The Patriot Post® · Trump Dumps Bad Deal
President Donald Trump yesterday canceled U.S. participation in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or Obama’s 2015 nuclear deal with Iran. In doing so, Trump kept yet another of his major campaign promises. In March 2016, Trump declared: “My number one priority is to dismantle the disastrous deal with Iran… I know deal-making. And let me tell you, this deal is catastrophic for America, for Israel and for the whole of the Middle East.”
Yesterday, the president blasted the Iran deal as “horrible,” “one-sided,” “rotten” and “a giant fiction.” Trump announced that “the United States will withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal,” adding that his administration is “instituting the highest level of economic sanctions.”
He concluded his address to the nation by saying: “We will not allow American cities to be threatened with destruction. We will not allow a regime that chants ‘Death to America’ to gain access to the most deadly weapons on earth. Today’s action sends a critical message: The United States no longer makes empty threats. When I make promises I keep them.”
Let me remind you of some key points, many of which Trump stressed in his remarks yesterday.
Iran is the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism. It has a long history of violating virtually every deal it has ever signed. Tehran cannot be trusted.
As last week’s dramatic address by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu demonstrated, Iran continues to lie about its nuclear weapons program.
The deal was fatally flawed in a variety of ways, but especially because it included “sunsets” on the most important provisions.
It prevented international inspections at Iran’s military bases, i.e., where the inspections were most needed.
It did not cover Iran’s ballistic missile program or the regime’s aggression around the region. As Middle East expert Michael Ledeen explains, the most fundamental flaw was not the terms of the deal, as bad as they were, but the Iranian regime itself.
I want to address one more thing that I know you are hearing because I am hearing it too. Many talking heads are claiming that it is unconscionable for Trump to break America’s word by reneging on a deal the United States made.
For all of these commentators suffering from amnesia, this deal was made by the Obama administration with the ayatollah’s regime. Barack Obama made a deliberate decision to evade the Constitution by refusing to send the deal to the Senate for an up or down vote.
If he had done that, and if it had passed, then the deal would have been binding as a formal treaty. But Obama didn’t do that because he knew it could never get the votes needed to pass. No president can make a deal that is binding on a future president without the consent of the Senate.
D'Souza Double Standard
Like many conservatives, I was disappointed when my friend Dinesh D'Souza was sentenced to eight months confinement for a 2014 conviction involving an excessive campaign donation. (Full disclosure: Dinesh worked for me in the Reagan White House.)
So I am curious to see what, if anything, will happen to Rosie O'Donnell after it was reported that she made at least five excessive campaign donations to liberal candidates.
O'Donnell insists she did nothing wrong and suggested that giving to left-wing candidates was a form of therapy for her. “My anxiety is quelled by donating to those opposing Trump [and] his agenda — especially at night,” the actress claimed.
Usually, this isn’t a big deal. Excessive funds can be refunded or reattributed to a spouse, unless there is some reason to suspect criminal intent. And O'Donnell might have reason to be feeling just a little anxious.
Rosie says she gave through a left-wing website and assumed that it or the candidates would not accept excessive donations. But the New York Post reports that O'Donnell “used five different New York addresses and four variations of her name.”
Now that does seem suspicious — almost like someone trying to mask her identity in order to evade legal limits.
Met Gala Mocks Christians
New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art hosted its annual gala event Monday night. A featured exhibit this year is “Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination.” The exhibit title also served as the theme of this year’s fundraiser.
The Hollywood elites who walked the red carpet let their imaginations run wild. Pop star Rihanna appeared as the pope in a mini skirt. Sarah Jessica Parker looked like the Queen of Hearts with an ornate nativity scene strapped to her head.
I am not Catholic, but it seemed obvious to me that the outrageous outfits were mocking Catholicism. If the Met ever hosted an exhibit on Islam and fashion, Hollywood leftists wouldn’t dare show up in costumes that mocked burkas or the hijab. But they are clearly comfortable mocking Christianity.
VE Day
Yesterday marked the 73rd anniversary of VE Day (Victory in Europe Day) recognizing the unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany and the formal end of World War II in Europe. Humanity owes so much to the heroes who ended Hitler’s tyranny.
Winston Churchill was one of those heroes. For years, Churchill sounded the alarm against the rising menace of Nazism, and he rallied the spirits of British people during the darkest hours of the war when Britain stood alone.
Below is an excerpt of a speech Churchill delivered to the British people on May 8, 1945:
My dear friends, this is your hour… It’s a victory of the great British nation as a whole. We were the first … to draw the sword against tyranny. After a while we were left all alone against the most tremendous military power that has been seen. We were all alone for a whole year.
There we stood, alone… The lights went out and the bombs came down. But every man, woman and child in the country had no thought of quitting the struggle… So we came back after long months from the jaws of death, out of the mouth of hell, while all the world wondered.
When shall the reputation and faith of this generation of English men and women fail? I say that in the long years to come not only will the people of this island but of the world … look back to what we’ve done and they will say, “Do not despair, do not yield to violence and tyranny, march straightforward and die, if need be, unconquered.”