Last week President Trump urged world leaders to stand with the United States in seeking to block the Iranian regime from spreading ‘mayhem across the Middle East’. He also asked other nations to honour the sovereignty of the US while defending their own.
Addressing the United Nations General Assembly for the second time in his presidency, he expressed optimism that engagement with North Korea will remove the spectre of a nuclear conflict. ‘The missiles and rockets are no longer flying in every direction,’ he said. He pointed out that nuclear testing has stopped, but acknowledged that much work remains to be done before sanctions are removed.
He called the ongoing civil war and humanitarian crisis in Syria ‘heartbreaking’ and rightly blamed Iran for fuelling and financing the conflict.
‘Iran’s leaders sow chaos, death and destruction. They do not respect their neighbours or borders or the sovereign rights of nations,’ he said, accusing them of plundering their nation’s resources to line their own pockets.
He addressed other major issues too:
Immigration: Tolerance for human smuggling and uncontrolled migration ‘has produced a vicious cycle of crime, violence and poverty. Only by upholding national borders, destroying criminal gangs, can we break this cycle.’
Trade: The days of other countries taking advantage of US open markets ‘are over’. He defended tariffs against China and other countries, saying: ‘America will never apologise for protecting its citizens.’
The Venezuelan crisis: Trump called upon all nations ‘to join us in calling for the restoration of democracy in Venezuela’. The socialist regime of Nicolás Maduro has bankrupted the once-rich country and driven its people into abject poverty, he said.
Foreign aid: The United States is taking ‘a hard look’ at its foreign assistance, and in the future ‘we are only going to give foreign aid to those who respect us and, frankly, are our friends’.
He stressed the importance sovereignty and the nation station in face of globalisation:
‘Sovereign and independent nations are the only vehicle where freedom has ever survived, democracy has ever endured, where peace has ever prospered’ which is why ‘we must protect our sovereignty and our cherished independence above all’.
Deroy Murdock in the National Review is right to say that he showed commanding presence and that ‘compared with Obama’s Mister Rogers approach Trump is Muhammad Ali’.
Murdock goes on to describe how from Sunday to Thursday President Trump practised high-level diplomacy in New York, signing the US-Korea Free Trade Agreement, hosting a reception for Security Council members, and holding one-to-one talks with UN Secretary General António Guterres and leaders of Colombia, Egypt, France, Israel, Japan, South Korea, and Britain.
Yet in a week that should have been enough to ‘squelch renewed chatter about his alleged mental instability and unfitness for office’ the MSM coverage of his speech was unremittingly negative, wisecracking about the ‘laughter and disbelief’ greeting his not unreasonable claims for the achievement of his presidency.
Typical was the focus of the New Yorker, as a quick check on Google reveals.
I leave you to make up your own minds as to whose response is nearer to the truth, theirs or Murdock’s.
You can read his full assessment and analysis here.
And you can view the President’s actual speech in full here.
I sincerely hope that it will be POTUS who has the last laugh.
