President Trump on His Successful Asia Trip : "America's Back and the Future Has Never Looked Brighter"

THE REAL NEWS TODAY IS THAT PRESIDENT TRUMP IS HOME AFTER A SUCCESSFUL ASIA TRIP. And, Washington GOP leaders have been waiting for him to return and help solve their problems. • • • TRUMP'S SUCCESS IN ASIA. President Trump clearly had two main goals for his trip across Asia -- trade and North Korea. He made it clear that the US will no longer quietly 'foot the bill' for cheap Asian labor and the lingering effects Chinese currenct manipulation that send low-cost, low-priced goods into the US, unless there is fair treatment in the deal for America and its workers. And, he went far in building the Asian coalition needed to confront Korth Korea's nuclear threat, especially with Japan and South Korea. • TheHill published an article on Wednesday outlining elements that President Trump addressed while in Asia. America's Asian allies "were looking for signs that the 'America First' President had not abandoned the region after pulling out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement earlier this year. Trump told an audience of Asian leaders in Vietnam that he is 'not going to let the United States be taken advantage of anymore,' indicating a pivot away from the multinational trade deals of the past." And, this goal was put into practice rapidly when the President announced more than $250 billion in business deals with China. But, TheHill said : "Trump was one-upped when the 11 other TPP nations announced they had reached an agreement on the core elements of a pact without the US." We would remind TheHill that this was not Asian one-upping because Trump had certainly realized months earlier when he withdrew the US from TPP that the trade pact would go on without America as a regional trade agreement -- he also announced that the US would enter into negotiated bi-lateral fair trade deals with any interested regional nation. • As for North Korea, President Trump said he will soon make a decision whether to place North Korea back on the list of state sponsors of terrorism, a move designed to further isolate the rogue nation. And, Trump gave the leaders of Japan and South Korea what they needed when he warned Pyongyang “do not try us” by escalating nuclear provocations. • TheHill acknowledged the warm reception President Trump got everywhere he went in Asia -- Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's round of golf for Trump with Hideki Matsuyama, one of the world’s top pros, and Abe's toasting Trump at a state dinner, saying “When you play golf with someone not just once, but two times, the person must be your favorite guy; South Korean President Moon Jae-in's celebration of the one-year anniversary of Trump’s 2016 election victory, noting the US stock market gains since then; Chinese President Xi Jinping treating Trump to a rare musical performance and first-ever state dinner in Beijing’s Forbidden City and calling the US president’s visit “an event of historic importance. President Trump called all the warmth "a sign of respect, perhaps, for me a little bit, but really for our country.” • • • WHAT ABOUT RUSSIA? Russia loomed, and looms, large. Of course, there is the "Russia election interference" investigation being led by special counsel Robert Mueller, who is investigating everything he can lay hands on EXCEPT for any evidence of Trump collusion in what were apparently Russian efforts to influence American voters in 2106. There is No Evidence, yet Mueller rolls on. BUT, Trump met with Russian President Vladimir Putin on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit and later said he believes Putin is being sincere when he says he believes that Moscow did not interfere in the 2016 presidential election. But, Trump add “I’m with our agencies” on election meddling. The key result of the Russian and Trump staff meetings was that Putin and the President have agreed on a framework for several key issues in managing Syria as the civil war winds down in light of major ISIS defeats in Syria. • • • AND, REALLY, WHAT ABOUT CHINA? Fox News reporter Steve Mosher wrote on Wednesday that "Trump represents the US far better in Asia trip than Obama ever did." • There isn't much to argue with here, but Mosher makes a few really good points : "President Trump did us all proud on his Asia trip -- at least those of us who are still prouder to be Americans rather than citizens of the world. He scored points by simply behaving like the leader of our nation and the free world. President Obama was never comfortable in either role. He often acted like he was ashamed of the United States and gave speeches that blurred the distinction between friend and foe. Not President Trump. He was open and forthright about his aims : he was in Asia to address North Korea’s development of nuclear weapons and long-range missiles, help right America's trade imbalance with China, and reassure our allies about American staying power. Just in case anyone in Pyongyang or Beijing -- or Hanoi or Manila for that matter -- missed this message, there were three US aircraft carrier battle groups operating off the Korean peninsula to reinforce its importance." • Mosher noted that the world was never very "comfortable with President Obama's bowing and scraping. Other nations couldn't understand why the head of the world's only superpower would deliberately project weakness rather than strength. At times President Obama seemed almost embarrassed by American power, as if he believed that America's free enterprise system was morally inferior to the vastly poorer but politically virtuous communist, socialist, and Islamic regimes he had to deal with. Our allies saw this behavior as, well, un-American. Our enemies were emboldened." That is why, according to Mosher, "President Trump was honored with a particularly extravagant welcoming ceremony in Beijing. Chinese President Xi Jinping himself served as his tour guide on a visit to the Forbidden City....President Trump's meetings with Xi were key to the success of his trip. He understands that China, and its increasingly open and brazen flouting of international laws and agreements, is the root of all the problems that we face in Asia." Mosher noted the US trade deficit -- "in large part Made in China. Ignoring the pledges it made when joining the World Trade Organization, China continues to use non-tariff barriers to keep its own domestic markets closed while taking advantage of our own relatively open markets. China lets American companies into its country only to milk them dry of their technology and then squeeze them out. All the while, China's state-sanctioned cybertheft of intellectual property continues apace, bleeding away America's technological advantage." All true, but Xi Jinping is now on notice that President Trump, unlike Obama, will not tolerate such imbalances -- estimates place the 2015 US trade deficit with China at $332 billion and the stealing of US patented technology and knowhow at $400 billion over the last decade -- and 'cheating' from a country that wants to be a unique partner in Trump's emerging world. • Concerning the North Korean threat -- Mosher labeled that alos "in large part, a Chinese creation. Dictator Kim Jong-un's half-kingdom would not even exist were it not for China's intervention in the Korean War. And it is China's ongoing trade relationship with Pyongyang that keeps Kim's nuclear and missile ambitions alive today. Were China to actually abide by the sanctions it has agreed to impose upon its ally, President Trump knows, the North Korean economy would collapse. Instead, with China's help, North Korea has actually improved its weapons procurement capabilities in recent years. Xi Jinping's foreign ministry may issue pro forma protests when Kim sets off a nuclear blast, but the two communist dictators remain joined at the hip by a mutual defense treaty." • Again, all true. The difference now is that Trump calls out Xi at every opportunity -- and, while he is receiving the usual Progressive slams for not hitting on Xi and China for human rights abuses, Trump chose throughout his Asia trip to ask "Why would China do that" when he talked about North Korea. In his Seoul speech, the finest of his Asian trip, President Trump gave a no-holds-barred description of the horrors of life in North Korea, ending with the question, "So why would China feel an obligation to help North Korea?" In his Seoul speech, President Trump also said : "All responsible nations must join forces to isolate the brutal regime of North Korea. And to those nations that choose to ignore this threat or, worse still, to enable it : The weight of this crisis is on your conscience." • Finally, there are China's destabilizing territorial claims that bring it into conflict with a dozen of its neighbors. The most outrageous example is China's recent claim to own the entire South China Sea. This Chinese claim not only runs roughshod over the rights of a half dozen other nations, it jeopardizes the free and open use of one of the world's most important waterways. Claiming an entire sea used to be an act of war. Trump addressed the South China Sea situation, offering to mediate between the competing territorial claims of the half-dozen nations that lay claim to part of the South China Sea and China itself, which claims the whole. Of course, the last thing China wants is for America to interject itself into the South China sea dispute. China prefers to bully its smaller neighbors into surrendering their claims one by one. As Fox's Mosher concluded : "Xi Jinping must be thanking his lucky stars that, when he first rose to power in 2012, a man as weak and clueless as Barack Obama was President of the United States. Because by now, Xi has surely realized that his days of taking advantage of the United States are over." And, in fact, at the ASEAN conference in Manila, Trump and the other nations participating affirmed their commitment to keeping the world's oceans open and international, not the property of any one nation. • • • WHAT ABOUT NORTH KOREA'S EMP THREAT. On Wednesday, WND published an article about the threat of Etectromagnetic Pulse attacks on America by North Korea. WND quoted Paul Bedard of the Washington Examiner, who wrote in his “Washington Secrets” column that the White House “is being warned that North Korea is mapping plans for a ‘devastating’ attack on the United States with an atmospheric nuclear explosion that would disable the nation’s electric grid, potentially leading to the deaths of virtually all impacted.” Bedard says President Trump “is being urged to create a special commission to tackle the potential for an electromagnetic pulse attack, one similar to the iconic Manhattan Project.” • Bedard also cited Marine Corps veteran Tommy Waller, an advocate for an EMP commission, now the director of special projects at the Center for Security Policy. Waller wrote : “The first and foremost thing he must write is an executive order establishing his own EMP commission in the White House -- a task force that draws from the experience of the previous EMP Commission.” Waller said that after “massive intelligence failures grossly underestimating North Korea’s long-range missile capabilities, number of nuclear weapons, warhead miniaturization, and proximity to an H-Bomb, the biggest North Korean threat to the US remains unacknowledged -- nuclear EMP attack.” Waller asserts : "North Korea confirmed the EMP Commission’s assessment by testing an H-Bomb that could make a devastating EMP attack, and in its official public statement : ‘The H-Bomb, the explosive power of which is adjustable from tens of kilotons to hundreds of kilotons, is a multi-functional thermonuclear weapon with great destructive power which can be detonated even at high altitudes for super-powerful EMP attack according to strategic goals.' ” • Another expert who delivered a warning to Congress was Peter Pry, who told WND it is "the Deep State, entrenched bureaucrats whose loyalties likely lay with a previous administration, that is indifferent to a threat that testimony has confirmed could kill 90 percent of the people in the affected region within a year." Pry, a nuclear strategist formerly with the CIA who served as chief of staff of the Congressional EMP Commission until it was terminated in September (the month North Korea tested a hydrogen bomb that it described as capable of a super powerful EMP attack), said liberal Democrats still are running a lot of Washington even after President Trump’s election : “The people who sabotaged the EMP Commission, Obama holdovers, are still at the Department of Defense. They have not been replaced by the Trump administration. This is happening not just with the vitally important EMP Commission. Our society, the Trump administration and the people who voted for Trump are paying for the failure of Congress to support Trump appointees quickly. At the same time during the Obama administration, he had twice as many appointees appointed to positions in government as Trump has. It’s not President Trump’s fault -- these people are undermining and opposing the policies that President Trump has enacted, including the case of the EMP Commission.” • What is an EMP?? It is created by a nuclear explosion at altitude -- in NK's scenario, over the United States. The blast would disrupt electronics in line of sight, including computers and other systems that deliver food, fuel, energy and communications to Americans. Repairing or replacing those systems easily could take months, or even longer, according to Pry, and "the result would be a run on food currently in stores, and starvation when those supplies failed, as replacements would be impossible without those delivery systems." Pry says an EMP attack would be more devastating than an asteroid hit. Pry says many downplay the threat of an EMP attack by claiming the conditions resulting from the attack would be similar to “time traveling” to a time when people were less dependent on electricity. But in reality, he warned, the “aftermath of an EMP would be an unprecedented environmental catastrophe. Gasline pipes are going to blow up -- you’ll have firestorms in cities from exploding gas pipelines. Chemical spills, toxic clouds, industrial accidents, where fires break out because of the failure of safety...systems. This huge chemistry set that is our society isn’t just going to sit there and black out; in many cases, it’s going to detonate and basically turn into bombs. In seven days, the nuclear reactors will go Fukushima and spread radioactivity everywhere.” • Jeffrey Yago, a licensed engineer and certified energy professional, told WND the danger of an EMP attack is very real : “I think in the future of this country, we’re going to certainly see not only more power outages in more areas, but they’re going to last a lot longer. I’m not talking about a two-day outage [caused] by a storm or a weeklong outage by something like Hurricane Sandy or Katrina, but we’re talking potentially, these problems could impact major parts of the United States for months, not days.” Yago suspects China, North Korea’s biggest ally, would rather see North Korea attack the US with an EMP weapon than with a more conventional nuclear missile. A nuclear missile would destroy buildings and other infrastructure that China, the US’s largest foreign creditor, may hope to own one day. An EMP attack would destroy America’s electrical grid while leaving other critical infrastructure intact." • For more detail on the EMP threat, there are published studies, including “Securing the US Electrical Grid” by the Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress in 2014, “Electric Grid Vulnerability” by the staff of two Democratic congressmen in 2013, and “Large Power Transformers and the US Electric Grid” by the US Department of Energy in 2012. You can also read more about the North Korea threat at < http://mobile.wnd.com/2017/11/warning-n-korea-mapping-specific-plan-for-devastating-emp/#bc1uAsPuHv9bDHIo.99 > • • • DEAR READERS, Americans can be rightfully proud of President Trump's visit to Asia. He represented America with dignity and displayed the stature of the international leader the world so desperately needs. His successes were numerous, but his greatest achievement was to be honest and forthright in speaking to America's Asian allies and foes. Nobody can say that President Trump has misled them about America's new and honorable goals of fair trade and a coalition that realistically deals with the nuclear threat posed by North Korea. • Now, back in Washington, the President must deal with the ongoing efforts of China's Xi Jinping to bully East Asia into agreeing to a Chinese commercial, territorial and cultural hegemony that erases much of the freedom won by the smaller countries in the region. President Trump also needs to rachet up, and talk to Americans about, already-ongoing programs included in the US effort to protect America from cyberattacks and the EMP threat, mostly coming from China, but from North Korea and Russia as well. • There is the other magic word, Russia -- because along with China, Russia presents Donald Trump with his single most important and difficult task as President. It is a task Trump is showing great skill at -- but his Progressive Democrat opponents in the Swamp are making his job much more difficult than it needs to be. Congressional GOP leasers could greatly diminish the ProgDem barrage, if they chose to. And, if the Republican leadership in Congress wants President Trump's help with their programs, they must come around to seeing that they cannot continue to be timid in the face of the vicious and Fake ProgDem attacks on their duly elected leader. There are signs that the Republican Congress is finally waking up to this fact -- House and Senate committees are investigating Hillary, Uranium One, the Clinton Foundation, Comey and his FBI, Obama's DOJ, and the Fake Russia Dossier. But, the GOP leaders continue to put distance between themselves and their President, and it feels wrong to the majority of Americans, who support President Trump. It feels like the squeamish behavior of someone who would like to help a neighbor who has poison ivy but who just cannot risk touching him. President Trump deserves better. His Asian trip proves that, if proof is still needed. • In his White House address to the nation on Wednesday afternoon, President Trump summarized his Asia trip -- "America is back, and the future has never looked brighter." That message has already resonated across Asia. And, we may be sure that Russia, Europe, and the Middle East are hearing it loud and clear.