Mr. Speaker, our American way of life and our Judeo- Christian values are under attack as never before. People understand that there is the threat out there, but perhaps the magnitude keeps coming…
Mr. Speaker, our American way of life and our Judeo- Christian values are under attack as never before. People understand that there is the threat out there, but perhaps the magnitude keeps coming home of how bad and what a great threat it really is.
Radical Islamic terrorists with a backward, evil, 7th century view of the world are out to destroy and kill us. They seek to terrorize Western countries and Americans, in particular, into retreat.
Well, instead, we must stand tall. We must have the courage to do what is necessary because it does depend on us, as it always has been. As when Nazism and Japanese militarism threatened the world, it was the United States that carried the day for the decent people of the world.
When communism threatened to establish atheistic dictatorships throughout the world and was on the march, yes, it was the American people who stood strong and had those policies necessary to hold off the communist menace until it collapsed, basically, of its own inconsistencies and its own evil nature.
Well, we had great leadership at those other battles, and I say, thank goodness that today we now have a President who actually can speak the words against and condemn this horrible force that threatens our country and the people of the world.
Yes, we have a President who can actually say those words, ``radical Islamic terrorism.'' For 8 years, we had a President who couldn't use those words, much less do those things that were necessary to defeat this threat and to make sure our people were secure.
Some, if not many, of our leaders have been afraid to confront the basic nature of those who have made repeated terrorist attacks and assaults. Anyone who is not signing on to their fanatical religious agenda becomes a terrorist target, not only Christians, but Jews and other Muslims.
President Trump is, at long last, providing the courageous leadership in this historic battle. Congress needs to support our President. We need to stand with him and to stand united against this evil, and yes, defend ourselves. We must not be afraid, and we must not only defend ourselves but also do what is necessary to defeat and extinguish this ghoulish adversary and end his bloody assault on Western civilization, and yes, on moderate Islam.
Words are not enough. Our homeland is under attack; people are in danger; our families, our country, and our way of life are under attack. These attackers come from many countries, both men and women. But in common--these people who have been murdering people and the mayhem they have been creating throughout the Western world, whether it is in France or in the United States or elsewhere, these men and women who participate in these evil acts of terrorism have something that they have in common. They all pledge allegiance to radical Islam.
That is our enemy, not Islam, not Islam itself, but the radical fanaticism that terrorists and the Islamic psychopaths that are out there murdering in the worst possible and ghoulish ways, people, in order to--yes, in order to have--to shock us and in order to intimidate the West into retreat.
This week, a 29-year-old Uzbek immigrant plowed a truck into people walking and cycling in a New York City pathway. He killed 8 people, and he proclaimed that he was inspired by Islam. In fact, he said he was proud of what he had done and even requested the display of his Islamic state flag in his hospital room.
We need to ask ourselves: Why are we allowing Islamic terrorists like this into our country in the first place? How much longer will we close our eyes and bury our heads in the sand?
We have even witnessed horrendous terrorist attacks even in my home State. We know that. We have seen it. On December 2, 2015, in San Bernardino, 14 innocent and wonderful people were brutally slaughtered and 22 seriously injured by an immigrant from Pakistan--a hotbed of radicalism. And yes, his motive was his fanatic belief in what he considers to be Islam. It was truly one of the most evil attacks in our State's history.
In Orlando, on June 12, 2016, 49 nightclubbers out having a good time, enjoying themselves as Americans--life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness--they were having a good time, and 49 of these nightclubbers were brutally murdered and mowed down.
All of these innocent lives were slaughtered. Americans who were blown apart at the Boston marathon is no different.
We have American victims staring us in the face saying: What are you going to do to bring justice and to protect the Americans that we left behind, our families? These horrific crimes of cowards mirrors what has happened to innocent people throughout the world.
Yes, we Americans are suffering. And as I say, we have seen it in France, we have seen it in Europe, we have seen it in Muslim countries where these fanatics take Christians out and behead them. But they also, of course, attack moderate Muslims. They are out to try to topple the government of el-Sisi and Egypt and all the other governments there that are not committed to the fanatic view of Islam that they hold.
The most recent attacks in New York should, at least, open our eyes to things that we can do here. Maybe we can't stop it all over the world, but the least we can do is to take steps to protect our own citizens from this type of fanatical threat that hangs over us.
Well, we need to take specific steps that can and should be done to help deal with this danger. I have, in fact, discussed a plan with the President--and this is a few months ago--and we have had a lot of work and a lot of things under the bridge since then, but his commitment to border security includes placing a wall on the Southern border.
Yes, making sure that we have border security, and yes, if it takes a wall on our Southern border, the President is right on target. A wall and beefing up our border will, of course, be expensive. That is why I laid out a plan to the President and have since offered legislation that would pay for President Trump's proposed border wall.
The car attack in New York has altered many Americans and alerted many Americans to something they didn't know about before, and that is that we have an immigration system, an immigration law that permits 50,000 people to immigrate into our country every year--50,000 people who are chosen by lottery, not by some really looking at them, some examination of their credentials, seeing what they could contribute, no. A lottery.
And, of course, Senator Schumer in the Senate, I guess, was the man who actually insisted on this. Well, I am sure he was well-intended, but what we have now are people--instead of bringing in the people who can most contribute to our country, he has insisted we leave 50,000 of them up to a lottery system.
This is insanity. It is forced onto us and has been forced into policy by liberal left politicians who would flood our country with illegals, which is something they are doing besides just this threat that we are talking about, because these people who win the lottery, of course, are not coming here illegally.
At the same time, the same people who are pushing that type of system are pushing for policies that would flood our country with illegals and has flooded our country with illegals, that has brought down our healthcare system, our education system. We brought criminals into our country, and we have had an uncontrolled border.
Yes, the people who are responsible for that have also been responsible for policy that just permitted 50,000 people legally to come here; and those 50,000 people are people not selected by a rational process but instead by a lottery.
The terrorist murderers in New York, of course, were here. That terrorist murderer, and maybe murderers, they were here on the lottery visa. They weren't here because they had been selected. In fact, the lottery selected this Uzbeki fanatic Muslim, and he didn't have the skills and the education necessary to live a decent life, and he ended up killing a lot of people in New York. Surprise, surprise.
We should know about these people who are coming into our country, period, whether those people are coming illegally. We have had millions of people pouring into our country illegally, and then what do our liberal left politicians on the other side say? ``Oh, we need sanctuary cities to protect them, the ones who are here illegally and have come here illegally,'' which, of course, does nothing but encourage more people to come here illegally. And the more who are here illegally are people who we don't know what they are all about.
Do you think the fanatic Islamic terrorists that I am referring to today didn't notice that our border was porous and that people were pouring across our border from our Southern border?
Well, we should know about everybody who is coming into the country, and we should choose the very best people who can contribute to our country. I have no problem with a very robust legal immigration into our country, no problem at all, and neither do the Republicans that I know.
What we have a problem with is a flood of illegals coming in, bidding down the wages of our own citizens, some of them criminals attacking and killing the citizens like we saw in San Francisco--a young lady who was killed by an illegal who had been sent home. But also, even within the system that is legal immigrants, we need to know who those people are and select the very best people to come here.
The plan that I offered the President, which will make it easier for him to accomplish this mission, is a plan that would take that slot in our lottery, 50,000 people who now come in under a lottery like the guy who just killed those people in New York, instead, let's use that slot, those 50,000 places in our legal immigration system and offer it to foreigners who are very wealthy, who can be given the privilege of paying $1 million each to come here and eventually become a citizen.
If we can do that, that $1 million and those 50,000 slots will give us all the money we need to build that wall, and it is fitting that we build that wall and we secure our borders and beef up our system of immigration to protect our citizens, and that we actually have people who want to come here and immigrate here pay for that reform.
We need to implement immigration policies that serve the American people. That is what should be first and foremost, not some crazy notion that we are going to, oh, build--get some kind of better spirit by opening up the immigration into our country to anybody who can get here, and let's let a lottery decide, let's not do it rationally. No.
We need to make sure everybody who comes here is going to contribute, and they are good people. Unless we can all stand together--and the most important thing is they are coming here because they want to be Americans, like almost all the legal immigrants who come here, people who want to be Americans, and we will open our arms, as we have, and as Republicans who are opposed to illegal immigration have said over and over again.
Well, I have proposed H.R. 2724, and I call on President Trump to pay attention to this. I call all of my colleagues to pay attention to this. I urge my colleagues to take a look at that legislation. That will offer us the financial resources we need to bolster our borders, to make sure that there is a wall, but, also, to make sure that we are not bringing into this country people who are associated with radical Islamic fanaticism that would do us harm.
I am asking my colleagues to look at that legislation. I am asking anyone who is reading the Congressional Record or listening to this, perhaps, to talk to their Congressman on this issue.
Now, in the past 2 weeks, we have been provided information on another issue that I would like to bring up. Mr. Speaker, may I ask how much time I have left.
Mr. Speaker, I will try to bring up something that we have heard, and we need to discuss this as Americans, because it also is about a very major flaw in our system that is apparent, things that have been not right for the last 2 years.
In the past 2 weeks, however, information has been provided to the American people that has exposed the hypocrisy and misinformation, forced down our throats, for months concerning the allegation that President Trump colluded with the Russians in order to steal the last election. Over and over again, fake news filled the airwaves and, of course, the newspapers, suggesting that there was a sinister plot that kept Hillary from becoming President of the United States.
The core accusation was the Russians had hacked into the Democratic National Committee computers. Emails between the Democratic leaders were taken and handed over to Julian Assange, who is the head of WikiLeaks, and that they were released to the public by WikiLeaks.
The skulduggery of the Democrat leadership and the Clinton campaign was, thus, exposed by these emails. Yes, that exposure to this skulduggery and this unconscionable activity between the Clinton leadership, and also the Democratic Party leadership, these emails, yes, did have an impact on the election, as many Democrats who supported Bernie Sanders felt that they had been cheated by their own party because the proof was being offered to them by these WikiLeaks emails that had been taken from the Democratic National Committee.
Now, we heard over and over again that Trump stole the election because he was in collusion with the Russians. The lib-left media, which is most of them, found every which way, any little thing that any member of the Trump team did, as sinister proof that there was collusion with the Russians, thus, they stole the election. Well, it was pounded into our heads month after month, even after the election was over.
But Hillary didn't lose that. That is what we are being told. Hillary lost the election. She didn't want us to believe that it was because she was a rotten candidate running on a miserable track record and a platform that undermined her own candidacy, but, instead, she lost because the GOP had subterfuge and treachery in which they were working with Russians, who helped them out to accomplish this horrible crime of stealing the election.
Well, this negative media barrage and this continued attack on President Trump did not stop when the election was over. It went on for months and months. Everybody should remember that. Month after month after the election, in what appeared to be, in my point of view, an effort to disrupt our new President's authority and to exercise powers granted to him by the American voters, that was going to be disrupted, so he could not become a regular President of the United States, as our election process had determined. Talk about not being loyal to the American way of life.
After months of these obstructionist tactics, the American people are now learning the whole truth. They are learning that the attack on Trump was
a total fraud, a power grab by those who lost the election, and an attempt to distract the American people from this wrongdoing.
First and foremost, let's make it clear: the Russians did not hack into and steal the Democratic National Committee's emails. In terms of the collusion with the Russians, it is now coming to light there are far worse things. But the stealing of those emails and then making them public--and, by the way, they were just making public honest emails. We are not talking about giving the public false information. We are talking about giving them information the Democrats didn't want them to have.
But in terms of collusion with the Russians, what is coming to light is that the Clinton Foundation--so these other charges that we have heard about President Trump may be something to distract us about something that was being done that was wrong and, of a similar light, that was wrong and being done by Hillary Clinton and her family.
In terms of collusion with the Russians, it has come to light that the Clinton Foundation collected more than or around $150 million from Russian oligarchs that Clinton felt was deposited right into the Clinton Foundation coffers. These oligarchs then deposited $500,000 right into the Clinton family's pockets for a speech. Yeah, they are going to give them a speaker's fee of $500,000 for one speech. All of this was happening when Hillary was Secretary of State. It was also happening when our government was making a decision as to whether they should sell 20 percent of America's uranium reserves to Russia. Why we would never seriously consider that, I don't know.
But in my research, I have found evidence that, because that did not seem right, the FBI had an informant watching all of this go down, close up, right there in Russia--an informant. Instead of charging Hillary with a crime, which was not done by the FBI, a gag order was placed on this witness who was working as an informer for the FBI.
That gag order at the time, who put it on this witness?
Well, it was the head of the FBI.
Who was the head of the FBI?
Robert Mueller. That gag order was kept on by Mueller, the gag order on the informant that had this information about the negotiations for contributions to the Clinton fund of $150 million. This guy was kept, and a gag order, all of this time, even while Mueller was head of the FBI. This is the same Mueller who is now the special prosecutor trying to find anything to charge Trump with collusion with the Russians.
That gag order over the witness implicating Hillary was not lifted until last week, when some of us stepped up and said: We have to have a public hearing on this and we need to make sure--not a public hearing on any type of negative or, let's say, illegal collusion with the Russian Government by any American politician, which would have included Hillary, of course, and will include Hillary and anybody else who colluded with them.
Yes, I know, that I have advanced the idea of cooperating with the Russians, so this may seem out of place. But I have always felt whatever we do with the Russians needs to be what is in the interest of the people of the United States. Certainly giving away 20 percent of America's uranium reserves, and then gagging one of the witnesses to the discussions that were taking place at the time when, at the same time, oligarchs in Russia were providing the Clintons with $150 million donation to their foundation, and a $500,000 donation right into the personal pockets of Bill Clinton.
Now, we need to move forward on this. As we know, the special prosecutor, Mr. Mueller, who kept the gag order on this witness, who didn't charge Hillary in the beginning, now has found someone to indict. Paul Manafort has been indicted.
Isn't this interesting?
Our special prosecutor was tasked with trying to see if there was Russian collusion in the last election between the Trump people and the Russians in order to steal the election. And what did he come up with?
Basically, tax evasion by Paul Manafort, who is a longtime politico in this city.
And guess what. The tax evasion he is being charged with happened long before Paul Manafort had anything to do with Donald Trump. That is wrong. That is wrong. There is something really wrong there. We need to get a new special prosecutor or whatever. We need to have these hearings. Our Republicans need to get tough and we need to make sure that we are seeking out this information and documenting it.
For example, putting the people under oath. There were a group of people--policymakers--who made the decision of whether or not to sell that uranium to the Russians. They need to be put under oath and asked whether or not anyone representing the Clintons ever talked to them during that process and encouraged them for this deal of selling the Russians this uranium.
There are all kinds of avenues that we need to follow through on. Instead, Mr. Mueller ends up with some kind of a tax violation by one of the players that happened long before he was even associated with Donald Trump.
Something has gone haywire here. The American people need to see it. Especially when we understand now there is also evidence that during that election, the Clinton campaign paid Russian sources--it went through an intermediary. He was an English intelligence officer--paid millions of dollars to the Russians to get a scurrilous false report and video, or tape, or whatever it was, of President Trump in some type of compromising situation.
But we know now that was false and that Hillary Clinton's campaign and these people talking about collusion with the Russians were paying, essentially, the Russians to give them this information.
Now, I would hope that this comes out and this becomes something that is explained and the American people understand. When they see this attack on our President by people who have a totally different view of how we should be in the world--remember, our last President could not say the words ``radical Islamic terrorist.'' He had a different approach than Hillary, the Secretary of State. We know what happened in Benghazi and elsewhere. We have a totally different approach to these challenges America faces overseas. It is all right.
President Obama was elected. Hillary was not elected. President Trump was elected. These efforts to undermine his authority are the worst kind of repudiation of the American way of life and the American system of government. We Americans must stand firm against radical Islam. We must stand firm and offer an alternative of strength and courage, as compared to the cowardice and nonsense that we have seen in the policies of the last 8 years.
Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
