PRESS RELEASE

For Immediate Release
August 14, 2025

CONTACTS:
Dede Laugesen,
[email protected]

Trump Was Right Nine Years Ago: We Must Strip Out and Remove “the Support Networks for Radical Islam in America”

GOP Candidate’s Seminal Speech in Youngstown Set Stage for Designating the Enemy

Virtual Program, 11:00 a.m.–12:00 p.m. ET, August 15, 2025

WASHINGTON, D.C.—On August 15, 2016, the then-Republican nominee for president of the United States, Donald J. Trump, made one of his most important speeches ever. In a campaign event in Youngstown, Ohio, he squarely addressed the threat our country faces from the ideology of “Radical Islam” – and courageously laid out a comprehensive agenda for defeating it, both overseas and here at home. By design, the platform he enunciated strongly contrasted with the policies and predilections of his pro-Islamist opponent, Hillary Clinton.

The Muslim Brotherhood and other Shari-supremacist groups and their respective fronts and leftist allies joined forces to fight one of Mr. Trump’s most prominent agenda items: his stated determination to stop the immigration of adherents to that toxic ideology. But what likely worried the opposition even more was his promise that “the support networks for Radical Islam in this country will be stripped out and removed one by one.”

While that pledge went unfulfilled in the first Trump presidency, Acting National Security Advisor and Secretary of State Marco Rubio suggested this week that it would begin to be realized shortly. In response to talk radio host Sid Rosenberg’s question, “Why wouldn’t you guys designate the Muslim Brotherhood and CAIR?” Mr. Rubio declared: “All of that is in the works. Obviously, there are different branches of the Muslim Brotherhood, so you’d have to designate each one of them.”

It is predictable that the same forces that conspired to block Mr. Trump from designating the Brothers and other Sharia-supremacist – and, therefore, terrorism-tied – operatives in his first term will mobilize to stop him now. Count on Qatar, Turkey and front groups like the Council on American Islamic Relations that they support to use their considerable influence and resources to ensure that toxic jihadism further metasisizes across our land.

The next Victory Coalition briefing from 11:00 a.m.–12:00 p.m. on August 15 will examine: the prescience of Donald Trump’s substantive rebuke to Hillary Clinton’s appeasement of the jihadists in Youngstown; the necessity of finally stripping out and removing each of Radical Islam’s U.S. support networks; and how we can engender the popular support required to overcome our enemies’ resistance to those and other steps laid out in his epic speech nine years ago.

What: A Virtual Briefing on “Trump Was Right Nine Years Ago: We Must Strip Out and Remove ‘the Support Networks for Radical Islam in America’” Register to participate at VictoryCo.org.                                                                                       

When: 11:00 a.m.-12:00 p.m. ET on Friday, August 15th.

Who:

Moderator:

• Frank Gaffney, President, Institute for the American Future; Member, Victory Coalition; host, “Securing America”

Panelists:

• Peter McIlvenna, Assistant to Lord Malcolm Pierson, Member of the U.K. House of Lords; Executive Director, Hearts of Oak
• John Guandolo, Naval Academy graduate; combat veteran, U.S. Marine Corps Force Reconnaissance; former member and Commanding Officer, FBI SWAT team; former FBI Counterterrorism Special Agent
• Robert Spencer, Director, Jihad Watch; a Shillman Fellow, David Horowitz Freedom Center; author of thirty-one books, including the New York Times bestsellers The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) and The Truth About Muhammad; columnist for PJ Media and FrontPage Magazine
• Dr. David Wurmser, PhD, Former Middle East Advisor to the Vice President and the National Security Advisor; Director, Middle East Program, Center for Security Policy; naval intelligence veteran

Sponsor:

The Victory Coalition’s mission is to focus on the need for victory over those determined to impose Sharia, whether by violent jihad or the stealthy, subversive kind, on Americans here at home and on their friends and allies in the Middle East and beyond.

CONTACTS: 

To interview representatives of the Victory Coalition, contact Dede Laugesen [email protected].