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By Jerry Falwell Jr. August 19 at 9:36 PM

Jerry Falwell Jr. is president of Liberty University.

In the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections, American voters were forced to choose between a liberal Democrat and weak establishment Republicans. Democrats won both times. In the 2010 and 2014 midterms, tired of the leftist agenda, voters sent an unmistakable message to Washington: Republicans took control of the Senate and filled more seats in the House than at any time since 1929. Still, nothing changed.

In 2016, we have a clear choice.

This moment is historic because Donald Trump is not another establishment Republican.

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We have lived through nearly eight years of weak leadership from a president who did not sign the charter to create the Islamic State but whose policies had the intended or unintended effect (we will be debating that for decades) of breathing life into the lungs of the terrorist group. President Obama and Hillary Clinton most definitely signaled to Islamic State leaders that they had no intention of seriously challenging them, or even of calling radical Islamic terrorism by its name. Instead, Obama and Clinton pulled our troops out of Iraq, drew and then quickly erased a red line in Syria and tried to convince us that unverifiable pinpoint drone strikes (after leaflet warnings) would win the war against the Islamic State.

All of this was enabled by a feckless establishment Republican Congress.

The policies of Obama and Clinton have made the world unstable and unsafe and created a world stage eerily similar to that of the late 1930s. We could be on the precipice of international conflict like nothing we have seen since World War II. Obama and Clinton are the Neville Chamberlains of our time. The deal to make $150 billion available to Iran, the leading state sponsor of terrorism in the world and a nation committed to the destruction of Israel, clearing the way for Iran to become a nuclear power, reminds me of Chamberlain’s deal with Hitler in 1938, when the British prime minister declared “peace for our time.”

Domestically, Obama and Clinton have pushed to $19 trillion the debt that our children and grandchildren will somehow have to find a way to repay. Even our noble law enforcement has been demonized by the Obama administration, and anarchy is erupting in our cities.

Thank God we now have the opportunity to elect a strong leader, one who is not afraid to call the enemy by its name and to take the battle to that enemy if necessary.

We need fresh and bold leadership. Continuing the policies of Obama and Clinton internationally and domestically would be the definition of insanity: repeating the same mistakes over and over and expecting a different result.

I chose to personally support Donald Trump for president early on and referred to him as America’s blue-collar billionaire at the Republican National Convention because of his love for ordinary Americans and his kindness, generosity and bold leadership qualities. My family has grown to love all of the Trumps because they are wonderful people willing to sacrifice much for their country. The public perception of Trump that has been created by the media is simply false.

We are at a crossroads where our first priority must be saving our nation. We need a leader with qualities that resemble those of Winston Churchill, and I believe that leader is Donald Trump. As Churchill did, Trump possesses the resolve to put his country first and to never give up in a world that is increasingly hostile to our values.

Despite our differences, Americans from all walks of life must unite behind Trump and Indiana Gov. Mike Pence or suffer dire consequences. If Clinton appoints the next few Supreme Court justices, not only will the Second Amendment right to bear arms be effectively lost, but also activist judges will rewrite our Constitution in ways that would make it unrecognizable to our founders.

And this country will have as its president a person who jeopardized our national security by negligently sending and receiving classified emails on a private server and then repeatedly making inaccurate statements about it, all while her family’s foundation accepted millions of dollars in donations from foreign countries. Will time reveal the quid pro quo?

Our nation’s future truly hangs in the balance. Republicans such as Sen. Susan Collins (Maine) need to stop whining about Trump’s temperament and start focusing on Clinton’s corruption. (As far as I am concerned, the credibility of anyone who ignores Clinton’s temperament while attacking Trump’s is suspect anyhow.) It is naive or deceptive for conservatives to claim that a write-in vote or a third-party vote will not benefit Clinton.

A vote for Donald Trump and Mike Pence is a vote for more freedom and less government, a vote for national security and responsible immigration policy, a vote to finally fight radical Islamic terrorism. It is a vote to rebuild America’s respect overseas and a vote for strict-constructionist and pro-life Supreme Court justices. Remember when Iran held American hostages for 444 days, only to release them the day Ronald Reagan took office? Expect those kinds of results under Donald Trump’s leadership.

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