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September 22, 2017 (LifeSiteNews) — It is a brand new era in U.S. foreign policy — gone are the days of “leading from behind” and “apology tours” — as world leaders from Israel to Afghanistan praise America’s more forceful approach to the world under President Trump, as epitomized by his first speech to the United Nations.

In his speech Tuesday to the 72nd United Nations General Assembly, Trump declared, “As President of the United States, I will always put America first, just like you, as the leaders of your countries will always, and should always, put your countries first.”

Defying UN, EU, climate change, de-population and other globalists, Trump pledged to respect the “sovereignty” of other nations as they respect ours. This was welcomed by leaders abroad who bristled at Obama’s cultural overreaches, such as the Democratic president’s (and then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s) pressure on other nations to embrace “LGBT rights.” (In 2015, one Kenyan legislator warned the visiting Obama not to lecture his nation on “gay rights,” asking him to “appreciate our Christian, Islamic and African traditional values which abhor homosexuality.”)

Trump sounded a different note. (See below a 10 minute excerpt from the speech that includes Trump's comments on national soverienty.)

“In America, we do not seek to impose our way of life on anyone, but rather to let it shine as an example for everyone to watch,” he said. “This week gives our country a special reason to take pride in that example. We are celebrating the 230th anniversary of our beloved Constitution — the oldest constitution still in use in the world today.”

“We do not expect diverse countries to share the same cultures, traditions, or even systems of government. But we do expect all nations to uphold these two core sovereign duties: to respect the interests of their own people and the rights of every other sovereign nation. This is the beautiful vision of this institution, and this is foundation for cooperation and success,” Trump said.

“Strong, sovereign nations let diverse countries with different values, different cultures, and different dreams not just coexist, but work side by side on the basis of mutual respect,” he said

Notable omission of climate change and LGBTQ in speech

Trump’s UN address made no mention of either “climate change” or the LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer) agenda—two top priorities of the Obama administration. This seemed to indicate, in their omission, that the Trump administration is not inclined to use its power to intervene in the affairs of sovereign nations in support of those causes.

Predictably, “gay” activist organizations were not happy with Trump's ignoring their issue and his talk about “sovereignty.”

The Washington Blade, a D.C. newspaper for homosexuals, reported Tuesday: “LGBT groups found that emphasis on sovereignty troubling because they appear to fly in the face of a U.S. policy seeking to secure LGBT rights overseas — even if that means demanding sovereign governments make changes to those laws.”

“Ty Cobb, director of HRC [Human Rights Campaign] Global, took to Twitter to say Trump’s words about respecting sovereignty and other cultures were just an excuse to ignore anti-LGBT human rights abuses,” the Blade reported.

Similarly, environmental activists were outraged at the lack of “climate change” references in Trump's UN speech.

“How do you do that without addressing the growing hazard and harm from climate disruption, a threat to the future of all humankind?” Rhea Suh, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council, wrote incredulously in an op-ed in the New York Daily News Wednesday.

Suh castigated Trump for pulling out of the Paris climate accord, which she called a “triumph of American leadership.” She grumbled that “Trump mentioned the disastrous storms without connecting the dots to climate change.”

USA won’t be “taken advantage of”

“The United States will forever be a great friend to the world, and especially to its allies,” he said. “But we can no longer be taken advantage of, or enter into a one-sided deal where the United States gets nothing in return. As long as I hold this office, I will defend America’s interests above all else.”

American Christian evangelist Franklin Graham had high praise for Trump’s UN address, posting this statement on Facebook:

“Thank God we have a president who stands for truth and is not afraid to speak truth to the whole world. President Donald J. Trump’s address today to the United Nations General Assembly may have been one of the best speeches ever given to that body. It made you proud to be an American. I hope you will join me in praying for this man, that God will guide and direct him. He reminded the world, ‘If the righteous many do not confront the wicked few, then evil will triumph.’”

Mocks North Korean despot

Trump railed against Iran as a “corrupt dictatorship” and “murderous regime.” Shaking off what many conservative critics said was Obama’s preoccupation with America’s alleged past sins, he openly condemned his predecessor’s weakness, describing the Democrat’s Iran nuclear deal as “one of the worst and most one-sided transactions the United States has ever entered into“ and “an embarrassment to the United States.”

He forthrightly declared, “We will stop radical Islamic terrorism because we cannot allow it to tear up our nation, and indeed to tear up the entire world.” As an edgier version of Ronald Reagan three decades ago, he belittled North Korea’s Marxist-Leninist dictator Kim Jong Un as “Rocket Man.”

“In America, the people govern, the people rule, and the people are sovereign,” he said. “I was elected not to take power, but to give power to the American people, where it belongs. In foreign affairs, we are renewing this founding principle of sovereignty. Our government's first duty is to its people, to our citizens—to serve their needs, to ensure their safety, to preserve their rights, and to defend their values.”

Referring to terrorist “rogue regimes,” Trump said, “If the righteous many do not confront the wicked few, then evil will triumph. When decent people and nations become bystanders to history, the forces of destruction only gather power and strength.”

Bibi: Trump’s was best UN speech

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu, whose frustrations with Obama (and vice versa) were well reported, praised Trump’s speech as “bold” and “courageous” and thanked Trump for “speaking the truth about Israel.”

“I've been ambassador to the United Nations, and I'm a long-serving Israeli prime minister, so I've listened to countless speeches in this hall. But I can say this — none were bolder, none were more courageous and forthright than the one delivered by President Trump today,” Netanyahu said in his own speech to the same UN collective body.

Afghan president praises Trump approach

President Trump’s tough approach is winning over allies overseas. Afghan President Ashraf Ghani praised Trump's new war-fighting strategy in Afghanistan, saying it has made a “difference of day and night,” according to the Washington Examiner.

The Examiner reports that Trump’s Afghanistan plan commits to “prioritizing conditions on the ground,” with the U.S. sending additional troops to train Afghan soldiers to aggressively prosecute the war in the long-embattled nation. That is opposed to Obama’s policy of adhering to arbitrary pullout deadlines, which the Democrat reluctantly abandoned toward the end of his presidency as Taliban rebels gained the upper hand in the war.

Trump has also “called out Pakistan for ‘housing the very terrorists we are fighting,’ and emboldened India to do more in Afghanistan,” the Examiner reported.

“Since the decision, there's been an immense change on the ground. … It's a difference of day and night,” Ghani said during remarks at the start of a meeting with Trump at the United Nations. “A cloud of uncertainty has been lifted, but equally important is your commitment to a political solution at the end of this process.”

Nevertheless, liberals were not happy with Trump’s speech, as Marc Thiessen, former speechwriter for President George W. Bush, explained.

“This is classic conservative internationalism: a vigorous defense of freedom, a bold challenge to dangerous dictators and a commitment to the principle of peace through strength. No wonder Trump’s critics on the left are so upset,” Thiessen wrote Wednesday in The Washington Post.

Pro-family leader to Trump: stop Obama’s LGBT promotion

One Caribbean pro-family leader, Dr. Wayne West, who for eight years fought Obama’s agenda of promoting the LGBTQ agenda in the name of “human rights,” urged Trump to follow through and respect the traditional moral values of sovereign nations like his country of Jamaica.

The vast majority of Jamaicans oppose American and European diplomatic campaigns to push homosexuality-based “rights” by first overturning the country’s anti-buggery (anti-homosexual-sodomy) law.

“I welcome President Trump's stated commitment to respect the sovereignty of all nations. In this regard, I hope that the president will see fit to discontinue the post of LGBT envoy which his predecessor created with the intention of imposing a wholly illogical lifestyle — which is associated with high rates of disease — on the nations of the world,” Dr. West, chairman of the Jamaican Coalition for a Healthy Society, told LifeSiteNews.

Under the fledgling Trump administration, a few U.S. Embassies across the world continued to fly the LGBT-activist “rainbow” flag in June to celebrate homosexual-bisexual-transgender “pride,” even though Trump broke with Obama’s policy of officially honoring June as LGBT “pride month.”

Trump and his Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, are reportedly keeping on Obama’s “International LGBT Envoy,” homosexual activist diplomat Randy Berry, whose appointment in 2015 as the first-ever diplomat to assume that role delighted LGBTQ activists. However, Berry’s current role and duties are uncertain.

The State Department website states that Berry “served as the State Department’s Special Envoy for the Human Rights of LGBTI Persons beginning in April 2015.” But his new title is listed as: “Deputy Assistant Secretary, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor; Term of Appointment: 01/20/2017 to present.”

Vatican criticizes speech

A Vatican spokesman denounced as “deplorable” Trump's threat to “totally destroy” a “reckless” North Korea if the rogue regime threatens the United States.

“The international community must respond by seeking to revive negotiations,” Archbishop Paul Gallagher, the Vatican's Secretary for Relations with States, said. “The threat or use of military force have no place in countering proliferation, and the threat or use of nuclear weapons in countering nuclear proliferation are deplorable.”

Gallagher also criticized Trump for his comments about rebuilding the U.S. military to the “strongest it has ever been.”

“We must put behind us the nuclear threats, fear, military superiority, ideology, and unilateralism that drive proliferation and modernization efforts and are so reminiscent of the logic of the Cold War,” the Vatican spokesman said, according to Breitbart News.

Trump’s commitment to rebuild the U.S. military has earned him widespread support among conservatives and the wider American public.

See the full text of Trump’s UN speech Sept. 19, as provided by Politico; the speech can be viewed here.