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Nov. 12, 2024 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
30:57
Matt Hoh : Can Trump Control Foreign Policy?
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Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Tuesday, November 12, 2024.
Matt Ho will be here in just a minute on can President Trump really control, can he actually change American foreign policy?
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Matt Ho, welcome here, my dear friend, and thank you for accommodating my crazy schedule today.
What do you think is the private inner Kremlin reaction to President Trump's election?
Well, I've heard it from guests on your show, Judge, as well as from other sources that the Kremlin wanted to see Harris because she is more predictable.
This aligns with what I think possibly the Kremlin is a bit more assured with these recent appointments and picks that Trump is letting out every day now, who's going to state, who's going to, excuse me, who's going to be the NSA.
You know, who's going to the UN?
Not because they like those picks, but they understand what they're going to be dealing with.
Interesting.
They do understand what they're going to be dealing with.
I want to talk about them in a minute.
Before we do, the Washington Post reported, translate, the CIA wanted us to learn or hear that Trump and Putin had a conversation shortly after Trump won the election.
And Trump told Putin, don't accelerate the war.
I can't imagine Putin accepting that, but whatever.
Why would the CIA want that out there?
We now know it didn't happen.
Trump has not acknowledged it.
And Dmitry Peskov, President Putin's principal spokesperson, has denied it.
The CIA is doing what it's done for decades.
It's interfering in American politics.
It's interfering in American policy.
And it's acting as its own rogue government.
It's essentially what's done.
This is why we've had presidents, whether it be Harry Truman, JFK, who have said the CIA should be, you know, reduced to ashes and, you know, let the wind take it away, you know, to paraphrase.
This is the very dangerous thing about the Central Intelligence Agency.
They have their own narrative.
They believe they are not just separate and unaccountable, but that they are righteous, that they are the true inheritors of the responsibility of America.
And they see Trump as interfering with that.
They don't like him for a number of reasons.
They certainly didn't like him the first administration during his first campaign.
And they certainly don't like him now.
It's curious because who he puts into office, of course, are all people who are going to get along swimmingly with the CIA.
But, you know, the fact that he is an affront to them means they're going to do everything they can to sabotage him, to undermine him and to continue this narrative going that the only real security for me for the American people is.
This is who they are.
This is generational for them.
So the fact that they plant this story, the Washington Post, of course, absolutely runs with it because the Post is, as you said, an arm of the CIA, basically.
You know, it just shows that right off the bat, they're going to undermine this president.
And they're going to do everything they can to make sure that their narrative is the one that's heard and that distrust in the president, particularly if he does anything that may seem an affront to them or may go off of or may deviate from their narrative, let alone actual policy, such as maybe potentially engaging with Russia.
They're going to do everything they can to sabotage, undermine that, prevent it, etc.
Well, they're deeply engaged in Joe Biden's war.
And Donald Trump, even though I have very serious issues with the names of people he's released already, about which more in a few minutes, clearly doesn't like the mess he's inheriting in Ukraine and will do his best to end it, not extend it.
Now, we know that Biden's people, they've said so, are going to spend every nickel Congress gave them as if that's going to help the Ukrainian people.
It's not.
They need human beings, which they don't have, to fight this.
We also know from Scott Ritter, Colonel McGregor, Larry Johnson, and others that the war is nearly over, that the Russians have reached the Dnieper River, that they don't have much farther to go.
What will the CIA do?
If Donald Trump suddenly and summarily ends military aid to Ukraine?
That's, you know, there is that question, right?
This is what their existence is bound upon.
This is what their existence depends upon.
They're having these enemies, having these boogeymen, if you will.
So if it's shown that, no, you could actually talk to the Russians, that perhaps their grievances had some merit.
Well, that undermines who the CIA is.
That undermines the worldview that they need Americans to have in order for them to get away with what they want to get away with, which is what they've been getting away with for decades.
Rogue government agency that has its own policies, sees itself as the rightful dictator of the United States, not just overseas, but also here at home, their interference in our elections.
I mean, this is, again, stuff well-documented going back decades.
So, excuse me, you know, the idea is to prevent anything that's going to upset their fiefdom.
And, you know, you have that great Chuck Schumer quote from early 20, maybe it was January 2016, right before Trump came into office or right after.
But Chuck Schumer's on MSNBC and he says something to the host there, a lot of lines of, why would anyone get into a fight with the CIA?
Why would anyone get into a fight with the intelligence agency?
They have, you know, six ways from Sunday to get you.
You know, so it even shows a person like Chuck Schumer.
High on the Democratic Party.
I can't remember at that point if he was a Senate Majority Leader or Minority Leader or whatever it was.
He was saying on national television that I am afraid of the intelligence services and I won't ever do anything to cross them.
So the fact that they feel slighted, they feel that he is not in step with them, that he's not controllable, means that they have to make an example out of him.
And Chuck Schumer was in a position to put them out of business.
All he had to do was make sure their budget didn't reach the Senate floor.
And Justice Scalia, God rest his soul, told me that he and other members of the court were convinced that the intelligence community, they didn't know who it was, the NSA, the CIA, they didn't know who it was, had the court under surveillance, digital and electronic and telephonic surveillance.
You remember- When Dianne Feinstein, you know, someone who you're not going to hear a lot of praise for, you know, from either of us, right?
But the fact that she did stand so strong against the intelligence community, against the CIA, in trying to get her torture report, the Senate torture report, released.
And what did the CIA do?
They hacked into the Senate computers.
They spied on the Senate.
I mean, this should have been a massive constitutional crisis.
Correct.
And then, of course, nothing happened.
Barack Obama didn't do anything about it.
In fact, what he ended up doing was the person who investigated the CIA and said nothing should be done about it, just as she investigated the drone campaign, the criminal and unconstitutional drone campaign of extraditional killing around the world, right?
Avril Haines, he promoted her.
And then when Avril Haines, you know, when Biden came into office, she became the director of national intelligence.
Correct.
The whole thing is correct.
The boss of the CIA.
The boss of the CIA.
That is one thing, Judge, actually, that I have heard, that the Trump camp, I believe, has said that they will make the CIA truly subordinate.
to the DNI, the Director of National Intelligence, make them just one of the many different, I think there's 17 intelligence agencies that fall under the Director of National Intelligence umbrella, that they would make CIA just one of those, that they put them back in their place.
You remember right now- That's right, right.
And you have to remember, too, that Biden gets along with them very well because Biden bumped the CIA Director, Bill Burns, back up to a cabinet-level position.
But Trump had two CIA directors in his first term.
One was Mike Pompeo.
Enough said.
Plotted to murder the person whose picture is over your left shoulder.
Correct.
The other was, I forget her name, but her nickname was Bloody Gina.
Gina.
Enough said.
You can imagine what she did that her own colleagues gave her that nickname.
If Trump puts an outsider to run the CIA, You know what they will do to him, not crimes, but everything under the sun to nullify the person's strength.
And there's some argument that that's what they did to David Petraeus.
So there's a theory out there, there's thoughts out there that the people who outed David Petraeus in terms of letting the FBI know that, hey, General Petraeus here is giving top secret level information to his mistress.
That it came from the CIA.
That it was from within there that that's how that's who outed him.
Even though the mistress had a security clearance.
This is only an American.
A few more questions about Trump's election.
How do you perceive from your own sources the NATO and EU elites' reaction to Trump's election?
We already know that Germany is collapsing, but that's not because of Trump's election.
No, no, but that's because of policies that help lead to Trump's election.
You know, the same type of engaging in these wars overseas while letting your own country rot internally.
You know, this concept that strength comes from your actions, not abroad.
But what you actually have internal to your country, right?
That's the nation's true strength.
And so you've seen that with Germany.
We see that here in the United States.
We act as if the way we prove we are strong is by going abroad, you know, looking for monsters, right?
When the reality is that our true strength comes from our people, it comes from our infrastructure, it comes from our education system, it comes from our resources, et cetera, et cetera.
And that's what Germans are dealing with right now.
I think, to your question, Judge, about the European elites, I think it's very similar, again, to 2016.
They're in a bit of a panic.
They are frustrated by it.
They can't believe it.
But that's their arrogance showing.
That's their failure to understand what life is like for many Americans, why so many Americans chose this sport.
Donald Trump, and I'll say that as someone who didn't support Donald Trump, right?
But you can understand why people did.
And these people, this is also why all those governments in Europe are in danger.
I think there's been six governments in Europe that have lost national elections in the last two years, and Germany will be another one if that election comes up.
I'm waiting for Trump to enter, not physically.
But politically, the German election campaign in March by saying the United States apologizes for destroying the North Stream pipeline.
And now that would really upset the CIA, Judge.
That would really upset the CIA.
I wish he would.
Listen, the German people must know, unless they're really kept in the dark, exactly what happened there.
Instead of clean, smooth, They're burning dirty coal this winter to heat their homes and businesses.
Volkswagen is shutting down three of its plants.
First time ever I think they've shut down that many.
I read a thing where it costs for the German car companies to make the same car in Germany as they can make here in the United States.
It costs four times as much.
And much of that has to do with their higher energy costs because, again, because of this war in Ukraine and because the United States blew up the Nord Stream pipeline.
Wow.
So can Donald Trump actually, maybe can is the wrong word, will he actually change foreign policy?
If the rumors about Senator Rubio are true at Secretary of State, combined with Trump, These are two very powerful positions.
One talks to everybody around the world.
Secretary of State, theoretically, Tony Blinken wouldn't talk to Sergey Lavrov.
The other has the ear of the president almost continuously throughout the day.
Third position is not that significant.
more symbolic, Lee Stefanik, to the UN.
But the three of them are...
Mike Waltz wants to start a war with China.
Right.
I'll say this, Judge.
I'll say this to your folks who are watching and listening.
If anyone out there was afraid that the Judge's channel is going to go away because there'll be nothing to talk about because Trump was going to change things, I mean, at best, Judge, we won't be talking about Russia, Ukraine.
This time next year, we'll be talking about China.
You know, that's essentially, I think, what we're looking at here.
And, you know, if you look at who may be going over to the Director of National Intelligence, who may be going to the CIA, we know that Robert Wilkie, who ran the VA under the Trump administration, the first term of the Trump administration, Wilkie has been running the transition team for the Department of Defense.
And if you know anything about Robert Wilkie, this is, he comes from the same neocon mold.
He has spent his whole life, adult life, in those circles, in those institutions, working for those people, you know.
So, you know, the Department of Defense is likely going to go to someone who is in line with Rubio, Waltz, Stefanik, so will DNI and CIA.
And so this idea of can Trump change foreign policy?
Yeah, he could have.
But he's certainly not.
I mean, we go back to the adage of the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior.
And so we're very much seeing what we saw eight years ago, essentially, in terms of people thinking that Donald Trump might do something different in terms of foreign policy.
And then the reality is, no, it's not going to be any different.
There might be shades, different right degrees.
These people have different institutional biases and loyalties, but essentially the core of the American imperial militarized foreign policy will remain the same.
Here's what Robert Wilkie, of whom you just spoke, told my friends at Newsmax on Friday.
Quote, I'm not speaking for Donald Trump.
But I think the first call will be to Mr. Putin, and it will be, stop, or I give the Ukrainians everything that they need, close quote.
Well, that is insane.
He can't give the Ukrainians everything they need.
What they need is manpower, unless they're going to send American troops there.
What they need is manpower.
It's, I mean, we had, And certainly I think most of us on this channel, we're okay with reading that.
This idea is going to freeze the lines and NATO won't bring Ukraine in for at least 20 years.
And most of us weren't okay with the idea that we would arm Ukraine.
I think most of us want to see a neutral Ukraine, similar to late Austria.
Was neutral during the Cold War.
But, you know, that's been dashed.
These ideas that perhaps Trump will pursue an actual peace with the Russians as opposed to demanding.
You know, those hopes are belied and upended by who we've seen him appoint.
I mean, just a day or two before the election, Mike Waltz was interviewed about what should be done about Ukraine.
And his thing was, we got to give the Ukrainians the missiles they need to strike deep into Russia, which, as we know, that now includes Tomahawk missiles, possibly, because that's what Zelensky is asking for.
And we need to sanction.
The Russians to the point that nobody there can spend a nickel, you know, that type of stuff.
And going on about how Russia is nothing more than a gas station with nuclear weapons.
We shouldn't respect them.
I mean, just showing a complete absence.
Well, one, the desire for victory, because that's all that these people want is victory.
That's their worldview.
That's their identity.
That's the generations they come from.
But also, too, that they still don't know anything.
After all these years, you have the National Security Advisor.
For the incoming NASA security advisor, saying things that Russia is nothing more than a gas station with nuclear weapons.
He's not been observing.
He's not been learning.
He's not been informed about the way the Russian economy has performed over these last few years.
And his answer, of course, is what I think we'll see throughout the Trump administration to all the problems, more weapons and more sanctions.
This is where the Republicans judge different from the Democrats.
The Democrats feign.
Lip service.
They want to appear a certain way.
They have a certain image to uphold.
They talk about rules-based order.
They talk about the importance of civil society, utilizing NGOs and the importance of diplomacy.
It's all farce.
It's all charades.
It's all lip service, as we know.
But they do that.
The Republicans don't even feign it.
And they just basically see that there's a righteousness to America, that this is a mannequin struggle of good versus evil, and that many of them also come directly from ideas of manifest destiny, doctrine of discovery.
This is their heritage, and they believe the United States is entitled to do as it wants, and anyone who stands in their way will get what they would deserve.
I know he doesn't want us to promote this.
But Colonel McGregor would be a godsend in the Pentagon.
He would reduce the budget, close two-thirds of the empire's 850 military bases around the world, and give us a lean, working, fighting force.
But they're not interested in that.
They want somebody who will work with a military-industrial complex, and that's probably who they'll get.
Particularly since Wilkie is running a transition and it lines up with everything we've seen.
And I know there are a lot of people out there really hoping that Colonel McGregor would be there.
I was hoping, you know, that Colonel McGregor would be the next Secretary of Defense because then you had a chance to change our militarized foreign policy.
You had a chance to reel back these fantasies and delusions, these fever dreams of empire that these people possessed.
Have someone like Doug McGregor sitting on, sitting in at the E-ring of the Pentagon, doing exactly as you said, Judge, bringing some reality back to the imperial madness that's occurring in Washington, D.C. Unfortunately, that's not where the money is.
And the other thing, too, is that now you really see how indecently brilliant, if you will, the military-industrial complex is.
The entire Washington, D.C. is staffed.
So over these last, with people who have been fully vetted by the military industrial complex, right, as well as fully vetted by the Israel lobby.
So nobody who's going into the Trump administration who wasn't fully vetted by them, but also in a position coming from some institute, coming from some NGO, coming from wherever, where they had that type of access to get in.
Because if you look and you talk to the people who are in our camp.
You know, who wanted to see Doug McGregor, wanted to see like a Tulsi Gabbard or a Rand Paul go into the government at Secretary of State or wherever.
You know, the bench is really small.
Like the number of people that we have to fill those positions is limited because that's the success of the military industrial complex.
They've made it.
So it's almost impossible for people who have these realist, And then even if they did, it would be them against the Leviathan.
And what chance would they have?
Right, right, right.
It's very sad.
My conversation with Colonel McGregor, which went on for 30 minutes, and it was profound and insightful, as it always is, was we looked at each other after...
And that's true.
The euphoria that my anti-war and libertarian friends felt over Trump's election are beginning to think that the warnings from people like you and me and others that agree with us, be careful what you ask for, should have been taken more seriously.
Well, we'll see.
You know, none of this is...
Sometimes the office makes the man.
Sometimes the man changes the office.
Who knows?
Or the woman, in the case of Ms. Stefanik.
I doubt it, but I'm willing to give people the benefit of the doubt.
There's always that era of good feeling in the first few months of the administration.
Now we find out these people might not even be confirmed by the Senate.
They might just get recess appointments.
Right, exactly.
So right off the bat, I mean, it is.
We haven't had recess appointments in years.
Picking up essentially from where they left off.
I mean, these people told us who they were.
This is who they're going to be.
I think some of us were hoping after Stefanik was picked, right, Judge, that, well, maybe she's the one that they're going to give up to the New York conservatives and to the Israel lobby.
Here you go.
You're getting the U.N. position.
It's mostly symbolic.
It's important.
It's prominent.
It demonstrates who the United States is to the world.
And certainly, one of the great villains of the last year has been Linda Thomas-Greenfield, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations.
She's one of the great villains of this story.
But, you know, the hope was, okay, we gave them Stefanik at the U.N., and now we're going to have McGregor.
Paul, others filling out these posts.
And then we saw that wasn't the way it was going to be.
I think the thought, the hope was that, well, maybe this will be like a Lincoln's team of rivals and there'll be people with offsetting views in different positions and Trump will have them fight it out in the cabinet room.
And it doesn't look that way either.
So I am on that.
I am in the same position as you and Colonel McGregor, our judge, where there is a sadness, there is a gloom here because we know what's coming.
At best, it's a status quo.
At best, it's the continual destruction, annihilation, extermination of the Palestinian people.
And we've seen how the Israelis are acting.
The lunatic that they're sending here to be their ambassador to the United States.
The guy's from Scranton, Pennsylvania.
This guy, lighter.
And then you have, as well, you've got Smotrich.
Over the weekend, the finance minister and essentially the governor of the West Bank saying that he expects to annex the West Bank in the next year and that he has given orders to the various arms of the Israeli government to begin the process of annexing the West Bank.
I was going to finish, but let me play what Smotris said and guess who is the sheet anchor of what he says?
Donald Trump.
Cut number nine.
I have instructed the Settlement Division in the Ministry of Defense and the Civil Administration to begin professional and comprehensive work to prepare the necessary infrastructure for applying sovereignty.
In his first term, President Trump led dramatic steps, including affirming the legality and legitimacy of settlements in Judea and Samaria.
Alongside this, there were the Abraham Accords, peace for peace.
Those accords, a set of agreements facilitated by Trump's first administration, saw Israel normalize relations with four Arab nations.
We were on the verge of applying sovereignty over the settlements in Judea and Samaria, and now the time has come to do so.
Israel destroyed the relationship with those four settlements.
The Abraham Accords had nothing, no contact whatsoever with the Palestinian people.
We could go on and on and on and on and on.
It was a real estate deal for Jared Kushner.
Essentially.
Essentially.
And you know what, Judge?
The thing about this is maybe this Russia deal comes through, right?
Maybe this Ukraine-Russia deal comes through.
It doesn't look as likely as maybe it did a couple weeks ago.
Maybe it does.
But you've got to know.
You've got to figure that when Waltz and Rubio, whoever goes to DOD, these folks are sitting around the table, the conversation is going to go along.
Because this is how simple-minded they are.
They really do believe these things.
They're going to have the idea that, well, we've got to learn from the mistakes of Ukraine.
So that means we have to give all these wonder weapons, we have to give them up front to the Taiwanese, right?
Because this is what they've been saying.
We're not giving enough of these weapons soon enough.
We're not giving them quick enough.
We haven't given enough to Ukraine as they needed.
And that's my fear is that the first week of the Trump administration, things are going to be said in D.C. about how we're not going to make that mistake and we're sending Tomahawk missiles right now to Taiwan.
So it's like that type of horror.
The sadness and the fear of what's to come.
You know, we'd be dealing with the same thing if Harris was coming into office, but this is just different in shades and degrees, I guess.
Yes, yes.
I forgot to identify the speaker in that last clip, and it was Smotrich, who's the Minister of Finance, the equivalent of their Secretary of the Treasury.
This wasn't just any crackpot.
This is a crackpot with real serious authority whose coalition is the sine qua non, without which there would be nothing of Prime Minister Netanyahu's government.
And he's also, as I said, he's essentially the governor of the West Bank.
He made himself correct.
Exactly.
So he controls the military, the police, all the different Israeli agencies, the civil administration within the West Bank.
I believe East Jerusalem falls under his control as well.
So he has the power to do all the things he's been saying.
And, you know, you look at this ambassadorial pic that Netanyahu is sending over to the U.S., this man is even farther flung.
He's even farther past where Smotrish and Ben-Gavir are on these things.
This is a true, dangerous radical.
I don't know, radical, maybe reactionary is the better word for him.
Essentially, the Israelis have done this before, but just even in his time.
That they are sending a man who was born and raised and lived in Scranton, Pennsylvania, the same town as Joe Biden, to be their ambassador to the U.S. This man is actually a colonist.
And he will be sitting in Washington, D.C. And he will have members of Congress at his beck and call.
And, you know, essentially, you know, this is how the Israelis view the election of Donald Trump.
the certainty that they have behind them now that they can go forward with their plans because they're going to have the full support of the United States.
Matt, how a pleasure, my dear friend.
We covered the gamut.
We will continue to do so every week for as long as we can.
Thank you for joining us.
Thanks for accommodating my schedule.
All the best, dear friend.
Thanks, Judge.
Coming up at 3 o 'clock this afternoon, Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski on many of these same topics.
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