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Nov. 25, 2024 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
27:42
Aaron Maté :
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Hi, everyone.
Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Tuesday, November 26, 2024.
Thanksgiving week here in America.
Aaron Mate joins us now.
Aaron, a pleasure, my dear friend.
I have a lot of questions for you about Ukraine.
And big picture is the reckless escalation of the war by President Biden's administration in the past couple of weeks.
But I want to ask you, what's going on?
What's new in Israeli politics?
The last time we spoke, it's been off the front page because of all the Ukraine stuff.
One of the criminal cases against Prime Minister Netanyahu was bubbling up.
Smotrich had proclaimed himself the governor general of the West Bank and was asking for annexation.
And now there's talks about some sort of a ceasefire.
But as Israel always does, it's not wasting an opportunity.
To cause more carnage.
And so, you know, just as we're speaking, Israel has ordered many neighborhoods in Lebanon to evacuate and he's carrying out more strikes around Beirut.
This is what Israel always does, that even if there's going to be a ceasefire, it wants to remind everyone that it has the monopoly on violence or claims the monopoly on violence.
So that is going to be in effect right now.
So we'll see.
If the ceasefire actually comes to fruition, obviously anything that stops the fighting would be welcome.
But Israel is always just playing with fire and threatening to sabotage a deal that it's apparently come close to brokering by launching these new attacks on Lebanon.
And what about Prime Minister Netanyahu's woes, the BB gate, the pilfered documents, his chief spokesperson indicted and still behind bars?
Well, all this underscores why Netanyahu has been trying to prolong these conflicts for as long as possible is because the moment they stop, he faces even more scrutiny.
And yeah, the cases are swirling around him.
He is in trouble, including a case in which there are credible allegations that he ignored warnings about a looming attack by Hamas.
On October 7th, and the efforts that his aides went to conceal that by doctoring transcripts of his conversations with senior Israeli military officials.
So that's happening, but it's not getting nearly as much attention as it should because Netanyahu has mired Israel in so many conflicts, continuing to pulverize civilians in Gaza and causing more carnage in Lebanon.
McGregor told us this morning of a report of 15,000 children and babies under the age of 5 killed.
Could the number be that high?
A recent UN report said that 70% of the casualties in Gaza are women and children.
So absolutely, I believe that those figures are credible.
And the horrible thing is that there could be an undercount.
Because how can you really have a full accounting?
of all the carnage in Gaza when Israel has destroyed all the infrastructure deliberately, as they've openly made clear.
So yes, these figures, as horrific as they are, could be even far worse.
Transferring over to Ukraine, has the West, in your view, perceived the significance of the Oreshnik missile that The Kremlin used late last week.
That's a great question.
Because who knows what's inside the minds of the people in charge.
When you're talking about the Biden administration, they've been willing to continuously escalate despite the dangers.
And even after this Russian intermediate-range missile attack, more attack missiles supplied by the U.S. Aided by the U.S. were launched from Ukraine into Russia.
So I don't think the Biden administration, at least, is taking the escalation seriously.
They're willing to sacrifice more Ukrainians.
I think they're calculating that Russia is not going to target NATO sites.
And I think that's accurate.
But what Russia will do, as they displayed with that missile launch, is target Ukraine.
And they can inflict far more damage than they have so far.
And so that's been the basic calculation.
Now, we've gotten all sorts of reports coming out of NATO capitals that, you know, France and Germany or France and UK are not ruling out sending more troops.
I think that's just desperation, knowing that they're running out of Ukrainians to sacrifice.
But even issuing these sorts of threats, it's dangerous in itself.
And then you also had this bizarre report in the New York Times a few days ago, in which the Times said that there have been discussions.
Among European and U.S. officials to place nuclear weapons inside of Ukraine.
I'm not joking.
The Times called this an instant and enormous deterrent, but the Times said it would also be complicated and have serious implications.
Yes, those implications are nuclear Armageddon.
Russia would never allow Ukraine to host nuclear weapons.
So it's just absolute insanity coming from Washington and European capitals.
I hope these aren't serious proposals.
They're just empty posturing.
But again, these kinds of threats are dangerous because Russia is going to see these threats.
And if there's any semblance, any possibility that anything close to these steps are being contemplated, Russia is going to get far more aggressive to ensure that Ukraine cannot host nuclear weapons or any other type of offensive weapons that can threaten Russia.
It would be hard for me to believe that the British people or the French people would tolerate troops on the ground, especially in light of this missile that the Kremlin now has, which can reach Paris and London in just a couple of minutes, and you'll see the damage that can be done.
I think you're right.
He's probably just going to attack Ukraine.
But the attacks in Ukraine will become devastating.
I mean, the munitions plant that this arresting, And all this was anticipated.
Two years ago, the New York Times had an article in which they were talking about the mentality inside the U.S. government.
And they said that, according to U.S. officials, the most dangerous moments are yet to come because, they pointed out, much to their surprise, Russia has been relatively restrained.
And what they were acknowledging is that Russia had not carried out Since then, we've had multiple efforts at a ceasefire sabotage, including, of course, most famously, or infamously, the April 2022 peace talks in Istanbul.
But now, of course, it's reaching the dangerous moments that U.S. officials anticipated as a result of their own refusal to engage in diplomacy with Russia.
And now with two months left in office, Biden is taking the gloves off and risking far more escalation because he knows that only Ukraine or he's betting that only Ukraine will pay the price.
Late last week, Admiral Bob Bauer sounds American, but he's Danish.
The chair of the NATO military committee suggested that NATO members are.
I don't know what that means.
I don't know what forces they have with which to do it.
Do you think the Russians are preparing or are already prepared to fight a war against NATO, NATO forces on the ground?
They've been preparing for years, and they've been preparing as a direct result of U.S. decisions to surround Russia.
With offensive weaponry.
when Russia was faced with the fact that the Bush administration, the George W. Bush administration, pulled out of the ABM Treaty and started building these missile sites in Poland and Romania, Russia started preparing with weapons that could counter that threat.
Because although the Bush administration claimed that these missile sites were just there to protect Europe from Iran, everyone knew that that was a complete joke, that the aim was to destroy So Russia's been preparing for that.
And then when the Trump administration, at the behest of John Bolton, who was instrumental in pulling out of the ABM treaty, then pulled out of the INF treaty in 2019, Russia has also been preparing.
So yes, Russia has been preparing.
Has NATO been preparing?
I don't think so.
I think they've just been incredibly arrogant in refusing to dismiss Russian security concerns.
And their strategy has entailed basically letting Ukrainians be the cannon fodder and pay the sacrifice of decisions made in NATO.
So, no, I don't think NATO is prepared.
I think it's Russia that's been preparing.
And that's why when you look at Putin, I don't think he's really concerned right now with what the U.S. is doing.
He's prepared to counter it.
And he's happy to go along with the NATO strategy of making Ukraine pay the price, if that's what it takes.
So, in addition to this Dutch admiral...
Now, this, of course, set some of our military guys, Ritter and McGregor, set their hair on fire.
Nobody's prepared to fight a nuclear war.
Why would an American admiral be making a crack like that?
Hasn't been authenticated.
Well, it's been authenticated.
He said it.
It hasn't been.
Commented on or rescinded by the Biden administration.
If someone is actually saying that they're prepared to fight a nuclear war, then he's saying that they're prepared to kill everybody.
Right.
To kill us all.
I mean, that's what that is.
know, Scott Ritter.
It's like if you're fighting and It's just mass suicide.
So is that what these people want?
If they're saying that, then I guess that's what they want.
Is the Trump administration, the incoming administration as we know it and understand it, just a gaggle of retreaded Zionist neocons?
I think that's a fair description.
I mean, look, if you go by previous positions, there is sort of a split inside the Trump camp.
You have people like J.D. Vance and Tulsi Gabbard who've been very critical.
of the U.S. NATO role in Ukraine and have, you know, called for diplomacy.
They, you know, and RFK Jr. as well.
But they stand in stark contrast to the people who are in, you know, really senior positions.
The Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, the incoming National Security Advisor, Mike Waltz, Sebastian Gorka, who's now been named to a senior position on the National Security Council.
These are diehard Gorka's made some really reckless statements about how, you know, if Putin doesn't do what we say, we're going to arm Ukraine even more than we're going to make what Biden has given to Ukraine look like peanuts.
I mean, absolute insanity.
So who is Trump going to go with?
Who's he going to listen to?
Well, if his first term is any guidance, the neocons, because he, contrary to popular belief, contrary to the fantasies of Democrats who believe that Vladimir Putin was blackmailing him to do Russia's bidding, Trump escalated tensions with Russia by arming Ukraine with weapons that Obama wouldn't even send, and by tearing up the aforementioned INF Treaty, which played a major role in fueling the very tensions we're dealing with today.
So which Trump are we going to see?
The Trump that talks about getting along with Russia and making peace, or the Trump that appoints a series of neocons who undermine his stated goals.
We'll have to wait and see.
But if we're taking a guess, I think we'll...
I want to ask you in a minute about whether Biden and the elites in NATO are in cahoots to extend the war so that Trump can't stop it in 24 hours, but I can't resist playing this.
Here's the Gorka clip that you talked about.
This is really absurd.
at 10. I'll give one tip away that the president has mentioned.
He will say You will negotiate now or the aid that we have given to Ukraine thus far will look like peanuts.
That's how he will force those gentlemen to come to an arrangement that stops the bloodshed.
Does he know what he's talking about?
It's a completely reckless statement calling a foreign head of state, especially a head of state that presides over the world's largest nuclear arsenal, a thug, and talking about how somehow pursuing the Biden strategy of flooding Ukraine with U.S. weapons will somehow lead to a different outcome.
It's absolute insanity.
And if he reflects Trump's actual thinking, then we're in real trouble.
I had an exchange with Gorka a few years ago.
Around the time of the invasion.
And he just struck me as profoundly ignorant.
He was proud of the fact that the Trump administration had withdrawn from the INF Treaty.
He couldn't establish a connection.
Pulling out of an arms control pact that had helped keep the peace.
And a climate of escalation.
And his view of the Biden administration was that somehow they had been weak.
Oh, for God's sakes.
Well, you may accuse me of raising your blood pressure because here's Mike Waltz, the new or the incoming national security advisor, talking about his good buddy with whom he sees eye to eye, his predecessor, Jake Sullivan.
Very clear about the need to end this conflict.
And so what we need to be discussing is who's at that table, whether it's an agreement, an armistice, how to get both sides to the table, and then what's the framework of a deal.
That's what we'll be working with this administration until January and then beyond.
And I also want to be clear on one thing, Julian.
Jake and I, Jake Sullivan and I have had discussions.
We've met.
For our adversaries out there that think this is a time of opportunity, that they can play one administration off the other, they're wrong.
And we are hand in glove.
We are one team with the United States in this transition.
Hand in glove with the principal architect of genocide.
Or funding of genocide in Gaza and slaughter in Ukraine.
Yeah, what he's doing there, he's endorsing the Biden administration's decision to approve Ukraine's use of long-range U.S. weapons to strike Russia.
That's what he's doing because that's what the Biden administration has just done.
And he's saying we're one team.
Now, he could be doing that as sort of posturing to look tough, to make, you know, just to show that – But on the surface, it does look like he's just fully on board with the Biden administration, and certainly he's not renouncing their decision, their very dangerous decision, to approve these long-range strikes with the Atakums into Russia.
But he has it backwards.
He's warning Russia there that don't take advantage of the fact that there's a new administration coming in.
It's not Russia that is contemplating taking advantage of a transition.
It's the Biden administration.
This was recently acknowledged in the New York Times.
I'll read you the passage.
It says this.
The escalation risk of allowing Ukraine to strike Russia with U.S.-supplied weaponry has diminished with the election of Trump, Biden administration officials believe, calculating that Putin knows he has to wait only two months for the new administration.
So that's an acknowledgement from the Biden administration.
That their decision to authorize these long-range strikes was deliberately the result of Trump winning because they feel with Trump coming into office in just two months, there's less of a risk if they approve an escalation because Putin will hope to make a deal with Trump when he comes into office.
So that's an acknowledgement from the Biden administration that their battlefield decisions inside Ukraine were deliberately influenced by a U.S. election.
That they're saying that they're more dangerous than Trump is because they're saying that with Trump coming in, there's less of a chance of escalation.
It's a remarkable admission from the Biden administration, but it's accurate because these people have been willing to risk escalation constantly for their aim of bleeding Russia and using Ukraine for that task.
Are you of the view that Biden is attempting to escalate the conflagration or cause a catastrophe so that it explodes on Trump's watch?
In Ukraine?
Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if he has that goal.
But again, there's only so much the U.S. can do at this point.
Ukraine is running out of people to sacrifice.
They don't have much time left.
So I think this is just a last-ditch effort to cause as much carnage as they can from a spiteful president who was ousted by his own party, who bragged about how the ruble in Russia is going to be rubble when in fact Russia's economy has not taken anywhere near the beating that Biden boasted about.
He's spiteful.
Early on in Russia's invasion, Biden went to Europe and said, for God's sakes, this man, Putin, cannot remain in power.
Putin's very much in power.
His popularity is very high.
So this is a bitter guy in his last weeks in office doing what he can to cause trouble for Putin, but knowing that there's only so much he can do.
You know, your analysis, based on the facts, makes the Gorka comment even more absurd.
If we're going to send more military equipment over there, where are we going to get it from and who's going to utilize it?
The thing that they need the most, we can't send them, which is human beings.
Exactly right.
And that's why you hear some European leaders threatening to send their own troops, but they're not going to.
They're not going to send their own people.
Everyone knows this conflict can be resolved.
Pretty easily.
Although at this point, Ukraine's going to have to absorb some losses that they wouldn't have had to absorb before.
Had they accepted their own peace deal, which they negotiated with Russia, they could have kept their territory, minus Crimea, which is majority pro-Russian anyway.
And all they had to do, the main demand from Russia, was neutrality.
Which is not a radical demand.
It's enshrined in Ukraine's founding declaration of state sovereignty.
The Ukraine is a neutral state, not a part of any military alliance, whether it's NATO or Russian-led military alliance.
The Bush administration started all this by giving Ukraine this future pledge of NATO membership, even though most Ukrainians didn't even want it.
If you look at the polls back in 2008, when the Bush administration, at the behest of people like Dick Cheney and Victoria Nuland push through this promise that Ukraine will one day join NATO.
Support for joining NATO in Ukraine was tiny.
It was absolutely tiny.
So all we need to do is respect Ukraine's founding declaration of state sovereignty and the majority of Ukrainian opinion for a very, very long time and center neutrality.
That is Russia's main demand and that's the key to any peaceful resolution of this horrible conflict.
Completing this unholy triumvirate of Mike Waltz and Sebastian Gorka is Pam Bondi, the designee to become Attorney General of the United States, who made some horrific comments a little over a year ago on the freedom of speech.
You and I talked about this at great length, Aaron, and of course I admire you.
Not because we agree with each other, but because of the stand you have taken in defense of the right of students to express their opinions, whether popular or unpopular, particularly on the campus of Columbia University.
She said these students should be taken out of the country and subjected to FBI interviews.
Now, when producer Chris and I first saw this, we thought somebody made this up.
No, no.
She actually said it.
Here she is.
Cut number 14. Whether they're here as Americans or if they're here on student visas and they're out there saying, "I support Hamas," you and I have seen that on all of these television shows.
Frankly, That's not saying I support all these poor Palestinians who are trapped in Gaza.
That's not what they're saying.
So I think their student visas need to be revoked.
I think we need to reinstate President Trump's travel ban immediately.
There's a lot of things that can be done to stop this.
Yeah, the anti-Semitism is rampant throughout this country now.
And it's truly, truly heartbreaking to see what's happening to all of our Jewish friends in this country.
She obviously believes the government can evaluate the content of free speech.
The very purpose for which the First Amendment was written to prevent the government from doing.
You know, it's a real tragedy.
We don't have a major party in this country that is committed to the principle of free speech, which means that you support the free speech of everyone, especially those that you disagree with.
If you don't support free speech for people that they disagree with, you don't support free speech.
And we Democrats, The whole campaign to label anyone who disagrees with them as a Russian asset and to silence them accordingly.
A whole lot of censorship was also conducted around health issues in the aftermath of COVID.
And that gave Democrats, deservably, a reputation for being against free speech, which Trump and the Republicans have exploited.
But now they turn around and are talking about using People have the right to resist military occupation, and you're not anti-Semitic or pro-Hamas or whatever it is if you express support for that.
Even if you are pro-Hamas, you have every right to speak in this country.
That's the whole point.
But you see the danger of having an attorney general who has a simplistic view.
Everything is either black or white.
She doesn't understand the subtleties of free speech, and she has the power to dispatch FBI agents to the Columbia campus to harass these kids.
Yeah, and there's some very worrying developments.
There's a new measure in Congress that would basically give the Treasury Department the unilateral authority to strip any group of its non-profit status that the Treasury Department deems to be supportive of terrorism.
Like some bureaucrats in Washington could decide that people supporting Palestinian rights are now all of a sudden supporters of terrorists as so many pro-Palestines.
Are falsely accused of doing it and then take away their non-profit status.
Both parties support this.
There's bipartisan support for that.
One Republican.
There are many Democrats who opposed, but it passed the House.
Every Republican but one supported it.
The one was, of course, Congressman Thomas Massey.
Of course.
of Kentucky.
I smile because he's so...
The time he voted against this, he was on Trump's short list to be the Secretary of Agriculture.
I don't know if he wanted it, but whatever, whether he wanted it or not, he wasn't going to sacrifice his principles and his belief in the freedom of speech to get another job in the government.
Aaron, always a pleasure, my dear friend.
Thank you very much for joining us.
I know we're all across the board, but it's a pleasure.
To share this time with you and to pick your brain.
Happy Thanksgiving to you and your family.
I hope we can see you again next week.
Happy Thanksgiving to you, Judge.
to you know since it's a season of gratitude let me express my gratitude to you and your whole staff for providing a platform a community for you know these really important dissenting voices to come together and speak truth on the issues of the day that are just our existential important importance and just as I'm very grateful to you and your whole team and to all your audience for the platform that you provide for some sanity in a very, very cruel world.
Thank you.
Thank you so much.
Thank you for those beautiful words.
All the best to you, my friend.
Coming up later today at 2 o 'clock.
Colonel Larry Wilkerson at 3 o 'clock.
Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski at 5 o 'clock.
Staff Sergeant Major Chief Dennis Fritz.
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