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Nov. 25, 2024 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
25:35
LtCOL. Karen Kwiatkowski :
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Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Tuesday, November 26th, 2024, Thanksgiving week here in America.
Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski joins us now.
Colonel Kwiatkowski, always a pleasure, my dear friend.
We will start with some breaking news.
This is not the subject about which I intended to converse with you.
But the Office of Prime Minister, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced, according to Haaretz and Reuters, that the Israeli War Cabinet has agreed in principle to a cessation of hostilities in Lebanon.
The agreement, of course, is in principle.
who knows what other details have to be worked out, who knows if Netanyahu Any thoughts?
Well, it's good news.
Any ceasefire, I think, is good news.
You know, it's not actually implemented yet, and how long will it last?
Israel has made a lot of mistakes, and they're continuing to make mistakes.
It's not as if, it looks like maybe in some cases they're operating from a position of strength, but in reality they're not.
And I don't think they have a long-range game plan other than to take territory, much of which they won't be able to defend.
They're in a tough situation, of course, of their own making, and they need to reassess their strategy.
Will this ceasefire allow them to reassess their strategy?
No, it won't.
Do you think that Donald Trump will give Prime Minister Netanyahu whatever he wants, whenever he wants it, as Joe Biden did?
I don't think so.
I don't think he will.
Even though he is very pro, you know, he likes Netanyahu and he's pro-Israel and there's no debate there, really.
I think he looks at things transactionally and he looks at things from a business perspective.
His focus that he ran on, the reason he was elected is he said he would end the wars.
And that includes Middle East wars and it certainly includes continuing his reputation as a president who won't start new wars for the United States.
I think that's part of how he will deal with Netanyahu.
He's going to say, look, dude, you know, you need to contain this.
We're not going to be able to do whatever you want.
And if Netanyahu treats him with the kind of contempt That will not fly with Trump.
That will not fly with Trump.
He's a full-grown adult, I guess you could say.
He's not going to put up with that.
Doesn't Netanyahu have a vice grip on the American government via the donor class?
Look at the way the Congress treated him with 56 or 58. Yeah, and, you know, I think that's kind of what Trump's agenda has been.
You know, and obviously the Republicans, along with Trump, you know, they had the down-ticket advantage here, and it's a so-called Republican Congress or Republican Senate.
But we know who directs them and who they're owned by.
And many of them don't like Trump.
Trump has taken the approach that I mean, those budgets, they come from the executive branch to the Congress.
The Congress adds on, basically, spends a little bit more than is asked for for their own pet projects.
But I think Trump realizes that you can't do anything with that Congress.
And also, I wonder if that's not why he's taking some of our better, I think, better, It's hard for me to believe they can constrain the lobby.
You mean the donor class?
His cabinet is filled with ardent Zionists.
No question about that.
Well, it's true, but they don't own our money.
And he has elevated this agenda of a government that doesn't spend four, five, six trillion dollars a year.
He understands, I think, I mean, I hope, but I think Trump does understand, and the people around him on the financial side understand that you can't keep spending money you don't have.
You can't keep borrowing it.
You can't keep printing it.
Creating it out of thin air doesn't work.
And I think that's his top priority.
War, any type of war, whether you're helping somebody else fight their stupid war or you're in your own stupid war, these things suck money out of every part of the economy.
I hope you're right, Colonel.
I really do.
But one thing Trump never really spoke about during the campaign, and that is genocide.
Yeah.
It is clear what is happening in Gaza.
It's beyond dispute.
They may hate the ICC, the International Criminal Court, but in this instance, they're right.
By the way, we have a clip of Lindsey Graham praising the ICC to the skies and attacking the target of its indictments as worthy of indictment.
Of course, that was when they indicted Vladimir Putin.
I saw the look on your face, but where's he going with this?
Not when they indicted Benjamin.
Chris, do we have that clip?
This is a legitimate complaint in our eyes and we'd ask the ICC to investigate.
You can find yourself in The Hague if you have a scorched earth policy.
So the world is watching you to hold one of the most vicious people on the planet finally accountable.
Enough of the murder.
Enough of destruction and carnage on your behalf.
They'll come a day when the rule of law will trump the rule of the gun.
you That's very good.
I thought he was talking about Netanyahu.
He could easily have been talking about Bibi Netanyahu, but he was talking about Vladimir Putin.
Putin was indicted for kidnapping children.
These are children whose parents were killed.
In the war in Ukraine, and he sent people to pick up these kids and put them into orphanages rather than leaving them homeless and parentless in the streets, and the ICC indicted him for it.
Back to Ukraine, or to Ukraine now, do you think the West recognizes the incredible power of this I don't think the whole West does.
I do think the military side does.
I think the military side, they may not have been paying as close attention as they should, but I think they get it now.
There's been enough out there, and of course, the demonstration.
Just a couple days ago.
And then they start reading up on it.
And I was reading up on it.
I mean, it's very impressive.
And the other thing about that weapon is not only have they ramped up production, because it was, I think, pre-production, you know, early stages, but this weapon apparently is made from many existing models, parts, whatever, from other weapon systems.
Russia not just can make, but is making.
And it's super fast.
This is very impressive.
And it reminded me so much of how we used to be in this country.
We used to be innovative and creative and scary.
And we're not anymore.
But this is.
And I think the military leadership, including probably the up-and-coming military leadership, the field-grade officers, I think they're looking at this and they get it.
Now, the politicians, I don't think they have the slightest clue.
Washington, D.C., the establishment, most of the think tanks, no, they don't get it.
And they're not even willing to get it because they missed it.
So they'll downplay it.
It doesn't fit into their fantasy.
But the military knows.
So let's hope that it is military leadership in all the countries that behave.
Seriously about this.
It is a serious advance, and it's quite significant.
Prime Minister Starmer of Great Britain, this is crazy, you may know this, and President Macron of France have leaked, and I don't know if they're sincere, that they're considering sending troops to Ukraine.
When I mentioned this to Ritter and McGregor, they said, Okay, they'll return home, if at all, in body bags.
That would be mortally foolish.
It's hard to believe the British people or the French people would tolerate something like that.
But, so my question is, does the West get it?
Is the West in cahoots with Joe Biden, Western Europe in cahoots with Joe Biden to extend this war so it explodes?
I don't think that the European leaders want the war to explode.
They want it to be over with some kind of advantage for all of their investment and faith in Ukraine, which has been misplaced.
And it's not going to end that way.
But I think they want it to end that way.
And they're afraid that when Trump comes, he's going to give away.
Whatever potential gains that they have sold their people.
Because, you know, you mentioned Sturmer.
I mean, I think there's people wanting to have a rushed election in England to get rid of that guy.
I mean, the people in France and the people in England are not interested in fighting for Ukraine.
They're not even interested in funding additional weapons to Ukraine.
So what these politicians are saying...
And maybe it's supportive messaging for Biden.
It's supporting Biden's own increase in, you know, he wants to blow all the rest of the money that he can.
He wants to, you know, he's already said, you know, deep strikes into Russia.
I think that's great.
You know, it's almost like a show of political, elite political support for Biden rather than anything that the people of those countries want.
And also, while I...
Any French or British soldiers that go there will probably come back in body bags or not come back at all.
But to me, it's like, where are they getting these guys?
Where is France and Great Britain getting these soldiers?
They have similar problems in recruiting that we do in this country.
We don't have, we're a large country, but even we don't have an excess of bodies to throw at stupid idiotic problems.
And we'll play a clip for you, a former Secretary of State of the United States, that Putin is within inches of winning and Ukraine is within inches of collapsing.
Okay, Biden, I'm not sure what is going on in his...
So by Biden, I mean his administration, whether he ceded the authority to Blinken and Sullivan and just ratifying what they say or whether he's making these decisions himself.
Yeah.
I don't think he makes any decisions himself.
I think they know how to stage manage him.
I think they know how to feed him whatever information to get whatever results they want.
So he is totally a manipulated puppet of people.
They realize in two months they are gone.
They are out of power and uninfluential.
Even if they're in think tanks, nobody's going to be listening to them.
And they will be blamed.
And they know this.
They know this is coming.
So it may be that they're simply saying, you know, we tried as hard as we could and have some way of saying, see, look, we really tried hard.
We really believed.
When in fact they don't believe.
I think it's clear that And they've been willing to kill and destroy Ukrainians and Russians.
Obviously, they want to destroy and hurt Russians, but they're really destroying Ukraine.
It's culture, it's people, it's economy, it's environment, it's the capability to rebuild.
They're destroying all of that.
And they will be blamed for it.
And they want to say, oh, we really believed.
I think it's a self.
I don't see the globalists.
If I was a globalist, and I'm looking at the situation, I'm a Blackrock.
I'm going, okay, how quickly can you stop this so I can get in and get my loans and my grants and my money and my deals and start rebuilding Ukraine?
And they should have been doing that last summer.
and they were getting ready for it.
Well, here is...
Listen to this, number 13. I think that the missile attack at a real scale last night into Ukraine is evidence that Vladimir Putin knows that this is his maximum point of leverage and that in 60 days, fundamentally, his leverage will have decreased.
And the shaping of that conflict will have fundamentally changed as well.
How can he say that the shaping of the conflict will have fundamentally changed as well?
There's no way Ukraine can stave off the Russians at this point, is there?
Not at all.
In fact, the next thing we'll be talking about is how Poland and Russia will draw a line between themselves and there will be no more Ukraine.
I mean, that is a possibility.
And for Pompeo to...
His advice is rotten.
His interests are not American interests and they're not Ukrainian interests because in Ukraine the people are tired and they've been tired.
They're exhausted from war.
They're broken in many ways.
They're sick of their dictator leadership that they can't have an election.
They're uncertain about their futures.
They've been impoverished.
All of the sacrifices that Ukraine has made.
And here's Pompeo.
Oh, just a little bit more.
Just a few more.
You guys can win this.
That is insane.
That is murder, really.
I mean, that is like telling beaten down people, just, you know, go lay in front of a tank and die.
That's what I think is good for your country.
Who would listen to him?
But somebody is, and he's talking to somebody.
I just see this totally disconnected from reality.
I forgot to look where he was speaking, what network.
He was on Fox.
He was on Fox at the time.
Well, here's somebody who will make Mike Pompeo seem calm, relaxed, and measured by example.
This is to be the number two person on Donald Trump's in the White House national security staff.
Sebastian Gorka.
What's this, Karen?
Cut number 10. I'll give one tip away that the president has mentioned.
He will say to that murderous former KGB colonel, that thug who runs the Russian Federation, you will negotiate now or the aid that we have given to Ukraine thus far will look like peanuts.
nuts.
That's how he will force those gentlemen to come to an arrangement that stops the bloodshed.
Could Donald Trump possibly believe that?
Could this be a serious threat?
We don't have the arms to keep giving them.
They don't have the human beings to fight the war.
Why would he call the most measured major leader on the planet a murderous?
Yeah.
Does Trump want to begin his relationship with Putin with words like that?
Yeah, the only, I mean, obviously these people aren't saying these neocons, and Sebastian Gorka is not really generating new thought process on Ukraine.
This is what he believes, and this is what he has believed.
The only thing I can think, if Trump has not lied to us, if Trump has not lied to all of us about this, is that He will use this type of language, this name-calling, this aggressiveness, this verbal threats with nothing to back it up with, but he'll use that to say, "Hey, this is what I'm dealing with," and make himself look reasonable.
That's the only hope that I have.
And I have to hope that Trump learned, and I think everybody hopes that Trump learned from his first four years, that he can't trust anybody.
Really, that's around him.
And he simply needs to really be Machiavelli about it and use the people around him as he wishes, rather than trusting them.
Because as he brings in people who are part of the deep state, once again, and some of these guys are, he's making us worry.
He's making us all worry.
So either he's, he's, uh, We may have to give up those dreams.
If he listens to people like Sebastian Gorka, there's no doubt about that.
That guy is so wrong and so inappropriate in the position that he's in, the things he's saying.
You know, I remember – and I remember – You didn't hear from him on TV.
He didn't stand up there and talk about what thugs these people we deal with diplomatically are.
You never heard that.
And now this is how the game is played.
So, I don't know.
Well, here's somebody that Donald Trump will probably be listening to.
And she's basically waging an assault on free speech.
If you are an American or a foreign student on a college campus demonstrating against Netanyahu, and she will soon be in charge of the Justice Department and the FBI.
And she wants those who protest on college campuses either to be kicked out of the country or interrogated by the FBI.
Here is a year ago now, Pam Lester.
You and I have seen that on all of these television shows.
Frankly, they need to be taken out of our country or the FBI needs to be interviewing them right away when they're saying, I support Hamas.
I am Hamas.
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.
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 will want the Justice Department to evaluate the content of speech to see if you are opposing Prime Minister Netanyahu or if you are supporting Hamas.
supporting Hamas with words is perfectly lawful, but to her that would justify whether you're an American or not being yanked off the campus.
It makes you wonder about Trump, given the people that he's appointed.
You know, the other side of this is they may not be around for more than six months because he's not going to go for a lot of this stuff.
That's true.
And that's a hope.
He did fire.
He was good about getting rid of people after he saw that.
He was bad about hiring the right people initially, but he got rid of them.
And, you know, that's a habit that he has.
So maybe that will help.
I will say that we have a Supreme Court that has been, I don't know if you call it conservative, because I don't really call that Supreme Court is conservative or constitutional as I would like to see it.
But it is revisiting things.
It is doing some things that are at least superficially in line with the Constitution.
It's actually been quite good on free speech.
Yes.
And so what this could happen, I mean, this Pam Bondi, this was maybe six months ago.
Okay, now they want to put her in justice.
Let's say she gets through the process, which she will.
She's very pro-Israel.
You have to be very pro-Israel.
You have to act like you are, I guess, pro-Netanyahu.
Then you get your position.
But once she's in position, if she oversteps, there can be cases brought, lawsuits.
In four years, we may see some real definitive type things.
You know, it's interesting to see her there.
But what she brings to mind is the leftist disinformation program of Biden.
That's exactly what they were doing for different topics, but it's exactly the same thing.
We decide what is accurate.
We decide what you can say.
This is why the whole purpose of the First Amendment is to keep the government, whether liberal or conservative, progressive or libertarian, Republican or Democrat, whatever it is.
Out of the business of evaluating the content of speech.
You can say whatever you want in this country.
It's none of the government's business and you can't be punished for it.
That's right.
And if you don't like the free speech, you talk more.
There's more free speech.
That's the solution to free speech that you don't like.
More free speech.
Correct.
I would think that Pam Bondi, I don't even know her, I've not studied her, but I would think she gets that.
We've got to hope that if she doesn't get it, that lawsuits are brought against her and these things make it to the Supreme Court so that we can get some answers.
Because, you know, a lot of the younger generations have been taught for years, public schools for decades, looking at the media and the messaging.
They don't really get free speech as well as some of us older people who kind of think it's black and white.
The government shall not infringe.
Interfere with.
Does not control this.
It's not their business.
But many of them think, oh, well, if it hurts your feelings and, you know, if it makes people feel bad, maybe we should limit it.
And they're taught that.
And so we may need some really clear kind of Supreme Court issues or debates at the national level to really help people understand how important that First Amendment is.
Karen Kwiatkowski, a pleasure, my dear friend.
Thank you very much.
I know we're across the board from Ukraine to Israel to the First Amendment, and I know I may have gotten under your skin a little bit with Sebastian Gorka.
But thank you so much.
Thanks for your comments.
I hope you have a great Thanksgiving with you and your family, and we'll look forward to seeing you again next week.
Oh, absolutely.
Thank you.
You too, Judge.
Thank you.
All the best.
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