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Jan. 13, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano

27:37

Matt Hoh :

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	Hi, everyone.
	Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
	Today is Monday, January 13, 2025.
	Matt Ho is here with us on the neocons surrounding President Trump, and we have some late-breaking news from the Middle East.
	But first this.
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	Matt Ho, welcome here, my dear friend.
	Some breaking news from the Middle East.
	Forgive me for looking down.
	I want to read this literally.
	CNN is reporting that Hamas is expected to release 33 hostages during the first phase of an emerging ceasefire agreement being finalized by negotiators in Doha, two Israeli officials said.
	The piece goes on and on.
	Apparently 1,200 Palestinian hostages will also be released.
	No indication of what happens when the 42-day ceasefire is over.
	So it looks like Joe Biden is going to get something out of this in the last week of his presidency.
	Well, thanks for being back on, Judge.
	I think two points to that.
	One, I'm sure you noted how late in the story CNN acknowledges that there are Palestinian hostages, let alone the sheer number of them.
	And the 1,200 that may be released if this deal goes through, first of all, there's the reality that they'll get rearrested.
	That happened to many of the Palestinian hostages that were released in the November 23 ceasefire.
	Many of them got rearrested, re-detained by the Palestinians, some literally in a matter of days.
	But then the other aspect, and it's also, too, the enormity of how many...
	I know members of the Palestinian resistance who were...
	The other aspect I'll say to point out is I don't think anyone is going to give Biden credit for this.
	The fact that Donald Trump has an envoy, Donald Trump's going to be sworn in a week from now, and that now the deal is finally coming through when Trump...
	Trump is now coming into power when he's possibly able to make good on his threats, use some leverage, use some force.
	I don't think that if this goes through, and I think there's still a big if, we've been here before in terms of ceasefire deals, may or may not coming to pass.
	But I think if it does go through, I think a lot of people are going to look at this and assign credit to Trump.
	This is one more example of how weak, how complicit, how much Biden was instrumental in Israel's genocide to allow for the full 15 months for it to go completely unchallenged.
	And now Trump, a week out of office, he's the one who got the pressure to make this deal possible.
	Well, we know that Trump will take credit for it.
	That's right.
	Quite frankly, you're right.
	Matt, the things he's been saying lately and the things he's done lately are far more in your face than Biden.
	I mean, look at the posting of the clip of Professor Sachs, which resulted in Netanyahu's decision not to come to Trump's inauguration.
	I mean, that must have really sent some message, some shockwaves through the hierarchy of Netanyahu's government that he would...
	Post the clip of Jeff Sachs calling Netanyahu a deep, dark SOB and arguing as persuasively as Professor Sachs can that Netanyahu is responsible for dragging the United States into its Middle East wars.
	Was Trump executing a chapter from his Art of the Deal book?
	Demonstrating the leverage I have and my willingness to change my mind on something by posting that Sachs video.
	It could very well be.
	It could very well be.
	I know, Judge, you know, it gives me a lot of pain to be assigning credit to Donald Trump like this.
	But, you know, it's very possible that what we're seeing is the result of this type of pressure.
	It is the result of this type of deal-making.
	Certainly, Trump was incredibly supportive.
	He likes to explain there's no bigger friend in the world to Israel than Donald Trump.
	He has surrounded himself with, you know, a clear and committed Zionist, you know, whether it's Marco Rubio at the State Department, at least Stefanik at the UN, right?
	I mean, so on and so forth, go down the line.
	So, you know, is he actually doing something here to make good on his Steve.
	Steve, yeah.
	Did he arrive in Jerusalem and then in Doha and said, look, the president's not joking.
	This is going to happen.
	Is that what occurred?
	And has that been the impetus this last week or so to get this done?
	Certainly, you know that wasn't coming from the Biden administration.
	The Biden administration, when it had leverage, when it had power, when it could do something about this, it chose not to do.
	So in the last week and a half of his administration, all of a sudden, Jake Sullivan and Brett McGurk and Tony Blinken are going to turn on the full force and weight of the American government and get something done.
	Nobody's going to believe that.
	The other thing, too, I think that's really upsetting about this, though.
	Is the fact that this essentially, as I understand it, Judge, is the same deal that was proposed back in the late spring.
	This is essentially what's called the Biden plan and that it was accepted by Hamas in early July.
	First couple of days of July, Hamas accepts this deal.
	This essentially, my understanding is that this is essentially the same deal, right?
	So you're looking at a half a year later, how many...
	Half a year and how many innocent deaths later.
	Right, right.
	I am hesitant to think that Israel is going to actually go through with this just because some of the terms of the deal, most especially allowing 1 million Palestinians back into northern Gaza, I just don't see that as what Israel wants,
	what it's decided it wants to accomplish in Gaza.
	Perhaps I'm completely wrong.
	But, you know, even if they go through and sign it and the first tranche, the first phase of the deal goes through, I think the ratio is 30 to 1. So for every Israeli hostage sent back, 30 Palestinian hostages will be released.
	You know, but even after they get through that, they get remains of the dead.
	Repatriated, hostage remains repatriated.
	You know, I just don't see Israel going along with this part of it that allows a million Palestinians to go back home in northern Gaza after they spent so much effort, resources, blood these last several months to really ethnically cleanse northern Gaza.
	I mean, the northern parts of Gaza, Gaza City, Bahia, and other sections, I mean, they're down to a couple hundred thousand people total.
	Well, Matt, look at the potential downside for Prime Minister Netanyahu.
	He's got two members of his cabinet who could very well leave the coalition.
	If this report is accurate...
	And I didn't read the whole thing.
	It's very long.
	I read what I thought were the key parts of it.
	If this CNN report is accurate, I can't imagine that Smutrich and Ben Gavir are very happy about it.
	No, and they'll vote against it, and maybe they will resign, and maybe it will cause a crisis in the government, and there'll have to be new elections or something.
	But we'll see.
	But again, remember back in, Judge, before the Democratic National Convention in August, Jake Sullivan, And Tony Blinken were yelling at the top of the lungs how there's going to be a deal this week.
	The Israelis have agreed to a deal.
	I mean, we've seen this before, so I'm very hesitant.
	What has changed for Netanyahu domestically to allow for him to survive?
	I don't know if anything has changed that would allow for that.
	So there's all kinds of reasons why I think maybe the deal goes through, they sign it, they want to make the Trump administration happy, and then at some point they're able to say, hey, Hamas fired a rocket, we're going back to war.
	But we have seen the Israelis make deals.
	They just made a deal with Hezbollah.
	President Biden just finished an hour-long midday speech summarizing what he says are his foreign policy accomplishments.
	This hostage exchange wasn't mentioned.
	So either he doesn't know about it, or they told him and he didn't remember, or he taped the speech a few hours ago, or the CNN report is not accurate.
	Who knows?
	You know, time may tell.
	The Qataris seem excited about it, from what I could tell.
	And other reports out of the region seem as optimistic as they could potentially be.
	But again, this could be just something for, you know, one last PR effort by the Biden administration to get out this last week without hard questions.
	Right. So let's get through this week.
	Everyone thinks the ceasefire deal is going to go through.
	It allows us to answer enthusiastically and positively and spin this as a great success.
	And this is what we've been trying to accomplish all this time and et cetera, et cetera.
	You know, and then when it doesn't go through, oh, it's because the Trump people caused it to fail.
	I mean, the reality for them is what they care most about is how they can spin something.
	And that's for their supporters and everyone else and those in the media who are going to argue their line and defend them.
	So we'll have to see.
	I wish I was more optimistic or positive about it.
	I'm kind of disgusted myself over this latest involving Tulsi Gabbard, the one person around home libertarians.
	Gathered with great enthusiasm that she might dial back what the NSA and the CIA are doing now.
	She announced, I guess last night, that she's in favor of Section 702 of the Patriot Act.
	Translated, she's in favor of mass warrantless spying, which includes the CIA spying on Americans in direct defiance of its charter.
	She's not a damn bit different than any of her predecessors and probably any of her successors until we have a revolution in this country.
	And she had the temerity to say she's going to protect spying and she's going to protect the Fourth Amendment at the same time.
	I defy her to explain to me how the hell she could do that.
	And she'll have that power, Judge, because as a director of national intelligence, she'll be the one who's required to sign off that the intelligence community are following the rules.
	That the talented community is following the law, that the talented community is continuing to serve the Constitution.
	And we've seen her flip on a lot of this.
	I mean, her change in the last several years from when she was running for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination back in the 2020 campaign over these last few years has been incredibly dramatic.
	I know her.
	I worked with her when she was in the House of Representatives.
	I've worked with her on anti-war.
	I worked with her, I remember specifically and very clearly with her and Walter Johnson, the late Republican from North Carolina.
	Walter Jones.
	Walter Jones, I'm sorry.
	Yeah, exactly.
	And they had legislation they introduced that would require an automatic impeachment hearing.
	For the President of the United States, if the President of the United States used military force abroad without authorization from the Congress.
	That's the type of stuff she was doing, and working with people like Mr. Jones to try and get things done.
	Of course, the Congress wanted nothing to do with it, just one more way to abdicate their responsibilities.
	But you've seen her change in a number of different things, and what's clear is that if she is confirmed, we are going to have a DNI who has, well, What's the saying, Judge?
	The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior, right?
	So we're going to have the person in charge of our intelligence community who just clearly lies for her own purposes, whose own ambition is the only North Star she has.
	And as the Director of National Intelligence, it's hard to think of someone scarier than that.
	I am so angry at her, but here she is.
	I mean, she's very articulate and very attractive, but here she is patting herself on the back.
	Last week, cut number four.
	My background on the Armed Services Committee and the Foreign Affairs Committee is in Congress over eight years.
	Service in the military now for over 22 years gives me a lot of the insight necessary to be able to go in and understand the serious threats we face and the essential function of our intelligence community to restore that trust and to get after ensuring the safety,
	security, and freedom of the American people.
	Not the freedom of the American people, Congresswoman, not if you're in favor of mass, warrantless, undifferentiated spying, meaning spying on huge numbers of people, not with any articulable suspicion or any probable cause or any warrants whatsoever.
	This is exactly what James Madison wrote the Fourth Amendment to prevent from happening, and now she's going to do it after...
	Giving those of us who condemn the spying, who believe that the Fourth Amendment means what it says, false hope.
	It's infuriating.
	Just as Trump's surrounding himself with the likes of Rubio, Waltz, Gorka, now Gabbard, and Hegseth is infuriating.
	They're all neocons and they're all committed Zionists.
	Correct, Judge, right?
	And it was Madison who said to Jefferson, That when we lose our civil liberties, I'll paraphrase, of course, when we lose our civil liberties, it'll be because of dangers from overseas, whether real or imagined.
	Correct. I mean, that's essentially what we're looking at here.
	And this week, the TikTok case is going to the Supreme Court.
	I think everyone is in agreement that this Supreme Court is going to go along with the government and TikTok.
	We'll either be sold or some deal will be struck, or 150 million Americans won't be able to use that platform for their First Amendment rights to exercise their First Amendment rights.
	Only one jurist was interested in the First Amendment.
	My buddy, Neil Gorsuch, I think he's going to write a stinging dissent on the First Amendment, but the other eight just collapsed and believed the nonsense that the government lawyers...
	Oh, they can hack into your computer.
	They can hack into your computer?
	The biggest hackers into computers on the planet is the federal government of the United States.
	Well, Judge, that's why they don't like TikTok, because they can't get into TikTok like they can Facebook or X or any of these other companies, right?
	And again, you have this symbiotic relationship that is astonishing how quickly it's developed in the last 15 years between big tech and the federal government.
	If you look at who staffs out big tech, it's former DOJ, former FBI, DHS, CIA, NSC.
	You know, as well as political types, the revolving door that we know that defines Wall Street, excuse me, the military-industrial complex, the media with our government.
	Again, that symbiotic relationship, the elites who control the empire, who run the empire.
	It's amazing how big tech...
	has stepped into that role so quickly.
	And this is the concern that the American government has about TikTok.
	And it meets the concerns of the big tech industries.
	Because, again, so the American government, the empire, can't get into this device or this app to monitor us like it can these other outlets that play ball.
	And here's the problem.
	You've got this outlet, this company, this Chinese company, making a heck of a lot of money.
	That Facebook and Twitter and others could be making if they weren't around.
	So the whole thing is crooked.
	This is how the empire runs itself.
	You know, on a daily basis, this is why the elites work together.
	So Facebook and Twitter and others will tell you, the FBI and the CIA and NSA and others, yeah, sure, we'll let you have backdoors into our stuff.
	We'll work with you.
	You just had an interview this past week with Mark Zuckerberg where he told Joe Rogan how Facebook censured stuff on behalf of the federal government.
	You know, I mean, so you had that relationship.
	And then, of course, the federal government says, yeah, we understand that this Chinese company is making money that you could be making if they weren't around.
	So, hey, you know, I mean, it is.
	In fact, I didn't realize that about where the court actually was on this already.
	I didn't realize it was going to be as bad as eight to one.
	Well, this is just my speculation from having read a transcript of the oral argument.
	I think I could be wrong.
	I think you're right.
	If you look at the court, particularly when it comes to national security, particularly when it comes to war, when it comes to the executive powers in relation to foreign policy, the court is so deferential of federal government, which is completely against everything that you just said about why James Madison wrote the Fourth Amendment.
	Correct. Correct.
	The whole purpose of an independent judiciary is to be anti- To preserve the life, liberty, and property of individuals from the tyranny of the majority.
	This TikTok thing, which Trump says he would have vetoed, and maybe something will happen after January 20th, I don't know, was passed by overwhelming majorities in both houses of the Congress.
	President Biden signed it immediately.
	Let me ask you what I was going to ask you before I learned about Tulsi Cavern and got me so upset and before the news from CNN supposedly about the hostage deal.
	Is Donald Trump an imperialist?
	Oh, absolutely, Judge.
	Absolutely. He just might be look a little different, sound a little different.
	His views of the empire are different than the outgoing administration.
	And he thinks it needs to be reshaped.
	It needs to be rebuilt, reimagined, whatever.
	You certainly, I think, his commentary in the last couple of weeks about taking Greenland, taking Panama, making Canada a 51st state.
	The most dangerous one, of course, is the one about Mexico, because the conversation about sending the 82nd Airborne into the Sierra Madres is a serious one in some circles in the United States.
	As horrifying as it is, there are people who really do believe the way to handle the war on drugs is to make it into an actual war that resembles Afghanistan or Iraq in the rural areas of Mexico.
	But the point being is those statements clearly show that he sees himself as an imperial president.
	He had in the past just looked different than the democratic versions.
	And what I'll say about this, Judge, is I think if you were to look at Trump's actions, if you're looking at Biden's actions, Obama's actions, Bush, so forth, if you were to put in front of their name emperor rather than president...
	Would some of their decisions, especially or really in regards to foreign policy, seem to make better sense?
	When you understand them as men whose duty is to uphold, maintain, and if possible, expand the empire, as opposed to men who are responsible to the people of the United States, the title of emperor starts to make a lot of their decisions easier to understand.
	And this goes back.
	To the late 40s, when George Kennan, who diplomat, American diplomat, who most famously authored the containment strategy of the Soviet Union, George Kennan writes to Harry Truman, the president of the United States, I think this was in 47 or so, he writes that,
	you know, and I'll paraphrase this, the United States is in possession of 55% of the world's wealth.
	We have less than 5% of the world's population.
	The goal, the duty of every successive presidential administration will be to preserve that inequality, right?
	I mean, that's the duty of an emperor, right?
	And the thing that's scary, too, I don't want to dismiss the Greenland and the Panama things as nonsense or just Trump rhetoric, where it's the third ring in the circus that he's using to distract from what's going on over here with, you know, where the elephant stepped on a clown or something,
	you know?
	Like, the thing that you can make arguments...
	That appeal to an empire as to why we should possess Greenland, particularly when you make the argument, look, China has all these rare earth minerals.
	They have all the resources they need for the coming future.
	We have almost none of that.
	Greenland has a lot.
	So when you hear Trump say it's about economic security, national security, there are arguments that you and I would consider specious.
	But that can sound very appealing to the emperor in terms of his needs to either maintain or expand the empire.
	And the same thing we said for Panama as well.
	People certainly understand how an empire would say we have to control that.
	So when you remove president and say emperor, I think very often it makes the decisions of American presidents a lot easier to understand.
	I want to end with a clip from...
	Congressman Thomas Massey, my favorite member of the House of Representatives, about TikTok.
	They've described the TikTok application as a Trojan horse, but there are some of us who feel that, either intentionally or unintentionally, this legislation to ban TikTok is actually a Trojan horse.
	Some of us are concerned that there are First Amendment implications here.
	Americans have the right to view information.
	He's right.
	Yeah. I have to run,
	Matt. Thank you very much for your time.
	Much appreciated.
	Whether the news is good or bad, it's a pleasure to be able to pick your brain.
	Thank you for accommodating my schedule.
	We'll look forward to seeing you next week.
	Thank you, Judge.
	Coming up tomorrow, Tuesday, Ambassador Charles Freeman at 8 in the morning, Professor Jeffrey Sachs, now a hero worldwide, at 8.45 in the morning, and Lieutenant Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski at noon.
	Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom.

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