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Jan. 15, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
25:04
COL. Douglas Macgregor : Trump and American Expansion.
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Hi, everyone.
Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Thursday, January 16th, 2025.
Colonel Douglas McGregor joins us now.
Colonel McGregor, always a pleasure, my dear friend.
I have a lot to ask you about, from the Israeli ceasefire to President Trump's statements about American expansionism.
But before we get there, just to...
Dust off a couple of things.
How much longer do you think the Ukraine military can successfully resist or even put up any resistance at all to the Russian onslaught?
I don't think that they're resisting widely.
There are a few hard points.
One just fell recently within the last 24 hours, and the Ukrainians took very heavy losses, and there were several that surrendered.
I think they're going to continue to fight in small groups, penny packets, until there's nothing left.
Until there's nothing left.
Do you expect the Trump administration will continue the flow of ammunition and material and cash to the Ukraine government that has occurred under the Biden administration?
Unfortunately, I do see that continuing because, and this will also have an influence over what goes on in the Middle East.
I think the Trump team and the supporting cast is very interested in a win.
In other words, whatever they do, whatever the president does, it has to be portrayed as a quote-unquote win for President Trump.
The problem...
Right now is that no such win is possible in Ukraine, and I think the president is beginning to figure it out.
The problem there is, of course, he's surrounded by people who are not telling him the truth, who are pretending that the Ukrainian army is a stalwart organization, that the Russians have taken heavy losses, that they're running out of people, all this nonsense, none of which is true.
And as long as he listens to them, it's going to be harder and harder for him to come to terms.
And of course,
once you pull our aid, the war will, in fact, end.
Which is what he has said he wants to have happen.
He's talked about the loss of human life and the destructive nature of this whole thing.
That's how you end it.
Then the best he could do is say, I'm willing to host a conference between Moscow, Kiev, and Moscow's European neighbors, and then let them try to sort out a solution.
But that means that we're recognizing the limitations of our power and influence.
Nobody wants to do that in Washington, so I suspect we'll just tread water for another six, seven, or eight weeks.
You know, what you've said in part is disturbing to me, not Trump's urge to peace.
Obviously, I applaud and commend that.
But the idea, and Ritter has said this, McGovern has said this, Larry Johnson has said this.
That the intelligence community would continue to feed the president, President Trump, materially misleading information as they did to President Biden.
And that as a result of these material misstatements, the president would make decisions that results in the deaths of human beings.
This is repellent.
Is Trump going to be the tool of the deep state the way Biden was?
Well, certainly Mr. Radcliffe will do nothing to change this.
He's going to carry the status quo message back to the White House.
There is a chance that if Tulsi Gabbard is confirmed, that she goes in and demands ground truth, knowing full well that this nonsense is inaccurate.
That's about the best we can hope for, because I just don't see that Mr. Radcliffe is...
Really, any different from his predecessor than, let us say, Waltz is different from Jake Sullivan.
And there's certainly not much difference between Mr. Rubio and Tony Blinken.
Very, very dangerous and unsettling, in my view.
You mentioned a connection between arms to Ukraine and the Middle East.
What is that connection, Colonel?
Well, you'd have to explain to me what I've said about arms going one way or the other.
I do think that arms for the Middle East are the number one priority.
If we know anything about this administration, Israel is the priority.
If there is any strategy, it's just called Israel.
I think that there is a recognition that we don't have much more to give to Ukraine.
They're now going to start trying to conscript 18-year-olds because the Ukrainian government has been told by us, you've got to demonstrate some robust capability or we have nothing to stand on at the negotiating table.
Well, here's a wild and crazy view.
We don't have anything to stand on anyway.
And just because you're willing to kill...
18-year-olds at great speed and in great numbers isn't going to help at the negotiating table.
But this is the mentality right now.
Right. I noticed that the bellicose statements of General Kellogg and Congressman Waltz, the general being the...
President's designated Ukraine envoy and Mike Walsh being the incoming National Security Advisor have been silenced or dialed back.
Even Sebastian Gorka has stopped threatening President Putin.
That can't be a coincidence.
That must have come down from on high, don't you?
We both know Donald Trump.
Do you agree?
Yeah, I think he probably has.
I also think Donald Trump has gotten some ground truth from the Department of Defense.
And you and I know that the voices, the lone voices in this wilderness that have cautioned against unrestricted flows of armaments and ammunition and capabilities from the United States to Ukraine have said on more than one occasion,
we're dangerously close to having nothing with which to fight a war ourselves.
And I think that word has reached President Trump.
And I think he's surprised because, once again, he's always had this image.
Of the United States Armed Forces as, you know, the invincible Superman.
It's not.
Hasn't been for a long time.
And he certainly didn't preside over that, though he thinks he has.
So I think he's been getting some ground truth there, and that may have induced a little bit of restraint and caution while he sorts through this.
But now he's got to get down and dirty with the intelligence crowd and find people who will tell him the truth.
And he may have to dig down to much lower levels to get the truth.
You know, I was very, very disappointed.
I wrote my column about this today.
It came out today.
I wrote it two days ago.
But Tulsi Gabbard, who when she was a member of Congress, was a fierce defender of the Fourth Amendment and voted against the section of the Patriot Act, which the intelligence community uses to spy on all Americans.
Over the weekend, she did a flip-flop.
She probably decided she needed the votes of people like Tom Cotton and that crowd in order to get confirmed.
It doesn't mean that she won't be truthful on other things, but it's an enormous disappointment to people like me, and I think you, who believe that the Constitution means what it says.
These things happen.
People change their minds in order to get the votes.
Let's go to the ceasefire or the so-called ceasefire.
Professor Meersheimer says it's a significant defeat for Israel.
Do you agree?
You said the significance is deep?
No, he said the so-called ceasefire is a significant defeat for Israel because none of its goals have been achieved.
And that Netanyahu is only agreeing to it, kicking and screaming under pressure from Trump.
Well, my inclination is to say not entirely, because I think there's more happening behind the scenes than any of us realize.
First of all, I think the Israelis could profit from some form of ceasefire, though I expect, having looked at the agreement, this can't last longer than six weeks, because that's the first phase.
And that's the phase of greatest importance to Mr. Netanyahu because that's when he's supposed to get back the hostages that are still alive.
I think once that's done, the ceasefire will be completely meaningless and they'll resume operations as they have in the past.
I think what's more important, too, at the same time, is I think behind the scenes, President Trump and his administration may well have agreed to a joint attack with Israel against Iran.
And that's going to be an air and naval power attack, largely aircraft and missiles.
But I'm fairly certain that that agreement was reached.
And in return for that, I think Mr. Netanyahu was willing to go along with this short-term ceasefire because he would like to have some measure of quiet on his flanks while he goes after Iran with our substantial help.
Are Israel and Iran...
Preparing for war with each other as we speak.
Oh, absolutely.
No question about it.
According to Israeli newspapers, not Haaretz, which you and I read, the President, Trump, entered into a side deal with Prime Minister Netanyahu, not published but leaked to this reporter and not denied.
The side deal consists of three.
We're good to go.
Clicking onto a link when Biden discovered, to his credit, that the FBI bought this in the Trump administration without telling President Trump.
He ordered them to get rid of it.
They store it in a garage in New Jersey.
I know this sounds like The Sopranos, but they do store it in a garage in New Jersey.
Sounds like the mafia, you know?
He then had his Secretary of Commerce impose an embargo on this.
Part one of the side deal is that the embargo would be lifted.
This would be terribly detrimental to the personal privacy of everybody, including Trump.
Second part of the so-called side deal is that Trump will support the repopulation and resettlement by Israeli settlers of the West Bank.
And the third part of the side deal is that if the IDF has to go back into Gaza for any reason, Trump will support it.
What do you say about that?
I mean, if such a side deal is known to the public and known to the Palestinians, everybody might look at this a little differently.
Well, I don't see why anyone is surprised by it.
I'm not even sure that it's the secret that everyone thinks.
I think this is completely consistent with President Trump's approach to foreign and defense policy.
This is the Israel first administration.
And I think probably the most interesting comment is the one that I think you broadcast earlier last week of Kash Patel talking about the FBI and then saying, but Israel is our first priority.
I think you have to believe what these people say.
And so I find nothing surprising in that, particularly given the enormous amounts of money that have been poured into the Trump campaign.
By the Zionist community.
So you expect the same level of military support to the Israelis under Trump as was the case under Biden?
It's hard to imagine more, but I could certainly imagine the same level, which is 100% of what they need.
Well, I think this is more support.
Remember, President Trump and his...
Appointees were all critical that the Biden administration had not done enough.
I think they were telling you the truth.
That's their view.
And I think that Gaza is scheduled for extinction.
So is the so-called West Bank.
All you have to do is listen to these people.
There's no news there.
The Pegasus revelation is disturbing, but not surprising, given the people currently interested in going after anyone anywhere in the world.
Boy, if the government begins using a zero-click in order to evaluate the content of our speech...
We will have reached a very, very dangerous point in this country, the likes of which we haven't seen since the Alien and Sedition Acts and the John Adams administration, where people literally, including famously a congressman,
Matthew Lyons of Vermont, were punished for their speech, which was critical of the government's foreign policy initiatives.
Well, we had something very similar under Woodrow Wilson, as you know.
Yes, we did.
And that's still the law, unfortunately, hasn't been used in a long time.
That's the Espionage Act of 1917.
It was famously used by Wilson to prosecute Princeton undergraduates who went to a draft office in Trenton, New Jersey, not far from Princeton.
Remember, Wilson was the former president of the university.
And who read aloud what he deemed subversive material in an effort to dissuade young men from going into the draft office.
What did they read aloud?
The Declaration of Independence.
That's where we may be going again.
Where do you think we would be going with Donald Trump's expressed desires?
Remember, we've got to go back to this view of it's got to be a win.
The president needs a win.
We need a win.
How do we get a win?
And I think Panama and Greenland in particular, particularly Greenland, frankly, I think that's viewed as a place where we can assert ourselves.
Bully our way into the situation and claim victory by having gotten control in some fashion of Greenland, to a lesser extent the Panama Canal, and build that as enhancing American national security,
as expanding the Monroe Doctrine, and expanding American power and influence.
The same thing is true about the comments on Canada.
You know, annexing central western Canada, That ostensibly is unhappy with their friends in the East.
All of this has a lot to do with this notion of a win.
You know, George Kennan said an awful lot of what we do.
In fact, he thought most of it in foreign policy was designed to create a pleasing picture of ourselves to the American public.
I think there's a lot of truth in that.
And I think that has a lot to do with it.
It also distracts people.
I mean, do you think we're on the verge of another so-called era of manifest destiny?
Because Donald Trump likes the look of Greenland as part of the United States rather than as part of Denmark?
I think so.
I don't know that I would call it manifest destiny.
As I said, from his vantage point, it's one of these things.
This is a win for America.
Remember, Donald Trump is about winning.
If you can't say it's a win, he's not terribly interested in the subject.
So it's easier for him over six, seven weeks from now to sort of dismiss what's happening in Eastern Europe, the failure of the Ukraine folly.
And I think there's a tendency to dismiss out of hand the very high probability that if we attack Iran with the Israelis, that the Russians will actually intervene to support the Iranians.
And then again, there's also the failure to recognize that not only the Chinese, but Indian.
The Indian government is horrified by that kind of action.
And while they may not intervene militarily, they're certainly not going to support us in any way.
In other words, the damage we're doing to ourselves in the Middle East is not widely appreciated inside the United States.
So then he turns attention to these other matters, which can be construed as a win.
I mean, what's Panama going to do if we decide to re-ennex the zone?
What can they do?
Nothing. Colonel, this is very distressing and depressing.
What I'm hearing you say is more of the same and maybe worse in foreign policy from Biden to Trump.
More of the same and maybe worse.
If I'm misreading you, please correct me.
You know, at this point, it's hard to see another course being charted, isn't it, Judge?
I mean, I'd like to say that President Trump, who I know wants nothing to do with a real war against anybody, is not stepping forward and saying something along the lines that I did earlier.
We didn't want the war in Ukraine.
We're not going to support it.
And we're pulling out.
And this is the quickest way to end the killing.
And once we've pulled out, there should be a conference, and we're happy to support it so that Moscow and its neighbors can sort things out with Kiev.
I would really celebrate that, but I'm not hearing that.
That may happen in the future.
Who knows?
It's not impossible.
But right now, we're still stuck with it has to be a win.
We have to look as though we bullied people into this.
Just as we're hearing about the ceasefire, well, we pushed Netanyahu.
See, Trump's tough.
He made Netanyahu bow and do this.
I think that's misleading stuff.
I think there's a much larger agenda.
It is still Netanyahu's agenda.
It's still the Greater Israel Project, and it's still leading to war with Iran.
Colonel, I was appalled when, first of all, these confirmation hearings are clown shows.
The Democrats are just making points, scoring points with their base at home.
The Republicans are lionizing the nominees.
I was appalled when a senator asked Pete Hegseth, my former Fox colleague, if as Secretary of Defense he received an order to shoot unarmed American civilians,
would he decline the order?
And he declined to answer that.
How could anybody consider that an appropriate...
Well, I did not watch all of those because, frankly, as I saw them when they began, the questions were not informed.
The exchange was infantile.
I just think it convinced me that at this particular point in time, Congress is almost useless as a political body in the government.
I don't see anything good coming out of it.
It's just about money and redistributing tax money and whatever for their own benefit.
So my opinion of the whole thing has just fallen through the floor.
Now, as far as the question goes, it's incomprehensible that that would be said.
But then remember, there's a permanent interest on the left to discredit everybody and anyone on the right.
You know, we're crazy right-wing, nationalist, fascists, and so forth.
What's disappointing is that Hegseth should have simply said, I can't imagine any such circumstances.
If they were to arise, I would have to see them and understand them before I would authorize under any circumstances the use of violence against any American citizen here or abroad.
It's not the answer we got.
When Pam Bondi, I don't want to get too deep into the weeds, was asked if she has an enemies list in the DOJ to prosecute perceived or real enemies of Donald Trump, she basically said, not on my watch.
A good answer.
Yes. A good answer rather than evading.
Colonel, thank you very much.
I'm sorry it's a little gloomy, but I do appreciate deeply The analysis that you've given us.
And I thank you very much for your time, Colonel.
I hope you can join us again next week.
Sure. Absolutely.
Happy New Year and all that stuff.
All the best to you, my dear friend.
Thanks. Bye-bye.
Coming up tomorrow at 4 o'clock, more of Max Blumenthal.
And at 4.30, The Boys, the Intelligence Community Roundtable with Larry Johnson and Ray McGovern.
I can't wait to see Ray's reaction.
To Max being thrown out of the Secretary of State's press gaggle today, because as you all know, that has happened to Ray.
See you tomorrow.
Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom.
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