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Jan. 20, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
25:04
Karen Kwiatkowski : Trump and Israel.
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Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Tuesday, January 21st, 2025.
Lieutenant Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski joins us now.
Karen, it's always a pleasure.
Thank you very much for joining us.
Before we delve into the issue of Trump and Israel, and before we delve into your magnificent piece at Judge Knapp and elsewhere called Dealing with the Bad Wolf, what did you think of the...
You know, I honestly only listened to parts of it, and it was, I think, as you mentioned before, like a rehash of the things he's been saying.
You know, it wasn't particularly exciting.
But it was a change.
I mean, it was fun looking at all the different people inside of the building, and especially I was impressed with Fetterman.
It's freezing cold.
I mean, it's so freezing cold here.
And he's wearing his shorts, so I'm like, okay.
Were you surprised to know, Chris will put the photo up, of a Mossad asset right behind Mrs. Clinton on the dais.
That lady in white, you know who that is?
I don't know.
That is Miriam Adelson.
Okay, I've seen pictures of her before.
You wouldn't expect President Trump to show sympathy for the slaughtered Gazans in the presence of Mrs. Adelson now, would you?
No, that would totally be unacceptable.
Yeah. Now, you know, she's a major donor, which, in fact, he is surrounded by major donors and funders of his, certainly the inaugural events.
And, you know, you got to put him on stage.
But, yeah, it's interesting.
I thought it was good that he did not.
Invite Bibi.
I thought that was good.
Apparently that was quite a disruption in Israel because Bibi told everybody he was coming.
And so they not only didn't invite him, they had to call and remind him that he was not invited.
And his wife was very upset and she made that known publicly.
What are you going to do?
I want to read to everyone.
An incredible paragraph you wrote in your column at Judge Knapp and elsewhere called Dealing with the Bad Wolf.
The bad wolf is, of course, the government that we always feed.
Americans have completed their long goodbye to Joe Biden.
After a life spent cheerleading and facilitating wars, interventions, conflict, and corruption, Biden blew through money that wasn't there, declared a constitutional amendment that doesn't exist, That is so eloquent and articulate.
But what are we going to do about it?
Did we go from Tweedledee to Tweedledum with respect to Israel and Gaza, Karen?
Trump is clearly, both by the people that are around him and the things that he has consistently said, you know, he's pro-Zionist.
He is pro-Israel as a colonial power.
I've never seen him evidence any sympathy for Palestinians or any other people that are displaced, mistreated.
Living under an apartheid condition.
And of course, certainly now being genocided with our weapons.
I mean, we're doing it.
So he's never complained about that.
He's never seemed to notice it.
The thing that I think is a tiny bit different about Trump is he cares about people.
You know, Biden likes people, too.
He likes to sniff their hair and whatever, and he does love his family.
He pardoned every one of them.
But Trump also cares about people, and he is touched by people in hard times.
You know, there's a lot of stories, and most of them are true, about Trump helping downtrodden people that he accidentally bumps into.
I think if he could be made more aware of some things...
I think we might see it at least better than Biden.
And certainly we're not going to have Blinken.
I don't think Rubio will be...
Rubio will do what Trump tells him.
But Rubio is also not as vicious as Blinken is.
Do you think that Rubio will last long in that job when Trump starts going around him and sending his own emissaries out?
He did with this guy, Witkoff, who's a supreme Zionist.
I mean, this fellow Witkoff, if you heard his speech at the Capital One Center, he makes Pete Hegseth sound like an agnostic.
I mean, this guy's an over-the-top Zionist.
Yeah. Well, you know, Zionists have something to worry about as well with the way, you know, if you're going to slaughter all your enemies and have continuous five-front wars.
And you need your weapons from another country that has elections every four years, a country that is increasingly, year after year after year, more sympathetic to Palestinians and others that Israel is victimizing than they are to Israel.
And that's the demographics in the world, not just in America, but in the world.
So even a hardcore Zionist has to be practical about what kind of crimes can be committed in the Zionist cause And at what point will they go over the line?
They're already over the line, but even they can understand that a lot of this cannot be fixed unless Zionism decides to contain itself.
So when Trump said, it's not our war, what do you think he meant?
It is our war.
Every bullet that's fired, every bomb that's dropped, every missile that's aimed, every plane that's Yeah, that's true.
And he, again, is repeating the mantra that got him elected, right?
Because that mantra is, America first, we're going to get rid of these overseas involvements.
And he has sold that because it's very popular.
It is a popular product in America, and they bought it.
And we want more of that.
So he has delivered that, at least in words.
He hasn't delivered it.
In regards to Israel, you know, he is not, his policy as it looks to be, which is a pro-Zionist policy, you know, he mentioned when he was signing executive orders, you know, I'm going to, you know, I think Gaza could be rebuilt and it could be very beautiful.
That is not...
What does it mean for the Trump organization to develop and sell the real estate?
What does it mean for the Palestinians to return home?
When I heard him say it, it didn't sound very much like he thought Palestinians should return home unless they were the kind of Palestinians that were acceptable to real estate deals.
He has a very juvenile and uninformed perspective on what Israel is doing.
But I think, and I've said this before, his instincts are he doesn't like being bullied.
He doesn't like to be placed in a corner.
He doesn't like demands unless he gets what he thinks is a better deal on his side.
In that respect, I can see him at some point saying to Netanyahu, Bibi, enough is enough.
Yeah, and also what he's done to NATO and what he did to the WHO, his reasoning even in 2020 when he withdrew from or where he notified WHO, we're no longer playing with you, WHO.
Now, of course, we're out of it.
And there's a great deal of cost with that.
But when he justified that, when he explained it, he goes, you know, we have 330 million people.
We pay this much.
China has 2 billion people and they pay only this much.
He says, that's not fair.
And he uses that same, that's not fair.
Right, right, right.
So if he looked at Israel's funding, and this is, of course, very much available to a lot of people, including some in his circle.
They know this.
You know, the overwhelming debt.
That Israel owes us.
Not that we owe Israel.
That Israel owes us.
That is real.
And I think if he sees it that way, he will be even more demanding of their proper behavior.
And he doesn't like war.
I mean, I think it's clear.
Trump talks a good line, but his...
His actions, his past presidency, the promises that he's made are anti-war, to some extent, at least as close as we've...
I want to read another paragraph from your piece dealing with the bad wolf, and it'll segue into a discussion about the nature of government.
Can we imagine America as a self-governing republic with a constitutionally limited federal institution easily supported by a union of consenting states themselves free to separate from the union at any time?
Can we imagine a decentralized restoration of human and economic liberty that would celebrate rather than dread modern technology and artificial intelligence?
Can we imagine peace?
Well, you know, the founders did.
The founders imagined that.
They expected for some time it would work.
And I think they had reason to.
People who are educated, and I don't mean smart, educated by college, but people that understand The kind of words of the Constitution, what is in them, even if they only understand parts of it, they become empowered.
And, you know, we see this in the left all the time.
There are certain parts of the Bill of Rights, the first 10 amendments, that the people on the left are somewhat familiar with, and they use them to support their arguments.
And, of course, the people on the right do the same thing.
The more we're familiar with the Constitution, especially the parts we're not familiar with today, I think it gives us something to grab onto, to have a limited government.
The problem is, and this has also bothered me about everything Trump has talked about both in his campaign and up to this point, he does not really, really address the Federal Reserve.
He doesn't really address the unsustainable debt, the fiat currency, the massive theft of our...
Of the value of our money, the destruction of our money.
He doesn't talk about that.
And that's what will break the current government, which is not constitutional by any description.
And it breaks it down.
So regardless of whether we reclaim the constitutional government, the limited government that we are owed, that we are supposed to have, or it breaks.
We still need to know the Constitution because if it collapses, we'll need to put something together that gives us a limited government.
Does anyone in government besides Congressman Massey and Senator Paul understand that it is essentially the negation of liberty?
That it essentially exists by taking liberty and property from the rest of us and feeding itself and redistributing it in such a way that it will stay in office?
Yeah. I actually think...
That it's like an iceberg.
Masty and Senator Paul are kind of like the visible part of the iceberg.
And I think that there are more in Congress who get it.
If you look at...
Congress comes from all the states and all the districts, particularly the House, right?
Most of the districts in most of the states are red.
They are conservative.
They are where the Tea Party was.
They are people that go around saying, don't tread on me.
They cherish the Constitution to the extent that they study it and understand it.
They do like it.
So most of people in Congress, most of their supporters, in terms of numbers, are communicating to their congressmen that we don't like this, that you exist on our dime.
And you are not doing your job.
They're hearing that all the time.
So how did we get a presidency so strong that one president, Joe Biden, can recognize an amendment to the Constitution that's already been rejected and another president, Donald Trump, can refuse to recognize an amendment to the Constitution that's been there for 150 years?
Yeah, well, these are...
We have this quiet little third branch of government called the judiciary.
Maybe the Supreme Court is going to have to hammer out some explanations for us.
Again, the country's going broke.
The money's going bad.
Most of this, when your money goes bad and you're going broke and you institute trade barriers, war happens after that.
You get war.
Of one kind or another.
So regardless if Trump wants it or not, we are on a path in this country for bad things.
Can we prevent those things?
I don't know.
I don't know if we can prevent them.
But we need to be prepared for much harder times than even what Donald Trump is proclaiming that he is going to fix from the last four years.
You're right.
Every president, every single president has become more and more powerful.
Either in his assertions of power or his actual, you know, we have granted him this power.
The Constitution didn't grant him the power, but, you know, the Congress has let it happen.
The people have let it happen.
So, you know, I want to be hopeful, but overall trend, the trend has not changed, I think.
The overall trend...
The reason the President of the United States can impose tariffs on his own, which is effectively a tax...
It's because FDR did it and the Congress looked the other way.
This is in 1936.
And in a famous Supreme Court opinion, the court said, well, it's foreign policy and under the Constitution that belongs to the president.
And since then, the presidential powers have expanded, expanded, expanded, usually in wartime.
The Republicans gave George W. huge discretion.
As to how to enforce laws or not enforce them, and that was inherited by Obama, and that was inherited by Clinton and Obama and Trump and Biden.
It doesn't seem to change.
Here's Trump yesterday asked if he thinks the ceasefire will hold.
Cut number seven.
I'm confident, Mr. President, that you can keep the ceasefire in Gaza and conclude the three phases of this deal.
I'm not confident.
That's not our war, it's their war, but I'm not confident, but I think they're very weakened on the other side.
Gaza, boy, I looked at a picture of Gaza.
Gaza is like a massive demolition site.
That place is, it's really...
It's got to be rebuilt in a different way.
Do you plan to help rebuilding Gaza?
My mind.
You know, Gaza is interesting.
It's a phenomenal location.
On the sea, best weather.
You know, everything's good.
It's like some beautiful things could be done with it, but it's very interesting.
But some fantastic things could be done with Gaza.
How do you see the future in governance for Gaza?
Well, it depends.
I can't imagine.
You certainly can't have the people that were there.
Most of them are dead.
Most of them are dead.
I don't know if he knew what he was talking about.
Hamas is as strong now as it was on October 7th, but there are between 40 and 50, if you believe the Lancet, up to 200,000 that are already dead.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, we can tell where he is getting his information right now.
And it's really, you know, it's not 100% from the U.S. intelligence community.
Oh, no.
He's getting this stuff from the neocons.
I don't know that he's had an intel briefing yet.
His CIA director hasn't been confirmed yet.
And his director of national security, she of the flip-flop on Section 702.
Hasn't been confirmed yet either.
Yeah, that's right.
So there is an opening left for a more reality-based assessment of what Israel is doing.
And again, guys like Witkoff and other guys who are Zionist to the core in our government, influencing our government and certainly influencing Israel, all of the ones who think about Israel's future...
Understand that the way it is behaving and the way it is sustaining its military, which is through us, through the United States, is not a winning strategy in the long term.
They want to take more land, and they will take more land, I think.
But at some point, Israel is going to have to...
It's going to have to not do what it's been doing because it's too costly to its own people, its quality of life.
You know, they've destroyed tourism.
They have created a global BDS, you know, don't buy Israeli goods type of a response.
They are an enemy, a stated enemy, a genocidal country under ICC, you know, with ICC critiques and UN condemnation.
A great many...
But places in the world do not want to be associated with Israel and what it's doing.
So if it continues to do that, it's simply going to go further away from normalcy in the world.
So fewer and fewer friends.
And I'll tell you, in this world, I don't care if it's a unipolar, bipolar, multipolar, whatever, you need friends.
You need not so much complex treaties with other countries, but you need to be seen as a good neighbor.
We need that.
Russia needs that.
China needs that.
Ukraine needs that.
You know, all of the countries need this.
And Israel is flaunting this.
This is a...
They don't think that's important, that they think they can prevail against reality.
And they cannot.
And even Zionists get this.
They understand the path that they are on.
And it's a Netanyahu path.
It's a Ben-Gurion path.
You know, it is a path of the hardcore Zionists.
They believe if they...
Many of them espouse a greater Israel.
That this is what they must have.
Here's the hardcore Zionist that was just sworn in as Secretary of State expressing his opinion as if he never went to law school on the ICC.
Well, I think the ICC has done tremendous damage to its global credibility.
First of all, it is going after a non-member state.
I think, first of all, the whole premise of his prosecution is beyond the process of it and the precedent that it sets, which is a very dangerous precedent for the United States of America, by the way, because this is a test run.
This is a trial run to see can we go after a head of state from a nation that's not a member, if we can go after them and we can get it done with regards to Israel.
They will apply that to the United States at some point.
And in fact, there have been threats to do so in the past.
How can you coexist?
How can any nation state on the planet coexist side by side with a group of savages like Hamas?
There is no moral equivalency.
And I think the ICC, if they don't drop this, will find its credibility globally badly damaged.
And I think the United States should be very concerned because I believe this is a test run for applying it to American service member and American leaders in the future.
Hamas are savages, but not the Israelis that are slaughtering babies.
Yeah. And also, I think they went after Russia, which is also not a member of the ICC.
We celebrated that.
We thought that was great.
So, yeah, he is...
Well, I'm not a big Rubio fan.
I never have been a big Rubio fan.
But he is...
I think he's out of his league.
I think he'll do what Trump tells him to do.
And I think he's the kind of guy who...
He will not only not disobey Trump, but he also won't quit on principle.
I don't think he has any principles.
No, he won't quit on principle.
He might quit if he's frustrated if Trump turns Steve Witkoff into the de facto secretary.
I've got to show you another clip in the theater of the absurd category.
The one government that can't pay any of its bills whatsoever and all of whose bills we're paying for is now offering to help Syria.
Watch this.
Cut number 11. And Ukraine's already stipulating to support the new Syria.
Our ministers have been to Damascus and we've launched a food aid program for Syria called Food from Ukraine.
And we are getting our partners involved to invest in this.
He's a lunatic.
He's a lunatic.
He's a lunatic and, you know, every bit of their government money.
That pays for everything that a normal state would do.
It comes from the United States and Europe.
Right. Cash payments, which about 50% or more are immediately siphoned off into corruption and alternate pockets.
So, yeah, that's kind of insane.
I mean, that's...
And, you know, but it is good for insane people to speak to the World Economic Forum, which is really passe now.
I mean...
Nobody cares about the World Economic Forum.
I think the free speech associated with that, half the world looks at that organization as nothing but elite globalist criminals, and half of the planet does not like elite globalist criminals.
So he is a nutcase speaking to some has-beens.
I think Trump does not like to be taken advantage of.
He likes to have a sense that his investments are paying off.
He speaks in terms of investments.
Right, so we're giving you money.
You're siphoning off some of it and giving the rest away to a group of people that are still on our terrorist list.
That was just four or five hours ago today.
Got to run, Karen.
Thank you very much for your time.
Always a pleasure, my dear friend.
And keep up the great writing.
We're happy to publish your work, and we'll see you next week.
Okay, thanks a lot, Judge.
Of course, all the best.
We have a busy day for you tomorrow.
Just bear with me one second.
Yes, at 12 noon, Aaron Maté.
At 1 o'clock, Ambassador Ian Proud.
At 2 o'clock, our dear friend from whom we haven't heard in a while, Anya Parampol.
At 3 o'clock, Phil Giraldi.
Ian, wait, wait, wait, worth waiting for.
At 4 o'clock, Scott Ritter.
Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom.
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