Jan. 26, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
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| Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. | |
| Today is Monday, January 27th, 2025. | |
| My guest today is someone whose work I've admired for many years and I'm thrilled finally to meet him, Ben Cohen. | |
| Yes, THE Ben Cohen of Ben& Jerry's Ice Cream, the best ice cream in the world. | |
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| Call 800-511-4620, 800-511-4620 or go to learjudgenap.com and tell them the Ben Cohen, welcome here. | |
| It's a pleasure, my dear friend. | |
| As I said before we came on air, I've admired your work, not just that which you manufacture, but your work, of course, for peace. | |
| And you and I have a lot of mutual friends, some of whom are regulars on this show, Ray McGovern, Matt Ho, Dennis Fritz, Jeffrey Sachs. | |
| You are a well-known, world-known celebrity. | |
| You were raised in a Jewish household. | |
| How do you feel about the slaughter in Gaza? | |
| Horrible. It's a genocide. | |
| It's doubly horrible that it's being done with my tax dollars and U.S. weapons. | |
| You know, I don't know. | |
| I can't believe that we're actually doing it and calling ourselves a peaceful nation. | |
| It really is a made-in-America war. | |
| The weapons were made in America. | |
| The ammunition is made in America. | |
| The cash, of course, as you say, comes from your tax dollars and mine and every American who pays taxes. | |
| I don't know if there's going to be any change. | |
| Under Donald Trump. | |
| He's only been in office for a week, Ben, but the military equipment and the ammunition and the cash continues. | |
| I mean, late last week, he stopped all foreign aid except for Egypt and Israel. | |
| Crazy. Yeah, I don't understand it. | |
| You know, so many people say that... | |
| It's because AIPAC tosses so much money around Congress. | |
| I don't get it. | |
| I mean, you know, the Jews, as I understood it, had been oppressed for many, many years, and then they go and turn around and oppress Palestinians and just out and out kill them. | |
| I mean, it's not a war. | |
| It's a slaughter. | |
| Now, when you say things like that, and I say things like that, And people on this show say things like that, that they earnestly believe in and for which the evidence for which is overwhelming. | |
| We're called anti-Semites, people that hate Semitic people. | |
| It's absurd, but that's part of the technique, I think, to try and silence us or dial us back. | |
| Yeah, that is amazing. | |
| I mean, what, if you criticize a government? | |
| That makes you anti-Semitic? | |
| I don't get it. | |
| They've conflated supporting anything Israel does with not being anti-Semitic. | |
| I mean, they're saying if you criticize anything this country does, then you're an anti-Semite. | |
| And it's irrational. | |
| It's illogical. | |
| I don't know. | |
| Do you think things will improve under Trump, or do you think his loyalty to Miriam Adelson and the AIPAC folks will cause him to be just as genocidal as Joe Biden? | |
| He certainly seems to have been doing kind of the same stuff that Biden did. | |
| I mean, it was Trump who... | |
| Moved the Capitol, or moved the U.S. Embassy, was it? | |
| Yes. Yeah, so he's done inflammatory stuff, and I'm hoping that he's going to do something to end it, but I wouldn't be surprised if he lets Israel annex all this other geography. | |
| What is your opinion of Prime Minister Netanyahu? | |
| Low. You know, our mutual friend Bernie Sanders seems to come and go on this. | |
| Every once in a while, he's terrific, and every once in a while, he sort of dials back. | |
| I think he was a little reluctant to take on his longtime Senate colleague who became president. | |
| Joe Biden, but I do believe in Bernie's heart that he opposes this genocide as we do. | |
| Is that a fair conclusion, Ben? | |
| He absolutely does. | |
| I mean, I'm a constituent of his. | |
| I get his emails, and he is totally against support. | |
| Well, didn't he introduce a piece of legislation to prevent... | |
| Well, under federal law, we are not allowed to give arms to a country that has nuclear weapons without having signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty. | |
| Israel hasn't signed it. | |
| And under another federal law, named after another Vermonter, Patrick Leahy, we are not allowed to give aid to a country that... | |
| We're looking, if you look on your screen, Prime Minister Netanyahu this morning being in a location he ardently doesn't want to be in. | |
| If you see him pressing his fingerprint on that device, he's about to enter a public courtroom for the resumption of his corruption trial. | |
| All righty. | |
| Good to see. | |
| It will be good to see if just this is done. | |
| I'm not so sure that whoever might replace him wouldn't be just as bad for human decency. | |
| Let me switch gears a little bit. | |
| Do we need 800 military bases around the world? | |
| I know what your answer is going to be, but I want to give you a chance to sound off on it. | |
| No. I mean, it's amazing. | |
| I mean, the public, the American public has been very clear poll after poll after poll. | |
| We don't want to be the world's policemen. | |
| What is the reason for having 800 military bases around the world? | |
| You know, it's interesting. | |
| I grew up, you know, as a little kid. | |
| Yeah, the U.S. has a lot of military bases around the world. | |
| I figured, well, that's normal. | |
| You know, every country must have a lot of military bases around the world, and it turns out that the U.S. has ten times more than every other country put together. | |
| I mean, it is... | |
| And our military budget is greater than the next ten countries combined, which includes Russia, which has a bigger army, and China, which has a bigger navy. | |
| Yep. That's exactly right. | |
| It's totally unnecessary. | |
| It's totally driven by profit-making weapons manufacturers. | |
| You got this revolving door that goes back and forth between the Pentagon and the weapons manufacturers. | |
| So you got a general in the Pentagon who's supervising a weapons contract, which, what do you know, goes tremendously over budget. | |
| And then he retires and gets hired by that same weapons manufacturer. | |
| I would imagine that former four-star general and former Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin is back in his office at Raytheon even as we speak, even though he's only been out of office for a week. | |
| Should we keep a CIA that engages in No. | |
| You know, it was Eisenhower who said that the people want peace so much that one of these days, government is going to have to step out of the way and let them have it. | |
| I mean, the people of the United States, the mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, sons and daughters, They have no desire to bomb people just like them in another country. | |
| I mean, is this really the best that our leaders can do? | |
| It doesn't seem to matter, Ben, whether the president is a Republican or a Democrat or whether Congress is controlled by Republicans or Democrats. | |
| Joe Biden will go to his grave with the nickname Genocide Joe. | |
| I don't know what Trump's nickname will be, but... | |
| It just doesn't matter if there's R or D after their name when it comes to war and killing and the Pentagon budget. | |
| Yeah. Militarism is just about the only bipartisan issue there is. | |
| They both agree that we should spend half of our entire discretionary budget on preparing to kill millions of people. | |
| I mean, what does that do to the spirit of our country? | |
| Well, I'll tell you what Martin Luther King said. | |
| He said that a country that continues to spend more and more on military defense than social uplift is approaching spiritual death. | |
| Yes. I mean, I think it's all associated. | |
| We have these mass killings. | |
| I mean, the government... | |
| Makes the statement by its actions that killing lots of people is just fine. | |
| Tell us about the Eisenhower Network, which you have funded, even though some of its officials are regulars on the show. | |
| I mean, another way of looking at this is, what does someone like you, who's an international celebrity, do about this, besides support? | |
| Well, you know, there's a huge number of people in the population, a huge number of Americans who don't want to go around killing people, who don't want the whole country to be militarized, | |
| and who don't want these huge Pentagon budgets. | |
| But the problem is that you get these generals and admirals standing up there in their uniforms with all their medals saying, oh no, you don't understand. | |
| If we don't have enough nuclear weapons to blow up the entire world ten times over, we're going to be vulnerable. | |
| So I felt like what we need is a group of retired, higher-level military officers and State Department officials, people who have the credentials, | |
| people who have been there, done that, to be willing to speak out on really this abomination of what's supposed to be American values. | |
| And so that's what the Eisenhower Media Network is. | |
| It's a group of about 12 fellows. | |
| It keeps on growing. | |
| I'm not sure exactly how many we have now. | |
| I think we just added an admiral. | |
| It's a group of 12 fellows that are former higher-level military officers that are willing to be public about criticizing. | |
| The Pentagon budget and the Pentagon mentality. | |
| It's the entire Pentagon mentality that we're concerned about. | |
| Now you see some of our colleagues. | |
| There's McGovern at the bottom. | |
| Larry Wilkerson, another great human being, Colonel Wilkerson in there. | |
| And of course, Matt Ho, Karen Kwiatkowski, and Dennis Fritz. | |
| Fritz is fiery. | |
| Ben, I don't have to tell you that. | |
| You put a fire under his tail. | |
| He is terrific. | |
| Yep, he's great. | |
| I'm going to be seeing him in DC next week. | |
| Well, thank you very much for all you do. | |
| What advice would you give young people who don't want to grow up in a world of militarism? | |
| There is a great new organization of young people. | |
| Multiracial called Dissenters. | |
| I think their website is dissenters.org. | |
| And I say, head right on over there. | |
| I actually spoke with them recently and I think they're doing a beautiful new job. | |
| And that's what we all need to do, is get active. | |
| Well, let me thank you for your time, and let me personally thank you for your generosity with the Eisenhower Media Network and with the other pro-peace causes to which you have contributed so generously and so regularly. | |
| It's a pleasure, Ben. | |
| I hope you'll come back and visit with us again. | |
| Be happy to, Judge. | |
| Thanks for the work you're doing. | |
| Thank you. | |
| Thank you all the best. | |
| All right. | |
| Take care. | |
| Sure. Coming up at 4 o'clock this afternoon, another warrior for peace, Scott Ritter. | |
| Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. |
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