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Feb. 11, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
23:51
LtCOL. Karen Kwiatkowski : Can the US Expel Palestinians from Gaza?
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Hi, everyone.
Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today it's Tuesday, February 11th, 2025.
Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski joins us now.
Colonel, always a pleasure.
Thank you very much for sharing your time with us.
Not too long ago, Donald Trump said that he wanted all of the hostages, the Israeli hostages, returned.
By noon on Saturday.
We'll play the clip for you in a minute.
He said nothing, of course, of the thousands of Palestinian hostages being held, who, of course, are referred to as prisoners rather than hostages.
And he said nothing of the fact that the ceasefire agreement, which was written and negotiated by his emissary, Mr. Witkoff, caused for only three hostages to be released.
No, because he has a really short memory, and he talks all the time.
He has no idea.
I think once he's committed to something, I really think he compartmentalizes that, it's done, checkmark, go on to the next thing.
I think that's how he operates, and it does not bode well for a A really effective foreign policy that I think he would like to have.
But if he can't pay attention, if he can't hold his attention and remember who he's talked to and how little he knows about so much of this stuff.
Which he refuses to acknowledge how little he knows about so much of this stuff.
You know, he's not going to be effective and he's going to be frustrated.
I don't want to compare him to Biden at all.
Biden's issues were vastly different and the mental issues were very, very deep and profound.
But when this ceasefire agreement came to pass about two or three days before inauguration.
Biden claimed credit for it.
Trump claimed credit for it.
Steve Whitcoff, Trump's emissary, had apparently had some very, very direct and aggressive conversations with Prime Minister Netanyahu to get him to accept an agreement that he had previously rejected.
Biden quite properly crowed that he had offered this seven months ago and Netanyahu had rejected it.
That appears to be...
Now, watch this clip.
This is Monday.
This is yesterday.
Tell me if you think the statements in this clip were well thought through, thought out, run past his advisors before he said what he said.
Chris, cut number seven.
As far as I'm concerned, if all of the hostages aren't returned by Saturday at 12 o'clock, I think it's an appropriate time.
I would say cancel it and all bets are off and let hell break out.
I'd say they ought to be returned by 12 o'clock on Saturday and if they're not returned, all of them, not in drips and drabs, not two and one and three and four and two.
Saturday at 12 o'clock and after that I would say...
All hell is going to break out.
And I don't think they're going to do it.
I think a lot of them are dead.
I think a lot of the hostages are dead.
I think it's a great human tragedy what's happened.
Does that sound like it's the policy of the federal government that's been run past his senior advisor?
So you think he just pulled out all the hostages and Saturday at noon off the top of his head?
I think he is in a very small bubble when it comes to Israeli policy and policy in the region.
And his idea on policy in the region is fed to him by a few people that he trusts, that he talks to.
He has no balancing information.
I doubt he's getting very much intelligence information that is very American or objective, you know, to counter anything that he's being told by his friends.
And by his friends, I mean his donors, okay?
We kind of can understand very clearly what is happening with his Israel and his Gaza policy.
It is something that was purchased during his campaign.
And he is now trying to, you know, deliver that product.
He isn't dealing with the broader world of reality.
You know, he seems, you know, and I'll tell you why I say this.
He looked at the devastation pictures and he goes, Gaza has been turned into rubble.
Okay. And he seemed to act like that was an act of God, like that was a mysterious thing that had happened, like a tidal wave had hit the Gaza shoreline or something.
Yeah. He had no concept that we paid for that rubble.
Every single piece of dust, we funded that rubble.
You know, he talks about 1.8 and 1.9 million Gazans.
They'll split themselves between Jordan and Egypt.
He says these numbers.
Does he know how many Gazans were there that were moved?
That was 2.3 million before this war.
So that's 400,000 missing Gazans.
He doesn't seem to make a connection because he's not talking to anybody except people like Netanyahu, people like Adelson, people who are talking about the inner workings of the Israeli government.
And quite frankly, this ceasefire that they all took credit for, Witkof and all of them, Biden, Trump, This ceasefire was the appropriate resting time for the IDF.
This was something that would have happened entirely on the part of internal Israel politics.
You didn't need any of that stuff.
That was a resting point.
And that's how it was seen, and that's how it was sold to the government in Israel and the advocacy sectors of Israeli politics.
None of this...
And Trump is, again, a fool, in a sense, of not really informing himself more broadly about what's happening.
Do you think he has any human empathy for the Palestinians?
Do you think he has any fundamental moral understanding of the human rights of the Palestinian people in Gaza?
He doesn't know any of them.
He doesn't hear from any of them.
He doesn't see them.
He's not exposed to them.
He doesn't understand anything that happened.
He doesn't know what the history is.
He only knows what he hears from his Zionist pals who are very careful to inform him of the story that will produce the kinds of statements that they want to hear and the kind of support that they want to get.
I believe Trump's a very popular guy.
He connects with people.
And he is known to have a soft heart for people that are abused and mistreated and fall under injustices of some type, whether it's government injustice or any other type.
He is a generous person.
He is simply not aware.
And again, I'll tell you, this is one of the reasons I kind of, I'm a little bit happy that he talks a lot about these crazy ideas about Gaza, what he's going to do, whatever.
He's very...
He's causing people to look at Gaza and to see with their own two eyes.
Because three-quarters of the American population that is an adult or that is following this, they oppose buying Gaza.
They support the Gazans.
Three-quarters, 75% of the American population looked at those 1.8 million Gazans marching northward to the rubble that we created, that Israel created for them.
And they're amazed.
They're amazed at the toughness.
And Americans admire toughness.
We admire toughness.
We admire justice.
You know, we applaud.
We root for the little guy.
Trump shares that with the people of this country, but he is not informed.
I imagine he has very little time to watch any news.
I don't think you're going to find him on Telegram looking at live video clips from the region.
We don't allow our president's time to...
Do you think he understands the history of Israel and United States presidents?
Do you think he understands that Israel murders the people it's negotiating with, has hired people to steal state secrets from the United States, destroyed one of our naval ships?
Killing dozens of sailors.
Do you think he understands all that?
That Israel is not a friend of the United States?
That we don't have a treaty with Israel?
That we're not a legal ally?
No, he doesn't.
He is not exposed to that.
And when you think about Trump not being a student of world history, he was a businessman.
During his coming up years, when all these things were happening, 1967, when the Liberty is being shot up and LBJ is covering it up.
Trump is not paying attention to politics.
And the people he's working with in New York, his friends in New York, many of them are Zionists.
If he learns anything about what's happening in Israel, he's getting Israel's side of that story.
And that becomes the reality for him.
And then you go through other parts of our history, who was the terrible NSA spy that we later returned.
To Israel after he served many, many years in American prison.
Were you talking about Jonathan Pollard?
Yeah, Pollard.
I mean, the Pollard case.
What was Trump doing when the Pollard case was big?
According to Ritter yesterday, what Pollard stole was the crown jewels of, well, you know this from your years in the military, the crown jewels of the American, tools of the American intelligence community, which caused...
It took generations and many human lives in order to develop.
Gone. Oh, yeah.
And sold it.
The Israelis took this, or Pollard took it on behalf of the Israelis, and then they sold it to Russia to help get Russian Jews and cut their own deals.
That's how Israel as a nation state.
It's sovereign.
It can look out after itself.
Your argument is that Trump is ignorant.
Of this, because it occurred at a time when his eye was not on the ball of international politics.
It was on whatever he was doing, developing high-rise buildings in New York City.
I think that he is extremely ignorant.
And I don't mean ignorant.
Some people think being ignorant is an insult.
It's not an insult.
It simply means you haven't been exposed to or absorbed certain information.
Could have been a lot of reasons why you didn't.
But yeah, he is absolutely ignorant of American history with Israel.
And to the extent that he may think that he knows something, like a normal 75-year-old, you know, a normal person of his age will say, well, I've lived a long life.
I've learned many things.
But what he has learned has been very narrow, a little bubble, very biased in interest of Zionist Israel.
And so his friends, and he should have Zionist friends.
He should have friends everywhere.
But the friends that inform him on Israel are not giving him...
Really, an American perspective, not giving him an objective perspective.
And so he sounds very much like a Zionist when he speaks of this region, okay?
And part of that is, hey, they know the area.
I'll defer to the expert, right?
So who does he think the expert is in Israel?
He thinks it's Israelis.
But of course it's not.
It's not the Israelis at all.
The people that know the history of the region are not the Israelis.
Colonel, he has surrounded himself with arch Zionists.
Yes. Even your and my mutual friend, the one person in his cabinet that we really ardently want to be confirmed, and she apparently will by the end of the week, Tulsi Gabbard, as good as she is on many intelligence issues,
is an arch Zionist.
Pete Hegseth, Arch-Zionist.
Sebastian Gorka, forget it.
Supercharged Arch-Zionist.
Marco Rubio, Arch-Zionist.
Mike Waltz, Arch-Zionist.
Mike Huckabee, at least Stefanik.
I mean, the list goes on and on and on.
I'm going to play a clip.
From Prime Minister Netanyahu.
It's in Hebrew with English translation.
It just came out about 45 minutes ago.
And I'm going to ask you, can Donald Trump stomach Netanyahu?
But first, first the clip.
We all welcome President Trump's demands for the release of our hostages by Saturday noon.
And we also all welcome the President's revolutionary vision for the future of Gaza.
In light of Hamas's announcement of its decision to violate the agreement and not release our hostages, last night I ordered the IDF to gather forces inside and around the Gaza Strip.
This operation is being carried out at this time.
It will be completed in the very near future.
The decision that passed unanimously in the Cabinet is this.
If Hamas does not return our hostages by Saturday noon, the ceasefire will end.
And the IDF will return to intense fighting until Hamas is completely defeated.
Of course, it would make him very happy if the ceasefire ends.
Then he still has his government.
He's still prime minister.
The judicial processes against him, though they go on, they are slowed down.
What do you think Donald Trump thinks of this guy?
His true feelings about him?
I mean, Donald Trump knows a bully.
When he sees one.
Donald Trump also is very good at sensing or feeling out weakness, human weakness in his counterparts.
And he sees Bibi for what he is, who is a guy at the end of his term, and he's under a lot of political pressure.
He's physically weak.
He's ill.
He's not popular.
And he's conducted a war that basically the assessment in Israel is that this war on Gaza has been a complete failure.
His own generals are explaining the four points, the four objectives of this war.
Three and a half of them were distinctly not accomplished.
This is in Israeli media, and it's also how the Israelis feel when they see the images, when they see what's happening.
They're very tired of war.
It's a very costly war.
They're tired of everyone blaming them for what they're doing to Gaza.
There's so many things about war that are not popular in Israel.
I think Trump gets that Netanyahu is in a weak position, and he is a weak man, and he is a bully.
I don't think he's friends with Netanyahu, despite what he says.
You know, he wishes Netanyahu...
I think truly Trump wishes Netanyahu was a better leader and a better person.
But he's got what he's got, and that's who he's going to work with.
Does the donor class in America effectively have Trump in a vice grip?
Mrs. Adelson and her wealthy colleagues.
See, in my opinion, I think politicians take money.
And unless you have dirt on them, like video of them doing criminal acts with children or animals, they aren't bound to honor the money that you donated.
I think Adelson...
For example, as one of the bigger donors, but certainly not the only Zionist donor, you know, they realize very well that Trump has been elected.
He used their money.
He took their money.
He spent their money.
And if they don't stay on top of him...
He will move quickly on to other things.
And I think anybody that donates to a politician realizes you have to make those follow-up calls.
This is why Thomas Massey has explained how APEC operates.
You know, they talk to the congressmen frequently and remind them of what was bought and paid for.
This is the same situation for a presidential election.
So I don't think they can trust Trump to do this.
They are hanging close by him.
There's a huge...
I think they're very concerned that he is not going to deliver the goods.
In part because it's impossible.
What Israel wants, what they want in Gaza, what they want in the West Bank and in southern Lebanon is they want dead people scraped away in huge piles and they want to take over that territory and they want no...
Complaints about it.
They don't want those people to come back.
They don't want to deal with the children or the progeny of those people.
They want it to go away.
That is a fantasy.
It's not going to happen.
No way it can happen.
There's so many structural things and human things and spiritual things that will get in the way of all that.
So that's a fantasy.
Adelson even recognizes that it's a fantasy, which is why you have to spend so much money to buy the American president, to help you.
But I don't think they trust him.
And Trump really does have a shallow informational base when it comes to Israel, but he also has a short attention span.
And I honestly, my opinion, basing it on nothing more than intuition, but I think Trump sees danger coming from another.
Not from Netanyahu and not from Adelson and not from whatever he is or isn't going to try to do in Gaza.
I think he wants this pushed off his plate much as he wants Ukraine pushed off his plate.
I'm sure he'd love both of them.
But he is deeply committed in Gaza.
If the threat that he just made About noon on Saturday, followed up by Prime Minister Netanyahu, comes to pass, Donald Trump will be funding genocide.
Genocide. Does he understand that?
You know what?
It may not matter if he understands it or not.
Because by doing that, when the whole rest of the world understands exactly what it is, Donald Trump is going to lose.
Some of his power, his perception of power.
And he knows this.
He doesn't want to lose power.
That's what he cares about.
And I'll tell you this.
His Gaza plan, which includes the Americans either buying it or Trump himself or some conglomerate purchasing Gaza.
Netanyahu is a liar.
Well, we know that.
But specifically in the clip that you showed, we welcome Trump's innovative ideas for Gaza.
That is not true.
Nobody owns land in the area.
So, there's no way in anybody's imagination That Trump, the United States, or any other country is going to purchase land that Israelis believe is owned by the state of Israel.
So right there alone, you can see where Netanyahu is really playing this for his own personal political survival, which you could expect him to do that.
But yeah, much of what we're being told and what we're seeing coming out of both Trump's mouth, Netanyahu's mouth, not true.
Things that are just Empty words.
And the rest of the world recognizes this.
Even if many Americans go, oh, I wonder what his plan is.
Oh, that's a plan.
Oh, we'll have to think about that.
No, we don't.
No, we don't.
How ridiculous do you think he looked in the eyes of the rest of the world?
Not a single head of state of any of the 190 countries on the planet.
With the exception of Prime Minister Netanyahu, and we just watch them, people can decide for themselves whether he's serious or not, supports this, we're going to buy and own Gaza plan that he concocted.
Not a single one.
Not even the Prime Minister of Great Britain.
No, no.
And I think some of them, sometimes when, you know, how we have comedy.
Or the court jester.
Maybe Trump's playing his own court jester.
But, you know, the court jester kind of says things that might be policy, but they're really over the top.
And in doing that, kind of illustrates both the flaws and the hubris of the big whoever's in charge, the king or the president.
And I see Trump playing his own court jester here with his ideas.
And they will have impacts, and they already have, because I believe he spoke with King of Jordan today.
A few days from now, he was supposed to have a visit with them, and that's been called off.
The Egyptian guy said, no, I'm not doing that.
And guess what?
What is the cost of that?
$1.3 billion that Egypt can't get from some other place?
You know, a billion a year to Jordan that Jordan can't get?
I mean, my God!
Muslims around the world would donate to...
Replace that American funding into Jordan and into Egypt.
So Trump lives in a world where he thinks it all works.
He's been told by his friends, this is what we do, this will work.
And he doesn't have a depth of knowledge or background in this particular foreign policy area, the history of the region, or anything like that.
He doesn't have anything to bounce off these bad ideas that he's getting.
And so he thinks they're good.
But he's going to quickly find out that they're not good.
They won't work.
And the whole world is, yeah, the whole world is scared of America.
They're a little scared of Trump.
But you know what?
The power is being held by the people.
The very thing that got Trump elected, power to the people, that's a global phenomenon, too.
Colonel Kwiatkowski, very articulate.
Very articulate and very thoughtful.
Thank you very much for joining us, my dear friend.
Thank you for having me, Judge.
I hope you'll come back with us next week, as always.
Sure. Thank you, Karen.
Coming up at 4 o'clock today, the always worth waiting for, Colonel Douglas McGregor.
Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom.
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