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Feb. 13, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
25:19
COL. Lawrence Wilkerson : Trump Emulates Biden.
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Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Thursday, February 13th, 2025.
Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson is here with us on today on Trump's foreign policy.
Is he emulating Joe Biden?
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Colonel Larry Wilkerson, always a pleasure, my dear friend.
Welcome here.
What have your sources in the military and in the intelligence community shared with you about President Trump's Gaza Riviera scheme?
That they think it's an insane idea that could have only come from Donald Trump?
That's almost a direct quote.
I mean, is there any serious...
Nor I would say the kindest comment I heard, and giving Trump his due, I think, is that they thought he got confused about wanting to help people who are in extreme duress.
Notwithstanding the fact that he and the man next to him in that Oval Office meeting, Netanyahu, were responsible for that duress, but that's beside the point with Trump.
That was a genuine show of concern about the people.
That's the kindest remark I've heard.
Well, does he share the same antipathy towards the human rights?
Of the Palestinians that Joe Biden manifested in four years?
I don't think so.
As you and I have discussed before, I think, if I remember right, I don't think he has empathy or sympathy.
I meant animosity or indifference.
Maybe that's the word.
Well, if you can't have the one, I don't think you can have the other.
You can look like you have the other.
You can look like you have passionate hatred or whatever.
But you don't really have it.
What you're worried about is you're losing money or you're gaining money or you're gaining traction politically or you're losing traction politically.
I think those are the only calculations that really matter to Trump.
I know it sounds weird, but I've met people like that before in my life.
They're different kinds of brains.
Does he not care that the Palestinians have lived there for 3,500 years?
Does he not care that international law has designated the Gaza Strip and the West Bank as Palestine?
Does he not care that the United States has no more right to dislodge them than they to dislodge us, where they have the power to do so?
But think about the people he's listening to.
And I'm not just talking about Miriam Adelson.
I'm talking about everyone from Ron Dernard and Netanyahu himself to all the people who surround him.
I'm sad to say this.
The recently confirmed new DNI is of the same nature, Tulsi Gabbard, who we're telling him differently.
They're giving him a different history.
They're giving him a different picture of what's happening in the region, a different picture of Israel.
If you've gone on a tour in Israel and gone on that bus with Israelis briefing you, and you know the real situation and the real history, you want to open the bus window and puke.
It's disgusting what they do.
But most people don't know anything, and so they're being impregnated with that message very carefully and very successfully by the Israeli tour guides and the Israeli people who accompany these showpiece trips.
They even take you to the Golan, for example, below it, and tell you to look up there and imagine tanks or artillery up there and how insignificant Israel is below.
And how utterly dangerous it would be for Israel if an enemy would occupy those heights.
Well, the question you want to ask is, why would an enemy want to occupy those heights?
Because you're here.
And because you've been here for 75 years.
And you stole the land.
They don't know that history.
Is the Trump foreign policy with respect to the Middle East nothing more than a continuation of the Biden foreign policy?
It's beginning to look that, except it has these traumatic moments and these shifts and mercurial moves this way or that way.
And I do think, I think there is a reason if Trump has animosity toward any individual.
I think we were looking at that individual in that scene in the Oval Office.
I don't think he likes Bibi Netanyahu at all.
I think he would...
Colonel, I keep hearing that.
From people who come on the show, and you know nearly all of them, that Trump can't stand Netanyahu.
Why does he give him everything he wants?
Because of the donor class?
That's part of it.
But I also think, you know my view on this.
I really think, like John Mearsheimer, or like Steve Walt, most of the things they say I agree with.
I really think...
In some ways, they did a disservice in trying to pin everything on the Israel lobby.
I don't think the Israel lobby has any blame for what happens in the United States, except the total takeover of the sycophant Congress and some other aspects of that.
Well, it's pretty significant if they've taken over the sycophant Congress.
Yeah, the military industrial complex have already done that very successfully anyway.
Thank you.
I think Israel is our tool.
To keep Levant and hegemony therein.
That's what I think is going on.
I don't think that their tail wags the dog.
I think we are the dog.
Colonel, did you know that the population of Palestine is hostile to the United States?
I'm going to have to play this clip for you from my former colleague and former friend.
At Fox News, Jesse Waters.
This is outrageous, but here's what he said last night.
Chris, cut number one.
This population in Palestine is hostile.
It's uneducated.
It's even more radicalized than they were at the beginning of this.
I mean, now they have no homes at all.
They're even more hateful of the Israelis.
And their birth rate is explosive.
The average Palestinian woman has five and a half babies.
The average Israeli woman has only two and a half babies.
So, demographically, they're a threat.
Not to mention the national security threat.
There is no way you can have these two peoples living side by side.
Does Mr. Waters know what the hell he's talking about?
Does that sound like someone in 1933-34 talking for a while?
It sure does.
That's what it sounds like to me.
I mean, he would make a good Schutztoffel SS member.
He could work for Reinhard Heydrich.
Now, do the Zionists around the president, Mike Waltz, J.D. Vance, I'm sorry to say, I'm happy she was confirmed, but I disagree with her on this, and so do you, Tulsi Gabbard, Marco Rubio,
Sebastian Gorka, Mike Huckabee, Elise Stefanik, on and on and on and on.
Did they feed him this nonsense also, or do they accept this nonsense as far as we know?
They do, and they do.
And it was the same with, it was more blatant with Biden, Blinken, and Sullivan.
I mean, Blinken was Netanyahu's Secretary of State in absentia.
And when he was in Israel, he was the Secretary of State.
But this administration is just as surrounded by these radical Zionists, money givers, as well as advice givers, as Biden and Blinken were.
You might say that Biden and Blinken didn't need it as badly because they believed it themselves.
Trump needs to be reminded every minute because I don't think he really cares about that aspect.
Colonel, is there any conceivable way that Trump's...
Our friend Pepe Escobar prefers to call it a scam because of his belief that the Trump corporation would do the developing of Gaza.
Is there any conceivable way that this could happen?
I mean, look at how King Abdullah was humiliated in the Oval Office.
Look at how President al-Sisi, who receives $4 billion a year,
It isn't going to happen.
It simply isn't going to happen.
If for no other reason, then the Palestinians are going to stop it from happening.
When we resume this conflict, which I think there's at least a 60-40 chance of doing at the end of the 42-day period, particularly if Hamas has given the bulk of the hostages back, then the IDF is going to be recommitted to a struggle it's losing.
There's no question about them losing it.
Hamas has defeated the IDF in terms of its stated strategic objectives, number one of which was to eliminate them completely.
They have anything but eliminated them completely.
So they're going to start this thing all over again and continue to march on the only path that Netanyahu knows, and that is killing his enemies.
This is a country with which he urins to have I think so,
too. I had a conversation two nights ago with a group of military colleagues where we put maps on the floor and we were looking at troop dispositions.
We were looking at different possibilities and so forth.
We were looking at the Turks, for example, in Syria.
We were looking at The Israelis already deep into Syria now, well beyond the Syrian side of the Golanites even.
We were looking at the armored forces of Jordan.
We were looking at the forces of Egypt.
We were looking at the forces of Iraq.
And we came up with an idea of what all those forces might do if they acted even in reasonable concert and attacked Israel.
I'm not even mentioning that Iran now has, as Israel has access across Syria to Iran, Iran also has access across Syria to Israel.
Were all this to happen, Israel would disappear.
Now, we all came down to the equation that Golda Meir came down to in 72, 73 or whatever.
Would they then use a nuclear weapon?
Our conclusion was they probably would.
But that's how in peril Israel could be, ultimately.
And then the question arose amongst us, what would the United States do?
And we left that hanging in the air because we didn't know what the United States would do, a cauldron like that, where Israel was essentially going down.
The Washington Post reports this morning, now I could stop right there because you know it's a CIA leak, that the CIA...
has advised President Trump and had advised President Biden that Netanyahu is planning an attack on the nuclear facilities in Iran.
Some of your colleagues on this show have said it's hogwash, it's just the CIA is unhappy that their new boss is Tulsi Gabbard and this is their way of getting that out there.
But were this to happen, Would you expect the United States to help Netanyahu?
And if the U.S. did, would you expect the Kremlin just to sit on its hands?
Let me start at the beginning.
They're two weeks away.
They're at 60% right now, and it would take about 10 days to get to 90% and to build a bomb.
Probably four to five bombs.
I think they could do that without Israel picking up on it, but I think Israel has probably already concluded that that is the situation.
I know we have.
So, at the same time, we have Zarif talking at Davos about how Iran would welcome a new negotiating technique coming from Trump, where they would even talk about ballistic missiles.
They would talk about no moratorium on anything.
Trump would have a splendid deal, a new JCPOA.
It would have all the things that it should have, that he said it should have when he walked out of the original one.
That's going on at the same time that this atomic program is going on.
And if it were to come to fruition, or even come close to fruition, I could see Israel doing that.
And I don't think the United States would follow them in that action.
And I don't think they would be successful.
What they would invite is a counter-strike from Iran that might be devastating.
Would the Russians participate in that counter-strike?
If we move down the road a little bit, you know the flankers are arriving right now.
The new equipment training team is training the first Iranian squadron in the SU-37, I think it is.
Really sophisticated aircraft with R-37 missiles and so forth.
If that were to pick up speed and you had enough pilots, then Iran could react, I think, with a significant attack.
And we might not even be able to do what we did before because we are limited now because of what we did before.
Our missiles are limited.
Our aircraft are limited.
Our pilots are limited.
We've put them through the crunch so many times now that I'm not sure they could respond as conclusively as they did before.
Again, I want to emphasize that with all of the array of enemies around Israel right now, the military power they represent, and I mean, you mentioned Turkey, then it's getting to be a very existential situation for Israel.
And I think it might be the point where we've got to make some really tough decisions.
Do we cut them loose and let them fall, or do we stay with them?
And get ourselves buried in the Levant in a way that, as Mir Shamer keeps saying, and I agree with John on this, takes our eye completely off the real ball, which is the other way in China.
Right. Colonel, if you'll permit me, we'll transition to Ukraine.
Tell me if you were surprised by this.
Cut number 11, Chris.
A durable peace for Ukraine must include robust security guarantees to ensure that the war will not begin again.
This must not be Minsk 3.0.
That said, the United States does not believe that NATO membership for Ukraine is a realistic outcome of a negotiated settlement.
Instead, Any security guarantee must be backed by capable European and non-European troops.
If these troops are deployed as peacekeepers to Ukraine at any point, they should be deployed as part of a non-NATO mission, and they should not be covered under Article 5. There also must be robust international oversight of the line of contact.
To be clear, as part of any security guarantee, There will not be US troops deployed to Ukraine.
I'm sure that the Kremlin is pleased about the acknowledgement by the United States at long last, after a million, close to a million human beings have died,
80-90% of that on the Ukrainian side, that the US has admitted that Ukraine will have no place.
And Jen Stoltenberg was so apoplectic about it that I thought he was just going to make himself blind with all his contentions about how NATO was going to, every country was going to spend enough money and so forth trying to deflect the criticism that Trump leveled during his first administration.
Yeah, that was a...
That was a significant comment and a significant change of policy, but I frankly don't think he went far enough.
Well, in fairness to him, and I'm not a fan, here he is saying it is unrealistic to expect that Ukraine would return to the pre-2014 borders.
That's before Crimea was annexed, much less the four other.
Oh, bless.
Chris, cut number 10. We will only end this devastating war and establish a durable peace by coupling allied strength with a realistic assessment of the battlefield.
We want, like you, a sovereign and prosperous Ukraine.
But we must start by recognizing that returning to Ukraine's pre-2014 borders Now, I don't know how Vladimir Zelensky can accept that,
but that and no NATO in Ukraine must literally be music to the ears of the Kremlin.
I'm sure it is, and especially that very key phrase, a realistic appraisal of the battlefield.
Yes. That's what Putin has been giving.
Repeatedly is a realistic appraisal of the battlefield.
And it is all in his favor and not at all in Ukraine's favor.
In fact, it's in Ukraine's disfavor.
And on top of all that, he's right about Zelensky.
He's an illegitimate ruler.
There is no way that he's legitimate.
The Ukrainians need to ask him and then make him, if necessary, step down and hold elections and have a new leader.
Who could come into this new environment created by Hegseth and Trump and capitalize on it?
Here's John Bolton, the person with whom you and I disagree on many, many things.
The president disagrees with him on many things.
It's very, very interesting what he said.
I believe it was on CNN yesterday.
Chris, cut number two.
Putin has scored a whole series of victories today.
It's hard to encompass them all.
But I think one, in addition to these substantive concessions, is that he has now, it seems, exactly what he wants.
Putin doesn't want to negotiate with Zelensky.
He wants to negotiate with Trump because he thinks he'll get more out of it.
And he's absolutely right.
Well, even a stop clock can be right twice a day.
John doesn't recognize the rectitude and correctness of sovereign rulers.
Yeah. Did you work with John when you ran the State Department and he was the U.S. ambassador, the acting U.S. ambassador to the U.N.?
Yes. I had my first experience with John was when I walked in to counsel him on the Secretary's prompting to counsel him about his remarks about North Korea.
Just short of contradicting George W. Bush, then the president, and looking for war with North Korea.
And I told him about the casualties that would result in the consequences for the 250,000 Americans living in the greater Seoul area.
And he looked at me and cut me off, and he said, I don't do military things.
You're the military guy.
John once told me he was an anti-war libertarian, and I'm still laughing.
Yes. He doesn't do war.
He was at Fox for a couple of years during the time period when I was there full-time.
Colonel, it's a pleasure, my dear friend.
Thank you very much.
Thanks for letting me segue from Israel over to Ukraine, but it was too important not to pick your brain on this.
One can only assume that what Secretary of Defense Hegseth said was approved by the White House and that the president agrees with that.
I mean, with this administration, who knows?
But I'm assuming that it was.
It hasn't been retracted.
It's a profound 180-degree change on Ukraine.
Although the pipeline of military equipment is still flowing, Colonel, to Kiev.
Still flowing.
The president said that yesterday.
Got to keep paying those U.S. contractors.
But I must say, I'm encouraged for the first time with respect to Ukraine in the history of the conflict.
Okay. Thank you, Colonel.
I hope we can chat again next week.
All the best, my friend.
Take care and watch out for that snow on your farm.
Oh, God, it's coming over the weekend.
Coming up at 3 o'clock, Professor John Mearsheimer, and in the 4 to 4.15 range, because he's traveling, the always worth waiting for, out under the collar, Max Blumenthal, Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom.
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