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Feb. 18, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
26:21
Karen Kwiatkowski : Does Europe Need the US?
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Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Tuesday, February 18th, 2025.
Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski is here on what is changing between the United States and Europe.
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I've set you.
Colonel Krakowski, a pleasure, my dear friend.
Thank you for joining us.
I do want to talk about the United States and Europe, but before we get there, a couple of questions about Israel and Gaza.
How unrealistic is President Trump's offer to purchase, don't know from whom, Gaza, own it and develop it, when even of all people, Senator Lindsey Graham said today,
there is little to no appetite in the Senate for this.
Yeah, yeah, I saw that he said that.
So he's right sometimes.
He's right on this one.
And also the Americans, it's not just the appetite in the Senate, but it's the political appetite in this country.
You know, we elected a guy to put America first.
So certainly...
It's not something that will be supported domestically.
But the other thing is, who will he buy it from?
Gaza is not part of Israel.
Israel has illegally occupied it, but it doesn't own it.
It can't sell it.
They refuse to deal with the elected leadership of Gazans or Palestinians.
Israel has said there will be no Hamas.
There will be no Palestinian Authority.
There will be nothing.
We're not dealing with any political construct.
So who are they going to buy it from?
Well, it's not Israel's to sell.
And the other aspect is Israel doesn't sell.
Israel takes land, occupies land, as it has done for a long, long time.
But the state of Israel owns the land.
It owns the title to all the land that the people live on.
And it leases property to...
What they consider to be landowners, Israelis, for 49 years.
And you can option it to extend another 49 years.
But I mean, it's not the way Americans understand land ownership.
And I don't know how Trump...
This is a socialist form of government.
I did not know what you just told us, Colonel.
Well, 93% of all land in Israel...
And I don't know if that includes what they consider, you know, the occupied territories or not, but 93% of land that Israelis live on is owned by the state of Israel.
It's leased to the various property owners.
It's been like this from the beginning because when they were building their state, it was uncertain, uncertain times.
And of course, anybody who studied the history of Israel, I mean, this is a state that was built.
You know, in a state of war.
I mean, they're very proud of their terroristic early identity in fighting for this land in Palestine that would be the Zionist state.
So you couldn't trust somebody to own land.
This is a political project, and it hasn't changed.
And of course, there's no also, and you've talked about this before, but there's no constitution in the way that Americans understand a constitution in Israel.
It's not like that.
Law is evolving.
It makes one wonder, and he may have said this, Israel will sell it to us if Donald Trump thinks that Israel owns Gaza in the way one owns real estate in the United States and would literally sell it to American investors or to the federal government.
Yeah. If he believes that, he's wrong.
I think that his staff, he's staffing up his advisors.
And yes, everyone that advises him on Israel seems to be a strong pro-Zionist type of person.
However, they do understand how Israel is set up.
That's not what Zionists in America talk about.
They don't talk about how Israel is designed as a very socialist, almost a totalitarian.
We don't talk about that here because that's not pleasant.
But the people that advise Trump, even his Zionist advisors, they know this and they will advise him as such.
So the way I see his Gaza, we're going to buy Gaza and we're going to develop it and whatever, this is a going in position.
Which has probably been even partially created for him by the Israeli government, by Netanyahu and his advisors, who intend to point out, oh, we can't sell you this land, but we'll do that.
We'll do that.
You fund it.
We'll do that.
And the idea initially when Trump proposed this, it was very shocking two weeks ago.
He said there would be a right of return, and he immediately was corrected.
I mean, the very next time he talked about it, he denied a right of Palestinian return.
So that tells me his talking points there are not being written by him or even by any American.
His talking points are being written in Tel Aviv.
Do you think that Prime Minister Netanyahu really...
Truly in his heart wants this to happen or is just trying to be flattering to President Trump.
I mean, if this were to happen, the United States would have access to the vast deposits of natural gas that are underneath the ocean there, which the Israelis have coveted for generations.
Yeah. No, he absolutely doesn't want that.
And also, let's imagine that...
Nothing that we said here mattered, and Israel believes it could sell this property to the United States.
What would be the price?
You have to price in the natural resources that you're going to exploit.
Those things have costs, they have contracts, they have estimated values.
There's a whole business of purchasing or leasing undersea reserves of any type.
So, yeah, Israel intends, and this is...
I'm not speaking for Israel.
You can look at Israeli media, you can look at their politicians, and not just the Smotrix of the world.
You can look at what Netanyahu has said.
They intend to evacuate the population in Gaza.
They thought that they did that, but they, of course, underestimated the determination of the Palestinians, walked on foot back into their...
Totally depleted and destroyed rubble fields that were created by American bombs and Israeli bombs.
So they did not think that would happen, but it did happen.
But they haven't given up on the idea.
The idea is they want Palestinians gone.
They want to wipe the idea that there ever was Palestine from the history books, from the modern books.
Of course, the history books, we know it existed, but they want to kind of make a new kind of history that is...
Sold and foisted upon the world.
But the problem is it's a little bit late.
Okay, because the world already knows better and you can't foist it on the world.
The last place you can foist it is Washington, D.C. And we'll see how it works out because Trump has gotten some really good advice in Ukraine.
You know, I mean, regarding the U.S.-Russian relationship.
And I think some of it, of course, Trump was sensitive to, right, because of his first impeachment.
It came out of that part of the world and from people that were advocating this war and never ending this war.
So he is focused in on Ukraine a little bit on a personal level.
And I don't know if he is yet focused in on what's happened to Gaza and really, you know, Western Syria, Southern Lebanon.
We're not focused in on...
What they're doing right now, what Israel is doing to the West Bank.
But if he becomes focused on that because he solved a few other problems, then, you know, we have to see what what he actually learns, because I do think Donald Trump can learn.
And I think he is putting people around him that he not just trusts, but feels care about America first.
I think that's clear.
Even Secretary of State Rubio, he's not an America firster.
He's very much a person who challenged that idea, bought and paid for by the APEC folks.
But when he appointed Rubio to be his Secretary of State, the condition was Rubio would be an obedient little boy.
And he has done that.
He has done that wonderfully.
And it may be that Rubio has actually found a place where he can help make the world a better place in doing what Donald Trump tells him to do.
Well, Donald Trump claims he is a man of peace, and I accept him at his word.
But the pipeline of aid to Israel has continued.
Yes. Every 15 hours, another ship arrives or another cargo plane lands.
What do you think Trump will do if Netanyahu concocts some reason, legitimate or not, so concoct or discovers, for the IDF to re-enter Gaza and they start killing people?
You don't think Trump's going to tell him to stop, do you?
Well, I know Netanyahu is going to do that.
Okay. Netanyahu is going to do that in order to stay out of jail.
Right. Netanyahu needs war.
He needs war.
You know, I can't say because I don't know the people Trump is listening to.
I read something somewhere that said that Jared Kushner has fallen down lower on the roster of people that he listens to.
So that's a good sign.
That's a really good sign.
Well, Jared Kushner and his wife, his wife is Trump's daughter, do not have an office in the White House as they did in the first administration.
In fact, I believe they have sold their home in D.C. Okay, but...
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Jared is the one who said to a professor at Harvard, can you imagine what it would be like if we could develop the Gaza Strip into high-rises and mansions?
I'm paraphrasing.
Sure, I know.
These ideas are very popular in Israel, and they're popular amongst Zionist Israelis, and that's fine, honestly.
That's not our country, and we're not those people.
So they can make plans for themselves.
The problem is, who's paying for it?
And who's going to pay the cost of the mistakes that they're making?
And that's the United States.
We're not only paying for them to do this, but we also, because we pay for it, we are now culpable for what they're doing.
Is Donald Trump going to be called Genocide Donald?
The way Joe Biden was quite properly ridiculed.
Now, I know it's alliterative, genocide Joe, but can we expect that?
Well, what I think could happen is we might expect that.
Because if Trump is able to solve some of the problems that he's trying to solve on his 100-day plan or 30-day plan or whatever, he's making moves on...
Refreshing our relationship with Russia, resolving the problem of Ukraine.
He's got some other cleanup to do in D.C., and he certainly enraged the deep state very much and got them off their game.
If he can put some of these things behind him, he may be able to propose something that makes a lot of sense for Gazans, for Palestinians, and for Israel.
And he'll be in a position to leverage...
The aid that we do give them, you know, we give them that aid with no, you know, this is a very un-Trump thing.
You know, this no qualifications on any of the aid that we provide to Israel.
They can do anything they want with it.
We can never say no.
It can only go up.
They get it when they ask for it and they can do whatever they want with it.
That's not like Trump to do that.
That is an un-Trump kind of approach.
You know, his idea is, as he said with NATO, you know, we're going to help you out and this is what you're going to do.
To me, it's fair.
He says, we're going to make peace in Ukraine.
And here's what you, Zalansky, you're going to give us 50% of your rare earths or whatever it is that he said he wanted.
But the idea is quid pro quo, which we don't have with Israel.
We have no quid pro quo with Israel.
And increasingly, as technology changes, as the Gulf states that we used to have to manipulate for oil and...
They're not very backward at all.
Many of these states have diversified their economies, their places people want to be in.
They have power, they have credibility that they may not have had in 1948, in 1958, in 1963, or whatever.
The Arab world has changed a little bit, and Israel has not.
Israel has actually gotten worse in its ideals and the way it operates.
Trump's not stupid.
Let me transition, Colonel, if I could.
As we speak, the conference in Riyadh has just ended.
They're really starting out with basics, Karen.
They agreed to allow each other to increase the size of their embassy staffs.
The U.S. wants more people in Moscow.
The Russians want more people in D.C. I didn't even know that that was an issue.
And they'll be sending...
Intelligence agents over, as we know, under the guise of being diplomats.
It's a game they both play.
That's the only hard and fast agreement they had.
I know that it's a journey of many steps.
I get that.
But what leverage does the United States have with Russia, if any?
Well, one thing...
That we can do, and I think Trump is interested in this, is we can change the sanctions regime, not tonight or tomorrow, but the sanctions regime can be relaxed greatly.
It can be reworked if we want to still have certain types of sanctions, but it is a very ineffective way to do business.
Trump knows this.
Well, Trump blasted the Biden sanctions, but he's keeping them in place.
Well, that's pretty much because I think that's about all that the U.S. really has to offer here.
And also not just sanctions on imports or exports or things, but sanctions on the money changing, you know, access to the...
You know, you can't fly to Moscow.
You can't even stay in certain European hotels if they're owned by Russians.
It's a pain in the neck, which doesn't really harm the Russian economy at all.
If anything, Russia's in better shape economically now than it was before Biden's sanctions.
Yeah, that's true.
Trump also wants to build a bridge and have strengthened relation with Russia to kind of compensate, you know, kind of like a Nixon thing.
Nixon goes to China.
Well, that's all screwed up now.
So maybe Trump goes to Russia first.
But, you know, so there are things that are kind of nice to have things, things that show respect for Russia and for what Russia brings to the table.
There's that.
In terms of...
The United States being able to continue to fund a war if Russia doesn't do what we tell them, that's not an option.
We don't have the money for that.
We don't have the resources for that.
We're not doing that.
The American people voted for Trump specifically not to do that.
In fact, one of the key...
I was listening to Jeffrey Sachs pointing out that the Democratic Party...
No party really ever loses elections based on foreign policy, but this time the Democratic Party did it because they were running a policy of endless war in Ukraine, and the American people soundly said no to that, and it actually broke the Democratic Party.
I mean, they lost all their best people to independents and Republicans.
So, yeah, I don't know.
I don't think Trump has a lot to do, but he can bring...
Russia wants respect.
They want to have what they are and who they are in their culture acknowledged and not constantly demonized.
And I think Trump can offer that very much.
And I think that would be a natural thing for Trump to do because he doesn't demonize Russia.
But yeah, in concrete terms, I'm not sure what we can offer Russia.
We don't have an army in place.
We're not funding Ukraine's army anymore.
The Europeans are almost...
Pathetically helpless in this.
Everybody's wasted away every bit of military stores that they might have had.
European economies are in really bad shape.
Trump is not going to sacrifice the American economy to help.
What did the United States gain, if anything, by Vice President Vance's admonition to It's a legitimate
argument, but not one we'd expect to hear from a foreign head of state.
No, I mean, if Starmer had come here and said something like that, we probably knocked his bus over, you know?
I mean, people would have...
We've gone insane just as we would if, you know, the Russian fleet or the Chinese fleet floated into the new Gulf of America.
You know, we are not tolerant of being told that we're hypocrites.
And that's a problem.
And I think Trump has, just by his existence, is helping us through that.
You know, there's some places he is a hypocrite.
Back to Vance in Europe.
What did we do?
I think Vance was sending, well, he was being Vance.
If you've heard his speeches before, there's not new what he is saying.
He's also sending the message that we're kind of large and in charge, and you guys are not going to dictate to us.
And when he says us, I think he's really saying the Biden administration has done European leaders a great disservice because it has gone along with your stupidity.
It has gone along with your illogicality and your warmongering tendencies, and we're not going to do that anymore.
We're not doing that.
And we are dealing with our own issues.
We have freedom of speech and you don't even have that.
So I think he was insulting them on purpose.
And this is very Trump-like as well, to insult people, to anger them.
I mean, his operation with the Doge domestically is very much set up to humiliate and anger the deep state.
That's one way of going after it.
Nicely put.
I'm waiting for Doge.
To go after the CIA and the Federal Reserve, but we'll see what happens.
The problem of Zelensky, who claims that Ukraine will never accept a peace settlement that it didn't contribute to, who, under international law and even Ukrainian law,
is nothing.
He's not the head of state.
What do we do about it?
General Kellogg says, I don't even know where Kellogg stands these days.
He's not in Riyadh with Secretary of State Rubio, Mike Waltz, and even Steve Witkoff.
But General Kellogg has said twice now that President Zelensky will participate in these conferences.
I can't imagine Foreign Minister Lavrov sitting there if Zelensky were there.
No. Zelensky has no credibility, not just with us or with the American government anymore, the new American government, but he also has no credibility with Europeans and he has no credibility with the Ukrainian people.
And that includes the refugees or the, you know, the people who have left Ukraine and live in Europe or elsewhere and the people still fighting.
I mean, imagine, we can't imagine it, what's happening in Ukraine, but, you know, this idea of reducing the enlistment to 18 that I think...
Some of our own senators, you know, oh, Zelensky must draft more people.
That's how he will fight.
You'll kill more of your young men off.
That's how you'll win this war.
Which, of course, everyone in Ukraine knows that that's not true.
And they're reacting to that with their feet.
I mean, you have, you know, grandmothers beating up these recruitment officers.
They don't buy this.
And this, what they don't buy is...
It's all Zelensky.
It is Zelensky and his people that have allowed this to happen and have made this happen.
Now, partly they've allowed it to happen because Zelensky does what he's told by the people that own him.
That was the Biden administration for sure, but also a number of the European leaders that he's their poodle.
But it's also Zelensky as a leader who the Ukrainians have experienced for four years elected and then the last year and a half or so.
You know, as a dictator, I guess you could say, as a martial law dictator.
And increasingly, the man, Zelensky himself, looks bad.
I mean, he looks like he's high.
He looks like he is corrupt.
He looks extremely nervous.
You know, and appearances are important for leaders.
Trump knows this better.
But you have to have a certain...
And Biden, this was Biden's problem, right?
I mean, stumbling around.
Does Europe need the United States?
Does Europe need the United States?
Yes. They do.
And we've actually, under Biden, and this is beyond Biden, this is before Biden and during Trump administration as well, you know, we wanted, the United States policy was to turn or to ensure that Europe state our economic vassal, our political vassal,
whether that's through NATO control, EU manipulation, or whatever trade.
You know, we have done this.
And that's what this government, past governments and possibly Trump's government to this time, that's what they wanted.
You know, they wanted Europe to be our vassal, to be dependent on us.
And they are.
They are.
I mean, why do you think they blew up Nord Stream?
We know why we did these things.
I mean, we put America first, not in the way the Americans that voted for Trump wanted it to be done, but the way the oligarchs in this country wanted it done.
So we've created something, really, which is quite a disaster.
We didn't do it by ourselves.
Obviously, European governments are...
Some of them are just absolutely insane.
And they are not responsive to their people.
They're suspending.
They're doing everything they said.
I remember Chancellor Scholz stood next to President Biden when he said, we can take care of the Nord Stream pipeline.
He obviously knows.
He obviously knows who blew it up.
And it wasn't a couple of guys in a sailboat.
That's ridiculous.
So we have created this problem.
That is a big problem.
And European countries have this problem.
They have a demographic problem.
They have a security problem.
They have a political credibility problem with their people.
They have electoral problems.
They have welfare state problems, socialist problems.
And they have Russia, which they've attempted to make the devil to blame all their problems on.
And it's being revealed now that that isn't the case.
It's not the case.
And they're going to have to deal with it.
Yeah, I wouldn't want to be in Europe right now.
As a European, because they've got a long way to go to fix their problem.
And I don't think America, Trump's attitude towards Europe is harsher than I think my personal attitude is.
He doesn't care.
He doesn't care.
He was not elected to make Europe great again.
He will sell at high prices everything we can sell to them.
He will tariff them if need be.
He will lecture them.
He will send Mr. Vance over to embarrass and humiliate them publicly.
He will do that.
And it's harsh.
But, you know, what they say, play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
Colonel Kwiatkowski, a pleasure, my dear friend.
Thank you for your time.
Thank you for your insight.
We'll see you again next week.
Absolutely. Thank you, Judge.
Of course.
All the best.
Coming up at 4 o'clock Eastern, midnight in Moscow.
He's just back from the Donbass.
Pepe Escobar, Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom.
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