Feb. 18, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
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| Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. | |
| Today is Tuesday, February 18th, 2025. | |
| Still scratching our heads over Donald Trump and Gaza, and we will discuss all of that with Matt Ho in just a moment. | |
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| No matter what we're talking about, thank you for joining us. | |
| I do want to spend some time on Trump and Gaza trying to figure out this conundrum that he has created with his offer to purchase the land and develop it. | |
| But before that, a few questions on Ukraine. | |
| If Trump really wants peace in Ukraine, and there's every indication that he does, Why is the Biden military and cash pipeline still flowing from Washington to Kyiv? | |
| Thanks for having me back on, Judge. | |
| That is a good question. | |
| I think the answer is that they don't want to cause a collapse. | |
| I think that's the point of the matter, is that if this... | |
| Aid just dries up right now. | |
| That the Ukrainian army will no longer be able to fight, will no longer be able to sustain a front line, and that you'll have a collapse, which could trigger a panic in Ukraine, and then Ukraine could become essentially a failed state. | |
| And nobody wants a replication of Afghanistan or Syria. | |
| And so I think there is an understanding that we have to keep this going to keep Ukraine alive to prevent a worse outcome than the current fighting actually is, which is hard to say. | |
| The military aid is still going. | |
| The humanitarian development aid to keep the government and the economy afloat, which is tens and tens of billions of dollars over the last three years provided by the U.S. government to keep... | |
| Again, the Ukrainian economy and government afloat. | |
| Essentially, the Biden administration kicked that all out the door. | |
| They provided that all to Ukraine before they left office. | |
| So there is no non-military aid available to go to Ukraine right now. | |
| So the only thing still going to Ukraine is the military aid. | |
| And like I said, the best understanding I can come to. | |
| Is that simply they don't want to have a collapse? | |
| As well as, also too, you have, aside from Donald Trump, when you look at his people around him, these were all hawks, for the most part, on the war in Ukraine. | |
| So for him... | |
| Sometimes I think General Kellogg is still a hawk. | |
| I think so. | |
| And so I think the danger, if these hawks fail... | |
| Is not that the United States walks away from Ukraine, but then Trump says to his people, you know what? | |
| You were right. | |
| The only thing the Russians are going to listen to is more force. | |
| So I'm going to do more. | |
| How much more can he do? | |
| We've already got 25,000 sanctions on them. | |
| We've already emptied most of our stocks. | |
| Lockheed and Raytheon and Northrop and all the weapons companies are booked for decades to produce weapons for Ukraine. | |
| There's not much more he can give. | |
| But that's the danger here, is that the people around Donald Trump are believers, or at least up until January 20th, they were believers in this war. | |
| And so if it does, negotiations don't go well, if they don't get a deal, my fear, and I think others' fear as well, is that he will then turn to those who are against diplomacy for war and say, I guess it has to be your way. | |
| Have we dangerously depleted our own stockpiles in order to get this stuff to Ukraine, whether it's an actual stockpile or whether it's anticipated arms to be crafted by the military-industrial complex? | |
| They've been careful about what they've shipped to Ukraine. | |
| So we've not sent any of our current generation of weapon systems. | |
| What we've sent is our older stocks or our things that we're going to replace. | |
| For example, everyone's familiar with the Atakums missiles. | |
| They went on and on. | |
| The proponents of the war went on and on for two years about how we have to send Atakums missiles, right? | |
| We all remember this last year. | |
| If we just send Atakums missiles, they're going to launch deep strikes into Russia with these missiles, and Russia will fold, right? | |
| We know that story. | |
| Didn't happen a year later. | |
| War's still going on. | |
| The reason why it took essentially two years for the Atakums to get sent to Russia, and the older variants, of course, the oldest variants, of course, were sent first, was that the Atakums were finally being replaced in U.S. inventories by what's called the PRISMS, | |
| the precision strike missiles. | |
| So, you know, and just to throw a little bit of color into all this. | |
| So as we replaced the Atakums, We give those attackums to Ukraine. | |
| We replace them with the prisms. | |
| Now, of course, the way the military-industrial complex in Washington, D.C. works, Judge, the attackums that we send to Ukraine are worth $1 million, and we replace them with weapons that are $2.5 million. | |
| So, you know, there is that graph there, right? | |
| There's the take on this, where people are getting so wealthy off this war. | |
| So even when we give away our old stuff, we're replacing it with very expensive new stuff. | |
| And that's just not the Americans. | |
| The Europeans are doing the same thing. | |
| So the weapons industry is making tens and tens of billions of dollars, not just on providing equipment to Ukraine through contracts. | |
| Won't President Zelensky always, not just in Riyadh, always be excluded from any peace, ceasefire, whatever you want to call them, talks? | |
| Because he is not the legitimate, valid head of state. | |
| That's a serious issue. | |
| And I think any peace agreement, any deal, any negotiated settlement is going to require elections in some form or another before or maybe immediately after to provide that type of transition to legitimate authority in Ukraine. | |
| This is certainly something that the Russians keep coming back to. | |
| It's just not like a one-off. | |
| Even if Zelensky agrees to whatever the negotiated settlement turns out to be, you have to ensure that there's a continuity there that will allow for whoever succeeds or replaces or usurps Zelensky to go along with his agreement. | |
| Because the dangers of this agreement being spoiled The idea that through these peace efforts, there may be more war is certainly a possibility. | |
| We've certainly seen the way the Europeans have responded to this. | |
| I shouldn't say Europeans in total, but many of the Europeans have responded to this. | |
| The hysteria. | |
| And it's very easy to see possibly the European nations, including the EU, which might finally get its own army distinct as a purely European army distinct from NATO, how they could throw a lifeline. | |
| Or even worse, maybe some of the far right in Ukraine who would overthrow Zelensky if Zelensky goes along with this deal, and then they depend upon the Europeans to keep this war going. | |
| I mean, that would be a greater fool's errand than this war has always been. | |
| But certainly the idea that there are elements, very powerful elements in Ukrainian government and society that are opposed to peace at any cost is clear. | |
| I mean, we all know this. | |
| We remember the stories from three years ago, even longer than that, from, what was it, six or seven years ago, whenever Zelensky came into office, when he was essentially shown the tree that they would hang him on if he made peace with the Russians. | |
| So, you know, going into these negotiations, whether it's the fact that Trump is surrounded by hawks who, if it was up to them, they wouldn't be agreeing to a peace deal with Russia. | |
| They want more war. | |
| They want war, not diplomacy. | |
| You know, Waltz, Rubio, Hegseth, you know, those types. | |
| And then on the other side of it, you have the Europeans. | |
| I mean, look at the Brits. | |
| Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, loudly stating, we will gladly send. | |
| Do they have much of an army? | |
| Is this a realistic threat? | |
| Judge, the British Navy, the Royal Navy, has more admirals than it does warships, right? | |
| That's the reality of the British Armed Forces. | |
| I've said this before, right? | |
| We could take the entire British Army and put it into Giant Stadium at the Meadowlands, and you'd still have a lot of seats left over. | |
| I mean, so it's this posturing. | |
| Surely Prime Minister Starmer knows this. | |
| Oh, he absolutely knows it. | |
| But again, his identity, just like Macron, just like Ursula von der Leyen, the head of the EU, Macron in France, others throughout the continent there, who have invested enormous political capital. | |
| Whether it's their own individual capital, whether it's their institutions that have sunk their identity. | |
| Into this war in Ukraine, this war in Ukraine. | |
| And we saw that with the Biden administration, right? | |
| I mean, the first campaign ad that Joe Biden runs when he's running for re-election back in September of 2023 is a campaign ad about Joe Biden as a wartime commander-in-chief. | |
| Joe Biden visiting Kiev, right? | |
| Joe Biden being on and on. | |
| So you can see how the allure. | |
| The romanticism, the ideal of being Churchillian, if you will, would lead to greater militarism and an increased chance of war on the continent coming out of these peace negotiations because there are so many elements in power who have basically gambled everything on this war, | |
| and the risk of a greater war with Russia to them is a better alternative, possibly, than to accept defeat. | |
| What do you think was accomplished by Vice President Vance's admonitions to European leaders at the Munich conference about their domestic policies involving free speech and immigration? | |
| I can just imagine how we would react if Starmer or Macron came here and said, well... | |
| Donald Trump shouldn't be issuing so many executive orders. | |
| He should wait for legislation from the Congress. | |
| We would laugh at them, even though that's a legitimate argument. | |
| We usually don't expect to hear it from a foreign leader. | |
| What do you think was gained by the Trump administration, by the U.S., if anything, by Vance's speech? | |
| I don't think anything was gained other than the administration making clear that Europe is not their priority. | |
| That their priorities internationally compose Asia, they compose the Middle East, they compose Latin America. | |
| The Arctic is a greater priority to this administration than Europe is. | |
| I think this administration made that clear. | |
| The fact that Vance delivered that speech in such a hypocritical manner. | |
| It's a great disservice to the United States, a great disservice to this administration. | |
| I mean, for this administration, that is threatening to deport students who are standing up against genocide to criticize another nation for free speech. | |
| So I was reminded, Judge, just how, with this administration, how far gone they are in their pursuit of their objectives in spite of the law. | |
| I remember Henry Kissinger said, A little while longer. | |
| Yeah. These guys skipped right over that. | |
| They got right to the unconstitutional. | |
| Yeah. Right? | |
| You know, I mean, so for the vice president to come and to give such a hypocritical, you know, the emperor has no clothes on type of statement is a great disservice to the U.S., but it also shows that this administration is serious. | |
| About pivoting, that's the word everyone likes to use, away from Europe towards Asia. | |
| And the robustness, the brazenness, the... | |
| The overtness of the administration's understanding of where Europe lies in this. | |
| And I think essentially you can come down to Donald Trump just feels that Europe isn't worth the return on investment of effort. | |
| That was clear. | |
| They sent the vice president. | |
| They sent the secretary of state. | |
| They sent the secretary of defense. | |
| They sent Wyckoff. | |
| They sent Kellogg. | |
| I mean, Donald Trump made it. | |
| There should be no doubt. | |
| Do you think that Netanyahu truly supports Trump's scheme or scam, whichever you prefer to call it, about the U.S. buying and owning Gaza as Netanyahu says he has, | |
| notwithstanding the natural gas deposits offshore that would come with it that the Israelis have coveted for generations? | |
| Well, he has said it, Judge. | |
| I mean, he's made it clear that he is on board with Donald Trump's proposal to take over Gaza. | |
| What that actually looks like, what it means, no one is quite certain. | |
| His view and the view of his cabinet and the view of Israelis is the most important view to be concerned with. | |
| When Donald Trump has pledged all this to him, they made this open-ended. | |
| We spoke about this last week, Netanyahu's comments about how Donald Trump has provided a security guarantee to Israel for generations and how there are now opportunities and possibilities. | |
| For Israel in the Middle East that were undreamt of before. | |
| What is he talking about? | |
| And certainly the provision of material, the provision of diplomatic support. | |
| Donald Trump is going to do better than Joe Biden did for the Israelis, which is really hard to believe because Biden He pledged essentially the full support and gave the full support of the United States to the Israelis for 16 months during that genocide. | |
| And he was labeled Genocide Joe by all kinds of people. | |
| Will Trump be labeled Genocide Donald or some alliterative form of that? | |
| I mean, is there any real difference between the Middle Eastern policy vis-a-vis Israel of Joe Biden and that of Donald Trump? | |
| The only thing you can see is, Trump possibly wants to do more. | |
| Now, that's in the immediate. | |
| That's Israel-Palestine specific. | |
| And the IDF actually just put out some numbers in the last week about how much the U.S. has provided to Israel over the last 16 months. | |
| And what we know is that through the Biden administration, they sent an arms shipment to Israel. | |
| Every 15 hours, essentially. | |
| More than 800 ships and planes went from the U.S. to Israel carrying weapons, munitions, equipment, vehicles, spare parts, etc., providing 76,000 tons of support to Israel during Joe Biden's time in office. | |
| Again, that's about every 15 hours. | |
| Donald Trump is seeking to do even more. | |
| So we learned from Steve Witkoff, his envoy, To the Middle East, as well as also involved in the talks with Russia, that the United States will be providing the mother of all bombs, the Moabs, to Israel. | |
| These are 22,000-pound airburst bombs. | |
| What does Israel need those for other than to attack underground facilities in Iran? | |
| Well, they can't use an attack underground facility, as an Iran judge, because those weapons are airburst munitions, and airburst munitions have little to no effect on things buried below the ground. | |
| They're also so large that the only thing the Israelis could use to drop those bombs would be a C-130 cargo plane, which the Iranians could shoot down with a machine gun. | |
| So what do you use that type of weapon for? | |
| Use that type of weapon to destroy buildings and to kill people. | |
| And so you can imagine then using the Moab to ethnically cleanse Gaza, using the Moab to ethnically cleanse the West Bank. | |
| I mean, that's what these weapons could be utilized for. | |
| And is this what we understand it to mean when Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu say they're going to unleash hell, right? | |
| When Netanyahu talks all the time about total war. | |
| Well, when total war, you think about the U.S. and Britain's air campaigns against Nazi Germany and burning cities to the ground, and essentially we've seen that in Gaza, right, with the genocide the last 16 months. | |
| But what can Donald Trump provide Benjamin Netanyahu to expand upon that? | |
| What do you think will happen if Netanyahu concocts some reason? | |
| For the IDF to re-enter Gaza and begin slaughter again, will Trump back him up? | |
| Oh, absolutely. | |
| Trump will back him up. | |
| I mean, and he has the full support and blessing of the president. | |
| And unlike, say, the Russia-Ukraine policy, he has the full support on this from his people. | |
| I mean, you have his ambassador to Israel, his ambassador to the United Nations. | |
| These are people who believe that Israel has a biblical right To the Palestinian lands. | |
| Even greater than that, they believe they have a biblical right to lands in Egypt and lands in Lebanon and lands in Syria, all the way out to Iraq and into Saudi Arabia. | |
| That's where greater Israel is. | |
| They think they have a biblical right to Manhattan. | |
| I'm being a little sarcastic. | |
| Lindsey Graham, of all people, he didn't say this in front of a camera or a microphone, or maybe somebody picked it up in a microphone. | |
| I saw it in print. | |
| Revealed this morning, for some reason I think he's in Riyadh, like Marco Rubio needs him there like he needs a hole in the head, whatever. | |
| He said there is no appetite in the Senate for purchasing Gaza. | |
| Quite surprised to hear him say that. | |
| It's probably accurate, but I'm surprised to hear him, of all people, say that in Riyadh, of all places. | |
| Right, and they will go along with... | |
| Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu. | |
| The Congress will go along with what Israel and the Zionists and the blob, the foreign policy of elite, the military-industrial complex, they will go along with this. | |
| This is not like issues with Russia and Ukraine. | |
| Donald Trump will face resistance from, as we described, within his own administration, but specifically within the Congress. | |
| This is not like where Donald Trump said to his great credit last week, we need to cut the defense budget in half, and I'm going to meet with... | |
| Putin and Xi, and we're going to discuss how to cut our defense budgets in half. | |
| We're going to be spending this money. | |
| At the same time, the Republicans in Congress, I think in the House, they're saying they want to spend $100 billion more on the Pentagon next year, and the Senate wants to spend $150 billion more on the Pentagon next year. | |
| So those are battles that Trump may have to face within his own party, but on Israel. | |
| They are all united, and they will provide Israel with whatever they need, I believe. | |
| I wonder if Elon Musk will uncover the incestuous relationship between AIPAC and members of Congress and between the military-industrial complex and members of Congress. | |
| I wonder if Trump will allow Musk to go there. | |
| I don't think Musk has any interest in going there. | |
| You know, I think he has a worldview. | |
| And I think the Zionists and AIPAC and that lobby are safe within his worldview. | |
| That it doesn't need to be a target for him. | |
| And I think he also is essentially a bully. | |
| So he's going to pick on the things that can't really fight back. | |
| So he'll pick on the Forest Service, right? | |
| He'll pick on the Agriculture Department. | |
| He'll pick on, you know, Department of Education or whoever. | |
| But I don't think he has it in him to take on a fight with the Pentagon, the intelligence services, the Israel lobby, etc. | |
| Matt Ho, thank you, my dear friend. | |
| No matter what we talk about, it's always a pleasure to pick your brain. | |
| And deeply appreciate it, and I hope you'll come back again next week. | |
| Absolutely, Judge. | |
| I just want to say one thing I saw yesterday that the American people widely support these negotiations for peace in Ukraine. | |
| CNN poll had that at 78%. | |
| And when you were watching, when I was watching the two guys on CNN... | |
| Talk about this. | |
| They contorted themselves in ways to try and make it sound as if not that many Americans actually really believe in this. | |
| Who wouldn't be in favor of peace, they said. | |
| You got to always wonder about how the question is asked and all this stuff, right, to tamp down, to ameliorate, to disguise the desire for peace in Ukraine by the American public. | |
| And I got to say, 78% of the American people are in favor of this. | |
| That's remarkable. | |
| Because CNN, Fox, MSNBC, the Journal, the Post, the Times, etc., the traditional establishment legacy corporate media in this country has been selling the war for three years now, in spite of that. | |
| 78% of Americans support peace in Ukraine. | |
| And that's because of people like you, Judge, the folks who come on this show, Chris and Sonya behind the scenes, and all the other people in independent media who are making sure that Americans actually know what's occurring in the world. | |
| That's why we have four out of five Americans supporting peace in Ukraine, as opposed to what it would be like if the corporate media with their military industrial complex, fossil fuel banker friends had their way. | |
| Very, very generous of you, Matt. | |
| Thank you very much. | |
| We'll see you again next week. | |
| All the best. | |
| Generous indeed. | |
| Coming up at 3 o'clock this afternoon, Lieutenant Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski, and at 4 o'clock, he's just back from the front lines in the Donbass. | |
| Midnight in Moscow. | |
| Pepe Escobar, Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. |
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