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March 17, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
25:33
AMB. Charles Freeman : What Putin Will Tell Trump.
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Hey everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Tuesday, March 18th, 2025.
Ambassador Charles Freeman is here with us on what he thinks the conversation later today between President Trump and President Putin will be like.
And of course, late breaking news from the Middle East as well, but first this.
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Before we speculate on what Donald Trump will say to Vladimir Putin and what Vladimir Putin will say to Donald Trump later today, I'd like to explore your thoughts on the most recent developments over there.
What is to be gained by American bombing of the Houthis, Ambassador?
Absolutely nothing.
This is something we've been doing.
It is proven completely ineffective.
The only thing I can say is that it is perhaps a substitute for an attack on Iran directly.
We always say the Iran-backed Houthis.
The Houthis are very independent.
They do what they decide on their own.
Iran does back them.
That is true.
And it may be that by bombing the Houthis...
We are fending off demands from Israel that we attacked Iran.
But the Houthis have been very consistent.
They said at the outset they would conduct a blockade in the Red Sea in support of the Palestinians and against Israeli genocide.
When the Israelis and Palestinians briefly enjoyed a ceasefire, they suspended that blockade.
Now that the Israelis are back committing genocide in Gaza, the Houthis are back with the blockade.
And I would remind everyone that we had years of assisting the Saudis to bomb the Houthis.
That accomplished absolutely nothing.
So we and the British attacking the Houthis again is, I guess, a very performative act.
It's symbolic.
It kills people, but it doesn't bend the Houthis to our will.
Earlier today, the IDF broke the ceasefire in Gaza and slaughtered, but it don't count, more than 400 people, more than 400 civilians.
Do you think something like this would have happened without notice to and the consent of?
No, I don't.
I believe he's fully backing Israel.
He certainly said he is.
He's released a huge quantity of weapons to Israel, presumably for this purpose.
We are entirely complicit in the genocide.
It's absolutely no surprise that Israel is again bombing Gaza because the Israeli objective has never varied.
To depopulate Palestine of Palestinians, and Gaza is no exception.
So they agreed to a ceasefire, supposedly.
Then they didn't agree with it anymore.
Mr. Witkoff, President Trump's special envoy, private envoy, put forward a new proposal, which did not remove the Israelis from the occupation in Gaza.
Hamas did not accept that.
The fact that Hamas did not accept that is now being used as a justification for resuming the bombing.
So this wasn't much of a ceasefire to begin with, and most of us thought it was not going to last and not going to succeed.
It certainly has no ongoing effects.
It does not lead to peace.
I want to go back to the Houthis for a moment, Ambassador, because I forgot to run this clip for you.
This is Secretary of State Rubio on Sunday.
With his message to Iran, Chris, cut number six.
What we can't ignore, and the reason why the president mentioned Iran, is because the Iranians have supported the Houthis.
They've provided them intelligence.
They've provided them guidance.
They've provided them weaponry.
I mean, there's no way the Houthis, okay, the Houthis would have the ability to do this kind of thing unless they had support from Iran.
And so this was a message to Iran.
Don't keep supporting them because then you will also be responsible for what they are doing in attacking Navy ships, in attacking...
Does he even realize what he just said?
If Iran is responsible for the Houthis, why isn't the United States responsible for the Ukrainians and for the Israelis?
Well, of course we are.
And where this all ends, very likely, is in renewed terrorist attacks on the United States.
The Houthis, the Palestinians, don't have an air force.
Worthy of the name.
And in the case of Palestinians, they have nothing except rocks, stones.
And so they will figure out a way to retaliate.
They did that on 9-11.
The same issues drove 9-11 to completion.
And they haven't gone away, and we're continuing to poke the hornet's nest as we speak.
And I'm pretty sure we're going to suffer for that.
Earlier this week it became apparent that the Ukrainians have lost in Korsk.
President Putin visited the region last week, ordered...
A total clean-out and fulfillment of the Russian military obligation, which is to expel the Ukrainians from Korsk.
How harmful is this to Zelensky's plan, the answer is obvious, I guess, to have a trump card, no pun intended.
Well, first of all, this was entirely foreseeable and was foreseen.
The idea of this attack on Russian territory was, as you suggest, to get a bargaining card for eventual negotiations, even though Mr. Zelensky consistently He said that he was not going to have negotiations on territory.
Clearly, he anticipated doing so.
He's just lost that card completely.
He's also lost his very best troops and the best equipment in the Ukrainian inventory.
This was a tactically brilliant maneuver, and it was a strategic disaster for Ukraine.
Propaganda claims that Ukrainian troops retreated in an orderly fashion from Kursk, but there's not much evidence of that, and I think we'll have to see a bit more before we understand the full dimensions of this disaster for Ukraine.
The political and cultural divide in Israel is about as wide and deep as it has ever been.
On one side are the deeply and profoundly religious people who take revelation.
Literally on the other side are liberal democrats, lowercase d, of course, who believe in an open society with equal rights.
Where do you see this going?
According to Well, I think Netanyahu has ridden all of these tensions to an extension in power that he wouldn't otherwise have.
We've talked before about Israel.
It is clearly at the worst stage in its existence.
Divided every which way with an economy that is failing its startup companies, which were world famous and for which it was justly acclaimed, are moving off door,
away from Israel.
The ultra-Orthodox are disenchanted and concerned.
The army now has very low rates of return when it calls up the reserves.
The hostage families are on the warpath, particularly given the resumption of bombing, which is probably going to kill more of the few hostages who are still alive in Gaza.
The religious right is openly genocidal, and while Israel has defied the World Court and the International Criminal Court, It has never been so isolated internationally.
So all these things are putting tremendous pressure on Israel and an unknown number of Israelis, something north of 600,000, maybe a million have emigrated because they don't see much future for the country.
So this is all the doing of Mr. Netanyahu, and it appears to be partly motivated.
By two factors.
One, his desire to go down in history as the man who completed the ethnic cleansing of Palestine and thereby achieved the ultimate aim of Zionism, which was a Palestinian-free Palestine.
And second, his own personal exemption from eviction for corruption and service serving jail time.
You know, in the middle of all this, he's been in court on those charges.
And the only thing keeping him in power is the war that he has so enthusiastically promoted.
Why is he firing the head of Shin Bet?
Because Israel has a habit.
Israeli intelligence is very good.
In two senses.
One, its collection of intelligence is very straight.
And second, its analytical capacities are really good.
That means there are realists in Shin Bet.
There are realists in Mossad.
There are also realists, I should say, in the IDF, the Israeli Defense Forces.
And they all disagree with Mr. Netanyahu that what he's doing is to the benefit of Israel.
Or that it can work.
And I think in the case of Shin Bet, we're talking about the intensified ethnic cleansing on the West Bank, pogroms of a level of violence that had not previously been seen.
And I think probably the intelligence community in Israel is totally at odds with Mr. Netanyahu.
So he fires him.
Wow. Well, we'll see where it goes.
I think you're coming to us either from Rhode Island or I know you have a lot of familiarity with Brown University, where a professor of medicine, a Lebanese professor of medicine, was deported without hearing or even charges being filed.
Because she had the temerity to attend, along with a million other people, the funeral of Hassan Nazarala.
There was a court order prohibiting her deportation, and the government violated it.
It's the second such incident in the past two weeks, without even mentioning what happened to the young man at Columbia University.
For a repression of free speech like nothing most Americans now alive have seen.
It's already happening.
Basically, the doctor at Brown was guilty of having sympathy for the religious leader of her Shiite sect.
So this crosses the bounds she's being expelled for, despite our claim to freedom of religion, despite our claim to freedom of speech.
There are others in the same position.
I'd note that the Alien Enemy Act, which was used to deport some 300 Venezuelans who were, quote, suspected of affiliation with Venezuelan gangs to El Salvador, was also The subject of a court order,
and the administration is arguing that since the court order was oral rather than in writing initially, they were not bound to follow it.
I don't think the United States has declared war on Venezuela, so I don't understand what the Alien Enemy Act has to do, how that can be used for this purpose.
Basically, we're entering an era of complete scofflaw behavior on the part of The people in charge of our country.
And we're in a lawless state.
And there is absolutely no respect for the Constitution and the rule of law.
The president is charged and the executive branch are charged.
And all of us who worked in it took an oath as we entered it to faithfully discharge our duties, which included respect for the law, to implement the Constitution and the laws of the United States.
We're not doing that.
We've departed from that.
So I'm not sure how to describe what this is, but there are ugly analogies to fascist coups in other countries that come to mind.
Here's an analogy and a thought on this from our friend and colleague, Professor John Mearsheimer, when I asked him last week what's behind all this.
Chris? He rescinds the green card of a person he probably never heard of because of statements the person made on the Columbia University campus last April.
This, of course, is a big deal here in New York.
It should be a big deal everywhere because it's an attack on freedom of speech like we haven't seen in this country in many generations.
But I suspect it is the Trump Department of Homeland Security and DOJ.
Doing a favor for the president's Zionist backers.
The truth is, Judge, that the single greatest threat to freedom of speech in the United States at this point in time is Israel and its supporters here.
In the United States.
It's truly amazing the extent to which Israel's supporters are going to enormous lengths to shut down free speech, not only on university campuses, but all across the country.
And what can be done about it when the Israelis have the president in their pocket or they're in his pocket?
I'm not sure how the analogy goes.
Well, what can be done is very simple.
People could speak up about this.
They could stand on the rooftops and scream about what's happening and making it very clear that this is a threat to basic American values.
This is a threat to liberal democracy.
Well, I agree completely with John Mearsheimer.
The Zionist lobby has emerged as the major enemy of free speech in our country.
The enemy of our Constitution, the enemy of the rule of law.
And I also agree with him that the only answer to this is for Americans to stand up and protest.
Because it's very clear that the remedy for this kind of behavior on the part of the executive branch, which is impeachment, is not going to be exercised because the The president has a rubber stamp following in the Congress that has a slight majority and is not respectful of the rule of law.
What we're hearing is statements by people in the administration or with the administration, let's say Elon Musk, that any judge who has the temerity to rule against the president should be impeached.
We have the president himself calling judges who criticize him scum.
This is an attack on the judiciary.
Now that the Congress has been subdued, the judiciary apparently is next.
But I want to add one other point here that's very important.
One of the great assets that the United States has had historically is that we've been a magnet for world talent.
And that's largely because of the excellence of our universities.
And those universities' excellence has depended On their autonomy from government control and their willingness to allow freedom of academic inquiry.
All of this is in the process of disappearing, as the example of Columbia University most notably demonstrates.
Now, Columbia has been told, has been deprived of its federal grants.
It has been told that it has to place Certain academic departments under, quote, academic receivership, whatever that is, no more freedom of discussion, no more freedom of research, no more freedom of speech,
no more academic freedom.
This is going to destroy our influence internationally on a level that you can't even imagine at this point.
What do you expect Trump and Putin to say to each other this afternoon?
Well, I think there's a very interesting gap in our understanding of what the president is trying to do.
Everybody's focused on Ukraine.
He cites Ukraine and the need to stop the killing there, which is very appropriate.
But I think he has a larger vision.
I think he has a vision of a broad rapprochement and cooperation with Russia.
And he's pursuing that objective in order to create a context for the resolution of the Ukraine issue.
It's not the other way around.
It's not solving Ukraine in order to have a broad renewal of U.S.-Russian relations.
It's a broad renewal of U.S.-Russian relations in order to put the Ukraine issue in a different context.
So I suspect that he will be discussing some of the issues that flowed from the Riyadh meeting, namely geopolitical and economic cooperation with Russia.
What to do about the sanctions regime that's been imposed on Russia and how to create a context in which peace in Ukraine has a chance.
And here, you know, Mr. Trump was elected and not in order to reach out to Russia.
Only 3% of Americans approve of that.
It's a minuscule number.
He was elected to end the war in Ukraine to the extent that figured in that.
But the figures are such in public opinion that he has to turn around the attitudes toward Russia, which are the product of decades of intensive information warfare and smear jobs.
So Russia is universally depicted as depraved, primitive, indifferent to human rights.
Mr. Putin is the devil incarnate.
Russia is evil.
He can do no good.
These are all very common attitudes in the West, very entrenched.
How can you make peace with Russia if you don't address those?
So I think he's not put the cart before the horse.
He's got the horse in the right place.
And if he can develop a cooperative program with the Russians, it benefits ordinary Americans and people in Europe.
Then I think the Ukraine issue will become much more resolvable.
Nicely put, Ambassador.
As you know, I was in Moscow last week.
Excuse me.
Put a cold somewhere.
And even some of my closest friends are...
I don't think Trump has that attitude.
And though I'm harshly critical of his suppression of liberty domestically, I applaud him for what he's attempting to accomplish with the grand reset between Russia and the United States.
I hope it includes India, China, and Brazil as well.
So do I. But I don't think we can forget about the assault on our liberties.
Oh, no.
It's core to our existence, our ability to speak freely.
And we cannot look the other way when they come for the Palestinians, because someday they may come for us.
Indeed. Ambassador Freeman, thank you very much.
Always a pleasure.
Thanks for putting up with my frimy voice.
Have a great day.
We'll see you next week.
All the best.
Coming up later today, 11 o'clock this morning, Max Blumenthal at 2 o'clock this afternoon, just back from Korsk, and live from Ukraine, Patrick Lancaster, and at 3 this afternoon, Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski.
That's the ball title for judging freedom.
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