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March 17, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
25:03
LtCOL. Karen Kwiatkowski : More US Bombs in the Middle East.
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Hi, everyone.
Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Tuesday, March 18th, 2025.
Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski joins us now.
Colonel Karen, always a pleasure.
Thank you for joining us.
When I crafted the title of our segment, it was the U.S. is bombing in the Middle East.
It was before I knew that Prime Minister Netanyahu, with the consent of President Trump, Would unleash the IDF to return to Gaza and begin its genocide, succeeded in slaughtering over 400 people in the past 24 hours.
I also didn't know that President Putin and President Trump would enter into some sort of a minor agreement, far short of what Trump was looking for.
So I want to talk to you about a bunch of those things, if I may.
Let's start with Netanyahu.
He was bitterly disappointed as I that Trump unleashed him to resume his genocide in Gaza.
Yeah, he seems to be getting more than a blank check from Trump.
And also, he's taking liberties with Trump's name beyond the support that Trump is giving him.
What do you mean?
Well, he called this latest, the restarting, you know, this was the Trump...
You know, Netanyahu and Trump, Israel and U.S. are fighting, not just in Yemen, but in Gaza.
He's blurring anything that we do over there is basically on behalf of Israel, but with Israel.
So that it's like he's teaming up verbally.
That's part of the message, at least on the, I don't know how he's presenting it in Hebrew, but Western media, it's basically, yeah, Trump and I are like, you know, we're tight.
We're doing this together.
And that's, I mean, if we could have gotten any more culpable in this genocide over the last 16 months, you know, I wouldn't have thought we could have got any more culpable.
And yet Netanyahu has done it because now our name is on it.
Now our name is on, you know, I think Mike Waltz, the security, who is it?
The national security person.
Anyway, he said, oh, no, we're in Yemen because we need to, you know, They're firing on ships again, so we're just doing normal stuff.
But the way Netanyahu presented that was we're in Yemen because of Netanyahu's war on Gaza, West Bank.
He's putting it all together into one big package.
I don't know how Trump's going to get his name extricated, and I don't know, and this is the worst part, I don't know if Trump wants to get his name extricated from this operation, this murderous...
So Joe Biden was a Zionist because he had that sort of Cold War era, Democratic Party in love with Israel, donor class has gotten me through my career attitude.
Donald Trump has the attitude, well, Mrs. Edelman gave me $100 million, and I don't really want these people on my back.
I'll go along with it as well.
There's no difference between the two.
Trump may even be worse.
I don't know.
Well, as I'm saying, I think Trump may be a little bit worse.
In the case of Biden, too, not just does he go way back with the Israel Democratic Party in the former days, but...
Biden never saw a war or a bombing or a military action he didn't want to support and pay for.
Throughout his Senate career, he's always been pro-war and he's never protected anyone or taken the side.
Trump seems to have, or at least he articulates to the American people, which is why he was elected, he seems to want to take the side of the weak and the put-upon and the abused and the neglected.
And the rejected.
He seems to want to embrace that to some extent.
I mean, that was part of his appeal to middle class and lower class America, which is the ones that launched him into office.
So he understands justice.
He understands the power of states to harm individuals.
All of the things that he speaks of should lead to a very different...
Oh, boy, I can't imagine.
I can't imagine him negotiating for any money back from Israel.
I'm going to ask you what's to be gained by attacking the Houthis.
But first, Here's Marco Rubio on all this.
You tell me if we are attacking the Houthis because they're attacking us or because Netanyahu wants us to attack them.
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 global shipping.
So are we getting ready for war with Iran?
Well, I don't think anybody that's running the country, if you think Trump is running the country, I don't think he wants war with Iran.
I know for sure that the Middle Eastern neighbors over there don't want war with Iran.
So it's not clear that Israel doesn't want it.
Probably does want it.
So they're pushing him.
But I don't think that there's enthusiasm for that in Washington.
But that clip of Rubio is very much the Rubio that I expected to see when I heard he was being appointed for Secretary of State.
That's the old Rubio.
Because he has said some things that made a lot of sense, I think, in the past couple, three weeks.
Not so much about the Middle East, but in other commentary.
His commentary on Ukraine was very...
Right. So let's get back to the beginning of this Marco Rubio conversation.
Why bomb the Houthis?
Ritter says it's ridiculous.
McGregor says it's ridiculous.
Alistair Crook says it's counterproductive.
Where are you on your view of the wisdom and military gain to the United States, to the United States of bombing?
Because we killed a lot of civilians.
We killed women and children.
Yeah, and we've done this before in the Middle East where we blow up weddings and we kill innocent people.
And every time that we've done it, both the military people and the intelligence people all say, yeah, that actually increases the number of the people that want to fight you and eventually their ability to fight you.
So it's counterproductive in any case.
Yeah, why he wants to fight the Houthis.
Of course, it makes no military sense.
But again, we don't have visibility into exactly what Netanyahu is telling Trump and what Edelman is telling Trump and what some of the very much pro-Zionist people that surround Trump,
that he's appointed in many cases, are telling him.
So clearly, American policy...
In the Middle East for 40 years is run by Israel, okay?
It is all about Israel's needs.
And I think this has been made clear by, you know, Jeffrey Sachs in many different ways.
Anybody who looks at it, it's all about Israel.
So if we are today, which we are yesterday, you know, attacking the Houthis, which are not even the governmental, I mean, in a sense, it's a subnational group, really.
We're attacking them.
It is because of Israel, okay?
Because that's what everything that we do in the Middle East is about.
You know, it used to be we talk about oil, but that's not the case.
That's not the case.
It hasn't been the case for a very long time.
So Israel writes our foreign policy in the Middle East.
Trump should reject this on principle because he doesn't like things being prepared for him, and he doesn't like being told what to do.
But he is allowing this.
How do we fix it?
You know, I mean, does it make military sense?
Of course not.
None of what we are doing in the Middle East makes military sense.
Do you think that Donald Trump thinks this stuff through?
Or do you think that this, and I'm asking you to get in his brain, I guess, Karen, or do you think that he's doing what he thinks Mrs. Edelman and her wealthy colleagues want him to do?
Because I'm going to ask you about the DOJ and the DHS and their prosecution and persecution of people because of their speech, but we can start with Trump and Adelson.
Yeah, I don't know the answer and I've been trying to figure out what drives him because Trump does some things that are very consistent with the limited government and a pro-peace perspective.
And then he does things like his policy with Israel.
And he has...
A vision of kind of fixing everything, which is hard to do.
And I think he has, and this is my hope, maybe I'm not thinking, maybe this is my hope, that he is trying to clear the table a little bit so that he actually can focus on Israel and deal with the pressures that he's on and the inconsistencies that Israel is causing in Trump's foreign policy.
I would say 50 to 60 percent of the people that voted for Trump see his Israel policy as an inconsistency.
They did not vote to kill Palestinians.
They did not vote to bomb the Houthis.
They did not support Trump because of the things that he's doing.
And if he continues along this, he's going to lose the people that he values because he wants to be a popular president.
In the past two weeks.
The government has arrested a young man, a grad student at Columbia University, and shipped him off to Louisiana.
He is a Syrian by birth but has a permanent resident green card.
The allegation was that he supported terrorism.
That's the stated public allegation.
If you look at the charging documents, which I read and which anybody can read, There's no allegation of criminal behavior, no allegation of terrorist behavior, no allegation of material support for terrorists, no evidence of anything, just the conclusion of Marco Rubio.
How does Rubio even know this kid exists?
Which gets to the bottom of my question in a minute.
The conclusion of Marco Rubio, that this person's presence on the Columbia University campus in New York City, Okay, now we go up to Providence,
Rhode Island.
A Lebanese physician, a nephrologist, a kidney expert, of which there's a shortage in the United States, not only practices medicine in Providence, but she's on the faculty of Brown University Medical School.
She flies to Lebanon to attend the funeral of Hassan Nasrallah and is arrested when she returns to Logan Airport.
They detain her for 36 hours.
During that 36-hour time period, they don't file any charges against her.
She's not brought before any judge.
But her lawyers go before a federal judge getting an order.
From a federal judge to the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Justice, the Department of State, the Department of Defense, enjoining them from deporting her.
They ignore the order and deport her anyway.
Oh my gosh.
No, I hadn't heard that.
That is...
So when I asked John Mearsheimer, the great Professor Mearsheimer, who he thinks is behind all of this, She's punished for First Amendment activity, attending a funeral,
a religious funeral.
He's punished for supporting in a public way a Palestinian state, which, by the way, has been the public policy of the United States for 40 years.
That's right.
Here's John Mearsheimer's reaction.
I want to know if you agree.
When Secretary Rubio...
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.
Yeah. Yeah, I mean, okay.
Of course, I agree with him, and I think he's right.
But let's say we didn't know.
We didn't know what was behind this attack on free speech, because that's what it is.
It's a direct violation and abuse of the First Amendment that we have.
Anyone in this country has, you know, we exercise this right.
So government can't mess with it, but government is messing with it.
So who is doing it?
We can go through and imagine various forces that might be doing it.
The only answer that makes sense is Israel's foreign policy, which is to activate American Jews and American Zionists towards this end, because speech that is harmful to Israel must not be allowed.
This is, you know, Mayor Scheimer says it's American Zionists.
Of course, they're the ones who are here to do the work.
But this is part of, I think, what they call Hasbro.
The Israeli Basically, the way of influencing global opinion in their favor.
And this also obviously includes blackmail manipulation and lobbying like AIPAC here in the United States and that kind of thing.
But it stems from Zionist Israel, the occupation.
It stems from the danger that they face.
And the only support that they still have is American government support.
And they can't tolerate it.
They can't lose that.
It is actually a desperate game that's being played.
And I think maybe what we can take from this is because, obviously, Americans, I have to think, won't tolerate this for too long.
It's such an obvious abuse of our liberties.
But the problem is, why is Israel so intensely operating in this way to shut down free speech in America and in Europe and other places?
But particularly what we're seeing, the examples that you gave, every other...
Why is Israel so intently doing this?
Because they are far closer to losing everything than we think they are.
When Prime Minister Netanyahu famously or infamously spoke before Congress the last time when he had...
58 standing ovations in 56 minutes, something like that.
The largest ovation he got was when he condemned the exercise of free speech by Americans outside the Capitol building.
Two of whom, or three of whom, are regular guests on the show.
Max Blumenthal, Aaron Maté, and Colonel Larry Wilkerson.
Yeah. Yeah.
But who would have thought that his tentacles reached this deep?
They found this doctor in Lebanon, and they found this 28-year-old kid with an American wife who was about to give birth in three weeks up at Morningside Heights, which is the neighborhood of Manhattan where Colombia is.
Well, it speaks to a couple things.
The intent, which I think Israel is in big trouble, and I think this is a reflection of how How extremely nervous they are.
Because if we could truly have free speech in this country, which we had a little bit of it, and it was shut down.
If it was pro-Palestinian speech, it's being shut down.
But it's not just that that's the danger.
Israel has...
We are all they have.
So they have to, if they can't manipulate this, if they can't control Congress, which we know how many are not controlled in Congress?
A handful.
Right? Are not basically doing Israel's bidding.
Yeah, Thomas Massey and a few of his buddies, and that's it.
Just a few.
Very few.
So this control of our government is tight, but the control of the population is a growth area.
That's an area that they don't control.
Why isn't the Israeli control of our government and national security issue?
Israel's a foreign country.
I know.
I know, Will.
They're not registered as foreign agents, and APEC certainly should be.
And I think maybe that's coming.
It's not going to come out of Congress, though.
I think they have Congress under good control.
The president, I'm not sure, because he's unpredictable.
He also plays along, I think, to some extent.
I don't know how much a true believer he is, as much as a person who...
He knows how to use power for his own, you know, objectives.
So I don't think we can find out for sure where Trump is on this.
I mean, it seems like he's very pro-Zionist and he'll do anything for them.
I think they don't believe that.
I think the Israelis, the government doesn't trust Trump.
And I think this is why they are hammering on a number of his appointments.
I mean, think of it.
Trump gets elected.
He's pro-Zionist.
Adelson, her $100 million helps.
Everything's good, right?
And yet they still nickel and dime Trump on his appointments, and they're still fighting Eldridge Colby.
They're fighting other ones.
They almost got Tulsi, but Tulsi is a Zionist, but they still, she thinks for herself, and that's not allowed.
They trashed Danny Davis to the point where Trump's people didn't want to go through all that.
But why would they need 100%?
They have 99.5% control of the Congress.
They have the presidency.
They have 80% of Trump's appointments.
And yet they're still fighting that 100% is what they need.
The APEC will make sure Thomas Massey never runs for senator in Kentucky, right?
This is what they're saying.
We want to fight him.
Why do they need 100%?
I think it's because they're highly vulnerable and they know things that we don't know.
And that's how vulnerable that Israel is.
I was very disappointed when Trump said he wanted to run A primary opponent against Thomas Massie.
Just because Massie voted against a budget which requires the borrowing of a trillion dollars in order to finance it, you would think Trump would understand that Massie is serious about cutting the government, unlike Trump, who is serious about appearing to be cutting the government.
Well, that bill they passed restored the spending that the Doge had exposed and said you have to cut this.
So how can Trump...
Well, again, we don't know.
I'm not inside of his head.
I don't know.
Here's something for Trump to worry about, Chris, if you want to put these pictures up.
This is a group of Tesla automobiles set on fire in Las Vegas, and they can't seem to get the fire to go out.
And, of course, the FBI is there investigating this as some sort of a terrorist plot because we all know who the...
Chair, CEO, and principal shareholder of Tesla is.
Yeah. Yeah, it is any electric car.
All the cars that have the big batteries are extremely hard to put fires out.
It takes a special type of firefighting to do that.
You know, it's funny.
Musk brought home those two astronauts that we had up there during the last year of the Biden administration, and it's getting no coverage.
No media coverage at all.
I'm surprised at that.
This is human life.
The government couldn't get its own astronauts back and it took private enterprise to do so and to do so officially.
I don't know if Musk will send Trump a bill.
He probably will.
It must have been enormously expensive.
Yeah. But, you know, it's hard to trust the media.
And again, on Israel...
We do need to know more and understand more.
But Israel's government and its population, they have terrible problems, which they should have because they're fighting with everyone and they're committing genocide.
Obviously, there's some justice in that country having internal problems, economic problems, recruiting problems, military discipline problems, political problems.
They have these.
And I think part of what we're seeing with the shutdown of free speech in our country, which is Led and dominated and driven by Zionist Israel's requirements of our government, and our government is complying with that so far.
But it's all connected.
Israel is far weaker than it should be.
It's far weaker than it appears to be.
It's far weaker than it tells us it is.
People, its neighbors, pretty much do understand this.
And I don't think Washington understands it.
And when we, as taxpayers who have been supporting Israel for all these years and their wars and apologizing for every evil thing that they do, when we find out that all that money has been basically wasted because Israel is not a successful democracy,
it is not a successful...
It is not a good advocate for American interests in the Middle East.
All the reasons that are told to us on why we give them $3.8 billion plus other billions, plus extra money that Trump just gave them recently, plus weapons that we just give to them as additional on top of the basic stuff.
All of that cash flow, all of that investment has really gotten us nothing.
And it looks like we're going to start realizing it.
Our freedom of speech is going to be gone.
Karen, it's a pleasure to chat with you, my dear friend.
I know we're all over the place, and I appreciate you allowing me to do that, especially with my froggy voice today.
But thank you for joining us.
We look forward to seeing you again next week.
Sure enough.
Thanks, Judge.
Sure. All the best.
Coming up tomorrow at 8 in the morning, Professor Gilbert Doctorow at 11 in the morning, Colonel Douglas McGregor.
At 3 in the afternoon, Phil Giraldi, Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom.
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