March 20, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
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| Hi, everyone. | |
| Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. | |
| Today is Thursday, March 20, 2025. | |
| Aaron Maté joins us now. | |
| Aaron, thanks very much for your time, for accommodating my schedule, as you always do. | |
| I want to spend a fair amount of time talking to you about Prime Minister Netanyahu and the firing of the head of Shinbad and the reintroduction of slaughter in Gaza and Donald Trump's support. | |
| But before we get there, some questions, eliciting your observations of the latest in Ukraine. | |
| What is your take on this so-called Trump-Putin-Zelensky agreement, the non-ceasefire ceasefire that apparently is taking place as we speak, which permits the continued shelling and killing and military maneuvers, | |
| but removes as targets, as I understand it, It strikes me that Trump has not yet decided what he wants to do. | |
| He wants to make it appear as if he's gained significant progress in achieving peace, but he's not willing to own up to the fact that the U.S. is a belligerent here. | |
| Marco Rubio, Secretary of State, recently admitted that this is a proxy war, which means the U.S. is a direct participant in this conflict, as everybody knows. | |
| So Trump, if he wanted to, could cut off the spigot to Ukraine, could cut off the weapons and intelligence sharing, as he recently did. | |
| But then he resumed that, and the White House has said this week that that assistance will continue. | |
| So as long as he provides that military assistance, this war will go on, no matter what he brokers or talks about in his conversations with both Zelensky and Putin. | |
| Trump made a big deal about his talks with Putin this week, but in terms of substantive agreement, basically what... | |
| What they agreed to was that Russia would halt attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure for 30 days. | |
| And that's a step towards something. | |
| But in terms of addressing the causes of this war, what propels it, and addressing the fact that the U.S. is a belligerent in this war, it does not address that. | |
| And it just strikes me that Trump has not yet, as far as we can publicly tell, made a decision on what he wants to do there. | |
| You know, they talked for two and a half hours. | |
| It's hard for me to believe that they spent the entire two and a half hours on energy infrastructure. | |
| And I wonder if Putin said to him, why don't you turn off the spigot? | |
| Why don't you stop supplying these people? | |
| We all know that you are a co-belligerent. | |
| I don't know if they speak this directly to each other. | |
| Do you have any thoughts on that? | |
| Well, this is where it gets very confusing because Russia claimed in its readout of the call that Putin directly asked Trump to cut... | |
| to Ukraine. | |
| And Trump, when asked about this on Fox News, said the issue wasn't even discussed. | |
| So who are we supposed to believe here? | |
| I | |
| I tend to, given that Trump plays loose with the facts, I tend to believe Moscow here. | |
| I doubt Moscow in writing would lie about this, whereas Trump has a long record of telling falsehoods, or simply maybe he didn't remember, you know, for all we know. | |
| I mean, who knows? | |
| But it just speaks to how there's a lack of focus here. | |
| There's a lot of real commitment to addressing the issues that led to this war, which Russia keeps talking about NATO expansion, using Ukraine as a proxy, the Minsk Accords that were broken by Ukraine, Istanbul Accords that were sabotaged. | |
| Is Trump going to actually make a serious decision to address these serious grievances that Russia has? | |
| And also addressing the U.S. military infrastructure that's not in Ukraine, but that surrounds Russia, that Russia wants rolled back. | |
| I often wonder if Trump even has a handle on all of this stuff. | |
| But here's a question put to Caroline Levitt, his spokesperson, about the difference between, and no surprise, the White House readout and the Kremlin readout of their two-and-a-half-hour conversation. | |
| Chris, cut number two. | |
| The Kremlin readout mentioned that Trump and Putin spoke about potential U.S.-Russia hockey games. | |
| And the Kremlin readout also said that Russia wanted the U.S. to stop U.S. intelligence and U.S. funding to Ukraine. | |
| The president has said that that conversation did not happen. | |
| Just wondering if you can get us any more clarity on that. | |
| And also, again, if it's energy infrastructure or if it's... | |
| Energy and infrastructure, because I think there is a big difference between that. | |
| Again, as for the readouts of the call, I would defer you to ours. | |
| And when it comes to the topic of hockey, it did come up. | |
| However, we're more interested in securing a peace deal than scheduling hockey games right now. | |
| All right. | |
| She doesn't want to talk about what President Putin asked. | |
| It's almost inconceivable. | |
| If Donald Trump is asking for a ceasefire, whether it's a full ceasefire or a limited ceasefire, that Vladimir Putin did not say in response, why don't you turn off the spigot, Donald? | |
| Almost inconceivable to me, and I suspect you probably agree. | |
| Yeah, and again, Kremlin says that they asked for that. | |
| And I just don't think they would lie about that. | |
| So I think as the Trump administration, trying to avoid having to answer the key question, are they going to actually own up to the fact that the U.S. is a belligerent in this war against Russia and put an end to it? | |
| And if they're not, then this war continues. | |
| Here's a clip, which you sent us a little while ago, of the man who has more blood on his hands over this war than anybody else who personally talked President Zelensky, Out of signing the peace agreement that Zelensky and his agents had negotiated with President Putin and his agents, | |
| now praising his former puppet, President Zelensky. | |
| You'll know who this is. | |
| Cut number 16. You've got to remember that Volodymyr Zelensky, he's not an unreasonable guy. | |
| He got elected, really, as a peacenik. | |
| In 2019, he tried to do a deal with Putin. | |
| As far as I can remember, his basic problem was that Ukrainian nationalists couldn't accept the compromise. | |
| And you can see why not. | |
| The basic problem was that he listened to you, Boris. | |
| Judge, that clip is very significant because it's actually Boris Johnson inadvertently, again, throwing Zelensky under the bus because he's undercutting the key claim that Zelensky made in this Oval Office meeting with J.D. Vance and Donald Trump that you can't do diplomacy with Russia. | |
| When Zelensky cut off J.D. Vance and said, what kind of diplomacy are you talking about, J.D. Vance? | |
| He said that he reached a deal with Putin in December 2019, but that Putin broke it, so therefore Putin can't be trusted. | |
| Here's Boris Johnson invoking that very exact same agreement in December 2019. | |
| But Boris Johnson is telling the truth and saying, Zelensky's problem was not Russia. | |
| It was Ukrainian nationalists, by which he means the ultra-nationalists, the fascists and some neo-Nazis, who made it impossible for Zelensky to live up to his commitments, which namely were implementing the Minsk Accords. | |
| So Boris Johnson here is actually admitting the truth and pointing out the obstacle to implementing the agreement that Zelensky reached with Putin, contrary to what Zelensky claimed in the White House, was not Russia. | |
| It was Ukraine's own alternationalists. | |
| And this is a point that I've made for a very | |
| long time and because Zolensky didn't have the backing of the U.S. back then he was being told by diplomats like William Taylor don't worry about the Minsk Accords it's a terrible idea uh he had no shot to implement them so Boris Johnson here | |
| A rare instance of him actually telling the truth, and in the process, showing the lie that Zelensky was telling in the White House. | |
| But Boris Johnson cannot hide the fact that he is principally responsible for the war by being the principal agent of Western elites, mainly Victoria Nuland, Joe Biden, and Sullivan and that, | |
| Blinken and that crowd, in talking Zelensky out of signing the agreement which his people negotiated. | |
| Absolutely. | |
| And, you know, on this front, I have a new anecdote to tell you about that really underscores your point. | |
| Oh, let's hear it. | |
| You played the clip before on your show of Alexander Chaly, who was a key negotiator for Ukraine at the Istanbul talks in the spring of 2022, where Russia and Ukraine reached an agreement until Boris Johnson intervened and told Zelensky not to accept it. | |
| And Chaly is the guy who said that in Istanbul, we reached a real compromise. | |
| Putin did everything possible to make peace, thereby undercutting Zelensky's and the U.S. claims that there was never a tangible peace agreement, that it's impossible to negotiate with Russia. | |
| So Charlie wrote a paper after that about the Istanbul talks, and he revealed something very significant. | |
| He said that Boris Johnson, that the U.K. and U.S. told Ukraine, when Ukraine wanted to sign that deal with Russia and Istanbul, that don't make this peace deal. | |
| We're not going to give you security guarantees if it involves a deal with Russia. | |
| We will give you security guarantees bilaterally, on our own, but not in any deal with Russia because we can't trust Russia. | |
| So that's when, as we know, Zelensky then walked away from Istanbul. | |
| Well, immediately, Zelensky's government went back to the U.S. and U.K. and said, hey, so what about those security guarantees you promised us as part of walking away from Istanbul? | |
| And the U.S. and U.K. told Ukraine, sorry, actually, we're not going to do that. | |
| So they hoodwinked Zelensky. | |
| They played him. | |
| They basically lied to him and said, we're going to give you security guarantees, just not in a deal with Russia. | |
| And as soon as Zelensky's government went back and tried to get those security guarantees, the U.S. and U.K. said, no, we're not prepared to do that. | |
| We're prepared to arm you to the teeth, basically. | |
| That's what they said. | |
| Do you think that Boris Johnson is correct? | |
| Or do I understand you to say that Boris Johnson is correct in that if Zelensky had agreed or today agrees to a ceasefire? | |
| The right wing in his government and in his society would assassinate him. | |
| Well, I can't go that far, but certainly he's under a lot of threat. | |
| And there have been open threats to his life going back many years. | |
| When he tried to implement the Mensa Accords when he was first elected, a leader of the right sector infamously said that Zelensky will hang from a tree if he does that. | |
| And that's continued over the years. | |
| And I'm sure that's on Zelensky's mind whenever the prospect of negotiations comes up. | |
| But it just underscores that The U.S. and U.K. played Zelensky, and they duped him. | |
| And just as they put out the promise of NATO for Ukraine, but never took any steps to implement it, they also did the same thing by promising him security guarantees and then pulling the rug out from underneath him. | |
| And that's why Zelensky right now is so desperate to get some security guarantees. | |
| Because that's what he was promised. | |
| That's what he walked away from a peace deal over. | |
| And so he needs something to show for it now after sacrificing hundreds of thousands of lives in the years since. | |
| Right. Switching gears to Gaza and Israel and the Middle East. | |
| Why do you suppose President Trump ordered the bombing of the Houthis? | |
| What conceivable American military benefit was served by killing Yemen civilians? | |
| opinions. | |
| It's for Israel. | |
| As I think Max Blumenthal pointed out on your show, This is entirely for Israel. | |
| Ansar Allah, the Houthis, are the only force in the world right now acting as a deterrent to Israeli aggression. | |
| They resume targeting Israeli ships in response to Israel resuming its starvation siege of Gaza, which is a humanitarian intervention. | |
| And so the U.S., acting as Israel's enforcer, has decided to bomb Yemen as a result. | |
| Acting on Israel's behalf. | |
| Putting Israel first. | |
| And so that's the reason why Trump is bombing Yemen. | |
| Well, is this to point a finger at Iran? | |
| Well, they're doing that in the process. | |
| And yeah, there's a warning here to Iran. | |
| Trump is saying we're going to hold Iran accountable for Ansarallah's actions, even though there's no evidence that I've seen that Iran controls Ansarallah. | |
| They've always acted autonomously. | |
| Yes, they've gotten some support for Iran, but not nearly to the extent that U.S. officials have claimed, I believe, as far as I know. | |
| This is Trump using the opportunity, again, on Israel's behalf to saber-rattle with Iran as well. | |
| Here's Mike Waltz on a roll about the relationship between the Houthis and Iran. | |
| This is from last Sunday, so five days ago. | |
| Iran needs to hear him loud and clear. | |
| It is completely unacceptable and it will be stopped. | |
| The level of support that they've been providing the Houthis, just like they have Hezbollah, just like they have the militias in Iraq, Hamas and others. | |
| The difference here is the Houthis have incredibly sophisticated air defenses and they also have anti-shipping cruise missiles, drones, sea skimming types of attack drones and other. | |
| Ballistic missiles, even. | |
| They've launched dozens of attacks on multiple warships, dozens of attacks, over 175 on global commerce, sank multiple ships. | |
| I just think the American people need to understand what has happened here. | |
| The previous administration had a series of feckless responses. | |
| President Trump is coming in with overwhelming force. | |
| We will hold not only the Houthis accountable, but we're going to hold Iran, their backers, accountable as well. | |
| And if that means their targeting ships that they have put in to help their Iranian trainers, IRGC and others. | |
| That intelligence, other things that they have put in to help the Houthis attack the global economy, those targets will be on the table, too. | |
| So, Colonel McGregor, Scott Ritter, Pepe, Escobar, Alistair Crook are in agreement on the following. | |
| The Houthis have never attacked America or American shipping. | |
| So I think you're right. | |
| This is being done. | |
| That's my understanding as well. | |
| This is Trump fulfilling the desires of top donors like Mary Madelson, acting not on behalf of America First, but Israel First. | |
| Netanyahu made the decision to blow up the ceasefire deal. | |
| Trump, despite... | |
| That Seastar deal being a major achievement for him, even before he took office, has decided to walk away from it as well, because again, it's Israel first. | |
| And that means also we have to expand this to Yemen, because they're standing in the way of Israel's blockade by interfering. | |
| And so therefore, this aggression extends to Yemen. | |
| And the criticism of Biden, well, Biden bombed Yemen many times too, so I don't even know what they're talking about. | |
| Right, so can you have any explanation for why Trump would trash His own Witkoff-negotiated, as you just pointed out, ceasefire agreement, for which, in my view, he quite properly took credit before he was even inaugurated by authorizing Netanyahu to resume the slaughter in Gaza, | |
| and how he cannot be moved by the sight of 400 civilians slaughtered in 24 hours by the IDF, and the absence of... | |
| Any military advantage to that? | |
| It's a great question. | |
| I don't know what's in these people's minds, but what we're seeing now, the carnage in Gaza, it's just unfathomable. | |
| The evil that Israel is guided by and the suffering and carnage that it causes. | |
| Well over 100 children have already been killed by Israel in its aggression so far in just a few days. | |
| That's exponentially more children that were killed on October 7th. | |
| And I don't know what can get these people to resume this bombardment of a besieged death camp where people are already living in absolute misery after Israel resumed the blockade, cutting off supplies for well over a week. | |
| It's just unspeakable. | |
| And by the way, one more point on Yemen. | |
| And I sent your producer, Chris, a clip if we have time to get it up. | |
| Trump during the campaign spoke very differently. | |
| He was on the Tim Pool show during the campaign back in May. | |
| Where he talked about, we don't have to always be resorting to war. | |
| And he specifically criticized Biden for bombing Yemen. | |
| And Trump said, you don't have to do that. | |
| You can pick up the phone and call these people. | |
| What happened to that Donald Trump? | |
| Where is he now? | |
| Because in the White House, he's doing exactly what he criticized Biden for doing, which is just bombing Yemen and backing Israel as it carries out even more and far more damaging. | |
| Who is Adam Bueller or Bowler? | |
| he a negotiator for Trump? | |
| Until recently, he was Trump's hostage negotiator, and he got himself in a lot of trouble when he went on CNN and told Jake Tapper that he had met directly with Hamas. | |
| He called them nice guys. | |
| These are the Hamas officials, presumably in Doha, living in exile, and said, we made significant progress. | |
| And he said, not only are we close to a deal that will see all the hostages released | |
| He said, I'm very confident we can get a long-term truce that will see Hamas step down from power. | |
| And that outraged Netanyahu because, according to Netanyahu, you cannot negotiate with Hamas. | |
| They just have to be eradicated. | |
| You can't recognize that they're a party here. | |
| They just have to be destroyed in Gaza along with it. | |
| Because if you have diplomacy with Hamas... | |
| That undercuts Netanyahu's goal of expelling Palestinians from Gaza and destroying their territory. | |
| So Netanyahu and the Israel lobby waged a campaign against Adam Boehler, and lo and behold, Trump obeyed, and he was gone. | |
| And Adam Boehler made the mistake not only of advocating diplomacy with Hamas and saying it was productive, but also saying in the same interview that the U.S. is not an agent of Israel. | |
| We have our own interests. | |
| You can't say that in Washington, D.C., because that's just not how things work. | |
| Chris just unearthed the Tim Pool clip with Trump. | |
| Take a look. | |
| I look at your policies, I see secure the borders, bring jobs back. | |
| I look at the Democrats and many Republicans, and it's foreign war and foreign expansion. | |
| What is that? | |
| I think it's just a failed mentality. | |
| It's crazy. | |
| You can sell problems over a telephone, and instead they start dropping bombs. | |
| I see recently they're dropping bombs all over Yemen. | |
| I heard that different the world looks. | |
| From outside the White House looking in compared to inside the White House looking out. | |
| That's a 180 degree flip. | |
| I will play this Adam Bowler clip. | |
| Some of what he says is absurd, I think, about Israel having done a wonderful job to suppress Hamas. | |
| But it's a very interesting clip, which you also sent to us. | |
| Chris, number 17. I do think there's hope. | |
| I think that Israel has done a wonderful, masterful job. | |
| Eliminating Habas, Hezbollah, a number of other enemies in the state that makes things possible that weren't possible before. | |
| And I think you could see something like a long-term truce where we forgive prisoners, where Hamas lays down their arms, where they agree they're not part of the political party going forward. | |
| I think that's a reality. | |
| It's real close. | |
| He contradicts himself. | |
| He says that Israel eliminated Hamas, but Hamas has to lay down its arms. | |
| But I can see why a statement like that would infuriate Netanyahu. | |
| Do you honestly think that it's because of the Zionist lobby that Trump said, okay, Bibi, resume the attacks inside Gaza, kill all the civilians you want? | |
| Well, not just the lobby, but also, This bipartisan commitment to Israel and Israeli aggression because Israel is a proxy of the U.S. and serves U.S. goals of hegemony in the region. | |
| There's also the evangelical component here. | |
| That's a major factor. | |
| All these factors contribute to just unfettered support for Israeli aggression and Trump after, as we saw in that clip from It's just | |
| people sheltering in tents and rubble. | |
| That's why we're seeing so many horrific images of civilian carnage, so many dead kids, because that's who Israel is targeting with Trump support. | |
| Look, in some respects, Trump is worse. | |
| He's certainly worse domestically. | |
| You and I have discussed the Columbia University student, the medical professor at Brown University. | |
| Here's John Mearsheimer's view. | |
| It's a Q&A. | |
| question John's, Professor Meersheimer's answer about the danger of all of this and the origins of the danger to personal freedom, personal liberty in a free society. | |
| When Secretary Rubio 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 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. | |
| He's right. | |
| Fully agree. | |
| Right, and this just keeps coming. | |
| I mean, yesterday they wouldn't let a researcher and grad student from Georgetown University who has a permanent resident alien card back into the United States because of critical comments on his mobile device. | |
| How did they know it was on the mobile device? | |
| They don't care about a search warrant. | |
| They just took it from him. | |
| Fully agree. | |
| The Biden administration engaged in smearing Anti-genocide protesters is anti-Semitic. | |
| Trump administration is taking it to a far worse extreme, cracking down on their freedom of speech with these deportations, threatening Columbia University with defunding unless it essentially fully caves to the Israel lobby and essentially polices discourse that criticizes Israel. | |
| Trump administration had a lot of capital because the Trump circle was the target. | |
| Of state censorship, of state smear efforts via Russiagate when Trump and his associates were Russian agents. | |
| They've taken that same playbook and actually gone to a new extreme by getting the government to now enforce speech directly, deport people, threaten universities' funding for criticizing Israel. | |
| It's a real danger to free speech, as John Mearsheimer said. | |
| Aaron Mate, excuse my froggy voice. | |
| Pleasure, my dear friend. | |
| Thank you for your time. | |
| Thank you for your insights. | |
| We'll see you again next week. | |
| Thank you, Judge. | |
| All the best. |
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