March 25, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
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| Hi, everyone. | |
| Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. | |
| Today is Wednesday, March 26th, 2025. | |
| Professor Glenn Deason joins us now. | |
| Professor Deason, always a pleasure. | |
| Professor, you are an internationally recognized scholar of geopolitics. | |
| Is the United States any safer today because it bombed Yemen the other day? | |
| Well, I wouldn't say there's a lot of evidence supporting that. | |
| Indeed, I think it was quite clear from some of these text messages which came out in a very embarrassing way that people like J.D. Vance was critical of it. | |
| I think he called it a mistake. | |
| And indeed, it really makes the question what the purpose was and also to what extent it's actually successful. | |
| Now, I think that, well, the purpose was obvious in terms of attempting to open the sea lanes, but the extent to which that is actually possible is a different question. | |
| And it also puts the United States right back into one of Israel's wars. | |
| And given that this is a conflict which is not in America's interest, and also knowing that Israel would like to pull America into one of its wars, I would say no, it's... | |
| Not in America's interest at all, and it would make the world any safer. | |
| The president is supposedly a man of peace. | |
| He has stated many times before and after his inauguration he hopes to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. | |
| He is continuing to fund the war in Ukraine, in which Ukraine is bound to lose almost literally any day. | |
| He's continuing to fund, even accelerate the slaughter in Gaza. | |
| Now he's bombing Yemen. | |
| Can anybody take him seriously when he says he's a man of peace? | |
| Or alternatively, does it appear from your vantage point that the Trump administration even knows what it's doing? | |
| Well, it makes sense to put a military support Right away, because they are in the middle of negotiations, so they don't want to give up an important hand, because there's not much leverage anymore. | |
| That is, that the Russians have won this war, so it's not much. | |
| If they give up supplying the weapons, then not only do they lose an important bargaining card with the Russians, but also a key point of pressure for the Ukrainians. | |
| Keep in mind that Zelensky is quite reluctant to make any real compromises, so I think it's quite important that he... | |
| He continues to have this card. | |
| But I agree. | |
| He was voted in for being a peace president. | |
| He was going to end the forever war. | |
| So to call for ethnic cleansing of every man, woman and child in Gaza, or even now actually bombing Yemen, I think this is something that will disappoint many of his voters. | |
| And it's even worth noticing that from these leaked calls, It was quite evident that there were some of them which belonged to the America First Club, such as Vance, who saw this as a European problem. | |
| But there's still neocons there, so they're driving not all in the same lane, it seems. | |
| It is fair to conclude that notwithstanding the so-called America First aspirations of President Trump, I've got to rephrase this. | |
| Is it fair to conclude? | |
| I want your opinion. | |
| Is it fair to conclude that notwithstanding the America First aspirations of President Trump, notwithstanding his talk about the Grand Reset, a big reset involving the United States, Russia, China, Brazil, and India, the President has surrounded himself with old-fashioned neocons. | |
| Who think that freedom comes from the barrel of a missile and who regard, Tulsi Gabbard said this under oath just two hours ago, Russia as an enemy, not as a likely trading partner to enrich both of us. | |
| Take it from there. | |
| Well, unfortunately, it does appear that a lot of evidence coming in to suggest... | |
| That one should be skeptical about the ability of Trump to actually follow through on what he said. | |
| Again, I think it's distinctively different from the different presidents. | |
| But that being said, this is a common trend that is... | |
| Clinton, he was going to be the president after the Cold War to bring about some peace, but he ended up starting this nation-building. | |
| Then the American people voted for Bush, which was criticizing the nation-building of Clinton, and then he took it on a much greater level in Afghanistan and Iraq. | |
| He had people voting for Obama because he was going to offer change. | |
| Then they voted for Biden because he was going to bring the adults back. | |
| And instead, he almost took America to war with Russia. | |
| So I think time and time again, people tend to vote in America for reducing or ending the wars, but they rarely get what they want. | |
| So I think this is a good indication that there's a very strong neocon element within the US. | |
| And I think this is very problematic because the main issue for the United States, if it does recognize that the unipolar order is over, that is, it should... | |
| Then stop wasting too many resources as it might run into some real economic problems. | |
| And it should take a more modest position in the international system because if it attempts to be all-powerful, that is, re-establish a unipolar order, then all the other major powers in the international system will try to balance the United States. | |
| So a lot of what Trump said seemed to make a lot of sense, but we have to question why. | |
| the policies aren't actually reflecting what he said. | |
| recitation of the foreign policy foibles of modern American presidents reminded me of what George Galloway, who was just on this program an hour and a half ago, said. | |
| If voting changed anything, they'd abolish it. | |
| sounds literally true when you can promise to be the... | |
| The Man of Peace, and you're funding all of these wars. | |
| Do you see a connection between Donald Trump's impatience with Vladimir Putin and his patience with Bibi Netanyahu? | |
| Well, it is always a bit of a difference when you look at the American leaders and the relationship with Israel. | |
| But it also goes back to what you said about banning democracy, or as Galloway said, because... | |
| I think a lot of the democratic institutions have been hollowed out. | |
| That is, we still have the rituals. | |
| Everyone can go and vote. | |
| But while one can change the people in power, there's often less and less ability to actually change the policies. | |
| So I don't doubt that a lot of the people who genuinely believe in the platform they're running on, but once they come into power, I think there's a recognition that they have to adjust to the... | |
| Now, Netanyahu, I think, obviously, gets much more loyalty from the United States. | |
| So whenever you see Netanyahu around Trump, you do question what happened to America first. | |
| Now, I'm not sure if Trump would like to also reconsider America's close relationship with Israel to the extent it doesn't serve American interest. | |
| Maybe it's something he wants to do, but it would be too bold to take on the entire Israeli lobby at the same time as he's trying to do a huge shift with Russia. | |
| Again, it's a possibility, or he might just be very much beholden to Netanyahu like others. | |
| Netanyahu himself, in my view, and please push back or reinforce or modify as you see fit, Professor, from your... | |
| A vantage point in Norway. | |
| Netanyahu isn't even making Israel safer. | |
| Is Israel safer? | |
| Because the IDF slaughtered a thousand civilians in Gaza in the past week. | |
| No, and I think that's why often we get into this Difficult dichotomy of either, you know, support Israel or before Israel or against it. | |
| But really, this is not good for Israel either. | |
| You see domestically, it's becoming very, very divided. | |
| Society itself can fragment. | |
| We see the army being very much exhausted. | |
| Indeed, one of the reasons why they accepted the ceasefire is because the army... | |
| It has been overstretched. | |
| That is, they bogged down in Gaza. | |
| They have exhausted themselves against Hezbollah. | |
| Now they have the additional occupation of Syria. | |
| And if you see this issue with Yemen, this is not a recipe for success either. | |
| That is, they can't really hit the weapons which are underground. | |
| Indeed, the missiles and drones which they use tend to be a lot cheaper, which means that they can exhaust the American ones. | |
| I'm not sure exactly what can be achieved. | |
| And all of this appears to only be building up to the big war, which they're working themselves up to and trying to bring the Americans in, which is against Iran, which would just be a complete disaster. | |
| So I think Israel is on a very dangerous path, a very suicidal path. | |
| And again, I would caution the Americans not to go down with the Israelis. | |
| Indeed, as a good friend, one should try to steer them away from this dangerous path. | |
| It's almost as if Netanyahu controls Trump rather than Trump controlling Netanyahu. | |
| Last week, the Hamas or Gazan, I'm not sure what they call themselves, health ministry, announced the burial of the 50,000th civilian in Gaza. | |
| Does the world even take note of the enormity of that slaughter? | |
| How does that number, 50,000 dead, these are people that can't shoot back, how does that number resonate in Europe, where you are? | |
| Well, I think all this killing has sadly become normalized. | |
| This news has come out every day, but within the European Union, it appears that all of the world values, Indeed, the EU leadership, as well as the German leadership, tends to be very supportive of Israel. | |
| And again, I don't see how this impacts any of that solidarity. | |
| So it is, yeah, no, it's a truly horrific, horrific number. | |
| So I don't... | |
| That's the Israeli donor class, as we call them here in America, the very, very wealthy Jewish and pro-Jewish, they're not all Jews, pro-Jewish people who donate to American politicians Does that exist in Europe? | |
| Does Frederick Mertz owe his chancellorship to the... | |
| Zionist lobby in Germany? | |
| Well, it is an interesting group because, well, not all Zionists are Jews. | |
| Indeed, there's a lot of Zionists among the Christians as well. | |
| And again, you also see that a lot of the people who oppose and criticize Israel are Jewish as well. | |
| So I think they fall most in the Zionist camp. | |
| But if you want to look at the donor class, it's quite huge in Brussels. | |
| It's become a very concerning trend, but over many, many years now, which is that you have the lobbyists more or less penetrating the EU structures. | |
| The Germans are a bit interesting, though, because they have their history. | |
| And because of this, it appears that the way of making amends for the Holocaust is by... | |
| By allowing Israel to do whatever it wants and support it, which is a very strange thing because it's effectively the Palestinians now have to pay for the crimes of the Germans in World War II. | |
| So it's quite remarkable. | |
| Also, the elements that have been on Genesis, which is in the USA. You mentioned at the outset of the conversation, Professor Deason, the signal scandal in which President Trump's senior most national security officials were engaged in a group texting. | |
| People say it was a chat. | |
| It was texting. | |
| And somebody, either intentionally or inadvertently, included A journalist, a person well-known. | |
| Some people like him. | |
| A lot of people don't. | |
| He's a former IDF member himself. | |
| He's a former prison guard at Israeli prisons for Palestinian prisoners, but he's an American and he works in Washington, D.C. And now, because the leading intelligence officials, the director of national intelligence, Intelligence and the director of the CIA testified under oath that they saw no military plans. | |
| Now he has posted the transcript of this conversation up to the point where he stopped copying it. | |
| And it shows that military plans were in fact posted. | |
| This is a very serious potentially criminal issue. | |
| And I'm not going to ask you about the federal criminal law. | |
| It's not in your field. | |
| How does this resonate in Europe? | |
| Oh, the Americans are cowboys. | |
| They can't keep their phone calls straight. | |
| Or is it serious? | |
| Is it perceived as serious in Europe? | |
| I mean, think about it. | |
| The plans to attack another country were revealed to a journalist an hour before the attack took place. | |
| yeah no it is it is well it did take the media but the A little bit by storm, but the angling is, of course, usually aimed at presenting the Trump administration as incompetent because, as you know, the European political class is very much, well, almost a copy-paste of the Democrats. | |
| So they don't care much for Trump. | |
| Indeed, they don't care much for the Republicans. | |
| So they tend to be a little bit gleeful as this happened. | |
| But, of course, it's not a good look at all. | |
| Not only how they actually had the war plans when they said they didn't. | |
| Again, the legal issues as a judge would be much better at addressing this than me. | |
| But I think it is maybe a little bit of this cowboy feeling to it that it's not done. | |
| Quite professionally. | |
| And again, I think some of the criticism is fair, because I think Trump put together a team such as Hegseth, which doesn't necessarily have the right background or the sufficient experience. | |
| A senator from Georgia, a young man that I really didn't know, but I was quite impressed with his questioning. | |
| John Ossoff is the senator's name, questioning John Ratcliffe. | |
| Now, Mr. Ratcliffe is the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, and of course, he is under oath. | |
| Take a listen to this, Chris. | |
| Cut number two. | |
| And they were discussing the timing of sending U.S. air crews, Into enemy airspace where they faced an air defense threat, correct? | |
| I'm going to, Senator, defer to the other principles that you're referring to about what the meaning and the context of what they were talking about. | |
| The timing of U.S. airstrikes, correct? | |
| Yes. Yes, and therefore the timing of sending U.S. air crews into hostile airspace, correct? | |
| Yes. And therefore, the time period during which enemy air defenses could target U.S. air crews flying in enemy airspace, correct? | |
| I don't know that. | |
| You do know that. | |
| Let me ask this question, General Hawk. | |
| You lead America's Signals Intelligence Collection. | |
| Would the private deliberation of foreign senior officials about the wisdom and timing of potential military action be a collection priority for you and the U.S. intelligence community? | |
| Senator, it's our job to do indications and warning for both the plans and intentions of adversary leaders and for military commanders. | |
| And would not information about the timing of air strikes allow a military to pre-position or cue air defense systems to shoot down enemy aircraft? | |
| I think, Senator, from our perspective, any advance warning is something that we certainly are trying to protect. | |
| This, of course, was all before the actual transcript was. | |
| That was from yesterday. | |
| This morning, and I don't blame him, people calling this reporter a liar. | |
| He released the transcripts. | |
| And it showed that he was not lying, that he was telling the truth, and that, if anything, the person we just saw, Director Ratcliffe, his colleague, Director Gabbard, who's a friend of mine, their colleague, Pete Hegseth, with whom I worked for 10 years at another network, were not being truthful. | |
| Oh, this is a huge embarrassment, and it's also coming from... | |
| Yeah, the US leadership. | |
| This is the largest army in the world. | |
| You would have thought there would be some more professionalism here. | |
| So I'm not sure how this is going to play out. | |
| But again, this is not just a massive embarrassment, but I guess Trump has a knack for getting out of scandals. | |
| But overall, given how this was done and all of the political capital which Trump has put into this, given that he was supposed to be the peace president, and now he's using this very aggressive language to destroy Yemen or the Houthis, and obviously he's not going to be able to deliver on the massive threats he made because... | |
| Yeah, it simply won't work on them. | |
| They have been bombed since 2015. | |
| I think this idea that they can just use very brutal language and then somehow the Houthis will be fearful and bend to his will, I think this is a huge mistake. | |
| And it can also get not just dragged into Yemen, but dragged in closer to war with Iran. | |
| And on top of it, what we're seeing now with this, I guess poor execution with them essentially texting each other and adding one of the journalists, which don't even like them, who leaks these things. | |
| Now they have also been caught lying to the public. | |
| So it's an unmitigated disaster. | |
| So again, one has to see if Trump is able to get out of this one as well. | |
| What will be the international economic consequences? | |
| If the United States and Israel wage war on Iran? | |
| That would be hard to predict. | |
| Iran can shut down important waterways. | |
| It can make energy prices go through the roof. | |
| Indeed, if the US and Israel would attack Iran, they would probably use the airspace of different Arab states. | |
| Like Saudi Arabia, which would then get retaliatory strikes as well. | |
| So there would be massive, massive disruptions. | |
| And that's just if they're able to contain it to Iran. | |
| And also, there's no clear exit strategy. | |
| They're not going to be able to defeat Iran. | |
| So are they just going to bomb Iran and tell Iran when they're done? | |
| No, I think Iran would hit back in a massive way so they wouldn't set a dangerous precedent. | |
| And also, keep in mind that Iran is becoming very deeply integrated into more Eurasian. | |
| Also, BRICS economic system. | |
| So the Chinese and Russians, I don't think, would want to sit around and do nothing. | |
| So I think it would be an absolute disaster for Trump to go down this path now, especially at this point in time when he's trying to bring peace to Europe. | |
| And on this, I commend him. | |
| And if he's pulling it off, I hope he gets the Nobel Peace Prize. | |
| But what he's doing now in the Middle East is... | |
| Yeah, beyond reckless. | |
| And as we saw from these videos, it also appears to be done by amateurs. | |
| This is in a way to run an operation. | |
| You were talking earlier about how not all Zionists are Jewish, true, and how not all Jews are Zionists. | |
| Here is some back and forth between Senator Tom Cotton, who's a strong supporter of the administration and is the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, which means he has the highest intelligence level of clearance, and his good friend, Pete Hegseth, the Secretary of Defense. | |
| Chris? During the Biden administration, I want to give you a chance to respond to what they said about you. | |
| I think the first one... | |
| I'm a Christian. | |
| I'm a Zionist. | |
| Anything worse is Mike Huckabee, who's another former colleague of mine from Fox, who is the nominee to be the U.S. ambassador to Israel, referring to people that are opposed to Zionism. | |
| Zionism, of course, is not democracy, it's apartheid, as Satan. | |
| But I guess you're right. | |
| The influence of the Zionists is all over the place. | |
| Now you tell me it's even in Brussels. | |
| I'll give you the last word. | |
| Yeah, well, Zionism could be fine if it's a Jewish nation state, but if that Jewish nation state would be full of Jews, it would be one thing. | |
| But the problem is when the Zionist state denies a separate Palestinian state, because if Israel will now be a Jewish nation state in which it then... | |
| It encompasses greater Israel. | |
| That means half the population will be non-Jews. | |
| So how are we going to have a Jewish nation-state if half the population is not Jewish? | |
| Well, then you either have to... | |
| Have them live under apartheid rules, such as they do in the West Bank, or you're going to have to ethnically cleanse or genocide a large part of it, which is what you're seeing in Gaza. | |
| So I think this is the danger of Zionism. | |
| Again, when they say Israel has a right to exist, yes, but if they don't accept that same right for Palestine, then... | |
| And there's not many more options. | |
| No one really explained to me what the alternative is. | |
| If you're going to have only half the population being Jews because you deny a Palestinian state, what is the alternative to either apartheid or ethnic cleansing? | |
| I don't really see what the alternative would be. | |
| Nicely put. | |
| It is a disaster. | |
| Professor Deason, always a pleasure, my dear friend. | |
| Thank you for joining us. | |
| We'll look forward to seeing you again back here soon. | |
| Thank you, Judge. | |
| Of course. | |
| And coming up later today at 2 o'clock Eastern, Aaron Maté on all of these things. | |
| At 3 o'clock Eastern on all of this, Phil Giraldi. |
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