March 31, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
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| Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. | |
| Today is Tuesday, April 1st, 2025. | |
| Colonel Karen Kortkowski joins us now. | |
| Colonel Karen, a pleasure, my dear friend. | |
| Is it a coincidence that Donald Trump has surrounded himself, I'm talking about his national security team, principals, as you folks in the government call them, and deputies, to a person? | |
| To a person, ardent Zionists. | |
| Yeah, well, obviously it cannot be a coincidence. | |
| There's no way, there's no way that, you know, this was a requirement. | |
| Whether it's a requirement that Trump himself, you know, generated, or if it was a requirement of his election. | |
| You know, I mean, he took a lot of donations from, you know, pro-Israel lobbies and Zionists. | |
| So, you know, you have to get something for this money. | |
| Trump is known as the transactional person, I guess. | |
| So, yeah, this was probably the price. | |
| I do think, you know, he has friends. | |
| He has friends that are Zionists, people he's known all his life, like Wyckoff, you know. | |
| So that kind of makes sense. | |
| But the rest of them, yeah, they had to come up through, which they successfully did. | |
| Were you surprised at the Did the absence of | |
| comments like that surprise you, Karen? | |
| Yeah, I mean, looking at the way they They spoke and cheered. | |
| It was like, you know, video game almost, like the commentary that you might have in a multi-player game, you know, where you can talk about these things and cheer each other on. | |
| That is very juvenile, and it was as if it wasn't even a real American defense activity. | |
| It was actually just almost entertainment or fun amongst people that, unfortunately, For all Americans have a great deal of power. | |
| These guys are making and executing our foreign policy. | |
| So it was way too casual. | |
| But the other thing is, you know, this is war. | |
| I mean, they were describing war, they were speaking in terms of war. | |
| And this had never been, it had not come before Congress. | |
| Congress has not authorized this war. | |
| You know, so there was that aspect. | |
| The other aspect was, of course, The Yemenis, the Houthi and whatnot, these guys are only attacking Israel, you know, passage of Israeli serving ships, ships that are under Israeli contract or whatever. | |
| They are attempting to, you know, reduce Red Sea traffic for Israelis. | |
| They wish to hurt the Israeli economy, something that, you know, we've talked openly about as a country. | |
| to trying to do to Russia, you know, in that proxy war. | |
| So Americans understand that, but none of that was mentioned, that it's an illegal war, that it is a war, that it is not for the protection of all shipping, because most of the concerned shipping doesn't go there anyway. | |
| This is, it is specifically for the protection of Israeli shipping, and then of course protection for American, you know, naval forces that are there, which are only there To protect Israeli shipping. | |
| So, you know, they're really kind of tiptoeing around the fact that this was an Israeli military operation that we executed for them. | |
| Have these people attacked us? | |
| Have the Houthis attacked American ships or American planes? | |
| Not, they've attacked American military ships, but they haven't attacked any non-Israeli related thing. | |
| And the Houthis have been very clear, this is the other thing, we're not It's super clear in what our foreign policy is doing, what the objectives are. | |
| I don't think a lot of people don't even know. | |
| But the Houthis have been extremely clear in the objective that they have, that it relates to Israel's treatment of Gaza, starving the Gazans to death, murdering them, destroying their houses and homes and businesses, hospitals, killing the journalists, all of the things that Israel is doing in Gaza. | |
| The Houthis and Yemeni's government has said this is why. | |
| This is what we are opposing. | |
| We are standing up for Gazans. | |
| Now, you know, if you say you're standing up for Gazans in America right now, you might get hit with a lawsuit or maybe some goons will come and arrest you and detain you. | |
| But that's the Yemeni's government and the Houthi position. | |
| We are standing up for Gazans. | |
| This is what we're doing. | |
| Very targeted. | |
| Very focused. | |
| Very clear. | |
| And it's as if it doesn't exist. | |
| It is as if we, you know, the Americans are making the rules and we want to blow up something because because we're going to protect shipping. | |
| Well, they're not. | |
| That's not what they're doing. | |
| So we're being lied to, which, of course, we're used to that. | |
| But it is a little upsetting that the lack of awareness of our own principals group. | |
| If you are here in the U.S. on a green card or on a student visa, And you publicly stand up for Gaza. | |
| You run the risk of having that visa, either the green card or the student visa, suspended by Marco Rubio, who will claim that you are an impediment to the effective execution of American foreign policy by your exercise of free speech. | |
| Yeah, yeah. | |
| I don't remember this in my lifetime. | |
| No, I think probably This is from the Wilson era, you know, maybe Lincoln. | |
| I mean, you got to go pretty far back to see this kind of destruction of our protected, God-given natural rights of free speech, free assembly, all of these things. | |
| So, yeah, it is, well, you know, we have been warned, right, that war is the health of the state and that countries, nations, governments go to war and the biggest benefit that they get from that is a suppression of dissent in their own societies. | |
| Whether it's a democracy or a dictatorship, it really doesn't matter. | |
| You can more easily suppress dissent and cause people to behave as slaves to the government if you're at war, right? | |
| This is the beauty of it. | |
| So we're seeing that, but the thing is, it's not our war. | |
| It's Israel's war, and Israel's kind of We're good. | |
| a Revolutionary War. | |
| And this is why they designed a system of government. | |
| It wasn't perfect, but it had checks and balances. | |
| And it said, government shall not interfere, will not restrict or all of the things that are in the first 10 amendments, and certainly the first amendments, very clear. | |
| So Yeah, we are watching the disintegration of our constitution in real time. | |
| And these people that are being detained and arrested and thrown in jail, that's real. | |
| These Americans. | |
| I mean, you know, we may think, you know, the murder of, I don't know, 180,000 Palestinian men, women, children. | |
| We may think, well, that's far away. | |
| That doesn't affect us. | |
| Well, you know, it's coming home. | |
| And it starts with restricting our ability to have free speech and to think freely and to ask questions of our government. | |
| Here's the person arguably behind the suppression of free speech in the United States. | |
| Chris, cut number 11. These ignorant demonstrators. | |
| Who are they demonstrating for? | |
| For these murderers, these rapists, these mass killers? | |
| This is a reflection of a deep rot that has pervaded the intellectual hub of free societies. | |
| And this vilification of Israel, the Jewish people, and Western values has been propagated by a systemic alliance between the ultra-progressive left and radical Islam. | |
| It must be resolutely fought by civilized societies to safeguard their future. | |
| This is why we must all commend President Trump's decisive actions against anti-Semitism. | |
| And we must pressure other governments to do the same. | |
| Did you catch that word? | |
| Other. And we must pressure other governments. | |
| In other words, in addition to the pressure we have put on the United States. | |
| Does any of this surprise you that he would say this so brazenly and publicly? | |
| Yeah, I mean, Netanyahu, you know, he's been Prime Minister for off and on 20 years or so, and he is a political animal, and he is, you know, very responsive to the political world that he's, the political lake that he swims in, the swamp that he lives in, and he knows how that works. | |
| This is out there a little bit, which indicates either desperation on his part, political desperation, or he's quite confident. | |
| That he can say these things and not be challenged, because quite frankly, the way that Israel is conducting their so-called defense against Gaza and Hamas, which is totally, this is totally unmatched, right? I mean, Israel and the United States together have overwhelming ability. | |
| In fact, the reason Gaza has to be rebuilt is because of the overwhelming military destructive force brought on it by Israel and the United States. | |
| So this mismatch in power, and yet What is the nature and extent of his tentacles into the United States Congress, either directly or through that group, AIPAC, American-Israeli Political Action Committee? | |
| You know, one thing, and I can understand why they want to get rid of TikTok or restrain TikTok, because there's a lot of information out there, which is valid, that shows how many of our congressmen are not just bought and paid for, because you can go to Open Secrets or any other place and see who the donors are. | |
| But the sense that many of these congressmen are also scumbags, you know, I use that word loosely, but people who Do not live particularly upstanding lives, are not driven, or do not proceed with character in all the things that they do. | |
| Many of these people are blackmailed. | |
| I mean, you know, and they're the kind of people that can be blackmailed. | |
| Because, you know, not everyone can be blackmailed. | |
| But many in our Congress can be. | |
| What does TikTok reveal about these people? | |
| Well, I mean, there's a lot of amazing... | |
| Dirt about individual members of Congress. | |
| Yeah, well, there's a lot of them that seem to be under the thumb of APEC in particular, but then you have a combination. | |
| There's a whole crowd of people that are still mad at Bondi for not revealing any type of useful information regarding Epstein's Island, right? | |
| That's still an issue for people. | |
| There's a whole TikTok fan group, and I'm sure it's on Twitter and everywhere else, that says RFK Jr. is compromised via blackmail. | |
| You know, he's a good Catholic, not as good as, you know, not like the Pope, right? | |
| I mean, the Pope will occasionally criticize Zionism. | |
| Not, not RFK Jr. | |
| He's great on everything else, but not on this. | |
| So why? | |
| It's inconsistent. | |
| And so a whole bunch of people in social media around the world talk amongst themselves about their favorite issue. | |
| And in almost every case where people are failing to live up to our American and pro-Trump, I should say, we just had an election. | |
| He's popular president. | |
| But those voters are saying, this isn't right. | |
| Why is this guy doing this? | |
| It's not America First. | |
| And I think that's really the big umbrella of complaint about the stuff that Israel is doing and the stuff that Trump is doing in service to Israel. | |
| That is not America First. | |
| What did Congressman Massey reveal about AIPAC? | |
| That he is the only A member of Congress that doesn't have somebody working in his office or directly connected to his office that's an agent of AIPAC? | |
| Well, I believe he's the only Republican member that doesn't have an AIPAC minder. | |
| But it's because I think maybe there's some, like Tlaib and some of these folks, I don't think AIPAC bothers with them. | |
| Unless it is to gather information to destroy their character or make sure they don't get elected again. | |
| But no, amongst Republicans, Massey is the only one. | |
| And what this means, you know, and he said, look, it's not sinister. | |
| These people come from your district, but they're not putting America first. | |
| These are people who don't put America first. | |
| So, you know, what business do they have to dominate our Congress and our foreign policy? | |
| It's really, you know, it's not right. | |
| I mean, people sense that it's not right. | |
| And that sense of things not being the way they should be, that's what I think I see across the world in social media and, of course, non-American and non-Western media, which is very well controlled by the Israeli narrative. | |
| But around the world, everybody sees the inconsistency and they wonder about it. | |
| President Trump nominated Elise Stefanik, a Republican congresswoman from upstate New York, to be the United States ambassador to the UN. | |
| She sailed through the Senate confirmation committee that was investigating her, and then before the Senate could vote on her nomination, he pulled it. | |
| claiming that he didn't want to take another Republican from a very fragile two-vote Republican majority in the House. | |
| Is there a backstory? | |
| Well, she's certainly a reliable Zionist, and I think she made kind of a Fool out of herself in her in her initial hearings that she had you know they asked her something about Israel, | |
| and she quoted Something from the Bible which of course the Bible is filled with many things, but it made her sound a little a little Off base a little bit, but in any case that was my maybe my opinion and some others But yes, she definitely was had total stamp of approval Christian Zionist all the way But here's the thing Massey doesn't always vote with President Trump, he doesn't vote with them on taxation and he doesn't vote with them on wars. | |
| So he really, if they're counting Massey in that two vote margin that he has, he definitely does need Stefanik. | |
| So I think, I don't see anything strange in that, but I'll tell you what, with a lot of the Zionists, American Zionists that Trump has Surrounded himself. | |
| A lot of the Israel firsters that he has surrounded himself with. | |
| Yeah. Given Trump's tendency to fire people, he's willing to do that. | |
| He's not afraid to do it. | |
| It does mean that he almost has to play even-handed with the firing. | |
| So there will be pro-Israel members of his cabinet that get fired. | |
| I have no doubt that that will happen. | |
| You know, he may just have some money there for insurance, because I think, you know, we saw how he was, you know, eight years ago. | |
| He went through quite a few people now that he had chosen poorly, and he had to go through them, but he's also chosen poorly now. | |
| I mean, in many ways, you can look, you can run, run down the list, you know, there's many of his appointments are not the best in class, so they may, you know, Be sacrificed at some point and so in doing so he's sacrificing some of his Israel first thing. | |
| I think he's a negotiator. | |
| I think he knew what it meant to take huge quantities of APEC money, Adelson money, APEC donor money. | |
| He understood what that meant and he may be It's my hope that he is simply being transactional, which is what we think of him in, you know, okay, this is what I have to do, this is what I'm going to do. | |
| And as he moves forward, because I cannot see Trump, I know he doesn't understand history, you know, he's very surprised. | |
| He didn't understand really a lot about Ukraine and Russia until towards the end. | |
| I mean, maybe even after he was elected, when he started really thinking about what was going on. | |
| And he was surprised at some of the things that he did not know and I was surprised that he did not know either because so many of us have been following it and we do know what's going on. | |
| I neglected to show you a photo when we were talking about freedom of speech. | |
| This is part of a video. | |
| I can't show you the whole video. | |
| But this is a photo of the Secretary of Homeland Security Looking like she's on the front page of a magazine, except for the people behind her. | |
| She's in El Salvador. | |
| That is the maximum security prison where the prisoners are virtually stripped naked and packed in like sardines. | |
| One of them, the government admits it sent him there by mistake. | |
| And he has every right to live and be in the United States. | |
| Now, in my years following the judiciary and my years as a judge, I've never, ever heard of the federal government admitting in court to a federal judge that they punished someone by mistake. | |
| But they did make this acknowledgement yesterday. | |
| Now they claim They can't get this guy back. | |
| Well, she could have gotten him back right then and there and Donald Trump can get him back with a phone call to the president of El Salvador. | |
| But to me, I'm going to use the phrase of my dear friend and your colleague on this show, Max Blumenthal. | |
| This is prison porn showing pictures like this. | |
| I didn't take the picture. | |
| The Feds took the picture. | |
| If we played the whole thing, she gives a speech! | |
| I don't want to play it, but she gives a speech with these poor unfortunates behind her. | |
| Not a single one of whom had a hearing before being deported from the United States. | |
| Not a single one. | |
| Well, that's a bad sign because If the laws don't, if they're not going to be honored, they're not going to honor the Constitution. | |
| They're not going to honor other laws that we have at the federal level for these guys. | |
| They're not going to honor them for us. | |
| And we're all in trouble. | |
| I think that is, that is the dark potential future that we, that we face with, with the way that, and, and, you know, I don't mean to pick on Donald Trump, but he and his cabinet, My piece coming out. | |
| Tomorrow night is called Taking the Constitution Seriously. | |
| It will aggravate my friends in the White House and the West Wing, but I felt morally compelled to write it because they don't care about free speech and they certainly don't care about due process. | |
| Everyone being deported is entitled to a hearing of some sort. | |
| I have to ask you this because I saw this in your column on Judsnap.com. | |
| Did Israeli generals once have full and on-demand and unfettered access to the Pentagon? | |
| Is that true? | |
| Well, they did, okay, after 9-11, the entry to the Pentagon itself, some of the rules changed. | |
| They got a little tighter with their entry because prior to that, I would never have known this because they had full and unfettered access. | |
| After 9-11, they put new, you know, turnstiles, a whole bunch of other things, and when you had groups of folks Larger than three. | |
| They needed an escort. | |
| And they had a group of six folks that came in, so they needed an extra escort too. | |
| And I was the second escort. | |
| I was called down, hey, we need to bring these guys up. | |
| So I didn't know, well, I think they said who they were, but of course I could see who they were when I got down to the entry level. | |
| And we were ostensibly, me and the other guy, were to take them up to Wolfowitz's office. | |
| And they knew the way, they led the way, They were upset that we took as long as we did to get down there, and that was expressed to us, and they took off. | |
| We followed them to Wolfowitz's office, and then of course, as I've written before, and it did stick with me. | |
| Wolfowitz was the Deputy Secretary of Defense under Rumsfeld. | |
| That's right, and so we got up to Wolfowitz's office, and Wolfowitz's door was shut, but they walked right past the secretary. | |
| She jumped up out of her desk, tried to stop him from barging into his office. | |
| She said, he has a He has another person in there. | |
| They actually got to the door, but she pulled the door shut, calmed him down, I guess, whatever that was. | |
| It was very urgent. | |
| Not really, but, you know, it was just the attitude of urgency. | |
| And so I said, trying to be helpful, that, hey, well, we have some spare time. | |
| Maybe you want to sign in. | |
| Because everybody who goes into Wolfowitz's office has to sign in, especially if they're not from the Pentagon. | |
| Oh, that was the secretary waved her arms to me. | |
| No, no, no, they don't have to. | |
| They don't have to sign it. | |
| And, you know, educational stuck in my mind. | |
| I was interested in that. | |
| So, yes, that's what I mean by free and unfettered access. | |
| Do they have that today? | |
| I haven't been in the Pentagon. | |
| It's just as hard to get into and it's probably even more open to members of the Israeli military and, of course, the embassy. | |
| So, Yeah, I wouldn't have any doubts that it is not with Hedgeseth there. | |
| I mean, they probably have their own facility. | |
| Maybe they gave him CNN's office space. | |
| I don't know. | |
| But I'll tell you, this is not something that people normally see or hear about, and they don't normally think about it. | |
| And it is a sign of a subjugation of our government in so many ways. | |
| And like you well know, a subjugation of our Constitution. | |
| So we have to fight it. | |
| You know, we have to expose it and we have to fight it tactically and strategically because this kind of thing will destroy the country that I've grown up in and it's not acceptable. | |
| Colonel Kwiatkowski, thank you very much. | |
| Always a pleasure no matter what we're talking about or what photos we show you. | |
| Thanks for your Thanks for your analysis and for your cheerfulness, even in these dark times. | |
| All the best. | |
| We'll see you next week. | |
| Okay. Thanks, Judge. | |
| Appreciate it. | |
| Sure. Pleasure. | |
| Coming up tomorrow, Wednesday, at 1 o'clock, Pepe Escobar on what he saw in Yemen at war. | |
| At 2 o'clock, Aaron Maté. | |
| At 3 o'clock, Phil Giraldi. | |
| At 4 o'clock, Max Blumenthal. |
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