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April 16, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
29:10
Aaron Maté : ICE Condemns Ideas.
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Hi, everyone.
Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Wednesday, April 16, 2025.
Aaron Maté will be here with us in just a moment on ICE, Immigration Customs Enforcement.
Are they in the business of deciding what ideas are illegal?
Yes, they are, even though they're trying to hide it.
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Aaron Mate, welcome.
Welcome here, my friend.
Before we get to the government trying to suppress ideas or claiming that some ideas are illegal, do you get the feeling that the neocons are becoming resurgent in Donald Trump's administration?
Absolutely. The fact that you have Zionist groups able to get students deported for thought crimes, the latest being this young student in Vermont who was on his way for a citizenship appointment and then gets nabbed.
You look at his record and he's talking about, on top of fighting for Palestinian freedom, he's also calling on anti-Semitism.
It's almost as if they're selecting people who are actually...
Models for civility and saying even if you go out of your way to be civil and to do everything possible to call it anti-Semitism from your perspective as a Palestinian rights activist, we're still going to deport you simply because you support Palestinian rights and you're Palestinian,
as is the case with this young man in Vermont.
So in that respect, the neocons are totally dominant.
Inside the White House.
Now, there are some issues where they're not getting fully their way, like in Ukraine.
There's obviously a split between someone like Steve Witkoff and J.D. Vance on the one hand, and then you have Marco Rubio, Mike Waltz on the other, who don't seem very keen on peace in Ukraine.
And that extends to other issues as well, also on this issue of whether or not the U.S. will go to war with Iran.
There's a split inside the Trump White House.
But policy-wise, what have we seen so far?
Well, on top of the enforcement of censorship at home, there's also threatening Iran, talking about making peace in Ukraine, but not really doing very much in the form of concrete steps.
So I think Trump himself reflects those divisions.
He doesn't know who to listen to yet.
But on some issues, like when it comes to censoring pro-Palestine speech or just speech that respects Palestinians as human beings, Trump is following neocon Zionist orders.
Proclaimed in a now-deleted post that its job is to prevent the spread of illegal ideas.
And of course, in America, how could any idea be illegal?
It's an idea.
It's a thought.
Max Blumenthal calls ICE Israel censorship enforcers, and that's exactly what they've become.
They censor...
People in the US on behalf of Israel.
And yeah, there was a post on social media bragging about all the things that, or touting all the things that the Department of Homeland Security prevents from crossing the border.
And one of them is, it's not just crime or drugs, it's ideas.
Bad ideas.
It's out of Orwell.
It's out of Orwell.
And amazingly, those ideas all concern a foreign country.
So under the Trump administration, they'll still tolerate some criticism of the US.
They won't tolerate courticism of Israel.
How does that make sense?
So, you can be anti-Palestinian, but you can't be anti-Semitic.
You can say whatever you want about the suffering of the Palestinian people, but if you come out in favor of the two-state solution and you are from the Middle East and you are here on a student visa, you're gone.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, that's the world we're living in.
And again, this is an administration that came to power with a really good argument about Democrats, that they were the party of censorship.
And they were.
They were on many issues.
We know that from the Twitter files.
There was pressure on social media companies to censor dissenting views or that weren't in line with the consensus when it comes to COVID and lockdowns.
And in my case, the FBI under Joe Biden asked Twitter.
to censor me on behalf of Ukraine because the Ukrainian intelligence service sent the FBI a list of accounts they wanted censored on Twitter and my name was among them and the FBI handed that over.
That came out from the Twitter files and that was the basis for Trump and his campaign, you know, that act of attempted censorship and many others for say, look, this is the party of censorship and we're going to restore free speech.
And they had a strong argument until they got power and they went far beyond what Biden ever did by literally trying to deport people for having views they don't like about Israel.
So they took the Biden censorship regime and they put it on steroids.
One of the neocons that You and I did not mention a few minutes ago who, according to the Wall Street Journal, still has President Trump's ear is General Kellogg.
Kellogg just came out with the most Absurd proposal, almost as if he's been living in a cocoon for the past two and a half years, if he thinks that the Russians would accept this.
This is the so-called division of Ukraine and the gubernatorial elements run by European allies, much as was done to Germany in 1945.
Where does he come up with something like this?
Send Steve Witkoff to meet for five hours with the president of Russia and then dispatch General Kellogg to make an offer like this.
Trump is incoherent policy-wise.
He has all these people around him.
He probably likes them personally, but likes having them around.
But policy-wise, there's no single guiding direction.
It's just a bunch of people who he likes, and I think he's still figuring it out as he goes along.
Keith Kellogg said that the Biden strategy of using Ukraine to fight Russia, he called it the acme of professionalism.
It was wonderful that we were using Ukraine to fight Russia.
He said this in congressional testimony a few years ago.
So this is who Trump has as his envoy to Ukraine while also dispatching another envoy to the Middle East, Steve Wyckoff, to go meet with Vladimir Putin.
It just makes absolutely no sense.
And now it's my impression that Keith Kellogg has been sidelined.
But he's still there in his position.
And he's still putting out policy proposals like this and statements.
He put out a statement about the Sumi attack the other day where Russia killed a number of civilians.
And he issued a very, very harsh condemnation.
But what was overlooked there, and again, I'm not trying to justify killing civilians.
Nothing can justify that.
But what the media ignored here and Keller ignored was that Russia was actually targeting a military ceremony in Sumi.
And this is such a scandal now inside Ukraine that the governor of Sumi has been dismissed because he's been accused of basically endangering Sumi by hosting this military ceremony and thereby giving Russia a pretext to launch an attack.
And by the way, among the people killed in this attack in Sumi was the commander of the Ukrainian division that uses HIMARS rockets.
And who uses those HIMARS or who is guiding or who has been guiding and directing those HIMARS strikes?
it's the u.s a few weeks ago we got that new york times article bragging about how the u.s oversees every single high mark strikes and that these high mark strikes have caused i'm quoting here russian casualties to soar so after new york times comes out with this piece bragging about
how high marks are used to kill russians russia goes and kills the ukrainian head of a brigade that uses high marks in ukraine and this is just an example of how the proxy war endangers ukrainians uh it doesn't just by russian killing civilians but it shows how i mean this attack
on sumi it came out of
According to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, there were also NATO officials present at that ceremony who were killed.
I wonder if any were Americans, and if so, if the Trump administration will treat that the way the Biden administration did by claiming they had a heart attack elsewhere.
Well, I have to wonder if Lavrov is telling the truth.
I have a hard time believing that Russia would target a military gathering if NATO military officials were there, because Russia's been pretty restrained so far when it comes to escalating this war.
In fact, the whole reason this proxy war has gone on for so long in the way it has is because Russia has not escalated in the ways that the U.S. has.
The U.S. kept crossing its own red lines.
Biden ruled out using some weapon systems that he allowed them.
Biden ruled out using those weapon systems for strikes into Russia.
Then he allowed them.
It's Russia that's been restrained so far.
So is Lavrov now seriously claiming that the U.S. targeted a gathering where NATO military officials were present?
I actually have a hard time believing that.
Very interesting commentary.
I hadn't thought of it that way, Aaron.
I'm going to run a piece that I know you have seen because I've seen you and Max comment on it.
It's Prime Minister Netanyahu in the Oval Office after Trump gave...
His rather pedestrian, I'm being charitable, understanding of the origins of the Israeli-Gaza dispute, Netanyahu jumps in as if to bail Trump out.
Cut number 19. I think what the president talked about is, first of all, to give people a choice.
Gazans were closed in.
And any other place, including in arenas of battle, I mean, whether it's Ukraine or Syria or any other place, people could leave.
Gaza was the only place where they locked them in.
We didn't lock them in.
They're locked in.
And what is wrong with giving people a choice?
Now, we've been talking, including over lunch, about some countries, I won't go into them right now, that are saying, you know, if Gazans want to leave, we want to take them in.
And I think this is the right thing to do.
It's going to take years to rebuild Gaza.
In the meantime, people can have an option.
The president has a vision.
Countries are responding to that vision.
We're working on it.
I hope we'll have good news for you.
We didn't lock him in.
Let's see how many ex-IDF generals have referred to Gaza as an open-air concentration camp.
Where does he come up with something like this?
And why didn't the press challenge him?
Well, that's a great question.
Why didn't the press challenge such a malicious lie?
I think one of the most malicious lies that's ever been told in the White House, and that's a very, very high bar.
Israel has put Gaza under siege for two decades, to the point where even cancer patients have been denied the permission to leave and get treatment over the years.
And this is long before October 7th.
So Israel locked people of Gaza in.
Egypt participated in that blockade, but it was led by Israel.
And now Netanyahu basically wants everyone to leave.
And he talks about them going to live somewhere else and then they can come back.
No, they don't want them to come back.
They want to permanently, ethnically cleanse Gaza.
And he talks about how there are other countries that are expressing a willingness to let in Palestinian refugees.
What countries are those?
Do you think Jordan, which already has a majority Palestinian population ruled by a monarchy that
have a
There's a lot of dissension.
There's a lot of unrest in Jordan.
Or Egypt, they want to bring in 2 million Palestinian refugees from Gaza.
So what is he talking about?
Other countries want to bring Palestinians in.
I think what he's talking about is we're trying to coerce other countries to accept Palestinians.
And we're threatening them and we're offering them enticements.
That's what he's talking about.
But this claim that Palestinians have been free to go wherever they want is just such a lie.
And that denial of freedom starts with the denial of their right to return to their own homes.
That's the majority of people in Gaza.
It's refugees and the descendants of refugees who come from homes that Israel stole from them inside Israel starting in 1948.
And many Palestinians in Gaza still have the keys to those homes, whether those homes still stand or not.
That's where they come from.
And that's where Israel's never allowed them to return.
And now, to continue that ethnic cleansing process, wants them to go somewhere else.
That's been Israel's plan all along.
That's why we still have mass murder being carried out inside Gaza, and not a ceasefire in which hostages are going home.
It's because Israel wants to continue its ethnic cleansing project, and it has President Trump's full support.
When I was in college in the late 60s and early 70s, the issue of the right of return...
Was a hot button.
Did any of them get the right to return under a more benign Israeli leadership, or have all Israeli prime ministers since 1948 precluded and prevented the return?
The most accommodating Israeli leaders in peace talks with Palestinians have been the labor governments of Yitzhak Rabin, Ehud Barak, and then Ehud Olmer.
None of them were willing to accept responsibility and even apologize to Palestinians to acknowledge the theft of their homes and ethnic cleansing in 1948.
None of them.
I mean, this came up in the discussions in the Oslo years.
In the talks of the early 2000s and in the future talks between Mahmoud Abbas and Ehud Omer in the mid-aughts.
And no Israeli government, even the most far-reaching one from an Israeli perspective, was willing to acknowledge Israeli responsibility for the Nakba.
Which for Palestinians, I mean, this is the start of their suffering.
That's why the Nakba, you know, it's called the catastrophe because this was their nightmare.
Now, of course, they're living through a brand new one.
And I've always, you know, by contrast, the Palestinian leadership.
Led by Yasser Arafat and then Mahmoud Abbas.
If you go and talk to the participants, if you read the documents from that period, they were willing to accept some sort of symbolic gesture, a token number of refugees being allowed back in.
But otherwise, they were essentially willing to give up the right of return.
They just wanted some acknowledgement, token acknowledgement of the suffering and just the fact of the ethnic cleansing that began in 1948.
Even these far-reaching so-called Israeli leaders who were willing to talk peace with Palestinians weren't willing to do that.
How far to the other extreme is Netanyahu?
Does he embrace the most extremist elements in Zionist ideology?
Well, over the years he's sometimes showed that he stakes a middle ground between himself and the ultra-extremists.
But at this point, Who is he allied with in his government?
It's the ultra-extremists.
What is the policy he's carrying out in Gaza?
It's the ultra-extremist policy.
That's why when he renewed the genocide in Gaza by relaunching a military campaign, some of the ultra-extremists who had resigned from his cabinet rejoined because they were so thrilled with his policy.
So whatever his own personal views are, I don't think he's personally as religiously extreme as some of the people in his cabinet, but in terms of policies, he's carrying them out right now.
Yes. Isn't the essence of Zionism an ethnic superiority of such magnitude it justifies the slaughter of lesser peoples?
Yes, it is now, certainly.
Now, has it always been that way?
Well, there were Zionists a long time ago, more than 100 years ago, people like Ahad Ayam, who wanted to have a Jewish national home, a place that could somehow preserve and honor.
I mean, that's the problem.
The problem comes when you start to exert your rights at the expense of someone else.
And then in the case of Palestine, do it on someone else's land.
I mean, that's the problem.
With Palestine.
But Zionism didn't always mean what it means today, which absolutely is ethnosupremacism.
You know, a funny story.
My great-grandfather, Joseph Levy, who was killed by the Nazis, he was friends with one of the most fanatic Zionist leaders, Jabotinsky.
And Jabotinsky was honest, though, about Palestine.
He said the Zionism is a colonizing adventure.
And therefore, it stands or falls by the question of armed force.
And he explained, basically, that we want this land, Palestine, but the people there don't want us.
And people who live in a land are naturally going to defend it from foreign invaders.
And Jabotinsky believed so much in the cause of Zionism that he was willing to fight and to, you know, ethnically cleanse, which is exactly what happened.
And I wonder, though, you know, for Jews like my great-grandfather, did he even know that there were already Arabs in Palestine?
Because if you're, you know, a Jewish person in Eastern Europe at the time, I think you have limited access to information.
And at the time, you know, facing persecution, even before the Holocaust, but certainly during it, obviously, the appeal of a Jewish national home is that much stronger, someplace to protect you.
I understand it.
But I just wonder about so many Jews from that period, whether they even knew, like Jabotinsky did, that there were already Arabs there.
And I suspect that, you know, I like to hope at least that if they did know that, they wouldn't have supported the colonizing project that Zionism has become.
How'd you find out about your grandfather?
My great-grandfather.
This was your great-grandfather.
How'd you find out about him?
Well, you know, so it's a long story, but, you know, he was killed in the concentration camps.
He was a physician, like my father is.
And when he got there, we know this from a survivor who witnessed all this.
When he got to the camps, one of the first questions they asked is, are there any doctors here?
Because we're going to give you a position treating your fellow concentration camp prisoners.
And so my great-grandfather put up his hand.
And the doctors, of course, were among the first people that the Nazis exterminated because they didn't want any doctors around to help keep people alive.
So we know that story from someone who witnessed this.
And we know that he was friends with Jabotinsky because...
Of people who survived from that time.
And also, I actually owe my existence, quite possibly, to Jabotinsky's movement, Beitar.
Because when my father, Gabor, was an infant, the Jews of Budapest were in the Jewish ghetto.
And conditions there were very tough.
So my grandmother, Judy, took my father, Gabor, to the Swiss protected glass house, which was a place of refuge.
In Budapest for Hungarian Jews.
And at first, it was so overcrowded that she wasn't let in.
But when people from Beitar, which is Jabotinsky's movement, found out that my grandmother was there with my father, who was then an infant, they actually got her in.
So it's quite possible I wouldn't be alive if not for Beitar.
And funnily enough, Beitar just called, just issued a statement of enemy Jews.
And I'm on that list saying that we shouldn't be allowed back into Israel.
Oh my God, you can't make this stuff up.
So there's a historical irony.
That movement saved my father quite probably from the Nazi genocide.
But today we're on opposing sides of the current genocide.
Do you think Donald Trump understands any of this history?
You know the man, Judge.
I mean, he's made some fair-minded statements in the past about Palestine.
I recall him saying that it was Netanyahu who didn't want a deal, not Abbas.
So that shows to me he has the capacity.
To be somewhat objective on this.
But if you look at his statements now, I mean, with Netanyahu, he basically, Trump endorsed the extremist Israeli view that Israel should never have withdrawn its illegal settlers from the Gaza Strip.
He said that, you know, Israel owned the Gaza Strip.
Right, right.
That was ridiculous when he said that.
Yeah. And if he was referring to they should never have withdrawn, he articulated it in a way that made him sound like a dope.
Yeah. Yeah, I mean, but you know him, Judge.
I mean, I'd love to hear your insight on this.
Like, what do you think is going on?
I have never discussed this issue with him, and he deeply and profoundly frustrates me because of the assaults on civil liberties, particularly free speech and due process.
I pull my hair out, particularly where I work during the day, where his behavior is...
It viewed more charitably than those of us who believe that the Constitution means what it says would view it.
But I have not discussed these things with him.
I've been told by people who know him that he has a personal real dislike of war.
That actually he doesn't like war.
Why does he stop these two wars?
He could call up Netanyahu tonight!
I know.
Listen, in that statement that you and I have viewed, where he's standing in, well, Chris Runnet, where he's in Air Force One on Sunday night saying this is Joe Biden's war.
Do you have a reaction to Russia's poem Sunday attack?
I think it was terrible, and I was told they made a mistake, but I think it's a horrible thing.
I think the whole war is a horrible thing.
I think the war is...
For that war to have started is an abuse of power.
You said they made a mistake.
You were told they made a mistake.
Do you mean it was unintentional?
They made a mistake.
I believe it was...
Look, you're going to ask them.
This is Biden's war.
This is not my war.
I've been here for a very short period of time.
This is a war that was under Biden.
He gave him billions and billions of dollars.
He should have never allowed...
If he had any...
Brain, which he didn't have and doesn't have and now it's being proven.
He wouldn't have allowed that war to start.
I would have absolutely not.
That war would never have taken place.
But remember this.
This is Biden's war.
I'm just trying to get it stopped so that we can save a lot of lives.
They happen to be Ukrainian and Russian lives.
But all I want to do is get it stopped.
It's his war now, isn't it?
Exactly. Exactly.
I mean, he's making all fair points, and that would be fair if he wasn't in government right now.
But he happens to be not only in government, but the president of the United States.
So he speaks as if he's powerless.
I think what he's basically saying there, I think that statement is a reflection of his own frustration having a divided cabinet, and he doesn't really know how to manage that.
He's got people telling him, don't listen to Steve Wyckoff.
Don't listen to Putin.
Keep this war going.
And he's got Wyckoff flying over to Russia, having a nice meeting with Putin.
And Wyckoff is saying, yeah, I think we can make a deal with this guy.
And Trump doesn't quite know yet what he wants to do, because it will cost him to make a peace deal.
He's going to get a lot of heat from not only members of his own cabinet, but the bipartisan uniparty in Washington.
And I think he's kicking the can down the road.
He just doesn't want to spend the political capital on making peace.
That's difficult.
So I think what you're hearing there is his frustration.
And blaming Biden is a very convenient foil.
Yeah. Yeah.
One last clip for you.
The new...
She's just reprehensible.
The new State Department spokesperson, Tammy Bruce.
Here's her latest nonsense, number 18. These are people who are the best in the world.
Ambassador Whitcoff clearly is one of the best people in the world for negotiating and for dealing with bad actors and getting peace and ceasefires.
Did I miss something?
Was Whitcoff nominated by Trump and confirmed by the Senate, or did they just give him the honorary title of ambassador?
Well, listen, Judge, I'm glad he's flying around the world and not Marco Rubio.
He does seem to be relatively, compared to everybody else, fair-minded and trying to get a deal.
He got a ceasefire deal in Gaza, which he simply, unfortunately, walked away from.
There was recently an account in the New York Times that basically talks about how Trump's hostage envoy, Adam Boehler, made good progress with Hamas.
He met with Hamas.
They had long talks.
They talked about not only this current crisis, but the overall Israel-Palestine conflict, which is what we want to have happen if we want to resolve conflicts as we speak to adversaries.
But Israel sabotaged the agreement.
They especially sabotaged it because Bowler was getting close to a deal to free Adon Alexander, the Israeli-American.
And Trump wanted to have him freed as a win to the American people to say, look, I got this American freed.
And when Netanyahu got wind of that, he basically blew up the talks.
He knows all this, but he let that happen and has gone along with it.
And that's just too bad.
I hope he won't walk away from his own achievements when it comes to making peace with Russia.
I wish he would apply the same energy to Gaza as well, because Gaza is a...
At least the people of Ukraine have an army.
People of Gaza, they're defenseless.
Every day there's a new atrocity.
I have the same hopes you do, but I will add one more.
That Max Blumenthal starts showing up at the State Department briefing so he can really interrogate her.
Yeah. Yes, that'd be great.
I second that.
I wonder if they'll let him back in after his last trip at the State Department.
Oh, that's right.
He's probably on some kind of a list.
Him and I forget it.
Was it Samuel Arion?
I forget.
Sam Husseini, yeah.
Yeah, Sam Husseini.
Aaron, a pleasure.
Very touching, the story about your great-grandfather, and a pleasure to chat with you.
Thank you very much, my dear friend.
Look forward to seeing you again soon.
From one genocide to another, unfortunately.
We're currently living through one right now.
Thank you, Judge, for having me.
Of course.
Wonderful, wonderful human being.
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