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April 16, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
24:18
COL. Lawrence Wilkerson : Are Neocons Ascendant?
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Hi, everyone.
Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Thursday, April 17th, 2025.
My dear friend, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson joins us now.
Colonel Wilkerson, a pleasure, my dear friend.
I have a lot of questions to ask you, principally about the ascendancy of neocons in the Trump administration, but to make our way there.
Do you think Trump is serious about negotiations with Iran?
We know that Mr. Witkoff, the chief negotiator, came back from the first round and said, looks like we're making a lot of progress.
They're going to have enriched uranium for their domestic purposes, but none for military purposes.
And then he did 180 after somebody whispered into his ear.
I think this is, I hope it is, although it's clumsy and inexpert and almost awkward, an attempt to build more and more pressure and to keep the Iranians guessing, if you will.
I don't think it works with the Iranians, but I can understand how someone who doesn't know them at all, and that goes for Whitcoff and Trump.
In fact, it goes for his entire administration.
It's something that they might think would work.
It's something that might work in a real estate deal in New York, for example.
I think we're still serious, and I'm hearing from my Iranian contacts that they're still serious, and they're not, for now at least, paying much attention to the rhetoric because they thought the first meeting showed potential.
We're not going to Rome, as I understand it.
We're going to go back to Muscat, back to Oman this Saturday.
And the foreign minister, Iranian foreign minister, Arachi, has been to Moscow, debriefed them, I'm sure, and gotten advice from Putin and others, Lavrov, for example.
And they're ready to go on.
And I just think this is more attempts to build pressure.
And the cacophony coming from the administration...
It's not just a part of that.
It's a part of, I think, this is a very divided administration, ultimately, and your comment about neoconservatives goes right to the point.
Right, right.
I wonder how your Iranian friends believe the Iranian government perceives Witkoff, largely ignorant of history, largely ignorant of geopolitics, and a Zionist.
I'm not hearing that.
My contacts are really old, except for one.
I'm hearing they're reasonably satisfied with the opening and with what is prospective for the second meeting and subsequent meetings.
Now, that may be...
Perturbated a bit by their security council and others talking and the RGC leaders and such talking about all this brouhaha coming out of Netanyahu.
But they're so accustomed to this kind of thing coming out of Netanyahu that it kind of rolls off their back like water off a duck.
Right, right.
You mentioned that the Iranian foreign minister was in Moscow.
Didn't he meet not only with President Putin, but with President Xi?
Yes, as I understand it.
Yes, and that was planned.
I mean, that's got to send a message to Marco Rubio and Donald Trump and company.
Maybe it goes in one ear and out the other with Trump, but the others have to understand the significance of it.
But it's also the Iranians speaking to those people with whom they dealt, diplomacy-wise, on the JCPOA.
It's not just the new developments with Russia and China pretty much backing Iran.
To what extent, we don't know, but at least the Russians have a sort of a security agreement with them.
But it's also, it's protocol.
It's what they should do because they were in the original group that negotiated the JCPOA.
effective can Wigseth, I conflated their two names, can Whitcoff be...
When he, when the United States issues threats like this, Chris, cut number nine.
He's dead serious that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon.
He's said that for 20 years.
He's been consistent.
That is clear.
But he's also dead serious that if we can't figure this out at the negotiating table, then there are other options to include my department to ensure that Iran never has a nuclear bomb.
We hope we never get there.
We really do, Maria.
But what we're doing with the Houthis and what we're doing in the region, we've shown a capability to go far, to go deep, and to go big.
And again, we don't want to do that.
But if we have to, we will to prevent the nuclear bomb in Iran's hands.
Ever worked with a Secretary of Defense who called the Pentagon my department?
Well, he said one thing there that was quite interesting and almost brought a smile to my face.
With what we're doing to the Houthis, the Iranians saw what you're doing to the Houthis, see what you're doing to the Houthis, and they realize that it's quite ineffectual.
Right. We have that from Pepe Escobar who was there.
Yes. Now, I've been asking this of everybody to whom I've shown the clip.
Why didn't Maria Bartiromo say, well, wait a minute, Mr. Secretary, how is it that the Israelis can have a nuclear weapon?
If the Iranians can't.
How would he have answered that?
He would have said what any American would say.
I mean, it would have been coming out of my administration, too.
George W. Bush's administration, and even H.W. Bush, he would have said, Israel is in a dangerous place, and if they even admitted that Israel had nuclear weapons, because our policy was not to admit it, we could neither confirm nor deny.
Your assertion is the political thing we would say back, the diplomatic thing we would say back.
But if you scratch them hard, they would say they live in a very difficult region.
It's a very dangerous region.
And there are all kinds of people around.
And Iran is the greatest state sponsor of terrorism on the face of the earth.
Never proved that.
Ever, ever proved that.
But we said that.
We said that in my administration.
I called the White House one time and said, why are we saying this when they aren't?
I said the same thing about Cuba.
And my contact in the White House, the Deputy Chief of Staff who managed the State Department, would say things to me like, Larry, you know it's all political.
You know it's all political.
Okay. I'm going to play a clip for you and tell you ahead of time what I'm going to ask you at the end of the clip.
Is this Joe Biden's war or is it Donald Trump's war?
This is the president on Palm Sunday night flying up from Mar-a-Lago.
Do you have a reaction to Russia's Palm 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.
Isn't it Donald's Trump war?
Mr. President, the moment you started trying to get it stopped, it became your war.
He can stop it with a phone call, can he not?
No way you can escape that.
Now, there are truly four huge components to this.
And Witkoff, at least, I think, has acknowledged this, at least in terms of the superficial aspects of it.
One, you have to settle the issue of inter-Ukrainian relations.
That is to say, those Ukrainians who, and there are many.
Want to stay affiliated with Russia, want to stay conversant with the Russian language and history, teach their children the Russian language and history, and those who don't, vehemently don't, some of whom are Nazis, just as Putin has said.
The second thing you're going to do is settle the situation between Ukraine and Russia as state entities.
The third thing you've got to do is settle the relationship that is now really raw between the autocratic, almost dictatorial EU, dominated by Eastern Europeans, especially Eastern Europeans,
and Ukraine and Russia.
And the third thing you've got to do, which is the big thing you've got to do, and do it while you're doing all these other three, is you've got to establish a new relationship between Moscow and Washington, which is what Trump wants to do.
But you've got to get through those three earlier ones, torturous ones, before you can get to the other one.
Now you can work simultaneously, but that takes a really skilled diplomat.
That takes a Henry Kissinger.
I don't like Henry that much, but I'll say that because Henry was a really skilled diplomat.
But this is not a game for amateurs.
Colonel, General Kellogg's proposal to divide up Ukraine the way Germany was divided up by the Allies in 1945 seems to indicate that he doesn't understand any...
Of the conditions that you just laid down.
You're absolutely right.
And I would get rid of him very fast.
I don't know.
Maybe they're keeping him around as an awkward suggestion guy.
Could President Trump possibly have approved that almost absurd suggestion?
So absurd it wasn't condemned.
It was ignored.
Trump befuddles me from time to time, if not all the time.
He doesn't seem to have a sheet of music from which he's singing.
He's just making it up as he goes along.
There are some fundamental things he wants to do.
I think ending the war in Ukraine is one of them.
I don't know what he wants to do with regard to Southwest Asia and Gaza and Israel because it's a disaster right now, a total disaster.
Israel is falling apart.
And as it falls apart, it's talking about taking on Iran, which is preposterous.
So I don't know where Trump is coming from on all of these critical issues.
Most of all, I don't know where he's coming from on the biggest issue of all.
And that is one that he put on the table himself.
And Putin and Xi have willingly acknowledged and want to talk about.
And that's this very dangerous nuclear arms race that we have started and are going to put $1.7 trillion towards over the next seven or eight years.
I can't even get my head and my arms around that and where it could possibly lead to.
If Ritter were here, he would say it leads us many steps, not one step, many steps closer to...
Universal annihilation.
You're right.
We should be going the other way.
Do you accept the New York Times article apparently based on leaks?
Leaks with which Hegseth apparently resulted in firing three people very close to him.
I don't know if he actually fired them, but they were frog-marched out of the Pentagon.
That Hegseth and Gabbard He advised the president to overrule Prime Minister Netanyahu, and much to Netanyahu's chagrin, not to authorize an attack on Iran.
Do you accept that?
Well, I think that was the Julian Barnes, Maggie Haberman, Eric Schmidt article.
And they sing, as I learned to my great chagrin during the Bush administration, George W. Bush administration, the administration's tone in ways that just rival the greatest symphony on earth.
So if they wanted some consternation, if they wanted some confusion to increase pressure on Iran, they got it.
And they got it from the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal and the Jerusalem Post also.
But I think this is just another sign.
I don't think it's that.
I think it's another sign of rank amateurism.
I don't think they can control their own message.
Your colleague and our friend, Colonel McGregor, says that Iran Has an enormous amount of missiles and enough to annihilate and demolish Israel in a day.
Does the United States understand that?
I don't think so.
I think that we've...
I listened to a gentleman this morning who was talking about another issue, but he used a great phrase.
They've swallowed their own Kool-Aid.
They've swallowed their own propaganda.
They've propagandized so much.
They've spattered words all across the screens, so to speak, so much that they believe what they're seeing.
And what they're seeing is not the truth.
What they're seeing is an abject falsehood, and it's going to cost the lives of a lot of people if they act on that falsehood.
And Israel, Israel is so weighed down, Judge, right now.
I go through Haretz every day.
That's the only paper I trust for Israel.
I look at the others, but Haaretz is the one I trust.
And they have so many elements of their security complex right now in bitter disputes with other elements of the security complex.
But the unifying factor is they all detest Bibi Netanyahu, and they wish he would get God.
Israel has real problems right now.
And to take on another problem the size of the Iranians?
It would just be tantamount to suicide.
Colonel, I want to switch gears to what I believe and what I think you agree is a very serious domestic problem, and that has to do with free speech in due process.
Here is a clip from a town hall meeting conducted by Senator Charles Grassley, the president pro tem of the Senate, the chair of the Senate.
Judiciary Committee, a senator for 40 years, a conservative Republican but not a fanatic and a rational person.
Watch what his own constituents said to him.
We would like to know what you, as the people, the Congress, who are supposed to reign in this dictator, what are you going to do about it?
These people have been sentenced to life imprisonment in a foreign country with no due process.
Our government cannot do anything.
The Constitution, the framers of the Constitution, said that every...
Person, not citizen, every person within the jurisdiction of the United States has due process.
So how dangerous is it when a human being can be swept up off the streets and two days later is in a hellhole in another country and the United States government is saying, oh, too late, we can't get you out?
This, Judge, is probably the most disturbing thing about Trump.
Right now for me and a lot of my friends too.
And it's not just that.
It's what he's doing to Harvard or trying to do to Harvard.
What he's already done to Columbia, although I understand from conversations this morning, Columbia suddenly grew some courage and maybe pushing back as Harvard is.
And what he's trying to do essentially to education...
All across the country.
And to the legal community.
And to the legal community.
Yes, absolutely.
They're a part of this.
And the judges are a part of this.
The judges who issue these injunctions or these stays or whatever the proper legal term is for them.
You know, don't do this.
Don't do this.
Wait for this.
I've got to decide.
And he just goes ahead and does it.
Or the administration just goes ahead and does it.
There's no respect for judges.
No respect for law.
Period. Let alone the Constitution.
These are very, very dangerous times.
The ICE, what does Max Blumenthal call them?
Israel Censorship Group.
But the ICE folks posted on their website, Chris, I think you have this, our job is to prevent the transmission of illegal ideas.
How is the government under the First Amendment?
In a position, look, if it crosses the U.S. border illegally, it's our job to stop it.
People, money, products, ideas.
There is nothing in the world more powerful, Victor Hugo, than an idea whose time has come.
That idea is free speech and due process.
How are these people in a position in our government where they think they can interfere with ideas?
Customs and Border Patrol is a unique entity, Judge.
I got to see it up close and personal when we empowered them, partly under the Patriot Act, but also partly under a special dispensation for them to do new things at the borders and at international airports.
One of those new things was what they did to Scott Ritter, for example.
So it didn't die.
It's still there.
And Customs and Border Patrol has this...
Bureaucratic, almost, tendency to absorb new powers like that and go full bore with them.
Go at anything they can go at, any target.
We had businessmen crossing the border who, under what they call reasonable suspicion, not probable cause, they...
Confiscated the computer of and sent it off to Colorado to be analyzed.
This is a businessman coming back from Mexico to America and his computer has just gone for 30 to 45 days to be analyzed at a lab in Colorado.
Imagine how many angry people there were.
You know how many terrorists we caught?
You know how many terrorists CPB caught?
Zero! They found a lot of child pornography.
Colonel, they stopped Max Blumenthal at Dulles, and the first question was whether or not he appeared on this program.
I don't doubt it.
And they held him for an hour.
Don't doubt it.
These are dangerous times, the Patriot Act and its progeny.
Should be vacated.
It's not going to happen under this administration because this president loves these authoritarian powers that the Congress gave to George W. Bush and were inherited by his successors.
And he seems to be expanding and deepening and making each of them more profound every day that goes by.
Well, ICE sent an email to a Boston lawyer, female lawyer.
Who specializes in representing immigrants, who was born in Boston, Massachusetts, USA, and told her to get the hell out of the country.
And then when she publicized this, they said, well, we sent it to you by mistake.
But we're dealing, some of it is ludicrous, but we are dealing with serious dangers to human freedom.
I mean, if these people prevent habeas corpus, Prevent the right of a detained human being to drag the jailer who's detaining him before a judge to justify the detainment.
A right expressly guaranteed to all persons, as that person just said in the Chuck Grassley clip, not just Americans.
A right guaranteed in Magna Carta back in 1215.
No freedom is safe.
I think you're right.
I think you're right.
Lincoln even said that when he suspended it briefly during the Civil War.
He didn't want to do it.
But you can argue that he had rationale for doing it.
We were, after all, going to kill millions of people.
Colonel, it's a pleasure.
No matter what we talk about, thank you for keeping your sense of humor and thank you for letting me pick your brain.
Can I just say one more thing?
Of course.
When I was watching Chuck Grassley there, my memory tells me he was the council that made a mess of Watergate.
Not Watergate, not the 9 /11 Commission, the Kennedy, the Warren.
The Warren Commission.
No, you're thinking of Arlen Specter.
No, Arlen Specter.
You're right.
But they look so much alike.
Yes. Yes.
Listen, I know Chuck Grassley very well.
We had many, many communications when he was chair of the Senate.
Well, I hope so.
But he's in a position to do something about it.
Yeah. If the Republicans in the Congress grew a backbone like the new president of Columbia University has, they could put a stop to all of this.
The Congress is not doing its job.
That's its purpose, and you know it's its purpose under the Constitution.
Yeah. Colonel, thank you very much, my dear friend.
A happy Easter to you and your family.
God love you, Colonel.
Same to you.
Take care.
Thank you.
Thank you.
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