All Episodes
Previous Next
April 28, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
25:45
LtCOL. Karen Kwiatkowski : Does Trump Lead or Follow?
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Hi, everyone.
Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Tuesday, April 29th, 2025.
Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski joins us now.
Colonel, thank you very much for your time.
It's always a pleasure to be with you.
What do you think scares Donald Trump?
I don't know.
I think, you know, I would like to say my first response would be embarrassment.
It turns out he's hard to embarrass.
He's very hard to embarrass, so it's probably not that.
I think he wants to be right, and he wants to be told that he's right.
So if he's told that he's wrong, he doesn't like that.
He reacts badly, whether that's fear or anger.
It's kind of in the same category.
Is he afraid of the Zionist lobby and the Zionists around him?
I'm torn, actually, because some of the things that he does tells me that he actually likes to bully them back.
You know, the way he hit up Netanyahu with his ongoing secret talks with Iran, that's a bully move.
And he did it publicly in order to kind of put Netanyahu in his place.
You know, he knew exactly the impact that that would have.
So he has that aspect.
But on the other hand, he has been extremely careful or activist in placing so many strong Zionist characters in his administration.
And in various places where some of them you don't even know why you would need particularly to have a Zionist there unless you valued them for, you know, just their service to country or whatever.
However, so did Biden, right?
And so did Obama.
So I don't know.
I think Trump is on par with Biden in terms of embedding Zionists.
Well, let's look at your column from last week and talk about our mutual friend and your former colleague, Colonel Daniel Davis.
Now, he was to have been appointed.
It's not clear to me if it was the National Security Council or the senior staff of Tulsi Gabbard.
Whatever it is, he's eminently qualified for it by intellect, by temperament, by professional military experience.
He's not a Zionist and he's not a neocon.
And they pulled out all the plugs to stop him.
Why would Trump?
Have withdrawn that nomination.
Actually, it wasn't even a nomination.
It didn't require a Senate confirmation.
Why would Trump have withdrawn the offer to hire him?
Yeah.
I'm not sure if it was Trump or Tulsi that did it.
You know, and Tulsi's a Zionist herself, so maybe she didn't want to fall on her sword on behalf of having a guy like Davis either advising her or on the NSC staff.
I think with dealing with Trump, too, I don't know what all is on his plate, but it's very clear that the man has a frenetic schedule.
He has an unusual ability to do so many things just one after the other.
In a situation like that, it is conceivable.
I don't know if this happened, but it's conceivable that he didn't know Dan Davis and he didn't really hear about it until after it was already pulled.
It's not clear how much control or, you know, involvement Trump is having in all of these lower-level appointments.
And the Congress has a lot of power, and that's who the Zionist lobby called.
That's who AIPAC made the calls to, was congressmen and senators to then put pressure on their friends in the administration to block, to eliminate Dan Davis as ever having any position there.
Chris reminds me that he was to be the deputy to Tulsi Gabbard.
I would imagine that something of that magnitude would have to be brought before Trump.
So they nominate this guy eminently qualified, and we both know him.
And then the Zionists go wild because he has referred to Netanyahu's behavior as a war crime and what he's doing with the IDF as genocide.
And then they pull his name.
And then he allows Mike Waltz to hire a woman by the name of Mirav Sarin.
Who is Mirav Sarin?
And why doesn't the public know about her?
And why should the public know about her?
Yeah, well, they don't know about her because AIPAC doesn't want the public to know about her, and neither does Congress.
Her newly assigned role is the Israel-Iran desk.
And why do we even have an Israel-Iran desk?
I mean, this is already...
What presupposing American interests have to do with that particular coupling?
And it shouldn't be that way in the NSC.
But anyway, that aside, that's the desk that she has.
And she has served the Israeli government in the past.
I think she has security experience working for Israel.
And then, of course, think tank type stuff.
And now she's here.
I'm not saying she's not qualified to do a job at the National Security Council.
Her background is, I think, very typical of a lot of the folks that are up there, think tanks, academia, and military.
But her military experience is not with the United States military.
And she's also, I believe, a dual citizen, as many American Jews have the opportunity to be.
That is a very distinctive aspect of her service to our country.
It went under the radar completely.
The Dan Davis thing, it was a whisper that Dan would be the deputy.
And immediately, an onslaught.
And it wasn't just like, oh, we don't think Dan will be good for this.
It was personal attacks.
It was lies being spread about his positions.
And, of course, you could view his podcast, you could read his record, look at his written material.
Chose bits and pieces to tell a story that was untrue about Dan because, above all things, he's an American patriot and totally would have been wonderful as Tulsi's deputy.
And I think, actually, the deputy job is something that APEC is concerned about because there's no doubt, if you remember how hard it was for Tulsi to get through the confirmation process, and she's a Zionist.
There's no doubt.
She is not...
Willing to say, I put Israel first.
She'll say that.
And she still had a tough time.
And the reason is, of course, is Tulsi has a great deal of military experience in Iraq.
She understands how things work.
She's extremely smart and she's extremely grounded.
So they don't want somebody like that at the National Security Council.
They don't want somebody like that advising Trump as the last voice Trump hears before he makes a national security decision.
They do not want that.
And in that...
And because they've already kind of injured Tulsi in some ways and tried to kind of put her in a corner, she may be targeted for replacement at some time in this current Trump administration.
And if that was the case, they definitely want to have their guy in place, not Dan Davis.
But this woman, Marav Sarin, is a joint...
A United States Israeli citizen, and she fought for the IDF.
And now she supposedly runs whatever the hell this is.
What is it?
The Iran-Israel desk at the National Security Council.
So when Mike Waltz puts all of his advisors around the table so that they can come to a consensus so that Mike can advise the president, this lady...
With divided loyalties between the United States and Israel, and you can imagine what she thinks about Gaza, is one of them.
Yeah.
And actually, I don't think they're divided loyalties.
I think it's very clear her loyalties are to Israel, because most people in this country who are loyal to Israel, they see loyalty to America as much the same thing.
Unlike Americans, who don't have, we have a single loyalty, we don't see a secondary Citizenship, it doesn't apply to most people.
But for dual citizens of Israel and the United States, they really see it as one.
They see it as one loyalty.
And on top of that loyalty, the embracing part of that loyalty is to Israel.
So what you have now with Merov Sarin in there, you have not just, I would say, an Israeli communication corridor.
You have a spy.
I'm just going to say that.
We've fired people for far less than that.
And so we have that, and that must please Israel very much.
But we also have an influencer.
On the one hand, the very fact that the people in the National Security Council know that she's a dual citizen, that might actually be enough to temper some of what she says.
And in this case, you could say, oh, This is a good thing for Trump because Trump is saying on the surface, I love Israel.
Look how much I trust Israel.
I've got Saren in there helping us make our policy.
And he can say, that's a plus for me.
In fact, she is not to be trusted.
And I think many of the people at the National Security Council would not trust her, particularly to make a pro-America position.
Well, to what is Donald Trump loyal?
The United States or Israel?
Well, it really remains to be seen.
I like to think he is loyal to this country.
We all would.
I think he's a secular person.
And in that sense, you know, he's very different to me than someone like our current ambassador to Israel, Huckabee.
Who is very much a Christian Zionist.
And kind of his whole worldview and his whole political view and whatever the afterlife is going to be for him is very much framed in Christian Zionism.
And you cannot say that about Trump.
You can't say that about Netanyahu.
Netanyahu is not.
He's a secular Jew.
I think so the loyalty is not to Israel or something else.
I think he's loyal to Trump and to what he thinks is going to be his legacy.
And actually, he will have a legacy.
Obviously, he's already got a legacy.
But I think he's concerned about how it will be.
I think he wants to have his legacy be something that he came in big with a lot of promises and he made it happen.
I don't know if he's going to make it happen.
I know that his promises...
Well, Karen, he's funding a war in Yemen.
Oh, yeah.
He's funding a war in Gaza.
And he's funding a war in Ukraine and he claims to be a man of peace.
Yeah, yeah.
So he is a flawed human being, a flawed human being.
But I don't think he's driven by religious prescriptions about his policy.
I think it does connect to...
Him, his allies, his friends, who he trusts, and again, how it impacts his legacy.
Now, how much time does he have to sit and think about his legacy?
Like I said, I think it's a very frenetic schedule that he runs, and it's very, whether by personality or by strategy, there's so much going on that a lot of it is left undone.
And plus, we know Trump isn't well-informed, particularly in foreign policy.
I think he learned everything he knew about Ukraine between November of 2024 and his last meeting with Zelensky.
He did not come in prepared.
He didn't know why the war had started.
He didn't understand anything that was going on.
So his depth of knowledge about Israel and Israel's history may well be just as...
Bereft of content as his Ukraine policy was.
So let's hope he's learning.
So what does he do?
Listen to the people he speaks to last?
Well, we always say that about most of the presidents, so I would think that it's true there.
Now, with Trump, he has relatives who also influence him.
You know, deep, trusted people like Wyckoff, but he also has his son.
Son-in-law, I should say.
He has his son.
He has a son-in-law and his daughter, who he very much respects, and she's a converted, you know, Jew, and they are Zionists, I mean, both religiously and politically.
So it's not clear, you know, he's getting a lot of stuff that's not America first.
Let's talk about members of Congress.
None of them has read, or very few have read, the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution.
They don't understand the Constitution because they, with the exception of Thomas Massey and Rand Paul, and once in a while Mike Lee, they recognize no limits on their own power.
What are they loyal to?
I think most of them are corrupt.
I think APEC has dirt.
I think Mossad has dirt on most of them.
You know, it's very telling that we haven't heard about the Epstein Island records.
You know, they're so protecting of the people that make policy in this country.
I think most of them are, I hate to use the word dirtbags, but many of the people that represent us in government are dirtbags.
And so you manage them like you do other people who have things to hide, who are...
You know, prone to grift, like to make a good profit, like, you know, like Nancy Pelosi.
You know, you can't say, oh, Nancy Pelosi's a criminal.
Well, she is a criminal, but in her mind, she just likes to make a profit, you know?
So this is what you're dealing with.
And I think the, and not just Israel, other countries as well, if they can.
We can work to take advantage of and influence our Congress because Congress has things to hide.
Those in Congress who have nothing to hide, we can count them on the fingers of probably one or two hands.
Massey, Rand Paul, Mike Lee, perhaps.
Some of these guys, they're open.
They're working for the people of this country.
But the rest of them, they need money.
They want to have easy re-election campaigns, particularly in the House, which they have to deal with every two years.
They don't want bad stories to be told about them.
And look at the way they attacked Dan Davis.
How did they do that?
Well, they made up a bunch of stories and rumors and whisper campaign stuff, planted it in every one of the friendly media, which is all mainstream media serving New York and Washington and beyond.
And planted these stories and asked these questions and made it sound like he was some sort of, that he wasn't what he was, which is a highly decorated, experienced military officer, retired, who is incredibly balanced and reasonable and wise.
Exactly.
Exactly what we would want as a deputy to Tulsi Gabbard.
Chris, put up the full screen that you just...
Texted me about.
So this is from Kelly Vlahos.
This morning my friend Daniel Davis was smeared by Jewish insider Mark Levin and Laura Loomer and this afternoon he was dropped from consideration working with Tulsi.
They got what they wanted but this is the Trump administration's loss.
So.
You still there, Karen?
Yes, yes, I see that, yes.
This is exactly what it is.
And also, Mark Levine, or Levin, you know, he has a radio show.
And I guess it's broadcast all over the place.
And sometimes when I'm listening to the radio around here, I can't get away from it.
And he is remarkably...
He's manipulative of really conservative thinking, because he's conservative.
He writes a lot of these silly books on the Constitution.
Well, I mean, I don't know what you think, Judge, because you know the Constitution better than anybody, but Levin writes these books.
I am not a fan of Mr. Levin, and I'm sure he's not a fan of mine.
No, but you know the Constitution, and he simplifies it or tries to...
To kind of, you know, sell books and have like a shtick and everything.
And that's great.
But when it comes to Israel, of course, all of that is thrown out of the window.
And any normal listener gets that if they listen to his show on any regularity.
So, and I think it actually makes him less popular because so many people in this country understand exactly the harm that a pro-Israel, an Israel-first policy has done to our country, not just in the past, you know, 40,
50 years.
Let me ask you one or two more questions about Trump.
Does he share Netanyahu's vision of a greater Israel?
You know, from the river to the sea, from Damascus to Cairo?
Well, he seems to in his language, and I don't think Trump has paid much attention to the historical record.
I don't mean the ancient historical record.
I mean the lines of demarcations after the 1967 war.
I don't think Trump understands why they call huge swaths of...
Palestine, occupied territory.
I don't think Trump understands why they use that term.
He just accepts it, occupied territory.
It's not occupied, it's Israel.
Well, actually, it is occupied.
The whole world knows it, and a lot of work was committed to to establish something that might work.
You know, his understanding of a two-state solution, of course, the United States has never been serious because our Our policy about Israel and Palestine is written by the Israelis and has been for all these years.
But I don't think Trump is that familiar with it.
And to the extent that he would have been exposed to it in his previous lives, it would have been a very pro-Israel storyline.
I think with Trump, if it's comfortable, if it's working, he's not going to deal with it.
He's going to go on to something that he wants to change or fix.
So in many ways, Trump probably thinks what he has been told is working in Israel.
And it's not.
It's not working.
And if he had just two minutes to open his eyes, he would see that this war, this genocide, is not just isolating Israel, but it's destroying Israel politically and societally.
From within.
You know, they're drafting people now.
To send them to do what?
You know, people aren't showing up.
They're not responding.
They don't want to fight in the IDF.
It's not the world's most moral army.
And I think even Trump has kind of started to figure this out.
But I don't think he came prepared.
And this is a real problem because we the people don't pay close attention to what's influencing our foreign policy.
We just don't pay attention to it.
And then we're surprised when it goes south.
I'm going to play a clip for you of our friend Medea Benjamin confronting Itamar Ben-Gavir on Capitol Hill just a few minutes ago.
Chris, cut number 30. My religion,
my religion as a Jew, you are creating the anti-Semitism.
I never supported 9/11.
Baby killer, extremist, racist, and political.
We don't want to hear it.
We don't want to hear it.
Genocide. Get out of our house.
We don't want to hear it.
When he walked through Wall Street yesterday, the same thing happened except they shouted at him in Hebrew rather than in English.
I don't know what he's doing here.
He's probably reminding members of Congress of their debt to AIPAC.
Yeah, and also American Jews, you know, who are very much...
In many ways, harmed greatly by what Israel is doing because nobody likes that genocide.
People are increasingly becoming aware of how Israel is behaving and what they're doing.
And so American Jews are bearing a brunt of this because they are a minority in this country.
And, you know, Americans, we only pay attention to the headlines.
Well, guess what?
The headlines are bad for Israel and they show Israel is creating.
This is him in Lower Manhattan yesterday.
These folks are shouting in Hebrew and the cops are just keeping them apart.
But what is he doing?
Why is he parading through the streets with his big belly like that?
I think the Israeli government is in big trouble.
Netanyahu himself is in trouble.
The political alliance is in trouble in so many ways.
Israelis are tired of war.
Better than Americans do, Israel and the citizens of Israel understand that this war in Gaza has been lost.
They've known this for a long time.
They understand that their boys and their girls who are mandated to serve in the IDF are being ethically and mentally ruined in many ways by what they are having to do.
They understand their country and their economy has been isolated.
Precisely because of what their government is doing and really what they supported their government in doing.
But many of them are realizing it's enough.
It was wrong.
It's a mistake.
And we have not prevailed.
So we need a new path.
That's what the Israelis are saying.
Americans, we're not paying close attention to that.
But I'm sure...
These guys are in Washington to get money and to reassure maybe some of their American donors because it's not just the taxpayer collection that we make every year of $4 billion to Israel.
There is a huge billions of dollars is sent to Israel by loyal Jews.
I shouldn't say loyal Jews, but Jews that believe in Israel, that maybe believe in Zionism.
And that money is donated back.
So I'm sure that this money is drying up.
And of course...
We know Israeli shipping has been paralyzed for really since the duration of this genocide in Palestine.
So big problems in Israel.
And it's interesting that he's here.
And it's also interesting that we're hearing publicly the complaints, the very valid complaints that Americans have against the government of Israel.
I don't think I've ever seen anything like that before, ever.
Well, the government of Israel is collapsing, and the Israelis are miserable, and it's probably going to come to a head soon.
Karen Kwiatkowski, always a pleasure, my dear friend.
Thank you very much for joining us.
We'll look forward to picking your brain and reading one of your columns.
Colonel Kwiatkowski's column is at judgeknapp.com and elsewhere.
We'll look forward to it again next week.
Thank you, Karen.
Absolutely, Judge.
Thank you.
Of course.
Coming up at 4 o 'clock.
▲
Export Selection