May 6, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
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| Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. | |
| Today is Tuesday, May 6th, 2025. | |
| Ambassador Charles Freeman will be here with us for a minute, in just a minute. | |
| Is the Trump administration looking for an excuse for war against Iran? | |
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| Ambassador Freeman, good day to you, my friend. | |
| Thank you for coming on the show and thank you for accommodating my schedule, as you always are kind enough to do. | |
| I want to spend some time with you on this rather complex issue of Israel, Iran, the United States and the pressures, as you understand them, on Donald Trump. | |
| To engage in some sort of violent action against Iran. | |
| But first to the breaking news. | |
| This is now 24 hours old. | |
| But Prime Minister Netanyahu announced yesterday that the IDF would occupy Gaza. | |
| He also called up about 10,000 reservists. | |
| One of his generals said expect 30 to 50 percent not to show. | |
| How do you read all this, Ambassador? | |
| Well, the announcement about Gaza is a logical extension of the whole purpose that the Israelis have had there, which is to depopulate Gaza and reincorporate it into the state of Israel. | |
| Basically, that is what has been happening. | |
| And now they're openly admitting it. | |
| For many years, Israel has disregarded international law. | |
| The former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations just proposed that the United Nations be abolished. | |
| Various people in the Israeli political establishment have proclaimed the UN to be, quote, anti-Semitic, unquote. | |
| They have destroyed the UN Refugee Works Administration, UNRWA, which provided humanitarian assistance to Palestinian refugees, And so they have tightened the noose steadily, | |
| and now they seem to be prepared to engage in a final solution for Gaza, which will leave no Palestinians in place and resettle Gaza with Israelis. | |
| So this is any proof that you felt you didn't have about the Israeli enmity to the rule of law internationally should now be erased. | |
| It's clear that they've crossed the Rubicon on that. | |
| And do you expect the Western world, never mind Western, do you expect the whole world to just look the other way while the Israelis, I'm paraphrasing either Smotrich or Ben Gavir, mow the lawn and simply slaughter the Palestinians? | |
| I think there will be varied reactions. | |
| One of the most serious, in my view, is that by behaving in this lawless and cruel manner, Israeli Jews are placing in jeopardy Jews of other nationalities. | |
| I mean, they are fueling anti-Semitism and people in places like Britain and the United States are justly concerned that Jews in the United States and UK will face the sort of anti-Semitism they haven't faced for a century. | |
| And all because of the behavior of people who proclaim themselves to be the Jewish state representing all Jews. | |
| Which they don't. | |
| So the innocent, as usual, are going to be punished. | |
| Elsewhere, I think we've seen a clear trend toward the ostracism of Israel as a scofflaw rogue state that has no consideration for the lives of anyone other than its own people. | |
| And even there is inconsistent as this Order about Gaza shows, and as has been charged inside Israel, the Netanyahu government has chosen territory for the lives of Jewish hostages in Gaza. | |
| So I think we'll see a trend toward the ostracism of Israel accelerating. | |
| There are already some countries that don't accept tourists from Israel anymore. | |
| Others facilitate the prosecution of Israelis who appear to have committed war crimes during this long struggle with the Palestinians or in Lebanon or in Syria. | |
| And this is not a way to secure the future of the state of Israel in my view. | |
| Also, on this weekend, the same weekend in which he announced that the IDF would occupy Gaza Prime Minister Netanyahu threatened Iran, saying that it was because of Iran that the Houthis dispatched a missile which struck some buildings at the Ben-Gurion International Airport and resulted in shutting down the airport for a few hours. | |
| Where is this going to go? | |
| Well, we saw before that. | |
| Israeli drones apparently attempt to sink a relief ship in Malta, very far away from Israel. | |
| Since the Houthi Ansar Allah attack on Israel on the Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv, the Israelis have carried out airstrikes on Yemen, joining us in that. | |
| I don't think Israel has any compunctions at all about using force against anyone it considers to be unfavorable to it. | |
| In the case of Iran, Israel's been trying for decades to enlist the United States in a joint attack on Iran. | |
| Iran has, of course, prepared for such an attack. | |
| It's placed many of its weaponry caches on And its nuclear facilities deep underground, so much so that military experts now say that the only way you could be assured of taking out those facilities in Iran would be with a nuclear attack. | |
| I gather the Pentagon has looked into that and done the appropriate planning. | |
| I don't think the United States would cross that barrier, but I'm not so sure about Israel. | |
| Given its total lack of any regard for the lives other than its own people, it doesn't even really care very much, apparently, about the lives of Jews. | |
| So I think this is a very dangerous moment, and the administration is clearly, the U.S. administration is clearly split between those who, like Stephen Whitcoff, the president's friend and special envoy, To Iran as well as other places. | |
| And the Neocon contingent, which remains quite large in the administration, being denounced fairly or unfairly by right-wing agitator Laura Loomer. | |
| Some of them fired, some kept in office. | |
| Marco Rubio, who now has at least four or five hats, probably will be unable to do any of the jobs he's been assigned. | |
| Secretary of State, National Security Advisor, head of the U.S. Agency for International Development, the National Archivist, and so forth and so on. | |
| He is himself a notorious neoconservative and has advocated the use of force against Iran. | |
| So there's quite, I think the President, Mr. Trump, is quite whipsawed between widely divergent views at the moment. | |
| You know, I was on Dimitri Symes' show out of Moscow, The Great Game, last night, and they asked me if I thought that Marco Rubio had really changed his spots, so to speak. | |
| And I said, no. | |
| I said, he's doing what he has to do in order to keep his job, but to the extent that he has the president's ear every day. | |
| I mean, no one really knows what he's whispering into Donald Trump's ear, but... | |
| My guess is it's the neocon argument. | |
| Do you agree? | |
| Yes, I think that's pretty clear, although Marco Rubio does a very good job of trying to fade into the background when he's around the president in public. | |
| For example, during that atrocious meeting with Volodymyr Zelensky, you could see him trying to remain in the shadows rather than up front. | |
| I think he's behaving like a careerist. | |
| He has political ambitions. | |
| He ran for president before. | |
| He wants to keep hope on the possibility of running again, so he won't jeopardize his position. | |
| And he says things which are, frankly, a disgrace to the United States because he sees them as supporting his boss, President Trump. | |
| I want to get back to Prime Minister Netanyahu for a minute. | |
| The same weekend in which he threatened Iran, and the same weekend in which he announced that the IDF would occupy Gaza, he threatened President Erdogan of Turkey, saying that Mossad is telling him, I'm paraphrasing, he didn't use the word Mossad. | |
| He has reason to believe that the Turks are refinancing Hezbollah. | |
| Whether this is true or not, that he has reason to believe it, whether it is happening or not, what is the likely outcome of a threat by the Prime Minister of Israel against the President of Turkey? | |
| I'll make a number of comments. | |
| One is that it's almost as if Mr. Netanyahu is going out of his way. | |
| To create enmity to Israel by all of Israel's neighbors, including Turkey, which is an enormously powerful country and which has interests in Syria that now impinge on the Israeli rule of the air over Syria, Israeli bombing of Syria at will. | |
| Apparently, there have been close encounters between the Turkish Air Force and the Israeli Air Force in Syrian airspace. | |
| I don't know whether the Turks are aiding Hezbollah. | |
| Hezbollah is, of course, Shia. | |
| It has been a client of Iran, supported by Iran. | |
| Erdogan and Turkey are resolutely Sunni. | |
| Traditionally, they would not have supported Hezbollah. | |
| But Hezbollah performed a function for Iran. | |
| Which it can potentially perform for Turkey. | |
| And that is a forward defense against Israeli aggression. | |
| And the threat of Israeli aggression is obviously real and has to be prepared against. | |
| Ask the Lebanese. | |
| Ask the Syrians. | |
| Ask the Jordanians. | |
| Ask anybody in the region. | |
| Of course, the Houthis will join in that. | |
| Ask the Egyptians. | |
| Israel has started war after war. | |
| We've taken territory after territory and it's been completely ruthless in this regard. | |
| So Israel behaves like a sociopath and those in its reach do need to think about how to defend themselves. | |
| Israel is in a shambles economically, culturally, and politically. | |
| I'm going to guess that Netanyahu must think that a war, I don't mean a war against helpless Well, apparently he does. | |
| I mean, it's hard to explain the attacks on Lebanon, the seizure of Lebanese territory, bases in Lebanon, the expansion into Syria, the devastation of Syria from the air, or for that matter, the attacks on helpless... | |
| Palestinians in Gaza or in the West Bank in any other terms. | |
| The man is in power because there are wars going on under his auspices. | |
| And as long as the wars are going on, he has a certain immunity from domestic political pressure and legal charges, criminal charges against him. | |
| Do you find credible the... | |
| Washington Post piece that Mike Waltz was fired, not promoted as the vice president claims, to the East River on the Upper East Side of New York City where the UN is located, but fired because he was having secret conversations with Prime Minister Netanyahu about how to manipulate Donald Trump into war. | |
| I think that was undoubtedly part of the problem that he had, but it wasn't the only one. | |
| There was also... | |
| The use of signal as a means of communication with people in the cabinet. | |
| And, of course, Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor of The Atlantic, a well-known neoconservative, arch-neoconservative critic of Donald Trump. | |
| So I think Mr. Waltz was revealed as a closet previous opponent of the president. | |
| As someone acting in disregard of the president's will, and as someone who was advocating a war with Iran, which I don't think our president wants. | |
| I want to switch over to Ukraine, if I could, because of some rather startling comments that President Trump recently made. | |
| All this brings to mind... | |
| A phrase that you and I have used. | |
| I credit my friend Tom Woods with it. | |
| I don't know who originated it. | |
| But the phrase is, no matter who you vote for for president, you end up with John McCain. | |
| But you'll see why I'm saying this, Chris, without any introduction at all. | |
| Cut number nine. | |
| The fact is that Putin is a war criminal. | |
| He's killed thousands and thousands of people. | |
| And he has made one thing clear. | |
| He wants to reestablish what was part of the Soviet Empire, not just a peace. | |
| He wants all of Ukraine. | |
| That's what he wants. | |
| And then you think he'll stop there? | |
| Do you think he'll stop if he takes Ukraine? | |
| What do you think happens to Poland? | |
| What do you think of Belarus? | |
| What do you think happens to those NATO countries? | |
| Absurd, isn't it? | |
| Well, you know, I think it's quite amazing that we've conducted an entire war. | |
| By attributing motives to our enemy that our enemy doesn't have. | |
| But former President Biden says he's made it very clear he wants all of Ukraine. | |
| He's done no such thing. | |
| Putin has never advocated that. | |
| In fact, he's been quite cautious. | |
| He did not launch a war. | |
| He called it a special military operation precisely because he wanted to limit it. | |
| And we've gone over what the Russian demands are. | |
| The incorporation of Russian-speaking areas, first in Ukraine, now in Russia because they were not safe in Ukraine. | |
| The neutrality of Ukraine, a broader discussion of architecture that would reassure Russians against the threat from NATO and NATO against the threat from Russia in Europe. | |
| Nothing in there about taking all of Ukraine. | |
| And he would be insane to try to take all of Ukraine because Western Ukraine… He's virulently anti-Russian, and it would be a great mistake. | |
| I don't think he'd make that. | |
| So this was all really, really quite nonsensical. | |
| I noticed that President Trump in that clip didn't answer these questions. | |
| Well, that clip was from the Biden-Trump debate a year and a half ago. | |
| Here's President Trump two days ago on the very same topic, I'm sorry to say, saying the very same thing. | |
| Cut number 10. Ukraine, there's been discussions they will have to give up some of the land. | |
| Russia will have to give up all of Ukraine because that's what they want. | |
| All of Ukraine, meaning they wouldn't keep any of the land that they've claimed? | |
| Russia would have to give up all of Ukraine because what Russia wants is all of Ukraine. | |
| And if I didn't get involved, they would be fighting right now for all of Ukraine. | |
| Russia doesn't want the strip that they have now. | |
| Russia wants all of Ukraine. | |
| And if it weren't me, they would keep going. | |
| There's your answer. | |
| What nonsense into his ears now? | |
| Well, it's the same people, the neoconservatives. | |
| This is their thesis. | |
| And by the way, they've sold that thesis very effectively in Europe, so much so that the Europeans have no peace proposal. | |
| They have only proposals for further militarization of this issue. | |
| And relief forces that the Russians would, I think, attack immediately if they were to appear in Ukraine. | |
| So this is a continuity. | |
| It's exactly what you said. | |
| We got John McCain again. | |
| But it's dangerous if the president is thinking this way. | |
| I never heard him say anything like this before the clip. | |
| Chris had to play it several times to make sure we heard it correctly. | |
| I didn't watch Meet the Press. | |
| I didn't listen to it on the radio, as I often do. | |
| But there he is. | |
| He seemed out of it, to be honest with you, Ambassador, as he was saying that. | |
| I have to say that as I watch his public appearances, I've been more and more concerned about the effects of age. | |
| But I think pretty clearly he's been captured on this issue, at least for the moment. | |
| Of course, he's mercurial. | |
| He changes from hour to hour. | |
| So perhaps tomorrow he'll say something quite different. | |
| But he just mouths the pure neoconservative line with great assurance. | |
| How close are we to a war against Iran? | |
| That depends on the outcome of negotiations, which are proceeding by fits and starts, in part because the negotiator, Mr. Whitcoff, seems to be a reasonable man who actually listens to the other side and tries to come up with a peaceful resolution of the issues. | |
| But then when he goes home to Washington, or back to Washington, He is subjected to extreme pressure from pro-Israeli sources. | |
| And the Israelis are demanding everything. | |
| They want the complete end of any nuclear program, peaceful or otherwise. | |
| In Iran, they want all their Iranian missiles destroyed. | |
| They want Iran to agree not to mount a defense at distance through its relations with Hezbollah and so forth. | |
| They basically want to reduce Iran to the level they've reduced Syria to. | |
| That is a country with sovereignty in name, but not in fact. | |
| And there's no way the Iranians will agree to that, and I'm sure Mr. Witkoff quite understands that. | |
| But he's being whipsawed, too, like the president. | |
| One last clip, and I'm sorry to keep going back and forth between Iran and Ukraine, but here's Donald Trump on Ukraine before he was elected. | |
| It should have never happened. | |
| I will have that war settled between Putin and Zelensky as president-elect before I take office on January 20th. | |
| I'll have that war settled. | |
| People being killed so needlessly, so stupidly, and I will get it settled and I'll get it settled fast before I take office. | |
| The right attitude, for sure. | |
| But again, we have a problem in that in order to succeed in a negotiation, you have to have... | |
| A realistic understanding of the motives and the position of the other side. | |
| And it's become quite clear that President Trump has been led astray on that issue. | |
| He thinks the issue is a ceasefire, but it's much bigger than that. | |
| And wars have purposes. | |
| And both Ukrainians have a purpose, which is the recovery of territories they've lost and the subjugation of Russian speakers to Ukrainian speakers. | |
| And Russians have motives, which I've described. | |
| Neither side would gain from a ceasefire. | |
| Ambassador Freeman, thank you very much for your time and for your analysis, and thank you for letting me go back and forth and back and forth between Iran and Ukraine. | |
| I found this a fascinating conversation, for which I am deeply grateful. | |
| Thank you. | |
| Of course. | |
| We'll see you again next week. | |
| Coming up later today at 2 o 'clock, this afternoon, Colonel Douglas McGregor. | |
| At 3 o 'clock, Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski. | |
| At 4 o 'clock, Aaron Maté. |
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