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May 6, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
23:36
LtCOL. Karen Kwiatkowski : War In Washington.
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Hi, everyone.
Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Tuesday, May 6th, 2025.
Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski joins us now.
Colonel Karen, a pleasure, my dear friend.
Thank you for joining us.
I want to discuss at some length your fascinating piece at Judge Knapp and elsewhere called War in Washington.
This is, of course, a war for Donald Trump's ears and his heart and his head.
Let me start with this.
Has Trump essentially surrounded himself with sycophants with utter disregard for their lack of experience and qualifications?
Well, they are sycophants, many of them.
But also, they're people that see themselves as serving Donald Trump, chosen by Donald Trump.
Like Hedge Seth is a great example.
You know, he's not particularly...
As it's been pointed out by everybody on all sides, you know, his background doesn't necessarily prepare him for the job that he's in.
It's a very big job.
But he is loyal to Trump.
He owes Trump that he shares views that Trump shares and he serves Trump number one.
So whether that's a sycophant or someone Trump has chosen so that he can be sure.
What he says does not get diluted or go astray before it reaches the Pentagon.
So I don't know if that's a sycophant or not, because I think Trump has chosen him for a particular purpose.
And I think Rubio falls into a similar category.
Rubio is certainly a, I think of him as a neocon, very much Israel first.
But Rubio is submissive to Trump.
Okay, Rubio, I think Trump sees him as a person that is very, that Trump can control, that Trump does control.
So those guys, you know, are they sycophants or did Trump choose them because he can trust that they'll do what he says and that he can stay on top of it?
Some of the other appointees that he has, I don't think they trust him.
I guess if the piece in the Washington Post is correct, Mike Waltz went too far in trying to persuade Trump by confiding in and plotting with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu as to how to talk Trump into blessing an Israeli and supporting militarily,
of course, the blessing wouldn't be of any value, the blessing alone, an attack on Iran.
And that's what I'm getting at.
Are the neocons and the realists, and I'll call Vice President Vance a realist, Marco Rubio a neocon.
I don't know where Pete is.
The Pete Hexeth I know from my years working with him is a classic neocon.
However, if you read the transcript of that one signal chat, now it turns out there were 12, but if you read the transcript of the one that was transcribed and publicly released, He was urging restraint.
But whoever's in the camp, are these two camps vying for Trump's heart and soul?
We just finished an interview.
I'm sorry, it's too long a question, but I want to paint the background here and let you fill in the individuals.
We just finished an interview with Colonel Doug McGregor, your friend and colleague, and he informs that Trump had a day and a half meeting with a female Protestant minister who's his spiritual advisor.
And she just came back from Ukraine.
And she told him about all the suffering in Ukraine.
And he announced the release of 500 million more.
He asked the authority under the law to do this.
This is still the Joe Biden legislation, subject to the president's discretion, more money going to Ukraine, whereupon Colonel McGregor said, why didn't she talk to him about the suffering in Gaza?
But you get my point.
This is a non-military person lobbying him.
He spoke to her last.
And now he orders a major release of military arms.
Yeah.
Is there any way to run the presidency?
Well, no, it isn't.
And his spiritual advisor, I don't know where that came from, because we all know, and Trump has said himself, he's very much a secular guy.
I mean, if he has a religion, I think it's patriotism.
You know, he sees...
Or it's Donald Trump.
I don't know what his religion is, per se.
But he sees himself as having a very important role in history.
But I've never heard that he needed or wanted a spiritual advisor.
And this particular person that you're talking about, who is a Christian Zionist, and really kind of a pop, you know, not like, I don't know how well respected she is across the various religions.
You know, the community.
I don't know.
But yeah, he should not be listening to her for really anything other than let's pray together and then shut up.
But that's not apparently what's happening.
She's serving as a source of information to him.
And again, her role there is part of this war that I was kind of talking about.
And I think many people are observing this, you know, the Zionist fifth column in Washington.
Which is powerful and has been powerful, you know, AIPAC and all this other stuff.
But these, they understand very well how Trump works, how he operates, what he likes.
So I have no evidence at all, but I would suggest that we look into how this particular blonde-headed, very lovely Christian Zionist woman emerged as Trump's spiritual advisor.
Out of nowhere, basically.
And I would say that that is clearly part of the war between the neoconservatives and the Zionist fifth column, whatever you want to call them, to get Trump to do their bidding.
And certainly Waltz was found out, I think he was known to be this already, but he was certainly exposed as somebody working for...
Working for Netanyahu, basically, more than he was working for Donald Trump, more than he was certainly working for the American people.
So, you know, we see this on many fronts.
And the last act that Waltz did, even after his signal chat invitation to, you know, Jeffrey Goldberg, was to appoint Mayor of Sarin, the person I talked about last time, as the Iran, the Israel-Iran desk in the National Security Council, and she needs to go.
She needs to be sent back where she came from, whatever think tank it was.
You know, you can look at her biography, and it shows no expertise in Israel or Iran.
But her expertise is not in these particular areas of foreign or security policy vis-a-vis.
Iran and Israel.
That is not her expertise.
Her qualification is that she's a Zionist and she's well-connected.
That's what Walt left them with and that needs to be corrected because that was also part of the war against really American people and certainly against that part of Donald Trump that puts America first because there is still a part.
So you have the neocons and the realists.
I'm going to use the John Mearsheimer phrase to describe people who recognize the sovereignty of other countries and the legitimate security needs of other countries and the moral obligation to leave them alone.
The neocons, of course, want to expand American hegemony and Force feed an American version of democracy down the throats of people as disparate as Iraq and Afghanistan.
However, are there any non-Zionists?
Is there anybody in that crew arguing this is genocide?
Is the word genocide permitted to be spoken in the White House?
Does Donald Trump see pictures of babies without arms and legs because of what the IDF has done?
Babies.
He has seen pictures of what the...
Hamas did not do.
He's seen false pictures.
He's seen the dramatization of October 7th repeatedly, presented to him by Israel and by Netanyahu, by some of the neoconservatives in his administration.
He has seen those images, but there is no advocate for the population in Gaza.
There's no advocate there.
In his administration at all.
The realists are not advocates for Gaza.
You know, Vance is advocating, you know, let's just take care of America.
Let's pull back where we don't need to be.
Let's not engage in, you know, kind of a George Washington advice.
That's all Vance is doing.
Vance is not advocating.
Powerful or realist in the administration, none of those people are advocating for Gaza because they really shouldn't be.
We shouldn't be concerned at all about what is happening over there.
Well, we shouldn't be funding it.
It wouldn't be happening if we weren't funding it.
You know what?
That is exactly true.
This genocide, which we can't say the word genocide, this genocide is funded almost entirely.
By American taxpayers.
They don't approve of it.
They don't want it.
It's overwhelmingly unpopular in this country.
We think it's terrible.
But even a very small percentage of the population is advocating for the dismantlement and depopulation of Gaza.
But we, in fact, are paying for it.
We have been paying for it.
We paid for it during the Biden administration as well.
People are somehow surprised to find out that Joe Biden never actually requested that Netanyahu take it easy on the Gazans.
He just sent more money, as we have done, as Trump has continued to do.
Part of the problem with all of this is that Trump apparently believes the person he's been listening to last.
Now, we're going to play a couple of clips.
Biden and Trump at the one debate that they had over Ukraine.
So, Chris, back to back.
Number nine, Biden, and then number eight, Trump.
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 when he if he takes Ukraine?
What do you think happens to Poland?
What do you think of Belarus?
There's been discussions they will have to give up some of the land.
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.
So...
As Tom Woods says, no matter who you vote for for president, you end up with John McCain.
I mean, you end up with Donald Trump agreeing with what Joe Biden said and what Trump condemned.
Chris, now play number eight.
This is Trump's response in the debate to what Biden had just said about it.
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.
So how do we know what to believe?
And how can he possibly say without a scintilla of evidence?
That Putin wants all of Ukraine.
He said it to her four times.
You can see how stunned she was when he said it the first time.
Yeah.
Well, he's repeating what apparently the people are telling him, the current people are telling him.
And I think when he was on the campaign trail, two things factored in.
One was he was spending a lot of time with Vance, with J.D. Vance and Vance's people.
And that helped him learn.
For the first time, I think, what was going on in foreign policy, because he wasn't paying a huge amount of attention to that.
I don't think I don't think he ever did.
So he had that input at that time.
And now the people who know, you know, the people who want him to they know you get around the president, you'd be the last guy to talk to him and you you encourage that.
You encourage other people who are talking to him to say the same message.
It's an influence game.
And so we didn't elect all these other people around Trump, but they are there.
And clearly they are influencing him because he's a flawed individual.
He is the John McCain that we elected every time we elect.
You know, Ritter points out that they all have their own agendas.
Vance wants to succeed him.
Rubio wants to challenge Vance for the Republican nomination in 2028, also wants to succeed him.
According to Ritter, Rubio, while appearing to be subservient to Trump, actually continues to despise him from the little Marco stuff.
It's going back to 2016.
I definitely believe that, yeah.
I think part of what Trump does, and we see this a lot of different ways, he likes to kind of humiliate.
People that he's beaten.
And Rubio, you know, little Marco is just part of that.
I think putting him as Secretary of State and really putting him as Secretary of State and then putting his friend and closer ally as the key foreign policy negotiator.
You know, what's the guy, his buddy, Steve?
Oh, Whitcoff.
I mean, Rubio, I am sure, was prepared for the influence of Vice President Vance.
He's a very strong personality, a very bright person.
He was prepared for the influence of Pete Hegseth whom Trump idolizes.
I can't imagine he expected a Steve Whitcoff on the scene to the point where foreign diplomats are saying, you know, Mr. Rubio will take care of the formalities, but the real negotiations will be Yeah, that's part of Trump's humiliation game.
Rubio is not incompetent, but they have bad blood between them.
In fact, having him as Secretary of State and then denying him the true authority and functionality of that position is how Trump deals with people.
We've seen it.
I think we've seen it before.
No wonder who has the most sway with Trump.
Don't tell me it's whoever has been whispering to him last because that's probably true, as horrible as it is.
You know, I can't psychologically assess him.
I will say this, though.
Trump will listen to females much more, I think, than some other presidents that we've had.
He's not afraid of strong female figures, and he's married several.
He likes Tulsi.
And the reason he likes, you know, he likes her because she's strong and she's competent.
You know, his insane religious advisor, again, fits into this category.
He has Susie Wiles, as he's worked with him before for years, and he trusts her.
So in some ways, he listens to...
And trusts people that are kind of hard to manipulate because the people that want to influence the president are generally not looking to influence the women around the president.
They are looking to influence the men around the president.
And so Trump has, he may be getting separate messages because they're not completely lobbying all the people that he listens to.
Honestly, Susie Wiles does not like Netanyahu.
We kind of know this already.
So just on a personal level, that's a factor.
You know, and the way Trump treats Netanyahu is reinforced, I think, by, in some ways, his own chief of staff, not Rubio and not some of these other folks who say, well, this is how it should work.
This is the order of things.
Is a people person.
I mean, we know that from his campaign and from everything we've observed about him.
He works with human beings and he trusts people.
He chooses the winners around him and he chooses the losers.
It's all about people.
It's not about principle.
It's not about logic.
It's not about a foreign policy like realism.
It's not even about...
Neoconservatism, which has an agenda.
It's not about the agenda.
It's about the people with him.
And I think that this actually puts the neoconservatives, it puts the Zionists, it puts other folks that would like to influence Trump at a disadvantage because he is unusual in this way.
You can't just put a guy in the right position who gives a briefing to him every day and think that that's going to work with Trump.
Now, again, who is he listening to?
Clearly...
You know, again, not being principle driven, not having a principle driven philosophy about foreign policy or about domestic policy.
Yeah, that puts Trump and the whole country at a huge disadvantage.
It's a real problem.
We have an audience that is largely anti-war.
And Chris ran a poll just this afternoon.
Will Netanyahu...
Succeed in dragging Trump into a hot war with Iran.
About 2,000 people responded.
73% said yes.
27% said no.
Now that, I think, not only speaks for the fact that our viewers are far better More attuned to foreign events and politics than the average public.
It also tells you what they think of Trump.
Yeah.
Well, the assessment of Trump is correct.
I think what we often miss, because we're Americans and we don't know everything, we just see, like anybody, we see things from our perspective and what we're focusing on.
But, you know, the world is not the same world that it was 10 years ago, 15, 20. 30, 50 years ago.
It's changed very much.
The U.S. position in that world has also changed, but many Americans don't recognize that.
So this concept that we will engage in a war, we'll start a war with Iran so that we can help Israel massacre the remaining 1.7 million Gazans, that may look good on paper.
To neoconservatives, it might look good.
It might look possible.
But in fact, the majority in Washington know that it's not possible.
The people who actually pay for the war, fund the war, lend the money to the government for the war, have to send the soldiers and the equipment to Iran to do this kind of thing.
They all know that that's not going to work.
It's not possible.
We have no friends.
Who will support us other than Israel?
And we fund, we've created, I'm sorry, we've created Israel's military.
You know, they take a lot of credit for what they've done.
They have some technology, but we have made that possible financially and through our own military industrial complex.
So it's us in Israel against every single other country in the world.
That includes India.
That includes China, Russia, Iran.
Which has a great ability to defend itself.
We don't have moral influence or authority over these other countries, and we don't have military superiority.
So if Trump is talked into engaging in a war for Israel, and this would be one more additional war for Israel against Iran, I think that he would be pulled back from that, either by Vance or by not headset as much,
but the people in the Pentagon who understand this would be an expensive and humiliating defeat for the United States and would put us on our heels for every other aspect of world influence and domestic improvement that Trump wants to do.
So I have to think that we would not do that.
But again, I'm not talking to Trump.
I don't get to...
God, how I wish you were that blonde-haired lady that he listens to, as opposed to that pastor whose name we don't know.
Karen, thank you very much.
Much appreciated, as always.
Thank you for this great piece, which is called War in Washington.
You can see it on jetsnap.com, luerockwell.com.
A variety of other revenues.
Thank you, Karen.
We'll see you again soon.
All the best.
Thanks a lot, Judge.
Appreciate it.
Sure.
Coming up tomorrow at 8 in the morning, Professor Gilbert Doctorow at 11 in the morning, Professor Jeffrey Sachs at 1 in the afternoon, former British diplomat Ian Proud at 2 in the afternoon, our buddy Aaron Maté at 3 in the afternoon, our other buddy Phil Giraldi.
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