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May 13, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
23:36
Phil Giraldi : Is Trump Tired of Netanyahu?
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Hi, everyone.
Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Wednesday, May 14th, 2025.
Our dear friend Phil Giraldi joins us now.
Phil, there have been leaks from the White House that President Trump is sick and tired of Prime Minister Netanyahu.
There is some factual evidence for this, the U.S. negotiating directly with Hamas.
Mike Huckabee being forced to admit publicly that it's appropriate for the U.S. to send humanitarian aid to Gaza, whether Israel goes along with it or not, suspending the sanctions on Syria.
And now this very ostentatious Middle Eastern trip, which equally as ostentatiously avoids Israel.
What's your take?
Well, I'm always suspicious of these kind of easy stories.
And one of the interesting aspects of this, it seems to me, is the fact that how much of this have you been able to read in the U.S. media?
Not a whole lot.
The story is not being covered to much of an extent.
Where most of the information is coming is coming out of the Israeli media and out of Israeli leaks.
So there's kind of a two-sided game being played here.
Clearly, I think the message that Trump, he of the huge ego, feels that he's been manipulated and used by Netanyahu.
And I think that's a fair assessment in both directions.
And I think so that's something we can establish.
But at the same time, this is a game of realpolitik being played here in which both sides are angling for various kinds of advantages.
So I think Trump is angry and also the fact that he wouldn't talk to Netanyahu and said...
That he doesn't want to be in contact with him again.
And also, our Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegsitt, canceled a trip to Israel that was also supposed to be this week.
So this is a move by the administration.
I think there is fire where there is the smoke.
But we have to see just where it goes with this.
There are, of course, the negotiations with Iran, which are perhaps one of the key elements of what's going on in the background of this trip.
There also is, of course, the story that Trump wanted to make a real big splash by basically ending the horror of what is going on in Gaza.
And that clearly is not going to happen.
So again, this is a secondary story that kind of is intriguing.
And I think we'll find out a lot in the next 72 hours, 48 hours.
I'm not sure because things are definitely moving ahead.
All right.
Well, tell me if you think that the following is credible.
Chris, cut number eight.
This is a very emotional moment.
Eden Alexander has returned home.
We embrace him and we embrace his family.
This was achieved thanks to our military pressure and the diplomatic pressure applied by President Trump.
This is a winning combination.
I spoke with President Trump today.
He told me, I am committed to Israel.
I am committed to continuing to work with you in close cooperation in order to achieve all of our war objectives, releasing all of the hostages and defeating Hamas.
This goes together.
They are combined with each other.
Netanyahu from his office in Jerusalem Yesterday.
I don't think it's believable for a moment.
Do you?
When I say believable, I don't believe that he and Trump spoke on the phone and if they did, that Trump said those things.
No, I don't believe that either.
And again, this is, to me, one of the aspects of the backstory here.
Netanyahu has apparently woken up and realized that none of his objectives are achievable if the United States really goes hard line.
Against what is going on in Gaza, against what is going on in the Middle East in general.
Like today, I was intrigued by this story about normalizing the relationship with Syria.
Well, there are a lot of problems with that, but one of the biggest problems is that Israel has now occupied a whole big chunk of Syria.
We're pretty close up even to the borders with Damascus and has been systematically destroying arms depots and that sort of thing so that the Syrian government, whoever it is, whatever it is, and whoever is supporting it, will not have any wherewithal to threaten the Israeli presence.
So how is Trump going to play with that one?
Very interesting.
Why did Trump meet with al-Julani, who is a former official of al-Qaeda, who, according to Scott Ritter, has killed Americans with his bare hands, and according to Max Blumenthal, is the head of a terrorist group, that as he is the president of Syria, killing Alawites and Christians in Syria?
Absolutely.
So again, this is a case where either Donald Trump is getting terrible information from the people who are allegedly supporting him in his cabinet and there to keep him informed.
Or there's some other game being played here.
Now, part of the issue will be that there has been talk of pulling all U.S. troops, all U.S. presidents out of Syria and maybe even out of Iraq as well.
And this is maybe to To change the dynamic of what's going on there because there's currently with Syria pressure coming from Turkey in the north and from the Israelis in the south and the U.S. in the middle with Kurdish militias under its control.
So this is a kind of game where there is any number of players just about.
And what the actual game is, is probably something that's never going to be written down and told to the public.
It's being discussed probably in closed rooms by the various players.
Let me segue a little bit, if I could.
What do you think will happen in Istanbul?
I mean, to me, it is inconceivable that Putin and Zelensky will be in the same room at the same time.
It's even inconceivable that they'll be in the same city at the same time, no?
Well, it's even more intriguing if you think that there are rumors floating that if Putin actually shows up and Zelensky is there, that Trump might just drop in.
So it's, again, there are all kinds of plays going on that we are not seeing, that we are not hearing.
I think in my own experience in the intelligence world, this is sometimes more the norm than a norm like we're used to, where we think the government is being honest with us or that we are being told actually what is going on.
Be very candid with me.
What would happen to Zelensky upon his return to Kiev?
If the day before his return, every major newspaper and website in the country shows a picture of him shaking hands with Vladimir Putin, would he survive that return trip or the day after in Kiev?
Well, again, this depends on what kind of deal is cut.
There might be some kind of agreement with Putin and guaranteed by Donald Trump.
To make sure that Zelensky manages to make a quick exit safely with his wife and show up at one of the palaces that he's been buying with U.S. tax money in various places, Israel, Florida, and the French Riviera is what I have been told.
Fascinating.
Fascinating stuff.
If he signs an agreement in Istanbul, which to me seems inconceivable, and then bolts, is it even a validly enforceable agreement?
Is he even the legal president of Ukraine, which Putin has asked?
Does he have the authority to commit the government of Ukraine and a subsequent government to anything?
Well, I think it's not a matter of whether he has the authority.
It's a matter of whether the guarantors of the arrangement, Which presumably would be Putin and our president.
And Turkey is involved in this, too, as kind of the sponsor of the talks.
If these countries were to come together and say, this is the arrangement, guys.
How realistic do you think?
Trump dropped this as a tease the other day.
It probably gave Netanyahu a heart attack.
How realistic would it be if Mike Waltz at the UN were to cast a vote in favor of recognizing Palestine as a sovereign country?
That would be tremendous.
I think that would have a huge impact because implicit in it would be that the United States would, in the Security Council, stop covering for Israel.
In terms of the war crimes that it's committing, and there would be a lot of countries that seeing that example and recognizing that the U.S. has been the one major impediment to stopping the Israeli behavior, a lot of other countries would follow the lead.
And something might actually happen in terms of the international community to stop the genocide.
Delighted to see it.
I was very intrigued when it surfaced at all because that meant the fact that it was leaking means that somebody is talking about it somewhere.
Somebody is playing with the idea of what the consequences of that kind of move would be.
So it's something that could have, I think, very decisive impact.
What are the chances that among the A hundred or so people on Air Force One, as Trump flew from Dulles or Andrews, wherever it leaves from, to Riyadh, was a Mossad agent.
Oh, God, I would think the chances are very high.
I mean, you know, we're talking about part of the story is the removal of Mike Waltz.
From the position of National Security Advisor.
And it's almost certain that that had to do with his having established a back channel to the Israelis.
And that's why this journalist, so-called journalist, Jeffrey Goldberg, showed up in the telephone conversation discussing the next security initiatives that were going to be taken.
Place in the Middle East.
And I understand Tulsi Gabbard has fired two more senior individuals suspected of what they're calling leaks.
So this is...
I would assume if the Israeli intelligence was doing its job, it recruited a number of...
Christian Zionists in all probability, but almost anyone who was interested in money and status, it could have been anyone.
So yeah, I would say that a fair number of people on that plane were probably informing others, whether the media or the Israelis or who knows, and I wouldn't doubt that for a second.
Let's start with that lady whose name is escaping me, who's the head of the Israel-Iran desk.
It was herself a former official of the Israel, not the IDF, but the defense ministry, and who has joint citizenship.
She's on that flight.
She is no doubt, no doubt a Mossad asset, is she not?
I would not doubt it for a second.
I mean, the fact is that her ultimate allegiance is to Israel, and here she's in a senior intelligence position.
What would anyone expect to come from her?
I don't blame her for being an Israeli, but this is a question of loyalty, ultimate loyalty.
It's a question of...
Of people getting killed as a result of where your head is.
And I just find it incomprehensible.
But she's not the first one.
There have been other dual nationals, Israeli-Americans in senior positions in Treasury Department and elsewhere.
So this is not the first time.
But it shows how deeply embedded Israel has managed to get within the U.S. Even in the most sensitive positions.
Her name is Merov Seren, M-E-R-A-V-C-E-R-E-N.
You and I spoke about her at length when it was announced that she was hired.
Shirley Trump, and correct me if I'm wrong, Shirley Hegseth, Shirley Rubio, no!
That she's a Mossad asset.
How could they not know it?
They have made the choice to look the other way.
And what specific incentives are built into the system for them to do that, I don't know.
They know.
I don't know.
And this is the whole problem with the corruption of the U.S. government by the Israel lobby and by the state of Israel.
You don't quite know who is playing which cards.
And this has been a problem that's gone back all the way to the George W. Bush administration when you had all those folks playing games over at the Pentagon and then the vice president's office who were basically, they were Israel's agents.
And they were the ones who brought about the war against Iraq that killed half a million people.
So, you know, this is not something new.
And the thing is to find out who they are and get rid of them.
But a security check should immediately raise a red flag for a lot of these people and keep them out of high office.
And that would be the first place to go.
Second place to go would be to go to AIPAC and these other groups and register in them under the Foreign Agents Registration Act so that they can't interfere in US politics.
And so they have to report their contacts with the Israeli embassy.
How long has Mossad been spying on the American president?
Probably since Harry Truman.
Oh boy.
Well, that's at the time of the creation of...
Yeah, I think you can count on that.
I mean, you know, obviously, Truman himself agreed to the creation of Israel because he was given a lot of money by, at that time, mostly Democratic Party donors, and he was given favorable press.
In the upcoming presidential election, which he might not have received.
So this is how the system works and how these people get manipulated.
That was Truman.
Eisenhower, I don't think, had a negative record, but many of the presidents after that certainly had negative records in terms of bowing to Israeli interests.
And that's what they do.
I mean, look at Joe Biden.
Joe Biden, we discovered last week, according to people who actually worked for him in foreign policy, said he never, ever put any pressure on Israel to stop the genocide it was carrying out against the Palestinians.
So this is the kind of guy we had in the top office, the very top office, and calling the shots.
People getting killed by the tens of thousands with the complicity of the United States of America.
Well, we have the same attitude in the Oval Office today, do we not?
Remember Tom Woods.
No matter who you vote for, you get John McCain.
Yeah, well, we have John McCain.
We've had two John McCains in a row.
Here's, of all people, President Putin talking about Gaza.
Chris, cut number seven.
Russia has always been in favor of providing humanitarian access and resuming the peaceful process of settlement in the Middle East.
Unfortunately, the situation only gets worse.
There's a humanitarian crisis that's only exacerbated by decisions to deny any humanitarian aid.
And to deny supplies of necessary goods to the Gaza Strip.
Well, at least he gets what's going on.
I mean, I don't know if humanitarian aid is getting through.
Mike Huckabee made, I'm sure he didn't want to make it, but he made that very ostentatiously public statement.
But we can send supplies to Gaza, whether Israel agrees or not.
But do we know if supplies are getting through?
Do we know if they are American in origin or by transport?
Well, the last report I saw on it was about two days ago from the UNRWA, which basically said that no supplies were getting through.
And this has been the case for well over a month.
The entire population of Gaza pretty much is on the verge of actual dying from starvation.
So this is the assessment made by people who are on the ground there.
The Israelis, of course, well, the Israelis have come out with comments over the last two days saying that the ultimate objective, of course, is to get rid of the Palestinians.
And should anyone doubt this?
Yeah.
As we speak, the president is in Qatar.
What is your take on this donation of a $400 million Air Force One-like jet to the Defense Department and then eventually when Donald Trump leaves office, supposedly, to the board of governors or directors of the Trump Presidential Library?
Well, I would say absolutely that this is in the nature of a deferred Gift to Donald Trump.
It's going to be operated by the US government.
It's first of all going to be updated by the Defense Department.
And then it's going to be operated by Donald Trump for the next two or three years.
And then he's going to receive it as a gift for one of his entities.
I think this is obscene.
This is corruption in the extreme.
And it's unfortunately something we've become.
Do the Qataris give away $400 million without expecting a quid pro quo?
Absolutely not.
I think the whole point is that what's going on in the United States is a transactional exchange between the United States and the places where Donald Trump will be visiting.
Each stop along the way, where he has stopped is expecting something, and he is expecting something.
So this is the game that's being played, and we can only watch it over the next few days and kind of see in our own minds what the quid pro quo was.
Bill Giraldi, thank you very much, my dear friend.
You know, I'm on with Salenti on Wednesday mornings, and whenever he asks who's on on Wednesday afternoon and I mention your name, he's such a character.
It's a big, broad smile from ear to ear and says, remind Phil that I love him.
So I'm reminding you that our dear friend, who's older than either of us, Gerald Salenti, loves you.
Well, we love him, too.
Yes, he's quite lovable in a unique...
Salentano way.
Anyway, thank you, Phil.
All the best.
We'll see you next week.
Thank you.
Sure.
Bye-bye.
Bye.
Coming up later today is not Jerry Salenti, Gerald Salenti, but coming up later today is Scott Horton from antiwar.com.
Four o 'clock right here.
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