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May 20, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
24:55
Phil Giraldi : Trump’s Magical Mystery Tour!
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Hi, everyone.
Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Wednesday, May 21st, 2025.
My dear friend Phil Giraldi joins us now.
Phil, always a pleasure.
I want to spend some time speaking to you about your fascinating piece, Trump's Magical Mystery Tour, which is mostly critical, but not entirely critical.
But before we get there, what is your take on the Trump Yeah,
I'm afraid that that latter assessment would be the accurate one, that Trump doesn't seem to understand very clearly what the Russians...
have been trying to make clear right from the beginning.
They have certain red lines and the red lines are perfectly legitimate in terms of national security and in terms of the history of what's gone on since the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the American interference in all of those developments.
So somehow there's no recognition coming from the US side.
Of what are the key issues that have to be dealt with and come up with some solutions to before there will be any chance for anything like a ceasefire or a peace agreement.
And that's the real tragedy of what's going on right now.
Chris, play cut number 19. This is Secretary Rubio yesterday testifying before one of the Senate committees.
He's being grilled.
Grilled is not the right word.
She's rather gentle by Senator Gene Shaheen of New Hampshire.
But tell me if you think Rubio should be saying what he's On the issue of Ukraine, here's what we can all agree on.
There is no military solution to this crisis.
It will have to end in a negotiated settlement.
And the fundamental challenge we have in Ukraine is this.
Russia wants what they do not currently have and are not entitled to, and Ukraine wants what they cannot regain militarily.
And that's been the crux of the challenge.
I don't disagree with that at one level, but on the other hand, what Vladimir Putin is doing now is playing for time, and he's playing this president like a fiddle.
And the longer he plays it, the more opportunity he has to gain.
What we need to do is to put pressure on Vladimir Putin in every way we can to ensure that we can get them to the negotiating table.
Well, I disagree with this playing with a fiddle analogy because the truth of the matter is when Vladimir Putin woke up this morning, he had the same set of sanctions on him that he's always had since the beginning of this conflict.
And Ukraine was still getting armaments and shipments from us and from our allies.
And the European Union is about to impose additional sanctions.
And the U.S. is looking for no patriot batteries to be able to transfer from other NATO nations into Ukrainian hands.
And what the president is trying to do is end a war.
He's trying to end a bloody, costly war that neither side can win, and people are dying every single day.
But this notion that, what has Putin gained throughout this?
He hasn't gotten a single concession.
He hasn't gotten a single sanction lifted.
And the more time he gets without additional pressure on Russia, the more incentive he's got to continue to gain territory and continue to play for time.
So, Bismarck.
The Russians always reclaim what is theirs.
Rubio is saying property that they're not entitled to.
The four oblasts in Crimea were Russia when Catherine the Great was on the throne.
Does he know what he's talking about?
Does he advance the ball by making statements like that?
And it is clear we are a co-belligerent.
Just listen to the secretary.
The nominal Secretary of State.
I think Whitcoff's the real Secretary of State.
But we are co-belligerents with Ukraine, are we not?
Yeah, well, that's the major point that nobody wants to talk about.
We have no specific national interest in terms of weakening Russia.
Just for the sake of weakening Russia, which is how Biden put it.
And that seems to be what's continuing as the policy.
And the fact is that there's no understanding of the history of going back to when the Crimea became part of Russia under Catherine the Great, the Oblast in...
In Ukraine that are under question at the moment were part of Russia until there were administrative reorganizations that made them part of Ukraine, but they are inhabited by mostly Russians who were being targeted by Ukrainian militias and 8,000 of them were killed.
So there's a whole lot of history that these people don't want to hear.
They're not interested in.
And they just want the war to continue for various reasons, which they are not even verbalizing because they're not quite sure what they are.
To the Middle East, Phil, your fascinating piece, Trump's Magical Mystery Tour, or actually you called it the Magical Mystery Tour that wasn't.
He did attack the neocon record.
He did correctly point out how their historical record is one of destruction.
And he did credit the birth of the modern Middle East to free enterprise and investment, not to anything American neocons have done.
But he still employs them and he still listens to them.
Yeah, obviously I would hate to put it this way, but obviously he was His speech is quite good.
It clearly was, to my mind, a speech that was written for him by someone.
I would love to talk to that person.
They could be identified.
But the speech is excellent.
It talks about how imposing governments on regions by the great powers and things like that has never worked.
It's been a bad idea.
This was taken I don't think he actually ever mentioned neocons.
In fact, he didn't.
But the idea was that when he walked away from the microphone, the audience, which was the leaders of the Gulf states, were delighted by hearing this kind of stuff.
You're going to stop interfering with us, are you?
And it was taken by the interpreters back here in the United States to be an attack on the neocons and the neocon foreign policy which has come to dominate.
Both major political parties.
So that was a really good kind of thing to do.
I think it was something that was necessary to hear from a leader of a major country in the West, and it went over very well.
But the question then becomes, how sincere or honest really was it?
There's plenty of interference going on.
I might even point out to Mr. Trump his attitude towards Iran, for example, which is certainly heavy on the interference.
So this keeps going on and on, and it's simple to talk a good talk, but it's a lot harder to actually act that way.
The administration...
They leaked something which was so fantastic that nobody believed it.
They leaked that the United States might recognize the Palestinian state.
This, of course, would turn Netanyahu and his crew on their heads.
Would almost be too good to be true.
I guess it was too good to be true because there was no announcement made, even though the stated public policy, you know this better than I. of the United States has been the two-state solution.
I bring this up as a prelude to the following.
All last week the Western press was saying Trump is snubbing Netanyahu.
Trump is there and he's not visiting.
Trump has recognized Syria and didn't talk to Netanyahu and a good chunk of Syria is occupied by the Israelis.
Was the snub of You know, I'm still debating that in my own mind.
I believe it can be interpreted either way.
And clearly, if you go based on the evidence, there were two issues actually that were being touted as likely push points for Donald Trump to push...
On Netanyahu and to get some compliance out of them.
And one of them was, of course, the whole issue of recognizing Palestine, which has been recognized by 140 countries in the United Nations, but the United Nations, the U.S. has used its veto in the Security Council to make sure it does not get recognized as a normal country, as a participant.
Member state in the UN.
So we've done that all by ourselves.
And it was presumed that he would be raising this issue and coming down the right way on it for a change.
And the other issue, of course, was that it was presumed that he would be putting pressure on the Israelis to also...
Stop their blockade of Gaza, in which the deaths are starting to multiply, particularly of young children.
And that he would be pushing for a real ceasefire, unlike the last one, which had an Israeli way to get out of, written into it.
And something like that would be the consequence, that he would be pushing on them and hopefully get some kind of result.
But none of these things happen.
So that makes you suspect that maybe the whole thing was a fraud to get positive responses from the Gulf states towards Israel by way of the United States.
And this also was extended to Syria, which was approached by Donald Trump.
And had its sanctions lifted, and it looks like there's a push to kind of legitimize it, even though it's headed by a former terrorist.
And this would take the pressure off of Israel in that sector.
So there is an Israel motive there, too.
I don't know.
I think that we'll find out in the next couple weeks.
What was true here?
There could have been this kind of negotiations that went on behind the scenes of players from Israel and the United States that kind of cooked this whole thing up.
How can we normalize relations with a country, a substantial chunk of which is occupied by another country, Israel?
Not only another country, it's occupied by three other countries.
Syria is kind of, at this point, a lump in the middle of what once was.
And there is a semi-legitimate government in place, as I say, headed by a former terrorist, al-Shara.
But to the north of it, the Turks have a big hunk.
of what was formerly Syria.
To the south of it, Israel has a big hunk and is attacking within that area to destroy arms depots so that the Syrians won't even have any way to protect themselves against the Israelis.
And the United States is remaining in place, the eastern part of Syria.
Where the oil fields are and where the good agricultural land is.
At first it seemed that the U.S. was going to pull out as part of this agreement, but today it came to word that there's no intention to do so at the present time.
Why didn't Donald Trump mention the slaughter in Gaza?
Well, he didn't mention the slaughter in Gaza, obviously, because He didn't want to press that issue with the Arabs because it would have created problems with Israel.
It would have raised the whole issue of Israel being supported and with having the U.S. complicit in the act of carrying out a genocide.
So it raised a lot of funny questions, but I'm somewhat surprised that the issue of Palestine Did not come up in any of the open conversations that might have been discussed behind doors, but it's a mystery to me.
Does it mean anything that Great Britain, France, and Canada have raised the issue?
I mean, these seem to be either threats to impose sanctions or like Spain.
A non-binding resolution.
It's too little, too late.
But does it show a crack in the wall?
Does it show some movement on the West?
No, I don't think so, actually.
I think that it's a sham.
Those governments are dedicated to supporting Israel no matter what.
And the fact is they are responding to popular pressure in both Canada and the UK.
And in France, and in Italy, throw some threats at Israel about sanctions, about possibly initiating sanctions.
Let's see the sanctions first, and let's see that there's just some seriousness in this.
Again, the problem here is the United States.
The United States is the bulwark of Israel, and it's basically an important partner.
To all those countries I just named.
And so there's another actor kind of hiding in the back of the scene here, which is Donald Trump and before him Joe Biden, who basically gave Israel license to kill and are continuing to give them license to kill.
And I mean that literally.
Does Donald Trump deserve the same moniker that Joe Biden did?
Obviously with a different second word, Genocide Joe.
Genocide done.
It's just as relevant, is it not, Phil?
I think it's just as relevant until we cut off arms sales to Israel and we cut off all the other means of support and political cover that we provide for them.
That means that we're serious about killing two million Gazans as a policy.
Because that's what Netanyahu has been enunciating.
And I just saw a smooth speech on the Israeli television today where he was spelling it all out.
They're not shy about it.
Here's a clip that will give you some heartburn.
This is a former member of the Knesset, a member of the Likud party, and then left and joined one of the ultra-right-wing parties.
Talking about the desirability of slaughtering Gazan children.
Cut number 10. Every child in Gaza is the enemy.
We are at war with the Gazan entity, the Gazan terror entity, which we ourselves established in Gaza, in Oslo, and in the disengagement.
The disengagement that Prime Minister Netanyahu voted in favor of, that is the enemy now.
Every such child to whom you are now giving milk.
In another 15 years, we'll rape your daughters and slaughter your children.
We need to conquer Gaza and settle it.
And not a single Gazan child should remain there.
Let's stop telling ourselves this deception, just to score points in this game between pro-BB and anti-BB.
This isn't about left or right, it's about winning this war, and it's about justice.
When will we learn?
When will we learn?
This guy's a madman, but does he crystallize the views of most Israelis?
Well, judging from opinion polls, he does.
I won't say it's a 90%.
In fact, it used to be a 90% infavorable percentage.
It's fallen off a bit.
From that, I gather, on recent polls, down to around 70%, because many Israelis, believe it or not, are appalled by what's being done to the Gazans.
But it's still a substantial majority, and he's representing a widespread view.
Now, the irony, of course, of all of this is that the Jews and the Israelis have been using the genocide Slogan to justify everything that they do based on what they claim was done to them.
And now they're doing the same thing to another people and are quite comfortable with that as long as they're on the winning side and are able to kill all these people.
Now, if you had just completed a course of study at New York University I know you went to the University of Chicago to better school.
And then you graduated first in your class and were the valedictorian.
And then you said at the graduation, what you just said now, Phil, you should expect that the university would not give you your diploma.
That's what happened this week in New York City.
That's where we are today with people making either truthful statements or opinion statements about the Israelis, which are not acceptable to the people that control the universities.
Yeah, I think this will become the norm.
We've gone through the phase where deportations are taking place of people who write a letter to their school newspaper.
And now we're into...
People speaking the truth, or as they see the truth in a situation, speaking their mind, and they're being punished by being deprived of something that they worked four years for, and the deprivation of this will severely damage their future life, their career, what they choose to do.
So this is becoming the norm, and this is another thing Donald Trump is really pushing hard, Mr. Hypocrite Trump.
The thing that's astonishing about Trump, for all his kind of mutterings and things like that, incoherent most of the time, admittedly, but the way he has...
No empathy whatsoever for these children, bags of children, you know, hundreds recently in Gaza being killed and wrapped up in shrouds.
Where is this guy's soul?
Where is his heart?
I don't think he has one.
Oh, but Phil, according to Steve Witkoff, the president is a humanitarian.
Sure he is.
It's absurd.
Now, this is a little off the beaten path from what you and I have been discussing and usually discuss, but it's so absurd and typical of the Trump administration, we have to run it.
This is Kristi Noem, the Secretary of Homeland Security, trying to explain a clause of the Constitution which schoolchildren...
Can explain that Chris got number 16. So, Secretary Noam, what is habeas corpus?
Well, habeas corpus is a constitutional right that the president has to be able to remove people from this country and suspend their right to...
Let me stop.
Habeas corpus, excuse me, that's incorrect.
President Lincoln used it.
Excuse me.
Habeas corpus is the legal principle that requires that the government provide a public reason for detaining and imprisoning people.
If not for that protection, the government could simply arrest people, including American citizens, and hold them indefinitely for no reason.
Habeas corpus is the foundational right that separates free societies like America.
From police states like North Korea.
As a senator from the live free or die state, this matters a lot to me and my constituents and to all Americans.
So, Secretary Noem, do you support the core protection that habeas corpus provides, that the government must provide a public reason in order to detain and imprison someone?
I support habeas corpus.
I also recognize that the President of the United States has the authority under the Constitution to decide if it should be suspended or not.
It has never been done without approval of Congress.
Even Abraham Lincoln got retroactive approval from Congress.
I mean, it's really very sad that the person in charge of deportations doesn't understand the basic law of the land, which in large measure governs.
deportations, the right to a hearing before punishment or expulsion Well, that was absolutely incredible.
That was basically turning a right, a liberty, which all Americans should benefit from, turning it on its head to make it a prerogative of the President of the United States to not observe it.
It's just absolutely incredible.
This woman is an idiot.
And, of course, she killed her dog, didn't she, back at home?
She did.
Which was a story for a while.
That explains it.
Wow.
All right, Phil.
God love you, my friend.
Thank you very much.
Thanks for letting me pick your brain, even going a little off the beaten path to expose you to this idiot.
You know, you'll get a kick out of this.
She's rather voluptuous the way she dresses at times.
She visited this horrific prison in El Salvador where the guys are stripped to their waist.
They're wearing shorts and sneakers and socks and they're bare chested.
And she stood in front of them and took pictures of herself with all these guys behind bars behind her.
And Max Blumenthal said, that's prison porn.
Leave it to Max.
You nailed it.
Thank you, Phil.
We'll see you again next week.
All the best.
Take care.
Bye-bye.
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