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May 21, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
31:28
COL. Lawrence Wilkerson : Netanyahu Killing Babies.
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Hi, everyone.
Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Thursday, May 22, 2025.
Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson joins us now.
Colonel, a pleasure, my dear friend.
Thank you so much for joining us.
Colonel, what is your take on the phone call earlier this week between President Trump and President Vladimir Putin?
How do you read that?
I don't know how to read it because I don't have a transcript.
But from the aftermath in terms of what I'm hearing, I won't say it didn't go very well.
I'll just say that they don't seem to have made much progress.
At least that's my readout of it.
President Trump and his team, by which I mean Secretary Rubio and Mr. Whitcoff.
I'm not talking about Lindsey Graham and that crowd.
The people that work directly for Trump have been pounding the table for a ceasefire as a prelude to negotiations.
I suspect, and I wonder if you agree, that whatever President Putin said to President Trump, they now are of the understanding that they're so close to winning, why would they engage in a ceasefire?
I say that because they've stopped asking for it.
I think that's probably true, and I think it's even truer than just the ceasefire.
Putin and Sergey Lavrov have said again and again, as have other Russian spokespersons whose views I take for trustworthy, that the root causes of this conflict have to be considered first and foremost and almost exclusively.
The root causes are the fact that we were going to take Ukraine into NATO.
Anything that even smacks of that, Whether it's a retention of a single NATO individual, clandestine or open, inside Ukraine, is anathema to Putin and the rest of the complex that's waging the special military operation.
So you just don't have a starting point if you're Donald Trump, particularly if you're Donald Trump, because he has to come out of whatever negotiation he conducts with at least a patina.
And there is no such thing in this.
Chris, I want to play the clip from 2017 with two senators in Ukraine.
I don't even want to mention their names because the colonel might leave the camera if he knows who we're playing, but you'll see them right now.
Your fight is our fight.
2017 will be the year of offense.
All of us will go back to Washington and we will push the case against Russia.
Enough of a Russian aggression.
It is time for them to pay a heavier price.
I believe you will win.
I am convinced you will win and we will do everything we can to provide you with what you need to win.
I was wrong.
It's 2016.
Trump has just been elected.
He just defeated Mrs. Clinton.
He hasn't been inaugurated yet.
Do you know what the hell they're talking about?
We believe you will win.
What war is going on in 2016?
The two Republican senators are in Ukraine promising aid and promising victory.
The same war that had been going on, Judge, since I was chief of staff to Colin Powell in 2002 to 2005.
The same war.
Just beginning then, just starting then, just being in a very seminal stage then.
But by 2013, 2014, in full, full bloom, with four-star generals riding their Harley motorcycles down to coordinate with the remnants of the Bandera group, what Putin calls Nazis, and very rightfully so.
We were in this from the very beginning.
And we were in it to put Ukraine in a position to bleed Russia significantly.
And if they didn't bleed Russia significantly, and there were people who said that wouldn't happen, at least to take it to the extent that some sort of agreement would be made afterwards that would indeed allow...
All this expansion of NATO to continue, to include Georgia, to include all of Ukraine, to include other countries that were being contemplated at that time in the Caucasus.
So we're looking at the United States having made a decision not only to expand NATO, but to use that expansion to essentially try to take out Russia.
Or to put it in such a position that it couldn't possibly ally itself with China or anyone else in the world and take us on when we then turned all of our attention to China.
I wonder how many of those people to whom Senators Graham and McCain were speaking are still alive today.
And look at those two.
This is anathema.
Congressmen, senators particularly, should not be conducting foreign policy on their own in such a dicey environment as that one.
But they do.
They do, and they often do with the connivance of the White House.
Well, the White House was the end days of Barack Obama.
Trump wasn't yet inaugurated.
But look, Trump must have listened to that, because you know what happened in the first Trump term.
That's the heavy arming.
He doesn't want to talk about that now.
It's what got him impeached, the negotiation over the armaments, but that's when the heavy armaments started to flow.
Am I right, Colonel?
You're absolutely right, and there was tension in the Obama administration, especially in the second administration.
There was significant tension, and Obama was making statements that made people think, like me, around him, that he had some sense.
He was saying things like, we can't possibly start a war in that area.
Russia has all the advantages.
And he went through some of those advantages, like he was a military man, like he'd been briefed by someone at the Pentagon who had a brain.
So there was a slacking, if you will, of this strategy during especially the second term of Obama.
Trump came in and put it on front burner again.
Trump listened to Trump Mike Pompeo and Jim Mattis.
You must know General Mattis.
You must know Secretary Pompeo.
And he obviously listened to Senators McCain and Graham.
Yes.
He listened to the Republican Party.
I mean, you could say it that way because there weren't too many dissenters within the Republican Party.
This reminds me very much of the Republican Party that opposed Harry Truman and Dean Acheson when we wanted to form NATO.
And it was a close-run thing to start NATO, to stand it up and to shift all the money that Truman allocated.
People thought it was for the Korean War.
It was not.
It was for NATO.
It was a very close-run thing.
But then after that, they turned into the most...
Are NATO supporters you'd ever want to touch?
And they haven't backed off that since.
And John McCain was probably one of the earliest ones of those you showed there, or of those that we would think about and recognize the name of today, who joined this crowd.
What will Lindsey Graham and Tom Cotton and those guys do if Trump walks away from Ukraine, throws his hands up and said, I can't get anywhere with these people?
That's a good question.
It's a question Several of us have been asking ourselves if Trump just divorces himself from the thing and lets it go on.
They don't have any armies in Congress.
So I think it would be very difficult, other than covert operations, which Congress has shown a hand in making happen sometimes, to continue the conflict in a way that would be significant.
Putin would eat them off.
Where do you think, I'm switching gears here, where do you think, Mr. Mr. Witkoff is going to go or accomplish with the negotiations with Iran.
I mean, he's moved the goalposts.
But he was happy.
3.2 in Richmond.
The Iranians can live with that.
It's the same as the deal that Trump trashed.
It's the same deal that John Kerry negotiated.
It was a happy deal.
Bibi didn't want it, so they got Witkoff to move the goalposts now down to zero.
In the last few days, I've been astonished that my assessment, and I have to admit, my assessment was tentative, to be sure, of Widkoff as the gray presence, if you will, the man who didn't have any diplomatic skills or experience, but who was showing some diplomatic skills, was a farce.
He's backed up completely, and I don't take this as just a negotiating tactic, as some have insinuated it is.
This zero enrichment thing is a war, is a cautious belly for the Iranians.
They have devoted billions of dollars and lots of blood with the Israelis and us from time to time, killing their nuclear scientists and such.
They've devoted a lot of treasure and a lot of blood to this complex.
And under the Non-Proliferation Treaty, the safeguards agreement and the additional protocol, they have every right to enrich up to a certain percentage.
And there's plenty of reason to think that you could set up a regime where they could get enriched uranium that they needed further than the 3.75% or whatever.
They could get it from a third country.
That was a provision in the JCPOA, for example.
So this is preposterous.
This is war-causing.
And here's the other thing, Judge, that really concerns me right now.
Netanyahu is in dire straits.
Israel is in dire straits.
Israel is on the verge of collapse, militarily and politically.
What's going to happen when Netanyahu decides that this is the case?
And I'm told right now he's got some people who are braving the storm, as it were, and telling him that, both military and civilian.
When he realizes that this is existential for him, he's going to start the war they're on.
Then the question, and I believe that in my heart of hearts, he will start this war with Iran.
Then the question becomes, what does Donald Trump do?
Because he said he will not join him if he starts it.
I think the weight of Donald Trump in this country is going to be so onerous, so heavy, so incredibly powerful, he's going to have to join.
Are we talking the religious Armageddon here?
We might well be.
Some crackpot by the name of Randy Fine.
A Republican congressman from Florida told Fox News that the Israelis should use nuclear weapons in Gaza.
So this character, I can't even call him a gentleman, this thug, wants to unleash Netanyahu to slaughter two million innocent people.
Some of the things we've heard coming out of the more right-wing elements in Netanyahu's government and elsewhere like that have just been astounding to me.
It's like listening to the Nazis again, truly.
It's like listening to Hitler's people, his worst people, once again, with the clarion call for the absolute total destruction of these subhumans, in this case, called Palestinian Arabs.
Before, it was the Jews.
I've got to play this clip for you, even though we've played it many times.
I don't know if you've seen this creep.
This guy is a former member of the Knesset and, at the time, a member of the Likud party.
I know who you're going to play.
Calling for the slaughter of children.
The slaughter of babies.
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 will 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?
Now, Mearsheimer, Ritter, and the others all say that This attitude is shared by most of the Israeli public.
There aren't even any peace demonstrations in front of Netanyahu's house as there were last year.
I think that's a little bit too encompassing a statement.
There are some.
I don't know if you know Joseph Avazar, who runs the IPC simulations every other Sunday in this country.
Joseph has been in Jaffa for some time now.
And he's been doing interviews and making pronouncements himself on videos all over YouTube.
And you can find a few.
I admit there aren't a lot, but there are a few.
And they're the few who get quoted in Haaretz saying things like, how can I raise my children in this country that kills babies?
And that's a quote.
That's a direct quote.
Haaretz is one of the few papers that shows this sort of language and this sort of feeling amongst Israeli Jews.
But there are a few.
But I will admit that they're right in terms of the majority.
And you could have put SS chevrons on that man's lapels and dressed him in the black of the SS, the Schutzstaffel, and he would have been perfectly in place talking about his own people.
Scott Ritter yesterday said virtually the same thing.
That you did.
Ritter also went on to say the guy should be dragged before the ICC tried, convicted, and hanged.
But he was very animated by what he saw.
But look at what we've done, though, Judge.
The ICC is in turmoil right now.
The ICC is falling apart itself because of the sanctions and the accusations we've made against the chief judge.
They're having trouble even...
Maintaining a prospect of being in existence in the future.
We're destroying the entire fabric which we had a great deal of hand in creating of international humanitarian law in the world.
I don't want to segue into another topic, but I want you to know what the chat room, the people that are watching us now are commenting on, because Chris posed this question to them.
President Trump called out South Africa for genocide.
Will he ever call out Netanyahu for the same in Gaza?
We'll have the vote by the end of your segment.
I can't imagine that he will.
He won't even call out this SS-like creep that we just played.
He won't even condemn that.
I hope the vote's 5,000 to 1. It's absurd.
How can you stop the killing of babies?
Colonel Wilkerson.
The only way you do it is you change the entire approach of the empire.
We have to take a stand and we have to tell Netanyahu we are taking a stand and that we'll get rid of him post haste if he doesn't recognize that and cease what he's doing.
It wouldn't be that hard to do really for Trump if he had the intestinal fortitude and the guts to do it and most of all had the willingness to stand up against those On his own team who are going to object strenuously, if not publicly, I don't think they would publicly, but strenuously in the background and perhaps even withdraw funding.
Wow.
Tom Fletcher, whom you may know, the United Nations Undersecretary General for Humanitarian Affairs and Relief, told the Security Council.
That 14,000 Gazan babies would die of malnutrition by the end of this week.
And Doctors Without Borders, Les Medicines Sans Frontières, and several other groups, Doctors Against Genocide, the people from the UN who are still there, who are working humanitarian issues, have all said the very same thing.
I listened to one this morning coming from the area.
And the Israelis had said that lots of trucks were getting in and so forth.
She essentially said there are four trucks.
Four trucks.
There are hundreds lined up to go, and they need 500 a day, Judge.
500 a day!
Ray McGovern said nearly the same thing.
He said they need 500 a day, and the Israelis only let five in.
Three, Colonel, three were filled with food.
Two were filled with shrouds.
For dead bodies.
As well they should be.
I mean, in terms of what the reality is.
Now, Wyckoff calls President Trump a humanitarian.
Right.
He's a humanitarian like I'm a...
Well, I won't say it.
Go ahead.
Say what you're thinking.
He's a humanitarian.
He's funding the genocide.
He's as culpable as Joe Biden.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
People don't seem to understand that our complicity, in my view, and my view as a professional military officer, our complicity is more heinous than Israel's execution.
Why is that, Colonel?
Because we're enabling it.
We're enabling it when we could stop it.
In some respects, Netanyahu can't stop.
He will go to jail if he stops.
I can understand that as much as I revile it.
We don't have any excuse.
We could stop it on a pin drop, but we won't.
Christy, if you have any numbers on the chatroom poll, text them and let me know, because I know the colonel wants to know.
Where do you see this going?
I mean, if Trump doesn't get sick and tired of Netanyahu or develop some humanitarian sense, neither, which seems like it has happened, what will stop the slaughter of these babies?
I think it's going to end just as I said, if we don't do something really forceful and quickly.
Israel is in peril right now.
In every dimension of state power, it is in peril, economically, financially.
It is in grave peril.
Netanyahu is not going to let that persist.
He is going to start a war with Iran, and he is going to demand and bring all the power he can bring to bear through his emissaries in this country, which are many and wealthy.
He's going to bring all the pressure he can to have the United States join us.
Trump may have said he wouldn't join, but Trump is going to face a hurricane if he doesn't join.
And then we're going to be off to the races.
And I mean, you could go to the Bible.
You can go to the Christian nationalists and others and get these scenarios.
You can go to the Jews and get these scenarios, the ultra-Orthodox Jews.
And they'll tell you all about the Antichrist and all about who is the Antichrist and all about what has to happen and all this crap.
And that's what we're creating.
We're creating Armageddon.
So Trump called out South Africa for genocide.
Will he ever call out Netanyahu for the same in Gaza?
52% said no, he won't.
40% said hell no. 7% think that Donald Trump has a soft part somewhere deep in his heart and said yes.
That is a reflection on America that I care not to contemplate.
Yeah.
Well, Max Blumenthal just spent three weeks in Iran.
I can't wait for him to come back.
I have so many questions for him.
But in some of his reporting, where he interviewed negotiators and diplomats, they have opined that Witkoff seemed ill-informed and preoccupied.
I'm told that the entire The congregation, as it were, around them, Omani, Qatari, others, are absolutely shocked at the lack of coordination, the lack of planning, the lack of any scintilla of strategy and diplomatic acumen that exists with the US team.
It is as if we are a new team every single time there's a meeting.
Wow.
And is this Rubio and company, the State Department, or is this Whitcoff and whoever supports him?
I don't even know if he has a staff.
I'm being told it's the group that's around him, and the group that's around him comes partially from state, as I understand it, and partially from the National Security Council and the White House staff otherwise.
Wow.
It's a terrible observation.
Yesterday, we won't bother playing the clip, but yesterday we played a clip of President Putin awarding the highest honor the Russians have, the Order of St. Andrew, who was the patron saint of Russia, to the greatest diplomat on the planet, Sergei Lavrov.
The United States doesn't have anybody like that!
We haven't had anybody like that for a long time.
Or someone like Wang Yi.
I put Wang Yi in pretty much the same category as I do Sergey.
And I've known Wang Yi since at least 2001.
A brilliant man.
And as talented and skilled in his own way as Sergey is.
And that's what we're up against in terms of diplomatic skill and talent in the world.
Formidably so.
And we have nothing.
We have nothing.
Rubio can be very glib and articulate and speak in attractive ways, but I don't think he has the breadth and depth of knowledge anywhere near these people.
No.
And if you saw him in the recent congressional hearings, he was cute.
He was cute, and he was acerbic, and he attacked, and in some instances I supported the attacks, especially against that nut who's...
He moved over from raping the Pacific Northwest as the Senate Appropriations Committee head, and now he's over on the Budget Committee doing everything else she can, Patty Murray.
But basically, he was very, very undiplomatic, and he's the Secretary of State.
Wow.
Let's play cut number 19, Chris.
Here's Secretary Rubio going at it with Senator Gene Shaheen of New Hampshire.
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 territory in Ukraine, and the harder it's going to be to get him to the table.
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 NATO nations into Ukrainian hands.
And what the president's 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 with that additional pressure on Russia, the more incentive he's got to continue to gain territory and continue to play for time.
Does either of them understand the Russian mentality?
Well, Rubio showed a little better understanding than Shaheen, and I know her well.
I've briefed her personally in her office on the draft and the need for the draft and a whole bunch of other issues where I just threw up my hands and left.
She was very naive.
Rubio at least showed some grasp of what's going on, but what I wanted to ask him and what I wanted to ask him had I been the senator in the chair asking the questions is, you're the Secretary of State!
How come you're not involved?
Because he isn't.
He isn't at all.
As far as I can tell.
Is this just Trump's way?
I mean, the de facto Secretary of State without portfolio is Steve Witkoff.
The de jure Secretary of State, the one that was confirmed under the law, is Rubio.
And all he does is testify and give pressers.
Bingo.
All right, I've got to show you one more thing, which really is dying to hear your reaction to it.
This is not a topic we ordinarily discuss, but it is something you and I believe strongly in, and that is habeas corpus.
Here is Homeland Security Secretary Deporter-in-Chief trying to explain habeas corpus, cut 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 you, ma 'am.
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.
She's right.
Listener.
And that is one of the most ignorant women judge I have ever seen step forward and take a microphone anywhere.
And she's Secretary of Homeland Security.
I told you what Max Blumenthal called the selfie that she took when she was dressed, let me just say, wearing very tight clothes in front of half-naked prisoners in that El Salvador jail.
I can imagine.
Prison porn.
B squared?
Only Max could come up with that.
I'm trying to give you some laughs.
I'm not trying to ruin your weekend.
Just showing me her face ruined my weekend.
Thank you, Colonel.
Thanks for all your time and thanks for your thoughts.
You have a great...
Holiday weekend.
I'm sure you have people whom you will remember who you knew were no longer around on Memorial Day and who died in a uniform.
We're going to have a special ceremony for Rich Armitage over at Annapolis on this coming weekend.
I hope.
I hope the weather cooperates.
But thank you, Colonel.
Thanks for everything.
Have a great holiday weekend.
We'll see you next week.
You too.
Thank you.
Thank you.
So next week is a short week.
We are all off on Memorial Day, which if you're watching us or listening to us from another country, is an American holiday.
It's the beginning of our summer season.
It's this Monday.
But on Tuesday, we'll have the Monday crew for you.
So on this coming Tuesday, which is May 27th at 8 in the morning, Alistair Crook at 10 in the morning.
Ray McGovern at 1130 in the morning, Larry Johnson, and probably one or two others not yet scheduled, but posted on time for you to know it in the afternoon.
Have a great three days, whether you commemorate this holiday or not.
Thank you for watching.
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