May 28, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
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| Hi, everyone. | |
| Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. | |
| Today is Wednesday, May 28, 2025. | |
| Ambassador Charles Freeman will be here with us in just a moment on the intriguing topic of Does Putin Trust Trump? | |
| But first this. | |
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| Ambassador Freeman, good day to you, my dear friend. | |
| Thank you, as always, for accommodating my schedule and joining us. | |
| I do want to spend some time with your views on whether Donald Trump has generated An aura of trust or not in the Kremlin. | |
| But before we get there, let's start with Gaza. | |
| Nothing seems to be slowing down the slaughter and starvation. | |
| Even the food that got through in the past two days, it seems the poor Palestinians were so starving, they trampled each other just to get their hands on flour so they could get it home and add yeast and water and bake it into bread. | |
| Some of them were killed while doing so. | |
| Big picture. | |
| What's going to bring this to an end? | |
| The only thing that could bring it to an end would be a cutoff in American military support for the operation. | |
| There have been 940 American military deliveries to Israel since October 7th. | |
| 940. | |
| This war is entirely an American-financed and equipped war. | |
| It's actually not a war. | |
| It's an annihilation. | |
| It's a genocide. | |
| The problem with humanitarian aid is so great that the first person assigned to manage it for us resigned, saying that the terms on which the operation was being organized were not consistent with any humanitarian principle. | |
| In fact, what is involved, there are two million people in Gaza, more or less. | |
| We don't know how many, because many of them. | |
| Many have died. | |
| But they propose to have four feeding stations for two million people. | |
| Four feeding stations. | |
| And these are military feeding stations. | |
| This is a plan cooked up by Israel as the United States has bought. | |
| Apparently, local contractors in Gaza almost universally refused to assist this on the grounds that it is essentially a means of tightening Israeli control and then concentrating the population entirely in the bottom fourth, the southern fourth of Gaza. | |
| So it is a militarization of so-called humanitarian assistance. | |
| It does not deserve that term. | |
| And it is utterly inadequate to cure the starvation in Gaza. | |
| And of course, it's accompanied by continued sniping, bombing and burning of... | |
| Children in tents. | |
| The situation is just absolutely beyond control. | |
| And you're getting reactions internationally now, finally, to all of this, with the Europeans in particular increasingly threatened sanctions on Israel, with the main European powers all lining up to recognize a Palestinian state in June. | |
| Israel is destroying its international acceptability, but beyond that, it's committing amazingly evil, cruel acts of a kind that we really haven't seen since the 1930s and the 40s. | |
| So we'll have one or two observations and then one or two follow-up questions on this. | |
| Four feeding stations for two million people. | |
| So MetLife Stadium, which is the football stadium in the Meadowlands outside of New York City, where the New York Giants and the New York Jets play, holds about 75,000 people. | |
| They have over 30 feeding stations for 75,000 people. | |
| And the Israelis are suggesting that four feeding stations for 2 million people who've been starved for a long time is somehow adequate. | |
| And the American government is going along with that. | |
| You mentioned the Europeans. | |
| Will the EU pressure on Netanyahu work? | |
| And before you answer that, I want you to watch this. | |
| It's a clip from Netanyahu from last week. | |
| And lamentably, he repeats the lies of October 7th that he's repeated many times, burning babies, raping women, beheading men, things that we now know from the research of Max Blumenthal and others, in fact, did not occur. | |
| But then he says something about what he thinks the moral equivalent of a free Palestine would be. | |
| And I'm just wondering why you think he's saying this. | |
| Chris, cut number one. | |
| Free Palestine. | |
| This is exactly the same chant we heard on October 7th. | |
| On that day, Thousands of terrorists stormed into Israel from Gaza. | |
| They beheaded men. | |
| They raped women. | |
| They burnt babies alive. | |
| Free Palestine is just today's version of Heil Hitler. | |
| They don't want a Palestinian state. | |
| They want to destroy the Jewish state. | |
| I could never understand how this simple truth evades the leaders of France, Britain, Canada, and others. | |
| They're now proposing To establish a Palestinian state and reward these murders with the ultimate prize. | |
| You won't be surprised to learn that Hamas thanked President Macron and Prime Minister Starmer and Carney for demanding that Israel end its war in Gaza immediately. | |
| Now, these leaders may think that they're advancing peace. | |
| They're not. | |
| So don't give us this talk. | |
| It'll be a peaceful Palestinian state. | |
| It won't be. | |
| Will any EU pressure on him affect him? | |
| Does he fear the formal recognition of a Palestinian state by Western European governments? | |
| I think clearly he does fear it. | |
| That's why you have the odious statement that he just made that you aired, full of lies, full of slander, full of nonsense. | |
| Of course he fears the Palestinian state. | |
| The entire premise of Zionism is the denial of Palestine to the native Palestinian inhabitants, who the founding father of Israel, Ben-Gurion, admitted were no doubt the descendants of the original Jewish inhabitants of Palestine. | |
| So, this is hate speech. | |
| Accusing the Palestinians of being Nazis is the classic inversion of the victim and the perpetrator. | |
| The perpetrator of the horrors in Palestine, including the basic imprisonment in a concentration camp of 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza, is something Israel did. | |
| The pogroms that are driving people out of their homes in the West Bank, the riots in Jerusalem on Jerusalem Day, these are done by Israelis, not by Palestinians. | |
| So this is, as usual, turning things upside down, blaming those who are suffering with the acts that cause the suffering. | |
| And it just has no credibility at all anymore. | |
| Will Europeans react in a serious manner? | |
| I've not seen a European react in a serious manner on much of anything for quite a while. | |
| So I'm very dubious. | |
| And I think, however, that the establishment of further recognition of a Palestinian state, there are about 150 members of the UN who already recognize Palestine as an independent state. | |
| What is significant is the statement that Merz, the new chancellor of Germany made. | |
| The Germans, of course, They don't like being reminded of that, and so they walk on eggs when it comes to criticism of Israel. | |
| But even Meretz now says there is no justification. | |
| Israel has no justification for the horrors it is perpetrating in Gaza. | |
| While the United States and Iran are methodically and patiently negotiating for a deal or a treaty or an executive agreement involving nuclear arms, the president, to the extent he's credible on this, says progress is being made. | |
| I don't know how the enrichment number is going to end up, since Mr. Witkoff, last time he spoke publicly, of which I'm aware, said zero enrichment, and the Iranians need three or four percent for domestic non-military purposes, which many countries have. | |
| However, while this is going on, as if to force President Trump's hand, The Netanyahu government is threatening to attack, while the negotiations are going on, going on in Rome, to attack the Iranian nuclear facilities. | |
| How does this play in the White House? | |
| Is this what gives rise to Trump's disdain for Netanyahu, his perception that Netanyahu is trying to use him? | |
| Well, I think there's ample evidence that Netanyahu's prime capability is the manipulation of American politics, and Mr. Trump doesn't like being manipulated. | |
| So that's entirely natural. | |
| I'd add that not only is Israel threatening an attack on Iran during the negotiations, but it has called up 450,000 men, reserves, to complete the conquest of Gaza and the extermination of the Palestinians there. | |
| That's the purpose of the call-up. | |
| As for the negotiations with Iran, I think we have a very strange situation in which the American position wobbles constantly. | |
| One day, Mr. Whitcoff says it would be acceptable to have enrichment to the 3.67% level. | |
| I mean, this has become a constant problem in the Trump administration's management of negotiations everywhere. | |
| No fixed position, goalposts moving, wobbling all over the place as the talks proceed. | |
| So the Iranians clearly Hope for a deal. | |
| They're hanging in there. | |
| They're not responding with what one might expect in the face of this kind of inconstancy in the American position. | |
| So, I don't know. | |
| But clearly, Israel is exercising a veto on the talks behind the scenes. | |
| Jump to President Trump's latest comments about President Putin. | |
| Cindy McCain, the wife of the late senator, is very instrumental in one of the groups that's providing aid to the Gazans or attempting to. | |
| This has nothing to do with the politics of her late husband. | |
| But here's a very interesting... | |
| Chris, cut number four. | |
| Well, five days ago, Prime Minister Netanyahu vowed to take control of all of Gaza, which seems to be a shift from going in, carrying out raids, and then withdrawing. | |
| We've seen the Pope speak out. | |
| We've seen the leaders of France, of Canada, of the UK, calling the cutting of aid egregious. | |
| Netanyahu said criticism like that is feeding Hamas and really feeding anti-Semitism. | |
| What do you make of that pushback from him, that criticisms of the state are feeding hate? | |
| What I do know is they're not feeding people. | |
| And the most important part of this is that's what we're supposed to be doing. | |
| I'm very grateful for anyone, the Pope, any of the folks that did shout out and say, listen, we need to get more in. | |
| But I can't tell you as to exactly what Netanyahu's thinking or anything else. | |
| What I do know for a fact is that we need food to get into Gaza to avoid an utter catastrophe. | |
| I went on to say that it wasn't Hamas stealing the food. | |
| It was the Israeli military harassing people as they were attempting to get the food. | |
| I mean, none of this is new, Ambassador. | |
| It takes us back to the first question I asked you, how does this end? | |
| Probably the only way it could end would be if Donald Trump picked up a phone call and said, that's it, Bibi, we're not funding you anymore. | |
| Well, Israel also faces the possibility, frankly, of a sort of slow strangulation of its international relationships, including with Europe. | |
| much of the world now considers Israel the most evil society on the planet. | |
| And Europeans and others are witnessing acts which are moving them in that same direction. | |
| I should note that Netanyahu, when he spoke, was reacting to the murder of two Israeli embassy staffers in Washington, and, you know, claiming that this is an act of anti-Semitism, which is It wasn't an act of anti-Semitism. | |
| They were not murdered because they were Jews. | |
| They were murdered because they were agents of a state that is conducting genocide. | |
| And so if you can't make a distinction between Zionism and Judaism, you're in real trouble. | |
| Right. | |
| So I think, you know, this is And some of them may be, but I don't think the majority are. | |
| I'm going to ask you for your take on President Trump's comments at the Morristown Airport in New Jersey on Sunday. | |
| Chris, cut number three. | |
| Yeah, I'll give you an update. | |
| I'm not happy with what Putin's doing. | |
| He's killing a lot of people, and I don't know what the hell happened to Putin. | |
| I've known him a long time, always gotten along with him, but he's sending rockets into cities and killing people, and I don't like it at all, okay? | |
| We're in the middle of talking, and he's shooting rockets into Kiev and other cities. | |
| I don't like it at all. | |
| President, what do you want to do about that? | |
| I'm not surprised. | |
| I'm very surprised. | |
| We'll see what we're going to do. | |
| What am I going to tell you? | |
| You're the fake news, aren't you? | |
| You're totally fake. | |
| Any other questions? | |
| I don't like what Putin is doing, not even a little bit. | |
| He's killing people. | |
| And something happened to this guy, and I don't like it. | |
| Can I follow up on that? | |
| A Russian commander reportedly said that Putin was almost caught in the middle of a drone attack from Ukraine. | |
| I haven't heard that, but maybe that would be a reason. | |
| I don't know, but I have not heard that. | |
| All right, a couple of things. | |
| One, how do you think the Kremlin reacts to ad hominem comments about President Putin? | |
| And number two, is it even conceivable that he didn't know about the attempt to assassinate President Putin? | |
| And number three is Scott Ritter. | |
| pointed out on this program yesterday a decision like sending drones after Putin's helicopter a decision based on where they knew his helicopter was going to be must have implicated the involvement of American intelligence. | |
| Well, of course, Scott Ritter is correct about that. | |
| Ukraine depends heavily on our intelligence support. | |
| The irony of this, of course, is that As President Trump speaks about Putin killing people in Ukraine, we are killing people in Gaza in vastly larger numbers. | |
| The criminal reaction was characteristically reserved. | |
| They don't want to break relations with Mr. Trump. | |
| I think to go back to the question you introduced at the beginning of the program, They're very confused. | |
| They don't trust Mr. Trump because one day he says one thing, another day he says something else. | |
| And I think what we're seeing is evidence of his frustration that Putin will not bend his knee to Mr. Trump, that the Russians will not come to heel, and that his concept of how to end the war and what the war was all about in Ukraine proved to be erroneous. | |
| So now nothing's happening, and he's angry. | |
| That's understandable. | |
| Is this war endable on any terms other than the four or five clearly articulated from day one demands of the Kremlin, which were reduced to writing and agreed to by the Ukrainians until President Biden and Prime Minister Yeltsin persuaded President Zelensky not to go along with it? | |
| No, I don't think you can overcome at the negotiating table what has happened on the ground. | |
| The terms that were agreed at Istanbul back in late March 2022 were in fact considerably more generous than any terms that are now feasible. | |
| If Ukraine had been allowed to go ahead with the peace that it had agreed, then a million Ukrainians who have now died. | |
| Or been seriously wounded to the point of being disabled would not be. | |
| They would be alive. | |
| They would be hale and hearty. | |
| This war has been a disaster for Ukraine. | |
| It has depopulated it, has destroyed its industrial base. | |
| It has costed its territory. | |
| It will cost it more territory and more destruction unless there is a serious effort to grapple with the terms that the Russians have. | |
| Do you get the impression that the president and the people around him, whether they're the neocons, which seems to be most of them, or the America firsters, understand what you just said? | |
| Or does the president view this as a real estate? | |
| I hate to say this because it diminishes the value of human life as a real estate deal. | |
| Well, there is a real question about whether we are capable of practicing real politic or just real estate politic. | |
| And we do seem to be quite concerned about real estate deals and a lot less concerned about human life. | |
| And I think many people are very upset about this. | |
| Certainly I am. | |
| Ambassador Freeman, thank you very much for your time today. | |
| Much appreciated. | |
| I'm sorry I missed your presentation in Newark, New Jersey the other day with our friends Ray McGovern and Scott Ritter. | |
| I understand it was very well received. | |
| No surprise. | |
| Next time I'll surprise you and try and show up in person. | |
| But thanks very much for your time. | |
| I look forward to seeing you next week. | |
| Okay. | |
| Keep well. | |
| You as well. | |
| Thank you. |
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