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July 1, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
22:48
Lt.COL Karen Kwiatkowski (Fmr. Dept of State) : Is the Empire Collapsing?
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Hi, everyone.
Judge Andrew Napolitano for Judging Freedom.
Today is Tuesday, July 1st, 2025.
Colonel Karen Kwetkowski joins us now.
Colonel, you have an unbelievable piece about the collapsing empire, and we'll get to that in just a minute.
But first, a couple of preliminary questions.
Is the United States Israel's overlord, or is Israel the overlord of the United States?
Yeah, you know, it's a good question.
I tend to think it's the overlord of the United States.
And really, it's because I guess one way you could look at it is, you know, human beings and horses work together really well, right, throughout history.
And the horse is really, really big.
And the human being is really small.
And the horse is very strong.
And the human being is not nearly as strong as the horse.
But we are in charge of the horse because we know how to manipulate the horse into doing what we want it to do.
And I think that's why that's what Israel does to Washington.
It manipulates Washington into doing what it wants Washington to do.
And it also seems to have a sense of ownership over Washington, just like a human would have a sense of ownership over their horse.
So I tend to think that Israel is the overlord.
But, you know, Brian Berletic makes the huge case that the United States uses Israel as a proxy.
And that has always been America's interest in Israel to have it as a proxy.
So you can go both ways.
I tend to think it's the overlord.
What does the United States gain from funding Netanyahu's slaughter in Gaza and his wars elsewhere?
In terms of...
Yeah, that's right.
We increase the enemies and people that hate America, that really would normally not hate America and have no reason to.
In terms of Gaza, that is very mysterious because you would think, how can our industry, how do we make money on Gaza, you know, slaughtering Gaza?
How does that help Israel get stronger?
Because it doesn't.
It puts us in a corner because we're having to defend things that are indefensible.
But, you know, there's a lot of money being spent in Gaza.
And if you have the view that the defense industrial complex in this country really pushes policies and makes things happen that will fill its coffers, that will profit it.
A great many American companies are involved in receiving money, receiving orders for things that are consumed in Gaza, bombs that are dropped in Gaza, contracts to do different things.
You know, even that silly thing that Biden did with the bridge kind of thing, the port to bring aid, you know, it never brought any aid, but a lot of money was spent.
Contractors made money on that.
So I think we're making money.
Not we as Americans, but I think contractors in this country and some of the big defense Caterpillar makes money, right?
I mean, Ritter says that there are three flights a day of U.S. cargo planes carrying construction equipment and military supplies to the Israelis, all of it at the expense of the American taxpayer.
Yeah, I think that's it too.
And then if you think about Trump's vision, well, I don't know if it's a vision, but there was a time when he was talking about making Gaza the American, he would own Gaza.
Trump actually said, I will own Gaza.
And he also said, you know, the Gaza Riviera, he's going to rebuild it.
It's going to be all beautiful, golden, I'm sure.
That also implies future printed dollars, American money, rebuilding what has been destroyed.
So I think that is a bigger part of it actually than even dropping the bombs and destroying Gaza in the first place.
There's money to be made in destroying Gaza and killing off Gazans, but there's more money even to be made by giving Israel money and co-investing in Gaza once it's been purged, once it's been ethnically cleansed, which is clearly what they're doing and have been doing for a long time.
So I think it's a business deal.
And yet it's not transparent.
We have to dig through the small print to find out what's happening and why it's happening.
It's criminal is what it is.
Seems to me there's a clause in the Constitution.
No money shall be spent from the public treasury, but that which shall be recorded in a public journal.
Yeah, you try and find out what the CIA has spent or what the American military has spent in Gaza or for any of its escapades.
It'd be very difficult to do that.
About two hours ago, the Senate passed this monstrosity, which has the childlike name of a big, beautiful bill.
I don't know what's going to happen when it goes to the House, but one part of the bill that the House passed and the Senate passed with which they're in agreement raises, you know where I'm going, the Defense Department budget to $1 trillion a year.
In the name of God, how can they spend and keep track of $1 trillion a year, Colonel Kwatkowski?
Well, clearly, they can't keep track of $500 billion a year.
They can't keep track of $600 billion a year.
They can't keep track of $700 billion a year.
They have not ever passed an audit.
And they don't even have audits that are structured in such a way that they can capture all the spending that goes on in and through the Pentagon.
So to reward an incompetent, non-transparent, and unproductive organization like that with an increase in its budget.
This is classic government 101, right?
When you fail, you're rewarded with more funding.
And I believe the Pentagon has failed.
I don't believe it provides any defense at all.
I think it's purely offense and the offense that it provides is very much Louis Vuitton and Rolex level offense.
Very small number of impressive but highly expensive equipment items that we produce and export with a huge profit margin to them.
So that is an organization that no normal person would want to give more money to.
And certainly if you wanted to have a Pentagon, because you said, oh, well, standing armies aside, we maybe we want to have a standing army.
Okay, I don't think we need one.
But let's say you agree that we should have a standing army.
Shouldn't that organization be accountable to the same level of scrutiny as any other organization?
And even a government organization.
You know, we hear a lot of criticism.
The IRS can't do its job.
You know, different agencies face criticism.
The Pentagon is the biggest dirty dealer here.
They're the biggest organization, the biggest budget with the least transparency, the greatest inability to track their money.
And we've asked nothing of it.
Trump, I say we, Americans have, we have that high expectations.
We elected Trump to implement those.
Trump has asked nothing of the Pentagon.
So either he is afraid of it, he doesn't care, or he inconceivably doesn't realize that it's a humongous waste of money.
Do you think he understands that we have 750 foreign military installations in 80 different countries?
If you were to ask him, Mr. President, why do we need that?
He might give you some BS answer, but he can't give you a specific answer.
He certainly can't.
I doubt that any human being could tick off all 750 or even all 80 countries.
No, no.
And I don't, honestly, I don't think, I think he hears things and he has probably heard this before that we have troops everywhere.
And he doesn't, I don't think he thinks about it.
I think he sees, oh, America first.
We have a little outpost of America and we put America first.
So I think he does not reflect on what it means.
I don't think he even knows what empire is.
We meet all the criteria and have for nearly, I don't know, 80 years now, have met every criteria for empire, probably more.
I mean, since we took over the Spanish Empire or what the parts that we wanted, we have been an empire.
And now we're in our twilight and Trump seems to have no concept whatsoever.
And yet it's weird to me because the platform that he ran on had some key points about, you know, the idea, the whole idea of putting America first is to end American empire.
I mean, that's what I think most of his supporters thought.
Maybe we were all wrong.
We were just played.
Isn't the American Empire collapsing?
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
And it's been collapsing for quite a long time.
And really, we could go back, well, I think my whole lifetime.
When you start getting assassinations of presidents, like we saw with JFK, and of course, other key politicians that threatened the state, RFK, you know, Martin Luther King, you know, these people who were in the way of state power, state growth, state control, people who questioned the constitutionality of whatever different parts of the state were doing, and they were assassinated.
And also, you take Nixon.
Nixon angered a few people, and it's easy to get rid of a president.
And now we're coming, that was in the 70s.
Now, in our current era, you know, we understand that the president really doesn't even wield great power.
I think Trump tries to do this, but we were led by a president who was completely senile for four years.
And the same things happened that happened when we had a non-senile.
We had George W. Bush, who was criticized for being a little bit brain dead.
Turned out he was brain dead, but didn't matter, right?
Because things went on just like the, just like the deep state, if you want to call it that, just like the system preferred.
And it's a system of empire.
It's a system of overseas wars, a system driven by a military-industrial complex that neglects its heartland, which of course is what brought Trump to the fore, both in this.
This is why, and I'm going to make this argument, and I think you probably agree.
It almost doesn't matter who you vote for.
There's that famous Tom Woods one-liner.
No matter who you vote for, you get John McCain.
But no matter who you vote for, that person's controlled by the deep state, the military, industrial, Zionist complex that very shrewdly and adroitly uses the power of the checkbook to control the government.
The CIA does what it wants with Mossad and MI6.
The Congress is bought and paid for by APAC and those folks.
It really doesn't matter who's in the White House.
Yeah.
And, you know, it was weird to me that the mainstream media didn't really comment when the head of Mossad talked about how he works hand in hand with the CIA at every step of the way.
And that CIA is basically a Mossad member in Washington.
And he said this publicly.
I mean, we're going to play that clip for you.
Okay.
Chris, David Barney, cut number six.
I also want to express appreciation and gratitude to our main partner, the CIA, for the joint operations and the missions that were carried out.
And also to the head of the CIA, who supported The Mossad in making the right decisions, which ultimately made this operation possible.
We will continue to keep a very close watch on all the projects in Iran, which we know in the most thorough way.
And we will be there just as we have been until now.
But we must not forget that there are still 50 hostages in the Gaza Strip, 30 deceased, 20 living hostages whom it is our moral and ethical duty to bring back to our border.
I want to thank you all again and to tell you that you are part of history, an unforgettable and inseparable part of what the Mossad has done and continues to do.
Continue working shoulder to shoulder with our partners in the IDEF and the Shin Bit.
And in this way, we will keep bringing great achievements to the people of Israel.
So thank you all very much.
Well done.
Truly well done.
Kind of stunned that he allowed himself to be filmed doing that.
The reference, of course, to the director of the CIA is to the notorious Zionist John Radcliffe.
Is the director of the CIA an Mossad asset?
Well, clearly, clearly this one is.
Clearly this one is.
And we've seen that he's not the only one.
You know, when Waltz was removed from the, as his job, I guess, National Security Council head, but he was also a Mossad asset and had been and Radcliffe as well for many years.
So it's well known that these guys are connected, but depending on what positions they rise to in the U.S. government, they become invaluable tools.
Mossad is celebrating that.
When I saw that, what Balea or whatever his name is said, the Mossad chief, it's almost like they're protesting too much.
I think Israeli society is a little bit stunned at a couple of things.
One is that they were hit pretty hard by Iran.
So some of the things that they were told about the Iron Dome and their defenses weren't true.
And also many of them are very tired of the Gaza thing.
They were happy to, you know, most Israelis that live there are pretty happy to kill Gazans.
They want them gone.
But they're surprised that it's going on almost approaching two years here in a few months and they haven't got rid of them all.
And they've lost IDF soldiers and their reputation globally has collapsed and their economy and trading partners, except for the United States, are starting to shrink away.
So I think some of this was to kind of drum up support.
Maybe that's why the Mossad guy went public, you know, to kind of say, look, the Americans are behind us when in fact, an objective assessment of the role America plays in Israel is actually not that positive in a lot of ways.
You know, Israel is in a bad way right now.
And most of it's their own doing.
But, you know, having us quote unquote help them hasn't really helped that much.
I think many Israelis realize this.
So I think they have another problem.
So maybe that's why he's speaking publicly.
But yeah, I'm surprised that American media didn't pick up on that and have something to say about that because Israel is not the 51st state.
Okay.
It's not.
Actually, most people in this country could care less about it.
It owns Washington.
It owns Washington.
Well, that leads me to another clip we're going to play for you.
Here's Senator John Kennedy.
Now, he does his sort of country bumpkin shtick, but he's a graduate of Oxford University and Harvard Law School.
So maybe this shtick comes naturally to him from Louisiana.
Maybe the voters find it attractive, but you are dealing with a formidable intellect.
However, he may regret the last three words of this interview.
So it's only about a minute long, but please listen to the last three words.
It has to do with a recent briefing that he and the Senate received on the bombing.
And he makes an allegation here, which I've not heard before.
And you'll see the CNN reporter, I think it's CNN, reacting with surprise and trying to pin him down.
Chris, cut number seven.
Before Israel and America did what we did, Iran was within days of having a nuclear weapon.
Now.
Within days.
Within days.
That's challenged in this briefing?
Within days.
Sir, just to kind of circle back and put a finer point on this, the days that they were to getting a bomb, that seems to be different from what Tulsi Gabbard had testified to in March.
Was there a new assessment?
Was that the Israeli assessment?
Was that a new American assessment?
Was that information new to you in this briefing?
It was new to me.
This was a good briefing.
It was one of the best I've ever attended.
I mean, Rubio, Hed Seth, Ratcliffe, General Kane, they didn't bring out a script and read carefully from it.
They just looked us in the eye and talked to us.
The assessment that said that Iran was within days of having a bomb, is that Israeli or American assessment?
I don't know.
Ah, the last line.
Was that an Israeli or an American assessment?
I don't know.
How could he not know?
How could he not have said, are you feeding us foreign intel?
And if so, what is the source?
Yeah.
Yeah, that is amazing that we are so accepting and so casual about what really is a hijack.
You know, it's a hijack of our national security approach.
It's a hijack of our intelligence, you know, system.
And, you know, it's funny because this has been going on for a long time, right?
When I remember years ago, when I was in the Pentagon, it was pro-Zionist and neoconservative policymakers in and outside of the Pentagon that were shaping the message that was being presented as hard truth, which of course was not hard truth.
It was actually very creative lying.
And it was sold to our policymakers and we got wars, wars that Israel wanted, wars that Israel needed, and wars that Israel attempted to profit from, which in the long run, I'm not sure how successful that Israel really has been here, but they certainly wanted those wars and they got them.
And they said a lot of things that weren't true.
And that was 20, 22, 23 years ago.
And they're still doing that.
And nobody's even noticing.
Or they're just, I mean, you know, and I don't know if it's because people are so afraid, politicians in particular, so afraid of being attacked.
You know, we've lost our courage, I think, in many ways.
Our politicians are dependent on their reputation.
They're dependent on re-election money.
And I think the re-election money is not the biggest problem.
It's the reputation.
They don't want to be called names.
And, you know, if we are a nation of people that are afraid of being called names by a piddly little country and their handful of avid warmongering supporters in this country, then it's on us, right?
I mean, you can't blame them for trying.
Why are we accepting it?
Why are we reluctant to fight back?
Are Americans really that polite?
Because I didn't think they were.
But it seems like our politicians will say nothing and they won't criticize Israel.
They won't call it out.
And if they do, they do it in a very mild way that can easily be walked back.
So, you know, that's not good.
And this is why I really like the Elon Musk Trump spat that goes on in social media.
I like that because, you know, he's showing all Trump is being Trump.
Trump's being the government.
And Musk is saying, I don't have to listen to that.
I'm not going to put up with that.
I'm a free person.
You know, we should all be thinking that way.
We're not.
I don't get it.
Very unfortunate situation.
Colonel Kwaikowski, a pleasure, my dear friend.
Nobody analyzes this stuff the way you do.
Thank you very much for your thoughtfulness, your time.
Thank you for the piece about the collapsing empire, which folks can see at judsnap.com.
Deeply appreciated.
We look forward to seeing you next week.
Have a great 4th of July weekend.
I don't know what the 4th of July means anymore, but we once were dependent on England.
Now we're dependent on Washington.
Whatever.
Have a great holiday weekend, Karen.
Me too.
Thanks a lot, Judge.
Thank you.
Coming up at 4.30, I think from Rio de Janeiro, of all places, Pepe Escobar.
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