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July 8, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
28:48
COL. Lawrence Wilkerson : Does The Deep State Control Trump?
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Hi, everyone.
Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Wednesday, July 9th, 2025.
After a week off of mountain climbing, the great Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson is back with us.
Colonel, we missed you dearly.
The viewers missed you.
The chatters missed you.
Chris missed you.
My team missed you.
And we welcome you back.
I'm happy that you're here.
We have, of course, a great deal to talk about.
What is your understanding of the current status of the special military operation in Ukraine, the ability of the Ukrainians to resist the Russians using drones and the inexorable march of the Russians westward?
It's a mixed bag, except at the bottom line area, as we've said so many times before, Ukraine hasn't got a chance.
They haven't got a Snowball's chance in hell.
It's a mixed bag because, one, Trump won't do what he said he would do, which is to end the war, which he could do if he were serious about it.
And two, because there are other people playing in it.
And three, because Putin has now decided that Trump is utterly untrustworthy and is going to pursue this war to the nth degree, whatever that might mean.
And that means Ukraine, regardless of its continuing ability to do some things that are disruptive for Russia, is going to be destroyed.
You used an interesting phrase, Colonel, one with which almost everybody on this show agrees.
And that is that the Kremlin probably believes that Donald Trump is not worthy of belief.
Why do you come to that conclusion, Colonel?
Let me reverse it for you.
Here's what Trump said yesterday.
This is a direct quote.
He's talking about Putin.
Quote, we get a lot of bullshit thrown at us by Putin.
He's very nice to us all the time, but it turns out to be meaningless, end of quote.
Turn that around and put it in Putin's mouth, and it has far more meaning and truth.
And that's the reality of it.
Putin cannot trust Trump.
He can't trust NATO.
He can't trust the United States in general.
And therefore, he's on his own ticket now.
And those people in Moscow who've been pushing him, and this is, I'm told, the majority as far as the nomenclature go, the cognicenti, if you will, he's doing what they want him to do.
He's pursuing it and going to pursue it to the fullest extent of his military capabilities.
He's going to destroy Ukraine.
Before we get into what that means, Chris, do we have the clip of President Trump saying what Colonel Wilkerson just quoted?
That was a war that should have never happened, and a lot of people are dying, and it should end.
And I don't know, we get a lot of bullshit thrown at us by Putin for you want to know the truth.
He's very nice all the time, but it turns out to be meaningless.
How does the Kremlin react?
I can't imagine President Putin taking it personally.
He was well above that.
Trump might take it personally if it came the other way.
How does the Kremlin react at such almost literally barnyard language from the President of the United States about the President of Russia?
I want to say bewilderment, but now Putin, who's not a stupid man in any way, fashion, or form, has heard and seen and listened to this so many times and in so many direct as well as indirect ways.
I suspect it rolls off his back like water off a duck.
He's given up.
He's given up on the United States.
And in many respects, he's given up on NATO, except he has to be worried about that, including the United States.
Judge, right now, from what I can see, we are taking on the Russians in the Arctic, in the Baltic, in Ukraine, and in Southwest Asia.
Who knows where it's going to happen again, possibly even in Azerbaijan in a sort of clandestine war.
We're creating an arc of crisis from the North Pole all the way down to the southern end of the Persian Gulf, and it's all aimed at destabilizing Russia.
What are we doing in the Arctic?
Besides trying to take over Greenland, but I say that with tongue firmly in cheek, but what are we doing in the Arctic?
We have troops in the Arctic?
I stumbled into a Naval War College and other entity-sponsored webinar.
Probably wasn't supposed to be on it.
And I got the latest DOD and other personnel who were involved, like members of the Arctic Council and so forth, approach to the Arctic, judging what's happening there.
And judging what's happening there is twofold.
One, the Russians are fortifying their border of the Arctic extensively.
I knew that.
They are putting all manner of military installations up there, and they essentially have revamped everything Stalin put up there and modernized it.
When you say the Arctic, you mean the territory of Russia close to the North Pole.
You don't mean they're seizing ice caps that belong to somebody else.
Well, let's talk about that later.
What they're doing is they have the longest along with the Canadians, but the Canadians don't have this kind of continuity.
Coastline that will front, if you will, the Northwest Passage that we've always been searching for and that now is rapidly developing.
In fact, we've had commercial ships go along there.
We're worried about Everything from Russia actually charging tolls to cross that expanse of water to China getting involved because China has gotten involved.
So we are doing things right now that look very warlike with regard to approaching Russia's responsibilities it feels it has to the Arctic and China's attempt to enter the Arctic.
We are looking at it as a war theater right now.
Wow.
Let me get back to Ukraine, if I might.
Scott Ritter, whom you and I know and respect and with whom we have the privilege of working, has referred to Ukraine as or analogized Ukraine as a patient in hospice waiting for the inevitable end.
Do you agree with that analogy?
In general, yes, but that hospice could be a long period because they still have people.
They are using unconscionable methods to impress those people, to bring them into the service, if you will.
But they still have people and they still have supplies, as it were, pouring in from Europe and from the United States.
And the volatility of Trump's attitude towards those supplies is part of the problem.
Part of the problem for both Ukraine, who never know what he's going to say next or do next, and part of the problem for Russia, because the supplies apparently are still fairly copious.
So Congress authorized, oh, the number is mind-boggling, and it was a couple of different authorizations.
I think it comes to about $265 billion in cash and military supplies to Ukraine, subject to the president's discretion.
President Biden exercised his discretion as he saw fit.
President Trump pretty much continued the spigot open.
Now it turns out that Secretary of Defense Hegseff, on his own and without authorization or even the knowledge of the White House, this is what CNN is reporting in the past hour, Colonel, dialed back the distribution of certain missiles and artillery shells, his argument being we need this for ourselves.
Have you ever heard of a decision of this magnitude, if the CNN report is true, have you ever heard in your years in the Pentagon and the State Department ever heard of a decision of this magnitude being made by the Secretary of Defense without the express authorization of the White House?
I have no doubt in my mind that Trump told Hegseth or told someone that they needed to do something about the problems he was hearing, probably from the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, maybe even Hexeth himself, with regard to drawing down supplies that the United States itself might lead and look at Israel for the biggest culprit there.
But Ukraine is adding to that.
I'm hearing that Hexeth has now blamed it on his deputy, whoever that is, because I don't know that he has a deputy.
He has the same last name.
I don't know if he's related to a CIA director, Colby.
Yeah, yeah, Elbridge Colby.
Yeah.
I don't know what's going on.
I have no idea what's going on.
I know that Trump is probably, if there's any validity to any of this, Trump is probably playing them politically.
That is to say.
He's lying again because he said he knew nothing about it.
Yeah, right, right.
Then he's an ignorant fool.
Now, we all know that's true.
But in this sense, I don't think he is because what he does is he tells someone to do something, Bondi, Hegseth, whomever it might be, Rubio.
And then when he tests the waters as to what effect that thing had on his political standing or other matters he's concerned with, like his money, then he reverses himself and blames it on the subordinate.
Wow.
Well, here's the latest thing he said, which is dated Monday.
Today's Wednesday, dated July 7th on weapons to Ukraine.
Chris, cut number eight.
Are you planning to send more weapons to Ukraine?
We're going to send some more weapons.
They have to be able to defend themselves.
They're getting hit very hard now.
They're getting hit very hard.
We're going to have to send more weapons.
You're defensive weapons, primarily, but they're getting hit very, very hard.
So many people are dying in that mess.
Before you comment on that, we're going to play another version of this.
It's the same clip, but it zeroes in on the rather bizarre, social media is going crazy over this bodily language from the director of Central Intelligence when he heard what President Trump said.
Chris, do we have that version?
Are you planning to send more weapons to Ukraine?
We're going to send some more weapons.
They have to be able to defend themselves.
They're getting hit very hard now.
They're getting hit very hard.
We're going to have to send more weapons.
You have defensive weapons primarily, but they're getting hit very, very hard.
What's that all about?
I was looking at Hegseth too.
Hegseth was like, what's he saying?
And Randall was like, oh, ha ha.
It looked like Ratcliffe was relieved that the weapons are going out.
And Hegseth is concerned that they're going out because the supply, you've told me this a hundred times, is finite.
You would think so.
And I will say this right now.
There aren't enough Patriot missiles to save Ukraine from almost anything because the Russians have air superiority, air supremacy, really.
And the Patriots are just not doing what Lockheed Martin would tell you that they'd do.
They didn't do it for Israel and they aren't doing it for Ukraine.
This is one of the lessons of this conflict, I think.
And we better learn it before others learn it.
Others are learning it simply by watching what's happening there.
And that is that our equipment is not top-notch.
Colonel, I dread having to ask you this because it is such a letdown if, depending on your answer, to those of us who expected a different Donald Trump.
Are the neocons in his administration triumphant?
Yes, in my view They are in my view, they are, and not just in his administration but outside too.
And those outside can be as dangerous because they're empowered by the fact that the ones inside empower them.
Three nationally televised meetings around that big table where you've been in that room.
Cabinet meeting, Tulsi Gabbard there, didn't say a word.
Two meetings with Nets and Yahoo, Tulsi Gabbard, not there.
Telling you anything?
It does.
It tells me that she's increasingly isolated, if not completely isolated.
Very, very dangerous.
Is she John Ratcliffe's boss or not?
Is he permitted to engage the president in matters of Intel bypassing her?
Or is under the law she the primary deliverer of Intel to the president of the United States?
The last amendment to the 1948 National Security Act, which created the DNI position, as far as I know, because I don't think there's been anything done with it since then, makes that individual the overall supervisor, what the DCI used to be, the director of central intelligence and thus a double-hatted CIA director.
It makes him over all or her over all 17 entities, including her or his own staff, but it doesn't give them the authority to move things around like people and money and so forth that would make them really powerful.
In other words, they could threaten with that money capability or that people power capability.
So it's really not a very powerful position.
Trump told her, I'm told by a competent authority that when she accepted the job, he was going to change that.
He hasn't.
So to answer your question, the person, either the director of the CIA or the DNI, or for that matter, anyone else, DNR or INR, state, could be the head honcho, if you will, were the president to put him at that position by being only he who could or she who could talk to him.
And that's what Trump will do.
He puts Hegseth or he puts Gabbard out and he tells the director of the CIA that he's the person who's going to be president at the National Security Council meetings and his premier briefer.
I'm going to run another clip for you and there's a couple of lessons from it.
Trump is unable to answer a question.
He asks, he whispers to Hegseth.
I don't think he intended his whisper to be picked up by the microphones, but it was.
Hegseth says, I don't know, ask John, meaning Ratcliffe.
Now, I don't know if Tulsi Gabbard was there.
So I don't know if this is a slap in the face to her because he didn't go to her or a slap in the face to her because she wasn't there.
It's also a slap in the face to Putin because without actually saying so, the intimation is that, and there's no evidence for this, Colonel, that the Russians are using chemical weapons in Ukraine.
This is a truly bizarre clip that we're going to play for you now.
Chris, number four.
And Ukraine, the Ukrainians have asked the International Accord to go after Russia for using toxic chemicals in the fight.
Germany and the Netherlands have had intelligence saying that.
What does the U.S. intelligence believe and what do you believe about the use of chemical weapons?
And would you agree that that would be important for it?
Well, I'd ask John maybe to discuss it if you'd like, John?
Well, Mr. President, obviously chemical weapons, if it's documented in its use, it's illegal.
It's against all international laws of armed conflict and treaties.
And obviously, I can't share in this room with this audience the intelligence that I can share with you privately.
But obviously, you're not going to stand or allow for any violations of international law by anyone.
That's right.
Thank you.
Kelsey Gabbard was there.
That was the cabinet meeting at which two-hour fully televised the cabinet meeting.
There it is.
There's a camera from the other side.
Now, Chris added the Gabbard sighting language, but there she is.
And did you hear him say, and Mr. President, we know you're not going to stand for any violations of international law?
What a statement in the face of the genocide going on in Caza.
Right, right.
It's hard to believe.
Now, our dear friend Max Blumenthal has a very negative but largely accurate moniker for John Ratcliffe, the Mossad stenographer.
I think he's right.
He regurgitates and repeats.
That's what a stenographer does.
Everything his Mossad buddies tell him.
I wonder if, because Max also claims this, when Netanyahu meets with Trump without the cameras there, there are Mossad agents with him.
Not CIA, not Gabbard, not Ratcliffe, but Mossad agents.
I wouldn't doubt that a bit.
I saw that with Douglas Fife, the number three man in the Pentagon in 2003 and 2004.
Rumsfeld actually made a statement.
I don't run this building.
Mossad does.
Wow.
Who made that statement?
Rumsfeld, the Secretary of Defense.
Wow.
I want to get back to your answer about are the neocons triumphant in the Trump administration?
And you said yes.
Will they settle for anything in Ukraine?
Will they settle for anything less?
As unlikely as this is, it's probably not unlikely.
It's impossible than a Russian withdrawal.
I mean, what would satisfy them?
Their goal was to use Ukraine as a battering ram with which to drive Putin from office.
What will satisfy those neocons?
They've shifted their, that's on hold right now.
And it's doing okay as far as they're concerned because it's still going on and shows every sign of being able to go on for quite a bit longer.
Their focus now is on the southern end of this arc of crisis.
They want the war back with Iran.
And mark my words, we will go back to war with Iran.
Israel will lead the way.
So are you telling us the neocons will or will give up the ghost or have given up the ghost on Ukraine?
Not given up the ghost, just shifted focus momentarily.
Remember, the Baltic's still up there.
The Arctic's still up there.
The northern flank of NATO is still up there.
They've got their focus all along that arc of crisis that I described.
And now their attention is focused on the most vulnerable area where they think they can effect a knockout blow, and that's Iran.
Take a look at these two newspaper headlines from Israel two days ago.
Haaretz, defense minister, says Israel plans to concentrate all Gaza's population in the humanitarian zone.
The Times of Israel plans said to outline humanitarian transit camps.
You see those two words.
Concentration camps in Gaza.
Now, you know, you told me this, and it's verified on the video.
A retired IDF general referred to the pre-October 7th Gaza Strip as an open-air concentration camp.
Now this is going to be, what, a self-acknowledged concentration camp?
with the intent, eventually, Judge, to empty it and to empty it into other countries, accepting or not.
Watch this Nazi-like crackpot whose name is Who doesn't Max know over there?
Anyway, his name is Zivka Fogel.
He is an Israeli member of parliament, member of the Knesset.
This will turn your stomach.
Chris, cut number one.
The war we are fighting today, which we embarked on the 7th of October, is a war against a Nazi enemy that threatened the existence of the Jewish people in the land of Israel.
That is the whole truth.
So the Prime Minister decided, the Prime Minister decided to do it sequentially.
I'm with him.
No problem, let's do it sequentially.
You eliminated Hezbollah, you dealt a severe blow, maybe even more than that, to Iran.
Now the time has come to deal with the Gaza Strip.
How do we do that?
You take off the gloves, stop the humanitarian aid, cut off electricity, cut off water, start destroying, and expel voluntarily, so to speak, voluntary migration to Gazans.
There are no uninvolved people there, no innocents, no one who isn't guilty.
As far as I'm concerned, they're all Hamas members.
At the end of the war, there should be two images in the Gaza Strip.
First, not a single Gazan remains, and all 50 of our hostages, 49 male hostages, and one female hostage, both living and deceased there, returned to the state of Israel.
Do you think Donald Trump agrees with that?
I think Bibi Netanyahu does.
Oh, of course he does.
I mean, right up Netanyahu's alley.
This is this Motrich Kavir Netsanyahu, this gentleman that I'd never heard of before, this clip.
And according to Max, a majority of the Israeli public.
82, 83% of the Jewish Israeli public.
You put your finger on it just a few minutes ago.
Now, Ratcliffe wouldn't say that because he wants to keep his job and the cameras were rolling.
But what Trump is doing there is absolutely horrific.
It's a war crime and nobody sees it that way on our side.
Does Donald Trump agree with this Nazi-like guy who's in the Knesset that we just heard?
I don't know if he agrees with him.
I certainly don't think he would say publicly that he agrees with him, but I do think he's going to let Netanyahu go as far as Netanyahu probably gets to go.
And that's going to be almost suicidal for the guys in.
Wow.
What will stop this?
What has become of the resistance, Colonel?
You know, I read an article in the New York Times the other day that typified this for me.
It was about ExxonMobil and their finding, I think, a Qatari energy company, and they're finding in the eastern Mediterranean a new methane field.
And it was a very banal article.
It went on talking about this great discovery and what it would do for Israel and what it would do for the consortium that would exploit this methane find.
And I'm thinking to myself, here's a guy writing in the New York Times and not even talking about the situation you and I are talking about right now in that region, the horrible situation in that region.
Instead, he's talking about Israel and methane and Turkey and Greece and all the countries are going to benefit from this tremendous fine.
That's what we're dealing with, Judge.
No one cares.
Wow.
Mike Huckabee, the clip is long and gut-wrenching.
Chris made a montage of everything he said, but here's a...
He's a Christian pastor.
He's the former governor of Arkansas.
He ran for president once or twice, but he gives an American version with a southern twang of what this guy Zivkafogel said, no Palestinians remaining.
Actually, Chris, play it.
You can't have two people claiming the same piece of real estate.
There are certain words I refuse to use.
There is no such thing as a West Bank.
It's Judea and Samaritan.
I think we have to recognize there was a Palestinian state.
It was called Gaza.
Look how that turned out.
You can't have a Palestinian state on top of the Israeli state.
Israel has a right to its autonomous, indigenous homeland that they've had for 3,500 years since the days of Abraham.
There's no other sense of Hossian and Persians.
There's no other sense of thing.
That's been a political tool to try to force land away from Israel.
If we make two governments, the Palestinian state needs to be outside the boundaries of the nation of Israel.
There's plenty of land in the world if we could find a place and say, okay, let's create a Palestinian state.
There's no such thing as a settlement.
They're communities, their neighborhoods, their cities.
There's no such thing as an occupation.
Mike's got his own vocabulary with his own unique meanings, but I suggest to you that his attitude is another version with the same goal as this Mr. Zivka Fogel, the Israeli Knesset member whom we watched a few minutes ago, Colonel?
Absolutely.
And his knowledge of history, real history, actual history is about as good as Ted Cruz's.
I was just going to say, as soon as you said real history, Ted Cruz, Ted Cruz, who famously or infamously told Tucker Carlson that the Israel, the idea, the concept, the metaphor of which God the Father spoke in the Old Testament is the same Israel that is now governed by Netanyahu and his cronies.
And a graduate of Princeton and the Harvard Law School who's a United States senator and makes policy could believe that is mind-boggling.
And he makes national security decisions and recommendations based on that.
You could see the disbelief in Tucker's face.
I mean, utter disbelief in his face.
And let's just face another thing here, too.
Listen to what he said about you can't hold two territories.
Well, Texas belongs to Texans in Texas, but it also belongs to Washington and the federal government.
That's bull.
That's utter bull.
You could have a relationship where you had a federal government and a state government.
Oh, we have that in America, don't we?
Yeah.
These people are idiots and they don't even realize it.
They are driven by this messianic view.
I mean, I would like to see, I don't think Tucker would do it.
It'd be a waste of his time.
I would like to see him interrogate Huckabee the way he interrogated Cruz.
You're going to get similar answers.
Huckabee will know where these phrases are in the Old Testament.
He's a pastor.
He studied this stuff.
Cruz didn't know it.
He's a lawyer.
He probably didn't study it the way Mike did.
But you're going to get essentially the same mentality right back at you.
It reminds me of what a very famous person, I forget his name now, but he said, when tyranny comes to America, it'll come wrapped in a flag, carrying a gun, and holding a Bible.
We'll end on that.
Colonel, I'm glad you're back.
Missed you terribly.
Look forward to seeing you next week.
All the best.
Thank you.
Same to you.
Hope my tooth gets for that.
Your tooth will be fine by next week.
All the best to you, sir.
Thank you.
Take care.
And if you think the colonel was hot, wait till you see Phil Giraldi, who will be here at three o'clock this afternoon.
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