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Aug. 4, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
21:57
LtCOL. Karen Kwiatkowski : US Government Unhinged
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Hi, everyone.
Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Tuesday, August.
5th, 2025, Colonel Karen Kwaikowski joins us now.
Colonel Karen, always a pleasure, my dear friend.
Thank you for joining us.
I'm absolutely fascinated with your piece at judgeknapp.com and elsewhere, our unhinged government.
And there are so many examples of the government being unhinged.
What is the, what diplomatic purpose is served by the President of the United States?
announcing that he's sending nuclear submarines to designated locations in response to a tweet, a tweet from a former Russian president and current Russian security official.
Who in their right mind would announce this rather than just quietly doing it?
Yeah, well, nobody in their right mind.
And, you know, Trump really doesn't have an excuse because he was president for four years.
He learned at least something about the job.
Certainly he got the...
it's surprising, it's dismaying, and it's dangerous.
And what do you think the Russians will do in response to it?
I mean, they know where all of our nuclear subs are, and we know where all of theirs are.
I stated incorrectly on with one of our guests yesterday that they have twice the number of submarines that we do.
They don't.
We have about the same number of submarines.
They have more nuclear submarines than we do.
But how does the Kremlin react to this?
Do they think that Trump is a madman and doesn't know what he's doing?
Or do they take this stuff seriously?
Well, I think they take it seriously as something Trump seriously said.
I think they understand that Trump says many things.
And he actually tries to be unpredictable.
He is unpredictable, but Trump tries to use that as an asset, as a kind of a policy.
He wants people to be surprised by him.
So I think the Russians know this.
Also, the Russians are not an empire.
You know, Russia is not an empire and they're not trying to create one they're not trying to manage one uh they are trying to take care of their country um in a world that they see correctly as becoming multipolar the United States is trying to preserve an empire a unipolar empire that the Russians don't have 750 military installations in 80 countries like the United States has No, they don't.
They don't.
And you know, the Russians do, of course, have military alliances.
They have defense alliances.
They have trade alliances.
They have bases in what they consider to be strategic locations around the world, but they don't threaten their hosts very often like we do.
They don't blackmail their hosts.
This is no longer the Soviet Union.
It's been gone for over 30 years.
So the Russians are pretty much just doing the Russian thing, and they certainly do not.
They see them, I mean, Russians see the nationalism of Russia.
They're proud, Russia first.
They are proud of their nationalism.
That I can tell you from the week I spent there three months ago.
Do the Russians threaten third parties because of what we do, as The United States has threatened China and India because of what Russia is doing.
This concept of collective punishment and vicarious punishment, punishing B and C because of what A does, this is Nazi like.
Yeah, it really is, and it's it's a it's a kind of an emotional foreign policy, which is not what good foreign policy ever is.
It's never emotional.
It's about interests.
It's about, you know, protecting your people, putting your country at an advantage if you can.
But certainly it's not about creating enemies.
But when you go emotional, and I have to say Trump, you know, he likes, again, the 3D chess, the 4D chess.
To me, it looks very emotional.
You have angered me, therefore I will threaten all your friends with punishment and you with terrible, terrible punishment.
That's pretty much how he talks.
And that is emotional language.
It is inappropriate.
It is appropriate for any republic, of course.
And it's also a sign of great weakness in your empire.
You know, one of the things I mentioned in the...
in that article i mean i talked about some of the more famous uh uh uh roman emperors the you know caligula um there's there's others.
And they are known for excess, known for waste, known for tyrannical behavior, known for a lack of control over their emotions.
And of course, I didn't talk about Augustus, but the Roman emperors and any king that we admire.
in history almost always was a sober individual, a person who had a great deal of control over what they say and how they feel and how they communicate, a kind person.
And Trump is not being very rational.
He's not being very kind.
He's not being unemotional in any of the things that he's putting out on tweet.
And maybe they should just take away his ex account, or he should do it himself if he had the sense to do that.
Because so much of what he's doing is not only causing a deterioration in the U.S. relations with the world, it's blowing up his support.
I mean, some of the tweets, some of the things that he has said and is doing.
you know the epsteem files for example you know he went after his own supporters for being basically stupid idiots for believing what he said not just for four years, but for longer than that, for the whole time he's been in politics.
I've done that.
What good does that do?
Why would you want to reduce your support?
It just makes no sense.
I'm thinking of And the only way to have absolute power and not be corrupt is by exercising self-restraint.
As you pointed out, you've given some great historical examples of that.
The last thing one would associate Donald Trump is self-restraint.
Good Lord.
No, and he's also very showy.
You know, I just learned about his grand new ballroom that he's going to build.
You know, he's, and of course, he has criticized the Federal Reserve for having their building with marble when, you know, billion, I don't know how big that renovation was, but apparently very much in excess.
We're ending the Fed, by the way.
I don't know if Trump has got that word, but the Fed will not be here much longer.
That building certainly, I hope, has alternate uses.
But this is what the state is doing, and Trump is applauding it.
He's participating in it, building great symbols of state power.
This is what you do at the end of a collapsing empire.
And it's just so inappropriate.
And the thing is, it's not like the world is run by a few informed people and six billion serfs who don't have internet.
We all see this.
The average person in the average country of probably age 17 recognizes.
what's going on and Trump's behavior is actually making our country much weaker and because he's revealing the weaknesses that are inherent in an empire at the end of its rope.
I think you're right on the mark, Karen.
And I don't know how this is going to end.
We're only six months into his term.
I work in an environment where he's very much praised and beloved.
They don't see the world as we do.
He is now supplying Ukraine at the same rate at which Joe Biden was.
He can't call it Biden's war anymore.
It's Donald Trump's war.
He said he was going to end it in 24 hours.
Not only has he not ended it, he's enhancing it.
And all of our military guys, Scott Ritter, Colonel McGregor, Larry Johnson, Colonel Wilkerson, Dennis Fritz, Chief Fritz.
So all the military guys say Ukraine, and you probably as well, but I want to put words in your mouth, Ukraine is on its last legs.
No matter what he sends them, it's on its last legs.
Yeah.
It's a failed state.
And it was a failed state actually before this happened, self-destructing with its civil war with the Donbass that we were, of course, supporting and egging on.
But it's been a failed state for quite a long time.
Obviously, it has the record as the most corrupt state in the European area that it held that title for years.
It has a puppet governor who has suspended, a puppet president who has suspended elections.
Most, a good many of the intelligent people in Ukraine have left the country.
This happened early on in the war.
They are, you know, immigrants.
living in Europe, in Canada, in the United States, and they're not going back home.
They're not going back home to rebuild their republic.
Okay, that's not going to happen.
But Trump is not listening to those voices.
He's not listening to people that understand the economy.
That's pretty clear.
He's not listening to people that understand security strategy in the military.
That's very clear.
So who is he listening to?
And what are they telling him?
Well, he's listening to the financial guys and his friends, in part, some of his friends in Israel and then his banking and real estate friends who really are not up.
to the job that they're supposed to be doing in Washington.
They are not prepared for it.
They think it's a real estate deal.
They think it's a matter of dealing with the mob to get your concrete poured.
It's not.
It's so far beyond that.
And it's a shame.
So that's what we're dealing with.
I think Americans have to be prepared and they have to see through this and take care of, you know, don their oxygen masks first before you try to fix Washington.
Let's talk about another failed state, one that wouldn't exist.
without the continued billions from the United States, and that's Israel.
As you pointed out in your piece, Our Unhinged Government, over a half million, more than 500,000 Gazans.
dead or displaced starvation as a weapon of war resistance to disease collapsed yeah I mean it's no wonder the young people in the IDF don't want to invade Gaza they're going to come back sick and diseased because of the diseases they have caused is there any way to stop this other than by Donald Trump Well,
you know, the good thing is if Trump truly believed he was a powerful president that could make a difference and if he truly wanted peace, which he promised to all of his voters and to the country.
Yeah, there's a ton of stuff he could do.
I mean, he could immediately suspend all the military aid and other financial aid to Israel.
He could require them to withdraw from Gaza.
He could, you know, this idea of dropping in food, which and the thing Biden did, you know, his portable seaport that he built and it delivered zero food to Gaza.
And none of that is necessary.
We have land bridges, roads.
Gaza is surrounded by land, a little bit of ocean and a lot of land.
Open up the roads, build roads.
They've got the dozers already there.
They can do it and drive the stuff in.
It is that simple.
And you or I in that same position could make that happen.
He talks about his power.
He wants to have symbols of power all around him.
He wants to be adored as a powerful man.
But he's not using his power for the things that he promised he would use it for.
One, to put America first, which he has not done.
He puts Israel first.
And the other, of course, is to pursue peace, to make peace, to create a world.
where peace is the dominant factor.
And he's not doing any of that.
And he has the power to do it if he chose to.
So now that's my opinion.
Some people think he's being blackmailed.
You know, some people think he's a liar.
Maybe he was just kidding.
You know, he was kidding about all the things that he said.
But there's something going on.
Part of it is I think he's not aware of so many of the things that the world is aware of about what's going on and the history of these things and how they're actually happening.
He doesn't really know.
I don't think he's that interested in it.
And then it could be that so much is still being filtered around him.
The people that he's actually talking to and what they are allowed to say, what he is willing to hear from his advisors may be very narrow.
It may be, don't bother.
me with that.
I don't care.
This is what I'm going to do.
And I want my ballroom.
You had mentioned a now viral interview that my friend and former Fox colleague Tucker Carlson had.
I could stop here and you could say which one because there are so many.
But I'm talking about the one with your former colleague, Lieutenant Colonel Tony Aguilar.
who is a real military hero because he fought in all these deployments and now condemns them and who has been on the ground in Gaza and stated to Tucker Carlson, he has never seen more horrific slaughter anywhere in the world in his 25 deployments in his 30 years in the military as a graduate of West Point than he saw in Gaza.
When Donald Trump was asked if there's genocide, he said, I don't see any, but he does see starvation.
And then he said, oh, and we're sending them some food and they haven't thanked us.
Thank you.
You are the reason, one of them.
The other one is called Joe Biden.
that there is starvation.
Yeah.
So again, this gets back to your theme that the government is unhinged.
I would drop the word the government is unhinged.
Apparently.
The concept of government is unhinged.
Biden was unhinged.
Trump is unhinged.
And we all suffer for it, Karen.
Yeah.
You know, the idea of unhinged, you know, we use it as a, you know, to say someone is unhinged as an insult.
But when I'm what I think is really what we're feeling is that just like a door that's unhinged partially or completely, you know, you try to open that door, you put pressure on it.
It doesn't open.
The pressure results in something very different than what you want to see.
And that's how our government is operating for for the American people.
It's not just that the majority of the voters voted for Trump because of what he said he was going to do.
So we said, well, we're going to put our force behind this and then this is what we'll get.
But in fact, we put our force behind this and we're getting something totally different.
We're getting more war, more insecurity, more.
And this was Biden's person.
You know, you could say, oh, well, it was time for her to go and get a new one.
But he said, well, your numbers, you keep rewriting them months later and it makes me look bad.
Well, that's not the point.
You know, the government is trying to give a report card on itself.
And the people in this country know exactly how the economy is doing because the people in this country live the economy.
They feel it.
They go to the grocery store twice a week.
They.
see what's happening.
They understand the choices that they have to make with their limited resources.
They have relatives or maybe they themselves are looking for work and they're not finding anything they can live on.
So, or they have to take multiple jobs.
This is what America looks like.
And Trump, you know, Trump's telling us, oh, well, we're going to fix all that.
But he knows nothing about anything.
And, you know, I remember, you know, George W., not W, Herbert Walker Bush got ridiculed because he went into a grocery store and he was very surprised at how the grocery store worked.
He had clearly embarrassed himself.
He had never been to a grocery store and bought anything.
So he embarrassed himself as a public person.
Well, Trump is doing that, not by going to a grocery store, but his decisions and actions are telling not just the world, but Americans that he doesn't know what he's doing.
And he's not doing what he promised.
And our republic, which we use to communicate to our government to say, this is what we want.
This is what we need.
It doesn't work.
We've told them what we want.
We want peace.
We need a healthy economy with fewer regulations and more opportunity.
We've said that.
We're not getting it.
The door doesn't work.
It's off its hinges.
Chris, can you put up the full screen that we crafted from Colonel Kwaikowski's piece.
Unhinged does indeed describe the U.S. government today.
Whether you are angered that Trump reversed himself on Epstein or happy that you are getting a consolation prize in the reveal of Obama, Clinton, and Biden criminality, you are ruled by the unhinged.
Whether you love the military because it's number one or are happy that the U.S. military is no longer number one, you are ruled by the unhinged.
Whether you oppose genocide in Gaza or you cheer it, you are ruled by the unhinged.
Karen, this is such a profound, poignant, clear, articulate, direct indictment of government in America today.
It should be read by everyone everywhere.
And it's beautifully written.
Well, thank you.
I wish I didn't have to write things like that.
I want to write happy things, but it's very difficult.
I think If we can't fix what we have in terms of our state, the United States state, and all of the activities that it's involved in including war and genocide and funding terrible things around the world.
If we can't fix that, we really need to take our energy and fix things that we can fix.
And again, I think Americans need to really think about how they and their families and their communities will prosper.
as when the empire dies because it is dying right now before our very eyes.
It's showing every symptom that every historical empire has gone through and we can't save it.
We can't save Trump.
We may love Trump and wish him well and cheer him on for what we think the good that he can do, but we can't control him and we can't save him.
The only thing that we can really do is take care of ourselves, our families, our communities.
We've got to focus on that.
And when we push on a door, it needs to open or shut like it's supposed to.
And that's only going to happen in our own small communities.
In Washington, it's done for.
Colonel Kwakowski, a pleasure, my dear friend.
I encourage everybody to read that Judge Knapp.
and elsewhere, Our Unhinged Government by Colonel Karen Kwatkowski.
It's dated August 2nd of this year.
Karen, a pleasure, my dear friend.
We look forward to seeing you next week.
Absolutely.
Thanks, Judge.
Appreciate it.
Thank you.
And coming up tomorrow, Wednesday, it's a typical Wednesday for us, plus Ritter, who's usually on on Mondays.
So at 8 o'clock in the morning, Professor Gilbert Doctorow at 1 in the afternoon.
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