Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano - LtCOL. Karen Kwiatkowski : The Evils of the State.

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Aug. 19, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano

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LtCOL. Karen Kwiatkowski : The Evils of the State.

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	Hi, everyone.
	Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
	Today is Tuesday, August 19th, 2025.
	Colonel Karen Kwatkowski will be here with us in just a moment on a celebration of freedom and peace that she and I both attended on Saturday.
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	Colonel Kwaikowski, Karen, welcome here, my dear friend.
	Thank you for your kind comments about the program on Saturday.
	Thank you for what you said about me and thank you.
	for the beautiful summary that you wrote about it reminding everybody of the evils of the state.
	I mean, there we were, about 500 people meeting.
	people mainly from the Northeast talking about peace and freedom at the Ron Paul Institute annual gathering.
	Professor Sachs was there, Colonel McGregor was there, Max Blumenthal was there, Anya Parimpo was there, you were there, Phil Giraldi was there.
	You think these gatherings make a difference?
	I do.
	I think they do because they kind of show our progress to some extent.
	And of course, it's always like any conference, you know, networking.
	But yeah, I think it makes a difference because if nothing else, we forget how far we've come I think and when you get together annually and I haven't gone to everyone but I've gone to three I think every few years I go to one and I couldn't believe how jam packed it was and the quality of the speakers it's always good but it was even better this time and the people and the message has shifted a little bit into a much more activist role it
	It seems like, I mean, I talked to a lot of people just there and not even that many, but the people, everyone that I talked to was, yes, they're learning, but they've also learned so much and they're doing so much and they're taking it.
	They're taking the bull by the horns in their own little areas that they have.
	So it's kind of like the vision that Ron Paul probably, I think he had, or maybe he never believed it would be back in the, you know, early 80s.
	Right.
	Definitely.
	we are are it's a it's a huge movement unstoppable movement we we were pretty happy on saturday morning that on friday we learned that President Trump is talking to President Putin as normal human beings talk,
	that Secretary of State Rubio is authorized to speak to foreign minister uh lauroff i think there's there's a significant difference in their level of understanding there but at least they're communicating unlike in the biden administration when after uh President Biden's meeting with President Putin in Switzerland, he never saw him again and never spoke to him again and prohibited his Secretary of State from speaking with his opposite number.
	But things are not always as they seem.
	Now we learn that the president may very well want to involve U.S. troops.
	in some sort of a security guarantee, whatever that means.
	I'll ask you that in a minute for whatever remains of Ukraine after a peace treaty is signed.
	What is a security guarantee?
	Is it troops on the ground?
	Is it American pilots in the air?
	Is it American intelligence aiming at Russians like they do today?
	No.
	The best security guarantee is neutrality.
	And that's clear throughout history.
	You know, a strong neutral state that trades with everyone, is friends with all.
	This is what Jefferson and Washington envisioned for our own country.
	It is the way to go.
	Now, when they talk security guarantees, we were in the nest of the military-industrial complex there at that conference this weekend right oh god we we are within uh a mile of virtually all of the major military industrial uh entities because they they that's where they live that's where they work and they don't have far to go uh for washington go ahead please yeah and and so that is what drives our foreign policy and
	That is how Trump thinks that he owns these companies.
	They actually own him, but he thinks he owns, you know, that this is part of the American strength.
	And so he cannot, I think Trump can't conceive of not selling something or being involved in what he thinks of his business.
	But of course, we're not talking about business, we're talking about foreign policy.
	So he wants to sell arms.
	Trump wants to sell arms.
	He doesn't really understand.
	I don't know, maybe he understands.
	But I think, you know, the more you sell arms, the more you make the world, the more more dangerous place right because you have those you sell to those you won't sell to um all kinds of things you're dealing with you know you're constantly the the military industrial spiral you know the technology spiral you're in the middle of that and trump doesn't He just says, oh, I'm going to make some money or the United States will make money or some of these big companies will make money.
	And so that's how he views security for Ukraine.
	He said it himself, we will sell arms to NATO and NATO will protect Ukraine, even though there won't be an Article 5 because Ukraine's not going to be in NATO.
	And then he talks about other security guarantees that the United States might do, again, implicating that Ukraine itself with no resources will buy massive numbers of weapons that it doesn't need.
	The alternative, of course, is a peaceful state neutrality.
	They don't want that.
	And Trump doesn't understand that because he's blinded by his desire to come out on top.
	Yes, I think he has, you know, we have criticized him for being one of these people that believes the person who was last in his ear.
	I think the flip side of that is, is he wants the adulation of those to whom he's speaking.
	Yes.
	He gave President Zelensky and the Europeans, because President Zelensky repeated this and President Macron of France repeated it.
	He gave them every reason to believe that he would put American boots on the ground.
	as part of a security apparatus for whatever remains of Ukraine after the Donbass oblasts and Crimea are formally ceded to Russia.
	And then the next day, which is today, on Fox and Friends in the morning, he said, absolutely not.
	You have my assurance you'll never see American boots on the ground.
	Yeah.
	Maybe air support.
	Well, air support means Intel on the ground.
	Yeah.
	So if Intel is on the ground and U.S. air support is supporting what?
	British.
	French and German soldiers.
	What is the difference between that and NATO formally there?
	Not at all.
	There's not any difference to it.
	And, you know, I was listening to your guest before Alastair, and he was talking to Glenn Deeson a little bit.
	talked to you too.
	And the, he's got the, you know, the, uh, uh, Trump doesn't understand these things, you know, and he's, he's moving forward, but, um, this stuff is not going to be acceptable, uh, to, uh, to Russia, number one.
	And number two, it's also not going to be acceptable if he moves forward to militarizing Ukraine or doing anything like, uh, military assistance or boots on the ground.
	It's not going to be acceptable to MAGA, his, which is really mad at Trump right now for a lot of things.
	The Epstein files is one, but also the, you know, the wars and the, the stuff that he says he will do.
	And the big, the big monstrous bill, whatever that was, uh, great, beautiful bill, um, you know, that spent more money.
	A lot of MAGA come from a I really don't, because if I was, I mean, Russia has the upper hand.
	They can continue to do, there could end up being no Ukraine at all.
	That is certainly feasible, that there would be zero Ukraine.
	Well, there could be no Ukraine for President Zelensky to go back to i mean the the banderas group uh a title for this loosely affiliated hardcore supernationalist aspect of ukrainian society and ukrainian military our friend pepe eskobar calls them nazis we're not supposed to use that phrase but that's what he calls them these
	people have said there's no surrender to the russians whatsoever so he has a serious problem with that he has a serious problem with his own longevity as president and on earth if he antagonizes this group.
	But I don't see how Russia is going to go along with this.
	You know, I interviewed Foreign Minister Lavrov back in March, and it was a joint interview with Larry Johnson and another fellow and me, and we only got to ask three or four questions, and he gave very long-winded answers.
	But here's 90 seconds.
	from one of those answers and the most important part is at the end you'll hear him say it really doesn't matter under whose banner or under what flag they fly if trump puts troops on the ground or authorizes it or goes along with it, it will mean that he lacks the fundamental understanding of the cause of this war.
	And we know that he has that fundamental understanding.
	And that fundamental problem is the efforts to introduce NATO into Ukraine.
	Now, the clip you're going to see doesn't show me doing anything but sitting there like a bump on a log, but I did participate in dialogue with him.
	Here is this very interesting answer.
	Chris.
	Europe and the UK, they certainly want this to continue.
	the way they received Zelensky in London after the scandal in Washington and it's an indication that they want to raise the stakes and they are preparing something to pressure Trump administration back into some aggressive action against Russia.
	We are philosophical about this.
	We know what we are doing.
	But I am mostly amazed with this peacekeepers obsession.
	Peacekeepers, let's stop.
	Macron says, let's stop in one month.
	Peacekeepers would be deployed.
	Then we'll see what to do next.
	It is not what we say is required for the end of this war, which the West waged against us through Ukrainians with their direct participation of their military.
	We know this.
	If NATO expansion is recognized at least by Donald Trump as one of the root causes then the presence of the troops from NATO countries under any flag in any capacity on Ukrainian soil is the same threat.
	It's that we will view it as the same threat.
	Now the Europeans were happy, President Macron was happy when he said American troops.
	Trump modified it to say American pilots.
	Where are we going with this, Karen?
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	You know, I don't know.
	I don't know.
	No, there's there's uh, that's one big problem.
	I mean, that's a major uh, problem that would stop everything.
	If we're going to put troops there or allow NATO countries to put troops there, that's not going to work.
	But the other problem was the trading of territory that they have to do.
	Um, you know, the the the Donbass regions that voted to become part of Russia, they've been written into the Russian constitution.
	So that's Russia for all intents and purposes.
	And the constitution of Ukraine, and they've suspended elections, so they have the same parliament and Zelensky all well past their elective terms.
	But that constitution has also been changed in such a way to preclude any trading of territory.
	So I see excuses being made for why this is not going to be, you know, no agreement will be made.
	And of course, Trump is a strange guy.
	Like you said, the last person he talks to, that's his best buddy.
	That's what he's going to go with.
	But I...
	i couldn't help but thinking in the briefing that he gave to the press after you know after he had spoken with all the uh nato people and they were all there you know the various countries and he went through each one and allowed them to to say something and he was very very profusely kind and laud, you know, very positive about each of these guys.
	And anybody who studied those characters that sat around that table from NATO, I don't care if it's Macron or Georgia Maloney, who ran on a position, she got elected in Italy because they were going to stop doing Ukraine.
	This is like two years ago.
	But now she's a big, you know, love it, love it, let's keep on fighting.
	And, you know, Rudy and Von der Leyen, who Trump has already had his way with her.
	So, you know, he's, I almost got the sense that Trump was trolling all of these guys, you know, by being so profusely flattering to them.
	Because once you start to get to know these guys and watch them and understand a little bit about what they've done and where they come from and what their capabilities are as leaders of their countries, you kind of laugh.
	So Trump may not understand what he's doing, but he does know people and he does play people games.
	He can be...
	And I just got the sense maybe he's saying what he needs to say to get those guys to lay off a little bit because they have no cards either, just like Zelensky has no cards.
	The European nations already have been well proven to have no cards.
	I mean, the trade agreement that von der Leyen agreed to, you know, the rest of Europe is so mad about the tariffs and they got nothing.
	So Trump is running this show.
	Well, the only card, the only cards they have are the 350 million stolen from Russian deposits and banks.
	I'd say stolen.
	It's frozen.
	It's still there, but the Russians can't get that money back.
	I don't think that's going to move.
	Putin, but it'll be a nice sweetener if there is some sort of a grand reset.
	Foreign Minister Lavrov gave an interview with either last night or this morning.
	in which he expressed the views that President Trump and his team are seriously interested in peace.
	The same cannot be said for the Europeans.
	Chris number 27.
	Definitely, yes.
	It was abundantly clear that the esteemed head of the United States and his dedicated team.
	first and foremost, genuinely wanted to achieve a comprehensive and lasting result that would be long-term, inherently stable, and truly reliable, quite unlike the European counterparts who at that particular time kept persistently insisting everywhere that only an immediate ceasefire was absolutely needed and after that, they would continue to relentlessly supply weapons to Ukraine.
	And secondly, it is important to note that both President Trump and his entire team possessed a very clear and comprehensive understanding that this particular conflict, in its very essence, truly has its underlying causes and deep-rooted origins.
	Furthermore, they recognize that the discourse and the talk emanating from some European presidents and prime ministers specifically regarding how Russia purportedly launched an unprovoked and entirely unjustified attack on Ukraine is, quite frankly, nothing more than childish babble.
	There is absolutely no other way to articulate or to describe it.
	Sort of throwing cold water on whatever message Trump and Macron and Starmer and Von der Leyen and Mertz wanted to get out from yesterday.
	I don't know what they agreed to on yesterday because it doesn't sound the same today as it did yesterday.
	Yeah, the ceasefire demands, it's almost, it's pleading.
	I mean, they were pleading about it.
	They know they're not going to get it, I think.
	I mean, why would, well, also to, you know, the West doesn'tt have a clear picture of who's winning this war, but most of us, people that watch your show know.
	And when you're winning, you have the upper hand militarily.
	You have the upper hand for a long war, a short war.
	You dominate on every spectrum.
	And that's what the Russians are doing in Ukraine.
	So there is no rational, you know, the next, if you want to end the war, there is a way to end the war.
	We let Russia.
	end the war, which they're going to do one way or the other, no matter how many weapons we send over there.
	We've done that for three years.
	We've sent weapons and it hasn't done a darn thing.
	So the choice is, does Russia get an unconditional surrender of what's left of Ukraine and imprison the neo-nationalists?
	I mean, to solve the problem that they intended to solve from the beginning, they can do that.
	They have the capability to do that.
	They may do that.
	So the other choice is, can we stop the killing, which is what Trump is saying?
	And so if these are your two choices, I think Trump's on the right track, at least is what he's saying.
	And so I prefer to think he was trolling those European leaders, because it's what it looked like to me, and that he is going to go ahead and do what needs to be done, which is to negotiate a lasting peace and that's going to be on russia's terms because you know what when you win a war you get to negotiate the terms of the peace i don't know if people remember you know at the end of world war two what we did to germany and japan but guess what you know the winners negotiated the terms of the peace that's how it works it's not always it's not perfect but
	why would we expect anything different today you know human beings haven't changed here's uh chancellor uh merts making a pitch for a ceasefire yesterday in the presence of president trump and the others number 20 chris the next steps ahead are the more complicated ones now.
	The path is open.
	You opened it last Friday, but now the way is open for complicated negotiations.
	To be honest, we all would like to see a ceasefire at the latest from the next meeting on.
	I can't imagine that the next meeting would take place without a ceasefire.
	So let's work on that and let's try to put pressure on Russia because the credibility of these efforts, these efforts we are undertaking today are depending on at least a ceasefire from the beginning of the serious negotiations from next step on.
	So I would like to emphasize this aspect and would like to see a ceasefire from the next meeting, which should be a trilateral meeting wherever it takes place.
	Well, we're going to let the President go over and talk to the President, and we'll see how that works out, and if we can do that.
	I will say, and again, I say it, in the six wars that I've settled, I haven't had a ceasefire.
	We just got into negotiations, and one of the wars was, as you know, in the Congo was 31 years long.
	Another one that we settled last week with two great countries was 35 years going on and we had no ceasefire.
	So if we can do the ceasefire, great.
	And if we don't do a ceasefire, because many other points were given to us, many, many points.
	So listen, I don't know where it's going to go.
	Trump is hung up on these exaggerated versions of his own record, and Mertz is insisting, I can't imagine Vladimir Zelensky was right in front of him, and President Putin was ten thousand miles away.
	I can't imagine them getting together while they're still trying to kill each other, or while their troops are still trying to kill each other.
	Yeah.
	And I, I mean, they talk about a meeting between Zelensky and Putin.
	I guess has that been scheduled yet that we know or?
	No.
	Yeah, that's not true.
	Trump said also in this Fox and Friends interview this morning, the one where he said, you have my word, there'll be no boots on the ground.
	Okay.
	He expected an answer from Putin on a Putin-Zelensky meeting in a couple of weeks.
	Now, Foreign Minister Lavrov has said many times.
	including to me personally, and President Putin has said many times, including publicly, they're not going to meet with him because he's not the legitimate president.
	That's right.
	They're probably not going to meet with them because they think it would be better to win on the battlefield.
	Yeah, I mean, this is the problem when you start a war.
	And this is a lesson for the United States, too.
	Not that we didn't have a big part in starting this war, but when you pick a fight and you don't have a plan and you don't know your enemy that you just decided to go up against and you really don't have good reasons for doing it.
	guess what?
	You're going to lose.
	And Ukraine has lost.
	The West has lost.
	NATO has lost.
	And I don't know if they've learned from this or not, but it's an important lesson.
	You know, and the thing that has really been revealed in the last few years is the lack of capability of NATO military capability and also the weakness in the so-called the well-vaunted American military capability.
	We've been shown to be mediocre in our ability to force.
	That's pretty much been going on for the last 45 years.
	We've been shown to be mediocre.
	We haven't won any wars.
	We had to leave the Red Sea because the Houthis were, it was unaffordable for us to stay there.
	Right.
	Karen, before I let you go, is that a rooster I hear in the background?
	It could well be.

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