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Aug. 27, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
23:32
COL. Lawrence Wilkerson : Can Trump Restrain Netanyahu?
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Hi, everyone.
Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Thursday, August 28, 2025.
Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson joins us now.
Colonel Wilkerson, always a pleasure.
My dear friend, you look fabulous, by the way.
And thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you for accommodating my schedule.
Are you going out for a rugby match?
You know, it was 45 degrees here at 5.30 this morning when I was walking my dog and I put this on.
It's still kind of chilly.
This is one of my favorite colors and I love rugby shirts.
It's a little early for fall, but it might almost be fireplace weather here this weekend.
October down here.
Yeah.
Wow.
Before we get to Trump and Netanyahu, about which I have some questions, what did the United States gain from the Trump-Putin meeting in Anchorage, Alaska, Colonel?
I'm rapidly becoming a believer in nothing except mentioning and discussing and hopefully pursuing.
talks over new start, which goes out in February 26, as you know, and we need to renew that.
And generally speaking, nuclear arms control with regard to both Russia and China.
Our friend and colleague and a big admirer of yours, Pepe Escobar, argued from long before the meeting that it was never really about Ukraine, that it was about these bigger issues.
Are you coming to that view as well?
Because we know that since the meeting, the Russian attacks have become more aggressive.
You could even describe them as ferocious.
And the president has done some strange things like taunt Ukraine for not being on the offense and authorizing the sale of 3,000 medium range missiles that have a 280 mile range?
Well, of course, there are three choices really that lie before Trump or that lay before Trump at the meeting in Alaska and I think haven't changed much.
One, he can cut and run completely.
just divest himself from the whole thing and let it cook however way it'll cook and of course the europeans will try for a while to keep it cooking but they won't be able to two he can just push away from the whole thing and go into the warm embrace of Putin and Sergei Lavrov.
I don't think he's going to do that.
And the third option is to just squirrel around.
And that seems to be what Trump likes to do or what he has a proclivity to do.
And that, to me, is the most dangerous thing of all, in other words, not solve anything really.
We come back to those statements that he made, and they're indicative of Donald Trump, I fear.
Chris, one second, Colonel Chris, put the truth social one up on the screen.
It's just the first few sentences.
It's very hard, if not impossible, to win a war without attacking an invader's country.
It's like a great team in sports that has a fantastic defense, but is not allowed to play offense.
There's no chance of winning.
It's like that with Ukraine and Russia.
The rest, he's attacking Biden.
Why would he say something like that?
And when Lavrov sees that and goes in to tell Putin, what do you think they say?
Is this guy crazy?
I think that's pretty much what they say.
It's also illogical and wrong.
particularly with regard to warfare.
As Klausowitz points out very, very carefully and pointedly, defense is the strongest form of warfare.
And all you have to do is look at Napoleon's ratio, for example, three to one, almost minimal to conduct an offense against someone with a good defense a really good defense i'd say it's more like five to eight to one and when you're outnumbered seven to one already just in population it's absurd to say that going on the offense rather than the defense for ukraine was a smart thing to do that's the reason i think we ought to be taken to the woodpile and
thrashed We have not done anything since 9-11, judge, in our military that even comes close to being competent and successful.
And we're not being held tasked for it at all.
There's no accountability.
Here's what Colonel McGregor, who was just on the show about an hour ago and since has sent me this, I'll read it.
It's not that long.
Ukrainian channels report an increase in casualties on the front lines.
The Ukrainian armed forces lose up to three hundred trucks, pickups, motorcycles, minibuses, ATVs, and other logistics vehicles per day.
Additionally, up to forty to fifty units of more expensive armored vehicles, tanks, armored cars, and air defense systems are lost every day.
All these losses mean that the infantry and drone operators are taking over the war.
However, the number of experienced drone operators is steadily decreasing.
The end must be near, Colonel.
I heard yesterday the total is up to 1.6, 1.7 casualties now, 1.6, 1.7 dead or missing.
McGregor agrees with you on that number.
And the huge number, the huge number, all but about 300,000 are all Ukrainian.
And as we're having this conversation, as Marco Rubio calls Lavrov, and I don't know if they speak, I'm just speaking hypothetically here, isn't the U.S. intelligence reconnaissance and surveillance still trying to show Ukrainians how to kill Russian soldiers?
I don't doubt it.
I don't know that for a fact.
I just don't know it for a fact, but I wouldn't doubt it.
I wouldn't doubt that Mossad, MI6, and CIA are still operating and still operating on fundamentally the same sheet of music they got very early on and was augmented significantly by Biden's administration.
If the U.S. military at Ramstein, Germany is using Intel reconnaissance and surveillance tools to guide the Ukrainians.
Do they work for the same General Donohue who said we can attack and take over Kaliningrad?
Is that the mentality that's directing them?
I won't deny that that might be the mentality, but no, the answer to your question is no, because he commands underneath the four star who is Sackyard, Sink Your, you know, the old Supreme Allied Commander Europe, who commands all the NATO forces as well as the U.S. forces underneath him.
Right.
He's underneath that man as the man who commands the U.S. Army elements.
Can you envision European troops on the ground in Ukraine under any circumstances, either now or after the special military operation is over?
Would the Russians permit that or would they violently expel them?
Well, Lavrov was very specific.
He said, here are our non-negotiable parameters.
The grain must be non-nuclear.
And then he went on further to say, and that would include, for example, Germany and Turkey.
And Germany, of course, was a member of the EU group that was associated with the JCPOA.
He was being very lenient there.
But didn't he then go on to say, but Russia would have a veto over all this?
Well, of course, on the UN Security Council, if that was a deployment.
But I take him at his word that if he's saying he would accept, if they needed security guarantees, that Russia would accept that those countries would be acceptable.
Caitlin Johnson, John Stone, you and I know of her.
I don't know her personally.
She's a brilliant and at times snarky and witty Australian journalist.
Just sent me a little ditty here.
God clearly and explicitly commands Christians to support the modern state of Israel.
It's right here in the Holy Bible.
Give me a minute and I'll find the verse for you.
Ah, I got it.
Exodus 2013.
You shall not murder.
Well, wait a minute.
That's not it.
Here it is.
Matthew 5.11.
Blessed are the peacemakers.
Israel.
We can't allow Palestinian journalists to remain alive in Gaza because all the Palestinian journalists are Hamas, Western journalists.
Okay, so let us in.
That way there can be journalists in Gaza who aren't Hamas.
Israel.
No.
Judge, there's a book called Dark Crusade that details what dispensationalists in America believe.
And it tells you that the estimate of dispensationalists in America, fundamentalists, we call them, is about 48 to 55 million.
Their belief about Russia, and this explains, I think, some of the otherwise inexplicable hatred of Russia amongst these people.
That's a lot of people.
They believe that the Rus, the Russians, are the soldiers of the Antichrist.
They believe that.
The Russia that I observed in the week I was there was devoutly religious, traditional Russian orthodox that reminded me of the old-fashioned Latin masses that I attend here.
Probably better Christians than many of these dispensationalists.
Yeah.
Chris, play the, I didn't look at the number, forgive me, the two rabbis and Mike Huckabee.
for Carl.
The ambassador has a very interesting view of anti-Semitism.
Rashid grew up in America, there was anti-Semitism, of course, in my experience, we've all experienced it.
The ambassador has a very interesting view of that.
He says, people are, you can't understand anti-Semitism.
He says, people are anti-Semitic, it's because they're against God, against Rabbi Shulid.
And we are represented as his people, and that's why they're anti-Semitic.
Otherwise, it doesn't make any sense.
Interesting view.
It's interesting view.
is another view that since we consider the chosen people and that's part of it is that because you are the chosen people given a chosen place for a chosen purpose and if someone is angry at god he'll be angry at the people who represent him so i tell people anti-semitism is irrational there's no reason for it
it unless you understand the spiritual reason, which is what I believe is at the heart of it.
It is not the left versus the right.
It is good versus evil.
It is the creator versus those who rebel against the creators.
Oh.
Does Mike represent the United States or the State of Israel?
I forget almost who, who, is he their ambassador to us or our ambassador to them?
That's a good question.
You can say the same thing about the director of the CIA.
Who's he directing the CIA for?
Yeah.
And you could say the same thing about a lot of these dual citizens who are, shall we say, more of allegiance to Israel when the crunch is there than they are to America.
That's very dangerous.
George Washington had this problem, of course, with the French.
And it was a real pain for him because he had had to deal with the French to win the Revolutionary War.
I mean, to be very frank about it, without them, he wouldn't have won.
their Navy off Yorktown and without the forces at Yorktown, he wouldn't have won.
Yet, he And we're talking that guy thinking he's doing it for God.
Colonel, do you know anybody that doesn't know that the Israelis attacked the Nasser Hospital and murdered doctors, patients, and five journalists?
That probably has gotten more...
Oh, here's somebody who didn't know about it cut number 10 if we could get your reaction sir the israelis bombed a hospital in gaza killed 20 people including five journalists when did this happen this happened overnight uh today i didn't know um any reaction to this or you want to talk to me about it i don't want to see it at the same time we have to end that whole nightmare i'm the one that got the hostages out i got them out all of them How could he not know?
If he didn't know, then he's got to fire Heg Seth Rubio, his chief of staff, and whoever the hell whispers into his ear.
He did know he wasn't telling the truth, and he changed the subject immediately.
Yep.
I think that's a relevant occasion for so much more, Judge.
I don't believe he's being told the truth when the truth hurts.
Well, they are not serving him well because he's making life and death decisions.
Well, has he normalized genocide?
Why is he not being criticized for genocide the way Biden was?
That's a good question too.
I think it's because that...
And so they could find their bona fidees to criticize him.
But the side that Trump represents is not the progressive side.
So they don't have any bona fide for criticism.
So why not go along with it?
I mean, just that's a crass thing for me to have to say because that's my political party.
But I'll say it.
Here's another one for you.
Mr. Smotrich, the Minister of Finance, watch this.
This is stomach churning.
Cut number 16.
What will come in over the next few days is very little.
A few bakeries handing out pitas to people and public kitchens providing a daily portion of cooked food.
Civilians in Gaza will get a pita and a plate of food and that's it.
That's exactly what we're seeing in the videos.
People are standing in line waiting for someone to ladle them a bowl of soup.
Would I want to avoid having to bring even a single grain into the Gaza Strip altogether?
Not even for the civilians?
Maybe so.
I completely understand the anger.
I completely understand the pain in our guts that we all feel as citizens.
The truth is, until the last hostage returns, we shouldn't even be giving water to the Gaza Strip.
For a year and a half now, we've been beating Hamas to a pulp.
We're dismantling Gaza and leaving it as sword lovers with total and unprecedented destruction in the world, and the world still isn't stopping us with the aim of achieving the one and only required outcome, conquering Gaza, destroying Hamas, and bringing back all the hostages.
In one word, victory.
This is the government the American taxpayers paying for, Colonel.
Right.
It's disgusting.
It's absolutely disgusting.
And yet we continue.
And if I have to conclude that Donald Trump knows even a half, even a third of that kind of vitriol that we just heard, and is going along with it, I've lost all faith in him.
Here's an interesting analysis by a Dutch analyst, last name Rabani, Chris Cut number nine.
It does appear that the Trump administration has now finally fully fallen in with the footsteps of its predecessor, the Biden administration, and lined up unconditionally behind Israel.
And it appears that at this point the United States is fully behind the Israeli plan to physically seize Gaza City and then Derrick Ballach in the center of the Gaza Strip.
And Israel will then basically be able to dictate so called post war arrangements.
Also another meeting today at the Security Council where fourteen of the fifteen members spoke out very strongly about the need to address the growing famine in the Gaza Strip, which has already claimed several hundred lives and is claiming more at a higher rate by day.
And the United States threw its full weight behind preserving Israeli impunity.
I mean, the real issues, of course, are genocide and famine in the Gaza Strip, annexation in the West Bank and to talk now about postwar plans.
is a bit like fiddling while Rome burns.
And he didn't even mention the most serious issue.
The most serious issue is the coming war with Iran.
We have got an event that's going to take place here.
The E3, apparently France, UK, and Germany are going to let the snap-back sanctions snap back.
And this is going to be extremely injurious to Iran.
Not only does it say formally from the UN that they cannot enrich, it also puts draconian sanctions on top of draconian sanctions.
And now Netanyahu is going to be looking for that war.
And I think Trita Parsi is right in his article.
He's reviewed it again in line with this snapback business.
And we're going to go to war with Iran.
And I say we because Trump is going to have to, he thinks, go with him when Netanyahu gets himself into existential circumstances.
He is going to put the state of Israel in an existential situation because Iran is going to beat that be Jesus out of him.
And then he's going to have to call on us.
Wow.
I don't know where this is going to go, Colonel.
There'll be some justice in that, crude justice.
But I don't want to see that.
I mean, we're talking about a real conflagration.
and you think Venezuela is serious.
mean that's a that's a really stupid thing we're doing down there i i got to think that maybe hegsith is positioning this tiny little flotilla as it were with a nuclear submarine attack submarine what the hell is that going to do to drug lords he's positioning maybe to slip up around Veracruz and to do something with regard to the truly dangerous cartels that are in Mexico.
But I have no idea.
What are they doing?
This is utter stupidity.
They're going to kill innocents.
Well, the force doesn't even meet the requirement.
It's a conglomeration, is what it is.
It's a reduced Marine Expeditionary unit with its command and control ships and its carrying ships, the LPDs that carry the Marines, and a nuclear attack submarine and a command and control ship.
This is crazy.
What are we doing?
Makes no sense.
I dealt with this in the Pacific all the time because we had to have Muse and ARGs all over the Pacific for real security reasons.
What are they doing?
Why are we bombing Somalia, Colonel?
Good question, but let me tell you, we've been doing it all along.
And supposedly we're doing it because we don't like the way the terrorists.
quote unquote, ISIS, whatever they might be, are complicating our relations with African countries in that particular sector.
It's all about the military having taken over Africa and banned the State Department, and they are our policy in Africa now and they're run by people as stupid as that general by the name of Donahue in Europe.
The president said as recently as yesterday he's going to change the name of the defense department to the war department.
I don't think he can do that.
I think only Congress can do it because Congress changed it from war to defense in 1949.
Watch this Congress do it.
Well, or watch this Congress roll over and let the president do whatever the hell he wants.
Exactly.
Exactly.
I wonder what your...
media network as to what they should call it.
The Rape, repine and pillage department, the incompetent department, the can't fight a war department.
How long would Secretary Powell have lasted as the Secretary of State for Donald Trump?
Well, he wouldn't have taken the job.
He had a pretty good eye for that sort of thing.
The only time he failed was when he lined up with the Governor of Texas.
We know about that.
Colonel, thank you very much.
Thank you for your time.
I hope you have a great, long, restful holiday weekend coming up, and we'll see you next week.
Thank you.
You too.
Thank you, Colonel.
All the best.
Sure.
Coming up at 3 o'clock on all of this, is Israel destroying itself?
Is Ukraine destroying itself?
Is the United States destroying itself?
Professor John Mearsheimer, Judge of the Police.
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