Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano - COL. Lawrence Wilkerson : The Deadly Trump/Zionist Negotiation Tactics.

Sept. 13, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano

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COL. Lawrence Wilkerson : The Deadly Trump/Zionist Negotiation Tactics.

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	Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for judging freedom.
	Today is Wednesday, September 10th, 2025.
	Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, my dear friend, joins us now, Colonel Wilkerson, a pleasure.
	Thank you.
	Um before we get to uh Trump and the Zionist negotiations and luring people into a false sense of security and trying to kill the negotiators, uh before we get to the Israeli attack with American support on uh Doha.
	In your view, is President Donald Trump seriously engaged in trying to end the wars in Ukraine and Gaza?
	No, decidedly on the first Ukraine.
	And no, decidedly, but with a caveat, he wants it to go on until Bibi's finish on the second.
	Wow.
	Why is he not trying to end the war in Ukraine, a war he said he would end in 24 hours within 24 hours of inauguration?
	I think he found, particularly at the Alaska summit, but before that, gradually, that it was a far more difficult task than he envisioned.
	And so even then, as he approached Alaska, he began to think about, and as he came out of Alaska, he probably decided he was right in his thinking, getting away from it.
	And the only way he knows to get away from it is to just push it away.
	And I think that's what he thinks he's done, and he's pushed it to the Europeans.
	Did any was any progress made toward peace from the Alaska summit?
	I think not.
	The one thing that I thought would come out of it that would adhere and be pursued would be the renewal of new start in February when it expires, and by extension, a new regime being discussed for nuclear weapons control in the world, uh bringing Xi Jinping and ultimately the other seven nuclear powers in, uh, if Iran goes.
	But I don't see that happening.
	Uh and I detect that Putin and Lavrov in particular uh have sort of soured on that.
	So they're intent on the war now, as they should be, but they don't see any prospect, at least from what I can tell, of renewing these very critical talks about nuclear weapons.
	Does this remember you may have seen this morning that the Air Force told the Congress that yes, we can extend to 2050 our ballistic missiles?
	Uh that's a hell of an admission on two planes.
	One, you can and save trillions of dollars.
	And on the other, well, is that really something you should be doing if in fact you were going for a new family of missiles?
	Why did you suddenly decide you can extend them all the way out to mid-century?
	Does Trump's current attitude about ending or not ending the war in Ukraine reflect the triumph of the neocons around him?
	Heggseth Rubio, General Kellogg.
	Well, if you if you consider stasis and the war just rumbling on and the dollars still flowing into the military industrial complex and so forth, yes, I don't think that's a very satisfactory solution.
	And we're about to have governments topple in Europe.
	I mean, Macron is only now holding on by a hairspreath.
	I don't think Starmer's situation is much better either.
	He's probably the most hated person in uh England, at least, if not Great Britain as a whole.
	And I don't think merits is long for the for the journey.
	So Europe and NATO are commensurately falling apart.
	Uh I want to get back to your views on um uh the war in Gaza.
	I want to hear about your caveat.
	But before we do, in reference to what you just said, Chris, I don't know the number, but it's um the Hungarian uh uh president Orban on the European Union.
	You know, as Gondolom I believe that the European Union has currently entered a state of fragmentation and disintegration.
	And if this continues, which is in fact the more likely scenario, then the history of the European Union will go down in history as the disappointing outcome of a noble experiment.
	Do you agree, Colonel Wilkerson?
	Well, I'm there are a lot of people at the inception, if you will, even at the inception of the common market, that uh smart people, smart people on both sides of the Atlantic, who said this will never work, it'll never adhere.
	It's Europe after all.
	Have you no knowledge of their history?
	I think we're at another juncture like that.
	Uh before we get to your uh views on Gaza and your views on uh Doha and whether Trump is serious about wanting uh to end the war in Gaza.
	Does President Trump follow a national security process of serious review by seasoned professionals of intelligence, political, economic, military data from foreign countries who then report it to him?
	Not at all.
	As far as I can tell, there is no national security decision making process that comports even remotely with the 1947 National Security Act and the process that has evolved out of that act very successfully in many cases.
	Eisenhower, for example, H.W. Bush, for example.
	Um, they don't follow it.
	It began to fall apart with my president, George W. Bush in the first term, Dick Cheney commandeering the entire process, and Condi Rice, the national security advisor, so interested in being Colin Powell's replacement after four years that she concentrated on the president rather than disciplining the decision making process.
	But right now, there is no one, Nana disciplining this decision process.
	It is a process of impolitic remark after impolitic remark that then becomes U.S. policy or fades away in the breeze and the wind.
	Is there a true national security advisor with a staff of professionals to inform him?
	I'm sure the staff is there, but how and Henry Kissinger was a much more capable individual.
	You may despise him, but he was a capable individual, let me tell you.
	And he couldn't manage both the State Department and the National Security Staff, which now can number as high as 200, 300 people, all of whom are buzzing away and generally are experts in their field or their area.
	You can't handle that.
	You can't do foggy bottom and the White House and the National Security Council simultaneously.
	It's just impossible.
	And Marco Rubio is not Henry Kissinger.
	Well, that's the understatement of the age, Colonel.
	Well, where does Trump get his guidance from?
	From his fertile brain.
	I think he really gives things some thought, not very cogent thought, because he's not a very deep person and he's not a well-read person.
	So he gives it thought.
	He does like he did in his real estate deals, he acts on instinct.
	That produces the remark, and then the remark, everyone else in the cabinet tries to conform their policy to.
	And some don't even go that far.
	They just conform their policy in the absence of direction.
	Wow.
	You know the, and you know this better than I. You lived and worked there.
	The National Security Advisor's Office is right outside uh the Oval Office, and he or she can walk right in and say, you need to know this right now, uh, Mr. President, these are decisions we have to make right now.
	This is Netanyahu's latest.
	This is Sister's latest, whatever the case may be.
	Rubio's not there.
	Nope.
	Now, Ronald Reagan tried to conform to the process, but he did it in a way that wouldn't usurp his presidential power because he'd seen Brzezinski with Carter, and he'd seen Kissinger with Nixon.
	He didn't want those.
	He wanted to be president.
	So count them.
	He had six national security advisors, and the first one he wouldn't even let into his office.
	But very, very quickly, he realized that was a mistake.
	And by the time you get to Carlucci and Powell, his uh ultimate and and uh penultimate national security advisors, he's seeing them.
	He's seeing them and he's listening to them, and they're forming and shaping policy for him.
	So here you had a man that was very powerful personally.
	I mean, and a pretty damn uh cogent decision maker and thinker who said, I don't need this person, who in a few years, not even a few years, one year really, decided maybe I do.
	And by the time he's at the end, he's got two people who are really helping him.
	What is the caveat uh that you uh entertain intellectually over whether uh Trump is truly trying to end the war in Gaza, Colonel?
	I I keep coming back to my postulation, which I have seen for all of my time in government and my time in the military too, for that matter.
	It is not Israel that is leading the United States, it's the United States that's pointing Israel at its perceived enemies.
	That's one reason I think we're going to war with Iran, and I think we're going to war with Iran before Christmas.
	This is going to be a disaster, Judge.
	But it's us doing it, using Israel as our willing and sometimes recalcitrant and dangerous tool in the process.
	I'm going to ask you in a minute what your take is on the attack on Doha, but before I do that, here's uh Steve Bannon, good buddy of the president, managed this uh first campaign in 2006, making some statements that uh Benjamin Netanyahu doesn't want to hear.
	Chris Cut number 19.
	The world's best ally.
	I I don't I don't want Tom Cotton and Lindsay Graham.
	You're gonna tell me that again, you're the world's best.
	Here's what an ally does.
	They're a protectorate.
	They're not an ally.
	They never fought shoulder to shoulder with us anywhere.
	Okay.
	They get us into messes like in Iran, where they tried to have regime change and lied about it.
	Netanyahu and his government are destroying not only the state of Israel and going to turn it into a Jewish Pakistan, they are hurting the Jewish community throughout the world and turning the world against the Jewish community.
	Full stop.
	I suspect you agree with him, Colonel.
	I agree with him wholeheartedly.
	I might be have different motivations, but I agree with him.
	I think my rabbi in New York who said the greatest cause of anti-S anti-Semitism in the world is Bibi Netanyahu.
	Right.
	What is your take uh on the uh attack on Doha?
	There were an radar was down, Doha defenses uh were down.
	Uh we understand there may have been some disguised planes, jets in the air, American jets in the air, just to make sure there were no other jets there.
	The Israelis were refueled by the RAF.
	Give us your take on all this.
	This administration has shown, I think, and I can say this, I think, rather definitively, that it turns things over to the commander in the field.
	That's not all bad, but it's not all good either.
	There are circumstances where the president himself, and certainly the Secretary of Defense should keep a weather eye 24-7 on that commander.
	Circumstances that are so strategic and so dangerous that the president dare not leave it to the commander in the field.
	That sounds nice.
	It sounds Like what every American would do.
	Let that general do what he needs to do.
	But we're doing that far too much.
	And these people take leeway.
	They take Leeway just like the commander in the Pacific did in April 2001 and sent that EP3 too close to Henang Island and the EP3 hit a Chinese F-8.
	The F-8 crash killed the pilot, and the EP3 had to go down on Han Island with some of the most secure gear the U.S. has in its contents.
	Those are the kinds of things that are overstretching your role, four star general or admiral.
	And I have no doubt that Central Command has become quite used to that.
	Did the Trump White House uh give uh Netanyahu the go-ahead?
	Is it even conceivable that with all the American assets and personnel who knew or must have known about this that the president did not?
	I can conceive that he didn't.
	Uh as I just said, that someone walked a little too fast for their britches.
	I don't think that's the case because I'm looking back on Iran and I'm looking back on the duplicity of that and the absolute war crime of that in actuality.
	And I'm saying, okay, they're an ally, but they're Doha.
	They're Doha.
	And would Trump do that and then try to deny it?
	And would BB say that he did it all on his own that Trump didn't know about it, and the Israeli government say the opposite?
	Uh they got their wires crossed.
	But yes, all of that could have happened, and Trump could have been uh absolutely knowledgeable.
	Tell me if you think uh this is credible, uh Colonel Chris cut number 16.
	Well, I'm not thrilled.
	I'm not thrilled about it.
	I don't have to do that.
	I'm just I'm not thrilled about uh the whole situation.
	It's not not a good situation.
	But uh I will say this.
	We want the hostages back.
	But we are not thrilled about the way that went down today.
	Did you know about you in advance, Mr. President?
	Did Israel tell you to advance?
	No.
	You were caught by surprise, sir.
	I'm never I'm never surprised by anything, especially when it comes to the Middle East.
	How did you vote about this happening?
	I'll be giving a full statement tomorrow, but uh I would uh tell you this.
	I was very unhappy about it, very unhappy about every aspect, and uh we got to get the hostages back.
	But I was very unhappy about the way that went down.
	The vice president and secretary of defense get paid to do, besides standing like two goons smiling at the president's wise cracks.
	Yeah.
	I you know you just can't read Trump.
	I I don't know whether he's being somewhat sincere there, or he's just covering Israel in, um, covering it with the Emir as much as he's covering it with the American people.
	Uh but I go back to my previous remarks.
	You bought this with regard to Iran.
	Now I know you think Iran is the number one enemy, uh, and Qatar is an ostensible ally, but still you bought this in a way that was a war crime.
	Why should I think now that you're really, you know, sorry that this happened?
	What is the likely geopolitical effect of the United States allowing its own ally to be uh attacked, a residential neighborhood in the capital of the country, an ally that gave a 400 million dollar uh gift ostensibly to the defense department,
	but really to the president himself, an ally that houses the largest United States uh air base uh in uh the Middle East.
	What is the geopolitical effect of allowing the Israelis to attack that ally?
	It will have repercussions, there's no question about it, all the way through Riyadh and through other capitals, um, maybe even in Cairo, or probably surely in Cairo.
	But I don't think it's going to cause any fractures or breakups of current coalitions or alliances or relationships, because it's so important that uh for Qatar in particular that Al-Udid stay there, and that airfield Be its principal contribution to not just the GCC,
	which is kind of morbid, but to the general defense of itself and the rest of the Arab countries in the region against they think Iran.
	But I would back up and say something else, too.
	This is a little bit uh Machiavellian, but I'm going to say it.
	There is angst about Qatar's role in everything that pertains to what's happening now that is one of the biggest war crimes the world has seen since 1943, 44, and 45, Gaza and the West Bank as well.
	Um Qatar has been duplicitous in a lot of this.
	They have helped Netanyahu to stoke what happened on October the 7th.
	They have helped transfer money that made October the 7th possible, and investigations down the road, if they're honest and straight straightforward might wind up putting a lot of blame on Netanyahu and on Qatar for providing that conduit.
	And they have not been in Netanyahu's face in terms, the most cooperative in handling Hamas as the negotiations took place.
	That doesn't mean they haven't tried for a good solution.
	It means they've tried for solutions Netanyahu vehemently disagreed with and was afraid were going to be forced down his throat.
	All to say, maybe Qatar needed a lesson.
	What is the conduit of which you just uh spoke, Colonel?
	I'm sorry.
	What is the conduit?
	What is the October 7 Qatar conduit of which you spoke?
	The fact that Netanyahu was shoveling money through Qatar and other places too, but I'm under I understand that Qatar was the main one to Hamas because he wanted them to be ultimately politically and otherwise victorious, if you will, with the Palestinians' allegiance, because he didn't want the PA and the PLO by extension to be that, because they both believe in a two-state solution.
	Hamas doesn't.
	So in that sense, the organization that Netanyahu is supposedly spending all his bullets and bombs on right now to exterminate, and won't, by the way, but the organization he's doing that to was his ally in keeping the group of Palestinians that wanted a two-state solution and had recognized the right to Israel to exist from being the predominant organization.
	And he was doing that willingly and knowingly.
	The New York Post reports just a few minutes ago, an Israeli airstrike leveled the Taiba 2 tower in Gaza City on Wednesday with the IDF claiming Hamas was using the high-rise for intelligence operations.
	Almost everyone that comes on this show who speaks of military and intel matters agrees with you that the Netanyahu regime will not succeed in eradicating Hamas.
	But they are really going after them full full force at this point.
	Well, what they're going after is the Palestinians, Judge.
	That's what they're going after.
	They will get very few Hamas and Hamas will get a lot of them.
	Hamas has learned how to make the most sophisticated IEDs, improvised explosive devices, like gave us such hell in Iraq and in Afghanistan.
	And they're going to take their toll on the IDF.
	That toll is going to be significant.
	That's another reason why I think we're going to war with Iran, because BB is losing all of his other struggles, some of them quite badly.
	I understand Lebanon is getting ready to give him some headache too.
	Um, whether it'll be Hezbollah or the government or both in combination remains to be seen, but they've got plenty of power left.
	And so he's going to have to extract himself from this politically and personally, jail time, by continuing this war.
	And the only way he can continue it with merit, quote unquote, is taking on Iran.
	Does Donald Trump look out of touch when he expects the American government to or the American people to believe that he didn't know in advance about these uh attacks and Doha?
	Even if it's true, my answer to that is yes.
	Even if he didn't know, he totally did not know.
	I don't think he's believed.
	Wouldn't uh George H. W. Bush or Ronald Reagan or even W have fired a defense secretary that failed to tell him that.
	Absolutely.
	Yes.
	Even if it was Donald Rumsfeld with Dick Cheney protecting him.
	I mean, he did in November 2006.
	He fired Rumsfeld over Cheney's great objections.
	All right, Colonel, thank you very much.
	You know why he fired him, I think, really basically?
	Because he was tired of his lying.
	Rosfell was a quintessential, polished, first rate liar.
	I know when I had my show on Fox, uh Rumsfeld quoted me up and he wanted to come on.
	No, he had just left office.
	I don't know if he was selling a book or whatever, and he came on, and the first thing we did was put up a huge full screen of Rumf Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam Hussein.
	Oh God, when it was over, I thought he was gonna take the head off of his PR guy.
	Did you know that they were gonna do that?
	Well, I thought the judge was my friend.
	We were at Princeton together.
	We weren't at Princeton together.
	He's 30 years older than I. One of my friends at the agency said, We knew that Sodom Hussein had chemical weapons.
	Rumsfeld gave them to him.
	There you go.
	There you go.
	Colonel, thank you very much.
	Thanks for a little bit of lightness at the end.
	Because this is such dark.
	Such dark things we're talking about.
	It's the White House incumbent.
	Is BB running the show?
	Sure seems that way.
	But uh, you know what I think?
	Uh I think the people behind Trump won't BB running the show.
	Yes.
	Yes, nicely put, Colonel.
	Thank you for your time, my dear friend.
	We'll look forward to seeing you next week.
	Take care.
	Thank you.
	And coming up on all of this at 2 15 this afternoon, Aaron Mate and right behind him at three o'clock, Professor John Meersheimer.

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