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Sept. 24, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
25:06
[SPECIAL] 🚨 Daniel McAdams : Is Free Speech in Danger under Trump ?
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Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Wednesday, September 24th, 2025.
Dan McAdams joins us now, a longtime friend of mine, serious libertarian uh thinker, chief of staff for uh Congressman Ron Paul and now executive director of the Ron Paul uh Institute, a person who truly understands the concept of limited government maximum liberty and peace, Dan, a pleasure.
Uh initially wanted to talk to you about the freedom of speech, but there's so many things happening.
Before we get to that, this statement that President Trump made yesterday at the UN after he left the podium and in the presence of uh President uh Zelensky, and then he articulated it again in his uh Truth Social,
that Iran uh that Ukraine can win, and with the uh support of Europe and in particular NATO, return Ukraine to the original borders before the war started, which means not only the Donbass, but uh Crimea.
How do you make sense out of something like this?
This is a Lindsay Graham dream.
Well, uh my on first reading, uh, my initial reaction was actually reposted on X, and I said, Well, looks like President Trump has met with Zelensky, because as you know, he's notorious for repeating the last thing he's heard from the last person he spoke to.
And so it certainly had that flair.
But you know, Judge, I got up this morning and I I as I often do, I turn to our good friend Larry Johnson because I wanted to get his take on it.
Uh and he had a bit different of a take, and I think his take makes a little bit of sense.
It almost was sort of an awkward desperation move like a Hail Mary Pass.
Because if you read between the lines what you have to do with President Trump, uh he's saying that, hey guys, you can take everything back.
Hey, you can even have a bite of Russia if you want.
Uh you to uh EU, NATO, you guys have at it.
We'll sit back and make the money off the weapons, and you guys should go for it.
It almost seems in an awkward way like he's trying to wash his hands, which perhaps is a more sanguine uh view than is than is warranted, but nevertheless, it does seem to track with with his way of thinking as we understand it.
You know, um I was uh speaking to a Russian friend's media friends and earlier today, and their view of the Kremlin's view is the same as Larry Johnson's as you've just so nicely articulated.
But boy, that's not the view here, you know, uh in this area where I live and work between Boston and and DC, where the neocons are just uh celebrating.
Now, I don't know if they're naive enough to think that just because Sebastian Gwerka whispered something into pr uh Trump's ear and he repeated it that Trump would say the same thing the next day.
But uh they are uh overjoyed because they are back to where they were in the um Victoria Newland days.
Let's use Ukraine as a battering ram with which to drive Vladimir Putin from office.
Yeah, but there the the magazine is empty.
There's no bullets, there's no cartridges in the in the gun, you know, there's there are no weapons that are going.
There are no there's no money that's going.
And I think it's important you you're absolutely right, Judge, to talk about the reaction from Moscow, because if if it was indeed as our first reading was a sort of declaration of World War III, we're gonna take some of Russia, then you would expect a much harsher response from Moscow, which we didn't.
In fact, almost as we're sitting here, uh the Foreign Minister Lavrov is meeting with Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State.
If truly it was that sort Of massive leap uh uh uh up the escalation ladder.
I I doubt such meetings would take place.
And in fact, even the uh President Putin's own spokesperson, Peshkov kind of almost made light of it.
You know, he said, No, no, and we're not a paper tiger, uh, we're we're a bear, you know, and there's no such thing as paper bears.
But he almost said it's sort of sort of tongue-in-cheek.
All right, well, that's that Dan, that's the other thing Trump said, which of course when Americans use it, it's an insult.
I don't know if the Russians translate it literally.
They're smart people, they understand American idiot.
Uh why would he say something like that?
They have a nuclear arsenal, just a touch under our ours.
They have a better army and a bigger navy.
How could he call them a paper tiger?
And battle tested.
Well, you know, this goes back to listening to Keith Kellogg and the Kellogg Plan.
This whole idea, I mean, actually goes back to John McCain.
It's a gas station masquerading as a country.
And a lot of people do believe that, including some people that we know and respect.
They still believe that.
But I think what Russia's demonstrated after these uh three years of warfare that they're capable of growing their economy at the same time uh that they're able to fight this this war, and this idea that their economy is in the tank.
Well, I mean, as Larry pointed out in his piece, our debt to GDP ratio was like 126%, and theirs is something like 19%.
So, in which country would you rather live in terms of this crushing debt burden you have on your back?
So I I almost just wonder, again, maybe it's too sanguine, but whether he was purposely being so over the top.
I mean, it's pretty easy to determine that there are no gas lines, as he suggested there were.
And indeed, I was just speaking with our mutual friend George Galloway, and he said, I was just in Russia, I was in Moscow and Nisny Novgorod.
There are no gas lines anywhere.
I mean, this is sort of made up out of whole cloth, maybe just to sound so over the top, maybe just to give a little give a little uh give a little rise to Lindsay Graham or something.
I don't know.
It's uh it's unsettling uh to me.
I just hope that uh I hope that Larry's right.
Uh two days ago, I was really fuming uh over the state of uh free speech uh in America.
I don't know what's going to happen with respect to this uh head of the FCC uh who threatened ABC if they didn't keep Jimmy Kimmel off air.
This is not a defense of Kimmel's politics, obviously, or a defense of what he said.
Uh it's a defense of his right to say whatever he wants, something that Americans used to enjoy.
Uh I get it that in wartime that that needle moves.
I don't approve of that, but I get it.
But there's absolutely no reason for this stuff to go on.
Now we learn yesterday that Google revealed, Google's enormous, we all know that, that they were pressured by the Biden administration uh to censure uh people who were critical of what the government was saying about COVID,
including a senator who happens to be a physician and also happens to be a good friend of yours and mine, put aside the fact that he is uh and a civil libertarian, put aside the fact that he is uh a friend.
This is just scandalous, because the Supreme Court back in 1963 ruled that the government cannot do indirectly what it is expressly prohibited from doing directly, and yet the Biden administration did it.
Google's lawyers must have told Zuckerberg and company uh to go along with it.
And Brandon Carr, the head of the FCC, tried it as recently as last week.
Whatever happened to the freedom of speech.
And whatever happened to courage to tell the government to buzz off, you know, every one of these or every one of these social media companies completely melted under the slightest bit of pressure from the administration.
The Biden administration, we know that that's one of the reasons, Dudge, we moved the Liberty Report from YouTube uh to Rumble because we were terrified, we were criticizing what was happening with the tyranny around COVID, and we were terrified of having three strikes, and we're out.
We didn't want that to happen.
And so now we know there was a coordinated policy uh from the administration.
Well, as you point out with the Kimmel issue, this is continuing with this administration, but it's just another set of guidelines.
It's no longer COVID.
It's that he said something about someone who indeed seemed like a great person, but somehow in being assassinated, tained uh, you know, Sanctosubito Immediately became a saint, and you couldn't say a single critical word.
The guy told the joke, it was a dumb joke, but that shouldn't warrant a call from the FCC director telling him.
And it was mafia talk, wasn't it, Judge?
We can do this the easy way or the hard way.
Right, right, right.
That is almost literally what he uh what he said.
I mean, one of the viewers points my attention to the Alex Jones uh fiasco.
It was a judicial fiasco because in every state of the union except Connecticut, where they change the law retroactively to burn him, you can express any opinion you want.
You can say so-and-so faked his death.
You can say such and such a thing didn't happen.
It's my opinion.
Opinions are absolutely protected.
Not in Connecticut.
I I only mention this because this is another egregious example.
In this case, the judiciary eviscerating the freedom of speech.
Usually the judiciary comes to the defense uh of uh of the first amendment.
So we both know and understand free the freedom of speech doesn't mean speech is free from consequences, it means speech is free from the government.
You don't need a government permission slip.
You have a natural right uh to say what you want.
You can't accompany the speech with a crime.
Oh, the bank robber was expressing his opinion of the bank when he relieved it of $10,000.
Well, that doesn't work, although I have heard that argument made.
That doesn't work.
But if we're just talking about speech unaccompanied by something that is independently criminal, that speech is protected.
But it's scandalous that the government does this because this 1963 opinion, which most people don't even know about, has been cited over and over and over again as recently as last year by a unanimous Supreme Court.
Every lawyer knows what the law of the land is.
And what's even worse, in my opinion, Judge, is that the conservative, the very conservatives who were victimized during the Biden administration of government interference in their social media, were cheering the firing of Jimmy Kimmel.
Yeah, I've never watched the show.
I'm sure he's a creep, they're all creeps.
They were cheering it.
And when I dared to point out the hypocrisy in my own social little social media outlets, I was absolutely pillowed for it.
No, it's our turn now.
We're going to get them all back for what they've done.
So there'll be this endless cycle of violence, you know, literal or or or not, against people whose opinions you don't like.
And the very conservatives that suffered.
Now that they have the hammer in their hands, they want to start pounding away.
That hammer's going to change hands.
Right.
Right.
So this is from my column, which comes out at midnight tonight.
Why did Jefferson and Madison craft restraints on the government?
Because neither trusted the government.
Government is irrelevant to speech.
Government doesn't create wealth, it seizes it.
Government doesn't build its destroys.
Government transactions aren't voluntary, they're compulsory.
Government at its core is the negation of freedom.
That's that famous line from uh von Mises.
Hence it wants to silence those who expose its errors and rid itself of those who challenge it.
Is Jimmy Kimmel that much of a challenge?
Is that late-night comedian with mediocre ratings?
Enough of a challenge to the stability of the government that they have to threaten as bosses.
And it goes even further than that.
On the 19th of September, President Trump threatened the entire ABC network.
You know, he said if uh if you know 97% of your coverage of me is negative, well, you're a licensed uh station.
Maybe we need to look at taking back those licenses.
You know, so it's it's uh it's he has a very dangerous mentality.
I remember this from his first uh from his first term, but it seems to have gotten much worse this time, the idea.
And and now he also has um his lackeys are also the same way.
Look at look at Pam Bondi.
Uh, she said, if you express hate speech, we're coming after you.
Uh, what is hate speech, Judge?
Is there such a there is no such thing uh as hate speech?
And she would have flunked uh the basic course on the constitution, or at least gotten a negative for that part of the essay for what she said.
She knows damn well what the law is, she's got to.
She must just mouth in what She thinks her boss wants her to hear.
This is a big issue, uh, Daniel, the dangers of a Justice Department that has no independence whatsoever.
The Justice Department used to be motivated by the written law and judicial interpretations of the law, not by the biases, prejudices, and hatreds and hatreds of the president.
Well, you know, I had a sneak peek at your column, uh, judge, because we love to reprint your columns, and it was a beautiful piece of writing, you know, and you really capture the importance, you know, the fact that they so distrusted government, the founders of our country.
And what's happened to the U.S. now in these 250 years, Americans have fallen in love with the ability to use a government as a cudgel to defeat their enemies rather than as a protector of their freedoms and liberties.
So you know, we we need to uh we need to have the whole country take your course in the constitution.
Oh, you're very kind, uh Daniel.
Uh, I have also, of course, complained bitterly about the absence of due process.
The president of the United States kills people before they commit a crime.
I mean, this is uh uh this is down the George Orwell Rod Hole yesterday, the president of Columbia uh ripped into President Trump for murdering people in speed boats on the high seas cut 25, Chris.
Trump launches missiles at unarmed migrant boats and accuses them of being drug traffickers and terrorists, even though they don't have a single weapon to defend themselves.
When the notorious drug traffickers, the individuals involved in illicit drug trade, live in New York City, right here, just a few short blocks away from us, and also in Miami, Florida.
And they make significant deals with the DEA where they are explicitly allowed to traffic illicit substances in Africa, Europe, Russia, or China, but emphatically not in the United States.
A powerful country that only temporarily holds the growth of cocaine consumption without truly reducing its overall prevalence simply because it's numerous drug-addicted patients who are indeed genuinely sick individuals, have tragically switched to consuming the incredibly deadly drug of humanity's counterculture in these challenging times of extinction due to the escalating climate crisis, fentanyl.
This potent fentanyl is meticulously produced within the vast industrial apparatus of the United States itself.
Here, very close to here, and here are the primary consumers.
You and I believe that we own our own bodies and we can put what we want into them.
Uh the president should not be in the business of punishing people before they've even committed the crime, must let much less been accused of it.
Well, I would watch out if I were the Colombian president, he's gonna get the Hugo Chavez treatment, I think, with talk like that.
That's a that's pretty tough talk, and I'm sure it's accurate.
You know, obviously, people have the right to do that.
And but the thing is it's counterproductive, because if the president really wanted to, you know, uh encourage les autres, he would he would capture these people and show all the drugs and show these people being arrested.
Uh, it would it would do a lot more than blowing them out of the water and leaving this huge question mark who were these people?
Why does a president do this?
How is he allowed to do this?
You know, it would be much more effective, even if you wanted to use them as propaganda tools to discourage them.
It's it's uh it doesn't make any sense.
Well, I don't know where uh any of this is going to go.
Um the Ron Paul of the House of Representatives today, Thomas Massey and his counterpart, Senator Rand Paul and the Senate are the only people that really complain about this.
The Congress is supine, the Congress does whatever uh Donald Trump uh wants.
You know, the Congress, the Senate is now in the business of uh confirming nominees to very significant positions, one vote for 45 people.
There isn't even a debate or a vote on the on the worthiness of each of these people.
So Trump can appoint somebody to be the U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia or New Jersey, who's never had anything to do with criminal law in their lives, and they're confirmed along with a bunch of other people Who are uh qualified, one vote on all those uh people.
Why would the Congress do this?
Why would the Congress become so supine to the president?
Why wouldn't the Congress say, hey, you want to declare war on Venezuela?
Show us the evidence, and we'll debate and we'll decide.
That's what the Constitution says, Mr. President.
Well, they can't even do they can't even pass spending bills.
That's their primary primary job.
They can't even operate under regular order.
We're going to be facing a new continuing resolution, which, as Massey very well points out, this continues Biden level spending.
We've continued, you know, we will have a whole year under President Trump where we're spending at Biden levels because Congress can't get its act together and simply pass the I don't know, 13 or so uh spending bills after a robust debate and an open debate on the floor, like we used to have when Dr. Paul was in the House, or you could offer amendments and you had actually had a debate.
I mean, may people might suggest the reason they can't get any of their actual work done is they're too busy passing uh resolutions condemning anti-Semitism that they don't have any time to do their actual work.
Right, right, right.
And and what you say is no joke, the House of Representatives uh voted by an overwhelming uh number, 300 and something to under 100 uh uh voting no, to define the uh the statement that the Jewish people participated in the crucifixion of Jesus Christ as an act of anti-Semitism.
Now, A, it's not B, who the hell is the Congress to be redefining words uh in ways which they've never been used.
But this is very dangerous because of the Zionist uh oligarchs in America that have an iron grip on the House of Representatives and the Senate and the White House.
And that's about the last place they have the grip, Judge, because they're losing it everywhere else.
You know, and that may well have something to do with what happened to Charlie Kirk.
I mean, the youth in America, you know, uh uh Megan Kelly, your old colleague at Fox.
I mean, I never thought I'd hear her say this.
The youth under 30 hate Israel.
That's what's happening, and so they're desperate.
Their last beach head is Congress, and they'll be the last ones because that's where the money goes to.
But they'll be the last ones to do it.
And and and and you're I mean, next they're gonna they're gonna rule that the Bible is anti-Semitic, and you can't read it.
I mean, I don't know what's what's next.
Yeah.
Well, you know, the House is run by these uh Christian nationalists.
I'm a Christian, I'm an old fashioned pre, as you know, old fashioned pre-Vatican II Latin mass uh attending uh Roman Catholic.
Uh, but these Christian nationalists would have their version of Protestantism be the law of the land if they could.
I think that they're dangerous people because they're also like Mike Huckabee, fanatical Zionists, and one of them is two heartbeats from the presidency of the United States.
He happens to be the Speaker of the House.
It's very dangerous, and I certainly believe in freedom of religion, but you can't take us all on a spaceship to to to Jupiter because you think that's where Jesus is or something.
I mean, there are real world consequences to your personal beliefs on estratology, uh, you know, and it's uh we are ruled by a very small, and ironically, it's not that different from what they claim that Iran is like.
We're being ruled by the mullahs who who who operate above and beyond the law in the United States.
Yeah.
Uh I have asked um all of my guests in the past uh couple of weeks the same question I'm going to ask you again, but before you answer it, I'm gonna play a fascinating clip for you.
The question is does Donald Trump control Benjamin Netanyahu, or does Benjamin Netanyahu control Donald Trump?
Watch my friend and former Fox colleague and now fellow podcaster, Tucker Carlson on this one, Chris number 26.
I mean, BB's running around.
This is a fact.
I'm not guessing about this, because I talked to people he said it to, is running around the Middle East, his region and his own country, and telling people point blank, just stating it, I control the United States, I control Donald Trump.
He's saying that.
And and again, I'm not guessing at all.
That's a fact.
And I dare them to say that's not true because it is true and they know it's true.
So I'm an American.
How do you think it makes me feel?
Even if I didn't vote for Trump, which I did, I did vote, I campaign for Trump, but even if I even if it was Joe Biden, I'm an American.
You can't treat it's too humiliating.
I can't handle that.
And I shouldn't have to put up with that.
This is a country of nine million people.
I'm not saying it's I'm not even attacking the country.
I'm attacking my leaders who are allowing my nation of 350 million people to be forced into doing things that are bad for me and my children because of some other country.
Like that is a violation of the most basic arrangement we have with our leaders, which is represent us, please, at least most of the time, and they're not.
What do you think?
Powerful statement.
And you know, 10 years, five years ago, even that would have been so controversial, you'd be saying Tucker Who in about five months, but it's not the case anymore.
In fact, his influence is only growing, which worries me a little bit because I've I've met and talked with Tucker, and I think he's a wonderful person.
It does worry me because of what's happened to people.
But maybe Donald Trump was also given a message.
Hey, we're going to blow off part of your ear this time, but next time it's going to be a lot more than that.
One never knows, and one can speculate.
Ironically, Judge, I think one of the things that might be a saving grace, perhaps, is Trump's enormous ego.
Because I think if he starts hearing more and more that uh, you know, the BB's riding you like a like a horse, uh, he may start getting irritated that may start, you know, fueling this uh idea that he needs to do more than just claim to break away.
Reportedly, he complained a couple of days ago that Bibi is blanking me.
I won't use the word.
Well, that's the case, then you're getting blanked, and you need to tell him to stop blanking you.
And America is waiting for you to do that.
All right.
I I even though we have the freedom of speech, I commend your good taste in not quoting the president uh literally.
Our neutral friend Gerald Salenti, of course, relish is quoting the president literally out of Gerald's own mountain and printing on the front page of his magazine, but the public knows what we're talking about.
Dan, I know we put this uh uh this part of the show together the last minute.
I can't thank you enough for hopping on like this.
You're a great friend, a great friend of the show, and you do great work and thanks for sharing your thoughts with us.
We'll look forward to visiting with you again soon.
Thanks, Judge.
Always happy to join you.
Take care.
Thank you.
A real pleasure.
Coming up tomorrow, Thursday, we have a first-rate lineup for you.
At 1115 in the morning, Colonel Douglas McGregor at one in the afternoon, Max Blumenthal at two in the afternoon, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson at three in the afternoon, Professor John Meersheimer at four in the afternoon from the United Nations,
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