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Feb. 9, 2026 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
26:34
AMB. Chas Freeman : What Netanyahu Wants
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Russia's Threat to Foreign Policy 00:15:06
Undeclared wars are commonplace.
Tragically, our government engages in preemptive war, otherwise known as aggression, with no complaints from the American people.
Sadly, we have become accustomed to living with the illegitimate use of force by government.
To develop a truly free society, the issue of initiating force must be understood and rejected.
What if sometimes to love your country, you had to alter or abolish the government?
What if Jefferson was right?
What if that government is best which governs least?
What if it is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong?
What if it is better to perish fighting for freedom than to live as a slave?
What if freedom's greatest hour of danger is now?
Hi, everyone.
Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Tuesday, February 10th, 2026.
Our dear friend, Ambassador Chaz Freeman, joins us now.
Ambassador Freeman, thank you very much for your time.
As always, I want to speak to you at some length about what you expect Prime Minister Netanyahu to tell President Trump when they spend time with each other in the White House tomorrow.
But before we get there, do you get the feeling that Russia is beginning to sour on its relationship, the Kremlin souring on its relationship with the Trump administration?
I mean, after all, as recently as two days ago, Foreign Minister Lavrov said, you know, those sanctions that the Biden administration put in place that you condemned, in fact, many of them you've enhanced.
No, I think it's true generally that, and Russia is no exception.
Broadly speaking, internationally, there is a lack of confidence in the United States in our ability to make an agreement and to resolve issues and then to stick with the resolution.
We're engaged, despite happy talk and flattering references to foreign leaders, Vladimir Putin, not so much.
Xi Jinping, for example.
We're engaged in economic warfare against many countries, including Russia.
We've been taking Russian flag tankers in the high seas.
We've put more sanctions on Russia.
We're trying to prevent traditional customers of the Russian economy to buy oil and other commodities from it.
So, yes, I think if Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner turn up again in Moscow, they will confront a polite but extremely skeptical, perhaps almost rejectionist response from the Russians.
It's interesting that it's Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner and not Marco Rubio, the de jure, the legal Secretary of State.
It is also not on the Russian side, the de jure, Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov.
But here he is yesterday speaking at a BRICS gathering, and I think you'll detect the unhappiness in his tone and in his choice of words.
Chris, number two.
President Putin has repeatedly said, no, we are not refusing to use the dollar.
Under Biden, the U.S. has done everything to turn the dollar into a weapon against those who are out of favor.
And I would like to point out and emphasize that the U.S. administration, notwithstanding the various public statements we have heard regarding the urgent necessity of bringing a conclusion to the war in Ukraine that was originally unleashed during the Biden administration, we need to come to an agreement, remove it from the agenda, and then clear bright prospects for mutually beneficial Russian-American investment and other cooperation will open up.
But all the laws that Biden passed to punish Russia after the start of the special military operation are not being challenged by the Trump administration.
For example, in April, the state of emergency law was extended.
The core of which is the punishment of Russia, the imposition of sanctions against Russia, including the freezing of our gold and foreign currency reserves.
This is explicitly stated as being due to Russia's hostile behavior in foreign policies.
And as examples, interference in United States elections is cited the very thing President Trump categorically opposes on a daily basis and rejects all of it and violations of international law, human rights.
There's no end to the list.
This is all pure Bidenism, which Trump and his team reject outright.
But nevertheless, they calmly extended it.
The law of the sanctions against Russia continue to be in effect.
There you have it.
I mean, that's pretty candid and pretty, as you say, telling of expect a frosty relationship.
And maybe don't expect the president of Russia to give you five hours again.
What are they negotiating about?
Well, it's not clear.
I mean, in effect, Foreign Minister Lavrov is expressing the disappointment, maybe more than that, a sense of betrayal coming out of the Alaska summit,
where it appeared that the two sides, United States and the Russians, had committed ourselves to a course of resolving the proxy war in Ukraine, but more importantly, developing a broad cooperative relationship to replace the very distant, hostile relationship that developed, particularly during the Biden administration.
He's saying you didn't deliver.
And so I think that will definitely condition the reception of these unofficial envoys.
I mean, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner are representing Donald Trump, not necessarily as President of the United States.
They have no position confirmed by the Senate.
They have no authority to speak for the United States.
Their authority derives purely from their relationship as crony, golf partner in the one case and son-in-law in the other of President Trump.
So this is an extra-constitutional practice, and it's far more extreme than what we've seen before in our history.
We've seen this with figures like Colonel House in the Wilson administration.
And so we're operating extra-constitutionally in foreign policy.
And more to the point, neither Witkoff nor Kushner have delivered anything except fictitious real estate deals.
There's no agreement on the war and ending the war in Ukraine.
There's no agreement on Iran.
There's no agreement on Maza.
There's the appearance of a ceasefire, which is daily violated by the Israelis and does not represent a meeting of the minds between the contending parties at all.
So I don't know what sort of reception he'll get, but I think we're hearing a good deal of skepticism.
Is the Greater Israel domination project failing?
Netanyahu's dream?
Well, he's coming tomorrow, Wednesday, to Washington to try to advance it.
I mean, there's this common pattern here.
Israel spent a couple of years trying to defeat resistance in Gaza to its cruel rule there.
It has spent years doing the same in the West Bank.
It has not succeeded in this mission, which it has pursued by military means.
It looks to the United States to provide the leverage and the framework for getting what it wants by non-military means.
It's willing to sacrifice American honor for its own purposes.
And that is the purpose of the meeting tomorrow, Wednesday meeting between Prime Minister Netanyahu, who has advanced the date of his proposed visit, apparently because he is alarmed by the apparent willingness of the Trump administration to talk about things that Iran is willing to talk about, rather than insisting on things that it won't talk about,
because they amount to a capitulation of surrender, a subordination of sovereignty to the state of Israel, which Iranians are not prepared to give.
So what do you expect Prime Minister Netanyahu will tell the president?
My guess is he'll try and scare the president with some nonsense that he claims is from Assad and the Mossad stenographer who does double duty as the head of the CIA will be right there to say, oh yes, oh yes, oh yes.
Well, I think that's a fair guess.
I think he has a very clear agenda.
He demands that the United States insist that Iran go to zero enrichment of uranium, that it destroy its missile force and disarm, and that it break its relationships with elements of the resistance to Israeli hegemony in West Asia,
Hezbollah masked the House of government in Yemen, none of which are consistent with the dignity of an independent state like Iran, and therefore are non-starters.
But I think they are intended to be non-starters.
Their purpose is to ensure that there is no agreement with Iran and that Iran is ripe for a renewed attack by Israel with the backing of the United States, or by the United States in place of Israel.
There's some very entertaining stuff out there.
I'm reading, you know, well, Netanyahu wants to disengage from dependence on the American military, but there's a problem.
Israel might get dragged into a U.S. fight with Iran, whereas it's Israel that is dragging the U.S. into a fight with Iran, which would never take place, never have any rationale at all if it weren't for the constant efforts by Israel to produce a war.
If there is a war, I think both the Israeli military and the American military are well aware that the outcome is likely to be very, very unpleasant for both Israel and the United States.
But Netanyahu wants to overcome that, and he believes his own propaganda about Iran.
He thinks Iran is less powerful than in fact it is.
And I think this is a war between Netanyahu, the political magician who makes you see things that don't exist, and realists in both the American establishment and in Israel.
Did Netanyahu ask Trump not to attack Iran back about a month ago in the middle of January, as was reported in the press?
And if so, what has changed his mind if you expect him to be all in for an American-Israeli attack when they talk tomorrow?
Well, I think that is correct.
That is, Netanyahu made an agreement at Mar-a-Lago with President Trump that there would be an attack on Iran.
There was a tentative date set.
He then went home and was told by his own military and intelligence people that this would be a disaster because Israel did not have the ability to intercept the Iranian counterattack, the missiles, hypersonic missiles, and other systems that could devastate Israel.
Iran, of course, as everyone is aware, has said that if there is an attack, another attack on it will take the clothes off.
It has been very careful in the past to strike all the military and intelligence targets.
It will now go all out.
And there is, according to various sources, a plan to fire as many as 2,000 missiles at once at Israel, which would totally overcome any defenses and damage throughout the entire small country.
And so I think when Netanyahu got home, he reconsidered the desirability of an earlier attack on Iran and asked for a postponement for the U.S. Abraham Lincoln, an aircraft carrier and associated battle group of three destroyers to redeploy from the South China Sea to the region within reach of Iran,
apparently about 500 miles away from the Strait of Hormuz because of a well-justified fear of the Iranian ability to target the aircraft carrier if it becomes engaged in hostilities.
So what has changed?
Netanyahu's back is against the wall politically, and he has an ambition to go down in Israeli history as a man who established a greater Israel, who subdued all of Israel's potential enemies in the region.
He has been superb at making enemies for Israel.
He has not been successful in eliminating those enemies.
Netanyahu's Ambitious Backlash 00:03:27
He looks to the United States to do it for them.
He sees President Trump as a uniquely manipulable political figure in American politics.
He knows that the Zionist lobby in the United States is all out in support of him, I think, foolishly, but not really realizing the military risks or not recognizing what they are.
And so he's going for Broke.
I think that's the answer.
Is the United States still negotiating with Iran?
And if the answer to that is yes, I mean, what are they talking about?
Iran is certainly not going to stop aiding its allies.
It's certainly not, as you indicated, going to surrender sovereignty by eliminating offensive missiles.
And it's probably not going to eliminate all nuclear enrichment because much of it is for a very beneficial domestic purpose, such as energy and medical use.
No, there is what I regard as an entirely performative negotiation going on.
The United States originally insisted that it be an Istanbul and that it be attended by a coterie of Gulf Arab states and others who the United States believes are still in a hostile relationship with Iran.
Those states are in fact focused not on preventing Iran from doing anything, but on preventing the United States and Israel from attacking Iran because of the dangers to their own security and the possibility that the war would spread that they understand is very real.
So the United States, in the person of Marco Rubio, Secretary of State, said that, speaking for the Zionist lobby in the United States, said that any meeting with Iran, any negotiation, would have to include zero enrichment, the destruction of the missile program, and an end to Iranian support for resistance forces in the region to Israeli expansionism.
And if these conditions weren't met, there would be no talks.
And the Iranians said, okay, no talks.
And we then moved the discussions to Muscat, which is a more congenial environment for the Iranians, because the Omanis have a well-justified reputation for objectivity and diplomatic skill as mediators.
Those talks took place, they were six hours of discussions.
It's very clear that Iran was not prepared to talk about either missile forces or its relationship with others in the region.
The sole discussion was, effective discussion was therefore on the question of uranium enrichment.
And this apparently did not succeed, but it may have at least clarified issues sufficiently for there to be progress by the two sides.
And that is alarming to Israel because it doesn't want progress.
It wants a war.
And so you have the Prime Minister Eden Yao turning up in Washington.
Epstein Files Indictment 00:07:18
Switching topics, Ambassador, do you think that the tenure in office of British Prime Minister, Sir Kir Starmer, is now severely limited due to the Epstein revelations involving his former friend and colleague, the former U.S. ambassador, a British ambassador to the United States?
Well, the latest poll shows that his unpopularity has reached 67%.
Two-thirds of the British people want him gone.
And in a parliamentary system, of course, the political party that's in power can fire the prime minister and replace him.
They don't have to have an election again.
They can do that.
And it's clear that there's a great deal of discussion within the party about that.
And so I would say the general view, which I have no reason to question, is that Sir Kerr Starmer's time in office is severely limited.
Here is Congresswoman Melanie Stansbury from New Mexico articulating the view of many Democrats about the dangers of the Epstein revelations to President Trump.
Cut number 10.
Let us be clear that Donald Trump is not only named thousands of times in the latest release from the Department of Justice, he is named over 38,000 times in the files that were released two weeks ago alone.
And we know that that only represents half of the files that the Department of Justice has in its possession, including files that were used for direct investigations of perpetrators, people who committed crimes, people who were co-conspirators in those crimes, and individuals who knew of those crimes.
We know that there are multiple administration officials, including Howard Luttnick, Elon Musk, who served as the appointee for the Doge efforts in the White House.
We know that the Secretary of Navy, we know that Steve Bannon, we know that there are more than three dozen associates, family members, and individuals directly associated with Donald Trump named in those files.
Now, there are now at least nine or ten other countries across the world that have opened investigations or forced their leaders to step down because of their mere association with Jeffrey Epstein.
And the United States government is engaged in an active cover-up of the largest sex trafficking scandal and influence peddling scandal in the history of the United States.
And Donald Trump is right at the center of it.
Does this come up when BB and Donald meet alone?
I suspect not.
It's not a subject that either of them particularly wants to address.
In fact, it's possible to argue that one of the major pressures on Trump that Prime Minister Netanyahu will use is the president's desire to divert attention from the Epstein issue toward a war with Iran.
There are multiple efforts underway to change the subject.
I want to just say a word about what the subject really is, because the Congresswoman is, of course, as you said, representing a Democratic party view of this president.
But really, the Epstein files and the revelations that they contain are an indictment of an entire class of depraved plutocrats, whom Donald J. Trump, our president, has admitted to impunity in our political system and authority.
These people can get away with apparently anything.
And this is precisely the issue, the issue of the abuse of wealth and power that got Donald J. Trump elected.
He himself claims to be a very wealthy man.
I guess he is now that he's been in the presidency and been able to benefit enormously from government-sponsored wealth promotion of his own family.
But he somehow convinced the public that he was on the side of those who demanded accountability from those in power.
And I think it's interesting to me that the best the Democrats can apparently come up with is an assault on Trump personally, probably reflecting his unpopularity.
But this is a broader issue.
It's our whole political litocratic political class that is indicted by this, these revelations.
Well, I think you're right, Ambassador, and I don't think this is going to go going to go away soon.
I don't think there's any human being that has read all three million pages that have come out, but this stuff just keeps coming out and coming out and coming out.
Yesterday, the two members of Congress who were most instrumental in drafting and sponsoring and getting the Epstein Transparency Act passed spent a few hours looking at the raw data that the DOJ allowed them to do.
It apparently wasn't a very pleasant or easily manipulative, easy to manipulate system.
Nevertheless, there are names there known to the public who were whose name and the names were redacted in what the DOJ released.
And now these two, Congressman Thomas Massey, full disclosure, a longtime friend of mine, and Congressman Roe Kahana, are threatening to go to the floor of the House of Representatives and reveal their names.
And of course, on the floor, they are protected by the speech or debate clause of the Constitution.
They can say anything they want about anybody, and there can be no reaction, criminal, civil, administrative, or house-related.
Well, we don't present the image to the world that we once drove to present.
We once aspired to be great because we were principled, generous, kind, concerned about peace and the welfare of others as well as ourselves.
Now, apparently, to be great is to be a great bully.
That seems to be our aspiration.
And it's compounded by the appearance of amoral behavior, the lack of values in our political elite, and the constant lying of the administration that is now the telling of lies is now a regular feature of our politics on a level that we've never seen before.
Professor Mohamed Mirandi Teaches 00:00:38
So I think this is really very serious.
And I agree with you, it won't go away.
Ambassador Freeman, thank you very much for your time.
As always, very, very enlightening.
It always is and deeply appreciated.
All the best.
We'll look forward to seeing you next week, my friend.
Keep well.
Thank you.
Coming up later today, if you're watching us live in just a half an hour, he teaches, he was born in the United States.
He teaches at the University of Tehran, but he's coming to us from Moscow, my friend, Professor Mohamed Mirandi, at nine.
At two o'clock this afternoon, Aaron Mate.
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