Judging Freedom - AMB. Chas Freeman : A Runaway Presidency.

Episode Date: September 4, 2025

AMB. Chas Freeman : A Runaway Presidency.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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That's an equivalent to $15 a month. Limited time new customer offer for first three months only. Speeds may slow above 35 gigabytes on unlimited. plan. Taxes and fees extra. See Mint Mobile for details. Hi, everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Thursday, September 4th, 2025 Ambassador Chas Freeman. We'll be with us in just a moment on a runaway presidency. But first this.

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No one is going to protect your wealth for you. You need to do it yourself, and now is the time. Ambassador, good morning to you and good day, and thank you for accommodating my schedule. I know this is not your usual day, but we have a truncated week because of the Labor Day holiday. Can the President of the United States kill anybody he wants without due process? Apparently, this was the precedent set by Barack Obama when he killed American citizens. citizens in Yemen, specifically assassinated them. We've now seen the President of the United States

commit murder on the high seas. The normal procedure for intercepting a drug trafficker is to arrest the trafficker, seize the drugs, interrogate the trafficker, and do what you can to cut off the organization that's supportive In this case, we have an allegation, that is all there is, that this vote with 11 people on it that we killed was somehow connected to Venezuelan drug dealers. We didn't stop the boat, we didn't interrogate anyone, we just murdered them. And I don't think, as much as this may appeal to some people, tough guy stuff.

It is, I don't think it does anything for our reputation except destroy it. I think here, there's one other perfect point, and I gather that from Marco Rubio, that the initial approach that the U.S. Navy proposed to take was exactly the one consistent with international law and practice, that is intercept the boat interrogated the bat that people aborted, seize any drugs on it, and so forth. They were overruled by the president. who ordered them to kill the people on the boat. So this is about as clear a case of murder as you can come up with. Way, I could not agree with you more, Ambassador.

And I'm thinking of the murder of Osama bin Laden and his family. He hadn't been charged with any crime. It had been followed for a number of days by intelligence agents and military, all of whom could have arrested him. But they didn't have the authority to arrest. him because he hadn't even been indicted. I'm thinking of Anwar al-Alaki and his son. That's the case to which you refer. They were American citizens. One was born in Virginia. The other was born in Mexico. They were seated in an outdoor cafe in Yemen when President Obama ordered them evaporated

effectively by a drone. I'm thinking of President Trump assassinating General Soleimani, who was on his way to have lunch with his counterpart in Iraq to talk about a peace treaty. I mean, how should Defense Department, here's one for you, from your days as a former deputy assistant, I think I have the title correct, Secretary of Defense, whatever you were, you were the smartest person in the Defense Department at the time. It should have been the Secretary of Defense. But how should military officials respond when they're asked to commit murder? We're not talking about shooting at troops from a country at war with us in wartime.

That is hardly murder. We're talking about what happened two days ago on the high seas. Well, there are codes of ethics for the U.S. military. We come out of World War II when a German military, officers said well that I was just following orders and we came up with a very clear ethical set of principles rules for our military which says that an illegal order it should not be followed so this was clearly an illegal order and it is I'm sorry to say quite a nasty commentary on the extent to which our military now

hides behind orders rather than exercising ethical judgments. Didn't we learn going back to the Nuremberg trials that I was just following orders is not a morally appropriate response? I'll tell you who also made non-morally appropriate response as the Secretary Hegg-Seth and Secretary Rubio, neither of them. could come up with a legal justification for this. They both, Hegsseth, in his typical way, gloried in the precision strike

and the utter devastation of the boat and demise of the 11 people. Rubio gloried in. This is the beginning of the end for the border of the cartels. If you're coming across, we're coming in for you. These guys don't both to present. preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution, which includes the Fifth Amendment, which couldn't be clearer, no person shall suffer the loss of life, liberty, or property without due process of law. Absolutely correct. And you have to say that our government is depraved, morally depraved. It believes the ends justify the means. It practices the law of the

jungle. It no longer follows the Constitution or the rule of law. It does not believe in due process. And we're seeing more and more evidences of this. And this incident is about as clear an example as you can get. Transitioning ambassador to Israel, there seems to be a lot of public opposition from very significant people in the Israeli government. to Prime Minister Netanyahu's stated intentions to invade and occupy Gaza, particularly Gaza City. Max Blumenthal says there's not much left to Gaza City. However, the head of the military has objected, the head of Shindbet, their spying or domestic FBI organization, has objected. the head of Netanyahu's own security counsel has objected,

and Netanyahu's own foreign minister has objected. Are these objections, as Aaron Mata has called them, just performative? Or are they substantive, and might they give Netanyahu and his crazy regime pause? Well, I think they are derived from two considerations. The first is, in fact, the military realities of that essentially, Actually, Israel has deprived Gaza of order any orderly governance. And it's not in a position to provide the governance that is required. And from a military point of view, therefore, Netanyahu's continued efforts to destroy

Gaza through the use of force and to focus on the remnant of Hamat there while killing huge numbers of innocent civilians makes no sense at all. And so I think you have a professional military judgment and an intelligence judgment at work here. But there's another issue, and that is that there are people in Israel who understand very well that they are putting the entire Jewish population of the world at risk. People who, the Jewish tradition is one of great attention to ethical reasoning. But it has died in Palestine with the state of Israel, run by an alternative to Judaism, which is Zionism.

They're very different. And if American Jews and Jews in Europe and elsewhere support Israel, regardless of its departure from any standard of decency, they place themselves at risk. and they imperil the entire reputation of Judaism as a just religion based on ethical reasoning. So the damage to Judaism and to Jews outside Israel is also a consideration. Israel depends on the support of the diaspora and the persuasiveness of the diaspora with foreign governments like our own, which prop up the regime. in Israel. And that is all in jeopardy now,

as well as the standing of Jews generally. Matt Miller, who spent four years attempting to justify the Biden State Department's absurd, destructive foreign policy with respect to Ukraine, Israel,

and whatever other hot spots he was being asked about, gave a 14-minute interview in which he is more or less coming clean. You know, we've ripped him apart from pillar to post, both before and after his time in office, but I give him credit for what he said. Chris has edited the 14 minutes. We're not going to play all 14 minutes of it. Chris has edited it down to 2.

It's very profound his observations of Prime Minister. Netanyahu, whom Professor Sachs and Scott Ritter have referred to as a monster. This is a very low-key Matt Miller, but his observations of Netanyahu are historic. Chris, cut number three. I did never fully understand how the lead-up to October 7th with the government of Israel facilitating payments from another country to Hamas wasn't a bigger issue. It's consistent with the pattern we saw for many months.

They were always looking for ways to add conditions or make the terms more difficult. The governor of Israel came back with its insistence on keeping troops in the Philadelphia quarter. We were really close to a deal, and the prime minister added these new conditions. And then we presented a proposal to bridge those differences. And the prime minister accepted that proposal.

And the proposal was very clear about when Israeli soldiers would withdraw from Philadelphia. Somehow it managed to leak that he told the families of hostages that Israel would never withdraw from Philadelphia, which of course was a complete contradiction of the position that he had taken. We spent at every level of government in the national security establishment an enormous amount of time trying to get this ceasefire over the line. And when anyone said anything or did anything that made it more difficult, it's incredibly frustrating. Will it be true to say that you wanted a deal, a hostage deal, more than Israel? I believe that's true.

The secretary was laying out all of our concerns to the... prime minister and to the rest of the war cabinet. And he said, without a plan for the day after the conflict, you were going to be dealing with an insurgency in Gaza forever. You have continued instability in the West Bank. You are making it impossible to realize the dream that the state of Israel has had since its founding. You're going to be bogged down here fighting this war for years and decades to come. And the prime minister said, you're right. We are going to be fighting. this war for decades to come. That's the way it's been.

That's the way it's going to be. Well, that is one skilled liar calling out another, namely Netanyahu. And it's no revelation that Netanyahu is insincere, breaks his word, does everything possible to undo

alleged agreements that he's reached with others. And I would note, however, that Mr. Miller, who worked for Secretary of State Blinken, who was in practical terms a member of the Israeli work admin, was properly called out during his time, the spokesman. He was given the nickname Smircula. It's interesting to see. see him expressed a bit of contrition, but he doesn't really come to grips with the main issue, which is genocide. He's talking about little tactical maneuvers that were going on between a United States essentially colluding with Israel and the Israelis. And so I'm not sure a judge that I agree with you that he has really redeemed himself. Well, I think you're right.

Now, he probably should have resigned and blown the whistle. We now know he saw Netanyahu moving the gold post. We now know he believed Netanyahu to be a liar. He must have recognized the Anthony Blinken. I come first as a Jew and second as a secretary of state, indicative of what you said that he was a day, a facto member of the Israeli War Cabinet, he did nothing about it until now he could have caused quite stirred quite a pot had he said

three years ago what he said yesterday well i think you know he's revealed himself to be the classic apparatchik uh somebody uh who assembles in the interest of uh promoting the interests of the government he serves um and to some extent any government official um is in a position of having to advocate policies that he or she may actually disagree with. That is entirely proper. That is to say, nobody elected government bureaucrat. The president of the United States was elected.

And he, the president of the United States, has the constitutional authority to create policies which the permanent bureaucracy should follow. But there is a limit. And he clearly crossed the limit. I think when you become a cog in a wheel of deception to the extent that he was, you've really dishonored the idea of the professional civil service. Can you draw a line from the murders of Alaki and his son to the murder of General Solon.

to the murders of the 11, so-called, unproven, uncharged, drug dealers to Trump's supposed statement to Netanyahu, just get it over with, do what you have to do, and the financing of the murders of Palestinian civilians. I'm sorry to say that there is a direct line, and it ends with President Trump's absurd statement. that the Constitution gives him the power to do whatever he wants, and that he has not, and it is accompanied by the judgment that there are no moral constraints on what he can do. And we've seen this kind of behavior accelerating over the years

and now becoming the norm. So there is no moral or legal constraint on the president, and the people who work for him apparently have no ethical standards at all. Chris, number one, and then follow it with the historical one that we found for Ambassador Freeman involving a statement by the person for whom he was the chief translator in Beijing on the same subject matter. I would have much more respect for Pritzker if he'd call me up and say, I have a problem.

Can you help me fix it? I would be so happy to do it. I don't love, not that I don't have the right to do anything I want to do, I'm the President of the United States, if I think our country is in danger, and it is in danger in these. Well, when the President does it, that means that it is not illegal, by definition. Exactly, exactly. If the President, if, for example, the President approves something, approves an action because of the national security, or in this case because of a threat to internal peace and order of a significant magnitude,

then the president's decision in that instance is one that enables those who carry it out to carry it out without violating a law. Amazing. Absolutely amazing. And that, of course, that statement by President Nixon, who, despite his enormous ability as a statesman, had severe personality problems and ethical issues is, unfortunately, what has guided our country in recent decades. And the attitude about presidential lawlessness was the same. And in Trump's case, he's buttressed by one of the most disreputable Supreme Court opinions in the modern era involving presidential immunity.

I'm sure his lawyers reminded him of that before he ordered the murder of these 11 people on the boat, which wasn't even, according to Latin American sources, wasn't even aiming for the United States on its way to Trinidad. Well, I don't know where the boat was headed, but I do know that under the normal definitions of international law, we just committed an act of piracy. Ambassador, it's a pleasure to chat with you. I didn't even get to all my questions on Ukraine, but still be relevant next week, I'm sure. I'm afraid so. Have a good day. Thank you, Ambassador. All the best. We do have a good day coming at 9 o'clock. From 9 o'clock in the morning, eastern U.S. time is 11 o'clock at night in Shanghai, Pepe Escobar. Anya Parenthill at 1 this afternoon more on what happened with the murders off the coast of Venezuela.

At 2 o'clock this afternoon, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, at 3 o'clock this afternoon, Professor John Mearsheimer, at 345 this afternoon, Colonel Douglas McGregor, Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. Thank you.