Judging Freedom - AMB. Chas Freeman : China and Russia view Trump as a Kidnapper

Episode Date: January 6, 2026

AMB. Chas Freeman : China and Russia view Trump as a KidnapperSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Undeclared wars are commonplace. Pragically, 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 reject 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? Welcome, everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for judging Freedom. Today is Tuesday, January 6, 2000, and 26, Ambassador Freeman, a pleasure to be with you.

What is your initial take, or what was your initial reaction as you watched the events unfolding in Caracas, Venezuela over the weekend? Well, there's nothing good to be said about that. Obviously, it was completely a flagrant violation of the U.S. Constitution, a ridiculous assertion of jurisdiction over a foreign sovereign. That's something that is entirely contrary to international law. The Vienna Convention gives total immunity to a sovereign. And this was aggression, unprovoked, justified over months

by very careful disinformation campaign with all kinds of fictitious causes brought forth. I note that in the trial of Maduro in New York, the claim that there's something called the Cartel de Los Solis, the cartel of the sons, which is central to the whole staging of what was supposed to be what was portrayed as a law enforcement exercise was dropped. The thing didn't exist and it now apparently doesn't exist for purposes of this trial.

I don't think, however, the implications of this are limited to our country. basically could say that we've seen in the case of Gaza and the impunity of Israel, Israeli action, that the rejection of the rule of law abroad can result in the loss of freedom, loss of the rule of law at home. Like your new introduction, by the way, it raises a question, if the Congress does nothing, why do we even bother having a legislative body? Maybe we should just admit, we have a dictatorship and be done with it. And the same principle exists with regard to international law. If you have a constitutional collapse at home, the rule of law disappears domestically.

Apparently it also disappears internationally as far as the United States is concerned. So I think this is really the end of 300 years of effort by Western civilization to develop rules to regulate international behavior. now it's entirely might makes right there's no pretense of providing a legal justification for what was done and the precedent has been set uh prime minister frederickson of denmark is now concerned that we will in fact uh take greenland from uh denmark a data ally by force and the whole fabric of uh collective defense that we set up uh native defense that we set up of NATO, the Rio Treaty, which people don't seem to remember, treaty, but among American states,

that would justify Latin America uniting to retaliate against our invasion of Venezuela. Fredrickson of Denmark says, I think, quite accurately, that if this precedent is applied to Greenland, NATO will disappear. How is the United States regarded today as in any way being faithful to its international commitments? I mean, this is an attack on a fellow member of the UN and flagrant violation of the UN charter, a treaty ratified by the Senate written by American officials at the end of World War II. No, I think we have now achieved a record of duplicity. Remember the negotiators who were to go to Muscat to talk about a deal with Iran,

and that negotiating session turned out to be a deception to cover a surprise attack on Iran. Same thing with the negotiators from Ukraine who were to go to Istanbul. role. That became the cover for Operation Spider-Web. There is no credibility at all to an American negotiating position. Interestingly, we negotiate internationally entirely through cronies of the president, Stephen Wittkoff, his business associate in New York, and his son-in-law, Jared Cotchner, none of whom have been confirmed by the Senate to have the power to represent the United States. So we're basically operating entirely outside any legal framework. And there are things being thrown around, for example, people are talking about a U.S. security guarantee for Ukraine.

On what authority? How can the president provide such a security guarantee? Why, when he apparently regards the actions of his predecessor, has not binding on him, should anybody take anything he says seriously, as likely to last? So this is a mess. I guess the United States is now about to be viewed the way Israel is as a rogue state that will use brute force to accomplish its purposes, whether those purposes are lawful, moral, or not?

Well, I think you have to give credit to the Israelis who very definitely decided early on that lawfare, the erosion of the principles of the rule of law internationally was in their interest and came up with a whole series of violations. of international law saying, well, you know, if we get away with it, that becomes a precedent and that means that the law has been changed to our advantage. So they came up with the idea of preventive warfare, which basically means aggression against someone who you don't like or you think might eventually do something to you. And that's essentially what we just did

with Venezuela. You know, the difference between Venezuela and Ukraine is not very great. in legal terms. The Russian invasion of Ukraine is illegal. Our invasion of Venezuela is illegal. But in the case of Ukraine, the Russians could plausibly claim a serious national security concern. They didn't want to accept weapons in the largest of their western neighbors, aimed at them. And, of course, we said at the time that,

And, well, Ukraine has an absolute right to choose who it's aligned with and who it's aligned with and so forth. And Russia has no say in this. We've just proven that that was not a principle we believed in because clearly neither Cuba nor of Venezuela or Nicaragua or apparently Greenland have the freedom to choose what alignments they will have internationally. We will dictate, just as the Russians are dictating in Ukraine. Here's Secretary Rubio on Sunday, attempting to answer George Stephanopos, who has to ask him the question twice, what is the legal authority for this? Chris, cut number 10. President Trump was pretty clear yesterday. He said the United States is going to run Venezuela.

Under what legal authority? Well, first of all, what's going to happen here is that we have a quarantine on their oil. That means their economy will not be able to move forward until. the conditions that are in the national interest of the United States and the interests of the Venezuelan people are met, and that's what we intend to do. So that leverage remains, that leverage is ongoing, and we expect that it's going to lead to results here. We're hope so, hopeful that it does, positive results for the people of Venezuela, but ultimately, most importantly for us in the national interest of the United States, we will no longer have, hopefully,

as we move forward here, will set the conditions so that we no longer have in our hemisphere of Venezuela that's the crossroads for many of our adversaries around the world, including Iran and Hezbollah is no longer sending us drug gangs, is no longer sending us drug boats, is no longer a narco-trafficking paradise for all those drugs coming out of Colombia to go and through the Caribbean and towards the United States. Let me ask the question again. What is the legal authority for the United States to be running Venezuela? Well, I explain to you what our goals are and how we're going to use the leverage to make

it happen. As far as what our legal authority is on the quarantine, I'm very simple. We have court orders. These are sanctioned boats, and we get orders from courts to go after and seize these sanctions. So that's, I don't know, is a court not a legal authority? Kristen Welker at Meet the Press asked him about why there was no consultation with Congress. He said, well, oh, that's easy. There's two answers. One, we can't trust Congress

and two, it was an emergency. So the Constitution trust Congress and I defy him to tell me what the emergency was, which is defined in federal law as a sudden and unexpected event? There was nothing sudden and unexpected coming out of Venezuela. In fact, President Maduro was continuously offering to cooperate with the United States to develop a new relationship with us to give us much of what we wanted and perhaps all of what we wanted. And that was not enough for this administration.

They wanted regime change and they wanted to grab the oil in Venezuela. I noticed, by the way, that the grabbing of the oil, which is of course pretty crass and has no legal justification at all, since there was an expropriation, there was a subsequent arbitration which settled the claims of the oil majors other than Chevron who left Venezuela. I know that the major oil companies are not at all enthusiastic about this. about this. In fact, the administration's beginning to talk about having to subsidize them to do

work in Venezuela because the price of oil is relatively low. Venezuelan oil is heavy. It's very hard to refine. It's expensive to refine. And it's probably not economically viable. But even if it were the prospect of an oil company going in there and experiencing sabotage, armed attack, assassination of its officials and so forth by Venezuela nationalists is very, very real. So this whole thing doesn't make sense, except in terms of might makes right. I didn't hear a legal argument from secte Rugo. I heard an argument that we have the leverage to do what we want, regardless of the law. The fact that a domestic American court has made a ruling about a foreign jurisdiction does not mean anything in terms of justify this sort of action.

American sovereignty, which we insist on, requires respect for the sovereignty of others. We've just disrespected it. I think we've thrown the whole world a precedent, which we will deeply regret. What would stop the drug cartels or the government of Mexico, which suffers from the import of weaponry, rifles, pistols, guns of one sort or another from the United States, with the result that much of Northern Mexico is in a state of anarchy. What would stop them from taking this precedent and just going after the depots and the gun factories in the United States? What would stop them from taking action by kidnapping Donald Trump? because he is acting in disregard of international agreements.

What they don't like his politics or something. I mean, this is really just anarchy. How do you think the Kremlin views this, ambassador, and in your comments, perhaps factor in the Kremlin view, now apparently documented with evidence, that the CIA was involved in the attack on President Putin's residence over the weekend. It's now two weekends ago. Well, we do know that the Russians have given us evidence of the targeting data from the drones that attacked the facilities in Novgorod

and the American story that these were aimed at somewhere other than the presidential palace just doesn't hold water. And we do know that the Russians are engaged in a review of their position on Ukraine and on European security in light of the fact that the United States had to have provided the guidance for this drone attack. And I think looking at this, I mean, obviously the Russians have rather hypocritically, perhaps with a double standard, condemned. the attack on Venezuela, their own attack on Ukraine was illegal, even if it had a sound strategic justification, which our attack on Venezuela did not. I think, you know, they want to keep open their line of communication, President Trump. But I think they, like much of the world, is now not asking, you know, what can we agree with President Trump, but how crazy is he? Oh, how much of a sociopath, is he?

Is the United States willing to follow any rules, exercise any restraint? Is there any point in conducting a dialogue with the United States? And here, of course, there is a story record of the Witkoff-Kir-Itschner interactions with the Russians, the Alaska summit, agreements that are made that are then repudiated, apparently, and new positions are formulated.

And the United States, which is a belligerent in the co-belligerent in the Ukraine war, is acting as over a mediator when we're not. And the war is still going on. And I think the chances are very good that the Russian reevaluation will lead to the removal of Ukraine's access to the Black Sea leaving it. landlocked, corrupt state, full of ultra-nationalists, whom the Russians want nothing to do with. Here's Chris put together a terrific montage of Trump on nation building. This will raise your blood pressure a little bit.

Chris, cut number seven. We're going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, and judicious transition. Our current strategy of nation building and regime change is a proven absolute failure. We will break the cycle of regime change. We must abandon the failed policy of nation building and regime change that Hillary Clinton pushed in Iraq, in Libya, in Egypt, and in Syria. regime change takes chaos

you've seen how that works over the last 20 years that hasn't been too good not a reckless interventionist globalism we're getting out of the nation building business we're going to stay until such time

as the proper transition can take place well the first thing is he's reading a text as though he's semi-literate that is not a great performance. He does not look well. But quite aside from that, of course, he was right about regime change and nation building.

He was right about the need for peace. He claimed he came to office claiming he would be a peace builder, not a nation builder. He claimed he would not start forever wars, but that's exactly what he's done. And there is a significant chance that this effort to control Venezuela by remote control to persuade whoever is in charge of Venezuela at the moment in accordance with Venezuelan constitutional practice. The acting president is the vice president, Delti Rodriguez, apparently a very able woman, apparently also the subject of a bribe attempt by us.

The preparations for this attack involved extensive bribery of Venezuelan politicians. She had at least one meeting, maybe two in Qatar, with people purporting to represent, to offer her a future as the leader of Venezuela. He's playing it both ways now. On the one hand, she's saying, as Maduro said, he would be willing to cooperate with the United States, gives the United States advantages in Venezuela. She doesn't want a household relationship with the United States. On the other hand, he's saying, we will not be, we Venezuelans,

will never again be a colony of anybody. And the streets are full of violent vigilantes who are busily detaining journalists, dissidents, one sort of person or another, when they believe were somehow associated with. or complicit in the American attack, which killed about 80 people, including the bodyguard, the Cuban bodyguard of Maduro and his wife. So the idea that somehow we're going to stay in Venezuela until they love us in this manner

is a sort of a mafioso dream. It's like something out of a godfather, a combination of Blame, and senators on the one hand and intimidation and threats on the other. Here's a former colleague of mine at my former network breaking from the Fox narrative, which is a very funny person, but she's very serious in this, Chris, cut number one. You have to see how some people might be feeling a little bit of whiplash here, given that Trump spent 10 years, railing against U.S.-led regime-change war, his own director of intelligence as recently as two months ago was railing against regime-change

war, and then he does one. Is this a regime change? The regime is still there, as far as I know, the vice president. Let me get this straight. We go to a country, we capture their leader, we bomb it, and then we say, we run this country now. And that's not war, but when they send cocaine over here that people are willingly snorting, that is war. For me personally, I'm not so confident that this is the one that this is not the regime change that's finally going to work the way we says it, say it's going to work. I would not willingly go die for it.

I would not willingly send my son to go die for it. So I would think would be hypocritical of me to call for other people to have to send there. I see your point. Well, there was a regime change operation against Iran, too. if we're clear on things. Yeah. So it's more of the same. And it's the illness of our democracy that our republic that is on display here.

That is there's no accountability constitutionally, legally, for anything that the president does. The Supreme Court actually gave him basically absolute immunity from any kind of legal scrutiny or punishment. And we have a functioning dictatorship, and the dictator is inconstant and sociopathic and maybe psychopathic. I have to go to one last topic with you, Ambassador, because I know you're an expert involving our friends in Beijing. China has invested about $5 billion in the Venezuelan oil industry in the past two decades. What's the reaction in Beijing to the kidnapping of President Maduro and Trump's statements that we're going to run Venezuela? Well, the government reaction, the Communist Party reaction, is one of power at the reach of international law that this represents. The purpose of international law, of course, is to provide predictability so that people

can get on with their lives and businesses. Second and more important to protect the weak against the strong. The United States is the strongest country on the planet, and we've just said that nobody should regard any international laws, any restraint American attack on that. The reaction in the street, it's quite different. People are saying, you know, this is a great idea. Why don't we just take the leader of Taiwan in custody? Why don't we just emulate what the United States has done to Venezuela and do it with regard to Taiwan?

I think that's really stupid, yeah, in part because it would replicate the fallacy that if you take out a leader, you destroy the regime. What we're seeing in Venezuela is a perfect demonstration that that is false. The leader of Venezuela has been taken to New York, kidnapped, along with his wife, and Venezuela has a constitution, and they have followed the constitution in appointing an interim successor. So the regime is not destroyed. The regime is still in place. and the very people that we object to most and when we have sanctioned the Defense Minister, the Minister of Interior in Venezuela,

are very much in charge of their apparatuses and the government. So I think the people in China, you know, I guess I should not be surprised that there are people in China who are as dumb as some Americans are to imagine that changing the leader solves all sorts of problems.

It doesn't. Taking Saddam Hussein out of Iraq didn't transform Iraq into the perfect pro-Israeli democracy, we assumed it might. Ambassador Freeman, terrific discussion. Thank you very much for your time. It's a very unpleasant topic. Nevertheless, thank you so much for your analysis and notwithstanding all of this, a happy new year to you, and we look forward to seeing you again next week. happy new year to you and to all your viewers and again i like your intro i think it's very very that's all it's all christ's work well it's good work thank you ambassador all the best and coming up later today at one o'clock this afternoon max blumenthal who has a tour will give us a terrific analysis on the weaknesses in the government's case against President Maduro at 2 o'clock, Matt Ho, at 3 o'clock, Colonel Karen Kutkowski, Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom.

Thank you.