Judging Freedom - AMB. Chas Freeman : How Dark Are These Days?

Episode Date: September 16, 2025

AMB. Chas Freeman : How Dark Are These Days?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 Tuesday, September 16th, 2025. Ambassador Chas Freeman will be here with us in just a minute. Just how dark are these days in America.

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attack on Doha and President Trump's escalation of the war. in Ukraine. Why do you think Benjamin Netanyahu saw fit to go on national television this weekend and deny that Israel assassinated Charlie Kirk? Well, we are full of conspiracy theories. Evidently, there is evidence that Mr. Kirk in his last days felt that he was being singled out for criticism by pro-zionist elements. And he apparently was fearful for his life. At least that's what he said to a number of people. And of course, he's been beatified by the Republican Party. And it's basically being used. His death is being used to drive a wedge in politics, hopefully from the point of

of the president bringing use to the polls in 2026 in the midterms. So it's a very political thing, but there is this undertone of, you know, Israel has a reputation for assassinating people. And there's apparently quite a bit of, I think, probably nonsense about this on the internet. What do you think will be the geopolitical fallout of the American-approved, Israeli perpetrated attack on a civilian neighborhood in Doha? I think we're just beginning to see the results of that. There's been a big conference between Arab and Muslim nations in Doha,

both to express solidarity with Qatar and also to review their stand on Israel and on the United States. I think we're now seeing the fallout from earlier incidents brought together with this one, where the Gulf Arab states have mortgaged their future and depended on the United States to protect them, and they find that the United States doesn't protect them. When Iran sinks and shoots down a drone in the Gulf of Strait of Hormuz, Donald Trump shrugs. That's the first term. When the Houthis strike uptake, the main interchange for petroleum in the eastern province of Saudi Arabia, Trump says that's a Saudi problem.

When Trump urges Hamas to examine what appears to be an Israeli drafted. peace proposal, that turns out to be a ruse, to bring everybody together in Doha, and Israel attacks them in a pattern that's now very familiar. So the question is, what does engagement with Israel by, for example, the United Arab Emirates, which is part of the so-called Abraham Accords, get for the UAE? It doesn't protect anybody in the Gulf, evidently, to have decent ties with. Israel. It doesn't seem to protect anybody to have ties for the United States. So we're seeing a number of proposals put forward. One is that the Organization of Islamic Cooperation and

his 57 members will now go after Israel in the General Assembly and in the UN. They've not been favorable to Israel, but they've not been proactive. Now, apparently, they may be. There's a review going on of defense ties with the United States is a $42 billion set of contracts pending with gutter for from American arms manufacturers. There's a chance now that that will not go through and that the gutteries will turn to China or someone else to meet their requirements. In any event, I think what we're going to see at a minimum is an acceleration of a process that's been ongoing for some years, namely countries in the region diversifying their relations, countries in the region like the Arab Gulf Corporation Council

countries and Iran making up balancing an increasingly aggressive Israel. And right in the middle of all this, of course, we have our president, President Trump, during the arteries of two things, one he didn't know about this. assault by Israel, and that may or may not be true. But second, more important, that Israel won't do it again. Just ever he did that, Netanyahu came out and said, of course we will. We'll attack anybody anywhere if we think that they're harboring an enemy of Israel. And of course, Israel has made enemies of all of the Palestinians and most of the countries in the region. So This is a recipe for perpetual war.

And it's happening as young people in the United States and elsewhere have a very negative opinion of Israel. Jewish Americans, many of them don't want to be involved with Israel, which they see is not a Jewish state, but a Zionist state, showing the distinction between their religion and an ethno-religious tyranny over, Arabs in the Middle East. Lots going on. And I think most of it is pretty dark, as you said.

What is the United States gain from its unique, even bizarre relationship to Israel? Not very much, if anything. Over the years, we've seen Israel launch surprise attacks on other countries, for example, 67 war of course they their independence war was the surprise attack as the in which they took a great deal more than the UN proposed two-state partition of Palestine had proposed to give them they they have continued a pattern of doing things that get us into trouble so They are an albatross, really, around our relations with both the countries of West Asia and more broadly the Islamic world. They do provide brain power for defense research, but that could just as well be done in New Jersey.

It doesn't have to be done in Israel. Well, they have invented an enormous array of police state enforcement measures, surveillance systems, drones, and this sort of thing. They've taught us how to torture people. Abu Ghraib was a product of Israeli instruction. But, you know, on the other side, they kill Americans with impunity. They kill other people with impunity. They defy requests from the United States for them to do or not do things. They don't really pay much attention to our interests at all.

And, of course, they are the principal foreign interferer in our election process. With all of the attention that's been given to the Russian alleged intervention in our elections, it's apparently taboo to talk about the far more active overt. the Israeli effort to skew elections in favor of its interests. And, of course, they have a nuclear weapon based on technology stolen from us, unauthorized, unacknowledged, then the federal government won't even admit it. Well, that's another problem. More recently, we've been forced to enforce an Israeli agenda,

not just ignoring their violation of the non-proliferation treaty. and the fact that they've actually done what they accuse Iran of doing, clandestinely developed nuclear arsenal. Not only that, but we are actually enforcing Israeli censorship on our campuses. We're arresting people, we're deporting people if they are critical of Israel. We're depriving universities of research funds if they're critical of Israel. This is basically the U.S. government acting on behalf of a foreign government against the protections that Americans are supposed to enjoy under the First Amendment, freedom of speech, academic freedom, freedom to petition the government for a change in policy, in other words, to protest, surveillance, and now we have apparently got a visa policy that we give a visa to anybody who's been critical of Israel.

We insist on inspecting their cell phones. There are grave constitutional implications there that the government would condition a governmental benefit of visa upon the non-assertion of a fundamental liberty. You're right to speak freely about anything you want to speak about. They're grave constitutional implications. This government doesn't seem to care. I mean, there are grave constitutional implications about the president murdering people on speedboats in the Caribbean. Well, I agree that it doesn't appear that the Constitution has any respect from this administration in quite a number of areas.

They have a theory that the second article of the Constitution gives the president the power to do anything he wants with no restraints. They totally ignore the Article 1, which provides most power to the Congress. Of course, they're helped in that by the fact that the Congress has decided to go AWOL. It's missing in action. It doesn't stand up for its prerogatives and powers. And, of course, the judiciary has been skewed in favor of Mr. Trump. and his administration, and we're not getting much support from the Supreme Court, at least, as a result.

Didn't Doha bribe, arguably bribe President Trump with a $400 million jet that they gave him? Well, there is a clause in the Constitution which prohibits the acceptance of gifts, emoluments from foreign government, and he doesn't seem to have paid attention to that. Yes, the gutteries have made every effort to ingratiate themselves with President Trump in the United States. And I think they're genuinely shocked that we don't come to their aid when they're attacked. Do you think that Mr. Whitkoff is an unwitting dupe? of the president? I mean, twice now he arranged serious negotiations, and in one case,

we bombed Iran, and the other case, the Israelis tried to kill the negotiators. Or do you think he's in on the plan, in on the Trump of Netanyahu orchestrated deceptions? I would like to think that he is a dupe rather than a conspirator in this regard. But I have to say those aren't the only two examples. There's, of course, Operation Spider-Web, which the Ukrainians launched, in conjunction with peace talks in Istanbul. So it sounds as though anything that involves American diplomacy on behalf of peace meetings in foreign lands,

it has to be regarded with great suspicion, because it may be simply a distraction while an attack is carried out. Last weekend, according to the police, 110,000, according to the media, a million human beings demonstrated in London against the government. They did what is standard in America, but what is unheard of in Great Britain. I didn't even know this.

It's actually against the law in Great Britain. They waived the Union job. as they were marching. How significant is a crowd of this magnitude uniformly opposed to the government? I think it's very significant, and let's not forget that this crowd, under British law, have been,

if they are active on behalf of Palestine, and certain organizations arguing for Palestinian rights, they are officially branded as terrorists, and they are arrested under anti-terrorism laws. So this, you know, a million people in London are terrorists, apparently. You know, this is terribly significant, I think. It also, however, does draw attention to the classic, now apparently erased differences between us and the English,

the English have all sorts of secrecy laws and controls on their press and so forth. And until recently, we didn't. Unfortunately, we're coming to resemble them now. Wow. How close to war do you think the United States is, whether it's a foreign war with the Israelis against Iran, whether it's boots on the ground in Gaza, intimated yesterday by Marco Rubio,

or whether it's a civil war here at home. Gosh, Israel is going to attack Iran again. They've made it quite clearly intend to do that. I hope we have the good sense to stay out of that. I think, in fact, that the only thing that will stop the genocide in Gaza is military intervention, but I don't expect it from the West. This whole issue has disgraced the West in the eyes of the world and divided us.

We no longer have the automatic moral authority and followership that we once did. I think it's entirely possible that there will be a misstep in Ukraine that draws us in, although we're trying very hard, apparently, to stay out and hand it off to the Europeans. And I would note that there's another issue out there, which is our intervention in the Chinese Civil War to protect the losing side, Taiwan, against China and the government of China, which for many, many decades, we refused to recognize. So, you know, there is, the Chinese are now, now the military balance is very much in their favor. They are restrained. They don't want to use force, but perhaps somebody will do something, either accidental or intentional, that sets off a war there.

And that would be a horror because it would very quickly, I think, go nuclear. why is it that aside from the fact that there's no alliteration the genocide joe moniker has not stuck to donald trump uh his supporters who are numerous enough to win him an election twice um uh just reject all of that um their own his supporters are almost a cult rather than a political movement. And they just reject that. And we can see, you know, in the case of Charlie Kirk, per Charlie Kirk, whom you asked about at the beginning of the program, you know, he has, as I said, been beatified.

But you have people on the right who, for example, mocked the dead kids at Sandy Hook. have people who said nothing about two dead, two murdered Michigan state senators. So there seem to be different rules for the right and the left, and the right has the ability to hurl insults. And their left does not. I don't know how to explain it. It's not, to use the phrase from Fawks, it's not fair and balanced. Yeah.

Last night we did a lengthy and fascinating interview with Max Blumenthal, who had just finished speaking with sources of his inside and outside the White House about Kirk's Charlie's conversion, well, figuratively and literally. He was about to convert to Catholicism, but that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about his conversion on the issue of Israel and Gaza. Trump shouted at him when he tried to change Trump's mind and Kirk was the object of attempted intimidation by some of his Zionist donors. But here's a fascinating clip. Now, this is October of 23. This is right after October 7th in which he's musing aloud about his doubts about Israel. cut number one so i've been israel many times the whole country's a fortress when i first heard

this story i still had the same gut instinct that i did initially i find this very hard to believe i've been to that gaza border you cannot go 10 feet without running into a 19 year old with an ar 15 or an automatic machine gun that's an idf soldier right the whole country is surveilled i think some questions need to be asked was there a stand down order was there a stand down order They're live streaming the killing of Jews was that somebody in the government say, stand down. That is a legitimate non-conspiracy question. The whole country is the IDF. The whole country is.

The essence is this. This is the closest thing to the Holocaust that any of us have lived through. But the fact is now BB and the Israeli hard right government has a mandate. I've got to be careful the way I say this. They're going to try to ethnically cleanse Gaza. I mean that that's and I don't use that term lightly okay they're talking about basically removing 2.5 million people from there okay there are some serious questions here's Patrick and let me tell you my pattern recognition over the last five years has become pretty sharp COVID Maui fires you know Epstein when I see a story and it doesn't click we're our guts are usually right He's a realist, and I guess realism these days is punished. We still don't know really what the motive of the assassin was.

He's made out to be a leftist Antifa type, but we don't have any proof of that. The contrary, he appears to have been quite on the other side on many issues. As I said at the outset, and I'm sorry I haven't watched you and Max yet, I will. But I think there is a lot of evidence that Charlie Kirk was concerned about retribution from Zionist, not just his donors, but the actual Zionist government in Israel. dark days in a terrible state of affairs in my view will continue to get darker before we see the light ambassador thank you very much thanks for your time as always thanks for accommodating my schedule thank you for letting me go across the board on all these issues with you i love our

conversations and we hope to see you again next week i would like to see israel again be delight to the other nations of the world rather than an abomination, which is what has become. And if I may say so, I hope you can think of some happy question or jolly issue to raise. This is pretty hard to take, actually. Yes, yes. Thank you, Ambassador. All the best, my dear friend. Thank you.

Coming up later today at 11 this morning. Good morning, Aaron Mate at 2.15, this afternoon, Scott Ritter at 3 o'clock, Colonel Karen Koukowski, Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. Thank you.