Judging Freedom - AMB. Chas Freeman : Will Netanyahu Last?

Episode Date: December 23, 2025

AMB. Chas Freeman : Will Netanyahu Last?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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And with Ollie's in-app on-demand health screenings, tap real experts whenever you need peace of mind. Visit ollie.com slash crossover and use code crossover for 60% off your first box. Thank you. Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for judging freedom. Today is Tuesday, December 23, 2025. Ambassador Chas Freeman, joins us now. Ambassador Freeman, a pleasure, my dear friend. Thank you. I do want to pick your brain about the state of affairs in Israel and how much longer the Israelis will be deceived and diluted by Benjamin Netanyahu. But before we get there, if I may, a few questions about another area. area of expertise of yours, which is China. In the past two weeks, the following has occurred. The Trump administration released its national security strategy, which says China is not an enemy. It's an economic competitor. Sounds pretty good to me. Yet, the president signed into law the National Defense Authorization Act, which provides $11 billion in offensive missiles to Taiwan.

and the president directed the seizure of an oil tanker coming from Venezuela, which was destined for the Panama Canal and for China. So how does China look at these disparate events? Well, these contradictions are not overlooked by the Chinese. On the one hand, we propose to have a mutually beneficial economic relationship. of course, subject to unilateral American intervention and sanctions and tariff manipulations, which have been all over the map in the course of 2025.

On the other hand, and we say that's our major objective, but on the other hand, we continue to arm the losing side in the Chinese Civil War. We continue to posture off the coast of China. We run three to four intrusive reconnaissance missions, either in the air or at sea, along the China coast. Every day, we are in their face. Our military openly talk about war with China, and, of course, the justification for our nuclear modernization program is largely China. So the contradictions just don't add up. And, you know, you can't have a wonderful economic relationship with someone when you're simultaneously cocking a gun at their head.

And stealing oil for which they've, for which they've, you know, that's an interesting question because the Bella, the ship that we couldn't quite board and take and we're pursuing is headed for China. You know, that is a total violation of international law, of course. It's unilateral American action. It risks a complementary reciprocal action by the Chinese taking some vessel with American cargo aboard it. And, you know, why do we think that we can unilaterally override international law and reciprocity, especially when we're dealing with a country that is a peer competitor in most respects?

I don't know. Isn't it a fair observation that the President of the United States doesn't care about international law? He's murdering people in the Caribbean. I don't think he cares about domestic constitution or law, or he cares at all about international law. We're basically watching the death of both. And by the way, we're also seeing the murder of diplomacy. The president has just fired 30 career officers who were serving in often difficult posts abroad. On no grounds other than that, they were appointed by Joe Biden.

But, of course, the president has the right to appoint anyone he wants, but we have over 80 diplomatic posts vacant already. And he's just added to that. We're retreating from the world. We're tying in our hands. We're engaged in diplomatic disarmament. And I don't know why we think people are going to follow us abroad. What do you think China will do? I mean, our colleague Larry Johnson, suggests all they have to do is start selling U.S. Treasury bonds,

and that will cause the Treasury to have to raise its interest offerings, which will cause the United States to have to borrow money to pay interest on borrowed money. I don't think they act impetuously in that manner, with all due respect to Larry, who I do have a great respect for. I think they have been very carefully selling down their treasuries. I think they're below $700 billion now, whereas they were about $3 trillion at one point. I think they reached the high point around 2008, and since then have been reducing their exposure. But they do it slowly because they're not stupid.

They know that if they caused a crash in treasuries, they would lose the value of their dollar reserves. So I don't think that's what they'll do. I think it's far more likely they'll respond in kind. And that is to say, if we seize vessels with Chinese cargoes on them and purport to confiscate them, we'll see them start doing the same thing. Oh, my goodness. Now, doesn't the president consider the dangers of arming Taiwan? I mean, this stuff is offensive weaponry, which, according to Ritter, can reach Beijing. I mean, suppose we don't know what happened in 1962, but suppose the Chinese put these types of weapons in Havana or in Tijuana, Mexico, and named them at Dallas or Washington. Well, we risk that sort of a face-off, of course, again, reciprocity kicks in.

But we've been arming Taiwan ever since 1950 when, after a moment when we decided to get out of the Chinese Civil War, we interposed ourselves between the warring sides in the Taiwan Strait and Douglas MacArthur's advocacy of a commitment to defend Taiwan was formalized 1954 in a mutual defense treaty with the Republic of China. on Taiwan, the remnant of the former government of China on the mainland, which had lost the civil war. That treaty was terminated in accordance with its terms in 1979 when we normalized relations with Beijing, but for all intents and purposes, we're behaving as though it's still in effect. And I think there's a theory that this is somehow deterrent. Well, we have deterrence, military deterrence that is less and less credible every war game that we run every scenario that we examine shows us losing a huge number of ships and aircraft in some cases two-thirds of our entire global force puts us out of business as a world power and if it doesn't completely destroy Taiwan leaves China to go at it again when and ever it wants. So this is totally pointless. It's a sop to the military industrial complex, and it is used by the government in Taiwan, which we don't recognize, to persuade its people

that the Americans have given Taiwan a blank check, which we will fill out in blood for Taiwan whenever that is required, and that they, therefore, do not have to conduct a dialogue or a negotiation with Chinese across the strait and can continue, of course, toward independence, which under Chinese law and Chinese policy would result in an all-out assault on Taiwan by the People's Liberation Army. So the question is, is there anybody in the left in the National Security Council staff who understands this? Does Trump listen to anyone, or is he governing entirely by his gut?

And does he understand that his great pal, his BFF, C.J. Ping, regards what he's doing as criminal. I don't know. Here's the president admitting to criminal behavior when he was asked yesterday, what are you going to do with the oil that you seized? You can take your guess as to what his answer was, but we'll play this for you now, Chris. So in response to the United States taking sanctioned oil from Venezuela, Colombian President Gustavo Petro criticized the United States by saying, well, the Southwest has stolen land and that it should be returned to Latin America. I just wanted to know what your response to that is. Well, he has to watch because, you know, he's got drug factories.

They make cocaine in Colombia. And he's no friend of the United States. He's very bad, very bad guy. And he's got to watch his ass because he makes cocaine, and they send it into the United States of America. America from Columbia. We love the Colombian people. I love the Colombian people. They're great people, energetic, smart, great. But their new leader is a troublemaker. And he better watch it. You better close up those cocaine factors. They have at least three major cocaine factors.

We know where they are. He better close them up fast. Yeah. Chris, I thought we were going to say, I think we have another one here about keeping the oil. not yet anyway he was asked yesterday uh what are you going to do with the oil and he said what do you think i'm going to do it i'm going to keep it i mean if that's not outright theft no that's what it is and of course he also said he'll keep the ship too um so uh you know this is uh high seas robbery i guess you'd call it uh it's better than murder on the high seas It demonstrates, by the way, that the U.S. Navy or the Coast Guard have the ability to intercept so-called drug boats, board them, inspect the contraband if it's there, arrest the people

on board for smuggling if that is appropriate, and subject them to the rule of law and due process. And we've chosen not to do that in order to terrorize the Maduro regime in Mexico. I think the clip that you just played is very revealing in that a serious question was asked, and the answer wasn't a personal attack on the president of Columbia. He didn't answer a question at all. Everything is ad hominem for this president. Well, I don't even know if there is a national security staff. I mean, the national security advisor is also the head of USAID and,

purports as well, I say purports, because I don't know what he does, to be the Secretary of State of the United States. I mean, this guy's got more jobs than Henry Kissinger did. And the National Archivist, which is no doubt a demanding job. I'm told there's a recent British film about a paraplegic archivist for MI6 or MI5, perhaps. Anyway, I don't see Marco Rubio doing any of those jobs, but I do see them is redirecting American foreign policy toward violent egemony in the Western Hemisphere and away from Europe and to some extent away from Asia. I don't know if you followed, we're going to get to the Trump clip in the minute.

I don't know if you followed this dispute at CBS News where the new president of CBS News Barry Weiss squelched a piece on 60 Minutes and one of their senior correspondents publicly disagreed with Ms. Weiss and Maxa Blumenthal will be on this afternoon at 4 o'clock and he's going to argue that Barry Weiss did this as a favor to Marco Rubio. What was in that piece that was squelched? It showed the horrors of that prison in El Salvador. to which American, well, to which people arrested in America for the crime of being here illegally were put in jail with murders and drug dealers who tormented and beat them horrifically. This is at the suggestion of Marco Rubio that this happened,

and this is the piece that she squelched probably to make him look better or look less bad than he already looks. Well, it is possible that it was directed at protecting Marco Rubio, but in fact, it is equally protecting the Trump administration and Stephen Miller, who is the author of the policy of mass deportation and pushing ICE to conduct the utterly illegal actions that it is conducting on American streets, mass men bundling up American citizens with everyone else. and incarcerating them with no process of review, no explanation of why they're there. If they're lucky, they're able to produce the right identification, and eventually they get released. But we've had testimony in Congress by multiple American citizens who've been subject to these dragnets. And so I suppose that the whole thing, the whole anti-immigrant policy is what Ms. Weiss was. trying to protect yeah you know this was exacerbated by one of the most bizarre

concurring opinions by the supreme court in the modern era by justice cavanaugh in which he said oh if they stop you it's not a big deal just show your papers show your papers what papers is this east germany circa 1967 this is now known as the cavana stop this is known in the legal and judicial and law enforcement communities based on this absurd concurring opinion of the already also said well if people are hanging out at a car wash that's evidence of them being there illegally i hung out on a car wash the other day waiting for my car to be washed right right no i mean this is this is uh verging on a totalitarian approach it's an illustration of the extent to which we've become a police state, you know, show papers is right out of Nazi Germany. And as you say,

the Stasi regime in East Germany, we might as well, if that's the mentality, why don't we have a national ID? And, you know, and then where everybody is registered and their identity and their status is recorded. Every other country, almost every other country has a a thing. We don't because we believe in liberty and privacy. But apparently we don't believe in either liberty or privacy anymore. Here's that question to President Trump yesterday about what are you going to do with the oil? Speaking of Venezuela, oil, what are we going to do with the oil that we have? Going to do with what? The oil that has been seized. The United States seized 1.9 million barrels of oil on December 10th. We're going to keep.

Keep it. We're keeping it. Are we going to sell it or put in the strategic oil? Maybe we'll sell it. Maybe we'll use it in the strategic reserves. We're keeping it. We're keeping the ships also. Yeah, that's the point.

It's everything we grab, we just keep. No law, no due process. Do you imagine if China or Russia did that to us? I'm afraid we may come to experience that. Yeah. Because in the end, if the law is no protection, people will resort to self-help, which is called violence, and they will do what is necessary. If there is no legal relief, people will take the law into their own hands. And it was the effort to replace self-help that led to the rise of the rule of law in the beginning, long evolution of 1,000 years in Europe.

European jurisprudence, and we're just ignoring it all. Over the weekend, Prime Minister Netanyahu, it's tough to say this with straight-face ambassador, announced that he personally will be the chair of the Commission of Investigation looking into the causes of the attack on October 7th. Now how much longer can the Israeli people be deluded by this monstrous charlatan? I don't think they are deluded by him. I think they understand exactly who's in charge and why he remains in charge, despite the fact that he's been accused of serious crimes of corruption and presides over a government that is conducting genocide. Of course, the majority of Israelis

apparently approve of that. Ethnic cleansing, well-documented. and increasingly violent in the West Bank. And he is supported by an international community of wealthy Zionists, many of them American, not all. So who have co-opted President Trump. So I don't know what the terminus of this is. It's up to Israelis, apparently. But I wonder why on earth the United States,

States has to support either this man or all the crimes he's committing. Alastair Crook opined yesterday that when the so-called Gaza peace deal collapses, Netanyahu will blame Trump. Of course. That is the standard practice. And he was dragged kicking and screaming into this so-called ceasefire, which is not in effect. Israel is murdering Palestinians on a daily basis. It is a more subdued, quieter form of genocide than the one they were conducting earlier.

Perhaps that's progress in some sense. But there is no ceasefire. This is a fiction. And it is a fiction that is constantly being appealed to in order to preclude any kind of effective response to the murders, to the mass mass murder, to the genocide, to the destruction of property, to the eviction of people, we can't disturb the ceasefire. Well, the ceasefire doesn't exist. So this is all fictitious, and it just will not withstand scrutiny.

How much longer can he last in office? I have no idea. He's got an election coming up in about, what, five months, something like that. He can't get, you know, his term in office is going to run out. He'll have to have an election. And in an election, we will find out what the answer to your question is. Well, Ambassador, thank you very much. As I mentioned to you before we came on air,

judging freedom has crossed the threshold of 100 million views in 2025 for the second year in a row. Thank you for your substantial weekly. contributions to our work here. Thank you for all the sophisticated and fearless analysis that you bring. And we look forward to working with you again right after the new year begins. Well, I greatly appreciate the opportunity to chat with you on a weekly basis. I thank you for what you do. I'm glad you have the viewership you do. And I wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Thank you. Merry Christmas to you and your family. All the best. And coming up later today, a busy day for you. Our last full day of work will be on tomorrow morning only. But today, Pepe Escobar at 10, at 11, Professor Jeffrey Sachs at 1, Aran Mate, at 2, Matthew Ho, at 3, Colonel Karen Koukowski, at 4 o'clock. How better to end? Max Blumenthal. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom. Thank you.

Thank you.