Judging Freedom - Ask the Judge - Viewer Questions Answered LIVE

Episode Date: September 13, 2024

Ask the Judge - Viewer Questions Answered LIVESee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Thank you. Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Friday, September 13th, Friday the 13th, 2024. And this is Ask the Judge. So it is just you and just me. Now, producer Chris and I have gone through many, many questions that many of you have sent in, and we've picked out about a dozen or so that are interesting, challenging, and in one or two cases, hilarious. And I will do my best to answer them. I'm also going to keep an eye on those of you that are emailing during the show. In case I see an interesting or provocative follow-up question, I'll hit your email.

Your name will come up on the screen. I'll read the question and follow up on it. So don't hesitate, please, to try and get involved in the screen. I'll read the question and follow up on it. So don't hesitate, please, to try and get involved in the conversation. One of these days, we'll figure out a way to have a real conversation where we really talk to each other and you can really address me directly and follow up. So producer Chris, let's start with the first question. From Joseph Doxey, what happens when the United States goes bankrupt? Is it hyperinflation or just a fault on the debt? That would really depend upon whoever is the president at the time. Hyperinflation, of course, would mean that the government is borrowing more money to pay

on its debts, and that will reduce radically the value of the dollar, and it will cost you 50 bucks for a loaf of bread. That's what Germany went through between World War I and World War II, when the Allies imposed extremely onerous, and we now know financially impossible conditions of reparations on Germany, and they had to borrow money in order to pay the reparations, and that caused the hyperinflation. On the other hand, if the United States goes bankrupt, I can't predict what the outcome would be. If it fails to pay back the $35 trillion that it owes and declares it has no intention of paying it back, people could probably sue the federal government and some judges might force it to sell what it owns in order to pay back those monies. Other judges would say it's a United States, it's a sovereign nation, and you can't sue it for its

debt, and you took the chance when you loaned it the money. But that would mean no one would ever loan money to the federal government again. The federal government might collapse like the Soviet Union did, and the United States would break apart into separate regional republics, the Northeast, the Southwest, the Southeast, the Northwest, the Central Plains, as an example, or maybe break off into the 50 states. It's hard to predict what would happen. But what we can predict is that at the rate we're going, the government will never, never be able to pay off $35 trillion. It can't even operate the government without borrowing $3 or $4 trillion a year. George W. Bush borrowed $7 trillion in eight years. Donald Trump borrowed $7 trillion in four years, just to give you an indication of where things are. Joe Biden has

borrowed about $3.5 trillion. When I say the president has borrowed, I mean the president has proposed a budget and the Congress has adopted it. And in order to fund it, it was necessary to borrow that money. Who was the last president to balance the budget. You ready for this? Bill Clinton, his first year in office. Okay, next question from Alessandro Mattiasi. Beautiful name, Alessandro. If elected, do you believe that Trump alone will really be able to end the war in Ukraine? That's a great question. I believe that Trump will meet tremendous resistance from the deep state, from the military,, release the JFK assassination documents and file. Close our 800 or 900, we don't even know the exact number of them, foreign military bases. He never did any of that because at the last minute, the people around him changed his mind. However, he alone could stop sending weapons to Ukraine. Now, the Congress has already authorized, the last authorization was over $100

billion, and Joe Biden hasn't spent that. There is Supreme Court authority that says if the Congress has authorized the president to spend money, he must spend it. However, there is also Supreme Court authority that says the president is in charge of foreign affairs, not the Congress. The president is commander in chief of the military, not the Congress. So there's a bit of a clash there, if you will, as to whether Trump would be forced to give military aid to Ukraine or if he alone could stop it. We know that if he had defeated Joe Biden in 2020, it would be his choice alone to give that foreign aid, that military aid to Ukraine. And if Congress told him to do it, he could veto it. And I doubt

that they would overcome his veto. So it's not as easy as Trump would try to make it sound. Good question, Alessandro. Ashley from Brownsville. Judge, can you address Anthony Blinken's statement yesterday that Israel is USA's second home. Is he saying the quiet part out loud? He's basically saying that even though we have no treaty with Israel because of its financial ties to so many people in the government, that it will always get its way. It's almost hard to imagine an American president saying to Israel, enough is enough. If you look at the people that gave Prime Minister Netanyahu a standing ovation

when he addressed a joint session of Congress, it was 90% of the Senate and 90% of the House of Representatives. That, of course, is an overwhelming number. In terms of Lincoln himself, remember what he said when he arrived in Tel Aviv shortly after October 7th? He didn't say, I come representing the United States. He didn't say, I come to help you. He didn't say, I come as the Secretary of State of the United States. He said, I come as a Jew. Okay, he's Jewish. I respect that. But that was indicating, if you will, showing his cards that because of the influence that the donor class, the wealthy Jewish Americans have on the American government, it's almost inconceivable without a radical change in the government that the United States would say to Israel, enough is enough. We're not going to give you any more arms with which to kill innocent people in Gaza. Good questions. President Putin warns NATO will be at war with Russia if it allows Ukraine to use Western long-range missiles. Why NATO escalation and why the mainstream media is not reporting? Thanks and Godspeed.

Actually, the mainstream media is reporting this this afternoon, but they are reporting it as a Biden snub on Sir Keir Starmer, the British prime minister. The snub is that the White House announced before Prime Minister Starmer arrived at the front door that there would be no approval for the use of long-range missiles today. So in other words, before the president and the prime minister even spoke. One wonders why Joe Biden and Tony Blinken wanted to snub their British poodle, by which I mean the British government, not necessarily Prime Minister Starmer himself. I think the NATO folks should take seriously President Putin's threat. In another hour, you will have two of my regulars

on here for our Intelligence Community Roundtable. They both have experience in the military and they both have experience in the intelligence community, and they will tell you that the Pentagon and the CIA will tell the President that Putin means what he says. Think about it. If we give long-range missiles to Ukraine and say, go ahead, you can hit Moscow, that is morally the same thing as if we declared war on Russia. Put aside the fact that we have paid for the missiles. Many of them can only be operated by Americans. American missiles, American explosives, American equipment, American technicians, American paid for. That is the moral equivalent of an American war on Russia. 5th. There's no way of telling how the electorate would respond because there's no way of knowing how President Putin would respond, except that he would respond forcefully as he has said he would. Okay, I won't try and read your moniker, Mr. Ford. Judge, if you can, comment on what the Polish MEP said to Blinken.

Okay, the Polish member of the European Parliament, we have the clip, spoke in English. Now, he's not a member of the Polish Parliament. He is a Polish representative, popularly elected in Poland, in the European Parliament. Here's what he said. Blinken, go home. Go home as soon as possible. Get lost. Get lost. We don't want you here. We don't want...

We don't want Polish people paying and dying for your wars. The Polish government felt that way. Now, he's obviously not in the Polish government, the government of Poland. If he were, he'd probably be fired for saying that. Insult the Secretary of State and the billions we give your country might go down. However, he is, like I am and like the guests on this show, profoundly anti-war and profoundly against the war in Ukraine. And he's basically saying, don't even stop here after your trip to Kiev, because the only reason you'd be here is to talk to us about war and we're not interested

in war. Unfortunately, the president of Poland and his government think differently. They have itchy trigger fingers. They are itching for a war. So my heart, my sentiment, my belief is entirely with that Polish member of the European Parliament. Unfortunately, the government of Poland is not. Good question. From NotMyMinky. Okay, I won't even try and figure out what these names or these handles, these monikers mean. In your opinion, is Biden's attempt to limit the term a judge sits on the Supreme Court

politically motivated and unconstitutional? Thank you for your reply. Yes and yes. Yes, of course, it's politically motivated. FDR tried this in 1936 when the Supreme Court kept invalidating the New Deal because much of what he wanted to do was not authorized in the Constitution for the federal government to do. Still not authorized in the Constitution for the federal government to do, but a change in the makeup of the Supreme Court changed the court's attitude and expanded the powers of the federal government. So President Biden is obviously very unhappy with the Dobbs case that invalidated Roe versus Wade and left it up to the states. He's very happy with, I forget the name of it, but it's the case that treats administrative agencies on an equal plane to anybody else in the courtroom rather than giving them a leg up, rather than telling judges, you must assume that the

administrative agency is correct. He's also upset that every time he tries to forgive student debt, the courts block him and the Supreme Court said you can't do it. Why did the Supreme Court say you can't do that? Because here's how the debt works. The money is loaned to you or your parents by a bank. The federal government guarantees the loan if you default. So when Joe Biden says you don't have to pay that money back, that's the same as saying, well, the federal government's got to pay the money for you. But he can't do that. Only Congress can do it. Why? Because the Constitution says no money shall be spent from the public treasury except that which is A, authorized by Congress, and B, recorded in a public ledger. Now, those rules are not always

followed. But when you challenge an expenditure under either of those clauses, it wasn't authorized by Congress, or it's not in the public ledger. We don't know how much it is. The court usually comes down on the side of the Constitution. So having been burned by the Supreme Court, he obviously wants to change its makeup. Would that be unconstitutional? Well, the number of people on the Supreme Court is up to Congress. The duration of their stay there is articulated in the Constitution. So if he wants to take away life terms and reduce it to, say, as FDR attempted to do in 1936, and he failed, that could be done by simple legislation enacted by the Congress and signed by the president.

I don't know that that would happen. You know, the Senate has the filibuster rule, which means that there have to be 60 senators in favor of it. I suppose if the Democrats, you know, really sweep this November and have 60 senators and Vice President Harris as elected president and the Democrats control the House, they might be able to add to the numbers of justices on the Supreme Court. But again, it would take two-thirds of the Congress and three-quarters of the states to amend the Constitution to reduce those lifetime terms to the 18 years that President Biden has said he wanted. Ready for a few more, Producer Chris. From Luca Clemente, question, the Second Amendment uses the term arms, not firearms, yet the term firearms was in use throughout the 18th century.

So why do I not have the right to bear a spiked club or a pole axe? What would you do with a spiked club or a pole axe on your own property. And you probably, I'm not giving you legal advice. I don't know where you live. I don't know what the local or state laws are where you are. But if you carried it safely, you probably could carry it openly. It's interesting you say arms or firearms. It also doesn't say armaments. So you can certainly own and carry a Glock 48. Can you own a tank? That's an interesting question

that the courts have never answered. The true libertarians say yes, because if the government can own a tank, you can own a tank. Why? Because the government gets its powers from us, the consent of the government. We can't authorize the government to do something that we can't do. On the other hand, the other side of that argument would be, do you really want your neighbor to have a tank? Suppose he misuses it. God knows what the results would be. Interesting question.

It's like how many angels are on the head of a pin? I don't know that we're ever going to be able to answer that. Now, please don't walk through the streets of Manhattan with a spiked club or what was that other thing you said? Some long, long device. From Vladimir AA, what will it take for the general population of America to become wholly aware of the hell in the Gaza Strip and its own responsibility in that tragedy? That's a great question. You will not hear that argument made on mainstream media. made that the American public is responsible for the slaughter in Gaza here on Judging Freedom and on other shows by anti-war activists, by pro-peace activists, by libertarians, by those who believe that the Constitution means what it says. Will that ever change? I don't think it's going to change in the near future. No matter who wins, Donald Trump or Kamala Harris,

they're going to be very, very pro-Israel. Maybe a prosecution would change things. Look, the International Criminal Court is thinking of prosecuting Benjamin Netanyahu for a war crime of genocide. If they do, they should probably prosecute Joe Biden as well. And if those prosecutions are successful, that might give an American president pause before this happened again. But as I said earlier to one of the other questions, the influence that the donor class, the Israeli lobby has in the American government is so profound that it's hard to believe that this would change overnight. It would take some sort of a cataclysm to bring about this change.

We battle this every day. I have lost friends because of the position that this program has taken on exposing the slaughter in Gaza. I like to think those friendships will return. I pray that they do, but I'm not going to change my moral sensibilities or my understanding of right and wrong because of it. Okay, we're almost at 20 minutes from Grassy Knoll. Now, Grassy Knoll, I see your comments all the time. It, of course, is a very intriguing moniker.

We know what you're talking to. The other gunman on December 22nd, 1963. Judge, if there was really any justice, wouldn't someone like Victoria Nuland be tried for war crimes? Yes. Yes. If there was justice, people who kill innocents using the power of the government would be charged with war crimes. Don't expect the United States of America to prosecute Mrs. Nuland. Don't expect the International Criminal Court to indict her. And if it does, she won't leave the United States.

You know, a Spanish magistrate procured an indictment against George W. Bush and Dick Cheney for war crimes. They cannot go to the EU because that indictment carries with it an arrest warrant, and that arrest warrant is valid everywhere in the European Union. It might not be enforced if one of them decides to go to Tuscany for a vacation or to the theater at the West End in London, but the arrest warrants are out there. I think we'll take one or two more, Producer Chris, if we have them.

I will ask the judge this. Where is Jack Devine, codenamed Jackie D? Jack Devine and I recently had dinner. He told me hair-raising stories about the things he observed and he did when he was much younger in his days in the CIA. I am convinced that Jack Devine is not a phony. Jack Devine is a true believer. But he truly believes that the security of the United States of America has been preserved by what he and his cronies did in the CIA and the wars they fought, the below the radar wars they fought, and the coups that they conducted. And the people that they, Jack didn't admit this to me directly, but I'm reading the two lines, and the people that they killed. Jack is a very devout Latin mass attending Roman Catholic. And I brought him to a Latin mass in New York city,

which he didn't know existed. I don't think I'm speaking outside of school to say this. We had a great dinner together. He's reluctant to come back on the show because he knows what you guys think of him. Okay, guys and gals. Thank you very much for this. I enjoyed doing it. I hope you enjoy hearing me. I have to save my voice a little bit. Coming up at four o'clock this afternoon, the end of the day, the end of the week, Larry Johnson, Ray McGovern, the Intelligence Community Roundtable. And next week, Colonel McGregor will be back.

All of your regular favorite guests will be back. And maybe a surprise or two. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom. Thank you.