Judging Freedom - COL. Lawrence Wilkerson : Does Trump Know What He’s Doing?

Episode Date: November 20, 2025

COL. Lawrence Wilkerson : Does Trump Know What He’s Doing?See 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 Thursday, October 20th, 2025, my dear friend, my dear, dear, dear friend, Colonel Lawrence Wilkinson joins us. Now, Colonel Lowe is a pleasure. I wish we were in the same room so I could kiss the top of your head again, but thank you very much for joining us. I do want to ask you, I think I know how you're going to answer this. question, but we'll explore it. If Donald Trump has any idea what he's doing in foreign

and domestic policy, but particularly foreign, but before I do, how dangerous do you think this Epstein file and all this Epstein stuff is for the president, which he can't seem to shake? I think it's dangerous, along with the Charlie Kirk assassination and what's happening with Tucker Carlson and Candace Owen and others, I think it's very dangerous for it. But I don't think it's as dangerous as some of my Democratic colleagues who are saying it is because I think Pamopi and Kash Patel went to Winchester, Virginia, and cleaned it. So they're not stupid enough to take all the Republicans out, but they probably definitely took Trump out, perhaps Ehud Barak, perhaps others like that.

And so what we're going to be getting with all this fancy. fair and an acclamation in the Senate and an overwhelming vote in the House is a sanitized list. Well, that's a felony to doctor, a federal document, particularly one that the Congress, by legislation, signed by the president, has ordered to be revealed, a felony for which they'll probably never get caught, just like when the FBI hacks into people's computers. They don't get prosecuted for hacking. It's the same hacking. It's the same crime that these kids do. And you've got people in North Carolina right now. I've just got an email from a friend in the Charlotte area and one in the Raleigh area, too,

who are actually band together with hundreds and hundreds of citizens and taking to the streets and escorting children to school and home from school to keep them away from ice. Our dear friend who has the courage of 10 tigers, Ray McGovern, went right up to ice, right to their faces with a sign saying human beings are not illegal. You kind of love Ray for that. I don't think he antagonized them, but there's no way they missed that sign. He was right in their faces with a big white and red sign saying that. He's such a terrific human being.

That's assuming they can read. Right, right. You know, in Chicago, I don't want to get too deep into this. They came down in helicopters and repelled down. There's Ray. No human is illegal. God love him. Had his clerical clothes on too.

Right. The ICE agents repelled down ropes and then used their combat boots to break into the apartment windows, smashing the glass, and entered that way. I mean, that's what the police do. when a criminal sexual assault is going on and they must get in by the fastest possible means to save the victim. That's not what you do with somebody who overstayed a visa, but that's what ICE did in Chicago.

Is it any wonder a federal judge ordered the head of ICE to report to her with body cams every day of the week? Nope, not at all. My granddaughter just sent me a text from Nashville saying that they had just announced on the news in Nashville. that a Chinese individual had been found with his hands and feet tied and hung up on a prong inside a building while ICE waited to search others in the area.

Wow. Colonel, why is the United States government planning a coup in Venezuela? You got me other than the just wide range of things I have heard, the most telling thing I've heard, I think is an alliance between such disparate, apparently, otherwise. Characters as the Nobel Peace Prize winner, Machado, a Jewish individual working from Assad and allied with Gary Bernson, a former CIA agent whom you may remember from al-Qaeda and the search for al-Qaeda and Afghanistan,

got disgusted and went home. And their whole attempt to convince Laura Lumer, who is the principal kind of, of intelligence on Venezuela and Maduro in particular to Trump, that in fact, Trinilagua and other things that they're purporting are going on in Venezuela are in fact going on when they aren't. And these people are making a lot of money off Venezuelans in the opposition who are trying to help them get Trump to come to Venezuela. At the same time, the opposition is falling apart around this sort of clandestine but obvious maneuver to the Venezuelans. because they don't want Trump coming down to Venezuela, whether they like Maduro or not.

I got to inquire about something you said. Laura Lumer is the principal source for the president of the United States to learn what's going on in Venezuela, not the CIA, not the military defense intelligence agency, not any of the federal government's intelligence agencies, but Laura, a blankety-blank loomer? That's what I'm hearing, and it's coming from some pretty good sources. And Tulsi's been put out to pasture, literally out to pastor. Well, we haven't heard of peep from her in a couple of months since the president

contradicted what she said with a simple, I don't care what she says on Air Force One. I don't remember what it was. I think it might have been about Venezuela because she was reporting that the CIA was saying that Maduro is not the head of a drive. drug gang, and fentanyl, well, we know as a fact that fentanyl doesn't come from Venezuela. Right. And you've got the head of the CIA, whose head is Bibi Degnejo's derrier. So where is your intelligence community?

Well, well, let me ask you another why. Why are there, according to Colonel McGregor, now he gave me this number, and he's gotten it from public sources. 18,000 American troops in Puerto Rico for what? For a land invasion? Let me just give you a clue. 18,000 is almost the exact number that we got out of 18th Airborne Corps at then Fort Bragg, North Carolina,

and put an alert and parachuted in or sent to Panama to go after Noriega. Wow. An inadequate number for Venezuela, by the way. Just do the terrain. chain search, sorely inadequate number for Venezuela. If the president invades Venezuela, whether naval, air, or ground, certainly Americans will die. Absolutely.

And how will we justify that? What conceivable, the same nonsense about, well, they're narco-terrorists, they're making fentanyl for which there's no evidence, they're distributing cocaine for which there's no evidence. They're sending boats to the United States, boats that can go 50 miles, but they're 1,500 miles away. And this is getting repetitive and ridiculous now. Nobody can take seriously what he says. But did you listen to Marco Rubio, the National Security Advisor? Tell me what the National Security Advisor had to say.

We just went on and on and he said, these people are guilty. I don't need to tell you why. I don't need to tell you why I know. I know. Take my word. I know. These people are guilty. We're not illegal.

We're killing them because they're guilty. They're bringing national security threats to the United States. They're bringing drugs. We're killing them. He just kept saying it over and over again. What about the two fishermen who survived Quick Draw Pete's botched killing and now may engage lawyers in Washington to sue the White House? These are barely literate fishermen. These are no more drug dealers than you and I are ballerinas.

and one of them's wife has made quite plaintiff testimony yes was revealed a couple of places and you know maybe my husband in order to survive and put food on the table might have picked up a packet of this or that and taken it a hundred miles down the coast but it would have been no further than that and it would have been a transshipment maybe for a bigger group or whatever i don't know she said but he's a fisherman wow and we killed them for We kill them for that. Does the Secretary of State have some sort of ethnically originated monolithic hatred for the government of Cuba, the government of Venezuela, the government of Colombia? I wouldn't go that far with Venezuela, Colombia, and other South American countries.

I think it's like what he just did. he was down there trying to get presidents of various countries who are rightists to go against Lula. And he got to Bolivia and that president is a rightist by definition in South America. But he told him to go pound sand that Lula was a pretty good leader and he wasn't going to take Lula on. But that's what Rubio is doing. So he seems to have a phobia about Latin America in general. But Cuba, on whose island he has never set foot, he has a vendetta against. And the only thing I can think is what I have met amongst Cubans in Florida from time to time,

older Cubans, mostly, ones that participated in, for example, the Bay of Pigs that are now 85 years old, is this absolute hatred, even now that he's dead for Fidel Castro and the fact that he beat America, even with the sanction, he beat America. And that's Rubio's, you know, passion is to reverse that. So MI6, which you know from your own experience, is more reckless and daring than CIA, refuses to participate in Trump's murders on the Caribbean and refuses to provide Americans with intel,

notwithstanding the Five Eyes Agreement, and you can explain what that is. What do they know that the CIA doesn't? Well, one thing they know is that British justice sometimes acts on things like this in a post-event mode, if you will. Take the Chilcott report, for example. That's probably the only official government accountability, and it's quite damning if you read the whole thing,

even though Parliament watered it down a lot on the Tony Blair, you know, Iraq War 2003. It's a damning report. And there are some people that suffered because of their names being mentioned in that report. So the British have a tendency to hold at least a partial accountability drill post things that are just patently illegal. And they're probably scared of that. They're also signatories to the Treaty of Rome establishing the International Criminal Court and they know that if their agents participate in these murders, the agents theoretically could be indicted and prosecuted. I'd like to see the legal opinion that was given to Prime Minister Sturmer or whoever's the head of MI6 and compare it to the legal opinion that the Office

of Legal Counsel gave the White House. Let's see, the Office of Legal Counsel, once headed by future Chief Justice William Rehnquist, once headed by future Associate Justice Antonin Scalia. In later years, advised George W. Bush and Richard Cheney that they could torture whoever they wanted, advised Barack Obama that he could kill nonviolent civilians in Yemen, and apparently he told Donald Trump he could do what he wants, killing these now 81 people on the high seas, but their rationale, which is a legal argument based on public laws. and public judicial opinions, their rationale is secret. So is the British rationale.

Well, John Hughes' rationale came out pretty glaringly, and in essence, I've read the whole thing. I've read Goldstein's, I've read commentary on it, I've read John Hughes original, and I've read the Attorney General's comments on it. And I can tell you that it boils down to a clear definitive statement that torture, and no one else in the world defines torture this way,

certainly not the United Nations or the ICC or the ICJ. Torture is that which occurs during interrogation that is just short of organ failure. Wow. Think about that definition. They had to put a doctor beside every gurney, and the doctor had to say, oh, stop, you're right short of organ failure.

Wow. We were just talking in our previous clip with our mutual friend, Max Blumenthal, about John Carriaco. John, of course, is the CIA agent who witnessed torture and went to jail, not for what he witnessed, but for what he told about what he witnessed. Many people don't know this. I talk to audiences all across the country, and they just look at me with their eyes wide like a deer in the headlight.

We murdered 33 people, 33 people in the torture. program, the high-value detainee Bush ordained torture program. We murdered 33 people. We being special operating forces, contractors for SAW, contractors for CIA or CIA. We murdered them. What's the name of that notorious CIA supervisor, I believe Rodriguez, who destroyed the tapes of the torture? That's a felony to destroy those tape. It's official government property, and it's evidence of crimes. And we made the person who knew all about that, director of the CIA, Gina Hossfeld.

Right. Whose nickname given to her by her colleagues, well, you can tell me about this, is bloody Gina. How the hell did she get a nickname like that? You can just imagine, just use your imagination. She was in the secret prison in Thailand that I understand. Right, right.

Why would the Trump administration expect the Kremlin to accept some sort of a 28-point Kakamami peace plan now when the Russians are on the cusp of achieving their territorial and military goals in Ukraine? Judge, I actually think that between Marco Rubio and Sergey Loveroff, and to a certain extent, light extent, Putin and Trump on the telephone, that they have mutually worked this 28-point plan out. Not that Russia approves of every point or that the United States is going to press every point, but they have at least come to some understanding of what the working groups, yes, you heard me, working groups are going to deal with once we get out of Budapest and go on to formal negotiations, which I hope, I'm being told, will include nuclear weapons and other

things, too, like renewal of new start and other issues between the United States and Russia. So this is much bigger than just Ukraine, I'm told. I hope that's true. What working groups do you speak, Colonel Wilkerson? We would have to have a massively complicated and difficult to deal with, but nonetheless, utterly necessary group for all the technical details necessary for nuclear weapons. treaties and for preparing the ground for them. You wouldn't believe how many people we sent to Russia and Russia sent to the United States from time to time when we were working out all the nuclear weapons treaties that we did work out, from the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty to the

INF Treaty, to the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty, to the START Treaty. All the treaties we had were very painstakingly worked out. Remember Reagan, trust but verify? Well, the verification is often the hardest part of working out the treaty regime. So your argument in a nutshell is the United States recognizes that Ukraine is on its last leg. It will enter into some sort of pre-agreement agreement, and Trump will get some sort of public and international credit. And then there'll be an effort to reset the relations between the two countries so that you and I can fly. from Dulles or JFK to Moscow in nine hours instead of in 20 hours going through Istanbul or Dubai?

I hope that's part of it. I really do. And I think restoration of commercial relations and restorations of serious talks about eventually, once the anger and hatred subsides a bit, eventually a new security architecture in Europe. But Marco Rubio really doesn't want the Ukraine war to end, does he? Isn't he part of that Hillary Clinton, Victorian Newland, Lindsey Graham, right? How could you forget him? Mindset that the NATO will use the war in Ukraine as a battering ram with this.

I'm tired of saying this, but it's absurd and this is what they believe with which to drive President Putin from office. Anatole Levin has a good article in Quincy Institute's statecraft, responsible statecraft this morning. And he leads it with a cartoon from World War I. You've got two GIs. They're looking at each other. You see the bombs going off all around them, artillery rounds, exploding and all this.

And one G.I. says, you don't like the hole, find another one. And what Anatole is saying, of course, is this is the plan. You don't like it. Find another one. Get another one. This is it. And he goes into a pretty good discussion of the way the plan is supposed to evolve. and all the hang-ups that might occur along the way,

and there are plenty, of course, as you would imagine. But at least you've got a hole. Will the bandarists who surround and basically control President Zelensky ever agree to the voluntary cessation of as much of even a quarter of an inch of that land that is now under Russian control, the Russian-speaking parts of Ukraine, that have been part of you, part of Russia, since Catherine the Great? You put your finger on the issue that will perturbate any kind of agreement for the next decade or so. And there's no way to do anything about it unless Ukraine will do something about it.

And if they try to do something about it, they will probably get a whole bunch of people assassinated. These are deadly people. These are true Nazis. They're Bandera's followers, you know, Bandera's progeny, if you will. And they are, as I've said, all along about Ukraine, productive of some of the most evil bastards on the face of the earth, and these people are they? France 24 just reports that France's top general,

General Fabian Mandant, I don't know if you know the gentleman, has sparked political backlash after warning publicly that the country must be ready, quote, to lose its children, close quote, in the event of a war with Russia, that Europe holds enough economic and demographic strength to deter Russia, yet it lacks the willingness to accept, quote, suffering for self-defense. What the hell is going on? We've got a lingering group of people in NATO,

and there are individuals like this in every state. I was just talking on German TV this morning. And they actually think that one, Russia is intent on taking them all out from Poland to the Baltic and elsewhere all the way to Britain, and that they have developed the wherewithal to do that in the course of this war, and that the only thing that is going to save them now because Trump is intent on getting out before this happens is themselves. you should see what they were telling me that Germany is now voting. No way in the world do I think they're going to vote for and keep this kind of flow of money. But when you look at the money that they're voting and the economic situation in Germany,

what Merritt is doing with the conscription laws and with 5% of GDP on defense, security, you just have to shrug your shoulders and say, for what reason and what are you going to do? do, once you've got this, if you could even do it, into play? Are you going to turn into a 1930s, Germany, and take off like a rocket all across Europe, or are you going to go after Russia? What's the purpose of doing this? Russia has no intent on attacking you. Colonel, were you, we're going to the Middle East now, and I'll just be brief,

just this one question, because it's in the New York Times this morning. I don't know if people can grasp the magnitude of it, were you surprised or disappointed to learn that the American ambassador to Israel, the arch Christian nationalist, Zionist, Mike Huckabee, secretly met with Jonathan Pollard in the American embassy. Oh, well, that's all right. Oh, if Pollard's crimes occurred during your era, you're very familiar with this. Maybe he's going to bless him and forgive him, you know. He's almost a preacher, this guy who's our ambassador, he acts like him. You know, this UN Security Council Resolution 2833 is a joke. No, that's the wrong term.

Don't call it a joke. It's a disaster for the Palestinians. That would explain why Mike Waltz and Danny Denon were hugging each other on the floor of the Security Council. Tuesday afternoon. It formalizes and internationalizes what Israel is doing. And the reason Netanyahu is a little miffed about it is because it takes it away from him. He wants to kill them. He wants to destroy them to the last person. This leaves him free for Iran, though. That's what worries me. Wow. Cardinal, thank you very much, my dear friend. We have a short week next week, but I hope that you can join us for your usual slot,

but on a different day since a week from today is Thanksgiving. But thanks for your time. Thanks for accommodating my schedule. Thanks for staying my dear, dear, dear friend. And look forward to seeing you soon. All the best. You too. Next week I'll bring my turkey gun.

All right. Thank you. And coming up at 3 o'clock today, and today is November 20th. November 20th, I inadvertently said October earlier, November 20th. 20th, 2025. At 3 o'clock, Professor John Mearsheimer at 4 o'clock from somewhere in Russia, Pepe Escobar. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom. Thank you.