Judging Freedom - COL. Lawrence Wilkerson : Trump’s License to Kill.

Episode Date: December 24, 2025

COL. Lawrence Wilkerson : Trump’s License to Kill.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 Wednesday, December 24th, Christmas Eve. Colonel Lawrence Wilkinson joins us now. Colonel Larry, a pleasure, my dear friend. Thank you very much for your time with us. It's always a delight to chat with you. We've had so many of these wonderful conversations during the past year. I'd like your thoughts, Colonel, on the EU sanctioning of Colonel, of Colonel Jacques Bo, a Swiss military and intelligence veteran of very high esteem because he had the temerity of quoting Vladimir Zelensky's former chief spokesperson who was opining on the true status of the special military operation in Ukraine? Many of us, as you might imagine, have been talking about that, both in Europe and here.

Some of the group knows him really well. I don't know him personally, but I do know of his work. And it's preposterous. And it is a demonstration in a microcosm, if you will, but nonetheless painful for him, I'm sure, of how paranoid Europeans are. particularly people like Merritt Starrmer and Macron and Ruta and others who were looking at their jobs literally evaporating in front of their eyes and they don't know what to do except to react that way and they react that way

and hurt individuals like job in the same week that Colonel Beau was sanctioned and these sanctions I mean he can't even go to the supermarket to buy a a gallon of milk unless he happens to have cash in his pocket. If he leaves the EU, he can't come back. I asked yesterday, does he have a Swiss passport? I mentioned he does. And the individual who knows him quite well told me, yes, he has one. I said, well, why can't he appeal to the Swiss government to honor his passport

and let him come back to Switzerland get out of these idiots way? You know, Switzerland has rolled over and played dead since I'm sorry to bring back these memories, Colonel, the George W. Bush administration intimidated the daylights out of the Swiss banking system. They haven't done anything for Colonel Beau, and he devoted his entire career to the security of Switzerland. but in the same week that the EU did this to him. Keir Sturmer, the British Prime Minister, appeared on the floor of the House of Commons and publicly threatened a Russian oligarch who was forced to sell his interests in a British soccer,

they call it football team, that if he doesn't give them the contents of his bank account so they can give it to the biggest crook in Europe, Vladimir Zelensky, they will just take it. So I think you're right. They are extremely desperate, and they're resorting to behavior that have done by anyone but a government. They would prosecute the person for it. You're going to steal 100 million pounds from a guy's bank account?

I look at Stormer is, you know, that old song, I think it was the monkeys or Herman's Hermann's. Henry the eighth I am, I am. Stormers, he is. yes he's destroying everything that britain was supposed to well what are we doing in the caribbean but the same thing everything that britain was supposed to feel about what we might call the rights of its people they don't care about them anymore and i'm hearing from people i know well in london i've been there every year for almost 30 years got a lot of friends there that it is truly draconian.

Wow. What is the basis for, as you understand it, Colonel Wilkerson, the maniacal fanatical fear that European elites have for President Putin? Well, first of all, it's something they thought was going to be a cash pie for the rest of their natural lives, political, if not. not biological. And what I mean by that is they thought they could hold on to the empire, its skirts, if you will, and through that, live in whatever way they wanted to live,

and that they chose, and I'm still trying to figure out exactly how this happened, because it certainly wasn't the case with the leadership we dealt with in the early 1990s. And even to a certain extent that we began to deal with in the early 2000s, though it had changed markedly. And that leadership has as a raison d'etat russophobia. And it is now turned it into a political tool that they cannot discard. They have generated the tool. They have put the tool in effect and in motion, and they can't discard it.

They're like dictators riding the tiger. You know, they can't describe what they've created. But what they've created is a bugaboo in Russia. And that's the only way they think they can survive. is by enhancing that threat, making it look absolutely draconian, and getting their people to go along with it and making them pay 5% of their GDP, too. Yeah. So thanks to the Prime Minister of Belgium, supported by the Prime Minister of Hungary, Mrs. von der Leyen and her coterie were stopped from seizing the Russian bank accounts in the

Belgian banks. I understand, according to our friend Gilbert Doctoro, that the last-minute President Macron opposed this after having supported it during most of the time leading up to it, but whatever, it didn't happen. But instead, Europeans are cobbling together a package of 100 billion euros to lend to Zelensky. The terms of the loan are. that it will be repaid when Russia loses and when, this is ridiculous, Russia pays reparations for the damage caused by the special military operation. What bank in Europe would accept that promise as a condition to repay? Somebody's got a sign on the dotted line.

Maybe the same bank that's going to deal with Scott Besson in the first week of the new year, when he faces a $3 trillion debt that no one in the world wants to buy and that the only country in the world capable of buying it is China. But back to your question about Macron, I understand he got a pretty good briefing, and Macron understood what a horrible precedent that would be to set, much as horrible as the precedent we set with our Biden and then Trump deepened sanctions on Russia. These are not things great powers want to be doing to one another. And you certainly don't want to use the banking system to do it. And Macron backed out of it because he realized that was not a precedent that he wanted to set. Well, I'm going to make you laugh a little bit. Our friends at Russia today have put together a hilarious Christmas parody mocking the EU.

Chris, cut number one. My friends settle by your Christmas tree It's all because of Putin's sea Power bills to buy to pay It's all because of Putin cake A feast of meal price feels like a scam It's all because of Putin down Your taxes fund a war instead

It's all because what Putin said It's all because of Putin's sad. The bureaucrats are on your back. It's all because of Putin whack. Santa robbed your kids this year. It's all because of Putin dear. No new hope for a year ahead. It's all because the Putin's red.

It's all because of Putin. It's all because of Putin. It's all because of Putin. It's all because of Putin. It's all because of Putin. That's good. I mean, it really makes the point. I don't know where they got those actors to play,

Von der Leyen and Zelensky, but they did a terrific job. Terrific job. I was thinking the whole time, too, a friend of mine in Moscow who was telling me some things that I would flip that around if it were being played in Moscow,

saying it's all because of Putin. We've got a great GDP. We've got a great economy. We've got clean streets. We got safe places to go. We got great things to do. It's all because of Putin. You can see how old I am.

Chris reminds me there's not an actor or a performer in that. It was all. Yeah. That was her, I think. I thought it was her. And they were just putting the words in her mouth and you weren't paying attention, so you didn't recognize the lips and the words weren't syncope. Some computer crafted the whole thing. Here's something that a computer

did not craft Donald Trump's latest threats and his latest urge for acquisition. Watch the smirk on the face of his Secretary of Defense who calls himself the Secretary of War. Chris, cut number We need Greenland for national protection. They have a very small population. And I don't know, they say Denmark, but Denmark has spent no money. They have no military protection. They say that Denmark was there 300 years ago or something with a boat. Well, we were there with boats too, I'm sure. So we'll have to work it all out. But he felt very strongly, we need financials, we need Greenland for national security, not for minerals. We have so many sites for minerals. We have so many sites for minerals and oil and everything. We have more oil than any other country in the world.

We need Greenland for national security. And if you take a look at Greenland, you look up and down the coast. You have Russian and Chinese ships all over the place. We need it for national security. We have to have it. Does he know what he's talking about, Colonel? I don't think he knows anything about what he's talking about. 300 years ago, we were doing something in Greenland? I wonder who it was. Who could it have been? Christopher Columbus's great, great, grand chariots and the Vikings. He is just a recipe for disaster when he opens his mouth. You never know what he's going to say.

He's right about some of the things he said, and he's going to be seeing that more often. Putin's already paying him back in his own coin, and Gigi Ping will too. They're going to have ships all up and down the Atlantic coast, and in the Caribbean and elsewhere. It is their way of showing him that when he did what he did in Ukraine, that is to say, Biden, Trump, together, we, the United States, and NATO, we can pay you back in your own coin, and we are going to do so. Our friend and colleague Larry Johnson, and this actually gets to what you said earlier about Scott Besson's need for cash and the only available place is China.

China's not going to buy our debt. China's selling our debt, which is going to raise Scott Besson's interest offerings, which means the American government again is going to have to borrow money to pay interest on borrowed money, in part because the last ship they seized in the Caribbean contained 1.9 million barrels of oil bought and paid for by China.

Yes. Are they crazy, Uncle Larry? Do they know what the hell they're doing? They are crazy. And here's the thing that Besson understands, I think. I don't know him personally, but I've listened to him. I think he understands this. I'm not sure he's going to get the leeway to act on it.

But there needs to be a deal between Beijing and Washington, and the deal needs to be that we will coexist, literally. and that Beijing doesn't really want our complete collapse. And I think that's a fair argument with Xi Jinping because he does not want our complete collapse. It would mean all kinds of problems for him if we just completely collapsed. So the deal is to go in and start this discussion

and getting it going in a positive way, in what I call a win-win way, because that's the only way we're going to get out of this. They're the only people in the world that have the money to do this, in the kind of fashion that it needs to be done. So we don't get swamped and literally wrecked with regard to our fiscal situation. And the oil business, Trump doesn't understand the oil business.

He simply does not understand it. I'd love to drag him over to the 2009 oil distribution war game, essentially, simulation. We ran in Beijing with all the countries mainly in the world interested, Japan to Russia, and Lloyds of London and Marad and other legal people with regard to the international realm and the law thereof, you can't get away from this. It's inescapable. Everyone needs oil, period.

Everyone in the world needs oil. And when you start monkeying with this, the way we're doing now, and you're a criminal in that system, which is what 60, 70% of the world thinks now, you're just cutting your own throat. So Scott needs to get to base. and on bended knee, take some knee pads with him and start talking with Eugene Ping

seriously. Otherwise, Americans are going to see disaster. Here's the criminal confessing to his crimes. Chris cut number nine. 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 it. Where is it going to? Are we going to sell Maybe we'll sell it, maybe we'll keep it. Maybe we'll use it in the strategic reserves. We're keeping it. We're keeping the ships also. Well, if that is not piracy in the high seas, and because of the integral nature of oil, about which is just so nicely spoke to human existence, a war crime, I don't know what is.

It's high seas piracy. I love the part about keeping the ship. There's a reason to do that, because we can't build any. You can't make this stuff up, Judge. We are at a very crucial point right now, and we are led by a man who not only shows incompetence on a daily basis in every area of strategic and policy thinking. He is incompetent in terms of the most important thing that we're looking at right now,

which he claims to be an expert in, and that's it. Well, here's his opposite number saying that Russia and Europe should join commercial forces with each other and see if Donald Trump pays attention, President Putin. And if we were to join our efforts with European countries, Russia and European countries, our joint GDP would be higher than the United States. United States. Of course, this is all theoretical, but it is quite obvious. The fact is quite obvious that unifying and complementing our abilities will thrive instead of fighting each other like you are doing. It's the adult in the room, Colonel. It's very interesting to hear that because I've always had this sneaking suspicion that one of the reasons that Europe took the posture it did immediately

about midway in the first Bush administration, George W. Bush administration, was because there were thinkers over there that realized that if they did that, they would be much more powerful, even possibly than China, because you had this $22 trillion GDP in Europe. You had a fairly substantial GDP in Russia, you bring Russia into Europe, then he's right, you're probably going to have the largest GDP in the world. At the same time, they were worried about what that meant for the alliance and what that meant for their relationship, the transatlantic relationship. And the people who won out were the people who bet on that rather than betting on unity. And as they did that, they developed this propaganda campaign to create Russophobia all over

Russia all over Europe, and we just picked up on it. So we both have Russophobia campaigns that paint Russia, as that video sort of depicted, paint Russia is the world bugaboo. Threats to Maduro, threats to seas, Greenland, threats to the president of Colombia, murders on the high seas, stealing oil tankers and stealing their contents. Does Donald Trump behave as if he thinks he has a license to kill? That would be a way to describe it. I think he behaves as if he thinks he is sitting on top of, Henry VIII again,

the greatest empire in the world upon whom no one can make any entry, no one can make any dent in their solidity and in their defenses, when he is actually sitting on a paper tiger, a paper tiger that he is going to find out just the weakness of the depth of the weakness of if he does any of these things that are looking at us right now this Christmas season which includes war with Iran because BB is intent on getting now the United States to do his heavy lifting with regard to Iran with Venezuela possibly and we're also looking at the situation in Europe getting out of hand if the Europeans keep poking their fingers in

Putin's eyes. Where are the Witkoff-Kir-Demitriyev talks going to go? I mean, what do they talk about? The Russian demands haven't changed one iota. There's nothing to negotiate. I think there's a realization of that in that group. I think they have come to that realization. And what they're doing now is trying to figure out how to sell it, not just sell it to

the world, but sell it to the American people in terms of the political. strength of the Trump MAGA group, and how to sell it to the Europeans if they even want to sell it to the Europeans. And also, what's the strategy for countering the Europeans when they realize we're dead serious and we've done a deal? Colonel, here's an interesting clip of an American speaking in Italian. You'll know who he is as soon as you see him, suggesting a 24-hour worldwide Christmas Day truce. like we had in World War I when American and German soldiers actually sat down and dined together. Chris?

Once again, I make this appeal to all people of goodwill to observe, at least on the day of the Savior's birth, a day of peace. Maybe they'll listen to us, and there will be 24 hours a day of peace throughout the world. Thank you. The Chicago-born Pope. Yeah, I'm all for it. Love is Italian. He actually sounded like a native. Yeah.

But, you know, that's a marvelous gesture, but the fighting will just go right back on afterwards. Yeah, I think you're right. Colonel, I think you know, we passed the $100 million, or I wish it were, the 100 million views threshold last weekend. thanks in no small measure to all of your wonderful conversations with us. I hope we can continue them in the new year. I am deeply grateful for you letting me kiss you on your head. I am profoundly grateful for our professional collaboration and our personal friendship

and I'm grateful to our mutual friends who brought us together. Thank you, Colonel. Merry Christmas to you and your family. Thank you, and the same to you. And may that New Year be. at least livable. Yes. Back at your, Colonel, and we'll see you the first week in January. Take care.

Thank you. So unless there is some breaking news, you won't see us live until early January, but who knows, maybe something will cause us to pop up. But you will see on Christmas Day a Maxathon, eight hours of Max Blumenthal, and we might have somebody a fun on New Year's Day as well. Keep your eye out for that. Merry Christmas. Happy New Year, Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. Thank you.