Judging Freedom - Col. Lawrence Wilkerson: War and Old Glory

Episode Date: June 14, 2024

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Thank you. Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Friday, June 14th, 2024, Flag Day here in America, about which more in a few moments. Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson joins us now. Colonel, a pleasure, my dear friend. Welcome here. I have a lot of questions to ask you, mainly about Ukraine, but a few about Gaza. But let's start with breaking news. And rather than me summarizing it, because it comes from President Putin, let's hear it directly from him.

Chris, this is just a few hours ago. Cut number three. The West is ignoring our interests and at the same time forbidding Kiev to negotiate, all the while hypocritically calling us to some kind of negotiations. It just seems foolish. Ukrainian troops must be fully withdrawn from Donetsk and Luhansk peoples' republics and from the Kherson and Zaporizhia regions. And I draw your attention to the fact that it includes the entire territory of these regions within their administrative borders, as they existed when they joined Ukraine.

Once Kyiv declares its readiness and starts the genuine withdrawal of its troops from these areas, as well as officially notify about the abandonment of plans to join NATO, our side will immediately, literally at the same minute, follow the order to cease fire and start negotiations. Colonel, couldn't the Ukrainians have had that deal on day one, about two and a half or three years ago? They certainly could have, as I understand it, possibly even a little bit better deal than that. But you can't be more explicit than that. I mean, let's face it, throughout the almost two years now that we've been doing this, you can't be more explicit than what he just was as to what his conditions are.

Acceptable conditions as far as I'm concerned. Right. And so should Biden and Sullivan and Lincoln think, and all the people in NATO. I mean, he's laid it out. Well, the timing is interesting, Colonel, because next week, 90 countries are meeting in Geneva, Switzerland. Of course, Russia was not invited. It's a so-called peace conference. I don't know what they think they're going to accomplish without Russia there. Russia won't negotiate with Zelensky. Zelensky is not the lawful president or anything lawful in Ukraine.

I thought President Putin was clear, concise, credible, and timely. Very much so. And by the way, the organizers and the people who are the dictators of the script in that conference have already narrowed the 10 things that Zelensky put forward. He can bring them up if he wants to, but nobody's going to talk about them. Two, three things, food security, nuclear safety, and return of children. Those are the three issues they're going to talk about at this incredible peace conference. Incredible because it's an incredible waste of time and money if those are what they're going to talk about. They're not going to talk about withdrawal of troops and ceasefire and giving up on NATO? Of the 10 things that Zelensky and others, and NATO I'm assuming behind me, put forward,

they've limited it to those three. That doesn't mean they can't talk about the others, but they're not going to come to any decisions or any communiques or anything like that, except over those three issues. It's a non-starter kernel, isn't it? Yes. Those nuclear safety in particular is important. I'd love to see him talk about that at length and in depth.

So, yeah, those three issues are important, but it shows you how much Zelensky overestimated what that conference might produce. When you were on with us last Friday, you made comments about American warships on their way to Cuba, and that portion of your interview went viral because no one had heard it before. Did you know what was coming, or do you just understand the Russian, the Putin mentality and predict what would happen? No, I have some contacts that tell me from time to time what's happening. Oh, you could have taken credit for it, Colonel. You could have told us that you predicted it. Well, I mean, you could tell it was coming

because of what the Cuban president and the Cuban foreign minister said, but I didn't know what ships would be included or what armaments they would be carrying. And I defy people who say that those ships aren't carrying powerful armaments. Admiral Gorshkov, the frigate is carrying Zircon missiles with a range of a thousand kilometers and they go nine times the speed of sound. That's nine times 761 miles per hour. Do the math on that. That's a pretty fast missile. Can we stop them? No. It's like hitting a speeding bullet with a bullet. What is the reaction from your experience in the military, Colonel, as well as your experience in the State Department, which you helped run for a number of years?

What is the reaction in the Pentagon to the presence of ships of this magnitude and with this offensive weaponry, literally a few miles off the coast of Key West, Florida. I watched Secretary Austin and General C.Q. Brown, who I had some hope for until this press conference I watched yesterday. I thought he was going to, you know, be so far up Secretary Austin's rear end that I would be unable to understand him. They said, and others have said too, those below them have said more powerfully, that it's inconsequential. Russia does this from time to time, that they're in Cuba as to be expected, that they're moored at the very place where, this is such an irony, our cruise ship was moored and making millions of dollars off of being moored there as the Cubans

were benefiting from it too. Now it has a Russian frigate moored there. And you're looking at a situation where we're now saying, oh, it doesn't matter. It's just what they normally do. Well, why did we dispatch submarines to track them and surface craft to track them? And why are we apparently dispatching a couple more? Because we don't think we have enough? Put yourself, Colonel, in President Putin, or I forget the name of the new person in Russia running the Defense Ministry, the economist who replaced General Shoigu.

Put yourself, if you would, in their brains. What is the purpose of sending these ships there? Surely they're not going to attack Miami or Washington. Well, it has the surface patina of a tit for tat. You do this to us in Ukraine, we'll do it to you in Cuba and see how you like it. But I think it's more substantive because I happen to know that the Russians, ever since the Soviets were kicked out, the Russians have been thinking and working with, and not very successfully because we were affecting a rapprochement with Cuba at that time. And Cuba saw a rapprochement with us as much more important than any renewed relations with Russia,

however Russia might be led. That was going on the whole time, though. There were feelers, there were people talking, talking with Ugo Chavez in Venezuela, then with Maduro, his replacement, and even talking with the government in Colombia, because the Russians were looking to gain some ground in the Western hemisphere where we are the true hegemon. And now it's opened up as the Cuban president and foreign minister said, what do you want, Mr. Biden? Another Haiti in the Caribbean? It's opened up. So Russia's back. So President Obama began the rapprochement as earnestly as he could from just the executive branch. He wasn't going to get it out of the Congress. And then maybe there was a method to his madness to make a rapprochement with Washington, as you just indicated, Colonel, be much more desirable than a rapprochement with Moscow. And then President Trump came in and undid everything that President Obama did for whatever reason. And we're back to where we started. But when these Russian ships arrived either yesterday or the day before, after you gave the cue, kidding,

they got a 21-gun salute in Havana Harbor. I know that's symbolic and not substantive, or am I wrong? Is there some significance to that? Well, the fact that they did it, it is symbolic, but the fact that they did it and it was not a quiet thing, it was a ceremonial occasion, means something. And let me just say this, I'm no fan of Donald Trump. Don't get me wrong there. I'm not a fan of Donald Trump. But Donald Trump didn't have an anti-Cuban bone in his body. What happened was exactly what I told the Cubans would happen when they asked me, what does Trump mean? I said, it means you'll be totally ignored, or it means because he doesn't give a damn about you, all the people underneath him who do are the bad people, the bad Republicans,

and they'll go after you with a vengeance. Well, this is Mike Pompeo on steroids. This is Pompeo, this is Cleaver, this is all the people he put on the subterranean NSC, for example, to manage Latin America. They didn't have any supervision, so they went after Cuba with a vengeance. They got them put back on the state sponsors of terrorism list, which is absurd. Draconian sanctions. Cuba hasn't sponsored terrorism in 40 years if they ever did. So we ruined a very good program that was making sure Cuba was our friend indefinitely into the future. What does this anti-Cuban crowd in the State Department hope to accomplish?

Castro is dead. Those people have suffered for so long. They're still driving, famously famously 1956 Chevrolets. What do they think they're going to accomplish by clamping down on this island? Actually, we made a bifurcated society in Cuba now because with the remittances coming out of Florida and the enterprises that were started, these people were entrepreneurial par excellence. The Cubans are the most entrepreneurial people in Latin America. And they created an upper class now. They're making money, that upper class, because of the remittances that came out, investing in their restaurants and their auto mechanic shops and everything else.

So you do have a divergence in Cuba now. So we actually made the situation even worse for them, because now they do have a capitalist market-oriented top that is getting wealthy, and a whole bunch of 10 million people who are very, very poor. That's the reason they had the protests in Santiago de Cuba. And what did we do? We threw the CIA into that to make them even worse. That's when the president said, what do you want, Biden? Another Haiti in the Caribbean? Because that's what you're going to produce. And now we have the Russians. How do you expect the State Department to respond to President Putin's overture, which included a truism that we all know, Washington won't let Kiev negotiate, period, end of story. But how do you think

the White House or the West Wing or Foggy Bottom, where you used to work, will respond? I don't think they'll make much of an overture because I think Blinken is bound to Biden now, just as he was when he was vice president. And whatever Biden wants to do is what Blinken wants to do, and Sullivan's no better. I think what you're looking at, though, is you need some courage from Zelensky. Zelensky needs to break this Gordian knot. He needs to step in and say, I'm done. People, do you hear me? I'm done. I know my rhetoric indicated otherwise. I know I was the most powerful cheerleader for Ukraine continuing forever to fight. But this is crazy. I'm going to lose everything and I don't want to lose everything. Ukraine doesn't want to lose everything. I need to go talk.

So shut your damn mouth and support me while I do that. But that takes courage. Right, right. In Rome earlier this week, I don't know if it was today or yesterday, President Biden and President Putin signed a 10-year agreement whereby the federal government of the United States of America would send $5 billion with a B a year to Ukraine. I happen to think this is legally of no moment. I don't think Joe Biden will be president eight months from now. President Zelensky is nothing with respect to Ukraine. He has no lawful authority. And because this is just an executive agreement signed by the president, his successor, Donald Trump, or whoever it might be, can undo it with the stroke of a pen. Why do something like that for show that both sides know

is not binding on anyone? November 2024, Biden is desperate to get reelected or to make sure that whoever replaces him is the future president. I'm beginning to think more and more about that because watching him at the D-Day ceremonies, the man is in trouble. Physically, he's in trouble. And the same in rome i mean you know when he wandered away from everybody else and president uh maloney of italy walked over and she grabbed him by the elbow and sort of turned him around now if you saw the full picture he was wandering over to talk to a soldier it appeared but the clip that everybody saw made it look like he was in another world.

He did have a little bit of a run-in with a reporter today. He didn't like a question about Israel and Gaza being put to him. The scolding of the reporter resulted in a very, very harsh statement by the White House press corps. I don't want to get into the tip for tap, but I'll play it for you because you commented on your observations of him. So this is in Rome. The White House press corps is there, the international press corps. We all have seen these press conferences. Anything is fair game. But he didn't like it. Watch this. Cut number two. Can you give us your assessment of Hamas's response? And do you believe that they are trying to work towards a deal? Or is this response working against a deal? And what is your message to allies, including those here at the G7, about what more, if anything, the U.S.

can do to drive towards a peace agreement. Thank you. I wish you guys would play by the rules a little bit. I'm here to talk about a critical situation in Ukraine. You're asking me another subject. I'll be happy to answer it in detail later. But the bottom line is that we've made an agreement. I've laid out an approach that has been endorsed by the

UN Security Council, by the G7, by the Israelis. And the biggest hangup so far is Hamas refusing to sign on, even though they have submitted something similar. Here's what the White House press corps said, quote, excuse me for looking away from the camera. While the White House does determine the number of reporters the president will recognize, it is up to professional journalists to decide what to ask. Any leader may prefer that reporters ask only one question or ask only about a topic that is of most interest to the president or another world leader, but a free press functions independently. Absolutely. I remember when Powell went out to talk with the Indian foreign minister and they had a joint press conference and every question, and this was 2003, late 2003, every question was on Iraq. The Indian foreign minister looked like, do I get a question?

Everything was on Iraq. But Powell kept his cool and answered the questions. This was another sign. And he lied. He flat lied. Now I don't think he knows he's lying, President Biden, because he insinuated that everyone agrees, including the UN, except Hamas. That's bullshit.

Israel doesn't agree. Israel is a major impediment to this deal that Joe Biden's credit to Netanyahu. It's bull. It's absolute bull. Watch this, Colonel. This is not your favorite person, nor mine, nor that of the audience. Admiral Kirby saying the proposal is an Israeli. I don't believe this for a minute, but you're going to see him say it three times.

Cut number nine, Chris. That proposal, an Israeli proposal, has been given to Hamas. It was done on Thursday night, our time. We're waiting for an official response from Hamas. We would note that publicly, Hamas officials came out and welcomed this proposal. This was an Israeli proposal. We have every expectations that if Hamas agrees to the proposal, as was transmitted to them, an Israeli proposal, that Israel would say yes. This is not an Israeli proposal. If Benjamin Netanyahu accepts this proposal, correct me if I'm wrong,

his government collapses because the right-wingers will withdraw their support and he won't have a majority in the Knesset. Absolutely correct. Absolutely correct. And Netanyahu is as much as said that. Right. But the president, Joe Biden, the Secretary of State, Tony Blinken, Admiral Kirby, who really has no credibility at

all, really, want us to believe that this emanated from the Israelis. This must be a political stunt that, according to Cy Hirsch, whom we both know and admire, emanated with the campaign of Joseph R. Biden for re-election? I would guess that too. And I must say, I have a little bit of empathy and sympathy for Admiral Kirby. I don't care for him at all. He's too wheedling and too covering the rear end of everybody around him all the time. But I feel sorry for him. They should let him go. He should get back to a ship, back to something that's Navy. He doesn't do this very well, and he's been murdered and murdered again and again and again. They're relentless in murdering him, and it's not doing the administration any good. I would replace him with someone who's a little more deft and a little better at,

shall we say, chocolate coating the lies that come out. Right. I don't want to beat a dead horse, but here is Secretary Blinken referring to the same proposal as Joe Biden's proposal, 12. Proposal that President Biden laid out 12 days ago was virtually identical to one that Hamas had accepted and put forward itself on May the 6th. So there's no reason why this agreement should not be reached. The only reason would be Hamas continuing to try to change the terms. But here's what's the reality.

The reality is, as this negotiation is going on, during the 12 days that it took Hamas to respond, the world wasn't standing still. Gaza wasn't standing still. People were suffering every single day. Palestinian children, women and men, suffering every single day. So from my perspective, from our perspective, it's time to stop all of this haggling and back and forth and start a ceasefire. If it was a slip of the lip or if he was referring to the proposal generically as President Biden's,

but President Biden said three or four times it was an Israeli proposal, Admiral Kirby said it three or four times, Secretary Blinken referred to it as an Israeli proposal. Admiral Kirby said it three or four times. Secretary Blinken referred to it as Biden's proposal. I want to get back to Ukraine and Russia before we go. Let me just say one thing. That was a very, very deft diplomatic technique. You say it's virtually the same. Well, where is it not the same? Oh, the most crucial issue. Right. That was an exclusive he gave to Al Jazeera at the G7 in Southern Italy. That his buddy, Bibi, kicked out of Israel. Yeah, correct. Kicked Al Jazeera out. Is Russia preparing for a land war against the West? I think they would be foolish not to. And Putin is anything but foolish. I think he is in a position where he thinks that we are serious about existentially threatening him, bleeding him,

bringing him down, bringing the Russian economy down. I don't see how he could think differently from the insanity that he's viewing otherwise on the other side. So I would be getting my ducks in line and I would be getting prepared for a wider, bigger war. Colonel, today is Flag Day. It's not like the 4th of July or Memorial Day where we all have off, but it must have some significance in the military, does it? Well, it does from the point of view of there are other things that coincide with it, like the 14th of June is the Army's birthday. And that's a very celebrated day just as the Marine Corps. I think it's 10 November for the Marine Corps.

This is their birthday is a very celebrated day. We have dining inns and formal ceremonies and everybody gets dressed up in their really good looking uniforms, which Marines have really good-looking uniforms, and celebrates. So it is a ceremonial day for the services. And it should be for the country because it's Flag Day. It's the day of our stars and stripes. When you look at that flag, do you think of war or peace, Colonel? Today, I think of war. I think of war. And it's not because I've seen all the battle flags, including that huge one that we had over the dinner party we had at State that flew over Fort McHenry. Tattered, still has the British bullet holes or cannon shrapnel holes in it. The Smithsonian provided it for us.

Those are the flags that symbolize America's freedom and the men who died and the women who died, people who sacrificed for that freedom. But today it's very hard to look at that flag. I think the flag hangs in shame to a certain extent today. The last 20 years have been just miserable in terms. Someone told me today, you know, Larry, you had no real sound reputation left after state-sponsored torture. Let me tell you what you've done with Gaza. It's in the grave. It's in the grave. I think he's right. this show starts a segment with the American flag with the phrase, personal liberty, limited government, and peace. That flag doesn't stand for either, for any of those, any longer. I had a long conversation on my Newsmax show, which is on on the weekends. We taped it this morning, with Congressman Thomas Massey,

tells me you could count on one hand the members of Congress who believe that the Constitution actually restrains the federal government. I doubt there's less than, there's probably a dozen. Wow. I don't think there are very many people, and I can testify this from personally speaking with some of them, who even know the Constitution in any real way. Even though every one of them has taken the same oath you took, the same oath I took, same oath Joe Biden took, the same oath a school board janitor takes, which is to preserve, protect, and defend it. Many of them, I i think believe it's an anachronism yes they think it's antiquated yes one of these days we'll have our segment just on the constitution colonel you're a wealth of so much knowledge and you personify personal courage and you're so good to join us uh on a friday afternoon thank you very much sir all the best

to you and we hope hope to see you next week. Thanks for having me. And happy Flag Day. Yes, happy Flag Day to you. Coming up, everybody's favorite, the end of the day, the end of the week, the boys,

Ray McGovern and Larry Johnson, the Intelligence Community Roundtable here on Judging Freedom, four o'clock Eastern. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. Thank you.