Judging Freedom - COL. Lawrence Wilkerson : Why Trump Is Wedded to Israel

Episode Date: March 26, 2026

COL. Lawrence Wilkerson : Why Trump Is Wedded to IsraelSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Undeclared wars are commonplace. Pragically, our government engages in preemptive war, otherwise known as aggression with no complaints from the American people. Sadly, we have become accustomed to living with the illegitimate use of force by government. To develop a truly free society, the issue of initiating force must be understood and rejected. What if sometimes to love your country you had to alter or abolish the government? the government? What if Jefferson was right? What if that government is best, which governs least?

What if it is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong? What if it is better to perish fighting for freedom than to live as a slave? What if freedom's greatest hour of danger is now? Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for judging freedom. Today is Thursday, March 26, 2006, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson joins us now. Colonel Larry, welcome here, my dear friend. Thank you for accommodating my schedule. We had some technical issues, but you are well worth the weight, young man, and I appreciate your dedication to this cause. Colonel, the Pentagon is apparently considering diverting U.S. military aid from Iran to Israel. A, does this surprise you? B, what is this mean? I think it means exactly what it sounds like it means. Israel is in deep trouble right now.

And let me back up and give you a real taste of the trouble they're in. Most of the video of late has shown simply nothing going up and lots coming in from both Hezbollah and Iran. And it's coming in with a rare synchronicity and planning and talking and talking and talking. targeting, and it is hitting almost everything at which it is targeted. Some serious damage is being done to Israel, and there is nothing going up in the way of air defense. It is so bad that, in fact, Iran is probably going to shift back to its cheaper versions, and is to say, drones primarily, and continue to pummel Israel because they don't even have the capacity to shoot those down now.

So it's growing increasingly perilous. I misspoke when I asked you a question. This is my fault. The diversion is from Ukraine to Israel. That's the same thing. Correct. They're trying to get more in there and give them some kind of capability.

Now, the only reason there aren't just thousands of Israeli WIA and even KIA is because they've been confined to the bunkers underground. They cannot live above ground now. They live in the bunkers. The other aspect of this I was not totally aware of, I suspected it until Ted Postall called me.

You know Ted. Right. I got it down at William & Mary and had me on the phone for about 40 minutes explaining to me this situation. I go back to Kongsak Jew and Yi-Gun in North Korea when Jim Kelly was negotiating with them and offering them this huge package of economic incentives, and Yguin stopped him mid-sentence

and essentially said, we already have the bomb. Blew Jim away. I mean, he was the Secretary of State for that region. Blew him away. Well, here's what Ted told me. He believes, and I think he gave me enough evidence for that belief to convince me,

that the Iranians underground, not only, let's go back, they not only survive the marvelous bombing of Donald Trump's B2 bombers, etc., etc., they survive with most everything intact. So they are deep underground right now, and he thinks that they are making a nuclear weapon and that they soon will reveal

that they have that nuclear weapon, or two or three or four, as Kamakshu said, we've got six to 12. And that will change, the entire picture because they've shown they have the ability to fire these Qomshah and other hypersonic missiles. They put that warhead on that. And we have an entirely different ballgame, one with an intensely dangerous perspective for the entire region and need for the world. Is Trump desperate?

I watched that cabinet meeting, Judge. I only had a few minutes. I got out of the car and my daughter told me about it and I turned it on YouTube and I went straight to the minute for Whitkoff giving his presentation and it was so sycophantic I had to go back and watch some of the earlier stuff, the Secretary of the Energy, for example. Those people, Judge, have their heads so far up Trump's derrier that they couldn't see the sunlight, let alone tell the truth. most of the things that were being said at that cabinet meeting to that now as as Jeff says Jeff Sack says this megalomaniac who's showing it more and more and more even if he were not that he could not possibly make a decision based on what they're telling him because what they're

telling him is all pablum and most of its lies and I want to ask myself you know Where have you been, Whitkoff? Where has Kushner been? Well, you've been out there making billions of dollars for yourself. You certainly haven't been doing diplomacy. And you're lying here in front of the president of the United States in a cabinet meeting about a serious issue, possibly one of the most serious issues confronting not only Southwest Asia,

but the world at the moment. And you're lying. Your sycophancy is so deep and so profound that you're lying in a cabinet meeting on national telephemy. television in order to make more favor and more money for yourself. This is incredible. Here is the extent of the lies as they sink into whatever Trump has between his ears. Here he is two days ago claiming, Colonel, did you know we've already won the war?

Of course. Number 13, Chris. Well, I think we're going to end it. I can't tell you for sure. You know, I don't like to say this. We've won this. This war has been won. The only one that likes to keep it going is the fake news.

I mean, the New York Times. You read the New York Times. It's like we're not winning a war where they have no Navy and they have no Air Force and they have no nothing. And we literally have planes flying over Tehran and other parts of their country. They can't do a thing about it. That was a series of lies there, Judge. It's incredible, but he's getting this. I'm sure he's getting this from someone, probably Heggseth.

That's probably the only one really giving him this kind of information. We're not flying over the skies of Iran with impunity. We're shooting most of our things from off the territory of Iran. And, well, we should be in order to protect our own pilots, and we have the capability to do that. The other thing that just doesn't make any sense there is what they're telling him is contrary to what others in the region, though, including those countries who are supposed to be our allies.

So you wonder what they're determining is going to be their next course of action. And I don't just mean so to Arabia and Bahrain and other countries like that. I mean countries like Pakistan, Pakistan who's got nuclear weapons too. And we're looking at a conflagration that could bring a lot of other people in very swiftly. And I don't think the president has the, remotest concept of that. Here's what he said at 6.30 this morning, Colonel. The Iranian negotiators are very different and strange.

They are begging us to make a deal, which they should be doing since they have been militarily obliterated with zero chance of a comeback, and yet they publicly state that they're only looking at our proposal. Wrong. They better get serious soon before it's too late, because once that happens, there is no turning back and it won't be pretty, President DJT. Does he actually think that negotiations are going on? Well, are negotiations going on?

Or is it like a four step, A to B, B to C, C to D, D to E? More of the latter. I don't think meaningful negotiations are going on at all. And I'll tell you when he says things, like we've destroyed their Navy. Well, Donald Trump, their Navy was not a significant component of their defense capability. We've destroyed their air force. Well, Donald Trump, they didn't really have an air force. We've destroyed everything about them above ground. Well, Donald Trump, what's potent that they have is underground, deep underground, in granite. So he doesn't even know the situation, Judge. And I can't

believe that he's that stupid. I mean, I can believe a lot of stupidity, but he's not that stupid. So he's got to be listening to people he thinks are telling him roughly the truth. So our mutual friends, Scott Ritter and Jeff Sachs are of the belief that American Intel told him, this thing is not going to be over in a weekend, and you're not going to get the Iranians to riot and overthrow their government. The senior generals told him the same thing. But Netanyahu told him, oh, Mossad's got it all ready to go. We got agents on the ground. Just kill the Ayatollah.

If you don't want to do it, we'll do it for you. Give us some cover and the revolution will start. And he apparently believed that. So you have the president of the United States rejecting the intelligence findings of his entire intelligence community, not just the CIA, all 17 of those groups with which you're familiar. And rejecting a senior military leadership and instead taking the advice of a foreign military. I'm not sure there's all that's all that's to it though. I think Trump has walked himself into what he even recognizes is a deadly trap politically and militarily, certainly security-wise for the region and perhaps even for the empire.

And he doesn't know how to get out of it. And Beebe's information appeals to him more and instinct tells me this than the intelligence community or any other sane voice he might be hearing. And he thinks Beebe is the man who can get him out of it, ultimately. And of course, what Beebe is doing is playing him like the fool he seems to be now. Because Beebe wants this to go on interminably, doesn't even care about what's happening to his own people. Probably wouldn't even care if Iran did break the boogaboo and shoot a nuclear weapon at him if he were still alive, because he'd just shoot 50 back at them. Bibi is entrenched in his own existential status now, and he wants Trump to be there with him in the foxhole, in the pit, to the very last moment.

And he'll do anything to create the atmosphere and the chemistry that's necessary to do that. Colonel, watch this. It's from 1990. You'll know immediately who it is. He's still around. He was a young man then. But this is profound. Chris number number 16. You have also said that Congress is an Israeli-occupied territory. Now, what do you mean by that? I said on the McLaughlin Group in response to a question, Jim. They said, do you think that the Congress of the United States will resist this demand for further aid? I said, throughout a crack I'd heard.

I said, no, the Congress of the United States is Israeli-occupied territory. What I bet by that is the most powerful lobby in Washington, which Congress can't stand up to, one of the most powerful, is certainly the pro-Israeli lobby. It has gotten its way in this town year in and year out. And I don't think the automatic votes of the Congress of the United States for three and four billion dollars worth of aid to Israel are necessarily in the national interest of the United States. And that comment, which is to ridicule the subservience of the Congress of the United States is perfectly valid. When a powerful lobby can influence or defeat them back at home and they can't get much

support on the other side for a vote. Many of them who will even tell you privately, they will tell you privately, I can't stand up to that kind of heat they will vote for it. Was Pap Buchanan right then and is he right now? He was right then and he's right now even more so because then there was at least occasional pushback. Not anymore. We are up BB Netanyahu's dairy air as much as Trump's cabinet is up his. Why is Trump so wedded to Israel? Is it all money? I think that's a huge component of it,

but I really think he's walked himself into a cul-de-sac now, and he has no idea how to get out of it, and so he's grasping at things that he, in the past, has been able to trust to extract him, and they're not going to extract him. They're just in the case of Israel, and Bibi in particular, going to suck him in deeper.

Wow. And look at what they're doing to Lebanon, Judge. Man, I've got people in Beirut. They're bombing restaurants. They're bombing hotels. They're bombing dry cleaners. They're bombing the bejesus out of Lebanon. And I guarantee you they have no intention of leaving.

How depleted our U.S. ammunition reserves, Colonel? Significantly, when you look at the, the, the, circumstances in Southwest Asia vis-a-vis Southwest Asia. Not so much so when you look globally. I mean, we can steal from Korea, we can steal from Germany, we can steal from Japan, we can take things from other places. I just had a conversation with an Italian, for example, who's really angry about what we have done to Italy, turning it in essentially and taking very, very precious land to Italians to do it,

turning it into a depot for Southwest Asia has nothing to do with NATO. It's all about Southwest Asia and it's all about Israel. This is going to hit the Italian press in the next week or two. It's going to be a devastating admission by the Italian government. But that's true. And if we raked all that in from all the rest of the world, which is what we're doing right now, then we could produce quite a bit more. But not enough to stand up to the missalry that Iran has over time.

That's the problem. We will run out before they do. Colonel, I want to play a clip for you from an ex-marine by the name of Jim Webb. I think you knew his grandfather. I know Jim well. Only man I ever gave thousands of dollars to to run for cars. All right. He was the secretary in the Navy and then U.S. senator from Virginia.

Here's the grandson being interviewed by Tucker Carlson, with some very strong things to say about what happens when the U.S. Marines become mercenaries? Chris? As of right now, I hate to say this. I love this country. I am not as proud of anything as I am as my service in the Marine Corps. But I will not let my kids join because of the way that we went to war with Iran. because if you look at it philosophically,

we have gone to war on behalf of another country to further their interest. Those are not my words. The administration has said as much. Speaker of the House has said as much. And when that's the case, you know, you have reduced our military to effectively a mercenary force. And there's no honor in that. You know, this is an offensive.

War of Choice. I found out something at William and Mary from my student military veteran coordinator on campus. He's a former Marine. He's not a former Marine. Marines are never former. Right, right, right, right. Ritter has corrected me many times. I didn't realize this. You know, everyone else is missing their recruiting goals, including the Army badly now. And the Marines have been just scraping by each. year. I always thought it was the beauty of their uniforms and their history and everything else. Well, what I found out from these two Marines who know the Corps as well as anyone is that, yeah,

we're barely making our recruiting, but we are losing a third of our Marines every year. In other words, they aren't reenlisting. They aren't staying. And I said, why do you think that is? He said, these stupid wars. How do the troops feel? Maybe this is a question, but Dennis Fritz, but you can certainly answer it with all your experience in the military and the State Department, about fighting a war for a foreign country at the direction of a foreign country. Not good. Not good.

That was another subject we brought up, and we had some soldiers there, too. You may be aware of this professor of military science at ODU, who was killed recently. We don't know whether it was a terrorist or what. In the U.S.? Yeah, at Old Dominion University. And he, when he was killed, as I understand it, we were talking about it,

when Mary, there were two of his PMS students, his ROTC students in the room, and they killed the guy. They're having a memorial service for him in a couple of weeks over there. I didn't even know anything about it. It kind of got tamped down and wasn't covered. very widely. But this is another example as we were talking about these different ROTC

detachments of how even people are committed and have taken the oath, so to speak, and are in a uniform and on a college campus going through an ROTC program are having second thoughts and third thoughts about where they are and what they're doing. Here's a...

It's not good for the country, Judge. It's just not good for the country to have Marines like that there, Marines like I was talking to, and others who are doubting the, and Marines just don't do this, doubting the reason why they are in or not going in because they do doubt. Where do you think this is going, Colonel? Not anywhere good. Not for us, for sure. What happens when troops are on the ground? I've heard two estimates.

Larry Johnson says it's as low as 10,000. Scott Ritter says it's as high as 50,000. Now, if you put the 82nd and the full group there together with the two muse and maybe some others, you might get that high, but I doubt it very seriously because we're going to be really hurt the moment we land anywhere. And to follow up with troops that we don't have in great capacity after some tragedy like that would be utterly stupid. I'm talking about the Trump administration, so maybe I ought to back up and say it would be a catastrophe. We do not have enough people, Judge, to take on Iran on the ground. We would have casualties out the yin-yang. And even if we put, you know, the entire army, we couldn't, we couldn't any given day judge,

a good 10 to 15 percent of the army is undeployable. So let's say you put 300,000 troops. over there. You'd have to scrape the bottom of the barrel and send them. Where are you going to put them? And where are you going to forward move them? And how are you going to get them into the country? You don't have that many parachutes. You don't have that many paratroopers. You don't have that many LSTs. You don't have any LSTs that will survive what they're going to have to survive what are LSTs, Colonel. You know, landing ship troops. You remember them from Normandy. They're a little more sophisticated today. They can fight their way onto the beach. They're armored, and the Marines can fight them

all the way in the, in shore. But you don't have any places to do this, not that won't be interdicted majorly by fire from every kind of missile that Iran has. This is a suicide mission. Wow. Here's as somebody else you may know from your time in the State Department, former Congressman James Trafficant. This is 2012. Cut number 18. I believe that Israel has a powerful stranglehold on the American government. They control both members of the House, the House and the Senate.

They have us involved in wars of which we have little or no interest. Our children are coming back in body bags. Our nation is bankrupt over these wars. And if you open your mouth, you get targeted. And if they don't beat you at the poll, they'll put you in prison. It's an objective assessment that no one will have the courage to speak about. They're controlling much of our foreign policy. They're influencing much of our domestic policy.

They push definitely, definitely to try and get Bush before he left to move into Iran. We're conducting expansionist policy of Israel, and everybody's afraid to say it. They control much of the media. They control much of the commerce of the country. And they control powerfully both bodies of the Congress. They own the Congress. Right now, it's like the canon. Exactly.

Or as Chief Master Sergeant Dennis Fritz, that you've had on your show, is written in his book with indisputable sources, including himself, who was in Douglas Fice's office for a long time. Israel got us into the 2003 war with Iraq. And Netanyahu said the same things, the very same things, as did Eric Sharon, that they're saying today, oh, this will be a cakewalk. This will be easy. There'll be no problem.

And when Sodom is saying falls, everything will be copacetic. The world will be a better place. This is the same story over and over again. And we fall for it every time, but we fall for it because of what he was saying, and what others have said, the money that pours into the coffers of the people who are supposed to be our representatives in Washington. Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, always a pleasure, my dear friend, no matter what we're talking about. Always worth waiting for. Always fascinating to chat with you, my dear friend. Let me know if you're going to be up in the New York City area again so I can kiss your head.

Getting Balder and Balder. Thank you, Colonel. God love you. Have a nice weekend. You too. You too. Thank you. If you're watching us live in 23 minutes at 3 o'clock on these same subjects, Colonel Douglas McGregor, Judge Napolitano for judging freedom.