Judging Freedom - Daniel McAdams : Trump and His Tariffs.

Episode Date: November 12, 2025

Daniel McAdams : Trump and His Tariffs.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 Wednesday, November 12, 2025. My dear friend Daniel McAdams, joins us now. Dan, a pleasure, my friend. Thank you very much for joining us. I want to spend some time discussing Trump and his tariffs with you and some of the absurd arguments that the Justice Department made before the Supreme Court. But before we get there, I thought I I touch on some hot button issues. The killings in the Caribbean continue to remain in the news, in part because the Secretary of Defense, who calls himself the Secretary of War, keeps announcing more killings. And lately, the news today is that the Crown Prosecution in London, which is what the British call their Department of Justice, advised Prime Minister Starrmer, that it is the the view of their internal legal thinking that these murders are war crimes, and therefore

any intelligence shared by British intelligence to American intelligence would expose British intelligence to prosecution not only at the ICC, but in Great Britain. And therefore, for the first time in history, or since 1947, publicly announced, this may have happened other times, but they didn't announce it. MI6 will not share intel with CIA or any other American intelligence agencies. You know, the British sometimes are worse at this than the Americans, but even a stop clock is right twice a day. So is this going to change American attitudes? Probably not.

No, but I think it's still a very huge thing. And I think the UK is clearly afraid of things like the ICC bringing charges against if they participate in what are clearly extraditional killings by the United States. They've they've blown up 19 boats, I think, by last count and killed several dozens of people. We don't know who they are, as you know. There's no bodies. There's one guy that got out and they let him go, as Senator Paul said the other day. And they're clearly concerned about this. I mean, look, Judge, I think this is going to go down is a massive.

debacle in Donald Trump's presidency. We've got the USS Gerald's War just arriving in theater. What are they going to do? What are they going to lob some, a few bombs? And you remember back in Trump 1.0 with Syria with a so-called chemical attack, which of course was a pack of lies, well, Trump was able to get away with it by lobbing a couple bombs into an empty building and said, we took care of things. I don't think it's going to be that easy with Venezuela. I don't think he's going to get away with it that easy. And I think people are starting to sour on the this foreign policy we saw you may have seen this piece from i'm sorry sean davis the uh founder and ceo of the federalist who is has always been strong pro-trump supporters saying you need to get

out of this obsession with foreign policy and refocus on the united states you know i think that's a bell weather of where conservatism is right now i think that maga is hemorrhaging uh support on the president's foreign policy uh the continued obsequious obeisance to Prime Minister Netanyahu and Israel is killing them. And now this nonsense in Venezuela, do any serious thinkers of whom you are aware articulate the view that the designation of somebody as a narco-terrorist allows the president to kill them, including the designation of President Maduro as a narco-terrorist allows the president to invade Venezuela.

I don't know any serious thinkers, anywhere on the political spectrum. I'm not talking about Lindsey Graham or Tom Cotton. Those guys love other people's blood being spilled. I'm talking about serious thinkers supporting or accepting the president's message. No, absolutely not. And I think you're going to start hearing more about this, even in Congress, believe it or not, the trailing edge of things. You know, of course, when it first happened, you had a lot of the Maga types on X,

elsewhere commenting yeah we're taking care of them finally but at you know boat after boat ship after ship uh people are starting to pay attention i've not seen any serious legal analysis saying the president has the right to do this and look how many republicans when president barak obama would meet on tuesdays i think it was or maybe it was thursday i forget to decide who gets droned that week how many republicans were correctly up in arms of president any president should never have this authority whether it's an american citizen or any person as persons are protected by our constitution because guess what it's not because we're so we're so nice and wonderful because the next person on the list could be you it's just not an this is a no brainer judge

correct correct uh the idea of presidential uh killing you know uh obama boasted about it i'm not going to give Obama credit for having analyzed and discussed each person to be killed, because Obama's view was that that analysis in the basement of the White House was the functional equivalent of due process. It is not the functional equivalent of due process. Due process means a jury trial, confrontation of the evidence against your representation by counsel, and the government's obligation to prove you guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, and to a moral certainty. Whatever happened to due process. You know, Trump signed, I can't call it a secret executive order because it was published, but he signed it in secret, which is out of character for him.

It's National Security Finding Number 7, which directed the federal law enforcement, all of which is unconstitutional, but it does exist, to disrupt meetings, legitimate legal assemblies, gatherings of people to hear political views if they are anti-Christian, anti-capitalist, anti-American. I'm not anti-Christian. I'm not anti-Catholic. I'm not anti-American. You know that. But we'll defend to the death their right to be. Who is the government to interfere with? And the word in the executive order is disrupt. Disrupt these gatherings. Isn't that what Antifa was doing just a few years ago to conservative gatherings they were coming in and disrupting and and shutting them down. This is clearly an attack on speech. And by the way, Judge, what about the hypocrisy of calling for

the disruption of meetings of people with anti-Christian agendas? Mr. President, you just welcomed in the White House yesterday, a man responsible for the deaths of hundreds, I would say probably thousands of Christians, not only in his former career as head of al-Qaeda in Syria or his former, former career as a low-level al-Qaeda worker in Iraq. But literally, the moment he became president, self-proclaimed president of Syria, he began working at the task of killing Christians and Druze and Alawites. This guy's got Christian blood on his hands, but he's perfectly welcome in the White House. Nobody disrupted that meeting. Correct. Correct. When President Trump threatened to invade Nigeria, I think most Americans would have trouble finding Nigeria on the

map, even though it's huge. That's a population of a quarter of a billion people. He said we're going to go in there because the government is permitting the slaughter of Christians. Well, the guy he just embraced is not only permitting, he's causing the slaughter of Christians. So I don't get it. I don't get Trump's thinking. I don't know what they tell him. I don't know what's become of Tulsi Gabbard. I think I understand Marco Rubio, who has blood on his hands, that he can't wash off and the same for Pete Hagseth but Gabbard, where the hell is she?

I mean, the Gabbard that we knew when she was in the House of Representatives was like Thomas Massey. Yeah. Well, I think she learned the lesson very quickly when it came time to attack Iran. She came in with the actual intelligence community, Big Eye, Big C analysis, which has been

consistent since 2006, saying that Iran is not building a bomb. And as you've reported so well on your with your wonderful guests. John Ratcliffe came in and said, no, that's not true. We have new Intel, brand new breaking news. They're going to have a bomb in a couple of days if we don't bomb them. Of course, his source was the Mossad. And I think she had a big slapdown on that. And I think she's been careful. She's very carefully released a couple of statements. I think a couple of weeks ago she said something about regime change is no longer on the menu. That may have been a shot across the bow with regard to Venezuela. But, I mean, I would hate to be here

because I do believe she still has integrity, but she's between Iraq in a hard place. What does she do now? Yeah, when she made that comment, you just talked about the president famously said an Air Force One. I don't care what she says. Yeah, yeah. Even though under the law, she is the chief and theoretically sole advisor to him on intelligence matters. But Ratcliffe, the stenographer for a Assad, as our friend Max Blumenthal calls him, just repeats what Mossad wants him to hear. I don't know how these killings in the Caribbean are going to stop. Our dear friend Rand Paul tried to get a resolution through the Senate and he couldn't break the 60-vote threshold. I don't even know if they'll let Congressman Massey talk about it on the floor of the House where the rules are quite different.

but perhaps the two that survived the killings will engage counsel to sue the president. They don't have to physically be here to do that. That will at least get this issue before a federal judge, and we'll see where it goes from there. Congress is not going to stop him, at least not this Congress. Not yet. I mean, what you'll do is you'll see a critical mass develop eventually, and then every member and senator will say, well, I was always against this. You know, that's what they've always done

with Iraq and everything else. But, Judge, this is a perfect siop because everyone is discussed by what's happened to the inner cities of America. Nobody likes seeing people hunched over in a fentanyl days. It's horrible what's happening.

So what you do is you channel that anger and frustration, particularly on the right, and you use it in a way that gives a state the power that it should never have in the first place in cooler heads like ours and Senator Paul's and masses and others. It's hard to prevail.

You know, just like when Senator Paul said, maybe we shouldn't give $100 billion to Ukraine, and we're just finding out how corrupt another corruption scandal is destroying the country. Nobody wants to hear that in the heat of the moment, and that's the real problem. Ukraine's military is on its last legs. They're yanking young people out of their homes, not only out of bars and places of work, but out of their homes, putting uniforms on them, giving them guns they've never fired, sending them to the front lines. The front lines are virtually deteriorated.

I don't know how much longer this can go on. Meanwhile, the American military industrial complex is still sending weapons there and being paid theoretically by European countries. I don't know where the European countries are getting the money. American intel is still there. American intel is still showing Ukrainian intel how to aim and shoot weapons to kill Russian soldiers. I say we're at war with Russia. Absolutely, it's the case.

And you saw Mayor Klitschko of Kiev come out and say, well, we just need to recruit younger people, younger kids. What a ghoul this guy is, you know? And the fact of the matter is it doesn't work because this has been out for quite some time. If you look at the demographic demographics of Ukraine, the people, young men of the age of 18 to 25, they just don't exist in Ukraine. That was a period in Ukraine where there just wasn't,

weren't a lot of births. And what you're basically doing, I mean, think about this, Judge, this is a kind of a Holocaust. You're going to destroy all of the men of Ukraine who are able to carry the country into future generations. And we know that they're dying. They're arriving on the front line with maybe, if they're lucky, a couple of days of experience, maybe someone will show them which end of the gun that you shoot from and shoot out of. And that's about it. Right after that, they're blown up. And we're seeing on every single sector of the front, massive Ukraine massive Russian gains. Pofkrosk has already been defeated. They said it would never go. So Lensky himself said a few days ago, maybe after a little white powder, that no, no, we've got

the Russians. We've got the Russians circled in Prokhovs. You guys got it backwards. Well, it's funny, but it's not funny. But the whole thing is disintegrating. And I think it's, well, it might have been nice to be right all the time. I think this is where things get dangerous because the Europeans aren't backing down. And just one final thought on this, this is a period right now where Trump could actually make a difference. He could be the peace president.

The Europeans on their last leg, they have no money, they have no weapons to give Ukraine, but they're desperate to escalate right now. Trump could put the kibosh on it right now if you played the game right, but I just don't see it coming from his administration right now. Do you think Marco Rubio wants peace?

Don't know. That's like a garlic to a empire. Right. He and Lindsay would commit haricurry if there were peace to break out somewhere. You know, as Lindsay said, we're killing all the right people. What a great day for America. What a ghoul. Here's a British, or excuse me, a member of the Knesset,

just unleashing on Prime Ministering Netanyahu. Of course, we have the English translation. She's rather animated, and he's rather smug. Watch this, Daniel. Cut number seven, Chris. I blame you, Benjamin Netanyahu. I blame you for the mindset. in october the greatest disaster this country has ever known happened on your watch even if you

sleep with a clear conscience we will not forget we will cry out over the abandonment and a state commission of inquiry will be established i blame you netanyahu your personal corruption has become a national plague every corrupt person becomes your partner the bigger the file you have on someone the more convenient they are for you i blame you netanyahu because you have forgotten what it means to be Jewish. Trump returned hostages in your place while you shamelessly were busy trying to get him to grant a pardon. I blame you Netanyahu. Racism has always served you. It has torn us apart from within. You turned half the nation into an enemy. We will cleanse the poison you have poured here for 30 years. We will return to being a united

society. I blame you Netanyahu. I blame you Netanyahu. Yes. I know, is that going to go anywhere? If that brings back the old adage of looks could kill. I mean, if you see the look on the face of Netanyahu when he sees this reminds me of Michael Corleone and the Third Godfather when he looks on at Kay after she arrives, I mean, I've never seen anything like it. You know, I wrote a piece,

and you are very kind in a personal note to me about it regarding the fall of Chowcchescu, and all it took were a couple of people to stand up to him and destroy this artificial edifice that he had built. and that's to me at least that's what it looks like with this young woman just brutally attacking him but the interesting thing about this as well is that just today judge president trump sent a letter to the president of israel saying you've got to pardon netanyahu so when the tide is turning against him both internally and externally here comes president trump waiting in

interfering in the internal legal affairs of israel and doing it on a side that probably 80 percent of Americans absolutely reject. Isaac Herzog, the president of Israel, said if anybody is interested in the pardon, there's a process and they should apply for it, which apparently Nathaniel was not yet done for political reasons. If he does it, it'll become public and it'll look like he thinks he's guilty if he's asking for a pardon. So he asked his buddy Donald Trump to do it. Chris, can you put the letter up again? Look at Trump's signature underneath Donald J. Trump, President of the United States of America. Now, what president of the United States has to

identify who they are below their signature on official White House stationary, except this guy? I'm surprised you didn't have underneath it. The greatest president of the hottest country in the world. Right. Right. And everybody says on the greatest. It's not just me. Everybody says on the greatest. So last week in the oral argument in the Supreme Court on tariffs, Daniel, I'm sure you know this, so it's a lead-up to the question. The DOJ told the Supreme Court the tariffs are not about money. It's about foreign policy, and in foreign policy, the president is supreme and the courts can't second-guess him. Yesterday, the president of the United States announced, we sent the wrong figures to the Supreme Court, and the DOJ has to correct them.

if they order the tariffs returned, it will require the undoing of, you ready for this number? They have collected $230 billion in tariffs, but if ordered returned, it will require the undoing of $3 trillion. Now, nobody knows where Trump got this number. If the DOJ submits that to the Supreme Court, A, will be unlawful because the Supreme Court cannot consider something that was not before the trial court. B, it will totally undermine the DOJ's argument that tariffs are not about money. C, who even believes the DOJ's argument that tariffs are not about money? Because D, the Constitution says only Congress can impose a tax, which is what a tariff is. And I just noticed before we started speaking, Judge, the betting markets, which I think are a great indicator,

they are dropping like a stone on whether the Supreme Court will rule in favor or of or against Trump. I think it was 40-some percent believed that would rule in favor of Trump. And now it's down to like 20 percent after some of the early oral arguments in this case. I mean, this could have massive, massive implications for the U.S., which makes you wonder if he wasn't trying to sweeten the pie by offering everyone a $2,000 stimulus check, you know, in an attempt to change public opinion about the tariffs. I think you're probably right. I mean, I don't know where the money would. The government is a known bankrupt.

It's in debt $38 trillion. What is it going to do? Borrow money to give $2,000 checks to the middle class to bribe them to be in favor of the tariffs. Does he really think that that is going to animate Neil Gorsuch and John Roberts on the Supreme Court, two conservative Republicans who seemed decidedly against the government's argument on tariffs during oral argument? insulting their intelligence when he does nonsense like that and it was so bad that even scott besson had to come up and say well he didn't really mean two thousand dollar checks people some people may find that they'll get a tax break in on their tips or maybe taxes on social security

so here he is almost immediately walking this thing back because as uh as strange as he's proven to be in treasury i think he still understands the basic math of what president trump is trying to promise. I think you're right. I think you're right. And it's very telling when Trump makes these wild claims. I wish that Secretary Bessett were here now, I would ask him, where did the president get this $3 trillion number from? I realize if they reverse the tariffs retroactively, which I don't think they'll do, it would be an economic nightmare. It is unknown how some of these tariffs were paid. Some were paid by the consumers. Some were paid by the importer. some were paid by the transporter some were paid by the manufacturer it's hard to pay it back the court will

not unwind them retroactively but prohibit them prospectively the court can't order the government to do something that's impossible to do you know one of your regular guests on the show is someone i've admired for many years and that's alister crook we've republished him for many years and he had a great piece out where he talked about in the UK, for example, how the voters were so disgusted by the Conservative Party, but there were no alternatives. So they voted for labor, which essentially has the same policies. I mean, we're seeing that here. All of these things are wonderful nuggets dropping onto the lap of the Democratic Party when we're moving up to the midterms. All of this stuff, the terror of chaos, every single thing. If there was any substance to the

party, of course, we would be cheering it, but we'll get more of the same. But he keeps dropping these nuggets in their loves. Wow. Daniel, thank you very much. A pleasure to chat with you, my dear friend. Give my regards to the gold standard in libertarian thinking that you get to work with every day, the great Dr. Ron Paul. Thank you, Judge. Okay. All the best to you. Thank you. Coming up later today, at 2 o'clock, Aaron Mate, and at 3 o'clock from St. Petersburg,

Russia, Scott Ritter, Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. Thank you.