Judging Freedom - Jim Webb : Trump Butchers DC Landscape

Episode Date: September 22, 2026

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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? 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 Tuesday, September 22nd, 2006. Jim Webb will be with us in just a minute. Why is Trump and how is Trump butchering the D.C. landscape? And what does he mean when he says annihilate the people of Iran? But first this. If you're serious about preparedness like I am, head over to preparewithachogeth.com right now. Let me tell you why. Our partners over at my patriot supply are the experts when it comes to emergency food and they're serious about making sure you have what you need. And in honor of National Preparedness Month, they're giving every customer who gets their best-selling three-month

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prepare with the judge.com. Jim Webb, welcome here, my dear friends. Nice to see you, as it was a pleasant surprise to see you last week. Shortly before we came on air, President Trump told the General Assembly that he's confronted with the decision in which he might need to annihilate Iran. I'm going to play the clip and then ask you your thoughts. Chris, cut number 12. But I have a big decision to make. Will a deal be made with Iran that lets them rebuild and create a far greater country than it ever was before? Maybe one of the greatest in the Middle East or even the world. Or do I annihilate the Islamic Republic and do it quickly, never giving them a chance to kill and destroy people and countries again?

do I drive them into hell with no chance of survival and no hope of future greatness or generations? But I believe we'll make a deal right after the election. Colonel McGregor said that that was the manifestation of somebody who thinks their God. I don't think Colonel McGregor is wrong, Judge. If you count the number of eyes, I lost track of it while I was watching that. That is somebody who is definitely on some kind of megal. a maniacal tip. And it is absolutely embarrassing that this man is out there in front representing the people of the United States to talk so casually and make threats about effectively erasing

an entire society. And I mean, he can't be doing anything short of suggesting the use of nuclear weapons because our conventional forces have not had any impact on Iran thus far to any kind of substantive degree whatsoever. But this is a I think this is a good. case if Congress had the gumption to use the 25th Amendment because he is out there talking about something he wants to do by himself in regards to another country, which would undoubtedly further stain the honor of the United States. And I mean, uncork, Lord only knows what should he choose to do that. You know, there's another group of people and I'm curious to know your thoughts on what they think of him when he talks like this. And that's active duty.

military you are not that long out of the Marines i know you're a marine forever but you're not that long out of active duty okay i should have said it properly the first time but what are the troops think when they hear something that sounds like the president is a madman i mean that's a that's a great question i can't speak for everybody judge but they can't be happy with this um this is the this has absolutely no bearing on the national security of the united United States. Iran did not present a direct threat to the American homeland or even a tangential threat to the American homeland prior to Trump deciding to kick off his own little personal war. And if you take a look at the rhetoric he's using, it's once again, it's all about him.

This is all about him. He has been stymied the entire way. He didn't know what he was doing when he got into this. And now it's all about his own ego trying to find a way to, I guess, I guess, win. but to suggest that we are going to have young men and women in this country either invade Iran and effectively eradicate their society, which would be a war crime on any number of degrees, or to use nuclear weapons against a country that didn't pose any threat to the United States whatsoever, cannot be good for morale on any level whatsoever. And I'm hoping that these folks look back on their training, particularly if he's suggesting the use of nukes to disobey unlawful. orders. We are not in a state of war. There has been not even a use of an authorization, the use of force been approved by Congress to this point. And I could tell you right now, if I was out there, I would not do it. You know, it's interesting you use the word or phrase war crime. It is clearly a war crime under the Geneva Conventions to threaten to eradicate

civilians. Just like it's a war crime when the Israeli leadership says we're going to mow the grass. We all know that that's a euphemism for slaughter indiscriminately Palestinian people. Colonel McGregor also recently told us that, well, let me ask you about nuclear weapons. when I said to Colonel McGregor suppose he says to General King get the nuclear weapons ready he doesn't have to say that they're already ready

right there are nuclear-tipped weapons on aircraft carriers in submarines and of course there are major nuclear devices stored certainly in Great Britain probably in Germany

and maybe in France and some in Romania or Poland. I think I'm remembering this correctly. How easy is it? Do you know for the president to engage either Hiroshima and Nagasaki-like weapon or a more low-yield tactical one? That's a fantastic question, Judge. I'm going to ask for your forgiveness on the front end here.

I'm going to talk around it a bit. But the first part about it is, what he did in front of the UN is definitely a violation of the Geneva Convention, but also to suggest that you're going to use nuclear weapons on an entire country would be a war crime. It is way outside the bounds of the law of proportionality, which governs the laws of armed conflict. You are not supposed to use, I would say, an ant to smash a sledgehammer here.

Furthermore, you're not supposed to cause undue civilian casualties. in any situation which you can possibly avoid it. This is a war of choice, and we would be choosing to use nuclear weapons on a country just to break them, is what it sounds like, just to break them. And it would undoubtedly target and unduly punish the civilian population of that country. Now, how easy is it? I mean, that is an issue of executive authority. And as you know, probably better than anybody else, this country, not this country, but I mean, yeah, this country is kind of off the rail. when it's come to that issue.

Congress is nowhere to be found. We no longer have three co-equal branches of government. And when you're starting to look at the U.S. military, it's going to come down to, in that situation, in my opinion, the ability for somebody to say no, for somebody to step out like you so eloquently spoke about last week, effectively a whistleblower, someone's willing to have their career in that environment terminated

to do the right thing to tell them. the president know and to tell the American public about what's really going on behind the scenes. Well, you know, we have a Congress that is profoundly influenced and even controlled by the American Israeli political action committee because that umbrella group has contributed significantly to the campaigns of over 350 members of Congress. And we have a president who's probably under the of the same mentality, if not the same people, what Professor Mir Schumer calls the Israel lobby. So let me get this.

In 2006, two-thirds of the federal government is controlled by a foreign power? Yeah. And I was listening to Max Blumenthal's interview with Tucker Carlson yesterday. And it goes well beyond that, according to him. And I think there's a lot of evidence to back it up. It goes all the way down to the state government.

If you look at the anti-boycott, divest, and sanction laws, BDS laws coming out of state legislatures in places like Texas, they've got their tentacles all the way down. It's all through our system of government. And when you go up to the federal level, there are very few representatives who are not taking money from APAC. the most, I guess the most popular one, the most famous one is about to no longer be a member of Congress. And Thomas Massey, he had he had the gumption and I shall say, sentically, the misjudgment to go up against them. And they got rid of them. And the reports coming out of the executive branch inside the White House even are absolutely unreal. And Blumenthal's interview, I thought, was incredibly brave to go out there and say everything he did.

But it confirms what we've been told for so long that they're picking our cabinet members. They're directly telling the president what to do. And in effect, the president is saying, yes, sir, to BB Netanyahu as if he is his boss. Yes, boss, I think was the phrase that was used. And this is something that really troubles me. I never thought that this country, you know, something that my ancestors fought so hard to carve away from Great Britain, in order to get our own serenity and our own way of life, would be so casually handed over to just a tiny state in the Middle East

that exists because we allow it to. And it borderline enrages me. And that's an understatement. It absolutely enrages me that that is the situation that we are in today. And one thing I give a lot of thought to is like, how do we take this back? How do we end up getting the right people back in the positions of power in this country? and unfortunately I can't find a great answer to it because no matter where I've worked, whether it's Capitol Hill or whether it's been on campaigns for senators, campaigns for president, these folks control the gates to who can be a candidate and then influence them via donations, via probably other means. I mean, you can't rule that out, how they operate once they get there, what they're allowed to say, what policies they're allowed to put forward. And if you have to

have such, you know, such tight gatekeeping on the process, it makes, you know, the entry point for good, solid Americans who are everywhere, just it's, it's almost unattainable, but we're running up against situation right now in Iran in particular where the, the fissures in the society, whether it's DOD, whether it's our governmental process, whether it's even the base competence of those who control the levels of power within the cabinet are being exposed. And it's putting us in a very precarious situation where if we don't find a way to do this soon, and I'm not sure the Democrats are a better answer to be quite frank, and they're going to win the midterms, but if we don't get this done soon, you know, I am absolutely petrified of what kind of

country my kids are going to inherit. Here's a still shot of the president, and I'll read what's what's under the frame. He said he touts being a peacemaker. At the same time, he asks if he should annihilate Iran. I mean, this is vanity over the top before we get to what he's doing in Washington, D.C. Are the troops resentful that he's a notorious draft dodger, five different deferments because of the so-called problems with his feet? Yeah, so I got to catch this a bit. So on active duty, I don't hear too much because the type of attitude that these folks are brought forward. I mean, look at Max Blumenthal as an example. They go after anybody who shows any kind of dissent. Pete Heggseth is running a completely different DOD, rooting out so-called leakers who aren't even leakers. So it's instilled a culture of fear from top to bottom. On the veteran side, though, people who can now freely speak their mind and aren't subject to the UCMJ.

One of the favorite phrases I hear is President Bonespurs. You know, and personally, I find a comical that this guy likes to get up there and effectively espouse war porn left and right when he took every single action necessary to avoid going to combat when his time was called. Well, what is he doing in Washington, D.C.? We know he's building monuments to himself. And we know this one has particularly gotten under your skin and under the skin of your great father. This is the 250 foot tall triumphal march. What?

To guard a cemetery? Yeah. Well, so this is two pieces here. You know, it's kind of comically. I played a lot of Command to Conquer back in the day when I was a kid. and this appears to be some sort of like, would have been a fantastic weapon for a video game. And that's kind of where the president's heads at.

It's like a kid. Veterans, particular, we don't want this monument. It's a triumphal arch of what? We'd much rather have a system that stopped sending our peers off to pointless wars. And if you want to look at, you know, kind of physical evidence to that, just look at how much Ron Paul had donated to him by the Act of Duty Force and veterans back in 2008. and hasn't gotten any weaker. The main thing that my peers tied into with Trump,

each time he ran was the promise of no stupid wars. He was going to be the president of peace. But when you take a look at that monument, it is absolutely abhorrent. It is a monument to himself. It strokes his ego. And there's no need for it. But the big thing it breaks apart in terms of the skyline

is the look from the least, mansion down to the Lincoln Memorial. And that was very consciously done. The country was divided at the Potomac River between North and South. And it was supposed to be an absolutely deliberate attempt for reconciliation between Lee, who, although not president of the South, was in effect the leader of the South and the Lee Mansion up on top of the hill. And the Lincoln Memorial at its base. They look at each other, slightly offset, probably indicative of the fact that they didn't really get along on everything. You know, secession being a key piece of that. And this arch would block that view. And it's run into legal trouble. And the big piece of this is the fact that you need Congress involved. And there has been

a continuous drumbeat from this administration to bypass Congress, to squash Congress, to circumvent Congress to get people out of Congress who aren't in lockstep and it is a message of removing their status as a co-equal branch of government. By declaring this a for some reason, you know, you can you can decide for yourself why they might put snipers and drones there. The legal part of it is that it would move it into DOD construction under US Title 10 of the US code, making it much easier to build under four different provisions. There's 2802, 05, and 08. But in effect, this would make it a move it from the National Park Service to becoming

a military installation. And the president can choose a national emergency to do construction. The secretary, Hegset, who's never going to say no to him, can determine the project is vital to national security. And then they can execute the construction of it so long as it has a military purpose. What would its military purpose be? That's a great question. That's a fantastic question.

I look no further than the fact that he now has a 29% approval rating. And it is for intimidation purposes. You can't make an argument to me that there is any other kind of military purpose to this. It sits less than a mile from the Pentagon or maybe it's just about a mile in a very tourist heavy area. in a major traffic artery, there's never been even like a crime problem there. So to say you need snipers and drones on Memorial Bridge is to say that you're directing them at the American people.

There's really no other way of putting it. Wow. Why ban reporters from the White House? Why make a government decision based on the content of someone else's speech when the First Amendment has been interpreted for a, hundred years to prohibit that. It's because you're losing control of the narrative. You have a bunch of policies that the American people do not like.

And you can no longer control what your messaging is actually getting across. And J.D. Vance had a very interesting and kind of a telling comment about it where he said the reporting coming out of these, I guess, these papers, is 92% negative. And that doesn't match up with the. actual, you know, opinion polls of Americans. Well, I mean, yeah, 29% approve. Two-thirds of America disapproves of the Iran War. So I guess there's a very small delta in there from, you know, from what he would consider balanced. And at the very end of that, he said that they should, you know, basically get in step with what a actual news agency is supposed to do. And to me, that means that he is, he is saying they should be a state outlet. They should just read the

press releases and regurgitate it. And that's very unfortunate. But then again, you go back to President Trump. And he said that this is to squash free speech straight up. He does not want these outlets reporting against them because I guess it hurts his feelings. And when you get to that point, you just have state media. And we're not a country that should have state media. We've never had it.

We've had this fourth unofficial column of government, which is out there to do over. watch to do the reporting that is needed for us to make up our minds in a very logical fashion about whether or not the people in power are good for the people of the United States. And when you have a president who has made $2 billion in a year and his kids have made another $2 billion in year and when his top officials, the Speaker of the House and the Secretary of State are both on the record saying that the president unilaterally without consulting in Congress, took the country to war on behalf of Israel, then no wonder you wouldn't want this kind of reporting to happen because it violates the entire foundation of what this country is

supposed to be, a representative democracy. Great stuff, Jim. Thank you very much, my dear friend. Thank you for your kind words. Oh, no problem. Thanks for taking the time to join us today. Absolutely, my pleasure, Judge. Who's visiting your podcast?

Well, it's the Jim Webb podcast on YouTube. And it's been, we're going to have Alexander McCurris on next week. He was at the event last week with you. And also I would suggest everybody out there go check out Judge Napolitano's speech. It was absolutely incredible. And big congratulations to you, Judge, on your award. You truly deserve it. Thank you.

Thank you, Jim. All the best. My regards, as always to your youthful father. Not my grandfather. We'll see you again. soon. Thank you. Yes, sir. Appreciate it. Sure. Coming up next, if you're watching us live in 38 minutes at 3 o'clock on all of this, Lieutenant Colonel Karen Kwikowski, Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom.