Judging Freedom - Kyle Anzalone : Trump's Wild Threats

Episode Date: April 20, 2026

Kyle Anzalone : Trump's Wild ThreatsSee 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? 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 Monday, April 20th, 2000 and 26. Kyle Anselaune joins us now. Kyle, a pleasure, my dear friend. Thank you for accommodating my schedule. As we speak, it's 2 o'clock in the afternoon in the east coast of the United States

on April 20, 26th. The vice president of the United States and his two minders, Steve Whitkoff and Jared Kushner, are sitting in a hotel room in Islamabad, Pakistan, waiting for the arrival of the Iranian delegation. They're still in Tehran and announced about 20 minutes ago. They're not coming. You blame them? Not at all. The U.S. negotiate strategy throughout the second

Trump administration has been to use negotiations as a pretense to build up military force to attack Iran. We saw that before the 12-day war in June, again before the U.S. attacked Iran and February, along with Israel. And of course, during this current two-week ceasefire period, the U.S. has deployed a lot of additional forces to the Middle East. We now have our, we'll soon have three aircraft carrier strike groups in the Middle East. This is a significant military force. And so Iran thinks that the U.S. is ready to go back to war. Trump is still making maximumless demands. So why sit down and talk with the U.S.? Why sit down and talk with the U.S.? which on the high seas engaged in an act of piracy over the weekend,

seizing a cargo ship. It was empty, but the cargo ship aiming for an Iranian port. I mean, this is a war crime to do this without any legal justification and on the high seas. But it's a head scratcher as to why the American government would authorize this when it's trying to either lull the Iranians into a false sense. of security or legitimately negotiate with them. Either way, why sees one of these massive three football field long ships? Well, there's two possibilities. One is we should never underestimate the incompetence and the stupidity of the current White House and the Pentagon led by Pete Headset.

Maybe they thought they had intelligence that this ship was actually carrying something important and decided to attack it for that reason. Another possibility is, Donald Trump really looked at the Venezuela operation as this massive success, this huge victory for him. And so he's trying the tactics he used in Venezuela against Iran, where Venezuela had no way to protect his shipping. Also, the Caribbean Sea was a far easier terrain for the U.S. Navy to operate in and contain these ships. And so he thinks, okay, I'll just start taking these ships and it's going to cause real economic pain in Tehran. But of course, Iran has other options. And as long as the U.S. is blockading Iranian ports and taking Iranian ships,

Iran has the ability to retaliate by closing the Strait of Hormuz and attacking all these tankers that are locked inside the Persian Gulf right now. But you and I have discussed this before, but the Strait of Hormuz was never even on the table when the war started. I mean, their goals were regime change. neutralizing ballistic missiles and neutralizing the use of enriching uranium. The Strait of Hormuz was open for free usage before Trump's war. A, how could they not have known that the war could result in the closing of the Strait of Hormuz?

B, have they given up the ghost on their other goals? Well, I guess they have to in part because reopening the Strait of Formuz is neat, A lot of U.S. allies, a lot of our partners around the globe rely on the energy that comes from the Persian Gulf. And so this is now something that the Trump administration has to deal with. Not only negotiating with Iran to reopen the Strait of Formuz, but the fact that Iran has just turned the Strait of Formuz from an international waterway into Iranian sovereign territory. So even if it does reopen to ships going by, Iran is going to retain the ability. to dictate who gets to go in and out, which means how is the U.S. ever going to get warships back in through the Persian Gulf if Iran says U.S. military ships aren't allowed to go. I guess that means the end of the U.S.

Fifth Fleet in Bahrain, of course, but also has a lot of implications for all these golf countries that sell a massive amount of energy through the Strait of Form moves are going to have to pay tolls on all that. So it's going to, you know, raise the cost of their energy as they, sell it on the global market. This is absolutely massive. Also, another one, their goals, as you mentioned there, was destroying the ballistic missile program this weekend at the New York Times, U.S. officials as U.S. military and intelligence estimates say Iran has 70% of their ballistic missile capability that they have access to. They have 60% of their launchers still and 40% in their drones. And these are from pre-war levels, meaning if 20% of those missiles,

went off in Arab states and in Israel targeting U.S. bases and things like that. The U.S. really only destroyed a very small fraction of Iran's ballistic missile capabilities during this conflict. But wait a minute. According to Trump, we destroyed their Navy, we destroyed their air force, we have control of the skies. We're close to bombing them into the Stone Ages. I thought the bombing them into the Stone Ages, which is apparently the comment that aroused, the ire of the Holy Father was really one of the crudest things I've ever heard a president say. But then, of course, I saw what he said on Easter Sunday and his use of profanity

and his posting images of himself as Jesus Christ. Do you think he has lost the ability to engage in critical thinking or to connect with reality? Absolutely. I think this Trump, where he's more of a manglo-manian than he was during his first administration, really does. And I've heard members of his administration say this, like Marco Rubio and Pete Headset. Trump believes through his sheer force of will, he could get things done on the international stage. He thinks every deal that he's making with the country is the same way as negotiating a real estate deal in New York City, where, you know, he has the bureaucrat, the unions and all other types of officials paid off.

You know, this is one of the things that Trump right about when he was writing for office in 2016 is how he bought politicians in order to craft policy to his will. And so when he was operating in this corrupt environment in New York City and other cities around the country and building skyscrapers, sure, he could impose his will to get what he wanted out of all these deals. But that doesn't exist in geopolitics. And so now every time Trump just trying to try. tries to force a deal with Iran, Iran gets to say no, just like they said, no, we're not showing up

to the taunts. And this is causing the president to act increasingly irrationally, hoping that at some point his sheer force of will will get a deal done that's favorable to the United States. But of course, when that doesn't happen, he's going to continue to climb up the escalation ladder. Do you, well, your last two or three words, the escalation ladder, Do you think that he and the military and the Israelis are prepared to begin another series of air bombardments? I do. I think the U.S. has used the two-week pause to put more forces in the Middle East. They dispatched the George H.W. Bush aircraft carrier strike group, apparently the USS Ford, which experienced what was reported to be a laundry fire, is at least now in enough of a shape to sail, and I believe is one. again in the eastern Mediterranean.

So they got the three aircraft carrier strike groups. My guess is the ships, they've, you know, reloaded the different missiles and interceptors into the launch tubes on the destroyers that have been fired over the past few weeks. And so they feel like they're ready to go. The Iranians have used this time as well, though, to retool their military. They've unburied a significant number of their missile launchers and their missiles. And so they'll be ready to hit back against Israeli and U.S. target.

it's in the Middle East as well. Wow. Let me switch gears a little bit. This is a topic that I know you're familiar with because you've written about it. Last week, Congress voted to extend Section 702 of the FISA law. Section 702 permits mass, bulk, warrantless surveillance of Americans. in direct defiance of the Fourth Amendment, does the Constitution still work?

Absolutely not, Judge. I mean, we wouldn't be in a war in Iran if the Constitution still works. Congress hasn't declared war on Iran, and yet we're in Iran. The debate in Congress is whether the war powers at grants the president the ability to wage war anywhere in the world that he wants for 60 days without any congressional oversight at all. And the same thing with the,

FISA SETCHN 702 that Congress renewed and they tried to pass it. They tried to do a five-year renewal of this law judge in the middle of a night in a 2 a.m. vote. And thank goodness for Republicans who are principled on the issue like Thomas Massey, who don't just take marching orders from Mike Johnson who stood up and said no to this. So I do think we're due for another vote on this at the end by the end of the month. They're trying to pass a clean reauthorization of Session 702. And and the other principled Republicans are trying to demand that there is a warrant requirement for any data on Americans gathered under FISA Session 702. And so that would mean they can't just sweep up everybody's data and look at whatever they want.

They actually have to go to the judge, which would still be in a FISA court and get a warrant. It's not exactly the process the framers had intent, but at least it was, is some kind of judicial oversight of the government mass surveillance. Oh, I think the, so we're talking about the NSA gathering huge amounts of data on Americans who communicate with foreign persons and the Americans with whom the Americans communicate out to the sixth degree. So I call or email a hotel in Rome to book a room for a trip to Italy. I'm fair game for life. I call my mother. She's fair game for life. She calls calls her sister, my aunt is fair game for life. She calls her daughter, a daughter is fair game for life out to the sixth degree. In 2023, the last year for which we have statistics, this happened

three and a half million times. If you do three and a half million out to the sixth degree, you easily reach 335 million Americans. So this section 702 effectively allows the intelligence community to spy and everybody. What do they do with the data? They have a required. That's the issue. Massey and Company want a warrant based on probable cause of crime from a regular Article III judge, not from a judge on the FISA court with their lower standard. How could anybody possibly be opposed to that? Because that's what the Constitution and the Fourth Amendment require. Well, unfortunately, the president, even though he was a victim of this court is in favor of extending section 702 of FISA. So it's quite amazing, Judge, that even somebody

who's been personally victimized by this, they used it against his campaign in 2015 and in the 2016 race. And yet he is now pushing harder than almost anyone in the country to get it passed because he believes, you know, it's important to the U.S. Empire and the military that he has waging wars across the world. I do a little six or seven minute read called the Judge Knapp Weekly. And last week, my weekly was entitled American Heresy. And it was the heresy of stomping on the Fourth Amendment by the enactors of FISA, the enactors of 702, and those who would move to extend 702.

And you're quite correct. So when somebody from the Trump, campaign, probably Paul Manafort, called a friend in Moscow, probably a business associate, because Paul represented a number of Russians in business dealings in the United States. As a result of that phone call, Paul was subject to warrantless surveillance. He then called somebody else in the Trump campaign. That person is subject to warrantless surveillance. That person then calls the candidate. This is 2015. This is well before he even has the nomination, much less defeats Mrs. Clinton. Trump himself is subject to the warrantless surveillance.

You would think, I pointed this out in the article, or in the Judge Knapp Weekly, which is also published as an op-ed in a variety of sources, you would think that the president himself would be opposed to a procedure by which he was victimized. But the world must look very different on the inside looking out than it did on the outside looking in because he's now in favor of this. Yeah, I guess that's the case. You know, power corrupts, right? And Donald Trump wants he's the man with the power. He wants it.

I mean, when they were considering the reauthorization in 2024, of course, Joe Biden was president. Then he was on true social posting kill FISA in all caps. And so when it's Donald Trump's spy apparatus, he wants it. He wants it to be as powerful as possible. Well, and could be used against him, he wants it defamed. So that's the president we have. And by the way, Judge, one, the outlets that your article runs almost every week is at anti-war.com.

Oh, yes. I meant to thank you for that. And you gave it a very nice positioning as well, deeply grateful. So the NSA spies, the FBI. hacks into computers using zero-click. You know what that is. Ice kills innocence in the streets and the military murders people on speedboats in the Caribbean

because they might be guilty of a crime for which the penalty is not death. What's to restrain them? At this point, absolutely nothing. As Donald Trump has said, the only thing that could stop him is himself is his own mind. If he wants to do something, he's going to do it. Over the history, the 250-year history of our republic, they slowly have eroded the Constitution.

We once had Congress declare war before the president sent our young men overseas to fight and die. And of course, since World War II, there hasn't been a declaration of war. But yet we're very busy at anti-war.com covering all the U.S. wars, raging all over the globe. And Congress is doing nothing to stop it. You know, as I was talking about earlier in the show, the constitutional war powers that limited the president's ability to just start wars around the globe has been reduced to. You actually need two-thirds of a vote of each House of Congress to override a president's veto of any war powers resolution to have Congress actually be able to assert its warpower, something that's never going to happen. So,

You know, there really is no restraints on the president at this point other than what he's willing to do. Maybe occasionally he gets held up in court when it comes to his ballroom or something like that. But even issues like issues on that, they end up being able to plow through and essentially do anything they want. Have you seen this, the desecration of a statue of Jesus by an Israeli soldier? That is a statue of Jesus crucified upside down. The Israeli soldier is smashing the head of the statue. It's a video. We're not showing the whole video.

We're just showing these two stills from it. This creep not only did this, he had at least one of his buddies film him doing it. Now, the IDF and the Netanyahu administration have condemned this and, quote, are looking into it. But what kind of a culture or society would create in the mind of a soldier an attitude that he could do this, film it, and get away with it? Well, it's because the IDF has blown up churches and killed Christians in Gaza in the West Bank and in southern Lebanon without any repudiation for three years now. And this is only getting attention from the Israeli government. It's only being condemned by the Israeli government. He's only facing repercussions because the imagery is just so bad.

I mean, a soldier taking a sledgehammer literally to the face of Jesus Christ is too much for Americans see that. And they say, wait, I thought we had shared Judeo-Christian values, right? Mike Huckabee is this, you know, very evangelical Christian who is constantly talking about Judeo-Christian values. Israel's our best ally. That's why we need to support Israel. Well, it's clear that Israel at least doesn't care about the Christian part of the Judeo-Christian values, right? They're willing to destroy churches. Do the hardcore, I'm talking about Ben-Gabir-Smotrich types of Israelis. Do they hate Catholics?

I think so. I mean, they certainly hate anybody who isn't a Jewish member of the Jewish state of Israel. And so that would apply to Catholics. I think Catholics present maybe in Christians in general present a real problem to the Israelis in the Middle East because these are people who the Americans are as a Christian nation generally sympathetic to. And so when we hear about the Israelis killing Muslims in the West Bank, a lot of Americans will write it off as, oh, they were terrorists, the family member of terrorists or the terrorists who were exploiting them. It's a lot harder to do. It's not people's natural reaction when it comes to somebody who's a Christian. And so when Israel is destroying Christian villages in the West Bank, that gets a lot more pushback than even destroying 10 Palestinian Muslim Christian villages. And so Muslim villages in the West Bank or something like that. So I do think they present a unique problem to the Israelis.

Wow. Kyle, thank you very much, my dear friend. If anybody wants to catch more of Kyle, it's the Kyle Anzalone show. And you have a great producer. We all know that. Thank you very much, Kyle. All the best to you. Thank you, Judge.

Okay. Coming up at 3 o'clock, if you're watching us live in 37 minutes, Scott Ritter. Judge the Palatano for judging freedom.