Judging Freedom - LtCOL. Karen Kwiatkowski : Can the State be Tamed?

Episode Date: December 23, 2025

LtCOL. Karen Kwiatkowski : Can the State be Tamed?See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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And with Ollie's in-app on-demand health screenings, tap real experts whenever you need peace of mind. Visit ollie.com slash crossover and use code crossover for 60% off your first box. Thank you. Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Tuesday, December 23rd, 2005, December 23rd. Where does the time fly, Colonel Kutkowski? Colonel Karen Kweckowski joins us now. Welcome here, Karen, and thank you very much for your time. Earlier today, the anti-war activist Greta Thunberg, who now appears to be in her teenage years, was sitting in front of a British insurance company

silently holding a sign saying, I oppose genocide. She's now in jail. What? She's in jail for holding that sign. Wow. Yeah, that's insane. I mean, if you didn't have a video of it,

I wouldn't believe that it was the case. But that's, it's insane. I don't know what's happening in, Great Britain. I really don't, you know, that was our kind of parent country, you know. We, again, we had a revolution, but still, we seceded from them. Yes, we did. We seceded from them. But, you know, a lot of what we thought were, we had shared values, you know, in terms of, you know, the modern idea of liberty, you know, human freedom, basic natural rights, you know, this kind of thing was, I think, I thought, shared with our British ancestors in some ways, but what they're doing, the directions they're going.

I mean, it's Orwellian, and he should know because he was part of the late stage, you know, George Orwell was part of the late stage empire. He worked for their state department or the foreign office in his younger years, and that's kind of, you know, was an impact. on all the things that he predicted and wrote about and condemned. So I guess this has been a long time coming for Great Britain. Have you followed the events surrounding this Swiss colonel Jacques Bo, retired military and retired intelligence, who unfortunately lives in Brussels, and while there has been sanctioned, silenced,

at his bank accounts and his assets seized. Now, how the hell can this be happening in the Western world just because of speech? All he did was, quote, some Ukrainian military saying Ukraine is about to lose. How can you possibly go to jail for any kind of speech, much less quoting somebody else whose words are already out in the public domain? Yeah. You know, the mechanics of how he ended up being sanctioned, I think is the bureaucracy. I mean, the government there, the tone and tenor, the attitude that the EU has towards their enemies, which are all around them, not Russia. Russia is the ostensible enemy, but the real enemy to the EU

is the people of Europe who can't stand it or tired of funding it, feel that it's non-representative and non-democratic, which, of course, it is all those things. And they know it. So the people oppose it. But it's a panicked, elite governing superstate. And it's in trouble. So everywhere it sees an enemy. But what Colonel Beau did was nothing more than anybody that you or I know anywhere does. They, he, he used his brain and his military experience. He gathered. data from a variety of sources, and he spoke the truth, and like you said, quoted allies of Great Britain, you know, Ukraine, people in Ukraine. And he also stated what is very well known and obvious, and that is that not only is Ukraine losing and pretty much has been losing from day

one in this war, they have lost it, and they cannot ever regain any type of initiative. I mean, this is not the assessment of some odd pro-Russia voices. This is the assessment, even, I think, of their own generals. So he has done no crime, but the other thing is it makes it very impossible. He's been charged with no crime. He's simply been punished, as if he is a criminal, as if he has been convicted with the jury of his peers. And none of that has happened, but he's facing the punishment. So that is the very definition of tyranny, and it's coming right out of the EU.

it's also here. It's also here. And I had written, I wrote an article up today on that topic. But to me, the very clear parallel is how Trump and Rubio sanctioned the Albanese, the UN spokesperson on, anyway, she's very outspoken on the genocide going on in Gaza being conducted by Israel and funded by the United States. And she's been sanctioned by the U.S. for very similar weak reasons. Without any due process, because the Fifth Amendment protects persons, not just Americans, and it covers life, liberty, and property. She has a property right in her American Express card or whatever credit card it is, but now she can't use it because Marco Rubio doesn't like what she says. That's right.

That's right. So it's not just that we can look across the ocean and say, oh, look how far Great Britain has fallen, you know, how tyrannical they are, how silly and stupid and criminal their government is. It's not just that because this is accepted among the global elites that rule most of the world. And that includes Washington because Trump is no different when he doesn't like something. And again, you know, criticizing what Israel is doing. It's not – the U.S. doesn't want to hear that we're funding a genocide, that we have killed with Israel's execution and assistance and guidance and encouragement and action. Israel has killed, what, 650,000, they think, are missing and gone from Gaza, just from Gaza.

We're not even talking about what they've been doing to the West Bank for the last year, expanding and murdering and bulldozing. So Washington doesn't want to hear this, but this is truth. If you don't like the truth, that's okay. You know, you can do something about it, but you can't change the truth. You have to change reality and they haven't, you know, they don't want to do that. The United States does not want to change its position on Israel. And Great Britain does not want to accept the reality that it has gotten into with this crazed anti-Russia pro-Ukrainian war meddling. They refuse to change their path. And so everybody who observes this doesn't even criticize it. All you have to do is observe what the reality is. Now,

you're sanctioned. You're a criminal. You're an enemy of the state and you should be imprisoned or in the old days, you know, put in, thrown into a dungeon somewhere. well of course it gets even worse because um uh trump is not only participating in or funding the suppression of speech he's killing people he thinks he has a license to kill his people on these speedboats and he's stealing well we'll let him speak for himself uh chris cut number nine what are we going to do with the oil that we have going to do with what the oil that we have going to do with what the that has been seized. The United States seized 1.9 million

barrels of oil on December 10th. We're going to keep it. Are we going to sell it or put in the strategic oil? Maybe we'll sell it. Maybe we'll keep it. Maybe we'll use it in the strategic reserves. We're keeping it. We're keeping the ships also. We're going to

steal. We stole the ships. We stole the oil. According to Pepe Escobar, that oil was bought on paid for by China. Yeah. The Trump people even know what the hell they're doing. They're going to steal 1.9 million barrels of oil from China.

There's going to be some sort of a response. Yeah. You'd think so. Well, they've already stolen it. I mean, by taking it, even if he didn't admit that he was stealing it, they stole it. Okay. There's no constitutional rationalization for any type of embargo or canker seizure. in that part of the world. It doesn't exist. That's just made up in Trump's mind. The administration

says, let's try this. So they've done that. So they've stolen the oil. Now, I don't know if they thought maybe they were stealing it from Maduro. And they thought maybe, well, it's Venezuelan oil. We're stealing his oil, and that's terrible. But the oil that leaves Venezuela is bought and paid for by somebody. Now, China, isn't that, isn't China like a major economy, very integral to the United States, you know, most of our stuff that we buy still comes from China. China has a huge military with rapidly increasing technology, capability. Their economy has got some holes in it. It's got some problems, but it's a strong economy. When you look at it by U.S. standards, it's quite a strong economy. And they have people. They have people to men an army with, which the United States does

not have. We don't have people. We're much like Europe. We can't really field an army of, you know, two million or whatever you might want to have. We can't do that. China can do that. They can do that pretty easily. So China's serious. China is a near-peer competitor, like we used to call it. So you don't just take stuff that belongs to people that can do something to you. Now, Trump apparently believes that the Western Hemisphere is his neighborhood, and he's the big boy on the block. And that's fine. He can believe that. But when he starts behaving in this way, stealing stuff from China or other countries that are quite capable of responding and hurting the United States.

What is he thinking? Is that putting America first? You know, it cannot be. It cannot be to put America at risk of things that most Americans can't even imagine. We take for granted that we're not fighting China right now. Well, you just stole a bunch of their oil and you publicly said we're keeping it, you know, know, we don't care whose it is, you are creating enemies. That's not putting America first.

That's not making American safe. Well, Colonel, these are war crimes. It's obviously a war crime to kill non-combatants in the speedboats. It's obviously a war crime to steal an oil tanker and steal the contents of the oil tanker and to do it in such a way as to starve several populations, Cuba and Venezuela. Trump must think he has a license to kill, Karen. He does. And I think maybe Trump's personality, you know, is not a collaborative personality.

He's a, he likes to keep his friends doing what he wants him to do. He values, you know, personal loyalty and all that. But I think his, his education on foreign policy or international politics or even national politics, I think it comes from Hollywood. I think he, like so many of us, you know, we watched movies, and it helps us form our mythology about how things work. And then as you get older, you might get educated or you might learn things by study or by doing them. And you say, oh, well, that was in the movies and not really, but I don't think Trump did that. I think Trump may think he is patent. You know, I think very much he thinks he's patent.

And do you remember the, Pete Hedgeseth, you know, when he did his mandatory call-in of all the generals there at Quantico, they had simulated or emulated the patent speech. Right, right. They had a humongous American flag, humongous. Yeah. So I think Trump is a, well, I mean, America, we may deserve Trump in some ways as a country because we have allowed entertainment. and concepts that are very unconstitutional. We have allowed that to kind of become part of what we believe about ourselves. So we aren't bound.

Americans are bound to honor the Constitution and to protect natural rights of all people, not just citizens, you know, but we aren't taught that. We don't celebrate that. And Trump is the very product of a country that doesn't really take its constitution seriously. And of course, we see that with the Congress all the time. time. They don't take their constitutional, they don't read it, they don't honor it, they don't care about it. And Trump, of course, doesn't either. So, but yeah, he's committing crimes. And I don't know what happens, you know, historically, justice will, it might be slow, but it's going to get

to him. So you can't murder people. There was an actual fantastic article by Jim Webb's son, who was a Marine. I think he's out now. And he wrote it in the American Conservative, I think, think it was. It was either that or the, it was one of the more conservative, a realist foreign policy outlet. And he was talking about what his dad told him before he was shipped off to Iraq. And he said, be very careful who you kill because you don't, you don't ever escape that. That stays with you forever. And his article mentioned that conversation, but really was talking about the fact that we don't send our soldiers to murder. And they are accountable for what they do. It doesn't matter if they were ordered to do it or if the president said it's great, they don't matter.

It doesn't matter. None of that matters. So this is the damage that Trump is doing by being constitutionally ignorant. He is hurting a lot more people than just himself. He's hurting the whole country. He's hurting our military badly by putting them in positions where they are, where they are becoming paid murderers. This is wrong. It's unconstitutional. And there's going to be justice at some point. I don't know how it's going to evolve. but there will be justice. Tell me if you think this might be a small glowing light in the Trump administration. Chris, cut number 11.

But what I've seen over these months is that every time they make progress and they move closer and closer to that hope for peace, the warmongers in the deep state step up and try to do everything they can to stop them. predictably, they use the same old tactics that they've always used. The deep state within the intelligence community weaponizes intelligence to try to undermine progress. They leak it to their friends in the mainstream propaganda, media, to try to spread this and push a false narrative. They foment fear and hysteria as a way to justify the continuing of the war and their efforts to undermine President Trump's efforts towards peace,

and do so specifically in this case in order to try to pull the U.S. military into a direct conflict with Russia, which is ultimately what the EU and NATO want. We cannot allow this to happen. We have to see clearly what's happening before our very eyes and stand united in this cause of peace. As Aaron Monte pointed out,

the people she's complaining about work for her. Yeah, they do. But I guess she doesn't know who they are or she can't control them. Unless she can't control them. That's the whole, that's the deep state in a nutshell. They are uncontrollable. They march to their own drummer. It's not America First and it's not the Constitution. But, you know, the fact that she is speaking so clearly and articulating what has really taken a lot of people a long time to recognize. A lot of Americans have learned that what she is saying is absolutely true. It resonates with them. And she's speaking

to the turning point population. That is younger people, younger conservatives, people that will inherit the wreck of a republic that we are leaving, that certainly Trump is leaving, and Biden, you know, the recent presidents that we've had. So, and they started cheering early on with that. I mean, they got it. They understood it. So yes, that's definitely a bright light. I think sometimes we focus too much on the old people we love to hate in Washington, and they're dying off, quite frankly, not soon enough, but they are. And the younger generations are not, they understand way more than I think a lot of us, my age, give them credit for.

So that is, it's a good thing. The future will get better. She, of course, I used to have a, Chris, I don't know if we have the full screen. She, of course, issued a tweet back when she was in Congress saying to stay the heck out of Venezuela. Look, I give her credit for what she said. She obviously can't say everything she thinks or she'll get fired. But when during the first Trump term, she'd be. Basically, when he tried that coup to put the grad student in,

who's that young kid that he said was really elected, one white goat. Right. How do we do? She said, you know, we don't want Venezuela deciding who our president is. We shouldn't decide who theirs is. That was pretty much in a nutshell what she said. She probably still believes the same thing, but she can only say so much before he'll fire her.

Should Benjamin Netanyahu be the chair of the Commission of Investigation that's investigating what happened? You can't make this up on October 7th. Should he be investigating himself? Well, that's the safest path for Netanyahu to take, of course, is to control. Isn't that our tradition in this country, too, when we do an investigation of mistakes made by our government, 9-11 commission, you name the commission. We always put government advocates and spies running the thing so that the results will be controllable and predictable. So, yeah. Now, in Netanyahu's case, it's very obvious if you put your very self in charge that maybe your support is thinner than you think it is.

You know, it's not as reliable. You have to be there. I have to make sure I'm there controlling it. But, yeah, I don't think that gets past Israelis, and I don't think it gets past the world. It's obvious what he's doing. he obviously doesn't want to go to jail unfortunately that's that's where he should be should be there right now here's the full screen from Tulsi Gabbard now this is January of 2019 the United States needs to stay out of Venezuela let the Venezuelan people determine their

future we don't want other countries they choose our leaders so we have to stop trying to choose theirs. I don't know if she can say that again today and expect to keep her job. I mean, under the law, she is the principal briefer to the president of the United States on all American intel.

But we know that John Ratcliffe, Max calls the Mossad stenographer, takes down whatever they tell him. He gets things to Trump and bypasses. her. She must have a terribly frustrating job, given her libertarian and pro-peace ideological tendencies in the midst of this war-mongering presidency. Yeah. Yeah, I'm surprised. Not that she hasn't been fired, because I think Trump realizes what that would look like. I mean,

he insulted her badly last June or whatever with Iran. information just publicly threw her under the bus. And she did not. I don't care what she said. Yeah. Wait a minute. She runs all the intelligence agencies except the ones in the military. And they concluded that Iran had not been developing a bomb since 2002. That's when they stopped.

And Trump said, I don't care what she said. But for Trump and his simplistic way of thinking, that's enough. Just to pretend reality isn't there. That's right. Again, you know, what she's saying is absolutely fundamentally true and consistent with reality. And that could be historical reality, today's reality, and tomorrow's reality. You don't go around picking other people's governments unless you think that that's okay to do and maybe it'll happen to you someday. And you would think that's okay.

No, she's honest. She hasn't quit. I think that's a great sign for the future of our country. She is there maybe to prevent a worse person in that place. She's there to have some influence. But again, with the Trump administration, I mean, here's a guy who doesn't even use his own State Department. He's got his son-in-law who has no qualifications whatsoever to do anything for the U.S. government at all. And then he's got his old buddy from his old real estate buddy from New York, who I think is a really nice guy.

you know, I don't know him. He also has no qualifications to do anything that he's being asked to do in the name of our country. But Trump has picked these people to go forth and do things. So, again, this boils down to Trump as a person, as a constitutional ignoramus, as a person who eats. Well, I mean, he is. I mean, he is. And yet, as president, you know, he's got this fantasy of what it means. I guess it means king or emperor.

and he's operating that way. And he wants to keep, and you know, just like an emperor or a king, you do want to keep people you trust close to you. You do feel that everyone is threatening you. And again, all of the lawsuits and all of the hatred, the Trump derangement syndrome that has gone on, the assassination attempts, you know, there's a reason maybe Trump feels that he has enemies.

But to me, that's a personal problem. He has a job to do, a constitutional job to do, and he's not doing it. He's not even paying attention to those rules. And again, even his trade, you know, his tariff thing, it's one thing to say, well, I have the power, we'll fight it in the courts, I have a power to do tariffs. But Trump's use of tariffs are as if, you know, you got somebody that sits in the front of a 7-Eleven, you know, with his handout. Okay, now you do tariff policy because it starts, it stops, it shifts, it shifts, It changes. He says one thing. He says something else. And the net result of that, not to mention chaos in the markets, the global markets, but the net result is we don't trust the President of the United States. We the world, we the market, don't trust the president. And this comes from believing he's a king. I don't mean a king, like no kings, but believing that he has every right to do whatever.

Right, right. Here's that clip. I think it's on Air Force One. It was June. 17th when he said, I don't care what she said. Watch this. They would go max. It's called max time. It's evil. I said that you don't believe Iran should be able to have a nuclear weapon. But how close do you personally think that they were to getting one?

Because Tulsi Gabbard testified in March that the intelligence community said Iran wasn't building a nuclear weapon. What she said, I think they were very close to have any one. That's it. I don't care what she said. I think they're very close to having one because I think it that makes it so. And he's got bad friends because he may think it because Mary Madelson told him, you know, or Netanyahu told them. Well, I didn't, we didn't elect those people. And they're not even Americans as far as I'm concerned.

They're Israelis. I know Netanyahu is, you know, so why would you listen to those people? And this is a big problem because, you know, our Constitution is not about protecting a president. It's not about protecting a senator or a congressman. The Constitution is about protecting our country. from making very dangerous mistakes that will cause the end of that country. It is an outline of how we do business and what our values are. It changes extremely slowly on purpose.

It's a wonderful document. And Trump is unaware of it. I mean, he really is. I don't think he's ever read it. No, I don't think so. Yeah. Karen, we have to go. You may know that last weekend, judging freedom,

surpassed 100 million views for 2025. So that's an extraordinary number. Congratulations. Two years in a row. And I want to thank you for all the time you've given us and for your chunk of that 100 million. And I hope we can continue to work together in the new year. Absolutely.

It's always a great honor to talk with you, Judge. Thank you, all the best. God love you. I love you. Have a great Christmas. Okay, you too. Thank you. Coming up, another person,

and I love the one the only at 4 o'clock, Max Blumenthal. Judge the Politano for judging freedom. Thank you.