Judging Freedom - LtCOL : Karen Kwiatkowski : Empire by Another Name; Trump’s Neo-Colonial Ambitions

Episode Date: January 20, 2026

LtCOL : Karen Kwiatkowski : Empire by Another Name; Trump’s Neo-Colonial AmbitionsSee 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 Tuesday, January 16, excuse me, January 20th, 20th, 26. A year ago today, Donald Trump was inaugurated into his second term. Three years from today,

presumably he will leave. Colonel Karen Koukowski joins us now. Thank you, Karen, for your time and your thoughts, as always. You have a fabulous piece. It's at Judge Knapp.com. It's at Lou Rockwell.com and elsewhere are called

Trump's neo-colonialist reach around, and I commend everybody to reach it. It is pure, Colonel Koukowski. It is articulate, well-researched, and profoundly courageous. Why do you suppose Trump tried and failed at two regime changes in the past four weeks, Caracas and Tehran? Yeah. I think it's, I think he, I think he's panicked. at the real situation in this country, the country that he is so-called, you know, trying to fix, trying to make great again. You know, he loves the military.

Our military is one of our, it's a handicap almost. You have a military with the reputation that our military has, and yet really any check that that military writes, it cannot cash. And I'm not picking on the military, but we have a system that sucks money and puts it into private pockets. And aside accidental benefit of that is you get military weapons. And we get weapons that are extremely expensive.

The only reason we have a market for American weapons today, not always it hasn't been this way, but today the only reason we have a market is because we strong-arm our so-called allies into purchasing our stuff. That's a fake economy. You know, Trump likes to talk about fake things. in many ways our military system, it's a fake defense. It defends nothing.

And in terms of offense, it's really unaffordable and very precious. So it's not what any country would want, and that's what we have. And I think he wants to impress people with something. But the problem is, you know, we've been at the top of the world order, so to speak, for quite a while. And so many countries that are getting stronger, smarter, better than they ever were, watch us very closely. They watch the United States. If they're interested in, if they're worried about us, they watch our military very closely.

If they want to emulate us, they look at our economy. And those people who, those countries and the rest of the world that looks at America, they're no longer impressed. They are not impressed. And Trump doesn't like that. He wants to impress them. So, you know, he's in many ways he's just throwing weight around, which is how I see it. Now, are there people advising him that, oh, Mr. President, you should coup this country,

you should get a new leader here. We should run the world in this way and that way. And this is how we do it. Yeah, there are people telling him that. The neocons have always said that. And there's other people that have their own agendas. And they know Trump's weaknesses. I mean, the man loves to be flattered, wants to be the most powerful.

powerful man in the world, wants to appear as the great decider, which I thought that was George W. Bush and we were over that. But no, I mean, Trump wants to be the great decider. He will determine how things are. So we're watching an imperial personality play out his final days, weeks, and months on the stage. Usually when empire expands and colonial life, property throughout history, the purpose is to send assets back to the mother country. When we expand and colonize, it costs us money. I mean, that's why we have 750. I don't even know the number anymore, Colonel, military installations around the world.

It might be as high as 900. It depends on how you count them. Some are full-time. Most are, some are, you know, bigger than Manhattan. and some of them are very small, but they're all over the world, and they're all manned by human beings, and they all cost money,

and they all add to our debt. So other than gratifying a childish... One point you said you think he was being influenced by cartoons that he watched this child... Other than gratifying his child... childish impulses, what do we gain? How does the average American gain that Nicholas Maduro is now rotting in a hellhole in Brooklyn? How does the average American gain that a thousand people were killed on the streets of Tehran due to agitations IDF, Mossad, CIA, and MI6?

They don't gain. They don't gain. And the empire is, of course, as you say, it's costly, and it's not really, it doesn't enhance our wealth. But what the empire has done since World War II for sure is caused other countries to want to hold dollars, to want to have dollars. And if people want dollars and you're in the business of printing them without real correlation with real productivity or anything else, then you can have that game going for a while.

And that's the game that we have had going. We print dollars, the rest of the world takes those dollars. and gives us some stuff. And Americans feel like they're very wealthy or they have. Now, we know today that they don't feel wealthy. They haven't been for some time. But, you know, our empire is a little different. But in the, you know, post-World War II period,

we benefited Americans in a sense by living off the wealth of the world, living off the productivity of the rest of the world. And we didn't really see it that way. Most Americans didn't give it too, didn't think about it at all. But the people in power know. And now people don't want our, they don't want our dollar. And what do we produce?

Very little. I mean, we do have oil. And now that we stole Venezuela as well, we have a little bit more. If we can get it out of the ground, if we can process it, you know, and make a profit. But yeah, it's a, it's a game that the elites have been playing around this country for some time.

And the rest of Americans are only now waking up to it. I think that's really the problem. And we're only waking up to it because so many Americans are actually suffering. They cannot, they're living a worse, lower level lifestyle. They have less more debt and less property than any previous generation. You know, they're not happy. And when you're not happy, you look around and you say, well, why am I not happy? And we're starting to figure it out. But the empire is the problem. And I think in that article you mentioned that was out this week, the biggest problem that our country has is, that we are an empire. That's the only problem we need to solve. You solve that, every other problem

goes away. Why does he want a police state? Who in their right mind would want that? Oh, a lot of people want police states. If you're afraid of the people that you rule over, you must have a police state. That's a must have. In fact, you'll go to the next guy that you hate who has a police state and you'll try to model your new police state off the one he has. So yeah, yeah, if you're an occupation, occupying power, needs a police state because you have enemies in your midst. If you're a, you know, we have a two-party system, but we always get the same guy every single time. So we have a one-party system, which means we are in tyranny. So when people wake up and realize that they live under tyranny, guess what?

The government needs a police state to keep those folks in line. You know, there's a reason that cops are knocking on doors about people's Facebook posts. There's a reason for that. They are extremely nervous. The government is extremely nervous about the people that it rules over, that it really is supposed to serve day and night. That's the only mission government has, really, is to follow the Constitution,

and the Constitution is designed to preserve our freedom and our productivity, our liberty, all these things. But no, when government stops doing that and the people wake up to it, you need a police force. I mean, seriously. You know, we could go back to any previous empire when it fails or any previous really rotten government when the people revolt. It's not pleasant when people revolt against their government. It can be very bloody and it can be very damaging to the people, the elites.

And anybody says, oh, the elites have bunkers. They'll get away. Well, will it? Maybe. Let's see. Let's see if they do. Here's a clip from the police chief of Brooklyn Park, Minnesota. a suburb of Minneapolis,

talking about the terrors of ICE. We, as law enforcement community, have been receiving endless complaints about civil rights violations and our streets from U.S. citizens. What we're hearing is they're being stopped in traffic stops or on the street with no cause and being forced to demand

paperwork to determine if they are here legally. As this went on over the past two weeks, we started hearing from our police officers the same complaints as they fell victim to this while off duty. Every one of these individuals is a person of color who has had this happen to them. In Brooklyn Park, one particular officer that shared her story with me was stopped as she passed ice going down the roadway. When they boxed her in, they demanded her paperwork, of which she's a U.S. citizen and clearly would not have any paperwork. When she became concerned about the rhetoric and the way she was being treated, she pulled out her phone and an attempt to record the incident, the phone was knocked out of her hands,

prevented her from recording it. The officer had their guns drawn during this interaction, and after the officer became so concerned, they were forced to death. themselves as a Brooklyn Park police officer in hopes of slowing the incident and de-escalating the incident down. The agents then immediately left after hearing this, making no other comments, no other apologies, just got on their vehicles and left. I wish I could tell you that this was an isolated incident. This isn't just important because it happened to off-duty police officers, but what it did do is we know that our officers know what the Constitution is, they know what right and wrong is, and they know when people are being targeted.

And that's what they were. If it is happening to our officers, it pains me to think at how many of our community members are falling victim to this every day. It has to stop. We have invited the chief on to the show. I'm sure he's inundated with invitations after that statement, which came out earlier today. And I want your thoughts on it,

but let me just give one little, a piece of background. There is a phenomenon in the law. It's relatively new and it's only known to those of us who are studying the granular aspects of law called a Kavanaugh stop. A Kavanaugh stop is the name given after the Supreme Court decided not to interfere in a case involving ICE in Chicago. So the court just said the application for an appeal is denied. And Justice Kavanaugh decided to publish a concurring opinion. In that concurring opinion, he used the line, oh, if you get stopped by the police, it's not a big deal. Just show them your papers and you'll be gone in a couple of minutes. Not a big deal, Justice Kavanaugh? What do you think this is? East Germany in 1970. Of course,

it's a big deal. We don't live in a society where the police can stop, you and demand your papers. Well, ICE has jumped onto this Kavanaugh stop thing that the court has never reviewed and is using that as its authority to stop people. Now they are stopping mainly people of color who are off-duty police in Brooklyn Park, Minnesota. Oh my God. That is amazing. That is amazing. But you know what I thought of watching that guy that I hope is going to be your guest soon, the police chief. You know, in America we have a desire for heroes.

I think our culture is very interested in heroes. And maybe all, maybe that's a human thing. And we look for them at the top. And Trump certainly likes to think of himself as, you know, I saved America. You know, he's over the top with all this. But when I listened to that guy, tell what he was, you know, witnessed, basically, the abuses of the federal government in his town, the abuses of his people and are, you know, his citizens, I thought he's very heroic. And this is what we need more of. We need people to verbalize and to witness what is happening and talk about it because it's going to take a lot of us to make this stop.

And I'll tell you the protesting, okay, the annoying, the harassment of ICE officers. Yeah, I guess there's a place for that. But what that tends to do is divide left and right, radical from normal, or if you want to call it that. But what the police chief did was really simply witness. This is what happened. This is the truth. This is not right. This must stop.

We need more of that, a lot more. that and maybe we'll get it. Why do you suppose Trump wants Greenland? Is it to get everybody's attention off of other things? Well, he has wanted it for a while and there's people around him that want it. You know, if you look at the planet from the North Pole downward, you can take that view of, you know, the Arctic Circle, which no one knows certainly anything about. about the, you know, if we have Canada, Alaska, because I think you can assume we have Canada,

unfortunately, and because Trump sees it as his property, I think. You have Alaska. And then if you add Greenland in there, the only other real partner that we have in the Arctic is Russia. And Trump, he talks about, oh, I want a partner. Russia can be my junior partner, you know. But Trump respects, does not respect Russia, really. He doesn't respect him. he sees him as subordinate as part of a country that can really live and thrive under the footprint of America,

with America's boot on its neck, so to speak, in a nice way. So Trump doesn't respect the other country. So Trump basically wants the North Pole. Well, why does he want it? Well, I don't know. I mean, you know, they talk about the rare earths, but that's not the only place there are rare earths. And plus, there's a reason that Greenland hasn't already been exploited through, investment and capitalism and that kind of thing. It is very expensive and costly and hard to get

the wealth, the so-called trillions of wealth that are in Greenland, you know, it's hard to get that out. So it doesn't make a lot of, it's kind of like Venezuela's gas. And you saw how Trump got when the Exxon guy said, you know, it's hard to get that out. It's very expensive. We need guarantees, long-term guarantees, because it's not like any other kind of gas. It's slurgy gas. It's, you know, whatever. Trump didn't want to hear that. I gave you, I gave you, you know, oil. There's oil. It's, you know, he wants it to be easy. He wants to own it. But there's a reason the world develops the way that it does. You know, we take the low-hanging fruit first. Greenland's not low-hanging fruit. So because of that, I think Trump's doing it really just for his ego.

It looks good. I think he sees the map and he wants to put his flags on it. I think that's part of it. And then this is kind of crazy. I mean, I don't want to get it. it crazy or anything. But if you look at where the south, the southern hemisphere is going, you know, Antarctica, well, Israel's got their foot in the door there. So maybe this is just the global empire, the global U.S. Israeli empire. I wouldn't put it past Trump to see it that way. Just to end on a lighter note with all of our angst and anxiety, I don't know where Chris comes up with this. He's unbelievable. The last time Denmark sold an island to the United States was in 1917.

That island was called Little St. James. It was part of the Danish West Indies sold to the United States for $25 million, along with some other smaller islands. No later island sales from Denmark to the United States have ever occurred. Do you know what Little St. James is called today? I do now. Epstein Island. Oh, my gosh.

I mean, you can't make this stuff up. No, you really can't. I mean, that's absolutely amazing. Yeah. By the way, the Justice Department, yesterday was a month after the date that the statute required the Epstein documents to be released. Justice Department has admitted it has released fewer than 1%

of the documents in its position. I guess they're going to try and ride out the tide. They only have three years to go, well, a little less than three years. Well, that's right. If it's done in an orderly fashion, but, you know, things have a tendency to become disorderly at certain points. And Trump's pushing it. Trump is moving a little too fast and a little too nuttily in so many ways that, yeah, I think the tide is going to turn on him. I think Americans are starting. to wake up. Ice is helping. There's no doubt. There's no doubt that ICE is helping. I have people understand, you know, what the state really looks like when it doesn't have its

mask on. It looks like ICE. Of course, ICE officers are masked. I think that says it all. Karen, thank you very much, my dear friend. Always a pleasure. We'll look forward to seeing you next week. Okay, absolutely. See you, Judge. Bye-bye. Tomorrow Wednesday, 8 in the morning, Professor Gilbert Doctoro, 10 in the morning, Professor Jeffrey Sachs, 11 in the morning, Aaron Monti, one in the afternoon, Professor Glenn Dison, three in the afternoon, Phil Giraldi, Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom.