Judging Freedom - LtCOL. Karen Kwiatkowski : Trump Spoils Hegseth’s Party

Episode Date: September 30, 2025

LtCOL. Karen Kwiatkowski : Trump Spoils Hegseth’s PartySee 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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the Happy Z-Pack and start improving your sleep health. Remember, Zipa is HappyZ spelled backwards. Save over 24% off by going to Zipa.com and using the code Happy. Today. Text fees may apply. Hi, everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Tuesday, September 30th, 2000, 25. Colonel Karen Koukowski joins us now. Colonel Karen, thank you very much.

I don't know if you watched Secretary Higgsath speech to 800 admirals and generals, but how do admirals and generals feel? about lecturing by a guy who's 20 years younger than they are and who was a reservist. Yeah, yeah, this is a big problem. I mean, I think actually that if Hegsef, if he knew what he was talking about, if he had a particular proven expertise

and he had something of importance to share with them, I think that they wouldn't be prejudiced against youth. I don't think they're prejudiced against the younger, less experienced person, but I think they are prejudiced against incompetence, which strangely is what, you know, Hedith is trying to do. He's trying to say, we don't want to have incompetence in the military. Well, he may not be the right guy to deliver that message. You know, he purports to have a vision of the military, which when he lectures about it just doesn't

come off credibly. It's not his fault that he has a trillion dollar budget. but he certainly didn't go in there saying, hey, I can do the job. But half of this, as Trump once promised during the campaign to accolades from people like you and me and your colleagues who were former military, he seems to be the MAGA guy in the Pentagon. And therefore, that reason. Am I miss reading this? No, I mean, I think it's exactly why he's there. He's the guy that Trump can control, that is impressed by Trump. It's obedient to Trump. In fact, what other job could Pete Hedgesis get? I mean, what could he get, really? What could he do? He is there because he's Trump's guy.

And, you know, I actually didn't watch all of Hedgeset's address. I saw bits and pieces of it, and it was pretty disturbing. And then I, but I did watch the president's follow on, and I was even more disturbed by that. Well, we'll play a clip of what the president is. said, which to me was the most disturbing, we'll deviate from Hague Seth through a minute because you raised this. It's really the most disturbing thing, he said. My column this week, I just finished writing it and getting it back from my editor.

It comes out midnight, Wednesday night, is called Who Will Protect Us from the Protectors, and it analyzes constitutionally Trump's devious behavior with respect to sending troops into the streets. I don't know if you're aware of this memorandum he signed, purporting to federalize local police and put them under the domain of federal troops. It's profoundly unconstitutional, but it's very, very dangerous. As I was finishing writing this, Chris, this is the cut that we played a few moments ago. Trump said this. San Francisco, Chicago, New York, Angeles. They're very unsafe places. And we're going to straighten them out one by one. And this is going to be a major part for some of the people in this room. That's a war too.

It's a war from within. Controlling the physical territory of our border is essential to national security. We can't let these people in. We're under invasion from within. No different than a foreign enemy, but more difficult in many ways because they don't wear uniforms. At least when they're wearing a uniform, you can take them out. These people don't have uniforms. I told Pete, we should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military, national guard, but military. So the military should use American streets with American citizens as a training ground for what? Killing the enemy? Yeah. Yeah, sure. You know, it occurs to me as I watch him say that again, and it is unconstitutional.

I mean, there's no court that would uphold that, but the problem is he acts, and then we have to wait for the courts to come through. So that, but it's unconstitutional, but, you know, it occurs to me that I think Bibi Netanyahu has visited Trump probably three too many times this year, because that is the way Israel runs. You know, that's how they operate, and that's how they view national security. You know, they have people inside the country who are enemies, and they have a unitary military defense. There's no National Guard. It's all in one combined military that does internal and external activities. Trump is not well prepared for any of this, and he doesn't have a background. He doesn't understand.

We know he hasn't read the Constitution, but he also hasn't served in the military and hasn't. He has no background of a way. in how militaries operate, how our military operates or how anyone's military operates. And his best friend's B.B. Netanyahu. And he listens to Bibi Netanyahu. This is very concerning. This is, it's more, you know, what I expected from this gathering of generals, and I wrote something about it, what I hope that Head Seth would say. But what I truly expected was that it would be a big nothing. It would be a nothing burger. Nothing would come of it. It was boring. And head Seth, I think, delivered on that. He didn't have much to say.

But Trump actually, he actually moved the ball way far close to an own goal. I mean, that was an own goal, frankly. Everything Trump said was hurting us, violating our standards. I'm sure that those generals and admirals that were sitting there, while I don't agree with most of them, and I really consider them to be a parasitical class on this country. But even them, I think, were shocked at the kind of lack of knowledge that Trump exhibited. And he spoke forever. He didn't, he just talked. He was like, it was like when a Castro talks. The comment he made at the end of his speech, which we just ran. I don't know if it was in the scripted part.

are consistent with this special memorandum that he signed, which my column is about, which got very little publicity, which if you read it as chilling, chilling. He's directed the feds to disrupt groups that are anti-Christian, anti-American. How do you define what's anti-American? This is a disruption based on speech. We do have a clip from Heggseth, which we'll play now. There's an internet acronym at the end, which I can't translate literally, because if you translate it literally, it has a four-letter word in it that we don't use here.

But here he is. Should our enemies choose foolishly to challenge us, they will be crushed by the violence, precision, and ferocity of the War Department. In other words, to our enemies, F-A-F-O. If necessary, our troops can translate that for you. So F around and find out. That's what the military phrase is. He also wants 65-year-old generals to pass a PT test twice a year.

year and then like Trump boasting, if I'm the president, I can fire however I want, he boasts, he's the Secretary of War and can make you do it. These are bad times, Karen. Look, the military is bloated. It doesn't need a trillion dollars, although Trump championed and made that happen. They haven't won a war in 80 years. But a 45-year-old treating these guys who've been in the military their entire career and have risen to the ranks of general and admiral talking to them like their new recruits.

I don't think this works. No. Well, clearly they noticed they had pauses where they expected applause to happen or punchlines and that kind of thing. And they didn't get that. They didn't get that applause. I think, you know, I'm not going to defend the military, but a lot of those guys, based on that they're currently active duty, they came of age in the Bush 43 wars, you know, in the Middle East. And we know the lessons of those wars.

You know, you don't lie about your intel. You don't make up stuff. You don't try to nation build. I think a lot of that stuff has been absorbed by our military. Now, that doesn't mean any of those generals or any group of those generals can fix the Pentagon because they can't. But I think they are far more aware of the complexities and the challenges facing our military than Headset is. I mean, the naivete of him to many of the things that he said, but the last one, the FAAFO, that is almost a casual, it's just so inappropriate, unbased in reality, you know, it's crazy. And of course, Trump's speech, when he talked about all the arms that we're going to sell to

people and how far ahead we are technology-wise, it's almost as if that is what Trump wants to be true. But the reality is, and these generals that he was addressing, also know the reality of our weapons systems and where our acquisition system has brought us. And our policy towards Israel has brought us. I mean, we ran out of patriots. Why? Because we gave them to Israel.

We are fomening wars and ruining our own ability to maintain the bare essentials. And the generals and admirals know this. They know this far better. So I just thought both Hedgeseth and Trump were very unprepared for something that was quite expensive in terms of bringing all these people back on short notice. And you would think you would be coming back for something really important. And it not only wasn't important, it was. It was insane.

So I don't know. I think this backfires. It backfires on the Trump administration, if that's what they thought they were going to do. Who wants to join the military today? Isn't that Higgs-Seth's most serious and pressing issue? Yeah, well, he thinks many people are joining, but I don't know if he's looked at the unemployment statistics

and the layoff and pink slip statistics that we have. You know, military always does well in recruitment when the economy is bad. Now, Trump doesn't admit that the economy is bad. I don't know where he's getting his information from. But people need jobs and military jobs, especially going in at the entry level, are great jobs because they will take just about anybody and train them to be whatever they need. So I don't even get that he's saying that people want to come into our military. military now. I don't buy that. I don't buy that. I think these guys are so far out of touch.

And what surprised me is I didn't think they were that far out of touch. And when I watch this, I'm just going, oh, my Lord. Colonel, watch the very end of his speech where, of course, he's expecting a standing ovation as he leaves. Watch what happened. Move out and draw fire. Because we are the war department. Godspeed. Ruth, attention. Yeah, that's crazy. My hands were clapping. I didn't hear any.

No, no. You know, the thing started late, too. They had this guys assembled in there for, I think it was 25 minutes late, which I don't have a real problem with, but on X, a lot of the enlisted people or people who had been enlisted, in the military years ago, they said, the generals always make us wait. So they thought it was cool that the generals had to wait. But the problem is they were waiting for something that really, if I was sitting in that audience as a career person and I was not myself, I was not

who I am, but I was devoted to the uniform and devoted to my career. And I was sitting in that audience, I would be very concerned about the quality of knowledge and capability of the leadership. And that would be two people that are the military's leadership, the Secretary of Defense, and the President. I would be extremely concerned. Well, the President changes his mind, and he changes his focus. It seems a dozen times a day. this has got to drive serious military people you have some generals there that have tens of thousands of human beings under their command that crazy general Donahue said we can take Lenin Grad in 45 minutes whatever he's got 100,000 troops that work for him nevertheless

it must drive people like him crazy that the president changes his mind Yeah, I'm sure that it does. And, you know, these people that currently are wearing three and four stars on their shoulders in our military, they have their own culture. It's a boutique war culture, okay? We haven't had a major challenge, but we've gone a nation built and done wars for Israel, and we've fomented war in Ukraine, and, you know, we've done all these things that are not really defensive wars. And, of course, our military is not oriented to defend this country. And we know that and they know that. But these generals have come up through that system.

And they rely on, they rely more than others, I think, more than previous generations, on the quality of thinking and leadership of the president. Because the president is picking the wars that we participate in. You know, the president is saying, oh, go do this, go do that. Take this city, you know, in the United States, which is a whole other story. But the president is picking targets. And here they meet this guy in this grand. meeting. And he rambles on and on, shows no understanding of what it is they do, has no

direct instructions for them other than do what I say. That's pretty concerning. If it was me, if I was one of these guys, I would think many will put their papers in after this. And if that was the goal of the meeting, fine. Well, you know, with Ritter and Colonel McGregor predicted the same, off the record to me, predicted the same thing. If Ritter, if Ritter how a star on his shoulder, according to Ritter, he would have ripped the star off right there in front of Trump. I believe it. But no, I mean, I think a lot of these guys, I have contempt for so many of them, so it's hard for me to put myself in their shoes. But I do believe, based on their view of what it is that they do for this country, that this was a blatant insult, a loss of confidence that they

would have. I mean, it's not just that the president doesn't really have confidence in them, but they have every reason to have lost confidence in President Trump for sure, based on what he said. I mean, if he hadn't talked so much about himself and about stupid things and about things that aren't true, that would be one thing. But he went in there with all of the things that Trump's enemies label him with, you know, and he presented that to them. So yeah, it's time for so many of them to retire. And they can all retire whenever they choose. And they should. Here's a Trump asking for and expecting applause, see if you can hear any. Fantastic, job.

I've never walked into a room so silent before. This is very, don't laugh. Don't laugh. Don't laugh. You know what, just have a good time. And if you want to applaud, you applaud. And if you want to do anything you want, you can do anything you want. And if you don't like what I'm saying, you can leave the room.

Of course, there goes your rank. There goes your future. But you just. feel nice and loose, okay, because we're all on the same team. And I was told that, sir, you won't hear a murmur in the room. I said, we had to loosen these guys up a little bit. So you just have a good time, but I want to thank. Nobody applauded. They're not going to applaud. I don't know. Maybe military culture tells you don't applaud the community chief. I mean, if this were World War II and that were FDR, they would have been going wild. Yeah.

No, no. The military will applaud. Generals will applaud. They're people like anybody else. And also, there was no, what was missing in this address today was any type of connection between Hed Seth and Trump and the connection that they might have and should have with the generals that lead dispassable. I am sure that Hegseth was miserable that Trump spoiled this party. Remember, this was supposed to be Pete's party. And then at the last minute, the president, the president, the president. president says, I'm going to show up. I won't talk too long, Pete, but I'm going to show up. Exactly. And completely big-foot-s him. Yep. No, it's true. And again, that is the casual kind of approach to being in charge of this great, massive, expensive military that we have that's deployed in 155 countries, engaged in wars and soon-to-be wars and conflicts around the planet. You have to have a certain seriousness about that. And if you, you don't, it could be a big problem. Big problem in how, you know, because Trump needs these guys

to do what he says. And if I was sitting in that audience and I was in a sense watching it and all these generals and admirals there, they must have been, I mean, the anger that many of them might have felt, I would understand that totally. If they were angry, if they wondered why they were wearing the uniform of this country when this country has so little knowledge, the leadership has so little knowledge of what a military is supposed to be doing. And that is defend. And honestly, if you ask military guys of any rank, they want to defend the country. They don't want to go fight imperial wars. They never do. None of them do. They obey orders. But I don't know, it was kind of a clown show. And I think, I don't know if that's what they intended. I don't know

if that's what Trump intended. I don't think so. And that's what's scary about it. Because it's one thing if you said, well, we're going to punish all these guys. We're going to make them come here and listen to crazy talk for 25 minutes. We're going to punish them. We're going to show them who's in charge. Make them wait 25 minutes. Okay, that's one thing. That is something that has an objective and it may or may not work. But I got the feeling after watching this that they were just simply unprepared. They had no idea what they wanted to communicate to these guys. And that's that's very concerning. Americans pay a lot of money, a trillion dollars a year and more for this military. And this is how we manage it.

Here's a problem is bad, bad problem. I wonder if this made its way over to them. Here's what he said. It's a threat as he was leaving the White House getting on a helicopter. This is truly remarkable, Chris. I'm going to be meeting with generals and with admirals and with leaders. And if I don't like somebody, I'm going to fire them right. on this spot. Yeah. Shades of the show that made him popular nationally, the apprentice. That's right. And it seems like, you know, they had the great patent backdrop, you know,

the American flag. And it was all theater and no substance. Right. Right. It's very disturbing. And it's going to be disturbing for you and people like you. who made a career in the military, who were proud of their work, who still refer to themselves or are referred to publicly as their title. Now you've got generals who, if they could, would have hidden their faces this morning. Yeah, yeah, that's, you know, H.O. Munkin, you know, says eventually you get the government you deserve with the democracy.

It's going to be really stupid. I don't have his quote proper. but it's possible we've satisfied that peak stupidity. We went through Biden with his dementia, which was a problem, but that's a physical problem, not necessarily that he was stupid. But now we have Trump version two, and he's proving H.L. Mencken to be correct. So very scary, very scary.

I'm going to play one more for you because we talked about it earlier, the unconstitutional use of troops in the streets. I'm not a fan of Governor Pritzker of Illinois. I can't even think of any issue on which we agree except for this, but he was very angry and articulate. Here he is, I believe, earlier today. Moments ago, the Illinois National Guard received word that the Department of Homeland Security

has sent a memo to the Department of War seeking the deployment of 100 military troops to Illinois, claiming a need for the protection of ICE personnel and facilities. What I have been warning of is now being realized. One thing is clear, none of what Trump is doing is making Illinois safer. In Broadview, people nonviolently holding signs and chanting against brutality, expressing their First Amendment rights have been regularly attacked with chemical agents like tear gas, pepper spray, rubber bullets, and flashbangs. Agents reportedly unholstered their guns and pointed them at protesters. In their own words, ICE intended to unleash, quote, a shit show in the

Broadview community. There you go. A little accrued at the end, but everybody knows what he's talking about. I think Trump has a fantasy that the people love him because, you know, he had a lot of, he won the election, he won the popular vote last time. He talked about that to the generals, as if that has any relevance at this point. But he thinks that the people back him, and he doesn't realize that whenever a group is attacked, we always joined together for the underdog or for the one closest to us, our community. Right. So I stand with Pritzker on this, you know, and he's right. If this was 1859 or 1860 and the president was sending troops into states, do you know how serious that is? I mean, that is that is incredibly concerning. And people don't think it in those terms, but this country is highly vulnerable.

to civil war, but that word is tossed around, but it almost sounds like Trump wants that. And he assumes that the people in these various states will side with the federal government. And I think he's, I think he's sadly mistaken if he thinks that. And it's, yeah, this is some incredibly scary stuff going on. Yeah, the clip we ran, I was wrong. It was the governor Pritzker yesterday. So if anything has happened today, even though I'm, even though, I live and work in a news environment and a newsroom I'm unaware of it. Karen, great chatting with

you. We'll look forward to seeing you again. Keep those great pieces coming. If you haven't seen Colonel Kutkowski's piece in Assembly of Generals, half of it is dreadfully serious and half of it is hilarious and all of it is worth reading. You can get it at Judge Knapp. Thank you, Colonel. We'll see you again soon. Okay, thank you, Judge. Sure. Coming up tomorrow, Wednesday, Eight in the morning, Professor Gilbert Doctor-O at one in the afternoon, Professor Glenn Deeson at two in the afternoon, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, at three in the afternoon. We missed him last week, the great Phil Giraldi, Judge Napolitano for judging freedom. Thank you. Thank you.