Judging Freedom - Lt.COL. Karen Kwiatkowski : Trump/Hegseth Ruin US Military readiness

Episode Date: September 22, 2026

Lt.COL. Karen Kwiatkowski : Trump/Hegseth Ruin US Military readinessSee 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? or abolish the government? What if 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, Colonel Karen Kutkowski, will be with us in just a moment. What are Trump and Hegsseth doing to the Pentagon that you won't like? But first this. Today's headlines aren't just bleak. They're an indictment of a government that has abandoned the Constitution. You are witnessing the direct result of the Federal Reserve's relentless war on the value of your dollar. For centuries, gold and silver have been.

been the ultimate shield against the state's favorite tools. Monetary expansion and runaway inflation. To protect your wealth is to protect your liberty. And you can do that with gold and silver. I own both and continue to buy because J.P. Morgan is now lying gold at over $6,300 an ounce. And Bank of America is suggesting silver could reach $300. That's great news for precious metal investors. for Washington to fix a mess they created. Secure your freedom today. Take possession of your precious medals or diversify your IRA by adding gold and silver. Call 800, 5114620 to see if you qualify for up to $20,000 in bonus medals. That's 8005114620 or go to Learjudgeonnapp.com. Carter Warkowski, welcome here. Always a pleasure, my dear friend.

A couple of minutes ago, the President of the United States of America said the following to the United Nations General Assembly. 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. How could the president of the United States of America? America morally and legally threatened to annihilate a civilization. Yeah, no. There's no moral or legal way that he can do that. He comes across as a megalomaniac unhinged, completely unhinged from anything like Dr.

Evil, you know, in the, what is the show with the comedy? Austin Powers, the Austin Power Show. You know, you have the guy that, I guess it is Dr. Evil. It's the actor that plays him. And he's unhinged from reality. And remember he asked for $1 million. And it's like that's so low. It's like he's living in another world where a million dollars is something.

And they remind him of it. And he goes, okay, $1 billion. But just absolutely untethered from reality. And, you know, it's, I mean, unless he's talking about nuclear annihilation, you know, the U.S. military cannot. doesn't have capability to even remotely annihilate anything, really, honestly, unless we're going in an all-out, unwarranted nuclear first-use attack with the intention of annihilation. If that's what Trump is talking about, then someone needs to lead him away and put him in a padded room.

And I really don't know what he's talking about, honestly. And I imagine that many people in that room are wondering, you know, where he's coming from. You know, he recently told the Air Force to be prepared for a massive assault after election day. So assault with what? Exactly. Exactly. I mean, I think our, what we've seen in this whole summer after the main 39, 40-day war kind of paused, What we've seen is that our military is basically capable of fighting two and a half days, and then it must pause. It must stop. It must await reinforcements.

We don't have staying power. And we've demonstrated that we don't have that staying power throughout the summer. And even this weekend, there was, you know, there were the reports that a lot of, well, the refuelers are in theater. And Saudi Arabia had asked for help with the other. and, you know, there was some thought that Trump would launch another weekend attack, and he didn't. He didn't do that. And I think it speaks to the inability of our military and its logistics to support anything like that. So he's increasingly coming across not just unhinged in a legal and moral sense, but he's unhinged from actual logistical reality. And he's also

unhinged from history because it's very offensive for him to say that we have to annihilate, or he's considering annihilating Iran to stop it from killing people around the world and starting wars and taking over countries. Because Iran is the last country in the region to do that. I mean, our own allies are the ones that do that. What is happening in Yemen? That was a Saudi invasion and taking over years ago. What is Israel doing? Nothing but invading its neighbors. and destroying and attacking with what Israel calls defensive actions. But of course, they're all offensive. They're not defensive at all.

So Trump is, he's not even believable in the basic history that he talks about. That's, I think, most average people, certainly the people in the UN understand the basic history of not just the region, but of the United States and her allies. They understand it very well. hear him say that kind of thing. It just doesn't do anything for not just Trump's credibility. I think that's completely shot. But American credibility is at risk here. We're supposedly we elected this guy. Supposedly we elected a Congress. A Congress seems to support Trump in whatever he does. You know, our whole country's credibility is basically being wasted. That's beyond the other things that Trump has wasted. Here's what he said to people like you.

and Colonel McGregor and Scott Ritter and Colonel Wilkerson and even me over whether or not the munition supply is low. Chris, this is that 22-second clip that's not on the regular list. The cowards and traders would love to say the United States is low on munitions, but that's not true.

We have more munitions than we could ever possibly even think of using and we're building them at levels that we have never done before. We are adding to our stockpiles faster than we have ever been able to do before. Top of the line stuff. And it does he know that the top of the line stuff of which he speaks, much of it takes four years to build each instrument? Yeah. And a lot of it can't be finished without rehearsed that we don't have position of and can't get, in part because of the bad foreign policy that Trump has pursued has got us locked out of a lot of these necessary

components and precursors. So he's just a liar. I mean, I guess that's all you can say. Whoever wrote this for him, because I don't think he writes, he doesn't read, so he probably doesn't write his own speeches. He is looking at information that is put on his teleprompter. He doesn't, maybe not read it, but he does have this information in front of him. The person who is writing that information is either exceptionally ignorant, okay, or consciously lying to Trump and having Trump portray those lies, which does Trump no service whatsoever. I mean, again, it's a massive credibility loss. You know, and Trump never offers real examples.

I was watching his speech in other parts to the UN, and he talked about that he's created all these really good civilian jobs in the country, and all the things he was saying is, like, that's really interesting. I would like to see the data on that, you know, but he has no data. He just, he has this fantasy that he weaves. And I think it might have worked at one time. It doesn't work six, seven months into a failed war, a war he has lost, a war he launched purposely and illegally without cause, and then one that he then lost. And in that loss, has depleted our military and harmed U.S. credibility both economically, militarily, and I guess you could say morally and ethically.

We have nothing to hang our hat on at this point. It's really immoral and unethical for him to call those who make intellectual evaluations about the proper use of military equipment cowards and traitors. But, of course, that's the way he is. Here's the way he was. go ahead no i mean he's also he also banned the media certain media because he thought that and and this is i got from vance jaddy vance said that well he he did not he's no longer allowing certain media into the white house for direct access because something like 90% of their stories were negative

on the white house and they were trying to influence american people on things that are negative But if he looks at the polls, the average American, even those who watch Fox, who I imagine is still allowed in, I don't know. You know, we have a good picture of what's going on in the economy. We understand a lot about what Trump is doing. We don't need CNN to make us feel bad about the White House. We don't need CNN to be concerned about the economy. So he's very punitive like that. So I think that speaks to, you know, he wants to call military and academic.

and people that spend their lives studying this kind of thing he wants to call them traitors. Well, you know, it really, coming from him, it means very little. Yeah. Here's the way he was greeted today at the United Nations by Caitlin Collins of CNN mentioning, and I'll ask you about this after we listen to this clip, that she was banned from the White House. He claims he thought she was also banned from the U.N. cut number 10, Chris.

The president came in. He briefly came over to speak to the reporters who I should note are here because we are credentialed by the United Nations while being blocked by the White House from covering the president. And we asked him this question about that new CNN polling. Mr. President, two-thirds of Americans, two-thirds of Americans don't think the U.S. is winning the war with Iran. Winmelin. So it's an honor to be here. I'm surprised that CNN is you're covering me. The United Nations allowed us in, sir. You should not be here covering me.

You said you weren't going to cover me. You shouldn't be covering me. Two-thirds of Americans don't think that the U.S. is winning the war with Iran. When will it end? We're making a lot of progress. Our country is doing really, really well. Thank you very much. American.

We're making a lot of progress. Our country is doing really, really well. Why? Why ban CNN, MS now, and Politico? from the White House when every one of these bands going back to Franklin Delano Roosevelt has been overturned by the courts. Yeah. Well, you know, Trump doesn't, first off, know that. He doesn't know that, okay? He doesn't know anything about American history or the history of the Constitution or the courts.

You know, there's nothing about that and he doesn't care. He disrespects the Supreme Court, even though it is a conservative court. I mean, for the most part, I think it's close, but it's a conservative court. But he disrespects the court because it exercises, exercises authority over his decisions. And he's a megalomaniac. He, his decisions must be honored. I think he thinks he ran for king. And he won.

So now he's king. And he's not king. And I hate to use the words of the no king's movement, because really there are so many of their prescriptions would be even worse than a king, if you can imagine that. But they are right in that our constitution does not allow King. It was specifically designed to avoid the evolution into a, you know, a ruler, a single ruler like this, an emperor. And these are these are things we should fear. We should rightfully be concerned

when we have a president that ignores the very rules that that define his office. And I think Trump enjoys doing that. And it's not just, I can't pick on him just alone. If you look at the evolution of the use of executive orders by modern-day presidents. You know, it's a very much an active expansion. Every president does more executive orders than the one before him, and they do enjoy that exercise of power. But Trump has great contempt for anyone who challenges him, and I think it's a, it really probably is a personality trait. You know, he's unable to debate because anything that is a question of what, of something he might believe or something he has said. are done becomes an attack on him. So he then returns the attack, you know. So now he has to think

about should I annihilate Iran. I mean, it sounds so crazy. But in Trump's world, he very, he has few tools. He has few intellectual tools. And increasingly, he has few tools that past presidents have enjoyed, which is a military that can intimidate and that can project power for extended lengths of time and we've lost that now. One of our regular writers says when a clown

moves into a palace he doesn't become a king the palace becomes a circus that's right that's right in Trump's case a golden circus yeah what is the story

I know this has gotten under your skin and I don't know it that well, of this pilot who was shot down and who the government claimed was rescued, and now they won't tell us who this is. Do I have this right? Well, yeah, yeah. They haven't told us who it is, even to this day, six months, six or so months later. But, you know, the big government narrative is that we had these devoted and wonderful pilots in this F-15,

a pilot and a weapons officer in the back seat. And they were doing their job to push for freedom and democracy in Iran. And then they got shot. They got shot and they had to ditch the plane. So and then we had these guys we had to rescue. So that's when Trump and Sentpom put together this massive rescue operation, which ended up in us destroying a couple of our C-130s on the ground and losing like four or five little bird helicopters and things like that.

But we did get both the pilot and the Iwo. And the backseater is the guy that was on 60 minutes. But that's the government story. So the real story, because I'm just going to say straight up, at my point, where I'm at in life, if the government tells me a story, that's what it is. It's a story. It's a government story. I don't believe it until I see a large number of facts and evidence to support it. So my suspicion is, and I think what most people think happened, is this was a race. raid on Isfahan to go in there and get some powder, some uranium dust.

Not sure what they thought they were doing. And they got snagged. They got bogged down. They came under fire. And meanwhile, some of their cover, some of their air cover and their sea ads, their surveillance and electronic suppression, air defense type suppression that comes from this F-15 came in and they got shot. And then I had it turned into a rescue operation.

So they're trying to say, oh, no, we didn't have a failed uranium rate or any other thing. We had no failures whatsoever. We just, we leave no man behind. That was the story. That's the cover story. And so they never would, these guys never made it to the Oval Office. They never made it to the Rose Garden with a ceremony to pin them with awards and medals and Purple Hearts. This guy who was interviewed, of course, I did learn something from the interview.

He also broke his back in addition to his ankle. And he still hyped up. 7,000 feet in the middle of the night onto a ridge. Yeah, it's a miracle. It's a medical miracle, okay? And he should definitely get a purple heart for that. And he hasn't gotten anything. Why is the government ashamed to tell the truth about him?

Because it's already lied about the mission. Yes, but it's an abject failure. It's a failure that I think even people in the Pentagon advised against this raid. I think, you know, Trump can't stand failure. And he can lie about some failures, but if he admitted that, yeah, if he admitted this story as it probably, as it most likely happened, we went for a raid, it got totally, you know, foobarred, and then we lost the F-15 guys, we had to go get them. So that's a sellable story.

And they said, well, we're going to sell that story. So if we come out with the truth now, not only did we lie to you, like we always do, the government always lies, but not only did we. we lie to you with this fake heroism story, but we also did a raid that was an abject, abject failure. And there's probably a lot of people in the Pentagon who advised against doing it. So if this is bad for Hedgsteth, because, you know, Hedsteth isn't really the leader of the Pentagon. He's, he is a, you know, political representative of the president. And his leadership capacity is extremely limited. He doesn't have huge amount of respect, doesn't really know what he's doing. And

in the middle of a war, not one, but three, really, if you count leftover taking of Venezuelan oil, because that operation was a big problem for Headset, all the illegalities, you know, the murder of people in boats, things like that, not good. Then they go to Iran, which is an illegal war conducted extremely badly. That's on Head Seth to quite a bit. And then meanwhile, you've got this continuation for no good reason of the proxy war against Russia. And this is draining our budget. It's ruining our credibility. Obviously, Iran and the Caribbean operations are weakening our military, both logistically and morally. And our leader is, this guy headsets, who has only gone downhill since he's been appointed. And I remember when he went through his confirmation

before the Senate, I mean, there was quite a bit of doubt about this guy's capability. And he has he's sunken. If it's possible to get lower, he's done that since he's been serving as the Secretary of War. So anyway, the whole House of Cards comes down. If you start telling the truth, and actually, this is true for all kinds of lies that you might tell in the criminal world

or in the business world or in the political world. If you start allowing your lies to be exposed, that's a thread you don't want to pull because it, it, it, it goes fast, right? The whole story, the narratives, the connected narratives, all start to fall apart. And pretty soon you have a very cynical population. Nobody believes anybody.

And if you don't believe people in government, if you don't trust authority and you don't believe them, you don't obey them. And if you don't obey authority, our system falls apart. So they got a problem. They cannot go back. They can't tell the truth, which is a shame because, as Jesus said, you know, the truth will set you free. And I'm pretty sure that Trump has said that before.

So he's heard it. I don't know if he's ever read it, but he's heard it. And he uses it as a punchline. But the fact is, yeah, our government is in extremely big trouble, not just around the world, but it's increasingly in trouble here at home for its lack of credibility. And Trump just doubles down every chance he gets, as we saw with this UN speech. I mean, I don't know what to say. I'm thinking of, you know, who was it, one of the German philosophers?

versus everything the government has, it is stolen, everything the government says is a lie. Like you at this stage of my career, but knowing this for 50 years, I'm so skeptical of anything that comes out of the mouth of the government. Now we have a government that lies far more than it tells of the truth. We have a president who confabulates, sort of talks himself into believing things that are totally divorced from the truth. But why does he need? Look at what Chris just posted.

Why does it need a triumphal arch in which store drones and snipers? You want to guard a cemetery, which is on the other side of that, or actually on our side of that arch from the way it's depicted, or to attack Americans in Washington, D.C. What else would you have snipers there for? It is incredible. And what good would it do? Snipers in a little arch like that. Also, it's in the flight path of a national.

but I guess Reagan Airport. But yeah, it's really crazy. And he strikes me. This is very dated for most people who don't watch Colombo. But there was a Colombo episode years ago when Colombo was a show. And this guy played with his toy soldiers. Actually, there was another Robert Redford movie. He had the same thing.

Had a guy that was obsessed with his Civil War soldiers and had this huge tables laid out with all these battles. And it's kind of a point of ridicule in some ways where people become so immersed in a fake world where they are in control, where they are controlling both sides of a battle, and they're the strategist, and nothing they do is wrong. They control where the soldiers are. They control who wins the wars. They become a person and a personality type that we ridicule, that we look at and we go, this guy's nuts. This guy has a serious problem. And I increasingly am reminded of those characters when I see Trump.

He does seem to imagine that he is operating the whole world, and it's the world at war, which he apparently likes, whether it's economic war or shooting wars. And he's playing a game with soldiers made of tin or plastic that he chooses and he places. you know and it's a fantasy the world isn't like that but his inability to negotiate which is very strange because he advertises he said that to the u.n yesterday too or this morning that the i'm a great negotiator he says i'm a i'm a wonderful deal maker he's he has said that to us repeatedly but i'm afraid that's just in his mind i think in his mind he is in reality he is incapable of

working with other people. He feels that, you know, he's in charge. And that's fine, but that's a personality disorder. And for the president of the United States to operate unconstrained with this mental disability that he has, and I want to call it, I think it's a mental disability. I don't think that it is helping the United States that he himself behaves as a king, a mad king, really. It doesn't help us, you know, because if it helped America, if it made America great,

again, okay, something I support. If it did that, then I wouldn't be complaining about it. But I'm telling you, Trump is a big part of the problem. Now, we have much deeper problems, but Trump can't fix him because he's obsessed with his little world

of toys. He's obsessed. He's obsessed with himself. Colonel McGregor said earlier this afternoon that Trump acts as if he thinks he is a god. Well, that's consistent with what you said earlier, where he treats human beings. as tin and plastic soldiers.

Karen, great analysis, as always, my dear friend. Thank you so much. And we'll look forward to, we'll look forward to seeing you. That's the movie. That is a great movie, by the way. Right. We'll look forward to seeing you next week. All the best, thank you.

All right, thank you, Judge. Appreciate it. Bye-bye. Coming up tomorrow Wednesday at 8 in the morning from Tehran, Professor Muhammad Miranda. At some time thereafter, I'm not sure when, or from where we'll find him, Pepe Escobar. At three in the afternoon, Phil Giraldi,

and at 3.30 in the afternoon, with a preview on what to expect at the UN from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday. Who better? Professor Jeffrey Sachs. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom.