Judging Freedom - LtCOL. Karen Kwiatkowski : US Empire Seeking a New Colony

Episode Date: January 6, 2026

LtCOL. Karen Kwiatkowski : US Empire Seeking a New ColonySee 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 preempted 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? 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, January 6th, 20206th, 2026. Colonel Karen Krakowski will be with us in just a moment on what is the United States looking for in Venezuela? Another colony? But first this.

History tells us every market eventually falls. currencies collapse and look at where we are now 38 trillion in national debt stocks at record highs defying gravity so what happens next groceries gas housing everything's going up and this dollar it buys less every day when the system breaks your stocks won't save you

and your dollars won't either but one thing will gold I've set it on my show for years Gold survives collapse. Central bankers know this and billionaires know it. That's why they're buying more. Is it too late to buy or is it just the right time? Call my friends at Lear Capital to find out. Ask questions. Get the free information. There's no pressure. And that's why I buy my gold and silver from Lear. And right now you can get up to $20,000 in bonus medals with a qualified purchase. Call 800, 511, 4620, or go to Learjudgeonap.com today. Colonel Karen, welcome here, my dear friend. You have a great piece out at Judge Knapp and Lou Rockwell and elsewhere called. We all see what Washington is doing. Stated yesterday, I commend it to everybody's reading enjoyment,

although there are parts that are really make you stop and think, how can this be happening? Your take on the military invasion of Caracas over the weekend. Yeah, a snatch and grab is what it looked like to me, a kidnapping. And one, I think that the CIA and maybe somebody else in Washington kind of greased. I mean, it's very typical of the kind of military operations we like to boast about, but in reality don't really test our military capabilities. So it concerns me when I see Trump celebrating and we get the greatest military in the world

because the way we're using that military doesn't test us. It doesn't test our capability to defend our country. And it's also very, you know, criminal gang like. You know, it's very easy to just see the U.S. military as a, you know, a mob tool for Washington. So we had about two dozen ships down there. Trump called an armada, including the largest aircraft carrier in the world. 20,000 troops at the ready, but we only used 100 for this. We had 150 helicopters in the air.

They broke into the presidential compound. They had bribed senior military officials, so they just laid over. They killed Cuban bodyguards in their sleep. They deny that this is an invasion. The Attorney General called it the arrest of a fugitive from justice. Somehow, this is not an invasion, but shipping cocaine to the United States to willing buyers somehow is an invasion to justify the use of force. Yeah. I mean, it's a coup.

I mean, we've done these before. The CIA is especially good at it. at least they were in the, you know, 60s and 70s. And I think that was probably the high point for the CIA, and they look to relive it in everything that they do. But no, this is a coup for, it's not just for energy. It's not just so Trump can beat himself on the chest and say, look what I did.

You know, he wants what he doesn't have. He wants to ensure that the dollar survives into the foreseeable future. And he wants to be able to leverage every other country, really. I mean, when you think about Venezuela and oil, think about maybe China. But to control that kind of oil wealth that Venezuela has is to dominate also and to make irrelevant really the Middle East. And so this is very much, you know, I think one of his first slaps on the back was from Netanyahu, who visits President Trump quite frequently. And this is also seen as a great thing for Israel. It's a great thing for the U.S. Israeli imperial model.

You can't be an empire without a lot of stuff and a lot of energy and commodities. And so Trump believes, just like Netanyahu believes, and maybe others in Washington, that it's okay to just take what you want if you can, if you can get away with it. And what's it going to take next? Are you going to use the military to steal Greenland? I mean, what mechanism is in place to stop an authoritarian machine that recognizes no lawful, constitutional, or international limits to its power? Yeah, I mean, if you look at even what Denmark, I think one of the leaders in Denmark tweeted out something because everybody says, oh, Denmark's next, and it may well be. And he tweeted out something like, you know, we want to be friends with, you know,

United States, and we want to have respect as a sovereign nation between. And so the real choice that people have is diplomacy, but the United States doesn't do diplomacy. So if you can't do diplomacy to protect your territory and your assets and your sovereignty, then the only other thing you can do is war. So what is he going to do? Go to war with NATO. We own NATO. So I think that Greenland will not, it'll require a coup, but it won't be much of one. I think you know, he thinks Trump and the people around him and who we do not, we don't elect them, we don't

maybe know all their names. Laws don't apply to them. The Constitution doesn't apply to them. They have justified in their mind that this is somehow good for the United States. It's also good for them personally. They have the power to do it. No one seems to have the power to stop them, so they're going to do it.

Who would negotiate with the United States when it doesn't take seriously it's international commitments. I mean, the conservative MAGA crowd mocks the UN Charter. The United States wrote the charter. The charter is a treaty. It was ratified by the Senate. Under the Constitution, a treaty is the supreme law of the land along with the Constitution of the United States. When the President takes an oath to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution, that includes the treaties. This is pretty basic stuff that I'm regurgitating right now. out. It is the kind of stuff that we will read in our college textbooks. We'll read that or we'll read the documents and we'll say this is what it is. But Trump and really all the presidents before him, you know, we haven't really respected the UN. We've used the UN as a tool of, for lack of a better phrase, American imperialism. We have used the UN as a tool to have our will be done in the various parts of the world where we think we know better than everyone.

which is a lot of places. So really, I think in some ways, Trump is doing us a favor as American people and certainly the rest of the world because he doesn't hide behind what's in the books or the Constitution. He's never read those things. He doesn't care what is in those things. Treaties, he wasn't a part of those treaties. If it had been up to him, he wouldn't have signed the treaties. So therefore they are irrelevant. And because he is very open about his personalization of,

empire. We all can accept it. We have to. We have to accept, not accept that it's the right thing, but we can certainly accept that that's where he's coming from. So now we have to choose or figure out or be creative. How do you deal with a Caligula? How do you deal with an emperor who has nuclear weapons, who finds it difficult to learn new things, who does not respect sovereignty or diplomacy? How do you deal with a guy like that? And it's very dangerous world because there are what they call near peer competitors who have very much the capability to use the weapons of mass destruction against this country and harm the United States.

And if we don't give them any other choices in how to deal with us, then those will be their tools. So China, Russia, Iran, maybe a hacking or international hacking organization. I mean, he's making the United States much. more dangerous for Americans. And he doesn't even see that. He is, I think if you told Trump that you're making the world more dangerous and you're making the United States more vulnerable to the dangers of other countries taking retribution or defending themselves in advance, whatever, he would not understand that. He would not accept that. He said, no, no, I'm making

the Western Hemisphere better and stronger. And he would, and you could not change his mind. So we have a big problem. says things like we will run Venezuela we own the oil under the earth in Venezuela I mean these are preposterous the government can't deliver the mail

it's going to run another country but when he says these things do you think he fantasizes about colonizing Venezuela making it utterly and totally subject to the will of whoever the president of the United States may be

Yeah. You know, I'm sure he wants to colonize it for the Trump empire. You know, I'm sure in that regard, you know, he wants to be able to profit from Venezuela. And he certainly wants to have the United States profit from taking Venezuelan oil. You know, it's not clear how they took our oil. I mean, Chavez nationalized part of the industry. You know, did he really, you know, that whole thing, he makes us. up stories to kind of justify what's in his head. Running the country. What does he mean by that? Because we have compromised the Maduro government in some ways. We've paid off the military. So now we'll just let the vice president Rodriguez do it, you know, and then call that running the country. Or does he really intend to run the country in the way that we run our own country, you know, like with our various HHS services or our, you know, our USDA, which is nothing but subsidies, you know, where's the examples of how we can run another country? Obviously, we can't run our own very well.

So he uses these words, and it's really as if he's watching a movie, which is probably being shown. It's not in his head. I'm sure his advisors are feeding him the real, okay? And they are showing him this is what it could be like, and he's just echoing that. His connection to reality, especially in Venezuela, where we have, what, 30 million plus people, some of the toughest people on the planet are in Venezuela. You know, the ones who, I mean, that country, thanks to the United States, has been through hell in many, many ways.

And they've dealt with it. They're patriotic. They understand clearly that many of their past problems have been caused in part by American foreign policy. And now we're going to run their country. I think Trump will not put a single soldier on Venezuela. That will be Vietnam from day the people are armed and they are not enamored of the United States. So it's hard to tell what they're telling him and what he actually thinks, but I think he sees dollar signs in his eyes. And it's very hard to compete with that with him. Why is the Pentagon never passed an audit?

Yeah. Well, you know, the Pentagon is really what? How many different financial systems do they have? So it's probably 12 or 14 different mini-pentagons glommed on to a big one. And, you know, it exists to serve the spending that the money that is poured into the Pentagon is lobbied for by the companies that will receive it. And we have evolved ourselves into selling the taxpayer and many of our Beholden allies, very expensive systems that are engineered for.

wars that happened two or three decades ago, and they're very expensive, and they're very expensive to maintain, because that's part of the profit model, is a high cost of lifetime support for these systems. And so that's what they do. It's designed to serve the military industrial complex, and you need different types of systems for different big corporations and companies. And it is broken from day one. We call it. We call it. a defense organization, it has never, in my lifetime, conducted itself in any way defensively for the United States. It doesn't produce defensive capability. It is only producing offensive stuff. So it's just not designed to be looked at because it's not for us. You know, we are the

taxpayer, maybe somebody elects a president, and the president says, I'd like to know what's going on inside the Pentagon. It's like, you have no right to look inside the Pentagon. So, you know, there's no incentive and again in any business any any example whatever gets measured gets done okay so profits get measured and profits get done but accountability waste fraud double accounting um we're not measuring that so and until we really decide to measure it you'll never pass an audit but again nobody the people that count in this country not the average american but the people who really make the decisions they don't want a pentagon audit okay They've been profiting from this.

What would happen if the government hired outside auditors to audit the CIA? Wouldn't that be something? Well, we need to. And make the Federal Reserve while we're on it. Oh, sure. You know, for the CIA, that is a big problem because we saw, I think Americans had their eyes open just a tiny bit, even no matter where they stand on this snatch and grab in Caracas. But the CIA was in the news only a few days before this because it turns out somebody,

we thought it was the Pentagon, blew up a ground target in Venezuela. Turns out it wasn't a military. We had two big carriers and all those helicopters. It wasn't them. It was a CIA that did it with a CIA drone. And then you have to wonder who's in control here. Because last I looked, Hedgeseth was not in charge of the CIA. It was Ratcliffe.

And I don't know anything about Rackcliffe, but, you know, why isn't he hauled before Congress for this? But of course, he won't be. So the CIA is completely out of control, and it needs to be ended, not audited. But if somebody did try and it would have to be an amazing organization or just, you know, somebody from outer space. But if they tried to audit the CIA, they would probably commit suicide. It would be so-and-so did hang himself. I mean, they're not going to allow that. And so I think it might, I don't know if that's the right approach to get rid of the CIA as an audit.

And plus, our government lies to us constantly. And certainly about how they're using our money is the main, one of the main reasons that they lie to us. Because if we knew, we would say no. Yeah, it's a shame. But the Federal Reserve is all another thing. You know, they're constantly lying to us as well. But I think they'll be much easier because if the money collapses, no amount of printing from the Federal Reserve can save it.

And that's coming. I think that's coming for sure. Here's your favorite senator from South Carolina mocking the next coming war. Chris, cut number four. So I pray and hope that 2026 will be the year that we make a run great again. Like we made Iraq great again or Syria or

Olivia. We can make a lot of these hats. I don't know who would wear them. Yeah. It's I think they're drunk on their own you know. It's, it is I don't know where this comes from. I don't know where this aggression

and this confidence in how well Americans and politicians in particular, like him and like Trump, understand the rest of the world so well that not only do we know everything that they need, but we can fix it so that it'll be perfect and they'll throw flowers and greet us in the street like the neocons said that the folks in Baghdad would do. Of course, they didn't. And, you know, it is a fantasy world. I just have to hope that not just Americans, but the whole world is seeing this for what it is.

And actually, I have quite a bit of confidence that most of the rest of the world sees American foreign policy and Trump and people like Lindsay Graham precisely for what they are. They understand them very well. The problem is Americans don't seem to. You know, we seem to, we're very generous with our belief in our particular leaders. and they continue to abuse that trust. But we come back to them. We go, well, you know, Trump's the best we have. What are we going to do?

Are we going to have Kamala? Come on, you know. And I guess we have, and that is the death knell of our sovereignty, ultimately. I think, you know, we're in dangerous times. This next clip is a little stomach churning. It's Senator Graham again. But he says, I'm wrong. The next war is not.

Iran, it's Cuba. Cut number 11. We talked about a drug caliphate in our backyard. You know, we had Venezuela, we have Cuba, we have Colombia, in our backyard. And these three countries have been condemned ever since I've been in politics. He's going to clear our backyard of a drug caliphate, countries run by narco-terrorism. dictators who murder, rape, send drugs into our country to kill thousands of our citizens. When Bin Laden went down, I was the first to applaud President Obama.

And as to this Commander-in-Chief, he did something people talked about doing. You just wait for Cuba. Their days are numbered. We're going to wake up one day, I hope in 26. In our backyard, we're going to have allies in these countries doing business with America. not narco-terrorist dictators killing Americans. This is a big frigging day. And everybody

in the world is thinking differently than they were just a few days ago because of what you did. The balding guy with the beard with the sort of bobbled green. That's hilarious. That's Howard Lutnik who's the Secretary of Commerce. He's also Oh my goodness. Oh, my goodness.

He's also the largest landowner in Manhattan in New York City considerably wealthier than the president. Wow. Listen, the Cuban people have been starved by American policy since the 60s. It's hard to believe that they would welcome the United States. No, and it's almost like Trump and Lindsey Graham and anybody who's talking like this. What are they reliving the 50s and the 60s of our Central American policy, early 70s?

Is this the glory days of America because it's what they seem to be bringing back? And if they looked at what actually happened then in Central America and South America, or if they looked at what was happening in the Middle East with every country we have touched militarily, we leave a path of destruction and hatred. It's not what Lindsay Graham is saying. And so I think these folks come across really is out of touch with reality. but a lot of money a lot of money sitting there getting on that airplane

well Colonel Quackowski a pleasure my dear friend thank you for joining us thank you for this terrific piece we all see what Washington is doing you can catch it at judd's nap dot com and elsewhere we'll see you next week Karen all the best

absolutely you too Josh thank you coming tomorrow Wednesday at 8 in the morning Professor Gilbert Dr. O at 11 in the morning Colonel Douglas McGregor at one in the afternoon, Professor Glenn Diesen, at three in the afternoon, our old buddy, that's stalwart, Phil Giraldi. Judge the Palatano for judging freedom. Thank you.