Judging Freedom - Matt Hoh: Trump and Gaza.

Episode Date: February 5, 2025

Matt Hoh: Trump and Gaza.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Thank you. Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Wednesday, February 5th, 2025. Matt Ho joins us now. Matt, thank you very much for your time. Much appreciated. Before the events of yesterday, when I was planning to speak with you today, I picked as the topic President Trump in Gaza, never imagining the statement that he would make when he was standing next to Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, that he would like the United States to acquire or take over the Gaza Strip. Before we address this from the moral perspective and the legal perspective, what are the physical, the logistics implications of this? How would you possibly get between one and a half and two million Palestinians off their own home, native, indigenous land when they don't want to go? Thanks for having me on, Judge. And yeah, this is absolutely stunning. I have heard from other people the same thing happened.

You're watching this. You hear President Trump say, I'm going to take over Gaza and you rewound it. I rewound it twice because I couldn't believe what I was hearing. That phrasing take over in the way he described the United States would have total control, whether from rebuilding it to clearing it of unexploded ordnance to making sure the Palestinians were cleared out of Gaza. And that's a phrase he has used multiple times now. This certainly what we saw last night from his press conference was with Benjamin Netanyahu was not something off the cuff. This was something that was planned, planned and prepared. This obviously was what the purpose of Netanyahu's visit was. And the scope and scale of what he is suggesting is incredible. This may be the most consequential announcement

of the 21st century. I don't think that's hyperbole. The president of the United States is saying we will take control when he's asked about whether that includes sending U.S. military forces to Gaza. He says whatever is necessary, we'll do whatever it takes. And so the idea of that then, if you have to physically remove 2.2 million people from a land that they have fought, they have bled, their fathers bled, their grandfathers bled, they have bled so, so hard and so much these last 16 months, to think that it's just going to be a process of organizing a slew of Greyhound buses to take them into the Sinai Desert. I don't know what to say. So what you're looking at here is if we're taking this at face value, you're looking at the possibility of a core of American military forces.

So two to four ground divisions, so bringing in the 2nd Marine Division, the 82nd Airborne, the 10th Mountain Division, and putting them on occupation duty in Gaza against an insurgency, a resistance, I shouldn't call it an insurgency, a resistance that will fight the American presence as much as they have fought the Israeli presence for the last 80 years. Wow. What are the military implications here? Would American troops actually be sent there? Would the Marines, your former colleagues, actually be sent there to force people from their homes at gunpoint against their will? It's almost inconceivable that Americans would be willing to do that.

It is. It's something that, you know, I said in another program earlier this week, Judge, with this administration, this kleptocracy, I'm never again going to say something is impossible. What we've witnessed these last couple of weeks, by this yesterday is just simply astounding. Again, this may be the most consequential press conference of the 21st century. So the idea of somehow that we are going to take control and we are going to quash the resistance and send everybody away so that we can rebuild it, that then can be resettled, not by the Palestinian people, but as Donald Trump called it, the people of the world or the people of the area, meaning the Israelis. You're looking at essentially putting American soldiers and

Marines on the ground in Gaza to kill and to be killed in order to carry out the ethnic cleansing for no other purposes than to pursue the goals of Zionism and the interests of Donald Trump's real estate friends, as well as his son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Here's the president himself as he made these startling comments yesterday. Chris, cut number four. The U.S. will take over the Gaza Strip and we will do a job with it, too. We'll own it and be responsible for dismantling all of the dangerous unexploded bombs and other weapons on the site, level the site and get rid of the destroyed buildings, level it out, create an economic development that will supply unlimited numbers of jobs and housing for

the people of the area. You were talking tonight about the United States taking over a sovereign territory. What authority would allow you to do that? Are you talking about a permanent occupation there? Redevelopment? I do see a long-term ownership position, and I see it bringing great stability to that part of the Middle East and maybe the entire Middle East. And everybody I've spoken to, this was not a decision made lightly. Everybody I've spoken to loves the idea of the United States owning that piece of land, developing and creating thousands of jobs with something that will be magnificent. And I don't want to be cute. I don't want to be a wise guy, but the Riviera of the Middle East, this could be something that could be so magnificent. If we can get a beautiful area to resettle people permanently in nice homes

where they can be happy and not be shot, not be killed, not be knifed to death like what's happening in Gaza, why would they want to return? The place has been hell. Place has been hell thanks to the mass murderer and war criminal seated next to you, Mr. President, and thanks to your predecessor financing it. Correct. I honestly don't think Donald Trump has either an intellectual or historical appreciation or an empathetic appreciation for what is occurring there. I don't think he has the knowledge, the context, the background. All he cares about is what he's told by those who benefit him. So what he learns from Miriam Adelson, certainly what he hears from

people like Benjamin Netanyahu or Ron Dermer, you know, I think that's where his understanding of what is actually occurring there. You hear that phrase, people getting stabbed. Well, you know, the Palestinians aren't being stabbed. They're being blown up. They're being immolated. They're being immiserated. They're being starved to death. The people who are stabbed are the Israelis by the Palestinians occasionally, because that's all the Palestinians often have to attack Israelis with as a knife. And so the fact that he said that, it shows just how biased where the chauvinism is in terms of his understanding, his worldview, you know, and then no empathetic understanding of the people, no other, no understanding of the attachment of the people

to land, the attachment of the people to their history, to their ancestors. He sees this as nothing more than going into an urban neighborhood, a section eight, low income community and offering them vouchers to buy them out of their homes. That's the way he is viewing this. That's the way he understands it. And it's not just him. It's his entire staff, with the exception of, say, the Zionists themselves or war romantics, the true believers in the empire like Michael Waltz or Marco Rubio.

I was very concerned when I heard Steve Witkoff speak over the weekend, Judge. Witkoff, Donald Trump's Middle East envoy, he visited Gaza by visiting means. He flew an Israeli army helicopter over it, and the Israelis took him on a tour, I guess, of it. But what Witkoff said that was really troubling, really troubling, was the fact he said this. He said, if I hadn't come here, I would not have known the reality of what Gaza is like. So this is a man who the last 15 or 16 months, who is now in charge of this for the United States, didn't know the extent of the destruction of Gaza. He's reporting this week in that unless he had gone there personally and seen it, he would not have known that Gaza had been reduced

to rubble, the plight of the people, the reality of the situation there. You mean, so this is what we're dealing with here is a biased, manipulated power structure that has no opportunity to ever do anything well or correct or beneficial because the pursuits are also corrupted. Could this be some sort of a ploy just to get Netanyahu office back? This certainly is a ploy. And this seems like a well-developed, well-thought-out campaign over the last couple of months to politically get both sides what they want. So certainly look at Netanyahu's position here. He has, by engaging in the ceasefire, starting to get civilians back home, the Israeli hostages back home, he has taken a lot of political pressure off himself.

At the same time, when he did that, he angered the far right. Benjamin, Itamar Ben-Gavir leaves the government, right? Bezal Stotris threatens to leave the government as well. You have this fear that the government is going to collapse and Netanyahu will lose an election. And now all of a sudden he's reversed that, right? So he's been able to get a lot of the hostages home. He's now giving the far right more than they could ever have possibly dreamed of. And this is all seems to be some some grand plan, you know. And so this idea that we had several weeks ago that Steve Witkoff showed up in Tel Aviv and called out Benjamin Netanyahu and used, quote, salty language, unquote, as the media kept reporting it as, and threatened Netanyahu and

got him to come to Trump's will, it doesn't seem like that was the case. It seems that if there was no stick involved, it was the carrot of, look, Netanyahu, you get me this presidential inauguration bombing pause, and I will then send in the Marines to help you deal with the Gaza situation. Because this is something that reflects us, right? I want to ask you about the presence of the IDF in Gaza now. But before I do, since we came on air just a few minutes ago, Hamas has issued a statement profoundly rejecting President Trump. Chris has a clip. Chris, let's watch. We strongly reject President Trump's statements regarding the deportation of our Palestinian people from the Gaza Strip and regarding the United States' control

over the Gaza Strip. These statements reflect confusion and a deep ignorance about Palestine and the region. Gaza is certainly not common land and it is not a property that can be bought and sold. American bias towards Israel and against our Palestinian people and against their just rights continues and is confirmed by such statements. We demand the US president to retract these statements because such statements add fuel to the fire. Our Palestinian people, the living forces and the resistance factions, supported by their Arab and Islamic nation, will thwart all plans aimed at deporting the Palestinian people and expelling them from their land. Trump is serious. If it's not a ploy, if it's not a negotiating technique, if it's not that Richard Nixon madman theory that he once said to Kissinger, let them think I'm crazy, then everything that that

Hamas representative said is true. This is born of abject ignorance of the history and the culture of Gaza. Correct, Judge. And the greed, the idea, Trump brings this up continually, the beauty of the place, the location of the place, the climate there, how great this would be for beachside resorts. I mean, so you have this understanding, again, this transactional view of things, Donald Trump looking at the American empire from the perspective of a real estate magnate, from the perspective of an emperor of real estate, if you will, as opposed to, say, the last administration, the Biden administration, that viewed the American empire in a much more traditional, static way. This is Machiavellian. It's diabolical. At the very least, it will allow for the Israelis

to now claim that Hamas is going to break the ceasefire so we don't have to go in to the second phase of the ceasefire. That does a lot of good things for the Israelis and for Netanyahu's government. Of course, it allows the resumption of the genocide, the push for the ethnic cleansing. You've got this pledge of support, to put it politely, by the Americans, which may entail American ground forces there, helping the Israelis to push the Palestinians out. I mean, that must have been the deal, because what was occurring in this first phase, Judge, is that we saw, right, those incredible, beautiful, historic videos of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians walking back to their destroyed homes. When I watched it together, it was deeply and profoundly moving. It was. And I think one of the questions a lot of us have was, how did the Israelis agree to this? They just

spent the last four or five months conducting a genocide within a genocide, as it's called, carrying out the General's Plan in northern Gaza, the Surrender or Starve campaign, pushing hundreds of thousands of Palestinians out of the northern part of Gaza, south of the Netzerim corridor. And now all these hundreds of thousands of people are coming back. So even if the Israelis resume their ethnic cleansing, how are they going to handle all this? They got to push all these people back again. How would the Israelis have ever agreed to go along with it? And now maybe this is what it was. Witkoff, on behalf of the president of the United States, said, don't worry about that, Bibi.

What we're going to do is we're going to send American ground troops in to help you do this. The next logical assumption would be, Judge, is what were the other parts of the transaction? What else is going to be provided? Including now we're talking about American ground troops going into the West Bank. What was the quid pro quo on all this? I don't know if it was a quid pro quo, really, because maybe they have a joint vision here, a real combined understanding of where they want to go. There was this really creepy moment during the press conference when Benjamin Netanyahu was talking about how he and Donald Trump have a vision for the future, how they can see what is possible. And then they exchanged this look,

you know, it was like a scene out of a movie, incredibly creepy and very unnerving. And so what are their plans after this? I think many of us have felt there's no way the Israelis can resume the genocide, the ethnic cleansing of the Gaza Strip in conjunction with the annexation of the West Bank. They just don't have the wherewithal, the capacity, the number of troops to do that. But if the Americans now are going to come in and be involved, then they can do both things concurrently. And then the third thing that was so important during this press conference was the commentary on Iran. And now we've heard that commentary before, that we pledge we will

never allow Iran to get a nuclear weapon, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, even though the Iranians don't have a nuclear weapons program. But the commitment to Gaza, the commitment to the West Bank, the sheer repudiation of facts, reality, history, leads me to think that it's just a matter of time until we have very similar to 2003, a cause's belly for war against Iran that is built upon manufactured intelligence. There's nothing to me that says that that won't happen again. And after watching that last night, I really do believe that some point in the next year, we will see now American military action against Iran in a way that, yeah, I would have put money on it one way or the other. But now I'm really quite certain that overall, this attack on Iran is coming as part of an integrated campaign to ensure Israeli supremacy, not just in Gaza, the West Bank, but throughout the Middle East.

Standing or sitting, I'm not sure if he's standing or sitting next to the man single most responsible for turning Gaza into a hell. Here's what Donald Trump said. Cut number five. Would Palestinians have the right to return to Gaza if they left while the rebuilding was happening? It would be my hope that we could do something really nice, really good, where they wouldn't want to return. Why would they want to return? The place has been hell. It's been one of the meanest,

one of the meanest, toughest places on Earth. I hope that we could do something where they wouldn't want to go back. Who would want to go back? They've experienced nothing but death and destruction. Just by the person smiling at you, two feet away from your nose.

Right. The whole, if people haven't watched the press conference in particular, it really is worth watching to just realize the dynamics at play here. Trump makes his remarks, all prepared remarks, not off the cuff. This is deliberate. He is very clear about taking control of Gaza, what that means, what the United States will be doing. And then Netanyahu's remarks are both flattering to Donald Trump, obsequious to Donald Trump, but also aspirational for the future. And you see this relationship between these two where Donald Trump is the king, Donald Trump is the emperor. But Netanyahu is there in front of the throne saying, you know, giving him all the platitudes, you know, being as,

as kissing his ass, as easy as way to describe it, as much as possible in order to ensure he gets what he wants. And then, of course, we have there as well, my understanding is that she was present, Miriam Adelson, who after Elon Musk was the second biggest contributor to Donald Trump's campaign, $100 million, that Miriam Adelson was present yesterday. Wait a minute. She's a Mossad asset. Is she allowed to be in the White House? I'm being sarcastic. We know she was there. We are going to post the entire press conference so that those who haven't seen it, those who've been intrigued by Matt's reaction to what he saw can watch it. And we'll have that posted shortly. Matt, thank you very much. This is such a deplorable state of affairs. I can't get my hands around it, but I'm sure more information will come and we'll find out if Trump is serious about his intentions. Maybe it is the madman theory. You

know, when Kissinger said you're going to bomb Cambodia? They'll think you're crazy. Nixon said, I want them to think I'm crazy. I don't know what Trump thinks that way. Yeah. I mean, Judge, we certainly discussed that madman theory with regards to Netanyahu. But I will say just to close is look at the people that Trump has around him. Look at his ambassador to Israel. Look at his ambassador to the United Nations. These are people who have testified that they believe Israel has a biblical right to those lands. They have a biblical right, not just to those lands, but they probably understand that to be all of greater Israel. So going from the Nile to the Euphrates, I can't see Elise Stefanik or Mike Huckabee disagreeing with that. The other aspect is look who's in control of the Pentagon. You have a man who is a fantasist, a great believer, a devotee of the apocalypse,

of revelations. His Christian nationalism isn't just steeped in the romance of the Crusades, but in a belief of end times. And so now you have these people surrounding Donald Trump who actually do believe that this may be the way to bring back Jesus's second coming. I mean, and that's not glib. That's not hyperbole. This is what these people actually believe. And on the other last, the last point I'll make about his people is where was Marco Rubio all during all this? Marco Rubio was, was in Central America. And what was he doing there? Among other things, he was most likely, in my opinion, I would speculate that he was there trying to twist arms and offer carrots in order to possibly get these countries to say, we will take Palestinians.

Trump was adamant that he had support from around the world for countries to take Palestinians. I haven't heard a single country say they're willing to do this. I know he sounds adamant, but I haven't heard anybody say it. We will post by five o'clock this afternoon right here on our YouTube channel. The full presser yesterday was President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu. If you missed it, you'll be able to see it and watch whatever spots you want. You can even rewatch it because you were so startled as Matt was. Matt, thank you very much for your time. Deeply and profoundly appreciated. We'll see you again next week. Thanks, Judge. I appreciate it. Of course. Coming up, you can imagine what he has to say

about this at two o'clock. Max Blumenthal at three o'clock. Phil Giraldi at four o'clock. Scott Ritter, Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. I'm out.