Judging Freedom - Phil Giraldi : A Battered America Awaits War

Episode Date: December 24, 2025

Phil Giraldi : A Battered America Awaits WarSee 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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And with Ollie's in-app on-demand health screenings, tap real experts whenever you need peace of mind. Visit ollie.com slash crossover and use code crossover for 60% off your first box. Thank you. Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for judging freedom. Today is Wednesday, December 24th, 2025. It's Christmas Eve. Phil Giraldi joins us now. Felipe, welcome here. That is a fabulous, fabulous sweater you're wearing with Frankie the Cat and Rupert, the dog. God bless you. But welcome here, my dear friend. We have a lot to talk about. You have a, all your pieces are marvelous. This most recent, one at UNZ review. A battered America awaits war. It's terrifying, but it's true. Let's start with Europe and the sanctioning of, like you, a retired intelligence officer,

in this case, like you, also retired military, Colonel Jacques Bao. What's your take on whether this is the beginning of worse things? to come or just an outlier? Well, I'd like to hope that it's an outlier, but I'm afraid it isn't. We've already seen this tendency on the part of European governments, most particularly the British, the French, the Germans, to go after dissident viewpoints. It's probably at its most extreme in Britain right now, where if you're walking in the street and carrying a sign that says something that is contrary to British government policy,

you could be arrested. So it's absolutely astonishing. So I'm not too surprised at it. I think it's something that will maybe play out as the situation with Ukraine plays out one way or another, where the Europeans are, of course, the ones who are pushing a more aggressive. approach and they don't want to hear anything but that. So it's, I'm afraid it might take off depending on what exactly takes place. I think that the key time is going to be over the next couple of weeks as we get through the holidays and most of the governments in question,

including our own, have their eyes on upcoming elections in the next year. And they're going to be thinking in terms of how are they going to be playing this you know the colonel uh beau situation is different from the others um uh the EU and the U.S. have stolen assets from Russian oligarchs the federal government owns a couple of hundred million dollar yachts that are sitting somewhere they can't use them they haven't decided to sell them but they've stolen them and of course the EU government says, well, they've done this to moneyed people, ostensibly because these people either own banks that finance Russian industry or are, quote, friends of Vladimir Putin, whatever that means. But in the case of Colonel Bo, like you, Phil, a dedicated,

civic-minded patriot, they are punishing him because of his words. Yesterday, on the floor of the house of commons prime minister stormer threatened a russian oligarch named a bramowicz who uh last name uh first name i think is roman uh loaned uh a large and popular uh football team in in britain what we call soccer and he was forced to sell it and the assets are in a bank and now the British government wants to steal the proceeds from the sale, and you're ready for this? Give it to Vladimir Zelensky, the biggest crook in Europe. That's for money and for politics.

But why, Bo? Why a person whose influence outside of Switzerland and Brussels was generally unknown until they made him a martyr? Well, again, I think to go back on what we've been discussing, it's an issue of silencing him and silencing people like him more than getting money out of them. I mean, the big money pile that, of course, has been subject to intense debate in Europe over the past couple weeks has been all the money sitting in Belgian banks, which amounts to, I think, $300 billion. dollars and this is this is uh russian government money that was put into these EU accounts for various reasons trade reasons and other and the idea it has been frozen and the idea is again to give all this money to Zelensky a company in ukraine i guess

Zelensky needs another house maybe on lake Como in Italy What is your take on Trump's latest out of left field threats to Greenland and his nomination of the governor of Louisiana who seems more concerned with who the football coach is going to be at LSU than running an efficient government, but it's a different world in Louisiana, as you know, appointing him as some sort of special emissary to Greenland. and then Trump said the other day, we want it, we need it, we're going to take it, no matter what we have to do. This is, this is Hitlerian language, is it not? It's like Hitler coveting France, although France is worth a lot more than Greenland. Yeah, well, Governor Jeff Landry, who is this special guy emissary that's being sent over there, denies that there's any threat of force or anything like that. So why is he being sent over there?

I mean, if I were Greenland, I wouldn't allow them to admit the, enter into the country, which would have to come from the Danish government, which I think would go along with that. But this is ridiculous. This is a non-starter by almost any standard, even worse than what they're doing down in Venezuela. And it's threatening a NATO, a NATO ally with taking over the country to allow the United States to have access to the Arctic Ocean, which I think is the arguments that have been thrown out there, that all this is vulnerable and rich with minerals area up there, has to be protected. I mean, this is utter nonsense. And this is the kind of thing, unfortunately, you can expect from Trump. I don't think he even knows where Greenland is. But the fact is he's got people that are telling him these things.

I don't know which ones would be on this particular agenda. But this is frightening stuff. How much in the world does he want to fight at the same time? I guess you, yeah. But Phil, we need Greenland, not for minerals. We have plenty of minerals. We need Greenland for national security. And besides, there are Russians and Chinese ships all over the place.

We can't allow that to happen. Chris, cut number three. We need Greenland for national protection. They have a very small population. And I don't know, they say Denmark, but Denmark has spent no money. They have no military protection. They say that Denmark was there 300 years. ago or something with a boat. Well, we were there with boats, too, I'm sure. So we'll have to

work it all out. But he felt very strongly, we needed for national, we need Greenland for national security, not for minerals. We have so many sites for minerals and oil and everything. We have more oil than any other country in the world. We need Greenland for national security. And if you take a look at Greenland, you look up and down the coast. You have Russian and Chinese ships all over the place. We need it. for national security. We have to have it. I guess that means military action to steal a land mass almost as large as the United States. Yeah. And what is the specific national security defense initiative? What is that amount to?

This is an interesting story for me, particularly because the big NATO, base in Greenland is Tully Air Base, which was built during the Second World War, and my uncle was one of the people who built it. So we've had a presence there. Nobody's complained about it. And the fact is that basically Greenland is a part of NATO through Denmark. And this is just, this is fear-mongering at an extreme level. Russia has ships moving through the Arctic Ocean, because it borders on the Arctic Ocean and Arctic Sea, whatever you prefer. And they move through there, and they have a border there. And if there are Chinese ships there, they're probably doing trade, too.

They don't have, there's no evidence of any warships or any threat against the United States. This is Trump, this little speech of his there is so full of lies and so full exaggeration. It's like everything else he comes out with. And how many wars are we going to get into for fake reasons? Did Netanyahu invite himself to Florida, or did Trump invite Netanyahu to meet him in Florida on December 29th? Well, the original media coverage was that the invitation came from Donald Trump. And I tend to believe that that might very well be true.

The question then becomes, what is this going to be about? There are two stories that are being floated as the reason for this meeting. One of them is that Netanyahu is going to lay on Trump the conditions or the inevitability. of the two countries combining to attack Iran. And the argument being made is that Iran is developing all these lethal missiles and everything. And they've changed the national security status for the entire Middle East region by doing this.

So we have to do something about it. And of course, it's no longer arguing about secret nuclear program programs, and this is shifting the kind of story. But the other possibility is that, and I don't believe this one for a second, is that Trump is going to lay the line on Netanyahu and saying he's got to stop killing Palestinians and attacking Palestinian leaders if they want to get to phase two of the Trump peace plan. And I can't see Netanyahu bowing to Trump on this in any way.

If they do come to some kind of formula, it'll be a fake one, which is full of holes that Israel can break the rules. So that's the question of what this is going to be all about. And we might get some interesting insights when the next two days after the meeting, Netanyahu will be meeting with the usual social. The Israel lobby and Congress, probably people like good old Randy Fine are dual national congressman from Florida. And this will reveal a lot more of what the real agenda is. Who or what is the Friends of Zion Ambassador Summit? Who is the Friends of Zion Ambassador?

Who? summit i'm sorry i don't know oh okay no you wrote you wrote about this a summit of some group called for i'm sorry yeah yeah i just i just i missed i thought you were giving me a name summit and uh no yeah this was a uh 1,000 parsons from the united states were given a free luxury trip to israel uh where they the israeli government uh whined and dining them after warning them that they should not engage any Christian activity while they were there because that's illegal and so we have these thousand parsons all the all the hardline type Christian Zionists and there they were getting all this and they were basically this was

basically an Israeli government motivated action to get real propaganda inside the the United States from a strong constituency saying how great everything was in Israel and so on so far. But the bad part about this was the U.S. ambassador, Mike Huckabee, who also is, of course, a Christian Zionist and is an apologist for Israel, to put it mildly, address these people. And he basically repeated the same stories, how Israel is only defending itself, how all these people who are attacking Israel are anti-Semites. And so this is, this is again where the narrative is flipping back to anti-Semitism. It's all not left anymore because everybody could turn on their television even,

even in the United States every once in a while, and see Palestinians getting slaughtered. Can three people stand on a street corner in Israel and recite the rosary out loud? They can certainly do it, but they will. fact be promoting Christianity, which is illegal. So they could be arrested by the police, but more probably they'll just be attacked by local Israelis. This is what happens all the time. Israelis will go up to these people who are clearly Christians or engaging in Christian practice of some kind and they'll spit on them. They'll hit them. They'll go on to the church where these people might be outside and they vandalized the church.

And this is all the stuff that's going by. And Mike Huckabee and Donald Trump don't seem to care about that. They care about Christians in Nigeria, apparently. But when it comes to the country that we support with multi-million dollars to conduct a genocide, they have nothing to say. Before you answer this question, we're going to play with a little clip, which Chris and I debated because we thought it might raise your blood pressure. The question is, is Donald Trump Jewish?

Watch this. And he loves Israel too. Six years ago I was up here. And I said, this is our first Jewish president. Now he's the first Jewish president to serve two. not consecutive presidencies. We thank you for everything. Did you see and hear Trump mumble? That's true.

And he said it twice. Yes. Yeah. And I, I, there is, there are people who claim to have insider knowledge to the fact that during Trump's first term, in 2017, he converted to Judaism. He's apparently very close to the Chabad extremist Jewish sect in New York State and has always been very close to them. And apparently that's where the conversion took place.

So when he says, yes, the first Jewish president, it always used to be a joke that maybe was Bill Clinton or Lyndon Johnson for various reasons. of their crawling to Israel and its lobby. But it looks like Donald Trump might be the real thing. Who is Rabbi Yehuda Kaplan. Oh, this is another beauty. This is a... You know, in the United States, you can curse out people like me and you,

Italians were Waps and were this, that, the other thing. And every other ethnic group, the Irish, and everybody, House has their people that can criticize them. But boy, in the United States, you cannot criticize Jews. That's anti-Semitism. And this guy, Yehuda Kaplun, is an Israeli, and he's a rabbi, and he is now a U.S. ambassador. He is the special envoy to monitor and combat anti-Semitism. And in his acceptance speech, the week or so ago, he basically said he was going to be getting rid of this anti-Semitism, which has been prevalent at our universities and has been employed by people to criticize Israel unfairly and so on and so forth.

So here we have an advocate for shutting us all up if we dare to criticize Israel, or if we dare to criticize the way the Israel robbery and their multiple Jewish billionaires behave in terms of distorting the policy of this country and corrupting our system. Well, you can't say that anymore. And I just said it. Right. God love you. Back to Russia and just to lighten things up. Our friends at Russia today have posted a pretty funny Christmas parody called Just Blame Putin. Watch this. Chris number one.

My friends are settled by your Christmas treat. It's all because of Putin's see. Power bills too high to pay. It's all because of Putin hate. Face of food. Your press feels like a skin. It's all because of Putin down. Your tax is fun, the war is dead.

It's all because what Putin said. Bureaucrats are on your back. It's all because of Putin whack. Santa robbed your kids this year. It's all because of Putin. Putin dear no new hope for a year ahead it's all because the Putin dread it's all because of Putin it's all because of Putin it's all because of Putin They should have played that at the meeting where Chancellor Mers was trying to twist the arm of the courageous Belgian prime minister who stood fast and said,

you're not going to steal any money from my banks. That's right. Oh, that was brilliant. I hadn't seen it. Yes, yes. It's absolutely, I mean, the fearmongering on the part of a certain. countries in Europe. It's astonishing. It's not it's it's like everything Trump comes out with it's not fact-based. It's just a question of creating fear and generating problems or blaming

problems that actually are the fault of the respective governments and blaming it on somebody else, which is the Russians. And it's just absolutely awful. But this is what we're confronted with And we're confronted with it every day, every time Lindsey Graham opens his mouth, you know, you want to stuff a sock or something in it. And Ted Cruz is another one. And it's just, what is wrong with these people? Do these are people who've gotten fat and rich as a result of being on the Israeli side in all things. And then they go and they stick it to the American. who are ordinary citizens who have had to pay the bill to send, you know, last year, what was it, $21 billion to Israel so they could fight their war and their genocide.

So this kind of stuff just goes on and on and on. But boy, that cartoon was brilliant. It was, but you made me laugh very hard when I asked you, who the hell is Rabbi Yehuda Kaplan? And you said, oh, he's another beauty. What a world we live in, my dear friend. Thank you for all your time with us this year, Phil. It's been a delight, both our personal friendship and our professional collaboration. I think you probably know that last weekend we surpassed 100 million views, which puts us in very distinguished category, in no small measure because of you. And thank you for everything you've done for us, and we look forward to working with you again in the new year. Well, so do I. And I wish you and I wish all our viewers a Merry Christmas and a happy new year. And keep coming to watch us because we will tell you what you need to know.

We will. Thank you, Phil. Much love to you and Angela. All the best. Thank you. Bye. Sure. Goodbye. Coming up at 10 o'clock this morning, Professor John Mearsheimer at 11 o'clock, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, And tomorrow on Christmas Day, the best of Max Blumenthal, 10 o'clock, excuse me, 8 o'clock in the morning. We will start eight hours. You can OD on Max. We're calling it the Maxathon.

Judge Napolitano for judging freedom. Thank you.