Judging Freedom - Phil Giraldi : Is Trump Suddenly Christian?

Episode Date: November 19, 2025

Phil Giraldi : Is Trump Suddenly Christian?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, November 19th, 2000, and is today the 19th? Yeah, Wednesday the 19th, sorry, 2025. Phil Giraldi joins us now. Phil, thanks very much, my dear friend. Before we get to President Trump's ostentatious and loud defense of some Christians and refusal to defend others. Yesterday, he announced yet again that he has authorized a covert

operation in Venezuela. I mean, what does this do to the CIA officers on the ground, the operations people, when they know that the president has squealed that they're there? Well, it's incredibly demoralizing, just for starters, because basically, as you and I have discussed in the past, covert means covert. And that means that the field officers, like I was, the operations people, we are reliant on a certain amount of security due to the fact that nobody's blowing a trumpet about us being there. And so this, I have to believe, is incredibly demoralizing. And I've had discussions with some of my former colleagues, also operations officers,

who feel the same way about it. This is a major betrayal by those who have responsibility for your safekeeping. This is a typical Trump type thing. He's too ignorant to know what he's doing. and he's surrounded by people who also don't have the right kind of experience to be able to tell him about anything about this. The director of CIA has no experience in this kind of stuff, and I'm sure they're not talking to anybody within the ranks who's kind of like me.

I mean, but why would he do this other than, as Colonel McGregor says from time to time, but we all know this he shoots from the hip, he gets angry, He boasts, he threatens, he cajoles. This is the most unpresidential behavior. But what beneficial purpose could possibly be served? It's not going to enhance negotiation, is it? No, I don't think it is. I think it's the fact that he's so ignorant of what all this means.

He's basically seeing operations people in CIA who essentially are there to keep their developing sources that tell them what's going on inside the country. And he kind of, I think, sees us as running around with guns and shooting people. Maybe he's trying to put pressure on Maduro and the Venezuelan government by saying, hey, we've got a lot of wild CIA people running crazy in your country. And boy, if you guys don't tow the line immediately, there's going to be some, use another one of his famous phrases, there are going to be bad things happening. Right.

Can these agents be arrested and executed? Can they be arrested and executed by the Venezuelans? Sure. Yes. I mean, they're trying to overthrow the government. What would we do if foreign agents were arrested in the U.S. trying to overthrow the government? Well, we have foreign agents from Israel

trying to overthrow our government. and probably make Netanyahu our next president. But that's another story. Yeah, sure. I mean, in the United States, obviously, if we were encountering people who were doing something active to subvert the government, there might be options that they would look at, including treason charges.

Treason charges, of course, do have a potential death penalty. Right, right. Are CIA agents engaged in espionage, foreign espionage, able to establish cover by some sort of, well, we're diplomats in the embassy facade? That's a typical cover, but obviously if you're operating in, depending on what the environment is, you would have other covers that you would work with. For example, it was when I was operating in Europe, it was very popular for U.S. people like me

who basically were working out of an embassy and had diplomatic or consular cover. We would also, when we were out operating, have a false document. Irish passports were very popular. Back when I was working in the business, and there were a number of other Swiss passports, for example. The U.S. would forge passports from these countries, and we would operate with them, and we would use them as a cover. What was the name that Phil Giraldi had on his Irish passport? I'm dying to know it.

Shamas O'Toole. Oh, you've got to be kidding. I am kidding, but it would always be, it would always be, particularly in the Irish passports, it would always be an O'Reilly or something like that, something that was so common that if they tried to look you up, they would come up with 150,000 hits. Got it, got it. Does the CIA, when they work undercover, work in tandem with the Department of Defense? I mean, suppose Trump orders an attack or even an invasion. Would the CIA still be on the ground? They might be.

Sometimes CIA people are actually under military cover and would be using the cover of a defense attache office or something like that, a military base or something like that. So it's not that uncommon. And the fact is that if CIA officers were directed by the director or presumably acting under orders from the president to work with military intelligence people or military officers in some other capacity, they would, of course, do it. Why do you think Donald Trump ostentatiously demands the defense of Christians in Nigeria but not in Syria, Gaza, or even Israel.

Well, that's a funny kind of story that I wrote an article about last week. And this was all, this all came out of Trump a little over a week ago appearing, I saw it on television, basically a live

speech by Trump, if you want to call what he does a speech. And he harangued about how these horrible people in Nigeria were killing off all these Christians. And if they continue to do it, we were going to get involved. And he made a very direct charge that if we got involved, it would be on the ground and it would be the U.S. military taking care of this problem.

And I listened to it, and I said, this is crazy. And I know I've been to Nigeria. I know a little bit about it. And Nigeria is about 50% Christian and about 50% Muslim. And there are about 250 million of them altogether. And so he's talking about taking on a rather big problem. And the fact is there is tension between the various ethnic majorities in Nigeria. But it's nothing like what he was implied.

about Muslims, basically running berserk and slaughtering Christians, willy-nilly. This is a typical Trump exaggeration about something that he knows very little. So when I heard that, I said, well, what about all the Christians that are being harassed, and spat upon and beaten, and otherwise abused by the Israeli government and the Israeli settlers? and I haven't heard Donald Trump say anything about that. Well, let's talk about Nigeria for a minute. 250 million people, where they have a military? Would our military meet resistance?

Our military would meet plenty of resistance. And as I recall, their military is quite competent. And so it could be an interesting game. And the other, of course, that interesting aspect. is that, you know, we don't have any real bases, military bases in that part of the world, so we wouldn't have anywhere to kind of hide to get these organizations organized. We'd have to do kind of what we're doing with Venezuela, which is doing it from the sea, bringing in a lot of ships and things,

and they would be very vulnerable to whatever, measures Nigeria would be using. Nigeria has a long coastline and it has significant capabilities to make it difficult. Why does the president bring monsters like Netanyahu, Al Jolani, Muhammad bin Salman, into the Oval Office and attempt to sanitize them? The efforts to sanitize Muhammad bin Salman were absurd, laughable, clownish, but he tried to pull that off. Why do they do that? You know, it's, to me, it's almost a mystery why he does it. We have all these countries that don't threaten us, that would probably be more useful

as kind of friends, and yet we go into this game. A lot of it is about Israel, of course. I mean, this whole bit with Syria, in which we're, We're talking nice now to al-Qaeda people. And it really has a lot to do with Israel, which is again trying to expand its own control in Syria. And there is some talk, I don't know if you've seen it, but that the US, apparently when our friend was visiting here

from Syria, the issue of the US opening a base, a military base at an unused airfield, in or near Damascus. Yes, yes, I did hear about that. Yeah. So that of course would be for use by the Israelis at our expense. Why else would we be doing that? Exactly. So Israel is the story on a lot of this.

Just like when the ceasefire went into effect recently, some of the stuff that happened immediately thereafter was Israel turned up the heat on Lebanon. And there's been bombing of Lebanon over the last two days. 23 people a couple days ago, and they're also, of course, still killing people in Gaza, even though there's ceasefire, which Trump has sponsored, is in effect. Chris, Phil, watch this. Number 16, Chris. Mr. Speaker, given the president's disturbing and counterfactual defense of Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman today, I feel compelled to speak up on behalf of Mr. Khashoggi and his family

and the American people. During my tenure on Trump's White House National Security Council staff, I reviewed many of Trump's calls with foreign leaders. Of all the calls I reviewed, two stood out as the most problematic. The first, we all know, it was between President Trump and President Zelensky, which resulted in President Trump's first impeachment. The second was between President Trump and Muhammad bin Salman. After the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, I reviewed a call between the president and the Saudi Crown Prince. The American people and the Khashoggi family deserve to know what was said on that call.

If history is any guide, the receipts will be shocking. I call on the president to release that transcript. And honestly, does anyone believe that the Zelensky call was the only problematic conversation Donald Trump had with a foreign leader? How could he have said to Muhammad bin Salman, after his own CIA, This is Trump's CIA in his first term, said Muhammad bin Salman planned, orchestrated, and ordered the butchering, butchering of Khashoggi and the embassy in Turkey.

Well, what did Trump just say in the White House? Things happen. This is the way Trump thinks about things. And Wynman is a guy I would not trust farther than I can see him or throw him because he is an arch friend of Israel. How many of those phone calls, Mr. Vindman between Donald Trump and the Israeli leadership, would you not want us to hear? I mean, this gets to be, you know, who is screwing whom and what is the backstory that we should be looking for? to explain to us what really is going on. Vindman is not a guy I would listen to ever. Interesting. Chris, 12 and then 18 immediately following it.

Watch this, Phil. Your Royal Highness, the US intelligence concluded that you orchestrated the brutal murder of a journalist. 9-11 families are furious that you are here in the Oval Office. Who are you with? Who are you with? Who are you with? And the same to you, Mr. President.

Now, who are you with? You with who? ABC News, sir. Fake news. see fake news one of the worst one of the worst in the business but I'll answer your question as far as this gentleman is concerned he's done a phenomenal job you're mentioning somebody that was extremely controversial a lot of people didn't like that gentleman that you're talking about whether you like him or

didn't like him things happened but he knew nothing about it what did Jeffrey Epstein mean in his emails when he said you knew about the girls I know nothing about that Jeffrey Epson and I had a very bad relationship for many years If there's something discriminating in the files, sir, why do you guys think is it? Quiet, quiet, McGee. Mr. President, why wait for Congress to release the Epstein files? Why not just do it now? I think you are a terrible reporter.

You're a terrible person and a terrible reporter. What the Epstein is is a Democrat hoax. Your crappy company is one of the perpetrators. And I'll tell you something. I'll tell you something. I think the license should be taken away from ABC. A terrible Democrat hoax that was voted for by every Republican in the House but one and every single Republican in the Senate. There's something about Donald Twop that is so bizarre.

He doesn't appreciate the dignity and the seriousness of the office he holds. The way he insulted those people. And as I noted before, with the, uh, with the, uh, with the sultan he says things happened that is his thing for going out and killing someone or going out and butchering someone uh you know this is this is uh so sickening that the american public has even put up with this kind of innuendo this far astonishes me why did he have to call that woman a piggy why did he have to tell that woman uh we're going to take away your broadcasting license. Why does he have to do this kind of thing? And yet he relishes

it. It's the level he exists on. And I think that's pathetic. And I wish that somebody would take him aside and talk to him and explain to him, that this is totally unacceptable. And if you feel this way, you have to behave as President of the United States, why don't you resign? I'm going to run another clip, not to raise your blood pressure, but I think this one will. Chris, do you have the clip of that woman, Hurwitz, that we ran for Aaron? This is long. This is about 90 seconds. It's at a Jewish-American conference here in New York the other day to study the problems of anti-Semitism.

Watch this. I think that since October 7th, but really before then, there have been huge shifts in America on how people think about Jews and Israel. And I think that is especially true of young people. So we are now wrestling with a new, I think, generational divide here. And I think that's particularly true in that social media is now our source of media. And this, you know, it used to be that the media you got in America was American media, and it was pretty mainstream. You know, it generally didn't express extreme anti-Israel views. You had to go to a pretty weird bookstore to find global media and fringe media.

But today, we have social media, which is a global medium. It is shaped, its algorithms are shaped by billions of people worldwide who don't really love Jews. And so while in the 1990s, you know, a young person probably wasn't going to find Al Jazeera or someone like Nick Fuentes. Today, those media outlets find them. They find them on their phones. It's also this increasingly post-literate media,

less and less text, more and more videos. So you have TikTok just smashing our young people's brains all day long with video of carnage in Gaza. And this is why so many of us can't have a sane conversation with younger Jews, because anything that we try to say to them, they are hearing it through this wall of carnage. So I want to give data and information and facts and arguments, and they are just seeing in their minds carnage,

and I sound obscene. And, you know, I think, unfortunately, the very smart, I think, bet that we made on Holocaust education to serve as anti-Semitism education. In this new media environment, I think that is beginning to break down a little bit. Because, you know,

Holocaust education is absolutely essential. But I think it may be confusing some of our young people about anti-Semitism because they learn about big, strong Nazis hurting weak, emaciated Jews. And they think, oh, anti-Semitism is like anti-Black racism, right? Powerful white people against powerless black people.

So when on TikTok all day long, they see powerful Israelis hurting weak, skinny Palestinians, it's not surprising that they think, oh, I know, the lesson of the Holocaust is you fight Israel. You fight the big powerful people hurting the weak people. So she wants the wall of carnage using her phrase, which Netanyahu and company have perpetrated in Gaza, to be suppressed, not to be shown on TikTok and on. on videos, because it might expose the Zionist experiment for what it truly is? Well, this is a common theme now, that we have to suppress freedom of speech, because freedom of speech might be used to tell the truth about what Israel is doing to the Palestinians.

Now, we can't have that. And so this is, that conference she was out in New York was, there were 2,000 people there, including a number of the billionaires who fund all this crap. And, you know, she was the press person, I believe, for Mrs. Obama. She was Mrs. Obama's principal speechwriter. Yeah, and so you can imagine the crap she was injecting into that system. I mean, you know, these people are, it's, there's one optic. The optic is Israel.

It's all about Israel. And if you do anything in any way that impugns what, or criticizes what Israel is doing, you're essentially a bad person because Israel is always right and Israel is always good. And how they can say that after watching Benjamin Netanyahu for any one of his pronouncements, you have to be crazy to go there. And Ben Gavir, I think you probably have seen his latest stuff. You know, Palestinians, first of all, don't exist. There's no such thing as a Palestinian.

We have to get rid of all of them. And the ones who are prisoners, if we kill them, that's okay too. So this is incredible what they're coming out with and what they get away with. And this woman who is a propagandist for what they get away with is they're mouthing off like she's some kind of victim. Here's Tucker Carlson on all of this earlier this week. Chris, cut number one. The whole propaganda machine.

that has been spoon fed to Christians, whether it's in the pews at church or Bible study, or coming through the television, or through their politicians' mouths, that we have to do everything for Israel. That's the only way we're going to go to heaven. America will be cursed if we don't. That whole lie is breaking apart. And thank God it is because I as a Christian, you as a Christian, we know there's only one way.

And it's through Jesus Christ, he is our Savior. He died on a cross for us. He rose from the dead in three days. He is the one and only living son of God, and he is seated at the right hand of the father, and he's going to come again one day to judge the living and the dead. And that is the way you go to heaven, and that is the truth, and that is the light, and that is the only way that we should think and believe. And it doesn't come to bowing down to Israel, the government of Israel,

or the military of Israel, or any politician, and the shaming. The shaming that we have received and the shaming that carries on is actually what is destroying them, completely destroying them. It's destroying not only them. It's destroying the social media influencers that are taking money. It is destroying everyone that gets sucked into this great deception. And that's what it is, Tucker. It is a great deception. But thank God people are waking up to it.

Yeah, I know the Israel's foreign ministry has paid a lot of people to slug. lander me, is a big it. Tucker R. Carson will be here on judging freedom in early December. We don't have the date yet, but shortly after Thanksgiving. As I listened to him with Marjorie Taylor Green, whom Trump now hates, as we all know, I'm thinking of that interview that Tucker Carlson Tim and Ted Cruz, where Cruz claims that God the Father gave present, day israel to benjamin netting yahoo you can't make this up yeah yeah obviously the cruz is one of the more lunatic fringe of the christian zionists and uh he comes out with that kind of

stuff i remember he was at a uh he spoke at a arab american gathering a couple years ago and he felt his mission there was to uh to to talk for 20 minutes about israel and offend them as much as he could. This is a guy who, well, you know, he is what he is, but I'd rather he weren't one of our senators. Yes. Phil Geraldi, thank you, my dear friend. A little bit longer than we usually go, but much appreciated. Thanks for your time. We have a short week next week, but I hope you can join us before the Thanksgiving holiday comes. Sure, Will. Thanks very much for having me on. Sure. All the best. A very interesting day.

At one in the afternoon, Max Blumenthal. At two in the afternoon, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, at three in the afternoon, Professor John Mearsheimer, at four in the afternoon from Moscow, Pepe Escobar. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. Thank you.