Judging Freedom - Phil Giraldi: Trump Panders to Israel

Episode Date: February 19, 2025

Phil Giraldi: Trump Panders to IsraelSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Resolve to earn your degree in the new year in the Bay with WGU. With courses available online 24-7 and monthly start dates, WGU offers maximum flexibility so you can focus on your future. Learn more at wgu.edu. Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Wednesday, February 19th, 2025. President Trump's Middle East policy, particularly his policies toward Israel, the same as or a continuation of or worse than Joe Biden's? That's a very difficult question to answer. I would say if we are viewing the fundamental issue being the genocide of the Palestinians that is taking place, you'd have to say it's better. warrant ceasefire which while it has not held in all details um generally because of Israeli actions um is still better than what we were getting before and it has led to a release of prisoners and hostage you have to say it's better but at the same time I think a lot of the messages that are being sent about, for example, buying and obtaining possession of Gaza so you could build luxury villas and no Palestinians will be allowed to go back to their homes after the fact.

I mean, that sends another that's a different signal. That's that's pretty depressing and you combine it with the israeli uh shall we say mowing the grass in the west bank and apparently moving towards annexation which which trump has given some signals that uh he's considering uh there are other things going the other way way. So it's hard to give a clear answer to that. Can Trump realistically believe, and I guess it's not a fair question if I'm asking you to get in his mind, can anyone realistically believe that the United States could successfully expel permanently all Palestinians from Gaza? Well, I think, obviously, there is a great deal of skepticism about that.

And if you combine it with the Palestinians on the West Bank, we're talking about a total expulsion of between three and four million people with no place to go at the present time. So it is unrealistic unless one is willing to create something like a police state in Gaza after you've cleared it so nobody even attempts to come back. But of course, the objection to that is a humanitarian gesture that uh question this is a obviously a a war crime that goes beyond the war crime into the genocide area and it's uh it's being looked at by the rest of the world uh in a very negative way both for what the United States is doing and and that's that's both joe

biden and donald trump and uh also in particular what the israelis are doing the israelis are against their understandings about the what was billed at the time as a ceasefire in lebanon uh there's still an occupation of a considerable part of the area they're calling a buffer zone. And of course, they've also occupied a considerable chunk of Syria, including more of the Golan Heights and Mount Hermon. So this process is going on,

and there have been a lot of opportunities for the United States to step in and stop it uh but they haven't taken those opportunities the president of Lebanon told Mike Waltz earlier today that the five Israeli bases in Lebanon need to be vacated but that's not going to happen is it? He'd have to talk to Trump, and Trump would have to tell Netanyahu, and that's just not going to happen, or am I wrong? No, you're absolutely right. And the thing is, the Israelis have taken it one step further. They've actually been killing Lebanese who have been believing that the ceasefire is in place and

have been trying to return to their homes, just as they have been intermittently killing more Gazans in spite of the ceasefire being in effect. And so, you know, this has been going on for a long time. And the United States is, unfortunately, under both presidents, an enabler of all of this. And people are getting killed for no reason. And it would be quite easy for the United States to intervene with Israel, since Israel is totally dependent on the U.S. for weapons and for money, and put a stop to at least some of this. The Trump administration recently shipped 1,800 MOABs to Israel. MOAB, an acronym for Mother of All Bombs.

Scott Ritter and Colonel McGregor inform us that these are so big and so heavy, the Israelis don't even have planes from out of which they can be bombed. I mean, for what reason would would Trump have done this other than to cause massive damage where civilians live. Resolve to earn your degree in the new year in the Bay with WGU. WGU is an online accredited university that specializes in personalized learning. With courses available 24-7 and monthly start dates, you can earn your degree on your schedule. You may even be able to graduate sooner than you think by demonstrating mastery of the material you know. Make 2025 the year you focus on your future.

Learn more at wgu.edu. Well, you're quite right. There's no other reason for it. These are they're also called, I think, MB-84s. They each weigh 2,000 pounds. That's a ton of explosive. And the only reason why you would want to have them is to destroy heavily urbanized or inhabited areas. And obviously, there is some intention in somebody's mind that these could be used to finish off the job, which is a favorite phrase of Trump's, incidentally,

finish the work, finish the job on the Palestinians. And of course, our good friend Benjamin Netanyahu was quite happy to receive these. How would this work if these things are so big and so heavy, the Israelis don't have a plane out of a chute so that they destroyed areas of Lebanon or Gaza or even Iran? You know, I don't have an answer to that. They certainly used them in Gaza. There were situations where they were bombing hospitals and administrative administrative centers and and uh those kind of built up uh structurally more sound buildings uh they they were using them in gaza they found a way to deliver them but you're absolutely right in that it's been sort of the acquired or normal knowledge perceives perceptions that these bombs are too heavy for the uh the jet fighters basically that the israelis have they don't have any bombers

so there's something that's been rigged up do they take them up in a helicopter and drop them? Maybe. Wow. Trump has done something which in this country is unthinkable, and that is impose sanctions on judges, judges of the International Criminal Court. I don't know what the sanctions consist of, Phil, but where does this fit in international law that a judge makes a ruling you don't like so you're going to harm the judge financially well it's not just that they've also basically said that they're going to go after the judges families if they should travel to a place where the u.S can get access to them uh there this is this goes beyond just going after assets it's uh it's actually criminalizing what they've done uh and uh basically accepting the Israeli definition that these judges are terrorists working with terrorists and that uh and here comes the big lie

the big lie is that the icc by its action is also threatening uh to do terrible things to politicians in the united states now to me for a certain to a certain extent uh the united states presidents and their secretaries of state have uh have justified this uh if if anyone were to go after them but that's that is implausible and so this is the the fear-mongering that's being used to justify um basically banning an international court which exists to stop exactly what's going on when there's a genocide or when there are war crimes. Do you think that Trump is ignorant of history? Not only history, I think Trump is basically a guy who operates on a a gut level which sometimes is it can be good as recent developments with russia might indicate um and uh very often are just bad he follows his instincts

i think everybody would agree that he has advisors who um who come with a certain mindset uh and he did that in his first term in office too. And these people giving him a lot of bad advice. So I think he is ignorant of history, the history of the last, you know, since the Second World War. I think he clearly, when he makes comments, there is no kind of historical understanding behind it. And I think he then goes on to make an ignorant judgment about what is authorized as a result of his bad first step. You have an interesting piece out at the UN's review and elsewhere called Trump's First Month Panders to Israel, in which you point out the influence of the donor class, the Israeli lobby, on domestic American policy as well as foreign policy. What are some of the things that, and this is terrifying because

this is my end of the world, that the Department of Justice under Pamela Bondi has been doing to interfere with fundamental liberties of people who are critical of the Israelis? Yeah, well, I would say there are two general areas that are affected most. They are freedom of association and freedom of speech. And what they're essentially saying is, at some levels, that anyone who is critical of Israel is not exercising frequent freedom of speech. He's instead himself committing a hate crime, which could have consequences that they are exploring right now. Like, for example, if it's a student at a university, the student is an exchange student. They're looking at punishing him by taking away his visa, by making him leave the country. These are all issues that are in prospect. And Bondi, in fact, is pushing,

this I found astonishing, she's pushing a joint Israeli-American task force to investigate Hamas and Hamas's actions back in October, on October 7th. What conceivable argument is there that Hamas has violated American federal law? She's a federal law enforcement, chief federal law enforcement official. Right, except Hamas is in the Middle East. How does she have jurisdiction over what Hamas did? Why isn't she exercising jurisdiction over what Israel is doing with its war crimes and genocide? Why isn't she just enforcing the Foreign Agent Registration Act? She took an oath to enforce all federal law.

Why doesn't she enforce it? Yeah, well, there is, in fact, a declaration that she came out with just last week about FARA, the Foreign Agents Registration Act, making it more difficult for people to accuse Israel of this, even though Israel interferes in the United States politics more than any other country. But it is a felony for foreign agents to interfere in American politics, and it's a felony for Americans to work on behalf of a foreign country, be paid for that work, and not report it to the State Department. That's absolutely right. And one of the really depressing aspects of this task force that they're cranking up is the fact that it would work jointly

with Israeli investigators. You will have Israelis working in the United States with the justice and the FBI to investigate Americans. You know, this gets deeper and deeper. This is why I'm saying that it is so difficult to really understand what the intentions are and who is really behind this and why they're behind it. I've got to bring you back to where we started about whose foreign policy is worse. of a pin and the viewers and listeners can decide which is more offensive trump's right now on the basis of what you've just told us seems more pervasive than biden's trump is not killing people as biden was because thanks to trump there is that ceasefire we don't know how long it will last uh but seeping this into the fabric of American law is terrifying to me.

Somebody's going to knock on my door and say, I work for Mossad, I want to talk to you. Well, that's it. I mean, the point is our fundamental liberties, and let's face it, these liberties were under attack with Joe Biden too. I mean, there was a lot of the same talk going on around, well, look at all the pressure that was put on universities last year to get them to shut down anybody demonstrating on a campus in support of the Palestinians or to be critical of what Israel was doing, what it was mass killing Palestinians. This pressure was coming out of the Biden administration, supported by Republicans. But the fact is this whole kind of viewing, I hate to put it this way, but viewing Palestinians as almost subhuman is bilateral. I mean, both parties are into it to a certain extent, and they're into it for different reasons, money being one of them, which you mentioned before.

The fact that a lot of money that comes from Jewish billionaires in particular winds up in the pockets of politicians, particularly in Congress. But Joe Biden was a major recipient of money coming from pro-Israel sources. And Trump, of course, we have the $100 million coming from Ms. Adelson. So this is bilateral, and everybody's into it, and it's a major reason why Israel is always considered to be an exception to American laws and never held accountable for anything it does. I don't know which is worse uh Phil uh a president ignorant of history or a Congress uh paid for by uh the Israeli Lobby but we apparently have both yeah we have both um and um you know the uh Biden of course, was no genius when it came to foreign policy either. Diplomacy under Biden with good old Tony Blinken was a dead issue for nearly all of the four years that Biden was president and with Blinken.

And, you know, again, this is both sides. The money has been right out in the open quite a bit. And nobody does anything about it because anyone in politics or many in politics benefit from it or think that they benefit from it. So it's a horror story that's unfolding right in front of us, and we're watching it. The world is watching it. And I have optimism right at the moment that we will maybe be moving in the right direction over Ukraine and Russia, but I don't see that necessarily the case in the Middle East. Well, I think Trump has been terrific in the past few days on Ukraine and Russia. I mean, he accused Zelensky of playing Biden like a fiddle.

Is Netanyahu playing Trump like a fiddle? Well, he's playing him. How Trump is perceiving it, I don't think we know yet. Trump has a big ego and Trump is not going to want to be perceived as someone who is being managed by Netanyahu. But Netanyahu, nevertheless, has manipulated the situation through probably the donors in the United States and the Israel lobby to the extent that he was invited to the White House, the first foreign head of state to be invited to the White House after the President the president was seated. And he was the guest who was intimately involved in the discussion of these plans for Gaza. So he has somebody's ear. And how the president sees him is, I think, a very interesting question, which we will learn more about in the next couple of months. Is the president of the United States afraid to say no

to Benjamin Netanyahu? That's another good question. I think that every president or recent presidents of the United States have been nervous about saying no to Netanyahu. And for that reason, we have seen issues, policy issues, going back to Obama in particular, where he clearly did not like Netanyahu, did not like a lot of what he was doing, but felt it was expedient to bow his head. And so we will see how this plays out. Again, because Trump is in terms of ego and somewhat capricious behavior, more so in that direction than some recent other presidents have been. Phil Giraldi, thank you very much. It's a great piece at the UN's review.

Trump's first month panders to Israel. It's a typical Phil Giraldi piece. Very, very well written research, then footnoted and brilliantly presented. Thank you, my dear friend. I hope we can see you again next week. Thank you. I'll be up. Of course.

All the best. Coming up at four o'clock today, talk about the best, the great Professor Jeffrey Sachs, Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. MUSIC