Judging Freedom - Phil Giraldi : Trump’s Vanity Will Consume Him

Episode Date: September 16, 2026

Phil Giraldi : Trump’s Vanity Will Consume HimSee 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 preemptive 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? 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 nipolitano here for judging freedom today is wednesday september 16th 2006. Phil Giraldi will be here on just a minute. Donald Trump's vanity, will it consume him or will it consume the Republic? But first this. Today's headlines aren't just bleak. They're an indictment of a government that has abandoned the Constitution. You are witnessing the direct result of the Federal Reserve's relentless war on the value of your dollar. For centuries, gold and silver have been the ultimate shield against. against the state's favorite tools.

Monetary expansion and runaway inflation. To protect your wealth is to protect your liberty. And you can do that with gold and silver. I own both and continue to buy. Because J.P. Morgan is now lying gold at over $6,300 an ounce. And Bank of America is suggesting silver could reach $300. That's great news for precious metal investors. Don't wait for Washington to fix America.

mess they created. Secure your freedom today. Take possession of your precious metals or diversify your IRA by adding gold and silver. Call 800, 511, 4620 to see if you qualify for up to $20,000 in bonus medals. That's 800, 5114620 or go to Learjudgeonap.com. Phil Giraldi, welcome here, my dear friend. I want to talk to you for a few minutes before we get into Trump and his vanity projects and the subtle and even direct effects on the American, so-called liberal democracy that we have. Last weekend, Boris Johnson and David Petraeus were on two different trains, both of which were passing at or near the Ukraine-Polish border when the Russians attacked the train station,

the attacks were timed so as not to harm either of them. It's clear that Moscow was sending a message to two champions of Russia phobia and champions of the Iran cause, as irrational as that may be. But my question to you is, wouldn't MI6 and CIA have known of these plans to attack the station as the former Prime Minister of Great Britain and the former director of the CIA were about to pass through it? To answer to that, I would have to say no, that they would not necessarily have had that kind of information. That would have been the kind of information that you really would be deep into Russian security planning to have access to. Now, the Brits and the Americans and their intelligence capabilities are pretty good.

In fact, they're better than pretty good. But that doesn't necessarily mean something like this would have been very, very tightly held as something they would have gotten access to. And since the Russians clearly in this case were very intent on sending an important message to both the Europeans and the United States, this wouldn't have been something very tightly held inside Russia. And as for the other side of this, where how would the Russians know that these people were on the move?

Well, these people are international figures who would have been known to people in Poland and Ukraine who were arranging the trip. And it probably would not have been that hard. to find out that these characters were on the move and would be on the move. And so the Russians that opted to, as they say, sent a signal about just what might be coming if they wanted to keep playing around with creating problems for the Russians. Do they travel with a lot of security?

I mean, they're both out of office now. they at one point of course probably traveled with substantial security details but do you know if they still travel with security or if the Ukrainians provide them their Ukrainian guests with security my understanding is that Johnson was leaving and Petraeus was arriving and their trains almost crossed at the same time it disrupted the travel of both of them yeah well I it again it If this was in any way an official type of visit by either one of them, they probably would have had security provided by the local governments and even by Secret Service or MI5, the British equivalent, because they considered it an issue of national security. So it could have gotten either way, but a lot of these people in their normal lives after they get out of government, they wind up actually making a lot of money doing various things, going around and speaking and so on and so forth. They're serving as consultants with the defense industry.

They pay for their own security in many cases or have a company or an associate. they work with paying for it. So it can go any way. Well, I guess there's not much security can do. If a drone is going to hit a train, the only thing they could do is try and get the person they're protecting out of the train before more harm is done. What are they going to do? If MI6 and CIA did not know in advance this is going to happen, it wouldn't matter what kind of security is sitting on the train with them. Well, that's for sure.

Although, you know, given the fact that a train or a bus or another type of vehicle is kind of an enclosed and sensitive place in terms of high-level travelers, they would have probably had some contingency plans, as you suggest, to get them out of the vehicle, out of the thing, away from where there might be. explosion if the actual train were hit. This is a kind of reminiscent of Donald Trump and Ankara sneaking out the back door with the container. What is the message that the Kremlin sent to the United States and the Europeans? Well, they're sending a message essentially saying, we can hit you, wherever you are and whatever you're doing. That's the principal message. But the other message, of course, is targeted.

It's targeted in the sense that both Petraeus and Johnson were instigators of this war and enablers of the continuation of this war. So they're kind of in particular saying, yeah, but we're really interested in those of you who are allowing this thing to go on or encouraging this thing to go on. So the Russians could have a number of motives, but I think that would be the principle. Shortly after this happened,

and I don't know if he was on the train, Eratoslaw Sikorski, that's the Polish foreign minister, announced publicly, this is insane, but this is what he said, Poland would defeat Monashire, Moscow in a head-to-head war.

Now, I think, and you can weigh in on this, Warsaw would cease to exist in about two days if there were a head-to-head war between Moscow and Poland, but yet Foreign Minister Sikorsky chose to say that. Vladimir Putin responded. We'll play the response in a minute, but I want your thoughts. This is quite interesting, because it's certainly a provocation to come out with something.

like that. And the fact is it's completely contrary to the facts that people like Larry Johnson would be able to describe them in terms of the balance of forces in that region. So it's just not true. And are the Russians supposed to take it like some kind of joke or some, but as a provocation, that's a bit stupid because there's nothing to win. There's no winning games. by coming out with a concept like that that's patently untrue. Well, President Putin, I don't know if he's directly responding to foreign minister Sikorsky, but he had an interesting comment about Russia's willingness to fight other countries to preserve its sovereignty.

Chris, cut number six. I think that everything that is happening in Europe as a whole is the result of systemic mistakes by the so-called West. We said many times that NATO's Eastwood expansion was unacceptable to us. Eventually, they reached Ukraine. This ultimately became the real root cause of today's tragic events in Ukraine. The Western globalist elites are to blame for this. Now they are saying that they are thinking about how to deploy troops on the territory of Ukraine. This means war with Russia.

As I understand it, the citizens of European countries understand what is happening. This means war with Russia, Phil. That's about as direct as you can get. Yeah, that is. And again, this goes back to the theme of with the train itself and the incident, where Russia is trying to send a very strong message to the Europeans. And indeed, Russia is... is dominant in terms of military strength all through that region.

And if it really chose to go after any of these countries, including Poland, and Poland is one of the ones that's most active in pushing this agenda of confronting Russia, somewhat also in the Baltic states. At least these people have a history where they were controlled by the Soviet Union not so long ago. they have a certain amount of resentment build up in terms of, you know, we don't trust the Russians. We don't want to have any allowance or kind of we don't want to give them any room to get away with anything because we know what it's like. Well, at least I can buy into that discussion.

But the fact is that this is a losing game to be playing. Does NATO have its own intelligence agency, or do they use the intelligence assets of the NATO countries? It's both, actually. When I was in Europe and I had some contact with NATO in Brussels, there were professionals who, of course, were mostly retirees who were drawn from the, intelligence services of the countries that made made up NATO and they worked at the headquarters because they were people who could understand the jargon and understand what the what the messages meant but individually every NATO country also has its own intelligence service or services as as we have and the British have and the

the Germans and the French have. And this is a separate function that cooperates with NATO, but is not really totally linked up in terms of everything they do. There's we operated certainly when I was in Europe completely independently. The contact with NATO or NATO local, local and telemark interest in the countries we were in, was modulated and very often limited. Well, yesterday the Trump administration served notice on Congress of its plan to give, not sell, but give 40,000, 2,000-pound bombs to the Netanyahu.

regime, even though the Israelis do not have a single plane large enough and strong enough and equipped appropriately to deliver these 2,000 pound bombs. So I guess American pilots would be again doing the dirty work for the Israelis. I suppose we shouldn't put our hopes that Congress will, Congress can veto this, but I guess we shouldn't get our hopes up. No, I don't think we should, given the fact that Congress just like the president is owned by Israel. The fact is that, as you point out correctly, the Israelis don't have a plane that can carry a bomb of this weight and deliver it on target. The United States has to do that.

And so what does that tell you about what the ultimate plan is here? And of course, the ultimate plan is to get to the United States and a totally gullible Donald Trump in to do the heavy lifting. And the heavy lifting will target any one of a number of countries. Certainly Iran is number one, but we're talking also about Syria. We're talking about what's left of Lebanon. We're talking about Egypt. We're talking about Turkey. And these are all targets for these kinds of bombs, which are devastating and basically can destroy whole complexes of buildings.

And also, of course, schools where little girls might be studying, you know, the ultimate target of the Trump regime. So this is an awful sign that Trump has ended up in his eyeballs to escalate this process. because this initiated with him and the people around him. And it's scary as hell. It means this thing ain't going to go away. As many people that you've had on your program have said, the only real solution to what has been going on in this needless war with Iran is to end it and pull out of it.

End it. It's over, guys. Netanyahu, it's over. We're not going to give you any more. support to kill Gazans, to kill Palestinians, and to attack Iran. We don't need this. Last week, the Trump political team held a two-day rally in Dallas, Texas, that they called a midterm convention. Were you surprised that one quarter of the seats in Dallas, Texas, were empty?

To be honest, I was a bit surprised because this is the kind of event that Trump and the clowns that surround him are very good at kind of rousing the folks that support them and getting them out. And Texas would be a very prime place for this to feed off of this. and I was a bit surprised, although very pleased, I would have hoped there had been more like 90% empty and that Trump's speech would have been somehow blocked. Although as it turned out, he was quite revealing and some of the stuff he said, which is some stuff that was quite disgusting.

Right, right. What is he doing to Washington, D.C., Phil? Well, there are a lot of things he's doing, Washington, D.C., all bad. The latest news, of course, is that the Kennedy Center is on the path to destruction. That's basically what he's talking about. There's no money without this becoming the Trump Center. So no money available to do the quote repairs.

And this is just a way of getting rid of it. And that's a disgrace. This place was funded and built to honor a president who was assassinated and who was an honorable man, unlike what we've had ever since 9-11. And here we get this clown coming along. And in his own ego trip, he's quite willing to destroy this. And I've been there a number of times that you may have been to do. And it's nowhere near the ruin that the Trump administration is making us help to be.

And, of course, the Trump administration also loaded the board by getting rid of the people on it that actually had two brain cells to rub together. And they put his Trump type of people there to make this a Trump project. Trump is basically trying to turn Washington, D.C. into a memoriam of himself. And he's admitted it. He said, it's all about me back a couple months ago. And what happens to a people when their capital city begins to look like a cult following of a temporary inhabitant? Well, one thing that happens, of course, is that the people will lose interest in politics. And once they lose interest in politics, the criminality of our ruling class will become even worse.

Trump will be totally uninhibited, uncontrolled on anything he does. One of the things he said in his speech in Texas was that he is the greatest American in the greatest president in the history, in the history of the United States. And this was part of his speech. And his followers there applauded that. And they were expected to vote as he was directing them. And he said, even if you have to cheat, get out there and vote Republican. And then we went on to the ridiculous thing about how he's going to give everyone, $5,000,

every man and woman in the United States, $5,000 each if the Republicans hold on to the House of the Senate. Now, this is corruption at the highest level or at the lowest level, depending on how you want to phrase it. And this guy, yeah, and it's just astonishing. And to a certain extent, he's getting away with it, isn't he? I mean, there was some uproar when it happened. And I haven't seen much in terms of people saying this is the destruction of our democratic system and our republic.

And I agree. If this guy gets away with this and he pulls this off, every election from now on will be whoever can cough up the most money. And of course, whoever will cost up the most money will be Israel anyway. But, you know, that's where we're going to be at. I guess it was lost on him and his speechwriters that in the same speech, he blasted Democrats for being attracted to socialism. And then, of course, he suggests a redistribution of wealth, wealth that the government doesn't even have to redistribute you. They have to borrow it against the future. You can't make this up. You wrote a terrific piece called A New Washington Colossus.

Trump's vision of his federal capital continues to irritate, which is available today at Lou Rockwell.com and elsewhere. But I wanted to read aloud. Chris made a full screen the final paragraph. One might assume that what is being done by Trump, who does not believe in rules or laws and thinks whatever he does is all right based on how he feels is manipulating and corrupting the entire electoral system. He should be impeached and removed before he does more damage. But will that happen? One has to hope that most Americans in November will, at a minimum,

follow the path to an electoral result that opens the door to impeachment. One hopes. I mean, it's enough to make a libertarian, like you and I are, vote for the Democrats, so that there will be a break on this regime? Yeah, and of course the presumption on our part is going to be that, well, the Democrats will come in and we'll have like a Joe Biden who does a lot of this stuff in secret that Trump is not ashamed of talking about. These people are in it for the gain, the money, whatever it is that they think they're doing and disguising by thinking or by claiming that they're doing what is good for the country

and good for the American people is a lie. Joe Biden, in terms of the genocide being carried out in Gaza by the Israelis, was in some ways just as bad as Donald Trump. Trump is just more open about it. Right. And, you know, so these people, I wish they all would go away. I have to confess that I tend to vote green every time there's an election because I find it so hard to stomach, you know, what is going on in this country and what is going on with these politicians? They're all crooks. Phil, it's a pleasure to chat with you. All my best of you and Angela.

We'll look forward to seeing you next week. Okay, well, I have a good trip later this week. Thank you. Thank you, Phil. All the best. Tomorrow Thursday at 8 o'clock in the morning, live from Tehran, Professor Muhammad Miranda. Judge Nipal Tano for Judging Freedom.