Judging Freedom - *** SPECIAL *** Ralph Nader - : Who Controls the Government?

Episode Date: May 20, 2025

*** SPECIAL *** Ralph Nader - : Who Controls the Government?See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

you Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Tuesday, May 20th, 2025. The great Ralph Nader joins us now. I say great because whether you love Ralph or not, he is truly one of the most intellectually honest, personally courageous people in the modern history of the United States of America whose activities and writing and speeches has had a profound effect on human freedom and he continues to do so. You see the front cover of the Capitol Hill Citizen, the only magazine,

the only publication of which I'm aware, circulating in Washington, D.C., that truly addresses the evils and the woes of government's failures today. Ralph has a new book out called Civic Self-Respect. It's sort of a summary of Ralph's views on what individual citizens can do in the United States of America to right the ship, which is sinking rapidly. Ralph Nader, a pleasure, my dear friend.

Thank you very much for joining us. That's a pleasure here too, thank you. Sure. People have heard me tell this story before, but Ralph and I met, oh God, it would be 1970 or 1971 when I was a sophomore or a junior. I'm not sure of the year. At Princeton University, Ralph was debating William F. Buckley Jr. I was the head of the organization that sponsored the debate.

The organization decidedly favored Buckley. There were 3000 people there for the debate. They chose me as the moderator and Ralph was pleasantly surprised at my level of fairness. I'm quoting you now Ralph from 55 years ago and we've maintained a friendship since then. We don't agree on everything, but we certainly agree on war and peace and on

civil liberties, which is what we'll discuss today. So genocide, Joe Ralph was incapable of stopping Netanyahu's slaughter in Gaza. Donald Trump is no better. What can we do about it? Well, you know, it's easy to say Congress should do something about it because it has the war-making authority under the Constitution, which has given up to the presidency. But it's really interesting how afraid Trump is of Netanyahu. Netanyahu, in a way, is afraid of Trump, as a reporter

from Harris told me, Gideon Levy. But Trump is really afraid of Netanyahu. He sidestepped Israel on this trip to the Gulf, where he was flattered and given all kinds of unrealizable contracts and monuments. And the press said it was a snub. It wasn't a snub. It was a way for him to escape, facing up to the mass murder, starvation in Gaza by the Israeli state terrorists and genocidides led by Netanyahu. And right now we have someone at the UN specializing in these matters saying in the next 48 hours 13,000 Gazan children may starve to death, infants, if they don't get relief.

And so Netanyahu is blocking US funded trucks, thousands of them, at the border since early March when he broke the ceasefire that Trump took credit for. So Trump's ego even is being suppressed here. Netanyahu broke Trump's ceasefire, and Trump shut his mouth. So what I think needs to be done is that everybody involved in this, whether it's the doctors and health workers back from Gaza, whether it's stand-up members of Congress, and there are some of them, whether it's the media, we've got to basically show that this is a mass murder that's going on, and even 400 rabbis objecting to the demolition of Palestinian homes. There's a report out just yesterday from Israeli media, the brave reporter Mehran Rafferport,

that Israeli soldiers are given missions like, okay, today you've got to take the bulldozers out and destroy 42 Palestinian homes or apartments. They're just leveling the place. And it isn't a war, Andrew. It's not a war. There's no fighting going on. This is really, the reporter said, there's no fighting going on. Hamas is not a fighting

force. It never was to begin with unless until Netanyahu mysteriously collapsed the elaborate border security on October 7th and opened the gates. But there's nothing left of Hamas as a fighting force. You don't hear any information from the Israeli military about Israeli casualties in Gaza, because there aren't any, unless it's friendly fire or some accident with some building collapsing on the soldiers inside. So unconstitutional, as you have pointed out. It violates six federal statutes, including one that says you don't send weapons to countries that violate human rights. And it's violating, of course, all kinds of international law and Geneva conventions.

So less than 1% of the people are rejecting here, pour it in, call the White House switchboard, Trump's egos at stake. You feel through his ego, he doesn't like to have foreign leaders affront to his ego. So you can start with that and hope there's a sliver of compassion for those dying kids in Palestine. Do you subscribe to the view that Trump can't stand Netanyahu because he feels manipulated by him and that Trump's ego will Trump's, no pun intended, even the donor class on the Zionist money machine which has funded Trump's campaigns? It's hard to figure out.

I mean, obviously he's always been afraid of the domestic Israel government can do no wrong lobby like AIPAC. He's always been afraid of that throughout his political career. He has favorite annexation of the West Bank. He moved the capital to Jerusalem. He legitimized the seizure of the Golan Heights in Syria.

So he's done a lot that AIPAC loved. But now he's gotta draw the line because this whole struggle in Israel-Palestine is destroying American civil liberties and civil rights. It's distorting public budgets. It's controlling Congress into a grotesque accessory, aiding and abetting the Palestinian Holocaust by the Netanyahu genocidal mass murderers.

And he's gonna have to face up to it. There's already a split in the White House that's growing against bombing Iran and doing what Israel wants us to do the dirty work on Iran. And there's a more dominant split now saying no way we're not going to play Israel's game. And they've opened negotiations with Iran. We'll see how that comes out. But it's what it's doing to American democracy, Andrew. Right. The, the, what I really want to ask you is who controls the government?

I mean, I think you're probably going to say the military industrial complex and the donor class, but Ralph, remember when Netanyahu spoke before a joint session of Congress, his speech was 56 minutes long, he received 58 standing ovations, and of course, if you go to APAC's website, you'll see well more than half the members of the House and Senate pictured there as regular donors of APAC.

Congressman Thomas Massey, who doesn't accept any money from APAC, reported that most of his colleagues actually have a minder in their office, an actual agent of AIPAC in their Capitol Hill office to make sure that they are aware of AIPAC's wishes on every vote. Why isn't AIPAC designated as a foreign lobbying entity and forced to register with the FBI?

Good question. They are a foreign agent of the Israeli government in every conceivable manner. I mean, they even oppose opening Gaza to American journalists and editors. opening Gaza to American journalists and editors. We're funding the war. We've got diplomatic and political coverage and AIPAC doesn't want American reporters to go in there independently and tell the American people what's going on with their tax dollars. Even worse, they refuse to support the airlifting of burned and amputated Israeli Palestinian kids to ready naval hospitals in the U.S., in New York,

and Philadelphia, and Washington, Chicago, Los Angeles. They never cross Netanyahu. They should register as a foreign agent. Ralph, who controls the government? Who controls the United States federal government? Well, obviously we have a corporate state, which you know from your research, is clinically defined as big business controlling big government and turning it against its own people. And that's what's happening now under the Trump regime. Notice, under the guise of efficiency and eliminating waste and corruption, The only programs they're going after are people programs, where the tax dollars are going back to help the people, whether it's meals on wheels or Head Start or pollution

controls or food and safe food inspection or firefighters or people who are heading off trying to head off pandemics or people who are trying to deal with the heightened climate, the storms and droughts and fires. It's amazing. He's even doing it to his own voters. He's canceling contracts on renewable energy, 80% of which go to red states. There are businesses in Alabama and Mississippi and Georgia saying, what are you doing to us? We've ordered for you.

We didn't vote for this. In the meantime, the three 800-pound gorillas are untouchouchable and they're the source of the vast majority of waste and inefficiency in government. Why are they? One, loaded military budget, unaudible, violating since 1992 a federal law requiring all agencies and departments in the federal government to produce audited budgets to the Congress. Number two, corporate welfare, giveaways, handouts, subsidies, guarantees, and what's known as corporate tax expenditures or corporate tax loopholes.

Hundreds of billions of dollars there. And then the big one is commercial ripoff of government safety net programs, like $60 billion ripoffs of Medicare every year. And then there's Medicaid and there's other government disbursement where these corporate contractors are cheating, looting, and there's very little law enforcement. Now both Musk and Trump benefit from these 300-pound, 800-pound gorillas in a variety of ways. So they're protecting the corporations that are part of the corporate state. The definition of fascism is clinically being fulfilled by the Trump regime.

Let me ask you about the Congress, Ralph. Now we know of APEC's influence in the Congress, but why do you think the Congress rolls over and plays dead? I mean, 90% of Donald Trump's executive orders have been stayed and joined from enforcement by the courts because these changes that he wants can only come about by legislation from the Congress. But the Congress does nothing. The Congress looks the other way. The Congress looks the other way when the President funds genocide. The Congress looked the other way when the President bombed Yemen. I didn't see any declaration of war in Yemen. We spent a billion dollars trying to bomb the Houthis. We couldn't

even scratch the surface of it. But what conceivable authority was there for that? The answer is nine. The big question is why doesn't Congress do something about it? Why doesn't Congress do something about it? Because for decades it has been the most one-sided, intensive lobbying campaign in American modern history with the possible exception of the NRA, and that's AIPAC. And they do it brilliantly. I've suggested to people I know of AIPAC that they have clinical, civic skill lessons to the American people as redemption from what they've been doing to control Congress. First of all, they don't engage in marches and demonstrations.

That's just for the powerless. They do personal focused lobbying. They get to know the member, they get to know the staff, they get to know the member's doctor back home, lawyer back home, golf companion back home, business associate back home, relatives, and they're relentless. They have about 300,000 lobbyists around the country, and they're organized to the teeth and anybody who dares defy them gets a primary challenge like Cory Bush did or Jamal Bowman, they beat them in Missouri and New York and then they use the ultimate, uh, libelous weapon, which is you're, they accused people of being

anti-Semitic. Of course, the Palestinians are Semetics. So the biggest anti-Semite today is Netanyahu. And it's not with words, it's with F-16s artillery, with snipers putting bullet holes into children's heads for which there is x-ray documentation by American doctors back from Gaza. Right, right. Ralph, talk to us, I'm going to ask you in a few minutes about your new book which I loved called Civic Self-Respect, but before we get there one more topic to address and that is the suppression of free speech in the United States.

The donor class has succeeded in twisting the arms of universities, including the one from which you and I graduated, sadly, getting them to suppress free speech. Just two days ago, NYU, a fine academic institution here in New York City, a great university, great research university, declined to give the diploma to the valedictorian of the school who met every requirement for getting his diploma because in his valedictory speech he accused the Netanyahu regime of genocide, and they used the word genocide. This kind of pressure on people to get them to conform their speech

is utterly reprehensible in America. Now, this is a private entity doing it. They do accept huge amount of money from the feds as a condition for accepting that money from the feds. They agree to abide by the Bill of Rights as if they were a government. They don't because the donor class is pressing them to suppress the free speech that the donor class hates and fears.

Ralph Nader, what can we do about this? Well, I've never seen anything so grotesque. The people who are supporting the genocide in the Netanyahu regime on campuses are allowed to do so. They are not harassed, they are not suppressed, they don't have diplomas withheld, they don't get canceled. They don't get fired. They don't get sanctioned in any way. It's the people who are opposed to mass murder with our weapons, our tax dollars, our diplomatic cover at the UN and elsewhere. They're the ones who are getting harassed and canceled out, like you just pointed, at

various universities. And I'm going to add law firms, too. harassed and canceled out, like you just pointed, at various universities. And I'm going to add law firms, too. And I've never seen anything like this. The McCarthy period was nothing compared to what's going on here. And these people are speaking out, they're getting kidnapped on streets by masked ICE operatives who don't identify themselves, don't show that they're legal authority and they're kidnapped and sent to Louisiana prisons or prisons in El Salvador.

Now, this was called by Professor Nancy Gerstner, a former federal judge, she's a law professor at Harvard now, she called what Trump's doing a coup d'etat. And the representative from Vermont, Becca Talent, whose grandfather was executed by the Nazis, said that Trump is engaging in Gestapo tactics. So let's stop using people's language here Let's stop using people language here and recognize that the people by a small margin elected a dictator. It's not the first time in the world that that's happened. And Trump now is doing things where even Trump voters are saying, hey, I didn't vote for this.

I didn't vote for that. I didn't vote for the strip mining, the Veterans Administration. I didn't vote for the strip mining, the veterans administration. I didn't vote for taking away health care. I didn't vote for these things. So Trump is facing a revolt and the Capitol citizens documenting this in this current issue. People can go to capitalscitizen.com and for a donation of $5 or more if you wish, you get a full in print newspaper on Converse like you've never read before and its purpose is to empower you, which is exactly the point

of my new book, Andrew Civic Self-Respect. It started when I'd be speaking at universities, people would come up to me afterwards and say, well, I got to ask you a question, Ralph. I know I'm a nobody, but I got to ask you a question. I said, wait a minute. What do you mean you're a nobody? Nobody's a nobody in a democracy. I said, what do you do? And I go through, I say, do you have work? Yeah, you're a worker, right? Okay, you pay taxes? Yeah, you're a taxpayer, right? Are you veteran? Well, some say yes. Do you shop? Are you a consumer? Yeah. Are you a voter? Yeah. Are you a citizen? Yeah. Well, how can you say you're nobody? You know something about all these roles. And you can mention. You know something about all these roles and you can't mention. This book, this book, Ralph, give it self respect. This book is a blueprint for people who are disgusted with the government. But just listen to these chapters, the citizen, the worker, it's just what you're talking about.

The consumer shopper, the taxpayer, the voter, the parent, the veteran, the philanthropist. This is a blueprint for anybody concerned with out of control government, concerned with authoritarianism in the government, concerned with undeclared wars, concerned with suppression of civil liberties, and how mom and pop can actually affect the government. This almost reminds me of a book that I read a long time ago called unsafe at any speed, which of course, targeted in on the automobile industry and the harms it was causing in those days. Now you're targeting an out of control government

and giving a blueprint for folks to address it. What's the most important thing that anybody can do who's disgusted with genocide and disgusted with the suppression of civil liberties? Well, there are always demonstrations and marches. You know, the politicians are still afraid of the people if they organize, because they like campaign money from special interests, sure, but what they like more is your vote. So you've got to give your vote a condition.

You've got to condition the votes. And when they go back from Congress, they go back for recess, you know, days and days of recess, shaking hands and smiling. There are two questions you should always ask a politician about the positions they're taking. One, what's the legal authority for your response or declaration or the vote or giving up your constitutional authority to Congress. Two, what is the evidence to back up your claim? Those are two questions almost never was asked of Donald Trump. The reason why he got away with thousands of lies and falsehoods is because while some

of the newspapers fact-checked him, they reached a tiny audience compared to his lies and falsehoods, and they never asked him, what's the basis for your statement, Mr. President, or candidate Trump? What's the evidence for your statement? They gave him a free ride. It doesn't matter if you fact-check, and a few people read it in the New York Times or Washington Post. So the voters have got to learn how to do their homework, how to focus on the record, not the rhetoric of a politician, and how to become more than a one issue voter. If you're a multi-issue voter, you have more influence over your candidates. If you're just a single issue voter, say on abortion, they know how to game that. They've taken their position

and they know how to answer that. But if you broaden it out, so what's your position on corporate crime enforcement? You have more, should we have more budget to enforce crime and fraud on Medicare by the health insurance companies, for example, or are they the so called vendors of healthcare? What's your position on increasing the taxes on the under-taxed rich? And half of the profitable corporations don't even pay any federal income tax. One worker in these corporations says, well, I'm under the US Treasury than the whole corporation, which has gamed the system. So this book is extremely valuable. That's why it's said it's self-respect.

It all starts whether we have a functioning democracy or a society. It all starts with individuals having a high estimate of their own significance in the ways you just outlined, voter, taxpayer, consumer, worker, veteran, so forth, and speaking out, connecting with others. Everything we like about this country, Andrew, that we inherited started with a conversation between two people. Right. And then four, and then a hundred, and then a movement, and then the politicians took

heed, or the corporations cleaned up their act. So this is why this little book, Civic Self-Respect, is something for you to discuss, give away as gifts to your students who are children, libraries. This is the fountainhead of democracy, or the absence of civic self-respect is the enablement of fascism, which we're experiencing today. And it didn't just start with Trump. Let me also say that the book is a wealth of a lifetime of your civic self-respect and all the lessons you learned compacted into this beautiful blueprint. Ralph, it's always a pleasure.

I hope you'll come back here more frequently. We had you on about a year and a half ago. Let's not wait that long for the next time. You're a hero to our audience. You remain a hero and a friend to me. It's a joy to be with you. Thank you, Ralph. Thank you for your time.

Very much appreciated. You're very welcome, Andrew. And we applaud what you're doing too, because you transcend left-right differences and get people to focus on fundamental justice and constitutional observance. Thank you, Ralph. God love you. Coming up later today at three o'clock, excuse me, at two o'clock, at two o'clock this afternoon,

Colonel Douglas McGregor at three o'clock, Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski, Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. MUSIC