In a recent episode of the Judging Freedom podcast, former CIA officer Phil Giraldi critiques former President Donald Trump's Middle East policies, dubbing them a "Magical Mystery Tour." Giraldi argues that while Trump rhetorically challenged neoconservative foreign policy, his administration's actions—including continued support for Israel and sidelining Palestinian concerns—failed to produce meaningful change. He suggests that Trump's approach lacked genuine diplomatic engagement and often contradicted his own stated objectives.
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00:00Transcription by CastingWords
00:30Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
00:36Today is Wednesday, May 21st, 2025.
00:40My dear friend Phil Giraldi joins us now.
00:43Phil, always a pleasure.
00:44I want to spend some time speaking to you about your fascinating piece,
00:49Trump's Magical Mystery Tour, which is mostly critical but not entirely critical.
00:56But before we get there, what is your take on the Trump-Putin telephone call?
01:03Do you think the Americans understand the Russian mentality?
01:07And do you think the Russians understand that Trump has neocons in one ear
01:12and America firsters in the other?
01:14Yeah. I'm afraid that that latter assessment would be the accurate one,
01:22that Trump doesn't seem to understand very clearly
01:27what the Russians have been trying to make clear right from the beginning.
01:33They have certain red lines,
01:34and the red lines are perfectly legitimate in terms of national security
01:39and in terms of the history of what's gone on
01:44since the dissolution of the Soviet Union
01:47and the American interference in all of those developments.
01:52So somehow there's no recognition coming from the U.S. side
01:58of what are the key issues that have to be dealt with
02:04and come up with some solutions, too,
02:08before there will be any chance for anything like a ceasefire
02:13or a peace agreement.
02:15And that's the real tragedy of what's going on right now.
02:19Chris, play cut number 19.
02:22Tell me, this is Secretary Rubio yesterday testifying
02:28before one of the Senate committees.
02:30He's being grilled.
02:31Grilled is not the right word.
02:33She's rather gentle by Senator Gene Shaheen of New Hampshire.
02:38But tell me if you think Rubio should be saying what he's saying
02:42or if he even understands what he's talking about.
02:4419, Chris.
02:45On the issue of Ukraine, here's what we can all agree on.
02:47There is no military solution to this crisis.
02:49It will have to end in a negotiated settlement.
02:52And the fundamental challenge we have in Ukraine is this.
02:55Russia wants what they do not currently have
02:57and are not entitled to,
02:58and Ukraine wants what they cannot regain militarily.
03:01And that's been the crux of the challenge.
03:04I don't disagree with that at one level.
03:07But on the other hand,
03:08what Vladimir Putin is doing now is playing for time.
03:12And he's playing this president like a fiddle.
03:14And the more longer he plays it,
03:17the more opportunity he has to gain territory in Ukraine,
03:22and the harder it's going to be to get him to the table.
03:24What we need to do is to put pressure on Vladimir Putin in every way we can
03:30to ensure that we can get them to the negotiating table.
03:33Well, I disagree with this playing with a fiddle analogy
03:36because the truth of the matter is
03:38when Vladimir Putin woke up this morning,
03:39he had the same set of sanctions on him that he's always had
03:42since the beginning of this conflict.
03:43And Ukraine was still getting armaments and shipments
03:45from us and from our allies.
03:47And the European Union is about to impose additional sanctions.
03:50And the U.S. is looking for no patriot batteries
03:52to be able to transfer from other NATO nations
03:55into the Ukrainian hands.
03:57And what the president's trying to do is end a war.
03:59He's trying to end a bloody, costly war
04:01that neither side can win and people are dying every single day.
04:03But this notion that, what has Putin gained throughout this?
04:08He hasn't gotten a single concession.
04:09He hasn't gotten a single sanction lifted.
04:11And the more time he gets without additional pressure on Russia,
04:15the more incentive he's got to continue to gain territory
04:21and continue to play for time.
04:24So, Bismarck, the Russians always reclaim what is theirs.
04:28Rubio is saying property that they're not entitled to.
04:34The 4-0 blasts in Crimea were Russia
04:37when Catherine the Great was on the throne.
04:41Does he know what he's talking about?
04:43Does he advance the ball by making statements like that?
04:47And it is clear we are a co-belligerent.
04:50Just listen to the nominal Secretary of State.
04:53I don't think Witkoff's the real Secretary of State.
04:56But we are co-belligerents with Ukraine, are we not?
05:03Yeah, well, that's the major point that nobody wants to talk about.
05:07We have no specific national interest in terms of weakening Russia
05:13just for the sake of weakening Russia, which is how Biden put it.
05:18And that seems to be what's continuing as the policy.
05:22And the fact is there's no understanding of the history of going back
05:28to when the Crimea became part of Russia under Catherine the Great.
05:32The oblasts in Ukraine that are under question at the moment
05:38were part of Russia until there were administrative reorganizations
05:43that made them part of Ukraine, but they are inhabited by mostly Russians
05:49who were being targeted by Ukrainian militias, and 8,000 of them were killed.
05:56So there's a whole lot of history that these people don't want to hear.
05:59They're not interested in.
06:01And they just want the war to continue for various reasons,
06:04which they are not even verbalizing because they're not quite sure what they are.
06:10To the Middle East, Phil, your fascinating piece, Trump's Magical Mystery Tour,
06:18or actually you called it the Magical Mystery Tour that wasn't.
06:22He did attack the neocon record.
06:26He did correctly point out how their historical record is one of destruction.
06:33And he did credit the birth of the modern Middle East to free enterprise
06:41and investment, not to anything American neocons have done.
06:47But he still employs them, and he still listens to them.
06:51Yeah, obviously, I would hate to put it this way,
06:56but obviously he was presenting, his speech is quite good.
07:02It clearly was, to my mind, a speech that was written for him by someone.
07:09I would love to talk to that person.
07:12They could be identified.
07:14But the speech is excellent.
07:16It talks about how imposing governments on regions
07:20by the great powers and things like that has never worked.
07:24It's been a bad idea.
07:26This was taken.
07:28I don't think he actually ever mentioned neocons.
07:31In fact, he didn't.
07:33But the idea was that when he walked away from the microphone,
07:37the audience, which was the leaders of the Gulf states,
07:41were delighted by hearing this kind of stuff.
07:43You're going to stop interfering with us, are you?
07:46And it was taken by the interpreters back here in the United States
07:51to be an attack on the neocons and the neocon foreign policy,
07:56which has come to dominate both major political parties.
08:00So that was a really good kind of thing to do.
08:04I think it was something that was necessary to hear
08:08from a leader of a major country in the West.
08:14And it went over very well.
08:17But the question then becomes how sincere or honest really was it?
08:24There's plenty of interference going on.
08:26I might even point out to Mr. Trump his attitude towards Iran, for example,
08:34which is certainly heavy on the interference.
08:38And, you know, so this keeps going on and on.
08:41And it's simple to talk a good talk,
08:44but it's a lot harder to actually act that way.
08:48The administration leaked something which was so fantastic
08:55that nobody believed it.
08:58They leaked that the United States might recognize the Palestinian state.
09:04This, of course, would turn Netanyahu and his crew on their heads.
09:09Would almost be too good to be true.
09:10I guess it was too good to be true because there was no announcement made,
09:15even though the stated public policy, you know this better than I,
09:19of the United States has been the two-state solution.
09:22I bring this up as a prelude to the following.
09:27All last week, the Western press was saying,
09:30Trump is snubbing Netanyahu.
09:32Trump is there and he's not visiting.
09:35Trump has recognized Syria and didn't talk to Netanyahu,
09:40and a good chunk of Syria is occupied by the Israelis.
09:44Was the snub of Netanyahu a real snub or a head fake?
09:50You know, I'm still debating that in my own mind.
09:56I believe it can be interpreted either way.
10:01And clearly, if you go based on the evidence,
10:05there were two issues actually that were being touted as likely push points
10:11for Donald Trump to push Netanyahu and to get some compliance out of him.
10:18And one of them was, of course, the whole issue of recognizing Palestine,
10:24which has been recognized by 140 countries in the United Nations.
10:30But the United Nations, the U.S. has used its veto in the Security Council
10:35to make sure it does not get recognized as a normal country,
10:40as a participant member state in the U.N.
10:44So we've done that all by ourselves.
10:47And it was presumed that he would be raising this issue
10:50and coming down the right way on it for a change.
10:54And the other issue, of course, was that it was presumed that he would be putting pressure
10:59on the Israelis to also stop their blockade of Gaza,
11:07in which the deaths are starting to multiply, particularly of young children,
11:14and that he would be pushing for a real ceasefire,
11:19unlike the last one, which had an Israeli way to get out of, written into it.
11:27And something like that would be the consequence,
11:29that he would be pushing on them and hopefully get some kind of result.
11:33But none of these things happen.
11:34So that makes you suspect that maybe the whole thing was a fraud
11:39to get positive responses from the Gulf states towards Israel by way of the United States.
11:49And this also was extended to Syria, which was approached by Donald Trump
11:56and had its sanctions lifted.
11:59And it looks like there's a push to kind of legitimize it,
12:03even though it's headed by a former terrorist.
12:06And this would take the pressure off of Israel in that sector.
12:11So there is an Israel motive there, too.
12:14I don't know.
12:15I think that we'll find out in the next couple of weeks what was true here.
12:21There could have been kind of negotiations that went on behind the scenes
12:27of players from Israel and the United States that kind of cooked this whole thing up.
12:32How can we normalize relations with a country,
12:38a substantial chunk of which is occupied by another country, Israel?
12:44Not only another country, it's occupied by three other countries.
12:50Syria is kind of, at this point, a lump in the middle of what once was.
12:56And there is a semi-legitimate government in place, as I say, headed by a former terrorist, al-Sharah.
13:07But to the north of it, the Turks have a big hunk of what was formerly Syria.
13:14To the south of it, Israel has a big hunk and is attacking within that area to destroy arms depots
13:22so that the Syrians won't even have any way to protect themselves against the Israelis.
13:29And the United States is remaining in place, the eastern part of Syria,
13:34where the oil fields are and where the good agricultural land is.
13:40At first, it seemed that the U.S. was going to pull out as part of this agreement.
13:44But today, it came to word that there's no intention to do so at the present time.
13:51Why didn't Donald Trump mention the slaughter in Gaza?
13:57Well, he didn't mention the slaughter in Gaza, obviously,
14:02because he didn't want to press that issue with the Arabs
14:07because it would have created problems with Israel.
14:12It would have raised the whole issue of Israel being supported
14:17and with having the U.S. complicit in the act of carrying out a genocide.
14:24So it raised a lot of funny questions,
14:26but I'm somewhat surprised that the issue of Palestine
14:31did not come up in any of the open conversations
14:35that might have been discussed behind doors.
14:38But it's a mystery to me.
14:43Does it mean anything that Great Britain, France, and Canada
14:47have raised the issue?
14:50I mean, these seem to be either threats to impose sanctions
14:54or, like Spain, a non-binding resolution.
14:58It's too little, too late.
14:59But does it show a crack in the wall?
15:02Does it show some movement?
15:05On the West.
15:07No, I don't think so, actually.
15:09I think that it's a sham.
15:12Those governments are dedicated to supporting Israel no matter what.
15:18And the fact is they are responding to popular pressure
15:22in both Canada and the U.K.
15:25and in France and in Italy
15:28to throw some threats at Israel about sanctions,
15:33about possibly initiating sanctions.
15:38Let's see the sanctions first.
15:40And let's see that there's just some seriousness in this.
15:44Again, the problem here is the United States.
15:46The United States is the bulwark of Israel.
15:49And it's basically an important partner
15:53to all those countries I just named.
15:57And so there's another actor kind of hiding in the back of the scene here,
16:03which is Donald Trump and before him Joe Biden,
16:06who basically gave Israel license to kill
16:10and are continuing to give them license to kill.
16:13And I mean that literally.
16:15Does Donald Trump deserve the same moniker that Joe Biden did,
16:20obviously with a different second word,
16:21genocide Joe, genocide Don?
16:24It's just as relevant.
16:26Is it not, Phil?
16:28I think it's just as relevant
16:29until we cut off arms sales to Israel
16:33and we cut off all the other means of support
16:35and political cover that we provide for them.
16:38That means that we're serious about killing 2 million Gazans as a policy
16:45because that's what Netanyahu has been enunciating.
16:49And I just saw a smooth speech on the Israeli television today
16:54where he was spelling it all out.
16:57They're not shy about it.
16:59Well, here's a clip that will give you some heartburn.
17:03And this is a former member of the Knesset,
17:07a member of the Likud party,
17:08and then left and joined one of the ultra right-wing parties
17:13talking about the desirability of slaughtering Gazan children.
17:19Cut number 10.
17:21Every child in Gaza is the enemy.
17:24We are at war with the Gazan entity,
17:26the Gazan terror entity,
17:27which we ourselves established in Gaza,
17:30in Oslo, and in the disengagement.
17:32The disengagement that Prime Minister Netanyahu voted in favor of,
17:37that is the enemy now.
17:39Every such child to whom you are now giving milk
17:41in another 15 years will rape your daughters and slaughter your children.
17:45We need to conquer Gaza and settle it.
17:48And not a single Gazan child should remain there.
17:51Let's stop telling ourselves this deception
17:53just to score points in this game between pro-Bibi and anti-Bibi.
17:58This isn't about left or right.
17:59It's about winning this war and it's about justice.
18:03When will we learn?
18:05When will we learn?
18:08This guy's a madman,
18:09but does he crystallize the views of most Israelis?
18:15Well, judging from opinion polls, he does.
18:18I won't say it's a 90 percent.
18:20In fact, it used to be a 90 percent infavorable percentage.
18:26It's fallen off a bit from that, I gather, on recent polls down to around 70 percent
18:32because many Israelis, believe it or not, are appalled by what's being done to the Gazans.
18:39But it's still a substantial majority and he's representing a widespread view.
18:47Now, the irony, of course, of all of this is that the Jews and the Israelis have been using the genocide slogan
18:59to justify everything that they do based on what they claim was done to them.
19:06And now they're doing the same thing to another people and are quite comfortable with that as long as it's that they're on the winning side and are able to kill all these people.
19:16Now, if you had just completed a course of study at New York University,
19:24I know you went to the University of Chicago to better school,
19:28and then you graduated first in your class and were the valedictorian,
19:33and then you said at the graduation, what you just said now, Phil,
19:39you should expect that the university would not give you your diploma.
19:43I think that's what happened this week in New York City.
19:48That's where we are today with people making either truthful statements or opinion statements about the Israelis,
19:56which are not acceptable to the people that control the universities and to the Trump administration.
20:05Yeah, I think this will become the norm.
20:07We've gone through the phase where the deportations are taking place of people who write a letter to their school newspaper,
20:16and now we're into people speaking the truth,
20:22or as they see the truth in a situation,
20:26speaking their mind,
20:27and they're being punished by being deprived of something that they worked four years for,
20:34and that will,
20:36the deprivation of this will damage,
20:39severely damage their future life,
20:41their career,
20:42what they choose to do.
20:44So this is becoming the norm,
20:46and this is another thing Donald Trump is really pushing hard,
20:50Mr. Hypocrite Trump.
20:53The thing that's astonishing about Trump for all his kind of,
20:57you know,
20:58mutterings and things like that,
20:59incoherent most of the time,
21:01admittedly,
21:01but the way he has no empathy whatsoever for these children,
21:07bags of children,
21:09you know,
21:10hundreds recently in Gaza
21:12being killed and wrapped up in shrouds,
21:15and where is this guy's soul?
21:18Where is his heart?
21:20I don't think he has one.
21:21Oh, but Phil,
21:22according to Steve Whitcoff,
21:24the president is a humanitarian.
21:26Sure he is.
21:28It's absurd.
21:29Now,
21:29this is a little off the beaten path from what you and I have been discussing and usually discuss,
21:35but it's so absurd and typical of the Trump administration,
21:39we have to run it.
21:40This is Christy Noem,
21:43the Secretary of Homeland Security,
21:46trying to explain a clause of the Constitution,
21:50which schoolchildren can explain.
21:53Chris got number 16.
21:54So,
21:55Secretary Noem,
21:56what is habeas corpus?
21:58Well,
21:58habeas corpus is a constitutional right that the president has to be able to remove people from this country and suspend their right to...
22:06Let me stop you, ma'am.
22:08Habeas corpus,
22:09excuse me,
22:09that's incorrect.
22:10President Lincoln used it.
22:12Excuse me.
22:13Habeas corpus is the legal principle that requires that the government provide a public reason for detaining and imprisoning people.
22:22If not for that protection,
22:23the government could simply arrest people, including American citizens, and hold them indefinitely for no reason.
22:29Habeas corpus is the foundational right that separates free societies like America from police states like North Korea.
22:37As a senator from the live free or die state, this matters a lot to me and my constituents, and to all Americans.
22:44So, Secretary Noem, do you support the core protection that habeas corpus provides, that the government must provide a public reason in order to detain and imprison someone?
22:55Yeah, I support habeas corpus.
22:56I support habeas corpus. I also recognize that the president of the United States has the authority under the Constitution to decide if it should be suspended or not.
23:05Let us be clear, though, that this president...
23:07It has never been done without approval of Congress. Even Abraham Lincoln got retroactive approval from Congress.
23:13I mean, it's really very sad that the person in charge of deportations doesn't understand the basic law of the land, which in large measure governs deportations, the right to a hearing before punishment or expulsion is imposed.
23:32Wow, that was absolutely incredible. That was basically turning a right, a liberty, which all Americans should benefit from,
23:43turning it on its head, turning it on its head to make it a prerogative of the president of the United States to not observe it.
23:53It's just absolutely incredible. This woman is an idiot. And of course, she killed her dog, didn't she, back at home?
24:01She did.
24:02Which was a story for a while. That explains it.
24:05Wow. All right, Phil. God love you, my friend. Thank you very much. Thanks for letting me pick your brain.
24:12And even going a little off the beaten path to expose you to this idiot.
24:18You know, she appeared, you'll get a kick out of this.
24:21She's rather voluptuous the way she dresses at times.
24:24She visited this horrific prison in El Salvador where the guys are stripped to their waist.
24:31They're wearing shorts and sneakers and socks and they're bare chested.
24:35And she stood in front of them and took pictures of herself with all these guys behind bars behind her.
24:41And Max Blumenthal said, that's prison porn.
24:48Leave it to Max.
24:49Max, you nailed it.
24:51Yeah. Thank you, Phil. We'll see you again next week. All the best.
24:54Okay. Take care. Bye-bye.
24:56All right. Coming up at four o'clock, no prison porn, but the one and only Scott Ritter.
25:02Judge Napolitano for judging freedom.
25:32Don't let them know they think we are going to remove their own personal life,
25:35but the other and only Scott Ritter.
25:36We'll see you again next week.
25:37als on the last week.
25:39Bye-bye.
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