Read the full transcript of retired Lieutenant Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski’s interview on Judging Freedom Podcast with host Judge Napolitano on “Trump Spoils Hegseth’s Party”, September 30, 2025.
Opening Remarks on Hegseth’s Address to Military Leadership
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Tuesday, September 30, 2025. Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski joins us now. Colonel Karen, thank you very much. I don’t know if you watched Secretary Hegseth’s speech to 800 Admirals and Generals, but how do admirals and generals feel about lecturing by a guy who’s 20 years younger than they are and who was a reservist?
KAREN KWIATKOWSKI: Yeah. This is a big problem. I mean, I think actually that if Hegseth knew what he was talking about, if he had a particular proven expertise and he had something of importance to share with them, I think that they wouldn’t be prejudiced against youth. I don’t think they’re prejudiced against the younger, less experienced person, but I think they are prejudiced against incompetence, which, strangely, is what Hegseth is trying to do. He’s trying to say we don’t want to have incompetence in the military. Well, he may not be the right guy to deliver that message.
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: You know, he purports to have a vision of the military, which when he lectures about it, just doesn’t come off credibly. It’s not his fault that he has a trillion dollar budget, but he certainly didn’t go in there saying, “Hey, I can do the job with half of this,” as Trump once promised during the campaign, to accolades from people like you and me and your colleagues who are former military. He seems to be the MAGA guy in the Pentagon and there for that reason. Am I misreading this?
KAREN KWIATKOWSKI: No. I mean, I think it’s exactly why he’s there. He’s the guy that Trump can control, that is impressed by Trump, is obedient to Trump. You know, in fact, what other job could Hegseth get? I mean, what could he get really? What could he do? He is there because he’s Trump’s guy. And, you know, I actually didn’t watch all of Hegseth’s address. I saw bits and pieces of it and it was pretty disturbing. And then I did watch the President’s follow-on and I was even more disturbed by that.
Trump’s Disturbing Comments on Using Military Against American Citizens
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: Well, we’ll play you a clip of what the President said, which to me was the most disturbing. We’ll deviate from Hegseth for a minute because you raised this. Really the most disturbing thing he said. My column this week, I just finished writing it and getting it back from my editor, comes out midnight Wednesday night. It’s called “Who Will Protect Us from the Protectors?” And it analyzes constitutionally Trump’s devious behavior with respect to sending troops into the streets.
And I don’t know if you’re aware of this memorandum he signed purporting to federalize local police and put them under the domain of federal troops. It’s profoundly unconstitutional, but it’s very, very dangerous. As I was finishing writing this, this is the cut that we played a few moments ago. Trump said this:
VIDEO CLIP BEGINS:
DONALD TRUMP: San Francisco, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles. They’re very unsafe places, and we’re going to straighten them out one by one. And this is going to be a major part for some of the people in this room. That’s a war, too. It’s a war from within. Controlling the physical territory of our border is essential to national security. We can’t let these people in. We’re under invasion from within. No different than a foreign enemy, but more difficult in many ways because they don’t wear uniforms. At least when they’re wearing a uniform, you can take them out. These people don’t have uniforms. I told Pete we should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military. National Guard, but military.
VIDEO CLIP ENDS:
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: So the military should use American streets with American citizens as a training ground for what, killing the enemy?
KAREN KWIATKOWSKI: Yeah, sure. You know, it occurs to me as I watch him say that again, and it is unconstitutional. I mean, there’s no court that would uphold that. But the problem is he acts, and then we have to wait for the courts to come through. But it’s unconstitutional. But, you know, it occurs to me that I think Bibi Netanyahu has visited Trump probably three too many times this year, because that is the way Israel runs. You know, that’s how they operate, and that’s how they view national security.
You know, they have people inside the country who are enemies, and they have a unitary military defense. There’s no National Guard. It’s all in one combined military that does internal and external activities. Trump is not well prepared for any of this. And he doesn’t have a background. He doesn’t understand. Well, he’s never—we know he hasn’t read the Constitution, but he also hasn’t served in the military and hasn’t. He has no background of awareness in how militaries operate, how our military operates, or how anyone’s military operates. And his best friend is Bibi Netanyahu, and he listens to Bibi Netanyahu. This is very concerning.
What I expected from this gathering of generals, and I wrote something about it, what I hoped that Hegseth would say, but what I truly expected was that it would be a big nothing, it would be a nothing burger. Nothing would come of it. It was boring. And Hegseth I think delivered on that. He didn’t have much to say. But Trump actually moved the ball way far close to an own goal. I mean, that was an own goal. Frankly, everything Trump said was hurting us, violating our standards.
I’m sure that those generals and admirals that were sitting there, while I don’t agree with most of them, and I really consider them to be a parasitical class on this country, but even them, I think, were shocked at the kind of lack of knowledge that Trump exhibited.
And he spoke forever. He just talked.
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: He was like—it was like one of Castro’s talks. The comments he made at the end of his speech, which we just ran, I don’t know if it was in the scripted part, are consistent with this special memorandum that he signed, which my column is about, which got very little publicity, which if you read it, is chilling. Chilling. He’s directed the feds to disrupt groups that are anti-Christian, anti-American. How do you define what’s anti-American? This is a disruption based on speech. We do have a clip from Hegseth which we’ll play now. There’s an Internet acronym at the end which I can’t translate literally because if you translate it literally, it has a four-letter word in it that we don’t use here. But here he is.
Hegseth’s Inappropriate Language and Unrealistic Expectations
VIDEO CLIP BEGINS:
PETE HEGSETH: Should our enemies choose foolishly to challenge us, they will be crushed by the violence, precision and ferocity of the War Department. In other words, to our enemies, FAFO if necessary. Our troops can translate that for you.
VIDEO CLIP ENDS:
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: So “F around and find out,” that’s what the military phrase is. He also wants 65-year-old generals to pass a PT test twice a year. And then like Trump, boasting, “If I’m the President, I can fire whoever I want.” He boasts he’s the Secretary of War and can make you do it. These are bad times, Karen. Look, the military is bloated. It doesn’t need a trillion dollars. Although Trump championed and made that happen. They haven’t won a war in 80 years, but a 45-year-old treating these guys who’ve been in the military their entire career and have risen to the ranks of General and Admiral, talking to them like they’re new recruits. I don’t think this works.
KAREN KWIATKOWSKI: No. Well, clearly they noticed. They had pauses where they expected applause to happen or punchlines and that kind of thing. And they didn’t get that. They didn’t get that applause. I think, you know, I’m not going to defend the military, but a lot of those guys, they’re currently active duty. They came of age in the Bush 43 wars, you know, in the Middle East. And we know the lessons of those wars. You know, you don’t lie about your intel, you don’t make up stuff, you don’t try to nation build. I think a lot of that stuff has been absorbed by our military.
Now, that doesn’t mean any of those generals or any group of those generals can fix the Pentagon, because they can’t. But I think they are far more aware of the complexities and the challenges facing our military than Hegseth is. I mean, the naivete of him to many of the things that he said. But the last one, the FAFO, that is almost a casual—it’s just so inappropriate, unbased in reality. You know, it’s crazy.
And of course, Trump’s speech, when he talked about all the arms that we’re going to sell to people and how far ahead we are technology-wise, it’s almost as if that is what Trump wants to be true. But the reality is, and these generals that he was addressing also know the reality of our weapons systems and where our acquisition system has brought us and our policy towards Israel has brought us. I mean, we ran out of Patriots. Why? Because we gave them to Israel. We are fomenting wars and ruining our own ability to maintain the bare essentials. And the generals and admirals know this. They know this far better.
So I just thought both Hegseth and Trump were very unprepared for something that was quite expensive in terms of bringing all these people back on short notice. And you would think you would be coming back for something really important, and it not only wasn’t important, it was insane. So I don’t know. I think this backfires. It backfires on the Trump administration if that’s what they thought they were going to do.
Military Recruitment and Economic Realities
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: Who wants to join the military today? Isn’t that Hegseth’s most serious and pressing issue?
KAREN KWIATKOWSKI: Yeah, well, he thinks many people are joining, but I don’t know if he’s looked at the unemployment statistics and the layoff and pink slip statistics that we have. You know, military always does well in recruitment when the economy is bad. Now, Trump doesn’t admit that the economy is bad. I don’t know where he’s getting his information from, but people need jobs. And military jobs, especially going in at the entry level, are great jobs because they will take just about anybody and train them to be whatever they need.
So I don’t even get that he’s saying people want to come into our military now. I don’t buy that. I don’t buy that. I think these guys are so far out of touch. And what surprised me is I didn’t think they were that far out of touch. And when I watch this, I’m just going, “Oh, my Lord.”
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: Colonel, watch the very end of his speech where of course he’s expecting a standing ovation as he leaves. Watch what happens.
VIDEO CLIP BEGINS:
PETE HEGSETH: Move out and draw fire, because we are the War Department. Godspeed.
VIDEO CLIP ENDS:
KAREN KWIATKOWSKI: Yeah, that’s crazy.
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: Hands were clapping. I didn’t hear any.
KAREN KWIATKOWSKI: No, no. He, you know, the thing started late too. They had these guys assembled in there for, I think it was 25 minutes late, which I don’t have a real problem with. But on X, a lot of the enlisted people or people who had been enlisted in the military years ago, they said the generals always make us wait. So they thought it was cool that the generals had to wait.
But the problem is they were waiting for something that really, if I was sitting in that audience as a career person and I was devoted to the uniform and devoted to my career, and I was sitting in that audience, I would be very concerned about the quality of knowledge and capability of the leadership. And that would be two people that are the military’s leadership, the Secretary of Defense and the President. I would be extremely concerned.
Presidential Inconsistency and Military Leadership Concerns
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: Well, the President changes his mind and he changes his focus. It seems a dozen times a day.
KAREN KWIATKOWSKI: Yep.
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: This has got to drive serious military people. You have some generals there that have tens of thousands of human beings under their command. The crazy General Donahue who said, “We can take Kaliningrad in 45 minutes,” whatever, he’s got 100,000 troops that work for him. Nevertheless, it must drive people like him crazy that the President changes his mind.
KAREN KWIATKOWSKI: Yeah, I’m sure that it does. And you know these people that currently are wearing three and four stars on their shoulders in our military, they have their own culture. It’s a boutique war culture. Okay. We haven’t had a major challenge, but we’ve gone nation-built and done wars for Israel and we’ve fomented war in Ukraine and, you know, we’ve done all these things that are not really defensive wars. And of course, our military is not oriented to defend this country, and we know that, and they know that.
But these generals have come up through that system, and they rely more than others, I think, more than previous generations on the quality of thinking and leadership of the President, because the President is picking the wars that we participate in. You know, the President is saying, “Oh, go do this, go do that, take this city.” You know, in the United States, which is a whole other story, but the President is picking targets.
And here they meet this guy in this grand meeting, and he rambles on and on, shows no understanding of what it is they do, has no direct instructions for them other than “do what I say.” That’s pretty concerning. If it was me, if I was one of these guys, I would think many will put their papers in after this. And if that was the goal of the meeting, fine.
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: Well, you know, Ritter and Colonel McGregor predicted the same. Off the record, to me, predicted the same thing. If Ritter had a star on his shoulder, according to Ritter, he would have ripped the star off right there in front of Trump.
KAREN KWIATKOWSKI: I believe it. But no, I mean, I think a lot of these guys, I have contempt for so many of them, so it’s hard for me to put myself in their shoes. But I do believe, based on their view of what it is that they do for this country, that this was a blatant insult, a loss of confidence that they would have.
I mean, it’s not just that the President doesn’t really have confidence in them, but they have every reason to have lost confidence in President Trump for sure, based on what he said. I mean, if he hadn’t talked so much about himself and about stupid things and about things that aren’t true, that would be one thing. But he went in there with all of the things that Trump’s enemies label him with, you know, and he presented that to them. So, yeah, it’s time for so many of them to retire, and they can all retire whenever they choose, and they should.
Trump’s Awkward Request for Applause
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: Here’s the Trump asking for and expecting applause. See if you can hear any.
VIDEO CLIP BEGINS:
DONALD TRUMP: Fantastic job. I’ve never walked into a room so silent before. This is very. Don’t laugh, don’t laugh. You’re not allowed to do that. You know what? Just have a good time. And if you want to applaud, you applaud. And if you want to do anything you want, you can do anything you want. And if you don’t like what I’m saying, you can leave the room. Of course, there goes your rank, there goes your future. But you just feel nice and loose. Okay. Because we’re all on the same team.
And I was told that, sir, you won’t hear a, you won’t hear a murmur in the room. I said we had to loosen these guys up a little bit. So you just have a good time. But I want to thank.
VIDEO CLIP ENDS:
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: Nobody applauded. They’re not going to applaud. I don’t know. Maybe military culture tells you, don’t applaud the commander in chief. I mean, if this were World War II and that were FDR, they would have been going wild.
KAREN KWIATKOWSKI: Yeah. No, no, the military will applaud. Generals will applaud. They’re people like anybody else. And also, there was no. What was missing in this address today was any type of connection between Hegseth and Trump and the connection that they might have and should have with the generals that lead this.
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: Colonel, I am sure that Hegseth was miserable that Trump spoiled his party. Remember, this is supposed to be Pete’s party. And then at the last minute, the President says, I’m going to show up. I want to talk too long, Pete, but I’m going to show up.
KAREN KWIATKOWSKI: Exactly.
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: And completely Bigfoots him.
A Lack of Seriousness and Purpose
KAREN KWIATKOWSKI: Yep. No, it’s true. And again, that is the casual kind of approach to being in charge of this great, massive, expensive military that we have that’s deployed in 155 countries engaged in wars and soon to be wars and conflicts around the planet. You have to have a certain seriousness about that. And if you don’t, it could be a big problem. Big problem in how, you know, because Trump needs these guys to do what he says.
And if I was sitting in that audience and I was, in a sense, watching it, and all these generals and admirals there, they must have been. I mean, the anger that many of them might have felt, I would understand that totally if they were angry, if they wondered why they were wearing the uniform of this country when this country has so little knowledge, the leadership has so little knowledge of what a military is supposed to be doing, and that is defend.
And honestly, if you ask military guys of any rank, they want to defend the country, they don’t want to go fight imperial wars. They never do. None of them do. They obey orders. But I don’t know. It’s kind of a clown show. And I think, I don’t know if that’s what they intended. I don’t know if that’s what Trump intended. I don’t think so, and that’s what’s scary about it, because it’s one thing if you said, well, we’re going to punish all these guys. We’re going to make them come here and listen to crazy talk for 25 minutes, and we’re going to punish them. We’re going to show them who’s in charge, make them wait 25 minutes. Okay? That’s one thing that is something that has an objective, and it may or may not work.
But I got the feeling after watching this that they were just simply unprepared. They had no idea what they wanted to communicate to these guys. And that’s very concerning. Americans pay a lot of money, a trillion dollars a year and more for this military, and this is how we manage it. Here’s is bad, bad problem.
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: I wonder if this made its way over to them. Here’s what he said. It’s a threat. As he was leaving the White House, getting on a helicopter. This is truly remarkable.
KAREN KWIATKOWSKI: Us.
VIDEO CLIP BEGINS:
DONALD TRUMP: I’m going to be meeting with generals and with admirals and with leaders, and if I don’t like somebody, I’m going to fire them right on the spot.
VIDEO CLIP ENDS:
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: Shades of the show that made him popular nationally, the Apprentice.
KAREN KWIATKOWSKI: That’s right. And it seems like they had the great patent backdrop, you know, the American flag, and it was all theater in no substance. Very disturbing.
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: It’s going to be disturbing for you and people like you who made a career in the military, who were proud of their work, who still refer to themselves or are referred to publicly as their title. Now you got generals who, if they could, would have hidden their faces this morning.
KAREN KWIATKOWSKI: Yeah, yeah, that’s H.L. Mencken, you know, says eventually you get the government you deserve with the democracy. It’s going to be really stupid. I don’t have his quote proper, but it’s possible we’ve satisfied that peak stupidity. We went through Biden with his dementia, which was a problem, but that’s a physical problem, not necessarily that he was stupid. But now we have Trump version two, and he’s proving H.L. Mencken to be correct. So very scary. Very scary.
Governor Pritzker’s Response to Federal Troop Deployment
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: I’m going to play one more for you because we talked about it earlier, the unconstitutional use of troops in the streets. I’m not a fan of Governor Pritzker of Illinois. I can’t even think of any issue on which we agree, except for this. But he was very angry and articulate. Here he is, I believe earlier today.
VIDEO CLIP BEGINS:
GOVERNOR PRITZKER: Moments ago, the Illinois National Guard received word that the Department of Homeland Security has sent a memo to the Department of War seeking the deployment of 100 military troops to Illinois, claiming a need for the protection of ICE permission, personnel and facilities. What I have been warning of is now being realized. One thing is clear. None of what Trump is doing is making Illinois safer.
In Broadview, people non violently holding signs and chanting against brutality, expressing their First Amendment rights have been regularly attacked with chemical agents like tear gas, pepper spray, rubber bullets and flashbangs. Agents reportedly unholstered their guns and pointed them at protesters in their own words. ICE intended to unleash, quote, “a shit show” in the Broadview community.
VIDEO CLIP ENDS:
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: There you go. A little accrued at the end, but everybody knows what he’s talking about.
KAREN KWIATKOWSKI: I think Trump has a fantasy that the people love him because, you know, he had a lot of, he won the election, he won the popular vote last time he talked about that to the generals, as if that has any relevance at this point. But he thinks that the people back him and he doesn’t realize that whenever a group is attacked, we always join together for the underdog or for the one closest to us, our community. Right.
So I’m with, I stand with Pritzker on this, you know, and he’s right. If this was, if this was 1859 or 1860 and the President was sending troops into states, do you know how serious that is? I mean, that is, that is incredibly concerning. And people don’t think it in those terms, but this country is highly vulnerable to civil war. That word is tossed around, but it almost sounds like Trump wants that. And he assumes that the people in these various states will side with the federal government. And I think he’s sadly mistaken if he thinks that. And it’s, yeah, this is some incredibly scary stuff going on.
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: Yeah. The clip we ran, I was wrong. It was the Governor Pritzker yesterday. So if anything has happened today, I’m, even though I live and work in a news environment and a newsroom, I’m unaware of it.
Karen, great chatting with you. We’ll look forward to seeing you again. Keep those great pieces coming. If you haven’t seen Colonel Kwiatkowski’s piece “An Assembly of Generals,” half of it is dreadfully serious and half of it is hilarious. And all of it is worth reading. You can get it at jointsnap. Thank you, Colonel. We’ll see you again soon.
KAREN KWIATKOWSKI: Okay. Thank you, Judge.
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: Sure. Coming up tomorrow, Wednesday at 8 in the morning, Professor Gilbert Doctorow at 1 in the afternoon, Professor Glenn Deason at 2 in the afternoon, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson at 3 in the afternoon. We missed him last week. The great Phil Giraldi. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom.
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