Transcript of Col. Lawrence Wilkerson: Trump Delusional over Tariffs and Iran

Read the full transcript of a conversation between Judge Andrew Napolitano and Col. Lawrence Wilkerson on Judging Freedom Podcast titled “Trump Delusional over Tariffs and Iran” premiered April 3, 2025.

The interview starts here:

Opening Discussion on European Military Posturing

JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Thursday, April 3rd, 2025. Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson joins us now. Colonel, always a pleasure. I have a lot to talk to you about, from tariffs to Iran. But before we get there, do you have an opinion, Colonel, on the bellicosity. And I’m going to play a tape for you in a minute. Coming out of the mouths of European leaders. Where are they going with this?

COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON: I think they’re operating, as I said before we went on the air, in the world of the insane. Frankly, I don’t know if you read Andrew Cockburn’s piece. Andrew sometimes can go deeply into things and odd directions, but this piece was really good. He demonstrated in the piece several things.

One was how utterly dependent European countries, particularly France, Germany and Britain are on the United States and not just for money, but for almost everything involved in the high tech fields in their military and for that matter in other fields too, like main battle tanks and armored personnel carriers and other things like that, particularly airplanes. And how it would take at least 10 years and probably longer for them to break out of that lock hole, Lockheed Martin having much of it and develop their own.

So we’re looking at a bunch of piss ants, militarily speaking, who would take a decade to become anything more than piss ants, saying that they’re elephants. This is.

JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Watch this. This is Ursula von der Leyen at her unleashed worst.

Chris, number 22.

[VIDEO CLIP STARTS]

URSULA VON DER LEYEN: We had a very good meeting of the coalition of the willing. The coalition of the willing has gotten bigger, stronger and very determined. I have basically three key takeaways.

The first was a broad discussion on how to step up in the support for Ukraine in the short term, financially and military wise. The military needs that are there in Ukraine that have to be fulfilled, but also the financial needs. And here I can contribute that we will front load the EU part of the G7 loans for Ukraine.

Second topic, keep up the pressure on Russia. It was very clear that the sanctions stay in place. What we want is a just and lasting peace agreement. That is the goal.

And the third key takeaway was on the long term support for Ukraine and our own European defence posture. Here, of course, the readiness 2030 then is crucial. It provides up to 800 billion euros of defense investment possibilities for the member states. And this means, for example, joint procurement with Ukraine, joint procurement with Ukraine in the European Union, but also in the Ukrainian defence industry. It’s strengthening the defence industrial base of Ukraine. And of course we need also a credible deterrence and defense posture in the European Union and thus we have to develop our own defense industrial base.

[VIDEO CLIP ENDS]

European Military Capabilities and Rhetoric

JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: I think this woman is not only delusional, I think she’s a danger to the peace and security of Europe. Thank God she doesn’t have an army at her command.

COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON: I’m going to quote the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius again when he said the object of life is not to be amongst the majority, it’s to not be amongst the insane. She’s amongst the insane. She has no army, she has no navy, she has no air force. She’s not even really a democratically elected leader. And she’s speaking as if she were speaking for 700, what, million? Count the Russians out, say 500 million Europeans who have probably about an 80% dissent rate with her. That is to say they don’t believe what she’s saying and aren’t going to support what she’s saying.

And you know, I’ve heard Colonel Macgregor talk about this and he’s absolutely right. It takes 10 years to build an army minimum. It takes 15 years to build a non-commissioned officer who’s going to be a really good platoon sergeant. It takes a long time. Europe has not been doing this for decades. It’s been on the tit, as it were, the U.S. title. And it will take quite a while for it to do what she’s doing.

What’s she going to do in the interim and what’s she going to do when the governments that might support, I don’t think they would, but might support what she’s talking about become governments that aren’t going to support it in such key countries as Germany, France, even Britain? This is nonsense. It’s insanity. They dwell in the realm of the insane.

JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Colonel, I’m going to bring you back to your years in the State Department. Was this a George W. Bush or Dick Cheney phrase? The coalition of the willing? I mean, I had to smirk when I heard her say that.

COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON: I couldn’t believe, you know, that just testifies to the insanity. That was Donald Rumsfeld. That was when he was going on about there are unknowns that you don’t know, you don’t know. And they’re knowns.

JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Right?

COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON: Yeah. And the coalition of the willing, because we couldn’t get anybody but Australia and some Argentines, I think, and maybe one or two other countries to participate with us. And of course we got our poodle Britain to participate with us. So it became the coalition of the willing. Powell once said to me, he turned to me and he said, how many people are coming in from Australia, I said about a company.

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JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: How many humans is that?

COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON: 100, 150 maybe.

JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Wow.

U.S. Military Actions in Yemen

JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Colonel, is there any military purpose, just from a military perspective now served by bombing civilians in Yemen?

COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON: Not a bit. Not a bit. And I understand from very good sources in Sanaa and in Hudaydah that about 45 to 50% of the casualties are women and children. And the Pentagon even this morning admitted it, not to that percentage, but they said we’re targeting things now that are going to cause a lot of collateral damage. No joke. A lot of collateral damage.

Meanwhile, you’re looking at Al Ansar, the Houthis having shot down now what? My son flies MQ9 Reaper drones, shot down 16 of them. That’s at 30 million a copy. That’s about $480 million, or almost half a billion dollars. My rough back of the envelope calculations show that the Houthis or someone providing this information or these weapons probably shot somewhere between 60 and 70 million dollars worth of weaponry to do that. That’s a hell of a bad exchange. They’re in the world of the insane again, Judge.

JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: These are war crimes, are they not?

COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON: They are. And it’s not a declared war. It is. We go back to that time period when we got the Congress to pass in both Houses, war powers resolution, constitutional resolution, to get us out of backing the Saudis in this war. Now, we’re not just backing the Saudis. We are the principal antagonists. Who consulted the Congress and the Constitution?

Taiwan and U.S.-China Relations

JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Nobody. Look, the Secretary of Defense, he’s back from his trip to Asia, because I saw him yesterday sitting in the front row in the Rose Garden where President Trump was manifesting his ignorance of Economics 101. We’ll get to that in a minute. But the Secretary of Defense, Colonel, when he was in Japan in the three days ago, was boasting about how the United States will defend Taiwan from China. A, what kind of sense does it make to raise that when you’re in the Far East? B, is it even conceivable that the United States could defeat the Chinese navy and army if they decide to use military force to retain control or acquire control of Taiwan?

COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON: First part of your question, I understand the administration’s position now is that we need strategic clarity rather than strategic uncertainty, which helped us for the last 50 years or so, ever since the communique, ever since Nixon’s visit to Beijing. You know, we wouldn’t say that. We wouldn’t do anything to cause a war, and China wouldn’t do anything to cause a war that was called strategic ambiguity. Now it’s strategic clarity. And Hegseth has just made that clarity very firm. Again, dwelling in the world of the insane.

Because the answer to your second question is, I don’t even think we would come to Taiwan’s defense because we would get beaten so badly and have to go nuclear. I just don’t. I can’t imagine the Pentagon recommending defending Taiwan. I just can’t.

Trump’s Foreign Policy Approach

JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Last week, the president, after boasting about the success his word of the bombings in Yemen, a statement defied by an eyewitness by the name of Pepe Escobar, our friend and colleague who was there said that this is just a prelude. He’s ready to bomb Iran. He also said last week I’m going to use his phrase, when you and I were kids, we would get in trouble for saying this. But it’s entered the parlance now he’s, quote, pissed off at Putin’s patience in the negotiations over Ukraine. He also sent B52s to fly over the Indian Ocean. I can only imagine what that costs. What is going on here? Is this any way to negotiate with Vladimir Putin?

COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON: Neither Putin nor the ayatollah or whomever is going to be in the deal making in Iran, and the ayatollah is ultimately behind whatever happens. I think Trump is trying to build negotiating pressure in both places, and he’s failing miserably with Putin because Putin doesn’t have to yield to this kind of pressure.

He may be succeeding to a certain extent with the security group in Tehran, because I think they do want a deal, and I know they don’t want a war. So getting a war would be rewarding Bibi Netanyahu too significantly. And Bibi’s in real trouble now, especially with Qatargate. This is a scandal that just won’t quit. I think what it means is that when the emir was sending money, per Bibi’s wishes, to Hamas and to Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Bibi was taking a cut of that money.

And they have proof of that. So I think this is the end of Bibi Netanyahu, if anything at all, still resembles justice in Israel. So Iran is content to watch this happen and see what results afterwards and not to go to war with the United States and have a deal in the process that would cause sanctions to be lifted. And I think Trump understands that. So I think what he wants here is a deal. I have lost the bubble on Russia. I have no idea what he’s trying to do.

Netanyahu and Israel’s Situation

JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Well, do you see any connection between Trump unleashing Netanyahu and the IDF to slaughter innocents in Gaza? Last week, the IDF executed one after another after another, 15 UN health care workers. There was no outrage. There was no international outreach, except in the Arab countries. Connection between Trump’s impatience with Putin and his giving Netanyahu whatever he wants, even more than what Biden was giving him.

COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON: I don’t see a connection other than perhaps Trump’s ego. What I do see is that Israel is in big trouble right now. On the other front in Syria, they were essentially stopped in their latest armored movement and they took casualties. They had to fly in medical evacuation helicopters and they had to evacuate those casualties and they had to retreat.

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Not only that, Turkey is going bangers on its construction of an F15, F16 airfield. F16 is already there in one place in northern Syria. And I think Israel is going to be checked in Syria and it’s going to be checked rather dramatically and fairly soon. And these things are just crowding in on Netanyahu in a way that I don’t see how he survived at this point. But beyond this, I think he’s in deep, deep trouble.

JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Well, here’s what happened to him last week. Now, I spent the bulk of my career in a courtroom and I never ever even heard of this happening in American courtroom. He’s on the witness stand testifying before a panel of three judges. They don’t have a jury. He’s a defendant in a criminal case. It’s an old fashioned bribery case. It’s not this Cutter thing.

COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON: No.

JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: And while he’s there, one of his senior aides is arrested in this Qatar scandal. The police enter the courtroom with a warrant for Netanyahu and persuade the judges to stop the trial so that they can interrogate him immediately before he can talk to and get his story straight with the guy they’ve just arrested.

COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON: I’m telling you, he’s in a mess. He’s in a huge mess. And even his ability to manipulate the judiciary in Israel, almost to the point it doesn’t exist, is fading and fading fast. Not only that, the people in Israel are getting angrier and angrier. The polls for Channel 12 in Israel showed 69% of the population of Israel, and I assume that means Arab and Jewish, is against what Netanyahu is doing to their judiciary and is willing to go to the streets over it. This can’t keep happening without his government falling.

Trump’s Economic Policies

JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Colonel, your background is in the military and diplomacy. Mine is in law and the Constitution. Neither of us is a professional economist, but we both understand basic economics. Isn’t a tariff, a tax.

Trump’s Tariff Policy and Economic Impact

COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON: To me, ultimately it is. I understand, I think, some of the arguments. Do you know Catherine Austin Fitts? I bet you do. I’ve been reading her latest Solari report and some of the things that she talked about in the previous one were about tariffs. This one’s mostly about Bitcoin and getting rid of cash and what it means and so forth.

I think we’re looking at an attempt by some people behind the scenes, as it were, call them oligarchs or whatever, call them Elon Musk type people, Peter Thiel type people. I think we’re looking at an attempt to destroy some things that are going to make them very, very wealthy as the destruction takes place and make Americans and perhaps other global citizens very, very poor. And that’s what’s going on. We’re looking at this deep machinations of things behind the scenes. And my question is, does Trump know what he’s doing? Does he understand what he’s doing?

JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: I don’t think he understands basic economics. 101, you know, which we all took many years ago. But, you know, two plus two still equals four. And if you tax something, you have less of it. These are basic rules that don’t change with the passage of time.

For example, he has banned or banned, he’s put a tax on not only foreign motor vehicles, but parts from foreign countries. There isn’t a motor vehicle made or a truck made in the United States of America with 100% American parts, nor.

COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON: Anywhere else in the world.

JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Right. So he, does he even realize he’s going after his base? He’s going after farmers and blue collar people that are going to be spending more for everything from toasters and the automobiles.

COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON: The Republicans doing a CR on the farm bill is another big mistake because most small farmers in the country who vote, they know that that CR and the previous farm bill that is continually has the continuing resolution passed with respect to it favors the big guys, Conagra, Archer Daniels Middle and all those big people in the farming business and does not favor the small farmer. So he’s losing vote after vote after vote in places like Iowa and Texas and elsewhere.

This, there is an argument out there that he is going with regard to the tariffs, that he’s going to do what he had done before, he’s going to rescind them quickly. That is to say, he’ll let them stay in there for about a week, maybe two weeks, three weeks and then he’s going to piecemeal go out there and rescind.

JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: What the hell will he have accomplished during the scaring the daylights out of people today? The stock market’s down 1500 points.

COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON: Yep. Maybe he feels good when he does that. I don’t know. I can’t figure the guy out.

JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: There’s a very, very lucid Wall Street Journal report of the impact to U.S. automakers and American consumers from these tariffs. Cut number 14. Chris.

Impact of Tariffs on Auto Industry

[VIDEO CLIP STARTS]

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: This chart shows where cars sold in the U.S. are coming from. All of these cars now face that 25% auto tariff. But this 53% of US cars is also affected by that tariff because of all of those foreign parts. Some of the major components. This is for the Ford F150. They have an alternator, create current. It’s from Mexico. We have half shafts. These deliver torque to the wheels from the driveline. They’re from Canada. We have tires, of course, five of them. These come from Korea. Of course you have to have wheels, in this case a style, tractor wheels. These all come from Mexico.

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Those tires from South Korea would face that auto tariff and any reciprocal or universal tariff placed on the country. Those parts from Canada and Mexico, well, that’s where it gets more complicated. Eventually they would face that auto tariff, any reciprocal or universal tariff and an additional Mexico Canada tariff. But the White House said parts compliant with the US Mexico Canada Trade Agreement or USMCA remain tariff free until there is a process to apply tariffs to their non US Content. And for some parts like a transmission, there will be a lot of content to consider.

This is going to be disruptive on day one. It’s going to increase the cost of doing business. The total amount depends on the vehicle. A Cox Automotive estimate shows a car made in the US would incur $3,000 in costs from the Canada Mexico tariffs plus another $3,000 from the tariffs on foreign made auto parts. Then research shows an added $400 for the steel and aluminum tariffs and more for any reciprocal or universal tariffs.

[VIDEO CLIP ENDS]

JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Like to show this to Joe Six Pack wearing his MAGA cap and see if he’s still wearing it.

COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON: I think Trump still thinks, or thinks he’s still in the realm of Alexander Hamilton. You know, we went to a Hyundai plant in Seoul, Korea and we opened the hood and we looked at the round clips. The round clips alone, we actually took several of them off so we could find the fabrication data and so forth. In that Hyundai, we removed nine round clips. You know what I’m talking about. It holds a hose on a fitting or whatever.

JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Right.

COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON: Those nine round clips came from nine different countries, making the point that was just made there in the film. It ain’t Alexander Hamilton’s world anymore. Tariffs do not do what they maybe did in the beginning of our country. And they’re very dangerous instruments because they don’t. It’s a very complicated multi-node world now, business as well as politics.

Concerns About the Administration

JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Colonel, I don’t want to put you on the spot and you know I love you, but we have an administration that is deporting people because of the freedom of speech, that doesn’t understand economics 101 and is engaging in war crimes in Yemen. Where are we going?

COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON: To hell in a handbag and the handbag’s labeled America. This is, as I said at the beginning, we are dwelling in the realm of the insane. I can’t think of a better phrase to describe it. I don’t know what it means for us other than financially, economically, security wise, foreign policy wise.

I just watched Marco Rubio on a stage with Ruta, the new Secretary General of NATO. What Marco Rubio was doing after a very effusive introduction of him by Ruta, which included every other sentence or so. Look at what we’re doing in NATO, look at what we’re going to do in NATO, look at what we’re going to spend in NATO and so forth. And then Rubio’s response was his running against JD Vance three and a half, four years from now.

That’s what he was doing, because he was saying everything Vance had said at the Munich Security Conference was not true. The United States was still a stalwart member of NATO. There was no reason to doubt the United States integrity with regard to its promise to be a stalwart member of NATO and so forth. And he’s talking to a Secretary General who’s just blasted him indirectly with regard to what Vance said.

JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: No, Colonel, once a neocon, always a neocon, no matter who your boss is.

COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON: Yes, and notice how Trump is evicting some of these neocons from the NSC staff, like Feist.

JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Boy, what isn’t he? Start with Hegseth and Wolfs.

COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON: That would be a good place to start. Colonel, I love how candid the two of us can be. It’s like we’re sitting at a bar just blasting the things that are irritating us.

JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Even though he scares me, he really frightens me.

COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON: This is serious, serious stuff. You know, I’ve known him for years. I’ve argued that he’s not qualified. And every time you turn around, you know. I want him to be under oath before the Senate Intel Committee and see if he repeats the fact that what they put on this website or this texting was not protected by national secrets.

JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Of course it was. Of course. Doesn’t have to have a number. Doesn’t have to have a file number. It was operational data.

COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON: Colonel, thank you very much. Thank you for your time and look forward to seeing you again next week. All the best.

JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Really. Take care.

COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON: Sure. Coming up at 3:00 this afternoon, Professor John Mearsheimer and mad as a wet hand over these tariffs. At 4 o’clock, Professor Jeffrey Sachs. Judson Napolitano for judging freedom.