➡ In this discussion, Gerald Cilenti and Judge Napolitano express concern over the perceived loss of individual freedoms and the growth of government power in the United States. They argue that the principles of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights are being ignored, leading to a government that can regulate any aspect of life and start wars without restraint. They also criticize the mainstream media for focusing on trivial news instead of important issues like war and injustice. Lastly, they discuss how crises often lead to increased government control and reduced personal liberties, a trend they find alarming.
➡ The text discusses the Patriot Act, the killing of Osama bin Laden, and the U.S. government’s actions towards Cuba and its own citizens. It criticizes the government for suppressing liberty, violating rights, and being dishonest. It also mentions the Trump administration’s repression of free speech and the U.S.’s large military budget. The text ends by suggesting the need for a new political party and leader to restore rights and happiness to the people.
➡ The speaker suggests that it’s time for a new political party in America, led by someone who deeply understands the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. This party should focus on freedom, peace, and justice. The speaker also highlights the economic struggles of the younger generation, noting the lack of good jobs and the shrinking middle class as key issues. Lastly, the speaker thanks a person named Judge and encourages everyone to visit a site called ‘judging freedom’ for unique insights.

Hello, everybody. This is Gerald Cilenti, and it’s Wednesday, July 2nd, 2025. And we are honored, privileged to have with us a man of men, someone that we’re going to be into the Fourth of July that knows about, you know, the Fourth of July, what it was about, and most importantly, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, two elements that have been robbed from us by the politicians running the freak show. Judge Napolitano, thank you so much for being here. You have an article that’s coming out tomorrow, Independence Day, 2025. We are independent of London, but are we independent of Washington? Is there more freedom when governed by one tyrant 3,000 miles away, or by 3,000 tyrants a few miles away? Judge, this article is phenomenal that you’ve written.

Does government today remotely resemble the values articulated on July 4th, 1776, when the President of the United States bombs the lawful facilities of a foreign country that pose no threat whatsoever to American national security, and does so without congressional declaration of war as the Constitution requires? You keep going on. Right. Tell us more, Judge. Well, it’s a terrible comparison of life under the federal government today in 2025, to the lofty ideals and goals and values of Jefferson and Madison as articulated in the Declaration of Independence, the promulgation of which we celebrate this Friday.

And it argues that we have radically, radically transformed from the small government maximum individual liberty values of the Declaration and the Bill of Rights to a monster government today that can right any wrong and regulate any behavior and take any property and transfer any wealth and kill anybody at once in our names. Nobody seems to abide the Constitution. Formally, the Constitution exists. We still have a presidency, we still have a judiciary, we still have a Congress, but functionally, the Constitution has failed miserably and completely as an instrument of restraint on the federal government.

There is no area of human life that the federal government is immune from regulating. And lately, with the person who’s presently in the White House, who believes he can start any war and kill anybody he wants, you and I were talking before the cameras came on about the number of people who are murdered daily in Gaza by the Israeli military. These are for the most part innocent people who are lined up to get flour and water for their starving families and they’re just slaughtered. Nobody seems to give a damn and the taxpayers of the United States, not of Israel, of the United States keep paying for it.

You’re talking about Trump. Arrogant, arrogant, arrogant. You know, some people say they don’t like my language, but it’s okay for Trump to say fuck, but I can’t. And that’s proper language, by the way. When somebody’s… Oh, we’re talking about the slaughter of innocent people. By the way, yesterday, 124 killed. 124 innocent people bombed to death in front of everybody’s eyes, destroying the place in front of everybody’s eyes. And if you say, what the hell are they doing? Where are these bastards? Calm down, Salendi. Be a little coward. Don’t get angry at the murder of innocent people.

That’s your government telling you what to do. Now you obey them, you’re still in kindergarten. That’s the attitude of people. And by the way, the mainstream media… No word about it. You know what we should be talking about, Judge? What’s really important. This is the front page of the Wall Street Journal a couple of days ago. All right. Bezos and his wife in Venice, wedding bash. I give a damn about this clown getting married. A freaky little guy with a wife with fake boobs. That’s news. It’s all over the news. It was all over the news, day after day, week after week.

The slaughter of Palestinian people, shut the hell up, you anti-Semite. Well, Gerald, I can’t imagine you without anger at the injustices in the world. It wouldn’t be you. And if anybody tells you to tone it down or dial it back, I’m sure you have choice words for that. I do. You know, in terms of this Bezos stuff, I agree with you. You know, this is a business and the media is going to try and draw as many eyeballs as they can and try and create the narrative that they want. The Wall Street Journal is pro-war and obviously pro…

I don’t know what they’re pro by publicizing Bezos’ stuff. I mean, in one respect, it was a $50 million wedding. Yeah, because of shit. Right. Well, where did the $50 million go? Went to a hotel. It went to people that drive boats. It went to waiters and waitresses and cooks and chefs and blue collar people that provide these services. On the other hand, it is not the type of thing that moves the dial in the history of the world like exposing the slaughter in Gaza would. And again, what the hell do I care if this clown boy got married? This is the bastard, by the way, that nobody remembers because they don’t care, that killed what they used to call bookstores when he began Amazon.

They started selling books for a lot cheaper price than you could get at bookstores and put them out of business. And it was one thing after another. They were losing money for like 10, 15 years Amazon. You know, he’s just keeping people out of business. But that’s the people we have to look up to. Going back to your article, this article that you’re writing, please, everybody, you have to read this article that the judge is putting out. And you got to go to judging freedom. Because here we are, we’re celebrating the Fourth of July.

We’re going to let everybody be excited about the fireworks. Yeah, the fireworks, you mean the fireworks that have killed us by the slime balls that are running the world. The Declaration of Independence is an indictment of King George III, as well as manifestation of limited government and maximum individual freedom. Maximum individual freedom? Who the hell are you to say that, Judge? That was at least the goal of Thomas Jefferson when he wrote the Declaration of Independence and the goal of James Madison when he wrote the Bill of Rights for their own safety and comfort.

They did not live long enough to see either of those documents destroyed and disregarded as they have been. Madison himself changed his mind at the tail end of his second term, and he signed legislation incorporating the Second National Bank of the United States after having vetoed it twice. That, of course, became the Federal Reserve. It was a horrible thing that he did. But for the most part, the two of them as presidents were faithful to the way the two of them were as revolutionaries. But the monster government didn’t begin until Lincoln and then Wilson and then FDR, and then from FDR on up, it’s continued and it’s grown.

The best book on all of this, I know you know the book and you know the author, is Bob Higgs’s Crisis in Leviathan. It’s a masterpiece that traces how with every crisis in American history, even going back to the War of 1812, which is Madison, the government grows and individual liberty shrinks, and the individual liberty that the government sees does not come back to the individuals from whom it’s been seized. Higgs’s book is a masterpiece. It’s easy to read, but the lesson is inescapable and very sad. Again, what’s the name of it? The name of it is Crisis in Leviathan.

It’s really the greatest chronicle of the growth of American government that I’m aware of, and his thesis is that from the title, Crisis in Leviathan, Bob Higgs is now retired. He taught constitutional jurisprudence for many years. The thesis is that every time there is a crisis, people are afraid, and they willingly surrender their liberties, and the surrender of liberty produces bigger government. And when the crisis passes, the liberty doesn’t come back, and the government doesn’t shrink. It just continues to grow and grow and grow, and he demonstrates this with the methodology of an economist of how government grows and has grown every time there’s a crisis.

I mean, whatever you think of Trump, one of those statutes under which he was prosecuted for keeping the documents in Mar-a-Lago was a World War I era statute enacted under the Woodrow Wilson regime, which was profoundly unconstitutional and utterly suppressed free speech. It survived World War I. It’s still around. It’s there for the government to use when it wants. This is one of the examples that Bob Higgs has used. We are a monstrosity today because we failed to keep the Constitution. We failed to keep the government chained down. I’m using Jefferson’s phrase by the Constitution, and we allowed it to grow each time there was a crisis.

You and I have blasted the Patriot Act, which was enacted right after 9-11, which allows one federal agent to authorize another federal agent to engage in a search, direct violation of the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits the recipient of one of these agent-written search warrants from telling anybody about it. You can’t tell your spouse. You can’t tell a priest and confession. You can’t tell your lawyer. You can’t tell a judge in a public courtroom. Violates the First Amendment. Patriot Act was written before 9-11. The Patriot Act was written in anticipation of the next crisis.

The authors of the Patriot Act read Bob Higgs’s book, and they knew when a crisis comes, time to suppress liberty and grow the government. And as you said, the people follow. Yes. He says in his book, 90 percent, according to the polls, 90 percent of the American people swallowed the crap coming out of the mouth of that moronic little daddy’s boy, George W. Bush. We’re going to get that guy Osama bin Laden. Get her alive. Oh, and then after they got him in the Obama administration, by the way, I caught so much hell on Fox when I said that Osama bin Laden was murdered.

Well, he was murdered. He wasn’t charged with a crime. He wasn’t indicted. He wasn’t arrested. They broke into his house and they blew him away with an automatic rifle fire. That’s murder. Oh, didn’t they throw him in the ocean or something? No, that’s another piece of garbage. But my point is, after they killed him, they decided he wasn’t the mastermind of 9-11. But the other guy that they have, who they would have ordered 183 times, still waiting for trial in Guantanamo Bay, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, he was the mastermind. Who the hell can believe anything the government says? Let’s go.

You’re talking about Guantanamo. What the hell right does America have to steal this land in Cuba? And now Trump just came out, and he’s going to put more sanctions on Cuba. You’re not allowed to go there. He’s going to punish anybody that does. This is the slime ball that sold himself as the man that’s going to bring peace to the world. Remember that line? Right, I do remember that line. This is the man who kills for peace. Kills in Gaza, kills in Ukraine, kills in Iran. And now he wants to punish us for our right to travel.

I don’t know if this is Marco Rubio’s doing, whose parents escaped from Castro’s Cuba. But Cuba is potentially such a beautiful place and such a great place for Americans to be able to develop and trade. But the American government, with the exception of Obama, I’m no Obama fan, but you know, you’re going to stop clockers right twice a day. The American government has been fixated as if Castro is still the dictator and we must punish the people because of their government. They still have that attitude, and now Trump is bringing it back.

And again, what Freddie’s telling you, it’s a terrorist country. It’s a threat to America. What are you kidding me? The place is going broke. And you go back, by the way, you know how much I love music. You go back to the songs before the revolution in Cuba, the American songs about going to Cuba, you know, going for the weekend and coming back and the great music. Xavier Ku got one after another, the great vibe from there. And it was where Americans wanted to go to have a great time. And again, one slimy piece of scum president after another, you know, putting the sanctions on them, doing this to that, that and this.

And it’s just they’re morons. They’re arrogant little morons. This article, by the way, again, we’re supposed to call this the 4th of July Independence Day. We lost our independence. You’re right that the third Jefferson principle is that the proper role of government is not to give the people whatever they want, but protect their natural rights. Moreover, Jefferson wrote, whenever the government, even one consented to by the governed, is destructive of natural rights that people may morally alter or abolish it. That’s right there in the Declaration of Independence. The values that these guys, they were all guys, the values that these guys embraced, very few people embraced today.

Maybe Thomas Massey and Rand Paul, that’s about it in the Congress. That’s about it. The thesis of this article, and thank you for your kind words about it, and thank you for quoting it, my dear friend, is that these values are no longer manifest today. The government ignores them. Madison and Jefferson, I’m not talking about skyscrapers in Manhattan and baseball stadiums and all that kind of thing. They would never have been able to accept what the government has done to us today and how it has grown. Not only that, if Jefferson said this today, they would have them arrested for wanting to abolish the government.

Yes, yes they would. Certainly under this administration, which has been the most repressive for free speech since FDR during World War II or Woodrow Wilson during World War I, and I’ll say that again, even though it’s going to aggravate a lot of friends of yours and mine. This administration, the Trump administration, has been the most repressive of free speech since FDR during World War II and Woodrow Wilson during World War I. They are taking money out of the pockets of students, professors, and universities because the administration of those universities allows people to demonstrate in front, in favor of a state of Palestine.

Something that’s been the public policy of the government of the United States since 1948. And by the way, this is going around all the world in the so-called democracies. Australia, they’re arresting people, beating them up for protesting. One country after another, they’re coming out after the people that are against the genocide war being supported by the President of the United States, this one, genocide Joe, and one after another. You’re right, the former American public is now an empire with an annual military budget, one trillion dollars.

That is larger than most of the next nine countries combined. And with troops on more than 750 military installations in 80 nations around the globe. As George III once boasted of his empire, the sun never sets on our empire. That’s, you know, the sun never sets on the British Empire. And as I said, George III, I am so sick and tired of calling these murderous pieces of scum royal families. We don’t tear poo, we’re royal. You’re a bunch of murderous bastards killing people all over the world, stealing their money and dressing up in your clown outfits so people could bow down and kiss your ring.

Well, we asked Jane to put up a picture of Charles III dressed in his regalia, there he is. And that’s only half the regalia. Yeah, look at this little clown, a murderous bunch of scumbags. And again, if they were Italian, they’d call him the mafia. Listen, if Jefferson and Madison hadn’t come along, we’d be genuflecting in front of him like his own people do. Well, we got it. They roll out the red carpet every time the president or the little clown girls and boys that are in his secretary of this or that’s where they roll out a red carpet and all the little boys get dressed up in their drag costumes and stand next to them and salute.

All right. Well, listen, it’s a terrible state of affairs. The country is still beautiful, has a magnificent history and a warm and wonderful culture, but the people that run it have abolished the effects of that history, crushed the culture, crushed freedom, stolen property and killed people. And you’re the person that could change it. You’re the man I want to see as president of the United States when it comes to the Constitution and the Bill of Rights to restore those rights to we the people.

Oh, you write about the declaration of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Happiness is a dirty word. Happiness is never talked about. Well, the government is the biggest destroyer of happiness. They don’t even want us talking about that. It was the if you could put an essence on which Everson wrote, it’s the right to pursue happiness. I know it’s again, we got to bring back that spirit. And again, to me, you’re the only man that could do it. We need a new way, a new third party.

You look at this little nothing of a boy that just won the election in New York City, the Democratic primary. Oh, Zohan Nandani. Yes, he clobbered Andy Cuomo. Yep. Well, he clobbered the establishment but he appeals to with the exception of his views on the Middle East, which are consistent with yours and mine. He really appeals to the most far left socialist elements around here, you know, wanting government food stores and things which are proved to be a disaster whenever they were experimented with in other countries.

How about free bus transportation? Like something could ever be free. Yeah. Again, but the point is that he won and he beat the establishment. Yes. There were a number of people and people with big dough behind them besides Cuomo. That were running in this case. Yes, to your point, he is effectively a third party here in New York City. We’ll see what happens in November. Right now it looks like he’s going to be elected the mayor. But we, you know, it’s only July. No, I can’t happen.

But the point being is that here’s a guy that comes out and calls a genocide. And this is New York City. It’s a lot of Jewish people in New York. And he won because a lot of everyone of my Jewish friends are opposed to what Israel is doing everywhere. Same here. Yeah. So what I’m saying is this is the time for a new political party in America and you’re the man to run the show to bring back what only you know more than anybody else that I know about the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

And that’s what the people are looking for. Freedom, peace and justice. And you got to look at the other facts of why he won for the same reason why Trump won. The younger generation, by the way, they also voted for Trump. They also voted for this guy because they can’t earn money. There are no good jobs out there for a lot of people. And that’s the other big issue. The people are going, the middle class is shrinking. And that’s another reason why he won. Young people are having a very tough time.

So, Judge, thank you for being here. Thank you for all you do. And everybody go to judging freedom. If you want to see what’s going on that you’re not going to see anywhere else. Thanks so much, Judge. Thank you, Gerald. And happy Independence Day to you. You too. Thank you. [tr:trw].

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