Ep 370 | Pursuing Empire Will Destroy America | Guest: Judge Andrew Napolitano

Summary

Kibbe on Liberty – Episode 370
Pursuing Empire Will Destroy America
Guest: Judge Andrew Napolitano
Release Date: February 4, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this episode, host Matt Kibbe sits down with his longstanding friend and constitutional scholar Judge Andrew Napolitano to investigate whether America is succumbing to the dangers of late-stage empire. They dissect the expansionist tendencies of the second Trump administration, the escalating costs—both financial and moral—associated with American militarism, and the troubling implications for personal Liberty at home. The conversation is frank, occasionally fiery, and infused with their enduring libertarian skepticism of unchecked power.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Shift Toward Authoritarianism in the Trump Administration

Timestamp: 01:46 – 05:00

• Surprising Escalation: Judge Napolitano reflects on the disconnect between Trump’s non-interventionist campaign promises and subsequent, aggressive foreign interventions:

  • Bombings in Somalia and Yemen
  • Attempted kidnapping of Maduro in Venezuela, resulting in many deaths
  • Threats and military actions toward Iran
  • Increased domestic use of poorly trained immigration agents with “ferocity in the streets”

• A New Level of Empire:

  • Napolitano warns that Trump is “manifesting an authoritarian side...even some of his strongest advisors” disapprove.
  • He brands current tactics as “a form of nihilism which accepts no values, recognizes no limitations, and it's just a manifestation of power over individuals.” (02:47)
  • Extrajudicial executions of alleged drug dealers and wanton disregard for constitutional process are cited as symptoms.

2. Expansionist Vanity Projects & The Logic of Empire

Timestamp: 03:40 – 05:54

• Greenland as a Symbol: Trump’s desire to obtain Greenland is painted as a “vanity project,” seeking to grow America’s land mass for prestige rather than strategic necessity.
  • “He wants to go down in history as the president who increased the land mass...greater than the acquisition of Alaska or the Louisiana Purchase.” (04:18)
• Economic Unsustainability:
  • Unlike colonial empires, modern America’s 850 foreign military bases “don’t bring in a nickel. They cost money. Now, no empire can survive very long on that model.” (05:19)
  • Warning that endless deficits and currency devaluation are unsustainable: “At some point, people will stop lending you money. If you print money, you'll devalue what you own.”

3. Fiscal Irresponsibility and the Military-Industrial Complex

Timestamp: 05:55 – 07:55

• Kibbe’s Tea Party Reflections: Recalls that true fiscal responsibility was always stymied by the inability to challenge military spending.
• Napolitano’s Critique:
  • Trump has ballooned defense spending, asking for “$1.5 trillion—more than all other military budgets in the world combined.” (06:56)
  • Argues it is not about safety—“it just makes us poorer and enriches the military industrial complex.”
  • “The military industrial complex and the Zionist lobby have a lock on him and he can't say no to either.” (07:20)

4. Domestic Militarization: Minneapolis and Beyond

Timestamp: 07:55 – 13:30

• ICE & DHS as ‘Domestic Military’:
  • Both host and guest characterize the current domestic crackdown (notably in Minneapolis) as unprecedented and unconstitutional.
  • “No federal police force is [authorized by the Constitution]. The FBI is not authorized by the Constitution.” (08:56)
• Administrative Warrants & Abuse
  • ICE invents “administrative warrants, nowhere recognized in the Constitution,” letting agents arrest without judicial oversight.
• Libertarian Perspective on Borders:
  • Napolitano: “You have the right to travel wherever you want. You can't come into my backyard, but you can certainly go onto a public street.” (10:47)
  • The problem isn’t open borders, it’s a bloated welfare state paired with violent enforcement.
• Minneapolis Tragedies & Accountability:
  • Strong condemnation of ICE violence: “These people, again, are nihilists. They don't believe that the Constitution restrains them.” (11:26)
  • Calls for direct prosecution: “Minnesota authorities...should immediately arrest them, charge them with first degree murder, and argue that they're not entitled to any bail.” (12:35)
  • Political implications: “For most decent Americans...this is repellent and reprehensible and not necessary.” (13:05)

5. Selective Defense of Liberty & Potential Collapse

Timestamp: 13:30 – 15:47

• Partisan Hypocrisy:
  • Kibbe: Americans defend individual rights only when their “side” is threatened, abandoning principle when it’s politically inconvenient.
  • Napolitano: “It turns my stomach...these moral principles like natural rights...exist for all persons.” (14:20)
  • Urges reading the Bill of Rights as protections for everyone, not just Americans or allies.
• Warning of National Consequences:
  • “When we lose sight of that...we end up with two sides in Congress that won't speak to each other and an authoritarian in the White House who doesn't believe in any restraints on his power and that that will bring us down...the federal government will one day collapse if it keeps up like that.” (15:37)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Trump’s shift:
  “If you believe what he said in the 16, 20 and 24 campaigns...you would be surprised because he repeated ad nauseam that he wouldn't start wars, he would end them.”
  — Judge Napolitano (01:53)

• On Imperial Economics:
  “The United States does the opposite [of old empires]. It has 850 military installations in 80 countries around the world. They don't bring in a nickel. They cost money.”
  — Judge Napolitano (05:13)

• On Extrajudicial Killings:
  “Oh, and I forgot the 150 boat people that he killed, his extrajudicial executions, claiming they were drug dealers without producing any evidence.”
  — Judge Napolitano (03:04)

• On ICE & Federal Policing:
  “No federal police force is [authorized by the Constitution]. The FBI is not authorized by the Constitution. The Drug Enforcement Administration is not authorized by the Constitution. This is now ICE and DHS, the largest police force in the world, and it's in the United States.”
  — Judge Napolitano (08:56)

• On Selective Libertarianism:
  “It turns my stomach. Where are all those people that defended Kyle Rittenhouse? Suddenly they're silent or they're on the other side of the issue...These exist for all persons. Read the Bill of Rights. Not just Americans, but for all persons.”
  — Judge Napolitano (14:20)

• On the Danger of Authoritarian Drift:
  “When we lose sight of that...we end up with two sides in Congress that won't speak to each other and an authoritarian in the White House who doesn't believe in any restraints on his power and that that will bring us down.”
  — Judge Napolitano (15:37)

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Important Timestamps

• 01:46 — Napolitano’s initial critique of Trump’s pivot to empire
• 04:11 — Discussion of Greenland as a vanity imperial project
• 05:00 — Analysis of imperial economics and military base overreach
• 06:56 — Skyrocketing defense budgets discussed
• 08:47 — Minneapolis crackdown and the unconstitutional rise of domestic militarism
• 13:30 — Kibbe and Napolitano on partisan hypocrisy in defending civil liberties
• 15:37 — Napolitano’s warning on the existential threat of abandoning principles

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Final Thoughts & Resources

Judge Napolitano also plugs his successful alternative media project, Judging Freedom on YouTube, praising its ability to present perspectives absent from legacy outlets. Both Kibbe and Napolitano emphasize their commitment to honest, courageous discussion—and express a tempered optimism rooted in persistent critical engagement with power.

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Useful For:
Anyone concerned with civil liberties, the U.S. shift toward imperial habits, the militarization of law enforcement, and the consequences of abandoning constitutional principles. This episode’s insights cut across partisan lines and re-center the enduring libertarian alarm over unchecked authority.

Transcript

[A]

Welcome to Kibbe on Liberty. I'm talking to my old friend Judge Andrew Napolitano. And the question before us today is America sliding into late stage Empire? I'm afraid the answer might be yes. Check it out. Welcome to kibby on liberty. Judge, it's good to see you again. It's been too long.

[B]

Great, my friend. How are you?

[A]

I am well. I think it was a couple weeks ago. It seems like a lifetime ago. I was watching one of your. One of your live streams talking about the grabbing of Nicolas Maduro, and I reached out to you to talk about American Empire and this precipitous shift in the Trump administration. But so much has happened since then. It's kind of hard to keep up with the crazy. But let me start by asking you, you've been a critic of Empire as long as I've known you, all the way back to your Fox News days. Has there been some sort of dramatic shift in the second Trump administration that has caught a lot of America firsters by surprise, or should we have not been surprised at all?

[B]

Well, if you know Donald Trump personally, you wouldn't be surprised at all. But if you believe what he said in the 16, 20 and 24 campaigns, the most relevant of which, for our purposes is 24, you would be surprised because he repeated ad nauseam that he wouldn't start wars, he would end them. He's bombed Somalia maybe 150 times. He bombed the Houthis three or 400 times. He killed 100 people in Venezuela to kidnap Nicholas Maduro. He bombed Iran and threatened and claimed he obliterated and destroyed their nuclear capability. My experts tell me he didn't lay a glove on it. Now he's threatening to invade Iran again. He has dispatched poorly trained thugs to enforce U.S. immigration law with a ferocity in the streets the likes of which we haven't seen since the civil war. So this is an authoritarian side of him being manifested in such a way as to meet the disapproval of even some of his strongest advisors. It is a form of nihilism which accepts no values, recognizes no limitations, and it's just a manifestation of power over individuals. Oh, and I forgot the 150 boat people that he killed, his extrajudicial executions, claiming they were drug dealers without producing any evidence whatsoever. And even if he did have the evidence, his job is to enforce the Constitution, which would be, wait until they come into American territorial waters, arrest them and prosecute them if you have enough evidence.

[A]

Is there any rhyme or reason to this? I'm thinking about. So after The Maduro grab in Venezuela, particularly Marco Rubio. But Trump himself started listing off all these countries that they aspire to topple, commit regime change. And Greenland, of all places, shows up on that list. Is there any rhyme or reason to that? Is Greenland a staging area for something that looks like World War iii?

[B]

I don't think so. I think Greenland. He actually has been talking about Greenland for about eight or 12 years. I think he wants to go down in history as the president who increased the land mass of the United States greater than the acquisition of Alaska or the Louisiana Purchase. I think it's a vanity project for him. He doesn't care about, again, he doesn't care about laws. He doesn't care about international laws. He doesn't care about treaties. We have three treaties with Greenland that pretty much allows to do whatever we want militarily. Why would we want to force people into our ambit unless it's to increase empire in the name of Donald Trump.

[A]

Yeah, this all feels like late stage empire.

[B]

I feel like we know the kings of the later Middle Ages, the Renaissance era, and up until the 19th century, even the, even the early part of the 20th century had colonies to enrich them. They took riches from the colonies and it went back to the mothership. The United States does the opposite. It has 850 military installations in 80 countries around the world. They don't bring in a nickel. They cost money. Now, no empire can survive very long on that model. At some point, people will stop lending you money. If you print money, you'll devalue what you own. And you can't really raise taxes above where they are now without seeing the billionaires along with the blue collar people in the streets.

[A]

You know, I go all the way back to my Tea Party days and realizing in hindsight that the entire battle for fiscal responsibility ultimately hinges on, on military spending and nation building, because that was the Achilles heel that did not allow otherwise fiscally conservative Republicans, Tea Party Republicans, to actually cut the spending that needed to be cut in order to balance the budget. And this escalation seems like all of that on steroids, starting with the war on terror. But every one of these foreign conflicts are just draining America of.

[B]

Well, that's a very astute observation and one with which I disagree. Excuse me, one with which I profoundly agree. Trump, again, either because he doesn't care what he says, or he's detached from reality during the campaign, said, you know, a trillion dollars is a lot of money for the Defense Department. Maybe we should cut that in half. Cut that in half. He's troubling it. He's now asking for 1.5 trillion. There are some other add ons in there that make it 1.7. That is more than all the other military budgets in the world combined. So this does. It doesn't keep us safer, it just makes us poorer and enriches the military industrial complex. But the military industrial complex and the Zionist lobby have a lock on him and he can't say no to either. And he has a lock on the Republicans in the House. And they, Thomas Massie, great human being to the contrary notwithstanding, they can't seem to say no to him. Although that seems to be crumbling now in part because of Minneapolis and in part because good people have just had enough.

[A]

Yeah, well, let's pivot to Minneapolis because I know you've been talking about this all morning. I've been watching your live streams. To me, in a lot of ways, this goes back to the big beautiful bill. Because for all of the rhetoric about how it was ultimately fiscally responsible, the thing that struck me the most was the massive new entitlement created for this domestic military force that we're calling ICE. Now. God knows what the next Democratic president will call it. Perhaps rebranded to go after different citizens. But what's your take on what's happening in Minneapolis and how we unwind this sort of radical Stephen Miller agenda? Is it just public?

[B]

My column that comes out at midnight tonight, the title will tell you what I think of it. It's called Americ, American Gestapo, American Psycho. I mean, these thugs are nowhere authorized by the Constitution. No federal police force is. The FBI is not authorized by the Constitution. The Drug Enforcement Administration is not authorized by the Constitution. This is now ICE and dhs, the largest police force in the world, and it's in the United States. Although I just saw that they're going to the Olympics in Milan. I don't know what authority they could possibly exercise there. But ICE is going to, over the objection of the people that run the American end of the Olympics, going to accompany the American athletes there. But that's just an aside. These people, again, are nihilists. They don't believe that the Constitution restrains them. They've come up with this concept of an administrative warrant, nowhere recognized in the Constitution, never countenanced by the federal courts, in which one ICE agent authorizes another ICE agent to arrest somebody that's in direct flagrant violation of the Fourth Amendment, which says that if the government wants persons, human beings, houses, papers or effects, it must get a warrant from A judge based on probable cause of crime, not probable cause of status, probable cause of crime. They don't get arrest warrants for any of these people, and very few of them are in a position actually to challenge them. I mean, I don't know how granular you want to get, but the true natural law libertarian position on this is that you have the right to travel wherever you want. You can't come into my backyard, but you can certainly go onto a public street. The problem is the entitlement society we have here, the welfare state that we've created here, which means once somebody is here, they're entitled to the social safety net. There should be no social safety net. That's not authorized by the Constitution. So we've created pretty much a morass. Even if you believe the immigration laws are just, and they're not, they're a mishmash of, of compromise, not based on any principles. The only principled immigration act is Simpson Mazzoli of 1986, promoted by Ronald Reagan, which granted amnesty to everybody here. Oh, and the sky didn't fall. He granted amnesty to 13 million illegal immigrants and the sky didn't fall. But even if you do believe that the immigration laws are just and ought to be enforced, they should not be enforced with this ferocity, with this level of immunity, with this belief that you can pepper spray somebody because they're blowing a whistle at you or taking a picture of you. With this belief that woman driving a car five miles an hour who turns the wheels away from you isn't moving fast enough so you'll put three bullets in her chest. With the belief that you can shoot a nurse whom you've blinded with a chemical agent called pepper spray because he came to the rescue of a lady that you pushed on the ground because she blew a whistle at you and took a picture of you and then shot him in the back. I mean, this is simply reprehensible. The Minnesota authorities, who now know who these two ICE people were, should immediately arrest them, charge them with first degree murder, and argue that they're not entitled to any bail. The same should be the case with Jonathan Ross, the guy who has been identified as the murderer of. Of Renee Good. So the whole thing is entirely out of control. And of course, there are enormous, enormous political implications. I realize the midterms are eight months away, but it's almost inconceivable to me why Trump is shooting himself in the foot politically, because this doesn't. This may play well with Randy Fine and other thugs like that, but for most Decent Americans, irrespective of political party. This is repellent and reprehensible and not necessary.

[A]

Yeah, I had Jim Bovard on the other day, and regardless of the constitutional moral and legal arguments, it just seems like a PR disaster for Republicans to be killing citizens on the street. Judge, I know you have a hard out because you gotta get back to your show, but I wanna end with this question. As a fellow libertarian, do you find it frustrating that Americans sometimes rediscover the First Amendment and the Second Amendment and the fourth Amendment and the fifth Amendment and the tenth Amendment and perhaps all the rest of them, but it seems to be a partisan exercise where when the other guys are violating those things, we're all for defending the Bill of Rights, but when our guys are doing it, too many Americans take a dive.

[B]

Yeah, it turns my stomach. Where are all those people that defended Kyle Rittenhouse? Suddenly they're silent or they're on the other side of the issue. These moral principles like natural rights, the right to live, the right to think as you wish, say what you think, publish what you say, associate with whomever you want, shake your fist in the tyrant's face, defend yourself using the same means that the bad guys and the government. Justice Scalia uses your right to be left alone, your right to due process. These exist for all persons. Read the Bill of Rights. Not just Americans, but for all persons. Good people, bad people, people as to whom the evidence of guilt is overwhelming. People about whom the government makes a mistake. Everybody has these rights because they're natural to our humanity. When we lose sight of that which we have now, we end up with two sides in Congress that won't speak to each other and an authoritarian in the White House who doesn't believe in any restraints on his power and that that will bring us down. I don't know how, but the federal government will one day collapse if it keeps up like that. And we haven't even talked about 38 and a half trillion in debt.

[A]

There's a bright note to end this conversation on. Tell people, Judge. Tell people where they can watch your show.

[B]

Because Judging freedom on YouTube has been successful beyond my wildest imaginings. Matt. For two years in a row we've exceeded 100 million views. So I'm very fortunate to have very first rate guests. Professor John Mearsheimer, Colonel Douglas McGregor, Colonel Larry Wilkerson, Professor Jeff Sachs, Max Blumenthal. I have a huge array of first rate guests who come on Scott Ritter regularly and they draw huge, huge numbers. We don't purport to be fair and balanced. We are alternate media. We are expressing a view you don't see in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Washington Post, or even my friends and former colleagues at fox.

[A]

Yes, and I'm a huge fan and I highly recommend it to everyone. And I really appreciate you shoehorning me in. And hopefully next time we talk, we can say something optimistic about the future of America.

[B]

Well, I will say this. I'm optimistic about the future of your work because you're a great thinker, you have great backbone, and it's a pleasure to be on with you again, Matt. And thank you for accommodating my schedule.

[A]

Thank you, Judge.

[B]

All the best.

[A]

Thanks for watching. If you liked the conversation, make sure to like the video, subscribe and also ring the bell for notifications. And if you want to know more about Free the people, go to freethepeople.org.