Andrew P. Napolitano offers 20 multiple-choice predictions concerning the Trump team, the U.S. government, the Supreme Court, popular culture, an array of politicians — and more.
Illuminated Washington Monument at night with traffic zipping by. (Diane Krauthamer, Flickr, CC BY-NC)
No. 1 — On Jan. 1, 2026, Joe Biden will be
a) A criminal defendant in a case brought by the Trump DoJ.
b) Generally regarded as smarter than he appears to be today.
c) Gone from this vale of tears.
d) In hospice.
No. 2 — On Jan. 1, 2026, Donald Trump will still be
a) Blaming JD Vance for something.
b) Appealing the civil judgments against him.
c) Defending the war he has started in Iran.
d) Sick and tired of giving Bibi Netanyahu everything he wants and getting nothing in return.
No. 3 — In January 2026, JD Vance will
a) Be getting the Mike Pence treatment from the Trump White House.
b) Wish he had stayed in the Senate.
c) Realize that he has become Trump’s poodle.
d) All of the above.
No. 4 — During 2025
a) Kamala Harris will announce she’s running for governor of California.
b) Chris Christie, having lost 100 pounds — again — will be back in Trump’s good graces.
c) Mike Johnson, having lost the speakership, will be back home in Louisiana teaching Sunday School.
d) Chuck Schumer will realize that he hates being minority leader in the Senate and will announce he’s running for Governor of New York.
No. 5 — During 2025, the Trump administration will
a) Spend a trillion dollars more than it collects in taxes and fees.
b) Start a war with Iran.
c) Continue supplying Ukraine with military equipment, ammo and cash.
d) All of the above.
From left in row: Vice President Kamala Harris, President Joe Biden, former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg, former President Donald Trump and JD Vance at the National Sept. 11 Memorial event in New York City on Sept. 11, 2024. (Tia Dafour, U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain)
No. 6 — The first of President Trump’s Cabinet to leave will be
a) Marco Rubio, in a principled dispute with the President over Ukraine.
b) Pam Bondi, because she will refuse to seek indictments of persons as to whom there is no evidence of criminal behavior.
c) Tulsi Gabbard, when her own intelligence community drives her from office.
d) Pete Hegseth, because he misses being on air at Fox.
Hegseth in December 2020. (Gage Skidmore, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0)
No. 7 — In 2025
a) Pope Francis will pass away and be replaced by a faithful traditional Catholic.
b) Trump will increase the government’s debt by half a trillion dollars.
c) Vladimir Putin will triumph in Ukraine as it becomes a neutral country and forswears NATO membership.
d) All of the above.
No. 8 — In 2025
a) Tom Brady will come out of retirement and quarterback the New York Giants.
b) The Yankees will decisively defeat the Mets in the World Series.
c) Patrick Mahomes will retire and replace Tom Brady at Fox.
d) All of the above.
No. 9 — By this time next year
a) Notre Dame will have been crowned college football champion.
b) Bill and Hillary Clinton will have announced a formal separation.
c) Victoria Nuland will be No. 2 at the State Department.
d) All of the above.
Nuland commenting on the “trans-Atlantic agenda” at a Beltway forum in 2019. (Brookings Institution , Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
No. 10 — By this time next year
a) Bibi Netanyahu will be in prison.
b) Volodymyr Zelenskyy will be living in Miami.
c) TikTok, under its present ownership, will be alive and well and popular in the U.S.
d) All of the above.
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No. 11 — By this time next year
a) Netflix will have put movie theaters out of business.
b) Broadway will be back to its pre-pandemic levels.
c) Trump will buy RFK stadium from the feds and develop it into massive high-rise residences.
d) Some of the above.
No 12 — In 2025, Trump will
a) Rescind Executive Order 12333, and the intelligence community will go berserk.
b) Have signed legislation repealing FISA and the Patriot Act.
c) Have banned all domestic spying.
d) None of the above, but while I breathe, I hope.
No 13 — In 2025,
a) The military-industrial complex will have gotten fatter, richer and more powerful.
b) The U.S. Defense budget will have exceeded $1 trillion.
c) The Trump administration will have started or substantially financed three more wars.
d) All of the above.
The Pentagon. (Joe Lauria)
No. 14 — In 2025, the U.S. Supreme Court will
a) Rule that all speech is absolutely protected as a natural right.
b) Rule that the right to travel is a natural right
b) Reverse Wickard v. Filburn which held that even infinitesimal, immeasurable, private and personal behavior can be regulated by Congress.
d) None of the above, but while I breathe, I hope.
No. 15 — In 2025, the majority of Americans will
a) Recognize that war is a racket.
b) Acknowledge that war is the health of the state.
c) Accept all wars because they believe the government’s lies.
d) Condemn the draft as a form of slavery.
No. 16 — In 2025, historians will finally acknowledge that
a) Lincoln was the first head of state in history to target militarily civilians of his own country.
b) Wilson formed a fourth unaccountable branch of government, unrecognized by the Constitution.
c) FDR was a virulent racist who supported the KKK and put Japanese Americans in concentration camps.
d) All are true, but none will be recognized.
Donald Trump participates in a FOX News Channel virtual town hall at the Lincoln Memorial Sunday, May 3, 2020, in Washington, D.C. (White House, Shealah Craighead)
No. 17 — The essence of government is
a) The negation of liberty.
b) A monopoly of force in a geographic area.
c) Taking from the haves and giving to itself and the have-nots.
d) All of the above.
No. 18 — The essence of a right is that
a) It comes from our humanity.
b) It exists whether the government recognizes it or not.
c) It can only be taken away after a fair jury trial at which the government must prove guilt.
d) All of the above.
No. 19 — The Constitution of the U.S.
a) Is the supreme law of the land.
b) Was written to restrain the government.
c) Recognizes natural rights.
d) Is regularly trashed by the government.
e) All of the above.
No. 20 — That government is best
a) Which governs least.
b) Which leaves us alone.
c) Which tells the truth all the time.
d) Which bends over backward to avoid war.
e) All of the above.
My choices: 1c, 2a, 3d, 4a, 5d, 6b, 7d, 8b, 9c, 10d, 11d, 12d, 13b, 14d, 15c, 16d, 17d, 18d, 19e, 20e.
Happy New Year!
Andrew P. Napolitano, a former judge of the Superior Court of New Jersey, was the senior judicial analyst at Fox News Channel and hosts the podcast Judging Freedom. Judge Napolitano has written seven books on the U.S. Constitution. The most recent is Suicide Pact: The Radical Expansion of Presidential Powers and the Lethal Threat to American Liberty. To learn more about Judge Andrew Napolitano, visit https://JudgeNap.com.
Published by permission of the author.
COPYRIGHT 2024 ANDREW P. NAPOLITANO
DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS.COM
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
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Nutrient-free filler.
It’s a holiday piece.
Brilliant.
And while I breathe I hope that millions more will watch Judging Freedom and learn from the Judge’s erudite guests who are among the smartest people in the US today.
As per usual, you leave the monopolized private sector off the hook with regards to our rights. It is no secret that all our foreign “interventions” are on behalf of corporate/ banker profits. The evidence is overwhelming. It is the government’s job to restrain these interests in the interests of the public. Neoliberalism has completely obliterated that concept. The corporate capture of our institutions is complete. There is no public interest anymore. There is barely a functioning government anymore. It’s a criminal enterprise of the wealth hoarding class.
As long as we have a Rothschild central bank, we will be at war somewhere. All wars are banker wars.
#20 — can anyone imagine Trump as a President that sits back and quietly “governs least”?
Nope, Trump governs a lot and loudly, and the only governing least that will be in the future is that Trump/Musk/Swamy will Defund the Police that look after worker safety, look after consumer safety, and try to catch tax cheats and “investors” who try to win by rigging the “free markets.” That’s the areas that will see ‘governs least’.
And as to #`17, the function of the American government is to take from the Have-Nots and give to the Haves. The 50% of Americans who can’t afford a $400 emergency understand this, as does America’s Historic Homeless population. Watch the tax payer money that flows to the class that is able to invest in ‘defense stocks’ to see it happening in real time.
Here’s some more predictions … by Jan 1, 2026, polls will show that Trump’s Approval Rating has once again dropped to below 40% after the memory damaged Americans remember what Trump rule is like. And, by Jan 1, 2026, Americans will be telling pollsters that America is heading in the wrong direction.
The latter is certainly not a radical prediction, as by now the chart of the Wrong Direction Poll is always showing that Americans think the nation is going in the wrong direction, with only the brief delusions of an election temporarily showing a rise to 50% saying we are going in the right direction. By the time the election is a distant memory, the polls revert to their now natural state of many, many Americans saying that we are going in the wrong direction. This has been true for several election cycles now.
A slightly more risky prediction, but not that risky, is that by Jan 1 2026 Trump’s Libertarian-ism looks a lot like Argentina’s Libertarian-ism, in that both have the public face of police storm-troopers in full riot gear swinging clubs at the citizens and using chemical weapons upon their own citizens.
An interesting option might be that the world begins to equate “interference in elections” from a billionaire like Trump’s favorite South African with “interference with democracy” from a foreign power. That road might actually lead to a revival of real democracy where its one person = one vote instead of the American system of one dollar = one vote. But, given the Libertarian tendency to use storm-troopers to enforce the rule of billionaires, that’s a prediction I would not bet any real money on.
Thank You Judge
It’s true that FDR was a racist, but “virulent?” He did have understandable reasons for many of his wrongful actions e.g. the fact that virulent racist Southerners had control of Congress and could have blocked his legislative programs. He was both good and evil, but wasn’t he rightly loved for the first?
Lincoln was faced with the only existential crisis in American history after the Revolution, and what he did had an understandable basis. He was very good and did have some evil, but in the main, there are few men as good as him in all of history. The idea of many conservatives that slavery would have melted away without a Civil War is idiotic nonsense. (I’m not saying this dopy view of the Civil War is the Judge’s view.)
I can understand someone hoping Pope Francis would be replaced, but to to say “pass away” in print is……
P.S. I think Judge Napolitano’s show is great and a beacon of light in a time when government censorship is becoming ever more oppressive. One might say that the Judge is good and evil (like all of us) and that the good definitely outweighs the bad.
No. 10 — By this time next year
a) Bibi Netanyahu will be in prison.
*
People around the world who watch the radioactive, banned-in-Israel documentary film, The Bibi Files, will understand why it is imperative that Benjamin Netanyahu, arguably the #1 most dangerous serial criminal on Earth, goes to prison, – not next year, but immediately.
See: hxxps://www.jolt.film/watch/the-bibi-files
Don’t mean to be rude, but this isn’t worthy of this publication.
Yes it is. What’s wrong with a bit of sarcasm/cynicism? It will be interesting to see how many of these ‘predictions’ come true. Watch this space?