Sept. 17, 2024 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
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| Hi, everyone. | |
| Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. | |
| Today is Wednesday, September 18th, 2024. | |
| Aaron Mate joins us now. | |
| Aaron, thank you very much, my friend. | |
| Much to talk about Israel, Ukraine, the freedom of speech, Hillary Clinton, Gavin Newsom, etc. | |
| Let's start out with the hot news in Israel. | |
| What is the latest on these explosive devices? | |
| The Times of India just reported a third round. | |
| I didn't see where, but somewhere today, and that there were walkie-talkies, old-fashioned walkie-talkies like the military used in Vietnam, as opposed to anything modern or sophisticated. | |
| What do we know? | |
| Who was behind this? | |
| How many people got killed? | |
| Well, Israel is certainly behind this attack for a second consecutive day. | |
| A terror attack on the people of Lebanon. | |
| It's obvious that Israel's behind this, and that's pretty much confirmed at this point. | |
| No one disputes that. | |
| They intercepted a bunch of these devices when they were ordered months ago and planted small amounts, the powerful amounts, of explosives inside them. | |
| And for some reason, they decided to set off this terror attack now. | |
| Perhaps They've been told by the U.S. that the U.S. will not back them up in a war against Lebanon. | |
| So they decided, well, what the hell, let's just go ahead and try to start one now or at least launch this final salvo as perhaps things wind down. | |
| Or they're looking to trigger a Hezbollah response that could justify their own invasion. | |
| Who knows with this extremist Israeli government, which is just off the deep end of an already fanatical country. | |
| Now, Israel's apologists will say that But who do they think was carrying these devices? | |
| Do they really think that all these pagers and walkie-talkies got in the hands of high-level Hezbollah commanders and that's who's been targeted here? | |
| No. | |
| These are civilians. | |
| There's footage of people in electronic shops, repair shops, people in markets, people in their homes being terrorized and being maimed. | |
| I mean, children being killed. | |
| So the injuries now are in the thousands. | |
| The exact number of deaths, I'm not sure. | |
| It's at least a few dozen. | |
| And that's the predictable outcome of launching this indiscriminate attack, which certainly Israel knew exactly. | |
| We're also seeing innocent bystanders severely injured who happen to be standing next to the person whose pager went off. | |
| In my view, this is a murder, pure and simple, and it's a war crime to attack civilians in a country with which you're not even legally at war. | |
| But you believe that this was done in order to provoke Hezbollah. | |
| Could not the provocation bring about Israel's undoing, given what Hezbollah has and what Iran might have with which to back Hezbollah up? | |
| It could, but the issue that Hezbollah has to contend with is that it knows that Israel doesn't care about civilian life. | |
| And so whatever Hezbollah does... | |
| That's Israel's official doctrine. | |
| It's called the Dahiyyad Doctrine, named after an area of Lebanon that Israel pulverized to teach Hezbollah a lesson. | |
| That basically if Hezbollah resists Israeli militarily, even when Hezbollah targets its operations at Israeli military sites, Israel will retaliate by targeting Lebanese civilians. | |
| And Hezbollah being a political movement in Lebanon. | |
| Is the visit of General Kurilla, the commander of CENTCOM, to Israeli leaders twice in one week telling you anything? | |
| Well, that could go either way. | |
| A top U.S. military official visited Israel in the days before it launched its mass murder campaign in Gaza. | |
| And the claim then from the Biden administration was that we were trying to ask Israel to moderate its response, to learn the lessons of urban warfare. | |
| Okay, well, how well did that go? | |
| What kind of results did that get? | |
| I'm not sure what to make of that visit, but what I know is that the Biden administration and its actions has put zero pressure at all on Israel and has enabled it, emboldened it to carry out terrorist attacks like this one, because at every single juncture, it's covered up for Israel by pretending as if Israel has accepted ceasefire proposals that in reality Israel has rejected, and it's kept rearming Israel to carry out atrocities like this. | |
| So I've been asking all of our foreign policy expert guests the same question about General Carrillo. | |
| Scott Ritter and Colonel Wilkerson are convinced from sources they have that General Carrillo said, we'll back you defensively, we'll back you in Gaza. | |
| We're not going to back you if you go into Lebanon. | |
| That was before these explosives. | |
| General Iraq. | |
| General. | |
| Colonel McGregor does not accept that view. | |
| He's of the view that the Biden administration would only do what Israel wants and that General Carrillo was there to find out what kind of aid they need when they do invade Lebanon. | |
| So it's hard to figure out an answer. | |
| Phil Giraldi is somewhere in between and said he would be stunned. | |
| If General Carrillo said, we're not going to back you if you go into Israel. | |
| However, and I'm sorry the question's so long, Aaron, we know that last week Tony Blinken intimated in Kiev in the presence of the British Foreign Minister that Joe Biden and Prime Minister Starmer were about to authorize the use of long-range missiles. | |
| Fired deep into Russia, and then by the time they all got back to Washington, the answer was no. | |
| Somebody changed Joe Biden's mind. | |
| Was it the Defense Department that said, Putin is serious? | |
| You really want to deal with this now? | |
| What do you think? | |
| Does Biden listen to reason? | |
| Well, that's a great question. | |
| How could you know that? | |
| As smart as you are, how could you know the answer to that? | |
| Who knows what's between his ears? | |
| That's the problem. | |
| Based on his actions where he's fueling two catastrophic regional wars. | |
| And blocking all diplomatic opportunities to end those wars. | |
| It's hard to know what's in his brain. | |
| But does he sometimes listen to reason? | |
| I think he does occasionally listen to the dire warnings that he gets from the Pentagon. | |
| I know that the chair of the Joint Chiefs, from what I've heard from my sources in Washington, is not on the same page as Tony Blinken in terms of fueling all these regional conflicts because they don't want to fight Russia. | |
| They also don't want to fight Iran, and they certainly don't want to fight Hezbollah either because they know what these different forces can do. | |
| Blinken is in his own world. | |
| He's completely just committed to U.S. hegemony, U.S.-Israeli hegemony, to continuing doubling down on the proxy war strategy because they put all their chips on what they thought was a sure bet that if they could just provoke Russia into evading Ukraine, that they could bleed Russia sufficiently so that Putin would be severely weakened if not overthrown. | |
| And they're continue to be blinded by that policy, which is why Blinken is advocating for long-range strikes by Ukraine into Russia. | |
| People forget this now, but two years ago next month, the top U.S. military officer in the country, General Mark Milley, came out not just privately but in public saying, we need negotiations with Russia now. | |
| Ukraine's gone as far as it can go militarily. | |
| They should consolidate their gains on the battlefield and negotiate an end to this war. | |
| This is in the fall of 2022. | |
| Joe Biden did not listen to his top military officer. | |
| He listened to his top diplomat, Antony Blinken, who also happened to be his top warmonger. | |
| And Blinken was saying, we have to keep fighting Russia, and that's what's happened. | |
| So perhaps this time, after Blinken announces that or suggests that Biden is about to approve these long-range strikes, we know, and you've covered this extensively on your show. | |
| Vladimir Putin came out with that very direct warning saying that if Biden approves this, then the U.S. will be a direct war with Russia. | |
| And that's when we saw very quickly Biden stand down. | |
| You can tell if you watch Biden at his Oval Office meeting with Keir Starmer on Friday, where Biden was expected to be announcing his approval of long-range strikes, he was very agitated. | |
| And it's pretty easy to see why, because he was standing down. | |
| And he had been told to stand down by his Pentagon. | |
| And I think that's what he was annoyed about, because he loves to present himself as a tough guy. | |
| And he was so agitated that when a reporter asked Biden, hey, what do you think about Vladimir Putin's warning that if you approve these long-range strikes into Russia by Ukraine, that you're going to be at direct war with Russia? | |
| Biden responded, he snapped back, he said, you know, I don't think much about Vladimir Putin. | |
| Does anybody expect us to believe that, that Joe Biden doesn't think much about Vladimir Putin? | |
| Biden's obsessed with Putin. | |
| Back when he was vice president, He went to Moscow and told Russian opposition activists that Putin should not run for a third term in office because Biden was so consumed with his hatred and vitriol towards Putin. | |
| didn't want him to run for president to the point where he felt entitled to tell russians who uh should run for president who shouldn't fast forward to when uh he comes into office and he provokes this war in uh He goes, in the early days of Russia's invasion, he goes to Warsaw and he blurts out, for God's sake, this man cannot remain in power, thereby confirming what Russia was saying, which is that Biden wants to have regime change in Russia and use Ukraine for that goal. | |
| And then recently when Biden briefly was resisting that democratic party elite revolt against him to make his case for staying in the race, staying as the presidential nominee, what did Biden do? | |
| He leaned over and told George Stephanopoulos, I'm the guy who took on Putin. | |
| So now Biden wants us to believe he's not thinking about Vladimir Putin. | |
| Of course he is. | |
| And that's why he's so irritated visibly that he has to stand down in the face of Putin's very direct warning. | |
| This is a great summary of his recent excesses. | |
| But here he is at his most bitter cut number eight. | |
| All right, so let's speak, okay? | |
| That's what I say. | |
| Good idea? | |
| What do you say to Vladimir Putin's threat of war, sir? | |
| You've got to be quiet, and I'm going to make a statement here, okay? | |
| All right, anyway. | |
| Mr. Prime Minister, welcome. | |
| Welcome back to the White House. | |
| Often said, there's no issue of global consequence where the United States and Great Britain can't work together and haven't worked together. | |
| And we're going to discuss some of these things right now. | |
| First, Ukraine. | |
| There you go. | |
| That's why he's so agitated, because he was expecting his big moment to announce his latest escalation in Ukraine, but he couldn't because of the warnings he presumably received from Pentagon intelligence. | |
| And Prime Minister Starmer must have been embarrassed, too. | |
| He showed up with maps. | |
| They were actually going to pinpoint where they wanted these things to land. | |
| He did. | |
| And my question about Starmer is, and I don't know the answer, was this Starmer's independent act? | |
| Here, in terms of pushing Biden to authorize these strikes, or was Starmer put up to it by Blinken, where basically, you know, Starmer's told, listen, you come to Biden and request these strikes that we're already going to approve. | |
| Because does Britain really act independently at this point? | |
| I don't think so. | |
| I don't think Britain has acted independently in the United States since the War of 1812 was over. | |
| Fair enough. | |
| This was embarrassing. | |
| This is embarrassing for Starmer, too. | |
| Starmer and Blinken were laughing. | |
| However, Blinken hasn't made a public statement since last Friday. | |
| Is he now in the doghouse? | |
| Has he been big-footed, using these quintessentially American phrases, in the doghouse big-footed by Lloyd Austin or whoever in the Defense Department persuaded the President that we are not prepared or willing to fight a war against Russia? | |
| Over whether or not Ukraine can use missiles deep inside their territory. | |
| I think that's a fair assumption. | |
| And how embarrassing is it that the nation's top diplomat is also the nation's chief warmonger? | |
| That the Pentagon is more diplomatic than the guy who's supposed to be the negotiator in charge, Antony Blinken. | |
| just such a humiliation. | |
| But we shouldn't rule out Blinken's agenda yet because He's obsessed with Vladimir Putin, contrary to what he said to reporters in that bitter tone at that meeting. | |
| And he's only got a limited time left in office. | |
| And at every turn, he's refused any diplomatic opening. | |
| You've covered this extensively. | |
| Victoria Nuland recently bragging that the U.S. opposed that peace deal that was reached early in Russia's invasion, which could have ended this war and prevented so many deaths. | |
| And so there's still time left for Blinken and his allied Hawks inside the government to get their way. | |
| So I wouldn't rule out their path yet. | |
| There's been a long pattern of Biden ruling out certain steps that he says are too escalatory only to later approve them. | |
| So I wouldn't rule it out just yet. | |
| Let's go back to the Israeli attack on Lebanese civilians. | |
| Is it not likely that MI6 and CIA knew about this ahead of time? | |
| It's a great question. | |
| I don't know. | |
| This Israeli government is so fanatic that it wouldn't surprise me if they really just did act alone. | |
| I don't know what kind of cooperation they needed from other states to carry this out. | |
| They could have done this on their own. | |
| That's not my wheelhouse. | |
| What I know is that certainly terror attacks like this The U.S. has direct responsibility because they've enabled this madman to continue and they've emboldened him to carry out atrocities like this. | |
| why would you We've already discussed that. | |
| What is the status of the animosity towards Netanyahu in Israel today? | |
| Stated differently, when he does things like slaughtering innocent Lebanese civilians, does that enhance his standing with the Israeli public? | |
| Sadly, I think it does. | |
| Just looking at social media yesterday, I saw countless... | |
| So yeah, it's a sick society. | |
| Occasionally he faces massive protests, but those are not over his mass murder campaign in Gaza and all the atrocities committed against Palestinians, but against the fact that he's constantly endangering Israeli captives and in fact directly killing them. | |
| Israel recently acknowledged that an Israeli strike back in November killed Chris, can you put up the full screen of the Major General? | |
| Do you know this or know of this fellow, Aaron? | |
| Major General Gadi Shamni, a recently retired commander of the IDF in the Gaza Division. | |
| Hamas is winning the war. | |
| Where soldiers are winning every tactical encounter with Hamas, but we're losing the war and in a big way. | |
| I'm only familiar with him from watching Judging Freedom. | |
| But I think that, yeah, I mean, the one part of that statement that I would take issue with, he says, like, we're winning every tactical engagement with Hamas. | |
| Are there really that many battles going on between Israel and Hamas? | |
| Norman Finkelstein, the scholar, historian of Israel-Palestine, he points out there's actually very few battles going on between Israel and Hamas. | |
| It's mostly just Israel from afar dropping these massive bombs and killing whoever it wants and moving on to the next atrocity. | |
| So this idea that Israel's winning some huge ground war against Hamas, I would take issue with. | |
| But the broader point he's making that overall we're losing When it comes to Israel, yeah, I do think that's correct. | |
| Because look, it's been more than a year of mass murder, and Hamas is still standing. | |
| And for Hamas, I mean, when you're on the defense like that, the fact that they're still intact, they're still surviving, is a victory. | |
| and meanwhile the entire world is completely uh fed up with israel there was just a vote today at the un general assembly affirming that israel is no And of course, the major exception to that vote was the United States, which voted against along with, you know, a number of smaller states that are under U.S. control. | |
| But that's where the world is at. | |
| And so that also plays into a tactical defeat here by Israel and completely losing the majority of the planet. | |
| Is Israeli Defense Minister Gallant on his way out? | |
| And if so, do we care? | |
| I don't think it matters very much. | |
| To the extent Gallant's opposed to Netanyahu, it's for his own political ambitions. | |
| Netanyahu will bring in somebody else, but ultimately he has a lot of power right now. | |
| He has the support of his extremist coalition, and as long as he has their support, it doesn't matter who he installs in the cabinet post like Gallant. | |
| I know you watch the show. | |
| But let me play for you something you may or may not have seen. | |
| This is earlier today, California Governor Gavin Newsom boasting about three pieces of legislation he signed. | |
| And in the clip, you'll actually see him signing them, which if somebody uses AI to mock you and it displays you in a false light, in your opinion, you can get a judge to enjoin the display. | |
| Meaning the state of California will evaluate the content of free speech. | |
| Cut number 18. There are a lot of deep fakes out there. | |
| There's not a lot of disclosure. | |
| There's not a lot of labeling. | |
| So among the many AI bills that are on the desk are three specific election-related bills. | |
| Do you want to sign some laws? | |
| I just thought, you know, why waste your time with a politician unless they're going to do something for you? | |
| Two are signed and three are signed. | |
| And this is now official. | |
| That is now injunctive relief if you do any of those deep fake election misrepresentations. | |
| So that's how easy it is to govern in California. | |
| An AI generator. | |
| There are many of them out there of Kamala Harris. | |
| She looks ridiculous. | |
| It's hilarious to watch. | |
| It's obviously not truly her, but... | |
| The Supreme Court jurisprudence as of this moment in our history is that you can say anything you want in political speech, even if you know it is untrue. | |
| I'm not a big fan of AI, and I'm not against efforts to regulate it, because I do see some dangers in it. | |
| But obviously, we don't want to support the government being able to designate what is permissible speech and what isn't. | |
| I mean, the standard that applies if you incite violence, that's not free speech. | |
| anything short of that i don't think the government should be involved in adjudicating that but i gotta say you know So I'm not opposed to some form of regulation for it. | |
| Here's something that I know you will oppose. | |
| The Yale Law School graduate, former U.S. senator, former secretary of state, former Democratic candidate for president and her views on the First Amendment. | |
| Cut number 17. I think it's important to indict the Russians, just as Mueller indicted a lot of Russians who were engaged in. | |
| But I also think there are Americans who are engaged in this kind of propaganda. | |
| And whether they should be civilly or even in some cases criminally charged is something that would be a better deterrence because the Russians are unlikely, except in a very few cases, to ever stand trial. | |
| Somebody's got to be tried, and if the Russians can't be tried, they might as well try Americans who are expressing political opinions that the FBI and Mrs. Clinton think constitute propaganda. | |
| This is just off the wall for somebody with a basic education, much less a graduate of a top flight law school. | |
| Before I get to how outrageous her proposal is for criminalizing free speech, let me just point out. | |
| She cites, to make her case for criminalizing free speech, Mueller's indictment of Russians for their supposed interference in the election. | |
| And then she says, you know, unlike Americans, the Russians will never stand trial. | |
| Actually, when Mueller indicted all those employees of that Russian social media company that put out memes that had basically nothing to do with the election, they were juvenile, but people like Hillary Clinton made this into some sort of new Pearl Harbor. | |
| That company showed up in court. | |
| They hired a U.S. lawyer who showed up in court, actually, to fight the case. | |
| And what did the Mueller team do? | |
| They dropped the case. | |
| They dropped the case because the case was so ridiculous. | |
| Indicting a bunch of Russian troll farm employees, accusing them of election interference. | |
| When their posts they put on social media barely pertained to the election, they were incredibly juvenile. | |
| So that's what happened. | |
| Mueller dropped the case that she's now citing as precedent and claims that the Russians will always evade justice, but we can go after Americans. | |
| She not only flunked constitutional law, she's a lousy litigator. | |
| And of course, the irony of her calling for criminalizing people who put up propaganda when she is behind one of the most consequential and disastrous propaganda campaigns in U.S. history, which is Russiagate. | |
| Her campaign funded the Steele dossier. | |
| Which was the basis for the allegations that Donald Trump and his campaign were engaged in a sprawling conspiracy with Russia. | |
| And the FBI relied on that Clinton-funded propaganda to make their case for leads, for surveillance warrants. | |
| That's how consequential that act of propaganda was. | |
| Her campaign also funded the firm CrowdStrike, which is the company. | |
| that first accused Russia of Russiagate's foundational allegation, which is that Russia stole Democratic Party emails and gave them to WikiLeaks. | |
| CrowdStrike, as your frequent guest Ray McGovern constantly brings up, and which the U.S. media refuses to cover, CrowdStrike, the president admitted under oath, actually, you know what, we have no evidence of Russian hacking, even though we publicly accused it, and even though this Russian hacking allegation became the basis for Russia, | |
| So Hillary Clinton, the sponsor of one of the worst and most malicious propaganda campaigns in US history, is now calling for criminalizing people Who spread propaganda. | |
| And so if her proposal was applied, she'd be the first one in prison. | |
| Nicely put, my dear friend. | |
| This has been under my skin since I first heard it. | |
| I've known Rachel Maddow for years. | |
| She believes in the First Amendment, I think, like we do. | |
| And I wish she had jumped down Hillary's throat, although, as you know, most hosts don't jump down their guests' throats. | |
| Thank you very much for your time. | |
| We look forward to doing it again next week, Aaron. | |
| All the best. | |
| Sounds good, Judge. | |
| You too. | |
| Thank you. | |
| A busy day and an exciting day for you tomorrow, Thursday. | |
| At 8 o 'clock in the morning, Dr. Gilbert Doctorow. | |
| At 2 in the afternoon, Aaron Maté's colleague, Max Blumenthal. | |
| At 3 in the afternoon, Professor John Mearsheimer. | |
| At 4 in the afternoon, The Boys, The Roundtable, Larry Johnson, Ray McGovern. | |
| And at 5 in the afternoon, it'll be midnight in Moscow, Pepe Escobar. |
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