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Oct. 30, 2024 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano

26:30

Aaron Maté : Liberals and Free Speech

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	Hi, everyone.
	Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
	Today is Thursday, October 31st, 2024.
	Aaron Mate joins us now.
	Aaron, my dear friend, thank you very much for joining us.
	You have been writing lately on liberals and free speech, and I want to explore your thoughts on that and some of the absurdities we have.
	Do you surmise that whether President Zelensky and the West have a plan B for Ukraine, a way to end this?
	Zelensky has basically acknowledged that there is no plan B. His only plan was the so-called victory plan.
	Which was dead on arrival.
	It relies on him begging for continued Western escalation, which is now off the table.
	He asked for immediate NATO membership, which the U.S. has refused to provide despite dangling it in front of Ukraine's face since 2008.
	And he also asked for U.S. permission to conduct long-range strikes with U.S. weapons into Russia, which the U.S. also denied after Vladimir Putin warned.
	NATO about what that would really mean.
	It would put NATO directly at war with Russia.
	And now we learn this was leaked to the New York Times this week by the New York Times.
	Zelensky also asked the U.S. for Tomahawk missiles, which have a far longer range and lethality than the Atakum missiles, which the U.S. has already provided, and which is a very sophisticated weapon system.
	And the U.S. said no, because the U.S. understands what that would mean.
	The U.S. has been fined to fuel this war.
	So long as the people dying and paying the price are Russians and Ukrainians.
	But as soon as Zelensky asks for something that will actually put the U.S. at risk, the U.S. is walking away.
	And Zelensky is understandably feeling betrayed because he was told by the U.S. all along that we have your back.
	Don't make that peace deal with Russia that Ukraine negotiated more than two years ago.
	Don't respect the Minsk Accords, which could have avoided a Russian invasion to begin with.
	We have your back.
	And now that Ukraine is running out of people to sacrifice, the U.S. is telling Zelensky to go packing.
	Two issues that I want to raise with you.
	One is, are North Korean troops physically present with Russians and engaged in battle or preparing to do so?
	And two, in connection with one, If that is the case, does that bring South Korean troops into the fray on the side of Ukraine?
	There has been confirmation from Russia that North Korean troops are training with Russian troops inside of Russia.
	And there have been rumors that there are Russian troops fighting alongside North Korean troops inside Kursk.
	But no evidence at all that North Korean troops are operating inside of Ukraine, which was Ukraine's allegation.
	Ukraine alleged that North Korean troops were fighting in the Donbass alongside Russian forces, and there's no evidence of that whatsoever.
	What I think this was on the part of Zelensky, look, he knows his only means of survival is if he gets direct Western military intervention on his side.
	So that's what he's begging for in the victory plan.
	And that's what he's trying to promote by claiming, without evidence, that North Korean troops are fighting inside Ukraine alongside Russia.
	I don't think there's any real prospect of other countries, including South Korea, joining the fray because Russia has the sovereign right to train alongside North Korean troops inside its own territory.
	And that appears to be what it's doing.
	Alistair Crooks says that...
	And that Ukraine has probably used this historical fact to gin up the type of conversation that we're having now.
	Larry Johnson, our friend and colleague, reports that Ukrainian troops have shelled their own civilians.
	I don't.
	I don't follow the battlefield developments that closely, to be honest with you.
	What I know is that on the diplomatic level, as we've talked about so much, all of this could have been avoided.
	All this carnage on both sides could have been avoided.
	Had Ukraine simply been willing to respect the cultural rights of ethnic Russians in the East, and had the U.S. been willing to take Russian security concerns somewhat seriously?
	With U.S. encouragement, Ukraine walked away from the Minsk Accords, which could have avoided all this long before Russia invaded, then walked away from a peace deal that was immediately brokered in the aftermath of Russia's invasion.
	Meanwhile, the U.S. has built up missile sites in Poland and Romania, expanded NATO, torn up really important arms control treaties, including the INF.
	And all these things, along with the coup back in 2014, backed by the U.S., have contributed to the mess that we're in today.
	Switching to Israel, do we know if the Israelis caused any significant measurable damage in their limited attack on Ukraine last weekend?
	Again, Alistair Crook says they had planned three waves of attacks.
	They stopped halfway through the first wave because they confronted some sort of Can you enlighten us at all on any of this?
	I would just direct people to the other guests you've interviewed about this.
	We're talking now about the Israeli strike on Iran.
	And I know that there was a claim put out in the Washington Post that actually Israel had penetrated Iranian airspace.
	And I know that people on your program, Scott Ritter and others, have challenged that, saying that likely that actually Israel only got as far as Iraq, but it's unlikely that they got into Iranian airspace.
	Not my forte, not my area of expertise.
	It does appear that whatever happened, Israel did not go forward with its biggest threat of striking Iranian oil and nuclear sites.
	And they can claim that that's because they wanted to avoid escalation.
	I think it's because, more plausibly, Iran showed in its counter-strikes that it actually can penetrate Israeli missile defenses and can do damage.
	And that's why I think we saw a relatively minor in damage attack on Iran by Israel last week.
	Right.
	I said Ukraine earlier.
	I obviously meant to say Iran.
	What can you tell us about the public spat between Defense Minister Gallant and Prime Minister Nathalie?
	Well, in terms of the impact on policy, no, because Gallant is a fervent supporter of the Israeli mass murder campaign in Gaza and its extension into Lebanon.
	Gallant probably sees that Netanyahu is vulnerable in the sense that he relies on a far-right coalition.
	So to the extent they have a feud, it's Gallant sometimes seizing a political opportunity when he senses that Netanyahu is weak, especially as Netanyahu continues to make clear he has no interest in returning the remaining captives inside Gaza.
	But in terms of whether there's a spat over the fundamental premise of Israel's right to, you know, self-declared right to commit aggression, no, there's none at all.
	We're going to play a clip, which I know you've seen, which is two minutes long.
	It's Bill Clinton at his most absurd attempting to, He doesn't appear as though he's succeeding, but let's play it and then I'll be happy to hear your comments on it.
	Chris, number 14. I have to be careful what I say because there's only one president at a time and none of us can get.
	I have to be careful what I say because there's only one president at a time and none of us can get...
	Well, there seems to be a problem with that.
	I just watched it, and we just watched it together right before Chris and I, before the show came on.
	I can paraphrase what he said, Judge, basically.
	Go right ahead.
	It's absurd what he said, but you paraphrase it as you recall it.
	He's basically trying to pretend he has empathy with people who are concerned about the carnage in Gaza and Lebanon.
	And he says, but, you know, think about what Hamas did.
	He claims that, you know, Hamas attacked Kibbutzim inside Israel near Gaza that are pro-peace.
	And he said, accordingly, given that Hamas did that, if you were Israeli, what would you do?
	I mean, you're basically, what he's saying is Israel was forced to go commit mass murder because Hamas attacked some Israeli Kibbutzim where some residents are.
	It's true.
	It's just an absolutely absurd argument.
	Because a militant group resisting military occupation killed civilians, that gives you the right to go and kill tens of thousands of civilians in the death camp that you're occupying.
	But that's Bill Clinton's argument.
	And he's amazingly is making it to people in Michigan where the number of Arab Americans of Arab Americans and Muslim Americans is enough to decide the election, not only Michigan, but the entire country.
	He's telling them to suck it up and just basically accept that Israel had to go and kill all those people.
	And then he goes and turns into a religious fundamentalist and he claims that Jews were in the land of Palestine before Muslims were.
	Even though you have done such a job of summarizing it.
	Boy, his voice is worse than Bobby Kennedy's.
	But here it is, cut number 14. To be careful what I say, because there's only one president at a time and none of us can get ahead of where we're going.
	But I think we're going to have to essentially start again on the peace process.
	And I understand why.
	Young Palestinian and Arab Americans in Michigan think too many people have died.
	I get that.
	But if you lived in one of those kibbutzim in Israel, right next to Gaza, where the people there
	Most pro-two-state solution of any of the Israeli communities were the ones right next to Gaza.
	And Hamas butchered them.
	And so then, the people who criticize it are essentially saying, "Yeah, but look how many people you've killed in Ritalin." How many is enough for you to kill to punish them for the terrible things they did?
	That all sounds nice until you realize what would you do if it was your family and you hadn't done anything but support a homeland for the Palestinians and one day they come for you and slaughter the people in your village.
	You would say, "Well, you'll have to forgive me.
	I'm not keeping score that way." It isn't how many we've had to kill.
	Because Hamas makes sure that they're shielded by civilians.
	They'll force you to kill civilians if you want to defend yourself This is really A, off the wall historically and morally, and B, why the hell did her campaign send him to Michigan to make statements like that?
	Whose vote is he going to win for her?
	You know, my friend Katie Halper, who I host a podcast with, she says her theory is that the Clintons are still so bitter that Hillary was denied the chance to become the first female president, that sending Bill to Michigan to say this is their effort to actually sabotage Kamala Harris.
	To prevent Kamala from becoming the first female president.
	I have heard that before seeing this clip.
	Hillary has said some off-the-wall stuff.
	We've already analyzed it before we heard it.
	I want to play this clip.
	Let me say one thing, Judge.
	Let me say one thing, sorry.
	On the issue of the human shields, which I didn't address in my preemptive answer.
	Please.
	These are 2 million plus people who are trapped in a death camp.
	So by definition, And it's even worse than before October 7th because Israel has forced millions of people now, or hundreds of thousands of people, out of their homes.
	So you have more than a million people, well over a million people displaced in Gaza from their homes.
	So by definition, people are going to be in the vicinity of where Hamas is because they have nowhere else to go.
	They can't leave.
	This is not like a free country where people can pack up and leave.
	They're trapped in a very small strip of land that's being destroyed.
	So you can't be a human shield in that situation.
	You're a human target because Israel's pinned you there in a cage that they can't get out of.
	Well, he's bought the Netanyahu argument hook, line, and sinker.
	There's no question about it.
	Before we jump to Victoria, one of the...
	That's how bad it was.
	Victoria Nuland is out complaining about too much free speech.
	We'll run this clip.
	The he to whom she refers in the earliest parts of the clip, no surprise.
	Is President Putin.
	Chris, cut number 13. He's at it again.
	This time he's not even trying to hide his hand and he has far more sophisticated tools.
	You know, his AI is better so he can make these fake videos.
	He has done things like spend $10 million trying to buy American influencers.
	and get them parroting his lines and not even know it's happening.
	But he's also got a brand new, very, very powerful tool, which is Elon Musk and X. You know, in 2020, the social media companies worked hard with the U.S. government to try to do content moderation, to try to catch this stuff as it was happening.
	But this time, we have Elon Musk talking directly to the Kremlin and ensuring that every time the Russians put out something like this, it gets five million views on X before anybody can catch it.
	So it's quite dangerous.
	Although I do think the American electorate has gotten more sophisticated and more savvy about this stuff.
	Censorship.
	Yes.
	She's complaining that Twitter is no longer working with the government to censor factual information.
	And the example she cites as being favorable was 2020 when reporting on the contents of Hunter Biden's laptop was kept from Americans.
	It was censored based on the fake claim that it was all a Russian disinformation operation when, in fact, the FBI knew the laptop and its contents were real.
	That was the actual election interference in 2020 when factual reporting on the son of a candidate was censored based on the bogus claim that there was some sort of Russian hand in it.
	And this is now the third consecutive election when national security state officials and bureaucrats like Victoria Nuland, along with Democratic Party elites, are fear-mongering about a Russian interference effort.
	The only interference effort we've seen in these elections Is the Russiagate interference election that has tried to invoke a mythical Russian boogeyman to brainwash Americans into voting for their preferred candidate and blaming Russia when they don't vote for the one they want.
	In the case now, it's Kamala Harris.
	Before that it was Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden.
	And it just, it's incredible that despite all the polls that have been, you know, All the embarrassing retractions, all the ways in which the story has collapsed, the whole conspiracy theory which dominated the first half of Trump's term that he was conspiring with Vladimir Putin, which triggered a sprawling FBI investigation where Robert Mueller was the hero who was going to lead Trump away from the White House in handcuffs.
	Despite the failure of that and just how wrong it's been shown to be, these people still go on TV and speak.
	As if it's real, to the point where now they can lament that the government is no longer, that social media companies are no longer engaged in censorship based on their own scam scandal, which is Russiagate.
	Are you surprised that liberals are suddenly anti-free speech?
	Well, it makes sense with the shift that they've underwent in the last decade or so.
	If you recall, when Obama was debating Mitt Romney, On the debate stage in the November 2012 election, Romney was mocked by Obama, who said the 1980s called they want their foreign policy back, when Romney was saying the Russians are our top adversary.
	Well, fast forward to the Maidan coup of 2014, and ever since then, basically, if you want to be a good liberal in the U.S., you have to embrace neoconservative dogma.
	To the point where they've all embraced Mitt Romney's worldview.
	And when you embrace a neocon worldview, you're going to embrace the attendant belief that dissenting viewpoints should be censored.
	This is a tradition of neocon opinion.
	Just look back to Dr. Martin Luther King.
	He was smeared as a Russian agent way back then because he was challenging the system.
	So now fast forward to the last decade or so, and anybody who descents from the neocon orthodoxy, who challenges it, who is perceived to be a threat to it, liberals are now, because they're in lockstep with neocons and cold warriors, they're going to embrace the doctrine of censorship too.
	And to the point where they were fined.
	Before the full-scale war, there are prevention things of so many leaders in the world, so many strong economies, so many strong countries, a lot of provincial steps.
	When I asked them in the victory plan to give me the package of long-distance weapons, and we will use it only if Russia will not stop the war, And will not stop continuing escalation.
	I said, this is a prevention method.
	They said to me, this is escalation.
	When a lot of countries began to support victory plan, you see what's going on now in media, they said that Ukraine wants or wanted a lot of missiles like Tamagovsk and etc.
	But it was confidential information between Ukraine and the White House, how to understand these messages.
	So it means between partners, there's no any confidential things.
	Where is he going with this?
	He's complaining that his request for US Tomahawk missiles was leaked to the New York Times.
	On the one hand, he does have the right to be angry because not only was this secret request leaked, so his confidentiality was broken, but also he's been promised all along that the U.S. has his back.
	You know, Joe Biden told Ukraine, you know, as much as it takes for as long as it takes.
	Notice how Joe Biden doesn't say that anymore.
	He dropped that a while ago.
	So he was told to walk away from peace deals that could have avoided all this.
	First, the Minsk Accords.
	Prior to Russia's invasion, and then the Istanbul agreement that was brokered in early 2022, right after Russia invaded, he was told, we have your back.
	Keep fighting Russia.
	And he went along with it.
	Now he's paying the price.
	And he's learning, as he says there, the Ukraine doesn't have partners.
	It has sponsors that have used it and bled it dry.
	And now that that utility is running out, they're walking away.
	And they're even humiliating him by leaking his desperate request for Tomahawk missiles.
	And what makes us even more cynical brings us to a point that Ray McGovern has made.
	And he was the only person in the U.S. to notice this, I believe.
	And, you know, it should have been a major story, but it wasn't.
	Back in late 2021, early 2022, you know, when the U.S. and Russia are still talking in the hopes that a Russian invasion can be avoided.
	Russia said that the U.S. had expressed an openness to an agreement that would rule out the U.S. placing missiles inside of Ukraine.
	That's what Russia said.
	And the U.S. didn't contradict them publicly.
	But then, fast forward to, now we're talking, I think, January or February, just right before Russia invaded.
	And the Kremlin came out and said that the U.S. had actually reneged on that willingness to discuss the placement of offensive missiles inside Ukraine.
	And for Russia, that was a serious provocation, because this is the U.S. saying to Russia, yeah, we reserve the right to place missiles inside Ukraine if we want to.
	So Biden, back then, could have tried to negotiate an agreement that addressed Russian security concerns and ruled out putting missiles like tomahawks inside Ukraine.
	And he didn't.
	He used that to bait Russia into invading.
	And now, fast forward more than two years later, Zelensky asked him for tomahawk missiles and Biden says no.
	Because it's very clear what Biden was doing.
	Whatever their intentions were back then.
	They wanted to use the prospect of placing missiles inside Ukraine to bait Russia into invading because they wanted this war.
	They wanted to use Ukraine to bleed Russia.
	Now that they've done that, now they're leaving Ukraine hanging out to dry.
	Some of the worst diplomacy ever by the Biden crew, whether it's Biden himself, Jake Sullivan, or Tony Blinken.
	I think Blinken is probably worse than Biden because Blinken doesn't have the deteriorated mentality that Biden has an excuse.
	Blinken doesn't.
	not rule out the placement of those missiles to begin with.
	And imagine again if Canada or Mexico were hosting Thank you very much,
	my dear friend.
	I know we were all over the place and thank you for those clips.
	Of Victoria Newland and Bill Clinton and Vladimir Zelensky.
	I hope you can join us again next week.
	Absolutely.
	Thank you, Judge.
	Happy Halloween.
	To you as well.
	Are you going to the parade as crazy as it is in the city?
	I'm going to skip that.
	I'm going to skip the parade.
	Great.
	Same here.
	I saw it once, but that's enough.
	Thank you, Aaron.
	It is...
	But if you're not, coming up at 5 o 'clock this afternoon, Colonel Larry Wilkerson and at 5.30, Professor Jeffrey Sachs.
	That is the symbol of my column today called Tweedledee and Tweedledum.
	My family is angry at me because I won't tell them for whom I'm going to vote for President of the United States.
	You can guess what I think by calling them Tweedledee and Tweedledum, and I explain it in my column of that name, which is out today and up on JudgeKnapp.com.

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