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Nov. 24, 2024 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
33:33
Larry Johnson : Who’s In Charge in DC?
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Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Monday, November 25th, 2024, Thanksgiving week here in the United States.
Larry Johnson will be with us in just a minute on who's in charge in D.C. What is their response to Putin's new weapon?
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Larry Johnson, welcome here, my dear friend.
What has been the reaction, I guess it's below the surface, so maybe from your sources, in the American intelligence community, military, deep state, whatever you want to call it?
To what Vladimir Putin's Kremlin fired off the other day, the hypersonic.
I think alarmed would be an understatement.
So we've got a real disconnect in the West.
The media, the public reaction is just dismissing this as no big deal.
What Putin unveiled the other day was this is a genuine game changer.
This is a nuclear weapon that doesn't have radiation, that doesn't have a fireball, that doesn't create a dust cloud that will block out the sun, that can be precisely delivered, that the West cannot stop, and when it hits, it destroys, literally pulverizes the target.
There's a good recording out of an individual talking to his friend who worked at the plant.
And she is just completely stunned by the devastation.
Because we're accustomed to seeing shock and awe like in Iraq where the big boiling clouds of flame rolling and dust filling the air and smoke rising.
And then we find out, yeah, it destroys a particular area but doesn't really eliminate it.
This eliminated that plant.
This plant had the significant portions of it were underground.
We're into a new ballgame now.
Vladimir Putin, he's in Babe Ruth territory.
Remember that famous game where Babe Ruth pointed to center field?
Hey, that's where I'm going.
And he put it in center field.
Putin has now said, going forward, if you continue with these attacks, We will respond immediately.
We are going to hit military targets.
We're going to give you advance warning, though.
We're going to tell you to get your civilians and personnel out of there because we're going to hit it, and there's nothing you can do to stop it.
And, you know, he wasn't bragging.
He wasn't, you know, playing, you know, bluffing as in poker.
He was just being a matter of, you know, he was like that, you know, that scene from the movie Billy Jack, where Billy Jack says, I'm going to take my right foot here and put that on your right cheek, and there's not a damn thing you can do about it.
That's what Putin is doing right now to the West.
And it is telling that the West has been very, very cautious since.
They haven't been sending out the attackums and the scalps and the storm shadows since that happened.
Because they recognize Putin now has a weapon in his hands that can hit every single city or military base in Europe, and there's not a thing they can do to stop it.
What was the reaction of US intel?
I mean, did the CIA, the DIA, NSA, whatever three-letter agency you want to refer to, there's a 16er.
What was that?
Because they may have had some, you know, understanding beliefs about what Russia was working on.
But, you know, even in the immediate aftermath, we kept hearing it was this kind of missile, and it was that kind of missile.
And yet, I've watched Ted Postol on a couple of other channels, and even Ted is going, man, this is something new.
I've never seen anything like this.
So when you're as old as Ted is, and you've never seen anything like this, that's what they call an eye-catcher.
That should catch your eye and grab your attention.
Russia has played a new kind of technology, and on top of it, insisted, hey, we've got some other surprises up our sleeves that we haven't shown you yet, either.
Is there any question in your mind that this was fired in direct response to the U.S. authorization and participation in the use of ATACMS?
and the UK authorization and participation in the use of storm shadows, which are reached inside of Russia.
None whatsoever.
This is, you know, Putin was coming under growing domestic pressure, particularly within the national security establishment, to say, okay, we've got to take the gloves off now.
We've got to punch back.
They were tired of being used as a punching bag.
And, you know, I think Putin, up to this point, Was fearful that Russia didn't have a good intermediate response.
You can stand at Iskander as they did apparently back in March of 2022 when Russia hit the Yavariv military base in western Ukraine.
That military base at Yavariv was a de facto NATO base.
And they hit it and destroyed a couple of buildings, but not with great devastation.
Now Russia's got in hand a weapon that it can destroy that entire base and do so without creating a nuclear cloud, without creating radiation and fallout that could drift anywhere and potentially even contaminate Russian lands.
They've got a card to play in this game that the other side doesn't.
And that's why I say this is a game changer because it's going to force NATO to reevaluate because NATO's choice is either continue to allow these attackums and storm shadows and scalps to go and then face That their own military facilities are now going to be attacked and destroyed.
Not damaged, destroyed.
And then what do they do?
Launch nukes?
And as you, you know, you played it on your show last week, that Vice Admiral Buchanan from, I guess, the Strategic Forces Command, claiming, oh yeah, we're prepared and ready to fight a nuclear war.
Yeah, you can say that.
We are not.
We're nowhere near ready and prepared.
We don't have the civilian infrastructure.
Russia is.
Russia has been deploying mobile fallout shelters throughout Russia.
And because of the recklessness on the part of these U.S. officials and U.S. military leaders, the Russians have now become convinced that the West is intent on attacking Russia with nuclear weapons and they're not going to let that happen.
You referred to this weapon as Putin's trump card, so continuing the play on words, if President Trump in his first term had not pulled us out of the INF, and if the Russians had complied with the INF, would this thing have existed?
No.
No.
This is, let's call, this is the Trumpinator.
This weapon is a direct consequence of Donald Trump's choices and his policy decision.
Probably advised by John Bolton and Mike Pompeo.
They were his principal advisors in that portion of his tenure first time around.
Yeah, and what's unfortunate is Trump, unfortunately, he's named people to positions of leadership in the National Security Council that he's proposing in addition to Mike Waltz, this character Sebastian Gorka.
Right.
They're out talking trash and saying the stupidest things that could be said.
I mean, just when I thought we had reached levels of imbecility with the Biden administration, the Trump folks are coming out of the gate strong, trying to out-compete them for saying just dumb things.
Gorka is saying...
We're going to pour it on.
With what?
With what?
I mean, just to say something like that to show he's so completely out of touch with reality.
And, you know, this is where you need people that have got Some calmness and some understanding about what the true state of the world is.
And anybody that thinks they're going to bully Russia now, particularly since Russia has unveiled this new weapon.
And, you know, we've heard people who call it, they call it the Keder, they call it the RS something or other.
I don't know what it is.
And I'm not sure the intelligence community has yet come up with a name for it.
Whatever it is, this is as important a change in military technology as happened on August 6th, 1945 with the bombing of Hiroshima.
Wow!
Prior to that, we had all these conventional bombs that were following.
All of a sudden, boom, an atomic bomb goes off.
Game changer.
This was a game changer.
That the media is failing to fully acknowledge.
This will raise your blood pressure a little bit, but it's exactly what you were just describing.
Here's Mike Waltz.
Congressman Waltz, soon to be National Security Advisor Waltz, over the weekend saying, I met with Jake Sullivan.
We see eye to eye.
We're on the same team.
Cut number five.
President Trump has been very clear about the need to end.
This conflict.
And so what we need to be discussing is who's at that table, whether it's an agreement, an armistice, how to get both sides to the table, and then what's the framework of a deal.
That's what we'll be working with this administration until January and then beyond.
And I also want to be clear on one thing, Jillian.
Jake and I, Jake Sullivan and I have had discussions.
We've met.
For our adversaries out there that think this is a time of opportunity, that they can play one administration off the other, they're wrong.
And we are hand in glove.
We are one team with the United States in this transition.
Who would want to be hand in glove with the most abysmal foreign policy since the end of World War II?
Yeah.
No, I said Trump.
Trump's on the record that he's going to do certain things differently.
And what Waltz is talking about is the same old game.
And if Trump fails to follow through on his policies, his presidency is the dead.
It'll be a dud.
It'll prove that he didn't learn a damn thing from his first term.
And that's unfortunate.
Yeah.
He's been given a historic opportunity to reposition the United States.
The problem, Judge, is that the, let's call it the zeitgeist in the United States, is one that views Russia as an implacable foe, as a tyrant bent on conquering the world.
We still hold these Cold War, Soviet-era images of Russia.
Without recognizing, actually, the changes that have taken place in Russia.
So, you know, it's unfortunate that he's not signaling a change.
More of the same, and the United States is going to lose.
Here is a cut from a woman that I don't know or know of.
However, her background...
I think you'll probably agree with what she said.
Surprise, surprise, it's on Fox News.
Here she is, Chris, cut number eight.
So we wargamed this scenario, exactly this scenario back in the intelligence community.
And we are The Russians and the United States are de facto right now.
In a war.
Why is that?
It is because those attackers don't fly by themselves, even though a Ukrainian soldier technically can push the button.
But the targeting of the weapon systems, ensuring that there's a proper flight trajectory of the missile, that it destroys the right target, the actual battle damage achieved that we wanted to achieve, it all requires U.S. personnel and U.S. satellites.
This is why the Russians have stated that the United States and European targets are now in crosshairs.
And every war game that we conducted back in the intelligence community ended up in a nuclear war.
Makes sense to you?
Yeah.
You know, the ignorance and failure to understand Russia as it is.
And to put ourselves in their shoes and understand how they view the world.
Because we've been so used to telling others what to do.
I mean, you saw this over the weekend or last week with the reaction of people like Lindsey Graham and Tom Cotton to the ICC warrants for Netanyahu.
You know, Graham says, well, we're going to sanction Canada, and we're going to sanction the UK, and we're going to sanction France.
And it's like...
That, yeah, we sanction everybody who's our, quote, ally?
That's all we've got?
Or, Cotton, we're going to invade the Netherlands?
Oh, great.
Yeah, so the United States has no other response than to threaten, to bully, to coerce.
But you know what?
If you're going to threaten and bully, you better make sure you can pull it off.
And the problem is right now, we're finger-poking Russia in the chest, and Russia's going to break our finger off one of these days, and there's not a thing we can do to stop it.
Let's extrapolate the existence of this weapon.
Let's assume that there's more than one to Netanyahu and Iran.
If Russia does not want Iran attacked, does Netanyahu stand still knowing that the last thing he would want is one of these babies coming at Tel Aviv?
Yeah, if Russia decided to share this technology with Iran, Iran would be able to take out immediately Russia's entire nuclear program.
You mean Israel's?
I mean, Israel's.
Exactly.
Sorry.
No, Iran would be able to take out Israel's entire nuclear program in a heartbeat.
And, you know, that's what's worrisome still.
Let's compare and contrast.
You've got Iran right now saying that it's going to retaliate.
It's going to hit Israel hard.
It's going to cause devastation.
Okay, it's been saying that now for a month.
Right.
Nothing's happened.
And my view is, If you're actually going to do something, don't sit there and talk about it.
Do it.
Putin's warning is quite different.
He's not making a threat.
Yeah, boy, we're going to hit you.
He's saying, look, you keep doing this, we will retaliate, and we're going to retaliate specifically at military targets.
We're going to tell you what we're going to hit so you can get your people out.
Because you cannot stop what we're going to fire at you.
You can't.
We don't want to cause unnecessary civilian casualties.
That's been the hallmark of Russian military operations throughout this special military operation.
But now, they actually have a technological solution.
Something where they can say, "We are going to hit you.
This is where we're going to hit you.
This is when we're going to hit you.
And you can't stop it.
Get your people out.
We're going to destroy that infrastructure." Because I could see Russia very easily destroying that new base in Poland.
There's a base both in Romania as well in Poland where they possess...
Yeah, this is a new American base in Poland.
It just opened two weeks ago.
So I can see Russia taking that and destroying that base, destroying the infrastructure.
So no place to live, no place to eat, no place to train.
I saw the clip of Senator Graham saying we would impose the most severe economic sanctions on any country that attempted to arrest Netanyahu.
Larry, the indictment of Netanyahu...
I don't care about the prosecutor's personal sexual behavior.
Those indictments are issued by a panel of three judges.
The three judges wrote a publicly available and compelling opinion.
My question to you is couldn't Joe Biden, Tony Blinken, and Jake Sullivan similarly be indicted because War crimes are defined as pulling the trigger or providing the ammunition.
Yeah.
No, they're facilitators.
You know, go back to your days as a judge.
If you had a guy that committed murder and then you also had the guy that sold him the gun and provided the ammunition that was used to commit the murder, knowing that that was the intent of what it was going to be used for, the other guy is an accessory to that murder.
Not innocent.
The problem, it'd be nice, or I guess entertaining is a more accurate word, to go back and pull Lindsey Graham's remarks about the ICC when they indicted Vladimir Putin for child practice.
Yes!
Yes!
Man, he loved himself some ICC then.
The ICC was the best.
Now, this underscores sort of where I think the ICC has gotten out over its skis.
Because neither Russia nor Israel nor the United States are signatories to the Rome Treaty.
Right.
The Palestinians are.
You can actually make a case from a jurisdictional standpoint that because the Palestinians are, you can charge the Russians with genocide.
You can charge the perpetrator if you have jurisdiction over the victim.
And that's exactly what the court has here.
That would allow...
of the ICC to charge Biden.
The perpetrator, the financer, the guy who provided the gun, the ammo, and the getaway car is Joe Biden.
The guy who pulled the trigger and drove the car is Netanyahu, so to speak.
Yeah, no, and it is unquestionable that what the United States has enabled and facilitated on the part of the government of Israel is...
There's no declaration of war.
And yet Israel is bombing them.
They're bombing Syria.
Israel is this country that believes that it can go bomb any other country at once as long as it says it's trying to fight and prevent terrorism.
Which, frankly, is a precedent we the United States set.
A very bad precedent.
That instead of abiding by some sort of rule of law, it's the rule of the jungle, you know, where we get to go rampage and kill and destroy whoever we want, and there's no accountability.
That, I think, has been exposed now with this whole ICC situation.
And, you know, here we have Graham and Cotton, both U.S. senators, calling for What would amount to acts of war against people that are supposedly our allies, who are obligated under international law, which we claim to uphold to abide by that arrest warrant.
So, you know, we've got a complete mess on our hands where the United States has been used to driving the car, and now...
We're no longer safe to be driving that car.
Is the deep state trying to create problems for Trump that will be insoluble or unduly consuming of American blood and treasure?
Yes.
And Trump, frankly, I think has taken the bait.
He met with Ruta the other day, the NATO Secretary General.
I'll tell you what, as soon as Ruta walked through the door, Trump should have punched him in the face.
Why is Trump unleashing Sebastian Gorka and Mike Waltz to sound like Lindsey Graham?
Yeah.
Well, you can make the case that, you know, And then in private, he walks it back and comes to a middle ground.
And so maybe that's part of his negotiating strategy, to present this outward public hardline so that he can fall back.
But I think what he fails to consider in using that strategy is the Russians are taking what these people are saying at face value, and they're saying, okay.
New administration, same old policy.
We're not getting any change, so we're going to continue doing what we're doing.
They're going to militarily defeat Ukraine, and the United States has no negotiating leverage with Russia.
Right, right.
You know, because the Russians know, what, you're going to give them more patriots that you don't have?
You just had the commander of Indo-PACOM, the guy that's in charge of all U.S. forces in the Pacific theater, admit the other day the United States is tapped out.
That if they keep sending stuff to Ukraine, they don't have anything to fight in the Pacific.
So stop pretending that you've got warehouses filled with inventory.
You don't.
The cupboards are empty.
So Chris, our producer, just texted me, while you and Larry have been talking, Biden issued a pardon.
I thought, oh my God.
Hunter?
Trump?
A turkey.
So sometimes the presidency is reduced to the ridiculous.
The president of the United States is killing people in Ukraine, which was a pardon to a turkey.
Ray McGovern stated earlier today that his sources tell him that the American and British decisions To allow the use of attackums and storm chasers, I forget if I have the right name, storm shadow.
Storm shadows, yeah.
Right.
Was made without Lloyd Austin, that the American DOD was kept out of the loop.
Is that not malfeasance in office for them to make a decision of that magnitude without inquiring of defense professionals into the likely and probable consequences of the use of such equipment?
Oh, yeah.
No, absolutely.
And they're probably now learning much to their chagrin that they should have brought Austin in on it so at least they'd have some cover.
Because if that is true, the military now is going to be in a position to say, man, you guys have set yourselves on fire.
We got the fire extinguisher, but we're not going to use it.
You've been drinking the Kool-Aid or something.
But I can't emphasize strongly enough, and I think Alistair Crook made the same point with you earlier today.
What we saw with this new technology that Russia unleashed is a game changer that gives Russia options that will close off options for the West.
And it really puts Russia in a position.
It can precisely hit targets in the United Kingdom where they're not going to kill civilians, but they're going to kill infrastructure.
Or if there are civilians killed, those civilians would have been stupid enough not to listen to the Russian warning that that place was going to be attacked and they needed to vacate.
Because Putin is through.
I would say his patience has been exhausted.
They're no longer going to allow these missile attacks, rocket attacks that come via programming by Western intelligence military specialists.
The drones is another thing.
Yeah, the drones come in, but they can shoot the drones down, and they do shoot down the vast majority of them, and the drones don't cause that much damage.
But this is different.
Up to this point, the West has always pretended that Russia was drawing red lines.
Well, they haven't.
They have now.
This is the line.
If you cross it, there will be consequences.
And all we have to wait and see is if the West is foolish enough to test that limit.
Here's Donald Trump in March of 2023.
On nuclear weapons in World War III.
We have never been closer to World War III than we are today under Joe Biden.
A global conflict between nuclear armed powers would mean death and destruction on a scale unmatched in human history.
It would be nuclear Armageddon.
He's right, isn't he?
Yeah, well, What we are now is Russia's got non-nuclear options.
It can have the destructive effects of a nuke without all of the other nasty consequences like fallout, radiation, clouds of dust that obscure the sun.
That's what I mean.
It's a game changer.
It's almost something like a Star Wars death ray.
It can hit and obliterate that particular site, but it's not one that's going to necessarily cause a lot of unwarranted civilian casualties.
I wonder what Mike Pompeo and John Bolton thought about when they woke up.
On Saturday morning and read about this in the newspapers.
Well, they made, going on what they read in the newspapers, they were probably misled.
You know, the newspapers have done a very poor job of really explaining the importance and significance of this technology.
And frankly, I think a lot in the West don't understand it.
Again, when you get Ted Postol, and he's looking at it and he's going, man.
I've never seen anything like that.
That's new.
That should tell you.
He didn't get those gray hairs on Amazon.
You know, he earned them the old-fashioned way.
Thank you, Larry.
Always a pleasure, my dear man.
We'll look forward to the Intelligence Community Roundtable at the end of the week.
And in the meantime, Happy Thanksgiving to you and your family.
And same to you.
Thank you.
Thank you, my friend.
Coming up, remaining today...
At 4 this afternoon, Scott Ritter.
At 5 this afternoon, Professor Jeffrey Sachs.
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