All Episodes
Previous Next
Nov. 29, 2024 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
29:13
INTEL Roundtable w/ Johnson & McGovern : Weekly Wrape
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Hi, everyone.
Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
It is the end of the week.
It's the end of the Thanksgiving week.
It's Thanksgiving weekend.
And this is your Intelligence Community Roundtable with my dear friends and colleagues who always do double duty, Ray McGovern and Larry Johnson.
Gentlemen, welcome here.
Always a pleasure.
Sorry to intrude on your Thanksgiving weekend, but much appreciated.
Larry, to you first.
Have the Russians issued some sort of a warning to the military or to people in Europe that something significant may soon be flying through the atmosphere?
Yeah, I mean, apart from Putin last Thursday, saying that if there are any more attack them, storm shadows, scout missile strikes into Russian territory, that Russia would strike back immediately, that they would warn Russia.
The West, where they were going to hit.
They would give them some time to evacuate personnel.
But that, and Putin smiled when he said this, you won't be able to stop it.
There's nothing you can do to prevent it.
Today, at the United Nations, Ambassador Poliansky, the deputy to Nabinzia, he spoke and he said basically to the West, he says, we warned you, you've asked for it, and you're going to get it.
I mean it was that clear, that direct.
So the result of the last two days of attack of missile strikes into Russia, into Kursk region, Russia last night issued a NOTAM, which is a Noticed Airman warning, closing off the airspace around the military base where the Oreshnik missile was launched last Thursday that destroyed...
And, you know, Russia's going to do it again.
They've issued that warning until the 30th, so until Saturday.
So we've got maybe a couple of days.
By Saturday, we will know what had happened.
But Russia's very clear.
They're going to strike back.
They're going to hit a military target, most likely in Ukraine.
It may be a joint NATO-Ukrainian military target, but they're going to hit it.
Ray, why does the West not take Putin seriously?
Judge, that's a really tough question.
You know, Russia is just a gas station posing as a country.
They use dishwater ports and stuff like that to build their ICBMs.
You know, Russia has been so marginalized and denigrated by the Western media that I think privileged people like Tony Blinken and Jake Sullivan tend to believe their own propaganda.
And this drives Putin crazy.
Let me inject one note of danger here.
We have all been saying, that is Larry, Scott, myself and others, that this is the most dangerous situation having to do the possible nuclear exchange since Cuba, okay?
Why do we say that?
Well, Lou Kionov, the research director for Valdai, he said today in something published by the Russians, he said this, look, the absence of a secure back channel Communication mode is what's different.
Both sides now face greater pressures to act.
Both sides.
Okay, got that?
This increases the danger of an accidental escalation as leaders may feel compelled to carry out their threats in order to maintain their credibility.
The breakdown of private diplomacy and the rise of public threats.
Have made the nuclear balance more precarious than ever.
If the current trajectory continues, the risk of escalation will only grow, and the stability that once existed during the Cold War may seem like a distant memory.
This is big.
I thought there was a channel like that between Secretary Austin and Dilo Usov, his counterpart in Moscow.
Apparently, either the U.S. has unplugged our end of the communication, or they've told Austin, no, don't talk to Bielo Usov anymore.
In other words, Lukianov, who is well-informed about as high as you can go in that kind of official, is saying, look, that's the difference.
That's what makes it really parlous.
And both sides, like the Russians as well as the U.S., might be tempted to go ahead and do something really stupid just to maintain their credibility.
Here's the reference that Larry made to Putin smiling.
The Oreshnik missile system isn't simply an efficient hypersonic weapon system.
Thanks to its power, particularly in the case of its massive use, in combination with other precision long-range weapons that Russia has, The results of its use against enemy targets would be comparable in effect, and its power to strategic weapons.
Although, in fact, the Oreshnik system is not a strategic weapon.
In any case, it is not an intercontinental ballistic missile.
No one in the world has such weapons yet, as we know, as you know.
Sooner or later, other leading countries will also get them.
We are aware that they are already under development.
But this will not happen tomorrow, or in a year, or even two years.
While we have this system now, I will add that there are no means of counteracting such a missile.
No means of intercepting it.
In the world today, they don't exist.
And I will emphasize once again, we will continue testing the latest system.
Considering the special strength of this weapon, its power, it will be put into service in the strategic missile forces.
In addition to the Oreshnik system, several similar systems are currently being developed in Russia for further testing.
Based on the results of the testing, this weapon will also go into serial production.
That is, we are developing a whole line of medium and shorter range systems.
The new missile could be fitted with nuclear and conventional warheads.
It can reach targets across the entirety of Europe.
Why doesn't the West take that seriously, Larry Johnson?
We have what's called confirmation bias.
We have decided that we know best that our understanding is superior.
And that we've indulged this nonsense that Russia is using computer chips from washing machines and refrigerators.
You know, our refusal to take Putin at face value.
He is not your typical Western BS artist who will say and do anything.
He's not Joe Biden.
He absolutely is...
And he always says what he means and means what he says.
And I likened that moment the other day on my blog to that iconic scene from the movie Billy Jack, where Billy Jack kicks the bad guy on the side and tells him, hey, I'm going to take this right foot and I'm going to put it on that side of your face.
I'm going to whomp you upside the face.
And there's nothing you can do about it.
That's exactly what he said.
And the nice thing about this is it gives Russia a way to respond without having to go nuclear.
But as Putin correctly noted, this has the characteristics of a strategic weapon.
When he says strategic, he means nuclear.
So it's sort of like a nuclear weapon, but it comes without the radiation and without the blast effect.
However, they can add that to it if they want to.
It is a most formidable weapon system, and as he correctly stated, the West has no answer.
So we're going to see another demonstration here, and when it happens, maybe the West will finally pay attention, much like the Japanese did after the bombing of Nagasaki.
Ray, does American intel know what is coming next, when it's coming, and where it's going?
Generally speaking, the answer is yes.
And Putin himself, in talking with Western journalists in 2016, talked about, you know, we know when the next missile that fits into those canisters or those capsules in Romania or Poland, We know when they'll reach a thousand kilometers range and they know We know that they know, all right?
So it's come to a pass where, you know, the word checkmate, the word game changer.
Now, in the Bronx, I never was smart enough to learn how to play chess with the Jewish kids in my neighborhood, okay?
But I did play checkers.
I was lousy at checkers.
But I know what checkmate means, okay?
In our poker, You know when to hold them and when to fold them, okay?
Well, it's time to fold them, okay?
The problem is that Blinken and Sullivan, they don't think about this, okay?
It's time to fold them.
To use the checkmate analogy again, you know, there's a socially acceptable way to lose, okay?
You resign, okay?
You say, okay, the game's over.
I'm going to leave.
That's when you're checkmated.
There's no indication that even though Sullivan and Blinken know chess, no doubt, there's no indication they'd know when to fold them.
So that's what's perilous about this.
Bottom line, just to inject a note of caution here, I think Putin, well aware of all this, He's not going to be provoked in the next days before January 20th.
I think it will not rise to the bait when he has these weapons and when he has the initiative and is all just about to conquer the rest of Ukraine.
So I think that's going for us here.
He's not going to try to do something really stupid unless he's really provoked.
And that provocation could be if Ukrainians use these missiles on something like the Kursk nuclear power station, which would yield results worse, 10 times worse than Chernobyl.
They could do that.
Here's Secretary Austin last week.
Doesn't seem to be concerned about this at all.
Cut number 15. We've known for several weeks that they were revamping their policy on use of nuclear weapons.
I don't see an indication that there's an imminent intent to use nuclear weapons.
Is he bluffing with this change?
He has rattled his nuclear saber quite a bit.
Larry, that is hardly worthy of the Secretary of Defense of the United States.
We sent those attack of missiles six months ago, seven months ago, so it's not like they were just recently sent.
And all of this is, Judge, this is part of a broader, let's call it deep state operation.
To create chaos for the Trump administration coming in.
It's all tied to the North Korean troops that don't exist.
Remember, it was David Sanger that put the CIA story out first that there are all these North Korean troops.
And why are the North Korean troops there?
Because the Russians are suffering such catastrophic losses that they need the North Koreans just to hang on so they don't lose.
I mean, it was all a lie.
But they're using that lie to justify, well, that's why we had to tell Ukraine that they could use the Takums because the Russians have brought in now, it started off at 3,000, now it's like 20,000 North Koreans to fight against us.
And so the lie keeps growing like a big fishtail.
And this is part of a broader plan, not just confined.
I mean, there are aspects of this plan that extend over to Israel.
Notice in Syria today, these radical Islamic, Sunni Islamic extremists launched an offensive against Russian and Syrian troops.
I guarantee you there's U.S. money behind that as well.
So what we're seeing is a broader effort to create a grand destabilization, if they can, because they recognize Trump presents An existential threat to them if he takes office.
Here's Mike Waltz sounding like Mike Pompeo, Larry and Ray, defending the use of anti-personnel landmines because it might stop the Russians from advancing.
Cut number 17. Well, these mines are the type that you can turn on, turn off.
They're smart mines.
But at the same time, it is a step towards somewhat solidifying the lines.
And we also needed to stop Russian gains.
I mean, is this the language of a representative of a president?
Who's going to bring about an end to the war, or who's taking sides in the war, and it's against Russia, Larry?
Well, no, he's taking sides, very clearly.
And remember, this is Mr. Glove in Hand, or Hand in Glove with Jake Sullivan.
That's not what people who voted for Trump voted for.
They don't want Hand in Glove.
They want their damn hand out of that glove.
They want to throw that glove away.
It's dirty.
They don't want that to fit.
No, they want a different approach.
You know, Walt is betraying the Trump voters, and in the course of this, he's endangering America.
Here's one for you, Ray McGovern, the former director of the CIA and former secretary of state, saying, if we keep up using the attackums, the whole conflict will fundamentally change in 60 days.
Cut number 13. I think that the missile attack at a real scale last night into Ukraine is evidence that Vladimir Putin knows that this is his maximum point of leverage and that in 60 days, fundamentally, his leverage will have decreased and the shaping of that conflict will have fundamentally changed as well.
What is he driving at, Ray?
That was Mike Pompeo, right?
Yes, it was slimmed down, Mike Pompeo, radically slimmed down, but that's Mike, yes.
Yeah, well, he graduated first in his class from West Point, which kind of proves that you can get all straight A's and flunk life.
He hadn't said a sensible thing in a decade or so.
You know, I don't know why these people keep drumming on this.
They must know better, and yet it's the party line, literally, and they've got to keep doing it, and they keep asserting these things that are factually non-existent.
This is not going to help Trump.
The business here with Mike Walz and so forth, you know, it really depends on whether they're loyal to Trump and how much weight he's going to throw behind his own policies, okay?
Now, the ones he picked the first time, you know, first time around, They were incompetent, and they were dangerous because they were disloyal.
This time, they were incompetent.
They're not very knowledgeable, but they're loyal, okay?
So what does that give us?
That gives us a situation where Trump, if he decides to assert his authority, it can make it stick.
And the question is, will Trump be smart enough to realize that he's got a folder cards on Ukraine, and it's got a very weak hand, but he should play it?
So that the game doesn't go down the drain completely.
Tell me if this is what Donald Trump believes.
Cut number 10. I'll give one tip away that the president has mentioned.
He will say to that murderous former KGB colonel, that thug who runs the Russian Federation, you will negotiate now, or the aid that we have given to Ukraine thus far will look like peanuts.
That's how he will force those gentlemen to come to an arrangement that stops the bloodshed.
Thought the neocons were gone, Larry Johnson.
Look, what Gorka said there is so abjectly stupid, you don't even know where to begin.
For starters, the Biden administration has given the Ukrainians close to $200 billion in weapons and aid.
It's not like they've been parsimonious, you know, just saying, oh, here's a quarter, you know, go help yourself to some candy kit.
We have opened the treasury to them.
They've gotten every single weapon system they wanted.
Now, like I said, they've had the attackums now for six months.
They don't have the trained personnel.
They've had F-16s for at least five months.
They haven't been able to use those effectively.
And the notion that he can, oh, That there's a whole warehouse stocked with all this equipment that we just haven't sent to Ukraine?
Nonsense!
It's ridiculous!
So, you know, there's Gorka displaying a level of ignorance that is breathtaking, not even understanding what the situation is on the ground.
And that was also sort of the premise of Pompeo's comments that, oh, the Bidens have been holding back.
People pretend like the Biden administration has been holding back on Ukraine and holding back on Israel.
And if we just get Donald Trump in there, the dogs will be free and American military power can go to work.
It is a fantasy.
It's a delusion.
And if they follow through on it, it's going to get us killed.
and He wants to revisit what we did in Iraq.
Cut number 12. The resurgence of global jihadism.
People think that it went away, but it didn't with the surrender of Afghanistan, the disgraceful surrender of Afghanistan by Joe Biden, by Lloyd Austin, his Secretary of Defense.
We have a new hub of jihadism.
We left 80, well, just $83 billion worth of weapons for the Taliban.
Al-Qaeda is resurgent.
ISIS is still out there, whether it's the Houthis or whether it's the numerous proxies of Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas, the threat is as great as it's ever been.
Is Al-Qaeda and the Taliban a threat to the United States?
Where does he come with this?
It was Mike Pompeo who negotiated for Trump with the Taliban that freed 5,000 Taliban prisoners fighters from jail.
The freeing occurred on Biden's watch, but the deal was signed by Trump.
Ray?
Well, Judge, one has to be really not only an expert at textual analysis, but visual analysis.
Now, I don't know if any of you two noticed that Gorka is channeling Bolton.
You see that little click in his ear there?
It's the same little plug.
That's a direct channel to Bolton.
Try to send things back.
Look, it's really going to be...
We have Tulsi Gabbard.
As long as she gets confirmed, okay, as long as she's in place, she reports to the president every morning or through her emissaries, the PDB briefer, president's daily briefer, which I used to be, in person six days a week.
Now, will Mike Walsh be there?
Yeah.
Will Gorka be there?
No.
Okay.
Will Bolton be there?
No.
So to the degree that Tulsi Gabbard has given her head and to the degree that she remains somewhat sane, unlike the rest of them, she's going to embarrass the likes of Mike Walsh and talk some sense into Trump.
And it could be that that would attenuate his instincts and, you know, make him realize what this Gorka fellow is.
A really strange cat.
The only benefit he has is his wonderful voice.
I'm going to practice to see if I can get better.
Right, right.
Switching over to Israel, how legitimate, Larry, is the ICC indictment of Benjamin Netanyahu and the indictment of Yoav Gallant?
No, it's a solid indictment.
Unlike the indictment So there's really no jurisdiction.
At least in this, the Palestinians are signatories.
So they did have jurisdiction from that standpoint.
And the indictment itself is very specific and lays it out.
Even by Benjamin Netanyahu's own words that were recorded when he was interviewed by William Buckley back in 1986, where he defined terrorism by his own words.
Israel is committing terrorism against the Palestinian people.
It is the deliberate use of violence against civilians for political purposes.
That is exactly what's taking place in Gaza.
That's what's taking place in the West Bank, and that's what's taking place in the neighborhoods in Beirut, Lebanon.
Do you think he was forced into the Hezbollah ceasefire because the IDF is taking a beating in Lebanon, and he doesn't want the public to know that?
Is that for me?
Sure.
Yeah, no, absolutely.
They declared victory in going home.
They said, oh man, we beat Hezbollah.
Well, they haven't beat Hezbollah.
And when you go back and read the Israeli, or try to read the Israeli press on this, and I'm talking about Haaretz, Times of Israel, Jerusalem Post, and Ynet News, over the last two months, It's been like Helen Keller was their universal reporter, saying nothing, saying nothing, hearing nothing about the casualties that the Israeli troops are taking.
Once in a while you might get a report.
Meanwhile, when you read the Hezbollah press, the level of attacks, the level of rocket intensity into northern Israel was increasing, not decreasing.
And so the Israelis had to find a way out.
So they've now got this ceasefire.
They claim that the Lebanese military is going to keep Hezbollah under control.
Not going to happen.
But it gives them an excuse to pull out and pretend that, oh boy, man, we beat Hezbollah.
We defeated him.
And I know I'm in touch with some of these crazy Zionists.
That's exactly what they're saying.
Oh, man, we defeated Hezbollah.
They're delusional.
But, you know, it seems to be a common disease running around Washington, D.C. and Tel Aviv these days.
Ray, does the American intelligence community know the nature and extent of the battle losses in southern Lebanon?
Do Jake Sullivan and Tony Blinken and Joe Biden know whether Netanyahu was beaten so badly that he had to get the heck out of there?
Do they know the nature and extent of his domestic political instability over the release of secret documents intended to make him look good and the resurgence of his criminal Judge, in answer to your question, what does Biden know?
I don't know what Biden knows.
Biden probably doesn't know what he knows or what he doesn't know.
Do Blinken and Sullivan know?
sure they do.
Okay.
Now, are Blinken and Sullivan sociopaths?
I mean, I just learned that word recently.
That fits people who allow genocide, okay?
What does that mean?
Well, they know, but they won't stop it, okay?
And they don't know when to fold their cards, okay?
Now, Netanyahu is in deep kimchi.
I mean, he's taken on the Shin Bet.
He's taken on the army.
I don't know how long he's going to last, but as Larry said, He can't really claim with any legitimacy a big victory in southern Lebanon.
So what's going to happen?
Well, nothing is going to happen until Trump comes in, and then nothing is going to happen again.
So we have to get our rear ends out of our couches and make sure that we Americans don't abide, people who abide by or enable or arm other countries that are involved in genocide.
Gentlemen, thank you very much.
Thank you for coming on during this holiday weekend.
I hope you get time.
I want to say a word there, Judge.
It's Thanksgiving weekend and I just want to extend my thanks and the thanks, I'm sure, of all my colleagues here.
You've given us a voice, okay?
You've given us a chance to inform American people, lots of them now.
We didn't have that before.
We were voices.
Crying in the wilderness.
So I just want to say thanks for taking us out of the wilderness.
And thank you for all the advice and analysis that you bring to the show and for all your time, particularly the two of you, because you're on with me twice a week.
How do you put up with Larry?
I don't know.
Thank you very much.
That's why I only lasted four years at the CIA.
That's what they said.
I don't hear him commenting.
Thank you, guys.
Have a great holiday weekend.
We'll see you on Monday at your usual times.
All the best.
Thanks, Judge.
And from my family to yours, a blessed and happy and grateful Thanksgiving holiday weekend.
▲
Export Selection