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Dec. 15, 2024 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
28:02
Larry Johnson :
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Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Monday, December 16th, 2024.
Larry Johnson will be here with us in just a moment on Ukraine and Syria and the latest on both.
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Larry Johnson, welcome here, my dear friend.
Always a pleasure.
We have a lot to talk about.
However, there is some breaking news since we actually finished our interview with Ray McGovern about a half an hour ago.
And in that time period, the German government has collapsed.
This is, of course, the most significant economy in Europe.
What are your thoughts, Larry?
Well, it was the most significant economy.
Right.
He lost basically a no-confidence vote, so this means early elections scheduled for probably February, February 23rd is the last date I think I heard.
It's going to be interesting because the perceived front-runner right now is a character named Mertz, who has been very hard-line on supporting Ukraine.
He's more supportive.
Oh, boy.
Oh, boy.
To blow up the Nord Stream pipeline and to cut off Germany from a reliable source of cheap energy coming from Russia.
And instead of pursuing better ties with Russia, he joined with the Western campaign to isolate and destroy Russia.
And in the consequence, you've got all these German companies that are starting to close down.
Volkswagen.
It's shuttering, I think, at least three plants.
And the problem with that is Volkswagen, once you close down Volkswagen, well, there are other companies below that that supply different material and products that go into building a car.
So all of those sub-suppliers, they're going to be out of work.
So it's a cascading effect.
The economy is contracting.
Then you've got a number of really interesting phenomena.
You've got a number of German firms that are closing down there, moving to the United States to set up operations.
Are they still suffering from the loss of natural gas because of the destruction of Nord Stream?
If you call it paying twice what you were paying before suffering, yeah.
They're suffering.
They're having to pay more.
You know, it's been good for some U.S. businesses.
You know, and that's what this is all about.
You know, the United States' myth that the Russians were able to provide a product cheaper than the United States could, in part, because Russia was right next door.
So this is...
You know, what's happened to Germany, it's come full circle.
This is a complete discredit.
The Green Party has been completely discredited, and it remains to be seen whether there's a sort of, they keep calling it the German right-wing party.
They're right-wing because they want to limit immigration into Germany, but it's called AfD.
Or AFD.
But at the same time he wants to limit immigration, he wants to increase military exports to Ukraine.
Yeah.
Wow.
I don't know very well.
Schultz has been trying to stop that.
I mean, he's been less reluctant to jump on board.
But the guy that's rumored to be his replacement is very hard over for Ukraine.
Do you think that President Zelensky will be in office and the Ukrainian military will still be around two months from now on February 23rd?
I'm terrible at predictions, but, you know, don't take my word to the bank on this.
But it's certainly a reasonable assumption.
That the situation that exists right now is not going to continue, and Zelensky and the military are not going to be in a strong position.
The Ukrainian army is really suffering devastating losses, and they're accelerating, not decelerating.
Last hour with Ray McGovern, I misquoted you.
You told me over the weekend that the Ukrainian army...
Lost 12,000 men last week.
I inadvertently said 20, so I correct myself.
But 12,000 in one week where they lack, correct me if I'm wrong, Larry, the manpower to replace them has to be devastating.
Yeah, the demographics for Ukraine look like an hourglass.
Anybody that's ever seen an hourglass where the sand runs through, it's big at the top, skinny in the middle?
Big at the bottom.
That's what the demographic image looks like for Ukraine.
And that skinny part in the middle, those are the people, the men and women, between the ages of 18 and 24. So they've had what was transpiring with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the corruption in the country,
let's say, 24 years ago.
It meant fewer children were being born.
So now the people who are in that age group, they're a very small portion.
So even if Ukraine lowered the age to 18, hey, we're going to go scoop up some more recruits, they don't have the manpower.
Even if they could find the manpower, they don't have the place to train them.
And then if you project that number out of 12,000 per week, that's almost 50,000 a month getting killed.
Well, they can't tolerate that.
That is a horrific number.
When you talk of the hourglass, you're talking about population.
So the population is substantial for infants and substantial for pensioners, but for those age-appropriate for the military, it has shrunk radically because of people leaving the country and because of deaths in the military.
Yeah, yeah.
And, you know, just put that 50,000 number into context.
You know, the United States built, you know, we built a memorial to the Vietnam War that over, you know, a 15, 20-year period, we lost 58,000.
Right.
People go to that wall and get all emotional, and, you know, I'm not disparaging that at all, but, you know, for God's sake, here, they're doing 50,000 in one month.
Right, right.
Do you think that, and again, I'm sort of asking you either to predict or get into somebody else's brain, Donald Trump knows that he can't resolve this in 24 hours?
No, no.
In fact, you know, it was really disturbing last week when Trump came out in that Time Magazine interview, and basically he was reporting on what he was being told by the intelligence community.
And I'm not disturbed by the fact that he was reporting on what he was told by the intelligence community.
I was disturbed by what the intelligence community told him.
Because he came out and basically said, oh, we've got to stop the killing.
There have been about a million killed.
And of that number, 600,000 are Russians and 400,000 are Ukrainians.
That's a lie.
It's a bald-faced lie, and that is...
There's evidence that the intelligence community is lying its ass off to Donald Trump.
That's what they've been doing all along.
They're taking, in my view, I think they're taking information from the Ukrainians, and they're just passing it on.
They're not doing the kind of critical analysis that needs to take place, but here they're telling Trump.
So you give Trump this information, he's got to rely upon the intelligence community, in theory, and so now he's got bad information.
And from bad information, you're going to make bad decisions.
Well, here's where, hopefully, Tulsi Gabbard will come into play.
If she's going to be the sole and exclusive debriefer to the president, hopefully she would say to whoever told her, these numbers are not right, where are you getting them from?
Who knows if she'll be confirmed?
Who knows if once she's confirmed...
Trump will only listen to her or if he'll allow these people who are lying to him now as president-elect to lie to him in two months or one month when he's the president of the United States.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, you know, you could blame Trump if he was told the correct information and then he made up his own numbers.
But that's not what happened here.
Because these numbers that are coming out have been consistently...
This is as egregious conduct as there can be.
On the part of an intelligence officer, an intelligence officer is supposed to look at all source information.
And particularly when it comes to trying to assess casualties, you not only listen to what the Ukrainians are telling you, you look at such things as...
Who's been firing more artillery shells?
The Ukrainians or the Russians?
Well, that answer would be the Russians.
Who's dropping more bombs?
The Ukrainians or the Russians?
Well, that would be the Russians.
Well, if that's the case, how in the name of God does Ukraine inflict more casualties when Russia is dropping, you know, many times by a factor of eight?
More artillery shells on Ukraine than they can fire back, number one.
How about looking at the expansion of cemeteries in Russia and Ukraine?
Compare that.
Which ones are growing faster?
Which ones have doubled, tripled, quadrupled in size?
Look at the notifications that are printed of obituaries.
Those are being published.
I mean, there's a whole host of information out there that an analyst should be on top of, gathering so they can make a sound judgment, so they can give the president the best information, whether or not the president wants to hear it.
And that's not what's going on here.
They are lying to Donald Trump.
But this is consistent.
Is it not with behavior of the intelligence community, probably going back to its creation after World War II, getting ahead by telling the president what you think he wants to hear?
No, no.
I was part of the crew.
We got in trouble for telling the president what he didn't want to hear with respect to, like, the war in Central America.
You know, there were other analysts.
I remember the South African analyst was asked to write a piece and whether or not the question from the White House was, is Nelson Mandela a communist?
And when the analyst, his conclusion was that Nelson Mandela was not a communist, Bob Gates, later Secretary of Defense, but at the time he was Director of Intelligence at the CIA, he changed the analyst's opening sentence.
He took out the word not.
Yeah, that kind of dishonesty.
I've seen it.
And so it's there, but the analysts have tried, for the most part, if they've got proper management support.
And this is where the whole issue of leadership comes in.
And frankly, if Tulsi Gabbard gets in, she's going to have some major house cleaning to do.
Getting back to Ukraine, Do you sense that Western leadership senses desperation and panic on the part of the Ukrainian military?
I think the Western leadership itself is desperate and panicked because they don't have an answer to what's taking place.
You know, they've been continuing pressing...
Zelensky, hey, you've got to bring in more.
You've got to bring in those 18-year-olds.
We need some more cannon fodder out there.
I think Zelensky at least understands that if he does that, it's a death warrant for himself.
He will not see the light of the new year.
But all they're seeing is the steady progression of the Russians moving steadily to the west, taking large swaths of territory, The Russians just encircled and
captured 700 Ukrainians near the village in Pokrovsk.
And this town of Pokrovsk is considered really as a central logistics hub.
Yes.
It's the end point for the defensive line that the Ukrainians have erected.
So once you break through there, the Russians have basically open terrain all the way to the Dnieper River.
So this is turning rapidly against the Ukrainians, and the Russians, I think, are not relenting.
They're not looking for a way out.
Larry, in the past hour...
President Putin spoke to the Russian defense establishment in Moscow.
We have a very interesting clip, which we believe is the heart of what he said.
There is, of course, an English translation.
It's about 70 seconds long, but I'd like to play it for you and hear your thoughts on it.
Today, the military and political situation in the world remains difficult and unstable.
Bloodshed in the Middle East and high conflict potential remains in a number of other regions of the world.
We see that the current U.S. administration, almost the entire collective West, does not give up trying to maintain its global dominance and continues to impose its so-called rules on the world community.
Which at the same time changes over and over again, distorts facts because it is convenient for them.
But in fact there is only one stable rule, no rules for those who do this, for those who consider themselves at the head of the whole world, those who representatives of the Lord on earth, although they themselves do not believe in the Lord and wage hybrid wars against undesirable states and implement a policy of containment,
including in relation to Russia, the desire to weaken our country to cause a defeat for us.
The United States is send advisors and thereby signaling a future escalation of the conflict.
The adult in the room, Larry.
Yeah.
Well, no, he's got a realistic grasp upon what the U.S. intent is.
And at this point, Putin is not going to make the mistakes that he did.
In 2015, you know, Putin is not without fault, and he has made some mistakes in trusting the West.
So what the West got away with in 2015, when the militia in Donetsk basically had the Ukrainian army on the ropes, they were on the verge of defeat, and Merkel and Hollande,
I believe, was the French president at the time.
And so, Putin has learned now, I think.
That he can't trust the West.
So, you know, Donald Trump's going to come in and try to offer some sort of ceasefire.
I don't see Russia accepting that at all.
There's not going to be a ceasefire.
There's going to be a surrender.
Ukraine is going to lay down its weapons.
It's going to refuse to disavow any future relationship with NATO.
And the United States is going to move its military bases away From Russia's border.
They can't afford to let, you know, because right now the United States is talking about putting intermediate-range nuclear missiles in Germany next year.
And that's going to, you know, let's call it the Europe's version of Cuban Missile Crisis.
Russia's not going to allow that because that represents an existential threat to Russia.
And the United States better wake up to that.
Because up to this point, Russia has not created the existential threat to the United States, and if the U.S. persists in that, I can see Russia say, okay, two can play at that game.
Before we conclude, Larry, over the weekend, the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post and the New York Times all...
Crowed that Putin dropped the ball in Syria.
Putin was weak.
Putin is overextended.
You have a different view.
Your view is that Putin was dumb like a fox.
Well, let's start with...
Do you remember all those pictures of those airplanes flying out of Damascus with people hanging to the wheels and falling off the planes?
Do you remember all the Syrians rushing together and being blown up by a suicide bomber trying to escape at the airport?
Yeah, neither do I. Because that didn't happen.
Oh, that happened in Afghanistan.
Who was in charge of that?
I think it was a guy named Joe Biden.
And it was a U.S. military.
People that...
These generals that are sitting around wanting to criticize and celebrate how weak Russia was in this.
So far, Russia's still got its naval base, still has its air base.
It is packing up in a very methodical manner.
They've been invited to stick around by Turkey, as well as HTS.
Oh, please stay!
And the Russians are going, hey, thanks for the invite!
We're going to be packing our stuff up here, probably moving out.
Because they recognize that what Turkey and the United States have created in Syria is something that makes potentially as bad as the collapse of the government of Yugoslavia.
And then the subsequent creation of Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, that you've created three different states that are now fighting with each other.
And already the United States and Turkey are toe-to-toe with the United States backing one group of Kurds and the Turks backing another group of Kurds, and they're fighting each other.
And so the United States is going to be faced with the choice of, do we support these Kurds that we promised we'd have their back?
Or do we fight Turkey?
You know, that's going on.
There is no Syria intact anymore.
Different people control different parts, and there are large parts that aren't under anybody's control.
So, yeah, Russia correctly assessed that situation, as did Iran.
And they recognized that Assad was not of any mind to do what was necessary.
To both enhance the economic welfare of his people as well as protect them.
So Russia and Iran backed off.
Let the West have it.
Because the West is going to embroil itself in something they cannot control.
And now we watch the spin patrol at State Department where they take the picture of the guy who's on their poster for $10 million, Jelani, and they're dressing him up in a suit.
You know.
Good God, they'll probably have him named the president of the new Syrian LGBTQ movement in a month.
Let's not get carried away.
I mean, it's ridiculous.
It's ridiculous.
President Assad issued some statements from Moscow.
We don't have video, but we have full screens translated into English.
Here he's talking about the terrorist forces.
Chris, Assad number two.
My departure from Syria was neither planned, Nor did it occur in the final hours of the battles.
As terrorist forces infiltrated Damascus, I moved to Latakia, that's the airbase, in coordination with our Russian allies to oversee combat operations.
Number three, Chris.
Upon my arrival at the airbase that morning, it became clear that our forces had completely withdrawn from all battle lines and that the last army positions had fallen.
As the field situation in the area continued to deteriorate, the Russian military base itself came under intensified attack by drone strikes.
With no viable means of leaving the base, Moscow requested that the base's command arrange an immediate evacuation to Russia, and of course he said this, Larry, from the safety of his new home in Moscow.
Make sense?
The man's a coward.
No, he's lying.
You know, he left members of his family behind.
You know, he took no steps to protect even some members of his family.
Wow.
This guy makes Jay Leno's car collection look cheap because he was so busy collecting luxury automobiles instead of ensuring the welfare of the Syrian people.
And then he rejected.
You've got it from both Iranian and Russian sources.
That he'd been rejecting, you know, specific requests to step up support, to help train, to provide additional aid, and he didn't want any part of it.
And so now, you know, Russia still protected him.
But again, it highlights the difference between Russia and Iran.
The way the U.S. presents them is that they're voracious.
I've got to put another full screen up because it's almost as if he knew you were going to bring up the issue of the cars.
Full screen number one.
I have never sought positions for personal gain, but I've always considered myself as the custodian of a national project supported by the faith of the Syrian people who believed in its vision.
I have carried an unwavering conviction in their will and ability to protect the state, defend its institutions, and uphold their choices to the very last moment.
Some of his family members that he failed to protect were butchered in the streets within hours of his departure.
Yeah, that's, as Ray McGovern calls it, that's MBM.
Male bovine excrement.
That's the cleaned up version for YouTube.
Thank you, Larry.
Great chatting with you, my dear friend.
We'll see you with that senior member of your team, Ray McGovern, for the Intelligence Community Roundtable on Friday.
All the best.
Yeah, Greybeard Friday.
See you then.
Okay, bye-bye.
Coming up later today at noon, Pepe Escobar at 1 o 'clock, Kirvort Almasian.
You don't want to miss this.
A Syrian analyst exiled from Syria who has extraordinary insight on what happened.
Then at four o 'clock in the afternoon, one of our old buddies, Chief Dennis Fritz.
Justin Napolitano for Judging Freedom.
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