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Jan. 16, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
26:20
[ BREAKING ] Max Blumenthal : MAX CONFRONTS BLINKEN!
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Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Welcome to this special breaking news edition of Judging Freedom with our friend Max Blumenthal, who not only is the news analyst and our great historian, he is, as you will see in a moment, the news maker.
Max, I deeply appreciate your coming to the camera for us, especially in light of what you went through earlier today, which the audience will see in a few minutes.
Before we get to what happened to you at the State Department, before we get to your analysis of the lies articulated by the Secretary of State as he was giving a swan song,
the ceasefire negotiated and supposedly agreed to between Israel and Hamas as you understand it.
Is it a defeat for Israel?
I wouldn't qualify it as a defeat.
I think, tactically, Israel has suffered a number of losses, and there is no strategy.
What October 7th did was unleash a protracted war that accelerated the process that has been developing in Israel, Palestine, and in the region for many years.
But to call this a defeat, I don't know, to look at it with rose-colored glasses because tens of thousands of lives.
And I think we're going to see that many tens of thousands more were lost under the rubble that were not known before once reporters and investigators are able to get in.
Those lives should have never been lost.
The destruction of Gaza, even the loss of many of the hostages and captives should have never happened were it not for
And they did succeed in doing...
A whole lot of damage.
But the human damage is immeasurable.
And that was part of Israel's objective, too.
So I can't call this a defeat, but this was not a victory for Israel, and they certainly failed to achieve what Netanyahu promised, which was total victory.
Will Smotrich and Ben Gavir leave the government if the cabinet and the Knesset accept this?
I don't know how the Knesset could accept it if they vote against it, but let's just say the Knesset accepts it.
And the cabinet accepts it.
Do they leave Netanyahu high and dry in confronting re-election while he's on trial for bribery?
Well, I think one reason Netanyahu was able to do this deal was also why he was able to extend the war, which was that he replaced his defense minister, Yoav Gallant, with Israel Katz,
who is a sycophant.
And he strengthened his coalition and expanded his coalition.
And so Ben Gavir and Smotrich don't have the same hold over Netanyahu that they had before.
It is worth noting, in light of the ridiculous comments made at the State Department over the past 48 hours, that it was Hamas's fault every time for sabotaging negotiations, that Ben Gavir has now come out and boasted that again and again,
he personally...
Got it.
Before we play these two very, very dramatic tapes, one involving you and one involving your colleague and friend, Sam Husseini, set the stage for us.
What was happening at the State Department when they dragged you out?
What was Secretary Blinken?
And before we run the tape, what message were you attempting to get across to him and to your fellow journalists?
Actually, at around 9.30 a.m.
And so I raced in there and managed to get in some questions to Tony Blinken that I've always wanted to ask him.
I had to ask the questions under duress.
I would have never been called on.
No dissenters are called on by Blinken or his press secretary.
And one of the purposes as well...
It's to hold him accountable for what I consider to be the Holocaust of our time.
You know, we may not get Nuremberg 2.0 in the near term, but he needs to at least feel uncomfortable and have this disgusting curtain call ruined by people asking legitimate fact-based questions about how he allowed this to happen.
Here is you challenging the Secretary of State.
I have even greater respect, even greater appreciation for you asking the tough questions, for you holding us to account.
Being on the receiving end, sometimes that's not always the most comfortable thing, not always the most enjoyable thing, but it is the most necessary thing.
300 reporters in Gaza were on the receiving end of your bombs.
Why did you keep the bombs flowing when we had a deal in May?
We all knew we had a deal.
Everyone in this room knows we had a deal, Tony, and you kept the bombs flowing.
Why did we sacrifice the rules-based order on the mantle of your commitment to Zionism?
Why did you allow my friends to be massacred?
I'm happy to address your questions when we get to questions.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Yeah, I have a statement to make.
Thank you.
I look forward to taking questions when I get a chance to finish my statement.
Thank you.
How does it feel to have your legacy be genocide?
How does it feel to have your legacy be genocide?
You too, Matt.
You smirk through the whole thing every day.
You smirk through genocide.
Thank you.
Thank you.
What happened to you after they pushed you out of the room?
Were you confronted by police?
There was a police officer who was looking for me, and I complied with him, and they walked me off the premises, and he said, don't...
You know, don't come back today.
And I said, well, you won't see me for the rest of this administration.
Why did you?
Okay. Why did you feel the need to go into his face?
Do you think he, knowing who you are and anticipating what you were going to ask, would ever have called on you?
No one ever gets held accountable in our society for the worst, most titanic crimes.
No one was held accountable for the financial crash, the housing crisis.
No one is held accountable for the Iraq War.
No one is held accountable for any of the crimes that our military and financial elite carry out.
And Tony Blinken now is uniquely responsible for the human rights catastrophe of my generation.
And he's someone that...
Was in D.C. when I was growing up.
I knew people who are close to him.
Growing up, he's someone who represents himself as a Jew, as I am.
He's someone who has broadcast and boasted about his personal ancestral ties to Israel through his father-in-law, Samuel Pissar, who is an Israel lobbyist in France, and his grandfather,
Nathan, who is also An Israel lobbyist who actually helped found the apartheid state of Israel.
And so he needed to be challenged by me personally, face to face.
And I also wanted to challenge, confront him for the horror that he brought to the lives of the people of Gaza in the name of defending.
The cause of Zionism that he holds so dear to his heart.
I wish that he could hear the screams and the cries of the children of Gaza.
I wish he could have been confronted by my friend Rifat Al-Arir, the great writer and poet who was killed in his home for social media posts in a targeted assassination with U.S.-made bombs.
But Tony Blinken wasn't even listening to his own staff in the Middle East Bureau at the State Department who were bringing him evidence of U.S. weapons.
The whistleblowers had been ignored.
60 Minutes held a report for eight months featuring the State Department whistleblowers.
So it really fell on our shoulders, any reporter who was able to get in that briefing and send that message to Tony Blinken.
But for me, this was personal.
It was personal as an anti-Zionist Jew.
It was personal as someone who had close relationships with people who were slaughtered.
Thanks to the soft-handed Eichmann-like signature of Tony Blinken.
And it was personal because I had the ability to get into that room.
I have a responsibility to speak on behalf of the 300 or so Palestinian journalists who were slaughtered by U.S.-made weapons sent by Tony Blinken, Joe Biden, and Brett McGurk.
And I did what I could because I don't believe in this.
I have to tell you that I'm saying this not because I'm your friend and colleague, but even if I were just a neutral observer, you are the personification of courage.
This is a conversation that needed...
I'm talking about the conversation that Blinken wouldn't respond to when you questioned him, and I am thrilled that I'm able to provide a forum in which this conversation can be continued after they kicked you out.
After they kicked you out, what happened?
Well, Sam Husseini proceeded to interrupt, and the room went into kind of a panic mode.
I could see that Tony Blinken's staff was very nervous.
I got to confront Matt Miller, his smirking press secretary on the way out, who's become sort of the face and voice of defending the policy of sort of the...
The railways to Auschwitz in the form of a military air bridge to Israel's Nevatim Air Base, giving them all the tools they needed to do this while pretending they were fighting for a ceasefire.
And Matt Miller was there to see me out the door.
And I got to say to his face, you smirked your way through this.
How dare you?
Just such disgusting figures that I've seen day after day.
And I was there yesterday, Judge, at the briefing, but behaved myself.
As I usually had, I mean, I always followed the process as Tony Blinken ordered.
And it was shocking to me to see all of these reporters, including some who challenged Tony Blinken and Matt Miller, thank Matt Miller for all of his work over the past few years and thank him for their fine relationship.
Max, let's face it.
They're afraid of you.
They're afraid of your courage.
They're afraid of your extraordinary knowledge of the facts.
We'll play this clip.
This is some rough stuff, I understand.
I haven't seen it yet.
But this is what happened in the press briefing room in the State Department a few hours ago to Max's colleague, Sam Husseini, after Max was escorted from the room.
I carried with me.
Again, I'm happy to address questions in just a few more minutes.
I look forward to answering questions in a few more minutes.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I look forward to answering questions.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I look forward to answering questions in a minute.
Thank you.
Everyone will have an opportunity to ask a question in just a minute.
Thank you.
So I have no greater pleasure in this job than crossing off a list I carry in my pocket, the names of those who had been arbitrarily detained and unfairly held hostage,
unjustly held hostage, and bringing them home, returning them.
to their families, returning to their loved ones.
Finally, I just wanted to share this morning...
Get your hands off me!
Get your hands off me!
Get your hands off me!
Answer a damn question!
I look forward to answering questions in two minutes.
Everybody from the ICJ, I am sitting here quietly and now I am being manhandled by two or three people.
Please, sir, respect the process.
We'll have an opportunity to take questions in a few minutes.
Please, sir, respect the process.
Thank you.
Respect the process.
Respect the process.
While everybody from the International to the ICJ is saying that it's all doing genocide and extermination, you're telling me to respect the process.
Criminal! Why aren't you in the hay?
Why aren't you in the hay?
Why aren't you in the hay?
What would the justification be for dragging him out when he was sitting there making notes?
I understand he interrupted earlier, but then he became quiet.
They will never call on Sam Husseini.
And Matt Miller started and ordered the cops to come in, the press secretary, ordered the cops in to remove him because Sam Husseini attempted to ask a question out of turn.
Honestly, if Blinken had just called on Sam, he would have asked a tough question that Blinken could have...
But they will not allow us to speak in there after they got the sense of what we were asking.
It just is too penetrating for them.
And what Sam did there, I think, was a remarkable feat.
CNN actually showed this to a national audience with a much more vivid angle, showing Sam from the front.
He was asking about Israel's secret nuclear program.
With three gigantic Secret Service cops strangling him.
Then he challenged Blinken, who says, follow the process on what process Blinken was following when Amnesty International and the International Court of Justice found Israel guilty of extermination and culpable of genocide.
And he managed to get that out to a national audience and show how the press is actually treated that dissent.
In the briefing room, the real dissenting press, they're dragged out by burly cops.
I allowed a staffer to escort me out, but Sam was, the press secretary ordered those burly cops to physically drag him out and almost suffocate him.
It's not against the law, by the way, to disrupt.
No, no, it's not against the law.
It's not a criminal offense at all.
Before we go on any further, Ryan Grimm, I think you probably know him.
He may be from The Intercept, I'm not sure, is the person who took that video, and I need to give him credit for the video on air.
What became of Sam after they dragged him out?
Surely he wasn't arrested.
It's not a prosecutable offense.
Yeah, I haven't had any contact with him.
I know he's been connected with a lawyer.
But I mean, this is just the hypocrisy of the State Department with Blinken praising the press corps and saying, you know, we're friends.
We all went out to Jose Andres's restaurant, got, you know, free drinks together from Jose Andres.
And I love you guys.
And I thank you for the tough questions while he's presiding over the worst killing.
I can't expect you to predict the future.
But other than being tossed into the ash bin of history, Will Joe Biden, Tony Blinken, Jake Sullivan ever see justice, ever be made to answer for the genocide they perpetrated?
No one ever, as I said before, this is the problem.
I think one of the central crises we face in America is that none of our military or financial elite who are involved...
In shocking crimes, including violating US law, violating the Leahy law, as the entire Biden administration did, which is an arms control law, violating laws on Wall Street, everywhere else.
They're never held to account.
The healthcare industry gouging consumers.
And it's leading to a crisis where people are beginning to take matters into their own hands.
I'm not a fan of violence.
I did what I do.
Which is to ask hard questions and not follow the process which is designed to prevent hard questions and protect the hypocrisy and criminality of this regime.
It really is a regime.
But we're facing a crisis in this country which is leading us into a dark time.
And as we go forward with this conversation, Judge, about the ceasefire, I think the lesson that...
Why do you think Netanyahu agreed to virtually the same terms that he rejected at least three or four times in the past six or seven months?
One reason is Trump was coming in.
He was afraid of what Trump might do.
He knew Trump did not want an open-ended conflict which could lead to war with Iran at the beginning of his administration.
He also wanted to give Trump a victory because he likes Trump better than Biden.
And Netanyahu learned that since this ceasefire was put on the table after, as Sam Husseini pointed out, after the ICJ decision ordering Israel to stop its incursion into Rafa and accusing it.
of genocide.
After this deal was introduced on May 26th, and Hamas essentially accepted it, Netanyahu had no leverage exerted against him.
And no matter what he did, whether it was attacking inside Iran, attacking the Iranian consulate in Damascus, nothing was being done against him except whenever Iran decided to retaliate.
And so Netanyahu learned the lesson.
As I said, Blinken waved the white flag before Netanyahu that he could get away with anything with this administration and the bombs would continue to flow.
Record levels of bombs, 25 billion dollar arms packages.
So Netanyahu then began to expand his campaign.
Attacking Lebanon after a very suspicious incident in Majdal Shams, which was blamed on Hezbollah killing Syrians who were living in Israeli-occupied territory, began assassinating top-level Hezbollah leadership.
And Matthew Miller said this actually yesterday in so many words, that they were waiting in Washington until Hamas was sufficiently weakened.
And they started to see...
That the forces that they wanted essentially exterminated, or in Miller's own words, wiped off the map, whether in Lebanon or Syria, started to lose ground.
They wanted to give Israel more latitude to continue that vicious assault.
And so it was actually the Biden administration that again and again prevented a ceasefire.
What then took place when the Biden administration decided they could have a ceasefire, And when they wanted it so that they could take full credit for it before Trump could potentially win a re-election and take credit was the killing of Yahya Senwar.
But as I pointed out at the time, the killing of the Hamas leader who was the sort of mastermind of the October 7th operation.
Would make it impossible to negotiate with Hamas because all negotiations had to be approved by him.
He was a central figure.
And Blinken admitted that.
Blinken also admitted that Hamas had replenished its ranks and was still a significant fighting force on the battlefield.
So he said that from the time that Sinwar was killed until...
About 48 hours ago, they were unable to get a ceasefire because it was too chaotic and they didn't have the right people to communicate with inside Hamas.
But Blinken and Biden and Kamala endorsed the killing of Yahya Senwar.
So they actually delayed the ceasefire again by supporting the killing of this figure that could have been negotiated with.
And remember, Israel killed Salah Arouri, the previous negotiator, in his office in Beirut.
Ismail Hania in his hotel room in Tehran, who was the negotiator after that.
So they killed all the negotiators because they wanted to change the regional picture, and they've said that all along.
And in order to change the regional picture, Judge, they had to sacrifice the lives of tens of thousands of people in the Gaza Strip who were killed, tortured, and disappeared, all for this geostrategic, diabolical master plan.
Here's a brief clip from Josh Paul.
You may know him, the highest-ranking State Department official to resign from the Biden-Blinken State Department over the genocide.
A brief but succinct and telling interview he gave last weekend.
Chris, cut number 10. Most of the bombs come from America.
Most of the technology comes from America.
And all of the fighter jets, all of Israel's fixed-wing fleet, comes from America.
There is a linkage between every single bomb that is dropped in Gaza and the U.S. because every single bomb that is dropped is dropped from an American-made plane.
These Israeli airstrikes, you could say, are made in America.
They are.
Made in America.
Tony Blinken can't deny that.
Joe Biden can't deny it.
Jake Sullivan can't deny it.
And history can't deny it.
Max, thank you very much.
You're so courageous.
Thanks for doing what you do.
Thanks for the privilege of allowing me to speak with you to an international audience, which I must tell you is huge as we speak.
All the best.
Thank you.
We all did what we could.
Thank you, Judge.
You're not going to quit.
God love you.
All the best, my man.
Stay well.
See you soon.
Sure. Wow.
I did not expect we'd be doing this.
I'm deeply privileged to have Max as a friend and colleague and collaborator, and we all are deeply grateful for his intellect and his courage.
Coming up later today, at 2 o'clock this afternoon, on all of this, Colonel Larry Wilkerson at 3 o'clock this afternoon, Professor John Mearsheimer at 4 o'clock this afternoon, the always worth waiting for, Colonel Douglas McGregor.
Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom.
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