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Feb. 7, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
26:05
INTEL Roundtable w/ Johnson & McGovern - Weekly Wrap
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Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Friday, February 7th, 2025, the end of the day, the end of the week, our favorite time of the week.
Larry Johnson and Ray McGovern, the Intelligence Community Roundtable.
Gentlemen, thank you for double duty and thank you for being here at this hour to accommodate my schedule.
I do want to spend most of our time...
In the next 30 minutes on Israel, Gaza, and the wild card that President Trump threw into it on Tuesday.
But before we do, a question on Ukraine.
Larry, since we met last, General Kellogg offered a ceasefire presidential elections, parliamentary elections in 2025.
And a demilitarized zone between eastern Ukraine and western Ukraine as a means to end the conflict.
When I saw that, I thought to myself, has he been in a closet for the past two years?
Yeah, the proposal's dead on arrival.
It won't fly with the Russians.
What's really interesting, though, is did you see that the United States told the United Kingdom, You guys are now in charge of the defense policy group at NATO for Ukraine.
You take this over.
So this whole group for coordinating aid to Ukraine that the United States used to be in charge of, we've kicked that to the Brits.
One further sign that Trump and company are getting ready to abandon it.
But is the spigot, is the Joe Biden spigot of aid still open and is the aid still flowing as far as we know, Larry?
Some of the military aid, but it doesn't make any difference.
You know, it's sending aid to units that can't use it because they're not trained to use it.
And the manpower issue still plagues Ukraine and there is no fix to it.
You know, it's not like, say, oh, just all we have to do is step back and spend two weeks and run out and recruit X number of people and then we'll be back in business.
No, they are so far behind the eight ball on this, there's no coming back from it.
Got it.
And look, Trump has no leverage with the Russians.
That's the bottom line.
I wonder if he recognizes that.
Ray, shortly before we went on air, you sent me a piece to...
Read about the old guard CIA leaking information to the New York Times and the Washington Post and questioning whether or not it was some sort of sabotage against the new CIA director Ratcliffe.
Can you explain this, please?
Sure. We have the old guard at the CIA.
It's not going to be there very much longer.
And they have a way of discrediting an incoming director of central intelligence or a director of the CIA very easily.
All they have to use is one of their agents of influence.
And their go-to guy, of course, is David Sanger from The New York Times, who's not worried about losing his job because he's not a staffer in the CIA.
He's what we call an agent of influence.
He's very, very helpful.
There's a whole history of David Sanger playing this role, I won't go into specifics, but this happened during my tenure there.
I was in Europe, but I knew the effects of this because several of the people where I was working were cashiers.
Many of them were super numeraries from Vietnam.
The head of personnel was a man named Fred Janet.
I used to work for him in 1963-64.
He's the father of Peter Jamy, who wrote the Mary's Mosaic thing about how his dad participated in the cover-up of Engelson and all the others, the assassination of John Kennedy.
Now, why do I mention him?
Well, when you have such high grades, you have to have a position that justifies that.
Ray, I'm going to stop you because I can barely hear you.
I don't know if your earbuds would be better or if you can get closer to the microphone, but I'm having some difficulty hearing you.
While you work on that, let me go to Larry.
The last thing you said was fascinating, Larry.
That Donald Trump does not have leverage with the Russians.
Does he realize he does not have leverage with the Russians?
No, not yet.
He's going to find out.
Again, he's approached this like a real estate deal, and he thinks that Vladimir Putin is upside down on his mortgage, that he's got a commercial property that is losing money right and left.
And that he's in a vulnerable position that any offer that Trump makes, he'll eagerly accept.
Well, great assumptions, but those are all false.
False assumptions.
Russia's not losing massive numbers of people, and Russia's economy is not in tatters.
Russia does have an inflation problem, but it's a different kind of inflation than we have in the United States.
In the United States, our inflation is driven because we printed too much money.
In Russia, their inflation is because actually their economy is so strong and the competition for employment resources is so great, that's pushing prices up.
I mean, it's an inflation that reflects a good problem, not a bad problem in that society.
Got it.
Got it.
Ray, back to you.
When Donald Trump made the announcement about the United States owning Well, that's a tough question.
They're more worried about their jobs right now.
This was deranged.
It was dangerous.
This was crazy.
Whether he could ever follow through on that, well, they might be called to follow through on it.
I think Ratcliffe...
And if Tulsi Gabbard becomes confirmed, I think they will teach Donald Trump about Ukraine, for example.
I think right now what we're seeing from Kellogg and others are just trial balloons.
You know, let's put this up and see if Putin will shoot it down.
I see the DMZ proposal, however, as having potential.
What the Russians want to do is have enough space between forces in Western Europe.
And Russia, so that there is no repeat of what they tried to do in Ukraine.
So, I see Mike Waltz calling up his opposite number.
I guess that would be Mitzvaziev.
And say, hey, would it be like to set up a call for Trump to talk to Putin?
Okay, just a second.
We're busy.
Call back later.
Yeah, but Ray, you know, Larry knows.
Well, that kind of demilitarized zone is, of course, not going to fly.
But a real one, I mean, Lavrov and others have said for two years now that it's a problem of geography.
You keep your weapons out of range of Russia.
Out of range of the provinces in Ukraine that we now occupy and we have a deal.
That's the kind of DMZ that I'm talking about.
Got it.
That is not what General Kellogg is talking about.
What you're talking about is far more irrational.
Those are trial balloons.
Judge, those are trial balloons.
They are not to be taken seriously.
They can't get through to the Kremlin.
They need to talk to top people in the Kremlin.
And the Kremlin say, I'm sorry, we're busy.
Until you stop thinking that you have leverage, we're going to just go on to the Dnieper River.
That's where it stands.
And the reason that there's been no telephone call is because the Russians have been hard-nosed about that.
We're not going to talk to you unless you come to our term.
But we're interested in the trial balloons that you might be putting up there in the air.
Larry, when the American government, whether it's Joe Biden or Donald Trump, says something that is ridiculous, does that advance the ball on the Kremlin?
Well, no.
Look, the United States has lost all credibility with the Russian people, and not just Vladimir Putin.
George W. Bush abandoned the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2001.
Donald Trump abandoned...
The Intermediate Nuclear Forces Agreement, INF, to control intermediate-range ballistic missiles in 2018-2019.
Minsk 1, Minsk 2, the French and Germans failed to, you know, back that one up.
They admitted they lied about it.
And then the United States comes in and sabotages the tentative peace agreement that the Ukrainians had reached with the Russians back in April 2022.
So at this point, the United States can make any promise, oh, we'll sign this, we'll assure this.
Russians are going to say, your word is worthless.
It's absolutely worthless.
And for Russia, the goal is not to stop the war in Ukraine.
Their objective is much broader.
Stop the threat of NATO.
Correct. Back NATO away.
And they've got two NATO bases right now, Poland and Romania, building a bigger one in Romania.
And they've got an Aegis missile system in each country that's capable of shooting a nuke at Russia.
Russia wants those gone.
So, you know, Trump...
And Trump doesn't...
What does Trump have to give?
What does he have...
I wonder if Trump and Kellogg and Waltz and Hegseth and Gorka and whoever has Trump's ear understand that this is bigger than just the special military operation in Ukraine,
that the only way there will be a lasting peace will be for NATO to back off, almost back off to the promise that Jim Baker and George H.W. Bush made.
20 years ago.
No, they don't.
Listen, there are flashes of light here.
President Trump has said, you know, I can understand why the Russians don't want NATO in Ukraine right up against the Russian border.
You know, I understand where Putin's coming from on that.
You know, he said that three weeks ago.
I mean, that's 80% of the problem, for God's sake.
Correct. Correct, Ray.
Correct. Let's transfer over to Israel.
We all know what the president announced, and then his people backed off a little bit.
And then he said this, caress the full screen.
This was in his Truth Social.
The Gaza Strip would be turned over to the United States by Israel at the conclusion of fighting.
The Palestinians, people like Chuck Schumer, Would have already been resettled in far safer and more beautiful communities with new and modern homes in the region.
They would actually have a chance to be happy, safe and free.
The U.S., working with great development teams from all over the world, I'm so tempted to throw Jared Kushner's name in here, but that's not in the text, would slowly and carefully begin the construction of what would become one of the greatest and most spectacular developments of its kind on Earth.
No soldiers by the US would be needed.
Stability for the region would reign.
Larry, does he understand what the hell he is talking about?
Israel will turn Gaza over to the United States.
Israel can't defeat Hamas in Gaza.
Well, notice he says when the fighting ends.
Well, we've already seen that Israel, after 15 months, with every advantage that they have, both in terms of tanks, artillery, planes, drones, intelligence overhead, that Israel was incapable of defeating Hamas.
And so, you know, Trump has established the benchmark when the fighting's over.
Well, the fighting's never going to be over.
And one of the major reasons the Palestinians are not safe and not protected is because the United States has provided weapons to Israel that Israel has used to kill civilians in Palestine.
But look, I think people are overreacting to what Trump said because it's nonsense.
It is not a plan because he's already made clear, hey, we're not going to pay for it.
Well, who is?
Well, we don't know that yet.
B, we're not going to have any troops on the ground.
C, we don't have a third country that these people can go to because everybody that we keep saying will take them.
They've just told us, hell no, go pound sand.
So Egypt, Jordan, we have no solution.
So it's a plan that has no plan.
There are no steps for implementation.
He's talking fantasy.
Let me play what he said earlier today.
It is fantasy, Larry.
I agree with you.
But he doesn't back off of it.
And Ray, I'll go to you as soon as we run this clip.
It's a little over a minute.
Chris, cut number 20. It's been very well received where basically the United States would view it as a real estate transaction where we'll be an investor in that part of the world.
And no rush to do anything.
We wouldn't need anybody there.
It would be supplied and given to us by Israel.
They'll watch it in terms of security.
We're not talking about boots on the ground or anything.
But I think we'll...
The fact that we're there, that we have an investment there, I think would go a long way to creating peace.
We don't want to see everybody move back and then move out in 10 years.
This has been going on forever.
Fifty years, much more than that.
We just want to see stability.
That would be having us have that particular piece in that particular location.
I think would show great stability and would lead to great stability in the area for very little money, very little price.
And we wouldn't need soldiers at all.
That would be taken care of by others.
And the investments are taken care of by others also.
So for no investment, I mean, virtually no investment whatsoever, it would bring stability to the area.
And others can invest in it later on.
Ray, have any international leaders, Arab, Western, Chinese, Russian?
Taking this seriously.
You know, I haven't checked with Zelensky, Judge, but...
Okay, you may have a winner there, Ray.
Okay. You know, this is, you know, this is nothing to left, as my Russian teacher used to say.
This is delusional.
This is dangerous.
This man has no reins on him.
No one even reviews his social things on order of magnitude things.
And no one tells him that Chuck Schumer, oh, Mr. President, Chuck Schumer is not a Palestinian.
You ought to cross that one out.
And, you know, Mr. President, you really ought to let us take a look at this before you put this stuff out.
Because if you're going to ask us to implement this stuff, you know, it's really, really crazy.
So here's my take.
The Russians are looking on at this.
The Chinese, everyone's looking on at this.
This guy is unbridled.
He has nobody to say no to him.
And he's got people like Fox News that accept this as the new normal.
That is dangerous.
He has no real restraints.
That's exactly what Putin said, that he really feared a candidate during the last election in the U.S. that was not predictable.
And that's what we have now in Trump.
Does he really think he can do this in South Asia?
Well, what does he think he can do in Europe?
They're on tender hooks.
I dare say they're probably on greater alert now because they can't predict what this unmanageable, what this delusional person might do.
Larry, could this be the Richard Nixon syndrome?
I want them to think.
I'm a madman?
Oh, absolutely.
Look, Judge, Donald Trump's career has been one of entertainment.
He has, you know, when he was on The Apprentice, he was playing a role.
When he was in the ring with Vince McMahon on the World Wrestling, you know, Wrestle Tonight, whatever it was, breaking chairs overhead, you know, it's an act.
It's a bizarre act.
I agree with Ray.
Saying this kind of thing is crazy.
The rest of the world just went, what?
They shook their head and did more than a double take.
But he didn't put any meat on the bone.
There is no plan for implementing it.
Saying he'd like to get rid of it.
In fact, look, it challenges, this is the irony, it challenges the very heart of the Zionist belief and claim.
Because the Zionists say, this is our land.
God gave it to us from the river to the sea.
This is ours.
It's God gave it to us, no one else.
And Trump said, now you're going to give it to me.
You know, now what's funny about it is people like Smotrich are going, oh yeah, yeah, Trump's on our side.
And I'm going, you bunch of dummies.
You're giving your sacred land to Donald Trump, who's not Jewish.
You know, this is Trump, I think, trying, you know, in a very twisted way, trying to box in Netanyahu in order to keep the ceasefire going.
Ray, did Trump embarrass or humiliate Netanyahu with this?
I don't believe so, no.
Look at the body language.
In my view, and this is contested, I know.
Netanyahu could not be more pleased.
In essence, Trump has given Netanyahu the job of finishing off Gaza with or without any ceasefire.
He's given him permission to finish off these folks.
The problem is the Palestinians are not going to be finished off.
I know that's from some personal friends I have in the West Bank.
They can have their sons crippled by rifle shots.
They can have their brothers murdered by...
We're also rifle shots.
They're not going to give up.
They're going to stay.
I had one Palestinian father tell me, hey, what do you mean?
What do you mean?
I had asked him, how can he permit his teenagers to do these kind of things?
He looked at me.
He said, Mr. McGovern, my God, are you saying that I should tell him to acquiesce in this?
I'm not going to do that.
So I've seen that firsthand.
And that's the reality that Trump either doesn't get or the advisers around him don't get.
They're going to have to get it pretty soon.
We'll just have to see how this plays out.
Look, Judge, I love Ray to death, but I disagree with him on this strongly because Trump has made it clear because Israel wants to go bomb Iran.
And Trump's made it clear, no, we're not going to do that.
In fact, Trump's working a deal through Whitcoff to negotiate with Iran.
And if Trump...
Trump invested a lot in the ceasefire.
Even Netanyahu agreed.
The ceasefire would not have happened without Trump.
And the Israelis, the Zionist crazies, yes, they want to end the ceasefires immediately.
As soon as they get the last hostage out, they want to start the attack again.
But the problem is, let's deal with the reality of what we've seen over the last 16 months.
Israel can't do it.
Yeah, they can kill a lot of Palestinians.
But the Palestinians, the Hamas folks, could kill enough Israelis to make it painful.
And what we've seen is at least this ceasefire that came about because of Trump has stopped the Houthis and Hezbollah from firing, and it stopped the loss of life on the part of the Palestinians at the rate that it was before.
So, I mean, let's give some credit at least to recognize that this is, I don't think Trump's trying to unleash Netanyahu at all.
You know, Netanyahu wasn't sitting there fist pumping going, yeah!
He looked a little sheepish.
Because when Trump said, yeah, give us this land which he's claiming is theirs from God.
No, now Trump's their God.
He wants the land.
Very articulate, Larry.
Ray, why does the United States always side with the oppressor?
Well, that's the question here.
You know, Bishop Tutu, South Africa, apartheid.
He made the point that in conditions such as these, genocide and so forth, to be quiet, not to do anything, is to side with the oppressor.
And I think that is exactly what the United States is doing.
But people are talking about how clever Trump is in all this.
I think Netanyahu is twice as clever.
I think Netanyahu, mark my words, has carte blanche to resume the offensive against Gaza as soon as he wants to, now with what he considers to be Trump's blessing.
And I see the situation getting a lot worse there, the fly in the ointment being.
That the Palestinians are not going to give up.
They're not going to give up their land.
Rather, they're going back to destroy homes and trying to rebuild.
So will the international community play a role in this?
Well, either that or they will be in the camp.
They will choose the side of the oppressor.
Gentlemen, thank you very much for your time, always for your double duty.
We'll see you again Monday morning.
We ended the week on a high note.
Who knows what will come at us next week, but it is a joy for me and for our viewers to start the week and to end the week with two very dear friends with whom I've collaborated for a long time whose intellect and knowledge and personal courage.
I trust immeasurably, so deeply grateful for everything you guys do.
Ray, we'll see you at 10. Larry, we'll see you at 11.30 on Monday morning.
Alistair's already asleep.
He's getting ready for his gig at 8 o'clock on Monday.
I'm kidding.
Alistair's in Moscow, and he's writing a piece for us from Moscow, which he and I, of course, will explore on Monday morning.
Thank you, gentlemen.
Have a great weekend.
You too, Judge.
You too, Judge.
And just to repeat, Alistair Crook Monday at 8 o'clock, Ray McGovern at 10, Larry Johnson at 11.30.
Judge the Paul Towner for Judging Freedom.
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