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March 21, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
32:42
INTEL Roundtable w/ Johnson & McGovern : Weekly Wrap
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Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Friday, March 21st, 2025.
It's the end of the day, the end of the week.
It's time for our favorite gathering, the Intelligence Community Roundtable, with my dear friends who always do double and sometimes triple duty on this show, Ray McGovern and Larry Johnson.
Guys, welcome here, and thank you for accommodating my schedule.
Don't take Route 80 in New Jersey.
If you're anywhere here, you'll sit there for four hours because of sinkholes that the government can't fix and the media didn't tell anybody about.
Anyway, I'm over it.
Welcome here.
Ray, is the world a better and safer place today because last weekend Donald Trump bombed the Houthis and killed Yemen civilians?
Judge, in my view, Donald Trump is Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
I can't give you an unadulterated answer to your question because the world is better in Europe and worldwide.
We have escaped what came close to a nuclear exchange with Russia for no good reason.
But in Gaza...
Our country is enabling, arming, funding genocide in all its manifestations.
I just think that that makes the world a lot less safe for people that don't look like us.
And I think that's going to have a comeuppance for our government in the longer run.
So it's a mixed bag.
safer in Ukraine, better with relationship to Russia, really bad in giving this knee-jerk support for extermination of a whole people
Larry, before you respond to the similar question, here's Trump saying we should never bomb Yemen.
I look at your policies, I see secure the borders, bring jobs back.
I look at the Democrats and many Republicans and it's Foreign war and foreign expansion.
What is that?
I think it's just a failed mentality.
It's crazy.
You can sell problems over a telephone and said they start dropping bombs.
I see recently they're dropping bombs all over Yemen.
You don't have to do that.
You can talk in such a way where they respect you and they listen to you.
Viktor Orban of Hungary, you know, the leader.
They call him a strong man.
Who cares if he's a strong man or not a strong man?
He's a very powerful guy.
He said the problem the world has is that Donald Trump is no longer president.
When he was president, China didn't play around.
Russia didn't play around.
Nobody played around.
And we had no problems.
Today the whole world is on fire.
He was on a roll.
It was during the campaign.
He was with Tim Pool who was egging him on.
But he did condemn Biden for bombing Yemen.
Larry. Yeah, that was what Ray described as Dr. Jekyll.
The good Donald Trump.
But this last weekend he became...
Joe Biden?
You know, the premise that the Trump people are putting out is that, oh boy, we're tough.
We're not like that weakling Joe Biden.
We're going to show these Yemenis.
And, you know, this is a level of stupidity that's really tough to achieve.
Because if they had paid attention to what Biden's Department of Defense did under Lloyd Austin, who initiated Operation Prosperity Guardian.
The United States discovered that the two destroyers and cruiser that normally accompanies a carrier strike group and carries on board this vertical launch system of Aegis missiles,
that when they fire them, the only way that they can reload it is by taking that ship to a port somewhere.
And so lo and behold, if the ship is on station for a couple of weeks, And the Houthis are firing 10 to 15 missiles and drones and forcing for every missile or drone that's attacking.
Usually the ships have to fire at least two, if not three missiles at the incoming target.
Well, a destroyer carries 96 of these cells.
So just do the math.
If the Houthis fire 20 missiles at you, that's 60 of that 96 that are gone in one day.
So, over time, what we discovered with Joe Biden's crew is, oh my God, we can't hang out there in the Red Sea because if we do, the ships, we're not going to have any defense.
So they had to withdraw.
So here's Trump.
Oh, we're tough.
Okay. Hey, knucklehead, you just discovered what Joe Biden and his folks took 15 months to discover.
Remember, last Saturday and Sunday, Trump was, you know, beating the chest.
Oh, we're so tough.
We're so bad.
We're teaching those Houthis.
And now you haven't heard much about them from the last two or three days.
While the Houthis have been launching missiles into Israel now, and they're launching daily attacks on the U.S. Harry S. Truman.
So, I mean, this is, like I said, this is a level of achieving a level of stupidity that's really difficult to do.
But congratulations, Donald Trump.
What are we doing in the Red Sea?
What is the U.S. Navy doing in the Red Sea?
Is this all a favorite in Netanyahu, Larry?
No, there's a supposedly, quote, freedom of navigation.
But what this is really about, this is laying a predicate because Trump wants to attack Iran.
Trump wants to attack Iran.
Yeah, but...
Does Trump think...
That the Israelis, even with American backing, is it reasonable for him to think could defeat Iran?
Judge, I don't share the view that the U.S. is going to succumb to Bibi's blandishments, do something so crazy as to encourage him or condone him to attack Iran.
What I've been saying to people is that Bush and Cheney had this in mind.
But that was before there were ever hypersonic missiles by anyone.
Iran has them now.
The Houthis have them now.
So I'm maybe an outlier here, but unless I see a positive signal, and that signal would be someone like Tony Blinken saying the Iranians are just one week away from a nuclear weapon.
Well, if that starts to be being said by U.S. intelligence, not Netanyahu, Then you have a lie that could justify this kind of attack.
Actually, even Bill Burns, perhaps to atone for all his lies, a week before he left office, he said, you know, still I have to remind you that the Iranians are not working on a nuclear weapon, as we have said consistently since 2007.
Well, why did he say that?
I think we want to prevent a war, too.
Does Mossad know that the Iranians are not working on a nuclear weapon?
And do they tell Netanyahu?
And is he lying to the Israeli public, the American government, and the world?
Or is Mossad telling him what they think he wants to hear, Ray?
Yes, yes, yes, yes.
Yes, they know.
Yes, they told him.
This is a PR act designed to justify an attack on Iran, which the U.S. would be mousetrapped into.
It's very clear we have those old...
Graphics of Netanyahu with the bomb at the UN showing that they're just about to get a nuclear weapon.
Well, this is the one contribution the intelligence community has made in a salutary way in 2007.
You count the years since.
They have not started to work on a nuclear weapon.
And you have actually the Supreme Ayatollah saying, we still have that patwa in...
In effect, we're not going to do that.
So, you know, it's going to take more lies, lies shared in by the people who are advising Trump.
Larry, I'm going to suggest that we're in a dangerous, not a novel suggestion, a dangerous situation because the people around Trump, his so-called national security team, with the possible exception of a once-in-a-while Tulsi Gabbard, seem to be telling him exactly what they think he wants to hear.
Whether it is faithful to the truth or not.
Could you imagine Pete Hegseth saying, oh no, Mr. President, we can't do that.
Think about what the response will be.
I know, Pete, he'll say, when do you want it done, Mr. President?
Well, you put your finger on what the problem is.
It's not so much that they're yes men, it's just that they don't have any independent thought and they don't really have the gravitas to step up to and say, Mr. President, You know, Joe Biden and his team already tried this in Yemen, the bombings,
and it didn't work.
And here's why it didn't work.
On top of that, the Aegis missile system, it's called an SM-3, that's fired.
They've only got, like, as of 2018, they only had a total of 660 in stock.
So it sounds like we've got unlimited supply.
We got very limited supply.
And so when they fire them off, they can't replace them.
So, you know, you should have had somebody that could step up to Trump and say, hey, you're going to deplete our inventory, number one.
And number two, it's not going to stop the Houthis.
So let's step back and look at an alternative.
Now, I hope Ray is right.
But what I've heard out of Trump...
Out of Pete Hegseth and out of Marco Rubio are clear, direct threats to attack over the last week.
They've all said, basically pointing, that if the Houthis use any of these hypersonic missiles against us, we're holding you, Iran, a response.
And there have been B-52s that have been put up to fly patterns and practice refueling just outside in international airspace.
But just outside Iranian airspace, I think these guys are that crazy that they're going to do it.
Man, I hope I'm wrong.
But what we're sending are alarming.
Ritter agrees with you.
Judge, let me interject.
Hang on, Ray.
Ritter agrees with you on that, Larry, referring to Trump as an idiot for having these people around him who are just yes men.
Go ahead, Ray.
He's forced to have people like that around him politically.
I think he's his own man.
There are two people that will stand up to Trump.
One's name is Putin and the other's name is Xi.
Putin and Trump no doubt discussed Iran during that long conversation on Tuesday.
They just completed military exercises, the Chinese, the Russians, and the Ukrainians.
You mean the Iranians?
Yeah, I'm sorry.
What did I say?
Ukrainians. They both had ANIA.
It's an easy slip to make.
I've been making that slip all week.
Go ahead, Ray.
Me too.
So China, Russia, and Iran, they're together as never before.
And I'm sure that Putin is saying to Trump,"Look, don't be misguided by any of these Netanyahu supporters in your White House staff.
This is not going to work, okay?
Because we won't allow it to let it work.
There is too much at stake.
China depends on that Persian Gulf oil for about 30-40% of its oil needs." And we have distinct defense interests there.
So don't even think about listening to these guys.
It's not going to work.
It's crazy.
Trim your sails and let's focus on real things like bringing peace to Ukraine.
Here's Mike Waltz threatening Iran.
Chris? Iran needs to hear him loud and clear.
It is completely unacceptable and it will be stopped.
The level of support that they've been providing the Houthis, just like they have Hezbollah, just like they have the militias in Iraq, Hamas and others.
The difference here is the Houthis have incredibly sophisticated air defenses and they also have anti-shipping cruise missiles, drones, sea skimming types of attack drones and other.
Ballistic missiles, even.
They've launched dozens of attacks on multiple warships, dozens of attacks, over 175 on global commerce, sank multiple ships.
I just think the American people need to understand what has happened here.
The previous administration had a series of feckless responses.
President Trump is coming in with overwhelming force.
We will hold not only the Houthis accountable, but we're going to hold Iran their backers accountable as well.
Is this just pro-Zionist propaganda?
Well, my answer is, so stop starving the Palestinians, for God's sake.
Make Netanyahu adhere to the provisions of that ceasefire agreement.
Let those damn trucks in.
We Houthis have not attacked people until the ceasefire ended.
We don't like people starved to death.
We lost several hundred thousands of people starved to death because of Saudi and U.S. air attacks.
So let the food in and we'll stop what we already stopped once that original ceasefire.
Was implemented and now it's out of the way, of course.
We'll stop.
You stop first.
Going to Gaza, Larry.
Is Israel safer today because the IDF slaughtered a thousand civilians in Gaza in the past week?
No, no.
This is going to inflict more damage.
Not only on the Palestinian civilians, but also on the Israelis.
And this is not going to solve Netanyahu's political problems at home.
But more importantly, it creates more emotional, psychological problems for the Israeli troops.
Because, you know, it's one thing if you're out fighting guys who are actually carrying weapons and shooting back at you.
Okay, you can take some pride and honor in that.
But when you're killing women and children, unarmed civilians, not all of the members of the Israeli occupation force are psychopaths.
There are still many that have a conscience.
And the murdering of these civilians weighs upon them.
But unfortunately, the Palestinians are paying the heaviest price.
And the only country in the world that's standing up for them, Standing up trying to help defend them are the Yemenis and the person of the Houthis.
Before we go over to Ukraine and Russia, is Netanyahu on the ropes?
I mean, was it necessary for him to fire the head of Shin Bet and then the Supreme Court of Israel said not so fast, he's not going anywhere?
Larry? Has it been confirmed yet that he's been fired?
I know he's talking about firing the head of Shembat.
Well, the cabinet voted to fire him, and his lawyers went before the Israeli Supreme Court and got an order enjoining the government from firing.
So he hasn't actually been fired.
But this has to look terrible.
This guy's leading the investigation of Netanyahu's corruption, the latest allegation of which is that the people around Netanyahu were bribed by intelligence agents from Qatar.
I would think this is serious stuff.
Well, I do know that there were protests, significant protests in Jerusalem and in Tel Aviv today.
So this is, you know, part of the motivation for killing Palestinians is to try to divert attention, try to create an external threat, and to use that to justify cracking down on these protests.
So, you know, Israel's not in a good position politically.
And, you know, Alistair Crook does a great job, you know, every Monday reviewing that for you.
The problem is these Palestinians are still dying.
And it's like the world sits by and watches it and lets it happen and does nothing.
Ray, here is President Zelensky yesterday pining for the good old days when Ukraine could have joined NATO.
Chris, cut number two.
I've always said, unfortunately, We're not being accepted into NATO.
We really want to.
And we believe that it would address many problems and many issues.
We talked today when people are looking for ways to strengthen our army, strengthen air defense, how to give money, how to have a lot of soldiers, where to spend them.
Where to hold training?
Where to conduct exercises?
What kind of contingent should be present?
Who should be in the air?
Who should be at sea?
Or it could just be NATO, making NATO simpler, less costly, and so on.
But again, there's nothing to talk about.
The United States, as the main ally in NATO, does not support Ukraine's membership in NATO.
That's it for today.
Yes. You can't just give this away to the Russians.
I believe that this is a great gift that I'm taking off.
So from the negotiations, I...
I guess, Ray, he has finally acknowledged in public that his suicidal wish to join NATO is now off the table.
Is that the way you read that, or do you read it that he's not giving up anything?
Well, he's been delusional all this time.
This time he seems to accept that when the President of the United States says he's not going to get into NATO, that's pretty much what's not going to happen.
You know, the delusion exists more among people like Keir Starmer and Macron and other pygmies, is what the Russian leaders are calling European leaders.
That bubble to the top in European governments.
They live in this delusion.
And, you know, to quote someone that I'm not supposed to quote, Ayn Rand, she said, you know, it's possible to avoid the truth, okay?
But it's not possible to avoid the consequences of having avoided the truth, okay?
You got that?
Yeah, Ray, that is one of my favorite one-liners from Ayn Rand.
It's a truism.
The statement is a truism for all those people, many of whom you know, that want to escape reality.
Larry, is there a real ceasefire of any sort going on between the Russians and the Ukrainians, as far as your sources can tell you?
The Russians are holding up their end of the deal not to attack energy infrastructure in Ukraine.
Ukraine is violating the ceasefire.
Or it's called a ceasefire.
Now, when Putin agreed to do this, he wasn't really accepting a ceasefire.
Russia was already in the position of having destroyed most of the energy infrastructure in Ukraine anyway.
So calling a 30-day halt to it was not like Russia was interrupting its offensive flow.
But Ukraine immediately struck back and they hit a gas terminus.
Along the border of Kursk and Sumy, which is in the northern part of Ukraine, on the southern border of Russia.
So, one thing is clear, though, as far as an actual ceasefire, Russia will never agree to a ceasefire.
That is off the table.
They have been burned too many times by the West, where they've accepted proposals for ceasefires, and then...
The West and the Ukrainians have betrayed them and used that time to renew, resupply troops, build up new forces, and then launch new attacks.
Once they decided, okay, the ceasefire is no longer in effect.
So, Ray, Donald Trump has said he wants the U.S. to own and develop Gaza, and now he says he wants the U.S. to own and upgrade.
The nuclear power plants in Ukraine.
I'm going to guess that your view and Larry's view is that the latter is as fanciful and unrealistic as the former.
That's when it's easy.
Yes, Judge, I agree with that.
There's a phantasmagoria at work here.
And, you know, it's sort of real, but it's also, of course, a bargaining chip.
You throw out a crazy idea and then you back off.
Well, I didn't really mean that, like he has in Gaza.
I meant this or something less.
And that's the way, I guess, real estate guys up in New York City work.
Hang on, Larry.
I want to hear your thoughts.
But here's President Zelensky on that very topic.
Trump's wish to own the nuclear power plants in Ukraine.
Cut number one.
All nuclear power plants belong to the people of Ukraine.
These are...
State-owned nuclear power plants, did he?
They belong to us.
This is not private ownership.
Energy. Nuclear power in Ukraine, yes, we have thermal generation.
There is green energy.
There is private.
There is private partnership.
And there is completely private energy.
This is absolutely clear and correct.
But all nuclear power belongs to the state of Ukraine.
For once it makes sense, Larry.
Well, let me observe that his English is surprisingly better.
He's probably practicing because he recognizes he's going to be going into exile.
He wants to spruce up so when he's walking along Barrow Beach...
Larry, his English is the product of executive producer Chris Leonard and something called AI.
Oh, okay.
Well, you know, actually, I would argue Zelensky's being really stupid about this because if they give the United States control of the nuclear power plants, that is the United States doing the equivalent of giving a security guarantee to Ukraine.
Because now that we control the power plants, if the Russians dare to do anything to inhibit the operation of those power plants, My God, that's an attack on the United States.
So that's what Trump is trying to do here.
I mean, it's sort of sneaky and semi-clever, and Zelensky doesn't grasp that concept.
Yeah, he's right about to protect the sovereign rights of Ukraine, but the reality of what Trump is proposing is a backdoor security guarantee without him coming up front and saying, yeah, We'll guarantee your security.
Ray, I'm going to guess that at some point during that two and a half hour telephone call, Putin said to him, hey, Donald, why don't you close the spigot of military arms to Ukraine?
The war will be over in a month.
Assuming he said that, what could Trump's response have been?
Josh, this is a tough one.
I'm sure he did say that.
It's in the readout.
It's in the Russian readout.
Right. It's not in the American version of the readout, though.
It's like two different phone calls, but go ahead.
That's correct.
So, okay, I'm Trump.
And I say, well, can you just give me a little bit more time?
I got political problems here in Washington.
Surely you understand.
Yeah, it's inevitable, but I need a little bit more.
Can you give me a little bit more room?
And when Putin said that that was maybe another week.
There, Don.
That's it.
That's my guess.
How do you see Ukraine unwinding, Larry?
I know I ask you guys this every week, but every week there's some event that causes us to rethink what we said last week.
This week the event was this two and a half hour phone call.
You know, Ukraine is losing.
They're going to continue to lose.
And the question is...
How much more territory are they going to end up surrendering?
Vladimir Putin has made it very clear what his demands are, and you and I heard Sergei Lavrov reiterate those demands in our conversation with him now almost two weeks ago.
And so Russia is going to continue to press the war forward.
They're not going to put their troops at risk by doing foolish mass assaults.
And so that's what accounts sometimes for what the West criticizes as the slow approach or slow movement of Russian forces.
But within the last month, Vladimir Putin has begun talking about Novorossiya.
Novorossiya refers to basically all of the territory along the left, you know, the west side of the Dnieper River, along the bank, all the way down to Odessa, Mikhailov, and the entire...
The entirety of the coast of the Black Sea.
And I fully expect that that's what Russia is going to take.
Because they continue to put the offer out there.
You know, the offer up to this point has been, you know, to Ukraine, abandon Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhia, and Kherson.
They haven't.
So now Russia is going to add on to it.
Okay, we're going to take Kursk.
We're going to take Dnipropetrovsk.
We're going to take Mikhailov.
We're going to take Odessa.
Tough luck.
Too bad for you.
You should have taken the deal when you had it.
And I think this will continue to drag on this year simply because Russia is not going to accelerate and put both its own forces and civilians at unnecessary risk.
Ray, you have a similar view or a different observation about how this thing proceeds from here?
It's about the same, Judge.
It's really hard to predict this.
The important thing to remember is that the Russians are out there for demilitarization and denazification.
They're going to insist on both, and they're going to be able to get both because of their battlefield success.
You understand the Russian mentality, Ray.
How do you think President Putin reacted when Trump sent not the Secretary of State to meet Lavrov?
Lavrov, sorry.
Larry warned me that I shouldn't slip in front of Ray.
He warned me a dozen times when we were in Moscow.
I'm a graduate of the Ray McGovern School of Language.
Yes, yes.
Didn't send Marco Rubio to meet President Putin, but sent his billionaire industrialist buddy to meet President Putin.
How did the Russians view something like that?
They made him wait three hours in the outer office.
Was that the message they were sending?
Well, that was after some disappointing performance by Rubio.
I think they welcomed it, Judge.
They're very realpolitik, very practical people.
They know who has Trump's ear.
And who has Trump's cudgel?
And they know it's not Rubio.
And I think that's probably a good thing.
So, yeah, they may have made him waiting, but that was, I think, for the disservice that Rubio and Waltz and the others had done by coming up with these crazy proposals.
So, yeah, I think as long as they have trust in Steve Witkoff.
It's possible that...
I don't know if Whitcoff is going on Monday to...
I haven't seen the American delegation yet to go to Saudi Arabia to continue to talk, but I understand it is responsible people.
I don't know if Whitcoff is involved.
Before we go, just to lighten up the afternoon, Chris has found the latest pronouncement on Ukraine from Bojo.
You've got to remember that Volodymyr Zelensky, he's not an unreasonable guy.
He got elected, really, as a peacenik.
In 2019, he tried to do a deal with Putin.
As far as I can remember, his basic problem was that the Ukrainian nationalists couldn't accept.
The compromise.
And, you know, you can see why not.
His basic problem was that he listened to you, you jackass.
All right, guys.
Thank you very much.
Thanks for accommodating my schedule.
Yeah, avoid interstate 80. Yes, I absolutely will.
I absolutely will.
And I know the roots around it.
I just wasn't prepared.
God love you both.
We'll see you on Monday morning.
Thank you so much.
All the best.
And coming up Monday morning, as usual, Alistair Crook at 8 in the morning, Ray McGovern at 10, Larry Johnson at 1130.
Have a nice weekend, my dear friends.
Thank you for watching.
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