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April 13, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
30:05
Scott Ritter : The Perils of US/Israel
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Hi, everyone.
Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Monday, April 14th, 2025.
Scott Ritter is here on just how dangerous is the U.S. relationship to Israel, how dangerous for the United States.
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Scott Ritter, welcome here.
I want to chat with you a little bit about your new book, Highway to Hell, which I found a riveting read and which I was privileged to be able to write a blurb for.
We'll get to it at the end.
Please remind me if I forget, because we have so many other things to talk about.
Do you accept the Alastair Crook theory or thesis that the Trump Foreign Policy Administration is now divided between the neocons, Rubio, Waltz,
Hegseth, Gorka, General Cavoli on one hand, and the America Firsters, Tulsi Gabbard, Vice President Vance, Steve Witkoff?
In order to accept that thesis, and I don't disagree with, first of all, Alistair and I are very good friends, and I'm loathe to disagree with anything he says.
He's a very experienced man, very experienced analyst.
But there's a structural problem to that thesis.
That implies that there's actually a foreign policy establishment that is capable of The kind of coordinated policymaking that one normally finds in a presidential administration where the National Security Council,
led by the National Security Advisor, runs shepherd over the flock, so to speak, bringing together principals who think of the big picture, then delegating down to the deputies-level meetings, and then these get farmed out to various interagency.
That's the way it normally works.
You get direction from the top, it gets fed down to the bottom, then the bottom works its way back to the top.
I don't see that kind of structure in play right now.
What I see is a bunch of principals running around.
Shooting from the hip, making knee-jerk statements that aren't coordinated with others.
And this is why you see a division taking place, because normally you wouldn't want to see a division of this nature.
That's what the process is designed to avoid.
Any differences of opinion.
It gets hashed out behind closed doors in conference rooms where people lay out the options, lay out their solutions, debate the differences, and then come up with a consensus that says this is the direction we need to go to fulfill the direction given to us by the commander-in-chief.
I also think that we're lacking in terms of specific direction.
I think Donald Trump is very vague in his pronouncements.
They shift day by day.
I'd hate to be a policymaker in the Trump administration.
Basically, I don't have the luxury of farming things out to groups of experts who will have a chance to chew on it for a while, digest it, and come back with something.
Instead, every day, something new.
The president's shifting, changing, shifting, changing.
What we're seeing here is...
Not so much a formal divide, but what we see is just a cacophony of voices shouting out, saying, this is our opinion on what the president has said today, because there's no other formal structure for them to give voice to their concerns.
Well, do you think that the neocons, whose names I just articulated, want the war in Ukraine to continue for the same reason that the neocons wanted the war in the first place as a battering ram?
As crazy as this sounds, to you and me, and to those listening to us now, as a battering ram with which to drive President Putin from office.
Lindsey Graham has pretty much said that.
Yeah, until the Commander-in-Chief, President Trump, issues a statement that says that the United States is formally departing from past policy, that the policy of the United States is no longer to...
Bring down Russia.
Bring down Vladimir Putin's government.
We're not here to strategically defeat Russia or keep Russia in a corner.
A formal policy pronouncement has to be made that the United States has broken with past policy and that we are now pursuing a policy solely focused on, you know, peaceful cooperation with Russia as opposed to potentially violent condemnation.
He hasn't made that statement.
I'd love to see what the CIA's directives are regarding intelligence collection and covert operations.
Is the CIA still tasked with carrying out operations designed to foment a...
A political opposition with the goal of bringing down Vladimir Putin.
Tulsi Gabbard is the direction of national intelligence, but she isn't a policy maker.
She's a policy implementer, and she has to be going crazy.
Asking the President, what is the policy you want me to?
I have a CIA right now that's chomping at the bit to go out and continue what they've done.
I remind your audience that the CIA built more than 20 bases inside Ukraine solely for the purpose of engaging the Russians in covert operations.
Some of these covert operations were paramilitary in nature, which means that we are on the precipice of armed conflict.
Has the president reversed these orders?
Has he ordered these bases shut down?
Has he terminated the directives that gave these bases their authority?
I haven't seen anything like that.
I think the president right now is operating on the premise that we're going to get peace and then we'll sort things out.
But if I'm the Russians, why would I have peace with a country that continues to believe that their singular focus when it comes to Russia is the strategic defeat of Russia?
It's a very confused policy situation.
The president has to do a better job.
I suggest to you it's even worse than that.
I suggest to you that General Cavoli and his colleagues, now this is from the New York Times, and it rings truthful to me and I suspect to you, have been involved in targeting, and we know that the government is still providing military equipment and ammunition.
The United States is at war with Russia.
We're picking their targets and doing everything but pulling the triggers.
Do you agree?
I do, but again, I believe this isn't so much the product of a concerted decision made by the President of the United States as opposed to the reality of momentum.
I mean, we have a system that was already shoving military aid.
We know that the generals were planning.
There was this...
This whole system in place to assist the Ukrainians in waging war against Russia.
Has the president shut this down?
General Kovoli cannot and would not act on his own volition.
Right. Agreed.
Here is the president's most recent pronouncement on the United States policy with respect to Ukraine.
This was last night, Sunday night, Palm Sunday evening, aboard Air Force One.
Tell me what you think of this.
Chris, cut number one.
Do you have a reaction to Russia's Palm Sunday attack?
I think it was terrible, and I was told they made a mistake.
But I think it's a horrible thing.
I think the whole war is a horrible thing.
I think the war is, for that war to have started is...
An abuse of power.
You were told they made a mistake.
Do you mean it was unintentional?
They made a mistake.
I believe it was...
Look, you're going to ask them.
This is Biden's war.
This is not my war.
I've been here for a very short period of time.
This is a war that was under Biden.
He gave him billions and billions of dollars.
He should have never allowed if he had any brain, which he didn't have and doesn't have.
And now it's being proven.
He wouldn't have allowed that war to start.
I would have absolutely not.
That war would never have taken place.
But remember this.
This is Biden's war.
I'm just trying to get it stopped so that we can save a lot of lives.
They happen to be Ukrainian and Russian lives.
But all I want to do is get it stopped.
But he is also giving billions and his CIA is also providing intel to the Ukrainians and his military, John Roccavoli and others, are also picking targets.
So how can he blame this entirely on Biden?
He can't.
I mean, this is the problem.
This is typical Trump.
I mean, it's a policy out of control.
He could take control of his policy.
First of all, Mr. President, take some friendly advice.
Don't speak unless you know what you're talking about.
It wasn't a Russian mistake.
The Russians deliberately targeted a gathering of military officials and mercenaries who were meeting in Sumy, an awards ceremony, and continued coordination of the ongoing conflict.
They were rewarding these people for invading Kursk, and the Russians hit this target.
Tragically, civilians lost their lives as well, but this wasn't a deliberate attack against peaceful citizens on Palm Sunday.
This was a deliberate targeting of A legitimate military target that you, Mr. President, play a role in.
It may have been Biden that facilitated the planning that led to the invasion of Kursk by Ukrainian forces, but you're sitting here continuing to provide weapons that give the Ukrainians the ability to believe that somehow America will continue to support them,
so they continue to have these meetings.
But the President shouldn't open his mouth.
He's the President of the United States of America.
When he speaks, his words should ring as law, as truth, should never be questioned.
I mean, we can question him as American citizens, but hopefully if we question, we find out we're wrong, he's right, because he did the research before he opened his mouth.
But this is typical of his knee-jerk reaction, saying things that just aren't true, and therefore helping...
Paint a picture in Ukraine, in the Western media, et cetera, that Russia did something wrong again.
I want to remind people that back in the end of March, early April of 2022, there was the Bucha incident, where the Ukrainian services went in and slaughtered civilians who were trying to flee with the Russians.
We know it's the case.
They deleted their stuff, but we have them putting out, you know, internet warnings, stay inside, we're cleansing, we have videotape of them saying shoot them, they don't have the right armbands.
We know what happened, but...
The West seized the initiative in terms of the propaganda, painted this as a Russian atrocity, and they used that as an excuse to terminate the first peace effort.
When there was the Istanbul communique negotiated between the Russians and the Ukrainians, Boris Johnson flew in and used Bucha as an excuse.
I'm concerned right now that the Europeans and their media allies are going to try and use Sumi as an excuse to cut the knees out from Donald Trump's peace initiative.
The president needs to step up right now.
He needs to decide, does he want peace or not?
Getting peace is the easiest thing in the world, but he has to be decisive.
Right now, it's extremely indecisive.
How is it that he can have Steve Whitcoff spending three hours directly This is what happens when you don't have a national security advisor in charge.
This is the job of Mike Waltz.
Mike Waltz, Kellogg should be fired.
Or if Kellogg releases officially, then Waltz should be fired.
The president sent Witkoff to meet with President Putin.
Three and a half hours they met.
And apparently, Witkoff reported back, we have a peace deal.
But in order to get it, you have to make a decision about the four territories.
Kerasone, Zaporizhia, Donetsk, and Lugansk.
The Russians say they have to all be Russian.
And if you do that, we have a peace deal.
The president should issue the order.
That's the American policy right now.
Make it happen.
Turn to Rubio.
Make it happen.
Instead, Kellogg undermines that by releasing this nonsense, which, again, undercuts everything Whitcoff was doing.
The president needs to take control.
Pick up a phone and tell Marco Rubio, hey, either you're on my side or you're the hell out of here, okay?
I don't care if Adelson paid me $100 million to put you in this Secretary of State.
You work for me.
No one else.
And when I tell you that we're making peace, we're making peace.
So shut up about anything else.
I don't want any word out of your mouth other than I support the President's Peace Initiative.
Nothing else.
Everybody else, the same way.
Heck, Seth, shut up.
Shut up, everybody.
Zip it.
You are to say the following.
We support the President's Peace Initiative.
That's it.
No more words.
But instead, everybody's freelancing, making it up because they're getting no direction from above.
Do you think that...
I'm switching gears now, Scott.
Prime Minister Netanyahu was truly stunned last Monday, a week ago today, when President Trump announced that there would be direct negotiations with the Iranians, or do you think he knew about it ahead of time and tried to talk Donald Trump out of it and failed?
I think he knew about it ahead of time and tried to talk...
I mean, I knew about it ahead of time.
Everybody speculated about this.
This wasn't, you know, top secret stuff.
We knew that's the direction he was heading for.
I was surprised that Witkoff was, you know, Witkoff's doing everything.
I mean, this man probably deserves a Nobel Peace Prize by the time this is done, if all this stuff works out.
He's the hardest working man in Washington, D.C. right now.
But we saw this coming because there was no other way out of this issue.
Of course, the Israelis, They think they have Iran between a rock and a hard place, and they want the United States to double down on putting the pressure to make no compromises, no negotiations.
And if Iran fails to live up to what we are demanding, to use military force, Israel knows that they alone cannot lead.
And what's interesting in Donald Trump's response is he said Israel would have to take the lead.
Israel can't take the lead.
They don't have the ability.
Take the lead.
They need full American support, and Donald Trump's not going to give it to them.
He doesn't want a war in Iran.
He's been making the bluster.
He's been deploying forces.
There's a real risk.
We have Pete Kedseth.
Again, I don't know why the president allows him to make these statements.
You know, if the Iranians don't do this, there'll be deep strikes.
Do you honestly think that's how you get the Iranians to negotiate by threatening like this?
How about shut up and let Wyckoff do his job?
How about Wyckoff have his second meeting where they can move forward?
Everybody's talking about how promising the first meeting was.
Give it a shot.
But Hegseth comes out and undermines it by making the Iranians look as if they're cowards if they continue to move forward.
He should be fired.
Literally, this is a firing offense, but he won't be because the president's giving no direction.
This, again, is the divided nature of foreign policy with respect to Iran, just as we talked about the divided nature with respect to Ukraine.
Here is that statement from Hegseth.
Which infuriated me, and I can see infuriated you.
Chris, cut number nine.
He's dead serious that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon.
He's said that for 20 years.
He's been consistent.
That is clear.
But he's also dead serious that if we can't figure this out at the negotiating table, then there are other options to include my department to ensure that Iran never has a nuclear bomb.
We hope we never get there.
We really do, Maria.
But what we're doing with the Houthis and what we're doing in the region, we've shown a capability to go far, to go deep, and to go big.
And again, we don't want to do that.
But if we have to, we will to prevent the nuclear bomb in Iran's hands.
Not only threatening, not only undermining Woodcoff, but wrong.
They did not go far deep and have success with the Houthis.
Yeah, this is like a coach at halftime who's down 20 to nothing because his running game has negative five yards, saying, we're going to continue to pound it forward.
We're going to pound away.
We're going to wear him down.
No, Hexeth, you're not.
You haven't stopped the Houthi from launching.
You failed in every military objective that you've tried to meet.
You brought in B2s to drop the biggest conventional bombs we have on buried sites in Yemen, and they didn't make a dent.
They didn't make a dent, Pete, and you know it.
And that was supposed to be the signal to Iran, blowing up the Houthi site, saying, we can bring this now and take you out.
Now the Iranians know that every one of their underground sites are invincible to our conventional weapons.
So what are you going to go deep with, Pete?
See, that should have been the follow-on question.
I would have said, you know...
Mr. Secretary, that you don't have a conventional weapon in your arsenal capable of destroying the buried Iranian nuclear facilities.
And if you don't destroy them, Iran will build a nuclear bomb despite your attacks.
So are you proposing that you're going to use nuclear weapons?
And hit him with that one and see what he says.
Pete Hedsith, this is the danger of, forgive me, having a lieutenant colonel doing a four-star general's job.
This man just doesn't have the experience.
He doesn't have the gravitas.
He doesn't have...
I fully agree, and I feel badly saying it because I've known him so well.
We worked together for 10 years, but it's true.
He shouldn't be in that job.
But what would he have said if Maria Bartiromo, and I don't think she would have asked him this, I would have, you would have.
Well, how is it that the Israelis have a nuclear weapon, Mr. Secretary?
How the hell could he have answered that?
Well, he would go with official American policy, which is if the Israelis have a nuclear capability, it's undeclared.
Neither we have declared it nor have the Israelis.
And, you know, that's how we're going to leave it.
That's been the official policy since 1969, not to acknowledge Israel's nuclear weapons capability.
It's hypocritical in the extreme, and it undermines the credibility of the United States and everything we're trying to do with Iran.
Iran has not violated the NPT.
Iran is allowed to do everything they're doing right now under Article 4 of the NPT, which they are signatories to.
Iran has complied with its obligations under its safeguard agreements and additional protocols have put in place.
But we have decided to interpret what Iran is doing as a threat to the state of Israel.
And therefore, we deem that we can use military force to prevent Iran from developing this threat, even though Iran's official policy is not to have a nuclear bomb.
And yet Israel...
You have ministers saying we could use a nuke against Gaza, and then they have to be told, you're not allowed to mention the nukes.
We don't talk about the nukes.
Everybody knows Israel has the nukes.
It's hypocrisy in this extreme.
It undermines nonproliferation policy.
And all it does is encourage nations to, especially Israel's neighbors who have perhaps hostile intent towards Israel, to develop a nuclear deterrent to the Israeli nuclear weapons.
Can Netanyahu stay in office if he's not fighting a war?
I don't believe so.
I think Netanyahu, even fighting a war, I think he's in a lot of trouble.
He's in a lot of heat.
I think that's one of the reasons why he came to the United States.
He was supposed to be in court.
And one of these embarrassing national security related things.
And he just came to the United States because this is his old tactic.
This is what he did before.
You come to the United States and you wrap yourself in the American flag.
You get the photo op with the American president.
But it ended up making him look even weaker because he had to sit there and listen to the president say...
Hell no, we're not going to war with Iran for you.
And then the president to reiterate that the future of Gaza is in America's hands, not in Israel's hands.
These aren't the things that a president like...
This man is weak.
His government is collapsing.
The economy in Israel is in a lot of trouble.
I don't know if you've seen the lines of people queuing up to get food rationing and essential rationing because the Israeli economy is collapsing.
Nobody's investing in that economy.
And he's the prime minister in a failing state.
No, he can't last.
He needs this war to be able to manipulate public opinion sufficient to the point where he can maintain a governing majority in the Knesset.
But even now, he's on the way down.
He's in a death spiral.
How long he can sustain this death spiral, I don't know.
But I don't think he recovers from this one.
Big picture.
How dangerous is it to the United States to have this extraordinary relationship with Israel?
This is the single most dangerous thing to America on a number of fronts.
First of all, Israel's getting us in wars we don't need to fight.
There's an Israeli hand in every major Middle East conflict we've been in.
And, you know, the blood of Americans...
It's spattered upon the Israelis who've been pushing us to do this ever since 9-11.
So we've got that.
We've got the damage that's been done to America's reputation as being the only supporter of Israeli genocide.
And so our reputation abroad is shot.
We're supposed to be the nation that stands for something.
I don't know how much we can stand for when we illegally invaded and occupied Iraq, and we've carried out our own war crimes in Afghanistan and elsewhere in Syria.
But at least we could pretend that we believe in something.
But now we're providing open cover for Israeli genocide, for the murder that Israel has committed against the Gazans on a daily basis.
But the greatest threat is here at home, where we're allowing the Israeli and the Israeli lobby to...
Take control of concepts of freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, to criminalize thought.
What's happening right now with the arrest of these foreign students who are simply doing what their American counterparts are doing, the ones that have been arrested haven't broke the law.
If it's illegal to write an op-ed, then, man, I belong in jail for four lifetimes.
If it's illegal to articulate...
In favor of compromise and peace, then I belong in jail.
I've opposed American policy across the board.
I'm probably one of the greatest threats to American foreign policy that exists, but because I'm an American citizen, what I'm saying is allegedly protected by free speech.
We know it's not.
The FBI kicked down my door and proved the falsehood of that.
The Constitution clearly says that when you are in the jurisdiction of the United States, free speech applies to you as well.
And because of Israel, we're chipping away at that.
This can't happen, ladies and gentlemen.
This is the greatest threat to the United States of America that there is.
Forget wars.
We can fight wars.
We can survive wars.
This is about attacking who we are, what we stand for, what we believe in.
The foundational principles of this nation are under attack by the state of Israel and its supporters here in the United States.
This is what's going to destroy America.
Tell us about Highway to Hell.
Well, making the shift.
Highway to Hell is a book that's...
It was conceived back in the summer and fall of last year when I was convinced that we were literally on a highway to hell.
We were marching toward a nuclear confrontation with Russia.
I had actually done a draft of the book when the FBI kicked down the door and took my computer and they took the draft with it.
Did they ever get back to you?
No, they haven't given anything back to me.
They haven't given my computers back.
They haven't given my archive back.
They took my college honors thesis.
They took my fitness reports.
They took my entire life.
They took it.
And they won't even acknowledge now that they have it.
These are horrible human beings.
And I petitioned Pam Bondi and I petitioned Kash Patel to do the right thing here.
And I haven't heard anything back from you.
Back to the book, which I was thrilled to read.
If you've ever done some writing, and I don't know whether it's a letter or an op-ed, and then the computer blanks out and you lose everything you wrote, you know the empty feeling you have.
And that's how I felt when they took my computer.
And I was struggling on how to restart this book.
And then I also took umbrage at the fact that they were calling me a Russian agent, saying that the things that I wrote, that I contributed to RT and Sputnik, somehow was Russian propaganda.
And I read, reread some of the articles I wrote on the threat of nuclear weapons, on the need for arms control.
And then I started comparing and contrasting that with what I've been writing since 2015 on the same issue.
And I said, it's the same.
It's the same.
And I'm not going to stand for this, for being called a Russian agent or having my work labeled as Russian propaganda.
So instead of rewriting this narrative, I just collected all of the articles that I've written on the subject from 2014 till 2024 and put it in chronological order, organized it by topics.
And that's what Highway the Hell is.
It's a collection of articles that I've written over the years talking about the danger of nuclear war, the need for arms control.
There's an added spin.
The importance of free speech.
Because it's not just about me writing this.
It's about Clarity Press, my publisher having the courage to publish this at a time when the FBI was trying to shut me down, saying that these articles are Russian propaganda.
And this was a brave Diana Collier, the editor of Clarity Press, deserves all the credit in the world for saying, no, it's not.
It's the product of our author, and we're going to publish it.
So Highway to Hell is not only about warning about the dangers of nuclear war and the need for arms control, but it's also...
Well, I encourage everybody watching and listening to us now to buy this book and read it.
It'll keep you up at night, but it'll make you a smarter, wiser person, certainly when the government tries to pull the wool over everyone's eyes.
And thank you for what you said about the freedom of speech.
The Israeli God forbid.
to prisoners in foreign countries where federal judges, as we can see under our eyes today, have great difficulty reaching them.
God forbid...
That that happens.
Scotty, thank you for the warnings that you have issued.
Thank you for your time today.
Thank you for letting me take you all over the place on all these topics.
A great conversation, and I'm deeply grateful for it.
All the best.
And a happy Easter, an early happy Easter to you and your family.
Thank you very much, and thanks for having me on.
Pleasure, my friend.
Coming up tomorrow, a full day for you.
At 8 in the morning, Ambassador Charles Freeman at 11 in the morning from Beijing.
Who else?
Pepe Escobar.
At two in the afternoon, Colonel Douglas McGregor.
At three in the afternoon, Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski.
At four in the afternoon, I'm not sure where he's coming from.
Professor Jeffrey Sachs.
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