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April 18, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
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INTEL Roundtable w_ Johnson & McGovern _ Weekly Wrap -18-April.mp4
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Hi, everyone.
Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Friday, April 18th, 2025, the end of the day, the end of the week, our favorite time, our favorite segment, the Intelligence Community Roundtable with my dear friends and longtime collaborators Larry Johnson and Ray McGovern.
Larry and Ray, welcome here.
Thank you, as always, for the double duty every once in a while, treble duty that you guys give the show.
Deeply appreciated.
Larry, to you first.
The New York Times reported this week significant pushback in Donald Trump's inner circle against authorizing the Israelis to attack Iran.
The article was supposedly based on insiders who spoke on condition of anonymity within three days of the article.
Three senior people in Pete Hegseth's inner circle where Frog marched out of the Pentagon.
Do you see a connection?
Is the article likely credible?
Was there resistance to Netanyahu in Trump's inner circle in your view?
Yeah, I don't think that article had anything to do with the dismissal of those three of Hegseth's cronies.
There wasn't enough time to, quote, do an investigation and then march them out.
But the New York Times piece is important in that it signaled that basically the voices for sanity were Tulsi Gabbard and J.D. Vance.
And, shockingly, Hegseth.
And Hegseth, yeah.
That may be explained by you.
Hanks have finally got a decent briefing about what the real capabilities of the United States are, and they're extremely limited when it comes to carrying out any military attack on Iran.
That said, that article was alarming because it reflected the belief among U.S. officials, and the Israeli officials say it.
I'm not sure they believe it, but the U.S. officials genuinely believe that in April of 2024, Iran was defeated in its missile attack on Israel, and then Israel subsequently destroyed Iran's air defense system.
They genuinely believe that.
Well, that's got to be hogwash.
Yeah, it's absolutely not true.
And Israel didn't even do any kind of significant damage when it launched its attack on October 27th of 2024.
So the fact that you've still got people in the Trump administration entertaining this as a viable option is alarming.
And then we get the news this week that Whitcoff is doing a 180 from going to accepting, at least being open to accepting the Iranian proposal that they would reduce their level of enrichment of uranium.
He's now saying they've got to stop it all.
They've got to end it.
Going back to...
The demands Trump made in 2018 when he withdrew from JCPOA.
Ray, why would the Iranians ever accept such a demand?
Why would they take a step or two or three or five back from even the JCPOA?
They haven't and they won't.
What what cough is doing is pretty much throwing a sock
To those people who are really, really wanting to attack Iran, it's very clear that the first part of that New York Times article was accurate.
Common sense sanity prevailed.
My God, we all should be very happy about that.
This other stuff is just the usual pap that people say, well, yeah, Iran has no defense.
We know that's not the case.
So does the Pentagon.
And when Larry says, hey, Seth, probably got a pretty good briefing on this.
That was included in that briefing, to be sure.
Not the propaganda, but the fact that Iran's air defenses are sophisticated in the extreme, the more so since they've got the latest Russian anti-aircraft and anti-missile defenses.
We've got a situation here where Witkoff is meeting with...
Witkoff is going again.
Was it Saturday, I think, the 19th, whatever that is.
Yeah, Saturday.
Yeah, and he's going to continue these talks.
The first ones, you know, let's remember that just a week ago, we had the White House saying that the talks then, a week ago, were very positive and very constructive.
And Whitcoff is saying two things, but one of the things he's saying is, look, this is...
Really a promising development.
He talked to Fox News and he said, whoa, this is very interesting.
The complicated situation is rooted in what the Russians are requiring with respect for their core interests.
We're working on that.
You're going to be surprised.
We might have a deal that will surprise everybody.
That's what I go with.
They may be shooting for Easter, for God's sake.
It's Holy Thursday, right?
Three days from now, they may issue some sort of, after Whitcoff has his next talks on Saturday, Easter Sunday would be a great time to announce, we've got a framework agreement, which Russia and we agree on, now we're
going to bring the others along, and it will eventually involve a ceasefire, but not yet.
So, Larry, Pete Hegseth may have gotten a good briefing and may have given the president good advice, but in public, he wants to convey This impression.
Here he is over the weekend with Maria Bartiromo at Fox.
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.
How many misstatements can you count in there?
Far deep and effective with the Houthis, Larry.
We know that none of that is true.
And if he's telling Donald Trump, you know, we really can't attack Iran, but yet he's telling Maria Bartiromo and her audience, my
will take care.
He's deadly serious.
He mentioned that two or three times.
Deadly serious.
You know, all we've got to do is look at the Houthis.
When Donald Trump announced the reigniting Operation Prosperity Guardian, It was done under the pretext that the Biden administration, they were a bunch of wimps.
They didn't flex U.S. muscles.
They didn't even try.
We're going to show those Houthis now.
And what happened?
Since March 15th, when the bombing campaign started, we have launched over 500 sorties.
500 different bombing missions in Yemen.
And in the course of that, the Yemenis, the Houthis in particular, have shot down five predator drones.
In the preceding 15 months, they'd only been shooting down like one a month.
Now in one month, they shot down five.
And the importance of shooting down the predators is the predators is the only platform that I'm aware of that the United States can use to real-time locate.
A mobile missile target on the ground and then fire at it almost immediately.
And that's one of the reasons that the Houthis are taking these out.
So if you're anybody else in the Middle East, you're watching the United States.
I'm hearing the big mouth flap, but I'm watching what's actually happening.
They're incapable of firing off enough bombs to stop the Houthis, who the Houthis do not have.
The advanced radar systems that Iran does.
Some of them were built by the Iranians.
They were, I guess, from the Russians.
On top of that, the Houthis don't have the support from Russia.
They don't have an air force.
They don't have the kind of missile force that Iran does.
What 500 sorties cost?
Is there a way to put a dollar figure on the money?
And the ammunition the United States is losing in this futile effort to stop the Hooties?
They said over a billion, over a billion dollars.
Wow. In 30 days.
Judge, money is money here.
We got money up the kazoo.
No, no.
The real problem is the disconnect between reality, where...
The intelligence community says that Iran is not working on a nuclear weapon.
And Maria's failure to say, wait a second, wait a second, Pete, you say they have to be prevented from working on a nuclear weapon.
Actually, the intelligence people says they have decided not to work on a nuclear weapon, and that's been true for 20 years.
Do you see a change there?
Just three weeks ago, your colleague, Tulsi Gabbard, assured us they're not working, and there's a fatwa, a religious injunction against it, and the same guy that put the fatwa in has not reauthorized what he had authorized before 2003,
the arithmetic.
So this is bizarre.
It's a red herring.
I mean, why doesn't anyone, even Maria, say, wait a second!
Wait a second.
There are two things here.
You're saying you're going to push on an open door.
You know what she also could have said to him, and I don't know how he would have answered it, guys?
Hey, Pete, why is it that the Israelis can have a nuclear weapon and the Iranians can't?
How is a cabinet member going to answer that, Larry?
They'd say they're God's chosen people.
God likes them better than you.
Okay? Let me show you the negotiating tactic.
This is what the United States is doing.
I'm not going to appear on your show anymore, Judge, unless Ray McGovern stops driving a Lamborghini.
Now, the fact is, Ray doesn't have a Lamborghini.
I'm asking Ray to not do something he's not doing.
That's the same thing.
I promise not to do it, Larry.
Case closed, all right?
We were talking just a few minutes ago.
About the relative strength of Iran vis-a-vis Israel.
Now, two friends of ours got in a little bit of a tussle over this.
Colonel McGregor was on Colonel Danny Davis' show.
Watch this, cut number 15. What nation on the planet can have their embassy destroyed in another country and to have an assassination in their capital city on an inauguration and not go to war with somebody?
Yet that's exactly what Iran didn't do because they don't have the power to do it.
So that should tell you...
Wait a minute, wait a minute.
That's a fundamentally false statement.
Which part?
False, false, false.
They don't have the power to go to war?
You haven't looked carefully at Iran.
Iran's arsenal of missiles is enormous.
It could flatten Israel in a day.
They have the power to go to war.
They have chosen repeatedly to avoid war.
And I've said this a thousand times.
No one in the Middle East is interested in a war except Israel and the United States.
Larry? Yeah.
No, Doug's right.
This is, you know, I learned when I lived in Latin America, they had a saying that basically it's translated, people assume that when you're being good, that you are a fool.
They think that because you're good, you're so foolish, they can take advantage of you.
And that's the lesson the United States and Israel have drawn from Iranian patients.
Because the entire image of Iran that's painted in the West, it's a lie.
It's a fundamental lie.
Iran's the number one sponsor of terrorism.
Yet, if you go back over the last 25 years, and you add up the number of attacks, the number of victims, And the groups that are carrying out those attacks and causing those victims, they're all Sunni Islamic groups tied to the Gulf Arabs.
Not a single one tied to Iran.
Yet, instead of calling a spade a spade, we prefer to manufacture Iran as this imaginary enemy that must be stopped at all costs.
So they have, you know, we saw some of their power on display during their October 1st attack on Israel, where we literally saw a hypersonic missile
down, deviating, and then to avoid an air
Wow. Ray, as to the essence of what Colonel McGregor...
just said.
Does the intelligence community know that?
Do your sources say the same thing?
Is Iran's arsenal
Well, as Larry just hinted, they've already demonstrated their ability to do that, okay?
They have missiles that cannot be intercepted, that cannot be defended against.
So McGregor is right.
And I dare say McGregor may be talking to people who are talking to Tulsi Gabbard, okay?
And it may be that Tulsi Gabbard has told Pete Tracy Hickseth that this is crazy.
And it may be that Hickseth went to the president while Bibi Netanyahu was in the Oval Office and said,"Look, Mr. President, turn him down.
Tell him no.
You're not going to do it." And that's what happened.
I hate to cite the New York Times because they're half wrong as well as half right, but I accept half a truth here when they say that finally Trump was persuaded to say, no, sorry, sorry, Mr. Netanyahu, we're sending Witkoff to talk this out,
and we're not going to let you, we're not going to attack you, Ron.
And if you try it, you're on your own.
You're on your own, baby.
You understand that?
You're on your own.
Ray, switching gears to Ukraine, could President Trump possibly, I guess the answer possibly is yes, is it likely that President Trump signed off on the crazy suggestion of General Kellogg to divide Ukraine up into protectorates like Germany was after World War II and with the expectation that the Russians would accept this?
Judge, as you know, the president is unpredictable.
My guess, and it's only a guess, is that no, Kellogg is off selling his own plans together with the British and the French and the Germans, for God's sake.
Kellogg is out of it.
That's why he's not allowed to negotiate any of this.
And he's teamed up with this faction, and it's very real, very real.
I think Rubio is part of it.
No, no, no, don't do this.
We can't make good relations with the Russians unless we inflict a defeat on them in Ukraine.
Totally irrational, totally impossible.
Larry, Gilbert Doctorow tells us that Frederick Mertz, the incoming chancellor of Germany, I forget the name of this, but...
Is prepared to send to Ukraine Germany's best offensive missiles, which require German civilian and military technology and know-how in order to exploit?
Is this going to make Germany a co-belligerent?
Is this going to expose Berlin?
Yeah, I think we're coming to that point.
Look, here's the reality.
Not only is Germany a co-belligerent, England a co-belligerent, France a co-belligerent, but the United States is still a co-belligerent.
Donald Trump whining the other day about, no, my war is Joe Biden's war.
Well, sorry, dude.
You're now president.
You've got it in your power to put an end to it today.
And all you've got to do is say, we're turning the money off.
No more money.
We're pulling out the CIA and military advisors.
They're done.
And you're not getting any more intelligence.
It's over.
But instead, you know, there's growing evidence that the United States, this, you know, we like to say that Russia...
You know, launched this attack.
We not only provoked it, this was part of a U.S. plan.
I think I've mentioned before, if I haven't, I would recommend people go back to August of 2021, read in the National Interest Magazine an article by A. Wes Mitchell.
W-E-S-S is how you spell Wes.
It is a paper that was originally prepared in December of 2020 for Pentagon's Office of Net Assessments.
And what he lays out in there is basically saying, look, we've got to prevent Russia and China from growing closer together.
And so our best option is to force Russia into a war with Ukraine.
And in forcing them into this war, we will level a defeat on them that will force them to come and suck up to us and be one of our lackeys.
And lo and behold, In November of 2021, what happens?
The United States starts building up the logistics base in Poland that has been used to funnel all the arms and weapons into Ukraine.
So this was a setup from the beginning.
The United States has actually carried out an act of war against Russia, and we ought to be down on our knees at Easter time, thanking God that the Russians haven't held us accountable for that.
What is intel doing, Ray?
Are we back to the Biden days where the intel the president gets is what they think he wants to hear?
Or now that it's coming through Tulsi Gabbard, is it unvarnished?
Well, I don't know how unvarnished it is, but it's very effective in preventing Trump from doing something really stupid, letting himself be mousetrapped into a war with Israel against Iran.
With respect to the Taurus missile, You know, Gil Doctorow is a very bright guy, and he's very prescient in warning that this would up the ante with respect to Russia's reaction to Germany.
But, you know, Putin is very, very circumspect.
Taoists will be pinpricks.
Most of them will be shot down.
It will be an additional irritant in relations, but I don't think...
That Putin, having won the war, is going to attack Berlin or Rammstein or any of those bases.
He's going to say, look, Mr. Trump, this is how bad it is.
Are you going to read these guys in?
Or are you going to say, hey, NATO is finished.
You guys do this kind of thing with the towers.
Article 5 doesn't apply.
Putin and Trump are together on this thing.
So I don't see any...
Any Russian attack on Berlin, even if one of these towerless missiles gets through, and I think that they'll have trouble getting through.
So pinpricks are pinpricks.
I think that's the way that Putin looks at it.
Last subject matter, the perception of tariffs in China.
I'm going to play a fascinating, fascinating click.
Clip from a Chinese TikTok influencer who speaks perfect English.
This is the Chinese view of Donald Trump's imposition of a 245% tariff on Chinese goods coming into the United States.
Chris, cut number 20. They rob your blind and you thank them for it.
That's a tragedy.
That's a scam.
That's why I'm saying this right now.
Americans, you don't need a tariff.
You need a revolution.
For decades, your government and oligarchs won't ship your job to China.
Not for diplomacy, not for peace, but to explore cheap labors.
And in the process, they hollowed out your middle class, crashed your working class, and told you to be proud while they sold your future for profit.
And yes, China made money.
But we used it to build roads, lift millions out of property, found healthcare, raised living standards.
We reinvested in our people.
My family also benefited from it.
What did your oligarchs do?
They bought yachts, private jets, and mansions with golf course driveways.
They manipulated the market, dodged tax, and poured billions into endless wars.
And you?
You get stagnated wages, crippling health care costs, cheap dopamine, debt, and flagged wave properly made in China while they pick your pocket.
For 40 years, both China and the United States benefited from the trade, the manufacturing, but only one of us used that wealth to build.
This isn't China's fault.
This is yours.
You let this happen.
You let oligarchs feed your lies.
Well, they made you fat, poor, and addicted.
Now they blame China for mess they made.
I don't think so.
I don't think you need another tariff.
You need to wake up.
You need to take your country back.
I think you need a revolution.
It's analyzing, Larry, isn't it?
Yeah, you know, there was a report that came out on Thursday.
And some American analysts seized on us and said, see, see, this is working, that China supposedly sent a message to Trump saying, look, if you start speaking respectfully to us,
then we can talk.
And so they took it and said, see, China just, as long as they're not calling them names, they're going to cave.
But based upon your conversation with Pepe and what he's observed on the ground in Shanghai, I don't see China caving on this.
And I think China still holds a lot more cards with respect to the United States and resolving on the whole issue of trade.
And that Chinese influencer, he said something very important, but it was incorrect.
He said the United States has wasted billions of dollars on foreign wars.
No, it's trillions, not billions, trillions.
And part of the reason we have this enormous fiscal deficit in the United States is not because the Chinese were building cheap trinkets and we were stupidly buying them.
It is that we were spending money like a drunken sailor on liberty.
But we were spending it on foreign wars.
We weren't investing it in the United States.
We weren't investing it in infrastructure.
And as a result, you know, we now got ourselves in this pickle, but like any good alcoholic, by God, we're not going to take responsibility for ourselves.
We're going to blame the Chinese.
Ray, your thoughts on what this young man just said?
By young man, I meant Larry, but I was referring to the Chinese TikTok influence.
Oh, damn.
Well, you know, do we need a revolution?
Let me not go out on a limb here.
Let me just repeat what Thomas Jefferson wrote.
Where in the course of human events it becomes necessary for...
I'll let you read the rest of that first sentence.
Right. One group of people to dissolve the political bands that have connected them to another.
You got it.
And to assume among themselves the powers of the earth.
Go ahead.
The equal station, yeah.
So, you know, this is not subversive unless you're talking about a monarch that wants to impose his or her will on us.
It's independence.
It's laudable.
That's what we need to do.
Now, Thomas Paine, just a year or two later, said, you know, there's an opportunity to be a summer soldier and bask in the sun and get a nice suntan or be a winter soldier.
Well, we've got to be winter soldiers now.
Now, 12 of my friends out of Travis Air Force Base blocked the supply of bombs to transport aircraft going to Israel last Thursday, or maybe it was Wednesday,
for several hours.
They ended up in jail, but then they were quickly released.
Those are the people that we have to emulate, okay?
What I'm saying here is that We have precedent.
We have Jefferson.
We have Tom Paine.
We also have Emerson.
And, you know, I was looking at this just yesterday.
We have Emerson and Thoreau.
Now, Thoreau wouldn't pay his taxes because he didn't think the U.S. imperialists should take over taxes.
Now, I made a big...
Big point of this in one of my talks, and they said, well, you know, he was sort of right, wasn't he?
Maybe we shouldn't have taken over Texas.
Well, yeah, okay.
The point is this.
Thoreau goes to jail, all right, because he wouldn't pay $5 or something.
Now, Emerson comes along, his good friend, and he says, what are you doing in there?
And he says, that's not the question.
What are you doing out there?
Now, that's the question for all of us.
It's time to put our bodies into this thing.
There are other bomber bases that are being loaded with bombs to kill Palestinians in Gaza and elsewhere.
Let's find out where those bombs are being transported.
Let's block the transport of those things because that's exactly what Tom Paine would do.
That's what Thomas Jefferson would do.
And it's certainly what Thoreau would do.
So we have good precedent here.
Why don't we step up and live up to our ideals, even if it means being battered around a little bit by police and maybe an overnight in jail.
That's my take on that.
And you, of course, have experience of being battered around.
Ray, you have the courage of a tiger.
Thank you very much.
Larry, thank you.
Thank you, guys.
A happy Easter weekend to both of you.
We'll see you both again Monday morning.
Thanks so much, George.
Thank you.
And, of course, on Monday at 8 o'clock in the morning, the day after Easter, Alistair Crook at 10 in the morning, Ray McGovern at 11.30 in the morning, Larry Johnson, and probably one or two more of our guests Monday afternoon.
Have a happy Easter, everyone.
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