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May 18, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
28:56
Larry Johnson : Do We Still Have a Constitution?
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Everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Monday, May 19th, 2025.
Larry Johnson will be here in just a moment.
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Larry Johnson, always a pleasure, my dear friend.
Thank you for joining us, accommodating my schedule.
You wrote a fascinating piece.
You write a great piece each day at Sonar 21. But you wrote a fascinating piece the other day, the essence of which is, do we still have a constitution?
Which, of course, is my other field.
And I do want to talk to you about that.
But before we get there...
This issue of the firing of two senior CIA analysts was raised over the weekend.
Again, you and Ray and I talked about it on Monday.
These two senior people, after an exhaustive study, concluded that the gang Trende Aragua is not controlled by or affiliated with the Venezuelan government, and they were given permission to reveal their finding.
Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, fired them and ordered another evaluation.
Then, this is what happened over the weekend, Secretary Rubio, without citing any source, said Trendy Aragua is controlled by the Venezuelan government.
Now, I don't know if he was saying that because that's a part of President Trump's narrative, which seeps into...
His efforts to use the Enemy Alien Act or if Rubio's State Department conducted its own analysis.
But my question to you is, I guess CIA or intelligence analysis is corruptible and can be corrupted by politicians.
Oh, newsflash.
Go talk to George Allen, not the former football coach.
George Allen was in charge of the analysis during the Vietnam War and the political pressure that he encountered.
I was just recounting to someone else earlier today the story of John Reed and Bob Gates at the CIA.
So when Bob Gates was the director of intelligence, headed the director of intelligence, DI, The Reagan administration was in power, and Reagan wanted to know, is Nelson Mandela a communist?
And so John Reed, the analyst, covered South Africa.
He wrote, and his bottom line was this, although Nelson Mandela has had associations and relationships with people who are known communists, Nelson Mandela is not a communist.
Judge, can you...
Guess which word Bob Gates changed in that assessment.
Oh, good God.
He dropped the word not?
Took not out.
Wow.
So, you know, if that's happening, you know, so yes, the intelligence is highly politicized, unfortunately.
It got worse under Biden.
So I don't, you know, I really don't know what the ground truth is right now because...
So much of the media is going to try to manufacture something to indict Trump when they're actually maybe trying to clean it up.
But on the other hand, it may be taking place.
I don't know.
A year or two ago, when Biden started funding the genocide in...
Gaza and the war in Ukraine, you and Ray and Phil Giraldi and all of your colleagues on this show have made it crystal clear that the analysts on the ground produce raw data as best they can, as truthful as they can, as accurate as they can.
Sometimes they risk their lives to get it.
And then it's the Bob Gateses, some mid- or higher-level management person, that twists it so that the ultimate listener, the president, I gather that still goes on today.
How does Donald Trump know if he's getting accurate information from the intelligence community or if he's hearing what Tulsi Gabbard thinks he wants to hear?
And if the latter is the case, what has changed?
Okay, there are two filters that you have to deal with.
Filter one is the case officers in the field.
When they're collecting raw intelligence from human sources and reporting that back up the chain of command, sometimes that chain of command, what was known as the Directorate of Operations in my day, will prevent that information from getting out.
I saw that firsthand with what was going on in Central America with the war we were waging against the Sandinistas in Nicaragua.
A couple of analysts from the Nicaragua side went down to Honduras, and they were accosted by angry case officers saying, why aren't you putting this information out?
And they showed them all the reports that they had been generating that were pointing out that the weakness is on the side of the Contras.
Well, it turned out that their chain of command, one guy that you've had on your show, you know, Jack Devine, We're covering it up.
We're not releasing it to the Directorate of Intelligence.
So that's one filter where the DO can self-filter, prevent information from coming in that's accurate.
Then when you get to the analytical side, taking what's available and drawing conclusions and presenting that to the White House, there's also the pressure to say, oh, you can't say that.
So the prime example right now is this notion that Russia suffered terrible casualties because the director of operations is relying exclusively on information that's coming out of the Ukrainian sources instead of accurately reporting what's going on and using a whole variety of methods that could be used to
track, such as following obituaries in Russia, looking at the size and expanse of cemeteries that are in Russia as compared to Ukraine.
A number of ways that you could tell that Ukraine is suffering the overwhelming number of fatalities, not Russia.
Do you think some intel source has told him that, whether the intel source knew it was inaccurate or not?
Yeah, yeah.
I think that's highly likely.
You know, we've got the Russians and Ukrainians have been exchanging corpses of soldiers.
And over the last three months, For each Russian body that's turned over to Russia, Russia is giving Ukraine 25 to 27 bodies each month.
In other words, it's a 27 to 1 ratio.
Now, some would argue and say, well, that's just because Russia's advancing and Ukraine's not ever able to recover the bodies of those that the Russians are killing.
And I said, okay, if that's the case, Then so much for this claim that the war is a stalemate, because it's not a stalemate, because Russia is continually moving forward.
But you've also got the disparity between the amount of artillery that Russia can fire and the limited amount that Ukraine can fire, and the overwhelming number of drones that Russia can produce by what Ukraine can produce.
So, I mean, it's just, it's a lie.
And that's part of the problem of Trump.
You know, he's supposedly still talking to Vladimir Putin as we speak, where he insists that Russia is suffering so many casualties that they just can't wait to get out of this war.
It's just not true.
So he's operating with that faulty assumption among many.
That really weakens his ability to negotiate with Putin when he comes armed to that negotiation with information that is grossly inaccurate, which President Putin knows is inaccurate.
Yeah, exactly.
Do you think American negotiators, not President Trump, but Rubio, Witkoff, and I don't know the names of the people at the level right below them, understand the Russian mentality?
Do you think they know that the Russians believe?
That negotiations should go on while the war is continuing?
That the Russians are not going to stop the war for the purpose of conducting negotiations?
This is part of Russian culture and Russian history?
Yeah.
No, they don't understand at all.
They're not listening.
You know, on Friday, once the talks concluded in Istanbul, you know, the Western press and some in the Trump administration were like, oh, that's outrageous!
The Russians are demanding that Ukraine withdraw from Kherson, Zaporizhia, Donetsk, and Luhansk before they'll even entertain discussions of a ceasefire.
How could they?
This is over the top!
And it's like, guys, Vladimir Putin...
Put that on the table as one of the Russian demands a year ago, June 14, 2024.
And, you know, Sergei Lavrov reiterated that to you and me, along with Mario, when we met with him on the 1st of March.
So, the West just isn't paying attention.
Russia says it very plainly, very clearly.
They're very direct.
And the West says, we're not listening to you.
It's crazy.
The chief Russian negotiator in Istanbul quoted Bismarck, of all people, saying the Russians always claim what is theirs.
They are not going to give up something that has been historically Russia.
Do you think Rubio and Witkoff, and I'm going to ask you about the two of them in a minute, their relationship, do you think they understand that?
No.
And here's the problem.
They are conceiving of this war between Russia and Ukraine, as is Donald Trump, as if it's like two kids that don't like each other, that, oh, Russia hates Ukraine, and Ukraine hates Russia, and we just got to get them apart.
That's not the root cause of this.
The root cause of this is NATO, the United States pushing NATO to the east.
And Donald Trump was just as much a part of that as Barack Obama and George W. Bush and Bill Clinton.
They've all had a hand in it, as has Biden.
So NATO is the issue, the fundamental issue for Russia.
Ukraine's just a pawn.
Ukraine has been simply a tool used by the West, one, to hopefully attack and destroy Russia.
That plan's gone up in smoke.
And then to compel Russia to acquiesce to become dependent on the West, to become basically a vassal, in much the same way that Europe is now a vassal of the United States.
Larry, I agree with everything you've just said.
What terrifies me is who's whispering into President Trump's ear.
Is it J.D. Vance?
Or is it General Kellogg?
Oh, it's Kellogg.
I mean, you know, Vance, I think Vance understands.
But, you know, you've got to come back.
Why is the United States so obsessed with pushing the NATO agenda?
And it's reflected in Trump's defense budget.
One trillion dollars!
You know, and what is that?
That goes to buy weapons systems from General Dynamics, Raytheon.
Lockheed Martin, Boeing, go down the long list of defense contractors that are feeding at the federal trough.
And one of the reasons you expand NATO is that those new members got to buy U.S. equipment.
So you're creating a market for it.
Is Rubio trying to marginalize Whitcoff?
Is Rubio at the present?
Just Secretary of State in name only.
Yeah, boy, Whitcoff, he's got a leash around his neck and he's been pulled up short.
You know, after the first round of talks with Iran, which was four or five weeks ago, Whitcoff came out suggesting, oh yeah, we could live with a limited enrichment that would allow Iran to enrich at a 3.6%, which is peaceful use.
It's done around the world.
Every country that's got a nuclear reactor is enriching at that level.
And so Iran would say, yeah, we'll agree to that.
That's basically what's on the table.
Now Witkoff is back.
Not one inch, not one percent, nothing.
It's all or nothing.
And he's doing that, as I think you discussed earlier today with Alistair, because of the enormous pressure.
From the AIPAC-purchased U.S. Congress within both the Senate and the House side.
So, you know, Trump's trying to, I guess, please them.
But in the process, he's destroying any prospect whatsoever for a deal with Iran.
And he's painting himself again into a corner that he's going to go the way of George H.W. Bush, who promised, read my lips, no new taxes.
Well, Trump was...
Read my lips, and we're not going to get involved with endless wars overseas.
And next thing you know, probably before the summer's out, he's going to be behind an attack on Iran that's going to blow up in his face.
Do you agree with Alistair that the United States is in no good military position to aid the Israelis in attacking Iran?
Yeah, well, we can aid them.
The point is, we're going to suffer significant damage.
We're going to lose aircraft that are going to get shot down.
But then in retaliation, Iran will hit U.S. military bases, particularly Al-Udid, which is a massive base in Qatar.
I was there back in 2006.
And, you know, it's only basically a five-minute missile launch from Iran to get there with one of their hypersonic missiles.
It's quite close.
So, you know, the United States is, Extremely vulnerable.
We could not defeat the Houthis.
Let's be clear about that.
When Trump came in, they said the same nonsense that they're saying about Russia.
Oh, the Biden administration was too soft.
You know, with Russia, they're too soft.
They didn't really put sanctions on that would hurt and force the price of oil to go up.
And now they're saying with the Houthis, they're too soft.
They just didn't bomb them enough.
And then, lo and behold, we had seven weeks of bombing, and we lost a billion dollars worth of aircraft and drones and did not stop the Houthis from hitting Israel with missiles, and we didn't stop the Houthis from interfering with Israeli ships in the Red Sea.
And what did we do?
We retreated.
We can paint it any way you want.
We spent a billion dollars.
You did the calculation.
What did we get for the billion dollars?
Embarrassment.
Exposure to the world that our Navy has limited in its power.
So we think, you know, we want to drop these buster bump, buster, the bunker busting bombs.
On the underground facilities where Iran has moved some of its sensitive nuclear enrichment programs.
Well, to do that, you've got to put an aircraft over Iranian territory.
And I guarantee you, B-2, B-52, whatever they decide to fly over there, one or two of them are going to get shot down.
And then all of a sudden, if they're shot down and the pilots survive...
Now you've got the embarrassment of Iran holding U.S. pilots as prisoners of war.
Oh, boy.
It won't even be a lawful war.
I can't imagine Congress declaring war on Iran.
It poses no national security threat to the United States whatsoever, and we don't have a treaty with Israel.
We've been there before.
Over the weekend, President Trump, notwithstanding his public snubs, Of Prime Minister Netanyahu in the Middle East last week denies that he's having a rift with Prime Minister Netanyahu.
Is that denial credible?
I don't think so.
But we shouldn't confuse a rift on a personal basis with Bibi Netanyahu with a rift between Donald Trump and Israeli policy to destroy the Palestinians.
Because we're still...
Funding genocide, and it's worse than ever because now it includes starvation.
Correct.
And we're not doing anything.
We're in a position to compel Israel to allow the humanitarian aid in, and we're not doing that.
We're refusing to do that.
So we're allowing this genocide to go on.
You know, what's interesting is what came out over the weekend.
So Israel supposedly has launched or is getting ready to launch Operation Guardian, Gideon's Sword, I believe it's called.
But they noted that they're only going to establish the regular army.
So Israel's military...
A small component of it is the regular army.
The much larger component are the reservists.
And they were not going to use reservists in this operation because basically they didn't trust them, A, to show up, and B, to fight effectively.
So, you know, the regulars are going to have to carry that burden.
And again, yeah, it's easy to kill women and children who are unarmed.
Israel can do that.
They're doing that every day.
But within that rubble, there are Hamas fighters, and with every dead woman, child, teenager, elderly person, Hamas is going to seek revenge.
And they've created rubble, just like the Nazis did in Stalingrad, and just like the Soviet soldiers at the time were able to use That protection to ambush and defeat the Nazis.
So Israel's going to pay a price.
What can or will stop the slaughter in Gaza if Trump just continues to pay for it?
If the Arab nations, if the Arab and Muslim nations came together and said, hey, But we are going to suspend relations with the United States until the United States takes action to stop Israel.
But none of them are willing to do that.
They paid lip service.
They'd rather do business than worry about the deaths of these Palestinians.
Because the fact of the matter is the vast majority of the world doesn't care.
Do members of Congress take seriously their oaths to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution?
Do they take seriously their restraints imposed on them, or do they think they can write any law and regulate any behavior that they can get away with politically?
Well, we've got, let's put it this way, we've got 75 years since the end of World War II, and so I'm counting from 1950 on, where the Congress has ignored the Constitution and allowed the President To carry out wars and attacks overseas at the whim of the president.
And, you know, in many cases there's been, you know, economic incentives for members of Congress to go along with that.
But, you know, whether we're talking the war in Korea, whether we're talking Vietnam, the wars in Central America, the war in Iraq, version one and version two, the attacks in Afghanistan.
The war in Syria, the war in Somalia, you know, it's on and on and on.
Congress has been unwilling to hold the executive accountable according to the constitutional powers.
And they're allowed to spend the money.
And so that's why, you know, the United States has been the biggest meddler in the affairs of other countries of any country in history.
And how do we get out of this mess?
The Congress has controlled...
By AIPAC or by the military-industrial complex, presidents like to kill.
It's a vicious cycle that almost seems to be getting worse.
Remember, Tom Woods, one line, no matter who you vote for, you end up with John McCain.
Yeah.
Well, and probably our only exit will be if we decide to attack Iran and suffer massive defeat.
In terms of not being able to compel a government change in Iran and significant damage to our air and naval forces, as well as our ground forces that are based in the Middle East.
It will be a shock.
Americans will be shocked because we've been told all along, we got the best, we're the greatest.
You know, Judge, when you start looking for sort of markers, like what's happened to our middle class?
Well, you know what?
While in Russia, their middle class has grown from, say, 7% in 1995 to 50% now.
In the United States, our middle class is shrinking.
It's going down.
Our literacy levels have gone down.
So if you define greatness in terms of having a well-educated population, a population where there's some equality of income and great economic opportunity, that ain't the United States.
Not anymore.
Let's go to the other side of the world.
What will the United States military do if the Chinese blockade Taiwan?
Well, the United States would send ships, and a lot of those ships would be in jeopardy being blown out of the water with Chinese hypersonic missiles.
But China is not going to do that.
I call it the mythology of China being this aggressive military power.
It hasn't been that in its history.
You know, we've got 5,000 years roughly of history on that front.
It's a concoction that the West uses to justify expanding defense spending that benefits who?
Oh, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, etc.
Same group.
Yeah, this is a scam.
You know, China believes that Taiwan is part of China.
And the United States agreed with that back in 1972, and that remained our position.
It's still sort of our position on the books, except now we're saying, no, we didn't mean that either.
You know, what keeps coming up time and time again, whether we're dealing with China or Russia, is the United States can't honor and abide by any single agreement.
We break them all.
George W. Bush walked away from anti-ballistic missile treaty with Russia.
Donald Trump walked away from the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Agreement with Russia.
And then, you know, we told the Chinese, oh, we recognize Taiwan as part of China.
And now we're saying, no, no, we never meant that.
We don't mean it.
You got to leave Taiwan alone.
That is an actual statute signed into law by Jimmy Carter.
You may disagree with it, but it's the law of the land.
And it's been the public policy of the United States for 50 years.
Yeah.
Yeah, so this is where we're seeing, you know, Trump, his administration is living in an alternate reality.
I just watched Carolyn Levitt, the press secretary, this morning insist that, oh, yeah, the tariffs are working so great that China came running begging for a deal.
That's a lie.
It's not true.
It was the United States that called China, not vice versa.
Correct.
China is taking steps.
They're going to try to maintain a relationship with the United States.
They don't want a military confrontation, but they're going to disentangle themselves as much as they can economically from us so that they're no longer in a position that we think we can bully them.
And before that happens, the price of almost everything at Walmart and Amazon, Thank you, Donald Trump.
Yeah.
You know, again, Trump is saying, oh, it's not going to hurt American consumers.
And then Walmart said, yeah, we're going to have to raise our prices.
And Trump's trying to say, no, hold your prices.
Again, it's just, you know, Donald Trump may understand real estate, but boy, he doesn't understand international trade.
Thank you, Larry.
It's a pleasure, my dear man.
Thanks for letting me go across the board on all these topics.
We'll look forward to seeing you on Friday with McGovern.
All the best.
I'll be there.
Thanks, Judge.
Thank you.
Have a great one.
Coming up later today at 4 o 'clock this afternoon on all of these topics, including the pressure on Congress to suppress free speech.
You probably know where that is coming from.
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