All Episodes
Previous Next
May 28, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
31:40
Prof. John Mearsheimer : Is Europe a Threat to Netanyahu?
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Thursday, May 29th, 2025.
Professor John Mearscharmer will be here in just a moment on the latest rumblings in Europe.
Are they a threat to Vladimir Putin?
Will there be a restraint on Benjamin Netanyahu?
But first this.
While the markets are giving us whiplash, have you seen the price of gold?
It's soaring!
In the past 12 months, gold has risen to more than $3,000 an ounce.
I'm so glad I bought my gold.
It's not too late for you to buy yours.
The same experts that predicted gold at $3,200 an ounce now predict gold at $4,500 or more in the next year.
What's driving the price higher?
Paper currencies.
All around the world they are falling in value.
Big money is in panic as falling currencies shrink the value of their paper wealth.
That's why big banks and billionaires are buying gold in record amounts.
As long as paper money keeps falling, they'll keep buying and gold will keep rising.
So do what I did.
Call my friends at Lear Capital.
You'll have a great conversation and they'll send you very helpful information.
Learn how you can store gold in your IRA tax and penalty-free or have it sent directly to your doorstep.
There's zero pressure to buy and you have a 100% risk-free purchase guarantee.
It's time to see if gold is right for you.
Call 800-511-4620, 800-511-4620 or go to learjudgenap.com and tell them your friend the judge sent you.
Professor Mearsheimer, welcome here.
Thank you very much for joining us.
Someone in the chat room says, Professor Mearsheimer is the real gold.
All other mines are paper currency.
I thought I'd pass that on to you from one of your fans who watches you here.
Over the past week, German Chancellor Mertz, Some of our military guys have said that's military jargon for we sent them a few weeks ago.
There are no geographic limits on the ability of the Ukrainians to use these missiles.
Is this going to make Germany a cobalt in the minds of the Kremlin?
Or is it going to make NATO, in the minds of the Kremlin, a co-belligerent?
Well, in the minds of the Kremlin, NATO is already a co-belligerent.
And the most dangerous state here from the Russian point of view is obviously the United States, not Germany.
So in a very important way, this doesn't change much.
I find it hard to figure out exactly what the Germans are saying.
They have basically walked back.
What Mertz said, and it's not clear to me that we've delivered or the Germans have delivered Taurus missiles to the Ukrainians or that there's any reasonable chance they're going to be used soon.
That may come down the road.
Who knows?
But I don't see any fundamental change at this point.
Here's what he said.
It's an AI translation into English, which purports to be his actual voice or the AI.
Construction of his voice.
Number seven, Chris.
There are no longer any range restrictions on weapons delivered to Ukraine, neither from the British, nor the French, nor from us, nor from the Americans.
This means that Ukraine can now also defend itself, including, for example, by taking actions such as attacking military positions located within Russia, or by targeting other strategic sites as necessary.
Until recently, it was not able to do that.
Until recently, with very few exceptions, it also did not do that.
Now it can.
In jargon, we call this long-range fire, meaning equipping Ukraine with weapons that can attack military targets in the rear.
And this is the decisive, this is the crucial qualitative difference in Ukraine's conduct of the war.
Russia attacks civilian targets completely ruthlessly, bombing cities, kindergartens, hospitals, and nursing homes.
Ukraine does not do that.
And we place great importance on ensuring that it stays that way.
But a country that can only confront an aggressor on its own territory is not defending itself adequately.
So, and this defense of Ukraine is now also taking place against military infrastructure on Russian territory.
Let's put aside the accuracy or inaccuracy of his depiction of the Russian military.
Are you saying that his own defense minister has walked back that rather definitive and clear statement about what the Germans plan to send to Ukraine?
I mean, he said that Ukraine now has permission to use missiles to get targets inside of Russia.
But as he pointed out, if you listen carefully, The Ukrainians have already been doing that.
This wouldn't be the first time that happened.
Remember, they were allowed to hit targets inside of Russia with ATACMS.
So this is nothing new.
And with regard to the Taurus missiles, he didn't say anything about the Taurus missiles.
And then on top of that, his comments were clarified later by other individuals in the government.
And it's quite clear the Germans are not.
We're making a radical change or offering a radical change in policy here.
I think this is a lot to do about nothing.
Fox News is just reporting that President Putin has amassed 50,000 troops on Ukraine's north front.
The Guardian reported this two days ago when I asked Colonel McGregor about it.
He said the Guardian's numbers are off.
It's more like 100,000 troops.
What does this tell you?
Well, I don't know about those exact numbers in that particular location.
I've been looking at the numbers overall.
And my guess, based on a Russi report from February, this is the Royal United Services Institute in Britain, which is a pro-Ukrainian outlet, they say that the Russians have about...
That's 580,000.
Wow.
They say that the Ukrainian military or the Ukrainian security forces are comprised of about 800,000 troops.
However, they say less than 25 percent of those 800,000 troops are So let's assume the number is 20%.
20% of the 800,000 are combat troops.
That's 160,000.
So that means 160,000 combat troops in the Ukrainian military up against 580,000 combat troops in the Russian military.
That's a 4 to 1 overall advantage.
Let's say that I'm not being fair enough to the Ukrainians here.
And let's just drop the ratio down to 3 to 1. A 3 to 1 overall ratio, Russian to Ukrainian forces, is a staggering disadvantage for the Ukrainians.
Furthermore, if you read the Russi story, it says that various points along the front lines, the Ukrainians are outnumbered 6 to 1 in some places.
Two to one and other places.
And there are all sorts of other sources that say there are points along the line that the Ukrainians don't have enough manpower to defend.
And what they're doing is defending those open spaces with drones.
This is an army that's in terrible shape.
Are they in imminent danger of collapse, the Ukrainian military?
It's very hard to say, given the limited information that we have on the outside.
But if they collapsed in two weeks, it would not be surprising, just given those numbers.
And I could take this a step further and talk about what the Russians are doing with glide bombs, what they're doing with drones, and so forth and so on.
And the situation in terms of the raw numbers looks even worse.
What are glide bombs and what are they doing with them?
Well, glide bombs are smart bombs.
They're bombs that are launched from a distance from an aircraft.
And basically what the Russians can do is put these glide bombs in the pickle barrel.
And what the Russians can do with their drones is they can identify where all the structures are that the Ukrainians rely on on the front lines and behind the front lines.
They can figure out where the troops are concentrated.
And then they stand off and they launch these glide bombs, which have, Now, what the Ukrainians do in these cases is they try to move when they see the bombs beginning to hit.
They try to move.
But the problem with movement up on the front lines is that they're drones saturating the air.
And if you start moving, the drones get you.
So the Ukrainians have very little ability to move.
To move.
They have very little mobility.
And at the same time, the Russians have these powerful glide bombs and lots of them that they can pound the Ukrainian soldiers and military structures with.
So the Ukrainians are in deep, deep trouble.
Are you the only person on the faculty of the University of Chicago who uses a phrase like pickle barrel?
I would assume that's the case.
Okay.
All right.
What is your take on the attempted assassination of President Putin by drone and President Trump's denial that he knew anything about it?
A, is the denial credible?
B, is it more likely than not that Western intel, CIA, MI6, Mossad, advised where Putin was going to be at any given moment?
I find it hard to believe that the United States, and here we're talking about the CIA, would provide that kind of information.
I think that the administration has to know that killing Putin could have potentially catastrophic consequences.
I mean, this is just something you don't want to do.
So I actually find it hard to believe that we were – But then when you think about how dysfunctional the Trump administration is, it's really not that surprising.
I mean, this does look like the gang that can't shoot straight.
And given that basic fact, it is possible that he just didn't know about it.
It's shocking, but nevertheless possible.
Moving over to Israel, the Europeans, the French, the Germans, the British have all complained about the slaughter in Gaza.
They don't call it a war crime.
They don't call it genocide.
They're mainly complaining about the absence of food deliveries.
What are they going to do about it?
Are they going to restrain Netanyahu in any way?
Well, there's no question that they're putting a great deal of pressure on the Netanyahu government, and they're putting pressure on the United States to do something, because they know the United States and Israel are joined at the hip in terms of executing this genocide.
So the Europeans are putting pressure on us and on the Israelis.
And I would imagine And just before we came on the air, I saw that the Israelis have accepted a 60-day ceasefire.
And I think that is evidence that the Netanyahu government understands that we need a timeout here, or at least they need a timeout here because the pressure is beginning to build.
The damage that Israel is doing to its reputation...
It's just hard to believe that more Jews around the world are not standing up and demanding that Israel put an end to this genocide.
It's going to have devastating consequences for Israel, and it is certainly not going to have good consequences for Jews around the world.
This is a disaster.
So I think, given all those factors, it's not altogether surprising that it appears that we now have a ceasefire.
But that's just a temporary halt, as best one can tell.
I mean, the Israelis have broken every ceasefire that's been negotiated.
The situation with respect to feeding people has been called controlled starvation by a retired IDF general.
With that in mind, here's Prime Minister Netanyahu.
Now, this is a week old.
But it does show his ranting and raving with lies about October 7th.
It does show his condemnation of France, Britain, Canada, quote, and others.
And then it shows what he says free Palestine really means.
Chris, cut number one.
Free Palestine.
This is exactly the same chant we heard on October 7th.
On that day, They beheaded men.
They raped women.
They burnt babies alive.
Free Palestine is just today's version of Heil Hitler.
They don't want a Palestinian state.
They want to destroy the Jewish state.
I could never understand how this simple truth evades the leaders of France, Britain, Canada, and others.
They're now proposing To establish a Palestinian state and reward these murders with the ultimate prize.
You won't be surprised to learn that Hamas thanked President Macron and Prime Minister Starmer and Carney for demanding that Israel end its war in Gaza immediately.
Now these leaders may think that they're advancing peace.
They're not.
So don't give us this talk.
It'll be a peaceful Palestinian state.
It won't be.
Where's he going with that?
Nobody believes.
Except the most ardent right-wing Zionist in his government about raping women, beheading men, and burning babies.
It's a mantra he's been repeating for a year and a half now.
Of course.
just lies.
I mean, there's an abundance of evidence that these crimes that he's committing, that he's accusing Hrmado It's part of the Israeli story that's designed to make what happened on October 7th look even worse.
But the main point is here, why did you have this attack on October 7th?
That's the question.
The Palestinians were in a concentration camp, and they were breaking out of the concentration camp.
According to international law, it was perfectly permissible for Hamas to attack Israel on October 7th, according to international law.
It's discussed, but it is true.
It was not permissible for them to kill civilians, and I am adamantly opposed to that.
I want to make that clear.
That the Palestinians breaking out of Gaza did kill civilians, and I think that that's wrong.
But they had a right, according to international law, to attack Israel.
They were in a concentration camp.
Gaza is occupied territory.
Netanyahu wants to do is he wants to make it look like what happened on October 7th was the second coming of the Holocaust.
And this is ludicrous.
The idea that the Palestinians were the equivalent of the Nazis in World War II and were going to do to the Israeli Jews what the Germans did to European Jewry between 1939 and 1945 is just simply not a serious argument.
But it's all designed to put the focus on October 7th.
To tell lies about what Hamas actually did and all for the purposes of demonizing Hamas and making the Israelis look like a good guy, which is hard to do when it's the Israelis who are committing genocide against the Palestinians.
I want you to listen to the testimony of a surgeon from California Donated, volunteered his time in Gaza.
Back here in New York, testifying before the Security Council.
We're going to invite him onto the program.
I was so deeply moved when I saw this clip that Chris found, which we'll show to you now.
Chris, number 17. My name is Dr. Feroz Sidwell.
I am an American trauma and critical care surgeon based in Stockton, California.
I come before you today to speak about the Gaza Strip.
Where I have volunteered twice since October 7th.
The Constitution of the World Health Organization states that the health of all peoples is fundamental to the attainment of peace and security and is dependent on the fullest cooperation of individuals and states.
I have taken this to heart, and it is the reason I volunteer in conflict zones from Haiti to Ukraine to Gaza.
I did not see or treat a single combatant during my five weeks in Gaza.
My patients were six-year-olds with shrapnels in their heart and bullets in their brains, and pregnant women whose pelvises had been obliterated and their fetuses cut in two while still in the womb.
The medical system has not failed.
It has been systematically dismantled through a sustained military campaign that has willfully violated international humanitarian law.
Civilians are now dying not just from the constant airstrikes, but from acute malnutrition, sepsis, exposure, and despair.
This is a man-made catastrophe.
It is entirely preventable.
Participating in it or not, allowing it to happen is a choice.
This is a deliberate denial of conditions necessary for life: food, shelter, water, and medicine.
Preventing genocide means refusing to normalize these atrocities.
It means refusing to dehumanize the Palestinians.
To refuse to see them as calories counted or numbers of trucks moved.
We see now that this way of thinking has brought about a human dignity crisis with an entire people on the edge of survival.
The only thing I would add is, and was paid for by the American taxpayer.
It was supported by the United States, starting with the Biden administration and now the Trump administration.
We are complicit in a genocide.
And what that doctor said is merely the tip of the iceberg, as anybody who's been following this conflict knows.
This is just absolutely horrific.
It's just hard to believe.
It's hard to believe that we haven't stopped it.
It's even harder to believe that we're involved in executing it.
Again, the Israelis could not execute it without us supporting them.
Is Trump free to stop it, or would the political and economic consequences Well, if he decided he was going to stop it, he would really have to take off the gloves and he'd have to go to war against the lobby.
And he'd have to be very strategic in terms of winning allies inside the American Jewish community.
And even outside the American Jewish community, because he'd get a lot of pressure, to put it mildly, from the lobby and from Congress.
But there's no question that he could stop it if he wanted to.
The question is, is he in a position where he thinks he can take on the lobby?
And so far it looks like that's not the case.
His negotiators are meeting in Rome with the negotiators Negotiators from Iran.
According to him, they're getting closer and closer.
And according to him, he had to call Netanyahu and tell him, don't disturb this negotiations.
It's almost unbelievable that this had to happen.
But we'll play this cut for you as well.
Chris, number 14. Back at Iran, did you warn Prime Minister Netanyahu against taking some sort of actions that could disrupt the talks there?
In a phone call last week?
Well, I'd like to be honest.
Yes, I did.
Next question, please.
I did, yeah.
It's not a warning.
I said, I don't think it's appropriate.
What exactly did you tell him?
I just said, I don't think it's appropriate.
We're having very good discussions with him.
And I said, I don't think it's appropriate right now.
Because if we can settle it with a very strong document, very strong.
With inspections and no trust.
I don't trust anybody.
I don't trust anybody.
So no trust.
I want it very strong where we can go in with inspectors.
We can take whatever we want.
We can blow up whatever we want, but nobody getting killed.
We can blow up a lab, but nobody's going to be in the lab as opposed to everybody being in the lab and blowing it up, right?
Two ways of doing it.
Yeah, I told him this would be inappropriate to do right now because we're very close to a solution.
That could change at any moment.
It could change with a phone call.
But right now, I think they want to make a deal.
And if we can make a deal, save a lot of lives.
I get analyzed this.
This is very telling that the president of the United States, either because of intel he received or his own impressions of Netanyahu, had to call him up and say, don't you dare attack the Iranians while we're negotiating with them.
Well, what's going on here is that Trump is moving towards bringing back the JCPOA, the agreement that the Obama administration made It put significant limits on their enrichment capability.
And Trump, of course, walked away from that agreement in 2018, the summer of 2018.
And he's now heading back toward that agreement or some, And the Israelis are adamantly opposed to doing that, as is the lobby in the United States, therefore, unsurprisingly, as are most of the members of Congress.
And what the Israelis want to do is they want to derail the negotiations so we don't get JCPOA too.
And the way they see us...
We'll have no more JCPOA too.
And of course, the Israelis also think if they attack Iran, we will have no choice but to follow in behind them.
Because the Israelis understand they cannot do the job alone.
The only thing they would get if they attacked Iran was, from their point of view, hopefully bringing the Americans into the fight.
Because the Americans have the military capability to possibly, and I'm underlining the word possibly, take out Iran's enrichment capability.
The Israelis don't have that capability.
But they just want to start a war to derail the negotiations because they don't want JCPOA too.
Here's another clip from this Dr. Asidwa, just as articulate, just as moving as the earlier one.
Cut number 19. My Israeli and American friends express horror at what is being done in their names.
Many of us cannot understand how our governments continue to arm this senseless destruction.
But you in this chamber have the power to stop it.
I am here because I have witnessed what is happening in Gaza with my own eyes.
I urge the Council, and especially my own government, to act with urgency on these enforceable measures.
One, demand an immediate and permanent ceasefire, including a halt to all arms transfers to all parties to the conflict, alongside targeted and lawful sanctions on Israel.
Two, demand the reopening of all of Gaza's crossings and guarantee unrestricted medical evacuations, including to hospitals in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, where Palestinian patients can be treated by Palestinian doctors.
Three, guarantee sustained humanitarian access throughout Gaza, allowing all essential supplies, shelter, food, water, fuel, and medical supplies, to reach all people in need.
Four, strongly and explicitly reject the weaponization and politicization of aid embodied by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, whose executive director, a veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps, publicly resigned on Sunday, citing the foundation's lack of adherence to humanitarian principles.
We must affirm support for existing U.N. mechanisms.
back UNRWA and ensure NGOs with expertise in reaching and providing specialized care to those in need.
Five, the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages.
Six, the immediate and unconditional release of all health care workers, including Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, now held in Israeli detention for more than 150 days.
And seven, without delay, uphold the UN Charter and act now to prevent genocide.
If this Council remains silent and fails to act now, that record will stand as a testament to a global failure to provide urgent care and to the collapse of our collective conscience.
Almost what you said earlier, Professor Mary Schammer, just in different words.
a global failure and a collapse of our collective conscience.
I mean, he paints a picture which is horrific.
I don't know if there was an American representative there in that room.
I couldn't tell.
We'll have to look at the picture to decide.
The United States does not have an ambassador to the UN.
It was supposed to be Mike Waltz, the former national security advisor.
I don't know if it's going to be him.
There must be some under ambassador, some full time employee of the U.S. that was sitting there listening to this.
I don't know how he or she could have responded to it.
What can they say?
I mean, I don't know what to say at this point.
I mean, I agree with everything that the doctor said.
And I think that huge numbers of people around the planet agree with what the doctor said.
On Netanyahu, besides Donald Trump, to stop the slaughter and to allow the type of aid in and movement that the doctor just so articulately described?
Well, there's no other actor in the international system that can do that.
I mean, the United Nations can't do that.
It doesn't have any troops of its own.
There's no country in Europe that can do that.
The Russians and the Chinese are not going to do it.
I think there's no question that as public opinion around the world and as elite opinion around the world builds against Israel, that does put pressure on Israel to change its behavior, for sure.
And I think that that pressure is directed not only at Israel, but at the United States as well.
As I said before, I bet a lot of money that European leaders are putting pressure on Trump to put an end to this.
But it's the Americans who matter.
The Americans are joined at the hip with Israel, and the United States is by far the most powerful state in the world and clearly the most influential state in the Middle East.
So it's up to us to shut it down, which is another way of saying it's up to Donald Trump.
And there's no evidence so far that Trump is interested in shutting this one down.
I mean, one can only hope that that changes.
But as you said before, you know, there have been ceasefires, and what happens is the Israelis eventually break the ceasefire.
So you can put pressure on the Israelis to move to a ceasefire.
And the question is, what does the long term look like?
That's the real question we should be asking ourselves.
What do the Israelis have in mind over the long term for Gaza?
And the answer is very simple.
They plan to ethnically cleanse Gaza.
And because they're having a devil of the time doing that, they're executing a genocide.
They're murdering all these people, mainly for the purposes of driving them out of Gaza.
And if they can't drive them out of Gaza, they'll kill them all.
That's what's going on here.
And they're doing it again with the help of the United States.
On that, we will end, my dear professor.
Thank you very much for your time.
Thanks for accommodating my schedule, as always.
We'll look forward to seeing you next week.
Likewise, Judge.
Thank you.
More on this with two fan favorites.
At 4 o 'clock this afternoon, we found him, Max Blumenthal.
▲
Export Selection