June 12, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
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| Hi, everyone. | |
| Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. | |
| Today is Thursday, June 12, 2025. | |
| Professor John Mearsheimer joins us now. | |
| We have a slightly different setup and a slightly different appearance because of Internet Gremlins, which producer Chris has worked his magic to overcome. | |
| Professor Mearsheimer, welcome here, my dear friend. | |
| Thank you very much for joining us. | |
| I have a lot to talk to you about, particularly The latest rumors and insinuations of war between the United States and Iran. | |
| And I basically want your opinion on whether Iran can defeat Israel. | |
| But before we get there, about the attacks on Russian military and civilian sites by Ukrainian drones, Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov. | |
| Has stated he believes with 100% certainty that the British were behind it, perhaps with American assistance. | |
| He is probably referring to MI6 and CIA. | |
| He wasn't quite that precise. | |
| But if he is correct that the British engineered this attack, and President Putin has said this is now a war against Terror, | |
| which in Russian legal parlance means once approved by the doom of the Russian parliament, all bets are off and President Zelensky and his senior generals can be targets of the Russian military. | |
| Okay, with the statement by Foreign Minister Lavrov, with the statement by President Putin, has the war gone from a special military operation? | |
| to a war against terrorists, to an actual war between Russia and Western forces Well, thankfully, it's not yet an actual war in the sense that NATO forces are directly fighting against Russian forces. | |
| That is the nightmare scenario that we absolutely do not want. | |
| And we have not reached that point yet. | |
| Now, is this a step in that direction? | |
| I think the answer is yes. | |
| And I believe this is why President Trump contacted President Putin on June 4th, three days after the attack, and Trump made it clear that we had nothing to do with it. | |
| He wanted to make sure that Putin understood that, because Trump lives in mortal fear that this one will escalate, and that's the last thing that he wants. | |
| So as I have talked about on numerous occasions since June 1st, attacking the Ukrainians, attacking one leg of the strategic nuclear triad of Russia is playing with fire. | |
| This is extremely dangerous. | |
| And of course, President Trump recognized that. | |
| Keith Kellogg recognized that. | |
| Other advisors. | |
| I can understand people saying to the president, oh, something's going to happen. | |
| We don't want to tell you. | |
| We want you to have plausible deniability. | |
| Don't worry about it. | |
| Something's going to happen that will bring Putin to the negotiating table. | |
| But to me, it's inconceivable. | |
| If Sergei Lavrov is right. | |
| An MI6 orchestrated, planned, plotted, and helped carry this out. | |
| They talk to the Five Eyes all the time. | |
| Those are the five English-speaking countries with which we share virtually all intel. | |
| It's hard to believe the CIA didn't know about it. | |
| It's hard to believe the Defense Department didn't know about it. | |
| Secretary Hegseth, who claims he didn't know about it, also claims that we track all drones in real time. | |
| Is it likely that the Russians believe that the U.S. was involved but kept this from President Trump so he would have the ability to assert truthfully in his own mind a denial? | |
| Well, a couple points here. | |
| First of all, there's a difference between orchestrating and planning this operation and knowing about it. | |
| You want to remember that Lavrov is saying that he's 100% certain. | |
| It's a quite remarkable statement because Lavrov is not given to making unequivocal statements. | |
| He's saying 100% certainty here that he knows or the Russians know that the British orchestrated and basically ran this operation in conjunction with the Ukrainians. | |
| Now, with regard to the Americans, I find it hard to believe that we didn't know. | |
| It's not only that we share intelligence with the British and with the Ukrainians, it's just the fact that the Americans spy on everything, especially in that theater of war. | |
| How could we have completely missed this? | |
| So I think we knew about it. | |
| Now, the question is, Did Trump know about it? | |
| Did Hegseth know about it? | |
| It's almost impossible to tell from the outside. | |
| But it's at least plausible that Trump knew about it and didn't say anything beforehand. | |
| And that, again, is why I believe he called Putin on June 4th, but we can't know for sure. | |
| But I do think it's clear after you listen to the readout of that June 4th conversation, especially from Trump, that he's not interested in doing this again, and he wants to make sure that nothing like this ever happens again. | |
| A new format, we can't always run the clips. | |
| Chris, unless you can run number eight, which is Sergei Lavrov. | |
| Just let me know. | |
| If we can run it, when we're in this temporary mode, in this temporary venue, we'll run it. | |
| But I assure you, having seen it several times, he says he's 100% certain the British are behind it. | |
| Questioned Professor Mearscharmer, knowing his thinking and his reputation as a diplomat, would he make a statement like 100% certainty unless he had actual, irrefutable, demonstrable intel proof? | |
| I think the answer is simply no. | |
| I mean, I think he's telling us that they have hard evidence that they know the British were deeply involved. | |
| And I would note to you that this is hardly a surprising line of argument. | |
| I mean, you would expect the British to be involved. | |
| You might not expect the Americans to be involved, but the British you would expect to be involved. | |
| It's also possible here that the Americans understood that it was a good idea to let the British do the dirty work and for us to stay in the shadows. | |
| I mean, I'm sure that the Russians are running that scenario through their head because they surely know that we share intelligence and therefore we undoubtedly knew about this. | |
| Expose their assets, human and material. | |
| To lawful retaliation by the Russians. | |
| I think the answer to that has got to be yes. | |
| I don't know what the British revealed in doing this. | |
| No, no, I don't mean publicly revealed, but if the British concocted this, orchestrated it, helped it, don't they become co-belligerents and aren't their assets now legally available for targeting their military assets? | |
| I don't think the Russians really care whether it's legal or not. | |
| And I think, to be honest, they've understood that they have been at war effectively with the West. | |
| And that... | |
| Thank you. | |
| What a day of gremlins. | |
| So, Professor Mearsheimer, I don't know if you can hear me, but we want you to log back on. | |
| No, he can't log back on, Chris. | |
| Are you there, Professor Mearsheimer? | |
| Okay. | |
| All right, I think we're going to have to terminate the show because of these gremlins this afternoon. | |
| It's a shame. | |
| We'll try and bring Professor Mearsheimer to you in the next hour, if we can, or sometime tomorrow. | |
| And we will do the same with Max Blumenthal, who is currently scheduled for 4 o 'clock this afternoon. | |
| Thank you for your patience. | |
| Thank you for watching. | |
| We'll be back to you as soon as we can. |
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