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June 16, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
22:07
Aaron Maté : Trump Lied, People Died.
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Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Tuesday, June 17th, 2025.
Aaron Maté is here with us, will be here with us in just a minute on Trump Lied, People Died.
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Aaron Mate, my dear friend, welcome here.
I know you're traveling.
Thank you very much for accommodating our schedule.
How dangerous was it when Trump uttered his deceptions in Saudi Arabia last month, condemning neocons and condemning military intervention in the Middle East, all the while CIA, MI6, and certainly Mossad were planning Well, you nailed it, Judge.
He's showing his anti-interventionist, anti-neocon rhetoric, especially when it comes to the Middle East, to be a complete fraud.
He's showing that he's completely controlled and captured.
By the same neocon forces who he claimed he opposed.
What he's doing is one of the most dangerous things I've ever seen a world leader do, telling the people of Tehran, that's millions of people to evacuate, reposting apocalyptic messages from Mike Huckabee, who talks about Trump being chosen by God and compares him to Harry Truman, who dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Trump is showing himself to Not just be a fraud, but one of the most dangerous leaders we've ever seen.
How ruinous is it for American negotiators and diplomats when the president leads the whole world, including the people with whom our negotiators were actually literally negotiating, to believe an untruth.
And then, and then...
He's showing that there's no point in any sort of diplomacy involving the U.S. That's the message he's sending.
And he keeps touting the fact that he did issue the 60 day deadline.
You know, back in April, he said there's a 60 day deadline for Iran to step up and make concessions or else.
But what was happening right after Trump's 60-day deadline?
He had scheduled new peace talks.
So if you're Iran, and yes, you've heard Trump's 60-day deadline, but yet you've been scheduled to hold a new round of talks with Steve Wyckoff, Trump's top envoy, you're understandably going to think that these talks are continuing and that Trump's 60-day deadline, as many other deadlines have been, including on tariffs, were just bluster.
But yet Trump used that, used the cover of diplomacy to enforce and abet Israeli aggression.
And Trump keeps saying that he thinks this will lead to a deal with Iran.
If anything, this will incentivize Iran to have no further interest in diplomacy with the U.S., although they're still making overtures.
But in terms of the level of trust, it's at less than zero.
Less than zero.
I just wonder what kind of damage this has done to the United States around the world.
Oh, here's what I want to read to you.
This is what Trump posted at 6.30 in the morning on Friday morning.
Now, the Israeli attack started about eight hours before that.
I gave Iran chance after chance to make a deal.
I told them in the strongest of words to just do it, but no matter how hard they tried, no matter how close they got, they just couldn't get it done.
I told them that it would be much worse than anything they know, anticipated, or were told, that the United States makes the best and most lethal military equipment anywhere in the world by far, in caps, and that Israel has a lot of it with much more to come, and they know how to use it.
Certain Iranian hardliners spoke bravely, but they didn't know what was about to happen.
They're all dead.
D-E-A-D in caps.
Now, and it will only get worse.
There has already been great death and destruction, but there is still time to make this slaughter with the next already planned attacks being even more brutal come to an end.
Iran must make a deal before there is nothing left and save what was once known as the Iranian Empire.
No more death, no more destruction.
Just do it before it is too late.
God bless you all.
Yeah, he's basically saying there's no point in negotiating with us because we're only seeking your surrender.
What are those terms that Trump is trying to impose?
Well, initially in the talks, Trump and Steve Wyckoff Claimed that they were open to some level of enrichment, which was basically the premise of the last Iran nuclear deal, which Trump broke in his first term.
Then they changed that.
And not only did they start saying that Iran can't have any enrichment, which for Iran is a red line because they have the right to enrich under the Non-Proliferation Treaty.
They developed that enrichment capability.
As a major signature achievement of their sovereignty and see giving up that enrichment capability as a violation of their sovereignty and their national character.
They also have domestic energy needs that they want to meet.
So Trump then started saying no enrichment.
And they also started talking about caps on Iran's ballistic missiles, which means that basically they were demanding that Trump, that Iran, Trump was demanding that Iran consent to being left without sovereignty.
without being able to meet its domestic energy needs and also without being able to defend itself.
Because if they're not going to have nuclear weapons, which they said they do not want, they still need some missiles to defend themselves from the two countries that are constantly threatening them and their allies, which are the U.S. and Israel.
So Trump is basically saying to Iran, no point in negotiating.
You must surrender to having no sovereignty and no ability to defend yourself.
And that's what he's still demanding now.
Last night on Air Force One, The president was actually asked by a reporter, you can't see who it is, how does he reconcile his support of the attack by Israel with the statement made under oath by Tulsi Gabbard, who of course wasn't speaking on her own.
She was speaking as a result of an assessment by MI6, Mossad, and CIA that Iran does not have nuclear capabilities.
Very cleverly combine the two of these together.
Watch this.
People always said that you don't believe Iran should be able to have a nuclear weapon.
But how close do you personally think that they were to getting one?
Because Tulsi Gabbard testified at March that the intelligence community said Iran wasn't building a nuclear weapon.
The IC continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon.
I don't care what she said.
I think they were very close to having it.
How can she stay in that job after he said that?
That's a great question.
I look forward to her answer.
He's humiliating her, and he's actually humiliating the entire U.S. intelligence community.
He's saying that he doesn't care what the assessment is of the U.S. intelligence community.
He's like Dick Cheney on steroids.
Dick Cheney got back the intelligence on Iraq WMDs that there were none.
So he ordered it to be fabricated.
Trump is saying very openly in public that he doesn't care what his own intelligence officials say.
He's going to ignore them if it serves his interests of helping Israel attack Iran and possibly entering into that war himself, which I think by all appearances he is planning to do.
Just today CNN reported that the most recent U.S. intelligence assessment on the matter That is what the most recent U.S. intelligence assessment said on the topic, according to CNN, and they cited four people.
And I have every reason to believe that that was credible because notice that when Tulsi Gabbard came out with her statement in March, which Neocons now want to pretend with some sort of act of defiance on her part.
It was like bad intelligence.
Did anybody challenge that from the intelligence community?
Were there any leaks saying that Tulsi Gabbard is wrong?
No.
she was accurately reflecting the consensus views of the U.S. intelligence community, because the U.S. intelligence community can see what the rest of us can see, which is that Iran does not have a nuclear weapons program.
They formally...
So what Trump is doing is just one of the most reckless statements I've ever heard from a president, on top of him calling the people of Tehran to leave, because he's saying, I don't care what the facts are.
If it serves my agenda, I'm going to say something else and humiliate his top intelligence official in the process.
Here he is again, Iran.
Chris, if you want to put that up, I'll read it.
Iran should have signed the deal I told them to sign.
What a shame and waste of human life.
We'll tell that to Bibi.
Simply stated, Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon.
I said it over and over again.
Everyone should immediately evacuate to Iran.
Chris, put up that still of Netanyahu at the United Nations with the mock-up of a bomb.
Just to show how long this drumbeat has been going on and how absurd and irrational these arguments are.
You have the still, Chris?
Yes.
Well, let me comment, Judge, while Chris goes and finds that.
Go ahead.
The issue...
Now, do you know when this is?
This is 13 years ago.
He was peddling the nonsense that they are 90% there.
Yeah.
And it goes back longer than that.
He's been warning about this for a few decades now, at least.
He's a pathological liar because he's pathologically committed to aggression and supremacy.
And the reason why he wants to target Iran is that Iran resists U.S.-Israeli aggression in the region.
That's what he only cares about.
There's nothing to do with nuclear weapons.
If Trump and Netanyahu cared about nuclear weapons, there are many paths they could take.
First of all, there's the path of negotiation that they were on, which Netanyahu and Trump have destroyed.
There was the Iran nuclear deal, which Trump killed the first time.
And there also has been a proposal, and this does not get as much attention as it deserves, from Iran and pretty much the entire world on the table for years, which is a nuclear weapons-free Middle East.
Iran has signed on to that.
Proposal many, many times where no one in the Middle East should have nuclear weapons.
But because Israel and the U.S. insist on Israel having nuclear weapons so that it can threaten everybody else, they put everybody else, everybody in great danger and they create these constant crises themselves.
And that's why Netanyahu won't give up nuclear weapons and no Israeli leader will because their whole existence is predicated on aggression and force.
That's how they rule.
The New York Times pointed this out after October 7th, where the New York Times said that Israel was shaken by October 7th because its aura of power was challenged.
That's how these people rule, not by cooperation, diplomacy, getting along, simply by threatening everybody else.
How badly has damage been inflicted on Israel by the Iranian response?
Do you have a handle on that?
I know the IDF is not publicized.
I know that Ben-Gurion Airport has been hit.
Israel has imposed a lot of censorship on images coming out of there to conceal the extent of the damage.
So unfortunately, Judge, that's just not something I can really speak to.
What I can say is, you know, I've always questioned whether Iran can sufficiently deter Israel in a war, because unlike Iran, Israel with U.S. help and the help of many more allies, they're pathologically committed to regime change.
They orient so much energy, resources, military power into doing that.
And we've seen that.
Iran is defensive.
Iran just tries to defend itself from its constant onslaught.
And so given that, I have to think that Israel has planned for something like this and planned to have some hits from Iran.
The extent of the damage by Iran, I'm just not in a position to comment on.
What is the domestic reaction in Israel to this?
That Netanyahu is crazy or that we've got to support him?
Well, a lot of people have been, I think, shook by experiencing for the first time, many Israelis at least the first time, what it's like to live in fear.
I mean, they've lived in this bubble where they're occupying.
Millions of people committing mass murder for the last year and a half.
And a lot of Israelis are simply insulated from that or just don't care and support it.
So I think there's some shock from that.
But Netanyahu to me still remains very politically strong.
I just don't think the Israeli public is one that turns against their leader in times of war.
If anything, they rally behind the flag.
There has been some movement against Netanyahu over his abandonment of the hostages.
But my sense is he still retains a fair amount of popular support.
Here's Lindsey Graham's new friend.
This is a real odd combination, Senator Lindsey Graham and Senator Richard Blumenthal.
But here he is two days talking about assets moved from Ukraine to Israel.
Chris, cut number six.
You know, the defense secretary was testifying to Congress this week, and he said he's moved equipment meant to counter drones in Ukraine.
Not only to protect U.S. personnel, but also to enable Israel to defend itself against Iran's retaliation.
But I think that the president is right to try to bring the two sides together.
There is a deal that's possible here if Iran were to abandon its effort to build nuclear bombs that endanger not only Israel, but Iran.
All the other Arab nations are going to have nuclear weapons if Iran does.
Does he know what the hell he's talking about?
No, they're making it all up.
Again, Iran does not have a nuclear weapons program.
They have the right to enrich.
Now, have they increased their enrichment?
Yes.
Why did they do that?
Because Trump tore up the original Iran nuclear deal.
And under the Iran nuclear deal, if one country breaches it in such a way, then Iran is no longer obligated to stay at the level of enrichment that the original deal was, which was 3.6%.
So they've increased.
Now, what was Iran's argument for doing that?
They needed to enrich at a higher level to build leverage for another talk, because if they didn't, they'd face continued threats with no means to defend themselves.
Putting, you know, increasing their level of enrichment would give them more, would give them more leverage to return to, to convince the U.S. to return to a deal.
Now, some people have criticized that.
And I know Scott Ritter has.
He thinks that was tactically unwise.
But whatever you think of that decision, it's Iran's right to enrich under the Non-Proliferation Treaty, which it has.
And it's not the U.S. and Israel's right to basically demand that a country submit a complete surrender of its sovereignty and domestic energy needs.
And by the way, why would Why is Trump and Netanyahu so insistent on no enrichment for Iran?
Well, this is the point that I think Max Blumenthal has made.
I believe this argument was made by him first.
They want regime change in Iran.
And so if Iran can meet its domestic energy needs, then that reduces their ability of the US and Israel to sow unrest and create the conditions for regime change if Iran is meeting the needs of its population.
So they want to keep Iran suffering as they're doing under sanctions and also by capping its ability to meet domestic energy needs.
So there's nothing to do with nuclear weapons.
This is everything to do with regime change.
And that's the agenda that Richard Blumenthal, Lindsey Graham and Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu and all their bipartisan friends are pursuing.
How do you think the rather I don't think Moscow needs any reminders that you just can't engage in diplomacy with the U.S. It's pointless.
The U.S. doesn't respect agreements.
And as Trump is showing, sees diplomacy as a means to achieve hegemonic ends, even if it means fooling people to create the conditions for war.
I mean, that was Russia's big complaint with the Minsk Accords and with Biden sabotaging the Istanbul talks of three years ago.
So I think this just reinforces what is now just conventional wisdom that the U.S. just can't be trusted to engage.
In diplomacy, as they also showed with the Iran nuclear deal, as they also showed with the Oslo peace process, the whole peace process between Israel and Palestine, brokered with great fanfare by Bill Clinton.
This was supposed to bring peace to the region.
What was it used for actually?
It was used as a smokescreen, as cover for Israel to accelerate its conquest of the West Bank and Gaza, to expand their illegal settlements there during the period of the peace of mind.
So that's what you get with diplomacy with the U.S. That's the message that Trump is continuing to send.
And by the way, on that question too, so I already noted that on the issue of nuclear weapons, Iran has put multiple diplomatic solutions on the table.
The Iran nuclear deal, the original one that Trump broke, and also a nuclear weapons-free Middle East, which the U.S. and Israel refused to even consider.
On the other main issue, foundational issue, at the heart of all Middle East strife, which is, you know, The Palestinian-Israeli issue.
What has Iran said?
In 2017, they endorsed a measure from the Organization for Islamic Cooperation calling for a two-state solution, which for Palestinians is a major compromise because they'd be accepting just 22% of their historic homeland in a Palestinian state.
Even Iran endorsed that.
Members of Hamas have as well.
It's Israel and the U.S. that have stood alone in rejecting even that massive Palestinian compromise.
And Israel is so determined to crush Palestinian self-determination that that's why they're going after Iran, because Iran has refused to relent in supporting the Palestinian struggle for freedom.
That's why Iran is a target now.
And that's why we're on the precipice, basically.
Not on the precipice.
That's why we're in the midst now of a major global catastrophe.
How are Trump's deceptions and Israel's invasion perceived in the EU?
Well, the population is one thing, but the governments are all completely subservient.
I don't know if you've seen some of the statements coming out of the likes of Keir Starmer and Macron and Germany, but one after the other, they all...
It's so shameful.
They're all so clearly in the pocket of the U.S. and Israel, showing no independence whatsoever.
Aaron Mate, thank you very much.
I know you're traveling, and I deeply appreciate the time and the insight you've given us, as always.
Travel safely.
We hope to see you again soon.
Thank you, Judge.
Of course.
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