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July 1, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
30:05
COL. Douglas Macgregor : Where Will Trump’s Bombing Failure Lead?
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Hi, everyone.
Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Tuesday, July 1st, 2025.
Colonel Douglas McGregor will be here momentarily on just where will Trump's failed bombings lead us.
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And now is the time.
Colonel McGregor, welcome here, my dear friend.
Thank you for accommodating my schedule today.
Before we get into the geopolitical ramifications of President Trump's bombing and Prime Minister Netanyahu's wishes, can we take a little peek at what's going on in Ukraine?
The world doesn't seem to be focused on it, but the war continues.
And just from the readings that I do, without getting into any depth with folks like you, it seems as though Ukraine is almost literally on its last leg.
But maybe you have a more definitive analysis than that.
Well, I think you saw that the Ukrainians launched strikes into Donetsk that killed a number of civilians.
This is another sort of revenge weapon.
And I'm told they use storm shadow missiles, which is disappointing, but I'm sure not surprising to the Russians.
And this kind of thing is just sort of pouring salt into the wound that London has inflicted already on Russia.
I wonder how long Moscow will put up with it before they actually do something to the British, but let's hope not.
Then, of course, they've now completely cleaned out Luhansk.
So Donetsk and Luhansk are now completely devoid of any Ukrainian elements.
And I think you've got to look at the bigger picture and understand that there are a number of different things happening on different levels.
The Ahmad Brigade or the Reinforced Battalion, I don't know which it is, which is largely but not exclusively Chechen, has been receiving reinforcement from Russian drone operators.
And they are moving down from Sunny into Chernygov and a number of other places on their way, I think, to Kiev with a list of names of members of the Azov Battalion.
You'll recall the Azov is this sort of neo-Nazi organization that delighted in killing Russian prisoners and murdering Russian civilians.
And my impression is that because they are known in Russia as the head choppers, that as they run across these neo-Nazis, they're decapitating them and moving on.
So I think Russia is getting ready for the final phase, which I think is going to have to include crossing the river into Kiev and then moving south on Odessa.
And they're benefiting at the moment, I think, from President Trump's desire to put Ukraine behind him as much as possible to try and still normalize relations with Moscow and focus preeminently on the Middle East and Israel.
Are there any discernible pressures on President Putin to bring this to an end more quickly?
Or are there pressures, but he resists them using his same slow, methodical, regular, consistent, systematic pace?
I think there's both.
You've hit the nail on the head.
First of all, the Russian population would like to see this whole Ukraine thing come to an end, and they would prefer to see a sledgehammer taken to Kiev to the government.
But you've got President Putin who has moved cautiously and deliberately.
And though this has taken a lot of time, it's proven to be a smart move because what he didn't want to do is he didn't want to draw us in, or for that matter, NATO, into a conflict with Russia.
And I still think that that's uppermost in his mind.
That's not because of fear.
That's because he recognizes the utter futility and stupidity of broadening the war that way.
So he's going to continue, I think, on the same path.
But I think we can expect between now and the end of September that the map will have changed profoundly.
And what happens at that point, you know, with the Europeans, who knows?
I still think he's waiting to see some of these governments in France, Germany, also in Great Britain at some point, but more importantly in France and Germany change.
And I think they will.
In the interim, he continues to supply arms to the regime?
You mean President Trump?
Yes.
Yeah, he does, but I think he's trying to find ways to dampen it, to reduce it.
Remember, he's dealing with a Congress that is incurable In its hatred of Russia and its determination to do to Russia what now we seem to be equally interested in doing to Ukraine, which is overthrow the government, divide it up, fragment it, and then strip it of its resources.
That obviously has failed against Russia, but that's definitely on the agenda now in the Middle East for Iran.
Without redefining the term totally obliterated, can we get to the bottom of what our bombs caused and did two weeks ago?
Well, you've talked to a number of people who are far more expert on that topic than I am.
And, you know, I think the world of Ted Postel, he's been a truth teller on a whole range of things from SDI and missile defense forward.
I think he's told us what we know and can know at this point.
I think, though, and this is important, that President Trump weighed in for different reasons.
Obviously, he was approached by Netanyahu for a ceasefire because Israel was being pulverized.
And when I say pulverized, I don't mean the whole country, but certainly the key targets.
And, you know, Larry Johnson's map is great.
It throws into very sharp relief the enormous damage that the Iranian missiles had done.
And I think everybody needs to see that because that's a tribute to Iranian missile technology and precision.
And I think they needed a break from this.
They were also obviously running out of their own missiles.
And again, everybody knows that when you're trying to shoot down an incoming missile, you're going to shoot at least two at the incoming missile.
And at that kind of rate, within a few days, you're going to be in a lot of trouble because you're just going to run out of anti-missiles.
But I also think President Trump decided that this might be a way that he could bring this conflict to an end.
Because, you know, he said, and I think he really believes this in his heart, but it's obviously not true, that the war is over.
Remember, we obliterated this and it's over.
He was very happy about the fact that we had not killed any Iranians in these strikes, at least as far as we know.
There was then a counter-strike on our facilities in Bahrain and no Americans were killed.
I mean, this is really vintage Trump.
This is a man that does not want war.
Now, you and I know that that's not the end of it.
You and I know that this is not going to, you can't tie a bow on this thing and wish everybody a Merry Christmas and go home.
But I think that in the back of his mind is something he wanted to achieve.
Who sought the ceasefire?
The Ayatollah's people or Netanyahu?
No, I think the Iranians were in for the long haul, Judge.
I think they were ready to blast away for months if necessary.
And I think the evidence is pretty strong that the Israeli side asked for the ceasefire.
And of course, you had this man, Ben Gavir, who was caught in public when he was asked, why have you turned to the Americans after only a few days for help and assistance?
And he said, we underestimated or we didn't appreciate the quality of the Iranian arsenal and what they could do.
I think he was telling the truth for change.
The other thing is that the finance minister spoke, Smotrich, and said that the economy had another week, maybe two weeks before it imploded.
And it just couldn't go on.
We put those two things together.
I think it's pretty obvious the Israelis needed the break.
Can we take a guess as to who's going to pay for the rebuilding of Israel?
Gosh, let me wonder about that for a second.
Oh, the United States.
And anything else they want.
Wow.
So American contractors will, you know, the huge international ones that build stadiums and bridges and highways will descend on Israel and send the bill to the Pentagon.
Well, I'm sure that there'll be a lot of effort to ensure that the right firms that are connected to the right investment houses in New York City are the ones who will benefit.
I won't go into any more detail, but I think you understand what I mean.
Right.
Okay.
What is the, and take as long as you want to answer this, the long-term geopolitical significance of Trump's bombing?
Oh, boy.
Well, we can only guess at this point.
You know, I'm always reminded of somebody asking Deng Xiaoping about the French Revolution, and he said, we're not sure yet.
It hasn't been long enough.
I suppose you can make the same argument about his bombing.
The bad news is that we're a co-belligerent.
We're in the war.
We have opened Pandora's box.
That's the number one concern, that however much Trump wants to bomb in the morning, send over sandwiches and coffee in the afternoon and make peace, that's not going to happen.
I don't think anybody in Iran is interested in talking with us anymore.
They'll listen to what we say, but I don't think they'll put much store in it.
They see him at this stage as Israel's instrument, that he's the backer and the source for whatever Israeli power exists, and therefore they're not going to listen to him.
I mean, they already feel as though he lied to them.
But those are true observations, are they not?
Yeah, no, I think so as well.
I was simply going to say, I think that's probably true for everybody else.
I think that's certainly true in Moscow and Beijing.
And that's not because they have a dislike for Trump.
That's not the issue at all.
I mean, as we've discussed that many, many times.
So we are in the war and the war is on.
It is not over.
And to what extent President Trump is entirely aware of all the moving parts across the region that are involved in this war, that's anybody's guess.
But you have to look at what's been happening in the Caucasus with Azerbaijan.
It's always been anti-Armenian.
The Turks are anti-Armenian.
We know That.
The Azeri Turks in Azerbaijan are no exception.
They want pieces and chunks of Azerbaijan, or excuse me, of Armenia.
They may want Armenia entirely.
But they're now playing a different kind of role because of their close relationship with Israel.
They provided locations, essentially a base of operations to the Mossad and the Israeli Defense Force from which they could launch actions, strikes, and other things into Iran.
And they haven't made much of an attempt to disguise that.
I mean, their contempt for Iran is pretty profound.
Unfortunately, they've made the mistake now of signaling their contempt for Moscow.
And again, as we discussed before, Iran is probably as close as you're going to get in terms of strategic importance to Russia as Ukraine is.
And that's because stability in Central Asia and southern Russia and the Caucasus is vital to stability across the Eurasian landmass that Russia occupies.
The Russians are very sensitive to what happens down there.
They don't want a hostile government in Iran.
They don't see any benefit to the world or to them of seeing Iran break into pieces, which is obviously what we, the financial interests in London and New York City, very definitely want.
Israel sees the breakup of Iran as essentially a dream come true if they can make it work, because Iran is the last holdout of defiance against Israeli hegemony.
And remember, Israeli supremacy in the region is part and parcel of the control of the region and its resources by the financial interests in London and New York City and Washington.
So everybody's on board for the strategy that was pursued against Russia in Ukraine.
Only this time, we're going to pursue it with the use of other proxies against Iran.
It's not just Azerbaijan.
We have Syria now.
And Syria has an important role to play from the standpoint of both Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Erdogan.
Mr. Erdogan is distracted at the moment because he wants to crush any semblance of a Kurdish independent state emerging inside Syria.
But once he's satisfied that he's achieved that, and I think that's what we're going to see in the near future, he certainly has no objections to seeing Syria used as a platform for attack against Shiites.
Only the Shiites that he'll be attacking in Syria are going to be in Iraq, because Iraq is obviously part of Greater Iran now in terms of sphere of influence and power.
Iraq is very definitely an ally of Persia.
So this war is spreading.
And then, of course, we haven't talked about Egypt.
Egypt doesn't get much attention in the West, but it's the largest Arab state.
It's very close to the Saudis as well as to Iran.
And of course, you know, the Saudis, the Saudi prince, the man we refer to, you know, for simplicity's sake as MBS, he called the Iranians and essentially the president of Iran and Prime Minister of Iran and said, you know, our sympathy, we're with you, we support you, et cetera, et cetera.
It's more important than something symbolic because that link between Riyadh and Tehran also extends to Cairo.
And, you know, you've got 50,000, 60,000 troops on the border with Israel.
You have a seething cauldron of discontent in Egypt and anger because the Egyptian government has been unwilling to act against the Israelis on behalf of the population of Gaza.
I'm surprised that there's not more trouble than we've already seen inside Egypt.
But CC has surrendered, I think, to a large extent to American influence.
And remember, we pumped billions of dollars into Egypt, and he doesn't want to lose those subsidies.
But again, this is all very fragile.
And, you know, the Israelis, they've been very open about their dislike of the Egyptians.
They don't like the Egyptian forces in Syria.
And if you put the map up of Greater Israel, the so-called Greater Israel project that many people in the West are not taking seriously, I do, they very definitely in Israel believe that everything essentially from the Suez to the Euphrates should be part of this thing they call Greater Israel.
It may not all be realized this year, but that's where they want to go.
And we are now part and parcel of it.
That brings me to the other piece of this equation.
We know Langley and the CIA is very heavily involved all over the region in subverting and attacking enemies of the United States and Israel.
Those are, even if those people really aren't enemies, it doesn't matter.
And they're interested in subverting at every turn Iranian influence and power in the region, particularly in Iran and Iraq.
But that's not the biggest chunk at this stage for our consideration.
The other is CENCOM.
U.S. Central Command has become a very, very powerful entity within the broader national security framework.
Apparently, CENCOM provides the intelligence directly to the White House.
And General Carrilla is widely thought to be closer to Prime Minister Netanyahu than he is to President Trump, which is a strange sort of phenomenon.
He also seems to be very gung-ho about the use of American military power wherever possible to expand, extend Israeli power and influence.
So we think there's joint planning going on between the Israelis and CENTCOM about the potential use of American military power.
How much, where would that be?
I mean, who knows?
But I think it's pretty obvious that General Carrilla is involved with that.
Then, of course, you have the new chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and he's endeared himself to President Trump.
I guess President Trump liked him because he thought he was a quote-unquote tough guy as an Air Force general committing air power against People in the region when he was president trying to fight ISIS, the very people that he now embraces in Syria.
And this man sat on the board of a hedge fund that I guess is headed by Jared Kusher's brother.
Now, whether or not that means anything politically, I don't know, but I suspect that this man Cain did not get his job if he had any reservations about embroiling U.S. air and naval power, potentially even special ops or ground forces in the region, working closely with Israel to achieve Israel's aims.
He was a retired three-star who apparently ran into Trump at a MAGA rally during the 2024 campaign.
There's no sense delving into their relationship.
Somebody, whether a four-star or a deputy secretary of defense, is going to get through to Trump that his bombing mission failed.
What is he going to do next?
Is he going to use low-yield nuclear weapons to satisfy Netanyahu's bloodlust?
You do have advocates in the air and naval circles for the use of low-yield nuclear weapons.
They've always been there.
A few years ago, there were people in Congress, and I say at least 10 years or more, who were raising the alarm about funding low-yield nuclear warheads for use on cruise missiles and so forth.
And they rightly pointed out, how does the enemy distinguish the so-called low-yield nuclear warhead from a major nuclear attack?
And the answer was, well, we think they'll figure that out.
But that wasn't widely accepted.
But nevertheless, they funded it.
So now we have these weapons.
And there is always a temptation to turn to them on the assumption that that weapon alone will do the damage that we need in order to, quote unquote, win the conflict.
I hope not, but that's with us.
That's always been with us.
And I think Elbridge Colby, who is in the Department of Defense as an undersecretary or something, was once an advocate for that.
I don't know if he's changed his mind as he seems to have changed his mind on a number of things, as almost everybody who finally got on board with the Trump administration did.
We came across a very interesting interview with Senator John Kennedy doing his country bumpkin routine, but of course he's a graduate of Harvard Law School and has a degree in philosophy from Cambridge University.
Nevertheless, this is the way he portrays himself.
Some of this is pabulum, but the last question and the last answer is profound, and I invite your attention to it.
Chris, cut number seven.
Before Israel and America did what we did, Iran was within days of having a nuclear weapon.
Now?
Within days.
Within days.
That's challenged in this briefing?
Within days.
Sir, just to kind of circle back and put a finer point on this, the days that they were to getting a bomb, that seems to be different from what Tulsi Gabbard had testified to in March.
Was there a new assessment?
Was that the Israeli assessment?
Was that a new American assessment?
Was that information new to you in this briefing?
It was new to me.
This was a good briefing.
It was one of the best I've ever attended.
I mean, Rubio, Hed Seth, Latcliffe, General Kane, they didn't bring out a script and read carefully from it.
They just looked us in the eye and talked to us.
The assessment that said that Iran was within days of having a bomb, is that Israeli or American assessment?
I don't know.
Is that Israeli or an American assessment?
I don't know.
Well, if you're a senator sitting in the United States Senate, I think I'd be very concerned about the source of the assessment.
And if it were foreign, because Israel, contrary to popular belief, is a foreign state with interests that do not necessarily align with ours, then I would like to know that.
In fact, I'd like to know why I am listening to an Israeli assessment.
So the otherwise usually adroit Senator Kennedy made a mistake, Judge, don't you think?
Yes, yes, I do.
I don't know when this is going to come back to haunt him or become a big deal.
This statement was made two days ago.
Well, you know, Judge Yent reminds me of something I read in Stimson's papers.
Stimson, of course, was the Secretary of War, and he was writing about Pearl Harbor.
And he wrote, thank God the Japanese attacked us on the 7th of December.
If they hadn't, we would have had to attack them in order to get this war started two weeks later.
Now, that's in Stimson's papers.
I think this is the same set of Stimson papers that reveal not only was he grateful that they attacked, but he knew the attack was coming.
And 2,700 18-year-old sailors went to a watery grave.
No, that's right.
And, you know, I'm just saying that it's disturbing to me that, you know, he says, well, I don't know if this was an Israeli source or an American source.
I would always insist on knowing the source.
And if it did not have a legitimate American stamp on it, then I would be very reluctant to accept it.
That's not to say that the Israelis don't have good intelligence.
They frequently do, but we also know that since 1995, you know, Mr. Netanyahu has been telling us that they are within months and then a month and then weeks and then one week And then days and now hours.
I mean, come on.
How often do we have to march down this trail?
But money has a habit of making things go down and making things more palatable than they otherwise would be.
And I'm sure that there's lots of Israel lobby money involved that makes this attractive.
Colonel, I'm sure you noticed, as I did, whose name was missing, Rubio Hagseth Ratcliffe, General Kane.
How about Director Ratcliffe's boss, Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard?
Well, Rubio is somebody that he knows who is a card-carrying member of the Israeli club, a lobby member almost.
And I think that that's probably enough.
Hagseth is too new.
Tulsi Gabbard's already alienated people by not unilaterally signing up without question for whatever the Israelis want.
That leaves you with Radcliffe.
And Radcliffe is, as Max Bluenthal has pointed out, a protégé of the lobby.
He was created from nothing, came out of nowhere knowing nothing, and has advanced all the way to the top of the CIA.
And he is there for one reason and only one reason.
That's what the Israeli lobby wanted in the job.
Here we are.
Is that an Israeli or an American assessment?
I don't know.
He might as well have said, I don't know, and I didn't ask.
I'm sure that's rather obvious.
Yeah, well, that's unfortunate.
But, you know, I wish he had asked.
But then again, you know, we understand what the real conditions are on the Hill.
These decisions are not in their hands.
They know that.
They want to be on the winning team.
Remember your discussion about Charlie Wrangell?
And you talked about the fact that Wrangell said, no, we're not going to object to anything the president does.
And if he's successful, we'll cheer him.
And if he's not, then we'll attack him.
And I think that's true for all of these people.
They'll go along with all of this.
But when it fails miserably, or we end up in a confrontation with the Russians or the Chinese or someone else, or if the Iranians target something that's very sensitive to us and we lose a lot of people, I think that they'll find themselves miraculously on a different side, don't you?
Yes.
Thank you, Colonel.
Thanks very much for your analysis, particularly that very long and informative analysis, which is not covered in the West here about what's happening with Azerbaijan and Turkey.
By the way, you know, I would ask everybody to pay attention to it because the Armenians are in a very, very weak position.
Their government has handled things badly.
Their only hope is that the Russians will assist them because I don't see any evidence that we will.
We don't seem to care about Christians at all.
No, we don't.
Very sad, but very illuminating.
Thank you, Colonel.
Thanks for your time.
All the best.
Have a great Independence Day weekend.
We're independent from London, but are we independent from Washington?
No, no.
I was talking earlier to a Norwegian friend, Glenn Deason, and I said, you've got to resurrect Harold Hadrada, the great Viking that got killed outside of York and tried to invade England in 1066.
Maybe he can put some iron back into the souls of Norwegians.
And he laughed.
I'm beginning to think we need to resurrect George Washington, because if he were here and he watched the extent to which we have been manipulated by foreign powers and influence, I think there would be a new revolution.
Maybe one's coming.
Thank you, Colonel.
All the best.
Have a great holiday.
We'll see you next week.
Same to you.
Bye-bye.
Thank you.
Coming up later today at 3 o'clock, Colonel Karen Kwatkowski and at 4.30.
I'm not sure where he is, but Chris will find him.
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