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July 1, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
31:19
Max Blumenthal : Trump and Israeli Disinformation
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Hi, everyone.
Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Wednesday, July 2nd, 2025.
Max Blumenthal joins us now.
Max, a pleasure, my dear friend.
I want to spend some time with you on the Israeli influence on Donald Trump through Mossad and other sources and other human beings.
But before we do that, a couple of questions about Ukraine.
Is the United States, as far as you understand it, really putting a pause on serious weapons, missiles, and artillery shells that are being sent to Ukraine?
And if so, is the reason being stated true that we're running out of them or is this another Donald Trump negotiating technique?
Well, the reason that's not true or doesn't ring true to me is that these munitions and particularly Patriot interceptor missiles need to be prioritized for American security interests.
I mean, what missiles are we intercepting around the homeland?
It's true that Donald Trump is allocating $175 billion to this phony golden dome, which is really just kickbacks to Palmer Lucky at Anderil and Elon Musk and the other tech billionaire warlords who are in his camp while he's investing billions and billions in nuclear modernization.
But this isn't for the homeland.
This isn't for American interest.
These weapons were given to Israel with Zelensky's consent.
And now Zelensky and Ukraine are howling that there's a supposed pause, but they're just the weapons aren't there.
And they went to Israel.
It's just a fact.
We know that Ukraine consented to the transfer of at least two entire Patriot missile batteries, each of which takes like 80 people to operate.
These are two of the most expensive platforms in the U.S. arsenal.
They consented to that.
Not only that, Zelensky gave up mineral rights on his country.
He sold his country down the river to U.S. Empire.
And this is how they pay him back because Israel is ultimately the priority because the preponderance of Zionist power in the United States is something that Ukraine can never compare to.
Wow.
When a very good question was put to the spokesperson for the State Department, by the way, do they still ban you from those press conferences or are they not worth going to?
I could probably go.
It just doesn't feel like they matter as much anymore, but maybe it'll give me something to do in the daytime if I'm not on the judge.
Well, watch this non-answer from Tammy Bruce.
Chris understands the decision on which weapons to provide to Ukraine being one taken at the Pentagon.
But from a diplomacy standpoint, does pausing the weapon deliveries for Ukraine make it more difficult to get Russia to come to the table in terms of a peace agreement or a ceasefire because it somehow relieves potential pressure on them?
It's a very good question, but it's good that it's not going to be a factor because we haven't paused sending weapons to Ukraine.
This is one aspect, one situation, one event that has been changed, as you heard from the DOD.
There are multiple robust other options and efforts regarding the Ukrainian situation with weapons.
Again, I don't speak for the DOD.
I can only refer to their statement and to what they've stated very bluntly.
The President has also indicated his remaining commitment regarding Patriot missiles.
This is not, I will reinforce this, this is not a cessation of us assisting Ukraine or of providing weapons.
This is one event in one situation, and we'll discuss what else comes up in the future, but be wary of painting too broad a brush there.
What the hell kind of an answer was that?
She never has a very good answer.
She's not as good of a liar as Smercula, Matt Miller, who I see has taken nice, gotten a nice golden parachute at some strategic communications firm.
Tammy Bruce comes from AM Radio.
You probably know her.
She has no background.
I know her from Fox.
I mean, I saw her there all the time.
I don't know if she was an employee or just one of the outside folks that's there a lot, but she was there a lot.
I mean, if you look into her background, she has no background in any of this.
She was on some right-wing AM radio station in the LA area.
And then I think there was some lawsuit where she sued for discrimination, ironically.
And then the Heritage Foundation picked her up and sent her on speaking tours to campuses where she was sort of like the token Republican out lesbian condemning, you know, gay marriage and same-sex marriage and stuff like that.
And then Trump likes her.
She seems loyal to Trump.
So he just throws her into the lion's den.
She's the one who gave an interview saying she loved her job because she was working for the greatest country in the world next to Israel.
Remember that?
Yeah, I mean, she's kind of a human blooper reel, although Trump said something similar.
And that is kind of consistent with Trump's actual policy, which is Israel first or make Israel great again.
But here what she's saying is she's just kind of filling time.
She's never going to say what you said, which is Zelensky knew about it and the stuff went to Netanyahu instead.
Oh, of course.
But there's another layer here to the question by the reporter with the elaborate kind of lowrider tattoo style laptop, which is that Zelensky's strategy doesn't really require conventional weapons, although Ukrainian air defenses have been depleted.
He definitely needs as much interceptors and U.S. assistance there as possible because Russia is hitting back in core Ukrainian cities.
But what has Zelensky been doing?
It's Operation Spider's Web or the Ukrainian SBU and military, attacking inside Russia, attacking many civilian targets.
You could even call them terror attacks using converted civilian drones carrying munitions.
These are relatively cheap attacks and require small teams of drone operators.
And they're considered successful.
And the whole point is to pressure Russia.
So they've attacked a Russian, in late May, they attacked a Russian fuel convoy by a train carrying fuel, hit the train.
They then attacked civilian targets on rail lines as well, killing and wounding a number of people in Bryansk.
A seven-month-old child had to be medevaced to Moscow.
And they attacked a hangar filled with Russian strategic bombers, destroyed like half the bombers.
Again, with commercial drones, with drone bases inside Russia, which actually resembled some of the tactics that we saw the Mossad deploy inside Iran.
And this is what Zelensky has left in his arsenal.
He doesn't really need heavy weapons or tanks.
And it shows desperation on the part of the Ukrainians.
And what it suggests to me is that there really is no leverage that the U.S. can bring to bear on Russia.
The liberal kind of New York Times press is howling today that Trump imposed no new sanctions on Russia.
Well, Russia is the most sanctioned country in the world.
Over a thousand U.S. sanctions exist through OFAC.
What are they doing?
The Russian consumer has more disposable income now than before the war.
The ruble has not been turned to rubble.
Russian GDP is surging.
It's proved to be very resilient.
So Putin, as far as I can tell, is fine with keeping this war going as they advance to key transit corridors and they just captured a key mineral field that Zelensky had used to negotiate with.
Now he no longer has the minerals.
So it doesn't matter what Tammy Bruce says or what these reporters want.
This war is essentially a losing cause for Ukraine.
And the U.S. has lost its negotiating leverage, which means the U.S. has lost its power on the world stage by backing Ukraine indefinitely.
Switching gears, does Israel have a daily quota for Palestinians to be murdered?
Well, they definitely, if they do, they definitely tried to up their quota on the day of the ceasefire that Trump tried to impose with Iran, where it has now been reported in Israeli media, I think it was Channel 13, that Israeli jets had a surplus of munitions that they were not able to dump on Tehran and were sort of forced to take a U-turn.
So the Air Force chief told them to just go dump the munitions on Gaza.
And if you were following social media from Gaza on that day or that night, you saw people on the ground reporting fire belts all across civilian areas and just massive amounts of death, piles of dead children, the horrible images returning.
And it's continued ever since.
Every day, it seems like Israel meets the mark of about 100 dead civilians in Gaza, whether it's opening fire on them deliberately, as we now know from testimonies by Israeli soldiers to the Israeli paper at these so-called aid distribution hubs,
which are really sort of concentration camps and shooting galleries run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation down in southern Gaza or along the Netzarim corridor, or just simply bombing people.
In the day, Israel bombed the home of the director, the medical director of Indonesian hospital, killed him and his entire family.
Titanic war crime, totally unreported by U.S. media.
Every day they seem to meet the mark of 100 people.
We don't even know why they're attacking them, what they're killing them for.
And U.S. media, Western media, has just kind of shrugged and seems much more outraged by some naughty comments by a subversive rapper at the Glastonbury Festival, Bob Villen, calling for the IDF to essentially be disbanded.
That's the real source of outrage, not the 100 dead a day.
Didn't the IDF recently drop a 500-pound bomb on a cafe in Gaza?
They did.
And I know this cafe, and I've worked at least out of cafes near it, if not this one.
It was an internet, one of the few internet hubs that were left in Gaza City.
So a lot of reporters would gather there and they would upload their videos.
And so I saw this as an attack on, another attack on journalists.
Several journalists were killed as well as artists.
A semi-professional footballer was killed.
Families were killed.
33 were killed.
No military value to the target at all.
But Israel's gotten away with deliberately targeting one journalist after another.
Ismail Ghul, for example, the Al Jazeera chief correspondent.
Then they killed his replacement.
And then they boast about it and nothing happens.
So they're just continuing to target my colleagues in Gaza in the media with no repercussion, no denunciation from Tammy Bruce at the State Department.
Has the issue of whether or not the Iranian nuclear centrifuges and enriched uranium was destroyed by Trump's bomb ever been resolved?
Well, it won't be resolved.
And Interestingly, there's a new YouGov poll, which shows that like 80% of Republicans support what Trump did because they're in a cult and they would probably support alligators eating migrants in the Everglades on camera if Trump authorized it.
But yet a minority of Republicans believe that Trump destroyed the centrifuges and the 60% enriched uranium stockpile.
That's how poorly this whole thing was executed.
So what was the point?
Iran is now operating in a space of ambiguity, which I think is very positive for Iran, as Israel has demonstrated.
That's where they would like to be.
And there's going to be, I actually spoke to the spokesman for the Iranian Atomic Energy Agency while I was in Tehran and asked, what will you do if Israel or the U.S. strike your nuclear facilities?
And he said, how we will retaliate is we will enrich more and we will not abide by IAEA inspections.
And now it's very clear, and Aaron Mate talked about this like an hour and a half ago on your show.
It's very clear that the IAEA has been providing data and surveillance for the Western powers and Israel to help them in their bombing campaigns and their assassinations of nuclear scientists.
So Iran has formally kicked the IAEA out and no one knows what's happened with the centrifuges or the enriched uranium, but I assume that Iran still has enough of it and they're moving towards, if not 60%, towards 90%.
I want to play for you a clip from a real character, Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana, making claims that I'd never heard made before.
And I'd like your thoughts on it.
Please, he talks about a briefing that the senators received.
You'll notice one name conspicuously missing from among the briefers.
But the most intriguing part of this is a very brief question at the end and an inexplicable three-word answer from the senator.
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.
Was that Israeli or American?
I don't know.
And I guess the sequel to that is, and I didn't ask.
Yeah.
Actually, CNN's Caitlin Collins asked Donald Trump a good question when he was at NATO.
The same question.
Was, is your intelligence coming from Israel or the U.S. that Iran was just a few days away from a bomb?
And Trump refused to answer.
It's pretty obvious.
And what we know about that Senate briefing is, well, one figure wasn't allowed in there, DNI Tulsi Gabbard, because they didn't want her to present the American assessment.
The assessment that came through was definitely the Israeli assessment.
And the person presenting it was the Mossad stenographer, CIA director, John Ratcliffe.
We had reported on John Ratcliffe's role at basically being the hand puppet of his counterpart in Israel, Mossad Director David Barney at the Gray Zone.
We reported this based on a source in the Trump administration.
And now it's all out in the open.
Everything we reported is all out there for everyone to see, confirmed by Mossad Director David Barney, who delivered a video message personally thanking Ratcliffe for the role that he played in advancing his manipulation game with Donald Trump.
And one thing that we were told at the gray zone that was being presented via Ratcliffe to Trump was the obvious lie that Iran could not only produce a nuclear warhead in a few days, but that it planned to transfer it to the Yemeni Houthis within a week unless Donald Trump acted.
And then we can see how the senators, the Republican senators, are falling for this, either because they're suggestible dupes or because they're willfully just doing it.
Here is that clip of David Berne.
Chris has edited it down a bit because it goes on and on and on.
I think he should be the most embarrassed person in Israel because his people failed exquisitely to estimate the ferocity of the Iranian response.
But before we get to the ferocity of the response, here he is patting himself on the back and blowing kisses to John Radcliffe.
Chris, I also want to express appreciation and gratitude to our main partner, the CIA, for the joint operations and the missions that were carried out, and also to the head of the CIA, who supported the Mossad in making the right decisions, which ultimately made this operation possible.
We will continue to keep a very close watch on all the projects in Iran, which we know in the most thorough way, and we will be there just as we have been until now.
But we must not forget that there are still 50 hostages in the Gaza Strip, 30 deceased, 20 living hostages, whom it is our moral and ethical duty to bring back to our border.
I want to thank you all again and to tell you that you are part of history, an unforgettable and inseparable part of what the Mossad has done and continues to do.
Why would he do this?
Why would he allow himself to be taped patting himself on the back and blowing kisses at John Ratcliffe?
Well, because John Ratcliffe appreciates it.
He enjoys the grizzle of David Barney's cheek against his neck.
He feels like he's so important.
And the CIA is gassing him up as well and making him think that he did something truly historic.
And my understanding is the CIA hates Tulsi Gabbard.
They can't completely control her.
So they're keeping her out of there.
And I mean, this is a Mossad-CIA joint operation in many ways, but particularly the Mossad.
And then, you know, Donald Trump's base does whatever Donald Trump says.
And many of them don't see Israeli interests and American interests as distinct.
So it's not just David Barney who is showing his cards right now.
They're strategic cards inside the U.S. It's Benjamin Netanyahu who delivered a wet kiss to A.M. Carnival Barker Mark Levin, who was a never-Trumper, a neocon who hated Trump when Trump first emerged as a contender, and became one of Netanyahu's key propaganda channels inside the White House and was used to attack Tucker Carlson and Steve Bannon.
So Netanyahu personally thanked Levin and it shows what the game always was.
They're shameless about it.
What is the interaction, the dynamics between the U.S. and Israel, between the CIA and Mossad?
For example, does the CIA bear blame for underestimating the strength of Iran's military and the ferocity and success of its retaliatory attacks?
I don't.
I mean, I've read assessments that are public.
I don't know what the CIA's assessment was, but I've read assessments that were public going back to like 2009 from Brookings and Winnep and other think tanks about how this would all go down.
And I think they all underestimated Iran, but there was an expectation in Israel that they would suffer some structural damage.
I think what shook them the most was the success of Iran in hitting very strategic targets like the Weizmann Institute and also the, which the Weizmann Institute was completely destroyed.
This is the heart of Israel's scientific research community.
I mean, they're doing research on nuclear physics, quantum physics, AI, drones, gain of function research on cancer, funded heavily by the Adelsons.
Tons of money is coming through there.
Totally destroyed.
So that's close to $600 million in damage.
But in Haifa, the Bazan oil refinery was largely destroyed.
And this is one of only two refineries in Israel.
And local municipal elected officials are reporting lots of environmental damage in the area.
Many Israeli bases were hit.
Israeli cyber tech parks in Beershevo were hit.
Let me just stop you, Max.
This is Larry Johnson's map of the strategic targeting by the Iranian military.
This has been relied on and praised by many of our other colleagues.
But just so you know what you're looking at, please continue.
Yeah, Donald Trump himself said at NATO in a meeting with Mark Ruta, those ballistic missiles took out a lot of buildings.
Israel got hit really hard.
So Trump even admitted it.
And so while I don't think Iran achieved deterrence, full deterrence, it does have a deterrent effect.
And Israel has to be prepared on some level to have more strategic targets get attacked.
They have to be kind of held back.
This was a psychological and political victory for Iran.
It also rallied its population.
You're seeing record numbers.
I mean, this was an Iranian state poll that came out today.
So it's not an independent poll.
It was by IRIB, their state broadcaster, showing 77% of Iranians supported the war effort.
But what I got from sources on the ground in Iran is that that poll is basically accurate, that there was a huge rallying effect.
And a lot of the rallying came from people who were proud of Iran finally delivering a blow to Israelis after what they did in Gaza.
It makes Iranians proud, even if they have grievances with their government of their own foreign policy, that they can actually exact a blow for all the horrors that Israel has done in the region.
But yeah, this has a deterrent effect.
And these were mostly older Iranian missiles that were used.
By the end, Iran wasn't able to fire larger volleys because its air defenses were being depleted and some of its launchers were being hit, but they were still able to do substantial damage.
I recognize that you and I don't often talk about domestic American politics, but I want to show you a clip from CNN.
It's not a political clip, but it's by their pollster.
I don't know the fellow, but he's got a pretty good reputation showing the remarkable shift late in the day, but remarkable shift among Democrats against the Netanyahu government and in favor of the plight of the Palestinians.
Chris?
Andrew Cuomo during the primary attacked Mandani as being insufficiently pro-Israel.
I'm not quite sure the former governor understood how much the politics have changed around this issue among Democrats.
What are we talking about here?
All right, who Democrats sympathize more with?
Israelis or Palestinians?
In 2017, the Democratic Party was a pro-Israeli party.
Look at this.
They sympathized with the Israelis by 13 points, more with the Israelis than the Palestinians.
But look at this sea change.
Now Democrats sympathize more with the Palestinians by 43 points.
Oh my God, that is a change in the margin of 56 points over the course of just eight years.
So all of a sudden, it's the pro-Palestinian position that actually reigns supreme in Democratic politics, not the Israeli position.
And that is part of the reason why Mandani was able to do so well in this primary, because those attacks over Israel simply put did not ring true for Democrats.
They're now on the side of the Palestinians, not the Israelis.
So take a look here.
Who age 18 to 49 Democrats sympathized more with?
The Israelis or the Palestinians?
Again, in 2017, younger Democrats sympathized more with the Israelis by 14 points.
Look at this shift now.
Palestinians, they sympathize more with the Palestinians by 57 points.
That is an over 70-point shift in the margin in just a matter of eight years.
The bottom line is the politics around the Israelis and the Palestinians have shifted tremendously among Democrats, and they've shifted specifically tremendously among Democrats who are under the age of 50.
Surprise you?
No, and actually, if you look at Pew Polls back in 2017, they were showing that most Democrats under 45 who were college educated or had graduate degrees sympathized with the Palestinians.
So the shift was already happening long ago.
And now, as anyone who absorbs social media is confronted with the most horrible images they've ever seen in their lives, courtesy of Israel's genocide in Gaza, it's not just that there has been a quantifiable shift among particularly younger Democrats under 50,
but it's the intensity of their opinions that they now put that issue at the top of their concerns because it's sort of like a beacon for a candidate's moral virtue.
And so when Mamdani refuses to back down, when he's being confronted by corporate media hacks about refusing to condemn a phrase he never said, globalize the intifada, they see him as someone who won't back down on other issues, that they see him as authentic and someone with integrity, unlike other politicians who might virtue signal as AOC did over this or over ICE, but eventually they vote to fund Israel.
So when Netanyahu is in Washington next week, will Democrats be kissing his butt?
Yeah, of course.
And I mean, this is why the Democratic Party has about a 20% approval rating from its own constituents, because they kissed Netanyahu's ring.
They put up Andrew Cuomo against Mamdani, who made the race a referendum on Israel.
And so many New Yorkers were so sick of having Israel rammed down their throats that they spit Cuomo out.
So there's a huge opportunity to primary these Democrats like Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer and lesser figures who are in the back pocket of APAC.
I mean, only, I think, 18 Democrats signed on to a bill condemning Israel for shooting people at aid distribution hubs.
So there's such a wide open opportunity, but the party itself is determined.
The party elite who are like Trump addicted to Zionist billionaire money, they're determined to crush any challenge and ignore all young people in their base.
And that's going to be to their own detriment.
I think this is going to cost them elections.
And I think it cost Kamala Harris the last election.
Max, thank you for a great conversation.
I know we were across the board.
I deeply appreciate it.
It's a joy for me to pick your brain and listen to you as articulate as you are.
Thank you very much, my dear friend.
I don't think Independence Day is even remotely resembles July 4th, 1776, but have a nice weekend.
Enjoy it with your family.
We'll see you next week.
Well, we're still fighting for independence.
Thanks a lot, Judge.
Thank you.
So tomorrow, we are going to treat it as if it were a Friday.
Tomorrow is Thursday, July 3rd.
At 3 o'clock in the afternoon, Professor John Mearsheimer.
At 4 in the afternoon, the Intelligence Community Roundtable with Larry Johnson and that ex-intelligence agent you know so well, Scott Ritter, because Ray McGovern is lecturing in Germany.
So John Mearsheimer, Professor Mearsheimer tomorrow at three, the Intelligence Community Roundtable tomorrow at four with Larry Johnson and Scott Ritter.
And my column, Independence Day 2025, which is one of the strongest I've written, which I think many of you will appreciate, drops at judgenap.com at 6 o'clock tomorrow, Thursday morning.
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