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July 13, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
25:59
Larry Johnson :
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Hi, everyone.
Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Monday, July 14th, 2025.
Larry Johnson joins us now.
Larry, you wrote a fascinating piece over the weekend about Ukraine and the number of deaths and how bad they're losing.
But before we get there, I'd like to probe a few other areas of your thinking.
Trump's bombing of Iran, did it chasten Iran as he has been boasting, or did it arouse it?
Aroused it, woke it up.
Pozheshkin is the current president.
He's a weak guy, and he's always been one of the leading voices for looking for some conciliation with the West.
This even sort of awakened him.
So instead of being in a position where we had intelligence penetration of the IAEA and we had a good underconfidence with respect to where Iran was with its nuclear enrichment program and the possibility of building a nuclear weapon, we're now blind.
We blinded ourselves because by launching the attack the way it was launched by Israel with Trump green lighting it and cheering it on early on until within 36 hours he was Sergeant Schultz.
He knew nothing, saw nothing, how this happened.
That it's now put Iran in a position where they've demonstrated Israel can't stop them if they choose to launch ballistic missiles.
Shouldn't the Netanyahu regime be terrified of a missile attack from Iran in light of its gross, Mossad's CIA's gross underestimation of the ferocity and effectiveness of the Iranian retaliation for Israel's lawless attack?
Yes, if they were sane and had a shred of humanity, but I'm not sure about the sanity or the humanity.
You know, Israel continues to try to spread the war.
You know, as Aleister Crook talked with you earlier today, this is not just, we don't want to look at this through a rifle scope at just a narrow area.
Take a step back and look at the way the wave is moving.
And it is this confrontation really with the West, with the United States as the de facto leader, desperately trying to hang on to its supremacy at the expense of everybody else.
And to that extent, they'll risk war with Russia.
They'll risk war with China.
They've definitely gone to war with Iran.
They are destroying Syria.
So it's like someone with a lighted match walking into a gasoline tank.
You know, the thing's going to explode.
So this is a situation where Israel now is expanding its military operations into Syria and threatening to go into Lebanon.
And they can't even defeat Hamas.
I mean, it's this detachment from reality.
They're not stepping back and looking at what their actual military capabilities are.
They're not as good as they claim to be.
How serious is the decline in American influence diplomatically and militarily around the world?
Well, you know, if this was high school and you're running for, you know, one to be the president of the class, we wouldn't be getting any votes.
We've managed to embark on a program of alienation.
I mean, and it's everything from imposing tariffs on our friends.
You know, Brazil was, we ran a trade surplus with it.
That meant, you know, we were getting the benefit out of that.
So we attacked them to Donald Trump asking the president of Liberia, where'd you learn to speak English so good?
Displaying a level of ignorance that's just appalling for someone in Trump's position to not understand.
That's their national language, Mr. President.
So, you know, kids, babies born, they learn to speak English.
That's how that works.
Are there signs that tonight, Monday, July 14, Trump may announce that he's going a full Joe Biden, even though he still, as recently as a few minutes ago, will play the clip, calls it Joe Biden's war.
You and I and everybody else on the show now know it is Donald Trump's war.
But are there signs he's going to go a full Joe Biden and supply them with offensive weaponry, maybe even threaten, I don't know how they could possibly enforce this, a no-fly zone over Ukraine?
He's not going to go full Joe Biden and doing it directly.
He's going to do it indirectly.
So he'll announce the tariffs, whether it's 100%, 500% on India and China, which will really warm the hearts of those countries.
They'll say, oh, great, America's our big friend.
And then he will endorse taking the frozen assets that the Europeans are sitting on from Russia and use that money to buy weapons from the United States.
So that way Trump can say, well, I'm not sending him direct.
I'm just, you know, the Europeans are doing it.
However, within the last hour, Peskoff, the spokesman for Vladimir Putin, said very clearly, he says, this is all, he says, this is all theater.
This is fake.
He says, the United States has not stopped for a minute supplying weapons.
And as long as they continue to do that, whether directly or indirectly, this war is going to continue.
Chris, well, before I call for it, here is President Trump about five minutes before we went on air, Larry.
Chris, cut number nine.
One of the reasons that you're here today is to hear that we are very unhappy, I am, with Russia.
But we'll discuss that maybe a different day.
But we're very, very unhappy with them, and we're going to be doing very severe tariffs if we don't have a deal in 50 days.
Tariffs in about 100% income secondary tariffs.
You know what that means.
But today we're going to talk about something else.
As you know, we've spent $350 million approximately on this war with Russia and Ukraine.
I would like to see it end.
It wasn't my work.
It was Biden's war.
It's not my war.
I'm trying to get you out of it.
And we want to see it end.
And I'm disappointed in President Putin because I thought we would have had a deal two months ago, but it doesn't seem to get there.
So based on that, we're going to be doing secondary tariffs.
If we don't have a deal in 50 days, it's very simple.
And they'll be at 100%.
After that clip, Larry, he went on to say, he actually said while you and I were doing our Q ⁇ A a few minutes ago, it's just what you said.
Exactly what you said.
We're not paying for anything Europe is.
Yeah, yeah.
But Europe is stealing from the bank accounts of the Russian government and Russian businesses in European banks.
What has Europe been doing for the last 400 years as colonial colonizers, going out and taking over other countries, stealing their resources for themselves?
Hey, they're just doing what they're genetically bred to do.
I'm not surprised by that.
This is classic Trump, where he gets to pretend, oh, I didn't have anything to do with this.
But he's going to supply, and as I think, as Ray noted earlier, going to supply weapons that we don't have.
And did you catch Ruby on the one clip he had played, I think, with Ray where he went, weapons, I mean defensive systems.
Oh, God.
These guys really.
It's a malignant show.
Yeah, it's just a malevolent clown show.
But it's dangerous, Larry, because he's going to die as a result of this.
Does anybody seriously take his statement?
It's Biden's war.
It's not my war.
He's about to announce he's going to ramp it up.
No, not at all.
Every time he does this, he claims that his policy is he wants to protect the hegemony of the U.S. dollar and the primacy of the United States and the international financial system.
Okay.
Well, what do you then do?
You threaten India and China and Brazil.
You threaten the central countries and BRICS where your threats only reinforce the fact we got to get away from this guy.
He's toxic.
We can't be beholden or dependent upon the United States in any form or fashion.
And so, you know, it's backfiring already because U.S. farmers used to have a major market in China, people growing soybeans and wheat.
Well, no longer because China now is buying the majority of its soybeans and wheat from Russia and Brazil.
And when they're making those financial transactions, they're not doing it with the U.S. dollar.
They're doing it in their own currencies backed by gold.
And they're not involving Swift or any U.S. system, any system, banking system the U.S. can control.
Correct.
President Putin gets all this.
It's a long clip, Larry.
It's a minute and a half long, but it's very, very eye-opening.
And it's yesterday.
Chris cut number six.
Russia will either be independent and sovereign or will not exist at all.
I wanted to convey this to our partners in the hope that they would hear and somehow adjust their attitude towards Russia, considering that, for instance, since the 1990s they promised us not to expand NATO to the east.
They lied at every step, constantly deceiving and pretending that nothing of the kind happened.
The same was true on many other issues.
Therefore, it seemed to me that it was about time to tell our colleagues, we need to live peacefully.
Let's somehow treat each other with respect, without imposing our will, without attempting to suppress another will, considering the interests of all participants in international communication.
I don't know how effective it was, but since it's often remembered, it seems it was timely, that's what I want to say.
But unfortunately, it was not heard.
We constantly, I want to emphasize, constantly made attempts to establish relations to not lead to the situation we are in today and to develop some common rules.
As soon as Ivan IV Ivan the Terrible said, no, we remain orthodox, a legend immediately arose that he was cruel, a tyrant, that he was insane, and so on.
Although no one recalls in such a context what was done by Oliver Cromwell, what happened in England, in France, the Western history is silent about this.
In any case, it does not give such evaluations as that it was barbarism, that civilization is absent, but they tried to subordinate Russia even then.
You were talking about.
He didn't use the word colonization, as you did, but he talked about subordinating other countries.
Just what you were talking about, Larry.
Well, and what a contrast between Putin and Trump.
I bet if Putin was sitting there and mentioned Ivan the Terrible, Trump would go, Which World Wrestling Federation character was he?
Or Oliver Cromwell?
Is that an actor?
Is that a Hollywood director?
Trump wouldn't know any of that.
And here's Putin looking at it from a historical context.
And I think the fact that he came out and gave that interview yesterday on the eve of what Trump's going to say today further reinforces that while Putin would like to have normalized relations with the United States, the United States is not taking any steps whatsoever to provide any concrete demonstration that we're serious about it.
We've not addressed the fact of naming a new ambassador to Russia, reopening Russian consulates, returning Russian property that was seized wrongly by the Obama administration.
And we certainly have not halted the flow of weapons to Ukraine.
We've not halted the flow of intelligence.
Now, if Russia was doing to us what we are doing to Russia, we would declare war on them.
And it's by the grace of God and the patience of Putin that that hasn't happened yet.
How badly is Ukraine losing this war to Russia?
Oh, it is a generational change.
You're wiping out an entire generation of people.
It's sort of on a much grander scale than what happened in the Chaco War in Paraguay, where they lost an entire generation of men.
And so it affects population growth.
You know, Ukraine was, you know, before this special military operation started at 42 million.
And now I think the population of the country is down around 27 million, which a lot have emigrated, left that country.
But then when you get into the death toll, the West perpetuates this myth that Russia is suffering massive casualties.
They are not.
And to put it just in real simple terms, it's like playing a game of risk.
Well, in this particular game, Ukraine is lacking in artillery and artillery shells, and neither the United States nor Europe can provide them.
So they fire a certain level around 2,000 to 3,000 a day.
Russia's firing 12 to 14,000.
But then Russia has weapon systems that Ukraine does not.
So Russia has an overwhelming advantage in firepower, whether we're talking the artillery, we're talking tanks, we're talking missiles, we're talking mortars, we're talking aerial drop bombs.
When you just go down the list of what they're firing at the Ukrainians, and the Ukrainians don't have the same level to fire back.
The same with drones.
Russia enjoys probably a three to four to one advantage on the drone side.
Plus, Russia is producing its own.
They've got a manufacturing capability.
Ukraine does not.
It's relying upon whatever the United States can give it.
So this thing is the offensive operations on the ground are developing very rapidly now.
They're going to continue to do so through the summer.
And it's a genuine question of how long can Ukraine sustain this kind of operation?
Because there's a critical battle taking place right now around the city of Pokrovsk.
And that city is identified as sort of the lynchpin in a defensive line.
And when that falls, not if, when that falls, it's going to break up their defensive line, which means Russia will be able to move to the Dnieper River with relative ease.
Tell me what this means.
I don't know if this is serious or if it's a joke.
The New York Times reports that Ukraine turns to fishnets.
Catch Russian drones.
Oh, yeah, no, they've been doing that.
They've erected these corridors.
But what Russia has done is they've got these fiber optic drones now.
And they're able to actually, they'll fly down into those tunnels.
So with that netting on either side and then also on top in some places.
But there's always got to be an entry and exit point.
And the Russians are just flying their drones into those entry and exit points.
So it's an expensive way to try to stop the drones.
And it hasn't worked.
What is your, I'm going to switch gears because it's in the front pages all the time these days.
What is your take on this Jeffrey Epstein case?
I mean, I can't imagine that Trump's name is on that list.
As you pointed out, the Biden people would have been all over that during the campaign when they had possession of the files.
Well, given what we know now about Trump's, let's call it subservience to Israeli intelligence, we see that during Trump's first administration, that's when Epstein was actually arrested and held in jail until he died or is alleged to have died.
There are interesting, I'll call them hypotheses out there that he didn't die.
It was a staged event and he was taken out, which would make sense.
He was an Israeli intelligence asset.
And one of the things Israel is very good about not leaving its intelligence officers behind or people that work for them.
They don't necessarily cut them off.
But everything that happened to Epstein happened under Trump's first administration.
And so now he comes out and tries to claim that this was Obama and Hillary Clinton.
Hey, you know, none of us were born yesterday, okay?
We actually can watch the videotapes.
We're not all of us Alzheimer's patients are suffering mental decline.
But we know what was said.
There were crimes committed.
There were women that were not just saying that this was Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell that did this to me.
I mean, women identified, you know, hundreds of individuals.
Some were very specifically identified.
People like Jamie Dimon, J.P. Morgan Chase, Robert Kraft, head of the New England Patriots Organization.
And so you've got names on there.
Governor Bill Richardson, who's deceased, his name is on there.
And it wasn't, these came up in court documents.
So this wasn't hearsay.
This was part of a legal proceeding.
So for now, Trump to come out and say, nothing to see here, move along, after Trump himself had made it an issue in the campaign.
His son, Don Jr., had made it an issue in the campaign.
Dan Bongino man talked about it every couple of weeks on his radio show.
And now they want people to say, oh, nothing to see here move along.
This is a nothing burger.
No, this is about protecting Israeli intelligence operation that was used to blackmail people and used and that they fear exposing it at this time would shred support for Israel in the United States, political support.
Chris has put together a montage of everything you just touched on.
Watch this.
How is it that my father could be convicted of 34 crimes, but no one on Epstein's list has even been brought to light?
How is it?
I'm trying to figure out how that's possible, right?
But it's almost like they're trying to protect those pedophiles for some reason.
I can't imagine why, right?
Why is the FBI protecting the greatest pederist, the largest scale pederist in human history?
Simple, because of who's on that list.
Everybody in politics has a vice that's much worse than alcoholism, is the way that I put it.
But we release the list.
Seriously, we need to release the Epstein list.
That is an important thing.
The DOJ may be releasing the list of Jeffrey Epstein's clients.
Will that really happen?
It's sitting on my desk right now to review.
That's been a directive by President Trump.
In this case, in Epstein's case, it is incredibly disturbing.
We have flight logs.
We have information, names that will come out.
I'm not ever going to let this story go because of what I heard from a source about Bill Clinton on a plane with Jeffrey Epstein.
I'm not letting it go ever.
Ever.
Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein?
This guy's been talked about for years.
You're asking, we have Texas, we have this, we have all of the things.
And are people still talking about this guy, this creep?
That is unbelievable.
Look, there is not a scintilla of evidence of which I'm aware of President Trump having been involved.
Correct.
They are obviously trying to protect somebody.
The announcement that the list no longer exists, notwithstanding what you heard from Dan Bongina when he had a podcast, now number two in the FBI, Cash Patel, when he was on somebody else's podcast, now the director of the FBI, Pam Bondi as the Attorney General of the United States, an announcement while Netanyahu was here that the list never existed.
It's obvious what you said.
They're trying to protect his status as a Massada asset.
Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely.
And it is, you know, this is a pivotal moment in Trump's presidency.
I think really it marks the beginning of the end of his presidency because he no longer has credibility with a lot of people that supported him, that thought, oh, yeah, Trump's going to be serious.
He's going to get to the bottom of all this.
No, he's not.
He's still holding back on files from JFK.
Look, Judge, Trump did it to himself when he could have released all of the documents that implicated CIA and FBI in RussiaGate and their conspiracy between people like John Brennan and James Comey.
Trump had those documents.
He could have released them.
He didn't even do that.
Larry, he had the documents of GCHQ spying on him in 2015, and he didn't release that GCHQ, the British Intel service.
He didn't release that.
Yeah.
So, I mean, it's just he's become a disgrace.
It's really, you can't believe anything he says now.
And that's what's unfortunate about this, that he had some credibility.
You know, he has sort of delivered on the deportations of illegal aliens.
But again, you saw him walking back trying to make exceptions for the farmers who are using, employing underage kids and paying them slave labor, slave wages.
Yeah, he wants to do a cutout for them so they can keep doing that.
I mean, you know, we're complicit with abusing human beings for profit.
And he's basically sort of endorsing that.
Now, he sort of walked that back a little bit, but this Epstein thing is very serious because this was a high-level, very wealthy individuals who are with a lot of power.
And it just reinforces, if you got money, man, you can get away with anything.
You know, I don't watch all this stuff, but Chris tells me there are hundreds of videos on social media of the MAGA base burning, burning their MAGA hats, flags, and t-shirts over this.
Yeah, I wouldn't.
Well, if you saw even at what Tucker Carlson's presentation at the Turning Point conference that was up in Tampa last week, the crowd was cheering him on.
So these were allegedly a whole group of kids, young people that were Trump supporters.
He's losing support dramatically.
Wow.
Larry, thank you very much.
Thanks for your time.
Thanks for accommodating my schedule.
Look forward to seeing you again soon.
All the best.
All right.
See you Friday.
You got it.
Bye-bye.
And coming up later today at 1 o'clock this afternoon, Colonel Douglas McGregor at 2 o'clock this afternoon.
Scott Ritter at 4 o'clock this afternoon on the Epstein files.
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