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Aug. 25, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
26:11
Larry Johnson : Will Trump Permit More War in Ukraine?
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Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Monday, August 25, 2025.
Larry Johnson will be with us in just a moment on Does Trump really want peace or more war in Ukraine?
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Larry Johnson, welcome here, my dear friend.
Thank you for accommodating my schedule.
I do want to spend some time on Trump's ambivalence on war and peace over Ukraine.
But first, Margaret Brennan of CBS did a fascinating interview with Gene Shaheen, one of the senators from New Hampshire.
on whether or not there is famine in Israel.
In the course of that interview, Margaret summarized the Israeli response to the allegations of famine and starvation.
Tell me what you think of this cut number two.
The Israeli Prime Minister's office on Friday had a very harsh statement about the famine designation.
They called it, quote, a modern blood libel spreading like wildfire through prejudice.
That suggests this is about anti Jewish hate rather than starvation.
How do you make sense of the Israeli defense?
I don't think that's a good defense.
The fact is this is not about anti Semitism, which I abhor.
But the reality is we have people dying because they are systematically being starved to death, because Israel is refusing to allow in the humanitarian aid that people need to keep alive.
Not only that, they're getting ready to do another, or they've already started planning another major incursion into Gaza in ways that are going to kill more people.
So this is not acceptable.
The world needs to speak out.
Why doesn't the Congress do more than just individual members of Congress speaking out?
And what are your thoughts on Netanyahu's response to the well-grorounded statements about starvation as a war crime.
Well, the sad fact remains that too many members of Congress, both Republican and Democrat, have been bought and paid for by the American-Israeli Public Affairs Committee, APAC, and other Zionist organizations.
And, you know, this is not confined to just members of Congress who are Jewish.
This is, as we saw with Ted Cruz with his abysmal performance on the Tucker Carlson interview, where, you know, he was quoting passages of the Bible that didn't exist.
to justify his support of Israel's genocide.
Netanyahu is, it's like with any addict, whether we're talking someone addicted to meth or alcohol, in this case, Netanyahu is addicted to power, trying to save his own corpulent rear end.
And in the process, he's led israel into a path of destruction that I don't think they can recover from with they become more isolated diplomatically in the world.
They have now getting people that previously were willing to give them the benefit of the doubt, even can see that they're committing genocide.
It's really sharpened divisions within the Jewish community.
Both you have a large sector of people who identify as Jewish but do none of the religious observances or practices.
So they made it into an ethnic group.
You have an element within that is religious that rejects the Sionist vision.
And then you've got these crazy settlers like Ben Gavir and then Bezalil Smotrich.
So now within Israel, you have the IDF chief still pushing back, saying, hey, don't make us go into Gaza City.
It will end up killing all of what remains of the hostages.
We've seen that Hamas is willing to negotiate a deal.
It's Netanyahu that's not willing.
And so the issue for Israel is it does not have unlimited resources, even with continued support financially and militarily from the United States and from Europe.
And as they lay on these additional missions that are taxing the military, and I'm talking about expanding operations in Gaza, expanding operations in the West Bank, expanding operations in Lebanon, expanding operations in Syria, you're going to put a stress and strain on the system that I don't think it can withstand.
Is Iran getting ready for another war with Israel?
And if so, is this likely to have a more definitive outcome?
Yeah, this, this, this go, Iran's learned its lesson.
They formed a new, let's call it, National Security Council.
The previous one with Peshkin, the president, had a significant influence in that and may have, and in his desire, a sincere desire to seek what he thought was a realistic rapprochement with the West, just left Iran vulnerable.
And now those are, let's call it more hardliners, more with a more realistic view about the threats emanating from Israel, they've taken precedent.
So, and on top of that, even though Iran did have, they had military contacts and cooperation with both Russia and China prior to the 12-day war, but it was confined mostly to maritime operations, you know, closing off the Strait of Hormuz.
Now it looks like that Iran has opened the doors for Russian and Chinese assistance.
In the past, the Russians always said, hey, we're willing to supply it, but if you...
And then you have Peshchekian going to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization a week from now, which the presidents.., you know, Putin will be there, Xi of China will be there, Modi of India will be there.
It's really, it's like the executive committee of the BRICS meeting.
So Iran is now, you know, cocked and loaded, prepared to retaliate.
And they have, they've been very clear that if they are attacked again, they are not going to hold back this time.
Is Donald Trump in favor of an imminent peace between Russia?
and Ukraine.
Well, it depends on what you mean.
I mean, you know, he'll go, yeah, yeah, I'm in favor of peace.
Well, okay, Mr. Trump, if you're really in favor of peace, cut off all military assistance to Ukraine effective today, cut off all economic assistance that's fueling the military machine in Ukraine today, and put a halt to all sharing of intelligence with Ukraine.
That way, this will bring it to an end.
But, you know, Trump still labors under the illusion.
that this is somehow a personal dispute between Zelensky and Putin and or that it's a dispute over land.
And boy, if we just get them to understand each other's position, they can work it out.
And Zelensky, since the meeting a week ago in Washington, where, you know, Trump thought.
he had him corralled to sit down and talk to Russia.
Zelenskyy subsequent to that rejected every single piece of what Russia is insisting on.
And Russia said, okay, we're open to continue to talk, but this war will continue on the ground and Ukraine's going to lose.
Since the meeting in Anchorage, since the kabuki nonsense with the G7 in the Oval Office, since Zelenskyy's refusal to consider any rational proposal to resolve this.
The president posted on truth social the following.
Tell me what you think of this.
This is Donald Trump, the president of the United States, within 10 days of his meeting with President Putin.
It is very hard, if not impossible, to win a war without attacking an invader's country.
It's like a great team in sports that has a fantastic defense but is not allowed to play offense.
There is no chance of winning.
It's like that with Ukraine and Russia.
Crooked and grossly incompetent Joe Biden would not let Ukraine fight back, only defend.
How did that work out?
Regardless, this is a war that never would have happened if I were president.
Zero chance.
Interesting times ahead, President DJT.
And this morning, the Wall Street Journal reports that the United States has approved EROM's extended range attack munition air-launched missiles, which can target inside Russia.
Yeah.
It has a range of up to 400 kilometers.
So that's 240 miles maximum.
It carries a 500-pound warhead.
You know, Trump's true social post.
It's embarrassingly stupid because it shows that he doesn't read.
It shows that he has no knowledge whatsoever of the history of this war over the last three years, three and a half years.
And he doesn't even understand his own complicity in helping this war come to be.
You know, the notion that all Biden did was encourage a defensive posture by Ukraine.
Well, Donald Trump, I guess, forgets the offensive that the Ukrainians launched with U.S. planning assistance.
And the planning actually was done more by the United States than by Ukraine in September of 2022, which led to the recapturing on the part of Ukraine a large section of the areas of Kherson, Sumy, and going into Zaporizhzhia and Kherson.
Then in June of 2023, the much ballyhood counteroffensive, again, fully planned by the United States, directed by the United States, funded by the United States and Joe Biden, they launched and again, Ukraine failed.
And then the curse.
the Kursk, the offensive into the Kursk salient last September.
So again, Donald Trump, he's created this mythological Ukraine that doesn't reflect anything approaching the reality.
And candidly, if Trump was serious about peace, he could end it today.
That's why I say he's not serious because when they're talking about sending these ERAM missiles, these are cruise launched.
These are basically air-launched cruise missiles.
All that's going to do is escalate.
Let's all, let's flip the script.
If Russia was.
was supplying the Sinaloa cartel or the North Valley cartel with air-launched cruise missiles that they were firing into the United States, the United States would go, no big deal.
Yeah, we'll keep with the peace process.
No, we would view it as an act of war.
Similarly, if Russia decides to militarily arm Venezuela right now, is Donald Trump threatening Venezuela with a military invasion.
So, you know, this is where Trump needs to stop deceiving himself and pretending to be something he is not.
He is not a peace president.
He is an enabler of genocide.
He's an enabler of war.
He could easily become the peace president.
But so far, ignore his words.
Look at his actions.
So in the past week, Moscow destroyed nearly all the German terrorist missiles that the Germans sent in pieces to be assembled to Ukraine.
And Putin threatened Berlin.
with World War II like with a World War II like uh response is Mertz crazy did he think is Chancellor Mertz crazy did he really think that the Russians would just let those terrorist missiles be assembled and used?
Well, you know, I think you and I labor under the deficit of believing that these people are rational, because rational people, in the case of Merckx in particular, whose economy is imploding.
And that people say, oh, well, you're exaggerating, Johnson.
No, I mean, it literally is the automobile industry is collapsing.
The debt to GDP is rising and rising rapidly because the loss of employment means that there are more people needing to take government payments from the government.
The economy is zeroed.
It's growing at, it's not growing at all.
And yet in the midst of this, here's Mertz pretending that they're going to suddenly produce a bunch of weapons that they can then send to give to Ukraine.
And the fact of the matter is Germany no longer is economically capable of doing that.
It stands along with France and the UK on the very precipice of a financial crisis.
So at the very time that Europe is becoming more bellicose, its actual economic ability to sustain these threats is dissipating.
So are General Kellogg's views in with the Trump administration or out with the Trump administration?
I think it depends on the time of the day and when Trump last met with Kellogg, you know?
Oh, Larry, you forgot one thing.
And when Trump last played golf with this person, Chris Cutnumber four.
Putin fears Trump and he's been a, I think he's been tough.
And my advice to President Trump and Marco is if you got to convince Putin that if this war doesn't end justly and honorably with Ukraine making concessions also, we're going to destroy the Russian economy.
We have the ability to do it.
To Europe, why don't you put tariffs on India for buying Russian oil?
To Europe, why don't you threaten China with tariffs for being the largest purchaser of Russian oil?
To Europe, you can do more.
If Europe and the United States banded together and we told Russia that if this war does not come to an end, we're going to destroy your fossil fuel economy.
This war would come to an end.
I think we have the ability to crush the Russian economy through putting tariffs on people to buy Russian oil and gas, buying cheap oil to prop up his war machine.
And I intend to push that until I can't push anymore.
You may not know what he's talking about, but if he whispers into the president's ear and Trump believes him, this is dangerous.
Well, I'll say Lindsey Graham's correct about one thing.
If the United States takes its skill in destroying its own economy and applies that to Russia and gets the Russians to do what the United States has done.
Then, Yeah, maybe we might destroy the Russian economy.
I mean, right now, Russia's only got like a 19% debt to GDP ratio.
So it has, it's bringing in more money than it's losing.
It is, then it's spending.
Its wages have remained high and are increasing so that people, the purchasing power parity is going up.
unlike the United States, which is standing at 125% debt to GDP ratio, which means we're spending a lot more money every day, every minute than we're bringing in.
So, you know, Graham.
I guess he's watched too many fantasy movies that the United States can destroy Russia's oil production or threaten countries like India and China.
I guess he hasn't been paying attention to what both Modi has said this past week, what the Foreign Minister Jaishankar of India has said.
And the most interesting thing is that the businessmen, the business sector, the entrepreneurs in India who previously, up until about four weeks ago, were the strongest advocates for working with the United States, for cooperating with the United States, for having better relations with the United States, now have basically said, screw that, we're with Russia.
And just because of President Trump's tariffs.
Yeah, because of his tariffs.
And India has made it explicitly clear, you can sanction us all you want because you know what?
We're selling our, we're buying oil from Russia.
We're paying rupees.
They're accepting it.
And so what this is doing is it's now shifting the demand for U.S. dollars.
And when you shift that demand, the price of the dollar goes up.
The dollar loses value.
And then on top of that, we've learned that Jerome Powell is going to probably raise interest long-term rates, which means the value of the dollar is going to fall even greater.
So at the very time that the United States is swaggering about, making threats, and we're going to get you, we're going to compel you to do what we want, these countries are reacting with just the opposite.
They're saying, How can we cooperate more closely?
And we saw that with Lula in Brazil.
He convened an emergency call of all the different BRICS countries to say, how can we expand our cooperation?
And in fact, it was just reported yesteresterday that soybean exports from the United States to China have fallen by 51%, according to Reuters.
And guess who's selling those soybeans to China?
That would be Brazil.
They're selling it again in their mutual currencies.
They're not going out to the market to have to buy dollars.
They're doing it outside of the dollar regime.
Donald Trump foolishly thought that the United States has the kind of economic clout that we can bully the hell out of the rest of the world.
And the rest of the world, the global south, India, China, Russia, are pushing back and say, n'et, no.
Let's go back to the ERAMs, the extended range attack munition missiles that the United States is authorizing.
If these are air fired and Iran doesn't have an air force, who's firing them?
Well, they do have some planes.
And in all fault, this is one of the errors I think Russia has made up to this point.
They need to destroy everything.
every single airfield that could launch an f-16 or or a meg or any of the other jets that have been combat aircraft that have been provided to Ukraine.
Ukraine doesn't have a lot of them, but it still has enough that they can get airborne, they can launch one of these missiles.
This would be, you know, I think Russia has the munitions.
Maybe it's the Arushnik.
that could be used on these airfields so that they could be damaged beyond a point that they could be easily or quickly repaired.
You know, you can never destroy something so they can never be rebuilt, but you can destroy it to a extent that it's going to take time to do so.
And up to this point., Russia has allowed that.
Again, this is, it'd be one thing if the United States was doing this quietly and not announcing it in public, but we're doing it publicly.
So, I mean, it's the same as if I'm threatening, you know, made a public threat.
I'm going to come shoot you.
And you go, whoa, whoa, wait a second.
I need to, I'm going to call the police down in Braden and have him go pay Mr. Johnson a visit.
Because that was a form of assault.
You know, we're doing the same thing to Russia.
And, you know, when Russia starts pushing back and goes tit for tat, then we find out, hey, we don't like that.
We can't play.
We can't.
keep up.
Tell me if after you see this next clip, Putin is worried about the French.
Chris cut number nine.
So a country that invests 40% of its budget in such equipment that has mobilized an army of more than 1,300,000 men, it will not return to a state of peace and an open democratic system overnight.
Let's not be naive.
And so even for its own survival, it needs to keep feeding itself.
That's it.
So it's a predator.
It's an ogre at our doorstep.
I'm not saying that France will be attacked as soon as tomorrow, but still it's a threat to Europeans.
We must not be naive.
And I say this with immense respect for the Russian people, for that country, its great history, its tradition, and its leaders.
But that's where we are.
We must not be naive.
Any empirical evidence to support that type of an attitude?
No.
I mean, again, the attack on Russia started.
You know, in fact, I did an interview with General Evgeny Vojinsky.
He was sort of the head of Russia's equivalent of the Defense Intelligence Agency.
And then he was involved with all of the major negotiations with NATO and with other countries during the 1990s and into the 2000s.
And, you know, the Russians made repeated, repeated efforts to become partners with the West and were rebuffed at every single turn.
And apart from that, then the West, particularly the United States and the United Kingdom, began taking some of the mujahideen, the fighters, these Islamic extremists that we funded during the war in Afghanistan in the 1980s, funded them to start the war in Chechnya in August, August 7th of 1999, to be precise, and continued to fund that.
So here's Russia.
Now, they've built up their army in the last three years.
They've doubled it in size.
And that was why?
Because NATO fully funded, equipped, trained, directed.
the Ukrainian army against Russia and using it to attack civilian targets in Russia.
So, you know, this is a classic case of the guy that's poking the other person in the chest with their finger continuously then when they get punched in the nose they cry and claim that they were innocent and they didn't do anything to deserve this that's france wow all right larry thank you very much thanks for letting me take you across the board on on all these topics a fascinating conversation as always and we'll look forward to seeing you with the birthday boy today is his birthday look forward to seeing you with ray at the end
of the week as usual all the best my friend Let's say if they light a birthday cake for Ray, just call the fire department, please.
There'll be a lot of candles on it.
Oh my God.
Okay.
Thank you.
Thank you, Larry.
All the best.
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