Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano - INTEL Roundtable w/ Johnson & McGovern - Weekly Wrap, 29-August

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Aug. 28, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano

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INTEL Roundtable w/ Johnson & McGovern - Weekly Wrap, 29-August

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	Hi, everyone.
	Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
	Today is Friday, August 29th, 2025.
	It's the end of the day, the end of the week, the end of the month.
	It's our favorite time, the intelligence community roundtable with my dear friends, Ray McGovern and Larry Johnson.
	Gentlemen, welcome here.
	Thank you as always for the double duty.
	Thanks for accommodating my schedule.
	As usual, we have a lot to talk about.
	Larry, you have written some interesting.
	work particularly the research that you've done on Donald Trump and BRICS.
	Isn't it ironic that with all of his attacks on BRICS is now almost unconscionable tariffs on India.
	This has served to unite and strengthen BRICS, has it not?
	It has accelerated its development.
	You know, if you would have asked me this question a year ago, where will BRICS be a year from now?
	And I said, well, you know, they're still going to be trying to figure the way out of the forest.
	They still got a lot of challenges.
	There's not a lot of unity within BRICS, despite having had a successful summit in the summer of 2024.
	But what has happened since Donald Trump came out with his tariff regime and sanctions that it has taken India and Brazil in particular, energized them in a way that they were not previously engaged.
	And they are moving in the exact opposite direction.
	They are defiant.
	You know, Donald Trump, according to the reporter heard earlier today from Alexander Kristoforo, Trump has tried to call Modi now five times this week.
	Modi's not picking up the phone.
	So, you know, anybody that's been in a bad relationship with a boyfriend or girlfriend or spouse and you've done something bad and then you're trying to call them and talk, no, not answering the phone.
	Same thing going on with Trump and Modi.
	The energy sector, the entrepreneurial sector in India, which previously was the one who were the strongest advocates for closer ties with the United States, have now completely reversed their position, are calling for sanctions, calling for embargoes on U.S. products, calling to move away from the United States.
	We've seen the similar phenomena with Brazil.
	And in the past, Brazil's benefited greatly from Donald Trump's tariffs because as soon as Trump put the tariffs on China, China then said, okay, we're not buying any more U.S. soybeans and we're not buying any more U.S. corn.
	And they turned to Brazil.
	They said, we'll buy the soybeans from you.
	Now, instead of in the old days, if Brazil and China were going to make that exchange, that have to go on to the International Fighters financial market china would have to buy dollars with its currency and then they'd get that dollars to Brazil and Brazil could change those dollars into reales.
	Not anymore.
	They're going direct RMB to real, Chinese currency for Brazilian currency, which means US dollar sitting on the sideline, getting no action, going, hey, hey, over here, which is why we're seeing one of the reasons why the dollar is dropping in value.
	Ray, does the intelligence community get involved in this type of thing?
	In other words, is the CIA telling Donald Trump the economic status of industry in China, in Brazil, in India?
	And if so, are they telling him what they think he wants to hear?
	Or are they telling him real and accurate numbers?
	Well, you provided the answer, Judge.
	You know, there was a time when our economic analysts were first rate.
	Right.
	Back in, let's say, the eighties, they were telling everyone who would listen that the Russian economy wasn't nearly as strong as Bill Casey, the head of the CIA, and Bobby Gates, his aide were saying.
	But they couldn't get to the president.
	That's when the politicization started full bore.
	So as of now, I don't know how many honest people are in the CIA analysis division.
	I know there are some now because some have been whistleblowers and have given Tulsi Gabbard a lot of good information.
	Whether that extends to economy, I can't understand.
	If there are good economic analysts in the CIA, there's no way that they could be telling Trump to do things like tariffs and double tap on India and all this stuff.
	The thing about hegemony is that, you know, hegemony has been lost by the United States.
	You have Putin talking with Xi now in China.
	You have all kinds of people congregating for the anniversary of the end of World War two in Beijing.
	The whole thing that's sort of like a symbol, sort of emblematic of how the world has sort of shifted to the east, right?
	And it's just and laughable that there are only two, as far as I can tell, major people there from the west.
	One is, I think, from Serbia, one from Slovakia, and I think the guy from Hungary is there as well.
	But yeah, the whole thing is has shifted and it shifted into the balance of the not the hegemon and the hegemon is finished.
	Now the last thing I'll say is that's not bad at all.
	As long as the hegemon gradually gradually realizes he is finished, then the Chinese and the Russians are just happy as can be to let them sort it down gently.
	They don't want a war.
	And I hope the hegemon doesn't think he can start a war to redress what's happened.
	Larry, did Trump recently fire the head of defense intelligence, a general?
	Right.
	The head of NSA, a general, either because Laura Loomer told him to fire them or because they let Ray weigh in on that or because they gave him statistics that were at odds with his political narrative.
	Well, yeah, on the surface, it certainly looks like there is some dramatic politicization.
	by the Trump administration of the intelligence process.
	The general at the Defense Intelligence Agency was criticized because their analysis after the bombing on June 22nd in Iran by the USB-2 bombers, that they did not come out and say, oh, the US obliterated it.
	They provided a much more measured, balanced assessment of what happened.
	So if that's why Trump fired this general, then Trump is engaged with malpractice at a minimum.
	We also saw that the head of the National Intelligence Council and the deputy of the NIC were also relieved of duty, fired by Tulsi Gabbard at the direction of Donald Trump, again, because reportedly their analysis didn't support what the administration was claiming with respect to Nicholas Maduro being a big drug cartel kingpin.
	The, you know, analysts have a responsibility to take all available information.
	to accurately repeat, collect, and consolidate that information so that the president knows what that is.
	Right.
	To identify as well what the gaps are what we don't know and in providing assessments provide not just one view, but provide, you know, it could be this or it could be that given these assumptions.
	But, you know, what looks like is going on here is Trump sending a clear message that either you say what I want you to say or you're out of a job.
	If that's true, Trump is doing, he's putting this nation at risk because when intelligence analysts actually have a real warning to raise, but it doesn't go with the political narrative the White House wants, they'll keep silent and let us get run over by a truck.
	You know, Ray, you and Larry have educated me for years now, going back to when we first started talking about the danger of information getting to the president different from what the analysts are giving the people who are getting it to the president.
	Analysts giving truthful, accurate data, management telling the president what they think they want to hear.
	But if management fears getting fired, for giving truthful and accurate information to the president, what are the consequences of that?
	Well, let me give the two alternative interpretations.
	The jury is out on these two big firings that Larry talked about.
	He may be right, but the full story is not in.
	Now, what happened with DIA, somebody leaked, somebody leaked to the press the initial assessment that not everything was obliterated.
	Now, was that the DIA head, the lieutenant general and head of DIA?
	Well, yeah, it was his fault because it's his DIA.
	And so they can them, okay?
	Now, the other thing with those people from the National Intelligence Council, they were very, very close to John Brennan and James Clappford, those guys, they were the ones, together with other quasi-analysts that said, for example, you know, Russia has already lost, you know, their army has been shown in Ukraine to be the laughing stock of the world.
	July, two years ago, Bill Burns telling that to the president, the president telling that to the world in Helsinki.
	Who are those people?
	Well, they're among the 37 who have now been deprived of the Security Council, their security clearances.
	That's not putting them in jail.
	This is saying, look, we had a privilege we gave to you.
	We're not going to take it back.
	So in my view, Tulsi Gabbard is up against it.
	And what you see in the Wall Street Journal and what you see all these other things, oh, releasing the name of a man under cover, well, that's all smoke and mirrors.
	What she's doing is cleaning out all the people that told Biden, for example, that Russia had already lost, and the people that told Brennan, oh, yeah, the Russians hacked into 37.
	That's only half of them.
	I think she'll clean the other half out right quick.
	Larry, did she just fire?
	to fire a 29-year female veteran who was about to become the head of the CIA station in Russia in Moscow approved by John Ratcliffe fired by Gabbard.
	Do I have that right?
	That I don't know.
	I haven't heard that.
	And the points Ray is making are quite fair.
	Do we or do we not have the whole of the story?
	But particularly, you know, I've not looked into it.
	Someone sent me the article about the undercover CIA officer getting relieved.
	So just being undercover does not necessarily mean you're in an extraordinarily sensitive position.
	You know, the reason I was placed undercover is going through the career trainee program.
	I was with other operations officers whose cover it was essential to protect their identity.
	But, you know, it is true that this, the intelligence community has discredited itself with his conduct really over the last 20 years in many aspects.
	And I've heard, I've seen a number of these former CIA chiefs of station in Moscow.
	One of them was in my career trainee class.
	He was a young kid at the time.
	And he was a legacy hire.
	That meant his daddy worked there.
	So that's why he got hired.
	But we've really had sent an unimpressive string of second-rate people, in my view, to that preeminent station.
	So the point of all of this is the politics are so rampant.
	There were politics when Ray and I were there, but it's gotten so much worse.
	And sorting out the politics from the last administration and then having the politics of the current administration intervene.
	You know, I'm hoping that Tulsi is able to stay above the fray.
	But the fear I have and concern is she really has no experience in this environment.
	She's learning.
	But with that lacking experience, she won't see some of the landmines that could be planted for her.
	I hate to say this, but I was crazy about the Tulsi Gabbard.
	when she was in Congress.
	Her voting record was almost like Thomas Massey's.
	I don't know if she's the same now, but switching gears, Ray, why has Trump not been attacked for normalizing genocide the way Biden was?
	Well, because the media is in the hands of Zionists and the media doesn't tell the American people the truth.
	There's copious evidence of that.
	The New York Times is a prime example.
	The BBC, people have been fired for criticizing Israel.
	That's the sum and substance of it.
	Israel has inordinate influence over our foreign policy and our media.
	And, you know, if you go back to George Washington, our first president, a general, who warned about alliances that don't share the common interests of each nation.
	He warned about what would happen if one country gave another country the precedence that the other country sought while your country really has no interest.
	He was talking about France, okay?
	France owed us, we owed France big time.
	France wanted us to get involved in their wars against England and Washington and Jefferson, all the others they say, look, forget about it.
	Let's repair our own country here.
	Let's not get involved in these eternal, forever wars as they were at that point in Europe.
	Larry, I think Ray is right.
	The only people that were able without repercussion to criticize Joe were like young Muslims in Michigan.
	Otherwise, the media was kid gloves.
	And where is Trump criticized for genocide?
	Here, Clayton Morris, Tucker Carlson.
	alternate media and nowhere else.
	Yeah, well, we saw the greatest display of American hypocrisy yesterday with the wall-to-wall media coverage of the shooting of the killing of those two children in Minneapolis.
	Terrible, an awful tragedy.
	But every single day, that is being repeated in Gaza 10, 20fold.
	Instead of two children, you're getting 10 children, 20 children, 40 children killed by Israeli gunfire, by Israeli bombs.
	bombs and ammunition that we, the United States, are supplying.
	So we are, in fact, facilitators and enablers of the genocide of children.
	And so on the one hand, you get this great emotional reaction in this country to the deaths of those two here.
	But we ignore the children that are even more vulnerable and have no voice, no one to shout out for them.
	When the Israelis attacked the Nasser hospital, and killed 20 people, doctors, nurses, children, patients, and five journalists.
	Trump said he didn't know about it.
	Is that credible?
	The President of the United States could not know that, Ray?
	Yeah, it is.
	The Israelis do what the hell they want.
	Let's face it.
	Now, what you talk about was an egregious crime.
	It was what the army calls a double tap.
	You fire a rocket into a hospital, mind you.
	We don't do that.
	The Israelis do.
	And then you wait five, ten minutes until all the first responders and the doctors and the reporters come.
	And then you do a second tap.
	That time they got five reporters.
	I think the number is up to almost 200.
	Palestinian reporters killed now in this Gaza episode.
	So, you know, if you're talking about merciless if you're talking about uh completely cynical well you're going to do this and you're going to show the world you don't give a rat's patooie about what anybody thinks you're going to do it and you're going to be proud of it and you will brag about it and tell your soldiers now go finish the job in the city of gaza and the american taxpayer um is funding it chris uh play the uh interview of
	Mike Huckabee and the two rabbis.
	And then I'm going to ask you both, is Huckabee the American ambassador to Israel or the Israeli ambassador to the United States?
	The ambassador has a very interesting view of anti-Semitism.
	You know, you grew up in America, there was anti-Semitism, of course, in my experience, we've all experienced it.
	The ambassador has a very interesting view of that.
	He says, people are, you can't understand anti-Semitism.
	If people are anti-Semitic, it's because they're against God, against Rabbi Shulid.
	And we are represented as his people, and that's why they're anti-Semitic.
	Otherwise, it doesn't make any sense.
	Interesting view.
	That's an interesting view.
	There's another view that since we consider the chosen people...
	And that's part of it, is that because you are the chosen people, given a chosen place for a chosen purpose.
	And if someone is angry at God, he'll be angry at the people who represent him.
	That's right.
	So I tell people anti-Semitism is irrational.
	There's no reason for it.
	it unless you understand the spiritual reason, which is what I believe is at the heart of it.
	It is not the left versus the right.
	It is good versus evil.
	It is the creator versus those who rebel against the creators.
	I think you can make the argument that Mike is a foreign agent.
	Yeah.
	So we got this parent.
	This parent says he loves all of his children.
	He's got five kids.
	But he only makes sure that one of those five is fed.
	He only makes sure that one of those five is clothed.
	He only makes sure that one of those five is educated.
	He only makes sure that one of those five gets medical care because that one child is the chosen child.
	Now, if you knew a parent like like that, you'd call the child abuse hotline.
	They would be arrested and those other poor four kids would be put in foster care where they too could get love, care, and concern.
	I've never heard such ridiculous theological crap in my life.
	The notion that they're the chosen people.
	Oh, we've got this universal God that loves everybody, but really he loves them more than everybody else.
	It is such ridiculous nonsense.
	And the fact that people believe this and allow others, these children to be killed.
	If there is such a thing as sin, this is it.
	Ray, I got to read for you a sort of satirical brief from Caitlin Johnstone, the Australian journalist who's 110% with us on all these issues.
	God clearly and explicitly commands Christians to support the modern state of Israel.
	It's right here in the Holy Bible.
	Give me a minute and I'll find the verse for you.
	Ah, I got it.
	Exodus 2013.
	You shall not murder.
	Well, no, wait a minute.
	That's not it.
	Here it is.
	Matthew 5, 9.
	Blessed are the peacemakers, Israel.
	We can't allow Palestinian journalists to remain alive in Gaza because all the Palestinian journalists are Hamas Western journalists okay so then let us in so there can be journalists in Gaza who aren't Hamas Israel no I love Caitlin I think she's terrific she's she's fabulous Well, let me pick up on that.
	There is one verse that applies if you want to apply Hebrew scripture to this, and that is Deuteronomy 15, 4.
	You shall have the promised land if.
	So it was a covenant, if there shall be no poor people amongst you.
	Okay.
	Whoa.
	So yeah, you Hebrews could have the promised land so that there will be no poor among you.
	Now that's the second part of 15.4 of Deuteronomy.
	People seem to forget that.
	Now in a more general sense, you know, I I have to say, I grew up in the Bronx.
	We grew up with Irish and Italians and Jews all together.
	My father has an honorary doctorate from Yeshiva University for God's sake.
	Okay.
	So I don't have to make any apologies for being anti-Semitic.
	Anti-Sionist?
	I am anti-Sionist to the core, okay?
	Partly because I'm Irish, I think, and I know what my people suffered at the hands of the British and the Sionists.
	Now, the other thing is this, Reverend Huckabee, this chosen people stuff, that's really insidious, because if he really thinks that, and if he tells that to our president, well, our president is impressionable, and besides, he's got political stake here in making the Sionists go good.
	So the other thing is this.
	Trump wants to go to heaven.
	Okay, now not many of your listeners know this, but I'm going to do a full disclosure here.
	Trump spent his first two years of college at my alma mater, Fordham University.
	In the second year, we all were required to take something called moral theology, ethics.
	Okay, I would dearly love to know what mark Trump got in ethics.
	But Trump's lawyers have sued to foreclose any disclosure of any of his marks.
	What am I making?
	What's my point here?
	Where are the Catholics?
	Where are the Jesuits?
	The Pope makes nice rhetoric, right?
	But here, Pump says he wants to go to heaven.
	So what happens?
	The intellectual peak of the Catholic Church, America magazine run by intellectual Jesuits say, okay, look, now if Pump wants to go to heaven, this is the way, this is the path, mister Trump.
	This isn't, I mean, it's it's it's it's really kind of puerile or adolescent at most.
	They should just come out openly and say, stop the genocide, Mr. Trump.
	And then maybe it could be considered for not only a Nobel Prize, but maybe they'll let you into heaven after.
	But Larry, Ray makes a very good point.
	This is very dangerous.
	Lindsey Graham, Ted Cruz, Tom Cotton, Mike Huckabee, all Protestant Christians preaching the primacy of the Jewish people into the ear of Donald Trump.
	I don't think he can distinguish between Jews.
	sionists i i don't know but but ray is right he is impressionable and when these people in the government uh sound like preachers favoring one religion over another, that has a way of bleeding into American foreign policy.
	Well, and he has a Jewish son-in-law who's a Zionist and his daughter, Ivanka, she's a Jewish mother now.
	So he's always had an affiliation with the, let's call it the conservative Jewish community.
	And, you know, again, this is where they're placing Israel first over America.
	And the divided loyalty is a real issue.
	And we saw that the other day when this one sergeant who was called in and he was being punished because on a social media platform, he was criticizing Israel.
	And he said, look, when I swore my oath to the constitution, to the oath to the army, I swore to uphold and defend the constitution.
	I didn't say the damn thing about having to uphold and defend Israel or protect Israel because Israel's not my country.
	America is my country.
	And yet he's being court martialed because of it.
	Yeah, we got a real problem.
	Did these kind of things happen when you guys were in the intelligence community, people being punished, court martial fired, prosecuted for their private political statements, Ray?
	Well, I go back longer than Larry and I could tell you that I went and came into the agency, the analytic agency or department in early 1963 and I waited a year and then I asked the branch chief of the Israeli Arab branch, how come you.
	don't have any Jewish people working here?
	How come there are no people of Jewish descent here?
	And he took me aside and he said, this is very un-American, Ray, but I don't think that a person of Jewish heritage can be relied upon to be completely objective.
	I said, whoa.
	Fast forward 10 years, and I'm the NI, the National Intelligence Officer for Western Europe.
	and all hell breaks loose in Derry in Northern Ireland, okay?
	I'm deathly afraid that Bill Casey is going to come down to me and say, Ray, you know a lot about Ireland.
	Please, please, be the analyst of what's going on there and what we should do.
	I would have to say, I know, I really can't do that, mister Casey.
	I cannot pretend to be unprejudiced on Ireland.
	And he would have, well, I don't know how he would react.
	But that's so now, the codicil here is that when the last time I checked, three quarters of that Arab Israeli branch were people by not only Jewish heritage people, but by Zionists.
	And that's the kind of advice that Biden and Trump have been getting.
	It's a bad, bad show.
	I think that can be repaired, though.
	Everybody with whom Trump surrounds himself in the national security, military, and intelligence community, senior people, are Zionists.
	Are they not, Larry?
	Yes.
	Yeah, and you've got enough, you know, members of Congress, too.
	You've got people like Brian Mast, who is a representative out of Florida.
	He served in the Israeli military.
	he wears an israeli military uniform on the floor of the house of representatives yeah yeah so this um you know if you want to be an Israeli patriot, that's great.
	Be an Israeli patriot, live there, you know, but don't come to the United States.
	And I say this would apply to any country, Israel, Mexico, Canada, you know, you want to think your country is the best.
	That's great.
	Do so.
	Do it in your country.
	This is my country.
	We will say America is great.
	Now, at least from the standpoint of where your national loyalties lie.
	But what's so unfortunate is that right now, anybody, people are being accused of being anti-Semitic for opposing Israel, murdering children.
	Well, if that's the definition of anti-Semitic, then I am anti-Semitic.
	I think we probably all agree on that as sad as it is.
	Gentlemen, thank you very much.
	It's been a long week.
	Great to chat with you.
	Have a great holiday weekend.
	We will see you Tuesday morning.
	Thank you.
	Not Monday morning.
	Don't get up early, Ray, on Monday for us.
	We'll see you Tuesday morning.
	Thank you guys.
	All the best.
	Have a great, great holiday weekend.
	Thanks for being here today.
	Thank you.
	And coming up, of course, we will, you'll be able to see what we've posted on Monday, but our new program will begin on Tuesday as if it were a Monday and Tuesday.
	You'll see Aleister Crook, Ambassador Freeman, Ray McGovern, Larry Johnson, and probably one or two others, Colonel Kwatkowski in the afternoon.
	Have a great holiday weekend, my friends.

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