Feb. 22, 2026 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
28:27
Alastair Crooke : The Zionist Anxiety For War.
Alastair Crooke examines how Zionist factions push for war, citing gold/silver spikes from inflation and money printing. He dismisses Marco Rubio’s Munich call for Western recolonization as counterproductive, warning Trump’s disregard for international norms risks backfiring against China—whose $1.4T trade surplus and 200x naval shipbuilding capacity outstrip U.S. leverage. A British-backed strike on a Russian Urals plant and GRU accusations of complicity escalate tensions, while Iran’s Beidou-linked missile upgrades and false claims about its June 12th war vulnerabilities signal deterrence. Ambassador Huckabee’s Genesis 15 justification for Israel’s Nile-to-Euphrates claim provoked Saudi, Egyptian, and Jordanian outrage, exposing U.S. strategy’s fragility. Netanyahu’s February 29th Gaza roadmap—sequential deals on enrichment, missiles, proxies, and Hamas—fails to address Iran’s intransigence, risking a stalemate where concessions are unlikely. [Automatically generated summary]
Tragically, our government engages in preemptive war, otherwise known as aggression, with no complaints from the American people.
Sadly, we have become accustomed to living with the illegitimate use of force by government.
To develop a truly free society, the issue of initiating force must be understood and rejected.
What if sometimes to love your country, you had to alter or abolish the government?
What if Jefferson was right?
What if that government is best which governs least?
What if it is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong?
What if it is better to perish fighting for freedom than to live as a slave?
What if freedom's greatest hour of danger is now?
Everyone.
Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Monday, February 23rd, 2026.
Aleister Crook will be with us in just a moment on the Zionist urge for war.
And this, did the British attack a Russian arms manufacturing plant over the weekend?
But first this.
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Alistair, welcome here and good day to you, my friend.
We're suffering with 18 inches of snow here in New York City, but it's very quiet and very white, as you can imagine.
Before we get to the Zionist anxiety for war, how misguided was the talk by Secretary of State Marco Rubio at the Munich conference last week, where he called for the recolonization of smaller sovereign states by Western powers?
Cannot Compete Without Currency Devaluation00:08:10
Oh, I think it wasn't a small mistake.
It was a great error to do this because it has alienated everyone.
I mean, it was an extraordinary call because it was a call, first of all, to say how, you know, how great it was.
You know, settlers went out and settled the countries and priests followed, setting up missions.
And we colonized the world.
And for 500 years, we had that until the Second World War.
And now it is the aim of the United States to reconstitute it.
And Europe, you can join.
We want you to be part of this project to recreate the Western colonial world.
And you're very welcome.
Of course, if you don't choose to be a part of it, very well, then we will do it alone.
But it was an extraordinary exercise at Munich.
Do Trump's advisors really believe that no law or principle of morality or respect for state sovereignty constrains them?
I don't know about his advisors, but that's what Trump says very clearly.
And he says, you know, I will not be constrained by law or by convention or by any of the international institutions.
I mean, this is it.
He is, he has the power, as he says.
I have the power and I will do what I want.
In fact, he said just in the last days over the weekend, I think it was, he said, I have the right to destroy countries.
I have the right to destroy any country.
So, yes, he does.
Does the Trump administration recognize the economic stability and military strength of China?
No.
At least it professes to ignore it because it is still intent and still believes that America being a big economic power has the ability to suppress China, to keep it down, to keep it from overtaking the United States.
But actually, it's too late for that.
It is quite clearly too late for that, because we've seen in this last period an extraordinary thing happening, that the huge Chinese trade surplus of 1.4 billion, about 4% of GDP, took place at a time its exports to America were fading.
The idea that Besant and Trump have is, you know, you cannot avoid the American market is the gold standard of business.
You have to be there.
You can't avoid it.
Well, the Chinese just did that and did it very profitably because their exports to the rest of the world went soaring up 16% at the time that their exports to America were falling 20% per month.
And so how are you going to constrain this?
And as I mentioned before, when I came back from China, and I said, you know, what is impossible to match is their huge surge of competitivity that they've achieved through applying AI at a very fundamental factory floor level.
You know, automation and robotics more than a sort of AI as we know it as a huge mass of data management.
Therefore, their price level is falling.
Their price level is falling and ours for manufacturing is going up.
So, I mean, we can't compete without a huge devaluation of our currencies.
I mean, it would take a valuation of about 140% of the dollar to match their price competitiveness.
Not 90%, 140, because the basic, the input to manufacturing, largely electricity, but also oil and gas, of course, but electricity, is one sixth of the price in China.
They have got it down to one sixth of the price of America.
It costs six times more to purchase electricity for industrial production in America.
I mean, that is a devastating gap.
to sort of have to overcome if America is going to take on China.
So the trade war has failed against China.
The tariffs have not succeeded in making the Chinese eat the tariffs, the taxes of the tariff taxes on their exports.
On the contrary, they have not done that.
But instead of which they're selling to the rest of the world because the future market, and everyone says that, it is no longer, it was the case that America, you know, you cannot ignore the American market.
The American market for technology and industry and everything was the best in the world.
It was, but it has declined.
And meanwhile, Central Asia, China, Russia, Central Asia, as I've said to you, you know, from my visits to the region, you know, Siberia is humming.
It's on the border with China and Russia, and it's getting, it's doing all sorts of innovative things on technology.
I mean, producing things.
It's not just producing energy.
Americans probably think of Siberia as a vast ice-covered wasteland, and you're telling us that it's the heart of Russian industry.
It's amazing.
I mean, one year ago, Trump claimed that China would eat, have to eat his tariffs.
Now, even put aside what the Supreme Court did on Friday, he's humiliated by all this.
Exactly.
And it's not, you know, just the heart of Russia.
This is the heart of the new economy that is developing, is in the East, in Siberia, between the interface between China and Russia together.
This is the heart.
That's where people want to be.
And this is where China is selling into.
And that's why its exports to the rest of the world, to particularly, I mean, partly to Europe, but partly to Central Asia, just soared in this period, is because there is a booming economy in, if you like, Central Asia that will buy their exports and allows them to ignore the American market and be self-sufficient and not to be dependent on America.
And that is the bottom line is if you cannot defeat China economically, and all the signs are that that's almost impossible to achieve its, if you like, relegation to a lower level of economy, then the only alternative is military, kinetic action against China.
That too is impossible.
The Chinese made 200 times the ships, the naval ships that America can manufacture for, if you like, a conflict of China in the seas, in the China Sea.
Israeli Intelligence and the Ural Attack00:15:15
So, you know, it's not going to be possible to do it.
So one has, I mean, this is why I keep saying it has to be managed.
You know, this is one of those moments of great tension.
It is one of those moments when one state, one great power, is coming up and overtaking another power.
And it's always a moment of some danger, but it needs to be managed.
That's what I would say.
Before we jump to the Zionist pressure on President Trump to attack Iran, apparently over the weekend, the British government, maybe the trigger was pulled by the Ukrainians, but it was British intel, British equipment, British strategy, attacked deep into the Ural Mountains and partially damaged a Russian munitions plant which makes,
which configures steel shell casings for nuclear purposes.
How dangerous is this?
Well, it's very dangerous.
And it comes in the context of what the head of the GRU, the military intelligence of Russia, the head of it, Podnikov said very clearly just over the weekend, and he said, in connection with that assassination of the general who was the deputy to the head of the GRU,
who was the one who was negotiating with the Ukrainians, was in the negotiation team, the general that was in it and his deputy was shot three times in the back.
He was shot twice and managed to subdue his opponent and then was shot a third time in the scaffold.
He's surviving, but what the GRU had said was, well, the people who pulled the trigger were Ukrainians, clearly.
We know that.
We've caught them.
We have all the details.
But behind them stood an intelligence service.
And that, he said, specifically was the British intelligence service.
I think there will be a reaction to that.
That was a very, very tough thing to say.
They are accusing the British intelligence service of, if you like, assisting or if you like being in some way collaborator in the assassination of the deputy head of Russia's military intelligence.
That's quite a claim to say.
Wow.
Over to Israel and Iran.
What lessons did Iran learn and Israel fail to learn from the 12-day war last June?
Well, I mean, that's a complicated question to answer because Iran is very clear that they learned lots of lessons.
And in fact, I've been told that they've completely reconfigured those missile cities in the light of what happened in that 12-day war.
And they've completely revamped, if you like, the ballistic missile structures.
And also, as I think I've suggested to you, they've had very important and significant help, I believe, from China and from Russia.
Of course, how significant, we will only know in the unfortunate event that it has to be used and put to the test.
But I'm pretty confident, and we see very clearly what sort of help it is, because the Chinese are advertising it.
All over the internet.
They're showing satellite photographs of where American planes are planted, where American planes are just on the, on the tarmac in Saudi Arabia, in Udaid base in Jordan, and the third missiles where they are in place and, and quite clearly, this is intended to convey.
They haven't done this just for fun.
They've done it to convey to the world that they will give the intelligence, this intelligence, to Iran.
That's clearly what else would be the point of it.
But they are going to provide that intelligence and what I believe also is that they can do this um through a new data link system, the Beidou system, um which um they have given the Iranians um a military quality, the highest military quality, access to this data so they can get, the Iranians can get data from these satellites,
from the Chinese satellite array which is monitoring the whole of the region.
You recall, I mean in Ukraine, what was the greatest asset that the United States and NATO provided to the Ukrainians?
It was isr, the intelligence surveillance, reconnaissance of their aeroplanes, their satellites, their radar systems.
That provided, if you like, the Ukrainians with immediate target data.
This is what was called, oh no, the secret parts of putting the data into the missile.
Yeah, because it came from this digital battlescape that the Americans protect very very, very carefully.
Well, maybe now uh, we may see, and time will tell only um, but it may be that the, the reverse is happening and that Iran has um, if you like, before it, um a battlescape showing where all of the aircraft are going.
And this has an important significance, I believe, because they will know, either from the Chinese, or even from the, the Russians, or from their own um abilities.
They will know as soon as an attack, uh has been the order given to go.
They will know immediately, they can see the signs that an attack is now underway and in that case, I think they, we can expect, and I believe we will expect that Iran will not wait for the American bombs and missiles to land as soon as they get the clear vision that it is now being triggered by an order.
I mean, at the moment, the order is simply to be ready right, but once the green light is given, I think you will see that Iran will take um the initiative, uh itself um, so we can uh, we will know, I mean they, it that will happen before you know the actual implementation of the order takes place in terms of missile attacks from America or attacks.
Why?
I'm sorry, I thought you were finished.
Please continue.
Yeah, i'm finished finishing.
Why do you suppose Zionist leaders are uh preaching that Iran is a paper tiger?
Do they believe this?
Do they want the Israeli public lulled into a false sense of security?
To a certain extent?
yes.
I mean, they do realize.
I mean, you know, there are two things.
There are two huge deceptions that have taken place on both the American public and the Israeli public.
One was that the nuclear sites were obliterated and beyond repair.
And that is the Israelis themselves say that is quite untrue.
They weren't at all.
I mean, they're still intact.
It suits the Iranians to go along with the story they were obliterated because then they can say, well, why are you pressing us on the nuclear issue if you've obliterated them?
But they know they were not obliterated.
And the other great deception practiced on the Israeli public is the suggestion that they destroyed it during that 12th of June.
They destroyed the Iranian air defense systems.
And they make that and they say, no, it was all destroyed in June and they've been trying busily to rebuild it.
The Iranians are trying to rebuild it, but it was destroyed.
It's just not true.
Actually, the destruction that took place in that first days was done by sabotage groups, not by air attack, not by suppression of air defenses.
It was done by small cells of saboteurs crossing from Kurdistan and in the north from Azerbaijan, small cells that were equipped with attack drones and strike anti-tank weapons, going for the first layer of the Iranian radar warning system.
It has three layers, and the first one is on the ground and is so vulnerable.
So they started destroying those by firing anti-tank guns.
So you can see how close they were to these radars.
And for a while, the Iranians were confused and unsighted because they didn't know where the attack was coming from.
They thought, you know, there are no aircraft, there are no missiles around, you know, and actually it was on the ground.
And then they dealt with that by simply cutting off the internet because these were taking their data about where Sufar and the targeting data was coming via the internet from the American satellite battlescape that we've just talked about.
I'm going to play a little clip from Tucker Carlson's interview of U.S. Ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee.
And after we watch this, it's only about 40 seconds.
I'll ask you how well this is playing in the Middle East.
Chris, cut number two.
Christian Zionism.
I want to go back because that's where we started.
I'm not going to let you off on this because you have said it three times that God gave this land to this people.
And so it is entirely fair for me with respect to ask, what land are you talking about?
Because I just read Genesis 15, as I have many times.
And that land, I think it says from the Nile to the Euphrates, which is, once again, basically the entire Middle East.
So God gave that land to his people, the Jews, or he didn't.
You're saying he did.
What does that mean?
Does Israel have the right to that land?
Because you're appealing to Genesis.
You're saying that's the original deed.
It would be fine if they took it all.
It would be fine if they took it all.
What do the Saudis have to say about that?
Look, I mean, I won't go into the details, but just to say there's a firestorm that has been ignited by that throughout the Middle East.
I mean, every state, there's been statements issued of all the all the Muslim states in the area condemning it utterly.
It is a turning point because it is so explicit, so clear now to Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, exactly what the American position in terms of the American administration is in its support for Israel.
And so it has created a firestorm.
I don't think that the damage can be easily undone.
And I leave it to you to say, but I think it's going to have as big an impact actually in Europe and the United States as well, because, you know, he said it absolutely clearly.
And this will be shocking to many Americans and Europeans.
And I think it will change the, it will change the atmosphere.
Do you foresee a sort of Islamic NATO coming together?
Maybe triggered, maybe, maybe triggered by what Huckabee said?
Not essentially.
At the moment, they're waiting to see everything is hanging on what happens with Iran.
And I would just say that about that because there was a cabinet meeting in Israel Sunday night last night.
And the position is the understanding of the Israelis, because it's often easier to find out what is going on in Washington through the Hebrew press than from looking at it from the Washington telescope.
But what they're saying is that the tactics of Witkoff and Kushner are simply to put together a train of interim agreements.
And so they are saying to the Iranians, well, the first Rinterma agreement is just about the enrichment of uranium.
And they say, no, there isn't, you know, that we're not including anything else because this is another deception, because what they mean is the next train after that will be ballistic missiles.
And the interim agreement after that will be about proxies.
And if the Iranians get on this train, then they will end up in precisely the position that Netanyahu set out for them when he went to Mar-a-Lago on the 29th of the four red lines that he said.
Zero enrichment, no ballistic missiles, no proxy forces, and Hamas has to be disarmed.
So he's moving Iran in that direction, but there's just a mismatch of timing because, you know, this is a little bit what they like to do in Gaza, what Kushner did in Gaza was an interim agreement, and we won't set out what the next agreement is.
You remember, phase one.
No one knew what was going to happen in phase two.
This is a technique that they're using now.
Phase Two Uncertainty00:01:45
Phase one, we're going to talk about the nuclear issue and we'll see what happens.
And then, of course, when that phase is over, well, we have to move now to phase two, which will be the ballistic missiles.
Phase three, of course, will be the disarmament of your proxies around the world.
I don't think this is going to work myself.
And I understand from Iran, I understand that I don't think there are, is it today or tomorrow that there will be a reply from Iran, but I don't expect any really significant concessions.
If there was, you know, if the America appealed for a ladder out of the tree into which Trump has climbed, they might to a certain extent be willing to try and sort of put the ladder against the trunk and see if he wants to climb out of it.
But they're not intending to make any concessions.
So Witkoff's sort of puzzlement that he showed on television when he said, you know, it's so curious.
I mean, how can they come and capitulate?
I mean, we've got all these ships and they're not capitulating.
Well, he'll find out that is right.
Alistair Crook, thank you very much, my dear friend.
As always, thank you for letting the conversation go across the board.
Your analysis is always so deeply and personally appreciated.