March 16, 2026 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
26:33
AMB Chas Freeman : Will China Dump Trump?
Ambassador Chas Freeman critiques the illegitimate U.S. war in Iran, driven by a Zionist lobby and tactical hubris that depletes munitions needed for Ukraine while risking Strait of Hormuz closure and oil prices exceeding $200 per barrel. He exposes the administration's strategic ineptitude, noting President Trump's alleged disregard for non-combatant lives and the isolation of U.S. allies like Japan and Britain who refuse naval aid. Freeman argues that China likely canceled a meeting with Trump due to this collapse in credibility, warning that further military escalation risks a Gallipoli-style disaster and ultimately destroys American global standing rather than defeating Iran. [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?
Hi, everyone.
Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Tuesday, March 17th, 2026, St. Patrick's Day here in the West, and especially in the United States, and particularly in New York City.
Ambassador Chaz Freeman joins us now.
Ambassador, thank you very much for your time this morning.
I want to spend some time with you on one of your fields of expertise, which is China, and how you expect the Chinese will deal with President Trump in light of the war in Iran.
But before we get there on Iran, how do you suppose U.S. officials, intelligence, military, and political, could have so underestimated the resilience of the Iranian people in the asymmetric strategy of the Iranian military?
Well, I think the administration ignored predictions that the depletion of U.S. munitions in Israel's war with Iran would impair our own military capabilities on a global level.
The exhaustion of our weapons stocks would deprive Ukraine of them and fatally weaken it.
The closure of the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran clearly signaled, would cause a global economic crisis.
Iran would attack U.S. bases throughout West Asia, which again, it said it would do.
And the U.S. would have no allies in this war of choice on behalf of the genocidal state of Israel.
And there were a lot of things wrong for this war from the beginning.
There was no strategy, only a campaign plan, tactical hubris, but strategic ineptitude, coupled with unilateral diplomatic disarmament, have put us where we are.
This is an illegitimate war, authorized by Benjamin, not Netanyahu, not the U.S. Congress, as the Constitution requires.
It was supported, it is supported by the Zionist lobby, not by the American people.
It's being conducted with brutal savagery without regard to the Constitution, the law, or international norms.
And the troops are being told that it's in the name of some kind of Christian nationalist objective of bringing on the apocalypse.
No clear, constant, or feasible objectives.
There has been no marshaling or husbanding of resources.
There's no plan for war termination.
So this is a classic forever war, exactly what President Trump promised us he would not produce.
There are no rules of engagement, thanks to Secretary Hedseth.
No respect for international law.
No apology for mass murder, for example.
The sweet young girls of Minab who were murdered by us, the biggest massacre we've conducted by has been conducted by our troops since Milan.
We've suffered severe reputational damage, both political and military.
And if the purpose of a war is, as William Tecunso-Sim said, to produce a better peace, there is now no process in place to gain such a peace for Israel, the Gulf Arabs, the United States, or Iran.
And no one now trusts Washington.
Russia, and I suspect China, as well as Iran, have now clearly joined us in reliance solely on the facts that the use of force can produce no diplomacy.
The world is becoming a more dangerous, not a more safe place.
So this is a disaster, and the administration is characteristically meeting it with a combination of bombastic bluster and bellicose rhetoric and declarations of victory that have no basis.
I wonder if there's anybody in his inner circle who truly warned him about this.
It appears that someone in the Pentagon, certainly not the Hegseth crew, released that General Kane, the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, warned about this.
Then the president on his Truth Social denied it.
It was released via the Washington Post, which means it probably made its way from the Pentagon through the CIA to the Washington Post.
Well, I think General Kane did warn him, regardless of his denials.
There's an old adage: never believe anything until it's been officially denied.
And this certainly fits that pattern.
And I know, we all know that the intelligence community did warn, there's, I found the record, did warn in writing that the probability of regime change, except in the direction that has occurred, which is toward a harder line regime, would be the likely outcome.
So, you know, I mean, here we are, we're back in this crazy fallacy that if you murder senior leaders, that somehow produces moderate successes.
We're told that Ali Rinadani, the head of security in Iran, has just been assassinated by Israel or killed by him somehow.
I wonder why we think that when we are normalizing such murders, the other side will not eventually copy us, overcoming its religious scruples to do so.
We don't seem to have any scruples these days.
I think that the message that my former friend and former Fox colleague, who's now the Secretary of Defense and calls himself the Secretary of War, sends to the troops is immoral, illegal, unconstitutional, and reprehensible, that there are no longer any rules.
Fun to Sink Foreign Ships00:16:30
Combine that, ambassador, with the president saying, I don't need international law.
My own morality guides me.
And it's no wonder that we have the largest U.S. slaughter of innocents since Milai.
I hope I'm wrong, but probably more coming if these people are told no rules.
And Trump said, I'll find it and run it.
They told me it's far.
Oh, here we go.
It's fun to sink these ships.
Watch this, Ambassador.
Cut number two, Chris.
The Navy is gone.
It's all lying at the bottom of the ocean.
46 ships.
Can you believe it?
In fact, I got a little upset with our people.
I said, what quality of ship?
Excellent, sir.
Top of the line.
I said, why didn't we just capture the ship?
We're going to use it.
Why did we sink him?
They said, it's more fun to sink him.
And they laughed.
The ship to which he was referring was not a ship equipped for battle.
It was a training ship, and the people killed were cadets and their teachers.
And they were nowhere near, nowhere near the Straits of Hormuz.
And he laughed, and the audience laughed, and he used the word fun.
Well, this is reminiscent of the disgraceful comment by Hillary Clinton when Colonel Gaddafi, the ruler of Libya, was solemnized and murdered in a drain pipe.
You know, we came, we saw he died.
This is despicable.
But I think there's a fundamental issue here, Judge, and that is what does winning mean?
Death and destruction are not the ends of warfare.
They are what happens during warfare.
But neither subjugation nor humiliation, which is what we're aiming at with regard to Iran, equates to peace.
And Iran will accept neither subjugation nor humiliation.
Wars don't end when until the defeated admit defeat.
And wars don't end when one side proclaims mission accomplished or portrays the death and destruction it has wreaked on another side as some sort of victory.
Iran continues to pursue its regime, its objectives of removing Israel as a threat to it.
And by the way, Israel has been a persistent threat to it.
To what?
To Israeli expansionism in the region.
Iran has not directly threatened Israel, but it is now a direct threat to Israel.
And Iran is intent on eliminating it as a threat, as well as the American military presence in the Persian Gulf.
And it has, in my view, a fighting chance of doing so.
Trump told NBC News on Saturday that Iran reached out to him via a third party's foreign ministry, didn't say what party it was, seeking negotiations for a ceasefire and offering terms.
Iran's foreign minister said it never happened.
I don't have Trump saying it to NBC News, but I have the foreign minister saying it never happened.
Chris cut number one.
President Trump said this weekend he is not ready to make a deal with Iran because the terms aren't good enough yet.
Has Iran asked for a ceasefire?
No, we never asked for a ceasefire and we have never asked even for negotiation.
We are ready to defend ourselves as long as it takes.
And this is what we have done so far and we continue to do that until President Trump comes to the point that this is an illegal war with no victory.
And, you know, there are people being killed only because President Trump wants to have fun.
This is what he has said.
Have fun.
Yes, this is what he said, that they are sinking ships and targeting different places because it is fun.
So who do you believe?
Trump's claim that the Iranians called and asked for a resumption of negotiations or the Iranian foreign minister who said, why would negotiate, why should we negotiate with a country that kills us during the negotiations?
I'm sorry to say that I find RFC, the foreign minister of Iran, entirely credible and the president not.
And I'd note that American diplomacy is not just missing in action.
It's basically dead.
It's been killed by amateur envoys who engage in protection rackets and personal corruption rather than well-prepared or good faith negotiations, so-called napkin agreements with no implementable details agreed that are entirely performative, not real.
One-sided false assertions about what has been agreed or what's happening, which is just what we heard, and repudiation of specific understandings or lack of follow-through on them when they are reached.
But more than anything else, as you said, the use of negotiations as cover for surprise attacks.
And we are isolated.
President Trump's call for naval support from other countries to open the Strait of Hormuz has been met with firm refusals by everybody.
The Chinese did not respond, but their press made fun of us for making that request.
So we're a laughing stock.
We have not made America great again.
We've done the opposite.
What happens if the Strait of Hormuz stays closed for a couple of weeks or months to Iran's enemies, which of course would mean the U.S.?
Well, we'll see the price of oil go to first around $140 a barrel and eventually over $200, very likely.
Iran, you know, there's one big missing point in the media coverage of this war and therefore our knowledge of what is going on in it, and that is there's a big blank where Israel is.
Israeli military censorship and the deference of our press to that censorship, to their disgrace, mean that we don't know how much damage Israel is suffering.
The little news that comes out suggests that it is suffering a great deal of damage.
Israel claims it has destroyed most of Iran's missile launchers, but the missiles keep coming.
And so who are you going to believe?
The Israeli government or your lying eyes?
Right.
Is Netanyahu alive?
I have no idea.
I know that he hasn't appeared for a long time.
And there was a film put out, supposedly, but it looks to me like a deep fake.
Israel is really good at that kind of thing.
There's a lot of false flag stuff going on in the region.
And I fear we may get it here because we're not winning this war.
And we're basically, as had been predicted, running low on interceptors and other defense capabilities.
We're acting with a bit of desperation, moving Marines from Okinawa to the Strait of Hormuz, where if they do go ashore, it may resemble Gallipoli more than Normandy.
So, you know, this is not going well.
And, you know, there comes a moment when And the effort to portray reality in false terms is overcome by the fact that reality persists.
And that's where we are.
We're proclaiming victory, but there is no victory.
We're proclaiming military success on the basis of wreaking a lot of destruction.
We clearly have done that.
We have not broken the will of the Iranian regime, the Iranian people.
Those who thought that our intervention might help them secure greater rights in a post-Islamic Republic, Iran, are now turning against us because you bombed someone.
That's not a good way to endear yourself to them.
And of course, all of the insults and the contempt we've shown toward our allies, the wild gyrations of our trade policies, the belittlement of their performance in past wars all mean that they have absolutely no desire to come to our aid.
Even the British have said it's your war, not ours.
Right, right.
Can you talk to us, please, about China?
Did Trump dump China or did China dump Trump?
The Trump-G meeting is now officially off.
My own view is that President Xi didn't want a picture in the front page of the Financial Times of himself shaking hands with the world's most despised head of state.
I think Xi Jinping was, in fact, prepared to go ahead with it with that meeting.
I'm sure he's relieved that it's not going to happen under these circumstances.
It was very clearly President Trump who has a tremendous set of problems domestically, politically, and internationally, of course, because what's been revealed is he's essentially dissolved our alliances.
Our partnerships are not there.
And there are skazing comments out of the Europeans now who had told their fire earlier in an effort to appease him.
They've stopped trying to do that.
And they're talking honestly about the end of the Atlantic Alliance.
I think there's a real question.
Prime Minister Takahichi of Japan is supposed to be here this week, I believe, in a couple of days.
I don't know if she's coming or not.
But of course, Japan has just declined to provide naval support for anything that we might do in the Strait of Hormuz.
By the way, I don't believe I defer to a military expert on this, but I don't believe that naval support could in fact overcome the blockade.
The only way the blockade can be overcome is the way the Chinese, the Indians, the Turks have done it, namely through diplomacy.
They've reached agreements with Iran.
They've reached out to Iran and their ships are now exempted from being shot at.
So they're coming through the strait.
Iran's own ships are going through the strait.
And the strait is not mined.
That's not a problem.
Iran controls who goes through it, when they go through it, how they go through it.
And there's not much we can do about that because Iran's military is land-based.
They are, like the Houthis in the Red Sea, demonstrating that you can blockade the sea from the land.
This is why presumably the Marines are being moved over toward the Strait of Hormuz.
But as I said, the Iranians are dug in and we should remember Gallipoli.
What are the Marines going to do?
Well, that's not clear.
You know, Trump was idly talking about taking Kharg Island.
That's way 800 kilometers up the Gulf.
It's not within easy reach.
You'd have to fight your way through the Gulf under Iranian fire to get there.
So I suspect it's probably something about trying to take out the land-based Iranian control of the Strait of Hormuz itself.
And as I suggest, they've had 20 years to fortify that.
I don't think that would be an easy task at all.
I think our Marines are terrific, but I fear for them if they try that.
Here's a new comment.
I'm being anxious to hear your thoughts on this from President Trump on who, how, why the Strait of Hormuz is closed.
Chris?
From Hormuz, the Strait.
Hormuz, a famous, wonderful, beautiful place, but you wouldn't want to be necessarily sailing about there right now.
You know why?
Not because of them, because of us.
Because we've taken out their entire Navy.
We've taken out every one of their drone.
They call it a drone layer, a mine layer.
Well, I'm encouraged that he's discovered the Strait of Hormuz, which he apparently didn't think about earlier.
But the taking out of the Navy, first of all, that's not entirely true.
But even if it were true, it's irrelevant.
The reference to mines is misguided.
There is no mining.
This strait is closed from the land, from the Iranian side of the Strait of Hormuz, by Iranian emplacements of weapons there.
And it cannot be opened by the Navy for that reason.
And whether the Iranian Navy is operating or not really isn't terribly relevant.
By the way, tankers are being blown up by small guided unmanned speedboats and other techniques of drone warfare that Ukraine has pioneered in the Black Sea.
Ironically, of course, we've had to ask the Ukrainians for help in terms of drone supplies and so on, and I gather they're not complying.
Well, that is the world turned upside down that we're calling on Ukraine for help and they don't have the ability to help us.
Who or what can call Israel and the United States to account for this catastrophe?
Well, of course, one of the features of this and the collapse of our diplomacy is that we have no credibility and indeed no real support at all in international organizations.
We've threatened them, we've defunded them, we've alienated them, and we've eviscerated them and not just the World Health Organization, but we've treated the Security Council and the General Assembly of the UN with contempt.
And they basically are not in a position to extricate us from this dreadful mistake we've made, even if they wanted to, but they don't really have any desire to do that.
And we don't have any allies.
There are bystanders who up to now have been muting their criticism of us in an effort to appease Donald Trump.
But they're now openly criticizing us.
And this is, as I said, this is a reaction to the contempt and the verbal abuse to which we have subjected them, as well as our disregard of their interests by putting tariffs and other quotas and sanctions on them.
They won't jump when we call them now to do.
Unconditional Surrender or Closed Strait00:02:41
Here's the Iranian foreign minister concludes with a very interesting line.
The strait is only closed to our enemies.
Chris Cutt, number 11.
When our adversaries first began by insisting upon a total and unconditional surrender, and then after a period of 12 long days, they requested please an unconditional ceasefire.
This time they implemented the same scenario, but with even greater intensity and force.
They mobilized all their forces so that this unconditional surrender would happen.
This time they were determined to make it happen for sure.
Well, the sheer scale of the attacks, the action they took on the very first day, you know all of this better than I do.
And again, they started with the phrase unconditional surrender.
And today, after almost 15 days have passed since the war began, for the security of the Strait of Hormuz, they are turning to those whom they considered enemies until just yesterday.
They are asking other countries to come and help them so that the Strait of Hormuz remains open, which, of course, from our perspective, it is open.
It is only closed to our enemies.
It is only closed to our enemies.
Well, it's very clear, I think, that what we have done has greatly devalued not just our reputation for sound policy making, alliance management, and so forth, but our military reputation.
We have pounded Iran terribly, and we have not broken its will.
And I would say, you know, the question really is, have we defeated Iran or have we actually defeated ourselves?
It's looking more and more like we've defeated ourselves.
Thank you, Ambassador.
Great, great conversation.
Thank you for your insight.
Be well, my dear friend.
We'll look forward to seeing you next week.
Hope so.
Thank you.
Coming up, if you're watching us live in 30 minutes, but at 9 o'clock Eastern on all of this, Professor John Mearsheimer at 10 o'clock Eastern on all of this, Scott Ritter.
At 1 o'clock this afternoon, Aaron Mate.
At 2 o'clock this afternoon, Matt Ho.
At 3 o'clock this afternoon, a full day for you.
Colonel Karen Kwetkowski, judge the Paul Channel for Judging Freedom.