April 7, 2026 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
26:49
Prof. John Mearsheimer : What Will a Panicked Trump Do Now?
Professor John Mearsheimer joins Judge Andrew Napolitano on April 7, 2026, to dissect President Trump's failed six-week war with Iran, which yielded no regime change or uranium despite a downed reconnaissance jet. Mearsheimer warns that Trump's genocidal rhetoric and Mark Levin's nuclear advice signal a march toward catastrophic escalation, potentially violating the Geneva Conventions and triggering a military revolt if commanders are ordered to destroy civilian infrastructure. Ultimately, this unchecked aggression threatens global stability by normalizing war crimes and pushing the world dangerously close to nuclear conflict. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Stopping Genocidal Nuclear Intent00:14:51
Undeclared wars are commonplace.
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, April 7th, 2026.
Professor John Mearshammer will be with us in just a moment.
President Trump is panicking.
What will he do next?
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Professor Mir Schamber, welcome here, my dear friend.
Thank you, as always, for accommodating my schedule.
We do have a lot to discuss, but I want to ask you for your take on the weekend's events.
The government says it engaged in a daring rescue of the co pilot of a jet.
The jet was there for reconnaissance purposes.
Larry Johnson, Scott Ritter, and their military sources tell them the jet was there as part of an effort to invade.
And steel enriched the uranium stored not far from where the jet was brought down.
It was a daring rescue, but it was the tail end of a failed venture.
How do you see this?
Well, I interpret Larry and Scott to be saying that they were planning to try to capture the uranium.
But in the meantime, this pilot got shot down before they had an opportunity to launch the effort.
To capture the uranium.
And once the pilot was lost and they were looking for the pilot, they used a lot of the assets and part of the plan that had been designed to capture the uranium to get back the pilot.
So they never fully launched the attempt to capture the uranium, although they were intending to do that.
And they did manage to get the pilot out.
That's how I interpret what Larry and Scott are saying.
And I don't have any inside information, and they certainly have a heck of a lot of inside information.
And what they say sounds convincing to me.
You are, of course, a graduate of West Point and a veteran of the Air Force.
Wouldn't it be unusual for a colonel to be the co pilot seated behind the pilot?
The pilot's a lieutenant.
The colonel was obviously there not to monitor his lieutenant, but for some grander purpose.
Well, it looks like the pilot.
I mean, the weapons officer in that F 15, the colonel, was there because it was a special mission.
And it appears that that special mission was to get the uranium in Iran, the enriched uranium.
So that's what it looks like was happening.
But we just don't know for sure why that lieutenant colonel was in the backseat.
Has the American government or the American military, I should say, tipped its hand?
In other words, do the Iranians.
Iranians now know how safe or how to protect their uranium from American theft?
Well, I think the Iranians knew beforehand that it was likely that we would try to do that.
But once this operation took place, it probably caused them to worry even more.
I would note, however, I think at this point we're past the point where worrying about losing their uranium.
Uranium is their major concern.
I think what really matters now is what's going to happen tonight.
So, regime change hasn't happened.
Theft of enriched uranium hasn't happened.
Degrading of ballistic missiles hasn't happened.
Open the Gulf of Hormuz, which of course was open before the war, hasn't happened.
What has Trump accomplished in six weeks?
Well, I think you're exactly right.
What's happened here is that Trump has not accomplished any of the goals that he set out to achieve.
And in fact, the Strait of Hormuz remains closed.
The Israelis are doing terribly in Lebanon.
And the end result is that he is thinking about how to further escalate.
And the problem he faces is that they've run out of military targets.
There have been a whole slew of articles to this effect.
There are only a limited number of real military targets inside of Iran.
And once you hit all those targets, there's not much left to hit.
So now what they're talking about doing is going after civilian infrastructure.
And in effect, tearing the country apart by waging a punishment campaign that's aimed mainly at civilians and not aimed at military targets because there are just no more military targets of any consequence to hit.
So the president has advertised his intention to direct the American military to commit war crimes.
That's quite remarkable what he said this morning in a Truth Social Post.
He said that tonight, if no agreement is reached, the whole civilization will die, never to come back again.
You want to think about those words.
A whole civilization will die.
Let me read what he said.
Chris, if you can blow that up a little bit.
Thank you.
You're quite correct, Professor Mearsheimer.
I'm reading what the President of the United States posted just an hour ago.
This is not his vulgarity from Easter Sunday, this is brand new.
A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.
I don't want that to happen, but it probably will.
However, now that we have complete and total regime change.
Now, this is me.
I don't know what he's talking about.
Now I'm back to reading.
Where different, smarter, and less radicalized minds prevail, maybe something revolutionary, wonderful can happen.
Who knows?
We will find out tonight.
One of the most important moments in the long and complex history of the world.
47 years of extortion, corruption, and death will finally end.
God bless the great people of Iran.
At one point, he says, God bless them.
Another point, he says he's going to annihilate them.
Yeah, he's going to annihilate them.
I mean, if this isn't genocidal intent, I don't know what is.
I mean, it's hard to believe that he is saying these things.
I mean, he's talking about wiping the entire civilization of Iran off the face of the earth.
How can the president of the United States be saying this?
This is unthinkable.
This is the kind of rhetoric you expect from Adolf Hitler, not from President Trump.
It just shows you that something is fundamentally wrong here.
Where is the American Congress?
Where is the concept of checks and balances?
Where is any major figure in the government standing to condemn this rhetoric?
And before you answer that, how about the vulgarity of Easter Sunday?
What does that tell you about the man's thinking?
Well, I think that President Trump is desperate.
The fact is that he entered this war thinking he was going to win a quick and decisive victory.
He did not achieve that.
Goal.
He's in a protracted war now that looks like it's going to have catastrophic consequences for the world economy and for the United States and for his presidency.
He fully understands that.
And he's flailing around trying to figure out what to do.
And the end result is on Sunday, you saw him basically lose his cool and issue these comments that were really disgraceful.
He was using language that he shouldn't be using, especially on Easter Sunday.
And now, today, he issues this truth social post that's just completely over the top, talking about eliminating Iran as a functioning society, destroying it so completely that it can never come back from the dead.
This is truly remarkable.
This is genocidal intent, as I said before.
But, you know, in a way, I guess we shouldn't be surprised because if you look at what's happened in Gaza over time, the Israelis, with the help of the United States, Committed a genocide there.
So if President Trump were to try and do this in Iran, it would just be another example of the United States and the Israelis, the tag team, going to work to perpetrate a genocide.
So we have gone from the Secretary of Defense, who calls himself the Secretary of War, condemning rules of engagement as stupid, to the President of the United States, for whom the Secretary of Defense works.
Threatening mass indiscriminate murder.
Threatening genocide.
I mean, we should be clear here.
He's threatening genocide.
That's what he's doing.
And again, you want to understand that the Israelis, with the help of the United States, have executed a genocide in Gaza.
You just want to think about the depths that we've sunk to here.
And as you pointed out before, what's really remarkable about this is nobody or hardly anybody seems to be protesting in the U.S. Congress or in the mainstream media.
You would think that people would be outraged.
They'd be going to enormous lengths to try and rein Trump in.
But you hear hardly a peep.
Right.
I'm going to play a clip from Tucker Carlson, which unfortunately includes another clip from Mark Levin.
The key is Levin is urging the president to use nuclear weapons.
And I didn't know this, but Tucker reveals it that the president over the weekend told everybody, watch Mark Levin.
So one wonders if Levin, as reprehensible as he is, is speaking for the president of the United States.
This is a minute and a half long, but it's riveting.
Chris, number seven.
The Battle of Okinawa 50,000 plus casualties, over 12,000, nearly 13,000 killed.
On that island, which is what convinced Truman that we would lose a million men if we didn't drop the atomic bombs that we did.
So this is a war or a peace mission to stop nuclear weapons that can blow away millions of Americans.
Embedded in there is something you need to know.
It's an argument that is being test driven.
And since no one to our knowledge has pushed back against it, maybe in full operation now, it's an argument for nuclear.
Weapons.
Here's what he said.
Nearly 10% of all casualties in the Second World War happened at the Battle of the Bulge, which of course at the end of the war, the Battle of Okinawa, 50,000 casualties, nearly 13,000 killed on that island, which is what convinced Truman, Harry Truman, the then president in 1945, we'd lose a million men if we didn't drop the atomic bombs that we did.
Did you hear that?
That's Mark Levin's counsel to our sitting president, Donald Trump, right now.
You are looking at a choice between the catastrophic loss of your troops In a ground war or the use of nuclear weapons, which in a sense, if you think about it, just think about it for a second is actually an act of peace.
It's an act of peace.
The most humane thing you could do is to end this now with nuclear weapons.
That's the case Mark Levin is making to the president who just last week recommended that all Americans watch Mark Levin's show.
Okay.
This is not like crazy dot connecting here.
This is one to one.
This is really obvious where we're moving.
And again, we're moving toward the use of weapons of indiscriminate mass destruction, possibly nuclear weapons.
What are your thoughts?
Well, I don't think we're going to use nuclear weapons.
Climbing the Escalation Ladder00:11:41
I think they'll use conventional weapons to try and destroy Iran as a functioning society.
I mean, what's happening here is just we're just slowly but steadily marching up the escalation ladder.
You know, Trump is talking about going after infrastructure, energy infrastructure, bridges, and so forth and so on after tonight if the Iranians don't.
But if you look carefully at what the Israelis and the Americans are already doing, we're going after infrastructure already.
We're going after bridges already.
We've already destroyed the largest bridge in Iran.
We're going after universities.
We're going after hospitals.
So we're marching up the escalation ladder.
And presumably what's going to happen tonight if the Iranians don't throw up their hand and surrender is we're going to march further up the escalation ladder and presumably at a faster pace.
And this is not going to succeed.
You want to understand that we can punish the Iranian population all we want, but they're not going to throw up their hands and quit.
And what that's going to cause President Trump to do and the Israelis to do is continue to march up the escalation ladder.
And it may be at some point as we go up that ladder that we think about using nuclear weapons.
In a way, it's almost impossible to imagine that happening.
Here we're talking about an adversary.
It did not attack us.
We attacked Iran.
It didn't present any meaningful threat to the United States.
And the comparisons with Okinawa are laughable.
13 Americans have died.
It's regrettable that 13 Americans have died.
But to compare this to Okinawa is absurd.
But nevertheless, we are in a situation now where President Trump is desperate.
His presidency is on the line.
I would argue his presidency is ruined regardless.
But he thinks that he can rescue the situation by going up the escalation ladder.
I don't think that's possible.
But it is possible.
I think it's highly unlikely.
But it's possible as you get up that ladder that he thinks about using nuclear weapons.
And certainly it's more likely that the Israelis will think about using nuclear weapons.
Because for them, they've thoroughly convinced themselves that Iran is an existential threat.
And if they can't defeat Iran with conventional weapons.
I would not put it past them to use nuclear weapons.
Which side is winning the war for our hearts and minds?
Oh, I think it's unequivocally clear that the Iranians are.
I think most people around the world think that the United States is in the hands of a madman, that Trump has just lost it, and that rhetoric like this just reinforces the opinion of so many that the United States is not to be trusted and that the United States is actually very dangerous.
The problem with the United States is it's incredibly powerful and it can do all sorts of foolish things and it does not suffer that much simply because it is so powerful.
And this is an example of that.
But the fact is, as I said, I think that Trump has basically destroyed his presidency.
No matter where he takes this one, he loses.
You know, the Geneva Conventions, of course, were based upon centuries of standards of behavior.
They were largely written by American and Swiss legal experts, they were promoted heavily by Harry Truman, so that nobody would do again what he did at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
They were signed by Truman.
They were ratified by the United States Senate.
Every civilized country in the world, even the Israelis, though they did so holding their noses and with some purported hesitation, signed it.
What good is it?
If Donald Trump does whatever he wants, what good is it?
If he's mentally deranged and still has his hands on the levers of power?
Well, as we all know, there's no higher authority that can enforce international law.
And when a super powerful country like the United States decides that it's going to go out and wage a genocidal campaign against Iran, or a country like Israel is going to wage a genocidal campaign in Gaza, and the United States is going to protect it.
There's just not much international law can do to stop it because, again, there's just no higher authority.
So, what's happening here is that the Israelis and the Americans in tandem are basically destroying this structure of laws that were designed to prevent genocide and mass murder in wartime after World War II.
I think it's fair to say that it's in tatters.
And if President Trump really does go on the offensive tonight, and sets the American military in train to destroy Iran as a functioning society and make it so that it can never come back from the dead.
I mean, it means clearly that these international laws meant nothing to him, meant nothing to the United States.
After all, he is our president.
He represents us.
What he's doing is being done in our name.
And it appears that nobody's willing to stand up to him.
And therefore, he is free to go on a rampage tonight.
And as I say, you want to remember that if he goes further up the escalation ladder, he's not going to succeed.
And the temptation will be to go even further up the escalation ladder.
And where this ends, nobody knows.
Here is Vice President Vance just a few moments ago basically saying the president will use whatever tools are available to him.
Chris?
Not going to happen if the Iranians are engaged in acts of economic terrorism.
So they've got to know we've got tools in our toolkit that we so far haven't decided to use.
The President of the United States can decide to use them, and he will decide to use them if the Iranians don't change their course of conduct.
What do you think he's talking about?
Well, if you're talking about tools as opposed to military strategies, right?
If you're talking about tools, the only tool that really comes to mind is nuclear weapons.
I mean, he's used all the other tools.
We've used all our conventional forces.
There are no conventional forces that haven't been used so far, either in the last war in June of 2025 or in this war, the one that started on February 28th.
It could be that what the administration is trying to do here is to subtly hint at using nuclear weapons for the purpose of coercing the Iranians, getting them to quit.
It seems quite clear that the threat of going up the escalation ladder with conventional forces has not caused Iran to throw up its hands and surrender.
So it may be, given the level of desperation inside the administration, that they now are turning to the subtle threat of nuclear weapons.
And maybe that's why President Trump said that people should watch what Mark Levine had to say.
But I don't know for sure.
What do the American people do if the president is crazy?
Well, we have the 25th Amendment, and it's up to people inside the administration at its highest levels to try to remove him from power if they think that's necessary.
But I don't see any evidence that people at the highest levels of the administration think that he's crazy.
And therefore, I think he's going to remain in the driver's seat.
The linchpin for the exercise of the 25th Amendment is the vice president.
We just saw him.
So even if the entire cabinet thinks the president's crazy, the 25th Amendment doesn't come into play without the acquiescence of the vice president.
I don't see it happening.
It didn't happen with Kamala Harris and Joe Biden.
It's not going to happen with JD Vance and Donald Trump.
Certainly not at this point, that's for sure.
What do troops do if they're ordered to engage in what is unambiguously, unambiguously a war crime and a violation of the Uniform Code of Military Justice?
That would be attacking a power plant that feeds hospitals, schools, and civilian homes.
Again, we want to emphasize here we're not just talking about attacking a few power plants or a few bridges, we're talking about bombing.
Iran back into the Stone Age.
This is, you know, taking a whole civilization and destroying it.
This is a strategy of destruction.
And the question you have to ask yourself is whether or not the military commanders will go along with that.
And that is an open question.
It all remains to be seen how this plays out.
It remains to be seen what he'll say tonight if Iran doesn't throw up its hands.
And then it remains to be seen what the actual campaign will look like.
It could be that he pulls back and it's a more limited campaign.
That he actually doesn't go out and try to eliminate Iran from the face of the earth.
But if that is his goal, if he makes it clear when he decides to attack, and here we're assuming he decides to attack, but if he decides to attack and he says, what we're going to do is eliminate Iran from the face of the earth, and he begins to prepare the military forces to do that, it'll be very interesting to see what his commanders decide to do in response.
And it is possible, it's hard to say for sure, but it is possible that there would be a revolt of the generals.
Wow.
Professor Mearsheimer, thank you very much.
Gloomy, dark, horrific subject matters, but ones that obviously bear analysis.
And your analysis is deeply and profoundly appreciated.
Thank you, my dear friend.
You're welcome.
It's just horrible where we are.
I'll just say that.
Yes, it is horrible where we are.
We may need to reach out to you.
Before your regular time with us next Tuesday, depending upon what happens in the next two or three days, I'll be available.
Okay.
Thank you, Professor.
All the best to you.
Likewise.
Coming up, if you're watching us live in 33 minutes on all of this, Colonel Bill Astori, Air Force veteran.
Acknowledging a Horrific Reality00:00:14
And then at two o'clock this afternoon, Matt Ho, Marine Corps veteran.
And then at three o'clock this afternoon, Colonel Karen.