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April 8, 2026 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
33:41
[ SPECIAL REPORT ] Larry Johnson : Iran Took Trump to the Cleaners!
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Time Text
Illegitimate Force by Government 00:08:32
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.
Welcome to this special edition.
Larry Johnson joins us for the second time this week.
Today is, of course, Wednesday, April 8th, 2026.
Larry, who sought, who begged for a cessation of violence in the Iran war?
Was it Israel?
Was it the U.S.?
Was it Iran?
Donald Trump.
It was Donald Trump.
The United States, they started.
You know, the second week of the war, so about mid March, uh, sending intermediaries to the Irans, hey, hey, let's get together and talk.
How can we settle this?
And Iran says, We don't have anything to talk to you about.
Period.
Uh, I think what changed, what made yesterday possible, is the Chinese intervened or the Chinese spoke to the Iranians and said, Okay, let's, you know, basically let's give these guys, these knuckleheads, another chance, but it's going to be on your terms.
And that, and Iran was very clear.
You know, these are these 10 items, these are our terms, you know, which include we're going to continue to control the Strait of Hormuz.
We're not giving that up.
And the United States, at least to the Pakistanis and to the Chinese, said, okay.
Now, what Trump and company have been saying in public, it's like they live in an alternate universe.
I just couldn't believe the nonsense that was coming out of Hegsef and Kane's mouth this morning at their 8 a.m. press conference.
It was just, it was one lie after another.
But, you know, We've grown accustomed to that.
Our friend and colleague Scott Ritter believes that the two biggest liars in this camp, those who betrayed Trump by selling him a bill of goods, were Benjamin Netanyahu and Pete Hegseth.
And that to the extent that Trump can feel betrayal, he feels betrayed by them.
They both told him this would be over in 24 to 48 hours.
So here we are six weeks later regime change?
No.
Uranium, enriched uranium seized?
No.
Ballistic missiles neutralized?
No.
Control of the Strait of Hormuz?
Let's see.
Nobody controlled it before the war, and now the Iranians have it.
What did Trump accomplish, Larry?
Awaking Iran from its slumber or bringing it out of the wilderness.
You know, Iran, over the last 46 years, I suppose, Iran could have at some point tried to shut down the Strait of Hormuz, but that would have been seen as an act of unilateral aggression.
That would have seemed seen as something completely unjustified.
But when the United States and Israel launched that surprise, murderous attack on Iran on February 28th, All of a sudden, now Iran was justified in defending itself, and they went for the economic juggler of the world, which we really didn't realize how important the Strait of Hormuz is.
Now, there are the, you know, Trump is involved with massive market manipulation or people behind Trump.
And so when he, you know, when he starts talking, oh, you know, this is, we've got a ceasefire, this is going forward.
You saw the Dowden.
$1,400 up and 10, 20% drop in the price of oil futures.
Well, that's not going to last because this ceasefire is not going to last because the Iranians are not going to back out.
They are not defeated.
They have won.
It's just the United States doesn't want to concede that it has lost.
And so they continue to say, oh, wow, we've destroyed all their Air Force.
We've destroyed all their Navy.
They're not going to be, they won't be rebuilding for centuries.
I was such Abject stupidity coming out of the White House.
And it's compounded by just the crazy tweets or the true social messages that Trump continues to post that are, I mean, they're like the ravings of a lunatic.
You know, two other people who talked Trump into this disastrous war one is his former business partner and the other is his son in law.
I mean, why would the Iranians even allow those two to be at?
Talking about Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, to be anywhere in the process of negotiation after the deception that they pulled back in June of 25 and in February of this year.
Yeah, well, it's not clear that the Iranians have agreed to meet with them.
They've agreed to meet in Islamabad starting this, I guess, Friday, April 10.
Now, what we also don't know, my advice to the Iranians would be to tell the United States if we're going to meet, we're going to meet face to face.
And, you know, the lead, you know, we'll meet with JD Vance, but nobody else.
If they go back to this format where they are in separate rooms and they talk to the Pakistanis and then the Pakistanis walk next door and talk to the Americans and then the Pakistanis walk back and talk to the Iranians, no, that's ridiculous.
You know, that's not even worthy of anyone's time for a genuine negotiation.
But Iran, those 10 points that Iran laid out, those were not items that would be negotiable.
In other words, they're not saying, okay, well, we're going to keep control of the Strait of Hormuz, but we'll negotiate about it instead of we'll release our control.
No, no, they're not giving up control.
That's this, you know, the days that it's like there was a time when the nightclub never had a doorman and you didn't have to pay a cover charge to get in.
There's now a doorman and a cover charge.
You want to get into the Persian Gulf, pay the cover charge.
You want to come out, pay the cover charge.
Otherwise, don't go.
And I just saw a news flash that Iran now has completely closed the strait as we speak because of Israel's continuing attacks on Lebanon.
Well, precisely.
Larry, I have the statement from the Iranian Parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy Committee.
In response to the brutal Zionist aggression against Lebanon, Maritime traffic in the Strait of Hormuz is halted immediately.
And a strong and decisive blow must be dealt to prevent this rogue entity and cancerous tumor, they're talking about Israel, from destabilizing the region.
The Lebanese people have made sacrifices for us, and we must not abandon them.
Now, listen to this the concluding line either a ceasefire on all fronts or no ceasefire at all.
That would include the Israeli efforts to steal and seize and acquire southern Lebanon.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Just, you know, I feel like we're in a deja vu situation, or as Yogi Berra said, it's deja vu all over again.
You remember back when there were the discussions about negotiations between Russia, the United States, and Ukraine?
West Keeps Pressuring Trump 00:02:48
And you and I would keep saying, well, the Russians made their.
Position very clear.
They haven't deviated from that.
And yet the West would keep coming up.
Oh, they're going to make this, they're going to declare a ceasefire here, or they're going to withdraw from there.
No, read the damn documents.
Read what they say.
They mean what they say.
They're not like Donald Trump and his group of clowns that make stuff up.
They actually, when they write it down, they actually mean what they say.
How miserable do you think Netanyahu and Smotrich and Ben Gavir and His heart rate and their heart rate colleagues were when they woke up this morning.
Oh, man.
Well, I think they were terrified last night.
You know, when this happened, they realized they had been cut out and Trump was potentially distancing himself from them.
So, you know, they absolutely saw this as holy smokes.
How could he do this?
Now, that said, the counterattack is just beginning that the Zionist lobby is just going to.
You know, be going, they're in a frenzy of putting pressure on Trump.
And Trump is really in a he's caught between the proverbial dog and the fire plug.
You know, there's no place for him to hide, he's catching it from both sides.
You saw Tucker Carlson just did a remarkable, amazing takedown of Trump's attack on Christianity and his violation of fundamental Christian tenets and talking about destroying Iran.
And in response to that, Trump viciously, viciously attacked Tucker as being low IQ and stupid.
Yeah, come on.
Trump, look in the mirror, man.
You're talking about yourself.
But when you got people like Tucker Carlson now, who had been ardent campaigners for Trump, coming out like this, Trump's losing it.
And the support among the Zionists, while it's financially lucrative, is politically toxic.
Yeah, I asked Chris to see if he could find Mark Levin or Lindsey Graham this morning.
They're nowhere to be found.
Yeah, well, Levin went on air yesterday, shortly after this news came out.
He was in shock.
Normally, he's screaming and yelling and got this obnoxious voice.
He was really subdued.
And he looked like he'd just been hit upside the head with a two by four and sort of stunned.
Now, they get a good night's sleep, and then they're going to get up and start attacking in earnest against Trump.
Fake Ceasefire Plans Exposed 00:10:37
Here's Iran saying, hey, we agreed to a total ceasefire.
If you're saying you're going to allow the Zionists to continue to kill the people of Lebanon, sorry, then we're not signing up for that and stand by for more incoming.
The Houthis have already said they're going to continue to fire missiles into Israel as long as they're attacking Lebanon.
So, yeah, this market manipulation play where, oh, we got pieces at hand.
So the stock market goes up, oil prices fall.
Again, there are people behind the scenes that are manipulating, that are making money off of this because they have an idea of what's coming.
They know that it's not a real, genuine ceasefire.
Wow.
Well, how long will it be before, in your view, before hostilities resume?
The Iranians have already said they will not tolerate continued hostilities in South Lebanon.
I assume they also mean in Gaza.
I would say, let's see, what time is it, 11 30?
Yeah, two hours.
Look, within 12 hours, we could see the missile barrages start again.
I do know that we are looking at the flow of U.S. military air traffic to the region.
It hasn't stopped.
So you got still what I'd call operational buildup.
So, again, I think this is just another ploy on the part of the Trump administration trying to buy some temporary time.
Trying to get a halt to the rise in the price of oil and gas in the United States.
And it's going to be a temporary relief, but that's all.
It's just temporary.
I think what we're going to see is the war will continue and the economic stranglehold that Iran has on the world will continue.
And they're going to use it to their advantage to force other countries to come around to isolate Israel, to finally put pressure on Israel that Israel is going to be forced to stop.
These murderous attacks on its neighbors.
Have the Iranians effectively chased the United States military from its permanent basis in the Middle East?
From at least, I think there were like 13, and I think 10 of them are now abandoned.
So there's still, I believe there's still a U.S. significant presence at Al Udeed Air Force Base in Qatar.
And that's attributable in large measure because the Qataris have been fairly conciliatory with Iran.
So, Qatar and Oman, those two are seen as willing to maintain steady relationships with Iran.
Emirates, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Saudis, and Bahrain.
The base at Bahrain, it's gone.
Emirate, I don't think there are any active bases remaining in the Emirates either.
They've been attacked.
The United States still has some presence, I believe, at Prince Saud.
Just outside of Riyadh, but they have been shifting more to a farther base.
What was it?
King, I forget the name of him.
It's farther west in Saudi Arabia.
And then they're still at Mawafik Salti in Jordan.
So, you know, this thing could kick off again.
I do believe, you know, I'm told that the U.S., senior U.S. military leaders, they've been telling their people, Prepare for a long war.
And they're talking two years.
I'm talking to fiscal year 2028.
You've seen the 10 points.
I've been on air almost continuously since 7 30 this morning, so I haven't seen them.
But there must be relief from sanctions and secondary sanctions in there.
That is absolutely key to the revitalization of Iran, which, again, President Trump, Puts them in much better shape than before the war, just like they're now control over Hormuz.
Does am I right, Larry?
Yeah, no, you're absolutely right.
Um, they've, um, you know, the first one was uh, that the withdrawal of U.S. military, the uh, lifting of sanctions immediately, they're going to retain control of uh, of the Strait of Hormuz.
And control means imposing a toll and collecting it.
It's still 2 million yuan or the equivalent in rials, Chinese money, Iranian money per tanker.
Am I right?
Correct.
Yeah, the estimate is that Iran will earn like $96 billion a year from those fees.
So, um, it's is there anything else in those 10 points that uh Trump doesn't want to talk about and the American people should know about?
Well, what's interesting is uh, the at least the version I saw said nothing about the enrichment of uranium and said nothing about uh ballistic missiles, that was all off.
So, though that was not even an item for discussion, according from the standpoint of Iran.
So, the Iranians are content that they genuinely believe that they have largely destroyed the U.S. military infrastructure in the region.
That's true.
We used to have the fifth fleet there in Bahrain.
It's not going to be there anymore.
Now, the U.S. may try to negotiate with Oman to establish a base on the Arabian Sea, so outside of the Persian Gulf.
But for right now, the United States doesn't have an effective naval base in the region.
The Some of the army bases that were there that had been used as assembly points, particularly up in Kuwait, used as assembly points when we invaded Iraq back in 2003.
Those are shut down.
So I think the U.S. military planners are looking, they're going to have to draw back to try to go to Jordan, maybe some spots in Israel and at Inzerlik in Turkey.
Chris, can you put up again?
Now, here's what the president said just a few hours ago.
I'm not going to read the whole thing, but I'll read the part that's highlighted.
Because the Iranians disagree with this.
There will be no enrichment of uranium, and the United States will, working with Iran, dig up and remove all the deeply buried B 2 bombers' nuclear dust.
I'm going to ask you in a minute what that is, Larry.
It is now and has been under very exacting satellite surveillance, Space Force.
What is he talking about?
No idea.
You mean nobody proofreads these things before he posts them?
Yeah, it's like that cartoon that came out with Donald Trump laying on a couch, psychiatrist sitting there and saying, Now, Mr. President, these two Iranians you've been talking to, are they here in the room with us now?
Yeah, you know, he's making stuff up.
There's no commitment by Iran on any of that whatsoever.
Wear your military hat for me.
How poorly planned from a military perspective was this?
Isn't it a basic principle of warfare that you don't start a war unless you have clear, militarily achievable objectives?
Well, true, but now we've got 25 years of history showing we do the exact opposite.
When we went into Afghanistan in 2001 in the immediate aftermath of the attacks on 9 11, the sort of immediate objective was to capture bin Laden.
But the next thing you know, we're involved and embroiled in some sort of regime change for 20 years and failed.
Same thing with Iraq when we invaded Iraq in 2003.
It was, okay, we're going to get rid of Saddam.
Then what?
Oh, it will, and believe me, this happened.
It'll take care of itself.
Don't worry.
I know from a friend who was involved in 2006 when there were plans drawn up then to invade Iran and to overthrow the regime, the Islamic Republic in 2006.
And my friend, again, he asked, okay, So we take him out, then what?
And the answer was, no, don't worry about it.
It'll work itself out.
That's what happened here.
They were convinced that all we got to do is we kill the top level guys, and then the people will rise up and we'll have a genuine democratic republic, and we'll put the Shaw in.
Wow.
And that, I mean, it really is the lack of planning in that regard is what's there's no strategic planning.
The military does a good job at some of the tactical planning, you know, and we saw that with the rescue effort of that one pilot.
But, you know, sit down and calculate the cost of that.
We lost $480 million worth of planes in trying to recover that one man.
And I'm not saying he wasn't worth it, but that is the largest loss of aircraft in a single day or in a, let's call it a 36 hour period since the Vietnam War.
Okay.
So this notion that, boy, we're kicking ass and taking names and those Iranians are on the run is just delusional.
Cost of Tactical Planning 00:11:41
Completely delusional gaslighting.
How much longer before Heg Seth, now I could ask this in two ways, is gone, is indicted.
Indicted for attempted insider trading, these trades he's been trying to make as broker, but stopped him from making one of them, is gone because he sold Trump a bill of goods that Trump now knows he shouldn't have bought.
Well, um, They may blame Hagseth.
I still don't think this entire operation was not ginned up by Hagseth at all.
He was following orders and he was trusting Trump.
And boy, we've learned much to our chagrin.
You don't trust Donald Trump.
He is not a man of integrity, he is the consummate narcissist that will serve only himself.
He never accepts any responsibility for any failure, he always looks to blame someone else.
And so, in this case, then I think the likely events that are going to unfold is probably by the end of the week, we'll be back at a full blown United States bombing targets in Iran and Iran continuing to destroy what's left of U.S. military infrastructure in the Persian Gulf.
Particularly, if the United States starts attacking the power centers in Iran, then they're going to turn the lights off in Saudi Arabia.
And Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates in particular.
And here's the same old song from the vice president earlier today in Budapest.
He's in Budapest campaigning for the reelection of Viktor Orban.
Whatever you think of Orban, I don't know how an American vice president that only speaks English can campaign for somebody in Eastern Europe, but that's what's going on.
According to the New York Times, He steadfastly opposed the war, but said to the president, I'm your vice president.
If you do it, I'll back you.
Chris, number 18.
The final point that I'll say about this is the president of the United States has told me, and he's told the entire negotiating team, the secretary of state, the special envoy, Steve Witkoff, he said, go and work in good faith to come to an agreement.
That is what he has told us to do.
If the Iranians are willing in good faith to work with us, I think we can make an agreement.
If they're going to lie, if they're going to cheat, if they're going to try to prevent, even the fragile truce that we've set up from taking place, then they're not going to be happy.
Because what the president has also shown is that we still have clear military, diplomatic, and maybe most importantly, we have extraordinary economic leverage.
So the president has told us not to use those tools.
He's told us to come to the negotiating table.
But if the Iranians don't do the exact same thing, they're going to find out that the president of the United States is not one to mess around.
He's impatient.
He's impatient to make progress.
He has told us to negotiate in good faith, and I think if they negotiate in good faith, we will be able to find a deal.
But that's a big if, and ultimately, it's up to the Iranians how they negotiate.
I hope they make the right decision.
How to interpret that.
Yeah, hearing him talk about good faith when the Iranians were the ones ready to sit at the negotiating table on March 2nd and the United States launched a surprise attack that killed not only upper leadership, but killed 175 young girls at a school, targeted a school, murdering these young ladies.
You know, shame on JD Vance.
I have lost all respect for the man.
Yeah, he's not possessed of the same bizarre personality disorders that afflict Donald Trump.
But he's also not a man with much backbone.
And he certainly is not a man with some core ethical principles that he stands up for.
You know, unless he's running for president in 2028 as the sitting incumbent president, I don't see the Republicans even nominating him.
I think his political career is over.
Yeah.
And this, you know, that gets us into a whole different level of the.
Kind of dynamics work in Washington.
But the notion that the United States has enormous economic leverage over Iran that we haven't used, are you kidding me?
Seriously, the economic leverage is held right there at the Strait of Hormuz and it's controlled by Iran, not by us.
And so, again, what we've seen is this entire misadventure that the United States launched by choice has exposed the weakness of the American military.
We can't let our ships get too close to shore because they get attacked.
Just, you know, the landing ship, it looks like a little helicopter.
I think it's called a LHA, a landing helicopter, assault ship, or amphibious ship.
It got close to the Iranian shore.
It got attacked by missiles.
They're ordered back off, back off.
So we can't get our ships in close.
We've limited what we can do with air power and.
The Iranians, I believe, with the assistance of Russia and China, are increasing their ability to shoot our planes down.
And so the number of aircraft getting shot down is increasing, it's not decreasing.
And so we've lost probably over close to $2 billion worth of aircraft in just the last six weeks.
So it's exposed to the limitations of what the United States can do.
At the risk of interfering with your appetite for lunch, here's JD Vance again, this time on Russia and Ukraine in the same interview.
Chris, number 16.
We've been disappointed by a lot of the political leadership in Europe because they don't seem particularly interested in solving this particular conflict.
And what the president has said is it's the hardest war to solve.
In some ways, we thought it would be the easiest, but it has been the hardest.
We've been at it for now 14 months, and we're just going to keep on working at it.
Fundamentally, the war has stopped making sense.
What I would say to both the Russians and the Ukrainians is, you know, we're talking about haggling at this point over a few square kilometers of territory in one direction or another.
Is that worth losing hundreds of thousands of additional Russian and Ukrainian young men?
Is that worth an additional months or even years of higher energy prices and economic devastation?
We think the answer is clearly no, but it takes, you know, two to tango.
So while Viktor and President Trump are going to continue to work towards a peaceful settlement, Fundamentally, we can only open the door that Russians and the Ukrainians have to walk through it.
The buffoonery.
Yeah.
You know, Russia is in the process of building up for, I call it its final offensive.
Ukraine is in retreat all along the front and this thousand mile front, I might add.
The United States refuses to accept responsibility for its own role in prolonging this conflict.
You know, pull the money, pull the CIA, stop sharing intelligence right now, do it today.
There are so many things the United States could do if they were serious about negotiation and getting a diplomatic process underway that many things that Trump could do that he's refused to do.
So, you know, for starters, like say, hey, that all that property that was illegally seized in the United States by Barack Obama back in December of 2016, we're returning that immediately.
That is yours.
You know, that's we're going on 10 years almost.
Reopening direct flights between the US and Moscow, show that unfreeze the assets, show that.
But the United States has done none of that.
And so Russia can only conclude that the United States is not serious about a negotiated settlement.
And they're going to win this militarily.
And it will further fragment.
NATO is not going to survive this.
That's going to be one of the ultimate casualties.
Oh, but according to General Petraeus, Ukraine is outsmarting Russia.
Watch this, number six, Chris.
Over the last two months, the Ukrainians have actually made greater incremental gains than have the Russians.
And that's really quite remarkable.
And it's a tribute to just not the sheer tenacity and determination and expertise of the soldiers on the front lines, although it is very much that.
It's really a tribute to the extraordinary innovation that has characterized what's going on in Ukraine over the last. two or three years in particular, when they've realized that they cannot, again, outnumber or outgun the Russians.
So what they've done is outsmart them.
Surge workout, General.
Yeah.
Having David Petraeus use words like smart is sort of a form of comedy, the irony that's implicit in it, because, you know, he was so smart, he was banging one of his biographers at the CIA headquarters and allowing her to walk off with classified information.
That's, listen, with that kind of intelligence, holy smokes, you know, it lights up the world.
Look, look, this again, this is part of the problem that people like Petraeus, by virtue of education and experience, should know better and be able to set back and provide an objective, a genuinely objective assessment of saying, okay, how much territory has Ukraine actually taken back?
And the answer to that is none.
And taken back and controlled, none.
How much territory have the Russians taken?
You know, they're advancing hundreds of kilometers a week right now across the front.
Not inches, not a few meters, hundreds of kilometers, square kilometers across the front.
So it's just, you know, once a society divorces itself from reality and just not only indulges in lies, but rewards liars and puts the liars at the forefront, you know, our country's lost at that point.
Larry, thank you very much.
You're doing triple duty this week.
Much appreciated.
I know you're much in demand today, and anybody that's been watching knows why.
We'll look forward to seeing you Friday on the Intelligence Community Roundtable.
All the best, my dear friend.
Thank you.
I appreciate the opportunity, Judge.
See you Friday.
Of course.
A dear friend and a great man, an expert on so many of these things.
Still to come at one o'clock today, Pepe Escobar.
At two o'clock this afternoon, Professor Glenn Deason.
At three o'clock this afternoon, the great Phil Giraldi.
Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom.
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