April 20, 2026 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
21:33
Ray McGovern : Why Negotiate With Netanyahu's Agents?
Ray McGovern and Judge Andrew Napolitano dissect the stalled U.S.-Iran negotiations, arguing American subservience to Israel prevents diplomatic progress on seized cargo and regional stability. They condemn Israeli war crimes, including the killing of 163 Iranian girls and crucifix desecration, while criticizing officials like Mike Waltz for legitimizing terrorism. Addressing President Trump's potential "Samson option," they conclude that moral responsibility demands opposing this war, urging Americans to reject guilt-driven compliance with aggressive policies. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Gold Silver And Global Uncertainty00:02:32
Undeclared wars are commonplace.
Tragically, our government engages in preemptive war, otherwise known as aggression, with no complaints from the American people.
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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 Monday, April 20th, 2026.
Ray McGovern will be with us in just a moment on why would the Iranians negotiate with Benjamin Netanyahu's agents?
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Right, McGovern, good day to you, my friend.
Welcome here, as always.
Empire Script And Crucifix Irony00:09:02
I said to Larry, it seemed like just a few minutes ago we were saying goodbye on Friday afternoon.
That was fun on Friday.
Yes, it was, my dear man.
Why would Iran negotiate with the U.S. after it seized a cargo ship in an act of piracy on the high seas?
Well, Iran makes a point of always saying it's open to talks, just like the Russians do.
But whether to think that it would be inflexibility in the U.S. approach after these last acts is debatable.
So I'm not even sure if they're coming to the talks in Islamabad.
That was still up in the air last time I checked.
But, you know, with Witkoff, I almost said Sally Cow.
Now, let me just explain why I had that brain thing.
Sally Cow was like.
A member of the president's foreign intelligence advisory board during and before Iraq.
Okay.
And what made me think of his name was what he said.
What he said, even before the attack on Iraq, was the real threat is the threat that we perceive against Israel.
And this, mind this now quote, this is the real threat that we dare not speak its name.
Because the Europeans don't care deeply about that threat, I will tell you frankly, and the American government doesn't want to lean too hard on it rhetorically because it is not a popular sell.
Oh, okay.
So that was before the attack on Iraq.
And he's on the same board that Scowcroft, the former national security advisor under the first Bush and Reagan, okay?
What did Skokov say?
He said that Sharon, who was then the Netanyahu prime minister, had Bush, the younger Bush, wrapped around his little finger, he got mesmerized.
If further proof were needed, we have the guy who ran the Al Qaeda branch for CIA, Mike Scheuer.
He says, The Israelis have succeeded in lacing tight.
The ropes binding the American Gulliver to Israel and to its policies.
So, what do I mention all this?
I mean, hello, it's deja vu all over again.
That's what got us into Iraq.
Now, it's got us into a war with a much more formidable adversary, but it's the same script.
And, you know, you don't have to believe me, and you don't have to believe the Iranians.
But the Iranians did say something really interesting over the weekend, and that is the top negotiator, the head of the parliament.
And what did he say?
His last sentence in this wonderful paragraph.
He says, the U.S. government claims that America first is the important thing, but in practice, it has shown that Israel is first for it because it makes decisions based on false information from the Israeli authorities.
False information?
Just read the lead New York Times article on April 8th, and you have the whole scheme of false information.
Why it will happen and exactly how it will happen.
So, you have Rubio saying the same thing, you have Joe Kent saying the same thing.
It's just a repeat of what always happens.
And the problem is that the Americans, most of them just say, oh, I don't understand this because there's no plan, there's no strategy.
Yeah, there's no strategy.
It's done for Israel.
It's Israel's stupid, as we would say, as elections approach.
Right now, the vice president and his two Zionist minders, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, are there in Islamabad.
Iranian delegation is not.
And according to our friend and our mutual friend and our colleague, Mohammed Mirandi, Professor Mirandi, there is no current plan to attend.
Now, I don't know if this is because of the continued killing by the Israelis in Lebanon or if it's because of the American Navy disabling and seizing the Iranian cargo ship.
We don't know, and I guess we got to wait.
Well, it is.
It is the latter.
That's what the Iranians have said.
In other words, as soon as we kept the blockade in, the Iranians said, no deal.
We're going to make sure that nobody gets through the strait anymore.
The killing of people in Lebanon is certainly important.
And I would again cite that there's something sort of idealistic about the Iranians here.
The rich Arabs don't give a Rats patootie about the Palestinians or the people in occupied Lebanon, but the Iranians, not even Arabs, they do.
So, this arc or this axis of resistance is real and it's legitimate because it's resistance to occupation and that's condoned by international law to include the use of violence.
I don't like violence, but hey, legal what they're doing.
To say nothing of this, I don't know if you've seen this, the IDF.
Who desecrated a crucifix and had his buddies film him doing it?
The IDF has, in fairness to it, condemned this and said they'll investigate it.
Chris, can you post it?
But what kind of a mentality or culture would even think of doing something like this?
Chris will get it up in just a minute.
Well, it's a decapitation of an image of Jesus on the cross where the cross is upside down.
There you have it.
Using a sledgehammer to desecrate this life size crucifix and having your friends film you while you do it.
We're showing you stills, Ray, because the video is a little too much to watch, but it's actually a video Chris extracted.
The stills from the video.
Yeah, well, let me comment on that, Judge.
As disturbing as that is, what bothers me far more are the deliberate killing of 163 young Iranian girls.
Of course, of course.
This just happened yesterday, and I'm sure it's animating the Iranians as well as all rational people who have a heart.
Well, yeah, let me just put a codicil to that.
I'm old enough, so I remember when we Christians accused the Jews of killing Jesus.
As a matter of fact, Robert Shear, a neighbor in the Bronx with whom I do a program now, he says, Why did you guys come into my neighborhood and say, Why did you kill our Savior Jesus?
Now, when I was real little, the Catholic Church rejected that theory, saying it wasn't the Jews.
It was the Romans and it was the empire.
Okay?
That's a big difference.
It was the empire and their satraps, like Julius Caesar, the people that they put in, they were afraid that Jesus was going to be a king and he got quite a following.
So you zap him, you crucify him.
So the reason I'm saying that is that when Larry was commenting on that, it was a flashback to the old days.
I'm sure Larry didn't mean this and he's far younger to remember the old days.
But we don't want to say the Jews crucified.
Jesus.
It was the empire.
And if Jesus didn't threaten the empire, he could have died very safely in his bed as a Hebrew prophet of great renown.
So it was the empire.
That's why they killed him.
And that's why the U.S. and the Israelis are trying to keep the same empire with their various satraps parceled around.
Trump Guilty Unless Responsible00:09:52
And it's kind of ironic that Netanyahu, who is no satrap, he's kind of ruling the roost and telling Trump, what to do?
You have been saying for weeks that Trump is mentally degraded.
My phrase, not yours, but you've used words to that effect.
How about this?
On Saturday, President Trump said soon the Americans and Iranians together will be excavating the Iran nuclear enriched materials.
This is crazy.
Yeah, I've been saying that he's not well.
That's the understatement of the year.
This is serious.
I mean, if a fellow with narcissistic and meligomania tendencies, I mean, something's got to give here.
And I just hope that the reports out of that meeting in the White House on Saturday night have some validity to them because if Trump did ask to practice with the nuclear codes and he was told no, sir, yes, sir, no, sir, by Marie Jean Cain or the others.
That's a good sign.
I just hope that our military is strong enough and courageous enough to withstand any impulse to do the kind of Samson option or to allow the Israelis to do it because that would change the whole ball game, as you well know.
Right, right.
Is the Strait of Hormuz open or closed, Freddie?
It's closed.
It's closed unless the Iranians say you can come through and pay top dollar.
I mean, now we have that ship that the U.S. shot up and boarded, and that was on its way back from China through the Malacca Strait, and it was on its way back to Iran, and it was still in the Arabian Sea.
Now they got that, but it wasn't anywhere near the Strait of Hormuz.
So Uh, homos is clearly an act of piracy.
Oh, it is, yeah.
And you know, if the Iranians had any idea of sending some people to meet with JD Vance and the two Zionists, well, I'm sure that they said that was it no meeting.
And there was still some circulation this morning, they might come, but I don't think they're coming.
Where should they come?
So we can expect the worst now, unless the military comes to Trump and says, Look, you know.
We can't do more damage except some more girls' schools and some more hospitals and stuff.
They've hit all the decoys.
They hit all the decoys.
There are thousands of decoys.
We got them all.
But we're not going to prevail here unless they do that, unless they resist orders from Trump, if he's really crazy enough to try to land troops on Iranian soil.
We're in for a real war here and we're not going to win it.
Just look at the map for God's sake.
Why do we think we can win these kinds of wars?
Here's a two bit political hack who is masquerading as the U.S. ambassador to the U.N.
No diplomatic experience whatsoever.
And the clip will run for you and manifest that.
By the way, he lives across the street from me.
I've never seen him in the neighborhood, but I know that the United States has a series of apartments in the apartment building across the street from me, very near to the U.N.
I haven't seen him.
Here is Mike Waltz yesterday.
Chris, number four.
I hope we don't have to go back to a military option, but President Trump's made it very clear.
And by the way, bridges, power plants that are run by the IRGC, which runs the entire military, are absolute legitimate military targets, not only now, but have been historically.
That is a false, fake, and ridiculous notion that this is some type of war crime.
Schools run by the IRGC with little girls in them, Mike Waltz.
If you do see him, say hello for me, Judge.
The guy's no diplomat.
I mean, they've had to find a job for him because he screwed up royally as National Security Advisor.
So, you know, this is the kind of people we have placed at the UN and elsewhere.
They're an embarrassment.
And if you look at some of the Security Council proceedings, my God, you have a willing audience for people like the Russian representative who actually ridicules the Europeans and the others and Actually, it's not a hard job to ridicule them because he's got the facts at his command.
The only problem is everyone has a veto, those five nations.
And so the U.S. can exercise that veto.
Usually the U.K. will follow along.
But he is dead wrong to say that it is not a war crime to attack civilian bridges and power plants.
The only reason for doing that would be to inflict misery on a civilian population which largely has no control over its government.
Yeah, actually, that's terrorism.
The only way he's a little bit right is that we did this before.
We did this in the first Gulf War.
We damn bombed the dams.
We hit the electric facilities.
We put Iraq back five, 10 years.
And we did that deliberately, even when we had won.
So, yeah, if that's the kind of precedent you want to cite, okay, yeah, we did it before.
That doesn't make it any less than a war crime.
Yeah.
Are the Israelis still killing innocent civilians in Lebanon?
They are, and of course in Gaza.
Let's not forget Gaza.
You know, it can get depressing.
I was watching our friend, Professor Morandi, yesterday on another show, and he was saying, Look, it is depressing.
It's a very bleak picture.
But look, don't feel guilty.
We don't hold you Americans responsible, we hold your government responsible.
Responsible.
So you are not allowed to feel guilty unless you are not doing the kinds of things that you can do to stop it.
I said, wow, you know, that sounds like Rabbi Heschel during Vietnam when he said, look, we're not all guilty, but we are all responsible.
Indifference to evil is more noxious and more guilty than evil itself.
So as long as all of us are trying to prevent this, and there's a great Wellspring of people who are against waging war against Iran because of Israel, it's becoming clear that Israel no longer is inviolate and no longer can pretend to be very popular in the United States.
That's a sea change and it's late in coming, but it's so well deserved.
After all, we are a country that has enabled genocide, it's forced starvation, and now a country, a nation that has waged a war that.
It fits the term of a war of aggression, the supreme international crime, differing from other war crimes only insofar as it contains the accumulated evil of the whole.
From Nuremberg, as you well know, Judge.
So, what Mirandi is saying, yeah, this is depressing as hell.
I don't know what's going to happen.
I don't know if I'm going to survive tomorrow.
But look, let's realize we still have agency.
And as long as you're doing what you can do, Well, don't feel guilty.
Just do it.
I like that.
Yeah.
Do you agree with Larry that there seem to be a lot of indications that the Americans and the Israelis are going to try this additional wave of bombing as just threatened by Mike Waltz?
I've learned with sad experience, Judge, never to disagree with Larry on things like that.
Yeah, of course he's right.
I mean, of course.
I think that the odds are in favor of more bombing.
They think bombing is the panacea.
You know, Kevin says, General LeMay, for God's sake, you bomb people out of existence.
Well, it doesn't work, okay?
So there'll be renewed bombing.
My God, if there's a landing of some kind, if they try to find those highly enriched uranium things and then try to dig them out, I mean, that's going to be bedlam.
We tried that already.
As your viewers know, didn't work.
We don't even know where they are, in my view.
Right.
Ray McGovern, thank you very much, my dear friend.
Great analysis, as always.
And we'll see you on Friday with our mutual friend, who's never wrong, Larry Johnson.
Have a good week.
You too, Ray.
Thank you.
Coming up, if you're watching us live in 38 minutes at 11 o'clock this morning, Professor Jeffrey Sachs.