Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano - Prof. John Mearsheimer : America Is Losing Israel’s War — Here’s Why
Aired: 2026-04-21
Duration: 30:29


=== Undeclared Wars and Retaliation (14:19) ===

[00:00:03]  Undeclared wars are commonplace.
[00:00:06]  Tragically, our government engages in preemptive war, otherwise known as aggression, with no complaints from the American people.
[00:00:14]  Sadly, we have become accustomed to living with the illegitimate use of force by government.
[00:00:19]  To develop a truly free society, the issue of initiating force must be understood and rejected.
[00:00:28]  What if sometimes, to love your country, you had to alter or abolish the government?
[00:00:33]  What if Jefferson was right?
[00:00:34]  What if that government is best which governs least?
[00:00:39]  What if it is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong?
[00:00:42]  What if it is better to perish fighting for freedom than to live as a slave?
[00:00:48]  What if freedom's greatest hour of danger is now?
[00:01:02]  Hi, everyone.
[00:01:03]  Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
[00:01:07]  Today is Tuesday, April 21st, 2026.
[00:01:11]  Professor John Mearshammer will be with us in just a moment on the U.S. is losing Israel's war.
[00:01:19]  Who knows about that?
[00:01:20]  But first, this.
[00:01:22]  Don't you just cringe when people say, I told you so.
[00:01:25]  Sorry, I told you gold and silver would reap the benefits due to excessive money printing, inflation, and global uncertainty.
[00:01:34]  It's here.
[00:01:35]  It's happened.
[00:01:36]  Gold and silver have reached All time highs.
[00:01:39]  Did you call Lear Capital and buy some?
[00:01:41]  It's not too late.
[00:01:43]  Experts are predicting higher prices ahead.
[00:01:45]  Why?
[00:01:46]  Nothing has changed.
[00:01:48]  Geopolitical chaos, cost of living crises, and a weaker dollar are driving central banks to boost their gold reserves.
[00:01:56]  Forecasts suggest gold could hit $6,000 an ounce and silver $200 an ounce.
[00:02:03]  Even Morgan Stanley ditched the 60 40 rule for 60 20 20.
[00:02:08]  Putting 20% into precious metals.
[00:02:10]  They're getting educated, and you should too.
[00:02:13]  Call the best in the business and the people I trust Lear Capital.
[00:02:17]  Get their reports, get the facts, get some gold and silver.
[00:02:21]  Tell them the judge sent you and get up to $20,000 in bonus gold or silver.
[00:02:26]  Call 800 511 4620 or go to LearJudgeKnapp.com.
[00:02:32]  Professor John Mearshammer, good day to you, my friend, and welcome here.
[00:02:37]  Were the negotiations.
[00:02:41]  Between the Americans and the Iranians in Islamabad last week, a hoax.
[00:02:48]  I don't think it would be fair to call them a hoax.
[00:02:51]  I'm not sure exactly what the Americans were doing.
[00:02:55]  Beforehand, President Trump had indicated that he was going to negotiate on the basis of Iran's 10 point plan.
[00:03:05]  But then, when the negotiations actually took place in Islamabad, what happened was that Vance reverted to the 15 point American plan, which had all the American maximalist demands in it.
[00:03:19]  And unsurprisingly, the Iranians had no interest.
[00:03:23]  And talking about those 15 demands that the Americans were making and ignoring the 10 demands that the Iranians were making.
[00:03:31]  So those negotiations led nowhere.
[00:03:35]  I'm not sure why we did that.
[00:03:38]  I think you can understand why the Iranians came to the table.
[00:03:42]  They wanted to show the world that they were interested in negotiating a settlement to this conflict.
[00:03:49]  But what the Americans were up to is hard to understand, unless you believe.
[00:03:56]  That the Israelis intervened at some point along the line and they forced the Trump administration to move away from the 10 point plan to the 15 point plan.
[00:04:10]  I think that's the most likely explanation for what was taking place then.
[00:04:14]  In other words, it looked like Trump was willing to negotiate on the basis of Iranian demands, but then he switched gears because the lobby and Israel itself put enormous pressure on him.
[00:04:28]  That's possible as well.
[00:04:30]  Right, right.
[00:04:31]  In fact, even the either prime minister or chief of staff of the army, I forget which, of Pakistan, who was serving as the intermediary and the host, had indicated that the 10 point plan was the basis preliminarily agreed to.
[00:04:48]  It included a ceasefire in Lebanon, a total ceasefire in Lebanon, meaning not only against the Lebanese army, but against the Lebanese people and Hezbollah.
[00:05:00]  Probably didn't read it before he accepted it until he heard from his friend in Tel Aviv.
[00:05:07]  Yeah, I think that's right.
[00:05:09]  I mean, I think it's just very important as we watch this whole situation evolve to understand that the Israelis and the lobby have a stranglehold on Trump.
[00:05:21]  And Trump has limited maneuver room, he can't just do what he wants to do.
[00:05:28]  He has to make sure that he checks with Tel Aviv or with Jerusalem.
[00:05:32]  and he gets permission because if it begins to stray, enormous pressure is brought to bear on him.
[00:05:39]  And up to now, he's been brought into line.
[00:05:43]  The second round, which hasn't happened yet, I inadvertently misspoke yesterday when I said the vice president was in an Islamabad hotel.
[00:05:53]  He apparently hasn't left D.C. yet because the Iranians say they don't want to negotiate.
[00:05:58]  But why would they negotiate with the U.S. when it just seized and heavily damaged one of its tankers and when it plans to bring Netanyahu's minders with them again?
[00:06:14]  The same two who concocted the subterfuge of June and February.
[00:06:21]  Well, again, I think the only reason the Iranians would do this is to show good faith, unless something's happening in the back channels that indicates that the Americans are willing to make concessions.
[00:06:33]  My view on this all along has been that the Iranians are in the driver's seat.
[00:06:38]  And furthermore, the longer the war goes on and the more damage that's done to the international economy, the more leverage the Iranians have in these negotiations.
[00:06:47]  If I had been playing their hand, I would not have gone to Islamabad last week.
[00:06:52]  And I certainly wouldn't be going now unless I had assurances from the Americans and from the Pakistanis that the Americans were actually willing to seriously negotiate on the basis of the 10 point plan.
[00:07:06]  But again, I guess that what they're trying to do here is just show good faith.
[00:07:10]  You know, I spoke with Mohammed Mirandi, Professor Mirandi, born in Alexandria, Virginia, USA.
[00:07:21]  But a professor at the University of Tehran, he and his family and children are, his wife are Iranian.
[00:07:29]  Anyway, he was part of the delegation that went to Islamabad.
[00:07:34]  And he told me that they all thought they were going to be killed on the way back.
[00:07:39]  And as a result, the pilot had to divert the last minute with no notice on the airwaves to another airport.
[00:07:50]  Who did they think was going to kill them?
[00:07:53]  Well, either the Israelis or the Americans, probably most likely the Israelis, because decapitation has been the order of the day for years now for the Israelis.
[00:08:04]  They're constantly running around the Middle East, you know, killing leaders.
[00:08:08]  And I think it was prudent on the part of the Iranians to fear for their life.
[00:08:16]  Wow.
[00:08:17]  At that point, they said if there was a second round of negotiation, it would be in Moscow or Beijing, where they would have no fear of.
[00:08:28]  Of attack, but I guess the, again, I don't know who's running the show from Pakistan, prime minister or head of the army prevailed.
[00:08:38]  Who knows?
[00:08:39]  Do you think there'll be another round?
[00:08:41]  Before we leave this topic, do you think there'll be another round of negotiation?
[00:08:45]  I don't think Vance knew what he was talking about.
[00:08:48]  Professor Mirandi said every time they asked him a question that he could answer with a yes or no.
[00:08:52]  What do you think he did?
[00:08:54]  Got on the phone and called either Washington or Tel Aviv.
[00:08:58]  Yeah, well, again, I think what was going on here is that Vance's position during the negotiations, and I think even before the negotiations in Islamabad, hardened or stiffened.
[00:09:11]  And it was in large part because the Israelis and the lobby itself were putting pressure on the United States and on Vance to demand a really tough deal with the Iranians.
[00:09:27]  And of course, the Iranians would not go along, so the whole process broke down.
[00:09:32]  But your question about where we're headed is a very interesting one.
[00:09:36]  I do think, I wouldn't bet a lot of money on it because it's hard to be confident about any judgment you make when Trump is involved.
[00:09:45]  But I would bet that negotiations do take place.
[00:09:49]  I don't think the Americans, despite all the bluster from President Trump, have a vested interest in going up the escalation ladder.
[00:09:58]  I don't think we win as we go up the escalation ladder.
[00:10:02]  In fact, as I just said a few minutes ago, I think it's in Iran's interest to prolong the war.
[00:10:07]  And if we go up the escalation ladder, it will work toward Iran's advantage over the long term.
[00:10:17]  If you think about it, what are we going to do if we go up the escalation ladder?
[00:10:22]  Are we going to use air power to pound Iran again?
[00:10:26]  This is what President Trump is talking about.
[00:10:30]  We don't have many military targets left to hit.
[00:10:34]  So we'd have to hit civilian infrastructure.
[00:10:37]  We'd have to hit power plants.
[00:10:38]  We'd have to hit their energy systems and so forth and so on.
[00:10:43]  And the end result is that they would retaliate.
[00:10:46]  It's not like the other side has no ability to retaliate here.
[00:10:50]  And they would retaliate by shutting the Red Sea, I believe, in addition to shutting down even further what's coming out of the Strait of Hormuz.
[00:11:02]  And furthermore, I think they would attack targets in Saudi Arabia and in the other Gulf states.
[00:11:08]  And this would have disastrous consequences over the long term for the world economy and therefore for the United States.
[00:11:15]  There's just no sort of air option here.
[00:11:18]  And again, you want to remember that we have a limited number of boutique weapons that we've already used.
[00:11:25]  And if we go back on the offensive with air power, we would use up more of those missiles and boutique weapons.
[00:11:35]  So there's no real air option here.
[00:11:37]  And if you think about a ground option, we don't have a ground option.
[00:11:41]  There's just not enough combat troops in the region to have a serious ground option.
[00:11:45]  And furthermore, even if we had a lot more ground forces going into Iran, invading Iran with a land army would be remarkably foolish and wouldn't work.
[00:11:56]  And this, by the way, is why we're relying on the Navy today.
[00:11:59]  If you think about what's going on, any military has three big instruments it can choose among.
[00:12:04]  One is its Navy, two is its Air Force, and three is its Army.
[00:12:07]  We have no Army option here.
[00:12:09]  We started the war with the Air option by bombing Iran, and that didn't work.
[00:12:15]  And that's why we are where we are today.
[00:12:18]  And what we've now turned to is the Navy option.
[00:12:21]  And this is what the blockade is all about.
[00:12:23]  But that has no promise of ending this conflict.
[00:12:27]  On favorable terms.
[00:12:29]  So you see, we have no military option here.
[00:12:33]  And at the same time, there's the whole economic side of this story, which in many ways is more important than the military side of the story, because the damage that's being done to the world economy is great.
[00:12:44]  And President Trump, therefore, has a deep seated interest in settling this conflict immediately.
[00:12:50]  I mean, he wants to settle it yesterday.
[00:12:54]  And that's why I think the incentive to have some sort of Negotiation is very great.
[00:12:59]  But the great problem the president faces is that he has to deal with the Israelis, and the Israelis don't want a settlement.
[00:13:06]  Very important to understand this.
[00:13:08]  Trump wants a settlement.
[00:13:10]  Israel does not want a settlement.
[00:13:11]  Well, Israel can't accomplish anything without the U.S. If the United States enters into some serious ceasefire or truce, what are the Israelis going to do?
[00:13:20]  Attack Iran on their own and risk the destruction of their country?
[00:13:25]  No.
[00:13:25]  Well, you want to remember here that the Israelis and the Americans together could not defeat Iran.
[00:13:33]  If you're assessing who has won the war so far, it's very clear that the Iranians have won the war so far.
[00:13:41]  None of our goals have been achieved.
[00:13:46]  And furthermore, we've lost control to Iran of the Strait of Hormuz.
[00:13:51]  So we're worse off, we meaning the United States and the Israelis, today than we were before the war started.
[00:13:57]  We just didn't achieve any goals.
[00:13:59]  So if the United States and the Israelis together couldn't achieve, The goals, the Israelis themselves can't do it.
[00:14:06]  But what the Israelis want is they want us to stay in the fight.
[00:14:10]  They want us to continue to hammer away at Iran and hopefully over a protracted period of time, disable Iran to the point where it is greatly weakened.
[00:14:21]  That's what they want.

=== Escalation Risks in the Strait (14:34) ===

[00:14:22]  But what Trump wants is he wants to shut this one down as soon as possible.
[00:14:27]  He knows that the damage that's being done to the international economy and the damage that might be done if this continues necessitates a settlement.
[00:14:37]  But again, he's running up against the Israelis.
[00:14:40]  Here is Mike Waltz, the U.S. ambassador to Iran, sounding very combative, sounding more like a politician than a diplomat, but that's his style.
[00:14:52]  First is the phrase you used the phrase earlier, and he uses it as well escalate to de escalate.
[00:14:59]  And second is his argument that destroying bridges and power plants is not a war crime.
[00:15:04]  Chris, can you play these two back to back, first number three and then number four?
[00:15:10]  All options are on the table.
[00:15:11]  The president's prepared to escalate, to de escalate.
[00:15:14]  He means it when he said nothing that benefits Iran is coming out of the straits.
[00:15:20]  And then on top of that, Secretary Besant announced Operation Economic Fury, where we are prepared to put secondary sanctions on banks who are transacting in illegal Iranian oil dollars.
[00:15:35]  So we are truly putting maximum pressure on every aspect of the Iranian economy.
[00:15:40]  And at some point, They are going to see some level of common sense and pragmatism and say enough is enough with this nuclear obsession.
[00:15:49]  I hope we don't have to go back to a military option, but President Trump's made it very clear.
[00:15:53]  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.
[00:16:05]  That is a false, fake, and ridiculous notion that this is some type of war crime.
[00:16:10]  Crime to threaten to attack civilian infrastructure.
[00:16:15]  He should know that.
[00:16:16]  Yeah.
[00:16:17]  I mean, what's going on here is that Waltz thinks that we can punish Iran to the point where it will just throw up its hands and surrender.
[00:16:30]  All we have to do is get tougher.
[00:16:33]  And there are two problems with this argument.
[00:16:35]  The first is that we represent, we meaning the United States and Israel, represent an existential threat to Iran.
[00:16:43]  And because we represent an existential threat, they will fight to the last person.
[00:16:49]  They are not going to throw their hands up and surrender.
[00:16:53]  They're going to fight like wild dogs.
[00:16:55]  That's point number one.
[00:16:56]  Point number two is that they have the advantage going up the escalation ladder.
[00:17:04]  People like Waltz don't understand that.
[00:17:06]  The idea that we're going to go in there and we're going to bomb power plants in Iran and they're just going to sit there and take it and eventually throw up their hands is not a serious argument.
[00:17:17]  They are going to respond, and they have the ability to cause us enormous amounts of trouble.
[00:17:24]  The international economy is already in deep trouble.
[00:17:28]  We are on the Titanic heading for an iceberg, and something has to be done to shut this down.
[00:17:34]  President Trump understands that.
[00:17:37]  But if you up the ante, the Iranians will in turn up the ante.
[00:17:43]  And where does that leave us?
[00:17:45]  It leaves us much worse off in terms of the international economy.
[00:17:49]  And as I said at the start, we're not going to get.
[00:17:51]  Them to surrender.
[00:17:53]  So we have no option to escalate, to de escalate.
[00:17:58]  If we escalate, we are going to cause ourselves enormous amounts of trouble.
[00:18:04]  The Iranian ship that was stopped by the Navy, boarded by personnel, I don't know if they were Navy or Marines, they used their weapons to destroy the engine and then they stole the ship.
[00:18:19]  It was a cargo ship, it wasn't a tanker, and it was empty.
[00:18:23]  What happens if they do that to a Chinese ship filled with three or four million barrels of oil?
[00:18:31]  Well, the question that then comes up is do the Chinese send Military escorts?
[00:18:39]  Do they send ships to escort those Chinese ships?
[00:18:43]  Or do the Chinese put guns, man pads, and machine guns on those ships that can shoot down the helicopters that tried to board the ships?
[00:18:55]  The Chinese have options here.
[00:18:58]  And I don't think the Chinese will just stand idly by and let us get away with this over the long term.
[00:19:05]  So I think there's a really serious risk of escalation here.
[00:19:08]  And my guess would be if the Chinese send military escorts with these tankers or cargo ships or they arm them, that the United States will back off.
[00:19:19]  I don't think the United States wants a fight with the Chinese.
[00:19:22]  But the longer this war goes on, the more you have a risk of the Chinese and even the Russians becoming involved.
[00:19:29]  Because the Chinese and the Russians, it's important to emphasize this, have a vested interest in seeing Iran win this war.
[00:19:37]  And they are helping the Iranians.
[00:19:38]  And once the war ends, they will continue to help the Iranians.
[00:19:42]  Because what we have here is a situation where you have Iran, North Korea, China, and Russia on one side, and the United States and the Israelis on the other side.
[00:19:53]  Have you seen any evidence of Israeli recognition that it has failed to achieve its military goals and is unlikely to achieve them?
[00:20:05]  Same question with American recognition, not Trump, because he says things that are divorced from reality, but American officialdom recognition.
[00:20:14]  Well, I think that probably almost everybody who's in a decision making position in both the United States and Israel recognizes that up to this point, we have failed to achieve our objectives.
[00:20:28]  I mean, that's crystal clear.
[00:20:30]  I think the interesting question is, where do you go from here?
[00:20:33]  And I think that almost all Israelis want to see the United States continue the war.
[00:20:40]  They want us to see go, want to see us launch a massive bombing campaign along with the Israelis against Iran.
[00:20:48]  And continue to pummel away at that country.
[00:20:51]  Here in the United States, I would bet that most of President Trump's advisors would like to shut this war down and they see the Israelis as a huge problem.
[00:21:02]  But then again, as you know, there are all these Israeli assets who operate inside the US government people like Kushner, people like Steve Witkopf, even people like Michael Walz.
[00:21:15]  And we refer to them more generally as neoconservatives, but neoconservatives.
[00:21:21]  Neoconservatives is a euphemism for pro Zionist forces inside the United States, and they basically follow the Israeli line.
[00:21:31]  And this is the problem that Trump faces.
[00:21:34]  Trump is caught between two powerful sets of forces.
[00:21:38]  On one side, there is an imperative to shut this one down so as to stem the bleeding in terms of the international economy.
[00:21:47]  But on the other side are the Israelis and their very powerful supporters.
[00:21:52]  Here in the United States.
[00:21:53]  And I think that is reflected in Mike Waltz's comments.
[00:21:57]  Does the United States engage in any serious diplomacy these days?
[00:22:02]  Not really.
[00:22:03]  And you see this, by the way, in the Ukraine case, right?
[00:22:08]  Remember, President Trump said that when he came into office, he would shut down the Ukraine Russia war overnight.
[00:22:16]  In fact, he promised or he said that there was a good chance he would shut it down before he even moved into the White House.
[00:22:22]  It's been a total failure.
[00:22:24]  And if you look at how we have behaved in the negotiating process, you just scratch your head and say, Does the Trump administration have any understanding of how to conduct diplomacy?
[00:22:35]  Sure doesn't look that way to me.
[00:22:37]  This is what I see in the Ukraine Russia case.
[00:22:39]  And then if you look at what's going on with regard to Iran, it looks the same to me.
[00:22:47]  It's very hard to figure out what the administration is up to.
[00:22:51]  Just think about the ceasefire.
[00:22:54]  That was negotiated.
[00:22:56]  There were two missing pieces in the ceasefire.
[00:22:59]  One was we had to get the Israelis and Hezbollah to agree to a ceasefire.
[00:23:07]  And then we had to get the Iranians to open the strait.
[00:23:11]  These were the two final pieces of the puzzle just to get to a straight ceasefire.
[00:23:17]  So on Friday, this is last Friday, I think it was April 17th, it looks like there's going to be a 10 day ceasefire.
[00:23:25]  Between Israel and Hezbollah.
[00:23:28]  And then the Iranians say that they will open the strait.
[00:23:35]  Is on the 17th, and it looks by early morning on the 18th here in Chicago like you know you have all of the ingredients of a ceasefire in place.
[00:23:45]  But what does President Trump do?
[00:23:47]  He refuses to take the American blockade off of the Strait of Hormuz, and not surprisingly, the Iranians switch directions and put their blockade back on the Strait of Hormuz.
[00:24:01]  And you just say to yourself as you watch this, What is President Trump thinking?
[00:24:06]  He wanted To get the ceasefire in place, he had the ceasefire in place.
[00:24:12]  But common sense tells you that if you keep the blockade, the U.S. blockade on the Strait of Hormuz, which is a blockade on Iran, and you keep Iranian oil from coming through the Strait, that the Iranians are then going to put the blockade back on.
[00:24:27]  And you're back to square one.
[00:24:29]  And the price of gasoline at the pump in the U.S. will continue to rise.
[00:24:33]  Yeah, exactly.
[00:24:35]  That's the other key dimension to this.
[00:24:37]  We had been allowing Iranian oil out into the global market.
[00:24:41]  Because it was in our interest for the purposes of keeping oil prices down.
[00:24:45]  But if you keep the American blockade of Iran on, then that Iranian oil can't get out into global markets.
[00:24:53]  This just doesn't make any sense at all.
[00:24:55]  And furthermore, if you're going to have a ceasefire, if you're going to have negotiations this week, right, wouldn't it make sense to show some goodwill by taking the blockade off of Iran?
[00:25:09]  But no, that's not what we did.
[00:25:10]  And I just scratch my head and say, I don't understand.
[00:25:13]  What the strategy is here.
[00:25:15]  I can't tell myself a plausible strategy as to why this makes sense.
[00:25:20]  Here's Congressman Kahana of California sort of mocking this Mike Walsh theory of escalate to de escalate.
[00:25:33]  Chris, cut number 11.
[00:25:34]  Well, they said they want to escalate to de escalate.
[00:25:38]  They've escalated to devastation.
[00:25:40]  I mean, you have the Pope lecturing America about possible war crimes, you have the president, as you pointed out.
[00:25:48]  Threatening to destroy all power plants.
[00:25:50]  I didn't think we would ever get to that point.
[00:25:52]  You have the Strait of Hormuz that is now blocked.
[00:25:55]  This never happened before the war.
[00:25:57]  What have we achieved?
[00:25:58]  Gas is up from $2.30 to $4.
[00:26:01]  You have now Iran having a more hardline regime, as we just heard, and all our allies, like UAE, being hit.
[00:26:08]  I mean, we've created devastation and we're being lectured by the Pope.
[00:26:15]  There you have it.
[00:26:16]  Hard to disagree.
[00:26:17]  Ro Connor was my student, by the way, when he was an undergraduate at the University of Chicago.
[00:26:22]  Oh, for goodness sakes.
[00:26:24]  Well, he learned well.
[00:26:28]  I'm not sure I had that much influence, but it seems to me that everything he said made eminently good sense.
[00:26:34]  Yeah, here's more good sense.
[00:26:36]  This is Tucker Carlson lamenting with his brother, Buckley Carlson, about the aid that they gave President Trump when he was running in 2024.
[00:26:49]  This is sad, but my hat is off to his intellectuals.
[00:26:53]  Honestly, the brother only gets one word in.
[00:26:55]  This is a Tucker lament, and my hat is off to him.
[00:26:59]  Chris, number 13.
[00:27:02]  You and I, and everyone else who supported him, you wrote speeches for him, I campaigned for him.
[00:27:07]  I mean, we're implicated in this for sure.
[00:27:09]  Yes.
[00:27:10]  It's not enough to say, well, I changed my mind, or like, oh, this is bad, I'm out.
[00:27:15]  It's like in very small ways, but in real ways, You and me and millions of people like us are the reason this is happening right now.
[00:27:24]  Yes.
[00:27:25]  So I do think it's like a moment to wrestle with our own consciences.
[00:27:32]  You know, we'll be tormented by it for a long time.
[00:27:35]  I will be.
[00:27:36]  And I want to say I'm sorry for misleading people, it was not intentional.
[00:27:41]  That's all.
[00:27:43]  Well, look, when he campaigned for Trump, Trump rejected the neocon mantra.
[00:27:52]  Said he would never do just what he now has done.
[00:27:55]  This is not Tucker Carlson's fault, but I salute him for this emotional, intellectual honesty.
[00:28:04]  I would just say I did not vote for Trump and am not a Trump supporter in any way.
[00:28:10]  But I thought when he came in, given everything that he had said during the campaign, that he would not behave at all the way he has behaved on the foreign policy front.
[00:28:22]  And I think.
[00:28:23]  Everybody who is on your show, all the regular guests you have, had a lot of goodwill towards President Trump on the foreign policy front soon after he moved into the White House.
[00:28:34]  Yes, because we believed what he said.
[00:28:37]  Yeah, I think that's exactly right.
[00:28:40]  But what happens here is that the lobby eventually goes to work on all of our presidents, all of our leaders, and they basically coerce them into towing the line.
[00:28:51]  And this gets back to the earlier conversation we had about what happened.

=== Lobby Power Coerces Leaders (01:32) ===

[00:28:57]  Before the Islamabad negotiations.
[00:29:00]  You remember, it looked like Trump was going to negotiate on the basis of the Iranian 10 point plan.
[00:29:06]  And then that all went out the window.
[00:29:08]  And then the reports are that when JD Vance was actually doing the negotiation, negotiating in Islamabad, that his position stiffened during the negotiations as he talked to Netanyahu and talked to Trump and company, who were obviously talking to Netanyahu as well.
[00:29:31]  Uh, so you see the tremendous power that the lobby has, uh, on our leaders.
[00:29:37]  And this is what happened to, uh, President Trump.
[00:29:40]  And Tucker, of course, understands that completely because he now fully understands just how powerful the lobby is.
[00:29:48]  And he fully understands, like you and I do, that Israel and the lobby are a giant albatross around their neck.
[00:29:56]  Professor Mearsheimer, thank you very much, my dear friend.
[00:29:58]  Great analysis, as always.
[00:30:01]  All my best to you.
[00:30:02]  We'll look forward to seeing you next week.
[00:30:04]  Likewise, Judge.
[00:30:05]  Thank you.
[00:30:06]  Coming up, if you're watching us live in 29 minutes at 10 o'clock this morning, Colonel Bill Astori.
[00:30:13]  At 1 this afternoon, the Golden Boy, Max Blumenthal.
[00:30:18]  At 2 this afternoon, Matthew Ho.
[00:30:21]  At 3 this afternoon, Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski.
[00:30:24]  Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom.