April 21, 2026 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
21:32
AMB. Chas Freeman : US Diplomacy Is Dead — And the World Knows It
Ambassador Chas Freeman argues US diplomacy is dead due to preemptive aggression and a reliance on bombing, citing the failed Islamabad-Iran talks marred by distrust of Vice President Vance's team. He condemns the Strait of Hormuz blockade as counterproductive, driving up global prices while Israel turns Lebanon into another Gaza through civilian killings. Freeman criticizes Ambassador Chris Smith for sycophancy regarding Netanyahu and highlights President Trump's alleged request for nuclear codes, which General Kane rightly refused, suggesting such conduct is potentially impeachable and demands a return to truthful ambassadorial duty. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Undeclared Wars and Piracy00:14:24
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 21st, 2026.
Ambassador Chaz Freeman joins us now.
Ambassador, I want to have a rather extended conversation with you on whether United States diplomacy is effectively dead, but let's sort of work our way into the project.
Were the Islamabad negotiations last week a hoax?
They were an opportunity to deliver an ultimatum.
Backed by delusions rather than real strength.
I think the Iranian delegation left correctly stating that there was no trust established with the American delegation headed by Vice President Vance, but in effect, under the surveillance of Woodcock and Kushner, who have completely forfeited any.
respect from the Iranian side.
So I guess you could call it a hoax.
It was performative.
It was not real.
There was no effort to reach agreement.
There were instead each side posturing and presenting its own demands as they were, and the United States doing so on the basis of the delusion that if you drop enough bombs on someone, you've won the war.
We should have learned from Vietnam, from Afghanistan, from other experiences.
That is not the case.
But that is the way we went into this talk.
And there's every reason to believe that if there is another talk, we will not deviate from that mistake.
From the Iranian perspective, why should they negotiate with a country whose Navy SEALs have just stolen a ship from it on the high seas, as happened over the weekend?
And why should they participate in any negotiation with two Zionist agents of Prime Minister Netanyahu who concocted the most dastardly, deadly deception with these Iranian negotiators in June and in February by being aware of the impending invasion and putting on the false front of a serious negotiation?
Well, I think you're faithfully.
Replicating what the IRGC, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard, is feeling and saying.
I think there are divisions in the government in Tehran.
The foreign ministry, I'm sure, wants to hear whether there's anything new that the United States has to say.
I think it will be very difficult for them not to find a way to listen to JD Vance if he goes to Islamabad.
But I don't think they believe there will be a negotiation.
And the IRGC, which is in de facto control in Iran now, we have promoted the hard line into positions of authority, destroyed the checks and balances in that government in Tehran.
They are adamantly opposed to any negotiation.
So I suspect we're going to see another failure of.
of any kind of progress and a return to warfare.
Who is in?
I'm laughing because I don't know that any human knows the answer to this, but you're a pretty smart person.
Who's in control of Hormuz as we speak?
Iran.
We see from Lloyd's list that some 20 vessels have actually gone through the American blockade, which is apparently quite permeable.
We have seen the example of the single ship that was attacked, had its engine room blown out, and Was assaulted by Marines or SEALs, I'm not sure who, and has been condemned by Iran as an act of piracy, which I think legally it is.
So, who's in charge of the Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz?
Iran.
And Iran has just published a tentative list of regulations that it plans to impose on the Strait of Hormuz if there is no.
Effective negotiation with other countries about those rules.
They're pretty harsh.
No ship connected in any way with Israel, no ship connected with the participants in the Iran Iraq war, meaning the United States and others who aided Iraq in that war, the Gulf Cooperation Council countries will fall under that heading, unless there are reparations and the money from the tolls that will be connected.
Could be devoted primarily, first and foremost, to rebuilding Iran's defenses.
Its infrastructure, nothing in there about benefiting the Iranian people.
So, pretty tough stuff and very unacceptable to the world.
There is going on right now a very interesting debate between Singapore and Malaysia, which straddled the Straits of Malacca, another major choke point of great concern.
To China, to India, to Japan, to Europeans, and basically the world.
And the question arose in the Singaporean parliament asking the foreign minister, why can't we, like the Malaysians, negotiate a deal with Iran which would allow our ships to pass through the Strait of Hormuz?
And his answer was freedom of navigation in straits like the Strait of Malacca, like the Strait of Hormuz.
like this trade of Taiwan, is essential to Singaporean national interests.
There's a lot at stake here.
Iran has set a terrible precedent in terms of the interests of many other countries, including ourselves.
But the fact is, possession is nine-tenths of the law, and they are in control.
Well, I wonder why the United States blockade is so ineffective.
A, does the Navy have the resources?
B, is it just one of those things the president wants to boast about without having given any serious thought to it?
C, what does the U.S. gain by this?
He wants oil prices down.
Blockading the Gulf of Hormuz is going to cause them to go up.
Absolutely.
Your point C is the fundamental one.
We get nothing out of this except gratification for the president, showing that he can bully people.
In this case, he's bullying us as much as he is Iran.
Ask American farmers or people who pull up to the gas pump what the effects of this blockade are, and they can tell you diesel fuel, the price has gone through the roof.
Fertilizer is not available.
The gasoline is around $4 a gallon.
And it's going to go higher.
It's going to go higher whether the strait is opened or not.
Because it takes four to five weeks for oil from the Persian Gulf to reach the refineries on the other side of the world.
And so there's going to be a four or five week hiatus in which supplies are.
Even more limited than they have been, and prices will go higher.
So, this is foolish.
I mean, basically, I'd say that it's like you want a door to open, but then you put a padlock on it.
Makes no sense at all.
Let me switch gears slightly.
Is Israel still murdering civilians in Gaza, the West Bank, and Lebanon?
Absolutely.
And furthermore, in Lebanon, where there's supposedly a ceasefire, supposedly.
Another phony ceasefire.
The Israelis are really raising buildings.
They are turning southern Lebanon into a version of Gaza.
They are murdering civilians.
They have put in place an invisible yellow line, as they did in Gaza, and they kill anybody who crosses it.
So they are, in fact, not respecting the ceasefire.
And I suspect at 8 p.m. Eastern Time, when that ceasefire ends, Officially, Israel as well as Iran are going to react to what's going on.
I neglected to ask you this earlier.
The Navy, and again, I don't know if they were SEALs or Marines.
Scott Ritter said he thought they were Marines.
But of course, Scott's a Marine.
Yeah.
But the Navy attacked an unarmed, empty cargo ship belonging to Iran.
It destroyed, as you said, the engine room so the boat couldn't move and the crew couldn't do anything, and the Navy took it over.
What happens if they try to do that to a tanker filled with 100 million gallons of oil destined for China?
You could have a big explosion, and you could also see the crew armed with man pads, anti aircraft, and individual anti aircraft missile systems take out a helicopter trying to land.
You could see a firefight.
You could see the beginning.
Of a war between the United States and China.
I don't think any country is prepared to accept the American stance pioneered in the Caribbean against the Venezuelans that just basically murders people on the basis of suspicion and takes tankers at will.
This is piracy.
And in the case of the Venezuelan tankers, we actually confiscated the oil too.
I guess the ship that has been immobilized by, I believe it was the Marines, is now up for grabs.
There are people in the United States claiming that we should take the ship.
Well, getting back to Israel, I haven't heard him condemn the desecration of a statue of Jesus being.
Crucified.
I haven't heard him condemn the president telling lies about the Pope, that the Pope is in favor of nuclear weapons, which of course would be contrary to Catholic theology and what every Pope has said since the development of nuclear weapons.
I haven't heard him say a word about the innocents being killed, but here's the U.S. ambassador to Israel praising Prime Minister Netanyahu.
Chris, number 13.
And it has been an extraordinary opportunity for our country to stand with Israel and to be able to stand against a menace that has plagued the world for 47 years.
Mr. Prime Minister, thank you for the extraordinary courage, leadership, and direction, and for the manner in which you have helped bring a level of direction to the world.
Let's hope and let's pray that the swords can soon be put aside for the plowshares.
But if there are those who are unwilling to put down the swords, it's good to know we have a partner that understands that the plowshares have to be preceded sometimes by the swords.
Blessed are the peacemakers, not the peace lovers, but the peacemakers.
Disgusting Diplomatic Sycophancy00:04:01
Is he the U.S. ambassador to Israel or the Israeli ambassador to the United States?
Clearly not representing American interests.
That was an extraordinary display of sycophancy of the sort that we see in the broadcasts of our president's cabinet these days.
No effort whatsoever to be realistic.
You could see Prime Minister Netanyahu.
smirking.
And of course, it's particularly anomalous, as you pointed out, that this comes in the wake of the desecration of a statue of the crucified Christ in Lebanon, which, you know, Israel's reaction to that was, well, gee, that's terrible.
We're going to investigate it.
That's like what they've said when they've murdered Americans in the past.
And there will be no serious investigation.
And in fact, the soldier who did that very clearly represents a significant, if not majority, strain of opinion in Israel, where it's considered appropriate for Zionist Jews, Israeli Jews, to spit on native Christians.
So to have our ambassador deliver that kind of disgusting praise of Mr. Netanyahu.
It's really shocking.
The image of the soldier that we see now with a sledgehammer aimed at the head of the statue of Jesus Christ was filmed in a video.
So there obviously was more than one person collaborating in this.
I don't know who it was.
It was probably one of his colleagues in the IDF.
They have a history of recording each other when they.
Abuse Palestinians, and here they are abusing a classic symbol of the Christian faith in a particularly hideous way by smashing the head of the person that Christians believe is the Son of God.
Maybe Huckabee said something profound about this.
I don't know.
I've known Mike for years.
His behavior when I knew him was of a conservative Republican vying for the Republican nomination for president.
His behavior now is sycophancy, as you said, but really over the top in an obsequious and almost disgusting way, which I ask as a joke, but it's a legitimate inquiry.
Does he represent the U.S. to Israel or Israel to the U.S.?
Well, ambassadors are meant to manage relations.
They're not meant to surrender or defect to the other side.
Sometimes they do.
Clientitis is a problem in diplomacy.
But this goes way beyond that.
This is a complete sellout.
Well, you were the United States ambassador to Saudi Arabia.
Is the temptation to be a sycophant to your host almost irresistible?
It's very irresistible.
But you have to be aware that there is that problem.
There's actually a wonderful passage in Zhuangzi, a Chinese philosopher from the probably fourth or fifth century BC, in which he says that, you know, an ambassador, he's speaking to a class of graduating diplomats, he says an ambassador has to be very careful because there's a temptation to,
The Danger of Distorted Messages00:03:03
Indulge in excessive flattery and sycophancy when delivering a message in order to ingratiate yourself with the recipient of the message.
And if you do that, the message is distorted.
Or alternatively, you can be overly harsh, in which case the message is also distorted.
So he counsels the most important thing an envoy can do is to scrupulously stick to the truth without embellishment.
That's not what I just saw in that clip.
Well, let me change the subject before we finish for the day.
Someone in the White House has leaked that President Trump asked General Kane for the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff for the nuclear codes, and Kane responded immediately and abruptly, no, and walked out of the Oval Office and rather dejectedly to his waiting driver and bodyguards.
Do you have any insight on this, Ambassador?
No, I'm aware of the report, which is deeply disturbing.
And, you know, it really, the notion that somehow or other the president would find it appropriate to use nuclear weapons against anyone, but particularly against a country that doesn't have nuclear weapons and which has been subjected to absolutely brutal bombing by us for the better part of a month and a half, is just very frightening.
There should be what General Kane did if this in fact happened, was entirely appropriate.
The president makes no sense on this issue and many others these days.
And this is the sort of thing that a Congress with any backbone would immediately take up in terms of either impeachment or invoking the 25th Amendment.
It's a sad day in the United States when basically insane statements can apparently be made.
They're not effectively refuted by the White House.
And of course, we've learned long since that you should never believe anything until it's officially denied.
A great one-liner.
Ambassador, thank you very much.
Thanks for allowing me to go across the board on these topics.
And thanks so much for your insight.
All the best.
We'll see you next week, my friend.
Thank you.
A busy and full day coming up for you at nine o'clock this morning.
Professor John Mearsheimer at 10 o'clock this morning, Colonel Bill Astori at one this afternoon, Max Blumenthal at two this afternoon, Matt Ho at three this afternoon, Colonel Karen Kwetkowski.
Much towards which to look forward, Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom.