Judging Freedom - Aaron Maté : Media Myths Driving the Iran Crisis ?

Episode Date: January 15, 2026

Aaron Maté : Media Myths Driving the Iran Crisis ?See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Undeclared wars are commonplace. Pragically, 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? 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 Thursday, January 15th, 2026. My dear friend, Aaron Matae, joins us now. Aaron, thank you very much for your time, as always. What is your understanding of the current state of affairs in the streets in Iran? Are the demonstrators formerly whipped up by Mossad, MI6, and CIA still demonstrating against the government, or are ordinary folks demonstrating in favor of the government or some other state of affairs? I know that Iran has reopened its airspace, so that's a sign that things are returning to normal. And we've seen footage that have come out of there were funerals held for protesters who were killed,

for state security forces who were killed. So I think there's an attempt right now by the government to project an air of normalcy. the problem Iran faces it's still under these crippling sanctions that make life very, very difficult. And even though this phase of this unrest appears to have quieted down, that's going to remain a very, very big problem. And the protesters who initially came out in Tehran's Grand Bazaar, they have legitimate grievances. I mean, there is mass corruption, there is mismanagement, and that's going to have to be addressed. And that's the question going forward. It does appear for now on the positive side that Trump is backed off as threats to bomb Iran.

But still, Iran will face the dual problem of having to address corruption and mismanagement within while also constantly facing the threat of aggression from Israel and the U.S. while living under crippling sanctions that make everything extremely difficult. How adept have CIA, MI6, and Mossad been at manipulating, this is your bailiwick, manipulating Western media into feeding everybody in the West misinformation, that this is some spontaneous objection to the government's attitude about Israel? Well, there's a very article at the gray zone pointing out that as is so often the case in all of these foreign countries where the U.S. tries to destabilize the government tries regime change, that the U.S. media relies on sources that are, you know, have benign sounding names, but are really funded by the regime change arms of the U.S. government, namely the National Endowment for Democracy. And that's been the case here. There's undoubtedly deaths that have happened in Iran over the U.S. government, namely the national endowment for democracy. And that's been the case here. There's undoubtedly deaths that have happened in Iran over the government. these past few weeks. And undoubtedly, protesters killed by security forces. What gets omitted is that

there was violence against the state. There's footage of that. And what also gets totally inflated is the death toll. So we've seen, for example, CBS News report that an estimated 12,000 people were killed with no evidence whatsoever. And what happens is you get a group funded by the National Endowment for Democracy to come up with some figure. The U.S. media then parat, figure and doesn't mention to its audience that the group is literally funded by the U.S. government. And that gets spread and that helps foment momentum for U.S. intervention. We've seen that playbook happen so many times.

Libya, Syria, Gaza, after October 7th, the claim of dozens of beheaded babies. This is the standard playbook of atrocity propaganda to essentially manufacture consent to commit more atrocities by intervening in the country and bombing. This time, it didn't work because I think Trump realized that his options were very limited if you wanted to bomb Iran. But the playbook is the same. Has you mentioned CBS, is CBS becoming a propaganda arm for the Netanyahu regime? Absolutely. I mean, that was why the Alessons, David and Larry Ellison, bought CBS. The Ellisons are the largest single private donor to the Israeli army.

And they've talked openly about how they see. Their mission is, you know, building public support for Israel. And so to run CBS, they tapped Barry Weiss, a opinion journalist with no actual newsroom experience. And even though the ratings have dropped during Barry Weiss's tenure, it doesn't matter because the point of buying CBS for the Alpsons is to just make it even more pro-Israel. And also curry favor with the Trump administration because they also want to expand their media empire, including to CNN by, buying a whole other news network. And Trump has told people that he's received assurances privately from the Ellison's that under their rule, CBS will become more pro-Trump.

So even though the ratings are declining, even though Barry Wise has been killing stories that are critical of the Trump administration, it doesn't matter. She's doing the job she was hired to do, which is curry favor with Trump and manufacturer support for Israel. She's doing the job she was hired to do, even though she doesn't know what the hell she's doing. That's exactly right.

That's why she was hired for it. Wow. Does it appear to you that Trump's attitude about what's going on in the streets or was going on in the streets of Tehran is molded by what was whispered into his ear by Netanyahu? That's totally fair speculation. I mean, we're called that Netanyahu visited Trump over the holidays. and we know what Netanyahu's agenda is. He wants to take out Iran's air defenses. That's why he bombed Iran last time.

The whole fiction that we were told was that Iran is close to acquiring nuclear weapons, so therefore we have to bomb. Israeli officials then quickly admitted that, no, the real reason was that Iran is rebuilding its air defenses, its ability to defend itself from Israeli-U.S. aggression. And that's why Israel bomb then, because there was a window of opportunity before those air defenses would be rebuilt. And the same thing is happening now. Mike Pompeo was on Fox News just a few days ago. And he said, we can't let them rebuild their air defenses because that would help them take out Western aircraft.

So the fiction that we're attacking Iran over its nuclear weapons program, which doesn't even exist, that was quickly discarded. And now the pretext they tried to seize on was the fact that you had a crackdown on protesters. even though, again, whatever happened in Tehran, Trump could care less about a crackdown on protesters. Just look at the fact that his administration is openly defending the ICE murder of René Good before even an investigation has been carried out. And by the way, on that note, just going back to CBS News, they got CBS News to report yesterday that the officer who shot René Good, Jonathan Ross,

that he suffered from internal bleeding, which they didn't specify, I didn't explain what that meant by internal bleeding and how even he obtained such an injury. They're just there to manufacture propaganda for Trump. And that includes in this case justifying the murder of a U.S. protester. So the four senior line prosecutors and the Minnesota U.S. attorneys are the line prosecutor is a person who actually goes into court and tries cases before juries. These are ordinarily, I can tell you from my own experience, the best trial lawyers the U.S. attorney has.

The four senior most resigned because they were all asked to commence a criminal investigation of Rachel Good's wife. Now, under the law, you cannot commence a criminal investigation against someone unless you have articulable suspicion that the person is committed a crime. You can't just pick somebody out because I don't like them and start an investigation of them. And these prosecutors knew that, and they knew they could. lose their licenses to practice law if they did it. So their only choice was to do the honorable thing and resign,

leaving a gaping hole in the prosecutor's office for senior trial lawyers when they need them and manifesting the political pressure on the DOJ at its worst. It's an unbelievable story. On the video, you can see Renee Goods partner taunting the ICE officer, Jonathan Ross, saying, you know, Perfectly, perfectly protected speech. Exactly, exactly. The idea that that then is worthy of a criminal investigation

because she's exercising her right to free speech. When we have on video an officer of the state murdering an unarmed mother of three. And then as she's, after he shoots her, he refers to her with a very crude expletive FNB, he says. I'm censoring the actual expletive. And so yet the government has taken over in the investigation, won't let the state investigate. And you have JD Vance out there every single day justifying all this and saying that this is perfectly legal. So the timing here of Trump saying he wants to intervene in Iran if they kill protesters, it adds to the complete farce of the U.S. government claiming to care about the fate of unarmed protesters and

Iran, the fact that they're defending this murder at home. Chris, do we have the sound on tape of Stephen Miller? Well, here's the new head of the Gestapo. Watch this. To all ICE officers, you have federal immunity in the conduct of your duties. And anybody who lays a hand on you or tries to stop you or tries to obstruct you is committing a felony. You have immunity to perform your duties and no one, no city of no state official, no illegal alien, no leftist agitator or domestic insurrectionist can prevent you from fulfilling your legal obligations and duties.

And the Department of Justice has made clear that if officials cross that line into obstruction, into criminal conspiracy against the United States or against ICE officers, then they will face justice. I guess he forgot about Lon Horiucci, the sharpshooter at Ruby Ridge, who was prosecuted for manslaughter, upheld by the federal courts in the Ruby Ridge case, a horrible case. We don't even have to go through the details. But what he's saying is not an accurate description of the law whatsoever. This fellow Jonathan, what is this last name? Ross.

Jonathan Ross can and should be prosecuted for manslaughter. But the state can't prosecute him or charge him until it has the evidence. and who has obstructed state justice by seizing the evidence, the feds. And who has prejudged this case? J.D. Vance called the dead woman a left-wing terrorist. Even if she were a left-wing terrorist, it doesn't justify shooting her in the head when she's turned her wheels to get away from you. This may be a pivotal and seminal moment in American history.

Yeah, and what I wonder about J.D. Vance is, obviously, the facts here, morality doesn't matter to him. The fact that he's come out and said that she basically deserved to be killed. But, I mean, thinking of his own election prospects, assuming that Trump gives up power in 2008 and there's a Republican primary or just moving on to the general election, Jadie Vance, is the nominee. Does he not think about whether or not this will be a liability for him politically, that he came out so forcefully and defended the murder of René Good on camera? And didn't even say, let's let an investigation happen before we prejudge. I mean, that to me would still be a cowardly line given what we can see on camera, but at least it would be legally sound and that you should let an investigation play out. J.D. Vance came out and forcefully defended this murder. And I think that will be a liability for him in any future election. I think he was a much better senator than he is a vice president.

I mean, he's just pretty much been co-opted by the political needs of the Trump administration. But here you have a Yale educated lawyer. By the way, Stephen Miller's a lawyer as well. I don't know whether he went to law school. It doesn't matter. He's a lawyer who passed the bar. He knows the basics. And the basics are that there was no such thing as absolutely.

absolute immunity for law officers, whether you're a traffic cop or a federal agent or anything in between. It's qualified immunity. You have to qualify for the immunity by yourself obeying the law. Now, here's the law enforcement officer in chief of the United States encouraging demonstrations, but not in many Minneapolis, number five. And by the way, to all Iranian patriots, keep protesting, take over your institutions, if possible, and save the name of the killers and the abusers that are abusing you. You're being very badly abused. If the numbers are right now, I hear five different sets of numbers.

I hear numbers. Look, one death is too much. But I hear much lower numbers, and then I hear much higher numbers. but I say save their names because they'll pay a very big price. And I've canceled all meetings with the Iranian officials until the senseless killing of protesters stops. And all I say to them is help is on its way. You saw that I put tariffs on anybody doing business with Iran, just went into effect today. And I say, make Iran great again.

You know, it's a great country until these monsters came in and took it over. But monsters, is he talking about? Is he talking about what his former CIA director and secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, said Mossad agents marching in the streets? Of course, he's not talking about that. Yeah, well, the fact that Pompeo came out and said, you know, happy New Year to Iranian protesters and every Mossad agent beside them, it speaks to how just contemptuous Pompeo is of Iranians and sees the, as Ponce, taking the very real grievances that they have. And they are real. I mean, I don't think you can just say that all this is a foreign plot and that's why people are on the streets. No,

there's genuine outrage about corruption and mismanagement, which of course is massively amplified by the sanctions regime that the U.S. imposes, which makes banking in Iran financial system very, very difficult. There are Obama administration officials like Richard Nephew who've written books bragging about how their sanctions raise the price of chicken for everyday Iranians during the holiday and made medicine more unaffordable. But Pompeo is basically saying in brazenly celebrating the role of Mossad, whatever it is, he knows that he's endangering those Iranian protesters who have legitimate grievances, who have nothing to do with Mossad.

Because what's the Iranian government going to do when a foreign official, when a former Secretary of State CIA director openly says the protests have Mossad elements, they're going to have to respond or else they look weak. And to the people in the government who want to crack down on all protesters, regardless of whether they're armed or not, that's going to emboldened them. So Pompeo is knowingly endangering Iranian protesters

who have nothing to do with Mossad by saying this. And so are the Israelis who have bragged about arming people inside Iran who have killed security forces. And if you look at the video footage that has come out, there is video of people, shooting at security forces. That has happened. And so Iran is being used by foreign elements who just wanted to stabilize it, as they

do across the board. And Trump's comments about help us on the way, you know, reminds me of George H.W. Bush during the first Gulf War, he encouraged a revolt of Shia against Saddam Hussein and then left them alone and then abandoned them after they did rise up and let's, and basically he lets Saddam murder them. And there's that playbook over and over. The U.S. claims to care about oppressed segments of the population, but really it just wants to foment unrest. In the case of Iran, it wants to foment what happened in Syria, where you had a horrible war that killed hundreds of thousands of people, exploding a country's internal divisions to leave it in ruins. Because

in the case of Iran, it's just too big for the U.S. to invade. The U.S. is not going to invade Iran. It also knows that it's very difficult to bring down the government just with airstrike. So the hope here is to create unrest internally. So you have essentially a civil war. In Syria, you had many assets willing to do that. In Iran, I don't think that's the case. But the playbook here is just so cynical. Going back to Minnesota for a minute.

Here's Joe Rogan, largely responsible for bringing millions of disaffected young men into the MAGA camp for Trump in 2024. here's what he had to say, Chris. After that woman was shot, I think unfortunately, well, everything is unfortunate about it, right? But one of the real problems is now ICE are villains. And now people are looking at them like murderous, military people that are on the streets of our city, and they're masked up, which is also a problem, right? Because if you get arrested by a cop, you're allowed to ask the cop, what is your name and badge number? And you could film that cop.

If you get arrested by an ICE agent, you have no such right. They're wearing a mask. They don't have to tell you that's a problem. That's a problem on our city streets, right? Because you can also pretend to be an ICE agent. Right. I mean, this is part of what Tim Walts put aside whatever baggage he has. And governor and mayor, I think his name is Frye, F-R-E-Y, have been saying they have created far more lawlessness

then they have arrested, then they have solved. Their behavior has been so profoundly disruptive in our streets that we can't collect taxes because businesses are closed. We can't direct traffic because streets are closed. Their equipment has filled our public parks and our public parking lots. That's called commandeering state property, expressly prohibited by the Supreme Court. I believe Mayor Jacob Frye of Minneapolis said that half the shootings so far in his city this year have been committed by ICE.

So ICE is not responsible for half the shootings in Minneapolis. And yeah, that clip from Joe Rogan, it captures the fact that on so many issues, whether it's censorship, foreign policy being against regime change. Trump has just totally abandoned the appeal that many people had in his campaign, including people like Joe Rogan. And they were given a very big gift by how, in many ways, neo-conservative, the Democrats were with their backing of the Gaza genocide, their support for the Ukraine proxy war, their support for censorship, all of which was real. Trump exploited that. But then what he's done since taking office on all these fronts is as bad as the Democrats. And in many cases, I think even worse.

So my question for going forward, the midterms for 2028, will Democrats actually apply the lessons? Will they transform? Will they take advantage now of the opportunity that Trump has provided for them? It's hard to be optimistic when the party is still led by people like Chuck Schumer. Right. Jeffries, but we'll see. Right, right. We have a blurry copy of Pompeo's email.

Can you increase the size, Chris? The Iranian regime is in trouble bringing in mercenaries is its last best hope. Here we go. Riots in dozens of cities and won't bother reading the names of the cities. Listen to this nonsense, Aaron. 47 years of this regime, POTUS, 47 coincidence. So here's the killer. Happy New Year to Eighty-Novey.

every Iranian in the streets also to every Mossad agent walking beside them why on earth would he have said that to every Mossad agent walking beside them I think uh well first of all it's just colonial hubris like he he doesn't occur to him how bad it looks to anybody sensible to be bragging about a foreign intelligence service you know being involved in protests but I think I think the main motivation he has, I think he wants to encourage the Iranian government to crack down on the protests, which can then be used to justify U.S. military intervention. Because that's the consequence of claiming that the Mossad has infiltrated these protests is to encourage a Iranian government crackdown. So I think he wants to basically sacrifice

peaceful Iranian protesters for his aims of regime change. And it's the same playbook. You know, Mike Pompeo was very proud of the sanctions. He, reimposed on Iran by walking away from the Iran nuclear deal. So what you do is you create economic hardship. You then turn around and look and point to that economic hardship and say, look at the Iranians that can't run their own economy. Everyone's miserable. We have to intervene.

The same playbook in Venezuela too. Look at all these people that are leaving Venezuela because of mismanagement while admitting that the sanctions that you imposed on these countries from Venezuela to Iran is a major factor in causing this hardship. And so similar lines here, claiming that. the Mossad is involved in these protests, thereby encouraging a crackdown and then using the crackdown to justify military intervention.

And why is people like Mike Pompeo and the Israeli government, why do they want to destroy Iran? And they make it very clear. It's because Iran supports actors in the region who resist U.S. Israeli aggression. And they claim that Iran is an existential threat to Israel and wants to see it destroyed. Iran, just like Hamas,

has previously accepted the global consensus for resolving the problem at the heart of all Middle East strife, which is the denial of Palestinian rights. Iran supported in 2017 a resolution from the Organization for Islamic Cooperation calling for a two-state solution, which is the global consensus for how to resolve this, giving Palestinians just 22% of their stolen homeland. Iran supported that same year Hamas revised their charter to also say in their own way that they support it. It's only Israel in the U.S. because they'd rather dominate the region. They don't want to have peace that reject it. And so therefore, the most powerful state in the region that resists them has to be broken

up and destroyed. And in case of Mike Pompeo, that not only means imposing sanctions that make life difficult for ordinary Iranians, it also means sacrificing them, encouraging an Iranian government crackdown to give him and his friends a pretext to go in and bond the country and destroy it. Aaron, a great conversation, as always. Thank you very much, my dear friend. All the best of you. We'll look forward to seeing you next week. Thank you, Judge. Thank you. Coming up at 1 o'clock this afternoon on all of this, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, at 2 o'clock this afternoon, a special. What is America First? The debate between the conservative Dinesh D'Souza and the libertarian Dave Smith. I will be moderating the debate, even though I know. both of these guys and have known them for years. I will be wearing my neutral judicial hat.

This is sponsored by our friends at Zero Hedge, but it'll be seen here on judging freedom. And then at 3.30 this afternoon, who else for the end of the day, the end of this week, almost? Professor John Mearsheimer. Judge LaPoitteau for Judging Freedom.