Judging Freedom - AaronMaté : US is Neocon and Paranoid

Episode Date: August 1, 2024

AaronMaté : US is Neocon and ParanoidSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Thank you. Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Thursday, August 1st, 2024. Our dear friend Aaron Maté joins us now. Aaron, thank you very much for being here. As you know, I was away. I picked the two most historic weeks in modern American history to be away. But what are you going to do? The vacation was planned a long time ago, and we did our best to adjust to it. But it's nice to be back and doing these broadcasts regularly.

And I appreciate very much your giving us your time. You have an interesting piece on your Substack column about Joe Biden. You're of the view that he didn't jump, he was pushed. Oh, there's no doubt about that. Up until the last minute, he was saying that the only way he would drop out is if the Lord Almighty told him to. Well, the Lord Almighty came in the form of the Democratic Party elite who threatened to pull their donations if Joe Biden stood on the ticket. And reportedly there was pressure behind the scenes from Nancy Pelosi and even Barack Obama. And it's clear to see why in his last debate performance, he couldn't put a sentence together. He was totally out of it.

And in public, he's had an increasingly difficult time just even walking. And so it was obvious that this was going to happen. I think it's a huge relief for Democrats because I think against Trump, he stood no chance whatsoever. Now, with Kamala Harris at the top of the ticket, I think actually Democrats have a chance because, you know, Biden was such a horrible candidate. And I think anyone's open to anyone who can, you know, speak coherently and isn't out of touch like Biden is. And also Trump has his own flaws, too. So I think this will actually be a pretty interesting race. I think Trump's flaws have been manifest lately. This idea that she's not black and all that.

And he doubled down on it again today, much to the chagrin of his advisors and of Republican Party leaders. He's going to shoot himself in the foot. I shouldn't use an analogy like that in light of what happened to him, but he is going to harm himself severely politically. Some of the things that Joe Biden said in an effort to redeem himself, you pointed them out in your article, especially in the interview with George Stephanopoulos, and I give George credit for the way he handled it, was, I saved NATO, and at another point, I'm running the world. I mean, this is truly delusional. If any American president had said,

I'm running the world, it would be delusional. And those comments from Biden illustrate why the world is in such a dangerous place, because he really sees himself as the steward of the world. And he also defines a proper way of running it. And he also defines his own credibility as the reason for staying on as the Democratic nominee, because this is what he was saying in this in the context of that i should stay as the nominee because i've done such a great job of running the world uh and it's clear why the world's such a dangerous place is because he's made the world more uh most dangerous by associating his own identity his own self identity his political identity with defending u.s heony. That's what he always invokes when he's trying to make his case for why he should stay on,

that I expanded NATO, as if that's something to brag about. Does anybody really care? Is anybody's security enhanced because Sweden and Finland joined NATO? And the only way that Biden could take credit for that accurately is if he wants to take credit for provoking Russia to invade Ukraine, because had Russia not done that, I don't think Sweden and Finland would have joined NATO. So in that respect, Biden can take credit in that his policies did provoke Russia to invade, and therefore he got Sweden and Finland to jump into NATO. But then the other question is, why is that something to brag about? Whose security is enhanced by Sweden, Finland joining NATO? No, but not even Sweden or Finland's security is enhanced.

Their security is jeopardized by joining NATO. Yeah, and their budgets are going to have to go now more into the military-industrial complex because NATO has this 2% of GDP requirement for military spending. So if you're a military contractor okay then you can celebrate joe biden's wonderful achievements but everybody else uh it's going it's grown a lot more dangerous and but look this is who joe biden is uh there was a interview with him back in october shortly after october 7th where cbs news scott pelly asked him, can the U.S. handle two wars at the same time in Israel, Palestine, and also in Ukraine? And rather than saying, well, actually, I want to bring these wars to an end, which is what anybody remotely connected with reality would say if they care about everyone's security.

Biden grows indignant and says, of course, we can handle two wars at a time. We're the United States, for God's sake. Of course we can do that. We're the essential nation. So this guy defines his political identity, his political worth along the lines of fueling war and safeguarding U.S. hegemony. And that's why the world is such a dangerous place is because this delusional person thinks he's in charge of running it. Do you think this is some sort of a combination of the neocon mentality and the neocon paranoia? Absolutely. Coupled with Biden's cognitive decline, which is a horrible combination. Neocons are dangerous on their own. I mean, look at their record. They've threatened the entire world for a long time now. Look at every single major disaster we face on a global

scale. The neocons' fingerprints are all over it, or many of them at least. I shouldn't blame them for everything. But certainly, neocons make the world a more dangerous place because they reserve the right to invade countries, to starve them through sanctions, to destabilize them through covert operations like the proxy war in Syria Syria and now the proxy war in Ukraine. And so accordingly, the world is a lot more dangerous because of them. And then you couple that with Biden's cognitive decline and him believing in his head that he's making the world better by fueling war. Very dangerous combination. What is your view of the wisdom of the two Israeli assassinations, the one in Beirut and the one in Tehran, in terms of the long run, in terms of what it is likely to provoke as

compared to the short-term gain, which is just a boasting because these people will be replaced by people younger and probably more radical. Yeah. And Ismail Ahania, the political leader of Hamas, he lives in Doha. So he's not even connected to Hamas's military operations on the ground. So for Hamas, this is, as you say, they'll just find somebody else. I don't see this as a big setback for them. What it will do though, is fuel calls for revenge and fuel calls for escalation. And who knows where this will go? And Israel is able to do this because it has the full support not only of Biden, but of the Republicans in Congress who got on their feet to applaud him dozens of times just last week. So in terms of the wisdom for Israel to do this, for a country that only knows how to fuel conflict and only sees the region as something to dominate, this advances that agenda.

But for everybody else, it's extremely dangerous. How Hamas and its allies will retaliate, I'm not sure. But the U.S. in continuing to support all this is playing with fire. And it's important to stress that there have been alternatives to all of this. For a long time now, Hamas, whatever you think of them, has been moderating its political position. Its infamous charter was revised a few years ago to no longer call for the destruction of the state of Israel. They started accepting the international consensus of a two-state solution, accepting a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza, which for Palestinians is a massive compromise because that's just 22% of their historic homeland. Even Hamas has said many times, including Ismail Haniyeh, even after October 7th, has said that they'd be willing to negotiate that and accept that.

Now, their sincerity could have been tested by engaging with them, by actually engaging in diplomacy, which is what serious states people are supposed to do, talk to other people and try to come up with diplomatic solutions to avoid war. But the U.S. and Israel are only interested in enforcing Israeli hegemony on Israel's right to colonize and ethnically cleanse as much Palestinian land as they want. So they've ignored Hamas's overtures for many years. And by the way, it wasn't just Hamas. Iran also said that it would be willing to accept a two-state solution. So unfortunately, the real extremists here are the people in the Israeli government, backed by their supporters in Washington, who have refused to explore the very serious diplomatic opportunities that have existed for a long time, including after October 7th. And so now they're just trying to kill people off, like Hania, rather than try to negotiate

with them. And what that is is simply a recipe for more conflict for an unspeakable amount of time. So how can anyone possibly be serious about negotiations when you assassinate the chief negotiator on the other side, particularly when there's a team chief negotiator on the other side, particularly when there's a team of negotiators on the other side, and the one you assassinate is the most moderate member of the team. How would Netanyahu even answer that? He'd come up with some lie about how all Arabs want to just destroy us no matter what, so therefore we have to fight. I mean, just look at his speech in Congress last week. It was just full.

Everything he said was a lie down to even, he even couldn't even recount the atrocities of October 7th correctly. There were atrocities committed by Palestinian militants, but apparently for Netanyahu, those weren't enough. He had to invent atrocities that didn't happen. He invented atrocities that you't happen. He invented atrocities that you and Max have debunked.

And that the authors of have withdrawn in light of your debunking them. Netanyahu's back in that space. Yeah, and he has a safe space to lie through his teeth because the Congress is on board with his lies and the mass murder campaign that he's waging based on those lies.

So Netanyahu does not care, obviously, about civilian life in Gaza, but also about his own hostages because he's killing, as you said, the main interlocutor on the Hamas side who's negotiating the release of Israeli hostages. And Netanyahu has so little regard for them that he's willing to kill the person negotiating their release. So, yeah, how can you negotiate with Israel? How can you negotiate with Israel after decades of this farce of a so-called peace process where Israel claims it wants to eventually grant Palestinians a state while increasingly taking over their land in the occupied West Bank and keeping Gaza in a concentration camp. So under these conditions, no, unless Israel undergoes regime change or radical de-radicalization, there's no hope of negotiating with them. I got a little angry over the bellicosity of Netanyahu

and these two assassinations. In a recent interview with John Amirsham, or Professor Amirsham, I didn't get angry at him. We both got angry at the same thing. But you'll appreciate what I suggested might be a solution to this problem. Chris, number 15. Is there anything the Israeli government could do that would cause the American government to say enough is enough? Not that I can think of. I hope I'm wrong. Or would it take a President Max Blumenthal before something like that is going to happen? Well, it would be very nice if Max was elected president and he could override Congress

at every turn and then execute a more rational policy toward Israel. But as you and I both know, that's not going to happen anytime soon. What would it take for the donor class or their obsequious servants in the Republican Party and in the Democratic Party to say enough is enough? Or is that never going to happen? i think it's never going to happen it's never going to happen at least under our current conditions you know there would need to be a massive massive massive movement public movement in the us way bigger than we have now to compel congress to actually follow international law follow uS. law and cut off military support to Israel and compel Israel to stop its occupation and mass murder campaigns against Palestinians. But under current conditions,

we have the power of the Israel lobby. You have Congress fully in lockstep with Israel. You have no serious differences between the two major parties when it comes to Israel-Palestine. If you listen to Trump, his only criticism of Biden appears to be that Biden isn't bellicose enough in supporting Israel, although he sometimes blurts out the truth also that Netanyahu doesn't want peace, which is refreshing as opposed to the Biden administration who pretend as if Netanyahu does. But still, when it comes to substantive policy, you have no difference between the two. So under these conditions, it seems very difficult to expect anything to change.

I wonder if Netanyahu was aware of your presence amongst the demonstrators when he attacked the demonstrators, but in so doing used a phrase which is the name of your podcast. Chris, can we run that, please? For all we know, Iran is funding the anti-Israel protests that are going on right now outside this building. Not that many, but they're there and throughout the city. Well, I have a message for these protesters. When the tyrants of Tehran who hang gays from cranes and murder women for not covering their hair are praising, promoting and funding you, you have officially, that's my friend Aaron Maté's podcast. Of course, he wouldn't refer to you as a friend.

What was it like amongst the demonstrators? And how many of them do you think were funded by the government of Iran? It was very heartening to be amongst the demonstrators. There was a lot of people. I don't know the exact count, but it was in the thousands or tens of thousands, surrounded by police who even came from out of state, including New York. And Max Blumenthal was making a lot of jokes to the NYPD, asking them for directions to the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building.

Why was the NYPD there? Just so New York City can waste its budgetary dollars by proving its government's loyalty to Netanyahu. Yes, exactly right. As a show force to say that, you know, if you exercise your free speech to protest this foreign leader who is carrying out mass murder with U.S. weapons, we're going to deploy state security to intimidate you. Donald Trump or Joe Biden travels from the White House to the Capitol, I can't imagine the NYPD is on the side of the road. No, certainly not. No. But Netanyahu is deemed to be a higher level of worthy of more protection. And that's why Mike Johnson referred

to him as his excellency. And again, dozens of standing ovations. But it was a very heartening experience. And I would bet the number of protesters funded by Iran is zero. Why would you need Iran funding to oppose mass murder and deliberate starvation and the deliberate fueling of a health crisis such as reintroducing polio to Gaza as Israel has done? Why would you need a cent from anybody to go out and oppose that? And it was striking that Netanyahu in his address, and Max von Wintel has pointed this out, spent a lot of time on the protesters.

If they were so insignificant, as Netanyahu claimed, and so small in number, why did he devote so much of his speech to attacking? Oh, I think you guys. And I think he realizes the very thin ice he's on with large segments of the population fed up with him and his government and funding all their atrocities. And I think to try to paint them all as being in the pocket of Iran was his way of demonizing protesters and trying to tamp down any thought of listening to them. Because otherwise, why would he spend so much time talking about them and lying about them? It said to me that he's actually fearful of U.S. public opinion. Our show, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, was among the demonstrators. He says it was more than 50,000. He also claims to be pretty good from his experience in the government at estimating crowd sizes. That's a significant number, I would think. My hat was off to the only Republican that didn't show. I know he's a friend of mine, but my hat is still off to him, Congressman Thomas Massey. There were 100

Democrats that didn't show, even though most of them voted to give Netanyahu all the money he wanted. At least they had the courage at this instance, including Kamala Harris, not to show. The Speaker of the House threatened to arrest members of Congress who booed Netanyahu. You could cheer all you want. They gave him 58 standing ovations, one longer than a minute, in a 55-minute speech. Yet, one member of Congress sat there quietly with a placard saying, war criminal. And my hat was off to her as well. Do you think that the whole purpose of this was for domestic Israeli political purposes, or do you think he got together with the powers that be behind closed

doors and said, we're going to have this problem with Hezbollah and I need to know that your aircraft carriers will be available to us? That's a great question. I would bet it's all of the above. Certainly, Netanyahu received such a warm welcome from everybody. He must have felt emboldened to do exactly as he proceeded to do, which is carry out these assassinations in Lebanon and Iran. And certainly, he also needed to shore up domestic support in Israel because there is growing protest against him. It's so obvious that he doesn't care about the Israeli captives in Gaza. So he's faced pressure over that and showing that he has the support of Israel's main and really only important ally, which is the U.S., I think would help him domestically.

There's also a certain arrogance with him. He loves to come to the U.S. and flaunt the impunity he has, and he loves to meddle in the U.S. as well. I recall that during the negotiations over the Iran nuclear deal, he was invited to give an address to Congress, and even though it was a total insult to the Obama administration, he went ahead and did it just to show that he's not going to be taking orders and he's not going to be intimidated by even the people footing

the bill for him, which is what the U.S. does. So I think there's a certain arrogance to him as well. And he loves the display of being treated as the president of the U.S., which is what he was. I believe Andrea Mitchell of MSNBC said that this sounded like a State of the Union address.

And Daniel Love loves that. union address and then it was that it did and it was treated uh uh i forget whose word this was it might have been scott ritter or colonel mcgregor uh no it was jeff sachs he was treated rapturously i mean they just treated him as if he were an angel descending from heaven. What is the state of Israel today? Is it not the case that the IDF is exhausted, that the economy is in shambles, that many small businesses have closed, and many investors are taking their substantial investments elsewhere. Yeah, it is facing all those things, but there also is just a huge current of chauvinism and supremacy, which compels people, as we saw recently, to go and try to protest the fact that there were some soldiers being

detained because they raped Palestinian prisoners. And the base or the facility where they were being held was stormed by radical protesters trying to free these prisoners because these protesters insist on the right for Israeli soldiers to sexually assault and rape Palestinian prisoners. There also was even a debate inside the Israeli parliament over whether or not Israeli soldiers should have the so-called right to rape. So this is a fanatic society that is driven by its own supremacy.

And it's very dangerous when even though their troops are exhausted, they do have nuclear weapons, they have an endless supply of U.S. weaponry that they can just drop on Gaza without having to send any soldiers in on the ground. And as we're seeing now in Lebanon, they don't seem to be afraid of a wider war now with Hezbollah. I'm assuming that they're hoping that the U.S. will go in and defend them if there is such a conflict

because I don't think Israel wants to fight Hezbollah on its own, because Hezbollah can actually fight back. But they're so fanatical, they're willing to risk it in the hopes that Biden will bail them out. And in Israel's defense, that's a pretty safe bet, based on how Biden's acted so far, giving them his unconditional support. The debate in the Knesset was over immunity for the rapes. The rapes also involved forcing objects into the Palestinians' bodies. I don't want to get too graphic, but it was disgusting and repellent. And the other part of the debate was whether or not Palestinians could be executed with a bullet to the head, without a charge, without prosecution, without conviction,

just because, according to Ben-Gavir, there's a shortage of beds. Beds, that would be what they tie these Palestinian prisoners to, blindfolded and with just a diaper on. That's their existence in these jails, and there aren't enough beds with which to do that, and he wanted the Knesset's authority to execute them. This was a Likud proposal. I don't know if there's enough votes for it to pass. I don't know how the Knesset works. Does Netanyahu have to agree or sign off on it like the American president does, or can he veto it could he possibly uh defend a legislation like this

well given who nanya who is and who he's in league with yeah I wouldn't be surprised if he does um this country is just off the deep end and it raises questions for U.S politicians uh people like Joe Biden and Kamala Harris like to talk about our shared values with Israel. Antony Blinken says the same thing, too. I mean, they all do, actually. I shouldn't single out individuals. They all do. What are these shared values exactly?

Like, I'd love to hear one value that Israel embodies that we feel we want to hold up as well. Is it the right to rape prisoners? Is it introducing polio to Gaza, slaughtering tens of thousands of people, including women and children? I mean, what are the shared values between the U.S. and Israel that we're supposed to be so staunchly behind when Israel every day shows us a new level of barbarism. And ironically, in his speech, Netanyahu cast his conflict with Hamas and its allies as one of civilization versus barbarism. Yeah, he's right, except he's the one representing barbarism here. And unfortunately, we're fully in lockstep

with him. Couldn't have said it better. Thank you, Aaron. Thanks for your time and your insight as always. I hope you can come back again next week. Of course. Thank you, Judge. Maybe we can do a segment with you and Max together. That'd be a lot of fun. That'd be great. Max is

tough to schedule things with, but I guess you could do it. He's worth waiting for. Thank you, Mr. Friend. Have a nice evening. Thank you, Judge. You too. Okay. And coming up tomorrow at 3 o'clock in the afternoon, if he shows, he'll be here. The aforesaid stated and aforeloved Max Blumenthal

at three o'clock tomorrow afternoon. At four o'clock tomorrow afternoon, the Intelligence Community Roundtable with Larry Johnson and Ray McGovern. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. I'm