Judging Freedom - [BOMBSHELL] - Max Blumenthal: Netanyahu Plotting.

Episode Date: April 23, 2025

[BOMBSHELL] - Max Blumenthal: Netanyahu Plotting.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

you Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Wednesday, April 23rd, 2025. My dear friend Max Blumenthal joins us now. Max, thank you for your time. I want to talk to you about Secretary of Defense Hegset. I want to talk to you about Iran. And I want to talk to you about Yemen, particularly the interview that you did with Mr. al-Bulkati from Ansar al-Ala. Fascinating, fascinating stuff. This question may seem a little off the wall, but I've been asking everyone this week, is the death of Pope Francis of any geopolitical significance whatsoever in Israel?

Well, the Israeli Foreign Ministry retracted its statement of condolences. Oh Lord, why? condolences. Why? Mourning the Pope. I don't know, they deleted their tweet mourning him. And there was celebration on Jewish nationalist telegram channels in Hebrew of the Pope's death. Pope Francis, who was involved with the Argentinian junta, which during Operation Condor in South America was disappearing many Jesuit priests who were sheltering dissidents and socialists that these US-backed fascistic regimes were hunting down and disappearing. Pope Francis at that time, he was a much younger man, collaborated and this was a guilt that stayed with him throughout his life. It was a heavy burden and his way of unburdening himself of this guilt

was to take some very progressive positions on the geopolitical stage, opposing war, meeting with Ayatollah al-Sistani in Iraq, the major Shia cleric in Iraq in a very respectful and humble way, and towards the end of his life, every day Pope Francis would phone the St. Porphyrios Church, which was planted in what is now the Gaza Strip during the 8th century, I believe, by Porphyrios himself. And he was checking in on this congregation that was under siege, where if you walked out of that church, everything around it was in rubble, and members of the congregation had been killed by Israeli snipers and that was his daily task. So there are a lot of people attacking Pope Francis for various reasons on culture war issues. No one hated him more than Israel. You are so smart educating me on things

that I should have known. I honestly thought you were gonna say, Judge, there's no significance to his death in Israel. They're Jewish there, don't we have something better to talk about? But yet again, the depth of your knowledge is extraordinary. I knew about the phone calls because one of the recipients of those phone calls, Cardinal Pizzabella, is one of the papabile,

one of the people who is being talked about to replace Francis. I did not know about his involvement with the Argentine juntas. I knew he was a Peronist, and I'm happy for his efforts to rid himself of that guilt. He did say something really weird in February. We need an investigation to determine whether or not there is genocide going on in Gaza. What? Where have you been for the past two years? But OK, he was dying and maybe his senses weren't that sufficient. dying and maybe his senses weren't that sufficient. The question is what would someone like Pope John Paul or Cardinal Ratzinger, what would

they have said? And I think they would have taken a more pro-US line. Probably. Probably. I would love to have seen Francis send Cardinal Perlin, the Secretary of State, right to Netanyahu's face and say, stop, the world wants you to stop, you're a criminal, but didn't happen. Here's Ambassador Charles Freeman on a topic that you and I are about to discuss. I expect you'll agree with what he says. Chris, cut number 18.

Well, I have to say he was more successful as a talking head with greasy hair than he is as Secretary of Defense and the fact is that sharing this kind of information with your wife and others on a signal call, they have no need to know this information. It puts it in jeopardy. It risks the lives of those carrying out a military operation. This is the behavior of a small boy posting to the internet. How do you read the affair, Hegseth? Well, a lot of Hegseth supporters in MAGA are trying to frame

it as a deep state attack and that these are all just fabrications and that the deep state wants him out of the way so it can attack Iran and you know I wish that I could see it that way but Chas Freeman is right Pete Hegseth is in over his head I mean even you know I hate agreeing with neocons who say this about Pete Hegseth, but it's just so obviously true. He has no idea what he's doing. He's never run the world's largest, he's never run anything that would provide him with experience to run the world's largest bureaucracy. And so he put this clown in charge, his chief of staff named Joe Casper, who comes out of representative Duncan Hunter's office, Duncan Hunter being one of the biggest stooges for the military leadership and the military industrial complex in Congress, as well as a drunkard.

And Joe Casper himself was unable to complete his tasks inside the Pentagon. He was failing on the job. He showed up to one. He reportedly showed up to one meeting, high level meeting in the Pentagon and walked into the meeting and just said, I just took a massive shit. Everyone. And I mean, you know, engaged in bozo behavior was holding meetings at strip clubs reportedly.

He was engaged in bozo behavior, was holding meetings at strip clubs reportedly. So Hegseth saw this and tried to do an end around without firing Casper. He started resorting more to efficient, highly knowledgeable figures like Dan Caldwell, who's a significant figure because he was one of the major restrainers who comes out of the right but is suspicious of U.S. regime change wars, was opposed by the Israel lobby, made it in. And Joe Casper in his jealousy against, his jealousy of Caldwell and like two other figures that Hexa started relying on, went to the media accused them of leaking and violating leaking classified information leaking that Elon Musk had visited the Pentagon. So they were frog marched out under Hegseth's orders. Hegseth had completely lost control and then someone leaks

that there's a second signal group with Hegseth, his wife, his lawyer and his brother, and he's providing detailed flight plans. I mean, I feel like if you're a Starbucks barista and you reveal the secret macchiato recipe, you're going to get fired. But Pete Hegseth is somehow still in his job claiming everyone's against him. And the fact is it does strengthen the hand of the neocons in the White House, like Mike Waltz at the National Security Council. It does strengthen Netanyahu to have restrainers like Dan Caldwell just frog-marched out of the Pentagon and have this whole apparatus in chaos. But this is about incompetence. And who could have ever predicted this would happen under Hegseth?

I was surprised to read the transcript of one of those. I don't know if I read the transcript of it or if somebody leaked it where Hegseth was advising restraint. That's not the Hegseth I know. I was happily surprised to see that. And now you're telling me that the people that were around him that advised dissent have been pushed out for specious reasons. Yeah, Dan Caldwell just gave an hour and a half interview to Tucker Carlson, and you can see how well prepared he was for his job. He's a veteran. He'd worked with Hegseth at the nonprofit that Hegseth ran and then moved on to

defense priorities, which is a pretty serious lobbying group on Capitol Hill that wants a more streamlined Pentagon bureaucracy, doesn't want a trillion dollar Pentagon budget, doesn't want regime change wars, and was targeted by the main avenue of attack for the Israel lobby is this outlet called Jewish Insider. It's basically like an Israeli cutout. And they hammered Caldwell. They prevented Danny Davis, who I believe has been on your show from getting a post in the Pentagon where he really would have been a valuable fount of information. He's another veteran who saw- Strongly on the restraint side.

Strongly on the restraint side. But it's really, it's up to Hagseth to defend these, his personnel, his guys who have been loyal to him who have knowledge. Dan Caldwell's knowledge on Middle East on Iran is impressive. And he didn't, he allowed him to be fired. And now Hagseth is all alone and Joe Casper is probably going to be fired as well. And then maybe Hagseth is next. And who's behind Hags Seth, by the way? Oh, God only knows. Deputy Director of Defense, Steve Feinberg,

who is the CEO of Cerberus Capital, a private equity firm that has $60 billion in assets and has had major investments in DynCorp. I believe in Lockheed Martin, owns a port in the Philippines that arranges shipments of US weapons to confront China. I mean, he's a walking conflict of interest for the military industrial complex. And it seems to me that Feinberg was placed in his position as this billionaire in order

to convince or mollify senators like Lindsey Graham or Roger Wicker who are suspicious of Hegseth, that there would be a steady status quo hand who's fully invested in the financial objectives of the military industrial complex. And for all I know, Feinberg could replace Hegseth tomorrow. And who chose Feinberg? President Trump? Trump did. I mean, he's like one of Trump's, you know, buddies from the, from the private equity predator class. Right. This is a guy, you know, he does roll ups, like he monopol, he'll buy 30 healthcare companies

or senior homes and then roll them all up so there's no competition in the market and then begin reducing services. It's one of the sleaziest professions in human history and he's has a substantial influence over the Pentagon. Well, one of the viewers is making a suggestion of somebody who's interested in the job, which totally turns my stomach, Senator Cotton. That, of course, would be horrific. That would be neoconcentral right there. It would be. And Cotton has been proposed as defense, was initially proposed as a front runner for defense secretary. Trump was considering him. So it was like almost you'd think, Oh, it's a relief.

Pete Hagseth in there. Cause he's just going to do whatever Trump tells him. He's just a front man from the Fox news green room to the, or another figure from the green room to the white house or to the Pentagon. But I knew that Pete Hagseth wouldn't last long in this job. And if you go back to his confirmation hearings, it's pretty clear that he was in over his head. Yeah, yeah. They twisted the arm of Tom Tillis, the senator from North Carolina, who was a fierce opponent of Hegseth, who talked Hegseth's, one of his former wives,

into giving a lot of testimony against them. And then Tillis ended up voting for him and they had the 50 votes and the vice president broke the tie. Switching gears, I read in the Financial Times this morning where Yair Lapid, the opposition leader in the Knesset made a startling statement with respect to Netanyahu's administration of affairs in Israel. We will soon see Jews killing Jews. Do you know what he's talking about? Are things that bad domestically in Israel? Well, of course they are, and it wouldn't be anything new.

I mean Netanyahu incited the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin over the Oslo Accords. Netanyahu has polarized Israeli politics deliberately in order to maintain power longer than any other Israeli prime minister, and now you have a substantial segment of Israeli society which has been politically defeated by the nationalist right out in the streets shutting down traffic because they understand clearly that Netanyahu will do anything to prevent a hostage deal. It's a hostage deal that Hamas just offered, where they offered to release every single hostage in exchange for a permanent cessation of hostilities and an end to an Israeli presence

in the Gaza Strip. But ever since last summer, 2024, Netanyahu has been, after the military objectives for the Israelis were all achieved in Gaza, and a deal was clearly on the table, Netanyahu began deploying deceptions, leaking fake information to German tabloids like Bill and Jewish insider, and Jewish insider, or sorry, British pro-Israel publications that Yahya Senwar, then the leader of Hamas was planning to spirit hostages out of the Gaza Strip through the Philadelphia corridor into Egypt.

And that's why Netanyahu needed to continuously occupy the Philadelphia corridor, which prevented a hostage deal. And we just learned through an Israeli investigative report that a tunnel that was at the center of Netanyahu's presentation at that time to the Israeli public, which he said you could drive a jeep through and presented this photo of a jeep coming out of a tunnel in the Philadelphia corridor was actually a sand berm that the Israeli military had erected for propaganda purposes. So just one fraud and deception after another. Now you have this Qatar Gate scandal, which is roiling Netanyahu's administration, where members of his team, close inner circle, have

been exposed for being on the take from Qatar in exchange for propagandizing on behalf of Doha. And as long as the war continues and Netanyahu keeps the regional tensions at a, at least at a simmer, if not moving them towards a boiling point, then that scandal will not undo him. Ami Ayalon, the former head of the Shin Bet, Israel's general security service, said last weekend in the Financial Times that the war was basically over by last May or June a year ago. And ever since then Netanyahu has just been delaying it, which means playing with the lives of the Israelis that are left in Gaza, which is causing, again, a substantial slice of the Israeli public to demand his ouster.

Dan Haluetz, former Israeli Army chief of staff, said Netanyahu needs to be grabbed and taken physically out of the prime minister's office. Oh, good Lord. Chris, I don't know what the number is on our cuts, but I want to play for Max the female spokesperson for the Israeli Foreign Ministry. Iran cannot have nuclear weapons, and this is what's in front of us. We understand it's not just a threat to Israel, but to the entire world. What about Israel? Israel is not posing a threat to anyone. We don't have any ambitions in any other country.

Iran has ambition in the entire Middle East. Right. And so Iran is a threat to the entire world and Israel is at the front line, at the front line of stopping the worst enemy the world can... And I don't understand that question. Who's... With all respect, the question was not about Iran. The question was about Israel.

Who's Israel posing a threat on? Israel has never provoked, has never attacked unprovokably a neighboring country or someone else. This has always been on the defense of our country and our people. We have no ambition. Israel is the key for stabilizing the Middle East. So if Iran abandons its nuclear program, Israel will do the same? Israel is what's stabilizing the Middle East.

Iran is what's destabilizing, arming, and terrorizing the entire population around. And so this arming Iran is not Israel's interest, it's your interests. It's international communities' interests. Try and imagine what is happening right now in the Middle East with Iran's nuclear weapons. It's not just a threat on Israel, it's a threat on the entire world. Regrets. One is that you were not there in that room to interrogate her, and the other is that we don't have the two or three hours it would take to dissect and deconstruct the nonsense that came out of that woman's mouth. I mean... yeah, nice mashup by Chris to really capture the absurdity of it, proposing Israel as the stabilizing force in the Middle East that has

never attacked provocally. And this is in response to a reporter from RT asking, I think the most important question to ask any US State Department spokesperson or Israeli MFA spokesperson is Which country currently has nuclear weapons in the Middle East in the region and they can't answer the question So she was filibustering angrily breathlessly Because she could not address the question which is that Israel maintains over 250 nuclear warheads, which are produced at its facility, one secret, at Dimona, which is exempted from IAEA inspections.

And we can't really explain why it's gotten this exemption. Is it because of the Holocaust? I mean, what is the reason that they can then threaten the world with a nuclear Holocaust? But this is the most destabilizing factor in the Middle East aside from the structure, the political structure of Israel, which is based on Zionist ethnosupremacist lines. The nuclear weapons place everyone in the crosshairs, including Europe, which as Seymour Hersh revealed in the 70s, could be targeted through Israel's Samson option. If Israel feels like it is existentially threatened and the West cuts it off, it will use nuclear blackmail. Iran, if it gets white, why are we freaking out now about Iran having a nuclear program?

It's because if Iran manages to produce nuclear grade weapons, that can be, it can be a deterrent that will prevent regime change. And the real goal here is not to denuclearize Iran. For Israel, it is about protecting its own nuclear priorities so it can control the entire region and so that it can advance regime change against Iran and reduce Iran to a fourth-rate power that eventually normalizes with it, put it in the same position that Syria is in today. That's what this is about. If Iran develops nuclear weapons, that will actually

have a stabilizing effect because it will deter the most destabilizing force possibly on the planet, which that highly aggressive woman with a Rick James haircut represents. You recently interviewed, I believe you interviewed him, Mohammed Al Bukhati, addressing American support for invasion of Yemen. Tell us about that and then we'll run a little clip from the interview. Well, now that the US is bombing Yemen, targeting civilians, and there's this reverberation in Washington of the Signal Gate scandal, which seems to be the only scandal about this war in which the U.S. is slaughtering

civilians, has bombed a civilian port in Ra's Issa, which serves two-thirds of Yemen, and in which a ground invasion of Saudi and Emirati mercenaries serving the interests of Israel may take place at any moment in Yemen, I thought it was important to go back to Mohamed al-Bukhaiti, who is the senior political officer in Ansarallah, the movement that controls the Yemeni territory that's under attack by the US and which is fighting to stop the genocide in Gaza. It was our third engagement and I think it was our best one, our most fruitful interview. Let me run the clip now.

Chris. We are ready for the battle even if we have to wage it on three fronts, whether they be internally, regionally or internationally. We are preparing for these new fronts because we are confident that the US will fail and its direct military operations will lead it to other options, whether these options include the targeting of Yemeni civilians or, when they tried that to throw the Saudis and Emiratis into Yemen or to move their mercenaries in Yemen. All these options of a ground invasion will be supported by US air support of course.

Let me also add that if the US moves their mercenaries, it will not play out according to their plan. The Yemeni people will not appreciate this and they will mobilize to destroy those playing defense for the Zionist entity. After all, the Yemeni people are eager to fight the Israelis more directly in order to support their people in Gaza. So using these options of different fronts won't help the Americans achieve any of their goals.

They will only lose their tools in the region. You the interviewer of that interview in that interview? Yeah, I conducted that interview and was able to do it thanks to the translation of my colleague Hekmat Abu Khattar. The Houthis or Ansar Allah have been portrayed as crazy in Western media. They have been labeled as terrorists by the U.S. government. And I think what you see from this interview is the logic which is rooted in historical analysis and I think a fairly realistic assessment of the political objectives of their historic adversaries.

The logic behind the Houthis or Ansarullahs attempt to impose a blockade in the Red Sea. Why are they doing it? Mainly for ideological reasons, because they believe that the oppressed in the world should be defended. It's a responsibility to protect operation, a humanitarian intervention, what I would call an actually principled R2P operation, because it's being done in defense of the most betrayed, oppressed, abandoned people on the planet in Gaza. And what they have said is, we are not seeking to attack US shipping. We're only going after Israeli shipping. It's been a largely bloodless operation, was, until the US commenced this Operation Rough Rider under Pete Haig, Seth. And they will end it as soon as the US enforces the ceasefire that it signed in January. In fact, it all ended and shipping was moving smoothly

until the US greenlit Israel's fracturing of the ceasefire and renewed bloodbath in Gaza. But also Yemen is facing, has faced down the might of the empire through the Saudi UK US assault, which ended under the Biden administration because they just couldn't defeat them. They just were losing on the battlefield. And that was a blow to American Empire because it showed that their partners in the region were weak and that the US wasn't going to be able to provide enough backing for them to justify the extortion money that they pay to the US, allowing them to have US basing in order to protect their oil fields. Now if they lose again here, what Buhayti is saying is it will be an even bigger blow

to US empire. It will expose the US as an empty suit, the emperor has no clothes because he can't protect all of these monarchies, which are basically glorified family business oil companies, and that they will actually have to start to negotiate with the Houthis, who are not Sunni, and so there's this antagonism and they will in turn also have to Move closer to Iran and work out a kind of regional Agreement and that's something the u.s. Does not want to see it's a divide-and-conquer strategy so that's why this war is so critical and an invasion as I said of Yemeni

Ansarallah held territory by em held territory by Saudi and Emirati mercenaries could begin at any moment and among those mercenaries are Al-Qaeda aligned fanatics. I don't know how this is going to end, but again the United States is committing war crimes. We know from the first signal transcript, the one that was leaked to Jeffrey Goldberg, that they attacked an apartment building because quote, a bomb maker was going to visit his girlfriend.

Pardon me when I talked about this. Yeah. Well, they said we're gonna kill the top missile guy, but they didn't, Mike Waltz didn't know who he was. Okay, let's say they got the top missile guy. Then the second ranking missile guy has been pretty effective because every two or three days, Ansarullah is able to launch one of their homemade Palestine ballistic missiles or Jaffa ballistic missiles towards Israeli territory. One was just intercepted over Haifa a few hours ago.

And this shows the failure of the United States. They have not been able to suppress Ansarullah's missiles. They have not been able to restore freedom of movement to the Red Sea. They have had to send a second aircraft carrier, the USS Carl Vinson, into southeastern Yemen in preparation for a ground invasion, which is a sign of desperation. The United States, with the most powerful Air Force and Navy in human history, is unable to defeat a locally armed force from one of the poorest countries in the world.

Max, thank you very much. Thank you for your time. Thanks for the breadth of your knowledge and for sharing all of it with us. We'll talk to you again soon, all the best. Thanks for the opportunity. Sure. I mean, the breadth of his knowledge is simply extraordinary. And we are thrilled to have him here coming up at three o'clock

this afternoon on the suppression of Christianity, especially Catholicism in its birthplace, Israel. in its birthplace, Israel. Phil Giroddi, Judging the Politburo for Judging Freedom. You