Judging Freedom - COL. Lawrence Wilkerson : Is Netanyahu Getting Desperate?

Episode Date: April 2, 2026

COL. Lawrence Wilkerson : Is Netanyahu Getting Desperate?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, April 2, In 2006, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson will be with us in just a moment on this intriguing topic. Is Netanyahu starting to panic? But first this. Don't you just cringe when people say, I told you so. Sorry, I told you. Gold and silver would reap the benefits due to excessive money printing, inflation, and global uncertainty.

It's here. It's happened. Gold and silver have reached all-time highs. Did you call Lear Capital and buy some? It's not too late. Experts are predicting higher prices ahead. Why? Nothing has changed.

Geopolitical chaos, cost of living crises, and a weaker dollar are driving central banks to boost their gold reserves. Forecast suggests gold could hit $6,000 an ounce and silver $200 in ounce. Even Morgan Stanley ditched the 6040 rule for 60, 2020, putting 20, 20%, putting 20%, into precious metals. They're getting educated and you should too. Call the best in the business and the people I trust, Lear Capital, get their reports, get the facts, get some gold and silver. Tell them the judge sent you and get up to $20,000 in bonus gold or silver. Call 800, 511, 4620 or go to Learjudsonap.com. Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, always a pleasure, my dear man. Thank you for joining us. Before we get to

what we know about the beating that Israel is taking and the desperation of Benjamin Netanyahu. Did President Trump last night persuade you of the wisdom of his decision to invade Iran? Not at all. I didn't listen. And at 4 a.m. this morning, I got a condensation from a friend. And then I turned on Foreign Minister Abbas Arachi and listened to him for about 45 minutes in exquisite language. explain why Donald Trump is a fool. Can Trump? Well, can is not fair to you. Has Trump made the case for war?

No, I don't think so at all. He's tried desperately. He's assigned everything in the world from state sponsor of terrorism, which Iran is certainly not. In fact, of those states in the world who may at one time or another over the last half century sponsored a terrorist group, Iran would be at the bottom. incidentally Israel would be at the top and the United States would be right there with it.

And I'm using the definition of terrorism that we invented in the Bush administration. So most of the things he said, he said before, they are just as useless now as they were before. And in many respects, they're just as curious because as I was explaining earlier on another podcast, we know these military movements that are taking place or not taking place.

We know about the retreat of Ford, for example, back to Norfolk, and other things like that. And we're puzzled because we don't see any coherent military operation going on. What we see is chaos. And let me give you an example of the chaos and Marco Rubio's negligence and Pete Hegas, doubling down on that negligence. When Bahrain was struck and virtually eliminated from the state powers of consequence in the Persian Gulf, we evacuated our people so fast that all they could take was a little kit bag. Now 2,000 of those, 2,000 judges have landed at Norfolk, and they're being taken care of by the citizens of Norfolk and Salem and Chesapeake and other places in that region,

not by the Navy because they have no quarters, they have no place for them. They weren't scheduled to come back. And I suspect this chaos is going on throughout the military complex, and we're just not hearing about it. These people had to get out. They were going to die if they didn't get out. So they had to get out. And they were given no prior warning whatsoever.

Jimmy Webb, you knew his father, probably still do, the former secretary of the Navy. And Jimmy is a Marine who regrets his duty in Iraq just told us, There's no question in his mind, but that Gerald R. Ford, the largest and most expensive aircraft carrier in the world, was sabotaged by a naval personnel who had just had enough. Are you surprised to hear that? Not at all. Not at all. I mean, you don't want to piss off, pardon my French, sailors on a ship that's so big that if you lose one, you'll be searching for a week to find him. You just don't want to do that. submarines are a little bit different, but they have their own quality too, but you just don't want to do that.

You have a real job as the captain of a carrier. An embark flag, different thing altogether, but an admiral on board the carrier because the group is commanded by a carrier. But the carrier is commanded by a Navy captain. They are top of the Navy crust, if you will. And they know that this is one of the most difficult jobs in the world. So anything that adds to the lowering of the morale of those sailors, they're on like, you know, the proverbial do-do-do. And in this case, they couldn't curb it because it's just so bad. On Iran's ballistic missiles and these phantom nuclear weapons, I'm not going to subject you to a lot of Trump, but this is one from last night.

This is one clip I'd like you to comment on. It's less than a minute. Chris, cut number four. They were also rapidly building a vast stockpile of conventional ballistic missiles and would soon have had missiles that could reach the American homeland, Europe, and virtually any other place on Earth. Iran's strategy was so obvious. They wanted to produce as many missiles as possible, and they did with the longest range possible,

and they had some weapons that nobody believed they had. learned that out. We took them out, we took them all out, so that no one would really dare stop them. And they're raised for a nuclear bomb, a nuclear weapon, a nuclear weapon like nobody's ever seen before. They were right at the doorstep. Why would anybody believe him, rather than his director of national intelligence, whose intelligence services have almost unanimously denied and defied what he just said? That's a good question. Judge. I don't think he cares. He signaled before that he doesn't care about what Tulsi says or about anybody in the intelligence community. Let's just examine some of those lies, though, and they are patent

lies. Let's look at Korea, for example, North Korea, Pyongyang, got a nuclear weapon, had a nuclear weapon for quite a while now, since 2002, at least when they told us they had them. Have warheads, can match those warheads with missiles and could hit California for sure, and we think now they could probably hit Washington, D.C. Anybody talking about them? Why are we not concerned about them? I would say they're more a criminal state than any other state in the world. Why are we not concerned about them? Because they know Pyongyang and the North Korean part of the peninsula would disappear if they shot a missile at us. That's called deterrence. We lived on. it for about 70 years. Why the hell doesn't deterrence work, even if it were true that Iran has

these kinds of missiles? And oh, by the way, if you destroyed them all, as you just said, how come a whole bevy of them just hit Israel and smacked a bee Jesus out of Israel? Because Trump is listening to Netanyahu. He's not listening to his own professionals. And increasingly, I think Hegseth. I do. I think Hegseth is the Sith Lord's, Darth Vader. I know you're old enough to know that. I am. I do remember Darth Vader. And of course, I, as you know, worked with Pete. He was not a madman or a monster when I worked with him. This side of him that has come out praying.

Power and prayer. The deaths of others is reprehensible. Can't be received well by the troops, Larry. No, it's not. I have not heard troops talk about it. Secretary of Defense since McNamara. And they talked about McNamara in Vietnam when I was there, very, very violently. And it was a morale problem from time to time. Now they're talking about Higgs at that place.

Well, Colonel, what purpose is served by the, or was even served by the now nearly totally destroyed U.S. basis in the Gulf? at a point in time, even though I was adamantly against it, and so was Powell when it first started. They showed that we understood that when we took Saddam Hussein out, we had to become the balancer ourselves. If we were going to treat Iran as an inimical power, as antithetical to our interests in the Gulf, which was hard to get away from, Congress passed the Iran and Iraq Liberation Act, after all. If we were going to do that, then we had to become the balancer.

So we began to flow forces actually onto the ground and, you know, the port like Bahrain for the Fifth Fleet into the region. A huge mistake in my mind. I think we should have just let the balance go imbalance and seen what happened and still had forces offshore in case we had to weigh in heavily. When we decided to go on the ground, we corrupted our whole presence in that. region and now we're paying for it. We're paying for it dearly. Colonel, how reckless would you say, and I'll put in the word incompetent, but please choose the adjective that you wish, was the Pentagon's preparation or lack of preparation for this war? Terrible, terrible. 2,000 sailors, just land. I don't, I've been on so many podcasts this morning,

Judge, forgive me if I repeat something, but 2000 were not alerted to anything, but put as much as you can in your kit bag and come with me. And now they're descending on Norfolk with no one to take care of them because the Navy has no facilities for them. And if it weren't for the citizens of Norfolk and Surrey and Chesapeake and Hampton Roads, taking care of them, at least on an interim basis, they would have no bed to sleep in, no food to eat, no clothes to wear, no sun. no brushing teeth or anything else because they didn't do anything about it. They didn't warn them at all. And when they got devastatingly struck in Bahrain, they had to be evacuated immediately. I suspect this is going on in other places too. And these troops are arriving in Conis, the United States, in essence, with no preparation

having been made for their coming. Now, the Army has a little bit better. The Marines have a little bit better situation because they have barracks and things they can put them up in. The Navy just doesn't have the facilities to maintain troops on shore who should be on ships or overseas. They just don't. So it's citizens in Virginia who are taking care of these people. Wow. What purpose would be served or how wrong would it be to introduce boots on the ground in the Iran War now, Colonel? Well, there's nothing that tells me. that I see happening right now, whether it's alerting the forward deployed me in Naha Okinawa,

or it's alerting the one in Southern California or the Rangers in Washington or you go through the litany 82nd airborne and such. There's nothing that shows a coherent plan, nothing whatsoever. This all looks like we've been talking about this a lot in the retired military community. It all looks like fainting and it looks like really inept fainting too because the Iranians have proven again and again, they're not stupid. They're pretty smart, very smart in some instances. I just listened to Arachi, for example, giving an interview to Al Jazeera English, and it was quintessential Sergei Lafrof or Wang Yi. I mean, this guy has really got his act together in English or Farsi. And he outlined how Whitkoff has not talked to a single Iranian,

not a single Iranian, and I believe him. He's talking to, intermediaries, sometimes third and fourth level intermediaries. And he comes back and gives Trump a cabinet briefing in front of the American people that's just bold, because he hasn't talked to anyone. And Arachi was very specific about what the conditions for Iran to halt this conflict are, particularly against Israel. And there's no way in the world that these conditions are going to be met by this current regime in either Tel Aviv or Washington. So that means we got an internal conflict.

What are we looking at? We're looking at $200 a barrel for WTI and Brent crude. We're looking at an utterly destabilized world economy. And Trump is talking about the straight-of-humus doesn't matter to us because we have our own oil. Well, I got news for you, Mr. President. The straight-of-hormuz is very important to 60% of the world, and you're going to find out how dependent you are on that 60%. Just keep on going.

It's almost as if he lacks an understanding of basic economics 101 when it comes to how you evaluate the price of oil. Colonel RT just posted Iran launches Wave 90 Phase 3 missiles at the Amazon data center in Bahrain, which was destroyed. Oh, that's really bad news. That's a target that was on their second tier list.

Let me back up and explain. The first tier list of targets that was struck with devastating accuracy and disruption was targets that they had picked out to hit that were basically U.S. targets. They might have been in Saudi Arabia. They might have had some incidental damage to Saudi facilities and such. They were in Bahrain, for example, destroyed the largest refinement facility in the Gulf, but they really were hitting the Fifth Fleet headquarters, and they knew they had to do that.

So that's the first tier, which they did extremely well. The second tier are economic targets and they are regional targets belonging to the Saudis, the Emirates and such. And they are devastating if they hit them all with the accuracy they did the others because they will spiral the world into global depression. Wow. Colonel, I'd like to play for you, if you may have seen it, a 90-second clip from a man you and I admire very much, Professor John Mearsheimer. This has gotten over a million views on a couple of Twitter places where we've posted it. And I'd like your thoughts on it. It's very strong and very direct, Chris. We didn't even make any attempt to argue that the Iranians had done something militarily to precipitate our attack on Iran.

There's no provocation here. We just decided we were going to go out and we were going to whack the Iranians, both last June and again, this time. Furthermore, both the Israelis and the Americans are running around the world, assassinating leaders. This was not something that the United States engaged in in large part, or certainly in an overt way in the past. And here we are. And furthermore, there's the Gaza genocide, right? The Israelis, here's an apartheid state executing a genocide in Gaza, and we're complicitous in that genocide. If there were Nuremberg trials, right, where the Israelis and the Americans were brought, before the court, President Trump, along with President Netanyahu, and many of their advisors, would be hanged, right? This is a genocide. Is it not? It is a genocide. What did we do in 1945 with those

Germans who executed a genocide in Europe and who were not only accused of executing a genocide, but those German leaders were accused of launching a war of aggression. It bears, remarkable resemblance to what we and the Israelis have now twice done against Iran. Colonel R. President Trump, Prime Minister Netanyahu and Secretary Hague Seth, candidates for prosecution for war crimes. John is absolutely right. And had he had more time, he could have marshal a wealth of other evidence to that effect. And yes, they are. Will it ever happen? As Mao Cetong said, international law comes out of the barrel of a gun. We have a gun. It's not the biggest anymore, though. And we should be worried.

We should be worried because I suspect that one day we will be hauled, we will be hauled before the world's power of justice, such as it is. Whether it will be Trump and Hexeth and the crew here, one wonders, one hopes it would be them. But there are a half. to be some accountability down the road somewhere. Otherwise, we are off for the races to a totally chaotic world. Before I ask you directly about Prime Minister Netanyahu, who by the way, went to the floor of the Knesset to vote in, you know, he's a member of the Knesset, to vote in favor of legislation imposing the capital punishment of hanging only on Palestinians who are convicted by military tribunal, is not on Israelis or convicted of the same crime, something

he never does unless the vote is so close that his vote is needed. But before we get to him, here's a footage from a city east of Tel Aviv just posted that Chris found he's still getting it ready for us, showing debris from Iranian missiles. Apparently, the Iranians, that's nighttime in Israel, as we speak. It shows streets flooded after debris from an Iranian ballistic missile struck and burst a local water sewer pipeline during the attack. Eyewitness videos and Israeli media confirm no injuries, just massive infrastructure damage and sewage spilling into a road with parked cars.

there. There you have it. How dangerous will Netanyahu be when he's desperate, Colonel? Very, very. This hoisting the champagne glasses that I understand happened after that law you were talking about. Yes, yes. By the way, I don't know if Netanyahu wore this, but Ben Gavir, who introduced the legislation, had a lapel pin on in the shape of a hangman's noose. That would be Ben Gavir. That's the site of. You know, the guy was convicted by the Israeli courts of terrorism and being a criminal and was headed to jail and may even have served, I forget.

And Netanyahu rescued him, brought him up, made him his security head. But yes, you're absolutely right. And Netanyahu is hiding a lot of this. I looked at the stats two days ago on hospitalizations of people from the missile fire. are 5,917. And then I found a passage in Horat's that verified that number. I think I got it right. It was 5,900 and something.

And Netanyahu immediately reacted with, well, only 117 or left in hospital. The rest went home. I wanted to ask, did they go home with an arm and a leg missing or what? Because there's a huge number of Israelis in hospitals because of the shelling. and you understand that they're 99% of the time underground in very, very solid bomb shelters. That's a lot of casualties for that sort of situation. There's the lapelpin that Ben-Gabier, half of whose face you see as the first of those three people. That's the man that should be before the bar.

First of all, he should be before the bar. Yeah. How bad of our own casualties been? Colonel McGregor, Colonel McGregor, said that the Pentagon's almost as bad as the IDF when it comes to hiding our own casualties. How many injured, how many killed in action? Do we know, Colonel Wilkison? But Doug knows we hit them in World War II. We hit them in the Pacific.

We hit them in Europe. Yes, he said that. Yeah, we did. And we just don't like to, you know, military officers don't like to say that they had 78,000 casualties in a single battle. So I think right now we're hiding them to the extent that we're probably in the couple, three, maybe even 400 figure. And I don't know how many of those are really serious and how many of them are just, you know, return to the battlefield in six weeks or whatever. But I'm hearing from places like Launstool, which is our ongoing movement hospital in Germany, which we've cleared out. You probably know, no civilians can go there because we're expecting a lot of casualties.

And other places like Walter Reed, the National Military Medical Center, have contacts there. And what the flow will eventually be, I don't know, because most of them are overseas right now in regional hospitals. But I think the casualty count's going to go up. You watch those AWACs get hit at Prince Sultan, and I couldn't watch the second round of films that came around without seeing a couple of people getting caught in the fireball from the AWACs being hit by the missile. So there are casualties.

Now, those might have been Saudis. They could have been Saudi maintenance crew or whatever. But I suspect there are some Americans that are getting hurt, and we just don't know about it, and they're hiding it. Here's President Trump's most recent post and boast.

The biggest bridge in Iran comes tumbling down, never to be used again, much more to follow. It is time for Iran to make a deal before it is too late and there is nothing left of what still could become a great country

President Donald J. Trump. So he's boasted. about the destruction of an exclusively civilian infrastructure. It looks like a bridge over a valley of homes and a waterway. And Arachi said very clearly ceasefire, cessation of hostile attitude and reparations. He said some other things too, but I'm concentrating on the reparations. Donald, you're going to rebuild that bridge. The only way you're going to get out of this mess in a sane,

sound fashion is you're going to provide reparations. And I'm sure that bridge, knowing how much it meant to the Iranians and the engineering feat and putting it together, it was all for civilian traffic. There wasn't any military significance to it whatsoever. You're going to rebuild that bridge, Donald. Wow. I just learned that my newsmax colleague, John Huddy, was forced to take cover as sirens were. wailing in the middle of the night in Tel Aviv.

Oh, Colonel, thank you very much for your time. There's John. We got to meet some time in the future before I pass out of this world at a better time. Well, if you're going to be up here,

let me know. If not, I'll meet you halfway and come down to D.C. Or come right to your abode. Definitely need to see you again, Colonel. Thank you very much for your time. time for your courage, for your intellectual honesty. All the best. Happy Easter to you, and we'll look forward to seeing you next week. Same to you, and thank you for what you're doing.

Thank you, Carl. Take care. Coming up tomorrow, Good Friday, but we'll be on, at least by East Coast time after the Good Friday liturges are over. 530 in the afternoon, the Intelligence Community Roundtable with Larry Johnson and and Ray McGovern and they will have a lot to talk about. Thank you for watching. Justin Apolletano for Judging Freedom.