Judging Freedom - CPT. Matt Hoh : Israel’s Next Move Could Change Everything

Episode Date: April 21, 2026

CPT. Matt Hoh : Israel’s Next Move Could Change EverythingSee 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 Tuesday, April 21st, 2006, Colonel Karen Koukowski- joins us now. Paranolkoykowski, a pleasure, my dear friend, as always. Just a little breaking news. Reuters is reporting that the Iranian foreign minister says the U.S. blockade of Iranian ports is an act of war. He's right, isn't he? Yes. I mean, anywhere else, obviously, an act of war. When we do it, when the U.S. does it, it somehow justified or legal. I mean, the ship that they boarded last night was 400 miles from the Strait of Hormuz. Of course, we know that the blockade is not very effective because some 20 ships have come and gone since the institution of the blockade.

but under international law, a blockade like this is an act of war. Sure, sure. And it's not just an act of war against Iran. You could say, well, you know, we're fighting Iran. We bombed Iran, so we don't like Iran. We're going to blockade them. You're blockading our Gulf State allies as well. And they import, you know, they import much of it comes on ships, you know, their food, their supplies, all kinds of things that they need.

It is a, they are desert kingdoms and they don't, they don't, they need to import important things. So these humanitarian type of things, to blockade humanitarian stuff is a war crime, not just an act of war, but a war crime. So we're conducting war against the Arab states as well as Iran. Yeah. I'm thinking of what the U.S. government is doing to Cuba. Those are clearly war crimes. I mean, they're blocking food, oil, and. medicines. Yeah. It's so obscene how we have adopted the Israeli approach to hurting your neighbors.

You know, we think because Israel does it and Israel is our friend, somehow that's justified. And, you know, it really angers me when we call ourselves a Christian Judeo-Christian nation because there's nobody in our government that is following either Judeo or Christian standards. Oh, don't tell that to the Secretary of State who calls himself the Secretary of War. And if he takes his shirt off, you'll see all sort of religious symbols. Here's Foreign Minister Arachi. Blockading Iranian ports is an act of war and thus a violation of the ceasefire. Striking a commercial vessel and taking its crew hostage is an even greater violation.

He's correct about that. That's three days ago. Iran knows how to neutralize restrictions, how to defendants. its interests and how to resist bullying. P.S. It doesn't appear as though there's going to be, I'm making up the P.S. That's my own commentary. It doesn't appear as though there's going to be another round of negotiations as performative and fruitless as the first round was. Yeah. Yeah, that's what it looks like. I mean, you know, it's like the first, nobody wanted to be the first group in the air on their way to Islamabad.

even though Vance, you know, the Americans would have to fly quite a long way. But anyway, the whole thing's stupid anyway, because they were bringing Wittkoff and Kushner, again, who are totally not the right people to be negotiating anything for the United States. And so this was all not for real. I mean, it would have ended in nothing. And, you know, again, one more, it's one more example of how Iran is negotiating and operating from a position of not just, initiative, but a position of strength. So this is great. And that 400 miles, you know, 400 miles off, out into sea, is that as close as our Navy is willing to go? Because I thought,

I thought Trump said we sunk their Navy, you know, I mean, this whole thing is so incredibly from the American side. It's so made up. It's so contrived. I asked Matt, how this question, and he got a kick out of it. It is ridiculous. why would Iran want to negotiate with Natsyahu's puppets? That's right. And his response, and Max Blumenthal's response was, Judge, it's three puppets, not just two. Vance is a puppet on a string along with Whitkoff and Kushner. He really is.

And, you know, it's almost as if the first negotiation or the most recent ones where Vance was constantly, you know, he wasn't even authorized to me. make a deal. He had his two, he'd had his two Zionist watchers there with him. And if that wasn't enough, he still wasn't authorized to make decisions. He had to get on the phone and call back. And apparently, you know, we don't know when he called Netanyahu. But again, yeah, very ineffective, very ineffective. And it's, you know, we're not, nobody in the whole planet thinks. The United States is negotiating in good faith. Not now, not last week, not 10 months ago. We don't do that. We, you know, even, you know, I like to think that we had some, that Trump had some good luck in

Fairbanks, Alaska, or Anchorage, Alaska, I guess it was, where he met with Putin and they, you know, they tried to resolve the Ukrainian thing. And even that led to nothing. Even that, not in good faith, you know, picking up stuff, shaking hands, performative. Well, I don't know. The Iranians don't seem to want to negotiate. and you can't really blame them. Let me switch gears a little bit

because you've got this fascinating piece with an intriguing title at Judge Knapp and at Lou Rockwell. What do pirates eat? Is the government having difficulty feeding its troops in the Middle East? It looks like they are. Apparently, I mean, when the USA Today

newspaper runs pictures of empty plates and reports of no coffee on the whole entire ship. You know, this is insane. I mean, this is something, I think, military people, particularly in the Navy, you know, one of the things I remember back in the day, the Navy guys and my brother was in the Navy.

You know, they always had good food, they had plenty of it. It was like, you know, food's really important when on a ship, you know, the quality of it and quantity, because there's not much else going on. It's a source of a lot of things. It's not just nourishment.

It's more than that. And so for that to be sacrificed, it tells me our Navy's in bad shape. Are they unable to replenish the food? Did they not plan well? Well, clearly they didn't plan well. We know that. There's no aspect of this unwarranted attack on Iran that shows any planning at all. But to see our empty plates, it's just, it's insane.

And apparently the care packages, the mail is shut off. They don't want our sailors, our airmen, our Marines, our soldiers. to receive mail or care packages, which also are something very, very important to people when they're deployed. So we shut that off. I guess, you know, I guess Hedgeset doesn't think they're loyal enough. I don't know. I mean, this is insane. And, you know, hang on, Chris, can you put those photos up again? What are we looking at here, Karen? What is that? Well, they said it's mystery meat, but it looks like shredded beef. for shredded pork with tortillas,

but not even a full one. I think they're making one tortilla look like it's bigger than it is. And no vegetables and nothing else. So it doesn't look staged. And I don't know, I can't guarantee anything, but when the USA Today runs it as well as other American media, I think they probably did their homework.

I think they said the internet is off most of the time for the ships, But every once in a while it comes up and so they can get mail out. And this is how this got out. So you wonder what else they're hiding from us. Well, I don't. I think it's just about everything about this operation has been hidden from the American people. Well, what do we know about the two rescued flyers from the failed Isfahan rate?

I mean, I'm going to ask the most profound question of all. Do they even exist? Yeah, yeah. We don't have any names. We don't have anything. No, no, there's nothing. I don't think they exist. I think the whole thing was an Isfahan raid that went sour,

and they had to have some explanation for why they were in Iran, and so, you know, rescuing pilots works. Now, you know, I'm happy to be proven wrong. Show me the pilots. You know, I want to meet their families. I want to see them get the, you know, whatever military medals that they get a purple heart or something else. I want to see that given to them in the White House rotunda.

That sounds fine. Why not? Do it. Show me that. And I'll be wrong. But right now they've shown it. nothing. And somebody yelled out a question, a reporter, yelled out a question to Trump just about two days ago at the White House. And he was kind of walking away. And so he said, hey, how those, how those two rescued pilots are doing? And Trump looked for a minute, didn't say anything.

They're fine. They're fine. So, you know, I don't think they exist. I think they are, possibly Trump doesn't know. Maybe he believes that they're real. Maybe that's what they told Trump because apparently the fiasco of the operation was very bad for Trump. He took it very badly and they had to kick him out of the, kick him out of the war room or whatever. So I'm not sure what Trump knows. Clearly, you know, I just don't know. Why were three of the Army's top generals fired in the, including the cheapest staff, including the chief of staff, including and the number one general in the Army, fired in the middle of a war. Yeah. Well, you know, people speculate. We don't know for sure, but they were fired very

abruptly right before the Isfahan raid to get the dust, you know, that big failure. So probably they were opposed to it. But the fact that he also fired at the same time, the head of of Army Chaplain and the head of Army training and I don't know if it's recruitment, some, the Army Futures type command where they take care of the people. They fired the generals that are informing headseth and potentially Trump of the situation amongst the Army personnel. So that would include morale. That would include pushback against Christian nationalism

being forced down everybody's throat in the Pentagon and at all the bases. It would include reports of people trying to get waivers, faith-based waivers, trying to turn the papers in, get out of the army, all of these things that are bad news that we don't want to hear. And apparently Trump can't tolerate bad news. And so I guess you just kill the messenger. That's what they've been doing.

But I think some of it was a big part of it, I think, was pushback on the operation and how decisions are being made. And that's unusual to do that. It's unusual to do that during a war. And also, you know, I made a point in another article that, or maybe somewhere else, Stalin had done this years ago. at the beginning of when the Germans turned on him and he was fighting with Hitler. And he had to fire a bunch of his generals, but these generals that he had hadn't,

didn't have war experience. We did the same thing at the beginning of World War II. We had generals who didn't have current war experience, and we fired a bunch of them and promoted up people like Dwight D. Eisenhower, who was a lieutenant colonel when the war started. So you do fire guys that aren't performing in a time of war because you want the very best. Well, we're in a time of so-called war with Iran, and we're firing the very best and replacing them with suckups, replacing them with people who are willing to do anything that they're asked to do, regardless of the price, regardless of the legality. So, yeah, that's, you know, we're not really firing them for the same reason.

Trump is a, Trump requires psych offense. And the psych offense of Trump require their own support. It is said, it has been said for over a year that Hedgeseth is very nervous, that he'll be thrown under the bus, that he'll be replaced. And he doesn't want anything that looks like an appearance of weakness or failure. He doesn't like that. So anyway, again, none of it's good for America. None of it has anything. Whatever became of Admiral Holsey, who was in charge of the Navy for the area into the Caribbean, who retired.

before they started blowing up the speedboats. Yeah, exactly. Now, I haven't heard from him, but I think he is in touch with other, his companions, his compadres, his equals that are still in the military. But we haven't heard anything from him. But I clearly think that he resisted,

this is my opinion only, but I think he was resisting the war crimes that they were being told to conduct in the Caribbean by shooting people hanging off of boats. And Judge, you talked about this so much. That's a war crime. That is a war crime domestically or internationally. It doesn't matter. It's wrong.

You don't do it. And they were ordered to do it by Trump and Hedgeseth. And they expected, I guess, the general to do that. And I think that's why he pushed back. You know, he whether he thought it was right or wrong or he didn't want to face war crimes tribunal after. Afterwards, either way, he stood up for something that he believed was right. That's what I think. Colonel, who controls the Strait of Hormuz as we speak?

Yeah, I think we know it's Iran, and they have a plan to do it. They've been doing it. They are still doing it, and they're going to continue to do it. There's a great article out by Martin Seif, and you know him, and he just put an article out, And he compared what hedge set this is doing with the so-called blockade operation with something that a young Winston Churchill did in the Dardanelles in Turkey, which also was connected to the disaster of Gallipoli, the same operation. And it's pretty telling that when you have idiots making your strategy, you know, your strategy and implementing it. And no one is stopping them. this is the kind of thing that you get.

So, yeah, Iran has the upper hand clearly. They know what they're doing. And also, it's not just that. Consumers of oil and gas around the world, shipping agencies around the world, are happy to work with Iran, with whatever it is that they require. If it's a fee, if it's safe passage under Iranian permission,

whatever it is, they're happy to do that, okay? because that's how business works. It's only the United States in Israel that are panicking over this because we're insulted. We're insulted. Well, you know, don't start fights. You can't finish. And we can't finish this one. Obviously, even if we went nuclear, it would not be the end of it.

It would be the end of us, the end of Israel and the United States. So, yeah, again, we don't have people that can think in a security sense. They can't think strategically in Washington. We have people who are fantasists who think that Trump in particular believes bullying works in foreign policy. And it might have 200 years ago, but now we have the Internet, okay? Now we have people who can make Lego cartoons that take three minutes to explain three hours worth of what's going on in a very convincing manner. You can't bully in this environment. It all comes back to you.

So we are failing badly. We aren't. Trump is failing, and he's costing the American people, not just money, loss of economic growth, stagnation. He's costing us our reputation. And we won't get that back right away. You know, our economy may bounce back. It may not bounce back, but it may bounce back in a year or two. But we will not get a good reputation in the world for decades after this.

Right, right. Trump has given us. Congressman Roke, huh? a one-time student of Professor John Mearsheimer at the University of Chicago has made some very poignant observations. Here's one of them. This is from one of the Sunday talk shows. Chris, number seven.

Does anyone believe that we actually have more leverage of the Strait of Hormuz? We have less. China has more influence in Iran. And we've lost our entire moral credibility. We have a president of the United States threatening to wipe out Iranian civilization, and people think it's normal. And then you have a situation where our troops are at risk, where a president who campaigned on peace, is spending now $400 billion to spend more money on these wars. Why aren't we spending that on health care here, jobs here, child care here? Why aren't we addressing the needs of the American people?

I'm Team America. He seems to be more obsessed with the Middle East. Well, he's under the thumb of president. Prime Minister Netanyahu and his wealthy Zionist Acolytes in the U.S. That's the short answer. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Netanyahu is a huge, huge problem for the United States. And if we had one problem we could solve in the world for our own country,

that we are capable of solving, quite capable of solving, and that is the Israel problem, we could solve it if we wanted to do it. Okay, there's simple ways and there's more complex ways, but that is a problem that we in the United States can solve. And we're on our way to doing it the slow way, which is American people are basically learning to hate Israel for what it does, the way it behaves. They despise the government in Israel because it controls our government. It sends us into wars that we don't want and can't afford and are losing, by the way. So all of that stuff takes time. as we elect younger people who have come up understanding very clearly that the government of Israel is an ethno-fascist government, you know, and that's not part of our value system. We don't like that. Our support for Israel will fade away. Regardless of how many billionaires that live in America that want to buy politicians, it won't matter. The voters are not going to go for that. We're already seeing it. But there's a shorter way. There's a better way to solve that problem. That is to solve the problem politically, because it's a

political problem. You know, can Trump do it? Well, Trump could do it. You know, he can do a lot of things. All he has to do is, look, look, think about how Trump has thrown many of his most valuable MAGA supporters under the bus. Tucker Carlson, you name them, these guys, you know, Marjorie Taylor Green, all the people who really worked so hard to convince people that Trump would be a great president again, okay, and that we should vote, that he should get our votes and our support. support. And he has, can't take, they've criticized some of the things that he's done. So he's thrown them all under the bus. He can do that to Netanyahu. Okay. And he should do that to Netanyahu. He is capable of abandoning his friends, stabbing them in the back, throwing them under the bus,

running them over. He is capable of doing that. And that's what he needs to do to the Israeli government. They need to be treated like any other government. They need to be held to account by any other international law that we hold other countries. You're channeling Congressman Kahana again from the same interview, almost just what you said. Cut number nine, Chris. Young people in this country, when I met Netanyahu years ago, I said to him, Mr. Prime Minister, you may have won the battle. You've lost the war because you've lost the next generation in America.

We don't think you're acting morally. We have a sense that people in Palestine, they deserve justice. They deserve a state. And yes, we need to have a secure Israel, but not in Israel led by Netanyahu who killed 70,000 people in Gaza, not in Israel that is going to be raining bombs in Beirut and not a prime minister sitting in our situation room. Let me tell you what a Democratic president's never going to do. And Israeli prime minister is not going to be sitting in our situation room telling the American president what to do. Only Americans will be in that situation room. That is really, well, what he said was profound.

found and I applaud him. But that is really terrifying. Apparently, Trump didn't even sit at the head table, at the head of the table where he usually sits as if to symbolize his equality with Netanyahu in that room. They sat across from each other like he does with the vice president when they have a cabinet meeting. I don't want to get too into the symbols, but he should not have been in there. He doesn't have a national security clearance. You and I can't go in that role. And also, Israel, like we should be, puts Israel first. Okay, we should put America first. We should put our own country's interest first.

When we're in political decision-making situations like that, they've been elected by the American people. American needs, values, everything comes first. They're not necessary. We don't need Israelis in our office. Why are they there? Did we invite them? Did they force their way in?

It's not clear, but this shouldn't be tolerated. And the fact that we're talking about it is good because I think many people are shocked, absolutely shocked to hear that this is how we make our decisions in this country, particularly our decisions about war and peace. So it's hopefully people will wake up. And I think they are already waking up. That's really not the problem. But I think the decision makers and policymakers and the Pentagon and the CIA in the Congress,

those people have a special responsibility to deal with Israel in the way that it should be dealt with. And frankly, that is not as a dependent, not as a special case for aid and for military, not as a proxy actor in the Middle East to beat up on oil producing countries, nothing like that. It should be treated like any other country. And if they can't do that, then I think we will replace them all. This is unacceptable. It's come to a head, I think, in many ways. So now's the time to do that.

We've got to deal with Israel. And this, again, I'm echoing a little bit of what Joe Kent has said. He said, you know, the real problem is Israeli influence on our government, and particularly on our national security, strategy, policy, and actions. So we've got to solve that problem. And if it's not going to be solved by our politicians, then we the people will solve it. It'll take us a little bit longer, but we will solve it.

And this idea that Israel has a right to exist, well, they do, but they have no right to our money. They have no right to our weapons systems. They have no right to access our politicians. They shouldn't be electing politicians and bribing them. They have no right to bribe our policy. Remember Pap Buchanan's phrase. This goes back to 1990.

The Congress of the United States, is this rarely occupied territory. I mean, that sounds ridiculous, but it's true. You mentioned Joe Kent. He's on with us tomorrow. And I can't wait. I can't wait to ask him about the interactions with himself, the president, and Tulsi Gabbard.

Karen, thank you very much. A great conversation, my dear friend. You're always on top of your game. I prepare my notes to ask you questions about has fascism arrived in America because that was your piece, two pieces of I wake up this morning and there's a new piece about troops not eating aboard ship. God bless you for staying on top of all this.

Well, thank you, Judge. It's always a pleasure. See you again soon. Thank you. Tomorrow Wednesday at 8 in the morning, Gilbert Docterow at 9.30 in the morning from Tehran, our dear friend, Professor Muhammad Morandi, at 11 in the morning, Joe Kent, the former head of Cameron. terrorism for the United States government. The gentleman who said to the president, I resign because Iran poses no threat to the United States, he'll be with me live. At one in the afternoon,

from wherever he is, Pepe Escobar, at two in the afternoon, Professor Glenn Duesen, at three in the afternoon, the great Phil Geraldi. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom.