Judging Freedom - INTEL Roundtable: Johnson & Matt Hoh in for Ray McGovern : Weekly Wrap Up

Episode Date: May 31, 2024

INTEL Roundtable: Johnson & Matt Hoh in for Ray McGovern : Weekly Wrap UpSee 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 Friday, May 31st, 2024. It's the end of the day. It's the end of the week. It's the end of the month. It's time for our Intelligence Community Roundtable. Larry Johnson is here from his motor vehicle. Matt Ho is here because Ray McGovern is traveling. Gentlemen, welcome here. Thank you very much for joining us. I know it's an imposition on your time to be with us more than once a week, but it is deeply appreciated by the viewers and by me. Larry, I'll start with you. We all watched the ridiculous CIA-written, Hollywood-produced talk that... Did we lose Larry? I guess we did. All right, I'll start with you, Matt. Maybe Larry will come back to us. We all watched the ridiculous Hollywood produced CIA scripted talk that President Zelensky used inviting President Xi to a peace conference. I know he mispronounced the word peace and he's being ridiculed for it in Geneva. What can he possibly hope to accomplish? This is just theater, Judge. It's theater. It's theater funded at the expense of the American government and American taxpayer. There's a guarantee it's a program through USAID that is funding that type of film work, that is funding these multi-camera video productions we keep seeing

coming out of Ukraine. But it's theater. This war is going terrible, and that's an understatement for the Ukrainians and for the West. And they are doing everything they can to put lipstick on the pig, as they say. So I expect as things worsen, as things become more calamitous, as Ukraine continues to move towards collapse, the damage control will be in these attempts, among other things, will be in these attempts to provide some type of hope, some type of optimism, some type of assurance that if just the right people get on board, if you all just jump on board, we'll take this train to victory. The big win is just ahead if you just cooperated. And of course, all this, what it does as well, Judge, right? All this type of theater, all this type of dialogue, it sets up the stab in the back theory so that when this thing

is finished, when it is over, when the collapse does come, when Ukraine does lose, the West loses, there is this, I told you so, if you all had just done what we asked, this wouldn't have happened. At the same time, well, does he really expect that President Xi is going to show up in Geneva? I mean, President Xi is in an incredible alliance with President Putin right now. I can't imagine President Xi's showing. Zelensky and his people must know this. The CIA must know this. MI6 must know this. So they've sent Zelensky out to look like more of a goofball than he already is.

I think for us watching this, we have to hope the Chinese get involved in some way. Because at this point, even though the Russians for years now have been offering negotiations, you know, big story in Reuters last week detailing how Vladimir Putin and Russia will accept a ceasefire along the front lines right now, how anytime he and his government are asked about negotiations, the response is we should restart them. And the US.S. response, of course, is to escalate, escalate, escalate with this most recent escalations of possible French troops into Ukraine, as well as the ability to send Western weapons into Russia. You know, we are looking at

this from the outside, you know, as observers and what can possibly be done that would bring, you know, who has the weight to bring the West to the table. And does that come from the Chinese? Does that come from the Saudis? Does that come from others who have the ability to have some type of leverage or at least threaten some degree of further alliance with Russia that might snap some sense into the Western minds? But that's not what's going to happen. And we all know that. We all know that. Nobody can really negotiate with President Zelensky. He doesn't have any legal authority. He has self-claimed legal authority, but it's not constitutional even by Ukrainian standards. Right. And everyone knows, too,

the reason why there's no elections there is because he would lose. If Zelensky was to hold an election, he would lose. If Zelensky was to hold an election, he would lose. And it's in the whole things of farce, this idea of martial law in a nation where 90% of it is not under occupation, 90% of it is not facing combat. Yes, of course, missiles and bombs hit various parts of Ukraine all the time. But this is nothing compared to, say, what like Iraq or Afghanistan was, we we held elections multiple times during those wars where suicide bombers would hit the polling stations. I mean, so the excuse that he can't hold the elections right now is, you know, people see right through that. The danger with that excuse where this now we start to get into the realm of this is really this is really dangerous.

This is the idea of where this can go is this excuse about martial law martial law is all totally subjective it's all dependent upon when zielinski and his government say martial law is over and if you follow their train of thought martial law won't be over until the ukrainians liberate crimea in their words right so you basically have now a government in power that will be in power forever, because there's no way they're ever going to remove Russia from Crimea. So I mean, as you start to kind of peel back the various aspects of what does this martial law entail, it goes further than just this momentary acknowledgement that he is no longer the head of state, that this is an

unconstitutional government. But, you know, it's this idea of like, this is basically setting up a dictatorship. Okay. Larry is with us. Larry, appreciate all the permutations you're going through to get the connection to work. We were just talking about President Zelensky's peace conference, and everybody's mocking him from the word he said, the word peace. I'm not going to subject you to that tape again. We've all seen it. And what you think, if anything, can be accomplished by it. Larry's gone again. All right, Larry, you're courageous,

but at some point you're banging your head against a brick wall. Here is cut number two, Chris. President Zelensky, a different cut, a much shorter one, where he's asking the West for weapons with which to strike inside Russia. Number two. Even from reconnaissance, you get maps, satellite images, but you cannot respond. I think it's unfair. But we cannot, and this is a fact, risk the support of our partners.

And that is why we do not use the weapons of our partners on the territory of the Russian Federation. Please give us the opportunity to retaliate against their military. You know, in response to that, he got a promise of a billion dollars from NATO. And that was, that followed President Macron saying it's okay to strike, use French armaments to strike inside of Russia. And then earlier today, Chris, cut number 11, Secretary of State Blinken, just a few hours ago, said this. Over the past few weeks, Ukraine came to us and asked for the authorization to use weapons that we're providing to defend against this aggression, including against Russian forces that are massing on the Russian side of the border and then attacking into Ukraine.

And that went right to the president. And as you heard, he's approved the use of our weapons for that purpose. Going forward, we'll continue to do what we've been doing, which is, as necessary, adapt and adjust. How reckless is it for the U.S. to do that? It's, Judge, it's foolish. It's insipid. It's unwise. I mean, we could just load up all the different ways to describe this. It's going to have this authorization to utilize these weapons into Russia, including if it's just over the border from Kharkiv, is going to have little to no effect

tactically or operationally. The Russians are prepared for this. They've already seen these weapons. They've encountered these weapons in Ukraine already. They're prepared. If there's anything different, they'll just do as they've done. We've seen them do these last two and a half years, essentially, in terms of adapt to the weapons and then counter them. The danger lays, of course, in what is Russia's response going to be, particularly, say, if one of these weapons hits a school and kills a bunch of kids in Russia proper. And we know what their response is going to be because they've already shown it before. Anytime there's been an escalation from the West, Russia responds with an escalation of their own. So blow up the Nord Stream pipelines and you get Russian attacks on critical energy infrastructure, attack Russian oil facilities.

You get further attacks, you know, more more devastating attacks on Russian energy infrastructure. I mean, like we know where this goes. And they have also said, they have warned over and over and over again, this is something, Judge, I know you like to bring up because it is so antithetical to the way we do things here in the United States, the way our politicians, which include people like Tony Blinken, because these are all just political animals, that they see the world. They don't understand that people mean what they say. They don't understand that when a nation puts down an ammunition, a threat, a warning, that is something to be respected. And even with all the history of what happened with Russia, whether it's Chechnya, whether it's Georgia, whether it's Syria, Ukraine itself, it seems as if the West,

the Americans most especially, the Brits, of course, and the French at the forefront with them, seem to be willing to disregard all that. Because again, it comes back to what is their base purpose? What do they want? And they want a short-term domestic political benefit from this. And that's their political calculation. It's somehow continuing to be tough against Russia by continuing to escalate this war is helping them domestically, politically, even as it is just continuing to destroy Ukraine, its people and its land. It's allowing Russia to

every day come closer to some form of victory. And of course, it's endangering us all through this escalatory trajectory we're on of both horizontal and vertical escalation, which is something that can lead to, as we discussed so many times, and we can never stop discussing it, lead to a third world war, a nuclear war. Chris, is Larry with us? There he is. Larry, can you hear us? Yeah, we can't hear you,ry can you hear me now uh now we can hear you now we can hear you so we are talking about uh emmanuel macron saying um french um offensive weaponry can be fired into russia as long as they fire at r military bases. And we're talking about Tony Blinken, who just two hours ago made the same statement,

saying President Biden has approved it. Your thoughts on that? Let me just make this observation. Go ahead. Right now, I'm sitting in the outskirts of Washington, D.C. We can't even get good cell phone coverage in the United States. That we know, Larry. Good luck with that, okay?

I mean, it's ridiculous. I had to drive up next to a public school and leech off of some of their internet right now. So if you see some angry principal come out banging on the window, that's what's going on. Well, you're very courageous and industrious, Larry. Go ahead, please. Well, you know, Macron and Biden are actually, you know, with Blinken as the mouthpiece for Biden because, you know,

Biden's still trying to figure out what flavor of ice cream to order. They are needlessly, recklessly, belligerently escalating this. And when all is said and done, you know, the maximum range on these missiles, you know, the attack them, the worst would be the Taurus, the Germans produced that, goes about 300 miles. But it's not going to change a thing on the battlefield except in one instance.

It is going to so enrage the Russians that they are going to punch back and expand their attacks in ways up to now they have not. For fear in the past they wanted, they didn't do it, they didn't want to escalate this war. Now they're saying, damn it, these guys want it, okay, bring it on. So Ritter tells us that both these French weaponry and the American weaponry can only be, because there are secret codes in there, can only be operated by the French people and by the Americans. And of course, that means that the FSB and President Putin know this. Are President Macron and President Biden intentionally putting Americans in harm's way in both cases without declaring war,

in both cases without having been attacked first, in both cases without the consent of their legislatures? Larry, first. Well, I think the next step, take out Starlink. Larry first? Well, I think the next step, take out Starlink. What do you mean?

That's what the Russians will take out. They're already jamming it. I think you could get to the point where they'll use the satellite kill system, take out the Starlink network. That's the network that the Ukrainians use to communicate with each other and to operate this equipment that the French and the Americans have sent there. Right. And the second step, take out ISR platforms, any predators,

and in fact, possibly even manned aircraft that are operating in the area collecting data sending it back it's providing targeting information ukrainians the russians will start shooting those down too that will escalate it but it's going to send a very clear message that they are dead serious about this matt what happens if amer are killed, whether they're soldiers in civilian clothing, intelligence agents or contractors? Well, this is a point we don't ever want to get to. Right. Because then we're wondering what Joe Biden is going to do with a hostile Congress in an election year with trailing Donald Trump in the polls, what is he going to do in response to that? I mean, you can imagine the chorus coming from Chuck Schumer, Mitch McConnell, Tom Cotton, Lindsey Graham, et cetera, what they're going to be demanding. And so that's the danger is that even if, you know, you could imagine the way they would, the way the Americans, because this is how the British are doing and others are doing it as well,

utilizing contractors. So it's not men and women in uniform. It's people that are, you know, deniable. But even then, the notion that those people are killed is actually going to be enough to cause this next degree of escalation that we've all been so worried about. And this is, why we've been saying, don't do this. You are putting yourself into a position where the likely outcomes are going to be those that you do not want to have to choose from, you know, and it is, it's just madness. It's reckless. It's stupid. But again, they obviously see some type of political benefit to them. Some type of, I don't know if it's, you if it's machismo they're going to get out of this, you know, in order that justifies taking this risk.

Larry, it looks like you're outside. So a couple of a couple of minutes to the wall. That's what they start shooting at me. Something to bounce off of. A couple of minutes ago, Colonel Wilkerson told us that as we speak, the Israeli Knesset is negotiating to replace Prime Minister Netanyahu. As we speak, Mitch McConnell, Chuck Schumer, Mike Johnson, and Akeem Jeffries have jointly announced an invitation to Prime Minister Netanyahu to address a joint session of Congress. Again, the Israelis using their influence on the American government to bail them out. Larry Johnson, does it matter who is the Prime Minister of Great Britain? Won't his replacement be just as ferocious, just as pent on genocide as Netanyahu is? You go from Tweedledee to Tweedledum, you still get two fat guys, okay?

And that's what we're getting here with that change. It's not going to change the policy at all. It's just, you know, this is another rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic moment. So it will not fundamentally change the Zionist policy of exterminating the Palestinians, which is what's going on. Are the Americans, Matt, likely behind pushing Netanyahu out because he doesn't get along with President Biden. Yeah, Judge, that's an interesting point to make right now, because today we've seen Joe Biden announce a new peace plan for Gaza. It's very similar to previous ones. But why it's important

to note this is, one, the president came on television and announced it and said it was an Israeli plan. But also, too, the more important thing is that Benny Gantz, who is Netanyahu's main opposition, has announced that he and his people will leave the government by June 8th if there is not a plan for the future of this war. So go back a couple of months when Benny Gantz came and visited Washington, D.C. Was this all cooked up back then? I doubt it, because that would mean I'd have to provide some degree of competence to the Biden administration that they could put something like this together.

But what we're seeing right now is a possible peace deal where the Americans are actually putting some leverage on Israel by helping out Netanyahu's main opposition. So for the Americans, is this finally, we're finally going to see something. And again, why is it happening now? Well, we are about two months away from the Democratic National Convention. If it's not calm and quiet in Gaza, if people aren't being shredded, burned, decapitated, starved to death in, you know, by the by if that's not ended by August, we're going to have a convention in Chicago like they had in 1968. Right. So again, we come back and we look at this. Why are they doing this domestic political calculations? But this might

be a deal that might actually stick because now you see some degree of leverage being used. But we'll have to wait and see. Larry, here's, and Matt, here's President Biden just about an hour ago. He's remarkably coherent and articulate in this. I won't comment further on that. It's a long clip, but Chris edited it down to a minute 12. This is the president announcing the ceasefire proposal to which he and his people and the Israeli leadership have apparently agreed. Cut number 12. The first phase would last for six weeks. Here's what it would include.

A full and complete ceasefire. A withdrawal of Israeli forces from all populated areas of Gaza, release of a number of hostages, including women, the elderly, the wounded, in exchange for the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners. During the six weeks of phase one, Israel and Hamas would negotiate the necessary arrangements to get to phase two. Then phase two would be an exchange for the release of all remaining living hostages, including male soldiers.

Israeli forces would withdraw from Gaza. And as long as Hamas lives up to its commitments, a temporary ceasefire would become, in the words of the Israeli proposal, the cessation of hostilities permanently, end of quote. Finally, in phase three, a major reconstruction plan for Gaza would commence. And any final remains of hostages who've been killed would be returned to their families. That's the offer that's now on the table. Larry, is this credible and likely to be accepted by Hamas? I think Hamas might accept it.

I'm not sure it is with the Israelis. Well, you know, Ben-Gavir and Smotrich, they're not going to accept that at all. If Bibi goes through with it, they'll leave the government and he won't be prime minister anymore, right? Well, internally, yes, but he will then be gaining some currency outside. And, you know, at this point, he's been losing friends so fast, he's all alone in the world, basically, apart from the United States. So what you're looking at here is perhaps he's trying to recover some face.

Matt, your thoughts on this? Well, I think what Netanyahu is looking at, potentially, is, of course, remember, let's go back a year there are 800 900 000 a million israelis on the street demanding his arrest and being put on trial for corruption charges right he leaves office he's he's back in that position so he's potentially looking at again and now with the international criminal court uh hopefully releasing an arrest warrant soon for his arrest uh you know where is he going to go? He's going to end up in the same apartment building with Volodymyr Zelensky in Miami. I mean, so, you know, the leverage that should have been put on Netanyahu

months and months ago may now be being put upon him. But again, you know, Judge, this is a guy, we've all known of him for 25, 30 years at least. And every time we think he's out and gone, he comes back. He is a political survivor. So, you know, I mean, again, right. I mean, we'll go back to Yogi Berra predictions are hard, especially when they're about the future. And, uh, you know, that's what we're looking at here, you know, Maybe we should end with that.

Larry, any last thoughts with deep gratitude for all you're going through to get the Internet to work? You can never go wrong with Yogi Berra. As Yogi Berra said, it's deja vu all over again. There you go. There you go. I can tell where you are, Larry, because out there it gets late early. Another Yogi Berra if I'm talking about right field. Gentlemen,

thank you very much. Larry and I will be in St. Petersburg, Russia together next week along with Scott Ritter. And we'll be doing some programs from there. We'll find a way to bring you in, Matt. All the best. Terrific. All right. Have a good weekend. Thank you, guys. Larry, safe travels. All right.

So we will be coming to you from St. Petersburg and from Moscow next week with some surprise visitors for you. Thank you for watching. Have a great weekend. We'll see you next week. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom. I'm out.