Judging Freedom - INTEL Roundtable w/ Johnson & McGovern: Is Putin Right to Threaten NATO?

Episode Date: March 1, 2024

INTEL Roundtable w/ Johnson & McGovern: Is Putin Right to Threaten NATO?See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Save $80 with code SPACE80 at Talkspace.com. To be continued... Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Friday, March 1st, 2024. It's the end of the day. It's the end of of the week it's the time for our favorite segment with my dear friends ray mcgovern and larry johnson doing double duty coming back for this second time this week this time together in the intelligence community roundtable we have a lot to discuss german uh officials plotting to grow to blow up the Crimea Bridge, a former head of the Defense Department and the CIA in the United States, now a college president, urging them on. The United States purporting to send aid to the Gazans.

Oh, we're going to feed the people. We are paying the Israelis to slaughter. But before we get there, Larry, you just came back from Russia. I believe you were in Moscow. Yes. What observations do you have to share with us about the attitude of Muscovites about President Putin, about the death of Navalny, and about the war in Ukraine? Putin is popular. Navalny is irrelevant. You know, they turned out a few hundred people, maybe a thousand people out of a city of 13 million to bemoan Navalny's fate. And, you know, it's curious that the West seems obsessed with Navalny. The Brits, Americans, and they didn't say a word about our friend Gonzalo Lera, an American citizen who was murdered in a Ukrainian prison.

Or they don't have a word to say about the political oppression of someone like Julian Assange, a reporter, a journalist who's reporting the truth and being punished for it. And we're seeing the same thing happen now to Catherine Herridge. You know, she is a former colleague of yours at Fox News. And they're going after her because she's doing what every journalist does, which is protect their sources. So Putin is popular. The city of Moscow, 13 million plus. It's immaculate. It works. They remove the snow.

They keep the lights on. And the city streets are safe. I just, you know, can't say enough good about it. How close, Ray McGovern, is Ukraine to the end of its rope, whether Victoria Nuland's wish, $60 billion more that Mike Johnson might be pressured into caving in on. Correct. In my view, that $60 billion more will get them maybe to November, and that's all they need. The election is paramount in their sights. And if they can give the Ukrainians this much more money and pay their officials and all that kind of stuff, then the Europeans will chip in.

And then Biden won't, if so, facto lose because he's lost in Ukraine very, very clearly. And they can postpone this thing. That's the name of the game here. Whether Mike Johnson, you and I have a bet, Judge, whether Mike Johnson postpone this thing. That's the name of the game here. Whether Mike Johnson, you and I have a bet, Judge, whether Mike Johnson will fold or not. I say he won't. You say he will. You're probably smart. You should have given me odds, Judge. I have an inside source who's one of the, I'll tell you who it is, Congressman Biggs, who's on with us a lot, one of the 40 libertarians in the House

who tells me they are just livid at Mike Johnson. I don't want to get into politics, but what the hell did they gain by swapping Kevin McCarthy for Mike Johnson? Absolutely nothing. The budgets that he has passed and engineered are the same as Mrs. Pelosi's from two years ago, but that's for the political podcast to address. Ray, while you are here, before I go back to Larry, what have we learned in the past 24 hours about overheard conversations amongst high-ranking German officials concerning the potential German plans to blow up the Crimean Bridge. The conversation, I don't know the timing.

I don't know if it was before or after Chancellor Scholz said, don't worry, I'm not going to send German troops there. I guess he's going to send German intelligence there. Judge Simon Jan, the head of RT and a pretty high official in the Russian pecking order, has announced that she has this independent, this intercept from very high senior Bundeswehr German army officials discussing what about these new missiles that they might hit the Kerch Bridge with, the bridge that connects Crimea

with Krasnodar province, Russia proper, and how dangerous would this be. Here's one fellow. He's from the Air Operations Command. His name is Rostete, and he says, I want to share thoughts about Storm Shadow. That's the big new missile that Germany is supposed to be giving Ukraine. Flight time. I come to the conclusion there are two interesting targets, the bridge and the ammunition depots, which are more distant. The Crimean Bridge, the east, is difficult to reach, but it's a relatively small target.

But the Taurus, those are the missiles, they can do it. And it can all strike within the ammunition depots. So considering all this and comparing it with the storm shadows and the HIMARS that have already been used, I have a question. Is our target the bridge or the military depots? Now, assuming this is accurate, and I have not been able to track down the German original, okay? Assuming this is accurate being translated from German into Russian

and now into English, which is the only transcript I have, this is crazy. transcript I have. That's just crazy. This is crazy. Striking Crimea or striking the bridge. And it would be crazy or not so crazy if it weren't for the fact that five days ago, former Defense Minister Robert Gates was interviewed by his best friend forever, David Ignatius of the Washington Post. And Gates says, you know, what we should do is surge our arms,

get that arms approved by the House, and then we should choose our targets and we should drop the Crimean Bridge, the bridge to Kyrgyzstan. We should drop that. That's what we should do and hit targets in Crimea. So you have the – now Gates is a, what, the windsock. And sometimes what he says,

my God, is translated into reality. I hope it's not the case this time. Wow. Larry, that bridge costs $2 billion to build. It's one of the great engineering marvels of the world. Would that not be an act of war by NATO on Russia?

Well, they already did it two years ago. Look, the timing of this leak, it's important. Pay attention. Where did this come from? It wasn't that RT's got such a group of intrepid reporters. I mean, they've got some good reporters there. I was actually at their headquarters Wednesday morning. But this was given to them

by Russian intelligence, okay? This was the Deliberate Intelligence League. Why is this coming? It coincides with the remarks that Vladimir Putin made at his annual sort of State of the Union address the other day, where he put the West on notice that attacks on Russia will not go unanswered and that it runs the risk of nuclear escalation. That the fact that the Russia intelligence is putting the word out there that, hey, we know what you're saying. We know what you're doing. We know what targets you're going after.

And on top of that, Russia is not sitting back passively. They put inactive air defense systems around the bridge in Crimea. They put defense systems and air defense systems in around these ammunition depots. So this is Russia putting the West on notice. That's what this is. This is not just a convenient, intrepid journalist that got a great leak and put out a story. No, no, no, no. There's more behind this. This is a message within a message. And what it signals is that Russia is escalating now to a level because they're confident that

they've got Ukraine on the run and that they're putting, that the West, who's been, you know, you saw Macron the other day make this bellicose statement about possibly putting NATO forces in. And even in this German intercept, they conceded. There are Americans in there. There are NATO forces already on the ground in Ukraine operating these systems which are attacking Russia. Russia's sending a word to the West, this is going to stop or you're going to pay a price. Chris, run back to back, please. President Macron and then President Putin.

There is no consensus today to send ground troops in an official, endorsed and sanctioned manner. But in dynamic terms, nothing should be ruled out. They should eventually understand that we also have weapons, and they know it. I just said it now myself, weapons that can hit targets on their territory. Everything that the West is coming up with now, what they threaten the world with, it can result in a conflict with the use of nuclear weapons and therefore the destruction of civilization. Is Macron a loose cannon or doing the bidding of Biden and company? God, it's hard to say. He is a loose cannon, ipso facto. And there are people within the Biden administration that would like to have that little tempting thing out there. I agree with Larry. This is really strong stuff that Putin is saying. And I want to remind people of what I've been saying for the last couple of months. When President Kennedy said you should avoid giving a nuclear power country a choice between a humiliating defeat and using nuclear weapons, well, that's what this is all about. And it's not Russia. It's the U.S. that is facing a humiliating

defeat in an election year where there's a big personal stake on the part of the people who are burning this policy. So what is Putin saying? He says, look, don't even think about it. When those military guys come, oh, these mini nukes, they'll show the Russians we mean business and give us enough time till November. Don't listen to them because we have the capability and they have a more accurate and more powerful capability on supersonic missiles to retaliate or to prevent. So that's what he's saying. He's saying, I hope you understand. Please understand, you know.

Larry, was President Putin wise to say what he just said? We haven't learned. The West has not learned. Pay attention to what Putin says. He is not a bullshit. He is not Joe Biden. He doesn't forget where he was yesterday. Everything that Putin says has meaning. And he doesn't say things to bluff. He's not a poker player. He's not an entertainer. He says exactly what he means and spells it out in very black and white detail. He warned the West that if you continue pushing Ukraine into NATO and keep pushing towards our borders, we will stop it. Well, that's what they did when they launched the special military operation in February of 2022.

And in the process, not only are they demilitarizing Ukraine, they have demilitarized NATO. They've exposed NATO as a hollow, empty shell, a fraud of a military alliance, if you want to put it that way. So pay attention to what he says. And the West is, you're morons if you ignore him. Switching gears to Gaza. Ray, how many nuclear weapons do the Israelis have? Oh, I know nobody in the West who's in official government is going to acknowledge this, but what does Intel know and understand that they have?

And might they use nuclear weapons if they're faced with that Hobson's Choice that you just mentioned, a humiliating, catastrophic defeat or the use of a nuclear weapon? At last count, in other words, the last data I've seen, the Israelis have between 90 and about 200 nuclear weapons ready to fire from land, from sea, and from the air. John Kennedy tried to prevent that from happening, and he was undermined, okay? So that's the situation right now. Would they use them?

There is the Samson option. You know, they've talked about it, okay? Cy Hersh has written a book about it. If they are, you know, at their wit's end, and probably won't come to that, I think we'll have something like a ceasefire before then. But if rather than have a humiliating retreat, they will be sorely tempted to use one of these things. They would have to be tactical because the fallout would go into Israel as well. But they will be. And that's what people have to take into account there as well. So the

sooner you could tamp that conflict down, the better before the Israelis are faced with that kind of choice. How much damage do tactical nuclear weapons do, Larry? I mean, are we talking about Hiroshima? Are we talking about something a lot smaller and more pinpoint? Well, it's a little smaller, but the real question is, where would they use them? So it's not a close-in-use weapon. Right now, Israel, it looks like they're going to attack into southern Lebanon. They're moving massive numbers of tanks, armored vehicles to the north. When they cross the border, they're going to run into a maelstrom of defensive positions

that are going to decimate Israeli armored columns. So at that point, what do they do? If they launch tactical nukes right there along the border, there's still radioactive fallout that's going to come. You have no way, you know, nobody can predict the weather despite what they claim. All right. So if you drop it in there, you've got to run with the expectation that all that cloud of nuclear radiation is going to come drifting back over you, rain down on Israel, contaminate lands that will then not be able to be inhabited for a while.

So, you know, where Israel would most likely use it is try to use it against someone like Iran at a distance, a distance away from Israel. Right. But the real issue for these nukes is they're a deterrent. They're a threat to use because when you get down to the practical terms of using it, it's not like Hiroshima and Nagasaki where you drop it, you get a magical solution to the end of a conflict, and then everybody gives up. We're in a different world now where Iran may have nuclear weapons. Russia has them. Pakistan has them.

India has them. Everybody's got them, and anybody who wants to cross the line and start using them runs the risk of themselves becoming a target. Chris, let's play the clip from Al Jazeera. This is a clip. There are some English subtitles, which I will read. It shows Israeli settlers beginning to build a house, a settlement in Gaza. And it ends with an Israeli woman saying, this is our goal to build a Jewish homeland in Gaza. These Israeli settlers are building a symbolic house on the border with Gaza. They're calling for Israel to build settler homes in Gaza after the war and want Palestinians

expelled from their land. Israeli settlements are considered illegal under international law. We came here to declare that the day after this war is over, we must settle, we must spread Jewish towns all over the Gaza Strip. These orange T-shirts call for a return to a settlement called Gush Katif that was dismantled when Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, 38 years ago. Can this possibly be happening without the knowledge, consent, and assistance of the Netanyahu

government, Larry? No, no, absolutely not. And the good news is right now they're doing this symbolically right out on the very edge. They have not actually gone into Gaza to set up. Gaza has been decimated, though there's no doubt about that. The Israelis continue to massacre. I can't emphasize that enough. They are massacring. They are murdering Palestinian women, children, civilians, men, young and old. They are acting in as ruthless a fashion as any tyrant in the history of the world has ever acted. If there is a God, and if there is a just God, Israel is going to be condemned by that God for their conduct. What they have done is unconscionable, it's inhumane, and it's been enabled by the United States and others that have refused to stand up. I mean,

still, here we are. The only two countries that have really stood up firm against it are Yemen, who continues to defy the United States and Great Britain and the rest of NATO, shutting down the Red Sea, and South Africa. I pray that somehow we get a resolution to this. I fear that the resolution is going to come because Israel will invade southern Lebanon and Hezbollah will knock the hell out of them. Very articulate, very articulately put, Larry. Ray, what kind of sense does it make at the risk of asking you to get into Joe Biden's brain? There's probably plenty of room for you to move around in there, but what kind of sense?

That'll be a quick forever. Let me know what kind of sense does it make for the United States to finance and facilitate the slaughter that Larry just eloquently condemned and at the same time provide aid for the poor souls that are suffering from famine and disease and haven't yet been killed by buildings tumbling on them? Wouldn't it make a lot more sense for Joe Biden just to stop the slaughter and let the aid proceed in? Judge, this is not about sense. This is about hardened arteries. This is about a worldview

where the U.S. has to prevail because it's not only exceptional but indispensable. Add Madeleine Albright, who Biden is favored to cite in various speeches and also in private conversations. So as long as you've got this megalomania, as long as you've got this delusionary outlook that the United States can do whatever it wants, you know, it's the strongest country in the world, you're going to have these benighted people, these acolytes around him, not saying, now, wait a second, that was true after World War II. It was also true when the Russians fell apart and we exploited it. It's not true anymore, Mr. President. We can't do the kinds of things you want to do.

Until that happens, he's going to keep doing this stuff. And, you know, it's really gets so damn embarrassing that I don't know if Joe Biden is going to be able to last the next couple of months before the election. Chris just sent me a note, a play on words when you're referenced that it's not about cents. No, it's not about cents. It's about billions of dollars. Yeah, yeah. What a mess, Larry.

I mean, you have painted a picture of monstrosity in Gaza. You are both telling me, as is everybody else that comes on this show, that the Ukrainians are on their last legs. The U.S. is still funding Gaza. The U.S. wants to send $61 billion to Ukraine. Now the U.S. wants to try and drop-lift aid in on the Mediterranean Sea,

not by trucks delivered, but on the Mediterranean Sea. Is the U.S. afraid to send those trucks that the Israelis will fire not by trucks delivered, but in the Mediterranean Sea? Is the U.S. afraid to send those trucks that the Israelis will fire on American trucks bringing aid in southern Gaza, Larry? Now, look, it's all political show. This is just the aid delivery is the best the Biden administration can come up with to try to deflect the anger that has been building up against it amongst the American Arab Muslim communities in places like Michigan and New York. So they're going to put it out. See, we've been doing our part to help those poor Gazans and deliver aid. You know, the thing

the Gazans need is for Biden to pick the phone up and tell Netanyahu, you're shutting it down. This is stopping. Stopping now. You're not getting another missile. You're not getting another rocket. Not getting another piece of ammunition. Nothing. We're cutting off your financial aid too.

You stop it or you're getting no more. Now, that would shut it down. That would bring an end to the human suffering. And then we could get on to say, okay, let's find a path to negotiation. But there's no political will in the United States. There frankly is no political path forward in the United States because the American Israeli Political Action Committee is so powerful. It has both Republicans and Democrats in its pocket.

So it doesn't really matter so much what Joe Biden does or doesn't do, because he's not, whatever Biden does that would try to hinder Israel is going to be blocked and countered by the Republicans as well. So this is, you know, Israel is being enabled to kill itself. That's what's happening. This is the King of Jordan. Maybe this was just for show. I don't know. It's sending a message to Joe Biden. This is the King of Jordan in one of those large aircrafts. There he is, actually.

You'll see him in a second pushing out one of the aid packages, which then floats down to the sea on a parachute. Yeah, it looks like it. Is anybody providing aid besides Jordan and the United States? And are they both afraid to send trucks in through Egypt? I can't believe the IDF would fire on Jordanian trucks or fire on American trucks.

Yeah, George, they're UN trucks, as I understand it. And they're lined up 1,000 trucks in one line. They can't get into Israel. Israel allows a couple, well, maybe I think it was 100 in a day, whereas 500 was the normal way back when. So Biden's in a vice. Biden is a self-confessed Zionist, although he might not know what that is. He's brainwashed on the

history of Palestine, and he's got the lobby, as Larry has so eloquently adduced. Not only he's got the lobby, but the president. I mean, the Congress is, the lobby has a stranglehold on the Congress as well. And I just remind you, once again, it's an election year. They need the money. And a lot of it comes simply right down to that. They think they can get through this thing. I don't think they're going to be able to, because if Larry, as Larry suggested, they go up north in the Hezbollah territory, they're going to get a bloody nose that will force

the U.S. to come up with a solution as to whether we continue to support this or whether we lean on Bibi Netanyahu and say, look, enough is enough. That's it. We're not going to give any more. Chris, do we have President Biden with an ice cream cone in his hand saying a ceasefire by Monday? Can you give us a sense of when you think that ceasefire will start, sir? Well, I hope by the beginning of the weekend. I mean, the end of the weekend. At least my national security advisor tells me that we're close.

We're close. We're not done yet. And my hope is by next Monday. That was a comedian with him. I forget the guy's last name. Seth. One of the late comedians. CBS late the guy's last name. Seth. One of the late comedians.

CBS late night. They were each eating triple scoops of ice cream. I don't think he even knows what he's talking about. Guys, this is just repellent, but I'm deeply grateful for your courageous and gifted

analyses here. I'm going to be in Rome next week, giving a speech at the lecture at the Vatican. We'll try and get you on. I don't know if it's going to be from me here or from me there. I know you're both going to be on. I believe you're both scheduled as usual on Monday morning, but we may have our round table yet from Alistair Crook's house. Yeah, I know.

You get to hang out with Alistair and Asleen. That'll be great. I am spending Saturday with them. Thank you very much, guys. Have a great weekend. We'll see you Monday. Take care. Safe travels.

Thank you. So please bear with us next week. We have a lot coming your way on Monday and Tuesday. And then I fly to Rome, where I'm privileged to give this lecture on the concept of natural law and natural rights, that our rights come from our humanity and not from the government. Why the Vatican wants me to give this lecture, I don't know, but I'm thrilled to do it. Professor Jeffrey Sachs will be there as well, giving a different lecture, but roughly on the same topic. And we'll do our best to get as many of our regular guests on air for you as we

can. In the meantime, have a great weekend. Thank you for watching. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. I'm out.