Judging Freedom - INTEL Roundtable : w/ Johnson & McGovern : Weekly Recap 26-Sept.

Episode Date: September 26, 2025

INTEL Roundtable : w/ Johnson & McGovern : Weekly Recap 26-Sept.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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That's an equivalent to $15 a month. Limited time new customer offer for first three months only. Speeds may slow above 35 gigabytes on unlimited. plan. Taxes and fees extra. See Mint Mobile for details. Hi, everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for judging freedom. Today is Friday, September 26, 2025, the end of the day, the end of the week, our favorite time together with you and with my two colleagues and collaborators that do double duty every week. Ray McGovern and Larry Johnson, Ray, Larry, welcome here. Thank you for accommodating my schedule.

Thank you for joining us for the Intelligence Community Roundtable, which has proven to be a very popular production for our judging freedom office. Larry, is Ukraine now Europe's war? Oh, yeah. I don't know if Trump this was a deliberate strategy or if he stumbled into it, but I think they decided to take General Kellogg's sunny, optimistic comments about, hey, Ukraine's winning, Russia's losing, Russia's economy is crumbling. And Trump basically says, well, if that's the case, why do we need to give

them anything since they're doing so well, since they're winning? I mean, hey, we're happy to sell some weapons to NATO and NATO can give them to Ukraine. But, oh, right. Hey, you guys take care of it since everything's so good. Are you being a little sarcastic? serious serious i mean i mean that that was the essence of what he did because because he embraced the positive spin and then what gave it away was uh that same day the french the germans the brits and ukraine they brought up this resolution at the u.n security council that was going to really condemn and punish russia and what it what did the united States do?

We'll take a pass. We're not interested. We abstain. So instead of, the only two actions, so I said, Judge Trump on this, by what he does, not what he

says. And what he did was, hey, if Europe wants to buy weapons from us, basically weapons we can't make, we'll be happy to sell them to them. And no, we're not going to condemn Russia and create a diplomatic incident over. All right.

Let me finish one other point. Sure. Dmitryov and Ushikov, Dermityev and Ushikov, both have been asked about that, and they're still upbeat. So there's clearly comments and conversations going on behind the scenes that the Russians still confident that they're not going to get, you know, bent over the log by the United States. Ray, your thoughts on this. and add to your thoughts what the CIA is probably still doing in Ukraine, whether Trump's turning this into Europe's war or not? Well, I think Larry is completely right.

After I talked with you on Monday and told you about Lavrov's very upbeat comments preparatory to his arrival at the UN, we had a major initiative from Putin himself to extend the new. START treaty for a year as long as the U.S. would do the same. That's so big. That's really big. So here's again, the Russians are distinguishing between what they give most priority to, and that is improving relations with the United States and Ukraine, which is sort of secondary and sometimes not even mentioned in these bilateral discussions. So that gives me some hope that if there are any sensible people advising Trump, and I think there are at least one, his name is Whitkoff,

that they won't turn this down. It's obvious. It's a winner for all sides to extend that very basic treaty for a year. Well, they work out the modalities, how to improve it, how to adapt it to new circumstances. This is a biggie. There's nothing more important than arms control. It was, according to all reports now, raised in anchorage. And the Russians apparently mentioned it, but it didn't get discussed very much. So I'm hopeful that the new contacts that are going on now post-B Biden regime are kind of coming together and making sure that the U.S. and the Russians can negotiate on bilateral matters irrespective of Ukraine. Let's say Trump dials back U.S. involvement. Does the CIA continue to show the Ukrainians where the Russian targets are, Ray?

Well, you know, that's really up to what presidential guidance is given. Now, if General Kellogg is in the loop of giving guidance, and my God, I trotted it, the type of thought, well, you know, the guidance will continue. I think by and by, the guidance will say, all right, you Europeans, you could take over from here. You have your own advanced missiles. We're out of here. And I think that U.S. aid will stop U.S. military aid. And I think that the intelligence cooperation will taper off and then stop. It may take a couple more months for that to happen.

Larry, before you jump in and, Chris, just to raise Larry's blood pressure a little bit, do we have Senator Graham crowing over this? Chris? Trump, 28. I hope this never ends when he asks, What should you do if a Russian jet flies into your country? Shoot it down. He's tried to go out of his way to get Putin to the table. We don't want to humiliate Russia. We just want to end the war. And to our friends in Russia, here's what Trump did today. He told NATO, I'll sell you

all the weapons you want. You can provide them to Ukraine. And as to Ukraine, you can use them any way you want. So to the Russian military, you're going to be up against the high end American weapons that will be sold to NATO for the benefit of Ukraine. And this war is coming to your backyard here with no limitations like Biden. Well, this is really, he's out of his mind again, Larry. This is the second part of Trump's statement. And you can comment on that, which to me is inconceivable that Ukraine could win the Donbuss and Crimea back. Yeah. Well, in fact, I mean, I think it was classic sarcastic trolling by Trump because he's he's thinking okay you guys are telling me that Russia's on the ropes in fact go ahead listen you're going to take back all of

all of the land that they've captured in the Donbos and go ahead roll on into Moscow and now what happens because you turn around and say okay where are the weapons that we're going to sell Well, we're having trouble making them. You know, we can't produce them in the quantities we want because we can't really give you any Patriots, for example, Patriot missiles. It's going to be about two years. So, yeah, here's Lindsey Graham, Chortleying over, boy,

we can sell them anything and do anything that they want, except let's look at we've got a three-year track record where the only weapon system we have denied the Ukrainian there's like a Tomahawk cruise missile which can carry a nuclear warhead. Now, as far as putting it all on Europe, yeah, go ahead, Europe. If you want to start shooting down Russian aircraft, hey, be my guest. And the Europeans are like, look at each other, said, you go first. Now, you go first.

Because you've had the query put to both Lavrov and the Russian ambassador of France yesterday. and each of them came back with one word. They were asked, if Europe shoots down a Russian, if any of the European countries shoot down a Russian jet, what will Russia's reaction be? They both said, war. While this is happening, Ray McGovern, according to the front page of today's financial times,

which is pretty reliable on these things, German Chancellor Mertz has proposed that the German government sees the Russian monies on deposit in German banks. Now, it's a total of $350 billion, apparently about $160 billion of it is in Russian banks and that it be given to Ukraine to help fight Russia. What will the Kremlin's reaction be to this kind of theft? Well, as I think I mentioned before, Germany has displaced the United States as the main enemy of Russia.

In other words, ever since World War II, and we started a Cold War up until four months ago, the polls all showed that the Gleveni Vrague, that is the main enemy of Russia was the United States and vice versa. Now all of a sudden, the new Poles show the main enemy, the Glavnyvrak, is Germany. Now, Russians have a history with Germany, right? And when they have a fellow like Mautz saying, oh, we're going to make our army the Bundesphere the most powerful army in Europe once again. Once again, oh my God. But last time around, 27 million Soviet citizens perished for this great German army. So there's a historic thing where the Russians are really trying to cope with this match.

They think he's a little bit daft. They don't know whether he's just stupid or whether he's trying to sell more weapons. After all, he comes from one of the major financiers of weapons sales, also work with its development. So Germany is in a tough position now, and the Russians aren't going to give them much latitude if they do something stupid. Larry, would the Russian response be military

if the German government seizes $162 billion? No, no. I think Putin is not crazy. He's been extremely, well, he is under growing political pressure at home to take a tougher stand. yes you know so he is getting he's getting pressure saying that they're almost accusing him of being too soft to to compliant but uh what they will they will take economic steps i mean look they've not had control of that money for three and a half years and has it you know ravaged the russian

economy no no the russian economy is doing fine that it's it's growing only at one point eight percent this year because of anti-inflation measures that Nebulina, the central banker, put in place, but she did so with the full support of Putin, and inflation has dropped down dramatically. But it's the principle of the thing that can you trust the West to honor its so-called international-based rules order? No. And the question, yeah, is absolutely not, which is why you've seen Russia and China. together move in the direction of setting up this alternative.

I would note that China system for handling clearance payments, doing sort of what Swift used to do. Yeah. It's been expanding rapidly. It's being used by more countries in the global south. And we've seen this year so far that the number of swift transactions have dropped by 15%. All right. going to switch gears to the Israelis, but before we do, Chris is going to play truly one of

the weirdest things that happened at the UN this week. I wouldn't even tell you who's in it. One of these people has his face hidden for the first minute or so. That's engineered by producer Chris. The other person is internationally well-known, but is totally off as rocker. Chris Cut number 24. As you know, Mr. President, I spent over 37 years in the U.S. Army, and I was a soldier, not a diplomat. So I hope you'll forgive me if I speak with the directness of the old soldier that I am as I get the first question out of the way. Because the fact is that we were on different sides when I was commanding the surge in Iraq. You were, of course, detained by U.S. forces for some five years, including, again, when I was the force. are there. And here you are now as the President of Syria. I just want you to tell you really on behalf of all the people who are here that this conversation has truly filled me with enormous hope. It has been very, very heartening and illuminating. Your vision is powerful and clear. Your demeanor itself is very impressive as well. How are you holding up under

all this pressure. Are you getting enough sleep at night? Again, I've been there, and it is so very, very hard. And you're many fans, and I am one of them, we do have worries.

Ray, emphasis on the first syllable of the word sycophant. Oh, my God. Hello. I think I'm going to throw up your judge, but I'll suppress it here. This is the guy who was chopping heads just a couple of years ago on R.B. a half. This is the guy that the CIA and the U.S. Army was funding, and these were used to be terrorists.

Now, well, I guess they became gentle. What was the word? Respectable terrorists. And then all of a sudden, now they're running in Syria. My God, you know. Has he no shame? this Petraeus, is the U.S. audience for this kind of dribble so ill-informed that would say, oh, way to go, Dave.

So you feel a real affinity to this head shopper. Wow, that's wonderful. It's a terrific re-institution of this trust. My God. So, you know, I just don't know how you treat a guy like Jolani, but you don't, unless you're general Petraeus and you need to be. mention that you were a four-star once. When I was a four-star, he was a terrorist.

Now he's a good guy. He was a moderate terrorist, and aren't we happy to have him right here with us? Jerry, and Larry, wasn't this disgusting display by the person who led the surge in Afghanistan? I was waiting for him to break out a bottle of baby oil and start rubbing it on Jalani's back, you know, just give him a full body massage. We got everything but that. I mean, good God. You know, they could say, at least they were consenting adults

and what they were engaged in there. But, I mean, the, it's not like Jalani was, just had some, you know, shaky beliefs. He oversaw and gave orders to kill Christians,

to kill she Muslims, to kill Alowans, to murder them, men, women, children. He was not some freedom fighter, like, you know, or somebody trying to defend his home from invading U.S. troops. You know, I could understand that. No, this guy was actively out carrying out a religious war. Now, at what point was he cultivated and recruited by the United States? I don't know.

But just underscores further the hypocrisy. when we hear these clowns talk about the terrorism of Hamas and the terrorism of Hezbollah, they haven't even begun to commit. In fact, Jalani committed more terrorist acts in two years, his crew with Hayatir al-Sham, than were attributed to Hamas in 25 years. You know, according to Max Blumenthal, he's still doing it.

The West just isn't reporting it. Yes. According to Max, he is still... slaughtering Drews, Alawites, and Christians in Syria. Right. Yeah. I don't know how you slaughter people in a moderate way, you know. But maybe Jolani has mastered that craft.

He wears a Brooks Brothers suit switching gears, Ray. Do you think that the now near universal acceptance of the Palestinian state will have any geopolitical significance? I want to say yes, Judge, but I'm not sure. A lot will depend on whether the Colombian president's initiative to have the Uniting for Peace resolution passed by the General Assembly happens. Now, it's cheap talk for people like Stormer in Britain and the other says, oh yeah, well, finally we think, you know, we've got to recognize the Palestinian state. It doesn't mean anything at all if they're not willing to follow that up with an embargo

on aid with a cut in economic relations with withdrawing ambassadors with actually tactile, actually tangible things. So let's see. I still hope that there's enough power

behind the Pedro's. His name, the Colombian president who's made the initiative now and I just hope there enough especially since today Nathan Yao today was incredible. And one might have predicted it, but when you saw all those people, you know, 90% of the people that seem leave as soon as he got to the podium, well, is he still going to have the chutzpah to think that he can prevail?

Well, I think he will have that chutzpah, but I don't think he'll prevail. I think the UN might just move this time, and I sure hope they do. Larry, there really were only about a dozen people in the hall, eight or nine of whom work for Netanyahu, so that was no, when he spoke this morning. I held my nose and tightened my stomach muscles and watched it, because I knew we were going to talk about it. That was no surprise, but the comments from President Trump afterwards are not exactly good news for Benjamin Netanyahu. Chris, the cut that we just reviewed before we started the show. I promised leaders this week that you would not allow Israel to annex the West Bank.

Is that something that you... I will not allow Israel to annex the West Bank. No, I will not allow it. It's not going to happen. Did you speak with that, you know, about this story? Yeah, but I'm not going to allow it. Whether I spoke to him or not, I did. But I'm not allowing Israel to annex the West Bank.

There's been enough. It's time to stop now. How's he going to stop him? Well, you can cut off money. and he can cut off further weapons supplies. There's a real interesting dynamic going on here because notice he had a sit down with the Gulf Arabs and I think Egypt while at the UN.

And I guarantee you, they delivered a very tough message to him, putting him on notice that they weren't going to have any further dealings with him that were positive, unless he held the line on this and stopped BB Netanyahu. Now, you're correct to believe that Netanyahu may be so reckless and arrogant to believe that he can go ahead and do whatever the hell he wants and just dare Trump to try to stop him. Now, while all that's going on, the whole Venezuela thing's playing out in the background, too, because we're seeing the same kind of buildup we saw in around Iran. in the week, in the, you know, 10, 12 days preceding the U.S. attack, deployment of naval forces,

deployment of error assets. We're seeing that as well now with respect to Venezuela, and there's been some speculation that all of that is to potentially secure the Venezuelan oil once the attack on Iran goes off because Iran could shut down the Gulf and make sure there's maybe another alternative source of oil. At least there's some people thinking that way. Wow. You know, I've been asking everybody all week, Ray, including you and Larry, if Trump controls Netanyahu or Netanyahu controls Trump,

and then Chris found this cut from Tucker Carlson, which is very, very telling Chris, number 26. I mean, BB's running around. This is a fact. I'm not guessing about this because I talk to people he said it to, is running around the Middle East, his region and his own country and telling people, point blank, just stating it, I control the United States. I control Donald Trump. He's saying that. And again, I'm not guessing at all. That's a fact. And I dare them to say that's not true because it is true and they know it's true. So I'm an American. How do you think it makes me feel? Even if I did. No surprise that BB's boasting, but where is this going to get him? I mean, you challenge Trump's ego. your peril yeah well everybody but Netanyahu with Netanyahu has a certain

Trump has a certain patience Netanyahu is going to say this to everybody including his wife because his whole power depends on his relationship with the US president now his bragging is par for the course whether he can controls Trump to that extent he has so far. Now, what happens if there's a Uniting for Peace Resolution? What is, what if the General Assembly authorizes a peace seeking force to go into Gaza? What if the Israeli shoot up the Samud flutella, which is mostly in Crete now, I believe, and ready to go to Gaza?

There are 42 ships now ready to go. Well, I think if the timing is fortuitous, if the Israelis act as is their character and shoot up these people with drones, and then the UN General Assembly might just face into the situation and say, look, this is a bridge too far. We're going to authorize. We're going to have a Uniting for Peace resolution. We're going to approve it. Now, what will the U.S. do then? will they, they don't have a veto anymore. This is a different kind of procedure.

That's one that will hit the road. And, of course, you have to remember that, in my view, I think that Netanyahu has some blackmail potential against Trump. And I think that's one thing that's working here. I may be wrong on that, but there's actually some evidence about that now. It's the fact that the Mossad agent that was handling. Epstein has talked about this and how Trump should just make a clean breast of it. I have to run Jeff Sachs is waiting for us.

But before I do, what are you doing tomorrow afternoon, Rayne McGovern? Well, I'm speaking at this big peace and freedom rally. Gerald Clienti is kind of convening a whole bunch of us there. I'm very happy to be there. A lot of my New York friends are coming up, and including people who were on the U.S. boat to Gaza in 2011. The timing is fortuitous, but these were the courageous people, many of them Jewish people, who helped us outfit and pay for this U.S. boat to Gaza,

which Obama made sure never got out of the harbor of Athens. Larry, I wish that you could be with us tomorrow, because for all of my work with Ray McGovern, he and I have never met in person. I am going to surprise him with a big bear hug and smother him with kisses at a time that he least expect. That's Kim's like Petraeus. Right, oh, God. This is meritorious, not sycophantic.

Kingston, New York, the birthplace of democracy in America. The buildings were constructed in the 1600s. Scott Ritter will be there. Dennis Gucinich will be. there. Roger Waters via remote. Ray will be speaking our mutual friend, Joe Loria. It'll be a very festive and very passionate afternoon. Guys, thank you very much. Thanks for joining me. Thanks for accommodating my schedule today. Have a great weekend. Ray, see you tomorrow. All the best. Thanks, Judge. Bye. Bye. Thank you. And if you're watching us live coming up at 5 p.m. Eastern,

Professor Jeffrey Sachs, Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. Thank you.