Judging Freedom - INTEL Roundtable w/ Johnson & McGovern - Weekly Wrap 15-May

Episode Date: May 15, 2026

INTEL Roundtable w/ Johnson & McGovern - Weekly Wrap 15-MaySee 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 Friday, May 15, 2026. It's the end of the day, the end of the week. Our favorite time to wrap up on the week's events with my dear friends and colleagues, Ray McGovern and Larry Johnson, Ray and Larry, welcome here as always. Larry, let me start with you. Aside from diverting attention from his failed war in Iran and from the inflation here at home, what did Donald Trump go to? China in order to achieve and did he achieve it? Well, he got, he added to his frequent flyer account.

So he's got some more miles there. You know, maybe we can do some additional vacation travel. I'm sure he got to eat some decent Chinese food. Of course, his tastes tend to prefer McDonald's over Kampal chicken. But apart from that, nada. It was a big, it was a nothing burger. And, you know, the Chinese, the Chinese really didn't. play this meeting up at all.

You know, they sent all the signals beforehand. You know, for example, the Tajik, the flags were still up adorning the light poles all the way in from the airport to the center of the city, six to eight hours, even before Trump arrived. And actually, I don't think the Chinese replaced those in time with U.S. flags. The front page of the China Daily. it was focused all about the Xi Jinping's meeting with

the Tajik president and you know they just had a sidebar about oh yeah she's going to be involved with some touchy international issues just barely mentioning the summit the primary

websites Shenhua and CCTV not a word about the meeting with Trump then the meeting at the airport port was, you know, the number two guy. When Putin shows up or even Kim Jong-un from North Korea, she's there to greet him. And in fact, I guess when Putin came last time, she put Putin in the back, they were both

in like a convertible and rode into the center of Beijing together. So, you know, clearly a different priority, according to Trump. And then I heard from a source, a friend of mine who has sources in the White House yesterday. And he'd say, because I'd predicted this summit was going to be a nothing burger. And he just sent me a quick notice. And you were right. And what he was told is that when Trump brought up the issue of Iran and what China could do to extricate the United States from it, they said the Chinese politely told Donald Trump to go pound sand.

So he came away with nothing. Ray, is there a significance to the fact that at their very first public meeting two days ago, before President Trump said a word when President Xi welcomed him, he lectured him on Taiwan, right to his face before Trump even said, thank you, and it's nice to be here. Is that the way the Chinese treat other heads of state, or are they trying to send the type of message that Larry indicated they have sent by their absence of, let's say, a Class A greeting. Well, Taiwan, of course, is sui generis. It's part of China. We agreed to that. And all this business is about sending $15 billion more of weaponry to Taiwan is sort of beyond the

pale as far as the Chinese are concerned. Now, do they fear an imminent challenge there? No, they're playing the long game, Taiwan will inevitably become part of China in their view and in mine as well. It's just going to take a lot of time and a lot of desisting from what she called conflicts and conflicts and some of the conflicts with respect to U.S. machinations toward Taiwan. The more interesting thing I found was she's almost immediately mentioned the Thucydides trap. Now, as you all know, that means that when a rising nation meets a hegemon and the hegemon is going to be a war, like the nation war.

Well, that's the first thing pretty much she said. He said, look, we have to find a way to avoid the trap here. And the way we do that is seek strategic stability. Taiwan, no movement on that. Let's see if we can work out a decent relationship. We put it in the 80s terms. Why can't we get along? Why can't we have a win-win strategy?

That was pretty much how he set the tone. And for the rest of it, I just add that over that dinner, I don't know if we saw that, But when she got up to go to the bathroom, did you see Trump take a look at his, take a peek at his portfolio there? And amusingly, I would say, he found no notations about rare earth minerals. There is no indication at all that this primary desire on the U.S. part did discuss rare earth minerals, which are so damn important. I never realized before. So the CEOs are going home

instead of with rare earth minerals, they have got Chinese checkers engraved, you know, each of them are separate. Somebody said they should have chess, but now the collective decision. Now, for these guys, the checkers would be far better.

You know, Larry Ray is not exaggerating at all. If you saw Elon Musk, posting his videos. All he did was sightsy while he was there. What an embarrassment and what an insult to the president. The president brought 16 of these guys with them.

Only Elon Musk and somebody else's name, I forget, was on Air Force One. The others got there on their own. Maybe they got their on luxury. The Navidia guy. Correct. Correct. So my point is,

did Trump really go there to talk President Xi into pressuring the Iranians to surrender in a war where they have totally stymied the United States and Israel? Did Trump think he could do that? Yeah. Yeah. Actually, that was one of their objectives. Let me just note in passing. Anybody want to place a bet of how many on the Trump entourage and staff had to quickly

Google Thucydides trap to figure out what it was? Probably a lot of them. I can't imagine the president to what that was. When Ray says the president looked at President Xi's notes, my first thought was, well, he can't read Chinese. And then I thought even if it's in English, she doesn't read. Yeah, no, there's, listen, they, there are still many in the Trump camp. And many of the, what I call the completely committed MAGA crowd who are insisting,

oh, this was another masterful game of five-dimensional chess by Trump. He's got the Chinese right where he wants them. And yet he came away with nothing other than, let's see, Boeing, Boeing got a verbal promise that, yeah, we'll buy about, you know, 200 of your jets, except they're already on, they're already committed in contract to buy Airbus out of, of France. The, oh yeah, soybeans, yeah, we'd probably like to buy some soybeans.

Now, the only problem with that is American farmers are having trouble finding enough fertilizer to do the planting. So the planting acres are coming down. So, but it was very clear when it came to the question of Iran, you know, China's message was, lift the blockade.

Basically, you're the ones blockading the Strait of Hormuz, not Iran. So it didn't come out well for him. Ray, what happens if Trump approves the $11 billion sale of offensive weaponry to Taiwan? I suspect he probably will, and the Chinese will complain, but they're playing a very long game here. They know that people will enrich themselves from these arms sales. Beijing is not afraid of Taiwan. when the time comes, even some of their politicians are pretty much drifting toward the notion that there really is just when China, there will be an accommodation.

They don't like it at all, but they understand that money speaks in America, and that's what that's all about. Hey, Judge, let me just add in on that, though. I'm sure the Chinese have, hey, U.S., go ahead, sell all you want to Taiwan. Where are you going to get the rare earth minerals to produce those weapons? you know. Wow. Very, very good point. And I don't want to be labor, Taiwan.

But here's what he said to Sean Hannity. I don't know if this was on Air Force One or in Beijing, if Hannity traveled with him. But here's President Trump a few hours ago. You tell me if you think he's got a good grasp on the Taiwan issue. Trump on Taiwan. President Sheets said there was a risk of conflict with the U.S. over Taiwan. No, no, I don't think so. I don't think so.

I think we're going to be, I think we'll be fine. He doesn't want to see, he doesn't want to see a war. And you have two things. You have the Iranian situation of that. I think we agree almost entirely other than he's a buyer. And we're not, we don't need it. And on Taiwan, he doesn't want to see a movement for independence. He says, look, you know, we've had it for thousands of years.

And then at a certain period of time and left that we were going to get it back. At the Korean War, a lot of things happened. depend all this. But no, for Taiwan, he feels very strongly. I made no commitment either way. See what happened.

I was incorrect. That was clearly on Air Force One. Here's the brief clip with Hannity on the Strait of Hormuz. We don't need it at all. We don't need it at all. Fair enough. I mean, you could make the case.

You know, like, why are we even? We're doing it. it to help Israel and to help Saudi Arabia and to help Qatar and UAE and, you know, Kuwait and other countries, Bahrain. It also helps China. I told them today. I said, you know, we're helping you. And we're helping you in another way because I don't think they want, I don't think China wants

Iran to have a nuclear weapon either. I said, this don't go crazy. You don't need them having a nuclear weapon either. What did he say? Well, he's not going to respond to much. He's a pretty cool guy. He's not going to say, oh, gee, that's a good point. I think he's going to do.

What a wonderful point. You think he agreed. That was the impression. I don't think he wants him to have. No, he would like to see an end. Some of what Trump said is almost meaningless. So, you know, in these heads of state to heads of state meetings, you both, been involved in a certain level in this, if we had real diplomacy, real diplomats would have

been meeting for weeks and months and would have really worked things out. Did they even have an advanced team? Because he didn't know who was meeting him at the bottom of the staircase. He didn't know who this fellow was that was the vice premier. Wasn't any of this stuff laid out? Wasn't any agreement made ahead of time that they didn't, that they would have. just ratified, apparently not, Larry. Yeah, apparently Chas Freeman, who's been through one or two of these rodeos like Ray has been, you know, he knows the work is done by what they call the Sherpas, which is stolen from the poor souls who have to carry the bags for a bunch of rich millionaires

up slopes of the Mount Everest. These Sherpas are diplomats that they meet with their counterparts from the Chinese foreign ministry and they work out all the details including you know the negotiations if there's going to be a joint press release which there wasn't to my knowledge and so all of that has to be hammered out in advance so that when the principals come together it's done and you know ray's been involved with that before for at least from the standpoint of the CIA at least on the arms control agreements none of that they didn't do any of that so that that's why that's why you knew right off the bat This was just a photo off.

You get together, you know, shake hands, get to see some interesting architecture. But beyond that, Trump came back with the Nothingburger, as was reflected in, you know, the stock market across the board started falling today. Stock market's down 500 points. Ray, what do the Chinese think of Donald Trump? What did Intel tell him Xi thought of them? They said, Mr. Xi, the only thing we can say about Mr. Trump is that he's thoroughly unpredictable. He's not very well informed. His intelligence people, some of them seem to know which end is up, but he doesn't seem to listen to those.

So we have to sort of agree with what Comrade Putin says. and thinks and proceed very gingerly, have ceremonies that he really loves in music and dancing and little kids with flags and stuff. We have to be polite. And the last thing we want to do is incite him to do something unpredictable. So we'll talk to him about Taiwan straightforwardly. Then when he goes off and he does his own thing in terms of announcing what we agreed on, well, there's not going to be any joint communique.

That's what we usually do. You know, we sort of try to hammer out something beforehand so that we can issue it jointly. So we're going to have to watch what the White House says and then do our own version, you know? And there were several points that were raised in the White House thing that weren't in the Chinese version of these things. So it was typically mucked up.

And the priority is simply not to alienate this guy, just to keep him feeling that he's very important, but to stand by the Iranians and all the others in terms of what the substantive positions are, which are not going to change. Again, Larry mentioned the straight. Well, you know, true of Trump said, the straight, we've got to get that straight open.

And the Chinese had to say, well, it was open before you attacked Iran. What do you want us to do? Withdraw and don't restart this thing. I have more hope now that it will not restart. I want to switch to Israel and give you both a little, even though I love you both, give you both a little bit of heartburn, listening to a diatribe from Mike Huckabee,

who of course sounds these days more like the Israeli ambassador to the United States than the American ambassador at Israel. But here he is ripping into Tucker Carlson. Now, remember, it is the interview with Carlson, where Huckabee said, let them take all the land they want. But listen to what he says because he could just as easily be talking about Netanyahu. Chris, cut number six. What he says is dangerous in the same way that when people throughout history have been

demagogues and they have incited entire populations of people to hate others. And they base it on hating people without justification, without cause. cause and based on outright lies, this is a dangerous thing. And when you marginalize, let's say Jewish people are marginalized, whether they're white people, whatever you marginalize, and you dehumanize them, you make it easy to justify, not just hatred, but violence and murder toward them. Where do we get a society where people think it would be okay to kill a Charlie Kirk or Donald Trump? When you dehumanize, him to the point you say, their views are so dangerous, we can't tolerate them, we must get rid of

them. That's why I say, it's not enough to just ignore Tucker Carlson. We need to confront him, and we need to correct him. Larry, does he even realize what he said? You know, he is a horse's ass for him the very thing he was describing is then what he prescribes to do to Tucker Carlson in other words he he's talking about all dangerous and how you these other people and then what he's doing is demonizing Tucker Carlson where you know I've watched a lot of what Tucker has done uh like occasionally I can I'll exchange some text messages with with Tucker but Tucker is always always emphatic about not using violence, not hating people as a group, not using blood libel. And here's Mike Huckabee doing that.

I mean, he really is a disgrace as a human being. And, you know, what he does is he foments the very kind of hate that he's claiming that he's trying to stop. Ray, everything he said about Tucker Carlson, he could have said about Netanyahu's towards the Palestinians and towards Arabs in general? Well, that's exactly right. You know, he talks about hate. Well, hate benefits itself by cooping people up, by marginalizing them, by making them some human, and by torturing them. Now, Nick Christoph has chapter adverse, so what on in some of those Israeli prisons and so forth.

He had the guts to publish it. Now, of course, the Israelis are coming after him. But when these things translate themselves into action, as they have on the West Bank, which I've seen with my own eyes, would they have in Gaza, my God massacre and genocide? I mean, that translates this hate right into action, and that's what's so abominable. The only thing I can say about Huckabee is he had a really nice paisley gray tie that sort of softens his image a little bit. His image really needs to be softened. Wow. I got one more of these for you. Another hypocrite. Marco Rubio on Cuba.

Guess whose fault it is that the Cubans are starving? Not anybody in Washington. It's their own fault. Cut number three. It's a difficult thing to manage, but it's only four months in, and I'm very, I think we should be pleased. Venezuela is a better place today than it was four months ago, but it needs to continue to stay on that path. In the case of Cuba is a very different situation. There is no economy. Cuba. To the extent there's any wealth in Cuba, it doesn't go, it doesn't, forget about it doesn't go to the people, it doesn't even go to the government. The wealth is controlled by a private, by a company owned by military generals. They take all the money. They're sitting

on billions of dollars. Okay, this is a country where people are literally now eating garbage from the streets, but they have a company that controls all of the money making there that's sitting on 15, 16 billion dollars. So it's a broken, non-functional economy and it's impossible to change it. I wish it were different. But, but it's sitting on 15, 16 billion dollars. So it's a broken, I believe, it's my personal opinion, you cannot change the economic trajectory of Cuba as long as the people who are in charge of it now are in charge of it. That's what's going to have to change, because these people are proven incapable. I hope I'm wrong. We'll give them a chance, but I don't think it's going to happen. I don't think we're going to be able to change the trajectory

of Cuba as long as these people are in charge in that regime. These people... Instead, Ray McGovern will starve them to death and deny them medicine, food and electricity and oil. Well, yeah, after all, they chased the rich people out of Cuba, including Rubio's ancestors. You know, it's pretty rich, pretty rich for Rubio would be saying these things. And one caution here I would adduce, and that is simply that Cuba plays a special role in Russia-U.S. relations. there's been a deal on Cuba. We agreed not to invade Cuba, not to overthrow it in return for the withdrawal of Soviet missiles. They were put there in 1962.

There were side deals, but that was the main deal that we did not invade. And if we try something like that now, I dare say the Russians are going to be very strong about it. Witness the fact that the Russians said, look, you have deprived the Cubans of Venezuela and oil. we're going to send a great big oil ship down. You better not stop us. And what did Trump do? He said, okay, well, go ahead. Now, a second one I think is coming.

So there is some real sensitivity here with respect to how the Russians look at Cuba. And I dare say they're going to, they will do something very strong if we decide to invade Cuba or overthrow their government as we did in Caracas. Larry, just to complete the circle, here's Dimitri Peshkov on Ukraine earlier today. Chris, yesterday, cut number one. In order for a ceasefire to take place and for a corridor to open for full-scale peace negotiations, as the President already mentioned back in June of the year before last, speaking before the leadership of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, President. President Zelensky must order the armed forces of Ukraine to cease fire and withdraw from

the territory of Donbos to leave the territory of the Russian regions. At that moment a ceasefire will take effect and the parties can calmly proceed to negotiations which, by the way, will inevitably be very difficult and will involve a large number of important details. As for contacts, we continue our dialogue through the existing channels with the Americans. These contacts are carried out on a regular basis. And since they serve as intermediaries through them, information is also exchanged with the Ukrainian side. Larry, I was surprised if what he said is true to learn that the communications are still going on. Well, it's communications, but part of communication is also understanding what you hear.

And Washington has refused to listen to what the Russians are saying. As Peskov noted, you know, they keep coming back to the June 14th, 2024 presentation by Vladimir Putin to the Russian Foreign Ministry. laid out explicitly, look, these are our conditions. And those conditions, as he noted there, is basically Ukraine withdrawals now from the Donbos and from Khrasan and Zaporisha. They withdraw NATO's out of the picture. Then Russia will sit down and talk about, okay, we'll end this conflict. We'll leave what's left of Ukraine intact, which means Odessa, Kiev, will still be left intact as part of Ukraine.

for now. But if they don't accept that, then there's going to be some new details added. And what's fascinating is we see the same phenomena with respect to negotiations with Iran. Iran has made its sort of five non-negotiable points quite clear. Lift the sanctions. Give us back the money that you've stolen, that we purchased weapons. you never delivered them. So give those back. Recognize our control over the Strait of Hormuz. Pay reparations.

And last but not least, stop the war against, stop the Israelis from killing Palestinians and Lebanese. That's got to stop. So that's Iran's position. Iran hasn't variated from that. And Russia hasn't variegated from its position about, hey, basically get NATO out of the picture, get your troops out of front of,

Russian territory, and then we'll talk. But beyond that, you know, there's not going to be any concession, no ceasefire, nothing. Ray, if Peshkov says it, he's speaking for Putin, right? Exactly. And Putin said something very similar in that wonderful press conference he gave. I say wonderful. He hadn't done that all year, and it was right after the parade. And what he said, and what Medvedev said before him, is that we like the notion that the U.S. is, you know, sincere in trying to help us work with the Ukrainians, but there's nothing to be said to the Ukrainians until they accept our terms, and we're moving strongly on the battlefield, which they are. And the most noxious thing is this increasingly widespread story that Russia has

been stopped. Russia is now losing. That's the economist. It's all kinds of places. Or, as I consulted one of my friends, my college friends up there in New York, who was really bright guy. I said, how do you see the war in Ukraine? Oh, it's a stalemate. It's a stalemate that Russia's not winning. And I said, where do you get that? I read the New York Times every day. So, most people don't realize that they're being given a line that Russia has been stopped or is losing. I don't really understand. There was a time when it looked like they were becoming more realistic. It's going to be a big shock to them. When Russia does move forward in a full throat offensive this summer and fall, I think it'll be over by the fall. And then people have to,

well, I guess they're not embarrassed. Oh, we were wrong on now. You know, last question. Larry, will Putin use those new weapons he has? Actually, yes. It sounds like. Dimitri, the former deputy ambassador at the UN. He was interviewed by Danny Davis earlier today. And actually, he was saying, you know what, he can't rule out that Russia is now going to use something like the Arrushnik against European targets that are producing drones that are attacking and killing Russian citizens. So this thing could still spread. I was sort of, you know, he is, you know, Dimitri is his name. He's a pretty low-key guy.

So for him to say that, and one, he doesn't say something like that without having permission from above. Got it. He's not a freelance guy. So he's always been cautious about what he can and can't say. So that was a remarkable statement by him.

Gentlemen, thank you very much. As always, a very happy conversation. And this time, we literally went around the world. Deeply appreciated. We'll see you.

you both early next week. Thank you, my friends. Okay, thank you. Sure. That's it for this week. Coming up on Monday, all of our regular guests, have a nice weekend, everyone. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom.