Judging Freedom - INTEL Roundtable : w/ Larry Johnson, Scott Ritter, & Joe Kent : 14-AUG

Episode Date: August 14, 2026

INTEL Roundtable : w/ Larry Johnson, Scott Ritter, & Joe Kent : 14-AUGSee 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, August 14th, 2020. Welcome to this special edition of the Intelligence Community Roundtable, the end of the day, the end of the week, where we wrap up the week's events. Apologies for the late start entirely my fault. Joining us today are Larry Johnson, Scott Ritter, and Joe Kent.

Gentlemen, welcome here, and thank you for waiting for me. Joe, I want to start with you, this bizarre event that we learned about this week, which happened about two weeks ago, in which the president of the president of the president, the United States was whisked off of Air Force One into a food truck and secretly delivered to another plane with a half dozen of his aides, leaving the Secretary of State and another dozen aids and more than 150 journalists on Air Force One. Apparently, the Mossade informed the CIA of a credible threat to attack Air Force One, which the CIA did not believe. Donald Trump, as he has in the past, decided to believe the Israelis rather than his own

intelligence community. What can you tell us about this, Joe? Well, you know, first off, I think it's very interesting that this leaked out to the Washington Post and things going to the Washington Post usually come from, you know, a well-placed source. So that shows, I think, the I sees frustration that the Israelis continue to give us information that is meant to influence us, not inform us. So the Israelis for quite some time have given us, you know, information to try and shape a narrative. That's kind of how we got into this, this Iran war in the first place. But I think this one was pretty blatant. I mean, the president was in Turkey. The Israelis are trying to set the groundwork, the framework for us go, for them going after the Turks next. So I think

they're trying to paint a picture saying, you know, Turkey can't guarantee your security. They've got IRC sleeper cells here, whatever the case may be. And here's some intelligence right now, trying to influence the president. Then the CIA had to basically do the duty to warn and they had to hand it over to the Secret Service. It sounds like they did the right thing. The Secret Service had to take that threat seriously. So they,

you know, they pulled a maneuver. They moved the president away. But then I think the CIA out of frustration said, let's, let's kind of get this out there. I'm speculating here, but this is my best guess.

Let's get this out here so that we can let the American people know that we don't believe this was credible. And also to let the Israelis know that we know like this little game they're playing. Like we're kind of sick of it. So I think that's actually the biggest. part of the story to me is that this actually leaked out. And we're hearing members of the intelligence community saying, like, we're actually pretty frustrated with the way the Israelis have been attempting to play with, you know, so-called intelligence sharing to try and craft a narrative

to influence the president. Scott, do you agree with Joe's phrase game they're playing? Was this another yet another attempt by the Israelis to manipulate Donald Trump? Can't hear you, Scott. Yeah, I was soundproofing against Maverick. My dog, who tins apart. Were you able to hear the question I put to? I heard the question, yeah. Well, I agree 100%. The Israelis are gaming the system.

They've done this for a while. I mean, you know, I spent four years working hand and glove with the Israelis, trying to get them to tell the truth about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. And then when the political winds changed, I watched how they immediately went away from fact-based, intelligence reporting to influencing intelligence reporting, which means they're just straight up lying. And they manufacture these. These are very good at manufacturing intelligence.

They know how to assemble data in a way and package it so that it looks and sounds convincing when any real intelligence professional who's knowledgeable of the subject, because that's what we have to keep in mind is the intelligence, you know, it's not this, you know, magical thing. It's common sense. The data flows, past patterns repeat themselves, things of this name. nature. So when something jumps up out of the blue that hasn't, nobody's detected, I mean, the idea that Iran is going to have man pads outside of Esamoa airfield in Ankara and not a single

person detected it except some magical Israeli source that we never knew of before this happened, that's a red flag in, in its own right. And the fact that, I mean, the fact that the Secret Service acted on this the way they did is absurd in the extreme. And if you got man pads outside of Osaboa, no airplane takes off with an American president. What are man pads? man-portable, you know, any aircraft, the Stinger missiles or the, you know, the Russian analog. You know, they put the president on an airplane that could get shot down even easier than Air Force One. So this was just theater all around. I think that there's more than just bad Israeli intelligence. I think there's also actors on the inside of the Trump administration that were going along with the charade in order to create the

impression of, you know, a threat, Israeli reliability, Turkish incompetence, whatever. But I do agree with Joe that this was an Israeli game. It's just a shame that the Secret Service played along. They really should have just told them to pound sand. Yeah, Judge, let me jump in on this, too. A couple of things. Okay, so having dealt with, you know, we came up with the standard of State Department in the wake of Pan Am 103, that if you had intelligence, it was considered reliable

and you couldn't prevent it, then you'd go public. But if you could prevent it, you wouldn't go public. Now, in this case, this doesn't make sense. Okay, you've got to report that some guys maybe going to try to launch a man, you know, a surface-the-air missile, shoulder-fired surface-to-air missile,

red-eye, stinger, you know, whatever, at the plane. Okay, do a couple of things. One, get a hold of the Turkish security services and say, we're going to set up a damn perimeter, five miles wide and five miles deep going out. Patrol it. Number one. Two, delay the takeoff till dark and turn off the damn lights at the airport.

I mean, you do that. You can't tell which plane's taken off. I mean, this doesn't even pass the sniff test for common sense. Why would you leave your Secretary of State, half of your senior staff, and all of the journalist, Larry, on that plane as a decoy? Well, because they've had poor performance reports, so you don't want to get rid of them. Speaking of poor performance report, Scott, what does your take on this USS Abraham Lincoln? We have an unbelievable quote. Actually, let's run what the president said about it. We know the complaints about the Lincoln. Four suicide attempts, two people succeeded in jumping off. They don't

get mail. The showers are clogged. They're eating lousy food. They don't have deodorant. They don't have toothpaste. Sounds like a great place. Here's what the President of the United States, the commander-in-chief of these guys, said about this today. Family members of U.S. service members are concerned about the conditions on the U.S. Well, no, that ship is moving. No, they're not. That ship is moving right now, or very shortly, and it's being replaced with another very similar ship. Not too long. Are you working?

No, no, no. Not nearly long enough. Thank you, everybody. I'd like to see him do a deployment. What does he mean, Scotty? First of all, he says they're not complaining. We know they are. What does he mean by the deployment hasn't gone on long enough?

They've been at seat for 250 days. Look, Donald Trump just is one of the most despicable human beings on the planet. And he's also one of the most disingenuous human beings on the planet. We know, look, this is a man who got his butt handed to him by the Iranians, but he'll go on and say, we've destroyed their missile force, we've sunk all their Navy, we've destroyed the Air Force, and we've wiped out their military. Meanwhile, none of that's happened. We control the straight-or moves.

That didn't happen. So basically, when his lips move, he's lying. So we can't believe anything that he's saying. He's simply trying to, you know, project a positive image, which is his whole function to protect the Trump brand. Trump has to be better than everybody else, which means anybody affiliate with Trump has to be better than anybody else. And, you know, of course we don't have any problems on the Abraham Lincoln. I can't address these. I mean, the thing is, and we were having this conversation before he came on, this just boggles my mind that these kind of problems.

I can understand maintenance issues. I mean, that happens all the time. And there are, you can have, you know, having been subjected to long deployments, I understand there are, you know, morale issues. and sometimes a soldier, airman, Marine commits suicide. It wouldn't be the first time on a deployment that this happens. I mean, military service is hard and deployments are harder, and deployments in wartime that disrupt family activities are the hardest.

And you know, guys get Dear John letters, or now they get Dear John, you know, voicemails or whatever, and they get depressed, and this is a leadership problem. And so what we're seeing is just a leadership failure on a scope and scale unimaginable, especially if we're talking about food. Because, you know, bullets, band-aids and beans, baby, those are the three Bs that make the world go around in the military and no commander worth his or her salt will ever allow deficiency in either one of them. If you ran out of ammunition, you're a loser. If you don't have the ability to take care of the

health of your troops, you're a loser. And if you run out of food, you're a big time loser because a army travels on its stomach. So I don't understand what's going on here. maybe some of the other guys can comment on this one. Joe, do we have a handle on what Trump is doing to find his elusive off ramp from the ill-advised and catastrophic defeat in Iran? You know, unfortunately, it doesn't seem like he's moving towards one. I mean, he's stuck in this position where he wants a deal, he wants a piece of paper to say that, you know, he got a deal. I don't think he's really concerned necessarily with the details of it. But the Iranians have come out and even said, like, we're not giving Trump a deal.

Their demands have been the same premise they set with the MOU. But then also Trump wants to, you know, allude to, hey, maybe we could get a military solution. Maybe we can go back to bombing when, you know, it's obvious that there is no military solution to this. So he kind of has this stalemate status quo where he says we have the wall of steel blockade and we'll just economically choke Iran. There's two fundamental problems with that. Number one, I think this is a major miscalculation. by the president and by, you know, the U.S. I see and the Pentagon, we still think that we can dictate the pace of this conflict, that we can start doing strikes when we want to, and then when we say,

okay, let's stop and let's have a lull, that we will be able to keep that lull. I don't think the Iranians are going to let us play that game. I think the Iranians know that, number one, if it's going to be a game of blockade and endure sanctions, that they can frustrate the Straits of Hormuz that's going to have an economic impact in America, they can do that, and that's going to affect us more. than any sanctions that we're going to throw on Iran. Iran's been sanctioned for 47 years. They have a pretty robust system. And also, like, they're not going to crumble just because of economic pressure. They are galvanized. They've rallied around the flag and around the regime. But I'm also concerned

that you have a lot of hardliners in Iran right now who are making the logical argument to say, like, if we don't hit the Americans, if we don't change this and we don't make the Americans retreat in defeat, then they're going to keep coming back. So we might as well hit them right now. At the same time, I think Sinkom is almost saying the same thing to President Trump, saying, like, look, at some point, the Iranians are just going to hit us. So why don't we hit them first? This is where everyone says, like, we don't want to, no one wants to get into an endless war. No one's planning on being in an endless war. But this is how you end up getting stuck in them through these escalation cycles. So I think we're, even though the shooting isn't going on right now actively, I think we're in a very

dangerous period right now. Larry, two questions. One, can the U.S. dictate the pace of the war? And two, what is the status of communications? I won't use the word negotiation, but you can correct me if you want. Between the United States and the Iranians, if any, through our friends, the Pakistanis. Now, first, as far as dictating the pace of the war, absolutely not. The United States is on its, you know, back heels. Look at, you know, so we had six, the first six weeks, United States, you know, unleashed hell, fired over 850 Tomahawks, forget the number of jasms, the joint air strike,

surface missile, you know, came close to depleting, you know, depleted a significant amount. Then after Trump declared the ceasefire dead and the MOU dead, there were another three weeks of intense attacks in the Persian Gulf to try to open, you know, degrade Iran's ability to prevent ships from going through the Strait of Hormuz, and that failed. And then we get finally, you know, got reports that backed up what, you know, I wrote about it in April, that we were running out of out of both air defense missiles and offensive missiles across the board

and all of them are dependent upon a Chinese supply chain that the Chinese government is telling us forget about it. So with all of our striking, you know, Brad Cooper's latest suggestion sounding like, you know, Christopher Walken on that Saturday night live skin. More Calbell! You know, more Cal Bell. You know, do the more.

Cal Bell and Iran's going to still be in the same position they are with their underground missile factories with their underground with their ability to launch those missiles from underground in our inability to stop it so you know that right there that's the problem now as far as talks go I have now you know I've heard via the you know Pakistani sources yes they're talking to J.D. Vance and then they're really into J.D. Vance what the Iranians are saying and then they're talking to the Iranian. So you're right, it's not direct negotiations at all. The Iranians have made their demands pretty clear. And there are a couple of interesting, I don't know, I may be reading too

much into this, but one of their demands is, hey, Israel's got to stop the wars in Lebanon, Gaza, or Palestine, Yemen, and in Iraq. Well, we have seen a significant falloff in Israeli military activity in southern Lebanon over the last 48 hours. Coincidence? Maybe. Maybe there's some other reason, but that's cut back. We've also seen some unusual flights from the United Arab Emirate into Tehran and carrying the reports are gold and cash. In other words, unfrozen assets, another demand that the Iranians have made.

So maybe these are concessions the U.S. is making behind the scenes without coming out front and admitting it. All right. I want to switch to Ukraine. Scotty, what is the current state of United States-Russia relations? Confused. Look, let's be serious here. The official policy in the United States continues to be what it has been for several

administrations now. We are seeking to undermine the rule of Vladimir Putin, to bring a collapse of the government of Putin so that we can install a leadership that is more conducive to complying with the dictates of the United States, economic and geopolitical that dictates. We don't want a strong unified Russia. We've made that clear in the 1990s, and we've made that clear ever since it was apparent that Vladimir Putin was better at getting elected than we were at installing CIA-backed proxies. We've been trying to undermine him ever since. The stated policy of the United States today in regards to Ukraine is that we are seeking the strategic defeat of Russia. This was stated by Lloyd Austin back in, I think, May of 2022, and it has not been altered.

And the CIA continues to take action based upon that. Why else would the CIA continue to be providing meaningful support to Iran's long-range drone projects to strike the strategic depth of Russia? The CIA continues to provide, you know, specialized support for other aspects. So one thing that people don't talk about are, you know, the long range, I guess, sabotage groups, you know, that the Ukrainians launch into Russia on occasion that go deep, deep, deep into Russia, do some damage. Now, they generally pay with their lives. They don't get out of it. But it takes some skill to do this. And the Ukrainians don't do it by themselves.

They get constant intelligence support from the United States. the CIA that's your training that's been going on for you know more than a decade now so all of this is happening in an environment where we claim we want a negotiated outcome but what an absurd notion and negotiated outcome we don't want a negotiated outcome that's beneficial to Russia we wanted to negotiate so that the american you know policy posture is primed to succeed we want a weak russia that's the goal and yet you know trump continues to pretend that you know we're we're seeking friendship. You know, the Whitkoff Kushner, you know, traveling duo, I think, has run its course. The Russians just won't do business with them anymore. Now we have Cash Patel going over to run some sort of security friendship relationship. But as long as you have Scott Bissend continuing to claim that we want to break Russia's economy, want to bring Russia to its knees and taking action to that regard, as long as you have a Secretary of State that continues to work with our European allies to create, you know, the structures that support the lethality of Ukraine so they can kill more Russians.

You can't speak of U.S. Russian friendship. We just right now are trying to maintain the facade of, you know, of peacefulness, I guess, while underneath we're doing everything we can to destroy Russia. Joe, does Trump truly want a grand reset, commercial, economic, academic, travel, diplomatic, between the United States and Russia that he talked about right before Anchorage?

Or was that some sort of a negotiating ploy? I believe the president would like that because I do think ultimately he would like a deal. And I think he sees Putin as, you know, being a strong, competent leader. And I think just the business mentality he has, I think he would prefer that outcome. The problem is he hasn't gotten full control

of the intelligence community. And the intelligence community, the military industrial complex, the neocons who got into this Iran war, they're also very hawkish on Ukraine. They have kept a very steady amount of pressure on him and they've kept key programs going that are basically enabling the Ukrainians

to continue the fight. So as opposed to coming in and just saying, hey, we're going to end this war. I need to cut off all the support the Ukraine's getting and make sure both parties get to the negotiating table. He instead kind of did this on, off, on off thing that sent a message to Putin who has been studying American politics for quite some time that, you know, the president really isn't completely in charge. The intelligence community is still

in charge. And the same people that were attempting to put Ukraine into NATO are still in the driver's seat and it's still an existential threat to Putin. And also by the time we got into, by the time Trump came in January, Putin already believed that he was winning in a very Russian sense of the way. It doesn't make sense to us here in the West because the amount of casualties he was taking and how long it was taking, but he knows that this is an existential threat and he needs to keep grinding. So I frankly just don't think right now that Putin takes the overtures even very seriously at all. He knows that NATO, the people who want to continue to expand into Russia's borders, are still really in the driver's seat. What I'm worried about, though, is the joining of the two conflicts, is the linking of the war in Ukraine and then also the war in Iran.

And we saw the Ukrainians strike that Iranian vessel. The Iranians have been giving the Russians drones for quite some time now. I think the pro-war party, the Israel lobby, the pro-Ukraine NATO types here, I think that they are going to do a full court press to attempt to get these wars essentially joined at the hip. We saw that when we saw Zelensky and Netanyahu come in brief Congress and go to the White House to kind of make their case for the war as well. So I think here soon we're going to see a wall of propaganda about how, you know, the new existential fight for our front. freedom is fighting against, you know, the Soviet communist Russia and the Islamists in Iran who've joined forces. And that's what we need to all band together to fight. So, and I think that could

spiral very, very quickly because both those wars right now are on a tipping point. Larry, earlier this week, President Putin, wearing a military uniform addressed Russian military officials talking about the dangers of NATO. Will he attack NATO facilities in Ukraine? Will he attack manufacturing plants in NATO countries that produce weapons that are making their way into Russia? Yeah, well, they have attacked. Russia has attacked NATO facilities in Ukraine.

I mean, hell, they did it back in 2022, March, was it March 3rd, March 7th, when they attacked the base at Yavarev in Western Ukraine. I mean, that was the de facto. NATO base. NATO used to routinely hold classes there, et cetera. So you can check that off the list. Putin was wearing a naval uniform.

He was addressing the Russian Navy in the Far East. And he issued orders that will now give the Russian Navy permission, the green light, to seize any European vessel that is hauling cargo in that area if the Europeans make another attempt at seizing a Russian ship in either the Atlantic, North Atlantic, or the Mediterranean. So he said, game on, guys. You got permission. Seize them.

Now, this has led to an interesting reaction out of the Europeans. The Brits in particular called up and said, Hey, Mike, can we get together and have a chat? And the Russians said, no. No. So Britain, the British military scrambling their brow trying to figure out they can get a, get a conversation. I think it's at this point unlikely that Russia is going to launch an Arrchnick or some missile into any of the countries in Europe. But if they did, they'd be going after a military factory, after something that's involved with drones that are being used to attack Russian civilians. But it's not entirely off the list.

I mean, I can't guarantee you, no, they'll never do that. It's not at the top of the list. But actually, right now, things are going pretty good for Russia with, they've closed down the Black Sea, shut down all imports and exports for Ukraine. And it's really creating some significant economic damage. They are taking apart piece by piece, the military and logistics infrastructure, particularly in Kiev, with nightly missile barrages, missile barrages,

missile barrages, and they've opened up basically seven axes of attack all along from the Cherningiv and the north, Kharkiv, Sumi, Pultava, even, down into Dhenzsk, and then into Nipro-Petrovs, Zapparija, Kherson. So Russia's, you know, they've ramped it up. So Europe is some nervous, nervous cats in the room with the rocking chairs. Scotty, what do you expect next or what do you expect in the next few months, say between now and the end of the year in the special military operation? And is it still

a special military operation or is it now a war from the Kremlin perspective? I think politically it's still a special military operation. Functionally, we're seeing moves towards where it's not a war yet. But, you know, Ukraine has done things with this expanded drone campaign, especially after the formal announcement of a 40-day campaign on, I think, June 25th, that exposed them. I mean, Russia, you know, has been in sort of a tit-for-tat retaliation kind of mode, focusing on the battlefield.

You know, Russia started the energy war with Ukraine, but, you know, You know, Ukraine struck energy targets and Russia sort of shrug it off because that's what happens when you attack energy targets. Things, they strike back. But Ukraine expanded this into commercial retail space, you know, warehousing, etc. They're not having a meaningful impact on Russia. Yes, there's some really spectacular fires as a dozen or so wild berries, factories have gone up in flame. But it's not having a big impact on Russia. Russia is shutting down all of Ukraine in response.

Ukraine attacks some shipping in the Sea of Azov and struck a couple ships in the Caspian Sea. Didn't have any major impact on Russia. Russia shut down the Black Sea coast. And now Russia is in the business of just destroying Ukraine. Andre Olnitsky is the former senior advisor to Sergei Shogu when he was the Minister of Defense. You know, he's plugged in pretty much. And he just published an article that says, we don't need to take out any European targets. There's 33 sites that are well known to Russian military planners inside Ukraine.

And if we strike these, we shut Ukraine down. It's over. And Russia now has basically got the green light to strike most, if not all of these facilities. So in the next, in the coming weeks and months, you're going to start to see Ukraine get shut down. One click, one click, one click, one click. The winter is coming. This isn't just John Snow saying it. This is reality.

Zelensky is not ready for what's going to happen this winter. Ukraine is going to go dark. no power, no electricity, no gas, no nothing. Their armies being eviscerated on the battlefield. I'm in very close contact with, you know, the drone operators on the Russian side. I just spent 10 days, you know, down into Donbassan-Zaparroja, the meeting with these people. You know, while the Russians will always say that the Ukrainians are very good at drone warfare, and the United States has learned that the hard way in a military exercise where Ukrainian drone operators stopped

a, an army heavy brigade in its tracks. The Russians are better. And right now, Russia is just dominating across the board. Absolute total domination. And that's the death. If you, if Russia is killing everything that moves, including Ukrainian drone operators. The most dangerous job right now in the Ukrainian military is to be a drone operator. They're dying in droves. They can't be replaced. Their infrastructure is being annihilated. So they're not getting the drone replacements that they need. And we have to reflect on the drone, you know, what the Ukraine's done. somebody just counted it up. I think the Ukrainians in the recent, in the month of July, fired 1,400 drones towards Moscow. One drone penetrated the triple ring of Russian air defense,

one drone. So that's one in 1,400 drones going in. That's not a success rate, ladies and gentlemen. Russia fired 27, Iskander M's the other day. Every single one of them hit their target. The Ukrainian drone has a 60 kilogram warhead that goes pop. The Iskander has a 500-kilogram. kilogram warhead that goes boom when russia things things disappear and everything's disappearing in ukraine right now nothing's disappearing in russia people need to understand that the ukrainians are doing no harm to russia whatsoever this is all a psychological operation designed to create the conditions for some sort of political shift in power on september 20th this is a cia m i 6 driven plan to collapse russia from within and it's failing Putin is stronger now his his his you know they

say he's vulnerable because his approval rate is at 76%. I can promise you this. By September 20th, his approval rate will be above 80. The man can't be touched politically. This is it, lights out for Ukraine. And the sad thing is, you know, yes, Russians are dying, but Ukrainians are dying in greater numbers. I just counted up the casualty figures that are put out there this past week. over 7,000 Ukrainian soldiers died last week. 7,000. I can tell you right now how many Russians died, less than a tenth of that. The reports of Russian casualties are grossly exaggerated.

Again, I say this because I was there. I was with the Russian units. I mean, back in April, there was some tough times. The Ukrainian drones were causing a big problem, but not the kind of problem that everybody was talking about. But there were some casualties. The Russians took some losses. Right now they got the situation.

you know, it's not perfect, but they've got it under control. They're dominating the battlefield. They're dominating the pace of action. The Ukrainians are 100% on the defenses. When they launch an offensive, it's into a gray zone, meaning that it's a space between the Ukrainian lines and the Russian lines. They're punching into an empty zone, and they're claiming victory when they advance five kilometers, but then the entire brigade is chewed up dead, and they're done. You didn't advance into anything. And this is the problem with propaganda. It creates false perceptions, false narratives. The only narrative right now is that Russia is slaughtering the Ukrainians and the slaughter is going to continue until Ukraine collapses. Joe, last question. Senator Lindsay Graham, of course, is gone. Are the neocons still dreaming of using Ukraine as a battering ram with which to drive Vladimir Putin from office?

And are they still whispering these sweet nothings in the president's ears? I just don't think they're being up front with the president on what they're trying to do. do. I think it's framed to him in a sense that politically you can't just leave the Ukrainians flapping because politically that would be very bad for you. So we need to continue to support Ukraine so that they can at least defend themselves and then we'll have a better negotiating position. But meanwhile, because he's not in full control of the intelligence apparatus, the military industrial complex, they're continuing to funnel support to Ukraine in order to get us further entrenched in this war. and the Ukrainians are getting desperate, like it just like Scott just laid out. And I fear pretty quickly that Putin could, especially if he knows that we're weak and he knows that we're overextended in the Middle East, this would be a good time, especially if we get back into it in the mix in the Middle East with the Iranians. That would be a good time for him to strike some of those targets in Poland or some of the more sensitive targets elsewhere. Because look, this war is existential for the Russians. This is another problem I think we have here in the U.S. is that we have really,

failed to fully, I think, absorb and understand how much the is for the Russians and for Putin. Like, he can't lose this. This isn't something that he can just sort of walk away from and, you know, let Trump save some face and have some more negotiations. So I don't think President Trump is being given, like, the full 100% truth. I think this is probably one of the more, this is probably the most consequential war that's going on right now in the world just because the stakes are so high, but it's taken a back burner once again to this disaster.

that were involved in in the Middle East. And so we're just going to continue to slowly sleepwalk and be pushed towards some sort of a world conflict. And again, if the wars are joined, and this is a big effort, I think, of the neocons, is to join these two wars so that they can get exactly what it is they want, which is us to be engaged in wars on multiple fronts.

So again, I just, this is a very, very dangerous time and the president's not being given the ground truth. Larry, I'll give you the last word. Is either of these wars a forever war? Ultimately, no, but it's causing severe damage to the United States. Not only materially, but in terms of prestige. I mean, we've become the old guy that was the wizard of Oz. We'd convince the world that we're the great and powerful Oz. And now Toto's pulled back the curtain. And it turns out, here we are. We were running out of munitions. 78% of the DOD advanced

munitions are dependent upon five rare earth minerals that come out of China and China controls them. And we failed to beat the Houthis and we failed to beat Iran. So the myth of the invincible United States, that sort of crumbled. Gentlemen, thank you very much. A pleasure. Joe Kent, Scott Ritter, Larry Johnson, all the best guys. Have a great weekend. We'll look forward to seeing you next week.

Thanks. Thank you. Coming up on Monday, of course, Alastair Crook, Larry Johnson. And if I can corral him again, the one and only, Scott Ritter. Have a nice weekend, everyone. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom.