Judging Freedom - Larry Johnson: Claims Ukraine Is Winning are Inconceivable!

Episode Date: September 16, 2024

Larry Johnson: Claims Ukraine Is Winning are Inconceivable!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Thank you. Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Monday, September 16th, 2024. Larry Johnson will be here with us in just a moment on what's with these professors, not on this show, claiming that Ukraine is winning the war right after this. A divisive presidential election is upon us, and the winner is gold. Let me tell you what I mean. Since 2016, our national debt has grown a staggering 70 percent and gold has increased by 60 percent. Do you own gold? I do. I bought my gold in February 2023 and it has risen 33 percent.

You've heard me talk about Lear, assisted the FBI in discovering a nationwide gold theft ring. And because of Kevin's good work, the FBI caught these people before they could steal anymore. That's why I have been saying the people at Lear are good people. They believe in America. They believe in their product and they're honest to the core. So take action right now, my friends. Call 800-511-4620 or go to LearJudgenap.com. Protect your savings and retirement before it's too late. 800-511-4620, LearJudgenap.com. Remember, hope is not a strategy, but gold is. Larry Johnson, welcome here, my dear friend. Before we get to Ukraine and some of the arguments that were circulating over the weekend,

which you addressed so passionately and articulately on your own website, and before we get to the latest on Israel, what is the latest from your perspective on the recent assassination attempt on former President Trump? Do you know of the weapon? Do you know of any skill of the potential shooter? Do we know if this was a, if Trump was in harm's way or if this was just a crackpot in the neighborhood? No, this was not a crackpot in the neighborhood. The guy may be described by some as a crackpot, but he is actually, while being an American citizen, he's been a very proactive supporter of the war in Ukraine, actively trying to recruit Afghan fighters to go fight on behalf of the Ukrainians Ukraine, actively trying to recruit Afghan fighters to go fight on behalf of the Ukrainians against the Russians.

He's been a very vocal supporter of the whole Ukrainian cause and views Trump as a danger to Ukraine. So he also reportedly owns several firearms so that he's not someone who is unfamiliar with firearms. And in this case, you know, the Secret Service did a great job. They had the perimeter secured to the point that they identified this individual poking a rifle through the chain link fence. The rifle in question, an AK-47. It's the Russian version of an M-16 as far as being what people call an assault rifle. It just, it shoots a larger bullet and it is to be a very deadly weapon.

And he was reportedly at 300 yards, 300 yards with the scope. It's not an impossible shot. It just depends on what kind of optic he would have had i haven't heard anything about whether it was a you know conventional like a magnified scope or if it was a red dot but uh they got they got him before he had a chance to shoot at trump so the uh so the secret service agent him. The rounds that were heard fired were Secret Service rounds. It was not just a guy actually shooting at Trump. Yeah, apparently they were close enough that this guy didn't stick around. He left his

backpack, he left the rifle, he left his GoPro, and he ran away. He did the old Monty Python thing, run away, run away. And they caught him. Apparently someone saw him getting into his car. The drone got some imagery of his vehicle and the combination of sheriff's deputies and Florida State Highway Patrol grabbed him. And he's in custody now facing federal charges. And if I know Ron DeSantis, he's going to also face, this individual will face state charges. Is there any, I suppose it's too early to tell, just like these questions were asked about the 20-year-old in Butler, Pennsylvania. Is there any intimation of connection with any American or foreign intelligence service?

Well, yeah, there's a question. Was there a leak from somewhere within the Trump team about Donald Trump's whereabouts at that particular time? Because how do you know when to go set up at the golf course there in West Palm? Because, you know, you play 18 holes, there's no guarantee you're going to be in one particular hole at one particular period unless you have some advanced knowledge. So I think part of the investigation is going to figure out what did he know and when did he know it and who did he know it from

okay switching gears to and thank you for that Larry and please just as you did so marvelously with the when I was in Italy and we did these segments from my hotel room

with the Butler Pennsylvania attempt to murder the former president. Please keep us informed. And if there's any breaking news, let producer Chris know and we'll pop right on air and continue. We'll do. We'll do. Our expert, especially on munitions. Before we get to Ukraine, I want to ask you a couple of questions about Israel. Ray McGovern and Alistair Crook both are of the view that the missile fired over the weekend by the Houthis reached its target, notwithstanding the silence from Prime Minister Netanyahu about the target. He wasn't silent about his threat to retaliate,

and part of the ferocity of that threat is what caused Alistair and Ray to conclude that the target was indeed hit. Do you know anything about this that you can enlighten us? Well, I've seen the photographs where the Israelis are going to great lengths to try to pretend that it hit someplace else and it didn't. The real question comes into where did the Houthis get the missile?

And so people have been saying, well, we're still waiting for Iran to retaliate. Well, maybe Iran just did retaliate. They retaliated with the Houthis doing it for them. Iran didn't supply the missile. The doing it for them. They, the, the, the running supplied the missile, the missile made its way defeated. Let's make this clear. Defeated Israeli air defense and us air defense, nothing, you know, so we're out there talking about how great our air defense systems is. Nope. Was it, was it hypersonic?

I've heard it described as hypersonic, but I see no evidence to support that. But what we do know is that none of the Israeli air defense systems and the U.S. air defense systems that are employed on naval platforms out there were able to bring it down. And, and reportedly there were, you know, several, uh, defense air defense missiles shot at it, trying to get it and they, and they missed. So that leads, you know, leads me to believe that it very well could have been a hypersonic missile, but the Houthis wouldn't have the capability to develop that. That would have been given to them by someone else. Because I know for a fact that the United States is still working on trying to develop a functioning prototype. We haven't yet been able to deploy a successful hypersonic missile. And yet the Russians have it.

The Chinese have it. Iran reportedly has it. So now the Houthis have it. The Chinese have it. Iran reportedly has it. So now the Houthis have it. Wow. I guess the Israeli PR on the invincibility of their Iron Dome is a myth. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and that was exposed as well. Now it's what, three weeks ago with the attack at that base outside of Tel Aviv, Gilead, which is the location of Israel's equivalent of the National Security Agency, Unit 8200. They do all the signal, you know, intercepting conversations, intercepting email, text messages, that kind of thing. And apparently Hezbollah hit that base and inflicted significant casualties there.

And Israel imposed a complete blackout on any information coming out. So, you know, now in the space of three weeks, you get Hezbollah hitting a target. Houthi's hitting a target, and yet Israel wants to go fight Hezbollah in Iran? It just doesn't add up. They're picking a fight that they really will not be able to win. Alistair Crook reported this morning, early this morning, that the Israeli cabinet has been meeting all day today as Prime Minister Netanyahu endeavors to persuade the cabinet to allow him to fire Defense Minister Gallant and hire somebody from one of his opposition parties to become the defense minister. Do you know any more about this just just what i i checked her routes before coming on air uh and there's certainly it sounds like they're moving in that direction you know

allister is is a measured calm guy it takes a lot to get him excited and even when it's excited you're not sure he's excited but you, you know, listening to him today, he was genuinely alarmed that it's moving in this direction, that Israel seems, Netanyahu seems hell-bent on committing suicide for his country. Because to launch, to replace Galan, and it's not like Gallant's some great sheikhs, but at least Gallant has enough sense to recognize we're overstretched, and if we commit ourselves to a military operation in southern Lebanon, we're going to be defeated. We can't sustain it.

That the others say, no, no, no, you don't know what you're talking about. And so they're going to fool around, and they'll find out that, no, no, no, you don't know what you're talking about. And so they're going to fool around and they'll find out that, well, actually he was correct. And this is the kind of military mistake that could genuinely jeopardize the future of Israel, as was predicted a couple of weeks ago by that retired Israeli general, Barik, I think his name was. Right, right. And he said, hey, if Israel continues on this path, it may not even exist in a year. So this lust for war has consumed him.

Transitioning, I thought of you as soon as I read this, and then of course I saw your website. The Wall Street Journal provided a forum for a professor from Catholic University of America. I never heard of the professor before, arguing that Ukraine is actually winning the war. And you were not Alistair Crook-like in in your yes you really did a dance on this guy's head who is he and what kind of claims is he making uh he's a cold war dinosaur he's uh his name is kimish uh he is he's like one of those beetles that's frozen in amber from the prehistoric age. Pick it out. Only he's frozen in the Cold War age. Still thinks that Russia is the former Soviet Union, that Russia today are a bunch of communists,

that Russia today has a barely functioning economy and a military that is corroded and corrupt. And meanwhile, that the Ukrainians are reinventing the miracles that Jesus performed in the Bible. They're walking on water and they're feeding the multitudes. It's really a pretty bizarre article because he's suggesting that, okay, yeah, Ukraine's struggling on the front lines, but boy, U.S. policy is just working so well in isolating Russia. I go, isolating Russia? You mean Russia that's got this new strategic partnership with China

and is the leader of the BRICS with Brazil, India, South Africa, and with countries in the global south in particular lining up to join, including our NATO buddy and ally, Turkey, and Thailand, and Vietnam, and Iran, and Saudi Arabia, and the list goes on. You know, I wrote in an article making jest, and it's something only a certain generation of people remember. I said, this is like the celebrity list trying to get into Studio 54, which was this disco nightclub in New York City in the 80s that was just a big hot spot where Mick Jagger and the Beatles

and Cher, everybody wanted to go hang out there. Well, that's what BRICS is becoming. And so here's this professor arguing that Russia's isolated. And then they say, oh, and boy, Ukraine's getting ready to make some massive investments in defense industrial plant, and they'll be producing right away. And it's like, dude, have you been watching the missile strikes? Has someone not been talking to you about what's going on? Because there's not a

safe place in Ukraine where you could set up any kind of facility, much less a lemonade stand, that if the Russians wanted to take it out they could here's um former president zielinski uh in an interview with farid zakaria of cnn over the weekend showing how delusional he is cut number one he afraid only one thing no leaders no countries no nothing he afraid of his society. Russian people. And if Russian people are in danger, if they don't have comfortable life, if they live without energy like our people, they will understand the price of the war. And they will be not happy with it, and they will begin to influence on him, on Putin. That's why I said, make Ukraine strong. And you will see that he will sit and negotiate.

This is an argument for long-range missiles, which I don't think he's going to get, at least not before November 5th. Well, not only that, did you hear what he said? He said, yeah, the Russian people are without power like we are. They'll be really upset. I'm thinking, well, now there's some projection. What he's doing is he's projecting onto Russia what is the reality at home in Ukraine. Because later in that interview, he admits to Farid Zakaria that Russia has destroyed 80 percent of the power grid of Ukraine. So they're going to be without power.

They're without it now, but it's going to become very severe once you get into the winter. You know, look, if you live in a condo and you're at the 20th floor, can you imagine having to walk up and down the stairs every day just to get to your floor? Plus, you need to carry a couple of buckets of water with you because the electric pumps don't work, so water is not getting pumped up there. And you're going to, at a minimum, have to use that to flush your toilets if the toilets work. And, by the way, there's no heat either. Well, the statistics right now, and they're basing this partly upon the number of active cell phones that are in Ukraine. The population of Ukraine since from January 2022 to now is cut in half. They went from 42 million.

It's actually more than half down to under 20 million people. That's because the Ukrainians have been bugging out. As winter comes on, more Ukrainians are going to be fleeing. And yet here, here's Zelensky, you know, it is reminiscent of that grateful dead song.

He's driving that train high on cocaine, but his name ain't Casey Jones. Wow. As if to make President Zelensky, former President Zelensky, sound rational by comparison. Here is the man who single-handedly persuaded then-President Zelensky to trash the detailed peace agreement in the spring of 2022. Hang on to your chair, Larry. Cut number seven. As for the role the Ukrainians could themselves play in stability and security in the Euro-Atlantic area. It's obvious. Thanks to the heroism of the Ukrainian armed forces, they've been fighting for more than two years, almost three years. They are the most accomplished armed forces in the whole

continent. And it's easy to see how they could play a very, very important role in peace and stability on the European continent. One of the arguments I think we should make to our American friends is if they want to take back some US troops

from the European theatre and save a few billion, a lot of billion, Mike, then I'm sure the Ukrainians, having defeated the Russians, and there's nobody more effective at defeating the Russians than the Ukrainians, I'm sure the Ukrainians would be only too happy to backfill in Europe. Anyway, those are some of the things, some of the ways in which I think Ukraine can be a force for stability. This is really lunacy.

And before he said that, he said he expects Ukraine to be a member of the EU and NATO. Yeah. But first of all, I'm going to insist that he has to get a name change. I don't want anybody wondering if perhaps we're distant relatives. At least you know how to brush your hair. Yeah, I was going to say at least I got a better barber than he does, or at least I know how to use some hairspray and a brush. But, you know, this is not like arguing about flavors of ice cream.

OK, some people like vanilla, some like chocolate, some like both. But you can argue about which is better. But it's subjective. It's a matter of taste. The declaring that Ukraine is beating Russia is madness. It's lunacy because it's not grounded in any kind of reality. that Ukraine is beating Russia is madness. It's lunacy because it's not grounded in any kind of reality, whether you want to describe it in terms of loss of personnel,

the number of killed and wounded that is taking place. I mean, Zelensky, even in his interview with Farid Zakari, admitted that for every one artillery shell, Ukraine is firing, Russia's firing 12 back at them. Just, again, a math problem. If I'm firing 12 at you and you're firing one at me, I've got an advantage. How is that winning? When they are unable to field F-16s in the air because they don't have pilots, how is that winning? When they are unable to field F-16s in the air because they don't have pilots, how is that winning? When they're begging, desperately begging the West for missiles, missiles, long-range missiles, please. If you're winning, why do you need those? Because you're winning. But you're not winning, which is one of the reasons they're begging for it is not so much to use the missiles, but to get the United States and the United Kingdom embroiled in the war.

As they know, Zelensky knows that without Western intervention, they have no hopes of victory. And even with Western intervention, the reality is they have no hopes of victory. How unstable is their military now? Yeah, it's getting weaker every week. You know, we've been talking now 2,000 casualties a day, 2,300 casualties recorded just yesterday, I believe. And that's been going on now for about two months. So that's 120,000 casualties in just two months. You think about that's, that's like double what we experienced in Vietnam over 15 years. And that's just in, you know, 60 days. So they're running into the fundamental problem of they can't recruit enough.

And the ones that they do recruit aren't getting insufficient training. So it's just a downward spiral. You could break out of it if you had a big, fresh, a large chunk, say 100,000 new guys that you could go and train for six months and then insert them in the fight. Under those circumstances, yeah, the situation might change, assuming that you had adequate supplies for them. But Ukraine is running in a situation where it can't produce its own supplies.

It's reliant upon the West for supplies, and it is the West that's coming up short, saying, no, we've checked our cupboard, and our cupboard is bare. We're going to have to withhold some of this because if we give it to you, we don't have anything left. And then the lack of trained manpower. So, I mean, it's all coming together. And if you're having to make the decisions as the general of the forces of Ukraine, you don't have any good options. Ray McGovern has suggested that the United States Defense Department has big-footed Tony Blinken and actually persuaded probably Jake Sullivan rather than the president,

but I don't want to get into this stuff about how incompetent the president is, caused the decision to allow long-range missiles at least to be deferred or not to be made. And Blinken, you know, has been silent for the past three or four days after intimating in Kiev as recently as last Wednesday that he thought the answer would be yes. Ray has speculated that the DOD basically said to the White House, you guys have any idea what you're going to bring on us if we start giving them this kind of equipment? Yeah, I mean, it was a remarkable, this all transpired over three days. So let's say on Wednesday, you've got leaks coming out of London and Washington

that are saying, oh, yeah, Ukraine's going to get the green light to use the missiles to strike deeper inside Russia. You had Congressman Mike McCaul of Texas. Yeah, yeah, Blinken's got the word. They're going to go do it. Here, Starmer's folks were leaking it out of London. Then the next day, Vladimir Putin comes out and says, any of those missiles strike inside of Russia, we're going to hold NATO, United States,

Britain accountable. It's going to be an act of war. And if you strike us, we'll strike you. That's essentially what he said. It was that, and he was tight jawed when he said it. There was no jocularity about him. He wasn't laughing, no twinkle in his eye. He was, you know, he was steely-eyed and firm jaw. And they knew the body language was he was dead serious. Here he is. Within 24 hours, man, it looked like the U.S. gymnastics team, all the backflips that were being performed. Here he is, cut number five.

It is not about allowing the Ukrainian regime to strike Russia with these weapons or not. It is about making a decision about whether NATO countries are directly involved in the military conflict or not. If the decision is made, it will mean nothing less than the direct participation of NATO countries, the United States, and European countries in the war in Ukraine. This is their direct participation and this, of course, significantly changes the very essence, the very nature of the conflict. This will mean that NATO countries, the United States, and European countries are fighting Russia.

And if this is so, bearing in mind the change in the very essence of this conflict, we will make appropriate decisions based on the threats that will be created for us. All the calmness of Alistair Crook. Yeah. You know, he wasn't being bombastic. He wasn't being emotional. He'd been very rational. And message penetrated somewhere in D.C. because within 24 hours, there was a different song being sung. And as far as the green light, green light went from green to yellow to red. Stop.

And it has stopped for now. Now, there are some, again, the Brits are like one of these nasty, nasty little yappy dogs that have no teeth. And here's the Brits insisting that you've got five former defense ministers encouraging Starmer to go ahead and give the Ukrainians green lights, regardless of what the United States says. Now, if they do, if the Brits do that, that's why, you know, I can't rule out stupid on the side of the Brits. They are, they're incredibly gifted at doing the wrong thing. They do have a long history of that. If they do that, then all of a sudden Britain's going to find itself in the crosshairs. And I'm not sure the United States would be there to back it up.

Wow. You know, there would be pressure to do so. But I said this thing could get out of control quickly. But the marker, you know, Putin made sure that they put that marker down in a way, and it was reiterated by Lavrov, the foreign minister. So there should be no doubt in the West. Already you're hearing out of Germany, out of Poland, even, you know,

Wroclaw, Sikorsky, their foreign minister, even he's not, oh, no, no, we're not going to fight Russia. And that means they're not going to do things that would provoke a fight. Thank you, Larry. Thank you so much for your analysis, as always. And thank you for accommodating my schedule because we have you with the youngster, McGovern, on Thursday this week because of a commitment I have on Friday. Much appreciated. You're very welcome. We'll see you on Thursday. Okay. All the best.

Coming up at 4 o'clock this afternoon, Scott Ritter. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. Thank you.