Judging Freedom - Larry Johnson: My Week In Russia

Episode Date: June 10, 2024

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Thank you. Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Monday, June 10th, 2024. Larry Johnson will be here in just a moment, fresh off his really remarkable trip to St. Petersburg, Russia. He will share the events from that trip and his observations about the Russian people and the Russian government for you. But just first this. You all know that I am a paid spokesperson for Lear Capital, but I'm also a customer, a very satisfied customer. About a year ago, I bought gold and it's now increased in value 23%. So $100 invested in gold a year ago is now worth $123. If you have $100 in the bank, it still shows $100, but $100 in the bank is now worth 24% less.

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have predicted this $3,200 an ounce gold. Learn about how to transfer this to an IRA. Protect your savings. 800-511-4620. Learjudgenap.com. Tell them the judge sent you. Larry, welcome here, my dear friend. Welcome back from your trip.

We have a lot to talk about. The EU elections, the coming French elections, the UK elections, the problems with the government in Israel. But everybody wants to know about your trip, and certainly I do. I deeply regret that I wasn't with you, but those were circumstances beyond my control. Tell us first your impression of the Russian people and the commercial activity and St. Petersburg as a city that you viewed in the week you were there? It's just magnificent. People, city, everything. You know, what's interesting is that over the weekend, the World Bank finally confirmed that Russia's the fourth largest economy in the world measured by in terms of gross

domestic product and with what they call purchasing power parity. And I've just read an email this morning from an acquaintance who has said, oh, Russia is terrible. I was there a few years ago. Those people don't have the kind of standard of living in the United States that we do. And you know what? He's right. Because in Russia and St. Petersburg, a woman can walk the streets at 1130 at night and not have to worry about being raped or mugged. You can get on the subways there and you're not chasing off rats. You can go to stores and they got every item you can imagine available for purchase, but you're paying, you know, probably 40% less than you would in the United States. So, yeah, absolutely. You know, I mean, it's ridiculous some of the stupid perceptions in the West and our arrogance.

Because it used to be true. You could go to Moscow or St. Petersburg and the shelves were bare and people were not able to buy. That's no longer the case. It's a thriving, vibrant economy. But best of all are the people. And this is what really, I think, sort of sets them apart. They're like the folks in the Midwest where I grew up. They're very welcoming. They separate. They don't judge you because you're an American that you got Joe Biden and Chuck Schumer and Mitch McConnell as your representatives. They judge you by you as an American. They ignore the government. And I found that same thing from a German TV guy who was doing an interview with me. And he was, you know, 33, 34. He said he was alarmed when he first got there. He was afraid that, you know, because he's German, given the history of Germany and Russia,

going back to World War II and then recent comments by German politicians. And he said he was just blown away by how welcoming and kind and generous the Russian people were. So I'm not trying to suggest that there are not some problems and they don't have some social issues in Russia, but I'll tell you what, people have given a choice between living in New York City or living in Moscow, they take Moscow hands down every time. Before we get into specific issues, we have a clip from your least favorite former admiral who does his Baghdad Bob imitations. Yeah. Press room of the White House. You won't believe what Admiral Kirby had to say

about Russia and Russians. We have evolved our support to Ukraine as the war has evolved. The needs of the Ukrainians on the battlefield have changed and they are still changing. And we are trying to stay apace with that. That's why we're in constant conversations with them. I would also want to remind people that everything Ukraine is getting is in concert with them. I would also, you know, want to remind people that everything Ukraine is getting is in concert with them and meeting their needs, their asks. And we're trying to, again, stay apace of that. But I think it's also the last thing I'll say. And then I promise I'll end the answer is take a look at what Russia has suffered. And the president alluded to some of this in his speech. More than 350,000 casualties.

A million young people leaving the country because they don't want to be there anymore. An economy that's basically a war economy and not doing that well. Russia has suffered a lot at the hands of Ukraine. And because... Does he know what the hell he's talking about? No, he's a moron.

I mean, this, look, he's back to his Baghdad Bob. The Russian people, and I had a conversation with one fellow who actually had been in the military and was out now. And he said, and he has some American friends of all things, because he had, he grew up in Texas for a bit in his life. And he pointed out, he says, look, these claims about us suffering all of these casualties, he goes, it's not on social media. And he said, as you can see, because I mean, every Russian, they got a phone, they're doing social media like Americans and Canadians and Europeans. He said, you can't hide it. Social media is ubiquitous. People are out there with cameras. They would be taking pictures of the graveyards,

of the freshly dug graves, of all the people who have been maimed, supposedly. Yes, Russia has suffered some casualties, but the general staff, the staff that's running the operation, has been very careful to ensure that the Russian troops are not thrown into meat grinder operations. Instead, they are the meat grinder. They're delivering it. So, you know, Kirby is a typical example of what I call the narcissistic personality disorder that afflicts America. We keep looking in the mirror and telling ourselves, man, you're so good looking, you're so strong, and we're a big fat slob. That's what we are. And yet we refuse to see what the rest of the world is. While you were flying, I think your trip was 28 hours long. While you were flying home,

Jake Sullivan, the president's national security advisor with a beautiful vista of the Eiffel Tower behind him from a rooftop in Paris, was boasting about how much common sense it makes for President Biden to have authorized Ukrainians to use American weapons to attack inside Russia. He wants them limited to Russian military facilities. Lindsey Graham was saying, no surprise, that we should be able to attack anything and everything anywhere inside Russia. Question for you, and I'm not going to play Graham because you'll lose your breakfast, but I am going to play Sullivan. Question for you. Do you think the American government takes seriously the likely and probable consequences of authorizing the use of American weaponry to attack inside Russia?

No, no, that's the problem. They have decided that Russia is just an empty suit, making idle threats, that Putin's soft and not competent. Boy, when you make those kinds of stupid assumptions, you're going to put your country in peril. And that's exactly what Biden and his crew of incompetents are doing. They're putting America in peril because Russia can hurt us, hurt us bad, and there's nothing we can do to stop it if we cross those red lines. Here's Jake Sullivan, Larry, yesterday from a rooftop in Paris, cut number four. From the president's perspective, this was common sense. What was happening up around Kharkiv, which was new just in the last couple of months,

was a Russian offensive where they were moving from one side of the border directly to the other side of the border. And it simply didn't make sense not to allow the Ukrainians to fire across that border to hit Russian guns and emplacements that were firing at the Ukrainians. So the president authorized that. The Ukrainians have carried out that authorization on the battlefield. And one thing I will point out is that the momentum of that operation in Kharkiv has stalled out. Now, Kharkiv is still under threat, but the Russians have not been able to make material progress on the ground in recent days in that area. And the United States will continue to support Ukraine in holding the line and pushing back against the aggressing Russian forces.

He knows what he's talking about. benefit is there to the use of American military equipment to attack Russian early warning systems, early warning of nuclear weapons. Yeah. One of your viewers just in the comments described it aptly, liar. He's a liar across the board. Number one, Ukraine has been firing weapons into Belgorod for more than a year, and they're not targeting military personnel. They're not targeting bases or equipment. They're killing civilians. They're hitting cafes. They're hitting theaters. They're hitting stores. They're hitting schools. They're hitting playgrounds. They're killing civilians. They're not killing soldiers. Quite a contrast to what the Russians are doing. They're killing soldiers. They're destroying military installations. So, you know, he's wrong on that. This wishful thinking that, oh, the Russians have stalled out around Kharkiv. They're not taking Kharkiv. What they're doing is isolating it, and they are certainly taking the territory that surrounds it because they casualties that the Ukrainians are suffering, particularly up around Kharkiv, are enormous. It has almost doubled from what it was three, four months ago.

Let's take a step back from the actual conflict in Ukraine and tell us a little bit more about St. Petersburg. Tell us about the St. Petersburg Economic Conference and who you heard and what you gathered about BRICS, about Russian economy, about Russian self-confidence? The West has, and I'm talking about the leaders, the leaders in the West are in denial. This conference attracted people from 136 different countries. It was one of the most amazing, I guess, conferences, displays I've ever seen. It is this expo center that sits on the outskirts of St. Petersburg. It's by the airport.

It sits up on a hill. So you have this panorama, this vista of Ukraine, the city which is located to the northeast from that perspective. Banks, corporations of different kinds selling different products, everything from one of the most sophisticated watchmakers in the world to robots to AI, to then also the discussions about what the future of BRICS means. And what the West is in denial about is that up until about five years ago, there was no other option. You either had to deal in U.S. dollars or you couldn't deal internationally.

If you wanted to be involved with any kind of commerce, you had to bow to the United States. And the thing I kept hearing over and over and over, and when I expressed it in a presentation I met, I got enormous applause. It is people are sick and tired of the United States being a bully. That's all we are. Because our options in dealing with other countries is either, if you don't do what we want, we're going to impose sanctions, or we're going to go to war with you, or we're going to launch a CIA counter covert operation,

color revolution to undermine and subvert your government. We don't deal with diplomacy. We don't treat these people with respect. And that was the message that was coming out of that conference. These people see Russia as treating them with respect, as equals, not as some second or third class citizen, which is why you're now seeing across the Sahel, the middle part of Africa with Chad, Najer, Mali going over to Sudan, they're tossing out the French and they're tossing out the Americans. American troops had to start pulling their equipment out the day before yesterday. You see that in Sudan, they're going to offer a port for the Russians to use.

Similarly, there are reports that Russia is going to be given poor privileges up in Libya and Tobruk. So what you're saying is the rest of the world is looking around just like Turkey. Turkey's been trying to get into the European Union for 25 years. And all the European Union does to the Turks is basically treat them like they're a bunch of field hands from a plantation in the south before the Civil War. No respect. And all of a sudden, BRICS shows up and BRICS says to the Turks, yeah, come on in. And the Turks are going, wow, hey, they really like us. And that has implications for NATO, because once Turkey goes full-blown into BRICS, they're done with NATO, and NATO loses the second largest army.

Did you get a chance to hear President Putin or Foreign Minister Lavrov? Yeah, that was a hot ticket to get into. And apparently people had to pay some bucks to do it. So we were with the cheap crowd. So I was sitting there with Pepe Escobar and Scott Bennett, who's another American that was over there. And we were watching it on the screen. And yeah, you know, Putin went up and he went through in detail how the domestic

economy's doing. He recognizes that you have got to meet the needs of the Russian people. They have to have some hope for the future. They have to be able to buy what they need for their families. They have to have some financial security. He's all about that. But it was in the question and answer session where he got down to the nitty gritty about foreign policy and dealing with the West and the war in Ukraine. And the United States or the Biden administration and most members of Congress are making a real mistake in underestimating the resolve and capability of the Russians. I mean, we refuse to deal with even this simple fact. For 15 years, we've been relying upon the Russians to haul our sorry butts to the space station

because we can no longer make the rocket engines needed to power the rockets to get us up there. And yet we want to treat Russia like it's some backward society that they're still using outhouses? Please. What are your thoughts on the rightward movement of the new members of the European Parliament and the reaction by the president of France to disband the General Assembly, I think they call it the National Assembly, that's the lower house of their legislature, and call for new elections immediately. Well, I know that in the case of France with Marie Le Pen,

who's always characterized as something to the right of Adolf Hitler, her movement really picked up a lot of seats, and surprisingly so. Now, when you go back and look at how her views with respect to Russia, she's got the Donald Trump treatment. She's a puppet of Putin. You know, she's a sellout to the Russians. She's doing Russian talking points. We'll see if she maintains her openness to be a more even-handed approach to Russia. But then she seemed to backtrack on that a little bit. is going to take the air out of the war party balloon,

or if it's going to intensify the desire, hey, yeah, what we're really failing to achieve here is not having enough war in Europe. So let's see how much more we can antagonize Russia. Transitioning to Israel, the IDF slaughtered 240 civilians in order to extract four Israeli hostages, and they injured another 600. Ray McGovern has called this a war crime. I'm sure it is. But of course, Israel is jubilant, and maybe that jubilation is tamped down a little bit with

Benny Gantz's resignation from the war cabinet. Give us your take on all of this, Larry, please. Well, this hostage rescue operation, we don't have the full story on it. What is clear is that the U.S. played a role. Reportedly, Delta Force was involved with that operation. They used the pier. Do you mean troops on the ground? Yeah. Yeah, there are media reports to that effect. They used the pier.

Yeah, they used the pier to, you know, they're bringing in some humanitarian aid. I guess they got, you know, a lot of it had floated away and sunk. I guess they got some of it back together. But they had some of the Israeli troops secreted inside some trucks. And then it's also not clear whether or not the U.S. forces actually got involved with the shooting. What is clear is that, yeah, they rescued four, but they also may have ended up killing some other hostages. We don't have the full story on that yet. But, you know, it's one thing to go out and shoot and kill a guy that's standing there with a gun. That used to be the training that you would get, particularly within the SEAL

community, what they called the CQD, close quarter defense, because they'd be trained to make split decisions about shooting somebody, whether they were a threat or not. Because it turned out that a lot of times during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, our troops were shooting people that didn't need to be shot. And so they were trying to up the training to make sure you could make those decisions. When you kill this many civilians, I guarantee you there were not 240 people standing there

with guns defending those hostages. There were women and children that were murdered. And this is just, again, the Israeli approach is to use a hammer to, to, you know, crush a peanut. And it's just, it's unconscionable. And yeah, they can celebrate getting those four out, but it's not going to bring the war to an end. If anything, it's going to intensify the problems in the Middle East. Because I think this is resonating in the streets of Cairo, in the streets of Oman, and in the streets of Istanbul.

And that's going to make it even more difficult to find a peaceful resolution. Benny Gantz and Benjamin Netanyahu, with the exception of personality, isn't it Tweedledee and Tweedledum? I mean, Gantz and Benjamin Netanyahu, with the exception of personality, isn't it Tweedledee and Tweedledum? I mean, Gantz has blood on his hands from long before October 7th, from the days when he was defense minister and when he was the IDF chief of staff. Yeah, no, this is not going to change Israeli policy in terms of how they're going to deal with the Palestinians. Gantz, I think, is jockeying. He recognizes that Netanyahu is not a popular president.

The policies that Netanyahu is following are popular. That's the irony here. So I think Gantz has seen that he's got to distance himself from Netanyahu, setting himself up as possibly winning the next election or making his way into power. The real unknown at this point is whether Israel is going to make good on its threats to go into southern Lebanon. If they do, it will be a disaster for Israel. Then I think there's some in the military there that realize it would be a disaster, which is why, despite all the repeated threats that they're going to do it, they've been talking, you know, the lead general has been talking about doing it since January of this year. Here we are coming up towards the middle of June.

So six months in, they're talking, but they're not doing. And meanwhile, Hezbollah has been ramping up missile and rocket attacks in the north. They've been setting parts of northern Israel on fire. They have forced the Israelis to evacuate close to a million people out of their homes and settlements. So Israel is caught. It doesn't matter how much weaponry they get and material support from the United States.

They don't have the manpower or strength to be able to sustain a fight both in Gaza and then the kind of fight that they would face against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. It would be, you know, they lost the last one in 2006, and the situation has only gotten better for Hezbollah and worse for Israel. Larry, I'm very interested in the use of American force, as you know, in Gaza. And if your sources, non-public sources, allow you to reveal whatever you learn about this, particularly if any Americans fired weapons or were fired at, please do let us know. Last question. That shirt you're wearing, did you get that in St. Petersburg? No, no. Actually, this is how they knew I was an American because the Russians are sort of low key. This is an old Tommy Bahama shirt. I put

this on in Florida. We call that business casual. Got it. You look great, my man. I'm happy you're well. I'm sad that I wasn't with you, but there'll be another time. All the best, Larry. Well, listen, I realized that I was what I'd call a C-level celebrity. That A-level celebrity is a guy named Judge Napolitano. The number of people that kept coming up to me, where's the judge? How's the judge? We've always watched the judge. I mean, you don't realize, you know, the number of subscriptions is one thing, but the number of people from different countries, and I'm not talking just, you know, one kind of the variety of countries that come up and they watch you, you must watch for them. So congratulations.

Well, thank you. And thanks for all you do for us. And we'll look forward to the intelligence roundtable on Friday afternoon. Sure. See you then. Thank you, Larry. All the best. Coming up later today, bear with me for a second, at two o'clock, Eastern, Colonel Douglas McGregor. At three o'clock, Eastern, Anya Parampol. At four o'clock, Eastern, Professor Jeffrey Sachs. A happy day and a busy afternoon. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. I'm out.