Judging Freedom - Larry Johnson: NATO's Next Moves.

Episode Date: May 13, 2024

Larry Johnson: NATO's Next Moves.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, May 13th, 2024. Larry Johnson is here, will be with us in just a moment, talking about what are NATO's next moves now that Ukraine is on life support. But 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 you can only buy $76 worth of goods with it. Why is that? Inflation has reduced all of your savings, all of your buying power and mine by 24%. And gold is largely immune from that.

Gold keeps its value and goes up. If you want to learn how gold will soon hit $3,200 an ounce, call Lear Capital, 800-511-4620 or go to learjudgenap.com. Get your free gold report. Same experts who predicted the 23% rise that I've enjoyed 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, my dear friend, welcome back. Welcome back to the show. A lot of people in Milan ask me questions about you and Ray. Very, very happy, flattering questions. And I thought I'd pass that on to you. Much appreciated, of course. How bad off is Ukraine today as we speak, mid-May 2024? Coming apart at the seams. There's a famous movie called Downfall, which is about Hitler's last month in the bunker

and just how detached from reality he was as Berlin was collapsing in on itself as the Soviets advanced, that's sort of what we're starting to see now. There's great upheaval within the military leadership. The real thing that started to grate on people is that here, Zelensky and the Ukrainians have received billions of dollars, literal actual billions of dollars in cash that would be used to build fortifications

put in minefields up there around Kharkiv on the border with Russia wasn't built aren't there the Russians are literally walking in in certain places and there's a lot of just real anger among some sectors in Ukraine about what happened to this money?

I mean, what do you think happened? Some of the Ukrainian elite went off on an international shopping spree. So there's still, you know, Western observers are trying to figure out, is this the big Russian push? Is this a feint? What it is doing, regardless of how big the Russian effort is, it's forcing Ukraine to shift forces from the south, from the Donetsk region and the whole Donbass and Russia northwards to try to staunch the Russian incursion. But I think this is just part of Russia pressing, pressing, increasing pressure all along the front. And it's going to force a break. Ukraine will collapse. I

think that's becoming more certain within each passing day, and the collapse will come sooner rather than later. And how does NATO cope with this collapse? What does NATO do next? They're going to need some big boxes of Kleenex. There are going to be lots of weeping and wailing. They can't do anything. I mean, they can in theory say,

oh, yeah, we're going to mobilize our troops and send them. Oh, good luck with that. Because one, how are you going to sustain them in the field if you can even get them there? And two, the Russians have already put you on notice. If you do that, we're going to kill you. You know, what people don't understand is the enormous advantage Russia has over the West. Right now, Russia produces three times the number of artillery rounds.

Think about that. Ditto for artillery, actual artillery pieces. And unlike the Ukrainians, the Russians are destroying artillery pieces in the Ukrainian inventory on a daily basis. And then when you factor in, there's a new statistic out. The Russians produce as many tanks in one month that the United States and Europe combined produce in a year. Think about that. And yet, here's NATO saying, oh, yeah, boy, we're going to tell those Russians what to do. No, it's not going to happen. The continued use of Western munitions to kill Russian civilians is firming up the resolve of the Russians to say, okay, we're going to put an end to this.

This is going to stop. And they recognize the only way to stop it is to demilitarize, destroy the military of Ukraine and, you know, candidly destroy the ability of NATO to us how raw, accurate intel from various surveillance and human intelligence makes its way up the chain and is tampered with, tinkered with, and then spun so that the ultimate recipient of that intel, in this case, the president of the United States or maybe one of his closest advisors, is being told what the briefer, Bill Burns, the head of the CIA, thinks the president wants to hear. Is that still the case now? Or does Joe Biden, in your view, I'll make it easier for you, does Tony Blinken, in your view, does Jake Sullivan, in your view, know how bad things are for the Ukraine military as we speak?

If they don't, they are deaf, dumb and blind. Because you don't have to have access to classified information to see what's going on. It's becoming increasingly a theme in the media about the disaster that's unfolding. I know that the Center for Strategic and International Studies just put out an analysis a year ago. You know, they were dressed up in the cheerleader uniform saying that Russia was on the brink, that the Ukrainians were winning. You know, all that nonsense that we were debunking at the time. Now they're out saying just the opposite. Boy, Russia's got a pretty robust defense industry and we're having trouble keeping up.

And Russia's got strong military and rush out numbers to Ukraine. So the information is there. It's just the question of from a political standpoint in the United States, the calculations they're going to make is if we abandon Ukraine now, is it going to hurt us in the election? And we're already seeing, hey, they're doing sort of the same thing with Israel. They're now saying, hey, we're not sending any more weapons if you keep this up, if you go into Rafah. Well, Israel has a lot more sway in the United States than the Ukrainians do. So I would think they're looking for an exit strategy

now in the West. Well, what will it take for Ukraine to negotiate with the Russians? Regime change in Ukraine? Yeah. No, there's no other way. Zelensky's already said he will not talk to the Russians. Okay. The Russians don't want to talk to him. And in a week or so, that whole issue is going to be moved. In fact, a week from tomorrow, on Tuesday, Zelensky's term is up. Just because he didn't hold an election doesn't mean that he therefore gets to stay on in power and be considered legitimate. At that point, the Russians will consider him illegitimate, and he will then become a legitimate target of war as far as Russia

is concerned. Up to this point, Russia has not, it is sort of abided by the concept, we don't think one state should be out murdering, killing, assassinating the leaders of other states. They've held to that. Next Tuesday, that goes away as far as for Zelensky. And, you know, his days are numbered now. How dumb not to have had elections. How dumb to expose himself to that. I mean, what has he become? Just some sort of a rump holdover dictator who's only there for as long as the security forces will allow him to stay there? Yeah, well, hey, being in charge had all of its perks and benefits. Some of those billions of dollars that were supposed to be invested in building defenses up around Kharkiv have gone into his pockets. And, you know, he's got to be the man.

He's been completely enabled. You know, a lot of this is, you know, I think a lot of it goes back to his previous history as a, quote, comedian and actor. You know, you get to a place where you love the adulation of the crowd. You play to the crowd. And, man, when he was the Churchill of the 21st century, remember when they were calling him that, the accolades that were flowing his way, you know, you get that kind of praise, it's pretty heady.

And he became enamored of it. And then at the same time, he began moving against all political opponents, killing some of them, having some of them killed, and shutting down opposition press and media, and going after the Russian Orthodox Church, which the very beginning of Orthodoxy, of the Orthodox Christian movement, began in Kiev in like 989. We're talking more than a thousand years ago. And he's trying to erase that history. So he's going to wind up in history books as a stain on Ukraine. And who comes in? General Zeluzhny waiting in the wings?

That's where the battle's going to be. The problem with Zeluzhny is in the wings? That's where the battle's going to be. The problem with Zeluzhny is, as I pointed out before, he's closely aligned with the neo-Nazis. Russians aren't going to deal with neo-Nazis. They're going to destroy the neo-Nazis. They did it once. They'll do it again. They did it in 1945.

And, in fact, with their remembranceembrance Day last Thursday, May 9th, where almost the entire population of Russia is mobilized to remember their dead and their losses. I was being interviewed by a reporter from Izvestia, a young lady in her mid-20s. And this topic came up. And I said, did anyone in your family die? And so she began talking about her grandfather who died in a tank battle and her great-grandfather and her great-grandmother, who was a physician in Leningrad at the time, both of them died. And as she's talking about this,

she's tearing up and becoming very emotional. And then talked about that her grandfather was, as a young boy, survived without his parents, but grew up, became a lawyer, became successful, and created a family. These people remember because they've spent blood in this. We in the United States haven't shed a damn drop of blood. We like to think we have, but it doesn't even begin to compare to what the Russians have experienced. And so that's why we're so easily, easily willing to support going to war in Iraq, going to war in Afghanistan, going to war in Somalia, going to war in Libya. By God, we'll send our boys anywhere because the politicians making these decisions,

they don't have to send their children or they don't have to send themselves. And I guarantee you, if we instituted a system that any politician who votes to send Americans to war or to support wars overseas either has to go themselves or they have to send their oldest child. And because I tell you what, you put that system in place, this crap will stop immediately now you're going to love some clips we'll show in a few minutes of lindsey graham saying that uh just as harry truman dropped two atomic bombs to end the war in japan which we all know was unnecessary and was done to terrify the russians um bb netanyahu can drop whatever bombs he wants and use whatever uh equipment he needs uh to defeat the palestinians but before we get there does russia fully control the east the parts of the country that it has uh from which it has chased the ukraine military or are there still pockets

uh of areas there that they don't control no No, the areas that are behind their front lines are under their control. There's not a problem there. The only thing that still persists is Ukrainian artillery, or actually it's not so much artillery, it's U.S.-supplied attack of missiles, British-supplied storm shadows, and HIMARS, those systems are being used to launch attacks on civilian areas. And I want to emphasize the difference between throwing a rocket into a city where you don't have an established Russian military presence.

In other words, they're not occupying a variety of buildings and hotels with their presence because they're outside the city. They don't have to do that. It is a civilian area. Just yesterday, they hit an apartment building. The Ukrainians did, killing at least 15 people. Whereas when Russia's attacking into these cities, you know, as they did with Avdiivka and Bakhmut, those cities are under the military control and the Ukrainians are embedded. The Ukrainian military are embedded in different buildings. So it's not the same thing. continuing to, I guess, drive the Russian offensive, because they're going to continue to push farther and farther to the west so that they can shut down any ability of these people to strike inside what was Russia proper prior to February 2022.

What will become of the parts of Ukraine east of the Dnieper River once the parts, excuse me, west of the river, the western part where Kiev is, once the eastern part is under Russian control and the Russians don't see the need to fight anymore? anymore uh the russians will be in a strong position from a negotiating standpoint to have a say in the kind of government that will then be established over there because russia is going to cut them off from the black sea and without that this country is just literally isolated it's going to be it's like depriving someone of oxygen. So, but I do not anticipate that the Russians are going to cross the Dnieper in mass and try to occupy most of Western Ukraine. And let's recall that a lot of the territory in Western Ukraine, Lvov, for example, that used to be Polish territory. There's also other territory that the Romanians and Hungarians saw as their own, and they've still got ethnic Romanians, ethnic Hungarians in those parts of Western Ukraine that feel a more natural affinity with Hungary and Romania, as opposed to Ukraine.

Switching gears, over the weekend, Prime Minister Netanyahu said he would not be, it's hard for me to say this in a straight face, he would not be surprised if the war in Gaza went on for another 10 years. Yeah, that's like a self-fulfilling prophecy to keep him in office for 10 years, I uh yeah i guess he comes from the same school of analysis that said that the war in ukraine is a stalemate you know that it's going to go on for years that's not going to happen in israel uh israel's position is eroding from uh let's remember war is not just about how many people can you kill. War is an extension of politics. It's the politics matter, not just that, okay, yeah,

we can put X number of soldiers out there, we can organize them, and they can go kill and overrun, overwhelm an enemy. I mean, number one, Israel's not overrunning or overwhelming. It is killing a lot of civilians. It's unprecedented. In the history of Israel, they've never killed this many Palestinians. That's the thing people need to remember. But secondly, their position is becoming more isolated. They had a peace agreement with Egypt, and yet over the weekend, Egypt said, okay, we're joining the genocide case that South Africa brought. Well, that's right there going to create an obstacle to relations between Egypt and Israel and make

Egypt less likely to cooperate with Israel. And I think part of that as well is stemming from growing popular demand that the governments do something about the slaughter that the Israelis are inflicting upon these Palestinian civilians. You're seeing the same thing with Saudi Arabia. So, yeah, you know, Netanyahu's a buffoon. He's talking, oh, we'll go it alone. We'll do it on our own. You're not even doing it on your own.

You're like the kid that's still living at home, sucking up mom and dad's groceries, driving mom and dad's car, and say, oh, I'm going to do it on my own. But you still want to drive their car, and you still want to eat their groceries. That's B.B. Netanyahu in Israel. And what happens when those groceries are cut off? Let me ask you this differently.

Is Joe Biden's, I'm not sending you 2,000 pound or 2,500 pound bombs threat to Bibi, a serious, going to produce a serious reaction on the part of the IDF? Or is it a fig leaf? Do they already have enough equipment and ammunition to continue the slaughter even without the 2,000 pound bombs? Or are they coming anyway? Is he just slow walking this because he's got his eye on Michigan in November? Well, I think it's a combination of factors. One, I think the United States is its own admitted difficulties in producing artillery and producing bombs and producing equipment that Israel might need. just turn around and use that at the moment as a way to say, okay, we're not sending any more if you go into Rafa. Well, we may not be able to send any anyway because of our own shortages. But I think it's the political, the politics of this are now weighing heavy on the whole Biden team. Biden doesn't know what kind of ice cream he had yesterday, okay?

But Blinken and Sullivan, they like their jobs. They like the positions. They like the power. And they don't like the prospect of having to vacate those offices and move on. And so I think that's why you saw Blinken today in one of the strongest statements ever, you know, really came out publicly blasting Israel and saying, get out of Gaza. You go, oh, that, you know, right there is an indicator that the domestic politics of this for the Democrats is becoming a real problem. Because on the other

side, the Republicans are, you know, they want to impeach Joe Biden for not sending, you know, nuclear weapons to Israel. It's just, you know, the Republicans areach joe biden for not sending you know nuclear weapons to israel it's just uh you know the republicans are part of the problem in this as well but the democrats are panicked here's uh uh blinken actually saying israel is not acting within the law something i never thought i'd hear him say. Cut number four, Chris. It's reasonable to assess that in a number of instances, Israel has not acted in a manner that's consistent with internationally humanitarian law. So I understand you're still collecting evidence, but on the policy, can you clarify? Because even the lead Democrat on House Armed Services says it's not clear.

Is the U.S. slowing down the delivery of any weapons to Israel at this point beyond the 3,500 so-called dumb bombs? As you know, Margaret, most of the population from Gaza, displaced from the north and from central Gaza, has gone to Rafah. There are about 1.4 million people there. And we've said to Israel that we cannot, will not support an operation in Rafah, a major military operation, in the absence of a credible plan to protect civilians. And they still haven't delivered it. So are you slowing the delivery of any weapons beyond these 3,500 bombs? Are you pausing, for example,

precision munitions, as some Republicans have claimed. The answer to that is no. What the president said and what he's been clear about in private conversations with the Israelis, which unfortunately leaked to the press, so the president responded forthrightly when he was asked about it, but what we've been clear about is that if Israel launches this major military operation into Rafah, then there are certain systems that we're not going to be supporting and supplying for that operation. But at present, the only thing that we've delayed and are holding back are these high payload bombs because we're in an ongoing conversation with Israel, given the impact that those weapons can have when they're used in densely populated areas,

including an area like Rafa. So we're in an active conversation with Israel about that. We have real concerns about the way they're used. Sounds to me like they're just slow walking it with an eye on Michigan. Yeah. No, I mean, because you heard Blinken admit, apart from the big bombs that all they're good for is area destruction, they're not stopping anything else. And Judge, it's important that people understand how evil Israel is with respect to this. The Israeli Foreign Ministry on its website has a list of all Israelis that have been killed by what they call Palestinian violence from 2000 through April 26, 2024. That was the last statistics I saw.

And I took the time and effort to count those up. How many? During that entire period, 1,455 Israelis were killed, okay, over almost a 24-year period. Think about, then I pulled the example of Chicago. In Chicago, which is, you know, one-fifth the size of Israel in terms of population, they had almost 14,000 largely black men murdered in that same 24-year period. Think about that. Almost 12 times the number of bodies laying around. Do you see that kind of concern in America? Oh, we've got to stop this.

We've got, you know. We don't care. And yet here's Israel with 1,455 dead, a total of 671 attacks. And of those attacks, only 105 were claimed by Hamas. The rest really looks like the kind of street violence you get in Chicago. People fighting over turf, West Bank settlers killing Palestinians and Palestinians killing West Bank settlers. And yet during that same time frame, the Israelis killed almost 8000 Palestinians. Now, that was over the previous 24 years. And then here we get to October 17th, where Hamas launches this major military attack. It was a military operation.

It was not a terrorist attack. And in retaliation for that, Israel starts fighting back. Yeah, over 1,100 people died. We're just not sure what percentage of those were killed by Hamas and what percentage were killed by the Israelis because the Israelis were randomly shooting up vehicles. But then since October 7th, the number of Palestinian civilians killed is 40,000 plus and growing. Now, in the history, in the 70 years history of this,

the Israelis have never killed this many Palestinians. It's almost like they now got a taste for it. And they're doing it in such a deliberate, evil manner where they're starving people. They're preventing humanitarian supplies. And, you know, to compare Hamas as, quote, an international terrorist organization, I'll say candidly, it is not. It is, yes, quote, we call it terrorists because they're fighting. They've confined their fight to wanting to reclaim territory that they view as their own in Israel. And within this, it's really interesting to note, the last suicide bombing Hamas was credited with carrying out was in 2012. And what happened was Hamas leadership came to realize suicide bombings and attacking civilians in Israel is just as bad as what Israel is doing to the Palestinian civilians. Hamas stopped it.

And so over the last 12 years, you've not had these repeated mass suicide bombings. So what we've got is a Western narrative painting Hamas as this consummate evil terrorist, putting them in the same category as Al-Qaeda and ISIS. It's a lie. The facts don't back it up. Well, very powerfully put and analyzed. But just to raise your blood pressure a little bit, Senator Graham comparing the right and ability of Prime Minister Netanyahu to do whatever it takes to Harry Truman dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Cut number nine, Chris.

Historians would say, why is it OK for Reagan to do it and not President Biden? But let me ask you about the big deal. Well, why is it OK? Well, can I say this? Why is it okay for America to not to to drop two nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to end their existential threat war? Why was it okay for us to do that? I thought it was okay to Israel. Do whatever you have to do to survive as a Jewish state. Senator, again, military officials say technology has changed. But let me you about how yeah these military officials that you're talking about let me ask you something crap obviously she got uh she got under his skin i don't think anybody who understands the military situation at the end of world war ii can possibly morally justify the atomic bombs and And how could he make that comparison to Gus? But I'll let you take that ball and run with it, Larry. Yeah, because he's in the money pocket of the Israelis, clear and simple. Look,

people like Graham that go back and try to draw the parallels with World War II, well, let's make one other parallel clear. It was the United States and Great Britain that specialized in bombing and killing civilians. The Germans did it to a lesser extent in England. But you did not see the Russian Air Force carrying out strategic bombings. It was in the Soviet Air Force carrying out strategic bombings or so-called strategic bombings that was in the Soviet Air Force, carrying out strategic bombings or so-called strategic bombings of cities where they would do mass casualties of civilians. Dresden. Yeah, Dresden was the United States and Britain.

And so across the board, we bombed, firebombed Tokyo. We got accustomed to it. And it really, it didn't advance or change the direction of the war one bit. We've constructed a narrative about Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and as if that was the only option. It was either that or send our troops in. Well, you know what? There were other options because the Russians were now freed up

and able to come in and attack the Japanese from the West. We had the ability to completely embargo Japan as an example. But so the point of all this is these guys like Graham, they have no problem sending other people's kids to die. They have no problem taking the lives, having put in place the means that the lives of other people are destroyed, because he doesn't pay a cost. He doesn't have an ounce of skin in this game. And I find people like him, they're a disgrace to the human race. Here's a montage of members of Congress put together by Politico, some supporting Joe Biden, some including Lindsey Graham, again, condemning him. This idea of withholding weapons to Israel as a condition of somehow, you know, Joe Biden wanted to micromanage their their war effort over there, their defensive effort is catastrophic policy.

In my view, Netanyahu should not have gotten a nickel so long as he continued this incredibly destructive war. I'm glad to see that the president is beginning, beginning to move in that direction. Withholding weapons makes it very difficult, if not impossible, to get American hostages back and Israeli hostages back because you're incentivizing bad behavior. I don't agree with the president. It demonstrates to Hamas that they're winning the PR war.

You can't go after 10, 20 or a brigade of Hamas and kill thousands of innocent people. There's got to be a better way of doing it. And I think that's simply what the president of the United States is saying. They're more concerned about their pro-Hamas wing of the Democrat Party, which we're seeing is part of the radicalized left. I think the president has taken exactly the correct action, something that many of us have been calling for for weeks. He's made it clear that Netanyahu cannot continue to blatantly defy the United States president, Secretary of Defense, and Secretary of State. So the Israeli donor class

doesn't control all American politicians, just most of them. Right. Well, they've got a firm grip on the Republicans. Yes, they do. There's not a single, you know, Republican of any prominence that's going to come out and back and try to compel Israel to back off. And then so Israel's going to be, they're going to be betting on a Republican victory come the fall. That's sort of, I guess, they think is their only hope. But again, what these politicians don't understand is the United States position as a global leader is in freefall. We've seen the United States expelled from the Sahel, from that band across the middle of Africa, from Niger, Chad, where we used to have close relationships. They're telling us, get the hell out.

We don't want you here anymore. And they're welcoming the Russians in, welcoming in the Russians, welcoming in the Chinese. The shift with Egypt, with Saudi Arabia, with Turkey. Israel can't go it alone. It is dependent upon oil and gas that flow in from outside. So far, Turkey has not stopped that. Once Turkey takes the decision to stop it, Israel is toast. And the Houthis continue to tie up the Red Sea. The United States, with all of its much-touted military prowess, supposed, can't open the Red Sea.

We can't make it safe for maritime traffic. And yet we persist with this bellicosity of threatening. You know, our way is you either do what we tell you or we're going to come, you know, punch you in the nose. Well, OK, that's a great way to make friends and influence people. You know, what's happening is the world's getting sick and tired of America thinking it can tell them what to do, where to do it, and how to do it. Thank you, Larry. Thanks very much for your thoughts and your analysis. We'll look forward to seeing you on the round table with the youngster on Friday afternoon.

Okay, great. All the best. Three o'clock this afternoon, Colonel Douglas McGregor, Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. Thanks for watching!