Judging Freedom - Larry Johnson : The Dangerous and Inept Marco Rubio

Episode Date: December 15, 2025

Larry Johnson : The Dangerous and Inept Marco RubioSee 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, December 15th, 2025. Larry Johnson will be with us in just a moment on the dangerous and inept Marco Rubio. But first this. History tells us every market eventually falls. Currencies collapse. And look at where we are now.

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And that's why I buy my gold and silver from Lear. And right now you can get up to $20,000 in bonus medals with a qualified purchase. Call 800, 511, 4620 or go to Learjudgeonap.com today. Larry, welcome here. Larry Johnson, my dear friend. Thank you for accommodating my schedule. Before we get to the Secretary of State for Latin America, I came up with that line for you, even though it's, I think, adequately descriptive. A couple of questions about the EU. What are they going to give Zelensky when they meet on Thursday of this week? promises that are getting deeper in debt and put him at more peril. You know, the EU is really disconnected from reality with, after having been warned not to do permanent seizure of the Russian assets, they basically took action last week to do that very thing.

And Russia didn't waste any time. It responded immediately by filing a lawsuit, taking legal action in a court in Moscow. And Russia certainly will prevail in that, but what this does is it calls into question the entire foundation of the economic system that is at the heart of the European Union. And so, you know, I think we've seen them, they've done some suicidal things in the past, you know, such as, you know, not protesting the U.S. blowing up the Nord Stream pipeline. deciding that they're not going to import any more oil and gas from Russia. But now this is just another step by the Europeans to make themselves completely divorced from the international financial community.

Wow. Alster Crook gave us his understanding, which is the same as yours, but told us there actually will be a vote. And even though there were seven countries, they're going to vote. No, the vote is on the freezing, not yet the seizure, but the freezing of these Russian assets. I didn't know this, Larry. Perhaps you do. The vote is weighted by population. So Germany, France, and Great Britain can almost outweigh the other countries that

are opposed to it in the voting, just because they have more weighted votes, because they have more people in those countries. Well, initially, it was right. Actually, my understanding was supposed to be consensus, you know, unanimous. But now they've set up a system through, you know, our favorite, our favorite descendant of a Nazi, von der Leyen, that they can basically shut out those, you know, countries like Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovakia, that would protest this. So, again, this is going to accelerate the dissolution of the European Union, I believe,

because once you start basically telling some states that their voice no longer matters, and they turn around and say, well, why should we even be a part of this? Yeah. Colonel McGregor has characterized Frederick Mertz as the most dangerous German chancellor since Hitler, when I asked him why, he said because of his plans for a militarization, but this is leading me to my question, so we'll hold your thoughts on Merz. Are the polls becoming dangerously militarized and almost to the point where they're looking for a fight?

What depends on who you're talking to? So if you're talking to the Prime Minister, Donald Tusk, or Foreign Minister of Sikorsky, The answer is yes. If you're talking to President Novroski, the answer is no. So what you have in Poland is actually a division. And my understanding is the last one to actually have votes on their behalf was Navrowski in his election last year. So Poland is far from united on this, and it's worth noting that of all the countries in Europe,

the one country that has had the most fatalities from fighting on behalf and on the side of Ukraine is Poland. Wow. And, you know, I think the number is like close to 15,000. So you have a properly elected president that says one thing, and then you have a prime minister elected to the legislature who says the opposite. Exactly. And who sets foreign policy? Depends. If, again, Sikorsky and Tuss tried to push one direction, and Novrosky pushes in the opposite direction. You know, and what makes all of this so bizarre is the decision of the polls to basically align themselves with a Bandera faction that governs.

Well, that is not only bizarre, it's dangerous, Larry. Well, and it goes back, you know, 80, 83 years ago, 82 years ago, Bondera and his thugs led what was now known as the Volan Massacre. They killed over 150,000 Poles. So you'd say that naturally there should be an animus between them. But within the Polish community, there's also this hatred of Russia for what was known as the Katyn Forest Massacre

back in the early days of World War II. Now, I think there were more Poles killed by the Banderaites than by the Soviets, but, you know, it doesn't matter when you get into these things. It gets very emotional. Go ahead. Do you share Colonel McGregor's view of the dangers of the Mertz-Chancellorship? The ideological danger, yes.

But what we're saying is, you know, Volkswagen just closed and the first time in its history, shut down one of its factories for building automobiles. So if you're going to gear up militarily, you need to have. an industrial base that can provide you with the weapons, with the vehicles, with all the logistic supplies that are required to sustain a modern army. And what we're seeing in Germany is their economies going the opposite direction. They're not, you know, this is not like the early days of the 1930s when Hitler was rebuilding the industry and developing tanks and planes and artillery that they had an industrial foundation that was coming out of the collapse from the Weimar Republic.

No, now you have, it looks like the Merch is heading them towards a Weimar Republic type of collapse because other prominent German companies are pulling out, and yet the German system is such that they do have a social safety net. So people lose their jobs, but they're still getting income. What that means, though, is that the German government is borrowing more. more and more money. So I agree with Doug that there is this mentality of wanting to do confrontation, but fortunately, Germany doesn't have that capability.

Well, hence the Coalition of the Willing, and Ray and I were laughing at the absurdity of that name, a George Bush concoction from the invasion of Iraq. But hence the three of them, Mertz, Stormer and McCrone wanting to steal the money from Belgian banks because they can't get it from any other source. Well, and what are they going to do with it? You know, look, it's not like Ukraine,

the assumption is, boy, if Ukraine just had that $300 billion, man, they'd be beaten Russia like a, like a tendrum. No, the money, you know, the money can't buy you victory. Right. You know, we'll amend the Beatles tune. Can't buy you love. can't buy you victory either it the physical demands or the physical costs that have been imposed on ukraine as a result of this war is something that ukraine cannot sustain and that's

that's why we're seeing this panic reaction now among the europeans they can they can see this house of cards is coming down this this is not sustainable particularly when you recognize that ukraine has gone in the spate of 12 years from 43 million people down to 19 million go in the wrong direction well I know you're a fan of Hollywood and so I have to mention this tragedy with Rob Reiner being slaughtered in his house apparently by his own son Rob you know he played that crazy role of meathead which was such a level character tormenting his character played by Carol O'Connor.

But shortly before he died, he gave some criticisms of President Trump. Somewhat are those articulated on this show? Watch this, Larry. And then I would like your thoughts on it. And then we have something from President Trump on it. Chris, cut number five. Our democracy is being taken away from us. Make no mistake, we have a year.

year before this country becomes a full-on autocracy, and democracy completely leaves us. Donald Trump knows, he knows that in a free and fair election, he will lose. He will lose the house. The house will flip this little, you know, these ICE agents and the National Guard, and now he's called the military in from all over the world to talk to them about Don't be surprised when polling booths are surrounded by American military in the guise of making sure that the elections are fair. There'll be some violence and they'll keep back. Then you'll see the commandeering of voting machines, ballot boxes to make sure that that election is secure.

Well, what that means is that he will then commandeer the election. It's a vague term democracy. It's like, what does that mean? the Constitution. We don't know what that means. People care about their pocketbook issues, the price of eggs, they care about their health care, and they should. Those are the things that directly affect them. But if they lose their democracy, all of these rights, the freedom of speech, the freedom to pray the way you want, the freedom to protest and not go to jail, not be sent out in the country with no with no due process all these things will be taken away from them

and we have to educate the public that this is what's happening right now in america fair warning no you look rob was a great director uh made some fantastic movies when it came to political analysis uh you know he was very ideologically driven You know, the shift, the demonization of Donald Trump is, you know, it's popular on the left, but they ignore the fact that some of the very things you're talking about have been, you know, done by Democrats as well. You know, it's like what we talked about last week with, you know, the Trump killing, authorizing murder of these people in boats off the coast of Venezuela. Well, Trump wasn't the first one to do that. You know, George W. Bush did it.

Barack Obama did it. So I have more... Joe Biden did it. Yeah, I have more respect for people that are going to call it balls and strikes, regardless of whether you're wearing the Democrat colors or the Republican colors. And that's where, unfortunately, for Rob, he only played for one side. So, you know, the bias, it is, you know, it's a horrific thing. Just no matter how much fame and fortune you have,

no matter how much money you have, the struggles they had with their son, who is the alleged killer with his descent into narcotics and substance abuse, who resulted in, you know, killing your parents? Yeah, I mean, good God, this is like some Shakespearean nightmare. Yeah, yeah. Trump himself actually made some critical, but, touching comments. I'll read it. It's from his truth social. A very sad thing happened last night in Hollywood. I'm going to read it literally. Yeah. Rob Reiner, a tortured and struggling, but once very talented movie director and comedy star, has passed away together with his wife, Michelle, reportedly due to the anger he caused others through his massive unyielding and incurable affliction with a mind crippling disease known as in caps. Trump derangement syndrome, sometimes referred to as TDS. He was known to have driven people crazy by his raging obsession of President Donald J. Trump,

with his obvious paranoia reaching new heights as the Trump administration. Jesus. I'm reading with a straight face, Larry. Yeah, yeah. He passed all goals and expectations of greatness, and with the Golden Age of America upon us, perhaps like never before. may Rob and Michelle rest in peace. I think this is becoming so political now.

The guy was slaughtered. The government says by his son, the bail was fixed at $4 million. That tells me that they have substantial evidence of his guilt or a non-coerced confession for the bail to be that high, and the president's making it political. Yeah, no, shame on Donald Trump.

Look, the many on the right or many of the supporters of Charlie Kirk were correctly outraged at the celebration from many on the so-called left who rejoiced in the murder of Charlie Kirk. Well, now here's a murder of someone on the left and instead of just being, you know, having some measurements, of kindness and decency, Trump has to make it as if he was killed because of Trump derangement syndrome. I mean, come on. This is another example of Trump's political instincts have just gone south because he had a moment, he had an opportunity here where he could

have played a role of saying, look, regardless of what political differences I've had with Rob Reiner. Rob Reiner was a talent in Hollywood, made many important contributions to the world. Just like his father. His father was hilarious. Father was a great comedian in the Jack Benny Bob Hope mold. Yeah. And it's just, you know, instead of taking the high road, Trump had to make it about him.

It says, stop. Now, is, is Prime Minister Netanyahu going to go on international television? television and deny that his people had anything to do with this? Yeah. Why does the U.S. persist in trying to starve the people of Cuba? The impoverished people of Cuba, whom we've impoverished for the past 60 years? They would not tow the line and do what we told them to do. You know, it was, we weren't about to allow a revolution to succeed in our history.

You know, the fact that the Cubans have survived, and, you know, I don't want to paint, you know, Fidel Castro is, you know, that he was some sort of benign presence. But this, if the United States really wants to achieve regime change in Cuba, open it up completely. Because as long as the Cuban government can cite, the attacks by the United States is, is the reason the people are suffering, it gives the government an out, an excuse. You know, I'm all in favor of sunlight. Sunlight does a great job of cleaning things up. And this is another example where our policy after, you know, our more Cal Bell policy for the last 65 years, it turned out to be completely ineffective.

And what is Marco Rubio's involvement in all of this? I kiddingly said the Secretary of State for Latin America because he apparently has nothing to do with Gaza and nothing to do with Ukraine, nothing to do with NATO. Yeah, well, he's got out of his Cuban heritage and his parents who, you know, left Cuba and, you know, a visceral hatred of Castro. I mean, if you go down to Miami,

you've got the, you know, little Havana, you know, there's entire neighborhoods or barrios that are filled with, let's call it the Cuban refugees. What's interesting with Marco Rubio, if you listen to Robert Barnes, an attorney, he tells a pretty compelling story of how Marco's sister married into one of the cocaine families, into the cartels. And that his nickname around some parts of Florida was Narco Marco.

So it's ironic that they're going after Venezuela for being some, you know, sort of the centerpiece of all narcotics trafficking, which it isn't. And this, you know, I call it the anti-communist revenge tour. Guilt by association. Because Maduro had good relations with Cuba, therefore he's as guilty as the Cubans. Well, and so his, it's almost as if Trump has given him Latin America. sure he's obviously fomenting some sort of military incursion into Venezuela again because this is a government that the American elites can't tolerate yeah this what I'm

fascinated by or and concerned the you know so we've got this presence of US naval forces off the coast of Venezuela now for four months you've had you know at least 5,000 Marines called up and activated. They're floating around on ships or I guess they they're now based on the back on shore in Puerto Rico because you can't keep Marines cooped up like that for

four or five months without you know they're going to just deteriorate physically. They need to be active. They need to be exercising. So how long can you keep this bow drawn? You know like a bow and arrow where you pull the string

back and you hold it and hold it and hold it and hold it. At some point, your muscles get fatigued and you're no longer able to hold it. The United States does not have any good military courses of action that don't carry tremendous risk. If they decide to put troops in on the ground, and we talked about this, I think, on Friday a little bit, you know, Venezuela's three times the size of Vietnam. And in Vietnam at the height, we had like 543,000 troops on the ground in Vietnam. 10% of whom never came home. Yeah.

And so now we're looking at with 18,000 troops to go into a land that is probably more rugged and difficult to traverse than Vietnam ever was. So, you know, that's crazy. Or you've got these ships offshore. Well, Venezuela does have some missiles provided. by China, Russia, Iran that are capable of sinking some of those ships. And so far, Maduro has been very careful not to take the bait of the United States has tried to provoke him by flying aircraft into the Gulf of Venezuela.

Maduro is keeping his powder dry. So what's the United States going to do? What's the objective? Regime change? If we manage to replace Maduro, that doesn't mean Maduro supporters are going to go. away, and that particular plot of land there in Venezuela is ripe for insurgent activity. Whatever new government gets installed would immediately face a pushback by guerrilla forces. And those guerrilla forces have actual sanctuary in Brazil, sanctuary in Colombia.

Even the government of Colombia has been able to stop dealing with an insurgency that dates back 50 years. and they've made repeated efforts to try. So this is a stupidest policy possible. Instead of trying to negotiate an end, we're trying to pretend that we got the military force to solve it. We don't. I mean, this is all connected. Rubio's paranoia about left-wing governments in Latin America,

Trump's orders and Hegsseth's follow-up orders to murder these people. in the speedboats, the seizing of this enormous tanker destined for Cuba and maybe destined elsewhere after that. And the admiral in charge of all of it resigning. His resignation took effect on Friday. I don't know if he's going to speak out. He could be recalled to active duty. You know, that crazy rule that they want to impose on Senator Kelly. He's got the protection because he's in the Senate and the Constitution doesn't allow you to be. in the Congress and active duty at the same time, but I don't know that Admiral Halsey has any

protection. But Admiral Stavritis, whom I've met a number of times, who's the former Supreme Allied commander of NATO and with whom I don't agree on a lot, we've met socially, nevertheless gave an interesting interview to, I think, Dana Bash over the weekend about Admiral Halsey. Chris, cut number seven. Very strange. Hard to come up with an analog, extremely rare to see a combatant commander, particularly in the middle of military operations, walk away from the job. We've seen Secretary Higgseth push out a lot of senior military leaders, including the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the former chief of naval operations. Perhaps he's been pushed out of the role, but in a less public way. The speculation

I'm hearing is that he disagreed with the policy choices. And in that scenario, as a senior military officer, you essentially have the choice of executing the mission you're given or putting your stars on the table. Perhaps he did the latter. Colonel McGregor says the same thing. In your position like that, you can't thumb your nose at the Secretary of Defense, but you can give him your stars. Yeah, well, and I think another factor here is what the difference between being a supported commander and a supporting commander. What is that? And so what that means is that the, you've got regional commands.

You've got the Southern Command, which has, you know, Central South America. You've got European Command, which has the Command over Europe, Africa Command, etc. Then you have groups like Socom, Special Operations Command, Command. Special Operations Command is not dedicated to any particular region. They will be introduced into a region as they have been now with respect to what's going on in Venezuela. The difference is, who's in charge? Is it the commander of Southcom? If the commander of Southcom, and in this case this Admiral Holsey,

if he's in charge, that means all the special operations, he's the supported commander. He's the guy in charge that everybody else has to support. That would put so calm in the position of being what is known as supporting commander. They have to work for Holsey. It looks like in this case, and again, I was involved in the scripting of terrorism exercises over 23 years, which dealt with this exact issue of who's in charge. Is it so calm or is it the theater saint, the theater commander? And it looks like what they've done is they've put SOCOM as a supported commander.

Halsey and the Southern Command is the supporting. They have to actually report to SOCOM. Socom is to call the shots. And I think that may have been another factor that contributed to Halsey, Stan. These guys are going to make some decisions I'm not going to be happy with. I have to follow orders. Instead of following those orders, I'm going to get out.

Does Hank Seth know what he's doing? No. No. Okay. You know, just, if Hankseth knew what he was doing, we wouldn't have been in the Red Sea, letting the Houthis beat us. Right. You know, this is the other, you know, what's being exposed,

both with respect to the Red Sea operation, prosperity, guardian, and now whatever name this fiasco has, is that we're recognizing the limits of U.S. military power the day and age when we could use gunboat diplomacy and force you know what we would call pissant little countries to come to heal and do our thing you know obey us that's gone and you know the standoff right now with venezuela well yeah on paper the united states is we're wealthier we've got a bigger army we've got all they've got control you know superior air force we've got more naval vessels but there's some vulnerabilities with all of that and some incredible

costs that if we decide to actually engage militarily and that's that's the lesson we have the united states has failed to learn over the course of the last 60 years getting involved with foreign wars and we we we pay a cost in terms of running up our deficit but on the other hand those people who are invested in Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Dynamics, they're doing pretty well. It's, you know, it's lucrative. So, so I think, and I think you agree, Donald Trump really would like the war in Ukraine to be over. He may not even care about how, but he wants it over. Marco Rubio does not want it over. He has the same mentality as Victoria Newland and, pardon me, Hillary Clinton and the people that were involved in the coup in 2014.

Do you think maybe Trump keeps him away from Putin but lets him make decisions that the compensation is to let him make decisions about Latin America instead? Yeah, well, tossing him a bone. It is fascinating that here is Rubio occupying the same kind of position that Henry Kissinger did as both National Security Advisor and Secretary of State. But what's clear is that Marco Rubio doesn't have the intellectual girth that Kissinger did. Right. Kissinger, for all of his faults, was not a stupid person and did think somewhat strategically, albeit deviously and malevolently. But Marco Rubio is not even in that camp. Marker Rubio is just an errand boy. You know, he's basically

he told what to do, he'll, you know, pitch in his two cents here and there, but he's not an intellectual force that's shaping U.S. policy. I wonder if he even really runs the State Department. I mean, the last statement he issued State Department wide was the size of the font they are to use in their official statements and their tables to him. This is crazy. Yeah. When you're worried about style, that shows that you don't have your eye on the ball. Look, we're in a tremendous phase of transition as the United States is having to come to grip with the fact that its role as the perceived role as the sole international superpower, you know, it's unraveling.

We cannot do economically what we once were able to do. similarly, we can't do militarily what we always thought we could do. And the limits of power is starting to be imposed. And, you know, Trump has had to confront that with respect to Ukraine. You know, he was confident that he could end it in one day. Well, here we are 11 months later, and it's still going on. Yeah. Larry, a great conversation. Thanks, my dear friend. We'll look forward to seeing you with Ray McGovern at the end of the week on Friday. I'll be there and I'll get my bag of popcorn to watch you and Tucker. Oh, thank you. Thank you, my dear friend. All the best. Have a great day.

All right. Thank you. Sure. Coming up this afternoon at 4 o'clock, Professor Jeffrey Sachs, and of course, Larry's references to my interview, which will be live with Tucker Carlson, this Wednesday, December 17th and 11 o'clock in the morning, Eastern. You don't want to miss it. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. Thank you. Thank you.