Judging Freedom - Larry Johnson : Trump TACO Again !

Episode Date: July 27, 2026

Larry Johnson : Trump TACO Again !See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Undeclared wars are commonplace. Pragically, our government engages in preemptive war, otherwise known as aggression with no complaints from the American people. Sadly, we have become accustomed to living with the illegitimate use of force by government. To develop a truly free society, the issue of initiating force must be understood and rejected. What if sometimes to love your country you had to alter or abolish the government? Jefferson was right? What if that government is best which governs least? What if it is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong? What if it is better to perish fighting for freedom than to live as a

slave? What if freedom's greatest hour of danger is now? Hi, everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for judging freedom. Today is Monday, July 27, 26. Larry Johnson will be with us and Just a moment on Trump is Taco again. Taco. Trump always chickens out. But first this. Today's headlines aren't just bleak. They're an indictment of a government that has abandoned the Constitution. You are witnessing the direct result of the Federal Reserve's relentless war on the value of your dollar.

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Don't wait for Washington to fix a mess they created. secure your freedom today take possession of your precious metals or diversify your IRA by adding gold and silver call 800 511 4620 to see if you qualify for up to twenty thousand dollars in bonus medals that's 800 511 4620 or go to lear judge nap dot com Larry welcome here my dear friend as always thanks for accommodating my schedule before we get to taco and I'll repeat for those unfamiliar with the American idiom of Trump always chickens out, chicken out, meaning changing his mind, afraid to do what he promised he would. Is there, or is there about to be some connection between the war in Iran and the war in Ukraine? Yeah, well, sort of. You know, this attack on the ship, the Iranian ship in the Caspian Sea, or two different reports.

It was supposedly, it was, I thought initially was in route to Iran, but then another report claimed that it was Iranian weapons going to Russia, and I'm thinking, yeah, that's like cold in Newcastle. So, regardless, it got a lot of attention. Now, why did Ukraine do it? try to curry favor with Trump. It's that simple. Hey, look at, you know, we're with you.

We're fighting alongside you. They may have gotten more than they bargained for, though, out of this. Because, you know, the IRGC, the Iranian government, they vowed to retaliate. Now, of course, I'm looking at it thinking, Russia's already pounding the stuffing out of of Ukraine with its everyday missiles into Kiev shutting down completely shutting down

Odessa, nothing going in and out that one one two or three more Iranian missiles are not actually going to make that much of a difference. It might not even be noticed but Iran may feel that on or bound that they need to retaliate

so maybe they'll pick out a target in coordination with the Russians that they can take out in Odessa. But at this point, if they're trying to unite the two, the one thing that unites the two is the United States doesn't have enough weapons to even fight in one theater, at least when we're talking precision-guided missiles,

both defensive and offensive. So the military activities in both theaters have highlighted the limitations, of U.S. military power, which is, you know, that's a tough, tough truth to swallow right now for the Trump administration. I want to talk to you at some length about whether or not the United States military supplies are depleted and whether Secretary Hegseth materially misled the Senate last week. But before we get there, just to finish up on a run, here's this crackpot who calls himself

the president of Ukraine. Watch this. Cut number six. You mentioned the Iran. You mentioned the Middle East and how it takes attention. Are you worried about Iran potentially attacking you? They've threatened because of what happened with one of their vessels? Or is that not a concern? And what do you think if Iran from the first year of the war gave new page, new technology to Russia. It was Chehi drones. They gave thousands of these drones first year of the war. Then they gave licenses. What did they do? Did they attack us? I think yes. So they already did it. The war was already underway, effectively. They are attacking you. We have to be courteous. We have to do everything, not

open a new front in any way but we have to be honest Iranians and North Korea's already attacked us yes I hope that they will not increase these attacks but we have to be ready for everything just to be ready and to know that we can't trust these people because at the very very beginning without without any messages any kind of escalation from our side. Iranians gave weapons. Is he crazy? Yeah, let's use his definition. Then by that definition, the United States, all of Europe, Germany, France, England, they've attacked Russia. So therefore, Russia, by that same logic, is entitled to attack those countries. And that may in fact happen.

Yeah, no, look, he's just, again, he's trying to, he's trying to create a justification after the fact. If, you know, because as you said, they knew back in 2022 that the, what the Shahad drone, aka Garan drone was provided by Iran. Okay, so attack Iran back then. Why'd you wait for a half years? So this is just an excuse. He is, you know, he's en route to the United States today. As is BB Net and Yahoo, they're coming for Lindsey-Gree.

Graham's funeral, which is tomorrow. And he wanted, you know, want to be able to have something to show Trump. Hey, look at me, man. I'm with you all the way on this Iran fiasco. Has the Kremlin ceased calling the military's presence in Ukraine a special military operation and started calling it what it is a war? I don't know if they've officially redubbed it. I mean, four weeks ago, Dimitri Pesri.

Kof Putin's spokesman, he made a point of saying this was really no longer a special military operation. It is a war. And by the actions of the Russians since then, I think we can conclude that they put the SMO and its limitations behind them. You see that particularly with the case of Odessa. Every ship trying to come in or go out, it's getting blown out of the water. Odessa is now closed. There are no imports coming in, no exports of grain going out. And Russia has not been shy at all about hitting other foreign flag vessels and sinking them.

And, you know, if they're hearing any complaints or protests, they're shrugging it off. They don't care. So this is, and they're doing this in tandem with just a relentless campaign of missiles, drones, glide bombs that are just decimating Kyiv and other cities across Ukraine. And then that's coupled with stepped up military operations or advances all along the line of contact from Sumi in the north, Kharkiv in the northeast, to the Donbos, Zaporizia, Nipro-Pethoros, and then down south into Karkev, or into Kyrgyz. side, has the American supply of needed military gear. I'm going to use that phrase, offensive, defensive, hardware, ammo, whatever you want to call it, been seriously depleted. And if so, did Secretary Hegseth materially mislead the Senate last week when he said it hadn't?

Yeah, let's start with the last one. Yes, he lied. You know, I'm going to take a victory lap. I wrote on Sonar 21 on March 3rd. People can look it up about the shortage that was developing that existed with respect to the Patriot missile, the PAC 3. So the shortage is concerned. Precision guided missiles.

And we got three categories of them. First are the defensive missiles, the air defense systems, like the PAC 3 for the Patriot, the THAAD, which is even more expensive, like $12 million a piece for those missiles. I think the numbers on the Patriot, like CSIS claims that they may have a thousand left. I think it's probably less than 400 based upon, you know, public source information. It's not, you know, not revealing classified information on that. So, and the thad is, that's basically, that's empty. Then you have what are called the SAD suppression of enemy air defense. That is the harm missile.

There are two variations of that. The older one and the newer one and the newer one, basically they're out. Then you get to the offensive weapons. Tomahawk, Jasm. Jasm is a cruise missile, another cruise missile, launched from an aircraft. The Tomahawk cruise can be launched from aircraft or ships. Those are running, you know, very, very low, less than 2000.

And you said, well, that seems quite a bit. But you got to understand, that's the entire inventory for the U.S. military. And you've got the commands in the Pacific, paycom. and then the European command, Ucom, they each claim to have, hey, we need some of those missiles too because that's part of our, on our task list for missions we've got to combat missions,

we have to be able to carry out. Then you've got the, what's launched from the high Mars, they've got two very, you get the attack thems, those are down in inventory, but those with respect to the Iran conflict are sort of irrelevant

because they can only go 180 miles, And if you're firing it from Bahrain or from Kuwait, you're really not penetrating very, very far into Iran. And then there's the prism of the precision strike missile. And they've only they produced Lockheed Martin. I think last year produced 56 of those 5-6, not 560, so they're down. So you really do have a shortage across the board. board. And, you know, what was fascinating, you know, again, and I wrote about that about a week ago, two weeks ago, caught a lot of flack over it from some. But then here we had all the mainstream press reporting it and reporting that both it was General Kane as well as Admiral Cooper,

the head of CINCOM. And Kane in his role as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, they told Trump, hey, look, you keep doing that. A, if we keep doing this, we're not going to accomplish anything. And B, we're going to make our inventories very, very dangerously low. And I think that was one factor leading Trump to say, okay, let's stop, at least for now. Wow. Why did Trump, after threatening the gates of hell on Iran last week back down over the weekend? Well, I saw what I considered the warning signs that the attack was imminent.

Right. You had embassies that were closing, you know, the French, the British, and the Germans. Only a day later, the Germans came out and denied that they'd closed their embassy. flights were being canceled. Israel was opening up its bomb shelters. So there was a full expectation, something was going to happen. And then I forgot to take into account the White House correspondence dinner on Friday night. So Trump reportedly didn't want to step on his appearance there by having these reports of a, you know,

a major attack on Iran come out. But then we get the reports that it was the combination, was the shortage. That's what's been reported in the press. But I also think there's the economic issue, the shortage of diesel and aviation fuel. And that's real. And it stems because, you know, I keep getting people writing me and saying, oh, you don't understand the difference between sweet and sour crew because you can make diesel oil. Yes, yes, I know that, folks. Look, the problem is the refineries in the United States, 70% of them are set up to handle only sour crude, not sweet.

Tell you what, if they were set up for sweet crude, we wouldn't be having a problem because we got plenty of that. We'd be making diesel and aviation fuel right and left. But we don't. 70% of them are for sour crude. That all comes from imports, from Canada, from Mexico, from Venezuela, and from the Persian Gulf. Gulf. So once we've got at least 10% of our supply cut off now,

that means the amount of diesel and aviation fuel is going down. It's not going up. We've been mitigating that impact by drawing from the strategic petroleum reserve, but we've, I think as Alistair correctly noted,

we've gotten to the point where they're drawing out so much that the structural integrity, those salt caverns are now in jeopardy and that's because when the oil is put into these salt caverns to get it out you pump water into it and you know anybody that's ever put a teaspoon of salt and some water knows what happens it they mix they dissolve so it's a few it's it's it's really a fuel crisis potential crisis that i think also impacted his decision recognizing that uh you know the market's going to react Now, I think today we're going to see that as a result of his actions, you know, this delay, price of oil now, the future's price is coming down.

Meaningless. It's manipulation. But that the stock market then will maybe tick upwards again. But he's just postponing a calamity. It doesn't solve the problem. So how much longer can the United States even afford to continue attacking Iran as the president's being pressed by his neocon and Maga buddies to do? Yeah, I think we could do about two weeks candidly. And the other limiting factor in there are the KC-135, the air refueling aircraft. you know, we'll sometimes we'll see pictures where you got, oh, 80 of these planes part. So, man, we got plenty. But people forget

that when those planes take off, you've got a crew, and if the crew flies for a particular amount of time, they have to get crew rest. You know, they don't just keep making them fly because it creates, you know, a danger of crew

exhaustion. Then the airframes themselves require maintenance, and they They take a beating. So we actually, we don't have as many as we like to believe that we do. And, you know, the danger now with what Ukraine, what Iran has demonstrated, it is effectively driven us out of our bases, the basis we were using in Jordan that the government of Jordan provided. And we retreated to Israel.

So far, Iran hasn't targeted the Israeli basis. If Trump renews the conflict, if he goes back and decides to get the keys out and open the gates of hell, Iran has its own, you know, if you will, can a whoop ass to open on us. And it will be, the difference is we no longer have an air defense cover. The combination of the depletion of the Patriot, the Thad, the Iron Dome and David Sling, you know, those are useless. What it means is we will be vulnerable to attacks from the Iranian missiles. And once they start hitting airfields and military targets in Israel, then we don't really

have a good answer to that. Wow. You mentioned earlier, and I did want to ask you about this Prime Minister Netanyahu is going to be spending here for Senator Graham. funeral, but he's going to be spending private time with the president. Alster Crook reports that among them more credible Israeli Hebrew journalists reports that Netanyahu expects Trump to ask him to remove the IDF from Syria, Lebanon, and Gaza to which Netanyahu will say no. What do you think Trump will ask Netanyahu? What do you think Trump will ask Netanyahu? What

you think Trump will tell Netanyahu? What do you think Netanyahu will ask of Trump? Well, the fact that they're reporting and Trump asked that, you have to step back and say, okay, why is Trump asking that? And this goes back to something that Alistair said. I agree with him that Iran's not going to return to the MOU. I'll just say, okay, let's give it a do-over. No, they've got preconditions. They've established, they're being, they've been approached in the last three weeks, first by Qatar, then by Islamabad, and then by the Iraqi prime minister last week, said, hey, you know, we come back to the table.

And each time Iran said, you know, no and hell no. So we're not going to do it. But apparently Qatar and Islamabad are actively working behind the scenes to try to, try to get the negotiations back on and trump going to israel with that demand he didn't ask he didn't say pretty please will you he said you need to pull your people out of there that's one of irons pre conditions so this tells me yeah there are talks but irons laying out laying out his preconditions it doesn't want some promise that eventually maybe uh israel was withdrawal from those areas No, before Iran's going to sit down and resign onto the MOU, Israel's got to pull out. Now, Bibi can sit there and say, oh, yeah, I'm going to tell him, no. The problem that Israel has is now completely dependent on the United States

for its supply of diesel and aviation fuel, which is how the IDF is able to maintain air operations and ground operations. Why is that? Because during the first 45 days of the war, Iran damaged the refinery in Ahifa and an Asthdad. And so they're not producing at the level that they were. And therefore, the Israelis have become dependent upon the shipment of these fuels coming in, you know, via the Netherlands, via Turkey. So, you know, Trump absolutely has some leverage over this. You know, I don't know if you use it, but he certainly could tell them and say, look, either you're going to do this or we're pulling the plug on your fuel and good luck figuring out how you're going to stand the fight.

Isn't that almost inconceivable, given the Zionist influence in the American government and given Netanyahu's perilous political state at home, that he would pull the IDF out of Gaza or Lebanon or Syria at a time like this? Yeah, I know. I think it's close to mission impossible, but then this is where you've got the Iranian demands on the one hand, because this just didn't come out of the blue. I mean, I don't think Trump was sitting there saying, gee, what could I do that could maybe get us back on a negotiation track?

Oh, I know. I'll tell Israel to pull out. No, this is a demand that's being levied. by Iran. And Iran, in this case, Iran holds cards that the United States doesn't. Look, the simple fact that the United States has been driven out of key basis. I was able to get some clarity over the weekend. I finally found some other open source that, you know, the forward headquarter,

the Central Command's Air Force component called AFSET. AFSENT is officially headquartered at Shaw Air Force Base in South Carolina. But effectively, over the last 20 years, AFSEN's forward headquarters was ALUDDED. And they had there what was called the Combined Air Operations Center. Well, it turns out the United States, I get the planners at the Department of War credit, they said, you know what, Al-UDeed is going to be a big, fat target

if this war with when we start the war with Iran. So they pulled it. They shut Kayok down, the combined air operations center. They shut that down the very, like February 26, 27th, pulled everybody out, sent him back to Shaw Air Force Base. Well, that base now is, you know, it's not functioning like in the way that it used to be. And air operations there are dramatically reduced as well. That's what Iran forces out.

And then on top of it, they, they. destroyed more than almost $2 billion worth of radars systems that were at Al-UDid, that saw the entire expanse of the West Asia, the Middle East. So what Iran has accomplished in the course of the first 45 days of the war was to destroy a combination of 19 radar satellite communication systems and basically compel U.S. military forces to move out of the Gulf. Aye. What do you think Netanyahu will ask of Trump?

Oh, more war. Yeah, more war. He'll be like that scene from Saturday Night Live, you know, more Cal Bell. He'll be coming out, saying, yeah, we've got to keep this up, you know, the Iranian regime, it's teetering, it's on, it's on its last legs. One more with one final push. He's going to try to sell that. Now, I don't know if Trump is going to be buying.

And we had other reports that J.D. Vans is trying to keep Netanyahu from even getting an audience with Trump. So we'll see if that comes off. Wow. Jeff Sachs is on after you at 11 o'clock this morning, Eastern, is going to paint a picture of Israel about to collapse. Israel tottering at the brink. Netanyahu's government. about to collapse. Well, Netanyahu's not...

And Natinehu himself is not in good health. Yeah, no, he's battling prostate cancer. But I think it is important to distinguish between the dislike of Netanyahu, the dislike of his governing, but the fact that I still, the majority, the vast majority of Israelis, both the ultra-right and even,

in the middle but they're still committed to this path of destroying the Palestinians so it's not like we get a new government that's going to come and say okay we got to negotiate with uh with the with the Palestinians and the assaults the assaults that are taking place right now we've got to emphasize this the people on Palestinian Christians in the West Bank the these Zionist settlers are showing up they're killing them they're burning their property they're attacking their churches. These are Christians. These are not Muslims. So I know there's this, there's this racism in the West that, you know, if you're Muslim, you know, you're a bad guy. But these are Christians. Now, and the fact of the matter is, probably Catholic. Yeah. Yeah, in many cases,

or Orthodox. So, you know, the, but the point of the matter is these are not, you know, these jihadists that the West likes to paint the Palestinians as, which is a lie. And so, unfortunately, even if not, you know, if Netanyahu went the way of Lindsey Graham, it was not necessarily going to change Israel's policy. And that's the problem. Larry, a pleasure, my dear friend. Thank you very much. We'll miss you Friday.

I know you'll be traveling, but we'll look forward to seeing you here next week for your usual double and things happen truly duty all the best my friend all right let's say hello to all of our friends in chattanooga thank you yeah we'll do thank you larry all the best coming up later today if you're watching us live in 90 minutes at 11 o'clock this morning professor geoffrey sacks at 2 o'clock this afternoon jim web will the troops disobey illy orders? And at three this afternoon, what is Trump's inner circle really telling him? Robert Barnes, Judge Napolitano for judging freedom.