Judging Freedom - Larry Johnson : Trump’s Colossal Mistake

Episode Date: February 28, 2026

Larry Johnson : Trump’s Colossal MistakeSee 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? the government? What if 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 Saturday, February 28th, welcome to this special edition of judging freedom with our dear friend and regular colleague Larry Johnson. Larry, of course, welcome here. Thank you for disturbing your Saturday afternoon. It's afternoon here in the east coast of the United States. We have much to discuss.

Before we get granular, let's look at the big picture. What happened today? What did the United States and Israel attempt to do? United States and Israel started a fight that they can't win, that they're going to lose. And they don't have an easy out. They'd convince themselves that all they had to do was launch this massive strike because, you know, Trump foolishly, foolishly believes his own nonsense about, you know, there's no better, bigger, more powerful military in the world than us.

With maybe Israel is a close second, but we are the best and we can do anything. And so they fully intended to try. a repeat of what happened on June 13th of 2025 to do a decapitation strike, take out the upper political military leadership. Well, you know, they've been gesturing for now more than two months that they were going to do this. The Iranians had no doubt that they were going to do it. And the Iranians were taking preparations that if it did happen and like, you know,

the Ayatollah Khaman, he died, he'd already designated successors. if Posseschkin died, he designated. They had all, you know, they all said, hey, if I go, you're in charge, you know, they were planning for this. So here's Israel, they top it off. And, you know, we saw from a recent article from Seymour Hirsch, that I don't know if his source was U.S. intelligence or Israeli intelligence, but regardless, this source told Psi that, oh, yeah,

we decimated the Iranian ballistic missile program last year. They don't have anything. So within an hour and a half of this surprise attack yesterday morning, it was yesterday morning in Iran, Saturday morning there, Iran was firing back. But this time, what's different from now compared to what happened in June of 2025, at that time, Iran confined itself to attacking only Israeli targets. They focus primarily on economic and military targets. This time is different, way different. They're going after U.S. bases and installations throughout the Persian Gulf into Iraq, and the United States is suffering significant material losses.

I don't know about human loss at this point. Here's one of the dopiest questions I ever heard asked, and I think the Iranian foreign minister agreed. when an NBC correspondent, I don't know who it is, asked him. Chris, the NBC dope. Why is attacking U.S. military bases abroad justified? Because they are attacking us. They are U.S. military, you know, installations, facilities, bases, who are attacking us. We are under attack. Why don't you, you know, recognize this fact. We are under the attack by U.S.

US forces in the region. So we have every right to defend ourselves. And how to defend ourselves we attacked, you know, the U.S. basis. This is obvious. This is a very simple fact. And I hope that, and I'm sure that people would understand that. We are not the one who attacked Americans. We are only defending ourselves. Are American troops and installations in the Middle East to the long-range offensive capabilities of the Iranian military? Well, you know, what's happened right now, for example, they made a big point of attacking the Fifth Fleet facility in Bahrain. It's a naval, it's a port. That port is critical for providing service to, say, U.S. destroyers who,

Remember, these destroyers come equipped with 96 missile slots. I think they got 50 up front and 46 astern. And their vertical launch system. So when they launch either Tomahawk cruise missiles or Aegis air defense missiles out of those tubes, the only way to replace them is to sail to a port. Previously, they could sail into Bahrain and go there. Not now. Iran has closed the Strait of Hormuz.

You've got several U.S. Navy ships that are now basically trapped inside the Persian Gulf, and Iran's got the anti-ship missiles to take those out. I don't know if they have yet, but I think they will, number one. So now this means the United States, when it's in a fight with the Abraham Lincoln carrier in the Arabian Sea, accompanied by, you know, last I checked it was like three destroyers, it may be up to four. once they're run out of missiles, they got the nearest port is three, three and a half days away at Diego Garcia.

Wow. So what we have right now is a situation that we cannot sustain an attack, a naval attack from the south, which is the one aircraft carrier because there's no nearby port they can sail to to get reloaded. So three days out, three days back, that's a week. How sustained is the American attack?

Is it regular, consistent, systematic without a break, or does it go for a couple of hours? Then they stop and then they come back. Well, they've got to, they can't sustain it continuously because they're using the land base is from planes that are flying out and dropping air-guided missiles, air-to-ground missiles. And again, the same applies The ships that are fought those destroyers that are firing off Tom Hawk cruise missiles Once they fire, they're done. I have to wait until they can go reload. We under, I do understand that Iran has fired some missiles and drones at the ship,

at the carrier strike force. Don't know what the effect has been. We do know that in Bahrain, they hit the facility that housed U.S. naval office, officers. It's on fire. So the possibility that they have killed some U.S. naval personnel. You've got Bahrainis cheering as Iranian missiles are slamming in to this U.S. naval facility. But at the same time, what you have is the other countries, you know, Saudi Arabia has now declared war on Iran. I'm sure that Qatar and United Arab Emirates are going to follow suit. And fine, up to this point, Iran is targeted only.

the military targets, the U.S. military targets in these countries. But if those countries want to start getting into it with Iran, Iran will take out their oil. And Iran very well can do that. And that'll be especially true if the West tries to attack Iranian oil facilities and oil fields. They will then, in turn, light up the entire Persian Gulf and say goodbye to 25% of the world's petroleum. Put your economics hat on, in which I know you are well-schooled. What is going to happen to the price of oil slash gasoline once the Strait of Hormuz is closed for more than just a few hours? Yeah, no, it's going to go up. People have estimated it could go up as, you know, the price of oil could go up $120 a barrel. Right now, Brent,

Last I checked, the Brent price, you know, the oil selling forward was at around 70, 72. So it's headed up, but it's going to go up dramatically. Now, it appears that China, China had an inkling about this because they started loading up on oil big time over the last four weeks. So they've increased their stock, their reservoirs. Same can't be said, though, for Japan or Indonesia or Malaysia. And Iran's playing a, you know, I think they're playing a deliberate hardball game here. That they're not going to stop like they did last June. Last June, there was a deal cut with the United States.

And I said, look, let us bomb these nuclear sites and we'll let you hit Al-UD. And then you can continue to sail and oil to China and we'll walk away and call it even. And Iran went, all right. And they received, you know, Peshchekin and received some criticism for that. Well, that's not going to happen this time. There's no deal. There is no deal the United States can offer them short of saying, yes, we'll remove all sanctions immediately. All saying, and Iran say, we're going to continue bombing until those sanctions are off.

So remove the sanctions and you are free to develop an enrich uranium however you want. Iran is not going to be compelled to back down. They've got to fight. How did it happen that the Americans or the Israelis, I don't know who did this, attacked a school for little girls, which killed 105 of them? Yeah, it's, you know,

they have more faith in the accuracy of their weapons systems that don't always work. And this is, you know, killing children. You know, you remember, Judge, the kind of reaction we had in the United States on 9-11, 2001. Sure. And on 9-12, 2001, the political differences that had existed in the country on September 10th disappeared, largely disappeared overnight. All of a sudden, we were all Americans. We weren't Republican or Democrat or independent.

We were Americans. we had been attacked, and we were, by God, going to make those who attacked us pay. Well, guess what? That's exactly what's going on today in Iran. And they've got the bodies of 105 little girls to stand there and look at. And they were in the midst. They had trusted us again. Right.

We said we were having peace talks. They were willing to make concessions. On Thursday, they said, oh, hey, we made progress. we look forward to Monday. And then Trump, he's worse than Adolf Hitler. He did exactly what Hitler did on September 1st, 1939, to attack a country that had not attacked us. Muhammad Miranda, your and my longtime friend told us the same thing

about the unity of the Iranian people as a result of the attack. It's like Americans on December 8, 1941. Yeah, yeah, exactly right. right you know right right how um how vulnerable is israel very vulnerable you know they what they didn't learn they should have was in june you know we're told they went to the united states say hey get us out of this you know we can't we're running out of missiles well they had not been able to resupply restock the uh basically the iron dome the missiles they fire just like what is fired out of the patriots and you know the annual production

on that in the United States was asked to have made it 700 a year, and yet when you realize that every Patriot missile, when there's an inbound targets, they're going to fire at least two. And, you know, let's say that so far Iran has fired 50 at Israel, well, there's 100 gone. And that's like 15% of annual production in one day. Gone. So we've already seen images of missiles penetrating Iran or Israel's so-called air defense iron dome system, direct strike in Tel Aviv about an hour ago. So Iran's just going to pick them apart. I think Iran will opt to do more of its strikes at night, again, at government facilities, at military headquarters, intelligence headquarters, and at industrial sites to minimize loss of civilian life.

Because unlike the Israelis, the Iranians are not into seeing how many civilians they can kill. Chris, play the, we don't know who he is or what his rank is. We just know he's an Iranian military official. He's making some very interesting statements. Chris, the Iranian military official. Trump should know that we are equipped with the most advanced capabilities today to fight with you for years. At the start of the war, we'll use whatever we have in storage, but as it goes on, we'll launch our most powerful missiles. The things we haven't revealed yet, the ones we Iranians say we've been keeping in reserve, we'll unveil those in these days as well.

The same thing that Scott Ritter told us this morning. Yeah, well, we've got Alistair Crook, Professor Morandi, Max Lumenthal, they all were in Iran about a year ago now, and they all saw several of the ballistic missiles in the different stages what Iran has developed and got some sense. So the Iranians are very serious people on this. This guy is not a gas bag just mouthing off to be mouthing off.

He's actually telling the truth. And when you see there are videos online, you can see them on YouTube, of these, they call them missile. cities. These are enormous underground passageways where you can drive trucks, but like a full semi-trailer. They've got the mobile launchers. And they've got the missiles as far as you can see. We're not talking about 10 or 12. I mean, we're talking about literally you can see hundreds in one passageway. Well, I'm guessing they've got lots of those.

And so it's not like you've got fixed launchers and people run out. and like Cape Canaveral and put the missile out and then five, because that's easy to destroy. What Iran has are mobile missile launchers, which are extremely almost impossible for the U.S. to detect, and very difficult to destroy. This is a Iranian missile striking in downtown Tel Aviv. This just released a moment ago, sorry, 1039 Tel Aviv time. So that's about an hour, about 45 minutes ago. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, see, no air defense. Right. And they're going to continue doing this. Iran will do this, you know, until they run, you know, they may eventually run out of missiles, but I see the other thing they've got going for them is they've got the ability to produce underground. So they will continue building underground.

They've got supply chains in place with, China and Russia. And see, here's the problem the United States has. Some of the, some of these air defense missiles, I'm sure, include rare earth minerals that are no longer being exported to the United States that China's withholding. And so you're going to run into a situation where the ability of the United States to sustain an air campaign is going to be extremely limited. One reason, you know, they started off at these bases in Saudi Arabia,

that Prince Sultan, and then Jordan Mwafik al-Salti. And now Iran is attacking those. And again, the Patriots missiles aren't working. They're not preventing the missiles from getting through. So they're going to have to relocate those assets to where? Well, somewhere farther away. Turkey said, uh-uh, not using us. So it means they probably go out to Cyprus.

Wow. Then they take off from there and they got a long flight and multiple air refuelers. So it really creates some logistical problems for the United States that in the past they could fly out of Jordan, fly out of Saudi Arabia, and Iran wasn't bothering them. Not now. Iran's taking out every U.S. base that's there and making it unusable. Well, what does the fact that this is the second time that Trump has lulled Iran into a false sense of security and attacked Iran in the midst of negotiations, literally when a negotiation session was scheduled in the next 24 or 48 hours? What does this do to the Russia-U.S. negotiations? I think it kills it.

Now, let's, you know, the old saying, you know, fool me once, shame on you, full me twice, shame on me. Well, shame on Iran. They took the bait again. They got, they got lucid, you know, when Charlie Brown would try to kick the football and Lucy had pulled it away. They did it for the second time. Now, Putin's had that done to him with the men's too.

He got played as well. I think the only thing you can conclude is not a, word that comes out of Steve Whitkoff's mouth can be trusted because he, you know, he's supposed to say, okay, yeah, we made some good progress. We'll have talks again on Monday. No intent whatsoever to have those talks on Monday. He's just a tool. And he's playing the same role with Russia. So I would not be surprised the next time Whitkoff tries to call up Vladimir Putin said, I'd like to stop by, we can chat. Putin's going to say, sorry, we're, we don't have time for you.

We're too busy at home. How long can the United States sustain this, given the difficulties you've described about refueling, caring, and all those problems attendant upon planes taking off from ships? Probably no more than eight weeks. and I based that upon what we saw last March. Remember when Trump with great fanfare announced, oh, we got Operation Rough Rider,

that Operation Prosperity Guardian that the wimpy of Biden administration tried, we're now going to show those hoothies whose boss. And so we put two aircraft carriers in the Red Sea at one point. We had five destroyers at least, and we tried for seven weeks. And in that seven week period, You know, in the previous, like, 15 months, the Houthis had shot down one predator drone a month.

After Donald Trump started Operation Rough Rider, they were shooting down one a week. And at the end of seven weeks, we had lost three F-18 helicopters. We'd had two Navy SEALs drown. We had lost, you know, so the total was like almost 800 million. dollars worth of drones gone in the previous 15 months with 220 million of that in just seven weeks. So, you know, I use that as, that's a benchmark. What did we do? We declared victory and left. And the Red Sea remained closed to traffic for Israel. Now what we're going to see in the next day or two are the Houthis, they're climbing back in the saddle. They're going to be firing missiles into Israel. And I believe Hesbalah will respond as well.

This is going, the Shia movement throughout the Middle East, I believe, is now going to take the fight, not just Israel, but to the United States. Our friend and colleague, Colonel Douglas McGregor, who will be on with me tomorrow at 5.30 in the afternoon has just informed us that the U.S. base in Saudi Arabia is under attack. You're not surprised to hear that. Oh, no, no, not at all. And that's, I said Iran's making a point. They're going to crush and destroy, make unlivable all these bases where the United States has operated for years. And frankly, you're going to get the destruction of those bases. You're going to get a lot of Saudis cheering it.

A lot, you know, not the royal family, you know, not those whores. But the average Saudi is going to be cheering it. And you got a lot of, you got 20 percent, Saudi Arabia, 20 percent of the population Shia, Muslim. They're going to be cheering it. What do you expect Russia and China might do that they haven't already done in light of the, I don't want to use the word ferocity, sustainability, frequency, whatever you want to call it, of the American attack? Well, I think they'll do everything they can quietly behind the scenes to complicate problems for America. And they may send additional naval assets to assist,

Iran, you know, enclosing the strait of Hormuz, perhaps. They are, you know, continuing to supply intelligence, and they will continue to supply critical minerals that Iran needs to continue building and maintaining its ballistic missile force. So, you know, they recognize, I think China in particular, that this, again, this regime change, it had nothing to do with Iran's so-called. quest for a nuclear weapon that they weren't trying to build or trying to get. And that's, you know, and that's a point that Ray, our friend Ray, has made over and over and over, and he's exactly right.

This is about regime change. And the reason we want to change this regime is to stop bricks, to stop the development of this alternative financial future that does not include the United States, or at least doesn't give the United States to control where it can tell everybody what to do. and then if you don't do what we tell you, we seize your money, we make it impossible for you to do international trade. You know, those days are over. And Iran now is seen a way to break free of that.

And so that's where this is, you know, this is to destroy Iran and ultimately destroy Russia and China. That's the U.S. goal. The other U.S. goal is to comply with Netanyahu's wishes to break apart Iran like they did like they did, like they did Syria. How long, before we go, Larry, how long do you think,

it's hard to predict, but you're the military guy, how long do you think this will go on? I think it would go on for at least a good month, if not more. You know, there's going to be, there's going to be significant economic.

The U.S. does not have the ability to bring an end to it militarily. We keep thinking that we do, but we don't. Neither does Iran. And what, I mean, neither is Israel. What Iran has is this enormous ballistic missile capability that I believe is largely untapped because they've kept so much of it underground and we've not really had a good measure of what was there.

But we're going to see within two weeks, Israel's going to be, they're going to be pleading for help. And they may resort to trying to use a nuke on what they think is a missile site. and then, you know, that adds a whole new layer of danger. Because at that point, you can see not only Russia and China getting involved, but also North Korea, North Korea coming to the aid of Iran, and they have nukes. Oh, good Lord. You know, it might have been George Patton who said, you know, fighting a war is like opening a door in a strange,

house with a pitched black room behind the door you have no idea what's there and if you go in you have no idea how you're going to get out yeah you know it's always best to say define your objectives clearly and then put the assets and resources together to achieve those objectives you know with Operation Rough Rider to the credit of the military planners they specified They laid out very clearly. Our goal number one, restore freedom of navigation. How do we do that? Well, to restore freedom of navigation,

we've got to stop the Houthis from firing ballistic missiles. We've got to take out their ballistic missile capability. So that was our goal. I'm not saying it was a doable, but at least it was a well-defined goal. And we tried for seven weeks, where our aircraft had full run of the air that we weren't having to worry about getting shot down necessarily.

And at seven weeks, we couldn't do it. We couldn't stop the Houthis. We couldn't reestablish freedom of navigation. So you step back and say, okay, what's the objective here and now with respect to Iran? Well, apparently regime change, and our goal is, we'll see if we can kill enough of the top leadership that the people will rise up and throw them out.

except our tactics by killing little girls at school is having the exact opposite effect. Instead of enraging the population against the Islamic Republic, it's building support for it. And it's going to pitch, you know, create a division in the Persian Gulf, that Gulf allies of the United States, they're going to be targeted. and those countries could very well be easily destabilized because they are these rich oligarchs who really, you know, don't care much about their public. And you've got enough Shia Muslims in some of those countries that they can wreak havoc.

So we're looking for sustained instability. And depending on how long the Strait of Hormuz stays shut, you know, Iran is going to keep it shut until it gets an agreement from the rest of the world that, okay, this has got to stop. We can't keep being attacked unjustly, illegally, and nobody says a thing. So you're all going to suffer with us until this stops. And it's going to leave the United States isolated. I was surprised to hear the president.

Now, this is a three in the morning. I didn't hear him live. Talk about the potential for U.S. deaths. Chris, I think it's our new cut number two, President Trump on U.S. deaths. The lives of courageous American heroes may be lost, and we may have casualties that often happens in war, but we're doing this, not for now, we're doing this for the future, and it is a noble mission. We pray for every service member as they selflessly risk their lives to ensure that Americans and our children will never be threatened by a nuclear-armed Iran. We ask God to protect all of our heroes in harm's way.

And we trust that, with his help, the men and women of the armed forces will prevail. What is noble about this mission? Nothing. Yeah, nothing. Well, you know, Trump, stupidly, did not learn the lesson of George H.W. Bush. Remember, read my lips. No new taxes. See, my lips said it. No new texts. And what happened to Bush? That destroyed. public support for him. And he lost the election to Bill Clinton,

an election that he should have easily won, having, quote, just won the war in Iraq against the, you know, the first Gulf War. Well, here's Donald Trump, who ran on what? We're tired of these needless, senseless wars in the Middle East. And we're not going to do it. And now he's done it. And, you know, he tries to trot out this lie

that Iran was desperate to build a nuke. They're not, at least weren't, and hadn't, and they'd offered a deal, come inspect, and Trump rejected it. Because, as you said, he's controlled by Bibi Netanyahu and other wealthy Zionists, and he's unwilling to challenge him. And so what he's done is he has now put America in genuine danger.

our economy will suffer from this and our standing in the world is going to suffer dramatically because you know imagine imagine you got a kid who's you know skinny kid and he's not seen as really a good fighter or is perceived as not a good fighter

and he gets in the ring with an aging Mike Tyson and he survives three rounds guess what that kid comes out with respect now he's proved he could go toe to toe with a guy that once was a super heavyweight champion. Now, the United States at one time was a heavyweight champion, but we've gotten old, we've gotten fat, we've gotten slow, and with that we've gotten is so arrogant

and so uncaring of the rights of others. And that kind of hubris is going to lead us to destruction. Larry, I have to tell you, just as an aside, at this moment, you have a truly enormous live, audience, enormous. And I'm going to ask this enormous live audience to like and subscribe, like and

subscribe. We're trying to hit 750,000 subscriptions this year. So forgive the sort of self-promotion there. Oh, no, absolutely. Look, the more people to watch and get informed about the reality. Because, again, the lies that are being told, not just by Donald Trump,

by J.D. Vance. Larry, my friends and former colleagues where I worked for 21 years at Fox News have said, a tremendous victory for the United States. What the hell are they talking about? Well, that may be how we get out of this. We declare victory and leave. Hey, we won. We've done everything we promised to do.

We gave the Iranians a chance to overthrow the mullets on them. Now we're out. See guys later. I don't think that's going to happen. and Iran, if they sink a ship or two, you know, here's what's going to do in Donald Trump. I think, I think this marks the end of his presidency, candidly, because when body bags start coming home and let's say we get, if we get like 2,000 casualties, well, that's more than we suffered in like 10 years in Iraq.

So, I mean, this could really go south and sour fast for Trump. And you know what? He could be impeached for taking the United States to war without congressional approval. No request to the Congress. No debate in the Congress. No recognition of the fact that Congress declares war. Look, when he kidnapped Maduro, we claimed it was a law enforcement. procedure. We're going after a guy

who was a fugitive from justice. We don't have to involve Congress. He can't claim that now. He's been open about his wish to decapitate to destroy the state. That's called war. Yes. Yeah. And you know, he's

liable on that front. You know, it'd be one thing if there was actually a genuine threat from Iran over, you know, since the establishment of the Islamic Republic in 1979, Iran has not directly attacked us. Now, they'll say, well, Iran was behind the bombing of the Marine barracks in October of 83.

No, it actually wasn't. That was Amal. And Alastair Crook can talk at length about that. Amal was a Lebanese Shia group that developed, set up and started organizing back in 1972, seven years before there was an Islamic Republic in Iran. But what we do know for sure is that the United States encouraged Saddam Hussein to attack Iran. back in 1980, and then provided the chemical precursors used to make chemical weapons, which killed a minimum, a minimum of 250,000 Iranians.

And then Americans sit there and run, why do they chant hate to America, you know, death to America? Why don't they like us? Because we've killed a quarter of a million Iranians, folks. Wake up. That's why. Larry, thank you very much, my dear friend. On a slightly lighter note, a much lighter note, have you collected on your bet from Ray McCovern yet? Now, Ray, Ray sent a very generous, kind note saying, you know, I'll get you your $2.

I said, keep it. Because I wish, I sincerely wish, Ray had been right. Same here. Because Larry, we'll see you Monday morning. Thank you very much. Yes, sir. Thank you. We'll see you. All the best.

Bye, bye. Bye-bye. Thank you for watching all of you. Tomorrow, Sunday, March 1st, 5.30 in the afternoon, Colonel Douglas McGregor. Judge Lepaltono for judging freedom.