Judging Freedom - Larry Johnson: Ukraine Partisans Attack Russia

Episode Date: March 18, 2024

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Thank you. Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Monday, March 18th, 2024. Larry Johnson joins us for his regular Monday time with us. Larry, a pleasure, my dear friend. Thank you for joining us. You and I commented in emails or texts over the weekend about the comments of Senator Schumer. What about Prime Minister Netanyahu? What's your take on that? Do you think he is expressing what a good percentage of American Jews think but are not saying?

Yes. Look, he didn't go out with that statement on his own. He wasn't suddenly inspired by some pang of conscience. He pre-coordinated it with the American-Israeli Public Affairs Committee, AIPAC, and he pre-coordinated it with other Jewish members of the Democrat-controlled Senate. So this was political theater, Washington style. The average liberal Democrat, and style uh the the average uh liberal uh democrat whether jewish or not despises bb netanyahu and would want to see him gone so uh this this is really chuck schumer trying to make some gesture to placate arab american muslim americans who have been outraged at what they see as the Biden administration's facilitation of a policy of genocide in Gaza.

Here's President Biden, number four, Chris, President Biden commenting on Schumer's speech. Senator Schumer contacted my staff staff my senior staff he's gonna make that speech and uh he uh i'm not gonna exactly elaborate on the speech he made a good speech and i think he uh expressed a serious concern shared not only by him but by many americans uh that was uh yesterday yeah green tie i think the person on the other side of the fireplace from him was the president of Ireland. They always do that. But this means that the vaunted Jewish lobby, about which Professor Mearsheimer has written so extensively, agrees with Schumer that it's time for Netanyahu to go. Schumer's not distancing himself from the powerful donor class. He's saying what they agreed with.

Well, and I hadn't seen that clip until you just played it. I was out all day yesterday. Schumer was carrying water for the Biden administration. You know, the Biden administration wants to dump Bibi as well. And so Schumer was, I guess, tapped on the shoulder and say, hey, buddy, you know, you're Jewish. You've been, you know, heavily involved with AIPAC over the years. You've been a staunch supporter of Israel, needs you to carry this water for us. And he happily did so. So this is part of a broader, I think, policy effort by the Biden administration. It goes beyond just Chuck Schumer's desires. So should we expect the types of demonstrations in the streets in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv that we saw

about eight months ago when Bibi was trying to take over the judicial branch of the Israeli government. Should we see those things fomented by the CIA now as they were fomented then? Probably not for one reason. When you have this kind of overt attack on another country, it has a tendency to, one, discredit the opposition. You know, previously, there was suspicion. There was belief that the United States was behind it, but there was no proof. Now they got proof. So anybody, you know, think how it would go over here in the United States. It's one thing to believe that the Russians were interfering in our election and were backing Donald Trump. But it'd be another thing if Vladimir Putin came out and said, you know,

we're with Donald Trump all the way and we think that Joe Biden ought to go. No, no, no. So Americans would, you know, then we'd be outraged because they stay out of our internal affairs. It's worth noting, though, that Putin already backed Biden. That's a whole nother issue. But with respect to Netanyahu, this now makes it more difficult for the opposition to try to dump Netanyahu. It's a bonehead play by the Biden administration, but who can be surprised at that? Yeah. Well, were they surprised, as far as your sources inform you, when General Gantz, the former head of IDF and the former defense minister and a likely successor to Bibi, a member of Netanyahu's war cabinet, visited the White House

over Netanyahu's vociferous objections and basically said the same thing. He didn't talk to Biden, but he spoke to Vice President Harris and Secretary of State Blinken and National Security Advisor Sullivan and basically said, well, if I became prime minister tomorrow, my policies would be the same as Netanyahu. I'm just an easier guy to deal with. Were they surprised when he said that? Who, the Biden administration? Yes.

Oh, no, no. I don't think they were surprised by that at all. What did they gain by bringing him other than poking Netanyahu in the ribs with their elbow? Benny Gantz is a more palatable public figure. He looks great. He looks presidential. He talks in more measured tones. He would not be obligated to keep the likes of Smotrich and Ben-Gavir in the cabinet. He would dump them

in a heartbeat. So he does not necessarily align himself fully with the extremist settlers who are moving in on Palestinian land like ravenous locusts, but he would be still very much in tune, I guess, with the current Netanyahu policy of destroying Hamas and protecting Israelis. One of the points that Senator Schumer made is that Israel cannot survive if it is an international pariah. Now, that's pretty much a truism. I think just about everybody would agree with that, would they not? Yes. And I think that was one of the reasons the Biden administration is moving to try to see what they could do to get rid of Netanyahu, because they recognize they have a public relations disaster. It's not just Netanyahu. You look at Israel's representative at the UN. Good Lord,

this guy makes Netanyahu look like Mahatma Gandhi in terms of his calmness. I mean, he was just vile in his attacks on Russia, for example, from the podium at the United Nations General Assembly. So they've got a real problem across the board that the Netanyahu government presents a very ugly face to the global public. And I think the Biden administration would least like to get someone who's a little friendlier face out there. But still, part of what I think has even inspired or brought AIPAC along to go along with all of this is the fact that people who are under the age of 40 in the United States are increasingly siding with the Palestinians, not with the Israelis. And that has not happened in the United States for more than 60 years.

The Guardian reports that the IDF invaded a hospital in Gaza City this morning looking for a mosque leader. I don't think they found him, but of course they killed people in the process. From this, I guess we can conclude that their policies, Netanyahu's policies of utter indifference to innocent human life are continuing. Notwithstanding Biden, notwithstanding Benny Gantz, notwithstanding Chuck Schumer, they're just going to continue until Biden makes that phone call and says, stop or we'll stop helping you. A call he'll probably never make. At Ritual, we know what goes into the holiday season, the potluck planning, the gift giving, the spreadsheets. So this new year, take a moment for yourself with science-backed support that puts you first. So whether you're focusing on supporting foundational health with a clean

vegan multivitamin or supporting your gut health with Symbiotic Plus, do it with 30% off your first month at ritual.com slash podcast. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. Right. No, he's not going to make that call. The conditions on the ground, the circumstances of the war are going to dictate what America is going to wind up doing. And I think this all hinges upon whether or not Israel goes into southern Lebanon. the head of the IDF, General Halevi, as well as over 70% of the Israeli public, have said, hey, we need to go into southern Lebanon because all those Jewish settlements and kibbutzim along the northern border of Israel that sits right up against the border of Lebanon have been evacuated

because Hezbollah started firing into them once in support of October 7th. So the Israelis have it in their mind that they're going to go all the way into Lebanon to the Latani River. If and when that happens, that is going to represent a significant change in this war because it's going to really, I believe, put Israel on its back hills. What will happen if Israel invades Rafah? They have, to set this up so the people listening to us know your thinking and mine before you answer this, Larry. They have effectively pushed the remaining living Palestinians down there. There's about a million two, a million three people jammed in that space, and now they're going to invade it. What will the international reaction be if that happens?

Well, there'll be lots of consternation, lots of accusations against Israel, but they're not going to do anything. I mean, this is the bottom line. Apart from the United States, who is a facilitator of the genocide, Turkey is in a very unique position to disrupt the oil supply to Israel. The Saudis, the Turks, the Jordanians, the Egyptians, they could get together and really apply a lot more pressure to Israel than has been the case. But up to this point, they're going with making the public gestures,

complaining about Israel, condemning Israel. You know, Turkey's Erdogan does it in the harshest terms possible, but there's no action. So it's just all talk. And so they're going to end up killing several thousand more Palestinians

because their goal is to get them out of Gaza. They're not looking to clean, destroy Hamas, get the hostages back, and then let the Palestinians go about their life. That's not what this is about. This is about getting rid of the Palestinians off of land that Israel says belongs to us, doesn't belong to them, get rid of them. Netanyahu has argued as recently as yesterday that not, you'll appreciate this because of your appreciation for military history, not going into Rafah now would be like the Allies not going into Berlin in 1945.

I don't think that that is an apt analogy at all. The Allies in 1945 were willing to, were there to stamp out the vestiges of the Nazi high command. They were not looking to slaughter innocent German civilians. Netanyahu needs to pick up a history book. Number one, the United States and the Brits did not run the Nazis out of Berlin. We stayed out. It was the Russians that did it. The Russians went in, rooted the Nazis out of the Hitler bunker, found Hitler's body, found the bodies, the still smoldering bodies of Joseph Goebbels, his wife, and children. It was the Russians that did that.

The United States didn't want to do it. We don't want to risk the casualties. We went in afterwards to divide the place up. And, you know, Eisenhower made a specific point of making sure that he had the only the major golf course in Berlin in the American sector because he wanted to play golf. That's where his priorities were. So, you know, this is nonsense by Netanyahu. You know, they really had some other choices in this.

If their goal was simply trying to weaken Hamas or destroy Hamas, cut off the money. That's what they could have done. And they would have had the cooperation of the Saudis and the Egyptians if they had played it properly. But they took advantage of their own failure on October 7th to say, okay, now we're going to get rid of these Palestinians. And maybe there is some truth to the fact that Netanyahu and company allowed it to happen because they wanted to have an excuse to go in and destroy the Palestinian people, because that's exactly what's unfolding. Oh, Larry, mainstream media is going to come down on you like a ton of bricks. You're not supposed to say that.

Yeah, Mr. Popularity here. All right, we're going to take a break to pay some bills. When we come back, Larry and I will discuss, can NATO survive a defeat in Ukraine? But first this. How do you really feel about your financial future right now, today? Stable or uncertain? Despite all the happy talk that the Fed and the banks want you to buy into, I believe that 2024 is going to be a very unstable year, politically and financially. That's one of the reasons I decided unstable year, politically and financially. That's one of the reasons I decided to buy physical gold and silver.

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Can NATO survive a loss in Ukraine? entering into a treaty with far less benefit to stand up against the previously the Soviet threat, now the Russian threat, you know, a threat they've invented largely. But NATO has a lot of internal problems. You know, they keep touting the fact, oh, we're more united than ever. We're growing. Yeah. They had Finland and Sweden. Okay.

That's like a professional baseball team adding a high school kid that was not even a starter. Why did they add Sweden and Finland? Just to tweak President Putin? No, they need the troops. It's partly to take a shot at Putin, but more importantly, they need the troops. NATO's been running on fumes. In fact, in fact, that's the reason that over the years that you've seen NATO quote expand when they bring in all these other countries, they're able to count up their, the additional brigade. So, you know, basically Finland and Sweden added, each of them had about 24,000 potential troops. That's on paper. And that's assuming that you take everybody that's

wearing a uniform in those countries and you know throw them to the front uh then then you go down the ranks of you know the germans are in no great shape in terms of their military england's got 75 000 guys if you go back you know they had 50 000 here in the United States when we were the American colonies during the American Revolution. So, I mean, the Brits have basically disappeared as a fighting force. I like to call them the, you know, the toothless, nasty Chihuahua. If you've ever been around a Chihuahua, the meaner they are, the longer they live. But they're, you know, these little bitty dogs. As Matt Ho, our friend and colleague said, they would fit in MetLife Stadium,

which is the stadium in Northern New Jersey where the Giants and the Jets play, and there would still be 10,000 empty seats. Oh, at least, yeah. That's the entire British military. Their Navy once ruled the seas. Their army once reinforced an empire. Yeah, well, you think back when Churchill evacuated them from Dunkirk, there was like

over 300,000. That was the British military back then. Well, you know, now they're dramatically down, you know, about 25% of what they were suppose um and it's not that much of a supposition a trump is elected president in november and pulls the united states out of nato what happens to it then yeah then it's done completely you know part of the issue is that that angers the europeans but you know i think right on this point. Hey, let them pay. It's not like they're these impoverished nations that have had their cities destroyed by American bombers, which was the situation at the end of World War II. A lot of Western Europe had been devastated as a result of the fighting. So the United States felt an obligation to step up.

Plus, we saw it as a way that we could gain greater control in Europe. That's not the case now. You know, Germany was until they decided to cut off oil and gas supplies from Russia. And then the United States blows up the Nord Stream pipeline. They were the leading industrial power in Europe. That's eroding. A lot of their companies are starting to go overseas. And so Germany is in trouble economically.

And what you're seeing is that these other countries, they need to step up to be able to defend themselves, but they can't. They're not currently funding their own military and their military industrial capability. That's the point. So the statements from President Macron about wanting to send troops to Ukraine, they're nonsense. They're propaganda. No, I think he genuinely wants to send. He has sent them. I mean, just the other day, on Friday, I believe it was, the Russians hit a site in Odessa with an Iskander missile,

which is one of the big hypersonic missiles. And they killed a bunch of French, Poles, and I believe Germans, or Georgians, excuse me, Georgians that were there. This was a big military meeting. And this is the second time a group of French mercenaries, again, these guys who've been dressed up to look like civilians but really are tied closely to the French military, have been killed. But Macron's intent on that, for whatever reason,

but his own French military command is saying, you know, you're crazy. This war is lost. Anything else we do at this point, it's going to be like, you know, like your blackjack player who's lost $2 million and he's going to borrow $500,000 to bet some more on a losing hand. That's where all of Europe is at this point. It'd be one thing if their industrial capability was intact and they're cranking out, say, the artillery rounds, the 155-millimeter artillery rounds, plus the barrels to replace those artillery pieces.

But they're not. That's the point. What this war has illustrated is the weakness that NATO is really a hollow shell. Yeah, they've got some high-speed combat aircraft, but their ability to keep them up in the air and to sustain operations is in question. There was just a report out over the weekend about the sorry state of the F-35, which has become the go-to aircraft for all of NATO. So this is what we're looking at here is this charade, and they keep pretending they're playing to be soldiers. And so Trump, at least to his credit, he's trying to call out this nonsense, calling

the bluff. And if they were forced to pay their own way, they're not going to do it. Are, switching slightly, but staying on Ukraine, Larry, are rogue Ukrainian militias using American weapons and ammunition to attack inside of Russia? Oh, no, they're not rogue at all. This is part of a Western-backed plan. This is not just Ukraine on its own. There was a concerted effort to try to disrupt the election by taking control of Russian territory inside Russia, outside of, you know, crossing from the Donbass area and from Kharkov, going into Belgorod, into Kursk. You remember Vicky Newland a few weeks ago. She was vowing after she visited Zelensky to say, oh, boy, big surprises coming,

some big things going to happen. Well, she perhaps was talking outside of school on that, giving a heads up. What's clear from this, when you look at how these various attacks were repulsed, the Russians knew it was coming. This is a classic intelligence penetration by the russian of the western services because they knew exactly where they were going to attack they knew how many were going to attack they were able to mobilize not just ground forces

but artillery strikes air strikes uh and missile strikes on these invading troops. And part of, I guess, one of their objectives is to try to get control of either a nuclear plant and or a nuclear weapons storage facility that was allegedly out there. And I wouldn't put it past the Russians to have put the word out, oh boy, yeah, we're really concerned about this nuclear, this facility where we've got all these nukes stashed. Just to bait them. You know, put the bait out there, and the Ukrainians and the Americans and the Brits took the bait. So with respect to Ukraine, which intelligence service does the better job of gathering data about the adversary, the Russian FSB or the American CIA?

Oh, Russians hands down. Why do you say hands down, Larry? Oh, the institutional problems of the CIA go back 75 years from its creation. I would really encourage your readers, if they have not read Tim Weiner's book, Legacy of Ashes, I have to admit, it came out years ago and I just ignored it. That was a mistake on my part because he details the first 60 years of the CIA. And what you have is this repeated pattern of interfering in other countries. As an example, under Eisenhower, carried out 158 covert actions in his eight-year

term as president. John F. Kennedy, in three years, did over 160. And yet, in each of these activities, they would bring people in that didn't speak the language, that had no experience with the culture, and that didn't understand the enemy. It happened in Korea. It happened in Vietnam. It's happened in Iraq. I guarantee you, they have not changed their stripes. I doubt if they have anybody that's really conversant and Ukrainian, much less Russian, out there on the front lines and that's calling the shots. It's in a decision

making position. And so this is all about carrying out the mission without regards to actually having somebody understand it. Look, I saw it firsthand with respect to the Central American Task Force when I was at CIA during the period 1986 to 1989, and the war in Central America was going on. Within the Central American branch, out of 10 analysts, I was the only one that spoke Spanish at a level four. They ranked them levels one through five. And I was the only one that lived in Central America. Wow. Everybody else. So there's that kind of lack of expertise, lack of experience that is pervasive throughout the CIA. It's really, it's a tragedy.

Let me take, before we finish, Larry, let me take you back to Israel and Gaza. Is the CIA there? I mean, actually, not virtually, but actually on the ground, either in Israel or in Gaza or both? Well, they're not in Gaza. They're in Israel. I mean, the CIA and the Israelis have had a very strong relationship. In fact, it's beyond codependent. I think the United States has been far more dependent upon the Israelis than vice versa.

And again, this goes back over 60 years. In the 1950s, the CIA couldn't get its hands on the speech that Khrushchev gave in the aftermath of Joseph Stalin's death. Where'd they get it? They got it from the Israelis. So, you know, the Israelis, despite all their faults, they've actually had better intelligence capabilities in certain narrow areas, particularly with respect to the Arab world, simply because the Israelis have taken the time to learn the language and have people that can move in those circles without being readily identified as a Westerner. It brings us back to what you said, and I teased you, about Netanyahu and his potential wish for an

October 7th-like assault so as to get himself out of the legal and political mess he was in at the time. Was Mossad deceived, or did they look the other way? Or will we never know that? I don't know if we'll ever know it. What we do know right now is that there were warnings issued by these female analysts who were out there on the border, and that those warnings were ignored. Were they ignored deliberately because the leadership was calculating that yeah let's let hamas do this they may have over underestimated what uh hamas was capable of but they saw it as let him commit this provocation and then we're going to have a reason to go destroy him or did they did they really completely drop the ball uh you know and it'll it'll feed

conspiracy theorists for years one way or the other but let's deal with the actual facts whether they knew or didn't know Israel failed to take action Hamas carried out a terrific military operation and Israel's been on spin patrol

ever since portraying them as a bunch of murdering raping child killing thugs. It's a lie, but that has become the accepted truth in the West. Larry, always a pleasure, my dear friend. We'll see you again at the end of the week for the Intelligence Roundtable with Ray. Have a good week. All right. You too, sir.

Thank you. Coming up, my dear friends, at 2 o'clock this afternoon is the aforementioned Ray McGovern. And at 3 o'clock, Anya Parampil from the Gray Zone. You don't want to miss that. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom. We'll be right back.