Judging Freedom - Larry Johnson : Why Does the US Kill?

Episode Date: December 1, 2025

Larry Johnson : Why Does the US Kill?See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Thank you. Thank you. Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for judging freedom. Today is Monday, December 1st, 2025. Larry Johnson will be with us in just a minute. Why does the United States kill? But first, this. History tells us every market eventually falls. Currencies collapse. And look at where we are now. 38 trillion in national debt. Stocks at record highs defying gravity. So what happens? next groceries gas housing everything's going up and this dollar it buys less every day when the system breaks your stocks won't save you and your dollars won't either but one thing will gold i've set it on my show for years gold survives collapse central bankers know this and billionaires know it that's why they're buying more is it too late to buy or is it just the right Call my friends at Lear Capital to find out. Ask questions. Get the free information. There's no pressure. 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 Johnson, welcome here, my dear friend. As always, thank you for accommodating my schedule. Before we get into the United States killing, whether by proxy or directly, including murdering people and speedboats in high seas, you have written a fascinating piece about how wrong very prominent American generals have been in predicting Russian demise or Ukrainian triumph or, at best, a stalemate in Ukraine. Big picture. How can these guys be so wrong? Is there corruption here?

Are they trying to please an audience? I mean, they're out of the military now. They are repeating what they're being fed. And, you know, yeah, I accuse several of them just being lazy. Instead of doing some actual independent research on their own. to verify what they're told they're being told you know that they're getting oh we're giving you're passing on special intelligence it's coming direct out of ukraine well yeah it's coming from ukraine all right it's the spin patrol but uh i was i was inspired to write this because a video

appeared yesterday that shows since september 1st the progress that russia has made in uh not just the Donbos, but all along the line of contact in Lacanse and the Kharkiv area and Sumi down to Zaporizia, Nipro, Petrosk. 86, they've captured 86 towns, villages, settlements in three months. So, you know, it's, and when you look at it, when you see the visual of the territory that they're taking, it certainly destroys this mythology that's being pushed by the likes of General Jack Keane, General Ben Hodges. There was David Petraeus.

So, you know, it's the usual suspects who've been insisting that, oh, it's a stalemate. It's going to take Russia four years to even, you know, if they have any hope of conquering Ukraine. It's all delusional, happy talk. I mean, do they work for think-torn? tanks, for lack of a better word, funded by the American intelligence community or the military industrial complex? That's a possibility. I don't know specifically where they're getting their money.

All I know is based on prior experience, what we saw during the lies told about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq back in 2003, that there were people who were connected with military, industrial complex, you know, the Raytheons, the General Dynamics, the bones, the Lockheed Martin. And so they had actually a financial interest in perpetuating some of this nonsense. So you can't rule out that they're getting, that these are not genuinely held beliefs. They're being fed information. And again, as I said initially, they're just intellectually lazy.

because it's you don't you don't have to be klauswitz to figure this stuff out when you just get certain basic facts that you know since january of this year when russia hands over the bodies of ukrainian dead ukrainians and ukraine hands over the bodies of dead russians despite the propaganda that russia's suffering massive losses about uh 30 dead ukrainians for every dead russian now you can't have that kind of ratio and then insist because then they'll come back and argue well that's just because uh rush is advancing and the ukrainians haven't been able to recover their bodies oh so russia's actually advancing now huh so you know it just it depends on which lie they're trying to tell but they're lies we're going to run general jack kean apologies for the person whose face appears next to him but it was mark Levin's show on which he made these comments, and then I want you to comment on them. Chris, cut number five. In 2025 alone, Russia is moving at a foot pace in position of warfare. What do I mean by that? They have taken 0.6 percent additional territory so far this entire year out of the territory

they already own. That is it. And they are taking over a thousand casualties a day, 300,000 casualties so far in making those slight marginal gains. And Putin is suggesting that he's winning the war doing this. We at the Institute for Study Award don't see him being able to take all of southern Ukraine for years to come, given the capability his force has today, poorly led and poorly trained, well equipped, to be sure, but use institutional problems. Despite the fact, they're fighting a smaller nation and a much poorer nation that doesn't have the defense industrial base that they have. Military, poorly led, poorly trained, and has huge institutional problems.

I've never heard this, Larry. So, hey, let's celebrate. Ukraine is winning. Russia is losing. My God, why do we need a peace process? Because Ukraine is on the role. I mean, you know, Jack Keane is just a liar. a bald-faced liar this this 0.6% not true and and and that's they do it by calculating

all of ukraine well russia is not taking all of ukraine you look at the advances and you can check out the video i posted at sonar21.com yesterday uh it shows very clearly big huge gains by russian troops moving and the the the pace of advance is accelerating. So, you know, they, King can have all this happy talk, you know, about, you know, a thousand Russian casualties. Okay, we have the exchange of bodies. Where are they? 30 dead Ukrainians for every dead Russian. So if that's the case, then if there's a thousand dead Russians,

then there are 30,000 dead Ukrainians. So just this kind of deliberate, lying on the part of these cats just infuriates well it is infuriating because they are clothed with credibility because of the ranks that they achieved before they retired or the venues that host them look at this general ben hodges yeah i mean he's disgraceful neither side can knock the other out now he said that as recently as last month i mean what what are they looking at that he could come to a conclusion like that all i can all i can assume is it's psychological projection you know to hear kean talk about pretend that oh rush is just

fighting this small poor country ukraine is fully backed by nato ukraine has received intelligence support from nato massive intelligence support there are operations ground operations the invasion into Kersk, planned by British officers, the summer 20, the June 20, 23 so-called counteroffensive, planned by U.S. military officers. Every weapon system that the U.S. has available, short of nuclear weapons and Tomahawk cruise missiles, have been provided to Ukraine.

Compare that with a great success of the United States in Afghanistan. There we were fighting a poorer nation. We were fighting goat herders and sandals carrying rifles. And we failed to defeat them and to control the territory. We left with our tail tucked between our legs. Meanwhile, Russia is steadily advancing to the West. And that's why we've got this panic in Washington and in Europe trying to get negotiations underway because they know that the negotiation is their only hope of trying to stop.

the Russian offensive, and it's not going to work. Do you share the view of our friend and colleague Ray McGovern that there is some panic among the neocons right now, and the president is aware of it? Yeah. Has kept Marco Rubio at a distance? Yeah, no, I agree with Ray, that the whole neocon, the war effort has got, they're panicked. But, you know, this is, you know, this is, you know, Yogi Berra said, this is deja vu all over again.

It's very reminiscent of the peace process that was pushed forward back in January of 2015 as the Battle of DeBalzva was underway. Ukraine was losing and losing badly, and the Europeans, Merkel and Holland of France jumped into it right away, persuading Putin to sign on to what we now know is the Mince 2 agreement. And, you know, we've talked about this before that Hollande and Merkel, Merkel in particular in December of 2022, admitted it was just the ploy. It was a stalling tactic to give Ukraine time to rebuild, rearm, refit. Well, Ukraine is in a far, far more difficult situation right now because it lacks the manpower. It's suffering significant losses, not only through casualties, which are estimated at 13 to 1,400 a day.

killed and wounded, but also desertion between 20 to 40,000 a month, depending whether it's the Atlantic Council, saying 20 or the Institute for the Study of War, saying 40. So Ukraine is on an unsustainable path, and the West is finally, you know, at least some in Washington, D.C., starting to recognize that. What happens to 20,000 a month? Let's just take five months. That's 100,000 former Ukrainian soil. Are they kept in prisoner of war camps?

No, they get out. I mean, they go hide or they leave the country. So it is... Okay, so these are not necessarily desertions into the tender arms of the Russian military. Correct, correct. No, they're not surrender. There are a number of others that are surrendering to the Russians, and the Russians, you know, putting them in POW camps.

One of the problems that exist right now between Russia and Ukraine is when they, sit down for talks about exchanging prisoners Ukraine doesn't have much to offer because they don't have a lot of prisoners. Russia, on the other hand, has thousands. Why does the United

States think it can get away with killing non-combatants? We've been doing it for 30 years. Bill Clinton did it. George W. Bush did it. Barack Obama.

Obama did it. I mean, hell, Barack Obama got to kill an American citizen and his son, his American son. And what consequences did he suffer? None. As long as we label him a terrorist, we can do whatever we want to them. It used to be if we labeled you a communist, we could do whatever we wanted to you. You know, we could steal your livelihood. But now, by God, if we say, you're a narco terrorist, we can kill you without having to provide one shred of evidence proof of any kind that you're actually engaged with the narcotics trade so the secretary of defense who calls himself the secretary of war with whom i worked at fox news for i don't know how long we were there together but at least six or seven years uh has been accused of

ordering the killing of two people who survived an initial attempt to destroy the speedboat that they were on. They were cited grabbing debris and using it as flotation devices in the high seas. The Washington Post has quoted someone in the chain of command to say, Hegseth verbally said, get rid of them, or words to that effect. Hegseth, of course, denies it. I would argue that both the initial killing and this subsequent killing are murder and war crimes. Do you agree?

Oh, absolutely. Look, and I come at it from the use of force here in the United States. Just because I think someone is doing something bad, even if I see somebody selling illegal drugs on the street corner, I can't go up and shoot them. And the police can't go up and shoot them. The first rule is if you're trying to take somebody into custody or interdict their activity, if they fire, if they take out a gun and start firing at you, okay, then you can use violence. But in every single one of these boats that have killed now more than 81 people, we don't have a single instance in which those boats are firing on American personnel or American ships.

so right off the bat you have an unprovoked extrajudicial killing and it's you know we've gotten custom to it i mean look candidly judge we got used to it in world war two once we once we got you know decided hey the way to break the will of the german people is we'll just we'll kill we'll blow up their cities and we don't care how many civilians we kill and we did the same in Japan, Hiroshima Nagasaki. And yet, we've sort of grown accustomed to killing civilians. We saw it in Vietnam. You know, ample examples of that.

We did it in Iraq. We've done it in Afghanistan. And we get away with it by saying, well, they're engaged with terrorism, so we're going to kill them. No judicial process whatsoever. And so that's why it's called extrajudicial. So when Hegseth was accused of this, and bubbling up today he made a joke out of it Chris are you able to post what he posted I mean look at this I don't know who this character Franklin is I guess it's some looks like a frog

sort of a for half human half a frog yeah and he's boasting about it and he posted under that Larry for your Christmas wish list secretary of defense is a accused of ordering murder and he mocks it using a children's book meme yeah well he's a juvenile you know he lacks the maturity and judgment to be in this position and this just just further underscores it uh you know that using a children's cartoon character a turtle uh to blow up boats and take human life. What's so disturbing about this is the complete fundamental disregard for human life. Our entire judicial system rests on a foundation that there is a presumption of innocence

until the government proves you guilty. And then at that point, the government can exert its power over you. It's a big contrast from in Europe where you start off with the presumption you're guilty. you've got to prove yourself innocent. And yet, here we got Donald Trump with the willing cooperation of Pete Hegseth trampling all over that principle. You know, this is a clear example

where Hakeshs says, that's an illegal order. I'm not going to carry it out. No, fully embraced it. And that's where I'm, you know, I'm quite critical of those six legislators that came out calling on U.S. troops to disobey illegal orders.

It was just a political stunt. Because when they called, when they said that, not a single one of them said that we specifically call upon U.S. military personnel to stop carrying out these extrajudicial murders of people that have not been proven guilty of being engaged with. No, Larry, I could not agree with you more. The statements they made were incendiary but truthful. But then none of them pointed to what is. obviously an illegal order, which is the murder of human beings unarmed and not engaged in violence on the high seas in international waters. If anything was ever an illegal order, that's it. And that's what they should have disobeyed. And that's what this person who, whoever it was, a drone operator, I don't know how these poor souls died, whoever it was, took the order and said, okay, the secretary of war, once these guys killed, I'm going to do it. That's a.

the order that must have been disobeyed and it wasn't. None of those orders were disobeyed as far as we can tell. And the admiral resigned over all of this. Yeah, he looks to be the only one with any kind of integrity in this process. But again, this is nothing new. We saw it in 2003. There wasn't a single officer in the chain of command at CENTCOM that said, oh, wait a second. We don't have evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. And we're not going to, I'm not going to stand by and support an illegal invasion because it wasn't even voted upon by Congress. So again, the United States carrying out acts of war and in complete disregard of the Constitution. So, you know, this is, but I don't want to just blame it on Trump.

Again, we've been doing this for years. Right. We like Clinton get away with it. Bush get away with it. Right. And Larry, the Congress, whether controlled by Republicans or Democrats, just look the other way. Exactly. Now the Congress, controlled by Republicans, is apparently going to look into it.

And this, Chris, can you put it up again? This Franklin thing that he just posted and associating it, A, with children, and B, with Christmas is going to make this worse. He's pouring salt on the wounds that he has opened up in the body politic by posting something like this. Well, look, it's no surprise that in the United States, we have. have created a culture of death that disregards human life. That's why, you know, hey, it's easy to support the abortion of unborn children because they're just, you know, some human flesh to be gotten rid of. And then, you know, we don't care as our inner cities are lit up like combat zones

in, say, Iraq or Syria. Hell, it's safer. It was actually safer in Iraq and Afghanistan than it is in Chicago. So this killing, it's okay. And so we show no regard for human life. And, you know, look, I fully believe that if you're being attacked, if your life is at risk, you've got your fully entitled to use lethal force to end the threat. But that's not what we're doing.

We're claiming that there's a threat of narco-terrorism. And yet, who does Donald Trump pardon over the weekend? a verifiable narcotics trafficker the former president of Honduras Right Right The evidence in that case

The evidence of his guilt Was overwhelming This was a serious Narco-terrorism I don't get it Kill the people As to whom There is no known

Public evidence of guilt Pardon the person Convicted in a a court of law with overwhelming evidence of guilt. I don't get it, Larry. Yeah. Well, again, our system was designed to limit the power of government to tyrannize and terrorize its citizens.

It was to put this, you know, our constitution, we the people, not you, the government, we the people are the ones who are supposed to have the power here to limit what the government. here to limit what the government can do to us. And the most terrible thing the government can ever do is take your life. And instead, what we're setting is this precedent that a president can make the unilateral decision, oh, just go, well, we asked the Department of Justice and they wrote us a letter saying it's okay. Hey, I tell you what, that paper it's written on, there's better grades of toilet paper out there

because we saw the same thing back in 2003, where these attorneys like John Yu wrote Membo saying it's okay to torture. It's not okay to torture. But people said, well, we got a letter. We got to get out of jail free card. So we're going to go ahead and do something, which we know is immoral, illegal, and in the case of torture, ineffective.

Thank you, Larry. I'm sorry we're still talking about this, but it just seems to be getting, Worse and worse. I appreciate very much your research. People should go to Sonar 21. You should go to Sonar 21 every day like I do because Larry's research is prodigious. And these generals are off the wall with their misleading statements. And thank you for the moral courage and fidelity to first principles you always represent, my dear friend.

Look forward to seeing you on Friday with that youngster. McGovern. I'll be much. Thank you. Thank you, Larry. All the best. Coming up later today, at 4 o'clock this afternoon, on all of this, I just can't get over Pete Heggseth, murder for Christmas. This is just the lowest of the low.

But we'll be talking about all of us at 4 o'clock this afternoon with Scott Ritter. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. Thank you.