Judging Freedom - Larry Johnson : Why Is the West Ignorant of Russia?

Episode Date: December 8, 2025

Larry Johnson : Why Is the West Ignorant of Russia?See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Thank you. Hi, everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Monday, December 8th, 2025. Larry Johnson will be with us in just a moment on just why is the West so ignorant of Russia. 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. 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 time? 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 Learjudgeonnap.com today. Larry Johnson, welcome here, my dear friend. Thank you for accommodating my schedule. Before we get to the latest involving Russia, imbued with Western ignorance of all things Russian,

the Guardian of London this morning is reporting that the IDF and the Mossad are spying on U.S. troops sent to Israel to help provide aid, to the Palestinians. Does this surprise you? Oh, heavens, no. In fact, I think that the reason the story is being put out, being leaked like this, is designed to put pressure on the Israelis.

I mean, you know, the U.S. should spy on Israel. I'm not sure that, I know that people in country or, you know, chief station are not allowed to necessarily target. But all intelligence agencies should be spying on foreign intelligence agencies. I mean, you know, that's the nature of the game. So when you get a leak like this, you know, it's trying to pretend, oh, my God, they're listening in on our phone calls. Yeah, duh.

This is what they do. And, you know, the Israelis have taken it in the past up to a completely different level when they were attacking an intelligence vessel of the United States Navy, the USS Liberty, and they attacked it and tried to sink it, and they killed U.S. sailors. So, you know, it's business as usual. I take this as a sign that the West is trying to put the Israelis on notice. They actually quoted a two- or three-star general who was the commander of the U.S. troops there,

calling in, I don't know if it was the head of the Mossad, but whoever he deals with him, Assad, saying this has got to stop, but probably won't stop. Is aid actually being provided to the Palestinians or a U.S. troops there are just a subterfuge, just a facade? Well, I think it's a combination of both. But, you know, you're going to have a conversation later with John Kiriakou. And you'll get John all thought.

fired up because of his previous experience dealing with the Israelis. And he'll tell you that the CIA actually didn't trust them, at least back when John was there, when I was there, there was no trust or special love for Mossad or the Israeli intelligence forces. So here I think, you know, the U.S. is trying to do something, but, you know, they haven't prevented the continued murder of Palestinian. It's especially children. I mean, as Alistair Crook noted this morning in your conversation with him,

there was, you know, they're shooting kids who stray across an imaginary line. And, you know, kids aren't carrying weapons. They're just children. But, you know, this continues to go on. I thought that Tony Blair was going to become the Governor General of Gaza and Donald Trump's Board of Peace. would stop all of this yeah

this thing is the Charmel Sheikh charade is what it really has become it is an excuse to get some Palestinians out of prison to return the remaining hostages that

Hamas and the other Palestinian groups are holding to allow the Israelis to recover some of the bodies and then you know the phase two that to move towards a political solution, that's not going to happen. This is going to fall back into war with Israel killing more and more Palestinians. And it is, you know, as Alistair noted in your conversation,

Hamas, instead of growing weaker, has become more popular and consolidated its control. This, you know, this is the thing we continue to miss how inept how incompetent the Israeli military is. They have now had more than two years where they've had at least 300,000 troops

surrounding an area that's 350 square kilometers. They've been unable to take, hold, and defeat an insurgent group. Because that's all Hamas is. They're just carrying rifles,

sidearm, some RPGs, They don't have heavy artillery. They don't have tanks. They don't have the advantages that a modern military like Israel does. And yet, despite that, Hamas has fought them to a standstill. And it is, you know, I'll call it reminiscent of the attempt of the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto during World War II. You know, they were only able to hold off against the Nazi army, the Vermont for three weeks. weeks. Well, here, Hamas has done it now for 25, 26 months going on 26 months.

So this is, you know, when you compare it to like what's going on in Ukraine, you get all these Western analysts poop-pooing and talking about how weak Russia is. Well, in just one month, Russia captured twice the territory that's represented by the size of Gaza. and they did it going up against a Western peer military force, a military force with tanks, with drones, with artillery, with Western intelligence. Russia is able to defeat that. If you're the Israelis, man, they cannot destroy Hamas.

They've been unable to so far after 25 months. Alistair also reports that Netanyahu and his cronies are threatened. President Herzog over the issue of the pardon. I wonder is really law in order to receive a pardon. You have to admit your guilt and you have to express remorse. Of course, Netanyahu can't or won't do that. Yeah, yeah. No, I mean, this is, Israel is an increasingly dysfunctional country.

While it is true that the overwhelming majority of the, the Israelis are committed to the Zionist cause of it wiping out or at least eliminating the Palestinians as a political force in the country that doesn't translate into unanimous support or even majority support for the likes of Netanyahu and there are significant divisions the reservists that is really the heart and soul of Israel's military have been reluctant to continue showing up for work. So, and amidst all this, Israel is extending itself. It's increasing military operations in Lebanon,

increasing military operations in Syria. That's all based on a presumption that they have unlimited resources. They do not. They are heavily dependent upon the United States. And again, we're seeing in recent days that, you know, like this newspaper article, and the Guardian, that tells me that there's some distance being placed. We saw that was it yesterday, day before yesterday, that even Netanyahu went out and was

taking action against one of the settler groups who's been repeatedly attacking Palestinians in the West Bank. And I'm sure that happened in part because of pressure from Washington, D.C. You've had the expressions out of several key of the Arab states in the Gulf, saying Israel's the greatest threat, the greatest military threat in the region, and that there is no way in hell that's going forward with the Abraham Accords. So this is, you know, the troubled waters ahead is, I guess, the best way to describe it. I want you to take a look at Rachel Maddow, sorry to subject you to this, on Stephen Colbert the other night, talk about

Russia phobia and Russian ignorance or ignorance of all things Russian. Watch this. Cut number four. I mean, literally, they wrote the plan for what they want Ukraine to do, and the White House put it on its letterhead and said, here it is. You better do it. And, you know, Russia is a podunk country. They're a huge landmass, largest physical country in the world. They've got an economy like the size of Italy, right?

They've got a kleptocratic, sclerotic government run by a guy who's never going to leave until he dies. The idea that we work for him, that we work for them is so humiliating and is such an abject failure on the part of Trump in terms of his weakness. I don't know what Putin has on him, but he works for Putin,

and it's an embarrassment to this country. Talk about an abject failure. She doesn't have anything right. Yeah, we'll talk about an embarrassment. And look, hey, I know Rachel. I was, I used to, she used to have me on her show years ago, 20 years ago. Yes, yes, I know Rachel as well. She actually had many friends at Fox when I was here, and I was one of them.

But this, this attitude about Russia is a Victoria Newland era act. Yeah, well, it isn't, and Rachel's a Rhodes Scholar, wasn't she? Yes, she is. She's not a stupid person. Let's start with the reality. Russia now has the fourth largest economy in the world, is measured by, GDP purchasing power parity. The only countries with a larger GDP are the United States, India, and China.

So really, three of the four biggest world economies now form the heart of bricks. So is anything but podunk. It is leading in technology in a variety of areas that has surpassed the United States. United States is still struggling to produce one functioning, deployable hypersonic missile. Russia has at least five variants and has been stockpiling them and is able to produce them. Russia has vast, enormous natural resources. There is no other country in the world with the kind of resource base that Russia has, which explains why the West is so obsessed with removing Putin and getting control of Russia.

We want that well for ourselves, not for the Russian people. Screw them. It's ours. That's our attitude. But we all know that this Victoria Newland and her neocon colleague's attitude about let's use the war in Ukraine as a battering ram with which they're driving. Vladimir Putin from all of us has utterly failed. Yeah. Why isn't that failure acknowledged by everybody from Ursula von der Leyen to Rachel Maddow?

To understand that, just go back and watch the movie Downfall, which was about the last days of Adolf Hitler and his bunker. A terrific movie. It shows the combination of delusion and denial. And that's what's taking place with the West right now. you've got you've got a leadership particularly in France, Germany, and the United Kingdom that are completely out of touch with their own citizenry. And to underscore that, you had the EU the other day pass a resolution that, by God,

they're going to stop importing all Russian oil and gas. Well, it turns out Russian oil and gas is the most, an expensive source of fuel that all of these countries depend on. So now they've decided, oh, no, no, no, we're going to stop paying for the inexpensive oil and gas, and we're going to start paying for the more expensive oil and gas. Well, when you start driving up fuel prices, that adds to inflation. And these economies, in Germany, France, and the UK in particular, are struggling. They're stagnant.

They're not growing right now, and this is simply going to add to their economic woes. And they're doing all this amidst the time where they're threatening Russia, and yet they cannot produce ammunition to or any kind of munitions to sustain Ukraine military operations. They're not producing tanks. They're not producing armor personnel vehicles. They can't keep pace with Russia, and they certainly don't have any air defense systems worth of dam. Russia has all of that. So again, the disconnect between what the Europeans say

and what they're actually able to do is makes, I guess, the Grand Canyon looks small. And yet, Larry, as we speak, the three of them, Mertz, McCrone, and Starrmer are meeting at number 10 Downing Street with Zelensky. What are they going to give him? They can't borrow. They can't raise their taxes and Belgium won't let them steal

the Russian money in Belgian banks. What are they going to give him? Probably a couple of bags of cocaine to keep him quiet, you know, send him on his way. Well, all the money he's stolen, he has more money than they do. Well, you know, he's cheap. He doesn't like to buy his own stuff. He prefers, he says, hey, the holiday season is upon us.

Give me some gifts. No, I, you know, they, this, if this was being viewed objectively, you would say these people are collectively crazy. Because there is nothing nothing that they can do that's going to alter the outcome in their favor.

It is all in Russia's hands. Russia holds all the Trump cards and no matter what Europe does, even if they try to start a nuclear war, they're going to come out on the short end of that too. And so Russia is looking to avoid that, but Russia has made it very, very clear that they will treat Europe.

If Europe directly intervenes in the conflict, more so beyond what it is has been doing up to this point that they actually try to deploy troops you know officially as opposed to all this covert action nonsense uh russia will deal with them harshly and we'll deal with them quickly which means that's one of the reasons the russians have been stockpiling the irishnik missile they'll use the irishnik missile against europe they haven't been using it against ukraine other than that one time when they demonstrated its capability. Right.

Quite an eye-opener. Trump's national security strategy, though couched in the language of a backpacking, back patting, and self-praise, does reject 80 years of Cold War liberalism, doesn't us? Yeah, this is the equivalent of a couple

that's been together for 80 years, and one of them shows up one morning with the other with a letter of saying, hey, you know, I think it's time for us to start seeing other people. So it could be the beginning of the divorce, but it's one thing to put it down on paper and to signal, yeah, we think Europe needs to shoulder all this responsibility and we're out of here and to see whether or not that is actually done. So words on paper mean one thing, you know,

we go back and look at the national security strategy under Biden, in 2022, 2023, under Trump in 2017, you know, the words were there, and then China and Russia were defined basically as adversaries that we'd have to be prepared to defeat militarily, but it didn't always translate into policies that would advance that particular strategy. And now here we are with Trump, you know, eight years later, after his first national security strategy document, is, you know, backing away, at least rhetorically, from confronting China and Russia. I'm not sure who drafted the document or which office in the U.S. government, whether it was

at the National Intelligence Council, at CIA, whether it was in Tulsi Gabbard's office, the National Intelligence Director, whether it was somebody at the Pentagon like Elbridge Colby, but, you know, I learned early on in my government career, those who get control of drafting the primary document, they end up controlling the debate. So whoever was doing the primary drafting certainly had this vision that, you know what, we can't continue down this road of trying to go to war with Russia and China. Well, it certainly wasn't Marco Rubio and the State Department. Correct. Correct. Well, it could have been INR, but they, it's not the first time I&R would have different views. What's INR, Larry?

The Bureau of Intelligence and Research, sorry. I'm doing acronym speak. The Bureau of Intelligence and Research is like the analytical side of the CIA. And they have some top-notch analysts, and they've been known for independent thinking. In fact, recall, it was earlier this year in March that the analysts at INR protested a CIA presidential Daily Brief that was suggesting that Russia would be coerced and pressured into making concessions of giving up territory in the Donbos and that they've now declared as Russian territory. And the state analysts in the Bureau of Intelligence and Research, INR, they were the only ones to say, no, no, no, no, that's not true.

But they ended up getting fired for their pushback. But they were right. Wow. So the president of peace and the president of John Mearsheimer-like realism, the president who says he recognizes sovereignty and recognizes the legitimate security needs of other sovereign countries. He's about to invade Venezuela. Yeah. Well, remember, he stopped that war in Vietnam and Cambodia, too, except they've been killing each other overnight. So I didn't exactly get that. that one to bed either. Yeah, what's fascinating is, you know, for weeks people have been predicting, oh, he's going in next week. They're going to attack next week. And they're not doing

it. And frankly, I've come to the position. I don't think they're going to do it because some sanity is going to prevail. They'll recognize that, you know, what is it your, when you use military force, you ought to have some clear objective in mind. So what's the objective? Well, if they're saying the objective is to drop bombs to replace Maduro, you know, hopefully kill him. Okay, then the question is always, what comes next? Who goes in there? Just because they've tried to create, the West has tried to create this, what was Maria Conchata, as the next leader of, because she's a Nobel Prize winner.

If they put her in, she doesn't have a base of popular. support. And there are still enough supporters of Maduro that have weapons. And the terrain of Venezuela is such that a guerrilla war can rage for decades.

So, in fact, Colombia has experienced that with its two main guerrilla groups, the FARC and the ELN. But in Venezuela, you're not going to accomplish the regime change that you

and then have a settled, peaceful society, which then will increase the likelihood of terrorist attacks against oil installations. If Western oil companies try to get control of that, the Venezuelans have enough capability inside the country through guerrilla organizations to destabilize that. So, you know, I think there are at least some with a measure of sanity within the realms of the Pentagon

and the now newly christened Department of War that recognize there are real limitations to what the U.S. can do here militarily. And invading, forget about it. We don't have enough troops to effectively take control of Venezuela. We would need a minimum of 400,000 to 500,000 soldiers.

And we don't have that. Here's a montage of clips from President Trump talking about just that, Larry, a land invasion cut number nine so now they're coming in by land and even the land is concerned because I told them that's going to be next you know the land is going to be next and we may go to the senate we may go to the you know Congress and tell them about it the the sea drugs are almost dead and they can't come in that fast from the land and the land drugs are much more dangerous for them it's going to be much more dangerous you'll be seeing that soon and in recent weeks

you've been working to deter Venezuelan drug traffickers, of which there are many. Of course, there aren't too many coming in by sea anymore. You probably notice that. We'll be starting to stop them by land also. The land is easier, but that's going to start very soon. We'd warn them. Stop sending poison to our country. The pretext of drugs in order to justify a land invasion.

And bring about regime. change. What a disaster that will be. Well, let's not forget, this is terrorism, too. So as long as we put the terrorist label on it, we can do any damn thing we want. We can kill you. We can take you and hold you prisoner. We can torture you because we're fighting terrorism. So the very thing we claim to be fighting, we are inflicting. We become the terrorists.

Somebody would get a map out for Mr. Trump and show him that Venezuela does not have a land connection to the United States. They have to go through Colombia. Then through Colombia, you have to come up through Panama, the Dary and Gap. And there's some difficult terrain to navigate down there. It's not easy passage. And then, you know, you go from Panama up into Costa Rica. And then Costa Rica, go through either Honduras or El Salvador.

Then from there, you've got to go through Guatemala. and then in the Mexico. But we're going to kill the Venezuelans with ground troops because they're shipping the drugs over land. You know, it's this level of ignorance

to just, because Donald Trump's not a stupid guy. Says stupid things, but he's not unintelligent. But it's like, good God, man. Don't you realize how foolish you make yourself look by saying these kinds of things?

And let's also add in that Venezuela is at least two to three times the size of Vietnam, landmass, and it's as difficult, if not more difficult terrain than Vietnam. Well, at one point, we had close to a half million troops in Vietnam, and we still couldn't defeat the North Vietnamese. And so now they're talking about they've got 18,000, 18,000 troops, maybe a little more, assembled in Puerto Rico and onboard ships, not even close.

So, you know, if Trump's foolish enough to put troops in on the ground, he's going to pay a justifiably well-earned political price because the body bags are going to come home, I think will dwarf anything that we saw in Afghanistan or Iraq. Wow. Larry, thank you very much. I appreciate the time and the announcement. As you know, I read Sonar 21 every day, usually at the crack of dawn when you've just finished posting it. Yeah, it's best to read it when you just have just woken up because if, you know, before bedtime, I'll put you to sleep.

We'll look forward to seeing you Friday with Ray McGovern. Thank you, my dear friend. Yes, sir. Bye-bye. All the best. Coming up at 1.30 this afternoon, Larry mentioned him a few minutes ago. John Kiriakou, the CIA agent who went to jail. for revealing CIA torture and for many other things.

Should be a great conversation. Judge the Politano for judging freedom. Thank you.