Judging Freedom - Larry Johnson: Zelensky On the Brink

Episode Date: September 9, 2024

Larry Johnson: Zelensky On the BrinkSee 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, September 9th, 2024. Larry Johnson is here on two intriguing subjects. Is Ukraine on the brink? Is the American military on the brink? But first this. A divisive presidential election is upon us and the winner is gold. Let me tell you what I mean. Since 2016, our national debt has grown a staggering 70%. And gold has increased by 60%. Do you own gold? I do.

I bought my gold in February 2023, and it has risen 33%. You've heard me talk about Lear Capital, the company I trust. Let me tell you why. Recently, Kevin DeMeritt, who is the founder and CEO of Lear, assisted the FBI in discovering a nationwide gold theft ring.

And because of Kevin's good work, the FBI caught these people before they could steal anymore. That's why I have been saying the people at Lear are good people. They believe in America. They believe in their product and they're honest to the core. So take action right now, my friends. Call 800-511-4620 or go to learjudgenap.com. Protect your savings and retirement before it's too late. 800-511-4620, learjudgenap.com. Remember, hope is not a strategy.

Larry Johnson, welcome here, my friend. Much appreciated, as always. Over the weekend, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced publicly that he has instructed the IDF to commence an invasion of Lebanon. This is not the first time he said this. It's the third time he's said this. Do you think it's serious? And do you think the Israelis can pull this off, given that they're not backing off an inch in Gaza? Yes, it's serious, and it's questionable whether they can pull it off, because the fractures within Israeli society have grown. They have not subsided or shrunk. We've seen over the last week since the death of the six hostages, whether at the hands of Hamas or whether at the negligence

of the Israeli military and security services, that the tensions have increased between the families of those hostages and their supporters and the government of Bibi Netanyahu and major clashes, not just in Tel Aviv, but in Haifa. And we're not talking about a couple of hundred people, we're talking about thousands. So on the one hand, Netanyahu's political support is as fragile as ever. But then you've also had pushback openly by the military against Netanyahu on several issues. Will they follow orders and go into Lebanon? Lebanon. At this point, I would say I'm skeptical, not that they necessarily lack the desire, but that they lack the capability in terms of overstretched lines of communication, their ability to support sustained troops in the field, a limited number of forces because they rely so heavily on reserves.

So, you know, when you put all that together, this seems to be more chest thumping by Netanyahu as opposed to a real plan. And let's think about it. If you're genuinely planning to invade Lebanon, why the hell announce it in advance? I mean, what do you think he is, Babe Ruth? Hey, I'm going to hit it out of center field? Come on.

Why would he do that unless he's more concerned with the narrative, about which more later when we talk about the head of MI6 and the head of CIA, than he is about reality on the ground? Well, that's exactly, you put your finger right on it. This is about managing messaging and trying to manipulate the public. Because, you know, one of the things he said in that, we got to make sure we get all these people who are living in hotels back to their homes in northern Israel. Well, they ain't going back because the military effort that would be required to destroy the ability of Hamas to continue to launch rocket missile strikes into those northern settlements

is, in my view, not within the capability of the Israelis, even if they use tactical nuclear weapons. It is because Hezbollah is well dug in. They've spent years prepping for this. It's not like this is the first time that they've been threatened with an Israeli attack. It was following the 2006 engagement in which Hezbollah actually came out, you know, had the upper hand in that, that they set about in real earnest constructing underground facilities. And we're not talking narrow tunnels like what we've seen Hamas come up with down in Gaza. We're talking massive underground structures that, you know, Israel's not going to be able to penetrate. The president of Turkey over the weekend, I don't know if it was in response to what

Prime Minister Netanyahu reeled or not, called for the unification of the resistance against him. I don't know. Is that a dog whistle? Unification? Does that mean time for military action? Because they already are emotionally and politically unified against Israel, are they not? They are, but hey, the guy talking, I'll look in the mirror. Erdogan has continued to allow oil to flow to Israel. As long as that oil flows, Israel is not facing an energy crisis. If Israel was facing an energy crisis, their ability to conduct military operations would be constrained. However, we are seeing Turkey, if you want to say, where were they a year ago? Where were they five

years ago? Where are they now? They're moving away from the West. They're moving away from the United States. They're moving away from the EU. They're moving more towards an alliance with those countries in the Middle East, and that will be aligned against Israel. That's the direction they're headed. And again, we got a hint of that last week with Turkey saying, hey, we want to join BRICS. Which means they're going to leave NATO. It would end up being sort of de facto leaving. I think for now, they want to stay in, but yet they're not going to be the ones who are going to be, uh, get handed all the dirty work because they, they do represent the second largest, uh, army within NATO right now. And yet they're not

going to go fight in Ukraine. They've made that pretty clear and they're not going to get, uh, siphoned off into some other, uh, NATO military adventures in places outside of Europe. So Turkey's trying to figure out what it wants to be when it grows up. With the exception of this Saturday conference in London sponsored by the Financial Times, which featured the head of MI6 and the head of CIA discussing Kursk. It seems to be off the front pages. In fact, you don't see anything about it at all. Is there anything new going on there? Resolve to earn your degree in the new year in the Bay with WGU. With courses available online 24-7 and monthly start dates, WGU offers maximum flexibility so you can focus on your future. Learn more at wgu.edu.

The Ukrainian incursion into Kursk. Ukrainians are losing. You know, we talked and I did some further research after because, you know, one of the messages the West is putting out is, oh boy, Turkey's captured, I mean, Ukraine's captured 500 square miles of Kursk. Oh, big. I said, okay, exactly how big is that? That's the size of Los Angeles City. That's the size of New York City. And yet the total size of Kursk, that entire region, is 12,000 square miles. So in other words, these Ukrainians are running around in about 4% of the territory.

And it's not like they're sitting in all these major urban areas built up, lots of infrastructure. They're out in these little isolated villages. It says, you know, give credit to Doug McGregor for the Pine Barrens reference, but it's like sitting out in Jersey in the Pine Barrens. You know, you could have a campsite set up. There could be a little community out there and you can, quote, control it, but you're not really controlling the movement of things in and out of that territory. The same for Ukraine right now. So the Russians are steadily moving in.

They're mopping them up. They're just cleaning them up in one pocket after another. You know, as unusual as this MI6 and CIA speaking in public and answering questions from the public conference was, there were comments about Kursk. So here's the head of MI6, last name Moore, and the head of CIA, Bill Burns, sounding like they're more interested in the narrative, no surprise, Larry, than the facts on the ground. Cut number nine, Chris. Typically audacious and bold on the part of the Ukrainians to try and change the game in a way.

And I think they have, to a degree, changed the narrative around this. The Kursk offensive is a significant tactical achievement. It's not only been a, you know, boost in Ukrainian morale, it has exposed some of the vulnerabilities of Putin's Russia and of his military. You know, there's no excuse for this level of stupidity by these gentlemen. I mean, it's not, it's not like they're without experience. It's not like they've suffered brain aneurysms

and lost, you know, half of their working gray matter. They've held positions, both in intelligence and in diplomacy, with particular burns with State Department. I mean, what they're saying is just it's not true it's a lie and uh you know i realized the definition of a diplomat you know somebody

worked with state department was a person who's paid to lie for their country but come on this is this is objectively has not advanced ukraine's ability to fight Russia in any form or fashion. It has, in fact, led to a loss of significant Ukrainian capabilities. And the body count with each passing week keeps growing higher and higher that I think we're well over 50% casualties on the part of Ukrainians. That's not a success. That's kind of, or by that, if we use that measure, then General Custer, good job.

They're a little bighorn. Right, here's Sir Peter Moore. My apologies for forgetting his first name and his title. Here's Sir Peter Moore again. This is even more absurd, Larry, because he's going to say Putin has failed. This sounds like that montage that producer Chris put together of Biden, Blinken, Sullivan, Austin, Kirby, all saying Putin has failed, Putin has failed, Putin has failed.

Cut number 10. And it's important to remember how this started in this phase with Putin mounting a war of aggression in February 2022. And two and a half years later, that failed. It continues to fail. The Ukrainians will need to fight. We will continue to help them to fight. And it's difficult.

This is shameless that the head of MI6 should be saying in public, Putin has failed. Yeah, I guess they think they're like Judy Garland in Wizard of Oz, you know, put those ruby slippers together, keep saying there's no place like home and eventually you'll get there. Just by repeating a mantra over and over doesn't make it real, doesn't turn it into reality. And again, he's lying that this started with Putin. We had General Sersky himself say just the other day that this war started in 2014. Okay. And which is a true statement. This thing's been going on now for more than 10 years.

It started with Great Britain and the United States launching a coup in Ukraine, in Kiev, in Maidan Square, in order to oust a president who was seen as too well disposed towards Russia and not willing to sell his soul and that of the Ukrainian people to the West. That's where this war started. Putin, he's just finishing it. The CNN is reporting that Ukraine seems to be suffering more desertions than acquiring more recruits. Can this be true? Oh, yes. And in could, I wish I had the technical skill to put together the linkage of all the different videos of these Ukrainian recruiters, grabbing people, tackling them, beating them up, trying to force them into the back of a vehicle to go off and quote, be trained. And as General Sersky himself acknowledged, confirmed what I wrote a week ago, that these guys are lucky to get two weeks of training before they're shoved to the front. Well, that's not training.

That's just going through the motions. And so first you've got the desertions, and then you've got the casualties. So no matter how many people you go out and, quote, recruit, the losses from those two things, the casualties and the desertions, means that can reach obviously Moscow and St. Petersburg. Do you think the U.S. will give them to him? I doubt it, simply because they recognize in light of Russia's recent actions over the last couple of weeks. And I think, you know, I know Alistair Crook talked about that today earlier with you, that the Russians are now hitting these training sites where foreign trainers are. And in the course of that, they're also killing NATO personnel, NATO contractors. Before they may have been a little cautious in doing that, not now. They're going to kill them all and they're

going to kill them in large numbers if the situation avails itself. So I think the United States recognizes that if they go that route, then they're asking for a level of escalation that frankly, the West and in particular, United States, is not capable of handling. Yeah, we could launch some initial strikes, but in terms of sustaining operations in the field beyond three or four weeks, no chance. We can't do it. We don't have the ability anymore. Here's a reporter asking Secretary Austin three days ago, why aren't you going to send long-range missiles? His answer is a little skittish, but it sounds like it's not going to happen. Cut number four. President Zelensky has repeatedly requested for these long-range attacks inside Russia. Even allies agree. So what is stopping the United States from

giving the go-ahead I don't believe what would have stopped in the United I don't believe one specific capability will be decisive and you know I stand by that comment I think Ukraine has a pretty significant capability of its own to address targets that are well beyond the range of ATACOMs or even Storm Shadow for that matter. And as we look at the battlefield currently, we know that the Russians have actually moved their aircraft that are using the glide bombers beyond the range of ATACs. So this is an interesting argument, but again, I think for the foreseeable future we're going to make sure that we remain focused on doing – helping them do those things

that are – enable them to be uh effective in uh in defending the uh their uh uh their sovereign territory the crane on the brink no hey at least lloyd austin has made clear that he's got a good job alternative once his secretary of defense thing comes out, he will be on Broadway doing tap dance. Because, man, I mean, good Lord, he was going at it like Bojangles there, you know? Really, really great, great form. How precarious is Ukraine's ability to maintain resistance to the Russian military? It's deteriorating with each passing day. So you remember, it's been like a year, three months ago. So a year ago, February, when we were dealing with that young man, that Air Force guy, kid

out of Massachusetts, who is leaking all the classified documents. And what was contained in those classified documents at that time was the U.S. intelligence community assessment that Ukraine's ability to sustain an effective air defense was good for about another until May of 2023. Well, we've seen that's true because since then, Russia is able to strike Ukrainian targets across Ukraine in the daylight, wherever they want, and without any opposition, any effective opposition. So no air defense, no effective fixed wing aircraft to fly out and combat Russian aircraft. The drones, yeah, they have drones, but they don't have drones in the quantity that Russia does. Artillery, they're lacking on that.

Those, they're losing significant pieces. HIMARS in particular, the 155 millimeter howers provided by the United States. We don't have, the U.S. can't supply them with enough artillery shells if they did have artillery pieces to fire them. They've lost an enormous amount of armored equipment, both tanks and personnel carriers in their failed Kursk adventure. So it's like, okay, what are they going to do? I mean, what are their actual legitimate, realistic options? And it's not like they've got a trained reserve of about

50 to 60,000 troops sitting back, waiting, saying, hey, put me in coach. I'm ready to play. Right. Just the opposite. They don't have that. So, I mean, I keep looking for, show me a ray of sunshine in here. Do we know how much ammo they have left? How many weeks or months they have remaining? I don't. But it's not, you know, if we're talking ammunition for rifles, handguns, they probably have ample supplies of that.

That's not tough to produce. But if we're talking the 155 millimeter artillery shells, very little, not a lot on that front. And it goes down with whether you're talking Javelin, anti-tank guided missiles, or even Patriot missiles, they've run out of those. One of the thoughts is that the reason the United States is talking about using these JSAM missiles that are fired from aircraft is that they don't have enough HIMARS and enough Patriots, so they'll use that as a substitute. You have a piece out this morning, Larry, arguing that the American military, the United States Armed Forces, is being degraded.

Right. What is that all about? Right now, across the board in the U.S. military, from Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, the criteria to get promoted, to be selected for leadership is what you look like. So if you've got a particular hue of color on your skin, that means you're qualified for a position. If you happen to be of a lighter shade of pale, then you're not going to get promoted. Well, you know, this is a return to the racism that once divided the U.S. military. It was in 1948 that Harry Truman, who didn't exactly come out of a progressive liberal

family. I mean, his grandmother was a, you know, she was a staunch supporter of the Confederacy during the Civil War, and she actually could remember the Civil War. She used a disparaging epithet for people who happened to have black skin. That's what Harry Truman was raised around, and he wasn't above using those words himself. Yet, after World War II, when you had black veterans coming back to the United States who were being attacked, who were being brutalized, who were being lynched, Truman stepped in and said enough. desegregated the military. And that desegregation was intent on doing one thing, to say, it didn't matter what the color of your skin was, as Dr. Martin Luther King later said,

it was the content of your character. It was who you are. It was what you could do. That should be the criteria. Now with this whole- The American military is imbued with DEI. Oh, yes. And promotions are based on DEI? Yes, yes. Listen, I've talked to several who are currently active duty, currently officers at a variety of levels.

They're getting out. They are Caucasian. I'll put that up front. They're the lighter shade of pale. But they're getting out. They can't stand it anymore because you've got these senior officers who are so intent on protecting their sinecures that they want to hang on to their job.

And so they will do anything possible, including sacrificing this very principle that, you know what, we want to hire somebody because they can do the job, not because they've got a particular sexual orientation or because of how they look. And this DEI has gone, it's gone past just the racist elements. It's now gone to who you sleep with also gets to be a consideration. So, I mean, it's just, it's led to a real dysfunction in the U.S. military and our readiness level has dropped as well as the numbers of people actually qualified to serve have dropped. Is the military having, the American military having difficulty recruiting? Well, it depends on how you frame that question.

Because if you said, hey, did they meet their goals last quarter? Yeah, it looks like they did. Except what they did to meet their goals, they lowered the number they needed. Okay. Originally they said we need 80,000. Okay. We'll put it at 40,000. They hit 40,000. They go, woohoo. We won. We got our 40,000. So they're deceiving themselves.

That's what's going on. The self-delusion, lying to ourselves. It's pervasive in the American society. I'm going to be speaking later today with actually actually my best buddy at fox he's still there charlie gasparino who has a book out uh called go woke go broke yeah in which he's arguing that the woke mentality of which you and in my view are rightly critical lar, in the military is pervading the banks and big tech and big businesses as well, and they are suffering because of it. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's like the most perverse form of racism with the sexual aspects tossed in. Nobody know, nobody controls what color you are when you're born.

You have no control over that. So at that point, it becomes, what is it that you can do on your own by yourself or through the help of others to achieve and to demonstrate competence in certain areas. This notion that tries to be foisted off on people, that blacks are somehow inferior intellectually, it becomes a cultural thing instead of we've seen example after example of people that,

regardless of the darkness of their skin, end up being quite competent. So it's really a sad commentary. It's something that really affects us here in the West. I didn't see that in Russia. That's one of the things. It's curious that among the Russians, they don't have this racist tent that depending upon what you look like, they have to make some judgment about you. They were open and accepting of people regardless of what they look like.

I think this is almost purely sort of a European, a Western European American thing. Is American intel infected with this as well as the American military? Oh, yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I've had four cases I know of. They were young men in their 20s, spoke multiple languages, one like Arabic.

I mean, languages that are not common. It wasn't like they were good, you know, good Spanish speakers. They couldn't get in because too white. Wow. Well, I hope this is corrected before the military is called upon to do some serious defense of a national security threat and they're unable to do so. And by the way, Alistair Crook says that the commander of American troops in Europe, not General Cavalli, the commander of NATO troops in Europe, but another general, name escaping me. Carrillo, the CENTCOM commander, the commander of CENTCOM, was in Israel this weekend. I mean, would Netanyahu have announced this plan to attack, whether it's serious or fanciful, Hezbollah without running it past America first? Yeah, absolutely. I think he would. In fact, he may have been making that public announcement to try to get the United States to back off from, you know, one of the things that became was leaked, I guess, last week.

The United States has told Bibi, hey, we can't keep those aircraft carriers, you know, on their extended deployment in the Persian Gulf. That was leaked this weekend. I don't know if it was leaked to send a message to him or if it's true. Yeah, no, I think it's true. Well, it's just objectively from a common sense standpoint, it's got to be true because there's no way you can keep these crews on these ships in that level of alert status and then actually have them continue to function well.

It's just, it goes against human nature. Either you've got to be in a fight and when you're in that fight, you know, then your adrenaline's flowing, but to be always ramped up for, hey, get ready, be ready. And then you're constantly ready and nothing happens. It dulls, actually ends up dulling your reaction time. And plus, there's just a logistics strain that's put on these ships to sustain them. Because you've got thousands of sailors and Marines out there. They got to eat. And whatever they eat and whatever they use, you know, creates trash.

They got to dispose of that trash somehow. So, you know, it's not like they've got a magic beam me up capability from Star Trek where they can just send the garbage off elsewhere. So the logistics, it's always the logistics judge. That's what's always you got to be prepared to deal with. Larry Johnson, a pleasure, my dear friend. Thank you so much for joining us. The pleasure to be able to pick your brain as well as to read your materials and talk about it. Look forward to seeing you with the youngster McGovern on Friday. Time flies fast, but I'm with you.

Thanks. Thank you. Same here. Thank you, Larry. Coming up at noon today, Anya Parampol at two o'clock, the one, the only, the revered, the ancient, the brilliant Ralph Nader. And at three o'clock, my buddy Charlie Gasparino on many of the same subjects I was just discussing with Larry Johnson, how they affect American business and the prices you pay for the products you purchase. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. We'll be you next time. think by demonstrating mastery of the material you know. Make 2025 the year you focus on your future.

Learn more at wgu.edu.