Judging Freedom - Matt Hoh:

Episode Date: March 4, 2024

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Thank you. Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Monday, March 4th, almost said February, March 4th, 2024. Matt Ho joins us now. Matt, a pleasure as always. Thank you for joining us. A lot of crazy stuff happened over the weekend, not the least of which was the release of a tape of German generals talking about Taurus missiles, German-made offensive weaponry, sophisticated weaponry being shipped to Ukraine and the desirability of German technicians, not stating if military, civilian, or intelligence technicians manning them. The tapes have been authenticated. I believe they were leaked by Russian intelligence.

Does this surprise you? And what does this tell you? No, it doesn't surprise me. But first, we should at least give credit to the Chancellor of Germany, Olaf Scholz, for saying that Julian Assange should not be extradited. I did not hear him say that. I just want to make sure we note that he did say that. It wasn't the most forceful, but he did say he would not receive a fair trial. And he alluded to that this is a political persecution based upon the release of state secrets. Oh, wait, does that change my view of him? I have not been a fan of his, but, you know, people...

People are surprised. This is a great, great thing to hear. I don't know that it's going to work, but it's nice to know he feels that way. And it further just validates what so many of us have been working for for these years, that if we just get a person to acknowledge the reality of what's occurring here and to be put on the spot about whether or not they want to be on, you know, I think all of us are tired of the phrase, the right side of history. But this is an example of that. Matt, is he the first head of state besides Australia itself where Julian is from to say this? Well, certainly Ecuador's previous head of state, besides Australia itself, where Julian is from, to say this? Well, certainly Ecuador's previous head of state said that. I believe Brazil's Lula has said similar things, but I'd have to get back to you about that in terms of-

He's probably the first head of state in NATO or in the EU to say this. I don't have anything in front of me to confirm that, Judge, but I would bet what I have that is the case. I can't imagine there's another NATO head of state who's willing to say something like that, who has said that. But now perhaps because Schultz has said it, perhaps this opens the door for others to say it as well. I've often thought that because the British judicial system is corrupt, I don't mean being bought off. I mean, being wedded at the hip to the government, that Julian's best hope was a diplomatic solution rather than a judicial one. A bunch of heads of state sort of ganging up on

saying, come on, you know, play ball with us on this right because once he goes to the us they know what there's no possibility of that and we could see that clearly say with what's occurring i'll tell you this if member of parliament george galloway becomes the prime minister the first thing he'll do is release jul. I mean, wouldn't that be something? I would buy one of those hats, you know, if he gets even close to anything like that. But what a triumph that was, right? Wasn't that so great? I didn't even realize he had the opportunity to become an MP.

And I see it on my Twitter feed. And, you know, it's things like that that keep us going, right? That's what helps us persevere. He argued typical traditional British Liberal Party blue-collar values plus human heart aching for the suffering Gazans, and he won overwhelmingly. Local elections over the weekend in Israel prove that Norman Finkelstein is right. There's three parties, right, hard right, and ultra right. And you can, I think, analogize this, Alistair Crook did this morning, Galloway's victory with the victory of the uncommitteds in Michigan in the Democratic primary. They expected to get 10,000 votes. They had 104,000 Democrats vote for anybody other than the incumbent Democrat president.

Right. That is something that we've been waiting to see, that type of political pressure being put on the administration. The only thing that they actually care about, we've talked about this a lot, Judge, right, that these are people who only care about their power, who they only care about the seat that they're in. They're not interested in bigger issues. They're not interested in their constituency. They're interested in, sure, they're interested in taking care of their donors, their big donors. But overall, their only concern is the seat that they occupy. It's power for power's sake for these people. So you have to threaten them.

So what we saw in Michigan was exactly that. 100,000 people go out to vote against the president. I wasn't in Michigan that day, but Judge, I'm willing to bet February in Michigan, you're not going out for anything, right, that isn't too important. So the fact that people made the time, made the effort to go and cast that protest vote in the way that they did it, and now the way you see the White House responding, you have Kamala Harris this weekend announcing that she's in favor of immediate ceasefire. So they're having to change

their rhetoric. They're of course not changing their actions. They're doing this theater, like we saw that farce over the weekend where they dropped three C-130s worth of food onto the beach in Gaza. So they're doing those types of forces like that to try and present themselves as actually changing or actually acting or actually caring. But they are scared to death that what's going to happen tomorrow on Super Tuesday is going to be a repudiation of the president and is going to be something that threatens his donors. People are going to say, you know what? I'm not going to put money behind Joe Biden because he's not going to win re-election. If this is how the Democratic Party, the base of the party, those who turn up for primaries

treat him, he's got no shot in November. And so now, of course, they're trying to say, we are doing things differently. We want ceasefires. We're working really hard on it, which of course, as we know, is phony. It's untrue. It's obscene. But this is what they're scrambling to do to try and get out of the hole that they've put themselves in. To the German generals, what was revealed and what is the significance of the revelation?

Well, there are two revelations. One about the missiles, the Taurus missiles, and one of the comments on the leak of this German generals was that all we need is the political will and we can provide these missiles to Ukraine, which you can read into and say, is this basically a frustration on the German military's part that they're not being allowed to have a greater role, that they're being frustrated by political concerns? The other aspect of this was, of course, that the U.S. I'm sorry, the U.K. has troops on the ground in Ukraine, which is something we know, which is something that had been spoken about just the week before, where the British government said that there's a small amount of British forces in Ukraine. But this was more explicit. This was more definitive in the sense that these German officers, these German generals were saying that the British had forces there to help guide and help operate the storm shadow missiles, the storm shadow cruise missiles that Ukraine has used against Russia, including

striking into Crimea. So I think this puts color to something that we knew existed in black and white. So we're seeing more of the details, but certainly it opens up this danger, right? This continues, it prolongs this danger that we've discussed about for as long as I've been talking to you and that you've been talking to other folks for for even longer about where this war goes to and how the danger of escalation brings about risks that none of us, none of us can accept and none of us even want to contemplate. I've been asking all day and all weekend, is NATO fighting a war against Russia? In all sense, if someone was doing this to you, you would consider a war being fought against you. If somebody was supplying all the materials,

supplying all the weapons, all the ammunition, if somebody else was paying for the troops that were fighting you, right? I mean, if you look into the totality of all this, the vast resources, just not material, but also as well, intelligence support. We spoke last week about that big CIA story in the New York Times, that big CIA propaganda puff piece, the New York Times. How can you read that and not say that the United States is not at war with Russia. When you are taking the lies of another side through your actions, even though they're indirect, you are at war with that other nation. And of course, there are the statements from our elected leaders clearly show this. A friend of mine, Walt Zalto, who's with a peace group in Chicago,

he writes this. You'll probably see this pop up in antiwar.com because his stuff does get published there. But, you know, Walt sent out a thing today where he's got six or seven of the top quotes from, you know, our senators, Lindsey Graham, Mitch McConnell, Richard Blumenthal, making this argument about what a good investment it is we are in spending all this money to kill Russians. I mean, so when you have American elected leaders, including people like the leader of the Republicans in the Senate saying such things, how could anyone not take away from it that you are at war with that country? And so, of course, the issue then is how does Russia respond to this? I mean, I'm sure Russia

knows of this presence. It's been stated before in a variety of different ways. And there's a variety of different forms of foreign forces in Ukraine. There's the military, there's special operations, there's intelligence services, there's contractors, there's mercenaries. So there's all different types of foreigners fighting on behalf of Ukraine for NATO, for the West. So how Russia responds, and of course, what we're seeing, though, is we're seeing more commentary coming out of Russia, even though Vladimir Putin said to Tucker Carlson, he said other places he's in favor of negotiations. You have others around him, like Dmitry Medvedev, who are saying negotiations are no longer possible. And Medvedev this weekend talking about how possibly we may need to break up Ukraine, right? So we will take apart,

Poland will take apart, Romania take apart. So all So all this rhetoric, you know, whether it's just rhetoric for rhetoric's sake or it's actually stuff being thrown out there, either as a warning or as foreshadowing actual actions, is becoming more and more heated. You know, and we keep having these conversations, Judge, and at some point, you know, at some point it's going to burst. At some point the relief valve is going to have to, some point it's going to burst. Some point the relief valve is going to have to be let and something's going to give. And, you know, this type of reckless, dangerous, frankly, idiotic behavior by the West and Ukraine, you know, these madmen are going to kill us all. So American, probably French, certainly British, and soon to be, if not there already, notwithstanding what the Chancellor said, German or there. If they're there, the Russians know they're there.

Cut number two, Sonia. Here's President Putin reacting to this. They should eventually understand that we also have weapons, and they know it. I just said it now myself, weapons that can hit targets on their territory. Everything that the West is coming up with now, what they threaten the world with, it can result in a conflict with the use of nuclear weapons and therefore the destruction of civilization.'s rather sobering to say the least right when you have the leader of a nuclear power like Russia someone who has demonstrated

that he has red lines and he won't enforce those red lines basically saying stop don't make me go any further let's not go any further when he's not go any further. When he's basically pleading for some sanity here, if he's basically begging for some wisdom, for some maturity, for some type of leadership that is responsible to react to him, as opposed to just the continual desire for escalation, the continual desire to bleed his country out, to remove him from power. I mean, he watches this and he sees this and nothing he does has any effect in terms of reaching through this Western insistence on war. You know, war basically just for war's sake, war for the power of it, war for the money of it. And we're seeing more

indications of that in terms of how much money is being made off of this war every day. Some of the stories coming out of Washington, D.C. on where that $95 billion that the White House so desperately wants for war, not just in Ukraine, but for the genocide in Gaza, as well as for future war with China, how much of that would go to the weapons makers. About that $95 billion, the estimates are at $64 billion of that would go directly to the weapons makers, to the Lockheeds, the Raytheons, the General Dynamics. He sees this moral and intellectual corruption, this greed, this megalomania that he's up against. And he's basically pleading, Judge, as that's how I read it. He's pleading for somebody to have some sense to stop it. But we also have to realize, again, recognize that this is a man who in the

past has laid out very clear red lines, whether they've been in Syria, Georgia, in Ukraine, in Chechnya, wherever, and he's enforced those red lines. So we'd be absolute fools. We'd be total fools, which we seem to be here in the West, to not take this man at his word. And so again, what we're up against are madmen who are going to kill us all. So over the weekend, after the tapes of the German generals came out, the clip from President Putin is four or five days old. The chief of staff of the U.S. Army said Russia has, quote, done very well, closed quote, at boasting its military defense. Russia should not be underestimated. Is there a message there that we have not done well, that we are not in a position to travel across the Atlantic Ocean and take on the Russian military

in and for Ukraine? I think that question goes to the very ethos of our political system, the very nature of our government, the reality of who our elected leaders are. I mean, how come we've had out of 535 members of Congress, how come we've not had one demand hearings as to why a Pentagon that receives a trillion dollars a year that claims it can fight and win two major wars at one time, this is their claim, that they can't provide enough artillery shells to Ukraine. How come there are not hearings? How come there are not generals being put in jail for the obvious corruption, whether that be professional or just greed in terms of why do we not have a United States military that can support just one proxy war, right?

Let alone fight and win its own wars. So I think that's just one example of what's being spoken about here in the sense of how well Russia has performed, certainly in terms of their economy and certainly in terms of their financial institutions, how smart they have been to prepare for this and how anyone looking at this would want to continue to bring this fight against them, knowing that they have performed so well, they have protected themselves so well, they have opened up so many more markets around the world. They have, you know, to use a term that Vladimir Putin used, the global majority behind them, let alone they have not suffered defeat on the battlefield. You can argue about how much they've won or lost on the battlefield, whether they've met

their goals, what those goals actually are. We can get into all that. But they haven't been defeated on the battlefield. Unlike the predictions of most of the last 24 months, the Russians have not been kicked back across into their country. And so the willingness to address this, or I should say the lack of willingness to address these issues about us, as you were bringing up, Judge, how we have done this, how our military has performed, of course, coming upon decades of failure, of catastrophic failure by our military, why we have no one calling for just sweeping deep and very sincere hearings and

investigations into the obvious corruption that is the embodiment of the American military as seen through its performance over these decades to include this proxy war in Ukraine, you know, it causes us to really, you know, start to lose hope, right? Here's Secretary Austin on Friday after they beat him up. I'm not sure if it's the House of the Senate over his failure to report his mysterious absence, which turns out was, you know, for a legitimate reason, although the failure to report I don't get. Nevertheless, he went on to make the administration's line about how desperate is Ukraine's need for help. Cut number eight, Sonia.

We know that if Putin is successful here, he will not stop. He will continue to take more aggressive action in the region. And other leaders around the world, other autocrats around the world will look at this, and they'll be encouraged by the fact that this happened, and we failed to support a democracy. And so if you're a Baltic state, you're really worried about about, you know, whether or not you're next. And and so they they know Putin. They know that what he's capable of. And quite frankly, if if Ukraine falls, I really believe that NATO will be in a fight with with with Russia. This is the domino theory that Joe Biden and Tony

Blinken, we haven't heard from Blinken in a while, and Jake Sullivan and Victoria Nuland have been peddling. It has never worked. It's profoundly inaccurate now, but it's what they're doing to try and scare the Speaker of the House of Representatives

into allowing the House to vote in favor of sending 61 billion there. Well, it's obviously an effective, effective warmongering piece of propaganda, though, Judge, because we've seen it all our lives and they keep trotting it out, right? We just went through two decades of, we have to reorder, we have to reestablish, we have to change the Middle East to get rid of this milieu that allows for these types of organizations like Al-Qaeda to thrive. I grew up in the 80s hearing about how the Soviets were going to, now that they've got Nicaragua, or once they get Nicaragua, they're going to advance Norse and come through Mexico into our border. And of course, that horror throughout the 60s and 70s in Southeast Asia was all predicated on this domino theory. I mean, so it obviously pulls well.

It must do well in test groups and in focus groups. But this is what they're banging on to. And it's quite preposterous. It's quite ludicrous. If you look at this, try and look at it subjectively, you know, actually how little territory Russia has taken in two years, how much loss they've taken. And they've certainly given a beaten and a hurt on to the Ukrainian military, of course. And they've withstood, again, this great proxy war from not just the U.S., but all of NATO, all of the West. But they still haven't advanced very far.

So this idea that they're now going to this army, this Russian army that we've we've fought to this point is somehow then going to now advance on Berlin and on Paris. And then they're going to cross the channel and take London. I mean, like, this is just, it's preposterous, it's nonsense. But again, these are the same people, though, Judge, who are saying the horrific, horrifically disgusting commentary in defense of what they're doing in Gaza, as they're helping the Israelis defend themselves. You know, to Lloyd Austin, sending three C-17s worth of bombs every day to Gaza is not perpetuating genocide. It's helping Israel defend itself. These are the people that we're talking about here. We've always got to be clear-eyed about who exactly, what type of

monsters are we dealing with. Back to Ukraine, do they have any substantial defenses left? Do they have anything like those three levels of cement, steel reinforced concrete defenses like Russia had, which repelled their so-called spring offensive? I mean, if we gave them $61 billion, what would they do with it? You know, Judge, this weekend, there are a number of stories that came out, including in the New York Times, that were just really didn't get the attention they deserved. I mean, this is very explosive. I didn't mean the pun there. But, you know, this idea of them not having prepared defenses, like I was a combat engineer in the Marine Corps. This is what I was professionally trained for fortifications, defenses, obstacles, landmines, those sorts of things. And the idea that Ukraine has not prepared a defensive line and a defense in depth, as we recall, so multiple lines, like we saw what the Russians had done, say, particularly in Zaporizhia, is just so criminally negligent. It's so professionally negligent. Judge, this would

be like showing up for a baseball game without your gloves. There's just no way you can play. There's no way you can win. I mean, so the idea that they have not developed their defenses, it's just an extreme form of negligence that goes beyond incompetence. You have to talk about corruption here. You know, in the Times article and other sources says that there was money allocated for it. Well, where did that money go? Where did the money go that was supposed to pay for the excavators to dig the trenches and dig the bunkers? Where did that go? And we know where it went. Ukraine is the most corrupt state in Europe. It went into the pockets of the people who are benefiting from this war, the people who own the homes in Miami and Dubai, right?

The same types of people that we put and kept in power in Afghanistan and Iraq. Hey, guess what? We've got the same people in power in Ukraine. They're corrupt. But then also, too, there's a professional corruption here that you have a military leadership in Ukraine. And this should really give people pause because Sersky, General Siersky, who was in charge of the land war basically for Ukraine is now in command of the overall Ukrainian military. So where you appoint responsibility at for this failure to prepare defenses really has to go to

General Siersky. And now he's in charge of everything. But this professional corruption, and this was alluded to a couple of articles over the weekend about this, is that there just was not the, that the political will would not allow for defenses to be, to be dug, defenses fortifications prepared, right? To get ready to be on the defense, because that goes against the political narrative. You can see that coming from Kiev. You can see that coming certainly from Washington and London and Brussels. It's certainly all last year. We can't retreat.

We can't be seen to be on defense. We've got to show that we can win this thing. That culminates, of course, in that enormous catastrophe, that horror show where Ukraine sends all its troops into that Meade grinder last year in their great counteroffensive of 2023, which weakens them so much that now they're severely on the back foot. But now you see they don't even have defenses to go back into. So rather than last year, falling back, preparing defenses, fighting this war on defense and death, fighting it in a manner that matches

best with their strengths and matches best with Russia's weaknesses, they didn't do that. They chose to go with the political narrative aided by mass corruption. And now, according to many sources, there are not these lines of defense that many of us suspected there would be because that's what you do if you are competent and you're professional and you have more than six weeks of training at an officer academy. I mean, so this is really astounding and this really could propel, this really propels the notion of we could see a Ukrainian collapse on the front, a significant Russian gains and a collapse on the Ukrainian front this year, maybe in the next months, maybe by summer.

And maybe this ties in then to what Dmitry Medvedev said over the weekend about parceling up Ukraine, right? Dividing it up between Russia, Poland and Romania, which, of course, the folks who understand the history know that not that long ago, That's what it looked like. So, you know, I mean, certainly what we're seeing here with these reports are very, very troubling if you are expecting any type of Ukrainian victory now, this year, five years of the House Intelligence Committee. That's about a 30-second clip, but listen to what he says about them rationing. I never heard of this. Not toothpaste. Ammunition. Speaker Johnson now has the leeway and the flexibility to work through Congress and the Appropriations Committee. I think it's going to be moving quickly. We're going to get our appropriations. They're not completely out of ammun quickly. We're going to get our appropriations. They weren't out of ammunition in April. They're not completely out of ammunition.

I've been to, I was in Kyiv last month and met with Zelensky also at the Munich Security Conference and certainly spoke to our military and they are rationing, but they are not out. This is critical. Yeah. We have to support them now or they will lose. And I think the Speaker sees that emergency.

Hakeem Jeffrey sees that emergency. And I think we're going to see bills hit the floor. They can vote all the bills they want. When Colonel McGregor saw that tape, he said, Congressman, the next time Congressman Turner goes to Kiev, he's going to see Russian troops in the streets. Well, you know, Mike Turner reminds me of so many in Washington, D.C., who think when they get a question about the ground truth about what's happening on the

front lines, they say, well, I was in Kiev. Right. I was in Munich. Right. And, you know, just the other day at the Starbucks over here, my friend told me, you know, like it's remarkable how I shouldn't say it's remarkable. This is the narrative that they have signed up for. This is where they thought, you know, both Republicans and Democrats, for reasons regarding the military industrial complex, for reasons regarding the empire, have decided to push that they went in on this. And they believe many of them sincerely that this is what's best for the United States, whether it's for the profits, for the weapons makers or for the benefit of the empire to pursue this proxy war. Do we have enough ammunition? I guess we're talking about 155 millimeter artillery shells. Do we have enough ammunition to give them what they need without depleting our own defensive requirements? The Ukrainians need 6,000 or 7,000 rounds a day of 155 rounds.

And right now we're producing between 25,000 and 30,000 rounds a month. So you're talking about four or five days, maybe stretch it out to a week's worth of ammunition we're producing in a month. So the way that the United States has been scrambling around the world to purchase ammunition from anywhere it can, you know, as a story, I think has probably been underreported. But yeah, absolutely. I mean, and these reports have been going on for a while, Judge. I mean, this has been going on since at least the summer, late spring of serious Ukrainian ammunition deficits. So I think there's probably something to do with how the supply works, the corruption in it, the amount of time it takes for the ammunition to

flow to the front lines, which has a lot to do with whether or not people are getting their kickbacks and payoffs. I mean, this is what we're talking about. We're talking about, it's not just a house of cards, it's a rotten, corrupted house of the cards there. So even just getting the ammunition to the front line, if it's available, it takes considerable costs, incurs considerable delays because of the corruption. And then again, the negligence at the top, that doesn't allow for a military to function well. But you also have this very real shortage. The Europeans a year ago were saying, we are going to get you all, we are going to get Ukraine, we are going to get you a million shells by this time next year. And I think they've managed to deliver

three or 400,000 rather than a million. I mean, so the difficulties that the Ukrainian military has here are, you know, is well on display. We've seen this for a while. We just really don't know how dire it is. Mike Turner, of course, and all these other types in Washington, D.C., you know, got to remember Mike Turner a couple weeks ago was the one who was screaming about hysterically that there's this great new Russian threat in outer space. Right. I mean, like, so this is what they're going to do. They're alarmists as much as they're fantasists and fabulous in believing in the myth of the empire, the benevolent empire and American exceptionalism. They are also alarmists and they recognize how well that works in terms of getting attention and then for their

purposes, putting other politicians on the back foot, right? The whole who lost Ukraine, which is the reason why Barack Obama stays in Afghanistan because of what happens in Iraq. He wants to pull out of Afghanistan, but he lost Iraq. And this goes back as well, too. This is as effective in American foreign policy consensus making as is the domino theory, this idea of who lost China, right? That comes out of the 50s. So, I mean, that is a great fear of any American politician that their agnotas can be labeled weak, but they're going to be accused of letting them down. And of course, the stab in the back theory is the third one that's in their arsenal, that's in their quiver. This idea that we are stabbing the Ukrainians in the back. Those Ukrainian boys

are willing to give their lives for us, and we're stabbing them in the back by not getting them the ammunition they need. It's very effective rhetoric. It's based, again, it's fantasist, it's fabulous, it's alarmist, but it's very effective, particularly in terms of getting the mainstream media, the legacy corporate media in the United States to echo it. Matt Ho, thank you, my dear friend. Thank you for your analysis. Much appreciated. We look forward to seeing you again next week. All right. Thanks, Judge. Of course. Great, great analysis by someone who has been involved in the heat of battle. Coming up, Kyle Anzalone, Scott Ritter, Aaron Matei. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. Thank you. Thanks for watching!