Judging Freedom - Matt Hoh: A War Criminal Addresses Congress

Episode Date: July 30, 2024

Matt Hoh: A War Criminal Addresses CongressSee 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 Tuesday, July 30th, 2024. Matt Hull will be here in just a moment on what happens when a war criminal addresses a joint session of Congress. But first this. You all know that I am a paid spokesperson for Lear Capital, but I'm also a customer, a very satisfied customer. About a year ago, I bought gold and it's now increased in value 23 percent. So one hundred dollars invested in gold a year ago is now worth $123. If you have $100 in the bank, it still shows $100, but $100 in the bank is now worth 24% less. Inflation has reduced all of your savings, all of your buying power, and mine, by 24%. And gold is largely immune from that.

If you want to learn how gold will soon hit $3,200 an ounce, call Lear Capital, 800-511-4620, or go to learjudgenap.com. Get your free gold report. Same experts who predicted the 23% rise that I've enjoyed have predicted this $3,200 an ounce gold. Learn about how to transfer this to an IRA. Protect your savings.

800-511-4620. Learjudgenap.com. Tell them the judge sent you. Matt Ho, welcome here, my dear friend. Always a pleasure. Thank you very much for joining us. The tease that I threw out there, what happens when a war criminal addresses Congress, one of our viewers responded by saying, which war criminal are you talking about? Congress is paying for the slaughter in Gaza. Good point.

But I'll let you take it from there. His audience was bought and paid for. We all know that. Right. It reminds me of when the Pope came and spoke a number of years ago and he decried the merchants of death, the arms companies in front of the U.S. Congress. And they all got up and cheered, you know, again, ignoring the fact that they are the merchants of death. They are as connected to the military industrial complex as the Boeings, the Raytheons, the U.S. military industrial complex and its empire couldn't

survive without its members of Congress being bought and paid for by all types of criminals being involved in all kinds of rackets. It's appropriate, Judge, we're talking about this. Oh, and by the way, I'm sorry. Welcome back. I'm sorry you didn't get to fully enjoy your vacation. A couple of things happened. I picked two of the most historic weeks in modern American history to try and relax on a beach in northern Italy.

And we did a couple of shows from my hotel, but life goes on. But thank you for your kind comments. But what do you think Netanyahu's purpose was in not offering a peace plan, but being as bellicose as he was? His purpose, Judge, was simply to show who's in charge. It wasn't even a question of who

can get the Democrats and Republicans to give 58 standing ovations in 55 minutes or whatever that number came out to during his speech. It was a question of showing who can get the Democrats and Republicans to kneel and kiss the ring. Because even the majority of the Democrats who didn't show up for the address, which is about 100 of them or so, most of them, most of them, the vast majority, I would say, whenever the next bill comes around Congress to send billions of dollars to Israel to send them tens and tens of thousands of more weapons, they will vote for it. So even those who didn't show up for his address, they're still committed to him. So this idea is that I am Benjamin Netanyahu. I am going to Washington, D.C. in the midst of the

general election campaign for the U.S. presidency. I am going to show up in between their two conventions, and I am going to show who the Congress kneels and kisses the ring for. It's for me because I am the one who has the power here. There's speculation that there was discussions involving what a U.S. role in a war in Lebanon would look like. But that's more weighted, I think, towards rumor than actual certainty. But I think the primary thing was to show that he was in charge, one, to reinforce that to the American political establishment, but also, too, for his own domestic politics. As we know, we've talked about this before October 7th, the political danger he is in, the fact that he is up on corruption charges and he should be in jail and he is incredibly

unpopular. Well, this goes, this performance in D.C., back home in Israel, tells the Israeli people that look at what Benjamin Netanyahu can accomplish. Look what he can do. The truth is, of course, with Benny Gantz or Eisenkot or a number of other Israelis, they'd be able to get the same type of obsequious response from the American Congress. But I think that domestic, the importance of the domestic politics for Netanyahu can't be forgotten about. Ambassador Charles Freeman, a friend of yours, and Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, a friend of yours. By the way, Larry Wilkerson was in the

crowd of demonstrators outside the Capitol building. I don't know if you were there. He said there were 50,000 people there. The press gave them no coverage at all. But they both independently said the same thing. One of the most shameful experiences ever to occur on the floor of the House of Representatives, that the two-thirds of the members of Congress were kissing the ring of a foreign leader in utter rejection of what they were sent to Congress to do, which is to represent the will of the American people consistent with the Constitution. A shameful, shameful experience embraced by both parties and more by Republicans than by Democrats. I was surprised that 100 didn't show. I would have expected that number to be lower.

I was surprised too, but again, it's mealy-mouthed. Many of them didn't even put out any statements. It just didn't show up. You had to find out they didn't go by calling their offices. And even then, when I called my congressional office here for Deborah Ross, who did attend, the local office wouldn't tell me whether she had attended or not. They said, we can't tell you that you have to call the Washington, D.C. office. So for even those who showed up following Benjamin Netanyahu's instruction, you could see that their that their their willingness to even talk about it, to serve the interests of their constituents, goes first and foremost, you know, gets in line behind Netanyahu because he is first and foremost for them.

You know, it's fitting today, Judge, that today, July 30th, is Smedley Butler's birthday. The great Marine Corps general won two Medals of Honor, would have won a third if the rules had been different back then. But after his time in the Marine Corps, 30 some odd years, he left the Marine Corps and decried the U.S. military, the U.S. Empire. He explained that his time in uniform across the globe fighting and killing for the United States, seeing his fellow Marines being killed and wounded was all done for the benefit of Wall Street. He was a gangster for capitalism. And war is a racket is his famous statement. And so it's fitting. It's fitting that we're here talking about Netanyahu. We're talking about this genocide in Israel. We're talking about how culpable and complicit and how bought off the American Congress is.

And today is Smedley Butler's birthday. And you would not know that from the public schools, the government schools where people like Smedley Butler aren't even mentioned. They're just deleted from American history. Only the generals who glorified in the killing and the killings are the ones who are mentioned. Do you think that Netanyahu really thinks that there would be a consensus amongst the American public for a war against Iran? I think he subscribes to what Herman Goring said at the Nuremberg trials when he was asked how you build up public support for these kinds of wars, these wars of invasion, these wars of conquest, these genocides. And essentially, you demonize the other side. And anyone who stands up, you demonize the enemy, the adversary, the other. And anyone who stands up and says this is not right, you demonize them

even further. You vilify them even further and call them unpatriotic and treasonous. And I think that that's essentially what will be done here. We have had 40 plus years in the United States of complete Iranian hysteria. Iran has proven to be the boogeyman that has stood the test of time throughout my lifetime. The Soviet Union came and then the Russians came back and Al-Qaeda was around for a while and Saddam Hussein, but the one constant has been the Iranians. And so the culture, the conditioning, the sentiment is already here in the United States to set the Iranians up as those that we have to fight against to set up

the Ayatollah and his people as modern day Hitlers. You know, it's a slur and an accusation. We've heard how many times, Judge, right? We could spend the remainder of this show, the next 20 minutes or so, just going on about all the different people and people that have been called Hitler by our country to justify war. So it's the same type of premise that would be used, I think, as well to the past. The American people are really good at not understanding their role in the continuous line of history. And I'm not talking about past ancient history in terms of American history. I'm not talking about the Mexican-American War, the genocide of the Native peoples, the Spanish-American War and the occupation of the Philippines, those types of things.

I'm talking about even the fact that right now, in power, waging these proxy wars in Ukraine, waging this genocide in Israel, setting us up for a war with China, are the very same people who ran the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Libya, Syria, Somalia. These are all the same people. And the American people are able to put what's happening now into a different box than events that occurred in the same generation run by the same people. So unfortunately, I mean, that's got to do with the way the empire works, with the way the military industrial complex controls our media, with our education system, which you pointed out so correctly, Judge,

how many Americans have ever heard of Smedley Butler? But of course, they all know David Petraeus, right? Of course. I mean, so that type of thing, I think to make that argument for war with Iran is something that could be easily done, particularly if there are limited American casualties. Look, the United States has essentially been at war with Yemen for the last six, seven months. Largest naval battle in American history since World War II. We have fired hundreds and hundreds, thousands of projectiles, bombs, missiles against Yemenis, killed an untold number, spent well more than a billion dollars just in munitions.

And that number is old. It's been utter failure. Of course, the Israeli port in Eilat, which we are basically protecting, has been forced to shut down, go bankrupt. Only about 25% of the shipping that went through the Red Sea is currently going through the Red Sea now, even with the United States' naval presence there battling the Yemenis for these last six, seven months. And how many Americans know about it? You know, Joe Biden last week said something along the lines that the United States, he's the first American president in however long where the United States has not been at war.

Meanwhile, that's occurring in the Red Sea, let alone all the other engagements Americans found themselves in throughout the world in the Biden presidency. You know, Cost of War Project at Brown University just put out their annual review of the United States' wars in the world. And they found that during the Biden presidency, United States ground forces have been engaged in combat in nine separate countries just during the Biden presidency, and that there have been airstrikes in five separate countries by U.S. forces during the Biden administration. And that does not include things such as the Ukraine war or the genocide in Gaza. Joe Biden's able to say that we haven't been at war. And, you know, CNN,

the Times don't say that. The president even knows that. Wow. Breaking news is that the Israelis have just fired missiles at a location in Beirut where they claim resides or works the Hezbollah commander, who they say was responsible for killing Arabs in the Golan Heights. I mean, you can't make this up. The Golan Heights is not a part of Israel, except in the mind of Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump. Israel occupies the people that live there are Arabs. There were 16 Arab boys that were killed playing soccer. And somehow this is the fault of the Arabs in his blood. This is crazy. Yeah. And I'll correct you, Judge, because it's also Joe Biden, his administration that recognizes Israeli control of the Golan Heights. Trump administration recognized,

allowed the Israelis to annex the Golan Heights, a war crime. And the Joe Biden administration, when they came into power, they could have done something about it and they chose to do nothing about it. Well, by the time I checked, the American president can't change international law. Though many of them wish that they could. Do you expect false flags?

Do you expect the CIA to walk into the Oval Office and say, ah, the Iranians have a nuclear weapon. We've got to do something about it immediately. Or American troops as a tripwire somewhere in the Middle East. If that wasn't the case, then these people wouldn't be doing their jobs, Judge, not at least in the sense of how these jobs are supposed to be done in historical context. I mean, the best evidence for false flags are all the previous false flags that have occurred. And this is something we don't like to think about. We don't like to think that our generation is possible for these things. We don't like to think that our current leadership is capable of what past

leadership has done, that somehow we were removed again from that continuous line of history. But it's been in our lifetime, it's been in this century that we've seen numerous false flags, chief among them, the one that killed more than a million Iraqis, completely destabilized the region, blew life into Al-Qaeda when there was basically none, killed a bunch of my friends, was the Iraq war. And with regards to false flags, whether it be we talk about this attempted assassination of Donald Trump or whether it be, say, this this rocket attack on this Druze town in the Golan Heights that kills, what, 16 boys playing soccer. There's not the evidence backing up that these types of things occur and then if you want to stick on the Golan Heights why this could be a false flag I mean and very also too it could have been an errant rocket it could have been a misfired

iron dome rocket I doubt very much the uh Hezbollah fired this rocket intentionally at a soccer field when they've never done anything like that. And if they were going to do something like that, why would they attack a Druze community when there are Israeli Jewish settlements they can attack? But again, they haven't even done that. So again, the evidence shows that that's not the case. What's likely is the case is a false flag or possibly an accident that is then utilized to gin up a reason for a war, a cause of spell. And, you know, I mean, and you just have to look at what Israel has done the last this last year in Gaza. Look what it's done the last 75 years in Palestine. I mean, just look at yesterday in the Israeli Knesset.

You had Israeli parliamentarians arguing that Israeli soldiers have the right. They have the right to rape Palestinian prisoners. You had multiple Israeli members of parliament making that case yesterday in their parliament, in the Knesset. And so this idea that somehow this couldn't be a false flag is completely belied, completely undone by what Israel has done continually, as well as what the United States has done in terms of whether they are false flags that are committed directly, or they're just aberrations of the truth. Hmm. Isn't the IDF, doesn't it recognize that it has failed to defeat Hamas? Isn't it physically and emotionally exhausted? Isn't it utterly unprepared to engage in the type of massive mobilization necessary to take on Hezbollah?

And doesn't Bibi Netanyahu recognize this? I think you're seeing within the Israeli army and in Israel in a greater level an exhaustion. Israel's economy is really bleeding out, is really struggling. Tens of thousands of businesses have closed. Investment in the country has dried up. Investment within the country has fled abroad. You have these reports of many, many thousands of people leaving Israel, never coming back. As we spoke before, the port in Eilat is closed. No chance of opening that up anytime soon. And I mean, on and on, all the examples of how Israel's economy is really, really crashing right now alongside of an army that is exhausted in its efforts in its genocide.

It's being successful in that genocide, slowly but surely, but it's exhausting itself. And it's also, too, achieving a political solution is not there. So regardless of how many Palestinians you kill, you are still burdened with the fact that it does not change the political situation and you still have this occupation for which there will be great and serious security concerns for Israel for as long as this occupation endures. So that's what it's confronted with. To Israel's credit, it does have a large cadre of, for lack of a better term, psychopaths within its population who have been conditioned for generations to believe for both religious and nationalist reasons, the need for these types

of ethnic cleansing, the need to expand greater Israel. So the Israeli army itself on a macro level may be being exhausted by its efforts in Gaza, but on individual levels, they certainly have enough people to keep showing up who are more than happy to gun down Palestinians because they believe it's what God wants them to do. It's because of some type of supremacy they have, or it's because they just have been grew up in a culture of violence and hate, that for them, this is reaching the potential that they always knew they could achieve, right? They are really, as individuals, yearning to be everything their society wants them to be by taking part in an ethnic cleansing, by taking part in a genocide. In their perverted minds, they see this as defense, right? I mean, so that is what kind of counterbalances

that type of exhaustion of the Israeli economy and Israeli military. But then that conflict arrives in the politics of Israel, where you're seeing this friction, this chaos start to really build up and be shown where there is great opposition to Netanyahu, great opposition to the government, but also to opposition within the government from its right wing who says we're not doing enough. Right. So all that conflict, you know, leads you to a point where how is this going to be sustainable? And I think that's why you come back to this thing we've been talking about for, you know, since it started back in October, this idea of expanding the war in Gaza into Lebanon or into the West Bank or somehow to allow for a permanent emergency or a near permanent emergency for Israel that undercuts

any political efforts to remove Netanyahu from power and keeps this governing coalition in place. And if you're able to do that, if you're able to have some type of war that dwarfs all these other concerns, then that, of course, allows you to remain afloat. And I think that's what the hope is, if you want to call that strategy that they have, hope as well, too. And this was another thing, getting back to Netanyahu going to DC last week was ensuring that within fortress Israel, uh, because that's essentially what it has become and will be within fortress Israel. You will still have the support of the American empire and that's all that matters. So for the Israelis, as long as they have the United States backing, particularly the backing of the American treasury, that's all they care about and the rest of the world can go to hell. And that falls in line then with their own

ideologies, whether it be national, supremacist, or religious ideologies, this idea of us against the world, well, that fits right in with their narrative. Here's Netanyahu at his worst last week, showing an utter contempt for the freedom of speech of the protesters outside the building. Some strong language in this, but I think you've probably heard it. For all we know, Iran is funding the anti-Israel protests that are going on right now outside this building. Not that many, but they're there and throughout the city. Well, I have a message for these protesters. When the tyrants of Tehran, who hang gays from cranes and murder women for not covering

their hair, are praising, promoting, and funding you, you have officially become Iran's useful idiots. All those people cheering were cheering against the concept of the freedom of speech. And the people cheering were the ones who took an oath to preserve, protect, and defend the First Amendment, the essence of which is the freedom of speech. President Erdogan over the weekend made a very interesting statement in which he said the Turks may need to enter Israel. How do you interpret that? Well, first, Judge, with regards to Netanyahu and freedom of speech, I'll just say briefly

for those who took part in the protests and all the other protests is that it has an effect. Look, if that protest outside the Capitol didn't bother them, didn't get under their skin at a minimum, as well as show a potential political problem, he wouldn't have referenced it. He would have just ignored it. So those protests are having an effect if for nothing else other than juxtapose what you just so correctly said, Judge, was the American Congress, Congress's preference for a foreign leader over our own constitution. With Erdogan, yes, certainly this is a big topic right now. What is Erdogan going to do? I think as most people say, most people know he tends to run at the mouth and that he sometimes is full of bluster and there's going to be no commitment to it.

But at what point does he start committing to it? And this idea of at one point, will the Turkish army, which is the largest army in Europe, largest army in the region, get involved is something that we all have to consider and start taking more seriously. And I think that the issue here is two. One, the two things that keep the Turks out, as well as other nations out, of what Israel is doing. One is the backing of the American empire, the backing of the US. But as the United States empire continues to decline, as it both overextends itself and exhausts itself and bankrupts itself, but also shows its incompetence and effectiveness. Certainly our performance in the Red Sea is doing nothing but encouraging any potential adversaries. As that continues, you also have the issue

that nations are understanding is that, look, the only thing that's really keeping us, along with the Americans, from getting involved, from stopping Israel from what it is doing, besides the fact that most of these governments themselves are corrupt and they're all part of this big racket anyway, but is the fact that Israel has nuclear weapons. And so I think when Erdogan looks at this and he says, I can go to war against Israel, but that means I risk losing Ankara to a nuclear bomb. Well, how does he remedy that? He gets a nuclear weapon himself, gets nuclear parity. And I think that that is one of the things that comes out of this crisis.

This episode in history is five years from now. You see a vastly changed nuclear landscape in the Middle East. Is Erdogan full of bluster or will he really put troops on the ground to reduce the slaughter in Gaza? I think what would be likely is potentially the introduction of troops into Lebanon, moving southwards to ensure that any Israeli incursion in Lebanon does not go farther than the Latani River in the south. So basically as a tripwire, if you will, but as some type of show of force or some type of buffer to get the Israelis to back off from any reenactment of their invasion and occupation of Lebanon 40 years ago. I think there's a point where Erdogan sees himself and the opportunity that this presents. Sisi, MBS, MBZ, the Ayatollah

of Iran, they don't have the opportunity he has in this moment to be the next Saladin in terms of uniting the Muslims against the invaders. So he has an opportunity here, peculiar to a few different things regarding Turkey, that allows him, I think, to take this opportunity for his own political aggrandizement, his own historical significance to do so. So at what point does the reality of the circumstances, the opportunity, catch up with the bluster? And he realizes that this is a good gamble for me personally, but also too, he is the leader of a people who are crying out for action, who, like us, have been watching for months now this genocide. It just just get worse and worse. Endure, endure the suffering. Just just just continue with nothing being done.

And so there are a number of reasons why, yeah, we can dismiss it as the usual Erdogan bluster. But also, too, there are some factors here that make you think, you know what? He might see this as an opportunity to get himself to play chicken with the Israelis, not intending to go to war with them, but at least play chicken with them in a way that improves his own position, but actually does force the Israelis to back off. Matt, how a pleasure, my friend, no matter what we're talking about. Thank you for your, you're like Ritter with your encyclopedic knowledge of all this stuff. It's a pleasure to listen to you. Thank you so much. We'll look forward to seeing you again next week.

Thanks, George. That's a very high compliment. I appreciate that. I know you share the same view of Ritter that I do, and that's why I use it, sparingly, but use it. Thank you. All the best. Coming up at three o'clock this afternoon Eastern, Lieutenant Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski, Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. I'm out.