Judging Freedom - Matt Hoh : The Hidden Costs of Trump’s War

Episode Date: July 28, 2026

Matt Hoh : The Hidden Costs of Trump’s WarSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Undeclared wars are commonplace. Pragically, our government engages in preemptive war, otherwise known as aggression with no complaints from the American people. Sadly, we have become accustomed to living with the illegitimate use of force by government. To develop a truly free society, the issue of initiating force must be understood and rejected. What if sometimes to love your country you had to alter or abolish the government? Jefferson was right? What if that government is best, which governs least? What if it is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong? What if it is better to perish fighting for freedom than to

live as a slave? What if freedom's greatest hour of danger is now? Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Tuesday, July 28, 2006. Matt Ho will be with us in just a moment on the hidden costs of Trump's war. But first this. You know, just a few years ago, if you told someone you were stocking up on emergency food, they would have called you a tinfoil hat conspiracy theorist. Not anymore.

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calories a day. Their food lasts up to 25 years without refrigeration, and it contains no GMOs or artificial colors or flavors. With this $250 discount, it's a no-brainer. So go to preparewiththejudge.com to get your emergency kit today. That's preparewiththejudge.com. Matt, welcome here, my dear friend. What do you think prompted President Trump to back down over the weekend from the promise he had made a few days earlier?

to visit the gates of hell, using his phrase, on the Iranian people. Well, Judge, thanks for having it back on. And I think part of it is the reality that the U.S. military is exhausted. It's overextended. It's superficial. We've talked about this for years now. And the, I think, clear inevitability of Iran demonstrating a dominance with its missiles and drones over the Arab states, over American facilities, against American ships, and eventually against Israel, was going to become a reality if this war continued for weeks or maybe even months. We know that by the time the United States requested a ceasefire in early April, we had expended roughly half of our defensive missiles, our patriots and our Thads.

So how much longer could we have gone on for? But then there is the other side, the economic side of this, judge, where you have that cushion that existed in the spring in terms of oil inventories, both government and commercial, have been used up as well as the pressures on economies from supply shortages, whether that be oil, gas, refined products, or other byproducts of oil and gas, like fertilizer, aluminum, you know, other such things. So I think those two pressures were what made the United States have to stop the war again. Now, we'll see if they pick it back up and maybe this will be, I think this will likely be how it goes to the next several months, a back and forth, start and stop.

But, you know, those two realities, right, low American, an exhausted American military, and though oil and gas inventories and that economic cliff that we're advancing upon are both two things that no amount of rhetoric, no amount of spin, no amount of narrative can actually change. How low are American military supplies? Can it be characterized? Now, don't let me put words in your mouth, Matt, as dangerously low. I think dangerously low is irresponsibly, recklessly low, dangerously low, judge, absolutely. This is a position that the United States should never have gotten itself into. This is a complete, in a principled U.S. military, you would have seen generals and admirals resign over this issue, over the fact that the United States was extending itself in this way, leaving itself vulnerable against other adversaries, putting a real dent in its ability to carry out operations in the future.

But we don't have a principled American military, right? All these generals and admirals, they came of age through the illegal criminal, you know, counterproductive wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. So what should we expect from them? But this idea that this is dangerous, though. And it's not the munitions shortages, Judge. I think it's other things as well. There is a lot made about the pushing of more aircraft,

whether it be F-35s and F-16s to the Middle East or. refueling aircraft. And the thought behind that was, well, this is signaling that's going to be a major escalation. And that may have been true that they were preparing to launch a larger campaign against Iran. But I think at least as likely is the idea that they had to send more of these aircraft to the Middle East because our aircraft over there were breaking down. Remember, before this war started, half of our aircraft don't work on any given day, right? Half of our aircraft, because of me. Why is that? Forgive me, Francis, we're up to you. Why is it? We're going to do a whole lot of code here, Judge, the most expensive jets known to man. Why half of them not work?

Because they're not made. Judge, these aircraft aren't made to protect the United States. They're made to ensure the profits of Lockheed Martin and Bowen and Geno Dynamics and others, right? This is where you see the real insidious nature of the military industrial complex shine through. Right? It's just not that the military industrial complex. complex pushes the United States into wars, demands wars so that you could have greater defense budgets, right? I mean, it's just not, you know, that threat to liberty, as James Madison would have described the military industrial complex. But it's also this reality that it's not fielding the best equipment. It's not providing the best planes and ships and tanks to America's

military. It is trying to make as much profit. So while the military industrial complex is pushing for war, right? Pushing for these endless wars. You also have the reality that they're producing incredibly poor, ill-designed, poorly functioning, incredibly difficult to maintain, et cetera, equipment, because that's what also helps make them a lot more money. I mean, so you can have a case with the F-35 where the F-35, the engine in the F-35, that contract that is specific to the current engine in the F-35 goes back 20 years. Lockheed Martin and its subcontractors still have not delivered on that 20-year-old contract in terms of providing an engine that meets that contract specifications.

So if you're a weapons company, you have this type of largesse, right? You are riding, as we say in the Marine Corps, the gravy train with biscuit wheels, right? If you're able to enter in a contract with the U.S. government where they're going to give you hundreds of billions of dollars, trillions of dollars for weapons that don't work and then let you fix them yourselves and never fix them, just continually get more contracts to fix the things that were never built correctly to begin with. I mean, this is just a grift that, you know, Dwight Eisenhower, when he warmed of the military industrial complex, going back 70 years now, more than 70 years, he had, or about 70 years, 1961, he had no, I think, conception of how bad it would actually get.

Did Pete Hegseth materially mislead to or lie to the Senate when he said last week, we have all the military equipment we need? Yeah, obviously, Judge, obviously did. And I'm sure he won't be held to account. They never seem to be held to account for these types of things. But I'm sure they will justify his statements if he's ever tried to be held to account that he was speaking at that moment and time. And on that day, they had X amount of weapons. And sure, they could carry out the missions that day.

But if you're talking about two weeks from now, a month from now, six weeks from now, different story. But Secretary Higseth was answering in that moment. You know, so this is the usual falsity, right? This is the usual farce we see with so many of our elected officials, just the way they just use duplicitous, disingenuous, deliberately misleading language to continue their narrative. And as we've seen from this administration, worse than any other administration, which is hard to state, they are just solely concerned about the narrative. They're solely concerned about saying how things are going rather than how things actually are going. And I think that's why we've been able to see this war for the last five months, continue as it has, where it just goes back and forth and there seems to be no strategy because there is no strategy.

The strategy is just to stick to the narrative and try and get some political benefit out of this, as well as ensure that your friends are enriched, right? I mean, so this whole thing, I just talking about the graph, and the corruption in the military industrial complex, you know, this war here is just what will we expect from an empire with a military industrial complex like this, bribed by an Israel lobby. How could we not have a war that looks and acts like this one does? Here's President Trump yesterday aboard Air Force One. I don't know which Air Force One, but one of the Air Force ones.

We needn't get into that controversy. basically saying, well, it's all Biden's fault. He gave away too much. But we have plenty. If Pete Hegseth was lying, then Donald Trump was lying in this. Watch this. It's a little over a minute long. Chris, number eight.

Are you concerned about if we get stockpiles if there is a robbing conflict? We have plenty. We have a lot of ammunition. Different types. You know, Biden gave a lot to Ukraine. And so we're building that up. But we have a lot. We have a lot of the mid-level stuff, too. I mean, more than we could ever use, no matter what. But we have a lot. I'd like to have more, to be honest, but so much was given to

Ukraine by Biden. When I left, the cupboards were full. When I came here with Obama, he didn't buy ammunition. We had very little, and I got it built. Now, as soon as I left, they gave a lot of it to Ukraine. I mean, I mean, numbers that nobody's ever seen before. So we're building it very rapidly. Plants are being built. A lot of equipment's being built. The Patriots in particular are being built. That system is going up. We have a lot. Every one of our contractors is building four to five plants right now. And we're in very good shape. But for some of the more sophisticated stuff, We'd certainly like that more. Biden gave a lot of it away.

More than we could ever use, no matter what. Scott Ritter told me just about two hours ago, he doesn't expect this to happen. But if the Chinese invaded, Chinese government invaded Taiwan, we would be incapable of defending it. That's not Ritter's words. He's quoting the Admiral in charge of the Pacific. Right. Now, I think that's very clear. And fortunately, we don't have any enemies.

are adversaries who aren't going to attack us. This should be a great lesson point for all the defenders of the empire, all the defenders of the one trillion dollar defense budget. If at this time when the United States is so vulnerable, when we're so overextended, why aren't our adversaries attacking us then? Right. I mean, so that's one thing I think we can point out here in this moment is, look, we're very fortunate that we actually don't have enemies who are going to attack us when everybody in the world knows. knows how overextended, how exhausted, how superficial our military is. You know, I mean, again, it's just not the munitions, Judge.

Look at the fact that we only have two aircraft carriers there. We have 11 total aircraft carriers. And still, we can only have two aircraft carriers at one time conducting operations because the rest of them are back in the yards getting maintenance done. Right. I mean, so this is something that it crosses across all the lines of, you know, of the American military. He brought up Ukraine.

One of the things interesting about Ukraine, when the United States provided drones to Ukraine, the Ukrainians said, stop sending these to us because they're worthless. They're not any good. We'll build their own. And we've seen the Ukrainians do that, where they have produced so many of their drones now,

where the Europeans are producing and what have you. But this, you know, this corruption, this rot of the military industrial complex, It is incredibly dangerous because the military industrial complex pushes us into these wars, but then the equipment that's supposed to be provided to the military to win these wars is garbage. It's built again not to protect the United States, not to achieve victory over enemies, but to make profits for the weapon companies. So it simply doesn't work that well.

Or they require incredible amounts of maintenance for it to operate. or they just are so complex that it takes weeks and weeks or months and months or years to build these various weapon systems and their munitions. But I will give Donald Trump credit with one thing he did say. When he did come into office in 2017, there was an ammunition shortage in the U.S. military. In 2015, 2016, the United States was running out of bombs fighting the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. So that should have been an indicator, and it was,

no one really paid attention to it, but that should have been a really bright, shining light flashing at that point that this is what the military industrial complex has gotten you. It's gotten you an American military that is running out of bombs fighting the Islamic State and their pickup trucks. So what do you think is going to be possible if we actually fight an adversary, a nation state, if we were to fight Iran or Russia or God forbid China, what do you think the results are going to look like?

And so Scott's entirely right. But I think more to Scott's point probably is that even four months ago, the United States couldn't have fought China. On February 27th, before this war began, the United States couldn't have fought China. If we had to sue for peace, if we had to ask for a ceasefire at the beginning of April, 40 days into a war with Iran, how long will we have lasted against China? A week? Two weeks? I want to interrupt our conversation for just a minute to show a photo of a history-making event,

which is a certain party showing up in the Oval Office in a business suit for the first time. It may not look like him, but that is Vladimir Zelensky standing next to Donald Trump as the two of them beam. You recall what happened the last time he was in the Oval Office, where among other things, they berated him for his choice of clothing. I don't know what kind of a suit this is. I can't tell if he has a necktie on, but at least it's not that grungy t-shirt or sweatshirt that he usually is seen wearing. Yeah.

I mean, he's there, I guess, to lobby the president and also to attend Senator Graham's funeral. Well, he's also speaking to the Senate today, Judge. Wow. And the Senate is voting today on, what's being called. I think they actually changed the name, the Lindsay Graham Act, which will be the imposition of tariffs on anyone buying Russian oil and gas, 100% tariffs. And oil and gas, you know, after four plus years of this war, you would think the Russians

weren't selling oil and gas to anybody. But as we know, they've been selling, you know, shiploads of it as much as they can to China and India. And that's along with Turkey. That's the biggest, buyers of Russian oil. But Russian gas, Judge, the biggest buyer of Russian gas is not China. It's not India. It's not Turkey. It's the EU. So these 100% tariffs, if they actually, they don't have carve-outs, if they don't have exemptions, which they don't have waivers, which they might for some of the European countries. But this is going to hit those European countries hard. And additionally, you have other issues where Europe is at, I believe it's a historically low gas inventory they have as summer ends and we begin the fall. And you just had the Qataris announcing today that they won't deliver

their LNG until the end of September. They're declaring force Mager and all their contracts from here into the end of September. So you're having one fifth of the world's LNG still unavailable on the market to the end of September. The Americans are introducing these tariffs. on rushing gas. And so, you know, where we're at here, Judge, in terms of what may come in not just the possibilities of a worldwide war, which we've spoken about before, the danger that is, how this could be, you know, cataclysmic, but also, too, even if the bombs and missiles don't fly, you're dealing with an economic reality here for the world that could be crippling. You know, So you'd have an issue with the European and struggling to heat their homes this year.

You'd have an issue with really populous nations like Pakistan and Bangladesh and others that can't afford to import gas. As well then, of course, how it's going to affect Americans here. If people think that we're somehow immune to gas prices, natural gas price in the U.S., I'll remind people that 43% of our power plants use natural gas in the U.S. So the consequences of these decisions and what's being done here. And I think I would say, Judge, what I've been thinking about a lot is this idea that where's the resolution? If there's no World War II style victory able to any of the belligerents in these wars, how do they end? And then if the only option then is to continue to do things like this, particularly with economic warfare, to immisorate, trying to emiserate the other side while you're emiserating your own.

My God, where does that take us to? What are the hidden costs of war with which I know you're familiar? Well, certainly, you know, and speaking about the participant said for the innocence for civilians who are caught up on it, it's three, four, five told, you know, five times, you know, what I'm about to talk about. They get almost no attention. They get no support. They have very little resources. They're not spoken about.

But for veterans of war, certainly you have a huge toll, whether it be in terms of coming home, sick with the toxic residues of war. And those toxic residues are physical. They're mental. They're spiritual. Physically, we have seen in wars in the modern era, going back through the 60s, a poisoning, an actual poisoning of our soldiers when they go to war. So whether it was in Vietnam with Agent Orange, in the first Gulf War, the first Iraq war with Gulf War disease, and certainly what we saw with our veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan getting sick with GI issues, respiratory issues, cancer issues, because of the toxic nature

of the battle zone, of the war. And again, can you imagine our soldiers and Marines go there for seven months or 12 months or 15 months of the time, they come home, they're coming back with these respiratory or GI issues or cancers. What you can you imagine happens to the Afghans and the Iraqis who were there the whole time. But then you also have other types of visible wounds, such as post-traumatic stress disorder, moral or injury, traumatic brain injury. One of the things about these wars, Judge, is that we had terrific body armor. We had terrific vehicle armor. It was always being upgraded. We had medical care where if we could get an injured Marine or soldier to the hospital within an hour, they were almost always going to survive. I can tell you from one of my deployments,

I can recall all of maybe two or three Marines or soldiers dying after they had gotten in the hospital. If we could get them in the hospital within what we call the golden hour, 60 minutes they survived. The reality is that you had Marines and soldiers surviving things that in previous wars, they wouldn't have survived. So in addition to the post-traumatic stress disorder and the moral injury, which has psychological and spiritual consequences and results in mass amounts of suicides, as well as depression, alcoholism, domestic abuse, you know, other secondary issues, you have traumatic brain injuries because when we were in our vehicles and we were hit by an improvised explosive device, a bomb, a roadside bomb, that in any previous war would have killed us,

Well, a lot of times we just walked away from it. But the problem is that explosive blast passes through your head, and it wrecks your brain, rattles your brain around inside your skull. And that causes microscopic tears that's developing your brain. And then years later, after the war, you realize you have a traumatic brain injury because you now have cognitive difficulties. You now have debilitating migraines. You now can't control your mood. You can't control your temper. you're a host of other disabilities,

dysfunction, problems. And the scale of these traumatic brain injuries for our soldiers and Marines and airmen and sailors of these wars is incredible. The VA estimates that one-fifth of veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan have a traumatic brain injury.

Judge, there's about 2.7 million of us who were in those wars. That means that the VA number is correct. It's probably low, because that's how they do things. It's probably low, though. You're talking about half million or more American veterans with traumatic brain injuries, which some may just be the occasional headache, but that's in the minimum.

Most of them are debilitating. And so then the effect then, right, just not on that veteran, but on their families, on their coworkers, on their friends, their neighbors, their fellow students, whoever is immense because that just ripples out. And so these invisible wounds are exactly what Plato described as only the dead have seen the end of war. And so with this war, certainly we can't expect anything different. Of course, what I just said is nothing compared to what the civilians go through who are being bombed in Iran, who are being bombed in Lebanon, the innocent people who have been killed, not nearly as many as an Iran or Lebanon, but certainly the scores that have been killed in

the Gulf states, many of them just transit workers, migrant workers. You know, the effects on them are legion, but on American veterans, you know, the effects are enduring and they're just not limited to the veteran, but they absolutely encompass families, friends, communities, and so forth. Do we know the casualty figures for Trump's Iran War, or is the Pentagon like the IDF hiding the actual true numbers of deaths or are they playing with the figures claiming it's three different wars right right i think that's what they're doing judges they're playing with the figures they're trying to keep their political bosses happy if anyone thinks oh no the department of the fence

wouldn't do that they wouldn't dishonor uh you know the men and women who are killed in service yes they will absolutely these are the same men and women who are bombing schools why would they not also forge or fake the data in terms of casualties. So we'll see what eventually final totals are. I think the number of dead is probably somewhat accurate right now just because it'd be so difficult to hide those because of local burials, right? People having funerals, things like that. But it's certainly the number of wounded is probably much higher than the 600 or so that

they say have been wounded so far. And the other way that they can hide this is that. So many of those who are doing this work over the Middle East are contractors. And contractor deaths don't count. And we saw this in the Iraq and Afghan war, Judge, where you had 7,000 American soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. But by the best count we have, over 8,000 contractors were killed. And all those contractors were doing jobs that in any previous war, they would have been wearing a U.S. military uniform. Right.

So the actual number of dead killed, the number of Americans killed in Iraq and Afghan wars, it's not 7,000. It's more like 15,000. And then you want to double or triple that at least if you want to include those who died by suicide since coming home from that war. Wow.

Matt Ho, thank you very much. A most unpleasant topic, but it needs to be explored. I appreciate your intellectual honesty and bravery and candor. All the best, my friend. Thanks, Judge. Sure. Coming up at 3 o'clock, if you're watching us live in 32 minutes on all of this, with this added twist, who would believe the government when it gives out statistics and numbers?

Colonel Karen Koukowski, Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom.