Judging Freedom - Max Blumenthal : Israel Threatens US Press Freedoms

Episode Date: July 22, 2026

Max Blumenthal : Israel Threatens US Press FreedomsSee 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. Fragically, 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 Wednesday, July 22nd, 226, Max Blumenthal joins us now. Max, thank you very much, your second appearance with us this week. How is Israel threatening U.S. press freedom? Well, Israel has been threatening U.S. press freedom for decades through its lobby, which has sought to punish anyone who reports the truth that, for example, Representative Roe Kana just experienced, when he went to the West Bank and experienced settler terror. Representative Roe-Kana showed that Palestinians have been telling the truth,

that settlers are terrorists who assault them and assault anyone who comes to aid them, and that they are being supported by the Israeli military and the Israeli government to the Hilt. Years ago, even just reporting on that would have been much more difficult than it is today. So now you can see it's not just the Israel lobby. I think it's almost impossible to call figures and groups that are based in Israel but pretending to be American or figures who are sponsored directly by the Israeli government influencers to just refer to them as the lobby. They're basically cutouts of this foreign apartheid state.

And they pressured the Trump administration to punish me for my factual reporting from Tehran. was based on nothing but innuendo about my reporting, in which in which I was doing the same kind of reporting as all of these credentialed mainstream reporters who were in Iran at the same time as me to report on the largest funeral in human history, the funeral of Ayatollah al-Alehameh. I was reporting on U.S. and Israeli war crimes from the ground, going to places that I think few, if any, American reporters had gone yet where massacres had been carried out by the U.S., not as bad as the Minab massacre, which the U.S. has refused to take responsibility

for 168 killed, mostly schoolchildren in southern Iran, but still terrible massacres. And I was interviewing officials, academics, people on the street. I came back, had my devices seized, was subjected to a very invasive. of questioning about my sources, methods. They asked whether I was paid to conduct these interviews in Iran, which dovetailed and echoed the bogus innuendo from these Israel-backed figures. And the seizure of two phones from me was absolutely unconstitutional. The DHS justifies that by saying that there's this legal zone of exception at airports, but I don't know where that's been established by courts. And so,

after the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee filed a lawsuit on my behalf. Soon after last week, I got a call from Customs and Border Patrol telling me to come collect my phones. It seems to me like they didn't want to go before a judge. They didn't like the media attention they were getting. And we're not done yet. This case is not moot. We want any copies they took off my phones, any data, any information. We're going to court.

I'm going to have my day in court this month, and I'll be reporting back to you about it and everyone else. The ADC under its new president, Janine Yunis, who is a real advocate for the people, a true free speech warrior, is suing DHS secretary Mark Wayne Mullen for the unconstitutional seizure of my devices. And we might take further actions. But the ultimate point here to your question is that the same forces, that manipulated our demented president into launching this disastrous war on Iran, a disastrous failing war on Iran, were the ones who compelled the Department of Homeland Security or whoever, whichever apparatchik in the national security state to authorize the seizure of

my devices as I returned from my reporting trip to Tehran. and I'll name one of them who is taking personal credit for it. Taking personal credit for calling the Secretary of the Department of State, calling the FBI, and even calling the Treasury Department on me. It's a disfigured plastic surgery victim who is now in Ukraine known as Laura Lumer.

And Laura Lumer... I thought you're going to tell me, Randy. Fine. Well, Randy Fine, you know, may have targeted me, but it seemed like Laura Lumer was essentially a mercenary who was being hired out by some shady and possibly foreign state source to target me. You know, when I look at the kind of breathless screeds, she pumped out specifically targeting me, the kind of terminology she used. And then I go back to January of 2024. This was something I just dredged up and published on Twitter X.

The hours after, I think it was hours after, I interrupted and confronted Secretary of State Tony Blinken over his support for the Gaza genocide and his rupturing of negotiations and his lies about it at his final press conference, from which I was removed. and another reporter Sam Hussein was forcibly removed, I got a direct message from someone expressing support

for my freedom of speech and declaring that the Department of State was out of line and ejecting us and that while they're a Zionist, this was unacceptable. That person, if I can even call them that, was Laura Lumer. So what changed between January 2024 and the present moment? Was it potentially, I don't know, a contract with former Trump chief of staff, Brad Parscal, who now is overseeing the largest meddling in foreign influence operation in American history on behalf of the Israeli Foreign Ministry, paying influencers like Laura Lumer,

$50 million to undermine U.S. negotiations with Iran. Could it be that? Well, why has Laura Lumer suddenly reversed all of her positions against on Russia, where she declared that Ukraine was infested with Nazis and that essentially, Essentially, Russia was defending itself when it invaded Ukraine. Laura Lumer was even a contributor to RT. She's now in Kiev at the pleasure and under the sponsorship of Vladimir Zelenskyy, declaring that, oh, she's had a rethink and Russian propaganda is bad.

I mean, this is just, it just looks like this is a foreign mercenary who is doing the bidding of clients who may even be foreign states to attack. smear and defame anyone who gets in their way. And that target was placed on my back, not just by her, but by another Israeli entity called Canary Mission. And the Trump administration, again, it responds to anything that Israel wants it to do. Israel controls its entire policy toward the region. Israel is essentially running this war in which American taxpayers are subsidizing a war for Israel and American service members are dying for Israel. And the Israelis are sitting back and simply watching and waiting for the next phase.

Have you ever communicated with her? Well, I didn't respond to her direct message, but she sent me an unsolicited direct message expressing personal support for my personal freedom of speech. And then recently, this is in January 2024, and then recently has called for U.S. Marshals to haul me off a flight for my reporting, for the Treasury Secretary to investigate my finances. I went on my own dime, and for the FBI to investigate me

and raid my home at 5 a.m. in a heavily armed raid, basically calling for me to be killed. And she called for the U.S. military to attack the entire funeral, killing millions of people, presumably including me and every other reporter there. She's a lunatic. Well, you can call this person a lunatic,

but this is someone who has ridden on Air Force One, with Donald Trump and has gotten Donald Trump to fire numerous people in the Trump administration, including the top NSC expert on Iran, Nate Swanson, who warned that the Strait of Hormuz would be closed if the U.S. attacked Iran. What is her relationship to Trump, Max? Bill Maher said she's Donald Trump's paramour, and she's now suing him. They were definitely pretty close, but I don't know if there is close now. Wow.

But why would Ukraine want this individual in their country? Someone who many Americans see as a lunatic, I would say most people who are familiar with them, someone who has recently celebrated a mass shooting at a mosque, someone who recently called for the slaughter of millions of Muslims for simply attending the Ayatollah's funeral in Tehran, someone who has lusted for genocide in Gaza, a virulently racist Ku Klux, Karen. Why would Ukraine want someone like that in their country to be sort of showcasing the greatness of Kiev? Why would Zelensky personally post a message on X welcoming this genocidal figure?

because they consider them close to Donald Trump and they are trying to keep Donald Trump and MAGA on their side and that's how they perceive Laura Lumer. That's why they're having her there. So we have to recognize that, yes, an actual former mental asylum patient is also a channel to Donald Trump who is not exactly a model of sobriety or something. sanity himself. I did not know of her attacks on you when we agreed to discuss Israel threatens U.S. press freedoms.

Before I jump to another subject, is she a former a mental patient? According to, if you ask Grock, the AI chatbot of X, whether her father had her interned in a mental asylum, it will tell you yes. that is something that I don't even know if she, if they dispute it. So it's not just glib talk by me, but at the same time, you know, maybe you could say unconfirmed, but it sort of tracks with the behavior of someone who would celebrate a mass shooting at an American mosque, someone who has been filmed on video sexually harassing young males who has been accused of harassment even by their own former campaign manager,

Milo Yanopoulos during a failed run for office in Florida. Someone who has a very sordid track record has managed to get this close to Donald Trump, and I think that's a real commentary on how insane and dangerous this administration. administration is. How interesting is it that when the two most recent soldiers were killed, they were killed in Jordan and President Trump blamed Jordan for not protecting them? Yeah. What's Jordan going to do?

Most Jordanians are Palestinian and they're not very happy about having U.S. bases in the region in their country. There's basically no popular support. we're having these bases in the country because everyone in Jordan or most people in Jordan know, those bases are just there to provide strategic depth for Israel, to protect Israel. And one of the bases was secret until it was attacked by a drone from Iraq in 2024, I believe, or 2023, Tower, sorry, 24, Tower 22. This was a secret U.S. military base on the Jordanian side of the Syrian border.

that has also been used, was also used to support infiltration and regime change in Syria. It is now totally evacuated after being attacked again by Iran directly, as is the Muawfi Salty base, which is the site of three, now three U.S. soldiers who were killed defending Israel from that base. And I think King Hussein Air Base, it's called. has been evacuated as well. So there's basically a total evacuation taking place in Jordan. The U.S. cannot put tankers, like the in-air refueling tankers at these bases.

Sorry, this is the King Faisal Air Base in Jordan, has been totally evacuated. So there are U.S. Black Hawk helicopters there. I think some of them may have been hit. There were F-15s there. You know, you look on, you know, satellite images, there's nothing there now. An even larger base that was critical to U.S. power projection in the region where most U.S. drone attacks on Iran emanated from historically and recently, the Al-Udeid air base in Qatar is totally evacuated. The Fifth Fleet base in Bahrain seems to be mostly evacuated. and much of it is damaged.

The Ali al-Salem base in Kuwait is heavily damaged and has been, as far as I know, partially evacuated. So the campaign of debasification by Iran is proceeding apace, and the U.S. is having to relocate much of its in-air refueling tankers and everything it needs to maintain this war on Iran inside the militarized frontiers of apartheid Israel. There's so much U.S. military air traffic in Israel that the Israeli government has said that the U.S. can't park its tankers at Ben-Gurion International Airport because it's interfering with civilian flights. So this is, I mean, we're not just seeing a black eye to U.S. Empire being dealt here as Trump restarts a war for reasons that most Americans don't even understand. This is like a serious body blow. This is a giant hit to the solar.

of U.S. Empire, and it's unclear how these bases will ever be reestablished under these circumstances. What are the Houthis preparing to do? The Houthis, as they're known, or Ansarala, which I consider to be the real government of Yemen because they control most of its territory. They control the biggest city, Sana'a. The officially recognized government exists out of a hotel room in Riyadh. Ansarala is currently under Saudi Saudi.

siege and it's an aerial siege. When I was in Tehran, I met with members of the Ansarala delegation, high-level former and current government officials, and they had flown there under serious threat to their own lives due to the Saudi siege. When they left, according to one member of that delegation, he told me that there were drones overhead, lethal, hostile drones, which could have been MQ-9s. They flew out on Mahan Air, which is an Iranian airline, and they phoned their wives to tell them that this could be their final flight, but that they were doing this in their fight for Yemen's sovereignty. They arrived safely in Tehran, and then they returned also under threat with the Saudis threatening to attack the airplane, again, including its civilian crew, its civilian, you know,

stewardesses and pilots. They managed to land, but this was an act of war, a hostile act of war. And I think there may have been attacks preempting the landing on the airfield. Saudi Arabia has been preparing war on Yemen, and Yemen will respond. Yemen is now announcing it will respond by placing a siege on Saudi Arabian shipping, on Saudi shipping. And if they do that through the Bab al-Mendab, Saudi ship, it will be very, very difficult for Saudi Arabia to get its oil out to its main customers who are located in Asia. And they'll have to use probably smaller ships and circle all the way around the horn of Africa get their oil out. So this would be a massive blow to the Saudi economy. And we already saw

the U.S. fail at a different point in this conflict to dislodge Ansor Allah from. power in Sana'a to really do anything to weaken Ansar Allah. Now the U.S., according to an official who just spoke to the Washington Post, is facing an unparalleled or unprecedented munitions crisis, where it's focused so many munitions on Iran that it may not even be able to hit Yemen with as much firepower. And what will they hit anyway? The IRGC has already demonstrated that you don't need to do a lot to enforce blockade of the Strait of Hormuz.

And the, and Serala will show the same with the Bab al-Mandab, and this will be devastating to the global economy. But it's where things are headed as Saudi Arabia continues this aggressive siege of Yemen and these acts of war. What did Trump agree to provide to Saudi Arabia? The announcement was made today by way of some nuclear facility or nuclear construction. I don't think that's a bomb, but it's something nuclear and new to Saudi Arabia. Yeah, I haven't followed this very much. I've just seen the reaction from some certain commentators

who don't seem to have any problem with Israel having an actual nuclear program. But seeing it now, it's allowing the U.S. to transfer nuclear material to Saudi Arabia. and it's a new deal that allows Saudi to, Saudi Arabia to enrich uranium. Trump is obviously displaying a massive amount of hypocrisy here by allowing Saudi Arabia a far less democratic country than Iran, which sponsored the 9-11 attacks on the United States to enrich uranium while announcing a war on Iran to steal its so-called nuclear dust. Trump met yesterday with the president of Lebanon. The president of Lebanon told Trump he wants all foreign powers out of Lebanon. What do you think Trump's response was? What was that?

I don't know. Trump may have said yes, not even realizing the size of the area that the IDF controls. You're referring to the meeting between Lebanese president Joseph Aoun and Donald Trump, right? Correct. All right. Well, this is another pathetic spectacle in which the Lebanese president is coutowing to a government which is effectively operating as a vehicle for Israeli influence. And what he's doing is continuing to set the stage for civil war. in which the U.S. aims to pit a Lebanese armed forces that has no desire to do this against Hezbollah, which is the only force defending Lebanon's sovereignty against Israel.

And Joseph Aoun has now been touted by Trump's buffoonish new counterterrorism director, the guy who undermined Joe Kent and then replaced him. Sebastian Gorka is referring to him as a former student, someone who he tutored on counterterrorism. terrorism, which will tell you a thing or two about Owens' fitness for government. Owens' meeting has been set up by the network of a billionaire in Lebanon named Antun Sanawi, who is the man behind the curtain of this entire scandalous episode in which Lebanon has signed a declaration of surrender before Israel and MOU. Sanawi happens to be the boyfriend of Morgan Ortegas, who is still very influential.

She is a former Lebanese Christian who converted to Judaism and was working under Mike Waltz at the United Nations. And during that time, she advised and urged the U.S. and Israel to carry out what would have been a historically criminal massacre to kill everyone and bomb the stadium where Hassan Nasrallah, the late General Secretary of Hezbollah's funeral, was held. That should tell you something about the bloodthirstiness of this individual. Sanawi is a right-wing warlord in Lebanon who runs his own private militia, which has carried out vigilante attacks around Beirut.

He runs his own media network, and they're pushing this whole meeting between Aoun and Trump to support the MOU Declaration of Surrender and to push Lebanon closer to civil war. Here's Trump and President Aoun yesterday where Trump talks about speaking with Hezbollah. Are you still speaking with Hezbollah? You said in previous interviews that you're speaking with Hezbollah. I would speak to Hezbollah, yeah. I speak to everybody. I'll speak to people that a lot of people think I shouldn't be speaking to, and things work out. I would say this, if the president wanted me to speak to Hezbollah,

You know, he's lived with Hezbollah for a long time. And if the president wanted me to speak to Hezbollah, I would. I wouldn't. What is Aon's relationship to Hezbollah? Well, his objective is to not only destroy them, but to displace and essentially denationalize their entire, their constituency, which encompasses most or much of the Shia public of Lebanon. It's a very sectarian agenda.

He came to the presidency, not through any real election and through a system that doesn't represent fairly the actual sectarian populations of Lebanon. And his prime minister, Noaf Salam, was also simply appointed, has no party and no constituency, and they cannot defeat Hezbollah. That's politically. Hasbola, you know, it operates like the, IRA and Sinn Féin. It has a political wing and it has a military wing. And its political wing holds the largest number of seats in parliament, much larger than anyone affiliated with Joseph

Aoun. So the only way he and No'Av Salam can beat them is by leaning on the CIA and the Pentagon and the Israeli military to destroy the homes of Shia, citizens of Lebanese, of Lebanon in the South and to fight and to have Israel fight Hezbollah. But ultimately, what the U.S. is pushing for is that the Lebanese armed forces would attack Hezbollah. And this is just such an impossible scenario because Lebanese armed forces are composed of people, citizens from many different sects. They don't all hold the same opinion. A large percentage of the Lebanese armed forces soldiers would not want to fight and kill other

Lebanese citizens. I remember like 10 or 15 years, over 10 years ago, I was in a refugee camp, a Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon, and I interviewed two of the negotiators for the 2007 siege of Nahar al-Barad, which is a Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon, where some Salafi jihadi militants had taken shelter against the will of the Palestinian population. The Lebanese army was sent in to basically destroy the whole camp because the Lebanese government has, in the past, been very anti-Palestinian as well. And what the negotiators told me was that one soldier would go in and set a house on fire or attack a house and then another soldier would go in and try to rescue the people and stop that

soldier because one soldier would be supportive of the Palestinians and the other would be anti-Palestinian and there was no clear logic to the army. So that army, which the U.S. is trained, which is forbidden from fighting Israel, Israel is supposed to take on Hezbollah, which is one of the most powerful non-state fighting forces on the planet. It's not going to happen. So Aoun is leaning on Israel as his real proxy force. Last subject matter, Max, what did Secretary Rubio just released with respect to some wild

allegation about Cuban agents infiltrating the American government? Yeah, I mean, Cuban agents have infiltrated the U.S. government at the highest level. It just turns out that they are right-wing South Florida Gussanos who see the U.S. as a base for carrying out, for settling the scores of the old country by using the military to invade Cuba. And, well, they basically destroyed Venezuela as well. And they may have their sights set on Nicaragua as well. But these are the Cubans who have infiltrated U.S. government. They're Marco Rubio and Carlos Gutierrez and that shrieking lady whose name I forget right now.

Maria Elvira Salazar. The Cubans that they say have infiltrated the U.S. government are pretty much non-existent. It's a delusional paranoid document that the State Department has produced. And if you read it and you're familiar with the late former Trotsky has turned right-wing neocon guru David Horowitz, who is Stephen Miller's mentor. Then he'll see his fingerprints all over this document because the whole document is about the 60s and 70s. It's about the radical left in the 60s and 70s. Karen Bass, the outgoing mayor of L.A. is named in the document because she went on a Venceramos Brigade trip in like 1972.

Barack Obama is targeted in the document because he came into contact with former weather underground leaders, Bernadine Dorn and Bill Ayers. It's all like stuff that's drawn for from David Horowitz's books about the evils of the radical left and has discovered the network's website. And I think they ran it through a Claude AI system and pumped out this document. I swear, almost 80 percent of the document is about the 60s and 70s. It's so boomer-centric. And then they named certain figures like Medea Benjamin or the People's Forum, various other

activist groups, and seek to connect them to – this history of radical left revolutionary activism and declare them to be a subversive threat to the United States. I actually asked Medea about this last night because I saw her at a talk I gave, like a report back talk from Iran, and said, you know, do you think this is like, that they're going to start some kind of new co-intel program or they already have, they're going to violate the First Amendment and start, you know, arresting the radical left. And she said, you know, the real threat is that this document is that this document, they're going to

is just a paranoid justification for Marco Rubio to compel the U.S. military to actually invade Cuba. And this is that they've waited too long for regime change. Cuba hasn't collapsed under this horrific energy siege, which is destroying the lives of its citizens. And they can't wait any longer. So now they have this absolutely absurd document as their new yellow cake, their new smoking gun, claiming that Cuba is infiltrating the U.S. government and destroying America from within to justify an invasion. So I do think that is what this is about, along with further attacks on the First Amendment and the organizing rights of Americans, particularly those who are against

these wars. Did I see Ben Cohen's face and name there? The federal of Ben and Jerry's. Why are they after him? Well, he gives a lot of money to pro-peace organizations, and that's why they're after him. You know, I assume, and that's why they're after me because of my journalism. And, you know, they may come for you next. They may come for all of us, but this is all, it's all about speech. They're targeting everyone for their speech and for their organizing and activism. There's really like, there's no, there's no meat on this at all. It's like, where's the beef?

Where's the proof of some real kind of foreign infiltration and survey, like Cuban surveillance networks, operating in the U.S. There really is none there. They're also targeting like Hassan Piker, who's a voice of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party. They targeted Eve Ensler, you know, the author of the Vagina monologues, because she attended the wedding of one of the founders of Code Pink. So it's, it, and McCarthy, Joseph McCarthy, is cited in this document as an inspiration. And Rubio... Senator McCarthy? Yes.

Which is no surprise. I mean, Stephen Miller. If Stephen Miller wrote this, it's no surprise. Agreed. He definitely presided over it, and this document followed the conference that Stephen Miller, Marco Rubio, and other administration officials held on what they call FLT or far-left terrorism, which is completely undefined, along with Antifa. They can't define what Antifa is.

But it's a new buzzword or designation. that they're going to use to give themselves surveillance and law enforcement powers to target people based on their speech, their beliefs, and their activism to basically shred the First Amendment. Wow. Last question. Will the mayor of New York arrest Prime Minister Netanyahu when he lands at JFK in October? He will not. The mayor of New York, Zoran Mamdani has just announced that he will not arrest Benjamin Netanyahu. And that's not because he doesn't want to. I thought his address was very well composed and true.

And I have no reason to question him. He simply has no legal ability to arrest Benjamin Netanyahu. And so Mamdani, in an address that was liked about half a million times on X and share, almost 200,000 times just on one platform alone. In that address, he called on federal officials to enforce the international criminal court ruling, finding Netanyahu culpable for genocide in Gaza and to arrest him. Donald Trump has declared that Benjamin Netanyahu is legally exceptional, that no one can arrest him, nothing can happen to him.

Of course, Netanyahu's cutouts in the U.S. are, freaking out and melting down about this. But I think what we're seeing here is Mamdani setting the stage for future federal American leaders to find the courage to actually do this and hold the authors of the Holocaust of our time responsible for the genocide they committed. Unfortunately, I don't see any actions attached to Mamdani's rhetoric that he could take under his authority as New York mayor. He could order the the NYPD to stand down and not protect Benjamin Netanyahu and he could not obstruct protesters who are seeking to voice their contempt and disapproval for Netanyahu's presence in their city.

Netanyahu has really shifted, though. I mean, we have to kind of pan out. I mean, just can you ever imagine, could you have imagined, Judge, you know, you're a resident of the New New Jersey, New York area. Could you imagine like five years ago, ten years ago, and New York mayor even saying that he wanted to arrest an Israeli leader for war crimes? No. I remember when Giuliani arrested Arafat, but that's the flip side of this. Exactly. And that was after Arafat won the Nobel Peace Prize and basically gave away the store to Israel. So. Right. And it was a very public arrest. They yanked him out of a performance of Beethoven's ninth at Lincoln Center.

Yeah, well, and that wasn't a particularly popular move. Giuliani was catering to one particularly powerful ethnic constituency that supported him and vaulted him to power that's centered on the Upper East Side. What Mamdani is doing is popular across the city and popular across the country. And there's a new Washington Post-Ipsos poll that shows a vast majority of Americans. believe that support for Israel by the U.S. is at a, is at too high a level. They basically support reducing or ending aid to Israel. The only Americans who think that the support level is just right are Fox News boomers.

That's it. Yes. Max, you're on a roll. I can't thank you enough for this extraordinary explanation of all these hotspots. Thank you, my dear friend. My best of you and your family, but look forward to seeing you again soon. for having me on great seeing you're good bye bye wow i mean it's an understatement for me to say that he was on a role an extraordinary explanation of all these hot spots uh coming up if you're

watching this live in 17 well in 27 minutes no 17 minutes at three o'clock phil geraldi judge napolitano for judging freedom