Judging Freedom - Max Blumenthal: Neocons and the Security State.

Episode Date: November 7, 2024

Max Blumenthal: Neocons and the Security State.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Resolve to earn your degree in the new year in the Bay with WGU. WGU is an online accredited university that specializes in personalized learning. With courses available 24-7 and monthly start dates, you can earn your degree on your schedule. You may even be able to graduate sooner than you think by demonstrating mastery of the material you know. Make 2025 the year you focus on your future. Learn more at wgu.edu. Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Thursday, November 7th, 2024. Max Blumenthal joins us now. Max, a pleasure, my dear friend. Thank you for your time. Trump State Department will not be filled with Zionists who will perpetrate the same policies as the Joe Biden State Department with respect to Israel and Benjamin Netanyahu? Well, first of all, it's a pleasure to report to you from an anonymous suburban parking lot.

It looks like you're in a jet. I love the visuals. deeply destructive neoconservative figures that populated not just his State Department, but also Defense Department and CIA from the first Trump administration. And a terrible indicator of this is the likely appointment of Brian Hook as the leader of the transition team to head up appointments to the State Department. Who is Brian Hook? And Brian Hook, for those of you who don't know, because he's sort of a banal figure, not very flamboyant, but played a very malign role in the first Trump administration, was the head of the Iran study group under the Pompeo State Department, who led and in many ways authored the policy of maximum pressure to

brutally sanction Iran, attempt to push Iran to the brink of escalation by assassinating Major General Qasem Soleimani, as well as Iranian scientists and IRGC figures like Fakhrizadeh. This was all part of an Israeli plan to influence the Trump administration through the influence network that is now led by billionaire Miriam Adelson. Jared Kushner played a major role in this. And the think tank, the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, basically used Brian Hook as their man on the inside. And they furnished him with bogus intelligence reports on Iranian nuclear development and the need to constantly counter and escalate against Iran.

So this is a very major red flag. I'm also hearing from sources that Joel Rayburn, who oversaw the policy to starve and besiege Syria, is going back into the administration. I haven't seen that publicly reported, but I trust these sources. How do guys like this get so close to somebody like Donald Trump? I mean, does Trump even, has Trump himself, as far as you know, ever even heard of them? There must be some intermediary that puts them in, to be present at the creation, so to speak, of a new Trump security state? Well, that's precisely the issue, is they don't get close to Trump. I don't know if Trump truly knows who they are. And in the parts of the national security bureaucracy that Donald Trump can't manage because he can only manage so much as well, along with his inner circle, basically run themselves. And they draw from

the Likudnik think tanks along K Street that have controlled Republican administrations and even influenced Democratic ones. So when we look at the areas where Trump can control, nepotism is a real factor. And nepotism is not always a bad thing because sometimes it can take a president out of the sphere of the so-called deep state. Now, nepotism was a terrible thing when it came to Donald Trump

giving Jared Kushner a security clearance and so many portfolios to run his Middle East policy and devise the Abraham Accords just because he was his son-in-law. But Donald Trump has a new son-in-law whose name is Boulos, who is from Lebanon, and who is reportedly going to replace the Biden administration's Lebanon envoy, Amos Hochstein, who has presided over a disastrous policy of escalating to de-escalate in Lebanon and constantly pushing Lebanon to the brink by authorizing more and more Israeli attacks. So Boulos, who is married to Tiffany Trump, Trump's daughter that everyone sort of forgot about, is a Lebanese Christian, I believe, who is close to a Lebanese

Christian faction that has been in political coalition with Hezbollah, and which would need Hezbollah to remain in some level of influence for it to continue to govern. So this is a really fascinating development, and it's because of nepotism. So I'm very pro-nepotism in this case, and I'm wondering what kind of threats Miriam Adelson is barking out to Kushner and her other channels inside the Trump inner circle right now, because this is being widely reported in not just U.S. media, but Israeli media. Well, Trump has a hundred million dollar debt to Mrs. Adelson, doesn't he? I'm sure he's going to listen to her at some point. I mean, she financed, along with Elon Musk, she financed much of his campaign, there is a faction inside the Trump camp. We can all kind of deduce this just from their public statements and their presence on

the campaign trail that did play a real role in getting Trump elected and in his landslide victory and it's the rfk tulsi gabbard tucker carlson faction that you know while they have their uh their their flaws on the issue of war we could say uh they are very suspicious of the people who want to take the u.s to war with iran who are gathering around trump tucker carl Carlson has called Mike Pompeo a war criminal, and they appear to be getting ready for factional internecine warfare with the neocons who are seeking major influence in a Trump administration. Well, it appears that Mike Pompeo or Tom Cotton and their twiddle-dee-twiddle-dumbo, Pompeo may be worse, it's hard to say who's worse, are the leading

candidates for Secretary of Defense. And Secretary of State. I mean, you've got Marco Rubio vying for that position. He has actually been cultivating, assiduously cultivating himself to serve as Secretary of State. He is a dyed-in-the-wool neocon, backed by the same forces that also back Tom Cotton, senator from Arkansas, who is a neoconservative poster child and really emerged as the next generation of the Bush-era neocons, and he's being put forward as a possible Secretary of Defense or Secretary of State. I'm not sure who would be Secretary of State or Secretary of Defense, who hasn't been already vetted by the neocon militarist faction that has dominated administrations throughout our entire lives, going back to George H.W. Bush. We're hearing that Tom Cotton has withdrawn his name

from Secretary of Defense, which boosts the chances of Mike Pompeo. You mentioned Rubio. It's not easy to watch. He's talking a mile a minute. But here he is yesterday, not directly pitching himself. But you tell me what you think this means. Cut number nine. Who wants war? What he's talking about is he wants the war to end. Now, as a businessman, he's not going to tell you about his negotiating tactic to bring it to a close. But I don't understand why we would not want a war like that to end. They don't admit it publicly, but if you ask the Biden administration, they will tell you we are funding a stalemate.

OK, I think the Ukrainians have been incredibly brave and strong and standing up to Russia. But at the end of the day, what we are funding here is a stalemate war. And it needs to be brought to a stalemate war and needs to be brought to a conclusion because that country is going to be set back 100 years. Now, that doesn't mean that we celebrate what Vladimir Putin did or are excited about it. But I think there has to also be some common sense here. And that is that right now what we are funding is a stalemate that's costing lives. And, you know, putting Ukraine, it's going to take 100 years to rebuild that poor country with everything they are facing.

Who's he appealing to? Well, he's appealing to the NAGA base that is completely opposed to the Ukraine proxy war. But the fact is that in Washington, this war is toast and Zelensky is cooked. Even within the Biden administration, there is just growing impatience with Zelensky, who's constantly asking for more and more and delivering very little on the battlefield. And if you look at polls, Democratic voters have now turned against military aid to Ukraine, which is a massive shift. And this is why you've seen the Biden administration constantly leaking on Zelensky. They recently leaked that Zelensky was pushing them for Tomahawk missiles. You look at Zelensky's statements after Donald Trump won,

you can almost feel the fear leaping off of his Twitter account when he sees the figure of Donald Trump preparing to enter into the White House. So what Rubio is saying there is the mood Trump inner circle. But it's also Rubio telling Trump and J.D. Vance that he will be loyal to their policy, at least on Ukraine, if he's going to enter Foggy Bottom as a leader. Were you surprised? I'm going to guess you weren't. But were you surprised that the first phone call that Donald Trump took after it was clear that he had won from a foreign leader was from Benjamin Netanyahu, who heaped gooey flattery on Donald Trump? Absolutely not. And this is what Benjamin Netanyahu sought to achieve. Benjamin Netanyahu understood that the longer this war continued, the worse it would be for Kamala Harris because her base, the Democratic base, and so many swing voters in Michigan would be disgusted. And I think he was actually stunned by the fact that Kamala and Joe Biden and their team didn't try to shut the war down and just kept giving him more and more latitude to expand the war, more bombs, more weapons, other than one

brief little pause on 2,000 pound bombs. They'd always shut these wars down in the past. The second Bush administration shut down Netanyahu's, sorry, Israel's failed 2006 invasion of Lebanon. But they won't shut them down now. And so Netanyahu achieved the ricochet effect that he wanted, which was a Trump presidency under the influence of his own benefactor, Miriam Adelson. It was Miriam Adelson's late husband, Sheldon Adelson, who sponsored so much of Benjamin Netanyahu's career and the Likudnik propaganda and political architecture that surrounds him. Over close to 80% of Jewish Israelis said they favored a Trump victory. In Israel's Channel 12, there were open blessings over wine on air when Donald Trump was announced as the victor. And we can see

how much they were able to achieve in a first Trump administration. There was a fear there and I think it was unfounded that Kamala after being elected would seek to finally wrap up Netanyahu's war and put real pressure on her but there was no reason to believe that the damage to Gaza has been so extreme I don't know what more Donald Trump could do and we keep hearing mixed messages from Donald Trump. On the one hand, he says that he Trump went to Dearborn, where Kamala Harris feared treading because of the amount of protests that would be directed against her by local Arab and Muslim community. Donald Trump went there and at least pantomimed an anti-war position along with J.D. Vance. And he owes part of his victory in Michigan to that constituency. So I think a second Trump administration could be a little less pliable than the first one was, but

you know, in such a bleak desert, any possible illusion of water or vegetation. Any oasis looks better than where we currently are. Is there any hope for stopping the slaughter, or will Trump give Bibi whatever he wants, whenever he wants it? I personally think we're at a point where the only thing that will stop it is a military solution if Iran manages to somehow restore its own escalation dominance. I don't know what the impact of Israel's last strike on Iran was, whether the Israelis are telling the truth about taking out Iran's S-300 systems and setting back its ballistic missile program by eliminating planetary mixers of solid fuel. I don't know if any of that is true. Iran is promising a punishing strike. What I do know is that because of the Biden administration's consistent, constant bear-hugging of Netanyahu and refusal to impose any red lines, there really seems to be nothing that is imposing, that is creating a deterrent effect

other than Iran's ability to continue escalating. We're now entering a very dangerous series of a few months where there remains a political void in Washington. We also should think about the West Bank. Will Netanyahu succeed in gasifying the West Bank, which is clearly his agenda especially the northern west bank and the first trump administration gave netanyahu basically carte blanche to annex large parts of the west bank so that there are many areas where there could be escalation and the only thing i think slowing down this train is the fear of an iranian response and

it's a fear in washington an iranian response could cripple the global economy that fear extends to the trump administration he doesn't want to come in with oil prices surging with possibly the uae under attack so he does want to shut this war down but will will he do anything to do it? I don't think so. So Scott Ritter and Colonel McGregor and Alistair Crook are of the view that there was no serious degrading of Iran's defenses by the Israeli attack. I want to talk about Netanyahu himself. He has failed to eliminate Hamas. He has failed to secure the return of the hostages. He has probably failed to degrade Iranian defenses, and he has failed to return the illegal settlers to northern Israel and southern Lebanon. In the midst of all of this is now BBGate, the scandal of these documents that came out. Where does Netanyahu stand with the Israeli people, and what is your understanding

on these documents? Well, most Israelis are telling pollsters this week that they think that Netanyahu is harming the Zionist cause, that he's damaging their national interest as a Jewish supremacist state. He's deeply unpopular, but he still maintains a base and a constituency that wants, quote unquote, total victory. And he still has his loyalists intact. Let's first talk about the documents. information to dupe reporters. The Jewish Chronicle, Bild in Germany, which is an ultra-Zionist tabloid, it's the largest tabloid in the Spiegel empire in Germany. And they were reporting that Yahya Senwar had plans to sneak the hostages out across the Philadelphia corridor and escape himself. And that's why Netanyahu had to be there.

And the Philadelphia Corridor was Netanyahu's code for, we need basically an endless occupation of Gaza and we can't end the war. So why was he leaking these documents and these false stories out? Just to keep the war going and to put the issue of the hostages on the back burner. So basically what we have through the, I think, the prosecution of one of his aides responsible for these forged documents and fake stories is confirmation of what we and much of the Israeli public already knew, which is that Netanyahu does not care about the hostages. We're seeing massive protests. We've also seen the firing of his defense minister, Yoav Galant, Mr. Human Animals, who is no less genocidal than Netanyahu, but who Netanyahu fired because he was too close

to the American administration and was attempting to meet with the Biden administration without Netanyahu's people present. The Biden administration actually liked Gallant and was using him to try to eke out some kind of hostage deal, which was always going to be unacceptable to Hamas because it wasn't a permanent ceasefire. So he fired him on election day because he hoped that Americans wouldn't notice. And he's replaced him with this complete goon, Israel Katz, who is one of his stooges from his inner circle, who is arguably more genocidal than even Yoav Galant. And Netanyahu is now increasingly isolated within Israel. But at the same time, and there's another issue we can discuss, but at the same time, there's no other

coalition capable of forming against him. And he had to fire Galant because Galant was trying to push the ultra-Orthodox into military service, which would have led to a culture war catastrophe inside Israel if it had been done in force. And the ultra-Orthodox parties are part of the linchpin to Netanyahu's very narrow coalition. So in doing this, Netanyahu has bought himself and the war more time. I want you to listen to what Galant had to say. It's two minutes long, but Chris, cut it down to under a minute. It's in Hebrew, but there's a translation. Cut number six, Chris.

This dismissal comes as a result of a dispute on three issues. The first, my firm stance that everyone who is eligible to be drafted to the military must be drafted to the military. They must serve in the IDF and protect the state of Israel. The second topic, our moral obligation to return our sons and daughters, the hostages. The third topic, the need to implement learning from the

mistakes of the war. I support a deep investigation into looking into who is responsible and I call for a national commission of inquiry. Max, on the drafting of the ultra-Orthodox, I mean, first of all, does the IDF even want the ultra-Orthodox in their ranks? But secondly, isn't it the Israeli Supreme Court that ruled that they are subject to the draft.

Yes. Yes. And that's why we've seen some of the largest anti-Zionist Jewish protests, because the ultra-Orthodox rabbis largely forbid this. The ultra-Orthodox battalions are some of the most ruthless. They're terrible fighters, because in ultra-Orthodox shuls, you're basically not allowed. Boys don't really participate in sports or athletics. And they come into the army, they go into basic training and don't know what the hell they're doing. So they're clearly, they're doing this because the secular part of the public feels like they've sacrificed too much and they've taken the bodies and they're just mad at these guys for taking state welfare

and studying Torah all day while their wives work in call centers. It's all part of the contradictions of Zionism that actually Yahya Senwar, the leader of Hamas, who has really been an anchor in the Netanyahu administration and maintaining his support from Washington. Gallant has been a savvy operator. And if you're looking at this from the Israeli or Zionist perspective, you probably see Gallant as one of the most successful defense ministers who's overseen the assassination of Hassan Nasrallah, the decimation of Gaza as the cradle of resistance, the Pager attacks. I mean, that was an intelligence operation, but it involved military intelligence, Aman. And Gallant is taking credit for all this as he's fired. So many people are wondering why Netanyahu has fired the author of these perceived successes. And then you have the third issue that Gallant brought up, which is the investigation into October 7th.

Look at the way he's dressed and the way he's presenting himself. He's not wearing a three-piece suit like Netanyahu. He's trying to present an image of humility. He's wearing dark colors to identify with the dead in this war. And he's opening himself up to a major state commission of inquiry in which he will look terrible. And that's because Netanyahu is fighting this investigation tooth and nail. He will look the absolute worst. And it will lead to further calls for his prosecution, which he's going to face for previous corruption trials when he goes out. So, Sinwar's strategy is actually playing out before our eyes with the opening of these contradictions, both within the Israeli

government and in the Israeli streets. Isn't there an investigation now ongoing, which we just learned about when an Israeli judge lifted a partial gag order, an investigation conducted by Israeli police and by Shin Bet of the origins of October 7th? I don't know if this is what Galat was talking about or if it's something different. That is like a, that's part of what he's talking about. But a state commission of inquiry will offer subpoena powers. Including subpoenaing Gallant and Netanyahu. of the Israeli military, whose name isn't coming to me right now, but he conceived the AI genocidal

technology, the gospel system that's being used for targeting in Gaza. He was leading Israel into the future, and he's taken the fall because it was the 8200's job to surveil Hamas's phones and communications and flag an operation like October 7th, and they completely failed. But we're going to see so many heads roll, and there will be an independent investigator appointed, as we saw, for example, after the Sabra and Shatila massacre. So again, the contradictions will come out, and it will be devastating. But who knows when that will even take place, because it looks like we're careening towards war with Iran. accused of espionage with respect to these documents whose bail was denied and the lawyer who represented him at the bail hearing, Netanyahu's criminal defense lawyer.

Of course. You can't make this up. Well, you can make up documents that we've been talking about earlier. You can make up anything if you're around Netanyahu. Who is this guy, and is he a full person? Yeah, I mean, Netanyahu stands before plasma video screens with fabricated documents on Iranian nuclear plans

before the entire world. And, you know, real journalists and scholars like Gareth Porter have been calling out and exposing these fabrications for years. But now, finally, someone is getting prosecuted for it because these documents were used and deployed to put Jewish lives in danger in Gaza by allowing the hostages to languish. They were forged in order to justify Netanyahu's plan to occupy the Philadelphia Corridor and not negotiate for the release of the hostages. And Netanyahu, there's no question in my mind that Netanyahu personally ordered these forgeries and these leaks because this is his MO and this is what he's been doing

throughout his career. And we should question a lot of the other leaks that have been translated into front page headlines at the New York Times and Washington Post, as well as the propaganda hoaxes around October 7th about Hamas mass rape and beheaded babies. Max Blumenthal, thank you, my dear friend. I'm not sure where you are, but I hope you get home safely. You're very, very good to stop in the midst of your travels to accommodate our schedule. All the best to you, my dear friend. Thanks. Looking forward to seeing you in studio next time. Yes, likewise. He's indefatigable.

And I love having these opportunities to chat with someone so knowledgeable and so fearless. Coming up at noon, Dennis Fritz. Why are we always lied into a war? At one o'clock, Professor Doctorow, what does the Kremlin think about Trump's victory? At 2.30, Aaron Mate, how much longer can Ukraine last? And at five o'clock, Colonel Larry Wilkerson, will Netanyahu shoot himself in the foot and survive the injury? Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. Thank you.