Judging Freedom - Phil Giraldi : The Pentagon’s Trillions Can’t Buy Defense

Episode Date: August 12, 2026

Phil Giraldi : The Pentagon’s Trillions Can’t Buy DefenseSee 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 Wednesday, August 12th, 2006, Phil Giraldi is here. The Pentagon gets trillions of dollars, and they still can't adequately provide a legitimate defense. But first this, you know, a few years ago, if you told people you were stocking up on emergency food, they would have thought you were crazy, not anymore. We've all seen supply chain chaos, devastating natural disasters, inflation, war, and civil unrest, and preparedness has now gone mainstream. That's why we're partnering with my Patriot supply, America's original Patriot

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I did want to talk to you about the Pentagon's wasting of money and they can't even provide adequate ammo. But before we get there, Trump's escape from Air Force One via a catering truck. As ridiculous as it sounds seems to be getting curiouser and curiouser. Now, as I understand that he got on Air Force One and then went right through to the other side to the catering truck and they scooted him off. And everybody else stayed in the plane

and everybody else on the plane assumed he was still on there. Because somebody, I'll ask you who, must have recounted some sort of a death threat. If all of that was true, didn't the government knowingly and intentionally expose everybody else on the plane to that death threat? Well, I would put it a different way.

Donald Trump, deliberately put everyone else on that plane on the death list. If the information was true that this plane was going to be, there would be an attempted assassination by shooting the plane down. These 100 or 150 people were still all on the plane, totally ignorant of the fact that the president had gotten off, and the plane was still scheduled to take off for England. which it did later.

And so anyway, Donald, meanwhile, is on a U.S. Air Force plane that was elsewhere at the Ankara airport. And he left separately. So here is the president of the United States on a presidential mission, and he was quite prepared to save his own butt and get everybody else on that plane killed. which I find disgusting. I find it outrageous. I've been writing this afternoon a couple of brief articles for Facebook and elsewhere. The one on Facebook, as soon as it popped up, got almost 200 comments. And it's just like, holy God.

I mean, how low do we have to get before this guy represents that he's not all about himself, that he's got to take care of the people around him too? and the fact that he doesn't care about the people around him is why he's done such a lousy job as president. I mean, was this a Mossad stunt an Israeli false flag that didn't work, Phil? I would suggest that it was an Israeli, well, first of all, it seems that that's being confirmed that the Israelis were the source of the information if you want to look at it that way. And I sort of suggested in one of my comments that if it had been successful, then the Israelis would have quickly blamed it on the Iranians. And this would, of course, been real good for them and would have been real good for them

even to get rid of Trump since he seems to be going soft on this hard war that the Israelis want against the Iranian. So it's a, you know, it works either way for them. And so I wouldn't be surprised if that's the kind of thinking. I'm putting it in very sort of simplistic terms. But if you think about it and you think about what are the outcomes and what the political blowback would be and everything like that, it's kind of interesting. But at the same time, to me, one of the tragedies is,

abandoning a hundred and 100 plus people on an airplane to die for information that you thought was credible and nobody cares about that?

Wouldn't there have been, listen, I'm not a security expert, but wouldn't there have been a better way to have secured Trump and everybody else on the plane? I mean, even when they whist Bill Clinton, and I don't remember when or where,

but I saw a picture of a recently getting off a small jet instead of the Air Force one. They told everybody else about it, and those people also were dispersed somehow, and then nothing happened. Well, I mean, the obvious way to solve the problem was to get everybody off the plane. Right.

And then once everybody's on the ground, you start to make other arrangements that are perhaps more, secure and there would be a lot of ways to do that. You could leave, if it is true that somebody had the airport targeted with either a missile or something equivalent, then you want to get those people and the president away from that area. And that'd be the first thing you do. And then you could at that point be moving people by vehicles until you get completely out turkey. So there are a lot of ways that if anybody had been thinking in a serious way about this,

and it was perceived as a serious threat, which is 50% of the time what they're trying to play this as, that's what they want to sound. And the rest of the time, it's like, oh, well, you know, these were just decisions made at the scene, at the time, and it could maybe have been better, but, you know, they never admit to any fault. This is not a characteristic of this administration. Right. How many U.S. military installations are around the world, and what do they cost the U.S. taxpayer? Or are these numbers unknown, and is my question unanswerable? Well, the Pentagon property has a pretty good idea of what they cost. There are about 1,100 military, what are labeled as military installations.

I believe those numbers even include, for example, that now we're talking about Turkey. So we're talking about Turkey, there was a military, a U.S. military office in the U.S. embassy in Ankara. And that counts as one of these military places. When I was in Istanbul, I was the head of a, military installation that was in

liaison with the Turkish military in Istanbul. So that also counted. So the 1100 number can be deceptive in the way these are not all bases with 10,000 people on them or that sort of things. But there are 1100 of them and

the cost is enormous and it's all born basically by the United States in spite of the fact that the pretext for having these bases in all these places is essentially defensive, both for the U.S. in extensal and also for the people that were basing our troops in to protect them. We see what a farce that turned out to be in Strait of Hormuz. Wow. Why can't the trillions of dollars at disposal, the

Hagen, Hegseth and his predecessor, Lloyd Austin, purchased adequate munitions and ammo for American use. How is it that we could have run out? Well, I think the simple answer is that the calculation principles at stake here were badly misunderstood. You know, there has not been this kind of war that we've had with Iran, at least for the United States, in some time. They failed to understand how rapidly if you are on the defensive and you are trying to counter missiles and drones and all that sorts of things, which are very cheap and very expendable. and they're easily targetable. So you have like this tennis ball coming at you at about 100 miles an hour, and you're standing there, and you've got a bunch of tennis balls in your hand,

and you've got to throw these tennis balls and intercept it. Well, our defensive mechanisms are kind of too sophisticated. They cost a lot of money, and the fact is that once you fired off about seven or eight or nine, them. As I think Colonel Doug suggested at one point, you've used up all your ammunition, and the next shipment of ammunition will be in about two years' time coming from Lockheed, as this stuff is very expensive, very hard to produce. And also, we have good friends like the Chinese who are withholding some of the rare earth minerals that go into them. So the process of replacing this stuff is not as fluid as it used to be.

And Trump, when he gets on television as he did the other day, was lying from start to finish that we have adequate supplies of all this stuff that we have. Factories is churning this stuff out and everybody's giving us this stuff. We can beat anyone and so on and so. That's all a lie. So when he had this argument with Hegseth, claiming that Hegseth was lying to him, and of course, we all know what Hegseth said. He blamed it on his deputy, the billionaire deputy secretary of defense, Steve Feinberg.

Apparently, the argument did take place even though Trump denied it, because didn't Trump himself intimate that true information was revealed and he would hunt down? I think that's his phrase, the revealers, the leakers. Yeah, I mean, there's plenty of evidence to indicate, first of all, that Trump did confront Hegset. Now, I would have to suggest that if Trump would just take a look at maybe the New York Times, some other papers that were reporting on the shortages of weapons with a lot of good, credible, supportive information. He would have had this information without Hexed's help. But Hexed obviously has an agenda, and he's basically a guy who is who envisions his reformation,

if you want to call it that, of the American military into a ruthless fighting, machine that will kill everything in its path and we have all these tools to do it plus testosterone if you need it. And so that's the kind of world we're in right now where the lie is is becomes the truth inside the administration. So Trump should have been listening and paying more attention to perhaps some other people like General Kane apparently is a lot more sensible. And And maybe even our vice president could have straightened him out on some of the stuff if he had asked and if he had indicated that he was willing to listen, which he's not always. So it's that kind of thing. Yeah, argument took place.

It's true that we're short on all this stuff. And it's all the big lie about what we have. So we see where we go from there. Here's Senator Chris Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut. Trump has lost this war when Trump doesn't know how to get out of it, doesn't even know what it costs. Cut number 13. Donald Trump has lost this war.

America is weaker. Iran is stronger. The price to reopen the straight increases by the day. The supposed deal that's on the table right now. would pay Iran $100 million, excuse me, billion dollars a year in order to reopen the strait. That is one-third of Iran's entire economy. What a victory for Iran. At the end of this war, they get paid to reopen the strait. They get paid to rebuild their military. They get paid to rebuild their support for proxies in the region. The answer to your question is, yes,

I will support a deal to end this war and to reopen the strait. I am prepared to support a bad deal to end this war and reopen the straight because the only deal that is available at this point in time is a terrible bad deal. But the war needs to end because every day that the war continues, America gets weaker, Iran gets stronger, and people here in the United States get screwed as prices go up and up and up. Trump understand that, Phil? Well, you know, it's nice that the conclusion he came to, which is basically pull the plug on it. But, you know, some of his other stuff is just crap.

The fact is that the money that Iran wants to get back is money we stole from them. Right. We are a country combined with our best friend and ally Israel who attacked Iran, even though Iran posed no threat to either the United States or Israel. and Iran has suffered a lot of dead people and a lot of damage to property, damage to all kinds of resources. And it's asking basically that it deserves compensation for the fact that this was unwarranted. This was a brutal attack to destroy Iran as a nation. And in fact, this was even openly discussed. We were going to take down their government.

We were going to do this. We were going to do that. And how many times if you heard from Trump, you know, how we sank their Navy, we destroyed their air force, we eliminated their army. We've done this. These are all lies. And so who's in the driver's seat right now? Who's in control of a straight of Hamas and by virtue? virtue of that is capable of doing serious damage to the United States economy and to the economy of much of the rest of the world.

Wow. Here's the Iranian foreign minister with a very rational, compelling statement, obviously connected to reality, unlike what Donald Trump says. Chris, number 14. And, well, our brave armed forces who truly sacrificed everything they had. had managed to render the world's largest and most formidable army completely helpless and ultimately defeated it. And please understand, this is not just some empty slogan at all. It is a profound reality that the entire world is now openly admitting to and acknowledging with great respect that in the recent war, it was the Islamic Republic of Iran that proved

itself to the world. And it clearly showed us that it is truly a remarkably tough, resilient and completely invincible power. I have heard this many times from foreign ministers of other countries, from officials of other countries, that you Iranians have created a wonder, the exact same phrase. You have astonished the whole world. It's rational, unlike Trump's boasting that there's a steel wall around the Strait of Hormuz owned by the United States Navy, which is, of course, of cert. The Navy is 600 miles away. Yeah.

Well, I mean, the gentleman is obviously hyping his own country and his own country's remarkable achievement at resisting the attack by the U.S. and Israel. And I give them full credit for that. The fact is they have, these were, you know, these things were all foreseeable. If the United States, if somebody in the Pentagon, well, we would. would get off his office behind and try to figure out that what are the advantages that any one of these countries that we consider adversaries around the world have if we had to confront them, they would have figured out all these things about the Strait of Hormuz.

They would have figured out about how difficult it would be to even consider a land invasion or anything like that of Iran itself. And this stuff is important because, you know, what we've done by this fun and games with Iran has basically turned a lot of the world against the United States now. And we have this Mecca agreement that just came into play. We have the Chinese basically cooperating with a number of these other countries. going to have some serious economic reactions coming in, too. The dollar will no longer be the

World Reserve currency. Wow. Who could have imagined that Trump's mismanagement of war and economics add to inflation tariffs, Phil? Who could have imagined this incredible mismanagement? And he doesn't seem to care that this is all coming together in a perfect storm at the time for the midterm elections. Here's another perfect storm we took about Hegeseth. I'd like the mother, the mothers, excuse me, of these poor young people on the USS Abraham Lincoln to be able to have a say to the face of Pistel Pete Heggseth. Now, this clip is from a producer and filmmaker who apparently is doing some research on this, and the story he recounts is revolting. Chris, cut number 15. You guys, there's a mental health crisis happening aboard the USS

Lincoln in the Middle East that no one is talking about, and mainly because the Navy is pretty much quashing it. You will read online about food shortages, supply shortages, poor morale among crew members. That's because they've been at sea continuously for 250 days. They've been deployed a total of 271 days, 250 without a port of call. That's unheard of. Normally they will go to port every three to six weeks. They have not been to port in 38 weeks. Keep in mind there are 52 weeks in a year. And yes, the showers are moldy. They're eating basically like a gruel kind of slop at this point. There's no deodorant. There is no toothpaste. My nephew, has a friend on board there, and I was basically hearing updates last week when I was in the

States in real time. They're not talking about the mental health crisis. Six people have tried to jump off that ship. The most recent was last Monday. You know, when you have not touched land in 38 weeks in over 200 days, things start to happen to you mentally. You know, combine that with exhaustion and deadly mistakes start to happen. So, you know, this is how the Department of War, this is how Donald Trump treats our service men and women, whose lives are already being put in harm's way for a bullshit war of aggression that was supposed to be over in a matter of weeks. We are further putting their lives at risk out of sheer ineptitude and neglect. It defies logic, it defies reason, and it defies basic humanity.

He's right. By the way, that number of attempted suicides has gone up. He made that clip on August 11th. it's now seven attempted. Maybe they attempt to jump off the ship. I mean, how high off the ocean is the flat bed of an aircraft carrier? I would think it would die as soon as you hit the water. Well, possibly.

The latest story I saw was that there were seven attempts, and one of them had actually succeeded in dying. Wow. The government has hidden that. from us. Yeah, well, they hide everything from us, don't they? And now one of the things that's curious is that, of course, the fact that they've been lying about all the stuff, about the munitions and everything else, Donald Trump is on a search for the leakers, and the leakers are going to go according to Trump to long prison terms. See, if you release, if you tell the truth and the truth

is something that Donald J. Trump does not like you become a criminal now. So, you know, we're in for a lot of this. And this stuff is just so scary and it's so ridiculous. And I just felt today I was at the breaking point when I was reading the account of the airplane in Ankara. And I was thinking, this is insane. This is a guy who has no loyalty to the people who work for him. with the people who are there to do what's right or what's best for the government and for the American people. And he just, it's not there. And if you challenge it, you're a traitor, I guess.

You're certainly somebody who is in the mind of this administration suitable for the FBI to be rooting out and trying and sending them to prison. just like the poor bastards who dare to stick their hand into the reflecting pool. Aye, aye, aye. The Justice Department is because it doesn't have any evidence that anybody other than the contractor, the contracting company is owned by a convicted felon, convicted of bribing a member of Congress. You can't make this up. That's why they couldn't have competitive bidding, because under the competitive bidding laws,

you don't qualify for competitive bidding if you're a convicted felon. However, not to want to fail to please the president's wish for vengeance on his supposed and phantom adversaries. The Justice Department is convening a special grand jury. Special grand jury doesn't indict. It just embarrasses. It just issues reports, and there's not much you can do about it. Sometimes the reports ruin reputations. Sometimes, they're forgotten the next day. Hi. Phil, a pleasure, my dear friend,

no matter what we're talking about. Your new camera looks great, by the way, and thank you very much for deploying it. Thanks for your time. We'll look forward to seeing you again, my dear friend. Okay, I'll take care. Okay, bye-bye. The reason he's laughing is because Chris helped him

deploy that camera that has a lot of bells and whistles, which are very helpful to us. Tomorrow Thursday, Tony Schaefer hasn't been with us in a while on the war in Ukraine. How much longer can it possibly last at 8 in the morning? Professor Deeson at 9 at 2 in the afternoon, the golden boy, Max Blumenthal, at 3 in the afternoon, the cleanup hitter, Colonel Douglas McGregor. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom.