Judging Freedom - Phil Giraldi : When Is a Ceasefire a Scam?

Episode Date: April 15, 2026

Phil Giraldi : When Is a Ceasefire a Scam?See 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 it? alter or abolish the government? What if 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, April 15th, 2006, Phil Geraldi joins us now, Phil of Pleasure, as always. It's hard for me to ask you this with a straight face, but is this so-called ceasefire

a scam? Well, maybe you have gone over to calling it a farce. I, right from the beginning, as you well know, did not trust it at all. And I really felt that this was essentially a trick to get a breathing period because Israel and the United States were running out of weapons

and the war was not going extremely well from their viewpoint. And they wanted to get a little time to take a breather and then back to the war. And that seems to be exactly what's happening. It was not exactly announced yesterday, but it was reported that Trump has sent another close to a billion dollars worth of bombs and weapons to Israel. Now, you know, Israel gets these things for free so they can bomb and kill people. And today, just now, I read the report that there are more troops under U.S. troops that are on their way to the Iran front.

So this is what's happening. What can the U.S. troops do? They failed miserably to seize the enriched uranium and then turned it into a rescue mission. It may never have been a rescue mission for all we know. If you hear our friend Colonel Karen Kerkowski, they've never identified the people who were rescued and all the other things that they normally do. It may have just been their way of trying to put a fig leaf over their naked failure. But what kind of troops are being sent? Ground troops?

You're saying troops, ground troops? Yeah, it was kind of nonspecific, but the implication seemed to be ground troops. But you're quite correct. I mean, there doesn't seem to be any path for success in terms of employing these troops. They're going to be outnumbered. They're going to be in a situation

where even getting them onto the ground, either from the sea or from the air, it's going to be problematical. So it's the kind of thing is, is this maybe some new threat, the fact that there are more people milling around in the area and they're attempting to, and Trump is attempting to block the seaways in the area,

in the area on both sides, Red Sea and Strait of Hormuz. And, you know, it's just like one threat and one admonishment piled on another in some kind of expectation that the Iranians are going to roll over and surrender, which doesn't seem very likely to me. What is your understanding, Phil, of what happened in Islamabad last weekend? Was this a serious negotiation on the part of the U.S. or was it to a scam to give Trump boasting rights? Yeah, I think it was the latter.

I don't think there's any question about it because the whole thing, the way it was structured. Even before they arrived there on the ground in Islamabad, they were already complaining that what they had a previous agreed to, which were the 10 points raised by, the Iranians were no longer valid and also the constituent, the people who were pulled together to go on this mission. The fact that the son-in-law and the real estate dealer were key parts of it yet again after having screwed the Iranians twice, there was no chance that this was going to succeed. And then once they got there with Donald Trump on the phone with them 11 times, and of course, Benjamin Netanyahu on them also on the phone,

and presumably also on the phone with Donald Trump. So this was a no-go from the start. It was a way of buying time, a way of kind of looking as if for the rest of the world, as if they had serious intents, which they did not have. Wow. Would the United States ever defied Israel? Yeah, twice that I can think of. John F. Kennedy and he got killed for it. I wonder why. And the other one was the elder Bush.

You might think back when he was going to stop money going to Israel to build the illegal settlements. and then the funny thing, the mainstream Jewish media discovered that, hey, the economy was really in bad shape. So I guess we have to vote for Bill Clinton in the next election.

So he was the last guy that tried to defy Israel as far as I know. And nobody defies Israel. I mean, the Netanyahu just boasted vis-a-vis the thing

with Vance is that he's in regular contact with people in the White House who keeping him up, keep him up to date, and obviously that's a two-way channel, and he's telling him what to do. You don't want to hear this, but here's Netanyahu saying just that. Cut number three, Chris. I spoke yesterday with Vice President J.D. Vance. He called me from his plane on the way back from Washington. He reported to me in detail, as the people of this administration do every day, on the development of the negotiations. In this case, the explosion in the negotiations, the explosion came from the American side, which was not willing to tolerate the blatant violation of the agreement to enter negotiations by Iran. Essentially, the agreement was that there would be a

ceasefire and Iran would immediately open the crossings. They didn't do that. The Americans were not willing to accept it. He also conveyed to me that the central issue on the table from the perspective of President Trump and the United States is the removal of all enriched material and ensuring that there is no more enrichment in the coming years, and this could be for decades. So here's the phrase to which you referred. He, meaning the vice president, reported to me in detail, and then the other phrase to which you referred, which follows this, as the people of this administration do every day. Does any of this language surprise you?

No, I mean, it shows who's in charge and who's the subordinate. They reported to him, huh? Right. And keep him informed. This guy is calling the shots, and we have these pathetic, so-called human beings in Washington and the White

House who let him get away with it. And of course, let's not leave Joe Biden out of this, too. It was the same under the Democrats. There was a report yesterday claiming that the majority of political donations to the Democratic Party come from APAC. Well, so none of this is a surprise at all. I mean, what's going to happen with Lebanon? Why would Lebanon be negotiating in Washington, D.C.? Well, I know whether they're negotiating in Washington, D.C. So the negotiators can't be murdered. But why are they negotiating with the Israelis at all?

Israel's trying to steal one-third of Lebanon and turn it into part of greater Israel. Yeah, and the map I saw was even worse than that. They're going to have an area that they fully occupy, an area that they partially occupy, and then they have another area that they can go into if they feel threatened. This is a comedy routine playing out before our very eyes. And the last place anywhere, anybody from Lebanon would want to go to negotiate their status, their future, their political system would be Washington, which is basically, and to be talking to Israel there,

which is basically having Israel and Israel to. Welcome to you. Trump said earlier, well, it wasn't today, it was yesterday, referring by name to Tucker Carlson and Megan Kelly and a couple of other people, that the people who disagree with him over the war are stupid, are nut jobs, and are troublemakers. How can something like this possibly resonate to Trump's benefit? with his base unless the base

are stupid nut jobs and troublemakers. That's a possibility. He also called them losers, I think. That's another one of his favorite epithets. Yes. Yeah, so, you know, this is just like

this guy is so stupid. It's hard to imagine that, as I have sometimes used the metaphor, it's hard to imagine him running a hot dog stand. And the fact is that this kind of stuff does him no good, even, and it doesn't get him any support from people who basically he would need if he wanted to assist the Republican Party in the upcoming election.

And it's the same thing as taking on the Pope. He keeps doing it. I mean, he's doing it again today. and these pictures of himself with Jesus or as Jesus. I mean, this is incredible stuff. If you and I were to go and make this up and write a fiction novel about somebody in power in any country doing something this idiotic,

nobody would believe it, no publisher would print it. Is the American military prepared for a false flag from Israel? They're probably not prepared for, but I think they should be. I think if there's any wavering on the part of the United States in the Iran case, and that would only be because somebody is reading the tea leaves and realizing this is really, really bad news for the upcoming election and everything else, that would be the only reason it would happen. And Israel is, I'm sure, perfectly prepared to drop the boom on this and to essentially kill a bunch of Americans.

They're very good at these false flags. They'll make it look like it was done by the Iranians under particularly horrific circumstances. And they will assume that will light a fight a fight. on the United States to get revenge, which is probably a reasonable solution from the Israeli point of view. Now, the other thing I have been looking into the last couple of days is the idea that either Trump or Renanjahou will go nuclear.

Now, if this situation in Iran reaches a point where, for political reasons, either or both of them are in some kind of trouble, I can just see it happening. I've done a little research in the last day on what the procedure would be if the President of the United States would press that little button on the electronic football and call for a nuclear strike.

I've discovered there are hardly any checks and balances in the process. The likelihood is that that person, the American president, would get away with it. And I'm sure with Regiment on Yahoo would be the same thing. So we could have World War III nuclear on our hands just because of these two idiots. Well, what would Beijing and the Kremlin do? They would never sit back and allow Tehran to be destroyed by nuclear weapons. this would literally either start World War III or be the end of civilization.

Well, the problem is if this all happens, you know, how long it takes for this nuclear attack from the White House to go, 25 minutes. So China and Russia would not have exactly a lot of time to do any maneuvering, would they? And the point is that Netanyahu and Trump are people who believe that they can do anything they want and they will get away with it. And history kind of bears that out. They've gotten away with genocide. They've gotten away with wars of choice, aggressive wars of choice, and they've gotten away with all this stuff. So, yeah, Russia and China will be very upset. They'll have to calculate what they think they can reasonably do.

And I'm not sure what that would be. Let's go back to the Pope. Here is the first of his responses to Trump's attack. He's on the papal plane on his way to Africa, where his first visit was to the tomb of St. Augustine. Chris, number five. I have no fear of neither the Trump administration, nor are speaking outlawly about the message of the gospel. And that's what I believe.

I am called to know what the church is called to do. If we're not politicians, we're not looking to make foreign policy as he falls with with the same perspective that he might understand it. But I do believe that the message of the gospel, the lesson of the peacemakers, is the message that the board needs to hear him. How can you possibly dispute that?

The message of the gospel is blessed of the peacemakers, to which the vice president said, the Pope better be careful when he talks about theology. That's right. And the Pope's representative in Washington, the Cardinal, who in diplomatic terms represents the papacy, was called him by the Pentagon and was threatened. You know, you guys better stop doing this kind of stuff.

stuff complaining about our policies because we are a great power and we can do a lot of things. I mean, this is incredible. This is like, again, a freak show. You know, the guy who did the threatening, I meant to ask you about this, his last name is Colby. Is he related to the former, now late, I believe. Yes, late because he died under bizarre circumstances. Director of the CIA? No, I do not believe he is.

He is connected. I saw a brief bio of him yesterday who was connecting him with some other political figures. But no, not Colby. That Colby. Did you know that Colby, who mysteriously died in a canoeing trip? Do I have that right?

Yeah, you have that right. He died under very mysterious. circumstances on a canoe trip down the Chesa County Bay many years ago. And it was as so many of these things never seriously investigated. Well, what is the CIA doing? What role are they playing, if any, in the slaughters in Lebanon or the bombings in Tehran? Well, I hate to say it, but But I rather imagine they're giving the Israelis information so that they can kill people more effectively. You know, that's unfortunately, you know, information can be used for good or can be used for

bad. And we've been using it for bad for a long time, and there's nobody that does it better at using it bad than the Israelis. So I rather suspect that they're active in both places, but whatever they're getting is going straight to Tel Aviv. If the Israelis have dirt on Trump, whatever it is, whether it's Epstein-related or something else, how would they go about threatening him? What would they say to him? How would they tell him? How would they make him know the degree of dirt that they have and their willingness

to expose it if he doesn't play ball with them? Well, I think given Trump's enormous ego and self-esteem, what they would have to do is to package it in a way that they're all, they're really, oh, unfortunately, we came across all this stuff. But we're going to protect you. We're going to do everything in our power, which is considerable, even with the media and your own country. and we will do everything in our power to protect you and keep this from damaging your reputation. That's the way how they would package it. That way it appeals to Trump's own sense of self-esteem,

and it also does the trick in terms of getting them to do whatever they want, which is what we have been seeing. If it's a photograph, would they actually show it to him? That's a good question. I think showing him the photograph might be a little bit too strong. But that's a good question. It would be they'd have to convince it. No, this is a very gullible guy.

But they have to make a strong enough case where Trump is going to be willing to go 100% along with it. And that might be walking a line where you're kind of throwing out a threat. but you're not really threatening with it. This is probably something that Israeli intelligence officers are pretty good at. I used to see it. I used to encounter them overseas when I was in Europe, and there are a bunch of dirtbags who were always conniving. All right, Phil.

Thank you very much. Regards from your buddy Salanti, and it's always a pleasure to chat. with you, my dear friend, no matter what we're talking about. We'll look forward to seeing you next week. All right. See you then. Thank you. Thank you, Phil. Bye-bye. Tomorrow Thursday, at one in the afternoon, the golden boy, Max Blumenthal, at two in the afternoon, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, at three in the afternoon, the cleanup hitter, Colonel Douglas McGregor. Judge the Paletano for judging Freedom.