Judging Freedom - Prof. Jeffrey Sachs : Is Trump Losing It?

Episode Date: June 8, 2026

Prof. Jeffrey Sachs : Is Trump Losing It?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 the government? 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 Monday, June 8, 2006, Professor Jeffrey Sachs joins us now. Professor Sacks always a pleasure no matter what we're talking about. Before we address the decision-making of Donald Trump and its outward appearances, why do you think Iran is willing to risk another phase of all-out war with the U.S. and Israel rather than comply with Trump's more outlandish demands? I think Iran does not find Trump's demands credible.

The reason being that Iran has retaliatory capacity. If the United States and Israel escalate, Iran also will escalate and cause grave damage in Israel and in the Gulf. I think this has been the conclusion basically now for three months, that there is no real credible path of escalation, and therefore Trump's threats and bluster don't carry weight. This has been my view also all along. I think it's confirmed in the last 48 hours with the renewed exchange of fire, which quickly was brought back under control by the United States, which does not want escalation. Neither side wants escalation. actually. Since there is unlikely to be a formal agreement, my view has been all along,

and I continue to hold it, that just informally, the United States should go home, and the Gulf and the straits should be opened for international shipping of hydrocarbons. And as best as possible, we get back to square one before this whole debacle. unfolded starting on February 28th. When it comes to Israel, Trump is very clear. He said, I call the shots. It's also clear that if Israel continues to attack Lebanon, Iran feels that it has the opening to attack Israel again because the United States isn't going to intervene in that, because the U.S. has also said to Israel, stop the invasion of Lebanon, stop the attacks in Lebanon. Of course, Netanyahu's whole theory has been that with American backing, Israel can destroy any foe.

It's not true. It's very costly for the United States. And Trump was also correct when he said a few days ago to Netanyahu, everybody. hates you and everybody hates Israel now and that's objectively true as well. So what we may be glimpsing is the beginning of the end of Israel's impunity. I certainly hope so. It would mean that the United States is recapturing its own foreign policy. This would be the right thing to happen. Well, in the past week, Netanyahu has thumbed his nose at Trump, metaphorically speaking, ratcheted up the slaughter in the Lebanese, in the Beirut suburbs. His principal opponent, Naftali Bennett, his former chief of staff, and also a former, albeit

brief, prime minister, has attacked him from the right. Of course. Even considering compliance with Trump. Where is this going? Well, there has been in grain now for decades in Israeli impunity that they can do what they want because they control the United States. And Bennett, of course, is campaigning for office. So we're in a ridiculous season anyway about this.

in Israel, who can be even more harder line than a essentially fascistic government, it's quite remarkable. But the underlying premise has been we can do what we want because the United States will have our back and the U.S. will have our back because the pro-Israel lobby is so powerful that it can't be resisted. I found Bennett's remarks to be rather out of a reality as well. I'm not holding my breath about Israeli politics, by the way. They may get rid of Netanyahu and the same kind of bluster and violence could continue. But what we're observing is a deeply held view in Israel that they can do what they want because the U.S. leadership will always come around.

may still be true, although the last few days have had Trump go out of his way to say it's not true. And we can recall several points. First, that reported shouting match that Oxios reported, which were Trump said, you're a crazy whatever. I won't. repeat the words, and everybody hates you. Well, then Trump was rather proud of that being reported. That was not a leak. That was a signal. Then Trump said very explicitly, I told Net Yahoo not to fire back. And then when they did fire back, I told them to stop. And now it is at least paused for the moment. This is not the language of somebody who is likely to join in the shooting spree, although with Trump, of course, we all know that everything is a bit unpredictable.

Then it's reported just now that when Trump was challenged on this, he said explicitly, he doesn't call the shots, I call the shots. So this is also very explicit. It's not the way that any of this is normally discussed. I think another fact that was quite telling is that, as we discussed already last week, the survey that the Pew Research survey institution carried out all over the world shows that Israel, let's say its behavior is despised all over the world. Netanyahu is despised all over the world.

So when Trump said you are hated and Israel is now hated because of you, he may literally have been referring to the briefing based on the Pew data or he may have been intuiting it, but it's factually the case. There just is no support anywhere in the world what Netanyahu is doing, and that includes the United States, strongly, which overwhelmingly is opposed to Israel's actions in Gaza, wants a state of Palestine alongside Israel, and is opposed to the war in Iran. And Trump is facing an election very soon. He says he's not bothered by it, not concerned by it, but he's losing votes in Congress now because members of Congress are concerned about it, about flush funds,

about his grift, about these wars. So in this sense, I think American politics at least is raising its head above the parapet for the first time and a long time in saying the lobby does not run everything and the American people are disgusted about. about yet another Israel caused war that is clearly a debacle. So something, at least in the short term, is changing right now. I think quite consequentially, for the longer term, by the way, because one of the things that is most consequential about all these opinion surveys is the demographic findings.

Older people are unhappy with Israel, but younger people are completely disgusted with Israel. And that signals the direction of change of politics as well, which will be increasingly of the views of today's young people. And then there's this, which is Prime Minister Netanyahu yesterday in the Knesset, Chris number seven. A prime minister in Israel must have one specific essential ability. Just one single ability. And if he lacks this fundamental quality, then he simply cannot be here in this position. He needs to be able to say one word to the president of the United States.

And that word is no. No. Bye-bye, BB. I guess the word no is the same in Hebrew as it is. in English or maybe he was just emphasizing. No, no. Is that for domestic political consumption? Obviously.

Does he believe that he can say no to the president of the United States, notwithstanding the consequences? He's on his way out. Of course he can't say no in some fundamental way. Let him try. It would just absolutely catapult the current. to a catastrophe for Israel. But he is an unpopular figure at home.

He is despised here in the United States. He's despised around the world. He has a warrant for his arrest from the international criminal court, as do several of his colleagues in the cabinet. We're sick of this, really. And he can say it, but he cannot do without the United States. Now, what's true is that prime ministers before of Israel have said no and brought the U.S. around. I think it's not so simple anymore.

And that's because what Israel is doing is more obnoxious than things that it has done in the past, more visible after 30 years of one debacle after another, brought to us by Israel, whether it's in Iraq or Syria or Libya, on and on and on, people here are just sick of it. And so in this sense, that was a little brave bravado, but boy, if you really believed it, you wouldn't have to say it out loud. Will Israel ever agree to a meaningful and enforceable cessation of violence, in Gaza and Lebanon? I think the answer is yes,

and the question is how many people are killed beforehand. Things change in life. Israel is at the end of an awful phase, in my view. How it ends, we don't know, because things can end tragically. But Israel has been on a phase of, so-called greater Israel. That is, if Israel thinks it has the U.S. in its palm, then it can demand to control all of Palestine. It can demand to control parts of Lebanon. It can demand to overthrow the

governments in the region. And for a long time, it got away with that. But it has been a failed venture. It has led to this worldwide profound, profound disapproval of what Israel is doing. It's weighing heavily on American politics. And Trump is clearly feeling the domestic politics as well as the substance. Maybe he's feeling the substance of it, but at least he's feeling the domestic politics of it. He's got an election coming up. So he's the one that's saying that he can say no to the Israeli prime minister. And this is something that American president should have done a long time ago. If Trump carries through on this, he's right. Let's see.

Over the weekend, several former Shinn bet is really domestic surveillance slash law enforcement, FBI slash NSA type organization. political violence in Israel. Oh, by the way, one other thing, just about these groups that we should touch on, this extraordinary New York Times report a few days ago, again, clearly a planted story by the U.S. government about the amount of spying that Israel is doing. Oh, that was next on my list of subjects. We can go right here. They even identified the targets of the spying as Elbridge Colby, the Deputy Secretary of Defense, and Steve Whitkoff. Now, that means they're spying on Trump himself because he talks to them.

Of course. But the point is not only that reality, which is probably true, but the story, that's the even more interesting fact that there is a story in which senior officials are saying that Israel is spying on us, that is not a happy story for Israel. That's not a news story, by the way. The news is the story that people are talking about it because they're pushing back on Israel. Because the people who are sick and tired of what's happening. Precisely. So the whole week was a disaster from Israel's point of view, a president of the United States ordering them to stop a president of the United States publicly saying everybody hates you, a leading New York

Times story saying Israel spying on us. In other words, the whole Israeli premise that they run our politics is coming unhinged. Fundamentally, because it's what Israel's doing is disgusting. that's the fundamental reason. And then because it's disgusting, the American people have swung strongly against Israel. And that's true of just about every country of the world. And that's what's changing our politics right now. That, yes, of course, terrible things are done

without the American people approving them or knowing them. But usually when there's strong public opposition with a lag, there is somehow a change of the American politics, the Vietnam Wars. The classic example in my lifetime of a horrible war that gradually was shut down on the U.S. side because the public was just exhausted by this horrible mistake over many, many years. the same is happening with Israel now. And I said it, by the way, to the Israeli media, the first days after the October 7th, 2023, attacked by Hamas, and then Israel launching this murderous assault on Gaza, watch out, this could be suicidal what you're doing. And I'm sorry to say that word, and it leads into your other question, you get too far ahead of your yourselves with this arrogance, with the impudence, with the violence, with the vulgarity,

with the criminality, it really can come back to haunt you very, very badly. And Israel is in a very bad state of mind societally. This is not a case in Israel, broadly speaking, where this prime minister is acting violently against the wishes of the public. described it in the U.S. This is a case where the broad public has gone way overboard in a kind of society-wide bout of viciousness and murderousness. And it's extraordinarily damaging and dangerous for a society to fall into that kind of

collective mindset. But I believe, broadly speaking, Israel did fall into that collective mindset. This isn't a society that is profoundly divided on all the violence. They're divided on Netanyahu, you know, individually, on his culpability, his responsibility, his criminality, his, his corruption, and so forth. But broadly, Israel has supported the war in Iran, the attack on Gaza, the war in Lebanon, and so forth, that's a disaster. And it's so contrary to what is in Israel's interest for long-term survival, that when reality starts to hit, the question you asked about internal violence and unrest is perfectly possible that it happens. Think of the fact that there are hundreds of thousands of,

settlers, wildly anti-Palestinian, wild analogs, many of them, pure zealots, God gives us the right to do whatever we do in the occupied territories. And they have that zealotry. They're killing people all the time, burning down Palestinian houses, shooting children, terrible, terrible things. And the mindset, is absolutely extremist, and it has been given full vent by real fascists in this government, Smotrich and Ben-Gabir at the top, even more than Netanyahu. And so it's, it will stop. Actually, the world will stop this. Maybe Donald Trump will stop this because the American people are totally,

completely disgusted by this. And when Trump says no, it's actually going to be no. But then the question that you asked, what kind of reaction could occur in Israel? Could it be violence internally? Absolutely. These people are armed. There are a lot of zealots around. Who knows what will happen in the shorter term? I hope that it doesn't go to the point where Israel destroys its own society. This is the risk that I've seen all along. What I hope is that reality sets in and that some people are able to stand up and survive in that context and say, you have to stop the wars. You have to go back to your borders, which are the 4th of June, 1967. There's going to be a state of Palestine next door because there are as many Palestinian Arabs as there are Israeli Jews, 8 million of each.

And you don't get along. And so there are going to be two states, not an apartheid state, not a genocide, not ethnic cleansing. They're going to be two states. This is the reality. And it's maybe Israel's last chance. Maybe. But I hope that somebody is listening to reason right now what you played of Netanyahu boasting that he can say no to an American president. He can, but America will say no to him, and then he'll find out what it means to say no.

All right, in case anybody thinks you're going soft on President Trump, I want you to watch him on Meet the Press yesterday. All right, good. Number one. Do you think it's appropriate that they have an election and five days later they're nowhere close to pick any winner? State and local officials acknowledge they are slow. They're urging. No, they're crooked. They're urging the votes to be counted.

That's how they vote in California. Just like you're crooked. Your press is crooked. And meet the press is crooked. To be fair, I'm not crooked. But really? Well, you play right into their hands in. Let's continue.

You're either crooked or you're stupid. You play right into their hands with a scrap. You know that these elections are rigged. Your network knows that they're rigged. You know that I won an election in a landslide and I got 94% bad press. But Mr. President, he's never presented. Because you have no credibility. But you've never presented evidence that it was rigged.

Let's keep talking about. I want to talk about Todd Lynch. You have more evidence. There's more evidence than ever presented. Let's talk about. Your elections in this country, we're like a third world country. Your elections are crooked and you're crooked and meet the press is crooked. And so is ABC and CBS and CNN.

But Mr. President. You're one-sided crooked networks. So let's call it quits because I've had enough. Thank you, darling. Have a good time. Mr. President, let's please. I traveled all the way to Wisconsin. I've sat in the rain with you.

I know. I've traveled all the way to an hour. On and off in the rain, and I've given you enough time. You ought to straighten out your press because you know what? A country can never be great with a dishonest. Listen, we traveled all the way to Wisconsin

for the same of you. By the sound died at the end, he crushed the microphone with his shoe. Honestly. What do the Iranians think when they see that? It's so sad for our country. We've got a lot of things that 340 million people here seriously need for their health care and their jobs and the schools for their children and safety. And we just saw, of course, we're not in good hands.

So thank you for making sure. that we stay with reality. We're in a kind of unreality on all sides right now. I think the world's never been more dangerous in the sense of this astounding craziness. But there's one piece of good news, by the way, every time I look, if you look at where the majority of the American people stand on issues, pretty sensible. If you look at that around the world, pretty sense. You look at that around the world, pretty sensible. If you look at what politics delivers, very, very sad. But if we could somehow get the will of the American people actually translated into what we do,

the wars would stop. And we may be able to address some of the problems in our society. Thank you, Professor Sachs. eloquent as always, my dear friend. Wow, what a thing to watch. Yeah, we'll probably hook up at the end of the week on Friday. Excellent. Make it again, depending upon where on the planet you are.

Thank you, very good. We'll see you then. All the best. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Coming up tomorrow Tuesday, a full day for you with a new guest at 8 in the morning Ambassador Chaz Freeman at 9 in the morning, Professor John Mearsheimer. At 10 in the morning, Robert Barnes, the lawyer.

with the inside scoop on how Donald Trump makes his decisions in the Oval Office. At 2 o'clock, Matt Ho, at 3 o'clock, Colonel Karen Koukowski. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom.