Judging Freedom - Prof. John Mearsheimer : Are Trump’s Killings and Threats a Bluff?

Episode Date: December 4, 2025

Prof. John Mearsheimer : Are Trump’s Killings and Threats a Bluff?See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Discover why there's more to imagine when you listen at audible.com slash best of the year. Hi, everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Thursday, December 4th, 2025. Professor John Mearsheimer joins us now. Professor Mir Schumer, a pleasure, as always. thank you for accommodating my schedule. Before we get very deep into Venezuela and the motivation and the problems with regime change, what is your take on the latest Embrolio involving Defense Secretary Hegeseth? As I see it, there are three issues.

One is the signal gate, the exposure of classified documents to the public and the the exposure of troop movements to the public. Two is the killing of people on speedboats, allegedly carrying drugs, non-combatants, civilians, 1,500 miles from the United States. Three is killing people who survived the attempt to kill them and were clinging for dear life onto the remnants of the speedboats.

You can take these in any order you wish, or you can reject them as premises for your answer. I think that there's sort of two things going on here. First of all, I think in terms of Hegss's behavior, it's basically beyond the pale. He's just done a number of things that are unacceptable. The whole business with going on signal and talking about classified information is just one example of that. But also the whole issue of killing people in the career. who we don't even know who they are and just murdering them is unacceptable.

So that's causing all sorts of problems for him and for the administration. But the other thing is that Hexeth has a reputation for treating his subordinates in terrible ways. And when you do that, there's eventually going to be blowback and people are going to look for opportunities to nail you. And I think there's a lot of that going on. It's payback time. And I think that moving forward, there will be more and more leaks, more and more efforts from behind the scenes to undermine Hegset's position, which is already weakened by the fact that he just does things and says things that, again, are beyond the pale, in my opinion.

What is your understanding from your education at West Point and your years in the Air Force about the lawfulness of killing. non-combatants in a non-war, a not-declared war? Well, the thing I've learned over time is that because militaries are giant killing machines, there's a very powerful tendency for people in the military in certain circumstances to kill civilians unlawfully. That tendency just sits there all the time. And what military leaders try to do is they try to. to keep that control, that situation under control. And political leaders do the same thing.

And military leaders and political leaders therefore go to great lengths to say that this kind of behavior is unacceptable. But they understand full well that it happens. And that's the reason so much emphasis is placed on trying to prevent it from happening. Because again, you can never lose sight of the fact that militaries are giant killing machines. And sometimes the killing gets out of control. The problem with someone like Hexas, and I think it's also true of Trump, is that they don't like the idea that there are rules of engagement that limit this kind of murderous behavior. They think that soldiers should be able to just go out there and do whatever they want. And if they want to kill civilians and they think it's in the interest

of the American military, they should be free to do it. And this is a prescription for disaster, right? We want to do everything we can to keep a cap on this volcano. But they're not interested. And here I'm talking about Hexeth and Trump in doing that. And it's coming back to bite them. That's what's happening here. People have seen what has happened in the Caribbean and they see how Hexeth and Trump talk. And there's a great deal of dissatisfaction. And if you're interested in going after the administration, it's easier to go after exit than it is to go after Trump. So in a very important way, dissatisfaction with Trump devolves to dissatisfaction with

exit, who's doing much to cause himself, all sorts of problems, as I said at the top of the show. I'm going to play a clip. Apologies to the audience. We've played it a couple times today, and you may have seen this. It's a short 44-second clip from George Patton-like speech that he gave to. to the assembled admirals and generals a few months ago, but I can't imagine when you were at West Point,

how you'd react if the Secretary of Defense referred to the rules of engagement as stupid. Chris, cut number seven. We unleashed overwhelming and punishing violence on the enemy. We also don't fight with stupid rules of engagement. We untie the hands of our warfighters to intimidate, demoralize, hunt, and kill the enemies of our country. No more politically correct and overbearing rules of engagement.

Just common sense, maximum lethality, and authority for warfighters. That's all I ever wanted as a platoon leader. And it's all my E6 squad leaders ever wanted, back to that E6 rule. We let our leaders fight their formations, and then we have their back. It's very simple, yet incredibly powerful. If I'm the prosecutor at his court-martial, although he's a civilian, it wouldn't be court-martial, at his criminal prosecution for murder, I would play that to the jury and say, here's intent, ladies and gentlemen, I've just demonstrated intent.

You see the defendant there? That's the way he thinks. That's the way he addressed every admiral and general in the United States. I'd make two points. One is that I don't think there is any instance of any civilian leader or military leader talking like that. I think that's unprecedented. It's irresponsible in the extreme. He simply should not be saying those things.

Second point I'd make is, you know, when I went to West Point back in the day, the Maillai Massacre involving Lieutenant Callie, was revealed actually by Cy Hirsch in my senior year at West Point in the period 1969, 1970. And I remember very well when the superintendent at West Point, General Costa, was relieved of duty at the time because he had been the commander of the Ameriqal Division or the 23rd Infantry Division in Vietnam when that massacre took place. Now, Costa was not responsible for the massacre, but he was in charge. And it happened under his command. And for that reason, he was removed as the superintendent at West Point. And I think the basic message at the time, and it was the basic message I heard in all my years in the military, was that when you engage in

unlawful behavior, you're going to pay a real price. And unlawful behavior is unacceptable. Now, again, that's not to say that it didn't happen, and the fact that the Cali case took place is evidence of that. And by the way, there are a number of people I have known over the years who say that what Cali did was not that exceptional in Vietnam. There were other people as well. There were more than a hundred slaughtered. Well, the point that I'm making to you is that, again, militaries sometimes engage in barbarous behavior. It happens. And what you want to do here is go to great lengths to minimize that. And if you take the comments of Pete Hegseth, what you see is that you're not going to minimize barbarous behavior. In fact, what he's calling for

is maximizing it, do whatever is necessary to accomplish the mission. And if it involves murdering huge numbers of civilians, so be it. That's his message. And again, you simply do not want to make that argument. Admiral Bradley, who's the one that apparently actually gave the order to kill the survivors. And General Kane, who's the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. I don't know if it was testimony or just debriefing. You know, they do these damn things in secret. Democracy dies in secret, but that's what we have in the Congress. It appeared before both the Senate Armed Services Committee and the House Armed Services Committee. We have clips from a member of each of the committee.

at bemoaning what they saw. We'll start first with Senator Coons of the Senate Armed Services Committee. I think it'd be hard to watch this series of videos and not be troubled by it. So I don't reach the same conclusion that Senator Cotton does if you're describing it as righteous. But I have more policy questions than ever. That's not specific to this. operation or this strike, that's the entire undertaking. Exactly how narcotics being trafficked in the Eastern Caribbean on the open ocean connect to harming the United States at a level that justifies lethal strikes repeatedly. I have not yet been persuaded of. Special forces. What Senator O'Connor said he said that from the video that he saw that these survivors

went back into the boat, but we're trying to move ahead with their efforts to traffic drugs or provide information to other who he said were narco terrorists and that's why it made sense to strike this vote again. Did you come away with that same impression? I did not. Before your comment here is Senator Hines or excuse me, Congressman Hines was a little bit more emotional and far more graphic. Admiral Bradley has a storied career and he has my respect and he should have the respect of all of us. But what I saw in that room was one of the most troubling things I've seen in my time in public service, you have two individuals in clear distress without any means of locomotion with a destroyed vessel, were killed by the United States.

Can you wait, can you tell us a little bit more about exactly what was so troubling? What were some of the things that come up with? Under the DOD manual for abiding by the laws of armed conflict, the specific example given of an impermissible action is attacking a shipwreck. Any American who sees the video that I saw will see the United States military attacking shipwrecked sailors. Bad guys. Bad guys. But attacking shipwrecked sailors. Now there's a whole set of contextual items at the aisle. Admiral explained. Yes, they were carrying drugs. They were not in the position to continue their mission in any way. We don't, we don't, people will someday see this video and they will see that that video shows if you don't have the broader context, an attack on shipwreck sailors. Who ordered that? The last thing I'm going to say, the last thing I'm going to say is that the Admiral confirmed that there had not been a kill-them-all-order. and that there was not in order to grant no quarter.

So does it exonerate that's all he got there? Do you think the video should be released publicly? I do. Killing shipwrecked sailors, just to put this into deeper context for you, this occurs on September 2nd, 2025. On October 25th, month and a half later, 2025, another ship was destroyed and there were two survivors

and they rescued those two survivors obviously a change in policy and then they called the DOJ and so what did we do with them and the Department of Justice said well we don't have any evidence with which the prosecute them send them home so they deported them back to the country

from which they came your thoughts well I have a question for you It was said by the congressman that these are bad guys and that they're carrying narcotics. They're basically narco-terrorists. I have seen no evidence that we knew who the people we were killing were and what they were doing. Am I missing something here? No, you're not.

Well, what you're missing is what hasn't been shown to anybody, the evidence. The phrase narco-terrorist is a political phrase. professor. It's not a legal phrase. It's not defined in the law. The allegation that so-and-so is a narco-terrorist does not give rise to the ability to kill that person any more than the Chicago police seeing a major drug distribution in the city, nonviolent, can just go up and murder the drug distributors. It's the same. I'm going beyond that. I'm saying, Is there evidence that these were drug dealers or these were people who were engaged in narcotics? If there is, they haven't, they haven't revealed it.

Just like they haven't revealed what they say is the legal opinion from the Department of Justice justifying it. This is the same crew in the Department of Justice that told George W. Bush he could torture and Barack Obama he could kill Americans, nonviolent Americans, uncharged with any crimes, a child, a 16-year-old, in a foreign country. So this is just a case of the United States military blowing people out of the water who they don't know what they're doing. So why do you think this is happening?

Is this a bluff to intimidate President Maduro of Venezuela? This plus Larry Wilkerson, Colonel Wilkerson says it costs a billion dollars a day to maintain all the hardware and troops that are in the water outside of Venezuela? I think that Secretary of Defense, Heg says comments that you played in his George Patton-like speech explains this. The administration thinks it has the right to shoot anybody who they think may be a bad guy. You don't have to pay attention to whether the people People in those boats are fishermen or whether they are drug dealers or narco-terrorists or whatever you want to call them.

If you think they are, maybe they're not, but if you think they are, you think there's some reasonable chance that they're bad guys to quote the congressman, you have the right to just blow them out of the water. Isn't that Hegson's view? That is Hexas's view, and that's the president's view. And these are war crimes when performed by the military. Sorry, this is expressly prohibited by the Geneva Conventions. Of course, and that's why you see all this buck passing now, right?

Right. Trying to blame it on the military. The military will want to blame it on the civilian leaders. Trump knows nothing. He'll blame it on Hexit, right? Because what's happening here is that the chickens are coming home to roost. And they got away with this for a while, but now people are asking hard questions. Here's Trump saying, here's Trump saying the second strike, the one that killed,

of the survivors, the shipwrecked survivors, never happened. It's a cut number one. And Pete said he did not want them. He didn't even know what people were talking about. So we'll look into it. But no, I wouldn't have wanted that, not as a second strike. The first strike was very lethal. It was fine. And if there were two people around, but Pete said that didn't happen. Judge, can I ask you another question? Sure. What's the difference between the first strike and the second strike. None. The second strike is more lurid because they are already disabled.

But legally, there's no difference. The law is the same. They are non-combatants and they are not lawful targets for the military. Under federal law, under the UCMJ, which as you know is also federal law, uniformed court of military justice, and under international law.

Now, HECSeth could be prosecuted by a subsequent Department of Justice, although Trump will probably pardon him. He could be prosecuted by the courts of the countries from which his victims came, if he ever goes there, and he could be prosecuted in the, hey, if he ever goes to a country that takes this stuff seriously. Just to simplify this, if you think about it, what we tried to do was to kill those two individuals who survived with the first strike. We just missed. We got everybody else in the boat, but those two individuals. We intended to kill them. And the whole purpose of the second strike

was just to finish the job. Because one of the chatters just wrote, dead men tell no tales. And they don't file lawsuits. Well, their families file lawsuits. And I don't think we've heard the end of this one. No, no, I don't think we've heard the end. And knowing the plaintiff's bar the way I do, they're probably in Latin America interviewing as we speak, the two survivors. Let me move on a little bit to Venezuela. Is the Mossad involved in trying to destabilize the Maduro government? I have no idea. I'm not sure exactly what role the Mossad is. playing here. It's quite clear that the CIA is involved, but beyond that, I'm not sure what's going on. Okay. Another question for you. Japan's prime minister and several United States

senators, Republicans all, have recently intimated the desirability of a military defense of Taiwan. Where are we going to go with this? Well, the Japanese prime minister basically said that if the Chinese were to attack Taiwan, that that would be seen by Japanese leaders as a potential threat, underlying the word potential, a potential threat to Japan's survival. I think she was stating the obvious. She wasn't saying that she didn't recognize the one China population. She was just saying that from Japan's point of view, a Chinese attack on Taiwan was potentially a threat to its survival.

Well, does she recognize the one China policy like theoretically the rest of the world does? There's no evidence that she does not recognize the one China policy. The key issue here is whether you recognize the one China policy or not, will you, if you're the United States, or if you're Australia or if you're Japan, will you defend Taiwan? That's the question. And from a Japanese point of view, I've spoken to Japanese elites over time about this issue. They consider Taiwan to be of enormous strategic importance to them. You want to remember that Japan took Taiwan effectively from China in 1895. There was a war between China and Japan from 1894 to 1895 and the Japanese took Taiwan and the Chinese, the Chinese government in Beijing

has never gotten Taiwan back. And the fact that it was Japan that took Taiwan is one of the reasons, not the only reason, but one of the reasons that the Chinese are so anxious to get it back. But of course, the Japanese don't want that to happen for strategic reasons. So this is a very dangerous situation. There's no question about it. What would American senators be thinking when they are suggesting that we would aid the Japanese in an effort to repel the Chinese? I mean, such a project would be massive in undertaking and probably defeated. Well, you want to remember that Joe Biden, when he was president, said on four separate occasions that the United States would come to Taiwan's defense if, China attacked it. Now, those comments were walked back each time, but not completely. And

the mere fact that Joe Biden said it four times is evidence that he was willing to come to Taiwan's defense should China attack it. And I think that what the Japanese prime minister was hinting at is that it's highly likely that Japan would come to Taiwan's defense as well. I mean, it's very important to understand that who controls Taiwan from a purely strategic point of view matters greatly. And the Japanese, the Australians, the Filipinos, the Americans all have a vested interest in keeping Taiwan out of China's hands. I fully understand that from China's point of view, this is anathema. And this, of course, is why Beijing reacted. One could say even overreacted to what the Japanese prime minister. Well, they did. They practically sent a squad

to arrest her. I mean, they egregiously overreacted, and she has walked it back a little bit, even though she's recently elected, and she probably represents accurately the views of conservatives in her country. I think that that's true. I think that the elites in the United States and the elites in Japan would decide to come to Taiwan's defense if Taiwan were attacked. Is the United States empire crumbling? No, I think that's much too strong. I think the United States is in trouble for sure. I think if you look at what's happening in Ukraine, you look at what's happening in the Middle East,

it's quite clear that the United States is in serious trouble. And we have been trying, the Trump administration has been trying to shut down these wars, but it's not succeeded for sure. But the idea that the empire is crumbling, that American military power is under threat and that the Chinese are dominating us, it's not the case at this point in time for sure. There's no question that China has grown more powerful relative to the United States, at least since the early 1990s. China is now considered a peer competitor. You remember, we lived in the unipolar moment from roughly 1992 to 2000. The United States was the single great power on the planet.

Just think about that. Well, that moment no longer exists. It no longer exists. That's right. Russia and China are now great powers. And China is considered a peer competitor. And one can tell a story where China continues to grow at a more rapid economic pace in the United States. And over the next decade or so, surpasses the American military in terms of the balance of power.

So China is a real threat to the United States. States in terms of the balance of power. And this is why the whole question of Taiwan matters so much. You have these two incredibly powerful states, the United States and China, who are eyeball to eyeball over Taiwan, their eyeball to eyeball over the South China Sea, and their eyeball to eyeball over the East China Sea. And by the way, if you're talking about the East China Sea, that's where the Japanese come in. And it's the East China Sea and how it's linked to Taiwan that matters so much to Japan. So this is a very dangerous situation. And I've long argued that once China grew powerful, this is the situation you would find yourself in. Professor Mearsheimer,

pleasure, my dear friend. Thank you very much for your time. As always, thank you for allowing me to go all over the place from the Caribbean to the East China Sea. And thank you for your thoughts and for accommodating my schedule. My pleasure as always, and I look forward to seeing you next week. As do we. Thank you, Professor. All the best. Coming up after this long day, one remaining, I think he's in Italy, but I'm not sure. We'll ask him at 4 o'clock, Pepe Escobar, Judge Napolitano for judging freedom. Thank you.