Judging Freedom - Scott Horton: How Naïve is Joe Biden?

Episode Date: February 29, 2024

Scott Horton: How Naïve is Joe Biden?See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Thank you. Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Thursday, February 29th, 2024. Our longtime friend Scott Horton joins us now. Scott, a pleasure, my dear friend. Welcome back to the show. Thank you, Your Honor. So in the same week that the United States asked France to seize the Russian assets in its banks and give that money to Ukraine and France said no, the President of France said this. There is no consensus today to send ground troops in an official, endorsed and sanctioned manner, but in dynamic terms, nothing should be ruled out. Official, endorsed and sanctioned, but we might not rule him out anyway. How crazy is it for him to make a statement like that, which had to be repudiated, I don't know if seriously, but

publicly, by nearly all of his colleagues in Western Europe? Yeah, it's amazing. If he said that off the cuff, rather than as a planned thing, you know, I know that he's there at a podium. Do you know if that was in response to a question or if that was part of his prepared remarks there, Judge? It appears as though it's part of his prepared remarks, but I don't know it for sure. It's going from his tenor and demeanor. Yeah, it seemed like it. It seemed like that was he had prepared to say it's completely crazy. And what mean, what does that mean? That means war between NATO and Russia. That's what that

means. And everybody knows what that means. That means general war. And that means thermonukes in the end of the world. Do you, from your sources, believe that the French have special forces on the ground as in Ukraine, as the Americans do? You know what? I'm going to have to plead ignorance on that, Judge. I'd have to go back. I know that the Jack Texaria leak from a year ago said that, yes, there were special forces, different combined NATO special operations forces on the ground there. And I know Dave DeCamp was just telling me earlier from antiwar.com about a new report about special operations forces confirmed to be on the ground there, although I could not tell you what all nationalities there said to be there. It's interesting you mentioned

Teixeira. The news is just breaking that he's going to plead guilty tomorrow to the dissemination of classified documents. I can't seem to find out from the news reports to which I have access what the terms of the guilty plea are, and that is what his penalty would be. I hate when this happens. I would love to see the government, a good defense lawyer, a defense lawyer who has security cleared himself so that he can look at this, these things, put the government on trial. It never seems to happen.

They always plead guilty because the government overcharges and, you know, you're exposed to 50 years in jail, but if you plead guilty, you'll get to almost anybody, particularly a young person would take that. But I appreciate you reminding us of the good he did by revealing the nature and extent of the involvement

of Western Europe and Ukraine. Here's President Putin responding to what President Macron said. They should eventually understand that we also have weapons and they know it. I just said it now myself Weapons that can hit targets on their territory Everything that the West is coming up with now what they threaten the world with it can result in a conflict with the use of nuclear weapons, and therefore the destruction of civilization. You were right.

Was he wise to say that? You know, you take it how you want, whether he's threatening or warning. I think, not to take it from his perspective, but just from a civilian earthlings perspective that the American government, their national security state, they get really carried away with their narratives and their beliefs about their own righteousness and what they're doing and what's probably going to happen. And it can be pretty scary sometimes. You know, last year I did this Waco special and a guy named David Hardy,

who's one of the great heroes of the Waco story. He was a former federal policeman himself. He had been part of the interior department. And he said, when you're a government employee in the executive branch, he said, there's the truth, there's falsity, and then there's our position. And our position doesn't necessarily have to have anything to do with truth or falsity at all. It's just the thing that the people in the room were able to compromise on when they finally wrote it down. And you can essentially have completely insane and just poor conclusions

about what is happening, what is to be done, and what is the likely result of it that they just get completely married to and won't stop. Look at Victoria Nuland. She's on a PR tour last weekend to attempt to persuade Republicans in the House of Representatives that assenting to the $61 billion that the Senate said they want to send over there and the president says he'll sign will somehow keep America safer. I mean, this is just utter nonsense. Nobody challenges her on it. I wonder if she actually believes it herself, or as you say, if it's somewhere between truth, falsity, and the government's version of things. Yeah, that's just what we say. Forgive me, someone was quoting a politician to me yesterday saying, yes, we have to pass this money for America's national security needs. And of course, they're talking about a bill that's to give billions of dollars to Israel

and Ukraine. It's about their national security needs, not about our national security needs. But you just call it whatever you want. One, two, skip a few. This is what George W. Bush would say. He would go, well, I shorthanded it a little bit. In other words, skipped the argument that makes any sense and just made some ridiculous claim. And you're supposed to just swallow it.

Well, unfortunately, what you say is true and is typical of government, no matter which political party is in. They're all they're all the same. And they all have that have that attitude. Remember, Tom Woods is lying. No matter who you vote for for president, you end up with John McCain. And Victoria Nuland. Victoria Nuland worked for Clinton, and then she worked for Bush, and then she worked for Obama, and then now she's working for Biden. She only took the Trump years off. She's been a huge player in American foreign policy since I

was in junior high. Well, not only did she take the Trump years off, she was one of the principal witnesses against him in his first impeachment over the phone call to Zelensky involving aid to Ukraine. But, you know, some of our viewers are saying, Judge, please stop showing this. I'm sick of seeing it because we've been running clips of her. But I have to run one because I want your comments on it,

because in it, she actually says, Scott, what you just suggested they all say. And that is by aiding Ukraine. Listen carefully, because you'll hear it at the very end. It will make the U.S. safer. The U.S. Without sending a single U.S. soldier into combat and investing less than one-tenth of one year's defense budget of the United States, we have helped Ukraine destroy 50% of Russia's ground combat power, 50%, and 20% of its vaunted Black Sea fleet. Ukraine has taken off the battlefield 21 naval ships, 102 Russian aircraft, and 2,700 Russian tanks. By every

measure, Ukraine's bravery and strength, its resilience, has made the United States safer too. Do you think that any rational person could possibly believe that, even though many will say it? Well, I mean, if they think that America is on the Black Sea, but it's not, you know, she's talking about is a complete non sequitur, right? You just heard her talk about a land 7000 miles away. And then she goes, yeah, and that protects America again, like Bush shorthanding it and not explaining how that makes any sense at all. You just heard her talk about a land 7,000 miles away. And then she goes, yeah, and that protects America. Again, like Bush, shorthanding it and not explaining how that makes any sense at all. And of course, what she says is wrong other than the part about the fleet. They have sunk some ships and damaged some Russian ships.

But there's plenty of reporting that says that the Russian army is stronger now than it was before. They got more tanks and more artillery. They built up a military industrial complex for, you know, Putin. The president has ordered a larger military to be created than the one that they had before. And America and our allies have spent a lot more money than the Russians have on the same war. So who's given who another Afghanistan? Who is, you know, creating, you know, getting away with strategically weakening their opponent here? The Americans always, more than anything else, judge. They believe in themselves, but they never question what they say. In fact, Russia's military wasn't posing a threat to the

United States at all. Their Navy wasn't posing a threat to the United States at all, unless you count John Brennan's terrorists in Syria getting bombed by the Russian Air Force, but I don't. Well, one of the reasons that we have troops all over the Middle East that serve as a tripwire, you've made that argument yourself. I know you're talking about killing other people in Syria, but that's one of the reasons that we're there. Retired four-star German general, forgive me, I don't even have his name, chair of the NATO military committee, recently retired, says President Putin has never sought to conquer Ukraine. And yet Joe Biden, Tony Blinken, Jake Sullivan, and Victoria Nuland all say, if Putin takes Ukraine, if Putin takes Ukraine, what's to stop him from going into NATO countries? And then we have nothing, we have something nobody wants and nobody's prepared for, which is American troops fighting Russians. I would argue

we've already started a war against Russia. You saw that piece in the New York Times. It's a puff piece about the CIA, so they probably leaked it. It's 10,000 words long. We have 14 bases. They say 12, and at the end they say, by the way, there's two more. 14 CIA bases in Ukraine for 10 years. Well, that's the case. The Russians know they're there, know what's going on and hear everything that's happening there. or a military, where to aim, how to aim, using American equipment and American ammunition to hit Russians in Russia. Wartime. No? Yeah. I mean, the only thing to add to that is, well, somewhat deniable until they put it on the front page of the New York Times. And then now that it's not deniable anymore, it's anybody's guess what the Russian reaction will be. I mean, I think mostly they're very cautious. They're not trying to invade and conquer all of Ukraine or recreate the Russian empire in Eastern Europe.

See, the thing is about that is it's a damn lie told by the Americans who know they'll never admit it, probably even out loud to each other or themselves on the weekend or anything, but they know that they provoked this whole conflict. They know, they bragged about it at the time, it ain't no secret at all, but they overthrew the government of Ukraine twice in 10 years, in 2004 and 2014. And they started the war against the East immediately thereafter. John Brennan went straight to Kiev, and the first thing they did was launch a war on terrorism to attack the people of the East who didn't want to accept the rule of the new coup d'etat junta. And that's the story of what happened

here. They forced this conflict, and so then they have to justify it. They can't say, well, geez, you know, if only George Bush hadn't sent the CIA to overthrow the government there in 2004, we probably would have never had any of these problems. They can't say that. So instead, who's the one link in all of this? Victoria Nuland, as you just pointed out, in all the years that she's been involved and what Lindsey Graham, forgive me for quoting him, said about Mark Zuckerberg, absurd about Zuckerberg, is true about Mrs. Nuland. She has blood on her hands. How many thousands, how many tens of thousands, how many hundreds of thousands of human beings have died

because of her two coups, and now her orchestrating this use of Ukraine as a battering ram to drive Vladimir Putin from office. Yeah, I mean, exactly. And look, she was Middle East advisor to Dick Cheney, the vice president in the run up to Iraq War II judge. This is Robert Kagan's wife we're talking about here, Victoria Nuland. People should read. There's this great article by Jim Loeb called All in the Neocon Family. And it's about how the neocons are really only about 75 or 80 people. And most of them are related one way or another to Midge Dector and Elliott Abrams and whatever. And they all could sit at one big Thanksgiving dinner table together. And she is one of the most important ones of them.

And by the way, Judge, you know, right when the war began two years ago, and pretty much everybody thought that the Russians were going to go as far as they wanted, that they were going to smash the Ukrainian military and they're going to sack Kiev and have their way. The question was, how far east are they going to go? And what are their demands against other Eastern European states going to be as far as NATO and whatever? And Robert Kagan, her husband, wrote a piece for The Washington Post saying, ah, screw it. You know what? Maybe the Chinese will be the dominant force in East Asia. And maybe Russia will be the dominant force in Eastern Europe. And maybe we'll just have to settle for being the dominant force in Western Europe.

And maybe that won't be that bad. And I'm going, yeah, look, if even Robert Kagan can admit Zbigniew Brzezinski before he died had written a thing saying, man, we need to back off. It isn't working. It's time to start deputizing the middle rank powers

to do more of the policing in the world and retrench, come home before we're completely busted. I mean, when Robert Kagan and Zbigniew Brzezinski are telling you you're blowing it, you're going too far when they're the ones who built the empire and they're the ones who drove it into the ground, you got to at least listen to their admissions and confessions of their own failures. Here we are two years later, pretending like they never recognized that, yeah, we blew it.

Were you surprised at the outpouring of sadness, sympathy, and intellectual support for Aaron Bushnell, the young Air Force airman who immolated himself in front of the Israeli embassy, not to protest the Israeli government, but to protest the American government for funding what the Netanyahu regime is doing. Yeah. Well, I have to plead ignorance on the reaction to it. I have my own and I talked with the guys at the Institute and antiwar.com about it a little bit, but I have broken away. I quit Twitter, Judge, and I have been working very hard on my history book and I've been reading a lot but they all understand the frustration of a person in the American military who's part of a group that's been put on standby readiness so that they may be shipped to the Middle East on a moment's notice. And he has no choice. Of course, he voluntarily joined the military, but long before October 7, wanted to manifest in a permanent way to his bosses that they're killers. Yeah. Well, look, I feel terrible about the whole thing. I am

firmly of the opinion that Israel is the worst thing about America. And it's the cause of so, I mean, America has plenty of problems without them, but they're just, their moral hazard and their perverse incentives and the operation of our national government and our national security state just caused so much grief. It's unbelievable. And this kid should be alive right now. And further, it speaks to the major disconnect in American society between the Hollywood movie of being a soldier and John Wayne or even your dad and your uncle and your grandpa who fought in a war that you might believe in or something. I don't know, World War II or some kind of thing, if you go back that far. But the idea is that, you know, look, to die for one's country is sweet and right. And if you wear olive green and you go fight, meaning kill and risk your life in defense

of your country, your Bill of Rights, your family back home, that's the most wonderful and heroic thing to do. And people, when they're kids, when they're 17, 18, 19 years old, they sign up basically based on that, based on just, we're going to be strong and brave and heroic without any real connection to America's foreign policy and what the United States is in the world, the dominant world empire since the end of World War II and the author of numerous aggressive wars and coup d'etats and bloody insurrections and terrorist mercenary throat-slitting campaigns and suicide bombers and God knows what. But in the neighborhood, it's your dad and your coach

and your minister and, and your friend's dad. And everybody knows that, oh, we're real proud of you, son. You're going to join the service to do the right thing. And it's, it's this completely like, you know, disconnected, metaphysical, imaginary service separate from the real American Pentagon, which is run by the most cynical and corrupt and dishonest and blood cut down by the IDF. It's now up to 107 deaths. Do you think even something like this will change the mind of Joe Biden or the American public that just can't stand for this much longer? It has to be the public. Joe Biden can only be made to feel the heat. Never. He will never see the light. He's the worst one of us. But look what happened in Michigan.

Uncommitted got more than 100000 votes. That's a huge shot across his bow from the left there. And, you know, a recent poll had something like 65 percent. I believe that the American people want to cease fire here. It's been at least a solid, you know, half of Republicans and even more now have wanted to cease fire, which Republicans are very biased toward Israel. But even there, they're saying enough of this. And on the left, the liberal side, the entire left half of the left is anti-israel and pro-palestine on this the center left liberal democrats are in a real bind between the donors who love the war and the voters who hate it and so you know let the campaign season begin and and you know the america first there's got a big deal

with donald trump too how can he be america first and is first? It's one or the other. Listen, I get it. I get it that the left of the left hates the war and hates our involvement with Israel. I hate both. And I get it that they want to teach Joe Biden a lesson, but they're going to end up with somebody who on Israel is worse. Maybe. Or maybe we can get Donald Trump. They may not care because Trump can't run for reelection, but they're going to be stuck with somebody who is more devoted to Israel than any other president.

I don't know why, but he is. He is. He's so very terribly Zionist, and he had a horrible record, which I'll spare you, in his four years in. But then again, remember, Judge, that the day after the election, Netanyahu congratulated Biden and that angered Donald Trump so badly. And I don't know if it's enough for him. So, you know, he does. Knowing him as well as I do and for as long as I do, he does take those things personally. I've been the object of his wrath, you know, and then he hugs you.

I know what it's like. I don't know if he'll forgive Bibi because he cursed him publicly for months since Bibi made. Bibi was the first foreign head of state to call Biden. And this was in an era where the final count wasn't even in. Yeah. Scott, go ahead. I wish somebody who knows Donald Trump would tell him that that's why Al-Qaeda attacked America. You know, all these 9-11 truthers, they missed the point.

It wasn't Israel that did 9-11. It was Israel that murdered a bunch of innocent Lebanese and Palestinians and motivated these Egyptians and Saudis primarily to attack the United States of America. And supporting Israel is contrary to the interests of this country. America first means defend America first and let Israel deal with their own problems. Couldn't have said it better, my friend. for joining us scott it's a pleasure to have you back we'll see you again soon thank you very much judge of course all the best uh a long and rewarding day uh tomorrow at three in the afternoon colonel lawrence wilkerson that's friday three o'clock eastern and four o'clock Eastern, your favorite, the Roundtable. Larry Johnson,

back from Moscow, Ray McGovern, his usual self. Judge the Politano for judging freedom. I'm out.