Judging Freedom - Scott Ritter : The Paper Tiger Closes In.

Episode Date: September 29, 2025

Scott Ritter : The Paper Tiger Closes In.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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That's an equivalent to $15 a month. Limited time new customer offer for first three months only. Speeds may slow above 35 gigabytes on unlimited. plan. Taxes and fees extra. See Mint Mobile for details. Hi, everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Monday, September 29th, 2000, 25. Scott Ritter, we'll be here with us in just a minute on the paper tiger closes in. But first this. While the markets are giving us whiplash, have you seen the price of gold?

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Zero pressure to buy, and you have a 100% risk-free purchase guarantee. It's time to see if gold is right for you. Call 800, 511, 4620, 800, 511, 4620, or go to Learjudgenap.com and tell them your friend the judge sent you. Scott Ritter, welcome here, my dear friend. Before we get to the latest nonsense from General Kellogg and the choices facing President Trump. A few other questions.

Should Benjamin Netanyahu, who did not look very happy at a press conference just that concluded a few minutes ago with the President Trump in the White House, be concerned over Israel's diminishing, rapidly diminishing support in the United States? I think he is concerned about Israel's collapsing support amongst, you know, what was the foundational, you know, component of this pro-Israeli, lobby, which is evangelical Christian Zionists. You know, everybody speaks of APEC, the American-Israeli Public Affairs Committee and various, you know, pro-Israeli American Jewish congresses or gatherings.

But the heart and soul of what makes the Zionist lobby viable in America is the iron grip hold it had on American Christian evangelicals. you know, we heard it with Ted Cruz when he said, I joined the Senate to serve Israel. My God, an American senator making that statement in public. But many of our elected officials do who come from communities where their constituents are comprised in large part of these Christian events. I just have to jump in. I forget the congressman's name.

And this has outraged you and all of our guests who are retired military. He wears him. Right. Congressman Mast wears an IDF uniform on the floor of the House of Representatives. How can that be lawful? Well, I mean, first of all, this is a man who served America. He was an explosive ordinance disposal soldier in the United States Army, working with special forces units. He lost both legs in an explosion in Afghanistan. But then he came back. And instead of focusing on veterans affairs and, you know, doing better for America, he went off and spent a year. working for the Israeli defense force, and that's been his priority ever since. This is the warped sense of priorities that seems now to be coming home. The chickens are coming home to roost because the American people are waking up to the fact that we have foregone our significant aspects of our sovereignty on behalf of a foreign power. There are problems to be resolved here

at home, things that need to happen to make America first. And much of the MAGA base that was dual-hatted, people who would say, you know, America first, but we support Israel, are waking up to the fact that America's second and Israel is first and they can't square that. And now they're starting to walk away, especially we're confronted with the horrific crimes taking place by Israel in Gaza on a daily basis. You can only, you know, people can only hear so many times there is no genocide. There is no crime. Don't worry about when you turn on the TV, when you turn on the news. When you turn on the Internet and you see it, even your brain, which has been brainwashed, realizes there is something bad happening here that we don't want to be a part of. And the American

people are starting to walk. And Benjamin Yenai now recognizes us. And he recognizes the reality that if he loses the American Christian evangelicals, the Christian Zionists, it's all over for Israel. It's all she wrote. Because the pro-Israeli Jewish part of the American population can't sustain Israel by itself, they don't have the political clout. It's the Christian Zionists to give the pro-Zionist movement the political clout that allow them to capture the Ted Cruz's, the Brian Mass and others. And once they lose them, it's over for Israel. And then, you know, he was very afraid. Wow. And hence this continued and persistent denials that the Israeli forces had anything to do with the murder of Charlie Kirk. But, I mean, it's the funniest thing in the world to say,

and I don't mean that funny because the murder of anybody's not funny. But, you know, you've heard the saying, thou doth protest too loudly. Right, right. And if you didn't have anything. Before this kid Robinson was caught, before they knew who the trigger man was, Netanyahu was on national television denying it. I didn't do it. And it's not because I believe he did do it.

I don't. There's no evidence to sustain that. But it just shows how nervous he is of the potential of being accused of doing it, because perception creates its own reality. And if the perception of the, you know, Christian evangelical movement that was the core of Charlie Kirk's, you know, base, if the perception is that Israel had something to do with this and they start to walk away from Israel, it's over for Netanyahu. So he's out there saying, I didn't do it, I didn't do it, I didn't do it. And, you know, it just makes him even look more guilty in the eyes of those who are already inclined to believe that he is guilty.

Last Friday, President Trump said he's not going to allow Netanyahu, he's not going to allow the Israelis to annex the West Bank. And he repeated it, as he often does when he wants to make a strong statement. Haven't they effectively annexed the West Bank already with all of the land theft that goes on there while the Israeli military and police look the other way? They have taken a significant part of the West Bank over the years, and they're doing it now as we speak. And so for the President to make these words without backing them up, it's just another empty threat made by a President who has made nothing but empty threats when it comes to Israel. If you want to back this threat up, Mr. President, the answer is easy. Make it illegal to seize lands and retroactively apply this law to anybody who has seized lands in the West Bank. Now, if they're Israelis, they have nothing to fear.

But if they're Brooklyn Jews who have flown to Israel for the sole purpose of stealing Palestinian lands, these are people who are in Israel, I just want to remind your audience, they get paid salaries, they effectively don't work, we pay their salary, we pay their health care, we pay everything, their education. They steal land that they live off the benevolence of the American taxpayer who pays for all of this, make what they do criminal and tell them that there is an arrest warrant for, them, and if they ever return to the United States, they will be arrested on the spot and prosecuted for theft. That's one way you back up your words, Mr. President. If you truly want to ban the annexation of the West Bank that make it impossible for American citizens to travel to Israel and carry out the theft that constitutes the core aspect of this annexation. Do you have any grasp on what Trump is about to propose that involves making former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, the Governor General, the overlord of the Palestine, of the Gaza Strip?

You know, this is, you know, what it, yes, I mean, what he's trying to do is. The only person I can think of who will be less appealable to the Palestinians might be Dick Cheney. I mean, Tony Blair? Tony Blair is a sellout. He has no legitimacy amongst anybody who knows anything about the military. Middle East, but he is somebody who has sold his soul to the Zionist devil, and therefore he is acceptable to the global Zionist movement as the face of the West when it comes to a so-called impartial arbiter of the future of Gaza and of Palestine. This is the grand bargain that

Trump's been trying to put together. The problem with it is not just Tony Blair, though, The problem is Hamas. The problem is the Palestinian people. Because, in effect, disenfranchises the only political party that has the support of the Palestinian people in any significant way. If there was an election today, if Tony Blair ran against the head of Hamas as the head of the Palestinian state, Blair wouldn't get a vote. Hamas will beat anybody. They'll beat the current president, Mahmoud Abbas, who is nothing but a shill, a sellout of the, Palestinian cause to Israel. There is no political competitor to Hamas, and yet you're looking for

what's called a political solution, and you seek to disenfranchise Hamas. This is, you know, the Achilles heel, so to speak, of this plan, because what do you do with Hamas? He says that they have to go, go where, who's going to take them now that you've made them, in effect, illegal? The Arab states that have never been there for Hamas now that Hamas has been disenfranchised will take them in this is this is why this plan has no chance there's a snowball chance in hell of succeeding chris i want you to play the sought number two the shorter version of it now this is general kellogg basically saying uh the president won the electoral college and we're in the military we do whatever he tells us to do i'm going to ask you what members of the

military should do when he tells them to murder people on a speedboat on the high seas. But there's no question what General Kellogg says he would do, Chris. He's the commander-in-chief by the Constitution, and everybody falls in line. When the president goes to go left, you go left, he says you go right, you go right. That's the president. The last lot checked, you know, none of us got electoral college votes, he did. So when the president says to do something, we just need to complete, to do that and complete the action.

Sometimes I think we don't think we realize how serious this is. My biggest concern is that something, a mistake can happen, and that causes for a larger escalation, be the attacks by the drones into Poland or the aircraft that are overflying Estonia, whatever it's going to be, you have to be very, very careful about it. So this is just not only a European issue. This is a global issue, and I think sometimes we forget that. Before we get into the European issue, and we have another cut from him, and I want you to explain Tomahawk missiles, what should troops have done? when they knew they were ordered to commit murder by blowing up a speedboat on the high seas. Well, here's the difficult part of this. If I have received an order from my lawful command to execute lethal action,

and I've been told by my lawful command that it is confirmed that the people in that boat are narco-terrorists, who mean to bring harm to the United States and that the appropriate legal authorities have reviewed this and this is a legitimate target, I don't get to second guess that because I've been given the conditions under which it is construed that this is a lawful order. So I open fire and I will kill them.

And if I refuse to do this, so, that's a problem for me because we can't have a situation where every trigger pooler is suddenly a constitutional scholar. Now, if I was told the people in that boat could be innocent tuna fishers, you know, tuna fishermen, and we don't know for sure, then I have a duty and responsibility to say, whoops, stop. I can't pull the trigger on this one. We have to go in and investigate.

We need confirmation. There are things that have to happen before we can apply lethal force. But if I've been told by competent authority, whom I have to believe are given me lawfully construed orders, I have to execute those orders. And so, yes, if the president says turn right and there's nothing. that leaps out that says that's unconstitutional, I have to turn right. I have to obey my lawful orders. So this is an issue that needs to go up to the top to where this generated from. And what we need to find out is, you know, who is the one who made the decision to gloss over,

you know, the component that allows lethal force to be done? Who's the one that said, oh, no, these aren't tuna fishermen. These are this. And what was the base? of that, those are the people that committed the war crime, not the trigger pours. We are still awaiting the DOJ's memo on legal authority, and nothing has come out after a month. They don't have one. They don't have one. The Heggseth just did what the president told them to do. The General Counsel to the Defense Department didn't produce one, and the DOJ didn't produce one. And this is problematic for Pete Hegsef, for President Trump, and for everybody. involved in that senior chain of command, this is extremely problematic because we're no longer

talking about, you know, politically motivated theory of war crimes. We are talking about actual war crimes being committed, that if they made this decision for political reasons, that we need to be seen as being tough, therefore we're going to arbitrarily pick this boat and kill it, claiming it's narco-traffickers, even though we don't have the evidence to back it up, or we might have evidence that actually proves it's not narco-traffickers, then you committed murder. We're going to play another clip also with General Kellogg from yesterday. I'd like you to explain if he knows what he's talking about with respect to the Tomahawk missiles. The questioner says, is that the president's position that Ukraine can conduct long-range strikes into Russia and that that has been

authorized by the president? Watch his waffling answer to help himself get to yes. Chris, cut number one. Are you saying, though, that it is the president's position that Ukraine can conduct long-range strikes into Russia, that that has been authorized by the president? I think reading what he has said and reading what Vice President Vance has said as well as Secretary Rubio, the answer is yes. Use the ability to hit deep. There are no such things as sanctuaries. That's one of the reasons I believe that this last week, and it has been confirmed, that President Zelensky asked President Trump to get Tomok missiles, which give you a depth. They're really good systems. America makes the best system.

systems in the world. Are we giving him the Tomahawks? Well, that decision has not been made, but he's asked. I know that President Zelensky did, in fact, asked for them, which was confirmed by social media post by Vice President Vance. That's going to be up to the president to do it. Okay, so we'll start with the likely consequences. If we had these Tomahawk missiles tomorrow and the Ukrainians got them on Wednesday and fired them at Moscow on Thursday,

what would happen? We'd all be dead by Friday because it would trigger an immediate Russian nuclear response that would then ping pong out of control and we'd have a general nuclear exchange and the entire world would be annihilated. The Tomahawk missile is a intermediate range nuclear capable missile with strategic importance attached to it. Just so people know the ground launch version of the Tomahawk, which is what we're talking about giving the Ukrainians, was banned by the intermediate nuclear forces treaty back in 1987, 88. Donald Trump withdrew from that treaty in 2019, and we've been deploying that missile ever since or has some potential to deploy it.

It is an American strategic system, especially when it has a nuclear missile, a nuclear warhead attached. It does have conventional capabilities, but those are capabilities that cannot be transferred to third parties. When we launch a cruise missile, because the United States of America decided to launch a cruise missile, or we gave a green light to our British allies who possess a handful of them to launch cruise missiles. But this is not a system that's just handed out like candy. There's a number of reasons why, first of all,

the missile technology control regime would prohibit it. So the president would have a whole bunch of issues about missile proliferation. It would also undercut everything the United States is trying to achieve when it comes to North Korea and Iran. If we start handing out, you know, Tomahawks, then we have no moral authority or legal authority now to confront Iran or North Korea. And this would undermine our position. The State Department would have huge problems with this. But the biggest thing is the Tomahawk missile cannot be operated without American hands operating.

This isn't giving it to Ukraine, and Ukraine suddenly is able to launch this missile. First of all, the guidance system, there's three aspects of it. There's GPS. That's encrypted American military-grade jets. GPS. There's Terracomtering following radar images that only we have. And then the final adjustments that are made, basically we take satellite photos of the target and we use real-time imagery from the system itself to align and zoom in. We control everything there. So if a Tomahawk missile hits a Russian target, it's because American intelligence of personnel prepared

the targeting deck to that. And the Tomahawk can't be fired without. certain things going through certain classified communications channels that can only be handled by Americans. So let me make it clear to Keith Kellogg and everybody listening. The United States will never, ever provide Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine. We know that. Russia knows that. Ukraine knows that. It's stupid for Keith Kellogg to put the, but this is part of the stupid game that he's playing. You see, his job right now is to create the perception that Ukraine is able to continue this fight, to sustain this fight, and to extend this fight into Russia. The goal here is to pressure Russia into having a trilateral meeting between the president of Russia, the

President of the United States, and the president of Ukraine, something the Russians have said, we're not doing. J.D. Vance lamented that fact. He said the Russians just refused to have this trilateral meeting. So this is all part of a game being played to put pressure on Russia to have such a meeting, Ukraine will never receive a Tomok missile because Donald Trump knows that if they do, the world ends. And Donald Trump's not in the world ending business at this point in time. What troubles me is that people like Kellogg, General Kellogg, you could add, this person might be worse, Scotty, Sebastian Gorka, Lindsey Graham, they get to whisper this nonsense into Trump's ears. He could pick up the phone and call Hegeseth before any rational person speaks to him

and something horrific will be commenced. In theory, but we just talked about the senior leadership. Right, right, obeying lawful commands, right. Here I am trying to reflect on the Constitution and the law, and we just acknowledge that there's a real potential this administration doesn't give a damn about the law. But there are laws that prevent this from happening. There would have to be congressional action. This is an impeachable offense. I'll tell you right now, if the president ordered Pete Hague-Seth to transfer Tomahawk technology to Ukraine without getting congressional permission, it is an impeachable offense.

Do you remember when Ronald Reagan violated the Boland Amendment and how serious Congress took that? Yes, yes. Iran-Contra. With your fellow Marine, Ali North. Yes, there's a reason why many Marines stayed away from Ollie during that time period because we were like, we don't want to violate the Constitution. How much longer will President Putin's ability to resist the pressure on his right flank and his personal patience last?

The British are playing a very dangerous game because they're the ones who are doing this. It's the British who are involved in every aspect of this. This is the British, you know, information operation, you know, keep Ukraine in the fight. You have to maintain the perception of Ukraine victory. The whole Pukrovsk, north of Pekroof's counteroffensive, you know, it's collapsing as we speak. It's over. And the Russians will now take everything back. But it was, you know, basically like the jab into curse, where they accumulate their best force, They pick a time and place, and they push forward. Then they surge drones in, and they made life a living hell for the Russians for a period of three weeks.

The Russians have stabilized the situation, and now they're bringing in overwhelming force to destroy the Ukrainians. This is the reality. But now the Ukrainians are striking deeper and deeper into Russia, and at some point in time, the Russians will lose their patience, their strategic patience. And, you know, there are certain weapon systems that haven't been used against Ukraine and there's certain, you know, targeting priorities that haven't, you know, reached up. We saw it the other day. You know, the Russians reached out with two Kinzal missiles, which are fired from Mig 31 fighters and took out a Ukrainian air base, destroying five U.S. provided F-16s, killing a whole bunch of Ukrainian pilots and a whole bunch of Western ground support crews. The Russians have avoided that because the Russians, you know, don't want to provoke NATO into saying, oh, you killed a bunch of our people. Now we have no choice about to come in. But the Russians are making, now are going to start increasing the target, the targeting categories that bring pain to NATO, including the United States. And then they will also add to the mix weapon systems. We've seen the Ereshnik once. I'm fairly comfortable saying that before this year is over, the Ereschenik will.

will be used in a decisive fashion against Ukraine, and it will not end well for Zelensky or his government if they continue to behave in the manner that they are. Russia isn't going to let Ukraine and let the British and let NATO make this an even fight. Russia has the strategic advantage, and they intend on keeping the strategic advantage. And as the West continues to pour resources into Ukraine, Russia will counter with resources of its own. firing deep into Russian territory. Are they using American equipment to do so? Not deep. I mean, no, right now what they're doing is using the German and British provided drones, using American provided intelligence to evade Russian air defense to strike oil targets,

you know, in the Russian depth. But, you know, the attack missile has not been used at its full potential. And as J.D. Vance has acknowledged, the president hasn't made the decision to give Ukraine permission to do that. The president committed in December of 2024 not to give this permission because he understood that doing so would enable Ukraine to strike targets, which could be classified by Russia as being in the strategic interest and therefore triggering Russia's nuclear doctrine, meaning Russia would have at least doctrinally the right to respond using nuclear weapons. The president said he doesn't want to cross that red line. So that line hasn't been crossed yet, and hopefully it never will be. Do you think Ukrainian seems,

senior leadership recognizes that its days are numbered, that it can't possibly win this war no matter what Europeans pay for or American arms manufacturers deliver? I believe that the Ukrainian senior leadership believes that they believe that what they've been told by the British and by the Americans, that if sufficient pressure is brought to bear on Russia, the pain will be so great as to compel Russia to come to the negotiating table. that Ukraine won't get what it wants at the negotiating table. But the fact of the matter is, if Russia comes to the negotiating table under those conditions, Ukraine will continue to exist.

And that means exist as a NATO proxy. And it's a poison pill because if you allow Ukraine to exist as a NATO proxy, ultimately Ukraine will become a NATO member and everything but the word, which is something Russia will never allow to have happen. Ukrainians don't understand that Russia, when they say never means never, but they believe that they continue to put pressure on this. As to the sustainability of this, what I would say is follow the money, Judge. Every single one of these senior leaders have taken hundreds of millions of dollars out of, you know, the aid, pocketed it,

and they have bought their retirement homes. They all have villas in Miami, villas in France, apartments in London. And so they will flee in a heartbeat to accounts that have already been patted with American tax pair largesse, and they'll do that instantaneously. So, you know, they're up there playing games with the Ukrainian people's lives on the line. But when, you know, when Russia calls the bluff, they're not going to be there to lay their cards down. They'll be gone. Scott Ritter, thank you, my dear friend. With a pleasure being with you on Saturday. And thank you very much for your time today. All the best. Look forward to seeing you next time. Thanks, Judge. And coming up at

3 o'clock this afternoon, Max Blumenthal. And at 4 o'clock, Professor Jeffrey Sachs. George and Paul Turner for Judging Freedom. Thank you.