Judging Freedom - Scott Ritter : Trump and Hegseth Haven't a Clue

Episode Date: April 20, 2026

Scott Ritter : Trump and Hegseth Haven't a ClueSee 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? us 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, April 20, 2006. Scott Ritter will be here with us in just a moment on Trump and Hegseth don't have a clue about what they're doing. But first this. Don't you just cringe when people say, I told you so, sorry, I told you, gold and silver would reap the benefits due to excessive money printing, inflation, and global uncertainty. It's here. It's happened. Gold and silver have reached all-time highs. Did you call Lear Capital and buy some? It's not too late. Experts are predicting higher prices ahead.

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Tell them the judge sent you and get up to $20,000 in bonus gold or silver. Call 800, 511, 4620, or go to Learjudge nap.com. Scott Ritter, welcome here, my dear friend. What happened on the high seas over the weekend with the American piracy of a uranium cargo ship. Did the seals shoot at civilians? Well, my understanding is that there was an Iranian cargo ship was making transit out of the Strait Orhmus into the Gulf there in accordance with the agreement that was reached between the United States and Iran in Islamabad about the

ceasefire in an illegal American blockade. It has no legitimacy under international law and is a complete violation of the ceasefire agreement. Demanded that the ship stopped. The ship didn't. In the United States,

the U.S. Navy vessel destroyer told the ship to evacuate the engine room. Then they fired on the engine room, causing the ship to come to a halt. in the U.S. Marine rating group was landed on the vessel and took control of the vessel. It is an act of piracy. There's no legitimacy for this action whatsoever.

Wow. What would be the goal of something like this? Why would Trump and Hegseth even order this? It's pure psychological operation. This is about the United States spinning the events so that the president can claim that he has the upper hand that, you know, if, for instance, Iran were to go to Islamabad and agree to a deal, the president would say it's only because of the strong stance that he's taken and enforcing this blockade and compelling the Iranians to, you know, see the common sense and coming to an agreement. That's all this is. It has nothing to do with, you know, legitimately stopping flow. Even, even let's just say that, let's just acknowledge that this is nearly lacked, like much of what the United States does. But the goal is to effectively

halt shipping out of the straight of hormones by the Iranians. And this most certainly is not doing that. So it's just pure theater, theater of the absurd. So as a result of this, J.D. Vance and his two Zionist monitors, Steve Whitkoff and Jared Kushner, are cooling their heels in a hotel room in Islamabad, and the Iranian negotiating team is home in Tehran. You blame them? No, first of all, if I were the Iranians, I wouldn't go anywhere near the United States at this juncture. The United States has a history of using negotiations as a ploy to kill negotiating teams and to carry out attacks against Iran.

But moreover, there's people need to understand that, We were very close to having an agreement the first time around. You know, the Trump administration, J.D. Vance and Witkoff and Cush, they didn't come in prepared at all. They were prepared for nothing. People were wondering why there were so many phone calls. It's because the United States didn't bring anything to the table. The Iranians brought everything to the table, the deal, everything, all the research, they had all the fact papers, everything worked out. And so what would happen is the Iranians would put a deal down.

The Americans would review it, ask some questions. The Iranians would give the answers. Now, because there is no position, because they went in blind, J.D. Vance has to call back and say, this is what the Iranians are saying. And Trump, of course, not prepared at all. I mean, this is. If people understood how ill-prepared this president is, they'd be embarrassed. So Trump isn't prepared at all.

It doesn't have briefing papers. He's receiving a verbal report and then giving back instructions based upon nothing because he doesn't know what, you know, the details are or anything. He doesn't have his staff prepping him on this. This is just purely reactionary work. You know, and then B.B. Netanyahu sticks his head in at the appropriate time about nuclear issues. They were actually this close, according to Professor Morandi, to signing a Islamabad memorandum of understanding, which would have brought us into this war. But the president was told you can't sign this deal because it makes it look like you're weak.

It makes it look like you're doing the Iranian bidding. Well, of course, is the Iranians are the only one putting talking points on the table. The United States has no talking points. And so J.D. Vance, is pulled from the, J.D. Vance, Kushner, and Wittkoff are pulled from the negotiations and they're brought to an end as Trump then proceeds to make his ridiculous, you know, demands and then back it up with posturing that, you know, look, we're going to blockade you until you do what we want you to do kind of thing. This is the kind of stupidity and sanity that it governs what's going on here.

But this is, it's all about posturing right now to create an impression that the United States is in charge. The United States is the one calling the shots. We're in charge of nothing. The Iranians are calling the shots. They're the ones who have put down the terms. And now the Iranians recognize the United States is incapable of negotiating good faith. And so there's no reason to negotiate. And if anybody thinks the Iranians are concerned about,

what happens next, they're not. In fact, there's a good portion of the Iranian government, together with the majority of Iranian people that just want to bring this war to an end to, I mean, and I don't mean by surrendering, and end by keep the fighting going. And, you know, a warning, and this is, you know, one of the things that may prevent this war. If this war starts again, Iran will more than likely terminate the viability of one or more Gulf Arab states, meaning they'll strike power production and desalination plants, making life impossible. If you do that in Abu Dhabi and Dubai, these cities will empty. You do that in Kuwait City, it's gone.

You do that Manama, Iran empties. And the Iranians, they're not going to play the escalation game. They're not going to say, okay, we're going to wait and see what kind of strike you hit and then we'll hit similar targets. They can go straight for the jugular. And this will terminate as modern nation states, one or more Gulf Arab states.

And the Gulf Arab states are very nervous about this right now. And the others are going to recognize that they will have their economic capacity to earn money permanently degraded, permanently degraded. Saudi Arabia, a rich nation right now. It won't be a rich nation if the United States resumes attacking Iran. So these are the stakes

that are at play here. Plus, oh, Yes, on Shtrala, the hooties said they're going to shut down Bablam and Deb, which is the death knelt to the Saudi oil economy and the ruination of the world. Donald Trump really can't afford to go to war right now, but he's really giving himself no other option. Are the Egyptians and Turks getting ready to do anything? Well, I don't know about the Egyptians. I mean, I know the Egyptians have been frustrated for some time now. Israel's playing a very dangerous game with the Turks. You know, you don't, it's one thing before Israel began bombing Iran to say that Turkey is the next Iran.

It's another thing after Israel has bombed Iran not once but twice, both using surprise attacks to say that Turkey is the next Iran. And the Turks are picking up on this and they're saying, well, we're not Iran. We'll actually take you out. And so there's big rhetoric taking place right now. And Turkey, unlike Iran, has the ability to project. meaningful ground power through Syria to the Israeli border. Turkey has a very strong air force that could challenge the Israelis. Turkey is intimately familiar with Israeli capabilities.

The Israelis used to train all of their long-range strike missions using the Anatolian Peninsula as the training ground. So, you know, Israel's got to be careful here. And Arrowas making, you know, making very aggressive statements towards, towards Israel. And so, you know, we'll see what happens. Yeah. Last night, the president made one of his off-the-wall statements saying the United States and Iran would jointly excavate Iran's nuclear enriched material.

I mean, this is really an escape from reality for him to make a statement like that. Yeah, no. Jointly executed is very strong. I think what had been agreed to in Geneva before the most recent round, a surprise attack, the act of perfidy by the United States, is that a full accounting of Iran's 60% enriched uranium would be had under the auspices of the International Atomic Energy Agency and that, you know, United States inspectors would be part of the IAEA inspection teams. And so, you know, that would be, you know, have the IAA inspectors there, include with American personnel. Now Donald Trump lives in a fantasy world where he's going to fly in American military forces. They're going to set up some sort of forward operating base and bring in heavy excavation equipment and they're going to be the ones digging it out and they're going to be the ones

taking control of this. That just simply isn't going to happen. Trump lives in a fantasy world. His advisors are the singular worst advisors in the world about this very issue. And he's just sending himself up for defeat and frustration because Iran will not buckle. I think he's getting word from people, Heg Seth and others, that we did so much damage to Iran that the Iranians have no choice but the cave. They can't afford to continue. Let me set the record straight.

We did no damage to Iran. None. Zero. We've superficially blew up empty buildings. We dropped some bridges and so that. But in terms of impeding Iran's strategic capacity to continue this conflict, we've accomplished nothing. Their leadership is as strong as ever. And the underground missile cities are, according to the Iranians, they've produced, you know, more missiles since the war ended than they were at a higher rate than they were produced more.

And these are the advanced missiles, you know, because they had all pre-positioned the production equipment, the production equipment, the production materials. And so they're cranking missiles out. They re-up their arsenals. And if this war starts, they're going to come in, like I said, with the most powerful missiles, the most accurate missiles, up front. And they're not going to wait for the United States to do sufficient damage. The first bombs that dropped, the Iranians should, according to what they've been saying, hit not just Israel with lethal blows, but as I said, the United Arab Emirates and at least one other state, maybe Bahrain will be taken off the map in terms of being a viable nation. state. Are you familiar with this story making the rounds that Trump on Saturday night or sometime

over the weekend asked General Kane, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff for an explanation of how the nuclear codes work and General Kane said no and left the White House? I'm familiar to two such incidents. Again, I can't confirm them because I'm not in the White House. This is just a report. But let me just so your your audio. understands that this isn't just blind speculation. I have been in the White House situation room. I have given briefings to, you know, the deputies level. I understand how the White House process works. I understand how the interagency process works. I understand how the JCS interfaces with the president. And so, you know, through this experience, you get, you know, a pattern of behavior.

And that's one of the things you do as an intelligence analyst is you assess patterns. You look for repeating patterns, past practices do repeat. So I have a good idea how the system works, especially when it comes to nuclear weapons. And so when I heard that the president, you know, when he tweeted earlier before the ceasefire that he was going to erase Iran, that was code word for the use of nuclear weapons. And my understanding is that the chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff put him on notice that no, they won't authorize. They will not concur with the use of nuclear weapons because it's a violation of international law. It violates issues of proportionality. It violates issues of distinction. And there's no justification for it. Nuclear

weapons are designed according to doctrine to deter. You're not deterring anything with a preemptive use of nuclear weapons in an environment that doesn't scream, we have to use nuclear weapons to eliminate an existential threat. So the president was put on notice that. And he immediately responded by a tweet where he, in all caps, said, and no nuclear weapons, as if to correct the record, to get ahead of any potential reporting coming out of the White House that he tried to use nukes and was told no. And so now this time, what we have here is in the president's mind, the psychosis of this man, you know, he threatened nukes. The chairman said no. And so he's, agreed to enter this peace process. But now that the peace process is collapsing, he's falling back

on the reality that if they continue bombing the way they did before, it'll be another defeat. We don't have a remedy to this. We don't have the magic solution. And the Iranians do have our number. They're going to ring it on a daily basis until Israel is destroyed and Gulf Arab states are destroyed. And so Trump is trying to say, we have no choice but to use nuclear weapons preemptively right now to eliminate this threat. And the chairman repeated what he told the president later. No, this is unlawful. There's no imminent threat worthy of this. We, we, there, there, you know, there literally is no, you know, you can't speak of proportionality. The damage Iran's doing to us is not proportional to the damage that we would do by using nuclear weapons on

Iran. And then again, the issue of distinction, dropping bombs, for instance, on Isfahan, would kill civilians in numbers that would, you know, boggle the mind. And so fortunately, you know, even though this president has said that the Constitution doesn't matter to him, that, you know, he relies on his own personal sense of morality, this is a man whose moral say he wants to use nuclear weapons and slaughter hundreds of thousands of innocent people. Fortunately, we have men and women in uniform who took an oath up and defend the Constitution, who take this oath very seriously. Wow.

And I guess if the story that is true, Larry Johnson's reported it from two sources. General Kane is one of them. Yes. Taking the oath seriously. He takes a very, and the interesting thing is that he was picked, handpicked by this president to be a yes man. You know, they got rid of the Biden era guys. Kane was somebody who was passed over for four stars as a Lieutenant General and went into retirement.

They brought him out of retirement and gave him a fourth star. And the feeling was this would be a hyper-aggressive man that would do the president's bidding. And, you know, Kane has proven to be a very aggressive, you know, chairman of the Joint Chiefs. But on a number of occasions, for instance, he cautioned against this war. If the New York Times reporting is correct, he told the president, don't believe the Israelis. The Israelis over-s oversell their capabilities. And there's no reason to believe. believe that regime change will be as easy as the Israelis claim it to be. And so Kane, you know, offered caution there. And then he turned the president down not just once but twice when it comes to, you know, the use of nuclear weapons. And I've always said that the men and women who serve,

you know, they take this oath seriously, especially the higher you get up in the ranks. You know, there may be problems. We may have politicized the military and all that stuff. But at the end of the day, especially when it comes to nuclear weapons, the military understands full well what the consequences of using nuclear weapons would be, you know, the potential for expansion globally. And, you know, once you establish a president, one thing I ask people to think about is this. Russia has said they will not be the first to use nuclear weapons. But if the United States changes the paradigm of, um, you know, of the use of nuclear weapons from, we'll never use it because we recognize after Hiroshima Nagasaki that these weapons can't be used to. We'll use it when it's convenient for us to use it to change a conventional military power equation. That becomes an intimidation factor, meaning the United States now will intimidate everybody saying, we've used nukes. You sure you want to take us on in Ukraine conventionally because we use nukes? And the Russians will have to level the playing field. They'll have to do it for national survival. And there's a lot of

people in Russia right now saying that it's time for Russia to use them to preemptively against Europe to set a precedent. So this could go bad very quickly. We should never use nuclear weapons. Let's go back to where we started, Hormuz. Who controls the straight? Is it open or is it closed? The Iranians control it, and it's open when the Iran is when it opened, it's closed when the Iran is when it closed, and there are variations in between. Right now, Iran is allowing some ships to pass through. But those ships have to meet certain protocols, and they have to be approved by the Iranian Navy. Do you think that Trump and the Israelis have given up the ghost on regime change and degrading Iran's ballistic missile? capability, two of their from time to time stated goals? I believe that the Israelis understand that there will be no regime change. That is not going to happen. The reporting is that the Israelis have acknowledged that they're going to have to learn

to live with the Iranian regime in a post-conflict environment. The Israelis have not yet given up on either, you know, degrading Iran's nuclear capacity and degrading Iran's ballistic missile capacity. You know, they believe if they continue this conflict that eventually, you know, they'll be able to find the right combination of strikes to do this. I believe they're wrong. And I believe many people in the Pentagon believe that they're wrong. But, you know, there are those. And unfortunately, one of them is named Pete Heg-Seth, who believe that by continuing this conflict, the United States, will be able to do what we couldn't do in the first 40 days of this conflict, which is to degrade Iran's ballistic missile and drone launch capabilities.

Here's a two-bit political hack masquerading as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, arguing on one of the talk shows that destroying power plants and bridges is not a war crime. I guess in his own mind he could have added grammar schools for girls. Chris, cut number four. I hope we don't have to go back to a military option, but President Trump's made it very clear. And by the way, bridges, power plants that are wrong. run by the IRGC, which runs the entire military, are absolute legitimate military targets. Not only now, but have been historically.

That is a false, fake and ridiculous notion that this is some type of war crime. Talking about the Revolutionary Guard runs a bridge. I mean, this is fiction. First of all, you know, two points. One, at the end of the Iran-Iraq war, when the, when the, you know, the Iranians were looking to demobilize hundreds of thousands of fighters into an economy that was fairly dysfunctional. One of the ways they avoided having mobs of military veterans unemployed on the streets was to allow the Revolutionary Guard command to create businesses. And then to give those businesses contracts related to infrastructure development inside Iran.

And so many of the companies, industries that build roads, that build bridges, et cetera, are run by the IRGC. Just because an IRGC company builds something doesn't mean that it has a military capacity. It's just a unique feature of post-war Iran. Two, and perhaps more importantly, if you were going to make the argument, that a bridge had military capabilities, you would have dropped that bridge already. We have. We targeted bridges, bridges that had genuine military capabilities.

If you're going to strike a dual-use power generation capacity, one that was providing power to, say, a military factory or a military installation, we would have bombed that already. But here we are, after 40 days of incessant bombardment, being told that suddenly there's a new list of relevant targets. There aren't. There's just a new list of targets of bridges and power plants that have nothing to do with Iranian defense industry and everything to do with, you know, civilian population. And this is the war crime. In a trial, I would just simply ask, why did you bomb this in the first 40 days? It was so essential to military victory. I mean, you were hitting a thousand targets a day, according to Pete Heggsett, a thousand points on the ground. Why didn't you factor in these targets in that if they're so essential? And the answer is because they were civilian targets and you knew it. That's why they were excluded. Now you

want to put them on, which means this is collective punishment. It has nothing to do with, you know, the legitimate degradation of a target that has dual-use capacity. You know, so this is a war criminal regime. And, you know, sadly, the military, if they go along with this target, is committing war crimes. Trump said about 15 minutes ago that the ceasefire is over on Wednesday and the war will resume. What will the likely consequences be to Israel and to the Gulf and to American assets out there if Trump and Netanyahu resumed the war at the level at which they started it six weeks ago? Well, the Iranians have made it clear that they're not going to, you know, start slow and finish fast. They're not.

going to wait for the United States and Israel to set the pace, which is what they did in the 40 days. The escalation, the nature of targets, etc., that were engaged by Iran, were largely defined by the nature of the Israeli-American strikes against Iran. Here the Iranians, I believe, will start with the notion that because the United States is incapable of negotiating good faith, that you must assume that any military action that's now taken is done to eliminate the regime of the Islamic Republic. And therefore, this is an existential war. Therefore, just go for the juggler from the start.

And I think this is what you're going to see. If we start attacking Iran, I think you're going to see Iran hit some Gulf Arab states harder than they've ever been hit. Hit Israel very hard, start taking out key infrastructure. And, you know, maybe reach out and touch the United States in a few places. as well, you know, that the United States has grown overconfident in terms of operation. But, you know, this is going to be a one-way street. When the war starts, we will be bombing empty buildings. We will be blowing up bridges and railroad tracks that have no fundamental value from a military standpoint. And Iran is going to be, you know, striking back with

absolute devastation. And the defeat will be obvious after the first three days when, as I said, perhaps Abu Dhabi, Dubai, maybe another city, will be unable to sustain life on the scope and scale necessary to be

to retain the stature that they enjoy today. People will be forced to leave, flee by the hundreds of thousands. Whatever happened to Trump's Board of Peace? Well, the funny thing is the Board of Peace was largely funded by Gulf Arab states. And a large percentage of the members were Gulf Arab states. Again, if I were advising the President, I would have gotten the Board of Peace involved in a negotiated compromise settlement on the Strait of Hormuz regarding revenue collection and revenue sharing.

And let the board manage this. It gives credence to the board, gives them a viable project that they can brag about later. It keeps the Iranians happy by allowing them to maintain the fact that they control. They have their hand on the throat of the Strait of Hormuz. It would appease the regional partners because it would allow money to be raised. They could be used to reconstruct not just Iran, but, you know, I remember it's Bahrain, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, etc. You know, and so, you know, and also, there's just so much that this board could have done.

It could have been involved in would have given United Nations, you know, stamp of approval, etc. But the board members don't trust Trump anymore. And so I think the board of peace is just a derelict. organization right now. Wow. Scotty, thank you very much. Deeply appreciated, my dear friend. Good luck with what you're going to be doing in the next few days. And we'll talk to you again soon, my friend.

Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you. Wow. Well, hang on to your seats because I guess the war is going to resume very soon. And if it does, we'll be bringing you the best commentary we can. Tomorrow at 8 in the morning, Ambassador Chaz Freeman at 10 in the morning, Professor John Mearsheimer, excuse me, at 9 in the morning, Professor Mearsheimer, at 10 in the morning, Colonel Bill Estory, at 2 in the afternoon, Matt Ho, at 3 in the afternoon, Colonel Karen Kutkowski. Justice of Paul Town, for judging freedom.