Judging Freedom - Scott Ritter : US Thrives on Continuous Conflict

Episode Date: July 9, 2024

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Thank you. Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Tuesday, July 9th, 2024. My dear friend and friend of the show, Scott Ritter, joins us now. Scott, a pleasure, as always. Thank you. Thank you. Since we were last together, there have been two breaking news reports with respect to the Israeli behavior in Gaza. One is from the oldest medical journal in the world, the British medical journal Lancet, reporting that the deaths caused by the IDF from a variety of sources, from a variety of means, the deaths are likely to approach 186,000 human beings, which is a lot larger than the numbers we've been dealing with, and which would be about 8% of the population. The other breaking news, and you reported this, Max Blumenthal reported this, Aaron Mate reported this, and others did as well, which is the report by Haaretz, which actually got its hands on texts and emails and military directives demonstrating conclusively that the Israeli IDF did invoke its euphemism for mass murder, which it calls the Hannibal Directive, and killed more than half of the 1,200 people who died on

October 7th. Let's start with the Lancet. Is this number startling to you, and is it believable, 186,000 Palestinians dead? Judge, when you take a look at the level of destruction that's been inflicted on Gaza, it's unimaginable. Now, normally, if you bomb a city, populations can flee the city. So the bombs start falling, the populations can, those who survive, which is the majority of people, can flee and move elsewhere. Not in Gaza. Their neighborhood gets bombed, they move to another neighborhood. That gets bombed, they move to another. And then what happens in Rafah, they're in open camps and the camps get bombed. The Israelis have literally been carrying out a policy of genocide. So this number is not implausible to me at all. And, you know, the fact is the number could even be higher.

You know, we don't know what bodies are lying underneath the rubble. They haven't had a chance to come in and clear that out. When a building collapses, when it pancakes, you're not getting those bodies. And many times the horrific nature of the collapse, those bodies don't exist anymore. You know, so, no, this is a real number. I think the world's become immune to, that's the problem when you start dealing with numbers that are this grotesque in terms of the scope.

We've seen too many bombs dropped to become too immune to it. Nothing shocks us anymore. How many times you have to see the jaw ripped off of a young girl before it just becomes another jaw ripped off of a young girl, a young baby torn in half? How many times do you have to see that before the brain just starts to cycle through it? And unfortunately, that's where we are today. What Israel is doing to the people of Gaza should generate so much more disgust and concern and condemnation. But the world has just become exhausted by this.

This is a great tragedy. But that number is a very realistic number. orchestrator of all of this uh two weeks from tomorrow will be given a hero's welcome on the floor of the house of representatives before a joint session of congress i don't know if he's going to go to the white house or not i haven't heard anybody uh in the congress since this 186 000 number came out saying tell him tell him to stay home. This is the head of a criminal gang that runs an apartheid government and is a mass murderer. And the Republicans in the House have announced that they're going to exceed the 55 standing ovations that he received the last time he spoke in the House of Representatives. So I think you are quite right that the American public has become immune to this

with respect to members of Congress. They are terrified of the donor class. None of them is going to say, hey, Bibi, stay home. Agreed? 100%. Look, Judge, I don't want to get you in trouble with the censors or anything, but this election has proven the level of control that the pro-Israeli lobby has over American democracy. Every single candidate backed by AIPAC has won. AIPAC poured $24 million into one race to buy a congressional. And it wasn't a primary. it wasn't even a general election. Well, that's where APAC actually, that's where they get the most leverage because nobody, not too many people can pour all their resources into a primary and survive a general

election. So even if somebody survived the primary challenge, generally speaking, let's say APAC challenge, I was running, APAC challenged me, put up a primary. All my war chest, which I'm saving to take on my opponent in the other party, now gets burned up in this primary. I get exhausted. They tear me apart. They're doing the work. And so by the time I stumble through this, let's say I win and I move into the general election, I'm beaten, I'm battered, and I'm generally speaking going to lose. So it's the primaries where AIPAC has the greatest leverage over people. People don't want to be primaries, so they quickly fall on the line. And it's a chilling impact because, you know, people say, oh, my goodness, I don't want that to happen to me.

What do I need to do to make sure that doesn't happen to me? And what they do is they vote straight down the line when it comes to supporting Israel. Wow. What do you think will be Netanyahu's goal when he comes in two weeks? Is it to terrify the Congress into declaring war on Iran? Actually, I think Netanyahu just wants continued strong American support. He's going to be going through a very difficult time soon because his military is fed up with him. No amount of American congressional support is going to change the reality that, as the IDF has said, Hamas has won. We can't beat Hamas. It's an ideology that can't be defeated and the idf has

warned netanyahu that a war with hezbollah could be devastating for israel and so netanyahu is about his legacy and so i think what he's trying to do is secure the support of the united states in a post-conflict world so that he can continue to be the prime minister even when a ceasefire occurs. He wants assurances of continued American support if there is a ceasefire, that America will be there to help police any violations, etc. And he's also trying to get a rebound. He wants to come to America and get this massive embrace by the U.S. Congress that he can take back to Israel and play domestically in a political fashion because he's a very unpopular prime minister right now. There's hundreds of thousands of Israelis protesting in the streets demanding his resignation. And he desperately needs this American trip to be a shot in the arm to keep him politically viable. The other breaking news is the Haaretz story. As

I said earlier, you reported this months ago. Max and Aaron broke the stories shortly after they happened. What has been the reaction in Israel to this whitewash, as Aaron called it in his now famous debate on Piers Morgan, whitewashing mass murder? It's the standard thing. Blame Hamas. This is Hamas' fault. Don't point fingers at us. What about the rapes? What about the murdering of the babies? What about the ongoing violence? You support terrorists. How dare you speak up? You know, that's the Israeli response. We saw that on Piers Morgan's show, and that's been the response ever since. But people, what Heret's story shows, and it's something I pointed out literally within days of October 7th, I said that this, you know, I called what Hamas did the greatest

military raid in modern history because it was a military raid. You don't have to support Hamas, but you have to understand what they did was a military operation. Everybody said, how can it be a military operation? So many civilians were killed. I said, they were all killed by Israelis. The number of civilians killed by Hamas is a very small percentage there. Over 400, close to 500 military people were killed by Hamas in this fight of that 1,200. Of the remaining people, more than 60% were killed by Israelis, slaughtering them, butchering them. Yes, Hamas killed some and they killed some in cold blood. There's enough video evidence out there that, you know, I'm not trying to whitewash what Hamas did. But, you know, when you set up a roadblock, people die. That's the reality of this conflict. But Hamas, the vast majority of the people Hamas killed

were military people in a stand-up fight where Hamas prevailed on the battlefield. The vast majority of the civilians killed were killed by Israel invoking the Hannibal Directive. That's the reality of October 7th. Israel's been trying to create a narrative that shows that Hamas was, you know, criminals, they were murderers, they were rapists, they were that. That's not the truth. Hamas carried out a military raid, a very deadly raid that was very effective in getting Israel to do what Hamas wanted them to do, which was to come into Gaza and create the situation that we have now where Israel's facing imminent defeat. The Israelis haven't been honest with the Israeli people. And what Haaretz is doing now is exposing the lies told by the Netanyahu government, told by the Israeli defense force. And there will be an accounting at some point in time within Israel, because this is, again, the largest killing of Israelis in a single day.

It turns out that they were killed by their own soldiers. On the Pierce Morgan interview, there was a very articulate, I would call him ruggedly handsome, retired IDF lieutenant colonel, who's a former IDF spokesman, who used about three words to say it's probably accurate. All the rest of his time was, as you have just indicated, calling Aaron a self-loathing Jew, attacking Aaron as a supporter of Hamas, never addressing the lawfulness or the morality of slaughtering soldiers and civilians by shooting them in the back as they were attempting to escape this conflagration. Question, how do these IDF soldiers, most of whom are reservists, feel about shooting their own people in the back because they were ordered to do it? I think one day when this war is over and the page can be turned or the curtain pulled aside um and we start talking about the cost of war you

know i talked about it here in the united states i've talked about the cost of invading iraq uh an illegal war of aggression you know american soldiers went over there after 9 11 they they enlisted in great numbers uh to serve their country patriotically they ended up going to iraq invading occupying the country uh they did it aggressively because they were told it was the right thing to do. But after a while, today, they all reflect and they know what they did was illegal. What they know, they participated in the illegal war of aggression. They know that they committed horrific murders, that it wasn't justified kicking down the doors and taking out a family because somebody screamed when they shouldn't have screamed or whatever. And we collectively as a nation are paying a price for that with our

veterans who are, they have PTSD for cause and they're committing suicide in increasing numbers. This is Israel's future. These reservists who have been pulled out of their lives and sent off to do things, to fight, obey orders. At the time when you obey the orders, look, bloodlust is up. I mean, anybody who's been there knows what I'm talking about. It's very hard to stay cool and compassionate. When you're in a firefight, your eyes are getting intense and you're laying down the fire and you're doing things instinctively. And when you're told, take them out, that's what we need to do to prevent Hamas from taking them in and leveraging them, that this is, you open fire.

But later on, when it turns out that everything you fought for was a lie, everything was fabrication, everything was to help Benjamin Netanyahu, not help Israel, that it all was for nothing. Israel is going to pay a horrible price. They're going to have an entire generation of young Israelis who served in the military, primarily reservists, who are going to be emotionally and psychologically broken by this conflict, because they're going to have to live with the repercussions of what they did. You have just given an intellectually honest, thought-provoking analysis of what we believed happened and now had it confirmed by Haaretz. Listen to the analysis, if you can call it that, given by Matt Miller, the spokesperson for,

it's almost hard to keep from laughing if it wasn't such a tragic situation because he's a goofball on steroids. But listen to his analysis to the very prudent question. Cut number 14. I wanted to ask you first if you read or heard about the Haaretz report on Israel employing the Hannibal directive on October 7th. So I did see that report that moved over the weekend. And that's the limit of my knowledge. I was seeing that report from Haaretz.

Does that make you change your position or your perspective on what really happened that day that the Israelis may be responsible for killing a majority of the people that died on that day? Boy, it certainly does not, Said. I don't think there's any question. I don't think there's any question that it was Hamas. Just let me finish. I don't think it's any question it's Hamas that is responsible for the overwhelming number of deaths on October 7th. Ambassador Freeman said this morning when he saw this, this is one of the reasons why the Biden-Blinken Department of State is the least respected State Department in America's post-World War II era. Look, it's morally unconscionable. The truth is the truth. The facts don't lie.

And when the Israelis, when the Israeli media has come out and has the facts and tells the truth, you just expose the intellectual and moral baselessness of your administration, because he is an administration spokesperson. He's speaking on behalf of the administration by continuing the line, the logic that it is that it's Hamas's fault. Hamas killed the majority of people. We know that factually that's just wrong. It's been proven that it's wrong. For him to stick to that and be dismissive of that, it undermines everything he tries to do. Because know, it's the old thing that I use when I, when I judge people, I play a lot of golf with people. And I can tell you, I learn a lot about people playing golf because golf's about a game of honor, integrity, and

rules. And you learn within the first couple of holes, you know, does somebody adhere to the rules? Do they mark their ball properly? Do they move the ball in the fairway? And you're like, no, those are people who take shortcuts. Matt Miller has proven that he's a man who takes shortcuts intellectually. I would never trust him to represent my country ever again. He should be fired on the spot. He handled that poorly because your job as the spokesperson is to deal with facts. He could have simply said, we've received this report, we're still evaluating report, and we're trying to wrap our heads around what this report means, and I'll get back to you when we're finished with that. That at least buys time without compromising you intellectually and

morally. Does Israel want a broader war? Does Netanyahu speak for the Israeli public when he says he wants a seven-front war? And can he possibly pull that off with an exhausted army of reservists never intended for even a nine-month war? Look, Israel in 2022-2023 ran exercises both years. Together with the United States, they resigned to stress test Israel. The premise of each exercise was what would happen if everybody attacked us at once? Could the IDF protect Israel from such a multifaceted, broad-spectrum war, inclusive of Iran, Hezbollah? But what they didn't factor in, both scenarios said, well, Hamas, that'll just be sort of an intifada on steroids. We'll handle that with border security and police forces.

They never once in planning this war game envisioned that Gaza would become a major front that took a majority of Israel's military resources and then exhausted it for nine months before they went into a full-scale war because fighting Hezbollah isn't going to be fighting Hezbollah it's going to become a Hezbollah Iran militia Yemen Syria war it's going to be the war game that Israel practiced for for two years and lost by the way the Israeli Defense Force knows the outcome of this they lost they lost when they had everything ready, when their troops weren't exhausted, where their airplanes weren't flying nonstop with maintenance issues, where they

had all the ammunition. They still lost. Today, their army has said, we can't go in to Lebanon right now because we don't have the spare parts. Our equipment has been run to a frazzle. We've never prepared for a nine-month war. And now you want to go into Hezbollah against an enemy that's been preparing for over, you know, 18 years now for this fight. They're ready for this. Hezbollah just put out a video, again, part two of their video that showed they know everything about Israel. They have targeted everything and they have the missiles ready to hit them now. No, the IDF is telling Netanyahu we can't do this because not only will we probably not win,

it's very likely we will lose and lose strategically. It will be a decisive defeat of Israel of an existential nature. And so far, Netanyahu has heeded that advice, and hopefully he will continue to heed that advice. How deep and how serious is the cleavage between Netanyahu and the IDF? It's fundamental. It's at the very top. We saw evidence of that when the IDF spokesperson speaking about Hamas said that Hamas can't be defeated because it's an ideology and you can't defeat an ideology. And Netanyahu came out and immediately attacked that. And the head of the IDF came out and said, no, we support what our spokesperson said. Right there, boom, it's fundamental. And right now they're telling Netanyahu, we can't go into Lebanon because we will lose. We can't win this one. Don't even try to do this. This is why you see a movement on Gaza for the first time, because Israel, I think, understands that there has to be a ceasefire. It's the only way out, because if they continue to push in Gaza, then the pressure will be put on Netanyahu to expand into Hezbollah, and Israel can't win that one.

Switching over to Ukraine, Scott, and I want to talk to you in a few minutes about your new book covering Ukraine. But before we get there, the other news, since you and I spoke last, is the insistence by American mainstream media that the Russians intentionally attacked a hospital for children in Kiev, even though we know for certain from the examination of the rubble that that was not the case. The question is, mainstream media still in the back pocket of American and British intel, I guess. Yeah, you know, and this is a tough one because, but my wife often tells me when I get up in the morning, please don't go on X and don't start posting because I read what comes in over the night. And sometimes I get very angry at what people say and I fire off responses.

And I responded very aggressively about this attack. And I took the position that it wasn't a Russian KH-101 cruise missile, that it was probably a NASAMS missile. But then as the data comes in, you begin to doubt yourself. You begin to look at everything. And I also understand that I'm not in a position to forensically analyze this in the totality necessary to make a definitive conclusion. So maybe I shouldn't commit to hard positions on X the way I did. But then I saw the Russian ambassador, who I respect greatly, speak at the United Nations.

And I know this man, and I know the Russian foreign ministry. And he was very strong in asserting that it was not a Russian cruise missile, that it was a NASAMS missile. And I don't see Russia getting out ahead of itself at that level unless it has run the data. And I'll tell you what, the Russians know exactly how many KH-101s they fired. And I have a feeling that when they counted the explosions in Kiev, there was one additional explosion. So they know that something hit what is supposed to hit. And when they look at the data of where the KH-101s hit at the industrial facility, they went, we hit every target we aimed at. There's an additional explosion. It's not ours.

And that's why I think Russia's comfortable with this. There are people who say the size of the warhead couldn't do what it did. I'll tell you what, the size of a KH-101 warhead would have leveled that hospital. You know, yeah, the warhead of a NASEMS isn't necessarily that much, but unexploded fuel could lead to an additional explosion. We don't know. If the Ukrainians have the data, and I will tell you right now, if I were in Ukraine, give me an hour and a half on that site. I would grid it out and I would collect the data necessary to tell me exactly what struck it. If they're saying it was a KH-101, then they need to provide the forensic data. But I respect the Russian ambassador. I respect the fact that he's not going to position Russia at

the Security Council to be exposed for a lie when he says that it wasn't a Russian missile, that it was a NASAMS. And he specifically identified it being a system provided by Norway. So Russia, remember, they have this area blanketed with electronic warfare. They know when a NASAMS missile is fired. They know it's fired. They can track it. I don't think the Russians commit to a storyline like this by making things up. And so I'm comfortable saying that it wasn't a Russian KH-101, that it was a NASAMS missile. I'm willing to be proven wrong on this because I acknowledge IAMS missile. I'm willing to be proven wrong on this because I acknowledge I'm not there. I can't do the forensics myself. But, you know,

at least I'm honest enough to say, you know, I'm committing to this, but, you know, I'm going to hedge waiting. That's not the mainstream media. The mainstream media is out echoing, you know, the U.S. position. And you have to ask yourself why. And of course, the reason why is that we've convened today in Washington, D.C., a NATO summit where they're going to use this as a justification to justify continuing to pour billions of dollars into Ukraine, maybe expanding the scope and scale of the conflict by, you know, promoting, you know, more aggressive NATO posturing in Ukraine. You know, if you say you're for the Ukrainian people, of course, you have to be sympathetic to the civilians who lost their lives. Even if this was an accident, you know, let's say it was a Russian

missile, it wasn't done deliberately. The Russians don't deliberately target hospitals. But no matter what, your heart has to break for the Ukrainian people. I mean, God, if you're a mother taking your child to the hospital, you don't deserve to have this happen to you. Bottom line, you don't deserve that. So that's one thing about being sympathetic. But then you also have to understand, why is a missile hitting this site? Why is this war taking place? And when we back it up, it's because the United States provoked Ukraine into posturing itself aggressively against Russia, provoking the conflict that we have today. This conflict could have ended in April of 2022 had Ukraine accepted the terms that were negotiated by Russia and Ukraine in Istanbul.

But Boris Johnson told them to say no. And now this war has been expanded and expanded and expanded to the point where Ukraine is incapable of telling the truth. And I'm afraid that what we're seeing right now is just another Ukrainian lie that's being echoed by Western mainstream media to prolong a conflict that has been devastating for the people of Ukraine. Listen to the Polish foreign minister who seems determined to provoke Russia into a battle with Poland number 15. we have been talking about this idea for a long time which by the way was born in Poland of responding NATO to missile attacks. In terms of missiles, missiles that are heading towards Poland and are still on Ukrainian territory,

with the idea of trying to shoot them down, not waiting until they fly into NATO territory, but still over Ukrainian soil. Excuse me, the Polish prime minister, not foreign minister, even more serious. So what is he going to do? Aim Polish missiles at Russian missiles while they're over Ukraine territory and expect himself, his own people, not to be attacked for that? Yeah, I'll just tell you right now that Russia won't put up with this. I can't speak for Russia, but it's just clear that Russia won't put up with this. It's a bilateral security agreement. It's not a NATO agreement. If Poland seeks to implement a bilateral agreement that has it carrying out an act of war in Ukraine,

Russia will take out the air defense systems that fired. That's a guaranteed. As soon as they fire and Russia will take them out. I mean, I don't know what this idiot thinks he's doing. I'm hoping that at this summit, he will be given the dressing down that he deserves. For instance, if I'm the Americans, I would simply tell him, you will be given the dressing down that he deserves. For instance, if I'm the Americans, I would simply tell him, you do understand that if you fire that missile, we're out of Poland. We're done. We're not going to sit here and provide a shield to you while you try to put our soldiers at risk. We're there to protect you from Russian aggression, but you don't get to be aggressive against Russia and Ukraine thinking that NATO is going to back

you up. We're not going to be there. This is what I would tell him if I were the mayor. In fact, I'd start pulling troops out right now just to send a signal, you need to shut up and you don't get to speak until you speak to us. We are the top dogs in NATO. Why we let Poland bark like this and put our troops at risk? We're already in a situation where both NATO, the United States have lowered the threshold for the use of tactical nuclear weapons. Russia is saying it's going to lower it as well to match that. And here this moron in Poland is talking about firing air defense missiles to shoot down Russian missiles. He knows for a fact that when Russia fires missiles, yes, they approach Poland, but then they maneuver so that their final trajectory is parallel to Poland when they hit the targets they need to hit.

He knows that NATO has been stacking equipment in warehouses along the Polish border in the vicinity of Lvov and et cetera that are legitimate military targets and Russia is hitting them. So what he's saying is we need to protect the equipment we send to Poland. So we're going to extend an umbrella of air defense over that so Russia can't strike those legitimate targets. That's not how it works, Tusk. You want to play big boy games? Get ready when the big boys come in and knock your teeth out, because that's what's going to happen. And then we're talking about the potential of general war. I hope every American understands what I'm saying here. This isn't about posturing. This isn't about being a tough guy this is about dying

all of us dying this is going to impact us because russia will hit these targets and then poland will turn to nato and say you must protect us and there will be some in nato that say yes that's what we need to do and then they make the wrong step and then we have the bigger bombs going off and then we all die because there's no such thing as a limited nuclear war there's no such thing as we speak uh mr tusk and uh his fellow heads of state and heads of foreign uh ministries uh are meeting in washington does any of them besides Viktor Orban, this is NATO now, any of them besides Orban understand that Ukraine cannot win, that this is futile, that every dollar and every euro that they put into this is just killing innocents and will never be returned the way they expected to return? In other words, will scene heads prevail, or is something worse going to come out of NATO's glorying in its 75th anniversary in Washington, D.C. this week? Well, one of the problems is the 75th anniversary, and NATO needs to be seen as being the strongest it's ever been, more unified than ever. These are the talking points that they

want to come out of this summit. Meanwhile, the United States has already said that they're going to tell Ukraine that they're not going to be NATO members because they're the most corrupt nation on the earth. They have to solve the corruption problem. Jan Stoltenberg has already admitted what he said, don't even think about membership for the next 10 years. Also, you have to win this war before you become a member of NATO. These are the realities, the harsh realities. And then the other realities are,

this is an unsustainable conflict. NATO has been briefed that Russia is getting stronger every day and NATO is getting weaker every day. And that the costs, they're going to be talking about the costs of building up NATO. These are prohibitive costs. They don't have the economies that can sustain the outlays necessary to get the militaries where they need to be. And if they did start investing in them, we're talking 2029, 2030, nothing that's going to impact what's going on with Russia and Ukraine today. This is a lost war. And the only way this war doesn't get lost on the trajectory that it's heading is if

NATO directly intervenes, but NATO is not positioned to directly intervene. Again, we come up with the Polish missiles. What happens if Poland fires these missiles, Russia counterattacks, then what? That Poland doesn't have the military necessary to project power into Western Ukraine in a meaningful fashion, they would be annihilated. And if American troops and NATO troops came in, they've crossed a red line now that becomes an existential issue for Russia, nuclear weapons will be employed. Russia just did a major test of its tactical nuclear weapons to send this signal to the United States. You know, a lot of people aren't talking about, you know, after the Crimea beach incident we spoke about earlier, you know, the U.S. ambassador was summoned to the foreign

ministry of Russia where she was read the Riot Act. And she was told that Russia blames America and will hold America accountable and that there will be retaliation. He called back. And that's why Lloyd Austin picked up the phone and called Belyusov. And again, talking to Belyusov, told him the same thing. Lavrov just said the same thing. I don't know what these people are thinking, but if they want to expand the conflict, they will get a response by Russia. And this response will lead us down the path of the inevitability of a nuclear exchange. That's how dangerous this is. Have we stopped reconnaissance over the Black Sea since those telephone calls? Well, the global hawks got diverted to other areas. You know, there's ways

to collect intelligence. The Global Hawk was, you know, a system that was configured to collect against specific systems. So it's been withdrawn because the Russians said they're going to shoot it down. You know, the British went in with an RC-135 with a fighter escort, but I think that was just a one-time show of force. But there's other things, I don't want to get into it too much, but there's other things that can be done to collect the same systems. But the bottom line is we were told by the Russians that if you want to play stupid games, then you win stupid prizes. Before I ask you about your book, I think you'll appreciate this. Here is a very candid Viktor Orban on his flight from Moscow back to Hungary after he just spent two days with Vladimir Putin assessing for a journalist Vladimir Putin, the man. He is more than 100% a rational person.

When he negotiates, when he starts to explain a point, when he makes a proposal, saying yes or no, he's super rational. How to say in Hungarian? Cool-blooded, you know? Cool-blooded. Low-profile cool-blooded, you know, cool-blooded, low-profile cool-blooded, you know, very cautious punctually formation, you know, discipline. So it's a real challenge to have

a negotiation and to be prepared if you would like to keep the intellectual and political level of film. He wasn't talking about Joe Biden. No, I mean, here's the problem. The second you start to speak positively about Vladimir Putin, people, oh, you're a Putin tool, you're a Putin puppet. I don't care, man. Orban's not a Putin tool and a Putin puppet. Why can't we just respect the guy for being the president of a nation or a leader of a nation for a quarter of a century? And the fact is he's been around a long time. He knows these subjects intimately. He's been a very successful president taking Russia from where it was in 1999 to where it is today. You don't have to agree with him. You don't even have to like him or support him, but you have to respect the professionalism of this guy. Listen to his speeches, listen to his preparations. I mean,

to his discussion, he is extraordinarily well-prepared. Words mean something to him. He doesn't use words loosely. And so I think what Viktor Orban did is paint a very accurate profile of Vladimir Putin. And it's one that should pour cold water over the heads of anybody who thinks that he's bluffing, that he's this out of control, crazy emotional dictator. No, he's actually a very cool-blooded, rational, pragmatic person. And here's the important part, who wants to do the right thing by Russia, which means he's not running off to get involved in a nuclear confrontation or expand a war. That's not his goal. At the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, he spoke at the plenary session, and he did two major interviews with media, international media and Russian media. If you think that he's an irrational dictator who's trying to bully people, he would have let off all three of these by talking about the war in Ukraine and Russia's role in the war in Ukraine and emphasizing that. He let off on the economy. He talked about how Russia is moving forward economically. He talked about BRICS. He talked about things that are happening of a social economic nature, not about the war.

The war was secondary. And that's the reality. This is a man who's trying to do the right thing by his country. And it's amazing when leaders define the right thing as being peaceful coexistence with their neighbors. Tell us about your book covering Ukraine and who wrote the blurbs for that book well you know a number of people wrote blurbs but i have a very good one written by a good friend of mine the honorable andrew p the politano host of judging freedom um and i'll let people read it but i really appreciate the blurb on that covering ukraine is a um it's just that it's a it's a book. I was asked by my publisher to write a book about Ukraine. I didn't have the time to do it. And plus the target just, thank you, Chris, the target just

moves so often. So we decided to do an interview-based book, but even then scheduling the interview, it said was too hard. I've been talking to Anya Kay about Ukraine since the war started. The interviews were already done. So I coordinated with her and she picked 19 of the best questions. And we turned that into a book that covers the scope and scale of the conflict from the beginning of the war until I think up until May is when our information could update, but it covers every aspect of, about this. It's an invaluable book. Uh,

I think it's entertaining. And one of the interesting things we did is because it's interview based at the end of each chapter. Um, we, we embedded a QR code into the, uh, into the book.

So when you, um, when you finish reading the chapter, you can take your phone, click on the gear, and now you can see the whole interview. So it's an interactive book. So when you, when you finish reading the chapter, you can take your phone, click on the gear, and now you can see the whole interview. So it's an interactive book. It was a lot of fun working with her on it. I think it's a, you know, it's a book, 120 pages. If you go to the beach, you could knock this thing out in a day,

but I guarantee you'll be going back to reading it because it is a resource for understanding the conflict in Ukraine and how it's covered by, by the media and how Anya Kay and I covered it through our interviews. I get asked to do a lot of blurbs. This book I loved. I loved going through it, not because you're my buddy and because we work together, but because it's very, very illuminating. Scott, thank you very much for everything. Good luck with the book. I'll be off the next two weeks, but we'll look forward to seeing you at the very end of July and early

August. All right, Judge. Well, have a great trip to Italy and have a good July. Well, thank you. Godspeed, my man. All the best to you. Thanks. A great man and a great interview. Tomorrow, let me just look at tomorrow for you, as I like to do at the end of each day. At three o'clock, Phil Giraldi, you won't believe how American tax laws benefit the IDF. And Aaron Mate about the fight he had over those in Israel and in the media who will cover and whitewash for mass murder. Judge Napolitano, fill it three, Aaron at four. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. We'll see you next time. earn your degree on your schedule. You may even be able to graduate sooner than you think by demonstrating mastery of the material you know. Make 2025 the year you focus on your future. Learn more at wgu.edu.