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Hi, everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Tuesday, August 26, 2025.
Max Blumenthal joined us now. Max, thank you very much. Thank you again for Saturday. For those
unaware of this, I was privileged to host a panel which consisted of Max Blumenthal, Anya Parenthill,
Aaron Mate, and Christian Parente. Christian might not be known to you, but he soon will,
as a sociologist and economist who teaches at John Jay College in New York City. And of course,
we were talking about war and peace
before a very appreciative
and enthusiastic audience. They were all
there to see Max, but I
was privileged to be
a part of it, and it was a most enjoyable
experience in Rutherford, in
Bergen County, New Jersey, where I once
lived and worked.
Max, why do you think Trump is
personally indifferent, or
at least publicly indifferent
to the
slaughter and starvation
in Gaza and that of this latest tragedy, the intentional murder of journalists in a hospital?
Well, first of all, if anyone wants to see the panel that we did with Judge Napolitano,
in which we learned some fascinating history on judge's evolution.
Little embarrassing.
A little bit of the Vietnam War to an anti-war extremist.
Check out our, it's all there on our gray's own.
own YouTube channel. Just go to the live function and we'll be putting up highlights soon.
And it was a really incredible overflow, sold out event, partly thanks to the presence of
you, Judge. So thanks for being there. I think the issue is why is Trump hostile to the concept
of any form of diplomacy at all? And why is he allowing Israel to shape his entire agenda
on the ground. And it's obvious, we've been talking about it for maybe years now on this show.
It's his, he is a vehicle for Israeli influence. And you can see that in the form of Mike Huckabee,
his ambassador. You can see that in the form of the Ghazi Humanitarian Foundation, which is basically
an Israeli replacement for the United Nations, which is fueling the starvation and genocide.
And the U.S. has created a front organization to allow the Israelis to avoid responsibility legally under the Geneva Conventions for the population in Gaza that they're starving.
But beyond that, right now, throughout the past hours, there have been massive protests across Israel.
The main highways are shut down all across central Israel.
People are out protesting for a ceasefire, not necessarily because they're going to.
they care about the lives of Palestinians, but because there are 50 dead and living captives
there who are Jewish Israelis and they want them out. And Netanyahu has completely ignored
not only those protesters. We're talking about hundreds of thousands of people, maybe not the
majority of Israelis, but a large plurality. And he's ignored the warnings of his chief of staff
of the Israeli military, A.L. Zamir, who is warned that the hostages will all, the captives will all be
killed and that many of his own men will be killed and that the reservists do not necessarily,
they have a manpower problem and that they should accept a ceasefire. He has ignored the
delegation of Hamas that appeared in Doha and accepted once again another ceasefire, which,
which led even the Israeli Army Chief of Staff A.L. Zemir to declare they have shown remarkable flexibility, and it shows that our operations on the ground destroying Gaza are working. Netanyahu can't accept it. And Hamas has correctly said again this week, he can't accept it because it will lead to the collapse of his coalition. So basically, Donald Trump is Netanyahu's lifeline. Donald Trump doesn't exist as an independent entity.
And he's also, while he may not be diagnosed with dementia, he has about the same mental
functioning capacity as Joe Biden at this point. I mean, there's nothing going on upstairs.
So Donald Trump is basically being led around by Netanyahu. It's his job to keep his coalition
going. And that means no diplomacy, total destruction, starvation, genocide, collapse of the
rules-based order, U.S. soft power is gone forever. And it's because Trump is a vehicle for
Israeli and specifically Netanyahu's influence.
Have any IDF soldiers been taken as hostages or prisoners of war,
whatever you want to call them, by Hamas?
Well, on October 7th.
Not on October 7th, but since October 7th.
No, they've generally been killed or they have been taken by a rescue team,
Israeli rescue teams.
There were attempts during the last.
Israeli operation in Gaza, Gideon's chariot, to actually take a few Israeli soldiers who
were wounded. They actually captured some of their weapons, but the soldiers wound up being
killed because it was difficult to transport their bodies when you have drones in the air.
But this spoke to the failure of Israel's last operation, Gideon's chariot, which has led us to
the current juncture and crisis where Israel's embarking on a kind of final solution to destroy.
Gaza City, destroy the densely populated urban areas. Gideon's chariot was primarily conducted in previously
destroyed areas, which is why you also saw like contractors who are destroying homes to flatten
out the area also being killed by resistance factions. So I think there's a much higher chance that
soldiers could actually be taken captive in the next phase if Israel chooses to go in.
Right now, what they're doing is like softening up, which means just randomly bombing civilian
areas, destroying entire neighborhoods in Gaza City primarily to the east of Gaza, like Al-Tufa,
and then planning to go in what will be a blood.
bloodbath like we haven't even seen before.
Is there no pressure on Trump to engage in diplomacy, to feed the starving, to recognize the war crimes, to restrain Netanyahu?
No, I mean, the reason that Netanyahu is moving with so much urgency right now, one of the main reasons.
I mean, there are reasons that relate to regional shifts and regional military realities.
But I think the main reason is that he has carte blanche, a complete green light from Trump
until the midterms.
And I think, you know, the Democrats, well, widely hated and absolutely pathetic are expected
to win the House.
And that could change the political calculus in Washington somewhat given.
the polling numbers and the pressure on the Democrats to actually take action on this genocide.
A new University of Maryland poll shows that only 11% of Democrats under the age of 35 side with Israel over the Palestinians.
And a wide majority of Democrats side with the Palestinians over the Israelis.
11% side with the Israelis over the Palestinians.
Right.
That's an enormous, enormous gap.
I'm surprised there's not more conversation about that in mainstream press
and not more action by Democratic leaders.
I guess most of the leaders are over 35,
but they're crazy to ignore that if they want to stay as a viable political party.
Well, the problem is, number one, they're in the minority.
They can't do hearings or really they have no power.
And number two, I mean, look at their leadership.
It's Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries, who are both vehicle.
for Israeli influence. I mean, Chuck Schumer is kind of like driving the Israeli death train.
He really believes in this project. His last book is about the plague of anti-Semitism while
a genocide is going on. And they're hated. Their approval ratings are in the toilet.
But the issue right now is that Trump is in complete control of the Republican Party. He got the
Republican Congress to leave early for an early recess to avoid voting on a release of the Epstein
files. So that tells you everything you need to know. And so Netanyahu is in complete control
in Washington right now. And he has that control until the midterms. And the other factors are
he can't, he wants to sequence out what his military is able to do. The
reservist corps is depleted after the campaign in southern Lebanon and in Gaza, and then a war with Iran, another more violent conflict with Iran, is immediately on the horizon.
We're seeing members of the general staff of the Israeli military go on Israeli media and predict that actually call for what they call preemptive strikes because they believe Iran is repairing its air defenses and is,
developing its military Iran just carried out naval exercises in preparation for a conflict.
He can't do the final solution in Gaza and a conflict with Iran at the same time.
And they're also using the Trump administration, which it's effectively the Israeli Trump
administration right now in Lebanon to try to push the Lebanese government, a very weak
government with a pathetic military to disarm Hezbollah, and they're saying that they want to get
it done by the end of the month, by August 31st. Tom Barak and Morgan Ortegis, who is a Israeli zealot,
former Lebanese Christian who is converted to Judaism, and Tom Barak are in Beirut to push for
this disarmament, which could amount to Lebanese civil war. But the point,
is to get a powerful resistance faction off Israel's back so it can go and carry out the final
onslaught against Iran, which I think is an absolute fantasy. So Netanyahu's using Trump to buy
time for a sequenced demolition of all his regional enemies, but it first starts in Gaza.
At the risk of turning your stomach, and this is not the only clip that I will show you that
well this morning or today that will turn your stomach here's lindsay graham uh trying to tell the
lebanese people what to do christ number 15 and the best way to secure americas have good partners
and the best way to have a good partners have a military that's loyal to the people not to a particular
sect within the people and hesbalah is not loyal to the people
Hezbollah's agenda is not Lebanon's agenda.
Hezbollah has an agenda inconsistent with you thriving and surviving.
So I think you as a people, the Lebanese people, overwhelmingly want a better future.
They want a future where the Palestinian militias are disarmed.
They want a future where Hezbollah is disarmed.
And that the people carrying arms are the Lebanese army.
The Lebanese army is trusted to take care of everybody's interests regardless of sect.
If you can pull that off, that would be the biggest accomplishment in modern history of Lebanon.
Once Hezbollah has been disarmed by the people of Lebanon, transferring power from militias to the Lebanese military through the people, through the political process,
then you'll have a different conversation with Israel.
I'm going to Israel pretty soon.
It's all talking to something changes.
Israel's never going to look at Lebanon differently until you just.
do something different. And that is disarm the enemy of the Israeli people. Hezbollah has an
American blood on its hands. Has Israeli blood on his hands. Has Lebanese blood on his hands.
So don't ask me any questions about what Israel's going to do until you disarm his blood.
The hell would listen to him. Isn't the Lebanon part of Netanyahu's greater Israel designs?
Yeah, of course it is. And that's, you know, Lindsay Graham is speaking.
on behalf of Israel. He reveals himself to be a spokesman for Netanyahu's Israel,
standing beside the Democrat Gene Shaheen, who's of Lebanese descent and is a repulsive neocon,
just like Lindsey Graham. The majority of Lebanese people oppose going to war against their own people.
Not only that, recent polling shows the majority of Lebanese people oppose disarming Hezbollah.
Why? And including a higher number of Christians than I would have suspected.
But why? Because they're not stupid. They see what's happening in Syria, where Assad was toppled
after a decade-long dirty war. Israel takes credit for that, by the way, replaced by al-Qaeda.
Sectarian warfare breaks out. Massive sectarian bloodbaths occur all across the country.
And yet, even as this country dissolves and basically waves the white flag in front of Israel,
Israel continues to attack and is now occupying the highest point in Syria and moving into the Damascus suburbs.
So Lebanon would get the same thing if Hezbollah disarmed.
Hezbollah has defended Lebanon against an Israeli occupation that began before Lebanon even existed.
And the submental U.S. ambassador, Tom Barack actually gave an interview recently in Arabic media where he claimed
Hezbollah was founded in the 70s.
He has no idea what he's talking about.
And I wonder if Chris could pull this clip up if he can find it in time.
Tom Barak came before that same press conference of the Lebanese media at the presidential palace
and referred to the reporters as animalistic and called for them to behave in a civilized manner or he will leave,
essentially insulting the whole of the Lebanese press and the Lebanese people in nakedly colonial terms.
Is this the same Tom Barrett that was a real estate developer in Long Island, New York?
This guy's now an ambassador negotiating for the United States, the same person?
Well, what was Steve Whitkoff?
It's just Trump's landlords running around, you know, his Jewish and Arab landlords running around pretending to be diplomats.
And the only results they get are bloodshed on behalf of Israel.
So it's that guy completely out of his depth with Morgan Ortegis,
a neocon fanatic who wears a star of David ring who converted to Judaism.
I mean, that's something that's very difficult to do unless you're Sammy Davis, Jr.
And right.
All right.
So, I mean, this really shows that the relationship between the U.S. and Lebanon is one of
total contempt for the whole Lebanese state.
It's not going to work out.
they're trying to push Lebanon into civil war as they did with Syria
in order to take the pressure off Netanyahu.
And this meeting really seals the deal.
As soon as I saw this, I said,
Max has to see this.
How do you interpret and understand this?
Cut number 14.
The ambassador has a very interesting view of anti-Semitism.
She grew up in America.
There was anti-Semitism.
of course, I've experienced, we've all experienced,
the ambassador has a very interesting view of that.
He says, people are, you can't understand anti-Semitism.
It's the people who are anti-Semitic,
it's because they're against God,
against Urban Shored.
And we are represented as his people,
and that's why they're anti-Semitic.
Otherwise, it doesn't make any sense.
Interesting view.
That's interesting view.
There's another view that since we can say
the chosen people
and that's part of it is that
because you are
the chosen people
given a chosen place
for a chosen purpose
and if someone is angry
at God he'll be angry
at the people
who represent him
so I tell people
anti-Semitism is irrational
there's no reason for it
unless you
understand the spiritual reason
which is what I believe is at the heart of it.
It is not the left versus the right.
It is good versus evil.
It is the creator versus those who rebel against the creators.
The next Christian adult to convert to Judaism?
I mean, I think he was too extreme possibly for his hosts.
They said he has a very interesting view of anti-Semitism.
His hosts are Agudat Israel in Ben-Barach,
which is a kind of closed ultra-Orthodox community outside Tel Aviv.
These are some of the key leaders of ultra-Orthodox Ashkenazi,
Ashkenazi ultra-Orthodox Jews in Israel.
They represent the historic communities that came over, mostly from Poland.
But it's a major meeting, historic meeting, trying to paper over or tone down the conflict
between the ultra-Orthodox and the members of Netanyahu's coalition who wants their children and
grandchildren to serve in the Israeli military, which they consider to be a violation of God's will.
And Huckabee walks in. He's advancing Netanyahu's agenda. He's been with Netanyahu the whole time he's
been there asking Netanyahu what to do. He's getting instructions from Tel Aviv.
and he comes out with his interpretation of the conflict and the crisis we're witnessing,
and it is a book of revelations inspired interpretation, an eschatological apocalyptic rapture-ready
interpretation in which Jews are basically a dispensationalist chess piece that are in what's
considered Israel in order to realize the plan for the rapture. And he says that. They are chosen by
God in order to realize his plan and dispensations will arrive through warfare, including a war
between Gog and Magog, which Huckabee interprets as a war between Israel and Iran and Russia,
somehow conveniently fitting within neo-conservative geopolitical plans. So the
Jews, according to Huckabee and his Christian Zionist theology, actually must have war.
They must start war, and they must eliminate all of the non-Jews within the land of Israel,
greater Israel, through ethnic cleansing in order to set the stage for the possibility of a rapture
in which, you know, if the Jews fail to convert, they're burning in an everlasting lake of fire.
So he expresses that clearly.
And that works out very conveniently for secular Zionists.
in Tel Aviv because it means he will do whatever they want.
And so they have a marriage of mutual exploitation
or a marriage of convenience between secular genocidal psychopaths
and Christian Zionists who also favor genocide.
And that's what that meeting represented.
And if you watch it, like I watched it like two, three times
before I tweeted about it because you never want
to get something wrong if you have a major Twitter
account because people will just cut you off at the knees. And I was wondering, is this like
AI footage created by some anti-Semitic Nazi account? Like, I can't believe this is real.
I thought I was hallucinating for a moment. And then I read about the meeting. It was on Huckabee's
page, like press release about it. This is the face of U.S. diplomacy right now.
Wow. Here's here's another face of U.S. diplomacy. Chris found the clip.
of Tom Barak, Chris?
Okay, wait, wait, wait, wait.
We're going to have a different set of rules, right?
You want, please, be quiet for a moment.
And I want to tell you something.
The moment that this starts becoming chaotic, like animalistic, we're gone.
So you want to know what's happening, act civilized, act kind of.
act tolerant because this is the problem with what's happening in the region.
So I beg you, do you think this is fun for us?
Do you think this is economically beneficial for Oregon and I to be here putting up with this insanity?
In cadence, with your kindness, your interest, and your thoughtful questions, we'll give you responses.
If that's not how you'd like to operate, we're gone.
Is that acceptable to everybody?
Now, what are we doing?
Well, I guess Chris and those of us who monitor these things are going to have a field day
when this character, Morgan Ortegas and Lindsay Graham, go to Israel later this week
and meet with Mike Huckabian, probably with Netanyahu himself.
Yeah, have you ever seen the Israeli press?
Like, it's pretty chaos.
Press scrum in Israel is pretty chaotic, just like waiting for a bus.
No one's capable of forming lines in Israel, but no one calls them uncivilized and says
that's what their problem is and that they're a bunch of animals who happened to be committing
genocide.
This was, you know, what Tom Barak said there resonated across Lebanon.
It's a top story in every Lebanese outlet.
Joseph Aoun, Lebanese president, has had to issue an apology, but a pathetic apology.
in which he couldn't even name Tom Barak.
He actually criticized his remarks without naming him,
which shows the subservient position of the Lebanese presidency
and reinforces to Lebanese people.
Why Hezbollah exists?
Because no one will defend them against this regional hegemon in Israel
with the U.S. behind it, which wants to seize their land
and take their water in the Latani River,
which sought to do so, which previously occupied Beirut.
And so the stakes were made very clear there by Tom Barak.
And in many ways, it's refreshing, I think, to have someone like Trump who lifts the mask off
the phony rules-based order and shows that this really is just about colonialism.
How I wish that you or Aaron or one of your Gray Zone folks could be at a presser
with Lindsey Graham and Benjamin Netanyahu later this week.
I don't think I'll let you in, Max.
When was the last time you saw Lindsay Graham get really tough critical questions?
He's all over the Sunday shows.
Well, he never gets tough questions no matter what shows he's on.
Never.
Yeah.
I mean, and this is the leading warmonger in the Senate who's not all,
he's despised by much of Donald Trump's own base.
Right.
sabotaging
Ukraine peace as well.
All right. Max, thank you very much.
We always talk about unpleasant things,
but it's always pleasant for me to be
educated by you, and I know the audience
appreciates it as well.
Have a great holiday weekend.
You and your family, and we'll see you next week.
Thank you, Max.
Thanks again for joining us last weekend.
It was my pleasure. I loved every minute of it.
All the best.
Great seeing you.
Coming up, but we have a full day
for you tomorrow. But coming up this afternoon at 3 o'clock, our friend Kyle Anzalone, Judge Napolitano for
Judging Freedom.
Thank you.