John Mearsheimer: Liberal Delusions & How NATO Led Ukraine Down the Primrose Path
Glenn Diesen
Jul 31 2025
John J. Mearsheimer is the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago, where he has taught since 1982. Prof. Mearsheimer discusses his book "The Great Delusion: Liberal Dreams and International Realities" and how NATO has been leading Ukraine down the primrose path.
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Scott Ritter: Trump-Medvedev Dangerous Nuclear Rhetoric
Glenn Diesen
Aug 1 2025
Scott Ritter is a former Major, Intelligence Officer, and UN Weapons Inspector. Ritter makes the point that language matters, and the dangerous escalation in rhetoric between Trump and Medvedev elevates the risk of nuclear war.
Transcript
[Glenn Diesen] Hi everyone and welcome back. We are
joined again today by Scott Ritter, a
former US Marine, a major, and a UN
weapons inspector. So welcome back to
the program.
[Scott Ritter] Thanks for having me.
[Glenn Diesen] So Trump was expected to withdraw the US
from the Ukraine war and also improve
bilateral ties with Russia. Indeed, it
looks looked as if he was on the path to
doing this. But now
Trump has made this his own war, but
bilateral relations are also seemingly
going from bad to worse. And one of
these things which you have picked up in
an article is the the language which
is rhetoric which is heating up
that is some yes strong words
from Trump against Putin. Putin has
really responded, but now we see the
former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev
and President Trump
exchanging some not very subtle threats
which includes, yeah, reference to
nuclear weapons. Again, you wrote an
article with the title Trump and
Medvedev's dangerous exchange of words.
I was wondering if you can elaborate,
what words have been exchanged, and also
what is the significance of this?
[Scott Ritter] You know I'm not a diplomat. I'm a
former marine, and I'm not known for
being much of a wordsmith and am a pretty
direct speaker. But when I was with
the United Nations, a very experienced
Russian diplomat kept pressing on me
the importance of words. She said
words matter. When you use a
word, the the language, the meaning,
it's all important. And that seems to
be reflective of all Russians,
not just him, that when the Russians
use words, they matter. The
language matters. And I bring that up
because we had this exchange that took
place between Donald Trump and Dmitry
Medvedev. You know, sometimes people they
have a tendency to say it's just the
internet, it's just social media [shit]
posting, you know, there's a
bad word, so I won't use it, but you
know. So don't read too much into
it. Except that one of the participants
is a former Russian president and words
matter.
You know, President Trump posted on his
truth social media platform a post
that was sort of critical of both Russia
and India, and mocking. You know,
basically I think Trump is coming face
to face with the reality that the
threats that he's put on against Russia
are having zero impact. Even Lindsey
Graham, who has been one of Trump's, you
know, dominant advisors, when it
comes to how to put pressure on
Russia, acknowledges that Russia is
pretty much sanction-proof, that Russia
has made itself immune to the
impact of US sanctions. And the
president has come to
the similar conclusion. He said these
may not work against Russia. But the
idea was to do secondary sanctions
against the people who bought Russian
oil. Well, China is just not
playing that game. India,
you know, has always been sort of
sitting on the fence, but it doesn't
appear that India is going to 100% buy
in. There is some talk that India is
looking at additional sources, but
the the Indians, you know, aren't, you
know, giving the United States the
result that they wanted. And so
President Trump has mocked the
dead economies of both Russia and India,
indicating that if they continue to
operate in this fashion that they won't
have business with the United States, and
the United States will conspire to kill
their economies. And he then went on to caution Dmitry
Medvedev, who's been critical of Trump's
threats over the last couple of days,
weeks, to say, you know,
"you're entering very dangerous grounds."
Well, what does that mean? "Dangerous
grounds?" I think here we get an insight into
how much the Russians follow
Donald Trump, and follow the United
States, and follow our policy
formulations.
We have a president who has openly
embraced the the concept of regime
change, decapitation strikes through
military action in Iran. He has talked
about how he could have
targeted the Iranian president, the
Iranian supreme leader. He praised,
early on, the Israeli efforts to achieve
this decapitation. And the Israelis,
in designing their Iranian attack, made
reference to the Nasrallah effect,
meaning their assassination of Hassan
Nasra, the head of Hezbollah,
combined with this pager attack against
Hezbollah intermediate leadership. The
combined effect was to collapse
Hezbollah's political sustainability and
led to Hezbollah withdrawing from the
conflict against Israel.
Netanyahu, in talking about the Iranian
action, made reference to the Nasrallah
effect, saying that we're doing the same
thing early on.
Now what does
this have to do with the president of
the United States? We're looking at the
reality. There's a couple things the
American people need to come to
grips with. One, that the notion
that this president was seeking the
bettering of relations with Russia is an
absolute fallacy. The president has
never been seeking better relations with
Russia. The president has been seeking
relations defined by American supremacy
OVER Russia, American superiority OVER
Russia. That what the president wants
isn't to treat Russia as an equal, but
to treat Russia as subservient. That
the betterment of relations is
contingent upon Russia YIELDING to
American demands about Ukraine,
YIELDING to American economic
imperatives. You know, we've seen
the president lash out against brics
and the supposed dd-dollarization
taking place in brics. You know
that this is all indicative of the fact
that what the president wants is a
Russia that recognizes AMERICAN
SUPREMACY. And that's not the Russia
he's confronted with. The Russia that he's
confronted with is the exact opposite. A
Russia that is presenting America with
RUSSIAN SUPREMACY, especially when it
comes to the issue of Ukraine, that
Russia will do whatever it wants in
Ukraine. There's nothing the Americans
can do to stop them.
I think you're also looking at the fact
that Russia is largely immune to
American economic pressures, and that the
American military isn't up to the task
of dealing with the Russians. This is
something that I think has come crashing
home to Trump. And so what happens is
I believe that Trump becomes very
vulnerable to arguments that say, you
know, we don't have to match the
Russians conventionally. We have nuclear
supremacy, and If needed, we
could just take the Russian leadership
out, collapse the Russian
intermediate leadership, and lead to the
collapse of Russia as a
whole. The Nasrallah effect applied to
Russia writ large. This dates back to thinking that
existed in the 1980s during the
presidency of Ronald Reagan, where
talk was given about launching a
decapitation strike using Trident
missiles launched from Ohio class
submarines,
Persian 2 missiles based out of West
Germany, B-52s armed with air
launched cruise missiles. The combined
impact of all these would be that within
12 to 15 minutes of launch, Russian
leadership would be eliminated, and
the majority of Russia's
strategic ability to hit the
United States would be eliminated.
The belief then is that the Russians
would back down, confronted with
the real likelihood of their
total destruction if they continue the
conflict. Fortunately, that never
happened. One of the reasons why that
didn't happen is that Russia
put in play a concept known as
"The Dead Hand," or "THE PERIMETER SYSTEM." A
lot of people think that it's fake. It's
not fake. I know it's not fake because
when I was a weapons inspector in
Vodkens, we came face to face with
the modified SS25s. They were used as
part of the perimeter system. Instead
of having warheads on top, they would
have a sophisticated communications
module, they would broadcast the launch
codes so that if the Russian leadership
was taken out, all of Russia's
surviving nuclear weapons would be
launched against the United States
automatically. That's why it's called
"The Dead Hand," meaning, you
may have killed them, but the dead hand
is going to launch the missiles.
Medvedev alluded to The Dead Hand. He said,
"What are you talking about? "Dangerous grounds." Are you
threatening us?" And he said, "You
know, you might want to take a look at
"The Walking Dead." That's a TV series
about sort of a zombie
apocalyptic world, where everything,
society, has been largely
destroyed, and people are running around as mere
survivors. And he mentioned The Dead Hand.
Now he said The Dead Hand doesn't exist, because Russia hasn't
officially acknowledged the existence of
The Dead Hand, but it does exist. Words
matter. Dmitry made this statement
for a reason. He's letting the president
know that the fantasy that exists in his
head, the fantasies that's being sold by
his advisers, is just that, a fantasy.
And the consequences of seeking to act
on this fantasy, by threatening Russia,
will be apocalyptic in nature.
Yeah. The Dead Hand comment kind of
stood out to show how serious
the situation is.
But do the
Russians think have a reasonable
concern that uh the US could be planning
such a decapitation strike or is it
likely? because I think many looked with
some concern when uh the United States
uh attacked Iran in the middle of the
negotiations and uh again for the
Russians a month earlier they or two
weeks or something they had also this
attack on their own nuclear deterrent
which in which it was a bit ambiguous to
what extent uh Trump would have been
aware of this. Um again there were
similarities with the tactics of
importing drones and uh and do do you
think this is something they they are uh
concerned about and preparing because
I mean the the sweeter the tone from
Trump at the same time he's uh he he he
tends to be a bit deceptive so the at
least the trust is uh very much gone now
but uh do you see this as a
as a possible thought that Trump now has
this decapitation strike.
Yeah,
I I see it as a pos because there are no
other alternatives if you're going to be
trying to bully Russia. What are you
bullying Russia with? Your conventional
military power, it's non-existent.
Um, your ability to uh sustain Ukraine
as a viable proxy to wear down Russia,
not happening. Uh, your ability to
economically strangle Russia, not
happening. So if you've
built a policy formulation that is
dependent upon Russia bending the knee,
the only thing left is to intimidate
Russia using the threat of nuclear war.
Um, and I believe that that is what this
president is doing. And I believe the
Russians are fully cognizant of this.
And Demetri Midv's uh response on X, the
citation of the dead hand is proof
positive. He's not going to make that
mention out of the blue. Words matter.
And so for the former president who is
cognizant of what the dead hand is to
mention it means that he's basically
been cleared to put the president of the
United States on notice that don't even
think about it. We will knock the living
daylights out of you. You may kill us
but we'll kill you too and all that will
be left is a walking dead type scenario.
Well, all of this uh well heated
rhetoric is of course in the context of
the United States or Trump putting a a
new deadline on the Russians that is uh
warning Russia it had to end the war
within 50 days which was then adjusted
down to 10 days and it kind of makes the
question what what happens in 10 days
because it's it's uh there's only three
possible options. One is uh further
sanctions, but as you said, it's very
limited impact this is going to have and
it could make Trump look weak. The
second will be to send more weapons, but
how much more weapons could be sent? And
the third would be something more direct
uh such as what people like Lindsey
Graham might like or uh or you know
something like a decapitation strike.
But uh how how is Russia reacting to
this though this u this 10 days besides
you know the outbursts from uh President
Meda?
Well last night we saw a a very heavy
strike against Kiev
that made use of not only the Giron
drones but according to some reports uh
13 Ecander M were fired against a single
target uh in Kiev. Um, that's
escalation, not deescalation. I think
what the Russians are saying is, "We
could care less about what you're
saying. Uh, we are going to do what we
need to do to win this war on our
terms." And, um, you can be damned. Um,
it's pretty much the Russian response.
U, I don't think the Russians are going
to engage meaningfully with Donald Trump
on on these issues. Uh, you know, what
what what can Trump do? I mean, he
already recognizes his policy is going
to fail. So, um, and you know, the the
legislation being pushed through the
Senate, uh, isn't 500% tariffs as
Lindsey Graham was demanding. It's the
ability to go from zero to 500. Zero,
which means the president has the
latitude to do nothing. And so what I
see is that the president, you know,
hasn't committed to a specific number or
any number against Russia. Um I think
he's hopeful that the Russians will
respond um by saying, "Oh, no. We we
don't want these secondary sanctions.
You know, we'll um let's let's get back
to the negotiating table."
You know, I can't predict the future,
but I don't imagine the Russians are
going to yield on on this issue. I don't
imagine the Russians um I don't imagine
the Chinese or the Brazilians yielding
the Indians. We never know. Um but I I
think at the end of the day, you know,
Donald Trump has to be careful about
boxing himself into a corner here. An
overreiance upon failed policy uh only
invites total failure. So I I think you
know once again Trump will get into the
business of extensions
uh etc. I don't think we're ready for
war just yet. Um, but the fact is, as
you pointed out, when confronted with
absolute failure on all other fronts,
does the president admit failure or does
he seek so-called victory by
uh promoting a scenario that he's been
told um could lead to an American
victory.
I always u make the point to people in
the west that uh one of the things that
has annoyed Russia the most over the
past 30 years um something that by the
way Sergey Lavrov keeps mentioning at
least over the past 20 years uh with
yeah many times has been um the the
death of diplomacy and he yeah
throughout the years he's all he's made
the same comment many times which is
that we no longer All after the cold
war, we stopped sitting down talking
about competing security concerns
looking for compromise and solutions.
Instead, uh he always argues that after
the cold war, the west abandon diplomacy
in return for a language of ultimatums
and threats. This is what Lavrov always
says and this is something that they
will never accept. again many times has
made this comment and uh so yet again
here it is this uh language of
ultimatums which is uh end the war 10
days or you'll get your yeah punishment
ambiguous what this means but uh the
whole thing is kind of strange because
if you want to end the war it shouldn't
it have a component with the United
States and Russia it's uh Trump seems to
still take himself out of the America
out of the equation as if this is only a
conflict between Ukraine and uh Russia.
Yeah. I mean that's unrealistic. Uh you
know Trump wants to make sure that
when this war gets finished
uh on terms that he helps negotiate that
he gets full credit for ending the war
but nobody links him to the beginning of
the war. That this isn't Donald Trump's
war. Um it very much is his war
especially now when he's made it so uh
directly. Um
again the tr the president's boxing
himself into a rhetorical corner. Um
he's leaving himself no no way out. Uh
what happens when sanctions fail? They
will fail. What happens when Russia
calls the bluff which they are already
doing? Uh do you admit failure? Do you
admit you're bluffing or do you are you
trapped? Do you now have to pursue some
sort of face saving gesture? Um but
there is no face saving gesture. I mean
you heard Christopher Donahghue mention
a possible um you know face saving
gesture uh you know an attack against
Keningrad as if the Russian exclave
there wasn't part of mother Russia and
Russia wouldn't treat it as part of
mother Russia. Um I mean the we we are
literally entering the realm of you know
insanity. Um where
you know political pride is creating the
conditions for thermonuclear
annihilation.
Well, how do you see the Russophobes
that Trump has surrounded himself with
as being part of this new influence,
this new approach to Russia, or was it
always deceptive? Because during the
election he was making comments that his
mistake in the first administration was
to have people like Bolton there. He
referred to him, I think, as a bit of an attack dog. So,
bad cop to his good cop perhaps? But
he also seems to be pursuing what
they're advocating for.
How do you make sense of the team he's
putting up around him?
It doesn't make any
sense from a policy standpoint, or
foreign policy standpoint, or a
national security policy standpoint.
It does make sense from a domestic
standpoint, because
Russophobia has infected the entire
United States. I mean, frankly speaking,
we're talking low single digits in terms
of the percentages of Americans
who actually know anything about Russia,
and understand the truth about Russia.
You can get higher percentages when you
ask, do you want a nuclear war
with Russia? You get a higher percentage
of people saying no. But then you follow
up with the question, is Vladimir Putin evil?
Yes. They don't even know who he is.
They don't know anything about him.
They've just been conditioned,
a Pavlovian response. Putin evil, Putin
bad. And when you have this kind of
environment, then it's easy to sell
failed policy because most people aren't
going to view it as a policy failure,
because they aren't conditioned to think
of US-Russian relations as being
peaceful in nature. They're conditioned
to think of them being confrontational.
So I think we're in
a very
dangerous territory, and something has to
be done to change the domestic political
imperative surrounding bad policy on
Russia. There needs to be a political
cost to be paid by this president before
he'll pay attention. Otherwise, we're
just going to find ourselves one day
waking up to
nuclear missiles being launched, and
wishing we were dead.
My last question is uh do you think
Trump really understands Russia? Because
when he makes these arguments that the
Indians and the Russians have a dead
economy, the Russians have more
losses than the Ukrainians. And
the solution to the war apparently is
European peacekeepers supervising an
unconditional ceasefire.
It's just a lot of misses,
which creates a lot of
concern that he doesn't actually
understand the conflict.
Well, he doesn't understand the conflict,
and he most certainly doesn't understand
Russia. He doesn't know Vladimir Putin.
He claims to have mastery of all
three things, but he knows nothing.
And this is the danger. I mean,
normally you want somebody who's smart
enough to be able to discern that they
have insufficient knowledge, and
therefore try to empower themselves with
knowledge and information, by seeking out
expert advice before moving forward
aggressively on complex as fraught with
danger as these things are. But this is what
happens when you elect a narcissist, an
egomaniac as president of the United
States. He believes sincerely that he
knows best. I mean, this colors
everything he does. He's a classic, you
know, sociopath when it comes to
malignant narcissism.
But it's a very dangerous
situation. There's no easy way to
describe this. I can't craft
words together that'll make people feel
feel good about this. You should be
scared to death, because we have a madman
as the president of the United States
who is creating the conditions in his
brain that will
legitimize nuclear war against Russia.
So one more final
question. How do you see this
war ending now? A peaceful
settlement, I guess, is out the window.
This war ends with either a complete
Russian victory or global annihilation.
Yeah. Well,
let's hope Trump doesn't go for
the latter. It's such a disappointment
though. I think so many people threw
their weight behind Trump on the
promise of ending the forever wars.
I did.
Ending the Ukraine war.
And I
believed in it after I gave him 100 days.
Yeah.
And I've been taking a lot of heat,
because "You supported him."
Well, he's the president of the United
States. Who doesn't want the president
to succeed? Because the president's
success generally translates into
success for the nation. And who wouldn't
want peace with Russia? Who wouldn't
want a president promoting peace?
But you know, after 100 days, you
just were confronted, just as we are
today, with the reality of this man.
And none of the good things that I
thought were going to happen are
happening. Nor are they going to
happen unless something fundamentally
changes. He needs to clean house on his
advisers. He needs a whole new slate of
advisers. Unfortunately, that's not
going to happen. It's also concerning
the aggressive language
which he has employed in the domestic
politics, and kind of got
away with. It doesn't really transfer
well to the international politics, not
just against Russia, but the
whole spat between the Russian Medvedev
and Trump now. Now you also
see the same thing referencing
India, and is very angry with them and
you know they're being punished for
trading with Iran, they're punished for
trading with Russia. The assumption
being that if you cut yourself off from
all the other major powers, and you'll
only be dependent on the one that's
actually threatening you and bullying
you. Even the countries
who, like India, really wants to
have a close and good relationship with
the United States is now being
alienated. I think that as you say,
words matter, and it's
shocking that they're being used so
lightly. But here we are. So
yeah, thanks again for your time, and
yet again, I would very much recommend
your substack and your article. So
thanks again.
Thanks for having me.
Glenn Diesen
Aug 1 2025
Scott Ritter is a former Major, Intelligence Officer, and UN Weapons Inspector. Ritter makes the point that language matters, and the dangerous escalation in rhetoric between Trump and Medvedev elevates the risk of nuclear war.
Transcript
[Glenn Diesen] Hi everyone and welcome back. We are
joined again today by Scott Ritter, a
former US Marine, a major, and a UN
weapons inspector. So welcome back to
the program.
[Scott Ritter] Thanks for having me.
[Glenn Diesen] So Trump was expected to withdraw the US
from the Ukraine war and also improve
bilateral ties with Russia. Indeed, it
looks looked as if he was on the path to
doing this. But now
Trump has made this his own war, but
bilateral relations are also seemingly
going from bad to worse. And one of
these things which you have picked up in
an article is the the language which
is rhetoric which is heating up
that is some yes strong words
from Trump against Putin. Putin has
really responded, but now we see the
former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev
and President Trump
exchanging some not very subtle threats
which includes, yeah, reference to
nuclear weapons. Again, you wrote an
article with the title Trump and
Medvedev's dangerous exchange of words.
I was wondering if you can elaborate,
what words have been exchanged, and also
what is the significance of this?
[Scott Ritter] You know I'm not a diplomat. I'm a
former marine, and I'm not known for
being much of a wordsmith and am a pretty
direct speaker. But when I was with
the United Nations, a very experienced
Russian diplomat kept pressing on me
the importance of words. She said
words matter. When you use a
word, the the language, the meaning,
it's all important. And that seems to
be reflective of all Russians,
not just him, that when the Russians
use words, they matter. The
language matters. And I bring that up
because we had this exchange that took
place between Donald Trump and Dmitry
Medvedev. You know, sometimes people they
have a tendency to say it's just the
internet, it's just social media [shit]
posting, you know, there's a
bad word, so I won't use it, but you
know. So don't read too much into
it. Except that one of the participants
is a former Russian president and words
matter.
Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump
I don’t care what India does with Russia. They can take their dead economies down together, for all I care. We have done very little business with India, their Tariffs are too high, among the highest in the World. Likewise, Russia and the USA do almost no business together. Let’s keep it that way, and tell Medvedev, the failed former President of Russia, who thinks he’s still President, to watch his words. He’s entering very dangerous territory!
Jul 30, 2025, 10:00 PM
Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump
Remember, while India is our friend, we have, over the years, done relatively little business with them because their Tariffs are far too high, among the highest in the World, and they have the most strenuous and obnoxious non-monetary Trade Barriers of any Country. Also, they have always bought a vast majority of their military equipment from Russia, and are Russia’s largest buyer of ENERGY, along with China, at a time when everyone wants Russia to STOP THE KILLING IN UKRAINE — ALL THINGS NOT GOOD! INDIA WILL THEREFORE BE PAYING A TARIFF OF 25%, PLUS A PENALTY FOR THE ABOVE, STARTING ON AUGUST FIRST. THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER. MAGA!
Jul 30, 2025, 6:09 AM
You know, President Trump posted on his
truth social media platform a post
that was sort of critical of both Russia
and India, and mocking. You know,
basically I think Trump is coming face
to face with the reality that the
threats that he's put on against Russia
are having zero impact. Even Lindsey
Graham, who has been one of Trump's, you
know, dominant advisors, when it
comes to how to put pressure on
Russia, acknowledges that Russia is
pretty much sanction-proof, that Russia
has made itself immune to the
impact of US sanctions. And the
president has come to
the similar conclusion. He said these
may not work against Russia. But the
idea was to do secondary sanctions
against the people who bought Russian
oil. Well, China is just not
playing that game. India,
you know, has always been sort of
sitting on the fence, but it doesn't
appear that India is going to 100% buy
in. There is some talk that India is
looking at additional sources, but
the the Indians, you know, aren't, you
know, giving the United States the
result that they wanted. And so
President Trump has mocked the
dead economies of both Russia and India,
indicating that if they continue to
operate in this fashion that they won't
have business with the United States, and
the United States will conspire to kill
their economies. And he then went on to caution Dmitry
Medvedev, who's been critical of Trump's
threats over the last couple of days,
weeks, to say, you know,
"you're entering very dangerous grounds."
Well, what does that mean? "Dangerous
grounds?" I think here we get an insight into
how much the Russians follow
Donald Trump, and follow the United
States, and follow our policy
formulations.
We have a president who has openly
embraced the the concept of regime
change, decapitation strikes through
military action in Iran. He has talked
about how he could have
targeted the Iranian president, the
Iranian supreme leader. He praised,
early on, the Israeli efforts to achieve
this decapitation. And the Israelis,
in designing their Iranian attack, made
reference to the Nasrallah effect,
meaning their assassination of Hassan
Nasra, the head of Hezbollah,
combined with this pager attack against
Hezbollah intermediate leadership. The
combined effect was to collapse
Hezbollah's political sustainability and
led to Hezbollah withdrawing from the
conflict against Israel.
Netanyahu, in talking about the Iranian
action, made reference to the Nasrallah
effect, saying that we're doing the same
thing early on.
Now what does
this have to do with the president of
the United States? We're looking at the
reality. There's a couple things the
American people need to come to
grips with. One, that the notion
that this president was seeking the
bettering of relations with Russia is an
absolute fallacy. The president has
never been seeking better relations with
Russia. The president has been seeking
relations defined by American supremacy
OVER Russia, American superiority OVER
Russia. That what the president wants
isn't to treat Russia as an equal, but
to treat Russia as subservient. That
the betterment of relations is
contingent upon Russia YIELDING to
American demands about Ukraine,
YIELDING to American economic
imperatives. You know, we've seen
the president lash out against brics
and the supposed dd-dollarization
taking place in brics. You know
that this is all indicative of the fact
that what the president wants is a
Russia that recognizes AMERICAN
SUPREMACY. And that's not the Russia
he's confronted with. The Russia that he's
confronted with is the exact opposite. A
Russia that is presenting America with
RUSSIAN SUPREMACY, especially when it
comes to the issue of Ukraine, that
Russia will do whatever it wants in
Ukraine. There's nothing the Americans
can do to stop them.
I think you're also looking at the fact
that Russia is largely immune to
American economic pressures, and that the
American military isn't up to the task
of dealing with the Russians. This is
something that I think has come crashing
home to Trump. And so what happens is
I believe that Trump becomes very
vulnerable to arguments that say, you
know, we don't have to match the
Russians conventionally. We have nuclear
supremacy, and If needed, we
could just take the Russian leadership
out, collapse the Russian
intermediate leadership, and lead to the
collapse of Russia as a
whole. The Nasrallah effect applied to
Russia writ large. This dates back to thinking that
existed in the 1980s during the
presidency of Ronald Reagan, where
talk was given about launching a
decapitation strike using Trident
missiles launched from Ohio class
submarines,
Persian 2 missiles based out of West
Germany, B-52s armed with air
launched cruise missiles. The combined
impact of all these would be that within
12 to 15 minutes of launch, Russian
leadership would be eliminated, and
the majority of Russia's
strategic ability to hit the
United States would be eliminated.
Dmitry Medvedev
@MedvedevRussiaE
Trump's playing the ultimatum game with Russia: 50 days or 10… He should remember 2 things:
1. Russia isn't Israel or even Iran.
2. Each new ultimatum is a threat and a step towards war. Not between Russia and Ukraine, but with his own country. Don't go down the Sleepy Joe road!
10:33 AM · Jul 28, 2025
Dmitry Medvedev
@MedvedevRussiaE
Trump issued a theatrical ultimatum to the Kremlin.
The world shuddered, expecting the consequences.
Belligerent Europe was disappointed.
Russia didn’t care.
12:11 AM · Jul 15, 2025
Medvedev reminds Trump about dangers of ‘walking dead’
TASS RUSSIAN NEWS AGENCY
31 Jul, 03:06"Perhaps he should recall his favorite films about the walking dead and think about how dangerous a ‘dead hand’ can be, even one that doesn’t exist in nature," Dmitry Medvedev wrote
Russian Security Council Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev © Yekaterina Shtukina/POOL/TASS
MOSCOW, July 31. /TASS/. Deputy Chairman of Russia’s Security Council Dmitry Medvedev has issued a pointed warning to US President Donald Trump, urging him not to ignore the peril posed by those he labels "dead." Medvedev’s comments come in response to Trump’s recent remarks about the Russian economy, as well as his criticisms of Medvedev himself, which he shared via his Telegram channel.
"Regarding the so-called ‘dead economy’ of India and Russia and the warning about ‘entering dangerous territory’ - perhaps he should recall his favorite films about the walking dead and think about how dangerous a ‘dead hand’ can be, even one that doesn’t exist in nature," Medvedev wrote, adding a laughing emoji.
The term "dead hand" harks back to Cold War-era nomenclature in the West, where it referred to the Soviet nuclear deterrent system known as Perimeter. This system was reportedly designed to ensure a guaranteed retaliatory strike in the event of an attack on the USSR.
Earlier, Trump had disparaged the economies of Russia and India on Truth Social, labeling them "dead," and had also directed critical remarks toward Medvedev.
The belief then is that the Russians
would back down, confronted with
the real likelihood of their
total destruction if they continue the
conflict. Fortunately, that never
happened. One of the reasons why that
didn't happen is that Russia
put in play a concept known as
"The Dead Hand," or "THE PERIMETER SYSTEM." A
lot of people think that it's fake. It's
not fake. I know it's not fake because
when I was a weapons inspector in
Vodkens, we came face to face with
the modified SS25s. They were used as
part of the perimeter system. Instead
of having warheads on top, they would
have a sophisticated communications
module, they would broadcast the launch
codes so that if the Russian leadership
was taken out, all of Russia's
surviving nuclear weapons would be
launched against the United States
automatically. That's why it's called
"The Dead Hand," meaning, you
may have killed them, but the dead hand
is going to launch the missiles.
Medvedev alluded to The Dead Hand. He said,
"What are you talking about? "Dangerous grounds." Are you
threatening us?" And he said, "You
know, you might want to take a look at
"The Walking Dead." That's a TV series
about sort of a zombie
apocalyptic world, where everything,
society, has been largely
destroyed, and people are running around as mere
survivors. And he mentioned The Dead Hand.
Now he said The Dead Hand doesn't exist, because Russia hasn't
officially acknowledged the existence of
The Dead Hand, but it does exist. Words
matter. Dmitry made this statement
for a reason. He's letting the president
know that the fantasy that exists in his
head, the fantasies that's being sold by
his advisers, is just that, a fantasy.
And the consequences of seeking to act
on this fantasy, by threatening Russia,
will be apocalyptic in nature.
Yeah. The Dead Hand comment kind of
stood out to show how serious
the situation is.
But do the
Russians think have a reasonable
concern that uh the US could be planning
such a decapitation strike or is it
likely? because I think many looked with
some concern when uh the United States
uh attacked Iran in the middle of the
negotiations and uh again for the
Russians a month earlier they or two
weeks or something they had also this
attack on their own nuclear deterrent
which in which it was a bit ambiguous to
what extent uh Trump would have been
aware of this. Um again there were
similarities with the tactics of
importing drones and uh and do do you
think this is something they they are uh
concerned about and preparing because
I mean the the sweeter the tone from
Trump at the same time he's uh he he he
tends to be a bit deceptive so the at
least the trust is uh very much gone now
but uh do you see this as a
as a possible thought that Trump now has
this decapitation strike.
Yeah,
I I see it as a pos because there are no
other alternatives if you're going to be
trying to bully Russia. What are you
bullying Russia with? Your conventional
military power, it's non-existent.
Um, your ability to uh sustain Ukraine
as a viable proxy to wear down Russia,
not happening. Uh, your ability to
economically strangle Russia, not
happening. So if you've
built a policy formulation that is
dependent upon Russia bending the knee,
the only thing left is to intimidate
Russia using the threat of nuclear war.
Um, and I believe that that is what this
president is doing. And I believe the
Russians are fully cognizant of this.
And Demetri Midv's uh response on X, the
citation of the dead hand is proof
positive. He's not going to make that
mention out of the blue. Words matter.
And so for the former president who is
cognizant of what the dead hand is to
mention it means that he's basically
been cleared to put the president of the
United States on notice that don't even
think about it. We will knock the living
daylights out of you. You may kill us
but we'll kill you too and all that will
be left is a walking dead type scenario.
Well, all of this uh well heated
rhetoric is of course in the context of
the United States or Trump putting a a
new deadline on the Russians that is uh
warning Russia it had to end the war
within 50 days which was then adjusted
down to 10 days and it kind of makes the
question what what happens in 10 days
because it's it's uh there's only three
possible options. One is uh further
sanctions, but as you said, it's very
limited impact this is going to have and
it could make Trump look weak. The
second will be to send more weapons, but
how much more weapons could be sent? And
the third would be something more direct
uh such as what people like Lindsey
Graham might like or uh or you know
something like a decapitation strike.
But uh how how is Russia reacting to
this though this u this 10 days besides
you know the outbursts from uh President
Meda?
Well last night we saw a a very heavy
strike against Kiev
that made use of not only the Giron
drones but according to some reports uh
13 Ecander M were fired against a single
target uh in Kiev. Um, that's
escalation, not deescalation. I think
what the Russians are saying is, "We
could care less about what you're
saying. Uh, we are going to do what we
need to do to win this war on our
terms." And, um, you can be damned. Um,
it's pretty much the Russian response.
U, I don't think the Russians are going
to engage meaningfully with Donald Trump
on on these issues. Uh, you know, what
what what can Trump do? I mean, he
already recognizes his policy is going
to fail. So, um, and you know, the the
legislation being pushed through the
Senate, uh, isn't 500% tariffs as
Lindsey Graham was demanding. It's the
ability to go from zero to 500. Zero,
which means the president has the
latitude to do nothing. And so what I
see is that the president, you know,
hasn't committed to a specific number or
any number against Russia. Um I think
he's hopeful that the Russians will
respond um by saying, "Oh, no. We we
don't want these secondary sanctions.
You know, we'll um let's let's get back
to the negotiating table."
You know, I can't predict the future,
but I don't imagine the Russians are
going to yield on on this issue. I don't
imagine the Russians um I don't imagine
the Chinese or the Brazilians yielding
the Indians. We never know. Um but I I
think at the end of the day, you know,
Donald Trump has to be careful about
boxing himself into a corner here. An
overreiance upon failed policy uh only
invites total failure. So I I think you
know once again Trump will get into the
business of extensions
uh etc. I don't think we're ready for
war just yet. Um, but the fact is, as
you pointed out, when confronted with
absolute failure on all other fronts,
does the president admit failure or does
he seek so-called victory by
uh promoting a scenario that he's been
told um could lead to an American
victory.
I always u make the point to people in
the west that uh one of the things that
has annoyed Russia the most over the
past 30 years um something that by the
way Sergey Lavrov keeps mentioning at
least over the past 20 years uh with
yeah many times has been um the the
death of diplomacy and he yeah
throughout the years he's all he's made
the same comment many times which is
that we no longer All after the cold
war, we stopped sitting down talking
about competing security concerns
looking for compromise and solutions.
Instead, uh he always argues that after
the cold war, the west abandon diplomacy
in return for a language of ultimatums
and threats. This is what Lavrov always
says and this is something that they
will never accept. again many times has
made this comment and uh so yet again
here it is this uh language of
ultimatums which is uh end the war 10
days or you'll get your yeah punishment
ambiguous what this means but uh the
whole thing is kind of strange because
if you want to end the war it shouldn't
it have a component with the United
States and Russia it's uh Trump seems to
still take himself out of the America
out of the equation as if this is only a
conflict between Ukraine and uh Russia.
Yeah. I mean that's unrealistic. Uh you
know Trump wants to make sure that
when this war gets finished
uh on terms that he helps negotiate that
he gets full credit for ending the war
but nobody links him to the beginning of
the war. That this isn't Donald Trump's
war. Um it very much is his war
especially now when he's made it so uh
directly. Um
again the tr the president's boxing
himself into a rhetorical corner. Um
he's leaving himself no no way out. Uh
what happens when sanctions fail? They
will fail. What happens when Russia
calls the bluff which they are already
doing? Uh do you admit failure? Do you
admit you're bluffing or do you are you
trapped? Do you now have to pursue some
sort of face saving gesture? Um but
there is no face saving gesture. I mean
you heard Christopher Donahghue mention
a possible um you know face saving
gesture uh you know an attack against
Keningrad as if the Russian exclave
there wasn't part of mother Russia and
Russia wouldn't treat it as part of
mother Russia. Um I mean the we we are
literally entering the realm of you know
insanity. Um where
you know political pride is creating the
conditions for thermonuclear
annihilation.
Well, how do you see the Russophobes
that Trump has surrounded himself with
as being part of this new influence,
this new approach to Russia, or was it
always deceptive? Because during the
election he was making comments that his
mistake in the first administration was
to have people like Bolton there. He
referred to him, I think, as a bit of an attack dog. So,
bad cop to his good cop perhaps? But
he also seems to be pursuing what
they're advocating for.
How do you make sense of the team he's
putting up around him?
It doesn't make any
sense from a policy standpoint, or
foreign policy standpoint, or a
national security policy standpoint.
It does make sense from a domestic
standpoint, because
Russophobia has infected the entire
United States. I mean, frankly speaking,
we're talking low single digits in terms
of the percentages of Americans
who actually know anything about Russia,
and understand the truth about Russia.
You can get higher percentages when you
ask, do you want a nuclear war
with Russia? You get a higher percentage
of people saying no. But then you follow
up with the question, is Vladimir Putin evil?
Yes. They don't even know who he is.
They don't know anything about him.
They've just been conditioned,
a Pavlovian response. Putin evil, Putin
bad. And when you have this kind of
environment, then it's easy to sell
failed policy because most people aren't
going to view it as a policy failure,
because they aren't conditioned to think
of US-Russian relations as being
peaceful in nature. They're conditioned
to think of them being confrontational.
So I think we're in
a very
dangerous territory, and something has to
be done to change the domestic political
imperative surrounding bad policy on
Russia. There needs to be a political
cost to be paid by this president before
he'll pay attention. Otherwise, we're
just going to find ourselves one day
waking up to
nuclear missiles being launched, and
wishing we were dead.
My last question is uh do you think
Trump really understands Russia? Because
when he makes these arguments that the
Indians and the Russians have a dead
economy, the Russians have more
losses than the Ukrainians. And
the solution to the war apparently is
European peacekeepers supervising an
unconditional ceasefire.
It's just a lot of misses,
which creates a lot of
concern that he doesn't actually
understand the conflict.
Well, he doesn't understand the conflict,
and he most certainly doesn't understand
Russia. He doesn't know Vladimir Putin.
He claims to have mastery of all
three things, but he knows nothing.
And this is the danger. I mean,
normally you want somebody who's smart
enough to be able to discern that they
have insufficient knowledge, and
therefore try to empower themselves with
knowledge and information, by seeking out
expert advice before moving forward
aggressively on complex as fraught with
danger as these things are. But this is what
happens when you elect a narcissist, an
egomaniac as president of the United
States. He believes sincerely that he
knows best. I mean, this colors
everything he does. He's a classic, you
know, sociopath when it comes to
malignant narcissism.
But it's a very dangerous
situation. There's no easy way to
describe this. I can't craft
words together that'll make people feel
feel good about this. You should be
scared to death, because we have a madman
as the president of the United States
who is creating the conditions in his
brain that will
legitimize nuclear war against Russia.
So one more final
question. How do you see this
war ending now? A peaceful
settlement, I guess, is out the window.
This war ends with either a complete
Russian victory or global annihilation.
Yeah. Well,
let's hope Trump doesn't go for
the latter. It's such a disappointment
though. I think so many people threw
their weight behind Trump on the
promise of ending the forever wars.
I did.
Ending the Ukraine war.
And I
believed in it after I gave him 100 days.
Yeah.
And I've been taking a lot of heat,
because "You supported him."
Well, he's the president of the United
States. Who doesn't want the president
to succeed? Because the president's
success generally translates into
success for the nation. And who wouldn't
want peace with Russia? Who wouldn't
want a president promoting peace?
But you know, after 100 days, you
just were confronted, just as we are
today, with the reality of this man.
And none of the good things that I
thought were going to happen are
happening. Nor are they going to
happen unless something fundamentally
changes. He needs to clean house on his
advisers. He needs a whole new slate of
advisers. Unfortunately, that's not
going to happen. It's also concerning
the aggressive language
which he has employed in the domestic
politics, and kind of got
away with. It doesn't really transfer
well to the international politics, not
just against Russia, but the
whole spat between the Russian Medvedev
and Trump now. Now you also
see the same thing referencing
India, and is very angry with them and
you know they're being punished for
trading with Iran, they're punished for
trading with Russia. The assumption
being that if you cut yourself off from
all the other major powers, and you'll
only be dependent on the one that's
actually threatening you and bullying
you. Even the countries
who, like India, really wants to
have a close and good relationship with
the United States is now being
alienated. I think that as you say,
words matter, and it's
shocking that they're being used so
lightly. But here we are. So
yeah, thanks again for your time, and
yet again, I would very much recommend
your substack and your article. So
thanks again.
Thanks for having me.
- admin
- Site Admin
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Re: Anti-Anti-Nazi Barbarian Hordes are Knocking Down the Ga
by admin » Fri Aug 01, 2025 10:30 pm
[SPECIAL] - Scott Ritter : Trump deploys Nuclear Subs to Russia over Social Media Rift
Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom
Streamed live 100 minutes ago
[BREAKING NEWS SPECIAL] - Scott Ritter : Trump deploys Nuclear Subs to Russia over Social Media Rift
Transcript
Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here
for Judging Freedom. Today is Friday,
August 1st, 2025.
Welcome to this special edition of
Judging Freedom with my dear friend and
colleague Scott Ritter. Scott, thank you
for the double duty this week.
There's no better person on the planet
for us to turn literally to explain the dangers, the
significance, and the idiocy
behind what President Trump ordered
today. What did he announce that he did
today, and what did he order and what
is the significance of it?
[Scott Ritter] What did the president do today? Well,
what the president did today is deploy
two of the most lethal strategic nuclear
assets in the American arsenal. Or at
least he claims to have deployed. I think
we will touch upon this later. Ohio
class submarines, launch ballistic
missile capable submarines armed with
trident nuclear solid fuel
missiles. Each one tipped with multiple
thermonuclear warheads. He has said
that he has ordered them deployed into
the appropriate areas in
response to a Russian tweet from
Dmitry Medvedev. This means areas where
the submarines missiles can target
Russia. This is extraordinarily
dangerous. You know, the United States
maintains
a permanent force of Ohio class
submarines on station. Two submarines at
least in each of the oceans, two in the
Atlantic, two in the Pacific. They're
on station where their missiles could
reach any of the
potential nuclear threats to the United
States of America. On occasion, we
deploy additional Ohio class submarines.
For instance, just recently an Ohio
class submarine was deployed into the
Indian Ocean close to Iran
where it's Trident missiles, armed
with W76-2 low yield nuclear weapons,
could be used against Iran if the
president so ordered. But we have four
nuclear armed submarines.
So, when he
said he's ordered two deployed, is
he talking about two additional
submarines to this, or is he talking
about redeploying
two submarines out of their
existing stations into
new deployment areas that make them
even more of a threat to Russia.
The tweet he's responding to is one from
Dmitry Medvedev, in which Medvedev sort of
mocked the president as
Medvedev is the former president of Russia,
who's the number two person on their
national security council,
who in recent years has been more
publicly bellicose than President Putin.
He's like the the bad cop to Putin's
good cop. And what did he do?
He picked a social
media fight with Trump, and Trump took
the bait?
Mean tweets. This is literally about mean
tweets. This is about Donald Trump
threatening to end the world as we know
it because of a mean tweet. But what's
even more outrageous is that Donald
Trump doesn't understand what Medvedev
tweeted. Medvedev was telling Trump to knock
it off with the dangerous threats, saying
that if you do this, America
can end up looking like [urlhttps://www.gettyimages.com/photos/the-walking-dead-zombie]the walking dead[/url]
because of the dead hand. The dead
hand is a reference to the perimeter
system, which is a defensive system put
in place by the Soviet Union back in the
1980s. So that if they were ever struck
preemptively by the United States -- A
first strike, by the way, the tactic to
be used in a first strike is to bring
Ohio class submarines close to Russia's
shores, fire off their Trident missiles
on a flattened trajectory to avoid
detection so you can strike the targets
quicker, which is what Trump just
actually appeared to order the US Navy
to do. So the dead hand now becomes a
factor, because if Trump is dumb enough
to launch an attack against Russia, the
dead hand, the perimeter system will
ensure that all of Russia's strategic
nuclear forces will be fired against the
United States even if Trump takes out
Putin, the National Command Authority,
etc. I know this is a fact. When I was a
weapons inspector in Votkinsk, there
was a missile crisis in March of 1990,
because the Russians were trying to get
three missiles out of the factory
without us turning on the cargo scan
x-ray system. Why? These weren't three
SS25 missiles. They don't care if we see
those. These were three modified SS25s, not
to carry nuclear warheads, but to carry
the radio equipment that's used to
broadcast the codes. They needed to get
these missiles out and deployed, and
ready, so that the perimeter system was
alive and well and living. The dead hand
is only defensive in nature. Trump
should feel no threat from this unless
he's planning on attacking Russia. This
is the insanity. This president doesn't
even know what he's doing. And he's
responding to a mean tweet from a guy
who's been mean tweeting for years now. I
mean, I think most people, you know,
view Dmitry Medvedev's tweets with sort of humor. Yeah, they hurt
sometimes. He's very good at what
he does. But he's not the president
of Russia. He doesn't command Russia's
military, nuclear forces. He doesn't
direct the Russian economy. He advises
Vladimir Putin, but he is not Vladimir
Putin. So to treat Medvedev as if his tweets
actually will translate into
action is, you know, childish behavior,
but in this case, dangerously childish,
because he's literally putting two US
nuclear submarines on a combat patrol
against Russia.
Let's read exactly what Trump
said. Chris has prepared a full screen.
This is from his truth
social, based on the highly provocative
statements of the former president of
Russia, Dmitry Medvedev, who is now the
deputy chairman of the security council
of the Russian Federation.
Would would Hegseth
understand what you just explained about
the power of these and how the Russians
would perceive the threat? Would Pete
Hegsth know that we already have four
underwater and and and are we adding two
more? Do we have two more to add or has
he just repositioned two of the four
that are already uh somewhere in the
seas?
I think we have 14 Ohio class
submarines. I mean, somebody can correct
me if I'm wrong, but I think it's 14.
And they go through a rotation. You
know, first of all, those four
submarines that are out there, it's a
minimum of four, two in each ocean. You
know, they go through rotations. And so,
they'll rotate back to their home port
for refitting. the crews have to go out.
Um, there are some that are cycling
through long-term refueling and
refurbishment. So, you don't have 14
able to be deployed at any one time. I
think you probably have somewhere in the
area of, you know, n six to nine Ohio
class submarines available for
deployment. Um, you'll have the four out
in the fleet out in the field. You'll
have two that are getting ready to come
out and replace two of the four. And
then you have surge capacity. Like I
said, sometimes they send an additional
submarine out to the Indian Ocean. Other
times they may choose to put three
submarines in each of the deployment
areas depending on what the world's
situation is. Um, but this is a standard
operating procedure, something that uh
Pete Hgsth should be cognizant of now
that he's the Secretary of Defense. He
should have been briefed on this by the
commanding general strategic command
whose job it is to run these uh
submarines. Um, the other thing that
we never announced the movement Ohio
class,
I was just going to ask you what is to
be gained by making an announcement like
this. Is he just trying to cause Putin
sleepless nights?
Well, I don't think Putin's going to
cause sleep. But to make this
announcement, first of all, it's
foolish. Uh, because all you're doing is
um giving credence to the legitimacy of
the dead hand. I mean, the dead hand
again only exists, it only becomes
viable if the United States launches a
preemptive nuclear strike against
Russia. And redeploying Ohio class
submarines close to Russia's shores
indicates that that's what you're doing.
So, you know, the Russians are going to
be doing something in return. This is
where it gets stupid because now they
have to do something in return.
Hopefully, they don't announce it and
make a big deal of it, but they do it in
a way that we detect it and we know what
they've done. Um, but the other thing
is, let's say I'm a Ohio class submarine
commander, a captain, and I'm out there
just minding my own business, and all of
a sudden I'm told that the president is
redirecting my submarine to a new
deployment area. Um, maybe even telling
me to target my warheads. I mean, we
don't know. Uh, all the all the warheads
should have been deargeted a long time
ago. Um, because we don't want
inadvertent launch. But what did the
president now say? Not only are we
redeploying them, but you're now going
to have a Russian city targeted to each
one of these uh uh warheads. Who knows
what's going through this man's head,
but the president did this publicly. So
now I'm the Russians. And I go, "Okay,
guys, start looking for an Ohio class
submarine moving." Because when Ohio
class submarine's on station, it's
sitting at the bottom of the damn ocean
and it ain't moving. It's avoiding
detection altogether. You don't want to
be moving this submarine because it can
become detected. Now, if I'm the
Russians, I'm looking for this thing.
The Russians has some very good
submarines. And if they locate it and
trail it now, they'll follow it to its
new deployment area. And if it makes a
threatening move, the Russians will sink
it immediately.
I mean, this is how dangerous this is.
He has put the lives of uh 19-year-old
sailors
uh at risk as well as senior everybody
on these subs.
Oh, yeah. There's not too many 19 year
olds on that submarine because submarine
nuclear submarines require people with
that have to go through some good
training. But you got some 20, 21 year
olds. You got a lot of 30 year olds. You
got a lot of 40-year-old men with
families and kids. Um, you know, th this
this is insanity. These are America's,
you know, most capable warriors um who
we never want to they we don't ever want
these guys to go into combat. They're
there for nuclear deterrence. They're
there to deter an enemy from carrying
out an attack against the United States.
Now the president has put them in a
place where they're not doing
deterrence, but they have now become the
perceived aggressors. This is insanity
in the extreme. Pete Hegath should be
advis the chairman of the joint chief
should be screaming his head off. I mean
every JD Van should be saying, "Mr.
President, no." But what we get, Lindsey
Graham, the perfume princess, out there
having an orgasmic response to the
president's toughness, you know, telling
his friends, the Russian people, Lindsey
Graham isn't friends with anybody in
Russia. Um, I can tell you nobody in
Russia is friends with Lindsey Graham.
But, you know, I mean, this is ridic I
apologize for the sexual reference
there. That was inappropriate. But, you
know, you just take a look at the way
this man's responding to these this this
dangerous absurdity on the part of the
president. It's idiotic.
This is going to raise your blood
pressure even more. Rather than
cautioning the president, my former Fox
News colleague, who now runs the
Pentagon, has reposted
on his own uh ex account President
Trump's nuclear post that I just uh read
to you. There it is on Pete Hegs's
official account. He reposted what
Donald Trump uh said. So, these guys are
enablers, Scott. But I I gotta ask you
something that I think is going to make
this worse. Is it true that within the
past several weeks, the United States
delivered uh nuclear armaments to Great
Britain? And if so, what did we send
there?
Well, it appears to be true. I mean I I
can't confirm it, meaning I haven't seen
the deployment order and I haven't seen
the miss, but I've read the media
reports and uh all indications are that
we have delivered uh B6112
um uh gravity bombs. These are the
basically it's the same weapon system
that we have deployed throughout NATO,
part of the NATO nuclear deterrence. Uh
we've now uh deployed these to uh to
Great Britain uh to to air bases there,
which means that uh we we now have a um
a nuclear deterrence outside of the NATO
hierarchy. That's what's interesting
here because in order for Great Britain
to receive American nuclear weapons
under the NATO umbrella, you have to
invoke the, you know, the the the NATO
nuclear uh advisory council and all
this. There has to be discussion and
things of this nature. This is a
unilateral deployment of the United
States to Great Britain, which implies
that this is about the United States and
Great Britain posturing as opposed to
United States strengthening NATO's
nuclear deterrence. Uh this is at a time
when Great Britain just did the
Northwoods uh declaration with France
where they've combined uh the nuclear
doctrines of France and Great Britain as
an independent outside of NATO uh
nuclear capability. This is when Great
Britain has extended its nuclear
umbrella into Poland. Um and now the
United States is attaching um its
nuclear force to to the British. I mean
we are literally people look at all this
stuff and they they're like, you know,
oh that's not a big deal. Let's not blow
this out of proportion. If you go back
and read Barbara Truckman's fantastic
book, um, The Guns of August, it's about
the leadup to August 1914, the beginning
of World War I. Especially in the month
of July, all the things that were
happening, the people went, "Yeah, but
it's just mobilization." Yeah, we're
just doing this. No, there will never be
a war. Nobody wants a war. And then
boom, World War I. Right now, we are
moves are being made right now that if
they're not stopped and reversed are
going to lead to a general nuclear
exchange between the United States and
Russia. This is the direction we're
heading. And I want to remind your
audience that the CIA said last year
there's a greater than 50% chance that
there will be a nuclear war between the
United States and Russia during the last
months of the Biden administration. What
the Biden administration was doing, as
provocative as it was, pales in
comparison to what this administration's
doing. We're above 50% right now, Judge.
We're heading into extraordinarily
dangerous territory.
What do you think uh is going on in the
Kremlin as we speak as a result uh of
all of this?
Dismay. Dismay. I mean, first of all,
the Kremlin right now, I believe, is,
you know, trying to
bring an end to the Ukraine conflict uh
without creating an even greater
conflict. And so, this is always a
delicate diplomatic balancing game. Um,
and then you have this president making
threats. I mean, we we still have the
August 8th deadline coming up. The 10
days expires. What's going to happen on
August 8th? Steve Whit flying to uh to
to to Moscow to meet with his Russian
counterparts. Are threats going to be
issued? And now in that environment
where we're supposed to be actually
trying to calm each other down, the
president deploys two nuclear submarines
uh you know, in response to a mean treat
from uh Demetri.
the the the good news here, and I know
I'm going to get in trouble here from
people, but um thank God there's one
mature, responsible adult in the room,
and that's Vladimir Putin. You know, is
he perfect? No. Does he walk on water?
No. But I'll tell you what, he doesn't
do any of the garbage that Trump's
doing. And I believe Putin will do that
which is necessary to ensure Russia's
security interests without being
provocative. if you saw his uh his his
his discussion today about Ukraine um
very levelheaded um you know saying the
doors open for peace don't look don't
blame us it's Ukraine saying they don't
want peace you know it's United States
that's doing the we're ready for it but
there are realistic conditions that have
to be met um you know trying to just
calm things down lower lower the
temperature and um I think he's going to
continue this way this this man is not
suicidal he didn't spend a quarter of
century getting Russia out of the ashes
to where Russia is today. This nation
where Russians are actually proud of who
they are and what they are and what
they've become. He didn't do all this
just to throw it away in a in a blinding
flash of nuclear insanity. Um and I and
think that was what was behind Dmitri
Mviet's, you know, mean tweet. What he
was telling the president of United
States is calm down, take a chill pill
because the things you're talking about,
the way you're talking can only end with
a nuclear apocalypse. And if you think
for a moment that you can preemptively
strike our leadership because we're not
playing the game in Ukraine the way you
want to play, we have the dead hand. And
the dead hand will take you out. That's
not provocative. That's just a statement
of fact. And it, you know, hey Tulsi, if
you're watching, talk to the guy. Brief
him on the perimeter system. Brief him
on the dead hand. And if you need help,
call me. I'll come in and back you up.
But this guy needs to have some hard
facts put on the table in front of him.
I don't think I don't think I don't
think he listens to anybody.
Telsey Gabbard is the only one that will
tell him what he doesn't want to hear,
but the others are all yesmen around
him. However,
yeah. Yeah. Pete Hex retweeted. That's
that's the biggest indication of the
syphy that you can come up with.
Correct. Correct. President Putin did
release a statement very brief
to the point and manifesting
what you said the adult in the room. All
disappointments arise from excessive
expectations.
In order to have a peaceful resolution,
it is necessary to have substantive
conversations
and not in public. He gets it. He gets
it that Donald Trump is just bravado on
steroids.
Yeah. And well, the other thing is
public public
posturing like this boxes you into a
corner. I mean, what what is the
masculine statement that he's trying to
make by deploying these nuclear
submarines? Because this is this is
alpha dog territory here. So, now that
you've done it, do you back away? Do you
back off? Do you pretend you didn't do
it? Do you admit you were wrong? Not no.
Once you've gone alpha dog mode, you're
sitting there with your chest pumped
out, you know, hey, I got all take, you
know, so and then what is there going to
be an additional escalation on this
part?
President Putin is 100% correct. The
place for these discussions is behind
the scenes. Um, so you don't box
yourself into a corner, so there's room
to maneuver. You know, it's it's
diplomacy 101. And you know, even a
simple marine like me knows this that
sometimes it's best not to go public
with things and you you handle it behind
closed doors and uh and and then when
you finally reach agreement, as
difficult as that process might be, you
come out and put on a common smiley
face, shake hands, and everything's
good. The world doesn't need to know
what your disagreements are. They only
need to know that you actually, you
know, worked through them and came to,
you know, to an eventual agreement that
makes the world a safer place to be. I
I'll leave you not leave you, but I I'll
say this. You know, on July 29th, uh,
President Trump in responding to a
question from a task correspondent, uh,
talking about the New START treaty,
which is the last, uh, strategic nuclear
arms agreement in play between the
United States and Russia, said, "That's
an agreement that cannot be allowed to
expire. It expires on 4 February 2026."
That's the most sane thing this man has
said. So hopefully there's a modicum of
sanity in that brain of his so that he
understands the danger of nuclear
weapons. He appears to understand that
the necessity of avoiding an arms race.
He appears to understand that. And
hopefully we can get through these
turbulent times and and and get on to
doing what needs to be done like
extending the New START treaty.
The Russian people are referring to
Trump by a certain word. What is that
word?
Oh dear. Um, it's a word I'm not
supposed to use. It's not a foul word,
but it's it's not a nice word. Durac
means fool. It means idiot. It's not
meant in a kind way. And if you call
someone a durac, it is it is a debasing
term. It means you're literally an
idiot. You're stupid. You're you're
dumber than than belief. Um, I use the
word today uh in describing President
Trump. And I used the Russian variant
because I just happened to believe that
the 150 plus million Russians who looked
at this, that's probably the first word
that came to their mind. Durac, what an
idiot. What a fool. Because there's no
there's no justification for his
actions. There's no legitimate trigger
for this. It's as foolish and idiotic as
it gets.
What is American intel doing now in
response to what Trump uh announced?
Well, I mean what it should be doing
right now is monitoring uh Russian
strategic nuclear forces, looking for
any alteration in um in alert status. Um
you know, counting Russian submarines.
You know, the Russians just deployed a
brand new submarine, the biggest
submarine in the world. It carries 96
nuclear warheads on it.
Uh, I can't remember how many um, you
know, RS56 um, Bulo missiles, but the
most mo more modern than the Trident
missile. Uh, 96 of them. It's out there
right now on station. Um, American
intelligence trying to find out where
that submarine is. Uh, trying to look at
the, um, operational status of the uh,
mobile missiles, the SS27s that are out
there. Um, are they are they in
garrison? Had they been put out into the
uh, Siberian forests? uh you know uh
what's the alert status of the other
missiles in their silos uh because what
Trump did is begin
unfortunately he began the process of
the mobilization of nuclear forces that
if left unchecked will lead to an
inevitable nuclear I just again I want
to come to the point last fall we were
over 50% chance of a nuclear war we were
very lucky to avoid it um right now that
that that percentage is higher we are
it's It's an extraordinarily dangerous
situation that even though I sort of
chuckle when I talk about the word
durac, it's only because this this
situation's so damn dangerous that you
have to laugh. It's like, you know,
we're going to die. You know what? What
can you do? Cry or laugh? And and we're
going to die unless something changes.
This we're this is it that there won't
be historians able to write this history
because they'll all be dead. But if they
were, this will be one of those moments
that a person like Barbara Tukman would
be talking about in the future, you
know, Guns of August um book that that
would have been written if anybody
lived. But we're talking about
thermonuclear war here, global
thermonuclear war. There won't be
survivors.
Wow. How destructive can these
submarines be if they were to uh
attack under the radar or under the
defensive systems at Moscow?
We talking about Hiroshima and Nagasaki
type destruction or greater?
Oh, good lord. Greater. Um Hiroshima and
Nagasaki were 12 kilotons under 20
kilotons of destructive power. Very I
mean destructive. No doubt about it. uh
our our cities would be hit with, you
know, 150 kilotons, uh 300 kilotons, one
megat ton, that's a thousand. Um we're
we're literally talking I did a I did a
um a uh public briefing last uh December
at the National Press Center where I
invited Theodore Postal to come in and
give a presentation about uh what a
single Russian nuclear warhead over
Washington. This is the brilliant and
fearless MIT physicist.
Yeah. A good man. And you you look at
this briefing and it just it it
terrifies you. And that's just one.
Understand that um when you do nuclear
targeting, you're putting at least two
warheads on each target just to ensure
if you're hitting a national capital
center, I I I can say this, during the
Cold War, Moscow was targeted uh by
about 60 warheads. That just overkill to
make sure we got everything. Um and and
so what we're we're the Russians will be
doing the same thing. There will be
nothing left alive in Washington DC.
Read Annie Jacobson's book nuclear war.
She she run through a very realistic
scenario and um it's it's over. And you
don't want to survive this. If there's a
nuclear war, you want to die. You want
to be one of the ones who turns into
dust immediately because to to live
isn't to live. To live is to die. uh
Rear Admiral Buchanan who is the
director of plans for strategic command
gave a lecture last November in
Washington DC and after he acknowledged
that the Biden administration is ready
to have a nuclear exchange with Russia.
We're ready to have a nuclear war with
Russia and we're going to win. This is
what he said. He then said we probably
should be more honest with the American
public about what this means and what
victory means because he said even when
we win life will never be the same for
any American. There won't be civil
liberties. We'll be living under
permanent martial law. Uh you're not
going to have electricity, want running
water, medicine. None of the nicities of
civilization that you currently enjoy
will exist. And that's winning a nuclear
war. Ladies and gentlemen, you don't
want to win a nuclear war. You just want
to die because to win means you're going
to be suffering. And if you're a parent
with kids, who the hell wants that for
their children? This is why people have
to become angry about this and mobilized
about this. You know, people should be
calling up their their representatives
in Congress and saying, "What the hell
are you doing?" People should be
demanding that Lindsey Graham, the
perfume princess, get booted out of the
Senate. This is the man who is almost
singularly responsible for this very
crisis because of his asinine
performances, because of his
Russophobia. Um, this is why what why I
do what I do to combat Russophobia. So
that people when they hear the lunacy
out of people like Lindsey Graham, out
of Donald Trump and others, they go,
"No, that's not real. That's not the
Russia. That's We're not buying into
this crap. But it's an uphill battle
right now. But people need to
understand, we're talking about you're
going to die. Your kids are going to
die. And if they don't die, they're
going to suffer like you've never seen
people suffer before. And no parent
wants to see that or experiencing that.
So let's nip this thing in the bud.
Let's let Donald Trump, let's let
Peakhead Seth, let's let Lindsey Graham
and everybody else know that this is not
okay. This is not good. You don't deploy
two Ohio class nuclear submarines
because of a mean tweet. Get real.
Become an adult. Become the leader that
everybody expected you to be. A mean
tweet sent two of the most powerful re
assets of the United States into an
operational status. This is insanity.
Literal insanity.
Scotty, I know you have to go, so I will
let you go. Thank you very much for all
this. You warned about all this in your
book, Highway to Hell. I just want the
book.
I mean, it's why I write a book, Judge.
You did. You did. I read the book. I was
privileged to to write a blurb for it.
It's all in there. It predicted what's
happening right now. Scotty, I know you
got to go. Thank you very much. Have a
great weekend. We'll see you Monday or
early next week.
Okay, Judge. Thanks a lot.
Thank you. Wow. And uh, of course,
everybody should have a nice weekend.
God only knows what will happen Monday.
All of your regulars will be with us.
Alistister Crook at 8 in the morning,
Ray McGovern at 10:00, Larry Johnson at
11:30, and probably Scott Ritter to
bring us up to date on God only knows
what will happen uh over the weekend.
Thank you for watching this special
edition of Judging Freedom. Judge
Npalitano for judging freedom.
Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom
Streamed live 100 minutes ago
[BREAKING NEWS SPECIAL] - Scott Ritter : Trump deploys Nuclear Subs to Russia over Social Media Rift
Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump
Based on the highly provocative statements of the Former President of Russia, Dmitry Medvedev, who is now the Deputy Chairman of the Security Council of the Russian Federation, I have ordered two Nuclear Submarines to be positioned in the appropriate regions, just in case these foolish and inflammatory statements are more than just that. Words are very important, and can often lead to unintended consequences, I hope this will not be one of those instances. Thank you for your attention to this matter!
Aug 01, 2025, 10:53 AM
Transcript
Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here
for Judging Freedom. Today is Friday,
August 1st, 2025.
Welcome to this special edition of
Judging Freedom with my dear friend and
colleague Scott Ritter. Scott, thank you
for the double duty this week.
There's no better person on the planet
for us to turn literally to explain the dangers, the
significance, and the idiocy
behind what President Trump ordered
today. What did he announce that he did
today, and what did he order and what
is the significance of it?
[Scott Ritter] What did the president do today? Well,
what the president did today is deploy
two of the most lethal strategic nuclear
assets in the American arsenal. Or at
least he claims to have deployed. I think
we will touch upon this later. Ohio
class submarines, launch ballistic
missile capable submarines armed with
trident nuclear solid fuel
missiles. Each one tipped with multiple
thermonuclear warheads. He has said
that he has ordered them deployed into
the appropriate areas in
response to a Russian tweet from
Dmitry Medvedev. This means areas where
the submarines missiles can target
Russia. This is extraordinarily
dangerous. You know, the United States
maintains
a permanent force of Ohio class
submarines on station. Two submarines at
least in each of the oceans, two in the
Atlantic, two in the Pacific. They're
on station where their missiles could
reach any of the
potential nuclear threats to the United
States of America. On occasion, we
deploy additional Ohio class submarines.
For instance, just recently an Ohio
class submarine was deployed into the
Indian Ocean close to Iran
where it's Trident missiles, armed
with W76-2 low yield nuclear weapons,
could be used against Iran if the
president so ordered. But we have four
nuclear armed submarines.
So, when he
said he's ordered two deployed, is
he talking about two additional
submarines to this, or is he talking
about redeploying
two submarines out of their
existing stations into
new deployment areas that make them
even more of a threat to Russia.
The tweet he's responding to is one from
Dmitry Medvedev, in which Medvedev sort of
mocked the president as
Medvedev is the former president of Russia,
who's the number two person on their
national security council,
who in recent years has been more
publicly bellicose than President Putin.
He's like the the bad cop to Putin's
good cop. And what did he do?
He picked a social
media fight with Trump, and Trump took
the bait?
Mean tweets. This is literally about mean
tweets. This is about Donald Trump
threatening to end the world as we know
it because of a mean tweet. But what's
even more outrageous is that Donald
Trump doesn't understand what Medvedev
tweeted. Medvedev was telling Trump to knock
it off with the dangerous threats, saying
that if you do this, America
can end up looking like [urlhttps://www.gettyimages.com/photos/the-walking-dead-zombie]the walking dead[/url]
because of the dead hand. The dead
hand is a reference to the perimeter
system, which is a defensive system put
in place by the Soviet Union back in the
1980s. So that if they were ever struck
preemptively by the United States -- A
first strike, by the way, the tactic to
be used in a first strike is to bring
Ohio class submarines close to Russia's
shores, fire off their Trident missiles
on a flattened trajectory to avoid
detection so you can strike the targets
quicker, which is what Trump just
actually appeared to order the US Navy
to do. So the dead hand now becomes a
factor, because if Trump is dumb enough
to launch an attack against Russia, the
dead hand, the perimeter system will
ensure that all of Russia's strategic
nuclear forces will be fired against the
United States even if Trump takes out
Putin, the National Command Authority,
etc. I know this is a fact. When I was a
weapons inspector in Votkinsk, there
was a missile crisis in March of 1990,
because the Russians were trying to get
three missiles out of the factory
without us turning on the cargo scan
x-ray system. Why? These weren't three
SS25 missiles. They don't care if we see
those. These were three modified SS25s, not
to carry nuclear warheads, but to carry
the radio equipment that's used to
broadcast the codes. They needed to get
these missiles out and deployed, and
ready, so that the perimeter system was
alive and well and living. The dead hand
is only defensive in nature. Trump
should feel no threat from this unless
he's planning on attacking Russia. This
is the insanity. This president doesn't
even know what he's doing. And he's
responding to a mean tweet from a guy
who's been mean tweeting for years now. I
mean, I think most people, you know,
view Dmitry Medvedev's tweets with sort of humor. Yeah, they hurt
sometimes. He's very good at what
he does. But he's not the president
of Russia. He doesn't command Russia's
military, nuclear forces. He doesn't
direct the Russian economy. He advises
Vladimir Putin, but he is not Vladimir
Putin. So to treat Medvedev as if his tweets
actually will translate into
action is, you know, childish behavior,
but in this case, dangerously childish,
because he's literally putting two US
nuclear submarines on a combat patrol
against Russia.
Let's read exactly what Trump
said. Chris has prepared a full screen.
This is from his truth
social, based on the highly provocative
statements of the former president of
Russia, Dmitry Medvedev, who is now the
deputy chairman of the security council
of the Russian Federation.
"I have
ordered two nuclear submarines to be
positioned in the appropriate regions
just in case these foolish and
inflammatory statements are more than
just that. Words are very important, and
can often lead to unintended
consequences. I hope this will not be
one of those instances. Thank you for
your attention to this matter.
Exclamation point."
Would would Hegseth
understand what you just explained about
the power of these and how the Russians
would perceive the threat? Would Pete
Hegsth know that we already have four
underwater and and and are we adding two
more? Do we have two more to add or has
he just repositioned two of the four
that are already uh somewhere in the
seas?
I think we have 14 Ohio class
submarines. I mean, somebody can correct
me if I'm wrong, but I think it's 14.
And they go through a rotation. You
know, first of all, those four
submarines that are out there, it's a
minimum of four, two in each ocean. You
know, they go through rotations. And so,
they'll rotate back to their home port
for refitting. the crews have to go out.
Um, there are some that are cycling
through long-term refueling and
refurbishment. So, you don't have 14
able to be deployed at any one time. I
think you probably have somewhere in the
area of, you know, n six to nine Ohio
class submarines available for
deployment. Um, you'll have the four out
in the fleet out in the field. You'll
have two that are getting ready to come
out and replace two of the four. And
then you have surge capacity. Like I
said, sometimes they send an additional
submarine out to the Indian Ocean. Other
times they may choose to put three
submarines in each of the deployment
areas depending on what the world's
situation is. Um, but this is a standard
operating procedure, something that uh
Pete Hgsth should be cognizant of now
that he's the Secretary of Defense. He
should have been briefed on this by the
commanding general strategic command
whose job it is to run these uh
submarines. Um, the other thing that
we never announced the movement Ohio
class,
I was just going to ask you what is to
be gained by making an announcement like
this. Is he just trying to cause Putin
sleepless nights?
Well, I don't think Putin's going to
cause sleep. But to make this
announcement, first of all, it's
foolish. Uh, because all you're doing is
um giving credence to the legitimacy of
the dead hand. I mean, the dead hand
again only exists, it only becomes
viable if the United States launches a
preemptive nuclear strike against
Russia. And redeploying Ohio class
submarines close to Russia's shores
indicates that that's what you're doing.
So, you know, the Russians are going to
be doing something in return. This is
where it gets stupid because now they
have to do something in return.
Hopefully, they don't announce it and
make a big deal of it, but they do it in
a way that we detect it and we know what
they've done. Um, but the other thing
is, let's say I'm a Ohio class submarine
commander, a captain, and I'm out there
just minding my own business, and all of
a sudden I'm told that the president is
redirecting my submarine to a new
deployment area. Um, maybe even telling
me to target my warheads. I mean, we
don't know. Uh, all the all the warheads
should have been deargeted a long time
ago. Um, because we don't want
inadvertent launch. But what did the
president now say? Not only are we
redeploying them, but you're now going
to have a Russian city targeted to each
one of these uh uh warheads. Who knows
what's going through this man's head,
but the president did this publicly. So
now I'm the Russians. And I go, "Okay,
guys, start looking for an Ohio class
submarine moving." Because when Ohio
class submarine's on station, it's
sitting at the bottom of the damn ocean
and it ain't moving. It's avoiding
detection altogether. You don't want to
be moving this submarine because it can
become detected. Now, if I'm the
Russians, I'm looking for this thing.
The Russians has some very good
submarines. And if they locate it and
trail it now, they'll follow it to its
new deployment area. And if it makes a
threatening move, the Russians will sink
it immediately.
I mean, this is how dangerous this is.
He has put the lives of uh 19-year-old
sailors
uh at risk as well as senior everybody
on these subs.
Oh, yeah. There's not too many 19 year
olds on that submarine because submarine
nuclear submarines require people with
that have to go through some good
training. But you got some 20, 21 year
olds. You got a lot of 30 year olds. You
got a lot of 40-year-old men with
families and kids. Um, you know, th this
this is insanity. These are America's,
you know, most capable warriors um who
we never want to they we don't ever want
these guys to go into combat. They're
there for nuclear deterrence. They're
there to deter an enemy from carrying
out an attack against the United States.
Now the president has put them in a
place where they're not doing
deterrence, but they have now become the
perceived aggressors. This is insanity
in the extreme. Pete Hegath should be
advis the chairman of the joint chief
should be screaming his head off. I mean
every JD Van should be saying, "Mr.
President, no." But what we get, Lindsey
Graham, the perfume princess, out there
having an orgasmic response to the
president's toughness, you know, telling
his friends, the Russian people, Lindsey
Graham isn't friends with anybody in
Russia. Um, I can tell you nobody in
Russia is friends with Lindsey Graham.
But, you know, I mean, this is ridic I
apologize for the sexual reference
there. That was inappropriate. But, you
know, you just take a look at the way
this man's responding to these this this
dangerous absurdity on the part of the
president. It's idiotic.
This is going to raise your blood
pressure even more. Rather than
cautioning the president, my former Fox
News colleague, who now runs the
Pentagon, has reposted
on his own uh ex account President
Trump's nuclear post that I just uh read
to you. There it is on Pete Hegs's
official account. He reposted what
Donald Trump uh said. So, these guys are
enablers, Scott. But I I gotta ask you
something that I think is going to make
this worse. Is it true that within the
past several weeks, the United States
delivered uh nuclear armaments to Great
Britain? And if so, what did we send
there?
Well, it appears to be true. I mean I I
can't confirm it, meaning I haven't seen
the deployment order and I haven't seen
the miss, but I've read the media
reports and uh all indications are that
we have delivered uh B6112
um uh gravity bombs. These are the
basically it's the same weapon system
that we have deployed throughout NATO,
part of the NATO nuclear deterrence. Uh
we've now uh deployed these to uh to
Great Britain uh to to air bases there,
which means that uh we we now have a um
a nuclear deterrence outside of the NATO
hierarchy. That's what's interesting
here because in order for Great Britain
to receive American nuclear weapons
under the NATO umbrella, you have to
invoke the, you know, the the the NATO
nuclear uh advisory council and all
this. There has to be discussion and
things of this nature. This is a
unilateral deployment of the United
States to Great Britain, which implies
that this is about the United States and
Great Britain posturing as opposed to
United States strengthening NATO's
nuclear deterrence. Uh this is at a time
when Great Britain just did the
Northwoods uh declaration with France
where they've combined uh the nuclear
doctrines of France and Great Britain as
an independent outside of NATO uh
nuclear capability. This is when Great
Britain has extended its nuclear
umbrella into Poland. Um and now the
United States is attaching um its
nuclear force to to the British. I mean
we are literally people look at all this
stuff and they they're like, you know,
oh that's not a big deal. Let's not blow
this out of proportion. If you go back
and read Barbara Truckman's fantastic
book, um, The Guns of August, it's about
the leadup to August 1914, the beginning
of World War I. Especially in the month
of July, all the things that were
happening, the people went, "Yeah, but
it's just mobilization." Yeah, we're
just doing this. No, there will never be
a war. Nobody wants a war. And then
boom, World War I. Right now, we are
moves are being made right now that if
they're not stopped and reversed are
going to lead to a general nuclear
exchange between the United States and
Russia. This is the direction we're
heading. And I want to remind your
audience that the CIA said last year
there's a greater than 50% chance that
there will be a nuclear war between the
United States and Russia during the last
months of the Biden administration. What
the Biden administration was doing, as
provocative as it was, pales in
comparison to what this administration's
doing. We're above 50% right now, Judge.
We're heading into extraordinarily
dangerous territory.
What do you think uh is going on in the
Kremlin as we speak as a result uh of
all of this?
Dismay. Dismay. I mean, first of all,
the Kremlin right now, I believe, is,
you know, trying to
bring an end to the Ukraine conflict uh
without creating an even greater
conflict. And so, this is always a
delicate diplomatic balancing game. Um,
and then you have this president making
threats. I mean, we we still have the
August 8th deadline coming up. The 10
days expires. What's going to happen on
August 8th? Steve Whit flying to uh to
to to Moscow to meet with his Russian
counterparts. Are threats going to be
issued? And now in that environment
where we're supposed to be actually
trying to calm each other down, the
president deploys two nuclear submarines
uh you know, in response to a mean treat
from uh Demetri.
the the the good news here, and I know
I'm going to get in trouble here from
people, but um thank God there's one
mature, responsible adult in the room,
and that's Vladimir Putin. You know, is
he perfect? No. Does he walk on water?
No. But I'll tell you what, he doesn't
do any of the garbage that Trump's
doing. And I believe Putin will do that
which is necessary to ensure Russia's
security interests without being
provocative. if you saw his uh his his
his discussion today about Ukraine um
very levelheaded um you know saying the
doors open for peace don't look don't
blame us it's Ukraine saying they don't
want peace you know it's United States
that's doing the we're ready for it but
there are realistic conditions that have
to be met um you know trying to just
calm things down lower lower the
temperature and um I think he's going to
continue this way this this man is not
suicidal he didn't spend a quarter of
century getting Russia out of the ashes
to where Russia is today. This nation
where Russians are actually proud of who
they are and what they are and what
they've become. He didn't do all this
just to throw it away in a in a blinding
flash of nuclear insanity. Um and I and
think that was what was behind Dmitri
Mviet's, you know, mean tweet. What he
was telling the president of United
States is calm down, take a chill pill
because the things you're talking about,
the way you're talking can only end with
a nuclear apocalypse. And if you think
for a moment that you can preemptively
strike our leadership because we're not
playing the game in Ukraine the way you
want to play, we have the dead hand. And
the dead hand will take you out. That's
not provocative. That's just a statement
of fact. And it, you know, hey Tulsi, if
you're watching, talk to the guy. Brief
him on the perimeter system. Brief him
on the dead hand. And if you need help,
call me. I'll come in and back you up.
But this guy needs to have some hard
facts put on the table in front of him.
I don't think I don't think I don't
think he listens to anybody.
Telsey Gabbard is the only one that will
tell him what he doesn't want to hear,
but the others are all yesmen around
him. However,
yeah. Yeah. Pete Hex retweeted. That's
that's the biggest indication of the
syphy that you can come up with.
Correct. Correct. President Putin did
release a statement very brief
to the point and manifesting
what you said the adult in the room. All
disappointments arise from excessive
expectations.
In order to have a peaceful resolution,
it is necessary to have substantive
conversations
and not in public. He gets it. He gets
it that Donald Trump is just bravado on
steroids.
Yeah. And well, the other thing is
public public
posturing like this boxes you into a
corner. I mean, what what is the
masculine statement that he's trying to
make by deploying these nuclear
submarines? Because this is this is
alpha dog territory here. So, now that
you've done it, do you back away? Do you
back off? Do you pretend you didn't do
it? Do you admit you were wrong? Not no.
Once you've gone alpha dog mode, you're
sitting there with your chest pumped
out, you know, hey, I got all take, you
know, so and then what is there going to
be an additional escalation on this
part?
President Putin is 100% correct. The
place for these discussions is behind
the scenes. Um, so you don't box
yourself into a corner, so there's room
to maneuver. You know, it's it's
diplomacy 101. And you know, even a
simple marine like me knows this that
sometimes it's best not to go public
with things and you you handle it behind
closed doors and uh and and then when
you finally reach agreement, as
difficult as that process might be, you
come out and put on a common smiley
face, shake hands, and everything's
good. The world doesn't need to know
what your disagreements are. They only
need to know that you actually, you
know, worked through them and came to,
you know, to an eventual agreement that
makes the world a safer place to be. I
I'll leave you not leave you, but I I'll
say this. You know, on July 29th, uh,
President Trump in responding to a
question from a task correspondent, uh,
talking about the New START treaty,
which is the last, uh, strategic nuclear
arms agreement in play between the
United States and Russia, said, "That's
an agreement that cannot be allowed to
expire. It expires on 4 February 2026."
That's the most sane thing this man has
said. So hopefully there's a modicum of
sanity in that brain of his so that he
understands the danger of nuclear
weapons. He appears to understand that
the necessity of avoiding an arms race.
He appears to understand that. And
hopefully we can get through these
turbulent times and and and get on to
doing what needs to be done like
extending the New START treaty.
The Russian people are referring to
Trump by a certain word. What is that
word?
Oh dear. Um, it's a word I'm not
supposed to use. It's not a foul word,
but it's it's not a nice word. Durac
means fool. It means idiot. It's not
meant in a kind way. And if you call
someone a durac, it is it is a debasing
term. It means you're literally an
idiot. You're stupid. You're you're
dumber than than belief. Um, I use the
word today uh in describing President
Trump. And I used the Russian variant
because I just happened to believe that
the 150 plus million Russians who looked
at this, that's probably the first word
that came to their mind. Durac, what an
idiot. What a fool. Because there's no
there's no justification for his
actions. There's no legitimate trigger
for this. It's as foolish and idiotic as
it gets.
What is American intel doing now in
response to what Trump uh announced?
Well, I mean what it should be doing
right now is monitoring uh Russian
strategic nuclear forces, looking for
any alteration in um in alert status. Um
you know, counting Russian submarines.
You know, the Russians just deployed a
brand new submarine, the biggest
submarine in the world. It carries 96
nuclear warheads on it.
Uh, I can't remember how many um, you
know, RS56 um, Bulo missiles, but the
most mo more modern than the Trident
missile. Uh, 96 of them. It's out there
right now on station. Um, American
intelligence trying to find out where
that submarine is. Uh, trying to look at
the, um, operational status of the uh,
mobile missiles, the SS27s that are out
there. Um, are they are they in
garrison? Had they been put out into the
uh, Siberian forests? uh you know uh
what's the alert status of the other
missiles in their silos uh because what
Trump did is begin
unfortunately he began the process of
the mobilization of nuclear forces that
if left unchecked will lead to an
inevitable nuclear I just again I want
to come to the point last fall we were
over 50% chance of a nuclear war we were
very lucky to avoid it um right now that
that that percentage is higher we are
it's It's an extraordinarily dangerous
situation that even though I sort of
chuckle when I talk about the word
durac, it's only because this this
situation's so damn dangerous that you
have to laugh. It's like, you know,
we're going to die. You know what? What
can you do? Cry or laugh? And and we're
going to die unless something changes.
This we're this is it that there won't
be historians able to write this history
because they'll all be dead. But if they
were, this will be one of those moments
that a person like Barbara Tukman would
be talking about in the future, you
know, Guns of August um book that that
would have been written if anybody
lived. But we're talking about
thermonuclear war here, global
thermonuclear war. There won't be
survivors.
Wow. How destructive can these
submarines be if they were to uh
attack under the radar or under the
defensive systems at Moscow?
We talking about Hiroshima and Nagasaki
type destruction or greater?
Oh, good lord. Greater. Um Hiroshima and
Nagasaki were 12 kilotons under 20
kilotons of destructive power. Very I
mean destructive. No doubt about it. uh
our our cities would be hit with, you
know, 150 kilotons, uh 300 kilotons, one
megat ton, that's a thousand. Um we're
we're literally talking I did a I did a
um a uh public briefing last uh December
at the National Press Center where I
invited Theodore Postal to come in and
give a presentation about uh what a
single Russian nuclear warhead over
Washington. This is the brilliant and
fearless MIT physicist.
Yeah. A good man. And you you look at
this briefing and it just it it
terrifies you. And that's just one.
Understand that um when you do nuclear
targeting, you're putting at least two
warheads on each target just to ensure
if you're hitting a national capital
center, I I I can say this, during the
Cold War, Moscow was targeted uh by
about 60 warheads. That just overkill to
make sure we got everything. Um and and
so what we're we're the Russians will be
doing the same thing. There will be
nothing left alive in Washington DC.
Read Annie Jacobson's book nuclear war.
She she run through a very realistic
scenario and um it's it's over. And you
don't want to survive this. If there's a
nuclear war, you want to die. You want
to be one of the ones who turns into
dust immediately because to to live
isn't to live. To live is to die. uh
Rear Admiral Buchanan who is the
director of plans for strategic command
gave a lecture last November in
Washington DC and after he acknowledged
that the Biden administration is ready
to have a nuclear exchange with Russia.
We're ready to have a nuclear war with
Russia and we're going to win. This is
what he said. He then said we probably
should be more honest with the American
public about what this means and what
victory means because he said even when
we win life will never be the same for
any American. There won't be civil
liberties. We'll be living under
permanent martial law. Uh you're not
going to have electricity, want running
water, medicine. None of the nicities of
civilization that you currently enjoy
will exist. And that's winning a nuclear
war. Ladies and gentlemen, you don't
want to win a nuclear war. You just want
to die because to win means you're going
to be suffering. And if you're a parent
with kids, who the hell wants that for
their children? This is why people have
to become angry about this and mobilized
about this. You know, people should be
calling up their their representatives
in Congress and saying, "What the hell
are you doing?" People should be
demanding that Lindsey Graham, the
perfume princess, get booted out of the
Senate. This is the man who is almost
singularly responsible for this very
crisis because of his asinine
performances, because of his
Russophobia. Um, this is why what why I
do what I do to combat Russophobia. So
that people when they hear the lunacy
out of people like Lindsey Graham, out
of Donald Trump and others, they go,
"No, that's not real. That's not the
Russia. That's We're not buying into
this crap. But it's an uphill battle
right now. But people need to
understand, we're talking about you're
going to die. Your kids are going to
die. And if they don't die, they're
going to suffer like you've never seen
people suffer before. And no parent
wants to see that or experiencing that.
So let's nip this thing in the bud.
Let's let Donald Trump, let's let
Peakhead Seth, let's let Lindsey Graham
and everybody else know that this is not
okay. This is not good. You don't deploy
two Ohio class nuclear submarines
because of a mean tweet. Get real.
Become an adult. Become the leader that
everybody expected you to be. A mean
tweet sent two of the most powerful re
assets of the United States into an
operational status. This is insanity.
Literal insanity.
Scotty, I know you have to go, so I will
let you go. Thank you very much for all
this. You warned about all this in your
book, Highway to Hell. I just want the
book.
I mean, it's why I write a book, Judge.
You did. You did. I read the book. I was
privileged to to write a blurb for it.
It's all in there. It predicted what's
happening right now. Scotty, I know you
got to go. Thank you very much. Have a
great weekend. We'll see you Monday or
early next week.
Okay, Judge. Thanks a lot.
Thank you. Wow. And uh, of course,
everybody should have a nice weekend.
God only knows what will happen Monday.
All of your regulars will be with us.
Alistister Crook at 8 in the morning,
Ray McGovern at 10:00, Larry Johnson at
11:30, and probably Scott Ritter to
bring us up to date on God only knows
what will happen uh over the weekend.
Thank you for watching this special
edition of Judging Freedom. Judge
Npalitano for judging freedom.
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Re: Anti-Anti-Nazi Barbarian Hordes are Knocking Down the Ga
by admin » Sat Aug 02, 2025 12:35 am
INTEL Roundtable w/ Johnson & McGovern : Weekly Wrap 1-August
Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom
Streamed live 7 hours ago
INTEL Roundtable w/ Johnson & McGovern : Weekly Wrap 1-August
Transcript
Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here
for Judging Freedom. Today is Friday,
August 1st, 2025. It's the end of the
day, the end of the week, our favorite
time. It's the intelligence community
roundt with my dear friends and
colleagues Larry Johnson and Ray
McGovern. Larry, Ray, welcome here.
Thank you for your time. Thank you for
the double duty. Uh, as always, Larry,
let me start with you first. In the past
hour and a half, President Trump
announced the deployment of two nuclear
submarines, quote, to an appropriate
location, close quote, in response for
some what I think was ridiculous and
childish social media spat that he had
with former Russian President Dmitri
Medvidev. What is your take on the
approp the propriety or impropriy of
such an announcement by the president?
uh he's pushing us closer to nuclear
war. It'd be one thing if it was just
this in isolation. You could say, yeah,
you know, Trump just uh he didn't get
his nap today and you know, he's a
little groggy from uh you know, because
of that. But with within the last week
and a half or two weeks, the United
States redeployed to the England nuclear
bombs that had been withdrawn previously
as a as a sign to the then Russians that
okay, yeah, we're serious about
deescalating. So now that we've deployed
those and on the back heels of that you
had this general Donahghue who is the
commander of US Yukon the European
command uh talk about invading capturing
Kenigrad and very very quickly. So the
the and in fact and you yourself you
were on Dmitri Sin's show I think
yesterday or the day before
and uh
the generals were expressing genuine
concern like what what the hell is this?
Yes.
What is Trump trying to what are you are
they serious? If you know, if Ry or I
were back at our old jobs and we were
and the Russians were doing stuff like
this, we'd have to say, you know, Mr.
President, you've got to be prepared
that uh the Russians may be preparing to
attack. I'm going to play uh the clip uh
of General Donahghue and then Ray, I'm
going to ask you to tell us what is
Kinenrad
and what is this guy talking about? This
is the commander of more troops than any
other fourstar uh in the military.
Colonel McGregor has some choice words
for this guy and his background. We
don't need to get into that now, but
he's addressing a group of European and
American military leaders and he
threatens to put American boots on the
ground. My question to you after you see
this is A, what is Kinenrad and where is
it? And B, Rey, could he possibly have
made a statement of this magnitude
without the knowledge and consent of
Secretary Heget than President Trump?
Chris, cut number 10.
If you look at Clenrad at its, you know,
you can argue back and forth, but it's
about 47 miles wide,
surrounded by NATO on all sides. There's
absolutely no reason why that A2 AD
bubble to deter Russia. We cannot take
that down from the ground in a time
frame that is unheard of and faster than
we've ever been able to do. We've
already planned that. We've already
developed it.
Ground ray already planned already
developed. So, first of all, what is
this place and where is it?
Uh, it's up there uh near near the
Baltic states in Poland. It's a what
they call an exclave. In other words,
there's no ground connection with Russia
proper. An exclave they call it. And so
it's it's really hard to defend if
anyone tried to take that seriously.
What Dan who is saying
is it is it Russia?
Yeah, it's part of Russia proper. It's a
leftover from World War II. Um, and you
know, there are there are agreements
that allow Russia to uh supply it, and
it's never been a problem. And so,
here's an artificial stoking up of a
place where Russia is particularly
vulnerable. And now we have the
president so saying he's going to send
two nuclear power nuclear equipped or
nuclear capable aircraft carriers into
the area. You know, as Larry said, if I
were advising President Putin, I would
say, look, you have to go to defcon,
whatever it is, you have to increase the
the uh the level of your of your alert
system because God knows what this guy's
going to do. And that's the the nub of
it. Uh Trump is the fly in the ointment.
He's totally unpredictable. He's under
great pressure from the Epstein stuff
and and he's being fought back against
by the deep state and the media and them
Democrats of course for this re
revelations of how they tried to
sabotage his election and then his
administration the first time around. So
is there's a lot of reason why he should
be upset. But derange. No, derange is
something that the Russians don't really
like. I imagine they're on tent hooks. I
imagine Putin is calling Trump and
saying, "Look, this is serious stuff.
Let's talk." Larry, the week began with
President Trump at his golf club or one
of them uh in Scotland seated next to
European or to UK Prime Minister uh Sir
Kir Stormer threatening President Putin
if the war isn't over used to be 50 days
now I'm only giving you 10 to 12 by
midweek he had reduced it to five so
he's basically saying if the war is not
over or a ceasefire isn't entered by
Tomorrow, Saturday, August 2nd, he,
Donald Trump, will force Putin's hand by
imposing secondary sanctions on anybody
that buys Russian oil. Can Donald Trump
successfully intimidate Vladimir Putin?
Will this threat change the Russian
military strategy in UK in Ukraine? One
iota, Larry?
No. I, you know, I think the the
Russians are starting to view uh Trump
like an annoying horsefly at a picnic,
something you just have to sort of swat
away and try to ignore. U the threat of
sanctions against Russia have, you know,
there's zero zero effect.
You and I have seen that personally.
Yeah. It's just Trump has no leverage
there. Um, China and India. Uh, while
there are some reports that the the
Indian refineries have stopped
processing Russian fuel, I guarantee you
what's going to go on this this stuff's
going to go into what what we would call
a black market. It's not going to be
easily recorded or easily identified. So
all that Donald Trump is doing is seeing
how much he can alienate
even countries in the world which we
previously thought we were our friends
and our allies. He is it's it's the most
erratic,
reckless behavior I've seen in any
president, including Joe Biden. And I I
really think that that that Trump is
suffering from some serious mental
decline that is, you know, he's able to
mask it
up to a point. But uh yeah, I liken it
to, you know, I'm sure we've all had an
elderly relative who is when they got
into like their last years, they would
start boarding out, you know, expletives
and say things in a very crude and rude
way that they never would have when they
were in sort of their normal state of
mind. And I think that's what we're
seeing with Donald Trump. Uh before I
jump to Rey uh on a similar topic,
Senator Graham of all people threatening
President Putin, you got to see this.
Larry, what is your take on General
Donahghue? Could in accordance with
military protocol, could he have made a
statement of that magnitude without the
knowledge and consent of the Secretary
of Defense or even the president?
No. No. He he spent too much time at
altitude without enough oxygen. That's
that's the only other explanation I
could give.
Uh here's
the other thing is that if and the
president wanted to to explain that
Danghue didn't really mean what he
wanted, they could have. So the Russians
have to accept that as the the plan, so
to speak, crazy as it is. I mean, um,
Trump is non-compassment
with with craziness attached, which is
doubly
doubly dangerous than Joe Biden for
God's sake. And I never thought I'd hear
myself say that.
Uh, Chris, gentlemen, watch this. Did
you know that Donald Trump is going to
whoop Vladimir Putin's ass? Not my
words, a quote from the senior senator
from South Carolina. Chris cut number
one.
Putin, your turn is coming. You know,
Donald Trump is the Scottish shuffler of
American politics and foreign diplomacy,
and he's about to put a whooping on your
ass. What's going to happen here is that
Trump is going to impose tariffs on
people that buy Russian oil. China,
India, and Brazil. Those three countries
uh buy about 80% of cheap Russian oil.
That's what keeps Putin's war machine
going. So, President Trump's going to
put a 100% tariff on all those
countries, punishing them uh for helping
Putin. Putin can live through sanctions.
He could give a damn about Russian
soldiers. But China, India, and Brazil,
um they're about to face a choice
between the American economy or helping
Putin. And I think they're going to come
pick pick the American economy.
This may be the crudest, but I don't
know which is the most reckless. Trump's
threat of Putin, General Larry, General
Donahghue's threat to land troops or
this craziness from Senator Graham.
Yeah. Well, this is reminiscent of uh
the character that George C. Scott
played in the movie Dr. Strange Love,
right?
I mean, it's abs it's absolutely I think
George C. Scott won an Oscar for that.
So, so maybe Lindsay should be should be
up for it. Look, I I read an article
earlier this week and it had two
fascinating charts. It showed that in
the year 2000, the the country that was
the majority trading partner with most
of the world was the United States.
Today in as of 2024 the country which is
the majority trading partner of the 75%
of the world is China completely role
reversal. Donald Trump is acting like
we're back in 2000 when the United
States did have some dramatic leverage
with other countries. But what's taking
place now, like with these tariffs he
put on China, we used to be a major
exporter of pork and soybeans to China
in just a spate of three months cut off
and China's buying from Russia and
Brazil because you know what? We don't
have a monopoly on pigs. We may have a
monopoly on pigheaded politicians, but
but not a monopoly on pigs.
You're on a roll, Larry. God bless you,
Ray. uh a group of Republican senators
have offered uh has offered legislation
uh to authorize the Pentagon, subject to
the president's discretion, to
distribute another 54 billion with a B
dollar in military equipment to Ukraine.
I guess the Joe Biden days are back.
Well, 54 billion. Wow. That's about a
quarter of what we've already given
them. That's a lot.
Correct.
You know, last time this happened, it
was two years ago, and I watched that
Senate uh that Senate session where they
were talking about giving, I think was
uh over 150 billion or 50 billion more
to Ukraine. And every one of those
senators said, "Now look, remember that
money is staying here. I mean in our
districts it's going to be spent on our
weaponry. So please please understand
this is not given money to Iran or to to
Ukraine. Now you know that was so
cynical. There was only one senator
Chris von Holland from Maryland that
didn't say specifically that. So the
game is up. You the game is very very
transparent. Uh the military-industrial
complex is profitering on all this
stuff. Even the Europeans are now
supposed to buy our weapons at our
prices and give them to Ukraine. Give me
a break. I don't know if Congress will
will approve another 54 billion. Uh do
you Larry?
No. No. I I I don't see them uh there
only a few that are getting paid off by
Ukraine.
Do how much longer can Ukraine last,
Larry? whether this 54 billion passes
and Trump signs it or not.
Well, actually, I think that's one of
the reasons you've seen the change in
Trump's tone on this that u previously
he was being assured, oh yeah, you know,
this isn't going to end anytime soon.
But now in light of uh the significant
military advances that uh you Russia is
making in Daetsk this particular they
just captured finally captured the city
of Chazafiar and then there's this other
city called Pakross the the relevance of
those is uh let let's they're not the
same size but let's think of them as
Washington and New York City in terms of
a defensive line that's a critical place
and when you capture those all of a
sudden The Ukrainians are in a
desperation mode. Top that off with the
fact that almost every single night over
the last two weeks, Russia is hitting uh
Ukraine with more than 500 drones and
dozens of Iscander or Kinsal uh
missiles, hypersonic missiles. Ukraine
doesn't have an answer for it. It it
used to be if you go back a year, two
years ago, Russia might do this like
once every two or three weeks. Now
they're doing it every night. They've
got they've now got the productive cap
the production capability. So Ukraine's
ability to survive militarily. I think I
think they genuinely could be it could
be over before the end of the year.
Ray,
Larry, I'm I'm having a flashback here.
I think it was less less than three
years ago that uh the director of
national intelligence
said to the world uh that Russia was
running out of ammunition and weaponry
and and didn't have any indigenous
capability to replace their great losses
on the battlefield. Do you mean do you
mean to tell me that that Joe Biden was
being misinformed? And do you mean to
tell me that Trump is true when he talks
about hundreds of thousands, millions of
Russian casualties? I mean, where is
where is Trump getting his information
from?
Well, actually, we we now know thanks to
Sai Hirs. So, Scott Sai Sai wrote an
article where he quoted this
intelligence official telling him that
the Russians had two million casualties,
right?
And so, I reached out to Sai. I said,
"Sai, you're being fed what what my
brother Ray McGovern calls mail by an
excrement." And and Sai was, "Oh, no,
no, no, no. He's these are reliable
sides." I said, "I'm not saying he's not
a reliable source. I'm just telling you
he's lying to you." So, I did produce an
article which spelled out exactly how
many soldiers the Russians recruited and
signed up under contract in in 2022, the
same for 2023, same for 2024, same for
the first six months of 2025, and can
show you without a doubt that the
Russians have deployed to the field a
grand total of 2,00 2,500,000
soldiers roughly in this last three and
a half years. If they had 2 million
casualties, they would have they
wouldn't have the 700,000 soldiers they
have in the field now,
right?
It just doesn't. So, they're lying flat
out lying.
Even the CIA stenographers,
aka journalists and editors at the
Washington Post said a million Russian
casualties. It can't be anywhere near
that. I I can't imagine that the
Russians have lost a 100,000
uh killed, Larry. No, they've they've
probably had about 120,000 killed. Okay,
that's that's that's from a group called
Media Zona. What they've done is they've
tracked the obituaries that show up in
the Russian press. And if we take, you
know, the conventional combat, it
usually says there's a a 1:4 ratio, one
killed, three to four wounded. So, if
you take that, that means Russia could
have suffered a total of 600,000
casualties. I think that's possible. But
the difference is they're signing
they're signing up uh enough people
every month that their military is
growing in size in contrast to Ukraine
which is shrinking. And then Russia's
got every advantage with armor, armored
vehicles, artillery shells, fixedwing
aircraft, rotary wing aircraft, fab
bombs, missiles, drones. There's not a
single area in which Ukraine has a
military advantage. I want you to watch
um you may have seen this elsewhere,
Lieutenant Colonel Tony Aguilar
uh on Tucker Carlson earlier this week.
Chris cut number 11.
You've spent your life in combat zones.
That's why I think your uh testimony is
so compelling. Um because you have a
frame of reference. You've seen a lot of
destruction and a lot of killing in your
life for 25 years. How would you compare
what you saw in Gaza to what you've seen
in say Afghanistan or Iraq?
Nothing compares.
Nothing I have seen in Iraq, in
Afghanistan, in Baghdad, in Mosul,
Solder City, all throughout Afghanistan,
Syria, the southern Philippines, some
places where there's dense populations.
I have never witnessed anything as
brutal, destructive, violent,
and I would say that that that steps far
over our international laws of of of
how we persecute wars and how we engage
in warfare. Um, we've we've long
departed from that standard and America
America is a part of it.
Govern is the world starting to coalesce
around the idea of what we have been
saying for the past three years. Yeah,
there is genocide there and yes, the
Israelis are using starvation as a
weapon and yes, that is absolutely
unacceptable.
Yes, but it bothers me knowing
that no one figures out what the hell to
do about it. That's that's that's
problem. The old Noah principle. No more
awards for predicting rain. Awards only
for building arcs. None of us have
figured out a way to build arcs so we
can stop this damn thing. I never
thought my country would be aiding,
abetting, arming, and supporting
genocide and forced salv starvation. My
god, can't we get our our can't we get
together and figure out some way to stop
it? Uh, I'm at a loss for words.
Larry, watch this. This is somebody that
the three of us probably would not quote
very much. Senator Dick Durban. This is
a rather emotional and profound
statement he made uh on the floor of the
Senate two days ago. Chris number 12.
Several weeks ago, several senators
joined me in meeting with the ambassador
from Israel, and we asked him why Israel
was not providing humanitarian aid in
Gaza. He said, "That's not true. We were
providing it, but Hamas was stealing it
from us and using it to buy weapons and
to make them stronger."
And then he went on to say when we asked
him about the children starving the
images we had all seen on television he
said that is not true that is a United
Nations narrative
and then we asked him basically if there
is such a difference of opinion between
what is happening in Gaza why don't you
allow international journalists to come
into this area and report to the world
what they actually see and he said it
was too dangerous for journalists to
even witness it.
Mr. President, I want to tell you that
was an incredible statement and I
believe totally wrong. At the outset,
Cindy McCain and others have told us
there is no diversion by Hamas of the
humanitarian aid. It just isn't coming
into Gaza and went on to say that these
children, of course, we see them on
television, you can't avoid it. That's
the reality of the situation. And
furthermore, when it came down to it,
that we had to stand up and acknowledge
the obvious that Israel is part of this.
Children of Gaza are starving and dying.
The question is, what will the United
States do about it? I thank the senator
from Vermont for offering these
resolutions this evening. It's painful
for many of us who've devoted our
congressional careers to supporting
Israel and standing by them through
difficult times. It is impossible to
really explain or defend what is going
on today. Gaza is starving and dying
because of the policies of BB Netanyahu.
at Larry that he had referred to this
ambassador who obviously was lying the
way Bernie Sanders referred to Netanyahu
as quote a disgusting liar. Of course,
the two of them are very late to this
game as Ry just pointed out. Larry, your
thoughts on all this?
Well, of course, I do I sure raise both
anguish, anger, and frustration over
this whole thing. I think the good news
though, we're starting to see this week
in particular and last starting last
week, the worm is starting to turn. Apac
is losing some of its clout and
influence and we we've seen it in a
variety of ways. One, more of the
European states are now standing up
saying, "Okay, we're going to recognize
Palestine come September when the UN
General Assembly has its annual
meeting." Uh so, you know, with England,
uh with France, with Canada now saying
it and and what does Trump do? Trump
starts threatening those countries with
tariffs in order to protect Israel. But
also important is the these shows, shows
like yours, but but Tucker Carlson has
really been hitting it out of the park
this week because he had John Mirshimer
on Wednesday for an hour and John just
raped Israel up one side and down the
other. They I mean he told the story of
the Zionist um conquest, if you will,
and how how wrong it is. Then he then
Tucker followed that up with Colonel
Aguilar. And Colonel Aguilard, tell you
what, I I used to not have too high an
opinion of West Point. But man, after
listening to him and his his recitation
of the Geneva Convention and his
description of what commanders need to
be doing with respect to the troops to
keep him from murdering children and
then his own encounter with this small
boy who was subsequently murdered by the
Israelis that those messages are having
power and then Tucker's doing it again
today with Candace Owens. They're
hitting this subject and Candace is
hitting it as well. The reason I point
those two out, they have a strong
resonance in Trump's MAGA base. So Trump
is lose starting to lose that base. I
know he's I know he's lost several that
I know.
Well, he's he's lost a lot of the base
over the Epstein saga, but he's losing
the base of those who are repulsed by
the slaughter of innocents.
Yes. Yes.
Yeah. I would just add, you know, that
uh Trump is in a very dangerous state of
mind here. He's got Epstein.
Uh I believe he's being blackmailed by
Netanyahu on Epstein.
I believe like Max Blumenthal that
Epstein was working with Mossad and they
have stuff on Trump. And to think to
think that Trump would be doing genocide
largely because he wants to escape blame
for this kind of thing is just atrocity
squared in my view. So let me just add
that I think that rather than Ukraine,
it's the Middle East that really is the
the boiling pot here. Uh uh Netanyahu is
going to probably resort to something
that he'll want US support for. It will
be an attack on Iran. And you know,
Iran's not going to take it easily.
Iran's going to destroy large parts of
Israel and then Netanyahu is going to be
faced with the choice of using his
nuclear weapons or forgetting about it.
And you know, a fellow who can who can
approve genocide and all this other
stuff, force starvation, you can't
convince me that he will not use nuclear
weapons in extremists. That's the real
live wire. And Trump, my god, I don't
know what he do. Last time he let
himself be mousetrapped. Would he do
that again? Well, we'll have to see. But
Iran, Middle East, that's the key in my
view. We'll we'll end with that. As
terrifying as uh as it is, Brother uh
Ritter is coming up in a couple of
minutes. Gentlemen, thank you very much.
We'll look forward to seeing you uh at
your usual times on Monday morning. Have
a great weekend. Thank you for joining
us.
Thanks so much. Thank you.
And coming up at 4:30 Eastern on the
president's recklessness with nuclear
submarines, Scott Ritter, Judge Npalit
Tenno for judging freedom.
[Music]
[Music]
Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom
Streamed live 7 hours ago
INTEL Roundtable w/ Johnson & McGovern : Weekly Wrap 1-August
Transcript
Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here
for Judging Freedom. Today is Friday,
August 1st, 2025. It's the end of the
day, the end of the week, our favorite
time. It's the intelligence community
roundt with my dear friends and
colleagues Larry Johnson and Ray
McGovern. Larry, Ray, welcome here.
Thank you for your time. Thank you for
the double duty. Uh, as always, Larry,
let me start with you first. In the past
hour and a half, President Trump
announced the deployment of two nuclear
submarines, quote, to an appropriate
location, close quote, in response for
some what I think was ridiculous and
childish social media spat that he had
with former Russian President Dmitri
Medvidev. What is your take on the
approp the propriety or impropriy of
such an announcement by the president?
uh he's pushing us closer to nuclear
war. It'd be one thing if it was just
this in isolation. You could say, yeah,
you know, Trump just uh he didn't get
his nap today and you know, he's a
little groggy from uh you know, because
of that. But with within the last week
and a half or two weeks, the United
States redeployed to the England nuclear
bombs that had been withdrawn previously
as a as a sign to the then Russians that
okay, yeah, we're serious about
deescalating. So now that we've deployed
those and on the back heels of that you
had this general Donahghue who is the
commander of US Yukon the European
command uh talk about invading capturing
Kenigrad and very very quickly. So the
the and in fact and you yourself you
were on Dmitri Sin's show I think
yesterday or the day before
and uh
the generals were expressing genuine
concern like what what the hell is this?
Yes.
What is Trump trying to what are you are
they serious? If you know, if Ry or I
were back at our old jobs and we were
and the Russians were doing stuff like
this, we'd have to say, you know, Mr.
President, you've got to be prepared
that uh the Russians may be preparing to
attack. I'm going to play uh the clip uh
of General Donahghue and then Ray, I'm
going to ask you to tell us what is
Kinenrad
and what is this guy talking about? This
is the commander of more troops than any
other fourstar uh in the military.
Colonel McGregor has some choice words
for this guy and his background. We
don't need to get into that now, but
he's addressing a group of European and
American military leaders and he
threatens to put American boots on the
ground. My question to you after you see
this is A, what is Kinenrad and where is
it? And B, Rey, could he possibly have
made a statement of this magnitude
without the knowledge and consent of
Secretary Heget than President Trump?
Chris, cut number 10.
If you look at Clenrad at its, you know,
you can argue back and forth, but it's
about 47 miles wide,
surrounded by NATO on all sides. There's
absolutely no reason why that A2 AD
bubble to deter Russia. We cannot take
that down from the ground in a time
frame that is unheard of and faster than
we've ever been able to do. We've
already planned that. We've already
developed it.
Ground ray already planned already
developed. So, first of all, what is
this place and where is it?
Uh, it's up there uh near near the
Baltic states in Poland. It's a what
they call an exclave. In other words,
there's no ground connection with Russia
proper. An exclave they call it. And so
it's it's really hard to defend if
anyone tried to take that seriously.
What Dan who is saying
is it is it Russia?
Yeah, it's part of Russia proper. It's a
leftover from World War II. Um, and you
know, there are there are agreements
that allow Russia to uh supply it, and
it's never been a problem. And so,
here's an artificial stoking up of a
place where Russia is particularly
vulnerable. And now we have the
president so saying he's going to send
two nuclear power nuclear equipped or
nuclear capable aircraft carriers into
the area. You know, as Larry said, if I
were advising President Putin, I would
say, look, you have to go to defcon,
whatever it is, you have to increase the
the uh the level of your of your alert
system because God knows what this guy's
going to do. And that's the the nub of
it. Uh Trump is the fly in the ointment.
He's totally unpredictable. He's under
great pressure from the Epstein stuff
and and he's being fought back against
by the deep state and the media and them
Democrats of course for this re
revelations of how they tried to
sabotage his election and then his
administration the first time around. So
is there's a lot of reason why he should
be upset. But derange. No, derange is
something that the Russians don't really
like. I imagine they're on tent hooks. I
imagine Putin is calling Trump and
saying, "Look, this is serious stuff.
Let's talk." Larry, the week began with
President Trump at his golf club or one
of them uh in Scotland seated next to
European or to UK Prime Minister uh Sir
Kir Stormer threatening President Putin
if the war isn't over used to be 50 days
now I'm only giving you 10 to 12 by
midweek he had reduced it to five so
he's basically saying if the war is not
over or a ceasefire isn't entered by
Tomorrow, Saturday, August 2nd, he,
Donald Trump, will force Putin's hand by
imposing secondary sanctions on anybody
that buys Russian oil. Can Donald Trump
successfully intimidate Vladimir Putin?
Will this threat change the Russian
military strategy in UK in Ukraine? One
iota, Larry?
No. I, you know, I think the the
Russians are starting to view uh Trump
like an annoying horsefly at a picnic,
something you just have to sort of swat
away and try to ignore. U the threat of
sanctions against Russia have, you know,
there's zero zero effect.
You and I have seen that personally.
Yeah. It's just Trump has no leverage
there. Um, China and India. Uh, while
there are some reports that the the
Indian refineries have stopped
processing Russian fuel, I guarantee you
what's going to go on this this stuff's
going to go into what what we would call
a black market. It's not going to be
easily recorded or easily identified. So
all that Donald Trump is doing is seeing
how much he can alienate
even countries in the world which we
previously thought we were our friends
and our allies. He is it's it's the most
erratic,
reckless behavior I've seen in any
president, including Joe Biden. And I I
really think that that that Trump is
suffering from some serious mental
decline that is, you know, he's able to
mask it
up to a point. But uh yeah, I liken it
to, you know, I'm sure we've all had an
elderly relative who is when they got
into like their last years, they would
start boarding out, you know, expletives
and say things in a very crude and rude
way that they never would have when they
were in sort of their normal state of
mind. And I think that's what we're
seeing with Donald Trump. Uh before I
jump to Rey uh on a similar topic,
Senator Graham of all people threatening
President Putin, you got to see this.
Larry, what is your take on General
Donahghue? Could in accordance with
military protocol, could he have made a
statement of that magnitude without the
knowledge and consent of the Secretary
of Defense or even the president?
No. No. He he spent too much time at
altitude without enough oxygen. That's
that's the only other explanation I
could give.
Uh here's
the other thing is that if and the
president wanted to to explain that
Danghue didn't really mean what he
wanted, they could have. So the Russians
have to accept that as the the plan, so
to speak, crazy as it is. I mean, um,
Trump is non-compassment
with with craziness attached, which is
doubly
doubly dangerous than Joe Biden for
God's sake. And I never thought I'd hear
myself say that.
Uh, Chris, gentlemen, watch this. Did
you know that Donald Trump is going to
whoop Vladimir Putin's ass? Not my
words, a quote from the senior senator
from South Carolina. Chris cut number
one.
Putin, your turn is coming. You know,
Donald Trump is the Scottish shuffler of
American politics and foreign diplomacy,
and he's about to put a whooping on your
ass. What's going to happen here is that
Trump is going to impose tariffs on
people that buy Russian oil. China,
India, and Brazil. Those three countries
uh buy about 80% of cheap Russian oil.
That's what keeps Putin's war machine
going. So, President Trump's going to
put a 100% tariff on all those
countries, punishing them uh for helping
Putin. Putin can live through sanctions.
He could give a damn about Russian
soldiers. But China, India, and Brazil,
um they're about to face a choice
between the American economy or helping
Putin. And I think they're going to come
pick pick the American economy.
This may be the crudest, but I don't
know which is the most reckless. Trump's
threat of Putin, General Larry, General
Donahghue's threat to land troops or
this craziness from Senator Graham.
Yeah. Well, this is reminiscent of uh
the character that George C. Scott
played in the movie Dr. Strange Love,
right?
I mean, it's abs it's absolutely I think
George C. Scott won an Oscar for that.
So, so maybe Lindsay should be should be
up for it. Look, I I read an article
earlier this week and it had two
fascinating charts. It showed that in
the year 2000, the the country that was
the majority trading partner with most
of the world was the United States.
Today in as of 2024 the country which is
the majority trading partner of the 75%
of the world is China completely role
reversal. Donald Trump is acting like
we're back in 2000 when the United
States did have some dramatic leverage
with other countries. But what's taking
place now, like with these tariffs he
put on China, we used to be a major
exporter of pork and soybeans to China
in just a spate of three months cut off
and China's buying from Russia and
Brazil because you know what? We don't
have a monopoly on pigs. We may have a
monopoly on pigheaded politicians, but
but not a monopoly on pigs.
You're on a roll, Larry. God bless you,
Ray. uh a group of Republican senators
have offered uh has offered legislation
uh to authorize the Pentagon, subject to
the president's discretion, to
distribute another 54 billion with a B
dollar in military equipment to Ukraine.
I guess the Joe Biden days are back.
Well, 54 billion. Wow. That's about a
quarter of what we've already given
them. That's a lot.
Correct.
You know, last time this happened, it
was two years ago, and I watched that
Senate uh that Senate session where they
were talking about giving, I think was
uh over 150 billion or 50 billion more
to Ukraine. And every one of those
senators said, "Now look, remember that
money is staying here. I mean in our
districts it's going to be spent on our
weaponry. So please please understand
this is not given money to Iran or to to
Ukraine. Now you know that was so
cynical. There was only one senator
Chris von Holland from Maryland that
didn't say specifically that. So the
game is up. You the game is very very
transparent. Uh the military-industrial
complex is profitering on all this
stuff. Even the Europeans are now
supposed to buy our weapons at our
prices and give them to Ukraine. Give me
a break. I don't know if Congress will
will approve another 54 billion. Uh do
you Larry?
No. No. I I I don't see them uh there
only a few that are getting paid off by
Ukraine.
Do how much longer can Ukraine last,
Larry? whether this 54 billion passes
and Trump signs it or not.
Well, actually, I think that's one of
the reasons you've seen the change in
Trump's tone on this that u previously
he was being assured, oh yeah, you know,
this isn't going to end anytime soon.
But now in light of uh the significant
military advances that uh you Russia is
making in Daetsk this particular they
just captured finally captured the city
of Chazafiar and then there's this other
city called Pakross the the relevance of
those is uh let let's they're not the
same size but let's think of them as
Washington and New York City in terms of
a defensive line that's a critical place
and when you capture those all of a
sudden The Ukrainians are in a
desperation mode. Top that off with the
fact that almost every single night over
the last two weeks, Russia is hitting uh
Ukraine with more than 500 drones and
dozens of Iscander or Kinsal uh
missiles, hypersonic missiles. Ukraine
doesn't have an answer for it. It it
used to be if you go back a year, two
years ago, Russia might do this like
once every two or three weeks. Now
they're doing it every night. They've
got they've now got the productive cap
the production capability. So Ukraine's
ability to survive militarily. I think I
think they genuinely could be it could
be over before the end of the year.
Ray,
Larry, I'm I'm having a flashback here.
I think it was less less than three
years ago that uh the director of
national intelligence
said to the world uh that Russia was
running out of ammunition and weaponry
and and didn't have any indigenous
capability to replace their great losses
on the battlefield. Do you mean do you
mean to tell me that that Joe Biden was
being misinformed? And do you mean to
tell me that Trump is true when he talks
about hundreds of thousands, millions of
Russian casualties? I mean, where is
where is Trump getting his information
from?
Well, actually, we we now know thanks to
Sai Hirs. So, Scott Sai Sai wrote an
article where he quoted this
intelligence official telling him that
the Russians had two million casualties,
right?
And so, I reached out to Sai. I said,
"Sai, you're being fed what what my
brother Ray McGovern calls mail by an
excrement." And and Sai was, "Oh, no,
no, no, no. He's these are reliable
sides." I said, "I'm not saying he's not
a reliable source. I'm just telling you
he's lying to you." So, I did produce an
article which spelled out exactly how
many soldiers the Russians recruited and
signed up under contract in in 2022, the
same for 2023, same for 2024, same for
the first six months of 2025, and can
show you without a doubt that the
Russians have deployed to the field a
grand total of 2,00 2,500,000
soldiers roughly in this last three and
a half years. If they had 2 million
casualties, they would have they
wouldn't have the 700,000 soldiers they
have in the field now,
right?
It just doesn't. So, they're lying flat
out lying.
Even the CIA stenographers,
aka journalists and editors at the
Washington Post said a million Russian
casualties. It can't be anywhere near
that. I I can't imagine that the
Russians have lost a 100,000
uh killed, Larry. No, they've they've
probably had about 120,000 killed. Okay,
that's that's that's from a group called
Media Zona. What they've done is they've
tracked the obituaries that show up in
the Russian press. And if we take, you
know, the conventional combat, it
usually says there's a a 1:4 ratio, one
killed, three to four wounded. So, if
you take that, that means Russia could
have suffered a total of 600,000
casualties. I think that's possible. But
the difference is they're signing
they're signing up uh enough people
every month that their military is
growing in size in contrast to Ukraine
which is shrinking. And then Russia's
got every advantage with armor, armored
vehicles, artillery shells, fixedwing
aircraft, rotary wing aircraft, fab
bombs, missiles, drones. There's not a
single area in which Ukraine has a
military advantage. I want you to watch
um you may have seen this elsewhere,
Lieutenant Colonel Tony Aguilar
uh on Tucker Carlson earlier this week.
Chris cut number 11.
You've spent your life in combat zones.
That's why I think your uh testimony is
so compelling. Um because you have a
frame of reference. You've seen a lot of
destruction and a lot of killing in your
life for 25 years. How would you compare
what you saw in Gaza to what you've seen
in say Afghanistan or Iraq?
Nothing compares.
Nothing I have seen in Iraq, in
Afghanistan, in Baghdad, in Mosul,
Solder City, all throughout Afghanistan,
Syria, the southern Philippines, some
places where there's dense populations.
I have never witnessed anything as
brutal, destructive, violent,
and I would say that that that steps far
over our international laws of of of
how we persecute wars and how we engage
in warfare. Um, we've we've long
departed from that standard and America
America is a part of it.
Govern is the world starting to coalesce
around the idea of what we have been
saying for the past three years. Yeah,
there is genocide there and yes, the
Israelis are using starvation as a
weapon and yes, that is absolutely
unacceptable.
Yes, but it bothers me knowing
that no one figures out what the hell to
do about it. That's that's that's
problem. The old Noah principle. No more
awards for predicting rain. Awards only
for building arcs. None of us have
figured out a way to build arcs so we
can stop this damn thing. I never
thought my country would be aiding,
abetting, arming, and supporting
genocide and forced salv starvation. My
god, can't we get our our can't we get
together and figure out some way to stop
it? Uh, I'm at a loss for words.
Larry, watch this. This is somebody that
the three of us probably would not quote
very much. Senator Dick Durban. This is
a rather emotional and profound
statement he made uh on the floor of the
Senate two days ago. Chris number 12.
Several weeks ago, several senators
joined me in meeting with the ambassador
from Israel, and we asked him why Israel
was not providing humanitarian aid in
Gaza. He said, "That's not true. We were
providing it, but Hamas was stealing it
from us and using it to buy weapons and
to make them stronger."
And then he went on to say when we asked
him about the children starving the
images we had all seen on television he
said that is not true that is a United
Nations narrative
and then we asked him basically if there
is such a difference of opinion between
what is happening in Gaza why don't you
allow international journalists to come
into this area and report to the world
what they actually see and he said it
was too dangerous for journalists to
even witness it.
Mr. President, I want to tell you that
was an incredible statement and I
believe totally wrong. At the outset,
Cindy McCain and others have told us
there is no diversion by Hamas of the
humanitarian aid. It just isn't coming
into Gaza and went on to say that these
children, of course, we see them on
television, you can't avoid it. That's
the reality of the situation. And
furthermore, when it came down to it,
that we had to stand up and acknowledge
the obvious that Israel is part of this.
Children of Gaza are starving and dying.
The question is, what will the United
States do about it? I thank the senator
from Vermont for offering these
resolutions this evening. It's painful
for many of us who've devoted our
congressional careers to supporting
Israel and standing by them through
difficult times. It is impossible to
really explain or defend what is going
on today. Gaza is starving and dying
because of the policies of BB Netanyahu.
at Larry that he had referred to this
ambassador who obviously was lying the
way Bernie Sanders referred to Netanyahu
as quote a disgusting liar. Of course,
the two of them are very late to this
game as Ry just pointed out. Larry, your
thoughts on all this?
Well, of course, I do I sure raise both
anguish, anger, and frustration over
this whole thing. I think the good news
though, we're starting to see this week
in particular and last starting last
week, the worm is starting to turn. Apac
is losing some of its clout and
influence and we we've seen it in a
variety of ways. One, more of the
European states are now standing up
saying, "Okay, we're going to recognize
Palestine come September when the UN
General Assembly has its annual
meeting." Uh so, you know, with England,
uh with France, with Canada now saying
it and and what does Trump do? Trump
starts threatening those countries with
tariffs in order to protect Israel. But
also important is the these shows, shows
like yours, but but Tucker Carlson has
really been hitting it out of the park
this week because he had John Mirshimer
on Wednesday for an hour and John just
raped Israel up one side and down the
other. They I mean he told the story of
the Zionist um conquest, if you will,
and how how wrong it is. Then he then
Tucker followed that up with Colonel
Aguilar. And Colonel Aguilard, tell you
what, I I used to not have too high an
opinion of West Point. But man, after
listening to him and his his recitation
of the Geneva Convention and his
description of what commanders need to
be doing with respect to the troops to
keep him from murdering children and
then his own encounter with this small
boy who was subsequently murdered by the
Israelis that those messages are having
power and then Tucker's doing it again
today with Candace Owens. They're
hitting this subject and Candace is
hitting it as well. The reason I point
those two out, they have a strong
resonance in Trump's MAGA base. So Trump
is lose starting to lose that base. I
know he's I know he's lost several that
I know.
Well, he's he's lost a lot of the base
over the Epstein saga, but he's losing
the base of those who are repulsed by
the slaughter of innocents.
Yes. Yes.
Yeah. I would just add, you know, that
uh Trump is in a very dangerous state of
mind here. He's got Epstein.
Uh I believe he's being blackmailed by
Netanyahu on Epstein.
I believe like Max Blumenthal that
Epstein was working with Mossad and they
have stuff on Trump. And to think to
think that Trump would be doing genocide
largely because he wants to escape blame
for this kind of thing is just atrocity
squared in my view. So let me just add
that I think that rather than Ukraine,
it's the Middle East that really is the
the boiling pot here. Uh uh Netanyahu is
going to probably resort to something
that he'll want US support for. It will
be an attack on Iran. And you know,
Iran's not going to take it easily.
Iran's going to destroy large parts of
Israel and then Netanyahu is going to be
faced with the choice of using his
nuclear weapons or forgetting about it.
And you know, a fellow who can who can
approve genocide and all this other
stuff, force starvation, you can't
convince me that he will not use nuclear
weapons in extremists. That's the real
live wire. And Trump, my god, I don't
know what he do. Last time he let
himself be mousetrapped. Would he do
that again? Well, we'll have to see. But
Iran, Middle East, that's the key in my
view. We'll we'll end with that. As
terrifying as uh as it is, Brother uh
Ritter is coming up in a couple of
minutes. Gentlemen, thank you very much.
We'll look forward to seeing you uh at
your usual times on Monday morning. Have
a great weekend. Thank you for joining
us.
Thanks so much. Thank you.
And coming up at 4:30 Eastern on the
president's recklessness with nuclear
submarines, Scott Ritter, Judge Npalit
Tenno for judging freedom.
[Music]
[Music]
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Re: Anti-Anti-Nazi Barbarian Hordes are Knocking Down the Ga
by admin » Sat Aug 02, 2025 3:45 am
Ghislaine Maxwell transferred to less restrictive prison after DOJ meeting. Normally, sex offenders like Maxwell are not housed in minimum-security prisons, but she has been moved to one.
by Erica Orden
Politico
08/01/2025 12:59 PM EDT
Updated: 08/01/2025 04:52 PM EDT
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/08/0 ... g-00488424
Days after sitting down with one of the highest-ranking members of the Justice Department, Ghislaine Maxwell has been transferred to a less restrictive, minimum-security federal prison camp in Texas, her attorney said.
As a convicted sex offender, Maxwell would not normally be eligible for a minimum-security prison. According to a Bureau of Prisons policy, people with a sex offender determination known as a “public safety factor” are required to be housed in at least low-security prisons unless they receive a waiver from an arm of the bureau that designates inmates. Low-security prisons are more restrictive than minimum-security ones.
The bureau is a component of the Justice Department, meaning its leadership reports to Attorney General Pam Bondi.
A spokesperson for the Justice Department didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. The Bureau of Prisons also did not respond to a request for comment.
Maxwell’s attorney David Oscar Markus said Friday she had been moved to Federal Prison Camp Bryan, a facility for female inmates in Southeast Texas. He declined further comment.
It’s unclear why Maxwell might have been moved, but her transfer comes as she and her attorneys have been advocating both for a pardon by the Trump administration and for her conviction to be overturned by the Supreme Court.
Maxwell, the onetime girlfriend of disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, is serving a 20-year sentence for her 2021 conviction for sex trafficking crimes. Until this week, she had been serving her sentence in Florida, at FCI Tallahassee, a low-security prison.
Late last week, Maxwell sat for two days of interviews with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, the No. 2 ranking official at the Justice Department, who met with Maxwell as part of an effort by the Trump administration to quell backlash over its handling of the so-called Epstein files.
According to the Bureau of Prisons, the type of facility to which Maxwell has been moved has “dormitory housing, a relatively low staff-to-inmate ratio, and limited or no perimeter fencing,” as opposed to the “double-fenced perimeters” of the type of low-security prison where she had been housed.
Maxwell had also been seeking to postpone a scheduled deposition with the House Oversight committee, a request committee chair James Comer granted. Comer said in a letter to Maxwell that the committee would delay her testimony until after the Supreme Court rules on her appeal.
“We will continue to engage with Congress in good faith to find a way for Ms. Maxwell to share her information without compromising her constitutional rights,” Markus said in a statement.
Following Maxwell’s meeting with Blanche, Markus told reporters of Trump’s pardon power that “we hope he exercises that power in the right and just way.”
Maxwell, who isn’t due for release from prison until 2037, was convicted of five felonies connected to her participation in Epstein’s child sex trafficking ring, including sex trafficking conspiracy and sex trafficking of a minor. Epstein died by suicide in jail while awaiting trial in 2019.
by Erica Orden
Politico
08/01/2025 12:59 PM EDT
Updated: 08/01/2025 04:52 PM EDT
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/08/0 ... g-00488424
Days after sitting down with one of the highest-ranking members of the Justice Department, Ghislaine Maxwell has been transferred to a less restrictive, minimum-security federal prison camp in Texas, her attorney said.
As a convicted sex offender, Maxwell would not normally be eligible for a minimum-security prison. According to a Bureau of Prisons policy, people with a sex offender determination known as a “public safety factor” are required to be housed in at least low-security prisons unless they receive a waiver from an arm of the bureau that designates inmates. Low-security prisons are more restrictive than minimum-security ones.
The bureau is a component of the Justice Department, meaning its leadership reports to Attorney General Pam Bondi.
A spokesperson for the Justice Department didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. The Bureau of Prisons also did not respond to a request for comment.
Maxwell’s attorney David Oscar Markus said Friday she had been moved to Federal Prison Camp Bryan, a facility for female inmates in Southeast Texas. He declined further comment.
It’s unclear why Maxwell might have been moved, but her transfer comes as she and her attorneys have been advocating both for a pardon by the Trump administration and for her conviction to be overturned by the Supreme Court.
Maxwell, the onetime girlfriend of disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, is serving a 20-year sentence for her 2021 conviction for sex trafficking crimes. Until this week, she had been serving her sentence in Florida, at FCI Tallahassee, a low-security prison.
Late last week, Maxwell sat for two days of interviews with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, the No. 2 ranking official at the Justice Department, who met with Maxwell as part of an effort by the Trump administration to quell backlash over its handling of the so-called Epstein files.
According to the Bureau of Prisons, the type of facility to which Maxwell has been moved has “dormitory housing, a relatively low staff-to-inmate ratio, and limited or no perimeter fencing,” as opposed to the “double-fenced perimeters” of the type of low-security prison where she had been housed.
Maxwell had also been seeking to postpone a scheduled deposition with the House Oversight committee, a request committee chair James Comer granted. Comer said in a letter to Maxwell that the committee would delay her testimony until after the Supreme Court rules on her appeal.
“We will continue to engage with Congress in good faith to find a way for Ms. Maxwell to share her information without compromising her constitutional rights,” Markus said in a statement.
Following Maxwell’s meeting with Blanche, Markus told reporters of Trump’s pardon power that “we hope he exercises that power in the right and just way.”
Maxwell, who isn’t due for release from prison until 2037, was convicted of five felonies connected to her participation in Epstein’s child sex trafficking ring, including sex trafficking conspiracy and sex trafficking of a minor. Epstein died by suicide in jail while awaiting trial in 2019.
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Re: Anti-Anti-Nazi Barbarian Hordes are Knocking Down the Ga
by admin » Sat Aug 02, 2025 4:07 am
Trump Gets SCREWED in Court by HIS OWN DOJ
by Michael Popok
Legal AF
Aug 1, 2025 The Intersection with Michael Popok
AG Pam Bondi just screwed Trump (again) in a new Court filing where she confesses that the Epstein Scandal is of great public importance (undercutting Trump who says "boring" an "nothing to see here") and that her own FBI/DOJ close out memo fueled public demand for the Files! Popok examines the new federal court filing about the Maxwell Grand Jury materials, and the revelation that there is virtually nothing new in those files the public hasn't seen, and only 2 law enforcement witnesses testified!
Transcript
[Michael Popok] Attorney General Pam Bondi just did it
again. She completely undercut and
undermined Donald Trump's talking point
that when it comes to the Epstein
scandal that he's desperately trying to
shove back into Pandora's box, saying
"This is boring. There's nothing to see
here. I don't know why you are all
interested in this." She completely
undercut his position in a new filing in
federal court, in the Southern District
of New York, where she tells a federal
judge, as she tries to get the grand jury
transcripts released, that this case is
of great public interest and importance
and it demands the release of files. I
couldn't agree with you more, Pam Bondi,
although that completely wraps you
around your own axle, about arguing to
the American people that the full
Epstein file should not come out while
you shoot your client in the head if
not the foot. I
I'm Michael Popock. You're
on Legal AF YouTube. This is Friday
morning. Let's get to the Epstein report
because it's that important. I got the
new filing right here. I will post it on
Legal AF Substack. What is this all
about? Well, if you recall, to try to
tamp down the public interest, as Pam
Bondi puts it in her own filing around
Epstein, self-created, I would suggest,
by Donald Trump himself, um they went
and said, "Well, we'll redefine what the
Epstein files are. We won't call them
the truckload, Pam Bondi's phrase, of
documents reviewed and scoured for hours
and hours and months by the FBI in order
for Pam Bondi to brief her client and
her boss, Donald Trump, about his name
being all over the Epstein files, as
reported by the Wall Street Journal. No,
no, no. To the Trump administration,
that's not the Epstein files. The
Epstein files are the grand jury
transcripts of the Epstein and Maxwell
grand juries from several years ago.
Really? Because even now they have to
admit that there's basically nothing of
novel interest in those files in those
in those grand jury proceedings because
get this have a seat only two witnesses
and they were both law enforcement
testified combined at the Epstein and
Maxwell grand juries. That's it. An FBI
agent and a New York police officer
detective working on a human trafficking
task force summarizing the evidence in
front of the grand jury. No victims, no
Patreon, no patrons, no people who
participated in the child trafficking
ring, no Epstein, no Maxwell, no
nothing. In fact, Pam Bondi had to admit
in her filing that there's very little
in those summary witness testimonies by
law enforcement that the public doesn't
already know about.
And yet she continues to beat the drum
that this case is of great public
interest undercutting Donald Trump's
talking point to MAGA. You're on Legal
AF. Take a minute, hit the free
subscribe button. Let's get into this
new filing. You know, because you it's
very difficult to keep a lie straight.
Isn't that what we're watching? The
truth will set them free, but the truth
is hard. You have to tell the truth. You
have to but but lies you have to
remember them. And then you have to get
your your factual BS uh mythology that
you're using for political purposes. And
when you're getting interviewed on
Scottish golf courses, you got to get
that straight with what you can really
argue pen to paper when you file
something in court. Now, let's point out
a couple of things about this filing.
Pam Bondi is on the cover. Todd Blanch
is on the cover. And Jake Clayton is on
the cover. There's always a direct link
to Donald Trump on the cover. So, let's
talk about who these people are who just
filed this just to show you that they
have, you know, some sort of bonafide to
speak for Donald Trump. Pam Bondi,
attorney general, former impeachment
lawyer for Donald Trump, did terribly.
He got impeached. Todd Blanch, former
criminal defense lawyer for Donald
Trump. He batted 500. He got he was the
defense lawyer when Donald Trump got
convicted of 34 felony counts related to
Stormmy Daniels and the election
interference case and he was able to
ultimately obtain the immunity decision
from the United States Supreme Court. So
we call that 50/50. Who's Jay Clayton?
Jay Clayton which is the and you're
going to love this term says he's the
United States attorney for the Southern
District of New York. He's not the
United States attorney for the Southern
District of New York. At best, he's the
acting US attorney for the Southern
District of New York because he hasn't
been confirmed by the Senate. He had
been the US attorney many, many years
ago, and then Donald Trump appointed him
to be the head of the Securities and
Exchange Commission back in the first
administration. He is, how do I put this
nicely? A golfing buddy of Donald Trump.
Trust me, he's a golfing buddy of Donald
Trump. Not the brightest tool in the
shed. No, sharpest tool in the shed. I
may not be the brightest tool in the
shed. Not not the sharpest star in the
sky, is that it? Um, and that's why he's
on here with a phony title, but from
this administration, you'd you'd expect
nothing less. So, they file it with this
judge. There's two different judges that
are looking Well, there were really
three originally, but two different
judges that are looking at the grand
jury materials issue. One is Judge
Angeler,
who is presiding over the Maxwell grand
jury transcripts. He took over from
Judge Nathan because Judge Nathan after
she handled the Maxwell case and
sentenced Derby got elevated to the
second circuit court of appeals.
The other one is Judge Burman who was
the original judge for Epstein. And they
both issued similar orders. We need to
get to the bottom of the grand jury. We
don't understand why you want the grand
jury. We want to uh walk us through the
factors. Write us a brief. Find out if
Maxwell in the Maxwell case has any
objection. You know, kind of get your
act together. another judge down in West
Palm Beach about another grand jury
involving Epstein. She already rejected
the release of the grand jury
transcripts, finding nothing under
federal rule of criminal procedure six,
which deals with the release of grand
jury material applied. That was Judge
Rosenberg up in West Palm Beach
Division. So, we put that to a side. Now
we got the new filing and here's what
Pam Bondi says
as a justification
on page four. Why disclosure is being
sought in this particular case. Remember
Donald Trump tells people there's
nothing to see here. This is boring
details. Why are you still asking me
questions about this? Um there's nothing
to see. Uh he he was a creep. Uh you
know he stole young girls from me. You
know all those statements that Donald
Trump's been making. So here's what
here's what her his attorney general
says in court. As described above and in
the underlying motions, there is
undoubtedly a clearly expressed interest
from the public in Jeffrey Epstein's and
Galain Maxwell's crimes. You know what's
stoking that interest? Donald Trump's
failure to be transparent, I would
suggest. Beyond that, there is abundant
public interest in the investigative
work conducted by the Department of
Justice and FBI into those crimes.
Yeah. So, let's stop right there. She
releases a two-page unsigned, undated,
nobody takes responsibility for it memo
which kicks this all off at the
beginning of July that says that Jeffrey
Epstein died by suicide because we
looked at the video and we didn't see
anything untored. MAGA conspiracy
theorist hated that. And we looked
through all the files and uh there's no
client list and so we're done. They
actually thought that would close this
out. So yes, we are interested in the
Department of Justice and FBI
investigation into those crimes. And I
find it I find it the height of I don't
want to say hypocrisy, but just just
gling that they cite as the reason why
these files should be released and that
people are interested in investigation
of a crime. They cite to the Rosenberg
trial where two Jewish Americans
were convicted of espionage
and and put to death back in the 1950s
for allegedly helping the Russians or
the Soviets at the time. I mean, you're
bringing up the Rosenbergs to justify
your position in the Epstein case. It's
just mindboggling. I mean, nobody thinks
twice about this, you know, between Jay
Clayton, the golf buddy, Todd Blanch,
and um Pam Bondi. Attention given, this
is what they say on page five. So, that
was page four. Page five. Attention
given to the Epstein and Maxwell cases
has recently intensified in the wake of
their own memo, July 6th memo,
announcing the conclusion of the
government's review and investigation.
Um, no crap. But what really is
re revoly is the fact that they have to
admit that there's very little in the
grand jury proceedings that the public
doesn't already know about. So then they
undercut their other argument of
transparency. Oh, the Epstein grand jury
transcripts will be the Rosetta Stone.
We said on legal af. That's not the
files. The files are the search
warrants. the f and results of the
search warrants on laptops, on
computers, on safes that were in Jeffrey
Epstein's house, from the plane, from
the home when they caught Maxwell on the
run. All of that, you know, there's also
financial transaction reports about
money exchange. Follow the money between
Epstein and the girls that he raped.
There's lots of data and information and
pictures and audio and video. That's the
Epstein files. So they already undercut
it because now it's revealed that the
grand jury material at best is a total a
total in both grand juries, Epstein and
Maxwell of two witnesses. One was the
same. One was an FBI agent who testified
in both. The other was a New York uh uh
detective who worked on the human
trafficking task force, kind of a joint
task force with the feds. And he
testified in the Epstein along with the
FBI. That's it. Summary witnesses at
best. Not that unusual. We said there
would be nothing in there. No exhibits.
Um although now the judge is
questioning, "Do you want me to release
the exhibits, too, because you better
address that as well because there were
exhibits that were used by these two
witnesses." Of course, they didn't think
that through. The judge thought it
through for them, and he issued an
order. I'll also post up on Substack,
Judge Angle Meyer, and he says, "The
government's application to unseal the
grand jury transcripts is pending, and
the government's submission, which I
just read to you from, suggests,
although does not squarely state that
the government is seeking to unseal the
exhibits, also the documents that were
used." And then he wants full briefing
on that by Monday, and I'll report back
here about which grand jury exhibits
you're proposing and why. Now in the
Maxwell, which is what Angelmy, Judge
Angelmire is dealing with. Maxwell is
alive. So she's also commenting and
being given a right to comment. The
victims are a lot or some of the lawyers
representing the victims. I know one of
them, Jack Scarola down in Florida, he's
okay with the release of the grand jury
material. the the DOJ Pam Bondi argument
is that most of this victim testimony
has already come out either through
suits because they sued Epstein or the
estate of Epstein civily or in the
criminal prosecution of Maxwell. So
again, she undercuts the argument of
complete transparency because there's
effectively nothing in the grand jury,
even if we were to get it. Grand jury
materials that we haven't already seen,
which reinforces, Pam, that's not the
Epstein files. You keep trying to
redefine them so small that you'll think
we won't notice, but we do notice. And
we talk about it here on a regular basis
on our updates. Uh this one here on
Friday morning on Legal AF. Take a
moment, hit the free subscribe button. I
talk a lot about the legal AF Substack
growing growing growing. We put lots of
critical material there for you to read
yourself. These this order and the and
the motion or the response by the
government both are there. Now you have
my commentary. So until my next hot
take, I'm Michael Popac. I'm Michael
Popac and I got some big news for our
audience. Most of you know me as the
co-founder of Midas Touches Legal AF and
the Legal AF YouTube channel or as a
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and fill out a free case evaluation
form. And if we determine that you have
a case and you sign with us, we don't
get paid unless you do. The Pope firm
fighting for your justice every step of
the
by Michael Popok
Legal AF
Aug 1, 2025 The Intersection with Michael Popok
AG Pam Bondi just screwed Trump (again) in a new Court filing where she confesses that the Epstein Scandal is of great public importance (undercutting Trump who says "boring" an "nothing to see here") and that her own FBI/DOJ close out memo fueled public demand for the Files! Popok examines the new federal court filing about the Maxwell Grand Jury materials, and the revelation that there is virtually nothing new in those files the public hasn't seen, and only 2 law enforcement witnesses testified!
Transcript
[Michael Popok] Attorney General Pam Bondi just did it
again. She completely undercut and
undermined Donald Trump's talking point
that when it comes to the Epstein
scandal that he's desperately trying to
shove back into Pandora's box, saying
"This is boring. There's nothing to see
here. I don't know why you are all
interested in this." She completely
undercut his position in a new filing in
federal court, in the Southern District
of New York, where she tells a federal
judge, as she tries to get the grand jury
transcripts released, that this case is
of great public interest and importance
and it demands the release of files. I
couldn't agree with you more, Pam Bondi,
although that completely wraps you
around your own axle, about arguing to
the American people that the full
Epstein file should not come out while
you shoot your client in the head if
not the foot. I
I'm Michael Popock. You're
on Legal AF YouTube. This is Friday
morning. Let's get to the Epstein report
because it's that important. I got the
new filing right here. I will post it on
Legal AF Substack. What is this all
about? Well, if you recall, to try to
tamp down the public interest, as Pam
Bondi puts it in her own filing around
Epstein, self-created, I would suggest,
by Donald Trump himself, um they went
and said, "Well, we'll redefine what the
Epstein files are. We won't call them
the truckload, Pam Bondi's phrase, of
documents reviewed and scoured for hours
and hours and months by the FBI in order
for Pam Bondi to brief her client and
her boss, Donald Trump, about his name
being all over the Epstein files, as
reported by the Wall Street Journal. No,
no, no. To the Trump administration,
that's not the Epstein files. The
Epstein files are the grand jury
transcripts of the Epstein and Maxwell
grand juries from several years ago.
Really? Because even now they have to
admit that there's basically nothing of
novel interest in those files in those
in those grand jury proceedings because
get this have a seat only two witnesses
and they were both law enforcement
testified combined at the Epstein and
Maxwell grand juries. That's it. An FBI
agent and a New York police officer
detective working on a human trafficking
task force summarizing the evidence in
front of the grand jury. No victims, no
Patreon, no patrons, no people who
participated in the child trafficking
ring, no Epstein, no Maxwell, no
nothing. In fact, Pam Bondi had to admit
in her filing that there's very little
in those summary witness testimonies by
law enforcement that the public doesn't
already know about.
And yet she continues to beat the drum
that this case is of great public
interest undercutting Donald Trump's
talking point to MAGA. You're on Legal
AF. Take a minute, hit the free
subscribe button. Let's get into this
new filing. You know, because you it's
very difficult to keep a lie straight.
Isn't that what we're watching? The
truth will set them free, but the truth
is hard. You have to tell the truth. You
have to but but lies you have to
remember them. And then you have to get
your your factual BS uh mythology that
you're using for political purposes. And
when you're getting interviewed on
Scottish golf courses, you got to get
that straight with what you can really
argue pen to paper when you file
something in court. Now, let's point out
a couple of things about this filing.
Pam Bondi is on the cover. Todd Blanch
is on the cover. And Jake Clayton is on
the cover. There's always a direct link
to Donald Trump on the cover. So, let's
talk about who these people are who just
filed this just to show you that they
have, you know, some sort of bonafide to
speak for Donald Trump. Pam Bondi,
attorney general, former impeachment
lawyer for Donald Trump, did terribly.
He got impeached. Todd Blanch, former
criminal defense lawyer for Donald
Trump. He batted 500. He got he was the
defense lawyer when Donald Trump got
convicted of 34 felony counts related to
Stormmy Daniels and the election
interference case and he was able to
ultimately obtain the immunity decision
from the United States Supreme Court. So
we call that 50/50. Who's Jay Clayton?
Jay Clayton which is the and you're
going to love this term says he's the
United States attorney for the Southern
District of New York. He's not the
United States attorney for the Southern
District of New York. At best, he's the
acting US attorney for the Southern
District of New York because he hasn't
been confirmed by the Senate. He had
been the US attorney many, many years
ago, and then Donald Trump appointed him
to be the head of the Securities and
Exchange Commission back in the first
administration. He is, how do I put this
nicely? A golfing buddy of Donald Trump.
Trust me, he's a golfing buddy of Donald
Trump. Not the brightest tool in the
shed. No, sharpest tool in the shed. I
may not be the brightest tool in the
shed. Not not the sharpest star in the
sky, is that it? Um, and that's why he's
on here with a phony title, but from
this administration, you'd you'd expect
nothing less. So, they file it with this
judge. There's two different judges that
are looking Well, there were really
three originally, but two different
judges that are looking at the grand
jury materials issue. One is Judge
Angeler,
who is presiding over the Maxwell grand
jury transcripts. He took over from
Judge Nathan because Judge Nathan after
she handled the Maxwell case and
sentenced Derby got elevated to the
second circuit court of appeals.
The other one is Judge Burman who was
the original judge for Epstein. And they
both issued similar orders. We need to
get to the bottom of the grand jury. We
don't understand why you want the grand
jury. We want to uh walk us through the
factors. Write us a brief. Find out if
Maxwell in the Maxwell case has any
objection. You know, kind of get your
act together. another judge down in West
Palm Beach about another grand jury
involving Epstein. She already rejected
the release of the grand jury
transcripts, finding nothing under
federal rule of criminal procedure six,
which deals with the release of grand
jury material applied. That was Judge
Rosenberg up in West Palm Beach
Division. So, we put that to a side. Now
we got the new filing and here's what
Pam Bondi says
as a justification
on page four. Why disclosure is being
sought in this particular case. Remember
Donald Trump tells people there's
nothing to see here. This is boring
details. Why are you still asking me
questions about this? Um there's nothing
to see. Uh he he was a creep. Uh you
know he stole young girls from me. You
know all those statements that Donald
Trump's been making. So here's what
here's what her his attorney general
says in court. As described above and in
the underlying motions, there is
undoubtedly a clearly expressed interest
from the public in Jeffrey Epstein's and
Galain Maxwell's crimes. You know what's
stoking that interest? Donald Trump's
failure to be transparent, I would
suggest. Beyond that, there is abundant
public interest in the investigative
work conducted by the Department of
Justice and FBI into those crimes.
Yeah. So, let's stop right there. She
releases a two-page unsigned, undated,
nobody takes responsibility for it memo
which kicks this all off at the
beginning of July that says that Jeffrey
Epstein died by suicide because we
looked at the video and we didn't see
anything untored. MAGA conspiracy
theorist hated that. And we looked
through all the files and uh there's no
client list and so we're done. They
actually thought that would close this
out. So yes, we are interested in the
Department of Justice and FBI
investigation into those crimes. And I
find it I find it the height of I don't
want to say hypocrisy, but just just
gling that they cite as the reason why
these files should be released and that
people are interested in investigation
of a crime. They cite to the Rosenberg
trial where two Jewish Americans
were convicted of espionage
and and put to death back in the 1950s
for allegedly helping the Russians or
the Soviets at the time. I mean, you're
bringing up the Rosenbergs to justify
your position in the Epstein case. It's
just mindboggling. I mean, nobody thinks
twice about this, you know, between Jay
Clayton, the golf buddy, Todd Blanch,
and um Pam Bondi. Attention given, this
is what they say on page five. So, that
was page four. Page five. Attention
given to the Epstein and Maxwell cases
has recently intensified in the wake of
their own memo, July 6th memo,
announcing the conclusion of the
government's review and investigation.
Um, no crap. But what really is
re revoly is the fact that they have to
admit that there's very little in the
grand jury proceedings that the public
doesn't already know about. So then they
undercut their other argument of
transparency. Oh, the Epstein grand jury
transcripts will be the Rosetta Stone.
We said on legal af. That's not the
files. The files are the search
warrants. the f and results of the
search warrants on laptops, on
computers, on safes that were in Jeffrey
Epstein's house, from the plane, from
the home when they caught Maxwell on the
run. All of that, you know, there's also
financial transaction reports about
money exchange. Follow the money between
Epstein and the girls that he raped.
There's lots of data and information and
pictures and audio and video. That's the
Epstein files. So they already undercut
it because now it's revealed that the
grand jury material at best is a total a
total in both grand juries, Epstein and
Maxwell of two witnesses. One was the
same. One was an FBI agent who testified
in both. The other was a New York uh uh
detective who worked on the human
trafficking task force, kind of a joint
task force with the feds. And he
testified in the Epstein along with the
FBI. That's it. Summary witnesses at
best. Not that unusual. We said there
would be nothing in there. No exhibits.
Um although now the judge is
questioning, "Do you want me to release
the exhibits, too, because you better
address that as well because there were
exhibits that were used by these two
witnesses." Of course, they didn't think
that through. The judge thought it
through for them, and he issued an
order. I'll also post up on Substack,
Judge Angle Meyer, and he says, "The
government's application to unseal the
grand jury transcripts is pending, and
the government's submission, which I
just read to you from, suggests,
although does not squarely state that
the government is seeking to unseal the
exhibits, also the documents that were
used." And then he wants full briefing
on that by Monday, and I'll report back
here about which grand jury exhibits
you're proposing and why. Now in the
Maxwell, which is what Angelmy, Judge
Angelmire is dealing with. Maxwell is
alive. So she's also commenting and
being given a right to comment. The
victims are a lot or some of the lawyers
representing the victims. I know one of
them, Jack Scarola down in Florida, he's
okay with the release of the grand jury
material. the the DOJ Pam Bondi argument
is that most of this victim testimony
has already come out either through
suits because they sued Epstein or the
estate of Epstein civily or in the
criminal prosecution of Maxwell. So
again, she undercuts the argument of
complete transparency because there's
effectively nothing in the grand jury,
even if we were to get it. Grand jury
materials that we haven't already seen,
which reinforces, Pam, that's not the
Epstein files. You keep trying to
redefine them so small that you'll think
we won't notice, but we do notice. And
we talk about it here on a regular basis
on our updates. Uh this one here on
Friday morning on Legal AF. Take a
moment, hit the free subscribe button. I
talk a lot about the legal AF Substack
growing growing growing. We put lots of
critical material there for you to read
yourself. These this order and the and
the motion or the response by the
government both are there. Now you have
my commentary. So until my next hot
take, I'm Michael Popac. I'm Michael
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