We've been almost at war now with Russia for over 3 years

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Prof. John Mearsheimer : Can Israel Save Itself?
Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom
July 31 2025



Transcript

Professor Mearsheimer, welcome here my dear friend. Thank you for accommodating
my schedule during my travels. I thought of you and missed you and I know the audience missed you and I'm happy to be back with you and have you back with us. Before we get to
the Benjamin Netanyahu regime's destruction of Israel, a few
questions about some bizarre events, and I don't know if you can call them bizarre, because they happen so many
times now. Bizarre events in the news this week. Threats against President
Putin. President Trump issued a threat. Senator Lindsey Graham issued a threat.
General Christopher Donaghue issued a threat. We'll start with the president. I want your thoughts on this, and how
you think the Kremlin reacts to it.

The president said on Monday, "forget about the 50-days
I gave President Putin to end the war. I'm giving him 10 to 12 days.
And then on Wednesday, yesterday, he said, "Ah, it's not 10 to 12 days. It's Saturday. You better end the war on
Saturday, otherwise, I'm going to impose secondary tariffs on whoever buys oil from
Russia, namely China and India. Is this any way to conduct diplomacy?
Is this likely to affect one iota of the Russian military strategy in Ukraine?

Yeah, I don't think it'll have any effect on the Russians in
terms of what they do in their war against Ukraine. I think the big question is whether President Trump
would be foolish enough to put these secondary sanctions on China and on
India. I mean, with regard to China, he's had to back off with regard to
tariffs because the Chinese have a lot of leverage over us when it comes to
rare earths and rare earth magnets. They really have a lot of coercive
leverage on us. So I don't see how he can possibly get tough with the Chinese
with secondary sanctions of the magnitude that he's talking about. And with regard to India, it's really quite
amazing what's happening there. It looked like the United States was going to have very good relations with India,
with Modi in the driver's seat in India, and Trump in the driver's seat here in the United States. They have a history
of good relations, but those relations have gone steadily downhill since
Trump took over. And if he were to put secondary sanctions on India, that
would just wreck our relations with India. And that is not in America's national interest because the United
States and India have a vested interest in working together in terms of dealing with China. Furthermore, if he puts
these sanctions on China and India, and they actually go into effect, the end result is going to be disastrous for the
international economy. So I think this is all an empty threat.

And I'm really curious what exactly he's going to do on
Saturday that he thinks is going to bring the Russians or these other countries to their knees. I often
wonder if he and his economic advisors view economics 101 the
way I do, and I think you do.

Who who pays these tariffs?

A tariff is a sales
tax paid by the ultimate consumer, the ultimate user of the good. You want to
buy a toaster made in China that used to cost $25. Now it cost $28.50.
You want to buy a MercedesBenz made in Germany that used to cost $100,000.
Now thanks to Ursula Vander Lion and her caving to Trump, it costs 115,000. Who's
paying it? The American purchaser in the United States.

Now we have this issue
about whether or not the president can impose a tax because the Congress gives that power, the Constitution gives
that power exclusively to the Congress.

Well, that doesn't seem to bother him. I
mean, he thinks that he's a sovereign who can do pretty much anything he wants. I
think what's going on here is that since he launched this tariff campaign, I think it was on April 2nd of this year, he's
gone back and forth, but he is definitely levied tariffs on a lot of countries, and
it has not damaged the American economy, so I think he believes, and his
supporters believe, that Trump can levy tariffs and get away with it, and there
are no real costs to pay, that the consumer is not going to have to worry about
paying higher costs. But I think most people, and this would include me, believe that at some point the bill is
going to come due. And when it does, he's going to be in serious trouble. But for the time being, he's operating on
the assumption that tariffs are the magic weapon. They bring everybody to their knees and we're not hurt at
all.

I was on a Russian talk show
called The Great Game, which is one of Moscow's premier prime time shows. And two of the other
guests, both of whom questioned me, one was a Russian general, and the other was
the John Thune, the leader of the majority party in the
upper house of the Russian uh legislature. And they asked me if I thought
Trump was serious about the sanctions, and they asked
me why he makes these wild statements. Now, put aside my answer, but I I
detected from the tone of their questions, which were long long typically Russian style questions,
uh that they think this is just bluster and they and they really it goes in one ear and out the other when he says this
uh this kind of stuff and they almost don't care uh if he imposes uh if he
imposes tariffs. They they believe they're immune uh from his uh blustering. But Senator Graham
uh threatened President Putin and said that I'm going to use the phrase the senator used that's a little crude.
Forgive me. President um Trump will whoop Putin's ass. That's what he said.
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 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. Why are they with abandoned bricks?
Before you respond, I know you have a response. This is the guy that gets to whisper into Trump's ear every time they
play golf and they sit next to each other in the golf cart. This is a dangerous attitude, but go ahead,
please. I mean, I think that people like Lindsey Graham and many people in the American foreign policy establishment
have no sense of the limits of American power. Whether you're talking about military might or economic might, they
think we can just run around the world pushing people around by threatening them. And if the threats don't work, we
can use military force against them. Uh maybe you could think that way during the unipolar moment, but those days are
in the rear view mirror. We now live in a multipolar world. China's a pure competitor. As I said, it's not
plausible to argue that we can put 100% tariffs on China. We've gone down this
road in the past few months. We tried to get tough with the Chinese and Trump was forced to back off. Furthermore, he
can't do this with India. It would be disastrous uh for American foreign
policy. So, I I just don't know what these people are talking about. Uh
maybe Trump is crazy enough that he'll try to do it and we'll see what happens. But at some point this is really going
to come back and bite him in the high knee. Senator, excuse me, General Christopher
Donahghue commands more troops than any other American general. All American troops in
Europe and in Africa. uh and at a recent uh conference
uh in Germany speaking to other an international military group including
American um uh general generals who are colleagues of his
uh threatened to put American ground troops on the ground in Russia. Now you
are a graduate of West Point and a veteran of the Air Force. I'm going to ask you some questions about what
generals should be saying, but I want you to hear this first. It's relatively brief. It's only about 20 seconds.
Chris, cut number 16. If you look at Kenrad 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 A2D 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 on the ground, planned it, developed it.
Professor Mir Shammer, could such a statement have been made by a fourstar general without approval of the
Secretary of Defense and the President of the United States? It's hard to believe that uh he didn't
get approval to say that. It's a remarkably provocative and foolish
statement. Uh and I find it hard to imagine that a general uh would make a
statement of that sort without getting it cleared uh by at least the Pentagon
and I would imagine even the president of the United States. I mean, could could you imagine if a Russian general
said, "We could take the Aleutian Islands off the coast of Alaska in remarkable speed.
We've trained it for it. We're prepared to do it." It would be the moral equivalent of that. And you can imagine
how President Trump, Secretary Heg, Seth, Senator Graham, and and that crowd and then the American public would react
to that. But very importantly, it's not the strategic equivalent.
That's the key point. When you talk about the Illutian Islands, you're not talking about taking American real
estate uh in the context of a war. There's no war over Alaska or Canada or
anything like that. We're talking about taking Kalinenrad in
the context of an almost war between the United States and Russia. I wouldn't
even call it a proxy war. I call it an almost war because it's so close to being a war. We been very close to being
fully at war with the Russians for over three years now, right? This is serious
business. and we've made it clear to the Russians that we're bent on knocking them out of the ranks of the great
powers. We want to defeat the Russians. So, it's in that context that you have
General Donnu talking about American or NATO troops taking Kinenrad. Kiningrad
is Russian territory. That's another way of saying it's sacred territory.
Yes. Yes. the idea that NATO would even threaten
to initiate a campaign that involves
invading and conquering Keningrad is almost unthinkable to me. Uh well,
what's going on here with these threats? Trump threatens Putin, Senator Graham threatens Putin. Now, this general comes
out of nowhere. I never heard of him before, although it turns out he was in charge of the disastrous evacuation of
Afghanistan. and then they promoted him and gave him a fourth star which requires Senate confirmation. He
threatens uh the Russians. Is the American foreign policy both reckless
and depraved? Yes. I mean certainly reckless. I mean
this is in my opinion a reckless statement. Look, if you're the Russians,
right, and you know that Kiningrad is exposed, the general is correct that
it's exposed Russian territory because it's detached from uh mother Russia and
it's surrounded by a handful of NATO states. Uh so it's exposed and he's
saying that we can take it very easily and he's intimating that we may take it very easily. Very important to
understand that he's basically sending a signal or trying to send a signal to the Russians. We may take Keningrad. This
means that in a crisis, the Russians have a powerful incentive to preempt to
prevent that from happening. If you get into a crisis with the Russians, you do not want them to have an incentive to
preempt. And this is what that does. We would have never done anything like this in the Cold War. If you go back and look
at American policym during the cold war, we were much more cautious. Now you can
say Russia is not the Soviet Union. The problem with that argument is that Russia has thousands of nuclear weapons
just like the Soviet Union had thousands of nuclear weapons. And yes, Russia is
not as powerful as the Soviet Union was, but that probably makes them more scared
than the Soviets would have been in an analogous situation. So, you don't want to threaten these people by talking
about taking Kinenrad with great ease. It just makes no sense at all. And my
I have to I have to tell you, I never heard of it. Where is it and what is it? It's a small piece of territory that
used to be part of Germany. It was referred to as East Prussia. Uh and uh
basically the Baltic states separated from Bellarus and from Russia. Uh so it
is sort of out there by itself. It's uh it's a part of Russia but it's not
contiguous to the mainland. That's correct. I mean under international law
as I understand it, General Donahghue has justified a Russian military strike on whatever
forces he claims he's got are ready to come in and take Kinenrad. They don't have to wait for it to happen under the
law. after that statement, we don't care about international law. And in fact, if you know about what's
going on in Gaza, we're basically wrecking international law, right? We'll move to Gaza now. Do you
sense, excuse me, excuse me, professor, do you sense
a slow growth of international consensus
of what you've been saying for a couple of years and everybody in this program has
uh that the Israelis are engaged in genocide and a recognition that their
more recent behavior is the use of starvation as an instrument to produce
this genocidal effect. Do you sense a growing consensus around that view?
I think there's no question that there are increasing numbers of people every
week who were saying this is a genocide or if it's not a genocide, it is a war
crime and that Israel needs to be punished and everything needs to be done
to stop this genocide uh in Gaza. There's no question about that. And you
see that um with regard to countries like Britain, France, uh Canada, and now
Portugal talking about recognizing a Palestinian state and even punishing
Israel in certain ways. Uh I think it's so clear at this point in time what the
Israelis are up to that it's inevitable that this tide will only grow with the
passage of time. I know you were uh just interviewed
uh by my friend and colleague, my friend and former colleague, still my friend, but formerly uh my colleague Tucker
Carlson. And of course, I commend that fabulous interview to everybody that is
a regular viewer uh of Judging Freedom. Shortly after you were interviewed,
Tucker Carlson interviewed a retired Lieutenant Colonel by the name of Tony Aguilar, whom we hope to have uh on the
show soon, who made some profound statements
uh about his own observations uh in Gaza. Take a listen.
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. You've been saying this for a long time.
Colonel McGregor's been saying it. Scott Ritter's been saying it. Jeff Sax has been saying it. Almost everybody in the
show has been saying it. But here you have a a hardened uh military guy
telling us all over the world where he has been, where these horrible conflrations have occurred, and he's
never seen anything worse than what is happening uh in Gaza now. And yet
and yet I hope I have the right number here. Chris Netanyahu
denying that there is starvation. Israel is presented
as though we are applying a campaign of starvation in Gaza. What a boldfaced
lie. There is no policy of starvation in Gaza
and there is no starvation in Gaza. We've enabled
the amount required by international law to come in.
Senator Bernie Sanders a little late to this referred to what Benjamin Netanyahu
said as a dis that of the mouth of a disgusting liar.
It's even worse than that. Uh, it's hard to find words to describe Netanyahu and
especially what he just said there. I mean, it's patently obvious that the
Israelis are engaged in genocide or if that word is too strong for you, mass
murder. Uh, it's patently obvious that they're starving the population. Uh
they're creating a giant concentration camp now. Uh and it's all aimed at
pushing the Palestinians out of Gaza. This is it's just so obvious. A and the
Lieutenant Colonel who just talked to Tucker made this clear. And by the way, Judge, this is one of the reasons the
Israelis don't want to let journalists and other observers into Gaza. They
don't want those observers to see what's happening and then report back uh to
people in the west. Uh but some people get in like this lieutenant colonel and
they tell you the truth and it's consistent with everything you hear from UN UN workers uh from aid workers from
doctors who are in there and so forth and so on. This is a genocide. The
Israelis are committing what is the greatest crime against humanity,
genocide. I want you to talk about the damage that
the Netanyahu regime is causing to Israeli society. And I I I came across a
phrase in some of my reading this week that I suspect you're familiar with and have written about, Israeli victim
identity. What is that? I'm not sure exactly what it means. Uh
it probably means uh the famous saying from Ellie Wiselle that uh Jews are
never the perpetrator, they're always the victim. Or to put it in slightly different terms, they're never uh the
victimizer, they're always the victim. Well, this piece in Harets claims that
they can never again make that claim after what they're doing in Gaza. Well,
the truth is they could never make that claim a long time ago because what's
going on in Gaza is just a continuation of a long story that started uh in the
early 20th century. Uh so they have not always been the victim. If you go to
Nazi Germany and what happened during the Holocaust, of course the Jews were the victims. They were not the
victimizers. Nobody in their right mind would make that argument. But if you go
to the Middle East, if you go to what was once Palestine and is now Israel,
it's impossible to make the argument that the Israelis were the victims and not the victimizer. They were the
victimizer. uh they went into an area where there were hardly any Jews and the
land and the villages and the people were Palestinians and they stole their
land and they created this state of Israel and to do that you had to commit
crimes. You had to be the victimizer. There is no way the Zionists could have
created the state of Israel without being victimizers. And the principal victims were the Palestinians, as I like
to say. And this is an argument that will strike most people as being uh on
the extreme side, but it really is not. What the Zionists and now the Israelis
have done to the Palestinians over time is one of the great crimes of modern history.
You have made that case uh very powerfully. And judge, by the way, based on
empirical empirical evidence. Exactly. You took the words right out of my mouth. People may think John is making
this up. This is just him putting the facts together uh to suit his own views.
No. I learned this from reading books and reading articles that were written by Israelis and Western Jews. There is a
huge amount of evidence to support the argument that the Israelis were the
victimizers and the Palestinians were the victims in the context of the Middle
East. There's just no question about this and anybody who's interested and wants to study this issue will find
plenty of supporting evidence for the point that I'm making. How much damage has Netanyahu's regime
done to Israeli society? Is it recoverable? Well, I don't think Israel is going to
disappear from the map. Uh I think the Israeli state is going to remain intact.
But the question you have to ask yourself is what is that Israeli state going to look like uh when all of this
is done? Uh, I think that what Benjamin Netanyahu has done is he has exacerbated
serious tensions inside the body politic that were already there that are going
to continue well after he leaves office. He's also gotten Israel involved in
conflicts in places like Syria, uh, Lebanon, uh, and, uh, uh, and, and with
Iran in, in ways that are going to linger for a long time and cause really
serious damage on the Israeli home front. I'm a firm believer that a thoroughly militarized state that is
fighting wars all the time is undermining basic liberal values, basic
decency on the home front. And you see this in spades inside of Israel when you
look at the body populace's attitude towards what's going on in Gaza. Right?
Furthermore, he's got Israel stuck back in Gaza. The Israelis got out of Gaza in
2005. And they got out of Gaza in 2005 under the leadership of Ariel Chiron,
who was no pussycat. And Chiron got out because Chiron understood full well that
that place is a hornets's nest. Well, they're back in there and they've been unable to expel the Palestinians. And
the question you have to ask yourself is, how does this all end? And it's very hard to tell a happy story. The final
point I'd make to you is that Israel is in a position where it is extremely
dependent on the United States. Israel and the United States fight these wars
together. They execute the genocide together. Israel is no longer the independent state that it once thought
it was. So I think for all of these different reasons, Israel is a country that is in serious trouble and that
situation does not improve with time. If anything, it gets worse. Does Donald
Trump control Benjamin Netanyahu or does Benjamin Netanyahu control Donald Trump?
Well, I think it's quite clear that the balance of power in that relationship clearly favors Benjamin Netanyahu. And I
constantly wonder what's going on with Trump. Because if you look around the
world, almost every leader, and here we're talking mainly about the West,
almost every leader in the West is beginning to bend on what is happening
inside of Gaza. You see this with the French, you see this with the British, the Canadians, right? They're all
beginning to move in a way uh that is antagonistic towards Israel. Not
completely, but Trump doesn't move at all. It's really quite amazing. And it's
hard to believe that this is in the American national interest, that he thinks it's in our interest to support
Israel no matter what. We are getting he is getting a huge amount of uh criticism
for this. But he's not bending at all. And I sometimes wonder why that's the
case. And I wouldn't be surprised if behind closed doors he's been threatened
in ways that make it clear that he better not show any criticism of Israel
or he'll be punished for it. Professor Mir Shimemer, thank you very much. These are such unpleasant topics,
but you have a way of explaining it so that it's easy uh and fulfilling to
understand. Thank you, my dear friend. Thanks for coming back on the show, back at your regular time. and we look
forward to seeing you next week. You're welcome, judge. Thank you. All the best to you, my dear friend. Coming up at 4:00 today from a
beach in the south of France, I think, uh, Pepe Escobar, judge Npalitano for
judging freedom.

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[SPECIAL] - Scott Ritter : Trump deploys Nuclear Subs to Russia over Social Media Rift
Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom
Streamed live 100 minutes ago



Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Npalitano 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 uh this week.
There's no better person on the planet
for us to turn literally for us to turn
to to explain the dangers, the
significance and the idiocy
uh behind what President Trump ordered
today. What did he announce that he did
today and what did he order and did what
is the significance of it?
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 deployed. I I think
we will touch upon this later. Um Ohio
class uh submarine um launch ballistic
missile capable uh submarines armed with
trident u nuclear or you know solid fuel
missiles. Each one tipped with multiple
thermonuclear warheads. Um he has said
that he has ordered them deployed into
the appropriate areas um you know in in
in response to a Russian tweet uh from
Dimmitri Midto. This means areas where
the submarines missiles can target
Russia. Um this is extraordinarily
dangerous. You know, the United States
maintains
um 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. Uh 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 uh an Ohio
class submarine was deployed into the
Indian Ocean close to Iran
where it's um Trident missiles armed
with um W76-2 low yield nuclear weapons
um 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, uh, is
he talking about two additional
submarines to this, uh, or is he talking
about redeploying
two submarines out of their, uh,
existing stations into
um, new deployment areas that make them
even more of a threat to Russia.
The tweet he's responding to is one from
Dimmitri Midv in which Midv sort of
mocked the president as
MV is the former president of Russia
who's the number two person on their
national security council
who who in recent years has been more
publicly bellose than President Putin.
He's like the the bad cop to Putin's
good cop. Um
and and what did he do? pick a social
media fight with Trump and Trump took
the bait.
Mean tweets. This is literally 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 Midv
tweeted. Midv was telling Trump to knock
it off with the dangerous threats saying
that you know if you do this you America
can end up looking like the walking dead
uh 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.
um so that if they are 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 Vladkinsk, 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 of what they
callina. These were 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 me tweeting for years now. I
mean, I think most people, you know,
view Dmitri Midva's tweets with sort of,
you know, humor. Um, yeah, they hurt
sometimes. He's he's very good at what
he does. Uh, 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 Midv as if his tweets
actually will translate into a 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 uh exactly uh what Trump
said. Chris has prepared a full screen.
This is from his social uh his truth
social based on the highly provocative
statements of the former president of
Russia Dmitri Medvev 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 Hegth
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.