Transcription
Undeclared wars are commonplace. Tragically, our government engages in preemptive war, otherwise known as aggression, with no complaints from the American people. Sadly, we have become accustomed to living with the illegitimate use of force by government. To develop a truly free society, the issue of initiating force must be understood and rejected.
What if sometimes to love your country you had to alter or abolish the government? What if Jefferson was right? What if that government is best which governs least? What if it is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong? What if it is better to perish fighting for freedom than to live as a slave? What if freedom's greatest hour of danger is now?
Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Tuesday, May 19, 2026. Professor Jeffrey Sachs will be here in a minute. What did Trump accomplish in China? And is Israel on the brink? But first, this.
If the last few years have taught us anything, it's that the systems we rely on can fail. And when they do, we're on our own. That's why I want to tell you about my Patriot Supply, America's original Patriot Preparedness Company. When you get their flagship solar backup generator, the ultra powerful grid doctor 3300, you'll also get over $1,000 worth of survival essentials absolutely free. Four weeks worth of emergency food, water filtration, and more, all absolutely free. But with everything going on right now, there's no telling how long it'll be available. So go to preparewiththeadjudge.com right now to see what you can get for free. Don't wait until it's too late. Get your complete preparedness set up today. Go to preparewiththeadjudge.com. That's preparewiththeadjudge.com.
Professor Sachs, welcome here. Uh, my dear friends, I I know you're traveling and am deeply appreciative of your time as always. What did President Trump achieve by his trip to China?
Uh, well, he avoided any disasters. He didn't make a fool of himself. Uh, he didn't make threats that the United States uh uh couldn't carry out. He um, he went and accomplished nothing, which under the circumstances is pretty good these days. Usually, we're accomplishing negative things. I don't think he set back any cause uh during this trip. It was uh, in one way inconsequential, but that by itself is actually big positive news these days because the United States has been digging itself deeper and deeper into a hole and I don't see any damage that he created on this trip.
Did he really think? Well, who knows what he thought. It seems that he thought he could use the power of his personality, such as it is, to persuade President Xi to persuade the Iranians to do something pleasing to the United States with respect to the Strait of Hormuz and enriched uranium, and Xi wouldn't have any of it. Look, uh, of course, um, China is not going to press Iran when Iran has been attacked by Israel and the United States. If this were a case that Iran was the aggressor, this would be quite different. This is a case in which Israel and the United States launched an unprovoked war against Iran. And China is an ally and and a customer of Iranian oil and a supporter of Iran. And Iran has been attacked. So uh, no, China is not going to pressure Iran to give in to uh outrageous US demands. Trump went to war thinking he could demand whatever he wants of Iran. He did not want to negotiate with Iran. If he thought that China was going to somehow save him from the disaster that he's created for himself and the world, that wasn't going to happen.
But let me add one basic point that I do think is real. I don't know if it was discussed or not between Trump and Xi, but I would say the following. What is the solution for this mess right now? The solution is for the United States just to go home. We're not going to get, in my opinion, uh, a comprehensive agreement because what the US is demanding major concessions by Iran make no sense when Iran has been attacked by the United States and Israel and has every reason to believe that if it made major concessions, it would be attacked again. So Iran is going to keep up its deterrence. It's not going to give up many things that the United States is demanding.
But then we could turn it another direction. Suppose the United States just left, which it should do. In other words, the United States should just unwind a terrible blunder that Trump made. Also a crime. By the way, I don't want to minimize the criminality and the venality and the murderousness of it because all of that is real. But I want to call it also a blunder because it was from every point of view, strategic and tactical, a terrible mistake. He should order the US Navy to end the blockade and come home. He should stop the military actions.
Now, here is where China would be helpful. Uh, if the United States retreated, the Strait of Hormuz would open again, and China would help with that because it would say to Iran, the military threat is over. The strait can open again. Uh, Iran would keep some measure of control because the United States and Israel are fundamentally not trustworthy. Let me say it again. The United States and Israel are fundamentally not trustworthy. They don't keep their word. They don't honor promises. They are not worthy in signing agreements. Right now, Israel is an assassination state. It believes that foreign policy should be run by killing the counterparts. Trump obviously is not a man of his word, and the US government under Trump is not a country that abides by its commitments.
But here's again my point. If the United States just goes home, China will say to Iran, quite credibly, "Open the straits. The US is gone. If things revert, well, things will revert. You'll have your deterrence. But don't take more provocative actions with the US retreating, for example, to take actions to domineer over your neighbors in the Gulf or to make new threats against Israel or against anyone else." Iran would not do that. It would not have an incentive to do that. China would be constructive in Iran not doing that. So there is an element of truth in the idea that China can be constructive and helpful, and I believe that it would be. The United States should just go home.
What happens? This is I have to ask you this because President Xi lectured President Trump on this before he even introduced him to the crowd. What happens if Trump authorizes the sale of 11 billion dollars in military hardware to Taiwan?
Well, it it would be a continuation of a great instability of US-China relations. It would put us closer to some kind of disaster. I don't think by itself it would be a cause of war, but it would be a breakdown of any kind of normal relations. And again, Americans or people in Europe should understand it would be like China saying, "We're selling uh weapon systems to New York. They don't like Washington, so they want weapon systems." Of course, the the whole idea is completely crazy, but the United States arrogates to itself the um, the the right to sell arms to a part of China. This is a big mistake. We should respect China the same way we expect China to respect us. This is the fundamental failing of American foreign policy that we have no concept of the golden rule. But the golden rule, to do to others as you would have them do to you, and to not do to others what you would not have them do to you, is the basis of peace and diplomacy. The United States, because it is an extraordinarily arrogant country, because it thinks that it runs the world, which it does not, and because we happen to have a president who usually is delusional in his beliefs about what American power really is, does not abide by the golden rule. But we should with regard to China. China has said this is a red line. The whole message of the summit to President Trump was, "Don't meddle in our internal affairs."
Right? Don't. And this is a very valid point. And American politicians in Washington who say otherwise know nothing about China's history. Know nothing about the Qing dynasty. Know nothing about the Cairo Conference in 1943, in which the United States committed to returning Taiwan to China after World War II, because Taiwan was part of China that had been grabbed by Japanese uh militarism and imperialism. These are basic facts. Washington doesn't deal in facts for decades. It deals in arrogance.
But Trump, to his credit, at least, and I'm going to give him credit for the moment, said, "Oh, I'm going to think about this arms uh deal." I We've never heard him say something like that. He actually said a couple of things. "We don't want to go to a war 9,000 kilometers away." He also said another good thing. He said, "We're not looking for anyone to declare independence," referring to the idea that Taiwan might declare secession from China, in which case a war would break out. And President Trump was right to say that's also not in America's interest. But the point is this was the message from President Xi to President Trump. It's a valid message. It's not bullying. It's an absolutely right message. Here is a red line of our country, a superpower. We respect your red lines. You respect our red lines. If we had acted in the same way vis-à-vis Russia, which said that NATO enlargement to Russia's border in Ukraine was a red line, a point made all the way back in 2008 as vividly as possible, we wouldn't be in the war in Ukraine either, and millions of people would not be dead or maimed or wounded gravely by that war. This is the most basic point for us: respect the red lines of other countries and expect them to do the same with you, and we can avoid disaster.
Do these crazy uh neocons like Victoria Nuland and Lindsey Graham actually believe that Taipei, the capital of Taiwan, is the capital of China?
No, but they believe that they should harass China. They believe that we should make life difficult for China, just as we should make life difficult for Russia. They believe in instigating trouble abroad. Why? First, it's business. Uh, it's hundreds of billions of dollars of military contracts. Second, they are imbued with a fundamental fallacy that the United States is all-powerful and can get its way, and that anytime the United States doesn't get its way, it's because it's showing weakness. Showing weakness, not because it's weak. They have a fundamental misunderstanding. The Greeks called it hubris. This is uh what uh Jay William Fulbright, our greatest senatorial guide to foreign policy 60 years ago, called the arrogance of power. And Lindsey Graham is exhibit A. The man has been in favor of every war for decades. He's an absolute disaster for the American people, and he has rung up a tab of 7 to 10 trillion dollars, which is now in our public debt. It's not his money. He's just leaving it to my children. He's leaving it to future generations. He's weakening America because he's playing a game and because he has a delusion of power. So, no, he doesn't believe that Taipei is the capital of China, but he does believe we should give China a hard time. How well is that going to work out? How many wars does the United States have to fight to give other people a hard time? Why don't we give them a pass, and they give us a pass, and maybe we'll have some peace, and the president of the United States won't have to ask for $1.5 trillion dollar in military spending in the budget he just submitted alongside cuts in basic healthcare, housing, education, and other essential needs of the American people. That's what this is about. And Lindsey Graham should be ashamed. He's got the worst record in the Senate on this war-mongering from morning till night, every day for years.
Here he is on uh, sorry to ruin your evening, but here he is on one of the Sunday talk shows two days ago on Iran. Chris, number 13.
So you're calling for strikes on the energy infrastructure.
Yeah, I'm calling to hurt this regime. If you do the same old thing, you're going to get the same result. Hurt them more. Maybe they'll make a deal if you hurt them enough. But right now, I think they're trying to wait us out. I think they're playing games. And in the words of the president, I think they're crazy. I think he's right.
The man is um, the the man needs to be retired, basically, honestly, because this is so destructive. What will happen if we were to follow his line? And we've been following his line. Oil prices today are at $110 a barrel. That's up from about $65 a barrel. Gasoline prices in the United States are between $4 and $5 a gallon. All over the world, the world economy is hurting massively. Lindsey Graham supported a disastrous blunder. Now he says escalate the blunder. And what would happen? We know what would happen. The Middle East would be destroyed quite quickly. That's what hypersonic missiles do. That's what drone attacks do. That's what Iran has said every day. Its deterrence. You heard us. We respond. And so Lindsey Graham is a a council of recklessness, of really a kind of idiocy. Actually, he, if anyone would just do the simple job of taking all the statements he's made about war over the last 25 years, you would see the reality that I'm talking about. This man has been wrong on every single occasion.
What happens uh if Trump attempts a serious peace negotiation with Iran? What would Netanyahu do to stop him? Jeff?
Netanyahu would try to stop him, and of course, the uh, the Zionist lobby would be out in force. Um, but frankly, Israel has no real hold on a president that acts like a president. If Donald Trump says no to Netanyahu, it's a no. And given the position of the American people on this, which are about 60% opposed to Trump's war and maybe 20% in support, Trump would actually regain some political ground in the United States. In other words, this isn't a politically risky decision. This is an obvious decision. If Trump wants to regain some support, he should act like president of the United States, not like a subordinate member of the Israeli Knesset listening to the Israeli prime minister who sold him a bill of goods. This war was concocted by Netanyahu. Trump swallowed it because he doesn't understand and he has no process. And we've broken down all real analytical processes in the United States. We play by whim and by true social posts. That's it. And Trump stepped into it. But Netanyahu guided him. And so the right thing for the president of the United States to do is to say to Netanyahu, "It's over." You know, Netanyahu is like Lindsey Graham. He's been wrong consistently for 30 years. He and Lindsey Graham share this tab of 7 to 10 trillion dollars. So, it's not hard politically. It's not hard politically to say no to uh Netanyahu because the American people are calling for that.
What economic and cultural shape is Israel in after Netanyahu's forever wars?
Israel became basically what we call the military-industrial complex, but that became the entire state. So Israel became, as Netanyahu himself proudly declared, Sparta. Sparta, meaning a society just organized towards war. This is a devastation to Israel's soul. This is a repudiation of the most basic values of Judaism. Uh, what they have created is the opposite of Jewish ethics. Uh, it's a terrible tragedy for a country to go down the road of just being a war state by choice because they don't try to make peace. They just want to make war. They think it's big business. The Israeli stock market is up. That doesn't mean the Israeli people are in good shape. They're burying their young people. They're witnessing hundreds of thousands of their neighbors, their family members leaving the country. Israel's at war everywhere because that became its business. So in terms of the soul of the country, it's devastating. Completely devastating.
In terms of the uh, economy, are professional people leaving or businesses uh closing?
I have taxes being paid.
Look, I I have to say that um, we have a big business in the US in Silicon Valley, which became its own war machine. It is deeply connected with Israel's equivalent, which is also a war machine. So I don't want to deny that there are lots of people making a lot of money because these wars are expensive. You and I are paying for them. Mind you, it's not consumers that are paying for them. Of course, we're not paying for them in the way that the people of Gaza are paying with their lives, or the people of Lebanon are paying with their lives, or the people of Iran are paying with their lives, but we're paying for it financially. And it's a business. And so Israel is in the war business. Of course, many other parts of the Israeli economy, when when the fighting stops, if and when it does, will be seen to have been gravely weakened by this. Tourism has collapsed. I'm sure that many other sectors have collapsed because people of skills that want to raise their family not in perpetual war uh and not in some crazy vision of uh trying to fulfill some line from the book of Joshua from 2500 years ago, they've left. So they don't want to be part of this. And who would want to be part of this in their right minds? So I'm sure that the overall economy is uh hurting in many ways, but what I'm saying is that there's a part of it that is revving because of the amount of money that is put into war.
Wow. Jeff, thank you very much. I know it's late. You are. I really appreciate uh your.
Great, great to speak with you.
The the president apparently has a narrow window in which to attack because of the World Cup and and uh the.
There's there's no window. There's no window. If he attacks, it's a disaster. There is no window. Period.
Well, the reason I say that is because he has intimated it, and we may need you back on air before your your uh weekly uh time slot. Uh, if he does attack, we know what the response will be.
Y absolutely.
Yeah. Thank you.
Well, let's let let's hope we don't see that, but we'll talk if we do.
Okay. All the best. Thank you.
Thanks a lot.
Sure. And uh, coming up uh today at 3:00 Eastern, if you're watching us live, in 33 minutes on all of this, what happens if Trump does attack? Colonel Karen Kwastkowski, Justin Napolitano for Judging Freedom. Heat. Heat.