Judge Napolitano 3/4/2026

Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Npalitano here for a judging freedom. Today is Wednesday, March 4th, 2026. Colonel Douglas McGregor will be with us in just a moment on Trump's war of choice. We should have never got into the Middle East. We should have never got into the Middle East. Under my leadership, we will turn the page forever on those foolish, stupid days of neverending wars that >> we're rebuilding our military stronger than ever before. And we are not going to deplete it again on stupid, senseless, endless wars. World War II has never been closer than it is right now. We need to clean house of all of the war mongers and America last globalists in the deep state. I am the president who delivers peace. I was the first president in decades who didn't start a war. And the worst, most incompetent, most corrupt president in history is going to drag us into World War II. And this horrible, horrible president is dragging us toward World War II. We're going to be in World War II soon because I think we would have been good with Iran. I don't want to do anything bad to Iran. Large sections of the Middle East, I mean, look at the death and destruction that's taken place. What would happen if we had a war? We won't with me, but you will have World War II, I believe, without me. >> That of course, Colonel McGregor, welcome here and thank you for sitting through all of that. That of course was President Trump at various points and various campaigns contradicting what we've all been uh observing. Has the Trump administration in your view uh offered a morally cohesive uh legally uh grounded, constitutionally compliant basis for this war? >> Gosh, is that a trick question? >> No. [laughter] >> Well, obviously not. Uh there there's no evidence for that. You know, I don't see any strategy at work at all. We are basically trying to bomb a country that is the size of Western Europe with 93 million people into submission to Mr. Netany and Yahoo's demands. There's no strategy. That's what we're trying to do. There is no endstate uh other than the likely eventual disintegration or destruction of Iran, which is ultimately what we're trying to achieve at this point. Now whether or not we achieve it that's another another matter but I think that's the desired end state barring any sudden capitulation by Iran. And the sad part is the world is suffering. This is a a global economic catastrophe. You know you you've stopped virtually everything from flowing in and out of the Gulf at this point. And I don't think you can put the United States Navy into the Gulf with the goal of protecting shipping. I think we'd simply offer up our ships for destruction. So, we're we're not dealing with reality at the moment. They've all Iranians have struck what 27 military bases. Uh right now, Iranian missiles are striking all over Israel at roughly 4,000 miles per hour. Uh a single Iranian drone flew more than a,000 miles and destroyed a British air base in Cyprus. Was never even identified or detected. and Iran has at least 10,000 of those and the number is rising. And I think we have uh what 500 interceptor missiles left in the theater. And you know, as I think others have pointed out, you've got to go out of the theater practically either all the way to Diego Garcia or India or if you're in the Mediterranean back to Europe to reload. And I don't see any evidence that this war is going to anytime soon. So th this is this is a disaster for us, for our friends and allies, for the world. >> Does the US military have sufficient munitions to sustain uh an attack solely from the air? >> Uh you know, at this point I don't think uh it's clear. Now we do have munitions. Do we have enough precisiong guided munitions? Do we have enough precisiong guided missiles? That's a different question. Uh I I think we can continue to bomb, but bombing on its own has never produced the desired result. I mean, this this is what we're up against. And it certainly since the end of the Second World War until the present time, no bombing campaign on its own has brought any country to its knees. So I don't see any evidence that's going to happen with Iran. The bigger issue for me though, Judge, right now is the economy. You know, President Trump did not pick up the phone and call Prime Minister Modi in India or the Prime Minister in Japan or the president in South Korea, let alone Xi obviously about whom he obviously doesn't care and ask the question, look, we're considering military action. What will be the effect on you? Is this going to damage you? Well, right now, I'd say it's very damaging to both Japan and South Korea. Horrendously damaging. Both of them import between 60 and 70% of their petroleum uh from the Persian Gulf. Now, China gets 50%, but the [clears throat] Chinese have built up enormous strategic reserves. So, this is going to affect them very much. And in the meantime, they're building new pipelines coming out of Russia. You know, by the way, Russia is doing a land office business. Everybody that needs oil is turning to Russia. So, if our goal was to enrich Russia, make it stronger and more effective, gosh, I think we've managed that. Um, can can any of these objectives at all be achieved? The uh destruction of all of Iran's offensive weaponry, which I understand the vast majority of it hasn't been used yet or even revealed. It's still underground. Uh I thought the destruction of the nuclear capability obliterated was taken care of uh in June and a persuasion of the Iranian people who are now united after the murder of the Ayatollah that they should take over their government and toss the government out and put in somebody friendly to the Trump administration. These are not realistic goals, are they? No, we we've always been delusional on that score. And uh we in the world are sliding now into global recession. That's certainly not going to make us terribly popular. It's certainly not going to hasten the end of the of the war for uh the purposes that we're waging it. But we may ultimately have to pull out because [clears throat] of enormous pressure from the rest of the world. It says, you know, you you've uh created a disaster. You've got to lead. That could happen. >> [clears throat] >> I think right now there are other things about which the administration is not talking. You know, I think our our era of uh local or regional hegemony in the Middle East is over. I think we're going to be swept completely out of the Persian Gulf. Now, will the Persian Gulf be rebuilt? Probably. Will someone finance it? I guess so. But there are going to be new rules and we're not going to be there. I mean, why would you welcome us back in? because the population certainly doesn't want us there. That's increasingly obvious. The ruling elites wanted us there on the assumption that we would protect them. Well, we've turned out to be incapable of protecting them. So, this whole notion of deterrence has been lost. And I don't think this bombing campaign is going to restore it. So, right now, you know, [clears throat] this this whole thing is burning down the economy. uh everything that needs petroleum is absent from all the major countries in the world except ourselves and to some extent also in Egypt or excuse me uh Europe. So I I don't see us achieving the real goal which is that uh you know we we have a sort of battleship Missouri ceremony where Trump uh steps up and accepts the surrender of Iran. Uh I don't see that occurring and I don't think the Chinese or the Russians will let that occur. What will the Chinese and Russians do uh if it looks as though the United States is effectively degrading the infrastructure and governmental u structures in Iran? >> Well, China has uh of of the two the greatest interest in the per permanent survival of the Iranian state and and nation. They're not going to welcome any attempts to break it up. Uh the Russians won't like it either. Now, the Russians want to finish up the war in Ukraine, and I think that's their primary focus. I think the Chinese will continue to provide whatever intelligence support, whatever missiles, whatever technical support that they can. They do have some Chinese pilots on the ground who could conceivably fly Iranian aircrafts and some of those aircraft are of Chinese manufacturer. Uh I don't think it's gotten to the point yet where that that is seen as a necessity. You know, we really haven't made a dent in this enormous missile arsenal. The missiles are continuing to land on Israel without much difficulty. And I think they're going to continue to try and hit us at sea. Now, we're pulling back and as far away as we can get to hopefully stay out of range, but we're discovering that some of these missiles have a greater range than we really anticipated. So, I I think right now Moscow and Beijing are watching carefully to see where this goes. But we should be careful in the United States not to declare victory. Uh yes, I'm sure we have air supremacy in the northwest of the country. We may have it increasingly in other areas, but air superiority alone has has not guaranteed success in war, especially when you have no ground force. And the notion of putting your ground force into the place is absurd. Judge, >> would there be pressure uh put on President Trump uh by the Arab uh magnates in the Gulf who want this war over so that they can get back to uh their production of oil and living their ultra rich lives? Well, aren't these attacks on Dohai, >> chasing the wealthy elites away? >> Oh, I'm sure some of them have left. I mean, that's what the Amir of Kuwait and his family did as soon as it became clear the Iraqis were on their way. So, no doubt they're in London or somewhere in Switzerland. [clears throat] Have to understand something. From the vantage point of the general Arab populace, the ruling elites, whether they're in Riad or they're in the Emirates, are all seen as members of the Epstein class. And right now, the the Arab populations there are not exactly cheering on us and their elites. They see us as the enemy. I I think other guests have come on and told you that. I don't I think we're finished in the region, frankly. I think when this is over, we'll be out. You know, frankly, that that doesn't bother me in the least because I think we've overstayed our welcome all over the world and should pull back as much as possible and stop uh participating in alliances that are guaranteed to drag us into war on the behalf of little states when we don't necessarily share their interests. So, that's fine, but I I don't think it's a good way for us to get out. But, I think that's effectively what's going to happen. The Secretary of Defense who calls himself the Secretary of War says this [clears throat] war was dictated by God was really dictated by the donor class in the United States and the presidential subservience to the prime minister of Israel. Isn't this war about Israeli hegemony in the region? >> Uh I certainly envy people that have this kind of pipeline straight to God. Uh there aren't too many out there and it's uh it's remarkable. Uh but I have a feeling he's got the wrong number and I don't think God is in any way, shape or form involved in this process. Look, this is all about Israeli Jewish supremacy in the Middle East and also I would argue Zionist billionaire supremacy in the financial world. And Mr. Netanyahu has rolled the dice with the help of President Trump and everything is at risk right now. They've taken an enormous gamble that we can bomb these people out of business and that that removes in the minds of the Israelis and their Zionist billionaire agents in the United States any obstacle to total domination. I think that's a serious mistake. The rest of the region is waking up right now. The Mossad and CIA and I I imagine MI6 are working overtime to try and organize thousands of Kurds in northern Iraq and Syria to into a force that can invade northwestern Iran. Now, think about that. That's where they're trying to mount a ground invasion. That that's a catastrophe. First of all, if they try it, they're all going to be destroyed. But how does that affect Turkey, you know, or Turkey as they want you to call it now? And the Turks are going to look at that. They see the Kurdish threat to their country as existential. A Kurdistan can't exist without chunks of Iran and Iraq, not just Syria, but also Turkey. And the Turks have said it's out of the question. That's one thing on which the Turks and the Iranians can agree. I you know, this sort of thing also suggests that we're we're already unreasonably desperate. We're looking for a ground force. And the fact that this keeps coming up and we say that's even a possibility suggests to me that our air campaign is not nearly as effective as we're trying to convince everybody that it is. And just keep something in mind, judge. If you tried to move forces into Saudi Arabia or through Israel into Syria or something in today's world, they'd be destroyed before they got off the boats. If they got off the boats, they'd be destroyed as they concentrated in the harbors. Now, why would this happen? Because we today are dealing with persistent surveillance from satellitebased uh intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance. Uh you can't repeat Desert Storm. If you try to, you'll be destroyed. All the ports that we would have normally used would be targeted and eliminated. So, I don't I don't know what they're doing except grasping for straws. And remember from the very beginning when this started, everyone understood the only thing Iran's got to do is survive. That's what they have to do. We, on the other hand, who have made these outrageous demands on behalf of Israel, we have to conquer Iran. Literally, that's not going to happen. Colonel, uh, twice in the last nine months, uh, the president has sent his real estate agent negotiators, uh, to negotiate with Iran in negotiations that were essentially a fraud, a deception, and the creation of a false sense of security. The very same thing happened in uh, this weekend as happened uh, in June. It was even a little bit more elaborate this time around because Secretary of State Rubio announced he was flying to Israel on Monday as again to create the false sense of security. My question is how will this affect talks between the United States and Russia? What does the Kremlin think of the credibility of the United States, the Trump administration, and Trump's negotiators? I doubt seriously that anyone in Moscow or Beijing or for that matter anywhere today is likely to believe very much of anything we say. And why wouldn't they? You know, I think judge, you've asked me repeatedly for some time over the last eight, nine months. Will we attack Iran? Do you think we're going to attack Iran? And I have always said yes. And the only question was never if, but when. Uh, I thought they would try to do this before Christmas, but we weren't postured for it. We weren't prepared for it. Neither were the Israelis really. And so it was put off in from January into February. Now, what are we watching? I think we watched frustration on the part of Mr. Netanyahu with the slowness with which we moved forward uh to execute this mission. And I think he decided to get it started. And we were alerted, I'm sure, but nevertheless somewhat surprised. So when you listen to Mr. Rubio or Mr. Hegsth or any number of these people, you're listening to all sorts of individuals trying to come up with a rationale for why this burst on the scene so suddenly and why the Israelis went in on their own to begin with. Again, there has never been a strategy. There has never been a clear annunciation of what the purpose is other than to destroy Israel's enemies. There has been no comment on the methodology other than to say bombs and missiles and there is no endstate other than the capitulation of Iran to President Trump and Mr. Netanyahu's great will. That's it. Uh so anything they say should be taken with a grain of salt at this point. But one thing is certain, I'm sure we're sending more stuff to the region. Do you buy do you buy the argument? >> Well, actually, let me play this clip for you uh of Secretary Rubio contradicting himself. Chris, >> please guys, I can't hear him all. Yes. >> Yesterday, you told us that Israel was going to strike Iran and that that's why we needed to get involved. Today, the president said that >> Iran was going to get >> Yeah, your statement is false. So, that's not what he I was asked very specifically. Were you there yesterday? >> Yes, I question. >> No. Did you Were you the one that cuz somebody asked me a question yesterday? Did we go in because of Israel? And I said, you were asking me, are you that followup? And I said, no. I told you this had to happen anyway. The second question that been asked is why now? Well, there's two reasons why now. The first is it was abundantly clear that if Iran came under attack by anyone, the United States or Israel or anyone, they were going to respond and respond against the United States. The orders. The third is the assessment that was made that if we stood and waited for that attack to come first before we hit them, we would suffer much higher casualties. And so the president made the very wise decision. He we knew that there was going to be an Israeli action. We knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces. And we knew that if we didn't preemptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties and perhaps even hire those killed. And then we would all be here answering questions about why we knew that and didn't act. I this that Netanyahu called up and said, "We're going in without you, so you better join us." Or do you think the whole thing was planned back at Mara Lago around New Year's Eve? >> Well, I think the decision to bomb or to attack Iran was made quite early. I think that was understood after the 12-day war. Uh the 12-day war was not enough to do the damage that Mr. Netanyahu required. And I'm sure uh in the months after that there were many conversations and there was always an agreement on attacking Iran. The question was when and under what conditions and circumstances. And again I think uh in this particular point you're sort of getting some of the truth. Perhaps Mr. Rubio should think about a future in disco because I've never seen anyone dance as rapidly and effectively an answer to a question as he has. I mean the man is really something. uh he can talk his way into or out of almost anything. Unfortunately, none of it has much to do with the truth. Iran was not going to preempt. Believe me, the the voices that suggested that were shouted down quickly. Moscow and Beijing both advised Thyron under no circumstances will you preempt because to do so would sacrifice your position of advantage as the victim in the war. Now, we don't care about that. We think, well, you know, Iran's been our problem for 47 years. You know, Iran hasn't changed a bit in 47 years. No, Iran's changed profoundly. It's not the world's leading sponsor of terrorism. If we were really concerned about Islamic radicalism and terrorism, well, we'd look pretty closely at what happens inside Pakistan. We'd be looking right now at what's going on inside Syria under Mr. Galani, the uh alumnus of ISIS and al-Qaeda and al-Nusra and so forth. We're not. This is entirely because the Israelis know, at least they think that they know that the destruction of Iran opens up opportunities for them. And remember, there are still people in New York and elsewhere, as well as in Washington looking at the oil fields. They would like to capture all those resources and harness them to our interests. At the end of the day, that's one thing that seems to have happened at Venezuela. We didn't change anything in Venezuela. Venezuela is still an independent state, except that it no longer can sell oil without our blessing. And so, we're very happy to take the oil that comes out, repurpose it, and use it as we see fit. I think uh President Trump would like to do something similar, so would uh Mr. Rubio, and so would Mr. Netanyahu to Iran, but you you're not going to be able to do that. And so you you've got Iran scheduled for the same kind of extinction that Russia was. You know, we're going to break it up. It's going to fragment. It's going to be divided. We're going to do with it whatever we see fit. That's the thinking. I don't think it's going to happen. And I think the Iranians have a lot more up their sleeve. And their missiles, uh, we have what, 500 interceptors in the region. They've got at least 10,000. We're just talking about anti-missile missiles. We haven't even begun to talk about the vast numbers of ballistic missiles and so forth. Uh this whole thing is out of control. It's going to continue to race out of control because we can't manage it because we haven't thought it through. How, if at all, will the this US and Israeli attack uh on Iran affect the Kremlin's execution of the special military operation? in Ukraine. >> Well, from the Russian vantage point, they've seen all the resources that might otherwise at least part of them flowed to Ukraine flow out of the theater. So, they I think they're viewing this as a tremendous opportunity. The only thing that stands in their way at this point is the soggy ground, the mud season. When that's over, and I imagine that'll be in April sometime, maybe midappril, the ground is solid. There's nothing to prevent them from moving decisively to take Odessa. And frankly, when you take Odessa and Iran becomes a land or excuse me, Ukraine becomes a landlocked country, the war is for all intents and purposes over. Now, can they still launch guerrilla warfare? Well, maybe. But then the Russians will simply follow up by marching into Kief and that may yet happen because they may conclude there's no alternative. We are trying to sustain that as well as sustain this crazy bomb and air air and missile campaign against Iran. We're we're overstretched. >> There's no question about it. >> Has the president uh made a bed, so to speak, that's going to be very difficult for Republicans to sleep in. I think this is so bad that within a month instead of the great victory that the you know his supporters are touting people are going to be talking about the 25th amendment judge and I'm not sure that President Trump is going to be president before the year's over. I think he may well be gone. And that's not simply because of this utterly stupid and futile campaign against Iran. It's because the global impact of this as we've been discussing, >> right? All the the the the Straits of Hormuz are an economic lifeline for countries like India and they're not the only ones. We're going to see most of the world just walk away from all of this and demand an end to it. I I don't think it's something that we can sustain. Now casualties, I don't think we know what's happened. In my experience, in my short life with casualties is that the United States armed forces, the Department of War that is now has always has always slow rolled casualties. We did that in World War I. We fought for 110 days. We had a thousand dead in every battle. That's a thousand dead every day in 110 days. Now, did we tell everybody about that? No. We slow rolled it because the population inside the United States that didn't want to go into World War I anyway was becoming very uncomfortable with the casualties that were coming back during World War II. We lied. That was the easiest thing to do. We said that we'd inflicted terrible casualties on the Germans and the Bulge and we were hugely successful. No, we had 200,000 casualties during the period when the Bulge was being fought in in Belgium and and France and Germany. Uh the Germans 68,000. Stop and think about that. What a difference. Did we announce that? No, we lied. We we suppressed those figures for years and years and years. So I don't think we're going to get the truth about how many Americans lives have been lost or how many have been wounded for some time. So might as well forget that. As far as Iran is concerned, I think we're over a thousand dead in that country. And I'm sure that we plan on thousands more. And the Israelis will celebrate that to no end. But the question is, when do the Israelis, who are dealing with hundreds of missiles coming in at 4,000 mph, finally stand up and say, "Washington, we can't do this anymore. If you don't stop this, if you don't pull out of this, we may have to use a nuclear weapon to end this conflict." That's the greatest single danger right now. We're not going to do that. Neither will the Russians nor the uh Chinese. And of course, we know the Iranians don't have a nuclear weapon. That's all nonsense. It has been nonsense for a long time. The question is, what do we do when the Israelis state that? Because they are determined to absolutely eradicate everything and anything in the region that stands in uh in the way of their absolute hegemony and absolute control. And when gas prices are up to $5 a gallon in the US, [clears throat] >> I would hope that someone in the United States will raise some questions, but uh frankly, the Israelis don't care about that, judge. The Israelis are about Israel's long-term interests, and their Zionist billionaires are going to stick with them to the bitter end because they are preeminently Israelis whether or not they're American citizens. >> Conor McGregor, thank you very much. Thanks for uh letting me uh question you all across the board. Deeply appreciate it. I know you're much in demand. Thanks for the time. You've given us all my best to you. >> Okay. Same to you, Judge. Thanks. Byebye. Thank you. See you again soon.

Trump's War: A Mess of His Own Making