Scott Ritter: Trump Deploys Nuclear Subs to Russia Over Social Media Rift (Transcript)

So when he said he’s ordered two deployed, is he talking about two additional submarines to this or is he talking about redeploying two submarines out of their existing stations into new deployment areas that make them even more of a threat to Russia? The tweet he’s responding to is one from Dmitry Medvedev in which Medvedev sort of mocked the president.

JUDGE NAPOLITANO: He is the former president of Russia who’s the number two person on their National Security Council, who in recent years has been more publicly bellicose than President Putin.

SCOTT RITTER: He’s like the bad cop to Putin’s good cop.

JUDGE NAPOLITANO: What did he do, pick a social media fight with Trump and Trump took the bait?

The “Mean Tweets” Nuclear Crisis

SCOTT RITTER: 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 Medvedev tweeted.

Medvedev was telling Trump to knock it off with the dangerous threats, saying that if you do this, America can end up looking like the walking dead because of the dead hand. The dead hand is a reference to the perimeter system, which is a defensive system put in place by the Soviet Union back in the 1980s, so that if they 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 Vodkinsk, 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 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 call Sirena. These are 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 tweeting for years now.

I think most people view Dmitry Medvedev’s tweets with sort of humor. Yeah, they hurt sometimes. He’s very good at what he does, but he’s not the President of Russia. He doesn’t command Russia’s military nuclear forces. He doesn’t direct the Russian economy. He advises Vladimir Putin, but he is not Vladimir Putin.

So to treat Medvedev as if his tweets actually will translate into action is childish behavior, but in this case, dangerously childish because he’s literally putting two US Nuclear submarines on a combat patrol against Russia.

Trump’s Official Statement

JUDGE NAPOLITANO: Let’s read exactly what Trump said. This is from his Truth Social: “Based on the highly provocative statements of the former president of Russia, Dmitry Medvedev, who is now the Deputy chairman of the Security Council of the Russian Federation. I have ordered two nuclear submarines to be positioned in the appropriate regions just in case. These foolish and inflammatory statements are more than just that. Words are very important and can often lead to unintended consequences. I hope this will not be one of those instances. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”

Would Hegseth understand what you just explained about the power of these and how the Russians would perceive the threat? Would Pete Hegseth know that we already have four underwater? 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 somewhere in the seas?

SCOTT RITTER: 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. First of all, those four submarines that are out there, it’s a minimum of four, two in each ocean. They go through rotations and so they’ll rotate back to their home port for refitting. The crews have to go out. 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 six to nine Ohio class submarines available for deployment. You’ll have the four out in the fleet. 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 each of the deployment areas, depending on what the world situation is. But this is a standard operating procedure, something that Pete Hegseth 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 submarines.

The other thing is that we never announce the movement of Ohio class submarines.

JUDGE NAPOLITANO: What is to be gained by making an announcement like this? Is he just trying to cause Putin sleepless nights?

The Dangerous Escalation

SCOTT RITTER: Well, I don’t think Putin’s going to lose sleep. But to make this announcement, first of all it’s foolish because all you’re doing is giving credence to the legitimacy of the dead hand. 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 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.

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. Maybe even telling me to target my warheads. We don’t know. All the warheads should have been detargeted a long time ago 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 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 submarines on station, it’s sitting at the bottom of the 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 have 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. This is how dangerous this is.

JUDGE NAPOLITANO: He has put the lives of 19 year old sailors at risk as well as senior personnel. Everybody on these subs.

SCOTT RITTER: Oh yeah, there’s not too many 19 year olds on that submarine. Because submarine nuclear submarines require people with 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.

This is insanity. These are America’s most capable warriors who we never want 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 Hegseth should be advised. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs should be screaming his head off. Every advisor should be saying, “Mr. President, no.” But what we get is Lindsey Graham out there having an orgasmic response to the President’s toughness, telling his friends, the Russian people. Lindsey Graham isn’t friends with anybody in Russia. I can tell you nobody in Russia is friends with Lindsey Graham.

I apologize for the sexual reference there. That was inappropriate. But you just take a look at the way this man’s responding to this dangerous absurdity on the part of the President. It’s idiotic.

Pentagon Enablement

JUDGE NAPOLITANO: 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 X account President Trump’s nuclear post that I just read to you. There it is. On Pete Hegseth’s official account. He reposted what Donald Trump said. So these guys are enablers, Scott.

But I have to 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 nuclear armaments to Great Britain? And if so, what did we send there?

Nuclear Deployment and Escalating Tensions

SCOTT RITTER: Well, it appears to be true. I mean, I can’t confirm it, meaning I haven’t seen the deployment order and I haven’t seen the missiles. But I’ve read the media reports and all indications are that we have delivered B61-12 gravity bombs. These are basically the same weapon system that we have deployed throughout NATO, part of the NATO nuclear deterrence.

We’ve now deployed these to Great Britain to air bases there, which means that we now have 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 NATO Nuclear 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 the United States strengthening NATO’s nuclear deterrence. This is at a time when Great Britain just did the Northwoods declaration with France, where they’ve combined the nuclear doctrines of France and Great Britain as an independent outside of NATO nuclear capability.

This is when Great Britain has extended its nuclear umbrella into Poland, and now the United States is attaching its nuclear force to the British. I mean, we are literally… People look at all this stuff and they’re like, “oh, that’s not a big deal. Let’s not blow this out of proportion.”

If you go back and read Barbara Tuchman’s fantastic book, “The Guns of August,” it’s about the lead up to August 1914, the beginning of World War I, especially in the month of July. All the things that were happening that 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 is doing. We’re above 50% right now, Judge. We’re heading into extraordinarily dangerous territory.

JUDGE NAPOLITANO: What do you think is going on in the Kremlin as we speak, as a result of all of this?

Kremlin’s Response and Putin’s Leadership

SCOTT RITTER: Dismay. I mean, first of all, the Kremlin right now, I believe, is trying to bring it into the Ukraine conflict without creating an even greater conflict. And so this is always a delicate diplomatic balancing game. And then you have this president making threats. I mean, we still have the August 8th deadline coming up, the 10 days expires. What’s going to happen on August 8th?

Steve Witkoff flying 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 in response to a mean tweet from Dmitry Medvedev.

The good news here, and I know I’m going to get in trouble here from people, but thank God there’s one mature, responsible adult in the room, and that’s Vladimir Putin. 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 discussion today about Ukraine, very level headed, saying the door’s open for peace, don’t blame us. It’s Ukraine saying they don’t want peace. It’s the United States that’s doing the… We’re ready for it, but there are realistic conditions that have to be met. Trying to just calm things down, lower the temperature. And I think he’s going to continue this way.

This man is not suicidal. He didn’t spend a quarter of a 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 blinding flash of nuclear insanity.

And I think that was what was behind Dmitry Medvedev’s mean tweet, what he was telling the President. 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 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.

JUDGE NAPOLITANO: I don’t think he listens to anybody. Tulsi Gabbard is the only one that will tell him what he doesn’t want to hear. But the others are all yes men around him, however.

SCOTT RITTER: Yeah, Pete Hegseth retweeted that. That’s the biggest indication of sycophancy that you can come up with.

JUDGE NAPOLITANO: 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.

The Dangers of Public Posturing

SCOTT RITTER: Yeah. Well, the other thing is public posturing like this boxes you into a corner. I mean, what is the masculine statement that he’s trying to make by deploying these nuclear submarines? Because 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?

No. Once you’ve gone Alpha Dog mode, you’re sitting there with your chest pumped out. 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. So you don’t box yourself into a corner so there’s room to maneuver.

It’s Diplomacy 101. And even a simple Marine like me knows this, that sometimes it’s best not to go public with things, and you handle it behind closed doors. 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 worked through them and came to an eventual agreement that makes the world a safer place to be.

I’ll say this. On July 29, President Trump, in responding to a question from a TASS correspondent talking about the new START Treaty, which is the last 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 the 4th of 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 get on to doing what needs to be done, like extending the new START treaty.

JUDGE NAPOLITANO: The Russian people are referring to Trump by a certain word. What is that word?

Russian Public Opinion

SCOTT RITTER: Oh, dear. It’s a word I’m not supposed to use. It’s not a foul word, but it’s not a nice word. “Durak” means fool. It means idiot. It’s not meant in a kind way. And if you call someone a durak, it is a debasing term. It means you’re literally an idiot. You’re stupid. You’re dumber than belief.

I use the word today 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. Durak. What an idiot. What a fool. Because there’s no justification for his actions. There’s no legitimate trigger for this. It’s as foolish and idiotic as it gets.

JUDGE NAPOLITANO: What is American intel doing now in response to what Trump announced?

Intelligence Monitoring and Nuclear Alert Status

SCOTT RITTER: Well, I mean, what it should be doing right now is monitoring Russian strategic nuclear forces, looking for any alteration in alert status. Counting Russian submarines, the Russians just deployed a brand new submarine, the biggest submarine in the world. It carries 96 nuclear warheads on it. I can’t remember how many RS-56 Bulava missiles. But the most modern, more modern than the Trident missile, 96 of them. It’s out there right now on station.

American intelligence trying to find out where that submarine is, trying to look at the operational status of the mobile missiles, the SS-27s that are out there. Are they in garrison? Have they been put out into the Siberian forests? What’s the alert status of the other missiles in their silos?

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. Right now that percentage is higher.

We are… It’s an extraordinarily dangerous situation that even though I sort of chuckle when I talk about the word durak, it’s only because this situation’s so damn dangerous that you have to laugh. It’s like, we’re going to die. What can you do? Cry or laugh? And we’re going to die.

Unless something changes, this is it. 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 Tuchman would be talking about in the future. The “Guns of August” book that would have been written if anybody lived. But we’re talking about thermonuclear war here, global thermonuclear war, there won’t be survivors.

JUDGE NAPOLITANO: How destructive can these submarines be if they were to attack under the radar or under the defensive systems at Moscow? We talking about Hiroshima and Nagasaki type destruction or greater?

Scale of Nuclear Destruction

SCOTT RITTER: Oh, good Lord, greater. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were 12 kilotons under 20 kilotons of destructive power. Very destructive, no doubt about it. Our cities would be hit with 150 kilotons, 300 kilotons, 1 megaton, that’s a thousand. We’re literally talking… I did a public briefing last December at the National Press Center where I invited Theodore Postol to come in and give a presentation about what a single Russian nuclear warhead over Washington…

JUDGE NAPOLITANO: This is the brilliant and fearless MIT physicist.

The Reality of Nuclear War

SCOTT RITTER: Yeah, good man. And you look at this briefing and it just terrifies you. And that’s just one understand that 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 can say this. During the Cold War, Moscow was targeted by about 60 warheads that just overkill to make sure we got everything. And so what we’re, the Russians will be doing the same thing. There will be nothing left alive in Washington, D.C.

Read Annie Jacobson’s book “Nuclear War.” She realistic scenario, and 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 live isn’t to live. To live is to die.

Strategic Command’s Nuclear War Plans

Rear Admiral Buchanan, who is the director of plans for Strategic Command, gave a lecture last November in Washington, D.C. 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. You’re not going to have electricity, running water, medicine. None of the niceties 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?

Call to Action Against Nuclear Escalation

This is why people have to become angry about this and mobilized about this. People should be calling up their representatives in Congress and saying, “What the hell are you doing?” People should be demanding 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.

This is why what I do what I do to combat Russophobia. So the 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. 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. No parent wants to see that or experience in that. So let’s nip this thing in the bud. Let’s let Donald Trump. Let’s let peak headset. 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 assets of the United States into an operational status. This is insanity. Literal insanity.

Closing Remarks

JUDGE NAPOLITANO: 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.

SCOTT RITTER: I mean, that’s why I wrote a book, Judge.

JUDGE NAPOLITANO: You did? I read the book. I was privileged to write a blurb for it. It’s all in there. It predicted what’s happening right now. Scotty, I know you got to go. Thank you very much. Have a great weekend. We’ll see you Monday or early next week.

SCOTT RITTER: Okay, Judge. Thanks a lot.

JUDGE NAPOLITANO: Thank you. Wow. And of course, everybody should have a nice weekend. God only knows what will happen Monday. All of your regulars will be with us. Alistair Crook at 8 in the morning, Ray McGovern at 10, Larry Johnson at 11:30, and probably Scott Ritter to bring us up to date on God only knows what will happen over the weekend. Thank you for watching this special edition of Judging Freedom. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom.

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