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Home » Scott Ritter: The Limits to Putin’s Patience (Transcript)

Scott Ritter: The Limits to Putin’s Patience (Transcript)


Read the full transcript of former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter’s interview on Judging Freedom Podcast with host Judge Napolitano on “The Limits to Putin’s Patience”, August 15, 2025.

Opening and Introduction

JUDGE NAPOLITANO: Hi everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Monday, August 25, 2025. Scott Ritter will be here in just a moment on “Are there limits to President Putin’s patience” and the latest tragedy in Gaza.

Scotty welcome here, my dear friend. I want to spend a fair amount of time on the latest developments, some of them rather dramatic, involving Iran. But before we get to President Putin’s patience, this morning, the Netanyahu regime, which uses American AI, as you pointed out, to target its victims, targeted a hospital in southern Gaza and targeted it twice, and in the process killed not only patients, bystanders and healthcare workers, but journalists as well.

The second target was aimed at the area where journalists gather in order to acquire Wi-Fi from the hospital system. Before you respond, watch this cut number 10.

Gaza Hospital Attack Coverage

VIDEO CLIP BEGINS:

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: So it happened around 10am this morning. And for context, to give our audience a lay of the land, Nasser Hospital is the largest, the only functioning hospital in the south. And the part of Nasser Hospital that was hit, you guys, is really important. You can see it in the videos. It was a staircase.

And the reason this staircase was targeted very clearly is that this is where journalists, since the early days of the war have gathered to get Wi-Fi signal. We have seen videos they posted on social media. Our team, which used to work right close to that staircase, would share videos of them holding their phones to the sky, kind of huddled over laptops in the wee hours of the night.

But journalists, since the beginning of this war, since they have been personally displaced, have flocked to hospitals to use resources like Wi-Fi, to use power, to use water.

So this staircase, journalists were on the staircase this morning when it was struck around 10am and as Jonathan just laid out, minutes later, as first responders were racing up to that area, as other journalists in the area were going to cover the strike, another drone strike hit that same exact spot.

Mika, we actually have updates from the numbers that you just read. As Jonathan says, this is a very fast moving story. It is now at least 20 people killed including five journalists as you mentioned. AP, Reuters and Al Jazeera have all said that at least three of those journalists were working for them.

And this brings the total of journalists killed in Gaza since October 7 to 245 journalists, media workers. These are our colleagues, our peers who have been killed in the last 22 months.

VIDEO CLIP ENDS:

JUDGE NAPOLITANO: All right, what do you have to say?

Scott Ritter’s Response on Targeting Journalists

SCOTT RITTER: The truth shall set you free. And that’s the problem – journalists, good journalists are out there to gather ground-based truth and share it with a broader audience so that people can have a more reality-based understanding of what’s going on.

Israel is the anti-truth. They are the opposite of the truth. They want to imprison us in their lies and they view journalists as some of the most existential threats to the continued well-being of Israel. Because the journalists are increasingly exposing the crimes of Israel. The duplicity of the Israelis, the absolutely abhorrent behavior on the part of all aspects of the Israeli government, the Israeli military, the Israeli society.

And they’re also sharing the tragedy that is the ongoing genocide that’s taking place in Gaza. The starvation, the deliberate targeting of children, of women, of innocents by the Israelis. The truth shall set you free. Therefore it’s Israel’s job to suppress the truth by killing the truth. And that’s what they do every time they target a journalist.

IDF Response and Analysis

JUDGE NAPOLITANO: Here’s the MSNBC reporting Mika Brzezinski on the IDF response. And before we play it, bear in mind, consistent with what you just told us, the Israelis have murdered over 250 journalists. Chris, cut number 11.

VIDEO CLIP BEGINS:

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Israel’s Defense Forces responded to the reports announcing plans to conduct an initial inquiry as soon as possible. It adds the IDF regrets any harm to uninvolved individuals and does not target journalists as such. The IDF acts to mitigate harm to uninvolved individuals as much as possible while maintaining the safety of IDF troops.

VIDEO CLIP ENDS:

SCOTT RITTER: How could she read that with a straight face? First of all, stop reading Israeli press releases. They lie. The Israeli government, the Israeli Defense Force, just about every aspect of official Israeli society are natural born liars. They can’t tell the truth about anything because to tell the truth about what’s going on is to expose the fact that Israel is a living manifestation of war crimes from the very beginning of its birth up until the present time.

Today, Israel can’t embrace the truth because the truth will condemn Israel. We need to stop treating the Israelis as legitimate sources of information. We need to start treating the Israelis the same way we would treat the most horrific regimes in history.

Would we read the words of Goebbels? Would we read the words of the Nazis as they sought to defend the crimes of Auschwitz? Would we listen to the Nazis say, “No, the trains were just running on time. We’re here to feed these people. It’s delousing, not…” No, we wouldn’t read them because we wouldn’t want to give any credibility to them.

She’s reading a statement from the Israeli Defense Force excusing mass murder by pretending it was a mistake. No mistake was made. These are drones. These are guided to their target by drone operators who are supervised by Israeli officers who are obeying the orders given to them by higher command to kill journalists.