Read the full transcript of American economist and public policy analyst Prof. Jeffrey Sachs in conversation with Judge Napolitano of Judging Freedom, streamed live on July 7, 2025.
The Current Meeting at the White House
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Monday, July 7, 2025. Professor Jeffrey Sachs will be with us in just a moment on what Prime Minister Netanyahu is lobbying President Trump for now.
Professor Sachs, a pleasure, my dear friend. Thank you very much for joining us. I know you’re in another part of the world, but it’s lunchtime here on the east coast of the United States. And as we speak, the president of the United States is having lunch with a homicidal maniac who also happens to be the prime minister of Israel. What do you expect Prime Minister Netanyahu is asking for now?
PROF. JEFFREY SACHS: Well, he’s asking for what he’s been asking for for the last 30 years, which is carte blanche to use the United States to make wars across the Middle East—a blank check for the United States to continue its slaughter of Israel, to continue its slaughter with American complicity in Gaza and probably trying to plot some renewed war against Iran.
Netanyahu is a warmonger, and he came to power in 1996 as a warmonger with a theory. The theory was that war would remake the Middle East in Israel’s image. He counted on the American people to trust Israel and to back Israel unconditionally. Essentially, the political system has until today. Trump has shown no capacity to differentiate, unfortunately, American policy from Israel’s policy.
We’ll see if anything changes. I’m not optimistic on that point, but we know what Netanyahu wants because he always has said the same thing. At least he’s consistent.
Israeli Parliamentary Views on Gaza
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: Here is an Israeli member of Parliament talking about the only way to save Israel is to utterly destroy the Palestinian people.
VIDEO CLIP BEGINS:
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: The war we are fighting today, which we embarked on the 7th of October, is a war against a Nazi enemy that threatened the existence of the Jewish people in the land of Israel. That is the whole truth. So the prime minister decided. The prime minister decided to do it sequentially. I’m with him. No problem. Let’s do it sequentially.
You eliminated Hezbollah. You dealt a severe blow, maybe even more than that, to Iran. Now the time has come to deal with the Gaza Strip. How do we do that? You take off the gloves, stop the humanitarian aid, cut off electricity, cut off water, start destroying and expel voluntarily, so to speak. “Voluntary migration” the Gazans.
There are no uninvolved people there. No innocents. No one who isn’t guilty. As far as I’m concerned, they’re all Hamas members. At the end of the war, there should be two images in the Gaza Strip. First, not a single Gazan remains. And all 50 of our hostages—49 male hostages and one female hostage, both living and deceased—their return to the state of Israel.
VIDEO CLIP ENDS:
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: Is this attitude prevalent in Israel today? Or is this just the views of a fanatical member of Netanyahu’s coalition in the Knesset?
The Language of Genocide
PROF. JEFFREY SACHS: Well, this is a very widespread view. I don’t think it’s possible to quantify exactly who holds what view, but this is very widespread. And it is the language of the Nazi Holocaust. It is the language of genocide.
It actually, sad to say, it is the language of the Bible. In the book of Joshua, which many Israelis read literally, in that book, it says that God tells Joshua, “Go in and kill every man, woman and child in the nations that you will confront in the land which I give you.” So in the book of Joshua, the Israelites are to commit multiple genocides. And this is taken as a literal command.
This vulgarity that you just heard is genocidal language, pure and simple. “There are no innocents. There will be no Gazans, no Palestinians left in Gaza.” It’s horrific. That is representing a policy that the Trump administration and the Biden administration and many administrations before that have supported.
It’s beyond cruel. It’s beyond criminal. It is clearly, explicitly, vulgarly genocidal. And it’s horrible to hear this, but you can hear this from many, many Israeli leaders. This is normal talk among the political class in Israel. This is normal talk among the government ministers. This is normal talk among the generals. This is normal talk among the Israeli Defense Forces in Gaza.
They’re killing people in cold blood by the dozens, sometimes the hundreds, every day. They want to kill or expel all the people. And the United States is part of this. Why is it part of this? Well, it’s very distressing to contemplate how the United States of America, how people in the United States of America, but especially our governments, hear this, know this, and pay for and supply the weapons to kill all these people.
Biblical Justification for Support
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: There is regrettably an American version of this as well by a well-known United States Senator who believes that the Bible literally commands him as a senator elected by one of the largest states in the Union, Texas, to support the government of Prime Minister Netanyahu. You probably have seen this, but it’s worth repeating.
VIDEO CLIP BEGINS:
TED CRUZ: Growing up in Sunday school, I was taught from the Bible, “Those who bless Israel will be blessed and those who curse Israel will be cursed.” So that’s in the Bible. As a Christian, I believe that.
TUCKER: Where is that?
TED CRUZ: I can find it to you. I don’t have the scripture off the tip of my… It’s in Genesis. But where does my support for Israel come from? Number one, because biblically we are commanded to support Israel. But number two…
TUCKER: Hold on, hold on. You’re a senator.
TED CRUZ: We are commanded to support Israel and we’re… What does that mean? We’re told those who bless Israel will be blessed. But what…
TUCKER: Hold on. Define Israel. This is important. Are you kidding? This is a majority Christian country.
TED CRUZ: Define Israel? Do you not know what Israel is? He’s talking about the nation of Israel. The nation exists and he’s discussing a nation.
TUCKER: The people of Israel is the nation in Genesis. Is that the same as the country run by Benjamin Netanyahu right now?
TED CRUZ: Yes, it is.
VIDEO CLIP ENDS:
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: Well, that last Q and A is just beyond remarkable. You’re talking to a senator, graduate of Princeton University and Harvard Law School. And he believes the reference in the Old Testament to Israel is a reference to the government of Benjamin Netanyahu today or somehow carries over to that government. This is what we’re dealing with, Professor Sachs.
Is this a common attitude amongst Christian Zionists and Jewish Zionists in America today?
Political Corruption and Campaign Contributions
PROF. JEFFREY SACHS: No… Senator Cruz takes millions or tens of millions of dollars from mega preachers who preach this. And Cruz makes his living on scooping up money from saying these things. That’s what this is. The man is completely corrupted by our political system and these campaign contributions. He’s a nasty, ignorant man.
We saw, if you watch the whole interview, he knew nothing about Iran, but he knew that he wanted to bomb Iran. He had no idea how many people live in Iran. He knows nothing about anything, but he knows what to say to get millions and millions of dollars from his campaign contributors, who include the megachurch Christian evangelical preachers, who, by the way, tell their congregations similar things and get vast money from their congregants.
It’s all a very sad system of monetary extraction and corruption.
Mossad’s Role in US Policy
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: Do you expect that Prime Minister Netanyahu brought Mossad with him to school the President on their version of what’s going on in Iran and why he needs to be more militarily aggressive with Iran?
PROF. JEFFREY SACHS: Well, we know that Mossad is joined at the hip with the CIA and has been for many decades in many crimes and murders, coups, assassinations throughout the world. And we know that Mossad played an important role in convincing Trump personally to bomb Iran in this latest display of our one-person rule.
The President does not have the right to go bomb Iran to make wars. Whether it’s a 12-day war or any other kind of war, that prerogative belongs to Congress. But Congress is so corrupt, money-oriented and dead to the Constitution that even when the President launches his wars, Congress doesn’t care that it is their function, not the President’s function.
So is Mossad there? Of course it’s there. Mossad and the CIA have run policy for the United States for decades. This is not something new, nor is it surprising, nor would it be… Well, it may be denied or whatever, but no one would take seriously such a denial.
This is the essence of policymaking. That it is murderous, that it is secretive, that it is against law, both international and domestic, and that impunity is the whole style of government.
What did Israel do with Iran in the middle of the negotiations supposedly taking place between the US and Iran? It went in and not just bombed Iran, but murdered dozens of people, blew up whole buildings for their targeted individuals. This is Mossad operations. It’s Murder Inc. But it is part of the US scene completely.
The Impact of Recent Bombings
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: Do you think that Donald Trump’s bombs hurt Iran or helped Iran, made it weaker or made it stronger?
PROF. JEFFREY SACHS: I think it made the instability in the world much worse. Most likely the Iranians had removed their enriched uranium before the bombing because they had plenty of notice and it was reportedly 400 kilos and not hard to move, according to the experts that I’ve seen give very detailed accounts on this.
It ruined the IAEA, the International Atomic Energy Agency, which played the game of Mossad and the CIA of Israel and the United States. So it wrecked an international agency. It ended supervision of the Iranian facilities by the IAEA.
So there are no winners. Iran was weakened because it was pummeled, but Israel was pummeled as well and the world became even more unstable. Violence and war and illegality and assassinations were further normalized. In other words, this is just par for the course.
The Path to Nuclear Armageddon
Donald Trump bragged that this was the kind of bombing like Hiroshima, Nagasaki—language by the President of the United States about the two atomic bombings of Japan. We’re normalizing the path to nuclear Armageddon. This is how we’re moving right now.
If there were going to be historians after the next war, there won’t be because there won’t be civilization left. But they would look at all these events and there would be a chapter written about how the situation became completely destabilized in the lead-up to the great disaster.
The next war, though, isn’t going to have historians after it because this will be the war that ends everything in the nuclear age. And we just have a normalization of lies, of murder, of instability, of secrecy, of falsehoods, of engaging in negotiations. And you announce the next round is in three days and then you bomb them the next hour.
What is this? Is this a game? Is this a video game? Is this a child’s game? These are our lives at stake. So we’ll see what the President says about all of this, but we can expect pretty much what is going to happen because it’s been consistent for years and years. Netanyahu is an absolute genocidal murderer and he’s sitting in the White House and he’ll probably be lavishly praised by the President of the United States in an hour or two.
Iranian Foreign Minister Addresses International Community
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: Here’s the Iranian Foreign Minister before the United Nations Security Council at an emergency session yesterday.
“What Israeli regime and subsequently the United States committed were no less than an unprecedented breach of international peace. The fact that the developing non-nuclear weapons state has been attacked by two nuclear armed regimes with the support of at least two more nuclear armed states that are also permanent members of United Nations Security Council is only appalling and extremely consequential.
No rule of law or logic allows anyone to target the IAEA monitored peaceful nuclear facilities of another state, simply out of speculation that the facilities may sometimes be used for weaponization. Mr. President, my people stayed steadfast and resolved in defense of our homeland against these blatant acts of aggression. And the aggressors had to cease their criminal attacks following the heroic resistance of our strong armed forces.
We will definitely continue to defend with all force against any future aggressions. But this is not over. As long as the Israeli regime’s lawless behavior is supported and justified by its backers and apologists. It is a shame that the international community has been unable to do anything meaningful to end the genocide of Palestinians for the past two years and stop Israel from occupying Arab lands in its vicinity.”
So I was wrong. It was not the Security Council. It was a BRICS meeting.
UN Security Council’s Response to Israeli Attack
PROF. JEFFREY SACHS: But you heard what he said. Yes, and I attended the Security Council meeting at the United Nations just after the attack by Israel and the United States and the Western countries threatened Iran rather than criticizing Israel at that UN Security Council meeting. They couldn’t utter a word against the brazen, murderous, illegal attack by Israel. All they did was threaten Iran. If Iran responds, if Iran retaliates.
It was shocking to see the brazenness, the double standards, the hypocrisy, the lawlessness by the United States and its European allies in the UN Security Council. I listened to the ambassador from Denmark, for example. She couldn’t even have one sentence about Israel attacking Iran. Her whole speech was an attack on Iran.
Ted Cruz’s Biblical Misquotation
And judge, I took the chance to look up because I was pretty sure that Ted Cruz had it wrong about what the Bible says. I wanted to verify it. He was referring to Genesis 12:3. And as usual with Cruz, he has the quote wrong. He said, “those who bless Israel are blessed,” or “those who favor Israel are blessed.”
But I don’t know if he ever went to Sunday school, but he never learned anything. What it actually says is, “I will bless those who bless you,” referring to Abraham, not to Israel. Israel isn’t mentioned there. Israel isn’t even yet present as of Genesis 12:3. “I will bless those who bless you, Abraham,” and “whoever curses you,” meaning Abraham, “I will curse. And all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.”
So Cruz can’t even make a quotation right. He doesn’t know the Bible. He doesn’t know his Sunday school. He doesn’t know how many people are in countries that he wants to bomb. He’s an ignoramus. But he makes a lot of money, by the way. He makes money from his preachers who make money from their parishioners. It’s all extremely sad.
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: He also helps make public policy in the United States, which is disgraceful that a human being would be animated by stereotypical and inaccurate visions of something written 3,500 years ago as compelling him to support a certain foreign policy today.
The Stakes of Political Games
PROF. JEFFREY SACHS: And if you’re going to support a genocide like he does, maybe he could even get the quotation right. Maybe he could even take the 10 seconds to open the Bible as I just did, as you were playing one of the clips, so that I could read Genesis 12:3.
Now he doesn’t care. They don’t care. They’re playing games, these people, which would be fine if it were games, but this is the world at stake and they’ve got to stop playing games. They’ve got to start telling the truth. They’ve got to start having hearings where people actually present evidence again. They have to start abiding by the US Constitution, which puts the responsibility for war and peace in Congress not in the hands of one person. This is what is at stake in all of this. And they’re playing games with our lives.
American Contractors and War Crimes
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: Scott Ritter just told us that he has seen videos of American contractors who to a person are former military, whom he described as maniacs, shooting Palestinians as they’re lining up to get food in Gaza and high fiving each other for doing it. Now, how can Donald Trump permit that to occur? These people should be indicted by the Justice Department and prosecuted for murder.
PROF. JEFFREY SACHS: Before our political system fell apart in the last few decades at the hands of corruption, the Israel lobby, big money, so that we don’t talk about anything truthful, there used to be a time several decades ago when an event like that would have been news. It would be discussed.
We have seen the people being massacred as they show up in this US concocted phony relief process. Remember what the US did was kick the UN Relief agency out. Then it said, “we’ll put in our relief.” And of course, Israel murders the people as they go in for food. It starves them and then when the people line up, it murders them. Well, we can recall Nazi atrocities like that.
And what we’re seeing is atrocities before our eyes. But our political system is so destroyed now that nobody says a word. There’s no seriousness, there’s no hearings, there’s no question of justification. Of course, we also have the Supreme Court that just ruled that Donald Trump can issue decrees as he wants and the federal courts can’t do anything about it, says this Supreme Court of the Land.
So what was that revolution about in 1776 when we said we didn’t want to have one person rule? What was it about?
From Revolution to Monarchy
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: Well, it failed. We went from one monarch to another.
PROF. JEFFREY SACHS: We are in trouble and we’ll see. Look, it may be they walk out of the White House and Donald Trump announces a ceasefire. Let’s hope so. Let’s hope so. I don’t rule it out completely. We’re talking as they are meeting.
But if history is a guide and the recent history is shocking, the US has been complicit in a genocide. I don’t think any American could have contemplated that we would be in this situation and not even ask questions about it at this stage. That’s how broken our political system is.
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: Professor Sachs, I know it’s practically tomorrow where you are now. Thank you very much for your time. I’m sorry the subjects are so gloomy and aggravating, but your analysis of it is much sought after and deeply appreciated. Safe travel.
PROF. JEFFREY SACHS: Thank you very much.
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: Next week, Jeff. Thank you.
PROF. JEFFREY SACHS: Thank you.
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: Coming up tomorrow, Tuesday at 8 o’clock in the morning, Ambassador Charles Freeman at 11 in the morning, Aaron Mate at 3 in the afternoon, Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski, Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom.
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