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Nov. 12, 2024 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
34:25
COL. Douglas Macgregor : Trump and Netanyahu At Crossroads
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Everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Tuesday, November 12, 2024.
Colonel Douglas McGregor will be here with us in just a moment.
What do we expect will be the level of United States aid and compliance with the wishes of Benjamin Netanyahu in the Trump administration?
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Colonel, welcome here.
Much appreciated your time and all your thoughts.
What do you think is the Kremlin's likely internal, truthful reaction to the election of Donald Trump?
Well, keep in mind, first of all, that the...
So I think there'll be a large number of people who will see this as a wonderful development simply because it's not Biden and President Trump has expressed a willingness to settle issues in Ukraine.
I think, on the other hand, that President Putin actually does understand much more about us, and I think he's being very guarded in what he says, and I think that's ultimately what the Russians will do.
They'll wait and see.
When the president-elect was a candidate as recently as 10 days ago and said he'll end the Ukraine war in 24 hours, I almost can't imagine what he was thinking could possibly happen in 24 hours.
He's not going to threaten.
Putin.
Zelensky is not going to give up.
Biden is still sending military gear and cash to them until January 19th.
And Zelensky still needs human beings, which nobody can really produce for him.
Am I missing something?
Well, I think the view from President Trump's vantage point and the people that he's appointing, obviously, collectively.
Is that we've wasted a lot of money on Ukraine, and we need to end that as soon as it's practical to do so.
That's the first point.
But I see a desire to maintain or perpetuate hostility to Russia.
And you have to look at these various proposals that have drifted out from inside the inner circle.
They're all predicated on the assumption that Russia must be an enemy, And a clear and unambiguous relationship with Russia that is not somehow or another, at least partially hostile, is a failure.
So I think that's a problem.
I also think there's an assumption, and this is common about everything right now with all of the people that are coming into the administration, there is an assumption that we are really in a place not very different from what President Trump left in 2020.
And of course, that's fundamentally wrong.
The world has actually changed very profoundly.
And most of the world, quote-unquote, is not afraid of us.
I think there's this assumption that we can still threaten and bully.
We can still impose sanctions and tariffs and get our way.
And I think those days are absolutely over.
So it's hard to tell.
Frankly speaking, I think they probably want to dump the problem on the Europeans at some point.
But I don't think they're willing to say, look, this was a mistake.
I think President Trump's appropriate approach is to say, I didn't start this war, I don't want this war, and I want to conclude it.
And I will support a proposal that meets to the extent that it can everybody's interests and needs.
And I think that would be wonderful, but I don't see that happening.
I think he's going to come in with some sort of expectation.
That he's going to profoundly shape what happens.
I don't think that's going to happen.
Russia is in charge.
What do you think is the reaction, and we haven't heard a peep from them, at least I haven't, of the NATO and EU elites who can't be very happy to President Trump's election?
Well, of course not.
But on the other hand, I think they're probably eagerly going into their various social media Probably not.
I think the truth is that the EU is crumbling.
NATO is crumbling.
I think the EU will probably go under before NATO does.
New governments are coming to power.
Germany, which is in total disarray, is going to end up with a new government.
And that may be the first of several, as we've seen in Great Britain.
Again, you have to look at the economics of the situation.
Look at the bond yields in Germany, the bond yields in England, the bond yields here.
Despite everybody's efforts to suppress interest rates, those yields are going up.
And the underlying fundamentals economically in terms of production, they're just terrible.
And the banking system is the other piece.
Our banks, from a systemic standpoint, Are eight times worse off today than they were in 2008.
You just have to listen to the financial analysts who tell the truth and are very open about it.
You know, people like Nassim Taleb, I think Gundlach, what's his name, Druckenmiller.
There are several others.
Michael Farber.
All these people are saying the same thing.
They're right.
So that's the other elephant in the room is this enormous debt load.
in our weak position and the supposition that we can simply print money into perpetuity.
All of that's going to come apart over the next few months.
Well, I hope that whatever the outcome of the dispute between the...
This is a little bit off our topic, but you've piqued my interest in it.
Whatever the outcome of the dispute, the public dispute between President Trump and Fed Chairman Trump,
Anyone who thinks so is delusional, and I feel badly for Brother Elon Musk.
Who, very childlike, is marching into this thing with the assumption that he's actually going to fundamentally change all of that.
There's no chance.
And I think President Trump has indicated that.
Look, he's still talking about tax cuts for the upper, what, 10% or 20%?
Trump loves debt.
Trump believes that debt is an appropriate instrument to prosperity.
His grandchildren and great-grandchildren might regret that view, but that's very much...
You mentioned Germany.
Trump is of the view, as are we, that the United States destroyed the Nord Stream pipeline.
I wonder if that's going to come out.
Everybody knows that Joe Biden is lying about this, caused it to be destroyed on his own.
Now this might very well be a topic of debate because they're going to go through either a cold winter or a winter with a lot of respiratory problems because they're burning coal.
Well, they are going to import a lot of coal, and we've got lots of coal to sell them.
And it's good coal.
I can talk for hours about that since I'm involved right now with coal and biochar and rare earths and other things.
It's not going to save Germany.
Germany's problems now are far worse than that.
What's happened over the last few years is that we've finally succeeded in implementing the Morgantau plan with Germany's support and assistance.
We've de-industrialized it, turning it into a rural pasture, if you will, which was what Morgantau tried to do under FDR.
It's a catastrophe.
The Germans are going to wake up.
They're already beginning to understand what a terrible position they're in, and they know that we're We're mightily responsible for it.
But remember that Schultz and his friends have all followed us blindly down the path to hell.
And that's their problem now.
And I think that will be Trump's attitude, sadly.
You know, the Washington Post reported that President Trump spoke to President Putin.
And ask Putin not to accelerate the war.
Now, I could stop by saying the Washington Post reported and put in parentheses, and therefore the CIA wants us to believe this.
Dmitry Peskov, who's President Putin's spokesperson, said absolutely not.
There's been no conversation that took place.
I can't imagine the conversation going much beyond any demand that Trump would make of Putin.
Putin just wouldn't sit there and listen to it.
Well, right now I'm afraid that Peskov has a lot more credibility than the Washington Post or, for that matter, anybody who has been repeating the CIA MI6 narratives about the war in eastern Ukraine.
So I would dismiss all of that as utter nonsense.
If Trump does something like that, I think he's the sort of person who would tell us.
Yeah.
How badly is Ukraine going right now?
How close to achieving a publicly proclaimed anti-war?
What they don't want is a foolish discussion between President Putin and President Trump on the basis of more promises for which there is no evidence we will ever keep.
And surrender anything that the Russians have gained through this war.
So I think the effort now is to sort of clean up the battlefield.
There are still some pockets where Ukrainian forces, small numbers, drastically reduced in manpower, independent brigades are being surrounded and then ultimately annihilated or they're surrendering.
I think they want to do that.
And they're pressing towards Dnipro.
If you're sitting in the Russian general staff, you're asking the question, where do we want to be by 21 January?
And I think they want to be on the Dieppe River.
I don't think they want to cross it because clearly President Putin has made it abundantly clear to everyone that he doesn't want to rule Ukrainians under any circumstances.
This is why the myth of the great Russian threat to Western Europe or Eastern Europe is nonsense.
HE DOESN'T WANT TO DO THAT.
Putin would like to do.
So I see a big emphasis right now.
Let's get to the Nyepra River, and then we can decide based upon what President Trump and his representatives ultimately propose.
whether or not we stay there or move further.
There's nobody to stop him.
Right.
I hope that President Trump doesn't appoint people, and he seems to be leaning in that direction, who have argued for this absurd domino theory that Joe Biden articulated that, I think I'm quoting the president now, He has his eyes on Poland.
This is absurd.
I have heard this from Republicans.
I have heard this from people whose names are being touted as potential nominees.
It'll be crushing for those of us who have hopes for a more sane, more peaceful, more rational, more realistic foreign policy if these neocons, if we go from one group of neocons to another.
Well, you know what President Trump could do, which would be a much more reasonable and rational approach to the Russians who don't want to be our enemies, who would very much like to do business with us, is to simply say that he will host a discussion or a peace conference or a negotiation between the various parties, primarily President Putin and the East European states.
In other words, the people that border Russia, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Finland, Romania, Slovakia.
Hungary, all of them, Poland, come sit and talk directly to the Russians, sort this animal out.
However, the precondition for the talks is that the United States accepts neutrality for Ukraine, not a term of neutrality that allows for something else in 10 years or 20 years.
That's absolutely unacceptable.
There will be no peace in Eastern Europe, let alone Ukraine.
Unless Ukraine, what remains of it, is neutral.
If he did that, I think this could come to some sort of closure relatively quickly.
But I haven't heard him say those things.
We get rumors, so we have to wait for what President Trump actually says.
But back again to this notion that we're the great superpower and we can weigh in and force or push the Russians to do anything is nonsense.
Last week, Ron Dermer, who's perhaps the closest advisor to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, I met Mr. Dermer many times.
He was born in Miami, educated in the U.S. and Great Britain, had joint Israeli-American citizenship, renounced his American citizenship to comply with Israeli law that allowed him to get into Netanyahu's inner circles.
What do you think that's about, Colonel?
We know that Israel is on the brink of economic chaos, and we know that it is surrounded by enemies with whom it has picked fights that it can't seem to win.
But what would Dermer be looking for from the Kremlin?
The truth is that Israel is on the path to war with Russia as well as Iran.
Syria and potentially any number of other countries, including all of the Arab states in the peninsula in Egypt.
I suspect that he went there hat in hand with some sort of attempt to get forgiveness for having launched airstrikes against Russian facilities in Syria and hoping that the Russians would tell him, you need not worry, we will not attack you.
And I don't think he got that.
As far as economic assistance is concerned, why would the Russians give them any and help bankroll them since they become, from the Russian standpoint, a menace to stability and security in the region?
We're financing Israel right now and keeping its society and economy afloat, but I don't think the Russians have any interest in that.
Bottom line is I don't think he got much.
Do we know, Colonel, if Russia and Iran signed a mutual defense pact?
No, I can't confirm that there was such a thing.
There may be.
Who knows?
But frankly, I don't think it's very meaningful to concern ourselves with it.
Iran is this enormous country of almost 100 million people.
It is a major powerhouse in the region.
Russia is not going to allow Iran to be pulverized and reduced to rubble by us because that's the only way it could happen if we intervene directly on the side of Israel, which looks increasingly like it will happen.
So bottom line is this is a terrible situation.
If I would say anything about the collective appointees right now, Judge, I would say that the announcements of all of these people thus far are interpreted, certainly in Iran and the rest of the Muslim world, in Arabia, the peninsula, Egypt, and elsewhere, that war is now imminent and it's inevitable.
And so everyone is quietly preparing for that inevitability right now.
And I think we will see this war blow up in a major way before Inauguration Day.
Colonel, if you look at the voting records of the people reported to have been appointed when they were in Congress and they're all still in Congress, that is a rational conclusion.
And what they've said on the floor of the House and the floor of the Senate without mentioning any names, that is a is a rational conclusion.
You and many other people on this show.
Will he have the same lock grip under Donald Trump?
Can he just do whatever he wants under Trump and still expect 100% of what he asks for, as has been the case under Joe Biden?
I think that's very probable.
I don't see any evidence to the contrary.
I would take everybody back, excuse me, to the Republican convention when a large sign with an Israeli flag was behind the podium and it said Israel first.
And a gentleman whose name I don't recall walked out and he had some cheers.
He also had people that watched with incredulity.
Some people, you know, folded their arms.
But I think that was the message.
This is an Israel-first administration, period.
End of discussion.
And that's where we're headed.
Now, what happens?
That will depend a great deal on the initial collisions and who comes into the conflict.
And then, of course, people will probably in many cases get cold feet quickly.
Right now, again, the worldview of this new collective coming into power is We can do everything.
We're masters of the universe.
We know everything.
Don't bother us with facts.
Don't bother us with any advice.
We know it.
We have this.
And we're going to prosecute this as we see fit.
End of discussion.
I think that's where we are.
They don't even seem to understand that you can make nice noises to the Russians in Eastern Europe.
And I'm sure they're going to go there with some notion of a grand bargain, which will include a free hand in the Middle East in return for us recognizing Russian territorial gains.
Well, that's silly nonsense.
There will be no grand bargain.
There will be no wedge driven between Russia and China.
That's off the table.
Right now, it's very obvious that if we go into the Middle East and attack Iran, we will be at war with Russia.
Period.
And China will back Russia 100%.
And the three potential or likely nominees announced so far in their congressional careers have described themselves as hawks on China.
They've been very bellicose toward China.
We can't fight a war against Russia and China and expect to prevail, can we, Colonel?
Well, obviously they think otherwise.
There's also a failure to understand the business with tariffs now and the usual American bullying tactics with sanctions.
China's total business with the Global South amounts to about 1.8 million.
The rest of the world, which is really Europe, North America, you look at that and it's a fraction.
Of 1.8 trillion.
I think if you include all the Europeans and a few others with us, you might come into 1.4 trillion total, but then you take us out of that.
We barely register.
I mean, if you look at the bar charts, which were published, I think, in the Financial Times, you know, 90 plus percent of China's business is elsewhere.
They don't need us.
This is the great fallacy that we're the indispensable nation, which continues under this administration.
And that we have leverage.
Again, leverage.
What's the strategic leverage?
It doesn't exist.
We have none.
But to admit such a thing is an expression of humility that is absolutely unacceptable to this administration, at least thus far.
Humility is not a word that comes to mind when I think of Joe Biden or Donald Trump.
But let's get back to Trump and Netanyahu.
Here's what...
Cut number eight.
In the last few days, I have talked three times with President-elect Donald Trump.
These were good and very important conversations designed to strengthen the covenant made between Israel and the allied countries.
We see eye-to-eye on the Iranian threat in all its forms and the danger it poses.
We see eye-to-eye.
Now, I don't know if that's true, but he certainly wants us to believe that that is true of himself.
Well, first of all, we don't know whether or not he's actually spoken to President Trump that many times.
Correct.
I mean, he's been deceitful in the past.
I don't see any reason to take it at face value now.
Again, I urge people to listen to President Trump when he speaks.
His basic argument, which goes back to Naftali's characterization of the octopus and the necessity of striking the head so that then you can clean up presumably all the little octopus arms all over the region, that stands up to closer scrutiny.
And I think that general proposition is well supported by this new administration.
And we've already seen, what's interesting to me, I was talking to someone today involved with the bombing strategy against the Houthis.
And I urge people to remember that in support of Saudi Arabia, we helped to kill about a half a million Houthis.
Well, that certainly had a big impact, didn't it?
No.
And the Houthis aren't out of business.
And we sent over, as I recollect, B-52s or B-1s.
To drop thousands of tons of bombs again?
It hasn't made any difference.
It's not going to make any difference.
We can't bomb our way out of this and Netanyahu can't kill his way out of it.
Do you think Israel is on the brink of collapse militarily and economically?
Israel without us would collapse.
Let's just keep that in mind.
Now, how close are they?
Internally to serious problems with their own population, I don't know.
I'm not there.
I would always defer to someone like Max Blumenthal, who has a much better grasp of what's really happening on the ground in Israel than I do.
But from a strategic standpoint, they are overreaching on an Olympic scale.
But that's because of us.
And now they have an administration that they are confident will do more for them than any other has.
And I think there's a great deal of evidence to support their assumption.
The question is, once things get hot and we are at war, how long will we persist?
Just how far are we willing to go?
I don't think anybody knows that yet.
The Israeli newspaper Haaretz, which you and I from time to time read, reminds everybody Today is the 29th day of Joe Biden's 30-day ultimatum.
The ultimatum was allow international assistance into Gaza, or we will certify you as noncompliant, and that might jeopardize our veto at the Security Council, and it might jeopardize our continued distribution of military equipment and aid to you.
I think that's nonsense.
Nothing else comes to mind that will be treated with greater irrelevance than the UN by this new administration.
Wow.
Colonel, thank you very much, my dear friend.
Are we going to talk about all the good things?
I was going to say, it's rather gloomy.
Well, we're going to get an education soon, I think, when we find out about the plans to secure the border.
What are they?
How is it going to be done?
And I note that Tom Homan, who is a very good and decent man, has been made the so-called czar in the White House.
The only problem I have with this term czar is it has no relevance.
It has no real authority.
It is not a key appointed position that requires confirmation.
Well, it doesn't have confirmation, it doesn't have a staff, and most of all, it doesn't have a budget.
Yeah, and you're dealing with people whose focus is really external.
The Israel-first approach really could care less about what happens at our border and what happens inside our country.
They simply want use of the American military establishment.
So I think Tom Homan is a good and decent man, as I said.
I like him very much.
But I'm skeptical of it.
I have also heard there was a dispute of some kind, or maybe it wasn't a dispute.
Somebody got their wires crossed.
A few days ago, President Trump said that RFK Jr. would be the Secretary of Health and Human Services, which I think is a brilliant choice.
Although, having said that, I'd rather have RFK Jr. as either Vice President or Secretary of State, but that's fine.
Health and Human Services is something he would do brilliantly.
But then Howard Lutnick, who is ultimately leading this transition, announced that that wouldn't happen, that he would be, quote-unquote, a health czar.
You know, all this czar business goes nowhere.
If that's true...
Yeah, sure, of course.
And ultimately, what's that mean?
Well, it may mean that the pharmaceuticals have called everybody up and said, look, you put him over there, we're at war.
I mean, you have the same thing with the Department of Defense.
You're going to end up with a Secretary of Defense who is not going to go into the Secretary of Defense office with the goal of fundamentally changing anything.
Oh, he may pick on behalf of President Trump some replacements.
Especially the chairman of the Joint Chiefs and maybe some of the Joint Chiefs.
But that's not going to make much difference.
When you want to make really positive change, you've got to go after structure as well as personnel.
And we have huge problems with that, as we discussed before.
43, 44 four-stars for a force of, what, 1.18 million?
It's ridiculous.
I mean, we managed to win the Second World War for the most part with seven four-stars for 12 million.
It's a banana republic structure right now.
It's also an old, antiquated structure.
If anything, we should have learned by now that we're living in a very new world, and that world has come to light in eastern Ukraine.
We've got to make some profound changes in the way we do business in defense.
And then, of course, there's the defense budget issue and the criticality of cutting spending.
It's going to become more obvious, particularly once the war starts, And we see the markets tank and the economy can't keep up because it's in terrible shape.
People then begin to say, well, where are we headed?
Well, we're headed into a storm of unbelievable proportions.
You've got debt, financial crises here at home.
You have millions of people inside the country who are non-Americans.
We're not born here.
Have no real interest in becoming Americans.
You have more.
Americans right now at risk of being killed or harmed by Venezuelan gangs than you do in the Middle East, at least at the moment.
Nobody talks about it.
Nobody's doing anything about it.
What we hear is, well, we're going to run the biggest deportation operation in history.
Okay, fine.
How?
And nobody wants to go there.
And these are very important things.
Where does the American military fit into all of this?
I want to get back to the military.
It's not really the man to command that kind of operation.
That's a military operation.
He won't have the legal authority or the financial ability to do that command.
Do you think that the president or whoever he's going to appoint to run the State Department has the appetite for curtailing the 850 foreign military installations that the empire has built and funds around the world?
Probably not.
No, I mean, just recently I listened to commentators in Great Britain who are not necessarily critical of President Trump personally, but have said this looks like a reactionary imperialist administration.
And their argument was there's no evidence for disengagement from these overseas garrisons, no evidence for disengagement from the conflicts and crises themselves.
If anything, they plan to jump in with both feet.
I think there's some truth to that.
Well, time will tell.
We probably will learn sooner rather than later.
In my world, of course, you would be either the Secretary of State or the Secretary of Defense, but I don't have any say.
Just my own vote.
I wouldn't worry about it.
It'll sort itself out.
Yes.
Thank you, Colonel.
A great treat to be able to pick your brain, as always, and hear you talk about all of this stuff.
Look forward to seeing you again next week.
One last point.
I heard that they just announced that this Christie known the governor of what is it?
North Dakota or South Dakota is going to head up DHS.
I was very hopeful given the, It's a waste of money.
Same here.
Not needed.
So, anyhow.
And he should do the same with the Department of Education.
For up to me, half those departments would be gone.
They're not authorized by the Constitution, but that's just me.
Absolutely.
Thank you, Colonel.
All the best, my friend.
Thanks.
Sure.
A great conversation with a great man.
Coming up at 2.15.
We've moved it by 15 minutes.
At 2.15 this afternoon, Matt Ho.
At 3 o 'clock, Karen Kwiatkowski.
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