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Jan. 9, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
22:22
LtCOL. Tony Shaffer : Will Trump Pull the Plug on Ukraine?
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Hi, everyone.
Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Thursday, January 9th, 2025.
Lieutenant Colonel Tony Schaefer joins us now.
Colonel Schaefer, thank you very much for all you did for us in 2024.
A Happy New Year to you.
Happy New Year.
Thank you.
I hope we can continue to prevail upon your expertise and your experience in all these military and intelligence matters.
Even though the public should know this, I hope you don't mind me saying it, you have recently been elected to public office in North Carolina.
Yes, that's right.
I'm one of the county commissioners, one of 2467 county commissioners here in Shawan County.
I've actually started serving in December, and I was mentioning in the pre-discussion.
This county is amazingly well-run.
I had no idea.
This, to me, is an example of what happens when people are elected for the right reasons, to serve the people, when they then internalize that trust that they've been given, and they run it.
I mean, everything is very efficient.
People run things by the rules.
It's a Democrat...
I'm glad to hear that.
If you don't mind, I prefer to call you Colonel to Commissioner.
Ed Henry was having it the other night where he was calling me Commissioner, but Colonel's fine.
Tony's fine.
So I basically want to ask you about whether or not...
You think Donald Trump will pull the plug on Ukraine, and if so, how it will happen and what will happen.
But before we get there, a couple of other pressing matters that I would like your views on.
The president-elect said the other day, famously or infamously, that if Hamas does not return the Israeli hostages by Inauguration Day, there will be hell to pay.
Andy, wouldn't rule out military intervention.
Could you even foresee American soldiers and Marines fighting shoulder to shoulder with IDF?
Could you even see that?
Would the Israelis even want that?
So, we have been way more, I think, integrated with the IDF than people have acknowledged over the years.
Here's a picture of...
An army general.
I don't want to get into this because I'll get in trouble if I get too far into this.
If there's a picture out there on the internet, people can track it down.
They're pretty smart.
Of an army general wearing active duty army general, as in like serving at the moment of the picture, basically in the Bekaa Valley, wearing an Israeli uniform.
Oh boy, a U.S. Army general wearing an Israeli uniform?
Yeah, so I...
Has he been prosecuted yet?
Well, no, because the mission was essentially to observe.
He wasn't there to fight.
But the idea was we had people observing what was going on.
So we weren't fighting with them.
Please don't take my words out of context.
I'm not saying we were there to fight.
But to the president-elect's comments...
I can't ask you to get into his head.
You're not a shrink.
And he often says things just to stir the pot and to begin the conversation and the negotiation.
I get that.
We both know him.
We know what he's like.
And, of course, we have his history of four years in the White House already.
But can you even foresee, with all your military experience, soldiers or Marines on the ground in Gaza?
No, no, no.
Because the same dilemma that he has to face regarding Ukraine, I don't think he wants to create regarding Israel.
He doesn't want to get us in so deep we can't pull out.
Right now, and I think this is why there were problems with he and Netanyahu.
Remember, Netanyahu was not a fan of Donald Trump.
And the reason why is that Trump was actually focused on America first during his first four years, which meant, hey, we're going to work with you when it meets our interest.
When it doesn't meet our interest, then you need to do your own thing.
Netanyahu didn't like that.
Now, right now, because our interests are very much aligned, Trump's going to say, yeah, I'm going to do this because Americans are there.
Remember, he's focused on the Americans.
As much as we support the Israelis, no doubt, I know you and I don't agree on all the issues regarding Israel, and that's fine, but regarding Trump, he's going to support them to the level necessary.
In Trump's mind, to facilitate getting our hostages back.
Secondarily, being able to go after Iran.
So that's a secondary target.
We'll get to Iran in a minute.
And then, of course, we'll get to Ukraine, which is what I really need to pick your brain on.
But back to Gaza.
Don't tell me what you're not supposed to tell me.
Are there troops on the ground there now?
American troops?
No. No.
All right, there must be American intel on the ground.
No, you'd be surprised what we don't have there.
We have a series of leaders from Central Command and UCOM who are kind of waltzing in and out of theater.
Basically, they've publicly acknowledged a couple of the guys who were there on the ground at the beginning of hostilities, a couple of generals.
No, the Biden administration...
Has been reluctant to actually do anything, even intelligence collection, Judge, to be honest.
I mean, that's part of my issue.
You want to at least be doing your own independent intelligence to tell you what's going on.
Everything the Biden administration relies on is from third sources.
Again, you and I don't agree on everything regarding this, but I don't think you can trust NGOs, non-governmental organizations, to be your eyes and ears on the ground.
If those eyes and ears have a certain political slant, and that's what's been happening.
What is the level of, and I'll use one of your technical phrases, signals intelligence that America has?
In other words, the internet and satellites and all that.
What is that level of intelligence?
U.S. intel about what's happening in Gaza?
Independent of Israeli intel.
Yeah. I think there's pretty good internals.
We have some very, as you know, and we criticize the government all the time for this, we do have a level of effective signals and related intelligence, data intelligence, you know, internet stuff.
But I think the bad guys have been smart enough to understand we have that, Judge.
So the ultimate transfer of information, especially operational information, is done by courier, by people, the old-fashioned way.
Yeah, you get kind of an overall perspective, especially with the Iranians, but you don't get tactical down-in-the-dirt details, and that's why the Israelis have been so effective, because they do have human intelligence networks,
spies, basic spies, which is what you need in a war like that.
Understood. Do you believe that Iran poses a threat to the national security of the United States?
I do, but not to the point of where we have to go to war.
I've said this consistently, and I'm going to say it again now.
Back when Barack Obama was president in 2009, he was supporting the quote-unquote Arab Spring, which I don't think we should have done quite as much as we did because we upended governance.
I'm like you on this.
I don't think we should be going in and telling people what government to have, and yet we were doing that.
But at the same time, there was a group of people, the Green Party in Iran, who basically wanted to get rid of the Mullahs.
They're Persians.
They want to be like us.
And we didn't do anything to encourage them.
I'm not saying we should do it.
Colin Powell once said, and I agree, you break it, you own it.
So don't break it.
If the people want to break it and they want to seek their own future, then God bless them.
Let's be a friend of them.
But the moment we involve ourselves, we become the issue.
So I'm saying that the Obama administration missed an opportunity to encourage, at least encourage, the Green Movement to throw the mullahs off in Iran.
But Obama didn't do it because the Democrats have been focused, obsessed, if you will, with the Iranians and the Shia to become our partners on the ground there in the Middle East since Zygmunt Brzezinski back in the Carter years.
And the Democrats have consistently tried to support this change of horse.
I'm not saying, I'm not here to judge choices made by previous administrations.
I'm simply saying the United States has always chosen to work with the Saudis and the Sunni flavor of Islamic Arabs over working with the Shia Islamic Persians.
Part of why there's so much chaos right now in the Middle East.
All right.
Let me bring you domestically.
Mike Waltz, whom you and I both know, Congressman Waltz, is about to become a national security advisor.
Tony, if I may, a job that you should have, but the president-elect is giving it to Mike, made a startling statement the other day that the administration to be is concerned about The expression of political opinions against Israel and in favor of Palestine,
and it's going to monitor them in the United States.
That's not the business of the federal government.
It's not the business of any government, is it?
No, it's not.
There's a fine line, and this is the issue that we always, you and I talk about, I've talked about with our dear friend Walter Jones.
There is a line to be drawn.
That says, hey, freedom of speech, go protest.
Don't care.
Go do whatever you want.
And I don't care.
But the moment you conceive of violence, when violent rhetoric becomes violent action, that's the dividing line.
That's where people will be debating this 100 years from now, should the republic...
Yeah, but if somebody on the Columbia University campus says...
I want Hamas to win, or I think Hamas are freedom fighters.
That is protected speech.
It cannot punish, silence, or deter that.
No, and I agree with you.
And this is where an institution like Colombia or any of the other universities have to establish their own interpretation.
Because my issue is, obviously, some of that became violent to those who were Jewish or Israeli.
So, again, I have no problem with people shouting at each other, but I have a problem the moment you pick up a stick, pick up a weapon, and start hitting on people.
That's that line.
So, I'm all for it.
I'm always for it.
I always err on the side of protecting and allowing speech.
I think I'm like Elon Musk, at least in this respect.
I'm a purist.
Everybody should say whatever the hell they want, whether it's right or wrong, I don't care.
It's up to the individual to discern what the truth is.
I wish that National Security Advisor Mike Walls and President Trump to accept that.
Now, I don't know if he was just speaking hypothetically.
I don't even know if he was speaking what the president wants, but the words he used were startling.
Another set of startling words, if I may, Colonel Schaefer, came.
From Lieutenant General Keith Kellogg, whom the president-elect has designated as his emissary to endeavor to bring about peace between the Russians and the Ukrainians, General Kellogg basically said, I'm paraphrasing now,
if President Putin doesn't quickly come to the negotiation table and consider seriously a ceasefire, we will increase Could Donald Trump actually want to do that?
I've not spoken to either man, but I don't believe General Kellogg reflects accurately what President Trump would want done.
I see some problems coming up on the road there pretty quick.
We don't, first off, Judge, we don't have more stuff to just kind of throw into it, especially when we're talking about trying to inject ourselves back with vigor into the Pacific regarding China.
The one word that's necessary for deterrence is credible.
You need to have credible deterrence.
And so many of our adversaries recognize we've been giving, you know, everything from attackums.
All these other things to Ukraine.
So there's a great gap of credibility.
And so Keith Kellogg saying that, I don't think that was a coordinated, a Donald Trump-approved comment.
I think Kellogg is out of the government right now.
They're not in yet.
And so I don't think he's fully aware of how bad things are.
He's old school.
And I'm not saying that as a bad thing.
General Kellogg, if you watch this, don't be offended.
My job is to call balls and strikes.
And in this case, it's a ball because I don't think he fully understands how compromised our own military is.
Secondly, Putin wants to come to the table, Judge.
It's not Putin.
This is where I think there's a level of propaganda that's permeated even General Kellogg's point of view.
Putin's been talking about wanting to have a conversation.
So I don't think it's about Russia at this point.
I think it's about the fact that there are elements of our own government and the political left who have invested so much in continuing this war.
They will continue this war and expand it, if at all possible, just to fix Donald Trump, to fix his wagon, if you will.
To get him stuck in this war, an expanded war.
That's what's going on.
Okay, so at the tail end of his tenure as Secretary of State, Antony Blinken is giving a series of interviews.
He gave a long interview, a video interview, to a reporter for the New York Times.
Here's a clip, and as you watch it, I want you to think of my question, which is, has he learned anything?
From the past three years.
Cut number one.
Where the line is drawn on the map, at this point, I don't think is fundamentally going to change very much.
The real question is, can we make sure that Ukraine is in a position to move forward strongly?
You mean that the areas that Russia controls, you feel, will have to be ceded?
Ceded is not the question.
The question is, the line, as a practical matter, in the foreseeable future, is unlikely to move very much.
Ukraine's claim on that territory will always be there.
And the question is, will they find ways, with the support of others, to regain territory that's been lost?
I think the critical thing now going forward is this.
If there is going to be a resolution, or at least a near-term resolution, because it's unlikely that Putin will give up on his ambitions.
If there's a ceasefire, then...
In Putin's mind, the ceasefire is likely to give him time to rest, to refit, to reattack at some point in the future.
So what's going to be critical to make sure that any ceasefire that comes about is actually enduring is to make sure that Ukraine has the capacity going forward to deter further aggression.
And that can come in many forms.
It could come through NATO, and we put Ukraine on a path to NATO membership.
It could come through security assurances, commitments, guarantees by different countries.
To make sure that Russia knows that if it reattacks, it's going to have a big problem.
That, I think, is going to be critical to making sure that any deal that's negotiated actually endures and then allows Ukraine the space, the time, to grow strong as a country.
And we put Ukraine on a path to NATO membership.
Has he learned anything in the past three years of this disaster?
No, Judge, there's some people who are so stupid they don't know they're stupid.
That's Tony Blinken.
And he's like a...
An academic moron.
From day one, and President Trump has said this, this is where I completely agree with President Trump.
President Trump said, look, there was an agreement made in the 90s that once Ukraine became independent, they would not join NATO.
That's the deal.
That's the deal that kind of what everybody signed up to back in about, was it 92, 93, whenever we worked it all out.
That's kind of the operational agreement I've always operated from.
It's like, yeah, we made this agreement.
We're now breaking that.
And Trump said, I don't think it's completely accurate, but Biden continued to push for NATO.
I don't think Biden was the first guy to push for NATO.
Obviously, Blinken is all for this NATO thing.
Just stop the NATO nonsense.
If I were in the room, if I were Mike Walsh, stop it.
Stop it.
Stop it.
There's no benefit to anybody to put Ukraine and the NATO.
It should be, like everybody agreed to, kind of a neutral zone.
Everybody does business there, which they do, good or bad, just saying.
Stop it.
Just stop it.
It's disruptive.
The Russians have the right of having their own political sphere of influence.
Donald Trump's kind of doing that with Greenland.
I get it.
It's time for people to understand that nations, based on culture and tradition and momentum, will have spheres of influence.
The Monroe Doctrine, well, Trump's kind of bringing it back.
So the Russians have the same right to have what they believe to be their sphere of influence.
It is what it is.
Knuckleheads like Blinken somehow want to disrupt things because they are part of this global government concept.
They want to break up Russia.
They want to push Ukraine into the EU because they want this Soros-backed, World Economic Forum-backed idea that we should be one world government.
That's what this is all about.
It's not in the cards.
And these people are acting politically against the benefit and interest of the EU and the population, both of Ukraine and Russia.
It's nonsense.
So I just hope...
I think President Trump understands it.
I agree with everything you just said, but I don't think Mike Walls, Marco Rubio, Pete Heggseth, and Sebastian Gorka, the people who will have Donald Trump's ear, agree with that.
I think they are neocons at heart.
They need to be listening to what Trump says.
I'm listening to it.
And it's like, I get it.
I'm with you, Mr. President.
I understand what you're saying.
I'm with you.
So these other folks, I'd like to believe, will be as attentive to listen to the president of what he's saying.
Because he's saying, yeah, we're out of the neocon business.
I'm not a neocon.
I've said this a dozen different times.
I'm not a neocon.
I do believe that we should look at how we can create conditions for global commerce and working together.
That is to say that, you know, everybody can be Canadian or Russian.
We all understand the language of commerce and working together to build a better world.
A voluntary system of interaction rather than a forced system is what the World Economic Forum and those knuckleheads all want.
And they are the ultimate expression of neocons.
They want to find a way to force people to do things.
And so, yeah.
I agree with President Trump.
I think others need to get on board with what President Trump is saying.
Commissioner, you're getting more articulate with every tick of the clock.
Congratulations on your new public office.
Thank you for your time with us.
I hope you'll come and visit with us again soon.
Absolutely. Thanks for having me.
Thank you, Tony.
All the best.
Coming up later today at 9 o'clock this morning, Professor Gilbert Doctorow at 1 o'clock, Ambassador Ian Proud at 2 o'clock.
Professor John Mearsheimer at 3 o'clock, Colonel Larry Wilkerson.
Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom.
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