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Jan. 21, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
21:29
AMB. Ian Proud : Europe, Ukraine, and Trump
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What happens to Ukraine if Trump pulls the plug?
And I'll continue the analogy.
It stops the spigot of the cash and ammunition and military supplies.
Well, they run out of money, and very quickly they can no longer afford to fight the war.
The UK won't be able to meet the funding needs.
We don't have any money left.
The Germans are cutting back on their money ahead of elections.
They don't have any money themselves.
They're in massive debt, so they can either stop the war or their economy can go into meltdown, seems the two options available to them.
NATO as a whole, neither NATO as a whole nor any of the EU nations can adequately replace the American largesse.
That's absolutely correct.
You know, the United States of America have so far put in $175 billion since 2022 into Ukraine, and that's almost the size of Ukraine's economy.
No other country or group of countries comes anywhere close to that, and they're not going to come close to that if Trump, as you say, pulls the plug.
I don't know what Trump is going to do, but here's what he said about Zelensky, about the many, many people who are dead, and about how horrific the war is, and he said this just a few minutes ago.
Cut number 13. President Zelensky would like to have peace.
He's told me that very strongly.
He'd like to have peace.
But it takes two to tango.
We'll see what happens.
Any time they want, I'll meet.
I'd like to see that end.
Millions of people are being killed.
And they're being killed.
It's a vicious situation.
And they're now largely soldiers.
A lot of people have been killed in the cities.
They look like demolition sites.
The thing with Ukraine is that many more people died than you're reporting.
You're not reporting the real numbers.
And I'm not blaming you for that.
I'm blaming...
I'm blaming maybe our government for not wanting to release those numbers.
Many more people died than what you know about.
I don't know what he's going to do.
At one point in the campaign, he said he could end the war in 24 hours.
And then another point after he was elected, he said he'll end the war before he's inaugurated.
And then shortly before he was inaugurated, he said it will take six months to end the war.
And then we had that statement.
I misspoke.
It wasn't earlier today.
It was yesterday.
But, you know, it was in the White House.
And since his inauguration, it's hard to put a finger on things.
Under our system, the spigot is dry.
I mean, if he wants to...
Continue sending what Joe Biden has been sending.
He's got to go to Congress.
He's got a lot of sway with Congress, even though most of the Republicans have said to Joe, this is it.
This is the last time.
So I don't know what's going to happen next.
What would Sir Keir Starmer prefer that Donald Trump do vis-a-vis Ukraine?
Well, Keir Starmer has just signed a 100-year pact with Ukraine, which I'm sure is making most Ukrainians feel much safer in their beds at night.
Keir Starmer would clearly like the United States to continue to provide the funding to Ukraine that has been providing hitherto since the war started.
But that's not going to happen, it seems to me, from everything that Trump has said.
That leaves the UK in a bit of a policy no-man's land again, as it was in 2017, the last time President Trump...
At a time when we're drifting further away from Europe.
So I think our ability to influence what's going on is reducing even further from an already very low position right now.
What is this 100-year pact?
Are you being sarcastic or is it true?
Who's ever heard of a 100-year pact?
Well, I wish I was being sarcastic.
But no, you know, Keir Starmer and Zelensky signed this grand 100-year pact.
Which included no new money, by the way, except for £40 million, that's I think about $50 million, to help me build Ukraine's economy after the war comes to an end.
You know, 100-year pact, security assurances, nothing's been written on paper, nothing's been made public.
But I think what the point was, was that Starmer was trying to kind of assure...
Zelensky, that he's got a friend for life, even though Zelensky's political life will come to an end shortly after the war finishes.
And when will Sir Keir's political life come to an end?
Is he still on eggshells, as we say here in the U.S.?
Or will he have a failure to prosecute people when he was a prosecutor?
This is before he was the prime minister.
Well, we now have this vicious murderer who killed these innocent young schoolgirls in the north of England attending a Taylor Swift party.
An absolutely tragic situation.
And it now turns out that actually the government wasn't honest with the public at the start about the fact that this person had been on an anti-terrorism programme several times and had been missed by the system.
Before he then rampaged into this party and killed these innocent children.
With the economy suffering badly as well, he doesn't seem to be cracking any good news right now, sadly.
But then we've had a string of pretty bad prime ministers, and in that regard, he's no different.
If he leaves office, this would not mean that a conservative would replace him.
This just means that...
His party, the Labour Party, would choose another prime minister.
Is that essentially correct?
That is absolutely correct, although I think it's quite unlikely that he will leave office.
You know, he has such a big majority in Parliament that he's just going to hunker down and wait for the clouds, hopefully, to blow over.
Let's see if they do.
Theresa May in the past was a similarly, you know, bad prime minister.
She hung on for...
Is there any effort on the part of European elites to do something for Ukraine?
Well, there's lots of talk about it.
You find these enormously powerful countries like Estonia and places like that talking about the need to fight to last Ukrainian, but they don't have any money.
And in fact, what has happened over the past year is that rather than giving Ukraine free money, they've actually increasingly given Ukraine debt and loans.
With all of Ukraine's problems, with its government and even some of its hospitals being funded by the American government, Here's Prime Minister Zelensky talking about the aid Ukraine is giving to Syria.
This must be with American cash, but listen to this, cut number 11. And Ukraine's already stipulating to support the new Syria.
Our ministers have been to Damascus, and we've launched a food aid program for Syria called Food from Ukraine.
And we are getting our partners involved to invest in this.
What do you make of this, Ian?
Well, for every one dollar the Ukrainian government...
It gets 50 cents given to it, you know, from foreign countries.
So essentially, as most of that money is, you know, from the United States of America, you know, you are paying for Ukrainian aid to Syria.
And I think what it means probably is free grain shipments to Syria.
But, you know, Ukraine has no money.
It runs its whole country on credit cards.
And actually, they're your credit cards and my credit cards as well, as it happens.
Although my credit cards are a lot smaller than the United States one, of course, as a Brit.
Here's Zelensky again asking what Trump will do.
Cut number 10. But will President Trump listen to Europe?
Or will he negotiate with Russia and China without Europe?
Europe needs to learn how to fully take care of itself so that the world can't afford to ignore it.
It's vital to maintain unity in Europe because the world doesn't care about just Budapest or Brussels.
It cares about Europe as a whole.
Does he have credibility with European elites?
Does he resonate?
Well, he resonates with European elites in Western Europe.
He doesn't resonate with European elites in Central Europe, in places like Hungary, Slovakia, now Austria, Romania, Croatia, has just elected another kind of more nationalist.
You know, president for the second time.
So he resonates with some elites, the wealthier elites in Brussels and places like that.
In Budapest, you know, he referred to both places.
He doesn't resonate.
You know, Orban and others want to kind of end this ridiculous war.
I think most ordinary people in Europe haven't got a clue what's going on.
They're blissfully unaware of how bad European policy is.
Fed an absolute blizzard of propaganda that everything's going fine.
And if we carry on doing what we've been doing for the past 10 years, eventually it will work.
Although there's no evidence that it will ever work.
What does the Kremlin's read on Zelensky?
Well, they see him as an unelected puppet leader.
They see him as a puppet leader put in place.
By the United States of America and to a lesser extent by the Europeans.
They see that he's got no legitimacy because his electoral mandate ran out in March of 2024 and he's only in power because the Americans and the Europeans are keeping him in power.
And actually he's...
Made it illegal for anybody in Ukraine to talk to Russia.
So, you know, they don't even have the opportunity to engage with him, not that they'd necessarily want to.
So, you know, I think from the Russian point of view, they see the kind of key dealmakers in this as Donald Trump.
And, you know, they're willingly engaged with Donald Trump.
Let's see, you know, how Trump is able to somehow to navigate, you know, Zelensky and Putin around the same table.
I mean, that's the thing that could take the most time.
Here's Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov yesterday.
Cut number nine.
President Trump and his administration intend to advance the interest of the United States on the world stage.
The interest of the United States has never changed, regardless of whether a Democrat or Republican is in the White House.
The interest is to always be stronger than any competitor.
I think he's right.
I think it doesn't matter whether a Republican or a Democrat is in the White House.
American foreign policy is essentially the same.
What do you think?
You know, from what Biden did in terms of wanting to maintain the US hegemony over foreign policy, at a time when centres of global power are dissipating, you know, everything's moving towards Asia, China is growing, the BRICS is emerging, and so on.
So at some point, there needs to be a moment of moderation where, you know, the United States, you know, even though it is still by far the largest military power the world has ever seen, of course, you know, it is, that it finds a way to sort of coexist.
You know, with other kind of blocks of power around the world.
However uncomfortable that will be, it's an inflection point that it seems that we haven't reached yet.
Can Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin sit down and cut a deal which would result in lasting peace between the US and Russia?
Well, I think they can cut a deal that will last as long as Donald Trump remains in power.
Further beyond that, who knows?
But with J.D. Vance being a long-term prospect, maybe a policy can be put in place that endures at least for the coming decade.
Let's see what happens there.
I think the key with Trump is, unlike Biden, who refused to talk to Putin, he did meet him in Switzerland, to be fair to Biden, but generally speaking, he's ignored Putin.
Trump has shown he's willing and ready to engage with Putin to cut deals.
And I think that's a key difference.
Let's hope they do that very soon.
Here's Putin's attitude about speaking with Trump on Inauguration Day.
He said this two days ago.
Cut number eight.
We've heard his commitment to do everything to prevent World War III.
Of course, we welcome this approach and we congratulate the newly elected President of the United States on his inauguration.
We have never been against dialogue.
We have always been ready to maintain a peaceful relationship with any American administration.
I have said that many times.
We would like to see the dialogue built upon equality and mutual respect, considering the common positions on our country and a number of international We're also open for dialogue with the new US administration on the Ukrainian conflict.
The most important thing here is to eliminate the fundamental reason for the conflict.
That's the most important.
And as for settling the situation itself, its goal should be not a brief ceasefire.
Not just getting some time to regroup and rearm and carry on the conflict, but long-term peace based on respect to lawful interests of all people and nationalities living in the region.
And of course, we're going to fight for the interests of Russia and its people.
This is actually the goal and point of the Special Military Operation.
Truly articulate, no?
Vladimir Putin is acutely aware that the United States of America is a far more powerful economically state than Russia is, even though Russia is a peer in terms of its nuclear arsenal.
Putin is acutely aware of that.
He was ready and actually had quite good relations with Trump last time around, even though...
Movements on the Hill with the Katsa Sanctions Act kind of scupper that a bit.
They still maintain sort of pragmatic relationships.
Everything I've seen in the time I lived in Moscow studying Putin up close was that actually Russia's World Cup deal is ready.
You know, to engage in dialogue, but it wants to be treated with respect and it wants its single core interest, which has always been this issue of NATO enlargement, for the first time in 16 years to be taken seriously.
And if that issue can be resolved, everything else suddenly becomes much easier.
I mean, you know, the Russians ultimately want to live in peace, but they don't want to kind of have...
NATO right up on the border.
That position has never changed and it will never change as long as he's in power and he still appears to be in the moodness of health.
I assume that that's what he's talking about when he says the core reason for the special military operation, it's because of NATO.
If Donald Trump says no NATO, Ukraine will never be in NATO as long as I'm president.
That might change the entire military outlook in Ukraine.
No? That is absolutely the single core issue that Vladimir Putin has been talking about since 2008 and even before 2008 after the Bolts joined NATO in 2006.
So 17 years now, guys.
Let's finally put this one to bed and say, actually, no NATO for Ukraine, but EU, yes.
Why not?
But NATO, no, never.
Not no, not for the next few years.
No, never.
And suddenly life...
What is the attitude of the British public about Boris Johnson's having scuttled the peace deal entered into by Ukraine and Russia back in 2022?
The vast majority of British people have absolutely no clue about that.
They see him as an utter buffoon on the back of what he did during the COVID period.
He's a bit of a clown.
But I think we don't really get independent news in this country, unlike in the United States where you do get a variegated sort of media.
We don't get independent news on what's happening in Ukraine.
We only get government propaganda from all the mainstream media channels.
So most British people are absolutely clueless about the fact that him, Victoria Nuland, Liz Truss, in this kind of terrible trio, scuppered that piece still in Istanbul.
Does the Kremlin understand?
The Victoria Nuland mentality that Russia is the enemy and must be beaten back.
Does the Kremlin get that?
Oh, yes.
And they feel it and they talk about it.
And actually...
You know, the problem is, you know, Judge, that, you know, when we do our sort of fighting on MTV and on Instagram and on, you know, TikTok and everything else, you know, we talk to the cameras about Russia rather than actually talking to Russian people.
That just makes them more resistant.
You know, your John McCain's, you know, and all these people, all the timeless of talking down the Russians, that just makes the Russians more determined never to comply with the things that they want.
You know, to happen.
And I think until we get to the point where we actually have a respectful, we don't have to like them, a respectful dialogue with Russia, only then can we get to the point of actually reaching a deal.
That has to start with listening to what Russia wants, what it's always wanted, the NATO issue.
But show some respect.
Diplomacy is not about being friends, it's about coexistence and actually showing respect and having honest dialogue to tackle the most difficult challenges the world faces right now.
And let's be honest, we face a lot.
Ian Proud, thank you, my dear friend.
Thank you very much for your time and for your thoughts.
I hope you'll come back and visit with us again.
I promise to be rid of this frog in my throat the next time you hear me.
Get better soon, Judge.
Look forward to seeing you again.
Thank you.
All the best.
All the best.
Coming up later today at 2 o'clock this afternoon, Anya Parampol.
At 3 o'clock, Phil Giraldi.
At 4 o'clock, Scott Ritter.
Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom.
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