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Feb. 4, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
31:21
Scott Ritter : Ukraine and Death.
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Hi, everyone.
Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Wednesday, February 5th, 2025.
Scott Ritter joins us now.
Earlier in the week, I read your research piece on the deaths in Ukraine, and that's what I thought we'd be talking about, and maybe we'll get to it, but of course, and the United States and the West materially misrepresenting.
Human death and the consequences of misrepresenting human death, even the history of misrepresenting human death.
But before we get to that, if we do, of course, we must talk about the announcement that President Trump made yesterday.
Excuse me.
It's legal.
It's political.
It's moral.
It's practical implications.
I speak, of course, of this off-the-wall statement in the presence of Prime Minister Netanyahu that the United States will acquire and own Gaza.
Now, I am sick and tired of watching the announcement, but if you want us to play it, we will play it again for you.
No, I'm intimately familiar with it.
So let's start with the practical and geopolitical implications of what the President said.
Let me set the stage this way, Judge.
Please. You know, I'm not here to defend what Trump said at all.
My dogs aren't here to defend what Trump said either.
Hopefully they'll quiet down in just a second.
We're dealing with a situation in the world where there is a leadership vacuum.
We're in an environment where the United States is in decline and there is nobody to fill that vacuum.
And what happens is certain situations around the world tend to deteriorate without any control.
One of those situations is in the Middle East.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is one that has been dragging on forever without a solution.
Trump is a different kind of leader.
A leadership abhors a vacuum.
And when you see a vacuum, he will go into it.
So what Trump, I believe, is trying to do here is solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Now, there's nothing finesse about him.
He's not going to do business as usual.
But I think we have to take his statements with a very heavy grain of salt, meaning that we don't take it literally.
The audience, I believe, I believe that Trump was basically putting Netanyahu on notice.
You have failed.
You have not solved the Gaza problem.
Israel doesn't have a solution.
I do, and this is it.
And it's an outrageous solution.
It's something that makes no sense morally, legally, ethically, you name it.
There's not anything about it that makes any sense except he, on record, in the White House, with Netanyahu standing by his side, shamed Netanyahu.
Netanyahu's not happy about this.
This is an embarrassing moment.
Gaza is Israel's problem to solve, and Israel couldn't solve it, and Israel can't solve it.
So what Trump did is said, I'm going to solve it.
Why was Netanyahu beaming?
Maybe he was looking at Mrs. Adelson in the audience.
I don't think he was beaming.
I think he was grimacing.
I was watching his hands, white-knuckled.
I think this man was taken by surprise by...
Go back and watch it.
Maybe you'll have a different take.
But I think as Trump is speaking, you just look at Netanyahu's eyes and he's just sitting there going, what the hell is happening?
All right, we're going to run it because Chris, my executive producer, zoomed in on Netanyahu's face and his hands.
It's 82 seconds.
We are sick and tired of it, but let's watch it and then you can comment on it.
The U.S. will take over the Gaza Strip and we will do a job with it too.
We'll own it and be responsible for dismantling all of the dangerous unexploded bombs and other weapons on the site, level the site and get rid of the destroyed buildings, level it out, create an economic development that will supply unlimited numbers of jobs and housing for the people of the area.
You are talking tonight about the United States taking over a sovereign territory.
What authority would allow you to do that?
Are you talking about a permanent occupation there?
Redevelopment? I do see a long-term ownership position, and I see it bringing great stability to that part of the Middle East and maybe the entire Middle East.
And everybody I've spoken to, this was not a decision made lightly, everybody I've spoken to loves the idea of the United States.
Owning that piece of land, developing and creating thousands of jobs with something that will be magnificent.
I don't want to be cute, I don't want to be a wise guy, but the Riviera of the Middle East, this could be something that could be so magnificent.
If we can get a beautiful area to resettle people permanently in nice homes where they can be happy and not be shot, not be killed, not be knifed to death like what's happening in Gaza.
Why would they want to return?
The place has been hell.
This is hell because of the mass murderer and war criminals seated next to you, funded by your predecessor and now funded by you.
But before you respond to that, Carolyn Levitt, the president's press secretary, claimed a few minutes ago that President Trump told Prime Minister Netanyahu ahead of time what he was going to say.
I don't know if that's accurate.
As you look at his hands and look at the look on his face, it's like, I have to stand here and listen to this.
But go ahead, Scott, please.
Again, I'm not here to defend Trump at all.
I'm trying to put this in perspective because otherwise you'd want to get this guy committed.
There has to be a method to his madness.
One has to search for that.
And what I will say is this.
No one else has a solution.
No one else has offered a solution.
Everybody who has said no.
To what Trump is saying.
And that's the right answer, by the way.
No, you can't do that.
No one's come up and said, no, but here's an alternative.
Here's something else.
So I think what Trump has done is put something so outrageous out there that it's going to compel people to have to come up with a solution, to have to come up with, you know, well, if we don't want to do this, let's do this.
And I'm talking about the Arab world.
I'm talking about Europe.
I'm talking about Russia, China.
I'm talking about everybody.
Nobody. Well, how about this?
We're not giving you another nickel, B.B. Oh, no, no, that's not the option.
Trump took the $100 million.
So he's going to have to play the game of, you know...
Meaning Trump has been bribed to keep B.B. happy, bribed by Mrs. Eggleston.
Basically, he's been told to, you know, yeah, keep the Israelis happy.
But again, What Trump has done is come in there and said, you know, you can't solve the Gaza.
That's literally what he said.
He said, this man next to me can't solve this problem, so I'm going to solve it.
I'm the problem solver.
America's the problem solver.
Now, we're not.
We don't have a solution.
But it's such an audacious, ridiculous proposition he's put out there that it will, I think in his mind, compare.
Look, Trump is a negotiator.
From a business standpoint, not from a diplomatic standpoint.
And if you're sitting down in a business negotiation, a big real estate deal, and you're at the table, and the other party says no, then they walk, they walk, they leave.
They're gone, they're finished.
What Trump is looking for is the counter-offer.
That's the way the businessman thinks, the New York State realtor.
He's come in with an outrageous proposal.
But people still want that property.
They still want to deal with it.
So they're going to say, No, but here's a counteroffer.
Now they have something to work with.
And I think that's what Trump is trying to do here because there's no way in God's earth does he follow through with any aspect of this.
Because it would just put America as one of the greatest war criminals in modern history.
And that's not what the American people want.
Can you imagine your fellow Marines knocking on people's doors?
With bayonets at the end of their rifle saying it's time for you to leave.
The United States owns this property.
Yeah, well, of course they would.
And we did it in Baghdad.
We did it in Kabul.
We did it in Afghanistan.
We do it wherever we're told to do it because it's a lawful order.
Marines don't get to judge the constitutionality of the order given to them by the commander-in-chief.
That's the job of Congress.
Now, if they're told to murder people, to bomb innocent civilians and all that, they won't do that.
That's an unlawful order.
But to be given an order to occupy a piece of territory, take control of the territory, and, you know, move a population.
Look, we did it in Vietnam.
We would move South Vietnamese people out of villages into safe areas.
Is it immoral?
Yeah. Is it illegal?
No. But I don't think the Marines want to do that, and I would think, I would hope that the Commandant of the Marine Corps and all the combat commanders would tell the President, Mr. President, we don't, this is not a...
Oh, but that arch-Christian nationalist Zionist that's now the Secretary of State, he would love another crusade in the Middle East.
You mean Secretary of Defense?
Yeah, I'm sorry.
I meant to say defense.
The Secretary of State, by the way, was in Latin America.
He wasn't even with Netanyahu and Trump yesterday.
No, he was going for another time.
But look, the Secretary of Defense isn't a combat commander.
He is the head of the Department of Defense.
But the people who lead the troops on the ground, who command the troops, who are responsible for the actions of the troops, I would hope every single one of them, the blind closed doors, would say, Mr. President, this is not a mission that's suitable for American troops.
This is a mission, actually, if you look at it, every aspect of this mission is setting us up to fail.
Mr. President, we don't want to fail.
We won't lose, Mr. President.
We will kill everybody on the ground.
That's what we do.
You don't want us to do that, Mr. President, because it will not reflect back good on you.
Or on the core or on the country.
Please don't make us do this, Mr. President.
There's got to be a better solution.
And what will happen when American troops come home in body bags?
Oh, hell, that's never bothered anybody.
Or when American troops come home morally broken, physically broken, mentally broken.
I'm at the point right now where I'm convinced that most Americans don't care about American troops because if they did, they would never allow this to happen to begin with.
We put the yellow stickers on the back of the car and say, I support the troops.
But we don't visit them in the VA.
We don't visit them on the homeless line.
We don't visit them when they're drinking themselves to death or committing suicide at a rate of 27 a day.
If we want to increase that suicide rate, put Americans on the ground in Gaza and watch them have to live with the consequences of that action.
I mean, we don't want to do this.
So Trump's proposal is unworkable, immoral, unlawful.
Unconstitutional. And his own people have begun to backtrack a little bit.
Carolyn Levitt said, well, it would be a temporary removal.
I don't know what that would constitute.
The Palestinian people are not vacating Gaza when Netanyahu drops American-supplied 2000-pound bombs on their tents.
They're certainly not going to leave because Donald Trump says you have to go.
We own the real estate.
These people spent 15 months standing toe-to-toe with the IDF and fought the IDF to a standstill and indeed compelled the IDF to withdraw from Gaza.
The IDF didn't win this war.
Hamas won this war.
And the Palestinian people showed they have the resilience and the right stuff to stick it out.
They didn't do that for 15 months just to fold like a house of cards because Donald Trump says that America wants to turn guys into a golf course.
So this is the stupidity.
You know, the interesting thing in all of the discussions that have been had, not once anybody said, well, what do the Palestinian people think about this?
What about their vote?
Nobody mentioned Hamas.
As if Hamas doesn't exist.
Hamas not only exists, it's stronger than it has ever been politically because...
I'm going to play a clip from Carolyn Levitt.
This is just a couple of minutes ago, and one of the reporters, it's a very snarky answer that she gives, and I'd like you to comment on it.
At least in my view, it's snarky.
It begins with one of the reporters saying to her, who owns Gaza.
Cut number 17, Chris.
Questions. One, the president yesterday used the word permanent for permanently resettled Palestinians.
I hear you saying temporarily today.
Is that a shift or a specific change that you want to highlight?
And my second question is, yesterday he spoke about the U.S. owning Gaza.
Who owns Gaza now, and how would the U.S. acquire ownership?
Well, Gaza is currently run by Iranian-backed terrorists in the Middle East.
Just Hamas, who we all agree, I think everybody in the region agrees, that can no longer stand.
Just look at the events of October 7th and the events since.
And the President, again, is committed to rebuilding the region for all people who want to return to it once it is no longer a demolition site.
And it's a place where people can actually live and thrive in harmony, as he said last night.
His words, not mine.
And permanent versus temporarily resettle?
Can you just clarify that?
I don't think she knows what she's talking about.
It's evil to suggest people should live in such dire conditions.
Honey, I'm sorry, I shouldn't call her that.
I apologize for that.
I'm not being...
But she has to understand that the United States together, Israel, created this unlivable situation.
And again, the Palestinians get the vote.
They're the only ones that get the vote.
You don't get a vote.
The president doesn't get a vote.
The Israelis tried to vote, but they lost.
The only people that get a vote are the Palestinians.
And right now, they voted with their feet, meaning they are putting their feet squarely on the ground.
You can throw labels around all she wants.
Iranian back, this, that, and the other thing.
They're the victors.
And to the victors go the spoils.
Now, does the United States want to take Hamas on and fight them?
That's a different issue altogether.
It would be a war of choice.
Hamas doesn't pose a threat to us at all.
We're sticking our nose in somebody else's business.
That nose of the other side, Israel, got broken badly.
I don't think Hamas is...
Going anywhere.
And in fact, the more we oppose them, the stronger they get.
I've always said the best way to deal with Hamas, I said this back in the 1990s to senior Israelis, is sit down at the table and negotiate with them because that instantly makes Hamas a responsible player that has to now take the negotiation seriously.
The best thing Donald Trump could do right now is send his special envoy to Gaza to meet with Hamas, to sit down and say, okay, you are the...
The leaders now.
What is your solution?
If you don't have a solution, I'll come up with one.
What is your solution?
And let's hear it.
Because then that forces Hamas to stop being the resistance movement and start being a political movement that is responsible to the needs and wants of the people on the international stage.
But nobody seems to want to go that route.
Not in the United States, not in Israel, not around the world.
Do you think that the American media, the media in the West, American politicians, whether they're Republicans or Democrats don't take this seriously?
Or do you think that this is the Nixon madman routine?
Remember when he went to the bomb Cambodia, Kissinger said, they'll think you're crazy, and Nixon said, I want them to think I'm crazy.
It would, except it's not.
I mean, the way he's laying it out, it's not, you know, Nixon was, you know, I'm going to blow the world up.
I'm going nuclear.
We're going to do this.
Trump is.
I'm building a golf course.
I'm building the new Riviera.
I'm going to put in Trump Palace, maybe some casinos, you know, and it's going to be wonderful and great and all that stuff.
You know, it's a fantasy world that he's building, but it's not, you know, the outcome is not insane.
It's the path to that is the insanity.
I mean, physically relocating 1.8, 1.9 million people against their will.
You're going to have to go in, Mr. Trump, and kill 20,000, 30,000 Hamas fighters who are underground.
They're not giving up.
Egypt's not taking them.
Egypt already said, we're not taking resistance fighters.
Jordan's not going to take them.
The Hamas guys are there.
You're going to have to kill them all, Mr. President.
Are you ready to do that?
This will be a battle unlike anything the American military has fought in modern history.
Think a combination of Stalingrad and Iwo Jima.
Hell above ground, hell below ground.
Tunnels and ruins.
And people who have been fighting there for 15 months know it inside and out.
Our troops go in and don't know anything.
We're very aggressive.
We'll pursue.
We'll close with and destroy.
They're going to kill a whole bunch of us in the process.
Switching over to your piece on Ukraine and death, why would Donald Trump either knowingly, grossly misstate The number of Russian deaths in Ukraine or be susceptible to grossly inaccurate data upon which he relied when he said things as absurd as a million Russian soldiers have been killed.
I'm going to do Russia a favor.
Their economy is failing.
This is a ridiculous war.
If President Putin, I'm paraphrasing, doesn't sit down and talk, I'll have no choice but to increase the level of, now he doesn't know what he's talking about, taxes, tariffs, sanctions on anything being sold by Russia to the United States.
What the hell is he talking about?
It's Trump.
People talk about Trump delusional syndrome or something of that nature.
He's deluded himself.
This is a man who has put out a political outcome that he wants, an end to the war.
But it's also one that he can't accept reality, meaning he can't allow the war to end on Russia's terms because that, of course, doesn't exude the kind of strength that he's trying to exude.
He needs to dictate the outcome, the solution.
And to justify it, he has to buy into data that sustains and supports the pathways he's chosen.
You know, the Russians are winning.
Everybody acknowledges that.
But he has to make it appear that with a little bit of pressure from the United States, the Russians could be losing.
I mean, his big thing right now is, you know, ruining the Russian economy, dropping oil to $45 a barrel.
I would just ask them what that does to West Permian oil in West Texas.
It destroys the U.S. oil economy.
We'll have a 30% drop in oil production.
Now, we could go to Canada.
No, we can't because we just irritated the Canadiens.
So we can't get oil from them or the Mexicans or the Venezuelans.
So our economy is trashed because he's trying to play tough guy with a Russian oil-based economy that produces oil at $12 a barrel.
So even if you drop it to $45, they still are making money.
They're not making enough money to balance their budget.
Hey, Russia could go into two years of deficit spending.
We, on the other hand, will collapse our oil economy.
He doesn't know what he's talking about.
In Vietnam, General Westmoreland would go around and brief people in 1967 about How we're killing all the Viet Cong.
We're dropping their numbers down.
They're getting down to 200,000.
Once we go below 200,000, it's an irreversible decline they can't get out of.
We're going to win the war in a year.
Send in more troops, Mr. President.
The American people, we are going to win.
We are going to win.
We are going to win.
And then in early 1968, the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong launched a Tet Offensive.
And why?
They had 600,000 troops instead of 200,000.
Our numbers were all wrong, and we lost the war.
The thing about it is...
McNamara knew this back in May.
He knew that he was telling lies about the numbers, but he was stuck in a political trap of his own making.
And so he continued to lie and lie and lie, and thousands of Americans died.
Trump knows that the numbers he's putting out there aren't true.
Why? Because he changes the numbers all the time.
He changes his numbers based upon who's whispering an ear, but he can't be ignorant enough not to actually have someone come in and say, no, the real numbers are this, Mr. President.
But the real numbers don't support...
The policies he's trying to see, the real numbers show that Russia is not only winning, but winning decisively, that our economy is sanctioned proof, that we can't touch their economy.
And the last thing is, this is a man who claims, you know, he says, I met with Vladimir Putin five times directly, and we had, I don't know, 12 phone calls.
Those numbers are rough.
He claims to know Putin, but not very well.
See, the one number he's missing is 27 million.
And the reason why I bring that up is that's the number of dead that the Soviet Union lost in World War II to fight and win a war of existential survival.
The Russians view this Ukrainian conflict as a war of existential survival.
They are going to pay whatever it takes to win this war.
They're not backing down.
They're not going to surrender.
They're not going to have a ceasefire.
They're going to win.
And if Trump doesn't want to help end the war sooner, this war will go on.
And then there's additional numbers.
See, McNamara's lies cost America about another 4,000 or 5,000 dead.
Trump's lies are going to cost Ukraine another 100,000 dead, maybe more.
The blood that he says he doesn't want to be spilled will be on his hands because of his inability to grasp reality.
He really needs someone to sit down and give him the hard talk.
I'm hoping that if Percy Gabbard is finally brought in as the Director of National Intelligence, that she will do that, that she will send Keith Kellogg out of the room and she will sit down and say, Mr. President, these are the hard numbers.
These are the real numbers.
This is what really is going to happen.
Here's our economic expert on Russia.
They're going to tell you what the economy is like, why it's resilient, why you can't bust it.
That's her job as the Director of National Intelligence.
Why does Trump listen to people like Sebastian Gorka and Keith Kellogg?
Because Trump surrounds himself with yes-men.
Trump has a vision and he surrounds himself with people that will help make that vision reality.
The problem with people who speak truth is that it means the vision that he wants isn't going to happen and Trump isn't inclined to change his vision.
Do we know if the Biden pipeline of aid to Ukraine is still flowing?
The military aid never shut down.
What we have to realize is Congress hasn't passed new money.
So whatever's flowing in there right now is the tail end of the money that was passed under Biden.
But there's not new money.
But we know it's passed.
Because even when people were talking about being shut down, Trump was authorizing Patriot missile batteries to be taken out of storage in Israel, sent to Raytheon to be refurbished.
That doesn't happen for free.
And for 90...
Patriot missiles to be flown into Poland and onto Ukraine.
That doesn't happen for free, and that's an accounting issue.
That's American equipment being withdrawn from Israel.
It's still ours.
We're transferring over.
That's money transferred.
So you can't do that if there's a freeze on aid.
So I believe that while the cash and the civilian support programs from USAID have been terminated, the military side is still going in.
So we're still...
Giving Netanyahu arms with which to kill innocent Palestinians, and we're still giving Zelensky arms with which to resist the inevitable Russian military triumph.
Look, I'll show you the lunacy of what's happening here.
The Patriot missiles we're sending in are old missiles.
They don't work.
They won't shut down the modern Russian missiles.
The Patriot batteries that are being refurbished...
We're not helping the Ukrainians do anything but fight and die.
How much longer can the war in Ukraine last?
The war in Ukraine can last as long as Russia wants it to last.
This war will end when Russia wants it to end.
Russia's prepared.
They've passed budgets and they're gearing up the defense industry to have this war go on for another two or three years.
After which time they would reassess and And, you know, reconfigure.
But economically, they're positioned for this war to go on two or three years.
Their military has built a plan to sustain manpower and equipment.
Russia's not running out of men.
Russia's not running out of equipment.
And Russia's economy is geared to sustain it.
And most importantly, they have political leadership that is dedicated to this task.
So this war can go on for another two, three years.
Ukraine can't last another two, three years.
Ukrainian head of intelligence says they die this summer.
That's not Scott Ritter.
That's Budanov saying it's over.
We're finished this summer because we run out of everything.
Was there recently an assassination in Moscow of somebody close to President Putin?
A bomb being exploded in a suicide bomber in a luxury apartment building.
Sarkissian was the last name.
I don't know if the person died.
I think they were wounded.
I think there was an attack.
They believe a bomb was in the ceiling.
I don't know if they've identified the exact source of the bomb yet.
But there was an explosion triggered when this individual was walking through the lobby.
I believe it killed a civilian, wounded him and some others.
But I think the target of this assassination attempt survived the attack.
Okay, the person was called Vladimir Putin's death squad chief.
He was killed in his $2 million luxury Moscow apartment.
Last name's Serkisian.
Yeah, I have to go and do research.
If he's dead, then that's news to me.
Right, right.
In the Kremlin's mind, have they won the war already?
No, I don't.
I mean, I think the Kremlin believes that they're on a path towards victory, but I don't think they're counting their chickens before they hatch.
I think they have a very patient approach, Pragmatic approach, an approach that is designed to maximize Ukrainian and Western losses and minimize Russian losses.
Do we know if the Ukrainians are still using attackums and storm shadows to attack inside Russia?
I believe it's Donald Trump authorizing what Joe Biden authorized.
I think the Ukrainians are still using ATAKIMS in the lower limit.
The Russians made it clear that they didn't want ATAKIMS going beyond a certain range, but that ATAKIMS missiles fired below that certain range wouldn't get the retaliation.
My understanding is that the Ukrainians have launched a few attacks using ATAKIMS missiles at the lower range, but they haven't violated the red line that was set by Russia, which even the Biden administration respected at the end.
And how depleted are the Ukrainian troops in Kursk?
Well, I mean, they continue to die.
Look, we have to hand it to these troops.
These are resilient, courageous troops.
I mean, some of them are criminals.
They're committing war crimes.
They're going in and raping women, blowing people.
And it's not manufactured that the Russians have hard proof.
They have confessions.
They have videotapes.
They have the whole thing.
Good people, but they're hard to kill.
And they're fighting very hard.
And I guess today they just launched another attempt to send troops into Kurs.
The Russians were able to detect it and destroy it before it could go in.
But the Ukrainians aren't giving up on Kurs.
This is a long, hard fight that the Russians continue to be involved in.
Scott Ritter, always a pleasure, my dear friend, no matter what we're talking about or how.
Unpleasant the facts on the ground may be.
Thank you so much for your insight.
You presented a very, I'm not saying this because I'm your friend and collaborator and fan, but a unique and gifted view of what Trump said yesterday, and I thank you for it.
Well, thank you for having me.
Sure. We'll talk to you again soon, my dear friend.
Okay, thank you.
Coming up tomorrow, Thursday, Aaron Maté at 1 in the afternoon, Colonel Larry Wilkerson at 2 in the afternoon, and from midnight in Moscow at 4 in the afternoon, Eastern, Pepe Escobar.
Coming up at 5 this afternoon, right here on our YouTube channel, the infamous press conference between Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu from yesterday.
Judge Napolitano.
We're judging freedom.
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