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Feb. 13, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
25:48
Prof. Gilbert Doctorow : How Moscow Views Trump.
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Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Thursday, February 13th, 2025.
Professor Gilbert Doctorow is here with us on just how does Moscow view Trump?
And did something happen yesterday that changed all that?
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Professor Doctorow, welcome here, my dear friend.
If I had asked you...
Two days ago, how the Kremlin views President Trump when he was attempting to persuade King Abdullah of Jordan and General President Sisi of Egypt,
each to take three quarters of a million Palestinian refugees and claiming that he's going to buy and own Gaza.
How would you have answered that two days ago?
Not respectful.
They deemed his projects to be extreme, to be unsupportable, and to be unrealizable.
They were disappointed that he was botching the good name he achieved by getting the Israelis to sit down and sign a truce with Hamas.
He was spoiling this by what he was now undertaking.
That he was undermining a truce that his own, and of course Mr. Witkoff comes in later on in our conversation, his own emissary crafted when he said, I don't like the hostages being released in dribs and drabs,
two and one and three and four.
Well, that's the agreement that his guy drafted and the U.S. agreed to and Hamas agreed to and the Israelis agreed to and Hamas has been...
Well, yes, none of this would have given much confidence to the Russians if they had a potential talking partner in Washington.
All of it undermined whatever was rational and attractive.
In Trump's pre-electoral campaign messages.
I know that I was on record as saying that the terms of the truce were a brilliant operation, and people have already thrown that back to me.
I don't, I'd say right now, it is too early to draw any conclusions about any of the initiatives that Trump has made in these first two and a half weeks or whatever.
What is modus operandi, is exceptional, is eccentric, is very hard to fathom for those of us who like transparency.
Nonetheless, he is being assisted by superior intellects and by people with vast experience.
And by that, first of all, I mean both Elon Musk and in particular.
How does Moscow view Trump today, after the announcement of the 90-minute, more or less, conversation with President Putin and the very pleasant, happy,
flattering, diplomatic way in which the White House Well, yes, I take your last point first.
The Russians were impressed.
The Russians, I may be honest about it, this came very late.
The breaking news is very late.
Most of the news analysis programs had gone to bed already.
That's to say they had taped in the late afternoon before this news came out, and they did not cover it.
One exception was the one I watched last night, which is the Vladimir Solovyov talk program, and he had some of his usual very experienced and competent analysts there to add to what he had to say.
What did they say about it?
They were very impressed by precisely what you have called attention to, the diplomacy that attacked.
Mr. Trump is not noted for tact, but this document was tactful.
It spoke about President Putin.
It had none of the derogatory remarks about Putin, Russia, the invasion of Ukraine that we have grown, sadly, grown accustomed to in the years of the Biden administration.
And this was called out immediately by the Russians as a good start to discussion.
But there was a lot that was discussed last night.
I hope we had time to get into a bit of it.
Some of it was quite surprising.
That is, the preliminaries to this telephone call were probably the visit in his own private plane by Ritkoff to Moscow last week.
To my knowledge, the mainstream was talking only about the release of this American school teacher, which was a performance by Trump.
With the help of Putin, of one of his pre-electoral promises was to the mother of this drug trafficker.
Let's be clear who's a drug trafficker.
During that time, we weren't aware, I wasn't aware, that Witkoff had spent three and a half hours with top Russian leadership.
And certainly he wasn't spending his time going over the details of how this school teacher would be released or taking property of him.
It was clearly about bigger issues which gave the Russians the understanding that Trump and the people around him agree with him that the meetings that they're going to have will be about the whole global relationship and particularly about strategic issues which by their nature are to be discussed by the two superpowers absent all of the vassals and
Before we get to where this leaves the rest of Europe, here's President Trump's non-response to a question put to him about will Vladimir Zelensky.
Be at the negotiating table.
Chris, cut number six.
What about Ukraine?
Do you commit to go to Ukraine?
No, I haven't.
I haven't committed to go to Ukraine.
I would think about going.
I'd think about it.
No problem.
Do you view Ukraine as an equal member of this peace process?
It's an interesting question.
I think they have to make peace.
Their people are being killed, and I think they have to make peace.
I said that was not a good war to go into, and I think they have to make peace.
That's what I think.
Can you even imagine President Putin sitting down, excuse me, at the same table with Vladimir Zelensky?
The underlying argument of the Russians, which was again put up on television last night, but certainly mainstream in the West didn't report it, so viewers.
That's what Peskov, the press secretary to Putin said, their take on the telephone call, that Putin had reiterated his basic non-negotiable stance, which is that this discussion that they will have,
as Putin and Trump, will be about the causes that caused...
That led Russia to invade.
Not about the invasion as such, not about the war as such, but the cause.
And the cause is, of course, the rollback of NATO that was called for in December 2021 by Mr. Ryabkov, the Deputy Foreign Minister of Russia, and was set out in the draft documents for revising the security architecture of Europe that the Russians presented then.
Chris, I'm going to call for cut number 11. What did the Kremlin think of this?
A durable peace for Ukraine must include robust security guarantees to ensure that the war will not begin again.
This must not be Minsk 3.0.
That said, the United States does not...
Believe that NATO membership for Ukraine is a realistic outcome of a negotiated settlement.
Instead, any security guarantee must be backed by capable European and non-European troops.
If these troops are deployed as peacekeepers to Ukraine at any point, they should be deployed as part of a non-NATO mission, and they should not be covered under Article 5. There also must be robust international oversight of the line of contact.
To be clear, as part of any security guarantee, there will not be U.S. troops deployed to Ukraine.
Now, that's a lot to unpack.
I would imagine some of it delighted the Kremlin and some of it did not.
But take the ball and run with it, as we say, Professor.
The Russians did what you're doing now.
They link directly to what Trump has said very briefly in a sketchy manner in his Truth Social platform describing the talk from his perspective.
Now, the link is direct because of substance.
of what had been discussed between Trump and Putin and was not disclosed in either the Russian or the American brief on those talks.
The substance was what Hexat was saying.
Precisely, no Ukraine in NATO, that the peacekeeping group would include non-Europeans.
Why would you say that?
What are we talking about?
Non-Americans and non-Europeans.
Who on the planet would it be?
Chinese. The point is that this would not be a body of 200,000 people poised to attack Russia, which is the way the peacekeepers have been presented by people like Macron.
Well, we'll be ready to jump on the Russians at any moment.
This isn't a group watching the peace.
It's a group that intends to violate the peace.
No installations.
No trainers.
None of the things that Russia will allow in the post-peace Ukraine.
So is it clear to say the Kremlin was pleased with part of what Secretary Peg Seth said, no NATO in Ukraine and no American troops in Ukraine, but either bewildered or opposed to the rest of it?
A peacekeeping entity?
A military entity on the border of Russia and Ukraine?
For what purpose?
Well, let's look at the rest of what he said, because the rest is dynamite as well.
When he was saying that there should be a division of labor on security between the United States and Europe, and Europe would look after the Far East and Europe.
So the United States would look out to the far east and Europe would look after conventional warfare on its own continent.
He was more or less saying that the United States is going to draw down its presence in Europe.
I think the Russians would pay much more attention to that than what you just called up on who the peacekeepers will be.
If the United States pulls down its presence in NATO, NATO essentially collapses.
And that is obvious.
This was in his speech.
I mean, he didn't say we're going to pull them down, but it follows from the notion that Europe looks after its own ground defense.
America will be the nuclear umbrella, and that's it.
That provides deterrence and doesn't require people on the ground.
So there are a lot of things in that speech that have to be unpacked.
Correct, correct.
Here's more from the speech that I'm sure will please the Kremlin.
Chris, cut number 10. We will only end this devastating war and establish a durable peace.
By coupling allied strength with a realistic assessment of the battlefield.
We want, like you, a sovereign and prosperous Ukraine.
But we must start by recognizing that returning to Ukraine's pre-2014 borders is an unrealistic objective.
Could have said impossible, but then in diplomatic speak, unrealistic objective, I'm sure, pleased Foreign Minister Lavrov and his team, don't you think?
Well, I think so.
I think it also indicates that finally the White House has taken a hint from what's been said on this program, and they have opened up the Financial Times, they've opened up the New York Times, and are actually following fact-based reporting.
Maybe just to give you some laughs, here's a montage of what the Biden administration said during their years in power.
About the failure or success of President Putin in Ukraine.
Putin's war of conquest is failing.
The answer is Putin's already lost the war.
Putin has already lost.
Russia's military has lost half its territory once occupied.
Putin has already lost.
Putin has already lost this war.
That is, Russia has already lost this war.
In short, Russia has lost.
It's worth fighting for for as long as it takes.
And that's how long we're going to be with you, Mr. President, for as long as it takes.
They've lost strategically, operationally, and tactically.
The American people can be and should be incredibly proud of the part they've played in supporting Ukraine's success.
We'll continue to supply Ukraine with critical weapons and equipment as long as we can.
I guess you could say we're 180 degrees from that.
Oh, you've got the basis for a very fine documentary.
Sorry, Joe Biden and Tony Blinken.
Well, it's a comedy of errors, but unfortunately, there are close to a million dead Ukrainians who came to enjoy the life.
Which is dead serious.
And these people who brought this on, all the people who appeared in this montage.
They all should appear before a tribunal in Moscow when this thing is over, because they have destroyed the Ukrainian nation, and they have almost led us to World War III.
So I think we can be very happy that a constellation of people with, I say, superior experience, superior intelligence, and the ability to have the president's ear have done what they have done in the last day.
Because it gives us hope that we are finally seeing the light at the end of this long tunnel of the Biden years.
Perhaps this question is coming too soon after the announcement by President Trump of the nature and scope of his telephone conversation with President Putin.
But has there been, and if so, what has it been, reaction amongst European elites in Paris, in Brussels, in Berlin?
In Rome, in London?
Well, the reaction has to be consternation.
But let's say that this didn't just come out of the clear blue sky.
And if we can say that Mr. Trump has, in his method of madness, a softening up of his opponents as his basic strategy for negotiations, then he has practiced it with a superior hand in the last two weeks.
He has already had the Europeans...
On the ropes, so to speak, in a boxing match by the whole question of a trade war over tariffs and by his alarming, surprising, shocking message of intent to seize Greenland,
whatever the colonial overlord Denmark thinks of that.
So they have been trembling in their boots here in Europe, except for what we call the far right.
Which is, of course, a derogatory term to describe patriots of Europe who have some common sense, whose heads are screwed on right, and they would like to live in peace and not face a nuclear war.
By that I mean the very people who gathered in Spain last weekend, whether it's from France, Marine Le Pen, Italy, Salvini, from Hungary, Orban, the gentleman who was in charge of the...
of the far right in the Netherlands.
These several people meeting there and all in agreement that Mr. Trump is the future and that von der Leyen is the past and that they and their countries will attach their, will hitch their wagons to the future.
This is a vision of Europe that will have very positive outcomes and gives us reason.
Do you, do you Professor Doctorow, expect German voters in the next few days to embrace that view that Trump is the future.
Stated differently, is the far-right candidate going to become the chancellor of Germany?
A few weeks ago, I would have said it's most improbable.
After what Trump did yesterday, I'd say the odds are pretty good that she will...
So we're speaking about Alice Weidel.
Yes. She was the chancellor candidate for the Alternative for Germany party, which was being boosted by Elon Musk.
She has appeared recently.
Yesterday, there were YouTube videos of her speaking in Hungary, where she was received by Orban, and was setting out her program.
And all of the accusations that this woman is a neo-Nazi, that danger to democracy in Germany, was all swept away.
She came across as very level-headed, as very pragmatic, and as understanding how to address the German voters.
And nothing could have been a bigger gift to her than what Donald Trump and his team did yesterday, because they undermined entirely the electoral platform of the leading candidate in Germany, the CDU, Christian Democrat candidate,
Friedrich. Forgive my ignorance.
When is the election, professors?
It's very soon.
23rd of February.
Got it.
Got it.
Last question.
Is General Kellogg out and Steve Witkoff in as President Trump's emissary for all matters Russia and Ukraine?
The Russians picked that out at once.
The listing of those who will be in the working group, we can call them the Sherpas because they will be the people who are preparing for the summit.
And in that group, Kellogg is dropped out.
And Witkoff has been parachuted in.
Witkoff has shown that he is a very capable diplomat, and this has to be said.
The people who have spoken about the oligarchs that Trump surrounds himself with, these plutocrats, as if money is the only factor they have going for them, they're intentionally defaming people who succeed and people who have experience that is rare.
Mr. Witkoff was a businessman.
But an international level businessman and I know what this means from my own experience simply as a corporate face in the country where I was posted as country manager in Russia.
Your job is a civil version of diplomacy and he mastered that.
Ditkoff is a very big asset to Trump and perhaps more so than Musk because he doesn't have these rather eccentric features to his personality which can More so than the Secretary of State Rubio?
I think so.
He, as I said, Rubio was never a diplomat.
De facto, Witkoff, with all of his international experience doing business in the Middle East, has been a diplomat.
He demonstrated that quality by what he did in Tel Aviv, and he will likely, and he did it when he was in Moscow last week.
He was negotiating for three and a half hours with the leadership.
And he made possible that phone call yesterday.
So he is a big asset.
And I also would like to link things up.
His responsibility also covers relations with Iran.
And you will note that one of the five subjects, something like five, that were listed as having been discussed between Putin and Trump yesterday was the Iranian nuclear program.
So it all comes together.
So the headline of today's Washington Post is that Prime Minister Netanyahu is planning to attack the Iran nuclear capability.
To me, it would be inconceivable that he would do that without an agreement from the United States.
And to me, it would seem inconceivable that the United States at this time would agree to that.
Do you agree?
It only conforms to what has been said on your program by others.
But the Washington Post is a voice of the CIA.
Correct. Correct.
Nicely put.
Professor, great conversation, my dear friend.
Thank you for being our eyes and ears over there.
You're always welcome here, particularly if there's some breaking news that you can help us analyze.
Things keep happening so fast these days.
But thank you for your time, Professor.
Most fulfilling.
Well, a pleasure to talk about good news.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Coming up later today at 12 noon, Max Blumenthal at 2 o'clock this afternoon, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson.
At 3 o'clock this afternoon, Professor John Mearsheimer.
Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom.
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