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Feb. 18, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
29:00
Scott Ritter : Trump and Nuclear Weapons
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Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Monday, February 17th, 2025.
Scott Ritter will be here with us in just a moment on Donald Trump and nuclear oblivion.
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Scott Ritter, welcome here, my dear friend.
You have a rather extraordinary piece on your column about Donald Trump and nuclear disarmament, and I do want to explore your thoughts and your understanding of the president's thoughts on it.
But first, one or two questions about Ukraine and one or two about Israel.
On Ukraine, if Donald Trump truly wants peace, why is the Biden pipeline...
I think what we've been seeing unfold over the past several weeks is a Trump policy in transition.
You know, Trump originally entered into the concept of negotiations with They were
half-hearted in the concept of normalization of relations with Russia.
They were looking more...
We're good to go.
Initially articulate.
You look at the initial postings he made once president.
These were insulting to Russia.
I just finished doing an interview with Dmitry Trenin, and he says this is deeply insulting to Russia, deeply insulting to the Russian leader, and not really the way you want to start off, you know, the first step you want to take on a journey toward peace.
And then you compare and contrast that to where we are today, where we have Secretary of State Marco Rubio getting ready to have a meeting with Sergei Lavrov in Riyadh that will end with Trump and Putin meeting in Riyadh by the end of this month.
And you say, well, how did we get there?
It's a policy in transition.
And one of the aspects of this policy is not to give up everything prior to negotiations.
And so one of the things that Trump has done is left that pipeline open, but what's going through that pipeline isn't any new congressional expenditures.
This is just squeezing the last of the toothpaste out of last year's.
And it doesn't change anything on the ground.
It doesn't change any aspect or the battlefield realities.
It just leaps open the possibility that if Russia doesn't want to play ball, then the United States doesn't have to go back and reinvent the wheel.
They've got this pipeline open.
But this thing will be crimped off and shut down the moment you get some progress on the ground in Riyadh.
Is it realistic to understand that the Ukraine military is so weak that no amount of American military equipment is going to turn the tables?
Look, you can give the Ukrainians artillery shells, and they can fire these artillery shells.
You can give them high Mars Mart rockets.
They can fire them.
But nothing's going to change the outcome on the battlefield.
You may kill some more Russians.
I mean, war is hell.
You let the other side fire extraordinary lethal weapons, and Russians will die.
But it isn't going to change the fact that more Ukrainians are dying than Russians, and the Ukrainians are retreating, the Russians are advancing, and there's no amount of military equipment that's going to resolve that problem.
It's a manpower problem with Ukraine at this point in time.
What were your thoughts when Vice President Vance hinted that the United States might introduce military?
Well, my understanding is Vance said no such thing that this is a Wall Street Journal total misquote.
I've read through the details of what Vance said, and there is no way, and Trump will not back it, and nobody in Trump's team is talking about this.
American troops will not be on the ground in Ukraine.
What Trump has said is that if Ukraine enters into a strategic relationship with the United States regarding minerals, that there could be a U.S. Did the
Secretary of Defense walk back his statement?
No. Ukraine and NATO, no U.S. troops in Ukraine.
Don't expect to go back to the 2014 borders, pre-2014, in response to the criticism he received in Europe?
No, I think what happened here is that Pete was reminded that the President of the United States is the final arbiter and that...
It's not Pete's position to close out any potential negotiation path.
Every word he said is the absolute truth.
But when you have Marco Rubio getting ready to meet with Sergei Lavrov and Putin getting ready to meet with Trump, what you don't want to do is lay out your position in black and white terms.
You want to leave a little bit of nuance and a little bit of maneuvering room, at least, so there's the potential that you might be able to extract something from the Russians.
I just think he was told that it's bad negotiating posture to put all your cards on the table up front, that you might want to have a hold card here so the enemy doesn't, or not the enemy, because we're changing our posture with Russia so that the people we're negotiating with don't know exactly what you're holding.
Does the United States have any leverage with Russia?
Of course we do.
We have tons of leverage with Russia.
We have the potential to make the nightmare go away.
We have the potential to get Russia back on the track of living in a sanction-free world.
Own Russia.
We don't control Russia, but we certainly have leverage on Russia.
There are things that we can do to make life better for the Russians, just like there's things that Russians can do to make life better for us.
I think it's interesting when you take a look at the four players that are meeting, you know, the four pairs.
You've got, of course, the State Department and the Foreign Ministry, Rubio Lavrov.
You've got the intelligence services, CIA, Russian SVR.
You've got the presidential advisors, Michael Waltz and Ushakov.
But then there's that fourth pairing that nobody's talking about.
It's the most important pairing out there.
You have...
I think his name is Wick, the special envoy of Donald Trump.
He was the Middle East special envoy.
Ended up flying to Moscow, curiously enough.
And you have Kirill Dmitriev, the head of the Russian Sovereign Fund or foreign investment businessman with deep connectivity here in the United States.
When I take a look at the agenda as it's being laid out and the fact that you have principals meeting this early, given the history of how relations work, This isn't happening on the spur of the moment.
There has been deep preparation made outside of normal channels, and I think that deep preparation is made at the business level, and you're looking at the two major players there.
I think the two most important people in those rooms will be Wyckoff and Dmitriev, because they're the ones that speak the language of Donald Trump and make all this possible.
They speak the language of international business, international commerce.
Trump is a businessman at heart, and yes.
Bringing peace is good, but he's always going to ask the question, well, what's in it for us?
And what's in it for us is, of course, from his perspective in the business world, and I think you're going to see that there will be a heavy economic aspect to these discussions, that the war in Ukraine will almost take a backseat,
meaning that they're going to agree to bring it into the war, but then they're going to talk about the business side of this deal.
Many, many other things.
On the issue of European and Ukrainian presence at their meetings, here's someone who probably thought he would be there, but will not.
I suspect you'll be critical, but here he is.
You tell me what you think.
General Kellogg yesterday, cut number one.
Can you assure this audience that Ukrainians will be at the table and Europeans will be at the table?
Oh, well, you just changed the whole dynamic.
The answer to that last question, just as you framed it, the answer is no.
The answer to the earlier part of that question is yes, of course the Ukrainians are going to be at the table.
So the Europeans who have provided as much or more support to the Americans in this process, you don't think should be at the table directly.
You think it should be two protagonists.
I said I'm a school of realism.
I think that's not going to happen.
But our philosophy is not to continue this war to the death of every last Ukrainian.
There's really, there's two protagonists when you look at it, and there's one, hopefully, to be an intermediary.
Okay, who are the protagonists and who's the intermediary?
Well, I'm saying is, notice I'm being very diplomatic about it.
The fact is, we're looking at, you can have the Ukrainians, the Russians, and clearly the Americans at the table talking, but we've got to have specifics to get to a point.
No way is Zelensky going to be there, no matter what General Kellogg says.
Kellogg's out.
I mean, he's the guy that was run up the flagpole first.
He was, you know, in typical Trump fashion, you go in hard, you go in mean, you go in heavy, and then you back down and you get to reality.
Kellogg is not reality.
Nothing about anything he says is reality.
Zelensky will not be at the table at all.
Neither will the European Union.
What the European Union forgets, and I just want to remind you and your audience, they are the enemy.
Never forget.
That they conspired with the Biden administration to Trump-proof the policies of the Biden administration to ensure that Donald Trump didn't have any options once he became president.
The European Union did this.
The European Union conspired against Donald Trump, against America, because Donald Trump says, I am the president, not Joe Biden.
And the European Union conspired and is still conspiring against him.
So when they say, why aren't we at the table?
Why would you be at the table?
Why would Donald Trump in any universe invite you to the table?
What do you bring to the table?
And the answer is nothing but negativity.
You are not there to promote what's best for America.
You're not even there to promote what's best for Europe because you don't know what's best for Europe.
You sold your soul to Joe Biden and now you're left wandering the wilderness and you're just not going to get a seat at the table.
Europe brings nothing to the table.
They don't want to bring this war to an end.
They were Trump-proofing the policy, which means they wanted the conflict in Ukraine to go on forever.
And Trump isn't that way.
Why would they be at the table?
They're not going to be at the table.
They're not going to be at any table.
In the end, Trump will hit them with a fait accompli and say, you can sign up and get involved in aspects of this, or you can opt out, in which case, we don't need you.
Right, right, right.
All right, switching to Israel and Gaza.
Last week, President Trump made a threat that if all, emphasis all, not dribs and drabs, Israeli hostages were not released by Saturday, there would be hell to pay.
Hamas complied precisely with the ceasefire agreement and released the three that were promised.
Question, is there a geopolitical effect?
To Trump making outrageous threats and then not following through on them.
Yeah, of course there is.
There's a geopolitical effect.
Israel was talking about they were going to go in and bomb Hamas.
There will be no resumption of the fighting between Israel and Hamas.
That just isn't going to happen unless Trump totally gives up on the Middle East.
Trump has committed to a policy path to bring an end to the fighting in the Middle East.
Trump went out with an outrageous proposal about, you know, depopulating Gaza, da-da-da-da-da, but the purpose of that was to get a counter-proposal, which he now has, and there is significant meetings taking place between Egypt, Jordan, United Arab Emirates, Qatar,
Saudi Arabia, about rebuilding Gaza with Palestinians there.
Why would Trump undo that?
By allowing Israel to go back in and begin a process which didn't end well for Israel.
So Trump is not going to let this war start, but what Trump was doing is basically playing the madman card, meaning either you get this back on track or else all hell is going to break loose.
But meanwhile, he has his special representatives running around and making the connectivity, and the message was received, and the ceasefire is back on track, and we are on a pathway to peace.
For all the people out there criticizing Donald Trump, you know, some criticism is legitimate and just, but to say that Donald Trump is positioning Israel to finish the job militarily in the Middle East is the height of ignorance,
and it means you have no clue what you're talking about, and you have no concept of the policy direction that Trump has embarked on.
In his own mind, doesn't Netanyahu need the war to stay in power?
I mean, maybe.
But it doesn't matter.
Again, I just want to remind people that Netanyahu is in a very vulnerable position right now, that Donald Trump can crush him like a bug any time he chooses to.
And I think his special envoy made that clear in beginning this process by telling him to sit down and shut up and accept the ceasefire that Netanyahu said he'll never accept.
There's only one driver of this truck, and his name is Donald Trump.
And Netanyahu could be a backseat driver yapping away all they want, but Trump will just elbow him in the face, tell him to sit down and back off.
And, you know, the other theory out there is that Netanyahu is going to pressure Trump into bombing Iran.
What part of Trump is avoiding major conflict does not people understand.
He's not going to bomb Iran.
He's not going to go to war with Iran.
He's going to seek a negotiated settlement with Iran, something Netanyahu doesn't want him to do.
Now, these are a couple things that Trump's going to do that Netanyahu doesn't want him to do, which tells you what about the relationship between Trump and Netanyahu.
One's the master, one's the servant.
And you can guess which one's servant whom.
When I read your piece about Trump talking about cutting the military budget of the United States, along with China and Russia, in half, and about eliminating or limiting severely...
Our nuclear weapons.
I wasn't sure if you had dreamed it or if he actually said it.
And then Chris found the following.
These are both very recent.
So Chris, both clips from 2025.
Trump on oblivion and Trump on slowing down nukes.
Back to back.
There's no reason for us to be building brand new nuclear weapons.
We already have so many you could destroy the world 50 times over, 100 times over.
And here we are building new nuclear weapons, and they're building nuclear weapons, and China's building new nuclear weapons, and China's trying to catch up because, you know, they're very substantially behind, but within five or six years, they'll be even.
And we're all spending a lot of money that we could be spending on other things that are actually, hopefully, much more productive.
Hopefully, there'll never be a time when we need those weapons.
If there's ever a time...
When we need nuclear weapons, like the kind of weapons that we're building and that Russia has, and that China has to a lesser extent, but will have, that's going to be a very sad day.
That's going to be probably...
One of the first meetings I want to have is with President Xi of China, President Putin of Russia.
And I want to say, let's cut our military budget in half.
The meeting I want to have first is a meeting with China and a meeting with Russia on...
Slowing down, stopping and reducing nuclear weapons in particular, and also on not having to spend the kind of money we're all spending on weapons, military weapons generally.
How significant is that last statement from the President of the United States?
Well, what's interesting is he's articulated this.
Normally, presidents will...
Come out and they will issue draft national security strategy guidance that then is used to educate his principles, his Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense, and others on the direction he wants to go.
And from that, you'll get what's called a nuclear posture review, which will discuss, you know, his, you know...
Where he wants to go with nuclear weapons, and then that'll turn into nuclear employment guidance, etc., which will shape things.
Trump has jumped the shark, so to speak, and just started off by saying 50% cuts, getting rid of...
I don't know if most of your audience understands this.
We are on the cusp of...
Committing to a multi-trillion dollar modernization program, once it's all said and done, involving land-based ballistic missiles, involving submarines, submarine-launched ballistic missiles, aircraft and modern air-launch cruise missiles,
all nuclear capable.
It will cost the United States...
Trillions of dollars when this is done.
I mean, right now, you know, people will say, Scott, when I count it up, it's only close to a trillion.
And I say, well, then you don't know anything about the U.S. procurement system and how defense industry works and how they always have contract renegotiations, etc.
By the time it's done, it'll be multiple trillions of dollars spread out over the course of, you know, two, three decades.
And Trump is right.
You know, we can stop this with effective arms control.
I mean, this is...
That's exactly what you want to be hearing from a president at this point in time.
The other thing it does is it prevents a nuclear arms race that's inherently destabilizing.
China's poured a little bit of cold water on this saying, you got to work it out with the Russians first because you guys got a lot of nukes.
We don't have that many.
And it doesn't make any sense for us to be at that table at this time.
So, you know, one of the first things that Trump and Putin could do is extend the new START treaty, the last remaining...
Strategic Arms Control Treaty that puts a cap on our nuclear arsenals and then begin a mature dialogue with not just China, but India, Pakistan, France, the UK, Israel, North Korea on the concept of denuclearization as a whole.
This is paradigm shifting mentality that most Americans should applaud unless you are in the business of You know, getting taxpayer money to build nuclear weapons, which, as Donald Trump said, if they're ever used, we all die.
That's the stupidity of this.
What about the military-industrial-congressional complex?
I mean, that is an enormous rock that Trump would have to move, isn't it?
It is, except that we have this thing called Doge.
That's going in and exposing corruption and governmental inefficiencies.
And I think what you're going to see soon is as the Pentagon is audited and the amount of money that is wasted and lost and misappropriated, which will run into, in the grand scheme of things, trillions of dollars, and the corruption of Congress and facilitating payments to entities that do nothing,
that Trump is going to...
You know, castrate the military industrial congressional.
And, you know, make them, you know, virtually powerless.
Trump will need the help of the American people on this, but I think this is an issue that will resonate with the American people.
And one of the things I wrote about in the article...
The American people have just been acclimated for four generations into believing we need to spend more money on defense, we need to have enough nuclear weapons to blow the world up a hundred times.
Sure, and they were also acclimated on the need for foreign policy to go out and help the world.
But as soon as USAID was exposed as nothing more than a regime change entity and corrupted that, look how the mindset has changed dramatically.
And I guarantee you that when the corruption of the Pentagon and the corruption of the nuclear weapons establishment and the linkage of that corruption to Congress is exposed, that the American people will have a come-again moment and at that point in time will be more susceptible.
This is almost, as you said in your piece that piqued my interest over the weekend, a dream come true.
It's 100% a dream come true.
It's revolutionary.
I mean, maybe that's an overused term in some corners, but if you don't understand what's happening in America today, the revolution that is taking place, the Trump revolution, then you're just totally out of touch.
He has dramatically transformed the way things work.
He spent four years learning.
The hard way about how the establishment will undermine him and oppose him and seek to undercut everything he tries to do.
That he spent four years surviving the lawfare being waged against him by the establishment.
He's now the president and he has identified every piece of the puzzle that needs to be eliminated.
And he's in the process of eliminating them.
And this is revolutionary.
And as I believe, he will successfully remove the impediments to This is also why you and I both believe that Trump,
Xi, and Putin can be another Yalta.
I mean, this can be another big-picture resolution of many, many, many issues—military, political, geopolitical, cultural, social, commercial.
There is a chance, and again, I just finished interviewing somebody who's pretty senior in the Russian establishment, that on May 9th of this year, in the stands in Moscow at the Victory Day Review celebration,
that Vladimir Putin will be joined by Donald Trump, Xi Jinping, and Prime Minister Modi of India, the big four, the four most important leaders in the world today.
And that would be...
Symbolic, because those are the four decision makers.
Those are the people that have their levers on the power.
And it would be indicative of the creation of a new alliance.
And the enemy isn't Nazi Germany.
The enemy is the old concepts of how the world was to be divided.
Militarism, that we solve everything through increased defense budgets and military confrontation.
I think the new direction will be that we're looking for economic competition where necessary, economic cooperation where possible, but to de-emphasize military-on-military engagements.
Again, why Trump is talking about 50% reductions in the military.
When I raised this to the gentleman that I was interviewing, I thought I would have gotten cold water thrown in my face.
And he said, no, this is actually a distinct possibility.
There's probably more cold water going to come from the deep state in the United States.
The deep state is dead, Trump.
These entrenched interests in Congress and in the executive branch and in the administrative branch.
They're dead.
They're dead.
What deep state exists anymore?
The FBI?
Purged. The Department of Justice?
Purged. The Pentagon?
Purged. The media?
Purged. The deep state's being deconstructed as we speak.
Trump is talking about purging all...
He's telling government employees, get the hell out of here.
If you're not part of the solution, that means you're part of the problem.
We're not playing the deep state game anymore.
There is a revolution taking place in America today that transforms everything.
And all of the potential obstacles that could exist are being eliminated to include the congressional obstacle.
You know, Trump is making it clear that Congress doesn't have much of a say in this, and he's also making it clear that Congress may very well find itself in the crosshairs of some of this corruption that's going on as we find out that congressionally appropriated money didn't get to where it was supposed to go and that many members of Congress knew about this and allowed it to happen anyways because of a sort of quid pro quo understanding with constituents.
That's corruption.
So Congress is going to be on its back feet.
The deep state's being dismantled as we speak.
And I think, you know, Trump knows exactly what he's doing.
Scott Ritter, what a pleasure, my friend.
What a pleasure to have you explain all of this to us.
It is revolutionary.
Thank you for bringing this to our attention.
Thank you for the time you spend with me.
Look forward to seeing you again next, my dear friend, next week.
Okay, thank you.
All the best.
Coming up tomorrow on all of this, at 8 in the morning, Ambassador Charles Freeman.
At 2 in the afternoon, Matthew Ho.
At 3 in the afternoon, Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski.
At 4 in the afternoon, Eastern.
Midnight in Moscow, Pepe Escobar.
Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom.
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