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Feb. 19, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
25:47
Prof. Gilbert Doctorow : Trump Full of Surprises
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Hi, everyone.
Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Thursday, February 20th, 2025.
Professor Gilbert Doctorow joins us from Brussels in just a moment on, wow, what a two days of Donald Trump turning American foreign policy around 180 degrees.
Is he ever full of surprises?
But first this.
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Professor Doctorow, welcome here.
Donald Trump has, of course, dominated the news, particularly with respect to foreign policy.
I'm going to read in just a moment his truth social, his startling statements about President Zelensky yesterday, and ask you, how does the Kremlin feel about this?
I can only imagine your answer, but so we're on the same page.
Here's what the president said.
Think of it.
A modestly successful comedian, Vladimir Zelensky, talked the United States of America into spending $350 billion to go into a war that couldn't be won, that never had to start, but a war that he, without the US and Trump,
will never be able to settle.
The United States has spent $200 billion more than Europe, and Europe's money is guaranteed while the United States will get nothing back.
Why didn't sleepy Joe Biden demand equalization in that this war is far more important to Europe than it is to us?
We have a big, beautiful ocean as separation.
On top of this, Alinsky admits that half of the money we sent him is, now this is in quotes and in caps, missing.
He refuses to have elections, is very low in Ukrainian polls, and the only thing he was good at was playing Biden like a fiddle.
A dictator without elections.
Zelensky better move fast or he's not going to have a country left.
In the meantime, we are successfully negotiating to end the war with Russia, something I'll admit only Trump and the Trump administration can do.
Biden never tried.
Europe has failed to bring peace.
And Zelensky probably wants to keep the gravy train going.
I love Ukraine.
But Zelensky has done a terrible job.
His country is shattered and millions have unnecessarily died.
And so it continues.
One WAG professor on Ukrainian television suggested that That was written by Sergei Lavrov and handed to Marco Rubio, who gave it to President Trump.
What is the...
We lost you for a second.
All right, I'll keep talking until you are connected.
That, of course, was President Trump turning American foreign policy completely around 180 degrees.
Okay, you're back with us.
One Ukrainian wag.
I hypothesize that that statement was written by Sergei Lavrov, handed to Marco Rubio, who gave it to Trump to post on Truth Social.
Question. How does the Kremlin view President Trump this morning?
The Kremlin is very satisfied with the positive results of the meeting in Riyadh.
They're very pleased, of course, with all of the further development, the further evolution.
I think it's fair to imagine that Trump's positions haven't changed.
The only thing that has changed is the timing when he comes out with the next layer of revelation of where we really are.
I think the big surprise in what's happened in the last six, seven days is that we, all of us, Both in mainstream and in alternative media.
We underestimated the Trump team's ability to penetrate the fog that the intelligence agencies had been maintaining during the whole of the Biden era.
And we assumed that it would have to wait for Tulsi Gabor to come in with a candle and light up the room.
But that was indeed not the case.
So many things have happened in the last six days which, if you look at them, are all directly interrelated and consequences were known in advance.
I'll give you two examples.
This whole question about the mineral resources in Ukraine to be used as a security for America to recover its investment in this war.
It was obvious that the terms that they gave to to Zelensky would result in his rejecting them.
And yet, further American assistance was made contingent on his accepting them.
Clear what they were going after.
Similarly, the whole question of the questionnaire, the issue of a questionnaire that was sent out to the European Union member states over the weekend, in which they were required to say what military units and what equipment they would have available.
To enforce a peace treaty and to provide security to Ukraine after the signing of peace.
And what happened in the meeting on Monday was, and I think Trump expected this, no show.
They have nothing.
They couldn't reach agreement.
Two of the most important countries in the possible donors refused flat to provide troops for this.
And even Britain said that the success was contingent on American support, which Trump had already said would not be available.
Therefore, the questionnaire was intended to oppose put up or shut up, and Trump knew in advance it would be shut up.
So these are not accidental or arbitrary moves.
They were all coordinated to get the European Union offside because it was evident that they are the war camp.
They would only frustrate any attempt at reaching an agreement with Ukraine over the end of the war.
And also to keep out Mr. Zelensky, who finally, when the last shoe dropped in the messages that you were just reading, Zelensky is called a dictator who does not hold elections.
In these circumstances, The United States can proceed directly with Russia.
How does Russia feel about it?
Vindicated. But then those who are in the BBC reporting this, and they're saying, ah, Mr. Putin is laughing at all this.
Well, first, it's fake news because they don't know what he's doing.
If they said he may be or he must be, that would be news, possibly.
But to suggest that they have access to his private offices.
And sees where he's chuckling or not.
That is fake news.
And what Russia thinks of it...
Somebody like you, who has great insight into the Kremlin, can probably opine that the Kremlin is quite pleased, maybe even ecstatic with the comments from yesterday.
No? No.
It has been explicitly excluded that there be any euphoria in Moscow.
They are well aware of that.
But I think the most important thing that we have witnessed in the Riyadh meeting and what followed immediately after that is the Russian satisfaction that Trump is acting in good faith and that there is a negotiating partner here.
Because remember the words that were used about the Russians speaking of the Americans in the last months, if not a couple of years, that America is not capable of reaching agreements.
And remember the importance placed by Lavrov and others on trust.
Just note that the project of discussions has been put into three baskets.
The first and most immediate one is to repair the almost destroyed institutions for diplomatic exchange.
The Russian embassy in Washington It's non-functional.
It doesn't have an ambassador.
It doesn't have workable bank accounts to pay any employees locally hired because they're cut off from the international banking system.
This has to be done first, and that is a gesture of good faith, which the Russians expect to be implemented very quickly.
Wasn't that, in fact, agreed upon At Riyadh, and the same with respect to the American embassy in Moscow.
Yes. The most problem, there are three baskets.
I just named the first of it, was immediately to repair diplomatic relations.
So to have the staff in place to work on the thorny, very difficult questions that are in basket two, which includes solving the war in Ukraine, but also includes less difficult or less unpleasant issues.
Like cooperation in space or joint work in the Arctic and the Arctic naval passages north of Siberia.
These types of subjects, which require a lot of expertise and constant support, the very idea that they exist as part of the overall reconciliation would give Moscow hope.
Because all of these things, whether it's restoring one or another type of the arms control agreements that were canceled and should be restored, they all have to do with a constant interchange, a constant flow of people back and forth, which are,
aside from the subject matter, the procedural side of this has its own relevance because all of it inspires confidence and trust.
And without confidence and trust, you can't do anything.
How astute was it of Foreign Minister Lavrov to note in the early part of his opening statement, looking at Stephen Wyckoff, the president's billionaire real estate developer buddy and go-to negotiator,
and say, because of the Joe Biden sanctions, Which President Trump has kept in place, American businesses have lost $330 billion in income.
That certainly got their attention.
I think that is effective for public relations of soft power.
I don't think it reflects reality.
Look, I was in Russian business for most of my professional career.
The common interest between the United States and Russia were always very small.
Foreign trade or the trade exchanges were always very small.
There was very little complementarity, nothing like the complementarity that existed between Europe and Russia.
That is, Russia is a big supplier of essential materials of all kinds, whether it's hydrocarbons or metals or grains.
Anyway, the Europeans...
We're big consumers for good reason.
It wasn't out of kindness.
It was out of advantage.
The United States never had that complementarity.
So the level of possible profitability of business exchanges between Russia and the United States is much more modest than this $350 billion that Lavrov cited.
It makes good news, but it's not reality.
Mutual friend and colleague Pepe Escobar recently returned from the Donbass, where he says the Russian front lines continue to move inexorably westward and with very little resistance.
General Kellogg, on the other hand, claims the war is at a stalemate.
What credibility does the general have in the Kremlin?
Well, he has none.
But they are very satisfied with his being sidelined.
Of course, I'm very well aware that it is a to and fro.
Has he been totally sidelined?
Is he really going to be in charge of negotiations?
I don't take this as worth investigating.
It's a lot of hearsay.
The last thing that I heard that I believed is that he was given the assignment of holding the hands of the Europeans and the Ukrainians, while the real work with the Russians was being assigned to Witkoff as the...
What's the next step that we can expect between Secretary of State Rubio and Foreign Minister Lavrov, other than perhaps a regular communication?
Marco said, hey, Sergei, here's my cell phone.
Call me whenever you want.
I'm not Tony Blinken.
I don't know if they've reached that level.
But what's going to happen next, from your understanding, Professor?
An appointment of working teams.
Of course, it's important for the top people to get together, and the top people in diplomacy are the two named, Rubio and Lavrov.
But at this stage, there is a great deal of detail work that has to be done.
And they have to assign working teams to get going on this advance.
You can't have a preparation for a summit of the two leaders if the Sherpas haven't done their work.
The Sherpas have to be named, they have to sit down and work, and there's going to be a very big group of people because of all the dimensions of relations that have to be restored.
So I think the two of them will be in touch, but only occasionally.
As certain timelines, marks on the timelines are reached, where a decision has to be taken one way or another.
Has the Kremlin tipped its hand about how much longer it thinks the war will last before Ukraine collapses, Zelensky flees, the military gives up the ghost, something like that?
Well, judging by what we've heard in the last two days, it's hard to imagine.
That Zelensky has a shelf life of more than a few weeks.
That doesn't mean that Ukraine has a shelf life of more than a few weeks.
Remember, there is a vast amount of armament that was sent out by Biden in the months, weeks, and even days before he left office.
So the notion that the Ukrainians have no arms is wrong.
They do.
They can last for a while.
How many months?
No one can say.
The idea that the Ukrainians have no men is also incorrect.
When the Russians are moving, as they are day by day, they are meeting resistance and counterattacks, and particularly keeping in mind the nature of the present battlefield, which is dominated by the little birds,
by the drones, the reconnaissance and kamikaze drones.
A rather small number of Ukrainians can do a lot to hold up the advance of Russian forces, and they do.
But let's look at it.
A six-month timeline would be reasonable.
Okay, thank you.
What is the state of affairs in Kyrsk?
Are Ukrainian soldiers and foreign soldiers of fortune still occupying a portion of Russia?
They are.
Of course, when Zelensky was saying that this would be a bargaining chip is if he has the whole region of Korsk under his control.
I don't know if he has 10 or 15 percent of Korsk under his control.
The Russians have been doing their best to flush out the remaining Ukrainians.
It's a long border there, I don't know, 100, 150, 200 kilometers.
And it's very hard to seal it hermetically.
So, of course, there's infiltration.
of new replacement Ukrainian forces.
They don't quite keep up with the slaughter of those who were there before them.
But it's not as though the Russians could flush it out once and there's nothing left.
No, there are replacements.
And so the battle goes on, of course.
And one of the things that has come out in the last few weeks of news are the horrendous stories of the torture and murder of civilians who were unable to leave.
Or who didn't have enough sense to leave when the Ukrainians moved in.
They find the bodies and they exposed these about two weeks ago.
They're still turning these up.
People who were murdered in their cellars after torture, of course.
They had a very good time, these Ukrainian and foreign troops.
So that has been filled with Russian news.
But the area is not completely freed.
And there are thousands and thousands.
I think it's...
20,000 or more Russians who are living in temporary lodgings because it's unsafe to go back to their villages, even if their houses were not destroyed, because of the danger of these marauders from the Ukrainian side.
What is the Kremlin's view, if you know it, of Vice President Vance's dressing down of European elites at Munich last week?
Well, I'm not going to be like the Financial Times, and I'm not going to put it as if I was in the back rooms there to hear them.
But as I will say, they must have been very satisfied, because what he was saying is precisely what the Russians have been saying for a good long time about the undemocratic nature of the European...
Upholders of international values and the rights of man and the rest of them.
Here is a critical point to mention.
It is not the alignment of what Trump or Vance may be saying with what the Russians have been saying.
It's the alignment of what the Americans are now saying with the truth.
And whether the Russians like it or don't like it, whether they're laughing, rejoicing, opening bottles of champagne is irrelevant.
It is to the advantage of us all, including those in power, to be speaking the truth and making their strategic plans based on reality, not on ideology.
Let me switch gears before we finish our conversation.
What do you expect from your observations in the German elections on Sunday, Professor Dr. Owen?
The really tough question is, what will the coalition be that results from this?
The last polls, official polls, so the Christian Democrats at something like 31% of the electorate and the alternative for Germany at something like 21%.
You add those two and you've got a majority coalition.
The question is, can they be induced to join forces?
It's very problematic.
Otherwise, what you've got is the 31% of the Christian Democrats.
Aligning with, what, 12% of the socialists.
They're still short of 50%.
They have to bring in the free Democrats.
It becomes really also problematic that they can find partners to reach 50%.
They could take the Greens, but they won't.
I find it inconceivable that these idiots from the Greens would be brought into a CDU-led coalition.
Is there any way Chancellor Scholz stays in office?
No, there's no chance of that.
Whether he would receive some ministerial portfolio, should they manage to scrape together 50% or more of the parliamentarians in an alliance of the CDU and SPD, then he will be given something,
but he will certainly not be the chancellor.
Before we go, are Russians still comparing Donald Trump to Mikhail Gorbachev?
They are, but in a much more sympathetic way to Gorbachev himself.
I think that there's been, remember that Gorbachev brought them economic disaster.
It brought them political disaster in the sense of disorganization, chaos, and a transition to the Yeltsin years, which were not very healthy years for Russia.
So Gorbachev has taken a lot of hits within Russia, although he was always very much loved in Germany for making the reunification possible.
But Gorbachev has many facets to him, and the one which they found initially to be so similar was his role as the wrecking ball, the one who broke down the Soviet system and made way for freedom.
Now, the wrecking ball, of course, is exactly what they saw in Donald Trump.
And their first conclusions were that Trump would bring chaos to America, that the opposition that he raised would nullify his reform intentions.
Much has happened to Gorbachev.
On second thought, they're very impressed by what he's doing and by his political skills.
And they see the other side of Gorbachev that we in the Western America think of.
That is Gorbachev the peacemaker, the man who put an end to the Cold War division of Europe.
And I think that's how they're looking at Trump today, hopefully, but without this euphoria, to be sure.
Professor Doctorow, a pleasure, my dear friend.
Thank you for your insight.
We'll look forward to chatting with you next week.
We'll know the outcome of the German elections, and we'll probably get another profound...
Wrecking ball statement from Donald Trump.
All the best.
Thank you.
Thank you, too.
Of course.
See you next week.
And coming up later today at 2 o'clock this afternoon, Colonel Larry Wilkerson.
At 3 o'clock, Professor John Mearsheimer.
At 4 o'clock, the always worth waiting for, Max Blumenthal.
Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom.
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