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Feb. 23, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
21:48
Larry Johnson : Will Zelenskyy Soon Resign?
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Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Monday, February 24th, 2025.
Larry Johnson is here with us on what's with Zelensky offering to resign?
What's the catch?
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I said to McGovern this morning, it seemed like just a few minutes ago that the three of us finished on Friday afternoon.
Yeah, if we get older, time flies quicker.
Correct, and there is so much for us to talk about.
I do want to talk to you about Zelensky, but before we get there, Alistair Crook opined.
This morning, that Europe is in chaos, certainly among the elites.
Do you agree?
Oh, absolutely.
So let's do a thought experiment.
If the news tomorrow reports that Donald Trump's support, that he only has 28% support, would that be viewed as a negative, as a disaster?
Well, of course.
Yet, yesterday, Germany had elections, and the winning party...
Got 28.5% of the vote.
So, you know, win is getting basically a quarter of the vote winning.
It's not winning.
And so what you wind up with is just a fragmented mess.
And it's not unique to Germany.
It's that way in almost every country in Europe, with the exception, I think, of Hungary.
Hungary is one of the few that actually had a majority vote for Orban.
But everybody else is in minority status.
And so how do you come together any kind of policy that's got popular support when you're so fragmented and broken up?
In the case of Germany, it's particularly difficult.
Friedrich Merz, the likely new chancellor, or the person who will be designated by the president of Germany first to form a government.
We'll either have to form a government with the AFD, the true conservatives whom he says he despises and doesn't want to deal with, or with the Christian Democrats who've destroyed Germany, German economy.
Yeah, he will not align with the AFD or the AFD, as it's called, Alternative for Deutschland.
I mean, he views them as more of an enemy than he views Russia.
You know, think about that.
Wow. The hatred he has towards them is profound.
And isn't he, I don't know where this is going to go, Larry, isn't he pro-war?
Oh, yeah!
Isn't he in favor of Germany aiding Ukraine?
Hell, he would have sent Taurus missiles already.
Again, these guys are indulging a fantasy.
I saw earlier today a clip with Ursula von der Leyen, you know, von der Leyen, but von der Leyen.
And she was talking about, boy, you know, Russia's being ravaged with inflation.
Russia's economy is in tatters.
They're losing the war.
I mean, this chick is so divorced from reality.
You've got to wonder what is she...
And she used to be the opposition to Friedrich Mertz.
But now here we find that both Fond of Lying and Mertz are on the same page.
I mean, really, there is no rational adult leadership anywhere in Europe right now.
Does Mertz acknowledge, as far as you know, or has he acknowledged, that the United States destroyed the Nord Stream pipeline and the Germans just stood there and let it happen?
And the Germans, the government of Chancellor Scholz just stood there and let it happen.
In fact, Scholz stood next to Biden when he posted about it.
The only thing Biden lacked at that press conference was having a collar on with a chain attached to have Schultz in his submissive position.
No, Mertz hasn't acknowledged that.
The reality is the destruction, destroying that pipeline has hurt Germany.
Now, Germany's economy is in trouble.
It was anticipated that it was going to have a much more dramatic decline.
The manufacturing industry is actually cratering.
It's way down.
Compared to, say, Spain, England, France, it's lost more capability.
But so far, you've not had the kind of widespread public suffering that would come from economic chaos.
Part of that is the government's been able to continue to provide You know, to fund, you know, send people money every month.
And so that's mitigated the suffering.
And, you know, frankly, it's out of suffering that you're going to get some unity.
And the Germans just haven't suffered enough yet.
So they've gone along with this, you know, kiss your sister moment where the winner is Mertz with 28% of the vote and the group that comes in second, AfD, with around 20%.
They're going to be excluded from government.
And so you're going to wind up with a patchwork quilt.
And the economy, what has really changed is before, Germany used to have a good, strong relationship with Russia in terms of exporting automobiles, exporting turbines, and other sophisticated machinery to Russia.
Russia was happy with that relationship.
That's over now.
And Russia's not importing those.
Russia started to make those things itself.
Things that he used to buy from Germany.
So that relationship's never going to come back to normal.
It's not going to normalize if MERS is in favor of war.
Now, maybe there'll be no war for him to be in favor of if Trump and Putin cut a deal, a grand deal, when they meet, I think, in May in Moscow or maybe even sooner in Saudi Arabia.
Well, look, MERS can be in favor of war, but the German army is a disaster.
As bad as the Brits are, the Germans are even more chaotic.
They don't even have enough rifles and ammunition to arm their own soldiers, their own active duty soldiers.
So, you know, what are they going to do for Ukraine?
Maybe they kick them a few Taurus missiles and then, you know, those are going to get shot down.
But it also opens up the way for creating a possible...
Calls this belli where, you know, Russia would retaliate against Germany.
So, I mean, you know, Mertz is just, he's talking out of a part of his body not normally used for vocal expressions.
Right, right.
McGregor thinks that Mertz can't last more than six to ten months.
Yeah, I think Doug's right.
In office.
As we speak, the President of France is meeting with President Trump, and on Thursday, the Prime Minister of Great Britain is scheduled to meet.
What leverage do they have with Trump?
Zero. So let's start with, before Macron, there was Duda, you know, out of Poland, the Prime Minister.
Trump kept him cool in his heels for about an hour and 30 minutes.
Welcome Duda into the office.
That 11-minute chat.
Hey, Duda, good to see you, buddy.
Hey, you know, have a nice day.
Pat on the rear end sends him out.
Let's call it the parade of the irrelevance.
You know, France, what's it good for?
You know, they've got some good wines, good champagne.
But Trump's not a drinker, so that's not going to sway him.
You know, they're military.
On a good day, it's mediocre and really brings nothing to the table.
They could swing the conflict in the favor of Ukraine.
Could France credibly offer to spend 5% of its budget on NATO, which is what Trump has demanded, or on its own defense, if not on NATO?
They could.
They'd probably really stress out their financial situation as government, but it's not going to make any difference.
I mean, you know, you combine, take the United States out of the equation and you put all of the European countries that are in NATO and combine all their armies.
They don't even match the size of the Russian army in its current form.
And the difference being the Russian army is now combat trained.
They're combat veterans.
You know, the Europeans, they haven't won a war.
I mean, you know, in recent memory, I can't credit them with winning World War II.
The French were tag-alongs on that.
And the Brits as well.
You know, it wasn't British resources that turned the course of the war.
It was the United States.
But the defeat of Nazis was done by the Russians, not the Western Allies.
Western Allies helped.
So it's just what we're coming up against now.
What is the EU good for?
What is Europe good for?
Other than, you know, a nice place to go on vacation or used to be, except now some of the major cities are so populated with homeless and others that they're dangerous, but they don't have any major natural resources.
They're not major producers of food that the rest of the world depends upon.
Now, all there are, you know, the UK has been sort of a financial center.
That's it.
Back to Prime Minister Starmer.
What leverage does he have?
Oh, boy.
He's going to invite the president to have dinner with King Charles.
Yeah, I'm sure that's high on Trump's list, hanging out with those two.
Look, Starmer comes in with the deck stacked against him.
He sent his own campaign workers to the United States to meddle.
In the U.S. presidential election on behalf of Kamala Harris.
You know, can you imagine the reaction of the world if Vladimir Putin had sent members of his political organization to the United States to campaign for Donald Trump?
Think that would have gone over?
Oh, hell no.
So here's Starmer having done that.
And then on top of it is the role that the Brits played, British intelligence, in perpetuating Russiagate.
And trying to destroy Trump even before he got into office in 2016, and then continuing to collaborate with U.S. intelligence in that effort to undermine Trump.
So Trump's got, really, he's got no time for Starmer.
If nothing else, he may just be bringing him in to let him, to humiliate him.
But there's nothing that Starmer's going to say or do where Trump will go, oh, gee, I hadn't thought about that.
Yeah, let's consider that.
No. So is it your view that barring some sort of a cataclysm, I don't even know what it would be, the Trump 180 degree change for the better on Ukraine and the Vance admonition of mind your own houses has caused radical and irreversible,
at least in the near future, change between the United States and Europe?
Yeah, no, it's all, well, it's all through the relationship, and as it should, because, you know, this dependency on Europe that the United States has shown by, you know, we keep, we've got several military bases still active in Germany,
and this is 80 years after the end of the war.
We need to shut those down and come home.
We've got really, we've got no business still being there.
It's just, it's part of our, let's call it our, New imperial legacy.
But the European countries are adrift.
And they don't even agree amongst themselves.
You saw Macron convened a hasty summit of what he would call his best friends in Europe with Starmer and Schultz.
And I believe the Poles were there.
And Maloney showed up late out of Italy.
They couldn't agree.
They fought amongst themselves in terms of supporting Ukraine.
So Macron was going to have another summit that may have already taken place.
That hasn't ended any better either.
So now Starmer shows up with his plan that he's going to send British troops.
I'm sure Trump will say, hey, great idea.
Go for it.
But if you get in trouble, you get attacked, we're not coming to your rescue.
You're on your own.
You know, at one point, And it was since January 20th, so while I was in the White House, Trump mused aloud about cutting the defense budget in half.
Pete Hegseth has offered a $50 billion reduction over the next 10 years.
That's absurd.
Can't we just close the 800 bases we have around the world?
I mean, the defense budget.
Listen to this.
According to Niall Ferguson, Professor Ferguson at Stanford, the defense budget last year was $846 billion.
The Defense Department spent $1.1 trillion.
So they're $200 billion over budget.
They need a radical reduction.
I don't know if Trump will get that out of his Republican buddies in Congress because they're dependent on the military-industrial complex for their campaigns.
Am I right?
Oh, yeah.
They're all bought and paid for.
I'm amused every time we hear the charges of, this government overseas is corrupt.
Russia's corrupt.
Ukraine's corrupt.
Hey, we're the king of corruption in this country.
We're a lot better at hiding it and not being as ostentatious about it.
But when you consider the fact that right now the military budgets of Russia and China combined are one-third of that of the United States.
Right. What do you make of the offers over the weekend?
Well, actually, I'll play it for you, President Zelensky.
Chris, cut number one.
If it's about peace in Ukraine and you really want me to leave my position, I am ready to do that in exchange for peace.
Secondly, I can exchange it for NATO membership if there is such an opportunity.
I'll do it immediately without a long conversation about it.
I am focused on Ukraine's security today and not in 20 years.
I don't plan to be in power for decades.
I mean, should this be taken seriously or is it...
So what?
Well, he is going to be forced out.
It remains to be seen whether it will be somebody will persuade him and say, look, you need to resign and restore constitutional order to Ukraine and hold new elections.
That would be the optimal way for Zelensky to bow out without being carried out feet first, covered with a sheet.
He really doesn't have any good options.
So the question is, how bad does he want to live?
If he wants to live, survive, and get into his old age, then he's going to have to vacate the office and seek asylum, safe haven, someplace, whether it's France or the United States.
Now, his chances of winding up in the United States, I've heard he's got property over at Vero Beach.
Which is just the opposite side of the state of Florida for me.
He may want to tone down his rhetoric about Donald Trump, because Trump will pull his visa.
But the bigger problem, I think, is the lesson he's going to have.
I fully expect him to be facing criminal charges for fraud in the United States for the money that he has stolen, U.S. taxpayer money that he's stolen, and that it's made its way into banks in the Caribbean.
Wow. Interesting observation, Larry.
Can the Musk team audit the intelligence community effectively?
Probably not.
They will hide behind that they don't have the proper clearances.
But I think some of the AI technology, the artificial intelligence technology, Doge is using to track money flows.
They can certainly start following some of the CIA money because they may have stumbled across some of it in their shutting down of USAID because we now know that somewhere over the last 20-25 years,
a lot of the CIA covert action that used to be contained in-house got out Out of the house and was crossed over into some public groups like USAID, where they were actively used to rent crowds and fund color revolutions.
And you notice what's happened, that the kinds of pressures we were seeing, say, in Serbia, in Georgia, and in Romania, these have died off.
That's because the money spigot was turned off.
Can Musk's people find out how much money the CIA spent to bribe foreign officials or, as you say, to rent fake crowds?
It's unlikely.
Congress, again, has oversight of this, but they've gone along with allowing the CIA To carry out operations that, frankly, don't serve the interests of the United States.
Our promotion of this perpetual war machine has, I would argue, really hurt us.
And it has hurt our security, not enhanced it.
Larry Johnson, thank you, my dear man.
Always a pleasure.
Thank you for the double duty.
Thank you for the breadth of topics that we've covered.
We look forward to seeing you with Ray on Friday afternoon.
I'll be there.
See you then.
All the best, my friend.
And coming up later today at 2 o'clock this afternoon, the always worth waiting for, Scott Ritter.
Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom.
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