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Feb. 25, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
24:01
Pepe Escobar : The Resistance Gathers
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Hi, everyone.
Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Wednesday, February 26th, 2025, although it might be Thursday where our guest is coming from.
Pepe Escobar joins us midnight in Moscow.
Pepe, always a pleasure.
I want to talk to you.
Thank you.
I want to talk to you about the resistance gathering in the Middle East.
But before we do, to the war in Ukraine.
Is the war effectively over?
No, on the contrary.
And in fact, today there were some serious discussions here that 2025 might be a military year.
Because essentially, the American position and the Russian position, as far as all the shadow play and the posturing goes, they are incompatible positions.
And they haven't even started a negotiation.
What is the essence of the incompatibility?
Neutrality of NATO.
Neutral NATO.
No foreign peacekeepers on Russian western borders.
The regions have to be recognized as Russian, all of them, because now they are in the Russian constitution that's belonging to Russia.
Crimea and the four regions.
And of course, I'm blocking all the so-called frozen funds across the West.
Okay, which President Macron told President Trump two days ago that French have designs on.
Before we get to that, right before we went on air...
Executive producer Chris said, we have a surprise for you.
Well, this is the surprise.
It's the biggest buffoon in the Western world whose intervention in the spring of 2022 prevented peace between Ukraine and Russia, now boasting, well,
I'll let this fool talk.
In his own words, and I don't even have to tell you who it is, but you'll know in a heartbeat, Chris, cut number 13. Everybody knows there's a minerals deal on the table today, right?
And I think it has every prospect of being signed.
And frankly, I think it should be signed because it commits the United States in black and white to a free, sovereign and secure Ukraine.
So what we need now is everybody to be serious and to get real.
And to listen to what Trump is actually saying and doing and proposing.
He said he doesn't mind UK troops on the ground in Ukraine.
That's great.
Well, then we need to make that real.
The US is committed, black and white, to a free, secure, sovereign Ukraine.
You can't have a sovereign country without the ability to decide which clubs you're going to belong to.
A sovereign country can remain committed to joining NATO.
That's sovereignty.
A sovereign country...
Can remain free to allow whatever troops it wants to come on its soil to support it.
That's sovereignty.
Now, Putin could never accept that.
The US has already committed to that.
I think Putin is ultimately going to fail and Ukraine is going to succeed.
Good Lord, does he have the slightest idea what he's talking about?
Of course not.
He's a buffoon.
In fact, a paid buffoon.
Now he's a columnist for a British newspaper, you know, very well paid, to write buffooneries, which he excels at.
If this was a Monty Python sketch, it would be very funny.
The problem is this is real.
This is deathly serious.
Now, you may have the same opinion of the President of the United States,
They spent $350 billion and Europe spent one.
100 billion dollars.
Now, does anybody really think that's fair?
But then we find out a little while ago, not so long ago, a few months ago, I found out that the money they spent, they get back.
But the money we spent, we don't get back.
They said, well, we're going to get it back and we'll be able to make a deal.
And again, President Zelensky is coming to sign the deal.
And it's a great thing.
It's a great deal for Ukraine, too, because they get us over there and we're going to be working over there.
We'll be on the land.
You know, in that way, there's sort of automatic security because nobody's going to be messing around with our people when we're there.
And so we'll be there in that way.
But Europe will be watching it very closely.
I know that UK has said and France has said that they want to put, they volunteered to put so-called peacekeepers on the site.
And I think that's a good thing.
To his right, but obviously not visible in this, was Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State.
Who must have truly winced when he heard the president say, we'll be on the ground and nobody will mess with our people.
And French and British peacekeepers is a good thing.
Please dissect this, Pepe.
The easiest way to dissect it is this Trumpian urge of launching something bombastic.
Three or four bombasts a day.
To completely monopolize the neo-cycle all across the West and beyond.
He's a master at doing that.
So this is a long-running reality show, non-stop.
But with no substance.
First of all, because there is no plot line.
And nobody explains to the president what is the plot line when you are about to enter an extremely serious negotiation.
Ukraine is just one small piece of the puzzle.
This is the whole spectrum of U.S.-Russia relations for now and the immediate future, and leading maybe later to a new Yalta.
There has to be a new Yalta.
But we are all lost into the circus all the time, and 90% of what the President says, I'm sorry, is beyond bullshit.
What is the effect in Moscow, A?
Of statements like that by the president, which must have reached Moscow by now.
It's just a few minutes old.
And B, the realization that the Joseph Biden pipeline of ammunition and military equipment to Ukraine is still flowing.
Well, there's some very interesting tidbits, all interrelated.
For instance...
Russian intelligence, they know that Ukraine, more or less, has been divided for quite a while among the Europeans.
In fact, this is European style, like they divided Sykes-Picot and beyond.
So Ukraine, for now, has already been divided in terms of who controls the ports, who control the mines, etc.
The Brits, for instance, would control the ports.
The ports and the Germans would control the mines among others.
So there is already skin in the game for Europe and this is one of the reasons why they need this war to go on until in their mines, in their war crimes, there is a strategic defeat of Russia.
At the same time, the Russians know that there are no rare earths west of the Dnieper or minimal quantities.
Doesn't American intel know that, to advise the president that this deal he's signing for minerals is in the earth on Russian land and not Ukrainian land?
How could the Americans possibly mistake that?
They're negotiating for nothing.
They're negotiating for something they can't feasibly get.
So there are two possibilities, Judge.
One... The president is being misled by the Intel acronym HELL.
Number one.
Number two, he can sell this to American public opinion as we're going to get our money back.
Nobody knows how they're going to get their money back.
If they get their money back in the long run.
The rare earth deposits are over 70% of them in Novorossiya.
Now they belong to Russia.
Period. Russians know it.
That's why they're not saying anything about the $500 billion that is going to be signed maybe before the end of the week in Washington.
Basically, Zelensky has nothing to sell.
Basically, Russia has all the cards even before the start of the negotiation.
So we have the circus, including the signature deal, including the fact that Macron suggested peacekeepers in Okay,
so here's Foreign Minister Lavrov before President Trump made the statement We cannot consider any options of deploying peacekeepers to Ukraine.
I don't know what Macron said there.
He did not play his role very convincingly in Washington.
But when this topic was raised at a press conference, as I read, President Trump said a decision to deploy peacekeeping forces is possible only with the consent of both parties, apparently meaning us and Ukraine.
No one asks us about this.
If the President of the United States said peacekeepers only with the consent of both parties, it's obviously just a political statement because he knows the Russians would never consent.
He knows that.
He must know that.
If he doesn't know that, he's a fool.
Secondly, why would he have said what we just ran after and knowing what Foreign Minister Lavrov said?
To confuse the American public opinion that he's already engaged in high-level negotiations when they have not even started, and the Russians are still waiting for anything substantial being proposed by the American side.
It's too early.
First of all, they need what they're doing now, basically, reconnecting the diplomatic channels.
So we are starting even before scratch.
So to say this now is counterproductive.
This is creating maybe the illusion among Americans and across the West that there's going to be an equal and profound negotiation between both sides.
There are no signs of that for the moment.
Another small detail, Judge.
Today I had an off-the-record meeting with Sergei Glazia, which is one of the most well-informed people in Russia.
The only thing that I'm saying, because this is off the red, the only thing that I can say was at the end, as we're both leaving, he said with his trademark smirk, this is a very strange war.
And this is the feeling.
We just got a clip of President Trump saying the weapons will continue, the Biden pipeline will stay open.
Until there's an agreement.
Does he really think that he can intimidate President Putin after three years of war?
But let's play the clip first, and then you can...
I haven't seen it yet, but you can respond to it.
Chris? Warfighting equipment and the ammunition that's sustained going forward for Ukraine, how long is it sustained?
Well, it could go forward for a while.
And maybe until we have a deal with Russia.
Look, we need to have a deal with Russia.
Otherwise, it's gonna continue.
It could go on for a while or it could be settled quickly.
I think it's gonna be settled quickly.
I spoke with President Putin.
I think he wants to settle it.
Does he really think that keeping that pipeline flowing will influence the Russian negotiations one iota?
Of course not.
And that's why, in the beginning of our conversation today, I was saying that there's a sort of consensus that this is going to be a military year.
Meaning, in Russian-speak, they will keep advancing.
And they will keep advancing much further than just reconquering the whole of Donetsk.
Which for the moment is around, let's say, 80%.
So there's still 20% to reconquer.
They could do that in the next three months easily.
A sort of spring-summer offensive.
And now that the whole front is collapsing in front of everyone's eyes, right?
So this could go on during the negotiations for the next three to six months with an enormous Russian advance.
And everybody's confident.
And I was in Donbass, what, three?
Less than two weeks ago, in fact.
And the commanders in Donbass between Donetsk and Ogledar, they were basically saying, yes, we're just waiting for that order.
And when the order comes, we'll go all the way.
No limits.
So they are not intimidated by anything.
Once again, why?
Because they hold all the military cards.
Why does Europe consider Vladimir Zelensky The legitimate president of Ukraine.
But he's not.
He's totally illegal.
Everybody knows this, that he's totally illegal.
In fact, Ukraine is being controlled by a military council, let's put it this way, that is basically all the commands come from this council.
And sometimes Zelensky is in the room, sometimes he's not.
So he's not the ultimate arbiter anymore.
First of all, because he's illegal.
And people in Kiev know that he's illegal.
So who do you have to negotiate with?
Which the Russians are asking all the time.
And that's why Putin, as Trump, they both proposed elections.
And it's fascinating because can you imagine that Putin and MI6 converge?
I mean, one key issue, that Zaluzhny should be the next president.
Because Zaluzhny is popular, military background, he's respected in Russia, and he respects Gerasimov and his military peers in Russia.
And he would be an interlocutor, you know, credible.
How would that happen?
The U.S. would have to engineer either an election or a coup?
Or basically get him to one of his mansions in Miami?
Well, what happens to him is irrelevant, considering that, in fact, both parties, in this case, Americans and Russians, they agree that we need elections, number one.
And two, probably Zelensky would be elected because he's double or triple more popular than Zelensky.
What happens to Zelensky afterwards is immaterial.
The Russians?
We want to go after him as a war criminal.
And this is extremely serious.
So they will go for him as a war criminal.
There's no question.
Switching gears to what was to have been the original topic today, which is the resistance, is Netanyahu perceived internationally as trying to wreck the ceasefire with Gaza?
No question.
And perceived all across the global majority.
Perceived all across the Arab world, the Arab street, the lands of Islam, and the global south global majority.
This experience that I lived this past week and judge in Lebanon was something, wow, even for us all dinosaurs is something absolutely extraordinary.
We had to go to those villages bordering occupied Palestine to see the senseless destruction after the ceasefire.
For instance, in one of the villages that we went, Marun Ras, they were fighting over there for 66 days.
Enormous resistance, local Hezbollah resistance.
They couldn't conquer the city.
So after the ceasefire, they came back.
And they raised everything to the ground.
Literally. From uprooting trees, to bulldozing streets, to booby-trapping.
Every single home in Maru Ras.
There are more or less 600 residential homes.
And when you see this in front of you, it's a mini Gaza in front of you.
And when we get back to another village, this one right...
In front of the border, you know, the western limits of the village of Odessa, there is an Israeli checkpoint.
In fact, by the way, some of the soldiers came and they pointed their guns at us.
They probably were thinking of intimidating us, right?
The same thing.
Could not conquer it, came back, raised it to the ground.
Some of our Lebanese friends were showing the places where they are...
Best friends in town were killed by missile attacks or by FPV drones, etc.
So it's a killing machine that is ultimately a revenge killing machine.
Because on hand-to-hand combat, when you put Israelis against Hezbollah, for instance, it's ridiculous.
And they run away.
How strong and what makes up?
Extremely strong because it's a spiritual, spiritually strong resistance.
When you talk to the villagers, and then when you talk to Hezbollah commanders, for instance, it's the same mindset of Defending their land.
For instance, right in front of one of these villages, Marun Ras, it's Lebanese land, in fact, that it was stolen already by Israel.
And then right behind it, it's on top of a hill, for instance, overlooking Palestine.
Right behind it is occupied Palestine.
But right in front of the hill, it's their land.
So we have to reconquer our land that was stolen by them years ago.
And the way the Hezbollah political Islam mindset works is extremely complex because it's a mix of Shi'ism and communitarian spirit that we don't see in the West anymore.
So that's why it strikes us immensely when we are face-to-face.
The way they resisted, to the way they basically expelled the invaders, to the way that they are ready to reconstruct their own villages.
And when we transpose all that to between 1 million to 1,400,000 people this past Sunday at Nasrallah's funeral in southern Beirut, this was something...
Absolutely outstanding.
And everybody's thinking the same way.
And they are not revengeful, per se.
We are just...
Let us alone.
Don't invade our land.
Don't bomb us all the time.
This is what they're essentially saying.
Well, they're going to have to do something militarily because their warm hearts will be met by the cold weapons of the IDF.
Exactly, Judge.
And that's what's leading some...
First-class intellectuals in Beirut, we had a fantastic conversation on Sunday night, in fact.
And they're saying, yes, these targeted assassinations, in fact, they eliminated over 90% of Hezbollah's leadership.
We should do the same thing with them.
And then they are going to be scared.
We are not scared.
We know that we're going to...
And Nasrallah was saying this all the time.
Look, we're going to lose a lot of people.
It's going to be very bitter.
But in the end, our spiritual strengths will predominate.
And it is.
And when you see this sea of black with those yellow flags inside the stadium, outside the stadium, half of Beirut.
We walked after the ceremony outside.
And there were people all over.
Beirut was literally converged to it.
Or the people who were afraid.
It's very interesting.
You go to a restaurant, for instance.
The waiters, they are Shiites.
And then when we see that we are foreigners and we were there, they sympathize with us and they thank us as foreigners to be there.
It's amazing.
As a human, spectacle is something that drives you to tears almost.
Pepe, thank you very much.
I know it's the middle of the night for you and I know we were listening.
On a topic different from what we expected to discuss, but your insight has been extremely valuable and much appreciated, and we'll look forward to seeing you next week.
From Asia, Judge, next time.
Midnight in Moscow stops for the moment.
All right.
We'll see you from Asia next week.
Thank you, my dear friend.
Thank you so much.
Thank you.
Coming up at 4.30 this afternoon Eastern, Colonel Douglas McGregor, Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom.
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