Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano - Pepe Escobar :
Aired: 2025-03-03
Duration: 21:47


=== Thailand's Perspective on East Asia (02:56) ===

[00:00:32]  Hi, everyone.
[00:00:33]  Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
[00:00:36]  Today is Tuesday, March 4th, 2025.
[00:00:40]  Pepe Escobar joins us now.
[00:00:42]  Not from midnight in Moscow, but from midnight in Indonesia.
[00:00:49]  That's in Thailand, Judge.
[00:00:51]  Thailand. Forgive me.
[00:00:52]  Forgive me.
[00:00:53]  Forgive me.
[00:00:55]  American ignorance of geography.
[00:00:58]  But welcome here, my dear friend.
[00:00:59]  I want to talk to you about the resistance gathering in the Middle East.
[00:01:10]  But before we get to that, since you are such an international traveler, what has been the international reaction?
[00:01:21]  To the confrontation between President Trump and President Zelensky in the Oval Office and the White House last Friday, as you have perceived it.
[00:01:30]  Yes. Well, I arrived in ASEAN, where I am, by the way.
[00:01:34]  We should explain that to the Trump administration.
[00:01:37]  ASEAN, Association of Southeast Asian Nations.
[00:01:40]  Ten countries.
[00:01:41]  Biggest partner to all of them.
[00:01:43]  China. So Thailand is an excellent point of view for the whole of East Asia.
[00:01:50]  In fact.
[00:01:51]  And the overall feeling is perplexity, of course, but people are enjoying it immensely, like a reality show, of course.
[00:02:01]  When you look at the Chinese media, especially the best outlets in China, like Guan Cha, for instance, a free translation would be The Observer, which is an excellent online newspaper.
[00:02:15]  And they are like baffled by what's going on.
[00:02:19]  They're not gloating, of course, but essentially they could see it coming.
[00:02:25]  For many reasons, especially the fact that Zelensky always thought that he was a protege of the collective West.
[00:02:34]  And what happened last week at the Oval was in front of world public opinion.
[00:02:42]  And everybody in Asia, everybody in Asia actually watched it and rewatched it.
[00:02:46]  That was the end of the free pass for basically a criminal and an illegal president in Ukraine.
[00:02:55]  It is generally understood, except amongst European elites apparently, we'll get to them in a minute, that he is in fact a criminal and he is in fact no longer the head of state of Ukraine.

=== Ukraine's Last Few Weeks (10:56) ===

[00:03:13]  Nevertheless, until last night, the United States was continuing to keep the spigot of military supplies flowing and keep that spigot open.
[00:03:25]  Trump administration says that there's been a temporary halt.
[00:03:29]  There's no way to verify this or to gauge it, but we'll take them at their word.
[00:03:35]  If there is a halt, I know you're not a military guy, but you know geopolitics.
[00:03:42]  A halt on the supplies.
[00:03:43]  How much longer can they last, Ukraine?
[00:03:46]  A few weeks.
[00:03:48]  And, of course, I'm not a military analyst, but when I was in Donbass, what, three weeks?
[00:03:55]  Less than three weeks ago, my commander friends in Donbass, from Donetsk all the way to Avdivka and Ugledar, they said, look, we're waiting for the order.
[00:04:08]  The order means the Ministry of Defense in Moscow.
[00:04:11]  And, of course, now the order might come considering that if they give the order, the collapse of the 1,000-kilometer-long front could be a matter of weeks maximum.
[00:04:23]  So the commanders on the battlefield, they are very optimistic.
[00:04:28]  They have the momentum.
[00:04:31]  The usual Russian strategy, which is attritional war.
[00:04:35]  It's working, and now they are advancing, let's say, slightly faster than before.
[00:04:41]  And now with the possibility of, let's say, the whole thing stops in the next few days.
[00:04:47]  No more deliveries.
[00:04:49]  What I have will be sufficient enough for a few weeks, four to five weeks.
[00:04:55]  And after that, that's it.
[00:04:57]  And if there's no Starlink, which is a major if at the moment, the whole Ukrainian armed forces are paralyzed.
[00:05:05]  Because they won't be able to communicate without Starlink.
[00:05:10]  Exactly. And we know who owns Starlink.
[00:05:14]  There you go.
[00:05:15]  the de facto prime minister of the United States.
[00:05:25]  Why do you think Zelensky has been so reluctant to say he's in favor of peace?
[00:05:33]  Is it the right-wing militias that he fears will end his life if he shows the slightest inclination towards reasonableness and away from violence?
[00:05:46]  Right-wing militias is a quite diplomatic church.
[00:05:50]  You mean the neo-Nazis, the neo-Nazi outfits as of battalion.
[00:05:56]  And they told Zelensky in his face over and over again, if you don't follow what, you know, what we really want, that's it.
[00:06:05]  You're done.
[00:06:06]  And your family is done.
[00:06:07]  So this is a criminal universe, sub-universe, in fact.
[00:06:12]  Apart from that, if the war stops, he loses his job, and the Russian War Crimes Tribunal will go after Zelensky big, big time.
[00:06:30]  They want to try him for war crimes.
[00:06:33]  Meaning they will arrest him, physically seize him, and put him on trial.
[00:06:39]  Wow, this is the first I've heard of this, probably ordered by President Putin.
[00:06:44]  No question about it, Judge.
[00:06:47]  And, of course, there are They are organizing the legal proceedings for months now.
[00:06:54]  They're just waiting for, I would not say a ceasefire, but let's say a semi-formal end of the war to launch their war crimes legal procedure.
[00:07:07]  And this is huge.
[00:07:09]  So Zelensky has, and of course, the gravy train that involves the Zelensky clan and everybody around him.
[00:07:17]  S.B.U.
[00:07:18]  officials, etc., which everybody in the U.S. now knows that roughly 70% of all the weapons that are sent to Ukraine do not stay in Ukraine.
[00:07:30]  So it's the opposite of Vegas.
[00:07:33]  They leave.
[00:07:34]  They show up.
[00:07:36]  Where do those weapons go?
[00:07:39]  Exactly. Anywhere across the global south.
[00:07:43]  And including also Several nodes across the global north as well.
[00:07:51]  So it goes to criminal groups.
[00:07:53]  It goes to cartels.
[00:07:56]  It goes to all sorts of illegal organizations.
[00:07:59]  He goes to the similar neo-Nazi outfits with a similar ideology to the Azov battalion, for instance, all over the place.
[00:08:08]  And, of course, this elite in the Russian country I wonder if they'll arrest Boris Johnson and Jake Sullivan and Tony Blinken and Victoria Nuland.
[00:08:30]  They have blood on their hands too.
[00:08:32]  And of course, Joe Biden, he has immunity, but he has blood on his hands as well.
[00:08:37]  All these people should be in the dock, Judge.
[00:08:39]  There's no question about it.
[00:08:41]  They're all war criminals, period.
[00:08:44]  Documented in Russia.
[00:08:45]  Correct what I said.
[00:08:46]  Biden has immunity for prosecution in American courts.
[00:08:50]  He does not have immunity.
[00:08:51]  I mean, he's probably non-capas mentis, wouldn't even understand the case against him, but he does not have immunity for war crimes and international prosecution.
[00:09:02]  All right, switching over to Netanyahu.
[00:09:07]  On the cusp of Ramadan, maybe two or three days into Ramadan.
[00:09:13]  He announces that he will stop the movement of food, water, and medicine into the Gaza Strip, using as a pretext for this that it is being stolen by bandits.
[00:09:30]  So they're going to starve everybody.
[00:09:32]  What is the reaction to this even before the Arab League assembled today?
[00:09:40]  The Arab League assembled to do what?
[00:09:42]  To eat a collective kebab?
[00:09:45]  Everybody knows they're a joke.
[00:09:47]  You know, everybody knows that the Arab League does not represent the Arab street, first of all.
[00:09:53]  All of their governments are compromised, different levels, not only with the US, but with Tel Aviv as well.
[00:10:01]  So they will, you know, issue the usual proclamation and nothing is going to happen, de facto.
[00:10:08]  We all knew that Netanyahu would do everything to stop stage two of the ceasefire.
[00:10:16]  He doesn't respect ceasefires by definition.
[00:10:19]  And now that it's something is approaching that could lead to, let's say, really stop the destruction of Gaza.
[00:10:30]  Gaza is 90% destruct, more or less.
[00:10:35]  Stop the remaining 10% of Gaza to be totally destroyed.
[00:10:40]  He will never stop at that.
[00:10:42]  And there's also an element of revenge, Judge, which is exactly what I saw personally one week ago when I visited villages in South Lebanon bordering occupied Palestine.
[00:10:55]  The destruction of these villages, I think we talked about it in our last conversation, they were after the ceasefire with Lebanon.
[00:11:04]  The idea returned and they raised those villages to the ground, which is exactly what they plan to do with what remains of North Gaza.
[00:11:16]  And will Trump just let him get away with this?
[00:11:19]  Trump, the peacemaker in Ukraine, is he the financier of genocide the way Joe Biden was?
[00:11:30]  Can I ask you this question, Judge?
[00:11:34]  Seriously. The answer is yes.
[00:11:40]  The answer is yes.
[00:11:44]  Yesterday, the Secretary of State of the United States of America, in my opinion, committed an act of perjury when he lied under oath.
[00:11:54]  He swore on a document he filed with the Congress that Israel is in a state of emergency.
[00:11:59]  And requires $4 billion in military equipment bypassing the Congress.
[00:12:05]  Tony Blinken did this on a regular basis.
[00:12:08]  What is the emergency?
[00:12:11]  Why bypass a Congress that's in Netanyahu's pocket?
[00:12:15]  Why do all of this unless they know that Bibi is preparing to attack somebody with something and he needs more equipment with which to do it?
[00:12:29]  I would say the whole global majority can see at the moment is that they are committing a genocide.
[00:12:35]  This is in itself a state of emergency, a state of exception, like the great Italian sociologist and analyst Giorgio Agamben has described.
[00:12:45]  This is a state of exception, a state of siege, which now has been...
[00:13:01]  So, who is the resistance and what are they going to do?
[00:13:07]  That's a very, very good question.
[00:13:09]  I use the resistance metaphorically, in fact, comparing these back-to-back trips to the front lines in Donbass, or very close to the front lines in Donbass, and then one week later.
[00:13:24]  To those villages in South Lebanon, bordering occupied Palestine.
[00:13:28]  It's a very humbling experience, emotionally very powerful, but you can connect the resistance on a Christian Orthodox vein.
[00:13:43]  In Russia, in Novorossiya, with the resistance in a Shiite vein in South Lebanon.
[00:13:50]  And all that compounded with that extraordinary ceremony, which was the Nasrallah funeral in Beirut.

=== Middle Eastern Resistance (07:42) ===

[00:13:57]  So these are different aspects, let's say East and West, or Middle Eastern in a sense of West Asian and Eastern Europe of resistance.
[00:14:10]  At the same time, we can extrapolate and talk about resistance in terms of the Chinese resisting the new trade war that Trump to a point here is launching, not only against Canada and Mexico, as we all know, but also against China.
[00:14:24]  And the Chinese immediately retributed with their own 15% tariffs on a series of American products.
[00:14:33]  Tomorrow, very important, Wednesday, it's the beginning of the two sessions in Beijing.
[00:14:39]  Where Chinese legislators get together to frame, organize, suggest, and more or less organize what's going to happen with the Chinese economy in the next five years or so.
[00:14:52]  Today, one day before, one of their spokesmen said something extraordinary, and it was basically a short message to the whole Global South.
[00:15:02]  Essentially, this is what he said.
[00:15:04]  Are you looking for a credible It's us.
[00:15:12]  Work with us.
[00:15:14]  So this is going to be heard from Latin America to Africa to West Asia, Central Asia, and here, Southeast Asia.
[00:15:21]  It's Janice saying, look, we are reliable.
[00:15:25]  We are not going to sanction anybody.
[00:15:27]  We just want to trade with all of you.
[00:15:29]  Bring me back to the animosity in the Arab street.
[00:15:37]  About the genocide in Gaza, the destruction of South Lebanon, the seizure of portions of Syria, and the threats to attack Iran.
[00:15:54]  Exactly.
[00:15:54]  Let me add to that.
[00:15:58]  Colonel McGregor says that General Alsizi...
[00:16:15]  True, because let's say a great deal of the Egyptian military represents the Arab street.
[00:16:22]  There's no question.
[00:16:23]  And the overall...
[00:16:29]  And this goes way beyond Sunni and Shiite.
[00:16:32]  And this spreads to all the lands of Islam as well.
[00:16:36]  They clearly see the direct connection of the genocide in Gaza with what's happening in Syria now, where Syria is being divided.
[00:16:49]  In fact, it's already de facto divided between Turkey and Israel.
[00:16:55]  Support to the Hugo Boss-clad former moderate rebel beheader, which, by the way, is visiting Egypt nowadays.
[00:17:07]  And, of course, the resistance of Hezbollah and the Houthis, which also, by the way, if I'm not mistaken, today were designated by Marco Rubio as a terrorist organization.
[00:17:23]  So this is very, very serious.
[00:17:25]  This means that Marco Rubio has no clue what the Houthis and Ansarala are all about.
[00:17:32]  The only thing that he sees in front of him is that, ah, they are attacking Israeli-related cargo ships, etc.
[00:17:42]  So this is, from the point of view of the Trump administration, it's literally antagonizing.
[00:17:50]  Practically the whole Arab street.
[00:17:52]  Because now the Houthis, and this I talked to a lot of Yemenis in Beirut.
[00:17:58]  They were the coolest guys on top of it.
[00:18:02]  Very well informed.
[00:18:04]  And they were struck at how popular they are in all the Sunni nodes of the Arab street.
[00:18:13]  The Houthis are even popular in parts of Beirut that are essentially business Sunni.
[00:18:19]  Christians and glitzy like you are in Dubai or in Abu Dhabi.
[00:18:23]  And they respect the Houthis because they know exactly what the Houthis stand for.
[00:18:27]  Once again, resistance.
[00:18:29]  So this overall, this broader theme of resistance, it's even transcending this Sunni-Shiite divide.
[00:18:37]  This is extraordinary.
[00:18:40]  And extraordinary in the sense that those ridiculous leaders at the Arab League, they simply cannot understand.
[00:18:47]  They are too compromised to understand that, and they think that they can do anything, Will Donald Trump, the peacemaker, say to Netanyahu what he has effectively said?
[00:19:11]  To Zelensky, enough is enough.
[00:19:14]  Stop now.
[00:19:15]  Or, because of the donor class in the United States, Mrs. Edelman and her colleagues, will he not do that?
[00:19:23]  Will he not be the peacemaker in the Middle East that he apparently, thanks be to God, is going to be in Ukraine?
[00:19:30]  Well, Trump would have to tell Netanyahu, you don't have the cards.
[00:19:35]  And he doesn't.
[00:19:37]  Netanyahu doesn't have any cards against anything, especially against a multi-front, I wouldn't say war, not yet, but a multi-front rebellion of all the neighbors, Sunni and Shiite.
[00:19:52]  Obviously, Syria is not going to be part of it because Syria at the moment is completely devastated.
[00:19:57]  And the southern city is controlled by Israel, essentially.
[00:20:00]  But Lebanon, even Jordan, Egypt.
[00:20:06]  Well, the Persian petro-monarchies, of course, they're not going to do anything.
[00:20:10]  They only care about money.
[00:20:12]  Iran, of course, and Iraq.
[00:20:14]  So, does Israel have enough to fight a multi-front confrontation?
[00:20:21]  No, they don't.
[00:20:22]  Do they have popular support to do that?
[00:20:25]  No, they don't.
[00:20:27]  Even though most of the Israeli population is completely brainwashed.
[00:20:31]  Can they afford to do this?
[00:20:33]  No, they can't.
[00:20:34]  Do they have enough weapons to do that, even with the new batches, which is still going to be sent by the Americas?
[00:20:41]  That's not likely.
[00:20:43]  So that's a very, very weak hand.
[00:20:45]  and what he plans to accomplish.
[00:20:48]  What would he dream of accomplishing if they could not?
[00:20:54]  And this is, I was discussing with Lebanese at the border.
[00:20:59]  They could not even take...
[00:21:08]  And the local resistance of this village said, no, you're not going to take our village.
[00:21:13]  And they didn't.
[00:21:14]  And that's why they came back after the ceasefire and raised it to the ground.
[00:21:18]  Revenge. So it's a revenge killing machine, essentially.

=== 1 O'clock - Glenn Deason (00:25) ===

[00:21:22]  This is what they excel at.
[00:21:25]  Pepe Escobar, it's a pleasure.
[00:21:26]  No matter where you are or what the time of day is.
[00:21:29]  Thank you, my dear friend.
[00:21:31]  We'll see you again next week.
[00:21:32]  All the best.
[00:21:33]  See you next week, Judge.
[00:21:35]  It was a pleasure.
[00:21:36]  Greetings from Asia.
[00:21:40]  Coming up later today at 1 o'clock, Professor Glenn Deason.
[00:21:43]  At 3 o'clock, Aaron Maté.
[00:21:45]  At 4 o'clock, Professor John Mearsheimer.