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March 3, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
23:07
Prof. Glenn Diesen :
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Hi, everyone.
Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Tuesday, March 4th, 2025.
Professor Glenn Deason joins us now.
Professor, always a pleasure.
Thank you very much for your time.
The Trump-President-Trump-President Zelensky confrontation in the Oval Office on Friday, of course, has reverberated around the world, and with the notable exceptions of Hungary and Italy.
Much of the European leadership seems to have doubled down on the side of President Zelensky.
Can you put your finger on the pulse of the public?
Is there a consensus amongst the public?
Zelensky was foolish.
Zelensky was strong.
Trump was crude.
It's about time Trump spoke that way.
Is there a consensus one way or another about this rather extraordinary Well, in Europe, there seems like much of the media selected specific clips which made it sound as if just or seem as if Vance and Trump...
We're just pounding on Zelensky, and much of the focus was on what was considered undiplomatic behavior as opposed to the core of the conflict.
I think it was also too much focus on the minerals, suggesting that they were almost beating him up because they wanted the minerals.
But I think what was left out of much of the media coverage here in Europe would be...
That what Trump and Vance were pushing for was for Zelensky to accept negotiations, that is, to start to bring this war to an end.
And we saw, again, that Zelensky more or less said no.
We continue to argue that there's no reason to negotiate with Putin.
It doesn't work.
And of course, all this rhetoric that the Russians are evil, they're terrorists.
So all of this translates into the idea that you can't negotiate with evil effectively.
And I was also told that there was some...
That Trump might have reacted poorly to the way he was dressed.
Now, I haven't gotten this confirmed, but I was told that the Trump administration asked him to wear a suit because he took off his suit and put on his war costume once Russia invaded, and they thought it would be a powerful...
Yeah, but this is something that was largely left from the It's interesting how the media in Europe, forgive my ignorance, is it mostly government-owned or government-controlled?
Well, it's both.
Some are government-owned, but much private-owned.
But there's a very strong narrative control that is very few that deviates from the narrative.
So we create all these narratives from the beginning that, for example, this was an unprovoked invasion.
This is very important because once it's unprovoked, it means that the Russians are just opportunistic.
They were just looking for a territory, and now it's dangerous to have negotiations because we'll just reward this.
So everyone kind of has to fall in line with the narrative, irrespective of being government or private.
Otherwise, they would be accused of being puppets of the Kremlin.
Were you surprised at the gathering, the immediate gathering in London the Sunday afterwards convened by Prime Minister Starmer and the near unanimous, as I said, we'll leave out Italy and we'll leave out Hungary and we'll leave out the neutrals,
Switzerland and Austria, but the near unanimous condemnation of Putin and at least stated, I don't know if it's real.
Willingness to provide security and support for Ukraine.
Did any of that surprise you?
No, they've been saying this for three years.
They say they stand with Ukraine.
But in this instance, it means to prolong the war, even though the majority of Ukrainians want negotiations.
So it's a very war.
War hawkish, a lot of war enthusiasm, but it's always dressed up in benign rhetoric about helping Ukrainians.
But we said we helped Ukrainians all along since we toppled the government in 2014 against the will of the majority of Ukrainians.
So when we sabotaged the Minsk Agreement, which most Ukrainians wanted implemented, when we sabotaged the Istanbul Agreement.
So time and time again, we always frame it as helping.
So this helps to shape the narrative.
I wasn't surprised by the statement, but again, it's very superficial because there's nothing to back this up.
They just come together, they take a photo, and they say how great this is that we stand strongly with Ukraine, but there's nothing behind it.
They don't have the weapons that Americans have, the logistics, the intelligence, the satellites, so there's not much that can be done without Americans.
And I also don't think the Europeans recognize that.
By saying that they will make up for the American weapons, they're effectively threatening to sabotage Trump's peace.
Because the whole idea of Trump is, we're going to stop sending weapons, and now this will force Zelensky to the table.
And the Europeans are saying, well, we're going to prevent this.
I think Trump could put similar pressure on the Europeans in the future.
Well, it's hard to say.
We have this very strange way we look at the Russians.
Either they're always hopelessly backwards or they can't take a single village.
Or at the same time, sometimes they're also overwhelmingly powerful and they can roll across Europe at any time.
So I'm not sure if they're ignorant or deceitful, but either way, I'm leaning towards deceitful because if they really believe that Russia threatens to invade Poland or the rest of Europe,
then surely this would have been reflected in the military budgets.
There hasn't been much efforts to arm.
So I don't think it's serious.
I think it's more a narrative used to prolong the war, because most of the narratives which are thrown in the media, they all have the same purpose, which is to...
To prolong the war.
Now, if you say that the Russians are hopeless, then they can be defeated on the battlefield.
So this is a long war.
And if you say that they're an overwhelming threat, they can invade all of Europe, this also advocates for not ending the war.
So sometimes we throw in all of these narratives at the same time, even though they contradict each other.
I'm going to play a clip from Prime Minister Starmer on Sunday afternoon.
So this is after He met with President Zelensky, after President Zelensky met with the king, after President Zelensky met with the European leaders that were willing to fly to London to give up their Sunday afternoon.
I thought what he said was absurd, but I invite your comments.
Chris, cut number one.
Our starting point must be to put Ukraine in the strongest possible position now so that they can negotiate.
From a position of strength.
And we are doubling down in our support.
Yesterday evening, the UK signed a £2.2 billion loan to provide more military aid to Ukraine.
Backed not by the British taxpayer, but by the profits from frozen Russian assets.
And today I'm announcing a new deal.
Which allows Ukraine to use £1.6 billion of UK export finance to buy more than 5,000 air defence missiles, which will be made in Belfast, creating jobs in our brilliant defence sector.
This will be vital for protecting critical infrastructure now and strengthening Ukraine in securing the peace when it comes.
I think this is domestic political claptrap.
Those missiles wouldn't be ready, according to Scott Ritter and Colonel McGregor, until 2030.
Yeah, no, this is nonsense.
The weapons aren't there.
They're talking about money they don't have.
To build weapons which don't exist and won't exist for many years.
You can't just print this.
This has to...
Our arming process, getting the skills, getting the factories, increasing the industrial capacity, it can't be done this fast.
Indeed, if it could be, we would have done it over the past three years.
So, no, this is...
This is nonsense.
But also this idea that all we have to do is make sure that we send more weapons and Ukraine can negotiate from a position of strength.
This is what we said three years ago.
Keep in mind that three years ago, the EU made this statement.
And over the past three years, they never did anything.
Negotiated from a position of strength.
They refused to do any diplomacy.
They put a full boycott on diplomacy with the Russians.
They would do no negotiations.
Still, no one's calling the Kremlin.
So this is nonsense.
This is the same as continuing what has already been done for three years, which is more weapons arguing that this is somehow going to change the tide.
Obviously, it is nonsense because every day we see that the Ukrainians get weaker and weaker, the Russians get stronger and stronger.
So, yeah, I think this is more about the British rebuilding their post-Brexit role in Europe as one of their main military powers.
How can he say with a straight face from the interest?
Generated by frozen Russian deposits.
That doesn't belong to Great Britain or to Europe.
It belongs to whoever the depositor is.
Either the government of Russia or some Russian industry that had the misfortune of having their assets in a European bank when Joe Biden persuaded everybody to freeze it all.
It's theft whether the government takes it or not.
No, it's a very obvious theft.
I meant to say it's theft whether the government calls it theft or not.
They're taking somebody else's money.
Yeah, but again, it's all narratives here.
We're already decoupled from reality.
So the narrative being sold now is that, well, if we steal all the funds of the Russian central bank in there...
With the sovereign funds, then yes, it's theft.
But if we just take the proceeds, then it's going to be fine.
It's not a problem.
But again, we...
We moved so far away from any common sense.
And if we can just comment very quickly on what they achieved in Paris, because this was supposed to be the peace summit as an alternative to what Trump was doing.
It was a debacle.
They can't come together.
It doesn't matter.
They don't have the military equipment, they don't have the money, but also they don't have any consensus.
At the end, the whole thing ended up in Paris with Macron saying, let's have a one-month limited ceasefire.
That is, no more...
Air attacks, naval attacks, attacks on energy infrastructure.
So all the areas where Russia dominates, we're going to stop doing this.
You can still fight on the ground, but without air support.
And if you can do this for one month, then we'll negotiate.
And the purpose of the whole thing was for Putin to be able to prove to us that it's coming in good faith.
And even the British thought, no, this is a bit giving Russia too much.
And Zelensky also thought it was dangerous to start talking about a ceasefire.
It's nothing.
They can't agree on anything.
It's just along the war, continue the war, and sell it as peace.
In the past hour, the Washington Post reports that President Zelensky has jumped on board that rather absurd suggestion.
So the limited peace fire would ban, forgive me for looking down, I want to make sure I get this correctly, long-range attacks, attacks on civilian and energy infrastructure.
No, of course, they're not.
And they even made this point clearly many times.
And we might have realized this in Europe if we actually have diplomacy and we talk to the Russians.
But, again, anything that implies a ceasefire without a political solution is not going to be acceptable, simply because we did this before.
We had the Minsk Agreement in 2015.
It was very clearly stated that Kiev would offer some autonomy to Donbass.
But instead of implementing this...
We simply bought time, bought as much time as possible simply to arm the Ukrainian army to the extent they could ignore the actual peace agreement.
Now, both the French and the Germans who negotiated this deal have admitted as well that they were just in for buying time, not actually aiming to implement it.
So why would the Russians go along with this again?
They're at the cusp of victory.
They see the Ukrainian army as essentially being on its last leg.
And now, as the Ukrainian army looks like it's going to collapse, Russia should accept some ceasefire, which the Europeans have been very honest about.
They would use this time to rearm Ukraine.
But why?
What is the...
It's a terrible deal for Ukraine, but it's still the best possible deal it can get.
If we don't take the American deal on this one, the Ukrainian army will collapse, and we can then either escalate by sending in our own troops and go to World War III, or we can watch it collapse and Russia can do exactly what it wants.
No, I don't know.
It's not much rationality left, and I wish I could make sense of it, but there's debates in our media either.
It's just about how awful Trump is and how we're standing with Ukraine.
So tonight at 9 o'clock Eastern Time, U.S. Eastern Time, President Trump will address a joint session of Congress.
What happens if Europe wakes up eight or nine hours later?
Well, it's hard to say.
I think actually NATO has some of the fault in this because over the years, by being part of NATO, NATO is pretty much the United States and NATO has resulted in...
The Europeans effectively outsourcing a lot of their strategic thinking to the United States, which is why you're seeing now the Europeans running around like headless chickens because they don't really know anymore what to do.
But, of course, there will be full panic because, well, we're pretty much engaged in a proxy war against our huge neighbor, the world's largest nuclear power, and we're trying to pressure the United States into doing what we want.
And if the U.S. would then...
We'll pull out of NATO, even threaten to pull out of NATO to put pressure on the Europeans.
I'm hoping that the Europeans would fold to the American demands.
But if America actually pulls out of NATO, Europe would have to reinvent itself because, again, this has been 80 years now of complete security dependence on the United States.
I think, yeah, there's already panic.
But if there is no fear of a Russian invasion, what is the reason for such a security backup by the United States?
Other than enhancing the arms industry.
Well, this is a great fear that if the war ends, America will not just leave Ukraine, it will also leave Europe.
If the United States leave Europe, Europe will become geopolitically even less significant, because this is the main trend of the United States.
The world is becoming multipolar, which means America has relatively few resources.
And it will prioritize them differently.
So the United States will look more towards the Western Hemisphere.
They will look more towards Asia.
So Europe is going to be less of a priority, maybe even less so than the Middle East.
And this is not great for the Europeans.
Throughout the Cold War, they enjoyed not just the security provided by the United States.
It allowed the Europeans to spend a lot less on military, but it also translated into more favorable trade agreements and preferential treatment, and again, strengthened the West as this one political entity.
So I think it's going to be, yeah, it's more the geopolitical irrelevance of Europe.
Their place in the world will diminish significantly.
Here's what Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov After Joe Biden, new people have come into power, who are guided by common sense.
They say outright that they want to end all wars.
They want peace.
Who demands a continuation of the war?
Europe. The new people in the American government want peace.
And Europe wants a continuation of the war.
I think that that is a fair, adequate, and accurate description of where we stand today.
Do you agree with Foreign Minister Lavrov, Professor Gysin?
Yeah, well, you can take it even further.
That is, the United States want peace.
Interestingly enough, the former advisor of Zelensky, Arostovich, he made a point a year ago that seemingly at that time only the Russians wanted peace because they also want to end the war.
The US wants to end the war.
The Russians want to end the war.
Most of the world wants to end the war.
The majority of Ukrainians wants to end the war.
They're even willing to accept territorial concessions to end the war.
The only ones still standing there calling for the war to continue is now the Europeans and Zelensky.
And I think this is why the American pressure will now go towards Zelensky by essentially challenging his legitimacy if he doesn't change course.
And it will also mount more pressure, I think, on the Europeans.
It's only today that Vice President Vance was mocking the Europeans, saying, you know, if you don't take our deal, what will you do?
What are you going to do, have 20,000 troops from a country that hasn't seen war in 40 years?
Yeah, so he mocked the whole concept.
And I think this kind of pressure will also mount on the Europeans, because it's not just Zelensky, it's the Europeans who are...
Backing him, encouraging him to go against Trump on this.
Well, it was British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who is largely responsible for dissuading President Zelensky from signing a treaty that his people and the Russians had negotiated before the war started.
Later on, in the clip that we ran of Prime Minister Starmer, He says that the British are offering to put boots on the ground and planes in the air.
Does anybody take that seriously?
It's hard to say.
I've been disappointed many a time, so it's possible they believe it, but I hope not because this is nonsense.
I don't think any of the Europeans would want to send any of their troops on the ground without having any American support because...
If they get into conflict with Russia, these troops would be destroyed.
They wouldn't last very long, and the British army isn't that big.
They would be shot down and destroyed very quickly, and it would be very humiliating as well, and very little that could be done.
So unless the Americans are there, I think this is just, at the moment, a big talk.
Perhaps... It's aimed for their domestic audience.
Perhaps it meant for the European audience to assert their leadership in Europe.
Perhaps it's meant for the Americans to suggest that as a threat, that if you don't follow us, we'll learn to live without you.
It's really unclear, but at least what I do know for certain is that this cannot happen.
There's no chance that somehow Britain can follow through on what it's saying.
Professor Glenn Deeson, a pleasure, my dear friend.
Thank you for joining us.
Thank you for your insight on your European friends and neighbors, and I hope you'll visit us again soon.
Thank you, my friend.
Thank you, Judge.
Sure. And coming up later today at 3 o'clock Eastern, Aaron Maté, and at 4 o'clock Eastern, this is a long day, but worth waiting for, Professor John Mearsheimer, Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom.
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