March 6, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
05:33
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| Time | Text |
|---|---|
| Here's the smartest foreign diplomat in the world saying, oh, the US wants peace and Europe wants war. | |
| Cut number 13. 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. If you could ask him anything, what would you ask him? | |
| Ask Lavrov? | |
| Yes. I'm not sure what I'd ask him. | |
| I think it's very clear what Lavrov's views are on all of these issues. | |
| I have no need to ask him any questions. | |
| I just hope that he and Marco Rubio or Steve Whitcoff, whoever he works with, are able to work out. | |
| A deal that is as favorable to the Ukrainians as possible. | |
| I mean, I think, as I've said to you before, the Ukrainians are going to get a bad deal no matter what. | |
| I'd just like to see them get the best deal possible. | |
| And hopefully, you know, Lavrov and Putin will be able to work out a deal with Witkoff, Rubio, and Trump that works to the Ukrainians' advantage, at least to some extent. | |
| But this is going to be a deal made between Russia and the United States. | |
| Zelensky is not going to be at the negotiating table. | |
| No, I don't think Zelensky will be at the negotiating table, nor will the Europeans. | |
| I think that Trump and... | |
| And the Russians will work out a deal. | |
| And then the question is, will Ukraine accept that deal? | |
| And will the British accept that deal? | |
| I mean, we're in this bizarre situation where Donald Trump wants peace. | |
| And he wants to improve relations with the Russians. | |
| And he wants to help create a security architecture in Europe so everybody can prosper and we don't have any more war. | |
| This is Trump's goal. | |
| What do you like? | |
| He had the same goal in the Middle East. | |
| He apparently does not, but we've been through that. | |
| Yeah, he does it, and we know why. | |
| But the point is, we know what he wants to do in Europe. | |
| He's not a warmonger. | |
| He's a peace monger in this case. | |
| If you were to say, or if I were to say to Sergei Lavrov, why do you think the Americans hate the Russians? | |
| How do you think he would answer? | |
| Well, I think he would probably point to some of the same factors that we'd point to. | |
| Number one, the fact that the Russians have stood up to the Americans, first in Georgia in 2008, and second over Ukraine. | |
| Second, he understands full well that we blame... | |
| Or many Americans blame Russia for the fact that Trump won in 2016 and that Hillary Clinton lost. | |
| And I think he also understands that there is an ideological disagreement between Russia on one side and the United States on the other side, at least as it... | |
| Applies to the Democratic Party, and that has to do with the whole issue of LGBTQ. | |
| They're just fundamental differences on those sorts of issues. | |
| So I think he'd point to the same issues we do. | |
| I can remember as a child in grade school being taught to demonize Nikita Khrushchev. | |
| I don't know if you remember those days were about the same age. | |
| It was like you were supposed to hate Khrushchev. | |
| Absolutely. I mean, the difference between then and now was that you had a wicked ideological dimension to the competition. | |
| It was communism versus liberal democracy. | |
| It was communism versus capitalism. | |
| And they were seeing the communists as the font of... | |
| All evil. | |
| And of course, Khrushchev was, in the 1950s, the head of the Soviet Union. | |
| He was the arch-villain. | |
| And we were brought up to believe that we should loathe him, if not hate him. | |
| And you don't have exactly that situation today, because the Soviet Union is not, excuse me, Russia is not a communist state. | |
| But you do have an ideological dimension. | |
| Some of it has to do with the fact that Putin is seen as a soft autocrat and we are seen as liberal democrats. | |
| And some of it has to do with social issues like LGBTQ and whether or not the United States is a Christian nation or Russia is a Christian nation. | |
| These issues matter for fueling. | |
| The hostility between the two sides. | |
| And I think what Trump is interested in doing is ameliorating these ideological tensions as much as possible and establishing good relations between the United States and Russia. | |
| Professor Mearsheimer, just like all of our conversations, scintillating, challenging, and informative. |
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