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April 14, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
28:24
COL. Douglas Macgregor : Will Zelenskyy and Neocons Reject Peace?
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Hi, everyone.
Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Tuesday, April 15, 2025.
Colonel Douglas McGregor will be with us in just a moment on, will President Zelensky and the neocons even accept a peace treaty negotiated by the United States and Russia?
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Colonel McGregor, thank you for joining us, my dear friend.
Always a pleasure.
Before we get to the subject at hand, has the United States aligned itself with ISIS and al-Qaeda again?
And does that alliance include the use of air power in order to attack the Houthis in Yemen?
Well, you know the United States' preference for proxies.
We'd much rather use someone else's ground force against our opponents than do it ourselves.
So I think there is very definitely an effort right now to organize and recruit from the elements that you just mentioned in the Saudi Peninsula or the Arabian Peninsula and use them on the ground while we bomb and support from the air and the sea.
Clearly, there's no willingness to use the United States Marine Corps, which one would have thought.
If you were serious about this, you would have landed some Marines somewhere.
This is exactly the sort of thing for which the Marine Corps was originally devised.
Raids ashore to destroy enemies or seize key points, harbors, and so forth.
So it looks like it's possible, yes.
And, of course, ISIS and al-Qaeda have been declared by the Secretary of State and the Secretary of the Treasury as terrorist organizations, and it is a felony to provide material assistance to terrorist organizations.
But I guess somehow that doesn't apply to the Department of Defense.
Well, you know that it certainly didn't apply to Senator McCain, who was behind that sort of thing in Syria and in northern Iraq, and actually went over to encourage turning the various Islamist organizations with equipment.
against at the time the Assad regime and his allies so I guess this is
Is there any military reason to justify the United States attacking and killing people in Yemen other than to satisfy the bellicosity of Prime Minister Netanyahu?
Well, obviously, we would like to see the uninterrupted flow of commerce at sea moving through the Suez Canal and the Red Sea.
We have a permanent interest in that, and so that makes sense for the Navy to try and protect and enhance that as much as possible.
The problem is that we are not just simply aligned, we are integrated into the larger Israeli offensive operation in the region.
And as such, everything that belongs to Israel and frankly to us is now seen as part of the enemy.
And so we're in a very difficult position, Judge.
We are effectively at war with everyone and anyone who opposes Israel in the region.
Last week, Prime Minister Netanyahu met for a couple of hours with President Trump.
And afterwards, they came out to the Oval Office and held a press conference.
And at that press conference, President Trump announced that his emissary, Steve Witkoff, would be speaking directly with the Iranians.
Prime Minister Netanyahu seemed aghast at this.
I don't know if he knew about it ahead of time, if the president was intending to embarrass him.
The Economist and the BBC also reported that Prime Minister Netanyahu came You know,
it's very hard to know without having been their judge.
I don't think President Trump wants to be drawn into an Israeli conflict with the Turks.
That would be, from the standpoint of U.S. foreign and defense policy, worse than self-defeating, it would be catastrophic.
On the other hand, I think that President Trump views this as the last, best opportunity to reach some sort of arrangement before he has to commit to Mr. Netanyahu's war with Iran.
Now, that may still happen, and I think the president has made that clear.
I think he's put himself in a very difficult position.
He doesn't have much maneuver room, even though privately he's clearly walked back all of the extreme measures that were outlined and what was effectively an ultimatum to the Iranians.
And I think this is a point of serious concern for Mr. Netanyahu, because clearly, if all we're going to demand is that they remain at the 60 percent I would argue
that that's Mr. Zelensky's solution for Russia.
Mr. Trump is now dealing with two recalcitrant supposed allies with whom we have no official treaty whatsoever in either case.
But nevertheless, we regard Zelensky and Netanyahu as allies.
Here's what you said earlier with our friend Colonel Davis about the...
Military strength of Iran.
Chris, cut number 15. What nation on the planet can have their embassy destroyed in another country and to have an assassination in their capital city on an inauguration and not go to war with somebody?
Yet that's exactly what Iran didn't do because they don't have the power to do it.
So that should tell you...
Wait a minute.
Wait a minute.
That's a fundamentally false statement.
Which part?
False, false, false.
They don't have the power to go to war?
You haven't looked carefully at Iran.
Iran's arsenal of missiles is enormous.
It could flatten Israel in a day.
They have the power to go to war.
They have chosen repeatedly to avoid war.
And I've said this a thousand times.
No one in the Middle East is interested in a war except Israel and the United States.
Vance, Hegseth, Rubio, Gorka, Waltz.
Do they understand that?
What is the foreign policy of the United States?
I think the foreign policy of the United States is two-dimensional.
On the one hand, it's whatever President Trump says on any given day.
And on the other hand, it's the permanent neocon bureaucracy of which his administration is a part.
So I think you've got two dimensions there.
He is very impulsive.
I see no strategy, no coherent approach of any kind to anything, whether that involves widespread deportation of illegal aliens, the systematic securing of the border, the ending the war in Ukraine as quickly as possible,
or anything else.
Where is the strategy?
What is the approach?
What's the framework?
I don't see anything.
So we're back to, well, it's whatever President Trump said today or yesterday, and I'm sure he's quite satisfied with that.
And on the other hand, all of these other people you mentioned, somebody said recently, if you hire clowns, then you get a circus.
Well, I think the rest of the people that you mentioned are very much involved in the broader circus.
Here's one of the ringmasters on Sunday morning.
Chris, cut number nine.
He's dead serious that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon.
He's said that for 20 years.
He's been consistent.
That is clear.
But he's also dead serious that if we can't figure this out at the negotiating table, then there are other options, to include my department, to ensure that Iran never has a nuclear bomb.
We hope we never get there.
We really do, Maria.
But what we're doing with the Houthis and what we're doing in the region, we've shown a capability to go far, to go deep, and to go big.
And again, we don't want to do that.
But if we have to...
We will to prevent the nuclear bomb in Iran's hands.
Have they gone far, deep, big and been effective in trying to degrade the Houthis?
Well, on the one hand, I'm a little confused because I think what we're really saying to everyone is not that Iran can't have a nuclear weapon.
It's that Israel must maintain a nuclear monopoly in the region.
That's what this is really all about.
Otherwise, it sounded as though he was describing a pornographic film that he'd seen at some point because the rest of it didn't make any damn sense.
The Hooties are still with us.
They've sustained tremendous effects from bombing.
I don't think you can bomb your way to success in the Middle East.
Years ago, somebody, I think it was an admiral, who said, you can't kill your way to success.
Well, I think we're at the point now where we just try to bomb our way to success.
It's not going to happen.
What would he have said?
How could you know what he would have said?
You've forgotten more than he's ever known without getting personal.
What would he have said if she said to him, well, why can Israel have a nuclear weapon and Iran can't?
How could he have answered that?
Well, I think he'd have probably been stumped.
It's not something that he's ever dealt with.
It's something that nobody in the United States can address.
Because to suggest...
That if Israel has 300 nuclear weapons that they can launch at a moment's notice from the air, from the land or from sea, makes it impossible for a state the size of Iran or Turkey or Saudi Arabia or Egypt or any other numbers of states in the region to live without a nuclear deterrent because there's nothing they can do.
To stop the Israelis from effectively annihilating them if they choose to do so.
So we don't view things from that standpoint.
Our assumption is the only people that have a right to a nuclear capability in the region are the Israelis, and that's justified on the basis of the fact that they are Israelis.
On his way back from his home in Florida on Sunday night on Air Force One, The president spoke at length.
We've reduced it to 60 seconds.
I'm going to tell you ahead of time what I'm going to ask you.
Is the war in Ukraine now Donald Trump's war?
But before you answer, here's what he had to say about it.
Cut number one.
Do you have a reaction to Russia's poem Sunday attack?
I think it was terrible, and I was told they made a mistake.
But I think it's a horrible thing.
I think the whole war is a horrible thing.
I think the war is, for that war to have started is an abuse of power.
You said they made a mistake.
You were told they made a mistake.
Do you mean it was unintentional?
They made a mistake.
I believe it was.
Look, you're going to ask them.
This is Biden's war.
This is not my war.
I've been here for a very short period of time.
This is a war that was under Biden.
He gave him billions and billions of dollars.
He should have never allowed.
If he had any brain, which he didn't have and doesn't have, and now it's being proven, he wouldn't have allowed that war to start.
I would have absolutely not.
That war would never have taken place.
But remember this.
This is Biden's war.
I'm just trying to get it stopped so that we can save a lot of lives.
They happen to be Ukrainian and Russian lives.
But all I want to do is get it stopped.
So, the legislation under which President Biden shipped About 165 to 190, it's hard to put a finger on it.
There are different ways to measure it, as you know.
Billion in military equipment and cash to Kiev, and under which President Trump has shipped a billion in military equipment to Kiev, specifies that that equipment is to be shipped at the discretion of the president.
Question, is this now Donald Trump's war?
Yes. The only way it could not have been his war would have been had he stood there on the day after his inauguration or signed an executive order or something and made it clear that we were going to cease sending all forms of military aid to Ukraine,
number one.
And number two, that all U.S. personnel in and out of uniform, intelligence, civilian, doesn't make any difference, would leave Ukraine within 48 hours.
Had he done that, then this would not be his war, but he did the opposite.
And effectively, what he's done since he's been in there is largely extend Biden policies.
So now he owns it.
He knows how to stop it, and that's just what I described.
But this has always been a problem for him, because he surrounds himself with people who give him reasons to act against his wisdom, against his own instincts.
Let me tell you, back in April of 2022, I received a call from Mar-a-Lago and a voice at the other end said, what do you think about Ukraine and what's happening there?
This was probably the first week of April 2022.
I said, well, this thing's a catastrophe.
We need to stop it immediately.
He said, why?
This particular voice.
I said, well, if we don't stop it, the Russians are going to crush the Ukrainians.
And the voice at the other end said, well, everyone here says that the Ukrainians are winning, the Russians are losing.
And I said, well, first of all, that's wrong.
It's not true.
And then secondly, we have no interest in a war in that region.
What we have an interest in is peace and stability.
And whatever we can do to bring peace and stability to the region should be our top priority, because otherwise we have no stake in eastern Ukraine whatsoever.
You've always had people like Gorka, like Waltz.
I mean, they may have other names.
It doesn't make any difference.
They surround the president and they try to persuade him that nothing can happen unless we are somehow or another directly involved in it, even though they have no value strategically to us at all.
And secondly, that we have to impose a solution because if we don't, we look weak.
And this is back to the question of how do we get a win?
For the boss.
Wait a minute.
This is not UFC night.
This is not a college basketball match.
This is life and death for millions of people at the moment in Ukraine.
But if we're not careful, this could spread.
Not because of anything that President Putin wants to do, but because of the stupids who are ruling in Paris and London and Berlin.
They could cause it to expand.
And of course, that would be delightful for the fools living in Lithuania, Lafayette, and Estonia, all of whom could be crushed in 24 hours.
All of this nonsense needs to end.
He's the leader of NATO.
He commands NATO effectively.
So he's the one that stands up and says, it's over.
We're out.
I'm not supporting this any longer.
And as soon as you do that, everything changes.
Zelensky's out of a job.
Zelensky has no future.
His corrupt criminal regime in a country that is potentially the most corrupt in the world, if such a thing is possible, will go under.
This is why he owns it now.
It's tragic.
It's unnecessary.
Because he's right.
He didn't want this.
He's not stopping it.
But Colonel, President Trump's official emissary to Ukraine, General Kellogg, Actually proposed a solution.
I mean, this is insane, but this is what he proposed.
And the solution is to divide Ukraine up the way Berlin was right after 1945.
Has he been living under a rock for the past three years?
Does he think that such a solution would even be considered for a millisecond by Foreign Minister Lavrov or with whomever Mr. Wyckoff is negotiating?
Well, I don't think General Kellogg's audience is in Moscow.
I think his audience is in Western Europe, the three capitals that I mentioned earlier.
Right. And he's got a big audience back here in Washington, D.C. These are foolish people that think that somehow or another we and the world and Europe will all benefit from sustaining this conflict.
And there's just no evidence for that.
The conflict is destructive.
It's harming everyone.
It's harmed us economically as well as strategically.
Stop and consider that we've learned a couple of very important things over the last few years.
Number one, that our equipment, our organization, our tactics don't work on the battlefield that exists today.
We live in a different world.
We have a battlefield or a battle space, as people like to call it, that has changed dramatically.
The Russians have adapted.
We haven't.
And the genius...
Military leaders that are currently occupying the senior echelons of the U.S. Armed Forces have played a dramatic role deciding how operations will be conducted.
And as a result, 1.5 million Ukrainians, somewhere to be 1.2 and 1.5 million Ukrainian soldiers, are dead.
And the war has been lost.
And the Russians are now prepared to move further west to consolidate their position.
Before they finally put an end to this.
So that's catastrophe number one.
But we're not coming to terms with that reality.
If we looked objectively at the battle space and understood what's happened militarily, we'd figure out pretty damn quick we're not in a position to do business effectively on the battlefield with the Russians.
Number two, look at the tariffs.
The tariffs have revealed something.
Our weakness economically.
We went into this tariff war on the basis of the assumption of people like Navarro and presumably Lutnik that foreign capital would then flow into our markets.
It's not flowing in.
The bond market is a disaster.
If we're not careful, it's going to hit 5%.
When that happens, we lose everything because the Japanese and the Chinese and others are dumping our treasuries.
All of this is going on, and yet President Trump continues to vacillate between I want peace, but I'm going to continue to pretend to do these other things or do these other things because I'm supposed to look strong.
This is sheer lunacy.
China makes almost 50% of the ingredients that go into every antibiotic sold in the United States.
The F-35 I'm reading from today's Financial Times.
The F-35, the backbone of the U.S. Air Force, requires rare earth components only from China.
And China owns close to a billion dollars, excuse me, close to a trillion dollars of United States bonds.
Didn't anybody point these things out to him before he imposed a 145% tariff on all goods coming in from China?
Look, a lot of people don't like Musk, but I think Musk made some rather unkind remarks about Mr. Navarro.
And again, I go back to the statement that came from someone, I can't remember the name of the gentleman, that hire clowns, you get a circus.
I mean, it doesn't look to me like anybody's done their homework at all.
Everything is done impulsively.
Everyone's flying from the seat of their pants, most of all the president.
And the president needs to surround himself with better, more capable, more cautious people who are going to study these things.
Again, the lesson of history is you always measure what you might gain by what you might lose before you do anything, most of all in a war.
And most of the time, it makes no sense to turn to the military option because once you do, everything is out of your control.
You can't contain these things.
Where things will go next?
And yet you have foolish people left and right who want to bomb things.
I mean, how many times have we talked about the strategic realities that currently induce the Russians to support Iran?
People don't understand that if you're a Russian, you look south, you look into Iran, you look towards the Caucasus, you want friendly states down there, you want peace down there, because that's the soft underbelly of Russia.
That's as important to them as Mexico is to us.
Right now, they're worried that we're going to try and destroy the Iranian regime for Mr. Netanyahu.
It's not enough.
Remember, Mr. Netanyahu wants the Libyan solution for Iran.
And replacing that government with what?
Anything that could be hostile to Russia, presumably.
And that's the last thing in the world the Russians want.
They want to protect their southern borders.
They want peace and stability down there.
Look, this is just too dumb.
To repeat over and over and over again.
But there is no strategic thinking in Washington.
Everything is arrogance and ignorance on steroids.
You know, you mentioned Senator McCain a few minutes ago.
My friend Tom Woods was a big fan of yours.
Once said, no matter who you vote for, you get John McCain.
I guess it's because a lot of Americans are easily impressed with people who are loud and bloviate threats.
I don't know how else to explain it.
I mean, there's always been in the United States a certain number of people that I think belong to what I call the Bombs Away Club.
And they think if we're dropping bombs on somebody somewhere, that our greatness as a nation somehow or another is expressed.
When in reality, you and I know that's not the case.
What we should want is what we had before the Second World War, and that was a reputation in the world for fairness and decency.
You know, after World War I ended and the Versailles Treaty was underway, believe it or not, the delegation of Arabs from Syria wanted the United States to provide forces to come there and administer their country.
They didn't want the British or the French.
And the reason for that was very simple.
We were not colonialists.
We were not imperialists.
And they viewed us as fair and just people.
Well, I don't think the people of Syria or anywhere else in the Muslim world would want Americans on their soil ever, based upon what we've seen over the last 30 years.
Do you?
Fully agreed, Colonel.
Colonel, thank you for your time.
Thanks for accommodating my schedule today.
We missed you last week, but it's such a joy to be able to pick your brain again.
All the best.
Judge, I have one last thing to point out to people.
You know, in 1914, when war broke out, the British and the French ambassadors met immediately, and they both said the same thing to each other.
The one person in Berlin who is most unhappy about this war is the Kaiser, because we all know...
War was the last thing he wanted.
This is something he never wanted.
Well, the rest of the story is very simple.
He always had it within his power to stop it quickly, decisively, before it ever began.
And he didn't do it.
His chief of staff asked him on the eve of the German offensive into Belgium, or the Kaiser asked him, General, can I stop this?
Well, the answer to that was, yes, he was a supreme warlord.
But the general said, no, your majesty, I don't think we can stop it.
Well, that's ridiculous.
And that's what President Trump needs to think about, because effectively right now, he's in a similar position.
He is more than just the run of a middle president.
He is standing on the threshold of potential disaster.
He can stop it.
All he has to say is, no, it's over.
Stop. Thank you for that, Colonel.
We're going to take that clip and send it all over the place.
It was dynamite.
Thank you for your time.
We'll see you again next week.
All the best.
As my relatives in Scotland say, drink heavily.
Bye. Thank you, Colonel.
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