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April 16, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
10:53
Prof. Glenn Diesen : What Is Europe Afraid Of?
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This is why the Secretary of Defense, William Perry, considered even quitting his position in the Clinton administration, exactly because he knew that this was a mistake, but it was a mistake they were willing to make since Russia was weak.
I'm going to play a clip for you from President Trump, and I'm going to tell you now what I'm going to ask you after we listen to the clip.
It's his last...
A public statement on the Ukraine war.
It's just three nights ago, a Sunday night, Palm Sunday night, when he was flying from his home in Florida back to Washington, D.C. The question I'm going to ask you is, is the war in Ukraine now Donald Trump's war?
But before you answer, here he is.
On Palm Sunday.
Chris, cut number one.
Do you have a reaction to Russia's Palm 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.
Trump, too, has delivered billions in military hardware since January 20th.
The American legislation for the delivery of this aid all says, both the cash and the military hardware, subject to the discretion of the president.
Professor Deason, is this now Donald Trump's war?
Yeah, I think it is.
It's becoming his war, at least.
It's fair enough to put it on Biden's shoulders, given that Russia invaded under his presidency.
But, as you said, Trump continues to send weapons.
It continues to provide logistics.
It gives the intelligence.
So the United States is still very deeply involved in the war against Russia.
And as we learned from this recent New York Times article, it's hardly even a proxy war anymore if we see what's happened since 2022.
It's been very directed by the United States out of Germany to hear all the details.
If that New York Times article is correct, and no one has denied it, we are a co-belligerent.
In fact, we are the lead belligerent.
Not in human deaths, but in the execution of the war.
Intel and strategy.
No, exactly.
And this is why I think it's important, because the U.S., as well as its NATO partners, has now been behind the killing of tens of thousands of Russians.
And the problem is we can look the other way, but then we only delude ourselves, because the Russians now, they know what's being done, and they will, again, look at a way of retaliating at some point.
And if you follow Sergei Lavrov, he gave a comment recently about the strike on Sumi, and he made the point that, well, we struck Ukrainian military leaders as well as trainers from NATO, which we knew were there, which is why we struck it.
Now, I'm not sure if there were NATO troops there or not, but the fact that they're now saying, well, we know there's NATO soldiers and that's why we're striking it, this is very interesting because...
Now they're signaling that they will focus on targeting NATO.
And one can look at this in the context of the Europeans, of course.
Right. Your colleague, Professor Jeffrey Sachs, says this should be called America's war.
Trump is continuing what Biden started.
Uninterrupted. Unimpeded.
Yeah, but I must say...
To only give it away to Biden, it's not necessarily fair.
Now, don't get me wrong.
Biden has been deeply involved since 2014.
But again, the first toppling of the government in Ukraine was the Orange Revolution in 2004.
And then, of course, under Bush in 2008, it was quite important.
And this is when NATO offered future membership to Ukraine, which...
Put it on a path to war.
Obama was president when the Western countries backed the coup in Ukraine in 2014.
And Trump himself, under his first administration, was sending javelins and weapons, which Obama didn't want because he recognized it would be too much of an escalation which could put the country further on the path to war.
It's very tempting often to find a date when a conflict begins because then you can set the whole narrative.
We do the same with Israel.
We do the same in Ukraine.
Once you set the date when the conflict began, it's a good way of throwing away all the responsibility.
Before we go, is President Macron preparing to recognize a Palestinian state?
It could be.
These days, it's very hard to read any of the leaders.
I think all the rules of the past have been thrown out.
So I don't think I could answer that question.
What I can say, though, in Europe, at least, they're all scrambling to find new roles and new structures of what should hold Europe together.
So Macron has always been the...
He's not just doing what he thinks is right to solve a conflict.
He's also looking at how to create French leadership within the European Union.
So he's always been this Napoleon.
Nobody wants to follow.
But if you have military conflict, then under an economically powerful Europe, then leadership was with the Germans.
Now, once the Germans are now broken and we have more of a militarized EU, then leadership naturally gravitates towards the French.
But then, of course, the British also want to say, so that's why they're also quite belligerent in their language.
So it's hard to say.
It depends on many things, what they see as resolving the conflict, but also how they can enhance their own role in Europe and try to find a new foundation for making solidarity between the states.
Here's Sergei Neryshkin.
Who's the director of Russian foreign intelligence, so the rough equivalent of the head of the American CIA, commenting about NATO border activity and the French in particular.
Cut number 12. Before the State Security Committee of the Republic of Belarus and before the Foreign Intelligence Service of Russia, we see difficult and specific tasks of ensuring the security of our countries.
by counteracting aggressive aspirations of unfriendly countries and their threats against our states.
Quite a lot has already been done in this direction, but at the same time we see increased military activity by NATO states at our borders, And we feel and see that European countries,
especially France, UK and Germany, have increased the level of escalation around the Ukrainian conflict.
So we need to and must act preemptively.
Listen, I hope that President Macron does recognize the Palestinian state, but does he know what he's doing by poking the bear like this?
You know who this fellow is.
He's saying what Vladimir Putin is thinking.
I agree, but this is the problem, I think, especially in Europe now.
The political leadership has trapped themselves into these narratives which they believe in.
Listen to now the incoming Chancellor of Germany, Mertz.
He's talking about using terrorist missiles to strike Russia.
Germany's going to go down this path again.
But they see it as being simply helping Ukraine.
It's completely legitimate.
They don't see why it should be that controversial.
But it just shows...
Again, any opposition can be dismissed as being put in talking points.
But keep in mind that only in the beginning of the Russian invasion, you had people like Biden who said that sending F-16s would mean World War III.
They were quite critical about sending artillery, but they kind of got used to this idea.
So at this point, we just escalated it so far and normalized it.
It's not really understood that the Russians also actually have a right to retaliate.
And indeed, imagine if, going back to that New York Times article, a similar article would have come out where we now know that the Russians have been striking our cities.
They've been hitting, they've been doing military planning, they've been doing the targeting, they've been supplying the weapons, they've been...
They've been offering the logistics and even operating the weapons which are used to kill thousands of, well, for example, American troops.
How would we respond?
Would we consider that we have a right to retaliate?
So as they now see the Europeans ramping up, given that Ukraine is collapsing now, If the Europeans are ramping up, I think the Russians will strike back because I don't think they're going to take this anymore.
And this should be obvious, but everyone's looking the other way.
It's a very strange, irrational path we're on.
It's very dangerous.
Professor Deason, thank you for your time.
Deeply appreciate it.
Happy Easter to you and your family.
We look forward to seeing you next week.
Happy Easter, Judge.
Thank you.
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