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April 28, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
24:40
COL. Douglas Macgregor : How Close to a Regional War?
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Hi, everyone.
Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Tuesday, April 29, 2025.
Colonel Douglas McGregor will be with us shortly on how close is the United States to a regional war in the Middle East.
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Colonel McGregor, welcome here, my dear friend.
Always a pleasure to be with you.
In the past week, Vice President Vance and Secretary of State Rubio have intimated that the United States may just drop the ball, if you will, on Ukraine.
General Kellogg proposed an absurd strategy, which he knew would be dead in the water from the Kremlin's perspective.
And President Trump and President Zelensky had a one-on-one in, of all places, the Vatican and St. Peter's Basilica, and the president sounded more pro-Zelensky than ever after whatever they said.
What is your take on where Ukraine is going from the perspective of negotiations and from the perspective of military action?
Well, I don't think there's much in the way of negotiation.
I think Zelensky and the circle of people that surround him have decided that they're going to fight to the last Ukrainian.
Now, I don't know what that means, and I think we're going to get an education in the near future when the Russians launch this offensive that I think could ultimately end the conflict.
But for the moment, I don't think Zelensky is interested in any form of compromise on anything.
And that's one of the reasons that from the very beginning, when President Trump suggested a ceasefire, that Putin wasn't going to do it, because he said, all you're doing is creating opportunity for the Ukrainians to rearm, reequip,
and renew the war.
So it's unsurprising that negotiations, frankly, haven't gone anywhere.
I don't think they will.
I mean, is President Zelensky...
Free to negotiate.
And by that I mean, in the Russian mind, he is not legally the head of the government, so of what value would be anything he signed?
And in the domestic political frame, well, he probably wouldn't get out of the building alive if he agreed, for example, to cede Crimea to the Russians as a condition for ending the war.
Agreed?
Yeah, I think that's true to some extent.
I think also keep this in mind.
We've talked about the Austrian model of neutrality.
Right.
And that was negotiated by the leader of Austria, the president, or what we would call the chancellor.
And that was a man named Bruno Kreisky.
He had been popularly elected and enjoyed widespread support inside the country.
That's obviously not the case with Mr. Zelensky.
Certainly, there are Ukrainians that share this deep, abiding hatred of the Russians, and regardless of what happens, we'll fight on.
But I think the majority of people in Ukraine have had it with the war and would certainly like to see an end to it.
Now, is he free to end it?
Is he simply under the guns of the people around him?
I suppose so, but what difference does it make?
He's ultimately responsible.
He's the leader of Ukraine.
And if he's not going to put his life on the line for his country, then what can we expect from the rest of the people that surround him?
I mean, literally, stand up and say, if you want to shoot me, it's your privilege to do so, but I'm going to end this war because it's in the interest of my country to end it.
We haven't heard anything like that out of him.
Here's my new friend.
I'm being a little facetious.
I did spend a few hours with him.
Foreign Minister Lavrov said about the value of a ceasefire.
Now, when I asked him off the record about a ceasefire, he looked at me and said, why would we agree to that when we are?
And he held his fingers up like this.
This was a month ago, showing this close.
Fingers an inch and a half apart.
But here's what he said on Sunday, cut number six.
If you want a ceasefire just to continue supplying arms to Ukraine, so what is your purpose?
You know what Kayakalas and what's his name, Mark Rutte, said about the ceasefire?
The NATO Secretary General and the European Union.
They bluntly stated that they can support only the deal, which at the end of the day will make Ukraine stronger, would
Ukraine a victor.
So if this is the purpose of the ceasefire, I don't think this is what President Trump wants.
This is what Europeans, together with Zelensky, want to make out of President Trump's initiative.
you
Now back to Zelensky.
Is he just a puppet of the ardent nationalists around him doing and saying, as the actor he has been, what they want?
I think he's more than that.
And I think that he's a huge part of the problem.
He's taken this acting job far more seriously than I think anybody thought he would.
Remember when he was elected, he was elected on a platform telling the Ukrainian people, I will sit down with the Russians and iron out our differences and come to some sort of agreement.
And we know that the opposite happened.
I think he takes himself very seriously at this point.
And obviously...
Foreign Minister Lavrov is correct.
And I don't think, frankly, President Trump should have involved himself at all.
You know, from the very beginning, I've urged him to say, look, it's not my war.
I didn't start it.
I didn't want it.
I'm ending any further support to this regime in Kiev.
They must negotiate an end to this war.
And then I'm removing everybody who is in Ukraine who's an American.
I'm getting them out.
He didn't do that because people surrounding him said, listen, Mr. President, if you do that, they'll accuse you of losing Ukraine.
You know, another refrain of this, who lost China back in the 1950s?
That's all nonsense.
Ukraine was never ours to use.
We brutalized it.
We misused it.
We tried to use it for all the wrong purposes, everything from biolabs and genetic engineering to every conceivable form of weaponry that could be used to kill Russians.
It's a disgrace.
President Trump should have washed his hands from it.
Instead, he took the bait.
He walked into it.
He now owns it.
And frankly, Zelensky is making him look ridiculous.
It's not the Russians.
The Russians have always been very straightforward in what they were concerned about, what they wanted.
It's Zelensky that's misled him at every turn and shown him extraordinary disrespect, in my judgment.
He stated as recently as Easter Sunday evening, so that's just two weeks ago, while traveling on Air Force One.
He said it three or four times in the same conversation.
It's not my war, it's Biden's war.
It's not my war, it's Biden's war.
Most respectfully, I would argue it is now his war after a hundred days.
No pullback of intel, no pullback of ammunition and equipment.
A member of Congress, a Republican member of Congress went over there and signed an artillery shell with Vladimir Putin's name on it and then pulled the triggers, I don't know if trigger is the right word, engaged some piece of equipment so that this thing flew off to Russia.
And the president permitted that to happen?
Well, I don't think the president necessarily permitted it.
He may not have even known about it.
The senator may well have traveled there without ever contacting the White House.
Or, there's another possibility, as we've seen before with the president, people in the White House actually encouraged him to do that without consulting the president.
This happens when you put people into key positions in your administration who are not necessarily loyal, and frankly...
Are quite willing to contradict the president.
So I think it's a catastrophe.
The best thing he can do now is simply get out, put an end to this, and stop listening to these people who have been trying to drag him into this catastrophe.
This is not in our interest.
We never wanted it.
The key thing is Ukraine has never been a vital strategic interest of any kind to the United States, least of all eastern Ukraine.
So I just, it's so depressing.
To see the president played like a fool.
But I'm afraid that's what happened.
You and I both know him.
We have both been alone with him at times.
Don't you think it was unwise for him to speak alone with President Zelensky?
He is not going to remember that conversation the same way Zelensky did.
That's always a mistake.
You should always have a trusted agent with you.
Someone who is absolutely loyal.
That hears what you hear and can sort through the outcome of the conversation with you when it's over.
It's always a mistake to meet one-on-one.
How wise is it to be using Steve Witkoff as the true negotiator here rather than the Secretary of State?
I mean, by my count, Mr. Witkoff has spent about 10 hours with Vladimir Putin.
And I don't think Secretary Rubio has spent more than a few hours with Foreign Minister Lavrov.
Well, I think the real question is, how do the Russians perceive all of this?
Good question.
My suspicion is, I've had some evidence for this, they're very unimpressed.
It's not a question of, is Mr. Witkoff smart or stupid?
That's not the issue.
The issue is, who is this person that comes out of the private sector, who appears to be a golfing buddy and another real estate tycoon who is worth a billion dollars?
All right, that's fine.
That's interesting.
What does he know about us?
What does he know about the region?
What are his loyalties?
What are his values?
What does he believe in?
All of these things, from the Russian standpoint, are viewed with great suspicion and is very murky.
Mr. Rubio, whether or not you like him or think he should be Secretary of State, is the Secretary of State.
The real question is, why has he not talked directly, routinely, with Foreign Minister Lavrov?
And why has someone in the State Department, who was appointed by the President, not accompanied Mr. Rubio and been a permanent point of contact for the Russians?
Right.
As an ambassador or envoy.
The whole thing.
Smacks of amateur hour.
I hate to be blunt, but that's what it looks like.
Here's Secretary Rubio in one of the Sunday talk shows.
Now, she caught him flat-footed by quoting what he said about Vladimir Putin back in Senator Rubio's...
Neocon days.
Chris, cut number two.
Quote, Vladimir Putin is the real aggressor in this war, and he is attempting an unjustified takeover of a sovereign democratic country.
The United States cannot recognize Putin's claims, or we risk establishing a dangerous precedent for other authoritarian regimes like the Chinese Communist Party to imitate.
What message does it send to China and other adversaries if the United States allows Russia to keep the land it's illegally claimed?
And
Well, first of all, I would say that right now there's a lot of press reports about this, that, or these concessions or that concessions.
A lot of things have been discussed.
And the reason why those things are being discussed is very simple.
Not because we're going to force anyone to do anything or pressure anyone to do anything like this, but because we need to understand what are the options to bringing about an end to the war.
We need to be grown-ups and realistic here in any negotiated end to a war.
Both sides get something, and both sides have to give something up.
That's a reality.
Without speaking specifically about that or another, you talk about that was back in September of 2022.
Since September of 2022, this war has continued.
Thousands of more people have died.
Generational destruction that Ukraine's going to spend two generations rebuilding from.
This is a war that needs to end now.
And so in order for this war to end, there are things Russia wants that it will not get, and there are things Ukraine wants that it will not get.
Will the United States just walk away as he once claimed and Vice President Vance did as well in the past week?
Yes, and the reason is something that he refuses to say publicly.
Whatever Russia has gained on the ground and decides to hold cannot be changed.
The real issue is, what are we going to do about it?
And what he should have said is, the United States is not going to be a co-belligerent.
And we are not promising to intervene in this conflict in order to drive the Russians back from whatever they've taken.
What the Russians have won on the battlefield is theirs.
It's a fact.
And that's the end of it.
I mean, at the end of World War II in the spring, very few people realize it.
But Churchill and, to a lesser extent, FDR were both horrified because the Russians at that time, the Soviets, had gotten far further, far faster, thanks to us, frankly.
They never thought possible.
And Churchill said, what's to stop the Soviets from marching all the way to Paris?
Well, ultimately, Stalin couldn't do that because they were just about exhausted by the time they reached Germany.
But the point is, there was nothing that could be done about what the Russians seized.
And so the reason for the war, if we go back to the beginning of the Second World War, was supposedly the sovereignty and freedom of Poland.
And what happened?
It became a Russian satellite.
It was crushed, and everybody refused to state anything about it.
But the truth was, how do we change it?
You've got several million Soviet troops on the ground.
They're there.
They're not leaving, and we're not prepared to go to war to change it.
And the truth is, the Russians now hold territory.
And what are we supposed to do about it?
The only thing we can do is pressure the Ukrainians to stop fighting.
On the very good grounds, moral grounds, in my judgment, that President Trump mentioned early on, that they are going to be slaughtered if they don't stop.
And remember, that was the message I sent to him in April of 2022.
And I was told, well, everyone at Mar-a-Lago thinks the Ukrainians are winning and they're going to defeat the Russians, and the Russians are incompetent.
I said, no, it'll never happen.
The Russians will crush these people.
Well, here we are.
He's now found that out.
And he's learned it the hard way.
We can't change that.
The only thing that we can do is bring a maximum amount of pressure on Zelensky to stop fighting, to spare the millions of people who are west of the Nieper River from any more war.
That's what we should be about.
That's what Zelensky should be interested in.
He's not.
Not because of what this stunt that Congressman pulled where he signed the artillery shell, but because of intel, cash, and other assets we're providing.
General Cavoli at Wiesbaden picking tows.
Yes.
But President Putin, from the very beginning, has made it clear that he wants to avoid a war with us.
And that has been a source of discomfort for many in the general staff, as well as others in his country, who are very angry with us.
They understand exactly what we've done.
They know what we have done.
We've done everything in our power to destroy that country.
And he has absolutely overruled it.
He has listened to President Trump.
He has tried to explain things to President Trump.
I think President Trump has understood some of it, but I don't think he has a true picture of reality on the ground, just as people in Washington don't have a true picture of reality strategically right now.
They don't understand it's not 1991.
We do not have the conventional military power that we did 30 years ago.
We've fallen behind.
We're in no position to fight a war.
And this kind of thing has not sunk in with key people.
I mean, yesterday, I think it was Senator Kennedy from Louisiana made the remarkably stupid comment that we should turn the Russians into fish food.
What?
And he's talking about, I'm talking about conventional, not new food.
That's insane.
What planet is this man on?
How do these people get elected?
Well, we know the answer to that.
They get elected from states where people don't know any more than he does.
But it's dangerous when you have someone sitting there with, at least in theory, serious influence, make stupid statements like that.
Just in case anybody thinks you're making this up, I'm pretty sure we have this clip.
Do we, Chris?
He has disrespected our president.
I don't think it's going to get any better.
Until we make it clear to Mr. Putin that we are willing to turn him and his country into fish food.
It's hard to believe.
I don't know what kind of influence he has.
He's one of 53 Republicans in the Senate.
Can we switch gears, Colonel?
Can Donald Trump stop Benjamin Netanyahu from attacking Iran?
You always ask these easy questions, and I appreciate that.
It makes it so much easier on me.
I have several people who have told me repeatedly that President Trump personally dislikes Mr. Netanyahu.
Well, that's fine.
Personal issues, personal relations, contrary to what President Trump thinks, don't matter in interstate relations.
Interests matter in interstate relations.
In theory, we have no interest in bankrolling either the mass murder of people in Gaza, the expansion of Israel into southern Lebanon, Syria, or the Sinai.
We have no interest in going to war with Iran.
So if we were simply looking at this from the strategic standpoint of what is or not in our interest as Americans, it would be easy.
But he's dealing with something else entirely, and we've been over this.
This is called the Israel lobby, which is much larger than a few people sitting in an office in Washington, D.C. It represents billions of dollars and is backed by Jewish billionaires who are absolutely intent on supporting what it is that Mr.
Netanyahu is trying to achieve, this greater Israel project.
Can he stand up to it is the real question.
I'm not sure he can do that.
I just don't know that he can.
Principal concern at this stage is not that Mr. Trump is going to pick up the phone and say, all right, Mr. Netanyahu, go for it.
Do whatever you need to do.
We're there.
I don't think that's going to happen.
But I do think that Mr. Netanyahu could certainly trigger a war with Iran that we are then obliged to join, despite the fact that it's not in our strategic interest to do so.
Do you think we are close?
And I've asked you this many times, but events keep changing.
Yes, we are still very close to that.
And we don't know what could trigger it.
We don't know what particular event could bring it on.
But we should look at what's just happened recently in the Red Sea, where we lost an F-18 that slid off the deck, not necessarily because of incompetence, although I can't rule it out completely.
But because the aircraft carrier, the Harry S. Truman, had to make a sharp turn to avoid a Houthi missile.
Now stop and think about that.
A Houthi missile.
The Houthis are certainly not in the top ten of military powers in the world.
Yet, they have this kind of capability that has caused this particular accident.
Now, if we're having trouble with the Houthis...
What kind of trouble do we think we're going to have with Iran?
Good point, Colonel.
If you listen to the Secretary of Defense, we have effectively neutered the Houthis, but that's just political populum.
Obviously.
It's always a mistake to say those things.
We've been through this before.
We went through this in Vietnam.
How many times did we defeat the insurgency?
How many times did we destroy the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese?
You know, and then only to discover over and over and over again that the enemy was far more resilient and capable than we thought.
These are bad statements to make.
By the way, during the Second World War, we did not make those kinds of statements in Washington.
People were far, far more careful when they talked about the Imperial Japanese forces or the German forces.
And we were taking very heavy casualties on more than one occasion.
We've lost sense of what war is.
We just don't even know anymore.
Colonel, thank you very much, my dear friend.
Thank you for allowing me to go from topic to topic, but it's a pleasure to pick your brain and much appreciated by the audience I know.
Okay, Judge.
Thanks very much.
We'll see you again soon.
All the best.
Bye-bye.
Bye.
A great man, and it is truly a pleasure to be able to pick his brain.
Coming up later this afternoon, two great...
Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski at 3 and from Moscow at 4 o 'clock, Professor Jeffrey Sachs.
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