| Time | Text |
|---|---|
|
Putin's Utility Expiring
00:15:38
|
|
| Hi, everyone. | |
| Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. | |
| Today is Thursday, May 1st, 2025. | |
| Our dear friend and longtime colleague, Colonel Tony Schaefer, returns to the show. | |
| Colonel Schaefer, always a pleasure. | |
| Thank you very much for being here. | |
| I've missed you. | |
| I know you're busy, but it's a pleasure. | |
| I have a lot to discuss with you, but let's start with the breaking news. | |
| Your understanding... | |
| of the deal cut late last night between the United States and Ukraine over mineral rights, reconstruction, and according to Colonel McGregor, security guarantees. | |
| Tell us what you understand about it, Tony. | |
| Yeah, I agree with Doug. | |
| It's a quid pro quo in many ways, in that it's not this for that, it's this for something else. | |
| So this is a metaphor, if you will. | |
| This is a form of boots on the ground without deploying boots. | |
| I understand why the Russians don't want foreign troops in Ukraine. | |
| I get it. | |
| One of the things that others have proposed to include, some of the folks we're going to talk about today, was deploying some sort of a peacekeeper force that is essentially made up of NATO troops. | |
| Well, that's never going to work, especially if U.S. troops showed up. | |
| So this is a way of kind of circling the square. | |
| It's like, yeah, we're going to put American people on the ground. | |
| They're going to be there to commercially develop a partnership. | |
| By the way, this isn't going to happen overnight. | |
| This is going to take upwards of five to ten years just to get everything in place. | |
| So it's not snap your fingers, everybody's in. | |
| It's a gradual walk-up. | |
| Another factor, Judge, is this is a way of recouping the billions of dollars that we put into it. | |
| The agreement is a lower overall aggregated amount. | |
| That is what the Ukrainians are expected to pay us. | |
| This is a reconstruction fund. | |
| So some of it will be paying for the past. | |
| Some of it will be paying for our current support. | |
| But the one thing that we'll not pay for, as far as I can tell, is weapons. | |
| The weapons are out. | |
| We're drawing down our support. | |
| Those weapons in the pipeline end within, I think, two months. | |
| By July, all the things we promised and bought for them is going to end. | |
| So the one thing that's not in this deal... | |
| So a couple of questions. | |
| Ritter says much of the land that has the minerals, the profits from which the United States wants to share in, are under Russian control. | |
| And to that extent, portions of this are moot. | |
| And McGregor says there is a security guarantee. | |
| And the minute we put an American soldier in uniform, literally boots on the ground, we have World War III with Russia. | |
| We do. | |
| Well, I don't see the latter happening under the agreement. | |
| Nothing I've seen in the agreement says there's going to be U.S. troops. | |
| It'll be investors. | |
| I agree with the fact that the grand majority of the terrain, the territory that has rare earths, is in Don Boston, the hell territory. | |
| With that said, Judge, that's why we're negotiating with Putin, too. | |
| Putin has said to Trump, hey, we'll give you rare earths, too. | |
| So I think it's a good thing. | |
| But let me be clear on this, and this may get me in trouble with your audience. | |
| We need to be looking for rare earths right here in the United States. | |
| One of the things I think we've neglected is developing a sustainable path to these minerals we need for a 21st century society right here. | |
| Tennessee, Utah, Oregon. | |
| Montana. | |
| We all have these things. | |
| It's just our environmental movement has prevented us from going to explore our own. | |
| Well, Trump wisely, in your opinion and mine, if I can speak for you, because I think I know where you stand on this, will dial back the environmental extremism that has prevented that kind of exploration. | |
| And the country, I mean, the loopy, loony lefties are still the same, but the vast majority of the country... | |
| Once that stuff dialed back, not eliminated, but dialed back to a reasonable level. | |
| But back to Ukraine. | |
| Can Trump negotiate a peaceful end when the linchpin of that has to be ceding Crimea and most of the four oblasts to Russia? | |
| And if Zelensky does cede that, He's a dead man. | |
| Agree? | |
| I agree that he's a dead man no matter what, Judge. | |
| His usefulness to both sides is about to end. | |
| The extremists on his side, the neo-Nazis, they've gotten their mileage out of him. | |
| He's been willing to carry this war on despite all off-ramps that were offered. | |
| So I just don't see a rainbow and unicorn in his future with them and with us and with the Russians. | |
| He has been essentially unwilling to actually examine realistic options going back to the beginning of the war when there was an off-ramp given. | |
| I think the Istanbul Accords were offered. | |
| Essentially, it was a form of a ceasefire that resulted in territorial concessions. | |
| He didn't do that. | |
| So there's no win there for Zelensky. | |
| But is he literally in danger of being assassinated by the super-nationalists around him if he concedes even an inch of earth to Putin? | |
| Yeah, I think so. | |
| And it would be tragic, but maybe it's time. | |
| I mean, I wish no bad will on Zelensky. | |
| Understood, understood. | |
| But I think he's got to move on. | |
| Putin has argued, Putin the lawyer, I didn't even know he was a lawyer, but he is, a Russian lawyer. | |
| Putin has argued that Zelensky is not the lawful head of state and doesn't have the authority to sign any commitment, ceasefire or treaty, whatever level it's going to be. | |
| Might the same be said of this agreement that his minister of finance, whoever it was that flew over here yesterday, Well, I think the Ministry of Treasury has more authority and potential legal standing than Zelensky, | |
| to your point. | |
| I think Zelensky, at this point, has gone against their own constitution, even though the Ukrainian parliament has said, yeah, we know the constitution, we're backing him anyway. | |
| I think there was a vote of confidence just right, I think, in late January, early February. | |
| Because President Trump also said, hey, there's doubts about this guy being legit. | |
| So that will be called into question. | |
| Plus, there's a question of what exactly did the Ukrainians sign with the British back three days before President Trump's inauguration in January? | |
| I think it was 17th of January. | |
| The British signed some sort of a comprehensive deal for this. | |
| So I'm still worried, Judge, that the Ukrainians may have done double, triple dealing where... | |
| Yeah, they've already signed these mineral rights off to the British, and we're going to have to litigate this somewhere down the road. | |
| So I trust no one. | |
| I trust no one at this point. | |
| This is like a first year of law school examination question. | |
| A guy sells the same product to two different people, and neither of them knows it, but no one ends up owning it. | |
| Yeah, it's a legitimate question. | |
| It's a legitimate question. | |
| Is Colonel, excuse me, is General Kellogg legitimate? | |
| I mean, the proposal that he offered, Tony, most respectfully to his three or four stars, I think it's four, is so dead in the water from minute one, one wonders why the Trump team even allowed him to come forward with it. | |
| And he's still selling it. | |
| He went on with Martha McCallum yesterday afternoon saying, I got Zelensky to agree to most of it. | |
| So, I want to be respectful but direct regarding Kellogg. | |
| Kellogg is in the Jack Keene Center for the Promotion of War, I mean, Center for the Study of War group, who really are trying their best to maintain Putin bad, Zelensky pure, | |
| we need to continue the war no matter what. | |
| That's what they're doing, and I am concerned. | |
| That Kellogg does have a seat at the table because what he says on the air is empty of any factual support in reality. | |
| Let's be clear. | |
| This is a special military operation. | |
| I'm a military guy. | |
| I understand that this is not a quote-unquote invasion of Ukraine. | |
| I understand that an invasion of Ukraine would look a lot different. | |
| As a matter of fact, right now, the Russians are preparing to return to the offensive. | |
| I think they could return to the offensive within, I don't know, two or three weeks. | |
| It would still be a limited offensive along the current contact lines, somewhere along that thing. | |
| It's not a patent-style breaking of lines going towards Kev. | |
| It was never meant to do that. | |
| The pressure on Kev was to put pressure on Kev. | |
| They were trying to take the whole country. | |
| So when he says, oh, we've... | |
| We've stopped, we have stopped Putin from taking Ukraine. | |
| It's like, no, you haven't. | |
| He never wanted the whole thing. | |
| He had a limited set of objectives, which, by the way, Judge, he's met about 80% of them. | |
| Agreed, agreed, agreed. | |
| So when he comes on and says this, what I consider neocon propaganda, he loses credibility with people like us, and I don't think he serves the president well because what he's telling the president... | |
| It's not supported by the facts as they are. | |
| So I'm very concerned anytime I see this sort of thing. | |
| The core of what he has offered is dead in the water. | |
| It's a NATO organized. | |
| The minute you say NATO, it's dead in the water with Putin. | |
| But a NATO organized division of Ukraine the way Germany was divided after 1945. | |
| Now here he is yesterday with Martha McCallum saying, oh, they've agreed to 22 points already in London last week. | |
| He won't tell you what 22 points they were, but here's what he had to say. | |
| Out of London last week, where we sat down with the Ukrainian team, with the Europeans as well, and we had 22 concrete terms that they've agreed to. | |
| What they want to, at the very first, and what they have, is a very comprehensive and permanent ceasefire that leads to a peace treaty. | |
| When I mean comprehensive sea, air, land, infrastructure, for at least 30 days. | |
| Why is 30 days important? | |
| Because it can build to a permanent peace initiative. | |
| And the reason why 30 days is important, it stops the killing. | |
| That's what President Trump wants to do. | |
| Catch what he said, who agreed? | |
| The Europeans and the Ukrainians. | |
| The Russians weren't at the table, so who's agreeing with them? | |
| Again, I've said this, there's two ships passing in the night. | |
| the Europeans with Zelensky and his extremists, and, you know, Vance, Rubio, and President Trump and the Russians. | |
| There's a big, there's no, there's no there there where these things come together. | |
| So I can only imagine that they're allowing Kellogg to go do your little negotiations, because I'm just telling you right now, from what I've seen, that the core Trump team's | |
| The idea of French troops... | |
| British troops coming in as some sort of a peacekeeper? | |
| Again, it's off the table. | |
| It's a red line the Russians have said. | |
| Do you think the Kremlin takes General Kellogg seriously? | |
| No, I don't. | |
| I don't. | |
| And again, I'm trying to be respectful to General Kellogg in his service and understand that maybe President Trump has him in the game for a reason. | |
| With that said, that reason is not credible to those we have to convince to end this. | |
| Remember, the Russians are winning. | |
| Any grace that Putin gives the process is because Putin does want an off-ramp that will benefit all parties. | |
| This Kellogg proposal is imposing NATO's will on the Russians. | |
| That's not going to happen. | |
| It's just not going to happen. | |
| Here's what Foreign Minister Lavrov had to say on Sunday about the 30-day | |
| Kellogg proposal. | |
| Chris, cut number six. | |
| If you want a ceasefire just to continue supply arms to Ukraine, so what is your purpose? | |
| You know what Kaya Kalas 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. | |
| Yeah, so what Kellogg's pushing is Minsk 3. Minsk 1 didn't work. | |
| Minsk 2 didn't work. | |
| So this is essentially the same thing. | |
| And that's what Lavrov's saying. | |
| It's like, look, we've seen this movie before, and we got the short end of the stick both times. | |
| We're not doing it. | |
| And you're not going to change their perception. | |
| And so the Minsk issue is out. | |
| I think what they're heading for is Istanbul+. | |
| Istanbul was an alternative that was put forward. | |
| The Ukrainians almost signed, except Boris Johnson. | |
| They're both drunks, but one is different than the other, just saying. | |
| Just true. | |
| Just telling you, it is what it is, right? | |
| I can't change the way things are. | |
| Anyway, Boris Johnson convinced the Ukrainians to not sign and stop this thing two and a half years ago. | |
| So those are the two competing tracks. | |
| Lavrov has said no to Minsk III. | |
| It's not going to happen. | |
| And yet Kellogg's out there pushing Minsk III. | |
| And he's right. | |
| The perception is I'm not in the game, so I can't tell you the internals. | |
| But the perception is, we give you the ceasefire, you rearm, you go back and fight us again. | |
| So that's off the table. | |
| The Istanbul Accords is essentially the freezing of things where they're at, concession of territory, and they get to the table. | |
| The one thing that the Russians keep saying, and you just said it, they weren't at the table with Kellogg. | |
| The Russians keep saying, we want to have a direct dialogue with Ukraine. | |
|
President Trump's Critics
00:00:57
|
|
| That's what they keep saying. | |
| And so the longer you have this alternate group doing their own thing, the more it damages. | |
| And President Trump's even said this, the Europeans have to stop working against me. | |
| Clearly they're not doing that. | |
| By the way, Kellogg's encouraging him to continue to work against President Trump, which is not a good thing. | |
| I don't know why he's putting up with it. | |
| Let's talk for a minute or so about the Secretary of Defense. | |
| Before we get to the latest nonsense, which I think is childish, but we'll get to it in a minute, what is the view of the troops on his behavior thus far? | |
| His wife in these meetings, the use of signal for classified information, the outright lying about whether or not military plans. | |
|
Dei Is Dead, Long Overdue
00:08:51
|
|
| We're placed on Signal. | |
| The firing of his chief of staff and the people around him. | |
| The forced polygraph tests on senior military people. | |
| How does that react to... | |
| How do troops react to that? | |
| I think the troops are just happy to have the Biden folks gone. | |
| I mean, let's be very clear on the good and bad. | |
| The good is... | |
| DEI is dead, long overdue. | |
| The idea that a Marxist form of discrimination to right wrongs was never going to work. | |
| C.Q. Brown was relieved because of that. | |
| I still believe, and I'll be blunt on this, I'm going to be really blunt, there should be a review of all senior executives in the senior SESs and general officers, and only two criteria should exist. | |
| First off, are you... | |
| Are you fit to continue service? | |
| That is to say, are you able to continue service and support the Constitution? | |
| And any DEI stuff in your background, anything you've done, that automatically kind of eliminates you. | |
| It's like, yeah, you've got to go. | |
| You've got to go. | |
| We've got to make room for new people. | |
| Secondly, are you technically competent? | |
| Are you actually capable of doing this job? | |
| So I have to ask you, is Pete Hegseth fit and competent? | |
| Well, by the President's standards, absolutely, at this point. | |
| By Tony Schaefer's standards. | |
| Alright, so by Tony Schaefer's standards, there's some things, full disclosure, I've told people I would have done things differently, very differently. | |
| I would have organized differently. | |
| Let me say this right up front. | |
| The two things I would have done immediately that he didn't do, and I don't know if he's done yet, is seize what I consider... | |
| Centers of gravity. | |
| That's a military term, you know, Clausewitz, centers of gravity. | |
| There are certain centers, nerve centers in the Pentagon you must have control of to be able to essentially just sustain yourself. | |
| One of those is internal security. | |
| That is the, you know, Pentagon force protection, the security system. | |
| What I've seen is that he doesn't have control of that because the chaos internally of people being investigated, all that. | |
| You don't need that chaos, so that's a mistake there, I think, that we've made. | |
| Secondly, relating to permitting third parties to have access to things. | |
| The signal gate thing, Judge? | |
| That was... | |
| I love Pete. | |
| Pete's a friend. | |
| But he should have delegated that to his deputies. | |
| This is where his lack of senior level... | |
| Executive experience has kind of shown. | |
| You have your deputies do all that. | |
| That's why they have, you know, you're the big guy. | |
| You've got all these mid-guys who do all the work. | |
| There have been nothing wrong with having deputies chatting in some secure form. | |
| There's secure things. | |
| I've talked to folks at the Pentagon about this. | |
| And just have that done with the deputies. | |
| And then you guys talk to each other on a phone. | |
| It's like, oh, this is really badass. | |
| You can do that. | |
| I think there's ways it could have been done better. | |
| So I'll leave it at that. | |
| All right. | |
| Chris, put up the full screen of Hegseth's ex-post. | |
| Message to Iran. | |
| We see your lethal support to the Houthis. | |
| We know exactly what you are doing. | |
| You know very well what the U.S. military is capable of. | |
| And you were warned. | |
| You will pay the consequence in caps at the time and place of our choosing. | |
| I think that is childish in the extreme. | |
| I suspect he was encouraged to do that tweet. | |
| You all know I advised Joe Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs Joe Dunford, under the first Trump administration. | |
| One of the things I told Joe, I don't think Joe will mind me saying this, As the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Joe, you must make a friend of social media and President Trump. | |
| So I think some of this is President Trump, who's learned how to use social media, extending that down to Pete. | |
| So I don't know if Pete thought to do that on his own. | |
| I don't know. | |
| But that is a legitimate form of messaging. | |
| You may not like it, and I've seen people on social media all nuts about it, but there's people in Tehran. | |
| Reading that and recognizing bad things may happen. | |
| And I still believe we need to clarify our objectives for the Middle East. | |
| But is this the most effective way to communicate with diplomats around the world rather than picking up a phone? | |
| This isn't about the diplomats. | |
| This is about the people below the diplomats who will see this, who may not be told it by their own people. | |
| You can't shield... | |
| All your people from social media, especially Iran. | |
| So I'm saying that this is a legitimate form of messaging that President Trump is famous for. | |
| All right, I'm going to ask you one more time, and I think you may not want to go there because Seg Seth is your friend. | |
| Is he qualified to be Secretary of Defense? | |
| Is he long for the job? | |
| I think he's as qualified as I am. | |
| So in many ways, because... | |
| That job requires someone to come in and understand the enterprise, but not be captured by it. | |
| This is the key thing. | |
| So, as much as I think maybe I have a better understanding of some of the structure, because, again, I've advised the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. | |
| I've worked at that level for a long time. | |
| I think I may have known some block and tackle options. | |
| The big issue here, and this is why they want him out, Judge, is that he's not... | |
| Part of the military-industrial complex. | |
| He's not from Raytheon. | |
| He's not from... | |
| Remember, all these other guys, even Jim Mattis. | |
| When Jim Mattis came in, he came off a board of one of the big defense concerns. | |
| I think that's the one factor that is most important to Pete. | |
| He has to be an outsider, and I think, frankly, that's why you see so much stress right now on him, is because those big defense... | |
| You know, you just saw John Bolton threaten him yesterday. | |
| I didn't see that, but look, he's sounding like a bully. | |
| If he's really a strong-willed, tough guy, then his actions will speak for him rather than his antagonistic, childish words. | |
| Again, I think that he may be directed to do some things which we may not fully appreciate. | |
| I think the tweet is okay. | |
| Are you telling me the White House wrote the tweet? | |
| I'm saying that there's a pretty good chance that there's an overall campaign. | |
| Look, I was just talking about this on the network earlier. | |
| This is from the 1990s, information operations. | |
| So one of the things that we recognized a long time ago, that cyberspace is a military dominion. | |
| It is a legitimate area where you will have conflict. | |
| This all may well be part of a larger campaign, information operations campaign, designed to create certain conditions or potentiality within the mind of an adversary. | |
| So I wouldn't put it past people from doing that. | |
| And I'm not part of it. | |
| Obviously, I wouldn't be talking about it if I was part of it. | |
| All right, Tony, thank you very much. | |
| I almost forgot how much fun it is to be on with you at the crack of dawn, but it's a pleasure to have you back on the show. | |
| I hope we can do it regularly. | |
| Yes, sir. | |
| Thanks for having me. | |
| By the way, are you a commissioner yet? | |
| Have you been sworn in? | |
| Yeah, yeah. | |
| No, I've been a commissioner since December. | |
| And man, oh man, I'm on five different committees to include, get this, I'm on three medical committees. | |
| I'm on the hospital committee. | |
| The Regional Health Committee and Trillium, which is like mental health. | |
|
Appreciating the Opportunity
00:00:51
|
|
| And by the way, Judge, I've asked the county to get some money so I can go to medical school since I'm not a doctor, but I should be a doctor to be on all these medical things. | |
| But no, it's an uphill climb. | |
| I'm learning a lot about local government and how things work. | |
| So I actually appreciate the opportunity. | |
| So it's been fun. | |
| So thank you for asking. | |
| All right. | |
| All the best, Tony. | |
| Thank you very much. | |
| We'll see you again soon. | |
| Thank you. | |
| And coming up later today at 11 o 'clock this morning, Aaron Maté at 2 this afternoon, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson at 3 this afternoon, Professor John Mearsheimer, and sometime during the day, because he is very hot over the so-called deal between Ukraine and the United States, | |
| Colonel Douglas McGregor. | |