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May 1, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
26:07
LtCOL Tony Shaffer : How Long Can Ukraine Last?
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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