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May 6, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
23:44
Aaron Maté : NATO and Ukraine.
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Hi, everyone.
Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Wednesday, May 7th, 2025.
My dear friend Aaron Mate joins us now.
Aaron, always a pleasure.
I want to talk to you at some length.
I know you've been doing some work on this, on NATO, Europe, and Ukraine, and your views of what the European elites are up to.
Why do you think we're hearing all these apocalyptic warnings?
Pardon me.
From Prime Minister Starmer, President Macron, and probably soon Chancellor Mertz.
And at the same time, the Polish government announced a universal draft.
I don't know the ages, but all males within certain ages.
They've all staked their political identities around this notion that Russia is an irredeemable enemy that has to be fought.
And can't be negotiated with.
And that basically their future as NATO is under the US-led military umbrella.
Now, Trump has been wavering on that by talking about making peace with Russia.
And so these dire warnings are part of just a long-term playbook to keep the drums of war going, to keep them beating, so that more money can be spent on this proxy war.
And it looks like Trump, the way he talks sometimes, is considering going their way.
Because he came into office about to end the war within 24 hours.
He hasn't done that.
He hasn't taken up Russia's overtures to engage not only on the issue of Ukraine, but on the broader NATO military alliance and its perceived threats to Russia.
And so I think they're hoping that by issuing these dire warnings that they can finally convince Trump to come their way.
Here's Vice President Vance earlier today in Munich, Germany.
Claiming, you know, it's good to talk.
Georgia is better than war-war, the old Churchill line.
But Rush is asking too much.
I don't know how he can say Rush is asking too much.
I'll play the clip for you in a minute.
Because Rush is asking the same thing today as it asked two years ago.
But you can weigh in on this.
Chris, number 25. Our view is it's absurd that you've had this war go on for so long, and the two sides aren't even talking constructively about what would be necessary for them to end the conflict.
You don't have to agree with the Russian justification for the war, and certainly both the president and I have criticized the full-scale invasion, but you have to try to understand where the other side is coming from.
I think that's what President Trump has been very deliberate about, is actually forcing the Russians to say, here is what we would like in order to end the conflict.
And again, you don't have to agree with it.
You can think that the request is too significant, and certainly the first peace offer that the Russians put on the table, our reaction to it was, you're asking for too much, but this is how negotiations unfold.
And I wouldn't say, I'm not yet that pessimistic on this, I wouldn't say that the Russians are uninterested in bringing this thing to a resolution.
What I would say is right now the Russians are asking for a certain set of requirements, a certain set of concessions in order to end the conflict.
We think they're asking for too much.
I mean, is he suggesting that...
Crimea, no NATO, and the 4-0 blast is somehow negotiable?
Well, I don't know exactly what he was referring to, but I have to say, he sounds reasonable to me.
If Russia, for example, is also demanding that there be extreme limits on the size of Ukraine's military while also ruling out NATO membership into Ukraine, then I do think it's fair for people like the U.S. and Ukraine to say that that's too much, because if...
Ukraine will not be in NATO, then they still need to maintain some capacity to protect themselves.
And that includes having a strong military.
Now, Russia can claim, well, sorry, it's too late.
You missed your chance.
You had your chance with the Minsk Accords and the Istanbul Accords.
I understand from the Russian perspective why they would feel that way.
I mean, there's a case to be made there from their perspective.
But you can't expect, if you're Russia, for the U.S. to agree to that, especially after how much the U.S. has invested in this war and just the general mood in Washington.
I mean, Trump still has to operate.
No matter what Trump and Vance feel about this personally, they have to operate in Washington, where it's very difficult to conduct diplomacy with anybody, especially a longtime geopolitical adversary.
And it was Putin's choice to go to war.
And he must have understood that going to war, although he saw that he must have felt he had no other choice, but that it was going to mean that certain things that he would be asking for.
He would not be guaranteed at the negotiating table.
If he wanted them, he'd have to impose them by force.
So basically, what the U.S. might be doing here is calling Putin's bluff, saying, look, we're not going to agree to these things, so if you want them, you have to go all the way with the invasion that you launched three years ago.
Sorry, I'm not sure what that is.
One of the other statements that Vance made talks about a face-to-face conversation.
I'm curious if the Russians still think that Zelensky is illegitimate and they won't meet him face-to-face.
I'm sorry, Judge.
The question was about Putin and Zelensky meeting face-to-face?
One of the other things Vance said, we can play the clip, is that he thinks that they should meet face-to-face.
He doesn't mention Putin and Zelensky by name.
He could be talking about Lavrov.
And his opposite number in Ukraine.
But haven't the Russians said steadfastly that the Zelensky government is illegitimate and any agreement that they sign might not be enforceable or even followed by a succeeding government?
They have made that case.
Putin has talked about how Zelensky declaring martial law is not legitimate.
If there was an agreement actually reached to address Russian concerns, I suspect that Moscow would drop that talking point.
And frankly, I don't think it's Russia's place to declare who's the legitimate government of Ukraine, no matter how strong their legal argument might be under Ukrainian law.
That's for Ukrainians to decide.
What Russia has said, where I think they have a valid point, is that how can we talk to Zelensky?
If he has a decree ruling out talks with us, unless our President Vladimir Putin steps down, which is basically Zelensky saying that we're not going to talk to Russia until there is regime change in Moscow.
That's ridiculous.
It's right for Russia to ask that that decree by Zelensky be withdrawn.
Do the European leaders still have Russia phobia or is their bellicosity just a means to...
Raise taxes or feed the military-industrial complex or mask their own military insecurities and ineptness.
I mean, look at Britain.
They couldn't invade anybody.
It's both.
I mean, they do have Russophobia, and it serves all those interests that you detail.
That's kind of the whole point of it.
And they're so locked into it after more than three years of this phase of the proxy war, but even going back to 2014.
When European states let people like Victoria Nuland and Joe Biden and Antony Blinken and Jake Sullivan and then the people in Trump's first term sabotage the Minsk Accords, sabotage all the diplomatic opportunities that were there to resolve this conflict peacefully after it began the 2014 Maidan coup.
Europe has subordinated themselves to the U.S.-led policy.
Why all these leaders have individually done that, I don't know.
I suspect in some cases there's bribery, coercion, because how could it be that all these European leaders all choose the path of war and also economic self-sabotage?
Because look what this war in Ukraine has done for their economies.
I don't remember who it was.
It might have been Max.
It might have been Ritter, it might have been Colonel McGregor, characterized Mertz as the most dangerous post-World War II chancellor Germany's had.
Is he looking to start a war?
Well, one of the first statements he made upon being elected recently was that he was going to send the Taurus missiles that his predecessor, Olaf Scholz, had refused to send.
And so, yeah, if you're making that statement openly, then it looks like you don't care about the consequences of delivering these high-powered weapons to Ukraine for use against Russia.
And as we know, as we've seen from what the U.S. has allowed with the Atakums, that those missiles are launched into Russia.
And given that you have military bases in Germany already, where, as we learned recently from the New York Times, the war was being managed by the U.S. If it goes ahead with now sending these long-range missiles that had previously been ruled out, it's putting itself in a much more dangerous situation.
And the Polish draft, I mean, is it becoming like Ukraine, where they're grabbing young men off the streets?
I haven't followed the situation in Poland, but what I've seen of Ukraine is harrowing.
And the footage continues to the point where, you know, people sometimes, when they see someone being kidnapped, They'll go around them and try to protect them, to try to save them from being sent off to the front lines and die.
And yet we're constantly told in the U.S. that Ukrainians are resilient, they want to keep fighting, they want the war to continue.
Well, if that's the case, why are they having such a hard time filling their ranks?
And why do they have to resort to kidnapping people to send them off to fight?
Two weeks ago, Secretary of State Rubio sort of threw up his hands.
And said, if this war isn't over in a week, we're seriously considering going home.
Two weeks ago.
Last week, President Trump released another $500 million worth of military equipment.
Who can believe these people?
That's a great question.
Yeah, I don't think they've said them what they want to do.
You have people inside the White House.
J.D. Vance is clearly one of them, who is not on board with the proxy war.
Would love to see it end.
But you have others, like Rubio.
Who have been with it from the start?
Who, you know, once sponsored a resolution saying that we'll never, ever recognize Russian control of Crimea.
That's how hawkish they are, even though, as we know from all the U.S.-backed polls, that the majority of people in Crimea want to be a part of Russia.
So you have, meanwhile, Trump, who seems to change his mind all the time.
He's very malleable.
He seems to be influenced by the last person he speaks to.
And so, therefore, you don't have a coherent policy.
And you have a lot of authority or a lot of negotiating responsibility.
Whitcoff, who seems like a relatively competent diplomat, especially given the stable of personalities that Trump has around him.
But what power does he have?
And how can he possibly pull off all these complex negotiations when he not only has one serious portfolio with Russia, but also the Iran as well?
I mean, it's just not possible.
Do you subscribe to this theory now asking about Whitcoff and Rubio that Trump wants to humiliate?
Rubio, back to the little Marco days, and that Rubio was ready for a Pete Heggseth and ready for sitting down on the couch in the Oval Office whenever Trump wants him there, but he was never expecting somebody else to take over his job as the chief negotiator at the two most potent hotspots in the world, the Middle East and Ukraine.
Well, given that he's delegated those portfolios to Steve Wyckoff, who doesn't even have really a staff, an office, he's not an ambassador, given that, that's clearly a sign to Rubio that Trump doesn't take him too seriously.
Whether he wants to completely marginalize him, I don't know.
I recall when Trump won in 2016, one of the first sit-downs he had in interviewing potential candidates for Secretary of State was Mitt Romney.
And they took a photo together, and it was so clear what Trump was doing.
He was humiliating Mitt Romney back then by pretending to consider him for the Secretary of State job, when, of course, Trump had no interest in doing that.
Is Trump doing the same thing now by giving the job to Marco Rubio after they previously sparred in that same campaign?
And that was very hostile between them.
I mean, it's a fair thing to wonder with Trump, because he's a very petty person.
That's clear.
But certainly, it's very clear that he trusts Steve Wyckoff a whole lot more.
Tell me what you think of this, Aaron.
This is President Trump at Meet the Press on Sunday.
Chris, cut number 10. Ukraine, there's been discussions they will have to give up some of the land.
Russia will have to give up all of Ukraine because that's what they want.
All of Ukraine, meaning they wouldn't keep any of the land that they've claimed?
Russia would have to give up all of Ukraine.
Because what Russia wants is all of Ukraine.
And if I didn't get involved, they would be fighting right now for all of Ukraine.
Russia doesn't want the strip that they have now.
Russia wants all of Ukraine.
And if it weren't me, they would keep going.
I mean, this is either some sort of a political ruse so when Russia ends up with Crimea and the 4-0 blast, he can say, I saved the rest of Ukraine.
or he is so woefully misinformed that it's dangerous?
Because is there a scintilla of evidence, scintilla, that the Kremlin wants all of Ukraine No evidence whatsoever.
If they did want all of Ukraine, they would have had to send a force infinitely larger than what they sent into Ukraine.
Everybody who understands military affairs knows that.
So this idea that Russia wants all of Ukraine is a joke.
And in fact, New York Times has reported quietly at times that U.S. officials...
Have assessed that Putin is loathe to expand the war beyond Ukraine's borders.
That's one of the few times the New York Times has admitted the truth, but it's obvious for everyone to see.
And it's interesting.
Trump wants to have it both ways.
On the one hand, he says, this is Biden's war, right?
I have nothing to do with this.
I didn't want this, right?
I'm just trying to end it.
Then he goes ahead and brags about how, if not for him, Putin would be taking all of Ukraine.
So which is it?
Is it Biden's war?
Or is it Trump's war, where supposedly Trump wants us to now believe that he's prevented Putin from taking all of Ukraine?
It's completely incoherent.
And because of that incoherence, he doesn't have a coherent policy right now.
And it's meaning that this war is continuing on without end.
And what it's going to do, ultimately, I think, is encourage Russia to impose its demands by force, which probably means sending in even more forces, which, as we learned recently from the Wall Street Journal...
It has ample capacity to do.
It's recruiting people into the military at a very, very high clip, unlike Ukraine.
The $500 million that he authorized, and just so everybody understands, this is not new equipment from Congress.
This is part of the Joe Biden-passed legislation, all of which is subject to the discretion of the president.
It was very, very troubling.
To me, and I think to people watching us now, that he's not serious about ending the war.
He can't claim it's Biden's war any longer.
He is deeply invested in it.
So my question to you is, are the Marco Rubios around him?
And I don't know which camp Hegseth is in.
The Pete Hegseth I know is a classic neocon.
However, if you read the transcript of the Jeff Goldberg text, he sounded like he was arguing for restraint.
But whoever it is.
Could be Sebastian Gorka.
The neocons around him must be whispering into his ears.
Yes, they are.
Absolutely.
And that's very clear with people like Rubio and Keith Kellogg around him.
They're on board with the proxy war.
Keith Kellogg once called Biden's strategy in Ukraine the acme of professionalism because we were using other people to weaken an adversary like Russia.
And so absolutely, Trump is listening to them.
Although...
In fairness, look, I have to distinguish between what I would hope I would do as president and what is politically feasible in Trump's context.
So what I would do is say, look, we started this.
We backed a coup in Ukraine.
We helped overthrow a democratically elected government.
We did that because we're trying to pull Ukraine closer into NATO, which was a huge mistake.
And here are the documents to prove all of it.
I'm going to declassify the CIA files, which show in detail how we backed a coup.
And how this led to a war that we helped prolong by then sabotaging the Minsk Accords.
And here's some more document declassifications on that, right?
I'd love it if Trump did all that.
But he's in Washington.
There are limits on what he can do politically.
And I can imagine when it comes to the weapons, if he were to cut off the weaponry that has already been approved by Congress, then, especially after that helped lead to his first impeachment, why just that would create a political headache?
Even if he's sincere about making peace, I can understand why you'd want to continue disturbing the weapons you've been congressionally ordered or mandated to deliver while still negotiating.
Because there is the argument, too, that having the weapons continue to flow does continue to give you some leverage and does continue to show Russia that you're not just going to give it everything.
And so I can understand that that's the political argument being made inside the White House, even from someone who wants to reach a negotiated solution.
But Trump, though, has to make a decision.
How far is he prepared to go in talking to Russia and having serious diplomacy, rather than just sending one guy, Steve Wyckoff, off to have some nice chats with Vladimir Putin?
And why is he taunting Putin?
I mean, they're celebrating the 80th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany in Russia on Friday.
It's like their 4th of July.
There is no question about the sacrifice of the Russian people.
27 million killed.
About 90% of that civilians.
And now he's unprovoked, gives a speech this afternoon.
We won World War II.
Nobody else won it.
And it should be our celebration and not theirs.
This is part of a longtime insult.
To Russia, to basically diminish its role in defeating Nazi Germany.
And we've seen this in recent years with people like Biden refusing to take part in celebrations that include Russia in ending Nazi Germany.
And Trump is continuing that.
And why he's doing it?
Well, he's a chauvinist.
He believes in America first, and that means whitewashing history.
To paint America as the victor in World War II and completely sideline the massive sacrifice of the Soviet Union.
And it's not going to be received very nicely inside Moscow.
Whether that will sabotage negotiations, I doubt it.
But certainly the Kremlin is watching this, I imagine, with a lot of disgust.
And I'm sure it doesn't help in the efforts to end the war.
I mean, he purported...
Yes, Chris.
He purported...
Well, here's what Dmitry Medvedev said, and you know who that is.
Our people sacrificed 27 million lives of their sons and daughters in the name of destroying accursed fascism.
Therefore, Victory Day is ours, and it is May 9. So it was, so it is, so it will always be.
I don't blame them.
I'd be aggravated at Trump as well.
There's really no reason for him to do this.
If he wanted to be a good guy, he'd show up there unannounced in Red Square and then he'd stay for a week and cut some sort of a reset because Xi is going to be there, Modi's going to be there, and of course Putin's going to be there.
I agree with you.
That'd be a wonderful thing if these two nuclear powers could come to an agreement.
And could honor the shared victory over Nazi Germany, but instead Trump wants to taint the moment and take credit for the U.S. Look, I agree with you.
It's totally insulting to people.
And now he's proclaimed, I don't even know what days they are, I think November 11th and May 8th, as federal holidays.
Again, he forgets to examine the Constitution and federal law.
And I'm sure Congress would do this.
It's so chauvinistic and the Republicans control both houses.
Only Congress can establish a federal holiday.
Do you remember what we went through for Martin Luther King Day?
Some governor was, you know, Arizona was impeached over it.
Only the legislature can do this.
Maybe this is a question for Anya, but you know this stuff as well.
It appears Russia and Venezuela.
I just saw that in Haaretz right before we came on air.
Are you familiar with this?
I am not.
I'm not.
All I know is that Venezuela is really suffering under U.S.-led sanctions, and Trump, who campaigned on lowering energy prices and campaigned on demonizing migrants, still wants to...
I guess, create migrants and keep energy prices high by maintaining the same policies on Venezuela, by trying to overthrow its government.
And so, understandably, Venezuela will turn elsewhere for partnerships, and I wouldn't be surprised at all if it's deepening its alliance with Russia.
Aaron, always a pleasure, my dear friend.
Thank you very much.
Thanks for accommodating my schedule.
Thanks for being here.
Look forward to seeing you next week.
Thanks, Judge, and I apologize for the audio issues on my end.
That was my fault.
Oh, that's all right.
You know, Chris Leonard has the world's finest ear.
Yes, he alerted me during the show.
Yes, he was texting you during the show.
Aaron, your mic is not on.
Anyway, we were able to hear you.
The audience was able to hear you.
We all appreciate you.
Thank you, Aaron.
All the best.
To you as well, Judge.
Thank you.
Bye-bye.
And coming up later today at 3 o 'clock.
How deeply invested into the American government, how deeply embedded into the American government, is the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu?
Who else?
Phil Giraldi.
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