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May 19, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
23:12
Ray McGovern : The Russians Always Claim What is Theirs
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Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Monday, May 19th, 2025.
Ray McGovern will be here with us in just a moment on the latest dispute in the intelligence community and why the Russians always claim what is theirs.
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Hi, McGovern.
Welcome here, my dear friend.
Before we talk about the Russian mentality during negotiations, I want to ask you about the latest kerfuffle involving the intelligence community.
We alluded to it on Friday during the roundtable with Larry Johnson, but now it has reared its head again with statements made over the weekend by Secretary of State Rubio.
As I understand it, last month, two senior CIA analysts, after doing the type of study and analysis that your former colleagues do, came to the conclusion that Tren de Aragua, the Venezuelan gang about which the president rails aggressively and politically, is not controlled by or affiliated with the government of Venezuela.
Then last week, the two senior people who authored and revealed that report were fired.
Then over the weekend, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said, new analysis has shown that the gang is affiliated with the government of Venezuela.
What's going on here?
Is analysis corruptible like this?
Well, it all happened before.
No one was ever held accountable, Judge.
They all got performance rewards, for God's sake, from falsifying the intelligence on Iraq.
And that was only, what, 2002, 2003.
Yeah, it looks pretty bad, doesn't it?
You know, it was February, I think, that the intelligence community advised the White House that, you know, the Venezuelan government doesn't really have much control over these folks.
And then apparently they were asked to take another look at that.
Now, before Iraq, when they took another look at that, they said, oh yeah, right, of course there are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
But this time...
These fellows apparently took another look at us and said, "No, we were right the first time.
The president's wrong." Now, for Tulsi Gabbard to dismiss them under those circumstances is really bad, bad policy and looks, a bad look, as they say these days.
There may be other things, but Larry suggested, Larry Johnson on Friday, that there was more to it that meets the eye and that may come out later.
But for Rubio to have his own intelligence analysis now contradicting what the National Intelligence Council said, that's a bad omen.
They're twisting the intelligence to fit the policy.
It shouldn't happen, but it's going to happen repeatedly unless someone sometime is held accountable and not given a performance, a cash bonus for yielding.
What kind of a message does this send?
Well, to honest people, you know, I'm just thinking, my grandson just graduated from a very, very good college, and I'm wondering how many of those people that are trained in the traditional way to have some integrity, how many of those would be tempted to join the CIA, given what they know?
I dare say the kinds of people are signing up or maybe the malleable people who smell the prevailing winds and trim their sails accordingly.
It's a bad situation, Trump.
I had hoped that things would be better under Tulsi Gabbard.
In some respects, they are, but not in this one.
Yeah, I mean, going back to when you and Ray and I were talking about how the intelligence community is telling Their bosses, what the raw intelligence is showing them, but the bosses are telling Joe Biden what he wants to hear.
It sounds to me as though nothing has changed except these firings, these public firings.
How can you fire somebody for being intellectually honest?
How can you fire somebody for releasing something they had permission to release?
How can you fire somebody for honestly doing their job?
You could reassign them to another job, but to fire them?
Well, maybe she's trying to make a point.
Maybe she's trying to make an instruction.
Look, this is what happens.
This is what happens if you serve up the wrong intelligence.
That's awful, Judge.
I had expected more of her.
But if this is the way it looks, and it's a very bad look, it's very bad news for the president himself.
Does the president really think that the Russian economy is falling apart?
Does he really think That the Russians are losing more soldiers than the Ukrainians?
I mean, the cadavers that have been exchanged up to the most recent one, 25 to 1. 25 Ukrainian cadavers to one Russian.
I thank Larry Johnson for those figures, but they're real.
So, you know, if the president has told these things and kind of wants to believe them, when he talks to Mr. Putin, like...
Right now, 10 o 'clock Eastern, he's going to be proceeding from the wrong premises, and only bad can come of that.
I have more hope for what's going to happen as we speak here, but if he's misinformed and really believes that stuff, and it's not just rhetoric that he puts out there, then he's himself handicapped by these misconceptions.
You know, I was optimistic after one of the many speeches he gave last week, which I really enjoyed, in which he said, "We will no longer tell you how to live," speaking to other countries in the Middle East, a direct, harsh, and warranted, in my view, and I think you had great criticism of...
Behavior of American governments, going back to the beginning of the CIA, certainly aimed at the Bush administration with Afghanistan and Iraq.
And the neocons.
Correct.
Now it seems like he is still in the clutches of the neocons.
How does he get away from the clutches of the neocons?
The neocon in chief is masquerading as the Secretary of State.
Well, did I mention that Trump is unpredictable?
You don't have to mention it.
It's so obvious.
The other thing is that he's got attendance.
He's got people working for him who are hopelessly divided.
Now, take Trump and maybe J.D. Vance and certainly Whitcoff.
On the other side, you have people like Kellogg.
People like the Secretary of State and others.
So, you know, will Trump be able to rise above this and be his own man?
Well, we'll see today, you know.
I think when they get together today, Pucci is going to have a very strong hand.
He's going to say, look, Mr. Trump, I really appreciate what you've done in getting the Ukrainians to the negotiating table.
That was you.
I mean...
Zelensky said he did it as a favor to you.
Lavrov has said, yeah, thanks, Mr. President.
So we're grateful for that, okay?
And we prepared.
We had a National Security Council meeting that wouldn't quit.
We got all our generals there.
We got our best negotiator.
He's got a sense of history.
And what happens?
Well...
You know, it doesn't look good unless you put more pressure on Ukrainians.
And if they continue to balk under the pretense that these Europeans are going to help them, well, then you can draw the right conclusions, Mr. President.
But let's keep trying.
I think this will be the byword.
We'll keep trying.
We'll keep these things going.
June perhaps will be the next session of this bilateral negotiation between Ukraine and Russia.
I think there's hope now that the negotiations have started, just as there was hope originally a couple of months ago when Putin and Trump personally started talking one to the other.
Well, Putin and Trump are speaking as we're speaking now.
Theoretically, if all this is going according to plan, as you and I are taping this segment.
And the president is probably going to ask, the president of the United States is going to ask the president of Russia, why don't you stop fighting for a month and we can negotiate during the fighting.
You sent my team and me.
A fascinating clip over the weekend.
It's nine minutes long.
Chris edited it down to about two and a half minutes.
This is the chief Russian negotiator talking about history and how the Russians, when they're fighting a war, negotiate while they're fighting.
They don't stop fighting in order to negotiate.
And then he makes a very, very captivating statement at the end.
Listen to his final words.
The Russians always claim what is theirs.
But now listen to this mini history lesson from the Russian perspective.
But unfortunately, the Istanbul process was also disrupted, this time due to the intervention, the direct intervention of the West.
And where does this lead?
As a rule, as Napoleon used to say, war and negotiations are conducted simultaneously.
Stalin proposes an armistice in Finland.
That is to make peace.
The British and French egg them on.
You can't negotiate with the Soviets.
You can't make peace.
We'll provide you with military assistance.
Volunteer Expeditionary Corps from England and France will come.
Naturally, no one actually arrived.
After that, peace is concluded and the fighting comes to an end.
So what am I getting at?
War and negotiations have always gone hand in hand throughout history.
Probably the most vivid and instructive example, Peter the Great.
Sweden forever lost its status as a great power, and the Russian Empire became a great power.
But just a few years after the war began, Peter the Great offered the Swedes peace.
He said, we actually don't need anything.
We have access to the Baltic Sea, St. Petersburg, and just a little bit around it, you know, a security zone.
And that's all.
Historically, these are Russian lands because the entire Leningrad region and most of Karelia are all territories that once belonged to the Novgorod Republic.
And Sweden had been chopping them off piece by piece.
We know that all of this is our ancestral land, but we're not even asking for it back.
Just give us a little, give us freedom and access to the sea.
Give us St. Petersburg and the surrounding area.
And we'll end the war.
What do the Swedes say?
No, we will fight to the last Swede.
Charles XVI continues this senseless war, despite Peter's repeated offers of peace.
But the funniest thing is, who do you think was supporting Charles XVI?
England and France.
In the end, we agree to peace negotiations.
Russia and Sweden go on for a long time.
England and France are putting their foot down.
No negotiations.
Stop it.
Let's do it through intermediaries, through us instead, because it benefits them when two major powers are fighting.
In the end, these peace talks led to nothing.
And only in 1721, 21 years after the war began, did Sweden finally sign a peace agreement.
But it wasn't just St. Petersburg and its surroundings.
It was a significant part of Karelia, the Leningrad region, the Baltics, and of course, St. Petersburg itself.
And most importantly, Sweden forever lost its status as a great European power.
There you have it.
Well, it's about how, in such a remarkable way, history keeps repeating itself for us.
Time used to pass slowly.
Now everything is moving much faster.
Bismarck, who was an ambassador in St. Petersburg for many years, he always said, Never.
Try to deceive the Russians or steal something from them.
Because time will pass.
And sooner or later, the Russians always come to reclaim what is theirs.
How do you read that?
Sounds to me more of an academic steeped in Russian history than a developer of high-rises in New York City who's the president's good buddy because he's a good negotiator.
Medinsky is a historian.
By trade, he is a personal aid to Putin.
So let me just dismiss one canard.
He's not a decision maker.
Of course he's not.
Putin is the decision maker, but Putin tells Medinsky what to do, okay?
That's the way it works.
So what he's saying here is, look, we're in a position of strength here.
Look at history here.
Even Napoleon knew that you continued the war as you continued your talks, okay?
You know, the history?
Well, the history is accurate.
Do Americans know that history?
No.
Does every Russian student that studies history, and all of them do, know that history?
Yes, they do.
Some of the remarks below.
This video indicated that I'm from Vladivostok and as a kid I learned that history.
So McGovern says, my god, I learned that history too.
But that was 65 years ago.
I better check this out, you know?
And I checked it out with one of my best friends, a historian who wrote the book on Stalin.
He's a professor emeritus at University College Cork.
Now he said, yeah, this is accurate, but he said more.
And I want to quote the simple way he put this, because it's the same as what Medvinsky is doing, but it's simpler for Americans to understand.
Look, he said, peace negotiations take place in wartime, okay?
Because one side is winning.
That's what creates the condition for their success.
In other words, the losers make concessions to avoid Abject defeat, total defeat, and the winners get enough of what they want relative to the costs of continuing the war, okay?
Peace negotiators that follow a ceasefire generally fail because there's a military stalemate and there's a lack of incentive to end the war.
Lastly...
Ceasefires can be prompted from outside forces, like the US is trying to do now.
And this is really tough.
But Trump has been able to get the talks going, which will remain a step forward, even if they fail to produce short-term results.
I think that's the bottom line here.
And I hope that what comes out of this discussion going on as we speak here will result in a continuation of these talks.
The Russians are in no hurry.
Trump needs to be patient and needs to suppress this Naocon influence on him and give Widkoff the charter to go ahead and talk some more and encourage the Europeans to knock it off and not give Ukraine the idea that they can still prevail.
I think Zelensky is getting the picture and I noticed that Trump is going to be talking to Zelensky right after he talks to Putin, and then he's going to talk to the Europeans.
I think good things are going to come out of this today.
I'm in the minority, but that's my feeling.
You are in the minority because you must know that the historic lesson just articulated by Putin's aide, who's his chief negotiator, which you just summarized so nicely.
Is probably falling on deaf ears on the Americans.
Do you think Keith Kellogg understands that you fight wars while you negotiate?
Do you think Steve Witkoff understands that?
Marco Rubio understands that?
Donald Trump understands that?
This is core to the Russian mentality and Russian history, is it not?
Well, it is.
But the Russians, even Medvinsky said...
That the Russians are prepared to make concessions.
He said that.
In other words, the overarching reality here, Judge, is that both sides want to get rid of this damn war.
Now, will Trump have enough power with the deep state and the neocons to make it happen?
That's the big question.
I think he's going to try.
And Putin, for his point, is going to try to make it as easy as he can to provide enough lipstick on this pig of defeat in Ukraine to allow Trump to escape or to get out of it by saying, number one, it was not my war, number two, this is the best deal we could get.
They're interested in root causes here.
Actually, last night, early this morning, our time, Putin himself...
Made this point.
Look, we want to do the root causes here.
And, you know, this is what we're going to settle for.
Nothing short.
And root causes before there's any ceasefire.
So the alternative, of course, the black view is that Trump is going to say, oh, man, those Russians are not serious.
And we're going to go with those Europeans, the coalition of the brain dead.
I think that Trump does have an understanding of the Russian mentality.
I think he manifested that when he told the woman that runs Meet the Press, the Russians want all of Ukraine.
He doesn't believe the Russians want all of Ukraine, but by saying the Russians want all of Ukraine and then they end up with Crimea and the 4-0 blast, he can say...
Look at what I saved you.
I saved you from the Russians taking over all of Ukraine.
Joe Biden couldn't do that.
I did it.
Yeah, and I prevented them from going and taking Poland and the Baltic states, just like Joe Biden warned.
They're not going to do that anymore.
I mean, to the degree that most Americans are brainwashed and believe Joe Biden in saying the Russians won't stop there.
This is a rhetorical flourish that could help Trump say, well, you know, look what I did.
And so I see more hope here than most people do.
They're talking.
This guy, Medinsky, is really, really sharp.
And he's going to represent Putin just as well as he did earlier on in Belarus and in Istanbul three years ago.
Correct.
All right, Ray, the next time we meet will be Friday afternoon with Larry.
Maybe there'll be some profound news or profound disappointment or something, some sort of an intellectual feast by then.
But we'll look forward to seeing you again.
Thank you, my dear friend.
Thanks for accommodating my schedule today.
Much appreciated.
Most welcome, Judge.
Thank you.
The aforementioned Larry Johnson will be here at 1130 this morning and this afternoon on all of this at four o 'clock.
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