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June 9, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
23:01
Aaron Maté : Lies the Zionists Teach.
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Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Monday, June 9th, 2025.
Aaron Maté joins us in just a few moments, but first this.
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Aaron Maté, thank you, my dear friend, for joining us today.
Thanks for accommodating my schedule, as always.
What is your latest understanding of the drone attacks on Russia?
I mean, who orchestrated them?
What was their military purpose?
Who benefited by it?
The purpose to me was for Ukraine to help try to convince its Western sponsors that it's still in this fight and that Ukraine should get even more U.S. military support on top of the tens of billions of dollars that it's already gotten.
And you can see why.
The whole point of the Ukraine proxy war was to weaken Russia.
It was to take a strategic adversary off the table, as Keith Kellogg, Trump's envoy to Ukraine, once described it in glowing terms a few years ago.
And you can understand why then Ukraine felt as if doing something like this, going after Russia's nuclear arsenal, would convince people in Washington to hand over more money and more support and impose more sanctions.
The problem they face is that Trump is not an ideological zealot when it comes to this issue, unlike Joe Biden.
The president of Brazil, Lula, just recently disclosed that in speaking to Joe Biden, his impression was that Biden wanted to destroy Russia.
And that's the goal that Ukraine has been tasked to help fulfill.
But in Trump, there's someone who's not on board with this, clearly.
You can see that from Trump's reaction to this.
So this was Ukraine's goal.
This was planned a long time ago.
I would be surprised if members of the Biden administration were not aware of this operation, given how integral U.S. planning and military support has been to Ukraine's operation.
I don't know if anybody in the Trump camp knew, but from Ukraine's point of view, this was meant to convince its Western sponsors that it can do what it's been tasked to do.
I just don't think with Trump it's going to work because Trump doesn't share that same ideological commitment.
it.
I mean, if this was planned by MI6, as Alistair Crook claims, and maybe you disagree with this, may they're wedded at the hip to CIA and to Mossad and to the Ukrainian intel.
I mean, isn't it more likely than not that someone somewhere, I'll use a governance phrase, in the bowels of the CIA knew about this, and it just didn't go up the food chain?
I think it's a fair bet that people in the U.S. and U.K. governments knew about this, but all we can do is speculate, unless anybody has inside knowledge.
It's all speculation.
Given the scale of U.S. and U.K. involvement in Ukraine, it's fair to speculate that...
And it's quite plausible to me that especially something like this was kept from people in the Trump administration who came to office vowing to end the war.
So given that the planning was admittedly done since before Trump took office, to me, I wouldn't be surprised if people in the Trump camp and the Trump administration did not know about this.
Because if you're Ukraine especially, you want to keep something like this.
This operation under wraps.
So all I can do is speculate.
I understand why people think that this was designed not in Ukraine but elsewhere, but we don't know for sure.
And certainly I think it's quite plausible that this was kept from people in the Trump administration who were vowing to end the war.
I asked Alistair Crook this morning who is running U.S. foreign policy.
I'm going to play the clip.
It's only about 20 seconds long.
I would like you to pay careful attention to the last two words.
He's terrified of the Senate, with 80% of the Senate opposed either to the Iran deal or to his deal normalization with Russia and want an escalation.
This is very dangerous.
So who's in charge of foreign policy?
The Russians may be asking himself.
Well, not President Trump.
But it will be split up between the deep state, the Congress, and Israel.
And Israel.
Fair analysis?
Yeah, I think we're all talking about the same forces here.
There's an entrenched bureaucracy and powerful, wealthy lobbyists and billionaires who basically control policy.
And they have a huge hand in what happens.
but they're not the final say.
I mean, Trump has shown at times a willingness to defend And he might do that still on Iran.
It's not likely, but it's possible.
But yeah, I mean, overall, there's an entrenched bureaucracy and there's entrenched powerful interests.
And certainly the Israel lobby is a major part of that.
And what happens if Trump goes along with an agreement with Iran?
It wouldn't be a treaty.
It would be some sort of an executive agreement like the one that he canceled.
Which allows a minimal amount of uranium enrichment for civilian purposes.
What can Netanyahu and what can Lindsey Graham do about that?
Well, that's a great question because they will try to do something because they don't want to see normalized relations with Iran because Iran's a powerful country and Iran will not accept Israel until Israel accepts the rights of Palestinians, which Israel refuses to do.
And so they'll find ways to sabotage Iran through other means, going after what's left of Iran's allies, supporting efforts to foment regime change.
They'll do what they can if Trump makes a deal with Iran.
Just as what happened last time, they got Trump to pull out of the Iran nuclear deal.
That was an example of initially a president defying the Israel lobby, defying pro-Israel forces in Congress from both parties, including Chuck.
But certainly, if Trump goes ahead and does the right thing and makes a deal with Iran, people like Lindsey Graham and Benjamin Netanyahu will be cooking up whatever they can to try to put the two countries back on a war footing.
Alistair Crook seems to think that this Concoction that Lindsey Graham has come up with, which he says has 80 co-sponsors, obviously enough to override a presidential veto, at least in the Senate, to impose more severe sanctions on Russia, which I guess would be secondary sanctions because we've sanctioned just about everything, he
seems to feel that that is some sort of a threat to Trump, some sort of a...
Do you agree?
Well, it certainly will be a test of whether Trump is willing to exert control over foreign policy, which is supposed to be the domain of the president.
And from what I've heard, he is.
People I know on Capitol have said that Trump is pushing back on Lindsey Graham and is basically telling Lindsey Graham to back down.
And it's been reported, too, that Trump is basically asking for authority under Lindsey Graham's bill to basically ignore what Lindsey Graham is demanding, which is impose secondary sanctions on countries that do business with Russia.
And for good reason, because this would essentially make diplomacy with Russia impossible, and it would ensure that the war in Ukraine continues without interruption.
But that's the test that Donald Trump faces.
Is he willing to actually...
We'll see.
If he lets them pass this bill and doesn't veto it, and he lets them basically control whether or not he can engage in diplomacy with Russia, then he'll have failed that test.
It failed it dramatically.
It may even be constitutional implications here.
If the Senate tries to intrude into his...
I've called him authoritarian and I'm defending him, but he does have certain legitimate prerogatives under the Constitution, one of which is foreign policy.
And Lindsey Graham, the Logan Act notwithstanding, seems to be trying to mold that foreign policy to his own liking.
You saw the clips of Lindsey Graham and his new buddy.
They don't agree on anything except this, Richard Blumenthal, when they were encouraging Optimistic about what?
Isn't Trump at the end of his rope on Ukraine?
These are two people, Lindsey Graham and Richard Blumenthal, who have bragged about how they're using Ukraine to bleed Russia.
Lindsey Graham was so happy that Ukraine witted his words, fight to the last person.
He said, this is the best money we've ever spent.
Richard Blumenthal said almost the exact same thing.
This is the best investment we've ever done because we're taking out a rival Russia without sacrificing any American soldiers.
So what they're really saying is this is great because Ukrainians are being used as cannon fodder on our behalf.
And that's what they want to keep going.
That's what they're trying to enlist Zelensky in continuing.
And Zelensky has an intent to do that because he himself walked away from a peace deal that could have ended all this three years ago.
And now he doesn't want to have to admit defeat, that he doesn't want to have to admit And plus he also has the traditional threat of radical ultra-nationalists threatening him if he makes peace with Russia.
So people like Lindsey Graham and Richard Blumenthal are taking advantage of that to basically continue the current strategy of sending more Ukrainians off to die, all while Russia is Like, for example, this recent attack was a hit to Russia.
It was embarrassing.
It damaged some important aircraft.
And Lindsey Graham and Richard Blumenthal love that because they don't care that the cost will simply be more dead Ukrainians.
Do you expect a humongous, An over-the-top retaliation from the Russians, or just the continued, methodical, patient, regular, systematic movement westward of their military?
I do think we are going to see, and again, this is all speculation, but this attack was so sensitive, attacking Russia's nuclear triad, that I don't see how Russia doesn't respond.
As Trump even indicated, I mean, Trump said that basically, Russia's going to have to hit back hard.
And I agree with him.
And I think he picked that up from his conversation with Putin.
So yes, I do expect a more devastating attack than the one we've seen so far.
And it's not what I'm hoping for.
I wish everybody could find a path to de-escalation at this point.
This war's gone on for, well, it's been going on since 2014.
But it really escalated when Russia invaded three years ago.
And Russia has the military advantage.
And so any escalation, I think, will only lead to a lot more suffering for Ukrainians who have suffered enough.
So unfortunately, yes, I do think we're going to see an asymmetrical response from Russia.
Here's one of the more childish analyses of the war out of the mouth of the president in the presence of the German chancellor in the Oval Office on June 5th.
Chris, cut number one.
But sometimes you see two young children fighting like crazy.
They hate each other and they're fighting in a park.
And you try and pull them apart.
They don't want to be pulled.
Sometimes you're better off letting them fight for a while and then pulling them apart.
And I gave that analogy to Putin yesterday.
I said, President, maybe you're going to have to keep fighting and suffering a lot because both sides are suffering.
Before you pull them apart.
Before they're able to be pulled apart.
But it's a pretty known analogy.
You have two kids.
They fight, fight, fight.
Sometimes you let them fight for a little while.
You see it in hockey.
You see it in sports.
The referees, let them go for a couple of seconds.
Let them go for a little while before you pull them apart.
And maybe, maybe, and I said it, and maybe that's a negative because we're saying go.
But a lot of bad blood.
There's some bad blood.
I mean, where is he going with an analogy like that?
There's a million human beings dead, and he's comparing this to two teenagers having a fight in a public park.
Yeah, and unfortunately, the two teenagers or children are not equally matched.
I mean, one's a lot bigger, and that's the case with Russia.
I think what he's really saying is...
He's willing to negotiate with Russia to address some Russian concerns, but he's not ultimately willing to stand up to people like Lindsey Graham, at least forcefully, to say, this has gone on long enough.
Yes, I know that Congress allocated all this money for the Ukraine proxy war that is still left and we're still giving them weapons, but I'm going to cut all that off and I'm going to just say...
So that's what I'm hearing from him.
He's not willing to put the political effort behind it.
Now, look, could Russia have been more accommodating to him and engage more with the terms that he put out?
I mean, the U.S. did offer to recognize Russia's annexation of Crimea.
But Putin basically said, I'm not interested in that.
He wants more.
Because from Putin's point of view, Russia has sacrificed a lot as a result of the U.S. push for NATO expansion and the sabotage of the Istanbul peace talks three years ago.
So Putin at this point now wants blood.
And I think he wants to teach the West a lesson.
And Trump is not willing to go as far as I think he could in meeting Russia.
Do you think Trump has it in him to turn off the spigot?
Remember, all those funds appropriated by the Senate are subject to the discretion of the president.
In theory, he does, but do I think he has the fortitude?
No, because ultimately, he's spent a long time saying one thing policy-wise, but not willing to actually implement it when he had the chance to.
In fact, when it comes to Russia, in his first term especially, he did the opposite of what he promised.
He talked about cooperation with Russia.
He ended up approving escalatory policies with Russia, from tearing up arms control treaties to sending weapons to Ukraine that Obama wouldn't even send.
And just like, you know, he was under a lot of pressure then.
He had the Russiagate scam surrounding him.
He's being accused of being a Russian agent.
There was nobody willing to back him up, including on the Democratic side, in support of diplomacy with Russia.
Now, though, he has more free reign, and he is moving.
He's not as bad as he was in his first term.
In fact, he's talked about brokering peace, which is better than what Joe Biden was doing.
But yeah, I don't think he quite has the fortitude to really do what it takes to end this war.
Here's what former...
Under President George W. Bush had to say, Aaron, I forgot what a neocon she is.
Listen to this and watch this.
Cut number two.
And if we had given them everything at the beginning of the war, when the Russians thought this war was going to take five days, they might have won outright.
So I would urge that if these talks are going nowhere, if Vladimir Putin is playing along, hoping that he can just keep this war, this kind of 19th century war going, that we will help the Ukrainians.
Well, first of all, let them buy the weapons with what money?
They don't have the money.
But what terrifies me is we should have given them everything they needed from the start.
What could that possibly have meant?
Does she mean nuclear weapons?
because that's the only real deterrent that Ukraine could possibly have at this point.
And what she's forgetting is that...
The same peace talks that Zelensky was refusing to engage in just before Russia invaded.
Russia basically imposed by force the diplomacy that Ukraine and the U.S. were refusing to engage in.
So that's actually what happened.
So if you want to play out Condoleezza Rice's scenario, and the U.S. had somehow given Ukraine even more weapons than it gave at the beginning, which, by the way, was a lot.
Biden rushed a lot of weapons to Ukraine even before Russia invaded.
Then what you would have seen is Russia sending in even more forces to invade Ukraine rather than the relatively smaller force that it sent in with the goal of compelling talks.
And I do think Putin thought that Ukraine would collapse.
I do think that's actually true.
I do think he had a wrong impression about how Russia would be welcomed.
And I do think he was misled or deluded there.
But in terms of what his goal was, his goal was obvious.
It was never to take over Ukraine.
It was to compel the diplomacy.
That Ukraine was refusing to engage in by openly rejecting the Minsk Accords.
And that's why there was peace talks immediately after Russia invaded, which culminated in the draft outline of the Istanbul Accords three years ago, which the U.S. and U.K. sabotaged.
And basically, had the U.S. sent in even more weapons, then probably those peace talks never would have happened, and Russia would have sent in far more forces.
And maybe at that point, the war would have ended way earlier, just not in the way that Condoleezza Rice thinks it would have.
What justification does the Israeli government give for stopping an aid ship, a boat, a sailboat, a couple of miles out to sea?
You know, I've stopped paying attention to Israeli statements because they're just so divorced from reality.
And this is a government currently engaged in mass murder, so they'll say anything to justify their actions.
But I imagine they'll put out some phony security pretext that this small aid ship Basic supplies to Gaza, some a threat to Israeli security.
And of course, they'll assert a false authority over Gaza when nobody recognizes Israel's occupation of Gaza and the West Bank.
So they have no right to stop this aid ship trying to reach Israel.
It's Palestinian territory.
And it's occupied territory.
And it's currently besieged territory.
And yeah, they'll try to paint these activists.
And they have, as just attention seekers, they've called the boat the selfie yacht, as if everyone on there is just out for attention.
When really, they're just incredibly brave, noble people trying to break a siege that is slaughtering tens of thousands of Palestinians.
Is it true that the Netanyahu regime is now arming a criminal gang inside Gaza, one that has ties to ISIS?
That is 100% correct.
Israeli officials have admitted this.
And the aim was obvious.
While claiming falsely that Hamas is looting aid and that that's why it's not getting to the people of Gaza, Israel has been paying off gangs that themselves loot the aid and create chaos, which Israel can then use to say that, oh, Hamas can't be trusted and the UN can't be trusted.
And therefore, we have to send in our own fake aid group to control the distribution of aid, which happens to be set up in ways that promote ethnic cleansing in Gaza and also leave people there to be trapped like mice and shot, as Israel repeatedly does with these fake aid distribution sites.
So, yes, it's one more plank of this just...
No surprise at all that the people that they're paying have ties to ISIS, because that's also, by the way, who Israel supported in Syria.
Literally, when fighters aligned with ISIS and Al-Qaeda were wounded, some of them were treated in Israeli hospitals and then sent back to Syria.
That's who Israel has always been tied to in that region.
Aaron Maté, thank you, my dear friend.
Thanks for letting me go back and forth on all the topics, and thanks for sharing your thoughts with us.
All the best.
We'll see you next week.
Thank you, Judge.
Of course.
Coming up later today at 4.30 this afternoon from Moscow with some fascinating observations.
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