June 10, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
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| Hi, everyone. | |
| Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. | |
| Today is Wednesday, June 11, 2025. | |
| Ian Proud will be with us in just a moment. | |
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| Ian, welcome here, my dear friend, and thank you for accommodating our schedule. | |
| I know it's late at night where you are, and much appreciated. | |
| I basically want to explore your thoughts on why Britain wants war, but before we get there, Sergey Lavrov, the foreign minister of Russia, has said, we'll run the clip for you in a minute, he's 100% certain It's | |
| It's been clear for a long time, and actually the British government has been quite open about the direct support it's given to Ukrainian military operations. | |
| Just two months ago, there was a bizarre long piece in the Times, the London Times, setting out UK's military involvement in the failed 2023 campaign. | |
| What is clear is that these drone attacks recently could not have been conducted without external foreign help. | |
| I don't believe that the Ukrainians have the sophisticated capabilities to do it on their own. | |
| They got help from someone. | |
| UK has been front and center providing that help. | |
| I think Lavrov is joining the dots, but I think he's got good reason to believe that the British have been involved in some way. | |
| Chris, cut number eight. | |
| Watch this. | |
| Here's Prime Minister Lavrov two days ago in Moscow. | |
| It is obvious that | |
| the British are actually behind all those things at 100% sure. | |
| I did have to chuckle about this Anglo-Saxon or just Anglo without Saxon. | |
| Yes, that's just his academic mind. | |
| Is that accepted in Parliament, that statement? | |
| Has anyone said to Sir Keir, did you authorize this? | |
| And if so, why do you consider the consequences of Well, there's only been celebration in the UK mainstream media about what is considered to have been a spectacular, audacious attack, even though its actual strategic and tactical value was fairly limited by all accounts. | |
| So, no, don't queue up and wait for the British Parliament. | |
| To challenge the Prime Minister on the level of UK support for that, they're completely lined up with everything the UK is doing to continue the war. | |
| As we take this, it's probably about 10 o 'clock at night, London time on Wednesday evening. | |
| Are you hearing what we are hearing at four in the afternoon here in the West or in the U.S. about preparations for an American war in the U.S.? | |
| the Middle East. | |
| Yes, I am. | |
| But then, as we were discussing before coming on the show, Judge, I've been hearing this for the past several months, America is immediately on the verge of... | |
| I've never believed that, actually, to be remotely likely. | |
| Clearly, the Trump administration wants to put maximum pressure on the Iranian authorities to drive some sort of concessions out of them on their nuclear program. | |
| I see very little strategic value to the U.S. in unilaterally starting an unprovoked war against Iran for no obvious kind of end goal in mind. | |
| So I've been hearing this nonstop for some time now. | |
| We're hearing that the United States has ordered its embassy in Iraq to be evacuated, and soon others will be ordered. | |
| We're also hearing that this is just a stunt, that the orders have been issued, but it's a stunt to put pressure on the Iranians as these negotiations in Rome continue. | |
| Well, it may also be because there are credible threats of terrorist attacks against those embassies. | |
| Take your mind back to the late 1990s and the attacks on U.S. embassies in East Africa. | |
| Then it may also be because of that reason. | |
| U.S. military strikes against the Houthis over the recent months may have elevated that terrorism risk. | |
| That may also be the driver of that. | |
| I know that from your years as a diplomat stationed in Moscow that you understand the Russian mind. | |
| How do you think, well, do you think that the Russians truly believe what Foreign Minister Lavrov said, and if so, what do they do about it? | |
| nothing to gain by attacking British assets, or do they have to send some kind of a message to Sir Kier? | |
| Well, I can tell you now that the Russians absolutely believe that the And they will be planning ways to respond to that, as they have done before, including through no invasion attacks and all those cyber things that we know about very well. | |
| So they will be planning something. | |
| But I think from their perspective right now, what they can see is the Brits are backing and losing war in Ukraine. | |
| And that's actually only weakening Britain itself. | |
| Political concern is elevated about the continuance of war, which is making life harder for ordinary British people. | |
| So, I mean, I think, yes, I can imagine there will be some sort of retaliation, but right now it seems to me the Russians have the upper hand anyway in terms of the big strategic game of what's going on in Ukraine. | |
| Just to explain to me a little bit about how the government works, I mean, President Trump has denied that the U.S. was involved in this. | |
| It is well accepted here. | |
| That the Secretary of Defense knew about it and others that they didn't tell him because American assets were not involved and they wanted him to have plausible deniability. | |
| I don't know if that's true or not, but my question to you is, could MI6 have done something like this, an attack on one of the triad, one of the three means that Russia would use to deliver nuclear weapons, without an express authorization? | |
| Well, on that specific question, I don't think they could. | |
| Anything of this level and severity would need authorization from the very highest levels of government, if indeed that was the case, if Britain was involved. | |
| So yes, I don't think they could freelance and do this. | |
| I think it would have been authorized at either ministerial or prime ministerial level. | |
| I mean, could it have been authorized by Prime Minister Sunak a year ago? | |
| And they just kept it from Prime Minister Starmer? | |
| Or once the government changes, does the new government have to authorize it? | |
| I doubt that very much. | |
| I doubt that it would have been authorized 18 months ago when apparently planning started, and then the military and intelligence folk wouldn't have then told Starmer about it before it had happened. | |
| I just don't see any likelihood that that would have taken place. | |
| Okay. | |
| You have accused... | |
| I don't think you're accusing him of putting it in his pocket, but I'll let you explain what you mean by that. | |
| Well, we're funding £4.5 billion every year, a war that Ukraine is losing. | |
| At a time, we're imposing cuts on ordinary British people. | |
| There's no clear plan for what this strategy is intended to achieve. | |
| Everybody knows that Ukraine can't win. | |
| They can't push. | |
| There needs to be some sort of peaceful settlement. | |
| But Keir Starmer, he should be Klingon Keir, that he keeps carrying on, pouring billions into it, with the Parliament playing no role in offering challenge, the mainstream media totally baying like hounds, supporting him in everything that he does. | |
| And ordinary British citizens are sort of kept like idiots, starved of facts and information about what's really going on, while their frontline public services are cut. | |
| So this is utter nonsense. | |
| Clearly, we should stop this war. | |
| We should stop pouring billions into the Ukrainian money printing machine. | |
| And we should actually start spending money on British people. | |
| This clearly makes sense. | |
| You use the phrase money printing machine. | |
| Is the 4.5 billion pounds that Great Britain is giving every year to Ukraine borrowed? | |
| Or is it taxpayer dollars that they have in the bank? | |
| Well, of course, it's both. | |
| The UK has stoked up massive debt. | |
| It wants to increase defence spending even further. | |
| Rachel Reeves this week has been talking about further temporary tax increases. | |
| When a tax increase is ever temporary, I'll ask you that, Judge. | |
| So yes, there is both massive borrowing, huge monthly debt payments, and promises of further So we're getting the worst of all possible worlds in the UK. | |
| And nobody is challenging the ridiculous spending on a war that Ukraine is losing and will lose. | |
| Are these appropriations authorized by a vote in Parliament after a debate, or is this discretionary with the Prime Minister? | |
| Well, the government of the day sets the budget plans. | |
| It announces its budget. | |
| There's a debate in the House about the budget, you know, where the opposition party offers a challenge and then the government carries on. | |
| But the opposition is so weak at the moment that it's unable to offer much challenge. | |
| And in any case, there's no challenge on the wasteful spending in Ukraine. | |
| I wish that George Galloway were still in Parliament and he could at least stand up on the back benches and challenge the Prime Minister the way he did to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. | |
| So I was going to ask you why Britain wants war, but I think you would correct me and say, Judge, ask the question why the British government wants war. | |
| Do the British people want war? | |
| Do the British people go to bed at night fearing a Russian invasion? | |
| Well, nobody's ever asked them, Judge. | |
| You know, when I speak to ordinary British people in the village out in the rolling Hampshire countryside where I live, most people are curious about Russia. | |
| How have we ended up in this situation? | |
| They want to find out because they get force-fed propaganda from the state-owned. | |
| In the UK, people feel starved of the truth. | |
| So when I speak to people, I find people remarkably open-minded to make sense of what's going on and they're prepared to consider the idea that actually maybe it's us that are making the mistakes here and it isn't all entirely Russia's fault. | |
| So that's the impression I get. | |
| This is entirely driven by the British government and the blob on which it sits and this complete alignment between the media and The political establishment allows the government to sail forth completely unhindered by the massive weight of the bullion of debt that's weighing its ship down and threatening to sink it. | |
| Are there domestic political reasons why the British government wants war? | |
| Is there about to be a vote of no confidence? | |
| Does he think this will stave it off? | |
| No, he has a vast majority. | |
| I suspect it's a majority that he may lose, even if he doesn't lose power in the next election. | |
| No, there is no political imperative domestically in the UK for us to continue to fund a war that Ukraine is going to lose. | |
| The problem is that we invested in Ukraine winning, and when Ukraine loses, we have to actually explain to our electorates why we promised them for so long that Ukraine would win. | |
| That makes it a far better political bet than to kick the hot can down the road, rather face the terrible reality of defeat, and tell the British public that we messed up. | |
| This is digging a hole deeper and deeper. | |
| Yes. | |
| Almost literally. | |
| Yes, exactly. | |
| And actually, if you take it a step further, for the Europeans, they want to kick the can down the road as well, because actually when the war stops, then they have to face the even more terrible prospect of admitting Ukraine into the European Union at an enormous cost, which they can't afford. | |
| Oh, good Lord. | |
| Would the EU embrace? | |
| A raggedy, crushed shadow of its former self, Ukraine, in the European Union? | |
| Well, they've been saying that they will. | |
| They've been saying there will be accelerated, turbocharged membership. | |
| But hold on a minute. | |
| A new Polish person has been elected. | |
| He recognizes that his country will lose billions in yearly EU subsidies that will all go to Ukraine in the event of Ukraine joining. | |
| And he said, well, let's just wait a minute. | |
| Maybe this isn't such a good idea after all. | |
| Hungary has been saying this for some years. | |
| Does it require a unanimous vote? | |
| the presidents of hungary and poland just stop it on their own every stage of the negotiations require unanimity among member states yes okay okay um Can the EU absorb Ukraine, or would the cost be prohibitive? | |
| It cannot. | |
| It cannot on the current terms of membership with the same level of subsidies that other members get. | |
| Ukraine would account for one quarter of total EU agricultural land that would completely throw up into the air the subsidy system. | |
| That's even before you get into the subsidies for building motorways and that sort of thing. | |
| France would veto that because they're the biggest beneficiary of agricultural subsidies. | |
| Poland would. | |
| That then creates the other option of coming in as a second-class citizen. | |
| You know, in a country with an army of one million citizens joining and not actually getting the economic benefits that they were promised, that doesn't really seem a very good idea either. | |
| Two of our regular guests, both with military backgrounds, have referred to Chancellor Frederick Mertz as the most dangerous German Chancellor since Adolf Hitler himself. | |
| Do you agree with that? | |
| Well, apparently he does have some in his relatives Nazi associations in some way, but I think he's trying to position himself as the new tough kid on the block. | |
| He said that gloves off in terms of the distance of cruise missiles used in Russia, he had to vote back on that. | |
| He promised to give Ukraine support, but when Zelensky turned up in Berlin, he said, well, actually... | |
| So the problem is all this bluster and rhetoric, like, frankly, every European leader before him, he isn't matching up with actual deeds. | |
| And the problem long term is actually if France at some point decides to leave the European Union, I'm not saying necessarily it will in the short term, but the way things are going, it does seem likely over the next decade, you're going to get Germany as by far the biggest state in Europe. | |
| Which poses all sorts of bigger challenges for obvious reasons related to that country's history. | |
| Where is Chancellor Mertz on the American destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines? | |
| Well, the Europeans now have said these pipelines will never again be reopened. | |
| Why? | |
| Because they hate all things Russian, even cheap natural gas. | |
| Yes, even cheap natural gas, even good living standards for their citizens. | |
| They hate that too. | |
| But they're buying expensive Russian liquefied gas at the same time they're not having piped gas. | |
| Judge, none of this makes any economic war. | |
| But these guys are bought into this narrative for so long that the cost of them stepping back from, you know, these positions is too high and they'll go on until, you know, they're burned by the flames. | |
| What ever came of that meeting on the train with Prime Minister Starmer, President Macron, Chancellor Scholz? | |
| I guess there was a train ride. | |
| On the co-carriage. | |
| Maybe in Paris, but I guess it was a train ride to Kiev. | |
| Yeah, the co-carriage to Kiev. | |
| Yeah, I mean, that's just like the standard. | |
| But I mean, did anything in terms of positive public policy come of that, or was it just a PR stunt? | |
| Well, there has been no positive public policy on Ukraine. | |
| We are failing, and every time they show up, it's to say that we are winning when clearly we're not winning. | |
| So yes, every time they turn up in their fortified train carriage, that is exactly the purpose. | |
| There is no other strategic benefit from these, you know, PR stunts whatsoever. | |
| Wow. | |
| Is Russia, excuse me, is France as warmongering as the Starmer government? | |
| I don't think anybody's quite as warmongering as the Starmer government. | |
| I think Mertz may be second, Macron may be third. | |
| But I mean, between the three of them, there seems to be no deviation from the line that we should, you know, support Zelensky until he kills the last. | |
| You know, Ukrainian. | |
| And in fact, they so hate Trump and his attempt to kind of bring about a negotiated settlement that if anything, I think that has actually hardened the European position on Ukraine because they don't want Trump to have swept in and delivered a spectacular, successful world peace. | |
| Unbelievable. | |
| Ian Proud, thank you very much, my dear friend. | |
| Thank you for the great Substack articles that you keep sending us. | |
| They're absolutely fascinating. | |
| And thank you. | |
| I know it's late at night, as I said earlier. | |
| Thank you for the time you've spent. | |
| All the best to you, my friend. | |
| We'll see you again soon. | |
| Sure. | |
| Bye-bye. | |
| We have an interesting and fascinating day for you tomorrow, Thursday, at noon Eastern. | |
| Alistair Crook. | |
| At 1 o 'clock, Professor Glenn Deason. | |
| At 2 o 'clock, Professor Jeffrey Sachs. | |
| At 3 o'clock, Professor John Mearsheimer. | |
| At 4 o'clock, Professor... | |
| At 4 o 'clock, Max Blumenthal. |
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