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June 17, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
28:30
Pepe Escobar : Trump and the Cult of Death.
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Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Wednesday, June 18th, 2025.
Pepe Escobar is here and will be with us in just a moment on The Serious Business of Death.
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Pepe Escobar, welcome here, my dear friend.
I know you are traveling.
You're in St. Petersburg, Russia.
We appreciate it's late in the day, very late in the day.
We appreciate very much your time with us.
Do you think the United States of America, do you think Donald Trump understands this business of death?
And how close his threats may bring death to millions in the Middle East.
Obviously not, Judge, unfortunately.
Well, instead of the business of deaths, I spent the day at the St. Petersburg Economic Forum talking and interacting with the business of life, trade, commerce, interaction.
There was even a panel on religion and economy with Buddhists.
Sufis, Jews, Orthodox Christians discussing interactions between religious spheres, economy, and the role of states in dealing with religious organizations.
It's the absolute opposite of what we are hearing from Washington.
Unfortunately, everyone here is appalled.
There are, I would say, 10,000 businessmen at this forum now.
It's absolutely packed.
And the global South is here.
It's not only Russia.
The president of Indonesia arrived late afternoon.
Southeast Asia is here.
Parts of Africa are here.
Central Asia is here.
Cuba is here.
And, of course, I'm sure you know, Judge, President Vladimir Putin.
He delivers the plenary session on Friday, and after that, there's going to be a Q&A.
Everybody is waiting for him.
Wow, I hope you got the question.
And in a minute, I'll ask you, if you do, what you will ask him.
Do world leaders and diplomats understand that Trump and Netanyahu connived to pull a trick on the whole world, pretending that the United States was negotiating with Iran, all the while helping Israel to plan and plot?
It's a surprise attack, including the assassination of the chief Iranian negotiator.
Do world leaders and diplomats understand what happened?
They do.
And here, Judge, is a microcosm because there are lots of high-ranking diplomats, former presidents, the crème de la crème of Russian business interests, Central Asian interests.
The SCO is here.
BRICS are here.
The Chinese New Silk Road represented here.
The Arctic Silk Road, which is how the Chinese define what the Russians call Northern Sea Route, which is basically a connectivity corridor in the Arctic.
Everybody is here and the connectivity corridors, which are the, what is, uh, Everybody is here discussing that.
And something I would say is extremely, extremely important.
Only a few weeks ago, the first direct train from China arrived in Tehran.
It came from Xi'an, the former Chinese.
From Xi 'an to Tehran, going through Central Asia.
And this means that this bypasses everything that is controlled by the US across Eurasia.
Strait of Malacca, etc.
So it's not an accident that we have a war only a few days later, because one of the key objectives of this war is to...
Nobody in the US has this analysis.
Nobody.
Did Trump trap Netanyahu into a plot to dismantle BRICS?
Or did Netanyahu trap Trump into a plot?
to allow Israel to expand its borders by neutering Iran.
Judge, it's the same interest.
That's a Pepe Escobar question.
I wouldn't put that to anybody else.
Yes, only you can pull that off, Judge.
Well, if it's a wag the dog, I would say this is a double wag the dog.
The fact is, this war has been planned since at least 1998, when the neocons were out of power, when they were basically peddling the clean break report, when Bibi was colluding with the neocons out of power, and then when they got to power colluding directly.
The supreme wet dream of the neocons and the ziocons and the whole Zionist axis is Iran.
Of course, after 9-11, one of the most quoted things in the history of the universe, General Wesley Clark learning at the Pentagon that it's going to be seven countries in five years.
And guess what would be the cherry on the cake?
Iran.
And now they think that they have an opening.
When I say they, it's the Zionist axis.
And that includes everybody.
Includes Bibi, includes everybody in power in Tel Aviv, and includes Donald Trump as well.
So there's no surprise.
They have extra incentives to launch this war now because of what we were discussing less than five minutes ago.
They have to prevent Eurasia integration, connectivity corridors, logistics, the International North-South Transportation Corridor, which I had the pleasure to travel last month.
I went from the Caspian to the Persian Gulf, tracking the corridor inside Eurasia.
It's one of the most important geoeconomic projects of the 21st century, as important as the Arctic Silk Road.
One of the guys today at the panel in St. Petersburg, he said, For Russia to build the Arctic, the northern route in the Arctic, this is equivalent to the conquest of space in the 50s and 60s.
It's that serious for Russia.
So from the point of view of the U.S., they have to prevent this integration.
And Iran is right.
Geography is destiny, really.
You look at the map, Iran is at the center of everything.
And the Chinese, now they...
Yesterday, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Rybakov warned the United States against attacking Iran.
I would assume that that is the official position of the Russian government if it came from Mr. Ryabkov.
It is, Judge.
And Ryabkov is going to be in one of the panels tomorrow.
So I'll have the chance to meet him again.
And I can even, if I have some time, you know, one or two key questions.
And Maria Zakharova, of course, spokeswoman for the Ministry of Foreign Relations.
She's a superstar all over the Global South.
This is what she said.
Today as well.
And I'll be on a panel with Maria Zakharova on Friday morning as well.
Please give her my regards.
When Larry Diante and I interviewed her boss in his residence, she could not have been nicer to us.
The mainstream media joined the Israeli euphoria on Friday over the surprise attack.
Trump denied it, then admitted it.
He obviously didn't tell Rubio he was about to admit it.
Secretary Rubio, the de facto Secretary of State, excuse me, the de jure Secretary of State, said we didn't know anything about it, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
How long did that euphoria last?
48 hours, to be more or less exact, because it took...
By the way, this is a very sensitive information in Russia, with help from Russian technicians to get their grid back together.
And then they changed completely their approach from strategic patience to, okay, let's start advancing.
No concessions anymore, and we're not going to take it anymore lying down.
It took them 48 hours to do that.
And after their first response, the Americas and the Israelis started to see that things had changed.
And it's now a lethal mix of calculated attacks, psychological war, it's psyops all the time.
Ah, we're going to launch maybe 200 missiles.
And then they launch five.
And then the Israelis, okay, what are they going to do next?
They're going to launch 50?
No, they launch 20. And then when nobody's expecting, they launch 50. So the other side is completely discombobulated, as our Tibetan friends like to say it.
And on top of that, everybody knows that Israel has interceptors maybe for the next two weeks, perhaps even less.
And very, very important, they don't have a functional port at the moment.
And their airport is basically not.
So this is what the Iranians are doing.
They're going for the nodes, and the nodes that really hurt.
Not to mention what they destroyed.
They destroyed Rafael, the biggest weapons maker and organizer and conceptualizer in Israel.
The Weisman Institute, which was a sort of MIT in Israel.
It's getting pretty dire, the situation, and that counts.
This adds to the calculation by Donald Trump, of course, because in a matter of two weeks, Israel may be completely exhausted.
Don, President Trump just had a Q&A in the Oval Office during the course of which he said he's going to the war room in a little while.
This is about a minute long.
Here it is.
What contributed to that change, how you got to where you are in making your decision now?
Well, I think it started the first night.
I mean, you know, that first night was devastating.
And it really knocked the one side off, as you know.
It was a devastating, devastating evening, day.
And it pretty much proceeded that way.
I have a meeting in the war room in a little while.
Situation room, as some people call it.
So we're going to meet.
We're going to see.
We're in the midst of it.
It's a terrible thing.
I hate to see it.
I hate to see all that death.
So much death and destruction.
But death primarily is what I hate to see.
Does that mean you haven't made a decision yet on what to do?
I have ideas as to what to do, but I haven't made a final.
I like to make the final decision one second before it's due.
Because things change.
Especially with war.
Things change with war.
can go from one extreme to the other.
There was no reason for this to be a war.
There was no reason for Russia, Ukraine.
A lot of wars there was no reason for.
You look right up there.
I don't know.
I see the Declaration of Independence.
And I say, I wonder if the Civil War always seemed to me maybe that could have been solved without losing 600,000 plus people.
I don't know what the Declaration of Independence has to do with the Civil War.
Exactly.
And there's no reason for Russia and Ukraine, of course.
It just came out of the sky.
I don't think he understands what happened in the '90s.
I don't think he understands what happened in '04.
I don't think he understands what happened in '14.
I don't think he remembers the '20s CIA.
The facilities that were built in Ukraine during his administration.
I don't think he remembers the hundreds of billions of military equipment he sent to Ukraine during his first term there.
There's no sense trying to get into his head.
It's frustrating.
There either isn't much there or he's a fantastic actor.
one or the other.
And in Russia, it's tricky because some sectors are But more and more among the intel agencies, especially saying, of course not.
And there's, I would say, fierce dialogue on, look, what he did to Iran, he's going to do to us, Russia.
And this is now discussed openly in Moscow and here.
I heard some echoes today here in St. Petersburg, from think tanks mostly.
How does the Kremlin view Trump the man?
Is he trustworthy?
Do they believe anything he says?
Are these phone calls between him and President Putin just a charade, or are they meaningful conversations from the Kremlin's perspective?
Judge, we don't know what Putin personally thinks of Trump, or if he actually believes that these phone calls, some of them, they actually didn't take place, by the way.
The last one, the Kremlin said, was figuratively, which was a very elegant way to say no.
It happened only in Trump's mind.
On Trump's birthday, which was last Saturday, the Kremlin says that.
Exactly.
Coming from Peskov, we can ask Peskov the same question on Friday again, but this is what he said.
It's on Russian media.
It's not on American media.
What will you ask President Putin if he opens up the dialogue to Q&A and he points to you?
And I'm sure he knows you.
I'm sure he will point to you.
It's a lottery, George.
It's very hard.
And Peskov selects the people who...
We both know that.
But if you are...
She knows you and she knows exactly.
If you are Not that that's going to change her mind or the procedures, but if you are selected, if Are you aware that the double game employed by Trump vis-a-vis Iran is being replicated against Russia from the beginning?
It would be, of course, much more polite than that.
This is the blunt version.
Because this is the question that I posed to some of my friends today.
In fact, in some of the panels in the sidelines when we were talking about Iran.
And some of them said, look, you have no idea.
Everybody is asking this question now in FSB, SVR, at the Security Council as well.
So there are no illusions anymore.
It's like putting for some...
We know it's impossible.
And on top of it, when you have a key ally of both Russia and China delivered an ultimatum by the President of the United States, it's my deal or I'm going to bomb you.
They know that this could happen in the future with both of them as well.
Ayatollah Khamenei's answer, Judge, just a second.
Ayatollah Khamenei's answer was, wow, Khamenei is a very, very subtle operator.
He talks by metaphors, usually.
He said, we will not surrender, period.
And this 90 million Iranians, which, by the way, Ted Cruz have no...
Wait till you see the rest of the interview with my friend and former colleague, Tucker Carlson.
The cruise is demolished and he's being slaughtered in social media.
Two things.
One is we frequently conduct polls amongst those who are watching.
And the poll we're asking about during this program is the But I want to switch gears before we leave, because we haven't talked about this all week.
What is the status of things in Ukraine?
The war is still going on.
Is Ukraine finally on its last legs?
How is the war in Ukraine viewed by all your buddies in St. Petersburg?
I'm glad that you asked this question, Judge, because one of my commander friends in Donbass, he was at the forum today.
And tomorrow morning, we're going to have a bombshell, by the way.
Okay, I can announce the bombshell for you firsthand.
The DPR, Donbass, Donetsk People's Republic, is going to sign 10 deals with China tomorrow morning here in St. Petersburg.
The Chinese will start to invest directly in Donbass.
This is enormous.
And, of course, these commanders and some ex-commanders who are now part of the Donbass administration, especially Donetsk administration, they said, look, it is progressing according to what we saw by the end of winter.
We are now in Dnipro, Petrovsk, like we thought we were going to be in summer, and it's progressing very, very fast.
And the front is collapsing steadily.
What is collapsing steadily?
Yes.
I didn't hear the word you used.
I'm sorry.
The front lines, George.
The front lines.
over 1,000 kilometer long front lines, in fact.
This does not mean that we're going to have...
No.
The war of attrition, Russian style, is impeccable.
It's exactly what they want.
And now, even more, because they know that the war will be decided in the battlefield and all this kabuki of ceasefire negotiations with the Americas, etc., is just a show.
And Iran proved to them that it's just a show.
Well, we have an answer on the poll from...
Will Russia get involved on behalf of Iran if Trump continues U.S. involvement?
Yes, 64%.
No 18%, undecided 17%.
That's a significant feeling amongst the pro-peace, anti-war folks that are your fans and that watch this show.
What do you think?
Will Russia get involved?
Will they do anything more than provide air defense?
Will they provide offensive weaponry?
Will Russia attack Netanyahu in return for Mossad participating in the attack on the four Russian air bases?
This is an immensely complex and very sensitive discussion to have in Moscow and in St. Petersburg.
I'm going to try to force it a little bit more tomorrow and Friday, but my interlocutors say, look, you won't get a public answer to your questions.
But very important, Judge, and for our audience, it's very, very important.
There was active Russian help in electronic warfare to put the Iranian grid back together in those first 10 hours.
But I cannot write that.
I have to be very, very careful.
So I can tell you.
I can go live.
That is, as Tucker Carlson said to Senator Cruz when he said, we bombed Iran.
That is breaking news.
You're making news.
There was active Russian help on the ground putting together the grids that were attacked by the Israelis in the first day of the attack.
But the Russians prefer not to advertise it.
Very discreet.
Just like the Chinese, there are Pakistani trucks with Chinese hardware help crossing Balochistan from Pakistani Balochistan.
Will the Pakistanis help defend Iran by attacking Israel?
They already offered help.
But a very important element, Judge, the Persians are extremely proud.
Basically, they are saying, We can do this by ourselves.
If we need you, we will call you.
This is what they told, essentially, Beijing and Moscow.
And we had confirmation from the Iranian side and from the Russian side, silence, basically saying, yes, that's it.
I'm going to guess you don't want to answer this.
Are we close to World War III?
No.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
This is...
This is like the worst possible modern version of a Greek tragedy.
No.
But the problem, once again, we have a total irrational system on one side and very rational actors on the other side.
The other side is here, Eurasia.
And we have three top rational actors, the Iranians, the Russians, and the Chinese.
I had a wonderful conversation with a...
I asked him directly, does China understand that they may be next in line in the near future?
He says, of course.
In Beijing, especially because Iran is an ally and we made a deal with them for 20 years worth $400 billion energy for infrastructure.
And if they are attacked, our deal collapses.
And for us, it's a matter of national security if this thing collapses.
So this is immensely serious.
But obviously, we cannot expect Beijing and Moscow to say, no, we are going to defend Iran against everything.
No, it doesn't work like this.
It's Chinese style.
Made in the shade.
Got it.
Got it.
It's late at night where you are.
We've kept you up.
You rushed to be there.
We are deeply, deeply and profoundly grateful, my dear friend.
My pleasure.
Thank you so much.
We hope you can come to us again from St. Petersburg, depending upon your availability and the events as warranted.
But the least we'll do is look forward to seeing you next week.
Thank you, Pepe.
Judge, if Putin says something absolutely scary, I'll call Chris.
I'll call you guys, definitely.
And we'll get you on.
Thank you, Pepe.
All the best.
Thank you.
All the best.
Thank you so much.
Bye-bye.
Great man and the character.
Coming tomorrow, Thursday, at 8 in the morning, Colonel Tony Schaefer.
What's been going on in Ukraine while all eyes have been on Israel and Iran?
At 11 in the morning, Colonel Douglas McGregor.
At one in the afternoon, Professor Glenn Beeson.
At two in the afternoon, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson.
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