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July 11, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
22:30
[SECIAL] LIVE from Brazil : Pepe Escobar : Why Trump Fears BRICS.
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Time Text
Ukraine Weapons Debate 00:07:59
Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Friday, July 11th, 2025, joining us from São Paulo, Brazil, our dear friend and comrade in arms and defender of human freedom, Pepe Escobar.
Pepe, welcome, my dear friend.
Thank you for taking the pleasure of traveling to join us.
I want to talk to you a great deal about BRICS.
You've spent a week with the BRICS hierarchy and you have much to report to us.
But before we get to that.
It now appears from comments made by Defense Secretary Hegseth and President Trump that President Trump is actually in.
increasing the flow of military aid to Ukraine.
How is that viewed by the Kremlin?
Well, Judge, they had no illusions from the start.
From the start, basically they were saying, okay, let's give them the benefit of the doubt.
Let's see what happens in the first few months.
It has come to this.
because the famous I'll solve the proxy war in Ukraine with a phone call in 24 hours or whatever other gimmick obviously didn't work because Trump was never ready to address the root causes of the war in Ukraine.
So now the war will go on in a forever war mode.
Obviously the Europeans buy American weapons for exorbitant prices, of course.
Theoretically the Europeans in the vanguard of weaponizing Ukraine, but of course with the US leading from behind.
Is this going to change Vladimir Putin's strategy, his military strategy one iota?
Of course not.
Of course not.
Because the Russian military strategy was set three years and five months ago.
It's not going to change.
What's going to change is when Russia will stop, how, and the conditions, of course, for total capitulation of Kiev.
That's it.
These are the variables.
and the only ones who know these variables are Vladimir Putin, maybe some in the Ministry of Defense, but that's not guaranteed, and the Security Council.
the security council and maybe not all of them in the security council you uh travel the world as we all know uh you're in brazil now about which more uh in a minute is the perception the pulse of the people you talk to you talk to regular people you talk to elites you talk to government people politicians academics is there such a thing as the collective pulse and if there is Is it now,
is Ukraine now Donald Trump's war?
Yes, it is, Judge.
And this was part of the discussions in Rio, even a last week before the start of BRICS.
BRICS started last Sunday, but Sunday and Monday.
Before that, there were lots of meetings, and we especially had lots of meetings with Russians, Chinese, Russian policymakers, Chinese academics, a lot of people from Africa as well.
And of course, whenever the subject of Ukraine came up, they understand Ukraine for what it is, a proxy war by the US against Russia and China, ultimately, of course.
They also understand West Asia as a war against Iran and also a proxy war against Russia and China as well and they see the American forever wars as wars against BRICS as a whole.
There's an overarching theme to all these discussions.
The Empire of Chaos, the ruling elites of the U.S. and the current circus ringmaster, they finally realized that BRICS is an existential threat to unilateral domination.
Used to be derided or dismissed in Washington as a talk shop.
No, now BRICS is at the center of a change in international relations.
Okay, I have one more question on Ukraine and then I'm going to unleash you on bricks.
Chris has put together some clips of President Trump making statements on aid to Ukraine.
I can't imagine Vladimir Putin talking like this, but watch these cuts.
There's about three of them all together, back to back to back.
Tell me how you think the Kremlin views this.
Chris, cut number 11.
Are you planning to send more weapons to Ukraine?
We're going to send some more weapons.
We have to.
They have to be able to defend themselves they're getting hit very hard now they're getting hit very hard we're gonna have to send more weapons you know defensive weapons primarily Mr. President, you're sending more weapons to Ukraine as you said last night.
Last week the Pentagon paused some shipments of weapons to Ukraine.
Did you approve of that?
We want to put defensive weapons because Putin is not he's not treating human beings right.
He's killing too many people.
So we're sending some defensive weapons to Ukraine and I've approved that.
So who ordered the pause last week?
I don't know.
Why didn't you tell me?
Sir, yesterday you said that you were not sure who ordered the munitions halted to Ukraine.
Have you since been able to figure that out?
Well, I haven't thought about it because we're looking at Ukraine right now and munitions, but I have not gone into it.
What does it say that such a big decision could be made inside your government without you knowing?
I would know.
If a decision was made, I will know.
I'll be the first to know.
In fact, most likely I'd give the order, but I haven't done that yet.
I mean, what does the Kremlin do behind sides shaking their heads after having that?
I haven't thought about it.
I don't know who ordered it, but if it had been ordered, I would know, but I didn't know.
This is a non-sequatur of the highest sort.
Exactly.
It's beyond clownish.
And it proves a cognitive dissonance absolutely off the charts at the highest excellence of the American administration.
Well, the Russians, because they are such rational actors, once again, as they proved in Briggs last week, they just observed that they are puzzled, they are amused, they shake their heads, and they continue to do what they do.
Which is their advance towards the West in Ukraine.
All right.
I misspoke.
I have one more question before I unleash you on the Briggs.
What is the view of the Kremlin, and what is the view of Briggs of 1911
Bypassing SWIFT: New Payment Models 00:05:46
And the main points, in fact, one of the main points was the language to condemn the attack on Iran.
From the beginning, they had already all of them, all ten, and this was later sent to the other ten partners as well, they agreed on the language on Gaza.
which is unrestricted condemnation, which coming from a multilateral organization is pretty, pretty serious, much more serious than the condemnations that came from the UN.
Tell us about the final declaration.
I understand from your communications that it addressed finance, security, and culture.
Let's start with finance.
What was agreed?
What will BRICS be doing?
can bricks do with respect to commercial transactions between and among its members the number one uh it And this was announced personally even before the start of the summit.
That was on Friday afternoon.
In fact, a day and a half before the start at the end of the BRICS business council we spent a whole day in a beautiful reconverted warehouse by the port in Rio with business people from all over the global south discussing projects etc at the end and at the end of the meet another meeting of the NDB the BRICS development bank the russian finance minister Anton Siluanov announced and
his rhetoric was quite telling.
It was precise, but it was very incisive.
He said, from now on, the NDB, the BRICS bank headquartered in Shanghai, may, he didn't say will, he said may, but in a sense that we're working towards, become the main platform to finance development projects, projects and megaprojects across the BRICS sphere by passing SWIFT.
The subtext judge of what he said is, this is de-dollarization in action.
You don't need to tell it, you don't need to say it, but this is de-dollarization in action.
And this is something that.
especially the Russians and the Chinese have been working on steadily since before the summit last year in Kazan, all over the year of 2024.
remember very well because I was in Russia for six months following that week after week and talking to the people from the BRICS business council, people from the Russian Minister of Finance as well.
This is a number of
And on top of it, we have the NDB, the BRICS Bank financing projects bypassing the US dollar as well.
So if I want to wire money to you in Moscow to pay you for the dinner that I owe you, can I do it bypassing SWIFT?
Can I do it from the US to Moscow bypassing SWIFT?
Not yet, Judge.
And there's the rub, of course.
You have to wait for the money that I owe you.
Because they are testing different models.
One of them is called Bricks Bridge.
Some people in New York, for instance, they heard about it, but not many people inside the U.S. There is a system which is coordinated by the Bank of International Settlements called M-Bridge.
What happens?
Example, the Thais want to buy oil from the Emirates.
Do they pay in their currency or the Emirates currency?
No, they pay with with this unit called mbridge so the bricks want to use this unit to all the 10 bricks members and then expand to the partners as well so this and it's uh direct automatic you don't need a currency transactions by swift sometimes they take well i remember i'm part of it sometimes when i need to to have money transfer you have to wait for five days to have the money transfer.
Can you imagine company to company and when they need to do a lot of business?
So this is another mechanism as well.
So it's what we decided to call last year, the BRICS lab.
They are testing all sorts of payment settlement models.
And sooner or later, there will be a.
critical mass that they will launch probably three or four different settlement systems and everybody breaks in the table in the partners will adopt it.
The second subject matter addressed by the declaration, I'm saving the best for last, security.
The second subject matter was culture.
What was addressed with respect to culture in the unanimous BRICS declaration?
BRICS Media Network Proposal 00:07:12
Well, this is the famous, to quote our friend, a comrade Xi Jinping, "People to people's exchanges" in Chinese terminology.
Means, for instance, there was a day before the summit.
where we had a very strong debate on media alternatives to big tech controlling narratives all over the world.
And of course, the soft power control of culture and media by the West.
So one of the proposals is let's have a BRICS-wide media network, including fact checking by BRICS members, public and private, to counteract this let's say imposition of one truth only by the West.
There was a letter that came out of it and very, very interesting.
This letter was handed out personally for a BRICS partner member, President of Cuba, Diaz Canel.
I think it was extremely relevant and enormous significance that the representative of a government that has been stigmatized and harassed by the United States government for decades, now is, let's say, the coordinate, the, the, the
For instance, three of the media that I work closely with, they made a deal in Rio, Sputnik in Russia, Guanxi in China, and Brazil 247, a portal in Brazil, the largest one, a progressive portal, to increase their cooperation.
So soon we're going to have all these new media alliances and corporations, BRICS-wide.
The BRICS nations won't be submitted to these diktats coming from big tech and from American mainstream media or Western mainstream media, which, by the way, their coverage of BRICS in Rio was absolutely pathetic.
What did the declaration say about mutual or collective security?
Very important.
BRICS is not a military alliance.
This is not explicitly detailed in the declaration, but it's part of the discussions and it was part of the very important first.
discussion in the first day in the opening day in the morning where we had the president lula opening and president putin went online uh it's a key it's an absolutely key issue because BRICS has been accused of being anti-Western.
No, the Chinese academics have a wonderful definition.
BRICS is the post-West environment.
Wow.
This is brilliant.
This means the system of international relations, geoeconomic and geopolitical, established after the end of the Second World War is dead from BRICS point of view.
And they're working to establish a new one.
The West may join or not.
It's irrelevant if the West joins or not because this high-speed train has already left the station.
So this is expressed in very diplomatic terms at the final declaration.
But in the round tables and in the business discussions, they're already on it completely.
Do these BRICS nations fear Trump's tariffs?
Yes.
Yes, yes, because which brings us to why brazil is on fire now judge since uh let's say a day and a half in fact when we were having a round table in rio on wednesday night this is when we learned in the middle of our round table about the 50 tariff and the room
sanctions start to be applied on august 1st, new markets in Africa, in Southeast Asia, Central Asia, etc.
But this is a complicated process.
And if that happens, that will raise the price of orange juice in the U.S. because it depletes the supply.
Yes.
Yes.
Is there a perception in Brazil that the Trump is doing this because of the Bolsonaro trial, as Trump stated, which makes the tariff illegal under American law because he can only do it for economic reasons, not political reasons?
Absolutely correct, Judge.
Illegal under American law and under international law as well.
Very, very important.
Considering the immensely significance that the United States has a trade surplus with Brazil.
For the past 15 years, if I'm not mistaken, please correct me.
It's over $400 billion U.S. surplus in the trade balance between the U.S. and Brazil.
So this has nothing to do with trade, commerce or trade.
geoeconomics this is a plot to interfere directly in a third country's internal domestic presidential race which is going to be in brazil next year with the trump administration and trump himself personally aligned with his ally Bolsonaro and the Bolsonaro gang, the whole family, or whoever they manage to appoint.
And tell me that Trump has a tough character on his hands in President Lula.
Yes, because Lula is very good at the fight, Judge.
Lula is a fighter.
He's an excellent articulator.
He never runs out of a fight, even in his old age.
And he's already, what he said so far is very measured.
But he said, look, basically the Brazilian reaction was a return to sender reaction.
He's going to send this letter.
Okay, we're not interested in your letter.
Take it back.
If you start applying your sanctions, there's going to be reciprocity.
Masterminds of BRICS 00:01:44
We're going to impose 50% on you as well.
Understood.
But before I go, what a role at BRICS was played by our mutual friend, the greatest diplomat on the planet, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.
From the beginning, Judge Lavrov is one of the, let's say, masterminds in a good sense of BRICS.
Creation of BRICS, expansion of BRICS and the role of BRICS today as, let's say, overtaking every red line imposed by the empire.
BRICS is now at the center of the whole discussion about reforming the system of international relations.
And this was proved by the summit in Rio, even if before many of us, we had low expectations for a number of reasons.
But at the end, after the preparatory three days and the two days of the summit, I said, wow, the Brazilians in the end delivered, not only the Brazilians, but BRICS as a whole deliver.
It's not only what's contained in the final summit declaration, but the tone of the discussions and the drive amongst all that.
Look, we have to keep the ball rolling and now it has to be fast.
Now we're going to start playing offense.
Wow.
Pepe, thank you very much for this.
I know it's an odd time of day and an odd day of the week for you, but I appreciate you spending the time with us.
It's a fascinating conversation.
I hope we can resume it next week.
Of course, definitely.
Thank you, Judge.
Thank you so much.
Safe travels, my dear friend.
Coming up at 4 o'clock today Eastern.
If you're watching us live, that's in six minutes.
The Intelligence Community Roundtable with Larry Johnson and Ray McGovern.
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