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Aug. 8, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
26:21
Pepe Escobar : Is the US Morally Qualified to Lead?
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Hi, everyone.
Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Friday, August 8, 2025.
Pepe Escobar will be with us here in just a moment on this intriguing topic.
Is the United States of America morally qualified to lead in the world?
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Pepe Escobar, welcome here.
Welcome from Paris.
What a pleasure, my dear friend.
Thank you for accommodating my schedule.
Before we get to the potential Trump-Putin meeting about which you have some very interesting information to share, I want to ask you about a few other things.
What are Brazil, China, and Russia doing in response to Trump's secondary tariffs imposed on people who do business with Russia?
especially Brazil, China, and India, and especially President Lula in Brazil.
Lula is taking the lead.
He already talked to Modi.
He's talking to Xi Jinping.
He will talk to Putin.
and BRICS and these four are among the original BRIC.
There were four in the beginning, the original founders.
They are putting together a collective response to the Trump tariffs.
This is immensely important.
India via Modi and Zhaishankar, Foreign Ministry and other officials, they already said, look, we will continue to buy Russian oil and nobody from outside is going to dictate our policies.
The case of Brazil isilian products, but there are lots of important exemptions at the same time because there will be blowback on the U.S. It's intimately linked to a direct interference in Brazilian domestic politics.
Basically aligned with former President Bolsonaro, who runs the risk of being sent to jail for 44 years.
by the next two months.
That's the end of his trial.
This is the trial that Trump threatened that he should dismiss the charges if they want to avoid the tariffs.
I can't imagine that President Lula would consider that for more than a millisecond.
Yeah, he didn't judge.
And his response from the beginning has been extremely forceful.
Lula rediscovered one of his key themes, which was in the back burner for quite a while, sovereignty.
He says, Brazil is a sovereign country.
We won't accept interference from anybody.
And I'm not going to humiliate myself, Lula's words, to call Trump because they don't want to talk, which is true.
The White House itself already said that Trump is not seeking a phone call from Lula and he doesn't want to talk directly because the whole thing is intimately linked to I would say extreme right to put it very diplomatic interests in Brazil extremely conservative interests in Brazil,
the fact that Brazil should always become a colony, it cannot be allowed to be a sovereign power, not only in South America and Latin America, but in the global South, and a personal animosity between Trump and Lula.
From Trump's side, not from Lula's side, Lula is the ultimate articulator.
Lula talks to everybody all across the planet.
What are the products that are now going to be increased just generally by 50% if they make it to the U.S.?
Among them, very important, coffee and meat.
Brazil exports a lot of coffee and meat to the US.
Among the exemptions, we have FFTA.
So a lot of exemptions, very, very important.
And of course, the Americans are looking at Brazil's immense rare earth potential.
And Lula has already said, no, rare earth is ours, and we're going to draw new legislation to protect our rare earth deposits.
So the hybrid war by the Trump administration against Brazil has several different levels.
It's much more complex than the trade tariff war against China or even the direct slapping of tariffs on India.
What did you say a few minutes ago about Brazil as a colony?
Of course, it once was a colony in Portugal, probably 200 years ago.
But does Brazil use Brazil as an American colony?
Yes.
And I say that not exactly metaphorically.
Metaphorically, of course, but in terms of having potential.
I don't know if I'm freezing or if Pepe froze.
All right, you're back.
I'm back?
Okay.
Yes.
My question was, explain your use of the word colony.
Does Brazil believe that the Americans treat it as if And this applies to Brazil and everybody else in Latin America.
But Brazil is, okay, straight to the point, the superpower of Latin America and one of the superpowers of the global South.
And of course, Monroe doctrine still applies to Latin America very, very well.
And Brazil under a progressive president like Lula, with his past, and now that he's discovering that he's got his mojo back, like, you know, all of us who have followed Lula for decades, we can see when he's, you know, at the top of his game and now he's back at the top of his game because he saw the multi-layered attack on Brazilian sovereignty, trade, commerce, relations, etc.
as an attack on the nation of Brazil.
And this is how most Brazilians.
street level the brazilian street let's put it this is how they are interpreting at the same time the fifth columnists are very important they're threatening to block congress for instance congress is basically a nest of fifth columnists in brazil it's an extremely corrupt congress and against brazilian national interest.
So this game, Trump administration Brazil is immensely complex and if Bolsonaro is actually thrown in jail in two months or so, wow, all bets are off.
Is the trial against him fair and is the evidence of his guilt substantial?
Yes, the evidence is substantial.
Audios, documents, what he's been saying, what the family said, what close let's say cronies said and the way they acted.
Yes, it is quite substantial.
And the Brazilian judiciary, for all its faults, is an independent judiciary and this is something that trump administration and the people around trump 2.0 simply cannot admit because after all one of their cronies is running the risk of disappearing he's already he's under he's already under house arrest and we're going to have a result in probably two two months or so
it's certain that he's going to be convicted could be from 10 12 to 44 before we get to uh trump and putin and the issues around their meeting you wrote recently uh of some surreptitious activity by the cia and mi6 looking to manufacture wars against china sort of a ukraine 2.0 can you tell us about this please well cia
mi6 in terms of opening new fronts against russia fulfilled at least four or five different fronts very very serious from the baltics to the black sea to the south caucasus to central asia and in terms of China, later on, the number one possibility would be a false flag involving Taiwan.
There's not much they can do in the South China Sea because ASEAN as a whole, the 10 members of ASEAN, they are very much aware that the Americas could provoke something in the South China Sea.
So this would be Plan B or Plan C. Plan A is still Taiwan, using Taiwan for some sort of false flag.
Well, This, the big picture for this is the hybrid and in many aspects also hot war against the top bricks.
And all the top are the top four and if we use iran as well the top five are under direct attack by the trump administration so this is only going to get worse in terms of the the chinese expectation is that they don't think anything is going to happen in the immediate future but they are paying close attention to anything that might involve some sort of not a deal,
but some sort of understanding between Trump 2.0 and Putin vis-à-vis Ukraine, because then they will know that Trump 2.0 will be, will have.
We have much more of a freer game to start acting against Chinese interests.
No illusions in Moscow or in Beijing, Judge, as there are no illusions in Brasilia or even in Delhi.
This week, President Trump signed an executive order.
You can't make this stuff up, declaring Russia as a material threat to the national security of the United States.
Of course, it is the other way around.
The United States is a material threat to the national security of Russia.
Exhibit one is General Donahue threatening to invade Kaliningrad?
Why would Putin meet with Trump under those circumstances?
This is the number one question, Judge.
Absolutely.
I wanted to get into it because I would like to stress that the only, only sentence so far that cuts to the chase in terms of a possible Trump-Putin meeting is by Ushakov.
a direct Trump advisor who said two days ago, very, very simple, we received finally an acceptable offer from the Americans.
This is the only thing that we really know.
Everything else is speculation.
This means that the Trump administration via Whitkov actually offered something that Putin and the Russian Security Council said, okay, let's study this proposition.
This is why we are.
It doesn't mean there's going to be a deal.
It means that they are studying Trump's offer.
That's extremely important.
So this is an offer to end the special military operation or an offer for Putin and Trump to meet?
Exactly.
Basically, Judge, we don't know the terms.
And obviously there have been less than zero leaks from the Kremlin on the terms of this American offer.
Nobody can tell you that they know.
I would say there are two guys who know because they were in the room.
Ushakov, who gave a very brief interview where he said that.
unacceptable offer.
And Kirill Dmitriev, who's the head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund.
And he's very upbeat.
It's very interesting to follow Kirill on X. Everything that he posts is very, very uplifting compared to a few days ago.
And he was...
Not exactly.
He's a rich guy.
He's self-made and he advises President Putin.
Exactly.
But he advises on an investment basis.
And he has very, very good contacts in D.C. and in New York, Judge.
This is very, very important.
And he's respected in the U.S. Dmitriev.
Important.
Ushakov is an old school fox.
Fascinating to watch him work as well.
And he carefully chose his words.
And nobody else comes close to divulging anything substantial about the meeting.
The fact that the meeting lasted three hours is already huge.
And in the middle of threats of secondary sanctions on anybody buying Russian oil, plus threats of more sanctions on Russia itself, and even then putting okay let's uh hear uh whitkov one more time so we can assume correctly i would say that this was probably the last shot by the Trump administration to get Putin's attention and
the Security Council's attention.
Apparently they got it.
So they must have offered something substantial.
But when we look at the, I would say the mini list that Putin himself has been stressing since last year, Lavrov, Ryabkov, everybody's talking about the same thing.
Right.
Inning, neutral Ukraine.
No NATO expansion, demilitarization.
The four regions belong to Russia.
Can you imagine Trump accepting all four or even one of these four items?
Well, he'll have problems with the neocons with which he surrounds himself, but President Zelensky is not going to accept any of this, is he?
Well, but he's not a player, judge.
He's an actor.
Why did the United States And this came out of the mouth of the press secretary herself, whose office is next door to Trump's in the White House.
Yes.
Why did the United States drop the or leak or state publicly that Trump wants Zelensky there.
That's a non-starter for Putin and Lavrov, is it not?
It's an absolute non-starter for Putin and the whole Security Council.
Medvedev and Minister of Foreign Relations have there was that.
No, there's nothing to discuss with the illegitimate government in Kiev.
And it is technically an illegitimate government.
And of course, the whole proxy war.
It's an American proxy war using Ukraine against Russia.
Everybody knows this.
And Putin certainly knows this.
And Putin knows that he's going to negotiate with a president whose CIA and whose military are helping Ukrainian military to kill Russian boys.
Exactly.
And this is something that Putin cannot sell in Russia to domestic opinion in Russia.
Domestic public opinion in Russia will be scrutinizing, okay, assuming that they meet.
What is the meat of the matter in these discussions?
Is this only about Ukraine?
Is this setting the terms of the Ukraine capitulation without mentioning the concept capitulation?
So there is a safe.
face-saving mechanism for Trump so he can say, look, I brokered a peace deal, this is it, and we're out of it, and we have better fish to fry, which is going to be the Trump spin on all that.
But Putin has to sell any sort of accommodation to Russian public opinion after three and a half years.
stressing always the same points.
The SMO started to prevent NATO getting very close to our border.
So NATO expansion is an absolute ultra-red light.
Ukraine cannot be a member of NATO or a member of maybe a member of the EU in the future, but that doesn't matter because the EU is going to disintegrate anyway.
Dematerialization and we don't want neo-Nazis in power in Kiev.
These are the top red lines.
very, very important.
The four regions are Russian.
And if you don't want to discuss that now, like you Look, if there's no deal, if there's no accommodation, it will be decided in the battlefield.
So there is a deal or anything.
If there is a deal, correct me if I'm wrong.
Yes, it will resemble remarkably the Istanbul Agreement that the United States and Great Britain persuaded President Zelensky to trash.
And this cannot be sold inside Russia, George, because Russians will immediately qualify it as a Minsk Treaty.
We all know what happened to Minsk 1 and Minsk 2.
Nobody respected it, starting with the Europeans.
This will be a Minsk treaty with the Americans, which they won't respect as well so ukraine will continue to be re-weaponized and of course in terms of nato according to the internal protocols of nato the big nato dream is war with russia by 2030 wow russians know all that in detail so what will putin have to do assuming they meet and assuming they meet in the ua it's
going to be the UAE because considering how MBZ was the reception that he got from Putin, it was quite impressive.
And they obviously talked about a possible meeting and MBZ certainly offered the Emirates to be the main stage.
If they meet, Putin has to explain to Trump, look, these are the basics.
This is the background.
This is why we started the SMO.
These are are our conditions for three and a half years and that's it so trump who's now a neocon will basically have to reject the neocon gospel yes about ukraine and russia to enter into this deal this will be remarkable if it happens exactly Judge, may I ask you if you think this is remotely feasible?
No, I don't.
I think the war will end when and not before the Ukrainian military collapses.
And that's not going to be much longer, according to Ritter and McGregor.
Let me change the subject one last topic before we go.
I know it's very late where you are.
Who or what?
can stop Netanyahu from invading and occupying Gaza.
Well, a military operation by the lands of Islam and by the global south, which we know will never happen.
The problem is now it's right in front of the whole planet, what they wanted to do from the start.
Erase Gaza, wipe Gaza off the map, occupy Gaza and essentially exterminate or starve most of the population.
Now it's official.
Now it's a Netanyahu cabinet decision in front of all of us.
There's going to be a lot of blah, blah, blah in the UN Security Council in the next few hours or days.
It will lead to nowhere.
There will be a blah, blah, blah in the Organization of Islamic Nations.
Nothing is going to happen.
So the feeling of impotence all over is, wow, it's off the charts.
And if this goes on, really, okay, let's assume there's a sort of global revolt in the Arab street or in the Islamic street.
So is it going to alter the situation on the ground?
It won't.
we imagine egypt and jordan rebelling against it no we can't they are vassals they're colonies egypt just is going to buy more gas from Israel.
It's totally dependent on Israel.
Iran.
Would Iran risk a total war against Israel to save Gaza?
That's a possibility, but still a long shot.
And obviously, we cannot expect anything from Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, and the rest of the GCC.
What about the Turks?
Excellent point.
They would not risk a war against Israel to save Gaza because don't forget, Erdogan is a grifter, essentially.
He poses as a neo-Ottoman sultan, but he's a grifter.
He wants deals as well.
He's an opportunist and he's always hedging his bets.
And if he wanted to go against Israel, there will be no oil from Baku via the BTC pipeline going to Israel.
He would have turned off the taps.
He didn't.
Thank you, Pepe.
Thank you for staying up late for us.
Thank you for all of your insight.
These are great conversations.
They're deeply appreciated by the audience.
We'll look forward to seeing you next week.
Thank you so much, Judge.
All the best.
Thank you.
Thank you, my dear friend.
Be well, travel safely.
Monday, we will of course resume again our regular routine.
Alistair Crook at 8 am, Ray McGovern at 10, Larry Johnson at 11:30, and probably one of the two guys closest to me in this picture on Monday afternoon.
This picture is Jeff Sachs, Colonel McGregor, Anya Parampol, Max Blumenthal.
The five of us will be together doing a live judging Freedom at 10:30 am at the Dulles Hilton Hotel right outside of Dulles Airport.
not far from Washington, DC next Saturday, August 16th.
If you want to meet us, we'll be there.
If you want to watch this live show, we'll be there.
And you can go back and look at the screen as to how you can get tickets.
The event is not a Judging Freedom event.
It is actually the Ron Paul Institute annual meeting.
But they have asked us, since Colonel McGregor and Professor Sachs and Max and Anya are going to be speakers at the event, they asked me to come down and stir the pot with four of your favorite Judging Freedom celebrities.
Thank you for watching.
Have a great weekend.
We'll see you Monday.
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