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Aug. 11, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
23:41
Ray McGovern : What the Russians Want.
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Hi, everyone.
Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Monday, August 11, 202025.
Ray McGovern joins us now.
Ray, always a pleasure.
Thank you.
Before I probe your thoughts and your knowledge on what the Russians want and how they're going, you believe they're going to approach the meeting with President Trump on Friday, I would be remiss if I did not ask you about the intentional murder of five Al Jazeera journalists in Gaza late yesterday.
Well, there were five of them, Al Jazeera, it was a very, very well-targeted shot at their tent.
There were 178 journalists killed by the Israelis before now in Gaza.
So you do the math, what's that 183 now, my God?
And the journalists of the world are pretty much taking this lightly.
If you look at well, if you look at how many journalists perished in the Ukraine war, I think the Russians have about, I think about fifty journalists that perished there, but they were all frontline people.
They were all in uniform.
They weren't really they were military journalists.
So compare 58 to a country like Russia and Ukraine, and then 178 plus five, my God, you know, what have we come to?
This was really bad because these guys were the only people left there monitoring what's going to happen now in Gaza City, more genocide, more forced starvation.
What have we become in supporting that kind of thing?
I'd like you to watch this clip about the murder of the best known of them, Chris Cut number one.
He was one of the most recognizable voices reporting from Gaza since the war began in October 2023, among the few international journalists who remained in northern Gaza throughout the conflict, broadcasting even as Israeli forces ordered more than a million Palestinians to evacuate the area.
Born in Jabalia refugee camp, Al Sharif graduated from Al Aqsa University's media faculty.
He became one of the key voices from Gaza's front lines.
Throughout the war, the 28-year-old reporter paid a high personal price for his commitment to truth.
In December 2023, his father was killed when Israeli forces struck the family home in Jabalia.
This came weeks after death threats.
Israeli officers told him to stop reporting, but he refused.
And in recent weeks, the pressure intensified.
The Israeli army targeted him and his colleagues online, falsely accusing Al Sharif of being a Hamas member., a pre prepared message was posted on his ex account after his death, saying, If these words reach you, know that Israel has succeeded in killing me and silencing my voice.
I have lived through pain in all its details, tasted suffering and loss many times, yet I never once hesitated to convey the truth as it is, without distortion or falsification, so that God may bear witness against those who stayed silent and accepted our killing.
He ends Do not forget Gaza, and do not forget me in your sincere prayers for forgiveness and acceptance.
So Prime Minister Netanyahu boasted about these murders, saying they weren't journalists, they were high-ranking Hamas officials.
He didn't produce any evidence to support that.
The evidence of their journalistic activity is available for everybody to see.
I don't think anybody believes what Netanyahu said.
How is this going to stop, Ray?
What is this to stop the Netanyahu slaughter?
The only person that can stop them is a fellow named Donald J. Trump.
We're supposed to live in a democracy.
We're supposed to have a voice in these kinds of things.
It seems impossible, but we have to do everything we can, everything that we can imagine to get these congressmen and to get the administration itself to stop the slaughter, stop the forced starvation, the genocide.
My God, what have we become?
You know, I was alive for the first genocide this last century and that was the Jews, the Holocaust.
I never thought it would happen again, but it is.
And ironically, well, pathetically, it's being done by the same people who suffered from the first genocide.
They should know better.
We should know better in terms of supporting them.
Is MAGA turning against Israel?
You know, it's hard for me to follow MAGA, but the American people no longer support Israel.
80 percent.
Absurd, said Netanyahu in 2001.
I don't know about 50 percent, less than 50 percent now.
Whether that will translate into what Trump does in supporting Netanyahu is another question.
I know that Alistair Crook talked a little bit about the black belt material that they almost certainly have on Trump and the pathetic appeal by a Mossad agent who handled who handled Maxwell and his daughter and Epstein his appeal to come clean mister Trump I don't like people dying genocide is bad come clean you'll feel better for it it will be bad for you but come clean release the Epstein tapes.
As we went on air a federal judge in New York City declined to release the grand jury transcripts.
So there were two grand juries one in Miami one in New York the one in Miami a federalal judge ruled against that last month.
The one in New York City, a federal judge ruled against it this morning.
We'll see where that goes.
But let's turn in Miami, just a little codicle here in Miami.
The judge was told, look, this is above your pay grade.
This is intelligence.
This is the intelligence committee, the community.
You better stop, better let them off.
And he did let them off.
So Jim Comer, Congressman Comer, the Republican chair in the House of the House Oversight Committee, who signed a subpoena to the DOJ for their full file.
I don't know what's going to happen with that, but under prevailing Supreme Court authority, they have to surrender it.
And he subpoenaed Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton, Jim Comey, John Brennan, et cetera.
He should subpoena.
You put your finger on this.
He should subpoena Alexander Acosta.
Mr. Acosta was the U.S. attorney who stated privately and publicly, they told me he's intel and I had to go easy on him.
Who told you?
And did you confirm it?
That's the guy I want to see them question.
Isn't it interesting?
They did not subpoena him.
Until Mossad, Epstein and now Netanyahu got Trump over a barrel.
For God's sake, let's recognize that and realize that genocide, heinous genocide to protect Donald Trump from implication in violating underage girls.
Heinousness squared, folks.
Let's do something about it.
All right.
To Alaska now.
Well, Alaska at the end of this week.
Who has more to gain?
and who has more to lose, Trump or Putin?
This is a negotiation, judge.
What matters here is that both sides see profit in pursuing this at a higher level.
As I've said before, the overarching aim is to make sure that US Russian relations do not suffer from this kind of thing and actually can bloom and bear more fruit.
So we have actually the Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryapkov yesterday on Russian TV saying this, I can find it here.
Yeah.
He says, look, I'm reflecting here on the uneven, the evolving state of US Russian relations.
And look, there are some sprouts of common sense that are appearing in the dialogue with the US, which have been severely lacking over recent months and years.
Well, he's no, he's no fool.
He's usually a very hardline guy.
He's Lavrov's first deputy.
So what Ryankov saying, look., let's keep our eyes open.
Let's see if these sprouts of common sense that are appearing in US demeanor, whether we can work something out.
They both want to do something about Ukraine.
I think there's a good possibility now that they've made it clear this is a stage sort of thing.
First Alaska, next Russia.
The invitation has already been extended.
They can go at this peacemaking.
And they don't have to solve everything in Alaska, but they do have to set down the terms of what they're going to talk about.
Now the other thing I'll say is that Yarapakov went right into intermediate range nuclear forces.
Okay, his next paragraph.
I want to emphasize Russia's recent decision to lift its self imposed ban on deploying intermediate range missiles.
Now, this is what the Americans and their allies, especially the European warmongers, are doing on their side of things.
You know, they should realize that we have the Iranians and we have other advanced missile technologies.
Arjeshnik.
So this is really the most serious bone of contention for Sergei Ryapkov and Sergei Lavrov and Putin himself.
Let me put some background on this because this I think is really interesting.
There's a history here, okay?
Now, Biden betrayed a promise he made when he was all alone in Delaware on the 30th of December 2021.
He said, and the readout said, Usharkov was the one that did the readout.
The President of the United States undertook not to put offensive strike missiles in Ukraine.
Whoa!
On New Year's Eve the following day, 2021, Usharkov was just exuberant, saying, Finally, finally the US is realizing that we have legitimate concerns.
Actually, this treaty we wanted them to fully, most of the provisions in that treaty have to do with the placement of intermediate range close-range missiles..
What happened?
Well, the negotiators in Geneva never got that word.
And when Lavrov finally cornered Blinken in Geneva on the, I think it was the 20th or so of January, he said, What's with this?
And Blinken said, Come on, we weren't with the president at that time.
They forgot about that.
Now we might want, yeah, we're going to put offensive strike missiles in Ukraine as we're fully entitled to do if they ask us to.
Now we could probably, yeah, we could probably talk about how many and stuff like that.
Okay, that was mid January.
What happens next?
The last summit, okay?
The last summit between Biden and Putin by telephone or whatever you call it.
The read out was Biden refused to discuss his earlier promise not to put offensive strike missiles in Ukraine.
He also refused to talk about prohibiting Ukraine from being a NATO.
That was ten days, twelve days before the war started.
So all I'm saying here is that Ushakov himself has seen all this, so has Putin.
So they're going to be really, really careful this time.
I don't think Putin will do this, but I think Ushakov will certainly tell Whitkov and or Rubio, look, don't try this stuff.
again.
A promise is a promise and we expect you to live up to it this time.
But Ushakov and Lavrov and Putin know and understand that at the very moments the President Putin will be speaking to President Trump, at those very moments, American Intel and American Army officers are helping direct American offensive weapons in Ukraine to strike and kill Russian soldiers.
Doesn't that resonate with them?
Of course it does.
But you know, they have unfathomable patience.
These have no effect on the course of the war.
I too am surprised at their saying, if you will, but since they don't affect the war and since they are print picks, this pinpricks, I think this will be one of the first topics that they talk about.
Look, your European friends with their longer range missiles like the Germans, like the French, we want them to stop and we want nobody to use your technology.
Can you agree on that?
Okay.
Now, how do we guarantee that?.
We guarantee that by seeing that no missiles are shot at Russia anymore.
Drones, drones by the thousands.
That's okay.
They're pinpricks.
Missiles like that, forbidden, okay?
That's the first term.
I think that Trump can easily say, okay, yeah, it doesn't make any sense from a military point of view.
I don't know why Biden decided to do this at the end of his term.
But again, this is not my war.
It's Biden's war, and I want to stop the killing.
So Trump is on the record saying, look, this is not my war.
I want to stop the killing.
And there are all kinds of elasti flexibility in the Russian position if you look at it closely.
Let me mention one that just came on my radar screen.
I read that statement by the Coalition of the Brain, not the Brain Dead.
Well, they call themselves the Coalition of the Willing.
These are Mats and Macron and Stomer and Sage the Tsar, a title that Dick Cheney came up with for the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, disasters that they were.
Go ahead.
Yeah, Coalition of the Willing.
You think that has some historical sense.
Well, what happened was the let's see one line in this very authoritative statement which states, quote, the current line of contact should be the starting point of negotiations.
Huh?
End quote.
Wait a second.
That's new.
Now, JD Vance was talking to these guys that same day or the day before.
Is this a new sort of start here?
In other words, that kind of claim is Zelensky, his whole is claim.
No, no.
The start we start with the assumption of an integral Ukraine as of February, late February 2022.
Well, here's all these guys saying that the current line of contact should be the starting point for negotiation.
Now, I think that JD Vance said, look, that's what we're going to do now, okay?
We'll talk, but then forget about this business about giving back the Donbass.
There's some flexibility on Kherson and Zaporizhzhia.
Even Putin displayed some flexibility on those two provinces in his major speech to the Russian Foreign Ministry in June, June 14.
June of last year.
So there's ample room to do, do the kind of deal.
The question is whether Trump will be strong enough, well, whether Trump can fend off the Lindsey Graham's and the Max Boots of this world to convince himself that it's safe and it's okay for him, at least once to stand by his stance, which is Biden's war, I want to stop the killing and the rest is in the woodwork.
How does the Kremlin read Trump's bluster?
They know damn well it's now Trump's war.
They know he boasts and threats and issues non sequituresors, what do they say to each other in private about all this?
Well, it's not so much what they say in private.
I think they laugh a lot in private, but it's what they say publicly.
And this famous quote from the head of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Duma five days before Whitcoff arrived, he said once again, his name is Grigori Karasin, please be calm, patient, compose, resist emotional responses to emotional overreach, okay?
Wait for Whitcoff, in contrast to the loud statements, the headlines, the sanctions and all this kind of wait for Whitcoff and see what he has to say.
So that's their attitude.
What they what you can depend on in reading how they really feel is what I just quoted from Ryabkov.
He's about as authoritative as you can get.
They're saying, look, there are signs of hope here, but we'll have to see whether this will continue.
And I think it will.
And I don't really think that naysayers are really abreast of what Soviet, sorry, Russian people really think or what the Russiansan leaders really think about this, they have the high ground.
They've won the war, for God's sake.
They don't want to take over all of Ukraine.
That's the rub here.
So if they could work out a deal for a demilitarized zone or a well, how close is the Russian military, excuse my froggy voice, Ray, how close is the Russian military to achieving its stated objectives of returning the four Donbuses to Russian control?
You know, judge from the outset of this conflict, mirror imaging has been.
a real problem.
If we're US forces, I would say a week, because US forces obliterate, my favorite word, everything.
Russian forces don't do that.
They're very, very circumspect.
They want to prevent extraordinary Russian losses.
They have the upper hand.
No more arms are coming from the West.
My God, the Maginot kind of line that the Ukrainians have constructed in the western part of Donbas can fall at any time.
But here's a card.
Here's a card that Putin has.
He says, look, mister Trump, we've won this damn thing.
Don't believe your intelligence people if they tell you what they told Biden in July two years ago that Putin has already lost.
I haven't already lost, okay?
We've already won.
So, look, we don't want to rub your face in it, okay?
We want to help you get out of this in a dignified way you can.
We talk about putting lipstick on this pig of defeat.
Well, he wouldn't put it that way, but he said, okay, now let's do a deal here.
What about you recognizing that Ukraine is will never ever ever be part of NATO.
NATO said a year ago that they had an irreversible path to NATO.
How about saying that's not going to happen?
That would be a big step forward and then we can negotiate all these other things when we meet in Russia that has already been set up.
Do you fear an attack on Russia this week by the Ukrainians?
Well, the Ukrainians will send as many drones as they can into Russia.
Again, these will be pinpricks.
Now, if they send these German.
The German missiles, TAULAS, Or the French missiles, what they call scouts or something like that.
Or the storm shadow missiles that really depend on NATO, and that means US technology.
That would be a different thing.
That will say to Putin, look, these guys really aren't serious, or Trump doesn't have enough clout to make these people obey.
It's a feckless situation because they don't have the weaponry, they don't have the money.
They're going to just go down in ignominy rather than have a ostensibly negotiated agreement.
resolution to this thing rather than unconditional surrender.
Ray McGovern, thank you very much.
Great conversation.
Great conversation.
And we'll look forward to seeing you at the end of the week with that youngster, Larry Johnson.
Thank you, Judge.
Thank you, Ray.
All the best.
The aforementioned Larry will be here with us at 11.30 this morning.
At one this afternoon, a roundtable in Moscow.
where I will be interrogating Scott Ritter and his Russian friends and at 145 this afternoon.
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