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Aug. 13, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
23:45
COL. Lawrence Wilkerson : Will Trump Outfox Putin?
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Hi, everyone.
Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Adjudging Freedom.
Today is Thursday, August 14th, 2025.
My dear friend Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson joins us now.
Colonel Wilkerson, a pleasure.
As always, thank you for accommodating my schedule.
I want to talk to you, of course, about what we expect will happen and the attitudes leading up to the meeting tomorrow at this very hour between President Donald Trump and President Vladimir Putin.
The Russian demands have never changed, Colonel.
Crimea plus the four oblasts, which are in the Russian Constitution as part of the Russian Federation and no NATO in Ukraine.
But if you listen to the European leadership, they say Ukraine's not going to surrender any land and it's got the right to join NATO if it wants to.
And President Trump supposedly said he agrees with European leadership, or at least that's the impression he gave when he spoke with them on the phone in a private non-public phone call just the other day.
Where are we going, Colonel?
One of the things I've heard few people talking about, other than perhaps my good friend Doug McGregor, is what's happening on the battlefield.
And I have no doubt Putin is well aware of that and is being kept aware of it almost on an hourly basis.
The Ukrainian military is about to be utterly destroyed.
The pockets around Cross have been sealed.
That is their main logistic hub.
That is their main highway and rail network.
That is where almost 60, 70% of whatever they have left gets to them.
And it is about to be utterly collapsed.
And then the road to Odessa is wide open.
So we're going to get presented.
If Zelensky is still in Berlin, Judge, I wonder if he's going to be able to get home.
Wow.
You're right.
Colonel McGregor used the phrase I was going to ask you if you agree with this, that the Ukrainian military is virtually obliterated.
And that, of course, puts President Putin in an even stronger position than he was in at the time that two of them agreed to meet.
I mean, surely Secretary Hegseth will know this and will have informed President Trump of this, no?
I have to assume so.
This is sort of like if you go back to 1944-45 and the German counteroffensive in the Ardennes that began on 16 December at 5.30 in the morning and shocked the bejesus out of Bradley, who was playing bridge 200 miles to the rear and Eisenhower and cost us 78,000 casualties and three more months of war that we shouldn't have had.
At that particular moment, what people forget about is the Soviet army was 200 miles from Berlin and changed the entire face of post-World War II Europe.
That's what we're looking at here.
We're looking at a juggernaut, a juggernaut, and it's going to roll over the rest of Ukraine and put everything there in jeopardy.
And Putin, in terms of strategic military results, has enormous pressure to put on people coming into this meeting.
And I'm sure he knows that.
So is the Alaska meeting reality or just a sideshow?
Could be either one.
It depends on Trump, I think.
I don't think it depends on Putin Lavrov and the other members of his team, all of whom are equipped very well to do what Putin wants to do if the avenues are open to do it.
The Question: Is Trump?
I'm going to play a clip from him three days ago, which I find a little mysterious because I don't know what he's talking about.
But before I even raise the mystery, let's listen together.
So it's August 11th, three days ago.
Chris, number 13.
The next meeting will be with Zelensky and Putin, or Zelensky and Putin to me.
I'll be there if they need, but I want to have a meeting set up between the two leaders.
I was a little bothered by the fact that Zelensky was saying, well, I have to get constitutional approval.
I mean, he's got approval to go into war and kill everybody, but he needs approval to do a land swap because there'll be some land swapping going on.
I know that through Russia and through conversations with everybody to the good, for the good of Ukraine.
Good stuff, not bad stuff.
Also, some bad stuff for both.
So there's good and there's bad.
But it's very complex because you have lines that are very uneven.
And there'll be some swapping.
There'll be some changes in land.
And the word that they will use is, you know, they make changes.
We're going to change the lines, the battle lines.
Russia's occupied a big portion of Ukraine.
They've occupied some very prime territory.
We're going to try and get some of that territory back for Ukraine.
What is he talking about?
He's going to try and get the territory back from Ukraine that is utterly defied by the reality of the battlefield, number one.
Number two, what land swaps?
A swap implies bilateral.
Russia is going to give land to Ukraine.
What is the president talking about?
Do you know?
I don't think he knows what he's talking about.
If he's been told some things by the real estate brokers that surround him, like Witkoff, then he's going to be disabused of those things, unless they're talking about tiny little parcels that we don't even know about right now.
I listened to Zelensky say that he should be president, that to talk about Ukraine with only Russia and the United States president and not Ukraine was just preposterous.
I got news for him, big news for him.
Throughout 5,000 years of human history, great powers, big powers, powerful powers have talked about little powers without the little powers present.
And that's exactly what's going to happen here, Mr. Zelensky.
And you will be lucky if at the end of these talks and this offensive that's culminating right now on your territory in key terrain, if you've even got a country to return to, or if you do return, a country that will accept you as its leader.
Here he is talking to Colonel Wilkerson about that very subject, cut number six.
It is impossible to talk about Ukraine without Ukraine.
And no one will accept that.
So the conversation between Putin and Trump may be important for their bilateral track, but they cannot agree on anything about Ukraine without us.
I truly believe and hope that the U.S. president understands and realizes that.
Well, you've already statement like that, Colonel, in your view, your experience in the military and in the diplomatic sphere, made for domestic political consumption, or does he really truly believe that?
Is this audience Donald Trump or is this audience the folks back home?
I think it's both, and I think it is also at least 50% himself because he's desperate right now.
He is absolutely desperate.
And well, he should be.
He's lost majorly in a conflict that's cost maybe a million Ukrainian casualties, probably more than a million, and is still costing casualties.
He's got a desperate hole on a government that he's not really constitutionally in charge of.
I agree with Putin on that.
And he's got all these things that are weighing heavily then that should weigh heavily that outstrip the importance of Ukraine by orders of magnitude, including, as Putin is wont to talk about, the nuclear weapons situation, which is far more important, far more desperate in many respects, and far more consequential for the fate of the human race than Ukraine ever could be.
So he's up against a marshaled item catalog, if you will, that trumps Ukraine from one end of the country to the other, not to even mention the $300, $400 billion that Russia would like to get back from predominantly Europe, but also the U.S. And that will be huge leverage for Trump if he knows smartly how to use it.
But he's got to use it in the context of these more important issues that I just roughly described.
So he will offer to talk his European colleagues into releasing those funds.
Professor Doctorow says it's about 50 billion under U.S. control and about nobody knows the exact number because theoretically interest is running.
It's about 300 billion under European control.
He can use that as leverage on the nuclear issue.
I mean, the reason we have a nuclear issue is because he pulled out of the nuclear treaty his first term as president of the United States.
We wouldn't have this issue had he not done that.
He was listening to John Bolton and your friend Mike Pompeo.
Yeah, my president started it by negating the ABM treaty, which Powell thought was the biggest mistake we made in the first year, if not in the first term, and rushed off to Moscow to try and placate the Russians a little bit because he knew how stupid it was to do what we did.
And we forged the Moscow Treaty in order to kind of give a little compensation, but it didn't do that much.
Here's President Trump threatening Russia.
I want your view as to whether this is for domestic American political consumption or for Vladimir Putin's ears.
Chris cut number four.
Does Russia face any consequences if Vladimir Putin does not agree to stop the war after your meeting on Friday?
Yes, they will.
What will the consequences, tariffs?
There will be, I don't have to say there will be very severe consequences.
Be very severe consequences.
How does the Kremlin view that?
Domestic, political, or don't threaten us.
I think that's their expectation and their hope.
I think they do keep a little bit of worry back there because they've dealt with this man before and they know how deceptive he is.
They know how material he is.
They know how vacuous he is.
And they know how little that he really understands about the strategic situation in which he's involved.
Can the same be said of Secretary of State Rubio?
Yes, when compared with his opposite number, who's probably the most experienced, knowledgeable international diplomat on the planet.
It's like Socrates meeting with Bozo the clown.
Wow.
Wow.
Well, I don't know who's going to be with President Trump.
I would imagine Secretary Rubio and Secretary Hagseth and probably Mr. Witkoff, but I don't know.
I will say from Riyadh in the meeting there and what I saw of it and read about it afterwards that Rubio at least seemed to acknowledge what LaRoff was telling him about the vast sums of money that the United States, always appealing to Trump, is losing by not having good commercial relations with Moscow.
Right.
Right.
What do you think is going to come out of tomorrow?
I hope what Trump has suggested, subsequent meetings, where they will actually have teams that are working the details of some of the more important issues like nuclear weapons treaties, like renewal of START, like bringing Xi Jinping into whatever regime results.
I hope that is what results from it.
And I hope we can put the Ukraine issue as sad as it is for those brave Ukrainians who died trying to defend what they thought was their right in their country in circumstances created almost exclusively by the West, especially Washington and London.
I hope that we get to the bigger issues because Ukraine is not worth the globe.
I have been on Russian television this week and will be on shortly after you and I Finish, and there's no question in my mind, but that the people who interview me, if they represent the view of the Russian public, or if they represent the view of the Russian elites of which they are members, or if they represent the view of the Kremlin, I don't know which, but they all seem to be in favor of a grand reset.
To them, they're thinking like Lawrence Wilkerson.
Ukraine is a sub-issue.
The main issue is the reset of the commercial, cultural, political relationship between the United States and the Russian Federation.
And they view this as the beginning of many meetings and many steps in that direction.
Do you agree?
I do agree.
And I think they are somewhat uncomfortable with the very, very close position they've been pressed into with China.
If you know anything about the history, especially the recent history of the Soviet Union, Russia, and China, you know how perturbated and difficult that has been.
Everything from the secret speech by Khrushchev, for example, which Nixon took advantage of by going to Beijing.
They're not that.
They would like to have a good relationship with China, no question about that.
But they don't want to be that close.
And I don't think India wants to be that close to China, but India now has been compelled to get closer to China.
I think it would be a healthy thing for the world if all three powers were equidistant from one another, if you will.
That is to say, not too close and not too far, because they have a preponderance of the world's economic might.
They are going to dominate the world economically.
China already does as a single nation.
And we all need to cooperate, not fight one another.
And Russia seems to understand that.
I think Putin is probably one of the smartest leaders on the face of the earth right now.
Professor Mearsheimer, who will be on this afternoon, has been arguing that Trump's honeymoon is over.
His foreign policy has been a disaster.
He hasn't come through on any of the promises he made.
And the deep state, which theoretically works for him, is impatient with him.
Do you agree, Colonel?
All good observations.
They're very Mearsheimer-ish, if you know what I mean.
They're realist.
Very realistic.
What will they do?
I miss that.
I'm concerned about the potential deep state animosity if Trump does engages in some agreement with Putin that is not consistent with the neocon ideology of trying to drive him from office.
I mean, basically, what is he going to do?
Repudiate the whole basis for the 265 billion we've spent on the Ukraine war, the neocon dream of driving Vladimir Putin from office.
The reality of it is it's been an abysmal failure, and the deep state's just going to take this lying down.
If you want to see an exemplar, watch Friedrich Mertz.
I don't think there is a better example of the deep state having moved into the regular regime of power, if you will, than Mertz.
Watch what happens to him.
Watch how he deals with it.
Watch indeed how he deals with the consequences of what might come out of Alaska.
And you're going to see at least an example of how the deep state is either reeling or compensating.
Well, the AFD is more popular than Chancellor Mertz's party in Germany.
We know that.
And their popularity continues to grow.
And that's not something to jump up and cheer about necessarily.
No, no, no.
I mean, that's going to bring other issues which we can discuss at another time.
Do you have a feeling of what will come out of tomorrow?
Is it just going to be an agreement to Agree.
We'll see each other in Moscow in a couple of weeks.
That could be, I think, likely, but also a possibility is we terminate right here.
And Putin and his team go home and Trump bask in his having stood up to the Russians and uses that domestically and tries internationally.
Probably has the Europeans back on his side again, at least temporarily.
It could be either way.
I'm hoping it's the former.
Yeah, but if it's the latter, then Putin's people will destroy Kyiv.
Yep.
And they could do that in a week.
We know how strong they are right now and we know where they're positioned.
And you have pointed out he might not have a home to return to in Ukraine.
He'll have to go to one of his other homes in Miami or Paris or Tel Aviv.
I forget where his other homes are.
You listen to a couple of polls right now, including the new president, and you listen inside their language.
And I think what you're hearing is at least one fairly powerful NATO, new NATO member, is awakening.
And that could have some influence on it, too, if Narochi actually does something with his newfound reality.
He's kind of like Mearsheimer in a way, but a Polish Mearsheimer.
You're talking about the new president of Poland.
Right.
He seems to have the boldness to move.
He just, for example, threw that group out.
Ukraine, of course, agreed with him, that are kind of Bandera-like and were operating in part in Poland.
Well, before we go, we haven't really spoken about Israel because though the slaughter continues and the starvation persists, we're all focusing on Ukraine this week because particularly today because of what's happening tomorrow.
However, your favorite senator from South Carolina made a speech at a Republican gathering last night, which your favorite producer, Chris Leonard, found just for you.
Chris, number 14.
But tonight, it's late at night.
Israel is in a fight for their lives.
Our friends in Israel are surrounded by people who would kill them all if they could.
I am tired of the word genocide.
Let me tell you about genocide.
If Israel wanted to commit genocide, they could.
They have the capability to do that.
They choose not to.
Hamas, they would commit genocide in 30 seconds.
They just can't.
And that's the big difference, folks, to people in my party.
I'm tired of this crap.
Israel is our friend.
They're the most reliable friend we have in the Mideast.
They're a democracy.
Surrounded by people who would cut their throats if they could.
This is not a hard choice if you're an American.
It's not a hard choice if you're a Christian.
A word of warning.
If America pulls the plug on Israel, God will pull the plug on us.
He's been to the Ted Cruz School of Foreign Policy.
You took the words right out of my mouth.
Is this an example of demented thinking, or is this a very astute politician appealing to his audience?
Both, but it is also a man who's running scared.
Notice the language.
The language came from B.B. Netanyahu.
I mean, he just repeated what Bibi said.
If I'd wanted to do a genocide, I could have done it in a day.
Lindsay means the same thing.
He could have done it in a day.
That means he would have used a couple of nuclear weapons.
That's the only way he could have done it in a day.
And Netanyahu said that.
And Graham just repeated that.
But Graham is running scared because the prospect of Israel collapsing is becoming real and present.
About which more next week, as all of our eyes turn to Alaska, one of the folks in the chat room says if Trump wants to learn about Alaska, He should call Sarah Palin.
I couldn't stop laughing when she said she understood American foreign policy because from places in Alaska, you can see Russia.
And most Americans have never seen Russia.
So she knew more about Russia than most Americans did.
We're missing something else, too.
I feel for some of my friends who live near Juneau.
The Menanol is really flooded.
I don't think there's been any real human catastrophe yet or death or destruction, but the flooding out there is considerable.
And it's just because it's where it is that it's not doing major, major damage.
But we're looking at this for the future for Alaska, too, because the glaciers are melting.
Right.
Right.
Colonel, thank you very much.
Thank you for your time.
Thank you for suggesting your colleague Colonel Astor, who was a big hit with the audience and who we'll invite to be on next week.
And of course, if something dramatic comes out of tomorrow, we'll reach out to you.
Thank you.
And take care.
Thank you, Colonel.
All the best.
Best of you.
Thank you.
And coming up later today at 3:15 this afternoon on all of this, who else?
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