Aug. 19, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
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| Hi, everyone. | |
| Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. | |
| Today is Tuesday, August 19, 2025. | |
| Colonel Bill Astor will be with us in just a moment. | |
| Why is the United States hung up on forever wars and why are some of them waged by the CIA? | |
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| Colonel Astor, welcome back, my dear friend. | |
| A pleasure to be with you and thank you for accommodating my schedule. | |
| I have some specific questions for you about what we think. | |
| uh president trump and the european leaders and president zelensky are agreeing to but before we get there what's your take big picture colonel on uh what happened in alaska on friday right uh well for me it's it's encouraging. | |
| It's just encouraging that the American president is now speaking with his Russian counterpart, and they're actually talking about a peace plan for the Russia-Ukraine war. | |
| I mean, not just a ceasefire that one side or the other or both could exploit, you know, not just a pausing of peace. | |
| I find it very encouraging. | |
| I always recall that the one country that can truly destroy the United States is is the former Soviet Union Russia with with all of its nuclear weapons it's always a good thing when we're talking I thought it was horrific and history will be very harsh on Joe Biden for the refusal to talk I mean they did have one meeting in Switzerland early on in Biden's presidency but then he refused to talk to Putin. | |
| He said terrible things about him and wouldn't even allow his Secretary of State to communicate with his with the Russi German foreign ministry during World War II, for God's sakes, and we can't talk to the Russians during this conflagration. | |
| It was terrible. | |
| So even though I have a lot of doubts about where this is going to go, the fact that Donald Trump was willing to break the ice and communicate with Vladimir Putin, invite him to American soil, and treat him with dignity, respect, and even affection, I thought is a remarkable. | |
| step in the right direction. | |
| I suspect that the reason Trump changed his mind on ceasefire versus peace treaty and on the presence of nato in uh Ukraine was about a 20 minute lecture that Putin gave him, which Putin characterized as discussing, I'm going to quote the English translation now, the genesis and causes of the Ukraine war. | |
| Trump had probably never heard that version of events going back to 1990, being kicked off in 2014 with the coup against Yanukovych. | |
| And I don't think Putin waved his finger at Trump or wagged his finger at him, but probably reminded him, who armed Ukraine? | |
| Donald Trump in the first term. | |
| It's what brought about the the impeachment. | |
| Yeah. | |
| No, I think that's, I mean, it's, I look at Vladimir Putin and it's kind of funny, as you said, Trump referred to him, of course, by first name, like they're good buddies, which again, I think is a positive sign. | |
| I think it's valuable for the American president to hear. | |
| his Russian counterpart's point of view. | |
| That doesn't mean that you have to agree with it. | |
| And I'm sure President Trump didn't agree with all of it, but to give him a respectful listening, I think, is just a good tactic. | |
| I think it's enormously important, particularly for this president who has surrounded himself with Zionists and Neocons who have no interest in articulating that understanding of events to him. | |
| Trump and the people around him need to know the Russian mentality and in general and in particular the mentality of Sergei Lavrov and Vladimir Putin. | |
| I don't think they fully grasped that until their time together in Alaska. | |
| You know the way the Russian public officials, I know this from having interviewed Vladimir Sergei Lavrov. | |
| You ask a question, you're going to get a 20-minute answer. | |
| It's a very thorough, meticulous, almost academic like answer. | |
| That's just the way they are. | |
| And I think that that's educational or was educational for President Trump. | |
| Colonel, on the flight from Washington to Anchorage, he was interviewed on Air Force One by Brett Baer at Fox News. | |
| said to Brett, I fully expect a ceasefire, and I'll be very disappointed if we don't have one by the end of the day. | |
| Four hours later, he was whistling an entirely different tune. | |
| Yeah. | |
| Yeah. | |
| No, you're right about – I think you're right about the Russians. | |
| I always – I was enthralled by the Fischer-Spotsky chess match. | |
| And when I think of the Russians, I think of chess players. | |
| I think of deep thinkers. | |
| I think chess is almost like a national sport there. | |
| And so I think they play a very careful game. | |
| uh whereas you know president trump uh he's more of a risk taker uh i i think of him as more of a poker player. | |
| You know, his attention span is not as long or as deep as, say, the Russians. | |
| So I think in this case, Putin played the game pretty smartly. | |
| I like the way in which Putin talked about the way in which Russians and Americans worked together. | |
| during World War II, you know, the way in which we defeated a common foe. | |
| I mean, he was obviously trying to appeal to a little bit of goodwill between the United States and Russia. | |
| And again, I think that's a good thing overall um yesterday uh trump met with eu leaders who to a person want to continue fighting or having somebody else fight the proxy war in ukraine uh against russia we know that the cia and mi six have practically taken over ukrainian intel and | |
| literally choose the targets and guide British and American weapons toward those Russian targets as cordial as Donald Trump was as he and President Putin were speaking. | |
| Now I'm back on Friday. | |
| American intelligence was showing Ukrainian soldiers how to kill Russian soldiers and Putin was still cordial. | |
| Now we're back to yesterday. | |
| Yesterday he seemed to tell the EU leaders what they wanted to hear, which was U.S. guaranteed U.S. support for security guarantees. | |
| Security guarantees of what? | |
| What is being guaranteed? | |
| Colonel Astor. | |
| Yeah, yeah, well, yeah, it's interesting that they're talking about some kind of modified Article 5 provision such that if Ukraine was attacked in the future by Russia, assuming there's some kind of a peace deal, that Ukraine's territorial integrity would be protected in some way, that there would be some kind of military response from NATO. | |
| I don't know if this is going to happen. | |
| But this is apparently one of the options being kicked around. | |
| And perhaps some kind of language will be inserted as a face-saving mechanism. | |
| because it seems to me that Putin is insisting on getting most, if not all, of the Donbass, which Russian forces currently occupy. | |
| And if Ukraine finally does give in and say, well, yes, your de facto occupation of that land is we will accept that for peace, I can see possibly where there'll be some sort of language inserted. | |
| as a way of, you know, without granting Ukraine, you know, full membership in NATO. | |
| Well. | |
| Well, but NATO troops on the ground, whether they call themselves NATO, whether they call themselves EU, whether they call themselves by the country from which they come, would never be accepted by the Russians. | |
| I'm going to play a clip of you of an interview I did just four months ago in Moscow with Foreign Minister Lavrov, in which he says just that. | |
| Now he, but you will hear him say at the very end of this, it doesn't matter under what flag they appear, we will not accept European and American troops on the ground in NATO. | |
| Chris? | |
| Europe and the UK, they certainly want this to continue. | |
| the way they received Zelensky in London after the scandal in Washington and it's an indication that they want to raise the stakes and they are preparing some something to pressure Trump administration back into some aggressive action against Russia. | |
| We are philosophical about this. | |
| We know what we are doing. | |
| But I am mostly amazed with this peacekeepers obsession. | |
| Peacekeepers. | |
| Let's stop. | |
| Macron says, let's stop in one month. | |
| The peacekeepers would be deployed. | |
| Then we'll see what to do next. | |
| It is not what we say is required for the end of this war, which the West waged against us through Ukrainians with their direct participation of their military. | |
| We know this. | |
| If NATO expansion is recognized, at least by Donald Trump, as one of the root causes, then the presence of the troops from NATO countries under any flag, in any capacity on Ukrainian soil is the same threat. | |
| Right. | |
| Yeah. | |
| No, I take his meaning there. | |
| And from the Russian perspective, I can understand that. | |
| I mean, they've basically been enduring what they see as unnecessary NATO expansion that threatens their borders. | |
| And again, this doesn't surprise me that the Russians feel this way. | |
| I remember I was at the Air Force Academy. | |
| I was a major in 1998, and we had a conference in which we had four of the former supreme or deputy NATO commanders and we asked them about NATO expansion before NATO actually started moving into the Baltics and Poland and all the rest. | |
| And three out of the four said they didn't think that this would be a smart move for NATO to expand eastward because of the Russian concerns. | |
| I mean, Russia has been invaded, as we all know, so many times, whether it be in 1914 by the Germans. | |
| I mean, there was even a time when American forces were involved trying to put down the Russian revolution in 1918. | |
| So Russia certainly has legitimate concerns. | |
| And I can see why they wouldn't want NATO forces as peacekeepers. | |
| Maybe United Nations forces would be acceptable to, or maybe they don't really need a peacekeeping force at all. | |
| Well, that's the point that I wanted to dwell on. | |
| I mean, what is a security guarantee? | |
| Does it guarantee that if someone attacks, that somebody else will defend you or does it guarantee neutrality like the security guarantee in the treaty and constitution in the mid-50s of Austria which has worked out perfectly fine it's a happy uh prosperous free totally neutral country on whose National Security Council sat a representative from the USSR | |
| the old USSR for 20 years to assure neutrality is that what they mean by security because if they mean military I mean Lavrov could not have been clearer that would that's a non starter Yeah, no, I think for Ukraine, the smartest move, easy for me to say, you know, I'm sitting here thousands of miles away, you know, safely. | |
| But often, you know, I think to myself, those who are advocating strongest for Ukraine to keep on fighting this war are often, are often like me, sitting several thousand miles away, safe behind the lines, you know, with no fear of artillery fire and machine guns and missiles and all the rest. | |
| I mean, I listen to people more when they have skin in the game you know those people who actually go to ukraine go to the front lines put themselves in danger okay i'll listen to you i think i think ukraine's safest path ahead is neutrality colonel um how dangerous is the deep state and how would they likely react to this i mean if donald trump continues that the path that he's | |
| on uh going along peaceably with the removal of naito and the lawful acquisition of crimea and the uh Donbass. | |
| This is like throwing the neocons, Lindsey Graham and that crowd under the bus. | |
| I doubt that Donald Trump is worried about Lindsey Graham, but should he be worried about the people that tried to undo his presidency the first time, who still have great sway in the foreign service and most poignantly in the intelligence community? | |
| I think that always has to be a concern. | |
| if you're president. | |
| Then again, though, I think Trump and other presidents have done this. | |
| I think they attempt to neutralize the deep state by feeding it more. | |
| So in other words, as we all know, Trump hinted or suggested at least once that he would actually cut the Pentagon budget in the deep state, possibly in half, Pentagon budget down to 500 billion instead of the unimaginable sum of 1 trillion. | |
| But he decided against that. | |
| And you have to ask yourself why. | |
| And I think it's mainly to neutralize that very deep state. | |
| As long as you keep it satiated, you know, maybe it won't come for you. | |
| I think the other thing is, is, is as long as there's another enemy that, that. | |
| that the deep state can pivot to possibly China or I hate to say Iran again. | |
| I think that's the other tactic that they that presidents use perhaps to get the deep state off their back. | |
| Isn't the CIA fomenting a revolution or civil war or whatever you want to call it in Georgia? | |
| Obviously, I don't mean American Georgia, but the country of Georgia as we speak. | |
| Didn't General Donahue just a couple of weeks ago threaten to use troops to take over Kaliningrad as if that somehow poses a threat to the country? | |
| Yeah. | |
| Yeah. | |
| No, no, there's definitely some reckless talk. | |
| What's going on in Georgia, I hate to say I'm not familiar with that. | |
| I don't know what the CIA is up to there. | |
| Well, you know that the CIA does fight wars and foment revolutions. | |
| It is a historical fact that many that they've done, including the one that started all of this in 2014. | |
| when they fomented the, I don't know, they gave it the Maidan revolution, whatever it was, and they drove out Victor Yanukovych, who was the popularly elected president of Ukraine. | |
| They work for the president. | |
| The president can stop the CIA with a phone call unless he's afraid of them. | |
| Right, right. | |
| Well, that's assuming that the president knows about it, right? | |
| That's assuming that he's being briefed. | |
| And I think there's a lot of things that, that, that happen as, as you know, uh, that presidents are not aware of. | |
| Want to play another clip from, um, uh, He says that President Trump and the people around him are very serious in wanting peace. | |
| Unfortunately, I cannot say the same thing about the leadership of the European countries. | |
| Chris, cut number 27. | |
| Definitely, yes. | |
| It was abundantly clear that the esteemed head of the United States and his dedicated team, first and foremost, genuinely wanted to achieve a comprehensive and lasting result that would be long-term, inherently stable, and truly reliable, quite unlike the European counterparts who at that particular time kept persistently insisting everywhere that only an immediate ceasefire was absolutely needed and after that they would continue to relentlessly supply weapons to Ukraine. | |
| And secondly, it is important to note that both President Trump and his entire team possessed a very clear and comprehensive understanding that this particular conflict, in its very essence, truly has its underlying causes and deep-rooted origins. | |
| Furthermore, they recognize that the discourse and the talk emanating from some European presidents and prime ministers specifically regarding how Russia purportedly launched an unprovoked and entirely unjustified attack on Ukraine is quite frankly nothing more than childish babel there is absolutely no other accurate or appropriate way to articulate or describe it more than the childish babel i don't know if donald trump changed the minds of any of those european leaders uh yesterday also don't know if they could afford to fund | |
| the war without us involvement what do you think well yeah that's exactly right that's what i was thinking is is that we you know the united states we've we've already bankrode ukraine to the to the tune of roughly 180 billion dollars spent on the war as well as you know keeping various agencies afloat there in Ukraine. | |
| And I do not believe that Europe has the will or the resources to provide that level of funding to Ukraine. | |
| But it is interesting. | |
| I think so much of this goes back to history and the fear of Russia within European countries. | |
| And you can understand that to a certain extent, right? | |
| I mean, it wasn't that long ago. | |
| where Russia was dominating many of these European countries. | |
| They were part of the Warsaw Pact against NATO and memories are long there. | |
| But nevertheless, I happen to think that President Trump is on the right track. | |
| I think this is a war that should be settled. | |
| I really appreciate that he's trying to push peace here. | |
| And I don't know if he's just motivated to get that Nobel Peace Prize. | |
| And I don't really care what his motivation is if he can achieve peace and stop the slaughter of Russians and Ukrainians, you know, all power to them. | |
| Agreed, Colonel. | |
| And nicely put. | |
| Thank you very much for your time, my dear friend. | |
| I hope you'll come back and join us again soon. | |
| Oh, thanks so much, Judge. | |
| Okay, all the best. |
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