Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano - COL. Douglas Macgregor : Trump’s Dangerous U-turn on Ukraine

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Sept. 25, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano

24:05

COL. Douglas Macgregor : Trump’s Dangerous U-turn on Ukraine

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	Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for judging freedom.
	Today is Thursday, September 25th, 2025.
	Colonel Douglas McGregor is here on President Trump's dangerous U-turn on Ukraine.
	But first, this.
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	Colonel McGregor, welcome here, my dear friend.
	Thank you for accommodating my schedule.
	Before we get to what you have characterized as war debt and delusion, uh the president's statement uh at the UN to President Zelensky and in his own posting of Truth Search.
	I have to ask him a few other questions about what he said at the UN.
	According to Arab leaders with whom he met after his speech to the General Assembly, he told them that he would prevent President Netanyahu from having the Israelis annex the West Bank.
	Can he do that?
	Can he get away with that?
	Okay.
	You know, as President of the United States, the the answer is yes, he could profoundly influence that outcome.
	On the other hand, uh, we haven't seen much evidence that he's behaved like President of the United States.
	He behaves more like uh someone implementing guidance and guidelines from Mr. Netanyahu.
	So to answer that question, we'll have to wait and see.
	If I were to ask you if President Trump controls Prime Minister Netanyahu or Prime Minister Netanyahu controls President Trump, I know you don't want this.
	How could you answer it?
	Mr. Netanyahu is in charge.
	He's been in charge 100% since President Trump took office.
	I don't think there's any question about that.
	I don't see any evidence for change in that either in the short term.
	Last question before we jump to Ukraine.
	In the past hour, the Pentagon revealed that Secretary Hegseth has ordered all 800 generals and admirals.
	My God, I had no idea there were 800 of them.
	Maybe another topic for another time.
	I know how you feel about this, and of course I agree with you.
	But all 800 of them around the world to meet him at a Marine base in Virginia next week.
	What could this be about and how disruptive to military order would it be if all generals and admirals assembled in one place at one time?
	Well, part of me instinctively wants to say that people could actually get a lot of work done that's positive and useful for the American people in the absence of all these slag officers.
	But I don't want to go there right now.
	So I'll simply say uh I suppose this is going to be at Quantico, Because that's the only base I can think of that could accommodate a large number of people like that.
	And it may have something to do with uh broader policy regarding where we're headed next.
	It may have something to do with his uh wanting to impart uh a message of what's important to him or or the president.
	You know, he's certainly not going to tell half of them that you're no longer needed and you're fired.
	I would I would I think that's very unlikely.
	So, but it is unusual, let's say.
	Let's say that.
	Um just to jump back on the Trump Netanyahu relationship.
	Uh I neglected to run this.
	Our mutual friend and my former Fox colleague uh Tucker Carlson has spoken very, very directly about this.
	Uh, here's what he said just two or three days ago, Chris number 26.
	I mean, BB's running around.
	This is a fact.
	I'm not guessing about this, because I talked to people he said it to is running around the Middle East, his region and his own country and telling people point blank, just stating it, I control the United States.
	I control Donald Trump.
	He's saying that.
	And again, I'm not guessing at all.
	That's a fact.
	And I dare them to say that's not true, because it is true and they know it's true.
	So I'm an American.
	How do you think it makes me feel?
	Even if we cut that short.
	He goes on and on and on, and it's a little repetitive, but the point is he spoke to people who have claimed to have heard Netanyahu saying he's in charge of Trump.
	Uh, the only comment I can make is that uh I have sources in various places who've told me the same thing.
	I'm not sure that's really new.
	I think most everybody in the region knows that uh Mr. Netanyahu is in a position to deliver on Trump.
	In other words, whatever he wants, he's going to get.
	So that's not that's not really news.
	I guess it's shocking to the American people, and it should be, but they'd better wake up and figure out who's really running the show.
	And uh, that's not Donald Trump.
	Chris, can we put up the uh full screen from uh Truth Social uh where the president says it's time for Ukraine to win?
	I know you've uh seen this, Colonel, but uh just so uh we're on the same page here.
	Uh the president posted this after he met, after he spoke at the UN, then met with President Zelensky.
	He posted this.
	I think you I'm reading it.
	I think Ukraine with the support of the European Union is in a position to fight and win in caps all of Ukraine back in its original form with time, patience, and the financial support of Europe, and in particular NATO.
	Now I'm editorializing, three-quarters of whose budget is paid by the U.S. Now I'm reading again.
	The original borders from where this war started is very much an option.
	Why not?
	How dangerous is this kind of a U-turn from the president of the United States before we even get into debt and delusion I I think the Moscow is unsurprised.
	They're seeing the final transformation of Donald Trump into Biden, too.
	So for all intents and purposes, that's what you've got right now, Biden too.
	Certainly as far as foreign and defense policy is concerned, and even in some areas of domestic policy.
	Everybody is disappointed.
	But uh it reaffirms uh something that uh Tucker said, because many of the same forces that want us to stay entangled and embroiled in the Middle East against the various states and people that Israel wants to attack, also back uh this unending war in Ukraine against Russia.
	Uh and again, we got to go back to the banking cartels in New York City and the city of London.
	They're very much interested in keeping everything going as it is.
	And then on top of that, you have your so-called globalist uh governments in places like London, Paris, and Berlin, who fear an end to this war because they know if it ends anytime soon, they're going to be eliminated, as uh the leaders of their respective countries.
	They they're losing air speed and altitude very, very quickly.
	So, all in all, none of us should be terribly surprised, but we could we all have a right to be disappointed.
	And of course, remember, we haven't even talked about the potential for yet another conflict, a new one to emerge in Venezuela.
	So all of this suggests that President Trump has walked away from just about everything he said he would do or not do.
	Before I play uh your favorite senator from South Carolina beaming over this, I want to play the president, more or less restating it in the presence of President Macron.
	Now, Macron, in your view and mine, has crazy ideas about Europe and where they're going to get their money from and whether Russia's going to occupy Paris and all that nonsense.
	However, look at the sort of biting my tongue look on President Macron's face as President Trump articulates this.
	It's time for uh Russia to win back what the it's time for Ukraine to win back what the Russians have taken.
	Cut number 22.
	It's been a terrible war, should have ended.
	And uh Russia should have stopped it.
	But uh they've been three and a half years and they've gotten that so far.
	So we'll see what happens.
	But the other side can fight too.
	And they've proven that maybe it's a pay, it could be that Russia's a paper tiger.
	I don't know what they are, but three and a half years of fighting and killing everybody, of killing 7,000 people a week for nothing.
	For nothing.
	So it's a very sad situation.
	But most of you have seen the recent statement I put out a little while ago.
	And I'm glad you got it.
	But I feel that way.
	I really don't feel that way.
	Let them get their land back.
	Yep.
	So we'll see how it all works out.
	It's not even conceivable that they could get Crimea and the Donbass back, is it?
	Not a chance.
	Impossible.
	Uh but this is uh, you know, phenomenal.
	It's it it's exemplifies the level of ignorance and uh self-delusion that is widespread in the West, and an unwillingness to see reality.
	There's no willingness to admit that Russia is absolutely no paper tiger, as I wrote, it if anything, it appeals it appears more and more like an impregnable fortress.
	Russia is victorious.
	Russia is now well prepared for anything that we throw at them, up to and including nuclear weapons, I'm afraid.
	And uh that's what worries me the most, that this this sort of stupidity and ignorance could inadvertently cause a major conflict between ourselves and the Russians that is completely unnecessary and counterproductive.
	is the lack of knowledge and understanding of what's going on in the region.
	The history, culture, and geography, everything is just so damaging.
	I I don't know where to begin.
	And uh that's why I wrote uh war debt and delusion.
	Now, the we'll we'll talk about that, I hope.
	Well, explain to us the problems as you see them with debt.
	I mean, we're running a $37 trillion debt with the big beautiful bill, as Trump and the Republicans call it, assuming there's no changes to it, that'll be up to 41 trillion by the time uh he leaves office.
	The military-industrial complex continues to be enriched.
	He claims that the NATO countries are paying uh for this equipment, they're probably paying for it with money borrowed from us, which we don't have, so we printed it.
	This is a mess.
	The world is discovering that fiat currency can always be diluted in terms of its value.
	They're also discovering once again that gold retains its value.
	And so we're watching the world gradually, step by step shift out of the dollar system and move increasingly towards gold-backed currencies.
	The most prominent of those currencies right now, I think that's emerging, is the Yuan and China.
	The Chinese have set up what I would call a petrogold exchange.
	And of course, this is being organized with the Saudis, and it's effectively gonna replace your petrodollar.
	Now, what is this?
	Well, the Chinese are opening what I guess you might call multi-jurisdictional vaults.
	One in Saudi Arabia and Riyadh, they're gonna have another one in Hong Kong.
	This is beyond the Shanghai gold exchange.
	And these are effectively warehouses for massive quantities of gold.
	And that means that when China and Saudi Arabia do business, they will do business in their respective currencies, because both of those currencies could be reclaimed as gold.
	In other words, China buys oil and gas, the Saudis buy whatever they do from the Chinese, Whether it's military equipment or anything else, and both sides have access to the warehouse.
	And as a result, they can move that gold into their portion of the warehouse.
	In other words, it completely bypasses the dollar.
	And this is a global effort underway right now to de-dollarize.
	In the meantime, we're simply debasing the currency.
	We continue to replenish the monetary supply, the money supply by what, six, seven percent.
	And the more you print, the less it's worth is simply the truth.
	You don't need complex mathematics to figure that out.
	And our currency is being debased.
	And increasingly nobody wants it.
	So the Chinese are dumping hundreds of millions of dollars worth of our treasuries.
	Ultimately, I think they'll dump all of them.
	And they're not the only ones.
	The Japanese, the Saudis, and others that hold substantial portions of our debt are shedding the United States Treasury, which in their judgment is dead weight.
	They're losing money.
	They want to get out of it.
	And increasingly, people don't want to do business in the dollar.
	Now, the Chinese banking system per se that's backing much of this is not yet as sophisticated and complex as our own.
	But they're moving there very, very rapidly.
	And it would be a mistake to believe that the world is going to rely on our SWIFT system in indefinitely.
	It's just not going to happen.
	This is very, very dangerous.
	This is as dangerous as open warfare with Russia for the United States and the Republic.
	So this is uh classic economics 101, which the government never follows.
	No, more money, more money, more cash, chasing the same amount of goods causes inflation.
	Oh, absolutely.
	And it's rising out of control.
	Correct.
	Now add to that the devaluation of the dollar.
	If I own an asset, whether it's land or stock or a house that I think is worth 100,000 as a result of all this, it's going to be worth less.
	Yeah, well, all you have to do is go on and listen to the various experts talk about the collapse of the real estate market that's coming.
	And when that collapses, that's one of the pillars of wealth in the United States, as you well know.
	Suddenly the thing that everybody has poured money into is going to turn out to be worth very, very little.
	You know, back during the Weimar Republic, with a very small few ounces of gold, you could walk in and buy beautiful homes.
	That's how bad it got.
	I think you're going to see something similar to that here in the United States.
	How much longer do you think President Putin's uh patience will last since you have told us, along with nearly all of your colleagues on this show and others with whom you and I communicate that his goal really is to degrade the Ukrainian military, and he's doing so patiently, methodically and systematically.
	He does not want to send an arreshnik into a uh Ukrainian government building.
	Uh, but at some point I would think his patience will run out.
	What's your take on this, Colonel?
	Well, you're asking a very important question, and unfortunately, none of us have uh ears in the Kremlin.
	But we have to assume uh a couple of things.
	President Putin is going to watch very carefully to see just exactly what shows up in Western Ukraine from the NATO members, primarily Great Britain, France, and Germany, and the United States.
	Now, what do I mean by that?
	Well, if all of a sudden vast quantities of SM6 missiles, this is your standard uh near hypersonic device, missile, whatever that can strike with great precision shows up, then that will have an effect on the Russians.
	The Russians will say, well, do we wait until these things are all uh fully deployed and operational, or do we strike first?
	They're gonna wait and see if these tourist missiles show up.
	If those kinds of things happen, then the Russians will be inclined to take very, very decisive action and move their forces further west.
	They're already on the outskirts of Odessa.
	They've got plenty of people on the ground west of uh the upper river.
	They just haven't brought over the weight of their conventional force.
	That can be done very quickly.
	So Odessa could fall in in a space of a few days.
	I know that the NATO members have sent some of their forces, particularly French and I'm told some British, into Odessa, but like the Russians, uh, these are in very small numbers and they appear to be special forces types.
	But all of this points in the direction of an escalating war.
	And again, the Russians have to ask how long do we wait before this poses a real existential threat to us?
	Or do we uh do we just wait?
	Wait or not wait.
	That's the question.
	And I don't know the answer to that.
	But I think uh President Putin probably has more fundamental concrete support from the Russian population now than ever.
	And there is no question in anybody's minds about the justice, justice of his cause.
	Everybody has seen all the material from the bio labs that were discovered.
	They know what terrible things the CIA were involved with and planning.
	Uh they know that uh the Ukrainians are now hurting men in their late 50s, 60s in the uniform to go become cannon fodder.
	They know that uh there are people in Ukraine openly talking about huge quantities of money that can be made by child and uh trafficking, human trafficking, as well as resale of goods, uh sale of mineral resources, and of course, Zelensky's been selling off agricultural land to the BlackRock and others.
	Uh all of this is known in Moscow, and Moscow has to make the decision are we moving forward?
	Do we continue to go forward?
	Do we finally put an end to this regime or do we wait until it gets worse?
	I don't know that answer, but I think President President Putin is not surprised, sadly, by what President Trump has done.
	Remember, President Putin on more than one occasion has pointed out that he's watched every president transform into some version of John McCain.
	He didn't say John McCain, but effectively that's what he's saying.
	That's where we are.
	Here's the present-day John McCain, cut number 28.
	Uh, Trump 2028.
	I hope this never ends.
	When he asks, what should you do if a Russian jet flies into your country?
	Shoot it down.
	He's tried to go out of his way to get uh Putin to the table.
	Uh we don't want to humiliate Russia, we just want to end the war.
	And to our friends in Russia, here's what Trump did today.
	He told uh NATO, I'll sell you all the weapons you want.
	You can provide them to Ukraine, and as to Ukraine, you can use them any way you want.
	So to the Russian military, you're going to be up against the high-end American weapons that will be sold to NATO for the benefit of Ukraine, and this war is uh coming to your backyard here with no limitations like Biden.
	Well, that's exactly right.
	He's consigning Ukraine to total destruction, and he's opening the very real possibility that uh we end up becoming part of the war.
	You know, Americans have this assumption that we sit in isolation, we're invulnerable, invincible, and no one will challenge us.
	That's not true.
	And the thing we have to understand is that what we're seeing happen in the economic world, in other words, the world of the petrodollar that's vanishing from our standpoint, the emergence of new gold back currencies and a new financial system called BRICS is matched in the military sphere.
	In other words, all of these countries are watching what we're doing.
	They want to get out of the dollar's way, but if we go to war stupidly, even if it's accidental with the Russians, Russia will have no shortage of friends.
	I thought I thought it was interesting that he talked about his friends in Russia or our friends in Russia.
	I don't think we have very many friends there.
	So if he thinks he's going to threaten or frighten the Russians, he's lost his mind.
	There's no chance.
	The Russians are not afraid.
	In fact, there are a lot of Russians that would welcome the opportunity to slam us.
	Now, talk about one thing that he keeps bringing up.
	Well, shoot down these Russian aircraft.
	There are no Russian aircraft violating our airspace.
	That's all nonsense.
	From Finland all the way down to uh the Black Sea.
	The Russians are not deliberately going into our airspace.
	They haven't sent anything in there deliberately.
	And these 19 drones that everybody is uh you know continues to fume about, were all reconnaissance, and uh none of them had anything to do with uh delivering weapons.
	And finally, we're not Even sure how they got there, but the Russians and the Belarus have given us all the information we could want.
	They they've opened the kimona, so to say, so that we can investigate it.
	We don't want to investigate it.
	We're looking for a reason to attack Russia.
	The Russians aren't going to give it to us.
	Colonel, uh, I could talk to you about this for another hour, but I have to run.
	Thank you very much for your time for your insight, my dear friend.
	I also want to talk to you next time we're together next week about the freedom of speech.
	Used to be fundamental in America.
	We will be together there.
	You are hosting on October 4th, 2025.
	It's a private dinner with limited seating, but I understand there is still room.
	There we are.
	Colonel McGregor, Natalie Brunell, uh, Dr. Alga Rabasi, and yours truly.
	Well, this is an exercise in free speech, Judge.
	Yes, it is.
	That's the whole fact.
	And everybody that's coming there knows that, and I think is looking forward to it.
	But uh just keep something in mind.
	I think since last night we're down to nine or ten seats.
	So almost uh all are sold.
	So I hope others will come in because uh we want you there.
	We want people to express their views.
	So thanks, Judge, and uh see you soon.
	Yes, thank you, Colonel.
	All the best.
	Right.
	Bye bye.
	Bye.
	And coming up later today at two o'clock this afternoon, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson at three o'clock.
	Professor John Meersheimer at four o'clock from the UN, which you can't get near today in New York City, but he's there.

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