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Oct. 17, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
24:44
Prof John Mearsheimer : Why Trump’s Gaza Deal Will Fail.
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Hi, everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for judging freedom.
Today is Friday, October 17th, 2025.
Professor John Meersheimer joins us now.
I'm in Moscow.
Professor Mirzher is in the upper Midwest where he usually resides and works.
Professor Mirschharmer, I wish you were with us, but I am deeply and profoundly grateful for the time that you're giving us.
Not your usual time of day, not your usual day of the week, but you're a trooper, and I thank you very much for it publicly.
I will do so personally next time we're together.
We have a lot to talk about.
The issue of the moment, it happened while I was here yesterday, uh, was the telephone call between President Trump and President Putin.
But before we do, a couple of other matters involving uh Israel and uh Venezuela, is there any reason that Americans should expect that the Trump Gaza plan will be complied with by the Israelis?
No.
Uh, and there's already evidence that it's not being complied with.
Uh look, with regard to the Trump plan, you're not going to get a peace settlement here.
There's going to be no final agreement where the Palestinians have self-determination and they get some sort of state of their own.
That's not going to happen.
The only interesting question is whether the ceasefire sticks or not.
And the Israelis have a rich history of breaking ceasefires.
Uh, you want to remember that people treat this ceasefire as if it's something new.
But the fact is that Trump, the day before he came into office, this is January 19th, a deal was struck with the Palestinians, with Hamas and with Israel to have a peace uh to have a ceasefire.
And there was a ceasefire that lasted two months.
And then the ceasefire ended.
And guess who ended it?
The Israelis.
So uh why should we expect the Israelis not to try to end this ceasefire?
And I think we should expect that.
Now, it may not happen, and let's hope it doesn't happen, because we don't want to see the genocide start up again.
But given that Israel has achieved hardly any of its goals in this campaign, I wouldn't be surprised for one second if uh Israel violated the ceasefire and we were back to square one.
Tell me what you think about the idea of Israeli settlements in Gaza.
And lest you think that's fanciful, here's Minister Smotrich, Chris Cut number seven.
There will be Jewish settlement in Gaza.
Without settlement there is nothing.
First of all, the territories of the land of Israel are ours.
But without settlement, they have no foothold.
So we have patience, but we also have determination and faith.
And with God's help, we will continue the series of victories and the great miracles that have happened to us to overcome all kinds of campaigns.
With religious fanaticism driving governmental policy, with a history of non-compliance, with a president of the United States saying, if Hamas doesn't disarm, we will disarm them, With none of the principles present in Cairo when the so-called ceasefire Gaza deal was signed.
Why would anybody expect it to succeed?
I don't know.
Uh, you and I certainly don't.
I mean, uh, when you listen to Smotrich talk, I think what you're hearing is uh the mainstream view inside of Israel.
Uh Israelis across the border interested in creating a greater Israel, which means that Gaza will be part of Israel and the Palestinians will be driven out Of uh Gaza.
And then the question is what happens after that?
And of course the answer is settlements go in.
So when you hear people like Smothrich talk, they reflect uh what is the consensus opinion in Israel?
And if you believe that, uh then how does a ceasefire hold up over time?
Because this ceasefire is designed to prevent the Israelis from colonizing Gaza.
You know, um before we jump to Venezuela and then the conversation between, or what we know about the conversation between President Trump and uh President uh Putin.
I need to play this for you.
Can the United States possibly disarm Hamas?
Here's President Trump cut number six.
How long will it take Hamas to disarm?
And can you guarantee that it's going to happen?
Well, they're going to disarm.
Uh because they said they were going to disarm.
And if they don't disarm, we will disarm them.
How would you do that?
Uh I don't have to explain that to you.
But if they don't disarm, we will disarm them.
They know I'm not playing games.
Okay.
Now, we did something monumental.
We got the hostages back.
That was the first thing we had to do, above all else.
Get the hostages back.
Now, they misrepresented because we were told they had 26, 24.
How would the United States of America disarm Hamas unless we're going to put boots on the ground, Professor Mirscheimer?
Well, I think what you have to do, Judge, is pay attention to the word we.
When he says we, he's not talking about the United States.
He's talking about the United States and Israel.
The United States and Israel are joined at the hip.
So when he says we, that means the IDF will do the dirty work.
So he's not talking about sending American troops in.
That's not going to happen.
The we applies to the United States and Israel.
Now, is this going to work?
The answer is no.
Hamas has made it very clear that it's not going to disarm until there is a Palestinian entity that is in control in Gaza.
And that is not going to happen.
Trump's 20-point plan is designed to make sure that doesn't happen.
So Hamas is not going to disarm.
And when we go in to try to disarm Hamas, we're going to get the same result that we got when we tried to disarm them over the past two years.
And that is that we could, we could not defeat Hamas.
Great observation.
Isn't the Gaza peace plan just a facade to get the Israeli hostages out?
No, I think that Trump and company were genuinely interested in coming up with some sort of plan that stopped the killing and ultimately settled the conflict.
It's just that the plan that they came up with had to be passed by the Israelis.
I mean, the Israelis and the Americans are a tag team.
And once you involve the Israelis, there's no way you can have a meaningful peace plan.
It's not even clear, as I said at the start of the program, that you can have a meaningful ceasefire.
So this plan is going nowhere.
Now, it was accepted in good part by the Israelis, I believe, because it did get the hostages out.
I think getting the hostages out is the only goal that the Israelis have achieved.
The only one of their goals, for example, they have not defeated Hamas.
They have not driven the Palestinians out of Gaza.
And they're now in a situation where it may be the case where this stabilization force that comes into Gaza, assuming it ever comes in, will make it more difficult than ever for them to drive the Palestinians out.
simply because there will be a lot of Arab armies in the region.
Thank you.
Wow.
Do you force the American troops there, Professor Mayor Shamar?
No, I don't.
I find that hard to imagine.
I would imagine that they're already small, you know, special forces in Gaza, but uh large-scale boots on the grounds, I find that hard to imagine.
I think we've seen how little success the Israelis have had at rooting out Hamas.
The idea that we would go in there and do that when the chances of success are not very great.
Uh I find hard to uh I find it hard to believe.
Let's jump quickly to Venezuela before we get to the uh Donald Trump, uh Donald Trump Vladimir Putin uh 90-minute more or less uh phone call uh yesterday.
If the president is going to build up the military in the ocean outside of uh Venezuela, shouldn't he be making the case to the American people?
Shouldn't there be a great debate on the floor uh of both houses of Congress about what national security threat is posed by the government of Venezuela to the people of the United States?
Shouldn't he?
The answer is absolutely yes.
But will that happen?
No, it won't happen for two reasons.
One is there's no case to be made.
There's no reason for us to be talking about going into Venezuela and toppling the government.
And two, this is just not the way we operate anymore.
Certainly true with President Trump, but it was true with President Biden and his predecessors as well.
Presidents feel that we're in a permanent state of extreme emergency, and they're free to intervene or go to war wherever they see fit.
And what Congress or the American people think doesn't matter.
Uh here is uh one of the president's staunchest allies.
I don't mean to cause you to lose your breakfast, but here he is, the senior senator from South Carolina on this very topic, Chris Cut number two.
That's not putting America first.
It's not ending wars, it's starting them.
No, it's protecting America greatly.
Uh narco-terrorism is a huge threat to our country.
More people die from drug overdoses than die from any terrorist activity.
Venezuela's a center to the storm.
The guy's indicted, and there's more coming.
We're not going to sit on the side of the side.
No, you know what you're doing, you're saving American lives.
Every time you blow up one of these drug votes, you're saving.
You know, Maduro's on barred time, I hope.
I hope the people of Venezuela is he's not a legitimate president.
Just stay tuned.
I don't know about you, but I feel like international terrorism is on the move again.
And he had airport systems hacked with pro-Hamas messages.
This is not a time to let your guard down.
So speaking of I understand Senator Graham's argument.
Uh we don't think that Maduro won the election, and therefore we will use military force to oust him.
And by the way, he's not cracking down on and maybe profiting uh from the sale of narcotics that eventually make its way to willing American buyers.
P.S., and I won't mention this, I'm I'm mimicking Senator Graham.
The CIA says the Maduro government is not involved in narco-terrorism.
So is that the case?
Look, this charge of narco-terrorism uh and using that using it as a justification uh for invading and overthrowing the government in Venezuela is ludicrous.
The two countries in Latin America that are most responsible for sending drugs into the United States are Colombia and Ecuador, not Venezuela.
The idea that Venezuela is the centerpiece of this problem is just simply wrong.
And the idea that this is part of a growing terrorist problem uh and that international terrorism is threatening the United States is another ludicrous argument.
Uh do you see terrorists running around in the United States uh threatening our security?
I don't see any of them.
Uh here in Chicago, to the extent that we see terrorists, uh, they're seen as ICE agents.
Uh so I just, you know, it's more of the sort of cockamimi arguments that you hear all the time from people like Lindsey Graham that just make no sense at all.
You're a great man, um uh Professor Mayor Shammer.
I was thinking the same thing.
The terrorists in Chicago are dressed in U.S. military fatigues and they're repelling down from helicopters and smashing into apartment windows and terrorizing people who are sitting there lawfully because they've overstayed their visas.
Let's jump to uh President Putin and President uh Trump, but first cut number four.
And look, I'm very disappointed because Vladimir and I had a very good relationship.
Probably still do.
I don't know why he continues with this war.
This war has been so bad for him.
He's going into four years of a war that should have beaten, he should have won that war in one week.
He's now going to soon be into his fourth year.
He's lost a million and a half soldiers, probably close.
He's got to really settle this war.
And you know they have long lines waiting for gasoline in Russia right now, right?
They have long lines.
Who thought that was going to happen?
And all of a sudden his economy is going to collapse.
And I'd like to see him do well.
I mean, I I had a very good relationship with Vladimir Putin.
But he just doesn't want to end that war.
Who would think that Ukraine could have fought Russia for four years to essentially a stance to where he got the million three loss, that is more attuned to the Ukrainian loss.
I've been in Moscow this week.
The gas costs less here than it does in Manhattan and in New Jersey, where I live.
There are no lines for gas that I've seen, and I've been all over the city for the past two and a half days.
So let's put aside his absurd smears on of the economic effect on the war.
What do you think they talked about?
What do you think he offered Vladimir Putin or threatened Vladimir Putin with during their conversation last night, Moscow time?
Well, I would bet a ton of money that he did not threaten Putin.
I would believe, I would think that what he did was he tried to convince uh Putin that they can work out some sort of ceasefire analogous to the ceasefire that you got in Gaza.
Uh Trump is in a situation where he views himself as a great peacemaker, and he thinks he's gotten the ceasefire uh in Gaza that's going to be very successful.
It's going to prove very successful.
And now he can do the same thing as to what would be required to have a ceasefire.
All of this is to say, I don't think you're going to get a ceasefire.
Or you excuse me, you said Zelensky, you meant Putin.
Putin, rather, sorry.
Right.
Right, right.
Uh you know, I wonder what role the Tomahawks uh play, because uh President uh uh uh foreign minister Lavrov has said it won't change anything on the battlefield, but it will change our relationship to the United States if Tomahawks show up.
The president of the United States thinks Tomahawks are a joke.
Chris cut number five.
Tomahawk?
Uh we'll be talking about Ukraine.
Yeah, I mean, I have the president coming in on Friday and we'll I know what he has to say.
He wants weapons, he would like to have tomahawks.
Everyone else wants tomahawk.
We have a lot of tomahawks.
Tomahawk is a do you need any tomahawks in Argentina?
You got Roman off vote.
You need them for your opposition, I guess, because see in this country they'd use tomahawks for the opposition.
I don't do that.
I'm much nicer.
The Democrats would use them if they had the chance.
They're sick people.
Go ahead.
Uh President Javier Millet making light of the concept of tomahawks.
Do you think this is just a throwaway argument, or you think it's a serious negotiating point?
Well, let me just say that Zelensky is obviously today gonna ask Trump for tomahawks.
And the fact that Putin and Trump spoke yesterday and came out of their conversation, uh, sounding positive on both sides, makes it hard for me to see How Trump can tell Zelensky today that he can have tomahawks.
So I would guess that it was definitely to Putin's advantage and probably to Trump's advantage yesterday to take the Tomahawk issue off the table, at least for the time being.
I wonder if Donald Trump understands A, the history here, going back to the coup that the CIA and MI-6 fomented to overthrow the popularly elected president of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych in 2014.
And B, the realistic military goals of the special military operation, I think I can distill them to three.
The liberation of the Russian parts of Ukraine, no NATO in Ukraine, neutral Ukraine.
And President Putin is very close to achieving those goals.
If you look at a map, what do you say?
I think there's no question about it.
I I've been following events on the battlefield quite carefully.
And it is no question that the Ukrainian army is in deep trouble and that the Russians are slowly but steadily rolling up the Ukrainians.
And there is a real danger in the not too distant future that the Ukrainian army is going to collapse.
They're badly outnumbered in terms of manpower.
And when you look at the balance of firepower, it really favors the Russians in uh significant ways.
So there's no way that uh Ukraine is going to stem the tide here.
The Russians are going to continue to roll forward.
And this gets to the Tomahawk issue.
People talk about Tomahawks, like that's gonna really solve Ukraine's problem on the battlefield.
That's simply not gonna happen.
Putin made that point.
Trump surely understands that.
This is just another one of those magic weapons that we talk about.
If the Tomahawks are such great weapons, if they provide uh the sort of magic uh bullet that uh pulls uh Ukraine's chestnuts out of the fire, I ask you, why is it only now that we're talking about tomahawks?
Why weren't we talking about tomahawks a year ago or two years ago?
Uh the answer is that tomahawks are no real solution to Ukraine's problems.
Ukraine's problems have to do with manpower and firepower on the battlefield.
And also the fact that the Ukrainians cannot deal with all the cruise missiles, uh, drones, and ballistic missiles that the Russians are firing them at firing at them every night.
Uh so the Ukrainians are just in deep trouble, and there's no way for them to rescue the situation.
And that's why, of course, Putin would be crazy to agree to a ceasefire.
Is the American military industrial complex continuing to be enriched by this war, Professor Meersheimer?
I think there's no question about that.
Uh but I think we spend so much money on defense that you really don't even need the war in Ukraine uh to fuel the military-industrial complex.
Uh, we have demands from the Israelis, we have demands in East Asia, uh, and of course we have demands in Europe as well.
So if you spent less money on the Ukraine war, that would just mean that you would spend more money uh supporting the Israelis and more money supporting uh our efforts to contain the Chinese uh in East Asia.
The fact is that the Pentagon has an insatiable appetite uh, and uh who's ever in charge, whether it's Joe Biden and the Democrats or Donald Trump and the Republicans, they're all bent on uh giving the Pentagon pretty much everything at once.
Professor Mirshammer, yesterday here in Moscow, I was privileged to address the School of International Diplomacy at Moscow State University, and I was just awed at the way the students treated me, the extraordinary respect, the command of the English language, their understanding of the Constitution.
I gave a lecture for about 45 minutes, uh, an introduction to the American Constitution, and then we had about 40 minutes of question and answer, and I was just really overwhelmed by their questions.
And then I was told something else that truly humbled me.
The last person who stood at that podium to address that audience in that auditorium was Professor John Meersheimer.
I can't fill your shoes, but uh it was a joy to be there, and I got goosebumps on my arm when they said your friend preceded you.
They're great students, and of course, their understanding of the English language is extraordinary.
Could you imagine lecturing to 400 students at the University of Chicago in Russian and expecting them to understand what you said?
No, but the fact is that English is more or less the universal language.
Everywhere you go on the planet, people speak English.
You know, I once I had a uh Korean PhD student, and I once visited him in Seoul, and he told me that he was going to Vietnam to talk to his counterpart.
My former Korean student worked for the South Korean government.
So I said to him, when you go to Vietnam, what language do you speak?
Because obviously, he doesn't speak Vietnamese, and the Vietnamese person doesn't speak South Korean.
And he answered immediately, he said, Oh, it's obvious we speak English.
So here we have a South Korean and a Vietnamese diplomat talking to each other in the lingua franca that they use to mix things up here.
When the great uh philosopher, Professor Alexander Dugan, who was not there yesterday because he's traveling, asked me to speak to his class.
I mentioned the language issue, and he looked at me, he goes, Judge, the class is taught in English.
You can't say only in America because this is Moscow.
Uh Professor Meersheimer, thank you very much for your time.
I know it's not your usual day, and certainly not your usual time of the day.
My schedule is crazy.
I'll be back in the good old USA on Sunday, and we'll look forward to seeing you next week.
Likewise.
Thank you, Professor.
And of course, coming up next week, our usual Monday for you, Alistair Crook at eight in the morning, Ray McGovern at 10 in the morning, Larry Johnson at 11:30 in the morning, and your other class A favorites throughout the day and the week.
Thank you for watching.
Have a great weekend.
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