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Oct. 23, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
24:54
[SPECIAL-MUST WATCH] - Scott Ritter : Russia/Ukraine Today.
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Hi, everyone.
Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Thursday, October 23rd, 2025.
Scott Ritter is here, back from his week in Moscow on Moscow and Ukraine, Russia and Ukraine.
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Scotty, welcome here, my dear friend.
We were happy to spend a very productive week together in Moscow.
And of course, I'm thrilled that both of us are back safely before we get to Russia and Ukraine today.
Two or three weeks after the grand signing of the Jared Kushner, Steve Witkoff Gaza so-called ceasefire.
Was it just a scam?
The Israelis have made it clear that it was just a scam.
Ben Gavir, this right-wing Israeli minister of, I guess, the interior, has said, now that we got our hostages back and accomplished that goal, it's time to go in and kill them all.
Now, so that makes it clear that the hostage deal, you know, the hostages were a political problem for Benjamin Netanyahu.
And it looks like the Israelis, at least, and maybe the United States as well, were just playing that putting the peace plan out there is just a game because what we see is that the Israelis are violating the ceasefire on a daily basis and they have no intention of adhering to the terms of the agreement.
Was Trump in on this scam?
I mean, now Hamas has given up.
Look, from Hamas's perspective, this was a brilliant and successful military style operation to deter and repel an unlawful occupier permitted under international law.
Now they've given up one of their best tools, which is the hostages.
Well, actually, no, the hostages were taken, and Hamas said so right from the start, as a currency of exchange for Palestinians held by the Israelis.
And over 1,000 plus several hundred Palestinian prisoners, hostages, were released by Israel.
And so the hostages served their purpose.
It's a tragic purpose.
I don't believe in hostage taking, but I know why Hamas did it, because Israel kept imprisoning Gazan citizens, raping the girls.
This is what they do.
The Israelis are horrible, horrible people.
I mean, I apologize.
I'm sure there's some good ones out there.
But when you tolerate a prison system that's designed to allow the guards to rape and film the rape of female prisoners so that they can blackmail them once they release them into society saying, if you don't do our bidding, we will show this video to your family and hope for an honor killing.
This is how Israel works.
This is how Israel thinks.
And Hamas was able to free over a thousand Palestinians held hostage by Israel.
So no, the hostages, that's all they were there for.
There was no other benefit for Hamas to maintain these people.
They got what they wanted.
They got what they intended to do.
So what happens now?
Jared Kushner is going to try and develop a portion of Gaza under the pretext that this is where the good Gazans, the one that cooperate, wants to cooperate with Israel, will live.
Hamas is going to be fighting and killing Israeli collaborators among them.
And the IDF will be back bombing the daylights out of what remains in Gaza.
Yeah, I mean, you know, apparently the United States is dumber than dirt.
And we know that Jared Kushner is dumber than dirt.
He's not a very smart guy.
He doesn't earn money.
He has it given to him.
And if people investigated that, they'd figure out that he was as corrupt as the day is long.
You know, this is just a naked effort at creating a state within a state.
The Israelis have spent a lot of money, time, and effort to find Palestinians amongst the Gazan population who are willing to sell out.
They have corrupted entire families.
And now what they're going to do is bring these people, these collaborators, these traitors of the Palestinian cause together in a community that will be developed.
And the idea is to, this is something akin to what they did with the Southern Liberation Army, the force they created in southern Lebanon when they invaded and occupied southern Lebanon, the SLA.
It was designed to provide a counterbalance to the Shia population.
Ultimately, Hezbollah slaughtered them, kicked them out, and sent them back into Israel.
And this will be the fate of the Gazan traitors.
But Trump is so ignorant that he didn't realize what the game was.
If you remember early on, Hamas started executing these people in the streets.
And Trump went, no, that's okay.
They need a police force.
And then when someone whispered in his ear, no, they're killing our guys.
He was like, oh, we can't accept this.
We will blow them to hell.
This hasn't been thought.
You said, is Trump in on it?
Apparently, Trump's in on everything.
We found out now that Trump was in on the Pager attack, you know, that act of terrorism carried out by the Israelis against the population of Lebanon.
Yes, some Hezbollah people were affected, but so were children, women, innocents.
Trump was in on it.
He's a war criminal, an admitted war criminal.
And apparently he's going to sign up for some more war crimes against the Gazans.
Is the war in Ukraine now Donald Trump's war?
100%.
Now, it was always Donald Trump's war.
I mean, no matter how he tried to spend it, people tend to forget that Donald Trump was president for four years before Joe Biden.
He's the man that put 20 CIA bases inside Ukraine to carry out broader objectives that he signed off on, lethal objectives, authorizing covert action on Russian soil to pave the way for direct action operation, combat operations.
It goes beyond spying.
We're talking about sabotage.
We're talking about blowing things up.
This is what Donald Trump signed off on.
He's the guy that helped train, gosh, what was it?
One Ukrainian battalion every 55 days to go to the east and kill Russians.
That's what the U.S. Army was bragging about while Donald Trump was president.
No, this is Donald Trump's war.
This war was going to happen because Donald Trump wrote the plan that Biden ended up implementing.
Trump, everybody's allowed to have a change of a heart.
And I accept at face value that Trump said this war is going bad.
I want to dump it.
And of course, he's going to spin it and say it was Joe Biden's war.
But that failed because now what we have is Donald Trump literally becoming an active participant in the conflict, freeing up the Ukrainians to use weaponry deep into Russia, things they couldn't do without American approval.
Now he's declared economic war against Russia, sanctioning the two largest energy producers, Ross Sniff and Luka Oil.
And he's committing diplomatic war trying to encourage people to turn on Russia.
And the goals and objectives are clear.
Scott Bessant, the Secretary of Treasury, has said to collapse the Russian economy.
And that's part of the overall master plan that Trump helped design in his first term to collapse the Putin administration.
This is a regime change operation taking place today.
It's going to fail, but no, this is Trump's war.
He owns it.
And now he's got to deal with the consequences.
It will not change anything on the battlefield.
I'm paraphrasing Sergei Lavrov, but it will change our relationship to the United States that Trump has authorized the use of long-range missiles.
Put aside the tomahawks for now.
You've explained that to us at great detail and much appreciated.
The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that Trump authorized the use of the long-range missile.
Trump today claimed that he didn't.
Who knows what the truth is?
He often speaks out of both sides of his mouth so that Lindsey Graham is happy and somebody else on the other side is happy.
But the Russians know what's happening, don't they?
Vladimir Putin made it quite clear today.
He told the Ukrainians and Europe, and that's the important part.
Trump may say America had nothing to do with it.
Europe does.
If a European long-range weapon strikes Russia, it'll be catastrophic, catastrophic for both Ukraine.
and Europe.
I don't know how to make it much clearer.
He's going to strike Europe.
He's not playing games.
I mean, the Russians have said all along, you know, you guys keep escalating, keep escalating.
Keep escalating.
I think he put Trump on notice.
You know, when you hear Ushikov and others talk about a frank discussion, that means it was pretty blunt language.
And I'm pretty sure that Putin made it as clear as possible that if the United States provided tomahawks, that it wouldn't have any impact on the battlefield, but that Russia would be hitting American targets in return.
That there's no way Russia would allow a Tomahawk missile to strike Russian soil and America to walk away from that one.
And that's why Trump has backed off.
It's the same thing that happened to Biden on September 13th of last year, where he was going to sign documents that Keir Starmer brought.
And Anatoly Antonov made a frank phone call to people who told Biden what he said.
We don't know exactly what it was, but from what I've heard, it was clear that Washington, D.C. would be in the target deck of Russia's retaliation.
And that caused Biden to back down.
And I think Trump backed down.
Well, Russia's not bluffing here.
Now, Trump is now playing the Scott Bessant game, believing that Russian economy is weak.
And so he's not going to risk escalation to military on military contact.
He believes by sanctioning the major Russian oil companies that this will lead to a collapse of the Russian economy and therefore compel Putin to walk away from the war.
You remember John McCain and Lindsey Graham once joked that Russia was this weak country that had nothing.
It was like a giant gas station, nuclear weapons.
I think people need to understand that if you are a giant gas station, that you might know the gas station business better than anybody else, especially those people whose whole job is just to put gas in their car, which is the United States.
Russia knows the global energy business better than any nation.
That's the Saudis.
Every time they try to squeeze the Russians, the Russians come in on the market and squeeze the Saudis.
It's the Saudis who back down 100% of the time.
Russia's been preparing for this moment.
They're not panicked.
You know, they will have to tighten belts here, make adjustments there.
But if anybody thinks that, and Vladimir Putin made it clear, real nations, genuine nations, never buckle under pressure.
You're not allowed to buckle under pressure.
That if you wanted concessions from Russia, this isn't the way to do it.
All this does is harden Russian resolve.
So we're headed towards an escalation that will result from the physical destruction of Ukraine.
And if Europe's not careful, the physical destruction of several European cities.
A couple of minutes after the phone call between Marco Rubio and Sergei Lavrov, Foreign Minister Lavrov told a press conference, let me reiterate, an immediate ceasefire, suddenly back on the agenda, as opposed to addressing the root causes of this conflict, is not anything we'd be interested in.
Is Rubio dumb enough to have raised that issue in the phone call?
Hey, Sergei, you want the president to show up in Budapest, agree to a ceasefire?
Is he crazy asking for something like that?
Well, no, because Rubio doesn't want diplomacy between the United States.
The president of the United States needs to understand that Marco Rubio is a poison pill.
Let's go back to the 2016 presidential campaign.
Marco Rubio hates Donald Trump, despises Donald Trump.
The only reason why he is the Secretary of State is that Miriam Adelson's $100 million bribe to Donald Trump, which came with the name tag that said he has to be vice president.
Trump went no.
So they gave him the second best thing, Secretary of State.
Rubio hates Trump.
Rubio hates Russians almost as much as he hates Trump.
Rubio will do nothing to make this policy work.
He is the poison pill, just like Mike Pompeo was, just like John Bolton was.
And Donald Trump is too stupid to understand that.
I mean, it's so glaringly obvious that Marco Rubio is undermining any chance for peace with Russia.
And yet Donald Trump continues to soldier along because he sold his soul to literally the devil, Miriam Adelson.
Do we know who canceled the meeting in Budapest, the Russians or the Americans?
The Americans canceled it.
Now the Russians are saying, yeah, it's obvious that it's not going to, what the Russians are saying is not going to happen now.
The Russians still believe in diplomacy.
Look, the Russians are the adults in the room.
And so, you know, even now, you have Russian diplomats saying, yeah, we'll continue to talk to the Americans.
You know, we have to leave a safety valve here.
There has to be an off-ramp, or else the consequences are inevitable, force on force.
And so the Russians will continue to manage this situation properly until which time, you know, Donald Trump, you know, flips the other way.
I mean, he's literally the only thing that flips more than Donald Trump is a trout once you put him on the ground after pulling him out of the river.
What is the status of matters on military status on the ground in Ukraine as we speak approaching the tail end of October?
Well, Judge, I wish you had been able to come to that dinner.
With the general kicking, but you know, I don't want to get into the details of it.
No, no, no, no, no, I don't want to get to that.
It's five hours later than it was supposed to be.
Otherwise, I would have been there and I could have been there had I known the flight was going to be five hours later.
I was getting the play-by-play from Natalie, who was just apoplectic at the situation you're in and very felt very badly.
But, you know, Apti Aladinov is a lieutenant general, commander of the Ahmad Special Forces, a man held in high regard who's very honest about the situation on the battlefield.
And if you could have seen his, look, you're a judge.
You are an expert in reading people.
You've sat in the courtroom and you've read the faces of innocent people, the faces of guilty people, the faces of liars, and the faces of those who tell the truth.
And I wish you could have been there to look Apti in the eyes as he spoke and understand the genuine integrity and honesty of this man as he spoke about the reality of this conflict.
Every Russian officer I've spoken to speaks in a similar fashion.
It's a very difficult war.
Under no circumstances will anybody tell you this is easy.
It's very hard.
It's literally life and death.
But there's no panic in his face.
There's no concern in his face.
He is confident in Russia's ability to continue to prevail on the battlefield.
And I believe that that's the reality.
This is a very difficult war that Russia is winning.
Well, what will happen next?
I mean, have the Russians gone to the other side of the Dnieper River?
I'm going to ask you a bunch of questions at once.
Does Zelensky realize that the end is near?
Can Zelensky agree to a surrender without being assassinated?
I don't know what Zelensky is saying.
Let's start with on the ground.
How close, in your view, is the Russian military to the achievement of the goals that President Putin set out?
Look, it's a grind, but they're very close to capturing Pokrovsk.
And when Pokrovsk falls, the Ukrainians have to fall back on Kramatorsk.
They don't have the defensive fortifications built.
So Krama Kors will be rapidly closed in on.
And then the Russians will do their similar double envelopment, leave an escape valve open and then grind away at the middle and take Kramatorsk.
At that point in time, the Donetsk region will collapse and the Ukrainians will fall back.
How long this will take?
The Russians aren't in the business of playing to the clock or the calendar.
They're in the business of getting the results.
And so this could take months, weeks.
It could take the rest of the year.
It could last into early next year.
But sooner rather than later, Russia will have taken all of Lugansk, all of Donetsk.
They're already starting to consolidate their position in Nepet Petrovsk, which is purely a Ukrainian territory in Khartakov and Sumy.
And now you're seeing the Russians begin to advance in Zaporizhia.
And as they advance in Zaporizhia, they'll be getting into a favorable position.
And at some point in time, they're going to cross the river and go back into the right bank of Kherson and take that as well.
And if the Ukrainians want to continue to play ball after that, then the Russians will go on to Odessa and Nikolaev.
They'll finish the occupation of Nepetrovsk, Kharkov, Sumy.
Now, on these Ukrainian territories, Russia doesn't care about the official delineation.
They'll find the best defensible spot and maybe they'll be willing to stop their advance there and do a ceasefire.
They will never agree to a ceasefire so long as Ukrainian forces are dug in on Russian soil.
In the Russians' view, Kherson, Zaporizhia, Donetsk and Lugansky and their totality be part of Russia.
Well, can I switch gears for just a minute before we finish today?
Why is Marco Rubio pushing Donald Trump to invade Venezuela?
Marco Rubio has, from the very beginning of his tenure as a senator, positioned himself to be anti-Maduro, anti-gosh, Hugo Chavez before that.
He's been a proponent of this.
This is when he got his appointment to the Foreign Relations Committee.
He made going after Venezuela a top priority.
That's how he separated himself from the PAC.
He is, of course, a Cuban in the Cuban-American in the Cuban-American community in Florida.
They thrive on being anti-communist and opposing Cuban.
Cuba is a major backer of Venezuela.
So he's just made this his pet project.
And ever since he became a senator, he's been advocating for military operations against Valentin in Venezuela.
Now he's the Secretary of State, and this is his baby.
This is his puppy.
He's not just the Secretary of State.
He's the National Security Advisor, which means he's the guy who drafted the findings signed by the president authorizing the CIA to carry out lethal covert action against Maduro.
And that's where we're in right.
We're in the assassination business.
Well, lethal covert action, which is no longer covert because the president announced it.
As horrific as it is, the agents are jeopardized.
I got to play this clip for you, even though it's going to aggravate you a little bit.
Your favorite senator from South Carolina on a show that you and I probably don't watch.
But is Venezuela going to become the 51st state?
Chris?
I had a chat with you this weekend.
I thought you had a pretty darn good idea.
And you said you were going to share it with the president.
I want to know if you did.
And that is this opposition leader in Venezuela that won the Nobel Prize that said it really deserved to go to Donald Trump sounds like a pretty good leader to me for the people of Venezuela and the end of narco-terrorism and a better relationship with the U.S. or if they choose maybe the 51st state.
I don't know.
Sounds good to me.
the opposition and you know like minds tend to congregate that, you know, You, me, and Larry Johnson hung out together in Moscow for a reason.
And the politics, I mean, I'm sorry, Lindsey Graham and, oh, gosh, who is that?
Sean Hannity.
I don't know who the other fellow was, but Sean Hannity.
I mean, these are people that long ago stopped being able to think.
And they are simply mouthpieces of the organs of hegemony.
I don't know what's going to happen in Venezuela.
I do believe that we are going to end up in some sort of war with Venezuela.
I do believe we will overthrow the Maduro government because we're in the United States and that's what we do.
But, you know, we overthrew Gaddafi and look at Libya today.
Just a disaster.
We overthrew Saddam Hussein, look at Iraq.
It's a disaster.
We helped orchestrate the overthrow of Bashar al-Assad.
Look at Syria, a disaster.
And if we remove Maduro from Venezuela, it will be a disaster.
And now the president's talking about Colombia as well.
You know, this Marco Rubio, you know, everybody screamed about Henry Kissinger, who, of course, was the last Secretary of State to dual had as a national security advisor, as being a war criminal.
And his entire life, that hounded him because of his illegal bombing of Cambodia and Laos and such, what he did in South America.
Marco Rubio will go down in history as one of America's most notorious war criminals, the things that he will be responsible for, not just in the Middle East, the genocide against the Palestinian people, not just underwriting the continued murder of Ukrainian men on the battlefield, but what he's doing right now in Venezuela and Colombia, the illegal covert actions that he's authorizing as the national security advisor.
When the truth becomes known, Marco Rubio's name will be carved into the stones in the deepest pit of hell, because that's where he belongs.
Skybrider, thank you very much, my friend.
It was fabulous hanging out with you in Moscow.
I learned a great deal.
As you know, I'm sorry I missed the dinner with the general, but we will do it again, my dear friend.
Next time, Moscow and St. Petersburg.
I think we're going to be there together in June.
I hope so.
Yes.
All the best, Scotty.
Thank you.
We'll see you again next week.
Thanks, Lancet.
Of course.
Well, finally, the end of the day and nearly the end of the week.
Tomorrow, Friday, the Intelligence Community Roundtable.
Ray McGovern in the United States.
Yours truly in the United States.
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