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Oct. 23, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
28:32
COL. Lawrence Wilkerson : What Ceasefire?
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Hi, everyone.
Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Thursday, October 23rd, 2023 and 25.
Excuse me, there he is, Colonel Larry Wilkerson.
Colonel, always a pleasure, my dear friend.
I missed you.
I realized I was traveling, but I missed you.
I was with mutual friends of yours and mine, and we talked about you.
And it's great to be with you again.
And thanks for being here.
Good to be with you.
I want to talk about Gaza.
I've titled this, entitled this segment, What Ceasefire.
But before we get there, do we know if it was the Kremlin or the White House that canceled the Putin-Trump meeting in Budapest?
My information is that it was mutual, but the impetus came from the White House.
You know, Foreign Minister Lavrov had a meeting or a telephone call, I guess perhaps it was video as well, with Secretary Rubio.
And within minutes of that meeting, in speaking to the press, I'm going to play the clip for you, but before I do, I will quote the operative language.
Since an immediate ceasefire is suddenly back on the agenda.
Now, is this the good Secretary of State not known as a deep thinker, known as a Russia phobe, known as a Zionist, doesn't he know that a ceasefire is a non-starter?
What I want to know is he should be not, should he be known as a defier of the president?
Because I could see him doing that, given who he is.
He's not Pete Eggseth.
He's not the kind of person who, you know, really fits the title of sycophant.
And I'm sorry, I know you used to know Eggseth, but I think sycophant is a good description of him.
Colonel, I agree with you.
In my work with him, and my work with him was very pleasant, but him being the Secretary of Defense was the farthest thing from my mind at those days.
I think Rubio is the exact opposite.
I wouldn't be surprised if Trump didn't give him guidance.
He established the guidance himself.
Wow.
Now, let's look at this cut.
Lavrov does not seem happy.
Bear in mind the operative languages in the first two sentences, and bear in mind this is a few minutes after he finished speaking with Secretary Rubio.
Chris number 16.
Let me reiterate.
An immediate ceasefire, suddenly back on the agenda, as opposed to addressing the root causes of the conflict, would mean only one thing, that a vast portion of Ukraine remains under Nazi rule.
It would be the only place on earth where an entire language is banned by law, a language that incidentally is one of the UN's official tongues and the native language of Ukraine's majority population.
Those now lobbying our American colleagues to abandon their stance on long-term sustainable settlement, to simply stop and let history judge, are the same forces behind this push.
We know who is handling this.
Zelensky's European patrons and masters.
But such an approach runs entirely counter to what Presidents Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump agreed upon in Anchorage, focusing on root causes, rejecting Ukraine's NATO integration, and fully securing the lawful rights of Russian and Russian-speaking populations.
We remain ready to continue this work.
We are still ready to continue this work.
But that what he says publicly and even what they do on the ground is in furtherance of the root causes.
And if Marco Rubio said to him, we need a ceasefire before the president will come to Budapest, well, that's crazy, insane.
This man, Lavrov, and Putin too, have been two of the most consistent spoken diplomats for their country I've ever dealt with in my life.
And deal with in terms of the video and podcasts and things like that is different from doing it in person.
Still, I think they are the most consistent diplomats on the face of the earth.
They do not deviate.
They give you what is their view and they ask you to give them your view.
And we have been singularly unsuccessful or compromising or perfidious, pick your term, in giving them our view because our view changes with the weather.
Right.
Is Marco Rubio respected the way Sergei Lavrov is?
And in diplomatic circles?
Absolutely not.
There's no way that any diplomatic circle in the world worth a damn would give Rubio the time of day other than the fact that he works for the empire.
You know, the media reports that when President Trump and President Putin had that 90-minute telephone call, I was in Moscow at the time.
I was actually on the set of a Russian television station, and you know the host, Dimitri Symes.
And we were waiting to see if any result was going to come.
The Western media and the Russians have reported that Putin said to Trump, tell President Zelensky if he doesn't relent, quote, this is a quote from the Financial Times.
So I don't know who did the translating.
I don't know what the words mean in Russian and if this is a faithful translation.
It's a short phrase and it's dramatic.
Ukraine will be destroyed.
A, does that seem reasonable to you that Putin would have said it?
B, is that feasible, the destruction of Ukraine without nuclear weapons?
It is absolutely feasible that he said it, and I suspect he did.
That'd be my judgment on it.
Second, it depends on how you describe destruction.
And I think the way I would describe it in military terms that fit the profile of the special military operation is that, yes, it can be done.
It is being done.
And it's going to be completed before Christmas.
And the destruction is going to be so bad that there'll be no lights on.
There'll be no way to move troops around, even if you have some of those Nazis left.
And Putin's right.
The Nazis are about all that's left.
You know what they've been doing, Judge?
They have, ever since the Kursk incursion and the destruction thereof, they have refused to go to the front lines.
They will not go to the front lines.
Who will not go to the front lines?
The 100,000 or so Nazis.
There are that many Bandera types around Zelensky.
They are his Praetorian guard.
They don't want to go to the front lines because they know absolutely.
They'll be dead.
So this brings us back to where we started.
Is Zelensky even free to negotiate a settlement?
Or will it result in his death, his literal assassination?
I think that's probably true.
I think he would probably be liquidated if he were to negotiate and negotiate along the lines that Putin and Lavrov have said is essential.
Well, are these Banderists crazy?
Do they not understand the significance of the superior firepower?
I'm obviously understating this.
Well, you said it correctly.
They are crazy.
They are insane.
After all, they are Bandera's legacy.
But here's their calculation.
If we, in any way, fashion, or form, show some ankle, let alone surrender, let alone let Zelensky surrender, we're dead.
And I think that's probably true.
Would they rather die than live?
I'm asking you to get in their minds, so this is unfair.
We're talking about a collective mentality.
You say there's 100,000 of them.
Would they rather die than live in a neutral Ukraine?
That's a good question.
And I suspect their leadership would answer that question with yes and think they were dear, dear patriots for doing so.
Wow.
Wow.
Yesterday, Wall Street Journal reported that Trump had authorized the use of weapons by the Ukrainians reaching deep into Russia.
This morning, there it is.
This was a banner headline yesterday afternoon.
U.S. lifts key restriction on Ukraine's use of Western long-range missiles.
The move coincides with a Trump push to pressure Moscow into talks and ending the war and to withhold U.S. Tom Hulk missiles from Kiev.
Okay.
This morning on Truth Social, the president's own social media platform, he says the following.
The Wall Street Journal story on the USA's approval of Ukraine being allowed to use long-range missiles deep into Russia is a, in all caps and with an exclamation point, fake news.
The U.S. has nothing to do with those missiles, wherever they may come from, or what Ukraine does with them.
He may actually be right on the latter because they may be British storm shadows, but I don't think the British on their own could authorize the use of the storm shadows deep into Russia without American approval.
You understand this better than I?
Perhaps you can explain it to us.
Well, if they're operating under NATO guidelines and strictures and directives, you're absolutely right.
They can't.
It has to be a decision on the part of the alliance.
If they're operating as independent characters, that is to say, Britain is operating as Britain and not as a member of the NATO alliance, they can do anything they damn well please, but I doubt very seriously if Starmer would do that.
So is Trump, again, talking out of both sides of his mouth?
One evening to please Lindsey Graham, the next morning to please whoever?
Do we know if he's actually authorized the use of these long-range missiles?
Shouldn't we as Americans know?
Is the United States at war with Russia?
I mean, I'm asking you too many questions at once, Colonel, but I give you the ball to run with.
Well, I've got to say that if he were going to do something like that, he probably ought to get the Congress's approval, and he ought to ask for some sort of legislation blessing that approval.
That's not Donald Trump's method, but he should.
And I would think that right now the cacophony is produced by a number of things, but this is the most significant one.
There are people, Lindsey Graham counted amongst them and his like, who really seriously don't want to stop this war.
And they'll go to any links, I think, to fulfill that objective.
So when you get these conflicting messages like this, it could be Trump trying to build negotiating momentum or whatever, which seems to be a favorite tactic of his.
But I think it's more than likely these other elements letting this out, Marco Rubio being one of the conduits through which they let it out.
Marco Rubio leaks to the press or says things on his own without clearing them with the president?
Or picks up the phone and says ceasefire has to be to Lavrov, and then all of a sudden the meeting's off.
Do you think that the Trump people think they can intimidate Vladimir Putin?
Because if they think that, they're in another world.
I think there are some people like Graham.
I think Graham, if you ask Graham that question, he would say, you're damn right I can.
I'll sanction that son of a bitch from here to China.
I'll intimidate him.
Now, whether Lindsey Graham, the person underneath with a brain, and I know he's got one somewhere, believes that is another matter altogether.
But that's going to be his public message because he's not going to fall off this in any way, fashion, or form.
He'll fight the president over it if he has to.
McGregor, Colonel McGregor, your friend and colleague, agrees with you that the Lindsey Graham, Tom Cotton, Sebastian Gorka, Keith Kellogg, Pete Hagseth Crowd want this war to go on and on and on.
They don't care how many people die.
They honestly believe tying Russia down in Ukraine weakens them, keeps them out of the Middle East, diminishes their respect internationally.
But at what cost, Colonel?
At enormous cost to the empire, not least of which, prominent of which, is the fact that we have compelled two of the leading powers in the world, certainly two of the top leading powers in terms of military might,
to come together and to come together over a third power, not quite the military juggernaut that the other two are, but over a third power whose population alone represents considerable weight, India.
We have forced these people into a tacit alliance against us.
Wow.
Will the sanctions imposed yesterday, and if you really want to laugh, you can read the statement Secretary Besant put out, we're going to punish the Russians because of their lack of serious commitment to a peace process by sanctioning their two oil giants, Rosneft and Lukoil, because we hope it will diminish the special military operation.
Is this going to affect the military one iota?
Zero.
It will have zero impact.
It's for the news only.
It won't have any impact on Russia.
Russia has worked out so many ways now, along with China and others, and Iran, to beat our sanctions that if you picked up the phone and called OFAC today and you've got an honest broker there, they would tell you they're pulling their hair out if they have any left because the 32 to 40 nations that we have under sanctions today are being independent of those sanctions in a way they've never seen before.
And this is building.
The momentum for this is building.
They're going to start trading in commodities, trading in Yuan and Reminbi, Chinese currency, trading in other things.
And the dollar is going to disappear as a world's transactional currency.
That's where we're headed.
You know, when we were in Moscow last week, President Trump said, I don't know where he gets this from, there are gas lines, meaning cars lining up to get gasoline in Moscow.
A, I didn't see anyone, and I was all over the city.
B, gas is actually literally cheaper in Moscow than it is in Manhattan.
Don't doubt it.
Don't doubt it a bit.
So who tells him this nonsense or does he just make it up?
Is this Lindsey Graham or is this just the way Trump's brain works?
And I should know the way his brain works, but I'll let you opine.
I think a lot of it is made up.
I do think that there are people within the professional intelligence community that are going along with a lot of this for various reasons because they're getting blessings on other things they want to do, like overthrow Maduro in Venezuela or even work on Colombia too.
We've been wanting to work on Colombia ever since they pretty much wasted three quarters of a billion dollars on playing Colombia.
So there are other things that the intelligence, professional intelligence services want to do.
Of course, they are operating on Venezuela right now, full-time, 24-7.
So, you know, they'll trade these things for items that they want, and they don't care whether they give him the straight poop or not.
I was quite surprised.
This also happened when I was over there.
Trump announced a covert operation in Venezuela.
Colonel, aren't covert operations supposed to be covert?
Well, you know, he gave a presidential finding to Mike Pompeo when he was director of the CIA, and that presidential finding said overthrow President Maduro through any means that are at your disposal, and I will give you plenty of money for it.
Well, we've been doing this since 2016.
This is not something new.
Colonel, have I missed something or did Congress declare war in Venezuela?
This Congress, the Senate, anyway, the Senate would, and Johnson would say, well, I don't know anything about that.
I'll have to study it.
Right, right.
I'm being sarcastic, of course.
Let's switch gears.
Was the Kushner-Witcoff-Trump ceasefire a scam?
I don't think so.
I think Trump finally reached somewhat of a limit with Bibi, and he finally decided he was going to do something.
You think about this for a moment.
Joe Biden could have done this at any time in the two years we've gone through this genocide and slaughter, and it would have had probably a more dynamic and ending impact on the conflict and the genocide than what Trump's done now, because Bibi's got himself a lot of trouble around him, and he's even in more peril personally and politically than he ever would have been in that earlier period.
So I throw a lot of blame on Joe Biden, Tony Blinken, and Jake Sullivan for not doing anything like this much earlier than now.
As it is now, though, it's such a situation in Kaza where the ceasefire is being broken, as you probably are aware, every day.
45 Palestinians were killed in the first few hours.
Four Israelis, I think, were killed in the first few hours.
And it's just gotten worse since then that Bibi has, you know, he has no intention of keeping this, quote, ceasefire, unquote, and every intention of putting his killing on a low burner until he can bring it back to a top burner again.
There's nothing going to change here.
Nothing.
Is it a ceasefire?
I think the answer is no.
No, no.
Bibi's never met a ceasefire he kept.
He's still violating the one in Lebanon, for example.
Wow.
Were you surprised?
Well, back to Marco Rubio again at his criticism of the Knesset, which apparently yesterday or the day before voted to apply Israeli law in the West Bank, which is the legal equivalent of annexing it.
Rubio said it's not going to happen.
J.D. Vance, the vice president, said it's not going to happen.
That I think is as close to a red line as you might get with this president.
And so anyone who defies him on that red line is going to be in trouble.
I don't know how he plans to bring that into effect, given that Netanyahu doesn't really care a hang about his red lines.
But I think that's true for the administration anyway.
And you've got to be very careful how you bulk that if you're not Bibi yourself.
And Bibi's got to be somewhat careful about the way he handles that.
You know, Heretz was full of stuff this morning that indicates Bibi's in more trouble even than I thought he was.
What is the trouble that he's in?
You alluded to this a few minutes ago, and now you've said it again.
Yeah, well, he's in trouble over the draft law, and he's going to lose probably the, I think it's the Shas party.
He's going to lose them.
Ben Gavir and Smotrich have not made a move yet, but I think he's on the verge of losing both of them if he does not make it clear and by his actions, not his words, that he's going to continue the killing in Gaza and the clearing in Gaza.
And then lastly, he's in trouble because he's got intelligence coming into him from the CIA and Wassad, and probably MI6 too, that tells him that some of his plans that are very integral to his newly devised attack on Iran, which was supposed to be imminent, are not coming to fruition.
And one of the biggest ones is that they've told him there are no people to form a fifth column inside of Iran as we did during the 12-day war.
Ah, yeah.
In other words, there are no Afghans, no Azeris, no others inside Iran or on the border who are corruptible, payable to the point where they will bring all kinds of pee inside of Iran.
He's doing it on the outside.
So, and then the other thing he's learned, I think very, very painfully for him, he's learned that as in Korea and in Vietnam, those very frontline fighters that are now in Iran and new equipment training teams are frantically training Iranian palatin are going to be flown if there isn't time to put the Iranian pilots in there with effectiveness by Russians,
just as they did in North Korea and just as they did in the Korean War and just as they did in Vietnam.
These are top-notch pilots and these are top-notch planes.
So a lot of the intelligence coming into him about the ease of doing something against Iran is not good.
This is only about 30 seconds long and it's actually said in good humor, but it is horrific.
This is the National Security Minister of Israel.
So the rough equivalent of our director of the FBI.
Whom he just fired.
He just fired Ben Gavir?
No, he just fired the National Security Advisor to him, who is the last person other than Bibi who was in the government on October the 7th.
So everyone is out of the government now.
All right.
This is Itamar Ben-Gavir, who Belizil Smotrich are the two most right-wing members of the Knesset and of the cabinet.
And I understand it numerically that if they pull their very small party out of Bibi's coalition, then he's no longer the prime minister.
Anyway, here he is.
This is horrible, even though he says it cheerfully.
Here he is two or three days ago, Chris number 17.
Right now, we have the opportunity, especially today, to stop everything and say for a moment, the hostages, thank God, life has returned.
That was the main argument for why we are not continuing the war.
And now we need to return to fighting.
We need to go back to war.
We need to unleash the gates of hell upon them.
Need to unleash the gates of hell upon them.
Does that sound like a man who's supporting a ceasefire?
Not at all.
He's not supporting it.
He wants to go right back.
I suspect he's actually got people in there right now who are violating the ceasefire on an hourly basis because he heads a lot of armed people.
He's the man responsible for giving the West Bank settlers sophisticated weaponry, Uzis, M-16s, AKs, machine guns.
They're not fighting with rakes and shovels and pitchforks anymore.
They're fighting for sophisticated weaponry.
This would be like the head of the FBI giving machine guns to Antifa.
Yes.
Or to the Proud Boys, if you want to go to both sides of the aisle.
Well, look at the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.
I know 11 of its security element were the people from the northwest of this country who hate Muslims and make it a vow to kill them.
This is why when I ask you what ceasefire, you say none.
None.
None.
And this is a good example for Putin and Lavrov.
This is what ceasefires do when one side has absolutely zero respect for what you're doing.
And in this case, you'd have two sides and the rest side would be dominant.
They would have no respect for what was happening on the ground.
Right.
And they don't want to do it.
I have to hand them to it.
They do not want to do it and then spend the rest of the, you know, year, two, three, violating it every day.
Colonel, it's a pleasure, my dear man.
Time goes by like that, in part because of your intellect, in part because of your personality.
I got another invitation to come to Russia.
I was really, really hard pressed, but I just can't do that kind of travel anymore.
Oh, I was going to say, I hope we can go at the same time.
My next trip is in June for the St. Petersburg Economic Conference.
but you know, these things pop up.
But, Colonel, thank you so much.
Thank you for your time.
I'm glad we're working together again.
I look forward to seeing you next week, my friend.
Thank you.
By the way, your Washington Times op-ed was a real subject of discussion on the Eisenhower Media Network group.
Thank you.
Brilliant, but no one understands it.
I mean, you know, the average American doesn't even know who James Madison was.
Does the average member of Congress, you know, this is not a secret.
The Washington Times is delivered for free on the desk of every member of Congress.
So they are free to read this thing or their eyes to glaze over it.
Do they even understand the violation of the Constitution by Trump murdering these people on the high seas?
Rand Paul and Thomas Massey do.
I don't know if anybody else does.
I think it's deeper than that, Judge.
I think they think the Constitution is archaic.
They think it's passe.
Well, they took an oath to preserve, protect, and defend it.
You and I have taken that oath.
Does anyone really give a damn about their oath these days?
Is honor not an obsolete concept?
Rhetorical questions because the answers are very sad.
The truthful answers are very sad.
Yeah.
Colonel, thank you very much.
Thanks for the comment about my op-ed piece.
Thanks for taking the time to look at it.
Thanks for joining us today.
Thank you.
Take care.
And thank you for watching us.
As always, somebody, one of the chatters, one of you guys reminded me, I don't thank you enough.
You're right.
I don't thank you enough.
So thank you for watching us.
We have two more for you today.
Just like the two heavy hitters we just did, two more coming up at 3.15, Max Blumenthal.
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