Nov. 19, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
28:43
Pepe Escobar : US Imperialism Masquerades as Peace
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Hi, everyone.
Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Thursday, November 20th, 2025.
It's midnight in Moscow, and Pepe Escobar joins us from there.
Pepe, you are a trooper.
You are, as the official spokesperson for the Russian Foreign Ministry called you about 12 hours ago, a force of nature.
And I was on that clip when she called you.
Exactly.
You were so aligned with us.
I endorsed it and repeated it.
But force of nature, welcome here, my dear friend.
My pleasure, Judge.
Does United States National Security Advisor and Secretary of State Marco Rubio want peace in Ukraine?
Wow.
That's very tough.
To get inside their minds, we can't.
I mean, isn't he wedded to the Hillary Clinton Victoria Newland ideology that Ukraine should be used as a, this is crazy, but this is what they believe, used as a battering ram with which to push President Putin from office?
Absolutely.
If we look at the background and if we look at it ideologically, no question, they don't want peace.
Well, the neocons as a whole don't want peace.
And some selected sectors of the American ruling classes also don't want peace.
The Europeans as a whole, and I start with the European Union, the European Commission, the European Parliament, the Council of Europe, everybody, plus the leaders of several nation states with very few exceptions.
For instance, Hungary, they don't want peace.
Wow.
Does the Kremlin know that Marco Rubio doesn't want peace?
Does the Kremlin understand that?
Absolutely.
Judge, I think it's very important for you and for audience, for you, because you already had on-the-ground experience here in Moscow lately.
And for our audience, the level of debate and discussion here is something really off the charts on a positive way.
This week, for instance, our friends Larry Johnson and Alistair have been here since the beginning of the week.
They had a marathon of meetings.
I arrived slightly later, and that was my turn the past two days, another marathon, including the one that you were part of online, along with George Galloway and Larry Johnson and myself.
And we had two hours of Maria Zakharov absolutely ripping on everything, on everything.
So discussions of substantial discussions here is the norm.
In the beginning of the week, I was with Sergei Glaziev, the head of the Union State, Russia Belarus.
We were talking about everything, not only geoeconomics, but also geopolitics.
And he was even talking about Venezuela.
The dinner I had before meeting you, we were talking about the famous 28 Trump points, 28 point, 20 point, or whatever points, whatever for peace, uh, in detail.
So they know everything that is going on in Washington, in the Beltway, in Mar-a-Lago, etc.
And of course, they also know everything that is going on in Brussels, in Paris, in London, in Kiev, etc.
And you have clashes of why would they accept the 28 points, whatever they are, yes, if they're on the cusp of achieving their military goals in Ukraine.
The 28-point judge is a diversionist tactic, essentially.
And this is something very, very important to stress now.
Kirill Dmitriev is not an official Russian negotiator, period.
If there is a peace deal being discussed, it has to be, or it will have to be with Sergei Lavrov and Ushakov, not with Kiril Dmitriev.
Who's doing the negotiating for the Kremlin and who's doing the negotiating for the U.S.?
The official negotiators, Judge, very, very important, are the Minister of Foreign Affairs and the Special Advisor Ushakov, the guys who actually went to Alaska.
This is the official negotiating team.
What the Kremlin can use, and this can several layers and constraints, they can use other channels, back channels, lateral channels, underground channels.
Dmitriev is one channel among others.
That's a different story.
Is Marco Rubio speaking to Sergei Lavrov?
Wow, when was the last time they spoke?
I think it's over two weeks, between one and two weeks that they spoke on the phone.
In fact, the last time they spoke on the phone, they came to the conclusion that there were no grounds for another personal encounter between Trump and Putin.
Does the Kremlin take offense when the Secretary of State is out of the negotiating loop, or do they just understand Trump's got an albatross here and he's sending somebody who's more rational, even though this guy is not an official part of the government, Steve Witroff?
Absolutely correct, Judge.
So the Kremlin, they do not discard options of dialogue.
They are ready to use dialogue in every channel available, even the ones that they have to make it all up.
They are not in a hurry, but they keep stressing what Lavrov has been stressing all the time and what Maria Zakarova yesterday when she was talking to us once again stressed.
We asked her point blank about the 28-point plan.
She said, I'm paraphrasing, and of course, her answer was much more detailed and nuanced.
She said, look, we did not receive anything from the Americans.
What does that mean?
There cannot be any official reaction by the Minister of Foreign Affairs here, much less from the Kremlin.
Because this is one channel of communication exploring possibilities.
That's what the 20 of the famous 28-point plan, which, by the way, was leaked to American mainstream media by Dmitriev himself.
Wow.
Well, but how close is Ukraine, is the Ukraine military to a total collapse?
This is this 60 trillion cost.
Really, everybody discusses this here.
Another example, Judge, another one, another interview that Larry and I had yesterday was with Commander Apti Alaudinov.
which is probably one of the most decorated military men in recent Russia history, the commander of the Ahmad forces.
And I made a provocative question to him.
Where should the SMO stop?
Odessa.
He gave a five-minute answer, basically saying, all Russian lands need to return to Russia.
So we can interpret this as the SMO going on for another few years.
Wow.
But do the Ukrainians have the manpower with which to resist the Russian military for much longer, no matter what weapons are sent there, they require human beings to operate them, unless it's going to be drone against drone.
Exactly.
You're absolutely right, Judge.
They don't have the manpower.
They don't have young manpower.
They don't have the funds.
They don't have the funds to pay for manpower and weapons.
They don't have enough weapons, even with the Wunderwaf and the Wonder weapons.
This is not going to alter the intrinsic logic of what's happening in the battlefield.
Plus, the corruption scandals.
And I want to touch this because this is extremely important for you, Judge, and for our audience.
What this $100 billion is nothing, is spinets, is covering.
And why European media especially is thunderously silent about this corruption scandal.
Well, we all know that this setup in Kiev, including selected oligarchs, neo-Nazis, neo-fascists, promoters of neo-Nazism and corrupt military functionaries, etc.
They are in terms of graft and in terms of corruption practically unbeatable everywhere.
And this is something that Ukrainian de factors went up here tell the Russians straight away.
The Russians all obviously know about that.
But another thing is to hear from the people who are actually there.
So what Nabo is investigating, this $100 million scandal in the energy sector, is just the tip of a gigantic corruption iceberg.
And if we keep digging deeper, for the moment, we still don't have a smoking gun in terms of written documents.
These things are never in a document.
Usually it's WhatsApp messages, SMS, etc., and then they disappear.
The Americans were involved years ago.
There's a story that circulates here in Russia.
Everybody knows about it.
It was a conversation between the late little Blinky, Tony Blinken, and one of the top guys in Kiev.
It was about commission.
The top guy in Kiev said, look, we need 30%.
And Blinken then said, can we make it 20?
So it's at least 20 to 30.
Apply that to 90 billion euros at least that the European Union transferred to Kiev in thesis as aid.
If we track this all back, it will end up where?
At the seat of the European Commission in Brussels and the toxic Medusa von der Lugen, the one that loves to lie in German.
So that explains the absolute silence in Europe about the scandal.
They want this scandal to disappear, but the scandal is adding to the disasters in the battlefield because now a few voices here and there, but not across mainstream media, are starting to say, Yeah, scandals, they happen everywhere, but we cannot lose track of Russian aggression or that same bullshit.
Right.
Is some of the American dollars ending up in the pockets of EU officials?
No, it's a sequence of events, Judge.
Everybody now in the US knows that American dollars ended up a little bit everywhere in Kiev.
The dollars that did not return to the United States, they went to the wrong pockets in Kiev.
They did not go to the war effort, let's put it this way.
With the EU, when you consider what the EU sent to Kiev in terms of aid, that was way, way more than what the US has sent.
But the process was the same, absolutely the same.
Going to the same pockets, the same members of this mafia.
And what Nabo is doing now with this investigation is once again, a little, little tip of a mega iceberg.
Let me switch gears for a minute.
What is your understanding as to why Russia and China abstained in the Security Council vote on Trump's Trump, Witkoff, Kushner, so-called Tony Blair, so-called Board of Peace, Western Imperialism, colonialism, controlling Gaza?
Wow, this is causing ripples all across the global south, Judge.
It's an extremely complicated process to explain.
And guess who did it in our interview?
Maria Zakarvo.
So when this interview with Maria will be released, she has, I would say, at least a five-minute answer explaining why Russia abstained.
There are two main points that we can talk about now.
One, Nibenzia, the Russian representative at the UN, in his speech at the UN, he basically said that this is completely absurd.
And Russia is essentially against it.
But they abstained.
Why?
Because the whole Arab world, practically Sunni, voted for it and the Palestinian Authority and Fatah voted for it.
How could Russia and China vote against some of the Palestinian factions?
I know it's very hard to absorb this.
Obviously, why did the Arab and Muslim countries vote for it?
Did the United States coerce or bribe them?
You just answer your own question, Judge.
And heavily, heavily, absolutely.
Like vote with us or else.
And of course, the Chinese, very important, we have to remember the Chinese promoted the unity of the 14 Palestinian factions when they had that summit in Beijing.
So the Chinese were and are deeply implicated in a unified Palestinian response.
So they could not vote themselves against two of the factions representing Palestine at the UN.
So they were caught in a bind, the Russian and the Chinese.
They had to abstain even condemning the whole thing because they know what this, I think it's a 20-point plan, this one.
We lost track of the points now.
The 20-point Trump plan, which basically condemns Gaza to be neocolonized and permanently occupied by a so-called international force.
Wow.
So the Russians in Syria, are they staying or leaving?
Ah, this is not the clash, Judge.
Should I stay or should I go?
Should I stay?
Absolutely.
And this is another dossier.
For instance, I'm trying to get hold of a super expert on Syria at the Ministry of Foreign Relations, and it's been so far unsuccessfully.
She's the one who could answer this question in detail.
It's very uncomfortable to have this conversation here in Moscow.
But in terms of real politic, totally predictable.
The Russians already knew what was going to happen with Assad and with this Idlibistan guerrilla attack on Aleppo and what could happen after that.
They were in touch with everything.
They knew about corruption among the military.
They knew about the effects of sanctions.
They knew that they could be bribed.
They knew that the country could fall in a few days.
They knew everything.
So what did they do?
They secured their sphere of influence in the Eastern Mediterranean.
And obviously now, very important, as ghastly as we can judge it in terms of did Russia betray Syria?
No, it's much more nuanced than that.
They preserve their national interest and their geopolitical interest.
And they're still there in Syria.
The partition of Syria now also includes Russia.
So the partition of Syria includes the United States, Israel, Turkey, and Russia in the west part of Syria with their bases.
Exactly.
This means that nothing happens in Syria without the Russians saying yes or no.
So in geopolitical terms, they got what they wanted.
What will Russia do if the United States attacks Venezuela?
They are not considering terms of attacks because they know the rationale, Judge.
They are very worried about destabilization operations, a Navy SEALs style raid, long-term attempts to provoke color revolution or pre-successive color revolutions.
And at the same time, under the table, several tables, iron tables, we can say, Russia, China, and Iran are sending stuff that Venezuela needs.
Everybody in Venezuela knows that.
And of course, here in China and in Iran, they also know it.
This is not leaked officially anywhere, but Venezuela, these three have Venezuela's back.
So obviously this message has already arrived to the ones in the beltway.
They have an IQ over room temperature, to quote our friend Andrei Martianov.
Not necessarily to Rubio and his circle.
Same question with respect to Iran.
What will Russia do if Israel with the military backing of the US attacks Iran?
What the Iran told the Russian is, look, we can do everything by ourselves.
We welcome your help.
We welcome defense systems.
We welcome SU's, no, not 57 because they don't export the 57s.
It's top of the line.
We welcome everything that you're sending to us.
But if we are attacked, we can do it by ourselves.
Same thing with the Chinese.
And we cannot forget, they have two strategic partnerships simulated, one with China and one with Russia.
It's the same thing with Venezuela.
Venezuela has a strategic partnership with Russia, not with China.
Iran has strategic partnership with both.
So obviously, there will be a lot of direct and indirect help if that ever happened.
The mood here among military experts, think tanks, very good academics is that only in absolute desperation, Bibi Netanyahu would try something against Iran because his own generals last time had to call the Americans and say, look, make them stop.
We are being devastated.
And now the Iranians now are saying, look, if they give us a pretext, this yesterday, one of the top guys of the IRGC said, if they give us the pretext, we can raise them to the ground this time because now there are no limits.
I want to play for you a clip.
I think you probably know, John, John Kiriaku, a CIA agent.
Fantastic.
We all know, went to prison for exposing and revealing the names of CIA torturers.
But here he is just two or three days ago.
Well, you'll see.
It's very fascinating.
Chris number three.
The reason, though, I'm told, that Donald Trump decided to bomb Iran was that the Israelis said for the first time, if you don't bomb Iran to take out these deep bunkers, we're going to use nuclear weapons.
And they had never threatened that before.
And so Trump said, bombing Iran might actually save us from the start of World War III if it keeps the Israelis from using nuclear weapons.
So according to your source, the Israelis told the president of the United States that if he did not use the United States military power to bomb the nuclear facilities in Iran, Israel, acting on its own, would use nuclear weapons.
Yeah.
Do you see why there's a problem with that statement, John?
Yeah.
Because they've never admitted that they've had them.
That's right.
So you're telling me that they just admitted to the president of the United States that they have nuclear weapons and we still do not have them in the IAEA treaty.
I mean, if Israeli nuclear whistleblowers are to be believed, yeah, they've had them.
They started working on them in the 50s.
They got them around the late 60s or the early 70s.
Look at Mordecai Venunu.
You know, he wasn't charged for treason for nothing.
Does that make sense to you?
Tricky.
I wonder which Israeli was John's source and what kind of agenda he was trying to impart.
Because they simply cannot admit in public or even to the president of the United States that they are a nuclear power.
This is the number one secret forever for Israel.
Everybody knows it.
Surely everybody in the government knows that Marco Rubio, Pete Hegseth, Tos Gabber, John Ratcliffe, even those crazy neocons in the Senate like Lindsey Graham, they must know that Israel has a nuclear weapon.
But why would somebody like that actually threaten the president of the United States with using nuclear weapons against Iran if the United States wouldn't intervene?
Wow.
This is the number one proof that they control literally everything and they can do anything they want at any time and get away with it.
Well, the genocide proves that they can do anything they want and get away with it so far.
Last question before we go, and I know it's already Friday where you are.
You've been in Moscow for a couple of days.
Do you have a comfortable hand on the pulse of public opinion about the special military operation in Ukraine?
Are people suffering because of sanctions?
Are people impatient because it's been four years?
Are they still supportive of the war as much as they have been in the past?
When you are in Moscow, Judge, you're very far away from the war.
Over, it's 1,200 kilometers from here, the war.
I did it on the road the last time.
No, I did it by train the last time, but before that, I did it on the road.
It takes 16 to 18 hours from Moscow to Luhansk.
So it's very, very far away for anybody living here in the European part of Russia.
If you go to other parts of Russia, it's different.
For instance, there's much more awareness about the war in the Far East.
In Vladivostok, people talk about the war constantly.
There are several different strands across Russia.
One of them is military families that they at least they praise the government because they are being taken care of in terms of pensions, etc.
There is a very hardcore, we can call nationalist patriotic strand that is very critical about the pace and about the procedure of the SMO.
And of course, there is an element of fifth columnists, Atlanticist column, fifth columnists, a little bit, especially between St. Petersburg and Moscow, who are totally against it.
And of course, in the Intel services, some of old professionals in the Intel apparatus, their criticism, once again, is about procedure, not the whole madness, the method behind the madness which was inflicted on Russia.
And among these fifth columnists, there are those who practically align with the economists of the Financial Times.
They consider it Russian aggression.
It's a small minority.
So you can, this stupidity of Russia being an autocracy where you cannot have a free debate.
No.
If you go to the TV shows, basically it's the Kremlin position.
But if you go all across the net in Russia, you have all sorts of debate from all, and the strands are talking to each other or accusing each other.
So it is a democratic spirit of discussion.
Now that the front line is in Ukraine is basically collapsing, the general mood in Russia is that maybe this could be solved in the next, let's say, few months.
Nobody's saying that the war is going to finish in January or February.
And I remember, for instance, when Shoe Gu was saying that the war would end in 2025.
Now, it was obviously wrong.
The war might finish next year, or it could go on for another two, three, four, which is exactly what the Europeans want, assuming they have enough heroes to buy American weapons and send them to Ukraine.
and they will be actually used or not sold in the black market and show up in a favelar.
Wow.
Fascinating analysis, my dear friend.
Thank you so much.
Thank you for staying up so late for us.
Thank you for being our eyes and ears.
Safe travels.
We have a short week next week because of our Thanksgiving holiday, but I hope you can spend a little time with us.
Yes, my last day next week is Tuesday here.
Maybe we can talk on Tuesday if it's possible.
Wonderful.
Thank you, Pepe.
All the best.
Safe travels, my friend.
Thank you so much.
Thank you.
Of course.
And tomorrow, Friday, the end of the day, the end of the week at 4.30 in the afternoon Eastern with Larry Johnson home from Russia and Ray McGovern raring to go the intelligence community roundtable.