Feb. 17, 2026 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
28:18
Gilbert Doctorow : A New Russian Attitude at Negotiations?
Gilbert Doctorow critiques Marco Rubio’s 2026 Munich speech, calling its Cold War Christian rhetoric tone-deaf for secular Europe and its anti-neoconservatism jab hollow. He contrasts this with Ursula von der Leyen’s dismissive "second-rate power" framing of Russia amid Ukraine’s war, despite limited gains. Geneva talks, led by seasoned negotiator Vladimir Medinsky since March 2022, stall over Kiev’s internal divisions—Budanov pushing for Donbas concessions vs. Zelensky-aligned hardliners. Meanwhile, Iran-U.S. negotiations narrow to uranium enrichment and defensive tech, with China’s real-time intelligence support possibly reducing Iran’s need for nuclear weapons. Doctorow warns Netanyahu’s extreme demands—dismantling enrichment, capping missiles, and ending proxy funding—risk deadlock, while Medinsky’s return signals Russia’s shift from public posturing to substantive diplomacy. [Automatically generated summary]
Tragically, our government engages in preemptive war, otherwise known as aggression, with no complaints from the American people.
Sadly, we have become accustomed to living with the illegitimate use of force by government.
To develop a truly free society, the issue of initiating force must be understood and rejected.
What if sometimes to love your country, you had to alter or abolish the government?
What if Jefferson was right?
What if that government is best which governs least?
What if it is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong?
What if it is better to perish fighting for freedom than to live as a slave?
What if freedom's greatest hour of danger is now?
Hi, everyone.
Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Wednesday, February 18th, 2026.
Gilbert Doctorow joins us now.
Gilbert, a pleasure.
I want to talk to you about your observations over the new Russian negotiator and what has been reported today with respect to negotiations this morning in Geneva.
But before we get there, what is your take on Secretary of State Marco Rubio's talk at the Munich conference two or three days ago?
Well, sadly, it confirms, sadly for me, it confirms your remarks about the man being shallow.
He is a sophisticated fellow.
He has his own ideas.
He's not an empty head at all.
But he is rather confused and uninformed about the nature of the people he was making his address to, who are a good deal more sophisticated than he is, and who are more cynical than he is, and who probably were part of the time studying their shoes during his speech or making snide remarks to their neighbors.
Or they were doing what Kayakalas, the head of European diplomacy, was doing, as we saw repeatedly when she was picked up by the cameras on the videos.
She looked confused and dissatisfied and was no friend of what she was hearing.
So the problem is that the audience was exactly the people who came within the gunsights of JD Vance a year ago and who, and Rubio made the mistake of thinking that he could reconcile them to American policy by stressing our common values.
But our values are not common.
The values of most of the people in that audience were awoke.
The values of most of the people in that audience were anti-religious.
When Rubio, being the son of Cuban refugees, was making his pitch, his Cold War pitch, it was falling on deaf ears.
When he was speaking about the godless communism, he's missing the point that most of the people in that audience are godless.
Most of the elites in Europe are sternly secularist.
The situation here in Europe is rather different from, I think, many American presentations of it.
At least from my experience, from the inside and being not just from the elites whom I associate with at a social club, people I see every day on the street and buy the grocery.
They are not what you would expect if you were in Rubio's shoes.
We have falling attendance at churches.
Here in Belgium, the Catholic Church was almost destroyed by the dropping of the Latin mass and going over to the vernacular, the languages of the people today, Flemish and French, which divides the country right down the middle and which made it very difficult to enjoy going to a Catholic service in your nearest parish.
I was surprised to see his references to Christianity by name in his talk.
You would think that the State Department would have advisors, speech writers, I don't know how these speeches are crafted, who would say to him, what you've just said to us, do you understand your audience is not going to resonate when you talk about this?
This is not an audience filled with people like Lech Vowenza.
This is a different audience that will not react the way you expect them to.
Moreover, he also purported to attack the neocon ideology.
He's at the forefront of the neocons in Trump's inner circle.
Well, I must pick up the last point.
It wasn't purported.
It was directly, directly throwing cold water on the fundamental principles of neoconservatism.
When it was first rolled out about 1988, 1990, in a book by Francis Fukuyama on the end of history, it was the whole world will be, all the countries in the world are like on one long train, the United States at the head, other countries in the caboose, but they're all headed in the same direction towards liberal democracy.
And those principles were all set out.
We are all the same.
We're just at various stages of development.
And going on to globalism, which was very closely aligned with neoconservatism.
And globalism is precisely what has precipitated the ills of the United States and also in Europe that Trump has called out and that Rubio was talking about in his speech, namely the transfer of jobs abroad, the outsourcing, the open borders, which have led to massive immigration of the wrong people, people who are never vetted to come into the country.
So these issues, he destroyed at the very start of his speech, quite surprisingly.
But as I said, he was speaking otherwise.
His first words were a typical Cuban refugees talk about the Cold War and godless communism and so forth, which he quickly skipped over.
But you said the State Department should have given him better tips.
I don't believe the State Department was involved in this at all.
You have correctly called out the way that the Trump administration has sidelined the State Department.
And I think it also affects who was writing speeches.
This was not a bureaucratic type of speech.
It was not, it was not written by someone who's been sitting at his desk for the last 40 years.
It was written by people who are close to Rubio and close to Trump.
And they have a different turn of mind.
I don't say that is necessarily a correct understanding of things.
I think he made some serious speech.
I think it's all political American domestic politics.
He wants people like you and me and mainstream media to be comparing that speech to the one that the person he perceives as his archrival for the Republican presidential nomination, the vice president, JD Vance, gave last year.
You all remember that speech.
It went over like a lead balloon.
It was a harsh articulation of Trump's view of Europe.
So I think Mr. Rubio was attempting to contrast himself.
But talk about contrasts.
You had me laughing this morning, saying Kayakala makes Lindsay Graham sound rational.
I mean, she was really over the top.
I mean, much of what she was saying was really absurd.
What is her take on all this?
And remind the audience who she is.
Kayakalis has the title of vice president of the European Commission.
She is in charge of European diplomacy and also defense and security issues.
It's more vague exactly where her remit on security goes, but it's perfectly clear that she is Europe's top diplomat.
And she is the most undiplomatic, the most brazenly anti-Russian person you could imagine putting in that post.
If you want to be sure that you will have confrontation and war for the rest of the century, and we're just at the start of the century, then you have to have people like Kayakalis there.
She said in her speech, she intended to be demeaning towards Russia.
Oh, it's not really a great power.
It's a second rate power.
Look, they've been fighting for four years, a million deaths, and they still haven't moved far beyond where they were when the wall started and controlling 19 or 20% of Ukraine.
She went on like that.
My goodness, if you wanted to bash Russia in the face, you couldn't have done a better job.
But let's be honest, what's more going on?
You look at the audience receiving that speech.
They were enjoying themselves.
And there you have the problem.
The Kayakalis, who really should be thrown out, well, these people in that room should be thrown out.
A large part of the governing class in Germany, not just in Germany, is deadly for the future of this continent.
Well, I'm going to guess that Victor Orban was not in that room.
True, true.
Yeah.
Let's move on to the negotiations in Geneva.
Now, when you and I began emailing a few days ago about this, you pointed out to me the significance of Vladimir Badinsky leading the Russian delegation, and I want to hear you on that.
But the breaking news is, as I see it, they only spoke for two hours this morning.
What does that tell you?
It tells you there's a conflict going on in Kiev.
There are power struggles.
You know, when you have power, there are struggles.
People around you who would like to throw you out and take over.
And I'm sure that's what's going on right now in Kiev.
Just as I've been a kind of voice in the desert saying there are power struggles in Moscow, in the Kremlin, no one wants to believe that the leaders of these countries are not absolute dictators whom everybody adores and idolizes.
No, things are more complicated than that.
Life is more complicated than that.
In the case of Zelensky, the reports that came out of, came out of Russian state news by a very savvy bureau chief for Viesty in Europe, who was based in Brussels and I've met several times.
She was in front of the Intercontinental Hotel in Geneva, and she reported on what happened when the meetings broke up.
And the rumors from the Russian delegation were that the Ukrainian delegation was split and that Budanov, the head of the negotiating team, the former head of Ukrainian military intelligence.
The one the Russians consider to be an assassin.
The ones whom they can't stand.
Right.
And by the way, since you've mentioned Medinsky, the Russians have done exactly what should be done.
They put in Medinsky whom Zelensky cannot stand.
So they've got, this is a match which has sense to it.
But the point is that the Ukrainians are split down the middle with Budanov saying, give up Donbas now, let's get it over with, let's move on.
And others in the delegation who reportedly are aligned with the man whom Budanov replaced, that is Umerov, who was the previous long, long-standing power behind the throne of Zelensky, and he was removed over corruption charges.
Well, his people at the negotiations were giving the Zelensky line that we will not concede any territory.
And it's quite possible that this dispute has gone back to Kiev, and that is where it's being fought out.
It's impossible to say who will win, but I cannot see Budanov staying on if he is left with mission impossible.
Very interesting.
What is the significance, A, of Vladimir Medinsky leading the delegation, not Dmitriev, the guy that graduated from Stanford and who was Witkov's opposite number?
And B, what is the significance of the negotiations being in Geneva rather than in Abu Dhabi?
I mean, are we reading tea leaves here or is there something we should know about?
Well, there are some substantial reasons.
The simplest one is that's where Vitkov and Kushner had to be for the Iran talks.
So why would they be flying all over the place?
The talks with Iran are in Geneva.
The talks with the Russians, Ukrainians are in Geneva.
So they can split their time instead of, again, flying around uselessly to bring the sides together.
Mr. Zelensky, after the incident over the attempted assassination of General Alexeyev, when the assassin, would-be assassin, flew to Abu Dhabi, sorry, flew to Dubai and was turned over at once to the Russians.
He considered that to be treacherous and a show of bad faith by Abu Dhabi, by the United Arab Emirates government.
And so he said, never again, Abu Dhabi.
Iranian Enrichment Demands00:10:46
Okay.
He wanted to move it to Miami, which was unacceptable to the Russians and to the Americans, who do not want Mr. Trump to be involved directly in these talks.
And so they settled on Geneva, which happened to be where those two American negotiators would have to be anyway on Tuesday and Wednesday of this week.
Very interesting.
What is your take on the comments made yesterday by the Iranian foreign minister at the end of those negotiations?
Well, they have narrowed the issues to ones that may be reconcilable.
They have called a timeout of two or three weeks to further refine their counter-offer to Donald Trump.
This means almost certainly that there will be no war in the next three weeks.
It also gives Mr. Trump a little bit of leeway, helps him to find the exit ramp after he seemed, as many commentators said, that he had trapped himself and was in an untenable situation where he was being pressed by many people,
not just Netanyahu, but many others, to initiate the war since he had all those naval assets in the area and still more cunning.
Well, now it's three weeks of cooling off period.
And I think this will give Trump a little bit of breathing room when he finally strikes a deal with Iran, which would be very different from what he demanded when they went into the talks.
Here's the Iranian foreign minister yesterday, cautious but upbeat is the way I would describe him.
You may draw your own conclusion from him.
I was surprised that Grossi, the head of the UN nuclear investigations, was there, but the foreign minister of Iran praised his presence.
Chris cut number 17.
Today, we held the second round of negotiations with the American delegation indirectly at the Omani Embassy in Geneva.
The consultations have started at the beginning of the day.
Mr. Grossi came to Geneva and we had good technical discussions with him.
He also met with the American delegation and I can say that in this round compared to the previous round, extremely serious and in-depth discussions were held and the overall atmosphere was notably more constructive than before.
A wide variety of different ideas were proposed by the group and each of these ideas was then very seriously and thoroughly discussed.
And ultimately, we were finally able to reach a solid agreement on a comprehensive set of guiding principles.
We reached a general agreement starting from this very moment.
We will continue to proceed based on those fundamental principles.
We will enter the text of a possible agreement.
This does not mean that we can reach an agreement quickly, but at least the process has begun.
Seems optimistic to me.
I think he has good reason.
The talks have been narrowed to only the enrichment issue and the amount of what enriched and weapons-grade uranium Iran may possess.
It is quite possible that the Iranians will accede to Trump's demands about stopping enrichment of Iran.
I think, but this has to be put in the context of the latest developments.
After all, the question of availability of nuclear weapons in the near term was something that was created when Iran's other defenses were very meager and really were inadequate to the situation that developed in the 12-day war.
What we have heard, and I think your panelist on your show yesterday, Alastair Crook, explained very well the nature of the reinforced defensive capabilities of Iran,
thanks to the Chinese supplying the absolute latest cutting-edge technologies in the last several months, which must give a great reassurance to Iran that doesn't really need a bomb any which way to defend itself adequately against all comers in the region, including against the United States.
Right.
But the situation has changed.
Does this mean that Netanyahu's three other demands are now off the table?
Getting rid of offensive weaponry.
Well, no country would do that.
It would lose its sovereignty.
Getting rid of the equipment needed to enrich uranium and stopping funding its allies.
Because if those are not part of the American agreement, and Netanyahu, and there is an agreement between the U.S. and Iran, and Netanyahu does not give that agreement his blessing, which if it just involves a level of enrichment above zero, he can't.
What happens next?
Well, I think there is room for a compromise that allows Donald Trump to look very good, to say he's gotten by applying maximum pressure he's got from the Iranians to concede points about enrichment, that they will stop enrichment.
Maybe they'll destroy the equipment for enrichment.
It's quite possible.
If I say the overriding issue is for Iranian defense that they have now got it without any bomb, without any need to look for a bomb, thanks to the Chinese providing them with an ecosystem of military intelligence gathering in real time,
which and detectability, the ability to detect American stealth bombers, and all these various electronic means which were missing at the start of the June war and which put at risk their other military assets, their missile systems.
So this new, things have not just stayed pat, they have changed and particularly changed thanks to this arms from or these military equipment from China, whereby the Iranians can appear to satisfy at least several of the major demands even of Netanyahu, that they stop enriching and that the equipment be destroyed.
They could probably agree to that.
If indeed they feel secure, and I think they feel secure.
Chris, I'm going to call for SAT 15.
This is the Ayatollah talking about some super equipment they have, which can sink aircraft carriers by firing at them from undetected radars under the sea.
Watch this.
The United States recently made the decision to send a powerful warship directly towards the coast of Iran.
Now, it is true that a modern warship is certainly a very dangerous and formidable device, but what is even more dangerous than the warship itself is the specific type of advanced weapon that has the capability to send it straight to the dark bottom of the sea vance this morning.
In some ways it went well.
They agreed to meet afterwards, but none of the ways it was clear the president has set some red lines that the Iranians are not yet willing to actually acknowledge and work through.
Those red lines, of course, would be the other demands that Netanyahu made.
Look, nothing will satisfy Netanyahu with respect to Iran until there's regime change.
Iran is broken up into small, harmless countries the way Syria has been broken up.
Nothing's going to please him.
If the Iranians agreed to his four demands, he'd add a fifth.
You know the way this works.
Yeah, I think that if he plays it well, and there's no reason to doubt that Trump can operate in this kind of environment, boasting about the deal that he has arranged, then he will not have to pursue the other red line issues with the Iranians.
By the way, I failed to mention that also under discussion, of course, the Iranians, for their part, can agree to these concessions regarding enrichment and the equipment for enrichment if the United States agrees to lift all sanctions, which will have a vast economic benefit to Iran.
So there is the basis here for a deal.
And I think that Trump, realizing that passing this up, could land him into very great difficulty.
Sending any one of these aircraft carriers to the bottom is right away losing 5,000 to 10,000 American servicemen.
He cannot afford that.
Right, right.
Here's Netanyahu with his latest iteration of demands: cut number one.
If a deal is to be reached, it should have several components.
Several components that we believe are important not only for the security of Israel, but for the security of the world.
The United States, the region, the world.
The first is that all enriched material has to leave Iran.
The second is that there shall be no enrichment capability, not stopping the enrichment process, but dismantle the equipment and the infrastructure that allows you to enrich in the first place.
And the third is to deal also with the questions of ballistic missiles.
There's an MTCR limitation of 300 kilometers, and Iran is supposed to adhere to it.
Of course, it doesn't, as the Rising Lion operation by itself manifested.
Distrust And Verify00:02:20
Everybody knows that.
And the fourth is to stop the dismantle the axis of terror that Iran has built.
It's been smashed, but it's still there.
It's trying to recover, as Iran itself is trying to do.
And the last thing is: remember Ronald Reagan's dictum, vis-à-vis the Soviet Union?
Trust but verify.
Distrust, distrust, and always verify.
So there has to be real inspections, substantive inspections, no lead-time inspections, but effective inspections for all of the above.
We only have about a minute left, but what are your thoughts there?
My thoughts are he should be careful, and he says everybody knows it, because everybody knows that Israel has a nuclear weapon and refuses to sign the non-proliferation treaty.
Your thoughts?
Well, on this account, you'll probably get his wishes on one, two, and five.
Three and four out of the question.
But let's take a step back for a second.
That is what we were talking about with the importance of Mr. Medinsky.
He is the man with the overall vision, with the political vision.
And he is the most serious person in the game.
Mr. The stress on trade and the Kirilov being, sorry, Kirilov, my goodness, the negotiator for trade who was substituting as the envoy for Putin.
He was a fill-in.
He was not the serious character.
He was something to engage the public.
Mr. Medinsky is serious.
He was in negotiations back in the spring, March of 2022, and he has been cowering the ball ever since.
So this return shows that we're in the very serious phase of negotiations.
Got it.
Got it.
Gilbert, thank you very much.
Thanks for this analysis and for meeting us at your usual time.
We'll look forward to seeing you next week, my friend.
Bye-bye.
Coming up later today at 10 this morning, Professor Glenn Deason at 1 this afternoon, Aaron Mate.