Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano - Gilbert Doctorow : The Trump–Putin Call Everyone Is Trying to Decode
Aired: 2026-03-11
Duration: 22:03


=== Putin's Determination Questioned (15:23) ===

[00:00:02]  Undeclared wars are commonplace.
[00:00:05]  Tragically, our government engages in preemptive war, otherwise known as aggression, with no complaints from the American people.
[00:00:14]  Sadly, we have become accustomed to living with the illegitimate use of force by government.
[00:00:19]  To develop a truly free society, the issue of initiating force must be understood and rejected.
[00:00:27]  What if sometimes to love your country, you had to alter or abolish the government?
[00:00:32]  What if Jefferson was right?
[00:00:34]  What if that government is best which governs least?
[00:00:38]  What if it is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong?
[00:00:42]  What if it is better to perish fighting for freedom than to live as a slave?
[00:00:48]  What if freedom's greatest hour of danger is now?
[00:01:02]  Hi, everyone.
[00:01:03]  Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
[00:01:06]  Today is Wednesday, pardon me, Wednesday, March 11th, 2026.
[00:01:13]  Oh, boy, frog in my throat.
[00:01:14]  Gilbert Doctorow joins us now.
[00:01:17]  Gilbert, bear with me for a second.
[00:01:21]  Before we get to your analysis of this mysterious phone call between President Putin and President Trump, to some breaking news, about an hour ago, the Kremlin accused the United Kingdom of being responsible for a missile strike on a Russian munitions factory in Bryansk, which is hardly at the border,
[00:01:48]  which killed six civilians and did material damage to the munitions factory.
[00:01:54]  The missile was a British storm shadow, and the Russian foreign ministry said British operatives, I guess that means MI6, were responsible for this.
[00:02:04]  Can you shed any light on this and how serious it might be?
[00:02:07]  It just happened.
[00:02:09]  Well, as you say, the breaking news, I don't have any commentary from the Russians on it.
[00:02:14]  I was looking at Russian news just a few minutes before we've come on air, and there was absolutely no mention of it.
[00:02:21]  This puts in question something that you and I have discussed in the last week, and that is the determination or lack of determination of Vladimir Putin to follow through on his very clearly policy for what happens if something like this should occur.
[00:02:42]  According to the position that he took on September 12th, back in, I think it's 2024, he should now have a military strike against Great Britain.
[00:02:56]  Right.
[00:02:56]  Or against the British military assets.
[00:03:00]  If he doesn't, then his deterrence is held in place or restored.
[00:03:07]  If he doesn't do it, then it will be a further enormous erosion of Russia's sovereignty and deterrence.
[00:03:15]  Okay, hang on to that because I want to come back to it.
[00:03:18]  I know this is important in informing your thinking and your analysis of big picture Russia-U.S. relations.
[00:03:30]  But before we get to all of that, how does the war in Iran playing in Europe, particularly in Northern Europe where you are, or Central Europe, I guess, where you are?
[00:03:43]  There is division of feelings.
[00:03:45]  The most craven seeker of publicity and pretender to be at the head of the band in Europe, of course, is Macron.
[00:03:55]  And Macron has thrown in his and France's fate with the most, let's call it, unqualified and risky policies of Donald Trump.
[00:04:08]  He's sending the Shab de Gaulle aircraft carrier and task force to the Eastern Mediterranean.
[00:04:15]  He is doing everything to demonstrate that he is ready to help where the British Fabi stumbled at the beginning and were refusing assistance.
[00:04:25]  You've got France out in the lead.
[00:04:26]  You've got Germany more or less following Mr. Trump's lead.
[00:04:31]  And you've got the Brits, of course.
[00:04:34]  On the other hand, you have Spain coming out very vocally, condemning the entire operation in Iran and calling Merits.
[00:04:42]  Sanchez called the head of the prime minister of Spain called Meritz a Trump vassal.
[00:04:50]  So you've got very, this is explosive language in the European community.
[00:04:55]  So the European community is dividing.
[00:04:58]  Some countries are, of course, viciously anti-Russian, like Denmark, and they will go along with Trump whatever he does or says, so long as it is not concerning the fate of Greenland.
[00:05:10]  But other countries are reconsidering and listening more closely to what Fizo of Slovakia, Urban and others are saying, taking a distance, of course,
[00:05:23]  is also the factor of the very visible Ursula von der Leyen, who has finally also stirred up discontent and divisions within the EU community by her backing the Trump actions in Iran,
[00:05:44]  by speaking out in favor of freeing the Iranian people, giving liberty and democracy a chance, and as of yesterday, her statement that no, there should be no return to using Russian hydrocarbons.
[00:05:58]  That also creates a stir here because Europe is short of gas and oil.
[00:06:04]  And this stiff-necked, viciously anti-Russian stand by the president of the European Commission is not going down well.
[00:06:14]  Wow, I was just going to ask you about her and her crazy sidekick, Kaya Kallas.
[00:06:20]  I'm going to assume Ms. Kallas, who I guess we can loosely call the foreign minister of the EU, is in the same boat as Ursula von der Leyen.
[00:06:33]  Oh, definitely.
[00:06:35]  They may hate one another, which is publicly known.
[00:06:38]  They are both extremely ambitious and backstabbers.
[00:06:43]  But on the issue of Russia, they are singing from the same chorus book.
[00:06:48]  Of course, we know that before she became the European chief diplomat, when she was still the prime minister of Estonia, in the last months before she made this transition, she was saying that Russia has to be brought to its knees.
[00:07:00]  And essentially, she hasn't changed that tune, even if it means the utter destruction of Europe in a war with Russia.
[00:07:07]  Wow.
[00:07:10]  American press has been reporting, I'm sure you've seen this, that the Russians are providing intel to the Iranians to help them locate American personnel and American assets.
[00:07:25]  Do we know if that is true?
[00:07:28]  No, there's no proof positive.
[00:07:29]  The Russians neither confirm or deny.
[00:07:32]  There's also the Chinese are in the act.
[00:07:34]  And let's remember that before this war started, some of my colleagues who appeared on your show were saying the Chinese had provided exactly the same thing.
[00:07:42]  The most remarkable state-of-the-art radars and other command and control systems to enable a Iranian defense, which of course failed on the first day completely.
[00:07:54]  The Russians probably using the older systems, but highly reliable, satellite systems and possibly their own airplanes equipped with massive radar detection equipment.
[00:08:12]  They most likely are providing this assistance.
[00:08:15]  But of course, no one will say that.
[00:08:18]  How fragile, in your view, is America slash Russia diplomacy?
[00:08:28]  Or stated differently, will Trump's duplicity in the Iranian negotiations affect the credibility with which the Kremlin approaches Witkov and Kushner the next time they come knocking?
[00:08:45]  Well, if Mr. Putin put my recommendations, which apparently is not going to do, he wouldn't be speaking with the United States at all.
[00:09:00]  However, what I heard is a kind of apology for what's likely to happen on the very authoritative talk show, The Great Game, in this segment that was led by a friend of yours of the past, Dimitri Sines.
[00:09:15]  And he concluded last night's edition of that great game by saying that no one believes at all, has any trust in the United States, but we have to go through this exercise.
[00:09:27]  So that was the best that you could hear at present.
[00:09:30]  It is not a vote of confidence in Mr. Trump, not at all.
[00:09:34]  And let me follow something up, because it bears on what you're asking.
[00:09:38]  We know that the little that we know of the content of that phone call between Trump, which initiated by Trump for one hour, spoke with Putin, both sides said almost nothing about the content other than they say it lasted one hour and that it was constructive, which is meaningless.
[00:09:57]  What the Russian side said, one little tidbit of value, was that Mr. Trump had indicated that he is ready to relent on sanctions on Russian oil in exchange for Russian assistance with their friends or allies in Tehran to get them to raise the, to reopen the Straits of Hormuz.
[00:10:24]  Now, the follow-on, which is highly relevant to all this, is what actually happened.
[00:10:31]  What did Putin do?
[00:10:33]  Well, we know that yesterday, or last night, he initiated a phone call to the president of Iran, Bezershkian, and they probably discussed this.
[00:10:44]  But let's remember something here.
[00:10:50]  The point is, Pezzh Khan is nobody.
[00:10:54]  He's not in control of anything.
[00:10:55]  He's lucky he wasn't hanged for a statement he made in the middle of last week that his apology to our Arab brethren for the attacks we made on them, and we won't do it again.
[00:11:08]  That remark must have taken him very close to a lynching because of an hour or two later he was saying that he was misunderstood, blah, blah, blah, and any country that uses it.
[00:11:20]  Why would President Putin call him?
[00:11:24]  Because he knows it's useless, worthless.
[00:11:26]  It sounds good.
[00:11:27]  The two presidents conferred, but everybody knows that Pezzhan now is zero.
[00:11:33]  As soon as the war entered, he lost all of his power.
[00:11:36]  The power went to the Supreme Leader, and the power went to the revolutionary guards.
[00:11:43]  No sooner did President Srian make this idiotic and unpatriotic statement that of apologies to the Arab states than the revolutionary guards started firing missiles like mad at those very same brotherly Gulf states.
[00:11:58]  Right, right.
[00:12:01]  You have argued you have argued that President Putin should not have taken this phone call from President Trump.
[00:12:10]  What is the basis for that view?
[00:12:13]  It's unseemly.
[00:12:14]  It makes me back to where we were.
[00:12:17]  You and I were talking in the mid-fall when Mr. Putin made his grand speech to the plenary session of the Valda Discussion Club, which he does every year.
[00:12:29]  It takes place in Sochi.
[00:12:31]  And his behavior was craven pandering to Donald Trump.
[00:12:37]  He had this little segment on Charlie Kirk.
[00:12:41]  He had a number of issues that he raised which made him look sycophantic and pleading for good relations with Donald Trump, which left me very disappointed because a great nation, a great power, doesn't behave like that.
[00:13:00]  And what we've just seen by Donald Trump's call getting through to Putin, just what, 10 days after, Trump and his team, Hegseth in charge, launched this barbaric, utterly illegal and murderous attack on Iran, decapitating the top leadership of the country.
[00:13:25]  This is barbarous.
[00:13:27]  And here, Mr. Putin just accepts the phone call.
[00:13:33]  No, that doesn't look good.
[00:13:35]  That doesn't look good at all.
[00:13:37]  Adding to the allegations of barbarism is a report this morning in The Guardian that the Israelis and the Americans, because it was an American missile, intentionally targeted the girls' school because this was a high-end grammar school for the children,
[00:14:04]  the female children of Revolutionary Guard officials.
[00:14:10]  So in order to degrade the Iranian military, the Israelis and the Americans, this argument goes, slaughtered their children, incinerated them.
[00:14:23]  This is a barbarity of almost unimaginable heights.
[00:14:30]  If there were justice in this world, which sadly there isn't, the whole Trump and his whole crew would be hauled off to the Hague right now.
[00:14:40]  And the lead would go to Hegseth.
[00:14:42]  Between us, the only satisfaction I can take from this is after this Iran war degenerates into a total debacle for the United States, which some of your other very well-regarded panelists on this program have predicted in the last day or two, starting with Professor Mirsheimer.
[00:15:04]  After that happens, I think Mr. Hegseth will be fired peremptorily so that Trump can blame it all on him.
[00:15:12]  I have no regrets.
[00:15:13]  Trump is, of course, responsible for his actions and his decisions, but Hegseth is the most vicious and despicable people who have been in American power in the last decade, and we've had quite a few of them.

=== Witkoff Meets Ukraine Stage (05:51) ===

[00:15:26]  Yeah.
[00:15:26]  What is your view?
[00:15:29]  And I think your view may have changed about these two people the more you learned about them, because you are an academic at heart, seeking evidence to inform or challenge your views.
[00:15:45]  What is your view now of Witkoff and Kushner?
[00:15:49]  When I spoke of them, I was speaking of them not as an academic, but as a former business executive who has seen a lot of top-level business people, board-level people of major corporations, who has accompanied them to negotiations, going back to the 1980s, and who had a high regard for their negotiating skills.
[00:16:10]  So the criticism of these two people as being incompetent or ill-prepared for the big tasks given to them was something I contested.
[00:16:18]  However, I've changed completely my thinking about them for an unrelated reason.
[00:16:24]  They're card sheets.
[00:16:25]  They're thieves.
[00:16:26]  They're people utterly without any sense of personal honor or personal self-respect.
[00:16:32]  If Witkoff had any self-respect, he would have quit Trump when this force in Iran started.
[00:16:40]  He was the lead person responsible for relations with Iran.
[00:16:45]  How could he stay on working for the man who double-crossed and committed barbarism against the people Mies was negotiating with in Tehran?
[00:17:01]  Should the Russians meet with Witkoff and Kushner, but we don't even know where they're going to meet or when we're going to meet, they're going to meet.
[00:17:12]  You have told me that the Russians don't want to go to Geneva again.
[00:17:17]  You can tell us why.
[00:17:19]  But apparently Witkoff has come knocking and someone has answered the knock.
[00:17:24]  I don't know if it's President Putin or Foreign Minister Lavrov or Dmitry Peshkov.
[00:17:30]  Somebody has answered that knock.
[00:17:32]  What should we expect next in Russia-U.S. relations involving these people you call card sheets?
[00:17:41]  The issues are very big.
[00:17:43]  And I don't want to pretend that the, well, fear is a way of calling it, or the risk aversion is a kindlier way of putting it, that Mr. Putin is exhibiting in relation to the United States is his alone, and he is solely responsible for our possible escalation towards nuclear war because of his failure to properly respond,
[00:18:10]  my estimation of a proper response to the provocations from the United States and South.
[00:18:16]  Look at China.
[00:18:17]  I am flabbergasted to hear that Xi is said to still be intent on receiving Donald Trump in Beijing.
[00:18:28]  What can we say about that?
[00:18:30]  Well, how can he possibly do that without enormous damage to his international standing?
[00:18:37]  Just saying that he wants to receive him has already damaged, I mean, to people like myself.
[00:18:43]  It condemns him to a position of a weakling and an indecisive person who is inviting disaster for China.
[00:18:54]  You don't shake hands with people whose hands are full of blood, as is the case of Mr. Trump and his team.
[00:19:03]  You don't pat him on the back.
[00:19:05]  And so I can't, how critical can I be of Vladimir Putin when a still bigger figure on the stage, Xi, is behaving in the most indecorous and inexcusable way?
[00:19:21]  Will President Putin agree to meet with Witkoff and Kushner?
[00:19:29]  And if he does, will it just be for show or to flatter Donald Trump?
[00:19:34]  Will it not be substantive?
[00:19:37]  It'll be to buy time.
[00:19:40]  I think what we heard through the mouth of Synes last night was the Kremlin speaking.
[00:19:47]  We don't like this, but we have to go through with it.
[00:19:50]  He's buying time.
[00:19:51]  And why do I say that?
[00:19:52]  Because on the same show, there was an evaluation of what Russians are doing with their production and storage of armaments.
[00:20:04]  There was the clear conclusion that the Russians are prepared to stage a major attack on Ukraine this summer, a wipeout attack.
[00:20:18]  And let's be specific because it alludes to something else that was on Russian television last night.
[00:20:23]  This was an interview.
[00:20:24]  Well, Mr. Putin meets with each of the 50, I think, 50, 52, however many governors there are, or what they call the subjects of the Russian Federation.
[00:20:34]  We would call them states or provinces.
[00:20:36]  He met with Pushilin.
[00:20:37]  Pushilin is the governor of Donetsk.
[00:20:43]  And they talked about this and that and reconstruction.
[00:20:45]  But the punchline was when Putin asked him why.
[00:20:50]  A few months ago, we knew that Ukraine held 25% of Donetsk province.
[00:20:57]  Tell me, please, Mr. Pushilin, how much do they hold now?
[00:21:02]  Answer, 17 to 18%.
[00:21:05]  You see the point?
[00:21:06]  They're going to wipe out the Ukrainian presence in Donbass in their summer offensive.
[00:21:12]  So he's buying time with Trump just to shut him up.
[00:21:16]  Wow.

=== Pushilin's Donbass Update (00:45) ===

[00:21:18]  Gilbert, a fascinating conversation.
[00:21:20]  Very, very informative.
[00:21:23]  Thank you very much for your time.
[00:21:27]  I know it was deeply appreciated because I can see the comments flowing in.
[00:21:30]  But a great conversation, my dear friend.
[00:21:32]  Have a good day.
[00:21:33]  We'll look forward to seeing you next week.
[00:21:35]  Thank you so much.
[00:21:37]  Thank you.
[00:21:38]  Coming up later today at 10 o'clock this morning on many of these very topics.
[00:21:44]  Professor Glenn Deason at two this afternoon with an emphasis on China, I think he's there, Pepe Escobar, and at three this afternoon with an emphasis on Prime Minister Netanyahu and his latest murderous stunts, Phil Giraldi, charged Nepal Town for judging