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June 5, 2025 - Ron Paul Liberty Report
30:39
Zelensky On The Ropes With Guest Phil Giraldi

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Putin, Trump, and Potential Collusion 00:14:45
Hello, everybody, and thank you for tuning in to the Liberty Report.
Dr. Paul is out today.
I am amped up on coffee that I got across the street that they put too much sugar in, and the caffeine is strong.
So beware, beware.
But thankfully, you don't have to listen to my briefing today, as usual, because my great friend of, I think, a couple of decades, to be honest with you, Phil Giraldi, is with us.
Phil is a retired CIA operations officer.
Before that, he was in Army intelligence.
He's a journalist.
He's an analyst.
Phil, good to have you with us today.
Thank you very much, Dan.
I'm glad to be here.
Great.
I thought we would talk a little bit about what's been happening in Russia, Ukraine, over the week because it has been a busy week.
Now, it started with when I got up on Sunday morning, I saw the initial reports of the drone attacks, and I thought the initial reports, of course, were that they'd knocked out 41 of the bearers of the strategic bombers.
And it looked like a pretty serious attack.
Turns out it wasn't anywhere near that, but nevertheless, significant, maybe not necessarily for what they took out, but for the reach, the fact that they got all the way to the Arctic Circle and out to Siberia, places that were probably less guarded because they weren't considered to be vulnerable because of the distance to Ukraine.
And then on Tuesday, we had the second round, I believe it is, of the Istanbul talks.
A lot of people thought they would be called off after this, the drone attack.
And by the way, I should mention that not only the drone attack happened on Sunday, but the derailment of a train in Bryansk and Kursk, I believe.
But the one in Bryansk is the one that killed, I think, about seven civilians, a purely civilian target.
And then we had the talks on Tuesday between Ukrainians and the Russians.
And then we had, after those, we had the Kerch attack, where they tried to hit the Kerch Bridge.
Again, another sort of blustery PR attack did not damage the bridge, despite original Ukrainian claims of what happened.
And then on Wednesday, which is yesterday, we had the Trump Putin call.
I don't know about you, Phil.
I thought I was watching a tennis match over these past few days.
What do you make of the events of this past week and what do they portend for the coming future?
Well, like you, I was going back and forth like a tennis ball.
The first announcement, of course, was that grave damage was inflicted.
Then as we walked away from that, satellite imagery and reports from people on the ground seem to be indicating that the damage was not so severe.
And that's been kind of playing around.
Today, I even saw more reporting, I think was on Yahoo, about how severe the damage was.
So they're still playing that game.
I have some different insights into how this kind of happened.
As a former intelligence ops officer who was in the business of recruiting spies and active agents to do stuff for you, I was under the impressions that since the war between these two started, that there were lots of people that were kind of sources and assets who were on the ground on both sides of the line.
So I rather suspect that this was something that's been kind of long developing and had assets in place, had equipment in place, and that sort of thing.
So I've been very kind of concerned with that.
And I bounced it off of a couple of other ops officers, former ops officers, and they said, yeah, it kind of smelled to them too.
It was just too easy to think that all this equipment and trucks and everything had been basically smuggled through Russian security, through the border arrangements, and that kind of thing.
So that's, I think, part of it.
Now, the other big issue, of course, is: did Trump know?
Yeah.
And a lot of people are focusing on that because if he didn't know, that's what might be construed as a major failure of U.S. intelligence or a deliberate withholding of the information from him for one reason or the other.
And both those possible answers are bad.
So this is, I think, a lot of what's been going back and forth.
And of course, the big question is: Putin has said that he will retaliate.
The question is, what will he retaliate with?
And is there any way the United States can get into the middle of some of this and have some kind of serious talking going on?
Because this is not benefiting anyone right now.
The one thing about whether Trump knew or not, you know, as you say, there are the two positions.
They're both bad.
One of them is that he knew and it didn't bother him.
That may mean someone just didn't explain it well enough to him what the implications would have been for him to okay an attack on strategic bombers.
The other is that they kept it from him.
But, you know, you spent a long time in the business.
Isn't there the possibility, and I think this has happened under presidents in the past, where there is an inkling of what was about to come to come that would give the president plausible deniability that he didn't know the specifics, but in general, he was briefed.
Would this be something that the intelligence community might do for the president?
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, definitely plausible deniability is a possible element in this.
But the reason I do not believe it is because Trump has said flatly he did not know about it.
And if, if, and this is another big if, Russians have a very good intelligence service, and they might have evidence to indicate that Trump or people in his chain of command who are over there and active knew about this, or even worse than that, might have in a way collaborated in doing it.
So this is opening a very bad nest of worms that could explode.
Here he is lying to the American people about an incident.
And this is hypothetical.
I'm not saying he did that.
I'm saying if he did that, this is something perceived as lying to the American people over an incident that could have started or still might start World War III.
I mean, that might even explain this sort of unscheduled phone call between Putin and Trump himself.
I mean, this, again, this is speculation, but might I don't, I don't know that I read who initiated the call, but might Putin have told Trump, look, we've got the intel here.
We've got the receipts, as the kids say, and we know that you knew about it.
We know that you're in on it, you know, that sort of thing.
Do you think that could have factored in for the call?
Yeah, I think very definitely.
It might not be quite worded that way or such a direct fashion.
But I think there probably might be ways to work around that.
Now, Trump is not particularly articulate, but maybe somebody will have sketched out a possible scenario for him to use.
But I think it's important for all sides in this to basically negotiate around the more dangerous issues that have surfaced as a result of this.
And if that means the U.S. really intervening in a serious way on behalf of Russia to bring about a ceasefire by cutting Ukraine off from U.S. money and U.S. weapons and also probably influencing a similar slowdown on the part of countries like Germany and Poland and Britain, it would be a very interesting scenario to see play out.
And that's interesting, maybe another coincidence that Mertz is in town today.
I just saw him arriving at the White House.
So maybe he's going to get a dressing down if this sort of little fantasy scenario that we're talking about is accurate.
I mean, it also seems to me, Phil, that the Russians would not necessarily want this to get out either, that Trump had known about it and approved it, because it would make things, I think, more unstable.
And if the one thing that Putin is actually criticized for among many people in Russia and even a lot of Western observers who are pro-Russia is that he's way too cautious in these situations.
So perhaps this is also his caution saying, as you say, in a much more subtle way than I did, that look, we know what's going on here and you're walking a thin line.
I don't know, speculation.
Yeah, and also bear in mind that Putin might not want to reveal their intelligence capabilities to read our mail.
True, yes.
They have a very good intelligence service, very active.
And there have been many cases when I was still in active duty where we discovered that the Russians were able to tap into meetings and communications that we had every assurance from the technicians were secure.
So this is an interesting side aspect of it.
You don't want the guys that you're listening in on to know that you're capable to be listening in.
Yeah, that's true.
That's true.
Well, the other thing I was going to mention about this, too, was Trump's weird tweet just before the attacks.
Do you think that is a coincidence or might he have been onto something?
I mean, it just almost seems like a schoolboy confession or something.
This weird bad things might happen.
You are in, you're going to be in hot water or something or something of this nature.
But it wasn't a tweet, but it was a post on his social media.
That struck you.
Did that strike you as weird as it struck me?
Yeah, I agree with you.
I mean, in fact, I even wrote an article that cited a lot of the funny comments that have been coming out.
The other one that was really funny was here, Trump was basically, it seemed, establishing a sort of working relationship with China.
And then the next thing, he's accusing China of cheating on the tariffs.
And he denounces the Chinese.
And he says, no more being Mr. Nice Guy.
Now, I don't know what kind of businessman Trump was in reality, but the fact is that this stuff doesn't work.
And calling Putin crazy is not a good idea if you want actually to come to some kind of working solution that benefits you and benefits them and benefits everybody involved so that it will actually come out as a success.
And Trump is desperately right now, I think, looking for a success.
It reminds me of the shirt sellers in Shanghai when I was there, the open markets, when I wanted to get a shirt, they would play that, no more Mr. Nice Guy.
Why are you so mean?
Why are you trying to talk us down?
It may work in the shirt market, but it does not work, I don't think, among leaders.
Now, let's, I want to ask you also about Lindsey Graham and Mike Pompeo, but it's sort of separate, I think.
I could be wrong, and please correct me if you think I am.
But here's Graham sauntering into Kiev a couple of days before this attack.
Coincidence or not?
What do you think?
Well, I think it's there's I think there's a revolution, if I want to put it in that strong an expression, or a revolt at the very least,
that's going on in the Republican Party among the what one might what one might describe as the harder right-wingers, the neocon type hegemonists who basically don't believe in giving an inch to anyone.
So, for them, the support of Ukraine against Russia, even as much of a catastrophe as it is likely to become, is a sine qua non.
We have to do this for them.
The next thing to do is to flip the page to China.
So, I think they're throwing a lot of this out openly, and it's picked up, of course, by the media.
And then there's a lot more probably going on behind closed doors.
So, we're going to see, I think, some harsh language or more about the budget vote, which is still pending, and about where the foreign policy is going to try to be going.
There's no question but in my mind that Trump does not have the courage or the finesse to take on Israel that's lobby and Net Yahoo, or at least not yet.
But the fact is that these other issues are issues that are manageable and to make him look like a strong man and to make it look as if he and the people who want to make America great again are on the same page.
And he's expended an enormous amount of political capital on this, quote, big, beautiful bill.
You know, you can imagine Lindsey Graham being able to exercise some serious leverage against him.
Do you want this to go through the Senate or not?
Here's what I need for it, something of this nature.
But the other thing about Graham in Kiev, now, you know, I've been a long, we've all been long critics of this idea of the imperial presidency, and it didn't start with W. Bush, but he certainly embraced it.
Diplomacy's Breakdown 00:06:22
But nevertheless, I believe, and I think you may agree with me, Phil, that the president does have wide constitutional leeway when it comes to foreign policy.
That's one area where it's pretty clear that he's got the authority.
Of course, it's subject to the checks and balances of the legislative branch.
But in terms of being the leading edge of U.S. foreign policy, I think the president has plenty of leeway.
So here you have Lindsey Graham in the middle of Kiev saying, Well, the president says you guys don't have a lot of cards, but I'm here to tell you, basically, and I'll paraphrase it, that's just his opinion because we've got cards too.
And I'm putting up this sanctions bill, and we're going to put 400% sanctions on anyone who does business with Russia.
You know, he's saying we've got the legislative branch, we've got the courts too in the U.S.
So the president ain't all that.
That almost struck me as something that you usually don't do overseas when you're a U.S. official who's not under the president in foreign policy.
Yeah, well, I absolutely.
I had the same impression when I watched him and where he was a policy wowzy with Zelensky.
And yeah, we're going to give you all the support you need, basically, is what you would say.
And that may not be really in its finer points, what U.S. policy is in the region.
And the other thing, it's interesting, your 400% sanctions and tariffs and things.
I really was bemused by this whole idea of putting 400% on any country that buys Iranian oil.
I mean, this stuff is so insane.
If you and I had to sit in the dark room and try to make up stuff that we thought was so stupid that nobody but a congressman, of course, would believe it.
And it's just the stuff they come out with is just off the wall.
And it's a symptom of the breakdown of our foreign policy.
You're absolutely right.
The president has the loudest voice.
But somehow the cat that's in the bag is the cat is what are America's interests.
And they seem to have forgotten that.
Well, there's rumor, and I'm saying it's just rumor.
I have not seen anything other than some things on X that they're looking into a Logan Act investigation on Graham, which I think is pretty unlikely, especially as a chairman of the budget committee in the Senate.
And also that he urged Ukraine to conduct strikes on Russian nuclear targets.
Again, those are just two rumors.
But knowing Lindsey Graham and how he operates, I don't know that I would be surprised if he did something like this.
Yeah, he's definitely out of a loose cannon.
Yeah, a loose cannon.
And I don't know if you saw this, but Andrei Yermak, who's a top advisor to Zelensky, now he was in town, I think, a couple of days ago.
And I don't know if you saw the video, but Keith Kellogg, not the brightest knife in the drawer, let's just put it that way, but nevertheless, also with some ties to Ukraine.
But he is supposed to be Trump's special envoy for Ukraine-Russia.
One would presume a neutral party, a neutral negotiator looking at both sides trying to make peace.
I don't know if you saw this, Phil, but when Yermok came into the room, he's a big guy.
I mean, he is a monster.
I thought he was going to eat Kellogg.
He gave him a massive bear hug.
It's not like they had just met for the first time.
This didn't seem like a very good look if you want to portray Kellogg as a neutral party in this conflict.
Yeah, in fact, I did see that.
I had the same impression you had.
I was thinking, my God, this is diplomacy.
I mean, no, this is, I'm on your side, buddy, and don't you forget it.
Yeah, Andre, that's not lunch.
That's the negotiator.
Well, let's switch over quickly to the Middle East.
Unfortunately, we're getting lower on time, but I do want to talk about a couple of things.
And I was just over here reading an article that the American conservative put in on X called Trump's Baffling Two-Step on Iran.
And I did want to get your take because we both know, everyone knows, the flip-flops, the back and forths.
Trump saying that you cannot have any enrichment.
Witkov saying you cannot have any enrichment.
And then Trump saying some civilian enrichment.
And back and forth and back and forth.
And it seems to me that the Iranians are getting frustrated as well that these goalposts keep moving with regard to this deal.
What the heck do you think is happening?
Why are they doing this?
Well, the simple answer is that Trump is under intense pressure from the Israel lobby and from the people who are supporters of Netanyahu.
Netanyahu very much wants his war, and for his war to be successful, it requires participation in a direct way by the United States.
That's the simple answer.
But there's the simple premise here, which is that Iran will not enter into a deal unless they have limited ability to enrich uranium for medicinal purposes, for commercial purposes, for whatever.
That's up to their discretion.
And we're talking about 3.5%, something like that.
And the thing is that when the United States top officials are going back and forth saying, first of all, this is, oh, yeah, certainly this is a negotiable and possibly allowable issue.
And then the next day are saying the contrary, then if I were in Iranian, I'd be running away from this as fast as I can, because it just confirms the view that Donald Trump and the people he surrounds himself with are not reliable, do not have much of a grasp of the realities of what these countries are like and what the conditions are.
Israeli Clearance Controversy 00:08:28
And they constantly are blundering their way around the world.
And the last word is always a threat.
It's like, yeah, okay, China, I'm stopping to be a soft guy with you.
I'm going to be a tough guy from now.
And the one gesture that I think characterizes Trump the most, which I despise, is the constant waving of fists every time he's speaking or pointing at his target in a threatening way, waving his hand at their face and that kind of thing.
This stuff is awful.
This guy is president of the United States.
Yeah, I mean, unfortunately, I am getting older, Phil, but I just wonder when I look at particularly this administration, but it wasn't, I don't think, any better in the Biden administration.
What happened to serious people in these roles?
Maybe I was just young and naive, but I remember some of the serious diplomats, even some of the evil ones, were nevertheless serious, learned people.
They weren't out barking out orders and contradictory orders and not knowing what the other person had said.
It just seems like a circus there.
Yeah, and in fact, let's go back to the old signal phone call.
Yeah.
There's a lot of stuff going on behind the scenes that to me is very suspect as a former intelligence officer in particular, because these are the kind of networks you set up when you're basically, at least I hesitate to use the word, but you're trying to subvert what might be going on and move it in a different direction.
So this is maybe serious stuff.
And maybe some of these firings we've seen lately of some senior officials that have just been hired, mostly in the security area, national security area, diplomatic security, all that sort of thing.
That's where the firings are taking place and at the Pentagon too.
And I suspect back in the back of my head, this is something that might well be in the cards somewhere.
And therefore, when they discuss something, when they come up with something that looks a little suspicious, their first instinct is, let's fire them.
Interesting.
Yeah, that certainly would explain the Pentagon ones at least.
You alluded to the others, like the NSC staff.
We talked about it off camera before we started.
There's a piece out in the Middle East Eye today saying Trump fires slew of pro-Israel officials in America First Course Correction.
Now, that's a very loaded title.
The subtitle is Trump is looking for an Iran Dove to Take Over as Middle East Chief of National Security Council.
Now, the three people who were fired, I don't know if it makes a slew, but there are three people.
There's Eric Traeger.
I'm not familiar with him.
I saw his picture when Trump was in the Middle East.
He looked unusual, let's put it that way.
Said to be a serious Iran hawk.
Then we have Merov Seren, who I know that you are familiar with.
She was a former IDF officer, literally a dual national Israeli-American passport holder.
And she was over at the notoriously pro-Israel and Iran Hawk Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
And by the way, very ill-named organization.
She's the second one.
And then you have Morgan Ortegas, who is also extremely pro-Israel.
According to the Middle East Eye article, she annoyed Witkoff, which is not hard to understand that point.
But if these three are related in any way, as the article tries to make the case, does this signify something?
A, and B, are they reading too much into this, the Middle East Eye?
Well, I'd be careful to not read too much into it, but clearly there's something going on.
And I would not overemphasize, I see the article discussing this was in Middle Eastern Eye, which, of course, is a it's written from an Arabic viewpoint.
And essentially, it's going to tie Israel in and all this into it.
But it may not be that simple, or it may be indeed a lot more complex.
Since Trump's entire cabinet could be characterized as pro-Israel, it's just a question of degree.
And this guy, Traeger, is not a senior official.
He was the guy who carries the briefcase of whoever is doing the talking in the meeting.
And the Israeli woman, that was the most ridiculous appointment ever made.
Her husband still works at the Israeli embassy.
So what does she do?
She goes home at night.
She says, I can't talk to you about what happened today.
And she was given the job of dealing with Iran apart from anything else.
So how ridiculous is that?
And yet this is what they did.
And I found it hard to believe.
There's a lot of criticism when they made the appointment.
And I was just thinking right from the beginning, sooner or later, she's going to have to go.
Otherwise, they're going to lose their minds over what she's proposing.
She was a Waltz special, apparently.
But the thing that I can't get now, you spent your whole career with very high levels of clearance, security clearance.
I had a top security clearance myself.
I know what goes into getting one.
How the heck, unless it's been way too long since I've had mine, how the heck did she ever get SCI and above to be on the NSC staff?
They would give her a pass to not have to be able to go into some of the details.
For example, as far as I can tell from her bio, she has spent a good part of her life, if not the majority, in Israel and working for IDF and working for national security and that sort of thing.
So how is a U.S. FBI investigator going to get to the bottom of what she did and why she did it?
So they just kind of say, oh, well, we can't find that out.
And I would really, one of my real ambitions before I stop going crazy over what's going on in the world, is to get a list of all the Israelis that are working for the U.S. government or for Washington-based think tanks or all that sort of thing, or indeed for social media as fact checkers.
I'd like to have a list of how many former Israeli officials would be on that list.
I would bet it bet numbers in the thousands.
Yeah, and a high proportion as well.
We're going to have to take off.
I'm going to ask you to do one prediction.
And you may not want to do it, which is fine.
But I've been following the flotilla that's trying to break the Gaza siege.
What do you think is going to happen?
What do you think the Israelis are going to do?
Greta is on the boat as well.
She's actually turned out to be not as bad as I thought she was a few years ago.
Maybe she's grown up and gotten some sense.
Nevertheless, what do you think is going to happen here?
Well, there are two stories here.
The one story is: to what extent does Israel operate with any restraint?
And the answer to that is, of course, never.
And they have already killed people on flotillas or arrested them.
And I would have no doubt that they will either maybe sabotage the ship somehow, having one of their patrol boats, you know, shoot a hole in the hull, or they will kill somebody, arrest them, and the ones who don't kill.
I would like to think that the world will react with so much repulsion to the Israelis doing that, that they will actually begin to take some steps to punish the Israelis.
Check Out Phil 00:01:01
I'd love to see that.
And I would count as a very minor possibility that the ships will be allowed to go through to Gaza.
Very minor possibility.
The Israelis don't operate that way.
And the U.S. is the only one who could pressure them in another direction.
And Trump won't do it.
He's afraid.
Interesting.
Well, Phil, thanks so much for giving us your time and your expertise.
It's great talking to you again.
And I do want to, oh, and I will point out, by the way, that Phil does a regular call in the UNS Review.
So check that out.
Most often we were able to reprint them.
Some slip through my fading eyesight.
But check out Phil at the UNS Review.
Is there anything else you'd like people to look for you at Phil?
Well, Judge Napolitano, I have an interview with him usually every Wednesday afternoon.
That's right.
Yeah.
The judge and Phil together is absolutely great.
It's a must-watch.
So thanks again, Phil.
Thanks to all our viewers for tuning into the Liberty Report.
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