Transcript of 'Judging Freedom' edition of 23 January

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Napolitano: 0:34
Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Wednesday, January 23rd, 2025. Today is Thursday, sorry, January 23rd, 2025. Professor Gilbert Doctorow joins us now. Professor Doctorow, a pleasure, my dear friend, and thank you for taking the time to join us.

Before we get into the latest from the Trump administration vis-à-vis Russia and the Kremlin reaction to it, in their swan songs at the State Department, former Secretary of State Tony Blinken and in the comparable swan song, former National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, each made the same claim that Ukraine is strong, stable, and on a path to joining NATO. Is this even remotely accurate?

Gilbert Doctorow, PhD: 1:35
No, it has nothing to do with reality, with the reality that you and I, and most of the viewers of these programs, know. This is a bubble, a Washington bubble. It's what they say to their immediate subordinates and to congressmen. And it is based on a view of Russia that dates back to the mid-1990s when the country was flat on its back thanks to the brutal transition from a planned economy to a market economy that the US inflicted on them. This view of Russia as being a basket case, that underlies almost everything that Blinken and Sullivan have done during their time in office. They would be necessarily beholden to the propagandists in Kiev for support and for material that they could then pass along to journalists, who pass it along to the public at large. And that is precisely propaganda from Kiev. It is not news, it is not fake news, it is pure propaganda written by a state.

Napolitano: 2:55
I realize that we're only three and a half days into the Trump administration, and he's done a lot since noon on Monday, but do we know, Professor Doctorow, if the United States supply spigot to Kiev of cash and armaments has been turned off or if it's still on?

Doctorow:
Well, this has been a rather interesting question the last couple of days. Larry Johnson cited information, not quite clear what the source was, but the essence of it was that the United States, the government has fired 50 or more Pentagon officials who were involved in the supply of military assistance to Ukraine during these past three years, and that the deputy secretary of defense has resigned.

3:53
The logic of this was that this is a pivot point, as Larry called it, and that possibly the Trump administration is going to stop deliveries. A well-known blogger called Simplicius has said that and added to it the idea that the United States government, Pentagon, have stopped opening bids or stopped requesting offers for logistical assistance for companies that have been doing logistics, arranging onward deliveries of American war materiel to Kiev, in Poland, in Zhechow, in Varna, in Bulgaria, and a couple of other places. Again, the implication is that the game is over, the United States is quietly stopping supplies. I can't agree with that, and I agree rather with statements that were made on your show yesterday by Scott Ritter. Nothing of the sort is clear.

4:46
If indeed there were such goings on, and if they indeed, they meant the United States has already taken a decision to cut military supplies to Ukraine, then Mr. Zelensky would have been screaming at the top of his voice yesterday in Davos. The man is extremely sensitive to such questions, and he wouldn't have been talking about the need for 200,000 Europeans to put boots on the ground in his country. He would have been talking about the American stab in the back. He wasn't, So I don't quite believe this.

Napolitano: 5:19
It sounds as though, inform me or correct me if I'm wrong. Pardon me. Even if Trump wanted to stop this, It's not like throwing off a light switch. There are so many different levels of suppliers involved from so many different parts of the world that it would take a while to shut it down completely.

But your observation about President Zelensky at Davos is quite correct. He made a speech; some of it was absurd, saying Ukraine is [garbled] up in Syria, obviously if that's true using American money, but there wasn't the slightest complaint about the spigot being turned off.

Doctorow: 6:08
That's the best case I can make. Of course, I don't claim that I'm right and others are wrong. No one knows for sure what the Trump administration is doing. I'm not sure the president knows what he's doing, because the words he had on his Truth Social platform about his ultimatum to Vladimir Putin to enter into negotiations right now with Zelensky, with Kiev, or face these very sharp increase in American sanctions -- this was completely outpaced. It was completely inconsistent with his role, prospective role as a peacemaker, because he knows or should know that these proposals are non-starter with the Russians. Mr--

Napolitano: 6:54
Did he even know what he was talking about? Well, we don't know what he knew. Did he sound as though he knew what he was talking about when he threatened President Putin? I mean, what sanctions remain? He's going to put an embargo on uranium that American utilities need to operate power plants?

Doctorow:
Well, the notion of sanctions was ridiculed on Russian television, with good reason. They had a good laugh at his expense. He made a number of absurd statements yesterday, ignorant statements yesterday, which were almost on the level of Madame or Frau Baerbock, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Germany, who has been notorious during her time in his office for making--

Napolitano: 07:54
What did he say that was so absurd and laughable?

Doctorow:
One thing that he mentioned in passing, that Spain is a member of BRICS, He mentioned that Russia had helped the infamous ... from the perspective of Russians, this was laughable: that Russia had assisted the United States to win the war. From the Russian perspective, three quarters, not just the Russian perspective, all experts know that three quarters of the Wehrmacht was engaged on the Eastern Front. So to speak about one helping the other, he's got it backwards.

Then he spoke about 60 million lives lost in Russia; it was bad enough, 26 million was bad enough, but he pulled this number out of the sky. He should just be quiet because he doesn't know what he's talking about, and he makes a fool of himself. Now, I don't want to leave the impression that Russians, Russian elites, because this is what we usually talk about, that they have, see no merit in Mr. Trump or entering his negotiations with him. They do. But they are fully aware of his weaknesses, of his vanity, and disregard for facts, and they show that up.

9:10
I'd just like to use this moment for a little side remark, because you know that I make heavy use of several key talk shows and analysis shows that are on Russian state television. People write to me, well, where did you get this from? They asked me for a link and I sent them the link. Then they complained, it's just in Russian.

Well, I can tell you with great pleasure that today-- this is the second time I see it, and I posted the link up on my Substack platform-- one of the premier Russian programs, "60 Minutes", which is hosted by a Russian Duma member, Evgeny Popov and his wife, that is now available in a voiceover. A voiceover that's put up on YouTube maybe an hour or two after the Russian original goes on Russian state television. So I would urge people to look at that so they don't just have to listen to Gil Doctorow's rendition of what Russian news is saying.

10:09
Coming back to what they're saying, they're saying that Mr. Trump is doing them a great service by using a sledgehammer on the EU, because they know that he dislikes intensely super-national organizations, and he wants to deal with sovereign states, primarily with Germany in Europe.

And for the Russians, that's a great service to them, because they also would like this solid block of 25 of the 27 EU member states that is anti-Russian, they'd like that broken up. They also see in Mr. Trump something else, a very big perspective for negotiations, not Ukraine. Ukraine, they'll solve on their own, thank you very much. Probably in the next few weeks, frankly.

10:53
But they want to speak to Mr. Trump about Yalta 2. They would like to divide the world with the United States or let the United States offload those parts of the world which it can't maintain because it doesn't have the wherewithal.

Napolitano:
Very interesting, even fascinating that you would call this Yalta 2, or is that a Vladimir Putin phrase?

Doctorow:
No, no, it's not his phrase. It's what some commentators get on Russian television, experts are saying. And what they have in mind is that he cannot keep America's arms around the whole world. America's global hegemony is no longer feasible. And the people around Trump have persuaded him of that.

And that is what the whole logic is of his going, looking to take greater control of the Western Hemisphere in the tradition of the Monroe Doctrine. That's what the Greenland escapade is all about. That is what his bid to take over Canada and his pressure on Mexico and his seizing or intended seizure of the Panama Canal. It's to ensure that America has tight control over its hemisphere. And then it would negotiate with the other global powers of which there are two plus or minus India, the other two powers being Russia and China. So that a global settlement will be sought by Trump over the coming months with these two countries, recognizing their spheres of influence.

Napolitano: 12:33
Of course, he does have that hotspot headache slaughter going on in Gaza. The Iranians have entered into, maybe you can enlighten us on this, some sort of a defense agreement with the Russians.

Doctorow:
Well, I'd like to answer to that, because it bears again on the comments on discussion you had on your show yesterday, a very important discussion. Is Trump and his administration keen on a peace settlement with Iran?

Some people, Scott Ritter believes, I believe. Or is it what Lindsey Graham would like, an all-out war, and let's finish it up using Israel as our assistant in this venture. The peace agreement, not peace agreement, the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership agreement that was signed last Friday in Moscow by the two presidents of Iran and Russia, that was a very peculiar document, and it strikes me as very odd that no commentators have detected that or brought it to attention. The Russians wouldn't do it, I understand.

13:52
They spoke about it. There was one hint, something odd about it, that was covered on Sunday night by the head of Russian news, Mr. Kisilyov. Dmitry Kisilyov said in the very opening of his program, he put up on the screen Article 3 of this cooperation agreement, which is unlike any other I've seen. It says that the two contracting parties will not join any aggressor attacking the other country.

If that's friendship, what do enemies do? The second point is that neither of these contracted parties will give assistance to destabilizing forces, to subversive forces active in the other country. Again, that is not what we usually think of.

Napolitano: 14:46
What happens if Israel and the United States attack Iran? What does Russia do under this agreement?

Doctorow:
Nothing. It doesn't join them. That's literally what you draw from this. The whole document was delayed, supposed to be signed, but all commentators were saying it would be signed when the Iranian president made his first trip to Russia, he came to the BRICS meeting in Kazan in October. And it was expected that they would sign it then. It wasn't.

15:23
And they said there were technical things that had to be ironed out. Indeed, there were and still are technical glitches in this document, which will be ironed out over time now that it's been signed. The main reason was, Russian uncertainty over Iran's loyalty long term, loyalty in its ongoing confrontation with the United States and the US-led west. The new president of Iran in his opening statements made it clear that he was looking for an outreach to Washington to resolve their differences.

16:01
That was destroyed in a matter of a week or two when Israel murdered the head of Hamas who was attending the inauguration of the Iranian president. After that, Tehran pulled back, no longer interested in talking to the States, and was, would seem to be they were running after the Russians to conclude that agreement. But I believe there's been some back channel from the Trump group after his election, to Tehran, an outreach saying, "Let's talk." Because the terms in this agreement are not only bizarre in Article 3, but they contain in them several articles further down, which look like they were written by Freedom House. It says that these contracting parties will do what they can to resist, to oppose international terrorism, extremism, international criminality, people trafficking or human trafficking, narcotics trafficking, valuables trafficking, all kinds of-- that's a whole shopping list of all what the baddies will do.

17:25
Oh yes, they will oppose taking hostages, they will oppose spread of nuclear arms. Well, there you have it. The Russians and the Iranians are on the same page as Washington, saying no expansion of a list of nuclear countries, including Europe, of course. So this is a bid to Washington.

Napolitano: 17:47
Tell me if you think that this Russia, the risk of raising your blood pressure, because this is a real harangue, tell me if you think that this advice from Senator Lindsey Graham will resonate with President Trump and what the Kremlin thinks when they hear a harangue like this. Cut number four.

Graham:
This war will never end with Hamas in charge of Gaza, politically or militarily. Their days are numbered. And the next question for the world is, what do we do about the Iran nuclear program? That's where we're going to move to next. There's diplomacy, there's a on- in-three chance you'll degrade the Iranian nuclear program through diplomacy. There's a 90 percent chance you'll degrade it through military action by Israel, supported by the United States. So the next topic I will be engaging in with President Trump is to take this moment in time to decimate the Iran nuclear program because they're--

Interviewer
What does that mean?

Graham:
so exposed. Help Israel--

Interviewer:
What does that mean?

Graham;
--deliver a knockout blow.

Interviewer:
What does that mean? You're going to urge him to have Israel bomb Iran's facilities that are underground and would require US military support to actually be effective?

Graham:
I'm going to urge the decimation of the Iranian nuclear program. I don't think diplomacy works. This is a religious Nazi regime. They want to destroy the Jewish state. They want to purify Islam and drive us out of the Mid East, it would be like negotiating with Hitler. I am hoping there will be an effort by Israel to decimate the Iran nuclear program supported by the United States, and if we don't do that, it will be a historical mistake.

Napolitano: 19:32
Hoo! What are your thoughts after listening to that?

Doctorow:
Well, as I mentioned before, viewers can now tune into "60 minutes" and hear a voiceover. They will find when they go to that program that Russian television spends a lot of airtime with rather lengthy video clips like the one you just put on screen, from Western media. And in that context, Lindsey Graham is well known to Russian audiences. Just read Satan over his name.

Napolitano: 20:15
Hopefully, he doesn't have open access to President Trump's ear, or World War III will be around the corner. Was there any reaction from the Kremlin-- as opposed to Russian elites on "The Great Game" and "60 Minutes", etc.-- from the Kremlin to Trump's threat to President Putin?

Doctorow:
No, none whatsoever. I don't think they want to get into a war of words with Trump. I think they want to go easy on him and wait until the opportune moment to schedule the summit. I think the opportune moment will be after they crushingly defeat the Ukrainian forces when its front line crumbles. That can happen in the next few weeks. You don't have to wait so long. After that, they could arrange a meeting with Trump, because the problem with Ukraine will be behind them.

Napolitano: 21:15
Professor Doctorow, thank you, my dear friend. Always a pleasure. You are our eyes and ears on the Kremlin and it's so deeply appreciated. We'll see you again next week.

Doctorow:
Right. Goodbye.

Napolitano:
Bye bye. Coming up, remaining today, at 12 noon, Senator Rand Paul. At one o'clock, Kivork Almasian. At two o'clock, Colonel Larry Wilkerson. At three o'clock, Professor John Mearsheimer. At four o'clock, Professor Jeffrey Sachs. And the worth-waiting-for at 4:30, Colonel Douglas Macgregor.

21:50
Judge Napolitano for "Judging Freedom".