Judging Freedom - Aaron Matê : Bill Clinton and Palestine.

Episode Date: October 22, 2025

Aaron Matê : Bill Clinton and Palestine.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Text fees may apply. Hi. If we're judging freedom, today is Wednesday, October 22nd, 2025. Aaron Matae joins us now. What an intriguing topic, and I can't wait to ask you about it, Bill Clinton and Palestine, your understanding of history and how it affects where we are today. But before we get to the plight and the rights of the Palestinian people, do we know, as of this morning when you and I are recording this, if the Putin-Trump,

meaning in Bucharest was canceled by the United States or by Russia? That's a great question. Russia never was as enthusiastic about the prospect of this meeting in Budapest, between Putin and Trump as Trump was. Trump said it was happening. Russia issued a more tepid statement saying that there are in discussions about it. And I suspect that Russia, after speaking to its counterparts, especially the call between Marco Rubio and Sergei Lavrov,

realized that the U.S. is simply just not willing to discuss the issues that Russia wants to discuss. Russia has interests to go beyond Ukraine. Russia wants an end to the encroachment of NATO on its borders. It wants to address the threats created by Trump's decision in his first term to tear up the INF Treaty, which is a really important arms control pact. And it also wants to address other issues, including these so-called missile defense sites in Poland and Romania that could be repurposed for offensive purposes. And it doesn't seem as if Trump has any interest in that.

He just wants Putin to cut a deal when it comes to Ukraine, freeze the battle lines. But Putin went to war in Ukraine, in part because Ukraine was part of a broader effort by the U.S. to threaten Russia. And so Putin wants to see those address. And so long as Trump doesn't want to do that, then I don't think Russia is interested in sitting down. They'll just keep fighting on the battlefield. Here's Sergei Lavrov yesterday on his conversation with Putin.

This is not a happy quote, but here's what he said, Chris No. 13. Yesterday, I engaged in a comprehensive discussion with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, in line with the agreement reached by the presidents of Russia and the United States on October 16th during their telephone conversation. We reaffirmed our steadfast commitment to proceed in accordance with the understandings and agreements reached between Presidents Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump, primarily in Alaska, as well as during their subsequent telephone exchanges. With Secretary Rubio, we reviewed the current state of affairs and explored how to finalize

the broadly agreed-upon framework for another meeting, which the U.S. President proposed should be held in Budapest. Naturally, the focus is not on the location, though. the venue does matter in this context, given commotion stirred by those who oppose a European Union as an association of sovereign states and prefer all decisions to be made by its Brussels bureaucracy. The key issue, however, remains not the place or the timing, but how we advance on the substantive tasks agreed upon, those which garnered broad consensus in Anchorage. We agreed to continue these telephone consultations to better assess where we stand and determine the right

way forward that was obviously before one of the two sides canceled in another clip he said that he heard on cnn that it was canceled and he blames cnn for a variant of fake news but then we don't know who canceled it i think you're right i think uh rubio either wanted a ceasefire which before serious negotiations toward peace or trump is just interested interested at some sort of a performative international stunt like he pulled off in cairo uh two weeks ago look i want to be fair to trump at least he's talking to russia which agreed i'm 100% with you on that refuse to do right which is speak to just how derelict the bide administration was in it's in all of its um policies especially foreign policies uh similar uh in gaza where they blocked a ceasefire

whereas Trump at least made an effort to push something through, even though there's so many problems with that deal. But look, he also has Marco Rubio here. And who is Marco Rubio? He's a career war hawk who has always been hostile to diplomacy. When he wanted to get the job in Trump's administration, he started talking about how we have to end this proxy war. But that was just to match Trump's rhetoric.

Does Marco Rubio have any serious interest in diplomacy? There's no evidence of that so far. And look, Trump is surrounded by people, not even in his own administration, you know, people like Rubio and Keith Kellogg, but in Congress too. I mean, look, what of his top allies is Lindsey Graham.

Lindsay Graham has been a passionate supporter of the bipartisan proxy war project in Ukraine, which really escalated with the Maidan coup of 2014, which Lindsey Graham cheered on. So Trump doesn't have a real constituency at home to back him up, even if he wanted to make a serious peace deal with Russia. And Trump just doesn't seem to have the interest and hammering out the details

and deploying working groups to like, you know, prepare the groundwork for an actual summit meeting in which him and Putin can make progress. It does seem, you know, there have been mixed reports,

but I think it's credible to believe that Russia has offered to essentially freeze the battle lines in Zaporotea and Kurson if they could have all the Donbos, which again was the main reason for going to war because it was the people of the Donbos

who were being attacked by the U.S.-backed Ukrainian government. Right. And the years after the Mayden coup. But Zelensky is not going to agree to that in the absence of U.S. pressure. And so Trump seems content to just let things play out. Yes, he's not going to go back to Congress and ask for more money to fund the proxy war, which is another difference from Biden. But other than that, there are limitations on how far he's willing to go,

especially being surrounded by people who want to keep the war going. You know, in one of the other quotes, and I don't want to overwhelm you with these long diatribes from Lavrov, although they are instructive, he talks about addressing the root causes of the war. And that is, quote, ensuring Ukraine's non-aligned, neutral, and nuclear-free status, which entails abandoning any attempts to dread into NATO. I mean, that is 180 degrees from Marco Rubio. It's almost inconceivable to me that he would further do anything to further that goal. Yeah, listen, Trump has said that Ukraine's not joining NATO, but the problem there is they've given out mixed messages. So Trump has said publicly, Ukraine's not joining NATO, forget about it. Pete Hague said something similar, not long after Trump took office.

But you know what's been communicated privately to the Ukrainian and to the Europeans by the Trump administration? they said this is our stance so we're saying Ukraine cannot join NATO but a future administration could change its mind so that's how they're trying to bring Ukrainians and the Europeans on board is Russia going to accept that

is Russia going to make a deal if you're only saying if you're only going to get a commitment from Trump that Ukraine won't join NATO but you're not going to have that ruled out for a future administration I mean from Russia's perspective there's absolutely no point in doing that

and this comes down to Trump's just inability to really take on the domestic war lobby and despite occasionally having some warm words for Vladimir Putin. So Russian media is claiming, I didn't hear this when I was over there, I heard it here, but now Russian media is claiming that Putin told Trump, if Zelensky doesn't give up the ghost, Ukraine will quote, be destroyed, close quote. quote, do you think that's true that Putin said that to Trump during the conversation, the 90-minute phone call, and Trump repeated it in person to Zelensky the next day in the White House? Yeah, but I mean, that was also reported in the Washington Post in the Financial

Times. So Western sources have also communicated this that Trump said to Zelensky, if Putin wants to, he will destroy you and you should make peace. So I wouldn't be surprised if that was true. Look, Trump is not ideologically committed to this proxy war. He's just boxed in by a bipartisan consensus in Washington. You know, Lindsay Graham right now is pushing this African sanction Russia and its trading partners. They haven't let go of that. They still want to do that. And this is the same pressure that Trump has always faced.

I mean, now it's a bit easier for him to disclaim the, to walk away from the proxy war because it's gone on for so long, it's cost so much money, and Russia's winning. But still, he's ultimately, unless he ultimately is ultimately, is willing to order Marco Rubio to reach an agreement with Russia that addresses not only the territorial issues in Ukraine, but goes beyond that. And we're just going to see continued conflict. Segwing over to Gaza,

how close is the U.S., I'm going to use our wonderful friend, Max Blumenthal's phrase, to green lighting an Israeli attack on Iran? Well, that is a really important, important question to keep asking as this phase of the genocide is over, but Israel continues to violate the so-called ceasefire that Trump negotiated. They've killed dozens of Palestinians since the ceasefire went into effect. They've blocked aid. They're still controlling more than half of Gaza.

Israeli forces are still occupying more than half of Gaza. And yeah, Iran is still in their sights. Netanyahu, when he talks about accepting Trump's so-called ceasefire deal, he said, you know, we're not done protecting ourselves and there are still threats in our region that we have to address. That's an obvious reference to Iran. And what does he mean by threats? He means states that resist are regional domination. That's why he's been obsessed with destroying Iran. That's why the reason he attacked Iran is because, and this was reported in the Washington

Post and elsewhere, that Iran at that time was not building a nuclear weapons program, which he doesn't have, but it was rebuilding its air defenses. And so Netanyahu sees an opportunity to establish. attack Iran before those air defenses could be rebuilt. And now Iran's in a similar situation. So I have no doubt, I have no doubt that Netanyahu's clamoring to seize that opportunity. But again, because Iran can defend itself, as we saw with their response to Israeli attacks, he needs the Trump administration on board. And there's every reason to believe that Trump will give Israel the green light. But you never know, look, this Israeli attack on Qatar, clearly

onnerved Trump because Qatar is an ally of Trump's. The Gulf states have partnerships with Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law, Steve Whitkoff, his peace envoy. So perhaps, you know, Trump's desire to keep the deals going with his Gulf allies and his desire for a future Nobel Prize will be enough for him to restrain Israel. But certainly Israel would love the opportunity to keep attacking Iran and fulfill its longstanding goal of regime change. Chris, can you put up that full screen from the New York Times? nations hesitate to send troops to Gaza fearing clashes with Hamas. I'm quoting, representatives from several countries seen as likely participants have said privately they will not commit troops until there is more clarity about what the force will be expected to do

once it arrives in Gaza. Well, you can't blame them. I mean, what is Jordan going to do? Fight the IDF when they start killing Palestinians again? What are peace-keeping troops? troops going to do. Netanyahu's not going to allow them in there. Yeah, that's what Trump wants them to do. And he's threatened Hamas. He said, you know, don't worry. He just said the other day that the nations of the region would love to go when and have the opportunity to take out Hamas.

And here we have this report in the near time saying the opposite, which isn't surprising. What Israel and Trump want from the Gulf states is similar to what they got from the Palestinian authority in the years of the so-called peace process, you know, under the guise of making peace with Palestinians turning the Palestinian authority into a collaborator that could police Palestinians on Israel's behalf. And that's what Trump and Israel want the states of the region to do now. That's the so-called peace. And the problem with it is any peace that doesn't safeguard Palestinian rights and is just premised on policing them and keeping them caged in a concentration camp in Gaza and continued vulnerability to Israeli attacks and land theft in the West Bank, is it?

it's not going to work. That's why the peace process didn't work is because there was no basic recognition that Palestinians have the right to self-determination. So what Trump is hoping now is that other forces will be bribed to come in and police the natives on Israel's behalf. But you can see there that the countries of the region are nervous to do that because they understand that Palestinians are people that are resilient and are fighting for their rights. And we'll see any force that's brought in just to police them and keep them cage in a concentration camp. They're not going to be received warmly. Do you think that the entire Whitkoff, Kushner, Trump, Netanyahu, Gaza, peace deal was a stunt just to get the Israeli hostages back? I don't want to call it entirely a stunt

because, again, I don't want to dismiss the importance of a halt to the daily Israelis. bombings, or at least at that intensity that they were happening before. People in Gaza are getting somewhat of a respite, not a full one, obviously, but if they're not under bombardment, that's a qualitative difference in their daily lives. And there is a little bit more food coming in, a little bit more aid coming in, which, again, only happened because the Trump administration forced Netanyahu to back down because after the so-called two-fire went into effect, Netanyahu again, tried to block all aid. but that was stopped by the Trump administration.

So I don't want to dismiss it entirely as a stunt, but yes, fundamentally, it is a stunt because it continues the denial of Palestinian self-determination, which is the basic problem in all of this. And it's doing nothing to address that. And in fact, it's just an attempt by Israel and the U.S. to get Hamas and Palestinians to give up their fight. And then so in that respect, it is a stunt, but I don't want to dismiss the significance of at least a sharp reduction in Israeli bombings. You know what? You're so subtle and so intellectually honest.

I can't thank you enough for it. That's the way you are. God love you. Here's Trump two days ago. We have a little situation with Hamas. Chris, cut number eight. We have a little situation relatively with Hamas, and that will be taken care very quickly if they don't straighten it out themselves because they're in violation of their agreement.

You just alluded to the violence in the Middle East. What steps is the administration taking to maintain the ceasefire? Well, a lot of steps, and right now it's in the hands of others. You know, we have 59 countries that agree to the deal. We have a peace in the Middle East for the first time ever. We made a deal with Hamas that, you know, they're going to be very good, they're going to behave, they're going to be nice, and if they're not, we're going to go and we're going to eradicate them if we have to.

They'll be eradicated, and they know that. And so they went in, they went in, and I don't believe it was a leadership, but they had some rebellion in there among themselves, and they killed some people, you know, pretty a lot of people. But this is a violent group, you know, you probably noticed over the last hundred years. This is a very violent group of people, and they got very rambunctious, and they did things that they shouldn't be doing. And if they keep doing it, then we're going to go in and straighten it out, and it'll happen very quickly and pretty violently, unfortunately. That was what he means by we when they pressed him on we as to whether that included American troops on the ground.

He said, no, that's not necessary. Are there roving gangs of thugs in Gaza? Yeah, that's what he's referring to. I mean, Hamas has executed people who it alleges were collaborative with the Israeli military, including collaborating by stealing aid and selling it either at really huge prices or just not providing the aid at all. And so that's who Hamas says was targeted. Look, this is what happens when you have a genocide and you have chaos and you have infrastructure destroyed. You have unrest like this.

I'm not condoning any violence, but it's to be completely. expected that that this happened. And Trump is basically buying the Israeli line that because Hamas went after people, it alleges to be collaborators and stealers of aid, then that means Hamas is not respecting the ceasefire and therefore it's okay for Israel to continue blocking aid. He's buying the Israeli line there. But privately, the Trump administration did make efforts to get Israel to continue to allow the aid in. So so far at least, I don't think the Trump administration wants to help Netanyahu break the ceasefire. At least they're making some effort to prevent it from doing that.

But Trump's speaking publicly, yeah, that's just him parroting the Israeli line. Whether he will let that collapse his deal is another story. I personally don't think he will. What is the history here involving Yasser Arafata and Bill Clinton? Well, so this is a talking point that Bill Clinton has pushed for more than two decades that in 2000, Yasser Arafat turned down a really generous Israeli-U.S. offer of a Palestinian state and something like 97% of the West Bank. And if only Arafat had said yes to peace, then we wouldn't have been in this mess today. And this line gets repeated all the time. I mean, like whenever you're talking to an apologist for Israeli violence.

They'll always repeat Bill Clinton. They'll say, well, you know, he was there, you know, and and this is the pal, basically the, the, the intent of the argument is say that this is all Palestinians' fault, that they've turned down generous peace offers. And the fact is, it's just a complete lie. It's a myth. The offer that Clinton gave Palestinians on Israel's behalf would keep most of the major West Bank settlement blocks to make a Palestinian state absolutely impossible. according to Clinton's own memoir this is in his own memoir his proposal would leave 80% of the West Bank settlers intact so think about that for a second Palestinians have already lost their homeland to Israel which was stolen from them okay so in accepting a Palestinian state they'd be accepted in the West Bank Gaza East Jerusalem they would be accepting just 22% of their stolen homeland giving 78% to Israel now okay could argue, well, too bad Palestinians. You lost it. That's what happens in war. Okay. But you think

maybe Palestinians accepting, as Yastra-Arafat actually did repeatedly, 22% of their stolen homeland is a compromise. I think it is. I think it's a massive compromise. Arafat already accepted that. Clinton and Israel were saying, no, you don't even get 22%. You also have to let Israel keep 80% of the settlers that carve up the occupied West Bank. What's self-respecting Palestinian leader? would ever accept that. And that's why Arafat said no, to his credit. And because he said, no, he was blamed for the collapse of the so-called peace process, which was another betrayal by Clinton, because Clinton had promised Arafat as a condition of these peace talks happening at Camp David. Arafat had said, I know what's going to happen. We're not going to have a deal. And when it

collapses, everyone's going to blame me. So Bill, you have to promise me, you're not going to blame me. And Bill Clinton promised Arafat to get him to go to Camp David, he would not blame him. As soon as Camp David collapsed, that's exactly what Bill Clinton did. He blamed Arafat, and he's done that ever since. And Hillary Clinton and Bill are still out there with that false talking point. Are they still spewing this nonsense now in October 2025? They're still spewing the nonsense now. Hillary Clinton had a clip in the early stages of the genocide where she was lecturing

college students protesting with genocide saying they don't know their history and they don't know that my husband offered the Palestinians everything and they turned it because they're so greedy. So, yeah, she's still spreading it. You know, Bill Clinton once said that at a fundraiser, I believe it was a pro-Israel fundraiser, he said that he loves Israel so much. He would put on a military uniform

and die in a ditch for Israel. That's how much he loves Israel. Now, that's a striking statement for an American politician to make, especially one who was a draft dodger in his own country. But let's assume he's telling the truth here. If Bill Clinton's willing to die in a ditch for Israel, he's also willing to lie for Israel. And that's exactly what he's done for more than two decades

and claiming Palestinians rejected a generous peace off. Wow. Fascinating, fascinating conversation. I guess the lesson of it is some people will never change. That's right. And some talking points never change. And this is how propaganda works to justify something as unbelievably horrific as the genocide. You have to paint your adversaries as intractable.

You can't make peace with it. with them. We tried. We did everything we could. You see this kind of narrative repeated in every single conflict. Similar to Russia and Ukraine. Putin doesn't want to negotiate. You can't make a deal with him, forget it, ignoring the actual diplomatic record of the Minsk Accords, the Istanbul talks after Russia invaded. All these, all this important context just simply gets erased in the service of the pro-war lies. And Bill Clinton has told a very disastrous lie by falsely claiming that Palestine's rejected peace when, in fact, it was Israel and the U.S. that undermined peace all along because they insisted on stealing Palestinian land.

Aaron, thank you very much, my dear friend. A fascinating, fascinating conversation. I appreciate you letting me take you across the board from Ukraine to Gaza to back. I don't know. When the hell was Clinton president 30, 35 years ago? It's been a while. Yeah. Thank you, Aaron.

All the best to you, my friend. We'll see you next week. Sounds good, Judge. Thank you. Sure. coming up later today at three o'clock this afternoon phil geraldi whose hottest can be about the coming war in venezuela and at five of thirty this afternoon what are the israelis up to next you heard some of that from aaron this by professor geoffrey sacks judge napolitano for judging freedom

Thank you.