Judging Freedom - Aaron Maté: Putin’s Endgame in Ukraine: What No One is Telling You

Episode Date: March 12, 2025

Aaron Maté: Putin’s Endgame in Ukraine: What No One is Telling YouSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

you Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Wednesday, March 12th, 2025. Aaron Mate will be here with us in just a moment on his observations on Ukraine and his observations on the latest in Israel and Gaza. But first this. Markets are at an all time high. Euphoria has set in. The economy seems unstoppable.

But the last administration has buried us so deep in debt and deficits, it's going to take a lot of digging to get us out of this hole. Are you prepared? Lear Capital specializes in helping people like me and you grow and protect our wealth with gold. Did you know that during Trump's last presidency gold rose 54% to a record high. If that happens again, that puts gold at $4,200 to announce in his next term. Don't wait. Do what I did. Call Lear at 805-11-4620 or go to learjudgenap.com for your free gold ownership kit and special report $4,200 gold ahead. When you call, ask how you can also get up to $15,000 in bonus gold with a qualifying purchase. Call 800-511-4620, 800-511-4620, or go to learjudgenap.com and tell them the judge set you. Aaron Mate, my friend, welcome here. Thank you very much for accommodating my schedule.

Before we get to your observations on Marco Rubio and his claim for a ceasefire and President Putin's likely response to it, I want to ask you a question about the perceptions in the Middle East. What are, as you understand them, the perceptions in the Middle East. What are, as you understand them, the perceptions in the Middle East to the United States negotiating directly with Hamas? Well, Trump's policy is so incoherent that I think it's hard for anyone to know exactly

whether this has broader significance beyond simply an exchange that could get the American captives in Gaza released. Trump has talked about taking over Gaza, talked about having Palestinians leave Gaza, and I think the odds of him reaching some sort of sweeping accommodation with Hamas are pretty unlikely. There are Americans still being held in Gaza, and that's what Trump wants to take care of. He wants to get them returned. I don't see there being some sort of broader pact being made directly between the US and Hamas.

I read where the PLO in the West Bank was very unhappy with the Americans dealing directly with Hamas, feeling that there's no mandate amongst Palestinians for that. But do you think this is Donald slapping Bibi in the face by sending Witkoff to negotiate directly with Hamas? Well, Netanyahu is so entitled and so arrogant that anything that doesn't directly involve him, I think, will be seen by him as a slap in the face. But ultimately, is Trump walking away from his commitment to the Israeli project of colonizing Palestinians, denying them the right to self-determination? No.

So yes, Netanyahu has voiced concern about these talks. But ultimately, I don't think Trump will do anything serious to disrupt Israeli hegemony, Israel's daily terror against Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza and simply because he's not being included in these talks yeah he feels left out and he's been used to being spoiled by the US so his top officials are complaining but ultimately I don't think Trump will do anything serious to undermine Netanyahu I just don't think that that's in the cards for Trump, who's been taking a lot of money from people very close to Netanyahu, including Mary Maddelson. Is Trump doing Netanyahu's bidding when he dispatches federal agents to the Columbia

University campus to arrest a young Palestinian who's never been accused or convicted of a crime, a young man who's married to an American whose wife is in her eighth month of pregnancy who has received his degree from Columbia University, who engaged in very strong expression of opinions, if you will, but never was charged with a crime by the NYPD or any relevant authorities here, and whisk that guy away to a hellhole in Louisiana. Is Trump doing BBs bidding when he does that? And targeting Malcolm Khalil, this Columbia graduate,

who, as you said, was kidnapped from his home where he lives with his eight-month pregnant wife who's a U.S. citizen. Absolutely, Trump is doing Israel's bidding. He's also doing the bidding of his extremist Zionist donors. I have to wonder whose idea was this specifically to go after this young student or this young graduate. There's no way Marco Rubio or Donald Trump or anyone else in the White House knows who this young man is. This had to be given to him by someone and that likely is a Zionist group, a group like Baitar or one of these other extremist organizations that have

been agitating for the deportation of people like Mahmoud Khalil. It's such an affront on free speech. As you said, he's not been charged with the crime. Yet the Trump administration has felt content to smear him and falsely claim that he has committed a crime. They've basically accused him of supporting terrorism, of having ties to Hamas, when of course there's none of that, there's no evidence for that. It's a blatant assault on free speech

and to advance that, they're smearing him. I mean, if we had any justice, he'd be suing, Mahmoud Khalil would be suing the Trump administration for defamation, because if you watch what's being said about him on TV, it's just lie after lie about his nonexistent support for terrorism. One official from New York, a state official,

said that Mahmoud Khalil is paid, is a paid agent. And when asked by CNN, well, who's paying him? He wouldn't answer, because of course, it's all a lot. I Analyzed Professor Jeff Sachs and I were on the phone together when we both looked at The charging papers against him He's not accused of a crime There's no facts in the charging documents There's no facts in the charging documents. There's no evidence described in the charging documents.

The allegation against him is that his behavior is contrary to the foreign policy interests of the United States because Marco Rubio, who's the charging authority here, says that his behavior is contrary to the foreign policy interests of the United States. But that's not a specific allegation. It's not a specific alleged fact of anything that he did. As far as we know, all he did was exercise his right of free speech and free expression, which protects everyone, whether you're a natural born citizen or a holder of a permanent residency green card. Well, Judge, let me ask you. As a permanent resident, not a citizen, does that lessen his protection when

it comes to free speech rights? Because he's not a US citizen. No, it does not. It lessens his protection to stay here if he's convicted of a felony. But it doesn't lessen his right to say whatever he wants. He could stand on a street corner and say Hamas is great. Hamas should win. Just as you and I could say that if we believed it, it's absolutely protected free speech.

But a follow up question for you, I mean, this is an immigration law matter. Does one have less rights if this is under the auspices of immigration where this is not a normal, you know, criminal. I am sorry to say yes. None of the immigration law can trump the First Amendment because free speech, aside from it being a natural right, is expressly protected in the First Amendment. Every schoolchild knows that. But the immigration courts, for example, the prosecutor is Marco Rubio. The judge works for Marco Rubio. This is not the same as being charged in a state court or in an American federal court where the judges are truly independent and are a different branch of the government. But even in this rigged system, the rudimentary fundamentals of due process have to apply.

They have to allege something. They can't just allege a conclusory statement. I mean, that's totalitarian. Yank him out of his bedroom on the basis of a conclusory statement articulated by someone, in this case, Secretary Rubio, whom, as you pointed out, probably never even heard of this guy.

Exactly. And listen, if you're a Trump voter, an average Trump voter, you believe in America first, is this what you signed on to? Putting Israel first to the extent where we're gonna go snatch a guy off the street, take him away from his pregnant wife and deport him, because we don't like what he says about Israel?

I mean, in this country, you can criticize the US, you can criticize US politicians, but it seems you can't criticize Israel or else you're going to face deportation. And it's sad to me, just strictly for the point of view of this idea of America first that I know many people bought into because they were tired of the US fighting all these foreign wars. And here's Trump making such a big priority for his administration to defend Israel from its critics, the point where they're gonna deport a young Palestinian who's married to a US citizen.

I don't think this is what many Trump voters signed on to. And Trump himself, I've heard him in the past say some fair-minded things about Israel-Palestine. A few years ago, he pointed out that it was Netanyahu who was standing in the way of making a peace deal in the Middle East, not the Palestinian authority. So Trump is someone who sometimes, I think, has some sense, and he recognizes things for what they are. But now he's in power once again, and rather than following what he campaigned on, which is America first, he's doing the bidding of his donors and putting

Israel first. And I think that's on top of just being so egregiously immoral and unconstitutional. It's a betrayal of his own voters. Watch this, Aaron. Chris, cut number 14. And I have stopped all government censorship and brought back free speech in America. It's back. Hogwash. Hogwash if they can snatch some kid off the street or out of his dorm room because they don't like what he said or because their foreign collaborators

don't like what they think he said even though the charging papers don't even say what they say he said. Exactly. And listen, Trump and the Republicans had a lot of grounds to say that they support free speech because Democrats were attacking it by basically declaring anything that they don't like to be Russian disinformation and censoring it, as we saw with the case of the Hunter Biden laptop reporting, which was censored egregiously. And that was a factor, I think, in Trump losing in 2020. Certainly that played a role in basically the media covering up factual reporting on Hunter Biden's laptop.

So Trump accurately called it out for censorship. And what does he do upon taking office again? He actually goes even further with censorship to the point where he wants to deport someone over their free speech. And the sad thing here, the other irony here is that this playbook of accusing someone you don't like of being a foreign asset, of being in the pocket of some foreign entity, that's the Russiagate playbook as well. And Trump was a target of that. Trump and his supporters were called Russian assets, Russian dupes, spreading Russian disinformation. And now,

rather than recognize how unfortunate it is to weaponize the government against people whose views you don't like, as was the case with Democrats and Russiagate, Trump has fallen on the same playbook and saying that, hey, this young Palestinian, because he quit his house in Israel, he has ties to Hamas and therefore he can be deported.

It's sad that Trump hasn't learned from his own witch hunt case against him and now applying a similar playbook against supporters of Palestine. Very good point. I don't wanna ruin your afternoon or beat a dead horse, but here's Tom Homan, the president's, I don't know, he's like a musk.

He doesn't have a legitimate job appointed by the president, confirmed by the Senate, enacted by Congress, but he's the president, confirmed by the Senate, enacted by Congress, but he's the president's immigration czar. He speaks for the president on immigration matters. It's rather long-winded question, but the end of the question gets around to the Khalil Muhammad case. Chris.

Specifically, if Lakin's law doesn't pass, if this lawsuit against the Greenlight law goes nowhere, what are the different kinds of things you would consider doing? What are the other steps of courses of action you can do? And specifically with that Palestinian, pro-Palestinian student from Columbia, on his arrest papers, like what exactly does it say in terms of the charge? I'm not, I'm not, I'm not fair with with that charge I can just tell you what I my discussions have been with it is that it's a direct violation of our foreign policy objectives he is when you hand out leaflets and cite violence on the college campus that's illegal being in this country with a visa or a resident alien card is a

privilege and you got to follow certain rules. Resident aliens get removed all the time when they commit certain crimes so he's no different and you're not gonna be the only one. And your first question is like look Pam Bynes already filed a lawsuit if she has to keep filing lawsuits that's what we're going to do. I'm hoping the voters on New York's day see what we're doing. And I'm not asking them to vote either way. I can't do that. But I'm saying that I think the voters look at exactly what ICE is doing, who we're arresting. I think President Trump has a lot of support for what he's doing. The majority Americans believe in removing criminal threats and I hope I think New

York feels the same way I don't know if your your elected politicians do I know the ones behind me do but I'm hoping more and more we educate the American people exactly what we're doing exactly who are resting I think there's gonna be pressure put on New York to do their common-sense thing to protect the communities of the state York to do their common sense thing to protect the communities of the state. So I just want to make sure, just to keep you from, you're not familiar with what the arrest charges are. I have not read the arrest report.

I've been traveling, but I'm aware of the arrest. I've read why he was arrested, and it's justified what happened to him. He can't say why he was arrested. He hasn't been accused of any crime whatsoever. And even if he did pass out literature that said, support the Palestinians and commit crimes if you want to in order to support them, even that is protected speech. And again, he says there that we do this all the time, we deport people who've been convicted of crimes. This is no different. Well, this is different

in part because he hasn't been charged with a single crime let alone convicted of one So they're just if he's guilty of something or if you think he's guilty of something charge him with something But they haven't because they know he's not guilty of anything. This is just a brazen assault on free speech and If it's allowed to stand it sets a you know as as everyone can recognize it sets a very chilling precedent Yesterday Secretary of State Rubio and National Security Advisor Mike Walsh made the following announcement. Tell me if you think they understand what President Putin said to President Trump in the 90-minute conversation would be the only conditions under which the special military operation would come to a halt. And if these two gentlemen, Rubio and Walz,

know what they're talking about, cut number 13. Today, we made an offer that the Ukrainians have accepted, which is to enter into a ceasefire and into immediate negotiations to end this conflict in a way that's enduring and sustainable. We'll take this offer now to the Russians, and we hope that they'll say yes, that they'll say yes to peace. The ball is now in their court. We also got into substantive details on how this war is going to permanently end.

We have a named delegation in terms of next steps from the Russian side. We have a named delegation in terms of next steps from the Ukrainian side. I will talk to my Russian counterpart in the coming days. Secretary Rubio will be with G7 foreign ministers in the next couple of days. We have the NATO secretary general in the White House on Thursday, and we'll take the process forward from there. Is this some kind of a PR ploy or manipulation using the term ceasefire, or are they really and truly ignorant of President Putin's three

or four conditions for the ceasefire? True neutrality, elections, demilitarization, no NATO ever, ever, ever. Yeah, and recognition. Excuse me, and the territorial concessions as well. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Well, listen, they're hoping that Putin will walk that back. And we'll see what Russia's response is. As we're recording this, Russia

hasn't given their official response yet. I know that Putin and Trump are talking about speaking on the phone in the coming days. And we'll see. Look, it's possible that Russia will back down and give some ground here as an act of good faith, especially if they determined that the US really wants to end this war and they want to reciprocate. I'm skeptical though, because Putin, as you said, has laid out those conditions, and it would be hard, I think, for him politically to justify backing down on that, unless, of course, he really sees an opportunity here for a meaningful end to this war. What I do know is that Ukraine is not going to get what they keep demanding, which is security guarantees from the US.

That just seems, it's so obvious that that's off the table. Every time Zelensky brought it up, Trump shot it down at their White House meeting. And that's not gonna change. And that is gonna put Europe in a tough position because Europe needs those US security guarantees to send their own peacekeeping force to Ukraine because without US backup, they're sitting ducks and there's no way they'll do that without the

US backing them up. So I think a lot, I guess my overall point is, I guess my overall point here is that a lot depends on this phone call that we can expect from Trump and Putin in the coming days. Do you think the United States recognizes that it unleashed a monster who is now the head of the government in Syria, notwithstanding, and or recognizes it now because of the attacks on ethnic minorities in Syria? Well, why does the IDF just look the other way?

Why doesn't it help stop this slaughter? It depends who we're talking about in the US government. If we're talking about Marco Rubio, who was a supporter of the dirty war in Syria, which empowered the al Qaeda offshoot that now rules Syria and presided over this massacre of Aloe Heights and Christians and others over these last several days, then no Marco Rubio is not going to be honest about the US role. But Tulsi Gabbard, who is the director of national intelligence, she is honest about that.

In fact, she called it out at her confirmation hearing when she was challenged on this. She said, it's a scandal that we knowingly empowered al-Qaeda, and they are a threat now to their own country and to the region, and we're seeing that now in action with these massacres of Alawites and we don't even know the real toll but I've gotten just personal reports from people I know in Syria. Horrific videos, horrific photos, horrific stories, families being executed in their homes, people hiding in the hills and this is predictable. When you flood a country with tens of billions of dollars worth of weapons, when you fuel an uncertainty that is led by al-Qaeda, hence why Jake Sullivan said,

over a decade ago to Hillary Clinton privately, al-Qaeda is on our side in Syria. When you do all that, and when they take over, you're gonna have sectarian massacres like this. And so it's awful, and all this could have been avoided had the US not fueled this regime change war, as Tulsi Gabbard accurately called out. And we'll see where the policy goes

because you have people inside Trump's White House like Marco Rubio, who supported this policy, and people like Tulsi Gabbard who opposed it. Trump years ago called this out. He said that, there's an interview of him from 2015 or so where he said that, you know, look, I don't like Assad, but the alternative is far worse. And I think we're better off with Assad and power.

So certainly Trump knows what the reality is. But now the country, the damage has been done. The country is destroyed. It's still under crippling U.S. sanctions that make life even more difficult. And in terms of why Israel is standing by, well, Israel is only content with Balkanizing Syria. And Israel has long recognized that sectarian fighting in Syria is good for Israel. In fact, there's a WikiLeaks email to Hillary Clinton from back when she was Secretary of State from 2012, which I just wrote about in my last Substack article, which says that basically according to Israeli intelligence, there are positives for Israel to see sectarian conflict inside of Syria is because it could draw in Iran and that could ultimately to the toppling of Iran. So Israel's fine with this. That's been, they've been on board

with this all along. It's not as if they have any particular affinity for Al-Qaeda, obviously, but they don't, but certainly they're just happy to fuel sectarian conflict because it keeps everybody else fighting themselves rather than fighting Israel and this gives Israel free reign to go Into Syria and steal the land that it wants to which it continues to do in the aftermath of Assad's ouster Hi, I may have raised your blood pressure with all of this Aaron but thank you for your time and thank you for your analysis my dear friend I look forward to seeing you next week. Welcome back judge from Russia. I look forward to watching your discussion with Sergey Lavrov. I just saw

that that was published today so I'm very. Oh yeah we posted it and it's proven to be quite popular and stimulating. You say conversation. He does 95% of the talking He does 95% of the talking. And in fairness to him, his assistant warned us about that ahead of time. All the best, Aaron. Thank you. We'll see you next week. Coming up tomorrow at 8 o'clock, Professor Gilbert

Doctoros is 8 in the morning. At 11 in the morning, Colonel Douglas McGregor at three in the afternoon, Professor John Mearsheimer at four in the afternoon, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson. Let me invite you to a new offering that we have. If you go to JuddSnap.com, you'll see our merchandise collection. All right, it's got my face on it,

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