Judging Freedom - Aaron Maté : The US Has Sabotaged Ukraine.

Episode Date: November 25, 2025

Aaron Maté : The US Has Sabotaged Ukraine.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Your first great love story is free when you sign up for a free 30-day trial at audible.ca slash Wondery. That's audible.ca slash wondering. Hi, everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Tuesday, November 25, 2025. Aaron Mante joins us now. Aaron, always a pleasure. My dear friend, thank you for joining us. before we get to the U.S. starting this war with the coup in 2014 and maybe even before that, I do want to ask you about the other hotspot, which seems to be off the front pages at least this week because of this 28 page written on a cocktail napkin plan, and that, of course, is Gaza. Are the Israelis still killing people in Gaza and in Lebanon?

Yes, they are. Thank you for bringing it up because it's been totally forgotten. The purpose, one of the main aims of this so-called ceasefire, was essentially to displace Gaza from the front pages and let Israel continue killing Palestinians with even a freer hand. And that's what's happening. Israel continues to kill Palestinians every single day in Gaza. And also in Lebanon, as you mentioned, there was a strike recently that killed a number of civilians, followed by another strike that killed a senior Hezbollah military commander.

Israel is sending the message that as far as it's concerned, you know, the military conflict is not over because it wants to impose its hegemony at all costs. It advanced very far in that goal in Syria with now the ouster Bashar al-Assad almost a year ago. And now you have a new government that is not standing up to Israel at all and is willing to basically be part of the coalition that lets Israel do whatever it wants across the region. Before Assad was overthrown, Syria was a land bridge through which Hezbollah could receive weapons from Iran. Now that's over. And Israel has been empowered by that. And they're taking advantage of their victory there. They're taking advantage of the UN Security Council resolution last week that essentially legitimized Trump's vision for Gaza being ruled by friendly oligarchs and having no role at all for any Palestinian leadership that actually wanted.

wants to stand up for Palestinian self-determination. They're taking advantage of that by continuing the killings. Our friends at anti-war.com are reporting this morning that an American surgeon who specializes in a badly needed procedure involving the reconstruction of the intestines and who had been permitted to perform hundreds of these surgeries in the past was barred from entering gaza by the israeli forces he can't get an answer from them he's had to hire uh israeli lawyers to file a lawsuit he's been sitting outside the courthouse for 10 days but why do they do things like this what possible conceivable justification is there for this

his patients were were to have been children it's just pure sadism for the same reason why they israel wouldn't let cancer patients leave gaza uh for treatment going back many many many of years. It's just complete sadism. It's to show that we control every aspect of Gaza. We're the real masters here. And this one doctor's experience that's just a microcosm of all the cruelty that Israel inflicts on people, both inside Gaza and those trying to come in to help them. All the diplomatic hurdles that aid groups have faced trying to bring their aid into Gaza that's sitting on the border, all the different logistical hurdles they have to overcome, which end up leading nowhere because Israel can do whatever it wants

and there's no one holding Israel to account and that's what's so shameful about this recent UN Security Council vote traditionally it's been the U.S. giving full impunity to Israel but by also not vetoing this measure I think Russia and China helped give impunity to Israel and that's just shameful

Before we jump to Ukraine our friend and colleague Phil Giraldi who was in the CIA at the time of Jonathan Pollard's spying has referred to Pollard as the most dangerous spy in American history, who did the most dangerous damage to American security.

Last week, well, actually last week it was revealed that apparently happened in the summer. He was welcomed and embraced at the U.S. Embassy by United States Ambassador Israel Firster Mike Huckabee. Why would something like that happen? Because the policy is Israel first, and it's unbelievable that this is not a scandal, that the U.S. ambassador to Israel had a secret meeting, which he didn't even report up the chain, with a traitor, someone who stole some of the most sensitive secrets in U.S. history, giving nuclear secrets to Israel.

By the way, it said that some of those secrets made their way to the Soviet Union, which made it even more dangerous. And yet he's celebrated in some circles, in Zionist circles, as a hero. And Mike Huckabee was basically treating him as a hero and having a friendly chat with him. It's extraordinary. There are some people inside the CIA that have been very upset by this, and that's why this story got leaked. But it's not a political scandal at all at home.

And imagine if the U.S. ambassador to Russia had met with, say, Edward Snowden had a friendly chat. Now, it's not a fair comparison because Edward Snowden, he didn't give his state secrets to a foreign power. He released them to the American public for those people about warrantless surveillance. So it's not a fair analogy. But the point is, had someone done this with Edward Snowden, this would be a major controversy and there'd be forced resignations. Mike Huckabee meets with a literal traitor and it's fine, no scandal. Dual American and U.S. citizenship was a civilian employee of the Navy at the time. Here's from today's Washington Post.

This is back to when we're talking about the American surgeon. Lack of tents, food, and warm clothes leave Gazans exposed ahead of winter. As winter approaches in Gaza, more than a million residents are vulnerable to extreme weather and disease. as Israeli restrictions hobble the humanitarian response. I thought part of the Whitkoff, Kushner, Trump, Tony Blair, Gaza, ceasefire peace agreement, removed the Israeli restrictions on humanitarian aid. And I thought the Americans were going to assure that the Israelis permitted the humanitarian aid. Apparently not.

There's a quote from Ehud Barak, the former Israeli Prime Minister and Defense Minister, from more than a decade ago when he's talking about what happens after a ceasefire is achieved in a previous round of Israeli attacks on Gaza

and he says the day after a ceasefire goes into effect nobody remembers what it says and that's what's happening here sure there's supposed to be some increased provision of humanitarian aid

but who's going to make Israel do it it's the U.S. that matters and the U.S. has given Israel full impunity and unfortunately other countries around the world all the influential Gulf states Russia, China, no one is using their leverage to help the people of Gaza because, frankly, the people of Gaza just have no power.

You know, Noam Chomsky observed this a long time ago. The Palestinians offer nothing to people in power, especially in the U.S., but elsewhere too. So therefore, they're just treated as a nuisance and their rights are expendable. But they tug at our heartstrings because of the brutalization, I don't even know if that's a word, but you know what I mean, that Israel has visited. upon them and gotten away with and continues continues to do so of course they they tug at the heartstrings of anyone with a heart but unfortunately our rulers don't i mean look at the the clips i mean you've played them on the show of sarah hurwitz the former speechwriter for michelle obama she wrote the you know michel obama's famous line when they go low we go high well yeah what's sarah

what's been saying she's been saying what a problem it is that there's a wall of carnage every day and so media that prevents young people from being able to support Israel because they see, you know, thousands of dead Palestinian children. And to her, the problem is not that Israel's killing Palestinian children. It's that young people here can see it. So those who our leaders are, whether it's liberal Democrats like her or the Republicans. And so our policy is just completely devoid of humanity because when it comes to Israel, we've put Israel first. And putting Israel first means internalizing Jewish supremacy. Here's another one that'll drive you. up the wall. I don't know if you know this lady. She's a Jewish, British journalist named Melanie

Phillips. Listen to this. Chris number 13. The world has been made to believe that peace and justice in the Middle East hinge on the Palestinians getting a state of their own. Justice for the Palestinians has been deemed to be the issue that drives all before it by apparently denying that happy outcome the state of Israel has come to be perceived as the enemy of humanity itself. This is the big lie that we are all up against. But the Jewish world has never identified this big lie as such and has never fought it. It has never told the world the truth.

There is no such thing as Palestine. There is no such thing as the Palestinian people. The Jewish world has never. told the rest of the world that the indigenous people of the land of so-called Palestine are the Jews, that the Jews are the only people who have any entitlement to any of this land, an entitlement based in law, in history and morality, and they are the only people who have an entitlement to all of it. The Jewish world has never said that. I mean, this is just off-the-charts fanaticism, but yet it's totally mainstream.

and it's treated to be, you know, respectable to think this way. Just on the factual assertion, like she makes there, that the Jewish world has never stood up for the belief that there's no Palestinians. Entire, like North American Jewish life is organized around denying Palestinian identity. Just to take one example, 40 years ago, there was a very famous bestselling book in the U.S. called From Time and Memorial by a woman named Joan Peters. if that's who actually wrote it. She probably didn't.

Someone else probably wrote it for her. But anyway, and the whole book was based on this claim that she had discovered through her own original research that basically all the Arabs who were in Palestine, you know, at the time of Zionist colonization, that basically all of them had come over from Egypt and other Arab countries to take advantage of the wonderful labor opportunities that the Zionists offered them.

So basically her point was there wasn't a, there was, there was no such thing as Palestinians who have been living there for centuries. It was all just Arabs, Arab nomads, migrants from other countries like Egypt, who would come because of the wonderful labor opportunities that the Zionists offered them. It was a complete fraud, obviously. But this book was celebrated. It was a bestseller, nice reviews in the major journals, all the major Jewish intellectuals.

You know, people like Saul Bello, Barbara Tuckman, all praised this book. It was a great thing. And then a grad student named Norman Finkelstein came along and read, the book exhaustively and showed that it was a complete fraud, that literally the author or whoever wrote it, you know, Joan Peters, whoever had just falsified all this key data to push this lie that the Palestinians were just an invented people. Anyway, did that matter? Did it make a dent? Finkelstein's work was totally ignored. And yes, now no one takes that book seriously anymore. But just the point is, to her point that, you know, the Jewish world has never tried to deny

Palestinian identity, it's just been organized around doing exactly that. for decades upon decades, and still is, as you can see, by the warm reception that her words get. Switching over to Ukraine, Aaron, why did the U.S. and the U.K. stage that coup in 2014, which precipitated what's happening there now? Well, they backed the coup because the government of Yanukovych was perceived as being friendly with Russia. And, you know, his cardinal sin in U.S. eyes was to push through a measure in Ukraine's constitution that ruled out membership in NATO and said that Ukraine will be permanently neutral. Now, Yanukovych happened to have the support of the majority of Ukrainians, if you look at the polls. And he also happened to be in line with Ukraine's founding declaration of state sovereignty, which said that Ukraine will be a permanently neutral state.

But that contradicted the U.S. plan, which back in 1994, was authorized formally by Clinton's National Security Council as the, quote, neocontainment of Russia. So bringing Ukraine into NATO would seem to be a key plank in the goal of the neocontainment of Russia. And that's why in 2008, the Bush administration pushed through this promise to Ukraine and Georgia that both these countries will one day join NATO. And once that was formalized with his NATO invitation, that set the path for conflict. And so when you have a president Yanukovych trying to enshrine permanent neutrality, he had to go. And there also was the belief that if you take Yanukovych out that that regime change might redound to Moscow as well. And maybe regime change in Ukraine will be so destabilizing for Russia that Vladimir Putin will be overthrown to. So that's basically been the goal.

And that's been the policy that has been pursued ever since to the point now where Trump, you know, this week unveils this new idea for a peace plan. And you can see in Washington the absolute freak out from both parties. You know, Mitch McConnell saying this is a huge betrayal because this is a betrayal to the project of trying to use Ukraine to bleed Russia because it would finally bring this horrible war to an end. how do you think the 28 point plan came about i mean was it literally uh drafted if two days of meetings in miami between uh carol dmitriev and steve whitkoff neither of whom is an official of either government well that is my understanding uh that um demetri f and wickoff and unfortunately jared kushner because speaking of someone like without a title jared kushner really has no title at all. I mean, Witkoff is an envoy, and so is Demetriov. He's an advisor in some

capacity to Putin, especially on the issue of foreign investment. So I do think that he has an actual mandate along with Whitkoff. Why Kushner is there is... Well, is he now an international diplomat, or is he trying to buy Ukraine land cheap so he can develop it? That's a great question. I mean, he was, I mean, you've talked about this, how J.D. Vance just referred to Kushner as the investor in Gaza. Right. Right. In public, in public, the vice president said that. Yeah. But I do think that Dimitriov was acting on the understanding that Putin at least was listening. And I think Putin was initially receptive to the plan, like when it was released. He said, you know,

this is a basis for discussion. He didn't accept it wholeheartedly, but he said, this is a basis for discussion. But what's happened ever since then, just in the last few days. The European Union freaked out. Neocons and Washington from both parties freaked out. They put pressure on Marco Rubio. Marco Rubio immediately caved to them. And, you know, the story came out that Rubio had told a group of senators that, oh, this wasn't our plan. This was a Russian plan, which means either one of two things. That means Rubio actually said that, or it means that the senators misheard Rubio. And Rubio had to backtrack and say, no, this was our plan too. But the point is somebody, whether it's Rubio, the Republican senators, or both, didn't like the idea of making peace with Russia.

And so since then, you've had now new talks between the U.S. and Ukraine. And the reports coming out are that Trump's peace plan, which already was not going to be accepted by Russia, because I don't think Russia saw it as going far enough to meet their demands, that even that's been watered down even more in favor of Ukraine's demands. So making it even more of a non-starter. So apparently what was before, clear language about Ukraine not joining NATO. Apparently that's been taken out for now. And also the language about Ukraine withdrawing from all the Donbos, because parts of it it still controls, that that's also been watered down, which basically guarantees that Russia is not going to accept this. So you have basically, this comes down to which faction does Trump want to listen to? Which identity does he want for Maga?

Is it the sort of faction of his administration with people like J.D. Vance who don't want to keep fueling this proxy war in Ukraine, who recognized that no matter how you feel about who started it, what was the U.S. role, the Maidan coup, the Minsk Accords, the sabotage Istanbul talks, NATO expansion. I mean, we have our clear perspective on that. But even if you don't agree with our perspective about, you know, how just horrible this whole thing has been and just how immoral it's been, just practically how the strategy of, fueling this war with weapons and trying to collapse Russia's economy by sanctions hasn't worked. So it's time to throw in the towel. So is Trump going to listen to that faction or the permanent foreign policy establishment in Washington represented by people like Marco Rubio and his former Senate colleagues who just don't want to have any kind of peace deal with Russia because they see that as a sign of weakness and they don't want to at all give Putin a win. So it comes down to who Trump is going to listen to. And it keeps going back and forth. That's in the pattern since he took office

is he keeps changing his mind. Last week it seemed like this was it. This was his peace plan for Ukraine. They have to accept it and it's where else. But now it's amazing which a little bit of outrage from neocons in Washington can do. Now it looks like it's Russia that's going to have to be saying no

we can't accept this and therefore the war continues. Here's a clip from our archives going back to 2013. People of your This is your moment. This is your moment.

This is about you, no one else. This is about the future you want for your country. This is about the future you deserve. It's about your my future your country. It's about your future in Europe. Europe, a future of peace with relations with all of your neighbors. The free world is with you, America is with you, I am with you. And the destiny you seek lies in Europe.

And your own, as we are, is in Europe. Ukraine will make Europe better and Europe will make Ukraine better. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, one of the great warmongers of the modern era. Yeah, and so, you know, John McCain's Senate colleagues are continuing his legacy by freaking out about this prospect of peace. And listen, who is John McCain to tell the people of Ukraine what their destiny is? He says, your destiny is in Europe. Okay, sure, there are many Ukrainians who agree with that, but there are also many Ukrainians who don't.

And the problem with U.S. policy is it only listens to those Ukrainians who agree with John McCain. And you can wish as much as you want that every Ukrainian agrees with John McCain, but the fact is they don't. It's a very divided country. And that's why it was so crazy to try to impose our conditions on Ukraine, which is a very divided country. And that's why neutrality always made sense. And that's why most Ukrainians actually supported neutrality. And even at that time, if you look at polls from that period,

Ukrainians were basically equally divided on the Maidan movement that John McCain was there, acting as a sort of de facto leader of. And, you know, on that stage, we should mention were people like Olay Tanibuk, who was the co-founder of the Svoboda Party a year prior, so December 2012. Isn't that the neo-Nazi party? They were founded, inspired by, by German Nazis. That's why their symbol,

their iconography reflected Nazi emblems. And a year before that, so that became clips from December 2013. A year before that, December 2012, the European Parliament put out a statement saying nobody should associate with Favoda because of their racist, xenophobic, anti-Semitic views.

And that message was directed at parties in Ukraine because the European Parliament didn't want to work with parties that we're working with Svoboda. And a year later, John McCain comes in and now all of a sudden, Savoda gets the U.S. blessing because Svoboda was at the forefront

of turning that Maidon movement, those protests, which were initially against corruption and calling for closer ties with the West, into a full-blown campaign for regime change. So that's who we've empowered, and that's why Zelensky today remains in a tough position because the elements that drove the Maidon coup, the far-right elements empowered by people like John McCain,

they threatened his life if he makes a peace deal with Russia. And that's ultimately who's still running the show in Ukraine and Washington as well. Is his life still threatened if he makes a peace deal with Russia? I think it is. I think it is. When you have years upon years of threats from paramilitary forces that are embedded in the army, you know, the Azov Battalion, for example, is essentially the most potent fighting force in Ukraine today. When you have those threats, you know, continue through this year, you know, year, I mean, even earlier this year, a major far-right leader threatens Zelensky's life. So, yeah, I do think his life stole as a risk if he makes peace with Russia.

Aaron, thank you very much. Thanks for your analysis, as always, on both of these hotspots, Ukraine and Gaza. Have a great Thanksgiving holiday. We'll look forward to seeing you next week. To you as well, Judge. Thank you. Thank you. And coming up later this afternoon at 2.15 Eastern Matt Hoaghan.

at 3 o'clock Eastern Karen Kwakowski, Judge Napolitano for judging freedom. Thank you.