Judging Freedom - Aaron Maté : Trump Turns on Zelenskyy

Episode Date: October 13, 2026

Aaron Maté : Trump Turns on ZelenskyySee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Undeclared wars are commonplace. Pragically, our government engages in preemptive war, otherwise known as aggression, with no complaints from the American people. Sadly, we have become accustomed to living with the illegitimate use of force by government. To develop a truly free society, the issue of initiating force must be understood and rejected. What if sometimes to love your country you had to alter or abolish the government? the government what if Jefferson was right what if that government is best which governs least what if it is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong what if it is better to perish fighting for freedom than to live as a slave

what if freedom's greatest hour of danger is now hi everyone judge andrew nopalitano here for judging freedom today is Tuesday October 13th 2026 Aaron Monte joined us now, Aaron, welcome here. Before we get to President Trump calling for President Zelensky's ouster, some interesting statements have come out of the British government in the past 24 hours. That is the government of Prime Minister Burnham, one of which is that Iran is behind the non-terror, non-attack at the Air Force base where American planes are were stored, even though all six arrested people were out on bail. And the other is now a bizarre claim in 2006 that 10 years ago, the Russians influenced the

outcome of the Brexit vote. We'll start with this nonsense about the airfield. What do we know? And why are they saying this if nobody's arrested and they're not showing any evidence? Nobody's in jail. I think it's just classic fear mongering to june up tensions with Iran and justify ongoing conflict. The threat was that Iran was behind this threat to U.S. warplains at a U.K. base and the planes had to be moved. And this is presented to us as a reason why Iran's a threat and why it has to be confronted.

I think it's just classic fear mongering, which is also the playbook. with Russiagate. And this time the culprit is Russian bots being responsible for basically everything wrong with Western society, everything dysfunction about Western society. For 10 years now, the blame has been put on Russian bots. And there was a big effort to blame Russia for Brexit, just as there was a fake effort to blame Russia for Donald Trump's victory, another populist rebuke where people were fed up with the neoliberal neocon order and they rebelled in the case of Brexit by rejecting the European Union in the case of the U.S. rejecting Hillary Clinton and her legacy and putting Trump in instead.

And just as Russia was blamed for Trump falsely, there was a big effort to blame Moscow for Brexit, and there even was a big parliamentary inquiry in the UK that took years. It was a huge deal, and there was a lot of hype around it. It was released years ago, and the result was we found nothing. There was literally nothing. when it came to Russian interference. But their conclusion then was not, there's no evidence of Russian interference in Brexit.

Their conclusion was the reason we found nothing is because our government didn't look for it. So despite the fact that, you know, the UK is a very sophisticated intelligence service, somehow because they weren't instructed to look for Russian interference, then that's because they couldn't find it, not because it actually wasn't there. It's similar to how a child thinks there's monsters under the bed.

Even if you show the child the floor, you give them ample evidence. It won't matter because they're fixated on this belief. And this is the same thing with Russiagate. And ever since Andy Burnham came in, he's decided for whatever reason to revive this scare. I mean, it's pretty clear why, actually, because the UK is really on board with the Ukraine proxy war. And you need to be able to justify these conflicts. You have to keep manufacturing consent. And one way to do that is by portraying Russia as this existential threat, not only to

Ukraine, but to Western democracy itself. So Andy Burnham recently went on a podcast and sort of of in an offhand comment said, yes, we know there was Russian interference in Brexit. And that set out this whole new round of panic. The problem is if you're going to make such a claim, you have to show evidence for it, especially after so many previous Russia-related claims have fallen apart. And of course, the government has no evidence to show because there is no evidence because the whole thing is yet another Russia-gate related scam. Chris, run the clip of Luke Pollard. This is the British Secretary of Defense for Procurement, a former member of, I guess he's still in Parliament, but in Prime Minister Burnham's cabinet.

We've heard, haven't we, from Saret Davy and from Kemi Badenog. They've asked you to do one quite, it seems simple thing, which is show evidence of Russian interference. Will you do that? So some of these information are held at higher classifications, so I won't be able to detail anything here now, but certainly I think there are ways that because of the severity of what Russia is doing, we need to have a different type of conversation, not just with the public, but with parmentarians as well, so we can demonstrate what is taking place. And over the last year, two years in particular, in defence and across the government, we've been taking steps to reveal some of Russia's activity. So, for example, revealing that the Russian spy ship,

Yantar was loitering over our critical undersea cables. was a substantial step in saying, look, we can see what Russia is doing. You know, much that information has been held behind classifications that we haven't been able to share with the public for quite some time, but we've taken steps to do that. And I would expect in the coming year, as we move the national conversation around our defense and securities as a nation into a new chapter, there'll be further opportunities for us to reveal

what Russia is doing without putting any of the ways that we get that information in the public domain or any of those sources that risk. What is this guy talking about? Well, it's very simple. He's asked for evidence, and then he says, oh, we can't show you the evidence. It's all, you know, it's very secret. And then he pivots to some story about a Russian ship threatening the cables that run the internet, which is another story that's been totally overhyped,

but also has nothing to do with the original question, which is about Russian interference in Brexit. And it's just classic Russiagate playbook. This has been going on for 10 years. I've documented this exhaustively, especially on the U.S. side, but it's universal. Make any claim you want about Russia, blame them for anything you want. And usually the media just writes things down and repeats it as fact. This is a rare case where a journalist actually asked for the evidence, and you can see there is none to offer.

Just a little breaking news. The White House has just announced that President Trump has asked a U.S. ambassador to Greece Kimberly Gilfoyle to resign. So let me get this straight. They want her to resign because of unethical behavior trying to have somebody pay her bills before she was in office. Why don't they ask Mike Huckabee and David Milstein to resign

for lying to the White House about the extent of slaughter going on in the West Bank? Great question. So yeah, Kimberly Guilful, Kimmelig, Gilfoyle is being forced out because she asked the donor to wire her $100,000. Okay, yeah, but as you say, David Milstein, who is the stepson of Mark Levin, a prominent radio host, big Israel Firster, he was recently found by New York Times investigation to be suppressing reports from inside the embassy on Israeli settler violence, terror, and the West Bank, including against American citizens,

against Palestinian Americans who've been subjected to Israeli settler terror in the West Bank. And David Milstein, while serving in the U.S. embassy in Jerusalem, is so Israel first that he's suppressing the documented attacks by Israelis on Palestinian Americans. So essentially, you can argue he's committing treason. He's putting a foreign country over his own country, even when it attacks his own country's citizens. And this was a big story in the Times, but will this lead to his resignation? or my country's resignation, absolutely not. It's October, which means it's Cybersecurity Awareness Month,

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Now at a special discount for our listeners. Get 20% off your DeleteMe plan when you go to join deleteme.com slash freedom and use promo code Freedom at the checkout. The only way to get 20% off is to go to join delete me.com. slash freedom and enter code freedom at checkout. That's join delete me.com slash freedom code freedom. Wow. The follow-up question is what did Mike Huckabee know and when did he know it? And are they just protecting Mr. Milstein because his stepfather, I guess,

I want to make sure I have the family relations. Right. See the stepfather or father-in-law, I think stepfather is Mark Lov. in the arch Zionist, supporter of Donald Trump, who publicly proclaimed from a podium in the White House that Donald Trump is Jewish, to which Donald Trump said, maybe.

Yeah. Again, the extent of the Israel first influence over this administration is, it's unprecedented. I mean, Biden, there's a new book about the Biden administration called Crossing the Red Line about everything Biden did to protect Israel during the, the height of the genocide in Gaza.

And it's stunning how just Biden refused to do anything against Israel. You know, there was maybe sometimes some talk about cutting off some, some weapons. And eventually they finally did. They delayed some shipments of some 2,000-pound bombs. But so many opportunities Biden had to challenge Israel, he shunned it. And, of course, Biden, Trump has taken that to a whole new extreme. Wow. Did the United States enter into a deal with Russia that provided for a ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine over energy facilities?

Or is this another confabulation from the mind of President Trump? It's the latter. Trump claimed there was an energy ceasefire between Ukraine and Russia, which no party agreed to. and then the White House had to clarify that it was a potential ceasefire. But yes, this is Trump doing what he can to convince voters that he's doing something

for the global economy ahead of the midterms because he's not going to abandon his regime change campaign in Iran. So I think now he feels more desperate to show progress on the Russia-Ukraine front. And that's what leads to this recent deal he made with Vladimir Putin to suspend some sanctions

on Russian exports of diesel fuel. And even though I don't think this will make a big difference. on the U.S. market. Trump is using this to say, look, I'm doing something to bring prices down for our farmers, even if that means throwing Ukraine under the bus, and also really throwing Europe under the bus, too, because recall that after Russia invaded Ukraine, the U.S. convinced Europe to wean itself off of Russian energy, and then Trump goes out and makes a deal to import Russian energy. And this just comes a few weeks after he signed a measure imposing secondary sanctions on countries that buy Russian energy,

including India and China. Peter Navarro, Trump's trade advisor, called India a giant laundry mat for the Kremlin. Well, because of midterm consideration that Trump needs to progress, now he's, I guess, acting as a laundry mat for the Kremlin to. It's also absolutely ridiculous. And then on the flip side,

the outrage that this deal is getting from proxy war supporters who just can't count as the thought of talking to Russia, making deals with Russia, doing something that, might help bring this war to an end. They can't tolerate that either.

Didn't Trump just sign into law, the Lindsay Graham Act, which prohibited the very type of deal that he just supposedly crafted with Vladimir Putin? Well, exactly, and it raised the question. Is Trump now making a deal with Vladimir Putin violating his own law,

the law that he signed in the name of Lindsey Graham? This could be an interesting legal debate coming up. But Yeah, he did that, of course, because he needs to show something to voters that he's doing something to address the energy crisis. And this was a way for Russia, too, to show that it can deal with Trump and that it's willing to make a deal. And Trump himself has no personal stake in the Ukraine proxy war. He's not a diehard neocon, unlike everyone surrounding him and most people in Washington.

So he's fine to make a deal with Putin. And also he has grievances with Zelensky that go back many years. A phone call was Zelensky in his first term got Trump impeached. Ukrainian officials did interfere in the 2016 election on behalf of Hillary Clinton. That's called the Kremlin conspiracy theory, but it's true. Ukrainians openly bragged about it at the time. They helped, for example, get Paul Manafort, who was Trump's campaign manager fired after releasing some damaging claims about him, which I'm not even sure were fully accurate.

But so Trump has grievances going back a long time and he's showing that right now by throwing Ukraine under the bus with this deal. Well, what is behind Trump calling for Oresilinsky to be ousted? I think that's just his personal animus towards Zelensky, you know, the collection of grievances that Trump has about Ukraine and Russia dating back to his first term, who's also framed as a Russian asset. And Ukrainian officials were actually also enlisted in that effort because John Brennan, When he was the head of the CIA, a major figure in the Ukraine proxy war dating back to the Maidan, which overthrew Yanukovych. Afterwards, John Brennan went to Ukraine and encouraged Ukraine to launch the war on the Donbos that ultimately culminated in Russia's invasion in February 22.

So John Brennan also was a major figure in Russia gate, where after the Clinton campaign comes up with this theory that Trump is a Kremlin asset in Russia's, you know, interfering to help Trump. John Brennan pressed Ukrainian intelligence officials to give him evidence, quote, unquote, that could implicate Russia in the hacking of the DNC. And they did. So John Brennan, after being involved in U.S. meddling in Ukraine, which helped lead to the overthrow of Yanukovych,

he then uses his new Ukrainian intelligence allies to meddle in an American election against Trump. And Trump hasn't forgotten that. And so I think Trump, Colin Rizelensky, to resign comes out of that. And also, he's probably frustrated with Zelensky's stance, which is just basically give me all the weapons in the world, put massive sanctions on Russia, and I'm not going to negotiate a peace deal.

We saw that blow up at their first White House meeting back in February 2025 when there was that meltdown between Trump, Zelensky, and J.D. Vance. And the reason why that meeting deteriorated, if you go back and watch that meeting, we talked about this at the time. The first 40 minutes at the show were, The first 40 minutes or so of that meeting were pretty cordial.

They were all meeting. It was fine. But it turned ugly when Zelensky basically chided J.D. Vance for advocating diplomacy. That's when Zelensky said to J.D. Vance, what kind of diplomacy, J.D. are you talking about? And Densky started arguing you can't make a deal with Putin because you can't trust him and all this stuff. And that's when the meeting went south. So Zelensky is so hostile to diplomacy that he was willing to start a fight. over it with his top sponsors in public.

And I think Trump now calling for Zelensky to resign is just a new display of his frustration with Zelensky. Wow. Here is, you're gonna love this. Here is a new clip from President Trump basically saying, there's a ceasefire because I said so, Chris. You said Russia and Ukraine agreed to a ceasefire, but both sides say they have not.

Well, they agreed. You know why? Because I said you agree. That's why. They agreed because I said they agreed. And that thing has to get settled. That war is a disaster. They agreed because I said they agreed. Well, since the agreement Keev was attacked, and this happened, Chris Yindex, this is the Russian Google attacked either yesterday or earlier today, an enormous. conflagration interfering with the Russian internet which

has spawned all kinds of conspiracy theories, has it not? It has. The latest conspiracy theory here is that because Ukraine bombed these Russian data centers, that the internet now is basically a magical place. It's peace and harmony across

the internet because these Russian bots that are responsible for not only electing Donald Trump, defeating the European Union and Brexit and so many other populist rebukes, that these Russian bots were also so toxic that by bombing these Russian data centers, the Russian bops have been vanquished and the Internet is a safe place. Literally, people have been saying that. Zelensky was saying that, like, you might have noticed that the Internet is a more gentle place now.

And there are people saying that, you know, support for the IFDA, which is the far right German party, that that's down online because Russian bots have been destroyed. it's all another Russia Gate scam. This goes back so long. Back during the height of Russia Gate, there was a dashboard called Hamilton 68, put out by a group of U.S. neocons, you know, tied to people like William Crystal, you know, chief Iraq war cheerleader. And Hamilton 68 came to be a dashboard that tracked all the Russian bots and showed how they were responsible for all these incendiary activity on the Internet. It was all just a complete scam. Matt Taibi, when he got the Twitter files,

was able to review some internal documentation from Twitter where they tried to actually track down and verify Hamilton 68's methodology because Hamilton 68 was going to Twitter and saying, you should censor these accounts because they're all Russian. So Twitter tried to just basically check Hamilton 68's work, and they basically included it was all fraud. And Hamilton 68 ultimately admitted it was all fraud. All this was just a way to taint any dissenting point of view

from the party line when it comes to Russia and the neocon consensus as being the handy work of Moscow and also to blame Moscow for anything in society that's dysfunctional or that's perceived to be dysfunctional whether it's the election of Donald Trump or Brexit or even Black Lives Matter Black Lives Matter was blamed on Russian bots.

Kamala Harris claimed that Russian bots were behind the controversy over Colin Kaepernick, the NFL player, the NFL quarterback, who bench, to knee at games to protest police brutality and racism. Kamalaire said that the Russian bots were behind the online furor over that. It was insane. And this is the latest manifestation of that. Are there new, I know this is an area about which you've done extraordinary research. Are there new allegations of the use of chemical weapons in Syria by the Assad regime?

Well, this has been a major narrative used to justify the dirty war that led to Assad's ouster. You know, the CIA spent billions of dollars along with their partners, including Israel, the Gulf states, and Turkey. The U.S. also militarily occupied one-third of Syria, stealing its oil and wheat and deliberately saying, you know, U.S. officials said this, to deprive the Syrian government of revenue to give the U.S. leverage to push regime change. and also imposing crippling sanctions that made Syria's reconstruction and basic economy impossible to function. And U.S. officials openly brag that U.S. sanctions were causing higher food prices for ordinary Syrians.

It was just so sadistic this whole thing. And a key part of the narrative to justify all this statism was that Assad gassed his own people, Assad gassed his own people. And there have been a series of leaks that undermined this narrative from U.S. intelligence, for example, James Clapper, when he was working for Obama, the head of national intelligence, went to Obama and said after one incident that the intelligence implicating Assad is not a slam dunk. It was a deliberate reference to George Tenet's slam dunk reference when he told George Roby Bush that the Iraq WMD evidence is a slam dunk. And so Clapper was basically saying that this is another Iraq WMD moment.

And that's why Obama didn't bomb Syria over it. And then you have Duma, 2018, another alleged chemical attack. This time Trump bombed Syria over it. I've gotten leaks from inside the OPCW, the world's top chemical weapons watchdog, showing that the actual team that investigated these allegations found no evidence of a chemical attack, and instead their findings point to a false flag. Their evidence was suppressed, and I put it out to the public in a series of articles at the gray zone. And now the, since Assad is overthrown, now the effort is basically to pretend as if they found something.

And as part of that, there are stories coming out, claiming that they have spoken to witnesses who say they were pressured by Russia and Syria to say that there was a false flag when really there wasn't. And look, a witness testimony is notoriously, in these cases, unreliable because, you know, maybe there was pressure from Syria and Russia back then. Who knows? The bottom line is no one addresses the suppression of the OPCW's own findings. which includes toxicologists ruling out chlorine gas as the cause of death, which was hugely significant because chlorine gas was said to be what killed these people in Duma. So now recently there was a new article in The Observer, which is a UK outlet, claiming to have spoken to one of the key witnesses who back then pointed to a false flag.

He was a boy back then. Now he's older. He's a young man. And this UK outlet, the Observer, claimed that he's basically recanted. but if you read the article, they don't quote him once. They don't quote the boy, like this guy once. They claim he's now telling a story, he's speaking out, but they don't quote him once. So it's bizarre.

And the writer of it was formerly with the BBC, the UK state outlet, and they did a podcast attacking the whistleblowers from the OPCW, trying to dismiss the OPCW controversy as all made up and all Russian disinformation. And in the process, they made a number of errors they had to retract. And also they omitted all the countervailing facts. And so this journalist doing this is just trying to double down on her own fraud. And the best she could do was come up with a witness who she claims is recanting without even quoting him once. I've never seen journalism like that before.

No, I've never seen it either. Just to make your day, here's President Zelensky boasting, as you predicted, that the Internet is a safer place because Yandak. has been partially damaged. Chris? By the way, when we started responding to Russia's operation against our data centers, and when our strikes reached Yandex data centers, it suddenly became a little easier to breeze

on many social media platforms. A lot of people, a lot of people noticed it. And there was less, less hate, less division, and fewer provocations, because there were fewer bots. It's farcical, but this is Russiagate. It's, you know, Russia Gate has imbued these mythical Russian bots with the powers to sow chaos, destroy societies, defeat Hillary Clinton, they do whatever they want. And Zelensky knows his audience. He knows that Western liberals have been bombarded with Russiagate

propaganda for years. And so he's trying to appeal to them by saying that, look, our military, our Ukrainian military, was able to make the internet a better place by bombing Russia. That's his argument. And so the upshot is give me more weapons and let's not have peace. The problem is, A, it's all a farce. And B, peace is the only way to save Ukraine's long-term future, which Zelensky apparently doesn't care about. And I'm not sure if you have the clip, but Fox News recently, there was a recently exchange on Fox News where the truth was briefly admitted where Boris Johnson sabotaging

the spring 22 peace talks on behalf of Washington was actually admitted which never ever happens on corporate TV. Who did the, whom made the admission? It was an exchange between

Brian Kilmead and Rachel Duffy. I wonder if Chris has the clip. Probably not one that we would run but I'm not supposed to surprised to hear that eventually the truth doesn't come out. Aaron, thank you very much, my dear friend. All the best to you. Great stuff.

I mean, we're all over the place this morning, but events just keep happening from Kimberly Gilfoyle to Yandex, but I won't hold my breath waiting for David Milstein and Mike Huckabee to be fired. Definitely not, definitely not. Good to see you, Judge. Thank you. Thank you. All the best.

Coming up later today at two this afternoon, Matt Ho, and at three this afternoon on Pete Hegseth and public firing squads. Colonel Karen Kutkowski, Judge Napolitano for judging freedom.