Judging Freedom - Alastair Crooke : The Pressures on Trump.

Episode Date: August 11, 2025

Alastair Crooke : The Pressures on Trump.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

You know what doesn't belong in your epic summer plans? Getting burned by your old wireless bill. While you're planning beach trips, BBQs, and three-day weekends, your wireless bill should be the last thing holding you back. That's why millions have made the switch to MidMobil. With Mint, you can get the coverage and speed you're used to, but for way less money.

And for a limited time, MittMobil is offering three months of unlimited premium wireless service for $15 a month. So while your friends are sweating over data overages and surprise charges, you'll be chilling, literally, and financially. All plans come with high-speed, data and unlimited talk and text delivered on the nation's largest 5G network. This year skip breaking the sweat and breaking the bank. Get this new customer offer and your three-month

unlimited wireless plan for just 15 bucks a month at mintmobile.com slash john. That's mintmobile.com slash john. Use your own phone with any mint mobile plan and bring your phone number along with all of your existing contacts. Up front payment of $45 required equivalent to $15 a month. Limited time new customer offer for first three months only. Speeds may slow about 35 gigabyte on unlimited plan. Taxes and fees extra. See Mint Mobile for details. Thank you. Hi, everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Monday, August 11th, 2025.

Alastair Crook will be here with us in just a moment, but first this. We all know how devastating war is. Lives lost, communities destroyed, but war can also threaten your financial freedom. That's where America's heading, our growing involvement in global conflicts. It means more spending, more debt, and a weaker dollar. That's a direct hit to your wallet. So here are three things to keep your eyes on. Exploding debt, declining dollar, rising prices of gold and silver. These things are already happening. Golden Sacks predicts gold could hit $4,500 an ounce by 2026. Why? Because central banks and smart investors are buying gold hand over fist. They know what's coming and they're hedging against it, currency

collapse, inflation, and market volatility. Gold has been a trusted store of value for thousands of years and today we need that protection more than ever. Call Lear Capital now at 800511-4620 or visit Learjudsonap.com. No one is going to protect your wealth for you. You need to do it yourself and now is the time. Alastair Crook, welcome here. Alistair, you wrote a great piece a few days ago about Russia seeking to comprehend fully the various constraints on President Trump just as relevant today after the announcement of their meeting in Alaska at the end of this week as it was before we knew when and where and even if they were going to meet. But I need to ask you this at the outset, who has more to gain and who has more to lose by this

meeting between President Trump and President Putin in Alaska on Friday? Well, that depends entirely on what happens. But I think in the sense of who has much to lose is that I think that in terms of Ukraine, it's very unlikely that we will see much progress. I think what we will end up with with the continuation of the war, as Russia plows on, presses on with its military operation. With Trump, you know, it's quite clear what he really wants is a headline, a good headline. He wants to be the center of attention again. He wants to dominate and to show that he's dominating the well-seen, that he's

you know, the great leader and that everyone comes. And so I think Whitkoff was sent off to try and sort of fix that so that there could be, you know, a great splashy meeting with Putin and it would be, you know, him and Putin together. And as others have suggested, even sort of bringing in Zelensky at the end. But the reality, the reality is straightforward. The reality is nothing has changed. There's no change in the Russian position. There's no sense in which the Russians have given any hint of a concession to offer Trump,

except the ones we all know. And what happened, I think, was it may be much more complicated because it seems, and we don't know the details because nothing was reported about that conversation, but that Whitkoff may have misled, certainly the Europeans and Trump, because he misunderstood what was being said, that at one point Putin said, well, you know, if we take a ceasefire could happen, if we take the Dombas, that is Donetsk and Unyansk oblast,

and as for Zapparisia and Kersan, Well, we can have a sectorial ceasefire in that we will stay there in those two areas, but we will stop attacking the Ukrainian forces for the period of a ceasefire. It seems that Whitkoff may have understood that Russia was proposing a withdrawal, and that's why we have all this talk about swaps taking place and swapping land and so on. It wasn't proposed that at all. This was just, as he said, a sectoral sithva in those two provinces. Donetsk, the Ukrainians have to, for Dumbas, they just have to withdraw from it.

But he was not proposing a Russian withdrawal. And so I think that's caused, and what's happened is that, is the Europeans have gone nuts. I think they're meeting about now on Zoom. with Kalaas, the European, either and all coming, how to stop this, and how to get, if you like, how to get Zelensky into this discussion and Europe. I think they've given up and trying to get Europe into it, but they want Zelensky in it. And of course, the Russians have said, no way. In fact, I think the Russians have suggested, if you do that, who knows, we could have medea for someone in it.

But the point is this has never been set up properly because it remains, it's remained as the archetype of General Kellogg, which is that until there's more pressure, until there's more pain felt by Putin, there won't be agreement. And clearly, since he hasn't moved on, we need more. So he's advocating to the Europeans and the Europeans are taking it up. We need more sanctions, tariffs on Russia and on Russia's friends, secondary tariffs on Russia's allies. And the American ambassador to NATO has said, yes, you know, more secondary sanctions. They're coming. They're coming.

It's war on bricks, essentially. So with all these pressures, you know, what is Trump going to get out of this? And I would suggest that Putin chose very carefully to have this meeting in Alaska. And I think that Whitkoff met for some hours before meeting with Trump, with Kirill Dimitriath, the head of the Russian sovereign fund. He's a man who's Wall Street trained. I mean, he's a product of an American bank, and he's very bright, and he negotiates with Whitcomb. I'm sure that what could come out of it, because as I say, you know, they understand Trump needs a headline.

He needs something good news, you know, a showstopper, something that will excite everyone. So what about the Arctic? Here we are, you know, in Alaska, what about the Arctic? Look, huge rora, huge deposits of minerals, oil, gas, join with us in a joint project in the Arctic. And you'll make billions and billions from it. And so we, maybe, I mean, I don't. I don't know. I don't have evidence from this.

But that choice, and it does go back. You know, there were talks between American oil companies. This was pre-Biden between American oil companies and Russia for joint production. I mean, it's a very rich area, and there is a lot of resources there. And would that tempt Trump to say, I've got a great deal out of this. We're going to make millions, billions of dollars from this deal. Let's forget, you know, Ukraine we'll talk about later at another. So maybe.

I think you're right on the mark in thinking the way you believe Trump thinks. But from your experience as an ambassador and as a diplomat, when heads of state meet over something as dramatic. as war. Isn't there usually an agreement hammered out ahead of time and the meeting is just the formality for them to take credit for the agreement that their underlings actually worked out? If that is the case, this is an abnormal meeting. As far as we know, nothing has been agreed to other than the time, date, and place of the meeting. I think, you know, this really goes back. And, you know, the blame,

for the fact that this meeting is held without any preparation by Sherpas or others to get this in order. And you're absolutely right. I mean, you know, usually it's the heads of state. They don't come to negotiate with another. They come to sign the agreement that has emerged. And this won't be the case. And I think, you know, where it's all gone wrong is with General Kellogg, because he has just insisted, you know, know there must be a ceasefire first, a straightforward ceasefire. Political discussions, you know, no, you don't need to prepare them. We don't need to do anything.

They will take care of themselves based on the sort of Korean model. And so nothing has happened. And the line is simply, well, now we need, if you like, tariffs on all those dealing with Russia. more tariffs. And I think to get out of this is one of the reasons Trump wanted so much to have this meeting. Because it's quite clear to me, but you can correct me if I'm wrong. But it seems to me McConnell and others in the Senate are trying to regain control of the Republican Party away from Trump. And one of their tools for doing this is for tariffs and sanctions, because they know perfectly well that if they put tariffs and they make Trump agree to a system of tariffs, whether it's on India or China or other BRICS countries, it will prevent ever a chance of normalizing relations with these countries.

because we know America never lift sanctions. I mean, they stay forever. It's impossible. There's never been a case of sanctions being imposed and then really lifting. So I think he's desperate to get out of being penned in by some of the hardliners in the Republican Party who can't stand the MAGA forces there at all

and want to get back to a sort of uniparty approach which sees Russia as something that must be reduced to dependency on America, that it has to be subjected to enough pressure that it becomes a dependent country like other countries. And hence, all of the firing up, and this is what Putin will be seeing all around. You know, the pressure on Azerbaijan, that new proposal to put NATO forces right on Iran's border. All of what is happening, the heating up of the ISIS movements, the attack on Lebanon, the attack across the region, shows that Trump has no agency on the Middle East. He has showed that for whatever reason he is trapped, cannot take action there. Perhaps he doesn't know the motive for the trapment, but he understands that he's entrapped or he doesn't know quite what the details are.

And that is connecting into the American aspect of that as well. As we speak, you mentioned this earlier, European heads of state and foreign ministers are meeting in a Zoom meeting. Also, as we speak, General Kellogg is in Kiev. Now, what is he telling, what can he possibly be telling President Zelensky? Zelensky. For all we know General Kellogg's on the Zoom meeting as well, but we know he's in Kiev or on his way to Kiev. What could he promise President Zelenskyy? Well, what I, now, I don't know what he's going to say in Kiev. Obviously, I can't read his mind. But what I hear is, and what we've been told reportedly that Macron and Stama

agreed in a conversation between the two of them, that what Zelensky must do is to do some provocative operation, a false flag operation or a provocative attack into Russia, into the depth of Russia, or something else, we don't know, sufficient to create an absolute pressure on Putin to respond and thus to destroy the meeting altogether, to stop the meeting taking place. The Europeans are terrified of the meeting taking place, and they want to stop it.

And this was a discussion, I believe, Russians have probably picked up on it, and suggesting that, you know, isn't it going to be an attempt to create some incident, some security catastrophe that creates the impossibility of following up on this meeting. And they're trying to get, they're trying to put Zelensky into Alaska, whether invited or uninvited, to sit there on the borders and to sort of toss verbal hand grenades into it. Don't you think that if Zelensky shows up to Alaska, even if he's invited by the Americans, the Russian delegation will go home?

Yeah, they won't talk to him. They'll say this was not in the agreement. I do think, I don't think Trump will do that. I don't think he'll do that. I think he understands that they won't do this with Zelensky. But this is part of the disruption tactics the Europeans are using. How close is Russia to achieving its military objectives in Ukraine? I think very close to an inflection point, which is that, you know,

after the Maidan revolution, there was set up in a very sort of urbanized area, the series of about five cities, which were turned into fortresses, into a new defensive, a new marginal line, if you like, of defense. And it's breaking up. And it's cracking and it is being destroyed. And when it is broken, that is a major change psychologically, socially in Ukraine, but of course, militarily, because there's nothing then Russia will be on the Nipa River. So there's a great deal of anxiety. And I think this is causing the European furoror, is they sense that they could be at the point of defeat. that Ukraine, they do finally see that the situation is becoming past critical mass.

It is getting critical mass and it could change dramatically any moment. And this is what's causing this huge. I mean, they've been in discussions ever since it was announced all the time. They are talking about the how to stop Trump, how to contain this, how to ensure that European interests, so-called, will be guaranteed in this process. European interests, of course, means continuing the war. Right. That's all.

The Republicans in the Senate have two proposals making their way through the legislative process, one for about $50 billion, one for about $100 billion, more aid to Ukraine. Now, the way these proposals are structured, it's subject to the discretion of the president. So even if he signed this into law, he doesn't have to spend it. But Colonel McGregor, Colonel Wilkerson, Scott Ritter have all told us that the United States military supplies of offensive and defensive weaponry are dangerously, dangerously low. and at some point we will have to stop providing the Israelis, about which more in a minute, and the Ukrainians with the level of military supplies with which we've been supplying them.

I don't know if these senators understand that. I don't either, but I do think what you've just said is absolutely correct. There's no inventory, and Europe doesn't have the inventory either. So the question is, can money alone sustain Ukraine? I mean, how do you have an army and how do you fight, if you like, if you haven't got weapons? I mean, the money is actually damaging. I mean, I found that in Afghanistan all those years ago when I was there. I used to persuade the CIA, try to persuade them.

And I said, you know, if you put too much money into Afghanistan, all you create is divisions and people are just, each other, wanting a bigger share, and no one actually fights because they're more concerned with grabbing their share of the loot that's coming in. You have to contain the amount of money you give to the weaponry and the ability you have to take this forward. And they're not doing that. So it's only money that's left, whether it's European money, American money, just money going in and that money that ends up in you know in back in american banks and european banks it doesn't actually change the situation on the ground and they are on the cusp of a big defeat which will be a blow to europe because it will destroy you know the whole european conceit

that they are somehow a politically significant power and the whole idea that europe is something to be contended with that it is a par and it has to reduce itself to nothing more than a trade association and a regulatory body and this is causing great despair in europe is maga turning against israel yes i believe not only maga i i think it is it is uh there is a i mean you know i'm an outsider you're an insider, but what I see from the outside is that there has been one of those big shifts that is social and cultural in America. The American, particularly young people, I think over 50s are still stuck in, you know, Exodus film and are not moved on from that. But under 50, there's a big change. They cannot stomach the idea of seeing children.

children starve to death. It just is just not acceptable. It is vile. And so there is a shift that is taking place. And they blame Israel, but they also blame Trump. And Trump knows that. And it's he who told an Israeli donor that my base is coming to hate you. But he can't do anything because Israel or the powers that be somewhere beyond have told him, no, you can't have what you want, which is an end to the war and to have a release of the hostages, because we are going to continue the war and we're going to continue it everywhere and you can't stop it. And the question, you know, comes back. You know, who are these people, because we've seen, and as you know, Ashling follows us closely. I mean, we see that

there are divisions within Shimbab, the security service, divisions within Mossad as well. Yes. So we used to call that those two services, together with other parts of the institutional framework, the Israeli deep state. Well, that no longer works any longer, because behind that deep state, there has to be another deep state that is telling Trump, No, you're not going to get what you want. Whitkoff can come and go, but no, yeah, we'll let a little bit more food in to sort of just keep the thing going ticking over, but we are going to go ahead with our plans.

And what's more, Whitkoff was fooled. This is what the Israelis say, because he was told or given the impression that, you know, Israel was going to go in, sort out Hamas, and come out. They didn't say that the Israeli plans actually for at least four years in Gaza, maybe much, much longer. And that at the same time Israel is pursuing ardently, you know, where can we send these Palestinians to? They came up with a deserted Indonesian island the other day. I don't think that's serious. But, you know, this is typical of what is going on.

So, I mean, there is a right-wing force in Israel. that seems to be having a great deal of say and power, even over parts of Shinbet and the defense. We had more than 500 senior defense security officers in Israel, writing a letter saying, we are committing haricare. This is a great mistake. We are going to suffer a defeat in Gaza,

a defeat, not just in Gaza, But a defeat of the Israeli project, of the Zionist project as a whole is going to flow from this. That's 500, including heads of Shinbet, says Amy Aylon and Pardo, the head of former head of Mossat, all signing on to this letter. Yet someone in America, some people in America or in Israel on the right have said to Trump, no, we are going ahead with. Gaza and we will not agree to do a deal and to get the hostages released. I mean, you can imagine the tension in Israel because it's a condemnation to death of the hostages. Today, Monday, the IDF murdered five Al Jazeera journalists, one of whom was exceptionally popular

and extremely well known. They, of course, claim that these were not journalists. They were Hamas under the guise of being journalists, but there doesn't seem to be any evidence for that whatsoever. It just seems that every month, every week, every day, this is worse and worse and worse. There's more slaughter. There's more bloodshed.

There's more innocence. I mean, you need to, I mean, be aware of Lebanon is on the edge of civil war, because you know this envoy barrack is pushing very hard and the Saudis are pushing extremely hard for the forced disarmament of Hezbollah and Hezbollah are not weakened rump as people think they have cleaned up everything they don't use telephones they don't use the communications all of that any western electronic component has been washed out of the system and they still have their heavy weapons they haven't been done but if you think if they think in washington that the lebanese army is going to be able to disarm hesbola they're wrong it will lead to a disaster

and it will probably divide the lebanese army and too Mr. Crook, thank you very much, my dear friend. A truly, truly gifted analysis. And we'll see what happens. We may have to call on you again if some announcement comes out of Alaska. But thank you very much for your time. Much appreciate it. We look forward to seeing you next week.

Anytime, Judge. Thank you very much. Thank you. Coming up later today at 10 o'clock this morning, Ray McGovern, at 1130 this morning, Larry Johnson. at 1 o'clock this afternoon, live from a television studio in Moscow, Scott Ritter and some Russian officials, and I will get to question them, and they will get to question each other.

And then at 1.45, Professor Jeffrey Sachs, Justin O'Pontan for Judging Freedom. Thank you.