Judging Freedom - Alastair Crooke: Trump and Chaos

Episode Date: April 14, 2025

Alastair Crooke: Trump and ChaosSee 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 Monday, April 14th, 2025. Alistair Crook will be with us in just a moment on Donald Trump and chaos. But first this. While the markets are giving us whiplash, have you seen the price of gold? It's soaring. In the past 12 months, gold has risen to more than $3,000 an ounce. I'm so glad I bought my gold, it's not too late for you to buy yours. The same experts that predicted gold at $3,200 an ounce

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So do what I did. Call my friends at Lear Capital. You'll have a great conversation and they'll send you very helpful information. Learn how you can store gold in your IRA tax and penalty free or have it sent directly to your doorstep. There's zero pressure to buy and you have a 100% risk-free purchase guarantee. It's time to see if gold is right for you. Call 800-511-4620, 800-511-4620, or go to learjudgenap.com and tell them your friend the judge sent you. I'll stare good day to you, my friend, and welcome here. Before we get to your fascinating analysis of Donald Trump and chaos, let's talk a bit about Benjamin Netanyahu and chaos.

How, in your view, how stunned was the Israeli prime minister when he was sitting in the Oval Office next to the American president who announced that the United States would soon commence direct negotiations with the government of Iran? Yes, he was shocked. He says he knew beforehand, but it seems to me that that's likely not true. He didn't look as if he knew beforehand. He was, eyes were darting around. He was shocked.

He was shocked about it. And he's shocked back at home because, according to the Hebrew reports that we've seen, an agreement had already been reached for an attack on Iran between the US and Israel. The plans were going forward, and even a date set for this. And then so you can imagine this was a shock, yes. You say that Netanyahu was of the view that an agreement had been reached,

that this agreement involved Trump or might it have been Israel Katz and Pete Hegseth? I can't tell you, but I mean, your friend, Ron Dermow, was a week in Washington. So I imagine he'd been around everyone that mattered during that time. And then Kurila, the head of CENTCOM, spent a couple of days down in the bunker at the Israeli Ministry of Defense preparing details,

but perhaps that was when there was a date set for an attack on Iran. Anyway, for the moment it's on hold, but I would say to you, you mentioned at the outset, you said, you know, the Trump chaos. And really, you know, I think the Iran outcome is going to depend heavily on precisely this chaos. And what do I mean by that? Why do I am saying the chaos is so important? Because that what really spooked Trump during this period, during the time just after he announced his tariffs, according to most of the financial press, was the bond market, not the stock market, but the bond market, the debt market, because that started dropping and yields started rising quite dramatically. And this was upsetting a very delicate trade in the market called the basis trade, which is a sort of

very complex, very complex, highly leveraged sort of casino bet. And I think Bessette was so worried by that that he took his airplane and flew down to Mar-a-Lago and said, listen, you've got to start winding this back and got to say there's going to be a moratorium because if this unravels, if this basis trade unravels, which is about a trillion dollars in the market, I mean, we'll be back at 2008 and you'll have a real crisis on your hand. Well, that still continues. And why is it so important was because what happened in that crisis, what was the crucial thing that is going to affect the Ukraine War and

is going to affect what happens in Iran, was that just Trump managed to hold together the team. He was very worried at points that, you know, that the chaos, the turmoil in the markets, the sort of anger about what was happening on markets was going to split his team. The team is already split. I mean, it's quite clear that some of the coalition, the Republican coalition that was put together that has existed so far under Trump was already fragmenting a little bit. Parts of the Republicans in the Senate were getting very antsy, if you don't mind the expression, but very antsy about what was happening

to people's share prices and everything, getting very anxious. What has this got to do with Iran? What has it got to do with Ukraine? Well, a lot. The most important thing for Trump, the absolute key to his position is about doing this reset of the domestic economy, about the economy, about rebalancing the economy so that when the economy is rebalanced, economy so that when the economy is rebalanced, industrial manufacturing will be regained back in the United States. This is what his supporters want. They want the jobs back from this. Right. That's what was key about it. So this matters more than anything. All right, before we get in-

Then what happened to what, I was just gonna finish off just to say, what really split it, what we see, the big split taking place was caused by Keith Kellogg. Keith Kellogg came back, presented his plan, and several of the team supported him. Just to be clear, was one that would never be accepted by Russia. It was a very hardline pro-Ukrainian plan that would see areas of responsibility. It is quite clear to me that this reflects

input from Stammer and Macron and the Europeans, who as I think everyone on this program knows, are intent on destroying American normalization with Russia. They don't want it. They want to continue the war till 2030. They want a big war in Europe. And so what Kellogg was doing was actually saying that beyond the River Nipah, there's going to be NATO, British troops, French troops, whatever other troops or volunteer, they will be behind the Dnieper, in front of the Dnieper up to the contact line would be the Ukrainian forces and then there would be the Russian forces. So it was a form of, if you like, separation into segments. And of course, this was completely, this is completely unacceptable to Russia. He should know that.

He acts as, you know, very much as Ukraine's advocate in these things. And he took with him Rubio, was, and others who said, yeah, you know, this is right. And he contested what was going on. He was contesting what Witkoff was proposing, which was to recognize the four omblasts. As Putin has always said, that is the minimum to start anything moving towards a ceasefire.

He said that in June of 24. And he said these, the four omblas which are already part of the territory under our constitution, which have had the, if you like, the referenda they wanted to join Russia. This is the minimum. And here is, if you like, here is Kellogg coming out and driving a horse and cart through the whole of the process and saying, I don't believe this will be acceptable to the Ukrainians. Well, of course, it's not acceptable to the Ukrainians and it's not acceptable, you know, the kid what um, Witkoff was saying is not acceptable to the Europeans they don't want it either and so it was setting Trump up for a big clash and already you can see the result of that is the talks are in trouble because unless Trump says comes down on one side or another and he says, I back Witkoff, I don't know what happened in

Witkoff's last thing, or if he says he backs Gelug, he has a split, potential split in his group. And these, it's like contagion, because that is the last thing he needs when what he wants, as I said, is to keep everyone supporting his trade, his tariff policy, his devaluation of the dollar policy. All of this is absolutely central to what Trump needs because he wants a normalization, but he's got to keep his team, which involves a lot of people. They were already unhappy with Witkoff. Many of them say there was a complaint made to Wals by many, particularly in the Senate, saying he leans too far to

Russia. He leans too far. He's too far gone. We can't allow this to go on. We must stop this and we must prevent it. And this is a real problem for, of course, for Trump. But imagine the consequences of that, because he's got to keep his support base there. They stood with him during the crisis. They're a little unhappy. They're very unhappy with Witkoff and what's happening there. I mean this faction, not all of the Republicans, but this faction. And then there are the talks in Iran.

And what is the connection between that is, you know, if you look at keeping the team together, 90% of the team are Israeli firsters. They're all extreme. I don't know what was the sort of Faustian bargain, but Trump did a deal with the most nationalist, with the, if you like, the hard, passive people on Israel. So if he's going to keep his team together, you know, maybe the only thing is to give up Iran to them, to keep the team together because of the economic program being his signature program. And it's not going that easily. There is chaos and there is a lot of unhappiness. So Iran is how many you know, it's quite different.

There is a constituency in the Republicans that wants to see, you know, the Ukraine war end and finish, even if the neocons don't. But the numbers of people who really ordinary Americans would say, oh, well, we agree, Iran mustn't have a nuclear weapon. Most would go along with that. So that'll be a price, maybe the price it will be paid. And certainly, you know, if we find, as I somewhat expect,

Witkoff comes back from Tehran and says, oh, the Iranians are putting forward a plan whereby they will reduce the amount of enriched uranium and they will allow inspections and they give undertakings that they won't go towards weaponization. And many of his own team, Trump's own team will say, well, look, you know, this is just a runaround to the same old bad deal that we had that you got rid of in 2018. It's the same deal. What's different? Nothing's different with that. We want something more than that. And either it's got to be a Libya solution where we go in and we blow up the whole of the infrastructure of Iran, or we end up having to go to war with Iran. So it's a lot to unpack. Let me stop you, Alistair. There's a lot to unpack here.

I don't think the Trump people realize that the bond market would give them the problems that it did. The United States government cannot operate without people lending money to it called purchasing bonds. The bond yield went up to four and a half percent. As the current bonds out there, there are $31 trillion worth are retired and rolled over. They come, they they draw the higher interest rate. The government doesn't even have the money to pay the interest on the bonds if they continue to go up. Trump's people didn't think of that. As for Iran, I mean, why would Iran ever accept the Libya solution? They, I would think, would rather go down fighting than allow the is market the Americans and the Israelis to come in and

dismantle them and emasculate them and effectively destroy their sovereignty. Don't you agree? Yes, it would be the end of Iran in the way that we've seen the end of Syria. I mean, it would be such a humiliation that I think then it would be a sort of a form of serious situation could take place. Now, they'll never accept that. They'd never accept to be so humiliated that they risked the whole republic. Back to Netanyahu, what kind of trouble is he in at home?

Oh, getting deeper and deeper deeper just as we speak there is a petitions going around whereby the Air Force officers and about 250 Mossad former officials Mossad intelligence this is not Shin Bet this is Mossad now saying the war in Gaza has got to end and the hostages have got to be released. And we know Netanyahu is obstructing it. It's becoming, as I've been trying to present it over these talks at times, we are really

in the most bitter confrontation taking place inside of Israel. At the moment Netanyahu is secure, but the bitterness and the sense, I mean reservists are not turning up to serve in the army, they are refusing to serve, there's a big shortfall, there's a great deal of, if you like, tensions about his policy of going back into into Gaza again, and also they are edging closer and closer to some sort of conflict in Syria where Israel is bombing right up to the airports in the center of Syria in order to make sure that the Turks can't get them because the Turks have announced they are going to take those areas and they're

going to establish main air bases in the center of Syria and Israel is engaged at the moment in trying to stop them. Is Netanyahu's own legal and political woes continuing to get worse? I read an article that you published indicating that members of the Knesset, the hard right members of the Likud party are actually going into court where Netanyahu was on trial and disturbing the court to the point where they have to be physically escorted from the courtroom in America. This would result in incarceration, but maybe it's some standard operating procedure in Israel. I mean, the police are attacking the demonstrators strongly, and so some of the demonstrators are going into the court. They've already disrupted the Knesset. They did, if you recall, just invade some of the forces of Ben-Gabir, invaded a military installation,

forces of Ben-Gabir invaded a military installation and took out people that they wanted to take out of it and stop the proceeding. So the thing, this is the point I'm trying to say is this whole thing is just only just holding together and without the support of Trump, I mean this thing could come apart altogether. So Netanyahu needs war to stay in power. He needs either to continue the war in Gaza, which isn't a real war, it's just a genocide, or he needs to start a war with Iran with US backing or both. Yes, the problem for him is the war in Gaza has become so discredited by senior military officers, by security officials, all of them have seen.

And the last figures that came out from in Haaretz in the English language, Israeli newspaper showed that, said that Hamas had 40,000 forces on the ground. After all of this, that they had 40,000. This is not me saying that, this is the Israeli statement saying that they estimate it is that they still have 40,000 forces, armed forces in Gaza. So, you know, the thing is, it's not such a winning solution for him. He wants a big win. So where can he get a win? Well, Syria is not so great at the moment. Lebanon is complicated, very complicated. So really Iran is the thing that if he can push Trump towards it and you know what I've been trying to say to you is that I can't see given you know what Trump said when he exited

the JCPOA in 2018, he said this agreement is no good because it doesn't deal with Iran's missiles. It doesn't deal with their weaponization of Hamas and Hezbollah and all of those things. That's why I'm leaving it and that's why I'm putting sanctions on everybody, including the Europeans who dealt with Iran illegally in the JCPOA. Why the Europeans have now started, if you like said to the Iranians, Euro 3, who are part of the JCPOA, have said to them, by the end of June we will trigger sanctions snap back on you for failure to stay within the JCPOA limitations. So I think,

you know, there will be, I'm sure, quite strong pushback on Trump if, you know, they come back with a proposal which is basically just to revert to the JCPOA because everything they're saying, you know, it's only about the nuclear program, it's only going to be limiting their ability to move towards a weapon. Well, all of that was in the first JCPOA, which Trump walked out of because it didn't deal with Iran's conventional defense forces and didn't deal with its proxy forces around the world. Right. How were the Trump off again, on again, off again tariffs reviewed by elites in Moscow and elites in Europe.

Do they think he knew what he was doing? Do they think he got caught with his pants down over the bond market? Or do they think this is some sort of a technique to negotiate the grand reset? No, I think they have a very good idea of what's happened. And I think what you hear is quite clearly out of Moscow, they understand that there are now divisions, quite deep divisions within the sort of the most senior elements of his own team,

between those that support Kellogg's really very sort of, you know, shall I say blinkered and pro-Ukrainian proposal, which sees no concessions by Ukraine whatsoever. And the sort of demand for a sort of immediate ceasefire. And Witkoff and others, who obviously is regarded as someone you can talk to and whose intelligence and very sharp. So where is all this going to lead? So they're, I think, increasingly cautious about the whole process now.

I think that's where it's going. They're not only cautious about the whole process now. I think that's where it's going there, not only cautious about it, becoming increasingly skeptical, and that's why I think we're seeing the beginnings of a really major Russian advance in Ukraine taking place. The forces are amassing in parts right across the front. And I think Russia is moving to its second option, which is simply to finish off the Ukrainian armed forces in the next period. One wonders.

And try and take Trump with them, but I don't know whether you'll feel he's able to go with them because he needs these people. This was a deal. This was the first-gen deal with the most sort of nationalist and Israeli firsters he's got, but the main deal is to change the economic domestic system. And now this is disturbing that support. It's actually more than that. It's put a great, Keith Kellogg has put an absolute spanner in the works. I want to play for you a clip from the president on Air Force One last night, Sunday night, Palm Sunday evening, as he was flying from his home in Florida back to Washington, D.C.

And I want to ask you about his repeated statements that the war in Ukraine isn't his war, it's Biden's war. Chris, cut number one. Do you have a reaction to Russia's Palm Sunday attack on Ukraine? I think it was terrible, and I was told they made a mistake but I think it's a horrible thing. I think the whole war is a horrible thing. I think the war is, for that war to have started,

is an abuse of power. You said they made a mistake, you were told they made a mistake. Do you mean it was unintentional? They made a mistake, I believe it was... Look, you're going to ask them. This is Biden's war. This is not my war. I've been here for a very short period of time. This is a war that was under Biden. He gave him billions and billions of dollars. He should have never allowed... If he

had any brain, which he didn't have and doesn't have, and now it's being proven, he wouldn't have allowed that war to start. I would have absolutely not. That war would never have taken place. But remember this, this is Biden's war. I'm just trying to get it stopped so that we can save a lot of lives. They happen to be Ukrainian and Russian lives. But all I want to do is get it stopped. The legislation providing for US military aid to Ukraine says at the discretion of the president, Donald Trump could stop this with a phone call. He could stop it this morning. Why do you suppose he hasn't?

Because of the divisions, because there is a strong component and one that seems to be gathering strength, which is saying that Trump and Witkoff are leaning too much, taking sort of Putin's speaking points and using them. I mean, it's all, you know, it's nonsense. These have been, the Russian position has been outlined so clearly all of this time. There's no doubt about it. This is not something that came up. It's been there well before Trump took office. But he has his friend who's doing the work, a lot of work, trying to build trust with the Russians, but there's now a gathering sort of force against that. And that's why he's trying to distance himself from this and say it's not my war, it's Biden's war, which is something Bannon told him to do from the beginning. Steve

Bannon said, you know, this will end up, you'll end up owning it if you go down the route by supplying it. And that's what Putin has asked for. Specifically, he said, look, if you want to get the thing moving, stop the intelligence sharing, stop giving weapons to Ukraine. Then we can talk about some sort of acceptable administration, UN administration of Ukraine that would allow elections to take place and a new government to form. But so far he doesn't move on those things, and so nor does, therefore, Russia. And the thing becomes, falls into stasis entropy.

Here's what Ukrainian President Zelensky said last night on 60 Minutes about this. This is Scott Pelley, the 60 Minute Anchor doing the translating. Chris cut number eight. I believe, sadly, Russian narratives are prevailing in the U.S. How is it possible to witness our losses and our suffering, to understand what the Russians are doing, and to still believe that they are not the aggressors, that they did not start this war. This speaks to the enormous influence of Russia's information policy on America, on U.S. politics,

and U.S. politicians. Not sure where he thinks he's going to ingratiate himself with the President of the United States with that? Well, you, I mean, the the the sites, the gun sites were quite clearly pointed at Witkoff. There's no doubt about that. That's the person he claims is too close to taking Russian speaking points and delivering them back to Washington. And he's interfering indirectly into the policy making of Trump by this. I imagine, you know, Trump is not a fool, he's smart. I guess he sees this exactly what he's doing and how, I mean, the Europeans, you know, who've been desperate to try and sort of get some sort of token NATO force inside Ukraine,

have persuaded Keith Kellogg to go along with this idea and to have them sort of sitting there as a sort of reassurance force for the future. It's a tripwire force is what they want because they want the war to go on. Right. Alstair, thank you very much. Boy, we're all over the place today and I appreciate the breadth of your knowledge and your patience in allowing me to take you from Iran to Ukraine to Israel to American monetary policy. Thank you, my friend. All the best to you. And to you. Thank you. Thank you. And coming up later today at 10 o'clock in the morning, Eastern Ray McGovern at 1130, Larry Johnson. At one o'clock, our friend Kivork Almasian, who used to be in Syria,

but is now in elsewhere in the Middle East, will be giving us the latest on Syria. And at three o'clock, Scott Ritter, Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. you