Judging Freedom - COL. Douglas Macgregor : Why Threaten Venezuela?

Episode Date: December 11, 2025

COL. Douglas Macgregor : Why Threaten Venezuela?See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Thank you. Hi, everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Thursday, December 11th, 2025. Colonel Douglas McGregor joins us now. Colonel, welcome here, and thank you for the beautiful Christmas tree over your left shoulder in your lovely home. I want to talk to you about the failures of U.S. diplomacy in Russia, in Israel, and Venezuela, and then delve a little bit on why threatened Venezuela now.

But can we start with NATO? You predicted on this show and elsewhere in 2022 that NATO would be fragmenting soon. It's now happening. Why is that, Colonel? Well, people tend to forget that the NATO alliance or the North Atlantic Treaty Organization itself was originally a purely defensive alliance.

and it's organizing strategic imperative was effectively to prevent the soviets from ever trying to conquer the rest of europe we forget that at the end of the second world war which we tout as our great victory 50% of europe was in the hands of the communist party of the soviet union so our victory was was not by any means complete and a lot of people didn't even regard it as a true victory because we'd lost half the continent people began asking why why did we we do as we did at the time. There are a lot of questions that came up, but the answer was NATO. And, you know, I think it worked well as a defensive alliance when it was required.

But after 1992, 93, there was no requirement for it. And most Europeans knew that. And so the next question was, how do we keep the Americans in Europe and engage? That was the view of the French, the British, and Germans. And at the same time that we were trying to keep them there, you had Congress that said, well, this is going to result in a dramatic cut in defense spending. So how do we keep the Europeans engaged with us? And the outcome was this famous statement, you're either out of area or NATO is out of business.

NATO should have gone out of business, but it didn't. When the Kremlin withdrew from and then ended the Warsaw Pact, Why didn't the U.S. leave NATO then? Well, I think the answer is that we did not want to give up what we widely regarded as an important part of our empire. I think the best way to look at Europe as an element of importance to the United States from a vanity standpoint is to go back to the Roman Empire. Originally, the Greeks invited the Romans to come in and help them throw out an enemy who was from Macedonia. one of Alexander the Greatest descendants. And the Romans agreed to do that.

They came in. The Romans threw them out. Then the Greeks began to fight amongst themselves. So the Romans said, enough of that. You're now going to become part of the empire. And under the rules of the empire, you're going to supply us with two legions, Greek legions, organized, trained, and equipped exactly like the two Roman legions that are currently in Greece.

And so the Greeks overnight became part. of the roman empire now they were not all that unhappy judge as you can imagine because greco roman culture there's a reason we call it greco roman and the romans revered the greeks right but having said that it's very similar in europe we we regard europe as the fountain head of our civilization where water is purest at its source but over time it became something else it became a very inexpensive ADT. You know, you're familiar with the ADT home alarm system that's been very successful across the United States. Well, if you want ADT to protect you, you know, you have to pay a bill.

They'll send you a bill. They'll install it, and then you pay them on a monthly basis. Well, we installed ADT. It was called the United States Armed Forces with some supporting or augmenting local European military strength. But we didn't charge anybody anything. And so finally, you know, Trump became president back in 2016. And one of his immediate comments was, well, we're paying all of this money and the Europeans aren't playing their role.

Well, I think it's finally come around to the point where, thanks to the Ukraine catastrophe and the failure of the NATO alliance to operate effectively, he said, enough's enough. And we're not going to do it anymore. So if you want ADT, you're going to have to pay up. but we all know that their financial condition is as bad, if not worse, than our own. Well, is Europe collapsing today under the leadership of Macron, Starrmer, van der Leyen, and Merritt's?

I think you can argue that it's going through a disintegrative process. And we say collapse. Did the Soviet state collapse? Yes. Did Russia collapse? No. Russia remained, but the Soviet state collapsed. And I think we're seeing the globalist structure of power, that is collapsing.

And ultimately, they will be replaced, but Europe will survive. The question is, who comes to power next? And what are they going to do to save Europe from the ruins? And that's an important question. I can't answer that at this point, but I think that will happen. But these people are crazy enough to think that they can save Ukraine. from the ruins by continuing the war effort that they cannot fund. They can't borrow.

They can't tax any more than they've already taxed without being thrown out of office. And thanks to the Belgians basic understanding of property law, they can't steal the bank accounts. Well, listen, I think you're right, but I would see it a little differently. I think President Trump has sent the message that we are not going to commit forces. our role in this process is going to be diminished. I think he's finally come around to understanding that the Russians are going to stick by their basic requirements, which means a neutral Ukraine without any foreign military influence or presence, they're not going to accept another puppet as the leader in Kiev,

somebody like Zalusini, sitting in London, who's being groomed as the next Zelensky in Kiev. by the MI6 of the British government. They'll never accept it. And he's already told them, I'm not going to send any more equipment. Nothing is coming free of charge. So if you want to continue this, well, tell us what you want and we'll send it provided you pay for it. I think the message is unambiguous.

It's over. It's finished. And I think the next question is not going to be, where do we go from here and how do we keep this thing going? I think the question is soon going to be, who? lost Ukraine. Now, the truth is, you and I know that we don't own Ukraine. It never belonged to us. And that's kind of a dumb question. But that's going to be the focus of attention. And the neocons and globalists are all going to pile in judge. And they're going to say,

we lost Ukraine because we didn't stay with it to the bitter end. And Trump will blame Biden and the finger pointing will go back and forth and back and forth. If you read the NSS, it's almost a remarkable transformation on the part of Trump in 11 months in office vis-a-vis Ukraine. If you read the NDAA, the National Defense Authorization Act, at least the version that was passed by the House of Representatives last night, there's 400 million more for Ukraine. Now, that is a pittance compared to what came out of the Biden administration, but it's a lot of case. Why are we sending cash to the most corrupt regime in Europe that is teetering on the brink of collapse?

Well, twofold. First of all, people on the hill have enriched themselves as a result of this war. Their donors, the industries, the lobbyists, everyone who supports this endeavor has found a way to pay off the politicians. And remember, the same people that are anxious for us to bring us. remain in a state of war in perpetuity with, say, Iran or anybody else Israel doesn't like, are the same people who are pushing the war in Russia. And by the way, I think you can identify most of the same players pushing for war in Venezuela. Yes. So that's part of the problem. The second part, and this is a wonderful opportunity, by the way, for the president of the United

States, though, I don't think he's really figured it out yet. And that is to veto the bill. because we can't afford it. We really can't. We are an empire that is on the verge of total bankruptcy. All the shell games that Mr. Besant can come up with, every effort that the Fed makes, none of it is going to retire the $38 trillion debt. And we cannot grow out of this.

And that doesn't even begin to address the private debt. We're just talking about the public debt. No one talks about all of the money. being sent through the repo window to various private equity funds to keep them afloat. Private equity is in a lot of trouble. The bottom line is this is a good opportunity for the president to say no. This is a very courageous and thoughtful argument that you make. I haven't heard anybody make it, and I wish, because I know some people in the West Wing watch this program,

they will pass on to the president your argument that we cannot afford. another trillion dollars for the Defense Department, and we don't need it. Colonel, we're going to get to Venezuela in a minute. Colonel Wilkerson says we're spending a billion dollars a day to house the 20,000 troops, and God knows how many ships, it's at least a dozen, including the largest aircraft carrier in the world. I want to move on to Russia. Do the Russians take seriously diplomacy conducted by two real estate, agents? I think the Russians are polite, but in principle, the answer is no.

I mean, stated differently, does Marco Rubio, when you said these are the same people that want us supplying Gaza, disrupting Venezuela, fighting in Ukraine, I was going to say, can you spell R-U-B-I-O? Does Marco Rubio want the Ukraine war? to end soon? And do he, does he and do his neocon buddies somehow think that Ukraine can miraculously be saved at this point by some whatever from Europe or the United States? Well, whatever these people truly believe is a mystery to me. I don't know. I can't answer that. I think they want to sustain what they think is harm to Russia. They refuse to believe that Russia is not being harmed. refuse to believe that the Russian economy is not suffering. They refuse to believe that Russian losses are compared with what Ukraine has taken almost 1.8 million dead at this point in uniform

are minuscule. So we have to have to keep in mind these are ideologues that are consumed with hatred for Russia, consumed with hatred for everybody Israel doesn't like, consumed with hatred for Maduro and Venezuela and, you know, this idea in the back of everyone's minds that if you destroy Venezuela and its capacity to sustain or support or help Cuba in any way, then you're doing the Lord's work. So these people aren't rational. These are not rational views. None of these views comport with any serious objective assessment of what is in the interest of the American people in the United States. So I think that's the best we can come up with. And I don't see any evidence that's going to change. And the interesting part is, Judge, you know, you and I watched

President Trump when he ran for election the first time and the second time. And I don't think his views have really changed personally. I mean, he may have wandered sometimes off the track in foolish directions. But, you know, he's president. Lots of presidents do that. But I think his basic position that I knew when I saw him in November, December of 2020 on NATO and on foreign policy in general, I don't think it's changed at all. So the question you have to ask yourselves, who were the donors that imposed on President Trump, this man, Rubio, and his contingent? Mrs. Adelson, Dr. Adelson, I believe she's an MD. Sheldon Adelson's surviving wife, who, according to Scott Ritter and others on this show,

said to Donald Trump, $100 million legally into a political action committee for you, make Marco Rubio your vice president. Trump said, I can't stand the man. No way would he be my vice president. Then she said, give him the next best, make him secretary of state. He's an expert. I'm doing air quotes in foreign affairs, particularly Latin America, and that apparently carried the day. Now, when Rubio says, I'm going to Moscow to talk to Lavrov, the president says, no, you're not. Jared and Steve are going. Okay, I'm going to Geneva to meet with the other foreign ministers of NATO. No, you're not.

The Secretary of the Army is going. So what is Rubio doing? He's worried about the font. I'm not making this up. The font sizes on the official documents that come out of State Department. Well, if what you say is true, I think that's a great. focus for mr rubio before he

focuses on that the safer I feel look this is something else this is called late stage empire behavior you're talking about a government that is confused the policy making process has broken down everybody knows

that the lobby owns Congress now does Congress have other interests other than whatever APEC tells them to focus on of course they do and there are other lobby You know, the pharmaceuticals, we can get out on the list. The problem is that everybody on the hill is bought and paid for. So whenever they do something, they do it under duress or they do it at the direction of their donors.

This is what President Trump deals with. Now, he's in a similar position. He's constrained because he took a lot of money from a lot of people, not just Mrs. Adelson. There are many other billionaires out there that have effectively reserved certain political positions for themselves with President Trump. Trump. That's very obvious. That's obvious in the Middle East. It's obvious in the Caribbean. It's obvious in Ukraine. The empire is falling apart, is the point. We have far, far more important business here at home, which incidentally, President Trump is trying to address. He is. In some cases, he's having success. In a lot of cases, he isn't, largely because his attention is diverted into too many different events and activities, most of which, Judge, don't matter to us. as Americans. You have written that empires bleed out slowly from self-inflicted wounds and unpaid bills. You have also opined that empires cannot be debtors.

That's right. And we all know the magnitude of the debt. You mentioned that a few minutes ago. It was the American Empire at the end of its rope. Yes. And I think the best way to think of it is to, for your audience, if they could read this, is to go back. just raise it up a little bit there you go paul kennedy wrote this many years ago the the rise and fall of the great powers in an effort to address exactly what you just mentioned that i've talked about and interestingly enough i was teaching at west point when the book came out my my roommate at the time the person who was sharing my office he was very very disturbed by it and he rightfully told me he said i think we're on this path i at the time was more optimistic. And I said, well, you know, Reagan's only gotten started. Maybe

something good will come out of the Reagan administration. We can find ways to disentangle ourselves from overseas, but we're still financially viable. Well, that's true. But we were already starting down a path of overspending and overextension what Paul Kennedy called imperial overstretch. Well, we've long since gone beyond that judge. Everybody that you bring on that has any knowledge whatsoever of the United States government and how we operate, whether it's John Kyriaku or Larry Wilkison, Larry Johnson. How do we end up with all these Larrys? Anyway, the point is, you know, John Mearsomer, everybody knows this. The average American hasn't really been asleep, but the average American has to work. He has to put food on the table. So when he says,

well, I'm making $50,000 a year, which 50 years ago was 11,000. thousand dollars a year and he finds out that his house that he's in now costs 15 times what it did when he was earning 11,000 that his car is 30 times more expensive than it was when he was earning 11,000 in other words the slight increase in his wages are not going to keep up under any circumstances with uh you know his needs and his buying power in other words his purchasing power is in the toilet. Yet we have all these people at the top of the structure who are making millions, hundreds of millions, even billions.

And they're the ones that own the government. The people at the bottom, they have little or no say. So they say, well, there's nothing I can do and they go back to work. Well, that will last much longer. The president's own drug enforcement administration, if you go to their webpage, says that there is no cocaine, or fentanyl coming from Venezuela. You and just about everybody else on this show have opined that Venezuela poses no

national security threat to the United States. In my view, the federal government of the United States of America committed an act of piracy when it seized a Venezuelan vessel destined either for Cuba or for Iran. Where is this going? Well, I think you remember that President Nixon at one point stated, if the president does it, it's not illegal. Now, he wasn't the first president to say that sort of thing or behave that way. FDR was involved in that too. But the point is, it didn't work out well. And frankly speaking, the new pirates of the Caribbean movie that were filming down in the Southern Caribbean is a disaster.

I'm sure somebody will come forward and say, well, we discovered drugs on board that oil tanker. Good luck. I have no idea. But this whole thing is a farce. Is military power the right way to gain access to Venezuela's resources? Well, I think since the president of Venezuela has offered us a stake in those industries, we should take it and we don't have to go to war with them. On the other hand, if you are Secretary of State Rubio and you are convinced that Venezuela, the Mexican drug cartels, and the Cuban government are all inextricably intertwined, and your long-term goal is to lead a military crusade to, quote, unquote, liberate these countries from all these problems, then I guess anything you do at this point is legal. and I think that's what's being whispered into President Trump's ears. He ought to stuff his ears with something other than the words coming out of Rubio. Yeah. And I guess General Kellogg has gone or on his way out,

but who is whispering into President Trump's ear of the word, Vietnam, before he decides to invade Venezuela? I mean, does he think this is going to be a walk in the park on a Sunday afternoon? I think he's probably being told that, yes. And again, everybody forgets that when we initially went into Vietnam in 1965, the first Marines and then soldiers that landed there, they all looked around and said, okay, now what do you want us to do? They didn't meet with any resistance.

Nobody met them on the beach. And then there was a frantic search for an objective, find some concentration of the so-called enemy that you could attack. And so after they found something nearby, they made the march, whatever it was, 40, 50 kilometers, and began operations against a concentration of the enemy. And so began the war. You could have something similar to that to happen in Venezuela. I don't know. The Venezuelans could just sit there and let you come ashore and invite you into the country.

And then your true hell on earth really begins. But we don't know what's being told to the president. I have no idea. And again, in fairness, too, it may not make any difference what the senior military leadership advice is. Yeah. We'll go on to Vietnam no matter what. In other words, we'll go into Venezuela no matter what. So shut up, General, and tell me how we can do this.

Well, he has a Secretary of Defense who just, you know, when Trump says jump, basically says how high. We know that. I mean, quick draw Pete is just only too anxious to become an armchair. Commander, you can tell me how the senior military would react to Heggseth, directing them to go somewhere that they know is not going to be fruitful. But I've got to play a little clip because you mentioned this. This will bring back memories. President Nixon saying what you said, he said. Well, when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal by definition.

Exactly. Exactly. If the president, if, for example, the president approves something, approves an action because of the national security, or in this case, because of a threat to internal peace and order of a significant magnitude, then the president's decision in that instance is one, that an those who carry it out to carry it out without violating a law. What about the first eight amendments, Mr. President? Well, there's no sense debating how many angels are on the head of a pin, but you're right. That is the argument that President Trump's people embrace. What do you think will happen if we invade Venezuela and try and put in this lady Machado to replace President Maduro.

Well, before we completely leave the previous segment, I think it's important to understand that the imperial presidency, which is what you're talking about, that's been with us for a long time, is probably at the end of its lifespan. And I say that because increasingly Americans want to hear directly from the president what it is that he's trying to do

and what it is he's trying to accomplish. It would be who've president, Trump to talk to the American people. I'm not talking about going around to rallies filled with the MAGA enthusiasts. I'm talking about speaking very quietly to the American people. I've considered this. This is what I see is the problem. I have tried to find other ways.

There's got to be some of that. If he fails to do that and he simply takes action without regard to how the American people think and feel, it will be a disaster because right now we know the polling is very very obvious the polling is 70 opposed to any action against venezuela only 30 percent of those polls those polls support it and if you go back to 1939 and 1940 to the lend lease period when president fDR what president rosevelt wanted to supply the british there was enormous opposition to it in the united states it was majority against doing anything for the british he gave a presentation. He talked about your neighbor's houses on fire. If it's on fire,

you hand him a hose and turn on the water and help him put the fire out. Well, that may sound simplistic, but it resonated. And suddenly, the pulse swung in direction of helping the British. Now, let's come to the current environment. If he simply goes into Venezuela, I suspect that he's to stir the proverbial hornets nest i think this will become a regional disaster why because there are lots of people who will chip in and support venezuela in its fight against us because their view is this is a repetition of history this is the evil north american yankee and his army coming down or marines whatever it is to intervene to install their puppet and they're not going to accept that. I don't think it's going to work in Venezuela. I think the majority of people there will

not support the forcible installation of Machado. And even more important, how do you do that? How do you get to Venezuela? We've got what, 15, 16, 17,000 ground troops in Puerto Rico. I'm told that they are the stabilization force. Well, the stabilization force, judge, comes in when things calmed down. You're not marching into a war. I don't think that's going to be the case. And they'll be the foreign force that is there to keep Machado in power. Well, what happens in the rest of the country with a population of between 28.5 or 30 million, depending upon who you talk to in the size of France, Germany, and Austria in terms of geographical range combined? What are you going to control?

How much influence are you going to wield? How legitimate is this new government that you want to install going to become? Now, remember, we were talking about the military. We haven't talked about the CIA. and the various intelligence operatives that have been trying to change the government down there for 20 years. They failed. What's changed since they failed in the past? The answer is nothing. Well, Colonel, thank you for a great analysis across the board, philosophical, historical, and very, very practical. And look for, I appreciate all of your time today.

look forward to seeing you next week, my dear friend. Sure. Thank you, Judge. Thank you, Colonel. And coming up later today at 2 o'clock on all of these topics, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson at 3 o'clock. I think he's still in Italy, but I'm not sure. Pepe Escobar at 4 o'clock, Scott Ritter. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom.

Thank you.