Judging Freedom - Dr. Gilbert Doctorow : Are US/Russian Negotiations a Waste of Time?

Episode Date: December 3, 2025

Dr. Gilbert Doctorow : Are US/Russian Negotiations a Waste of Time?See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Thank you. Thank you. Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Wednesday, December 3rd, 2025. Dr. Gilbert, Dr. O' will be with us in just a moment. Are the U.S. and Russian peace negotiations just a waste of time? But first, this. History tells us every market eventually falls. Currencies collapse. And look at where we are now. 38 trillion in national debt. Stocks at record highs defying gravity. So what happens next? Groceries, gas, housing, everything's going up. And this dollar, it buys less every day.

When the system breaks, your stocks won't save you and your dollars won't either. But one thing will. Gold. I've set it on my show for years. Gold survives collapse. Central bankers know this and billionaires know it. That's why they're buying more. Is it too late to buy or is it just the right time?

Call my friends at Lear Capital to find out. Ask questions. Get the free information. There's no pressure. And that's why I buy my gold and silver from Lear. And right now you can get up to $20,000 in bonus medals with a qualified purchase. Call 800, 511, 4620 or go to Learjudgeonnapp.com today. Gilbert, Dr. Rowe, a pleasure, my dear friend.

Welcome back, excuse me, to the show, and thank you for accommodating my schedule. Do we have any idea why the President of Russia spent five hours with the American President's business partner and son-in-law yesterday? And if so, what if anything was accomplished? Well, I think that he has high hopes of reaching an understanding. understanding with Donald Trump. They have had talks behind closed doors. After them, Trump seemed to reverse himself. And there were many, even in a close entourage of Vladimir Putin,

who said, no, this is a losing cause. But President Putin himself, nonetheless, believed that whatever Trump may be saying in public, it's to offset, to push back his many enemies domestically and abroad that did not really have varying his relations and intentions with respect to Russia. I think that the overriding concern of Mr. Trump is to separate Russia from China, to avoid the alliance getting any closer than it has over the past 10, 15 years of American, American sanctions, and most importantly, American surrounding the territory of Russia with missiles and with allies who were prepared to attack Russia.

That made Russia nervous and brought them together with the Chinese. Mr. Trump is doing his best to undo that, and we cannot mix up his policies with other parts of the world, which are less priority, for example, the Middle East and Gaza, or what he's doing now Latin America, his very warlike, hawk-like, and inhumane policies there have no bearing whatsoever on what he's doing in and with Russia because of its overarching global importance. Where was Sergei Lavrov in Brussels, right? I don't, I'm not aware that he arrived in Brussels. Well, or maybe I have the city wrong, but was there not a meeting of foreign ministers

to which he and Rubio were invited, and Rubio wasn't there, was Mr. Lavrov there? I don't think the Lavrov would have been here for the meeting that's going on today, which is a meeting of foreign ministers in NATO countries. They wouldn't have him there, but Rubio's not there, is he? No, he's not there. And that is being, it's not being dealt with with the seriousness of the merits. Here in European media, they may mention in passing that Rubio isn't there, but he has sent a deputy, so America is represented.

But this is the first time in ages, if not entirely, of all time, But the United States is not present at the meeting of foreign ministers of NATO. And the reasons are very important, as you and I suppose the audience is also aware. This is Mr. Trump's determination to keep Rubio away from the NATO allies, because he would surely be conspiring with them to cause further problems for Trump's peaceful. plan with Russia. Almost ridiculous that you have to keep your own Secretary of State away from these plans. Who is the de facto Secretary of State of the United States?

Is it Marco Rubio, who is vetted by the FBI and confirmed by the United States Senate? Or is it Steve Whitkoff, the fellow developer and former business partner of President Trump? Well, it hasn't been put in quite that to bold terms. After all, Whitkoff is not looking after Latin America. He's not looking after large parts of the world. His remit is for the Middle East and for Russia, which is the most important foreign policy issues on the plate of Mr. Trump. I think that we are witnessing the last days of Mr. Rubio.

He's doing his best not to get on the nerves of his body. in a public way, I think he understood that Kushner being present at the meetings in Geneva was acting as the spy for his father-in-law to see exactly what kind of monkey business Rubio was doing both on camera and off-camera to frustrate Trump's plans. But since he is so obviously in working against the policies of Trump's plans, but he is so obviously in working against the policies of Trump, I find it hard to believe that he would remain Secretary of State for very long. You know, our mutual friend and colleague Ray McGovern the other day on air, I don't know if you saw this, mimicked a conversation between Rubio and Trump, in which Rubio says, well,

I'm going to go and talk to Putin next week, and Trump goes, no, you're not. You're staying here. Well, I'm going to go to the NATO foreign ministers meeting next week. No, you're not. Send somebody else. Likely to have happened, given Trump's personality, maybe even in that tone of voice. Quite possibly. I think he's caught the sense of their relationship. The question is, how is this going to end up?

Is Trump comfortable with having an enemy so close to him that he can watch his every move and perhaps frustrate his doing it? or is he going to put in place somebody with whom he can live and work more normally? I don't know. With Trump, it's impossible to predict. All right. Tell me what you think of this and why you think it was said the very day that President Putin was planning to and did meet with Whitkoff and Krishna. Chris, a cut number 12. We are not planning to go to war with Europe.

I've said that a hundred times already. But if Europe suddenly wants to go to war with us and starts it, we are ready right now. There can be no doubt about that. The only question is, in what way? If Europe suddenly starts a war with us, I think it will be over very quickly. This isn't Ukraine. With Ukraine, we're acting in a surgical, careful manner. Right?

So that, well, you get. it, right? These are profound, profound statements, and I've been dying to hear your analysis of them. And that is a dramatic change in tone from Vladimir Putin. And it's not accidental or an empty statement. It comes because the Russians, among themselves, are talking about possible military confrontation initiated by the NATO countries in the coming days and weeks. As the situation evolves in such a negative way for the Europeans, a situation in Ukraine, now they are desperate to find a way to hold up the peace talks and to escalate or change the direction of the war to one more favorable to the outcome they're looking for.

And on the one side, you have this desperate effort to unfreeze the Russian assets and apply them to financing Ukraine for the next two years. On the other side, you have the speculation that one way or another, there's going to be a kind of Berlin showdown coming up. For example, there have been hints of this for the last few weeks that Lithuania will halt the grand. transportation links between main Russia and its enclave, Kaliningrad. That would be Akazza's belly. And there you have it. But Mr. Putin is not naming the location of where this next provocation or formerly speaking, a cause for declaring war would break out.

But he's forewarning the Western friends. that Russia will react. And the, but I think I've heard this part, I've heard part of this statement before, but not the last part that you've included, which I think is very, very important. When he says this will not be a long war, well, let's put that into simple English.

What he's saying, or restating, what Russians have been saying for some time, but never at his level, and never with such a clear reference, that any war with NATO will not be fought in the trenches. The Russians are not going to fight the way they are in Ukraine because they differentiate between the nature of the war. As many of my colleagues have been saying, the Russians view Ukraine, rightly or wrongly, that's a separate question. But they view Ukraine as brethren, and formerly speaking, they've tried to keep down the casualties.

Right. In the case of even though they have incurred casualties, which they could avoid if they were, if they behaved more aggressively and used heavier weapons and didn't care so much about civilian casualties. If they did that, the war had been over a long time ago, but they're not doing that. In the case of Europe, watch out. They will not pussyfoot. They will go straight to nuclear weapons. That is what he's saying.

So I'm going to play the clip again. Now, neither you nor I are shrinks, but watch his body language. Watch when he smiles. Watch when he smiles. Watch when he talks about the surgical war in Ukraine and the image of a surgeon holding a scalpel with his fingers. This is fascinating. I've never seen President Putin reveals so much with body language, at least to me. I mean, I'm not a body language person, but in my years on the bench, you listen to people testify and you have a good feel for what they're not saying. Chris, let's watch number 12 again.

We are not planning to go to war with Europe. I've said that a hundred times already. But if Europe suddenly wants to go to war with us and starts it, we are ready right now. There can be no doubt about that. The only question is, in what way? If Europe suddenly starts a war with us, I think it will be over very quickly. This isn't Ukraine. With Ukraine, we're acting in a surgical, careful manner.

Right? So that, well, you get it, right? Fascinating. Anger, humor, basically relaxed, but a very serious threat. How does London, Paris, and Berlin take a threat like that? this morning. Probably without as much attention as you're getting into it because you're doing something that very few people do. You have precisely called out body language. The thing that has struck me for at least two decades is that at least in American, a political analysis,

European political analysis, nobody does what you does them. And they're pretending that they don't see what's in front of them. Nobody saw the crooked smile on the vice president Chinese face. or try to understand whether that meant that he was rational or irrational. You have to look at body language. And what I see in the body language, we may not see the same thing, because finally it's quite subjective, but it has to be said. I see here enormous self-confidence. He's almost buoyant.

And he's because he's holding back what he could say, which is what I just said before, translated it into simple English, we will use nuclear weapons and destroy you at once. He doesn't say that, of course. He's still the head of state, and he's more reserved in his language. But the body language gives it away. What do you see? Well, let me ask you, I think I've asked you this before. The special military operation in Ukraine, is it going to end in a conference room or a battlefield? Unforeseeable. But I'm speculating now, and let's be honest, this is

I think from all of us who are trying to make sense out of the daily news that's coming in the flood. I am speculating on a political collapse, which is being engineered by Donald Trump. If nobody wants to give him a peace prize, considering the genocide that he's sponsoring in Gaza and other war crimes against the Boisleaving Venezuela, He isn't a nice guy, but what he's doing in the Russian-Ukraine war deserves enormous credit. And I say this with a certain idea in the back of my mind. I have reluctantly joined the opinions of Paul Craig Roberts in putting a thumbs down on why the war has been conducted since the beginning. and it comes to the point that you and I are now discussing.

What is humane and what is inhumane? Is it humane to conduct a war of attrition rather than enormous use of all that you've got and throwing everything you've got at once to finish the war quickly? I have been like almost everybody in the field. I have for three years. I've been hopeful that every time we approach the end of the war, it will come. And each time I've seen it recede like the horizon.

And finally, I say, Basta, enough of that. The war would continue forever if Mr. Putin is left to his own devices. And Trump is doing something of very great merit, which very few people around are going to give him credit for. I understand that. But so what? Putin wants to fight this and win a military victory. He will not. The Europe will not let him do it.

We will have a pan-European war before Russia can win the Ukraine. And the longer this goes on, the closer we approach a pan-European war. But a pan-European war would be very one-sided. What do France, Germany, and Great Britain have compared to Russia? Military. France has nuclear weapons. Britain has nuclear weapons. Of course, Britain's nuclear weapons are subject to approval by the United States for use because

they're on these submarines and the technology is American. The French have no such limitation. They're forced to frapp and their nuclear weapons are freely usable. Now, Russia may have wonderful anti-aircrafted air defenses. All it takes is one of these missiles to get through and you don't have Moscow and you don't have St. Petersburg anymore. So the situation is not so very simple of, I would say, an open and shut case that Europe cannot resist.

If Europeans are berserk, and I contend that most of the leaders of European countries should be in padded cells right now, then we could have a pan-European war. They're doing everything possible here in Brussels to overcome or get around Mr. DeVabre's veto on use of frozen assets. Yesterday, I understand maybe 20 or 30 billion

euros and Russian assets in other countries have been, are being applied to giving media assistance to Ukraine. Well, as I said, they're desperate here. Well, hasn't the European Central Bank effectively vetoed either the confiscation of the assets or the use of them as collateral for a loan? Not exactly. What they have done is they said they will not backstop. Backstop. this. You can do what you want. What does that mean? It means that if the loans are called and the Europeans have to pay up, the European Central Bank will not help them. That's to say, they will have to draw the funds directly from their own taxpayers at once. Look, let's be honest about, well, be honest. Not a question of being dishonest or honest. People are not talking about it,

from my standpoint, from the right angle. What's going on here in Europe and the whole story of using those Russian assets is to provide vast funds to Ukraine without the European taxpayers being aware that they're going to be hit for this. Wow. And the European Central Bank says it's not going to stand in between. You want to do it? You want to lose a court case. You will be bankrupted. And that's your own business. That's what the European... They will be bankrupted. They'll also be out of office and some of them might be in jail. It would be very nice if that happened. I can't say that the system of justice here in Europe is not so hopeless as one may think. Even if Mr. Sarkozy was released for his five-year prison term,

other people are facing even more serious prison terms who have occupied very high positions in the European institutions. And so the arm of the law in Europe is run along, it works very slowly, but it does grind fine. So some of these people who are about to violate all the rules of democracy by accepting debt that their parliaments have not been allowed to vote on, because that's what it comes down to. They will incur $145 or $185 billion in debt for which no European parliament has voted. Wow. Does the Chancellor of Germany, the Prime Minister of Great Britain, the President of France, each have the power under the laws of their country to incur such an indebtedness without going to their legislatures?

I think in Germany he doesn't have that right. In France, let's look at what they're French Constitution, which is different from any other constitution on the continent. President Macron, is essentially a king. He cannot be removed, even if he only has 11% approval ratings. And he can do it virtually whatever he wants. If you can't be removed, then you can do whatever you want. So, yes, he could get away with this. Wow. Gilbert, a pleasure chatting with you. The comments from the President Putin were very timely for our interview, and your thoughts on them are. very much appreciated. Thank you, my dear friend. We look forward to seeing you next week.

A pleasure. Thank you. Coming up at 11 this morning, Aaron Mate, at 2 this afternoon, Kivork al-Massian, our man in Syria. And at 3 this afternoon, Phil Giraldi, Judge Napolitano for judging freedom. Thank you.