Judging Freedom - Kyle Anzalone : Will Trump Dump Ukraine?

Episode Date: August 13, 2025

Kyle Anzalone : Will Trump Dump Ukraine?See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Speeds may slow above 35 gigabyte on unlimited plan. Taxes and fees extra. See Mint Mobile for details. Thank you. Thank you. Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Wednesday, August 13, 2025. Kyle Anzaloon joins us now. This morning on this program, Colonel McGregor, opined that the Ukrainian military is almost totally obliterated. Assuming that that's accurate, and there are many people who believe that it is, why should President Putin

be negotiating with President Trump for any kind of a ceasefire. He's within inches of victory. Well, I'm sure there's propaganda wins on the world stage for Putin for solving this at the diplomatic table rather than on the battlefield. And also from the Russian perspective, while the Ukrainian army is in trouble, it has cost a lot to get the Ukrainian army here. We're talking three and a half years of war at this point. Russia has suffered losses. Ukraine continues to cadetats inside of Russian territory. And so ending the war and Russia getting most are all of what it wants would, I guess, be a preferable end for Vladimir Putin. But I think the important thing is, is if the deal isn't good enough from the Russian side, that they are prepared to win this

on the battlefield. And the analysis from McGregor does seem to be fairly accurate at this point that the Ukrainians are in trouble and the Russians are taking some fairly unprecedented gains in recent days as far as the territory they're conquering. Do the neocons recognize this? Do Lindsay Graham and Tom Cotton and John Bolton and that crowd, do they recognize that their gambit in Ukraine, their proxy war to drive Vladimir Putin from office, has been a costly miserable failure? I'm guessing there's some differences in the group. The real fools like Lindsey Graham probably really do believe there's some potential for Ukraine to drive some Russian forces out of some Ukrainian territory. But largely they're just wrapped up in the

propaganda and the narrative. Lindsay Graham says, well, if we give Russia too good of a deal of Ukraine, then China's going to take over Taiwan. And so that's why he thinks we need to keep fighting. I also think for a lot of people that you mentioned there, particularly the lights of John Bolton, I don't think they really care if the Russians completely take over Ukraine. And in fact, from their perspective, they may see it as a trap for Vladimir Putin. The more Ukrainian territoryitates, the more people that are probably ethnic Ukrainians, they're going to be in the midst of the new Russian country, and there's going to be room for sabotage and that's a terrorism. I mean, this was the original plan of the deep state,

was Russia was going to win this war, but they were going to carry out Afghan-like operations. Hillary Clinton was talking about this on the night of the Russian. Russian invasion. That's going to be like Afghanistan. The Soviet war there all over again when we bought them down and we arm up and train some of the extremist fashions in Ukraine and really cause real problems for the Russians. I'm sure they'll be just happy to switch to that if the Ukrainian military completely collapses and the Russians take a large swat the territory. I wonder if what we're now about to play truly represents the view of Donald Trump and the Trump administration. You never.

know. You'll know who this is in a jiff. Chris, cut number nine. To your point about weapons, what we said to the Europeans is simply, first of all, this is in your neck of the woods. This is in your back door. You guys have got to step up and take a bigger role in this thing. And if you care so much about this conflict, you should be willing to play a more direct and a more substantial way in funding this war yourself. I think the president, and I certainly think that America, we're done with the funding of the Ukraine war business. We want to bring about a peaceful settlement to this thing. We want to stop the killing.

But Americans, I think, are sick of continuing to send their money, their tax dollars to this particular conflict. But if the Europeans want to step up and actually buy the weapons from American producers, we're okay with that, but we're not going to fund it ourselves anymore. I think this was largely a political statement, blithely unchallenged by my friend and former colleague. Maria Bartaroma, but he did say we're done with funding of the Ukraine war. Can that possibly be what Trump thinks? Do you think something like that was said as a prelude to the meeting in Alaska, or is the vice president just talking off the top of his head? Well, I think this is the policy that J.D. Vance wants. This is what he voted against the current Ukraine aid that was passed in April

2024 when he was still a senator. So I think he really does believe that. the U.S. should stop funding the war in Ukraine. And who knows what Trump believes, it seems to change from minute to minute. I think one important note is J.D. Vance does seem to have Trump's ear when it comes to the Ukraine war. He's actually, when they have the call or maybe going on right now between the European Zelensky and Trump, Vance is going to be on that call with Trump. Now, one of the things I want to point out here is that while what J.D. Vance says here sounds good that we one piece and that we're going to stop funding the war in Ukraine. He is still offering to let the Europeans buy American arms for Ukraine. And this seems to miss a fundamental point,

which is the American stoppiles are depleted. We don't have Patriot Interceptors or artillery rounds, key pieces of equipment to send to the Ukrainians. We've depleted our own stoppiles of these weapons. The Department of Defense, it has 25 percent of the Patriot interceptors it needs for America's own battle plans. And so the idea that we could continue this just by having the Ukrainians finance it simply doesn't work logistically with the weapons that the U.S. has in our arsenal. And additionally, Van seems to think that Putin is caving to some American pressure here due to sanctions. And if the U.S. and Trump go into the talks with Putin, thinking that we're going to exert leverage and concessions out of Russia, then I think

we fundamentally misunderstand the situation in Ukraine. Well, I think you're 100% correct on that, but I don't know which Donald Trump is going to Alaska. Is it the now neocon-influenced genocide funding, Ukraine financing, war-mongering guy? or is it the guy that ran for office three times saying he would end all wars and he hasn't ended any of them? You're right. He changes his mind all the time. We don't know which one's which one is going to show up. Kyle, about two hours ago. He threatened Putin and said if he doesn't stop the war soon, Russia will have hell to pay. What kind of a statement is that to make on the eve

of this momentous meeting? Yeah, it just goes to show that Donald Trump really doesn't understand geopolitics. I think from his position where he's used to negotiating real estate deals, these ideas that you could make threats and throw around your influence at the last minute is probably a way over the years that he's inflated his wealth and exacted, uh, exalted concessions out of people he was doing business deals with. But here he isn't the billionaire doing business on friendly grounds. Here he is inviting Putin to the U.S., yes. But Putin comes in, comes to America with the upper hand on the battlefield in Ukraine. And so him making these threats are unhelpful. I will say it may not be that big of a deal just because I think the Kremlin

understands where this rhetoric is coming from and understands the immaturity of American political rhetoric at this point in time. Do you think that Alaska will be substance or shadow play. I think it's not going to end up with much substance here. I think there's real potential for Putin to come away with a propaganda victory, appearing, you know, going to the table, meeting with the Americans, proposing something that to a lot of people, I think, is going to sound reasonable if the Russians are on the advance, not wanting to take more of Ukraine than the four regions that they've already in. That's maybe even giving a portion of the southern oblast and allowing those to saying Ukrainian hands, that might sound reasonable to people on

the international stage. And when the Americans, or even if Trump accepts it and then Zelensky later rejects it, are going to look like this is the problem at its side. And I think it's going to maybe hurt Trump's ability to try to sanction and tariff countries into breaking off business with Russia and encourage countries to continue to do business with Russia, even if there's a threat of economic penalty from the U.S. Who has the most to gain and who has the most to lose? Well, the Ukrainians had the most to lose, certainly. Well, you're right, okay, but they're not there.

Between, good answer, Kyle, very good answer. Between Trump and Putin, I think Putin has nothing to lose and Trump has nothing to gain, but you tell me what you think. Well, this is a key campaign promise of Donald Trump, and while we're certainly a long ways from 24 hours after he returned to the White House, ending this very, you know, complex war. It's a proxy war that involves dozens of countries on one side. You know, there's a lot of conditions here.

There's a lot of legacy issues, the NATO buildup over the year, NATO expansion towards Russia that will need to be addressed. So if Trump could come away with this meeting, have taken steps towards repairing the relationship with the U.S. Russian relationship and also starting to wind down the war in Ukraine. I do think it'll be a political victory here in the United States, especially as I think Americans are concerned that Trump's going to go one way or the other. He's either going to double down on the proxy war, which means we're in for more years of spending tens of billions of dollars to arm and fund

the Ukrainian government, or we're going to get out of this thing. And that seems to be what the American people want. Is Putin under pressure to end the war, whether it's from his right flank, Dimitri Medvedev, and those folks, or his intelligence community, or his general staff? I mean, remember, the CIA and MI6 is showing Ukrainian soldiers how to aim, target, and kill using American and British equipment, Russian soldiers. Right. And I mean, I've heard voices inside Russia, certainly the former president Medvedev being the most vocal calling for Russia to take a more hardline stance on the war in Ukraine. I'm not sure if Putin actually feels pressure, if it's maybe just some rhetoric. I often think that maybe Putin even uses Medvedev to be a Lindsey Graham-esque figure as far as portraying the Russian side kind of low-brow type rhetoric. just to kind of throw back into the Americans' face what is constantly thrown in theirs by American politicians. So I'm not sure Putin is under actual pressure to end the war, wrap it up or escalate it.

Though it sounds like there's not much left to the war, I know these military guys, Ritter, McGregor, Larry Johnson, I respect them and love them all. But they've been telling us for years the war's about to end, the war's about to end, the war's about to end. However, Colonel McGregor this morning on this program was about the most definitive I have ever seen him in arguing that the Ukrainian military, he used this phrase, Kyle, is virtually obliterated. And Hags Hethkins can send as much equipment as he wants there. A, that's dangerous because our supplies are low, but put aside that argument for now. B, there isn't the manpower to operate it. Yeah, and I think the U.S. is probably in another hard position here where in the past when the Ukrainian military was in real trouble when they are suffering setbats or any kind of actual successes that they had on the battlefield came after the U.S. injected new billions of dollars of military

support more upgraded weapons. Remember, at the beginning of this thing, we weren't even sending anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons, And now we've sent taints and aircraft and all kinds of long-range missiles and drones. And we've given the Ukrainians a lot of military equipment. And I think to the extent that we've armed Ukraine has been hard to predict. And this has really propped up the Ukrainian military and allowed it to fight on long past myself and, you know, all the analysts there that you mentioned said that the Ukrainians would be able to fight. But at a certain point in time, it does become obvious that particularly on the manpower issue, The Ukrainians are very stretched.

Also with missile defenses, I've covered in recent weeks a couple moves by Zelensky, one, to start to allow 60-year-olds to serve in the Ukrainian military. The idea is they serve in non-combat roles. Did you say 60? 60, 6-0, yes. They can serve in non-combat roles, and this is supposed to free up younger men to go into the front lines. They're also so desperate for air defense interceptors. They're now using agricultural aircraft or crop duster, strapping missiles on those and using those to shoot down drones. So it's pretty clear that the Ukrainian army is rad tag at this point and is really probably just being cobbled together with the will of the Ukrainian men in that army not to give up a more territory to the Russian invaders.

Okay. Let me transfer over to the Middle East where Donald Trump seems to show no awareness. of his complicity in war crimes, of a genocide in Gaza, genocide by the ethnic cleansing of Gaza and by starvation. Are you of the view that Trump controls Netanyahu or that Netanyahu controls Trump? Israel certainly has a lot of influence in American politics, and they seem to be getting everything they want at this point, even when it comes to the detriment not only of the American people, but also to the American president. I mean, look at the 12-day war that was fought in Iran between Iran and Israel in June. The American people wanted nothing to do that, but particularly Trump's own base, the Maga faithful, were 100% against that war. They wanted nothing to do with it.

And yet Netanyahu drew Trump into it. We end up carrying out a massive bombing run against the Iranians. It completely blew up any chance of negotiating. new Iran deal while Trump is in office with the Iranians. And so it was a massive setback for Donald Trump. And the president doesn't even seem to realize this. Now, in some ways, I do see how Israel benefits the American Empire and what the deep state wants by being a foothold in the Middle East and giving us an excuse to constantly meddle in the region. But certainly right now, we are giving Israel everything they want, even when it's at a large detriment to the U.S. Do you think that world opinion is beginning to recognize what Netanyahu was doing and the United States and Israel are becoming more isolated?

And if the answer to that is yes, and I'm going to guess it is. What good is that? If they're going to stop Netanyahu, the United States and Israel could be totally isolated. Is that going to stop him? No, it won't. And it does seem world opinion is increasingly against Israel. We've had four countries in the past two weeds, France, the UK. Canada and Australia all announced that they will recognize Palestine as a U.N. member state.

Of course, it's too late. Israel has already carved up the West Bank, taken, you know, cut it into pieces multiple times. And so there's really not a Palestinian state to be had at this point, but that is seen as a diplomat set back by Tel Aviv. And so you're seeing an increase in there. But as you point out, really, it only matters what the U.S. and Israel think when it comes to the U.S., really only the people in Washington, those on Capitol Hill, and President Donald Trump himself. And even if Maga, the Republicans, are increasingly opposed to what Israel is doing in Gaza, unless Trump shifts his position, then Netanyahu, I think, is going to have more or less a free hand to act in Palestine for the remainder of Trump's term in office.

You have a piece at Judge Knapp.com and elsewhere today entitled Netanyahu says, Palestinians will be allowed to exit Gaza. What Hutzpah? What is he talking about? They'll be allowed to exit Gaza. He's held them locked in an open-air concentration camp for all these nears. Now he's saying, well, by the way, we're taking it over completely and you can leave? Right.

The Gaza Strip is under complete siege by Israel right now. Israel controls all borders, including the border crossing with Egypt. They set up buffer zones around all of Gaza and forbid the Palestinian from entering the Mediterranean seat. There is simply no way a Palestinian could get out of Gaza at this time without being shot by the IDF. They're bombing them every day, killing them by the hundreds, killing dozens of aid seekers every day. The official count from the Gaza Health Ministry is now over 1,800 Palestinian aid seekers have been killed as they are trying to reach the GHF distribution sites over the past 10 weeks.

It's an absolute onslaught in Israeli-created hellscape in Gaza right now where the people are suffering every day. And Israel and particularly Benjamin Netanyahu put it forward to the world as if the Palestinians, if they would want to leave, it would be voluntary migration. We're actually doing them a service by allowing them to leave. Not that these people want to stay in their homeland and are being ethnically cleansed, which is the reality. But this is the way that Netanyahu is trying to put it forward. Senator Bernie Sanders calls statements like the one you just quoted and paraphrased disgusting lies. And that's Netanyahu's moniker today. We had an Al Jazeera journalist on, not live, but a quote that he gave, listing all of the Israeli lives.

Chris has posted it. There it is. All of Netanyahu's lies about nearly. everything, including the origins of October 7th, right up to this one that you just are articulated. Carl, thank you very much. Thanks for accommodating my schedule. I know we move this around a little bit.

And thank you for allowing me to go back and forth on all these different topics. A great interview, my friend, terrific interview. I appreciate your time. Absolutely. Thanks for having me. Sure. We'll see you again soon. On coming up tomorrow, Thursday at 8 in the morning, I know he's usually here on

but this week on Thursday. Professor Gilbert Doctor O at 11 in the morning, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson at 315 in the afternoon, Professor John Mearsheimer. Judge LaPoitteau for Judging Freedom. Thank you.