Judging Freedom - MAX Blumenthal: Zelenskyy on the Ropes

Episode Date: February 20, 2025

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Thank you. Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Thursday, February 20th, 2025. Max Blumenthal joins us. Our late start was not Max's fault. It was a technical issue on my end, which the great Blumenthal helped resolve. But Max, welcome here. I'm glad you're here. Thank you for your patience. I know you're not stateside, and I deeply appreciate the time you've given us. I was going to read what Donald Trump wrote on Truth Social, but we all know what he said about the origins of the war, generally correct, not literally correct. We all know what he said about Zelensky, absolutely correct. What is the significance of this 180 degree turn in American foreign policy? A turn that even Donald Trump's closest advisers a month ago would have rejected?

And now they're all forced to defend it. I couldn't believe what I was hearing, not for the same reason that Donald Trump's domestic foes couldn't believe it. They treated his statement as possibly the most heretical thing that any sitting U.S. president has said in our lifetime. But I couldn't believe it because this was essentially what I've been trying to explain to the American public since 2022. And before then, since 2014, I and a small other group of Americans from my little corner of the internet have been trying to educate and warn Americans about the impending war with a nuclear-powered Russia that seemed inevitable after the Maidan coup, which was backed by the U.S., funded to the hilt by USAID and NED, and the annexation of Crimea that followed. And so to have a president acknowledge in his clumsy, typically sort of cretinous way, but to have him acknowledge that this war was the most provoked war in modern history. Of course, Zelensky didn't literally start it. He didn't invade himself. that this war was the most provoked war in modern history. Of course, Zelensky didn't literally start it. He didn't invade himself, but that the invasion was one of the most provoked wars,

the Russian special military operation in modern history was so remarkable. And once you start to understand that and examine the history, then the entire narrative of this brave, plucky little Ukraine fighting on the front lines of freedom for democracy as just a victim of a Russia that seeks to reestablish the Soviet Union, but in conservative right-wing form, it all falls apart in your hands. It disappears like USAID money sent to Kiev.

And that's what's happening now. The American public is starting to wake up from years of propaganda, war propaganda, and realizing that they've been hacked. And it was this lie that Putin's invasion of Russia was unprovoked. We heard it again and again in clockwork orange style with our eyelids peeled back from corporate media. Once that's understood to be disinformation and a lie, there's no support left for this project. And so that's what Trump has done. His opponents can call him a Russian puppet, claim the Kremlin hacked his brain, all they want. But we have been explaining this real history. And no American, especially the American military, the military brass, no American politician would have accepted what Russia was

expected to accept when after 2014, a hostile foreign power hand-selected the government, the leadership, right on its border, and then began a massive military buildup through a hostile military alliance, which aimed to, in the words of the Pentagon-aligned think tank RAND, overextend and unbalance Russia. That was the title of the paper that was released by RAND two days after Zelensky was elected in April 2019. Zelensky was elected with U.S. advisors. His ministers were from the United States. The whole country was run by the U.S. and NATO. And the U.S. would have never accepted something like that if Russia or China were backing a government in Mexico aimed at overextending and unbalancing America. The U.S. military would send B-52s to bomb everywhere between Calexico and Teotihuacan.

It would be a carpet bombing campaign like we've never seen before. They would topple the government. They would never allow it. But Russia was expected to allow this. And I mean, leading all the way up to the days before Russia launched its SMO and invaded Ukraine, what was happening? The OSCE was documenting a record number of violations of the ceasefire in the Donbass, almost all of them by the Ukrainian military. And then days before, because they were documenting those violations, the U.S. removes its observers and Zelensky's government and his military leadership announced that they will not re-engage in Minsk negotiations with the Donbass separatists while the population of the Donbass is under fire, and Putin finally moves in. And there's a whole history before then. But even

Jens Stoltenberg, who was the head of NATO, general secretary in 2023, admitted the same thing or said the same thing that Donald Trump said, but from an alternately opposite angle, when he said this war actually started in 2014. Those are his exact words, with the annexation of Crimea, and then when Russia went and took control over eastern Donbass. Max, if you were here, we're a few thousand miles apart. If you were here, I would hug you because everything you've said, you were a lone voice for many, many years before this show came on the scene. You've articulated it brilliantly, succinctly, and correctly. And if anybody wants to double check what Max just said, our mutual friend Scott Horton has written a book

that you and I have read and both of us endorsed called Provoked. It's 690 pages and it has 2,000 footnotes. It's inassailable and it demonstrates the detailed, boring, but detailed academic version of what Max just summarized. There were rumors in Washington, D.C. this afternoon. I can't report it as fact, but they're just rumors that Trump has ordered or is about to order that no further American arms be sent to Ukraine. Don't take Donald Trump on,

Mr. President Zelensky, because this is what will happen to you. Trump is right. Zelensky is a dictator. Trump is right about the reasons for the start of the war. Somebody around Trump or Trump himself has seen this alternate version. Question, can he get the American foreign policy establishment to turn on a dime the way he wants it to? Donald Trump is getting the American public on his side. He has, unlike in his first term, the civilian leadership on his side because he's installing loyalists. He has the Democrats on the back foot domestically. He's kind of like a kid and the Democrats are a bunch of fireflies in a jar and he's just shaking the jar. And it's very hard for them to respond cohesively to any one part of his agenda because so much is happening so fast. And with Ukraine, you have a country

like Israel or Taiwan, which isn't an actual country, that is so dependent on Washington and is so devoid of sovereignty that any cutoff in arms or aid is going to lead to massive destabilization. And I think we could see Ukraine descending into a kind of abyss if the arms fail to come, if the USAID money, which was, as former USAID director Samantha Power admitted, was paying Ukrainian teachers, pensioners, basically paying the entire government. If that gets cut off, the situation will deteriorate and the EU is not going to be able to fill the gap. Right. That was my next question. Yeah. I mean, what could happen first is Zelensky gets blamed. He leaned so hard on the Democrats and Biden and the Ukrainian government, but especially under Zelensky, interfered in American politics against Donald Trump. And the Ukrainian civil society groups

propped up by USAID and the NED participated in many ways in the narrative around Trump's impeachment and painting Trump as a Putin puppet. And so Zelensky could be blamed domestically by the group that fought hardest since 2014, the neo-Nazis and ultra-nationalists, the Azov types from Western Ukraine, for this defeat. He could be ousted. They're battle-hardened. They're tough.

And they lost a lot of casualties. So they'll bring out the stabbed-in- in the back narrative. They could overthrow him. Europe will fail to be able to do anything. Their economies have been battered. The liberal transatlanticist governments are losing right now. They're not going to be able to prop up Zelensky. So the state, the post-Maidan state could actually collapse. Yeah. So this afternoon, Scott Besant, who's the new secretary of the Treasury, basically said, if Putin doesn't come to the negotiating, if Putin comes to the negotiating table, we'll consider dropping the sanctions. Well, I thought that was an absurd, absurd statement. Prime Minister or Foreign Minister Lavrov was clearly there the other day, made a terrific presentation, and the Russians don't need the sanctions dropped, and Putin doesn't need any coercion. I think Besant is in over his head and didn't and should stay in his lane and really

didn't add anything by making a statement like that. Secretary Rubio said the sanctions will go away. They should go away immediately. The American businesses, according to Foreign Minister Lavrov, American businesses lost $330 billion in revenue due to the Biden sanctions, which are still being continued. Well, and Russians had around that number of stolen Russian assets, just simply stolen by the EU. Correct. was that the American consumer paid at the pump, and that led to higher inflation, and higher inflation led to higher interest rates. No one would talk about this publicly, but that was one of the main factors in inflation. So the America first position would be, let's end these sanctions and let the oil flow freely

and the gas flow freely to Europe as well. And if I may, let the vodka flow freely and the gas flow freely to to europe as well um and if i may let the vodka flow freely there's a hundred thousand bottles of stolechnaya in a warehouse at port newark which can't be sold and distributed in the united states and can't even be shipped back to russia they're just sitting i don't know who's paying for it but nobody's making money on vodka that's sitting in a warehouse. 100,000 bottles is a lot of vodka. Send it to Americans who can't afford eggs and can't afford woke Finnish NATO vodka. You know, let's give us some surplus vodka. But seriously, I mean, Trump, what could be happening with Venezuela as well? The sensible thing to do, the America first thing to do, the realist thing to do is Venezuela accepts its migrants and the Trump administration

relieves sanctions so Venezuela can refine its oil in Texas and Americans can have cheap oil again and Venezuela can have an economy so people won't want to flee Venezuela because they would rather be there at home. This would end two problems with one stone. Back to my question earlier, I fully agree with everything you're saying, but this requires a sea change in thinking of the foreign policy establishment from Marco Rubio on down, does it not? These people have all condemned Maduro and condemned Venezuela. They think the president of Venezuela is a grad student in Miami, for gosh sakes. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, Rubio is part of this repugnant class element in the United States of Cuban-American and Venezuelan upper middle class,

upper class, de facto war lobbyists who basically have used this country as a base to organize regime change operations against their former homes. And in the case of Venezuela, it doesn't serve any U.S. interest unless you are so ideologically zealous that you actually think that destroying that country's economy is going to end communism as we know it. And, you know, the Ukrainian, American and Ukrainian-Canadian lobby has played a similar role in the same way the Israel lobby has played. And so it's really up to the Trump administration. I don't think Donald Trump is quite articulate enough to do it, but it's up to the Trump administration to illustrate how these insidious elements inside

the United States have subverted U.S. foreign policy so that it is not putting America first. And I don't think, I don't know if they can do it, but they're going to have to because the U.S. media is fully on board with the interventionist agenda. And it hasn't, you know, it just hasn't served the American consumer well. It's maybe served contractors well and, you know, a part of the American economy. That's why Zelensky is constantly complaining that at least 50% of the money that's supposed to be allotted for Ukraine is just simply missing. It's all gone back into Northern Virginia and Colorado to the defense contractors. That's where it's going.

That's where it was intended to go. It's money laundering. Zelensky shot himself in the foot by complaining about the money laundering because Trump wound up using it against him. And this was brilliant on Trump's part. He actually illustrated how dumping billions of dollars into Project Ukraine is detrimental to the average American. But there's a whole class of Americans which are interwoven within U.S. corporate media and the Acela corridor who have so much skin in the imperial game that they're afraid, desperately afraid of what it will mean to end this war and end this gravy train.

I want to talk to you a little bit about Israel, if I might, does Netanyahu still want and need to resume the slaughter in Gaza? Netanyahu really served better by regional war. I don't think Netanyahu wants to re-enter Gaza, but there are other elements that do. And there is a momentum now, a very dangerous momentum that has led even Steve Witkoff, who's Trump's golf buddy, turned foreign policy problem solver, to warn that phase two looks daunting in the negotiations. Phase two is when the Israelis will have to leave Gaza. Their presence in Gaza will end. And Hamas is doing everything it can to facilitate phase two. It has offered all captives and hostages inside Gaza. Just let me interrupt you because I need you to educate me. Has phase two been agreed to, or does Witkoff still have to negotiate it between

Hamas and Netanyahu? It's been agreed to as a kind of benchmark, but as we know in these negotiations, all the benchmarks are fungible, according to the occupier in Israel. And one of the main reasons phase two could collapse, I mean, there are a lot of reasons, we don't have time, but most immediately, what happened today, the Bibas family. The remains were returned. Hamas handed them over. These are the remains of a young child and a mother. Yarden Bibas was let out, the father. And Yarden Bibas, when he was in captivity, delivered a video message. Obviously, it was, there was an element of coercion because he's in captivity, but he delivered a video message appeal to Netanyahu and the Israeli military, asking them to simply negotiate for his release. Hamas had already negotiated and wanted to hand him and the family

over so that he could bury his family with a proper burial inside Israel because Israel had killed them in an airstrike. The U.S. media, the Western media, refuses to tell the world that the Beavis family were casualties of the Hannibal Directive, like not only hundreds of Israelis on October 7th, possibly even the majority of Jewish-Israeli casualties, but also as many as 40 Jewish-Israeli captives inside Gaza. Noah Calderon, the niece of a hostage, I think his name is Ofer Calderon, who went on Israeli media and declared that the Israeli government under Netanyahu was deliberately killing the hostages under the Hannibal directive to deprive Hamas of negotiating leverage. And that's what happened to the Bibas family. But in Israel, the Jewish Israeli public and the broader Zionist movement is painting this as some ritual baby killing by Hamas, that they slaughtered this baby and are now handing them back. And the Western media and the

Israeli government colluded to prevent the Jewish Israeli public from learning the truth so that they would have this violent outpouring of emotion when the bodies were finally returned in order to upend the ceasefire before phase two. So there's a deliberate effort to sabotage. Hasn't Yoav Galant, the former defense minister and indicted war criminal, acknowledged that when he was defense minister, he ordered the employment of the Hannibal Directive and his orders were complied with? This was just yet another confirmation that the Hannibal Directive was employed on a mass scale, mass Hannibal, as a colonel serving under Galant, declared on October 7th. And we don't know how many were killed under it, but Yediot Aranoth, which is the most popular newspaper in Israel, reported that over 70 cars were shelled deliberately heading back

into Gaza by the Israeli military, by jets, by helicopters, tanks, many of them containing Jewish Israeli citizens. We know that houses were shelled by tanks in Kibbutz Beri, in other Kibbutzim. And we know that even an Israeli military base at the Erez Crossing was shelled by the Israeli military, killing many Israeli soldiers. But Galant is comfortable admitting this now because he's out of government. It's too late to do anything about it. And yeah, it looks as though a large number of the 1,200, 1,100 killed on October 7th were killed by the Israeli military. And keep in mind also that of that 1,100, at least 400 were active duty uniformed Israeli soldiers who were basically combatants. So they don't really count there. One last subject matter about Netanyahu, if I may. Is he attempting to fire

the head of Shin Bet because Shin Bet is investigating corruption in Netanyahu have been accused of being on the take from Qatar during negotiations. It's called Qatar Gate inside Israel. Qatar is seen as kind of like an enemy nation that Israel has to deal with. And it's Netanyahu's opponents who are attacking him. And their main point of attack is that Netanyahu had an underhanded kind of backdoor relationship with Hamas through Qatar, and that this relationship now appears to have been incentivized through some kind of bribery. I don't know what the details are, but it's just another case for the so-called gatekeepers in Israel, the intelligence, military intelligence apparatus, what's really the Israeli deep state to investigate, but they've been weakened so much after Netanyahu's tenure, which goes back with a brief interregnum all the way to 2009.

They're so weak. I mean, the Labor Party in Israel is dead. The Meretz Party is dead. Netanyahu's opponents, many of them actually come out of the Likud party. So I don't know where it can go at this point. But it will ultimately come to a head when there is a real October 7th independent investigation or parliamentary investigation in Israel. Max Blumenthal, my dear friend, thank you very much. Thank you for your passion. Thank you for your accommodating of our schedule. Thank you for breaking with where you are to educate us on all of this. And thank you for being so far ahead of the game. You should take a victory lap.

My best to you and Anya and your baby, and I hope we'll see you again stateside soon. Thanks a lot, Judge. Of course. All the best, my dear man. Travel safely. Thank you. A great human being who made an enormous sacrifice to be with us here at this time. Tomorrow, Friday, the end of the day, the end of the week, The Boys, the Intelligence Community Roundtable with Larry Johnson and Ray McGovern, 4 o'clock Eastern. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. Thank you.