Judging Freedom - Pepe Escobar : Does Trump Understand Russia?

Episode Date: August 20, 2025

Pepe Escobar : Does Trump Understand Russia?See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

You know what doesn't belong in your epic summer plans? Getting burned by your old wireless bill. While you're planning beach trips, BBQs, and three-day weekends, your wireless bill should be the last thing holding you back. That's why millions have made the switch to MidMobil. With Mint, you can get the coverage and speed you're used to, but for way less money.

And for a limited time, MittMobil is offering three months of unlimited premium wireless service for $15 a month. So while your friends are sweating over data overages and surprise charges, you'll be chilling, literally, and financially. All plans come with high-speed, data and unlimited talk and text delivered on the nation's largest 5G network. This year, skip breaking the sweat and breaking the bank. Get this new customer offer and your three-month

unlimited wireless plan for just 15 bucks a month at mintmobile.com slash john. That's mintmobile.com slash john. Use your own phone with any mint mobile plan and bring your phone number along with all of your existing contacts. Up front payment of $45 required equivalent to $15 a month. Limited time new customer offer for first three months only. Speeds may slow about 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 20th, 2025. My dear friend Pepe Escobar joins us from somewhere in northern France. Pepe, it's a pleasure. I wish I were with you, but thank you very, very much for joining us.

You have a fabulous Thank you. God bless you. You have a fabulous piece out this week called What Happened in Alaska, and that's the essence of what I want to talk to you about. So let me build up to the dana maul of what happened in Alaska. After listening and watching President Trump being lectured to by President Putin for about 150 minutes on the genesis and causes of the special military. Does the Kremlin believe that finally Trump understands the Russian mentality and the Russian history? It's very hard for anybody apart, I would say, from the three in the room and the other members of the Russian delegation that were also in Alaska, like Siduano, the

Minister of Finance, and Belosov, the Minister of Defense. In the room, for instance, Lavrov, which is the number one diplomat on the planet, who knows the dossier back and force, if he had 10 minutes, Lavrop could have explained to Trump everything that has been happening in Ukraine

even before Mayden in 2014. Of course, there are no illusions in most. And when we talk to very good sources, think tanks, and people close to the high echelons of power in Moscow, maybe Trump is starting to get the big picture, but nobody knows for sure. The way the whole choreography, the way he treated President Putin, and the way that's the big story, the United States treated Russia as a peer power. for the first time in decades. This is already enormous.

And of course, it's very much appreciated by the Kremlin and in Moscow. But from now on, they know that the pressure, not only over Putin, but over Trump, especially over Trump, is going to be even worse than it was so far. Starting with that by now historic meeting on Monday in Washington, between Trump and the coalition of the thwarts or the coalition of the impotent or the coalition of the moralists or the coalition of the school girls and schoolboys. So this is going to- He treated them. He treated them like school boys and school girls. Absolutely. He put them out of the Oval Office and let them stand in a hallway for 45 minutes

while he supposedly spoke to President Putin. We don't even know if the conversation occurred. And then when they came back in, they sat around this desk. like he was the school principal who had called them in to admonish them. I'm surprised that some of them even went for that. But what did they think they were going to accomplish? Did they think they were going to talk him into ramping up the war and disregarding the goodwill that was generated from Alaska? They actually believe in that, Judge,

because they live in a bubble, in a parallel reality, in an alternative reality, completely conditioned by a cognitive dissonance. where they think that they are still going to be able to inflict strategic defeat, their own terminology on Russia. Even though now the strategic defeat is inflicted by Russia on the whole collective fragmented West, and that's one of the reasons why Trump wants out. Our good friend Ray McGovern,

the shortest, brilliant definition of what's going on, Trump is trying to apply lipstick on a pig and what is the pig the pig is the strategic defeat pig and the lipstick I say again the pig is what the pig is the

strategic defeat pig essentially and the lipstick of course is Trump posing as the peacemaker of course he has designs on the that's an obsession

in fact, a personal obsession, the Nobel Peace Prize, and at the same time, to extricate the U.S. from a war that is already lost and concentrate on the next forever wars. And we all know what does that mean. And at the same time, transfer the costs, the full cost of the war from now on to Europe, to NATO and Europe. But, Judge, there's something extremely schizophrenic in play. This doesn't mean that the United States will extricate.

itself from a war that they initiated against Russia, using the proxy Ukraine, and using Europeans as well. Because NATO is essentially an American mechanism. It's not going to be destroyed by the U.S. It might implode in a very short term. And the implosion of NATO will go in parallel with the implosion of the EU. Now, NATO and the EU, they face the ultimate dilemma. They want to keep their forever war against Russia. But now they have to pay the full cost of that war and the weapons, the superfactorated weapons by the Americans with money that they don't have.

Well, that's my next question. They can't afford to replace the United States. If Trump pulls out all of the Joe Biden-era aid, under the law it's subject to the president so he can pull it out where are Mertz and Starmar and Macrona and von der Leyen going to get the cash from to supplant

to replace it? They can't. They'll have to go to international banks have gigantic loans with mongo's interest rates. They'll never be able to roll over this debt.

None of the full NATO EU and NATO and EU members can afford it, and most of them are already deeply in debt. The U.S. doesn't have these weapons, this tsunami of weapons. NATO is already being demilitarized steadily by Russia for three and a half years now. And, of course, this does not even take into account the collapse of the front lines, which is now, we would say, in the first stage and in the next stage, two months is going to get to the second, third,

four stage, maybe until the end of the year, the total collapse all along the over a thousand, a kilometer long front line. How was Alaska perceived by the Kremlin, by Russian oligarchs and elites,

by ordinary Russian people? By ordinary Russian people, as Russia is back as a superpower. By the Kremlin, considering the takes by Ushakov himself, by Siluanov, by Belosov, even by Dmitri Peskov later on, Kremlin's spokesman, they all consider it excellent and perhaps the beginning of a reset of strategic relations between U.S. and Russia. For the oligarchs, this is a much more complex story. They hope that this is the beginning of back to business in terms of American oligarchy and Russian oligarchy working together and profiting together.

For example, in the Sakalin one gigantic gas project in the Sakalin Islands, ExxonMobil had to leave because of the sanctions, the other two companies in the consortium, one Indian and one Japanese they stayed. Rosneft, the Russian side as well. So now one of the big questions in the Vladivostok Economic Forum, which is going to be two weeks from now, exactly, will be to Rosneft executives. Are you ready to start working with ExxonMobil again? This is a big, big, big business question in Russia. Are there any circumstances under which the Russians,

would accept what Trump either hinted at or said directly on Monday because President Macron repeated it on national television, that the U.S. would use military to support Ukraine's security guarantees in a post-S.MO Ukraine world. Would the Russians accept? German, British, French troops on the ground and American planes in the air under any circumstances? Absolutely not, Judge. This is pure spin by the coalition of the school kids. Of course not. And this is part of all the conditions that have been established by putting himself for over a year now, June, from June last year,

demilitarization of Ukraine, no NATO in Ukraine, and no NATO in Ukraine means no NATO member troops or weapons in Ukraine, period. This is part of the absolute red lines from Russia. And of course, Putin knows that he cannot go against the red lines that he himself outlined over a year ago. In Russian public opinion, they know all of them by heart. And obviously he didn't promise any of that sort to Trump and to the Trump 2.0 team. Not at all. So what the Europeans are trying to do, of course, the Europeans are now in a very advanced already sabotage campaign against any possibility of not a deal, but the beginning of some agreements between Putin and Trump. Starting with the possibility of this trilateral, which in itself is completely absurd.

Because Trump and Putin will be meeting an illegitimate president as illegitimate as his parliament, the Rada in Kiev, and many of them accused of war crimes. And from the Russian point of view, they are all war criminals. So there's absolutely no point in a trilateral like that. So Putin will never sit down in the same room with Zelensky, no matter what Trump says. That's a very complicated question, Judge, because we don't know what kind of carrots, in fact, Trump would be offering Putin for this trilateral to take place. The way Zelensky is seen by the Kremlin, by the intel agencies, by the Russian Ministry of Defense, everybody is as a war criminal. So from their point of view, there's no negotiation with the war criminal. They are ready to negotiate. with a legitimate Ukrainian government after elections.

And obviously this was impressed on Trump. And Trump, apparently by now he understands that a trilateral will have to involve a legitimate Ukrainian government. But he's still pushing for the trilateral with Zelensky. And especially after the coalition of school kids went there to be reprimanded by his master's voice. But the whole time, all of them were saying, We need a meeting, we need a peace process, we need a ceasefire, the whole thing.

So once again, the schizophrenia, from the point of view of, okay, we can dismiss them as a coalition of the Tuots. But the Tuats, they have a long-term plan. Their long-term plan is the forever war against Russia will continue, no matter what. Even if we cannot finance it, even if we don't have money to buy the, We'll keep fighting them. Using what, essentially, terror attacks, coordinated by, especially by MI6, in fact. So nothing essentially would, the only thing that could possibly turn the whole thing upside down is an absolutely smashing Russian victory in the battlefield within the next few months,

which is also a possibility. What are the pressures now on President Putin, either from the Russian public, his advisors around him or the Russian elites? From the Russian elites, Judge, once again, they want to go back to business. And that means they want the war over one way or not. They're not the war over. And I think we mentioned in many of our conversations that serious representatives of the Russian oligarchy, they described this war as either a known war in their own words or an almost war. I heard this from people from Rosneft over a year ago.

They described this is almost war. They sought from the beginning that it should be lightning. cut off the head of the snake, and then we think about negotiating. Well, can Putin face the Russian people with equanimity if he fails to achieve his military objectives? He can't. And that's why for him, this is very, the whole process is very, very dangerous. because he knows that as much as Trump has his own reasons to, okay, some sort of peace process, even if it's not a settlement, but then get America's attention elsewhere.

He understands all that. And he understands that Trump is facing a lot of internal domestic enemies in the U.S. At the same time, he cannot simply accept any sort of, let's say, Minsk-3 agreement. because he knows that he's going to be betrayed later on, especially an agreement where Europeans are involved. Europeans already botched Minsk 1 and Minsk 2. They will botch Minsk 3, even if it's broken, brokered by Trump. Would the Russians accept security guarantees monitored by non-Western military, like, say, Chinese? Yes. In the case of Bricks members, for instance, certainly. Security guarantees could be monitored by a group of Western and Eastern nations, including big powers like China and India,

BRICS members. Of course, Iran cannot enter because Iran is the very peculiar U.S. against Iran, hybrid and hot wars. Is there any sense in which? Vladimir Putin was in Alaska, not just as the president of Russia, but representing bricks. Yes, I wrote about this, and many of our colleagues also subscribe to this concept. You just need to analyze the fact that all the major bricks are under different layers of hybrid war launched by Trump 2.0. So, of course, we could say that a small victory already obtained by Putin in Alaska is that Trump is not launching an extra batch of sanctions against BRICS members which are buying Russian energy, especially India and China. So he was there representing BRICS. There's no question

about that. And before Alaska, and even after Alaska, Putin was on a fly. flurry of phone calls with other BRICS leaders, and the other BRICS leaders were calling themselves as well. So for two weeks, everybody is calling everybody else practically on a daily basis, Judge. This includes Brazil's Lula, includes the president of Indonesia, and of course, India, China, Iran, and Russia. So, yes, this is, because the war in Ukraine in many aspects is a war against BRICS because it's a war against two top bricks. against Russia and against China. Against China because it's breaking off many of the connectivity corridors that could go through Ukraine.

And obviously, China was already thinking about investing in them before the start of the SMO. And obviously it makes much more complicated all the circulation from Western China across Central Asia, across, let's say, if we consider Ukraine as Eastern Europe, which it is in many senses, and then to Western Europe. So obviously, Russia and China look at resolution Ukraine as something that in terms of commerce

and trade for both would be much better deal. But Russia is not ready and Putin is not ready to pay any price for a deal because he sees the long-term picture, he sees the underlying motivations for the war which they try to explain in these 150 minutes to Trump in person and they know that any pause that is not really significant

will mean the return of this war in a matter of one, two, three, four years because this is what NATO and these current EU political leaders really it's an obsession for them. Colonel McGregor reports as of this morning, and he believes it's a credible source that the Ukrainians have lost 1.7 million military dead and missing. How much longer can they possibly last?

I mean, this might, all of this Alaska stuff might take a back seat if the Kiev government and its military collapse. Absolutely. Absolutely, Judge. And these figures, we had some times to, this was a hacking by the KillNet hacking group. They hacked personal computers of top-end Ukrainian military, and they have everything that have names, dates, why they disappear, where they disappear, what could have happened, there are tags, you name it. It's a very, very, very serious act. And this figure of 1.7 million dead and missing. This is something that was circulating in Russia for quite a while

in different Russian military channels. But it was never, I would say, a smoking gun evidence. And the smoking gun evidence is now. So this means if the ratio is 5 to 1 or 6 to 1, that the actual Ukrainian victims of the war could be over 8 million, including the wounded. It's something beyond mind-boggling. Can Trump throw the American neocons and the deep state under the bus?

Or does he have to worry about them? Yes. It's hard for any of us to say at the moment that he has what it takes to throw them under the bus. It's still, they could throw him under the bus. They have an arsenal of sabotage operations. against a possible personal, let's say, Putin-Trump deal, and they will apply them, of course. Everything, terror attacks, false flags, you name it.

So it's a very, and the Kremlin and the Intel agencies in Russia, they are very much aware of the pitfalls and the challenges I had. And this is going to find even the beginning of a possibility, reset of strategic relations between the U.S. and Russia is going to be extremely hard. And of course, don't forget, the whole Atlantisist gang and old money in the U.S. and old money in Europe, their obsession is dismemberance of Russia, harassing Russia, plundering Russia. This is never going to change. Whatever happens. Pepe, thank you, my dear friend. I know.

even though the sun is still out where you are, it's late in the day. And we deeply appreciate your insight and your thoughts and this great piece you've written what really happened in Alaska. Thank you. We'll look forward to seeing you next week. Thank you. From the Normandy Landing, which is 20 minutes behind those trees. Thanks, Judge. Thanks, everybody. Thank you. Bye-bye.

What a PIP. What a character. What a great man. Coming up at 3 o'clock today, another. character and great man, Phil Jaravi, Judge Napolitano for judging freedom. Thank you.