Judging Freedom - Pepe Escobar : Will Russia and China Help Venezuela?

Episode Date: December 4, 2025

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Discover why there's more to imagine when you listen at audible.com slash best of the year. Hi, everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Thursday, December 4th, 2025, from somewhere in northern Italy, from a quiet corner in a restaurant where 25 diners are waiting. for him as soon as he finishes, is the great Pepe Escobar. Pepe, welcome here. Ciao, Judge. Straight from Pia Monta, Italy. The thought of being with you in an Italian restaurant in the country in northern Italy is almost too much for me to resist. I just wish I could be there with you.

But thank you. Thank you for joining us. Thank you for interrupting your general. Thank your friends as well. We have a lot to talk about. I mainly want to talk to you about Venezuela and I want to talk to you about NATO in Europe. Sure. Before we get there, is there a concern in Europe that you can sense either among the regular folks or the elites for all these killings of people on the speedboats in the Caribbean by the United States military? Well, if it comes from the European elites, if it comes from the European elites, if it comes

from Brussels, or if it comes from the European elites or the governments across Europe, including the Italian government here in Rome, they don't care. And obviously they don't even question the legality of what's going on. Public opinion is a completely different story. I am in Italy for almost a week now. It's a tour of my latest book, which is called The Multipolar Century, by the way, which is released for in a global premiere in Italy. I'm very, very pleased about that because it speaks to European readers about what's going on outside of Europe, the construction of the

multipolar world. And my interlocutors here in North and Italy, by the way, for you, Judge and your audience, a few days ago, I was in the Friuli, surrounded by NATO bases. We should. We should should remember that the Friuli was the limits during the Cold War, because right to the right, in fact, was Slovenia. And up to the north was Austria. A few days ago, I was 20 kilometers away from Slovenia and 60 kilometers away from Austria. And the NATO bases are still there, and they're being expanded, including underground NATO bases across the Friuli. So you have underground NATO bases in northern Italy. Yes. And you have at least five huge major bases throughout Italy going to, U.S. bases going down to Naples.

All the way to Sicily, Judge. Why has Italy become militarized with non-Italian military? Absolutely. Well, maybe you, Judge, and our author. know how American commanders, Pentagon commanders call, especially Sicily, Amgot, American government's occupied territory. And this is not a joke. This is a terminology that's been used for decades. And what I've been discussing with my Italian interlocutors is how Italy as a whole,

from the Friuli, all the way to the Aviano base, all the way to the Sigonella base, in Sicily, it is NATO-occupied territory. And early this week, the big, big, big news independently in Italy this week, the Italian top commander NATO, he's an admiral, in fact, Dragone from a very influential family. But they tell me, my friends tell me that he's an absolute stupid specimen. He said, on the record, NATO is. is considering the possibility of a preemptive attack against Russia.

He doesn't get more demented than that. Yes, please. Why on earth would an Italian admiral? Now, no, correct me if I'm wrong. He's not just an Italian admiral. He's the chair of some military committee in NATO. Is the chair of the NATO military committee. You're absolutely correct.

Yes. And why would he make a statement like that? Because, sorry, NATO now is in deep provocation territory. Provocations are coming on an everyday basis all the way from that Dutch Gouda that poses as Secretary General, Tuddy, or Rudy, to military commanders everywhere, France, Germany. Where's the German army? We haven't seen it yet. And France. but the first time that there is

a direct reference to the possibility of a preemptive attack the response by Dimitri Medvedev which was with the usual Medvedev's sense of humor was okay there will be a response but after that there will be no Europe to negotiate with here's what President Putin I don't know if he had in mind what this Italian admiral said,

but here's what he said to Europe and about Europe, right before he spent five hours, probably wasted time, but I'll ask you about that in a minute. Five hours with Steve Whitkoff and Jared Krishna, Chris, 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? Confident?

I love the sense of humor of thinking or saying literally. I think it will be over very quickly. So what do you think he's talking about? He's either talking about Arashniks or nuclear weapons. Yes. He's talking basically about Oreshniks, a judge, because even if it is a preemptive attack, Moscow would think carefully about, they don't need to use nuclear weapons because they have all the hypersonics that matter.

And if you launch the hypersonics surgically against NATO bases, could be Ramstein, one of them, in Poland, even Sigonella here in Italy, they can accomplish everything that they won't in a matter of minutes. So Russia doesn't need nuclear weapons, but the response will be devastating against these centers of command. But the fact that NATO desperation is leading their military commanders and even the Secretary General to keep doubling down on provocations. It only reveals their desperation and, of course, their way of trying to influence the Russians once again about those five hours in Moscow.

They don't have a say, not even in a mini table on the side, not to mention the main table. I mean, why would Putin even? care what the Europeans think because Donald Trump doesn't care what the Europeans think. The only one who cares what the Europeans think appears to be is Zelensky. So you have no Sergei Lavrov there. You have no Marco Rubio there. You do have President Putin there.

And then you got these two characters who may be able to put together real estate deals, but they have no diplomatic experience. They have very little knowledge of the history of these things. And President Putin gives them five hours? Well, if we follow what Ushakov, which is one of the official negotiators, and he was at the table during the following, said afterwards, he said, there will be no leaks. And this was mutually agreed by.

us and the Americas. Obviously, there will be some leaks coming from the American side. There will be no leaks coming from Russia. So we don't know the substance of the conversation. What we know is that there was a lot of talk about the 28 points that became 19, or maybe even less. But nothing substantial. And if you go through what Shakov said, he was basically saying that this was a nothing burger. But maybe this could be the beginning. of further conversations, we'll keep talking to the other side, et cetera. Diplomatic language to say, okay, we agree to disagree. And he said many of the points we forcefully cannot accept.

And the craziest thing is that the victors delineate the terms at the end of a war. The United States is not a victor, much less the criminal organization. Russian terminology by President Putin in Kiev. So what Trump envoys are trying to achieve is some sort of concessions from the Russian side. There will be no concessions. The conditions and the stipulations come from June last year by Putin himself, and they won't deviate from them. NATO, no NATO for Ukraine, demilitarization, elections, immediate elections, a government in Kiev that won't be completely

Russophobes. And of course, later on, the denazification of this criminal organization and elite, which is going to take at least two generations. But it's starting now. The demilitarization of Ukraine. Yes, yes, please. I know you're in Italy, but are you able to sense any resignation on the part of the Ukrainians to the realistic likelihood that the land now occupied by the Russian military is gone forever? No, no resignation because once again, don't forget, we are dealing with a criminal organization. organizations by definition don't resign themselves to anything. Only if they have a bullet in their head. Figuratively and geopolitically and militarily, they have. But they won't ever admit it,

especially because they still count on the support of NATO Secretary General, generals all across NATO stand, politicians, of course, all across Europe, who still believe that if we keep feeding Ukraine with weapons that will be American weapons paid in years that we don't have in the first place, they can still have a chance of salvaging Plan A, and there was never a plan B. We have been discussing this here. Among my interlocutors, there are former high-level special forces, former high-level intelligence, a former treasury ministry. So people who know the Italian government from the inside-out, in fact, who had access to everything, and now they can have a critical point of view, not only about Italy, but about how NATO works.

And, you know, who really issues the orders. And at the same time, they have fabulous, I would say, alternative. interpretations of the current karaoke that involved the Kremlin this week. They were the first to act. What are those alternate interpretations? What are those alternate? I will give you one of them, Judge, which is absolutely fascinated because I have not seen that anywhere else.

Why Jared Kushner was part of the mini two American, It's a matter of salvaging international capital in the hands of the Zionist Axis, trying to find a secure place to invest. China, impossible. Europe, dead. So why not try Russia? So they are trying to place these funds in Russia. Nobody in Europe is analyzing it this way. This is something that we should try to get deeper into it. Obviously, we won't get anything out of Kushner himself, of course. But maybe some indiscretions can come from the international financial system, some of those actors. Which, by the way, at the same time, they are already discussing the next pandemic. So that tells us something that the next pandemic, judge.

And among them, Larry Fink and Bill Gates, they're already talking opening about the possibility of the next pandemic, like right around the corner in 2020. So all this is interconnected, movement of capital, movement of total control, who's going to control what, where to place the money, and of course, who can be, which place should be ideal to park untold zillions of funds. They are not saved anymore because of the collapse little by little of American debt and the American Empire as a whole. So the Russian role in all that, it's still fuzzy. What we know for sure is that the American oligarchy wants to talk to the Russian oligarchy and vice versa because they want to go back to business together. And that would include even American investment in some parts of the Far East and Siberia. And even the Arctic.

This is all on the table. And it was certainly discussed in these five hours. But that clashes directly with a Russian development project, which is to develop the Far East, the Arctic, and Siberia, for Russian national interests, which have nothing to do with international capital interests. So it's so very fuzzy at the moment. Of course, the feeling among the well-informed analysts here in Italy is that this kabuki or cinema, any way you want to put it on circus,

will continue with no resolution while the war on the ground, on the battleground in Rocio continues to progress steadily. In your conversations with me just now, and in the written materials that you've sent me in the past week, you have probably used the acronym NATO, 30 or 40 times. Do you sense in Italy and elsewhere, either because of NATO or the EU, the creeps like Ruta and von der Leyen, whatever, a loss of sovereignty of these Western European nations? but this is a number one theme discussed among

progressive Italian thinkers which all of them of course are banned from mainstream media and mainstream cable channels here in Italy the key theme in fact if we could sum it all up in one minute from my point of view I qualify Italy as the unmistakable, unbittable, unsurpassed civilization state in the whole of the West, historically, culturally, artistically, there's no competition. And they add, in this past few decades,

Italian sovereignty has completely disappeared to the point of the new generations, the textbooks in school, already talk about Italy in terms of Italy being a part of the European Union and NATO without referring to all those glories of Italian civilization, since even before the Roman Empire. So it is a new colony. People who have been involved in politics in Italy know that Italy became a NATO colony decades ago, and it's going to take at least one or two generations to recover the condition of a sovereign NATO state.

But they also know that this loss of sovereignty applies to all the nation states which are compacted with something that has to be thrown into the trash bin by the European Union. And also they see how the European Union and NATO, this combo, is absolutely desperate because they are now starting to not understand but be face to face with their strategic defeat vis-a-vis Russia. and not the other way around. The famous story that there was never a plan B. Now they're finding coming to grips with the fact that there's no plan B. There are two options for them. Either they steal those Russian funds at Eroclear, number one.

Or number two, they're going to fleece European taxpayers, 450 million of them, to get the funds to continue to finance their war machine in Kiev. So both options are absolutely out of... If option number two is adopted, that we can't expect. I wouldn't say revolutions, but mini-serial revolutions in most European nations.

What about our... What about our friend in Hungary, Victor Orban? Exactly. Orban is, let's say, he is the graphic illustration of the leader of a nation-state that still wants to retain his sovereignty, rebelling against the EU-NATO combo. There are others.

There's FICO in Slovakia. Sooner or later, the Austrian. Sooner or later, maybe others in Eastern Europe. Certainly not coming from France, Germany, and much less Italy, where foreign policy in Italy is dictated by people who are totally controlled by the Congo European Union NATO. Wow. What are you having for dinner?

Oh, I had, oh, shit, this is the best. I should say what I had for lunch, Judge. I had the best yonoke al-Burro in the history of humanity in a small restaurant, high in the mountains of Piamonte. So, yonoke is made from potato, and al-Burro is with butter. With, exactly. And now I'm having plin. Plin is a pasta from Pia-Monte. with burro and salvia, with butter and salvo, with and sage.

It's almost dinner time here on my mouth is watering, but Pepe, it's a pleasure to speak with you all the time. And you travel well and eat well and sleep well, and we'll see you next week. Definitely. And greetings for all of you from occupied Italy. Yes, occupied by the West. All the best, my friend.

Thank you. Very terrifying that Italy would be referred to as a colony of NATO. And, of course, there are more countries in that situation as well. Thank you for watching this long day. Tomorrow, Friday, end of the day, end of the week, at 4 o'clock, not 4.30, at 4 o'clock, the Intelligence Community Roundtable with Larry Johnson and Ray McGovern. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom. Thank you.