Judging Freedom - Prof. Jeffrey Sachs: Does Trump Want Peace?

Episode Date: January 8, 2025

Prof. Jeffrey Sachs: Does Trump Want Peace?See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Thank you. Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Wednesday, January 8th, 2025. Professor Jeffrey Sachs will be with us in just a moment on, does Donald Trump really want peace? But first this. It's a game. This is the deep state and they have their wars and every war has been phony. Some wars, the American people are basically never told about. For example, the war in Syria.

And you may actually hear from grown-up reporters who are lying through their teeth or ignorant beyond imagining that, oh, the war in Syria, yes, Russia intervened in Syria. Well, do you know that Obama tasked the CIA to overthrow the Syrian government, starting four years before Russia intervened. What kind of nonsense is that? And how many times did the New York Times report on Operation Timber Sycamore,

which was the presidential order to the CIA to overthrow Bashar al-Assad? Three times in ten years. This is not democracy. This is a game. And it's a game of narrative. Why did the U.S. invade Iraq in 2003? Well, first of all, it was completely phony pretenses. It wasn't, oh, we were so wrong. They didn't have weapons of mass destruction. They actually did focus groups in the fall of 2002 to find out what would sell that war to the American people. Abe Schultzky, if you want to know the name of the PR genius. They did focus groups on the war. They wanted the war all the time.

They had to figure out how to sell the war to the American people, how to scare the shit out of the American people. It was a phony war. Where did that war come from? You know what? It's quite surprising. That war came from Netanyahu, actually. You know that? It's weird. And the way it is, is that Netanyahu had from 1995 onward the theory that the only way we're going to get rid of Hamas and Hezbollah is by toppling the governments that support them. That's Iraq, Syria, and Iran. And the guy's nothing if not obsessive. And he's still trying to get us to fight Iran this day, this week.

He's a deep, dark son of a bitch, sorry to tell you, because he's gotten us into endless wars. And because of the power of all of this in the U.S. politics, he's gotten his way. But that war was totally phony. So what is this democracy versus dictatorship? Come on. This is these are not even sensible terms. That, of course, was you, was Professor Jeffrey Sachs at the Cambridge Student Union, at your articulate and a little bit snarky best. I'm so proud of you. I'm proud of our personal friendship and our professional collaboration. And why do I run that? Because that was posted, a reference to it was posted,

on Truth Social by the president-elect of the United States. Jeff, if you could have his ear, oh, my God, millions of human beings' lives could be saved. I'll let you take it from there. I mean, I almost don't even know where to start. I want to talk to you about the nonsense he has been saying about Gaza and Greenland and Canada and Panama and the Gulf of Mexico and all of that. But you may want to expand on what we just heard from you. Well, thanks a lot. That was a clip made from a talk that I gave just recently at the Cambridge Student Union. That's University of Cambridge in Britain. And I was discussing the truths of American foreign policy, not the narratives of American foreign policy, not the narratives of American foreign policy.

Foreign policy is the purview of a very small group of people in the U.S. elite. It is not decided on the grounds of public opinion or public interest. It's decided by a very small group of people in the national security institutions. That's the White House, the Pentagon, the CIA, and a few other places. They have their reasons. It could be reasons of sheer power. It could be reasons of war profiteering. It could be reasons of grabbing financial or mineral or oil resources. It could be in the case of the wars in the Middle East, doing what Israel has asked or told the U.S. to do, given the power of the Israel lobby.

It's striking to go back and see how Bibi Netanyahu, Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's current prime minister, back in 2002, 2003, at one moment a foreign minister, and then again prime minister, was a huge lobbyist for the war in Iraq, because this was a war that Israel wanted. It is the purview of small groups, and it gets us into terrible, terrible trouble. The last five presidents of the United States have brought us closer to nuclear Armageddon than ever before in history. Every one of them, Clinton, Bush, Obama, first Trump administration, and Biden, every one of them brought the doomsday clock, which is the measure of how close we are to self-annihilation, closer to that midnight hour.

And this is a drama. How could American presidents make American security so low that we are fearful of global destruction? Well, it's because they're not doing the public's bidding. They're not even making sense. It's a mix of hubris and greed and secrecy and lobbying and war profiteering, but not sense. Well, I explained all of this. The record is extensive, and I was pleased to see President Trump tweet this, not tweet it, to post it. Let me be more accurate on truth social yesterday. It's somewhat remarkable, Jeff, when you, Professor Sachs, when you emailed me, and I was so delighted to see the email saying, guess what? I almost couldn't believe it.

I almost thought it was some sort of a joke. I mean, at the same time he posted that, he said things like, I'm Israel's best friend, and if Hamas doesn't return the Israeli hostages, no mention of the Palestinian hostages, if Hamas doesn't return the Israeli hostages by my inauguration, there will be hell to pay. Well, they have already paid hell. It's hard to believe that anything worse could be done to them, and I don't even know what he's talking about. They've been dropping 2,000-pound bombs on people living in tents.

He's talking about American troops on the ground fighting side by side with the IDF. No one wants that. I don't even know. I don't believe it. I don't believe with what Trump has said and how he campaigned and seemingly how he thinks about these issues, that that's what he wants or what he would do. And it's a little complicated to guess, and so I don't even try to guess. important. And that was that he understood that NATO was the deep, deep irritant of Russia in the case of the Ukraine war. And he said, I understand that. That makes sense. It's interesting. If Trump will think through the eyes of the adversaries. How would Russia view something?

How would we view what we are doing to Russia? How would if Russia were to do the same or how do we understandges, boy, what we're doing is really provoking the other side. world, and this is very important for Americans in particular to understand this, we are not at any security threat at all from the rest of the world, except if we get ourselves all blown up. So the only way that America is threatened, not by an invasion, not by an attack by China on the American homeland. This is impossible, but a nuclear war. And so the first thing one asks is, how do we avoid that? And the first answer to that is, well, don't provoke each other. If you're a major power, just keep some distance with the other major powers. Now, what's also extremely interesting, and I think it has everyone's eyes wide open and shock and so forth, but I want to make a point that isn't exactly made about it. Trump has talked about Canada as the 51st state, and we need Greenland for American

security, we need Panama for American security, and so forth. Whatever one says about those statements, what Trump is saying is for the American homeland to be safe, our neighborhood has to respect our security. Well, that's an interesting point. I think it's actually true in a way. The same thing Vladimir Putin is saying. Yes, I don't like those Chinese and Russian submarines coming around Greenland, he's saying. I don't like that.

You know what? That's saying. I don't like that. You know what? That's right. And they don't like it when our submarines are right on their coast or their border. And President Putin has been saying, and before him, President Yeltsin, and before him, President Gorbachev, we don't want your military base on our border. Not so hard to figure out. And the Chinese are saying, you're going to arm one part of China? You're going to send over our objections, weapon systems, advanced weapon systems to one part of China? Really? You're going to do that? Can you imagine in Donald Trump's mind what it would be like? Not to mention sending it to an American state, but suppose that the Canadians say, we don't want to be the 51st state, so we're asking China to arm us with missiles. And the United States would say, yeah, that's Canada's choice. That's

none of our business. We have literally said that. Joe Biden, Jake Sullivan, Tony Blinken, they said that about the U.S. putting its missile systems in Ukraine. It's none of Russia's business, they said. You know, Donald Trump probably has a more realistic handle on whose business is what than we have had so far. And this idea, this hubris, this delusion, well, we can do what we want. And as a matter of right, we can put our missiles anywhere. We can put them in Ukraine, or we can put them in Korea, or we can put them along China's coastline, and that's none of their business. Well, this is so completely dangerous and absurd that it has brought us, as that doomsday clock says, to 90 seconds to midnight. Meaning, you have these great powers with these missile systems, now hypersonic missile systems,

nuclear weapons to the hundreds or to the thousands when it's the case of Russia. And we're saying we have every right to provoke you, to annoy you, and so forth. Well, Donald Trump says, don't do it in our neighborhood. And well, that may be a step to saying, hmm, we shouldn't do it in their neighborhood. And he did say that yesterday in the case of Ukraine. Now, that, to my mind, is the key to make for peace in Ukraine. And if he applies the same thinking to Taiwan and to the South China Sea, it's the key to making peace with China. So, you know, it's a pretty complicated situation right now. But I'll tell you, the current course that we've been on has been disastrous, and it's been through five presidencies, each one of which has brought us closer to disaster.

I'm going to take you from the happiness of the clip of your brilliant speech and knowing that the president-elect saw it and perhaps reacted to it, to the gloom and doom of Tony Blinken. I'm going to play a little clip from the Secretary of State and you tell me if you think he's learned anything in the past four years. Cut number one. Where the line is drawn on the map, at this point, I don't think it's fundamentally going to change very much. The real question is, can we make sure that Ukraine is in a position to move forward strongly? You mean that the areas that Russia controls, you feel will have to be ceded? Ceded is not the question. The question is, the line as a practical matter in the foreseeable future is unlikely to move very much. Ukraine's

claim on that territory will always be there. And the question is, will they find ways with the support of others to regrain territory that's been lost? I think the critical thing now going forward is this. If there is going to be a resolution, or at least a near-term resolution, because it's unlikely that Putin will give up on his ambitions. If there's a ceasefire, then in Putin's mind, the ceasefire is likely to give him time to rest, to refit, to re-attack at some point in the future. So what's going to be critical to make sure that any ceasefire that comes about is actually enduring is to make sure that Ukraine has the capacity going forward to deter further aggression. And that can come in many forms.

It could come through NATO, and we put Ukraine on a path to NATO membership. It could come through security assurances, commitments, guarantees by different countries to make sure that Russia knows that if it reattacks, it's going to have a big problem. That, I think, is going to be critical to making sure that any deal that's negotiated actually endures and then allows Ukraine the space, the time to grow strong as a country. And we put Ukraine on a path to NATO membership. He has no memory of the events of the past three years. Oblivious of everything that's happened.

I'm beginning to believe it's really ignorance. It's really blindness. But, oh my God, to this moment, he can't understand what has happened. He can't understand the U.s provocations he can't understand the situation from the point of view of russia he can't understand how it is that russia and ukraine ended the fighting in march 2022 but for the u.S. coming in to intervene, to tell the Ukrainians to keep fighting, he doesn't get it at all. Here's something else he doesn't get. Cut number six.

Do you, Secretary Blinken, worry that perhaps you have been presiding over what the world will see as a genocide? No, it's not, first of all. Second, as to how the world sees it, I can't fully answer to that. But everyone has to look at the facts and draw their own conclusions from those facts. And my conclusions are clear. Well, we're going to have an adjudication of that point sometime very soon, because much of the world, and I, among that group, believe that Israel is committing genocidal acts in Gaza. But to the point, genocide is a legal term governed by the 1948 Genocide Convention. And under the 1948 Genocide is a legal term governed by the 1948 Genocide Convention. And under the 1948 Genocide Convention, there are terms of what genocide means. And under that convention, the government of South Africa, now joined by many many other governments has made a a petition to the International Court

of Justice in The Hague to adjudicate whether Israel is in fact committing genocide that is violating the 1948 genocide convention the court has issued some preliminary rulings. There has been lots of pleading in this case. And so people can go online and read hundreds of pages, not what Tony Blinken thinks, but what Israeli officials have said, what senior officials in the Israeli Defense Forces have said, what Israel has done in deliberately bombing hospitals, killing doctors, killing journalists, killing UN workers, destroying schools, making Gaza unlivable, killing tens of thousands of women and children. And those are now very carefully documented. It's an absolutely grim record. I think the International Court of Justice ruling will be an extremely important event in the world.

I believe it is likely to find that Israel has committed genocide. And then the words of Tony Blinken, well, they will be shown for what they are. Blinken's lack of awareness, which seems to be pretty general to most places in the world, will be exposed for what it has been. But it will also mean something for the United States, because the U.S. is complicit completely in Israel's actions. Blinken explains why. He doesn't think that there's much wrong with it. In fact, the U.S. has gone out of its way at every moment to say we will stand by Israel. And that has been true with an enormous amount of armaments and finance and logistics and intelligence and other kinds of military support as well.

And this makes the United States complicit in what Israel is doing. Well, if the court rules that Israel has just been undertaking a military action in self-defense, that's one thing. But if the court rules that Israel has committed genocide, that's quite another matter. I think that's likely to be what will turn out in the ICJ ruling. Will Prime Minister Netanyahu ever be brought to justice? Will that arrest warrant ever be served? No, probably not on an individual level. Israel's future has been gravely jeopardized by the criminality of Israel's political leadership. Because if you commit crimes like this, which Israel is committing, this puts the future of Israel in grave, grave danger. Countries, governments that commit genocide

create not only profound harms to those targeted, but also profound harms to their own country, is supposed to live within a community of nations. And if it is decided in this extraordinary event, when these events are captured by TikTok every day, captured by video every day, this is the first real-time genocide I think that the world has ever seen, if it turns out to be judged that way, I think the consequences for Israel will be extraordinarily adverse. I'm very sorry to say this because this is a cataclysm that is completely, completely unnecessary, counterproductive, and was completely avoidable. Professor Sachs, thank you very much.

Congratulations on the recognition of your work. Well, let's just hope that we get a different perspective, one that says, you stay out of our front yard or backyard and we'll stay out of yours. And if the great powers can reach that. Let's hope that Donald Trump listens to you more than he listens to the crowd that he's indicated he plans to surround himself with. We'll see. Let's hope for some good insight and good luck in the works ahead. You're obviously an honest reader. Thank you so much, not just for this, but for everything you've

done for us and the collaboration you and I have done along with Dr. Sachs, your wife, in 2024. Very, very generous of you. And I look forward to the same level, maybe even more so, of collaboration. I'm counting on it. All right. Thank you, Professor. God love you. All the best. We'll see you next week. Okay. Coming up tomorrow at eight in the morning, Colonel Tony Schaefer. At nine in the morning, Professor Gilbert Doctorow. At noon, Max Blumenthal. Yes, he'll be here at noon. At one o'clock, Ambassador Ian Proud. At two o'clock, Professor John Mearsheimer.

At three o'clock, Colonel Larry Wilkerson. Proud of all my guests and all of our viewers. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom. Thank you.