Judging Freedom - Prof. Jeffrey Sachs : Zelensky Out of Office, Netanyahu Out of Options.

Episode Date: May 15, 2024

Prof. Jeffrey Sachs : Zelensky Out of Office, Netanyahu Out of Options.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, May 15th, 2024. My dear friend, Professor Jeff Sachs joins us now. Professor Sachs, a pleasure. Thank you very much for your time. Likewise. Recently, the United Nations General Assembly voted overwhelmingly to recognize this and bring into membership the state of Palestine. But before that vote, there was perhaps the most unusual speech, if you can call it a speech, ever delivered to that body by the Israeli ambassador. Some have described the speech as the product of a deranged mentality, and others have described it more charitably as off the wall. You watched the speech. I watched the speech. What did you think of it? Well, it was a rant more than a speech. And it ended up with the Israeli ambassador putting the UN charter through a shredder that he brought up to the podium, claiming that by voting for Palestine's membership in the UN, the General Assembly was shredding the UN charter. It was

disgusting and disgraceful. And my first impression was that it was a kind of deranged mind. But when I thought about it more, and especially when I read the Twitter feed of this ambassador, Gilad Erdogan, it was obviously carefully thought out. He came with his props, and it wasn't a rant. It was an appeal to the extremists in Israel. He was basically showboating and taking a video selfie for his ex-followers. And it's a sign of how bad the political scene is. It obviously, if it swayed any votes at all in the General Assembly,

it was to increase the vote for the state of Palestine. I'm a strong supporter of immediately admitting Palestine as the 194th UN member state. The U.S. is the only obstacle to that, literally. It's the U.S. veto that stops it. The U.S. is complicit in Israel's genocidal war. Biden is pathetic. I'm sorry to say, I'll use strong terms, but he just approved in the midst of Israel's Rafah offensive, which has, again, displaced hundreds of thousands of Palestinians running for their lives right now and against what was supposed to be a U.S. red line, don't do that. Well, Biden just gave another billion dollars of munitions support for Israel doing exactly what it wants.

So Biden's pathetic. This administration's pathetic. It doesn't understand the power of the presidency or it lets Israel dictate US policy, however you want to look at it. But it is the United States that is the sole obstacle to Palestine's membership in the UN. But listeners should understand that that step is the way to peace, actually. That is implementing the two-state solution. And on that basis, the Arab countries are saying, yes, the Saudis, other Arab countries, send peacekeepers to Gaza. And what are those countries saying to the U.S.? Well, yes, but not as a military force backing Israel's occupation of Gaza as part of the two-state solution. Now, what is so hard for

those dunderheads in Washington to understand about this? Honest to God, I don't get it. I mean, I get what should be done. I don't get how bad it is in Washington that they can't do anything practical to make peace. Why would the Israeli ambassador, there's a still of him, right as he's shredding the UN charter, why would he make such an awful speech knowing, such an incendiary speech, such a vulgar speech, as you call it, knowing that it's not going to have the effect that he wants. And what is the international effect of such an undiplomatic and disgraceful display? I mean, at one point he was carrying on so badly, it was almost as if he was describing the ideafic. He was accusing the Palestinians of genocide. It was absurd.

Well, yeah, the greatest irony is he's telling us that the Palestinians are committing genocide, just as Israel is killing tens of thousands of people, and as they were amassing tanks for this Rafah incursion. Remember, Rafah is the southern tip of Gaza, where the Israeli Defense Forces told the Palestinians to flee for their lives into a safe zone, and now they're bombing that safe zone, so-called safe zone. This is so sordid. But why did he do it? Because the name of politics these days is, my base can be more extreme than yours. So it's not to try to appeal to reason, to try to find a solution. It is to appeal to the radicalism of one's own side. That's why in so many places in the world, we are on a path of escalation to World War III, because what politicians do these days is appeal to their

bases. They don't appeal to reason. They don't appeal to their opponents. They don't talk to their opponents. They just brand their opponents as whatever horrific brand they want to assign them. And then they say, well, we have to kill them because they're horrible. And when you talk only to your base and when people live in a bubble, and I'm afraid the Israelis especially live in a bubble right now, they don't know what's going on in the rest of the world. This approach, while in a way understandable as a tactic, and this guy is an experienced politician, by the way, he's well-trained, well-educated. He's held several senior ministerial posts. He's no jerk off the street. He knows what he's doing, but it's all a gambit to stoke the extremism. But it's based on an idea that the U.S. will do whatever Israel says. That's the bottom line.

Well, that is probably true. I mean, the same president, as you mentioned a few minutes ago, who famously said, I'm not going to send 2,000-pound bombs, just announced a billion dollars in other bombs and military equipment. And Scott Ritter has reported that the frequency of the flights of the American cargo planes to Israeli military airports has not lessened at all. It's true, but it's true in a very short-term, short-sighted way. In other words, it puts all of Israel's survival in the basket of U.S. politics where the interests of the U.S. are not Israel's interests. So everything that Israel is doing is betting that the United States will stay in line. But if anyone knows American history, the Americans can turn on any country. They can stop immediately.

They can tell the Afghans, we're out of here. The Vietnamese, we're out of here. They will. Because anyway, it doesn't make sense for the U.S. to be alone with Israel against the whole rest of the world. What are, Professor Sachs, what are Prime Minister Netanyahu and Likud's options now that Israel is totally isolated in the international community, but for its decreasing support in the United States? Well, their option is to try to provoke the U.S. into a regional war. That was the gambit that Israel took in bombing the Iranian consulate in Damascus, Syria in March.

This is what they've been hoping for. I don't think it's going to happen. By the way, the American public more and more is swinging against Biden. He'll probably lose the election over this. Somebody among his political advisors surely is noting this fact. And what it means is that to gamble your country's survival, not on its diplomacy, not on goodwill, not on understanding, not on trying to find a rapprochement, but only on the support of another country whose interests are not in the extremism that you're promoting, that Israeli strategy is so wrongheaded. It's so naive. It's so doomed to fail that it's shocking to me how far this continues. My point is that, yes, they gamble on the U.S. Yes, Biden, if you wanted to bet any given day, he'll just go along with what NetYahoo tells him.

That's true. But that's a day-to-day calculation. Is that really a month-to-month or year-to-year strategy for a country? Not in my view. Jeff, I don't think there's any reason for optimism here, because if Trump beats Biden, which it now appears to be the case, we're six months out of anything that could happen, I think he'll be even more stridently pro-Netanyahu than Biden has been. It's true, except for one thing. The Trump-Kushner gambit was, we'll peel off the Saudis. You know, Israel will do what it wants. We have these Abraham Accords. We've got the UAE and Bahrain signed on. We'll get the Saudis signed on. They'll go along with it. These are big boys. We're going to give them F-35s.

We're going to give them nuclear technology. We'll be able to peel them off. You know, it's actually, it's a close call, but it's not working. eyes. This is one thing. Second, the Arab world is understanding, hey, wait a minute, the rest of the world is on our side. This is something different. This is something new. The Arab world has been jerked around by the United States and the UK for 100 years since the Treaty of Versailles. Now they're saying, we don't want to be manipulated this way. We don't want to make these side deals where we know an untrustworthy United States is going to get us in the bag. So Trump, even Trump, he's a deal maker. He thought the deal was, well, the Saudis will go along with

this. Jared Kushner talks about, we'll make condos on the Mediterranean coast of Gaza. I mean, okay, this is not going to happen. And so if Israel is betting its whole security on Trump, well, my advice is be a little more prudent. How about a little diplomacy? How about thinking this through again? How about not ripping up or shredding the UN charter on the podium of the General Assembly? Try to do something a little bit more clever than that. Is there an access of resistance to Israel? And will it, if so, will it bubble up into state action, military resistance to Israel? I'd say the access of resistance to what Israel is doing right now is about 160 countries. I'm at the UN, as you know, very frequently, almost daily when I'm in New York. And there's no support for what

Israel is doing anywhere, even in the US, by the way. It's not real support. When Blinken and Biden wring their hands at NetYahu, it's probably genuine. It's just extra pathetic because we should have a president that does something else than wring his hands. But the rest of the world's aghast. When I say 160 countries, remember there are 193 in the UN. Europe is also torn because basically Europe by and large follows the US because it's more NATO, I would say, than Europe these days. This is the nature of geopolitics. But even in Europe, oh, many countries are about to recognize Palestine. Spain, Norway, Ireland, others are going to recognize Palestine soon because people are and governments are aghast and people in the street are aghast. So that's the axis of resistance.

What will it bubble up to? I hope not a world war. I hope not a world war. I hope not a military confrontation. I think it will mean Israel's economic isolation, its diplomatic isolation. Countries are stopping their trade with Israel. Turkey, Colombia, countries are breaking their diplomatic relations with Israel. This will really hurt. What Egypt has said is if this Rafah incursion goes on, the Camp David Accords could go out the window. Many, many steps can be taken to make the point, well, you are completely on your own in this world. And being on your own in this world is not a place

where any country should want to be. Let me go to your wheelhouse, which is the economy. Before we transition over to President Zelensky's woes, what is the status of the Israeli economy from and after the slaughter in Gaza? Shattered. Shattered in terms of credit ratings, in terms of debt, in terms of loss of credibility, in terms of lack of desirability of investments, in terms of loss of diplomacy, in terms of the sheer diversion of young people from their jobs to the army, which is a very heavy, absolute, direct cost. This is a very, very heavy blow in terms of the loss of tourism, which is a complete collapse, obviously, as well in terms of the numbers of people that will emigrate from Israel. The idea that Israel will just, you know, bear this out and that this is all manageable is dead wrong economically.

Switching gears, Professor Sachs, to the other hot spot on Joe Biden's plate. Is President Zelensky out of a job as of next Tuesday, May 20th, when his term expires and for which there has been no election to choose either him or somebody else as a successor? He is on Russia's wanted list after this because they don't recognize him as the legitimate president. He is out of a constitutional position. I assume he will be de facto leader after next Tuesday, meaning completely unconstitutionally. So right now he's due because he's operating under a martial law decree that he signed before the end of his constitutional mandate, but that runs out next week. And after that, he's just de facto non-constitutional leader. But the end game is very sharp and clear on many fronts, including, of course, most importantly, the battlefield right now, because the Ukrainian forces are being overrun by the Russian forces as we speak.

The defense lines are breaking. The U.S. aid was just, of course, billions more down the drain. It won't stop the Russian offensive. And the question is, how stupid are the White House and the European leaders to escalate further and risk nuclear war. Chris, I'm looking for the Secretary Blinken speaking to President Zelensky yesterday in Kiev. Can you run that, please? The assistance is now on the way. Some of it's already arrived. More of it will be arriving. And that's going to make a real difference against the ongoing Russian aggression on the battlefield. And we're determined, along with many other partners

for Ukraine, to make sure that you succeed on the battlefield. We're equally determined that over time, Ukraine stands strongly on its own feet, militarily, economically, democratically. A strong, successful, thriving, free Ukraine is the best possible rebuke to Putin and the best possible guarantor for your future. And for all of that, the United States is and will remain a committed partner. I don't know if you noticed, there was a three-camera interview. That's more cameras than Joe Biden gets in the East Room to make it look like it was seriously produced. How

deceptive, we know how wrongheaded it is, but how deceptive is it for the American Secretary of State to articulate this false sense of security to President Zelensky and his cabinet? Well, we've seen that act so many times before. We could imagine a U.S. Secretary of State in South Vietnam before the helicopters took off from the roof. We could imagine the same speech being given in Afghanistan. We've seen that show so many times. All they want, they being the White House, is get us to November somehow. Get us to November somehow. Everything else was so false, so wrong, so much blatant lying. One can't even start. What Blinken has been part of, because he goes back with Biden, he goes back with Nuland, with Sullivan in a project that is more than a decade old. They've basically played the gambit to get NATO into Ukraine.

It was an absolutely reckless gamble back in 2014 when they helped with the coup to bring in a government that would want that. They have by now succeeded in completely wrecking Ukraine. And so whatever nice words Blinken has, he's got lots of blood on his hands, as does the president of the United States. There are perhaps 500,000 Ukrainians dead, a massive loss of territory. None of this had to happen at all because there were so many peaceful off-ramps, but the U.S. refused to take any of them because in their arrogance and ignorance, they thought, we can win, we can win. And they felt, well, if we lose, it's Ukraine's loss, it's not us. So right now, all of that was about getting to the November elections. I don't know how many coups the United States has staged in Ukraine,

but they're certainly adept at it. Would you put it past another one to remove President Zelensky and put somebody in power who will negotiate an end to this? It could happen. So many things can happen right now because soldiers are not following orders. There's overt, very sharp conflicts among political leaders in Ukraine. Anything can happen at this stage. I want to play one more clip before we conclude. It's a little on the light side because it is so laughable, although the person speaking is attempting to be serious. this is the official spokesperson for the government of the United States of America, Admiral Kirby, on threats from Moscow. Cut number one. There's been threats from Moscow in the last couple of days of striking British military facilities and also simulating nuclear drills as it sharply rises tensions because of weapons manufactured in the U.K. being used in the conflict that says it could potentially apply to other allied countries as well, theoretically the United States. Do you have a response to that?

Well, what I'd say, number one, is it's just reckless and irresponsible for the leader of a major nuclear-armed power to be saber-rattling the way that he is with respect to potential use for nuclear weapons. Obviously, we monitor this and have continued to monitor this very closely. I can tell you we've seen nothing, even despite the reckless rhetoric that would cause us to change our strategic deterrent posture. And look, lastly, if Mr. Putin and Russian officials are worried about their troops in Ukraine getting hit with weapons from other countries, then the easiest thing to do is just take your troops and leave. Now, how does a comment like that advance the ball of peace in the world? Take your troops and leave. That is really asinine, is it not?

The basic situation is that this administration does not care for, maybe does not understand anything about diplomacy at all. Since this special military operation began, but even before that, since President Putin put on the table a draft U.S.-Russia security agreement, which was put on the table on December 15, 2021, there has been no diplomacy between the United States and Russia. And what there has been is an escalation of arms. And what Kirby was talking about here was the fact that the UK, which is as strident and reckless and actually irrational about all of this as the US, but in the case of Britain, it goes back to the 1840s, not just to the more recent period, in the case of the U.S., they said, we're going to use advanced weaponry to attack Russia in its heartland, and that that's okay, and with our own intelligence and our own personnel. And Russia said, if you do that, you will be subject to the utmost direct attack and retaliation. Do they think this is a game? Well, Kirby, oh yeah, we've done nothing to change our

strategic assessment. I can't help but saying what reckless fools they are. Talk to the other side. Negotiate. Discuss. Find a path to peace. This is what you need to do because it's us that have the stakes. You're not playing a game. And get the smirk off your face, Mr. Kirby. This is real.

And it's very dangerous for America. And it's very dangerous for the world. And learn diplomacy. And if the president's not up to it, he needs to leave the job. Because what we need right now is diplomacy to avoid what could be an absolute global catastrophe. Before we leave shortly, before we came on air, Robert Fico, the prime minister of Slovakia, as the victim of an assassination attempt, it appears as though he was shot three times, twice in the chest and one in the head, and he's fighting for his life. He is the resistor to the West. And of course, the one who recalled or

refused more aid to Ukraine. Do you have any idea if this is a plot or just a crazy person that perpetrated this? It's apparently a known person, somebody who was known in Slovakia. I hope it's not right that he was shot in the head. The early reports said that he took shots to the abdomen, but I may be out of date on that. He is one of the voices for negotiation in Europe. Events like this are not only horrific and tragic in their own right, but they're extremely frightening. I think everybody knows from their history books that it was basically one shooting that caused the course of events that led to World War I in 1914, when Archduke Ferdinand and his wife were assassinated in Sarajevo. We are living in dangerous times, but especially dangerous times

because President Biden seems not to know how to pick up the phone and call President Putin to calm things down. He seems not to know how to pick up the phone with the Arab leaders and with Israel and say, we need two states and we need peace right now. He seems not able to do his job. Viewers are writing in and correcting me that the latest news reports are that he was not struck in the head, that he was struck in the abdomen, which I guess is obviously a better indicator for his survival. So I accept the correction and appreciate when viewers are able to send in updates, since I'm obviously conducting this interview rather than consulting my sources on the late break. Professor Sachs, always a pleasure, my dear friend,

no matter what we talk about. Thank you very much for your time. Thank you for accommodating my schedule today. Of course. Look forward to seeing you next week. Excellent. for accommodating my schedule today. Of course. Look forward to seeing you next week. Excellent. Very good. Thanks so much. Of course. Three o'clock this afternoon, Phil Girardi, Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. I'm out.