Judging Freedom - Prof. John Mearsheimer : An Incoherent Foreign Policy.

Episode Date: December 24, 2025

Prof. John Mearsheimer : An Incoherent Foreign Policy.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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And with Ollie's in-app on-demand health screenings, tap real experts whenever you need peace of mind. Visit ollie.com slash crossover and use code crossover for 60% off your first box. Thank you. Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Wednesday, December 24th, Christmas Eve, 2025. Professor John Mearsheimer will be with us in just a moment. What is the common theme in Donald Trump's foreign policy? Is it incoherence? Is it arrogance? Is it America first? Is it Trump first? But first, this. tells us every market eventually falls. Currencies collapse. And look at where we are now. 38 trillion in national debt. Stocks at record highs defying gravity. So what happens next? Groceries, gas, housing, everything's going up. And this dollar, it buys less every day. When the system breaks, your stocks won't save you and your dollars won't either. But one thing will. Go

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and an early Merry Christmas to you and your family. In the past week and a half, a very highly regarded, retired Swiss military and intelligence officer by the name of Colonel Jacques Bo was sanctioned by the European Union, prohibited from entering the EU should he leave it, and prohibited from using his bank accounts and his credit cards. At the same time, the government of British Prime Minister Starrmer announced that it plans to seize the proceeds of the sale of a British soccer team, what they call a football, owned by an exiled Russian oligarch,

and deliver the proceeds of his bank accounts to the greatest crook in Europe, Latimer Zelensky. What's going on? I think the European elites are getting desperate. The business with Colonel Bout is just outrageous. I mean, what's happening to freedom of speech? There are all sorts of people who appear on your program, yours truly included, who make basically the same arguments that the colonel does. Yes, the colonel was sanctioned because he quoted some retired Ukrainian military who said Ukraine's about to lose. A truthful opinion.

And for that, he can't use his credit cards. He can't go to the store and buy toothpaste. But as you know, whether it's truthful or not doesn't even matter. Right. You're allowed to say things that are pro-Russian, that are anti-Russian, that are truthful, that are not truthful. This is what freedom of speech is all about. I mean, the truth is that this man basically is saying what people like you and I, think is correct. The idea that we're, you know, Putin's puppets and we're sort of in cohoots

with the Kremlin is ridiculous. But this just shows you how desperate the elites are getting at this point in time because it's becoming increasingly clear, number one, that Ukraine is losing on the battlefield. Number two, that the Trump administration has basically bailed out on this one and shifted the burden to the Europeans, and number three, the Europeans can't afford to keep Ukraine afloat. So they're in desperate straits, and they're lashing out. By the way, the person that Colonel Bo quoted is the former chief spokesperson for President Zelensky. It's just mind-boggling what happened to him. And now they want to seize assets.

When the, through the courage of the Belgian Prime Minister, when the EU failed in its efforts to steal the contents of Russian bank accounts in Belgian banks, they decided instead to borrow money from Russian banks and give Zelensky a hundred billion dollars, a hundred billion euros. Do they think that money will or can ever be paid back? Well, first of all, they're not stealing the Russian assets. That failed. Right.

I mean, I agree. That did fail, thanks to God and the courage of the Belgian Prime Minister. Instead, they're going to borrow money and give it to Zelensky, expecting it to be paid back. What kind of an idiot would expect that money ever to be paid back? Well, the money will be paid back if the Russians lose the war and agree to pay reparitions. The chances of that happening are zero. So that money is never going to be paid back by anybody but the European bondholders. So this is, it's just, you know, more evidence of the shenanigans that the Europeans are up to

to try and keep this ship afloat. It's a lost cause. Here's President Trump on Monday talking about Greenland. I guess Venezuela's not enough for him. And now he wants Greenland, but watch that. And if you can't watch the Merck on the face of the Secretary of Defense who calls himself the Secretary of War. Chris, cut number three.

We need Greenland for national protection. They have a very small population. And I don't know. They say Denmark, but Denmark has spent no money. They have no military protection. They say that Denmark was there 300 years ago or something with a boat. Well, we were there with boats, too, I'm sure. so we'll have to work it all out.

But he felt very strongly. We need it for national, we need Greenland for national security. Not for minerals. We have so many sites for minerals and oil and everything. We have more oil than any other country in the world. We need Greenland for national security. And if you take a look at Greenland, you look up and down the coast. You have Russian and Chinese ships all over the place.

We need it for national security. We have to have it. what is he talking about who knows i mean he is a wallless president i mean he just doesn't believe in international law you see it with regard to us boarding these ships uh it's just hard to believe and now he's once again talking about uh conquering greenland uh i mean the danes are not going to give it to him he's going to have to take it from them one way or another And he says there's this great threat that we face if we don't take Greenland. Well, I'd like to know what that threat is.

I'm sure that if there was a serious threat to American national security, the Danes and the people in Greenland would cooperate with us to deal with that threat. And we wouldn't have to take Greenland to deal with it. But again, you know, Trump wants to take Greenland. Who would have ever thought this before he became president? Nobody was talking about taking Greenland. I mean, and who's advising him on this? Is Marco Rubio saying, oh, let's take Venezuela, Cuba, and by the way, Greenland?

Is Higgs-Seth saying we can invade Greenland and take it in two hours? I mean, are any of these people being rational? We don't know. There is no great debate. Congress is not involved. The American public is not involved. Is his foreign policy fairly characterized the shoot from the hip, whatever is in his head at a given moment?

Yeah, I think that's right. But let me just say a word or two about Venezuela versus Greenland. I think on Venezuela, the key person is Marco Rubio. Yes. I think one point that's been lost in a lot of the discussion about Venezuela is that by throttling the flow of oil out of Venezuela, you're cutting off the oil flow to Cuba. And it's absolutely essential for Cuba that it get that oil from Venezuela.

And in fact, Mexico is now talking about trying to do what it can to replace the oil that's being cut off from Venezuela to Cuba because the Mexicans understand that Cuba is in desperate straits. And of course, Marco Rubio is deeply interested in race. wrecking the regime in Cuba, inflicting massive pain on Cuba to bring the regime to its knees. And of course, he wants to do the same in Venezuela. So I think he's a key player there, and I think you don't want to lose sight of how important Cuba is, in addition to Venezuela. With regard to Greenland, I think that's just Trump, maybe Hexeth too.

Trump from the very beginning was interested before Rubio was a serious player. Trump is making arguments about taking Venezuela. One could argue it's easy pickings, and anything that's easy pickings is something that Trump is eventually going to put his gun sights on, and that's sort of what you see happening with Greenland. Yeah. You know, here he is mocking President Maduro of Venezuela, cut number two. You mentioned strikes on land in Venezuela more than 15 times, even now, just in your recent remarks.

Why should Maduro take your threat seriously? He could do whatever he wants. What's your endgame? Maduro? What's your ending? There's no answer. He can do whatever he wants. I mean, we have a massive armada formed, the biggest we've ever had.

And by far the biggest we've ever had in South America, he could do whatever he wants. It's all right. Whatever he wants to do. If he wants to do something, if he plays tough, it'll be the last time he's ever able to play tough. At the time, the United States picks a fight with a smaller country, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, the hoodies. Yeah.

We lose. We lose, and we lose human beings, and we lose assets, and we lose money. Well, there's two points to be made here. One is that armada that he has in the United. the Caribbean has been sitting there for quite a while now. And I think the reason is he doesn't know what to do with Biduro. He's boxed himself in here. He's got himself into a real mess. And it's hard to see how he gets out of it. And if he uses military force in a serious way, he's going to do a lot of damage to American foreign policy. It's not going to have a happy ending.

But to take this just a step further, especially thinking that this is the holiday season, tomorrow's Christmas, you know, when we try and strangle a country like Venezuela directly and Cuba indirectly, we inflict massive punishment on the civilian population. You can rest assured that Maduro will be eating filet mignon tonight, and this is not going to affect him in any meaningful way. But the average person in Venezuela, and the average person in Cuba is going to suffer enormously as a result of these policies. And we run all around the world. And this is not peculiar to the Trump administration. We've done this in the past as well, inflicting massive punishment on the civilian populations in countries all across the planet. And in the end, I don't understand what we gain from it. So not only do we lose, but do all these people lose?

And it's just from, I think, a human rights point of view, and also from a strategic or realist point of view, these are policies that just don't make any sense. We ought to leave Venezuela and Cuba alone. If they do something to threaten us, okay, then we can play tough with them. But in no way is Cuba or Venezuela a threat to the United States. So why inflict massive punishment on the civilian populations in these two countries? I just don't understand it. Here he is two days ago when he was asked, what are you going to do, Mr. President,

with the ships you've seized, talking about the tankers, and the oil that's in them. Now, before we play this clip, bear in mind, I think you know this already, Professor, the most recent seizure

contained a million barrels or more of oil bought and paid for by the Chinese. He may be playing with fire. But watch, watch his attitude. Chris, cut number nine. What are we going to do with the oil that we have? Going to do with what? The oil that has been seized.

The United States seized 1.9 million barrels of oil on December 10th. We're going to keep it. Where is it going to? Are we going to sell it or put in the strategic oil? Maybe we'll sell it. Maybe we'll use it in the strategic reserves. We're keeping it. We're keeping the ships also.

It's the same as the EU seizing the assets of the oligarchs. This is an act of war, is it not? International piracy is what the Chinese called it. And as far as I can tell, they're correct. The ship, the centuries that had that 1.8 million gallons of oil on. it that was going from Venezuela to China and was not a sanction ship, as best I can tell, is going to cause all sorts of problems with the Chinese that already has. And I wouldn't be surprised if the Chinese seized a ship of errors. The fact is, the Chinese, given the hostility

between the United States and China at this point in time, the Chinese have a vested interest in retaliating, playing tit for tat. Because if they let Trump get away with doing this, Trump will just do more of it. So I wouldn't be surprised if the Chinese retaliate. If I were the national security advisor in Beijing, I'd be looking for an opportunity to do the same thing to an American ship. Here's what one of Trump's predecessors very famously said to the American people shortly before World War II, when the Nazis seized American commercial ships. We have sought no shooting war with Hitler. We do not seek it now. But neither do we want peace so much that we are willing to pay for it by permitting him to attack our naval and

merchant ships while they are on legitimate business. When you see a rattlesnake poised to strike, you do not wait until he has struck before you crush him. These Nazi submarines and raiders are the rattlesnakes of the Atlantic. They're a menace to the free pathways of the high seas. They are a challenge to our sovereignty. They hammer at our most precious rights when they attack ships of the American flag. Symbols of our independence, our freedom, and our very life.

Very well have been articulated by President Maduro about the slaughter on the high seas of these people in the speedboats and the oil tankers being seized. Yeah, yeah. And again, getting back to the chiefs. Chinese case. You want to remember that Trump tried to play tough with the Chinese on tariffs. Remember, he was going to greatly increase tariffs right after he took office. Right. And then the Chinese made it clear to him, first on April 4th, then on October 2nd, that they had cards to play and they had lots of leverage over us in terms of rare earth minerals and rare earth magnets. And Trump was forced to back off. So Trump would to be aware that when he's playing with the Chinese, and he tries to play hardball with the Chinese, they have cards to play. And that applies to tariffs. It applies to the use of military force. And it applies to boarding ships from Venezuela and going to China. So he better be very careful here.

You spoke a few minutes ago about the damage to American diplomacy as a result of what Trump is doing and may do in Venezuela. What is your take on what he did yesterday, where he summarily fired 30 U.S. ambassadors, all of whom were career diplomats leaving those posts empty, ordered them home immediately? Well, I'm not sure that that hurts us so much diplomatically. It doesn't help for sure. But I think it badly damages the State Department and the diplomatic corps. I mean, for purposes of conducting diplomacy, you want professionals. And most of these people are professionals. Why would you do this?

What are you trying to do? You're politicizing the State Department. You're basically saying these are not my people. I want to get rid of them, and I'll replace them with my people. So with regard to Trump, first of all, he places little emphasis on diplomacy, and to the extent that he practices diplomacy, he relies on cronies. He relies on people like Steve Whitkoff and Jared Kushner. These are people who have no experience as diplomats, basically know little about foreign policy,

but they're his cronies. They're his buddies. And those are the kind of people that he wants to rely on because he doesn't trust the foreign policy establishment to include people in the State Department. And the question you have to ask yourself, is this any way to run a government in the modern world? And the answer is it's not. And this is one of the reasons we're having so much trouble. And there's, I think, little prospect of the situation improving. It appears, with the exception of Latin America, he doesn't trust his own Secretary of State. I mean, can you imagine? I mean, our colleague Ray McGovern did a funny imitation of this.

Marco Rubio is saying, you know, I'm going to Moscow next week. No, you're not. Jared's going. Well, I'm going to Geneva to meet with the NATO foreign ministers. No, you're not. The Secretary of the Army, J.D. Vance's law school roommate, is going. Stay home, Marco. Concentrate and overthrowing Cuba. Now, this is hyperbolic, but there's a kernel of truth to it. Yeah, it's quite interesting how little impact Marco Rubio has on foreign policy. It reminds me a bit of when William Rogers was Richard Nixon's Secretary of State.

Oh, and who was the National Security Advisor in that time period? and Godzilla was his nickname. His real name was Henry Kissinger. But you want to remember that in the case of Marco Rubio, he is, excuse me, he is the national security advisor plus the Secretary of State. So he has no Henry Kissinger figure to blame. And in fact, the person he has to blame is Donald Trump, because Donald Trump basically has little use for Mark or Rubio.

He was a political foe in the run-up to the presidency, and he said some terrible things about Trump, and Trump has no use for him, so he's treated as a second-class citizen. Is America American foreign policy, Chris has a metaphor on this involving the Kennedy Center, is American foreign policy America first or Trump first? Oh, it's clearly Trump first. With one caveat, you could also call it Israel first whenever it comes down to a choice

between what's in the American national interest and in the Israeli national interest, Trump always goes with what's in the Israeli national interest. So I think you could say it's Trump first plus Israel first, over America first. He is not an America first president. He makes a lot of noise about that. But if you look carefully at what he's been doing, that's just not the case.

Watch him react when Mark Levin proclaims him the first Jewish president. And he loves Israel too. Sure. six years ago I was up here and I said this is our first Jewish president now he's the first Jewish president to serve two not consecutive

presidencies we thank you for everything twice he said that's true now he could have been meaning that's true Mark Levin said it or he could have been meaning, I've converted to Judaism, or he could have been meaning it as a metaphor. Well, I think it's the latter for sure. Mark Levin's behavior there is really beyond the pale.

It's quite interesting that he felt that he could go up and put his arm around the president like that and talk to him in that manner. And that you can tell just watching it that Trump did not feel very comfortable. He knew that this was in the White House at a Hanukkah party, I think about a week ago. I think it was earlier this week around the early last week when Hanukkah was beginning and Trump hosted a Hanukkah party. Last issue I want to raise with you before saying Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

and I'll miss you during our break. Do you think the Epstein scandal and revelations is, is going to impact Trump's foreign policy? I don't think it's going to impact this foreign policy very much. I just don't see that. Where do you see the connection? Well, we haven't seen it yet, but we know from Epstein's four foreign passports

and his doting on Ahud Barak, the former Israeli prime minister and chief of the Israeli military, that if he wasn't a Mossad agent, he was certainly a Mossad asset. We also know that the use of blackmail is a classic, classic Mossad technique. Well, a couple of points. One is we haven't seen any evidence of blackmail yet. And with regard to the Israeli connection, the Epstein-Israel connection,

there's already an abundance of evidence, and there'll be more evidence. of that connection for sure. I just don't think that's going to matter much for Trump as that comes out. I think what matters for Trump and is going to matter enormously not only for Trump, but for Vance and Rubio and other Republicans who are interested in succeeding Trump is what's happening inside the Republican base regarding attitudes towards Israel. You have a real split inside the Republican base, as you do inside the Democratic base with regard to Israel. They're just a lot of Republicans who are sick and tired of this Israel first policy that the United States has long had. So that raises all sorts of questions of how Trump maneuvers in his

last three years in his relations with Israel. And for people like Vance and people like Rubio, who are thinking about running down the road, they have to decide which side of that divide they're going to come down on. And I think there's really no middle ground here. And I think this is going to create huge problems for both Vance and Rubio, but it's also going to create problems for Trump. So I don't see the Epstein business as a big problem for him in terms of waging foreign policy, I think the whole question of the souring of many Republicans on our relationship with Israel is more likely to cause him trouble moving forward. He's going to have to figure out which side to come down on, and it's going to cause him problems, I believe.

On Monday, December 29th, President Trump is meeting Prime Minister Netanyahu. Did Trump invite Netanyahu or did Netanyahu invite himself? This is the fifth, fifth in-person meeting in Trump's 11 months in office. To be technically correct, it's the sixth meeting because there was also the meeting in Jerusalem. You're right. You're right. Yeah, so they've met six times. I would imagine in this case that Netanyahu initiated it. You don't have the sense from listening to the White House talk about this visit that they're enthusiastic. And it appears that what Netanyahu wants to do is come over and brief Trump about why it's time to think about attacking Iran again. I don't think Trump wants to hear this. Remember, he declared a great victory after the June 22nd bombing.

Oh, right, right. All of Iran's nuclear capabilities have been obliterated. So why do we attack them, Bibi? Well, there's no reason to attack them according to Trump, because we solved the problem. Furthermore, Trump runs the great danger that if he gets sucked into attacking Iran again, it'll become a forever war. In June when we attacked, June 22nd, it was a one-off. We went in, we blasted those Iranian sites and declared victory, and that was the end of the story.

So Trump thought, but he should have understood, maybe he did, that when you're dealing with the Israelis, it's never the end of the story, whether you're talking about the Palestinians, Lebanon, Syria, Iran, or what have you. So the Israelis are back and they're thinking about attacking Iran again. And I don't think Trump has any appetite for that. Professor Mearsheimer, thank you very much. Thank you for all you've done for us in the past year. As you may know, last weekend, we surpassed 100 million views on this program. Thanks in no small part to your extraordinary, smart, courageous analysis. sees that you give us every week.

Thank you for our professional collaboration and our personal friendship. I hope you have a great holiday break, and we'll look forward to seeing you in early January. Likewise, Judge. Merry Christmas to you, and may you cross the 200 million threshold next year. Oh, God love you. Thank you, John. All the best to you. All the best to you.

Merry Christmas. One more live show and then a super show coming up at 11 o'clock this morning. Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, and tomorrow Christmas Day at 8 in the morning, the Maxathon. Your eight hours of the best of Max Blumenthal. Judge the Paltona for judging Freedom. Thank you.