Judging Freedom - Ray McGovern : Why European Elites Hate Russia.

Episode Date: October 6, 2025

Ray McGovern : Why European Elites Hate Russia.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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Ray McGovern will be with us, in just a moment. Why do the European elites hate the Russians? But first, this. While the markets are giving us whiplash, have you seen the price of gold? It's soaring. In the past 12 months, gold has risen

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Call 800, 511, 4620, 800, 511, 4620, or go to Lear, Judge Knapp.com and tell them your friend the judge sent you. Brad McGovern, welcome here, my dear friend. The Cold War has been over for 35 years. Are the Russians still demonized in U.S. intelligence agencies? I'm afraid they have been. I don't know whether Tulsi Gapar is going to be able to turn things around. But, you know, when you say demonized, that's really the,

the word. And I would just point to some remarks that Ambassador Jack Matlock, a good friend of mine, who was ambassador to the Soviet Union in its last days, what he said about the deterioration in relations and why we're at the past that were reached now. And he said, look, if it wasn't for the Russia gate, if it weren't for brainwashing the American people to think that the Russians gave us Donald Trump, the Russians interfered in our election, in our elections in 2016. They all did all manner of terrible things, and now they've invaded a country in an unprovoked manner. Well, they're all lies because the Russians didn't do that. Right.

It was provoked up and down. So, yeah, there's a large tissue of lies that has to be gotten through. And I run into this all the time, not only around the neighborhood, but also talking to audiences like I just said at the University of yeah USC University of Southern California when you joined the CIA

and the Cold War was still on I suppose it was a little bit easier to demonize the Russians they were the adversaries we were trying to steal their secrets they were trying to steal our secrets they were a communist repressive slash social society

where the we're the good guys We have to make them like us. Their analogy. Yeah, and that's important because I thought I was pretty much well up on Russia. And I was just getting out of grammar school when Stalin died, but I learned a lot in subsequent years. I didn't know that the Russians had offered to join NATO.

I didn't know that. My friend Jeff Roberts had uncovered that by going into the Soviet archives and picking out the foreign minister papers written by Molotov and Mayankov and how they made these overtures to NATO. Now, it's really interesting because Mauling, the Presidium had to really cover its rear end because this is amazing, but they did it now. That was in 1954. Putin mentions it at Valdai. Now the next year, what happens? The Russians create the Warsaw Pact. Wait a second now. I thought the Warsaw Pact was created in reaction. I thought that the NATO was created a reaction to the Warsaw PASS. No, no, it wasn't. NATO was created in 1949.

Right. Warsaw Pact, 1955. Now, that really wasn't in my active imagination for many years until I tried to assimilate this stuff. This is history. It's documented. And the whole notion about how the call was. started you know needs a little rejiggering even in minds like mine who pretend to know a lot of version history why do european elites whether it's emmanuel mccrone or frederick mertz or uh keir stormer or mrs maloney in um in italy why do european elites hate the russians money the military industrial complex is just as powerful in europe as it is here If you don't have an enemy, my God. You know, it almost came to not having an enemy.

When Putin rehabilitated Russia and sort around 214, 15, my God, how could you build a common European battle tank if there was no threat from Russia? Wow, that was 2013. 2014, we had the coup in Kiev and all of a sudden Russia had planned this thing, had planned to take over Crimean or stuff. All this poppycock justified, well, what happened? Mafia and a French firm were building the common European battle tank and, whoa, they're stocking like that. And then finally, the other firm sued Mafi and said, or the other way around, Mafi said, you're trying to build a common European battle tank now. No, we have the rights to that. They settled it out of court and both firms are making billions, not millions of billions of bucks on this threat from Russia, which now they justify by the unprovoked nature of the Russian entry into Ukraine.

Do you think that there are no longer rules of war that nations follow, as Alistair Crook has argued? That, in fact, there's a straight line between Netanyahu's slaughter of the Ghazans and Donald Trump's blowing speedboats out of the water in the Caribbean. Well, Trump, I think, was impelled first and foremost by the desire to show how tough he was. In other words, you know what happened in Beijing. It looked like the world was hurt against the U.S. and the West, so to speak. So I had to show some muscle. It came directly after the Beijing thing. But this is really, there is no rule anymore.

Now, when was the last time? Well, the last time it really mattered in a nuclear environment was when John Kennedy made that wonderful speech at American University in June, 1963, I had just joined the CIA. And what he said was, look, the main thing we have to avoid. There are two nuclear powers, Russia and us at the time, Soviet Union, is to make sure that we never backed up the other into a choice between abject surrender and using nuclear weapons. Now, that was the Cold War rules, or those were rules of engagement. Now, with respect to Ukraine, we back the Russians up to where they entered,

Ukraine, and then we, through our proxies, tried to back the Russians into what they call a strategic defeat. And, you know, they're not going to be strategically defeated by anybody on their border when they see an existential threat coming. That's just the rules of the road. What basis is there legal or political, I guess mainly political, to say, stop a ship on high seas that has no arms uh that is filled with civilians that is carrying food water and medication for gaza oh none at all i thought you were going to talk about the french

intercepting that that cargo ship with the with oil no there's no basis at all in that and of course i was on one of those foltillas 2011 and you know they just do what they want and I don't know how strongly the White House talked to Netanyahu and said please don't there's a lot of American veterans a lot of American people there and please don't do that well these gutsy people and I applaud Greta Thunberg especially for her persistence nevertheless she persisted one might say I applaud these people because there are new boats going new boats okay and they have doctors and they have journalists and not

going to stop and we'll have to see if maloney of italy says oh please keep keep away from the trouble and just be there just be there in case you can pick up the people who are thrown overboard okay or whether she'll step up to all the demonstrations down in italy and whether the spaniards who also have a battleship or have a warship in the area well they'll do something more than just wring their hands and pick up the people who are still alive in the Mediterranean sea. What basis is there for the French to have stopped a civilian Russian tanker in the high seas? President Putin called it piracy. I think he's 100% correct. Yeah, that's the basis in law, piracy. In other words, it's an outright violation of law. Now, it's interesting how Putin

explained it. He says, you know, why did they do these things? Well, look at the, look at the chaos in places like France. Now, my God, here's a guy who conceives himself as a Napoleon that rings some really strong bells in Russian minds, right? Napoleon, a little Napoleon, and his country has fallen apart. So he's got to divert attention somehow. So he grabs one of the ships that he said that people say has Russian oil in it. My God. Well, if further proof were needed, judge, as you know, the French government fellow's morning. I think it was the fourth prime minister that he had in less than a year. And he gave up just one day after he had pointed all his business is my gut. The place is falling apart. So yeah, it's to distract. And Lavrov made

the same point with respect to Tomahawks and other things. Largely, they're to distract the tension from the problems that these geniuses in Berlin and Paris and London, they can't cope with the problems that they face. The French Constitution says that the government shall be run by the prime minister with his cabinet. He had just installed the cabinet, and now they're gone, and he's gone. So you're right. This is the fourth one in a year, the fifth one in two years. one wonders what's going to become of the French government.

Chris has put together an interesting back-to-back on the START treaty. So we're going to run this clip. I know you want to talk about this. This is fascinating. First President Putin, then the American press secretary, who often doesn't make any sense but does here, Carolyn Levitt. And then the President of the United States, surprisingly agreeing with President Putin, Chris, cut number nine. After February 5, 26, Russia is prepared to continue adhering to the central quantitative limits of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty for one year.

Going forward, based on an analysis of the situation, we will make a decision if we continue adhering to these voluntary self-limitations. We believe this measure will. only be viable if the United States acts in a similar manner. The president is aware of this offer extended by President Putin, and I'll let him comment on it later. I think it sounds pretty good, but he wants to make some comments on that himself, and I will let him do that. President Putin offers to keep limits from nuclear arms for one more year, so then hopefully negotiate the new free thing. Sounds like a good idea to me.

Fresh everyone's memory, please, on what they start treating. was? Well, it severely limits the number of intercontinental missiles, whether their ICBMs launch from the land, or whether a submarine launch ballistic missiles. Now, they're tightly controlled. The limits have been in place for two terms of this START treaty now, and it expires on February 5th of this coming year. So this was an initiative about two and a half weeks ago, if memory serves. Putin made this initiative, utter silence. And when Putin was asked about this at Baldai on the

1st of October, the whole tenor was, well, why don't the, why don't the, doesn't the U.S. respond? Even if it's going to say no, really respond. Now, I'm not surprised that the response It seems to be positive. Now, caveat, Trump may say tomorrow, I had some bad idea. I thought it was a good idea yesterday. So caveat that, but this is the real hope. If the Russians and the Russians did mention this or raise it in Alaska. So this is, you know, if we can get started on arms control,

just as John Kennedy persuaded Wolfschoff, look, we can do it, limited test ban treaty, and that will loosen these things, and we can get a better rapporteur, even Dayton. If we can start that, and the Russians seem ready to do that, Kirillov, one of Putin's major lieutenants, the economic guy, financial guy, said, look, this is really good. He said, look, the probability of the outcome of relations here, the probability of the outcome of the introduction. of these talks is quite high. So Kirillov said that, not Putin.

They go waiting until a couple of days to see Trump changes his mind. He has all kinds of opposition to this. If he can move on this, he can move on other things. So that's a good sign. He'll have opposition from everybody around him, from Lindsey Graham and Tom Cotton to General Kellogg and Secretary Rubio and Sebastian Gorka. President Putin's comment was on September 22nd.

President Trump's response was yesterday, October 5th. Here's Dimitri Peshkov on Saturday, Chris, cut number 8. Certainly we welcome such a statement and believe that it already provides grounds for optimism in the sense that the United States supports this initiative of President Putin. There you have it. I think you were right all along that there was more to the Anchorage, Alaska meeting than met the eye. If there's now a meeting of the minds and something as critical as start. Well, Judge, it's not rocket science.

If you look how the Russians have been really careful to separate their attempt to make a better relationship with the United States from whatever else goes on. Ukraine, U.S.-Israel attacks on Iran. After each of these major kerfuffles, the Russians said publicly, look, this is on a different plane. We need first and foremost to do this. Now, my notion is that the president's daily briefer for Putin is telling him, Trump is not well. He's not okay.

You know what that means? Vladimir Vladimir, he's not okay. So Putin said, what does that mean? Well, just be guided by the fact that the guy who has his fingers on the codes there or whatever they are, he's not okay. So what I saw Putin doing at Valdai was bending over backwards. You can almost say to appease Trump, but also to ingratiate with himself. Oh, man, he is the most comfortable guy ever. he's the most comfortable guy to talk to.

Lockelius is the only guy in the world that thinks he's the most comfortable guy to talk to. And yet Putin goes on, he bent over backwards to say, look, we have a pretty decent relationship. He didn't apparently know quite yet that Trump was going to say what he said yesterday, but there's real prospects for peace. And this Tomahawk thing, which entered into the fray again, Bear in mind, Lavrov answered that question two days before Putin was asked it. And they both answered the same thing. I said, look, you know, number one, it's not going to change anything on the battlefield.

Number two, this is mostly a satisfied the Europeans. The U.S. really sees a need to make sure the Europeans think that the U.S. takes their view seriously. And what else? So, yeah, well, we had a tact. tackle missiles. And what came out of that? Well, Russian air defenses put them down. Lastly, and this is key, he's asked, as Lavrov was, will this damage relations? How about the light at the end of the tunnel, Radimir? Will this damage? There's only one answer to that, of course. He said, these things can't be man. They can't even be delivered without U.S. help

that won't work. And it's going to be, yeah, well, of course, of course. is going to damage things. How else is he going to answer this? So the reality is it's a red herring. It's a red herring. Ain't no tomahawk could ever be used by Ukraine, even if they go circuitously shoe to the Netherlands or Spain or something like that. It won't be able to do that for three years, Judge. So this is artificial stuff, and it's had its impact. The Europeans are really In the meantime, your former colleagues, and maybe they weren't there when you were there, but CIA are still with MI6 helping Ukraine

aim American and British weapons to kill Russian soldiers, correct? That's true, but I don't think that would be very short lives. I think it will be short lives. I think by and by, the situation, on the ground had become ever more precarious for the Ukrainian forces. Many of them are surrounded. I think Putin himself talked about hundreds of thousands deserting. And so they have these culprudrons. It's just a matter of how fast Putin wants to move ahead. And I think he sees this as a bargaining chip. If Trump can come around and make believe this would be a negotiated end to the war,

that would be good for everybody, particularly if the West takes seriously the core interests of Russia, which are not to have NATO in Ukraine. Ray McGovern, thank you. A great conversation, my dear friend. Thank you for sharing all of your knowledge and analysis with you. We'll look forward to seeing you with Larry Johnson on Friday. Thank you, Judge. Sure.

All the best, my dear friend. And the aforementioned, Larry Johnson, will be here at 1130 this morning at 2 o'clock, Max Blumenthal, at 3 o'clock, Scott Ritter, at 4 o'clock, Professor Jeffrey Sachs. Judge Lepaltena for Judging Freedom. Thank you.