Judging Freedom - Scott Horton: Can Trump Bring Peace to Ukraine?

Episode Date: May 14, 2025

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you Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Wednesday, May 14th, 2025. Scott Horton from antiwar.com and he the author of the number one bestselling book on the origins of the special military Operation in Ukraine called provoked look at that smile is with us now Scotty welcome back It's been a long time since you've been here. I have so many things To talk to you about we'll we'll get started with the events happening as we speak. Does it trouble you that Trump is cozying up to butchers in the Middle East in the presence of Mohammed bin Salman and Al Jalani of Syria? Well, it's really a sight to see him hanging around with Jalani

and giving him so much respect, praising him as a very tough guy with a very tough past when what he is referring to, whether he knows it or not, is that this guy was a high level member of al-Qaeda in Iraq during Iraq War II, where he fought Americans by his own admission judge in his interview with Frontline from a few years ago. He fought Americans in Mosul and Ramadi. And then he was sent by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who was the successor to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq in Iraq War II. He was sent then for Obama's dirty war in Syria and led what was called al-Nusra, which as even Victoria Nuland admitted when she was a spokeswoman for the State Department, was just an alias for Al Qaeda in Iraq. And they were the suicide bomber brigades, the head shopper brigades.

And long story short, they had been relegated to the Idlib province in Northwest Syria for really the end of Obama and all through Trump and Biden until the very end of Joe Biden's administration, the Turks essentially activated them and they launched their own October 7th type, you know, breakout from their pen in Idlib and they ended up sacking the capital city. They took over all of Western Syria, the major populated parts of Syria. And now it's true, Judge, as the War Party would say that, or they would argue that this guy's been reformed now, right? Like he's been to Turkish and American public relations school, and they told him, please stop chopping off so many heads. And, you know, they don't really need

to do suicide attacks anymore for their strategy. So now that they've won, but they're trying to, you know, they put, they dress him up in a monkey suit and pretend like he's just a western statesman of some kind. His people are still out there butchering innocent people. According to Max Blumenthal, they are slaughtering Alawites and Christians in Syria. By the thousands. This is the guy that Trump embraced. This is the guy that Trump praised. And this is the guy, the head of the government theoretically from which Trump removed sanctions. This is a guy who until a month ago, Trump's own State Department had a $10 million bounty on his head.

Yep. And look, the thing is, I wrote my book is called Enough Already, Time to End the War on Terrorism. And I don't argue in there that there's no enemies out there. There are bin Ladenites out there. And I would never recommend in a million years that Trump lead another war against this new bin Ladenite state in Syria. Somebody else is going to have to work that out. But for God's sake, we shouldn't be backing them.

So lift the sanctions, yes, but officially normalize relations with them? I don't know why. Why can't we lean on the Turks to put somebody who's not a former, supposedly sworn, blood oath member of Al-Qaeda in charge of Damascus? It's crazy. And clearly it's up to the Turks to decide. They have a thousand times, a hundred thousand times the state power that this new Syrian regime has They can go in there and change things. Why does this have to be the status quo? it's crazy with respect to Mohammed bin Salman Trump has to cozy up to him Trump's boys are building high rises in Saudi Arabia, what's he gonna do say? I'm not gonna talk to you because you butchered,

I forget the fellow's name, the reporter from the Washington Post while he was still alive? Yeah. Yeah, Khashoggi, Crown Prince Bonesaw, we used to call him there. I think I might've got Kennedy in trouble on Fox Business Channel for calling him that.

But yeah, he is a murderer murderer and he's of course the butcher of the Yemenis from 2015 through 22 as well. Mohammed bin Salman is a terrible guy. And I don't know the intricacies of Trump's sons of business relations over there. They ought to be able to keep that separate even if they are doing that. And they should not be doing that while he is in power. But even if they are, they ought to be able to keep that separate. And he ought to be able to just like Joe Biden ought to be able to say, well, I'm sorry, your business interests don't mean anything compared to the foreign policy interests of the United States of America.

And if we have to play hardball with these countries, we're going to. But yeah, clearly, it's a major disincentive for doing that. What is your opinion of this four hundred million dollar plane as a gift that the Qataris want to give to the Defense Department and then to Trump's library? Do the Qataris give these things not expecting a quid pro quo? I can't imagine. It's really a shame. I mean, the whole idea is just crazy.

Trump ought to obviously just turn them down and say thank you, but no, thank you. It's a massive conflict of interest just that there any foreign state, if it was the English or the French or anybody else, the Germans, we shouldn't be doing this kind of deal with any foreign country. And clearly when it's a monarchy, a royal monarchy in the Middle East, it's crazy that we would have that kind of relationship with there. And then yes, of course, just like with every foreign

expenditure in this country, there's a massive conflict of interest, with all of these states and it's, you gotta take responsibility. It's quote unquote our, and I mean this loosely defined But it's our society that has allowed our government to get away with creating this world empire Yes, you're right us in this situation where it matters very much to every foreign government what America is going to do So of course they have to corrupt our system as best as they can to protect themselves

So there's the emoluments clause in the constitution which prohibits a foreign country from giving a gift to the president. He and his attorney general and his White House counsel are getting around that by saying well the gift is going to the board of trustees of his presidential library not yet formed. Of course he will control the board of trustees of library not yet formed. Of course, he will control the board of trustees of his not yet formed library. It seems to me the whole purpose of the Emoluments Clause is to prevent this very thing from happening. But I couldn't imagine that when Madison wrote

the Constitution with the Emoluments Clause in it, the clause prohibits the gifts from a foreign head of state. He had the faintest, he had the wildest imaginings that it would be $400 million. Yeah, that's a man who already holds himself out as a billionaire. Does this billionaire manifest to you a an accurate historical understanding of how the special military operation in Ukraine came about. I think on the surface he does. He knows that America essentially pushed the West's luck overall there.

I don't know. I'm sure he hasn't read the book. I don't know if he's ever read any books about any of this stuff. But, you know, Judge, it's a sad case, right, of him just being inaugurated at the wrong time for all of this. If it hadn't been for the Russiagate hoax and all that, he probably could have solved this problem back in his first term. But he just was inaugurated here in early 25 at a time where no one else's interests line up for ending the war the way he wants to end it. So the Russians have the advantage now.

They seem to want to continue the Ukrainians. I'm not sure exactly what they're thinking, but they seem to think that they can rest more aid out of Europe and even the United States if a deal is too difficult to reach. And there's a lot of reasons on the ground considering just, for example, the gap between what the Russians claim and what they actually hold. Right? So, and of course, where the Ukrainians don't want to concede to giving up any of it at this point and the Germans and the French and the British still promise that

they're going to send more aid and Trump still might, he's still sending some while all this is going on and if talks break down, he might still at least trickle in some, hopefully it would be somewhat reduced, but the Ukrainians seem to still want to deal and. And, and, and Putin of course has pressure from his right to not just take the four O blasts that he's got, but to keep going and take everything east of the river and then maybe march on the coast all the way

through Odessa to Transnistria and take the whole southern coast. I don't know if that's what Putin wants, but there are clearly people in Russian politics who are demanding that of him. We've gone this far, what are we gonna do? Stop now, this kind of thing. So Trump, I think, is sincere judge in wanting to end the war.

And even if he read the book on it, I don't know if that really would put him in a much better position to try to end it. You know, he does have some competent advisors. I know Tulsi Gabbard certainly understands the situation in great detail, but I'm just not sure that that even like deep wise insight would really give him the ability to end the situation as it exists right now, unfortunately. Yeah, but one day he seems to say Crimea is part of Russia and the next day he says Putin wants all of Ukraine. There isn't a scintilla of evidence says Putin wants all of Ukraine.

There isn't a scintilla of evidence that Putin wants all of Ukraine. Putin couldn't afford to run all of Ukraine, particularly if the Ukrainians were waging a guerrilla war against his regime there. Well, I agree with that. He certainly has not demonstrated that intention at all. Although I do fear, Judge, that just for the reason you exactly cited there, that by the logic of government programs, he has sort of gotten himself

into this trap where he's already taken anyone who's pro-Russia out of the country and made them part of Russia. So now he has a much more anti-Russian Ukraine than he had before. Remember, the Eastern parties used to win elections. That's why America had to overthrow the government there twice because the wrong guy kept winning, right? So now anyone who leans pro-Russia is never going to win again, right? That's all over because all those Donbass voters are gone. All right. Tell me what you think of this, his interview with Meet the Press. Ukraine, there's been discussions they will have to give up some of the land that Russia is illegal.

Russia will have to give up all of the land that Russia is illegally... Russia will have to give up all of Ukraine because that's what they want. All of Ukraine, meaning they wouldn't keep any of the land that they've claimed? Russia would have to give up all of Ukraine because what Russia wants is all of Ukraine. And if I didn't get involved, they would be fighting right now for all of Ukraine. Russia doesn't want the strip that they have now. Russia wants all of Ukraine. And if it weren't me, they would keep going.

Sounds like he was talking to Sebastian Gorka right before he went on air. There isn't a centella of evidence that Russia wants all of Ukraine. Right. It's funny the way he kept saying it that way over and over again and whatever too, is kind of absurd. I agree with you, although what I was just gonna say was though, I think he may

have actually, Putin may have walked himself into that trap essentially, where let's say he takes all the Donbass in the south. Well now he's got still a lot of Russian speakers, if not ethnic Russians, east of the river, who they can say are at threat now that they're a much more severe minority compared to the ethnic Ukrainians west of the river. Well, now maybe they'll be persecuted. And so now they need protecting, right? That would be the argument. But then let's say that they take everything east of the river. Now they left a rump Ukraine that's run by hardcore

right-wing nationalists with no balance against them. Many of them, quite frankly, are real Nazis in power, in the military, and in the national police services and so forth. They're going to certainly dominate politics after the war. They're going to be the war heroes. Andriy Bolesky, who's leading the third separate infantry division right now, he could be the next president, maybe. So then you're Russia, then you're Putin. What do you do about that? Now you got to keep going. And then as you say, make an insurgency, even if the Russians stop east of the river, the Nazi types and other militias and they could wage an insurgency from the forests and the swamps west of the river. And so if you're Putin now, you've essentially dug yourself

into this pit. Where now what's the solution to that? It's not what you're talking about. Talk to me about Zelensky's dilemma. He can't concede Crimea and the four O bless and no NATO and expect to go back to his living in Keeve and wake up the next morning alive. Can he? No, speaking of the neo-Nazis and judge, I mean, they have, I have them cited in the book, Bolecki and Dmitry Yurash and others have threatened to murder him and his predecessor Poroshenko numerous times.

You know, the way they look at it, people might remember from the Iraq War, the Sunk Kos Fallacy that said, if we leave now, then our men will have died in vain. Right? That's the way they look at it. All the Ukrainians who've died and have been maimed in this horrible thing, they haven't died in vain yet. They haven't been casualties in vain yet. But if Ukraine makes peace with Russia now, and they lose things and rather

than saving everything, then then they've died in vain. Then now the leaders have sacrificed all of those lives for nothing. Now that's treason. Now they get hanged from the lamp post. Right. Yeah. Yeah, here's one of Trump's over the top boasts in one of the debates. It's either a 2020 or 20. It must be 2024. But here it is, Chris. It should have never happened. I will have that war settled between Putin and Zelensky as president-elect before I take office on January 20th. I'll have that war settled. People being killed

so needlessly, so stupidly, and I will get it settled and I'll get it settled fast before I take office. Apologies because Joe Biden looked like he was in another world, but that boast was apparently bought by the American people. Now it is Trump's war, I would argue, and you're the expert on the war from your knowledge and extraordinary research in this fabulous book, Provoked. He could stop the war by turning off the spigot just by saying to Pete Hagseth, nothing else is going over there after yesterday.

Yep. That's true. You know, the problem is he over there after yesterday. Yep. That's true. Um, you know, the problem is he really doesn't have that many cards to play. Right. He's when he took office, America is on Ukraine side and Ukraine's losing. And Joe Biden already poured in every conventional missile system that he can get away with giving them. Um, so those lines have all been crossed. There's really nowhere else to go there, no more room to move there. And they've already levied every sanction in the

world and attempt to boycott Russia, which just pushed them east. They're still fine trading with the rest of Asia. So Trump really the only cards he has to play, he has no sticks, just carrots. And the only carrot he has is, hey, you could normalize relations with America. We'll lift the sanctions and be friends again, which is great. And to me is the most important thing in the entire world and nothing else should matter at all. I don't care about any other thing. I happen to agree with you and I wish that there would be a grand reset.

But because that's the only card that Trump has because as you know, Russia has prospered under American sanctions. Would they like to be a part of SWP? Yes. Would they like Amex cards to work in Moscow? Of course, but they've learned to live without it. Yep. And in fact, you know, Judge, there's this guy named the War Nerd. His real name is John Dolan and he's a really great military. You were the war nerd. Oh, I'm sorry. You know him? You were the war nerd. Yeah, I might be. That's his official name though. Gary Butcher, John Bolan is his name.

And he wrote back in 2014 that, oh, guess what, everybody? Russia's just opened a new natural gas pipeline to China. Game over. That's it. Europe can never threaten to boycott Russia again because the pipeline is open for business. And that's it. They could just sell all their natural resources to the East. They don't need you at all anymore. And so whatever leverage Europe just had to boss the Russians around is canceled. And that was back, you know, in in 14 was when he wrote that.

And then so by 22, the proof was in the pudding that the West said oh, yeah Well, if you do this, we're gonna kick you out of the West and Putin said you don't scare me I'm already ready to trade with India and China and everybody else but you right if I you got a great really made good On that you have a great grasp on these things Scott. Tell me what you think of this. This is President Putin yesterday talking about Ukrainian conscripts versus Russian volunteers. Chris, cut number six. I want to draw your attention to the following. Well, the Kiev authorities are carrying out forced mobilization, catching people on the Kupo streets like stray dogs. Our guys are joining up voluntarily, they go of their own accord.

So as you know, our recruitment, well they're managing to round up about 30,000 people now, right? But with us 50 to 60,000 guys come forward on their own every month, including from your workplaces. 50 to 60,000 volunteers a month. Hegseth would drool over that. Yeah. Well, it's because they know they're winning. Right. Right.

So it makes sense to go ahead and get in on that and win your badge and all that stuff and hopefully not get blown up. Whereas on the Ukrainian side, even though they are on the defensive to a great degree, although obviously a lot of this land is in dispute and is very complicated and all that, but in the scheme of things, they're fighting a defensive war, but they don't want to go out there because they know they're just going to die for nothing. Right. They're going to get blown up and lose anyway.

They're ill-trained, ill-equipped, ill-prepared. In many cases, they're untrained and they're just, you're right. Being frog march, frog march to their death. And I'm very sympathetic. Where do you think the war could go on? Even if Trump doesn't dial back the spigot. I mean, at some point they won't have the human beings to use the equipment that the American defense department is sending there.

Right? Yes. Although, you know, that's a great question. I'm glad you brought that up because it's different than a situation in Saigon or in Kabul. Right? American Defense Department is sending there, right? Yes, although, you know, that's a great question. I'm glad you brought that up because it's different than the situation in Saigon or in Kabul, right? I mean, when America packed up and left Afghanistan,

the regime just completely crumbled and ceased to exist. I don't think that's likely to happen here. I think if Trump called off all support, the Ukrainian army is still an army. It's not like the Afghan National Army, which was always nothing but a Potemkin village full of ghost soldiers on the payroll, but who don't really exist and this kind of thing. It was a joke in the way that the Ukrainian army is not. So even if Trump packed

up and left entirely, they still have at least months of fight left in them, I guess. Obviously, they'd be in a much tougher position. I'm not exactly sure how much tougher. Can the Europeans give them anything substantial of Trump really turns this big it off. I can't imagine so. Judge. No, they said all along, we need America to backstop all this and you know, to, to, you know, essentially fun and do this logistics and everything for the effort.

They just can't do it. They'd have to cancel their welfare states. They're going to make that big of a investment in Ukraine. And they have shown no willingness to do that or capability. Even if they had, you know, the tax monitor, they wanted to print the money and pay, print the money now and pay later. I still don't know if they could get their resources together enough, certainly to make a difference. And what would it take? It would take the full land armies of Western Europe to go there and intervene. And nobody's willing to mess with that. Because that means atom bombs start flying around. Everybody knows that. No one's willing to cross.

And this has always been the case, as we've talked about on your show all this time, that no one is willing to cross the lines necessary to actually help Ukraine win. Because that would mean direct war between NATO and the Russian Federation. So instead, what do we do? We pay them and barely sort of arm them enough to keep the war going at the Ukrain Federation. So instead of what we do, we pay them and barely sort of armed them enough to keep the war going at the Ukrainian. I wonder what a Victorian Newland and those people involved in the first impeachment of Trump and Hillary Clinton and all everybody that was involved in the 2014 coup, I wonder what they think now of the abject failure of their plan and plot that resulted in probably close to a million Ukrainian deaths.

Yeah, oh no, it's all the other guy's fault. That's how they know they did the right thing. Look how bad the bad guys are. You know, and this is, I really lament this too. I, you know, it's easy to imagine Biden, or maybe not Biden, he's too out of it, but you could imagine a scene, maybe a Saturday Night Live skit or something

where you have Sullivan and Blinken and Newland and they're sitting around at night and they're having a little bit of whiskey and one of them says like, "'Geez, we did kind of push too far. "'We thought we were gonna glue it and stick it "'and midwife this thing and make it sail "'before Putin could torpedo it and look what happened.

And, you know, oops. And then maybe they could recognize judge that, hey, you know what, since this is a little bit our fault, maybe we could find room to compromise. We wouldn't have to admit it, but we could climb down a little from our high horse. Maybe. No way, not these people. Scotty, I almost forgot how much fun it is to spend some time discussing these things with you because you're so bright. You have the knowledge of the facts like very few people do, but that same wonderful sense of humor.

God bless you, my dear friend. Thank you for coming on the show. Thank you for your time. Chris, put up the full screen once more. Now, I didn't read the whole thing. I perused it. I read a couple of chapters and there's a nice blurb from me somewhere in the back. But this is the standard against whom all, against which all other histories will be measured for how this mess in Ukraine came about, that the Russians were provoked by the Americans. Scotty, congratulations on the book. I'm glad it was a bestseller.

All the best to you. We hope you'll come back again soon. Thank you very much, Your Honor. Appreciate it. Of course. All my best. Coming up tomorrow, Thursdayursday a very happy and full day for you at eight o'clock in the morning tony schaeffer at 11 in the morning if we can wake

him up and find him i'm only kidding max blumenthal max at 11 in the morning aran matte at two in the afternoon at three in the afternoon the great professor john meersheimer and at two in the afternoon, at three in the afternoon, the great Professor John Mearsheimer, and at four in the afternoon, the always worth waiting for, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. MUSIC