Judging Freedom - Scott Ritter: Does Trump Understand Russia?

Episode Date: May 21, 2025

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you Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Wednesday, May 21st, 2025. Scott Ritter will be here with us in just a moment on Does Donald Trump Understand 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 to more than $3,000 an ounce. I'm so glad I bought my gold, it's not too late for you to buy yours.

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them your friend, the judge sent you. Scott Rader, welcome here. My dear friend, before we get to your thoughts on the Putin Trump phone call and the efforts, the fits and starts to try and bring about a resolution of the special military operation in Ukraine first to Israel, Steve Witkoff, the de facto secretary of state State told ABC News over the weekend when asked about Gaza that Donald Trump is a humanitarian. Isn't that laughable? Yeah, I mean, he's Donald Trump is a man, a weak man, fundamentally weak man, who will take the path of least resistance. And what I mean by that is, back when it was fashionable to say that, you know, I support

Israel and it made him look strong, he said it. You know, now when he's confronted with images that cannot be ignored any longer of dead children killed by the bombs that we gave to the Israelis when we green-lighted to break the ceasefire that we negotiated, suddenly he's a humanitarian. This is one of the fundamental character flaws of Donald Trump is that he is a fundamentally weak person. He doesn't stand for anything. He's fickle and again he can he can be easily swayed just simply by standing up to him. That's one of the ironies here is that if he had people who would actually stand up to him and say no Mr. President what you're doing is facilitating genocide and you will go

down in history as the president who did this, if you had done this earlier and done it the right way, he may have implemented the right policies, but he's surrounded by people who promote genocide, people who don't have a conscience. And finally, he just got too much. And again, if he was a strong man,

and I'm not saying that necessarily means good, but a strong man would be able to look at the pictures and say, no, I'm staying the course. I made a decision that we're gonna solve this problem through military force. You could show me as many dead babies as you want, and it's not gonna change my mind at all, because I'm a strong guy.

When I make a decision, I stick with it. Donald Trump's not a strong man. He doesn't believe anything. He's not deciding not to kill children because suddenly he grew a conscious. He's just a weak man. And people are telling him that this is bad and that this is going to hurt you. And he suddenly now is worried about his image. And so, yes, now he's a humanitarian. You know, he is surrounded mainly by neocons, but substantially by America first. There's no sense in saying who's who.

But we know that these views, these different views are being whispered into each of his ears. But to a person, to a person, they are ardent Zionists. I don't know that anybody is saying to him this is horrible. This is terrible Netanyahu is a monster. Netanyahu is using you. It's genocide. This is the way history Will treat you. I think would cough just through that that line out there as Irrational and absurd as it is. Well, keep in mind back in 2018 and absurd as it is. Well keep in mind back in 2018 Donald Trump decided to bomb Syria to attack Syria because his daughter saw photographs and videotape on the mainstream media that were put out by the Syrian White Helmets that

purported to show the victims of a Syrian government chemical weapons attack. I just want to remind your audience that there were never chemical weapons in 2014. And it seems now that we're going to lift sanctions, whatever happened these chemical weapons, which Donald Trump said when he attacked Syria, they exist, we know they exist, offensive weapons were bombing the sites that we know they come from. But the point is, he did this because he said the images were horrible. He wasn't briefed by anybody in his cabinet about these horrible images that came from an indirect approach. And this very well could be the case here, where somebody who's not part of his Zionistic cabal that he surrounded himself with got to him and said hey daddy or granddaddy or whatever this is bad stuff man I mean they're killing kids you know and what I

hear is that he actually cares about his grandchildren cares about his children and you know he may not be a humanitarian but you know I think the rumor is he's a good father and a great grandfather. And if somebody he loves tells him that, he may take action on it. But that doesn't mean he's a humanitarian. It just means he's responding to input coming from a source which has painted him in a bad light and he needs to fix it. Tom Fletcher, who is the Under Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs and Relief at the UN, told the UN Security Council two days ago that 14,000 Gazan babies have 48 hours to live. 14,000 Gazan babies have 48 hours to live if they don't, they're so malnourished, if they don't get food and nourishment by the end of the day, today, Wednesday, May 21st.

I don't know if they got that food. I don't know if Netanyahu's people are allowing it in. I don't know if the u.s. Did anything do you have any knowledge about what if anything? In the form of decent human nourishment is making its way into Gaza If anything's going in it's not enough what you're describing here is an absolute humanitarian debacle I just again I want to remind people because history is inconvenient You know NATO in the united states, uh bombed libya bombed libya

uh, and began a major intervention because of the With of a rumor of genocide that turned out to be false. Uh, muhammad gadaffi wasn't committing jewish genocide It wasn't but the rumor of a genocide involving a couple thousand Libyan civilians prompted immediate mobilization of NATO to launch massive air attacks. Here we have the United Nations saying 40,000 children are gonna be dead or dying,

and they're part of an ongoing existing genocide and nobody's doing a damn thing, Judge, a damn thing. Nothing. Zero. I mean, this is a national disgrace. This is this every American should look in the mirror and say, you suck. I look in the mirror every morning. I say, I suck. I just talked to Ray McGovern the other day. He shamed me because he's, you know, I mean, you know, I'm to Ray McGovern the other day. He shamed me because he's you know I mean, you know, I'm doing what I can for the things that I can do but he's like Gaza Scott Gaza I'm like, yeah, you're right. I haven't been focused on Gaza the way I should be I've been focused on Russia Ukraine trying to stop a nuclear war things

I think that are important but at the end of the day, there's kids dying in Gaza And we're not doing a damn thing about it, collectively, as a nation. I mean, you know, I don't know what the solution is. I can't sit here and say, if you did this, this would happen. It's one of the frustrating things is that we're at this impasse where, you know, the government has largely checkmated the American public. We've been told that if we speak out against Israel, that we're committing a crime, support, you know, a hate crime, you know, to condemn Zionists is to be anti-Semitic. And that should be a crime.

And even though Congress couldn't pass the law, it weighs on people. We have students being dragged out. They're losing their education. They're losing their degrees because they dare have the courage to step up and say, hell no to this. If people go out and demonstrate they could lose their education. They're losing their degrees because they dare have the courage to step up and say hell No to this if people go out and demonstrate they could lose their jobs and in this market today in this calamitous economy Thanks to Donald Trump by the way who wants who can afford to lose their jobs who can afford to go to the streets I mean, I I have sympathy for the people who feel you know powerless, but this is what the system has done on purpose. They've sought to disenfranchise us, to disempower us,

to make us feel weak. And because we feel weak, we are weak, and they're getting away with literal murder in our name. Yeah, I don't know what to do. All I do is I look in the mirror and say, I should do more. And I don't know what to do, judge. I is I look in the mirror and say I should do more and I don't Know what to do judge. I have to tell you I'm confounded by this Watch this monster

Who was a former member of the Knesset and Prime Minister? Netanyahu Excuse me, that's in Yahoo's party Chris cut number 10 every child in Gaza is the enemy We are at war with the Ghazan entity, the Ghazan terror entity, which we ourselves established in Gaza, in Oslo, and in the disengagement. The disengagement that Prime Minister Netanyahu

voted in favor of, that is the enemy now. Every such child to whom you are now giving milk in another 15 years will rape your daughters and slaughter your children. We need to conquer Gaza and settle it. And not a single Ghazan child should remain there. Let's stop telling ourselves this deception just to score points in this game between pro-Bibi and anti-Bibi.

This isn't about left or right. It's about winning this war and it's about justice. When will we learn? When will we learn? When will we learn? We know this is the attitude of Smetra Gengivir and Netanyahu himself. Is this the attitude of the Israeli people towards gauze and babies? Kill them now? Starve them to death because they may grow up to rape your daughters? This is repellent. I can't say all Israeli people, but I just want to remind your audience that in 2010, 2014,

in the city of Ashkelon, which is just north of Gaza, when the Israeli jets and Israeli artillery were going in and pounding the positions, the citizens would take out their lawn chairs and sit in the hill overlooking with drinks in their hands and cheer as the bombs were dropping on Gaza and pray for the death of the children and the death of the Gazan civilians because they view them as human animals.

I also want to remind your audience that the Israelis at one point in time in the 60s went into Argentina and captured a gentleman named Eichmann. And Eichmann was a horrific human being who promulgated and promoted policies which are exactly those, similar to those put forward by that disgusting human being you just had up there talking about the Israeli children. Justice will come and there is a rope that will fit around that pathetic human being's neck and hopefully he will drop through a hole in a gallows and snap his neck because this, we just saw a war criminal. If you ever wanted to know what a war criminal looked like, if you ever wanted to hear

what a Nazi sounded like in the 1940s promoting policies that in their collective nature constituted the Holocaust, that's it right there. That was a Nazi speaking to us today. Today. That's what a war criminal looks like. And now ask yourself what are you doing about it to bring that person to justice? Because that's the kind of person that sometime in the future needs to have people knocking at his door, pulling him out of his house, taking him to a court of law, putting before a jury of his peers, and being sentenced to death by hanging. Now you can't do that in the United States, but maybe someplace in this world where you have that kind of justice, where people will stand up and say, you will not get away with the murder of Palestinian

children. This is what the death penalty was made for. Criminals, disgusting human beings like this. I'm glad you showed that because your audience now has seen what a Nazi looks like, except today we call them Israelis, we call them Zionists, we call them members of the Israeli government, but don't be fooled by those names. That's a Nazi. That's the kind of people we hung by the neck at Nuremberg, and that's where he belongs, in a Nuremberg-type tribunal down in the world, hold everybody accountable who's committed this genocide

against the Palestinian people. When the president took his, or prior to the president taking his trip to the Middle East last week, the White House leaked that he was unhappy with Netanyahu, that they were having a spat, that it was intentionally going to snub him. Was this real or was this a deception? You saw the Godfather. Yes, many times. It's just business. It's not personal. Okay, I mean, what he's doing with Netanyahu, it's a game. Yes, he doesn't like Netanyahu, but he's not turning on Israel. He's simply using Netanyahu as a foil to deflect criticism and to create opportunities without ever stopping the real policy. Remember, it is Trump who greenlighted Israel's actions.

Trump campaigned on a promise that didn't say Benjamin Netanyahu gets to go in and kill Hamas and slaughter them. Israel does. He didn't give the bombs to Netanyahu gets to go in and kill Hamas and slaughter them. Israel does. He didn't give the bombs to Netanyahu, he gave the bombs to Israel. But now he's paying the consequences for this this policy as the blowback is coming back and he's being confronted with the horrors of this. And so he's blaming Netanyahu. He has kept Netanyahu there so that he can deflect blame onto him. It's Bibi's fault that this ceasefire didn't take hold. It's Bibi's fault that Israel isn't winning this war. It's Bibi's fault. No, Donald, it's your fault, because ultimately you could have shut this all down on day one. All you have to do is pick up the phone and call Bibi

and tell him to stand down. And he will stand down immediately. But remember what I told you, Donald Trump's a fundamentally weak man. He can't, and when you have a strong character like Bibi Netanyahu will get in his face, Trump will wilt under the pressure. Trump will not seek the decisive confrontation.

Trump will look for a way out. And then afterwards when there's distance between the two, he will make the bold statement when there's no potential for immediate consequence. It's a game he's playing right now. There's no real split between him and Bibi Netanyahu because that would imply that there's a split between him and Israel. And there isn't. His principal you know legacy in the Middle East is the Abrams Accords and that's what he just spent a bunch of time in the Arab world, you know, you know, sucking up to the Saudis Qataris, the Emiratis, trying to get them to buy into the concept of living in peace with Israel. But he didn't have the guts to do what everybody said he was going to do. Remember, he was going to go to the Saudis and say, the grand bargain will get the Israeli you recognize Israel will recognize Palestine.

But at the end of the day, when it came time for Donald Trump to actually grow a pair, he wilted and he said, ah, don't worry about that. You guys deal with Israel on your own timeline. And he, and he wilted. And he said, don't worry about that. You guys deal with Israel on your own timeline. And he punted. I wanna switch gears. Thank you for that, Scott. I wanna switch gears to the special military operation in Ukraine.

And I'm going to ask you if the American negotiators understand the Russians, but before you answer that, here's Secretary of State Rubio yesterday. This will impact your answer, I think. Cut number 19, Chris. On the issue of Ukraine, here's what we can all agree on. There is no military solution to this crisis. It will have to end in a negotiated settlement.

And the fundamental challenge we have in Ukraine is this, Russia wants what they do not currently have and are not entitled to, and Ukraine wants what they cannot regain militarily. And that's been the crux of the challenge. I don't disagree with that at one level, but on the other hand, what Vladimir Putin is doing now is playing for time,

and he's playing this president like a fiddle. And the more longer he plays it, the more opportunity he has to gain territory in Ukraine, and the harder it's gonna be to get him to the table. What we need to do is to put pressure on Vladimir Putin in every way we can to ensure that we can get them to the negotiating table. Well, I disagree with this playing with a fiddle analogy because the truth of the matter is

when Vladimir Putin woke up this morning, he had the same set of sanctions on him that he's always had since the beginning of this conflict, and Ukraine was still getting armaments and shipments from us and from our allies, and the European Union is about to impose additional sanctions, and the US is looking for no patriot batteries

to be able to transfer from other NATO nations into Ukrainian hands. And what the president's trying to do is end a war. He's trying to end a bloody, costly war that neither side can win, and people are dying every single day. But this notion that, I don't know, what has Putin gained throughout this? He hasn't gotten a single concession.

He hasn't gotten a single sanction lifted. He's gotten time. And the more time he gets without additional pressure on Russia, the more incentive he's got to continue to gain territory and continue to play for time. So when the Secretary of State says land to which they're not entitled isn't he manifesting a fundamental ignorance of Russian history and an ignorance of the Russian mentality? Marco Rubio is ignorant about everything Russian he doesn't he's not a smart man I'm not calling them and you know stupid he's clearly articulate, but his level of,

whether it's willful or it's just ingrained in him, he's incapable of absorbing the Russian reality. He has built up a fantasy world that is populated by his anti-Russian ideology and it blocks reality so that he sees things through a prism that creates this fantasy world. Russia is not entitled to. I'd just love to spend a couple minutes asking Rubio,

what is the intellectual foundation and legal foundation of that statement when it comes to entitlement? I'll just confront him right off the bat with, why did the United States recognize Israel's right to the Golan Heights and say that Israel could annex it? Israel has no historical right to it, but Israel conquered it.

And so we say through the act of conquering, et cetera, Israel has a right to do this. Russia has a historical link to every piece of territory that it's occupied and is insisting on it has always been part of Russia moreover Russia is in the process of Defeating a hostile enemy and conquering this territory Which would give Russia the same rights to this territory that Israel has but Rubio doesn't want to go down that path The other thing I would remind Rubio is today, just today, the Russians broke through the Nets-Nepepetrovsk border and they're now operating inside the territory of Nepepetrovsk.

One of the additional four obelisks that Russia said will be conquered by Russia if Ukraine doesn't come to the table. Well, it's too late, Ukraine. You've just now lost Dnepropetrovsk. And if you keep waiting, you'll lose Kartikov, you'll lose Mikhailov, and you're going to lose Odessa. This is irreversible. I mean, again, Marco Rubio doesn't know what he's talking about. Russia is on a roll here. Every day they're breaking through. The Ukrainian military is on the cusp of total collapse. And in some ways, the senator that was questioning Rubu is right, Putin has has time, but he was always going to have time. I mean, I would just remind the senator, your sanctions haven't done a damn thing. In fact, when you first imposed your sanctions back in 2022, Russian economic growth was measured with 2.6%. Today, it's like 4.6%, 4.8% and growing.

Sanction them more. The Russians say, please sanction us because every time you sanction us, our economy gets stronger. You know what India did today? They bought more oil, the most oil from Russia that they've ever bought despite all the threats made by the United States. Why? Because we have no leverage here. I don't know what she thinks she's going to accomplish. Vladimir Putin said the Europeans are idiots for sanctioning us because the sanction package they put together will only hurt Europe. It will bounce off Russia like nothing. Russia is literally sanctions-proofed. You can't do a damn thing to Russia. So what are they trying to do through sanctions? Putin isn't buying time. Putin owns the damn calendar. This war will operate on the pace set by the Russians, and right now

that pace is one that no one can match. We can't get enough weapons. Where are we going to get the ammunition? Rutte, the secretary general of NATO, got up and said, hey, Russia today is producing four times as much ammunition as we are. Their their industries fully mobilized. We can't do anything We got nothing Rubio acknowledged. We got nothing. What weapons are you sending Marco little Marco? I mean, this is a joke These are people fooling themselves into believing that they are somehow relevant The only relevance that the United States has is that Russia would like to have better The only relevance that the United States has is that Russia would like to have better relations

with the United States to avoid a new Cold War and the threat of nuclear war that comes with it. So they are working with this. They're very smart. Putin had a nice conversation with Donald Trump. They talked, you know, in first name basis and they had nice words. And I don't think they lied to each other.

But again, Donald Trump's not man enough to deal with Vladimir Putin. I'm just telling you straight up he won't meet Putin until the conditions are right because if he goes in right now he has no cards. He's going down with a man who has a royal flush already and it'll be just like the last time he met Putin. If you remember they were in I, I believe, Helsinki, and they came out after their one-on-one meeting where Trump was all on a strong arm Putin, and Trump was a beaten little child, and Putin came out like a cock on the walk.

I mean, boom, boom, boom, boom, I'm in charge, I'm big, I'm strong, my head's up, my shoulder's back, and Trump's all defeated. That's the reality when somebody who's not prepared for Vladimir Putin meets Vladimir Putin because he's got his act together And he's backed by a country that has his act together And he's supported by a foreign ministry that knows what the hell it's doing Donald Trump has Marco Rubio Doesn't know anything about Russia as a whole host of other characters that don't have what it takes to tell the truth about Russia Let me tell you just how believable you are with our audience. Chris has been running a poll

throughout the show. The question is, does Trump really understand Russia? About 1500 people have responded. 87% no and 12% yes. I don't know what the 12% of think it's obvious he doesn't understand Russia and what you said is is patently true. You know the Russians I spent a few hours with Sergey Lavrov. This is a different level of intellect than and knowledge of the other side then Then what we have here. Well, let's start with basics. Who is the Secretary of State? Is it the guy they swore in or is it the guy that's doing all the negotiating?

Yeah, no and You know Sergey Lavrov, you know is not only competent but he's backed by one of the most competent teams imaginable You know, is not only competent, but he's backed by one of the most competent teams imaginable. Everybody in the Russian Foreign Ministry is an honest to goodness expert who studies it doesn't mean they're perfect. Doesn't mean they don't make mistakes, but collectively they are competent. The Russians have a term. It's adequate. When I first heard them use it, I'm like.

That's not a very strong term. I mean, if someone said that I was adequate, I'm like, I don't want to be adequate. I want to be... Adequate wouldn't get you promoted in the Marine Corps, would it? No, but in Russia, adequate is like the ultimate compliment. You are adequate. That means you are competent, you do your job, everything is done properly. The Russians are adequate and the Americans are the furthest thing from adequate, not in the right direction either. We're not competent, we don't understand Russia. This is what people need to understand.

If you're gonna deal with the Russians, you better understand them, you better know them. That way you can develop strategies that work. If you put all your effort into putting in, for instance, economic sanctions, that then our predicate, you know, your follow-on strategies are predicated on things the sanctions are supposed to accomplish, and they never will accomplish, which means you're now left stumbling around because nothing's happening the way you wanted it to happen. And you're, and the Russians are sitting there going, thank you very much, we, we already planned for that. We've taken the countermeasures. I've told your audience before and I've talked to you about the OODA loop John Boyd's classic Decision-making cycle the observe orient decide act if you get inside somebody's OODA loop

You're inside the decision-making cycle and you're gonna win every single time Well, Russia is deep inside our decision-making cycle. They are acting, we are reacting, they are controlling the pace of operations, they're controlling every aspect of this. We're trying to play catch up, and we are never gonna be catching up. Today, we think we're doing something

that will affect this, but they're already four months ahead of us. Tomorrow, we're gonna try and do something, but now they've accelerated to six months. They are getting so far ahead of us They're gonna have us lapped 26 times by the time this conflict is over marco rubio I promise you this on the day the russians get the ukrainians to sit down and sign the unconditional Surrender that they will sign because the russians have destroyed them marco rubio will still be looking

For patriot missiles somewhere in the world to send the Ukrainians. Scott Ritter, there is nobody like you. Your intellect, your bravery and your passion. Thank you so much, my dear friend. I wish I could bottle or we will get a transcript of what you just said. It should be read all across the land. Thank you, thank you, thank you, my friend.

Thanks for having me on and have a great week. You too, enjoy the holiday weekend. We'll see you again soon. Coming up tomorrow, Thursday at two in the afternoon, Aaron Mate at three in the afternoon, Professor John Mearsheimer at four in the afternoon. He's just as hot as Scott Ritter. Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. MUSIC