Judging Freedom - Scott Ritter : Ukraine at the Breaking Point?

Episode Date: January 26, 2026

Scott Ritter : Ukraine at the Breaking Point?See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Undeclared wars are commonplace. Pragically, our government engages in preemptive war, otherwise known as aggression with no complaints from the American people. Sadly, we have become accustomed to living with the illegitimate use of force by government. To develop a truly free society, the issue of initiating force must be understood and rejected. What if sometimes to love your country you had to alter or abolish the government? Jefferson was right? What if that government is best, which governs least? What if it is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong? What if it is better to perish fighting for

freedom than to live as a slave? What if freedom's greatest hour of danger is now? Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for judging freedom. Today is Monday, January 26, 2006, Scott Ritter joined us now. Scott, a pleasure, my dear friend. Thank you for accommodating my schedule. Before we talk about whatever they're discussing in Abu Dhabi, and before we talk about how Ukraine may be close to a breaking point, your take on the killing of Alex Preti in Minneapolis, which, to my view, in 50 years as a lawyer and a judge, was an act of murder. I totally concur.

Let me start my take by pointing out that, I mean, as disturbing as the murder of this ICU nurse who is simply exercising his First Amendment rights and his Second Amendment rights in a nonviolent fashion, and it was murder, as disturbing as that is, what I find even more disturbing, is the ignorance of the American mob when it comes to the Constitution. The level of hatred that Americans have in their hearts to their fellow Americans,

the level of ignorance that exists in the hearts, in the brains of many people who call themselves Americans. And the sad fact is if we had a litmus test for American citizenship derived solely from the knowledge of the Constitution, the vast majority of Americans would fail this litmus. I've never been more disappointed in my fellow citizens than I am today. This man was straight up executed. You may not agree. Look, people can sit there and say, I voted for Trump's policies of mass deportation, that I support an aggressive ICE posture. That's you're right. As long as what ICE is doing is constitutional. The problem is many courts have found that what ICE is doing is unconstitutional. But you can never, regardless of how you feel about ICE, say that it is un-American for Americans

to hold a differing opinion. And there are many Americans who feel that what ICE is doing is not just unconstitutional, but un-American. And they oppose it. And they oppose it using the tools of, you know, civil disobedience, peaceful demonstrations. And ISIS responded with excessive force across the board, whether it is the pummeling of Americans, throwing, you know, tear gas, spraying, pepper spray, shooting, you know, non-lethal devices or straight up executing Americans in the streets of American cities. You know, ISIS responded in a manner that should cause every American despair because this is not what we want to see in our streets. Now, people may say, well, we don't want to see demonstrations. The hell you don't. That's what we're about.

I mean, I don't mean to get angry. My God, when Americans say, you shouldn't have been there. What do you mean you shouldn't have been there? When you say you shouldn't have been there, you're saying you shouldn't have exercised your rights, your God-given rights, your constitutionally protected rights, of freedom of assembly, the right to demonstrate, the right to protest, the right to stand up and say no to a government who has exceeded all bounds of normalcy, of legality. That is your duty and responsibility as an American. Other Americans may disagree, but my goodness, to sit there and say, this man deserved to be executed in the street

by a bunch of ill-trained ice thugs. It means you have no clue what it means to be an American. No clue whatsoever. This man did nothing wrong. Nothing wrong. He simply went to the aid of a woman who was shoved to the ground. He did not assault an ICE officer. The video clearly shows this.

And then he was sprayed in the face by a guy wearing a mask. Judge, I don't know how you feel about this. I've been trying to find the constitutional law on this. But when you put a mask across a law enforcement officer's face, how the hell can you say that he's giving clearly articulated instructions? You can't. And when you spray pepper spray in the face of somebody, instead I start shouting through a mask, how do you comply with that?

How do you comply with that? This has violated, and I know this to be a fact, because I did the research, violates every protocol set forth by the Department of Justice, by ICE itself, by every police department about the use of force. You know, you're supposed to de-escalate, not escalate. And ICE is in a 100% escalation mode that led to the tragic execution, because that's what this was, the execution of an American city in broad daylight for simply carrying out his constitutionally protected right to say,

I don't want ice in my streets. Man, I couldn't agree with you more. This will aggravate you even more. This is lies the government is telling you, Chris, cut number eight. Who goes to a protest and brings a gun? I mean, was he not asking for some kind of trouble in that situation? But as Secretary Nome said, no one who wants to be peaceful shows up at a protest with a firearm that is loaded with two full magazines.

That is not a peaceful protest. And I don't know of any peaceful protester that shows up with a gun and ammunition rather than a sign. I'm sorry that this gentleman is dead, but he did bring a 9mm semi-automatic weapon with two cartridges to what was supposed to be a peaceful protest. Peaceful protesters don't have 9mm weapons. He wasn't there to peacefully protest. He was there to perpetuate violence. I mean, as you know, he was an ICU nurse, worked for the Veterans Administration, and there's no evidence that he brandished the gun whatsoever.

But he brought a gun. He was disarmed before he was. I've been to a protest. Guess what? I didn't bring a gun. I brought a billboard. You cannot bring a firearm loaded with multiple magazines to any sort of protest that you want. It's that simple. You don't have that right.

Under Minnesota law, if you have a licensed, a permit to own and a license to carry, and you have it concealed. You can bring it to a protest. You can bring it to anywhere you want. I asked Tim Pawlenty, who was the governor of Minnesota, who signed that legislation into law, and he agrees. So Cash Patel yet again is wrong. The young man did nothing violent.

You can see the way they treated him. We're going to show you a picture. Chris, put up the picture that we got from Matt. You'll see. you'll see the picture, that guy just blows him away at point-blank range while Preddy is on all four, so there he's only on three. The gun has already been removed from him. The gun was in a holster in the small of his back. George, it's not just Minnesota law, and I respect Minnesota law, it's the Constitution. The Supreme Court of the United States has ruled decisively in two cases.

One here in New York, the other one I believe in California, where the government has tried to limit the places where people can carry concealed weapons. And while there were some limitations agreed to, nowhere did they say you can't bring a concealed weapon. into a demonstration such as this, a protest. If you had to apply for a permit and you received a permit, that becomes a protected zone. But here you have people in the streets of their neighborhoods protesting what they believe to be an illegal occupation. It's not a violent protest. It's also not a protest that required a permit.

Under the U.S. Constitution, this man had every right to carry. a weapon and cash patel is dead wrong noam is dead wrong bened is dead the entire trump administration is dead wrong and frankly speaking everybody who speaks out against this man because he brought a weapon to this demonstration is dead wrong i mean good lord i guess that makes every uh every minute man in america dead wrong um you know can't show up in concord lexington guys because you got weapons take them home um you know i'm not advocating rebellion but what i am saying is the founding fathers put the Second Amendment in there for a reason. And many Americans feel the need to carry weapons to protect themselves. I don't know what went through this man's mind when he, when he's

strapped on that day. What I do know is that he was a law-abiding citizen. He wasn't violating any laws. And he had every right to carry that weapon and to be executed for it and to have that execution justified by the constitutional ignorance of people who've taken oath to uphold and defend that Constitution is frankly one of the most outrageous, enraging things I can think of. This is a form of nihilism, a belief in no values and a belief that life is meaningless. This is what's been manifested by ICE and by their defenders in the government, a cross-section of which we just played. I couldn't agree more.

Again, I've become increasingly despondent about the health of my constitutional republic, and it is my constitutional republic, it's your constitutional republic. It's every citizen of this United States, these United States. It's our constitutional republic. We, the people of the United States of America, it belongs to us, and it can only survive if we are willing to defend it. But we must be willing to defend that upon which it is based, solely based, and that is the Constitution of the United States of America. I am tired of people, you know, accusing. me of being not unpatriotic because I insist that the Constitution be followed. What they don't

understand is you are inherently unpatriotic the moment you allow government or anybody to deviate from the rules, the rule of law is set forth by the Constitution. We cease to function as Americans at that point in time. And sadly, what I'm seeing is a large number of Americans you know, we have submitted to the will of the mob, the whim of the mob, and the mob operates at the dictate of the emperor. And that's where we are today, where the emperor is dictating, the mob is complying, and if you feed them enough blood and violence, they'll be satisfied. This is entertainment for so many people. I voted for this.

People said, you voted for an ICU law-abiding nurse to be executed in the streets of Minneapolis, Minnesota. That's what you voted for because that's what you got. And you're going to get more of it unless we finally rally to bring an end to this nonsense. Robert Reich, liberal Democrat, was Secretary of Labor and the Obama administration, has prepared a very, very compelling and terrifying video. It's about a minute, 20 seconds long. Watch this. Trump wants to invoke the Insurrection Act. to punish anyone who opposes them.

You need to be aware of this imminent danger. It's unfolding very, very rapidly. He's following a four-point plan that you need to know about. Step one is to deploy ice into so-called blue cities owned by Democrats. These masked and armed ICE agents are wreaking havoc on American cities and violating due process. They're arresting people outside immigration courtrooms. They're raiding homes in the middle of the night

and detaining children and adults, including American citizens. They admit to using racial profanism. These aggressive tactics are provoking demonstrations, which leads me to step two, exaggerate the scale and severity of the protests. Trump has described Portland as a war-ravaged city burning to the ground, but Portland's own police chief has debunk that. The city of Portland is about 145 square miles. This is one city block. Even the events that are happening down there do not rise to the level of attention that they are receiving. And Trump continues to describe Chicago as a war zone. But recently, that's because of ICE agents, who've sprayed tear gas, pepper balls, and rubber bullets into crowds of journalists and protesters gathered outside a detention facility.

But that doesn't seem to matter to Trump. It's all part of a plan to establish a pretext for step three, deploy National Guard troops. Trump is deploying hundreds of National Guard troops from red states like Texas into blue states like Oregon and Illinois against the wishes of Democratic governors. This is continuing to enrage and already outraged public, which is the whole point. Trump wants to spoke actual violence, which would make it easier for him to unleash the final step in his plan, which is step four, invoke the Insurrection Act. The Insurrection Act empowers a president to federalize the National Guard and use the U.S. military to suppress civil disorder, insurrection, or armed rebellion against the government.

Look, what can we say? You know, this is a step-by-step analysis of the facts as they present themselves. You know, nothing that he said is unfounded. There has been talk of the Insurrection Act. You hear whispers of this all over, not just whispers, statements about it. And when you take a look at the reality that this is a president who has publicly divorced himself from the rule of law, he only relies on his own sense of morality, no legal compass, just a moral compass, which is problematic in the extreme. This is also a man who is hungry for power.

We see this with his so-called Board of Peace, where he creates an alternative United Nations, where he is the chairman for life. People donate money that doesn't go to the U.S. Treasury, but goes to offshore accounts that he alone manages. In total violation of the emoluments clause of the Constitution, but the Constitution doesn't matter either because he clearly isn't bound by it, and Congress is unwilling him to hold him. them to account by it. We have a midterm election coming up. And my concern is that the timing of this so-called insurrection is going to correspond with the lead-up to midterm elections because he's going to lose the mid-term elections if we had free and fair elections. This man is as unpopular as the day is long. The economy is collapsing. His policies are ripping this country apart. There's a growing recognition, even among the military that ostensibly supports him,

that this man has gone off the constitutional, you know, path. And, you know, and so he's playing a very dangerous game. I will never openly advocate or even in, I will never advocate for a civil war. It's not the solution. We have a constitutional republic. The solution is simply abide by the Constitution, let the checks and balances play out and have an informed American population participate in the electoral process to elect the right people to office. That's how we cure this.

But if he continues to go down this path, we may find ourselves in a nation awash in a wave of violence, violence that will rip this country apart permanently. I don't want to see that, but that's the direction we're going. I mean, this is a very, very dangerous situation that, you know, you can't be silent about this. And there's no way to overstate what Robert Reich has said that we are looking at the conditions for a civil war to be created because of the mismanagement of a president who knows nothing about the Constitution. And as we have seen, is supported by people who are equally ignorant about what the Constitution means. Let me switch gears. February 6th, this fast approaching. It is, of course, the expiration date of the new START treaty. Why do you suppose the Trump administration has not responded at all to President Putin's offer to extend the terms of the treaty for another year? We go back to President Trump's first term in office. He had a guy, I think Marshall Billingsley was his name. He was running the arms control. effort for the Trump administration. He, you know, his whole thing was that we had to get the

Chinese involved. And it was sort of, you know, the worldview of Trump that Russia and China linked at the hip, and therefore they negotiate as one. Both of those is one against America, and we need to have that kind of a relationship. And it failed, it floundered, it didn't get anywhere. The Chinese just aren't playing that game. The Chinese have said we're a sovereign state. and before we even begin to talk with the United States, the United States has to get its act together regarding Russia. Russia and the United States, two largest nuclear powers have to come up with a bilateral treaty

that quantifies what we're dealing with, and then China can come in. And if China comes in, of course, we have to get the UK and France to come in, and it's far more complicated than Trump has let out. But Trump has also been advised by people who are not advocates for arms control. They believe not in disarmament, but in armament.

They believe when we say that it's peace through strength, that the strength implies a robust nuclear deterrence force that is not the equal of anybody, but superior to everybody. And they're looking for nuclear supremacy, which, of course, is the antithesis of basic arms control philosophy, where we try to create, you know, mutual respect based upon, you know, reciprocity. We're equal.

Trump doesn't want to be equal with anybody. And so the New START Treaty, which brings about caps, 1,550, Trump wants more nuclear weapons, not to maintain this cap or even seek additional reductions. He wants more. This is why the Defense Department's budget, you know, calls for, creating thousands of what they call plutonium pits. These are the basic core of nuclear weapons, and they're going to create these for the next generation of American nuclear weapons. Thousands. That means that we're not going to be limited to 1,550. We're probably going to be going up to,

you know, 6, 8, maybe 10,000 weapons. That's the vision of Donald Trump. And so the New START treaty is incompatible to him and incompatible to the people that advise him. The Russians have also linked conditions to, you know, continuing the new start caps. One of those conditions is there will be no Golden Dome. If the United States seeks to build a missile defense shield whose purpose is ostensibly to, you know, eliminate the effectiveness of Russia's nuclear deterrence, Russia's not going to sit by and let that happen. And you can't have arms control at the time when one nation is trying to build a missile defense shield designed to obviate your deterrence capabilities.

The Russians say if you go with Golden Dome, all bets are off. Well, Trump has doubled down the defense budget, $1.5 trillion, it's a huge chunk. In fact, one of the reasons why he's seeking to acquire Greenland is to deploy aspects of this Golden Dome missile defense shield into Greenland. So Trump's not interested in arms control. He's interested in an arms race. I mean, if people are interested, they just published a book about it, Highway to Hell. read it because we are literally on a highway to hell. When I wrote that book, I was hopeful that we could get off the highway to hell by, you know, continuing new start. That's not going to happen. We are going to enter an arms race. And I'm just going to tell the American people right now, it's going to cost you trillions of dollars and none of it's going to work. None of the systems we're going to build are going to function. The missile defense shield will not function. We will simply go bankrupt. Defense Industries will make a lot of money. And, you know, we will, put ourselves at risk of a nuclear war that ends all life on the planet.

But that's okay because we have a president whose sense of personal morality trumps everything. Wow. How close to the end is the Ukrainian military? Let me just make it clear. They've lost this war and they can't win this war. They'll never win this war. But what the Ukrainians have shown an ability to do, is sacrifice the genetic future of their nation, that is their manpower, on a battlefield with no

hope of victory. Europe has been willing to sacrifice them. The United States has been willing to sacrifice them. And the Ukrainian leadership of Leromir Zelenskyy has been shown a proclivity for sacrificing. And so as long as Ukraine is willing to throw bodies into the meat grinder, the meat grinder will continue to function. The Russians are making progress. They are making, you know, slow but steady progress across the entire front. They're chewing up the Ukrainians, spitting them out, and continuing to advance. And nothing can stop this. The Russians have said they prefer, you know, that the Ukrainians accept reality and just get out of the Donbos right now and save 100,000 lives.

But if the Ukrainians want to continue to fight, if Europe wants to continue to sustain this, Russia will push forward and Russia will win. There's nothing NATO can do to stop Russia. There's nothing the United States can do to stop Russia. There's nothing Ukraine can do. But putting a date on this, it's tough because how do you predict when a nation fails? Because that's what's going to have to happen. Now, we're seeing indications of imminent failure. Right now, the energy war that Putin is waging against Ukraine is devastating to Ukrainian society,

entire cities that have been without power, people freezing, no water, no electricity. we're looking at societal collapse. With that comes political collapse, and that could be paralleled by military collapse, and then Ukraine is out of this war. But the Ukrainian people have shown themselves to be surprisingly resilient. And, you know, as I mentioned once before, the Russian military has never, ever denigrated the fighting capacity of the Ukrainians. They've always spoken barely highly of them, because, as the Russians say, they're the same as we are.

They're tenacious. They're willing to fight to the death. And, you know, they don't yield at all. So it's literally Russians fighting Russians. And, you know, we know the Russians are tough son of a guns. And Ukrainians are too. So I'm not going to sit here and say, oh, they're going to collapse this week or collapse in the spring. They're collapse in the summer.

What I'm going to say is they're going to collapse. When they collapse is up to them. But the inevitability of this collapse is written in stone. Tell me what you think of this unusual. analysis from General Petraeus of all people. Chris, cut number three. Essentially, the Ukrainians without a Navy have sunk over 35% of the Russian Black Sea fleet and force the entire fleet to tie itself up inside a port as far from Ukraine as it can get in southeastern part of the Black Sea. Ukraine has also carried out some incredible operations

on Russian soil through the air, including the one in which maybe a million or so dollars worth of small Ukrainian drones secreted in the roofs of large transport vehicles, were able to position themselves near strategic airfields of Russia's thousands of kilometers apart and destroy or damage some five to seven billion dollars worth of strategic aircraft. to be sure again on the front lines, they've largely hardened, and the gains such as they are have generally been on the side of the Russians. But these have been glacial. They've been quite incremental.

And they have been incredibly costly for the Russians. I mean, what can I say to this? We all know that the Ukrainians have been very well trained by the CIA and by American Special Operations. forces and they have carried out a number of daring missions inside Russia that have inflicted some harm. I'm reminded, though, of a war game that I was invited to participate in back when I was in the Marine Corps. I was sit down there and it was right after the Gulf War, so I was feeling pretty cocky because of my counter-scud experience and I took command of the Op Force special

forces and I was running missions behind the lines. I was blowing up airplanes here, interdicting supplies here. And the whole time I was doing that, the main army got beaten. We lost the war. Afterwards, people were going, what did you think you were accomplishing? I said, I was just running around doing my thing. They said, yeah, you know that you actually hurt your side. You didn't help your side. And this is, and the reason is, the more damage I did, the harder the American side punched back. And this is what Petraeus is missing. Okay, so you did a couple million dollars worth of damage to the Russians.

They have blown the hell out of Ukraine in response. I mean, does Petraeus not care for the Ukrainian people? Because they're the ones paying the price right now. They're the ones caught in the middle of this. David Petraeus is as ignorant as the day is long. I mean, I know he had four stars on his shoulder. And I know at one point in time he was the director of the CIA. but this is a man who is so detached from reality.

It's not even funny. If you don't understand that nothing the Ukrainians do to Russia is advancing their cause, that every little victory they get through special operations forces is responded tenfold. And his assessment of the Navy is superficial at best, because I'll tell you what, Judge, last night, the Russian Navy and the Black Sea Fleet fired Zircone missiles, and they fired caliber missiles that blew the crap, out of Ukrainian energy infrastructure. Take that, General Petraeus, and smoke it, because that's all

it's good for your analysis. It's like smoking dope. Get you high, makes you feel good, doesn't accomplish a damn thing. Scotty, thank you, my dear friend. Thank you for your passion. Thank you for your brave defense of constitutional principles. Here's the book to which you referred, which I was privileged to read and write a blurb for Highway to Hell, the Armageddon, by Scott Ritter. It'll keep you up at night. Thank you, Scottie. Thank you. All the best. Thanks. Sure. Coming up tomorrow, Tuesday, at 8 in the morning, Ambassador Chaz Freeman, at 10 in the morning, Professor Jeffrey Sachs at 11 in the morning, Aaron Mote, at 2 in the afternoon,

Matt Ho, at 3 in the afternoon, Colonel Karen Koukowski. Justin Paletano for judging freedom.