Judging Freedom - Scott Ritter : Was Anchorage Just a Dance?

Episode Date: September 2, 2025

Scott Ritter : Was Anchorage Just a Dance?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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That's an equivalent to $15 a month. Limited time new customer offer for first three months only. Speeds may slow above 35 gigabytes on unlimited. plan. Taxes and fees extra. See Mint Mobile for details. Hi, everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Tuesday, September 2nd, 2025. Scott Ritter joins us now. Scott, I want to ask you in some length about the Trump-Puton relationship and what, if anything, was manifested and what if anything was accomplished

by Ukraine. But before we get there, a few other questions about the other hot spot, last week, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that Palestinian officials authorized as observers at the UN would not get visas to enter the United States over the weekend. The State Department announced that no one with a Palestinian passport will enter the United States. national security issue is implicated here. I mean, what does the United States gain by barring Palestinians from entering the U.S.? Nothing. There's no national security interest. There's no legitimate diplomatic reason. This is purely, you know, American sycophancy to Israel. This just proves that Israel, Zionism, has a iron vice-like grip on the source.

soul of the American government. There's literally no excuse for this other than to appease an Israeli government that, frankly speaking, is getting its butts kicked in Gaza right now. Nothing's going right for them. Heretz, the daily, one of the largest daily newspapers in Israel, just published a front page story that said that the Palestinians are the greatest people in the world when it comes to defending their homeland, calling Palestine, a Palestinian homeland. This is the reality of Israel today, a defeated nation, governed by a corrupt, defeated politician, desperate for relevancy, and turning to its only friend in the world today, the Trump administration, because I can't say the United States.

The United States is increasingly waking up to the reality that Israel is a genocidal state, an illegal warmongering cancer on global society. And even Donald Trump had to acknowledge that the the control that Israel once exercised freely over Congress, and he admitted that Israel owned Congress. What a thing for an American president to admit? He says that that's slipping away. So it's not America, the Congress, or, you know, the people of the United States that Israel controls anymore.

It's a Trump administration which sold its soul to Zionism when he gathered together these various cabinet members that currently populate his administration. Is there any force since Netanyahu and his regime and the IDF only seem to respond to force? Is there any force that can stop the IDF slaughter and forcibly admit food and medical supplies into Gaza? Hamas. Amos is doing that right now. It's going to take time. But look, let's just be frank about this.

October 7th was about destroying Israel. Let's be up front, but not the way the Israelis have characterized that, you know, the non-existent slaughtering of babies, the raping of women. This didn't happen. What happened is that Israel was humiliated by Hamas who launched an attack against Israeli military positions, Israeli strong points. And the purpose of this attack was to lure Israel into the Gaza trap. Now, this Gaza trap was going to be a bloodbath. Hamas knew this. They knew that Israel would

behave as Israel is want to behave, to slaughter civilians. And Israel has done this. And this is the genius of the Hamas plan, because the only way you get the world to turn their collective backs on Israel, as is happening today, is for Israel to expose to the world the awful truth of Israel, which is Israel is a Zionist entity that exists only at the expense of the Palestinian people, and Israel is willing to slaughter, butcher, commit genocide, starve people to death, bombed children trying to get drinking water to remain relevant. Israel has exposed itself to the world, and Israel will be defeated by this, and this is only because of the continued resistance of Hamas. But the diplomatic isolation of Israel,

Israel is not stopping it. It sounds like only Hamas or some outside force, Egypt, Turkey, an American president that viewed this from a humanitarian and America first, not Zionist first, donor class first perspective. Only something like that seems like it will stop it. Do you believe that Hamas can defeat the IRS IDF and prevent them from demolishing Gaza City? Oh, Israel has already demolished Gaza City. Israel's already demolished Gaza, but what they haven't demolished is the resistance, the spirit of resistance amongst the Palestinian people. And Hamas has defeated the IDF. The IDF is not winning this war. The IDF will lose. this war, and the IDF knows it will lose this war. This war won't be stopped when some outside power intervenes, because all that does is by Israel time. This war stops when Israel is defeated

by Hamas, and this defeat isn't just militarily. If it was just a military equation, Sinwar and the other Hamas leadership wouldn't have ordered this. This is about the economic demise of Israel, the societal demise of Israel, the political collapse of Israel, the de-legitimization of Israel in the global eyes. This is how you defeat Israel. And the only power that can do this is the power of Hamas, the power of the Palestinian resistance. And they're succeeding at a horrible cost. I'm not trying to minimize anything that's going on here. But the fact is, every day that Israel slaughters Palestinian children, and they just bomb seven of them gathering water yesterday, every day Israel does this is another nail in the coffin of Israel. And this is

tragically the only path towards Palestinian statehood that exists, because the world was never going to rally and do the right thing by Palestine. Never. They never would. There is no peaceful solution. The only way there is a Palestinian state is for the Palestinian people to defeat the state of Israel completely. And that's what's happening right now.

And the best weapon that Palestine has is Israel itself, because Israel now has exposed the fact that by existing, it is incompatible with civilized human life. The world is recognizing that the issue isn't Netanyahu or the Lakud. The issue is Israel. The issue is Zionism. The issue is the evil that Zionism brings, the murder that defines their black hearts. And Hamas has brought this reality out. It's going to take some more time, some more suffering, some more sacrifice.

But my God, let's not minimize the sacrifice has already been made. or denigrate it. These Palestinian people, as Heretz noted, are defending their homeland unlike any other people in the history of the modern world. So why doesn't Turkey stop selling oil to Israel? Why doesn't Moscow impose some sort of blanket sanction embargo on Israel? Why don't countries do non-violent things to give the Netanyahu regime pause? Well, first of all, Turkey is making far too much money for this. The Turkish political and economic elite are making too much money. Turkey has long-term ambitions of being an energy hub in the region.

And you can't be an energy hub if you start embargoing the energy that comes from your your resources, from your territory. Turkey is conflicted here. Russia is likewise conflicted. Vladimir Putin has acknowledged that a significant percentage of the Israeli population speak Russian and therefore by definition are part of the Russian nation and Russia simply can't sanction the Russian nation. This is the reality. Israel has spent decades insinuating itself into the very life fabric of so many nations and this is why so many nations have blindly supported the existence of the Israeli state. This is again why it's up. to the Palestinian people and the Palestinian resistance, supported by other steadfast, loyal allies like the Houdi, who continue to, you know, attack Israel, even after Israel assassinated their prime minister. Again, Israel assassinated a head of state and the world is silent. I mean, this is stunning. It's not that they tried to assassinate the Iranian head of state and the world is silent. Well, you know who's not silent? Hamas. Every day, Hamas is getting up, crawling out of the tunnels,

and slaughtering IDF occupiers. And this is what it's going to take to defeat Israel and to bring about and into this conflict and the reality of a Palestinian state. Let's transition to Russia and Ukraine. You and Colonel McGregor and Larry Johnson and others with military experience have opined that Ukraine is on or close to being on,

very thin ice on its last leg, just to use vernacular language. Do the Ukrainian elites, their generals, their diplomats, their government officials, not Zelensky, recognize that? I believe they do. I believe they recognize just how dangerous this situation is. They also recognize that at this juncture, given the hell that they have put in Ukraine through that they simply can't cut and run.

I mean, normally when someone's confronted with a situation of this nature, you, you know, cut your losses and go live in your villa in Italy or where else you hid your, you know, millions of dollars that you stole from the Ukrainian people and you stole from the West. But, you know, we're talking 1.7 million dead. I mean, the ancestors of these dead will come hunting, those who are responsible. force. So the only chance these people have not only have continued relevance, but survival, is to extend this war and pray for a miracle, pray for some ability, some combination of factors to

align themselves so that Russia will accept a compromise solution that allows these people to remain in power. But they can only remain in power by sustaining this conflict. And so they're in a catch-22 that isn't going to end well for Ukraine. These people desperately holding on to their political and economic relevance through the corruption of Ukraine, through the sacrifice of the lives of Ukrainian soldiers, will ultimately fall victim to their own greed, to their own avarice, to their own evil nature. And it will come sooner rather than later. This war will not last forever. This war will end at some point in time. And when it does, it ends badly, not only for Ukraine, but for those nations who have supported Ukraine.

Talk to us about the ultra-nationalists, sometimes called Mandarists. sometimes called neo-Nazis, of whom apparently President Zelensky is afraid. Are they realists or are they blinded by ideology? Do they recognize that Ukraine is at the bitter end and Russia is very close to achieving its military objectives? Well, let's keep in mind that the bandarists have been doing this for a while. And, you know, back in 1944, when Germany withdrew from Ukraine, the Bandarist resistance, the organization of Ukrainian nationalists and their insurgent army, began what was a decades-long resistance that lasted until 1954, inside Ukraine, inside parts of Poland,

Belarus. Resistance that killed tens of thousands of Soviet interior ministry forces, Red Army soldiers, hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians caught up in the mix of this, and the Ukrainian bandarists were decisively defeated. Hundreds of thousands. thousands were in prison in the gulag of the Soviet Union, hundreds of thousands of others were forced to flee and joined the diaspora abroad. One would have thought that that would have been the end of them, but no, they hung on because of the diaspora, because of the insinuation they had into decision-making circles in the United States and elsewhere, and the continued support of the CIA who funded their operations up until 1990, leading to a 25-year revival,

there were, I mean, a 14-year revival that manifested in 2014, a coup in Kiev that saw them come back into political relevance. Yes, today they are looking at a situation where it's not looking so good, but this wouldn't be the first time that they were strategically defeated on the battlefield, but continued to survive. Bandarism is an ideology, a belief system, and so long as there are Bandera cells in existence here in the United States, right there in Ellenville, New York, 60 miles away from me, very close to where you are, judge, is the heart of Bandarism in New York, a summer camp where every summer they cycle through three classes or more of Ukrainian-American children who wear the Nazi uniform, burn the Nazi torches,

carry the portrait of Stepan Banderas and sing the songs that glorify Stepan Banderas. I did not know about this. Ellenville, New York, right there. They have Heroes Hill. They have a monument. Bandera's statue and other statues of evil Banderas Nazis are there. It's not just here. It's in Canada. It's elsewhere. And the FBI came knocking on your door, not on their door.

Well, look, since the 1980s, the organization of Ukrainian nationalism had hijacked the American Ukrainian Congress. And these are the people that advise the United States about Ukrainian policy. And these are the people that own the think tanks in Washington, D.C., who pay the Congress, they bring over Ukrainians. And as long as they exist, the Ukrainians will believe. that their ideology will continue to survive. So, yes, they're facing imminent defeat, but these are fanatics. These are people, remember, Stefan Bandera, when imprisoned in Poland for the assassination of a Polish prosecutor, when asked about what price he was willing to pay to continue

his nationalism, he said he's willing to see millions of innocent people die in order for the Ukrainian nation that he is envisioned to survive. So this is what the Russians talk about when they speak of denotification. It's not just the physical defeat of the Bandaris. This is inevitable. It's ensuring that this cancer never again revives itself. Look at the polls. The polls today are kicking out Bandaris, anybody who speaks loyally. And the polls are the ideas if Poland was given Western Ukraine, which the Truskin, the head of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, has said is a likely solution. Then the polls would have to deal with denotification, the elimination of this. bandarist ideology. But the bottom line is simply by defeating them on the battlefield doesn't make this cancer go away. They waited, you know, since 1954 to 2014, that's 60 years, if my math is right. They waited 60 years to get a chance. They'll wait 60 more years. Is it your understanding that these are the people whom President Zelensky personally fears

would kill him if he enters into a formal agreement with the Moscow? Moscow, ceding the oblasts to Russia? It's not that he fears. He knows they will kill him because they've told him so. This is Yarrush and others who have come into his office, come into the presidents of Ukraine's office and said, if you make any compromise to the Russians, you will be hung by the neck right now. We'll drag you out of your presidential administration and hang you by the neck until dead on

Step-in Bandera Avenue, downtown Kiev. So Zelensky knows what his future is. And look at the man that everybody is talking about replacing Zelenskyy, the general, who's currently the ambassador in Great Britain. This is a man who is not only posed giving medals to Bandaris with a photograph of Stepan Bandari behind him, but he has just recently said the way forward is to train every child in Ukraine on the ideology of Azov, on the ideology of Bandera. talking about corrupting the minds and souls of the next generation of Ukrainians to continue this nationalist fight. He's a Bandarist. They're all Bandarist, Judge. They're all Bandarists. Wow. Since the meeting between President Trump and President Putin and Anchorage, the Russian military

activity has notably increased, and the United States has authorized the eventual sale of 3,500 medium-range missiles with a range of 280 miles to the Ukrainians. So what was accomplished by their meeting in Anchorage? Well, the first thing is we had a president of Russia talking to the president of the United States, and that's not something that has happened since June of 2021. and something that hadn't happened since the special military operation began. And they talked about more than just Ukraine. They talked about the broadening of improved relations between the United States and Russia.

This has created a window of opportunity that hopefully can be exploited. The president, though, you know, you saw it. Look when Vladimir Putin said, next time in Moscow, the first thing out of President Trump's mouth was, ooh, I might take some heat for that. He knows the fact that there is a huge opposition to what he's trying to do. Tulsi Gabbard is in the process of cleansing the CIA and the national intelligence community of the Russophobes. One of these Russophobes was advising President Trump on the Alaska Summit right up until the moment of his departure before she had her security clearance. Yanked, you know, there are people stabbing in the back.

I'm just going to be straight up and say it. Marco Rubio is stabbing this president in the back. Scott Besson is stabbing this president of the back. are Russophobes, long-term Russophobes who do not want good relations with Russia. They have no choice but to hold their nose while the president meets with Vladimir Putin, and then they turn around and stab him in the back as he moves forward. This is what did, what did, I agree with you on Rubio, but what did he do that you characterize as stabbing in the back? I realize it's a euphemism, but what did he actually do? He goes back and he promotes sanctioning of Russia.

He promotes the, he denigrates the concept of peace. He criticizes Russia. He promotes the European vision of, of ceasefire. She does everything but say, you know, the president. And what you need to do at this point in time is not put up the negatives. You need to only accentuate the positives. And that's not what Marco Rubio is doing. Neither is Scott Besson, who today is all, the only word out of his mouth today is sanctions, sanctions, sanctions, sanctions would be the end of this peace process.

Marco Rubio supported the sale of these ER and. of missiles that you talk about because he's trying to get the Russians to back away. This is his strategy, is to make Russia take a step backwards, not the president, but it's not going to work. Let's look at these missiles for a second. I went and researched the companies. The primary company involved in the manufacturer of this missile has a current $34 million contract with the Department of Defense to produce a single prototype of this missile. The due date of the delivery date of this prototype, October 2025. You heard me right, Judge. They haven't even produced a prototype of this missile yet. Once they produced a prototype, then they can transition

into serial production. But it's going to take time to ramp up serial production. The maximum output, once you get everything ramped up, will be 1,000 missiles a year, which means they haven't even started building these missiles yet, but even if they do at maximum output, but you wouldn't deliver 3,000 missiles until the fall of 2028. This is a fake contract. This is a fake deal. It's fake. Everything about it is fake.

And this is the genius of Donald Trump because what he's done here is outmaneuver those people who are saying, you have to give Ukraine the ability to strike back. You must give Ukraine the weapons to do this. And he said, okay, Europe, pay me $850 million for a missile. And they can be produced for another year. And we'll sell it to Ukrainians as if this somehow changes. street you can balance of power. It doesn't. It's a fake deal. It's the fake support of the United States. And Russia sees this. Russia's smart enough to know all this. This is why you see nothing but

patience coming out of Russia. They will continue to do what they do. And yes, it'll put the United States in a bad light if we continue to articulate support for Ukraine. But the bottom line is this war ends when Russia decides this war ends. And there's no other factor that matters. Europe doesn't matter. And frankly speaking, the United States doesn't. matter. The best thing Donald Trump could do is recognize the inevitability of a strategic Russian defeat, seek to mitigate the consequences of this by improving diplomatic relations with Russia so that when this war ends, we move forward in a positive trajectory, hopefully bringing Europe alongside. But the worst thing we could do is align ourselves with Europe who's

committing suicide as we speak, economic suicide, delinking themselves from cheap Russian gas, turning around and buying that same Russian gas at five times the cost is put through various middlemen. This is the stupidity of Europe. Hopefully it won't be the stupidity of the United States as well. Have our embassies grown to full staff? Are they still skeleton staffs in both Moscow and Washington? You know, Marco Rubio just approved a budget that slashes the budget of the Department of State, I think, by one-third. So I don't imagine if you're slashing the Department of State overall that you're going to see a beefing up of the embassies anywhere in the world, let alone Moscow.

And this is problematic because our relationship requires that we have, you know, competent people that deal with the various issues, the whole myriad of issues that define the relationship, competent people that can talk to one another. I know for a fact the Russians are fully staffed with competent people. We don't. There's phone, you know, the Russians have phones, they pick it up, they dial a number. Nobody's picking up that number in Washington, D.C., because the, the, the, appropriate positions haven't been staffed. This is a huge weakness, a failure, a failure on the part of

Marco Rubio. Again, the worst secretary of state we've ever had, a man who is dual-hatted unconstitutionally as a national security advisor of the United States simultaneously as he destroys our vehicle of diplomacy. This is a man who is allowing the Department of Defense under this, you know, want-to-be emperor Pete Hegsif to dictate what, you know, how America represents itself to the world. That in the Department of Treasury. I mean, we've got Scott Besson, who is destroying, single-handedly destroying the credibility of the dollar. I don't know if you saw what happened in China this past week at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization meeting, but we saw Modi, Z, and Putin come together. Putin and Z just signed the largest ever strategic energy agreement. It's a binding treaty now. Russia has completely replaced Europe as a necessary market.

and now China is that market, and Russia will supply China with the energy it needs to grow its economy for decades to come. This is a strategic defeat for the United States, a strategic defeat for Europe, and a huge geopolitical win for Russia and China. The attacks on bricks by Donald Trump and the criticisms of bricks by Scott Besson have strengthened it, have brought it together. And the same thing with the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. Isn't that so? I wonder if these guys, I know Trump doesn't, but Besson should, even understand economics 101. What did they gain by this tariff on India? Not a darn thing, Judge.

I mean, this is purely, basically Scott Bessent has fallen into the trap of the simple-minded. He, you know, he's talking about tariffs generating, you know, economic. me lifeblood for America, you know, trillions of dollars of potential income that will offset this, that, and the other thing. But you know who's paying the price? Not the nations that sell goods. The American people are. We're paying the price, you know, it's an indirect tax on the American public. And it's unsustainable. It doesn't solve anything. It weakens the U.S. dollar. Today, the dollar is collapsing. I'm not an expert in the bond market, but what I'm seeing right now is a collapse of, you know, the Western bond market. Though, we're not

able to sell our debt to manage our debt. We're going to have a debt collapse. And then, you know, it's game set match. It's over. And Scott Besson's responsible is Donald Trump, fire this son of a bitch. Excuse my language, Judge. Fire this man. He is destroying our country. He's not making America great again. He's destroying America. And he's destroying you. You have a chance for peace with Russia that could be built upon to create stable relations with Russia's friends and allies, China, now India, who used to be an American friend and allies. But thank you, Scott Besson. Thank you, Marco Rubio.

And thank you Donald Trump for listening to them. You need to stop listening to these people. Start bringing in smarter people who give you sage advice. There's a role for America to be played in the world today, a very constructive role, a positive role, a leadership role. But what's happening with Marco Rubio and Scott Bessent is that we're being mocked, we're being humiliated. The world is turning away from us. We are no longer, you know, the not just exceptional nation or indispensable a nation, We are the least exceptional nation out there, and the world is disposing of us.

The Associated Press just reported that President Trump announced that the United States has carried out a strike in the Southern Caribbean against a drug-carrying vessel that departed from Venezuela. The President said the President on Tuesday offered scant details of the operation. Secretary of State Rubio said on X, the President. the vessel was being operated by a designated narco-terrorist organization. Well, that in their minds could be the government of Venezuela. The press office of Venezuela's government did not immediately respond to a request or comment on the announcement from the Associated Press.

This is just four minutes ago. What happens if he dispatches 4,400 Marines into Caracas? us. 4,400 body bags coming home. You know, I love the Marine Corps, and we have a tremendous history. We have the ability to close with and destroy our enemy, but we're not immortal. We're not invincible. You know, math does apply to military operations, and 4,400 Marines is not enough to take on a nation of millions.

Even if we fire all 265 Tomahawk missiles that are loaded on board the various ships that comprise the naval task force, force floating off of Venezuela. You know, wow, you mean we deployed a great expense, you know, one of the larger naval task force in modern history and we sink a narco ship, man, we're really good, aren't we? This is stupidity in the extreme. You know, the Coast Guard could have done this. You don't need a Navy to sink the ship. This is pure theater on the part of the president, muscle flexing where you don't need

to flex muscles. It's creating even, you know, greater tension in a region that's already a cancer. of dynamite. Does he want to lose all of South America? Because this is what he's getting positioned to do. We're sitting there spending all our money sinking a single narco ship. China's built one of the largest ports in Peru, building rail line connectivity from Peru to Brazil, bypassing the need to go to the Panama Canal and completely dominating the South American market. And we've sunk a narco ship. Wow, we're really good, Judge. Scott, thank you very much. Thank you for letting me go all across the board i didn't know we were going to end up with venezuela but i knew if we did

do that that you'd have an informed response as you did thank you my dear friend always a pleasure to chat with you no matter how bad or good the news may be and we'll look forward to seeing you next week thank you for having me thank you and coming up uh tomorrow wednesday uh at eight in the morning Professor Gilbert Doctoro at 11 in the morning, Aaron Mate, at one in the afternoon, Max Blumenthal, at two in the afternoon, Karen Kutkowski, at three in the afternoon, Phil Jerezhi. And on Thursday, among others, Anya Parampal, our resident expert on matters in Latin America. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom. Thank you.