Judging Freedom - Scott Ritter: What Did Netanyahu Get From Trump?

Episode Date: February 10, 2025

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Thank you. Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Monday, February 10th, 2025. Scott Ritter will be here with us in just a moment on what did Netanyahu gain from his meeting with President Trump? And what did President Trump gain from his meeting with Prime Minister Netanyahu? But first this. Markets are at an all-time high. Euphoria has set in. The economy seems unstoppable. But the last administration has buried us so deep in debt and deficits, it's going to take a lot of digging to get us out of this hole. Are you prepared?

Lear Capital specializes in helping people like me and you grow and protect our wealth with gold. Did you know that during Trump's last presidency, gold rose 54% to a record high. If that happens again, that puts gold at $4,200 an ounce in his next term. Don't wait. Do what I did. Call Lear at 800-511-4620 or go to learjudgenap.com for your free gold ownership kit and special report, $4,200 gold ahead. When you call, ask how you can also get up to $15,000 in bonus gold with a qualifying purchase. Call 800-511-4620, 800-511-4620, or go to learjudgenap.com and tell them the judge sent you. Scott Ritter, always a pleasure, my dear friend. Thank you very much for joining us. This announcement that Trump made about the U.S. owning, buying,

developing the Gaza Strip, about which you and I have spoken already, but which he's doubled down on, he actually said on his way to the Super Bowl, or maybe it was on his way home, I don't know which, but he was in Air Force One, that the Palestinians who he will cause to be expelled from the Gaza Strip would not be permitted to return. Made me think of this. Is Trump under Netanyahu's thumb or is Netanyahu under Trump's? Let's make the relationship very clear. The United States of America is the world's most powerful superpower. Israel is not.

Now, we can go down the path of a lot of anti-Semitic tropes, talk about how Jews control everything and all this stuff. I'm not going that route. What I'm saying is straight up. There's a pro-Israeli lobby in the United States that exerts significant influence on policy matters as they relate to Israel and the Middle East. That's it. Israel doesn't direct the United States. Israel doesn't control the United States. Israel can't destroy the United States. The United States can eliminate Israel anytime we want to. Israel exists only because we allow it to exist, because we facilitate its existence. Now, in the Cold War period,

there was a mutually beneficial relationship to have, in effect, a land-based aircraft carrier right there in the Mediterranean to give the United States the ability to project power via proxy to control Russian influence in the Middle East. Today, there's not so much benefit to be had by, you know, with Israel and its geopolitical significance of its geography. It's purely political. It's purely the extent to which the Israeli lobby has bought Congress on matters pertaining to Israel. I think what Israel will find out, though, is that make America first, make America great again, trumps Israel. We will do what needs to be done to appease the Israeli lobby to make sure that the Israelis feel that they haven't been neglected. Trump will do any number of policy.

We saw that in his first term, moving the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, etc. But at the end of the day, Israel will never, ever, ever be allowed to position itself to bring harm to the United States of America, to threaten the national security of the United States of America in a meaningful fashion security of the United States of America in a meaningful fashion. We could talk about peripheral threats. I'm talking about to do something that brings about the collapse of the United States. So the notion that Netanyahu is calling the shots is as absurd as the day is long. Donald Trump is in charge. He is influenced by a pro-Israeli lobby, but he and he alone is calling the shots.

What happens if he defies Netanyahu? What will the donor class in the Israeli lobby led by Mrs. Adelson do? What can they do? How many divisions does Mrs. Adelson control? Nice question. She apparently has quite a bit of influence. He had her there in the White House when he and Netanyahu were meeting the other day, and she was right there. She apparently, according to Alistair Crooks, said directly to Netanyahu, you will honor the ceasefire.

There's only one person in charge. It's not Abelson. It's not Netanyahu. It's Donald Trump. He's the president of the United States of America. And I need not remind people, he's not running for office again. He doesn't have to appease anybody. What he needs to do if he wants to continue the MAGA legacy to facilitate transfer of power to J.D. Vance in four years is have successful foreign policy, not to allow the United States to be dragged into yet another Middle East entanglement. Remember, it is Donald Trump who reposted Jeffrey Sachs calling out Netanyahu for getting America caught up in wars that we didn't need to be caught up in in the Middle East. Donald Trump reposed those because he believes that. He believes that Netanyahu led him down that path. So there's just no way that Donald Trump is going to allow Netanyahu to take us down that path again. And I think this is clear. He has put forward a policy projection on Gaza that incorporates a lot of what Israel wanted to do, get the Palestinians out,

rebuild, et cetera, except he's done it in a way that keeps Israel out of it. He's not saying, we're sharing this with you. This belongs to you. He's saying, this belongs to me. This is America's. We're doing this. And that's putting Israel in its place. And so, and the other thing is, I think Trump is doing that because if you brought Israel in, that complicates the art of the deal. You see, right now, there's only one player who's negotiating on behalf of the United States and its position in Gaza, and that's Donald Trump, because it's only an American position.

And I believe that he's put this position out there, not because he's going to implement it, because he can't, but because he's trying to create the conditions where people, in order to forestall the potential of him trying to implement, will say, no, no, no, no, no, here's a counterproposal. This is a counterproposal. And it's going to be a clean counterproposal because it only deals with them and the United States. There won't be any Israeli aspect to it at all because Donald Trump hasn't allowed Israel to become embroiled in the Gaza issue. All right. But this proposal that he made is so impractical as to be nearly impossible. What did Netanyahu gain other than maybe a little lifeline on his premiership to keep Smotrich and Mr.

Smotrich's allies from departing the government? I don't think Netanyahu gained anything. I think this is a loss for Netanyahu. It creates perceptions that Gaza will be, you know, he can say, oh, Hamas will be dealt with, but he didn't deal with Hamas. Trump is. Trump's solving the problem. This is a huge humiliation for Benjamin Netanyahu, the man who since the mid-1990s has sold himself as the de facto guru of Israeli national security, Israeli defense issues. He alone, Netanyahu alone, can solve these problems. And here we have a situation where there is a problem that for the past 15 months, he couldn't solve. Hamas, Gaza. And Donald Trump's come in and said, I got this. Sit down, shut up. That's pretty much what Trump told him. And so this is a humiliation for Netanyahu.

You know, he can't take any solace from this. This isn't a chest thumping period for him. This is, you know, a chastised teenage boy sort of coming out of the principal's office, trying to spin it that, no, everything's okay. You know, I was only suspended for three days, not a week. But no, this isn't a victory for Netanyahu at all. Because again, as you pointed out, none of this is going to happen. So what does Trump gain by making this offer, which is impossible to achieve? Well, the first thing he does is he seizes control of the agenda. Look to the extent to which the Biden administration was held hostage by the Israelis. Everything had to be run by Netanyahu.

Everything had to get the Israeli permission. Everything, everything, everything. Trump's saying, I don't need your permission. I'm not seeking your permission. I'm not asking your permission. I'm taking charge. That's what he gains. He has made the United States the only voice when it comes to a resolution of this issue. He's pushed Israel to

the side. And like I said, I think at some point in time, there will be counter proposals put on the table that Trump and Trump alone will respond to. He's not going to allow Netanyahu to once again muddy the waters. And I think that's what Trump gains. This is the initial, the initiating phase of negotiations. Look, Judge, let's be honest. I don't know and you don't know. Nobody knows what's going through Trump's head. This is pure speculation on my part.

I think it's informed speculation, but I can't sit here and I don't want people to think that I'm telling you what Donald Trump told me on a phone call last night. I wonder if Trump has had enough of the Zionist influence in American foreign policy. I mean, surrounded himself with uber Zionists, Hegseth, Rubio, Waltz, Sebastian Gorka. But do you think maybe he's had enough? Well, I mean, there's that old saying, you know, hold your friends close, but your enemies closer. By wrapping himself with these Zionists, they are, for instance, what is Elise Stefanik going to do? The president of the United States has now put forward a policy. He didn't coordinate with her.

This didn't go through State Department. The United Nations didn't receive talking points. What is she going to do? Go before the Security Council and contradict the president of the United States? No, he controls her. What is Mike Huckabee going to do? The ambassador, ultra Zionist. What influence does he have? None. Marco Rubio wasn't a player in this. Hegsif, nothing. They're all responding to Trump. They're not advising Trump. Everybody had sat there and said the

Zionists are going to control Trump. How did they control him? This was a unilateral action by a president who behaves unilaterally. So he brought the Zionists in. It appears he didn't even consult the people whose names you and I have just ticked off, who comprise the universe of his inner circle of national security people. They're irrelevant, Judge. They've been made irrelevant. So all the people out there, they're going, oh, these are the worst Zionists in the world,

this, that, and the other thing. Yeah, on paper, it looks that way. How did they influence this policy? Tell me how in the answers they didn't. Donald Trump did this by himself, for better or for worse. Is Israel an ally of the United States? On paper, yes. In reality, no. Look, I just want to remind people. There's no treaty. No, there's no treaty. But what I mean is, superficially, the way we talk. Let me remind people that in the 1980s, there was a guy named Jonathan Pollard. He was an American intelligence analyst, and he was directed by Israeli intelligence, by an Israeli intelligence officer in the embassy of Israel in Washington, D.C., to basically steal the crown jewels of American intelligence. It's the Bible that has all of the frequencies that we collect

upon in the SIGINT world. These are frequencies that are developed over years painstakingly. If the enemy finds out that we know what a frequency is, they change it, and then it's no good. This is the Bible that said this is what each frequency did, how it's encrypted, how we've defeated the encryption, the whole works. Scores of American lives were lost gathering this information. I just want to remind, this is the Cold War when we had C-130s get brought down over Armenia. They were doing a SIGINT track. We had other aircraft go down collecting this data. When you say SIGINT, this is government talk for signals intelligence. Signals intelligence. And basically, Pollard took this book and gave it to the Israelis. Then the Israelis took this book and gave it to the Soviets in exchange for getting beneficial immigration policy out of the Soviet Union. So basically, they gave the Soviets the Bible on how we collect intelligence against Soviet SIGGET. It damaged American national security. The Israelis did that. The FBI will tell you that the number

one collector of intelligence against the American target in the United States is Israel, not Russia, not Iran, not China, Israel. Israel is the greatest threat to American security. Israel only cares about Israel. They don't care about us. They only act on their benefit. They view us as a tool to benefit them. So Israel is not an ally of the United States. Israel is not a friend of the United States. Israel uses the United States like a parasite uses a host. What became of Pollard? He was supposed to be in jail for life and rot and die in an American prison, but the pro-Israeli lobby put pressure on uh Netanyahu called him an Israeli

hero again a friend of America calling a man who stole the crown jewels gave him to Israel sold it to the Soviets he's a hero so we pardoned him we released him and he's uh living his living out his life in Israel as a hero of Israel one of the greatest traitors of America ever had is a hero of Israel. When Trump doubled down on his announcement about owning the Gaza Strip, not a single country on the planet supported him, but perhaps the harshest denunciation came from the Saudis, who are usually rather guarded in the public language that they use. They refer to the proposal or to Trump. It's unclear whether they're calling the proposal extremist or Trump extremist, but they used the word extremist twice in a two-paragraph statement. How significant is that?

I mean, on the surface, it's a very significant thing. But let's just remind everybody that Donald Trump and Saudi Arabia collaborated during his first term to bring about the Abrams Accords were a series of agreements that would lead to the normalization of relations between Israel and the Gulf Arab states to create an environment conducive to business. And Saudi Arabia and Israel were ready to normalize relations on October 6th of 2023. Because of the Hamas attack against Israel on October 7th, that didn't happen. But at the time, Saudi Arabia is willing to sell Palestine down the road, had already sold Palestine down the road, had created the conditions that there wouldn't be a Palestinian state. So let's not pretend that Saudi Arabia is suddenly now a born-again champion of the Palestinian cause. What's happened is that Israel has made it almost impossible for Saudi Arabia to go back to that deal

because of the genocide that was carried out against the Palestinians in Gaza. And the fact that the world has rejected that, the Arab street has turned against it. So this is about domestic Saudi politics more than it is about suddenly the Saudis growing a conscience. I think what Trump is going to work on next is getting the Saudis to help underwrite the cost of rebuilding Gaza, to get them to chip in to whatever counterproposal ends up being put out there. But the idea that Saudi Arabia is now a strong, hard, fast supporter of the Palestinian cause is absurd. We saw that the Saudis, the senior members of the Saudi government have come out condemning Hamas, speaking out against Hamas. The Saudis secretly would love to see the Palestinians removed from Gaza

because that would disenfranchise Hamas. Politically, they can't do it. So I think there's more to the Saudi posturing than meets the eye. Wow. Who commuted the sentence of Jonathan Pollard? Was it Donald Trump? I'd have to go back. It might have been Donald Trump.

Yeah. Because I know under Barack Obama, that Obama, a lot of pressure was put on Obama to do this, but that the Department of Justice and the intelligence community came in and said, no, this would be a huge insult to us. I think it was Donald Trump that commuted the sentence of Jonathan Pollard. How does the Kremlin view the genocide in Gaza and now this off-the-wall proposal for the United States to own it? Look, they reject it. I mean, the Russians have been very much against Israel's actions in Gaza. Russia has sought, if you remember,

it was the Russians that initiated the process of bringing 14 Palestinian factions together, including Hamas, to create a political singularity that would undermine American-Israeli objections to Hamas being the government in Gaza. The idea was to recreate the government, rename it, and have Hamas play a supporting role, not the leading role. Russia initiated that, then the Chinese picked it up because there's some complexity in the Russian Middle East posture.

Remember, Russia was in Syria. Russia was opposing Iranian expansion into Syria. Russia was opposing Iranian expansion into Syria Russia was green lighting Israeli bombing of of Syria and so it was it was it was a complicated situation for the Russians to take the lead but the Russians likewise are not supportive of Donald Trump's policies but what can Russia do Russia can only speak out formulate policy continue to do diplomacy behind the scenes. But the Russians aren't the heavy hitters in the region that people might think they are. They are heavily beholden to Israel, and they have their own pro-Israeli lobby. Many of the Russian oligarchs, these billionaires that are the secret power behind the Russian economy, are dual citizens with Israel. And so, you know, Russia has an

Israeli problem, just like the United States has an Israeli problem. Before I aggravate Maverick any longer, what is your latest understanding of the situation in Ukraine. Is the pipeline of military equipment still flowing, American military equipment still flowing to Kiev? The money that was allocated by the Biden administration, what's left of that continues to flow. There was no way the Biden administration was going to squeeze that tube of toothpaste clean before they left. And that money hasn't been stopped by the Trump administration. Indeed, there's been, you know, for instance, the whole Patriot, the transfer of Patriot batteries back to Raytheon to be refurbished before moving on back to Ukraine.

The transfer of 90 missiles, you know, Patriot missiles. This, I think, is even an addition, too. So there is this flood, but the United States is no longer the lead coordinator. We've backed out of the Ramstein coordination group. NATO now has the lead. I think it's the British have the lead on that. And Europe just simply can't do this job. The whole thing about the military supply line into Ukraine is collapsing as we speak they're able to put in spurts in here but what ukraine needs is a fire hose not a garden hose and they don't have

the fire hose anymore and the other thing is that the ukrainians um they're just their manpower situation is collapsing on a daily basis i mean zielinski came out with an interesting comment which is the truth he says we can can't have presidential elections because if we have presidential elections, we'll have to suspend military operations. And the moment we suspend military operations, our army ceases to exist. Everybody will flee the front. There's a huge desertion problem right now. Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian troops are fleeing. If you recruit 10 soldiers and send them to the front lines, six of those are going to desert within a day. And then the others are going to surrender to the Russians and those that don't surrender die. This is the reality.

Ukraine's manpower situation is a crisis that can't be resolved. So, you know, it doesn't matter if we keep sending equipment in. There's nobody to operate it, and there's no structure to employ it properly. It just is, you know, wheat and grist for the grinder. Right, right. How much longer can Ukraine last? According to Budanov, the head of their intelligence, Ukraine will cease to exist by the summer of 2025. Now, that could be an exaggeration designed to, you know, scare the West. But the fact is the Ukrainians are in a lot of trouble. peace, the longer they delay implementation of what will be a surrender, the more territory

they'll lose, the more manpower they'll lose, and the greater the collapse will be. I don't think Ukraine survives this year, you know, but I didn't think Ukraine was going to survive 2024. You know, it's, again, in the end of the day, it's up to the Russians to decide how much pressure they want to put on Ukraine. The more pressure Russia puts on Ukraine from a military standpoint, the more Russian soldiers die. And from Putin's perspective, and I believe this was articulated in a conversation with Donald Trump, the Russians aren't in the mode of, let's kill as many Russian soldiers as possible. I think the Russians realize they've won this war, and what they need to do is

just continue to put pressure on Ukraine, but in a manner which minimizes Russian casualties. And we're talking about minimizing Russian casualties in a high-intensity conflict situation, which means there's going to be significant casualties no matter what. Scott Ritter, a pleasure, my dear friend. Thank you very much for your extraordinary analysis on both of these hot button issues. All the best. I hope we can see you again next week. Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you. Coming up tomorrow at eight in the morning. Ambassador Charles Freeman at 10 in the morning. Professor Jeffrey Sachs at 1.15 in the afternoon.

An old friend of mine from Fox who's an unabashed liberal Democrat, Chris Hahn. I'm going to ask him, where are the Democrats on Donald Trump? At 2 o'clock, Matt Ho. At 3 o'clock, Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom. Thank you.