Judging Freedom - UN Indifferent to Russian Hate Fest

Episode Date: September 25, 2023

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Thank you. Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Monday, September 25th, 2023. Our dear friend Phil Giraldi joins us now. Phil, always a pleasure. There are still reverberations going on that I can sense in the media and from various sources over President Zelensky's trip to the U.S. last week. He had three, well, a trip to North America, I should say. He had three focus points. One was the U.N., one was washington one was ottawa we'll talk about ottawa later and we'll eventually get to washington but let's start with uh new york i mean he arrived to a uh serious um research piece by the new york times uh pointing out that a ukrainian village which he had claimed was destroyed by Russian missiles

and therefore was a war crime, in fact, had been destroyed by Ukrainian missiles. While he was here, the president of Poland, right outside the UN, stood at the edge of the East River and said, we're not going to help them out. It's like a lifeguard saving a drowning victim. The drowning victim is so flailing about, he's going to pull the lifeguard down as well. When President Zelensky spoke to the UN General Assembly, it was half empty. And of course, he was denied a presser, a joint presser with President Biden, and he was denied the opportunity to speak to a joint session of Congress. And he's still happy. I mean, how do you view his week in the U.S.? Well, I would say that everybody is beginning to wake up

to the reality of just how horrific a downside of what's going on in Ukraine really is. And by that, I mean that here we have a half lunatic head of state who basically is willing to do anything to bring other countries into this war, which he's having. And he was pulling out all the plugs and making all the efforts and everything like that. And people were just kind of walking away from him. As you pointed out, he made a speech on the second day of the United Nations General Assembly meeting, which is usually a very full and active day. And I saw a video of the hall.

It was more than half empty. And when he was making what he thought were his clever points, nobody was applauding. And so this was a sign of things that were to come. And by the time he got to Washington, which I assume we'll talk a little more about, it wasn't the hero's welcome that he got a year ago. In fact, it was more like nobody really wanted to talk to him or see him or to commit to anything with him. Because again, the writing is on the wall in terms of what's going on in Ukraine and with Russia. And I think a lot of people are waking up to it finally, including some heads of state and politicians. And of course, we had the Poland, Slovakia, Hungary conflict with Ukraine over

grain imports and agricultural products, which Ukraine has been flooding those countries with. And they finally said enough. Before we get to the grain, and I want your thoughts on it, President Biden's speech was also a dud. I think the two of them, and this is your analysis as well, I believe, wanted to make last week a festival of hatred for Russia, and I don't think they succeeded in doing it. Both speeches were duds. In neither speech would the camera pan the audience. Biden didn't have a full House either. Maybe the first time in history that there was not a full House for the President of the United States. But if they were in cahoots with each other, if Jake Sullivan talked to Zelensky's speechwriter and said, here's what Joe's going to say.

So Vladimir's got to say this. Don't worry, we'll beat the Bushes against Russia. I think they failed. Yeah, I know. I think so, too. I think if you compare the texts of the two speeches such as they were, they basically were the framework was let's really denigrate Russia and call Russia a terrorist state and talk and call Putin a despot and so on and so forth. And that's the line that they pursued, but that line is not selling very well anymore. The fact is, Putin certainly has his faults, and the Russian government system certainly has some, shall we say, idiosyncrasies, but every country is like that. Let's look at what Joe Biden has been doing, and if we want to compare, you know, who's the more sensible and sound statesman, I think Joe Biden is the one that comes down low on the list. Why do American elites hate Russia?

Why has the CIA and MI6 been planting all these stories in the press? Why the anti-Russia propaganda? Why not just treat Russia as another strong nation and trade with it so they can become prosperous and be markets for our goods and we can buy from their markets? Well, that was kind of the intention back in the 1990s and uh it was uh what what turned out was that basically the west decided that russia was uh was a resource that we were going to go in there and take everything valuable that they had and and just tell them to go to hell boris yeltsin. And Putin was the antidote to that. So you had that bad blood that started when the Soviet Union broke up.

You had the fact that Russia was at that point a traditional enemy, and the United States, God knows, always needs to have enemies. And I would also add the point that many of the commentaries were from Jews who nurture the history of Jews in Russia and have basically been prejudiced against Russia and written about it, those of them who are journalists. So there's that going into it too. Putin has said more than once, he said, we want to be a normal country and we want to have normal relationships with all of you. And this was basically rejected by the U.S. and Western Europe. I know the Prime Minister, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu blasted Iran. He's been blasting Iran for 20 years.

Did he blast Putin also? Yeah, yeah, he did actually on this trip. I mean, it wasn't a wholehearted screaming fit or anything like that. But he's careful because, of course, a lot of Russian Jews emigrated to Israel. And a large part of the more conservative voters who vote for Netanyahu are of Russian background. So Netanyahu was very careful of staying on both sides on this issue. And he's very clever at doing that. And how is it that we have come from in the Reagan and George H.W. Bush years, a country that wanted to sell refrigerators and blue jeans to the Russians, to a country that now despises their leadership. And what role does the CIA play in that transformation

of American culture and American attitudes about Russians? Yeah, let's start with the end of that. I think that the CIA and other institutional national security bodies in the United States, to include the National Security Council, to include NSA, to include the Pentagon's intelligence arm, all of these bodies have a historic antipathy towards Russia and mistrust of Russia. I know even among my peers in the agency that I still have contact with, many of them kind of have this suspicious thing about Russia. So it's a historic thing. It's something that's in people's heads. And there's a lot of that going around. And then I think you have to put that together with the fact that the history of the United States,

certainly since the Second World War, has been that of a state addicted to war that is always looking out for national security issues and is always looking out for enemies. So this is a pervasive thinking too. And it's a shame. It need not be. I don't know if you've been to Russia. I've been to Russia a couple of times. They're like everyone else. They're real people. They have real needs, real interests. And let's just drop this stuff about perpetual enemies. We don't need it. Well, how adept is MI6 at propagandizing and why does the press buy this? MI6, I encountered a lot of MI6 people in Europe and the Middle East when I was in the agency, got along very well with them,

knew a lot of them. They are deeply embedded in Europe and in Eastern Europe and in Russia. They have a long history of doing this kind of stuff and doing it very effectively with officers who were fluent in the local languages, much better than the CIA. And they are manipulators in a lot of these situations. Probably the war between Ukraine and Russia would not have taken place without a British prime minister going and talking to Zelensky and telling him how we had his back and he shouldn't give in to the Russians. The war would probably not have happened. Gary, do we have the clip of Senator Schumer bowing to President Zelensky as he's standing next to Mitch McConnell? We don't. I don't know if you saw that last week.

President Zelensky walks through the hallway of the Capitol building. He sees Senator Schumer. Schumer shakes his hand and bows like this and then says in audible English, we're in your corner. Now, of course, there's a double entendre there He could mean we're boxed in the corner Like you are or we're in your corner Meaning like the corner of the ring Where a boxer is

And we're going to help you out That's about the biggest Public display of affection He got in D.C. And it was weird Because of Chuck Schumer's bow I was bowing the likes of which I've really never seen in public from one American official to the head of state of a foreign country. But when he got back, this is yesterday, so this is Sunday afternoon, here's what

President Zelensky, it's a short clip and there's an English translation, simultaneous English translation. Here's what President Zelenskyy wants the Ukrainian people to believe he succeeded in accomplishing. There is a historic decision by the United States to jointly produce weapons and defense systems, in particular air defense. This is something that was an absolute fantasy until recently, but it will become a reality. We will make it a reality.

I held very important meetings in Washington and Congress, both parties, both houses, and we specifically requested a format of meetings and communication in Congress that would allow for the most detailed conversation this resulted in more trust and i heard that support for ukraine will persist this results resulted in more trust and i heard that support for ukraine uh will persist okay this is this is what he heard maybe joe b said, we'll give you those ATACOM acronym.

I'm pronouncing it the way I think they want you to pronounce it, missiles. But Joe Biden also floated the idea of something that Congress has rejected, which is an inspector general. I think he threw that out there to try and win over conservative and libertarian Republicans in the House who are refusing to vote for any appropriation for Ukraine whatsoever. I don't think it was a good week for President Zelensky, and I don't think the White House is going to get that $28 billion that it wants. What do you think? It's the $28 billion on top of the $113 billion.

Yeah, well, as I'm sure you're aware, Senator Rand Paul said he's going to do everything within his power, and senators have a lot of power on these kinds of issues, to disengage that money from the defense bill, which is how they were trying to squeak it through. And he said, no, this is going to be something that's subject to analysis and to a vote independently, and they may not get it. So we have that floating out there. No, he had a bad week, and he's trying to, of course, cover up for it. A lot of these joint meetings and these joint projects and everything like that, it's a joke that he's actually talking about this because he's got no joint to give into the joint. I mean, he is basically criticizing about he being a major league player in all this. He is totally dependent on the goodwill and the money and the the weapons being provided by the United States and NATO.

And he's joking if he thinks otherwise. So let's face it, he got a minimum cold-handed greeting when he was in Washington. And that should have sent signals to him right there. And I'm sure it did. He got a warmer greeting in Canada, but this is truly bizarre. We'll play the clip. I mean, it's one thing for a parliament getting carried away with some sort of false patriotic pro-Western view to give him a standing ovation. They gave him about a dozen standing ovations. It's quite another or one of those ovations to be centered on a former SS stormtrooper who happens to have been Ukrainian, who happens to have fought, I don't know, with the Russians against the Nazis, with the Nazis, against the Russians. It's hard to say. This guy was a Nazi,

was a German SS trooper, and now he's being lauded in the Canadian parliament. Well, take a look at this. When you see it, you have to look quickly to see President Zelensky. He's all the way over on the left of your screen as the clip starts. Then the camera goes up into the balcony where you see this 98-year-old fellow who's the former and apparently still, in his own view, a Nazi. He's speech received at least a dozen standing ovations. There was also one for this man, a 98-year-old Ukrainian-Canadian

who fought for Ukrainian independence against the Russians during the Second World War. So, listen, I don't know who this reporter is, but she's claiming that the Nazi stormtroopers fought for Ukrainian independence. Russia was our ally during the Second World War. So what's your take on this? Well, they would have to dig real deeply to unravel the various stories that came out of the Second World War. The SS had basically like a foreign legion division, which had people from all over Western Europe and Eastern Europe. And certainly there were a lot of Ukrainians who joined it because they had major grievances against Stalin and what Stalin had done to the Ukrainian people. So the story is not as weird as it seems. But these people actually voluntarily and intellectually chose Hitler over Stalin.

Absolutely. And you can check that out. It's a fact. The thing that's weird about it is how the Canadians seem to have misconstrued this whole story in a funny kind of way and surfaced this at this time and in this context. I just find it incredible. Hey, the Canadians never do anything in a normal way, so, you know, what can I say? Gary, run the clip again, please. His speech received at least a dozen standing ovations there was also one for this man a 98 year old ukrainian canadian who fought for ukrainian independence against the russians during the second world war so when president putin says So when President Putin says we are fighting Nazis and we are fighting the remnant of a Nazi ideology, there is accuracy in that statement. Sure. Yeah. I mean, as they say, I don't know what the numbers were like, but I imagine they're in the multiple tens of thousands

possibly who uh who fought for uh the germans against the russians because as i say the russians had a recent recent history of uh their own holocaust uh against the ukrainians under stalin so these these memories go with the actions and um yeah, I would thinkiffe, the Director of National Intelligence in the last year and a half of President Trump's administration, published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal arguing that the CIA bribed some CIA analysts, management bribing analysts to get them to change their views on the true origin of COVID. Professor Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University made the same argument here on judging freedom. Have you ever heard of the CIA bribing with cash bribes its own analysts? No, but of course, the way it's normally done is in a subtle fashion, which is that you're bribed with a promotion, which is the equivalent of money. And that's the way the system works. If you go along with what the system wants in the intelligence world, you're getting rewarded. If not, you kind of spent 30 years as a GS-14. And your thoughts. This stuff seems to be getting worse rather than better.

The elites still believe that Ukraine is winning. The elites still believe the offensive is going to prevail. The elites still want to demonize Putin. I just don't know what it's going to take. Maybe you do, for them to open up their eyes and recognize the reality of what they see. Well, I think most of them do know what the reality is. But the problem is that they don't feel that given their context, where they work, like at American Enterprise Institute or places like that, that they can speak the truth, first of all. And secondly, it would not enhance their careers to do so. So, you know, it's complicated. People

play this game every day. They look at an issue from a moral viewpoint. They have a certain stance on it, but then they turn around and say, well, look, I can't say that. I can't do that. Wow. All right, Phil Giraldi, thank you very much, my dear friend. We greatly appreciate your time and look forward to seeing you again right here next week. Thank you. Of course. More as we get it, my dear friends. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom. Thank you.