Transcript submitted by a reader

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HY4T88gIpdw

Napolitano: 0:33
Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for “Judging Freedom”. Today is Wednesday, September 24th, 2024. Professor Gilbert Doctorow will be with us in just a moment on President Trump embraces Ukraine. But first this.
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2:02
Professor Doctorow, good morning and welcome here. Thank you for coming on the show. Thank you for accommodating my schedule. Let’s get right to the hot international news, at least in the West here. As the sun comes up on the East coast of the United States, President Donald Trump yesterday saying that Ukraine can win in all caps, W-I-N, the war against Russia, and retake Crimea and the other areas now under Russian security control. What do you make of that?

Doctorow:
Double talk. Look, my opinion has not changed. I do not say that I am certain. I do not claim that others are wrong, but I think I am onto something quite important when I say that Mr. Trump deceives constantly, misinforms constantly. These are the tools he uses to maintain his independence and to put at arm’s length his many opponents domestically and abroad.

Napolitano: 3:12
Well, what do the Russians think when Trump makes a statement like this? And there’s a lot more to it. “Russia is a paper tiger, NATO”, which of course includes the United States, which is predominantly the United States, “can help Ukraine win the war”. Do you think these are just negotiating techniques?

Doctorow:
I think they have the intent of making fools of his opponents and they very gladly fill that role. The BBC today put without any question whatsoever the statement that Trump has changed sides, that he now backs Ukraine, that Ukraine will retake its territory, they’ve gone in for that. Why not? They are so heavily invested in this story that the Ukraine will win, that Russia will be humiliated, that they will seize at any opportunity, at any straw that Mr. Trump gives them to think that he has joined their side.

4:16
That does not mean he joined their side. I look at the small print. When he said that the Europeans can go ahead and shoot down Russian military aircraft if they are violating the airspace of NATO countries over the Baltic — he was then asked afterwards by a journalist whether the United States would support Europe in this venture, and he said it all depends, depends on the circumstances.

Well, if you’re sitting in London, Paris, Berlin, and you hear him say that, you understand perfectly that you will be on your own. And none of these countries is likely to take his invitation to fire [on] a Russian aircraft and face the wrath of Russia by themselves, which is what you–

Napolitano: 5:08
You missed one country in there which probably is prepared to fire at Russian aircraft and bear the brunt of Putin’s wrath on its own: Poland.

Doctorow:
No, I don’t believe so. I don’t think that Mr. Tusk is that bold or that much a risk-taker to put his country on the line without a firm backing from Washington, which he does not have and will not get.

Napolitano: 5:40
All right, Chris, put up the full screen. You had it there a moment ago. I just want to read the operative language of President Trump’s statement on what he calls “Truth Social”. This is yesterday, Professor Doctorow.

Trump:
“I think Ukraine, with the support of the European Union, is in a position to fight and WIN” [in all caps] “all of Ukraine back in its original form. With time, patience and the financial support of Europe and in particular NATO,” [now I’m editorializing: which includes the United States. Now back to reading] “the original Borders from where this war started is very much an option. Why not?”

Is this his negotiating, in your view, his negotiating technique? And if so, with whom is he negotiating?

Doctorow: 6:33
He is buying time, yet again. Now I’d like to note here that– and it goes back to his remarks in the General Assembly, when he said that he was disappointed that Mr. Putin did not do what the Americans expected, which is to defeat Ukraine in a week. And then he made this taunt that you have quoted, that Russia is possibly a paper tiger. I agree with him. And so far, what is really at issue is Mr. Putin’s way of conducting this war, where Mr. Putin, the lawyer, is at odds with Mr. Putin, the military commander in chief.

Napolitano: 7:21
But is not Mr. Putin’s goal in fighting the war to eradicate a Ukrainian military so that at least for another generation the Russians don’t have to put up with this again? He could send off a half dozen Oreshniks tomorrow and destroy the regime. That’s not what he wants to do.

Doctorow:
I agree with your analysis, but I say it’s a faulty policy, because the world does not stand still. This has been the problem with this war from the beginning, that every time it looked like the Russians were coming to victory, the West came in with a new escalatory move and provided Ukraine with manpower, with, I’ve got to say, advisors, and with hardware, which enabled them to fight on.

If the situation is now reaching a culmination point, which means that the defenders of Ukraine are all the more desperate and irresponsible in their behavior, [then] I think it is a big mistake if Vladimir Putin does not take that into account and do what is within his power, which is to utterly destroy the Ukrainian regime in one day with the Oreshniks on Bankovskaya Urytsia, whatever it’s called, the one street in downtown Kiev, where all the government officers are.

That would be much more sparing of Russian lives and Ukrainian lives than his war of attrition today.

Napolitano: 8:50
I guess he doesn’t want to spare the Ukrainian lives. Chris, let’s play back to back the cuts that reference what Professor Doctorow has been saying. 18 and then 22, Chris.

Questioner:
Mr. President, do you think that NATO countries should shoot down Russian aircraft if they enter their airspace?

Trump:
Yes, I do.

Questioner:
Would you back up NATO allies– you said that you thought that they should shoot down the Russian aircraft– would you back them up, would the United States help them out in some way?

Trump:
Depends on the circumstances. It’s been a terrible war, should have ended, and Russia should have stopped it.

But they’ve been three and a half years and they’ve gotten not so far. So we’ll see what happens. But the other side can fight, too. And they’ve proven that. Maybe it’s a – it could be that Russia is a paper tiger.

I don’t know what they are, but three and a half years of fighting and killing everybody, of killing 7,000 people a week For nothing. For nothing. So it’s a very sad situation, but most of you have seen the recent statement I put out a little while ago. And I’m glad you got it. But I feel that way. I really do feel that way. Let them get their land back.

Macron:
Yep.

Trump:
So we’ll see how it all works out.

Napolitano: 10:07
Let them get their land back. You know, Professor Doctorow, that that is a metaphysical impossibility.

Doctorow:
And so does Donald Trump. He is speaking with sarcasm and he is giving again the message that I have read into him going back weeks: that is, Mr. Putin, get it over with. Now he didn’t say how the war should end.

He didn’t say what Russia will give, should give up in a settlement. No, he expects Russia to take all the chips, but they should do it now so we, the United States, and you Russians can get on with our real business, which starts with renewal of the New Start arms limitation agreement, which expires in February 26, very, very soon. These are issues of much greater importance to Mr. Trump than where the lines between the new Ukrainian rump state and Russia will be.

Napolitano: 11:09
Well, they’re certainly of great importance to the Russians. I don’t know if they’re of importance to Trump. He’s the one that tears up these agreements. He thinks they’re a sign of weakness when the United States is very rationally restrained from expanding its nuclear arsenal.

I want to play President Trump and President Macron again. Watch the look on President Macron’s face. This goes to your argument, Professor Doctorow. He may be saying this for the benefit of the Europeans. Watch the smirking President of France.

——–
Trump:
It’s been a terrible war that should have ended, and Russia should have stopped it. But they’ve been three and a half years, and they’ve gotten not so far. So we’ll see what happens.

But the other side can fight, too. And they’ve proven that. Maybe it’s a — it could be that Russia is a paper tiger. I don’t know what they are, but three and a half years of fighting and killing everybody, of killing 7,000 people a week for nothing. For nothing.

So it’s a very sad situation, but most of you have seen the recent statement I put out a little while ago. And I’m glad you got it. But I feel that way. I really do feel that way. Let them get their land back.

Macron:
Yep:

Trump:
So we’ll see how it all works out.
——–

Napolitano: 12:27
Here’s President Zelensky’s reaction, Not to that interview with President Macron, but to the Truth Social posting that I read a few minutes ago, cut number 19.

========
“I think Ukraine, with the support of the European Union, is in a position to fight and WIN all of Ukraine back in its original form. With time, patience and the financial support of Europe and in particular NATO, the original Borders from where this war started, is very much an option.”

Are you surprised to hear that?

Zelensky:
A little bit. A bit. I mean, this, I’m sure in my people, in my army, and I’m sure in strengthening, in support of the United States. But President Trump was more positive in it. And he showed that he wants to support Ukraine to the very end.

So we understand now that we are ready to finish this war as quick as possible. And he wants, and I want, and our people want. But he understand that Putin doesn’t want. And he understands that he’s not winning, but he says to everybody that he will win. And I see very, it was a little bit surprise for me, you’re right. I was very positive signals from the side that Trump and America will be with us to the end of the war.

Yes, we will see. We will see. But God bless. It will be so.
========

Napollitano: 14:05
What do you expect him to say? Surprised and he’s happy, but he may not believe it. He may take the Doctorow view of this.

Doctorow:
Well, I don’t know how deeply he will analyze it. So long as Trump says what he said, that Europe will save Ukraine, Zelensky knows that it cannot save Ukraine. This is the key point.

Mr. Trump has washed his hands of American military and financial contributions to Ukraine. That is decisive. Everything else is irrelevant, actually. Let Mr. Macron smirk, let him feel satisfied that he has turned Mr. Trump, which he hasn’t. The man is not for turning. And I believe that Mr. Putin is missing the cues.

The cue is Trump is buying him time to end it. And end it, he can only do with Oreshniks. Otherwise, this will go on for one more year. And Lord knows what’s going to happen in the global alignment of countries on this war and on Russia in one year’s time. This is the time to end it.

Napolitano: 15:25
Can you give me your understanding of the drone issue, the claims that Russia sent drones over Poland, the counterclaims that these were Russian drones on the ground in Ukraine, reassembled by the Ukrainians sent over Poland as sort of a false flag. How do you read this drone controversy, which candidly seems a little like old news and then it keeps coming back?

Doctorow: 15:57
It keeps coming back because it is not a self-standing issue. The drone issue is part of the Russian incursion issue. They are both being masterminded by the same people, probably sitting in MI6 in London.

It is because the Brits are way ahead of the States in nasty, nasty tricks, especially today, when Mr. Trump has pulled in the CIA and the other actors who otherwise took part in dirty tricks and false flag operations in Ukraine.

The situation is complex, and I’m not surprised that many people have not seen this as one whole campaign by the leadership in Europe, this means Britain and Germany, to nail Russia with accusations that are false or which are, may be true as in the case of incursions, but are true for reasons that are not coming up in the press. I have in mind specifically the point that in effect, the NATO powers in Europe have created or want to create an air blockade on Russia.

17:17
They are saying that Russia is crossing their airspace. Well, it probably is, because if you look at the map, and if you ask Google artificial intelligence this question, can any aircraft pass the length of the Baltic without passing over NATO countries’ territorial waters, the answer comes back: it cannot. So what we saw–

Napolitano:
That’s Sweden, right?

Doctorow:
Sweden joined NATO, and that made it almost impossible for Russian aircraft to cross the Baltic and not touch on one or another territorial water of a NATO state. That is not being discussed in the media.

It is a nasty secret because what we’re talking about now is essentially an attempt to blockade in the air, which follows the May events. You will recall, in May of this year. The Estonians sent cutters to arrest a gray fleet tanker that was taking oil to or from St. Petersburg as Russia owned. And they were driven away like scattering mice before a cat when the Russians sent up fighter planes over that area.

18:39
That failed. The naval blockade on the ground, on water level, failed. Now they’re trying an air blockade. So the only way– what this will lead to, if it is pursued, and if they follow the advice of Mr. Trump and shoot down a Russian plane, it leads us directly to World War Three. Since Mr.

Trump did not answer the question– you heard that he didn’t answer the question, but the United States will provide support– he was asked that elsewhere, in which he said it depends on the circumstances. The point is that it’s very feeble to non-existent support, and no NATO country will dare attack a Russian airplane if it doesn’t have US backing.

Napolitano: 19:20
Does Emmanuel Macron believe that Russia is a paper tiger?

Doctorow:
I don’t think for a minute he believes that. He knows how many nuclear missiles he has. He knows that the Russians have 10 times or more that number. And that he knows that the Russian nuclear triad is totally updated, which the United States is not. Therefore, if anyone is feeding him proper intelligence, and I assume they are, he knows that that is not a paper tiger.

Napolitano: 19:48
Back to the drones. Is it your understanding that MI6 engineered this, that the drones were a false flag and the Poles were in on the scheme?

Doctorow:
My first reading of the situation was much more simple and direct. It seemed to me, and not just to me but to many other people, that the Ukrainians had initiated this, and that the intent was to put the Russians into direct conflict with Poland. If a military action took place, then that would quickly broaden into a direct kinetic war, as opposed to proxy war between NATO and Russia.

20:30
Then when this broadened, then Romania became an issue. And then following that several days later, at the end of last week, we had this Estonian claims. It became clear that this was not a one-off, the drones were not a one-off act by Ukraine to engage Poland in war. It was something much bigger, and it was being directed most likely from the West and most likely from Britain.

And the timing, let’s look at this question of incursions. The incursions, even Kallas said, Kallas, the head of, the foreign policy commissioner of, the vice president of the European Commission, said that there were four Russian incursions over Estonia airspace this year.

21:17
Well, why wasn’t the complaint made earlier, and why was it made now? The answer is Zapad-25, the military exercises that Russia was conducting at the same time as the drone incursions and ended just before the story of jet fighters over Estonian airspace.

This was a NATO response to Zapad 25 to start the 100,000 Russian soldiers in operations from Murmansk to the southwest of the Russian Federation with a very big soft-power impact on the 25 delegations from all over the world, including Iran, who were present as witnesses.

Napolitano: 22:06
If MI6 orchestrates this type of dirty tricks– and I don’t mean to demean it by calling it dirty tricks; it could have led to the loss of life; it could have led to a a war– is CIA far behind? Don’t they work hand in glove?

Doctorow: 22:23
Well, I think you have other panelists who are much more capable, much more experienced in judging what CIA can do. I, as an outsider looking on, say that’s doubtful.

After all, I think that Mr. Trump has some control over policy, even in the CIA, and they would be much more cautious about something as inflammatory, as escalatory as what has gone on in the last week; whereas MI6 knows no restraints. Their boss is all in favor. It’s all sporting for a war.

Napolitano: 22:59
Professor Doctorow, a fascinating stuff. Thank you very much. Welcome back home from your happy trip. And thank you very much for joining us. We’ll look forward as always to seeing you next week.

Doctorow:
My pleasure.

Napolitano:
Thank you again. Coming up later today at 1:30 this afternoon, Aaron Maté– do you know that General Petraeus embraced somebody he once tried to kill who was the head of the Taliban when Petraeus was leading the charge in Afghanistan? We’ll get into all of that.

And Pepe Escobar– what do President Xi and President Putin think of Trump’s latest words, which I think are nonsense and Professor Doctorow says are carefully calculated? That’s Pepe Escobar today at 3.30 this afternoon.

23:49
Judge Napolitano for “Judging Freedom”.

News X World interview 23 September:  the Indian understanding of British sense of fair play is a knee to the groin

Yesterday I had two brief interviews with News X World relating to the latest NATO Council accusations against Russia for ‘irresponsible’ incursions into Estonian and other NATO air space over the Baltic Sea.

One of these interviews has been partially put on line by the broadcaster

You will note that the video stops just as I was about to say the following:

My characterization of these NATO allegations, which were picked up and disseminated by the BBC and other Western major media, is that they corresponded to Western, in this case specifically British, behavior in the sporting world during competitions with Indian teams: the Brits use a knee to the groin. I was merely repeating what I had heard some years ago from an Indian news analyst on air. The NATO story line against Russia is precisely a knee to the groin.

I say this because it is virtually impossible for aircraft to navigate the Baltic Sea without passing over the ‘territorial waters’ of one or another NATO nation given the narrowness of the sea in various places and the fact that since the accession of Sweden to NATO, the sea is lined by NATO member states.  What we are talking about in effect is an attempt by the European NATO member states to impose an air blockade on Russia.  If pursued, this can only lead to WWIII.

However, I greatly doubt that it will be pursued.  Even when Donald Trump said yesterday to a journalist that the Europeans should shoot down any offending Russian planes, he went on to say that whether the U.S. would back them up ‘depends on the circumstances.’  That faint support ensures that no European country will dare to attack Russian military planes over the Baltic.

In one of the two News X World interview segments, I expressed my surprise that NATO speaks of the Russian incursions as a violation of international law!  How remarkable, given that the Collective West had abandoned the notion of international law coming from the United Nations and replaced it with the ‘rules-based order’ set down and changed daily by Messrs Jake Sullivan and Tony Blinken in Washington. If NATO countries indeed once again are paying attention to international law, then they should rise up and put an end to Israel’s genocide in Gaza.         

                                                                   *****

I am told by a News X World producer that the full interview will be posted and sent to me. If and when that happens, I will repost here.

Transcript submitted by a reader

https://www.mgtow.tv/watch/sanchez-effect-dr-gilbert-doctorow-trump-s-playbook-a-masterclass-in-confusion_DXPcqxRBgbjUY3z.html

https://rumble.com/v6zbfxs-sanchez-effect-dr.-gilbert-doctorow-trumps-playbook–masterclass-in-confus.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CroGgJxPEbU

Orban: 11:55 (English voice over)
Europe, as we knew and loved it, is over. If we deny this, we lose time. If we say it out loud, we gain time.

Sanchez:
Wow, has the post-World War II model lost its way? Is it too late to get it back? That’s what Orban seemed to be saying, but in stronger words than I just repeated. Our guest today has written countless books on this subject. His books include War Diaries, Stepping Out of Line, Does the U.S. Have a Future, Does Russia Have a Future, and many, many more.

Here, historian, international thinker, and writer, Dr. Gilbert Doctorow is good enough to join us. Wow, that was quite a mouthful, not for me, but for Mr. Orban. Lilliputians, bankrupt, wars, they’re finished. Wow. Is he right about Europe, doctor?

Doctorow: 12:52
Yes and no. Under the present administration of von der Leyen, yes, this is a very apt description. However, she’s not going to remain in power forever. And there are some well-informed members of the European Parliament who have shared with me their view that she may not last six months. It’s also possible she may not last two weeks.

There are now pending two votes of no confidence against von der Leyen, one of them initiated precisely by Mr. Orban and his group of deputies in the European Parliament, the Patriots for Europe. These are accusing her of violating the Constitution, of having lack of transparency in the way she governs.

So if von der Leyen falls, which is, I wouldn’t say likely, but it’s possible in the near future, then she will be replaced by people who will be far more circumspect. I don’t mean to say that the balance of power within the European Parliament and in the European institutions will change overnight, but it will be on the way towards change, and it can virtually only change for the better.

14:07
As for Europe’s viability, I believe it’s there. But it’s possible only if Europe goes back to where it was in the 1990s as a peace project and not in the new millennium as a war project.

Sanchez: 14:22
Let me ask you the question that my editors would ask me when I told them that something is likely to happen and it’s going to be big news. How good are your sources that are telling you that von der Leyen is on the way out?

Doctorow:

Well, it’s not wild speculation. There were several weeks ago, and I forget, within the last two months, there was a vote of no confidence, which she survived.

Sanchez:
Yes.

Doctorow:
But she held on by her fingertips. I understand that there was a one-vote swing, which left her in power. And if the mood has continually deteriorated, with respect to her popularity, standing, credibility in the parliament, then she’ll lose the next vote. As I say, that’s not going to cure all, but it’s a good start, towards cure. And what is at issue is Europe being, as I say, a war project, because it has taken over geopolitics as its uniting factor, whereas in the 1990s it was the economics and cultural dimension which gave Europe unity.

Sanchez: 15:28
So essentially it’s become an entity that is into wars, Afghanistan, Belgrade, Iraq, et cetera. It has become aggressive and very tied to the military establishments that surround themselves with that entity. Is that part of what you’re intimating has been their downfall?

Doctorow:
Exactly. They have made the bogeyman Russia the uniting factor. It is meant to keep in power those who are now ruling Europe. Let’s be frank about it. We’re talking about a very common element of politics, and that is to hold on to the spoils of power at all price. European countries, by and large, are run by coalition governments, which are a formula for corruption and for incompetence, which, corruption and incompetence, are two sides of the same coin. Parties get together for the sake of grabbing and holding power, and they have no consistency in their policies, because they have dealt out to parties with conflicting interests and conflicting programs, ministerial portfolios, to have a majority of seats in the parliaments. So it is a situation where Europe, country by country, will have to reconsider the basis for elections and allocation of a formation of governments. That’s a separate but related issue.

Sanchez:
But when you hear Orban talk about it, he talks about layoffs and high inflation and wages are really low and migrants all over the place and the populace that’s unhappy. How did that become the overflow product of this situation that you were just describing to us. Did they, you know– there’s an expression in America, as you know, you and I are both Americans. The term is you “take your eye off the ball”. Have they taken their eye off the ball, the people that they’re supposed to serve?

Doctorow:
Well, it took some time to reach the dismal state they’re in now. As regards the illegal immigrants, refugees, as they were called at the time. This takes us back to 2014, 2015, and the gross mistake of Angela Merkel to open the doors of Europe to these supposedly kind ladies with little children who were fleeing the civil war in Syria. That was a very nice story for the progressive press in Western Europe.

It was now quite– lie. And the present Minister of Defense in the Belgian government, Theo Franken, he wrote a very fine book about 2016, _Europe Without Borders_, which described in great detail the fraud that was perpetrated on the European peoples, since it was not nice, kindly ladies with little children who came in. And it was not Syrians as such. It was Afghanis. It was North Africans. It was all kinds of very muscular young men who came as economic refugees, not war refugees.

Sanchez: 18:56
Before it’s all said and done, before we leave Europe– because I want to ask you about the United States, and I want to ask you about Russia and Ukraine. There’s so many things to talk about, including some of the things that are going on with India and Israel as well, but– maybe the final question when it comes to Europe is, will, if there is a change– and let us suppose that your sources and your sense of things is correct, and your sense of things is usually correct because you’re one of the most respected people in this business– and von der Leyen is out, what are the probabilities that whoever or whatever replaces her in the European power structure will be more level-headed and will not do things like wanting eternal war with Russia and wanting to constantly engage in more and more wars, etc.? What are the chances of that?

Doctorow: 19:57
There are several factors here. I started this discussion pointing to the European institutions. The opposition to von der Leyen is partly or even importantly on geopolitical considerations. And that is why it is of greatest interest to myself and to others who are following developments in Europe.

This is not the only factor that can bring about change. We have the two locomotive countries from the beginning of the European institutions, that is France and Germany, both are faltering. Both have the possibility of changing government in the foreseeable future, as opposed to the constitutionally recommended periods of service. England also has a very weak government.

20:47
So, if you put together the possibility the fall of Macron, he has royal powers under the French Constitution, but even royalty can find itself on the way out, even if they’re not facing a guillotine. The government of Macron is hanging by a hair. And if he cannot maintain his own position, then there will be a change, a dramatic change in France, which will bear upon the overall geopolitical stance of Europe.

In Germany, Mr. Merz looks very solid. He was very proud that in the West German Laender, the states, federal states of Germany, had elections in the last 10 days. His party held its own. However, his coalition partner, that is the socialist SPD, they lost significantly to the Right parties of the Alternative fur Deutschland.

Sanchez:
Or Russian.

Doctorow:
If you lose your coalition, then you lose your government.

Sanchez:
Yeah.

Doctorow:
And you’re out and have to face elections. And he will not survive a new election in Germany, because he’s very unpopular, as became apparent after he took office. So it is possible in both of these locomotive countries of the European Union that there will be changes of government in the foreseeable future, all of which would promote and redirect the European institutions, because these countries are leaders within the European Council, which is the second executive body alongside the commission within Europe.

Sanchez: 22:27
Yeah, all three of them have horrible approval numbers, by the way. I mean, not just horrible, dismal, like in the low 20s. And by the way, just to make sure I heard you correct, you said that Macron is not hanging by a thread, but hanging by a head?

Doctorow:

Hanging by a hair, well, might as well say by a thread, yes.

Sanchez:
Okay, I was thinking of French history there for just a moment. Good line either way. Let’s talk our country, the United States of America. What gives? I can’t help but look at the situation and scratch my head in a different place every day. I’m going to give myself a sore trying to figure out what is the intent? What is the actual strategy? Have you figured it out?

Doctorow:
Well, I have. I’ve paid a price in terms of the general public reading my works or listening to me. I’m doing better these days than, say, six months ago. Six months ago, I was called an apologist for Putin. Now I’m called an apologist for Trump. I suppose that’s progress.

The point is that I see logic in Mr. Trump in what he does, not what he says. What he says is intended to confuse, to keep all of his opponents both domestically and foreign, off balance, and to avoid their coming at him with a hatchet. So he has successfully confused many of my peers in alternative media.

Sanchez:
Including me. Including me. Hands up over here, by the way.

Doctorow:
They point to the contradictions as if he is mindless and does what is proposed to him by the last person to whisper in his ear. I absolutely [disagree] with that. He has his priorities and his direction.

His first priority is establishing some normal relationship with Russia for a number of reasons, which we probably don’t have time to discuss, but they are rational, rational logic to this. And he is doing what he can in very difficult circumstances. By that I mean he is surrounded by opponents to his policy. The Congress basically is opposed to his policy of some kind of normalization with Russia. And of course, Europe is now all against it and has, in the last week, launched yet another program to draw to its side Mr. Trump.

25:06
And I mean now this discussion of the drone attacks on Poland, Romania; and the Estonian complaints that Russian fighter jets violated their airspace. All of this is nonsense. If you want to go back to basics, what those drones were, whether it was possible at all to fly across the Baltic without violating NATO space, given the realities of the narrowness of the Baltic Sea and the countries lining it, being NATO members. In any case, my point is that the Russians have been described as aggressors in the last week, all in an attempt to turn Mr. Trump around.

Well, they won’t. The man is not for turning, but he is for lying, for deceiving, and for giving hope to his enemies that he will do what they want, which he will not. So it is a waiting game. The message that I see from Mr. Trump to Mr. Putin is to get it over with quickly. That is the message.

Sanchez: 26:18
I’m wondering, in hearing you say that about Mr. Trump, whether you believe—and I think this is important, so let me just try and get it on the record from you, because a lot of people heard you mention as an aside what just happened with Poland, and I haven’t quite even figured it out.

Do you think it’s a canard, a red herring? Do you think it’s just errant drones that suddenly may or may not have been the fault of Russia that ended up in Polish airspace? And should we not then ask ourselves if Russia was really interested in doing something with Poland or to Poland, which I don’t think they are. I think they have no interest in Poland or Europe, who would? They would have done it full force, not with three or four errant drones.

27:10
That’s just what I’m thinking, not necessarily as a studied journalist on this issue who’s talked to sources, but rather as somebody who just looks at it and says, this doesn’t make sense to me. What’s your take?

Doctorow:
Well, to go back to the beginning, my own understanding of what was happening has changed over the last 10 days or so, as new information came out and as new accusations against Russia came on. Initially it looked like this was, these were drones sent by Ukraine into Polish territory for the sake of provoking a Russia-Polish war, and which would immediately become a broader Russia-NATO war, moving from proxy to genuine kinetic war.

That was over, that was bypassed by further information. First of all, we learned from Polish authorities, Polish news sources, that Belarus had communicated with the Polish military while those drones were flying over Belarus territory informing the– well, I have posted the links to the Polish news agencies– giving the Poles time to act. If Russia were the source of these, of the [drones] it is excluded totally that Belarus would be communicating information to warn them.

Sanchez:
They’re allies with Russia.

Doctorow:
We have to [assume].

28:40
Secondly, people have done research into what the drones were. They were found to be not kamikaze drones, but the type of drone that Russia has used in swarm attacks on various Ukrainian sites. These are to attract or distract the air defenses from the primary attack drones and missiles. It was known that the Ukrainians had been collecting downed drones of this variety.

And they did. Some of them do go down by electronic warfare they’re brought down, and or they crash. And since they had no explosives, which was the important fact, they would just fall and break up. They could be reassembled, were reassembled by the Ukrainians for use in this contingency. All of that was defined at the level of a Ukraine-Polish interaction.

However, the plot had thickened in the last week or so; then there were the so-called attacks on Romania, further aggravating the case against Russia as an aggressor. And now we have the culmination in the last few days, the supposed violation of Estonian airspace by Russian military jets.

Well, we have to look at the timing of all of this. All of this comes in the middle or at the end of Zapad 25, the West 25 military exercises of Belarus and Russia with very large-scale participation, more than 100, 000 Russian soldiers in action, sites all over the place from Murmansk in the north, down to the southwest of Russia, and in the [Baltic Sea].

30:30
This of course was an important event staged in part to show the military prowess of Russia to the 25 visiting delegations, many of them Global South, prospective security partners of Russia and purchasers of Russia military hardware.

Now, the West reacted. How did they react? By this canard, as you called it, false flag activity, which has a number of objectives. One of them has been to call for united Ukrainian, Polish dash NATO action, securing a wall against Russian drones using Ukrainian technology and hardware to help the West European countries defend themselves against Russian drones.

31:24
At a price less than what happened in this Polish incident, where the Poles sent aloft fighter jets that cost several million euros each, that fire missiles that cost $500,000 each to down drones that cost $20,000 each.

So this was one big end result of all of these various efforts, starting with the false flag drone attack on Poland. And now it reached the highest level in the case of the Estonian charges meant to influence Donald Trump.

Sanchez:
That’s amazing. The explanation that you just gave is the best that I’ve heard since I’ve been watching this situation. And I’m here in Moscow.

And sometimes, you know, things get muddy because a lot of people talk at once. But in the end, the takeaway from all of this is Russia was flexing its muscle, doing military exercises and inviting global south countries and countries from all over the world. They probably would have been happy to see even NATO countries come. Here’s what we got. We’ll be happy to show you. You can buy it if you want, for the right amount of money.

32:38
NATO, EU, that power structure saw what Russia was doing and said, we have to create a distraction. We have to create, as you said, a false flag. We have to create something to make people think that Russia is actually getting ready to invade Europe. If Biden had been president, he would have held a news conference and said, “We’ve got to be on the alert because Russia is getting ready to invade Europe.”

Instead, we heard it from Rutte, but we didn’t hear it from Donald Trump. Going back to your original point, maybe Donald Trump is a little smarter than we give him credit for.

Doctorow:
I think he has good advisors. In the memorial service for Charlie Kirk yesterday, we had a good glimpse of what kind of advisors and what quality advisors Trump has had around him. And that is first quality.

That is an extraordinarily capable man of great intelligence, who obviously was providing to Trump the information on what is going on at American universities, since he traversed the country many times each year and had installed his Turning Point units in 2,000 American universities and colleges. That is on that domain. I believe he had similar competence in his advisors for foreign policy and what is going on in Russia. I have taken issue with my peers and intelligence experts who appear on some very widely known programs based in Washington and elsewhere, and who keep on insisting that Trump is in the dark. He’s not in the dark at all. We’re more likely in the dark than he’s in the dark.

Sanchez: 34:13
So you’re talking about Jeffrey Sachs and Mearsheimer and Ritter and Napolitano and Daniels and some of these guys who are wonderful people, by the way, really good communicators, great shows, but they tend to lean on the side that Trump’s getting really, really bad information and he should have made Macgregor his defense secretary.

Doctorow:
Well, I won’t make any comments on Macgregor, who iss obviously a very competent and experienced man, but I’m not sure I would like to see him as the defense minister. As regards Mr. Sachs, I would put him apart from the other men you’ve mentioned, because he is a globalist. And that is something that everybody who praises him for his wonderful stance on US foreign policy and its violations of international law, they ignore the fact that Jeffrey Sachs is a backer of globalism, which is the reason why the United States is such a violator of international law.

Sanchez: 35:13
Can we talk Israel for a little bit? Canada, UK, Australia came out today and said they recognize officially Palestine as a state. I’m wondering whether they know that they’d already done that during the Oslo Accord, or at least that was my reading of it, so [I’m] kind of shocked that everybody’s making such a big deal out of it. So I guess my question to you, is it a big deal?

Doctorow: 35:38
Well, it cannot be a big deal if no one is taking any action against Israel to prevent the annexation of the West Bank. I think that’s a much bigger deal than these countries coming out and acknowledging the non-existent Palestinian government.

There is no government. It’s a nice statement. It is certainly hurtful to Israel, but it does not contribute to ending the genocide in Gaza or to downing Mr. Netanyahu. I think a much more important development in the last couple of days, was the Pakistan-Saudi agreement, a mutual defense, which, if I were sitting in West Jerusalem in Israeli offices, I would be much more worried about.

36:27
That gives to the Gulf states, and to one Gulf state in particular, Saudi Arabia, finally an equalizer to Israel and its nuclear weapons.

Sanchez:
That’s a great point. Everybody talks about the Israel situation in Gaza. Everybody criticizes what Israel is doing, and by everybody I mean everybody but the United States and a few others. But nobody ever can definitively say that any of this, no matter how ruffian Israel may appear, is going to eventually affect them in a negative way.

I alluded to this earlier, I think you heard me say, props to Netanyahu, he basically is thumbing his nose at the rest of the world and said, “I don’t care what you think, and I don’t care what you say about me.” My tendency is then to ask you, what can they do to him? What can happen to him? How can he be affected by any of this?

Doctorow: 37:32
None of the great powers [has] taken any significant action against Israel, and that is China, it is Russia.

Sanchez:
Right.

Doctorow:
And I understand why. If the neighbors, if the Gulf states do nothing, except jawbone, then there is no room for outside powers to come in and do something. So that is the real state, the real situation. As for Mr. Trump, since I’ve said some very positive things about him, I’d like to put the negative side. This is a balance, of course. The negative side is his support for Israel, which enables the genocide, and not only the genocide. For example, the very widely discussed Israeli attack on Qatar. Yes, as I understand, it was enabled by American refueling of their jets, not a small detail.

38:32
The problem here is that Mr. Trump lives in a world that he didn’t make in Washington, and there are certain rules that he is stuck with. And one is not to go against the pro-Zionist Congress. If he were to act out of conscience and take any measures against Netanyahu and the genocide, he would be politically broken the next day. Therefore, in a world that has both good and evil in it, you have to make compromises.

Mr. Trump has compromised on relations with Israel, and he is seeking to accomplish something on a global level by putting aside the risk of a war with Russia.

Sanchez: 39:23
There are those who say, and I only mention this because it’s become part of the national conversation these days in the United States, that what you just said is true, but actually worse. Mr. Trump would not be broken politically, to use your words, as a result of taking on Israel in the United States. He could actually be broken physically for taking on Israel, if you get my gist. What do you think of that?

Doctorow: 39:54
I think if he doesn’t do something stupid again, that is not going to happen. What he did stupid was called out on Russian television two weeks ago, when he and J.D. Vance and much of the cabinet took a stroll over to a Washington restaurant to demonstrate how safe Washington is.

That was a very stupid thing to do. Vladimir Solovyov’s program mentioned anyone with a bomb among that group of protesters in the restaurant could have ended the US government right then and there. Now, the reason why Mr. Trump, aside from that very strange and inexplicable risk-taking that I just described in that restaurant, Mr. Trump’s best life insurance policy is called JD Vance.

40:45
Nobody in his right mind, among political malefactors, will try to remove Trump knowing that he would be replaced by a man who is still more obnoxious in the opposition to America’s conventional foreign policy than J.D. Vance.

Sanchez:
Yeah, he’s a non-Neocon. He’s a non-Neocon, right? That’s what you mean, yeah.

Doctorow:
That’s right.

Sanchez:
Huh, I’ve never looked at it that way. That’s absolutely fascinating. His best insurance is in fact JD Vance.

I got, what I got left in my mind in this feeble little tiny Cuban mind of mine. Why don’t we go to why don’t we go to India? I was fascinated last night. I was obviously watching football because it’s Sunday night in America. But I was fascinated by what Mr. Modi did. Just to all of a sudden call this emergency national address where he told his people, Swadesha, we have to do this. And he didn’t say, don’t go to McDonald’s, don’t go to Burger King, don’t drive a Chevy. But he didn’t have to. I kind of got the gist.

He was telling people, don’t buy American products. We’re going to make our own products. We might buy some stuff from the Chinese and the Russians. That was my take. What was yours?

Doctorow: 42:12
Well, he was just repeating Mahatma Gandhi. This was the basic method, don’t buy British textiles. Buy Indian hand-woven textiles. That’s where it all began. That’s where the Indian liberation movement found its footing.

So I think within India, this would have been recognized immediately, that he’s positioning himself in the tradition of Mahatma Gandhi as regards the self-, the production of goods and the purchase of goods within the country. However, that is much easier to recommend than to enforce. Russia has been through this. It was only in wartime conditions of drastic economic sanctions that Russia adapted to that type of policy of import substitution. And, of course, it was furthered by the military prowess on display, which gave a great deal of confidence to Russians that they can make things and do things.

43:25
And that is one of the big points in my book, which you made reference to, _The War Diaries_, which is largely about coming from my visits to Russia at a time when nearly all Western correspondents were not there due to the, first the covid and then to the sanctions imposed on Russia at the start of the special military operation. And what I saw was, step by step, how this was achieved, how there was the making of a nation that had confidence in itself.

And I thought back to the 1990s when I was, my wife and I were taking a taxi down the main boulevards of St. Petersburg and the driver said, “And by the way, we Russians make very cute kids, but not such good cars.” That self-deprecation, that inferiority complex, which was well established in the broad Russian public, has evaporated.

Sanchez:
It has.

Doctorow:
And there’s great pride in Russia’s ability to produce very good consumer good products.

Sanchez:
Yeah.

Doctorow:
And of course to feed itself magnificently as it is doing now. So India has to have a bit more pressure on it for the public to follow Mr. Modi’s advice.

Sanchez:
I, it’s interesting. So in many ways, what you’re saying is the United States has replaced the British in the mindset of the contemporary situation that we’re undergoing or that India is undergoing right now. If you haven’t had a chance to look at it, I would direct you to go look at my files of this show to my interview with Mr. Solyonov, who was the finance minister of Russia, because he said the very same thing.

45:11
We were having a conversation, he was sitting right here to the right of me, came in to say hi, spent a long interview, and at one point I asked him, I said, “what are you gonna do about McDonald’s?” And he says, we’ve learned to make the burgers and the cheeseburgers and the Big Macs better than theirs, and they ain’t getting them back. So anyway, it was a pride of ownership. I don’t know if you can brag about pride of ownership over a Big Mac or a Juicy Burger, whatever the hell they’re called, but it was interesting to hear him say that. To your point.

45:42
Hey, let’s finish off, doctor, with what can happen in Ukraine. My take watching this and reporting on it and doing interviews on it is that the Europeans have not moved one inch. They’ve not moved one inch in understanding what the positions of the Russians are. I think if they did give the Russians, I don’t know, 60, 75 percent of what they’re asking for, this thing could be done in– this thing could be over in 24 hours.

But they haven’t, as far as I can tell. First of all, what do you think of my take on that? And second of all, is there room for movement at some point, maybe post-von der Leyen and Rutte, you know, Merz, Macron, these other people? What do you think?

Doctorow: 46:41
Well, I think that some kind of patching up between Europe and Russia will take place. I wouldn’t want to put an exact timeline on it, but the logic is compelling, the economic logic. Also, if the locomotive countries have this collapse of the present leadership, that will give further room to the smaller countries to make their own accommodation with Russia. I’m speaking to you from Brussels. I’m a longtime resident in Brussels, long time, meaning more than 40 years. And I’ve seen a few people here and have a sense of how the country is suffering right now economically.

47:23
When you go down the main boulevards at Brussels, you see a lot of vacant retail and restaurants. The economy is suffering. People who are associated with marketing, which is the first budgetary item in all company business to be sacrificed, they tell me that the companies have slashed their marketing budget, which is an indication that Belgium is suffering from the German recession, as are the other smaller countries around Central Europe. These countries will certainly break with the von der Leyen-imposed restrictions and cancel Russia policies — as soon as von der Leyen goes, which could be very soon, and as soon as a country like France has a change of government, which is also very possible. So, but that is a very near term.

48:16
In the medium term, it is so obvious that Europe needs very badly the hydrocarbons, the gas and oil, at affordable prices, which Russia was providing, in order to be, once again, economically competitive in global markets. So, this will patch up. The Russians, that’s for the Russians. I know that many Russians who might listen to this will say I’m wrong, that they have had their fill of Europe. However, my own reading of the situation is that Russia is part of Europe intellectually, culturally, in every way.

48:59
And to say that– to deny that, is to deny the obvious. When I was, again, studying, looking over my diary entries when I was living and working in Russia in the 1990s, in the midst of destitution, the high culture performing arts, museums, symphonies, they were reconstructed, readapted to market conditions and flourished. And they are flourishing today. And let us remember that these high culture institutions, they are European institutions.

Russia was an essential contributor to European culture. Therefore, to deny this is to deny the obvious. Of course, they’ll patch up.

Sanchez: 49:43
I get a sense. I’ve been here now, I don’t know, four and a half, five months or something like that since I got here and I started covering stories, though I’ve done a lot of traveling, different parts.

My sense is, I love what you just said. I think Russians like American culture, but are born of European culture. And they can’t take that suit off. They wear it. It’s visible to me when I see it.

So that’s my take, you know, just based on observation. And it comes to me as I hear you say those words. So, wow, what a great interview. You are such a brilliant person. And your thoughts, your ideas are so provoking in so many ways.

And it seems like obviously you’re imperfect and so am I and so are we all, but So much of what you have said, doctor, has been on the money in terms of understanding these situations that we’re all embroiled in right now. Thank you so much for being my guest. You’ve been so kind to spend so much time with us talking about these things. I hope to be able to talk to you again.

Doctorow: 50:57
It was very kind of you to invite me, and I’ve enjoyed this as much as you have.

Sanchez:
Oh, thank you so much, Dr. Gilbert Doctorow. What a pleasure. What a great author. Buy his books, my God. Listen to that man.

That’s it from us. I got a podcast. It’s called Journalistically Speaking because I believe in journalism, because I am a journalist and because I think it’s an important craft and it’s about truth. Also, oh yeah, we’re on X a lot, all over X these days.

I mean, I’m also on Apple and Spotify. I’m all over the place, but we do a lot of really good stuff on X, and our crew’s really commanding some unbelievable conversations with you. Thank you for all you do. Thank you for letting us into your home. God bless.

51:42
Take care. We’ll see you next time.

Transcript submitted by a reader https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RHzPmbvNCYU Napolitano: 0:32 Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for “Judging Freedom”. Today is Wednesday, September 17th, 2025. Professor Gilbert Doctorow will be with us in just a moment on Is Europe Collapsing? But first this. [ad] 1:56 Professor Doctorow, welcome here, my dear friend. Thank you for accommodating my schedule, as you always do. Before we get into the current state of geopolitics in Europe, what has been the reaction in Europe and maybe in the Kremlin, if you’re able to gauge it, to the United States-approved and facilitated and Israeli- perpetrated attack on a residential neighborhood in Doha, Qatar last week? Doctorow: 2:31 The reaction– I’ll concentrate on the Russian reaction. What I detect in the last few days watching Russian state television is a significant hardening of Moscow’s position with respect to Israel. They were sitting on the fence. They didn’t want to create difficulties in their relationship with Israel. That’s all over. What I see now is very frank statements condemning Israeli genocide in Gaza, and of course what happened in Doha is part of the overall picture. So in that regard there is a change in Moscow’s position vis-a-vis Israel and the ongoing land offensive in Gaza City is part of that picture as well. In Europe, of course, what we see is a greater willingness to talk about sanctions against Israel, though of course nothing has happened as yet. So far it’s just jaw-burning. Napolitano? 3:36 Is the Kremlin going to do anything about it? I mean, how should we read this public change in the Kremlin’s attitude? Doctorow: I’m afraid to say that it doesn’t indicate any particular actions to protect Palestinians or to intervene in the conflict. That is not the present state of affairs. I think that the Kremlin takes its cue from what the Gulf states are doing, and as you know, the Gulf states are doing nothing. Therefore, it is useful, interesting to see the Kremlin has finally broken with this mystique around Israel and is taking a moralistic stand and not afraid to condemn the Israeli government. Napolitano: 4:28 Has there been any reaction that you’re able to detect to Prime Minister Netanyahu going on international television and before Charlie Kirk’s shooter was even caught or named, denying that the Israelis murdered him. Who denies that they committed a murder before they were accused of it? Doctorow: Well, in the case of the Kremlin, there has been almost no commentary on that issue. I understand that it is highly visible in American media. Even in Europe, I don’t see much commentary on that particular question, but for Russia, it doesn’t exist. Napolitano: 5:12 President Putin’s recent trip to the Belarus-Russian War Games wearing a military uniform, Do you read anything into that? Doctorow: Well, it’s the first time, to my knowledge, it’s the first time that he has donned a military uniform. It was quite impressive when Mr. Belousov, his very civilian minister of defense, first shifted from a formal suit to a military uniform. And now Putin has done that. I don’t think it’s necessarily a message to the West, though it would be appropriate to say it’s a hardening of his position, and his position on the war, of course. And I think that the occasion was to be one of the boys when he was meeting with the 20 or so foreign delegations who were present as witnesses and some as participants in the military exercises, war. This 2025 is taking place, as you say, in central Russia, not far from the Volga River in the territory of Nizhny Novgorod. That is a remarkable event. It’s understandable that it attracted so many foreign visitors, from the global South in particular, Because there are 100,000 Russian soldiers in these exercises, an extraordinary large number. Napolitano: 6:53 Were NATO officials invited to observe this? Doctorow: I believe they were. But of course, when Mr. Putin had his address to the foreign contingents, NATO people were not in it. Napolitano: Why would NATO be invited to observe a hundred thousand Russian troops and gleaming new military equipment? Doctorow: I don’t think there’s any particular meaning to that, because by convention, all military exercises, both Russian and Western, usually invite everyone. So it would be exceptional if they were excluded, not that they were included. Napolitano: 7:44 What is the Kremlin’s public position on the drones over Poland? Doctorow: I think the public position was stated clearly by their ambassador to the United Nations last week, Mr. Mabenzio, And he spoke of this as absolutely not Russian drones, that they had no participation in this. He made mention of the Belarusian reporting in real time on the incoming flight headed towards Poland. And as a demonstration that Russia was in no way involved, the Belarusian authorities hardly would be alerting the Poles if their fraternal Russian military were sending drones at Poland. So the flat denial. I don’t see, though, any particular accusations as to what the intention of this Ukrainian action was. 8:55 From the very beginning, we assumed it was to spark some kind of a conflict between Poland and Russia, which would immediately broaden into a NATO-Russian conflict. But I don’t see this as being reasserted or any other particular interpretation being presented by the Kremlin. Napolitano: 9:15 Is this, in your view, the dirty work of MI6 and CIA again? Doctoorow: I’m skeptical if the CIA at this stage would be involved, given Mr. Trump’s position on Ukraine and Russia, That the MI6 is involved is on the hundred percent. So that is a fair game. Pick up, there have been so many statements by various observers with considerable technical expertise explaining why this was a fake attack, why this was an attempt by Ukraine to set off the parties against one another. But this has not been, as I said, hasn’t been in Russian news. And I don’t think it’s a current issue for Russia. What is interesting is that, for example, the _Financial Times_ today is speaking about these drone incursions as if they were Russian without any question, that this is not a contentious issue. That’s a statement of fact. The Russians sent these drones in, and we in Western Europe have to react by strengthening, by investing more in our defenses, and of course by increasing our cooperation with the Ukrainians who have far more experience in liquidating, destroying Russian drones than we in Western Europe have. That is the official word coming out of the _Financial Times_, and I take it to be prompted by MI6. Napolitano: 11:05 I thought of you this morning when I saw these absurdities in the _Financial Times_. Has the Kremlin indicated at all how much longer it will take for the Russian military to achieve its objectives in Ukraine? Doctorow: No, no. They don’t put out any timelines or any indications of what they’re going to do next. The daily news on Russia hasn’t changed in the last several weeks. They speak about capturing this or that village in Zaporozhye, in Donetsk oblast and elsewhere, but they don’t give you a strategic vision of where they’re heading or whether they’re going to take Odessa, how soon they’re going to take Odessa. There’s nothing of that sort in Russian news. Napolitano: 11:53 Let me back up to Poland for a minute. I neglected to ask you this. Did the Polish government send troops to the Polish border in significant numbers? Doctorow: o-fly zone in the face of the Russian military. Let’s jump to Europe. Over the weekend, there was an enormous march in London. The British police said it was 110,000 people. The media says it was north of a million. It’s a huge, huge number of people fiercely opposed to the government, doing something that I honestly didn’t know was unlawful in Britain, which is waving the Union Jack. You know, you see these American demonstrations, people wave American flags all the time, but this was apparently unprecedented in Britain, or at least rarely done. Is Prime Minister Starmer on thin ice? Is the Labour Party going to go through this musical chairs as Prime Minister, as the Tories did a few years ago? Doctorow: Starmer has serious political problems at home. I wish I could say that they were caused by his various positions in geopolitics, but they’re not. The difficulties that Starmer has are very traditional in British political history, which was laden with sex scandals. Well, in this case, the domestic issues were the forced resignation of his deputy prime minister over scandalous, really scandalous tax manipulation. And there are other members of his cabinet who are teetering. 14:59 There is severe criticism within the party of Starmer, who is now being called by leading figures in his own party as being incompetent and not up to the job. On the outside, the conservative party, the normal conservative party is also in tatters. The only rising force, the people who could succeed Stammer in case he loses his grip, is ousted, then has to hold an election and loses the election, which would be quite likely, is Nigel Farage, who is doing very well. He has been consistent going back a dozen years. He has a very statesman-like image. Let’s remember that Mr. Farage had difficulties in the past. He was known to tiple too much, to drink too much. All that is gone. He’s quite serious. And his policies on immigration and on Brexit and otherwise, have been useful to him because of his very consistency over a decade, whereas others have waffled, gone this way and that, in both parties. Napolitano: You know, I know him well. He worked with me at Fox News. He was there for about two years. In those days, it was almost inconceivable that he would become the prime minister, but you’re telling me there is a spanking new Nigel Farage who’s perceived as a statesman by the British people and could very well be living at number 10 Downing Street in the future? Doctorow: 16:46 It is possible. I agree that he had difficult times, and for the reason I just mentioned, he wasn’t taken so seriously, but that’s all gone. He has sobered up in every way, and his positions are of great popularity, particularly on immigration. It’s very hard for other parties to get their arms around that. Napolitano: 17:10 Let’s look at France, which is in its fifth government in two years. How stable is the government there? Doctorow: Well, it’s a question of how many weeks or months this new government will last. The peculiar thing is that Beyrou was replaced now by the defense minister, who was close to Macron. But it’s the heart of what is wrong with Macron government. After all, Beyrou was fired, was lost the vote of confidence over his budget. Which– what was wrong with the budget? That everything was being cut, that the number of public holidays [was] being cut, that health, welfare benefits were being cut, and only one budgetary item was going up, and that is defense. It is inconceivable that this fact– this basis for the new prime minister in an increased military spend when everything else is being cut– it’s inconceivable that that will go on for long. In the meantime, the French government has a different problem. That is the loss of confidence of investors and of the business world in its ability to keep the national debt within sustainable, financeable terms. Today’s _Financial Times_ is reporting that exceptionally the French private company bonds are giving a lower interest to their purchasers than government bonds. It should normally be the other way around. It means that the markets have lost confidence in Macron. And I don’t see how he can stay on for long when the markets where he came from disown him. Napolitano: 19:10 Fascinating observation. In Germany, the AfD gained recently, but at the price of the socialists, as I understand, not at the price of Chancellor Merz’s party. I don’t know if that makes Merz stronger or makes the AFD stronger. Doctorow: It makes the government weaker. He has a coalition government. Napolitano: Right. Doctorow: And his coalition partners are precisely the people who took a battering in the West German elections. Now, this Alice Weidel and her Alternative for Germany, they didn’t rise, I think it’s about 15 percent, which doesn’t give you a ruling position in the government. But considering the loss– that everything she gained was at the expense of Merz’s coalition partner, it puts in jeopardy his coalition government. And if that government should fall, he’ll be obliged, most likely, to call elections, in which case all possibilities are open. And his continued service as chancellor has a question mark over it. Napolitano: 20:29 Last subject matter, von der Leyen, is she confronting some sort of a vote of no confidence, and if the vote of no confidence prevails, is she out of a job? Doctorow: Well, when we last spoke a week ago, I mentioned what I’d heard from a well-informed, independent member of parliament from Germany who said his prediction was that she won’t last six months. And he reminded me that on the last vote of confidence, she was held in power by one vote. Now, what has just happened? And why is it possible that she will lose this vote of no confidence? There are two of them, apparently scheduled in a week’s time from now. 21:18 The one that’s most important, I think, politically, is the one that is being sponsored by Victor Orbán’s bloc. There are deputies from various countries, but he is– the bloc that he formed is called Patriots for Europe. And that is interesting because Viktor Orban is now in really a fighting mood. He just won a very important decision by the European Court of Justice, in which the core issue was whether Orban’s very restrictive policies on immigration, which are in contradiction with the much more lax immigration regulations of the European Union, whether he would continue to face blackmail and suspension of monies that are owed to Hungary in the EU budget for violation of EU immigration rules. He won the case. 22:20 This just happened. And that put him really in a fighting mood, as came out in a message to his parliament yesterday. He initiated a vote of no confidence against von der Leyen. And who knows, they may unseat her. Napolitano: Wow. Professor Doctorow, thank you very much. I know you’re traveling, and I deeply appreciate the time you’ve given us. Enjoy your travels, safe travels. We’ll look forward to seeing you next week. Doctorow: Well, thank you so much. Napolitano: Thank you. Coming up today, a busy and full day for you: at 11 o’clock this morning, Pepe Escobar from somewhere in China. At two this afternoon, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson. At three this afternoon, Phil Giraldi. At four this afternoon, Professor Jeffrey Sachs. 23:06 Judge Napolitano for “Judging Freedom”.

Transcription submitted by a reader

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZMub8zcb4s

Jawad Husain, Espoir et Dignite: 0:00
Good morning, everyone. Today we have the great honor of speaking with Dr. Gilbert Doctorow, a respected political analyst and writer on international affairs, especially Russia and Europe. We will ask him about the current tensions between Europe and Russia, the role of the United States and the future chances for peace. My first question, Dr. Doctorow, why do you think Europe is so invested in the idea of a final and total confrontation with Russia?

Doctorow:

Europe discovered after the first six months, eight months of the special military operation which began in February, 2022, that Russia is a much more formidable military force than it had imagined.
1:04
And when it looked around, it looked in the mirror at itself, it understood that it is naked. It has virtually no modern armies in Europe, if you take out NATO, by which I mean if you take out the American component. The Europeans are unable to defend themselves. This didn’t just happen accidentally, it happened because there was no reason to defend themselves after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the accommodation with the new Russian Federation, which wanted very much to become integrated into Europe and into the Western world.

1:46
It didn’t play out that way. The Americans decided to take maximum advantage of their situation as the only surviving superpower after 1992. And they used the 1990s to economically destroy Russia with very good advice, they said, on transition from the communist centralized economy to a market economy, the result being shambles was left. Most of industry in Russia was destroyed, and the rest went into the hands of some rich people whom we call oligarchs.

2:26
That was the outcome of the ’90s, and it took some time for Europeans and for Americans to understand that Russia under its new president, Putin, was capable of and was in fact restoring its strength. Of course, being half the size and population of the Soviet Union, the Russian Federation could not be the equal in terms of economic output and other parameters, but it was doing very well since it had no dependencies to feed.

That is to say, Russia’s kind of colonial relationship with its Warsaw Pact countries no longer existed. It did not have to give subventions in cheap supplies to those countries and receive back shoddy commercial merchandise. So Russia was paradoxically strengthened by getting rid of its empire, and it became as it demonstrated particularly in year two of the Special Military Operation, when it slaughtered the Ukrainians’ so-called counteroffensive, which had all the weight of the United States and NATO countries behind it, and the Ukrainians were destroyed.

3:46
This vision of a big neighbor whom they had been poking in the eye for more than a decade, and being militarily vastly more powerful in conventional weapons than they were, frightened them out of their boots. And when you are afraid, one of the normal emotional responses is hate. And hate took hold in the leadership of the European EU member states to the point where they were fanning Russophobia, Russia hatred, from the towering heights of power.

And that is how you have– to their surprise, to the European surprise, Donald Trump won the elections last year, and he came in with a policy that placed primary emphasis on an accommodation with Russia, on recognition that the war was lost, and to move on to areas of cooperation with Russia in geopolitical terms, which the United States deemed important. That is to say, to change the balance of power and relationship with China by way of removing Russia from China’s arms and WArm embrace.

5:06
So the Americans started making movements away from the confrontation between Russia and Ukraine, and the Europeans doubled down and insisted on continuing the war, because it would keep in power those who had got Europe into the war; and they would not be shown up to have made wrong bets and to be on the wrong side of history. So that is how we got to today. Europeans have been encouraged by the Biden administration to support Ukraine in every possible way, which they did. And now Donald Trump was doing the opposite and renouncing such policies and they were left hanging in the air. That’s how we got to [today].

Husain: 5:54
Okay, thank you sir. How would you describe the present relationship between Russia and Europe?

Doctorow:
Terrible. The Europeans under the, shall we call it leadership, of the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, are collectively committing suicide. There are only two sane members among the leadership in Europe, and they are Fico in Slovakia and Orbán in Hungary. It’s not that they are Russia friends. It’s just that they would like to live. And the leaders in the other 25 countries seem to be betting on suicide.

Economically, Europe is going down the drain. I live in Belgium. It’s a small country. And this small country, like many other small countries in the EU, is largely dependent on a strong German economy to maintain its export business and generally for its economic prosperity. Germany is now in the second year of recession. Germany has slipped from being the fourth largest economy to behind Russia.

7:13
Russia has now taken over from Germany the lead as the largest economy in Europe. And this has happened because the Germans have been at the forefront of the proxy war against Russia and with sanctions, and they have allowed their economy to be destroyed by their renouncing Russian energy supplies. That is the situation today. The Europeans, unfortunately, European leadership doesn’t care a whit about their populations or prosperity. They only care about keeping their seats in power.

And by maintaining the war in Ukraine, they have the argument that we need, that Europe needs strong leadership, meaning we, and that we will stay in power to look after your security. That’s what they’re saying. In fact, they are destroying that security by preparing for a war with Russia in 2029. They believe that they can dictate when the war will start, when they’re ready. That’s dead wrong. The Russians will not let that happen.

Husain: 8:27
If I follow on with that, President Trump has spoken about a peace initiative. He’s been on this track of normalizing relations with Russia. Do you believe such an initiative can bring real chances for peace, considering your answer to the previous questions, that the Europeans are not prepared to make peace with Russia and they want to continue the war against Russia?

Doctorow:
Well, I think we’ve seen in the last two days during the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit that Europe geopolitically counts for nothing, nothing whatsoever. It’s just the leaders refuse to face that bare fact.

As for Mr. Trump and making peace, generally whatever Mr. Trump says, I treat with great caution. I follow what Mr. Trump does, not what Mr. Trump says. And that’s not because he is badly organized or confused or doesn’t know what he wants. No, it’s because he lives in a political environment which is populated by enemies to the policies that he wants. I don’t mean personal enemies, although there are plenty of them among the other aspirants for power, as always is the case in any country, but political enemies, people who oppose what he is trying to do.

9:58
And what he’s trying to do is in fact make peace, but not at the level of solving the dispute and little war between India and Pakistan or doing something nice in Africa. No. Or being a mediator in the Ukraine-Russia war, which is nonsense, of course, because in fact, the United States is a co-belligerent. Co-belligerents, normally, are not mediators.

What he is trying to do is to destroy the bloc system. He is doing his best without being conspicuous about it, because if he were conspicuous and if he spoke openly and truly about it, he would be impeached. The American political establishment does not agree with what his foreign policy intentions are. His foreign policy intentions are to break the United States out of the blocs.

We saw this in his attack, his tariff attack on India. People say, “Oh, it won’t work. Oh, we were losing our good friends in India.”

Nonsense. He had one intention, and it looks like he got what he wanted, namely for India to withdraw from the quadrilateral arrangement in the Indo-Pacific, which the United States has been building for the last 25 years, for the purposes of containing and possibly fighting China. One of the first things that Mr. Modi did was to withdraw active participation in the quadrilaterals.

11:29
In fact, even Mr. Trump is saying, well the rumor is, that he will not go to the next quadrilateral summit. So in that case, in the Indo-Pacific, where there is no big structure approved by the Senate that he has to overturn, Mr. Trump is undoing America’s involvement in a bloc that’s aimed at fighting China.

He is intent on reducing American participation in NATO, which will effectively destroy NATO. It removes the reason for its existence. But he cannot be open about this, as I said, or he would develop enormous resistance. And so he’s speaking double-talk, as we say in colloquial English, out of both sides of his mouth. But I don’t listen– that’s why I don’t listen to what he says, I watch what he does.

Husain: 12:24
Thank you very much, Dr. Doctorow, for sharing your valuable insights with us today. Before we close, we would like to remind our audience of your latest book, “War Diaries, The Russian-Ukraine War, Volume 1, 2022-2023”. We highly recommend it to all those who want a deeper understanding of this important subject. And finally, dear viewers, if you enjoyed this interview, please support our channel by subscribing, liking and sharing our contact content. Your support helps us continue bringing you valuable discussions like this one. Thank you very much, sir.

Doctorow: 13:07
My pleasure.

Transcript submitted by a reader

https://rumble.com/embed/v6wb53y/#?secret=LTCubIeAhz

RT: 0:00
Right now, let’s get more on this now and speak to author and independent international affairs analyst, Professor Gilbert Doctorow. Professor, I’m glad to have you join me now. So judging from the speeches by the NATO chief and President Macron, Western politicians are excluding Russia’s opinion on their plans to send troops to Ukraine, despite the fact that NATO expansion was one of the key reasons why the war erupted in the first place. Why do you think they are seemingly intent on ignoring Moscow?

Doctorow: 0:34
Because they’re insane. Lt’s say the definition of insanity is detachment from reality. And everything that Mr. Rutte said and that you have put on air would indicate that he needs a padded cell. The man is not spreading propaganda; he’s spreading insanity. What he said, that Russia is, that Mr. Putin has the strength of the governor of Texas, is utterly ridiculous. Now, Mr. Obama, in his worst days, said that Russia was a regional power. He didn’t say that Russia was Texas.

1:09
I understand that Mr. Rutte could be deranged. After all, he spent 15 years or more as the prime minister of the Netherlands. In the 1990s, when Russia’s economy collapsed, it was widely observed with some humor that the whole of the Russian economy was the size of the Netherlands economy.

I think Mr. Rute is caught in a time warp. He thinks it is still the 1990s. He is ignoring the fact that Russia is now the fourth largest economy in the world, as measured by price parity, and it is the largest economy by far in Europe. In this circumstance, to speak about Russia, Mr. Putin’s country, as having the weight of Texas, shows that the man is deranged.

RT: 2:06
Now it’s been three years already. What needs to happen still for the West to take into account Russia’s position in national interest when it comes to ending the war?

Doctorow:
The utter collapse of Ukraine; that is the only thing that can bring these people to reason and reality. So this is not something that Russia has decided upon solely. No, This was a solution that was imposed on Russia by the European Union, by the past high representative or commissioner for foreign policy. I’m speaking about Yosef Borrell, who famously said that this conflict between Russia and Ukraine would be solved on the battlefield.

2:55
Well, Mr. Borrell, it is being solved on the battlefield. The Ukrainians have lost 1.7 million men. And that is incredible loss, which Mr. Rutte doesn’t want to acknowledge. In that case, he is personally taking responsibility by his light-minded approach to this for those deaths. He wants that to continue. He wants to annihilate the able-bodied men in the country of Ukraine. This cannot go on. Mr. Ruta has outlived his usefulness, even as a propagandist.

RT: 3:34
Now, today, the Hungarian foreign minister has publicly brought up the issue of forced mobilization in Ukraine. Let’s take a listen to this.

Minister:
It is a well-known fact that there is an open hunt for people in Ukraine, that there are violent conscription events in Ukraine. Everyone knows that during these violent arrests, people are often beaten, in some cases to death. And they can do this because, according to pro-European politicians, Ukraine is allowed to do anything in this situation. I think that one of the greatest European disgraces of the 21st century is that in the heart of Europe there is a hunt for people, that in the heart of Europe there is a violent conscription and that in the heart of Europe, under the pretext of conscription, people are beaten to death. And I think that here, along with the specific criminals, responsibility also lies with all the Brussels politicians who do not pay attention or ignore these crimes.

RT: 4:31
All right, he’s talking about open hunt for people and violent conscriptions there. Now, he is the first European high-level politician to speak on this matter. Will that open the floodgates to others following his lead or will the silence continue? What do you make?

Doctorow:
I don’t know about floodgates. The mainstream newspapers in the United States and in England, I am thinking now of the Herald Tribune, even they, in the last month or two, have come back down to earth and recognized that Ukraine is losing the war very badly and that the procedures for recruiting, so to speak, new forces for their depleted army are the ones you described. That is already in print in the West in major newspapers. So the problems are extensive. I can tell you from my experience here in Belgium that elites in Belgium are also living in a different world or universe.

5:38
I have sat at the table in the most prestigious monarchist royal club in Brussels, French speaking, and heard my colleagues at the table and their wives say how wonderful it will be for their sons — and daughters — to receive military training and to prepare for … to execute their citizens’ obligations for defense. They are living in a dream world. Russia will win this war in a dramatic way in the coming weeks to months, not years. And only then, when the Ukrainian people acknowledge that they have been beaten, and they will, then Europe will also have to look at the facts, which they are ignoring. At the popular level, at the elite level, it is not yet understood what a disaster this war is for the Ukrainian nation.

RT: 6:40
Completely spot on. We have to leave you here now. Professor Gilbert Doctorow, independent international affairs analyst and author, thank you so much for your opinion.

Transcript submitted by a reader

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hiTAfLZs0Q



NewsX World: 0:01
I’d like to continue this discussion. I request the guests to stay on with us
0:06
Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin had earlier at the leaders’ meeting stated that there are certain understandings that were reached during his summit in Alaska with Donald Trump.

He stated that this could open the path to resolve the war with Ukraine. Putin also expressed appreciation for efforts and proposals from both China and India, as well as other strategic partners to facilitate peace. Let’s listen in to his comments.

—————-
Putin [from video subtitles]: 0:36
We value the efforts and propositions to solve the Urainin crisis / of China, India and other strategic partners of ours. The mutual / understanding that was reached at a recent Russia-US summit in / Alaska heads the same direction, I hope. It paves the way to peace / in Ukraine, I hope. I will inform my colleagues in more detail on the / results of talks in Alaska during our bilateral meetings today and / tomorrow.

1:17
I’d like to use this opportunity to say that Russia uses the same / approaches regarding the crisis in Ukraine. I will remind you that / this crisis was created not as a result of Russia attacking Ukraine. / It emerged as a result of a coup d’etat in Ukraine that was provoked / and supported by the West. What followed were armed attempts / to suppress the resistance of the regions of Ukraine and people / of Ukraine who did not accept that coup d’etat.
—————-

NewsX World: 2:02
I’d like to bring Mr. Doctorow back into the conversation. Even though Putin has made these statements, Kremlin has not until now really given any indication of coming to the negotiating table in order to end the war. On the other hand, we see Donald Trump is eyeing the Nobel Peace Prize, and he’s not being very subtle about it. He does have his personal considerations as well, even while rooting for a trilateral. We’ve recently seen a defense minister’s meeting of European nations take place in Denmark.

They gathered to discuss security guarantees for Ukraine. So in this context, how urgent is it for Europe to outline these guarantees?

Doctorow: 2:49
Europe’s decision to possibly send troops into Ukraine is understandable because Ukraine’s military is collapsing. However, if they proceed on that path, _their_ troops will be decimated. The Russians have made no secret of the fact that they will destroy any incoming European so-called peacemakers.

I’d like to take issue with the comments of a fellow panelist in England who is saying that he would be ready to mediate, that all you need is common sense. I disagree. You have to have some area knowledge. You have to know the situation on the ground. You have to know what’s going on in Russia itself, which he admits to be ignorant about.

3:29
I assure you that Russia is doing quite well, and the inflation that’s reported in Russia is nothing like what we experience in Western Europe and here in Belgium with food prices and energy and so forth. Russia is winning this war, he is ignorant of that, and you cannot bring the parties together when you don’t know the real situation on the ground, which he doesn’t. I’d excuse him, because Western media would not allow you to know what is really going on, with rare exceptions.

So the situation is, I say, Russia is winning this war. Mr. Putin’s remarks at the conference in Tianjin were diplomatic, which means they were meant to sound kindly and sound reasonable, but the reality is that Russia does not need and does not want any intervention from any parties, including India, to try to end the war. Russia is doing what Mr. Burrell said it should do, it is fighting this war on the ground and the outcome of the war is being decided on the ground, not by the talking shops.

NewsX World: 4:39
Indeed, I’d request our guests to stay on with us because we’re tracking some breaking developments now. We’re learning that days after a federal appeals court in the United States ruled that most of the tariffs imposed by the Trump administration are–

Transcript submitted by a reader

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtFWnlOedjA

Kataoka – NewsX World: 0:00
Thank you very much. Now we move on. But as these diplomatic exchanges unfold, Ukraine is hit by fresh violence. Overnight, Russia carried out what officials called a massive strike on Zaporizhzhia, killing at least one person and wounding 24, including two children. Homes, cafes, and industrial sites were destroyed. Ukraine’s central Dnipropetrovsk region also came under heavy attack with explosions in Dnipro, and Pavlograd. Authorities have confirmed Russian troops have now entered the region, marking a dangerous escalation in this area previously spared from fighting.

0:41
Speaking at the UN Security Council, Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko has condemned the attacks, declaring Russia continues to choose killing over ending the war. Let’s listen in.

Svyrydenko:
These killings are deliberate acts of terror. It’s an informed decision taken by Moscow to continue its systematic campaign to terrorize civilians and extinguish any semblance of normal life. Yesterday, Russia again responded brutally to our attempts to engage them in a civilized dialogue in the language of international law, peace, and respect for human life.

1:30
Russia continues to choose killing over ending the war. [We] still hope that this Council and its member states, who have consistently emphasized the need for cessation of the hostilities, will now show the courage to turn word into action by supporting a relevant solution on the matter.

Kataoka: 1:53
So as leaders converge in Tianjin, the human toll of the war deepens, emphasizing the stark divide between diplomacy and devastation on the ground. Now for this discussion we are joined by Gilbert Doctorow. He is a Russian affairs expert, joins us live from Brussels.

Thank you very much for staying with us and joining us again. Now with leaders meeting under the SCO framework, how realistic is it to expect that diplomatic summits can influence the course of the current Russia-Ukraine war?

Doctorow: 2:30
Well, it has already been made clear that the subject for discussion between Presidents Putin and Xi when they meet ahead of the parade in Beijing will be precisely the war in Ukraine. Of course, there are other issues, important issues, that they will be discussing, such as the decision of the big three in Europe, the UK, France, and Germany to use the provisions for reimposing sanctions on Iran, and the president of Iran will be there. There are many subjects that are topical and important.

3:09
I could say that Mr. Trump has done his best to provide the key members of the … SCO meeting and of the celebrants of the end of the war in the Pacific with talk and the possibility to address and define a common policy on these very issues. I also want to mention something that your viewers may not be expecting. It is possible that the meeting in China will have a very big surprise, a rabbit pulled out of the hat. That is to say, the Russian media are still considering that Mr. Trump may show up in Beijing for the parade. That is not to be excluded. I’d like to emphasize that this disruption, this disorder, which you in India are feeling particularly over the tariff war, is not arbitrary and is not without a foundation. The foundation is Mr. Trump’s hidden agenda to disrupt entirely the existing world order of American hegemony and to prepare the way for a multipolar world, however strange that may appear from his words, My insistence is to ignore his words and follow his actions. That he has applied these tariffs on India, just ahead of this important meeting is not an accident. It is intentional. And it is to get your presidents talking about how to deal with the United States.

Kataoka:
Yes. And that is very interesting that you’ve mentioned that a surprise guest might show up hinting to US President Donald Trump. If– we can only speculate here– but if he were to show up, do you think that this can shift the narrative at the ongoing diplomatic talks in Tianjin and maybe we might see any breakthrough? What do you think?

Doctorow: 5:13
Well, Mr. Trump has said recently in the last two weeks how much he would like to meet with Mr. Kim, how much he would like to meet with President Xi. They’re both in Beijing for this parade, and so it would be very convenient for him to be there. The European leaders, aside from Mr. Vucic in Serbia and Mr. Fico in Slovakia, the EU-25 hardliners have all declined to accept the invitation. And it would be remarkable if, and in keeping with his policies, if Mr. Trump were to show up. I can’t say that will happen, but there is a possibility that the Russians have detected and are publishing in very serious periodicals and online assets.

6:00
So Mr. Trump has destroyed what 25 years of American diplomacy have tried to do by enlisting India in a quadrilateral arrangement of countries encircling and opposing China. He has destroyed that in a few weeks. That is the real outcome of his tariff policy. The tariffs are nonsense compared to that geopolitical act, which I insist was not an accident, was not something that he missed, but it’s something that he intentionally brought about. So I think India also should rethink what Mr. Trump is doing. It is not what it appears to be.

Kataoka:
And now looking– thank you very much for sharing that– and now looking back at Ukraine and its allies, do you think there is any fatigue from the allies in Europe for Ukraine? Do you think that could eventually impact the level of military and financial aid that’s flowing now from the West?

Doctorow:
I would disagree with your generalization. Ukraine has no allies in Europe. It only has destroyers in Europe. What Europe is doing is to fight Russia to the last Ukrainian.

That is not a friend or ally of Ukraine. And that has to be made clear, because we are living in a world of Orwellian double talk, where peace is war and war is peace. Think for yourselves and understand that Europe is no friend of Ukraine.

Kataoka:
Right. Thank you very much for bringing us fresh perspective and always sharing good insights from Brussels.

7:41
That was Gilbert Doctorow. This is all we have time for. We will continue to bring you more news updates from around the world and the SCO Summit.

Transcript submitted by a reader

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TI2k2jbku8c

Napolitano: 0:32
Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for “Judging Freedom”. Today is Wednesday, August 27th, 2025. Professor Gilbert Doctorow will be here in just a moment on Trump’s confusing signals. But first this.

0:49
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1:59
Professor Doctorow, good day to you, my friend, and thank you very much for joining us and for accommodating my schedule.

In the past week, President Trump on his own Truth Social has written that Ukraine is doomed to lose the war unless it can get offensive and attack Russia, in a Truth Social that we have been posting, you can see it right there. He also authorized the delivery of 3,000 E-ROMs, offensive missile weaponry that can travel 280 miles. That’ll take about six weeks for them to get there. And just yesterday, he said he has something very severe in mind for Russia if President Putin doesn’t sit down at the same table in the same room at the same time with President Zelensky. What kind of signals is he sending to the Kremlin?

Doctorow: 2:54
Well, they’re not good ones, but I don’t see any sense of alarm coming out of Russia. They’re rather calm about this. Mr. Trump changes his– he pivots this way and pivots that way, in accordance with domestic American politics and where he sees the greatest threats to his position.

In this sense, Mr. Trump is not a great departure from other presidents and from the American political establishment for whom the rest of the world are just props. The only thing that counts in foreign policy is domestic policy. And that dictates many things. I was asked earlier today about the American initiative in the United Nations to reinstate the sanctions against Iran.

3:51
And in Tehran, they’re very upset about this. They take this, shall we say, personally? My point is, there’s nothing personal about it. If Mr. Trump sees himself under threat for one or another issue, however unrelated it is, for example, to Iran, then he will take action on Iran.

And if it’s the most convenient and less costly thing that he can do to flex muscles and to prove that he is macho and still in control of everything.

Napolitano: 4:27
I realize that you and I agree that he is often driven by his own personality and his own ego. He doesn’t have the moral or ideological or value-laden sense of some of his predecessors. But what is to be accomplished by these threats? How can he expect the Kremlin to react positively, or do they just dismiss it as, “Oh, there he is changing his mind again, he doesn’t mean it, he’ll back off, what can he possibly do to us?”

Doctorow:
I think it’s the second situation. We don’t know what back channels there are, what messages are being sent by Washington to the Kremlin to reassure them that this is not going to be what it looks like. If it is what it looks like, then we have World War III. So then we all should be quite excited about it. What I mean is that the Russians have made definite threats, what they will do to the suppliers of long range missiles that are being used against them deep inside the Russian Federation.

5:40
And this would be in direct, this shipment of these 3,600, whatever it is, medium-range, oh, 480 miles is pretty good. If that is used as the Ukrainians would normally use it to destroy civilian infrastructure, to kill ordinary Russians and not to attack military posts, then the Russians will have to, if they want to follow through on their red lines, attack Washington.

So I don’t believe this is going to happen. He’s making sounds and he’s silencing critics of one kind or another, maybe in relation to his policy on Gaza. It’s hard to say exactly what is motivating him.

But I would go a little bit in variance with what you said about his ego. I don’t think he’s ego-driven. I think it is policy-driven. But it is political threats that he’s responding to. They are real threats. And he responds in what seems to be illogical and unrelated manners.

Napolitano:
Here’s his threat yesterday, Chris, cut number two.

Trump: 6:50
I want to see that deal end. It’s very, very serious, what I have in mind, if I have to do it. But I want to see it end.

I think that in many ways he’s there. Sometimes he’ll be there and Zelensky won’t be there. You know, it’s like, who do we have today? I got to get them both at the same time. But I want to have it end.

We have economic sanctions. I’m talking about economic, because we’re not going to get into a world war. I’ll tell you what, in my opinion, if I didn’t win this race, Ukraine could have ended up in a world war. We’re not going to end up in a world war.

And it will not be a world war, but it will be an economic war. And an economic war is going to be bad. And it’s going to be bad for Russia. And I don’t want that.

Napolitano:
–done a damn thing to dial back the violence. If anything, it’s accelerated in the past eight months.

Doctorow: 7:49
Well, this brings us to the point. I think the hidden message from Moscow is what he said to Netanyahu months and months ago. But in Netanyahu’s case, it didn’t serve his interests. His interest is to keep the fight going, but to keep in, to stay in power. Mr. Putin doesn’t have a problem staying in power. He doesn’t need a war to stay in power. So the issues are a little bit different, but Trump’s behavior towards them both is the same: get it over with fast. And frankly speaking, the Russians are getting it over with much faster than they were before Mr. Trump made his threats.

Napolitano: 8:29
Yesterday, President Zelensky said he would never voluntarily surrender the oblasts in the Donbas region or Crimea. It sounds ridiculous. But is he free to make those concessions? Or would he do so at the peril of the loss of his life?

Doctorow:
Oh, I think it’s the latter case. I think the Russians are solving that predicament for him. The way they are progressing now, along the whole front, taking every soft spot they can, even if it’s not in Donetsk, even if it’s not moving closer to the Dnieper, they are taking territory and position, making emphasis on position. They moved into and took one or two towns in the new oblast for them, the Dnepropetrovsk oblast. We know about that area because there the only use of Oreshnik was to destroy a factory, military factory, heavily fortified and underground factory in Dnipro. Dnipro is the Ukrainian word for Dnepropetrovsk. And this area is of symbolic importance, the same way that taking Kramatorsk and Slavyansk in Donetsk oblast, is symbolic, because that’s where the– that was the cradle of the Russian Renaissance, the resumption of spirit and self-confidence that came in 2014.

10:07
So this Dnepropetrovsk is more than a physical acquisition, it is a symbolic acquisition, because that is the home base of Kolomoisky, the oligarch who from the start financed the Azov battalion, who financed a lot of the dirty operations against Russia.

Napolitano;
Right.

Doctorow:
And was one of the wealthiest men controlling, owning the most important bank in the country and owning the airline and calling all the shots. Well, that’s where he came from. So this is a territory, if they move on Dniepropetrovsk, they are going at the jugular of the…

Napolitano:
What actually happens or changes on the ground when the Russians take a village Does the government of the village change? Do the police in the village change? Does everybody go back to speaking Russian? Or are these takeovers of villages, which we’ve never heard of here in the US, just symbolic or part of the pathway toward the Dnieper River?

Doctorow: 11:21
It is more than symbolic. It’s clearing the way for reconstruction and for resettlement. There aren’t too many people in those towns that are taken, to greet the incoming Russian soldiers. Very few have remained behind, because they were under threat of being shot by the Ukrainian soldiers for not evacuating with them. So there are very few people in their cellars or whatever who are there to toss flowers to the incoming Russian soldiers.

The main task that the Russians have is demining. And they send in their specialists to remove the mines, because everything is mined after the Ukrainians leave a village. Well, I say village; most of these places they’re conquering really are hamlets. Maybe they have two, three, 500 inhabitants. They’re not a village in the sense that you had in mind.

And they don’t have mayors and high officials. But this is very important. Mr. Putin yesterday had his meeting one-on-one with the governor of Kherson oblast. And this is an area that is highly contested.

The Kherson city, the capital, is on the right bank, that is say the west bank of the Dnieper. It is under Ukrainian control. It was evacuated by the Russians as untenable. They had to cross the river to supply it.

But most of that, Kherson oblast is in Russian control on the east side of the Dnieper. And they were discussing the vast reconstruction program that’s now ongoing, building 600 kilometers of new asphalt roads and all kinds of infrastructure. And taking each of these little hamlets and villages is extending the territory in which Russia will restore normal living conditions, rebuild housing, and so forth. So it’s more than symbolic that when they take these, they’re preparing to move in immediately to restore normal living in these places.

Napolitano:
And who pays for this reconstruction? The Russian Federation, or is it private investments, or is it BlackRock in the U.S.? Who’s paying for it?

Doctorow: 13:41
It is multiple layers of the Russian government. You have cities in Russia like Moscow, which have city-to-city brotherly relations with this or that town, the same thing as St. Petersburg, and they put up their own laborers, their own equipment and so forth, to do construction work and then to build new housing for the returnees.

You ask which language they speak. Almost everyone in these territories speaks Russian. The idea they’re– or they’re bilingual, Ukrainian, Russian. Let’s not confuse the language with the ethnicity. There are ethnic Ukrainians, if you can define that, who are Russian speakers. That was the predominant language in the region where they were living. So that is not really an issue.

Napolitano: 14:38
Right.

Doctorow:
Even on Ukrainian television, you have a lot of officials who are interviewed and are speaking Russian. That was the language.

Napolitano:
Isn’t it illegal, even criminal, under Ukrainian law to speak Russian?

Doctorow:
It is. But practicality says if you want them to say something, they’ll say it in a language they can speak.

Napolitano:
Right. Foreign Minister Lavrov says no Putin-Zolensky meeting without an agenda. What does that mean?

Doctorow:
Well, they have an agenda. It’s a negation of the agenda by Zelensky. As soon as he got back home following his trip to Washington, he was saying that in no way will we accept surrender of territory. And that put a big “nyet” on the whole logic of the meeting, because Trump himself had said the prime purpose of the meeting would be to discuss exchange of territories, meaning Ukraine ceding its loss.

The question, of course, is that if you go into this, the Ukrainians, if they were to cede anything, would be de facto rather than de jure, they would maintain their claims. But the United States, at least with regard to Crimea, already stated openly that it is willing to acknowledge Russian governance of Crimea, de jure. What happens to the rest of the other oblasts will be a subject for negotiation at present or perhaps at a given time in the future.

Napolitano: 16:09
India is thumbing its nose at Trump’s tariffs, which are now up to, I think, 60 percent. Are you surprised?

Doctorow:
There has been some very reasonable analysis of what actually is happening on these tariffs. The most important component of Indian exports to the United States are not commodities, they’re not products. It is IT, it is technology, it is software programming. So I think $38 billion in that. That’s not touched.

Pharmaceuticals are not touched. And we all know that India is a big producer of generic pharmaceuticals, which are in big demand because they cost a fraction of the price of the original owners of the medicines that we’re talking about. These are not touched. What is touched are this: many factory operations were started up in the last two or three years to replace production that otherwise had been going on for American companies in China.

And so this is affected. The products that were being made in India to replace their production in China are under direct threat and become unviable as exports to the United States. That is surprising, but I’m just saying that the Indian commentators do note that it is more complicated than it looks. Nonetheless, Mr. Trump has undone in a matter of a couple of months, what the United States took perhaps 10 years to achieve as a foreign policy objective: to use India as a counterbalance to China and to invite India into its partnerships relating to the Indo-Pacific area.

18:05
That’s all undone. And it’s remarkable. That is the most astonishing reversal, and I say loss of American influence, that Mr. Trump has done since taking office. Mr. Biden pushed Russia into China’s arms, and Mr. Trump is pushing India into Russia’s arms. And also into China’s arms. Mr. Modi is going to China, I think, in the next week or two.

Napolitano;
Right.

Doctorow:
This will be the first visit in seven years.

Napolitano:
Is it fair to say that for all of his bombast and threats and animosity toward BRICS, he’s actually strengthening it, Trump?

Doctorow:
Absolutely. That’s a perfect summary of his achievements from seven months in office.

Napolitano: 18:52
Wow. Last week, the Russians destroyed not- yet-assembled Taurus missiles that had been delivered by Germany to Ukraine. Did Chancellor Merz think that the Russians would allow the Ukrainians to assemble these things and start firing them?

Doctorow:
Well, the Russians did very important damage to the whole missile program in Ukraine, both the deployment of weapons that are received from outside and the construction of weapons using British and other Western technologies. One of the big issues that drove Mr. Trump– if you want to speak, want to find rational decision-making in what he’s been doing for the last 10 days– one of the most important factors was the destruction of the Flex Factory. This was nominally making coffee machines for consumers in Ukraine, 30 kilometres away from the Hungarian border. A company called Flex, I believe, which was the local branch of an American electronics manufacturer. Now, Mr. Trump had to react to that.

20:18
This was, I don’t know, this was a billion dollar or so, so it was a large investment had been made by Americans in this military production, intending to create strike missiles in Ukraine. This was utterly destroyed by a combination of drones and hypersonic missiles. Flattened, destroyed. It took Mr. Trump a day to react.

Of course, he must have been under enormous pressure. “How do they dare?” Just as Mr. Merz must be concerned, “How do the Russians dare?” Well, they dare.

In this sense, there’s acceleration, escalation I should say as well, in what the Russians are doing. Before, they didn’t touch manufacturing facilities owned by foreigners. Now they are. And it was a big signal to the Brits, to the French, to the Germans, don’t even think of setting up military facilities, production facilities in Ukraine, because they will suffer the same fate.

21:17
So in a number of ways, the various threats that Trump and others have made, the various attempts to have a real military presence in Ukraine– such as assisting the construction of latest generation strike missiles there– that has touched a nerve, and the Russians have responded, I’d say, violently.

Napolitano:
I’ll tell you what I’m concerned about, Professor Doctorow, and I wonder if you share that concern. And that is the resurgence of the neocon whispering into Donald Trump’s ear. General Kellogg, Senator Graham, Secretary Rubio. The type of threat that Trump made yesterday. Maybe it’s just an idle threat. He often talks off the top of his head. I can’t imagine he’s run this past his advisors first. But I’m worried that that neocon attitude may be resurgent in the behavior of the American president. Do you share that fear?

Doctorow: 22:28
No, I don’t. There are limits on what he’s going to do. And the limits are: if he were to do what he said about giving the Ukrainians these 5,000 missiles and letting them have a go at it, then we’ll have a war. And the last thing he wants is a war. He had just said in the segment that you quoted that he wants an economic war, not a kinetic war. And I believe that is a deep-set feeling.

As to the whisperers, again, this is part of his drama, of his theatre. Not everybody is deceived. There are a few people around who have their wits about them and understand what’s going on, even in Europe. Even in Europe. There were two days ago in a broadsheet publication as a large-format daily newspaper, the “Écho de la bourse”, there was an article interviewing a leading French European security specialist talking about how the European response to Trump and his seeming pivot towards Putin and against themselves explaining that it’s a little bit more nuanced than one would think, that Europeans aren’t complete dolts.

They understand that he could be playing with them, that he could be stringing them along, but they have a choice of two ways to react. One is to turn their back on him and to go against him, to dig in their heels. And the other is to humor him, to play to his vanity and to think that they can bring him around. And the second policy has a little bit more depth to it than it appears. It is that they don’t want to be seen as being that monkey-wrench in the works that Mr. Putin was talking about. They don’t want the failure of Trump’s peace efforts to be their doing. They believe that Mr. Putin will do it and let him take the flak, let him take the opprobrium from Trump for destroying his chances of getting the Nobel Peace Prize and ruining the peace negotiations. And that could be, there’s a logic to that. It makes them look a little bit less stupid than they otherwise seem to be.

Napolitano: 25:01
Right. Before we go, what is the significance, if any, of the arrest in Italy of this Ukrainian intelligence officer? I think I have this right.

Doctorow:
No, you do. I was very glad you brought it up because while very little is said about it in Western news, a lot is said about it in Russian news. And they’re covering it closely. Today’s had a release on the ticker tape news in Russia that you find on their Yandex, that he was the head. The man who was arrested was a Ukrainian officer who was supervising a team of seven saboteurs, of various specialties, who carried out the preparation of destruction of the Nord Stream 1 pipeline. But that doesn’t take away from Sy Hersh’s story that the whole thing, the whole concept was American and that Biden approved the timing and that this was a setup for whenever the American president decided the explosive would be detonated.

26:17
That doesn’t change. But it does tell you that, and as Russians are saying, in fact, the only aspect of this that interests them is this team was Ukrainian and that it could never have been authorized without the personal approval of Zelensky. And they’re saying, and what is Mr. Merz going to do about it?

Napolitano:
And what was this team of Ukrainians doing in Italy? Where in Italy? In Rome?

Doctorow;
No, no, It’s one man who’s captured, as far as I know. And there is an arrest warrant out for six others who were his subordinates in this team that carried out the preparation of the destruction of the pipeline. And I suppose he’s simply enjoying the money that he received for his work.

I think he’s just gotten away from the hardships of Ukraine. I don’t believe that he’s out there in Italy on assignment. Certainly that his team isn’t there, because the job was done.

Napolitano:
Professor Doctorow, thank you very much. Thanks for the broad array of topics. Thanks for the tip on the arrest in Italy. Great chatting with you, my dear friend. We have a holiday coming up here in the US, Labor Day weekend, but it should not interfere with our work next week, and I look forward to it already.

Doctorow:
And I do as well. Thank you.

Napolitano:
Thank you. All the best. And coming up later today, actually beginning shortly at 11 this morning, Professor Jeffrey Sacks; at noon, Aaron Mate; at three this afternoon, Phil Giraldi. Tomorrow, Colonel McGregor and Professor Mearsheimer and Colonel Wilkerson.

28:03
Judge Napolitano for “Judging Freedom”.