Read the full transcript of a conversation between Judge Andrew Napolitano and retired Col. Lawrence Wilkerson on Judging Freedom Podcast titled “Russia/Gaza: Is the US a Trusted Neutral?”, premiered March 13, 2025.
TRANSCRIPT:
Introduction to US Credibility in International Negotiations
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Hi everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Thursday, March 13, 2025. Colonel Larry Wilkerson joins us now. Colonel Wilkerson, always a pleasure, my dear friend. Thank you for joining us.
I want to talk to you. Here’s the subject matter for today, if I may. Is the United States a trusted neutral in its negotiations with foreign powers? In the two principal negotiations going on, I would argue the United States is a co-belligerent. In the negotiations with Hamas, the United States has financed a war against them. In the negotiations with Russia, the United States implemented, provoked, directly caused and financed a war against them. Who would trust Marco Rubio?
COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON: I think you’ve got a good point. I think the world is awakening to that point too. And it’s not just that we are co-belligerent, as you said, though that is a powerful aspect of it. It’s that we don’t seem to care about keeping our word in any realm of endeavor, be it economic, financial, military, social.
We just don’t have the feeling that the hegemon of the world, the single pole of power, if you will, has to do that sort of thing. So we constantly violate our word. We constantly walk back on agreements we’ve said we were going to adhere to. Look at what we did to the nuclear weapons treaties, for example. And that’s something that’s very esoteric to most of the world because they don’t know what they’re looking at. They don’t understand how dangerous these weapons are and how many there are and how we have destroyed all of the nuclear weapons treaties.
US Negotiations with Hamas
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: We’ll start with Ukraine because we have all these clips on it. There are no clips on Gaza. I don’t even remember the name of the person doing the negotiating. It’s not Mr. Witkoff. It’s somebody else. And it’s not Brett McGurk from the Biden administration.
COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON: It’s Baylor, I think, or Boehler. However he said that word. B-O-E-H-L-E-R.
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Okay, well, he is apparently sitting down directly with Hamas, much to the chagrin of Netanyahu and his right wing coalition. They must feel like Trump has slapped Bibi in the face by sending his own negotiator with Hamas. You know, the Israelis assassinate the negotiators from Hamas. I don’t think anybody’s going to lay a glove on this guy that Trump sent.
COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON: I don’t think so. And Hamas has already said much to that chagrin, and to the Palestinian authorities’ chagrin that they like dealing with the United States.
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: What is he going to get out of them? I mean, he wants the hostages that are American citizens as well as Israeli citizens, but they’re never going to get. Unless you know something I don’t, or unless you think Trump is going to read the riot act of Bibi. They’ll never get Bibi to say, okay, the IDF will leave you alone, can have a two state solution. Bibi would be cooked if he did that.
COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON: No, I don’t think so either. I think this is principally about U.S. hostages. And if they strike on other subjects, so be it. Probably not going to be made public unless it’s politically profitable to make it public. But the real issue that Adam is negotiating with Hamas is the hostages. And they seem to be willing to, if not explicitly or publicly, treat the US hostages differently. They seem to be willing to do it in private and maybe get them back on a more expeditious train.
Public Diplomacy and Ukraine Negotiations
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Some of your colleagues on this show earlier today, Pepe Escobar comes to mind, were critical of Secretary Rubio for negotiating in public and just using the word cease. 30 days of the phrase 30 day ceasefire, there’s nothing else reduced to writing. Would Colin Powell have done that?
COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON: No, I think what we’re looking at right now is if people would just be careful. And when I say careful, I mean diplomatically careful. We’re looking at a situation where tit for tat has worked. We have agreement on both parties, Russia and Ukraine’s side, for a 30 day ceasefire. And we, as an after effect of that, very cleverly, we reinstituted intelligence sharing and weapons.
So now Putin’s got the shoe on his foot, as it were, but it’s really tight shoe. He’s got to decide whether he wants to do that. With that additional pressure brought on him, because he’s got some right wingers in Moscow who are pushing him to not accept anything except all the things that all of them want. And we’re at a point where it’s very delicate. But if Putin will come back responsively, and we get down the road here with this, it could work. A lot of land mines in the road on the way, by the way.
I gotta tell you, Judge, I listened to the entire thing twice with you and Larry Johnson, with Sergey Lavrov. And Lavrov was all he had with those little three by five cars that he occasionally referred to. But he had, he rehearsed the entire history, the pertinent history of the U.S. Ukraine relationship, the U.S. Russia relationship with Ukraine in the middle and such.
And if every American could listen to that, what was it, 53 minutes or something like that? If every American could listen to that and understand that fundamentally Sergei has a better grasp on all of this than almost anyone in the world. And he puts it out there so beautifully in terms of the data and the rationale. And it’s all against us. All of it is against us. We have been the most duplicitous negotiators, the most duplicitous supporters of Ukraine and war. It’s just unconscionable.
But I wanted to rehearse a couple of things that he said because they’re so important. The first thing he said was that Stoltenberg, Jim Stoltenberg, had emphasized upon his assumption of Attorney Generalship, the defensive nature of NATO and then almost immediately turned to China, as if NATO is going to do something about China. Then he cited the head of the BND saying war might end by 29 or 30. Where are you, Germany? Where the hell are you? German intelligence service.
And then he went on to say Ukraine is more vital to Russian security than Greenland is to the U.S. You think so? You think so? You think so? President Trump. And then he talked about toppling the statue of Catherine and Odessa and what an affront to Putin that was. And to Sergey too, I would assert.
But then he talked about the most important thing of all, and I want to make sure I get this across. We have the nuclear powers, Washington and Moscow, a special responsibility to humanity. A special responsibility. You bet we do. And this opening to reduce both stockpiles and maybe bring Xi Jinping in as well, to just halt his build out is probably as important, if not ultimately more important, than settling the Ukraine war.
Nuclear Arms Treaties and US Credibility
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Who canceled the nuclear arms treaty, which would have kept those arms at a low number?
COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON: We did.
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Every single Donald Trump.
COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON: Oh, the INF Treaty. Yeah, Donald Trump did the INF treaty in his first term, but following in the footsteps of a series of presidents who just very stupidly took all the Cold War nuclear weapons treaties and destroyed them.
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Well, this is the neocon mentality which Trump claims that he will reject. But look, he has reopened the spigot to Ukraine. His Secretary of State is running around claiming he’s got a ceasefire and Ukraine is bombing Moscow. All this is happening at the same time.
COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON: Oh, yeah, and Israel is striking in Damascus.
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Correct.
COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON: I’m sure you noted that.
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Correct, correct. And the United States, of course, won’t do anything about it.
COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON: Not a thing.
Israel’s Influence on US Policy
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Israel can target a Columbia University student for prosecution because he’s an alien. And he spoke out against the Israeli policy in Gaza, charging documents alleged, no crime, no misbehavior. There’s nothing in there but the conclusion of Marco Rubio. Israel can trash a decent human being like Colonel Danny Davis and prevent him from getting a job for which he is eminently qualified in the DNI office. Israel still runs the show, Colonel.
COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON: They do. I don’t think, as you know, Israel’s running the show. I think we’re running the show. And when I say we, I don’t necessarily mean Donald Trump. I mean those people who actually run this country. They are running the show. And Danny Davis is a thorn in a number of people’s sides, and they saw an opportunity to get rid of that thorn.
Sergei Lavrov’s Insights on European Attitudes
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Here’s Secretary Rubio. Well, actually, before we do Rubio, you mentioned this, so we’ll play it. Here’s Sergei Lavrov startling me. You’ll hear me go, huh?
COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON: What? In the back, I heard you. I heard you several times do a breath intake. Right.
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Right. About Europe wanting more war. Chris, cut number 10.
COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON: Prime Minister of Denmark, she said that these days, Ukraine is weak. Ukraine cannot be fairly treated now. Therefore, for Ukraine today, peace is worse than war.
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: She said this.
COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON: Let’s pump Ukraine with weapons again, and when we have shaken Russian position, then let’s see whether we can talk.
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: And the chief of German intelligence a.
COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON: Couple of days ago said that it would be bad for Ukraine and for Europe if the war ends before 2029 and 2030. Even better. Yes, they say these things. And when President Trump was interrogating President Zelenskyy in the Oval Office, asking him many times, you don’t want to negotiate. Zelenskyy was trying to avoid an answer.
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Zelenskyy was trying to avoid an answer. He’s, you know, he’s very charming. He’s utterly brilliant. His grasp of the facts and the history is really second to none. I would like to be a fly on the wall, or maybe more than a fly on the wall, when he and Secretary Rubio actually speak with each other, as they did in Riyadh last month. But they are vastly, vastly, vastly different human beings.
COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON: And I have a feeling, Judge, a deep feeling, profound feeling, that one of the reasons Blinken and others in the Biden administration, including the president himself, didn’t want to deal with Sergei or Vladimir, because they were so inferior to them.
The Disturbing Preference for War Over Peace
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Yeah. I mean, what do you think the Germans mean or the Danish mean when they say war is preferable to peace? This is sickening. This is like a line out of 1984 or Animal Farm. What could the head of German intel possibly have meant? A man that achieves that position and he goes around saying, we want the war to continue for another four or five years.
COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON: That’s because the war isn’t in the streets of Berlin and it’s not in the streets of Copenhagen. If it were in either place, they wouldn’t be talking like that. And they will tell you that the reason they’re talking like that is to keep the war from those streets. And that is utter hogwash. As you and I have discussed a number of times.
Yes, Russia has no intent of going further. The bad, profoundly bad aspect of this is if we keep pushing the beast, as it were, if we keep insisting on statements like the BND or Denmark or whatever, then we’re going to provoke the hardliners in Russia to say to Putin and ultimately be victorious with their conversation. You can’t trust these people any further than you can spit anybody. So we do need to get ready and be ready to fight the entire bunch of them. That would not be a good development.
Russian Concerns About Ceasefire Implementation
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Here’s another Russian that has a grasp on history and geopolitics. Chris, cut number 16.
COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON: So how are they going to use this 30 days? Are they going to use it in order to continue the forced mobilization in Ukraine, in order to supply weapons to those areas, in order to newly mobilized units to undergo training, or none of this is going to happen?
Then we have a question. How are we going to resolve the issues of control or verification? How can we be guaranteed that none of this is going to happen in the future? How are we going to control this? I think on the level of common sense, everyone understands this, this is a very serious question.
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Who is going to give orders to cease fire, and what is the value of these orders?
COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON: Can you imagine about 2,000 kilometers, who is going to determine who and where violated this agreement? That’s an area of 2000km.
And then who is going to blame who? The violations of this agreement, all of these are questions that need to be thoroughly studied on both sides. So the idea in itself is correct and we support it, but there are questions that need to be discussed.
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: I think we need to discuss this with our American partners. Maybe we need to have a call with President Trump and discuss this.
Discussing Peace Negotiations in Ukraine
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: But the idea in itself to stop.
COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON: This conflict in a peaceful way, that’s something that we support.
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: I thought that was a pretty good answer. What do you think, Colonel?
COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON: I think it was an excellent answer. And he’s right. There are so many landmines buried in this supposedly moving now process that I’d be very concerned were I he that there. There’s so many players on the other side that can muck it up. And we need to consolidate the sides, if you will, and we need to have each side speaking more or less with unanimity. And the unanimity is forged by the fact that we want a stop to this war. And the parameters of that stop are pretty clear now.
There’s some things that have to be worked out, of course. Putin, for example, cannot demand. He can demand, but we cannot accede to the demand that he have those portions of the oblast he already mostly has, that he doesn’t have. He can’t have land that he hasn’t conquered. And there are other things too, that have to be worked out, of course, that are serious and that will take some time, not the least of which is who is going to, as he said, who is going to patrol this land.
I agree with him. The potential for interruption of that patrolling of that peace, so to speak, is going to be far more on the side of the Ukrainians than on the side of the Russians. They would have no interest in reigniting the thing once it stopped. But the Ukrainians, certain of them, would have, as they have for the last 15 years, have every interest in reigniting it and trying to pull some of their then quiescent European allies in with them.
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: But do you think that the Ukrainians would ever agree to Putin’s conditions? Elections, total neutrality, no military, no NATO. Russia gets the oblasts, the territories east of the Dnieper River. This is a far worse deal than he could have had before Boris Johnson broke it up. But this is what Russia is demanding. I don’t think that Zelensky will voluntarily accept it. When I said to Sergey Lavrov, will you accept a ceasefire? And he goes, why should we? We’re so close to the end like this, with his fingers.
The Reality on the Ground
COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON: The problem with that is where do you go from there? If you don’t accept a ceasefire, where do you go from there? Now they’re wrapping up the Kerch salient. They’re eliminating the few remaining crack troops that Ukraine has. And I rest assured they will do that, probably. I saw some videos last night of Ukrainian soldiers with their hands behind their backs and bullets in their neck. I don’t know if they were accurate or not. But those people are doomed if they don’t surrender or if they aren’t killed, they’re not going to get out of that cauldron. That’s the final. That should be the final slaughter for Ukraine.
But I don’t blame Putin for not being interested in giving up anything that he’s taken, and I wouldn’t. But I don’t think it’s going to be palatable that he insist on territory that he hasn’t taken. Now, if he wants to continue the war, if he wants to fulfill the BND’s prediction and continue the war endlessly until he has taken that territory, that’s another matter altogether. But I think that’s going to screw the pudding, so to speak, that we have developing now for finally putting an end to this conflict.
And he’s got a man, hopefully, in Donald Trump, that wants to do the same thing he wants to do with that bigger objective. And I wouldn’t take too many chances with that. We know how mercurial Trump is. We know how he might back off this, get angry all of a sudden and decide he’s going to side with all the nuts over there like Starmer and von der Leyen and it looks like Friedrich Merz. And what we’ve done with this Oval Office gig and what we’ve done with our tariffs and other things is if you look at the polls now, we’ve caused these dead men walking, dead women walking, whatever, to. We’ve caused their poll ratings to go up because they’re standing up to the empire.
Free Speech and Foreign Policy
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Colonel, when you and Colin Powell ran the State Department, you, his chief of staff, he, the Secretary of State. Did you ever revoke the green card of a person because of their political opinions expressed on a college campus?
COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON: Not that I can recall. And I’m sure you’re talking about Mahmoud Khalil at Columbia.
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: I am. I am.
COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON: That’s a disgrace, absolute disgrace. Ralph Nader had a good piece on it. You said things about it generally and specifically, this is constitutional. And they seem to have. I’m not sure anybody’s read the Constitution. And if they have, they don’t give a damn.
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Well, here’s what the man who took an oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution on January 20th had to say. You tell me if this is credible. In light of the Khalil case, Chris cut number 14.
COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON: And I have stopped all government censorship and brought back free speech in America is back.
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: So Marco Rubio, who probably never heard of Mr. Khalil, authorized the filing of a charging document against him which offers no evidence, states no facts. I’ve read it. Makes no allegations, contends no criminal behavior, just offers that. In the opinion of the secretary of state. Mr. Khalil’s presence at Columbia University is an impediment to the effective execution of American foreign policy. What judge is going to accept that?
COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON: None should, that’s for sure. And I’ve looked it over pretty closely. As close as a civilian like me can get to it now. And I can find nothing in there, nothing whatsoever. That constitutes a threat to the national security of the United States of America. I can find something in there that constitutes a threat to the grip that we have on Israel and Israel has on us. Perhaps. I don’t even see an anti-Semitism charge there. Which is what motivated all this in the first place, I think, because there simply isn’t one there.
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Colonel, it’s a pleasure. My dear man, thank you for your astute analysis of what Foreign Minister Lavrov said. It was a little out of body experience, really, given who he is, to be sitting across the table from him. Much as you and I did up here in New York. And then when he came over to me afterwards, as if nobody else was in the room. And started to chit chat with me. I used to live in your neighborhood, you know. I live in New York, which is very close to the UN which is where he worked for 10 years. And he lived in, quote, my neighborhood.
COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON: Yeah, Powell and he used to talk about that neighborhood, too.
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: There’s some very fine Italian restaurants in that neighborhood. That’s what I was going to mention next. But that would have been a little ridiculous.
COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON: He probably would have named a couple for you.
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: You’re a great man. Thank you for your time.
COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON: All the best. Take care.
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Bye. Bye. He is a great man. No question about it. Courage personified. Speaking of courage, Larry Johnson and Ray McGovern. The Intelligence Community Roundtable at 4pm tomorrow, Friday. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom.
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