Read the full transcript of prominent American scholar of international relations Prof. John Mearsheimer’s interview on Judging Freedom Podcast with Judge Andrew Napolitano on “Will Putin Outfox Trump?”, August 14, 2025.
Opening Remarks
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Thursday, August 14, 2025. Professor John Mearsheimer joins us now. Professor Mearsheimer, thank you very much for accommodating my schedule today.
There’s a great deal for us to talk about, nearly all of which is our speculation, but I’ll call it analysis of what we think might happen and what forces will play out tomorrow in Alaska. Big picture, is this a substantive or is it just shadow play, the meeting between Trump and Putin?
The Nature of the Trump-Putin Meeting
PROF. JOHN MEARSHEIMER: I think it’s mainly shadow play. If we’re talking about an agreement between Putin and Trump that’s going to lead to shutting down this war, I don’t see how that’s possible because the two sides are so far apart.
Russia has a set of non-negotiable demands that the Ukrainians categorically reject, that the Europeans categorically reject, that many people around Trump categorically reject. And therefore it’s just hard to see how Trump, who’s shown no evidence that he accepts those Russian demands, is going to reach some sort of meaningful agreement. So all you have here is a lot of shadow boxing. It’s all rather pointless.
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: So Trump, apparently, according to people on the phone call, one of whom is the president of France, the other of whom is the Prime Minister of Great Britain, purportedly told the Europeans he agrees with them. Now we know what their position is.
If he agrees with the European position, which is a ceasefire must precede anything else, and Ukraine has the right to join NATO and Crimea and the oblasts are really part of Ukraine – this is almost ridiculous to say this. If he truly told the Europeans that he’s either lying or has a fundamental misunderstanding of how to deal with Putin.
Trump’s Contradictory Positions
PROF. JOHN MEARSHEIMER: Well, you know how Trump operates. He says one thing one minute and the next minute he says the opposite. If you read the reports on what he told the Europeans yesterday, apparently he said that he was going to push for a ceasefire, but today he is saying that he’s interested not in a ceasefire, but he’s interested in a real deal. He wants to end the war – you can only do one of those two things.
And he says one thing one day and a different thing the next day. So who knows exactly what his position is going to be going into these talks. But the fact is he’s never going to agree to the principal Russian demands. And until he comes to agree with those demands, you’re not going to get a meaningful agreement between Putin and Trump.
And then you want to understand that’s not the end of the story. Because there are more than two players in this game. The other two players are the Ukrainians and the Europeans. And even if Trump and Putin were to agree, the other two wouldn’t agree with the deal that the two of them worked out.
Trump’s Threats and Empty Cards
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: Yesterday, he threatened Russia. Now, I don’t know if this is a serious threat. I’ll play it for you. I don’t know if it’s for American domestic political consumption. I don’t know if he thought it through. He’s saying it in a matter of fact way, but he does use the phrase – it’s the last two words of the clip and it’s only 16 seconds. Severe consequences.
VIDEO CLIP BEGINS:
REPORTER: Will Russia face any consequences if Vladimir Putin does not agree to stop the war after your meeting on Friday?
TRUMP: Yes, they will. Yeah, there will be consequences.
REPORTER: Tariffs?
TRUMP: There will be – I don’t have to say – there will be very severe consequences.
VIDEO CLIP ENDS:
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: How does the Kremlin view a statement like that?
PROF. JOHN MEARSHEIMER: The same way you and I do, as not very serious and indicative of the fact that he’s all over the map. Let’s just talk about why we’re having this meeting.
Two weeks ago, nobody thought a meeting like this was possible because the two sides were miles apart. So the question you want to ask yourself is, why are we having this meeting tomorrow? And the answer is that Trump had previously threatened to levy secondary sanctions on Russia, which meant that India and China in all likelihood would be clobbered. And that was going to happen on August 8.
But as we inched towards the August 8 date, he came to realize that he did not want to do that. So he sent Steve Witkoff scurrying off to Moscow to ask Putin to have this meeting. It came out of nowhere. Putin, of course, agreed to the meeting because he understood the pickle that Trump was in. So we get the meeting, and on August 8, there were no secondary sanctions. So Trump solved the problem.
But here he is in the clip that you just showed talking about sanctions again. He just got out of the pickle, and now he’s getting back into the pickle. This is just hard to understand. Why is he threatening very severe sanctions when that card is not worth playing? And in fact, it’s just going to lead to all sorts of trouble because he can’t employ it against the Chinese. They have too much coercive leverage. The Indians have told him that they will not play along. And if anything, what this is going to do, it’s going to drive the Indians into the arms of the Russians. Is that in our interest? Of course not.
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: What cards does Trump have to play? With the possible exception of the 350 billion – I don’t know if it’s dollars or rubles, but it’s roughly 350 billion translated into dollars in Russian assets frozen or seized or stolen, however you want to characterize it in European and American banks.
Does he have any other cards to play?
PROF. JOHN MEARSHEIMER: He has no cards to play. If he had cards to play, he would have played them already. Or if he hadn’t played them, Joe Biden would have played them before. What can he do? There’s all this talk about increasing armaments to Ukraine. We’ve been down this road probably 50 times. There’s nothing we can do there. We’ve got an empty cupboard for the most part.
And with regard to sanctions, as I just said, and countless people have said on your show and countless people have said in other places, that’s not a meaningful card to play. And by the way, what we haven’t talked about is the fact that the Russians are now winning in a serious way on the battlefield. If you look at what’s happening there, if anything, this just plays to Putin’s position, not to Trump’s position tomorrow.
Putin’s Unchanged Demands and Strengthened Position
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: Putin has never changed his demands going back to the start of the special military operation. Those demands, correct me if I’m wrong, Professor, were incorporated in the Istanbul agreement, which was – every page of which was initialed by the Russian and Ukrainian negotiators. And we know what happened with that. Joe Biden and Boris Johnson got their hands on it.
So he’s never changed his demands. And today, August 14, the day before the gathering in Alaska, he is in an infinitely stronger position because of the devastating effects that his military has visited upon the Ukrainian military. Your and my colleague and friend, Colonel McGregor, says the Ukrainian military is virtually obliterated in large measure because of the last movement of Russian troops in the past week. Agreed?
PROF. JOHN MEARSHEIMER: Yeah. I think that the Ukrainians are in deep trouble. And Colonel McGregor is correct. And again, this plays to Putin’s advantage in a really big way tomorrow. Putin has no reason to want to compromise at this point in time, given events on the battlefield.
And the other thing is, as I’ve stressed before, it’s very important to understand that what’s happening in Ukraine, from Russia’s point of view, is an existential threat. People in the west, for the most part, refuse to accept the logic of that position. But it doesn’t mean anything, whether they in the west accept or reject Putin’s thinking. What matters is what Putin and his lieutenants think. They all think they’re facing an existential threat, and they think it’s absolutely essential that these demands that they’ve put on the table be accepted by Ukraine and the West.
But we refuse to accept those demands. The Ukrainians do and the Europeans do. So again, I get back to the question I asked you before. Where do we get an agreement here? What’s the basis of an agreement? I don’t see any basis of a peace settlement. I hope that I’m wrong. I hope that I’ve been missing the obvious. But we’ve gone back and forth, the two of us. You’ve talked to all sorts of other people on your show, and nobody sees a magic solution to this problem. And I think that’s because there is none.
Zelensky’s Position and Putin’s Strategic Advantage
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: Well, is it possible that actually, before I ask you if it’s possible that Ukraine is just a PR ploy for a discussion of a reset between the two countries, here’s President Zelensky’s view of tomorrow.
VIDEO CLIP BEGINS:
ZELENSKY: It is impossible to talk about Ukraine without Ukraine, and no one will accept that. So the conversation between Putin and Trump may be important for their bilateral track, but they cannot agree on anything about Ukraine without us. I truly believe and hope that the US President understands and realizes that.
VIDEO CLIP ENDS:
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: Is Trump under pressure from neocons somehow to say to Putin, “you got to give up Crimea and you got to give up the Oblasts,” or does Trump and do even the neocons around him understand that such a statement out of Trump’s mouth would probably result in Putin getting on his plane?
PROF. JOHN MEARSHEIMER: Putin won’t get on his plane. He’s much too smart for that. Putin understands that this is a wonderful opportunity for him to look like a real diplomat, to not look like the warmonger that the west portrays him to be, and to go and to talk to Trump and to emphasize how much he is interested in peace and to talk about a broader security arrangement in Europe that will produce a peaceful Europe, to talk about how US-Russian relations could improve in this way and that way. So this is all to his advantage.
And I would also note that he is setting foot in the United States, is landing in the United States, and this is a symbolic move. It gives him a certain amount of legitimacy to come to the United States to talk to President Trump. So he really has nothing to lose tomorrow. And we’ve seen enough of him to know that he’s a very sophisticated strategist. He’s a very sophisticated diplomat. Whether you agree with what he’s doing or not, he’s not the kind of person you want to give an opportunity to demonstrate how reasonable he is and how smart he is. And, of course, that’s exactly what’s going to happen tomorrow.
Diplomatic Personnel Comparison
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: And will more than just the two of them be talking? You really can’t compare these two. Will Sergei Lavrov, the Russian Foreign Minister, and Marco Rubio, the American Secretary of State, be speaking?
PROF. JOHN MEARSHEIMER: I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s some of that. But as you know, whenever Donald Trump is involved, he sucks all the oxygen out of the air. He dominates. And it will not only be President Trump who’s dominating tomorrow, it will be President Putin as well. These are two world historical figures, and they’re used to commanding the stage. And I think they will both clearly dominate.
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: How do you compare Lavrov and Rubio?
PROF. JOHN MEARSHEIMER: Bambi versus Godzilla.
Prospects for a US-Russia Reset
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: Wow. That’s almost exactly what Colonel Wilkerson said this morning. He was even less charitable. But it was a similar lopsided comparison.
Could the Ukraine war be just the public reason for the meeting, but the real reason, the efforts by both presidents to bring about a grand reset politically, diplomatically, economically between the United States and Russia – is that not in the best interest of both? If they could just put Ukraine aside for a moment.
PROF. JOHN MEARSHEIMER: I’ll make two points on that. One, I do think the fact that they will not be able to come up with a meaningful agreement in terms of the Ukraine war will push them in the direction that you described. It’ll push them to talk about things they can agree on, which is the more general relationship between Russia on one side and the United States on the other. So I think you’ll see that tomorrow.
The second point I’d make to you, though, Judge, is it’s hard to see how you can reset US-Russian relations as long as the Ukraine war is not settled. And you want to think about where this train is headed, because it’s quite clear that the Ukrainian military cannot hang on that much longer. Witness what you just said about Colonel MacGregor’s views.
And at some point, when it collapses, when it begins to fall back to the Dnieper river or whatever, the question you have to ask yourself is, how will the west, especially the United States, react to this? Are we just going to accept that, or are we going to double down and try and do everything we can to rescue the Ukrainians and cause trouble for the Russians? I bet that we do the latter, and that, again, will cut into any improvement in the overall relationship that we see as a result of tomorrow’s meeting.
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: So you think that the neocons will be triumphant in Trump’s mind and in his exercise of his presidential duties if…
PROF. JOHN MEARSHEIMER: If…
Trump’s Weapons Pipeline Through Europe
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: If he goes back to Washington and orders more military gear shipped to Ukraine, notwithstanding the dilapidated nature of their manpower? That’s contrary to reason. That’s just an ideological decision and not a rational one.
PROF. JOHN MEARSHEIMER: Well, you want to understand that Trump has not cut off the flow of US weaponry to Ukraine, and all the evidence is that he intends to continue the flow. What he is now doing that disguises that fact is that he’s passing it through the Europeans and he’s getting the Europeans to pay for it. So the Europeans are buying weaponry from us, right? They’re getting American weaponry. It’s just that the Europeans are buying it, they’re paying for it, and they’re giving it to the Ukrainians.
So the Ukrainians are not going to run out of weaponry, because once the Biden pipeline dries up, there’ll be no Trump pipeline. There will be a Trump pipeline through the Europeans. What has screwed the Ukrainians big time is not the weapons problem. They do have a weapons deficit, for sure, but the real problem is a manpower deficit.
They have run out of infantry, they have run out of trigger pullers, and the end result is they don’t have sufficient forces to thickly populate the front lines. When you’re in a war of attrition and you have two armies standing toe to toe, if you’re the defender, like Ukrainians are, you have to thickly populate the front lines. You have to have lots of troops up there to parry the offensives by the Russians. And the problem is that the Ukrainians are so short of manpower that they can’t populate the line in any meaningful way. And that presents the Russians with all sorts of opportunities to penetrate the defensive position of the Ukrainians.
Trump’s Confusing Land Swap Proposal
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: One of the more bizarre statements, in my view, that the President has made recently now, this is August 11th, which is Monday. Today’s Thursday is this idea of land swaps. But in fairness to him, I’m going to play what he said. It’s an earful, Professor. You’ve probably heard it, but I’m going to play it. And you tell me if you think he knows what he’s talking about.
VIDEO CLIP BEGINS:
DONALD TRUMP: The next meeting will be with Zelensky and Putin, or Zelensky and Putin and me. I’ll be there if they need. But I want to have a meeting set up between the two leaders. I was a little bothered by the fact that Zelensky was saying, well, I have to get constitutional approval. I mean, he’s got approval to go into war and kill everybody, but he needs approval to do a land swap because there’ll be some land swaps stopping going on.
I know that through Russia and through conversations with everybody to the good for the good of Ukraine. Good stuff, not bad stuff. Also some bad stuff for both. There’s good and there’s bad, but it’s very complex because you have lines that are very uneven and there’ll be some swapping, there’ll be some changes in land. And the word that they will use is, you know, they make changes to. We’re going to change the lines, the battle lines. Russia’s occupied a big portion of Ukraine. They’ve occupied some very prime territory. We’re going to try and get some of that territory back for Ukraine.
VIDEO CLIP ENDS:
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: Well, that is inconceivable. The last statement. We’re going to try and get it back. And I don’t know what he’s talking about. He used the word swap, which connotes bilateral exchange, a swap four times.
PROF. JOHN MEARSHEIMER: My first point to you is going to be the point you just made. What is he talking about? I mean, there’s never any specificity when he talks or when others in the west talk about these sorts of things. Please tell me what these land swaps look like. The key question on the table is whether or not Trump is going to accept the Russian demand that those four Oblasts that they now partially control and Crimea will be part of a greater Russia. That’s the question on the table, and he never answers that.
Second point I’d make to you is after he talked to the European leaders yesterday, the whole issue of territory and land swaps was taken off the table. Right. He made it clear to the Europeans that they were not going to talk about land swaps unless the Ukrainians were present at the table. So he was talking about that issue before yesterday, but now he’s no longer talking about that. And the reason he’s no longer talking about that is land swaps are unacceptable to the Europeans, unacceptable to the Ukrainians, unacceptable to the Keith Kellogg’s of the world. And the end result is it’s not even worth going down that road because it’s just not going to happen.
Amateur Hour vs. Putin’s Strategic Team
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: Do you think that maybe what we all thought was threatening nonsense out of the mouth of General Donahue? If you want it, we’ll find the clip where he said we can invade and take over Kaliningrad. You know, that’s the exclave, the portion of Russia that’s not contiguous with the main part of Russia. Do you think that was strategically articulated as part of a warm up to the land swap idea?
PROF. JOHN MEARSHEIMER: No, that’s giving them much credit. They’re not capable of that kind of sophisticated thinking. I mean, you just have to understand that this is amateur hour, right? I mean, you put Vladimir Putin up against Donald Trump and again, it’s Bambi versus Godzilla. You just have to understand that.
You look at the team around President Trump. These are not first rate strategists. They’re not even second rate strategists. I hate to say this as an American, but it’s simply true. The Russian team that will appear in Alaska tomorrow is a far superior team in terms of thinking about and executing strategy than the American team. And it starts at the top.
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: So there is no land to be swapped. It’s just one of his blustering statements or he’s given up on it. It was four days ago and he seems to change his mind every time we hear from him.
PROF. JOHN MEARSHEIMER: Well, just very quickly. The question is, if you’re going to talk about land swaps, you should have talked to the Russians about it beforehand. You just don’t go out and start talking about land swaps off the top of your head. This is something that you talk to the Russians about and you work out some sort of broad parameters for a deal and then you go out and talk about it. But this is not the way it works with Donald Trump. He just says anything that comes to his mind whenever he wants. And then as I was saying before, he’ll change his mind an hour later or a minute later.
Trump vs. The Establishment
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: Does he have to worry about the European establishment, the American security establishment, the American deep state? These are all neocon, Lindsey Graham, Senator Tom Cotton ideologues.
PROF. JOHN MEARSHEIMER: Of course he has to worry about them. He had to worry about them from the very beginning. Trump was playing a very difficult hand on Ukraine and on other issues. When he walked into the White House on January 20, that meant that he had to be very strategic. He had to be very cunning, very smart about how to deal with all those people that you were just describing.
But did he behave in a strategically smart way? Did he calculate how best to negotiate through these obstacle filled waters? Of course not. He did none of that. He just thought he could fly by the seat of his pants and get by. And the end result is he has lost those different foreign policy establishments.
Israel’s Potential Strike on Iran
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: Just transitioning before we leave, professor, to Israel. Do you believe that Netanyahu is planning another invasion of Iran?
PROF. JOHN MEARSHEIMER: I think they have contingency plans and I think when the time comes, when they think the time is right, they will probably attack Iran. The fact is we don’t have IAEA inspectors in Iran and the Iranians have promised they’re going to start up their enrichment program. That means that the Israelis are going to make the argument in the not too distant future that Iran is back to building a bomb and something has to be done about that and that in all likelihood will lead the Israelis to attack Iran.
The only counter argument, if I have to argue against myself on this one, is that if you look at what happened in the 12 Day War, the Israelis did not do well against the Iranians. The Iranians have lots of ballistic missiles. The Israelis have a limited ability to find and hit the nuclear capabilities on the Iranian side. And it’s not clear that Israel has a vested interest, given the military balance of striking against Iran because again, Iran has a second strike capability.
It’s commonplace in the west to portray the Israelis and the Americans as having won this great victory in the 12 Day War, but that’s simply not true. And the end result is I think the Israelis may be reluctant to strike at Iran again. But nevertheless, if I had to bet, I’d bet that they’ll go after the Iranians.
Iran’s Nuclear Capabilities
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: Our friend and colleague, Professor Ted Postol of MIT says they already do have a nuclear weapon.
PROF. JOHN MEARSHEIMER: Well, I’m not sure that Ted says that they already have a nuclear weapon. I think Ted makes the argument that they can easily develop a nuclear weapon in a way that makes it very hard for the United States and for Israel to discover where that weapon is being made. I think Ted’s argument is that they have enough enriched uranium up to 60%. And if you look at what it takes to go from 60% to 90%, it’s a hop, skip and a jump. And they can do it in a laboratory or in some facility, which is very hard for the Israelis or for the Americans to see.
Lindsey Graham’s Israel Rhetoric
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: I have to play a clip from your favorite senior senator from South Carolina last night before a group of Republicans in South Carolina talking about the relationship of the United States to Israel. You tell me how many falsehoods are in this statement?
VIDEO CLIP BEGINS:
LINDSEY GRAHAM: But tonight, it’s late at night. Israel is in a fight for their lives. Our friends in Israel are surrounded by people who would kill them all if they could. I am tired of the word genocide. Let me tell you about genocide. If Israel wanted to commit genocide, they could. They have the capability to do that. They choose not to. Hamas, they would commit genocide in 30 seconds. They just can’t. And that’s the big difference, folks, to people in my party. I’m tired of this crap.
Israel is our friend. They’re the most reliable friend we have in the Mideast. They are a democracy surrounded by people who would cut their throats if they could. This is not a hard choice if you’re an American. It’s not a hard choice if you’re a Christian. A word of warning. If America pulls the plug on Israel, God will pull the plug on us.
VIDEO CLIP ENDS:
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: This is the Ted Cruz, remember that interview with Tucker Carlson school of thought. If we don’t give Benjamin Netanyahu what he wants, we will incur the wrath of God. Israel is not a democracy. It’s a criminal apartheid state. But anyway, I’ll let you take it from there.
PROF. JOHN MEARSHEIMER: Yeah, I mean, it’s not a democracy. It’s an apartheid state. It is committing a genocide in Gaza. And the argument that it is a strategic asset to the United States is not a serious argument. It’s an albatross around their neck. And Senator Graham can continue to make these arguments, but I wonder.
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: I don’t think Senator Graham is stupid at all. He must be appealing to what he thinks the voters in South Carolina, these are South Carolina Republicans, want to hear. Otherwise, there is absolutely no basis to make those statements. There’s no basis in truth, in history, or in fact.
PROF. JOHN MEARSHEIMER: Well, first of all, he gets a huge amount of support from AIPAC, and he gets a huge amount of support in other forms from the Israel lobby. One of the reasons that he has such a prominent platform is because of his views on Israel. He’s no fool, as you say. I fully understand that. I’m not sure that all his constituents or most of his constituents in South Carolina want to hear what he has to say about Israel. Given where public opinion in the United States is on Israel, I wouldn’t be surprised if there are a lot of people in South Carolina who share our views on Israel.
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: Maybe he’s worried about that. I know he’s confronting. He always does. But this is a serious one, a challenge in the Republican primary next year. Professor Mearsheimer, thank you very much. I know this is not your usual day or time. Thank you for accommodating my schedule. Thank you for all of your thoughts, as always. And we’ll look forward to seeing you next week. We’ll probably have plenty to talk about. This will either be earth shattering or a dud.
PROF. JOHN MEARSHEIMER: Tomorrow we’ll probably have to increase the length of the program to a whole hour to deal with everything that happens between now and then.
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: Happy to do so. Thank you, Professor. All the best.
PROF. JOHN MEARSHEIMER: All the best to you, Judge.
Closing Remarks
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: Thank you. And coming up tomorrow, Friday, a special intelligence community roundtable with Larry Johnson and Ray McGovern at 8 o’clock in the morning Eastern time. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom.
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