Read the full transcript of former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter’s interview with host Judge Napolitano of Judging Freedom Podcast on “Is Trump Unhinged?”, August 6, 2025.
Opening Discussion on General Donahue’s Kaliningrad Threat
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: Hi everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Wednesday, August 6, 2025. Scott Ritter joins us now. Scott, always a pleasure, my dear friend. Thank you very much for accommodating my schedule. I know your own schedule is busy and I deeply appreciate it.
You know that I do want to talk to you about whether the President of the United States knows what he’s doing in general in foreign policy. Our mutual friend, Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski has referred to him as unhinged. But before we get there, are you aware of any public pushback against the statement made by General Christopher Donahue when he threatened a ground invasion of Kaliningrad?
SCOTT RITTER: I’m not aware of any pushback by the Trump administration, and the reason why I believe there isn’t is I think Christopher Donahue was executing orders given to him to posture as tough and self confident.
I think, you know, I have enough respect for General Donahue’s resume. You know, former, not just four star general, this is a guy who was a Delta Force troop commander, Delta Force squadron commander in combat, commanded Delta Force and held senior JSOC positions in addition to serving in Ranger regiment commanding a battalion. I believe, you know, his resume is good. You don’t get to do any of those jobs unless you’re top notch officer.
So I believe that he’s a top notch officer, I believe he’s a military professional and I believe that he inherited a situation from General Cavoli who told him we have no capability. I mean, Cavoli was honest enough to say that going into the war, the United States had no comprehension on what high intensity lethality was like. And he said that the level of destruction blew our minds. We’re not prepared for that war and we’re not prepared for anything that’s happening right now that’s becoming even more lethal.
There was team of Ukrainian drone operators who were sort of taking umbrage to the fact that people are starting to be critical of the Ukrainians. These are guys who operated the drones in the Prokrovsk front that were able to stop the area, the Russian advance for a moment. And they came out, now they’re not being able to stop it. And if they actually work, they die. And they came out and they told NATO straight up, if you fought in this war right now, you’d be, all of you would be dead within a matter of days. NATO is incapable of surviving on this.
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: Is the United States capable of doing what General Donahue boasted about?
America’s Military Capabilities Against Russia
SCOTT RITTER: Not at all, not even close. One of the reasons why we’re not is that what he was talking about can only exist in a vacuum. He spoke as if we’re going to take out the A2AD bubble, which is area denial. You know, we’re going to do that quicker than you could ever imagine.
What he doesn’t or what he does understand. But what he didn’t say is the first NATO ordinance that strikes Kaliningrad, Christopher Donahue and his command staff will be dead within an hour because they will have been targeted by Oreshnik and other systems, conventional or nuclear. Any base that launched anything against Kaliningrad will be taken out not by systems in Kaliningrad, but by Russian system. Because to attack Kaliningrad is to attack mother Russia, to attack the Russian homeland, and the Russians just won’t put up with it. He left that out.
But his job right now, having inherited a system that can’t fight, and that’s the other good news here is he knows he can’t do what he’s saying. He knows that we don’t have the capability to do what he’s saying. Surrounded by NATO. That’s funny because most of the Kaliningrad is surrounded by the Baltics. That ain’t NATO. That’s like they claiming to be surrounded by NFL teams when you got, you know, peewee football up north. And the best thing you got in the south is Poland, which is, you know, division four high school football. There’s no NFL team going up against the Russian right now who are NFL super bowl champions.
He knows this and that’s why there’s no pushback, because he didn’t speak out of school. He’s a responsible officer who was given a briefing and given a brief and he said the brief. The Russians have pushed back though, and they’ve said exactly what I said. He do this and you’ll die.
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: Well, so Secretary Hegseth, who I guess is the only person that could have ordered him to do that, or even the President made him look ridiculous.
SCOTT RITTER: Yeah, I mean, I don’t know how this White House functions. One would think that Hegseth would have been. But you know, as the commander of NATO forces, you also have, you know, a State Department entity, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff have a play. It’s not just a Pentagon controlled thing. You know, there’s no national Security advisor anymore. It’s dual headed by with Marco Rubio, with we don’t know where the instructions came from.
Okay. I actually think it came from the White House, not the Pentagon. Because I don’t think Pete Hegseth smart enough to.
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: I was going to ask you if army generals can say and threaten anything they want, but you’re telling us that this was done on command. He’s probably too smart to have done this on his own and did it because he was ordered to.
SCOTT RITTER: He couldn’t have had the command positions he had if he was a renegade and a rogue agent. He can’t speak in public like this unless his comments have been through the White House, through the JCS.
So every word that he said there was staffed through some sort of system. And he was told to say that everything he said was approved and it was done for a reason.
Russian Military Objectives in Ukraine
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: Okay. Do you believe Moscow is confident that it will achieve its military objectives in Ukraine in 2025?
SCOTT RITTER: I don’t think Moscow will put a calendar date on it. They’re confident they will achieve their military objectives in Ukraine. You know, the one thing the Russians have refused to do is let the calendar drive their operations. They let the outcomes drive their operations.
That’s why, you know, Chasiv Yar took so long to fall, is because the Russians didn’t say we needed to fall by victory day, therefore keep sending the troops in. They basically said, oh, Chasiv Yar, they’ve stiffened up here. Let’s go to the flanks, let’s attack the logistics, let’s find the soft spots, let’s exploit those. And eventually they got the Ukrainians in a position where they had to withdraw and the city fell.
That’s happening to Pokrovsk right now. It’s not that the Russians are saying, oh, we need Pokrovsk to fall by this date or that day, because Donald Trump’s putting pressure. That’s not how the Russian military operates. Pokrovsk will fall when Pokrovsk falls, and it will fall when the Russians create the conditions conducive to its fall. And then every city Russia targets after that will fall when Russia creates the conditions conducive to that falling. And that will happen as the battlefield gets shaped by Russian actions not, you know, influenced by political artificialities that are driven by a calendar.
I have listened to Russian generals that I respect, and they are confident that something meaningful is going to happen in the next two months that you’re going to see, you know, the kind of collapse that I’ve been predicting for months now. I’m going to stay hands off on this one and say that, you know, when it happens, it happens, but I’m not going to put a timeline on it.
Reports of Captured British Personnel
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: Have you followed this, these reports about two British colonels and an MI6 agent seized by the Russian military in Ukraine? And if you have, is it false or is it worth considering?
SCOTT RITTER: I’ve been following it. I’ve read the reports that come out of it. At this point in time, if I were asked, you know, do we take action on this, I would say no, that this appears to be, you know, a propaganda ploy.
The only thing I would say is that for instance, a while ago, there was a report that an American general was killed in Mariupol. And you know, they are captured and you know, a lot of people were running with it. They even put out a photograph they said looked like the general. But all I did is I went and googled the general’s schedule and he was, you know, in Italy, you know, attending a conference and there he was. And I went, well, he ain’t dead, he ain’t captured.
You know, these are named individuals and you know, the fact that people haven’t located them, they’re not covert operatives. The MI6 guy, of course is, you know, covert operative. But these are named individuals and nobody’s come up and provided the, you know, the counter narrative saying, nah, the Colonel’s actually on vacation from General Staff College or, you know, no, he showed up at work the other day here. And so that raises some eyebrows. I don’t want to be totally dismissive of it.
Military Deployment on American Streets
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: I appreciate your intellectual honesty as always. I thought maybe you had some sources on it because I have sources saying it’s true and yet there are sources saying it’s exaggerated and it’s not true. It was AI crafted.
Before I ask you more about President Trump, the New Republic reveals a new Hegseth leak. And the Hegseth leak is a position paper prepared by his brother which states that the Defense Department plans to have troops on the streets of the United States for the remainder of the Trump presidency. How do American troops feel? And maybe you don’t know because I don’t think this ever happened. When you were an active duty Marine, how do American troops feel about being used for ordinary law enforcement as they were in Los Angeles until a federal judge put a stop to it and the appellate court upheld it.
SCOTT RITTER: Well, I was on active duty when the Rodney King situation went down in LA and Marines were mobilized to come in and assist that. And yeah, I can’t speak for all Marines. But I will tell you that the Marine Corps as a whole, we obey the lawful orders given to us by our command authority. But no Marine was happy about wearing a uniform and carrying weapon on American soil, facing off against Americans, even though ostensibly the purpose was to bring about law and order. No Marine wants to be that.
I was also on active duty when American Marines were on the border in Del Rio, Texas, and they shot and killed a teenager who was herding up goats because he was out there plinking with his .22 rifle and he shot at the camouflaged position. And the Marines believed they were taking effective fire, and they shot and they killed him. A horrible day for the Marine Corps. We’re not here in the business of killing American citizens. We’re not here in the business of patrolling American streets. That’s a law enforcement issue. It’s also a constitutional issue.
I can also say that if you go take a look at, you know, remember when the White House was sort of under siege and the President made that famous walk across the lawn to the church where he held the Bible upside down. The American soldiers that were mobilized for that event were confused. They didn’t know what their lawful orders were. They weren’t briefed properly. You can’t account for 100% of the people there. There are always bad apples in every cart. And there’s people out there just looking for violence and looking for any excuse to commit violence. And that’s why you need good leadership to hold them to account and hold them in check.
But the vast majority of American service members that I’ve experienced, both while on active duty and talking to them afterwards, do not want to be part of American law enforcement. They do not want to be deployed on the soil of the United States facing off against American citizens. That’s not why they joined the military.
Trump’s Latest Statement on Ukraine
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: Breaking news to some extent. President Trump on his Truth Social. This is just a few minutes ago, wrote “My special envoy, Steve Witkoff, just had a highly productive meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Great progress was made. Afterwards, I updated some of our European allies. Everyone agrees this war must come to a close, and we will work towards that in the days and weeks to come. Thank you for your attention to this matter.”
I don’t know, probably Trump boasting the war is not going to come to a conclusion. Correct me if I’m wrong. Until the Russian objectives, stated clearly, crisply and consistently from the outset, are achieved.
Putin’s Ceasefire Conditions
SCOTT RITTER: Vladimir Putin made this easy yesterday. Before Witkoff showed up, he did a presentation in Russia and he said, look, we can have a ceasefire right now if Ukraine commits to two things. They have to withdraw from Russian territory. That means all of Kherson, all of Zaporizhzhia, all of Donetsk, all of Lugansk. And they have to commit that they will never join NATO.
This will get them a ceasefire right now, as we speak, and then we can move on to negotiating the nuances associated with bringing about conflict termination. But if you want people to stop dying, it can happen instantaneously. Anything less than that, Russia will continue to wage this war until it has liberated the totality of its territory.
I can guarantee you, having made that statement before Witkoff showed up, Putin reinforced that statement. And it’s not going to change. It’s not going to change at all. And I think you’ll find once the ceasefire takes place, Trump may have gotten something he didn’t want, because the other Russian objectives aren’t going to change. Just because there’s a ceasefire doesn’t mean that Russia is not going to insist on demilitarization.
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: I just wonder if Donald Trump understands what President Putin said and what you just so nicely articulated. Who knows what Witkoff told him that prompted him to write this thing? This is very optimistic, but I don’t think it’s realistic.
Trump’s Nobel Peace Prize Obsession
SCOTT RITTER: Well, the Russians have never closed the door on diplomacy. And the Russians are very honest about what they will do. And when they say they’re going to do something, they’re going to do it. And the consistency in their argument over time has even brought about begrudging respect by Donald Trump, who says they’re tough guys. They’re stubborn people.
The Russians have never once yielded to any of the pressure put on or the threats made by Donald Trump. And I think Trump recognizes this in the most simplistic word. What he needed to hear was that there’s a path forward. And I think what Witkoff said is that we can get a ceasefire now. And that’s all Trump cares about.
I don’t mean to be disrespectful here, but the President doesn’t care about Ukrainian lives. He doesn’t care about Russian lives. He doesn’t care about the national security of the United States. He doesn’t care about Europe, NATO, or any of that. He cares about getting a Nobel Peace Prize. That’s it.
Listen to the statement he made the other day. “I have stopped five wars. The sixth war I’m about to stop.” And then he always says, “I’m the guy for the Nobel Peace Prize.” He bribes the Cambodians to nominate him. This is all he wants. It comes down to this is the supreme narcissist.
And because he wants to be seen as the man who brought an end to the war, I think the President has heard from Witkoff a scenario where the war can be brought to an end. Now, the President needs to put pressure on Ukraine to accept a result that is inevitable. I mean, this war ends when the United States sits down with the Ukrainians and says, you’re going to lose all that territory. There’s nothing you can do to help you. You’re going to lose it all.
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: But this is not Joe Biden’s war anymore. And the President is sending military equipment there at the same rate at which Joe Biden was. Donald Trump has become a neocon.
Trump’s Neocon Transformation
SCOTT RITTER: Yeah, well, he’s become a narcissistic neocon, which means he puts his own narcissism ahead of neocon principles and ideologies, which I don’t think he can even articulate. The problem is he surrounded himself with neocons, and so he’s getting just horrible advice, horrible advice.
The United States needs to find a way to get a team B assembled, trained up and brought before this president to show him alternatives. Witkoff is a breath of fresh air. But again, it’s very difficult for Witkoff to have any credibility left because as a negotiator, remember, he was undermined by the President in the Iranian negotiation where he was telling the Iranians that there was going to be a fifth round of negotiations, we’re moving forward. And then Israel bombed them with America’s blessing.
So from the Russian perspective, they got to take Steve Witkoff with a grain of salt. But I do believe the Russians are very honest and very sincere about having a ceasefire as long as they get all of their territories. And if the President can’t guarantee that, if Ukraine’s unwilling to do it, then this war doesn’t stop. And I think that’s the point Putin made to Witkoff. This war doesn’t stop unless these conditions are met.
But look at the simplicity of the conditions. There’s only two things now. Get out of the territory and no NATO. Now you have a ceasefire as opposed to if you remember, the Russians were saying, there’s no reason why we can have a ceasefire until all the root causes of this conflict are addressed. This is a major shift on the part of the Russians.
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: Correct.
SCOTT RITTER: They’ve taken 25 moving parts and now they have two moving parts to get the ceasefire. That’s why I think Trump’s excited.
Alexander Dugan’s Assessment
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: So I want to play for you a clip from the great Alexander Dugan. Professor Dugan, who wrote a book, he gave me a copy and autographed it. Unfortunately, I didn’t realize that the copy he gave me is in Russian, so I can’t read it. However, it is quite laudatory of what he expected of Donald Trump at the outset of the Trump administration.
I spent a lot of time with him. You know him, you met him. And I spent a lot of time when I was with him in Moscow. He’s a brilliant philosopher. He’s known as Putin’s brain. He has changed his mind on Donald Trump and now says Trump has become a neocon.
VIDEO CLIP BEGINS:
ALEXANDER DUGAN: Trump has abandoned his MAGA strategy for the time being. I don’t know if there are still any elements of that strategy left in him or not. It seems like there aren’t any at all. He’s simply taken the position of classic neoconservatives and gone back to what Biden was doing. That is unconditional support for the Nazi regime, the drive to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia and apply pressure by all means, including the threat of a direct nuclear conflict with Moscow.
VIDEO CLIP ENDS:
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: Scott Ritter, including the threat of a direct nuclear conflict with Moscow. What do you think?
Nuclear Escalation and Strategic Shifts
SCOTT RITTER: Well, first of all, I think that came back to bite the president in the butt. This president, we’ve had this conversation about the irresponsibility of directing the movement of Ohio class submarines through social media posting. Look how quickly the president backed away from this. Because I think he was read the riot act by people who are supposed to read him the riot act.
Not Hegseth, because Hegseth is just a bootlicker. Not Kash Patel, because he’s a bootlicker. But the rest of the generals who got bypassed by Patel came to Patel and said, no, this isn’t how it works. Strategic Command, this isn’t how it works. This can’t happen. And the president backed away.
And then the other thing that happened is the Russians now have done a repeat of the deployment of the SS-20 missile in the 1970s when the Russians first fielded the SS-20 Road Mobile Intermediate Nuclear range missile back in the late 1970s. They totally fundamentally altered the balance of power in Europe and created a crisis that resulted in the United States being compelled to deploy its own INF systems. But even then, the Russians had the advantage.
The Oreshnik is a game changer in every way, shape and form. It’s now in serial production and the Russians are now deploying it. They said we’re no longer held by the moratorium. With this deployment, the Russians have overnight changed the entire strategic calculus in Europe. And even the President, who is simplistic, this is not a hard thing for him to understand. And I do believe that he is being briefed on the consequences of this.
Remember, he’s the one who pulled out of the INF treaty to begin with. He created this problem. But this is also a new calculation. So I think what’s happening is the President hopefully is waking up to the fact that he’s just getting bad advice from people and maybe he’ll start asking questions and those questions will lead to him seeking solutions from other people.
Maybe Witkoff’s star will rise. Witkoff is ably assisted here. He has Kirill Dmitriev, who is a brilliant banker, investor with experience here in the United States and some of the big banks. He knows the American economy inside and out and he’s very optimistic about the potential of good relations between Russia and United States that are economically viable. Music to the President’s ears.
So notice that Mr. Dugan said “for the moment” has lost his way. I believe that this President can be brought back to the principles, and this is again until we know the details. But I do believe that Vladimir Putin has delivered, in typical fashion, diplomatic genius because he’s advised from some of the sharpest minds out there, Lavrov, who you’ve met, and others.
And I believe that he has put something on the table that has been specifically crafted to solve the political problems of this President. And if this President can find in his gut the intellectual and moral courage to move on this and act on this, I do think that the guns can fall silent soon. But the key is the Ukrainians have to evacuate these territories. Without that, there is no ceasefire.
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: Just for a moment of levity, what is a bootlicker?
SCOTT RITTER: That’s the proper, nice way of saying ass kisser. But I didn’t want to… A bootlicker is somebody who’s going to shine your boots for you by licking them. Normally in the military, if I’m going to spit shine my boot back in the day, because today they issue these brown side out boots that you brush, but you used to get issued these black leather boots and you had to spend ungodly hours shining those babies up. Somebody who’s going to get down there and lick the boot for you.
Nuclear Deployments to Britain
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: I thought that’s what it was. But somebody suggested I should ask you that. One last time, why did we know that Trump was reckless and now has backed off on the movement of the two Ohio class submarines? Did he also send nuclear warheads to Great Britain in the past two weeks?
SCOTT RITTER: That’s the story that we have deployed B61-12 gravity bombs, nuclear gravity bombs, to England for the first time in some time. It’s an interesting story because then the question is, under what authority are these part of the NATO deterrent? We already have 100 plus B61 gravity bombs deployed in five locations throughout NATO. In Turkey, in Belgium and Italy and Netherlands.
Is this new deployment as part of the NATO nuclear deterrence, or is this a bilateral nuclear arrangement with the British that falls outside of the NATO nuclear deterrence? That would be very worrisome because then it implies we’re deploying bombs that could be loaded onto B-2s and used in a preemptive strike, and you combine that potential of a preemptive strike with the pushing Ohio class submarines closer to Russia and you’ve just created an inherently dangerous situation.
All right, it looks like there’s a spinning wheel. I think I’m back. Now I want to remind people that… What was I going to remind about before the Internet went dead? I don’t know. So I can’t remind them. I’m sorry.
Netanyahu’s Desperation
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: Okay, okay. One last subject matter before we go. And I know you’ve been on a roll here. Netanyahu’s threats to occupy Gaza. Is he now desperate?
SCOTT RITTER: One hundred percent act of desperation. First of all, as he issued that statement, did you see Judge, 600 former Israeli intelligence, military intelligence, Mossad, Shin Bet, we’re talking about the cream of the crop. It’s not six, it’s not 50, it’s not 51, it’s 600 came out and said that the Gaza policy is a disaster. And that is the consensus.
That means that there is an absolute consensus amongst the professionals in Israel that this ain’t going to happen. So Netanyahu saying this is not going to translate into the Israelis doing this. It’s an act of political posturing by a man who is increasingly finding himself boxed in by reality, both in terms of his own domestic legal problems which Donald Trump’s social media postings can’t undo.
And the fact that Hamas is just kicking the crap out of the Israelis on a daily basis. The Israelis are taking casualties and not achieving discernible outcomes. And Israel’s reputation around the world is collapsing. The starvation of children, the ongoing slaughter of Palestinians seeking food as they’re being starved. The world is turning on Israel.
You got Europe right now just lining up to recognize a Palestinian state. Unheard of. And so Netanyahu, the only thing he knows is the counter attack and he’s threatening something that he won’t be able to implement.
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: Scott, thank you very much, my dear friend. From bootlicker to sophisticated diplomatic analysis, you’re at the top of your game. And I know you’re having a busy day. And I appreciate you taking this time for us. We’ll look forward to seeing you again next week. All the best, my friend.
SCOTT RITTER: Thank you.
Upcoming Guests
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: Of course. And coming up later today on all of this, at 2 o’clock, Max Blumenthal, who does have a lot of insight for us on the desperation of Prime Minister Netanyahu. And at 3 o’clock, Phil Giraldi, who has insight for us on the desperation of Donald Trump. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom.
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