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Home » Transcript: Judge Nap & Larry Johnson chat with Maria Zakharova: Moscow, Russia

Transcript: Judge Nap & Larry Johnson chat with Maria Zakharova: Moscow, Russia

Read the full transcript of Judge Nap & Larry Johnson chat with Maria Zakharova in Moscow, Russia, October 24, 2025.

Maria Zakharova is spokeswoman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation. Judge Nap is an American retired jurist, and Larry Johnson is a political commentator and former CIA analyst.

Opening Remarks

MODERATOR: Greetings, dear friends. Today, we have a very unusual format of the discussion. And today, at the studio, informational agency, ITAR-TASS, major news agency of Russia, and with the invitation of the International People’s Unity Club that I am a co-chairman of, we have as a guest, Maria Zakharova. She’s official representative and a face, definitely a face, Ministry of Foreign Affairs. And Ministry of Foreign Affairs speaks about us.

It’s just a great help, and it’s a reality. Also in our studio, have four very famous American podcasters, Mr. Larry Johnson. He’s ex-analytic from CIA. He’s a political study guy and international analytics guy.

Also, Judge Napolitano, he’s got his Zoom podcast, Judging Freedom. He said that in Russian. And majority of American experts are guests with a judge. And I want to say right away for our audience, these people are very well known. They are present even in RuTube, which is Russian version of YouTube with a lot of… And we have not just American, but also Russian audience here.

The Question of Rationality in Modern Politics

MODERATOR: And the beginning, I would like to ask a couple of questions. First question, of course, to you, Maria, but I also would like if my colleagues have a supportive answers would be great. My question is, it’s like a professional pain that I have as an analytical person. Modern international politics has a new quality that we didn’t have before. It’s absolutely, unprecedentedly. We cannot forecast it. It’s volatile wildly.

And the international leaders, as soon as they got this, TikToks and all the stuff, they started connected with the world, forgetting that they are leaders of huge countries. And there’s military machine behind it, including and there’s a responsibility for some leaders. They have to have responsibility for what they say.

It’s not a global south countries, but in the west, we have this highlighted marker. And we all face the same question. A lot of colleagues are speaking. They say, they’re going crazy. There’s no logic. There’s no aim. There’s no strategy. There’s some kind of just reactions. And I am the opponent. And I said, no, no, no, wait a minute. There’s a government behind them. There’s a huge machine system behind them that works with a plan. Where is the rationality and all that? Can we lean on it? Or it’s a pure intuition we have now?

Maria Zakharova’s Response: Historical Context

MARIA ZAKHAROVA: Dear colleagues, hello. We have a great audience before, a small team, million audience. Hello, Russia. Hello, early morning to United States of America. We don’t know how it will be when they will put us on their greetings.

I always say about one thing that I’ll give an example of my childhood, my school years. I love mathematics, and we had a great teacher. She’s a gifted teacher. Definitely, we had a lot of teachers in mathematics. One of them was she’s gifted, talented. And I remember her, still remember her.

She began lessons of geometry with a simple task. She’d invite you to the class, stand in front, she’d give us a chart, and she’d tell us, draw me a triangle. And I would do that on the chalkboard. And I said that this is a equal sized triangle or this triangle has a straight angle. Of course not. We just drew the triangle off of our hand, off of the mine. No, no. You look at this triangle just on a chalkboard, but you need to be able in a three-d dimension. And if you look at the volume, that could be equal side triangle, it could have a straight angle.

Everything what you say, you can’t look in one format of today. You have to look at it as volume, historical volume, historical content. Why? Because it was your key phrase never. It took place before. It never happened before and only now it takes place. Counting in that we have you have in your phrase a connotation, a connection to the history, time. See, it never happened before. We have to compare it to something.

So I cannot agree that today, we have a special time that never took place before, and it’s worse than when it was some time earlier.

# Comparing Past and Present

MARIA ZAKHAROVA: So look at it now. What happens now? World leaders are going crazy. And social media, they write crazy things and statements. You know? I apologize. Eighty-five years ago, world leaders were telling how they organized a massive killings of people and how they came up with a concentration camp, specialized machines on a massive killing of one nationality or one faith. And that was counted in a whole world, particularly in a whole world in many countries that was… That was absolutely accepted, maybe not normal, but they accepted it. Just think about it. And you speak today about bad times.

Listen, at least today, we have some type of understanding of a norm. At least a little bit, we have, including what you said. That White House has now a person like Mr. Trump. We have a possibility to see people that are same thinkers on the basic foundational things. And we could push us to give an oath to negative basics.

Today, we have good times because we can stand against ninety years ago, eighty-five years ago, we can do that. This is the time where we have seen our grandparents, grandfathers, our neighbors, teachers that lived in those times. And that was massive murders time, but not by barbarians, by sick people, but by those who were as a national hero, national head of the state. And they actually proclaimed the self of the leaders of the free world.