Here is a transcript of a conversation between Judge Andrew Napolitano and economist and public policy analyst Prof. Jeffrey Sachs on Judging Freedom Podcast titled “Does Trump Want Peace?” premiered April 29, 2025.
Introduction
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Judge Andrew Napolitano is here for Judging Freedom. Today is Tuesday, April 29, 2025. Joining us now from Moscow is our dear friend and regular colleague, Professor Jeffrey Sachs. Professor Sachs, always a pleasure. Thank you very much.
PROF. JEFFREY SACHS: Great to be with you tonight.
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Where you are, but thank you very much for joining us. And of course, you’re there with other friends of ours and I’m glad that you all got together. I want to ask you about President Trump’s efforts to bring about peace between Ukraine and Russia. In the past week, the Vice President of the United States and the Secretary of State both said, we’re thinking of the US is thinking of giving up on Ukraine if something isn’t resolved in a week. Also in the last week, General Kellogg, one of the President’s senior advisers on Ukraine, came out with an idea that is absurd. It’s a non-starter from the beginning with NATO dividing the country into protectorates. And last week, surprisingly, President Trump and President Zelensky chatted for a couple of minutes and of all places, St. Peter’s Basilica, a place that you and I have visited together. I thought it was odd that they would have a conversation without anybody else participating. And I’m sure that President Trump will remember it differently than President Zelensky did. With all those things happening with the pressure on President Zelensky not to concede any real estate to President Putin, where is the United States going in its peace efforts, according to Jeffrey Sachs?
Ukraine’s Difficult Position
PROF.
I don’t think the United States government is going to change that fundamental choice faced by the Ukrainian government. Now the Europeans, many of them I should say, because Europe is divided on this question, but the UK under Starmer, France under Manuel Macron, Germany probably with its incoming administration of Chancellor to be Mertz, are saying that Ukraine should fight on and not cede territory. But Europe doesn’t really have the means to make that claim effective because Europe plus the US was not pushing back Russia. Russia was still advancing. Now it’s Russia without the US on the other side and Europe has no means to push for its argument that Ukraine should fight on.
What all of this means, in summary, is that we’re reaching a kind of end game. Either Ukraine, to its intense displeasure of this ruling group or not, agrees to some peace arrangement, and we know what the structure of that would be, or it would very likely face continuing military defeat. That, I think, is where we’re heading. My guess at the end of all of this is that we’re actually heading towards an end of the war with the Ukrainians coming to the realization, as deeply unpleasant as it is, that they had better settle or else they will lose everything.
Zelensky’s Position and Ukrainian Nationalism
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Is it fair to characterize President Zelensky as a puppet of deeply hardcore nationalist figures?
PROF. JEFFREY SACHS: Probably, yes, probably. What we’re seeing in Ukraine is the exercise of an extraordinarily extreme violent nationalism, which was in the ascendancy for many years and basically which took power in a coup in February 2014, a coup backed by the United States, in fact, a part of a long term US strategy, long term US collaboration with extreme right wing militarized forces in Ukraine. And so what we’re seeing is an extremist regime. It does not rule now by popular assent. There are no elections. This is effectively military rule. It is martial law.
The population in Ukraine, as best one can guess from opinion surveys, is exhausted and wants the war to end. But the regime in power is a clique of extremists on the right that are determined to find anyone to give them the arms and the financing to impress the public into deadly service, that is, to grab people off the streets and push them to the front lines to their death. And that’s what the Ukrainian regime is doing.
This is an important point I think that we need to underscore. The idea that Trump is somehow siding with Putin against Ukraine is the opposite of the truth. The idea that Starmer of UK and Macron of France are somehow siding with Ukraine against Russia is the opposite of the truth. The war party is the party condemning Ukraine to massive further bloodshed. The peace party, in this case led by President Trump, is saving Ukraine, not on Ukraine’s terms, because Ukraine wants things that it cannot get. It can’t win those on the battlefield. It is not able to achieve its maximal demands.
What President Trump is saying is you can’t achieve those. Here is something on offer which saves Ukraine, gives security, stabilizes or ends the fighting, I should say stabilizes the situation. And that is the offer that Ukraine should take, because the alternative is to lose everything. And I should add that Vice President Vance made this statement absolutely, clearly, correctly and explicitly in recent days. So this is really the core. President Trump is not anti-Ukraine, and Ukraine’s supposed supporters are the ones driving Ukraine to further massive loss of life.
Zelensky’s Freedom to Negotiate
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Isn’t this really a waste of time? I mean, is President Zelensky free to negotiate and free to concede real estate like Crimea and the vast percentages of the four oblasts which have historically been Russian? Is he free to make these decisions without the loss of his own life?
PROF. JEFFREY SACHS: Of course, we don’t know. The fact of the matter is that if he is in a position where he knows that Ukraine is losing, that if he doesn’t take the peace offer, it’s much worse, but he resists taking it because of fear of his life, physically or politically. If that’s really the choice that he faces and he can’t make the choice other than to continue the slaughter, he’s definitely got the wrong job. That’s not a situation he should be in. It’s not a situation he absolutely has to be in. I don’t envy his situation, of course.
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: But he might not have any choice because we said earlier he’s a puppet of arch nationalists, and from their perspective, he’s the right guy for the job because he does what they want.
PROF. JEFFREY SACHS: Maybe he leaves and takes asylum someplace, who knows? You know, the fact of the matter is, individual politicians should not condemn their nations to destruction, period. This is a basic point. We cannot run the world for the sake of a few politicians. The politicians have to work for their society. If they’re put in a position where they cannot do so, they have to do the best they can to get out of the position that they happen to be in.
And so whether Zelenskyy has a margin of maneuver, whether his life’s a threat, is political life is a threat, whether a corruption machine, which is enormous in Ukraine, is really the issue at hand, whether it’s delusional, I think we don’t know what President Trump said in that colloquy that we observed. But the idea of what President Trump is saying right now, which is that Ukraine should take a deal and that it should save lives and that fighting should stop. President Trump is exactly right on this point.
The fact that the Europeans, the hardliners, are saying, you’re appeasing Putin, this is completely wrong. Actually. You have to look at the situation in its factual context, which is that if you don’t take an agreement, Ukraine loses more and hundreds of thousands or millions more people die. And if Ukraine does take an agreement, it survives. It has guarantees. It may not get all it wants. Yes, it wants to join NATO. It cannot join NATO. The idea was terrible from the beginning. The United States was reckless in putting it on the table because it knew it was a Russian red line.
Ukraine cannot get back all the territories that it has lost. It can’t. It may want to, but it can’t. And it may fight on to do it. But what will happen is it will lose more, and innocent people by the hundreds of thousands or millions will die, and the risk of nuclear escalation will remain as long as this fighting continues. So this is the reality that needs to be faced. It’s the job of leaders to face such situations. If Zelensky doesn’t like it or he fears for his life, he should get the heck out of there. Because he’s the wrong person for that job. If that’s the case, that’s the job of a leader.
St. Peter’s Basilica Meeting
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Right before we leave St. Peter’s Basilica, I thought you might want to see this. He fell sound asleep, but Melania’s glare awakened him.
PROF. JEFFREY SACHS: You know, I can only say, honestly, I have a little sympathy for jet lag. So as a non-stop traveler, a nonstop traveler, but in any event, that was a sad day, that day of bearing the greatest peace leader in the world.
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Why were there no Israeli officials there? Because he called a priest in Gaza once a week to make sure the priest was still alive and still tending to his flock.
Israel’s International Position
PROF. JEFFREY SACHS: Because Israel made itself a pariah state in the world. That’s why. Because if you are an extremist government that is slaughtering innocent people, you become a pariah. And when others point out that you’re slaughtering innocent people and you resent that, you make yourself completely isolated in the world. And so the reason that Israel doesn’t appear at diplomatic functions, it is that it is isolated itself from world opinion because of the way that it is behaving.
Trump’s Approach to Gaza
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Is Trump doing anything for peace in Gaza?
PROF. JEFFREY SACHS: We don’t know. We really don’t know. One very important thing, as we talked about last time, is he is resisting the call for war with Iran. Of course, the United States is in no position to have another war anywhere right now. Not from a military stockpile point of view, not from a geopolitical point of view, not from a fiscal point of view. And so Trump is doing the right thing in resisting Netanyahu’s call. Now he has to keep doing it because the pressures are relentless to side with this extremist Israeli government.
What is he going to do in Gaza? And on the issue of Israel and Palestine, what he should do, of course, is to recognize a state of Palestine alongside the state of Israel. Like the vast majority of the world, I estimate 95% of the world population live in countries that are onside for the two state solution. And that includes all the Arab states, and it includes the 57 Islamic majority states in the Organization of Islamic Cooperation.
What is Trump actually going to do? Like usual, I’m not sure he knows, and I’m not sure that we can know. But he has an idea, which is a wrong idea that needs to be cleared up. And the idea is that he can establish peace between Saudi Arabia and Israel and maybe some other Arab countries and Israel without needing to face the question of the Palestinian statehood, which is a difficult one because of the Israel lobby.
So he’s hoping that offers of big armaments for Saudi Arabia or other kinds of deals for Saudi Arabia will entice Saudi Arabia to say, yeah, we will normalize with Israel and no Palestinian state necessary. The Saudis, however, have been extremely clear on this point, as has the Arab League, as have countries all over the world, that there can be no normalization unless there’s a state of Palestine in this context. Otherwise, the violence, the killing, the cruelty, the illegality of what Israel is doing is far too high to enable any kind of normal relations.
Whether Trump realizes this or not is a big question. Whether he hears this clearly when he goes to the Middle east very shortly, in just a few days, if he hears this clearly from the Arab leaders, if he hears it clearly from Saudi Arabia, if he hears it clearly from other leaders that he’s going to visit, he may reach the same correct conclusion that he reached in Ukraine, which is that there’s only one route to peace. That is the two state solution.
And that actually, strangely enough, is completely in America’s hands. Israel has no veto over the two state solution. The reason is simple. The membership of Palestine as a UN State is a matter that comes up in the UN Security Council, where Israel has no veto. It’s only the United States that put a veto on the state of Palestine. It’s only the US that has blocked the path to peace. If Donald Trump says, no, I’m not going to block the path to peace anymore, the US changes its vote, then the UN Security Council will give membership to Palestine as the 194th UN member state, the UN General assembly will vote probably 185 to maybe, you know, three against and the others not voting or something like that. In other words, the overwhelming expression of humanity will be for the two state solution. So this is really an issue in front of the United States in the next few weeks.
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: But is this a pipe dream given the ironclad grip that the donor class has on the American government? The President of the United States just put a former IDF soldier who is a citizen of Israel in the National Security Council in charge of the Iran Israel desk. Come on.
PROF. JEFFREY SACHS: Yes. So here is the point. Just as with Ukraine, which was based on a 30 year project of the CIA and the rest of the deep state to surround Russia, to weaken Russia, maybe to divide Russia and so forth, that 30 year effort failed. And Donald Trump said, I don’t want to hold a losing hand. And so he changed quite fundamentally American policy towards Russia. Just in recent weeks we might have said that’s a pipe dream. America’s anti-Russian – look at the last five presidents and so forth. But Donald Trump basically took a pragmatic view and said, I don’t want to play a losing hand.
Now, when you turn to Israel and the Middle East, Israel has pushed the United States to play not just one losing hand, but losing hands repeatedly during the last almost 30 years as well, since Netanyahu became Prime Minister in the mid-1990s. And for me, it’s the same point. Yes, it seems impossible that the United States would change. And maybe it would have been impossible given the power of the Israel lobby in the early 2000s, when John Mearsheimer and Steve Walt wrote their brilliant book about the Israel lobby and explained all of this very, very clearly.
But now we’re nearly 30 years on. Netanyahu has led the United States into one disaster after another. His whole country is so profoundly divided right now, he’s breaking apart the country. So Donald Trump actually has more of a free hand than we might imagine, because the American people are aghast at what Israel is doing. They’re not siding with Israel on this. This is not public opinion that Donald Trump would have to oppose. Yes, this is a lobby that Donald Trump would have to oppose. But Donald Trump could explain to the American people, just like he has explained the Ukraine situation, that this is the losing path of Biden, this is the losing path of previous presidents. He’s not going to play that losing path anymore. It may sound like a long shot, maybe it is a long shot. It happens to be the right thing to do. And I wouldn’t rule it out.
On Ukraine and European Response
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: My goodness, I wish he would listen to you. And we know he’s listened to you in the past because he posted some brilliant and forceful comments that you made about Prime Minister Netanyahu. I want to bring you back to Ukraine before we finish. Do you think that the Europeans are misguided enough to try to replace the United States if, as Vance and Rubio have threatened, the spigot is turned off in a week?
PROF. JEFFREY SACHS: Some of them definitely are. I would say the British have no sense. Somebody needs to tell them that they lost their empire a while ago because they still behave as if they’re the British Empire running the world, though they have, as Donald Trump would say, no cards to play. So Starmer is absurd in what he’s saying. There are a few others that are absolutely absurd.
But there are also some European leaders that not only know the truth but are speaking it absolutely clearly. Of course, the most clear headed of all has been the Hungarian leader Viktor Orban, the Slovak leader Robert Fitzo. Absolutely clear. And throughout Europe there are more and more political leaders that are making the obvious point, this is failing, this is not working. We couldn’t do it with the US, we can’t do it without the US, this has to stop.
I actually in Rome spoke to a massive peace gathering called a couple of weeks ago. There were about 80,000 people in the Roman Forum stretching to the Coliseum. It was quite a location to give some remarks, which I did. But the outpouring for peace in Italy, which I’ve seen with my own eyes, is profound. Prime Minister Meloni is on the good side of President Trump. If President Trump says to Prime Minister Meloni, look, we need to stick together to get this peace deal done, there’s a good chance she’s going to say that’s right.
And when she says that’s right, then Europe has no basis for acting as Europe because Europe has to act in a consensus manner. And when there is no consensus at all, Europe is absolutely barred by their constitution essentially. In other words, by the treaties that govern the European Union that they can’t continue this.
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: So you are multilingual, but in what language did you address 80,000 Romans?
PROF. JEFFREY SACHS: That’s an interesting question. I did address them in English and some people seem to be very, very clearly hearing that. But there was a voiceover as well. Was a very interesting day speaking to.
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: I wish that I could have been there. I also wish that I could be there when this photo was taken. There we are.
PROF. JEFFREY SACHS: Yeah. Oh, my God.
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: My professor Jeff and our buddy Ray McGovern. Yeah.
PROF. JEFFREY SACHS: Phenomenal. That’s great.
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: When and where was that taken?
PROF. JEFFREY SACHS: Recently, just now in Moscow. Absolutely. We happen to just be coincidentally here, but Christopher brought us together, you know, enabled us to know that we’re both here at the same time. So I’m here at a different conference. I’m here at a really wonderful conference called an Open Dialogue, which has brought people from all over the world. And it’s very impressive that the Russian government saying, let’s talk about the future in a completely open way. And it’s a very effective meeting.
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: That’s excellent, Professor Sachs. Thank you very much. I know it’s very late there, but deeply, as always, wherever you are, you’re so faithful to this program and it is so appreciated by my team, by me, and by all of our viewers. Thank you very much for your time.
PROF. JEFFREY SACHS: Great to be with you. See you next week. Yes, you got it.
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Tomorrow, Wednesday at 8 in the morning, Professor Gilbert Doctorow at 12:30 in the afternoon, Pepe Escobar, 1:00. Professor Glenn Deason at 2:00. Always worth waiting for. Max Blumenthal at 3:00. Our buddy Phil Giraldi. A full day. Just Napolitano for Judging Freedom.
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