Contrasting Views On Trump And His Foreign Policy

Among today’s guests on the Judge Nap show were Gilbert Doctorow and Doug Macgregor. They presented contrasting—not necessarily conflicting—views of Trump and his foreign policy that I believe will interest readers. So I’ve done partial transcripts of the most relevant portions. Those portions happen to be those that discuss what I’ve been discussing lately, namely the linkage between the Middle East and the war on Russia. I find both to be in pretty close agreement with what I’ve been saying, but with Doctorow presenting a quite audacious view.

Before I get to those transcripts, however, I want to highly recommend a live stream (listener questions answered) by the two The Duran guys. Alexander Mercouris, IMO, is masterful in his interpretation of the Trump - Putin phone call. In particular he is highly persuasive in arguing that Putin “didn’t budge an inch,” but that he did toss Trump a few bones that would allow for the appearance to the American public that Trump was making progress. He also argued strongly that—one way or another—the issue of Odessa would be settled before this war ends. Mercouris believes the Russians have a number of options in that regard. It’s also worth noting that Macgregor agrees with Mercouris that Putin is allowing for the appearance that Trump is making progress, while actually giving nothing away. On the other hand, Mercouris argues persuasively against Macgregor’s pessimistic view on Iran, arguing that Russia is simply not going to abandon Iran and Putin probably told Trump that.

So, here we go.

Prof. Gilbert Doctorow: Putin and Ceasefire.

Judge: What is the Kremlin's view of President Trump's decision to bomb the Houthis, which resulted in the deaths of Yemen civilians?

Doc: Well it's easier to bomb the Houthis than it is to bomb Teheran. So this was a messaging. Look, there are a lot of cynical things going on here, and bombing the Houthis was one such cynical measure. Lives were lost--civilian lives were lost. Blood is on Trump's hands, but I think he exculpates himself by saying that by his actions he is avoiding much bigger bloodshed. I think that you have to look at everything that Trump is doing today from the perspective of his prioritizing his managing his political strengths to achieve one overriding goal--and that is a reset with Russia, which is a precondition for a new world order of the kind that you described a few minutes ago.

Judge: What does this say for the request that we know is coming to Donald Trump from Benjamin Netanyahu to back up the IDF when it attacks Iran? Has Trump already said, ‘Forget about it, BB!' or 'I'm thinking about?'

Doc: Well, he might say 'I'm thinking about it' because it's too early for him to fully alienate Netanyahu and Netanyahu's backers in the States. This is a war of of great proportions going on between Trump, his domestic opponents, and his foreign opponents in Europe. He has to find points of leverage. He cannot fight on all fronts. It's quite enough that he's got these tariff wars going. He cannot fight on all fronts and he has to find leverage, and of course the Israeli supporters are a very effective point of leverage. Any demonstration that, 'You know, boys, I'm not all bad, I'm doing some things that you want very much.' So to have them at his back makes it much easier for him to go into what is going to be a real struggle of enormous proportions with Starmer and Macron and Merz and Van der Leyen. That is a hell of a task he has.

Judge: Do you suppose Donald Trump authorized Benjamin Netanyahu to resume the genocide in Gaza, and do you see any connection between his communication with and agreement with President Putin and this dreadful unleashing of Netanyahu?

Doc: I think they're directly related and this is a point that I've had in correspondence with some of my readers. Some people have been extremely outraged that I could speak rather calmly about the green light that Trump gave to Netanyahu. They're linked because, as I said, Mr Trump is in a struggle of enormous consequence and great danger to himself, and he has to have points of leverage. There's no better point of leverage in the United States Congress than the Israeli Lobby and that end of American foreign policy. So with that at his back he can look like one of the boys, a continuator of American foreign policy at the same time that his overarching aim is to destroy the fundamentals of American foreign policy of the last 80 years.

Judge: Not with respect to Israel.

Doc: No, not yet, but I would be very cautious in believing that his support for Netanyahu on this miserable, cowardly, and deadly attack in Gaza is anything more than a temporary deal with the devil for the reasons I gave.

[clip of spoksgirl]

Judge: She's known for her hyperbole, but it doesn't sound like she's representing or speaking in behalf of somebody who's about to say to Netanyahu: 'Enough is enough!'

Doc: [Trump’s] not prepared to do that today. He needs Netanyahu's supporters on Capitol Hill in order to do the reset with Russia, China, India, and Brazil.

Judge: Exactly. This is a fascinating observation. It pains me that human beings lives can be sacrificed like this--Yemen lives sacrificed for Iran--and now 400 civilians killed by the IDF yesterday. There is no moral, legal, or even military justification for that whatsoever, and everybody acts like it's a normal thing for the Israelis to do! Why aren't people furious about it?

Doc: I agree with you on all moral, legal issues. At the same time there is every political reason to do it, and I think people misjudge Trump because he's a businessman. [They think] he's a transactional operator, he has no experience in International Affairs. I think they're dead wrong. I think that Trump is a very political animal--probably the most effective political animal we've had in the Oval Office since Lyndon Johnson. He uses threats freely and with some effect.

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COL. Douglas Macgregor: Will US Attack Iran?

Judge: President Trump unleashed Prime Minister Netanyahu to resume genocide in Gaza, which unfortunately resulted--I say unfortunately; it was intentional--in the killing of 400 civilians in the past two days.

Mac: I don't think Trump has any choice. I think when he ran for office he made certain agreements with major donors. These donors are far beyond just Miriam Adelson. These donors oblige him to effectively underwrite whatever Mr Netanyahu wants to do.

Mac: You always have the possibility that a war is precipitated somehow by Israel somewhere in the region with Iran, the Iranians respond, and the expectation is ... that we will reinforce whatever the Israelis want to do. We've already done all of the planning for joint strikes and joint strike packages, we're sharing all of the intelligence with our vast satellite arrays with theirs, so I think [war with Iran is] a foregone conclusion. I can't predict when or how, but I think it's going to happen.

Judge: Can you get your hands around the thinking of a human being who wants to do all he can to end the war in Ukraine and bring about a grand reset between the United States, China, Russia, Brazil, and India but is still stuck on giving Netanyahu all he wants to slaughter innocents in Gaza?

Mac: Yeah, I'm afraid I can. I think [Trump] tends to compartmentalize whereas, if you're sitting in Moscow or any of the other capitals that you mentioned, they see no such compartmentalization. They see what's happening in the Middle East as part and parcel of what's been going on in Ukraine--an effort by us and our proxies to undermine them, whether it happens to be Iran or Russia or any of the others that you mentioned.

Judge: Let's talk about the so-called agreement that emanated from the two and a half hour conversation yesterday between President Trump and President Putin. Do you agree that it's unlikely that they spent two and a half hours talking about bombing Ukrainian infrastructure, and that they probably spoke about many other things as well. Number one. And number two, is this much of a concession by President Putin?

Mac: Oh of course not, it isn't, and we're not going to get any concessions from President Putin on this matter. I think President Trump made the phone call with the hope that he could persuade President Putin to respond positively in some way to the offer of a ceasefire that we had extracted from Zelensky, and I think he got something like that when there was an agreement to not destroy or attack any more energy infrastructure in Ukraine. But keep in mind that just 6 hours later Ukrainians struck energy infrastructure in Russia. So under the circumstances was that meaningful at all? I think the answer is probably, No.

We need to understand something. There's one important point on which President Putin and President Trump agree, and that is that neither of them under any circumstances want a war to break out between us. In other words, both men will do whatever they can to avoid a direct confrontation with each other. That is good news and we should all be grateful that President Trump is in the White House at the moment and not President Biden, because there was no evidence that President Biden and his administration were really interested in avoiding that kind of conflict.

The problem is, how far can we go in terms of admitting that the war is lost, that Putin has won--not Putin but Russia--that the Russian armed forces are in a position that cannot be effectively attacked by the West, that the Russians can continue to move west if they want to. That's difficult for President Trump to state categorically, and again it came up that if you really want this to end, President Trump, you've got to stop this flow of military aid and assistance to Ukraine. Not only do you need to stop that, you need to prevail upon your allies to stop it.

Judge: I know it's difficult to try and figure him out, because he's often all over the place in what he says and what he does, that maybe the question is unfair, but how can he be asking Vladimir Putin for peace when we are funding a war against him?

Mac: Judge, you're preaching to the choir on this one. How many times have I been on your show over the last months, probably the last year, and said repeatedly: the most important thing for us to do to signal our seriousness about this is to end aiding Ukrainians. Period. Get all Americans--in and out of uniform, intelligence,civilian, whatever--out of Ukraine. That's still what we need to do. If we do that, then I think we can look forward to a useful discussion with the Russians in terms of what we want to do in Ukraine and ultimately across Europe, but until we reach that point nothing fundamentally is going to change. And that's the point of the discussion. over the last 24 hours. The only thing we achieved was to agree to a hockey game.