DeProgram with John Kiriakou and Ted Rall - Americans to Trump: You Lie! | DeProgram with Ted Rall and John Kiriakou

Episode Date: February 5, 2026

Political cartoonist Ted Rall and CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou deprogram you from mainstream media every weekday at 9 AM EST. Today we discuss: • New Quinnipiac poll: 61% think Trump lied about the shooting of Alex Pretti and 25% believe the Trump administration. Democrats (93%) and independents (65%) say Trump lied, while Republicans (60%) say he was honest. 80% think there should be an independent investigation. 78% have seen the video. Meanwhile, 65% say ICE has "gone too far," according to the NPR/PBS News/Marist poll. • In October 2024, a Rikers Island social worker came forward with a bombshell accusation: officers were routinely isolating severely mentally ill men in their cells for weeks and even months, a process known as “deadlocking.” The Department of Investigation (DOI), announced an inquiry. More than 450 days have since passed, and nothing has happened. • Jeff Bezos axes a total of 2000 out of 2500 jobs in 2.5 years. Is The Washington Post entering a death spiral? Can it be replaced?JOIN US LIVE ON RUMBLE!https://rumble.com/c/DeProgramShowFOLLOW TED:https://rall.com/https://x.com/tedrallFOLLOW JOHN:https://www.instagram.com/realjohnkiriakouhttps://x.com/JohnKiriakouLISTEN ON SPOTIFY:https://open.spotify.com/show/2kdFlw2w8sSPhKI8NRx8ZuLISTEN ON APPLE MUSIC:https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/deprogram-with-john-kiriakou-and-ted-rall

Good morning. Welcome to D. Program with Ted Rawl and John Kiriakou. I'm Ted Rall. That's John Kiriaku. Good morning, John. Good morning, Ted. How you doing? I'm doing good. So I just, just as we came on the air, I felt like I was back in the Cold War. The AP is announcing that the U.S. and Russia are reestablishing high-level military communications in order to just make sure if they don't blow up the world. Yeah. To tell you the truth, I didn't realize we had stopped. stopped those military to military communications. That's what used to be called the red phone, I think. Exactly. We've seen it in a million movies and TV shows. I didn't realize that we had put ourselves on the edge of nuclear war like that.

What a bunch of retards we are. And I bet you 10,000 to one that this was our doing and not the Russians doing. Without a doubt. Without any doubt. So speaking of mental retardation, Jeff Bezos, has now fired 300 of the remaining 800 employees at the Washington Post. We're now down to 500. Originally when he bought the paper, there were 2,500.

So he's down 2,000 out of 2,500. Former publisher Marty Barron, who I know quite well, actually, says that the Washington Post appears to now be in its death spiral. We will talk about what that means. 80% of death. Incredibly stupid. Oh, I'm sure they're saying, we're going to have to do more with less. We've all, everybody's heard that before.

Man, for a second. Please. Yesterday, I was reading something at Mediaite. I hate that name, but they do have reporting. Me too. They zeroed out the sports section. No more sports section. Or if they have a sports section, it's going to be either written by AI or written by, you know, syndication service.

Wire service, yeah. Yeah. No more local reporting, which is completely bananas to me. No more local reporting. It's not the nation's capital or anything, so nothing to worry about. No more book section or book reviews. They ended the magazine for years. Washington Post Book World was a really renowned book review section.

I tell you, I did well in the New York Times. I'm in the, sorry, the Washington Post bestsellers list and was looking forward to try to make another run at it. Now it doesn't exist. Yeah. Ridiculous. And then, of course, you know, the thing about syndication is people, I think publishers at places like the Washington Post don't know where syndication comes from.

Yeah. Syndication comes from newspapers like them, right? So it's like basically everybody, so like reporters at the Washington Post and other papers write things and then some of them are syndicated and then other and then everybody shares that right but if everybody fires everybody then there's no syndication right and then that's the death that's the death spiral rikers island new york city city jail which has been benighted for many years apparently this horrible whistleblower stepped forward about a year and a half ago sorry almost two years ago, a year and a half, and said that severely mentally ill guys have been locked up for

months at a time. They call it deadlocking. They basically just don't want to deal with them. So they lock them up and throw away the key. There's a DOI investigation, Department of Investigation. Four hundred fifty days have gone by. Nothing's happened at all. I wonder if Mayor Memdani is on top of that. On multiple occasions, the courts have ordered that Rekker's Island be closed. Yeah. Well, I always wonder is, I mean, John, you tell me, right? I mean, do you think it makes a difference to just close an institution? I mean, the problems that afflicted Rikers Island aren't just the fact, it's not the geography, right? I mean, or the, or the building. It's the poor funding. It's the, it's the lack of training. It's the poor, it's the, it's the terrible policies coming from the top. That's right. It's exactly what it is. And there are no solutions to those policies. When, when, when, a half a dozen of your guards get arrested and charged with murder for torturing a prisoner to death because he spat on them, then you've got a problem. And those are the guys who get caught.

It's the tip of the iceberg. That's it. Yeah. So that's a problem. And then when you don't do anything about the problem and it only gets worse and you on top of that refuse to close the prison, And then politicians are just cycling through the mayor's office and the governor's office, then shit like this happens. And we might.

And yeah, if Mamdani has his way, although I don't know how, I mean, we can talk about this a little bit later in the show. But if Mamdani gets his way, we're going to end up with five borough jails. Yeah. I mean, I don't know. I don't know if that's a good idea either. Problem. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. I'm not sure. The one advantage is that loved ones would be, it would be easier for them to visit people. You know, or for them, maybe. But like, for example, if you're in the Staten Island lockup, how are you getting legal counsel? Yeah. You know, I mean, there's not a lot of lawyers there.

No, the lawyer's got to go all the way to Staten Island. That's a day. If you have to drive all the way to Staten Island, do your legal meeting, drive all the way back to Manhattan, that's a day. You're not going to do that. And especially if you're a public defender, you don't have the time to do something like that. No, you just won't.

You'll be in that situation that prosecutor for, that federal government prosecutor in Minnesota famously said, like, this job sucks in court. Like, I can't, I can't see of this job. I would quit if I could. It's so funny. They punished her by firing her. She wanted to be fired.

Thank you. She was asking to be fired without saying, will you please fire me? Exactly. And then they're like, okay, fine, you're fired. And she's like, thank. You know, very strange. And then we have this Quinnipiac poll. I guess we could start with that because I think it's an interesting story. What do you know, John?

It's important. All right. So, you know, we obviously, Renee Good and Alex Pretti lost their lives to ICE a couple of weeks ago. And now we have some polling about what the American, you know, we've been thinking and guessing what the American people think, but we didn't have numbers. Now we do. Quinapeak poll, one of my favorites, they're one of the few that correctly predicted that Trump would win in 2016, for example, have come back. and they say 61% of Americans don't think the president told the truth about the shooting of Alex Preddy. But 25% do believe the Trump administration's messaging. I'm like, who are the 25%?

I know, right? I mean, so 78% of Americans, which is crazy, have seen the video. I don't think 78% of Americans watch the Oscars or do anything that communal. So this was a huge national moment. where we were all doing and watching the same thing. It was like the 60s all over again. Yeah, too easy. So we do have a big party split.

That shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone. 93% of Democrats, 65% of independents say that they think Trump lied. 60% think he was honest. But that's kind of low for Republicans in this day and age who are so loyal to Republicans. Yeah. 80% of the American people believe there should be an independent investigation. again, who are the 20%?

So, and meanwhile, the new NPR PBS Marist poll finds that 65% of the public believes that ICE has gone too far. Again, who are the 35%? I mean, because, you know, even our producer, Robbie West, says that ICE has gone too far, and he's an immigration hawk of beyond belief. Speaking of which, we are without Robbie today, because his wife is very ill and he's taking care of her today and tomorrow.

He's at the hospital with her. But hopefully we will be back with Robbie on Monday. This is that time of the month when we ask you to help donate the GoFundMe, which helps him stay with working with us. And it's definitely going to be a smoother experience with him back like it was yesterday and we'll be again. So, you know, Kizzy get better. Go fund me search for deep program, Robbie.

I put up the URL up there. If you haven't donated it, please consider doing it. And seriously, if you have a little extra scratch, please consider throwing it this way. He would not want me to ask for this. But, you know, honestly, he really could use it. His insurance sucks. And he's going to be laying out a lot of out-of-pocket stuff for his wife.

Who, by the way, doesn't share his political opinion. So if you hate his politics and you don't want to donate to Robbie Aid, you'll be donating to Kizzy Aid this week, this month, if you do it that way. And also, thank you very much to Sneaker Dad 1020, who gave us $50. Thank you very much, very kind of you. Fantastic. Thank you. Yeah, that's fantastic.

All right. So we're going to start, we're going to get to some, so before we get to, so we'll get to your questions. Please like, follow and show the show. Please put your questions if you're watching live in the YouTube or the Rumble chat. We'll get to them as we always do. And, of course, we're not limited to the conversations to the topics that we've just enumerated here. But before we get to your questions, John, you know, this is a story that's not going away, the killings in Minneapolis. And it seems like what's going on now is that the administration's trying to bring down the temperature by, first of all, bringing in the very reasoned,

Tom Homan, who I guess is recent, who got to keep his $50,000 bribe, by the way. Yeah, he did. It's crazy. It was a sting operation. At least, I mean, I might say like, okay, I'm not arresting you, but I need that many $50,000 back. Anyway, the point is, Tom, and then also he's withdrawing 700 ice goons from Minneapolis. Okay, so we're supposed to breathe easily, right?

But those ice guys, they're not going anywhere. I mean, well, they're going to go somewhere else, is my point, right? Yeah, that's exactly right. They're going to, yeah, they're not just going to go back to headquarters and sit and play pinnacle. No. They're going to go somewhere else. But governors have begun asking state legislatures to pass laws calling for allowing, I should

say, state governments not to cooperate with vice, with ICE, rather. We haven't seen that before. And much to my surprise, there's a handful of federal judges out there just over the last two days that have begun making decisions not allowing ICE to go into certain cities. And I think that they are just making the decisions, hoping that they get sued or that the decisions are appealed, really, so that. the appellate courts can make the final decisions. I think that's what we're looking at here. And then we'll have more of these federal prosecutors losing their minds and getting themselves fired. That's right.

So, yeah, I mean, the system is going to start to get creaky. Also, there's these giant detention facilities. It's interesting, right? Like, whenever corporate America or the government wants to put a big, massive cubic foot facility somewhere they end up usually doing it in red America because that's where the most space is right blue America is more densely populated so these giant so these giant iced detention facilities that currently have RFPs out for contractors to request for proposal to fill out it

looks like a lot of them are going to end up in places like the Florida Panhandle in northern Texas and places like which is which is where existing prisons already are. If you look at Texas, for example, Florida, Pennsylvania, listen, there's a fantastic book called In Defense of Flogging by a professor of criminal justice at John Jay College named Moscos, Peter Moskos. And he says that the reason why there are so many prisons in places like Texas and Florida, on Pennsylvania and Ohio is because they are the sole employers for otherwise unemployable,

undereducated rural white men. Right. And that is absolutely true. And so, okay, so given that fact, given that demographic reality, John, why is NIMBY cropping up now? Even among MAGA America, people don't want these detention facilities, particularly for immigrants, in their backyard. Is this because they don't, they had a bad experience hosting these private prisons or is it something, or are they afraid of illegal migrants escaping? What is it?

It's not escaping. It could be that even they don't make enough money to live on when it comes to private prisons. Private prisons, they squeeze every last penny out of the food, out of the medical care and out of the pay of the guards. So they're not making any money either. And besides that, there are a lot of people, and I'll tell you specifically, the wife of one of my closest friends works for the GEO group, which is the biggest private prison company in America.

They live in rural Pennsylvania. And they're just not confident that these prisons are going to be there beyond Donald Trump. If a Democrat is elected, the Democrat is going to shut down these private prisons. And then they are SOL. And then what do they do? So, yeah. Well, I mean, that was kind of like the nimbism that affected, although it's a very different demographic, when Amazon wanted to put one of their giant facilities in Queens in AOC's district. And she drove them away and said, we're not interested, go away. and, you know, like the New York Post and right-wing media tried to make a lot of it.

Like, look, AOC is literally killing jobs. But her stance had widespread support insider district. It did. And nobody misses it. Nobody's saying, oh, my God, I wish we had let Jeff Bezos come here. Oh, my God. Right. No.

No, they don't. People would rat, I mean, it's sort of, you know, this reminds me of game theory, John. There was an experiment. I love game theory. And there was an experiment where there were monkeys or chimpanzees, probably chimpanzees, and they would allocate them a ration of 10 bananas a day. And then they started reducing among the half of them. They had a control group.

They kept getting the 10 a day. Then the other half, they kept reducing. Like, you know, you're going to get nine. You're going to get eight. And basically, they started becoming more vocal and complaining. But once they got down to like five, they got so furious. They refused to eat any of the bananas. They threw the bananas at their handlers, and they started throwing scat at their handlers, too.

In other words, it was that people, I mean, these primates could live with a certain degree of unfairness, as they perceived it. But beyond that, they were so angry that basically they rioted and were willing to go hungry rather than deal with it. this kind of reminds me of that like you know i'd rather have nothing than have your shitty poorly paid gross hard unpleasant job you know kind of reminds me when i was a little kid um it was the blizzard of 78 you and i were just talking about my brother and i went out and and we were making tons of money i i remember specifically we made two hundred and twenty dollars one saturday morning that saturday morning um which was a lot of money i mean we're talking about you know, two grand in today's money.

Sure. That an 11-year-old and a 9-year-old made shovel and snow. So I went up to this one house, the corner house, Mr. Karen Bauer's house. I still remember him. He drove a limousine, which even to me as a little kid was just weird. Like he bought his own giant stretch limousine and would just drive himself in this giant limo. Anyway, I asked him for five bucks, which is what we were getting for everybody. And he said, two bucks.

and you do the driveway too. And even 11-year-old me knew to say, shit. Yeah, also, it's like, dude, you are not reading the market right now. You know, things have changed. There's three feet or four feet of snow right now. Like, go do it yourself. We'll, we have other business. That's right.

Oh, my God. So, okay, so before we move on to some of the viewer questions, my question for you is, you know, how much of a liability is this ICE situation? I mean, you know, immigration is still a good issue for the administration. I just wrote about it. Basically, I think Democrats are not reading it right if they think that like now, you know, people don't want deportations. They want deportations.

They don't like how they're being done. So, you know, Republicans are getting beaten up because of ISIS goonery. and but Democrats are benefiting because it's a two-party system, but that's not a keeper, right? I mean, so what do the politics play out this fall? Two weeks ago, Ted, I would have given you a different answer. But I think all Americans, all Americans, left, right, center, drew a line when I started shooting people and killing them. first of all no name plates no no you can't see their faces because they have masks on

no badges we're just supposed to take their word for it that no if someone gets killed no no there's not even accountability at all no accountability no investigation and Americans have put their collective you know foot down and said enough is enough you've gone too far but two weeks ago before they started killing people in Minnesota, I would have said, well, you know, the Democrats are on one side on this. The Republicans are on another side. It's just going to be another ugly divisive issue. No, it's different now. Everybody's saying stop. Right. And so, I mean, how this is playing out most quickly is in the government shutdown, right? The Democrats are holding up funding. They're sort of holding up funding for two weeks.

You know, to tell you the truth, I'm not even really clear on what the Democratic strategy is on this. Yeah. I'm sure they're not even clear. They're kind of sort of holding up funding. Yeah, because like there's been some reporting, you know, that to the effect that this money is already pre-allocated by Congress. Right.

And so it may be completely just. window dressing, it might just be a cash flow issue temporarily. It's been appropriated. There are two different kinds of bills when it comes to the budget. There are appropriations bills and authorization bills. So they've appropriated the money. Now the vote is to authorize them to use the money. And that's what we're talking about here.

Right. And so, I mean, so Department of Homeland Securities have, I mean, you can kind of tell the Democrats don't know what they're doing and they're kind of like figuring out how to drive the car after they stole it. because they don't have a clear set of demands. They've said, okay, we don't want, I mean, they have a clear set of demands, but they're not sticking to them. They're like, where are we going to, you know, we would like no masks.

We would like accountability. We would like, you know, IDs and all that. But our body cameras, Christy Noam already said okay to the body cameras, which by the way is sort of a backtrack, because I remember her saying a few months ago that in fact, they already had them. Yeah. But like, but anyway. And then it was kind of like, well, if they already had them,

How come we can't get that stuff released? Yes. But anyway, she said okay to that. I know they can use the body cam stuff. They can edit it and make scenarios look okay for themselves. Cops have done a great job of that all over the country. Thank you to McKenna for $999. McKenna says, please put out a recommended reading list,

specifically on the histories of Israel, the Middle East, Iran, maybe personal favorites too. We actually did that for our paid subscribers, but we can figure something out. Yeah, we'll figure that out. And thank you very much for that donation. So, I mean, the Democrats, you know, but it seems like the one thing they want or are asking for is no masks. And that seems to be something the administration is really unwilling to do. Why is the administration so unwilling to do it?

And will Democrats, like, cave as they always do, or will they hold tight? I think the Democrats are going to cave because the Republicans are making the point that they're afraid officers will be doxed. They pointed these websites that already exist with the personal identifying information, the name, the address, the phone number, photographs of these ICE officers. And I think that the Democrats are going to cave. And they're going to say, well, that's true. You know, there are some bad apples out there that are doxing people. nothing's going to change. No, nothing.

I agree with that. So then that Democrats blow up their own issue. Yes. So, yeah, I mean, I think standing firm is the way. If nothing else just to convey strength, something that Donald Trump is very good at doing, even though it's not always a reflection of reality. So Trump is very, very good at reading public opinion

where the Democrats are clueless. Very true. All right, John. shall we do some questions? Yes. All right. Any thoughts on triple j, sorry, quadruple j, x, y, z?

Any thoughts on Keir Starmor's fate amid the recent Mandelson scandal? Oh, and along the same lines, Reynolds' rap, 22, thank you for the 99. Question out of left field, but are you following the implosion in the British Parliament right now? Oh, great.

Just started watching guys, I'm loving it. Thank you. Yes. So, yeah, let's talk about that. You know, I was talking to Mike from nodding him yesterday. And we were talking about this very issue. This issue is fascinating to me. First of all, Mandelson has been a scumbag his entire adult life, right?

He had been credibly accused of bribery and just general, what's the word I'm trying to use here? General crookedness. The guy's a scumbag. Skullduggery. Yeah. He's just a crook. He's always looking to pocket a couple of bucks. It's just scandalous.

And he was drummed out of two different labor governments. And so what does the last labor government do? They make him ambassador to the United States. And then he says, oh, I never met Jeffrey Epstein. Maybe I met him one time, but I don't really know anything about him. And then there's a picture of him on Epstein's island in his underwear with a 16-year-old. And so not only was he. he'd thrown out of the labor government three days ago, four days ago.

But he was thrown out of the House of Lords. When was the last time that happened? No, that like never happened. But Mike also brought up a very, very important point. And Ted, it's something that really bears close watching. The labor government is in the process right now of major criminal justice reforms, which are not reforms, where they are doing a way with jury trials for almost all cases other than murder, rape, armed robbery, the most violent.

No jury trials. So it's not even going to be like here in the U.S. where most accused criminals never get to go to trial because their cases is larded up with a bunch of overcharging and they're bullied into just taking a plea. You're talking about like in the UK, theoretically even, they're not entitled to a trial before a jury of recures. Correct. You just don't get it. You don't get the trial.

It's not a choice you can make. You know, a lot of people when they're- That's disgusting. When they're guilty, but they don't want people to go nuts, it's a high-profile case. You can elect to have a bench trial. So only the judge hears the evidence, then the judge makes this decision. This is different because that's a choice. And this, what the Brits are talking about, it's just your, again, to use the phrase,

your shit out of luck. Yeah, you are. God, that's crazy. P.D. Hendricks, why not solve the housing project crisis, sorry, by making corporations divest from single-family residences, this would add 3.8% of homes back to the market, roughly 600,000 homes. I think that you'd have some major constitutional issues because American law, you know, basically comes out of British common law, speaking of the Brits, right?

And contract law is a thousand years old in our culture, right? And basically anyone can buy anything. A corporation is a person. I don't know. I don't see legally how you get around it without a constitutional amendment. Ted, I subscribe to Barron's. I get it every Saturday morning. hard copy and you can read it every day. So they're recommending a stock this time that I had never

heard of called Invitation Homes, right? And I'm thinking, I thought I knew all the house, the home builders. I never heard of invitation homes. What turns out invitation homes doesn't build any houses. They own 86,000 single family homes across the state of Florida. This is exactly what people have been warning us about. Yeah. This has been in the works for a good 20 years or more. Yeah. And they're saying, oh, my God, they've got their swimming in cash and they've got a 4.4% yield. Everybody should buy invitation homes. I'm like, no, the people should take over invitation homes and, you know, do away with its leadership and take its money. Oh, I couldn't agree more. Guys, Elliot Cover, you were both kids when the GOP decided they could no longer protect Richard Nixon.

I remember that very well. How does today's GOP compare via Visa v. Trump? Well, as far as, you know, well, that's not going to happen under, you know, under Speaker, under Lindsey Graham or or Speaker Mike Johnson. That's not going to happen. At all, ever. You know, Sam Irvin was the ranking Republican on the Watergate Committee on the Senate side. No, no. Sam Irvin was a conservative Democrat. It was Howard Baker that was making a name for himself as one of the senior Republicans on the committee. And he famously asked the question, what did the president know and when did he know it? And when it became clear to Howard Baker and other Republicans on the committee that Richard Nixon knew of the cover up, because remember, it's not the crime that does them in. It's the cover up of the crime. That was it.

And then Baker and Bob Dole and a handful of other people, Barry Goldwater, went to the White House and told Nixon, you've lost the Republican caucus. You have to resign. And there's not a Republican on Capitol Hill other than maybe Thomas Massey and maybe possibly Rand Paul that would ever do such a thing. Yeah, that's right. Richard Nixon was never going to put himself through the ordeal of going through the impeachment. and so he read the writing on the wall and flew off to California. F.U. So, a dollar. Your show needs an intro video. It has an intro video. How about a spy versus spy theme cartoon or some sort of cartoon?

Well, yeah. Well, do you think about that? Sure. I know. I'm getting, I'm getting some shade for using the R word, retard, too much. You know, my... You know what? My son said to me, what's with the R word that you use? And I said, you know, that was a legit word when I was growing up. True. And I still use it.

And maybe it's offensive to people. And if it is, I apologize. But I do still use it. And he said, actually, he said, it's my generation that's bringing it back. Yeah, that's true. It's in music now and lyrics and people are saying it. So he's like, don't know. Well, here's the thing is there isn't, I mean, stupid, it doesn't really

convey the same thought. So, I mean, because like the, because the R word, as we will now call it for the next minute until I go back to saying retard, is, you know, basically about something that is so stupid that everyone should know and not do it. And it's like beyond, right? And so anyway, so if I can get another word, if I can, you know, get a synonym that works as well or better, please let me know. Yeah.

Furfer wants to note, do you think the world would be a better place if Russia wasn't a powerful state at any time in history? Many world war, maybe world wars would be different and communism wouldn't have spread. Well, also, we would have been the Nazi Germany, we would own Europe. Yeah. Yeah, I disagree. The Soviet Union, I mean, defeated Nazi Germany. Just watch the man in the high tower and you'll see what life would have been like. Yeah, yeah, good. Yeah, I mean, I, yeah, I don't, I think multi-molarity is better than monopolarity for sure.

I agree. Okay. Is this Epstein, Frazmatas wants to notice, is this Epstein release on par with the church committee? Or can we all agree it surpassed it in at least cultural significance? That's an apple's and oranges question, I think. Yeah, it's a tough one. I mean, what do you think, John? Church. I mean, the Church Committee is about, is about exposing and calling for reforms

with serious illegality. Yeah. And this is, this isn't about, this is about exposing wealthy elites and their corrupt interconnectedness, victimizing innocent children. Yes. And so in terms of, I mean, the Church Committee was a serious endeavor. This is not really a serious endeavor. This is more like a looky, looky, look at this. But there's no suggestion of what could or should be different, right, as a result of the Epstein leaks. I think this is just like a bunch of people in damage control mode. Yeah, I think that's right. Pink Lady Apple 83 question for you, John. You've talked about how the CIA was difficult for your relationships when you were there. has that improved since you've been out? Are they healthier now?

My relationships? Yeah. I guess so. Yeah, yeah. You know, my second wife was a CIA officer. I am prohibited by court order from talking about her. Needless to say, things did not go well, and I feel righteous. That's all I'm going to say. I did nothing wrong. Somebody did. Wasn't me. So plain and simple. I am in a long-term relationship now. I have. have been for coming up on three years. Keep it private. She's lovely and wonderful. And we enjoy each other's company. And it's a good partnership. And thank you to Steak or Dad for the $50 donation. I don't know if you already mentioned that, John. If so, I don't apologize because anyone who donates $50 deserves two. Thank you. John, $5 donation from Ray. Did you see the new Tucker

talking to Palestinian Christians and what's going on by the Zionist regime, sickening. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, this is a serious beef that I have. Tucker and I have talked about this offline. What the fuck are American evangelicals doing, helping to literally wipe out Palestine's Christians? These are the original Christians. Right. And evangelicals are supporting Israel to the hilt to kill them, to expel them, to take their land, to destroy their churches.

Don't forget that St. Porphydeus Church in Gaza was the oldest continuously operating church on the planet from the 7th century. And Israel bombed it and killed 14 women and children. side. So yeah, we should all be standing up. If you are at all Christian or care about Christians or care about minorities in the Middle East or care about human rights, yeah, you would stand with with Palestine's Christians or with Palestinians in general. John, shall we do an ad? Oh, wait, so I think, I'm sorry, I'm like having trouble. See, this is why I need Robbie. I can't do this as well. So anyway, we will keep moving on here. Let's do another question.

Did we see that the founder of 4chan was an associate of Epstein? I did not. I did not see that, but that is very interesting. Because wasn't it the founder of 4chan that was believed to be Q from QAnon? Yeah, that's right. that nut that was living in the Philippines? Oh, boy. Okay, so let me see.

Can we do two losers, VP? Can you dig deeper into the police body cams? Both sides agree on that one because it's one. It's a cute exercise to waste more of our money. And two, the camera captures faces and voices of people, not the cops. That's exactly the issue, right? That's it right there. Yeah.

ScoopGB, don't ICE have to provide arrest statements or paperwork to courts. Surely their names must enter the evidential process and become public at some point. Except they're not courts. These are administrative proceedings, right? That's it. Yes. So I think that's the issue here. With Marco Rubio, Sean Whitman wants to know, being the National Security Advisor, or is it very possible he's not being completely truthful to Trump?

I think that's actually the case. Because remember, Marco Rubio sees himself as president, you know, once upon a time and again someday. And he's got his own foreign policy. I honestly believe that what happened in Venezuela, that was Marco Rubio. Donald Trump didn't come up with that. That was Marco Rubio. To squeeze the Cuban government into non-existence, that's Marco Rubio. thing with Iran, I believe that's Marco Rubio.

You know, if Donald Trump is the guy that's going to go shake hands with Kim Jong-un, Donald Trump is going to be the guy that goes and shakes hands with Pesachian. Marco Rubio doesn't want that to happen. Yeah. Okay, let's see. Let me try something new here. Let me just sort of see. This looks like a pre-recorded video for something called the Kids Guide.

Let's just see how this goes. Okay. All right. I do not know. Oh, failed to accept campaign, it says. See, Robbie would probably be able to explain this to me. All right, we'll just do... Let me see.

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Yeah Okay then Yeah Paul says 8chan's founder was found to be Q Not 4chan Forchance founder was pushed by Epstein To create the politics board in 2011 Ah

I thought Forchan just changed its name to 8chan Yeah I find those things confusing for sure Let's see Then someone else That I thought this was supposed to be Jim Watkins

Second owner of 8chan See I don't know Oh Steve Steve's answering your question John The specific class of evangelicals Doing that literally believe

That the world is going to end in their lifetime And that they themselves will be lifted to heaven Without having to die Yeah this is to hasten the rapture Yeah that's That's such a good idea.

Which is a 19th century American Baptist invention, by the way. Insane. And by the way, if I miss any questions here, I am sorry. It's just like really hard without a producer today to do this. Ramplands wants to know from both of us. Can we explain what Trump wants to do regarding nationalization of the voting? What does that mean? So elections are run by the states, and he wants to, he says, basically, I don't trust the way that the Democratic states are counting their ballots.

I think that they're robbing me. I should have won the 2020 election and Republicans are being robbed. So I want to take over, I want to have the federal government administer the counting of the votes and the board of elections and create a federal board of elections to run the elections. I don't know how that would work for local races, but obviously he's talking about the presidency here. Yeah. And as we discussed, there's no way to do that legally, but I guess there's a way to do it illegally. Christian Sidillo, thoughts on the CIA's intervention in Mexico. Do you think that they have operated there recently?

Oh, yeah, I do. Yes. historically the Mexico City Station has been one of the largest on the planet so yeah Jackson McGrath John what's the most apartheid law in Israel the most apart high law oh my God where do you get where do you start I think one of the one of the worst is there's no freedom of movement so if you're Palestinian you may only enter Israel proper with permission of the Israelis. You can't go from one village to the other without permission. You can't cross that line. When I was in Israel, I wanted to go to Bethlehem,

for example. I'd never been to Bethlehem. In a taxi that's driven by an Israeli, no problem. We just crossed from one to the other. In a taxi driven by Saeed, my Palestinian driver that I connected with, No. He was not allowed to cross the line. And there are these gigantic walls that have been built, like prison walls with barbed wire at the top, and then they go down, you know, two meters underground so you can't tunnel underneath them. They're just not allowed freedom of movement. And then the other thing, too, in Gaza, it was worse. Before the Gaza war began, the Israelis were allowing the Gazans only five hours of electricity and two hours of water every day. not because it wasn't available, just because the Israelis would shut it off. And I was talking to Norman Ficklstein, who's a wonderful scholar, and he said that the Israelis had really overreached in Gaza. Their goal was to keep the Palestinians in Gaza weak and hungry, right, so that they wouldn't be up for a fight. The problem was they made them too weak and too weak. hungry and they had to lash back. Right. Right. That's interesting. I mean, like the thing is,

I mean, it is hard to say, but I mean, for example, even if you go to the old city, you know, which is like, you know, tourism ground zero, right? So this is where the Israeli government you would think would be on their best possible behavior, certainly a lot better than in the occupied territories. And they have these horrific checkpoints where, you know, manned by the idea, where everybody goes through and Palestinians have to show their ID. They're searched, they're humiliated in their own homes, trying to just go to their businesses or their homes.

And, you know, the Israelis are constantly patting them down. Yes. You know, in Muslim culture, touching women is very bad, but they frisk women. My mom. They humiliate them. My mom and my sister went to Israel in 2008.

I think it was 2008. And when they got back, I asked my mom, so did you have a wonderful time? You saw all the holy sites. And she said to me, my poor mom, she goes, did you have any idea how they treat the Palestinians over there?

And I'm like, mom, I've been shouting about this for 30 years. Yeah. And she said, my God, it was scandalous. they had this little minibus, right? There were like 12 of them. My mom, my sister, these people from church. It was our priest took a group over. And she said that the bus driver was a Palestinian Christian.

And because he had done these roots a thousand times, he wouldn't get out of the bus. He'd take you to the church. The antivity, he'd sit on the bus. He takes you to this place. He sits on the bus. That place he sits in the bus. And he had one of these just pulp fiction kind of drugstore novels that he would read.

They stopped at a roadblock and a soldier gets on the bus and everybody just had to hold up their passport. But the driver being Palestinian, the soldier snatched the book out of his hand, opened up the book, said, no, no picture of Arafat on this page and tore out the page and threw it at him. no picture verified on this page tore it out and threw it at him and she said that man's book was laid out all over the floor of the bus just because they could just yeah he told my mom everybody was like what are you doing what are you doing and he said they do this to us every single day we're used to it yeah no i'm sure um the um pain is asking didn't the restrictions on

movement manifest after the first intifada? No. They existed before. I personally witnessed them. So, yeah, no, the, it's, I mean, look, it's hilarious that they, that Israelis or Zionists ever defend themselves as being, you know, that Israel's not an apartheid state. It's like, if that's not an apartheid state, then there's no such things in apartheid. It's the most apartheid, aparti of them all. Yeah, seriously. I mean, it's kind of like, well, you just have to go and just open your eyes. I mean, I guess that's maybe asking too much. Let's see.

Flandrina says our home was invaded by the IDF at 2 a.m. And my father-in-law then in his 70s was kidnapped and held for six months. It stands like standard IDF shit. That's how they be. Yeah. Elliot Covert says Jerusalem's municipal government cuts off water to the Arab quarter of the city regularly. All the Arabs have fresh water tanks on the roofs of their houses. And they cut the power, too.

Yes, and they cut the power. And if you have no power, in many cases, you have no water because, you know, you have a pump that pulls it, draws it out of a well and pushes up into your tap or whatever. Yes. Yeah, a longtime listener points out in Jewish culture, you're not supposed to touch a woman. You're not married to either. Yeah, that's true. That's right. So, okay, so let's talk about the Washington Post, John.

This is bad, man. It's really bad. So Marty Barron says that this feels like a death spiral. So what is a death spiral, right? So basically the Washington Post, when Bezos bought it, bear in mind, it had already gone through tons of budget cuts already. It was already suffering. Jeff Bezos came along and said,

I will save you from your trouble. Instead, we are now, 80% of the staff that he inherited is now gone. Just yesterday, he fired 300 out of the remaining 800. There were 2,500. So there's 500 left out of 2,500. And here's the thing. I probably, I could see letting some people go who don't do a good job or whatever.

But, you know, I would bring in a bunch of new reporters, independent reporters, people who've proven that they can't be corrupted by official Washington. But that's not what's going on here. This is about gutting. So this, and what we mean, but what is a death spiral? In journalism, a death spiral occurs basically when the publisher decides, okay, well, we're going to make the product skimpier and smaller.

We're going to charge more for it. And then so the remaining people will, basically, it's like climbing the mast on the Titanic as it's going down. The remaining subscribers out of loyalty will, suck it up and take the smaller shittier product, pay more for it. But they're going to accelerate the loss of subscribers who are like, why am I still buying this paper that's much smaller and thinner and not as good as it used to be? And so they're circling the drain.

That is not a path to solvency. No. If you are the richest man in the world or one of the three richest men in the world, then you're going to want a legacy, right? You're going to want, listen, we've all watched, what's it called, Rosebud, what's a citizen Kane? We've all seen Citizen Kane. You want an outlet that's going to be yours.

You don't want to ruin your own outlet, especially when that outlet was one of the two or three most highly respected newspapers in America, maybe in the world, one of the top five newspapers in the world, known for its investigative journalism, known for bringing down a corrupt president. That's the one, that's the paper that you buy and you ruin. And that's exactly what he's doing. It was bad enough when he ordered the editorial page to move not just to the right, but kind of far to the right. I actually stopped reading the editorial page in the Washington. Oh, it's unreadable now.

It's a waste of time. Right wing, yeah, I can't do it. But he's fired 80% of the staff. And they're in that gigantic new headquarters over on K Street. Gigantic headquarters. John, let me tell you what I think happened. You tell me what part I'm not getting right. I think what happened is that Jeff Bezos was genuinely interested in this idea

when he bought the paper. And then he quickly, realized or maybe not so quickly, but he came to realize that he didn't know anything about how to turn around a newspaper. And he wasn't willing to take time away from the more profitable enterprises like Amazon that he has going on and all the CIA contracts he has with the Amazon cloud and all that stuff. He was like, if this is just a low priority, I was hoping this was going to be a fun side project. And without breaking a sweat, I could turn it around and I'd get all the prestige, John, that you describe from owning the Washington Post. and being the savior of the Washington and I'd have a mouthpiece in official Washington

that would help me, you know, with lobbying and all that stuff. It's like, turned out it's hard. And nobody really knows how to say print media, except I know, but like he's not asking me. So he's like, so basically he's like, doesn't know who to turn to. He's just like billionaire in their toys. You know, they just take it and they drop it.

They're like, he's bored. And so he realized, maybe he didn't he didn't even admitted to him to himself until recently probably a couple years ago deep down inside he was like there's nothing i can do here so now he's already given up on it as far as he's concerned the washington post is dead to him he never pops in the editors never hear from him anymore he's completely disinterested and detached yeah you know i think they're done i mean it's like basically the best thing that could happen to them now would be to be sold again And this is the same exact thing that happens with Dr. Pat Sun-Siong at the LA Times. It's, you know, this is the billionaire model. They think if they throw a little bit of money, you know, they can sort of like get the Tinder going.

And then it'll be fly little bird and then they'll make money. This isn't just starting up. This is legacy business. Yeah. You've hit it on the head. I think that is exactly what happened here. He thought, eh, I'll throw a couple of bucks. It's really prestigious that I'm going to own the, the, the,

Washington Post, everything's going to turn out just fine. And it's not. It's not. And F.U. So asks a good question. Thanks for the buck. Is it going to become the AI post? Because that's what happened to smaller papers. The travel, the travel section is just written by AI bots recommending hotels that no longer exist, for example. That's, yeah, well, I mean, that'll be, that'll just be part of the death spiral. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, just making the product shit you know the end shittification as the techies call it um and and that's that's what it'll be and it's uh you know i mean look the thing is it's not just a legacy business it's a business that is in the you know the middle of a profound transition to uh you know due to

the internet and and it's been in the middle of that for the better part of 20 years and they haven't figured out john the answer is simple the answer is that none of the content that's online at the washington post should ever appear in print the print addition should be a completely different entity. Your phone should tell you what happened just now, and the print thing should come the next day and tell you what it all means in analysis. Only analysis. That's a new model right there. That's what it needs to be. And people, no one wants to read 5,000 words of like the economist, like on the phone, but they'll take it to the bathroom in print. That's the purpose. That's how this should be. Hand,

I can't believe nobody's done it. Maybe it's because they're retarded. Anyway, should we talk about this Rikers Island thing, the deadlocking thing? Do you think Mayor Moundani is going to get on top of this? I mean, his plan is to have five city jails, replace one city jail, one per borough. I mean, there's no money in the city, right? I mean, Mayor Adams left him $10 billion in debt. Yeah, every mayor says they're going to tackle this.

every single mayor, and they all fail, every one of them. The courts have ordered Rikers Island to be closed and torn down. They've ordered it, but there's nowhere else to put people. Right. So, I mean, we sure, we would all love it if Rickers Island. There are people who have died who were literally, there was one guy who died last year, John. He was in for some incredibly, like, minor thing, like peeing in public or something. Anyway, the dude couldn't come up with 20 bucks or 25 bucks bail. He was that poor. He was there for a better part of a year, gobbling up taxpayer money.

And then he was murdered by the guards. I mean, it is. It's like 20 bucks. There's at least one murder a week at Rikers, and there are usually about two suicides a week. I mean, it's a hellhole. There was one kid. he was arrested for stealing a backpack and he was put in rikers his family couldn't come up with

you know the 150 bucks or whatever to bail him out and um and so he was there for ages for over a year awaiting trial the trial kept getting delayed delayed delayed and finally he committed suicide all stemming from stealing a backpack by the way city jails are the lowest circle of hell in the penal system. Oh, the worst. Having spent nine days in one in solitary confinement, I can tell you they're the worst. Yes. And you very quickly get tired of bologna sandwiches three times a day. Sure. Yeah, no, yes. So Peruse is asking, and this is the last question we're going to have time for today. Does the CIA analyze religion as a factor in different countries or is that approach just secular and material.

Oh, no, no. Religion is very heavily considered. Yes. I mean, it's a huge part of people's culture. I mean, I feel like it's really important to, you know, regardless of your own faith or lack thereof, it's really important to study religions because they motivate so many, you know, billions of people's lives.

I mean, it informs everything, even for people like me who are not religious. It's still, you know, I grew up Catholic. Being Catholic is a huge part of my culture. So you want to understand Ted Rawl. You've got to understand Catholicism. Right. Yeah, anyway. Okay, well, I guess we'll leave that there.

Robbie West, if you hear us, we are all our love to you and Kizzy. Hope you are that she comes through everything well. Don't forget Robbieade, gofund me.com. Then go look for D-program. Robbie, once we get to a grand, we stop bugging you. But seriously, consider being very generous today. It would mean a lot to me and John. And with that, please stay tuned.

Coming right up is TMI show with me and Manila Chan. And then at 11 o'clock, we have the DMZ America podcast, which we have every Thursday at 11. That's 11 o'clock Eastern time. Scott Stantis and I will be interviewing Mr. Fish, the cartoonist, controversial cartoonist. Can you imagine cartoon? And become a tier two member,

and you'll be in the new outro for the show. which we are just unveiling now and see you later John see you tomorrow see you later bye-bye