DeProgram with John Kiriakou and Ted Rall - Blue Glove Blues | DeProgram with Ted Rall and John Kiriakou

Episode Date: March 18, 2026

Political cartoonist Ted Rall and CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou deprogram you from mainstream media every weekday at 9 AM EST. Today we discuss:• If the Homeland Security Dept. shutdown continues, some smaller airports may have to shut down entirely within weeks due to a shortage of TSA security screeners. Typically, under 2% of TSA workers call in sick or do not report to work. At Atlanta, JFK and Houston, no-show rates are about 20%.• In public, Israel is urging Iranians to revolt against their government. Privately, senior Israeli officials are telling the U.S. that Iranians will “get slaughtered” if there’s an uprising, according to a leaked State Department cable.• Israel and the U.S. are relying on targeted assassinations in their war against Iran. But decapitation strikes against figures like Ali Larijani, Iran’s de facto leader, and Esmail Khatib, intelligence minister, has its limits, and may even prove counterproductive by radicalizing the government and marginalizing moderates. Iranian missiles are flying all over the Middle East.• Israel has ordered a mass evacuation of southern Lebanon and is subjecting central Beirut to heavy bombing in its attacks against Hezbollah. • Democrats are turning against AIPAC. Only two out of four AIPAC-backed candidates won special elections yesterday.• The Strait of Hormuz shutdown has several countries on the ropes. Myanmar, Vietnam and the Philippines, according to the SocGen commodities team, 80%+ of their oil via Hormuz, and only have about a month of oil in storage before they run out. Singapore has 40 days of inventory. Thailand has 50 days. Taiwan can last about 100 days. Bangladesh can last about 100 days, and has already instituted fuel rationing and shuttered fertilizer plants. MERCH STORE: https://www.deprogram.livehttps://x.com/tedrallhttps://x.com/JohnKiriakouLIVE ON RUMBLE: https://rumble.com/c/DeProgramShowSPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/show/2kdFlw2w8sSPhKI8NRx8ZuAPPLE MUSIC: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/deprogram-with-john-kiriakou-and-ted-rall/id1825379504

Good morning and thanks for watching the program with Ted Raul and John Kyriaku. It is Wednesday, March 18th, 2026. And I'm Ted Raul. Filling in for John Kyriaku, who may or may not be joining us, is producer Robbie West. John is traveling this morning this afternoon for him. And he may or may not pipe in. He knows what to do. And we just don't know.

He's kind of like the if you're old enough to remember, the old OJ Simpson commercial of him running through the airport to the rental car counter. That right now be John Kiriaku. So, Robbie, thanks for doing the honors. Much appreciated. No, of course. I just hope my internet doesn't die. Just a quick word.

If the show drops, it's on my end. My internet provider is really being, what's the word, a dick this morning. So if it blows up, it's on my end. Okay. All right. I'm going, by the way, just to add to the chaos this morning, I had just because of that, I had reached out to friend of the show

and my best friend Scott Stantis of the Chicago Tribune to see if he could guest co-host this morning. And he didn't pick up. And then he just texted like a minute ago to say that he just got out of the shower. So unless we wanted Jeff Tubin moment with Scott Stantis at age 67, I think we probably should forward a soldier on as best as we can. As always, please like, follow and share the show. Like I said, if you're just

joining us, John Kirooku will certainly be back tomorrow, but we'll see what happens if he's able to pipe in. I'll pop him up, I promise, right away. Just a little bit of news. Thank you so much. We are now at over 30,000 subscribers on YouTube. And as someone in the chat, is it rational? Pointed out just a few minutes ago before we went live, weren't we just at 10,000? a few months ago, yes, yes, we were. So this is a very fast-growing show. And so partly, that's part of it brings me up to the next topic, which is, I do want to apologize.

We love your questions, and we encourage you to put them in the live feed if you're watching live on YouTube or on Rumble, but we have been overwhelmed. We're kind of victims of our success, and there's only so much time. I know I'm wasting some of that time right now, telling you all this, but that can't be helped. anything that is left over from the day before, especially super chats, we pipe in and we make up for the next day. And we have three of those that we have to deal with from yesterday. And so we hope you're here, but just that's our promise to you.

Anyway, let's go through the rundown and then we'll hit some topics and then we'll take some questions and we'll get to it. So this is a busy news day. It looks like as the Homeland Security Department shutdown enters its second month, the TSA and Department of Homeland Security have announced that some of smaller airports across the United States may have to shut down entirely within weeks due to a lack of TSA security screeners. We've seen very long lines at airports like Austin, Texas, where three to four hour waits before flights are pretty typical these days. So normally, before the shutdown took place, about 2% of TSA workers called in sick or just didn't show up to work. I mean, if you don't just show up to work, don't you just get fired? But anyway, no show rates at huge airports like New York, John F. Kennedy Airport, Houston and Atlanta, those are major hubs for people who are not familiar with the United States aviation system. No show rates are currently about 20%.

And so that rate's only going to increase over time. We'll get into that. Israel is, of course, in public, urging Iranians to overthrow their government and create a revolution. However, a leaked state department cable shows that senior Israeli officials are privately telling the United States what they really think, which is that if there's an uprising, the Iranians will get slaughtered. Nice people, Israel. Israel and the U.S. are also relying on decapitation strikes. There was just another one yesterday.

Intelligence Minister Ishmael Khatib of Iran became the latest high-ranking Iran official to be assassinated by the Israelis. That followed two more yesterday, most notably Ali Larijani. He was the de facto leader of Iran as of yesterday. He's kind of like the managing director of Iran. He was killed yesterday or about 36 hours ago. But it turns out that there's a lot. There's a counterproductive aspect of this.

The Israelis seem to be killing the more moderate members of the government. So that's marginalizing the split between marginalizing the moderates and sort of radicalizing who's left. Iran's missiles are all over the place. They're in Qatar. They're in Saudi Arabia. There's there have been strikes all over the Middle East. And finally, the, oh yeah, not finally. Israel has ordered a massive evacuation of southern Lebanon.

Central Beirut is now subject to heavy bombing. It's what it's calling its attacks against Hezbollah, but lots of innocent Lebanese are being killed too. Not that Hezbollah are not innocent either, and we could have a discussion about that. Robbie, I thought you'd be interested in this. I'm sure you took note of the fact that there were four special elections in the Democratic Party yesterday across the nation,

all of which involved APEC funding candidates. It's only two of those four, one, and that's being viewed as a reflection of the fact that APAC is finally losing its power and its dominance over Democratic Party voters. And finally, this to me was the most interesting story of the day, Robbie. The Strait of Ormuse shutdown is something that Americans are talking about. Gas prices are up. In fact, they just went up a nickel overnight. And oil is currently floating at around $93 a barrel. that's just to put this into perspective, it was about 60 before the war began.

So the whole ripple effect to the pump hasn't yet occurred. But several countries are really going to be suffering a lot more than the United States or Western Europe. Myanmar, Vietnam, and the Philippines get 80% or more of their oil via the Strait of Ormuz. They only have about a month of oil left before they run out entirely. Singapore only has 40 days left. Thailand has 50. Taiwan can go and Bangladesh could each go about a hundred days, so just over three months. But Bangladesh has already instituted fuel rationing and shut down all of its fertilizer plants.

So that's basically where we are with all that. Robbie, what do you want to talk about first? Because you get to play the role of John, and I always let John pick. I always think it's interesting about how if you're trying to stir up a revolution in the country, you bomb the people that you're hoping actually rise up in revolution. I talked about this with you last week. If the idea is to get the liberal Iranians to rise up and revolt against the government, then why in the world would you be bombing Tehran where the more moderate Iranians live?

You'd be bombing the sticks. You'd be bombing the more conservative Iranians. They're the ones that you're the problem if that's your whole metric that you're going by. I don't understand it. It's stupid. It's true. I mean, the thing is, this is a tactic that has been used a number of times. And it never, ever, ever, ever works.

So why do they keep trying it? I don't know. I mean, there's not going to be, like, the thing is, we did see a bit of an uprising in Iraq, but in 2003. But that was because we sent in ground troops. I wouldn't be surprised if there was, you know, there were some regional forces, some factions that were to, you know, rise up against the Iranian government in the event of a Western or a U.S. invasion, maybe not an Israeli invasion. I can't imagine the Israelis would be part of a ground force anyway. I can see that. Listen, Ted, this is the responsibility of your son and mine to catch bullets meant for the Israelis. It's called Operation Human Shield. means fury. I mean, think about what I just said for a second. We went to war for Israel in Iraq, not once but twice. How many Israeli soldiers were committed to that fight, even though we were

defending their little pancake hat wearing butts? Not one. Not one. Instead of us thousands of our boys that come home in coffins. Well, that's true. So, you know, what do you make of the fact that, like, the, you know, the Israelis, you know, are alongside their American allies, are, urging, you know, the Iranians to go out into the streets and basically serve as, you know, as fodder for the IRGC bullets. And, but they know privately it's not going to do any good. I mean, I'm not even, the inhumanity of it doesn't really shock me. I mean, this is Israel. These people just killed 400,000 people for fun in Gaza. But, but, but what strikes me is like, it's just a waste, it's just sort of, they know it's not going to work. It's going to. It's

going to be ineffectual. So why bother? Because they, they want dead people. I cannot think of it. I cannot think of a single other reason, Ted, why we're doing this, except that they want to fill as many body bags and as many cemeteries as they can. They get off on death. And that's a radical thing to say. I get it. I understand it. Uh, I'll probably be accused of, of a blood libel. I don't care at this point. because the facts proved me right. I mean, they committed a genocide in Gaza. Mike Huck could be considered whatever he wants.

He can talk about how Israel is the most moral military in the world, but he cannot ignore the fact that to kill one guy, that they would drop a 2,000 pound bomb on a bazaar, killing God knows how many people, wounding how many more. And then to add insult to the injury, The AI, no, Israel has two different AI systems. A lot of people don't realize this.

One's called, where's daddy? And what it does, it tracks who they suspect as a terrorist. They wait until he gets home. And then they drone strike the house to get, not him, but him and as much of his family as possible. That's not moral. That's disgusting. Well, that's a German style approach. You know, I know a lot about this because my family, half of my family, half of my family,

family was lived, you know, in Nazi-occupied France. And, you know, they had these tactics where, like, my grandfather was in the resistance in France. And my family, his family had to be on the run constantly because it was, it was Vichy and Nazi policy that if a member of the, a family had a member of the resistance in their family, they would kill the entire family and hunt them down, even if the person had run off to join the marquee. That happens, that's, that's like, you know, That was just sort of like, that's how it goes. And the Israelis, you know, have subscribed to similar policies for years. Like if someone was so alleged terrorist, member of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, let's say,

the Israelis would demolish their house, the whole family's house. They wouldn't just arrest the guy. They would make the entire family homeless. So it's a Nazi-style policy. And I think, honestly, I have to think that it was inspired by that. we should take we should knock off a few more of these many topics and then deal with some of the questions from yesterday and and of course some of the questions from today all of them if we can get to them okay so let's what do you know the obviously we have um i'm curious about how a country the size of israel can maintain a multi-front war i mean you know two front war did in adolf hitler in world war two but here you have a have a country of 10 million people, it's involved in a heavy ground operation in Lebanon, at the same time that it's involved in destroying and bombing the shit out of Iran and taking

and taking fire from the Iranians. People, Israelis last night were getting killed in Tel Aviv. How do they have this capacity, this military capacity? They don't. We do. That's why they own us. I mean, let's let's be honest here. Israel by itself is really nothing. It's a non-entity. The issue is that they own the United States military. They owned the United States government.

We support them financially. We support them militarily. We do everything for them. That's why this is Israel doing this. Israel couldn't fight for a week if it wasn't for the United States. This is us doing this. This is the American government doing this. I think I'm breaking up again.

No, you sound good. There's a request, by the way, for you to put the Rumble link into the chat in YouTube because John's usual email did not go out today. I can do that if you can't do it. But, okay. So, you know, I mean, we'll continue to follow that story. And then the other one I wanted to talk about is I think that we can probably dispose of fairly quick. is this issue of decapitation strikes.

I always think that the idea that you can bring down a government by magically, even taking out three or five top figures, is incredibly naive. You know, I mean, this Iran's government has been around for, you know, 47 years since 1979. There's several. This episode is brought to you by Spreaker. The platform responsible for a. rapidly spreading condition known as podcast brain. Symptoms include buying microphones you don't need, explaining RSS feeds to confused relatives, and saying things like, sorry, I can't talk right now,

I'm editing audio. If this sounds familiar, you're probably already a podcaster. The good news is Sprinker makes the whole process simple. You record your show, upload it once, and Sprinker distributes it everywhere people listen, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and about a dozen apps your cousin's swears are the next big thing. Even better, Spreaker helps you monetize your show with ads, meaning your podcast might someday pay for, well, more microphones. Start your show today at spreeker.com. Spreaker, because if you're going to talk to yourself for an hour, you might as well publish it. Overlapping power systems, there's the formal government apparatus itself, the deep state, if you will, there's the IRGC, there's the Kud's force. I mean, there's all these other, you know, the proper means. The proper

military. There's more overlapping functions in the Iranian government than anywhere. But even here in the United States, I mean, you could wipe out the entire cabinet, the president and the vice president and the Supreme Court. That does not mean you have taken over and toppled the United States government. I think that they just think that Iran really is a dictatorship and they don't realize it's actually has a different silo government than what we have. But it's a sophisticated form of government. Listen, Persia was old when Rome was young. These people know how to govern. They've been around for a very long time.

This is not new. They know how wars go. Iran has won its share of wars. It's also lost its share of wars. And they've learned lessons from both accordingly. The United States isn't used to fighting a real country. That's the problem. And I think that they just think that if they keep killing managers, that there's no bench.

Well, another thing that's always a bench. Sorry, Robbie, to step on you there. Another thing that strikes me is that whenever I see experts, you know, either being quoted inside the administration or being quoted on national television on CNN or whatever, and they talk about Iran, none of them have even been there. Isn't that just weird as hell? Like they haven't even been once as a tourist to go see some Roman ruins. And we're supposed to believe anything that they have to say about this?

place? Well, of course, because they get their briefings from the Israelis every morning. Yeah, and the Israelis haven't been there either. Although, Lord knows, they've rented a lot of people. The Iranians just caught a Mossad spy and executed him yesterday. That's the best thing you can do with them. Can't say that's surprising at all. Okay, so I think we should go ahead. Let's dispose of these questions that were left over from yesterday, Robbie, if that's okay with you. Yeah, sure. Thanks, by the way, from Para Illegal for the $50 donation that happened in the, not the live chat, but in the regular comment section on YouTube. Can I get Robbie to give me a shout out and then call me out, Robbie Aid.

Also, what do you think about all the SSA programs? So that's a Robbie question. Well, Paralegal, love the name, a huge shout out. Don't know who you are, but I appreciate you. I appreciate what you're doing as far as the SSA. SSA programs, to be honest, I don't know enough about them to be able to give you an opinion. I'd have to study them more. Okay.

Yeah, you know, my mom always used to say that some three most powerful words in the English language that are not used nearly enough are, I don't know. I don't know. Yeah. Masojas, thanks, hello Ted, John, and Robbie. Thanks for the $499 donation. As a young man in his senior year in high school, and thanks for listening, it's been difficult to find a clear, mostly objective perspective.

on world geopolitics that questions authority at all times, but you two have been an outlet for that. Thank you very much, much appreciated. And the last one left over from yesterday is from Chris Otahahi. Thanks for the New Zealand $100. Robbie, you can reply in comments if it's easier. Kia, Ora, John and Ted. John, when in May are you going to Palau?

John will obviously have to answer that question. Never mind, Oz. Have you been to New Zealand? And good luck with the pardon, Kia Kaha. I have no idea what Kiyah means. But anyway, thank you for all that. Okay, so let's do some of the super chats first, then we'll try to get to get to other stuff.

Cars on Jordan, thanks very much for the 1999 over on YouTube. Hey, John, I'm a 21-year-old student. I'm sorry, I'm not John. Or Robbie's not John. Maybe Robbie can play John, who's taken interest in working in Intel analysis. What degree do you think would be most applicable in the modern day? What information or media should I be consuming to educate myself? I think we should kick that to John and keep that probably for him until tomorrow.

In terms of the information or media, you need to educate yourself. I mean, I think honestly, as much as you can is the main, is the best answer. Marco Ferrari, thanks for the South African RAND, 1999, much appreciated there. And let's see, thanks for the two Canadian dollars from Vilmar, off ramp, obviously for the war. Each week, I feel it's less likely. I think each week, Robbie, we get closer to the end of whatever this is, right? I mean, just by definition. But, you know, the right off ramp is the one thing that's not going to happen, which is

is free and open relations and relationships, you know, discussions with the Iranians to try to bring this in for a soft landing involving mutual respect. That's not going to happen. You know, the U.S. and Israel, that's not their policy. They don't see any, and they don't have any truck in it. They're just not going to do it. So the off-ramp is going to occur when both sides just stop fighting. I think the U.S. wants to stop fighting sooner than the Iranians want to stop fighting.

The Iranians are motivated because of the fact that they know that if they don't bring this to some sort of satisfactory conclusion from their point of view, that there's just going to be right back here again in six or 12 months. I think it's bigger than that, Ted, and I have a question for you because you've been in that part of the world. I never have. I mean, think about this. The Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor while the Japanese, were actively negotiating with the American government. That happened.

Yeah. We have done the same thing to the Iranians, not once, but twice. That's right. We have, I mean, we have been, oh, go ahead. I'm sorry. No, go ahead. No, I was interrupting you. Sorry, go ahead.

I mean, it's just the way that I see, from a cultural standpoint, how could you possibly make peace, especially with the people in that part of the world where the word honor still mean something with someone who you fundamentally do not trust who is joined at the hip with someone who says, I want to destroy you, not defeat you, not feed you, not regarding you as a regional rival, but as an enemy that needs to be just completely eradicated. How can you negotiate with somebody like that? I don't see how you can, expression of that cultural context. It's almost impossible. And look, Robbie, you're right. Older cultures value traditions for obvious reasons more than younger cultures do.

And what the U.S. has effectively done is, you know, come forward across the lines of battle with a, you know, a flag of truce, sat down and then opened fire as soon as they got the chance. You know, that's extremely dishonorable. And I mean, I think, you know, there were some statements to that effect. And but sort of the Iran, but some Iranian officials, kind of the vibe, the subtext of their statements was kind of like, you know, you know, fool me twice, fool me. It's like, fool me three times, shame on me. At this point, we probably should have seen it coming and we know we can't trust them. But Robbie, to your point, I mean, I think the implication of your point is, like, they know they have to keep fighting now. Because like, what good are negotiations with, you know, an adversary who would do something like that? And here's another question out for you, Ted. One of the things that we hear is that this government

does not represent the people of Iran. How do we know? It's a serious question. I've never been there. I would love to go to Iran. I will love nothing more than able to go there, spend a month, get to know the people. But I don't know. I've never been there. I don't know anyone that has except for you.

And so we keep hearing the stuff. Well, the government doesn't represent the people. Well, news flash for you. This government doesn't represent me. And I supposedly live in a republic. Yeah, well, it doesn't. I mean, look, here's the thing, right? I mean, look, by the way, if you're just joining us, John Curiaku is traveling.

Robbie West, our producer is Philly again. Thank you very much, Robbie. You're watching the program with Ted Roll and John Curiacu, and I'm sure John will be back tomorrow. Just got a text from John that he just landed. I'm not going to say where because, you know, I don't want the wrong people to know, but he just landed where he's landing. He's still on the plane. So, you know, I mean, flights be delayed, and so I don't think he's going to be joining us today,

but he might be. So we apologize for that. But getting back, you know, I've been, I often think about like how whenever the United States goes to invade another country, I had this discussion with my late mom about Afghanistan and Iraq. And my mom's like, well, you know, the Americans have a good point. The Taliban are a terrible government, the way they treat women. You know, Iraq, Saddam Hussein's a bad man, you know.

And I would be like, mom, you're missing the entire. entire point. Like if the United States wanted to just be in the, you know, democratization business, we could start with a lot of our allies, right? And we could start with ourselves because we don't have a true democracy. A two-party system isn't really a democracy. It's not even a republic, really. And, you know, but the point is, if you wanted to attack countries that have despicable government, back then, you would have been like, oh, Uzbekistan, where they literally boil political dissidents in a giant pot to death. It's not really a much better government now. You can ask Craig Murray, former British ambassadors to Uzbekistan, all about what it's like that. He wrote this great book called

A Murder in Samarkand that I strongly recommend, but I would say don't eat before you read it. And the thing is you could start with any number of countries around the world. You know, probably easily 150 of the world's 200 countries all could stand a good solid revolution like right now to liberate their people. So that's not what, you know, we don't choose our targets because we're worried about the plight of women in Chaudhors or because we're worried about, you know, we're worried about countries that export terrorism. After all, no country exports or finances terrorism as much as we do.

You know, we choose targets for other reasons. And they don't have anything to do with these highfalutin values, Robbie. I mean, I guess I. I just don't understand where the whole talk, but the, the, the talk of points come from. I think one of the biggest problems that, that Americans have, this is one of the things I really envy about Europeans. Americans don't travel enough. We don't know the world. We, we're here. I think it's because we're in such a large country, just such a large continental country. We just kind of just forget the rest of the world exists. I don't think that America is an island. I think it is a planet unto itself. and most Americans just simply don't care about the rest of the world.

If it's on our side of... Geography has a lot to do with it too, right, Robbie? I mean, we're far... I mean, if you live in France, it's easy to get to a bunch of other countries by train and car, right? Oh, yeah. Also, we don't get any vacation time. You know, Iranians get 45 days of vacation a year, you know, guaranteed by the government. You know, we guaranteed get 11.

Yeah. I don't know. That's just something I've always just worried about. I've just always wondered about. You know, whenever people say, well, their government doesn't represent them. My government doesn't represent me. What's your point? That's a conversation I always have with people.

Like when I went to Afghanistan in 2001, the first, well, I was the second time. And I remember talking to some guys about American foreign policy. They were, you know, rabidly jihadi. And they were kind of like kind of like the subtext. like was, why shouldn't we just kill you? You're an American. And I said, you know, and I have this conversation all the time with people overseas. And I'm always like, you know how in Afghanistan, the people are here and the government is up here. In the United States, it's exactly the same. And then they're like, oh, okay, let's have some tea. And, you know, they get it. I don't think we get it.

You know, we tend to blame the people themselves for their government, ironically. At the very same, I mean, it doesn't make any sense to say your government, you know, the government of Iran is oppressive and most people don't support it and then kill the very people who supposedly are being oppressed by that government. Yeah, I mean, that goes back to my original point, right? Exactly. If you're trying to get liberal Iranians to rise up, bombing the liberal Iranians is probably not the best career choice.

Probably not. Rob, by any chance, do we have an ad? I don't know. When I clicked on the button, it started spitting it, and I nearly died. So I don't think we're going to try that. Do you want, okay, too, maybe I'll take a look or not, whatever. Okay, so let's do some more questions.

Sky B, thanks for the 20 bucks. In my county in Wisconsin, they're proposing spending $50,000 on a sign dedicated to Charlie Kirk. What's the sign made of? Gold? Francesca Hong, though, is a Democratic socialist leading the Democratic Party for the state. So that's nice to see. Love the pod. Thank you so much.

I do want to know what the signs made of, though. And I want to make those signs and sell them to the state of Wisconsin. Mr. Asa Hills, 499. Curious what your takes are on Scott Ritter and his former charge is set up? He doesn't seem the type, but what the fuck do I know? So, okay, I'm going to kind of channel John here because I've never met Scott Ritter. And my first assumption about the pedophilia, well, I guess pedophilia. charges, not the actual petto. There's no allegations of him actually diddling any kids or

anything like that. I assumed it was a setup. I assumed that the government put these images on his computer and then busted him. I just, he was such an enemy of the state. This episode is brought to you by Spreaker. The platform responsible for a rapidly spreading condition known as podcast brain. Symptoms include buying microphones you don't need, explaining RSS feeds to confused relatives, and saying things like, Sorry, I can't talk right now, I'm editing audio. If this sounds familiar, you're probably already a podcaster. The good news is Spreaker makes the whole process simple.

You record your show, upload it once, and Spreaker distributes it everywhere people listen, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and about a dozen apps your cousin's swears are the next big thing. Even better, Spreaker helps you monetize your show with ads, meaning your podcast might someday pay for, well, more microphones. Start your show today at spreeker.com. Sprinker, because if you're going to talk to yourself for an hour, you might as well publish it. But from what I hear, he really does have a problem.

Yeah, I've heard the same thing, and I've worried about this. I mean, you and John are both getting a high profile. You are getting higher profile. And if you really want to destroy somebody, what you do is that you slip no kitty porn on their computer. It's something to worry about that happening on my system. I worry about that. I've built a firewall.

Yeah. It would actually be really good to see if it's possible to, you know, do a scan to make sure, you know, there's nothing like that on your computer. That would be a useful program. And then, of course, obviously automatically purge it without you having to see it. Because who wants to? I don't want to. Jackson McGrath, thanks for the two Australian dollars. Israeli government are terrorists who agrees.

I do. I mean, state terror. It's literally state terrorism. Of course it is. Hey man. Hey man. From Ariane Gordy, thanks for the $1.99. Thoughts on the Pakistani Afghan war. Hashtag, Robbie Up Front. I like it. I like the hashtag.

That war is now in its third week. It's being completely overshadowed by the Israeli-Iranian, the Israel-U-S-Iran war. But that's a big deal. I mean, just yesterday, as we talked a little bit about a little bit with John, over 400 people who are, who were living in a drug rehab center were blown up by the Pakistanis right in Kabul. And, you know, the Taliban are swearing they're going to get revenge. I don't know what they're going to do, you know, go yell, climb to the top of the border fence and yell insults at the Pakistanis. They don't have an air force. They don't have, as far as I know, they don't even have short-range missiles.

so I don't know what the fuck they're going to do about it. But, you know, this comes down to the Pakistanis are getting attacked by the Pakistani Taliban. But the Pakistani Taliban don't have good or really much of any relations at all with the Taliban government of Afghanistan. So you're basically attacked, you're getting even with, it's kind of like the U.S. gets attacked by the Saudis and the Pakistanis on 9-11 and goes and bombs the shit out of Afghanistan and Iraq. They have nothing to do with it. The Pakistanis are getting bombed by, you know, Pakistani dissidents internally. Then they're going to attack Afghans who have nothing to do with it.

Yeah, I don't know. To be honest, I don't even understand what the entire thought process is behind it. If a couple of podcasters can figure this out, then surely the national intelligence of a country that's sophisticated enough to have nuclear weapons can understand the exact same thing. I don't know. I think maybe they're trying to cause a refugee crisis. And by they, I mean, the United States and Israel,

they're trying to cause a refugee crisis to cause more Afghans to go into Western Iran. I think that's what this is. They're trying to cause a refugee crisis on Iran's eastern flank. That's an interesting theory. I like that. We'll have to. So what's what I would do? I'm that curious.

If I was trying to destabilize the government in Iran, I'm willing to go for maximum pressure. One of the reasons why people oppose mass immigration, it doesn't matter who you are, where you are, is that if you get enough of it fast enough, it has a destabilizing effect. That's a statement of fact. Yeah, refugee flows.

I mean, well, the Iranians have already taken historically. They've taken in a lot of Afghans. Sometimes they go back home and sometimes they don't. Yeah, and as John has pointed out, a lot of those Afghans are under the employee of the Israelis because they're easy to bribe. Yeah, they're very, they're highly affordable. Although you can always rent an Afghan.

You can't really buy one. Ray, thanks for the two bucks on Rumble. John, did you hear for the first time in 17 years? Israel's shutting down the church, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre for Easter. What's your take on it? I mean, I don't know. I mean, first of all, you know, it's probably this is a question for you.

I mean, I've been there. It's kind of funny. It's almost like a junk shop the way that it's set up. up. But it's probably not really where Jesus was crucified, right? It's not really where there's like a, there's like a glass that you can look through and you can see the rock that is supposedly Golgotha, but I don't think it really was in that part of town. Nobody knows. It's tradition. I mean, most people don't realize this. What we call the modern city of Jerusalem is not the city of Jerusalem that existed in in Jesus' day when Titus when he sacked Jerusalem people don't know this

fact check me on this he destroyed Jerusalem so thoroughly when Jesus predicted not one stone be left upon the other that literally happened the Romans were so pissed off at the Jews that when they took Jerusalem at the end of that siege not only they tear down the buildings not only did they tear down the, the temple, they dug up the foundation stones of the city. They removed the foundation zones and made it look like a pasture. For a hundred years, there was nothing there. The modern city of Jerusalem was built over 100 years later in the Romans called a capital telena as a monument.

I wanted to say it was to Trajan at the time. It could have been Hadrian, one of the other. But the modern city of Jerusalem that we see now. was not it was not the city that Jesus walked in no one even knows where the temple actually was built nobody knows right yeah I mean I was very surprised when I visited Jerusalem the first time that it's really a medieval city there's uh you know that you that's there's really very little if anything that predates the 1300s yeah I mean because there's there's not I mean when the Romans erased Carthage, they wiped out the city and salted the fields.

What they did when they took out, when they took out Jerusalem, they didn't salt the fields, they turned it into a sheep pasture. So, I mean, the Romans are very, very good. Points for Theronas. Let's see. Oh, yeah, sorry. F you so, thanks for the dollar. We need a Deadpool Israel edition.

This is Bibi already off the table. You know, it looks like BB Netanyahu is not dead. What do you think? I wish he was. That's not my question, though. No, he's not dead. Yeah. He's one of those people who's like a cockroach.

He will be around forever. It does seem so. Okay, so Robbie, let's, well, you know, let's talk about the specter of airports being closed. I mean, so I've been giving a lot of thought to this. Republic, if you read my social media feed, which has, I guess, an inordinate number of Trumpy Republicans on it, you'll see a bunch of Republican figures, congressmen, and so on, going on and on and on about how the Democrats are being irresponsible in a time of war to shut down the Department of Homeland Security. And so basically, as John Kariaku has pointed out here on this show numerous times, you don't, it's not really like these guys don't. get paid. They just get paid late. And most Americans who've ever had a job know what that's like.

But if you know the money's coming, you should be okay, generally speaking, right? You should be able to put things together. Anyway, the Republicans are saying that, you know, this is because basically Democrats have refused to find it to fund the rest of DHS because they want reforms to ICE. Ironically, they voted to fund ICE, but okay, whatever. So they're holding out for, you know, no masking and a bunch of other stuff. I agree with. It doesn't go far enough as far as I'm concerned. But they want these reforms.

TSA is, you know, guys have basically will get their paychecks if and when the shutdown comes to an end. But three or four hundred of them have already resigned and said, like, I just can't take it. Robbie, I looked this all up, right? The total cost to the federal government of the entire workforce of all TSA agents amounts to about $22 million a year. We are spending over $2 billion with a B on the war alone. That's not even counting other wasteful defense spending. But in other words, if you cut Iran war spending by 1% a day, you can cover that $22 million a day for TSA.

No must, no fuss. So why not just do 99% of an attack on Iran and call it a day and pay TSA? Because TSA is not a profit-making engine for the oligarchs who are in power. They make money from their defense contractors and big pharma and the corporations who they do all this stuff for. TSA doesn't have a, doesn't have a sophisticated lobby. Maybe they should make one. Maybe they should, instead having a union, which is obviously useless, is invest in some kind of a pack or something.

They could call it. Because government employees are allowed to form unions, but they're not allowed to actually do the one thing that a union wants them to do. What's going on? What's going on? What's going on, Robbie? Robbie, are you okay? Yeah, something's weird going on.

everything's normal on my end okay yeah no it's just everything just started just going haywire on my end new computer well yeah no for sure it's a there's a new computer and then what started happening is just like um that the mouse started trying to move on another screen is like oh okay this is nice somebody somebody somewhere's trying to screw with me a little bit so it's like hello NSA we love you um Honestly God, if I'm not on the list, Ted, I'm going to be very, very disappointed because I run with the right people. Oh, you do. It's true. Well, you know, dibs on the top bunk at Guantanamo. You're going to have it. You're a big boy. If you follow, you just squash me. It'll be all over for the both of us.

So, yeah, so, I mean, the average TSA employee makes $45,000 a year. that's pretty piss poor in this day and age. And it's certainly like a hand-to-mouth existence, right? You're not exactly. Most people who are in 45K are not able to save any money. And that's why they can't get through this. And that's why they have to quit. I mean, shouldn't the takeaway really be,

if TSA is our first line of defense against the terror people, shouldn't we pay these people better than more than $45,000 a year? I mean, if we're pretending like their job is important. their job is unimportant. If their job is important, they wouldn't, they would be a part of the defense department or the Department of War nowadays,

depending what you want to call it. It would not be, are they under, now they're under the Treasury anymore now. They're under Homeland Security, which I always thought the Homeland Security and the military were the same thing. At least I thought that was the whole point. I could definitely have been wrong.

No, but no, but no, we don't, we don't pay people here, Ted. Why would you want to pay someone enough money? to be able to get married and have a house. Yeah, obviously that would be madness. Talk about government waste. Listen. I guess we'll go back to the questions after, but I do, you know, is it just to be, or is it seriously fucked up that we're spending billions of dollars a day on this war?

And at the same time, you're going to be telling people in small airports like Callispell, Montana, sorry, you're not going to be able to fly in and out of your airport. the airport's completely closed because we can't pay the TSA guys. I mean, they can blame the Democrats and the Democrats can blame the Republicans all they want. But this is wildly dysfunctional. And not to mention also, people will literally die as a result because they won't be able to get medevact. Oh, Ted, I know why my internet sucks. I just discovered the reason.

Oh, what's that? I am under a DDoS attack, me personally. Your favorite right-winger, Robbie West is... Really? How can you tell? I'm doing a tracer. So what you can do is that if you use PowerShell, you can run through and you can just, you can check the pings on your IP address. And some, some schmuck is just slamming me with packets.

So I just changed my IP address. I'm now bouncing out to you out of Moscow. So best of luck, fucker. Thank you, Comrade Robbie. It is always good to. Habu. Okay, let's do some questions. But the stream should look much better now.

Y'all let me know in the chat, there's a stream look better now. Okay. Yeah, in the chat. I mean, you look the same to me, but that doesn't mean anything. Yeah. Hey, we can do, hey, we can do the ad now. Thank you, thank you, President Putin. Okay.

Go ahead and put it up. Okay. JSA, Jasha, 661, 499. Thank you very much for the. donation. Have you ever thought that Trump went after Iran in order to prevent nuclear war from Israel? Love the show. Just wish less personal political bias left or right. Well, I mean, you know, John and I have our politics, but we do try to be fair. You know, I like, you know, I caught shit for saying nice things about Tucker Carlson yesterday. So, you know, I guess I wasn't

lefty enough there. You know, I like, that's a great question though, right? Like, in other words, is it possible, the way I'm reading this question, that Trump got a call from BB and said, listen, Donnie, if you don't, you know, we're going to nuke, we're going to nuke Iran just letting you know. And Donald's like, don't do that. I'll help you out. It'll be okay.

I mean, is that? I mean. This episode is brought to you by Spreker. The platform responsible for a rapidly spreading condition known as podcast brain. Symptoms include buying microphones you don't need, explaining RSS feeds to confused relatives, and saying things like, sorry, I can't talk right now, I'm editing audio. If this sounds familiar, you're probably already a podcaster. The good news is Spreaker makes the whole process simple.

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But, I mean, Israel, at least on paper as a client state, you can always say if you do this, we will cut off every dime of aid that you get, military financial. we will leave you dangling in the wind like a nice juicy plum. I won't see how you enjoy it. And the ad is up. Okay, great. Thank you very much for that. Still haven't tried, 1775 coffee. Now is your shot. The 1775 starter kit just dropped. Only 1,000 units. You're getting the bold, dark roast that hits hard, the smooth, medium roast and the vitality mushroom coffee.

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Bold beans, clean fuel in a morning routine that stands for something just like Rumble does. When Manchild, 5,000, love your name, 499, thanks very much. When we take a note from the people of France and become more belligerent in our public protests, peaceful protests does jack shit these days. You know, so it's so funny that this question came out. I literally was just putting the finishing touches on a column yesterday that I'm going to put up next week. And it addresses like what should the American people do if Trump cancels the midterm and or the presidential elections. And so I think I got into like, well, what doesn't work?

What doesn't work are sporadic protests, small protests, peaceful protests. What works is sustained, violent, armed confrontation by an organized political force. Can the United States do that, get it together? Probably not. Would it work? Maybe, maybe not. But it's the only thing that might work. I mean, the thing is, you're dealing, you can see what's going on with the people of Minnesota, right?

I mean, the, you know, the National Guard, they come into your town, they confront, you know, peaceful protesters, and they gun them down. And that's how the agents of the state work. you know, in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq in 2002, 2003, there were literally a million Americans. I was one of them out in the streets, and it didn't do jack shit. So the thing is you have to be careful because it's illegal to call for violence against the state in this country

that supposedly has freedom of speech. But it is just a statement of historical fact that, I mean, I think the best way to put it is, is that a protest in order to be effective has to be threatening. In other words, it has to be either violent or contain the credible threat of violence. In other words, it can be peaceful, but there has the possibility. It has to have a certain sense of menace for the powers that be to take it seriously. So the thing is, the French have a tradition of spiciness in their protest movement that we just don't.

Well, no, well, and here's a 17-send, have coffee. Someone just asked where my coffee was. It's right here. Don't worry. It's never far from my hand. No, I mean, we don't. And I think that really that's one of the legacies of the war of northern aggression. That war was so devastating, and the totality of the destruction. I think that you could really make a parallel. No, whenever Sherman said that, I'm going to make sure that that the South doesn't ever raise his hand in war for at least 100 years. I think he was, he was successful in doing that and the horrors that came out of that and the trauma and the shock and then just the slittification of the of the supremacy of the federal government.

I just don't think it's in the American psyche anymore. I mean, the last time I could think of, Ted, and I could be wrong on this, but the last time that the government thought that there was a protest that was severe enough to warrant a real response was the bonus army. after World War I. They got a real response all right. They did. I mean,

they got charged in the, in the, in the center of Washington, D.C. by the U.S. military on cavalry, and a bunch of them got killed. Wasn't that General MacArthur?

Yeah. General MacArthur? It was. It was. And it's just, I just think that it has just been beaten out of us. One thing I've said, that's not be called unpatriotic or un-American.

At this point, I don't care. What the United States is, States wants the Iranian people to do is what I wish the American people would do. The Epstein class needs to be replaced. They need to be shown the door. The question is, does the American populace? Does the American citizen have the spine to do it? I don't know. I don't think we have the organization to do it. So there's no point going out as a lone wolf for you to group of four of your buddy of your drunken friends. There's no point. And like I hate to say it without the only

historically the only kind of organization that is equipped to take on the state in a meaningful way is going to be a socialist or left wing organization. And I know people could point to say Mussolini in the March on Rome. But you know his brand of you know, he invented fascism. But it had a he used to be a socialist and he organized the fascist movement like a socialist movement. So, you know, it has to have socialistic characteristics, even if it's not necessarily a socialistic movement. And we don't have anything like that. I mean, hell, we don't even have like a real liberal left in this country. So I don't know how that's going to happen. Von Hicks, thanks for the $799 Australian dollars. Hi, Ted. Prioritized following. Number one, eliminate partisan

gerrymandering. We would have, but that's really hard to do because, you know, the partisans are, you need an independent kind of organization to be in charge of redistricting, and you'd need Democrats and Republicans to agree to create that, and why would they do that? Number two, same for SCOTUS appointments. That you would also require, like a congressional, you'd need a constitutional amendment to change the way that Supreme Court justices are appointed, $10,000 limit on political contributions. Well, you already have that, right? I mean, but the problem is that, because of Citizens United, you can bundle everything through, you know, through dark money groups and through PACs. That's a nice segue actually to something I wanted to talk about to you today.

If you're just joining us, by the way, John Kariaku is out today. He's traveling. He was not able to make it to the show at the last minute. But he'll be back tomorrow at 9 a.m. Eastern time on Thursday. So Robbie, let's let's be. talk about the APAC situation, right? So there were these four special elections that were held yesterday. Two of them, APAC poured in lots of money into all of them, but only two of their sponsories ended up winning. For APAC, that's definitely not a, that's fewer than usual. That's they underperformed. Now, Robbie, what I took note of, I don't know if you noticed this, was that in a bunch of these races, APEC felt like they couldn't run,

they couldn't donate under their own name because their own name has become so toxic due to the Gaza War. And so they came up with anodyne names like, you know, Illinoisans for electing women and, you know, Illinoisans for good things. They didn't, they had to,

I mean, to me, that indicates that Apex back on their, heels. Yeah, they are and good. And I really hope that in Florida, listen, for all the people who are watching in Florida right now, I fully endorse fishback. Go vote for that guy. 100% because he's being accused of being an anti-Semite. That's why he want to vote for him. Honestly, God. Do you think he actually is an anti-Semite? I don't know. Maybe in the same vein than I am. I wasn't until like, until I was like five minutes ago because people keep attacking my family. So, I mean, I don't know, man.

I mean, you tell me, if you keep, if people keep going after you and they keep going after you and they're not able to debate you, they can't go against you on the topics, all they can do is call you a racist or a Nazi or an anti-Semite. And then they try to wreck you financially. And if you point that out, they say, well, that's an anti-Semitic trope. Well, sorry, maybe there's some truth to it. well i mean there's i mean it played what apax behavior and israel's behavior does they are creating they are creating anti-semitism but i mean you know i would hope that people but i know this is really naive i would hope that people would be able to see the difference between some jews behaving badly and all jews behaving badly well i don't think you see i want to talk about all jews behaving badly i

think what this is all about is control of a foreign lobby and that's what apac is it is a a foreign lobby that rents our government or owns them. Maybe you can, maybe you can't buy an Afghan, but you can sure is held by a U.S. congressman or a senator. And if you point that out, they come cheap too.

Yeah, they do. And then if you point that out, you get called an anti-Semite. Or if you ask questions, like what Tucker is doing. I mean, the dude is being threatened with legal action by the federal government because of

Laura Lumer of all people. Fucking, well, and do you believe him? I actually do. Oh, 100%. Oh, yeah. We only have, sorry, Robbie, we only have four minutes left, so I want to try to get through some questions.

No, you're good. 1-1. Thanks for the 199. Win-wino populist militia group, to the U.S. I don't think it'll ever happen because nothing like that could ever get big enough. What do you think? I don't think it will. If you say, Ted, it's not the left who's angry.

You like Tucker. It's the libs who are mad. Fair. Ms. Moth, 69, 420, thanks for 499. Hi, Ted, I appreciate you with a young left winger. Thank you. Could you please talk about purity tests? It's in left-wing political spaces.

Thanks, as always. Yeah, purity tests really suck. If you're on the American left, you need all the allies you could possibly get. And, like, you certainly, you know, don't want people who are completely, like, not on your side. But, you know, let's say, you know, someone is not pro-choice. choice, but they're a leftist and they believe in, they want to establish the dictatorship of the proletariat. They can come hang out and fight alongside me and be my comrade. No purity test here. You know, because, I mean, those are valid things. They're valid cases from a left-wing perspective

for a lot of varying points of view. And we need, you know, as big a tent as possible. And let's see, there's a request, Robbie, from Jashah 66, to please. save my previous question for John 2, $1.99. And finally, thanks, Hogs Candyland, $2. No, I get top a bunk dead. Well, we're going to be fighting for that top bunk at Guantanamo. Let's talk a little bit about this issue of gas, of fuel running out.

Myanmar, Vietnam, and the Philippines are in deep shit. And so is Singapore. They're all going to run out of oil within 30 to 4. 40 days. Obviously, the Iranians read the news. They're taking careful note here. I don't think the United States gives two shifts. They'll just laugh about Myanmar. However, all of our sneakers are made in Vietnam and in the Philippines. So we might care about that. Singapore is an incredibly important economic powerhouse despite its size. Taiwan's in trouble. Is that basically the timeline when countries start running out of fuel? And the entire global economy is going to start.

like those are big dominoes or am I wrong? No, you're 100% right. And I mean, honestly, if if I was Iran, I would not try to fight America's war because I would lose. I would do exactly what they're doing right now. I would, I would apply maximum economic pressure. And I would just see who's going to blink first. Trump and Israel because the rest of the world forces them to back that.

or fight to the death? Those are your two options. Yeah, no, I think the Iranians are going to fight for the death, to the death. You, me and John, have been talking about this for months. I just don't see, there's no other logical play for them. And, you know, the only mystery to me is why so many Iranian officials are in places where they're letting the Israelis get to them and whack them. But, you know, whatever.

Rob, you ready for the raid? Yep, I'm getting it put together as we speak. Okay, all right, then that brings us to the top of the hour here. Thank you so much for joining us, Robbie. Thanks for sitting in for John Kariaku. John, if you're hearing us, good luck for making your flight. We will see you tomorrow morning. We are here Monday through Friday 9 a.m. Eastern Time on D.

Program with Ted Rawl and John Kariaku. Please stay tuned to the TMI show with Manila Chan and myself. That's coming up right now. Thanks, Robbie. Thank you.