DeProgram with John Kiriakou and Ted Rall - Canada Retaliates Against U.S. with 50% Tariffs | DeProgram with Ted Rall and Jamarl Thomas

Episode Date: August 27, 2026

Conflict reporter/writer/cartoonist Ted Rall and political analyst Jamarl Thomas deprogram you from mainstream media every weekday at 9 AM ET. Today we discuss:• Canadian trade officials acknowledge that their retaliatory tariffs of up to 50% on $20 billion in American goods are intended to exert pressure on key U.S. states. The tariffs could hit states in the Midwest and Northeast particularly hard.• Meta reaches a landmark settlement with 47 states, the District of Columbia and U.S. territories, agreeing to pay up to $17.1 billion in penalties and make major changes to its products over claims it endangered children with addictive social media platforms. The settlement effectively ends a bellwether federal trial in the U.S. Northern District of California in Oakland, where California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey were seeking roughly $200 billion over accusations that Meta harmed children. Meta’s stock rose on the news, closing up just over 1 percent. The company is valued at $1.47 trillion and most recently generated $60.8 billion in quarterly revenue. The full value of Meta’s payout depends on whether other social media companies also settle with the states and agree to financial penalties and product changes. Meta will initially pay about $12 billion. It will pay an additional $5 billion if Snap, TikTok and YouTube also settle with the states and agree to financial penalties and product changes.• The massive expenditure of U.S. munitions in the Middle East is worrying Asian allies and frustrating Pentagon officials overseeing the Indo-Pacific, who fear that the prolonged war with Iran could undermine U.S. readiness for a conflict with China. One Taiwanese official said they expect “significant delays” of Pac-3 Patriot missiles due to the drain on supplies as the Pentagon has depleted most of its interceptor stockpile in the Middle East. Japan has been warned by the Pentagon of possible delays in defense shipments, including Tomahawk cruise missiles.LIVE ON YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/@DeProgramShowLIVE ON RUMBLE: https://rumble.com/c/DeProgramShowhttps://x.com/tedrallhttps://x.com/JamarlThomas#tedrall #jamarlthomas #news #politics

Good morning, 8th, August 27th, 2026. This is the program with Ted Rall and Jamaral Thomas. We're here Monday through Friday, 9 to 10 a.m. Eastern Time. Q&A shows Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. The Fridays are exclusive. I've got to make sure Trent wants us to remind you that if you are a subscriber to the show, we're doing the very first of our exclusive hangouts for subscribers only this evening at 7 p.m. Eastern time. So basically, the way this is going to work is I need you to email the show with your

name and YouTube username in order to verify your membership status. This is only for tier three members. These are people who pay $19.99 a month. So the email for the show, which I'm going to put up in a second, is deprogram podcast at Gmail. That's deprogram podcast.com.com.com at gmail.com. Just a reminder, this is only for the tier three members. At 7 p.m. Eastern time, you do the adjustments. You'll get a reply with a link to a stream yard session. You will click that link to join.

This is important. You have to make sure that your microphone and camera are active. They're not when you, by default, they're not on. The chat goes until 8 p.m. So you'll be hanging out with me and JT. Robbie, are you going to be joining us for that? I will be, yeah. And we may have a special guest who wants to debate yours truly,

depending on if he's man enough to accept the invitation. He better be a tier three member. I don't know if he is or not, but either way, it's going to be spirited. All right. Okay. Here, I'm going to do, all right, so, oh, I think I am able to do the screen share for this one. Let's see. Yeah, here we go.

All right, I'm putting this guy up. This is the all the info for what's going on to. Let's see. Maybe I can't do it. Maybe I'm too dumb. Oh, there we go. That could be. Oh, my God.

Yeah, it's really a. Boomer. Yeah. There it is. All right, I guess. Okay. Thanks, Robbie. So yeah, that's all the stuff that I just said.

I'll leave it up there for a little while. Just, you know, okay, a little while has now transpired. I'll just go over what we're talking about today. And then I got to sort of throw you something that came across my feed. Just this morning I wanted to talk to you about a little bit because I feel like I had a realization about the nature of propaganda this morning. I wanted to test it out against you, Jamar. So, nice. Canada is fighting back.

Who knew that they had it in them? Well, you know, they do drink hard and they play hockey. So we know that they're down with violence. And they know how to kill indigenous people. And the indigenous people know how to kill animals. So, okay, you know, they're not nonviolent. Meta has reached sort of a big tobacco-style settlement with 47 states. Yes.

$17 billion. Texas has a separate, because everything's different in Texas. Texas is bigger. $1 billion separate settlement with them. You know, the indications are that this is probably a good deal. for meta because their stock went up and then you know we know we've been talking here on the show about how the u.s is out of missiles and now sadly Taiwan and japan are worried that we might not be able to have enough missiles in order to defy a big war against against china so uh which is so

funny it's like oh it's no it's funny as shit i mean it's it's like like i love it's i love the way that we think about this from this kind of U.S. perspective. Oh, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I'm interrupting. Is it? No, go ahead. Go. Okay, well, it's the perspective of the people who write these articles, I'm fascinated by. Because somebody had to write down, and with all the seriousness in the world, say, well, Japan and Taiwan are worried that the United States is not going to be able to fight a war against China for defense of something. Either China or Taiwan or I'm sorry, either Japan or Taiwan. And it's like, dude, they, Iran that is nowhere near the industrial capacity of China has just taken what was amounted to trillions of dollars of assets

in the Middle East, meaning from the standpoint of the wars and everything else, and rolled that up in six months. I mean, in six months, you have articles that are saying the U.S. has effectively been pushed out of the Middle East. And Even NBC News reporting billions of dollars and damage to the U.S. basis, I think they call it unprecedented amount of damage. Like, we've never seen this level of damage in any of the wars that the United States fought, especially in the modern era. Ridiculous. And so it's kind of like, okay, so if you can't deal with Iran, why are we having a conversation about China? You were never able to defend Taiwan. You are never able to do it.

You shouldn't even, yeah. You should, you know, here's the thing, too, you probably shouldn't even pretend like. you could, right? It's like it doesn't help you. Everyone knows your, everyone knows you're bullshitting. Everyone knows you're lying. And it's kind of like at a certain point, are you lying to your own people? Are you lying to yourselves? Like, what is it?

I mean, like, seriously? I don't even want to enumerate the reasons why the China thing is impossible, but it's impossible. We can enumerate that later, I guess. Okay, let me show you some, let me show you this propaganda thing. Okay, this is on X this morning. All right. So let me, okay.

I might need, Robbie, I might need your help to put this up here again. Okay. So it might be hard to see this, but this is the official Twitter feed, X feed, for the Department of Homeland Security. And there's Trump, and he says, and he's inexplicably under an umbrella. And he very chillingly says, did you remain loyal? Now, of course, this is very like McCarthyist, very 1950s. And also, this comes at the same time that he sicked the Department of Homeland Security on Ilhan Omar, right? He's investigating to see, I mean, you know, look, as Barillas of the NKVD famously said, you show me the man, I'll show you, I'll find the crime, right?

I mean, everybody's, there's so many laws, everybody's broken some law, even if you're a quote-unquote law-abiding citizen. So, I mean, a lot of immigrants, you know, have, you know, you know, kind of inconsequentially wrong answers on their immigration applications. A peer dismissing. A T. Yeah. Exactly. I mean, you can always find something.

So, I mean, it doesn't mean that the person shouldn't be in the country. It just means, like, you know, it's kind of like, it's a technicality because it's so ridiculous. So, all right. So I was looking at this and it's like, I don't want to get into the old hill, Ilhan Omar. I said, you know, we can talk about that another time. But I was thinking about the difference how this is fascist propaganda and how it fits into us,

and I, you know, I collect propaganda posters from communist, you know, Soviet Union and from China and from Nazi Germany and everything, Vichy, France. And I realized this morning, I'm like, I just turned 63 yesterday, and I'm like, okay, so this is my, this is like my realization. fascism is about fear, right? Like, did you remain loyal? It's like if you look at Nazi propaganda, there's a lot of glowering. There's a lot of scowls. If you look at Donald Trump,

you know, he's actually a pretty smiley dude in real life, but he practices, famously practices his scowls, like for his mugshot and everything. He says that he wants to look like Churchill, who was a right-wing politician. But the propaganda of the right, like Nazi Germany was like very all fear-based like you know do what you're supposed to or else it's not really inspired communist propaganda which is still propaganda it's still from a you know from authoritarian regimes but notice everybody's smiling right there's like brighter colors um there's uh you know red and yellow and there's flowers like in the chinese stuff um if you look at nazi propaganda There's a lot of sort of darker colors, a lot of gray palettes of the colors that are there.

It's a lot of shadows. And it's so that's, I realize, like, that's the big difference between fascism and communism, right? Like far right, far right ideology, the way it enforces itself is through propaganda of fear. Do what we say or else. Whereas communism is attempting to inspire. you. It's like, let's all pull together. Let's build socialism. Let's make the country better. Let's improve our productivity. Right. Let's let's all do it together. Now, I just thought it was, I don't know, is that like an obvious observation or? I don't know if it's obvious. What is that book?

The 90 days that shook the world or something like that. I can't think that exactly name of it. Yeah, it's 18 days, right? But it's John Reed. Yeah. That book is emancipator. Like, meaning that book is, it's so, for one, it glosses over a lot of blood. Right. Well, that's true. But it's so, it's infectiously optimistic. And I think that's your point. Yeah.

Like, for example, when I was in Malaysia and there's this picture of a man and woman holding a globe and they're standing up, you know, like they're moving into the future. Okay, that's optimistic. Right. But we are going to build a better world. That's what we can do. And we can build that better world together. Now, obviously, it's a classic over a lot.

Sure. But it's the mindset of this is what we're trying to do. And even Soviet literature. Like if there was, oh, what is the name of that book? What is the name of that book? It's basically a person comes back. He lives on Mars. And he's bringing people to Mars.

And it's basically Soviet idea of what communism, was if it was transplanted to another planet. Basically, if you didn't have the factors that are the complex factors on Earth and you transplanted there, what does this look like? And again, it's this idea of we're building a system. We're building a society. We're building a new model. We're building this new stuff. Fascism, it's more blunt, brutal, I suppose.

I mean, even in the United States, in the way that it is operated. This is a vicious system. And, you know, Trump can practice the scowls all he want and everything else. The system is, I guess your point is, there's similarities between the way, let's say, the Nazis, or the way the fascists in Germany or in Italy, or for that matter, in the way that Trump effectively operates its government. Yeah, I can go with that. I got to be honest, I'm not overtly well-vers on all of the German post-us and everything else in order to make this kind of proportional analysis of how many were scowling and threatening. Trust me. Yeah. Right. I'll take your word on it for this one because I know you, you followed this stuff immensely.

So no, I accept that. I didn't notice it, but I accepted it. I knew the Soviet thing was more emancipatory. Like, we're going to build this great system and this great world and we're going to change the world and blah, blah, blah. They meant it. They were true believers. But yeah, the fashion system was terrifying. I mean, in general. Yeah, and it's like, and that's the thing, right? It's not trying to seduce you. communism is trying to, socialism is trying to seduce you. And that's kind of like, and these, both of these systems are kind of differentiated from, you know, authoritarian regimes that are neither really left wing or right wing,

like, you know, Turkmenbashi or, you know, Saddam Hussein or, I mean, you know, Saddam Hussein was more left than right, but still not really a communist. But yeah, that's cult of personality. That's, look at me, I'm awesome, and I've got it covered. and, you know, we stick with me and everything's going to be cool. That's a different thing, too. You know, and if you just look at, you know, the administration, right, this administration, they scowl, they glare, you know, they, you know, it's not,

I mean, about the only optimistic messaging that you see coming out of them is about, like, oh, look at our great reflecting pool, or look how cool, you know, the ballroom is going to be. Look how pretty the, you know, look at the race cars going around D.C. And it's kind of like, it's kind of like little boy cool. Like, look at what we did. Like, my Legos are bigger than your Legos. But it's, I don't know. I just thought it was, I just thought it was interesting.

And I think that's in a way why fascism is short-lived. I mean, because you, you use, fear is just not really a powerful motivator for a long time. It's a powerful motivator. not for year after year after year, people just get sick of it. I think it depends on power structure, but yeah. And by the way, Trump does run with the idea of we're going to have the greatest economy in the history of economies. I had the biggest presidential event than any other presidential event in the history of presidential events.

He does that. Like, we've got the greatest health care system in the history of the world once we get rid of Obama care. Hey, what are you going to replace it with? Something fantastic. Like, he, he does play that card. But that's not inspirational. It's not inspirational, right? It's not asking you to join, right? It's not saying, like, you know, like, let's do this together, right? Like, in socialism, it's always, like, big crowds of people moving together with flowing red flags and, you know, like, he wants to be obey. There's a difference. And he wants to brag about what he's supposedly already done or what.

what he's, or what more likely what he's already done or what he might be planning to do. But that's more in the, that's more in the strong man, you know, Gaddafi motif. Well, more than that, no, there's a, there's a ancient Greek general. I can't remember what his name, what his name was right now. I'm getting a brain fart. It was not Socrates. But he said, he said that constant exposure to danger breeds, breeds contempt for them. And that's why fear doesn't, there comes.

a point where what terrifies you no longer terrifies you anymore you said it yeah that's yeah that's the way human beings are wired rob that that's the difference between fear and hope yeah and i think and i think that like trump did he he did offer hope in 2016 did you know only i can fix it i will rebuild i will make america great again i will you know bring coal back coal mining and beautiful jobs back to West Virginia. I'll reopen the carrier factory in Indiana. I'll reopen the Lordstown plant in Ohio. Those are all. I mean, that's that's hope. That sounds still like the same I have the biggest ballrooms. The economy is going to be the greatest in the world. Well, he said he was going to make Gary, he was going to bring Gary Indiana back to life.

That used to be like one of the major industrial hubs of the country. It no longer exists. It's dead. That's true. And so if you're going out, that's one of the reasons why I supported. We talked about this yesterday. I knew what I was going to get from a establishment Republican. I knew what I was going to get with Hillary Clinton. Trump offered hope of something different.

Burning it down, burning it down, doing a hard reset, blowing up the system that literally has destroyed the country. Now, looking back, it's easy to look back. you know for over 10 years of time and say well Robbie you're obviously misguided you were wrong well obviously now yeah because out of the benefit of hindsight but at the time this is a guy who called George W Bush a war criminal put Jeb on a cross on a on a national stage yeah and blew up the Republican primary system through force of will and self-funding He got credit. He got credit.

No, he revolutionized. I mean, I don't think particularly the Democrats, but even the Republicans, I don't think they've caught up to the innovations in campaigning that Trump initiated in 2016. But that's just that if you remember in the very beginning,

he didn't even have a campaign thing. Like, he didn't even have a floor game. Right. He had a closet in Trump Tower. Yeah. With no stuff on. Thing, yeah. And what he had is

that he but one of the reasons why in no j t you talked about this before no the apocalypse at youtube unleashed and big part of that is because there's so many people like me you just normal people just getting over on youtube making channels and we were actively campaigning for this guy who is complete outsider yeah and and his punchline what the hell do you have to lose is magical well it's I mean, it's kind of not, though, right? That's a big thing, isn't that? Well, at the time.

I have Russian friends, and my Russian friends always say the problem with you Americans is you think that if things are shitty, they can't get worse. In Russia, we know that's not true. I think it always do worse. There's always worse. Always. I mean, my grandfather told me this about, like, how there was this sadistic SS guard in his camp at Buchenwald, and they were terrified.

of him. And then they heard like, oh, he's being, that guy, you know, Hans is being transferred to the Eastern Front. But rather than being happy, they were really, all the prisoners were really glum and scared because you're like, look, okay, Hans is a syndic bastard, but we know Hans. We know how to suck up to Hans. We know how to, like, you know, stay on his good side. We know Hans. Like, who knows what's going to replace Hans, right? That's, I mean, you got to be careful. You know, what do you have to lose? You have a lot to lose, you know? That's a good point. That will you know versus the one you don't.

Well, I mean, can you have representative style of government without hope baked into the system? I don't think you can't know. Because you've got to have, you've got to have hope that you can change course.

Yes. And that's why Trump offered. Of course. I agree with it. And then the entire thing implodes. So, I mean, that was Trump's masterpiece.

That's what he did. And I think that at the time, he didn't have heard that he had a really terrible candidate to run against too. Yeah. Oh, for sure. Clinton and, I mean, Clinton was the worst candidate in the world to be put up at that particular time to run.

He had an anti-establishment election. Right. And she was literally the most establishment candidate that you could come up with. True. Yeah. Like, you could just throw a dart at a random senator other than her and done better. Yes. Cory Booker, done, you know.

I think you still have the same issue. I think the issue is you have. an establishment candidate. Cori Bucco was every bit as much as establishment. 100%. In some ways, more. He took more Wall Street. He might have been a better candidate, though. He might have not have taken it for granted in the way to sheet it. I mean, Clinton ran the race. I mean, he comes from, he's not of the people anymore, but he comes from the people. I mean, he's from Newark. He, you know, he got covered with, you know, his body is covered

with burns from saving his, his neighbor from a fire. It's also covered with money. Yeah, that's true too. Yeah. Yeah, he is. I think it over money. Like money bandings all over the fuck. Got some comments. Maybe Blue Funk, thanks for the don't know. Guys on this topic on the Trump scowl, I grew around chaotic families, but the scowl feels like kind of an evangelical thing that seems strange.

That seems strange to me. Thoughts on how his scowl reads to others. A scowl comes across as evangelical? Robbie, you're the deep program evangelical. Tell us. I don't see an evangelical component. And I think he's trying to make himself look strong. He's trying to make himself feel like he's set apart.

Really what he's doing is he's showing himself to be a tired, weak old man. Yeah. He's like, I mean, yeah, he said that he told one of his, you know, he wants to look like Churchill. And so. Why would you want to look like the guy who destroyed Britain? Well, I mean, no one knows what a pastor. supposedly won world war two right has as there any nation except for the ones who got bombed to believing that lost more than britain did no i mean churchill i think churchill was an asshole but like

you know i mean destroyed the british nation but that's not his reputation right well i understand it's because the winners write the history books but if you but if you actually just go through that's why he was out immediately at the end of the war right yeah i mean well what Why would you? I mean, he called it. One percent of the territory around the globe after the first World War. Yeah.

And the thing, I mean, he lost everything through the gates open. He signed the Bretton Woods Agreement. So if that's your, if that's your future is to mortgage your nation and peg your currency onto another country, by definition, you are no longer great. That's why it's not called. Yeah, it's called Britain.

maybe the UK if someone is feeling generous well it's still called great Britain but yeah well where who calls it great it's the united isn't it the united kingdom of great britain and northern Ireland that's that's the official name but seriously I mean who in the world because it used to be a day where you could take a sterling certificate and that was good anywhere the British pound was the unit of measure globally it used to be even if no one could understand all those shillings. And now you have more than half of the domestic population.

You can't even get jobs because there's so much pressure from automation, AI, and immigration. What's great about it. You're kidding. Trump's not thinking about Churchill's ideology. He's just, this is about marketing. He's thinking he's thinking

Churchill will help win the war. He defended Britain. I'm defending America. It's that thing. I don't think he's looking further into it. Well, that just, God, I hope that they are wrong, the chel are wrong, because if that's how shallow and stupid Americans are now, it's bad. We shall fight them on the beaches. We shall fight them on the streets.

We shall fight, I mean, it's just like, dude. We will fight them in the porn stars bedrooms. Right. We will fight them on the Queen's Island. We will fight them at the wrestling match. No bullshit. I think this is all just, I mean, look, what of depth has Trump demonstrated to you to give you any impression that this goes beyond surface deep? Like, meaning when he's Trump Tower, he doesn't own it, he just putting his name on it. And when he's trying to present this stuff, I guarantee you it is, I want to look a particular way. It doesn't require substance. No. It's all marketing. Totally.

Like, I mean, like, Iran is going to end the, you know, we're almost at the war, we're at the closing of the war with Iran. We're going to close it with Iran. He said it 40 some times. Like, you mean, this is not a person with a certain amount of depth or they care about the honesty of a particular situation. This is all about optics. It's about image.

He has no knowledge of history other than living what he lives in personally. Right. That's it. I don't know. I mean, I'll go after I say this, but you know, when Lee surrendered at Appomatics on April 9th, 1865, when Jefferson Davis found out, because he ordered Lee to continue fighting, he wanted to lead just to go to the Appalachians and just basically this way he had a guerrilla war. Lee rescinded the order of the president of the Confederate States of America and Davis went to a rage.

And Davis is like, how dare this man rescind the order? And his aide, Benjamin Butler, said, Mr. President, he lost the one. Robert Lee, General Lee said 300,000 men is enough. Yeah. That's Churchill's fatal problem. He, he was something that we always talk about the Japanese of Hirohito. You'll charge the beaches of bamboo spears. Winston Churchill was the exact same way. He would have emulated his entire population for the, for the sake of his hatred of the German people. And the only reason that, the only reason that he was on the winning side is because FDR bailed him out with American blood and American treasure. Well, also, FDR, I mean, Churchill was also right about Hitler.

Like, meaning that's true. Chamberlain, who was doing the whole appeasement strategy. He was wrong. He was like demonstratively wrong about the type of person that Hitler was. Churchill got it right, which is the reason. Although it is also true that Hitler was not going to invade Great Britain. Well, also, it's also true. I mean, he thought Hitler's theory was that, like, the German, that, you know, there was so much German in the English royal family that, that they, you know, they're kind of like natural.

allies and at bare minimum, they would just leave each other alone. Well, they always happen. Operation C-line was an explicit effort to try to evade Britain. I mean, even the Battle of Britain in the air, was it in order to have Operation C-Wil? Hitler didn't want that, though. Hitler did not want war with England. Well, one thing I think about, and a lot of people don't realize this, that the German people and the English people never had a war with each other.

And all of European history, think about this, for over. a thousand years before world war one why is that because france is in between well because they're natural allies just like the united states and russia could be natural allies if we were ruled by or the united states and iran no and the fact of the matter is i'm going to take some flag from this too stolom was a monster and so is hitler so if you have to choose from one monster the other how about choose neither one wait a minute why do you think germany and britain were natural allies well because they both for a couple different reasons one that has shared history that the saxons were germanic people yeah that's true second no the the france was the bigger threat for both of for the

holy roman empire and also for england you got to remember uh william normandy was french he's the one who conquered the saxons he's the one who tried to impose french law and tried to erase english identity they remembered this stuff and the holy roman empire had to deal the there was all these problems too. Yeah, there are definitely close ties between, you know, cultural and ethnic ties between Germany and England. Yeah, for sure. I mean, there was never a war, like, no,

even in the war of the Austrian secession, Frederick the Great, Germany, well, at the Holy Roman Empire, Prussia, and England fought together for eight years against the Spanish and the French. That was always, that was always the dichotomy there. Rural 1 was not a natural war.

All right, we're running low on time. Sorry to be like that, but I'm good to be like that. Okay. All right, what do you want to talk about first, JT? Canada, meta, or the fact that we don't have any bombs left? Let's not go matter real quick. Well, I mean, the bombs thing definitely, but I want to talk about meta real quick.

Just so I'm understanding, because I want to make sure I understand the lawsuit. They effectively find meta because they're saying that meta is bad for kids and that they went with a policy of trying to ensure that kids stay on as long as possible. And so they're hitting them with a lawsuit for billions of dollars. $200 billion. Am I getting that right? Yeah.

So basically, yeah, it's a product, it's a series, it's a class action series of product liability suits. That it's analogous to big tobacco and that it basically says, if used as directed, this product is bad for you, right? So under American law, if that's what tobacco went down for. If you do, you know, if you use this out directed, you can get lung cancer and die. So if you use social media as directed, you know, your kid might commit suicide or just become depressed or whatever. So the thing is, so the state attorneys general all filed suit except for a few states. And they basically sued for a total of over $200 billion.

This is a settlement. So META decided, okay, okay, we'll pay and we'll make some changes. It's a complicated settlement. But basically, they have to pay $17 billion. The states get all, you know, are going to divvy up that cash. And then it's going to pay. And there's a, they structured, Mehta's lawyers structured the deal to incentivize it so that like their competitors like TikTok and Snapchat and YouTube would also, if they settle with the states, then they'll, then Mehta will pay even more an extra $5 billion. So this could be a $22 billion settlement.

this seems weird to me. Meta's job is to get people to watch meta. That's their job. When they create social media, what is the point of social media, if not for people to be social on social media? And what it's every incentive in the world

for Google, Meta, Instagram, TikTok, pick any particular company, is to keep eyes on screen. If they could have you sit there, but 10 hours out of a day, they would want you to do that because it's their best interest for you to do that. How are they being hit for something that is their business business? It's the child aspect of it. It's the, and I think it's more political. Well, I think the whole point is that the parents have been complaining for years that

they can't, there's nothing they can do, right? And I think that's as a parent myself, I can tell you, That's true, right? I mean, basically, it's impossible to keep your kid out of, you know, out of Snapchat. I mean, you know, it's like there's, you know, it's like, are you over 18? Yes. I mean, it's like there's no controls, right? So there was no attempt to control it. It's sort of like if the tobacco, well, the tobacco companies were marketing to children, right?

With flavored cigarettes and then, and now flavored e-cigarettes. They were marked, you know, Joe Camel, who, inexplicably they thought was cute to kids. I mean, I think he was gnarly and looked like a penis. But what do I know? But like they, you know, I think it's the kid aspect of it. And I think, you know, it's more political than anything else. Because it's like, you know, by all means, you know,

addict our adults to tobacco and social media, but not our innocent poor children. And so, so that's, I think they're going to get their asses kicked. I have a problem with the lawsuit from a legal point of view. See, I have trouble with it from a libertarian point of view. It's, it's, it just seems very weird to be like, okay, we are going to allow these social media companies. And then we're going to ding them. So now the social media company has to do something to inhibit people from watching its product when the product is based on people watching the product.

Okay, how does that work? Well, it's like the tobacco companies sold a legal product in the United States for two centuries. You know, it was so legal that they had corporate headquarters in major cities and that you could see, you know, from miles away. And they advertised in national magazines and on television. You know, it was legal. And then it's like, and then you're going to sue them for, like, if it's kind of like, if it was dangerous, which obviously tobacco is dangerous, it should be banned by the FDA or whatever other regulatory agency is required. I mean, it should be regulated. But like, you let people sell a product and then, you know, you nail them for it.

I mean, that said, this is... How do you regulate this? Just say, okay, well, kids can only watch two hours and we're going to put some kind of structure in our thing to damage our business model to keep kids from watching two hours. Like this... And by the way, there's a difference to me between tobacco that causes cancer, emphysema, heart disease, etc. as opposed to people watching social media. I mean, like it, it may rock their brain, but it's not cancer. Well, I mean, kids have died, right?

I mean, because they've been bullied online. They've been, you know, they've been encouraged to commit suicide via social media. So literally. Like this hard. Well, okay, but, you know, like when I was bullied as a kid, the bullying stopped when I left the school. You know, it's like, this is like, there's no respite. It's 24-7.

What kills more people? The entire world sees it. What kills more people? Alcohol or social media? Or what? What kills more people? Alcohol or social media? Which one has a higher cost?

I would imagine alcohol. Then once you just ban everything then and just pay one into a nice little prison so that way they can have any agreement. Right there. That's what that's, it's that part. Like, it feels like a nanny state stuff again. And it feels like the state are just taking advantage in order to get plenty out of the company. Meta is a very unpopular company. Sure.

Mark Zuckerberg is an unappealing personality, and he's the public face of Facebook. I mean, I think the politics of this are a huge part of it. I mean, Silicon Valley has been incredibly arrogant, and when people have a problem, let's say someone posts something that harms you and that you cannot pick up a phone and say, hey, my ex-girlfriend posted a nude picture of me on Facebook. Can you remove that? there's literally no way to do that. And so, and also, I remember reading this startling statistic. Now, this is way out of date, right? This was like five years ago. But basically at the time,

Facebook employed, I think, about 10,000 employees. They had twice the market cap of General Motors. General Motors directly or indirectly through suppliers employed two and a half million Americans. Wow. And now, so like the footprint of a company like General Motors, you could have a product liability case against, you know, big auto, right? You could say, you know, your cars crash all the time. People die every day in cars. The pollution is, you know, destroying the planet. All that would be true.

But, you know, people would say, no, no, no. GM, we love GM so much that even in a case of an economic downturn, we approve of the government giving them billions. of dollars to save them. Because why? Because they're too big to fail. They have so many jobs. Facebook isn't too big to fail. If Facebook went away, literally dozens of Americans would lose their jobs.

It would not matter at all. And everybody would just jump over to other social media companies. It would not matter. You just delete that app. That's it. Ted, why are you going to sell these H-1B visa holders going to be losing their jobs at at headquarters? That's a good point.

Yeah, that's another thing, too. You need to seriously check your racism right now because it's unacceptable. It's untenable. It's over the mayor. I am very sorry. There's like all these good immigrants trying to take America jobs. They're not a popular company. Well, I get that. I do get that.

But my argument is not coming from the popular to Facebook. Obviously, I'm not making a rah-rah argument for Zuckerberg or for Facebook in and of itself. I think it's just, it just feels very strange. like a it's a little bit more esoteric than to just say somebody gets cancer, heart disease, and phozena. So that's why I'm taking out this notion

of cigarettes as a comparison because I think these things are radically different. From the standpoint of kids' brains turning to mush, I agree with you, true, but it's their model and we let them set that model up. And now we're saying you need to do

something. The parents can't deal with parental responsibility. And so now we need the company to somehow decapitate itself. Okay, fair enough. No, lightly gilded. Okay, does that apply to Twitter, TikTok, Instagram, et cetera? Because we're basically, we're going to pick favorites. We're going to damage Facebook in lieu of these other companies.

Right. Well, it definitely, it definitely applies to TikTok and Snapchat. I don't know. I'm dodged about this. No, I mean, I think the legal aspect is hard because it's like, I think if you'd, I mean, I think basically, look, if Mark Zuckerberg were a warm, cuddly dude and he was in point two and a half million Americans, this would not have happened. I mean, look at the shit we put in our foods.

Nobody complains about that. Like, generally recognize safe. Okay, in Europe, they wouldn't touch that stuff. Wouldn't touch it. And it's like, okay, so it's very possible that people are getting cancer and other diseases as a result of the American diet because we allow corporations to maximize their profit at the expense of Americans' health. Nobody takes issue with that. Facebook. I mean, like, McDonald's exists.

Although you can commit suicide, you know, because of suicidal ideation, right? You would probably be pretty fucking upset. I mean, there's been, I mean, there have been suicide. Look, I take your point. Look, I think the solution here probably is not. Okay, let's talk about the money, too. I think this part's really super important, right? So, okay, so if the government was really just interested in solving the problem,

it wouldn't be, money wouldn't be involved. Like I always say about traffic tickets. Like, if you're just interested in, you know, just getting people to solve. slow down because it's safer, then you just have a point system. Every time someone gets a ticket, they get closer to having their license suspended. And so that's the incentive, right? You don't, you don't need to charge people money and it only affects poor people. It doesn't, you know, rich people don't care. They just pay the ticket or hire an attorney. And so this is the same sort of thing. This is a shakedown. This is like a, this is an opportunity for the states, right? Like, I don't

think this money is going to the parents of suicided kids or kids now or it's not going there's not going to be a slush a trust fund for kids who are suffering from depression to go you know get a 350 an hour psychologist right that none of that's going to happen what like let's look at what happened with the big tobacco settlement this will be exactly the same it became a slush fund for all sorts of things that were unrelated supposedly the tobacco settlements were going to to go for a bunch of public education campaigns about the dangers of tobacco. That never happened, right? So the states used it to pay down deficits, to give their state employees and state legislators raises, to buy new computers that they had been putting off for years, oh, maybe things that needed to happen, but it was a slush fund. And it was like, I mean, here in New York State,

there was a community of Orthodox Jews who suffered from low fertility rates due to inbreeding. And in upstate New York, did it inbreeding? Inbreeding. Yeah. And basically, yeah, I mean, that's why they're fertility. That's why they had low fertility. And anyway, they applied to the state for tobacco funds to get help to pay for IVF. I mean?

Like shit like that, right? It was just sort of like a. unrelated like bonanza oh cash that's what this is this is definitely uh you know this is my libertarian side speaking too i mean it's cynical it's not going to address the issue it's not like oh now with 17 billion dollars there ought to be a public health clinic for under 18 year olds in every city right from now on forever you know we're going to hire staffers like oh are you feeling down are you being bullied, pop into the community psych center and we'll take care of you. We got your back. Uh-uh. None of that's going to happen. I mean, the idea that we're going to make this argument, or that they are going to make

this argument that this is about suicide because there are people who are online and they commit suicide because of stuff that happens online. Again, kids were committing suicide before they got to this point. And any technology that we just voice into the public without any concern for the impact on the public. There's studies that direct correlation. Well, there may be a correlation from the standpoint of, I guess I'm trying to make the point of any social entity that you allow people to communicate in such a way, obviously they're going to be consequences associated with, especially when you're dealing

with kids. I guess I'm saying it's in the bricks. It would be this way for any device that allow people to communicate off hours and everything else that would allow, let's say, bullies. or people who will behave in such a way to go after people who are weaker. It's not, it doesn't have to be Facebook. It could be random book that does something very similar. I hope that makes sense.

It's the social media aspect of it. It's not the company aspect of it. And just, and the second point, the government doesn't care about that. It's kind of like them saying, for example, they would say, well, we need to stop pedophilia. So we need each and every person to identify who they are. are online with an ID number associated with it and where their computer is located. And you would get some people who would say, well, we obviously need to stop child pedophilia.

So we obviously need to acquiesce to this particular breach or this movement of authoritarianism. Okay, I feel this in somewhat of similar ways. Look, I've had a friend when my wife and I were married, her niece tried to commit to a suicide. and she went online, she wasn't being bullied. She went online to brag that she was taking her life. She took a huge amount of pills. And if it wasn't for Dana coming home a little bit early, then what she would typically come home, that kid would have died.

And it wrecked my wife, my wife, like she was in shambles. And the dad, obviously, was in tatters. They had nothing to do with online. There was a kid being a kid. And as bad as that sounds. Wait a minute. I mean, are you sure? I mean, I mean, I mean, seriously, like the bragging aspect. I mean, I won't brush over that so much. I mean, like, she went online and like, look at me. Look at what I'm doing. I mean, is it possible that without that outlet she might have, you know, like, you know, if I'm just going to do this solo, she might not have done it. I guarantee you from the time that I worked at the hospitals and health care for the last 12 years of my life, SSRIs and antidepressants. do so much more damage than social media ever has.

The difference is that social is that big pharma really is just baked in with their lobbying system and stuff with insurance or everything else. It's baked into the system. This has nothing to do with public health. This is nothing to do with mental illness or the health of the American population. That's all this is. This is low hanging. It's like the data centers. Look at these evil data centers are popping up.

They're the greatest problem of all time. Meanwhile, we're $40 trillion in debt. Sorry, Zucky's not responsible for that. Well, see, the difference with the data centers is the $40 trillion is theoretical from sample of most Americans. The data centers sucking away your power where you have to pay more

as a power bill. That's pain. Right? That's what I say pain matters. Pain is the thing that focuses the mind. But both those things are true, though, because more inflation you have, the higher your cost go for commodities. Electricity and large is a commodity. It's just one, you're able to see the other one, just more abstract.

But at the end of the day, though, there's little pill bottles that we're shoving up riddlin and the ADD medication, the SSRIs, all this other stuff. It is a poison. People don't understand how powerful these drugs are. And they are overprescribed for profit. Yeah, I think this is over. Look, it's not that, I'm not trying to be heartless to families associated with stuff. But I do think these families are being used at this. I think they're being used as useful it is in order for the state to get cash.

Well, it's definitely a giant shakedown for sure. Yeah, it's a shakedown. Not that Meta can't afford it, but yeah, I'm sure that privately, in the C-suite at, you know, at MetaHQ, they're like, oh, brother, they're just, pay them off. Pay them off. Make them fucking go away. It's a good deal for them, right? I mean, it's like, it's only 17 instead of $200 billion.

In fact, Tony, here's your bag of money. Leave us to our devices. Yeah, it's what happens when you become successful. You have a target on your back. I mean, that's, that is true. I mean, it's also true that Mark Zuckerberg is an asshole. All right, let's choose some comments here. Phileas Fav, if you don't center eugenics and race,

science in it. You understand fascism 0%. If you do, you know it never ended. Search protest psychosis, racist anti-psychotic ads, and John Metzl's book. All right. Well, just also, exceptional. Just the very thought of we are exceptional. We are somehow there. Even the way if the Europeans act, like there's still these colonial powers, these countries are nothing in the modern era. If it wasn't a tick on the U.S.'s ass and they use the U.S. as power projection, which is why they're so busy bending over backwards in regards to why they wouldn't stand up, whereas Carney would. No, I think all that plays into it. I mean, the moment that you come away with the assessment that you have somehow better than the Russians, you're somehow moralist superior,

despite all of the just deranged, degenerate, psychopathic stuff that they've allowed backed, permitted, et cetera, it's amazing. Like, you have, have to wonder what's in their minds to bring them to that assessment of their unique superiority. Ardvarc 7. Gary Indiana is in the news right now. A bad storm has had the power out there for weeks. Yeah, there was a tornado there. Did you guys hear, Manchild, did you guys hear about the fake AI think tank funded by Israel? Yes. They're actively working to poison the data well. Yes. So basically, a think tank that doesn't really exist had a bunch of money dumped into it by, let's say, Israeli funders. And the idea of it was if you can pump out a bunch of stories to make it look as if these were policy papers, all of the policy papers, obviously, are in favor of Israel, then you can poison a well of information that AI systems may use in order to pull information. So let's say, for example, because the AI is only going to tell you what somebody put into it. And if you have a bunch of junk about Israel. And by the way, they're doing this on a full court press. The company that they found

in Israel, Tel Aviv, that was pushing elections, that was effectively putting chum in waters in order to influence the direction of a particular election. They did this all over the world. They were doing this in Europe and they were doing this in Africa. And the moment that they started investigating the company, by the way, French, France created an organization that found what they were doing. It dissolved. It went up in smoke. But they're doing stuff. like this too, poisoning and Oafel AI buying television companies so you get CBS news putting in Barry Weiss. I think it was CBS as the top editor. Okay, well, what do you think she's going to do for stories that are negative towards Israel? They would never see the light of day. True. Full court.

Yeah, true. Just a reminder, because now we have, we are pretty much around peak viewership for the show for the show hour. Tonight, we have our tier three member only on YouTube private chat with JT and Robbie and I. So basically, if you're a tier three member, which means you're paying 20 bucks a month on YouTube, you should join us tonight at 7 p.m. And we're just going to hang. It's not going to be broadcast. It's just for us.

It's not going to be rebroadcast. Sorry, it's exclusive. So if you'd like to join the party, it's not too late to become a YouTube subscriber and you can join. We're going to do this every month, by the way, on the last Thursday of every month of thereabouts. So here's the procedure. If you're such a person, go to email deprogrampodcast at gmail.com. That's deprogram podcast at Gmail. You send your name and this is important, your YouTube username.

Okay. Then at 7 p.m. you will get a reply with a stream yard link. You click that thing. you click the little microphone in the camera icon, and there you are, and you'll be hanging with us, and we go until 8 p.m. All right, so it's just a little reminder there. Okay, so we have some more comments,

and then we should probably have a few more things to talk about. If you so, Michael Parenti on thought control, the only thing they care about is what you're thinking. The ruling class absolutely cares about what you think. Their rule depends on it, and that's true in any system. Yes. I don't want to have to have to. use military power for every particular issue, right? Right. It's paining. Yes, it's hard. If I'm

sure what you think, I never have to do it. Have you been loyal? Have you been loyal? Um, all right. So, um, by the way, do you think that works on anybody? Like this, have you been loyal or some of the stuff that is coming to my house? It falls dead on me. In fact, I even get to the point of saying, who does this even work for? Well, I'm in, I'm sort temperamentally impervious to that kind of shit and I would rather you put a bullet in my head and just get it over with than like, you know, threatened. But it's also like, you know, I can see through the vagueness of the threats, right? Like, you know, it's kind of like, it's vague. It's like non-specific. That's another difference, by the way, between fascist and communist propaganda.

Communist propaganda tends to be very specific, like it's directed to architects or teachers or workers or whatever um you know fascist propaganda is very vague and it's like like things like and you you know and stuff like that and like have you been and who's who's this you you you're talking about loyal to whom loyal to what what are you talking about right so nobody it's like i don't even know what it means i don't know if it works um if it does work i can't imagine for whom it would work I suspect it's not really, I think it's red meat for the base, right? It's sort of like, oh, I'm loyal, but like, yeah, like, let's go after the people who aren't loyal. That's not me.

That's these other people who I can't really identify personally. But that's, I think, I think that's what it's for. It's sort of an attempt to unify, like, against the other, I think. Canada's tariffs. So they decided to retaliate. It looks like Canada's got a set of balls, unlike a lot of other countries. And they're specifically targeting, they say, the Midwest and the Northeast. The Midwest, those are swing states, midterm elections are coming.

That's got to be part of the calculus because they didn't just sort of randomly slap tariffs on. It's like they're looking for certain industries. So that's got to be, you know, like we're going to hit Trump in the re-election pocketbook, right? The Northeast part, I don't know if he cares about because, you know, he's not going to have that anyway. That's what China did, by the way. When China, when they did reciprocal tariffs, they hit, like, soiling industries. They hit industries that effectively were going to be farmers that were a big part of Trump's face. when the farmers were out there effectively begging the Jesus saying,

please help us with a miracle, that's why. You've lost a market of 1.4 and 1.3 billion people. That hurts. And even now with the fertilizers stuff, the costs apparently are going through the roof, especially with the inventory, is the way it is the wars that are taking place where you get these wars in Russia and you get the war in Ukraine in Iran, both of which are choke points in regards to inventory, which increases the cost of pretty much anything.

dealing with diesel, the farm equipment, fertilizer, all of those things have spiked. The farmers and the U.S. are taking it in the ass. Thanks. Iran, I mean, are they taking a cue from Iran, right? Like, sort of like, yes, you know, the U.S. is bigger than us. Yes, they have, the U.S. can, is not going to suffer as much from what we do to them as we do as they do to us. But nevertheless, we've got bigger balls.

We're going to, and we're going to outlast them. and we're tougher, and we have the resolve on our side. I mean, it seems to be like a very similar mentality from two very disparate cultures. Yeah, but it's because human beings are human beings. And, you know, if you're asking me for a deal, or let's say you're coming to me for some kind of negotiation, hey, I don't think you should come to me

for the mis-cociate bill because I'm sovereign, but I'll talk to you because I don't want to fight. And then you tell me, I need to have sex with your wife. Okay, what am I to do with this? Right? Like even if I wanted to make a deal, I can't make that deal. We have nothing to talk about. Same thing is true for Canada.

It's like, hey, all of this is great, but I need to have sex with you, I'm like, yeah, no. Just no. It's too much. They ask too much. And what they finally to realize is that any inch that you give, he's going to want more. Any inch that you give is considered weakness. If indeed they're weak on this, there will be weak on other stuff. We can push them further.

We can push them further. We can take more. We can take more. We need to win. We need to win. And more importantly, we need to make it clear that they lost. Okay. That only going to get you so far.

Inevitably, somebody is going to say no. Yeah. Yeah. And just enough is enough, right? Like, fuck. And then also there's, I mean, obviously the Canadian people are behind their government in this respect. They're furious. And I think the thing is that for them it's really personal and they're insulted.

They're like, we have always been America's best friend. And, you know, who are they to treat us like this? And I think, I mean, I think they're upset at us as ordinary citizens for not, you know, screaming at the Trump administration to stop this shit. We haven't screamed at him to stop anything at this point. That's true. Start with Canada. Right.

Like he didn't attack Canada. He didn't bomb Canada. Not yet. He wasn't murdering Canadian fishermen. Not yet. Not yet. I mean, he did that to Venezuela. Did Canada say anything about it?

No. It's time to get those Nova Scotians. Who the fuck do they think they are with their lobster rules? Do Canada say shit about when we attacked Iran? No. So why is Canada now screaming that somebody should say something when Trump is going after them? Well, I mean, they are standing up to themselves. I still know.

Do you think they can outlast us? on this yes yeah i mean it depends like it depends on what you mean by outlasts if you mean by outlast and they make a deal that may be a little bit worse for canada but same token they didn't trump didn't get what he wanted yeah like that count i mean yeah i guess i mean instead of just rolling over i guess yeah it counts yeah and i guess you know have we settled the matter of i mean we have seconds left in the show but uh you know the media munitions situation. I mean, you do have to laugh, right? So we, you know, we can't, we can't do, you know, the Japanese, we can't send weapons to Taiwan or Japan. They're completely depleted. We have no more interceptors. Filarious. Yeah, but those interceptors weren't going to help at all. I'm sorry. The idea, if China cut loose and it's like, man, man. Just giving the Taiwanese money. Like, hey, you're welcome. Right. Right. I just.

It's a laughable premise. Oh, we've, oh, we've expended so much for Iran now. We can't fight China. You were never able to fight China. No, no. One last donation, we're like a little over here. P.W. Walker, it's worse. The Carnegie government has officially blamed Iran for America attacking it.

Our defense minister literally said there was little daylight between the U.S. and Canada on Iran. All right, well, you're totally confirming your point there. All right. We're out of here. TMI coming up right now. We're on with the tier three dudes and ladies at tonight at 7 p.m. Eastern. We're looking forward to that. We'll see you tonight.

And as for everybody else, see you tomorrow morning at 9 a.m. That's Friday. And also do a day tomorrow. Okay, complicated. Bye.