DeProgram with John Kiriakou and Ted Rall - Club Med Gaza | DeProgram with Ted Rall and John Kiriakou

Episode Date: January 23, 2026

Political cartoonist Ted Rall and CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou deprogram you from mainstream media every weekday at 9 AM EST. Today we discuss: • Jared Kushner presented a glittering vision of postwar Gaza centered around the construction of entirely new cities where rubble and Palestinian bodies currently lay rotting. Who will be in charge? Who will profit? • Minneapolis braces for today’s city-wide strike against ICE, which will close hundreds of businesses. • Trump looks Left on economic populism. • Kristi Noem’s Homeland Security tweeted a racist altered photo of a women arrested for opposing an ICE preacher.JOIN US LIVE ON RUMBLE!https://rumble.com/c/DeProgramShowFOLLOW TED:https://rall.com/https://x.com/tedrallFOLLOW JOHN:https://www.instagram.com/realjohnkiriakouhttps://x.com/JohnKiriakouLISTEN ON SPOTIFY:https://open.spotify.com/show/2kdFlw2w8sSPhKI8NRx8ZuLISTEN ON APPLE MUSIC:https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/deprogram-with-john-kiriakou-and-ted-rall

Good morning and happy Friday. You're watching Deep Program with Ted Rall and John Kiroaku as John and I brace for the big snowstorm. Seriously, man. Did I tell you night before last, my son and I went to Home Depot? I can't find my scraper for my windshield. Oh, I always lose those. I must have like five of them. Yeah, they're probably buried in the back recesses of your trunk under ship.

They probably are. So we went to Target and target. The shelves were literally bare. It was like, it was like COVID all over again. So it's just diagonally from across the street from the Home Depot. So we went there. And mind you, this is, this is like 9 o'clock on a Wednesday night. We couldn't find a parking space at the Home Depot, first of all.

So we had to park where they have sort of taken the parking spaces and they use it for storage. You know how Home Depot's do? Yeah. So we went in and there's a guy holding a container of, of salt, rock salt. And I said, excuse me, can you tell me where you got the salt? He said very back of aisle four,

and you better get back there fast. We were like, what? So we ran back there. It's a mob of people. And as quickly as this poor hapless, like 70-year-old stock clerk is pulling the salt out of the boxes, people are just grabbing them out of his hand.

So I got three containers, three eight-pound containers. and they're in my trunk. I gave my son one. I'm going to give a friend of mine one, and I've got one for my car just in case. But man, and the models are different. I mentioned yesterday.

They haven't changed, at least this morning, when I first woke up, they hadn't changed. But it was the American model and the American AI model are saying eight to 12 inches for us. But then the European model is saying, um, uh,

20, 21 to 26 inches. Here, let me look right now. Yeah, we're looking now at 8 to 10, according to you. Do we know which one, do you happen to know which one tends to be more accurate? I remember downloading this one because the other one was inaccurate. So I'm going to say 8 to 10, 8 to 12. I swear by Accuweather.

It's my, it's my favorite weather app. Yeah. Okay. You know, I like, I mean, it's almost unearthed. Earthly. Oh, this is the weather channel. It'll say like, you know, snow stops in 17 minutes. And then it does.

It does. Yeah. Okay. I'm going to, I'm going to download it right now. So I think we're expecting over a foot, I guess one foot and four inches in New York City. Oh, my God. And more in the surrounding areas. And it's going to be coupled with ice and severe cold temperatures.

You know, it's going to be wind chills tonight below zero in New York City. and actual temperatures of like single digits in New York City, like over the weekend. We have low of 17, high of 18. Well, at least you know what the temperature is going to be. It's not one of those like, oh, like California. Like, we need layers. Yeah. No, not so much.

Well, it's cold in Gaza, but Jared Kushner thinks it's going to be hotter. We'll talk about that and how exactly this is going to look. you mentioned this yesterday, and I did a deeper dive overnight into Jared Kushner's vision for ClubMed Gaza. Minneapolis is, I didn't know this was coming. This kind of snuck up on me. It snuck up on me, too. I actually didn't know was coming.

There's a citywide strike. Hundreds of businesses are going to close down today. Thousands, maybe tens of thousands of thousands of Minneapolisians, is that what you call them? I don't know what you call them, are going to refuse to work today. ICE is already complaining that they can't get hotel rooms. Their hotel room reservations get canceled. They're, you know, they can't get a cup of coffee.

Their refused service. Oh, it's sad to be a, you know, sadistic, macho, steroided shithead. And Trump is turning to the left. We already kind of knew this like two weeks ago when he was talking to Elizabeth Warren. But he's looking to the left on the economy. I have thoughts about that. And the Department of Homeland Security kind of pulled like what Time magazine did to O.J. Simpson when they darkened his picture for the cover. It's one of the three women who were arrested for being in a protest against an ICE preacher.

Those are the two words. Yeah. That would go there. Is that one of them, they tweeted out her picture. It was modified by AI to make it look like he was prying and blacker than she is. So all beautiful stuff. And of course, obviously, please like, follow, share the show. We appreciate your donations as always.

I think it's fair to say, John, we're now actually, you know, we can see the light at the end of the tunnel. And it doesn't seem to be a train heading to run us over. Amen. Yes. It's doing well now. Yeah. And thanks to everybody. Yes.

Thanks to everybody. Because when we first started this, remember, we started it with Michelle. And I think we had five people watch the first episode, literally, quite literally. Yeah, that's right. And we appreciate those five people. We do very much because it was from that that we grew. And now we're able to actually pay the electric bill, which was a concern for a while. Oh, yeah, yeah, no, for sure.

And we have questions in the feeds. So, you know, maybe we could do what we did yesterday, John, and knock out a story or two. and get to the questions. What do you think? That sounds like a plan. All right. I'm interested in all of these things, but you get to pick. Okay. Let's talk about Minneapolis. I was invited to a dinner last night with Ilhan Omar. There were about 20 of us.

And she talked about this really what amounts to a general strike in Minneapolis today. And she said something that I thought was important. Well, she said a couple of things that I thought were important, that the administration has underestimated the resolve of Minnesotans repeatedly. And she also said, These are sturdy people. It's routinely 20 below zero there. That was an important point that she made,

that these ice people from D.C. or from wherever they are, Texas or California, they're not used to Minnesota winters. And this is going to get very old for them very quickly. And, you know, to use a line from the Sopranos from the Pine Barrens episode, Minnesotans wash their balls with snow. So Minnesotans aren't afraid of these ice people in this weather, number one. Number two, Minnesotaans see this as a legit attack, a federal attack on their city and state. And they're not going to roll over for it.

So this is going to get worse before it gets better. She said that the federal government thought people were just going to roll over. They were going to run from the screaming from the room, hide in their homes. That's not it at all. She said that there are thousands of people who are at least temporarily hiding people in their homes so that they can't be found. Which is taking a risk. That's a felony. It's a felony.

me. God bless them. A five-year sentence. God bless them is right. You know, I've said many times, many members of my family came here as what people call illegal immigrants. And all they ever wanted to do was to make money to care for their families.

They were very happy to pay taxes. They didn't come in legally, as Robbie would complain, because that option was not open to them. Right. They couldn't come here legally. The answer was no, we're not giving visas to Greeks in the post-World War II era. no. And so, you know, I think that she made a couple of good points last night that

that the administration isn't really paying much attention to. Yeah, you know, I think it's always interesting. You get into trouble politically when you grind up against a local indigenous culture. I was thinking about, you know, Chris Christie was a really unpopular governor of New Jersey. And he pulled a lot of shit as governor. Yeah, you did. But what? What did him in ultimately was two things, right? One was fucking with something near and dear to New Jerseyans, which is their ability to commute in and out of New York City.

That's why he lived in New Jersey. Yes. And so he did. Bridgegate, effectively closing the George Washington Bridge. By the way, a lady died in an ambulance. In an ambulance.

You know, on that day. That's right. And then worst of all, in the middle of a heat wave, closing all the beaches, but going to the beach himself with his family. Again, New Jersey has a lot of beach communities, and people really value their, you know, they're like, we might not live in a state that has its own TV station, but we live in a state that has beautiful beaches,

and all of us are no one's more than an hour or an hour and 15 minutes away from a beach. And he's taking that away from us and he's using it for himself. Fuck you. And this is similar. I mean, Minneapolis and Minnesotans, you know, we've all heard the term Minnesota nice. And it's a real thing. These are, to a fault, hopelessly polite people. You know, they're Scandinavian ethnically.

Most of the whites are. And that's the culture that sort of, you know, everybody who moves there kind of has to adapt to, regardless of their own ethnic background. And they really, and you know how it is? Like, New Yorkers don't care if you're a little gruff. But like, you know, Minnesotans, if you're like that, you know, if you're rude and crude, people hate you. And that's the exact impression that ICE made. They culturally could not have asked for a worst, more grading crash.

Yeah, seriously. Seriously, I couldn't agree more. That's why I think this is going to be a bigger deal than the government realizes. And it's not like, you know, they're planning. to pull out on Tuesday. This is an ongoing thing. J.D. Vance kind of, you know, kind of, you know, tipped, you know, he's a smart guy. He can, you know, he takes the temperature. He knows what's up. And he said, you know, we want to turn down the temperature. Well, that's a new statement from the administration. Yeah, it is. They've been turning up the temperature all the way to like 600.

And now, you know, but the thing is, they're not doing the things that are required to, to turn down the temperature. Just saying you want to turn it down doesn't do anything. I guess this brings up the issue of the Homeland Security Twitter account, which by the way is a cesspool of like, you know, alt-right, you know, wink, wink, nod to like neo-Nazism and, you know, sort of crazy like memes that look like they come out, you know, Norman Rockwellish kind of 1930s, like, you know, not that he, Norman Rockwell was a right-winger, far from it.

But that kind of idealized all white American vision. But anyway, they tweeted out a picture altered of one of the three women who they arrested for disturbing the peace, I guess, basically. I think they're all going to walk, no question, you know, for basically yelling at this ice preacher for being a number of ice during a church service, right? I can't see what where the law breaking is here unless you can't you can't charge someone with trespassing. Listen, I've become a it's a church a YouTube expert on this kind of thing. You can't charge someone with the crime of trespassing until you have trespassed to them, which means you have to give them written notification that they are not permitted on your property. Somebody you can't just arrest somebody in charge them with trespassing because they walk into a

church and start yelling. You can throw them out. It's not the vampire law rule where I un-invite you and they fly out the door. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah, no, so the, so this woman, right, I mean, first of all, even if they had tweeted out her photograph, I mean, this is an agency that complains about federal employees, ICE officers being doxed, right, by leftist activists.

Here they are doxing a, you know, a private citizen, right? a person of color, a woman on top of it. So that would be, that makes me really uncomfortable. But on top of that, they altered the image to make it look like she was in tears. She wasn't. She wasn't. And, you know, she was brave and composed. And she, and they made her, they changed the color of her skin.

They tinted her to make her look more, to make her look darker. This is racist. It's a racist. It's a racist thing to do. Just racist. The Christy gnome owes her. and the country an apology. Yeah.

Couldn't agree more. And this is not turning down the temperature. Do you remember, of course, you remember the shit that Time Magazine took when they darkened O.J. Simpson's booking picture, his mugshot. Yeah. They had to make an apology. And they said that it was, you know, it was a poorly thought out attempt to make it look more stark.

And, yeah. I actually knew the editor who approved. approved that image at Time Magazine because I was doing cartoons there at the time. And it did turn out to be kind of a production fuck up. And which, you know, people don't know. Like when you produce something in a magazine, like you have to create what they call a matchprint. You're not really sure what it's going to look like until it rolls off the press. And you kind of need to print.

So anyway, apparently they were late that day because of the OJ story. So they didn't have time to do a match. proof and then the thing it's actually a fascinating story it's sort of like the the dean scream i knew someone who was working at his campaign the mic was malfunctioning that night and when howard dean was like you know shouting or trying to yeah he was trying to make his mic work and it kind of played into this awkward kind of you know image that the that the corporate media was trying to paint of him i always liked him oh i'm a big fan and the 50 state The 50 state strategy is the way to go for any party.

Absolutely. Oh, my God. See, the Clintons did this to the Democratic Party because it was James Carvel who insisted on a 50 state strategy. This is something, this is not a new idea. This is something that George McGovern proposed in 1960 when he first ran for the Senate. And that's why the Democrats were able to elect senators from North and South Dakota, from Wyoming from Oklahoma, from Utah.

I mean, there were Democratic senators. You don't write off entire sections of the country. No, and what the Clintons did was they ended financing for Democratic candidates at the state representative level, which controls redistricting in most states. And also it killed their farm system, right? Yes, it did. Somewhere in some statehouse, there's some lady who could be the president of the United States in 40 years. That's right. You know, you don't know that.

We don't know that because she's not going to get any money. She'll be defeated by a Republican. Yeah, no, it's really boneheaded for a variety of reasons. We could do an entire show on that. All right, let me see about getting into. So Robbie is just getting just getting to us. So I'm going to please bear with me, guys, while I parse through the comments here.

Much appreciated. K.D. I'm going to sort of work through these on YouTube. Ted, you mentioned how well, One day you'd like a good documentarian to tell your story one day. The first name and channel that came to mind when I heard that was Andrew from Channel 5 News. Okay. I don't know who that is, but if anyone wants to contact me, it's raw.com slash contact. Nicholas Franco's, John, can you explain a little bit about the situation with the stateless people in Kuwait when I was studying for my bachelor's degree?

I met two girls. They said they're refugees from Kuwait. Kuwaiti citizenship is a difficult thing. There are multiple levels of Kuwaiti citizenship. Three, there are first class Kuwaitis, second class and third class. Now, a first class Kuwaiti is a descendant of someone who can trace his Kuwaiti citizenship to the census of 1920. Right? So they had this big census in 1920.

If you want to be Kuwaiti, come and sign up. Well, a lot of people didn't bother because they were like, what is this state? This is we're better ones. Everything is our state. We just move from place to place. This was created by the treaty of Versailles? No, it coincided with the Treaty of Versailles. Okay. Second class Kuwaitis are descendants of people who can trace their lineage to people who were in Kuwait in 1920 but didn't register. Okay. Okay. Third class Kuwaitis are people who have been granted Kuwaiti citizenship for whatever reason you served the ruling family you did some special thing but who do not have the privileges

of first and second class citizenship and then there are stateless people called bidoon bidoon uh in arabic means without so they are without papers without citizenship that's not the same word is bedouin no it comes from the same route to move badana to move around So Bedouins kind of go through the desert, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Iraq. They're constantly nomads. They're moving from Oasis to Oasis with their flocks. But the Bedoon tend to, you know, live in Kuwait City like everybody else does. They just don't have a passport.

They don't have any rights. They have to travel on United Nations issued laissez-passes. And so like these two girls, apparently, you get a laissez-passé that allows you to travel the United States to go to school, but you are not a Kuwaiti citizen. Huh. Okay. It's rough. All right. Sneaker Dad, 10, 20. Thanks for the 10 bucks and thank very much, much appreciated. You see Vance's talk yesterday so much, us versus them, Katie Catastrophe, red versus blue, it was thickening, sickening. Well, that's, it is sickening. I, you know, I mean, very clearly, this administration repeatedly, you know, says, you know,

the quiet part out loud, which is if you're not a Republican and you're not a supporter of President Trump, we don't care about you. We don't care if you live or die. I guess the question for me, and I really don't know the answer to this, does this make Republicans or Trump supporters uncomfortable or do they love it? That's a good question. That's a good question. I don't know, but you know what, though, even if it did make them uncomfortable, they would remain silent. we're not yet at a point. We're starting to get to this point in the Senate, but we're not yet at a point

where people are comfortable enough criticizing Donald Trump. Once we get past the next election in November, and Trump truly is a lame duck because he's not running for a third term, I don't care what he says, then I think people will feel much more comfortable in criticizing him. Hey, let me add one of the thing. Elhan Omar mentioned last.

night at this dinner that she had just come from a series of budget votes on Capitol Hill. We were getting push notifications last night. So what the Democrats did because they're utter and complete and total sellouts is they demanded that the budget for Department of Homeland Security be stripped out of the omnibus. So she called it a minibus, which I had never heard before. It was kind of funny. So all the Democrats voted for the minibus, which funded the entire government except Homeland Security.

But the Republicans were unified on the Homeland Security vote last night. And there were just enough by like a majority of two or three that they approved the Homeland Security budget, which includes ICE, of course. Of course. And she said that the only hope that the Democrats have to either block the DHS budget or to shut down the government again is on the Senate side. She said the Republicans are nowhere near 60 votes necessary to break cloture.

So I said, are you predicting a government shutdown brought by the Democrats? And she said, not necessarily. She said, because many of my Democratic colleagues on the second side are sellouts and weaklings. So we'll see what happens. Nobody's reporting this yet that there's a real possibility of another government shutdown when, March something. I would love to see some fucking discipline inside the Democratic caucus. It's chaos. It's chaos in the Democratic caucus.

was basically like, I will kick your ass so far down the street. If you stray from our party's official position, you won't even fucking remember. But, yeah, we're not there, obviously, and it's not going to happen. Good question for you, John. I'm curious about this. For a Vita, John, if an ex-source ever, an ex-source ever hit you up asking to meet up and talk about life, would you follow up? Or the curiosity not worth the risk?

Or is it simply just not allowed? I absolutely would. I actually have on two occasions. One time I ran into one of my sources, an Iraqi, in Dulles Airport here in Washington, he says to me, John, John, like that. And I looked and I go, I go, Muhammad, what are you doing here? He said, I became a refugee. And now I'm an American citizen.

I was like, oh, my God. we sat and had coffee and it dawned on me partway through the conversation i said wait a minute you're speaking english and he's like yeah i learned how to speak english it just it didn't register in my brain that when you see someone out of context i guess it's a more extreme version of like when i see my dry cleaning dude at like right are right wait you live with the dry cleaner i don't exactly oh my god i was at i was at the town mall in newcastle pennsylvania one time with my mom I was 16 and there was this we're not allowed to use the word midget anymore. What do we say?

Short person, little person. There was a little person. Yes. And we're walking down the middle of the mall and he goes, hey, how you doing? I said, hey, how are you? And my mom goes, how in the world do you know that guy? And I said, oh, he must have confused me with somebody else. The truth is that he was the bartender at the bar that served minors, that my buddies

and I used to go buy six packs. at City Lights Cafe. Anyway, God bless those people. I remember when my first day at college, in 1981 in New York, the drinking age was 18 at Columbia. I sidle up to the bar. And there's like three like girls from like New Jersey drinking. And they're all like, they couldn't, none of them could have been older than 12. So I would, the bartender was flirting with me.

And she's like 40. and I go, what's up with the, you know, what's with these ladies? And she goes, I know you're new to New York City. She's like, if you're old enough to pay, you're old enough to drink. City Lights Cafe, man. And occasionally hanging gardens bar and lounge. Hanging gardens was good. But there was a bartender there that knew my parents, so I tried to stay away.

And in Dayton, where I grew up, we had the best names for bars that they had plausible to liability. Nowhere. Hey, where have you been? Nowhere. The library. There was a whole row of cars like that on Dixie Highway in Kettering, Ohio. Oh my God. Anyway, so let's see. John, you've mentioned on several podcasts, this is from KDOT, that you like to visit cemeteries a lot during your spare time as part of your writing process. Have you ever had a paranormal or ghost encounter while there? No, that's a fun question. No, I never have. I was walking through a Columbia Garden Cemetery here near my house one night.

It was nighttime, like legit dark. But, I mean, there's no reason to be afraid at night in a cemetery. And I heard this screaming that scared the shit out of me. And it turned out that there's a den of foxes that lives in the cemetery and they were fighting. That's all those. But no, I've never had a paranormal. experience in the cemetery. Foxes make, the foxes are,

foxes are so cool. I love that. No, we have so many of them around here. And they, like, walk right up to you. They're not afraid or anything. You have red, and they eat the rabbits. We have both. Okay. Mostly red.

I see mostly red ones. Thanks for the two bucks on sung Pat. Okay, Angela Falalala. I'm sure, I think this is for you. I'm pretty sure that's for you, John. Thanks for the fiver. Have you ever met Evie Pumpuros? Oh yeah.

Former Secret Service, now all over YouTube and Greek like you. Yeah, I've seen her in church a couple of times. She's quite good. She's very, very bright. She was a Secret Service agent for, I don't know, 12, 15 years. I remember she took a lot of shit from the male Secret Service agents. They were real jerks to her. She left to become an author and a journalist.

And her book was quite well received. It was kind of a combination memoir, self-help book. I don't remember the name of it, but it was quite well received. And now she's out on the speaking circuit all the time. And she's done well for herself. Another one for you, John. Alfred, two bucks. Thank you very much.

Joby Warwick is releasing. Oh, Joe B. The Jackal. I know we've talked about that here before. Were you a reference for the book, and would you consider having him on Dead Drop to talk about it? Yeah, I was a reference for the book. He and I talked about it as recently as, I don't know, six or eight months ago.

And it's funny, I've known Joby for years. He's a, he's a brilliant journalist and a multiple Pulitzer Prize winner, serious, like deep investigative journalist who somehow finds the time to bang out number one New York Times bestselling books in his spare time. I don't know how he does it. Research assistance is helpful. Yeah, a good one. Yeah. A good one. And yeah, he called me and he said that a friend of his said that I had been teaching this class at the University of Salamanca and that I was spending a lot of time talking about Carlos the Jackal.

And I said, yeah, yeah, I have. And he said, well, I'm doing this book. Would you talk to me about it? I said, absolutely. So we had coffee. We spent a couple of hours talking about Carlos the Jackal. and then he came out with his book. He's doing well for himself too, good old Joby.

Robbie, do we have an ad? Hey, there's Robbie. No. Okay. I just thought that would be a funny way to do it. Okay, so, okay, so, but, blah, blah, blah, bah. Frasmataz says,

Target shelves empty near D.C. How's the Pentagon, Gay Bar, and Pizza Index looking? My money is on a strike against Iran tonight, unfortunately. Oh, I'm glad. a good with the weather and all the distraction going, this would, there would be, this would be a good, great weekend for a media dump. Yeah, you could say that again. Ryan Grimm was at this dinner last night. Ryan is from Dead Drop media, very, very well connected. And somehow we got

on to the topic of Iran. And he said he does not expect an attack on Iran in the next week or two, but all bets are off once this carrier battle group, the USS Abraham Lincoln finally gets to the region. He said he does believe that we're looking at an attack on Iran in the coming months, yes. I would agree with that. Gotarach, thanks for the 10 bucks. John, this question's for you,

but I would like to time in on it as well. What are your rules for accepting Arab hospitality? I'm not sure every random taxi driver and shopkeeper actually wants to host me for tea at their home, but I'm curious. I think they actually do, but go ahead. They do actually. And I'll tell you, the honest to God's truth is I never say no, never. I'll tell you, the first time this happened to me. It's rude to say no.

It's rude to say no. Because Americans have a shitty reputation as it is. Yes, it's quite bad for them to say no. The first time this ever happened to me was I was in Damascus in 1990, I don't know, two or three. It was my first trip to Syria. And my boss had told me beforehand, he said, Syrians are so insular and so afraid of their government that you will never meet a non-official Syrian and you will never see the inside of a Syrian's home. So I went to the souk and this guy asked me,

Antimin, where are you from? And I said, men, I willa yattel mutaida from the United States. And he just looked at me like, and I said, you've never met an American, have you? And he said, no, I've never met an American. So we stood there talking. I bought a tape. table cloth that I think my ex-wife stole from me in our divorce. And he said, you have to come to my home. You have to come to my home for dinner. And I said, oh, no, no, no, no, I don't want to, you know, make a problem for you, which could have been a serious problem for him. He insisted. And then he picked with the phone, called his wife, closed the shop around nine o'clock. We went to his house. And I still remember what a wonderful time I had at that dinner. Even recently I was in, when was

I in Jerusalem in like in 2022. And a taxi driver invited me to his house for dinner and dropped me off at my hotel, picked me up three hours later and took me to his house for dinner. Just in time for me to buy, you know, some flowers for his wife and, you know, whatever. But I never say no because they mean it. When they invite you, they mean it. They mean it. And it's very insulting if you say no.

Like in Japan, they don't mean it at all. Don't say yes if you accept it. You're being an asshole. But like, no, in like in Wadi Rum, where they filmed Lawrence of Arabia in Jordan. Yes. I had a car accident. I did the Wadi Rum. I had a car accident.

It was bad. The car rolled into the desert. It was total. I still have the key. And the, and I went through the windshield. And so it was a hell of a day. And finally, you went through the windshield? I went through the windshield.

Yeah, I had like, I had safety glass all embedded in my, in my, in my, in my, in my, in my skull, right? I didn't know that. So my, this was two thousand, this was, actually, it's a funny story. You, it has a connection to you, maybe, obliquely, um, to the millennium plot. So I was staying at the Moven pick with my wife in, uh, on December, on New Year's Eve, 1999, December 31st, 1999, Y2K. the Moven pick is at the entrance of Petra. And we were fucking around Petra for a couple of days. And we did the New Year's celebration with like the British ambassador to Jordan and all these people.

And this was so later this accident took place. But we later learned, right, that that hotel was targeted to be blown up by Al-Qaeda. And that night and that this operation that had been disrupted by Jordanian intelligence. They had a list of like a dozen hotels. They were going to blow up all at the same time. I don't know how far along it got. But anyway, the point is it was kind of creepy, like feeling a bullet go by, you know, by your ear or something. Like Trump can probably attest.

And anyway, the point is, rolled the car in the desert. And this guy stopped and this Bedouin guy stopped in his Jeep and gave us a ride. He was like, I guess, part Bedouin because he had a house. and he insisted that we, you know, all I wanted to do was get back to the hotel, take a bath, and pull the safety glass out of my scalp. But he's like, you have to come to my house. I'm like literally like, okay. And my wife's like, what the fuck are you doing?

I'm like, we got to. We have no choice. We have to. That's how insistence it is, for sure. Yeah, this Syrian guy, the only thing he asked of me was that when I got back to Washington, I would send him a postcard, which I gladly did. He just wanted to have a postcard with a scene from Washington, D.C. I don't know why Tammy's talking, referencing all the young dudes, but any reference to

Mott the Hoopal, I will take. Famously, David Bowie wrote all the young dudes to save Mott the Hoopal. I freaking loved Mott the Hoopal. I saw them at G.W. in 1982. They're fantastic. And Ian Hunter's solo career is amazing. Yeah. I mean, he's still going strong.

And his records are great. I mean, you know, it's not one of those like nostalgia things. Right. If you'd never heard of Ian Hunter and you bought like his most recent album, you'd be like, this is a good rock album. Yeah, seriously. Okay, so any insights on Apollo global management contacts with ICE and the government? Apollo acquired Contellus Holdings, formerly Blackwater.

This is Unsung. Pat, thanks for the 10 bucks. I don't know enough to answer the question to tell you the truth. Have you followed this? I don't know anything about it. And by the way, about Minnesota again, right? A little bit yesterday I talked about how, you know, General Strike's not going to work without a broad-based left-wing organization.

But like, what about, I mean, I guess the part that's a little weird about this is the people who are going to suffer from all these closed businesses are going to be Minneapolis's economy. Yeah. Right. I mean, the businesses themselves. Which tells you how serious they are about this. Yeah, but it's almost like when there's a riot and people burn down their own neighborhood because they're pissed off at someone else. I mean, I don't know. I mean, I'm glad they're doing something. I mean, it seems like it puts the pressure really on local politicians, but the local politicians don't want ice there. And we already know they don't want ice there. I don't know what they're supposed to do, really.

Yeah, I agree with you. Three birds, one stone. Two bucks. Thanks very much. Where do we see the world in five years? Honest thoughts, though, although operating. optimism is not entirely off the table. That's hilarious. You can go, John. I think that in one way or another, we're going to be in the process of trying to rebuild our longstanding international friendships and relationships. Serious damage has been done.

Serious damage. For example, this morning, President Trump threw the Canadians off of the so-called peace board that he's creating for Gaza, like it's his to create, threw the Canadians off because he's angry about the speech that Prime Minister Carney gave at Davos. So we've got a lot of work to do to try to repair these relationships. I mean, I think also the body politics has never been more divided. The divisions between left and right, Democrats, Republicans, the total distrust in the system.

I mean, to me, it's very reminiscent of the stuff I've read about the late Weimar Republic. And just like there's just like no faith whatsoever in, in the, in the, you know, in representative democracy. It just feels like it, you know, nobody thinks they care about us. And that's very toxic. I mean, I could see the system collapsing entirely, although, frankly, I hate the system and would love to see it replaced. But, you know, I mean, the problem is we don't have something waiting in the wings to replace it. That's all, you know, whatever, however. shittier system is, it can always get worse.

Yeah. Yeah, that's right. It can always get worse. Yeah. Hey, did you happen to see that the president Trump said the other day, he was talking about U.S. Italian relations? Did you see this? No, I think I missed it. He was talking about U.S. Italian relations, and he said that our relations with Italy have been excellent since Roman times.

And the translator looks at him like, what? and then she translates it. It's like, I don't know if he knows how long ago that was. It's like George W. Bush with the Grecians. You know, we, we love the Grecians. And the Greeks are like, what? Jesus Christ. I mean, okay, so I know it's like the equivalent of like, you know, a poll tax or something.

But I kind of feel like you should have to pass a basic history. politics test to be allowed to run for president. Yeah. Yeah, I would agree. Yeah, we would rule out pretty much almost everyone who ever runs. So that would have that benefit. John, if you ever run Young Courthouse wants to know, and thanks for the buck. Have you ever crossed paths with a Jack Lee in the 1990s? No, I'm sorry.

I can't say that I have. Okay. The one and only scars. Hey, John, I'm in high school and speak Arabic. do you recommend trying to join the CIA? That's a longer conversation. I'll put it this way. If you are inclined to join the CIA in order to make changes from the inside, absolutely.

As much as I criticized the CIA, and Ted and I have talked about this a million times, I loved every minute of that career. I went to 72 countries. I met with kings and presidents and prime ministers and had the experience of a lifetime. So if you're inclined to do that kind of work, knowing that you may have to stand up one day and say, this is wrong and I'm not doing it and I'm making a whistleblower complaint, then go for it. The career is magnificent. Thank you for gentlemen for your work.

and thank you for the five Canadian dollars. John, you once mentioned the CIA uses a lot of cheap gadgets from Amazon. Then what's DARPA for? DARPA is for the big ticket items. The Black Mirror robot dogs. The soldiers, the robot soldiers that we're developing now, that the only reason they're not on the battlefield fighting

is because we haven't developed a long life battery yet. That's what DARPA's for. Stuff that we haven't even thought of. But if you want to bug a room or plant a camera, or something, just get it off of Amazon. John, what's the website you used to track aircraft carriers that you have mentioned? Oh, let me see if I can find it again. Aaron Arnold wants to know, Ted, do you use a seatbelt now?

100%. By the way, the car that I was driving didn't have a seatbelt. So there is that. Okay. No, that wasn't the one. Oh, here it is. Got it. It is. Yes, here it is. So it's go. WWW. You know what? Why don't I put it in the chat? Okay. Do you go ahead and do that? Unsung Pat, wow, thanks for the 50 bucks. When it comes to the Middle East, why don't we talk about one? The Lord Rothschild letter, my family created Israel. Two, the lives after World War I that chopped up the Middle East. Three, the 1948, 1950. um um um bulk miss child affair i don't know the third one i don't know the third one um i guess maybe you can uh elaborate on that one uh pat but um you know i think that like in america you lose

i have lost every single historical and political argument that i've ever made that relied on someone either knowing history or believing that I knew history or believing that history was relevant to today. It just doesn't have much effect. You know, Americans are a historical. I mean, and it's, you know, part of it's a superpower. We're always looking forward. We're not wallowing in the past. You know, we're not pissed off about the 1389 Battle of Kosovo. But we are still, but part of the problem is, you know, when you try to say, well, this is how we, the reason it's important in my view to know how we got here in any situation is because then we won't make the mistake of making the same mistake in the future and being like, okay, you know, now everything's

solved. Like if we know, for example, that a lot of the shit that Trump does is stuff that Obama did and that Biden did and that Bush did, then we know that these are things that, you know, we're not going to think that just electing Democrats is going to solve the Trump problem. But like the point is that most people just, they can't relate to it. Not in America. This in France or any other, Greece, any other country, you can, Russia, you can make a historical argument and it resonates like incredibly powerfully. But I don't know how to get around that.

I've just, you know, I've tried it my entire life. It never, ever works. And I've never seen it work with anyone else. Yeah, I think I think you've hit that on the head. I agree. Relaxed Garden. John, do you really think we can repair those relationships with? our allies. I hope we can, but I'm not sure if they'll take us seriously anymore.

I do, actually. I do. You know, we repaired our relationships after George W. Bush, and it can be done again. Remember that old saying that there's no such thing as permanent friendships, just permanent interests, and our interests are going to continue to intersect. And so whether we, you know, have hurt feelings on one side or both or not, those relationships will be repaired. And some foreign leaders will think to themselves, well, that was crazy Trump. It's better now. Right. Exactly. Kat Melvin, I hate the system and would like to love to see a replace. That's me. There you go. That's why we're doomed. Everyone wants some kind of dramatic showdown. It's bad. I don't want a dramatic showdown.

I just don't think this system is reformable. I would be very clear here. You should never have a revolution if you can avoid it. Revolution really sucks. but, you know, if, but there are, there are problems that can only be solved by revolution. Desert Fox 41, what would you recommend, John, for a history major with a polysci minor in their last semester at Seton Hall. This is very specific, John, you know, who is 5'9 and 147 pounds with brown hair. Now, about what to do about a career. I am extremely concerned. Don't be. Don't be extremely concerned about.

I know that you feel like you're under the gun, but don't feel bad about taking a job that is going to end up being temporary. You're young. You have literally a whole lifetime ahead of you. You know, it took so long for my CIA clearances to come through. Even though I was sort of, you know, expedited through the old boy network, it took. 18 months for my, my clearances to come through. And so I had to take a job at the Office of Personnel Management doing background investigations for other people to get their clearances. That wasn't a career. I knew it wasn't a career. It was a bunch of bozos just going through the

motions of being a pretend cop. And so, so don't be hard on yourself. Go ahead and take a, temporary job that you know is not going to be a career, while you do other things. to improve your lot in life. Get a graduate degree, a master's degree, learn a foreign language, develop another skill. Just give yourself a little bit of time. Don't worry about it. Yeah. And also the thing is your education can end up helping you in unexpected ways.

I have a colleague, a cartoonist, his name, he goes by the name Rubin Bowling. It's not his real name, but he does a strip called Tom the Dancing Bug. He went to Harvard Law School. He's never practiced law. and I'm sure that came as a great disappointment to his parents. He graduated at the top of his class. He would have been an absolutely brilliant attorney. And certainly he's like freelance as like a paralegal,

but he's never been a lawyer. But his cartoons are infused with that sort of legalistic approach. And he draws on legal knowledge for his work. He's the only cartoonist who can do that. And it shows. And it might be like one of the, those things like, you know, you could read his work your entire life and never know. But the point is, it's in there. It's part of the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, which is brew that makes for

this magic comic strip. You just never know how you're, how, how, how, how, how, how, how, how, how you're, I mean, you know, I, I, I went to engineering school for three years. I have a physics, I have a physics, I have a physics minor. I never use it. But still, it informs the way I think, the, you know, sort of the scientific method. Like things are, you know, how I ascertain whether something is likely to be true. That's very subtle. But, yeah, it helps me in all sorts of other,

in my politics. Teflon money dawned for both of us. For viewers who may not know much about Lebanon, how do you see the country fitting into the Middle East today? Well, how I see the country fitting in the Middle East is going to be vastly different from how Donald Trump sees the country fitting in the Middle East. Because Donald Trump's view is Israel, Israel, Israel, and you know my position on that.

I think that we have very strong relations with, you know, the GCC countries, the Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates. Very good relations. I think we could do a lot to improve our relations with Algeria, Tunisia, even Egypt. Relations with Morocco are very good. Lebanon's a basket case. We should be somehow working to, you know, to bring the, the Lebanese economy back to life. I'm actually going to give an interview to a Lebanese network this afternoon about that very issue. And location, location, location, right?

That's it. Lebanon's jammed up between, oh, I mean, Syria was a bigger power, right? Yeah. Right. And it will be again. Yes. But Israel, Turkey. I mean, they're surrounded by.

big bruisers who always push them around. On the other hand, location, location, location, they have a lot of shoreline, they have ports, they have beautiful beaches. You know, there's potential there. There's inherent value in Lebanon. I mean, you know. Agreed.

I mean, as a tourist destination, it could be fucking off the charts. Yeah, without a doubt. I mean, speaking of which. So we all remember. member, everybody who's watching this show, I know has seen that AI video that came out at the height of the Gaza War, of, you know, the Trump Tower Gaza, Trump Casino, Gaza with the giant gold Trump statue and all that stuff. I used it in the thumbnail today. Do you, you know, yesterday or two days ago, you mentioned this yesterday morning. Jared Kushner, I guess this was yesterday

local time at Davos, made a presentation that kind of echoed that leaked Israeli document that sort of had this vision for Gaza. It's basically full-fledged exploitation, right? It's all rubble. We're going to build brand new cities over the rubble and over the bodies of the dead Palestinians. We're going to start from scratch. It's all, going to be glitzy and luxurious and touristy. John, questions. Who's going to own this land? How are they going to get, and how will they get it? Will they, would the Israelis or the other, you know, Western developers who want to build there, would they sort of go with the Maui model or where they exploit the misery and desperation of the property owners to get the song,

to get the land for a song and then build there? will the Israelis annex it and just eminent domain it and steal it? Or is this just all bullshit and incapable of happening in the same way that like the trans-Afghanistan pipeline project was never going to happen because it required going through a war zone? You know, what's going to happen here? I'm not sure anything is going to happen here. The first thing that you said is I think the most important in that this is not our call.

we don't get to make these decisions. We can't just pretend that it's not ours. And we can't pretend that Palestinians don't live in Gaza or shouldn't live in Gaza or won't live in Gaza in the near future. So this whole, this whole, I think it's a fantasy. I do. And I think this whole peace board or peace commission or whatever it is that Donald Trump is charging people a billion dollars to be a member of. And that just appoints his friends and family. I just don't see how this could possibly carry out a policy.

It would be like me just saying, you know what, there's this island in Papua New Guinea. I'm going to develop it. I'm going to charge people billion dollars to be on my board of directors. I'm going to develop this island. I don't own it. I've never been there. But yeah, I'm going to do this. And then what, you expect people just to say?

step into line. I just don't see it happening. Yeah, I does feel like they're high. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's also, but, you know, and then there's the politics of it, right? I mean, how are the, is, how are the Palestinians and those of us who care about them supposed to look at this? You know, basically it's like we're, you know, you basically want to build this shining, glittering Las Vegas on top of this giant grave, the graves of hundreds of thousands of dead Gazans. Yeah. And, you know, what of the people who are suffering horribly there now

that you just don't give a shit about? That's right. Exactly right. I couldn't agree more. We should, before we do some more questions. I really want to get your thoughts about, I thought it was interesting that Trump is reported in Politico to be looking to the left for ideas about economic populism, things like a cap on credit card

interest, things like coming up with a health, an improvement on Obamacare. And they're saying, oh, he's looking to the left rather than the right for, you know, to in order to address the affordability crisis. Well, I mean, famously liberals like to say the truth as a liberal bias. I wouldn't say that's true. But I will say, say that, you know, caring about ordinary people economically has a left-wing bias. Right-wingers don't care. By definition, I've just never seen an idea that come out of the Republican Party or out of the right that addresses issues like people are poor. They can't pay their bills. They can't pay their rent. They just don't have ideas for that. You know, we're still waiting for a real health care plan.

I mean, this puts lefties into an awkward position, though, right? Like if Elizabeth Warren, works with Trump and he ends up selling one of her ideas and she gets the satisfaction of seeing her idea become come to fruition, but she's also empowered Donald Trump and maybe improved his chances in the midterms. What do you do in a situation like that? What do you do? Yeah. I mean, I mean, personally, I say if it were me, I'd say, you know, you take, you take your,

you take your wins where you can get them. Yeah. That's kind of my standing position. Yeah. I'm happy to form alliances wherever I can and take my wins. Thanks for the 10 bucks, waterways. Much appreciated. Thank you.

Much much, much. How hard is it to learn Desert Fox wants to know? How is it hard to learn Lebanese Arabic? Oh, it's actually not that hard. I mean, once you have a foundation in standard Arabic, many of the films that are made that are broadcast all around the Middle East are in Lebanese or Syrian dialect. And so everybody in the Middle East has an acquaintance with them. Psycho not good name.

John, was there any time in the past that the CIA used the company as a reference to the agency? Or is that just from the movies? Never, ever, ever, never. Never. If anybody ever said to me that they worked for the company, I'd say, get the fuck out of here, you phony. Okay. Yeah, no. That's just in the movies. Literally no one ever in my life ever mentioned the company. Right. That's the name of a famous book, right? Inside the company. Yeah. Yeah. Um, Kat Melvin, Bustamante told Pierce Morgan he would pretty much be doing the same thing as Trump.

If he were president, is that reasonable? Like, is what Trump doing strategic in any, and he's, Yeah, Bustamante also said literally on the same day in another interview that Trump was so insane that he and his wife and kids were leaving the United States permanently. So Bustamante, the fraud that he is, just plays to his audience, whatever he thinks they want to hear. He also said in that interview with Pierce Morgan, he says, I'm not trying to stroke you, Pierce, but your questions are sheer genius. Are folks 92? Have you read Putin's essay on the justification for the invasion of Ukraine? Is it a genuine example of non-Americans caring more about history or just retroactive justification for a lands grab? Well, it's certainly the former.

I mean, you know, Putin's a huge student, like all Russians. Russians care about history. History is front and present for them. And Putin's definitely an avid history of he wants to make Russia great again, like it's, he wants to roll like it's 1350 all over again. That is right. Now, is that, so what's, so then, is it retroactive justification for a land grab? Well, it's definitely justification, right? That's what he's trying to do.

Yes. Obviously. Yeah, that's it. It is, yeah. But you're right. Sorry, no, no, we only have a minute left. You go right ahead. No, go ahead.

I was going to say he understands, Russians in general understand history so much better than Americans do. And they have such a longer view of issues because their views are rooted in history. Ours or not. Totally. And with that, thank you, John, very much as always. Hope you enjoy your weekend. And that you stay out of the snow.

Okay, so it is now 10 o'clock Eastern, which means it's time for the TMI show with me and in Middala Chan. please stay tuned for that. We dropped a DMZ America podcast yesterday about ICE, which worked out really well. I highly recommend that you go check that out. John and I will be back here doing D-Program at 9 a.m. Eastern Time and all next week on 9 a.m. Eastern Time

throughout the weekdays. So please tune in then. Have an awesome weekend. Thank you very much. And see you later, John. Bye, everybody. Bye, Ted. Bye.