DeProgram with John Kiriakou and Ted Rall - Cold As ICE | DeProgram with Ted Rall and John Kiriakou

Episode Date: February 27, 2026

Political cartoonist Ted Rall and CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou deprogram you from mainstream media every weekday at 9 AM EST. Today we discuss:• America’s least popular government agency, ICE, is under fire after another wild day of brutality. Another Columbia student was illegally abducted from campus housing by agents, with no warrant, who used fake NYPD badges and a forged NYPD missing persons poster to lie their way past university security. Reuters reports that ICE is hiring career criminals and members of violent street gangs as they lower standards and skip vetting procedures, as the top federal judge in Minnesota threatened to jail ICE officers who routinely defy court orders. A nearly blind refugee from ethnic violence in Myanmar, a father of two, died after Border Patrol goons dumped him at a Buffalo doughnut shop and he tried to walk home five miles in arctic weather, after BCE confiscated the cane he needed to walk. • “Open War Between Us”: Pakistan bombed Kabul and Kandahar and assaulted Taliban border posts. • Anthropic, which created Claude AI, will not allow the Pentagon to use it for fully autonomous armed drones or AI-assisted mass surveillance that could track dissent. Pete Hegseth is giving Anthropic until 5 pm today to cave in, or he’ll take it for free under the Defense Production Act. • For the third year in a row, Israel is the top killer of journalists who have managed not to get laid off. • Texas airspace was closed after the DoD used a high-energy laser to shoot down a HomeSec drone near El Paso. • The Washington Post reports that activists with close ties to the White House are urging Trump to declare a national emergency to justify to placing midterm elections under his control, with mail-in voting canceled and ICE “protecting” polling stations.TO ASK A QUESTION FOR TED AND/OR JOHN BEFORE TODAY’S SHOW AIRS LIVE: https://ahaslides.com/T1S4EMERCH STORE: https://www.deprogram.livehttps://x.com/tedrallhttps://x.com/JohnKiriakouLIVE ON RUMBLE: https://rumble.com/c/DeProgramShowSPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/show/2kdFlw2w8sSPhKI8NRx8ZuAPPLE MUSIC: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/deprogram-with-john-kiriakou-and-ted-rall/id1825379504

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Terms and conditions apply. Visit blueapron.com slash terms for more. Good morning and happy Friday. You're watching D-Program with Ted Rall and John Kirooku. I'm Ted Rall. Good morning, John. Good morning, Ted. Hi, everybody.

A lot of big, big news night. Got a lot to talk about. I'm going to go through the rundown very, very quickly. ICE is the main story today. After another wild day of stories coming out of that agency, a Columbia student was abducted from her dorm by agents who didn't have a warrant, used fake NYPD badges to gain entry into the Columbia University building, used a forged NYPD missing persons poster to lie their way past university security. Mayor Mamdani personally intervened

with President Trump, who ordered the, interestingly, Mandani was managed to keep her in New York, which indicates to me that the mayor has maybe more powers than he's been using in the past. Reuters reports that ICE is now hiring career criminals and members, of MS-13 and other violent street gangs because they're not vetting anyone anymore, top federal judge in Minnesota was threatening to jail ICE officers who routinely defy court orders saying that financial fines don't seem to be doing the trick. And probably the grossest story that I've read in a long time, this blind refugee from ethnic violence of Rohingya dude from Myanmar, aka Burma, father of two, was dumped off.

in the middle of the night, in freezing cold in Buffalo, New York, outside a closed shop, and the guy needs a cane to walk, can't see where he's going. Buffalo is freezing, freezing cold all the time in the winter. But this has been an especially cold winter. Anyway, they took away his cane, and the dude died while he was trying to make his way home five miles in single-digit weather. For the first time, I think John and I were talking right before he went, live, Afghanistan and Pakistan are close to a hot war.

Oh, they're in it. And it's bombing. And Ganderar. There's this crazy story out of Anthropic. There's a 5 p.m. Eastern deadline that's set by Pete Hegseth. He says, if you don't let us use Claude AI for fully autonomous armed drones and mass surveillance, which he claims that he's not planning to do, but he wants the option, he will sees it for free under the Defense Production Act of 1950.

Israel is the third, if there are any journalists left who haven't yet been laid off, Israel is the top killer of those who remain in the world for the third consecutive year. In fact, of all the journalists killed around the world this year, Israel killed a majority of them. Insane. Yeah. That little tiny country. It's insane. And this is supposed to be this bastion of democracy in the Middle East.

Ridiculous. Yeah. Plus, they're not letting any journalist into the Gaza Strip still. Texas Airspace is closed, was closed near El Paso due to another fiasco between Homeland Security and the DOD over a drone. This time, the U.S. is shooting down its own drones. So, I mean, you know, that's great. And then last and certainly not least, the Washington Post is reporting that,

that plans are seriously being considered by the White House to declare a national emergency this fall in order to federalize the midterm elections and where they would put ICE in charge of polling stations, cancel mail-in voting, and who knows what else. John, there's so much to talk about. And, of course, please, as usual, if you're watching live here in the 9 o'clock Eastern Hour, please post your questions to the live chat in YouTube and Rumble. For those of you who posted your comments ahead of time in the AHA slides, which seems to be working pretty well,

we will get to those first. John, do you want to do first too? I don't even know where to start. Yeah, you know, let's start with India, Pakistan, because it's so straightforward. Good. So there was an attack in Pakistan, I'm going to say a week ago, maybe a week and a half ago,

that was claimed by the, I forget who claimed it, the Pakistani Taliban, which ironically is not affiliated with the Afghan Taliban. But anyway, the Pakistanis, the bottom line is they've had enough. They've had enough. Look, Pakistan, as poor as it is, Pakistan's a nuclear power, and it has a lot of people. And a big military. Yeah, big, big military.

And so they've had enough. And they just started bombing Afghanistan. The Pakistani Minister of Defense said that this is, his words, open warfare. And then there were accounts from both Kandahar and Kabul of bombs raining down on them all night long. And people having to, it's kind of a thing that they do in the area, they run into the streets for their own safety. I never understood that. I understand why. I've been in Afghanistan during American bombing.

The buildings will come down on you. The buildings will do. definitely come down because they use Adobe construction. Exactly. So it's poured mud if building will fall right down on you and crush your ass. Yep, that's right. So this is, this is bad. It's unclear exactly what the goal is. I guess the Pakistanis want to destroy any militant ability to attack in Pakistan. That's not possible. The border is wide open. The Pakistan are choosing to misunderstand what's going on here, right? I mean, the Taliban are themselves at war with ISIS K and the TPP that are in their own borders, mostly in the eastern part of the country, but like

near and north of Jalalabad. But this is kind of like an old story, right? It's like the way that the Northern Alliance was based in the Pangyar Valley. Yes, indeed. And, you know, it's very hard for any Afghan central government to control all of that very wild tribal unruly territory. And the Taliban don't control this terrain. These attacks against Pakistan are real, but the Afghans would love nothing more. The Taliban would love to crush these groups. But the Pakistanis aren't bombing those groups. They're bombing. Well, they did that last week, but they are not doing it now. They're bombing Taliban arms depots in Kandahar and Kabul. The Taliban should really be aligned with the Pakistani military in this particular fight.

You would think that they would be. Exactly right? They're not talking to each other. They're like talking past each other. And the Afghans have always had a dim view of the Pakistanis. They think that the ISI, the Inner Services Intelligence Agency, which is the CIA of Pakistan,

is always pulling the strings in Afghanistan. And for many years, that's been true. And it's not true now under the Taliban, but it's, I mean, it's, It's a shit show. It's one of the most unnecessary stupid wars I've ever seen. Yeah. Totally, totally agree.

It's completely unnecessary. Yet a lot of people are going to get killed. That's the bottom line. It's a real shame. Should we do another one? Pardon? Before we do some questions? I want to say one of the thing.

I spoke with Mike from Nottingham last night. Another great conversation with Mike. Mike flagged a story for me that I just had missed. It's a story for you. yesterday, but it's really important. There was a parliamentary by-election in Northern England yesterday in a constituency that has been held by the Labor Party since 1931. Okay.

95 years, this has been an unbroken streak of parliamentarians from the Labor Party. And labor got crushed by the Greens. Of all people. The Tories only got two. Their greens are better than our ground. They're real greens. So the Greens won the seat. Reform Party, Nigel Farage's Reform Party came in second.

Labor came in a distant third. The Tories got 2%. So what we're seeing here is the complete upending of British politics. Mike made a couple of points I want to highlight. Number one, the Greens are a legitimate alternative to labor. labor is not really labor anymore it's like a fake party uh number two the tories look like they're done the tories have been around for 350 years they're done and nigel farage is probably going to be the next non-labor prime minister i say the next non-labor because i think kirstarmer's going to be done

relatively soon and somebody else is going to be a labor prime minister but all of british politics are being upended right now and the thing is what's interesting is it's not just something to watch from over across the pond or over the channel. It could happen here. That's, we're seeing this fracture throughout the West where, you know, the polarization is not just between, like here the way it's sort of implied in the mainstream media is. It's between Democrats and Republicans. Yeah.

But no, it's really between left and right. Exactly. Exactly. And these old center left and center right parties are being left behind. Exactly. Exactly. Which, frankly, I have no problem with. I hate those center left and center right parties.

I mean, give me people who believe in something. Yeah, I'm with you. And I said to them, I said, you know, I really wish we had a viable Green Party. Whenever there's an election where I just don't like either one of the, you know, the Democrat or the Republican, which is frequent, I'll vote for the green or the libertarian. Only because I like to know, you know, who these people are and I follow them and I know which ones are nuts and which ones are legit. But neither one of them are viable.

They're not viable. especially not on the local and state level, right, which is where it needs to start. That's right. I mean, it has to start there and people like, oh, because it's grassroots. No, it has to start there because the presidential campaign is untenable because of the electoral college. So there's no way for a third party candidate to. I mean, you know, in 1992, right, if Ross Perrault hadn't dropped out, he could have conceivably won a plurality in 1992, right? I believe that's a point two percent of the vote.

Yes. And the point is that, and people were very unhappy with the two other candidates, Bush and Clinton. And so let's just say he had gotten 35% of the vote and could have gotten the majority, I mean, the plurality. But the point is the election would have gone to the House of Representatives. I don't remember who controlled it in 1992. I think it might have been Republican. 1992 was the Democrat. Well, no, actually.

I don't remember. it might have been Democrats, you're right, because then Newt Congress. Right. But anyway, the point is the Democrats would have just, you know, elected, you've just voted for Bill Clinton under our Constitution. So, I mean, it wouldn't have mattered. The people's will doesn't matter. You have to. There's no choice. It's not even a, you know, like an ideological thing. It's a practical thing. You have to start at the local level. That is a cool story. And we're going to, we have to keep watching it. We will get to your questions. We have tons of questions piled up. I do want to like knock down.

at least one other story. Shall we do? What do you want to do? Journalists. Yeah, let's do journalists. That's important. All right. Well, so Israel has been killing journalists mostly in the Gaza strip for, which is ironic

because they don't let them in there. But these are mostly stringers working for, you know, Western and Arab outlets in Gaza. And the Israelis target them. It's like they, you know, they see it. They look at a, they see that press jacket. And they're like, oh, that's not. That's a yummy appetizing treat for us to shoot. So they deny this, but we know it's true over and over and over.

John, there's just no, even American media outlets don't even editorialize against Israel when they kill their own employees. It's absolutely right. You know, Alan Dershowitz was on Pierce Morgan again a couple of days ago. You know, I can't help it to criticize Alan Dershwitz. And I need the guy right now and I can't help myself. But anyway, he was just vociferous in his position that, yes, these deaths do happen in Israel, but the Israelis are investigating every one of them and they are prosecuting the people that carry. Name one, the guy said, the other guy.

Name one Israeli soldier that has been prosecuted for him. killing a journalist. I'll wait, Alan, he says, name one. It's never happened. It's just sat there and looked. Nobody's getting prosecuted. Most moral army in the world. Yeah. Nice. What a fucking joke. It's, it is disgusting. You know, I mean, as someone who has watched and seen and been close to journalists who have died in, in war, you know, it's one thing when it's an accident or when you just get caught in the crossfire or you step on a mine. That sucks. But when you have a U.S. ally gunning for you, you know, on purpose, a U.S. ally. I want to really make that clear here. That's right. Like they're shooting our soul,

our journalists and Western journalists with bullets that you and I, John, paid for with our taxes. Yep. That's exactly right. You know, it's, I don't know how Americans are not outraged. that Israel has a welfare system that gives free apartments and free furniture to every refugee and that gives free health care to all Israelis. How come we don't have that stuff? It's a good fucking question. And unfortunately, there is not a good answer. All right, should we do another one or should we start taking some questions?

Well, I want to thank Sodan real quickly. Yeah, let's do that. Thank you for your generosity, so on. He says, good morning, gents. John, would you be open to having a special episode of Deprogrammed with your old colleague? like Bob Bear, Mike Baker, Jeffrey Sterling, and others. Same questions for you, Ted. Would your colleagues be open to that kind of forum?

Absolutely, yes. 100%. That's a great idea. It's so simple. I don't know why I didn't think of it. All about it for sure. Definitely, yes. Also, $25 donation from GV man.

John, sorry everyone is sending you 2K LinkedIn requests, 2000 LinkedIn request. Robbie's clearing them out for me today. I was about to send one, but I'm not asking you for anything. I had a question for Ted. How long does it take to do a cartoon usually? Idea plus drawing. Well, the idea is just filter in. And I write them down on little scraps of paper.

And then it takes about depending, something like this takes about an hour and one and a half, two hours to draw. Then I take about a half an hour to color it and fix it in Photoshop. So I guess all told typically two hours, two and a half hours. You used to take like eight to ten hours when I got started. Okay, so shall we do, let's take some of the questions from the aha slides. Huge fan of the show.

This is for both of us. All war and suffering is horrible, and the people that have glorified the deaths of children and gods are deplorable, as you both pointed out. However, as you've also noted, Israel has few limits because it's in a fight for its survival. Is it? Is it really? With so many wanting its destruction, what are its other options? But otherwise, if you were senior advisors in the Israeli government, what would you recommend to be done differently. John, I'll let you take that one, because I'm jumping at the bit

too much. Yeah, I mean, like very serious peace negotiations with everybody. You can negotiate a buffer zone. The Syrians, they probably wouldn't even show up to the talks because they couldn't find the southwest of their country on a map. But you got to negotiate. I know that you don't want to negotiate with Hamas or with Hezbollah, but you've negotiated with the Saudis and the Emirati. and the Bahrainis and the Egyptians, the Jordanians, the Tunisians, just negotiate. The policy, I said this on Pierce when I was debating fucking Dershowitz. The policy can't be to just kill everybody. That's not a sustainable policy.

Well, John, your answer was better than mine, and so I'm not going to say what mine was going to be. I'm going to piggyback on yours. I think, look, Israel is the only country in the world right now that, relies 100% on international and Western and particularly American goodwill for its financing, its economic support, its military support, right? I mean, so it's like if you're reliant on public opinion, then you've got to be, you've got to play nice.

You know, you've got to be the soft pillow. You can't, like you said, John, you can't be going around killing everybody. You can't bomb everybody. You know, you have to be transparent. You have to, you know, you have to talk to the. Palestinians, you have to move towards a resolution of the Palestinian state issue. You can't annex the West Bank or Gaza. I mean, I think seriously, the best thing they could do for their security would be to move immediately to sit down with the Palestinian state and say, we are prepared

to declare to recognize a Palestinian state Monday. You know, like, do it right away. Yeah, totally agree. And they could turn the Palestinian authority into their, you know, even more of their bitch than they already are and then like you know just have an economic relationship with them i mean they need to be they're in the same neighborhood you got to get along that's right okay exactly right uh question for uh let's see um best prayer best wishes and prayers for robbie's wife also great when robbie's on the show we agree not only just thanks to all of us um let's see uh john have become a huge oh i like this question john i've become a huge fan of all of your podcasts and i'm captivated by dead drop. Are there fictional elements or is it all true? Yeah, it's it's all true. There are some

things that I've had to sort of fudge the details on because the CIA won't let me talk about them yet. Most of the time, the details that have to be fudged are specific locations, like countries or countries that I might be working against. But yeah, it's all true. And I will say one other thing. My stories are not any different from the stories that any other CIA operations officer has. I might be a better storyteller than those guys. But everybody's got those stories. And not everyone knows how it is good at telling stories. Logan, John Ted and Robbie, love the show and prayers to your wife, Robbie. Would you guys do a meet and greet in Tampa, Florida? Oh, totally. Yeah, we just need an honorarium, airfare, hotel.

and you deal with the venue. That's it, literally. This applies pretty much to any place. Does this planned war make any Iran we're talking about? The amount of planes and refuelers is not like Midnight Hammer where there was a small radar signature. There will need to be a no-tam clearly giving away any sense of surprise. Any smaller would be recognizable by updated radar systems Iran has installed.

My worry is that an American pilot, not Israeli, would be captured or killed, Trump's ego would not stand for it and it's off to the racists. Yeah, I've thought about that. I agree. Do we think it's the real Donald Trump who called C-SPAN to diss the Supreme Court? That was famously, Trump used to call media outlets to complain about this and that. I have a friend who worked at Forbes, it still does. And basically, Trump used to call and complain when he was listed too low on the list of the world's richest men. and he'd say like, I'm worth so much more than that.

But he called other media outlets using like a trying to disguise his voice and using a... And he used another name. Yeah. It's not as good as Marco's Danger. Carlos Danger. Right. Carlos Danger. But still, yeah.

So, I mean, do I think it's him who... It's possible. I don't think it is, though. I don't... Trump's not that crazy. Morgan's... asking you, John. What do you think of Snowden? Have you ever had any contact with him, if you're familiar? What's your opinion of the info he leaked and do you think he was unfairly

prosecuted? Oh, yeah. I have a good, although not close. I have a good relationship with Snowden. We haven't spoken in a while. The last time we spoke was probably three years ago now. But I think I've mentioned on the show, his dad actually came to prison to visit me and to thank me for a letter that I had written to Ed. And then when I got out of prison, I reached out again. We used to speak mostly through Ray McGovern, our mutual friend. And then Ray sort of lost touch with him. A buddy of mine in New York asked if he could get in touch with Ed recently.

And the only way to do it now is through his attorney, which is difficult. But I will say that he wanted to come home. He tried to come home. And he hired my attorneys at my recommendation. They negotiated a deal for him. And all he wanted to do is to be able to stand up in court and explain why he did what he did. DOJ said absolutely not. And that was under, under who was it?

Barack Obama at the end of the Obama administration. And so he's become a Russian citizen. He speaks Russian. his girlfriend moved there and they got married there. They have two little boys now. I think that what he released was incredibly important because, frankly, without overstating it, we would have no idea that NSA was spying on us had he not told us. That's true.

Yeah, of course he was unfairly prosecuted. I mean, disgusting. In the Eastern District of Virginia, same place I was and Julian Assange was and Jeffrey Sterling was and everybody else. Daniel Hale, all of us. Morgan's asking me, I'm not a member to watch your life story video, but I've been curious to know if you've ever been threatened or even attacked for some of the art you've published. If so, was there ever a time you thought of quitting and what made you decide to consider your art? Yeah, no, I've been, literally I stopped counting at a thousand death threats many years ago.

I have a file of them. I receive them every single week. I mean, that's sort of the par for the course when you're a political cartoonist with any kind of strong opinions. And, you know, the truth is I'm kind of surprised that more of us haven't been killed. I knew four of the guys of Charlie Hebdo who got killed. So, yeah, 100%. Cartooning is a dangerous work. And I have often thought about quitting. Not really because of that, though.

I'd rather die than be afraid, to be honest. I grew up being afraid as an abused child, so I don't want to be afraid as an adult. Better to die, really. But, you know, so that's why I continue. But I've thought about quitting because it's pretty thankless. Cartooning is not appreciated much in the United States, very different in other countries. Let's see. Question for you, John, from Petros.

What do you think about the current political situation in Greece? Your opinion on Mitsotakis? I've lived in the U.S. for 20 years hoping to save up and retire in Greece. Not very sure about the political climate. If things are not good there, today, how can things improve? What kind of changes are needed? I think that in general, in general, the political climate is good. In general, there's a problem with government accountability.

I like Mitsutakis as a person. And I think that among the leaders that, Greece has produced recently in the last 20 or 30 years, I think he's quite good. But the country has serious problems, the brain drain being the most important of them. Greece's population is shrinking. And if the country hopes to be viable, remain viable, it's going to have to either bring Greeks back or allow more immigration, which I think most Greeks don't want. but I think he's he's good given the cards that he's been dealt like you I hope to at least partly retire to Greece fingers crossed and knock on wood thank God I'm having a pretty good year right now and by the end of the year

I hope to buy a little teeny tiny apartment in Athens where I'd like to spend two or three months a year but quite lovely I'm hoping but you know another issue is and I think this is what you you were alluding to. Greece isn't the inexpensive haven that it was even 10 or 15 years ago. Real estate prices have been driven up significantly by Russians, Chinese, and Israelis, who are just buying everything. And many neighborhoods in Athens, and I'm thinking about Placa, Citi, Nioscosmos, you know, Thysillo, places like that around the historic center are empty because the owners of all the apartments are foreigners who don't live there. The last time I was there was in March and I was staying in PCD.

I was in a 12-unit apartment building. Every one of the 12 units was an Airbnb. And I was the only, literally, I was the only person in the building. This is a problem all over the world in major cities, of course. John, I think if we, I'll be very upset with myself. Let me bring in Robbie. And then I want to talk to. about this midterms story.

Robbie, Robbie, you have some stuff to say? Yeah, just a quick, a little bit of housekeeping. First, I want to thank everyone who has come by. We have over 1,500 people watching live on YouTube. Welcome. If y'all would, I need about 500 of y'all to come over here and join us on Rumble because Rumble pays a hell of a lot better than what YouTube does.

And also, you get to get some content that's probably a little bit too spicy for YouTube's moderation. So come on over, the weather's fine. second if you have a question please do not spam it repeatedly two three times is fine but if you spam the same question like john what do you think about armenians of like 30 different times i will delete your question no one will ever see it if you keep me if you keep on doing it i will ban you so don't be a dick that's the that's the first rule so that's all i've got for you thank you very much robie um okay so let's talk about the washington oh um let me sorry Robbie, do we have an ad?

We do. Okay. All right, let's talk about a quick, well, let's do a question while Robbie pulls that up. So I love this story. Cleve to antiquity. Thanks for the 49. John, can you talk about your role your faith took during your time in prison shortly after, etc? I find this fascinating.

I'm going to reach into my wallet here and show you that I always keep with me a laminated card of my, my favorite saint, I consider him to be my patron saint, nectadios of Eugena. My faith was very important to me. You know, not just my faith, but my culture was very important to me in prison. You know, you're surrounded by crazy people. I said in my second book, prison is like seventh grade, a mental institution, and Lord of the Flies all wrapped into one. and you have to negotiate that where you know 22 hours out of the day you're the only sane person

in your proximity you're surrounded by pedophiles and serial killers and drug kingpins and mafia dons and it's just it's just nuts everybody's a sociopath i read a book once that said that 85% of prisoners in america are mentally ill they have a diagnosable mental illness So I relied on my faith. I was the one who established the Orthodox Christian section of the chapel library. They had this giant section for Protestants and Catholics and Mormons and Muslims and Jews and even Wiccans.

And I was like, where's the Orthodox stuff? Good question. So I wrote to the Diocese of Pittsburgh. They sent me cases and cases of books. That's fantastic. So I managed that. And then this sounds silly, but. I so missed Greek music while I was in prison.

I was laying in my bunk one night listening to my radio. You're allowed to buy these little transistor radios that are clear so you can see all the guts inside so people don't hide, you know, drugs and things inside the radio. And I, as soon as the sun would go down, I was able to pick up a Greek radio station in Toronto. and it would play Greek music all night long until sunrise. And so that, like, kept me sane. You know, I would, I got, I especially ordered the biography of St. Nick Dados. There's now a movie on his life called Man of God that's on, that's on Amazon. It's absolutely incredible.

It was nominated for an Academy Award. And between that and the music, I was okay. Very quick follow up, because we have an ad ticking. did was the fact that like in in prison, I assume people are identified a lot by their race, their ethnic background, their geo, where they are from. Everything's racial and geographic. Right. So religion would enter into that.

It's an identity as an identity. Wouldn't that be important? Yeah, the Jews all stuck together. The Mormons all stuck together because they were, there were so few of them. There were three Orthodox. I was the one of the three who was not a pedophile. The other two were pedophiles, so I had nothing whatsoever to do with them. But yeah, everything is very strictly racially divided.

And then within the races, it's either ethnically or religiously divided. And among African Americans, it's geographically divided. Interesting. All right. Four guys were Baltimore. The D.C. guys were D.C. The Pittsburgh guys were Pittsburgh. Still haven't tried 1775 coffee.

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wondering if it's actually worth it. Spoiler, it is. Go to 1775coffee.com slash studio and grab your starter kit before they're gone. Bold beans, clean fuel, and a morning routine that stands for something just like Rumble does. John, let's talk about the Washington Post. So activists who have previously had the president's ear, the Washington Post reported as their lead story late yesterday, are urging the president to declare a national emergency,

wait for it on the grounds that China gave the 2020 election to Joe Biden. I thought it was the Italians that hacked into the satellites and the satellites made the votes change from Trump to Biden. Because that's what they were running with in 2020. Now it's China. And so it's like now we have, Russia gate is no more, but China Gate is with us. They are, so they're claiming that there's no evidence whatsoever to support this theory.

But basically the idea is because of this national emergency that China wants to overturn the midterm elections, because I'm sure that China's super concerned about who is the representative of Ohio's third district from Dayton. But anyway, he wants the proposal that the president is considering. would be to declare the emergency as an excuse to federalize the elections in this country, states run the elections. And then mail-in voting would be canceled. ICE would protect the polling stations. This looks to me like the first, if this were to happen, would be the first step toward a soft coup.

That's exactly what this would be. The Constitution specifically says that elections are to be held. by the states, period. The bottom line here is that Donald Trump doesn't like mail-in voting because he loses among mail-in voters. He doesn't like early voting. Although he might not lose if he encouraged Republicans to cast their votes by mail. That's all he would have to do.

Right. But he wants to take the right to vote away from the rest of us. I can't imagine that this would be legal. I can't imagine that even this crazy right-wing Supreme Court. court would uphold something like this. But it's scary because what we're talking about here is troops in the streets. But in a national emergency, you know, a president, you know, the president could get his compliant House of Representatives to shut down the federal courts.

So the courts wouldn't have anything to say. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. I mean, people don't remember. People think the courts are always in session. They're not. I remember during COVID, my entire case like blew up in everybody who had anything.

in front of the courts during COVID didn't get their day in court because of this national emergency. That's right. That is right. Oh, my God. Oh, so Robbie's saying, John, they couldn't see your card. Could you show it again? Oh, sure.

I guess put it way up close to the camera. There it is. That's good. Yeah. All right. St. Nick Dados. He looks like a kind man. Seriously, it's worth the three bucks or whatever it costs on, on Amazon.

The movie was made by a Serbian filmmaker and just swept the film festivals. It was incredible. I went and saw it in the theater. And the funny thing is, get this, when it came out, it was during COVID. It was released in only 11 theaters in America. And it made number five, the number five grossing movie. Wow. Yeah.

It's a terrific movie. That's terrific. High praise. And it would be about something I don't know much about, which inherently makes it interesting to me. It was great. So before we move on. On to other crazy stories today, I guess I want to talk about Anthropic too.

What do you think the chances are that, you know, obviously the Republican Party is highly motivated not to have these midterms happen. They want to keep the house. This would be their way to keep the house, just keep everything frozen and they might not even be thinking it as subverting democracy. They might just be thinking it as getting their way,

right, for the time being, and preserve it the MAGO movement for another year or whatever. What do you think? I mean, obviously they're weighing this. I mean, if they were to do it, where would the pushback come from? I'm having trouble seeing it, but the Democrats would, you know, post some angry tweets. What would happen? No, no.

They would have to immediately file a federal suit or multiple federal suits. And then they would have to be, you know, appealed quickly. Well, you can file a federal suit. and then go straight to the Supreme Court on an expedited basis. But this is going to have to be decided in the courts. Otherwise, we're going to have bloodshed. I really believe it. Big donation, 100 bucks from Sneaker Dad.

Thank you so much. Thank you, Sneaker Dad. Any chance of John being a regular on Napolitano's Intelligence Roundtable? Oh, you know what? They invited me to go on today at 4 o'clock, and I regret that I have another interview at 4 o'clock. I would love to be a regular. I love Judge Napolitano and he loves me and he always has my friends on Larry Johnson, Ray McGovern. We're all buddies and it doesn't feel like an interview to me. It just feels like a bunch of friends sitting around having a conversation like this. This is not work to me.

Yeah. This is just I get to have a conversation with my friend every morning. Yeah, I would do this without anybody watching. At Chu, do you think there are things for the donation? Do you think think there'll be any more political fallout from this Bay of Pigs event in Cuba the other day? They just revealed that at least one guy was a U.S. national. I suspect not a lot. What do you think? You know, I think that the White House and the State Department are going to try and, you know, shout about this. But the fact that the perpetrator's families came out and said that they were anti-communist political activists who made some students, stupid decisions.

And they stole the boat. And they stole the boat. Diffused the whole situation yesterday. Fucking lunatics. Thanks, Soden for the extra 1999. What do we think about Trump and Mandani bromance, L.O.L. And what do we think about... That's exactly what it is.

His handling of the snowstorm this past weekend. That's exactly what this is. It's one of these... It's like Jesse Helms and Jesse Jackson. Mm-hmm. How do you explain a friendship like that? Yeah. They're saying, oh, it's because they're both New Yorkers from Queens.

I'm like, Queens is a big place. There's two and a half million people there. You know, I guarantee you they're not all buddies. The former Greek prime minister who was a, I mean, he called himself a socialist. He was more of a Euro communist. He and Trump loved each other in the first term. And they would smile and shake hands. And he invited, Trump invited him to love.

at the White House and it was all great. Sometimes these relationships are just inexplicable. Yeah. In terms of the snowstorm this past weekend, look, this snowstorm wasn't nearly as big a deal. I kind of say one of the big problems, and as a New Yorker, I'm recognizing this. We have alternate side of the street parking, which means that basically every other day in most neighborhoods, a street sweeper comes by and cleans up all the dog shit and all the schmuts from the side of the road, including the snow. Well, and so for that to happen, the cars have to move to the other side of the street,

then they move back to the same side of the street after the sweet mover goes by. Anyway, it's a strange system, and in fact, everyone double parks and then waits, and there's a sort of an informal dance to wait to see if the ticket agents is going to bug you or not. Anyway, I have a serious problem with the way that they do this, which is they suspend alternate side of the street parking after a snowfall. And it's like, okay, yeah, for a day. or two, you need to clean out the street first. But then you're never going to get the spots like between the cars and like, you know, all that until you get, you restore alternate side

of the street parking. They shouldn't suspend it for as long. It should be a day or two. And then they, but it literally the last snowstorm, it was three weeks. You couldn't park anywhere. Everybody was leaving their cars like under piles of snow all caked in with gross black ice. You know, so I don't know. I think Mount Downey's like learning the job. of course, but it's also like, he's got experienced people. He should do better. All right. So let's see.

We've got a few more things that I've got to talk to you about, John. Okay, so do we under, thanks for exile for the exile of the Knights of Malta, five bucks. Do you understand standing military legal justice system, peaceful legal rescue of innocence? Oh, being required, lawyers are channeling Charles Schultz. I guess I'm I guess that oh I guess we're talking about things like the boat bombings where if you survive you're supposed to rescue yes you are

you are supposed to rescue the survivors yeah yes you are supposed to rescue the survivors you can prosecute them if they've committed a crime but you can't just double back and bomb them again no I mean that's just it's not fair play it's not no it's a little it's a little strange let's see um let's talk a little bit John about Anthropic because I do not want to rush through this too much. So Anthropic does

Claude AI. A lot of people love Claude AI. Full disclosure, I'm suing Anthropic for stealing my books. I'm one of the many plaintiffs class action suit. And we're getting our money first week of May. Yes, what I hear. I'm looking forward to it. But anyway, but I'm not going to complain about Anthropic today. I come to praise Anthropic. So Anthropic basically, was negotiating a very lucrative contract with the Department of Defense to use their AI. In their contract, apparently it's a standard contract. Anthropics says, okay, you cannot use our AI for fully autonomous armed drones. In other words, drones that are like hunter killers in the Terminator that choose their own targets. Or AI assisted mass surveillance that could

be used to track people like John and I. So the thing is, the Department of Defense says, well, we don't want to do that anyway. But we'd like the option. We don't want to take that out of the contract. Anthropics like, well, we're not taking out of the contract. So they've been at an impasse and Pete Hague Seth decided to, you know, be big man. Big man. And I'm sure with the approval of the president put down, is laying down the, it's threatening. the Anthropic with the Defense Production Act, which basically is a cold war era law that allows the government in case of an emergency like, hey, we really need to have a GM factory convert over to make tanks, or we really need in a pandemic to build ventilators or whatever to force

the private industry to do things that they don't want to do. They're like, if you don't give it to us voluntarily by five o'clock today, five o'clock today, we will take it for free. whether you like it or not. That's pretty scary. Yeah, it is scary. I mean, technically, they can legally do it. Ethically, absolutely the wrong thing to do. The act that Hexeth is citing was passed in 1940

in response to rapid Nazi and Japanese takeovers and military buildups around the world. It was meant to get the United States ready for entry into World War II, which was an eventuality by the end of 1940. Sure. But invoking that now just because you feel like it and you just want the technology, so you're just going to steal it, take it, not cool at all. I agree with you.

I'm no fan of Anthropic. They stole my first two books and now I have to pay for it. But this is wrong. I mean, the thing is I also, I think, you know, there's the chilling effect on private industry. I mean, if you're a tech company or any company in the U.S., you have to think, like, you know, do we want to invest millions of dollars into research and development with the possibility that our IP might be stolen by, you know, or a tech might be stolen by the federal government and will be effectively put out of business. Yeah. Yeah. That's exactly right.

And not to mention, I do think there should be a ban on this sort of technology. You know, it should be past, I mean, it would never happen. But it should be. passed by Congress. I don't think the Democrats would vote for it, but it should be banned. I totally agree. Drones should not be fully autonomous ever. Yep. Yeah. Hey, thank you. Thank you, Troy Boy. I'm actually, I've actually not been taking my vitamins and I've lost more weight and I'm not trying to lose weight. So I appreciate the kind thought. I'm going to start taking them. Let's see. John, you've mentioned on several occasions that intelligence, in intelligence, most people are recruited because of money.

You've also mentioned that Cuba has some of the best, one of the best intelligence agencies, assuming Cuba doesn't have that much money. How are they able to recruit people? You know what it is? It's the same idea that the Israelis say that it's either they win or they're destroyed. Same with Cuba. Either they can defend themselves or they're destroyed. And so in the Cuban intelligence service, every single person is a true believer. And, you know, when somebody is that ideologically pure, no amount of money is going to sway them. Big lady, do we think activist folk music has the same power today as it did in the 60s and 70s? Do you ever listen to Jesse Wells?

Thank you. I don't know, Jesse Wells. I don't know. I don't know Jesse Wells either. Sorry. I don't think it has the same power because it's not mainstream music anymore. I mean, rap is hip is mainstream music now. Yeah, it's, yeah, rap is mainstream music.

And I'll tell you, on a side note, this is something that really bugs the shit out of me is for 2026, literally none of the nominees for Rock and Roll Hall of Fame are rock and roll artists. Oh, that's weird. Yeah, I'm sorry, Mariah Carey has no friggin' business being in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, nor do any rappers or country music people. Get your own Hall of Fame. I couldn't agree more. One vote against. Nitsky is asking, how do we even become friends?

Brian Becker introduced us remotely. When I was doing the show with Brian Becker at Sputnik, loud and clear. Ted was a frequent guest. And I thought, I like that guy. He's interesting and he's nice. Ditto. That's it. Not that complicated.

John, we got to talk about ice. So we got to take him one at a time, right? Let's go a little bit like meta. We'll go meta to micro, right? So Mehta, Reuters is reporting that there's basically no vetting going on. That's not shocking. But I was shocked to hear that MS-13, members are currently working at that's shocking neo-nazis career criminals with felony records um you know

basically they're in such a hurry to hire people yeah i mean and who says this guy they're not creating government jobs um i don't know then you know let me say real quickly ted about ms 13 if you're a member of ms 13 you have to get a gigantic tattoo that says ms 13 oh really time it's on your neck MS-13, how do they not see that they're hiring MS-13 members? Like, seriously? That's a good question. That is an excellent question. I saw it.

There was a guy in our prison who had MS-13 across his forehead. And I discreetly asked one of the Italians. How is an MS-13 member in a low-security prison? He said, oh, he's a rat. He was a rat against MS-13, and it's just too dangerous for him to be anywhere else. They'll kill him. So yesterday, John, two major stories related to ICE activities. Columbia University, always in the news with ICE, they went to this off-campus apartment,

which is just to make this very clear. It's not like a dormitory, dormitory, but it effectively has the same legal status as a dormitory. It's a university building on 121st Street in Manhattan, owned by the university. Students live there. The student went to the same school that I did, the School of General Studies at Columbia University. University and is a double major there. By all accounts, she's been in the United States for about 10 years. She's Azerbaijani.

She's picked up, and basically, ICE has been involved in all sorts of trickery. There was a story yesterday about how in D.C. They have been going through stolen car reports and luring people to the police station and saying, oh, we found your car. Then they come, and then ICE arrests them. Like the free Yankees tickets. Like that. And I'm sure that the ice guys are just laughing their asses off.

They think they're just so funny. And so anyway, they showed fake NYPD shields. This is not just like Ted Rawl saying this. The president, President Shipman of Columbia University, who's, I don't know, the 17th president since all the anti-Semitism things supposedly started happening. But she sent a statement to the Columbia community to that effect, saying that they know for a fact that fake NYPD shields were used here. And she's not backing down from that story.

They picked this Azeri lady up and she managed to Instagram out. She has 100,000 followers or Insta. I don't know how she did that. I'd like to do that. And anyway, the point is by the end of the day, she was out after a long and harrowing day. Meanwhile, at the same, Mayor Mendani was meeting, happened to be meeting with Trump.

and basically said, hey, could you let her go? All the jokes were Trump. He showed Trump the picture of her. She's hot. And Trump said, okay, she can stay. She's definitely hot. And then there's this blind refugee, this Rohingya dude from Myanmar, father of two, you know, I mean, you take a picture.

You see in very poor health, they picked him up mistakenly. His legal status is completely legal. I realized their mistake, rather than do the right thing and drive him back to his fucking house with his cane and carefully escort him back to its front door and make sure he's savings down in the freezing cold, zero degree Arctic temperatures of Buffalo, New York. They drove him to a donut shop and dumped him in the parking lot. He tried to muddle his way home. He doesn't have his cane. He can't fucking see. It's freezing cold.

He's wearing paper slippers that they gave him. And he fucking died. They found him not shockingly dead. ICE's defense, John, was, well, we dropped him off at a warm, cozy donut shop. Well, the warm donut shop was locked and closed when they dropped him off at 8 o'clock at night. So a lot of people are really, this seems to be resonating in a way that the Alex Pretti shooting is resonating. Yeah.

I mean, this is, we used the term the other day depraved indifference, at the very least. They just left the guy out to die. It's a crime. It is. And like the thing is, these are five ICE agents. They have names, right? They have, I mean, how come we don't know their names? How come we don't have any sense of, you know, what kind of hearing there will be, what kind of investigation there will be.

Just like, oh, too bad. Yeah. Tough luck. Yeah. And nobody's going to pay any price for this. No. It is a shame. Afghanistan and Pakistan at war.

You and I don't remember anything like this. I mean, the Pakistanis, there's always been tension. Sure. They hate each other. All right. Yeah. They hate each other. But open warfare is something completely different.

Nitsky, what glasses am I wearing? I bought them at a place called 2020 optics in Manhattan. They are I don't know what the brand is Anyway, got them like three years ago They're embarrassingly expensive And someone with a degree in IT How would I get into cartoon drawing in Columbus, Ohio?

Well, you are by the You are by the Cartoon Art Museum at Ohio State University So I would start there But anyone can draw- You're an art museum at Ohio State Yeah, oh, it's like the biggest one in the country Yeah, it's great

So I would say, you know, go over there and talk to, talk to my, to, well, email me later. I'll give you some advice. Ted Rawl. Just go to roll.com slash contact and you can reach me. Let's see. John, why is Northrop Grumman listed as a plaintiff in a previous lawsuit against you with your SO? I reported a serious ethics violation to Northrop Grumman. And instead of acting on it, which on their website, they say they are compelled to act on reported ethics violations. They called the Arlington police, told them a lie.

The police asked the FBI to raid my house. 22 FBI agents and Arlington County Virginia detectives raided my house. They were inside for eight and a half hours. They took all of my electronics. And then six months later just gave me everything back and said, oh, our bad. No crime's been committed. So I said, oh, no, you don't. You're not going to charge me with a crime.

You can't just bust down the door and take somebody's shit and say no hard feelings. So I sued all three of them. Good. False arrest. At the district level, the suit was thrown out twice, and the appellate court reinstated it both times. John, we're not going to answer this question today,

but I would love to answer it at some point. Why did the British publish the Balfour Declaration in 1917? Seems like it wouldn't even benefit the UK and led to a disaster in the Middle East. Yes. That's for damn sure. 100%. Yes. Thank you, everyone, for tuning in.

We will be back Monday. We're here Monday through Friday at 9 a.m. Eastern Time. here on D-Program with Ted Roll and John Curiaku. John, have a wonderful weekend. Thank you, you too. Robbie, have a wonderful weekend. Enjoy everybody.

Much love to you and Kizzy. Thank you to everybody who's been watching us. We really appreciate you. And for their generosity today and every day. Thank you very much. No doubt. Thanks, everyone. Please stay tuned for a TMI show with Manila Chan and yours truly.

Bye.