DeProgram with John Kiriakou and Ted Rall - Coup! | DeProgram with Ted Rall and John Kiriakou

Episode Date: January 21, 2026

Political cartoonist Ted Rall and CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou deprogram you from mainstream media every weekday at 9 AM EST. Today we discuss: • According to the DOJ, there was a secret Trump Administration agreement between DOGE employee and an unidentified political advocacy group to turn over Americans’ confidential Social Security Administration data to try to overturn election results in certain states • The Greenland Crisis has not only sparked full-out trade war but rattled Western allies at the World Economic Forum at Davos. Always helpful, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent calls Denmark “irrelevant” after Denmark sells off $100 million in US Treasury bonds and notes. Greenlanders prepare for a possible US invasion. • Canada’s Mark Carney calls for a new New World Order in which the US is no longer considered reliable.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, John's back. It's D-Program with Ted Roll and John Kirooku. It's Wednesday, January 21st, 2026. Thank you for joining us. John, welcome back from your travels. I wish I could say that I didn't have a good time and I couldn't wait to get back. But, man, I had a great time. Still, it's good to see you and it's good to be back on the show.

You know, you don't have to feel guilty about having a good time. You know, you're allowed to have a good time. I love the Middle East so much. my God. It's so great. Great to see you again. And of course, not that I didn't appreciate Robbie sitting in for you while you were gone and Scott Stantis as well. Indeed to both. So as usual, please like, follow and share the show. Just a reminder that if you become a tier two member on YouTube, we will thank you by running you in the credits at the outro of the show. We already started doing that a day or two ago. So that is now the new.

reality. We had some kind of issue with the free John Kiriaku t-shirts that we're working on right now. Apparently, you know, bots be looking for copyright violations. And so even though it's the photo, it's your photo that you paid for of yourself. Right. Just saying that, you know, right. Someone told it from you. I mean, I went years and years and years ago dating the story. I went to Kinko's to Xerox some of my cartoons. Yeah. I tell them out. Oh, I know where this is going. And they said like, well, this is copyrighted material. And I said, yes, this. And you can see, because I wrote, these are my cartoons.

Well, how do we know that? I go, I have ID. I'm Ted Raul. And finally, someone in the back was like, wait, Ted Raul is here? I'm a big fan. And then it was like, oh, okay, just let him go. And it was like, are you sure? Are you sure?

I mean, it's like, you know, people just follow rules slavishly. Yes, they do. They don't think is the problem. No. Anyway, speaking of, we have a lot of thoughtlessness to talk about today in the news. It's like the country's gone nuts. Totally. And I was following it in the foreign press, especially, like on BBC and BBC International.

They're like, what the fuck has happened to the Americans? They've all gone nuts. Well, I mean, that's the thing, right? So our president is obviously loopy. Yeah. And I think what's more crazy to the outside world, you tell me, because they're the one who just was across an international border the most recently, is that we all seem to be okay with it. I mean, the streets aren't full of demonstrators. I mean, yes, there's conflicts between ICE and the people of Minneapolis.

But that's not really over Trump. That's about a specific form of policing that's happened. You know, we're kind of like, okay, we're like letting. it ride. Yeah, no problem. It's normal. And this is something people don't understand. I got a series of text messages from a friend of mine last night who's a journalist

and whom I respect. Let me see if I can find it because I want to tell you. She, anyway, wherever it is, she, here it is. She says, yeah, here it is. She tweeted something.

should Trump take Greenland? And I'll say it seriously. I don't like Trump's aggressive behavior to manhandle Europe. And yes, that includes Greenland, not because it's morally pure or diplomatically elegant, but because Europe spent decades building the conditions that made this outcome inevitable, her word. And she goes on to a very long post saying, the Germans suck, the French suck, the British suck, they deserve this, they caved into the CIA, blah, blah, This is why Western European leaders are almost never overthrown because they love the status quo. And then she goes on to say that that Trump is the only person who can possibly protect us from Russia. And so we deserve Greenland.

And I wrote to her, I go, when did you become a fascist lunatic? That's what I said to her. And she says, she said, ha, ha, ha, you think I'm nuts. the question is, do you agree with me or not? And I said, of course I don't agree with you. Declaring war on Denmark will not help our country. I said, only a strong man would do such a thing, and that's not American. And the latest polls anyway show that only 7% of other Americans agree with you. And then we went on from there. But I consider her to be somebody who's very bright and who usually gives a lot of thought to these foreign policy issues. But my God, if this kind of thinking

is entering into the mainstream, Ted, we're in very serious trouble. John, we are in very serious trouble because it is entering into the mainstream. I mean, you know, you and I both know that the Russophobia goes deep. Even among the intelligence class, you and I both have lots of friends who think the Russians are coming. The Russians are coming. I have friends who think I'm a Russian agent because I don't think like they do. Me too. And then the thing is, I just, I took note of the fact that now key congressional Republicans, including the Speaker of the House, Speaker Johnson, they are now starting to back up Trump about seizing Greenland. Yeah.

They're falling into line. I mean, so yeah, I mean, that's the thing. I mean, you know, to quote a certain Austrian colonel, right? It's the triumph of the will. Yes. If you just are willing to bully and bluff and bluster, you can freak everyone out into giving them into giving you your way. Yeah, that's right. That's right.

And that, nothing good can come of that. That only comes back to bite us in the ass later when we need, when we need international support after a 9-11. But your friend, the Russaphobe, the fascist, she is right about one thing, about like the Europeans just, they just want the status quo. they're technocrats. Yes. They don't have. I mean, you know right now who would fucking howl at this whole situation is Charles de Gaul, you know, French nationalist.

He would be like, you know, I told you not to fucking suck up to the Americans and let them run the world. And you see what happened? And you see what happened exactly as DeGal predicted. So let me ask you, because this is the question that other people ask me. And I'll tell you my opinion too. But do you think that this is. Donald Trump specific, or is this the new Republican Party?

I think this is Donald Trump specific in the same way that, like, the Nazi party existed before Adolf Hitler joined it, right, early on. But it never would have grown the way that it never would have gone the direction that it went or he'd gotten big without Adolf Hitler. That's a good point. Donald Trump took the Republican Party. It was a hostile takeover. And they were kind of rudderless.

I mean, remember those books, you know, the new Democratic majority. majority that basically predicted that demographic changes meant that the Republicans would never win another presidency, right? The Democrats under Obama changed the judicial filibuster. I was just going to say they said that as recently as 2016, that the country's demographics had so changed that the Republican Party would never win a national election again, and it was going to have to either split into two parties or morph into something different. And nothing could have been more ridiculous. So what Trump did, I mean, like, look, here's the thing is if you're a mainstream Republican leader, right, like a Lindsay Graham or someone like that, you look at Donald Trump and you might privately be like, but you're also really grateful because you're like, well, we're a majority party now.

Right. We wouldn't have been because Donald Trump brought tens of millions of previous non-voters, got them to register, got them to show up. That's right. That's a political miracle. Yes. I mean, so it's kind of like he saved our ass. we owe him, we'd be nowhere without him, right? But I'm confused then over whether a president, J.D. Vance,

continues to carry out these very Donald Trump policies or a president Marco Rubio, because he's clearly a neocon, takes the Republican Party back to the neocon days. Yeah, I don't think the, yeah, I don't know. I mean, my gut tells me that Rubio's got the, got the Riz more than, Vance does. I think so too. And although Rubio probably isn't very happy, I don't know if you saw you were away,

the big article about how this administration is deporting a lot of anti-Castro Cubans from Miami. Right. Those are Rubio's people. They sure are. They were always immune from any kind of action like that for a long time. That's absolutely right. Let me add one other thing about Florida. Florida has moved farther and farther into the red,

whether that's MAGA or neocon and historically really since the late 1970s that has been because of south florida's Cuban American population if we are deporting anticastro Cubans which for whatever reason we appear to be doing that could turn that could turn Florida purple again especially in an election where turnout is depressed for whatever reason yeah they wouldn't vote Democratic they would They would just sit on their hands. That's what we do now when we're mad. Yes. Uh-huh.

Yeah. So, I mean, it's like the whole electoral process has been thrown into disarray. Yeah. Did you happen to see the piece in the post, I'm going to say, like late last week, about the Democrats now having an actual path to winning the Senate? And it was because of that, coupled with ranked choice voting. in the state of Alaska. Mary Peralta, who was a one-term congressman.

She beat what was McCain's running mate, that crazy woman? Oh, Palin. Paylan, Sarah Palin. She beat Sarah Palin for a house seat a few years ago, served one term and got thrown out. She's the first native Alaskan, an Inuit, to win elective office in Washington. And now she's running for the Senate.

And so again, in an election where turnout could be depressed, coupled with rent choice voting, I don't know. The Democrats are targeting that awful, awful Susan Collins. And there's some of the Republican they're targeting. It might be Iowa because Joni Ernst is retiring. But now all of a sudden, because of all this craziness that we're seeing, the Democrats might have a path not to say anybody should vote for the Democrats because they're just as nuts. Well, that's true.

And the thing is, John, normally, you know, it would be a cliche for us to say, well, you know, it's over 10 months too, Election Day. And that's an eternity of politics. But now it's 17 lifetimes, right? I mean, things are moving so fast. I mean, I can't, you know, Trump just celebrated his first year in office for his second term yesterday and it just seems like wait oh my god like what could possibly happen next yeah um i mean you know robbie when robbie was filling in for you he and i both kind of agreed that if

trump wants greenland he can take it nothing's going to happen in the day without a shot will have fired yeah no one's nuking us nothing's happening the french aren't aren't firing and yeah that's right and i mean they're not really wrong right like right if you're at the if here in the Elysee Palace, you're meeting with your advisors, and they're like, well, you know, technically speaking, we could nuke the Americans. It's like, but it's like, really? Do we want to destroy the world over a piece of ice? That's right. And the answer is no, you don't. I mean, it's not the right thing to do. On the other hand, it is the right thing to do. You know what I mean? Like, they should do that, although I'm glad they're not going to. If that means that may too.

Can you imagine, though? I mean, what, what any, what we would do in a case like this? God. It is we would send like nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers right off the coast of whatever country. And we would sit there until we got our way. Yeah. Well, I mean,

yeah, imagine it's like, oh, you know, hey, you're not using Puerto Rico. We want that. And exactly.

We're taking it. It's like, uh, no, you're not. You're really not. Um, so yeah,

no, I mean, the Europeans really, I mean, the thing is they also could go the human shield route. Right. They could send tens of thousands of troops to Greenland. Yes, indeed. And then it's like, we're not going to say what we're going to do, but we have troops there.

And I would just, and I think I'd probably also sever, I'd sever like talks with the Americans. You have to. Because once you're talking, you're kind of semi-agreeing. And that's Donald Trump's strategy. And it works just about every time is you start off with this outrageous, ridiculous, ridiculous, utterly unacceptable position. You force people in talks into talks because they're so rattled. They don't know what you're going to do.

Yeah. And then you end up. It's Nixon's madman theory. It is. It's Nixon's madman theory. That's exactly what it is. And so now he's at Davos today. And speaking as we speak.

That's right. He's on right now. But the New York Times is saying this time he's gone too far. he has so frightened everybody at the same time that they're unified against him, led by the European Commission. So they're speaking with one voice. And that this time it's not going to be that halfway point where we essentially take over Greenland, whether we annex it or not, that we essentially, you know, take it. it's going to be different that they're going to hold us off. Now, your point is correct that if we wanted it, we just walk into it and take it.

There's nobody's going to defend it. And they only have but 500 troops there. Trump is dying to do this. You know, and I think it's because, so, you know, I don't know if you, you look this, look this up, I looked it up because someone had said this to be true. And it is true. This would be the, this is bigger than the Louisiana purchase in terms of square mileage. And while the Louisiana purchase had all that oil, Greenland is jam packed with rare earth metals.

And probably oil, too. Probably. The Canadians have it. Why wouldn't it be in Greenland? Yeah. You just have to access it. And now with a melt, ironically, right? The oil melts the glaciers, which allows you to get more oil.

That's right. It's the great cycle of life. That is exactly right. So, all right, well, so let's, shall we do some questions and we'll talk more about. Yeah, the questions are always the best part. I thought I would never utter together, Greenland crisis. So, here we go. Charati, how would you advise a young CIA officer to avoid falling into the same traps,

while that same officer must operate in a world that increasingly resembles a permanent wartime state? It's like, read like an SAT question. That is a very difficult question to answer. My standard answer is when I first started working there, an old timer mentioned to me. He was the deputy director of my office. So I was like 25. He was probably 65. He retired a year later.

So he told me that I should work hard and keep my head down for the first 10 years. And then after 10 years, when I lift my head up, I'm going to realize I'm actually in a position of authority. Because by year 10, they've, so to speak, separated the men from the boys. And you're a branch chief or a deputy group chief by year 10. And you realize you can actually change policy. Well, it's then that you can begin to protect yourself and others. I also say that the deep state is real. You don't have to call it the deep state.

You can call it the federal bureaucracy or whatever. And one of the reasons why it's successful is that the deep state knows it can outweigh presidents. Right? They don't like what this president wants them to do. No problem. They just don't do it. Just don't do it. They slow roll the policy.

Everybody who's ever worked in an office knows that vibe, right? Like you get a memo from corporate. From now on, you all have to fill out this special form. Everyone's like, uh-huh. You know, I remember when Bill Clinton was elected, he instituted what he called the less is more policy at the CIA, that the CIA was going to downsize, but it was going to produce more intelligence, recruit more spies, do more operations. And I remember the director of my office, the office of leadership analysis, saying that

she had told the director of the CIA, Judge Webster, that no, we're going to do less with less. Less is just less. Less is less. And so if we have less, we're going to do less. And if the president didn't like it, well, tough luck for the president. And then that was it. We just outweighed him. Right. Yeah, this crazy man is here and fuck him and he's gone. Just a little bit of breaking news from Trump's speech in Davos, he told the attendees that Europe would be speaking German and Japanese without the U.S.

I don't think the Japanese thing is probably very historically accurate, but he also thought that Norway awarded the Nobel Prize. Oh, I felt so bad when I read that. Like, I thought everybody in the world knew. Everyone knows. And then...

By the way, apparently one of the things that's funny is when when the committee calls you to say that you've won the Nobel, like half the people think that it's a prank call. It's a joke. Yeah. And hang up on them. And hang up. That's absolutely true. And then also he said that that Denmark isn't adequately prepared to defend Greenland. Therefore, the U.S. must acquire it. Greenland's not first of all Greenland being a Danish territory is is a part of NATO no one's invading it and if somebody were to invade it it would be treated as a NATO member state which means an attack on one is an attack on all and all NATO member states including the United States would defend it there is no threat whether Russian or Chinese or any from anybody else there's no threat to Greenland. Plus there's no sign.

That's a red herring that President's Putin or G covet Greenland. No. No. Exactly. You know, I was thinking last night. Like what? Putin needs more like Arctic. He has plenty of Arctic.

He has all the Arctic. Yeah. I was thinking about this last night and about, about other, like, ridiculous scenarios. Like, instead of Greenland, if you really want something that's really, rich in, you know, like mineral wealth or oil or whatever, and you want to create some kind of buffer between the United States and the Russians. Why don't we annex Siberia? That would be a better idea.

Sure. And if you invade Siberia, you don't have to worry about armed conflict with NATO. Well, you do have to worry about Russia, but yes. Well, there's that, but. I mean, we should just from now on, John, our MO should be to just, invade and threaten to invade very obscure countries. Exactly. Like Papua New Guinea. Exactly. Vanuatu. Nobody's going to defend Vanuatu. Yeah. And there's no sign that they can defend themselves. And this is, I love this. This is the Andrew Jackson argument, right, for seizing Florida. Yeah. The Spanish can't defend Florida. And to prove it, I will invade Florida and overthrow the Spanish. And then look, I was right. I proved it. They couldn't defend themselves. That's right.

So I will defend it. That is exactly right. And as you said, Trump is speaking right now as we speak and he is calling for immediate talks. Now, did we just predict this five minutes ago or not? Immediate talks to acquire Greenland, but he said he will not use force to obtain it. Everyone should just refuse to take his calls. It's like when ice comes to your door. You know, and like some ice, you know, some anti-ice activists say, well,

call them, ask them for a, you know, ask them if they have a warrant to slide it under the door. No, don't answer the door. You know, if they want to break in and drag your naked Hmongass grandfather ass mob into the street, let them break down your fucking door. But do not open the door. Do not talk to them. Do not, don't even, you don't have to answer your door. Why do people feel like they have to talk?

Years and years ago in the 80s, two young kids, you know, sat next to me with knives and tried to mug me on the subway. And I had this thought. And I just started speaking like fake French gibberish to them. Good. And like they basically, and I acted like really confused. Like I didn't know what they wanted. And finally they were like, ah, fuck this.

And they just left. There's a, there's a viral video that's on TikTok right now. I saw. And actually I saw it on court TV, court cam. That's what it's called. Court cam. It's this, this guy walks into a salon, like a nail salon. and pulls out a gun and he's like,

give me all the money, give me all the money. And the clerk looks up and just says, no. And then he's shouting, pointing the gun, shouting at people waiting to get their nails done. Give me your money.

Give me your watch. And they're like, get the fuck out of here. And then he just puts the gun back in his waistband and he walks out. Because, well, he wasn't prepared to shoot them, right? No.

But I mean, I think, and I think, but it's even more powerful. Like, you know, way no one can really oppress you without your consent to some extent you know you don't have to talk to them i mean imagine if like you're you know dragged into a deposition you can just again you know talk nonsense act crazy they don't know i mean you know it's like it's ridiculous um we should do some more questions but uh john i got to ask you before we do that um about this secret trump

administration agreement between Doge and some unidentified political advocacy group, which I have no idea who it was. I mean, could be turning point, could be something else, to turn over all the roles of well, many of the roles, let's just say, of social security numbers and other information. And the effort, this would be in order to try to overturn election results. I mean, that's basically a coup. I thought it was interesting that the DOJ, admitted this in their court filing. I don't know if they feel like that's going to get them off the hook, or they just were scared of lying and withholding information from an investigation

into a lawsuit. But this seems pretty extreme. I mean, Doge did not reduce government spending. At all. It caused a lot of disruption. It fucked up federal workers' careers for the rest of their lives. It made it so that nobody's going to want to work for the federal government anymore if they can help it.

That's right. And it's like, and apparently they were in this, you know, I mean, I've never been one to say that Donald Trump tried to, you know, I didn't think January 6th was a coup or a coup attempt. No. Or if it was, it was like a, like a lame attempted putch sort of. But this is a, this is kind of a coup attempt, a light coup. That's sort of. It sounds like the groundwork for it.

Yeah. Yeah, it does. And it is the, it is kind of the definite, the Italian definition of fascism in its cooperation between corporation and between government and private entities. But why do you think the justice department would actually come out and confirm something like that? Yeah, you know, I don't, I was, I was trying to figure that out. Look, John, in my lawsuit against the LA Times, I had an analogous situation where I had no really, everything was skullduggery. I didn't really know who had fucked me. Yeah.

And when I stood them. It's, oh, it's absolutely, it's crazy making. And when I filed the suit and they, and they defended themselves, they admitted kind of like in an Alexander Butterfield moment that in their response that they had received a secret audio tape of this incident that I was involved when that the chief of police had personally handed it to the publisher of the LA Times in a secret meeting months early. and it was all attested to by a guy who was the former press officer for the LAPD and swore this out. And I was like, you guys think that you're defending yourselves here? Like you think in, because it was really like our lawyer, my lawyers could not figure it out. Like, why would you admit? Good Lord.

And like, why would you? Like, in your defense, you don't have to say this. You're not being, you haven't been subpoenaed. You know, you're not being deposed yet. discovery hadn't begun. And it's like, this reminds me of that. It's like, I wonder if they think there's some kind of like legal argument that this somehow inoculates them like it's a government action and therefore it's protected in some way.

I think the LA Times thought that they were going to be able to say that this was protected journalistic collection rather than conspiracy and blackball, blacklist. I got to say, Ted, you've, I mean, I, like to kind of sometimes allow myself to feel like a victim. You've been screwed worse than anybody else I've ever known. This LA Times thing, this is like, you should write a book about this. This is epic. Well, I've written the book. Let's just have to try to publish it. You know, I mean, the thing is, I'm kind of, I have to admit, full, full disclosure here, basically it would ruin three people's lives or it could make their lives difficult.

Gavin Newsom, Pat Soon Shiong and Austin Butner. Butner wants to be the governor after Gavin Newsom leaves. But do you give a shit about any of those three people? Oh, I would love them to twist in the wind and die with the crows eating their eyeballs. Exactly. No, I mean, but my point is that like timing is everything. you know, all their shit's going to start next year. So like you kind of don't want to fire too late.

You don't want to fire too early. I'm thinking next year. Right, right, right, right. You know. Do you have any, I'm sorry, I'm getting off topic. Do you have any friends in investigative journalism that you're close enough with that they can write this up and then release it like an atomic bomb when the campaign is approaching? No.

I hate to sound like a jerk. I tried to. I had, I was, you know, so you're going to laugh. I was strung along and teased by a top investigative journalist at the intercept for months about doing this. I talked to Brooke Gladstone at On the Media, NPR. She said that they didn't have the budget to do a proper investigation that they don't really do investigative journalism. I mean, you know investigative journalism doesn't really happen anymore. John, I got to tell you what would really, the only way I think my story would ever resonate would be in documentary.

film form. If someone were to do like a Netflix documentary. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's exactly right. So I don't know. And I don't really know a documentarian, but if someone knows one, you know, it's, I have everything you need. I have, I have an idea. We'll connect after we. Yeah. Cool, cool. All right. And Robbie, yes, we are ready for that ad. And I promise not to blow it off like I did last week. All right, let's do some more questions here. So, I mean, were you as disturbed by this Doge story as I was? Deeply. Deeply, because, you know, there were ink, there were inklings about it when it was happening. And everybody just kind of dismissed it as that's just a bridge too far. They're being jerks to everybody, but they wouldn't do something so patently illegal as, you know,

what appears to be the very beginning of a coup attempt. And then it turned out, no, it was true. Yeah, it was true. The details are always, it's all, the devil's always in the details. $2 donation from DJ 928. Thank you. John, your latest dead drop episode was amazing. Will you be interviewing more former intelligence people from the United States? Thank you.

Oh, I appreciate it. Yes, we are. We're going to, we're going to interview a bunch of people. Yeah, I get it. I got to blow my own horn here, Ted. So we had so many downloads of this new episode that we ranked just for a minute as the 18, most popular podcast on the planet. Holy shit.

I love that kind of thing. That's a fucking amazing thing. Although, frankly, you should be number one. Thank you. We had 7,000 downloads in one hour. That's fantastic. Tatum Hedric. Wait a minute.

Adds up and time is ticking, according to Robbie. Okay. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm like getting distracted again. I do that. All right. Still haven't tried 1775 coffee now is your shot? 1775 starter kit just dropped, only 1,000 units.

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I always say gears. I don't know why that happens. This is for the ones who've been watching 1775 blow up on Rumble. Wondering if it's actually worth it. Spoiler, it is. Go to 1775 coffee.com slash studio and grab your starter kit before they're gone. Bold beans, clean fuel in a morning routine that stands for something just like Rumble does. Okay, so many questions, so many good questions to get to.

So let's just like fly through these. Yeah. Here we go. Okay. Ted, what's your drawing process like? And John, you're writing. Great fans of you both. ethics have anything to do with meditation or other altered states.

Thank you. My ethics have nothing to do with meditation or any altered states. No, mine. No, my brother's a strong believer in meditation. He says that it's literally the only thing that works for him. A lot of people feel that way. A lot of people I respect to do that. When I tried to meditate, I literally felt like my mind was like falling empty and I was

worried I wouldn't be able to put it back together. I didn't really like, didn't care for it, to be honest. But my drawing process is really simple. I draw the cartoon on Bristol board using a pen, black, black ink. I scan it into my computer. In Photoshop, I add color and I fix any mistakes that I may have made, like ink smudges or misspellings or whatever. And I save it as a TIF file, and that's my process.

John, what's your writing process? You know, I'm almost embarrassed to say that it depends. On what I'm working on. If I'm on deadline, I will sit at the computer and I will literally not allow myself to get up until it's done. If it's an op-ed or something like that, I will not get up. I mean, I won't get up to get a cup of coffee. I will just sit there until it's done. My third book was commissioned.

And when Skyhorse Publishing got in touch with me, they said, oh, we want you to write this book. And I said, okay, yeah, actually, it's this book right here. the convenient terrorist. So I said, sure, I'll write it. It usually takes me nine months to write a book. And they said, no, no, we need it in 30 days. I said, I can't write a book in 30 days. That's where the 1775 coffee comes into play. Seriously, right? So they said, no, it's got to be 30 days. So I made myself a promise that I would sit at the computer every single day and I would not get up until I had written 2,000 words. I was going to say two or 3,000 words, yeah. And sometimes, that's, you know, that's a beast.

Two hours. Sometimes it's all day. Yeah. I'm telling you, I started that book the day after Thanksgiving and I finished it on Christmas Eve. That's fucking awesome. Yeah. So, but let me, add one other thing. Um, I will sometimes go a week or even two if I've got writers block. And then if inspiration hits me, I rush to the computer and bang it out. With me, cartoon, its ideas all come, like, in groups of, like, nine. Yeah, exactly. For a while.

Exactly. Exactly. It's very, it's like, broop. I have, and, you know, in terms of, in terms of writing, lately, John, I've been, like, writing op-eds, like, on my phone. Oh, man, I hate that. I've done that. And then I, like, then I can't add links or correct anything because it's too small.

But I just get it down on pages, and then I email it to me. myself and then I fix it up on it. But there's something about being able to like curl up on a sofa and like right that way. I wrote an op-ed about John Bolton. I'm going to say two weeks ago. And it's still sitting here. Right here, there it is, Bolton trial op-ed. I've not submitted it to anybody because it's not perfect. And I need for it to be perfect before I send it to anybody. I'm going to send it to the post, I think. Don't let the enemy be the perfect of the good. But logger-jogger, what do we think about cryptic? No. It's obvious to me that U.S. government could crush it with very little effort, so it must provide some utility to them and or the ultra rich. Yeah, it's the underground economy. It's the new cash. Yeah. Right. That's why they're allowing it to happen. To the extent that all money is fake, which it kind of is, you know, it's just the latest fake thing. Yes. I don't, I have to admit, I never bought it. And I'm a little bit sad about that. I have a friend who bought like 40.

Bitcoins when they were like, I don't know, 15 or 20 bucks each. Oh my God. Yeah, he's a happy camper. So, but I don't have any, but it's not, you know, it's not anonymous. It's not anonymous guys. No, at all. In fact, the very method, the very system, the blockchain is by definition like not anonymous.

It couldn't be anonymous. Flandarina, Ted and John hitting on the head. The problem is there's nobody likable on either side. That's just true. Exactly. Exactly. Okay, Frasmataz, question for both of us. Did we see the viral clip of the dog mask wearing rococo dancers at Maralago?

It's juxtaposed with a rabbi that morning. They're blowing two giant rams horns. Strange. I have to admit, I missed that. I saw the rams horns. You don't need to do drugs because real life is weird. Yeah. I didn't see the dogs, but I did see the rams horns.

Yeah, it's, yeah, I don't even know what to say. Um, okay, uh, MM 5478. The Dems aren't shooting American citizens in the streets. The Dems aren't threatening to destroy NATO. The Dems aren't trying to shove the world back into the 1890s. Stop with the bullshit. I like being challenged and called out. Yeah, that's cool.

Um, no, but, um, okay, so the Dems aren't shooting, uh, well, I mean, first of all, I'm not quite sure I'm going to say the Dems aren't shooting people in the streets. No. The Dems used violence to destroy the Occupy, Wall Street movement. Sure they did. They literally had coordinated raids by the, who was it, John, the Department of Homeland Security. That's right. And they coordinated with local PDs to simultaneously crush all the encampments, hundreds of them all the same night. It's exactly right. They use violence. And as for the Democrats threatening to destroy NATO,

to threaten to destroy NATO. I'm glad NATO is going to be destroyed. And NATO should be destroyed. It should have gone away the day after the Warsaw Act went away. no reason to have NATO. There really isn't. It's dangerous. Just read the guns of August. It's dangerous. So I'm trying to avoid just comments here. A-A-A-V-N-G-R.

John, just watch your diary of a CEO interview. And as a Grecian, is that what it is? Like, Grecian Formula 44. Do you not feel that you have let down your countrymen by not kissing your gay mark? L.O.L. I love to the interview.

In the end, in the end, the approach was successful. If I had been more present in the moment, I'm more patriotic. I may have allowed him to kiss me. And then he walked up to me and he asked me to dance. It's funny. I don't know why I had never told that story before. It just had never come up. But the way he asked me the question, it just kind of came out.

Young courthouse, thanks for the $2. John, what do you think of the likelihood of an antibiotic-resistant bacteria pandemic? Also, should the audience stop holding our breath to see the SpongeBob shirt? You know what? If we have a minute, well, maybe Robbie can fill in. I'll run upstairs and grab the SpongeBob shirt. I don't know if we have a minute or not. I'll bring it down tomorrow.

Okay. What about the, let's see. Yeah, I will tell you that even when I was at the CIA, the one thing that they were constantly planning for, that they weren't really sure how to plan for. Yeah, sure. Was a pandemic. Yeah, I mean, George W. Bush, to his credit, was very interested and concerned about this. And so was El Gore. And he wrote about that while you were at the agency.

That's right. That's right. And so was El Gore. When SARS broke out in 2002, I was. I was the briefer, the DDO briefer. And we spent thousands of hours. In fact, it was the first time in my career I had ever seen a complete worldwide global stand down on travel. No CIA traveled anywhere for any reason until we got a handle on SARS.

Okay, this might be for a Rumble premium episode. But what psychological forces made you in the CIA tolerate moral compromise? And how would you advise a young officer to resist that in today's permanent crisis world? That is, that's the nature of the job. It's one of moral compromise. And in some cases, I was very, you know, perfectly willing to compromise my moral values. And in other areas, I was not. Like, if it meant, if it meant, you know, pretending to be someone I wasn't to make a recruitment, no problem.

If it meant standing by while, while human rights were violated, I wasn't willing to do that. that if you said thanks for the buck did you make any friends in prison who are who are still friends today yes in fact i had dinner with two of them a couple of weeks ago cool one named gambino and the other named uh testa ray thanks for the buck why was mcron wearing sunglasses his wife punched him in the face that's yeah maybe spousal abuse it could be i'm guessing it's either that or he has like what i have uh if he's been anywhere hot I kind of burned my cornea through sunburn. And so my doctor, my ophthalmologist, just advised me to wear sunglasses whenever I'm outside.

So it's one of those two things, or it could be both. Do you think, pain too, do you think Greenland must be developed at a fast pace? This is not something the ecologically bent voter wants. I guess this ecologically bent. No, Denmark should be left the fuck alone. Yeah, exactly. No. 20 bucks. Thanks so much from M.T. 16, Mike from Mike and Nottingham. John, have you seen the new. Thank you, Mike. Mike's a buddy of mine.

The new Chinese mega embassy approved for London. Yeah. The approval is causing a lot of heat for Kirstarman. Oh, I'll tell you, the demonstrations in London were gigantic over the weekend because of this embassy. The Chinese, this is something usually that it's the Americans that are doing or the Russians. They also do it, where you build an embassy. in a target country that takes up an entire city block. It's like a friggin fortress.

And God bless the Brits. I mean, not necessarily the British government, but the British people are putting their foot down and saying, no, this is just too much. Here in Washington, the Russian embassy is not just the biggest embassy in the city. It's at the highest point of the city, and it overlooks everything from the White House to the Pentagon. everything. You can see it from every point in Washington. And it's because we're idiots and we just

allow them to spy on us. And the Chinese, though, have kind of a normal sized embassy in a little embassy cul-de-sac. And then their defense atesha is in a different place and their housing is in a different place. It's a really terrific neighborhood north of DuPont Circle. Unlike what they're trying to do in London. In London, they're trying to do. In London, they're trying to establish a major spy center. Well, Mr. Big Money, if Trump were to do another operation like he did it with Maduro, what countries are next on the hit list? I've heard people say Colombia, then Mexico, then Cuba, then Cuba.

I think Colombia, maybe. Mexico is certainly not, Cuba, certainly not. I agree with that, yeah. Yeah. Maybe Bolivia? Maybe. That's a stretch, though. Or Iran, maybe.

but you know Iran's Iran's government is so overlapping there's no one person even if you took the Supreme Leader it wouldn't collapse it wouldn't do anything I mean hell the Maduro thing didn't do anything Desert Fox

what's our guy's opinion about the new defense budget and the insane debt we're facing I think that that question answered itself yeah yeah we mean you know 1.5 trillion dollars currently it's $1 trillion he wants $1.5 trillion

it's already 10 times too much as far as I'm concerned. And the debt is, I mean, you know, I'm not a debt, I'm not a deficit hawk at all. But if you're going to run up a debt, run it to like give people health care.

Not for bullshit like this. Yes. Greg Patis, Rall Kiriaku presidency run. Just kidding. Please don't. We would hate to see you guys age faster. Yeah. Or to have holes blown through our heads. Yes, thank you. I prefer not.

Jackson McGrath, what country did you go to, John, and what university degree should I do to be a politician after my BA and MA in Islamic studies, possibly MA in history and philosophy as well, and PhD in Islamic political science? Won't you be like 82 by the time you're done with all that anyway? Oh, God bless man. I was in Kuwait for four or five days and loved every second of it. Kuwait, there's a special place in my heart for Kuwait because I went in with the Marines on Liberation Day. We pushed the Iraqis out. We reopened the embassy. It was heady stuff for a 26-year-old, you know, kid. But I'm headed back, which I haven't told Ted yet.

Sometime between the last week of March and the middle of May, I'm going to go back for a week or two for a speaking tour that's in the process of being set up right now. I'm going to stop in Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Abu Dhabi, Dubai, and Jetta. And you know what? All of those degrees are good for politics. You might think about, though, a little bit of background in accounting if you want to take the federal budget seriously. Yeah.

That is interesting. Thanks for the 499. Keith Oko, sorry, he's just going back to catch that. Thanks for the 99, Jacob Decker. If we annex Greenland, does that eliminate any moral authority towards Russia for taking Crimea? What moral authority? Sure?

Yes. I mean, I don't think, I don't think, I don't know. I'd ever thought the U.S. had a Blake to stand on to criticize any other invading countries, considering we do it all the time. Okay. By the way, Robbie's reminding everyone that you can tip us on crypto, in crypto, on Rumble. They just hit the little green tip button in the feed. You'll see it.

Totoa, curious have John seen the Spymaster's documentary. It features many people from his life, Brennan, Tenet, Rodriguez, Cofor, etc. I'd pay to watch John react and call out their bullshit. Oh, my God. And that's exactly what I was doing while I was. watching it you know it just gives me a a knot in my stomach to uh to see these people lauded i mean it's nice to see them criticize rightly criticized we're talking about serious war criminals i mean people who should be in the dock in the hague not not celebrated in

videos netflix documentaries got i feel about every 10th person who shows up on my on my on my TV screen, I feel like that about. Yeah. Thanks for the 99.09.05 Namat. Where are we now in the Iran protest, its regime change saga? It appears that the U.S. carrier group is moving towards the Middle East or a U.S. Yeah.

I think it's a slow-moving crisis. I mean, we're not done there. It's just like, I think we're in a, we're sort of in a pause right now. Yeah. But it's not over. Agreed. Thanks for the 20 bucks sneaker dad. Much appreciated.

Also, two bucks from DC8828. Three from Maria Weigan. Thank you so much. Thanks for the five from on Joe Rogan. Kurt Metzger claims that during a Jimmy door appearance, John told him that Giuliani had a very high chance that there was a very high chance that I was there in the Daniel Pearl beheading video? Is that true?

No. What I said was that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed said that he was in, he's the one who killed Daniel Pearl. And we knew definitively that he had not killed Daniel Pearl. We knew who had killed Daniel Pearl

and the Pakistanis had just captured him. KSM didn't know that the guy had been captured. That's what I told Rogan. I see. He took the, he took the, So how did you find, can you say how you guys figured out who it was? Oh, yeah. Informants like coming out of every nook and cranny in, in, in Lahore.

So it wasn't like, you know, knuckle analysis. No, no, no. And in fact, that's what KSM told us. KSM said, you see, in the, in the video, the guy grabs, Pearl by the, by the hair, pulls his head back and just starts sawing his, his head off, just hacking at his head. And KSM was saying, you see, you see how hairy his arm is, that my arm is hairy. That's my arm.

It's like every, every Pakistani's got a hairy on. I was going to say, you're Pakistani. What are you talking about, man? Yeah, that's hilarious. Borgesson. Greetings from Spain, John, what's your opinion on Spain's security service services if you ever had contact? You know, that's a funny question.

I was in Spain a couple of months ago to teach my class at the University of Salamanca. And the mayor of Salamanca invited me to an event. It was like drinks and mingling around in his office on the old square, the old city square. And so there were these two guys there. And the mayor said, oh, I want to introduce you to my friends from Madrid. And they whispered to me that they were from the Spanish intelligence service. And I said, oh, it's so nice to meet you.

Thanks for coming all the way to Salamanca. Salamanca's far. It's, I mean, even if you take the train, it's, you know, a couple of hours. In the bus, it's several hours. And I asked, I said, hey, let's get a picture together. And they were like, oh, my God, absolutely not. They're not even supposed to be in Salamanca, but they just wanted to come and say, hi. I did have occasion over the years to work with the Spanish intelligence service.

And they were always very good. They're especially good when it comes to threats from North Africa, as you might imagine. But, yeah, they're very good. By the way, I think it would be, we'd be remiss if we didn't talk about Mark Carney of Canada, as I always call it. He is basically, he spoke at Davos, and he was very dark, and he basically was saying that the U.S. is no longer trustworthy or reliable, that basically other countries have to kind of go their own way. I suppose, you know, better 80 years late than never, but, you know, it's notable, right? I mean, Canada absolutely was and has been, I mean,

people say it's the UK, but I mean, certainly they're tied as closest to ally. They were our totally reliable friends. They fought and died at our sides countless times. You know, I mean, they are, they're scared of us and they're really pissed. They're really pissed. Yeah. I mean, does this go, is it possible to, assuming there ever is another president besides Donald Trump, who's duly elected, is it possible to squeeze this toothpaste back into the tube? Can these relationships ever be repaired under a future president, even, let's say, a liberal president? I don't think so. I don't think even a liberal president would necessarily want to change it. You know, it's just not in the nature of an American politician to concede authority. Or to give up powers that were accrued under a previous administration.

That's right. No, yeah, I've never in certainly my lifetime have I ever seen a president who wished he was less powerful. John, a lot of stuff broke from Minneapolis over the weekend. Yeah. You know, do you have anything you want to chime in on before we close out the end? hour about that? Yeah, well, the thing that was the most disappointing to me is the fact that what appeared to have been a nascent FBI investigation just went away. The only good part is that there's no statute of limitations on murder. I think what we saw was not a murder. I think it was a manslaughter. Yeah. Classic. Yeah. But maybe it's possible that someday somebody can be

prosecuted, I'm not optimistic. Nor am I. Yeah, they always, I mean, the thing is, it seems like it's just going to get worse and worse. I mean, because the administration's being very clear in that basically their forces can do no wrong and are fully inoculated. It reminds me a little bit of what Obama told the CIA when he first became president. Like, don't worry, you guys will never face any consequences for torture. And this is, but this, that's bad because, but it's not nearly as bad as this, because this is in advance. Like, I says, only you just begun.

And so they're, you know, so they're going to be, we're going to be seeing more and more action in the coming months and years. They're only growing. You know, these are, these are, I don't know if you saw the article that I posted in the feed, but it was in great detail. I mean, about how these people are steroided. They're aggressive. Many of them have histories of domestic and violence on the job as police officers or in the military. I mean, these are bad people that are being recruited by ICE. And they're being told they can do whatever the fuck they want.

And also they're recruiting white nationalists by using ad campaigns that are literally deliberately drawn from Third Reich and Alt-Rite propaganda. like, you know, literally, like, for example, echoing the Nazi, you know, ein rikine, Volkine, Fuhr thing, like, you know, it's crazy. It's crazy. And so, like, this is a, I mean, it's going to get, they're going to kill more people. Yes. And they're going to get away with it and nothing. And then that's going to provoke, you know, counter violence.

I agree. It's, it's deeply troubling. And we still have. just about three more years to go, at least. At least, right. Yeah, I'm not sure the Democrats have a good plan for 2028 to say, or for that matter, for 2020. Or a decent candidate.

Well, yeah. Now, this is going to be the first time in a while that we've had two open primaries. So at least there are going to be some real choices. But I'm not liking anybody. No. Anybody. It's rough. It's rough.

All right. So with that, we should wrap. it up. I got to get ready for TMI show with Manila Chan coming right up after this. Please like, follow and share the show. John and I will be back here with Deep Program tomorrow Thursday, 9 a.m. Eastern Time. See you guys later. Thanks for all the donations, the questions, the support. And again, if you're a tier two supporter and you want to be in the video you're about to see as a thank you, please go ahead and donate in the YouTube feed.

John, see you later. See you later. Bye, everybody. All right. Have fun catching up. Bye. Thank you.