DeProgram with John Kiriakou and Ted Rall - Crazy Bastard | DeProgram with Ted Rall and Jamarl Thomas

Episode Date: April 6, 2026

Political cartoonist Ted Rall and Jamarl Thomas deprogram you from mainstream media every weekday at 9 AM EST. A Major Announcement this morning! Tune in to find out.Today we discuss:• On Easter Sunday, Trump threatens Iran with war crimes against civilian infrastructure: “Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards!” Deadline is 8 pm tomorrow. US politicians have reacted with alarm and are questioning the president’s mental state. Oil prices are up, stocks are down. Is it 25th Amendment time?• OPEC Plus warns about the toll the war with Iran is taking on global oil supplies and energy infrastructure: “restoring damaged energy assets to full capacity is both costly and takes a long time.” The group, including Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Kuwait, also said that it would raise its oil production quotas by 206,000 barrels a day next month, a largely symbolic move because Iran’s virtual blockade of the Strait of Hormuz has obstructed their shipping of oil to world markets.• Trump’s mounting frustration with NATO allies over their refusal to join the Iran war has policymakers on both sides of the Atlantic bracing for change. He would need congressional approval to officially withdraw, but there are other steps he can take to curb cooperation, and Europeans say his threats alone are badly weakening NATO.• Germany wants to require men aged up to 45 to get permission from the armed forces before any significant stay abroad, even in peacetime.• Lebanon's government says at least 54 health workers are among more than 1,400 people killed by Israel during the current invasion. Some human rights groups say first responders are being targeted by the IDF.MERCH STORE: https://www.deprogram.livehttps://x.com/tedrallhttps://x.com/JohnKiriakouLIVE ON RUMBLE: https://rumble.com/c/DeProgramShowSPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/show/2kdFlw2w8sSPhKI8NRx8ZuAPPLE MUSIC: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/deprogram-with-john-kiriakou-and-ted-rall/id1825379504

Good morning. It is Monday, April 6th. You are watching D-Program, which used to be with Ted Roll and still is, and used to be with John Kyriaku and is not. So for people who missed the news last week, John Kyriaku gave us some very late notice here on the show, about an hour before we went on the air on Thursday, basically telling us that he was no longer going to be able to do any podcasts. So he's dropping. This show, Deep Focus and all that stuff, because he signed a big Hollywood deal, and they basically informed him that they don't want him doing these kind of programs. So, therefore, we had to scramble. Robbie filled in on Friday. We, you know, we're still friends with John, by the way. It's not like it's, you know, hard feelings there. But, you know, we had to scramble and try to figure out what we're going to do. And so, you know, we tried to think about.

put our heads together and try to think about who would be not a replace suitable replacement for John, because there's no doing that, but who would be a good partner, a great partner for this show going forward. And, you know, this was the person that ultimately we've settled upon is someone who I've known for a long time, going back to the old Sputnik days, and who, ironically, it's just a few months, months ago had reached out to me to talk about maybe doing a show, co-hosting a show, and trying to figure out what that would look like. Unfortunately, there were events that came up that made it impossible for that to happen, not on my part, but I guess you could blame God, but it was a health setback. And so, you know, basically there's been a long period

recovery. I think probably some people who are familiar with me and my background and who might have been around for the Sputnik days probably know who I'm going to talk, who I'm talking about. So without further ado, let me bring on Tremal Thomas. Welcome to Deep Program. Tana! He's back. He's back. I know right. He's back. Yes. Obviously. can't replace John. John is a force of nature. But I am glad to be here. So no, man, thank you. I appreciated the invite. And you're right. You and I had talked about this months ago, if I'm not mistaken. I mean, this was like, I don't know, I was in like some rando country or something like

that. We were talking about it. Very rando. And yeah, events fell apart. Like radically so. But I'm back. I'm back on my channel. I'm back on this channel. Or I'm very much. at least I'm new to this one. And so I'm glad to be filling in. I hope it's a productive fitness and I'm excited. Me too. Me too, for sure. So we will, so just some housekeeping to take care of, more than usual.

So last week we had announced that we were going to start doing Q&A shows, Mondays and Wednesdays at 12 noon. We managed to get one in the can before John decided to dip. So we're going to continue to do that because, you know, the Q&A thing is, it's fun for everybody. I suspect y'all are going to have some Q&A, some questions for Jamal. And I'm always happy to answer your questions as well. So that's today, 12 noon as in addition to this. So this show is here Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. Eastern Time as well as Monday and Wednesday, 12 noon.

We're still doing analysis in the 9 o'clock hour. 12 noon, we're not really doing that. We're just answering your question. So if we miss your question here in the morning, we will kick it over. Robbie will keep your question over for the 12 noon show and we'll get to it then. All right, let's go through what we're talking about today. The main topic is, of course, the war and Donald Trump's tweet over the weekend. I guess you would call it it it.

It's a truth, although I can never really do a truth as a verb. But anyway, he threatened to, he threatened Iran. on early Easter Sunday, where he said, open the fucking straight, you crazy bastards, setting a new deadline, which he keeps moving his deadlines back from yesterday to 8 p.m. Eastern time tomorrow. He said that if unless the Iranians reopen the Strait of Ormuz to traffic, which obviously they're not going to do, that he's going to start targeting civilian infrastructure even more than they already have. They're going to take out bridges and power plants and so on. And things have really heated up in Iran and around the Middle East, even in just the last few hours.

So we'll be getting into that. I have to ask, and we're going to talk about this, is it finally time to talk about the 25th Amendment about Donald Trump? You know, he's obviously springing out and acting very erratically. OPEC Plus is warning about the toll that the war is taking. They are pointing out the fact that it's going to take a lot of. time to restore damaged refineries and pipelines and all that tankers and ports and it's going to be very expensive and so it's not one of those things that you can just turn on a dime and everything will be fine oil prices now are nearly 100 percent more than they were before this war began five weeks ago

so you know the effects are going to be with us OPEC plus says they're going to increase oil production quotas by 200,000 barrels a day starting next month But that's not going to matter because it has to go through, wait, the Singapore moves. And it's not going to go anywhere. Also, NATO is very weakened by Trump's comments and his frustration. We'll talk about that. I was really interested in this story about Germany. Germany is, you know, it's never a good thing when Germany goes militaristic.

They are, they're about to pass a new law that says that all men in Germany up to the age of 45, can't leave Germany for more than three months at a time without permission from the armed forces, just in case they're needed for, I don't know, invading Poland. And Lebanon's government says that at least 54 health workers have been targeted by Israel and killed during the current Israeli invasion. The Israelis deny this. As usual, please post your questions in the live feed in the 9 a.m. hour, both on Rumble and on YouTube. We have some questions already in the queue.

Thank you very much for those. As always, super chats get priority, but we try to get to all of them. Okay. So let's let's, let's, and, oh, I guess I should ask Robbie. Robbie, do we have an ad? We do. Okay. I'll get to that.

We can do a question first, and then we will immediately. Okay, here we go. U.S. Triple X. Arod.Rod, thank you so much for sticking around with the show. Thanks for the $10 donation. Disappointed the job. John left, but always a deep program fan since the Michelle days. Yeah, we missed Michelle, too. Keep up the great work. Also, what do you make of the Trump administration contempt for Catholics lately? Yeah, I find that interesting. You know, I grew up Catholic. I don't know what your religious background is, Jamal. You said my background. I don't have a religious background per se. I mean, well, my family was Christian, but it didn't necessarily take. I didn't see what he was going. He was going after Catholic. Probably the Pope probably doesn't. necessarily like something for Popeye's. To that effect. Yeah. But I didn't see him going

after Catholics. What was the story in this case? Well, you know, he spent, Trump spends a lot of time with Christian nationalists. It's like Heggseth, right? So, um, and you know, they, it's, it always kind of weirded me out that a lot of them don't consider Catholics to be real Christians, right? They're like, really Christians. Yeah. If you talk to,

oh, I'm going to put Robbie on because Robbie knows all about this. Yeah, I didn't know that. But a lot of, right? Am I, I'm not telling tales out of school here, right? Robbie. Like a lot of A lot of Christians say there's Christians, and then Catholics are a separate thing. They are. I just posted that ad. So let's go and knock that out first so we don't lose it. And then I will answer your questions.

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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 Rubble does. Robbie. Perfect. Okay, so now I can answer your question. So first, the reason why Trump is going after Catholics is because Catholics and Protestants could actually agree on this one thing and Papatist in there too up to like 10 minutes ago,

or a little like 100 years ago, was that when Jesus, when he went to the cross, when he finished his work on the cross, the old covenant was completed and the church, the body of Christ is Israel. Well, of course, that flies in the face of Zionism because they teach that the Jews are still God's chosen people. So that's the whole issue. So the evangelicals know rally around Trump, they get on their knees for them, worship their little orange Messiah.

Meanwhile, the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church, an independent Baptist fundamentalist like me actually still believe what the Bible says and said, no, actually, Mr. President, that's not true. And so that's where Trump's vitriol, especially, especially, especially, especially, especially if the Catholic Church comes from to answer your question about Catholics and why Baptists like me kind of look at Catholicism, scratch your heads. It's like I don't really know what you people are doing is the Catholic Church is completely inverted with what the Bible commands. Like for example, in first and second Timothy, the Bible says that in order to become a pastor, you got to be married. You got to have kids. You've got to be able to manage your household.

The Catholic Church says, no, you have to be celibate. that is a direct contradiction to what the Bible says. The Bible says that there's one mediator between God and man. That's a person, Jesus Christ, not his mother Mary. Mary is only mentioned 19 times in the entire Bible. The crown mentions there more. So the, I call it worship that Catholics do with the, with Mary and the saints. If you are a Baptist like me,

really kind of makes you scratch your head because you're putting stuff in the Bible that literally is not there. and just blows up and basically church tradition is put on the same pedestal as Holy Red. That's where you lose me. I see. Okay. So, I mean, for me, I guess I'm simplistic. I'm like, there's a big cross on the wall when you walk into a Catholic church.

So it seems like it's Christian to me. But this is a lot of it, like, reminds me of the iconoclastic controversy in the Middle Ages. But, okay, thanks Robbie for that. Okay. So let's talk about, let's talk about the war. and get that out of the way. Even by Trumpian standards, right? So I've been reading a lot about the rise of fascism

and the anatomy of fascism, as my old professor at Columbia, Robert O. Paxton, described it. And it's sort of like, because the rhetoric is always hostile, hyper-masculine, and aggressive, it logically leads to constant escalation, right? And then ultimately culminating with war that destroys the regime. in both the case of the two classic 20th, mid-20th century fascist movements in Italy and Germany.

I feel like we're seeing that now with Trump, where he's saying, open the fucking straight, you crazy bastards. I mean, he's obviously panicking. John and I talked about this last week. The last oil tankers that got through the Strait of Ormuz are now arriving at their ports in Europe and around the world. and that's it now. And so there's already, you know, there's already gas, there's been gas hoarding in the UK. There's people, they're talking about gas rationing there.

There is gas rationing already in Vietnam and Myanmar and Singapore. It's going to get worse. The heat is on. You know he's, Trump is taking calls from world leaders and corporate leaders all over the world, like from who are in a panic. I just smell, if I'm the Iranians, I smell panic. I smell panic, fear, and desperation. At the point where, let me break this out into two parts

because I agree with everything you just said, everything that came out of your mouth. If the president of the United States, there's this element, let's go back to Obama for a moment. Obama had this polish associated with him, and many of the presidents that were there before had this idea of polish. Like there are certain things the president don't do, and there's a certain cadence that the president needs to maintain, maintain, you know, for the dignity of the office, right? And you see the wheels falling off

in real terms. Like for the president to get out like he came out of a brothel and he's screaming bloody murder with F-bombs and everything else, that is way beyond the pale. And you think to yourself, if the president has to act this way and say this, something's wrong. Something's gone monstrously wrong. And what's going monstrously wrong is that he doesn't have the capability of accomplishing the objectives that he claimed that he was out there to accomplish. It's that. And so, you know, if you're Trump and you find yourself in the fix, and it's like, how do you get out of this? And he doesn't have an answer. Then you get this. You get bluster. You get threats. You get the moving of the goalposts. You get the, you know,

we're going to destroy Russia if they don't do X and they don't come to the bargaining table. At which point, Taco always backs out because Taco doesn't have the capability to Taco claims that he has. It's bluster. So yeah, if I'm the Iranians, I'm looking at this as we didn't want this war. This isn't what we asked for. We continuously tried to push it off, even to our own detriment that we pushed it off. But since it's here, wars are used to reshape, let's say, the balance of force and balance of power, and that's what we're going to do. And I suspect that's what they're doing. I don't know. Yeah, I think they sense blood in the water. They have to. It's not about the number of people that are killed. Obviously, that's horrible. But they are effectively

reshaping the landscape of the Middle East in real terms, like in hard power sense. Yeah, he doesn't know what to do. It's, I mean, honestly, it's an awe-inspiring example of geopolitical jiu-jitsu. It's so impressive. And I think, you know, part of what the Iranians are counting on is we've got, I mean, first of all, they're isolated, right? They're the only, major Shia state. Bahrain is not their friend, even though it's majority Shia in any way, it's small. It's a U.S. vassal. So the Iranians are figuring we're the natural regional superpower, the natural regional hegemon in the Middle East. We've been around for 7,000 years. And we've had enough of negotiating not once, but twice with the Americans and the Israelis. And then they attack us

during peace negotiations. This can't happen anymore. Like, we can't have that. And then I think also they're thinking, look, we close the strait of our moves and oil prices go up. Our oil revenues double. We get to charge a toll to any ship that's passing through the strait. So we're going to have more money to rebuild our infrastructure after this is all over. And probably the Americans are going have to agree to lift sanctions. You know, the Americans will never pay reparations, but they will definitely have to lift sanctions at some point. And, you know, I think, I think the bluster here is the last hurrah for Trump. I mean, you know, I wrote a little bio of him a few years ago, and I was fascinated by this battle he had when he was a real estate developer with these old ladies

who had rent-controlled apartments on Central Park South. And Trump bought the building, and he tried to evict them so he could convert all these rent-controlled units to luxury high-rise condos. Ultimately, this thing dragged on for years. And it got really ugly. He hired goons and crackheads to move into the building and throw these old ladies down the stairs and stuff.

He like almost killed some, okay? But in the end, it went through the courts and he lost. and I interviewed the lady who was the head of the tenants association. She said it was the weirdest thing. She ran into Donald Trump in the lobby and he couldn't have been nicer. He was like, oh, it's good to see you. In other words, it wasn't personal. It's just a game for him.

He just does, he's a sociopath. He doesn't care. I think in this case, I guess the question is that was a long time ago. He was in his, you know, in his 50s back then. Now he's going to be 80. You know, does he have the flexibility? to realize at some point at 3 o'clock in the morning, I lost, I've got to come out of my Heidi hole

and make nice with the Iranians. Oh, man, that's a lot of, that's a lot of crow. That's a hell of a plate of crow. It is. I mean, that is a massive plate of crow, right? Where you have to back away. What he probably does, if I had to guess, is probably fill up a stink bomb

and then why the smoke is there, just kind of run in the opposite direction. Like basically declare victory. It's saying, okay, we've accomplished our objectives. True or not. We're out. The problem... He tried that already, though.

He tried that last week with his speech. Sort of. Kind of. I mean, but the reality of it is, at some point, the rubber is going to meet the road. I used to say when the war was second place, when the first started in Ukraine, that at some point, reality asserts itself.

Meaning, you could say, Russia's losing. You could say they blew up their own pipeline. You can say that the Ukrainians are holding in the line. At some point, they're going to dwindle in manpower where this is going to be obviously the case. And I'm saying the same thing is true for the Iran thing. Trump can come up with stories of heroic rescues into the country. It's like we've had thousands of special forces penetrating deep inside of Iran, very deep inside. It's like, okay, dude, at a certain point, it is going to become clear that they control the straight. You haven't destroyed their capacity.

You're going to be claiming that you've destroyed their capacity to knock stuff out the sky. And then they knock stuff out the sky. Like at a certain point, reality will assert itself in a way that Trump can lie, but I don't necessarily think it's going to be taken with any level of credibility. I think your thing is at the end of that process, does he finally come to terms? Yeah. Ah, God, man. That's a tough one.

I mean, he came to terms of the truth. Donald Trump used to be able to do that after he lost something. But you're right. He generally would just walk away. Like the Taj Mahal casino or whatever. It's just like, oh, fuck it. I'm out. Yeah, but see, those are business deals.

And I don't know the geopolitical, like, it's very difficult for a U.S. President to admit that they failed miserably on a massive scale, especially for something that was an elective, meaning this was a war of aggression. And to, like, fail miserably at a war of aggression. That's rough. I mean, think of Nixon, your student of history.

Nixon decided to keep bombing Vietnam years after it was clear that they couldn't accomplish their objectives in Vietnam. Because they didn't want an American president to look bad by losing a war. Well, yeah. Kissinger advised Nixon that they would get better terms at the Paris peace talks from the Vietnamese if they softened them up by carpet bombing. Yeah. That didn't work. I mean, quite the opposite. It never does. It never does. I mean, it's so funny, too, because Trump says, oh, you know, no other president had the balls. No, every other president considered it. It was just Iran's just too big and too hard to, you know, that's why nobody ever did it because it's a real country. It's too hard.

Yeah. Do you think, I guess the next thing or the next question is ground troops. They're on the way, too. Yeah, that was the other thing. Colonel Wilkerson, when he was on the show, he mentioned, he thought it was going to take place by Thanksgiving, meaning he thought last year this was going to happen. And I remember, like, in having the conversation, it kept thinking to ourselves, like, A, America is in war with Ukraine, right? I mean, yes, you can say Ukraine is fucking the Russians, but whatever. That's America's war.

And then on top of that war, full-fledged, high-impact, high-intensity war, something that out of like the second world war, like back in the 60s or whatever, then you end up with Israel going to war with Iran simultaneously. And it's like, okay, so you are effectively holding two wars simultaneously with the limited capability of supplying air defense and some of these other missile systems. And yet, in their minds, this was a great idea. I don't know. Do you think, I mean, do you think Trump was getting bad intelligence?

do you think he is delusional? Like, because I remember one of the other military guests didn't believe that the U.S. would be stupid enough to do this. Because from their point, if they were like, well, we absolutely don't have the materials in order to maintain two wars like this. I don't think we could win this. I don't even think, I think if Iran was the only front, we couldn't win. Agreed.

So, yeah. I mean, that's just, it's an additional fact. factor. Yeah, I've got to think that Trump got bad advice. You know, look, except from Tulsi Gabbard, right? I mean, the CIA's assessment was that this couldn't be done successfully. And it was, that information was turned over to Trump. He chose to ignore it. My take on this is that Bibi and his allies basically told him, look, look at the big protests that happened in Iran a couple of months ago. the regime is super unpopular. It's basically like you need a military, you need a push.

You basically are just going to go and then the government is just going to crumble of its own accord. And then there's going to be swarms of dissidents are going to seize the corridors of power. It'll be like 1979 all over again and then we'll reinstall res up by the V or whatever the fuck we're going to do. I think that's what was convinced. I mean, the thing is, what this betrays is a complete ignorance of what this, you know, of Iran. I mean, I don't know if, you know, these people have ever been there. But, you know, I have. And yeah, I'll give you, the regime's unpopular for sure.

But that doesn't mean they want to become a U.S. vassal state. And it's like Cuba. The regime is, I mean, actually more popular in Cuba than in Iran. But it's like, but still, you know, I mean, even people. enemies of, you know, even of the revolution don't want to go back to the Batista days. So, you know, they just don't get it, like the national pride of the Iranians. And also, I think the size of the country eludes them. I remember when I went to Iran and I was planning my trip and I was like going to drive,

I was going to take a bus or drive from one end of the country, the short way, right, east-west. And it was like, oh, yeah, that takes a week. I'm like, what? And they have good roads, too. I'm like, it takes a week. It's like, oh, it's like Iraq. It's huge. It's the size.

Yeah, it's all of Western Europe, right? It's bigger than France, Austria, and Germany combined. I mean, it's a beast. So, and plus it's got big-ass mountains. It's not like Iraq. So, you know, it's just like, yeah, I don't know that they knew what they were doing. We should do some questions and move on to OPEC. But, uh, meow, me, meow.

Thanks for the 499. Did the CIA and FBI add chemicals in the water to turn the frogs gay? Yes. Yes, they did. No, I don't, I mean, so I think the story comes from this thing of chemicals being leached into the water and it's having chromosonal effects on the animal life, the frogs. If I remember the story correctly. Yeah, there's something about amphibian biology that is apparently makes their,

their genders very flexible. Yeah. Yeah. So it's like they're very easily affected. They're very sensitive. Let's see. Okay, glitzy gang. Thanks so much.

Told me, told myself I wouldn't watch anymore without John, but here I am. Congratulations. You guys are part of my morning routine. Thank you. Thank you. Cleveland girl. I don't know, Jamal. Can we please get an intro? Jamal, why don't you, you know, give us the short version. We'll do a show with a long version. Jamal Thomas, political analysts, political commentator. I have been on YouTube for the last decade, shockingly. In fact, I think it might have been a little bit more.

I initially had the iteration of my show, Jamal Thomas. It became kind of a political show and eventually converted into domestic international politics after I got back from working at the radio station. And so for the last year, I've been running my channel in earnest on the Jamal Thomas show. I also do every random blue moon articles and stuff like that, but I have to feel an article. because it takes me forever to kind of sit down there and actually write when you get very accustomed to just kind of speaking, whatever you need to say. So I've been doing this for a while. Nice to meet you and hope to continuously, you know, see you soon. You know, Jamal, one of the things I've been thinking of doing, I might even do it like next week is writing a piece about like, yeah, how there's scenes that like you'll be like, oh, like the such and such scene and then like all these like cool people came out of it.

someone's kind of sputnik turned out to generate all sorts of interesting people right i mean yes uh your old your old co-host uh malik abdul is now on cnn i mean and it's kind of like uh you know it's it's worth writing about because it's an odd story right it's like you know the misfit toys yeah so you know they asked me um black agenda report asked me to write an article on um the last days of sputnik oh that's a good idea yeah and It was, it's wild, right? I mean, because for all intents of purposes, it was this little engine that could. Yeah.

That was a very talented, very intelligent people. You know, our old boss, Mindia Gavishelli, he had an eye for people. Even Michelle Whitty, who was the original, one of the original co-hosts with John and I here on Deep Program. She was my producer. And she started out. I think as an office manager or something like that. And then Mindia sort of was like, oh, no, you're smart. You can be on air.

And he turned her into an on-air personality. And he was right. Manchild, same kind of question. Thanks for the dollar. Hey, Jamal, who are you? Who are you? Tell us. I think I just answer that.

Yeah. Tell us about yourself. Also, what are some important things that are falling through the cracks with these silly war shenanigans stealing all the oxygen? That's a good question. That's a good question. Probably the Russian war. Yeah.

Because the moment that this is the place, that fell off a cliff. And even the Lebanon invasion is like a side show now. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, they've been murdering. But see, that's the rub, right? Israel's been murdering aid workers for a very long time, not just aid workers. If you talk to the people in an area.

Ambulance drivers. Yeah. But not just aid workers. What is it called? called like building materials, construction materials, companies that deal with those things, because the initial intent was to prevent them from rebuilding when they blow stuff up. So it's this kind of combination of, okay, we're going to kill eight workers on top of destroying all of these other things.

Now, there are a few stories that felt through the cracks, but war sucks up oxygen. Let's see, Ray C 2020. Thanks for $5. Welcome back, Jamal. Good to see you're doing better. Ted, the Subhumans show was great. They finished the set with religious wars. Ted, you can catch them in Queens on the 11th.

Last show of the tour, rock on. All right, thank you for that. Punk advice. Hey, hey, Mike, that came for John, but I've really come to enjoy my mornings with Ted. Thank you. Really appreciate that. I'm really grateful.

Dr. Z Fresh Prince, 999. Oh, my God, I'm a longtime progressive soapbox fan. I'm ecstatic to see Jarmal as well and here. Keep up with the chess. break chats. We missed you, Jermal. Much appreciation. Mustafa, thanks for the $1.99. Jamal, Eric, wants to know. Can you give us an update as to what's been going on with you?

Yes. So, I'm not sure how many people in the audience know. I was traveling while I was working. And I was in, it was Baku, as a brajan, where I had what I understood what at the release thought was a stroke. This removed a large portion of eyesight

from basically destroying my ability to see well. It damaged my eyesight significantly to where a large portion of that eyesight just doesn't exist, creating anomalous and vision and the way that you kind of function in a world.

I had to travel back to the states immediately because I didn't know exactly if anything else was going to take place in addition to the asset damage and I wanted to get back into the states in order to get chapped over. So for the last several weeks, I was either in the hospital or trying to get myself together and trying to get this kind of new norm. And if I'm being bluntly honest and full transparency, at the point where this happened, I didn't really care about anything else that was going on. I hadn't talked to anybody. I didn't deal with. anybody dealing with shows, anything dealing with politics, I don't think I even opened my Twitter

for several months or for several weeks. But invariably, you start slowly paying attention. It's like you can only watch Real Housewives for so long, right? And started paying more attention to what was taking place around the world and then started reaching out to other people basically saying, thank you for. or checking on me and that type of stuff. And eventually, slowly, just kind of reaching a new norm. I'm doing okay.

I can't complain. I'm back in the U.S. I'm going to be here for at least a year since I have a lease at this point. I'm no longer flying a wall. But thank you for X-Men. I appreciate it. Excellent. Okay, so let's see a few.

Oh, Son of Martania has a time zone request. Ted, why don't you change the time to 9 p.m.? Because most of us are at work now. honestly I would not be able to do the show by 9 p.m. I am so tired and so sleepy. I mean, you know, ever since I had a kid, I got into sort of waking. I got my whole biological clock used to be like I really didn't want to wake up before eight. And but now it's like I get up at like six. I wake up around 5.30. And by by the time nine o'clock, I'm heading toward bed by nine. I mean, I just I'm not sharp. Yeah, same here. But, you. But, you. know what's while when I was traveling. I didn't change. So there are two reasons.

A, you don't necessarily like to move the show because it screws with your metrics when you move the show. People often don't know what that other show is and it takes me a lot of find it. Two, you're right. Like, I know there's some people who do shows late in the evening. I am not one of the people that can function all that well. I can function overnight very well, but I'd rather get stuff over with. Who was the crazy conspiracy UFO guy who had his show from 12 midnight till? 5 a.m. who was in a trailer in Nevada.

Oh, what is it called? It was like George Knapp. Yeah. It's not just, no, no, not George Knapp. It's not George Knapp. It's... I'll find it. Someone... I know who it is. You know. Because I love that show. It's the underground thing. Yeah, I used to listen

to it if I was driving in the middle of the night. It's so good. Because they say the wildest stuff. And he... It's also got a great late-night tone, you know? His voice was perfect. Yeah. George, it's George something, I think. It was like something like, and it's kind of named something along the lines of like, you know, America overnight.

But that's not it. It's better than that. But anyway, but like, yeah, I'm like, I remember listening to that show and being like, I could not do that show for $10 million a year. I could do it if it was a UFO show. Because it's cool, right? It feeds into itself, right? Like, it's like, you're just, you have the smooth voice at two and a, morning and you're just going and just saying,

wow, the stuff. And you have the airwaves to yourself because nothing else it's good, nothing good is really on at that hour. Yeah. Except the BBC, which I do enjoy listening to in the middle of the night. They have these hard, man. Like, doing a show, like when I did my show, when I was

traveling, 7 a.m. in the States was 7 p.m. in Malaysia. And doing a show until like 10 p.m. at night, oh, that's rough. That's rough. That's rough. I don't believe. Oh, it's called coast to coast. Art Bell.

Art Bell. Art Bell show. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's it. I think George Noree took it over, but Art Bell is, he's the, he's the, he's still on 600 stations. It's in Parump.

I know he did it. Well, yeah, but he, they, apparently some other dude took over. George Nore. I think George Noree took it over. Yeah. Yeah, that's it. Interesting. I don't know.

I have to, I have not heard the post. Art Bell days. All right. Question, Mustafa. Did Trump say praise me to Allah in that tweet? Yes, he did. Yes, he did. Yes, he did.

It's so insulting. And on Easter Sunday, on top of it all. But, but like, it's, I mean, it's like really you manage. So, okay, so this does bring up the 25th Amendment. I mean, I think we're there. You know, I mean, look, we were there under Biden. He should have been removed.

I honestly believe it's Vice President Vance's patriotic duty to invoke the 25th Amendment and get that majority vote from the cabinet to remove President Trump and for him to take over. I think it would also be for the betterment of the Republican Party because they're headed towards major defeats this fall. Trump is going to be Trumpism is winding down. He's at 35% approval rate, which is the lowest of the entire time of both. both terms he's been in office. It's like, you know, I mean, it's, and honestly, he's unhinged. I mean, there's something wrong with him. And I don't, I'm not sure exactly what it is.

But the man is, he's acting. I mean, this is mania. No, I agree with you. I mean, I think, I think I heard you say some about fascism or something like that, whether we're going down that path. And it might have been one of the previous videos I was watching. Yeah. On the channel.

But he's, he was always unhinged though. I mean, he might have been, he's, obviously, he's gotten worse. Don't get me wrong. But he was always this unhinged lunatic of a character. That's why they elected him in many respects. Like, don't get me wrong. I know the whole thing of, I'm not going to start wars. I'm not going to do this.

I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to touch Medicare. Well, that's another story, right? That apparently he's going after either Social Security or Medicare. But Donald Trump was never a trustworthy figure. like that was like is that really the guy before this term that you look at and you think to yourself he's obviously trustworthy or is it that guy's obviously full of you know full of it he's a blustering carne artist he's a fling flam artist and i don't i'm i'm almost shocked the people are shocked

i mean granted some of this stuff is very enhanced the idea that you're going to say um praise be to Allah is you're murdering people in a particular country in an unprovoked war of aggression is outrageous. It's outrageous. I mean, it's it's beyond offensive, right? Like, it's one thing, if I say something about your mama, it's another thing, if I murdered your mama and say something about your mama, one is the double way worse than the other. And they kill thousands. Right. He's saying stuff like this. I mean, he's blowing, and he's destroyed, he and his ally Israel, I mean, also it's got to be like a special insult, right? Like, not only are you attacking us as Americans,

but you're bringing your Jewish state ally into bombers as well. Right. I mean, the whole thing is, I mean, it's so offensive. And Ishfahan and other religious, historically and religiously notable sites have been blown up by the Americans and by the Israelis. Holy shit. OPEC. I thought that was notable. the fact that they're just trying to remind Trump, I think this, I think this as an audience of one. It's like, hey, Mr. President, we're your close allies here.

We're, you know, these are all close to U.S. allies, right? The Saudis, Kuwait, and so on. We are telling you, you're breaking everything right before we went on the air. The South Fars oil, liquidified natural gas field was. hit. All sorts of infrastructure is being bombed on both sides of the war. You know, Sharja is being bombed. This is infrastructure that even if this war ended today, oil prices aren't going to come down because there's still going to be major production and distribution problems now that have already been caused this much. And even blowing up the Iranian stuff,

well, it's a global market. So if you reduce Iran's production, you're going to, you're screwing yourself too, right? So I mean, so I just thought it was interesting that OPEC's trying to be the adult in the room here. Yeah. And I don't think it's just agreed. And like I said, audience of one, I mean, for all intents of purposes, you get Trump and Israel effectively taken down the world's oil market, which is fascinating. I mean, and this is on top of another oil war in Ukraine with Russia, right? I mean, because Russia being a huge supplier in Europe is doing this whole thing of we don't want necessarily use Russian oil. Okay, let's see how long that lasts. Because do you think one is going to have an effect on the other that basically you've started war in Iran where for the

most part, the Strait of Ramos is effectively shut to any enemy combatant or anyone working with enemy combatants? And for that matter, anybody working with the U.S. is fair game. When that's your world, then it becomes, okay, what's taking place in the war with Russia and Ukraine? Does that have an fact. And I think there's another anomaly for this that I think people sometimes miss. All of these things are happening simultaneously. Like all of these countries are allies, like Russia, China, Iran. These are countries that while not necessarily will put themselves out for each other, definitely we're content with each other against this kind of imperialistic drive that is coming out of the West. Does the spread? Like China has for the

most part found a way to stay out of this stuff for the most part, at least directly. But doesn't this start to take on a character of a larger world conflict? It does. And I think we're, you know, I mean, look, obviously from previously we've been watching Bricks for years. And I think, you know, Bricks is not going to be creating a dollar alternative next week, right? But it's, but it's a, it's an interesting symbol of what's, you know, sort of, I guess it's sort of like the, the, the, a big version of the non-aligned movement of the 1970s, where it's like we're trying to look for a space outside of American hegemony. We never liked American hegemony. We always thought that they were kind of oaves or oaves or whatever, but now we're scared of the Americans. The Americans

are fucking crazy, right? They're crazy. I mean, forget about Donald Trump. I mean, Look at Stephen Miller and fucking Pete Hegseth. They're fine. Joe Biden. I mean, if you think about it. He was crazy too. Yeah. I mean, like they initiated a war that liberals back, by the way.

Yeah. That got hundreds of thousands of people killed. But also an unwinnable war. And unwinnable. And that was the liberals, right? And if you talk to them that day, the liberals are the one that's important the most. They're shocked that Donald Trump was even wanted to have peace talks, quote and quote. So now all of these people are nuts and all of these people are lunatics. They may be

a flavor of lunatic, whether you initiate a war by being overly provocative in Ukraine or whether you launch an unprovoked war of aggression against Iran, are these things that radically different. Yeah. And look, NATO is even NATO, right, which is America's idea. We founded it. We created it. It's our beast. NATO is going to have to do it without us. Do you think that's true? Let's talk about that. Let's get into that. Because I was fascinated with that rhetoric. Because for the longest time, this has been this thing of what Donald Trump is going to pull out of NATO. And I'm like, Donald Trump never said that. But he's annoyed because they didn't come to his age. And it's like, dude, he didn't talk to them. Well, not just they didn't talk to them, but they are under no obligation to get involved in anything that is a war of aggression. Meaning it's one thing if America was attacked.

And then Trump could credible come on and say, hey, we need your help to do. This is an Article 5 situation. Exactly. That's not the case. That's not the case. No. I mean, and NATO certainly has been involved in American wars of aggression like in Afghanistan. But it was a choice.

It was like, hey, you guys want to come in? And also, I think the sense there was that the Taliban had, this is false, but that the Taliban had attacked, you know, not only the U.S. on 9-11, but also, you know, in East Africa, the embassies in 98, the USS Cole, although Trump blames the USS Cole in his speech on Iran, inexplicably. but anyway, yeah, yeah. Do you think he's pulling out? I don't think he's, well, first of all, it's interesting, right? You know, the, like, Congress would have to de-ratify that treaty. Wouldn't that require a two-thirds vote? I mean, so for that reason, it's not going to happen.

Right, because I don't think, like, the grams of the world are not going to accept Trump. A simple, yeah, I mean, I think it would be hard to even get to a simple majority vote. and but like you're not going to get to this Congress to do two-thirds to vote kittens and puppies are are cute. You know, there's there's no way. So, so I mean, but I mean, obviously, but like the French are like butt hurt. They're like, oh, but you know, even the fact that they're talking this way weakens the alliance. We feel like we can't trust the Americans as much. I mean, it's true.

We're unsteady, right? I mean, like, if you're an ally of the United States, you're like, oh, well, can we count on the Americans? depends on their election results at any given time. That kind of sucks. It does suck. I'm curious, what do you think the Gulf states? Like, if you, like imagine yourself being started Arabia or UAE or one of these other states. And you spent, you bought Trump, like an airplane. You've been putting money in his company illegally or in the very dubious fashions. Yeah. You have been working with his family. You've been putting up hotels, his hotels. Yeah, golf courses, all that stuff. And, and, and, and, And you've spent billions of dollars over the course of decades working with the United States being vassals of the U.S.

And the U.S. gets into a war, doesn't really notify you about this. They just do it. The U.S. and Israel. And they keep poking the bear. And I don't mean poking the bear in the sense of like the Russian bear. I just mean they keep poking Iran over and over again. And Iran is doing everything about it. Leave me alone.

Leave me alone. Leave me alone. just because I don't fight you, it doesn't mean I'm weak. I just don't want to fight. Leave me to my devices. I want to focus on my economy. And you get this explosion of rage and sophistication that decimates all of those countries that spent all of that money for all of those years believing that the U.S.

was going to protect them up and smooth. What effect does that have going forward? Or do you think that have an effect at all? I mean, like, do you think it? I think it does. I mean, look, I mean, the thing is, it's back, right now, it's back channel, right? It's all stuff we're not going to see. But, you know, I mean, I think like MBS has, you know, doesn't care. But like when the, when you're like a little tiny little Gulf state, these guys box outside of their weight class all the time in terms of their influence. The influence of little tiny UAE is massive, right? It's just because of the money and the oil well. It's like, I think they've got to be thinking, you know, we need. There's got to be another way. I mean, I'd be thinking about asking the Americans to close their base.

I'm not sure that you get to a certain point. It's like, well, you said you were going to, if we let you have this giant base, we would support you and we would, you know, allow that base to be, we would defend you if the Iranians or anyone else ever attacked you. And then we don't. And not only that, we're like, you're drawing fire because of our. presence. At a certain point, this relationship doesn't work out. We have some more questions to get to, and then we can get to Germany. Okay. Ekongkar, thank you for the extremely generous $100 donation. Overjoyed to see Germal, hope to see more of him. You will. Arrian Gordy, thanks also for the generous 1999. Good morning, sirs. Mr. Thomas, great to have you, and glad to hear you're

recovering well. Wondering your thoughts on the Pakistan-Afghanistan war still going. That's one of the stories that's being overshadowed. How does India factor into that conflict? Can and will India benefit from this? Thank you and welcome to Mal. Interesting. Yeah, that has been going under the background. In fact, before I fell off the planet, that was, there were attacks that were going back and forth between Afghanistan and Pakistan. I can't speak. I have to reserve my point of view on that one because I haven't seen anything recently. My knowledge of that goes back just several months when it was taking place where there were these kind of conflicts, these border skirmishes and these attacks back. Oh, yeah, well, things have heated up.

I mean, the, yeah, the Pakistanis have been bombing Kabul, Jalalabad, other Afghan cities. The Taliban have struck back at Florida, but they don't have as much ability to do that. It's been more like back and forth. The Pakistanis blame the Taliban for the Taliban for the Taliban for the Taliban. actions of the Afghan Taliban for the actions of the Pakistani Taliban who the Afghan Taliban hate. So it's kind of like it's kind of this weird misunderstanding. Weirdly, India is kind of, you know, cozying up to the Afghan Taliban government. And, you know, I say it's weird because, you know, the main mountain range in Afghanistan is called the Hindu Kush, which means killer of

Hindus. I mean, there used to be no love lost between, you know, Indians could not travel safely in Afghanistan. But that's changed. And basically, the doctrine is the enemy of my enemy is my friend. And the Afghans always see a Pakistani under the bed, like ISI, like they always think they're there to fuck with them. And that's often true. Okay, so let me put, Robbie has some housekeeping to do.

Hey, Robbie. Hey, no, just real quick, I'm just with all the, you know, just with all of the changes in the show. I mean, let's be honest, we had a lot of questions. I come in for John because it was an experience of the CIA and stuff. And so that's where a lot of the superchats came from, which helped fund the show. So what I am going to ask you all to do, especially those of you who are over on YouTube, consider making the jump over to Rumble.

I dropped the link over there. And the reason is, is purely financial. I am a terrible capitalist, but I do have bills. And so is Jamarold and so is Ted. So you can help us out by watching us on Rumble and on YouTube. And the reason is that Rumble pays based off of your watch hours, not just, no, just they add revenue like you see over there on YouTube. And whenever I say this, it's not an exaggeration. For every nickel that YouTube pays us off of ads, Rumble pays us about 93 to 94 cents.

And that's going to really go a long way with just kind of helping ends meet. I mean, let's be honest, John Levin is, it's going to be a blow. It's going to take a little bit of time to rebuild. Also, JT doesn't know this yet, but he's about to find out. We are going to be doing premium content only exclusive on Rumble because it's going to be too hot to put on YouTube. And so if you want to see that kind of spicy content that's unfiltered, come over here to Rumble. You'll like it. Thank you very much.

Robbie. Okay. So some more questions. Then we'll get to the next topic. Sean, thanks for the $1.99. That tweet yesterday was outrageous. Melissa, thanks for the 1999. Great show.

Trump seems to need a straight jacket. The guest shirt is funny. He's not the guest. He's been medicated. He's out of his mind. Like, imagine that. Like, like, I always think of myself, the presidency has such power in that position

that you need, there needs to be steadiness in that position. Otherwise, you get this nonsense. So, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think, look, that was honestly, I was not a big Obama fan. I voted for him in the first term. But I think he definitely understood that.

That's what he brought, decorum is what he brought to the office. Yes. Something that had been missing under George W. Bush, although George W. Bush makes, I mean, he was a spas. But he makes Trump look dignified. I mean, I mean, the other way around. Well, yeah, Trump makes George Bush look reasonable. Yeah. Yeah, totally. Thanks for being a member for two months, Julia.

Miss John, but loving Jamal. Sneaker Dad, thanks for the 10 bucks. Shouldn't we be concerned that 35% still approve of this idiot? Yes, yes, yes, we should. And you don't have to vote for the Democrats. You can always go third party. So that's what I do. Okay, so, Jamal, we have this story out of Germany.

I don't know if you find it interesting as I think. I find it terrifying. So the German government has just passed a new military law and buried deep in there, and someone found it, if you're a German citizen, if you're a male, if you just want to go overseas for a few weeks, that's no big deal. Nothing's changed. But if you're under the age of 45 and you want to go somewhere for six months as an expat or you know, whatever, travel to Antarctica for a year. You have to notify the Department of the Defense

Department, the military authorities, and get their permission. So, Jamal, I don't know if you ever been to a country that has an exit visa. I have. I have to. And it's weird, right? Like you're, like you're an American citizen and you're in another country and you're not allowed to leave unless they give you permission. That's a lot of still former Soviet republics have them. But this is like, you know, Germany is a European democracy. It's weird. It's strange. It's bizarre.

In fact, like, we can curse on here, right? Oh, fuck yeah. Yeah, it's like, who's like, who's up for you? Like, what? And maybe this is my own American sensibilities coming into play, right? It's like, who the fuck are you? Like, how are you? Let's be very clear.

The only reason they're doing this is the thing that's terrifying. because for all intensive purposes, they have been during up for war. Like Europe has been getting into this mindset of like, we, they have been believing a myth. And the myth that they've effectively told themselves over and over again, almost like the stab and back myth, is that the war in Ukraine was completely unprovoked. Russia just went ballistic and just decided to attack Ukraine.

That is so far from the truth, right? And in the context of that myth, they have been gearing up for war. And they've been gearing up for war in a way by a provocative things like these kind of false flag things. Oh, there's been drones and the Russians are flying drones all the way to Estonia. It's like, really? Why are they doing that? They're not doing that. No.

But it would be place up to place. They couldn't do that. They couldn't do that. It's too far. And they were like scrambling jets and stuff to go after drones. that seemingly, or stopping ships saying we'll believe that the ships might be flying drones. All of the stuff is nonsense. None of the stuff came to be true.

Even missiles that fell in like Poland or somewhere. Some of those things, A, came from Ukraine, but B, none of those things were the false flags that they were effectively screaming that they were, or the attacks that they were screaming, that they were. These countries have been using this stuff in order to kind of gear up for war. and the amount of military hardware that they've been doing, the amount of provocative statements that have been coming out of all corners of Europe. Germany is one of those places. And it is terrifying to me that we seem to be okay. And I mean, we in a collective, the West, were Germany to be army.

That's terrifying. And this idea of this, this is set for military law. This is the nonsense that they have in Ukraine, right? Like if you're a certain age, you can't necessarily leave the country. Yeah. Germany is doing the exact same thing. And Germany's not at war. Not yet.

Yeah. Yeah. No, I agree with that. Every single word there. We're number nine on Rumble, which is amazing. Are we? Yeah, we are number nine right now. Thank you for that, Robbie.

Matthew, are John and Ted still going on vacation together? I don't know. You guys are going on vacation? Where are you going? We were going to go to Central Asia together this summer. I don't know. I haven't heard from John. I don't know if I'll ever hear from him again. We'll see. I hope so. Anyway, yeah, it's, this whole thing is very weird. But anyway, whatever. Let's talk about Lebanon. So in the minute or two that we have left. And just a reminder, Q&A show, Jamal and I. You can get to know Jamal a lot better through the Q&A show. That's coming up at 12 noon today, Eastern time. Don't miss it. it. Lebanon has says that at least 54 health workers have been

killed. They wear bright red uniforms like fire engine red. I mean... I know, but there's no way to know that they're health workers. The Israelis are killing them on purpose. There's no question. There's nowhere to know. Or they were holding guns and they were medical sex. Some like... Right, right. Right. Right.

They had like medical effects. No, I mean, it's kind of... Yeah, yeah, it's depressing. It's like the joke during World War II that like the medics who wore red crosses on their outfits that the that the red cross was a target made it easier for them to be sniped like terrible. Terrible. Territus is absolutely terrible. Yeah, it's dark humor.

Jamal, it's our hour's over. Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah, no, it's quite all right. So we will be back tomorrow at 9 a.m. Eastern Time, Monday through Friday. But we will also be here at 12 noon Eastern time. So if you have a Q&A, a question for me and or Jamal, that's the time to check it out. See you then. Bye, Jamal.

See you tomorrow.