DeProgram with John Kiriakou and Ted Rall - Dems Run Against Trump, Again | DeProgram with Ted Rall and Jamarl Thomas

Episode Date: May 12, 2026

Conflict reporter/writer/cartoonist Ted Rall and political analyst Jamarl Thomas deprogram you from mainstream media every weekday at 9 AM EST. Today we discuss:• Since Virginia’s Supreme Court struck down state Democrats’ new congressional map and SCOTUS narrowed the Voting Rights Act, Democrats are arguing that Republicans’ aggressive moves to dismantle Black- and Hispanic-majority districts in the South will outrage voters of color and spur them to the polls in record numbers.• The former mayor of Arcadia was expected to plead guilty after being charged with acting as an illegal agent of China. Eileen Wang, who was elected to the Arcadia City Council in 2022, as well as Yaoning “Mike” Sun of Chino Hills, allegedly worked at the direction of China and operated "U.S. News Center," a news source for the local Chinese American community between late 2020 and through 2022.• Israeli legislators have approved a bill to establish a special tribunal with the power to impose the death penalty on Palestinians accused of involvement in the Hamas-led attacks of October 7, 2023. The bill explicitly permits mass trials that deviate from standard rules of evidence, including broad judicial discretion to admit evidence obtained under torture.• Kuwait accused Iran of sending an armed paramilitary Revolutionary Guard team to launch a failed attack earlier this month on an island in the Middle East nation home to a China-funded port project. The accusation came as the U.S. ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, said that Israel sent Iron Dome anti-missile batteries and personnel to operate them to the UAE.MERCH STORE: https://www.deprogram.livehttps://x.com/tedrallhttps://x.com/JamarlThomasLIVE ON RUMBLE: https://rumble.com/c/DeProgramShowSPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/show/2kdFlw2w8sSPhKI8NRx8ZuAPPLE MUSIC: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/deprogram-with-ted-rall-and-jamarl-thomas/id1825379504

Good morning. It is D. Programmed with Ted Roll and Jamarlem-Thomas for Tuesday, May 12th, 2026. Good morning, J.T. How are you doing? I'm doing okay. What's going on, man? How are you doing this morning? I'm doing pretty good. Slept hard, so hard that I woke up tired, if that makes any sense. It does make sense. I feel like this morning. It's struggles. For sure, for sure. Right before we went on the air, the new inflation statistics came out. take them with a grain of salt because they always underplay the real numbers. But 3.7% that's higher than the Federal Reserve Bank was hoping.

They like to go for 2% for the official rate, which doesn't really include a lot of stuff that we care about, like energy and housing. But it's going to continue to go up. I think next month is going to be a serious scare. We have a lot to talk about today, as always. Please like, follow and share the show. Democrats have a new, brand new strategy for the midterm elections that looks a lot like their old strategy, which is Trump sucks. Republicans suck.

Republicans are mean and they're racist. And so that's literally about the size of it. It all goes back to the redistricting battles. So we'll talk about that. Interesting story in California, the former mayor of our. Arcadia is going to plead guilty today for acting as an illegal agent of China because he, because she and her boyfriend basically operated a news website for local Chinese-American community there in SoCal between 2020 and 2022.

I find this a little chilling. In Israel, they've, speaking of chilling, the Knesset has voted unanimously to establish a special kangaroo court for October 7, 2023, Hamas suspects. They will be tried not as individuals, but in mass trials. They will not have standard rights granted to a defendant in Israeli or Western courts. They will be subject to the death penalty, and evidence obtained under torture will be allowed. Last but not least, the Kuwaitis say that Iran said,

a raid of revolutionary guardsmen on an island that belongs to Kuwait, basically to try to attack a Chinese-funded port there. The Iranians are not responding as to whether or not that's true. We never yesterday talked about what we could talk about if we wanted to, because it is an interesting story. The Israeli establishment of a secret base inside Iraq that they got caught, the Wall Street Journal has the story. They got caught. by a local shepherd was like, hey, what's this? And so they sent out some Iraqi troops and the Israelis killed them. The main mile US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee,

says that Israel is going in really deep with the UAE, or maybe it's more the other way around. Israel sent Iron Dome anti-missile batteries and personnel to run them to the UAE. So, you know, it's hard to imagine that the UAE is going to be able to make nice with Iran anytime soon. Well, there's more on that story. The UAE has been secretly attacking Iran. That was the other story that came out, that they've been actually having attacks coming out of the UAE that was somewhat unacknowledged. Really?

Yeah, that the UAE, Israel, and the U.S., basically were talking Iran, which explains why Iran was bashing UAE to such a degree. And it even explains at some level this kind of split between Saudi Arabia and the UAE that is taking place. The Saudis don't agree with the strategy. Yeah, they just don't see. Yeah, they just don't see. But no, the story came out today. The UAE was running attacks or attacks on Iran secretly. Well, so what shall we talk about first?

I am fascinated. Well, I'm fascinated by all these stories, to be honest. The Israeli one I'm not entirely shocked by. I mean, a country that's been murdering people, in mass that has been attacking its neighbors relentlessly that has been trying to gauzify southern Lebanon it's not shocking to me that under torture rape that they would use testimony in order to go after others the reality of it is is rarely should be put on trial and then yahu should be hung and i would say he's not the only one um well no i agree it's not a surprise um i thought you know

But the details are always where things get interesting in a story like this. I mean, so about, so the, you know, I mentioned that the Knesset voted unanimously. However, a couple dozen legislators decided to abstain or not attend the vote. That's, that symbolism of that is I don't approve of this, but I'm scared to outright vote. No, I'm not going to roll, I'm not going to roll Barbara Lee style here. I'm just going to sit it out. You can do it, but you can do it without me. obviously that's not enough, you know, when you're talking, when considering what we're talking about here.

I mean, you know, to me it seems like if I were in the Israeli government and I was furious about October 7th, and I wanted to deal with this in a way that lended Israel international credibility, I would say we're going to bend over backwards to give these people all the rights that they're entitled to as a defendant. If we tortured them, we let them go. the ones that we didn't torture, we give them great attorneys, we give them good trials, you know, we want this to be unimpeachable. That's just not what they're doing. I mean, and I think to me what that indicates is the Israelis just don't give a shit about international public opinion.

They don't. I don't see, I mean, like it's not, it doesn't seem to be some. something that's on the forefront of their mind or that they're concerned about because they believe that they have a blank check from superpower. I mean, I've had this conversation before where it's like the blank check thing is big. Like if I tell you, hey, I'm going to back you. We're going to give you billions of dollars. We're going to, you have nukes to their staff. And we are going to protect you in the international court.

We're going to protect you from the United Nations General Assembly and we're going to protect you in the United States Security Council. and we're going to try to mobilize our propaganda in order to give you this megaphone about how you're the most moral military in the world and all this other nonsense. Then how do you behave in that sense? You behave as if you have a blank check. And how do other countries behave with a blank check when the U.S. goes to the Philippines and say, hey, we're going to give you weapons. We need you to be Bush versus China.

The Philippines says, hey, sure, we'll do that. Okay, if they didn't have the blank check, what the Philippines act that way? Or would Ukraine act that way in regards to the negotiations if it didn't have a blank check of the U.S. and let's say you're backing it. The blank check matters. You're right. You're totally right. And that's what's going on here.

It's like, you know, it's kind of like you're in a dust up on the elementary school playground. But you have the biggest kid in sixth grade on your side. And you're going to, you know, you're going to be a little cocky, except for the day that maybe he's out sick. and then, oh, shit. October 7th was the day that, like, you know, we were out sick, and Hamas finally got some payback. I guess what I'm wondering here is, I mean, so I don't know, I don't get, even in the hyper propagandized environment

of domestic Israeli politics, and it's important to remember here, Israel is a country that speaks where Hebrew is the official language on television. it's not a country. So therefore, a lot of Israelis only speak Hebrew, which means that they can watch the BBC, but they don't understand what the fuck is going on. They can watch Al-Zaza-Zera, but they don't know what the fuck is going on.

And so they've been propagandized. There's been lots of studies showing that they're not seeing the same imagery from Gaza that we've seen. So they don't really know, even though they're closer to the story than we are in the rest of the world. But still, you know, everyone knows someone who's in the IDF, that people come back, they talk, they tell stories. A lot of Israeli soldiers have come back deeply traumatized, very guilty. A lot of them have committed suicide.

There's a lot of, you know, psychological pain there on their side as well for what they've been ordered to do. How do they reconcile the fact that, for example, Israel famously is a country that doesn't have the death penalty, right? And therefore that puts it in line with like Western Europe, you know, to join the EU. You have to be a country that doesn't have the death penalty. Turkey had to abolish the death penalty in order to be considered for EU membership. So to be a modern, real country, you have to get rid of capital punishment. So here, they're not only restoring it, but they're only restoring it in a very special circumstance. Like, well, if you're guilty of this particular crime, we're going to kill.

you and we're going to kill you under circumstances, you know, we're going to try you, you know, with less consideration than the high Nazi hierarchy received, you know, at Nuremberg, and for that matter, in Jerusalem, in the case of Eichmann in the early 1960s. It's, I don't know how they think that this is okay. Well, I mean, but they do have the death penalty. They murder people all the time. I mean, like, when they're in the West Bank and the soldiers are standing there as, you know, these lunatics with guns and beards go murdering the people in the West Bank because they want to take their property, that's murder. Whether, I mean, and that state-sponsored murder, like, whether they put the person on trial and that is almost secondary to the point that that's what

they're doing as a basis of operation moving forward. almost as policy. Meaning, if you're a soldier in Gaza and you bomb and take somebody's home and you murder that person, that's murder. When you have these lunatics holding guns for people trying to get food and they're shooting at people as they're trying to get food, that's murder. Or in the West Bank. Those things are issues of state policy. And I would argue murder.

Whether they have the show trial or whether they just go to. through and murder the various people. To me, those things are the same. You can say that there's a difference because they were pretending to have a trial. Okay. I don't see a dramatic difference between whether the state chooses to murder somebody in the context of, let's say, working with the military to do so in the West Bank, whether they're doing so to steal land in Lebanon, or whether they're doing it in Gaza.

To me, all little things are the same. Look, I think that's everything you said is true. And, you know, maybe, you know, it's my bourgeois upbringing that makes me think that it matters, you know, that like the official stance of a government versus, you know, their theoretical, you know, rhetoric and their construction of their constitution and their legal framework relative to their actual facts on the ground in the way that they actually behave. I guess I do think it matters a little bit, but probably does not matter as much as I think.

So I'll take your point on that. Let's get to some comments, and then we can, I'm okay with moving on. The Mordson 64, the Israelis have gone without tangible resistance for too long. They stopped paying attention to criticism. Keep It Real says, Americans should not be allowed to join the IDF. No. It's up to the IDF who can join the IDF, right?

Oh, no. But I mean, I don't think Americans should join foreign armies. I don't think they should join foreign armies. I think it's that. Like, it feels weird to me, and it feels like it's a loyalty issue. Like, how on earth are you, like those congressmen who are in U.S. government and walking around in the IDF uniform, that's outrageous. Or the mercenaries who like go to your own in places like that, yeah.

They should be prosecuted. They should be prosecuted. Well, you would need a law against it, though. It's not against the law. Philip Blair, October 7th was a militia of orphans breaking out of a prison they were born into. Yes. I'm not going to argue with that.

Crown Heights, Brainiac. They only speak the Hebrew, but they have a Crown Heights Brooklyn accent. Yeah. I mean, they're New Yorkers, a lot of them. Many of them speak English, and I've been to Israel, where I've run into New Yorkers. Oh, yeah. Who spoke Hebrew. And then when he realized I was American, they turned to perfect English.

And I was like, oh, she was like, yeah, I'm from New York. I was like, oh, okay. Yeah, no, it's funny, these connections, right? Like when I don't remember which time it was, I went to Israel, and I got detained at the airport, Ben-Gurian airport because of the exotic passport stamps I have from places like Taliban, Afghanistan. And so I was there for like four hours cooling my heels in this little corner with a vending machine and a bunch of like Palestinian dudes who were like in their 20s. And they were, you know, I mean, if you were a New Yorker, you couldn't tell these guys were anything other than, you know, local New Yorkers.

And they were all from New Jersey. And they were like telling me like, oh yeah, every time I kind of. come home to visit my family in the West Bank. It's like this every fucking time. They always make us wait like this. Like we tell our parents, don't even bother to come for six hours until after six hours after the flight arise. There's no chance we'll be out earlier than that.

So we don't want them waiting out in the parking lot for no reason. Mobey Bluth Funk, thanks so much for the $2. Wait, back, right. Real quick, they did it to my wife also. When my wife and I went, we went through, I think it was, what, it's called the Tapoport or something like that. But basically, we went through, we didn't, it was Iliat? No, I think it was either.

I think we came to Taboport. I think that's what it's called. And they held her there for like four or five hours. And I'm sitting there, like, worried. I'm totally worried because I know where I am, right? It's like we're in Israel. We're not in. Yeah, not to mention a part of this story that, like, people don't read, you have to remember, right?

Like you just flown like a long flight. There's jet lag. You're tired. You just want to get to your hotel and like take a shower. And then like, but there, they take advantage of the fact that you're fucking exhausted. And then they, you know, then they just like fuck with you. Go ahead. Yeah.

She was up for hours. She was like four, five hours. Did it amount to anything? Was there any particular reason? If there was, I don't know the reason. I mean, it wasn't like she. They didn't tell her. she had never been anywhere.

They had didn't, they were like, well, we're just checking you up. And they just had her sitting in the back room. And I'm sitting there like, okay, what the fuck are you doing? Yeah, it's not the most pleasant tourist destination. Because it's Israel, right? And I remember, like, when I went the first time, they, they said, they kept me there for a good 30 minutes asking me, why do you have, basically, why do you have a Muslim name?

There was that. Who was your grandfather? Like, as if they were, know. I tried to explain my grandfather was, they said, what is his nationality? I said, well, he's in America, but he's partial Native American. They said, what do you mean by Native American? Yeah, it was, that's, Israel is terrifying to me because, I don't, it's, and I mean, it's just as terrifying as if I was going to Dubai, to be honest, like, where you know the laws are not going to protect you. You're in, no, it's mystery. I had no problem getting into Dubai. That was, that was

fine. No must know about it. Once I was there, it was that issue. Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, do we know, guys, do you know about the transition from Yiddish to Hebrew? I believe this happened in the early 20th century, but it seemed like an interesting way to wipe the slate clean in a weird way. That is correct, right? Like Hebrew was a completely dead ancient language until the early 1900s.

And in fact, even today in New York, you can walk by the... old former offices of what now is, I think, a monthly magazine, but used to be a daily newspaper of the Forward. It was a huge Yiddish language newspaper that was very vibrant well into like the 1920s and 30s. And yet they basically decided to kill Yiddish. Yiddish was like a lingua franca of Judaism, right? Like I have a, I was with a Jewish friend in Bukhara in Uzbekistan, and he was wearing a t-shirt that had something in Hebrew written on it or something, and an old Uzbek dude walks up to us, and they start talking in Yiddish. And so basically Yiddish-connected Jews all over the world,

and Hebrew disconnected Israelis from the rest of the world. It's had profound implications. That was the point, though, right? Yeah, I don't know if it was intentional or not. I don't know if they just thought, like, oh, you know, we're going back to the land of our forefathers. We're going to resurrect this language. I don't know. It would be like trying to resurrect the Roman Empire and we're going to go back to ancient Latin or something.

Although that was much more of a lingua franca and would be far more understandable because it's a root of so many romance languages. But I don't know. Or if it was definite, it had an isolating effect. It has had a tremendously isolating effect. And I don't know. you know, and also language changes the way you think, as any linguist will tell you. Yeah. So.

Their way of trying to, you know, we're connected to the land. We're back to our, you know, that type of stuff. Like they were trying to like hook themselves into the territory. I don't know. Yeah. But it has had that effect. And it's a really interesting. I'm sure there are books about it.

Philip Blair, they give people a living death penalty in the European Union. SSRIs to make people. the living dead our friends like um like on brave new world like soma yeah like soma well i mean it's look it it's kind of true like one of so i had i've told the story before but i think it's worth telling again so my ex-wife um basically was a kind of for a time became like an expert on water quality and she um and she hosted this suffolk county new york which is eastern long island talk about water quality and the suffolk county water authority came out and they talked about And they said overall, everything in the water is, the water here is very clean.

We're far away enough from New York City and there was never any industry here. So the water table is good. However, there's a lot of SSRIs in the water. And people are like, whoa, what do you mean? It's like, well, so a lot of people have excess Zolov, Prozac, what have you, and they flush it down the toilet. So here's a story that will blow your mind, J.T. So they set up a program to discourage people from doing that.

Don't flush your toilet. Your drugs, your extra meds down the toilet. Please bring them into your local police station. We'll have a box in the lobby and you can dump them off there. Now, bear in mind, first of all, this is Eastern Long Island, which is vacation land. People are not really there in the winter. This program was there in the winter. It's like population balloons in the summer when the rich and famous.

come out there, right? It's pretty sparsely populated, compared to like Nassau County, the suburbs near New York City. And who the fuck wants to go to the police station? I'm white and I don't want to fucking go to the police station like ever. Okay. It's like walking, it's like showing up in Tel Aviv at, you know, at customs. I'm going to be scared. So I would just, if I had extra Zoloff, I just throw the shit away in like the trash can, right? So the point is, this is like an unpleasant program. that said over the course of four months they collected wait for it two metric tons of of of these of these pills seriously each one only weighs like a gram or two right i mean so you're talking about hundreds of thousands of pills now that's the tip of the iceberg right you can only imagine

of pills. Yeah. Can you imagine how many of these fuckers go into the water supply in New York City, Los Angeles, you know, D.C. And so I remember telling my ex-wife, holy shit. Now I know why we don't have a revolution in this country. It's sober. Like we literally every, and it's true, if you drink tap water, you are drinking SSRIs.

in most places. Maybe not if you're like, you know, there where producer Robbie is in Cal Spel, Montana. But like most people are definitely, you know, are doing that. And I was like, it makes everybody like, you know, mukow, you know, passive, placid. You know, the government can like fuck us up the ass. We don't care.

Well, we care, but we just don't do anything about it. People think fluoride does something similar. Yeah, that's a work. Well, it is, I mean, fluorides definitely, I do understand the problem there. I mean, it is, I mean, they're problematic. I mean, you know, that's the other thing with the water thing, right? You don't know how much of that stuff you're taking. If they're putting fluoride in water, you have no idea how much people are drinking that water.

Well, you know the theory about the fluoride, right? It's actually fascinating. My son turned me on to this. So the thing about the fluoride is, like, it is actually good for your teeth, right? But basically what you'd really want to do is just how. have the fluoride directly applied to your teeth. You know, that's the correct way to do it. So to get you to have a passive of anti,

you know, anti, what's the word I'm looking for? Anticavity kind of effect on your teeth just by passively drinking water. They have to put in a lot more fluoride than you really should have, right? Because it is toxic, you know, at a certain, over certain amount. So that's the concern.

is the fact that like basically they should just send you you know like a little tube of fluoride in the mail and then you just yeah just get the two just get the fluoride two just get the fluoride two trees like it's like that idea you need to go see your dentist that's it and you know you have no idea how much you're drinking like meaning you have no whether a person drinks a liter two liters a day a cup a day you have no idea I mean like putting anything in the water is a little little dicey right so no I get it That's fascinating.

Yeah, though, it's really, I really wish someone would do, like, a really good documentary. So, okay, so John Park One, do you guys think we'll ever have another Nuremberg trial again with Russia and Israel causing mass war crimes? Will they actually be held accountable? I have a feeling it will be a slap on the wrist. I think you'd have to have one country have such political dominance over the rest of the world that the, like the United States, did at the end of World War II for anything like that to ever happen again. Yeah, agree. I mean, you would need a war or you need something so dramatic that other countries would be able to impart cost. They can do that to Germany because Germany was fundamentally

destroyed in a total war. Yeah. These other countries. I mean, it would have to be something dramatic. Right. No, totally. Yeah, no, I just don't see it. Um, should we talk about Arcadia? Yes. The one thing, pursuant to that point, Kagan wrote a piece in the Atlantic, Arch Neocon,

Kagan. Yeah. America, what do you call it? America check-made it in Iran. And his point was Trump has no good options. All of his options are bad.

And they're so bad that it is a dramatic loss. Pursuant to your point, worse than Vietnam because he made a similar point that you made that, look, Vietnam was bad, but it didn't

it was like a blotch on America's dignity. It didn't have real world political consequences. And as what is this is real world political consequences regardless that's usually my job. Regardless of what Trump does.

And, you know, whether he walks, which is just a loss, whether he escalates, which could end up destroying the oil infrastructure in all of these countries, which would set the world back for decades, or whether he keeps the blockade, which he can't continue to do over long per the time. All of these are bad options and all of these are damaging options. He was like America's checkmate. It doesn't mean Trump won't escalate, but it means, and there's a question of whether or not the escalation would do anything materially beneficial. This is fascinating.

Totally fascinating. Totally. Couldn't agree more. Okay, so Arcadia, I had not followed this story much, had you? Which one? Arcadia? Yeah. Okay, so this, but, you know, so look, given our experiences at Sputnik and what happened, like, the way that Sputnik was targeted, I took great interest in this story when it broke today. The former mayor of the city of Arcadia, Eileen Wang, she was elected to city council. back in 2022, as well as her ex-boyfriend Yeoning Mike son, I guess just Mike son of Chino Hills, according to the DOJ, and basically they prosecuted them for operating the U.S. News Center for local Chinese Americans

as a news source for a couple of years, starting six years ago, and basically said it was a front for China, I guess that they received funding from the Chinese, and therefore they violated Farah, the Foreign Agents Registration Act. I have such problems with Farah when it comes to anything involving the media. I mean, let's just stipulate for the sake of argument

that she completely did what they said. But there's no reason not to believe it. Well, I guess there is reason not to believe it. Because, like, you know, if they chart, like we know from, John Kiriaku, the way that the DOJ approaches you is, you know, they come and they say, listen, you can plead guilty and do two years in club fed, or you can do 18 years of hard time. It's up to you.

And basically, you don't really have a, you know, you're like, do you want to take your chances with a judge and jury that's stacked against you with the government holding all the cards, yay or nay? I mean, I'm a stubborn asshole. So I know the answer is I would take my chances with the judge and jury. but most people don't and won't. So she basically pled guilty. All right, but let's just say for the sake of argument that they had her dead to rights.

I mean, so fucking what? Let's just say that the Chinese government paid her, let's say like CGTN is a Chinese cable TV station that broadcasts in English in the United States. You can get on the internet and you can get it in some cable networks. So if you were, or I go work for CGTN, we are taking money indirectly from the People's Republic of China. Okay, so fucking what?

I mean, that's not okay, but going to work for the BBC, which means you're taking government, you're taking money directly from Great Britain, is that's bad. That's okay. That's totally reputable. In fact, that's good for your career. I can go work for the CBC, the Canadians, the ABC in Australia, that's all okay. That's my problem with it, is that the rules completely inconsistent. And it also tramples on First Amendment rights.

I mean, if the First Amendment applies to American ownership, it should apply to foreign ownership as well. So, you know, press TV, which is Iran, should be able to have an outlet in the United States. RT and Sputnik should not be sanctioned in the United States. foreign, I mean, you know, if the Bill of Rights applies to you, even if you're not a U.S. citizen, even if you're a tourist, even if you're an illegal migrant. If you're on American soil or under American jurisdiction, you have First Amendment rights. Why the fuck should you not have First Amendment?

Why does she not have First Amendment rights? Okay. I understand the argument. I mostly agree with the argument. The fair thing, I don't think, okay, I don't have an issue. Okay, we're probably going to disagree on this. I don't have an issue with a government trying to have a sense of what type of media or political affiliations are in the country. I am of the mind that countries need to control that media space.

And I understand the problems with that position, if that makes sense. Because the issue that I have with this is the way that the U.S. engages other countries. And I do think those countries need to control their media space. I'm taking this out of the U.S. to give a vision of crime. Yeah. So if I'm Georgia, for example, if I'm in Georgia, and the spook that they have as president of Georgia at the time decides that she wants to help overturn the Georgian government by having protests and whatnot. Okay, I have problems with that. And to give an example, if you remember when Georgia tried to put in their fair law,

all of a sudden Europe and the U.S. flipped out. What do you mean you're going to have a fair law? And they're looking at us like, what do you mean? You have a fair law. How are you complaining about the fact that we have a fair law? And the only reason they were complaining that the U.S. and Europe was complaining is because they didn't want Georgia to know how much money was being dumped into their politics to change over the government of that country.

meaning they were using the money in order to influence it. If you look at the NGOs that are in other countries, those NGOs are specifically used as a tool to destabilize those countries. Look at Ukraine. They use NGOs. The 90% of the media and the money that was going to media in Ukraine was external to the country itself with the idea of overturning and destabilizing the politics of that country,

which effectively led up to what is taking place in Ukraine right now. I'm saying countries should know who's putting money into their media. Now, bringing it back to the U.S., I agree with you. We use it as a tool of getting rid of political opposition that we don't like. So if you're Israel, we have no issue, which you dump in $100 million into our politics. Have that, right? If you are, as you point out, the BDC, if you're Canada, et cetera, we don't care if you have media organizations in the country. We use it in this as a tool to get.

get rid of people we don't like while giving a pass the people that we were perfectly okay with. So you could be Israel and dump all of this money, hundreds of millions of dollars. You can get rid of political opposition. Like they got rid of, oh, what is their name? They dumped all the money and got rid of the progressive, quote-unquote, people that were in our politics. I think it was the last election. So I agree with you. I just don't know how.

And don't forget the corporate money, right? I mean, like, if we have a, if we want to have like a, you know, truth in advertising label on our media, the way we do on the side of the cereal box that says there's high fruit, you know, you might want to know that there's high, you know, high fructose corn syrup in there. Then we probably have a right to know, let's say, you know, Washington Post should probably say, owned by Jeff Bezos of Amazon fame, right up on the masthead, right? But anyway, it's just saying. Yeah, it's selective.

It's, you know, I always say selective justice is that. justice and going after the O'Huru, I believe in Florida, because apparently they were working with the Russian. Which was nonsense, right? Going after this one, I agree with this. This tiny little minute splinter organization that nobody's ever heard of. Yeah. And I guess my point is, I agree with you.

They use this selectively. So yeah, we're going to go after John Carrack. We're going to go after the Chinese person. We're going to go after a spoof. We're going to go after the O'Huru 7 or whatever the name that the group is. I agree with you. They use it selected. And in terms of the control, I mean, you and I both know, like, look, obviously when I was at Sputnik,

I knew it was not a good idea to get up one morning and start talking about how Vladimir Putin is a pig. I don't happen to think he is a pig. So, therefore, it wasn't a problem for me not to say that. But if I'd woken up and wanted to say that, it probably would have been a problem. You know, but I think, you know, I have worked at very few places where I had less editorial thumb on the back of my neck. Much worse at places like the nation, Mother Jones, the New York Times is horrible. Robbie, you had thoughts. You are muted, Sir Robbie.

Yeah. So here's what I'm thinking. First of all, no, JT. You talk about all these other countries. they don't have a First Amendment. We do. So freedom of speech is enshrined in the United States. So that no, you're talking about, no, about the nation of Georgia.

Fine. I mean, they don't promise to get their citizens this concept called free speech. We have that here. And I agree with you. The single biggest problem that we have is our government is selective with what it enforces and how it enforces. Yes. One of the things that I encourage everyone to do is read foreign media. for two reasons.

One, you're able to get outside of the American ecosystem. Second, the U.S. government lies to me all the time about everything. They don't have the right to tell me what to say or what to think or what I'm able to consume. If you give them that power, they own you. You're not a citizen anymore. You are a slave. And I think that's the whole point of FARA. I think it's a disgusting thing.

It should be overturned. And the only way we're able to fight back against the control that the Israel lobby has in this country is by using foreign media. You've got to get off that middle plantation. To be fair, it's not that Farah doesn't allow you to speak. It just tries to nail down whether or not you're getting money from foreign sources. Basically, who's paying you is what Ferrer is asking. It doesn't stop you. I mean, we had to sign when we were at the network, right?

It's not their business who pays me. Yeah, right. But it didn't stop us from saying what we wanted to say. It was just meaning it's tethered. It's just basically saying, are you being paid by foreign sources to give a particular point of view? And my point is, is who the hell cares? Because you do not have a right. You being the federal government to tell me who I can and cannot receive money from. If I am providing a service, it is not, so as I pay my taxes, as long as I pay you your tribute, so that way you can go buy these rainbow colored moms drop on hospitals in kids schools. Where I earn my money from is not your freaking business. No, Robbie, I'm not this. I don't think I'm disagreeing with you. I guess what I'm saying is countries, I'm going to be on the weaker side of this argument from standpoint.

That's okay. I'm off in there. Yeah, I'll accept that. Countries should control their information space. Why? And that has nothing to do with a. First Amendment in the sense of whether you have the ability to speak and whether you have the ability to think. Obviously, I am fully for the First Amendment. I'm saying I'm also,

look, man, I told you, I am MAGA on the Latin stuff. And I don't mean it in the Trumpian sense. I mean, in the real, I think America should come first. You and me are united in that front. All things being equal, I want to know who's dumping money into my politics, meaning if Saudi Arabia is dumping a billion dollars, in to the political space. I kind of want to know. If Israel is dumped in $200 million to buy politicians, I want to know. Like, those things matter to me in the context of who is paying my, who is putting a credit card down the ass of my politicians. And if that is a foreign source, I want to know. And so I get it, right? Working at the network and they are passing sanctions on the network.

Obviously, I think that is beyond the pill. I don't think you should stop a network from publishing, like meaning, if Russia wants to have RT in the U.S., let them have RT, if China wants to have CGTN, let them have CGTN. I want to know that that's CGTN. I want to know that it's RT. I want to know that that's BBC because, or I want to know that's Presti, because I want to know their point of view. Well, I mean, why don't have to have a logo?

It literally stands for Russia today. That's all I mean, it stands for Russia today. Right, right. I get that. But I mean, here's the point that I'm going to make, so that we're going to make again. First, the United States, to my knowledge, I could be wrong on this. We're pretty sure we're the only country which freedom of speech is enshrined in the Constitution, the founding document of the nation.

The federal government does not have the right to police what information is I ingest, where I get it from, and they don't have a right to know how it is I'm getting paid if I'm not committing a crime order to get paid. Me watching a TV show, and that means if, If I'm watching a TV show, reading a newspaper, or reading a blog by a mayor in a city in California, that is my business between me and her because I'm choosing to consume her content or her content. And lastly, Mary Adelson, who is an Israeli citizen sitting in her bloated spiders webbed, Tel Aviv or Jerusalem, on the skulls of Palestinian children, has put almost a million dollars into a Kentucky primary against Thomas Massey.

Don't feed me this crap about, oh, we got to know where the money is coming from. We know where the money is coming from. We know where it's coming from. And so if it can't be universal, get rid of it completely. Barrow should be abolished today. I agree with that. I don't disagree with you entirely, Robbie. The issue for me is that it's selective.

That's my issue. Okay. I don't have any issues that exist at all. Okay, let's move on here. Thank you, Robbie. Okay. I want to leave lots of time for this Democratic messaging thing. So, yeah.

So there was a ruling came out of Alabama that is under the, basically the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act. All of the sort of anti-jerrymandering along racial and racially related lines have been gutted. And now Republican states are going hog-wagon. wild trying to reverse everything that happened under the Voting's Rights Act. Alabama is just going to flip a seat over to from the Democrats and Republicans. Virginia just struck down a, that's a blue state, they just struck down the voters' decision to do to redistrict in favor of the Democrats, thus a net win for the Republicans. So Democrats being, I mean, this is, I want to get.

the bird's eye view here, J.T. So Donald Trump ran for president in the last three cycles, 16, 20, and 24. And those races kind of boiled down to a Democratic Party that was largely bereft of ideas other than opposition to Trump and the Republicans versus not really a set of ideas. Trump didn't present that, but he kind of promised an idea incubation machine in the form of MAGA, right? Like we have a principle here. America first, make America great again. Those are exceedingly vague phrases. But I'm going to appoint a bunch of people who are really out of the box, including people like RFK and Tulsi Gabbard. And we're going to put these, we're going to be thinking about things in a new way. It became, it was a, it was a, those three campaigns were about

novelty on the Republican side versus stayed steady as she goes. Don't, don't, it ain't broke, don't fix it, Democrats, right? For the most, I would argue that it always, the contest basically favored the Republicans and would have in 2020, if not for the Black Swan event of COVID and the weird way that Trump responded to it, right? So now, as we face the midterms in 2026 and the upcoming 2008 presidential campaign, assuming there is one, we have Democrats are still apparently in anti-Trump mode. It's like nothing's happened in the last 10 years. They have not learned a fucking thing.

They literally think that the redistricting, which has put them back on their heels and means they won't be as the. They won't pick up as many seats if they hope this fall is going to piss off black and Hispanic majority districts in the South and people who care about those districts enough to turn out in record numbers for Democrats in the fall. That seems to me like you are so fucking desperate. Like hope is not a plan and you don't have any good reason to hope that this is going to work, right? I mean, Hispanics are not a Democratic voting block anymore. Blacks used to be 90% reliably a Democratic. Not so much anymore. And, I mean, you know, still majority Democratic, but not like the way it used to be.

So, I mean, really can, I mean, is Democratic rage? I mean, that's just, I mean, is that as insane to you as it is to me? Yeah. I mean, but there's a contradiction in the way that Democrats operate that they can't manage at this point. Like, if 90% of the races decided by the most cash, that means from the standpoint of if you're a political actor, your thing is how do I get as much money as I possibly can't get? Because regardless of my ideas, I can at least win 90% of the time if I get more money than my opposition, my opponent. then what is your plan of action if you are a Republican? Okay, well, there's no contradiction there, right?

They're for the rich. You're trying to get as much money as you can. But if you're a Democrat, there's a contradiction in that. I mean, you're supposed to be the release vow for capitalism. In the way that Chris Hedges used to call it. Well, how can you be a release vow for capitalism would you require huge amounts of money to get elected? And so what do you run on? Trump is bad.

Okay, that doesn't affect the rich in the sense of them giving me money. Woke stuff. Hey, I want, you know, gay people to be gay. I want trans people to be trans. I want lesbians or Hispanics to be Hispanics to be Hispanics. Meaning, you focus on those items. You focus on those issues in lieu of let's deal with the economic issues that present to each of us. They can't do it.

meaning you're a political party that is supposed to be the party that deals with inequalities. It's specifically economic. If you go back to the 60s, what did Martin Luther King say, I am a man, and we're fighting for unemployment benefits and wages. That's not what they do today. They give lip service to it. But how do you focus on issues concerning the rich when you need the rich to get elected? It's that. Exactly that.

I don't know how you mend that gap, hence, this nonsense of Trump is bad, put us in. Well, I mean, there is the small donor, you know, donation model that Bernie Sanders, you know, used exceedingly well. It's a lot of work. Yeah, too much work. Too hard. Let's not do that. That would involve, like, I might have an achy back the next morning. Like, I have to knock on doors.

Right. Yeah, no, that would suck hard on your knees. you know, have to get a new pair of okas. Yeah, not good. No, so comment from Manchild, thanks for the donation. Democrats fold like a wet towel every time they quote unquote resist. Is there any traction here or is this just another billion dollar opportunity for Chuck Schumer to blowviate before he hands Trump the check? I mean, I'm not confident that they have weakness seems just endemic.

within them to me. I have no confidence at Democrats in the least. No. No, I mean, what's amazing to me is that they've been in the wilderness now for really 10 years. I mean, look, Biden basically, we had no president under Joe Biden. The country was rudderless. And really nothing much got done. And during that time, the Democrats have had a lot of time to get together and think, okay, what's going to be our messaging? What's going to be our appeal? Look, they could have come up with a completely brand new appeal. They could have said, you know, we're now the party of the bourgeoisie. We're whatever.

We're the party of the coasts. I would have been against all this, but they could have done that. They didn't, but there's no, there is literally no message. It's literally the entire thing boils down to I mean, you know, like, well, here's the other thing too. It's circular. So you should be mad because the Republicans are not going to let you vote for us. That's literally it.

And it's kind of like, okay, well, that's pretty self-serving, isn't it? Like, it's not the election's not supposed to be about you. It's supposed to be about me. It's like when Hillary, the embodiment of this was Hillary, Hillary Clinton's campaign slogan, right? I'm with her. I'm not supposed to be with her. She's supposed to be with me, right?

You've got this backwards. Well, they seem to have this assessment that, you know, we are the saviors. It's like we're going to give you the opportunity to vote for us. And aren't you happy about that opportunity? Like somewhere along the way, they've gotten to this idea of let's use Republicans as leverage to get to scare the shit out of people to vote for us. and Trump being the epitome of that.

So they say, hey, you see how bad he is? Do you want that back? Then you should vote for us. It's like, but hey, what are you offering us? We're offering you the opportunity to vote for us. That's what we're offering you. And it's like, okay, that's not the way this is supposed to work, right? Something is off here in the way this is operating.

No, I totally agree with you on this. This is outrageous. Like, it's insane that this is, it's almost like they're assessor. been as Trump is so bad that it doesn't really matter what we are. You just vote for us because you get him out of office. And I agree that Trump is fucking awful. Yeah, but that's not the way this works. No, it's really not.

And, you know, the thing is, okay, so here's a question that someone's calling me out here, Matina. I don't know how you can say that about Biden wrong. We started working on roads, chips, reducing student debt. You're wrong about Biden. Okay, so look, fairness, there's the infrastructure act that granted was greatly watered down. But nevertheless, the build back better, right? So that's that's Biden's major accomplishment. It's not nothing.

And it may well be that a lot of this stuff is going to be in the pipeline for years. And it may be that, you know, you might, you and I might be sitting here seven years from now and say, holy shit, man. Here I was talking shit back in 26 about Biden, but look at these new bridges that have been built all over the country. They finally finish the high-speed rail between San Francisco and L.A. You know, that turned out to all be, you know, there's money in the, you know, we were able to compete against the Taiwanese

and against the, on microchips and all that. That may well be true. We don't know that yet. It's bubbling up and bubbling. through the system. That's possible. But I mean, what it did not do is directly impact a lot of Americans and their quality of life. I mean, and we know that because, you know, they're telling pollsters, I have a hard time affording gas. I have a hard time affording food. I have to decide, I have to ration out my medical and my dental care for me and my kids. So, I mean, that's the real

fault because I mean look I'm on team infrastructure this country has shit for infrastructure we need a lot more of it and it creates jobs and it's we should we need to do that but first and foremost has to be basic you know a security blanket for the American people and for when they falter and I use the word when because we do falter and we do fall because we're human beings I will give Biden credit on the student loan thing to people who were sick. Because what they did was, let's say if you were on Medicare, they would go through and they would say, okay. Because what they did was, they said if a person had student loans, but they were on like Medicare or the Social Security, that they can go and petition for the student loans to be removed, then nobody was doing it. So then they said, okay, well, we would do this automatically.

And so they went through and removed the loans for people who had, like it was on Social Security, were collecting Social Security of benefits and those type of things. I give them credit for that. I even give them credit for the Social Security for kids. It wasn't Social Security for it, as I'm calling it, that. But basically, the $300 that they were given to parents who had kids. Now, mind, they got rid of it within a year. So there is that.

But, okay. But is it negligible? or is it significant, which is the issue? If it was significant, I would argue Trump wouldn't have gotten elected. Joe or Karl-Harris would have gotten elected because Democrats would have done something enough for people to not see it as negligible. I don't know.

It's definitely negligible, right? It's more than just around the edges. I'm sorry. Yeah, no, I think that's right. Yeah, no, it's frustrating to no end, to be to just sort of to see this like oh like and here's the other thing too right if they were if the democrats were attacking trump on stuff that's like they you could trust them for example let's say they were like really going after Israel like oh you know if we come in we will

defund Israel we will cut them off we will go after them and try to prosecute them for we will freeze their assets in the United States we're going to go after them on Gaza and south Lebanon and the whole nine yards, you know, they might have something to work with here, even though it wouldn't necessarily hit us in the pocketbooks. But you would get the sense like, okay, they're offering a different, you know, things will look different January 1st if we vote for these people. They're not offering anything like that. I mean, what would, as Joe Biden would say, meaningfully change if the Democrats were elected? I don't know. The war in the Ukraine would continue. The war, Israel, would continue, meaning it's not like the Democrats would inhibit

any of that. I'm unclear on any kind of major financial stuff that would take place. And the debate, even worse, when they get in office, oftentimes they enshrine whatever the Republicans did into law. I mean, if you think of the George Bush tax cuts in the way that people were like, oh, my God, these are the worst tax cuts in the history of tax cuts. And when Obama gets in, he enshrines, It's like, what, 90 percent, 80-something percent into law? And even if you're looking at what Trump is doing right now, do we really think that they're going to do anything dramatically different? Do you think the war is going to stop?

No. It's not right. The JCPOA. Wasn't that? Like, I don't, look, I don't foresee a tangible, radical reorganization if Democrats gets an office. And that's problematic. for the party and this idea of loss of credibility in regards to political system.

Donald Trump came in saying he's going to end the wars. He's going to end the wars. He made all of these highfaluteing statements over and over again. I mean, in the wars. I mean, in the wars. And what did he do? He made more wars. He made the shit worse. I'm saying, right, like the political system discredits itself with both political parties. When they get into office, when Joe Biden comes in and makes promises of, I'm going to legalize moral, I'm going to, I don't know, kiss babies and $15 now minimum wage. And people deserve a $15 minimum wage because they were working during COVID and they were risking their lives. And so we need to have a decent wage, a living wage.

People can't eat on a poverty wage. And what he gets in, silence. I'm saying this just credits the political system. It makes people just not care. It makes people just fundamentally distrust it all. I'm sure. No, totally. All right, guys, thank you so much for joining us.

You've been watching D-Program from May 12th. It is almost 10 o'clock. It is now 10 o'clock Eastern, which means we're moving over to the TMI show with Ted Rolla-Manila-chan. J-T and I will be back tomorrow, not once but twice, 9 a.m. for the regular show, 12 noon for the Q&A. Please keep it here.

Please like, follow and share. Appreciate you guys, and see you later. Bye, J-T. Have a good one, man. See you tomorrow.