DeProgram with John Kiriakou and Ted Rall - DeProgram: “A Big Beautiful Mass Extinction Event for Republicans?”

Episode Date: July 8, 2025

As we wrap up the holiday weekend, catch up on the smartest takes on the big news—tune into the “DeProgram show with political cartoonist Ted Rall and CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou.” John and Ted analyze the political and personal fallout of Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, a sweeping tax-and-spending package signed July 4th, sparking numerous debates. Will the MAGA base see the massive increase in deficits as a betrayal? Can this latest attempt at Reaganite “trickle down economics” succeed in stimulating the economy? What of the millions of Medicaid recipients, mostly Republican voters, who will lose their healthcare? Is James Carville right to call this a “mass extinction event” for Republicans? Elon Musk says he’s going to make good on his new “America Party,” as revenge for the Big Beautiful Bill. He wants to disrupt duopoly politics but can he attract new voters and overcome legal and institutional barriers? Alligator Alcatraz, a Florida Everglades detention gulag that opened to imprisoned migrants last week, is being criticized for inhumane conditions like flooding and mosquito infestations, as well as its $450 million annual cost. Israel rejected Hamas' proposed changes to the latest Gaza hostage and ceasefire proposal, but will send negotiators to Qatar today. Is a breakthrough possible? Finally, we look at the catastrophic Texas Hill Country floods, where over 10 inches of rain killed at least 50 people, including 15 children, with 27 missing from a girls’ camp. Did National Weather Service staff cuts of 600 by Trump’s DOGE lead to inadequate flood warnings, despite meteorologists’ claims that their forecasts were accurate?

Well, it's neither good morning nor good afternoon. It's 12 noon here on the East Coast. I'm Ted Raul. John Kariaku is here. You're watching the Deep Program Show on YouTube and Rumble. Please like, follow, and share the show. Today, we're talking about the Big Beautiful Bill and its aftermath. The Medicaid cuts. James Carville is calling it a possible mass extinction event for Republicans. That's our main topic. We're going to be talking about Elon Musk. He seems to be following through on his threat to create a third party, partly in revenge against Donald Trump. Alligator Alcatraz is open for business, the Human Rights Act against our pissed off. Israel has rejected yet another cease file proposal, including one that they kind of agreed to the terms to before. And of course, there's massive, terrible flash floods in Texas Hill country that have killed over 50 people. It's 70 now.

Okay. And there are still 11 children missing. Terrible. And so now already there's the question of blame. Some people are saying that cuts at the National Weather Service under Doge may have left the agency short-staffed, not of the people who made the predictions, but of the people who coordinate those predictions with first responders and emergency agencies. So, John, let's get into the Big Beautiful Bill Act.

It's actually technically the One Big Beautiful Bill Act of 2025. might be the most inelegantly named piece of legislation ever to pass the United States Congress. So it's going to add $3 trillion to the deficit over 10 years. It's going to cut taxes mainly for the super rich and for corporations, but no one's taxes are meant to go up. There's some gimmicks like no taxes on tips or overtime, which nobody's going to qualify for. Right. And, but the big, it looks like the big political blowback is going to be from Medicaid. It doesn't go into effect until 2027.

So the Republicans are hoping to coast through the midterms without a bunch of angry, sick, poor people in flyover country, throwing rocks at them. But, you know, it looks like anywhere from 10 to 17 million Americans, mostly Republican voters, are going to lose the access to health care because of this. Donald Trump had specifically promised that he would never touch entitlement programs like Medicare or Medicaid. And so, you know, look, James Carville's words always have to be taken with a grain of salt, considering that he's been spectacularly mistaken. Crazy wrong. In recent years. And even though my politics, I don't share my politics with his centrism, but I do find him smart and appealing.

Even though he's wrong and centrist. I think he might be right this time. I think he might. And the Washington Post, excuse me, the Washington Post even alludes to that today. There's a piece on the front page of the Washington Post head saying a couple of different and mutually exclusively interesting things about this stupid bill, this law. One is that 67% of Americans are against it. The other is 67% of Americans are against it.

67% of Americans don't really know what's in it. And so now the race is on to define what this thing means. You mentioned just a second ago, for example, no taxes on tips, right? The Republicans brought that up repeatedly at the Republican National Convention in the summer of 24. And so, by God, Congress charged forward, no taxes on tips. if you make less than $25,000 a year and you itemize, which means nobody is going to qualify for it. Nobody who makes that little money itemizes.

Nobody. Nobody. Nobody. I don't even itemize. I mean, I would love to, but I don't own my home. I rent. And so the standard deduction is by far the way to go. Well, that's how it's going to be for all these.

poor people making servers wages and living on tips, they're not going to come anywhere near itemization. Well, so that's a joke. It is. It's a stop. I mean, obviously. So I guess the question now is, you know, what is how, I mean, obviously to take advantage of a screw up like this, you need an opposition party that's competent and knows how to message

clearly. Unfortunately, the United States doesn't have such an opposition party. But let's just say the Democrats were going to do this, and they had some messaging discipline. You know, I mean, Carville's saying that Republicans could lose 40 seats next year. I say, I call bullshit on that. I do too. But maybe five or ten, and that would be enough to tip control. That would tip control.

I'm with you 100% on that. I'll tell you why. In 2010, in the aftermath of the Obamacare vote, Republicans were ascendant. Democrats were in chaos, and in the 2010 midterm elections, the Democrats lost 62 house seats. They would have lost the Senate, had the Republicans not nominated crazy people in places like Missouri and Indiana and Delaware. But since that election, we've had two rounds of redistricting. And so now the district lines, the district borders have been. redrawn almost exclusively by Republicans to protect Republican districts.

So even if people remain this angry over this bill and they run to the polls in 2026, the Republicans are not going to lose 62 house seats. I think you're exactly right. They're going to lose five to ten. That's enough to tip the balance, but it's not going to be enough to really force through an agenda. But it does create, we go into traditional, back into traditional gridlock. mode. Yeah, absolutely. No more major legislative achievements for this administration. No, that would be it because the Republicans, I'm going to go out on the limit to make a prediction

here. There's no possible way the Republicans lose the Senate in 2026. Agreed with that. Not possible. I don't see how. And then the House is, of course, where investigations start. So it's where impeachment proceedings begin. So I would be surprised if the Democrats didn't to try to gin up another impeachment because, you know, good things come in threes. Why not? And I wouldn't go anywhere in the Senate, as you point out. But I think that, you know, you'd be looking at some investigations, right? I mean, I don't know of what. It would nice, the one thing that Democrats never go after, and I think I know why now, is emoluments. It's the one thing they would have Trump dead to rights on. Yes, but they don't dare.

Because they do it too. That's right. That's exactly right. Listen, every politician knows that in the end he's going to get rich, everybody. And that is despite the fact that 30 years ago, 35 years ago, they finally changed the law, which had said previously, any campaign funds that they don't spend, they can keep. And so there were members of Congress raising millions, tens of millions of dollars and then saying, oh, I retire. And then all that money would just go in their pockets. Now they have to give it to the DNC or to one of the campaign committees in the House or the Senate.

But they know that they're going to go on to lucrative lobbying contracts or boards of companies that they had overseen when they were in Congress. Everybody gets rich. It's the revolving door. I mean, my colleague, fellow political cartoonist Gary Trudeau of Dunesbury, Yeah. He created a TV show that was based on a true story about how some members of the house, freshman members, they weren't called first years, at the, they had to share apartments or live in their offices together because they couldn't afford having a house in their home

districts as well as an expensive apartment or house in D.C. Things have changed, right? Now we have the Nancy Pelosi, you know, feed. Like, you know, if you just follow all of her investments, you make bank. People actually are able to do that now. There are, there's one closed-end mutual fund that allows you to track Nancy Pelosi's investments. Yeah. As nuts as that is.

And apparently the returns are kick-ass. Yeah, they're astronomical. Because they're all based on insider trading. That's exactly right. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I used to work at Bear Stearns in the mid-80s. and on the trading desk. I remember just thinking at the time that the whole idea that insider trading was illegal

was silly because, like, I was the lowest of the low, right? I made $10,000 a year. I was a trader trainee. I had no inside, no family contacts I could sell securities to, lowest of the low. And I would sit there and listen to a little squawk box that said, like, at 1130, in three hours, there's going to be a block trade of 300,000 shares of outside. IBM, three dollars below the market. And all you have to do to make money is short sell as much IBM as you could put on margin and dump it an hour later, right? Oh my God. And it's all

you have to do. And it takes an incredible amount of discipline not to do that. And every now and then the SEC bus someone for doing that. But I'm like, insider training is normal. And so like, But, you know, it does seem to me like it should be illegal among the, you know, the political class. I mean, when I was at the CIA, we were warned like the week that we were brought on board, right? We were warned not to trade. So, for example, we predicted that Saddam Hussein would invade Kuwait, okay? Nobody dared short Exxon. Right.

Nobody dared. the instructions or buy oil futures or by oil futures because you would be prosecuted they meant it too but on Capitol Hill oh my God you're free to do whatever you want anything you want I honestly don't think they should be able to buy securities I agree with you I think absolutely everything should go into a blind trust just the way it is with the president I mean I think it's Marjorie Taylor Green who lately has been on a wild bender of sanity yeah and And I mean, just today, we're not talking about it today, just today, I sent it to you. She comes out, she wants, she's proposing a bill to ban geoengineering, you know, shooting moots up into the atmosphere.

Okay. Good. Yeah. I'm on Team MTG, you know. Sounds good. She also wanted to ban the purchasing of securities by members of Congress. Go MTG. I'm with you.

It's crazy, man. But I find myself in complete agreement with her over the last three weeks or something. So I'm almost embarrassed to say the words out loud. I know. I feel like it's important to give credit where credits do. And, you know, it's kind of like if someone was wrong before and they're right now, I mean, that's what you wanted, right? So you've got to reward it.

Exactly, right. It's human nature to be like, but you were wrong before. I say, we don't give you credit now, which is totally like, you know, that's my, that's where I go first. That's nuts. Definitely a mistake. All right. So I guess we're just going to see where that goes.

But I think the fight is on. I think certainly red state Democrats are going to be campaigning on the big beautiful bill. This bill reminds me of nothing else more than the 1981 Reagan budget. I mean, it's like. Oh, my God. This is exactly the same as the 1981 Reagan budget. I was thinking about that the other day. And the thing is, is we've had all these years since the 19.

1881 rigged budget to prove that trickle-down economics, supply-side economics, does not work. You can't keep cutting taxes on the rich and on corporations and expect pennies to trickle down to the people who actually need to live. It doesn't work. Yet here we are, what, 44 years later, and we're doing exactly the same thing. I just don't get it. No, I mean, it did not work. Absolutely. Now, the other thing is, right? Like, correct me if I'm wrong, John? I don't think I am.

Wasn't this president elected to get us out of wars and do something about the price of eggs? Yes, indeed. Instead, you're just going to die of cancer, untreated. I guess you don't care about war once that happens. You know, I got to give Trump credit for one thing. There is a rule in the Senate. that you are not permitted to filibuster a budget bill. And so one of the reasons or the primary reason that this is the big, beautiful bill,

and it covers everything, was that he packed everything he wanted that had nothing to do with the budget into the budget bill so that it couldn't be filibustered. Very smart. Yeah, it is. I mean, I'm surprised it passed muster with the parliamentarian. well that was a fight the parliamentarian took several days to rule on it and then admitted that well everything's packed in here and it's still a budget bill technically they have everybody right right

yeah yeah that's when that's when everybody kind of came to the realization this was going to become law there's just some parliamentarian backed off i mean it's we're we're propagandized as children to be taught that like the american system is really perfect when everyone follows the rules. But sometimes the rules don't work. I mean, I was thinking about the Texas, you know, the ruling in the Texas porn law, 9 to 0 unanimously, the Supreme Court ruled that Texas has the right to ban anyone, well, not ban, but basically there is a ban against anyone consuming porn in all 50 states under the age of 18 and rightly so. But Texas passed a law that basically says you have to upload your driver's license or passport or other kind of official government ID

in order to prove that you're over 18. And, you know, it makes sense, really? It makes sense. But you know what they're after here, right? Effectively what this does is it bans pornography in the state of Texas because no one's going to do that. Right, right. And they're massive consumers of pornography. You know, every year Pornhub releases a list of the 50 states.

And it's ranked in terms of who consumes the most porn. And the number, like the top five states are always, you know, Texas, Utah, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia. It's always the red states because they're all repressed down there. That's exactly right. It's like when you discover a senator, like hitting on another dude in the airport bathroom, you know it's not going to be like Bernie Sanders. No, I was just talking about that yesterday. You know, it's like, or in the UK. Hey, you know, if you, if you find like an MP hanging from the ceiling with a red ball gag in his mouth,

it's a Tory, guarantee you. Always. Always. It's like the unwritten rule. Yeah. It's like you can count on it. Take it to the bank. You know, all right.

Yeah, that guy's name was Larry Craig. That's right. All right. Let's talk a little bit about an aftermath of the Big Beautiful Bill. Elon Musk had threatened to start a third party called the American. party in the event that the big beautiful bill passed that he was very up musk was unhappy about trump accuses him of saying that's because the evi subsidies were gone musk said it has nothing to do with that that he's pissed off about the deficits no i honestly don't know which is who's telling

the truth maybe both maybe neither um but uh he then much true to his word musk went online and said did one of his online polls to his to his ex followers and said do you want it two out of three respondent said yes he said done i'll do it and so he has more money than god yeah he can certainly you know a billion or two could definitely launch a third party um you know i don't know if he would have the like all billionaires and their toys whether he'd be interested in keep playing with it for a while but um you know we talked last time about how this would be a centrist party and maybe that's not what the world needs, right? Yet another centrist party. I can't argue that we don't need another party. That I can't argue.

Well, like you and I were saying the other day, Ted, we actually need several new parties. We talked about this on the last installment of the show. We need a progressive party. We need a, you know, populist party. We need, there's got to be someplace for centrist Democrats to go, which is the Democratic Party. And centrist Republicans, we need a whole bunch of parties. But the country is set up in such a way, you know, for the last 90 years, that it's just not going to happen. And that's what Elon Musk's party might sort of bubble up a little bit. It'll get three, four, five percent, and then it's going to go away. You know, I think it's probably high time that Elon Musk licks his wounds and goes home.

Yeah, he's not doing well in the world of politics. It's killing his bottom line. It's really hurting the stocks. And frankly, honestly, Elon Musk has contributed some really important things to our country, particularly by creating a network of charging stations across the country for electric vehicles. No one else was going to do that. Yeah, that's right. And so I'm like, seriously, thanks Elon for that.

I think the space stuff less interesting but still worth doing since obviously we can't. NASA's not doing it. No, we haven't been back to the moon since the early 70s since the Nixon administration. That's right. I mean, we used to go up there with like, you know, magnetic tape on storage. I don't understand why we can't go back there now all the time. There was more memory in an Atari game system than what we used to go to the moon. It's very, it's really, I mean, we can't do things anymore.

No. So, but I mean, he's going to, I mean, the thing is what he's going to discover, I don't think he realizes the institution. you know, block blocks on a third party. Like, for example, here in New York, the Green Party needed to be on, I need to get at least 5% of the vote in order to be back on the ballot in the last most recent presidential election. And it wasn't in, it didn't get 5% of the vote in 2020 because so many Democrats were afraid of the big bad Donald Trump that they, even though New York was obviously going to go for, you know, was going to go for, was going to go for Biden. It didn't matter.

Right. And so the thing is, so there's so many, like, rules like that. You have to get up to a certain level. You have to maintain that certain level. You get, they challenge all of your ballot petitions in every election. You know, you. Every time. I've collected, I've collected signatures, and it's, it's kind of quite the rule, right?

Like, so, like, if I signed Ted Rawl, oh, that's an invalid signature. Yeah. Because I'm Frederick Theodore Rawl III. I've got to write the comma between Rawl and the third. Right. Spell out my, if I say, like, I live at 2-2-2-2 East 902 Street, I don't live there. But let's say, but I have to, I can't say 92nd, because that's not actually the name. It's a 92.

I can't say ST, period. That signature is gone. It's got to be street spelled out. I can't say NYC-1021. I've got to say New York. comma, NY, 102.1. I mean, so it's really a process. You need to collect at least twice as many signatures as we really need. And most people can collect four or five times the signatures that they really need. They're companies that do this. Yeah, there are companies. That's right. You have to

hire these companies with campaign funds to go out there and do it for you. Yeah. So, I mean, ridiculous. Hey, Ted, I got to ask you a quick question too. Yeah. I got a, I got an automated email yesterday. I got actually five automated emails yesterday from the Congressional Black Caucus of fundraising arm, despite the fact that I've repeatedly unsubscribed. So all five of these were a version of vote blue no matter who. Of course. Right? So on the fifth one, I was so tired of seeing these, there was a comment button. So I commented, what about my Domani. Are you voting for him if it's vote blue no matter who? Because if I were in New York, I would vote for Mom Dani. Right? You keep telling us, give money and vote blue no matter who. We have to

stop Trump. Okay. How come nobody has endorsed this guy? Including Governor. No, Hachim Jeffries, no Chuck Schumer. Not a one. Nancy Pelosi, no Hillary or Bill Clinton. Nope. No. All of the top Democrats. The only one is my congressman, Gerald Nadler. yeah he did yeah to his great credit to his great credit yeah i mean it should by the way when only in this world is it considered courageous for democrats to endorse their own party's nominee who won by the way by a landslide landslide right so it's like oh god i mean i thought you were going to say so it's that's really funny i assume he didn't get a reply no i didn't get a reply and And, you know, this brings me to Cuomo.

Same thing. So Cuomo won the nomination of this obscure party that I never heard of until last week. But he's not the Democratic nominee. So why didn't he immediately endorsed Mom Dani? Mum Dany beat him fair and square. Should have. Yeah, he should have. Absolutely.

And right now you see like the right wing apparatus, which is sort of this bizarre coalition of convenience. between right-wing real estate interests, pro-Israel Zionists, the Democratic corporatists, Clintonites, and the Murdoch Empire, the New York Post and Fox News. And they're all getting together, and they're trying to figure out how they can get to unify anti-Mamdani votes around who? Sliwa. Yeah, right.

You heard of Slewa. Maybe Slewa, maybe Cuomo. But I think most of them have, they've kind of like settled on Adams, you know, who's, by the way, you know, would currently be on trial for corruption if he hadn't thrown the city open to ice. That's right. He should be on trial for corruption. And I have to ask you, because you're a New York voter. I saw, excuse me, I saw Mayor Adams on Jake Tapper a couple of days ago state as fact that Mamdai. Doni has been very public, his words, very public and very vocal in his support for Hamas and other terrorist groups. And Jake Tapper's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a minute, wait a minute.

When has he been public in his support for Hamas and other terrorist groups? That would have been big news. Oh, he says it all the time. He loves Hamas. It was even in his raps when he was a rapper. It's like, what are you talking about? about. Does any of this sound right to you? No, it's just they're making shit up. I mean, like one of the things they've been doing is like, why won't you, Mamdani, Zoran, why will you

not say that you will, that you're against the phrase to globalize the intifada? And he's like, I never said globalized the intifada. Yeah, but you should condemn that. You should apologize for that. It's like, why would I apologize for something I've never said? Well, what do people mean by that? Well, you know, they favor the liberation of the Palestinian people. Condem, condemn, condemn. I will give it to him. He's kind of like, you know, and he's right. That's the right way to play that. I mean, even if he personally thought, which I doubt, but even if he thought that's a terrible phrase, you know, You can't admit that.

You can't say that. This is just, it's a game. It's a sick game. It used to work great. It doesn't work anymore. No. And Houdini's got a great comment here. Why is he labeled a Muslim socialist?

What does his religion have to do with his politics? Oh my God. I've been saying that from the very beginning. Why in the world is he always described as a Muslim socialist? It's fearmongering. It is what it is. Yeah, it's dog whistling. I mean, and it's like, you know, the literally, and besides which, what religion is more anti-socialist than Islam?

I mean, Christianity. Now, that's a socialist religion. You know, it really is. I mean. It is. That's right. Jesus did not like rich people. May I answer Lulu three real quickly?

Did I click the African-American box like Mom Dany did? That's why I keep getting. You know, you know what? I can tell you exactly what I did, and I kick myself. I kick myself. My voting precinct is directly across the street from me. And so I went over there to vote one day. And, you know, there are always people there with the sample Democratic ballots and the sample Republican ballots.

So I took a sample Democratic ballot just to look at like the school board races because I don't follow it closely enough. And none of my kids were in Arlington County schools. So the guy said, would you like to sign up for our member? list and I said yeah okay so I give him my spam email and and I stupidly gave him my phone number oh no and how and so they text the shit out of me constantly and then how they got my good email my real email I have no idea but I get I'm going to say 10 of these a day from groups I never even heard of. Same thing when I put my kid in Little League.

Ted, I get 50 emails a year from baseball bat manufacturers. I didn't know there were so many. No, I just know Louisville Slugger. That's how I know. That's the only one I knew. So they bombard me. Right now, and I hate having stuff in my inbox. I have 16 unread emails in my inbox.

And you can keep blocking, but they keep sending it from new numbers. It just pretty frets. Thank you, Marble. On telegram, and we talked a little about this, every single day I'm getting these stupid bot things. And like you, every now and then I get bored, and I reply. So I thought you'd be amused by this.

I got one from a girl named a girl. Yeah. You know, AI girl named Isabella. This was the opening. What are your activities today? I said, I'm eating cheese. She goes, that's good, yummy. Do you want to come over at a BBQ party this weekend?

I was like, yes, that sounds great. Can I bring cheese? Sorry, is this Nerissa? I'm Isabella. I said, hi, Isabella. Narissa sent me out to pick up some cheese. I can't decide. Come on bear or roll, L.O.L.

I better get both. She goes, are you, Nerissa? I said, this is her friend Musa. Musa is Latin for mouse. I'm so embarrassed. Oh, I asked the wrong, I asked the, I, I, I saved the wrong number because I was driving the car earlier, and I hope I didn't disturb you. Nice to meet you, Musa. I'm Isabella, 36 years old. And then she said, thank you for your kindness. I wonder if I could make friends with this friendly gentleman. I said, why not? Oh, my God. So it goes, can I send your picture, see your picture? So I sent her a picture of a guy on, you think a giant block of cheese. and that was the end as soon as I get those

I love responding to those they'll say I'm like hello Mary are we still riding horses together tomorrow and I write back send nudes

then they just stop oh my God yeah you know it's like a I mean look I'm giving providing some entertainment to a guy in Nairobi sleeping on a bug-end bug-infested mask. One guy I made so mad, I was insulting him.

Like, every time he would text, I'd insult him. And he was supposed to be, you know, they always send you a variation on that very heavily, heavily edited, beautiful, young Asian woman. Always. And so I'm hitting him, you know, and I'm saying, like, horrible stuff that I can't even repeat on the air. just to see what the reaction's going to be. And I made him so mad that he texted me without first putting it into Google Translate.

Oh, shit. And when I saw it, I was like, what the heck language is that? It was Indonesian. Oh, yeah. Yeah. That's awesome. You know, I say like, yeah, that's what your mom said when I was leaving her house last night after I got done shaving her back. 10 nudes

That'll be my reply from now on It's much, much faster All right, so America Party, never mind America Party. All right, so let's talk about Alligator Alcatraz. I don't know if you saw this. In the news today,

there was a picture of Workman putting up a giant highway reflector sign that officially designated as Alligator Alligator Alcatraz. I was, I was sickened when I saw that. It's actually called alligator alcatraz. It's on the road signs.

Yeah, it's not like the, you know, central Florida detention, migration detention facility or something bureaucratic sounding. I mean, this is what happens when children run the government, basically. It's like a bunch of little, like, caffeinated little boys who are having a great time. And they're loving it. They're having such a good time. Hey, let me add something, too.

My best friend from high school called me the other day. And he called several times, which is unusual. When he called the first couple times, I was just so busy I couldn't pick up. So he called me several times. And he lives in very, very rural northern Pennsylvania, right near the New York War. There's nothing up there. The last time I went to see him, I saw a bear, and I saw a family of porcupines. I've never seen a porcupine before.

Oh, porcupines are cool. And they're big. They're frigging big. They're like bigger than dogs. Oh, yeah, yeah. They can be dead. So he called me to say that his wife has been unemployed for 16 months. The company where she worked for years and years went out of business.

So she's unemployed for 16 months. And he wanted to tell me that she had accepted a job and that he hoped I wasn't defended by it. I said, what are you talking about? And he said, well, she took a job with the geo corporation. and I said oh Gary it's the world's largest private prison company I said oh Gary and he's like I know I know I know but she hasn't worked in 16 months and I said no no no I've been there I've been unemployed God bless yeah whatever you guys need to do to make a living don't worry about John's position on the geo corporation but importantly he went on to say they hired her to be a senior HR person she's done HR for 40 something years and the that they're expanding in far northern most Pennsylvania is because they are opening migrant detention facilities all over America. It's not just in Texas and Arizona and the California Desert and Alligator Alcatraz. It's three new prison facilities in Pennsylvania.

So this is not just an election ploy. you know now this is the brism industrial complex that's exactly what it is they are deadly serious about scooping up as many people as they possibly can incarcerating them and then throwing them out and we should probably also mention this situation with south sudan right oh we absolutely and before we do just i want to parenthetically mention pennsylvania ought to know better considering they had that massive scandal where the judge was a juvenile justice judge that's right was funneling kids into a for-profit prison just to make money and for kickbacks. He sold children into bondage and Joe Biden pardoned him.

That's right. And Joe Biden pardoned him. That's right. And Joe Biden pardoned him. Yeah, disgusting. All right. So let's talk about it. I believe it was eight citizens of other country, well, seven citizens of countries other than South Sudan. Yes. And one who is a South Sudanese, eight total. The courts have signed off on this, and they told the Trump administration, it's okay, at least for now, to deport undocumented workers, people without legal residency status in the United States, to any country in the world that you want. Yeah. I can't be right.

You know, I thought when I first saw it that I just had misread it. And so I started following this issue closely. And no, that's what the Supreme Court said. We can send people to any country we want. And so these guys, these eight guys are being held at the American drone base. It's called an Air Force base in Djibouti. They're all locked up there pending expulsion to other countries. only one South Sudanese

all of them have been convicted of murder attempted murder or armed robbery so these are bad guys sure but they're being expelled to South Sudan which the United Nations calls the poorest country on earth

people leave South Sudan to go to Somalia for opportunity it's an active war zone an active war zone yes yeah and this is what we're doing now we're not sending them back to their own countries.

We're just putting them on a one-way flight to South Sudan, kick them off the plane and say, good luck. We probably don't even say that. Even in a country that's 249 years, there's shit that's so evil that no legislator ever thought that they needed to make a law against it. And this is one of them. It reminds me of like, you know, maybe 20 years ago or 15 years ago, there was that guy in Germany who put an ad on the internet saying, like, hey, come to my house and I'll kill

you and eat you. Yes. And somebody did. Yeah. And he was happy about being eaten. There was a video. But the point is, even in Germany, it had never occurred to any member of the Bundestag that they needed a law against this because no one had ever done it. We're at that state now here with what the government is doing to these people.

It should just, it's one of those things like it's indecent. It's obviously indecent. And it shouldn't be permitted. I mean, it wouldn't be okay as far as I'm concerned to send these people to France. They don't have any affiliation. But this is meant to terrorize it's sadistic. It reminds me of everything I've read and heard from my mother who grew up during the Nazi occupation, where it was like the word deportation in World War II occupied Europe.

Like, oh, what happened to, what happened to Rachel? She's been deported. Now, that meant probably killed, right? like sent off into the ether never to be heard from again that's right that's what it means now that is exactly right that's exactly right you know i've told you i think i've told you this story before but i i went to uh i went to somalia once with uh i was in jibouti and and i should add too tom makes a very good comment here does it make sense from a security standpoint to be sending these expelled people to relatively secret of military bases in the case of jibouti that's a

very good point. Our base in Djibouti, which crazy as it sounds, we share right down the middle with China. Crazy. This used to be a French base. Well, why not? We had Chinese intelligence operatives

assisting with torture of Uyghur DG at Guantanamo. That's right. The base is cut right down the middle. There's just a chain link fence down the middle, and half of it is Chinese and half of it is American. It used to be a French base called Camp LeMontier, and the French were like,

we don't have any national interest here anymore, we're going home. And they just packed up and went home, gave the base half to us and half to the Chinese. So the Chinese, all their hangars are sitting open. And our hangers are all closed because that's where we keep our drones that we use to bomb Yemen. So anyway, I was in Djibouti, and the ambassador asked me if I wanted to go to Somalia with him the next day. I said yes. So the ambassador, the defense attach, the chief of security and I got in a car, and we drove from Djibouti City, past the national garbage dump, which I'll get to in a second, around the bay, and then south to Sudan.

I'm sorry, south to Somalia. And so we went to Somaliland, which is northernmost Somalia, and we're talking to Somaliland officials there. And as we're standing out talking, I'm looking at the beach, and there's a line. That looks like it never ends. It was thousands of people, and they're just walking up the beach. So I said to the Somali guy, I said, who are all these people?

And he said, oh, they're refugees. And I said, where are they going? And he said to Yemen. And I said, they're going to Yemen for a better life. And he said, yes. And I was like, oh, my God, how bad must things be here for them to go to Yemen? But anyway, my initial point, you have to drive past the municipal garbage dump to get to Somalia. And so as we were driving by, there was a family standing in the garbage dump, and there's a shrouded body laying on the ground.

It's all wrapped up in linen. And they're digging a hole, and they're going to bury grandpa, you know, in the hole. and I said to the ambassador look at that I said there but for the grace of God go I you know I'm so lucky to be born where I was born and my grandparents you know came to the United States etc we drive back from Somalia that night and as we're passing the garbage dump

there's a pack of wild dogs digging up the body oh yeah I'll never forget it as long as I live but this is there we're sending these guys that's the environment that we're sending these people to now if they're guilty of murder and attempted murder and armed robbery incarcerate them yes we have right knows we have the facilities that's right you know um michael brings up an important question what happens when they arrive at this unfamiliar country they just get dropped off with their stuff and a pat on the back i mean my my impression is that it depends on the country right i think in some cases

they're going to take them into custody for whatever trumped-up reason. In other cases, it's going to be just like sex to be you, bye. I mean, I read a really bizarre article about during the Obama years, some young Cambodians had been brought with their parents to the United States, and Obama deported them back to Cambodia. They hadn't been, in many cases, to Cambodia. since they were babies. So they didn't speak Khmer.

They had no, they'd never been to Cambodia within their memories. And the Cambod, and so they basically, the Cambodian government didn't know what to do with them. They were homeless. They're living outside. It's a poor country. The government doesn't have a lot of resources. They were basically loitering. And then some people kind of cobble together sort of a little bit of a charity to put a tent over their head.

And I'm like, these are Americans. They speak only English. They play basketball. You know what I mean? This is a, I mean, it's an atrocity. I mean. Houdini makes a very important point here, too. Some of these sub-Saharan countries have citizens who would rather go across Libya,

which is all desert, and drown in the Mediterranean than stay in their home country. That tells you how bad things are. Yeah. And that story you told, John, is very, I mean, I had my own experience with. that in Afghanistan one time, leaving Afghanistan, I was at the Tajik border. And I saw a busload of people at the Tajik side who were way, they were illegal immigrants from Afghanistan. And they were about to be deported back to Afghanistan. And they had the saddest look on their faces.

And it was like, imagine being so desperate for a better life that you were searching. You wanted to be in Tajikistan, which is the poorest of all of the former Soviet Republicans. republics, the poor Central Asian Republic, where most people made like $15, $20 a month. That's crazy. A month. Is Stephen Miller the mastermind behind this? I think, yes. I think, I mean, from all reporting that we've seen, this is Stephen Miller, to the point

where his own family has disowned him. They've walked away from him. They're like, we don't know how this guy was created. He was born and raised in Santa Monica, for heaven's sake. He graduated from Santa Monica High School and then became this hate-filled anti-immigrant ideologue and attached himself to Donald Trump. I mean, there's a, I mean, so psychologically, right, John, there's a sadistic aspect to this. This is about gleeful, like, it's one, I mean, I kind of understand, I do understand, a country that says we don't want illegal immigrants, especially those who commit crimes, but the gleeful sadism of it. How well does that, I mean, Democrats clearly don't care about these people, but are Republican voters actually happy about this?

Do you think that they're like, or they just don't really think about it, you know? Well, that's great. I think they probably don't think about it. And I keep coming back to that hilarious news story about this woman in Indianapolis. I think we've talked about this. This woman and her husband in Indianapolis, they have a wildly successful. Steakhouse. And her husband came to the United States from Mexico 35 years ago, never legalized, never legalized, but went into business, got married, paid his taxes, made tons of money,

got scooped up by immigration and deported to Mexico. And the wife was on the news crying. She had voted for Donald Trump because her words, he said he was going to expel the bad ombray's I don't remember him saying the bad hombres he may have but I remember him saying he was going to scoop up the illegals and that's exactly what he did this is the thing about Donald Trump Donald Trump has done exactly what he told us he was going to do take the man at his work

he keeps his promises yes he does I mean honestly if I'm a Republican mega voter who voted for him knowing everything that he promised I don't have a lot of reason to be upset, except for the Big Beautiful Bill. Yes. Because he promised he was not going to raise, he was not going to raise the spending. Yes. We need our deficits.

That's a lie. Yes. And he promised he wasn't going to touch entitlement programs. That's a lie, too. Yes, indeed. So, yeah, no, it's, the sadism here is really disgusting. Let's talk about the ceasefire. So currently, I'm not sure if this, I assume this plan, latest proposal originated with Trump.

It seems to be a rehashed version of a deal that had been on the table earlier, that Israel then broke after Hamas adhered to the agreement. And now basically, Hamas basically just wants to go back to the status quo. I don't know what the Latin word would be for broken ceasefire that fell up. part in March and wants to and wants to basically say, okay, we want to go back to the lines there and Israel's not going to, what was the other term that Israel didn't agree to? There was something else.

It's driving me a little bit nuts. They basically won, oh yeah, Israel wants to basically keep control, right, of all the territory they currently have. And Amas is like, yeah, we're not going to do that. and they want the ceasefire to be permanent, too, right? They don't want to just sort of have like an ad hoc ceasefire, release the remaining hostages, and then have the Israelis resumed of the environment.

And, you know, I read yesterday, I think it was in the New York Times, it may have been in the L.A. times, that for the first time since they started taking polls, more Americans support the Palestinians than support the Israelis. It's massive. I thought I'd never see that. No, never, never, never. Uh-uh. And that's the current situation.

And it's because, you know, people recognize a genocide when they see one. It takes them a while. Yeah, it does. It takes them a while. I mean, you could see it on October 9th, really. But, you know, that's right. That's exactly right. I think, you know, I've got to say, John, I think the spell has finally broken.

I sure hope so. I think with the Israelis and, you know, and their supporters in the U.S. who bully everyone into like, oh, if you don't support us, you're an anti-Semite, yada, yada. Nobody believes that anymore. No, somebody called me in a chat a couple of days ago. Somebody called me a noted anti-Semite. And I was like, oh, okay, noted by whom? What are you talking about?

Right. If supporting human rights makes me an anti-Semite, then, you know, what am I going to do? I accept it. Right, right. And it's just like, yeah, you just can't keep playing that game over and over and over. It's sick. I don't think Israel is going to come back from this. You know, no country on the planet is more reliant on U.S. public support for its existence.

And I just don't, you know, I just don't see it. I mean, even if, like, you snapped your fingers and they put in a liberal government to replace Yahoo tomorrow, there's too much damage to that's been done that's it that's it too many dead too much destruction it's just not going to happen so the israelis in the and the um and hamas are meeting in katar today um we're going to see any where are we going to see a breakthrough i doubt it yeah yeah i hate Israelis don't really want a ceasefire right israelis like things just the way they are The Israelis can do anything they want And the only country in the world that matters

The United States doesn't object Right You think behind the scenes Donald Trump is frustrated with the Israelis I do And I think that's why he dropped the F bomb a week or two ago Because I think he is frustrated with the Israelis But he would never say that publicly No American politician would say that publicly

for the most part but no I think I think that I think he is frustrated and I think the Israelis don't care if he's frustrated yeah and also most Americans now say they want to see

a reduction in aid to Israel I mean how great would that be well it's it's you know 50 years overdue but you look better late than never I suppose yeah I mean

it's so funny too like one of my favorite tropes is, you know, oh, you hold, if you hold Israel to different and higher standards than you hold other countries, that's an official form of anti-Semitism as defined by a number of Jewish organizations. And I'm like, there's a reason that we hold Israel to a higher standard or let's just say we pay more attention to their human rights violations than we do to say the Myanmar against the Rohingya, because there's no country that we finance to this extent. It's literally our responsibility. It's our genocide.

We pay for it. I mean, we're not paying for what Myanmar is up to. It's not cool what they're up to, but it's not ours. And this is our business, and that's different. That's right. That's right. We've done this. We can stop it, but we won't.

No, that's correct. And I guess finally we have to look at the floods, right? You said at least 70 people have been... Yeah, Associated Press is now saying, let me find it here it is. 70 people are dead and many others missing, including still 11 children from a summer camp after floods tore through Central Texas Hill Country. Go ahead. So, I mean, so this is an area that is prone to flooding and flash flooding in general.

It's not like it's now happened to be taught. And, you know, it's called flash, that the Guadalupe River is considered, they call it a flash flood zone. It's happened historically before. This was a huge amount of rain in a very short time in one place. You know, the storm wasn't particularly big, but it all, it's stalled in one place. It's just a dump tons of water. Ten inches of rain. All at the same time.

And then like, whoosh. Yeah, it was six months worth of rain fell in two hours. And that means, obviously, if it hasn't rained in a long time, The ground's hard, so it, you know, it just runs off the top. And so that's really terrifying. There's a little bit of a squabble within the meteorological community where some Republicans were blaming the National Weather Service for having failed to predict this.

And they're saying to defend themselves, no, no, no, we predicted it. We told you this was going to happen. But the people that normally convey our forecast, to FEMA and other state agencies and so on, you fired them under Doge. Exactly. And so they were fired. They're not here. And that would have helped.

Yes. Yes, that's absolutely true. They were fired under Doge. And I'm going to go a little bit farther than that, deeper or further, whichever I think it's further. Anyway, when you, when you, when you, you appropriate funds for the Pentagon that the Pentagon doesn't even ask for, you take away funds that could have been spent on public works, including flood control, right?

This happened in Utah 10 years ago. It happened in Iowa, 12 or 13 years ago, when you would rather buy another B2 bomber or three or four more F-35s instead of to create flood control mechanisms along these rivers that you know are going to flood. And then you're shocked that people die, then that's on you. That's on our leadership. And that's what we saw here. These people died unnecessarily.

Okay. So let me play, put on my harsh hat right now. So a local official, presumably conservative, but maybe not. you know said the people there just don't want to pay higher taxes um that they could they could have local and state officials handle this but they don't want to hire them they don't want to pay for the resources and therefore this is just going to keep happening that's an op-ad right there ted i might write that today is that fair is that is that victim blaming or i mean this is this is why i mean i do think even if that's true this is the case for federal government

Sometimes local municipalities don't know what's good for them. And, you know, they need a little bit of the big, big, big, the big white, the big great white father from Washington to weigh in and tell them what's what. Yep. That's exactly right. And if Donald Trump gets his way, in a year or two, there won't be any such thing as FEMA. And then what? Then what do you do? I don't even understand that.

I mean, literally like, okay, so we can all credit. I mean, that's, by the way, kind of a recurring theme with Republican budget cutting. It's not the first time we ever heard it, but I think it's gone to a new level. So it's like, you know, there's that old joke, the restaurant's terrible. The poor, such small portions and such terrible food. And it's kind of like, well, if government is such small portions, it seems to me like the solution is bigger portions. But they're like, no, close the restaurant down entirely. Don't eat at all.

And I'm like, I'm going to steal that for the op-ed I'm going to write this afternoon. Steal it. You're exactly right. You're exactly right. Look, you've identified the problem, okay? You've identified the solution to the problem. All that remains is the implementation of the solution. That's it.

Right. Don't just pretend that the problem is never going to happen again. No. I mean, yeah, no. And all these children, I mean, Ted, there were, there were. reports. I saw, I saw photograph yesterday at AP showing a little girl clinging to a tree 18 miles away from the camp. She was switched by this river 18 miles and was found clinging to a tree. She survived. These were little kids like from 9 to 12 were talking about. And they were

just slaughtered. Yeah, I mean, it's, I mean, look, these things do happen. They do happen fast. But if you know the weather, I mean, that's why we have radar. It's it. That's right. I mean, and this is not new technology. We all have it on our phones for heaven's sake.

You can watch the storm coming at you. Right, right. Although, I don't know, you've probably seen it too. When I've been in places like Texas, man, when the storms come in, like it's nothing like it. We rarely have storms that intense in the northeast. Yeah, rarely. There's not that much energy in the atmosphere.

No. The rain comes down like sheets, the massive lightning strikes. And then it passes. Yeah. But down south, it's different. Like I said, six months worth of rain in two hours. It's just crazy. Yeah.

Gorgeous icon. Wow. Rebellious rainbow wound. Unicornic just have an icon must. Wow. Yeah. Yellow banana says Texas Texan here can confirm the storms here are next level. Yeah.

I've always found it incredibly impressive and crazy. You know, it's like plus you know what they say in the desert, right? Like not that all of Texas is desert, but hardly. But, you know, they say, how do you die in the desert, right? Thirst or drowning from like a flash flood that might not even be visible. right you could be a clear blue sky over the horizon there could be a thunderstorm that dumps a whole bunch of water and suddenly you're in a wadi rushes yeah that's right that's right you know i went to uh petra uh the ancient city of petra in southern jordan wadi rome years and years yeah that's

right wadi room um it was uh it was before the peace treaty so we were literally the only two people in the whole place and as we were going in a jordanian guy told us to um to be wear of flash floods. I said, it's a beautiful blue sky. He said it doesn't matter. Watch out for flash floods. Yeah. That's exactly right. So, I mean, I always wondered, I mean, I think the theme here is, you know, Trump is basically Reagan redux. I've never thought that, but that's where we are. Do you think the Democratic Party ascended under Bill Clinton as a response to Reaganism or as an evolution from Reagan? Oh, no, that's a good question. I think it's an evolution. I think Reagan pushed us so far to the

right that the whole country moved to the right. Remember, the Democrats were determined to never allow a George McGovern ever to win a presidential nomination ever again. Right. And so they stacked the deck with super delegates. And so I think the whole body politic of the country moved to the right. And here we are. There's nothing liberal about Hakeem Jeffries. He's no progressive, for example, right? I don't care what his race happens to be. He's a, he's a Clinton Democrat. And that's not a, that's not a leftist. No, no way. Like the Democrats we have now will continue to do the same thing. I mean, it's not like, I mean, when the, when the, when, when, when the Republicans come in, they strive to undo all of the works of the previous Democratic administration.

But the Democrats don't do that. I mean, if and when President Newsom or whoever comes in, they're not going to get, they're not going to unwind the big, beautiful bill. They're not going to restore the cuts to the National Weather Service. They're not going to cut the Pentagon budget. Nope. Nobody ever does. They'd look weak on national security. Not to mention, those are their contributors.

Exactly. exactly those are their contributors yeah uh-huh beautiful nice country we have yeah uh you know well fourth of july weekend's over we don't have to be told but next year is the big two five zero people forget that you know i can't you know the last one the bicentennial was uh under the um not so exciting administration of gerald r ford yeah and now Donald trump I mean, it is truly a cruel joke that he gets to be at the helm for the, what is it,

the bicusquintennial? Bicentennial, yes. Well, that rolls off the time. Bicentennial, yes. He rolls off the time. It's already an ugly logo for it. At least the Bicentennial had a nice logo, I thought.

Very 70s, but well designed. Yes, indeed. You look at this one, it looks like it came out of a clip art factory. It probably did. It's foul. All right, so are we sufficiently deprogram? I think so.

Good to talk to everybody. Thanks for all those outstanding comments. I get a lot out of that. Thank you. Indeed. We always appreciate the comments and the questions. We have the best. And the donations.

Thank you. Thank you very much for that. Yeah. Thank you so much for that. So we will be back Wednesday, 5 p.m. Eastern time here on D-Program with John Curiacco and me, Ted Raul. Thank you so much for. watching and listening.

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21. I'm sorry to mispronounce your name. Do you think Democrats keep track of all the damage Trump is doing, or do you think they keep playing identity politics? Oh, I. B. yes be strongly yeah yes that's their way and thanks for the five dollar donation much appreciated thank you all right everyone we're going to take we're going to see you in a few

days have a great remainder of your weekend thanks for sharing some part of it with us take care bye everybody