DeProgram with John Kiriakou and Ted Rall - DeProgram with Ted Rall and John Kiriakou: “Bolton Busted”

Episode Date: August 22, 2025

Trump was a no-show for his police ride-along. The National Guardsmen occupying Washington start carrying loaded military weapons this weekend. What could go wrong? And those aren’t even the main topics on today’s “DeProgram with Ted Rall and John Kiriakou airing today LIVE at 5 pm ET! Political cartoonist Ted Rall and CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou unpack the urgent stories at the end of the week: • FBI Raid at Chateau John Bolton: The Feds burst into the Maryland home and D.C. office of the notorious neocon warmonger. They’re looking for classified documents, not his judgement—that’s long gone. JD Vance denies its retribution for Bolton’s criticism of Trump, but his denials are less than convincing. • Erik Menendez Snubbed: The patricidal brother’s parole application was rejected after a 10-hour hearing, supposedly due to prison misconduct like using a cellphone. Despite family support and credible claims he was raped, he was dubbed a public safety risk. • ICE Kidnaps Army Vet: US Army veteran Muhammad Zahid Chaudhry showed up to his citizenship interview in Tukwila, Washington only to be disappeared into an ICE gulag. His wife, Melissa, says he faces deportation despite 25 years in the US and military service. • Visa Dragnet: The US is reviewing 55 million visa holders for violations like overstays and links to terrorism, enforcing “continuous vetting.” They’re scanning social media feeds for “anti-American” sentiments, reflecting Trump’s anti-immigration and hatred of Palestinians. • ICE Spying on Wire Transfers: ICE uses wire transfer data to track immigrants, as seen in Gregorio Cordova Murrieta’s deportation case. The Transaction Record Analysis Center’s database violates your privacy for immigration enforcement. • Secret Space Mission: The X-37B mini shuttle launched again for classified space experiments, testing laser communications and GPS-free navigation. The Space Force mission’s duration is undisclosed, with past flights lasting up to a year. Boeing’s reusable craft continues to push secretive aerospace boundaries. What are they up to?

There we go. Hey, Ted. Hey, Ted. Can you hear me? Hey, everyone. Thank you for joining us. Hi, John. Good to see you this Friday, August 22nd.

You are watching Deep Program with Ted Rall and John Kiriakou. I'm Ted Rall. That's John Kirocou, obviously by process of elimination. He's the whistleblower. I'm the cartoonist. Okay. Let's get to it. A little business to take care of.

Two things. First of all, it looks like some people are having trouble with the Rumble feed live right now. It looks like, oh, someone's saying that the YouTube feed may have dropped two. It's really crazy because I have it live. It's totally working for me. Yeah, me too. I'm looking at, let me see if the YouTube's working for me. I might just have to reboot this thing.

Oh, you know what? But just now as I was on it, my YouTube feed went out. Did it go down? Yeah. And then... Let's see. It looks to me that... I have to click through so many different things to get to it.

Is it live or... Rumble looks like it's live to me. YouTube... I'm good. I'm testing the YouTube right now. And the YouTube looks like it's a good... The YouTube's on a 10-minute countdown. So it's like living in a different space-time continuum.

Obviously, one of the secret Space Force experiments. I think we're probably better off. I see viewers are live. So I think we should probably just proceed. John, if you want to chime in and just tell people what we're doing while I do the housekeeping aspect, you bet that would be great okay thank you and i have to say for a friday i usually say fridays are so slow in washington there is a lot of stuff going on first of all um former national security advisor john bolton was the subject of an fbi raid on his home this

morning at seven o'clock in bethesta maryland he lives in a very wealthy very upscale uh close in suburb of Washington. They gave him the courtesy of not raiding the house at six. They waited until seven, but they sealed off the entire block to do it. People were live streaming it. It was a very big deal. As soon as they finished raiding the house and taking all of his electronics, they went downtown and raided his office and took all of his electronics there too. So the Washington Post and other outlets are reporting that he is being investigated for for improperly maintaining possession of classified documents, which, of course, is a violation under the Espionage Act.

It's exactly what Donald Trump had been charged with doing all those many four years ago, three years ago, whatever it is. And so now it's Bolton's turn. In addition, the CIA, not the CIA, but the DNI, excuse me, Tulsa Gabbard released a list of names of all 37 analysts who have been fired from their jobs at the CIA for writing, contributing to, or coordinating on the paper that said that the Russians were using Donald Trump to steal the election. So there were a couple names that I recognized as senior intelligence service officials.

No big deal. They take the retirement. They live happily ever after. The other 35 are people in their 30. and 40s, mid-career, young kids at home, they are finished in Washington. If you have lost your security clearance, something that in government is called statutory debarment, you're done. You might as well pack up your stuff and move back to Timbuktu, where you came from,

and get a job with your cousin selling life insurance or something. I hate to be so harsh, but that's what's going to happen is people. A couple of other things happened. Just in the last hour, the Justice Department probably inappropriately released the audio tape of the Deputy Attorney General's meeting with Galane Maxwell that took place last month. The reason that they released this audio is clear when she says repeatedly, President Trump acted as a gentleman in all respects. right president trump acted as a gentleman in all respects she never saw him acting appropriately he was never with an underage girl he never laid his hands on anybody nobody nobody laid their

hands on him everything's good now of course she's pandering to him because he's the only person in the world who can give her a pardon or a commutation and i was watching one of the debates on cnn just before we started the show and they had an attorney saying That that's all fine and good, but she's missing the point. The point is not to relitigate the case. The point is she should be taking responsibility for what she did. She should be expressing remorse and contrition and throwing herself at the mercy of Donald Trump. That's not what she's doing.

She's saying, oh, in fact, she went so far as to say one of those young girls, she lied about me. I never did that stuff. She told stories and made it up. I think she just wants to get money. It's like, Galang, that's not how you win friends and influence people. This is your one shot. So there was that. In addition, it's been a busy day at the Pentagon with Secretary of Defense Pete HECSF firing the head of DIA.

That's Lieutenant General Jeffrey Cruz. Why did he fire the head of DIA? because DIA analysts looked at the bomb damage assessments from the U.S. attack on Iran and said, we probably didn't get everything. Well, the president said we got everything. So we got everything. So the head of DIA is fired because his analysts looked at the photography and came to a different conclusion than President Trump did. Also at DOD today, Hegsafe authorized all National Guard troops in D.C.

to carry military weapons. Okay? So they're not going to just, you know, have their sidearm as they do a drive along or ride along with the D.C. police. They are going to have M5s and whatever military equipment they would normally have if they were going into battle in Afghanistan or Iraq. That's the weapons they're going to be carrying with them now every night in Washington, D.C. With fully loaded... fully loaded fully loaded right so what could possibly go wrong exactly now interestingly one of the commentators today on fox said you know with all due respect to the white house he said

crimes are not taking place you know on the restaurant corridor of 14th street right times are taking place in southeast Washington and when we look at the pentagon's maps of where these deployments are in Washington none of the deployments are in the high crime areas I mean wouldn't you love to in the National Guard, and you get sent to Georgetown to stand on the corner of Wisconsin and M and watch the tourists walk around, you know? Well, I'm a cynical bastard, but John, what do you, and I think, by the way, I think we're back up. We lost, we had lost both feeds at some point, but I think we're up and running now on both.

We're Robbieless, so it's not as easy with Robbie gone today. Okay. So what do you make of that? Right? I mean, so this reminds me of the old joke about the two cops who are chasing a criminal. The criminal ducks down a dark alley. And the young cop who's in better shape arrives on the outskirts of the alley and says, and he finds the more experienced cop, you know, outside of the alley looking out on the street. And he says, what are you doing here? The criminal ran down there. And the experienced cop goes, yeah, but it's easier to look out here. Is that what this is really about? Like, you know, they're not really there to go after crime. They're really there to swing their dicks around. Yeah, you know, one thing about Donald Trump, he's egotistical, he's narcissistic, et cetera, et cetera. He's not stupid.

He's not stupid. He knows exactly what he's doing. See, Democrats, at their own peril, have underestimated him repeatedly, and he's come out on top. So he knows what he's doing. read these charts just like everybody else can, he can see that there is no crime problem in Washington. And that Washington ranks at something like 35th or 37th in the country in terms of per capita violent crime. There's no problem here. And most of those violent crimes are in these areas that we talked about in southeast Washington and northeast Washington that are very far from

the beaten path where tourists go. So he's doing this as a preview for what he wants to do in Chicago and New York and Los Angeles. My guess, for example, in New York is he's going to wait until Momdani wins and then send the National Guard to save New York from socialism. If he really wanted to make an impact on crime in big cities or even in medium-sized cities, he would send the National Guard to Memphis or to Jackson, Mississippi. or St. Louis. Or St. Louis, for God's sake.

Oakland, California. Oakland, yeah. Camden. Not Washington, D.C. No, totally true. Totally true. Comment from a question from Reed. Can we get Sean back to know more about how the government scans or social media?

Absolutely. Even when it's private. So, yeah, that's a request. Actually, thanks for that. Because I just talked to Sean yesterday, and he said, hey, I'd love to come back on. And I said, great, we'll have to schedule you. Yeah, for sure. me more impetus. Thank you for that. No question about that. And also, by the way,

a read, hang tight because we'll be talking about how ICE is scanning everyone's wire transfer data, probably including ours. I don't see why they wouldn't be. And we'll get into that a lot of news about ICE and deportations today. So, I mean, John, thank you for holding the fort down, John, while I was. I'm sorry to say that it looks like YouTube's down again. Is that true? Because I'm, hold on. Oh, my God. Rolls seems to be working. I think the other, I think the, I think I had to create a new YouTube feed.

Oh, okay. And I think that one's up and running. If I'm not mistaken, I'll take a look right now. But, God, I hate, you know, this is kind of like when you go to see a band. And, yeah, we're live on the other. Yeah, yeah. We're right. We're live.

Where you hear the band tuning. I used to be friends with Johnny Ramon. And he said that one of the reasons that they used to watch. walk out on stage and just go, one, two, three, four was that they hated going to see bands like, wow, wow, it's like, you know, a little more, a little more reverb from the, you know, it's like, and he said it was just boring to them, and they didn't want to do that to anyone else. Anyway, all right, John Bolton. John Bolton is in a huge trouble.

Most bloodthirsty, neo-conservative. The feds burst into, you know, to quote the Nick Lowe's song, Marie Provost. They broke into her loneliness in that cheap hotel up on Hollywood West. They broke into his house in Maryland and his D.C. office. And they're looking for classified documents. I mean, is that going to be the new thing? Everybody's got classified documents. We're just going to go and that's what it's for, right?

Yeah, but you see, they've got. Bolton by the sack right now. And he walked right into it. You probably remember that as soon as he left the administration in the first term, he wrote a book. He wrote a memoir. And the White House blocked it saying that he had not submitted it for pre-publication review and that it was chalk full of classified information. Yeah, you know all about this process. Boy, do I. It so anybody who Has anybody who relies on classified information or had access to it, you wouldn't have to submit, like, if you wrote a, I don't know, a romance book, you wouldn't have to submit that to the CEO, would you? You used to, but not anymore. Now, if it has anything to do with foreign affairs, defense, intelligence, you know, national security, you have to send it in.

Okay. So, and it's everybody who had an SITK gamma clearance. By the way, how do they approve things that say, I mean, why do they approve books that tell a lot? Like, for example, inside the company by Philip A.G. He didn't get it approved. Oh, he didn't. That's why he went on the run. Oh.

Well, guess what? Guess what? Bolton didn't get his approved either. Really? See, he said at the time, and again, this is, what, six years ago, he said there was nothing classified in the, that book and that Trump was just blocking publication just to screw him because they disagreed on policy. So he told his publisher, go ahead and publish it. Let him sue us. But Trump didn't sue. Trump patiently bided his time until this morning. And so if if I were John Bolton, revenge is a dish

best served late. Oh boy. If I were John Bolton, I would be far less worried about forfeiting my my advance, which is the normal civil penalty, and I would be far more worried about losing my freedom, because that's now what he's looking at. Wow. Wow. Yeah. So J.D. Vance issued a denial that this had any, that this is about retribution. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Nothing, nothing about retribution. Not even a little bit. Just trying to protect classified secrets. Now, the thing is, J.D., his denial wasn't, you know, he's, for whatever his other faults are,

J.D. is an articulate and intelligent man, and he uses words carefully. He did not make much, he didn't really mince words here in a very, a straightforward way, I would try to say. He, he kind of let it be known, like, well, of course, you know, if he didn't break the law, he's got nothing to worry about but if he broke the law there's going to be consequences you know it's like that was a scripted message nice maryland house he got there mr bolton be a pity if it burned down yeah yeah boy you worked so hard for that two and a half million dollar house it would be such a shame if it were to sit empty while you were in a prison cell yep yeah um so how do you feel about this i mean i always wonder. So on the one hand, I know it's like, okay, couldn't happen to a more deserving

motherfucker. On the other hand, although maybe not for classified docs, but, you know, but on the other hand, you've been through the ringer that he may be about to go through. And it's no fun. So what are your feelings about that? Like, do you sort of have mixed feelings? Like, God, I kind of don't think anyone should have to go through it, or do you think, like, I hate John. I hate John Bolton. I do. I hate John Bolton. I hate everything he stands for. Me too. And I know what law fair is all about. And in fact, Donald Trump's U.S. attorney for Utah, Brett, Brett Tolman said the Kyriaku case, I want to get the wording right. He said the Kyriaku case was the Democratic Party's template for its policy of lawfare. So I know what this is about. If they want to get you, they're going to get you. There's

literally nothing you can do to protect yourself. At the same time, how many lives did Bolton ruin? You know, maybe we should be prosecuting Bolton to warn everybody else to respect the rule of law as it pertains not just to you and your friends, but to those with whom you disagree. I feel, I feel pretty strongly about it. No, I, look, that's the thing. This is totally Al Capone on taxes, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it is. That's exactly what it is. These days, rough justice is the only justice we can get. It's true.

It's true. Yeah, so what's going to happen? You know, is he going to be prosecuted? Maybe. Are they going to prosecute him in D.C.? He probably won't be convicted with a D.C. jury. He probably would be in Maryland. Why do you say he wouldn't be?

Why not D.C.? Because Donald Trump got seven. percent in Washington, D.C., seven percent. And a jury, whatever jury they're able to seat is going to look at this and say, which side is Donald Trump on? And they're going to go with the other side. That's why these draconian sentences were passed down to the January 6th people. You're involved in January 6th, and then you get 30 years in prison.

30 years, for real, it's because it was D.C. Marble wants to know for $1.99. Why is Bolton bad? Bolton is a younger, angrier iteration of Dick Cheney. Bolton never saw a war that he didn't want to jump into with both feet. And if there was no war, then by God, he was perfectly happy to start one so he could get us involved. It's all about manifest destiny and the greater United States. a Pax Americana.

I mean, he's all the worst part. I've never heard the word diplomacy come out of his mouth. Never. And this was a guy who was a diplomat. He was a message to the UN, yeah. It's crazy. Yeah, very, very bad man. Yeah, he's a wicked man because, I mean, look, war should always be something that we only do in last resort.

It should never be for fun. And he's the embodiment of that neo-conservative outlook, which is, He is. It's all wars are good. Aggressive wars are good. You know, always for no, for no reason. I mean, war is literally the worst thing in the world. I mean, we actually, we actually do have to mention his mustache. His nickname in Washington is the walrus. He is a walrus. He's a human walrus. And Tarik has a statement here. Trump used him as a bulldog. That's something that I never fully understood, right? I couldn't wrap my mind around it. If Donald Trump, he's, he looks like a warlors. And Tarak has a statement here. Trump. Trump, he's wants to drain the swamp and get rid of all the swamp monsters or swamp creatures. Well, Bolton is the architect of the swamp. Yeah. Since the beginning, since 9-11. He's the creature from the Black Lagoon.

He is. So why in the world would you name him, who should be your biggest enemy, as your closest advisor on? I got the impression in 2016 that Trump had seriously had a hard time finding help and didn't have a lot of people to choose from from the establishment. and that people were like Bolton were like, hey, I've been around, I need a job, I have a big name, and Trump just didn't really know much about some of the people that he picked.

I don't think he really knew John Bolton was or what he did in the Iraq War or anything. I agree. And it may have been a bone that he threw to the Bush people because the Bush people loved him. And M.W. Knox 186, Bolton killed a deal with North Korea. You bet he did. He killed that deal single-handedly.

Well, there was a danger that a dreadful peace might have broken out on the Korean Peninsula, thus costing many arms manufacturers hundreds of millions of dollars. Exactly right. You know, when we were at Sputnik, Ted, I used to see Bolton all the time. His office was about a block away from ours. And he was always going into the Dunkin' Donuts there at Connecticut Avenue in K Street. I used to see him with Tom Friedman, who I also can't stand. Oh, God.

By the way, you know, if you really want to, let me piss you off, John. After the show, do a Google image search on Thomas Friedman House. Oh, I'll do that right now. You are going to, it's the last time I did it, it's one of those mansions, like the size of the White House that has a view. It's on Chesapeake Bay, and it can only be seen by helicopter. Oh, come on. Do you see it? This is actually his house?

Yeah. It's a 20,000 square foot house. Yeah, yeah. It's like a, I mean, it's bigger than a few very small countries. Oh, look at this thing. He has his own swimming pool. He has his own tennis court. He has his own basketball court.

It's in Bethesda, Ted. It's in Bethesda. This has to be a $20 million house. It is. Yeah, it's all from his speaking fees and his consulting fees. All of them completely unethical, according to the New York. Times. You're not supposed to have any of that shit. But, you know, yeah, he's living, he's living like rappers. I told you. This is like, and he's the worst, too. You know, it pisses me off.

I've been doing political punditry since the late 80s. And, you know, I've made mistakes, but not like Thomas Friedman. And I usually get the big ones right. I got those ones right. You know, no rewards for me, no job at the New York Times for me. No house in Bethesda, $20 million house, right? Yeah. Not for me. Ted, listen to this. He bought the house in 2006 for $9.3 million. And it's now It's now worth $25 million. It is it is 11,500 square feet and it sits on seven and a half acres. It broke my brain. I blundered into it one time accidentally, searching for something else. And I was like, what is this shit?

What? Yeah, it's fucking insane. This is somehow, man. I mean, he's, and, you know, his whole thing is a grift. You know, he talks to a taxi driver, writes it up in a column, then he puts all the columns together in a book, doesn't do original writing for the books. Research assistants do all the work. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's true. He doesn't do any of that.

Yeah, he doesn't do any of that. It doesn't really work. No, no, no. So he's a supervisor, basically. Let's see here. Thank you, Simon. Thank you, Cedon. Very generous $20 donation there.

Serious question, fellas, from Reed. It's like they're moving so fast here. Is political consulting the biggest grift out there? Totally. It's a big grift. It's a big one. Yeah. But maybe a bigger grift.

grift is intelligence consulting yeah that's correct what nonsense thank you boz allen hamilton they are they're known as in the intelligence community as a butts in the seats company okay that's what they call them butts in the seats now if you want the most sophisticated cutting-edge analysis you're not going to go to them you're going to go to like palanteer or whatever abraxas if you just want a bunch of people with secure clearances who are going to work for 70 grand and be there 40 hours a week, you hire Booz Allen. That's what they do. Well, and they don't know shit that like the, they only learned the shit from their client.

I used to work for a consulting company called Spectrum Group. It was a banking consulting group and based in San Francisco. And I remember just thinking, what a hilarious fraud it was. So we'd have a client. We'll call them Bank of the West because they were called Bank of the West. we go there, we land, we don't know anything about Bank of the West. No one in the company has ever worked at Bank of the West

or has a bank account at Bank of the West. So we sit down in a conference room and all the people who work there are nervous, like what the fuck are these people doing? They bring information in about their bank and their business to us. And then we look at it. And then we bullshit out a bunch of PowerPoint presentations.

And my job was to create PowerPoints and crunch numbers. but we didn't know anything about their business. They were paying us to give us information to bullshit back about them. I mean, it's the most ridiculous thing in the world. It's like me interviewing you and then you paying me for the information that you gave me. It's insane. That is insane. Yeah, it is.

That's nuts. And you know, the crazy thing is that a majority now of the members of the intelligence community are not government employees. They're contractors. It's crazy. Everybody's getting rich. Everybody's getting rich. Everyone's getting rich. Everyone's getting rich except John and Ted. But you guys are helping a little bit. Thank you so much for watching us over on the Rumble feed and on the YouTube, but we make a lot more money on Rumble. So if you can watch us on both or Rumble, sorry about the tech shit today. That was a Rumble studio. Yeah, sorry about that. Apparently, I'll look at the numbers, Ted. I look at the numbers. I'm like,

oh my gosh we made six dollars today it's like that yeah then then John and I get into a deadly cage match over the six bucks and then the cat runs off with it and we're both left hungry okay so let's talk about speaking of insanity

John you've been through the Bureau of Prisons bullshit and Eric Menendez we talked about it the Menendez brothers yesterday so the fucking after 10 hours of bullshit Eric was sent back to his cell, sorry, no parole for you,

despite having been raped by your dad and horribly traumatized, despite the fact that the whole family wants both he and his brother out, it's like he's a security risk. They said he wasn't little Lord Faunturoy. He did not follow every single rule. Now, when I read this, I was expecting to be like, he shived a dude. You know, he fucking, I don't know,

He was running, he was killing people. He was a shot caller inside the prison, having people killed. No, no. He had a phone. He had a smuggled cell phone that he was caught with. Right. Which apparently is very common. It's very common at the state level.

It's a serious crime in the federal level. They'll add two years to your sentence. At the state level, everybody's got phones. The dude's been in prison for what? 37 years? And they're, so I'm sorry, they're like, 37 years is not enough. If we get you with a phone, I mean, I'm sorry. I know this is a different set of rules, but it's fucked up, no?

It is. Ted, I served with a guy named Art Rachel, who I really, really came to like. Art was an old man when I got to prison. He was almost 80. And he was a longtime cat burglar. he he and three partners stole um stole what was called the star of marlborough the biggest diamond ever to be in private hands in uh in the UK and um his last arrest the reason why he was in prison with me was that the boss of the Chicago syndicate the outfit had died and while the family was at the

funeral, Art and his gang broke into the boss's house and they were ripping him off. But art was also a very accomplished artist, so accomplished that with freehand, he was able to, to, with colored pens, duplicate a bearer bond. And he actually cashed it in for several hundred thousand dollars. They caught him and he went to prison. Okay, anyway. That's awesome. That's like, that's like, that's like the, that's like the, that's like the Dustin Hoffman character

who's based on a real dude in Papillon. That's exactly right. Master Forger. Art, art is still alive. He's living with his sister outside Las Vegas now. And his, his memory isn't what it used to be. But he told me that in all the years he was in prison and he probably spent 40 or 45 years in prison for a lifetime of crime mostly you know these white collar kind of artistic kind of

crimes he he was that could have easily been me yeah he was written up twice once at leavenworth and once at alcatraz um at alcatraz he was written up for speaking during lunch because back in the day you weren't allowed to speak in the cafeteria you got written up that was number one number two at Leavenworth he was written up for not finishing

all the peas that he had put on his tray because take what you want eat what you take and he didn't finish the peas and so they wrote him up in 40 or 45 years in prison those were the only two blemishes on his record

and that was enough to deny him parole they said oh well he clearly i was hoping you weren't going to say that i was really hoping they're dicks about it they really are well so i mean obviously there's other things in the in the mix here i think governor newsom is determined to let these guys go but still it's a right it's a major bump in the road and it really sucks they did the last thing that these guys needed at all yeah i think you're right And Eric, it was Eric yesterday, right? It was the younger, it was the younger of the two brothers.

Yes. He was the one that was a little bit less culpable than the other. That's right. Yeah, yeah. He's already been turned down. It wasn't really his idea. Like, let's kill our parents. Exactly.

Exactly. Oh, my God. Some of these comments, you guys are so funny and smart and have such great minds. The Gricemeister makes me feel. think of a confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Tool. Yeah. Literally the funniest book I ever read. One of my favorite books.

Oh, my God. And what a story behind the book. Yeah. He committed suicide because he didn't think he could make it as a writer. Yeah. And then his mom, 10 years later, convinced someone to publish it. Yeah. And it won the Pulitzer Prize.

Yeah. Yeah. Jacob Decker, thank you so much for the 499. Candice Owens hates the CIA and has money. Go work for her exposing the CIA. Yeah, you know what? It's funny, too, because I've watched Candice Owens for a long time, and she always seems nuts to me. And I mentioned to a major, like, very major. I don't want to get him in trouble, a podcaster that I'm friends with. he said he said you should go in candace or she as the case may be and i said oh come on man she seems like she's nuts and he said sometimes but she converted to catholicism recently and she's backed off and she does hate the cia jacob and so you know what maybe it's time to reach out maybe maybe you never know oh this is true though this is true what michael garland That's a problem for her. She's being sued right now.

And she's going to lose. She's going to lose. Yeah. She's going to lose the rate. This reminds me a little bit of one of my favorite anti-SLAPP law stories. So what was the guy who was the famous, he was the gay exercise guru, Richard Simmons. Oh, sure. Richard Simmons was the National Enquirer, photoshopped a picture of him in a dress.

on an operating table and said that he was transitioning to become a girl. This was not true. No. And so he sued the National Enquirer, who was represented by the way, by the same attorney as Kelly Sager, is her name, as the L.A. Times, who was outgoing after me. So anyway, long story short, there's no question that the story was false. he was the they abused the anti-slap statute and they ruled against him and richard simpsons was ordered to pay i think two hundred thousand dollars in attorney's fees to the national inquirer for having had the gall to defend his honor and his name from being accused of being

transitioning unbelievable that is absolutely terrible my good sir has a question for us and thank you for the generosity. Do you think the U.S. will sanction the new bricks currency the moment it comes out? If not, I think that it would be a very lucrative investment opportunity. I think yes. And yes, it would be a very lucrative investment opportunity. I think it'll be a lucrative investment opportunity. Regardless. Yeah, the sanctions won't make any difference, right? I mean, it's going to be, I mean, you know, it's going to have half the world or more behind it. It already does. And they keep adding countries, like important countries. I'm not missing out on the next Bitcoin like I did last time.

I'm with you, man. I still kicked myself over Bitcoin. I'm an idiot. I remember repeating, like, to this kid who kept telling me, buy Bitcoin, buy Bitcoin. I kept saying, but I just don't understand it. That's what I kept saying. Well, next time I'm not even going to try to understand it, I'm just going to buy. But anyway, getting back to this bricks currency, you know, the Chinese and the Kuwaitis

have already made two sales of Kuwaiti oil to China for Yuan that has the U.S. really. The Saudis made an arms purchase in euros, which made us angry too. If the BRICS countries come up with a unified currency, like the European Union, the U.S. Empire is over. That's the beginning of the end. Yeah, very true. Well, it's hard. You can't, you can't fault Dostoevsky. I'm just going to say to Earl of Lurl. It's kind of like, that's an easy one. All right. We've got to talk about some of this ice crap because they're really out of control. We want to end on time today. So, John, I thought I would start with one that might make your blood boil almost as much

or more than mine even. So there's an Army veteran. And so, as you know, a lot of people join the U.S. Army who are not U.S. citizens, but they're told that their citizenship is almost 100% likely to be approved if they serve in the armed forces. This has been going on for many years under Democratic and Republican presidents alike. There's an army vet served with, discharged honorably, did everything he's supposed to, been living in the United States as a law-abiding citizen for 25 years.

His name is Mohamed Zahid Chaudhry. The name might be part, it might give you a clue as to what happened to him. He showed up for his interview in Washington State in order to be finally approved for his citizenship application. So U.S. Army vet, lives here 25 years, served his country honorably, shows up to become a citizen, disappeared into an ice gulag. His wife says that she doesn't really know where he is. He faces deportation. Unbelievable. Did you see the announcement from early this morning?

The State Department, well, there were two things from the State Department. One, the spokesman said that the U.S. is going to begin vetting, get this, all 50. 25 million foreigners who have a U.S. visa. 55 million foreigners who have a U.S. visa. Best of luck. We're going to need to set up another Pentagon to handle that. Well, I suspect, I mean, I'm not even kidding. I suspect they're going to use AI for a lot of this stuff.

Oh, but they will. And you know how reliable AI is. Yeah, it's so accurate. And the other thing is the State Department yesterday fired one of the deputy spokesman because he's well not because he's Palestinian he happens to be Palestinian but he issued a statement that we do not

support the Israeli government's attack on Gaza City we don't no it's it's US policies we do not support the attack in Gaza City but they said oh but coming from a Palestinian and a Muslim yeah that's not going to look that or no look good you're fired and they fired it they walked him out of the building took his badge it's um that's unbelievable

shocking now let's talk about something that has big implications for all of us um as part of this whole uh you know anti migrant anti immigration sweep um it turns out it's just broken ice has been uh it has somehow gotten a hold of probably everybody's wire transfer data and basically they're scanning it to see if people are sending remittances from the U.S. to Mexico and other countries. But the truth is, they have access to everybody's wire transfer information. So this is beyond the Edward Snowden revelations. This is something that, well, it wasn't happening back then. And this is, people have actually been, they've actually caught people doing this.

I know this is an article that broke in The Intercept. I think it's really chilling. I'm very worried about this. I'm very worried about a lot of different things. And it's like every day there's a new announcement of something outrageous. And I know that they do that on purpose. They want to keep people distracted. They want to keep us on our heels.

So we can't, you know, prepare a, you know, prepare a defense or launch a counteroffensive. So, yeah, this is one of those things that, I mean, is this real? Is it something we're going to have to prepare for? Now what do we do? And so basically this is like Western Union and MoneyGram is where they're starting because that's like these are the cheapest ways to send money. A lot of, you know, but let's face it.

I mean, look, I could send a wire transfer to Mexico. You know, I mean, sometimes I buy meds from Mexico. Yeah, I do, too. And sometimes, you know, you might be planning a vacation to Mexico. Great country to visit. You might need to send some money for, you know, for that. I had to send some money to Central America for a vacation fairly recently. So, I mean, I don't really want ice up in my business.

These are fucking madmen, masked goons, unidentified, going and kidnapping people off the streets, including U.S. citizens and army vets. And now they're fucking going through my personal file. You know, I used to think, John, I was really naive. Why do you think this happened or why it didn't happen? In 2013, when Snowden stepped forward and explained what was going on, I always thought that all of my friends called each other. We were like, holy shit.

We thought it was going to be an atomic bomb because Americans are privacy obsessed. You know, Americans really don't want anyone up in their business, right? Like, live free or die. That's right. And no one gave a shit. Nothing happened. You know, there was a, I was in prison when Snowden released his information, his revelations. And a guy woke me up in the middle of the night to tell me that this was on the news and what a huge story this was.

That's how big it was. It was a huge thing. It was a huge thing. People understood how this was. And you're right. And Snowden would be the first one to tell you, Ted, that he really believed that by, now our privacy, our information security would be guaranteed and we would all be living happily ever after. Well, the way he put it was he wanted to give the American people the information

that they needed so that they could have an intelligent conversation about the balance between privacy and security. Yeah. And we never had that conversation, ever. No, we never had that conversation, which is another thing that Snowden expected to happen. You know, I remember him saying too in the in the beginning that the next step was members of congress stepping up and saying okay wait a minute this guy snowdon's right our rights are being are being trampled upon the government is is uh overreaching and taking our personal information and nobody came forward i mean i guess in the beginning it was ron paul then it was ran paul and i guess you know maybe Mike Lee once or twice, and it just never stuck. I don't understand it. Unicorn, we would love to

have Snowden on the show. He's welcome anytime. We'll reach out. We can reach out to him. Tom Drake and Snowden, two heroes. Yeah, Tom Drake was one of the guys who inspired Snowden. And in fact, for my book on Snowden, which is really the only biography of Snowden that existed at the time, Tom Drake, I interviewed Tom Drake for it. It was really very useful. But, I mean, God, like the way they screwed him and you and Snowden, it's criminal. I've said before, too, that Snowden told me in no uncertain terms, he was willing to come home and he was willing to go to prison. And I told him, you've got to hire the best lawyers in Washington.

hire my lawyers, right? So I introduced them, and he hired my lawyers. And they negotiated this deal. And Snowden said he was willing to come home and do 20 years. Which he shouldn't have. The only 20 years he should be doing is in a ticker tape parade down Broadway. Yeah, that's exactly right. But he said all he wanted to do was to stand up at his sentencing and explain why he did what he did. And the Justice Department said, absolutely not. Yeah, they were, they're not going to allow that. No way. You can't have your day in court and actually explain yourself. I really like this. What nonsense says, Snowden was made, the info was made to seem complicated. So it went over people's heads. You know, I agree with that. I mean, all the names of all those programs, all the charts, it wasn't

really that complicated. I mean, it is. The tech is complicated. But not. the, but not the basics of it. And, you know, they did do that. It's like Iran-Contra. It didn't land with many people because it was sort of like, so the Sultan of Brunei gets up at five o'clock in the morning, and then the market opens in Zurich, and then the money is converted into Deutsche Marx.

And like, it was just too complicated for people to understand. A good scandal should fit on a bumper sticker. Like the Eric Adams stuff, which we're not really supposed to talk about today, whatever, but more scandals on Eric Adams, right? My favorite is, so he is another top official who's just been busted for accepting bribes and this crazy Chinese-American lady who's handing out red Chinese envelopes with cats and them in all that and a bag of chips. Yeah, you can say that again. How anybody could vote for Eric Adams, I have no idea. No, he may be. No, he may He makes Andrew Cuomo look like a paragon of virtue.

Corruption is one thing, but this is like a joke. It's like an ongoing joke. Like it's a caricature of a corrupt politician. He is, well, I mean, the thing is, the man is a clown. He dresses like a clown, talks like a clown, governs like a clown. He's a clown. He's bozo. Yeah, seriously.

Oh, my God. No, I don't know about this. Hi, Alba. Don't know about the new J.P. Morgan Tower. I wonder if it's one of those little skinny splinter ones, which I hate. You know, I really don't like the look of the New York skyline these days. It's not good. I know that's a minor thing, but it's just not a pretty skyline anymore.

It used to be very dramatic and awesome. The little splinter buildings, they're all over the place. And it's not a good look. It's not. Earl of Lurl. Was it Earl of Lurl? No, I'm sorry, Houdini. What was his connection to Turkey?

You know, that's the funny thing. The money. Apparently when he was in college, he went to Turkey, and he loved it, and Turks were nice to him, and he stayed with some Turkish family. But then when he was running for mayor, he was a, what, a police captain, I think. And he's running for mayor, and the Turks start passing him money and passing money to people around him in order to get their consulate. approved it was not up to code and they didn't fire code yeah so they just bribed him um why not just get it up to code probably cheaper yeah and then you're not going to you know kill a dozen people when it finally catches well it is really disgusting i mean hey it's not like

in in new york city there's ever been any recent events in which a lot of people died in a fire yeah that's right that's right and the reason why i'm smiling is because um the Greeks hate Eric Adams because he's pro-Turkish, and he's unabashedly pro-Turkish. And there are 200,000 Greeks in New York City. It's actually the fifth largest Greek population anywhere on the planet is New York. And so the Greeks threw their money in with Cuomo, because Cuomo is the one who made sure that the Greek Orthodox Church didn't lose its land at Ground Zero. And now there's that magnificent church, St. Nicholas, that's right there next to the footprint. So the Greeks were all in with Cuomo.

Cuomo loses. And then the next day in the Greek papers, the banner headlines are that Mundani may actually be more pro-Turk than Adams. Like, what have we done? Don't worry. I'm sure Mamdani will manage to be bought just like AOC and everyone else. Thank you, Selwyn, Sodon, 23, 24. What do we think about Zephtef firing the DIA chief? We started talking about that at the beginning of the show.

Listen, I'm all for people losing their scalps, just because I'm biased. The more the merrier. But this guy didn't deserve to be fired. This is a lieutenant general. That position is normally not partisan in any way, with the exception of Mike Flynn. This is just, you know, career lieutenant generals who are working their way up to get that fourth star before they become, you know, an assistant chief of staff, for example. They have a stop for two years or maybe three years at DIA. The reason he was fired was because the DIA analysts doing the bomb damage assessment on the Iranian nuclear sites said that our, you know, 30,000 pound bunker buster did not destroy this.

site. Okay, now they looked at the photography and they, you know, did their measurements. Yeah, uh-huh. Yeah. Did their measurements and they said, yeah, they went deep. They didn't destroy it. Well, Donald Trump says, we did destroy it. That's what he told the American people. We destroyed it. It reminds me of a Rudy Ray Moore joke. I lie heavy, but I don't go deep. Right. And so what's he do? He fires the poor head of DIA. Like, it's his fault. You know, that's what this was about. Yeah, it was about the bomb damage assessment. Oh, well. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, I can argue that. I can argue that one either way, really. Yeah, I suppose I can't. And then it happened just a day after Tulsi Gabbard fired these 37 CIA analysts. Now, they actually deserved it. This is the danger of group think at the CIA, right? everybody's smart everybody went to a good school but they're so afraid of going out on a limb on

their own they're so afraid of somebody saying oh you know what he's actually not as smart as we thought he was so you get into a room and somebody says the russians tried to get Donald Trump elected and everybody says yes yes that's exactly what happened that's what the intelligence shows even though they're behind their backs they're like And they got caught. And all 37 of them were fired. John, is there a way to sort of do a genuine, let a hundred flowers bloom kind of movement in any kind of organization, not like the CIA, where you can really encourage people to step forward and, you know, and share their thoughts,

and have them really genuinely not fear that they're going to be shot down or punished? Not as things stand now. We've got a whistleblower protection law, but it doesn't cover national security whistleblowers. So the best you could do is blow the whistle, have the president fire you, and then work with Chuck Grassley for the next two years to try to get reinstated. Which happened yesterday. All those FBI agents that got fired, they were all reinstated yesterday thanks to Chuck Grassley. But that's not a workable system. It's just not.

no yeah not at all john let me ask you about um the secrets first of all i got to ask you space force yay or nay nay i'm on nay also um so space force space force uh anyway the uh there's a new secret space mission which maybe not new but the x 37 so in the air force uh if a plane or vessel is experimental, it starts with the initial X. You can go to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base Museum and see some of the early X planes. They tend to be really little. But the X-37B mini shuttle, I think this is Voyage number eight, supposedly. But it's apparently doing some classified stuff, testing laser communications and GPS-free navigation, whatever that means. I don't know.

And you care to speculate over what the secret space flights are about? You know, I'm wondering if we really do have a space force. When you are literally 100% dependent on Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos to get you into space, and then on the unclassified missions, you pay the Russian government, with which you are at war, literally. To take your astronauts into space? I think this is all... It's very strange, right?

It's sort of like, so we have to hire the Russians who have the Bikonor Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. In Kazakhstan, that's right. And to go and, you know, I've been wanting to visit Bikonor and go and send our guys up into space. And, I mean, I'm against privatized space exploration. I think it should be against the law. I think it's something that governments and governments should do cooperatively together, like Apollo's so used.

By its very nature, space exploration should be unclassified. It should be internationalized and shared. I agree. Yeah. Yeah. Dana's right. It's another grift. It is another grift.

And it's a super expensive one, too. Oh, my God. Yeah. Yeah. And then when you keep slashing the budget of NASA to the point where they lay off 40% of their staff and then you have to rely on your friends, Bezos. and Musk to put rockets up in space. I mean, what have we come to? I know, it's also, I mean, it's kind of pathetic, right?

I mean, the United States government was able to send a man to the moon, several of them. In 1969, think about the technology in 1969. There were no touch-tone telephones, right? I mean, there were, I mean, you could barely get, like, TV didn't even really work right. I mean, I remember fiddling with the vertical hold, but all the time. People had aluminum foil on their TV antennas at home. And it actually helped. Yeah, you needed to.

It wasn't like a conspiracy. And we sent dudes to the moon, got them back. I mean, it would have been amazing if it was a one-way trip. Now we're reliant on like potheads like Elon Musk. Yeah. Yeah, I don't understand it at all. Not at all. it's i mean it's what happened to us john you're on oh you're okay it's it's on purpose i had to

okay that's cool all right anything else we need to hit before we call it a week no it's been a busy week thanks for everybody for joining us oh he we have a conspirators see a person saying the u.s people unite u.s. doesn't anyone to the moon so probably watched capricorn one one of my i love it's one of my favorite bad movies. O.J. Simpson, isn't it? Yes. About a fake Mars landing. Yes. All right. As Michael Carter says, time for reprogramming. You can do that over the weekend. So this is my fault, but there's no show on Monday, guys. I'm dropping off my kid in college, so I'll be on the road. But Tuesday, we will be back to our regular schedule. So we're here Monday through Friday, except this coming Monday, 5 p.m. Eastern time. Please like, follow, and share

the show. Sorry for the tech stuff. We still prefer you watch on Rumble, but Rumble Studio, which sometimes goes down. And so that's what happened today. Thanks everyone for rolling for the punches. I see all of you guys got back. And much appreciated. Thanks for the good, for the good wishes. And John, do you want to flog your latest book? I should do that. We should be doing that more. Oh, we should. You know what? I don't have a date yet. I'm waiting for my contract to come. I'll have a date by next week. But I have another podcast that's on YouTube called Deep Focus. And today I got John Perkins, I got Andrew Coburn, and Roger Waters. So we're coming out with those in the next week or so. That's awesome. I'm especially jealous about

the Roger Waters part. I'm a huge Pink Floyd fan. He was a rare form. Wow. Awesome. So, Yeah, they sure beat him up on the Israel stuff. You know what he told me, just before I let you go. He told me that he played two sold-out shows in Buenos Aires two years ago, and the Israelis had lobbied so hard against him that he was not able to get a hotel room in any hotel in Argentina. He had to spend the night on his plane, sleeping in a chair on the plane. He did the next concert the next day and then flew right out. not a single hotel would rent him a room and he said just five years earlier he did nine consecutive

sold-out shows in buenos Aires now he's not even welcome there well awful horrible all right well enjoy the weekend thank you you too john and i'll see you tuesday uh we're deprogrammed bye