DeProgram with John Kiriakou and Ted Rall - DeProgram with Ted Rall and John Kiriakou: “Death-scalator!”

Episode Date: September 25, 2025

Political cartoonist Ted Rall and CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou dissect the undercurrents of power and injustice. Luigi Mangione's legal team accuses Presient Trump of jeopardizing the accused killer's right to a fair trial through inflammatory Fox News remarks labeling him a "pure assassin" who "shot someone in the back," with links to "left-wing extremists" as false narratives, alongside social media reposts by DOJ officials. U.S. District Judge Margaret Garnett rebukes the DOJ, citing violations of her April order prohibiting prejudicial statements, and warns of potential sanctions including contempt findings or financial penalties. Anonymous artists from The Secret Handshake erect a 12-foot statue on the National Mall depicting Trump and Epstein joyfully holding hands, complete with a plaque hailing their "long-lasting bond" for Friendship Month, only for the National Park Service to remove it within a day citing permit noncompliance. Artist "Patrick" says the piece honors Trump's "one and only true friend.”NORAD scrambles U.S. fighter jets, including four F-16s and an E-3 aircraft, to intercept two Russian Tu-95 bombers and two Su-35 fighters entering the Alaskan Air Defense Identification Zone, marking the ninth such incursion this year amid routine but provocative Russian probing of NATO readiness. The flight, in international airspace abutting U.S. and Canadian borders, follows similar August incidents and coincides with European alerts over unattributed drones disrupting Danish airports and Russian jets breaching Polish and Estonian airspace. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth summons hundreds of generals and admirals from global posts to an unprecedented, short-notice meeting at Quantico, Virginia, next week, leaving attendees puzzled over its undisclosed purpose amid his aggressive overhaul slashing 20% of four-star positions. Trump demands a Secret Service probe into "triple sabotage" at the U.N. General Assembly, alleging deliberate failures of an escalator halting mid-ride with Melania Trump, a 15-minute teleprompter blackout forcing ad-libbed remarks, and faulty audio muffling his nearly hour-long address decrying immigration and global warming as a hoax. U.N. officials attribute the escalator stop to a U.S. videographer triggering a safety mechanism and the teleprompter to White House operation. The uproar, dubbed "Escalatorgate," underscores Trump's narrative of institutional dysfunction undermining his global stage.

Hello, everyone. Thanks for joining us. It's Thursday, September 25th, 2025. You're watching D-Program with me, Ted Rall, and John Kyriaku. Thanks for joining us. We're here Monday through Friday, 5 p.m. Eastern Time. We are going to change the schedule a little bit starting next Wednesday, but on through Tuesday, we will be here at the regular time slot. Just a reminder, Tuesday we have an interview with Reality Winner about her new book and about her life. She's of course, the NSA whistleblower. It went really well. I think it was a great interview.

So I think you guys will like it. John, good to see you. Good to see you, Ted. I want to add real quickly, Real and Winner does not do a lot of interviews. And she was incredibly forthcoming in this interview. In all seriousness, you're not going to want to miss it. If I weren't the co-host of the show, I would say, oh, my God, that was a great interview.

That's awesome. Yeah, no, I thought it was a great interview. I heard her on Fresh Air with Terry Gross. And it was a good interview, but I think ours is a little better, to be honest. I agree. All right, John, let's do, let's pick a topic. Shall it be the mass firings threatened over the government shutdown? Should it be the judge threatening the Trump administration over talking shit about Luigi?

Should it be my personal favorite story, the Jeffrey Edstein Donald Trump statue on the Washington Mall. Should it be more Russian provocations this time in Alaskan airspace? Or should it be this mysterious meeting that War Secretary Hankseth has called for all the generals and admirals? Get your ass to Quantico, we have to talk. The boss wants to talk to you, but you won't say what it's about. That's not usually a good sign. Or should it be like the thing that I put.

that I did the main topic, just because I thought it would make a funny graphic. The Descalator, Trump's confusing the U.N. are trying to kill him with the descalator. So what shall we? A lot to choose from. Plus, what you guys are going to talk about? It tells me that Washington is a very unpredictable place right now, and that's not a good thing. So let's start with the government shutdown. Cool.

Just as a matter of practice. I always predict that there will not be a government shutdown, always, right? Because at the last minute, they come to an agreement and they work it out. It's another continuing resolution for another 30 days or another 90 days or whatever. This time's different. This time is different, very different. So I say it's different because it's far more complicated to the point where there can't be a continuing resolution. This time there can only be an agreement or a shutdown.

Why? Because the big, beautiful bill specifically funded some programs and specifically didn't fund other programs. So now the Democrats said a week ago, if you give us 30 days more funding on these five or six different points, we'll vote to pass a continuing. resolution. And they asked, they wrote a letter to Donald Trump over the weekend saying, we would like to meet with you. Trump agreed to the meeting. But then yesterday, John Thune, the Senate Majority Leader and Mike Johnson, the Speaker of the House, wrote a letter to Trump saying, don't meet with the Democrats. They're going to try to trick you. And so Trump canceled the meeting. The government runs out of money on the 30th. which is just in five days, at midnight on the 30th.

And so what Trump threatened this morning was what he called mass firings. So I mentioned to you before the show started when I was listening to NPR this morning. And I've boycotted NPR for years just because they've always been such dicks to me. But there's nothing to listen to out here, really. So I had NPR on and they were talking about mass firing. with the government closure. And I said to my brother, not mass firloes,

and then they always bring everybody back and they always pay them for the time that they didn't work. Uh-uh, I was wrong. Donald Trump is threatening to fire every federal employee who works in an unfunded program. This has never been done before

in American history, Ted. Does he have the right? He absolutely. yes he has the right but he's talking about taking a butcher knife to the federal bureaucracy and if you're if you're a deficit hawk okay that's great although he's not going to do anything about defense bendings it's kind of phony anyway but we're talking about we're talking about reshaping the american government in ways that it's never been reshaped before assuming he goes through I mean, you know he's a huge blusterer.

I mean, we see this on tariffs. We see it on everything else. You know, I'm going to fuck you up. I'm going to break everything. And then it's like, yeah, actually not. I mean, how many times did he kick the can on TikTok? Yeah. And I just got to push notification in the last few minutes saying that he and Xi Jinping have agreed on the sale of TikTok.

And so he's in the process right now of signing an executive order taking over TikTok. Yeah. So, I mean, I guess he did ultimately get his way. And this does work sometimes. So, you know, I mean, he's going to, I mean, he's obviously out to terrorize the Democrats here. You know, but it's also, it's a big risk, right? I mean, if he trashes government services, people aren't getting their social security checks. Already social security offices have slowed down due to, I mean, John, you and I asked you this question right before we went on the aisle. I'll ask you to you again, what's, Isn't this what Doge was supposed to be all about? Yes. Yes. What's this? What's this? It's like he decided Doge was a bad idea. And then once everybody from Doge was gone, he changed his mind and said, yeah, Doge is actually a good idea.

I don't want to bring all those people back. I'll just, I'll just slash and burn the federal government by myself. I don't know. Unless he's just bullshitting like he often does. That's the problem. I mean, you know, if he were a poker player, the problem is, I mean, well, maybe he is playing poker. It's more like he's a driver. And like, so I had this girlfriend.

She was brilliant, but she was a terrible driver. And she would like sometimes drive really aggressively. She was from New Jersey. They do that there. And then other times she'd drive really cautiously, really, really slow and like riding the brakes all the time. And she constantly got rear-ended. and she got three cars totaled within like four months. And I was like, you know, this is kind of your fault.

And she goes, well, the court, you know, I got rear-ended each time. And I'm like, yeah, I understand that. But like, you know, other drivers watch your patterns and they can't predict you. And they think, oh, the way she's driving, she's going to go for the yellow. And so she slams on the brakes on the yellow and gets rear-ended. That's what Trump is like. I mean, it's really hard politically to assess, you know, like, Well, how serious is he?

Because, like, if he was the kind of guy who, like, I'm not a bluffer. Like, if I were the president, I would, if I made a threat, I'd always carry it through. After a while, people would realize when Raul threatens, he's serious. Yeah. But he's not like that. So people don't know whether to be scared or to roll their eyes. I can't imagine that's a great strategy for President Trump. No.

I can't imagine neither. And, you know, one of the things that surprised me, is that Thune and Johnson are asking him to shut it down. Now, we know from long time experience that the Republicans always get blamed for the shutdown. This time might be different. They do. This time might be different. Now, the Democrats may be successful in saying, wait a minute, we were ready to negotiate,

but Trump canceled the negotiation, which is also true. well no one that's true i mean look this is going to be one of those cases where if it happens both parties will say it's their fault um it won't be cut and dry and i think for the american for the average american voter who you know is working 75 hours a week and is only reading like the headlines on their on their on their on their notification push notifications on their phone they're going to be thinking oh god these are like these these fucking washington people who fucking knows. They're not going to know who to blame. In a way, that's worse because they're not going to be able to assert pressure. We have a bunch of comments and questions. So let's see,

SDR, why is the U.S. provoking Russia with airplane flights over Alaska? Why do you do that? Well, we were going to talk about that. We might as well just talk about it. Well, we kind of, look, this is the latest, this is something called the Alaska Air Defense Identification, zone, which is like sort of a buffer zone between Eastern Russia, Siberia, and Alaska. And routinely, the pilots from both countries, even during the Cold War, they got to know each other, they'd see each other. They would actually wave at each other from plane to plane. They'd show each other.

The Americans would sometimes bring porn mags and, like, show the centerfolds to their Russian counterparts, and the Russians would be like, yeah, duh. And so it's pretty funny. So, but basically there seems to be a pattern right now, right? We know the Russians did a 12-minute incursion over Estonia. There are Danish drone. There were drones over Denmark. No one's saying it's the Russians, but no one's not saying it's the Russians.

There's, it really could be anyone. And now there's this, oh, and of course, obviously, Russian jets have been over Poland. The polls are really pissed about it. So NORAD basically did a show of force here. They didn't shoot it down. Trump says, openly said at the UN that any Russian plane that violates NATO airspace should be shot down. I mean, certainly they have, any country has the right to shoot down the plane. But, you know, it's generally not normally done.

It's sort of assumed like we know what you did here or we think it was a mistake. But anyway, we guide you out of the airspace. We really don't want to escalate to that. level. Why is this happening? I think this is more of the same. I think this is the Russians way. They are, you know, I did mention the comparison to North Korea. It's a temper tantrum. It's a sort of a way, it's probing, but it's also for me, I think it's a way for Putin to say, you can't blow off Russia and you can't blow off the Russia-Ukrainian war. You've got to pay attention to this problem. You have to pay attention to us. We will not, we will not be ignored, like Glenn Close says in

fatal attraction. ignored, Dan. Yeah. One of the best movies ever. So great. Yeah. Michael Doug was so fantastic. Yeah. So that's my take. What do you think,

I think that's exactly right. You know, I think that's what the Russians are doing in Europe, too. Somebody asked me a question earlier today about whether or not I thought that the drone that went into Poland last week or the

before whenever it was uh was actually a ukrainian false flag and i said oh no no i don't think it has to be that complicated i think it was the russians i think that the russians are trying to do a couple of things they're reminding the americans that they're there and that they need to be paid attention to number one number two every country every big country probes its its detractors its its enemies just to see what the reaction's going to be that's a great way to collect intelligence. And third, I think that they wanted to see what the NATO response would be, and the response was to ask for an Article 4 meeting. So I think the Russians actually were able to collect a lot of information by doing this probe. I don't think it was a Ukrainian false

flag. There doesn't need to be a Ukrainian false flag. It's the Russians. And just like what happened in Alaska, I think that this is a well-fought-out exercise that the Russians do in order to collect intelligence. Big Bob, big boss Bob Ross says, how much of Trump's blustering is an attempt at Nixonian madman politics and how much is just him being an actual petulant narcissist? Well, I think those two things go together. There's a big Venn diagram. I think, look, I think, you know, from what I've read about Donald Trump, look, he came

of age under Richard Nixon. He's older than I am. But he, you know, he, Roger Stone was a Nixon acolyte who became a close advisor to Trump. I think he was deeply influenced by Nixon's politics, domestically and internationally. He liked the fact that Nixon tried to make peace in places like Vietnam by going to China, made a big splash. He also liked the fact that Nixon bent the rules. I think he, and I think he totally tapped into the whole silent majority thing that Nixon had going. the race baiting, which was a Nixon.

I think he's really influenced by Nixon. I don't even think it's like a coincidence. I think he's like ripping this page right out of the Nixon playbook. A lot of this page. That's exactly right. Yeah. I think that's exactly right. Let's see.

We've got more questions here. How badly should we read Goom Barum, how badly should we read into Hegset's order for hundreds of senior officials to meet next week? I literally can't think of a good reason to. to talk to do that well not just to go to war i mean it's probably something far far easier to explain than that but you know in the very early days of the second world war we did this where roosevelt called all the generals together and said look you know we're going to war it's a world war we're going to have to win there's no there's no way to lose we have to you know win and win big we're going to knock out the germans we're going to knock out the japanese and the italians and

you know go go go USA okay well we since then we don't bring all generals together for some kind of kumbaya session maybe it's to threaten them maybe to downsize them maybe it's some kind of political purity exercise we we genuinely don't know but we do know that this is a very very unusual thing. I mean, it's obviously not meant, I don't know. See, I think that's terrorizing your own employees is bad management. And that's what they're doing here. I mean, even if it turns out, hey, we just wanted to introduce the new word processor

that we got, you know, or the new encryption protocol or whatever. Or I just wanted to say hi or, hey, we're going to talk about the rebrand of the DOD to the ward department. But it's like, you know, whenever. your boss says like, John, you got a minute, I need you to come into the office. It's like, well, what's it about, boss? We'll talk about it when you get here. That's ominous.

That's not good. Yeah. Thank you, U.S. Triple X for the donation. The scary part about the generals heading to Quantico is you don't know if we're going to war or if they have to swear a loyalty oath on Fox News Live to Trump. Oh, imagine. that's you know i wouldn't put that past them no i wouldn't either i hate to say that's why that's why i'm saying i genuinely don't know what to expect no nobody knows

what the fuck is going on um spectrum's asking you john when's the jo rogan podcast coming out can't wait yeah we're recording on october ninth and it's coming out october 10th i'm excited and nervous. Oh, well, you already recorded it, right? No, no, no. No, it was on the 9th of October. Oh, okay. Oh, okay. And then when does it come out?

On October 10th. Frazmataz, also for you, John. Can you tell us about the meeting with the Iranian president? Yeah. So, funny thing. He has a meet. He had this meeting with six of us, peace activists. it was canceled.

And so, no problem. I understand they delayed issuance of his visa. He finally got the visa. He arrives today in New York. He's giving a speech tomorrow at, or he gave the speech today. Anyway, whatever it is. He is doing a meeting with prominent Iranian Americans, but the meeting with the peace activist, and it was going to be Medea Benjamin from Code.

Pink and Andy Shalal and a bunch of people, well, six, six of us, that is canceled. I'm sorry. Yeah, me too. Me too. It was going to be. Maybe next time. I'd never done it. Although, you know, an invite to Tehran would be even better, frankly.

I will take it. Yes. So let's see. We had a request. Well, we got to, there's someone trolling us, but, you know, okay, whatever. Hocken, are you going to start supporting Russia now that Trump is supporting Ukraine? I don't think Trump is supporting Ukraine. I think Trump is trying to pressure both sides.

I don't know, John, you want to answer that. I think it's a, you know, a troll. Yeah, yeah, it doesn't even make sense. All right. Cobas Hatting asking, can we talk about 107 days, Kamala's book? Some people say that book will be the end of her political career. Oh, I agree. And I don't think it's an accident.

I think she decided that she was not going to run again. She's not going to run for political office again. and she decided to write a candid memoir. And she doesn't really give any shits. And so she's just telling, she's telling it as she sees it. I don't know. I say good for her because I like political memoirs. And I always say political or otherwise,

if you're not willing to never eat lunch in this town again, as the name of a really great memoir is called, don't write a memoir. You know, I mean, it's like write something and write a romance a clay, write a fiction book, whatever. never, but don't do it. I'm looking forward to reading the book. I'm going to, I'll definitely pick up a copy.

I think she's never, I do not think she's interested in running again. And also, she's smart enough to know that there's nowhere for her to go. No, she'll be crushed in a Democratic primary. You know, I've come around to your way of thinking on this because I, I thought, I thought that she was being, oh, how should I say it? I thought she wasn't being honest in the book. I thought that she was trying to appear tougher than she was.

I thought she was appearing or trying to appear more decisive than she was. And then I've come around to your position that she probably is laying it all out because she's not running. that she's criticizing walls and and and boot judge and booed judge exactly because she's not running

yeah she had the job the other day teaching law part time at Stanford which is probably a good fit for her totally yeah I always I picture her provost yeah exactly just like Connie Rice yeah yeah that's

that's what she'll end up doing something like that By the way, the latest excerpt that broke, I had to have to pick your brain about this, John, is about Gaza. She claims secretly, behind closed doors, very secretly. She was fighting the good fight for the victims of the Gaza genocide. She was raising cane, fighting Biden and the Zionists. But, you know, she couldn't do it in public. But the people who were there, they know where she stood. yeah how'd that work out for us uh no i i i uh don't believe that for a second no and you know why

because something would have leaked out it's washington it leaks like a save yeah that's the part yeah that's so true i mean if she was raising hell she would have been accused she was always accused of disloyalty by the biden staff they would have they would have gone after her for that absolutely they would have gone after her and they didn't And also, here's my thing, John, in politics, if it isn't public, it don't count. It's like, that's the job is articulating policies and communication. If you don't do that, well, you know, you're not, it just doesn't matter. It's like if a tree falls, if a policy falls in the woods, if your integrity falls in the woods, it does not make a sound.

If it happens to be a closed door meeting, it just does not. I mean, look, I don't doubt that she may have said, like, well, you know, Mr. President, an awful lot of civilians are losing their lives, and we have to express some concern. And then she, he was like, shut up, Kamala. Like, you know, this is what we're doing. We're with Israel. Next. I think that's how that went. Yeah, I agree. I agree. Plus, you know, she was only, she was only in the Senate for a few years. She really was no one of any import within the Democratic Party, not over any extended length of time. And so people like that, like Kamala Harris. She was an up and comer in California. Yeah, she was an up and comer in California. But people like Kamala Harris and

Dan Quail and Mike Pence, they're easily ignored in Washington. Easily ignored. Yeah, well, she had no locus of power. Exactly. David Wagner's asking, did we see where 911 systems went down in L.A. and MS, what's MS, I don't know. Mississippi? I don't know. I think there's any connection to the sim farm in New York. Could we be facing a cyber telecoms attack? I mean, LA's nature.

I did not hear that. I'm going to, I'm going to. Yeah, take a look and see if you can find that. Oh, thank you to me from Sean Pat. Thank you for recommending Day of the Jackal, haven't been able to put it down. So good. And when you're done with that, pick up dogs of war.

next. It's fantastic. Also, no comebacks, which is a short story collection by Foresight. Great. And the movie, Day of the Jackal, is fantastic. Even though my dad irresponsibly took me to see an R-rated movie when I was 10. That's okay. It was great. Thank you, Dad. Appreciate you. Louisiana and Mississippi. Oh, okay. Oh, Louisiana and Mississippi. widespread 9-11 outages, authorities are citing of a severed fiber optic cable. Some kind of road crew severed the cable, they say. I get to imagine what national security, I mean, there are military bases there, of course. I don't know, it doesn't seem like it's a backwater, though, let's face it.

These are some of the poorest states in the country. This is for you, John, Peruse S. A general question about the CIA, if you can answer this, how does plausible deniability actually work? And how much freedom does that give to the CIA to operate freely? Yeah, that's a good question. So let's see, I'll use as an example, Pakistan. There was a CIA contractor in Pakistan just after I was there.

and he was stuck in bumper to bumper traffic in Lahore, which is quite common about 20 hours out of the 24-hour day. Oh, sure. And he looks in his side view mirror and he sees a guy coming up alongside the car and pulling a gun out of his waistband. So he pulls his own gun, shoots the guy, kills him. Oh, shit. And then hits the gas and kills two guys on bicycles.

Jesus Christ. Instead of running to the consulate, which is what they train us to do, just get to the consulate as fast as you can. He again gets bogged down in traffic. And then he hits the ambulance that had been dispatched to help the guys that he ran over. And he kills the ambulance driver. So it's like a double tap strike, but without a drone. I don't mean to laugh, but it's like, talk about a bad day for everybody's called. Yeah, no doubt.

The cops arrest him. And as soon as he gets arrested, he says, I'm CIA. Well, he wasn't actually CIA, but he was the CIA's responsibility because he was a CIA contractor, counterterrorism contractor. Okay, he made a whole bunch of mistakes here. Not the least of which was that you don't ever, ever say that you're CIA. The station knows your CIA. the station's going to take care of you. Now, because you're an American,

the Pakistani government is going to have to inform the American consulate. The consulate informs the embassy. The embassy informs the station, and they're going to get you out. Now, the plausible denial of you. You might have to cool your heels for a day or two. Yeah, a couple three days, yes. But the deniability is this.

Pakistani military tells the government, this is CIA man. And the government leaks it to the Pakistani media, which then gins. up squads that want to come and lynch you at the jail. So the American ambassador has to go and say, this is not a CIA man. Just deny, deny, deny. It's not a CIA man.

And then you have the station chief grant an interview to one or two preferred journalists saying, look, this is not a CIA man. And then a day later or so, the station. chief will go to see the director of the pakistani intelligence and service and say listen you've got my guy you need to let him go and we're going to give you know we'll give the people he killed we'll give their families a hundred thousand dollars each we'll give you guys a million you can do whatever you want with it just let my guy go and then he's turned over in the middle of the night we put him on a plane and send him off that's plausible deniability now operationally you can implement a clandestine operation

and make it look like the operation was hatched by somebody else. For example, we know thanks to the Vault 7 revelations that WikiLeaks published, that the CIA wrote malicious code in order to leak online and have it infect, let's say, the Iranian nuclear program. But in the lines of code, they've embedded standalone lines of code, that are written in Cyrillic, or written in Arabic, or written in Chinese. So they can plausibly say, look, you know, we wish we could disrupt the Iranian nuclear program. But clearly this is Chinese because the code's partly written in Chinese or in Russian or Hebrew. So don't, don't point at us.

That's plausible to naubility. It's all the time. We have a little housekeeping to take care of and some ads. so we're going to put in producer Robbie West in and Robbie come on in and clean house. Great. All right. So we're going to do some housekeeping. It's going to be quick and easy, unlike how it normally is with my wife. First and foremost, lots of people have been asking on YouTube why you cannot make donations. The short answer is this is because YouTube took away your ability to make donations. Supposedly that will get fixed next month. We'll see if that happens or not.

I think that was technically my fault, but all right. just them just being douchebatts. So, it is what it is. Second, if you are on YouTube, please consider also watching John and Ted over on Rumble because Rumble pays them a lot more. And what a lot of people do is that they'll watch on both platforms.

Other thing about Rumble, John's last episode for his life story will be airing either on the first or the second. I need to figure out how that's going to work. Also, John, not John, Ted's, his interview will also be airing as a Rumble exclusive and so for those of you who have been waiting for that

they'll be hitting very early in October so they're good oh yeah no they're they're worth watching oh I completely agree and as far as the trolls over on YouTube I have been squashing them so I have no problem dropping that little that little bomb so yeah we don't we don't we don't need trolls all right let's up you can go ahead and put up that ad Robbie I'm taking you out. Okay, so a few other questions here. I think you've been asked about this, John,

what do you think about Tucker Carlson's 9-11? Doc, it's Ashley Jala. I haven't seen it, so I can't answer that question. I'm actually in one episode. It's episode five, but I went to watch it the other day, and you have to subscribe at $6 a month, and I'm not a subscriber, so I couldn't see what it was like. But friends of mine have watched all of it so far. And they say that it's good, that it's interesting, it's thought-provoking, but that it might be tending a little toward conspiracy theories. That's always the concern when it comes to 9-11. Yeah. I'm not sure that that's actually true, though, in this case, because I know a lot of the people. I know almost all of the people that he had interviewed for this show. And it's, it's people like Mike Schoyer.

I sat 10 feet away from Mike Schoyer in the C.I.'s counterterrorism center. It's, I better read that ad. They expire like, oh, like Mayflies. So let me go ahead and pop the in. If you hadn't, if you haven't already, please make sure you download the Rumble app. It's free, so simple to use and the best way to stay connected to the content you want. Once you've got it, search for my channel, our channel, and hit follow. That way, you'll get a notification every time we go live. No missed shows, no extra steps. You can grab it right now using the link in the description or the PINS live chat, download it to your phone and you're ready to go. And if you prefer watching on the big screen, Rumble is available on all major streaming devices

and smart TVs. Just search for Rumble, follow the channel, and be part of the action. Okay, sorry, John, go ahead. No, that's okay. I forget what I was saying. tell you the truth um the 9-11 documentary oh yeah yeah so he interviewed mike schoyer he interviewed mike's wife the red-headed devil um he interviewed everybody who's still around from the fbi i that uh that that that knew anything about 9-11 or worked worked on the the case so i don't know i'd like to see it myself before i make a a judgment. Ashley Jala said that

that she did see saw the first I assume that's a she saw the first episode and it was interesting. See that's what I'm hearing too. I'm hearing that it's compelling.

By the way, $20 donation from government man 43. Thank you very much. Why don't more of these airspace incursions result in shootdowns? Yeah. They happen constantly. Taiwan, Europe. etc. I have a theory, but I always talk about this topic. So John, why don't you take it? Well, the dirty little secret is that we do that to other countries every single day.

That's what I was going to say. We don't want them to shoot us down. We do it for the same reasons. The Russians would do it or the Chinese would do it or the Israelis would do it. You probe. You want to see what the response is. You want to see how long it takes for you to be intercepted. Maybe you take some photography while you're up there. Most of those, all of those fighter jets are equipped with cameras. It's

all about the intelligence collection. Yeah, I mean, it's like, you know, it's like the theory, there's this great book called the Theory of Cooperation, and it talks about stuff like the Christmas truce during World War I, where people who are destroying each other,

nevertheless starts singing Christmas carols and came out of their trenches. and, you know, basically decided to spend a few days together just celebrating Christmas. In other words, like, people have to talk. You know, we're not, even adversaries, it's not just like, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, I'll kill you, I'll kill you, I'll kill you.

It's not. I mean, it's sort of like how we fuck the Iranians six ways till Sunday with sanctions. But we still have to talk to them about shit every now and then. So there have to be back channels. We have to talk. And, you know, we don't want our planes shot down because we do this shit all the time. And, you know, just like you said, John, and we don't want our shot down either. All right. So I do want to talk about the statue. I have to talk about the statue. The statue is very

funny and deserves a few minutes. Yeah, it does. So I strongly recommend, if you haven't seen a picture of it, to go Google a picture of the secret handshake statue. So this was a 12-foot-tall statue. this group, basically, of artists from the Secret Handshake, they got a permit from the National Park Service to put it on the National Mall. It has a picture of Trump and Epstein, kind of frolicing, gaily, holding hands together. And they're kind of like, like two gay little boys holding hands. There's really no other way to describe it.

It is fucking hilarious. The artist, who goes by the Nond d'Artiste, Patrick, says that honors Trump's one and only true friend. Anyway, the point is the National Park Service claims that somehow this statue violated the terms of the permit. I call bullshit on that. But basically, obviously, obviously the Trumpies saw it, got furious. it went to the administration and you know someone at the White House said get that fucking thing out of the Washington Mall

and now it's gone I love artists when they do shit like this it is so funny this is the at least the third one of these statues they appear in the middle of the night

there was won up by the Capitol building a week or two ago and then they make a splash for a day or so and then they just kind of disappear here. So in this case, the National Park Service took it down. I guess Trump didn't think it was funny. It's an act of political censorship. That's exactly right. And they had permission from the National Park Service. Yeah. And you know what, given everything that's happened with Jimmy Kimmel and so on, if they have a, if if, if they're accusing alleging that there was a breach of the contract,

then honestly, they ought to, they ought to show what it is. is. Otherwise, no one's going to believe them. Yes. Yes, I agree. I agree. So we'll see. I think this is just going to continue. You know, they're always going to be people looking to have a little little bit of fun. No doubt about it. John Smith says he's very disappointed that New Zealand hasn't recognized Palestine. Historically, we haven't been afraid, haven't been afraid to stand out, up like our anti-nuclear law. John, how did the CIA feel about New Zealand? So there's kind of like a comment and a question in there. I actually, I'm surprised they haven't. A New Zealand story. Ronald Reagan in the 1980s cut off all intelligence cooperation with New Zealand because

gasp the New Zealanders would not let us dock a nuclear powered submarine in New Zealand. And they were, they were right not to. It's their country. And so he ordered that, we cease all intelligence exchanges. So in 1991, we began to rehabilitate the New Zealanders. And so I was instructed to give a briefing on Iraq. And I'm proud to say this was the very first intelligence exchange between the United States and New Zealand since Reagan cut the New Zealanders off. I was proud to have a little role. And got invited to a lovely, lovely dinner at the New Zealand ambassador's residence. That was years ago. Of course, now

New Zealand's a member of Five Eyes. We give the New Zealanders literally everything. They give us literally everything that they have. Relations could not be better. I'm not necessarily sure that that's a great thing because it also makes New Zealand susceptible to American political pressure more than it otherwise might be. This issue of not recognizing Palestine is a great example.

simple. I have no doubt whatsoever that the United States went to the New Zealanders and said, look, don't recognize Palestine. And they said, okay, we won't because that's usually how that works. But otherwise, at least at the CIA, we loved the Kiwis. And we enjoyed working with them. And relations were very, very good, very tight. John, got a question from Ellie Louise on the YouTube. Want to know about Otto Scrozenny? I don't know if I'm wanted to know if you had any thoughts or opinions on him and his life. Yeah, he was a fascinating, fascinating character.

Auto Scorseni, to the best of my recollection, was a Nazi officer, very wily, SS officer. He was responsible for a lot of really best. bad shit that was done by the Nazis. He's the guy, to the best of my recollection, he's the guy that rescued Mussolini when Italian partisans captured him for the first time. He was arrested, he was acquitted for something he did, I think, at Dachau, but he was arrested again after the war and escaped in 1948.

he showed up in in egypt as a as a political advisor to president nassar there were a lot of nazis working for the egyptians back then including martin boorman who was repeatedly seen at cocktail parties uh in egypt so after he worked for naser he went to work for whoever the dictator of argentina happened to be at the time i don't remember anymore and then he left argentina and went to work for do you know the Israeli Mossad of course of course they hired all kinds of Nazis the Israelis he was never brought to justice he died in the 70s I think he had cancer but he died in his bed he wasn't like assassinated or murdered or you know died on death row or you know nothing he died in his own bed never faced justice for any of his war crimes although he was in he got

the shit kicked out of him by some Frenchman. Oh, really? Like the last year, yeah, yeah, the last year of his life in 1975, he was coming out of a Paris TV station and a former officer of the French army

basically thrashed him and almost killed him. Good. Good, good, good. Somebody else asked a question earlier that I made a moment to get to. The question was, at the CIA, did we use hard drugs as part of our

cover overseas? That's actually a great question. So the answer is the overall general answer is no. But if you were assigned to Yemen, Ethiopia,

Djibouti, Eritrea, or Somalia, you got special dispensation to chew got right it stretches out your mouth like this it's like a mild um stimulant like drinking a pot of coffee um so it stained your teeth horribly terrible make them dark brown so yeah you could you could chew cats if you were in a position operationally let's say that you've infiltrated the the cali cartel and you have to snort a line of coke to prove your bona fides then by god go ahead and snort the Coke. You're absolutely allowed to do that. And then when it came to polygraph time,

well, what you would do is you would write a cable saying, hey, I, you know, I infiltrated the Cali cartel and we had a meeting. And at the meeting, they made everybody snort a line of Coke. So in order to maintain my cover, I had to snort the line of Coke. And then they say, okay, that's fine. They put it in your file. And then when it comes polygraph time, they'll say, other than what you reported from the Cali cartel, have you done any hard drugs? And then you just answer truthfully. So my father was on the team from the Air Force and the Pentagon

that sold the AWACs to the Saudis. Oh, you're kidding. Yeah, he was shopping it around, right? And so anyway, he showed me the letter. He got a, there was a understanding, they told him, Like, listen, there's a strong chance the Saudis will expect you to smoke hashish with them to close the deal and to celebrate. Of course, it's illegal, you know, this especially, this was the late 70s. But anyway, you know, he's a high-ranking member of the military.

You're not allowed to do that. So they gave him a letter, basically a papal dispensation, that said, you are allowed to smoke hashish with the Saudis while attending only if, It's clear that it's expected, and it would be rude to refuse. And it's just so funny because it's, you know, it's on official Pentagon letterhead. And it's sort of like, it's your little get out of, it's just these things are so strange. Like in Pakistan, I'm sure you saw this. You know, obviously it's theoretically a dry country. But if you stay at like a nice hotel, like the Pearl Continental, they have these shitty beers you can get delivered to your hotel room.

Pearl Continental. But you have to sign. what I used to call the infidel card. You have to sign a card that says you're not Muslim. You're not a devout Muslim. And so I was like, so it's basically like, you know, I'm a worthless scum who doesn't believe in Allah. And so can I have one of your shitty beers?

Yes. And they put from meldehyde in the, in the Murray and Murray gold in Pakistan. I had one beer. I thought I was going to die. It was like praying for death deliberated. In the Gulf, in the Persian Gulf. sorry for those, those, uh, Iranians who object to me when I use the term. Ghost Rider wants to, sorry, Ghost Rider wants to know our opinions about Spain and Italy deploying

warships for the Gaza aid flotilla and how will Israel respond? Well, I didn't know that. I did not know that either. I know that they were trying to protect them from drone attacks, which apparently have been coming fast and furious. Yeah, I did not know that. I'm going to check it out. If that, if that's, That's true, and I hope it is. That's going to seriously up the ante for the Israeli. What the Israelis is going to attack Spain and Italy? Somebody has to do something to help the Palestinians. I mean, we need shiploads of food and medicine and water. Colonella Valeria, Valerio has a great historical question. Does the CIA always going after

leftist regimes stem from them bringing in Nazis after World War II? In part, I would say yes. But, you know, there's another thing, too, about our great nation. And that is that we always, at least for the last, you know, century, say, 130 years, we always need an ism to oppose. We always need, the government always wants to rally Americans against a group of people, right? So whether it's socialism or communism or Bolshevism or anarchism or whatever, the government always wants to try to bring people together to smash something that perhaps just theoretically might someday perhaps maybe pose some kind of a problem. And I think that's, it's more that than it is the Nazis. Although you're, I'm sure you're right.

I'm sure the Nazis had their own influence behind the scenes as well. God knows we brought enough Nazis over here. I mean, that's why we have NASA. Seriously. National is made up of Nazi rocket scientists. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, the old V2 rocket program and all those people. I'm a little bit, I mean, I do think this also comes just,

down to the very simple fact that, you know, socialism and communism were viewed as the biggest existential threat to Western capitalism because they presented a model that in some ways worked better than capitalism and that would be appealing, right? I mean, it's literally like, hey, we're creating entire countries, entire societies, entire economies, and we're providing stuff that you guys aren't, like free health care and free housing or very cheap housing. Free college and all that. I mean, if that caught on, what if we wanted a revolution here? I mean, you know, I think, I think it's kind of like just kind of like that simple in most cases.

But, you know, maybe I'm maybe it's too simplistic. I like this question. This is for you, Big Bob, Big Boss, Bob Ross, which I always mispronounce. John, you mentioned in speeches that hurting children is a line you'd never cross while working at the CIA. Have you ever heard of or known of other agents crossing that line? No. And that's why I bring it up as a hypothetical situation when I give speeches at colleges and universities. The point that I make in these speeches is that is the line I would never cross.

But the CIA does not offer any ethics courses. And so if you have a source who says, hey, you know, I'm good for you. I'm good to you. I've given you everything you wanted. I saved American lives with my information. Go get me a prostitute. Sure, you're going to go get him a prostitute. It's part of the job. But what if he says, go get me a child prostitute? Well, nobody at headquarters is going to say, no, you can't do that. You have to know in your heart that that's the wrong thing to do. But I never knew anybody who did that with children. I mentioned Andrew Warren yesterday on the show and his rape of 23 women. He was only convicted of two. But there are a lot of bad guys at the CIA.

There are a lot of people who just, they're sociopaths or even psychopaths and they have no moral compass. And so, you know, you have to go in there knowing right from wrong because God knows the CIA is not going to teach it to you. One last comment, Ted. I didn't finish my thought on Persian Gulf. So the internationally recognized name of the Persian Gulf is the Persian Gulf. However, in the Arab countries on the peninsula side of the Persian Gulf, it's called either the Gulf or Al-Qalija al-Arabi, the Arabian Gulf. Iranians lose their shit when you call it the Arabian Gulf. And a couple of times, on the show that I had with Michelle, I accidentally let slip, let's slip Arabian Gulf.

We got hate messages from Iran and from Iranian Americans. And I actually had to issue a correction that I was very sorry. But even when I say the Gulf, people with whom I'm very close and who are listening right now will yell at me after the show's over and say that I should apologize and correct myself to call it the Persian Gulf. Well, speaking of possible apologies, so Donald Trump is basically accused the U.N. of what he called triple sabotage. So he shows up at the U.N. I watched the video. He and Melania get on the escalator, and it's true. It's very strange. They're on it for basically two seconds, and as soon as they hit it, it stops. He goes crazy on X saying that Melania and he could have pitched forward and died. He said, this is, he's like, this is on purpose. Also, the teleprompter went out, so he had to ad lib his remarks, which is part of why things got little crazy and insane

yesterday during his UN speech. And finally, there was bad audio for the rest of it, basically muffling his speech. So, I mean, so listen, Donald Trump is obviously the ultimate blowhard. I mean, if you didn't know what a blowhard was and need to explain it to people from a distant land, you would point to Donald Trump. But he's also maybe not wrong. I mean, although the U.N. has an explanation. They said that actually one of his support staff accidentally triggered the red button at the top of the escalator to take a picture or something or leaned against it and it triggered the automatic shutoff. I'm inclined to believe that. But I also don't think that the the president and first lady's lives were at risk in this mishap because those gliders don't really

go that fast except for the ones in the london tube which kick ass they go those are dangerous they haul um but anyway they don't have the wooden ones anymore oh god the ones with the fires yeah so so the um although they were kind of cool looking but it were i was living there when the fire took place oh man so all right but but i will say you know this kind of sabotage politically It has happened. I mean, probably the most famous example is the Nixon-Kennedy debate of 1960. Kennedy's staff learned that Nixon was like me, a sweaty dude. Like if it was over 65, he would be uncomfortably hot.

So they went down to the basement and cranked up the heat before the debate. They told JFK, and JFK wore a linen suit and no underwear. so that he would be cool, calm, and collected. And so Nixon's makeup is like falling off his face, like Rudy Giuliani. You know, he's like, he's miserable and he's sweating like a pig. And, you know, he looked like shit on television. Fox News would have like ergonomic warfare against people like me. Whenever they have a leftist on, they had this broken down secretary's chair that they put in front of the thing.

And the thing was kind of like tipping over all the time. So you had to sort of balance in order to not fall off the, you know, the podium where you're, you know, you're in that studio. So these things are not completely, it's not impossible. Yes. Do you think that escalator gate is a real thing? No. No, I don't. And I think it's actually kind of sad that Donald Trump even mentioned it.

You know, if somebody's, listen, if somebody's going to take a pot shot at him from the roof of the, of the Butler County Fairgrounds, okay, yeah, that's really, really bad. If somebody's going to be in the bushes alongside his golf course and take a shot at him, yes, that is really, really bad. But shutting off the escalator that's going half a mile an hour, come on. I'd just like to point out, by the thank you, Robbie, for pointing this out to us. We are currently number nine in the nation on Rumble right now, even as we speak, right behind O-A-N, right behind Fox News. Amazing. Bannon's number one. Congratulations, Steve.

But we're coming for your ass. So, anyway. Somebody asked me the date of my Oxford Union debate. It is December the 4th. I do not yet know whom I will be debating. But December 4th, be there or B square. John, why do Greeks own so many diners? And I love that question because here in New York,

I don't know if Greeks owned diners outside of the New York metro area, but like there's always been certain sectors that are dominated by certain ethnic groups, like for a long time, newsstands were run by South Asians, mostly Indians. There are a lot of bar. Harbor shops were Bukhara and Jews from Uzbekistan. And so why so many white diners for Greeks?

I don't know. It's just one of those crazy things. And it's not specific just to New Jersey and New York or even to New England in New Jersey and New York. It's all over the country. Chicago, even in the D.C. area. I don't know. And growing up, even my parents had. had three restaurants all the years that I was growing up. It's one of those things. It's like all the cops being Irish at one time.

It's just something that people follow others of their ethnicity into. Yeah, I used to live in the Hamptons, and I remember finding out that all the landscapers were not only Mexican. They were from the same cluster of two or three villages in one province. I think it's Chihuahua province. in Mexico and basically a few of them came in the 70s and they were like the water's fine come on over and more and more and that's often how it works it's like the sous chefs like every sous chef at every good restaurant in New York is from Ecuador it's just one of those things yeah

Ecuadorian sous chef it's the it's just the thing Abby Marie Marie wants to know any recommendations of media to share with people who went on a propaganda trip sponsored by Israel. Oh, I guess maybe like the right of return thing. I forget what that's called. Like, obviously, there's so much to choose from, but wondering what you would choose first. That is a great question. I'd go maybe Al Jazeera. I read Al Jazeera. I read the Al-Montor. I read the Middle East monitor, and I read electronic edifada. And then if I have time, all good. Just for old time's sake, I look at the, well, it's called the Gulf News. It's not called the Persian Gulf News. It's the Gulf News, which is.

the National English Language Paper of Bahrain. John, I do want to talk to you about, I don't know if you're interested in this, but I am, so I'm going to inflict this upon you. So, I mean, as someone who's been a defendant in a criminal case, it's got to affect you. So Luigi Mangione is filing a motion, complaining about all the inflammatory remarks, members of the Trump administration, including the president himself, have made on Fox and on social media, basically saying that Luigi Mangione, accused killer of United Healthcare CEO, Brian Thompson, is a pure assassin who shot someone in the back with links to

left-wing extremists. They're saying, you know, basically this is prejudicial, and the judge Margaret Garnett rebuked the DOJ, said that these are violations of her order, prohibiting prejudicial statements and said if they keep up this shit, she's going to impose sanctions, including contempt of court or fines. You know, I mean, how can Luigi possibly get a fair trial when the president of the fucking United States is up his ass? You know, as soon as these words came out of Donald Trump's mouth, I thought to myself, oh my God, they're going to have to throw out the charges.

For exactly that reason, Ted, when the president of the United States uses that bully pole but to say this guy is an assassin, he's guilty, he did it because he's an extreme left-wing terrorist. He can't get a fair trial. Because the president has access to everybody. He's going to taint the jury pool. And they're not going to be able to impanel a jury that's going to be able to give him a fair hearing.

Listen, fines are nice, contempt of court is nice. That just means a slap on the hand. they're not going to make the prosecutors spend a night in jail for contempt of court. They're certainly not going to make the president spend a night in jail for contempt of court. So the defense gets nothing out of this. No. But I swear if the president that is... I think you should walk.

Yeah. I'd actually let him go. I honestly think whenever you have like a... I mean, it doesn't even have to be the president, but I mean, let's say the governor or the mayor decides to weigh in on a case like this. I mean, I'm going to go even further. even when the prosecutor makes the announcement, like we've decided to charge Bob Smith with blah, blah, blah, that statement should be non-prejudicial.

It should be completely like just, you know, straight, like this happened, we're charging him with this, here's why. They shouldn't say anything about like he was a dangerous person. We took him off the streets. We did a great job. You know, the city is safer today. They shouldn't editorialize.

I think if they editorialize, you're, you know, they've prejudiced the entire community and the entire jury pool. That's right. That's exactly right. And I wouldn't be surprised if they continue to do this if we don't start seeing charges thrown out. Thank you, government and man, 43. You guys are doing really great. Love watching you too. And John is a hero for blowing the whistle and torture here, here.

Shameful that you went to prison. Also very, very true. And this is from a former criminologist at Boise State. Oh, I appreciate that. Thank you very much. You know, I've never been to Idaho. I've been to 48 states. I've never been to Hawaii or Idaho.

And I keep saying, I'm going to go to Idaho just to say I've been there. If I come to Boise, let's have a coffee. Maybe I can even speak to a college class or something. There are similarities to Montana, obviously. It's nice. It's very, Boise is a very underrated city. I used to appear in the Boise Weekly, All Weekly, as both a cartoonist and as a columnist. And when I went to speak in Boise, I was like thinking,

you know, this will be like whatever. And people used to make jokes about Boise, the way they made jokes about my hometown Dayton. But Boise's cool. It's what people said about Portland in like 1990. It's hipsterizing. It's cool. It's off the grid. It's cheaper.

you know it's got obviously the old west vibe but it's got big ass mountains right right nearby it's it's a cool place that's awesome yeah i want to check it out i'd like to see i'm wasting a little bit of time but i'd like to see cordelaine i've always heard it's wonderful i want to check it out uh let's see um the last night saying i tried to rush through the show from yesterday to see if we acknowledged the memorial, obviously, for Charlie Kirk as a gathering of

psychopaths and scared. I don't know, were they supposed to riot and burn everything down or what? I don't think they were supposed to riot and burn everything down. But look, I'm just going to say it. It was, what a bunch of

misfit toys, man. It's like, it was tacky. It was tawdry. It was like idiocry with President Camacho come to life. The grossest moment, of course, and this has been remarked upon by others, was when Trump basically disagreed with the moment of grace that the widow made, where she said, I forgive the person who killed my husband. Okay, so let me just give you, Mr. President, let me give you some advice. When you go to a memorial service, you never argue with the widow. If the widow says, green's the best color, you say, yes, green is the best color. You

agree with that because she's the widow, because her husband was just murdered. And like, you don't argue with her and say, no, no, actually, I hate what Trump said. I hate my enemies. You know, it's, it was tawdry. The politic is the excess, I mean, he was a political guy, so I suppose it's appropriate. But obviously, I was made very uncomfortable by the sort of mishmash of you know, discount evangelism and far right politics. The whole thing, I thought the whole thing

was just, I hate to say it, anti-American. Right. Anyway, that be my take here. Let's see here. Yeah, so disrespectful to Erica Kirk. That's exactly right. Thank you, Aleuk. Much, much, much, agreed.

Agreed. Oh, you'll see. And I was asked about Nick Fuentes. You know, he's really, he's a yucky boy. I'm not going to get him. Nick Fuentes. Oh, yeah, yeah. Adam Fighter, thanks for the reminder here.

And Mr. Athenian also. We do have, John, we should talk about Nicola Sarkozy. Yeah. So this is basically Sarkozy was accused and has now been convicted of basically what Donald Trump was accused of but did not do. Donald Trump was accused of getting Russia to install him as president in this first term. He didn't, and Russia didn't. But Sarcozy went to Moammar Gaddafi and his age did and said, hey, can you give me some money? This was when he ran for president successfully in 2007. So, John, this is actually a really

interesting story because in France the way that you know they've they've addressed the problems that we have with excessive money in electoral politics is that every candidate gets the same exact amount of money it comes out of the treasury and so what happens and so it's a great idea the problem is if you're what's the word scum then you cheat and you decide that you want an extra advantage and you want to spend extra money. But, you know, it's sort of like analogous to like how Ronald Reagan couldn't get money from Congress for, uh, for, for the Contras. So he, you know, set up a whole, you know, Iran Contra affair to get a slush fund that he could go do an end run around Congress. In the same way, Sarkozy didn't have all the, couldn't get the money, you know, in France from campaign

contributors. So his people went to the, led to the Libyans and said like, hey, when our guy becomes president, he'll look kindly upon you and how about some cash for Nicko, for Nikki, so he can run for, so he can run for president successfully. There's no evidence that the scheme ever came to pass. There's no, there's certain, there's no evidence that money ever changed hands. There's no evidence that any money was spent from any Libyan money was spent. But that said, the talks took place. And they're, and was a discussion and there was a scheme, but it never materialized. He was convicted not of actually doing it, but of the conspiracy. So he's going to prison. He can appeal. He has a

mechanism to appeal, but in this particular round, he has to report to prison within a month, and his appeal can proceed while he's waiting for it, after he reports to prison. But he's going to go, he's going to be the former president of France is going to be in prison probably for at least a year as a result of all this. That is just amazing to me. So, it really is. It's, you know, I mean, it is amazing. And I was asked about this earlier on another show. What is, you know, what is, has this ever happened to a French president before? And I would say the closest you can come to, well, I guess you could say it happened to Leone Blume, the first. Jewish president of France.

He was interned by the Vichy authorities and then put in a concentration camp during World War II. But he didn't do anything wrong except be a leftist. And then Philippe, Marshal Philippe Petin was, of course, arrested at the end of World War II. He was the collaborationist traitor. And then he spent the rest of his life until 1951 at Ilius, which is a basically a one-man prison just for him

off the coast of France. They rolled Napoleon style. If he was sentenced to death, Charles de Gaulle commuted his sentence. And so he, because he was old as shit. He was like 85, 86 years old at the end of the war,

died at like 91. And it was just like, and you know, his, and a lot of French people really still liked him. And he was, I mean, people have to remember, he was an incredible, of World War I. So it was such a mixed bag, you know, for him to do what he did in World War II

that is sort of like, well, there's two Philippe Petins. There's the one who saved France at the Battle of Verdin. And then there's the one who sold France out and shipped Jews off to be murdered during World War II. There's a French, a former French prime minister, he's a Vichy prime minister. buried in Washington in Rock Creek Cemetery. Is that Pierre Laval? I believe it is Pierre Laval, actually.

Pierre Laval was executed. It doesn't mean he was not buried there, though. I'm going to find it. You know, by the way, he is on the, if you ever walk down Broadway where they have all the markers for people who received ticker tape parades, Pierre Laval is there. He got a ticker tape parade down Broadway

when he was Prime Minister. in the 1930s. He was a socialist deputy, and then he moved to the right under Pétin. Here it is. His name is Camille Chauton. A three-time Prime Minister of France during the Third Republic. He was Prime Minister in 1930, 33, 34, 37, 38, and briefly in 40 following the fall of France to Nazi Germany. He was briefly Prime Minister in the Vichy government. He came to the United States for an official meeting and defected. Smart.

He's like, fuck this noise. Not going back to hang out with Marshall Pita. But you know what? It says in 1946, he was convicted in absentia of collaboration with the Nazis. And he was later given amnesty in 1954. But he was in the United States the whole time. Anyway, he died in Washington in 1963 and was laid to rest in Rock Creek Cemetery. Yeah, Pierre Laval was shot by firing squad.

He was the big one. He was a fucking beast. Is it rationales asking, do we think Trump will use Kirk's death as his Reichstag fire? He's fucking trying. He's trying to. Yeah, absolutely. He's trying to. E. Luke says, we got a book recommendation earlier from Ted.

John could get a movie recommendation from you. Oh, like an espionage movie recommendation? I guess so. You know what? I will say that the one movie that most closely represented real life in the CIA was called The Recruit. It came out, I'm going to say 20 years ago, 2005 or 2004, and it starred Al Pacino and I forget who. The only thing that they embellished in that movie was they did not beat us in training. they beat him and they made it uncomfortable for you but they didn't actively beat you in training

everything else was was just solidly right on in fact i went to that movie with my then girlfriend who later became my wife she was also a senior CIA officer and we went with four other friends of ours from the CIA and we were so shocked at how close it was to real life in the CIA that we sat through all of the credits to see who their advisor was and they didn't have have an advisor which was crazy to me but that's how i that's how i've put food on the table i've been an advisor on i don't know half a dozen movies and tv series just to try to keep things right yeah most recently two years ago on um uh true lies i've only gotten to be an advisor once on syriana oh that's that's uh that's bob bears book was turned into syriana that was a good

movie. Yeah, it's a good movie. I was a little bit. I was a little bit pissed because I didn't listen to my advice. You can give advice, you can lead a director to, to, to, to, to good advice, but you can't make him take it. That's right. Although I understand why they ignored me, but whatever. Last, oh, let's see, we, a couple more question. We're over, so we should go. Yeah, we're over. Is Adam, is that why France instigated the Libyan Civil War in 2011, basically to shut Gaddafi's mouth. Yeah, basically. Yeah. And Peter, how does it toad like Nikola Sarkozy end up with a haughty like Carla Bruni? Carla Bruni is a delicious morsel with maybe the best hair of any woman on earth. She's a beautiful brunette. She's a singer-songwriter

and a model. And holy shit. I mean, the dude's got game. You know, she's his third wife. And John, you'll hate this story. But the way he met his second wife, his first wife and him were invited to a wedding where the woman who would become his second wife was getting married. He picked her up at her wedding. What? Yeah. Yeah. He fucking, yeah, a month later, their marriage was over. Oh, my God. I mean, the guy must have Mad Game. He must.

He's got some special in his pants, maybe. I don't know. It's obviously, yeah, it's not because he's pretty. No. Anyway, guys, thanks so much for tuning in. Really appreciate you being here. We're here Monday through Friday, 5 p.m. Eastern Time. We'll be back tomorrow, 5 o'clock, 5 o'clock Eastern Time, as before.

Please like, like, follow and share the show. If you're not watching us on Rumble, please do so, and we will see you later. Bye. Bye-bye.