DeProgram with John Kiriakou and Ted Rall - DeProgram with Ted Rall and John Kiriakou: “Dick Cheney Is Dead”

Episode Date: November 4, 2025

Political cartoonist Ted Rall and CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou explore the legacy of Dick Cheney, America's most powerful modern vice president and chief architect of the "war on terror,” Israel���s top army lawyer imprisoned after she exposed IDF’s sexual abuse of a Palestinian detainee, the shakeup at the Heritage Foundation over Tucker Carlson's interview with Nick Fuentes, and Tanzania's sham elections and resulting street unrest.Dick Cheney’s Death: Complications from pneumonia and cardiac disease kill the influential VP at 84, surrounded by loved ones praising his legacy of national service and personal virtues like fly fishing. As the neoconservative architect of post-9/11 wars including the Iraq invasion based on lies, he leaves a polarizing mark, ending his political life by criticizing Trump and endorsing Harris. Recent tributes highlight his bunker directives on 9/11 and unyielding defense of torture, shaping two decades of brutal U.S. foreign policy.Israel’s Wrong Scandal: Maj. Gen. Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi's remains in jail on fraud and obstruction charges, following a frantic beach search sparked by her disappearance post-resignation. The whistleblower leaked a video revealing soldiers' knife sodomy assault on a Palestinian at Sde Teiman, causing severe rectal perforation and rib fractures. Weirdly, Israelis are mad at HER. The saga, also detaining ex-prosecutor Matan Solomesh, amplifies Israel's polarization, eclipsing abuse inquiries amid Netanyahu allies' insults like "resume the lynch."Heritage Shakeup: Chief Kevin Roberts announces reassignments amid uproar over defending Tucker Carlson's Nick Fuentes interview. Roberts' reaffirms anti-antisemitism efforts and anti-cancel culture stance, balancing Israel views while pushing Heritage 2.0 unity and moral conviction.Tanzania Election Violence: Africa’s crises spread. President Samia Suluhu Hassan takes office privately amid 98% "win" after banning Chadema, with leader Tundu Lissu in solitary on treason charges facing execution, as over 1,000 protesters reportedly die in crackdowns—bodies piling in streets, mass graves piling up under internet blackouts. Schools close, transport stops, hospitals overflow with bullet-riddled youth, despite 2021 reforms now reversed into worse repression than "Bulldozer" Magufuli. Pope Leo calls for dialogue, AU applauds, but opposition vows endurance against the "total sham," echoing African disputed polls in Cameroon and Ivory Coast.

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This is a commercial message brought to you by GoFundMe. Good morning. It's D-Program with Ted Roll and John Kiriakku. It's Tuesday, November 4th. 2025. It's Election Day in New York City, New Jersey, and across the nation. And we are looking forward to seeing those results. John, good to see you. Good to see you, Ted. It's election day here in Virginia as well. Excellent. So, lots to talk about, you know, John, this morning when I woke up, I kind of noticed that the sun was a little brighter. Yes. I noticed that the birds were singing more beautifully than ever. Yes, and there was automatically an extra spring in my step.

My cat's fur was glistening, almost sparkling. I just felt like probably my bank account increased a little bit. Everything just seemed brighter. And then I woke up to the news that the dark lord had passed on to whatever horrible. dimension he resides in. Dick Cheney, of course, is dead, former vice president, and we'll get into his legacy. I'm sure you, of all people, have thoughts. I have many thoughts. The Bush years were very formative for both of us. So we're going to talk about Dick Cheney. We'll talk about Israel's very, as I called it, very wrong scandal. So you can identify with this. A top army lawyer

ratted out the IDF for sticking a knife up of Palestinians' ass and sodomizing him. That got caught on video. She leaked it because nothing was going to happen to the rapists and basically attempted murderers. And so they decided to do the right thing and put her in prison instead of giving her a promotion. Welcome to the wonderful world of whistleblowing.

Indeed. Like, well, we have so much in common with Israel that way. Chaos at the Heritage Foundation over Tucker Carlson's interview with Nick Fuentes. Africa continues to blow up. I'm proud of our show for talking about Africa, you know, as much as it deserves. Maybe not enough. But now it's Tanzania. Things are pretty crazy over there.

We'll try to break that down for you. You know, I just want to say, I came up with the AI-generated thumbnail for the Dick Cheney thing. I just want to be clear that the idea that he's in heaven with like the angel was meant to be a sarcastic joke. When I saw that, I was like, should I call Ted this morning? No, he probably did it on purpose for some reason. I just thought it would be funny as shit because I didn't want to go with the obvious like he's turning crispy brown by now. Well, I wanted to say something too. There's a there's a quote that is attributed to Mark Twain.

It is attributed incorrectly to Mark Twain. People believe that Mark Twain said, I've never wished a man dead, but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure. Yes. Clarence Darrow actually said it. Oh, that's great. And he should get credit for it. But that was literally the first thought in my head when I rolled over this morning to see what the push notification was on my phone and it said that Dick Cheney was dead. Like you've said, Ted, you know, we all have thoughts about Dick Cheney.

I've been in meetings with Dick Cheney in which I have, like, feared for my safety. Wow. Because he would lose his shit like a crazy person in these meetings. And then he would get up and storm out. And then everybody would be like, okay, well, back to work. And then they would get up like it was normal to treat people like that. Wow. And when it came to let's, let's enumerate them, the assassination program.

the torture program, the rendition program, the secret prison program, literally all of it was Dick Cheney, all of it. It was all his idea, and they were all implemented by people who were close to him. That's his legacy in this country. His legacy is the stripping of the constitution, ignoring of human rights, and making our country weak. while pretending that he was making it stronger. Yeah, I mean, he's the hatchet man of neoconservatism, right? He's not a neoconservative theorist, like, you know, like some, like, well, like people who signed the original project for a New American Century letter, you know, like a John

Keegan type person. He's more, you know, he was, but he's the guy who really made. made it happen. He had this idea, like, literally, as within hours of the attack on 9-11, he was approaching people in the White House saying, like, okay, we're going to invade Iraq now. Yeah. Yeah. Fused, right. They're going to be Iraq. That's right. What did they have to do with this? What could they have had to do with this? Nothing, literally.

I mean, Saddam Hussein and Iraq hated al-Qaeda. Al-Qaeda wanted to overthrow them. Yes. Yes, indeed. So, I mean, so he was the biggest architect of the lies. I mean, him and Donald Rumsfeld, the lie machine. Donald Rumsfeld had my favorite lies. And there were so many to choose for. My favorite one was, we know exactly where the WMDs are.

They are northeast, south, or west of Baghdad somewhat. You could look it out. You know, it's funny. Rumsfeld, Cheney was a, Cheney was an intern in Rumsfeld's office when Rumsfeld was a congressman. That's how they met. Rumsfeld was a congressman, I think, from Illinois. And Cheney really, really, really wanted to go to Washington.

He was from Wyoming. He had three DUIs in his past, couldn't find a job, but really loved Rumsfeld. So he applied for this internship. And he got this low-level, entry-level internship in Rumsfeld's office. and Rumsfeld really took to him. And then when Rumsfeld became Secretary of Defense for the first time, Cheney was in his first term in Congress. This was during the Ford administration.

And Rumsfeld recommended to Ford, hey, you should hire Cheney as your chief of staff. He's a real tough son of a bitch. And so Cheney became Gerald Ford's chief of staff, set himself apart in conservative circles, once Ford lost to Carter and then came roaring back with Reagan and Bush and the rest is history. That is, yeah, I mean, that's the thing, right?

The origin story of the Bushies really goes back to the Ford administration where all of those people came together. I mean, I guess they didn't have much to do because for people who don't know, like Jerry Ford was probably, you know, he dealt with a 1974, huge democratic sweep. And so basically, Congress wouldn't pass anything that he proposed. And he

vetoed everything that Congress passed. They called him president veto. Yeah, nothing happened. I mean, basically all he, he was basically widely known for the pardon and for whip inflation now buttons. Yeah, I still have mine. I still have mine too. You know, so a question that came up from F. you so, and I'm glad that he brought this up because he said, thanks for the donation, by the way. Over under a number of years, so Cheney is whitewashed as a good guy, I think it's zero. I think we're there right now.

I mean, already the media is whitewashing him as like, you know, he was a, he was pro-gay. He came out in favor of his big daughter. Eventually, eventually only because it split his family. Right. Not because he had any love of gays. Not at all, right. He was very, very right wing in all the worst ways.

And he liked to fly fish. Who gives a shit that he liked to fly fish? But they're trying to humanize this bastard. I mean, and he was just, you know, I mean, I thought, there's so many things to say about Dick Cheney, all of them mostly bad. My favorite was that Bush put, you know, basically picked him as the head of his vice presidential search running mate search committee because he wanted someone you know he's like he didn't really know who to choose and um so he so cheney finally was like well i looked around and i'm thinking me and that's literally how he became he was the head of he picked himself yeah he did yeah he did

and you know there's what kind of man in the movie vice there's a there's a scene where where bush is asking him to be vice president where where cheney made him it looked like it was Bush's decision. So he said, well, I would want to be in charge of foreign affairs defense policy. Bush says, done. Energy policy, trade, done. Tax policy, the environment, done. And then he's like, okay, then we have an agreement.

And also he wanted like really frequent meetings, right? Yeah, you know, that's another thing. It's rather unusual for the president and vice president to meet more often than once a week. Usually they'll have breakfast together on a Tuesday and then go over what the rest of the week is looking like. Cheney and Bush met every single day in the Oval Office for the president's daily brief. And then Cheney essentially would tell Bush this is what is happening in foreign policy. This is what's happening at DOD. You know, Cheney was obviously clearly the president.

Did, I mean, yeah, no, I think, I think anyone who lived through that period has to agree with that. I mean, I guess, you know, I want to be fair here. To what extent was Bush responsible? I mean, was Bush a dupe? Or was he just lazy? Or is it something else that happened in this dynamic? I hate to say it, but in my own personal experience, and I saw them interacting with each other. And I mean, you know my positions at the CIA at the time.

I had access to these guys all the time. Bush was a dumb dumb. I hate to say it, but there's no other way to say it. He was just an idiot. He was like the village idiot who somehow found himself in charge of the village. And so Cheney knew that. Cheney took advantage of it and Cheney put himself in charge and made it look like Bush was in charge.

That's, yeah, I mean, it's really kind of insane. And, you know, and then he talked the American people. But, well, I mean, a lot of them talk to the American people, right? I mean, they all had their roles, right? Colin Powell closed the deal with that speech in front of the United Nations with the fake vial. Absolutely right. I've always thought, you know, my fantasy, John, was that in the Hollywood version of that, and I bet Colin Powell had this dream at least once before he died, you know, he starts to give the speech.

They told him, go up there and do it. He knew it was all bullshit at the time. It was reported that he spent the weekend really angry and, frustrated when he read over all the evidence. And he was like, there's nothing here. And at one point, he threw it all up. I don't remember if it was Time or Newsweek, one of them reported that he threw everything up in the air and said, this is all bullshit. But he went out there and did it anyway, because when Cyrus Vance was Secretary of State and the president told him to say something, he didn't believe in, Cyrus Vance resigned. Colin Powell should have resigned. And that's,

and he could have done it at the UN. What if he had gone to the UN and just said, they sent me out to, They sent me out here to lie to the American people and to the people of the world, and I will not do it. He would have been president in 2004. He would have been president. You know, Larry Wilkerson is a friend of many of ours, right? And Larry was Colin Powell's best friend and his chief of staff when he was the Secretary of State. They came up through the military together.

They served for years together in the military. And then when Ronald Reagan was president, Colin. Paul went from lieutenant colonel to four-star general in four years. George Washington didn't get promoted that quickly. But Reagan took to Colin Powell and made Colin Powell somebody. And Larry will tell you that in their private moments together, Colin Powell would admit that he was in over his head. He shouldn't have been promoted so quickly. And that he was weak when it came to the weapons of mass destruction debate. Colin Powell said to Larry at the time and said in his memoirs years later that he should

have resigned, that he ruined his reputation by going along with what Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld wanted him to say. Yeah. And it was the greatest mistake of his life. I think that was in his character. I think frankly, John, that was baked into his character. Of course it was. Because he was the PR flak who was put in charge to go out and sell bullshit.

shit about the Mili Massacre during the Vietnam War. That's right. You tell the press the line of shit about like, nothing happened, nothing to see here. This is why I have always said that I don't think military officers, especially generals, should have cabinet level positions anywhere because how did they make four stars? They made it by saying, yes, sir, for 30 or 35 years. And what you need in positions like that is someone who has the guts to stand up and say, Mr. President, that is a terrible idea.

Let me explain to you why. And that was not Colin Powell. No, it wasn't. John, we've got an ad, so I'm going to go ahead and read that. All right, outdoor crew, if you're into fishing camping or getting off the grid, meet your new best friend, the Hunter Orange 25 quart cooler from Catas Sports. This isn't your average cooler. It's roto-molded for max durability.

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Go grab the Hunter Orange 25Q cooler and keep your next adventure, ice cold. You know, I was very proud last night, Ted. Two friends of mine and I released episode three of a podcast I have on Apple Podcasts called Dead Drop, What Makes a Spy Tick. So we dropped our third episode, and knock on wood, I've been so fortunate that last night, much to my shock when I listened to it, it says, Dead Drop, what makes a spy tick? Brought to you by Progressive Insurance.

And I was like, what? Progressive Insurance. So I called one of my colleagues, who's the producer. I said, hey, what did we make now that we're endorsed by progressive insurance? He said, let me look it up. So we looked it up, $22, buddy. Excellent. All right. Well, you know, $22. You know, it's like, look, what would you do? The way you have to look at it is, if you saw $22 lying on the ground, would you pick it up?

Sure. And you'd be very happy to. I have to split it three ways, but that's $7.33 I didn't have yesterday. That's how you have to look at it. Let's do a little bit of housekeeping here. So for people who are regular viewers, you know that our producer, Robbie West, who was doxed out of his current job and basically will be out of that work in two weeks. He is going to be rejoining the show here, and that's the good news. But the bad news, or maybe it's the good news, is that you have the opportunity, as NPR would say, to help contribute to making this show viable by making his tenure as producer viable for us. please we we basically need for this to work to keep Robbie going month after month we need a grand a month from him that means we need a grand a month from you guys John and I are we are each

paying 250 just so full transparency here so it's not like we're asking you for stuff that we're not willing to contribute and we're both broke as shit but we're paying 250 a month so if you guys can do we're each doing 250 if you guys can do a thousand that'd be awesome please go to give send go.com slash west glacier gaming again that's give send go not not not not the other one give send go dot com slash west glacier gaming and throw some money uh Robbie's way we will keep doing this until we get to the thousand dollars for November then we'll shut the fuck up until December so basically that is our our pledge to you so someone goes in and sends in a grand right now the whole thing's over. So you know who you are. You people are, we have, we have some rich

viewers. So, you know, whatever. Is it, is it worth, before we move on from Dick Cheney, I think it's impossible to overstate his legacy, right? Well, let's talk about, let's talk about Trump a little bit. What's Trump's view of Bush and Cheney? I mean, Trump, he, you know, he's, he's a little bit revisionist about this. He came to opposing the Iraq war. or sort of after, but, you know, before a lot of other Republicans, and he remarkably ran against the Iraq War as a Republican primary candidate in 2016. Is Donald Trump going to order flags placed at half staff? Is he going to, you know, have a big to-do body and state at the capital?

Is he going to make a big to do about it? Or is he going to basically do what he deserves, have his body thrown into a dumpster. I have no inside information, of course, like you have no inside information. But my guess is in order to try to shore up the neocon wing of the Republican Party, the answer is probably yes. He'll probably do a lot of those things. We have not had a vice president lay in state in the capital since Hubert Humphrey. Hubert Humphrey died in 1978. So it's been a long time. I would be afraid, frankly, that if he were lying in state, no one would show up. I'm serious. People might come by just to make sure he's dead. Just jab him with a fork to make sure he's dead.

Yeah. Yeah, no, it could be, yeah. Yeah, I mean, that's a good question. Do people come to pay their respects, really to pay their respects, or do they come out of vital curiosity or both? I think most of them come out of curiosity. I've been to a bunch. But never out of curiosity, only out of respect. I went to Claude Pepper, for example. But there were others that I skipped. I skipped Ronald Reagan. I loathed Ronald Reagan.

I felt like I would be hypocritical if I went to stand in line and walk past a, you just walked past a closed casket with a flag over it. It's a big deal. What do you see? Yeah, nothing. It's just a box. Yeah. I went to Jimmy Carter.

I had a lot of respect for Jimmy Carter, even though he refused to write a letter of support for my pardoned application. I went back and forth with his chief of staff a half a dozen times. My lawyers are writing. And they're like, nah, he doesn't want to do this. You know, I don't even understand that, right? Like, it's sort of like if you have it. I mean, I would be a pardon whore.

I would too. I would too. Yeah. Yes. It's like why not? Like, why not like throw people a bone? Like when people ask me for a book blurb, I used to be a book blurb horror. people ask me all the time.

Oh, yeah. I was like, you know, if I can help you sell your book, unless it's something I really despise, sure. Yeah, I never say no to book blurbs. I've written a dozen of them, I guess. Happy to do it. Yeah, totally. And I've written three or four, four words and afterwards and stuff for other people's books.

I happy to do it. When you might, my, my inclination, whenever somebody asks me for something, even people I don't even know. My inclination is to say yes. Because you never know, you know, you're spreading goodwill. maybe it'll come back to you. Phil is asking if we've both been, are we both doxed?

Pretty lame thing to do to a person. I would say, I mean, you know, I would say I have not been, I don't want to give anyone any ideas. I would say I have not been, look, I get death threats. I get death threats. I got a half a dozen of them last week.

Yeah. That was an unusual week, though. But yeah, I haven't been doxed, but I get death threats with some regularity. I don't think doxing would do anyone any good since I don't work for any, like, mainstream organizations that, like, would get pissed off at me or fire me or anything like that. You know, my syndicate, they, you know, to quote Jonathan Richmond, they know who I am.

They've been dealing with me with my annoying ass since 1996. See? So, you know, go ahead, docks away. You know, nothing's going to happen there. Same here. We'll see. If you still watch to know, what bands are lined up to perform at, right? lobby aide.

I don't know. I would imagine some right-wing bands. Not the Dixie Kit, the Chicks, maybe. Aren't they just called the Chicks now? Yes, the Chicks, because it's, I guess, racist to say Dixie. Oh, well, this is funny. Rebellious Rainbow Unicorn, nice to see you.

So we should write and publish Darth Cheney's real obituary and publish it. Yeah, now I'm looking forward to seeing like what the New York Times. has got going, you know, I think they'll probably do a good job. Their obits raise are legend. The New York Times always has the best obituaries. The post-obituary today was generally factual, slightly on the pro-cheney side.

Really? Yeah. Yeah. God, that's crazy. I don't even know how you can do that. I mean, you know, his approval rating when he died was like one, like nine percent or something like that. See?

He and Eric Adams. Yeah, both of them. Thanks for the donation, Phil Chats. In their own households. Phil Chats just gave us five bucks. Appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Would like our thoughts on, hmm, frog shack gamers wants to know, would like your thoughts on mesh-tastic and if private decentralized communication networks are the future to combat invasion of privacy? I'm only peripherally aware of these issues. but you know we should have we should have Sean O'Brien on he could walk us through it step by step let's do that okay we will do that F you so thank you for the buck in case Cheney in the new Trump White House ballroom coat rack or something

yeah maybe like a like a like a bear attacking yeah throw your coat on top there yeah that I could I could handle that um here we go uh Riz Rizwan Hassan 9757 Do I have to make an account on Rumble for us to benefit from watching videos on Rumble? I don't think so. I don't think so either. I think just so long as you watch it, that's what counts. Yeah, watch hours are king. We're going to find out a little more about the metrics here.

Oh, Katie, Catastrophe, too. People can never believe this is true, right? Oh, there's chat GPT still has no record of me. Google says it's because of your controversial. LA newspaper stuff. Yeah, that's not why. It's because of an article that I wrote in the Wall Street Journal

making fun of Open AI and Sam Altman. Yes, without a doubt, yes. Because that's when it happened. I mean, L.A. Times thing, that was, I was all over, Chat, GAPT, years after the L.A. Times thing was all over. Have we seen,

born to bad, or you want to know, have we seen the SNL White House improvements skit. No, I've had a lot going on, but I need to catch up on that. I always, SNL to me is, it's, it's a shitty show. I mean, I just got to say, I've kind of, it's always been a shitty show, but there's always like one skit that you should kind of watch. They're never that, it's never that good. No. But it'll have moments. I can't believe this shitty show's been running for 50 years. On the plane the other day, I was flying back from somewhere, Mexico, I guess. I was flying back from Mexico. And I'm going through the, you know, the entertainment on the back of the seat. And there was, there was something about Needsmore Cowbell. You know, the famous skit with Christopher Walken, Needs More Cowbell. Here's how desperate Saturday Night Live has become. It was, it was an hour-long documentary on the skit. What? Needs more Cowbell.

ridiculous that's how desperate they are and then they the people that they're interviewing were like oh yeah are you you're saying you're making a documentary just on the skit was good it's not like that documentary they made on that the aristocrats you know about the joke no no that's right the joke right the worst joke in the world or the most aristocrats the dirtiest joke in the world yeah Yeah, I mean, I don't understand, like, the, I mean, SNL makes me actually crazy. It's literally like, is there something wrong with me that, like, I'm just stone cold, like, just not laughing while I'm watching this? And does every, what is it that everyone else sees that I don't see? And it makes me crazy.

Toward that end, like a few months ago, I went back and I started watching SNL from starting with season one, episode one. And, you know, it's, and it's kind of like, okay, it was better than. but it wasn't that great no really no that's a good way to put it that's a good way to put it it was better then but it was never really great like you say you can pull out

individual hilarious skits and put them together in a best of DVD but now Carol Burnett show was that's hilarious yeah yeah and consistently

yes I mean you know even in love living color that had a lot of good shit a lot and and made people giant stars laughing a lot of funny shit classic yeah so i mean it's we can do humor yeah it's mother's brothers even yeah i just can't you know i mean so yeah and it's like yeah it's horrible anyway um it held someone should just do skits making fun of SNL uh all right we got we got a half hour left here on our show. I love how fast it goes, but then I hate how fast it goes. So what do you want to talk about? Heritage Foundation. It's real. Yeah, let's talk about the Heritage Foundation.

There's a real split right now in the Heritage Foundation that appears to have been caused by Tucker Carlson. Tucker Carlson, you know, I've said a million times. He's a friend of mine, and he said something to me the other day that made me very happy for him. He feels utterly unencumbered by anything or anybody. He's rich. He's famous. He doesn't work for anyone. He controls his own destiny. He's got the Tucker Carlson Network. He can say whatever the fuck he wants to say. And people don't like that. And at the Heritage Foundation, they don't like it because he had Nick Fuentes on the other day. Now, me personally, I wouldn't have had Nick Fuentes on, but that's just me. I don't know what I'd want to say to the guy. He's only like

25 years old. He became a household name because of his racism. So I wouldn't really have anything to say to him. But Tucker had him on. And in the course of the conversation, they kind of pulled the Heritage Foundation in. And it's gotten ugly the last couple of days. Well, so it's strange, right? So the Heritage Foundation is a right-wing think tank, most notably recently for Project 2025. Yeah, it's the best funded right-wing think tank in America. It also is what Obamacare came out of, right? Obamacare, I mean, Heritage came up with Romney Care,

which became the Affordable Care Act. That's right. But it was like sort of like above, it used to be above, or it seemed to be above the GOP fray. It was like conservative rather than Republican. That's correct. now it's Republican. And that seems to be, that seems to have been a mistake.

The same thing happened at Liberty University, where it was, they were very proud to say that they would turn out conservative Christians. And now they say that they're proud to turn out Republican Christians. That's always a mistake. Same thing with like when, when there's, you know, there's far fewer similar organizations on the left among liberals. but you know when they become democratic organs i mean i feel like that happened to like the nation became democratic as opposed very much so progressive that's exactly right and once that happens you're you're fucking done all right so what exactly is this about right so basically Tucker interviews nick so fucking what i mean okay i understand why people would get upset particularly

liberals you know i i interviewed when i was when i was at had my radio show in l. at KFI. I interviewed David Duke for three hours. It was supposed to be an hour and it was just, it was going so great with all the lots of calls. I was just like, keep going, keep going, keep on. It's a fantastic three hour. You know, great. I mean, here's, you know,

you don't really know much about David Duke. If you listened to those three hours, though, you definitely understood why he actually really was dangerous because he was so charismatic, so funny, so intelligent. Yeah. Very smart. Very dangerous guy. Good looking, too. And, you know,

I liked him. That's a funny. I mean, I hated everything you had to say, but I liked him. So, I mean, isn't that just, is what's Tucker guilty of doing journalism? I mean, like you, I wouldn't have interviewed Nick Fuentes because I don't really think there's much to learn about this little pipsqueak. No, I agree. And we have a question from Craig D. Vance, who says, honestly, why do you guys support Carlson after all the stuff he did on Fox, honestly asking? for me personally he was he has consistently been one of my strongest supporters from the very beginning

from my from my arrest and um just secondarily um he was one of the first republicans to really call the israelis out on on human rights abuses in in gaza and the west bank and i had respect for that plus he's a very sweet guy you know you you don't have to agree with everything i actually disagree with most things. That's something that he said on his show. He said, you and I probably disagree on 90% of the issues, but he said, I like you and we're friends. That's how I feel about him. Now, I've never met Tucker Carlson. I've never been on a show. Would love to be. But the thing is that he's, you know, I mean, I watched him for years. And, you know, I used to find his bow tie stick really annoying. Generally, people with bow ties, it's like, why are you wearing a bow tie? My best

friend Scott Stantis when I met him. He used to wear bow ties. I was like, why the fuck you're wearing bow ties? But that said, yeah, it's just same, you know, same thing. Look, he strikes me as a guy who has integrity, which is to say, not that he's always right, but that he is trying to find out what the truth is within, you know, the limits of, we all have our limits of politics and personality and so on. And that's, to me, that's all I can ever ask. And here's the, I mean, he's one of the rare media personalities who ever admits when he's mistaken. So, you know, so I wouldn't say I support him, but I would be like, I respect him, which is more important.

Yeah, that's how I feel. Yeah. And I think one of the reasons why conservatives are afraid of him right now is because he is way more powerful in media than he ever was at Fox. And because he's given. the Israeli shit and the Israelis aren't sure how to react to it. And Lord knows they fucking deserve it. Oscello has a question for us.

I don't know. He wants to know our thoughts on Zoran Mamdani. Well, the elections today, he's going to be the mayor of the city of New York. He's going to be a boy mayor, 34 years old. He's about to defeat Andrew Cuomo, who's 67 years old. And the former governor, three-term governor of the state, you know, political lion. is that's pretty much, I think, going to mark the end of Cuomo's political career. I mean, I could see, by the way, if there were a Democratic president in the future,

I could see Cuomo ending up on the cabinet easily. Sure. You know. I could see, I could see Cuomo ending up in a Republican cabinet. I could see that too. Oh, by the way, Donald Trump just endorsed Cuomo. I saw that yesterday afternoon. By the way, that's the death of him.

Kiss of death. Done. Yeah. He's done. It was just five points, just up his 25, just evaporated. And Curtis Lee was like, fuck you, Trump. Yeah. No, that's disgusting.

What did Curtis Lewa do to deserve that? Yeah. Curtis Lewa is the Republican nominee? Fuck Donald Trump. That's so fucking wrong. But I bet Cuomo's even thinking, fuck Donald Trump. You know, because it's also one of those things like it was going to do any good. It might have done more good months ago.

That's right. I think Mondani is a promising young man. He's definitely in over his head. He's 34 years old. Hopefully he'll surround himself with some smart and good people. You know, I think he seems smart enough to know what he doesn't know. What do you think? Yeah, I think that's right.

And, you know, one of the things that has been largely ignored about Mamdani is that he has surrounded himself with very smart people, many of whom, and this is something the media, I think, are purposely ignoring, many of whom happen to be Jewish. And so this nonsense that he's an anti-Semite, I think, is not working. I saw a clip yesterday from one of the early mayoral debates where there were like six candidates. And the question was, where will your first, when you're elected mayor, where will your first foreign trip be? And they were like, Israel, Israel, Israel, Israel. And Mamdani said, I am happy. to meet with Jewish voters in all of the five boroughs. My job would be to be as mayor of New York not to enact a foreign policy like I'm Secretary of State. If constituents happen to be Jewish,

I'm happy to meet with them. If they happen to be Muslim or happen to be Christian, I'm happy to meet with them. Their religion makes no difference to me. And then they start screaming with Cuomo being the loudest, that's anti-Semitic. You don't support. Port Israel, screaming. It's like, no, that's not at all what he said. He's going to be mayor of New York. He's not going to be Secretary of State. So who cares where his first trip is going to be?

Well, and you know who kind of gets to decide this is New York's high Jewish population. Exactly. And guess what? New York's high Jewish population overwhelmingly supports Mamdani. Yeah, it's crazy. So they do. In fact, you know who else? and the entire the Jewish population of the United States

is opposed to Israel and pro-Balest Palestinian now. Game over, Israel. You guys are finished. You're done. That is right. So, all right. So do we want to move on past, so let's talk about Israel. It seems like a good place to transition here.

Yeah. So Major General, Yafat, Tomar, Yashashalmi, is a top army lawyer. I guess, would you say that she would, was a jag, kind of, like a top jag. Yes. Equivalent. So she basically came across a, well, she was, she had access to the surveillance tape that showed IDF soldiers at this notorious torture facility. I don't know how you pronounce it, but today, Tiemann.

But basically, they were sodomizing a Palestinian prisoner with a knife. not shockingly, he was severely injured and had to be, go through numerous surgeries. He got rectal perforation and they fractured his ribs. He's lucky to be alive. Yeah, he's lucky to be alive. And anyway, so shockingly and strangely, rather than having a grateful nation, thank her and say, well, thank you for, you know, revealing this, she sent this to the media because obviously nothing was happening internally.

Most of the country, which has gone so far at right wing that it's crazy, they're pissed at her, and they want her to stay in prison. Another former prosecutor, Matan Solomesh, also is in prison for related charges. And then Netanyahu's allies are saying things like, now we can resume the lynch. In other words, they want to, you know, there was some thought that she might have committed suicide. She kind of like vanished and she went off to the beach. And that whole episode sort of feels like, you know, being on the Appalachian Trail, if you remember that episode.

But who knows what was going on here. Look, the stress can absolutely make you contemplate suicide. You and I have talked about that. Yeah. We've both been there. So basically, I don't know. I mean, you're a whistleblower. I mean,

Ted, what don't you, what does you, go ahead. When I, when I blew the whistle, it was in December of 2007. And I was unprepared for the media storm that, that ensued. I gave an interview to NPR. I was in a hotel room in Dallas, I remember, because my boss had summoned me there to fire me. I was at Deloitte and Touche. I ended up suing them and I won. But he summoned me to Dallas to fire me.

And before I went into the office, you know, knowing this was going to be a bad day, I gave this interview to NPR. And Senator Roy Blunt was the other guest on the show. He was at the time, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. And he said, just straight out, I want to see you hang. from a tree. And I thought, oh, my God, this is, this is the chairman of the Intelligence Committee. And he's calling for me to be executed or lynched. I mean, at least if you're executed, you get a trial, right? And I thought, oh, this is, this is going to be way worse than I thought it was. And so I can understand what he's going through right now. You, you speak the

truth because you believe that the American people, or in the case of this woman, the Israeli people deserve the truth, right? You see your role as a whistleblower as one of keeping the government honest. And then the response is to call for your death. So I know exactly what she's going through. This is going to be a very difficult road. And it's going to be, you know, it's going to be years. It may be forever before they appreciate what it is that she did. I appreciate what it is that she did, but she's in for a real shitstorm. John, I've always wanted to ask you this question, and I'm glad this comes up now. When you know that there's going to be this big shit show, and it's going to big media shitstorm around you.

and it's going to be basically it's going to come down to people who are going to say good for John Kyriaku for exposing torture thank God for him versus people who are like fuck him he betrayed his oath you know what matters is we got to protect the secrets of the U.S. government you're kind of taking you're kind of placing a bet right on that a sizable majority or maybe at least a good plurality of the American people are good people, that they're going to see the obvious moral choice here of what's right. What's more important is being opposed to torture and stopping torture, that's more important than safeguarding government secrets

that are basically secrets involving the fact that you're torturing. Were you ever disappointed that the American people didn't respond more or like, I mean, I always think, like, Ed Snowden, he said that he was trying to start this national conversation about privacy and NSA surveillance. And, like, you know, he was, he wanted to give the American people a chance to raise hell and put pressure Congress and put it to stop to it. Obviously, the American people fell down on the job and did not do that. And we are worse off than we were in 2013 when he did that. Yeah. L.A. Times, I was not disappointed.

the people of Los Angeles came to my support and, I mean, canceled their subscriptions and they were pissed and they're like that. The people of L.A., like, you know, I'm so grateful to them. That's awesome. How did you feel about, I mean, how did it go? Like, did you feel like, you know, like, okay, it's kind of like up to the public now.

How do you feel like they did if you had to give them a grade? I would give them a D. I really would. I mean, now it's great. Now it's, it's, you know, an A minus or B plus. It'll be, it'll be an A when I get a pardon. But, but no, in the beginning, in the beginning, it's like the whole government fell on my head. And I couldn't get, I couldn't get out from under it.

And then I'm facing, you know, 45 years in prison and the FBI's following me and tap my phones and they're intercepting my emails and my. friends stopped talking to me and some of my relatives stopped talking to me. I'll tell you what, my mom has, my mom has, my mom was one of nine children and only two are still alive. One lives in Greece and the other lives in Youngstown, Ohio. And I don't speak to him. And the reason I don't speak to him is because one of my cousins called him when I blew the whistle and said, we have to step up for Johnny. All my cousins call me Johnny. So she says, we have to stuff up for Johnny. And my uncle said, I told him years ago that he should just keep his big

fucking mouth shut. My own uncle said this. He said, what he brought on himself, he brought on himself. And that was it. He walked away from me. And now it's like, well, why? Why doesn't Johnny talk to me? Johnny doesn't talk to you because he knows what you said about him in 2007. And he doesn't like or respect you asshole yeah um mr out straight says i thought to you i thought your advice on depression you gave on your own show deep focus was very good and poignant baby share with viewers here ted's input would be interesting too somebody asked me i do q and aes for deep focus um oh once a week or once a two weeks every two weeks whenever somebody puts a question in the in the chat like we have here, we pull it out and I do a 30, 45 minute session just answering questions.

So somebody asked me the other day how I dealt with the depression. And I said, frankly, the easy answer is that my life was saved by 10 milligrams every day of venal vaccine, effects or literally saved my life. I also had something called transcranial magnetic therapy, which was incredible. It was brilliant, fantastic. But, you know, every once a while, like everybody, you find yourself falling into depression for one reason or another. Sometimes there's no reason. Sometimes I just wake up and I feel a little bit depressed.

Maybe it's a dream that I had that I don't even remember what it was. And so what I said on deep focus was, you got to put yourself first. And maybe that means taking a couple of hours and going for a long while. you know listen to music go to a movie call a friend something anything to distract yourself get out of your head just get out of your head exactly and for me that actually has worked yeah i mean i've never been on on drugs on meds i kind of just well i've never been suggested to me so therefore it's not like been a choice um i did um i did talk therapy for years and I was diagnosed with PTSD over the LA Times thing.

Without a doubt, I would be shocked if you told me that you didn't have PTSD from the LA Times. For sure. And I think the therapist was really shocked by just how much, and she was very experienced. EMDR turned out to be really helpful for me. I've heard very good things about EMDR. So I strongly recommend that. I'm not I don't like I don't suffer from sort of chemical depression at all I'm not one of those people who I'm a pretty upbeat person so for me it's situational if something really really fucking bad happens to me or someone I care about then I can you know like for me when I was caregiving from my mother who was dying

of Alzheimer's for years that was rough because I'm an only child it was just me and her there were no other relatives I was you know they knew they got to know me at LaGuardia at the same little gate that flew to Dayton. It was like, oh, Mr. Raw, nice to see you again. I'm like, uh-huh. It's just trudging along. Yeah, depression's not been my problem. My problem has been anxiety, but it's paralyzing anxiety.

Paralyzing. You know, I went to see this shrink. I only saw her one time because I didn't like her. But her entire practice is just fucked up former CIA people. so she's cleared so you can speak freely and all that stuff she probably rats you out to the agency anyway but i went to see her one time and she said that um she said i find it fascinating that you have no PTSD from the agency you have no PTSD from um prison but you have crippling PTSD from your divorce and I said yeah I said that I could have predicted that because they teach us in

training not to trust anybody and I allowed myself to trust one person well and I you know it's not a great it's not a great Julia Roberts movie and I like Julie but sleeping with the enemy is a great name for a movie about a fucked up marriage got that right that's literally what you're doing and it's like it's really disturbing. It's one thing to be like, you know, the fuckers, whether it's the agency or, you know, the newspaper publisher. But they're outside of your house. This is like you can't even go into your happy home and be left the fuck alone. No. No. No. And then you get the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee saying that you should be executed, which did nothing

from my mood. That's always, by the way, very bizarre to me when like really high profile people punch down like that. Tom Toll's was the long-standing editorial cartoonist at the Washington Post. At one point, he did cartoon, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the whole Joint Chiefs of Staff, they drafted a letter calling for poor Tom to be fired from his job. I hope he framed it. He didn't like his little cartoon. I'm like, you got big military guys, like invade foreign countries all the time and you're scared of a cartoonist? When my first book was coming out, my editor said,

Hey, let's ask George Tenet for a for a blurb. And I said, George Tenet's not going to send a blurb. He hates me and I hate him. No, no, let's ask anyway. So they reach out and, and George Tenet writes back and says, I wouldn't do anything for that asshole. And I said, that's the blurb. Yeah.

Let's let's publish that on the back cover. And they were like, no, no, no, we can't do that. This isn't a joke. It's a serious. book. I'm like, all right. Humor. You can never really have enough humor. We've got to talk about Africa before we wrap up

here at the top of the hour. Tanzania. So I did just talk to it. So there's riots. Once again we have another fucked up election. President Samia Salihu Hassan, first female president of Tanzania, just took office

with 98% of the vote. And I suppose it's possible for someone to be super, super, super, super, super, super, but that doesn't appear to be the case there. And the people of Tanzania totally seem to not think that's the case. There's riots going on. Everything's closed down. There's martial law.

Over a thousand protesters have apparently been gunned down in the streets. The word is that bodies are piling up on the streets and the repression is rampant. Even the Pope has chimed in. So, John, I'm kind of like, okay, so ideologically, I wanted to know sort of who's what here, Right. So Samia Salihu Hassan is from this longstanding ruling party that's been in charge of Tanzania ever since independence, pretty much. And it's easy to say, well, this is obviously a bullshit, you know, election has to be. Right, right. That said, I was like, you know, but I always get suspicious when American media, I'll let's say, well, the opposition party, Chidima, has been banned.

And they quote them. I was like, well, who is this opposition? And it's really uncomfortable for my side. I hate this as a leftist. But basically, the opposition is center-right. And Hassan is a lefty, like a basically African, pan-African liberationist, you know, sort of in the Qaddafi mold. So it's the uncomfortable place to be where the autocrat, I'm more sympathetic ideologically to the autocrat. And the person who's being suppressed is the center-right, which I absolutely disres.

spies yes what the fuck anyway um what do you make of what's going on in tanzania um i think that that the tanzanians wanted to experiment again with um authoritarianism thinking that it's like the 60s or 70s all over again it's not and uh and people are taken to the streets a thousand dead so far I think is they've gotten, they've gotten off easy. I think that when the Pope weighs in, it's because things are going to get a lot worse. Excuse me. And I think this is the beginning, Ted, of political upheaval that we're going to see in Tanzania.

You know, in the United States, at least in the U.S. government, there's long been this belief that Tanzania, is one of those democratic or pseudo-democratic West Africa, sorry, East African countries that we can rely on. And it's not. It's not. It has these fascist tendencies just like so many other countries have. And I think it's going to get worse before it gets any better. Are we going to see some sort of some equivalent of an African spring? You know what? I hadn't thought of that, but that's absolutely possible. Sure. It's absolutely possible. With a ripple effect over post-colonial Africa. And people get to a point where they just, they can't take it anymore. And if you're hungry

and you're oppressed, the only place to go is the street. Because I mean, the center of gravity, right, like in the post-colonial era, was this sort of these, you know, former black liberation movements that basically took over. Then we went into second and third generation, like the sons and daughters of those sons and grandchildren of those leaders who were charismatic in the 1960s and 70s and then the corruption got really out of control and now it's full blown right there's no there's not much left except just the slogans from that yeah yeah yeah that's right that is right well guys thanks everyone for tuning in just thank you just a reminder please contribute to Robbie Aid. It is putting it up on the screen. GiveSendgo.com slash West Glacier Gaming.

We are here Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. Eastern time. Little housekeeping, John and I will be back here Wednesday at 9 a.m. Showtime will be on Thursday, but Thursday, John, you're out. I'm out. So friend of the show and my best friend, Scott Stantis, the editorial cartoonist for the Chicago Tribune, will be sitting in for John on Thursday morning at 9th. 9 a.m. and John will be back on Friday, rested and ready, I hope. And we're looking forward to all that. Thanks. Please stay tuned for the TMI show with me, Ted Raul and Manila Chan. That's coming up right after this. And you can just, if you're in the Rumble chat, it'll just steal you and take you way away and you can never escape. Well, maybe that's not quite true. Enjoy. All right. Thanks, everyone. And take care. Now I need to sit. I need to hit our little end stream thing. Yeah, then I found it. Yay. Okay.