DeProgram with John Kiriakou and Ted Rall - DeProgram with Ted Rall and John Kiriakou: “France In Crisis”

Episode Date: September 8, 2025

France teeters on the brink of chaos as Prime Minister François Bayrou's government collapses after just nine months, signaling chronic political instability amid a ballooning debt crisis. Across the pond, the Supreme Court signs off on Trump administration ethnic-profiling arrests in Los Angeles, enabling ICE to target based on broad criteria like speaking Spanish or congregating at day labor spots. Join us on the DeProgram show with political cartoonist Ted Rall and CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou for this vital dissection of two powerful nations fighting over their identities.French Government Collapse: What is France? A nation of cherished rights and privileges? Or a lean, mean American-style place where life keeps getting harsher? The National Assembly answers that question with a crushing 364-194 no-confidence vote, rejecting Bayrou’s ask for $51 billion in savings amid a $198 billion deficit at 5.8% of GDP and 114% debt-to-output ratio. Far-right and left alliances oppose austerity measures, pressuring lame-duck Macron (15% approval rating) to call elections or appoint one of their own.SCOTUS OKs LA Raids: The Supreme Court dumps a district judge's order limiting Trump administration ICE raids in Los Angeles, allowing ethnic profiling criteria like Spanish-speaking or day labor. Critics highlight unconstitutional "roving" patrols targeting stereotypes at car washes and Home Depot lots, risking sweeps of citizens in a half-Hispanic city. Dissenting justices decry racial profiling, while the 6-3 ruling backs "common sense" questioning amid 3,000-arrest quotas.Trump Told To Pay Up: A federal appeals court upholds E. Jean Carroll's $83 million defamation verdict against Trump, now growing with 9% interest for calling her assault claims a hoax. The panel finds his five-year malice "unprecedented," rejecting presidential immunity and affirming punitive damages for reputational and emotional harm. Trump denies wrongdoing and appeals to the Supreme Court.Jerusalem Bus Stop Attack: Two West Bank Palestinians kill six Israelis in a Ramot Junction shooting, injuring others before responders kill them. European leaders like Macron condemn the violence, linking it to Gaza war and pushing a Palestinian state. Trump Pushes School Prayer Guidelines: Trump rolls out Department of Education guidelines promoting prayer in public schools, countering "anti-religious propaganda". Echoing campaign promises, he builds on prior allowances for student expressions during non-instructional time, defying 1962 bans on state-sponsored prayer. He stresses reviving Judeo-Christian principles to strengthen the nation.

Hey, John, long time, no C. Right. And I'll tell you, I'll be honest with you. You and I talked at, what, 12 to 1? Yeah. I did some stuff, computer stuff from 1 to 2, went right to sleep and woke up five minutes ago. So I'm basically the person that you see all day today. All day.

I hope I'm not a disappointment. Today's Ted Day. And you know, Ted, sometimes, sometimes when we're waiting. for the 10-minute countdown to finish. I go on what is literally my favorite website on the internet, and that is findagrave.com. I use Find a Grave a lot to help guide the research in my book, right, to decide who to put in the book.

And I know most of the people who are important enough to be on Find a Grave as a famous person. There's one who's listed as having her death date today that I think people would be interested in. It's Greta Zimmer Friedman. And all it says is pop culture icon. Okay, who the heck is Greta Zimmer Friedman? And she's buried here at Arlington Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia.

Well, get this. It says she and her sisters were among the last Jews to make it out of Austria when the Nazis were in the process of ending emigration. She made it out to the United States. She was, let's see, 12 years old when she got the visa. She was 15 years old when she finally settled with her family in New York City, got a job as a dental assistant. On August 14th, 1945, she was working for dental.

J.D. and J.L. Burke on Lexington Avenue in Manhattan, there were rumors that the war was going to end that day. And since she wasn't far from Times Square, she thought about walking over to see for herself if the rumors were true. When she got there, she was suddenly grabbed by a sailor. Hashtag, me too. Kissed exuberantly and just as suddenly left. She had no idea that an Associated Press photographer, took a picture of the sailor, you know, like honor, kissing her, but it became that iconic image of Times Square on V on VJ Day. On VJ Day, Victory of Japan Day. That's amazing.

Front page of Life magazine and everywhere else. So interesting. It says here, front page of... She is a pop culture icon. She is. And it was on the front page of Life magazine. And in fact, later on, 20 years later, Life magazine called it the most iconic cover it had ever had in the history of Life magazine. She was misidentified for years as the VJ Day nurse.

She wasn't a nurse. She was a dental assistant. But anyway, she brought a copy of the picture. She was wearing an all-white uniform. That's right, with the hat and everything. She brought a copy of the picture to Albert Eisenstatt who took the picture. And she said, I need for you to acknowledge that this is me because nobody believes me when I say it was me. And he said, I recognize you.

That was definitely you. And then she said in an interview later, it was kind of fun to be world famous even for a moment because it was totally accidental. Fame for just being there. And it says here she died. On this date, September 8th, 2016 in Richmond, Virginia, at the age of 92, and she was cremated in her ashes and turd at Arlington Cemetery with her husband, Misha Elliott Friedman. That's very cool.

Although I still think she should have been buried at Times Square in a mausoleum as far as I'm concerned. She probably should have been. But this is why I write these cemetery books. I mean, the stories that people have are just fascinating to me. I love it. amazing well nothing we're going to talk about today is probably going to rise quite to that level but let's see what we can do the government of france has collapsed yeah the Supreme court has handed trump another victory in his battle against immigration uh however he got hosed in a federal appeals

court he still has to pay jean carroll 83 million bucks there's that jerusalem bus stop attack we'll talk about the implications there trump's pushing school prayer dying to hear what you think about that But first, there was some, the breaking news is that the House Oversight Committee has collected some Epstein documents. Yeah. House Democrats are starting to release some of those documents. And most notably, they released this. So this is, of course, Epstein was born in 1953. And in 2003, for the occasion of his 50th birthday, his friend,

put together, maybe Just Lane did this, I would imagine, put together a birthday book. And they were asked to do a page in honor of Jeffrey. And they did this, and Donald Trump allegedly did this. I'll get into the allegedly. I don't know, I mean, I learned this from my lawsuit, that there's a big difference. You can't trust a Xerox copy as being authentic, you know, but I'm wondering who has the original. It certainly looks like Donald Trump's signature. And I'm going to say that's one who used to be a banker and had to look at handwriting analysis.

It certainly looks, and who also is an artist, I'm going to say whoever signed that also probably drew that too. If you just look at the quality of the line. But it is fascinating to see the content of this thing. We were talking about this before we went on the air with producer Robbie. about how, you know, like, what does it all mean, right? So I'm going to read it for people who can't read it. It says it's a picture of a woman's torso. It's his voiceover.

There must be more to life than having everything. Donald, it's all like a script. Yes, there is, but I won't tell you what it is. Jeffrey, nor will I, since I also know what it is. Donald, we have certain things in common, Jeffrey. Jeffrey, yes, we do, come to think of it. Donald, enigmas never age. Have you noticed that? Jeffrey. As a matter of fact, it was clear to me the last time I saw you. Donald, a pal is a wonderful thing. Happy birthday. And may every day be another wonderful secret. I would not call that a Democrat hoax. I would say that Donald Trump has to grab this thing by the horns. You know, weeks ago, weeks ago, Ted, you and I were talking.

talking about this. And I said that there was a guy, Bloomingdale, I forget his first name, but he was Ronald Reagan's best friend and he was part of the Reagan kitchen cabinet. And he died. He died on top of his girlfriend who was 50 years younger than he was. And so there was a worse ways to go. Indeed. But I mean, if you're Mrs. Bloomingdale, this is going to be a problem. So later on in the Washington Post, there was an article saying that journalists had spoken to these White House insiders that the knee-jerk reaction was going to be that Reagan would deny ever being close to Bloomingdale. He was just a guy, you know, yeah, sure, he was in some of these meetings, but we weren't really close. It was just one of those things. And then somebody said, wait a minute, wait a minute.

if we lie and say that you weren't closed, that's going to be the story. And so what they ended up doing is they released a statement under Reagan's signature saying Bloomingdale was one of my best friends. He was a loyal friend for many years. We were close. We did this together. We did that together. Our wives were close.

The circumstances of his passing are unfortunate. But that's something between him. and his god and people are like you know what that was the perfect response yeah good for ronald ragan it's exactly the opposite of what donald trump is doing right now with this geoffrey epstein thing just come clean say look i was friendly with epstein i didn't know he was a pedophile and when i found out he was a pedophile i cut off all contact and i banned him from mara lago so yeah okay i i sent this silly uh whatever this is birthday card but we were friends at the time.

After that, we weren't friends. Just be honest about it. Calling it a Democrat hoax just makes him look stupid. And it makes him look like he's covering up. Yeah, I mean, look, it's one of these things. Can we, could we go to court and say that he definitely drew and wrote that? No. I mean, even if we had the analysis of the pen, of the ink that was used, we have access to the original.

We still couldn't prove it. But you and I both know he wrote that. And we both know he drew that, right? I mean, there's no question. And so, I mean, look, Houdini, thank you very much for the generous donation. Thank you. You know, the Houdini said doesn't sound like Trump. I got to agree with that.

I mean, as far as we know, it doesn't sound like anything Trump would say or write. I will argue about the pen. It looks like the signature was done with a cheap pen. The Don only used Montblanc, top of the line pens. no he uses El Marcos and he uses We've seen him use sharpies Yeah he

This right here is what he's been Yeah he's using sharpies Yeah here we go This is what he uses So So that's a that's a sharpie Believe me I know my pens And yeah I mean I think he signed it

He likes the Sharpie because it's fat The Mont Blanc wouldn't make a big thick line like that No matter what I have one So I'm just telling you, I know. And the, yeah, so I think that the question here is, who wrote it? Did he have someone else write it? I took note of the fact that it was laid out in the shape of a woman's torso on purpose, right?

So someone laid it out. This was probably done by computer because it was 2003, but it looks almost typeset. It's meant to look like an old book. Now, of course, obviously the question is, and now I thought this was. was interesting. I think very clearly, this is the work of someone who is trying to put on errors. The question is, is it as a joke? Like, I'm going to pretend to be snooty? Or are you really trying to pass yourself off as fancier than you are? And of course, the big question is, what's your little secret that you and Jeffrey have in common, Donald? And I mean, look,

it could be anything. I mean, I'm not going to name the thing that comes to mind. It could be that we know the thing that comes to mind but it could be financial it could be it could be about something really innocuous like you both love chess or whatever but they've got a little secret just it just come clean with it and then move on i i just don't understand these responses at all i just don't get it well it's like it's always deny deny deny right like always but the problem is that it's not credible and then you get the drip drip drip which was is always the mistake. Anyway, I'm looking forward to more.

It also strikes me as like, these are little children. These are like little boys, you know, little boys with their billions of dollars, you know, just so pleased with themselves. It's true, man. Oh my God. And then what's, Bill Clinton has to be enjoying this too, because so long as, as, as,

People like us or anybody in media are talking about Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein, that means they're not talking about Bill Clinton and Jeffrey Epstein. Yeah. Unbelievable. It's true. All right. Well, in somewhat more serious news, the government of France has collapsed. So which you predicted.

You predicted it a couple of days ago, Friday or Thursday. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, I mean, and I think I called it. pretty much as soon as François Bayroux was appointed prime minister. So basically, this is looking, France is looking increasingly like Italy in the 70s, where their governments are collapsing.

It's been two years. This is government number five on the way out in two years, right? So Beiru is a center. They call him a centrist. Fine. Fair enough. I would call him a center right guy, but hell, I'm a commie. So, so like, so the point is, basically, but this is, but this is,

really important, right? So basically, where do we even start with this? So the president of France, right, Macron, he has to now appoint, he doesn't have to call an election. He has to appoint someone who can form a government. The pickle for him is who's going to do it. I mean, so Marine Le Pen says that her protege, the young guy, he's ready to step up and do it. There is no fucking way in the world that President Macron is going to let that happen. Then over on the far left, the left alliance says, well, we're ready to govern. Jean-Luc-Milancheon is like, I'm right here, right here. And again, there's no fucking way.

Emmanuel Macron is going to let that happen either. Which leaves him with the usual hassle of boring, corporatist, banker, centrist, but those guys, they all know they're doomed because they can't. can't govern because the same thing is going to happen to them. Not to mention, there's only two years left on Macron's term, and he's term limited out. And so he has nowhere to turn. And this really does make it, John, a political crisis on par with 1958. And people don't know this story because it's pretty obscure. My mom was living in Paris in 1958. And basically, the Fourth Republic's last government just couldn't form a government. And there was a

crisis also simultaneously going on with France's war in Algeria, which wasn't going well at the same time. And so while all this was happening, nobody knew what was going to happen. Well, one fine day, my mom told me, and I've read the story elsewhere, the newspapers didn't appear at the corner newsstand. And when you went to turn on the television, television, there was just La Maceaes playing on a loop with the French flag. And when you put on the radio, there was just the Mousséez playing on a loop. This is right out of a Soviet premiership death. Correct. Or out of like a third world coup. Yes. So three days went by. And you know, there must have been 20 daily newspapers in Paris in in 1958. Three days go

by, people are just like wondering what the hell is going on. And after three days, the TV comes back on and self-appointed new president Charles de Gaulle announces that he has, he's going to create the Fifth Republic, call for a new constitutional convention, and solve the crisis basically by kind of force of personality. So it was a coup. France had a coup in 1958. And, you know, he basically aligned all the powers that be behind the scenes, turned off the media. And then, so it's, we're not going to see the media.

Basically, he turned off the media. It's incredible. But you can't do that now. So, but Macron's not really in a very different situation than they were in there in the late 50s. I don't know where he goes from here. And the thing is, this is a big deal because it's about literally what kind of country France wants to be. I mean, France, unlike the United States, has always defined itself as a country that's based on rights and privileges from being a citizen.

Being a citizen means like the American Express Card commercial membership has its privileges. You're a French citizen. You can retire a decent lifestyle at the age of 62 and go all the way to your death and never be sleeping. outside or dumpster diving. You know, you, you can, your kids can go to college basically for free. You know, you're never going to be spending, you're never going to incur massive medical debt or student loan debt. You know, you're protected.

And the cent, and Macron is about the opposite of that. It's about trying to Americanize things and basically point to the national debt and say, we need austerity. And both the far left, predictably, and the far right, little bit less predictably are aligned against austerity against the center corporatists represented by Macron. Macron's at 15% approval rating right now. He and Eric Adams should be friends. They should hang out. They've got the same polls. So this is a big deal. I mean, France is along with Germany, one of the two founding members of the EU. It's an incredibly, it's a permanent member of the Security

Council. It is an important country. And they don't know what to do. And what's funny is, I don't even know, is it, is the debt really that bad or is this just all in their minds? I don't know the answer. I have a question for you, too, Ted. And maybe you've answered this before and I don't recall. Well, it's kind of a two-part question. Number one, why is Marine Le Pen not permitted to run, even though she's, you know, she inherited this party from her father? It's essentially their family party.

Number two, would you attribute the popularity of the far right to the fact that Macron has tried to squelch them? Or is this some sort of a reaction against immigration or against the growing number of Muslims in France? Well, yeah, I'll start with the last one first. Yeah, I think the, I mean, look, immigration's front and center here. But Le Pen, you know, when you hear that, you know, when people hear that she's not allowed to run, they assume it's like her father who got busted for anti-Semitism, you know, basically Holocaust revisionism and Holocaust denialism. And that's illegal in France, in front under French law. You're just not allowed to say that the Holocaust didn't happen or question the narrative.

And so the, but with Marine Le Pen, this is really, it's about embezzlement. And it's a little bit like the lawfare that was waged. Yeah. So basically, a court found that both, in Paris, found that both Marine Le Pen and other members of her party, which is the national rally, misused EU funds because basically the EU provides matching funds for running for EU office. And instead of using it to campaign and for the things that they're supposed to use it for, she used it, they used it to pay staff. So she was, she was sentenced to a five-year base. on holding any public office. And she faces two years in prison.

Four year prison term total. She's appealing currently. And she had to pay, I don't know if she's actually paid it or not, $100,000 euros. So she's got Jordan Bardella is her, like, protege. And, you know, by the way, that relationship feels a little bit like Iron Rand and her predilection for younger dudes.

I don't know if there's anything sexual there at all, but it kind of looks like it. But, you know, who knows it's France, anything's possible. But, yeah, that's why she can't run. She can't run this time. She can't run in 2027. She could run next time. But, you know, that's going to be five years later.

Right, right, right. I get it. So it's a, so it is super, super interesting. Thank you, Matthew Blair Raines for the donation. What do we think of the Franca Freak? has it actually delivered any benefits to France or is it just a way for them? I'm going to answer the question.

I think it's watered down neo-colonialism. Yeah. That's it. I know a small fraction of what you know about France. And I would say that's 100% it. You've got, yeah, you've got Greece well covered. And many, many other countries. So, yeah, so I think we're going to, but basically this is

about the French are deciding, you know, what do they want to be? And there's definitely a move towards austerity. Like, you know, we can't keep spending this way. I mean, you could also argue that maybe the French wouldn't be in so much trouble if they weren't promising, for example, to help the Ukrainians out, or if they weren't also, you know, doing without Russian oil and gas. Yes. You know, they would, that hurt their economy. Yes, indeed. But France has structural problems anyway. They have a very very. They have a very very, very low birth rate, even worse than ours.

And they've been suffering with that shit for a century or more. I mean, basically, they never recovered from World War I in that respect. Oh, my God. Greece is in the same predicament where it has the largest population decline on a percentage basis in all of Europe, not just the European Union, but in all of Europe. And it, well, it started decades ago, of course. but it accelerated during the economic collapse. And I read an editorial in one of the Greek papers the other day,

and it was talking about where educated Greeks are going. They're going to the United States, to the UK, to Germany, to Australia. But it says when 1,500 educated Greeks, people with master's degrees, law degrees, MDs, PhDs, when 1,500 of them moved to Turkey, for more opportunity, you know you're screwed. That is very, very, that's funny and sad. Terrible. Well, good luck to the French.

I hope they can pull through this. Yeah, I mean, honestly, their big mistake, I think, was, you know, the French get into trouble whenever they trust a single man. They, you know, they trusted Philippe Pettin in 1940. Like, don't worry, I got you. I'll take care of this. I'll be your shield. That didn't work out well.

It didn't work out well in 58 when they trusted de Gaul or in 68 when they trusted de Gaul. You know, the French are better off with like a more, you know, hedging their bets. They trusted Macron. I mean, they basically gave, they put him in. He was a kid. And they gave him a parliament of all of his own. And like, basically he didn't know what to do. And he didn't do shit with it.

Yeah, he blew it. crazy so yeah well this is one of those like we'll just have to watch and see what happens next by american standards like 10 years ago i remember thinking oh my god the greek prime minister's 10 years younger than i am it's like what am i doing wrong i must be a bum or something hey you know the way things are looking you might get that you the nod for the french prime minister job no one wants it right no one no one in the center on the center right wants it. They know they're going to look like a fool. Yes. Yes, indeed. And the thing is, the French care much more than Americans do about their dignity. It's part of their culture. All right, what I'm going to talk about next? You want to do Jean Carroll? You want to? Yeah, let's do Jean Carroll. That should be an easy one. Easy.

Deep respect for Gene Carroll. She has so much, I was going to say she has balls of steel, but that doesn't make any sense. She has so much inner fortitude that she stuck this out. She continued her suit. The political tide turned against her. She didn't care. She kept suing.

And today she won. What was it, Ted? 83 and a half. million dollars, I think, or 85.3 million. 83, yeah, but who's counting? Right. And today was a day where, today was a day that was very good for Donald Trump in the federal courts, especially in the Supreme Court.

He won pretty much everything except that. And that was a personal slight against him. Yeah. So good for E. Jean Carroll. Yeah, I mean, it must have been pretty humiliating. Although I do kind of have a problem with the idea that, you know, he, Donald Trump had this alleged incident back in the mid-90s. How do you defend yourself?

30 years ago, right? And how does he say, like, okay, so by all accounts, they hooked up and went into the dressing room at, what was it, at Lord and Taylor? Lord and Taylor, yeah. And, you know, and so she said, and basically they had sex. The question is, did they, you know, was it consensual or not? Right. I mean, how does Donald Trump defendants?

himself from that. I don't know. You can't defend yourself. Yeah, it's kind of a problem. I was asked in the chat here, whether I draw my own cartoons, I'm like, look, if I were going to hire

someone to draw cartoons for me, they'd look a lot better than the ones I do. So, here, let me answer that question with some visual evidence here. Like, that's that's this week's cartoons. You know, draw,

I draw them by black and white and then scan them in and do them in color. Hey, can I answer some comments from both Houdini and Starline? They're talking about real estate in Greece. I am absolutely friggin obsessed with real estate in Greece. And I use this app every single day. It's called Spittogatos. It means house cat. Cute.

Because I fully intend to buy real estate in Athens. Here's the problem. The prices of real estate were going like a rocket straight up because, as they point out quite correctly, you invest 200,000 euros or 250,000 euros, and you get a golden visa, right? So Athens real estate was being bought up, like all of it, by Russians, Chinese, and Israelis.

Not because they want to live in Athens, but because just in case things turned to shit and they needed to run somewhere, that's a pretty nice place. Plan B. What happened was, since they're not living there, they turn all those units into Airbnbs. I can't even tell you the last time I stayed in a hotel in Athens. I always stay in Airbnb's.

So the result of that was that there's now no residential real estate available for rent. Right? All of the empty apartments are now Airbnbs and they're all owned by foreigners. So the government passed a law a couple of weeks ago. No more Airbnbs. The ones that are Airbnb now, okay. No new real estate can be converted into Airbnb's inside the city of Athens. And prices now have fallen like a stone. I've been looking at this one condo. It's on the eighth floor of a building. and the view of the Parthenon is like a punch in your face. It's like right there in front of you, right? Exactly the kind of place that I want.

It went up to 600,000 euros, and it's back down to 250,000 euros. Like a roller coaster. So now's the time. Now's the time. Wow. And interest rates are going to start to drop, including in Europe. Yeah, that's right. That's right.

And if you're an EU national, you can get a loan, even an investment loan for real estate. I'd like to pay cash if I have the opportunity to do it. But anyway, just a thought. And I'm afraid, no, I don't. John, you told a story about Greece and cats last week. And I already forgot what it was. Yeah. Do you remember?

I don't remember. There are no rats in Athens because there are 150,000 cats or whatever it is, a million cats. I don't know. And, you know, tourists love the cats. They'll come up to your, to your table at a restaurant, and you give them a little smelt or a shrimp or whatever, and they purr and, you know, brush up against you. But as a result, there are no rats in Greece. It's just a completely alien thought to, you know, think that, oh, you sit down at a restaurant, you see a rat run across the pavement. And here in Washington, we're second only to New York in the fact, you remember when we were kids, Ted, the

movies uh willard and ben oh yeah yeah that's we're living it now yeah that's true the places are overrun with rats and i mean they're big i saw one the other day i'm telling you without any exaggeration this thing was the size of a small dog never in my life ever have i seen a rat this big i'll tell you another thing real quickly and then i'll move on i was having trouble sleeping the other night because i'm old and i guess this is like life from now on so So it's 1 o'clock in the morning. I'm sitting in my chair right over here watching TV. And my phone rings.

And it's a friend of my father's. So I answered the phone and I said, I said, Jim, are you okay? One o'clock in the morning. Jim, I said, are you okay? He said, no. My son is stranded in Washington, D.C. with a buddy of his. They went into the 7-Eleven and somebody got into their van and stole the van, took everything. Their luggage was in the back, their passports, their laptops, everything.

everything they have nothing i said okay no problem i'll pick them up where are they he gave me an address i said what in the world are they doing that part of town like i wouldn't go to that part of town the daytime well because they're idiots and they went on hotel dot com hotels dot com and it was the cheapest hotel i said yeah well it's the reason it's the cheapest hotel i said tell them i'll be there in 30 minutes i'll pick them up so i speed over to southeast washington i get there finally it was about 1.45 in the morning. Oof. Better you than me. They're both 18 years old and they're panicked.

And I thought they were panicked because they just had all their shit stolen. They're in a terrible part of town. That was not why they were panicked. They were panicked because while they were waiting for me, they noticed a homeless guy sleeping on the ground and rats were eating his toes. No way. I said, yeah, I said, welcome to Washington. We are rat central these days.

And I don't know why nobody wants to do anything about it. And they were like, we never saw anything like that in our lives. Oh, I never want to come back here. I was like, well, yeah, exactly. So I went to, when I went to college, I was expelled after my junior year. What? Why? It's true.

Well, when you interview me, I'll tell you. Okay. It was kind of over a wart. But I think I told you about the wart story. but I was expelled and so I moved in with two other guys who'd both been expelled at the same time and

if we lived together, we had adventures two and a half years anyway, when it all went sideways two of us, we each had girlfriends, we moved in with our girlfriends and then the third one Chris, he moved out to Jersey

City and he moved into this dump that and he said, and I was like, how's it going? I talked to him on the phone. He goes, it's not good. At night, the rats run over me. And I'm like, what? He goes, yeah, the place is full of giant rats. And when a New Yorker tells you giant rats, that doesn't mean like this, right? It means big. And so he's like, he goes, yeah, they run across me and they bite me at night while I'm sleeping. And I'm like, I would leave. I'd be sleeping outside before I did this. He was, so I'm like, well, you got to do something. He's like, what do I do?

I don't know what to do. And so he said he was at one point going through 30 glue traps a day with with a day. A day. A day. I mean, that's a lot of rats. So I was like, dude, you got to go down to the, I'm like, you got to go down to the pound and get like three big Tomcats. And, you know, my, my mom taught me that like the best mousers have the longest tails. And she's like, so it's like, look for a cat with a long tail.

because they can jump more, right? The tail is like, it gives them that balance. Like monkeys have a long tail, like tigers, any animal that can jump far. Better jumping, better mousing. So anyway, he followed my advice. And then he died on 9-11, but that's a whole different story. Oh, my God.

Yeah. What a story. You know, I know. But I always thought about the biting. It's like, I mean, that's a horror show. I mean, John, I had a job in. in freshman year on the docks as a part-time longshoreman. And for two weeks, the first two weeks is basically the hazing period.

And they're like, okay, so you have to prove yourself. So I think he'll like this story. So my boss, he's like, today go out, here's a bag. We poison all the rats. And the wolf rats are massive. Giant. But they poison them. And then go pick up the dead ones and throw them in the

bag. I'm like, all right. So I go out there. I pick them up by the tail. Oh, Ted. Drop them into the, into the bag. There's hundreds of them. And I picked up one and it wasn't dead. It whipped around and bit me like right in the small of my arm. Right here. It sunk. It sunk its teeth and it would not let go. And of course, as you can imagine, I'm screaming. I'm all by myself. I've got to solve this problem by myself. So I bashed it and bashed it and bashed it against a pylon until it let go. And I was pleading like all over the place. I go to the office and the guy's like, Teddy, you can go ahead and go home early. And something told me that that wouldn't be a good idea. So I was just like, okay, I'm like, no, I'm good.

Just like, let me just wrap myself up. I'll finish my ship. And I really did need the money. I was a scholarship kid, you know, at a second most expensive college in the country. And it was about to lose all my financial aid due to the Reagan budget cuts. So I needed that money. So anyway, the point is I bound myself up. And so the next day when I came back to work, my boss goes, you know, if you hadn't, if you'd agreed to go home early, I would have never let you come back. And I'm like, you're a real charmer. But Ted, you must have gone to

the hospital. I didn't. No, I couldn't afford it. Are you kidding me? Oh, my God. I was always worried that I might, you know, for like weeks, I was like, what if I got rabies or? Yeah. Right. Or whatever rats carry. They carry all kinds of stuff. No, this is one of the many reasons that I'm for socialized health care. You should be able as a human being to walk into a clinic and get that taken care of. It would have cost hundreds of dollars back in the early 80s. There was no way. I didn't have it. Yeah, healthcare is a human right. I'm 100% with you. Healthcare is a human right. It should be free for everybody.

And man, so for me, when I think of rats, I always think of that. And, you know, it was a tough job. The test was that you had to carry a 200-pound bag, 200 yards. They didn't care how. On your shoulders in front of you. On your shoulders was the best way. That's how I did it. Yeah, it's the best way.

But it was like, that's a lot of weight. only weighed like 160 at the time. So, you know, it was not easy. And but the pay was insane. So it was it had to be. It needed to be. Yeah. Yeah. It was like it was it was $50 an hour cash. Cash. No. And you went home and the terrifying thing is you'd go home after a 12 hour shift with 600 bucks in your pocket, you know, in on the New York City subway in 1981. Oh my God. Yeah. You know, You're a walking bank. Yeah, where's Bernie gets when you need him? Totally, totally.

No, I was really, really wanted a gun, but couldn't get one. Anyway, so with that, speaking of gunfire, so we should talk about this remote junction shooting. So two Palestinians from the West Bank shot and killed six Israelis who were waiting for the bus at remote junction. How this is covered depends on the political leaning of the press organization. But basically, Somersnay calling it Jerusalem. But the truth is, it's really occupied territory, right? It's in East Jerusalem. Yeah, they keep saying Jerusalem, but it's in a Jewish settlement in East Jerusalem.

Which is the West Bank. It's the occupied West Bank. Which is the West Bank, correct. Yep. So Emmanuel Macron, again, in the news here on Deep Program. And by the way, please like, follow and share the show. We didn't do the proper intros this time,

but thank you very much for your support and all that. And thank you to Chrism ZTC with a question we can get to in a second, but thank you very much for the $5. Yes, thank you indeed. So, yeah, I mean, so the thing is, what do we do? I mean, so Macron is saying this is another reminder of why we need to put an end to the violence, and this is all related to the Gaza war.

I got to say what was notable to me was I can't imagine a year ago that any politician as mainstream as Emmanuel Macron would ever have been able to say something like this following a terrorist attack that it was anything other than just a cruel, horrible event that shouldn't have happened and never to tie it into the Palestinian cause.

That's a big change. Yeah, I think it is too. you're going to see, you know, the predictable coverage in places like the New York Post or even the more mainstream media like the Washington Post, the New York Times, even the L.A. Times. But I was surprised that Macron came out and said what he said. Yeah, I'm a little bit torn over this because if we're going to be a little bit. opposed to attacks on civilians, then we've got to be opposed to attacks on civilians. At the same time, if my land were occupied and my house was taken over by some strangers from New Jersey who just

came and said, you leave now, this is our house. Yeah. I don't know what I would do. I would probably do what these guys did. They were both. shot and killed on the scene. And the Israelis, you know, said the predictable things. Netanyahu went to the site of the shooting and gave a speech. But you're right. The bottom line here is we all have to work together to not just end this conflict, but to try to protect Palestinian human rights because the Israeli government isn't going

to do it. And I don't think the Israeli government really cares that much about the safety and security of the Israeli people. I think that's right. Angela, thank you so much for the donation. Thank you, Angela. Do you want to answer

Chrism TC? Yeah, Andrew Bustamante. So Andrew Andrew recently came out with a book in which he single-handedly you know, brought down

some mole. Funny that we never saw any reporting about any mole in the CIA. But he claims to have brought down a mole. He also went on the Julian Dory podcast, and he waterboarded Julian. Incorrectly, I might add. And I called Julian. I was like, dude, what are you doing?

You did it wrong. And Bustamante's got his hair pulled back. Anyway, so he came out with this book last week, and he says that he took down this mole. and then he says that he waterboarded people when he was at the agency. I don't think any of this is true. Andrew Bistamante was a targeting analyst, just like his wife. They're both targeting analysts. And as a targeting analyst, your job is to go through thousands and thousands, maybe even millions of pieces of data to try to discern the location of a target.

so that either your special activities people can go kill him or kidnap him or your operations people can go try to recruit him, right? Bustamante was not a case officer. He was not an operations officer. He was what's called a sue, a special operations officer. Most of the sues couldn't make it through operational training. I don't know why he was a sue, but most of them just could not cut the ops, training. A Sioux then serves as an assistant to the operations people. So if I was going to go

do a particularly dangerous meeting, I would say, hey, Andrew, put together a surveillance team and a counter surveillance team. I had this meeting. I'm going to do my surveillance detection route kickoff at 6 o'clock. The meeting's at 9. Make sure I don't get shot. Or at the end of a particularly long night, I'd say, Andrew, or whoever the Sioux was assigned to me, I'm tired, I got to do another surveillance detection route. When you get back to the embassy, do me a favor and do my accounting paperwork. But running around the world catching moles and then randomly flying out to secret sites to waterboard people, uh-uh. No. One thing he's very good at is what at the agency we used to call SSP's shameless self-promotion.

We were taught early on you have to relentlessly promote yourself as a Superman because everybody else is promoting himself as a Superman and you're competing against these people in the promotion panels. One thing he's good at is coming across as Superman. And if you're outside the agency and you're doing it, then it's easy because there's no way anybody can check your bona fidees. All you have to do is say,

up, take my word for it, it's classified. And then that's it. I'm going to spontaneously pop Robbie in because Robbie has something to say. He wants to just remind people to follow us over on Rumble and why. And I think it's frankly just faster to just have Robbie do it. Robbie, sorry about this, but not sorry. Go ahead.

Howdy, no, it's a pretty doggone mercenary and capitalist. Rumble pays us more. Yeah. And so if y'all go over to Rumble, if you'll follow there, Rumble actually pays John and Ted based on watch hours and not just the pennies that that YouTube call pays. So if you just go over there, watch the show over there, they get paid more.

And we've got to help John get that house in Greece. So let's do it. Thanks. Thanks, Robbie. Yeah, yeah, thanks. All right. I know, like my plan to move to France is not looking as exciting as one of the chatters pointed out. But, you know, I mean, whatever. France will, as long as the wine is good and the food is good, which will always be true. Everything will be fine. So let's, yeah, do we want to move over to, oh, L.A. Oh, we are ready for an ad, Robbie. Go ahead and put it up when you're ready. Yeah, we should do an ad, yeah.

Okay. So, L.A., the Supreme Court has overruled the district judge. Basically, the district judge said, you guys are ethnically profiling, which, by ICE's own account, they are. And basically, there are unconstitutional roving patrols sort of basically going to car washes and Home Depot. So anyone who looks Latino, a little bit tope, you know, sound Spanish, they get questioned about, you know, hey, are you here? Do you have papers that, you know, prove that you're legal to be here? Well, the Supreme Court just basically said they overturned the lower court decision, but without comment. And so basically there's no decision.

That to me indicates that this tends to be for political reasons, right? Yeah. John, while you're chewing on that one, let me read the ad. Here we go. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I agree with you. It's political. You've probably noticed Rumble is growing fast and it's not slowing down.

They're building a real alternative to big tech that puts creators first and actually protects free speech. And now there's Rumble premium. Easy way to upgrade your experience with premium. You get ad-free viewing across the platform. No pre-rolls, no interruptions, just the content you came for, plus premium members. Unlock exclusive content like bonus videos, behind-the-scene drops, and more from your favorite creators right now rumble is offering $10 off an annual subscription just go to

rumble.com slash premium and use the promo code studio at checkout that's rumble.com slash premium promo code studio no no ads more freedom and content you actually care about that's the deal and you can also do it for five dollars and but you'll just be watching us for just one show and you wouldn't see the other stuff anyway so L.A. I mean this I mean look I think it's pretty disgusting. You know, we've talked about this before, but I think it's worth mentioning again. You know, when you're driving on a freeway near the Mexico border, or I guess this would be true also anywhere in Southern California, you may well come upon a police checkpoint where there's orange cones and there's uniformed officers who slow you down, eyeball you, and if they see

faces that look like yours or mine, they wave us past. to go but if you are Latino looking in their in their minds then they pull you over and harass you and I don't think that that if that's constitutional or if that's legal it ought not to be it should be made illegal yeah yeah I agree I agree and to tell you the truth Ted I thought it was illegal maybe maybe we're wrong maybe it's state law that prohibit cops from doing it? I don't know. But it should be.

It should be illegal. I thought, yeah, I thought ethnic profiling violated the Fourth Amendment's right against unlawful search and seizure because there's no just cause. Mm-hmm. Right? And I would. And another thing, too, is that, and this is scary.

I heard just over the weekend that that people here in D.C. have begun it's a it's a violation of the 14th amendment there it is i thought it was illegal protection clause there it is here in dc people have begun carrying their passports just because they're afraid of being scooped up yeah there was a story about a violinist for the was it the salt lake city symphony he was grabbed and held for three weeks the guy's an american he was grabbed he was grabbed held for three weeks just because just because they know they can get away with it so i don't know seriously um we have a question from the youtube feed from jace thoughts on barry weiss cashing in with cbs oh you know what i didn't realize that it happened i'll check it out do you know anything

about it no i don't know anything sorry sorry jace all right well we'll have to be that part of deprogramming we'll have to await a night uh tomorrow's show yeah look into that and uh yeah and i guess the last big story of the day unless something breaks in the next 10 minutes is um the school prayer thing so um it's not like um there's ever been a prohibition against practicing your religion in school you've always been allowed to pray um i was always surprised uh i only went to public schools K through 12. I was always surprised that you could, that prayer groups were allowed on campus as an after school activity.

Totally okay to do that. But Trump wants to go further and he wants to promote prayer in public schools. He says there's too much anti-religious propaganda in schools. Obviously we have separation of church and state, so therefore you can't have state-sponsored prayer in schools. John, the part that I want to talk to you about, you're a man of faith, is, isn't it, what's fucked up and weird to me is not, is less the fact that Trump wants to do this than the fact that he himself is so brazenly not religious,

not religious in any way. He doesn't, he doesn't go to church. No, he doesn't have a spiritual advisor. Like, many presidents had Billy Graham meet with them personally. Many, yes. it's like he doesn't talk about scripture he can't reference it he doesn't know remember he was asked name a line from the bible one line from the bible yeah couldn't even do jesus wept right couldn't do anything the the shortest literally the shortest verse in the entire bible couldn't do one and jesus wept right and so i mean you know this

i mean he doesn't know and he's not a religious man nothing wrong with not being a religious man. Beautiful thing. Many Americans are not religious. But isn't it weird for people who are Christian to think this? I mean, to see this? I mean, how does he get away with it

with his people? I know the whole God works in mysterious ways argument and that like, you know, evangelicals, some evangelicals think that, you know, Trump is doing God's bidding even though he's, you know, even though he's balls deep in Stormy Daniels. I don't

No, I don't get it. Can you explain this to me at all? I think that he thinks that most Christians are suckers. I hate to be cynical like that, but I believe this. He thinks most Christians are suckers. You remember when he walked out of the White House, there's this near riot situation. The chairman of the joint Steve, Chiefs his staff goes out with him, and he goes to St. John's Church, which is directly across the street from the White House, where every president since James Madison has gone services and what's he do he holds up a bible he and he just holds it up yeah upside down later he

he autographed it right and then on fox they started selling autograph only god should be allowed to autograph the bible yeah or his or his kid but i think that it's an easy and cheap way to just rile up christians who are predisposed to support him anyhow and he realizes ah they're all suckers I'm just going to keep doing this. I really believe that. I can't, yeah, I can't argue with that at all. That sounds right to me. But I mean, Christians aren't stupid people.

No. They're no stupider than anyone else anyway. So, I mean, how is it that? I mean, they know what's going on. They know about the grift. I mean, by the way, thank you, M.W. Knox 186 for the donation. Much appreciated. Thank you. Thank you.

Right. I mean, Christians must, they know, don't they, why don't they hate him for this? I would, I would be so furious over the thought that I had been used as a political prop that I would be furious. I don't understand why he's a, how he's able to get away with this. John, this is more for you than for me, I'm sure. B.S. wants to know, can you speak to the intelligence community's role in making Western capital markets accessible to sanctioned groups via shadow banking? That's a good, that's a good question. And, you know, I think a lot of it is probably still

classified, but think of it this way. Not only, not only do the interests of the CIA sometimes diverge from the greater national interests of the United States, but they frequently diverge. I say all the time in that wonderful Netflix series, Narcos, you know,

just as the DEA guys are going to swoop in and get Pablo Escobar or whatever, the CIA Station chief throws up. Yeah, this CIA State Chief shows up and just screws the whole thing up. Well, the reason that's

in the series is because that's how it is in real life. The CIA doesn't really care what the lie is, even what U.S. lie is. And oftentimes the people that they're dealing with or the governments that they're dealing with are that are friendly to the CIA are actually hostile to the State Department, to the White House, to U.S. foreign policy. And so the CIA will arrange backdoor banking, backdoor investment, backdoor loans just to keep these outlaws going. So oftentimes the CIA is doing something that is both illegal and antithetical to American foreign policy. Somebody also asked at the very beginning, and maybe it was Star Lion, at the very beginning of the show about the role of astrology.

Has astrology ever played a role in the CIA's work? And the answer is yes, it did in the 1950s into the early 1960s as a part of that overarching M.K. Ultra program. Like every bit of craziness that you can come up with that had the MK Ultra label attached to it, they tried. That's insane. Yeah, wait, time travel. Time travel, teleportation.

LSD, all of it, because they were panicked at the idea that the Russians were doing it, too, and they were ahead of us. It's a little, I mean, is there any link at all between that and the fact that just a decade earlier, the Nazis were also interested in the occult? Yeah, there is a link because all these people in positions of authority where they don't have to report back to the public and they have unlimited or virtually unlimited budget, think, you know what, there's probably nothing to it, but just in case there is, and it'll make me a star if it leaks out. My father told me about the wackiest classified story. He had told me about a bunch of them, but I'm sure this is no longer declassified because it's so old.

But apparently, John, maybe you know about this, but apparently the Air Force was interested in insect mutations as part of Cold War. And they wanted to see if they could make bugs like houseflies, giant-sized. And the plan was to like drop 10-inch houseflies on the Soviet Union. And I was like, so what exactly did they think would happen? And he said, well, we hadn't thought it through that much. See? And basically we thought that like, and I'm like, so what?

So if we drop the 10-inch house flies on the Russians, then nobody goes outside anymore and our troops can just march into Moscow. And he's like, maybe, I don't know. And he's like, I'm like, why wouldn't the Russians just go out with bats and tennis rackets and have a great time? Also, what's going to stop these flies from coming to the United States? Exactly. I don't know. And so he said, he claimed that they actually had some success because insects, you know, they have very short lifespan. So you can have thousands of generations in a very short time.

And he said the problem, of course, was he could get them to be pretty big, but they would hatch and immediately collapse upon themselves because the exoskeleton wasn't meant to, like, scale up to that size. So basically they would hatch and collapse in a Jewish gelatinous mass. And I'm like, is there video? And he was like, there's film. I'm like, I want to see it. But it's like your text.

What kind of people are we? Oh, my God. Meanwhile, people literally, I couldn't have, you know, I couldn't go to the doctor from my rat bite. Yeah. But, you know, but that's where our money is going. Yeah, yeah.

Oh, my God. Oh, yeah, yeah. Your little dialectical boo on Rumble saying, I might remember that. They tried to put an antenna in a house cat. And don't forget, the Russians had a spy baluga. Oh, the spy baluga actually, like, transmitted data back to them.

And there are, and there's spy dolphins and porpoises, right? Yeah, that's right. And pigeons. You know, we, we trained pigeons for years to land on the windowsills of the Soviet embassy here in Washington just to pick up vibrations from, that was the problem. They land on the window sill and they're cooing and it screws up the sound. And then there's the, and then there's the Havana syndrome, right? probably oh yeah oh my god have i i i curse whoever implemented havana syndrome because my phone rings off the freaking hook from people who have havana syndrome and you know for so long i thought

ah well it's probably just a nut until friends of mine started getting it and now i have to be i'm i'm actually a believer in havana syndrome so you think that you think this was a Cuban or whatever attempt to Or American or Chinese? Yeah. I don't think it was the Cubans. Yeah, I don't.

And I'll tell you why. Because when the story- They denied it like When the story first broke, I was in Cuba. I happened to be in Cuba. And the Cubans made a huge production out of saying

we will open the books. We will open the files. We'll work with the Americans and give them everything that asked for. And that just told me that, no, this isn't the humans. Wells Campbell on YouTube is reminding us, wasn't Nancy Reagan influenced into the war on drugs by an astrologist? Yes, very much so. By the way, speaking of astrology, we now learn that due to the rotation of the Earth, we know that actually, like, all of our signs are off by about one sign from when they were

conceived 2,000 years ago. So, like, I think I'm a Virgo, but actually I'm a Leo. oh my god so that's probably what went wrong with nancy ragan and the war on drugs the astrologer was just off by roughly nine percent wow okay i'll tell you what today is an unusually clear day there's not much humidity it's going to be clear all night it also happens to be one day after the brightest orange moon of the year. So I'm going to go out there with my telescope. Why is it orange? It's just the position of the of the sun behind the earth.

If you're on the East Coast and it's nighttime. It's just one of those things. It happens once a year. And so here it is. So in China, I think it's in China. There's a lunar eclipse last night. It was a lunar eclipse last night. So I'm going to try and get some pictures tonight.

All right. Sounds good. Yeah, for people who aren't familiar, John, you have a, what do we call this? Astronomical photography? Is that? I do. Yeah. Yeah.

Astronomical photography. I've been putting them on Facebook as I do them. And they're good. Getting better and better. Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate it. It's fun.

It's time consuming. I always look at them. Thanks very much. So you have to do like long exposures, right? Yeah, long exposure. Yeah. And for people who know me personally, they know that I have an utterly irrational fear of mosquitoes. And so it's hard for me to sit out there at night for two hours dealing with mosquitoes. I freaking hate it. But, you know, we all have our cross to bear.

That's really funny. Yeah. You know, one other thing. Yeah, the night that we captured up was a beta. there were mosquitoes all over the hospital and I was freaked out by them because I couldn't take the chloroquine

because it gave me such terrible nightmares so I just stopped taking the chloroquine which prevents malaria once the malarial mosquito bites you so I'm just taking my chances with the mosquito I go into Abu Zabeda's room to wait for him to come out of surgery and it's like a cloud of mosquitoes in there I'm like, great.

So I put the ceiling fan on high blast. And this was March. It was a little bit cold, you know? So I'm sitting there like this. I'm freezing. And this FBI agent comes in. He goes, dude, it's freezing in here. What are you doing?

I said, I would rather freeze to death than be bitten by a Pakistani mosquito. I agree. Not going to happen tonight. By the way, I assume you know this following factoid, right? But mosquitoes will not fly if it's over 64 degrees. I did not know that. And it's going to be in the high 50s tonight. Okay.

You're safe. Thank you, Ted. You're welcome. And with that, thank you again, everyone, for joining us. Today's Monday, September 8th. Tomorrow, we'll be back Tuesday, 5 o'clock Eastern Time, as we are Monday through Friday, here on D-Program with me, Ted Rall, and John Kirooku. And we appreciate your donations.

Please like, follow, and share the show. As producer Robbie indicated, it is best for us. if you can watch us on Rumble. So what a lot of people are doing who aren't really that excited about Rumble is they watch us sort of simultaneously. They just have the Rumble run in the background and they watch us on you.

That works. It works. We're actually able to make a go of this. Thanks to you guys watching on Rumble. It's that important. Thank you. Star Lion is saying astrology still works ignoring the constellations

because it's really more about the seasons or something Earth-related and not star-related. All right, okay. I mean, no, lunar movements, I mean, obviously, it affects tides and all that. That has to be, that has to affect things. And cops swear by the idea of the full moon stuff.

Yeah. So more weirdness during full moons. I think it's just because you can see better and weirdos don't need a flashlight. But what do I know? All right, guys. Anyway, oh my God, what am I doing here? Why do I not have this?

Okay. All right. There we go. Thank you.