DeProgram with John Kiriakou and Ted Rall - DeProgram with Ted Rall and John Kiriakou: “Israel Goes Full Gaza”

Episode Date: August 8, 2025

It’s the end of the week but there’s no end to the drama on “DeProgram with Ted Rall and John Kiriakou,” where political cartoonist Ted Rall and CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou deprogram you from the noise and deflection used by the establishment to keep you in the dark. Ted and John answer your questions in the Rumble and YouTube feeds, but here’s the docket: • Israel Goes for the Whole Schmear: Israel’s war cabinet votes for the IDF to invade and hold ALL of Gaza, including Gaza City, ignoring military generals who say it will be a disaster. The escalation threatens even more civilian deaths and will kill most if the remaining hostages. Global condemnation grows as famine worsens with no end in sight. • Germany Starts to Ditch Israel: An incredibly reliable ally, Germany is cutting off weapons to Israel. Chancellor Friedrich Merz criticizes Israel’s Gaza genocide, hinting at recognizing Palestine. Germany’s concern over civilian suffering potentially alters regional alliances. What next in Europe? • A $50M Bounty on a President: Trump offers $50 million for information leading to the arrest of Venezuela’s President, Nicolás Maduro, twice as much as for Osama bin Laden. It’s regime change by another name. Is it also a risky diplomatic gamble? • Trump Meets Putin: Trump has a high-stakes meeting with Putin soon. He’ll ask the CIA for insights about Russia’s leader. Can U.S.-Russia relations get a reset? Any chance for a peace deal in Ukraine? What will the CIA tell him? John may have ideas. • The Migrants Who Aren’t Here: Trump wants to omit illegal immigrants from the U.S. census, potentially slashing representation and funding in the blue states and depriving agencies of information about the population. Critics say it is unconstitutional. • JD Vance Has the Lake His Way: Reminding us of Chris Christie during N.J. beach closures, Vice President JD Vance, on vacay with the fam, arranges with local authorities to adjust SW Ohio lake levels more to his liking. It’s good to be king apparent! But remember what happened to Christie. • Apple’s iOS Update Swipes Left on Democracy: Apple’s latest iOS update raises alarms that pollsters and electioneers will no longer be able to access voters. Tech’s role in civic integrity faces scrutiny.

Hey, everyone. Thanks for sticking with us through the week. It's Friday. It's August 8th, 2025. I'm Ted Rall. That's John Kariaku, and you're watching D-Program, where we try to deprogram you from all the corporate and other yes in the media and in the political world and basically keep up on what's going on. So, John, nice to see you. Good to see you, Ted. Good to see Robbie there behind you. Yep, I'm in Montana at Team Robbie, so in beautiful northwestern Montana. It's really awesome to be here. Yeah, let's get into it, right? Gaza. So the news was all day long. Yeah, bleak assessment of what was about to happen. Netanyahu's war cabinet voted yesterday as expected to authorize the IDF tube. go in and occupy all of Gaza, including Gaza City, which is sort of the last redoubt of where civilians can still live, sort of, in the rubble. The question was, what's going to happen to the

hostages and the Gazans when this happens? And basically the assessment was the hostages are all going to be killed and a lot more Gossans are going to die unnecessarily. And the genocide is going to accelerate. This whole thing really appalled the international community. And now you've seen a huge reaction. Germany announced that it was going to stop transfer of weapons to Israel. Germany is, of course, a very tight ally. Oh, yeah. Mostly due to the guilt from World War II and the Holocaust, kind of understandably. But it's also kind of stupid in some ways. But that's, you know, we can leave that for another time maybe. But anyway, John, you informed me just as we were about to go on the air

that there's been some late breaking developments here. Yeah, Benjamin Netanyahu announced just in the last 20 minutes or so that there has been such an international outcry and there has been such strong international pressure on these railies for taking this stupid decision to occupy Gaza city that they have just canceled the plan. They're not going to invade. and occupy Gaza City. Now, that doesn't really change anything. Like you said, Ted, people are just living in the rubble, literally living in rubble, probably with many thousands of dead bodies under there that haven't yet been counted.

But this is really the first time that the Israelis have responded to large-scale international pressure since this thing started. It's the first time. So I hope that these countries. and they're mostly Western countries because everybody else already supports the Palestinians. But the Western countries, I hope, will keep this up because it might be the only thing

to save some Palestinian lives. So finally, the Israelis are feeling the heat. They seemed impervious. Yeah, very much so. So I guess now the question is, what next? I mean, you know, okay, so... Can't trust them. No, well, that's clearly true.

I guess the question now is, So, okay, so if the Israelis aren't going to do that, I mean, the status quo isn't acceptable really for anyone, right? It's certainly not acceptable for the Palestinians who live there. And it's not really, from the standpoint of the Israelis, acceptable either. They don't want to leave Hamas in charge. They don't want to understandably, I think. The Palestinian Authority isn't viable for a variety of reasons. Israelis won't accept them, but that's fine.

Palestinians don't accept them either. So it's like now we're sort of, we're back at square one, right? Does this mean Germany is going to resume arms shipments, by the way? I would suspect, yes, that they would resume arms shipments. You remember the Germans, more than any other Western country, have this policy fueled by guilt, by national guilt over the Holocaust. And now they're bending over backwards and practically fighting with the Greeks to see which country can be the most pro-Israel. Greece is to starting to see some upheaval, large-scale demonstrations against the government for its support for Israel. We've already seen pictures and video of Israeli cruise ships docking, for example,

at my ancestral island of Rhodes, and Israeli tourists not being able to get off the boats because so many Greek protesters have turned out to tell them to get the hell off our island that we didn't want Israeli tourists because of the way they treat Palestinians. It's getting to the point where the government, the Mitsutaki's government, is going to have to decide if they're going to be on the side of human rights, or are they going to be on the side of, you know, splitting the oil wealth in the eastern Mediterranean with the Israelis? And so far, they're choosing the money. So we'll see. It's being ugly. But not for much longer. So Marcel has a question. What do we think, what was the line that got crossed? Was it the effect of all the string

of countries recognizing Palestine, well, you can't, you can't possibly ignore that, right? Yeah, that was a big part of it. A French announcement triggered a whole string, the UK, Canada, so on now, the Germany arms transfer threat. You know, I mean, there's been some loud outcry inside the Israeli political scene where people, you know, generals, former IDF guys, former Shindbet guys, have all said, This is a disaster. We're being cut off.

Our country is going to become an international pariah. It is. One guy said it's going to become a leper country. And basically, they're finally noticing, although the protests, John, that have taken place in Tel Aviv over the last 24 to 48 hours, they're still not about the Gazans. It's still not about being a country that commits Czech. genocide, it's still about the safety of the hostages. I mean, I understand.

I'm not saying they shouldn't care about the hostages or that it was okay to take them. It wasn't. But that said, it's all they care about to the exclusion of all else, even on the left. Yeah, I think that's exactly right. There's going to have to be a major change here. You know, one of the things, too, you and I were discussing this very briefly just before the show started. It's the Russian position on Ukraine.

It looks like there may be something of a breakthrough. Well, there's kind of a side story to that, too. The Iranian government said today, how sorely disappointed the Iranians have been over the fact that the Russians have been all talk when it comes to support for Iran. In the in the Iran, the 12-day Iran-Israel war, the Russians did nothing but say nice words. That was pretty much it. And so, you know, we talk about the Western countries lining up, whether it's behind the Israelis or the Palestinians, when the Palestinians are supposed to be feeling this really great Russian support, Russian, Chinese, Indian, et cetera. And they're not. The Russians are preoccupied with Russian stuff and with Ukraine.

They're not really doing anything anywhere else. Well, you know, Iran, let me introduce you to former President Assad if you want to know what it's like for. Russia to sort of decide to not be so interested in you in any way. Yeah, yeah. That's exactly right. I mean, is that legitimate? I mean, is Russia just legitimately overextended and it's like guys are going to have to understand? I think so. Or do they just not care? Are they just being assholes or is it a little bit of both? I think that they're overextended. You know, and I'll tell you, the reason why I come to that conclusion is that Assad gets on the plane and flies to to moscow and then the russians release a statement meant for jolani saying can we please

keep our bases oops yeah and then jelani's like no get the hell out and that was it they're out they're out so they so miscalculated because they're preoccupied with ukraine clearly i want to add too as an aside um i had a friend over uh the last couple of days two friends over one of them is a former special forces guy and even though he's almost 60 years old he is built like like the rock right right and he has friends who are fighting do you remember that the ukrainian volunteer force where malcolm nance and a bunch of other americans signed up to go fight so apparently it's still a thing and he's got some friends there that are that are fighting and they sent him a couple of pictures of North Koreans that they had killed.

And you should see the stuff that these North Koreans have in their pockets. It's all propaganda. Like they all have the same exact things saying that they're fighting for the glory of the dear leader and they're going to make North Korea proud. It has nothing to do with Russia. The issue, though, is that the average Russian is tired of fighting this war. And there just aren't enough Russians to keep this constant supply of people going to the front. Now, the Ukrainians, of course, are having the same exact problem.

Right. Thus, the press gangs. Yes, thus the press gangs. And so I can't help but to think that, you know, there aren't enough North Koreans in the pipeline. There certainly aren't enough Russians in the pipeline. The Ukrainians are tired. I think this may be the beginning of the end of the war. Well, that's, yeah, I mean, I've been dying to talk to you about this, John, since I read it. It just broke right before we went on the air. Wall Street Journal reported, and they've had consistently reliable reporting on this matter, that there's this summit that in some reports was supposed to already have occurred either yesterday or today. We don't know when it's going to happen. It might be, you know, it might be starting right now, even as we speak. But anyway,

it's a matter of hours or days, right? It's not weeks. Trump's going to meet Putin in person. I've always thought that was going to be absolutely essential for anything to get done. And Trump, apparently Putin has conveyed to Trump, not in person yet. Right. He's down to one demand. I just want eastern Ukraine. In other words, not even a requirement for denotification or that you can't join NATO.

that's apparently no longer something and I thought this entire war was mostly about Ukraine not joining NATO so that you would have basically a hair trigger you have a couple of drunken border guards on the Russian Ukrainian border mix it up one night and the next thing you know it's World War III but that's what Putin was worried about

I would be if I were him but he may be willing to let that go I mean, and basically he just wants the status quo to, you know, basically let's, let me have the Donbos and Crimea, which, let's face it, there's no getting them back anyway. No. And I walk away. I take my ethnic Russians with me. If you hate Russia, you're going to view this as basically it's a Sudeten land sellout, you know, and basically that's the deal. I mean, first of all, do you believe that report?

And if so, do you think it's enough to get a peace deal across the finish line? And can the Ukrainians be rolled? So three questions. Maybe I'm overly optimistic, but I think that this is the beginning at the end of the war. I really do. You know, the Ukrainians already don't trust the Trump administration. They see that the Democrats are in disarray, just like we see it. And they're probably not sanguine that that,

significant aid is going to pick up again. Sure, they've got the Poles and the and the Germans and the Brits, but that can't last forever. And other European countries are already saying enough. Enough is enough. And so, you know, there's no, among Ukrainians, too, there's no really deep love of Crimea. Crimea has only been a part of Ukraine since 1953. It was a gift from Khrushchev, who was Ukrainian, right, to Ukrainian SSR. Right. And so I think that deep down, they don't really care so much. It's symbolic. Yeah. I think so, too. Yeah. It's really part, yeah. In my view, it was never should have been part of Ukraine. And, you know, in 1991, probably Crimea should have been returned to Russia when at the time of the split. But that's not how it went. And the Dombas is a little more complicated.

Yeah. But there's, but it's mostly ethnic Russians who I think mostly, want to be in Russia. You know, it's funny, all the Ukrainians that I know, all the Ukrainians who are friends of mine, including my best friend's wife, are ethnic Russians. And they hate the fact that there's been fighting.

They hate the fact that there's been death and destruction. But they want to be Russian. They speak Russian at home. They're members of the Russian Orthodox Church. They want to be Russian. And when Russia offered these people, the right to apply for Russian passports, they took them up on it in droves.

They didn't have to. No one's holding a gun to their head, say come down to the passport office. That's right. They wanted to be, and let's not forget that for the last, you know, for the eight years prior to the war, the Russian independence forces,

the, you know, represented by the so-called PPRs, right, the People's Republics, of Dernetsk and Luhansk, they wanted to, they've been, they've been fighting and getting bombed and shelled by the Ukrainians. I mean, so it is, it was kind of a, it was a separatist movement to begin with. I mean, this is kind of like, it's almost like the Kurds, right, in Turkey, sort of. I think it is. I think it is like the, like the Kurds in Turkey. there was something else too I just saw

from Marble 455 this is the $64,000 question right here does the U.S. lift sanctions if Putin makes a deal with Trump that is the question that's the question that's what it all comes down to yeah

well and I guess I mean I'd have to think that that would be an important part of the deal for Putin it would have to be it would have to be because we've We've made it just difficult enough for Russia to sell gas to the point where we're now

threatening the Indian government with 50% tariffs if they don't stop buying Russian gas. You know, we're going to end up having sanctions or tariffs on practically every country on the world unless we can get this thing settled. Plus, John gets his TV show back if the sanctions are lifted. Right. True. And I need the money very badly. Yes. Yes, you do. So do I. But I don't, you know, I don't know.

I don't think the radio's ever coming back, though. No, I don't think so either. Unfortunately. Yes, that's right. It was, it never should have gone away. Yeah, so I guess, yeah, I agree with you. I think that I think this is the beginning of the end. It's a breakthrough.

I think, you know, what's going to really, if Trump really wants to get across the line and maybe be a serious contender for the Peace Prize, not that they will ever give it to him. he's going to need to do something he doesn't like to do. He's going to have to spend overnight meeting with Putin, you know, probably like four, five nights in a row. Yeah. And just do nothing else. Where do you think that? Focus, focus, focus, and listen to Putin, talk about, you know, medieval Russian history

for hours on end. Yep. And then they can get there. I think I think this is about Putin needs to feel like this guy, he showed up, he's going to listen, he's going to give me what I want, he's going to be respectful, he's going to recognize Russia as a great power, and then we're good. Yeah. Where do you think a meeting like that would take place? It would have to be in Asia somewhere, right? Yeah, you know, that's a good point.

You know, I could see maybe the Japanese hosting something like that or Hong Kong. or Singapore. Yes. Something like that. Just like with talks with the North Koreans, the first was in Singapore. Yeah, because, you know, in Qatar has been mentioned here, but it doesn't seem like, I don't know, I think that's a look that Trump doesn't want. Yeah, I think that's right, especially when he's going to get his new 747 soon. He could do Paris.

Yeah. Yeah. Hungary. True. You could totally do Hungary. Mm-hmm. It's a friendly place for both of them. It is.

It is. That would be a sweet spot. Off to Budapest. Candace, Drake, thank you so much. Thank you for that generosity. Oh, my God. Yeah. Thank you.

I didn't want to let it go. And Marble 455 has another good question. Didn't they fire the Russian embassy, D.C. chef? I'm surprised anybody outside the diplomatic community knows about that. That was actually a very big deal. The Russian embassy brought their own chef, from Russia. Every year in the diplomatic community, there's a cookoff and all the embassy chefs compete. This guy won every single year. And then as soon as the war broke out, the State

Department announced that they would not renew his visa. I was invited to lunch at the Russian ambassador's residence with a bunch of other people. It was like 12 of us, Peter Kuznick and a bunch people and the chef really was that good as good as they built him up to be really and then he was gone like four days later back to russia the russian ambassador finished his tour i'm going to say in september he's gone and has never been replaced so we have a lot of rebuilding to do in terms of our relationship with the russians yeah i don't know what this question is yeah Turkeys. Byram, what do you mean?

Do you think they want to divide and conquer Russia? Who's they? If you can just let us know. Oh, which chef? Oh, it was the Russian. The Russian, and he would beat the pants off the French. Year after year after year. And what was funny, the ambassador told us that most of what he made was French.

It wasn't even Russian food. Oh, so the clarification from Bosco is the West. Well, of course, they've always wanted you. Yeah, yeah, definitely. I mean, the Ukraine war was part of that. I mean, God, it's just been an endless series of attacks ever since the Bolshevik Revolution. Oh, my God, yes.

The Cold War never ended. You know, they just never stopped. The Russians thought that the Cold War was over, but no one told the U.S. Ted, four minutes ago, a story broke that President Trump has met with the leaders of Azerbaijan and Armenia this afternoon, and they will sign a joint peace declaration to end four decades of conflict. So this is Nagorno-Karabakh.

It's Nagorno-Karabak. And for the first time, peace is at hand since the conflict started in 1988, and they're both lauding the peacemaking acumen of Donald J. Trump. How do you like that? Well, that's great. Now, the way I remember that working out, though, wasn't that kind of like, all right, so correct? So maybe we need to summarize what happened here.

Yeah. So at the end of the, in 1991, when the Soviet Union broke apart, a lot of the borders didn't make a lot of sense. But basically, the borders of the 15 autonomous republics all became 15 independent nations, such as they were. And they ended up with what they called frozen conflict zones all over the point in U.S.S.S.R. All over the place. Like the Transnistria.

There's all sorts of weird border conflicts that, you know, we're about like in the Fergana Valley and so on between Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan and Kyrgyzstan. Anyway, one of them was this Nagorno Karabakh. This is in Azerbaijan, right? Right. But they're ethnic Armenians. It's like, it's a little island of Armenia inside Azerbaijan. So recently, but correct me if I'm wrong, did I, I didn't hallucinate this, right? Like a few years ago, basically they were ethnically cleansed.

Yes. So basically the Azaries went in. Kick the Armenians asses. And kick them out and just said, get the fuck out. And they sent them to Armenia proper, right? And the Armenians took them in, although they're not like really the same kind of Armenians. Right. And they have a funny accent.

Yeah. But anyway, so now, Azerbaijan, so basically the Armenians lost, they lost their people. They lost their ethnic brothers. And so basically, I guess, isn't this pretty much just accepting the facts on the ground, much like Russia and Ukraine? Well, some of our listeners are making points here that I think are very good. EOK, not sure this is good for Armenians. exactly. I'm of exactly the same mind because the Armenians are

are being forced to operate from a position of weakness. They've already been beaten. They've already been ethnically cleansed. And so I'm not sure what the Armenians are getting out of this. But then, oh, who said it? Maybe money. Oh, here it is. The president of Armenia said Trump deserves the Nobel Peace Prize. Houdini said it. Really? I mean, this is just, I can't my brain around this. It's like every day, whether it's Congo, Rwanda, it's, it's Cambodia, Thailand, it's Armenia, Azerbaijan. It's like, what, what? I mean, could this actually happen?

Yeah, I know. It's like a, it's like a fever dream. Like a fever dream, yes. And it's, yeah, it's very strange because this scene, I mean, Donald Trump is both an ignorant, fascist blowhard and a brilliant peacekeeping genius at the same time Oh, Trump hinted that there might be possible Somaliland peace treaty

I went to Somaliland in 2011 There's literally nothing there It's just sand And a couple of villages So this is near Eritrea, right? This is North Ethiopia Near Ethiopia, yeah

at borders Djibouti And they just want to be an independent country. They're happy to allow themselves with the United States. They just don't want to be a part of Somalia because Somalia is a, you know, it's a pirate country. Yeah, and Obama won his Nobel Peace Prize just because his name wasn't George W. Bush. That's all he had to do. That was it. Literally, he was, he, there's no peacemaking, actually, that occurred.

Quite to the contrary, right? He expanded. He sent more troops to Iraq and Afghanistan. kind of taking a page from the Kissinger playbook, like to try to, you know, we'll make peace after we accelerate the war. QQTF at the bottom here has a good question. It's about the corridor to not just,

I can never say it, not just Javan. So do they get the, do they get the corridor? I mean, that's really what they want. The Armenians. Yeah. We don't know anything about this peace deal. This deal is just, yeah, there's no details available. We don't know.

But that's really what they need. They need that corridor. You know, interestingly enough, too, the Iranians hate the Azaries. All my Iranian friends, when they talk about Azerbaijan, they'll refer to it as the other Azerbaijan because there's an Iranian state. Azaris are a huge ethnic minority in Iran, yeah? Huge. And even in Azerbaijan, one of the official languages is Farsi.

Djibouti. I was in the – I'll say some funny thing that – that – USC X-X-X-X-A-Rod 21. Ha-ha, Djibouti. I was in the Holiday Inn Express in Salt Lake City on Saturday. And I walk in the lobby to check in, and there's this big, huge guy there. And he points at me, and he says, hey, YouTube CIA guy. And I said, right, right, nice to meet you.

And I put out my hand, and I shook his hand. And he said he watches my videos when he's laying in bed at night, which is funny because I watch other people's videos while I'm laying in bed at night. I've never actually seen one of my videos on. No, I never read my own books. TikTok. No, no, no. I don't either.

And he ran back up to his room. He says, stay right here. He runs back up to his room. He comes back down with a challenge coin. And it turns out he's the American Embassy's Regional Security Officer in Djibouti. Oh. And so we started talking about Djibouti. And he said, you know, Djibouti is really, really underestimated.

It's a little teeny, tiny country. It has only one city called Djibouti. And, you know, a couple of villages here and there. It's very poor, but we're there militarily. The Chinese are there militarily. And the French Foreign Legion still has a presence there. It's 16 miles across the water from Yemen. So everybody's interested.

And it's connected to Somalia on the south to help. to help us fight the pirates, this is a very important place. By the way, speaking of people who aren't aware, I think most of our viewers are, Azerbaijan is why Hitler invaded the Soviet Union, right? People are always like, why did they do something stupid like that? It was to get the oil fields in Baku. That's exactly right. He was like, oh my God, what am I going to do?

I have this allied oil embargo, a Europe, occupied. Europe's not getting any oil. I've got to get that Soviet oil. And then he got started a month late. And that's what did him in. That's what did him in. Yes. The weather turned. Yeah. And also the late start, right? There was some kind of coup in the Balkans, right? Like someone overthrew his Nazi puppet. I think was it in Serbia or Croatia. No, it was in Hungary? It was Central Europe, yeah. Yeah. Or Czechoslovakia. It was in Czechoslovakia.

Or Romania, maybe. But it was one of those. And he was like, I can't let that pass. I have to send my army there. And then by the time he got started. So Azerbaijan is really a, he has a, it was a linchpin to it, a hugely important, you know, historical event. Houdini makes a point, too. He had to go save Mussolini. This is something that the Greeks, are so, so proud of. In October 1940, Mussolini ordered his prime minister, I'm sorry, ordered his ambassador to go see the prime minister of Greece at midnight. And he gave Prime Minister Metaxas an ultimatum to just surrender to the Italians and that Italy would occupy Greece. And he said, Oji, which means no. So now there's this national holiday called Oji Day. It celebrated both in

Greece and in the United States among Greek Americans. It's a very, very important holiday. So the Italians attacked Greece the very next day. And the Greeks not only beat the Italians back, but the Greeks ended up occupying the southern third of Albania. And so Hitler had to send troops to Greece to bail out the Italians. And it set back the invasion of the Soviet Union to the point where later Churchill said henceforth we will not say that the Greeks fought like heroes

we will say that heroes fought like Greeks and they still quoted my praise yeah they still quoted but the Greeks are very proud that their steadfastness against the Italians and then against the Germans delayed the invasion of the Soviet Union and helped to win the war in the end.

No, that's seriously incredibly important. All right, so let's talk about, so what's going to come out of this Russia-Ukraine thing, obviously? I don't know, man. I'm always accused of being overly optimistic. And it's because I've got like a, you know, financial stake in this peace deal. Yeah, that's why I'm not optimistic

because I have a financial stake in this peace deal, not as big as yours, but yeah. I want my show back. So I want my health. insurance back. This Obamacare, I wish I never heard of Obamacare. Oh, my God. Anyway, it's, yeah, it's evil. By the way, next week, I didn't tell you yet, John, we've got a guest coming in to talk about sanctions. Oh, great. I heard about the effect on sanctions, you know, it's nothing that you'd be surprised by, but the details are very, are really interesting.

Excellent. Excellent. We're going to do that Thursday. I have a lot of questions about sanctions. Yeah, I know we both care about the topic a lot. I think sanctions are ridiculous. I'm not saying they can't work. They just sort of almost never do. I guess is my answer to this. Let's talk about the census. Yeah, yeah. This thing's spreading, man. Under the U.S. Constitution, the Census Bureau counts the number of people in the United States every 10 years. Key word is the people in the United States. Now, Donald Trump is, he signed an executive order. By the way, John, I don't know, I think we're each going to get our own personal executive orders from Trump every day from now on, telling us, like, what to

wear, like, you know, like how we should do our hair, all that stuff. And anyway, so, so he's, he's really guy, you know, he's very granular, this guy. He's like Turkmenbashi. Turkmenbashi would sign, he like, you know, the Turkmenbashi, the dictator, Sophrmurat Niazoff of Turkmenistan, was such a personalized dictator that he

literally personally considered every college application in Turkmenistan. All of them. Absolutely nuts. And he like, he was like, also he was like, oh, people should stop smoking. It's not good for you. His doctor made him stop smoking. So he's like, okay,

Smokie is banned. That's just like that. What was the deal, Ted, why did every car have to be white? You know, that's a good question, although frankly, very Turkmenistan might be the hottest country in the world. So white is best.

That makes sense. That makes sense. Yeah. So he looked like a sort of, like a business dude, really, like a cheap business dude wearing a cheap suit. Yeah, anyway.

So acting like Trumpman-Bashy is once the, all immigrants out of the census, right? The practical effect of this is, of course, it's another GOP attack on the blue states, right? Because they think that a disproportionately high number of illegal immigrants live in the, on the coasts. I'm not sure that's really true. Right. Isn't the purpose of a census going back to Roman times? It's never been about citizenship status.

No. It's always been about trying to... The number of people. Who, yeah, and how many people live here? What kind of people are they? It, I mean, without this information, it seems to me like it would be just like not having reliable economic statistics. It would be hard for demographers inside the government, inside of business, to make

intelligent decisions. I mean, about any number of things, I mean, they're still here, whether you count it or not. Right. And they have an economic effect. They have an effect on crime. and a million other things. You're just not going to count them? I mean, it doesn't seem like a good idea.

No, it doesn't seem like a good idea. I mean, how do you, how do you, how would an urban planner, for example, plan public transportation routes? If none of these people exist, right? You just pretend they don't exist. It's about reality. John, I used to work for a traffic engineering department when I was a young man. And I remember, like we used to, we would time. how fast cars went on the roads.

And the ideal is that when you drive down the road, the light turns green when you get there. And it's just as you arrive, right? That's perfect. It doesn't, of course, always work. But, like, anyway, that's what you're striving for as an engineer. And, of course, obviously, you have streets going the other way that you also want that to happen with.

And then you also want to give enough time for pedestrians to cross, you measure how long it takes a person to cross the street. You want to make sure that they have enough time in the crosswalk and so on, right? So those are all the factors that go into it. But I was fascinated when I got the job that we were measuring the actual speed of the cars, not the speed limit. And I said, well, the speed limit's 40. Shouldn't the light only turn green for the people who are going 40? Shouldn't the speeders have to hit the brakes?

And they said, no. My boss said, we deal with the reality. So the reality in my town was that people typically went 10 miles an hour over the speed limit And we want them to hit that light on time We don't want people slamming on the brakes that causes accidents Right people so that's not good So in fact we see red light cameras cause a lot of accidents

People slam on the brakes and get rear-ended Oh yeah Happens all the time there So anyway the point is this is about reality The census is about knowing the truth It's not about knowing some theoretical, idealized version of the truth. And you can't even, it seems like the compromise solution was, well, count them all, but have a separate category for the illegal migrants.

But then the problem is if you do that, the illegal migrants aren't going to cooperate with the census because they're for fear of deportation, which certainly is a valid fear nowadays. Yeah. Like today, some poor guy went to NIH for some terrible disease he has. He made an appointment. They wanted to see him at NIH, and as soon as he arrived, ICE was on him, and they grabbed him and took him to some detention center. Jesus Christ.

So he's sick, like sick enough to need to go to a hospital, and now he's in a detention center. Yeah. Just incredible. Well, he's going to be in real trouble. Yeah, he's going to be in real trouble. We've got a couple of questions, too. Robbie has passed a couple onto me. Right.

Why don't I move to Greece? I think about that every single day. And there's an app I have on my phone called Speed dog atos, it means house cat. It's the Greek version of Realtor.com every single day. And then my son is constantly emailing me, Dad, look at this, look at this condo. Dad, look at this house. Look at the view. Oh, my God, it's right on the water. Yeah, but all my kids are here. Everybody who's important to me is here, the health care would be free. That's the only reason I think about it every day. The health care would be free. So what big boss is saying here is

correct. It is, the census data is used. Yes. Representation in the House is proportional of the population of each state. So this would deprive Democrats, presumably, of some seats. Yes. It's a, it's an apportionment grab. John, I think about that of moving to France. I look at French real estate all the time. I mean, as a New Yorker, it's so cheap. Yeah. It's like they're giving it away. For 300,000 or even 300,000 euros or less, you can, you can have a beautiful 1820 farmhouse made of stone in a picturesque village. I mean, man,

I'll tell you, even in Athens, which is, you know, a major city, the six, seven million people almost. For 550,000 euros,

you can get a top floor two bedroom, two bath condo where you can practically reach out and touch the parthenon. Seriously. 550, 580, maybe. And the prices have. doubled in the past three years because Russians, Chinese, and Israelis are buying up all the

real estate. Yeah, no, I mean, it's, it's, yeah, no, Europe is better. I mean, I was looking into the French medical system, like, what would happen if I were to move there? And it's like the, it's, so it's eight euros to see the doctor, whether you go in for a checkup, a whatever, or an operation, it's eight euros every time. That's the way it should be. Yeah, and that's no.

that's the shitty version for people like me who can pay into the system right so right yeah yeah how are the prices in marseille oh well i marse i didn't check i i do like southern france um i'm not a marseille though yeah i mean i love marseille i like the people they're wild and crazy like you know what it is marseille is the new jersey of france and i mean that in the nicest possible way. It's like, they're like the, they're like people who are, they're scumbags and they kind of like, they own it, like, yeah, you know, this, oh, nice sofa. Yeah, it fell off a truck.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's how they are. And it's great, you know, they're kind of like, they're awesome people. But Marseille the city, it's kind of like, you know, like there was that old Huey Lewis song, sometimes bad is bad. Edmunds did a great cover of it. And it's like, that's what it's like. like, you know, you're like, oh, you see the blinking, like, La Pigal type cafe lights and, you know,

the skanky X-rated stores. And you're like, oh, that's really charming. And it is, unless you actually have to live there. Um, you know, I would much rather be up in Exxon-Provence. Right. And I need of province. Like, you know, with the flower boxes all over the place and everything's quaint and, you know, maybe, sorry, I'm a little bit of a, of a, of a, I might have liked you. I might have liked Marseille when I was 25, but I'm too old. I'm with you. Somebody just asked a quit.

Any advice on learning Arabic? Forrest and Sebastian, yes, I will give you advice. Don't let it intimidate you. And here's what I mean by that. When I was studying Arabic in the CIA language school, my classroom, there were just three of us in the classroom. My classroom was next to the Spanish classroom. And there were six of them.

And the last day that we were in class before Christmas break, one of the women from Spanish class came in and she shouted three, three, three, three, like that, meaning on a scale of zero to five, three being conversationalally fluent. She had scored three in reading, three in writing, and three in speaking. And I said, oh, my God, we haven't finished learning the alphabet yet. So we started the last week of August. Here it is the third week of December, and we had not finished learning the alphabet. But then in April, so started in August, now I'm in April.

I had my first dream in Arabic, and it wasn't gibberish. It was real Arabic. I'll never forget it. I happen to go to New York to see my best friend from college, and we got in a cab the days before Uber. Fusha is what I studied that first year. And then Khalidji dialect, the Gulf of dialect. Fus has high standard Arabic. It's almost like Shakespeare in English.

Like what the Jordanian speak? No, it's what the Yemenis speak. They speak the purest form of Arabic. Because Arabic might be the language with the biggest geographical and cultural range of any and from one end of the Arabic-speaking world to the other. they can't understand a single word the other guy's saying. But the writing is all the same. And Fusha,

Fusha, everybody understands because that's what you learn in school. They also understand. Most people understand Egyptian and Syrian dialects because all of the movies are made in Damascus and all the soap operas are made in Cairo. So they understand that. But you think my Arabic sounds Egyptian? One of my professors...

Egyptian. One of my teachers was Egyptian. The other two were Lebanese. But that's a compliment. Thank you. I appreciate that. I never have trouble getting around Egypt when I go there. Everybody understands my Arabic. Although they have a funky, they have a funky accent in Egypt. Anyway, don't get discouraged. If you start learning, just accept. the fact that it's going to take a long time it's a very super intimidating for and you know what it's it's not once you learn the letters arabic is very mathematical in its construct so once you train your brain for example the first word of every sentence is the verb so you say went ted to the store or visited Ted Montana. Once you get used to that, it just all comes naturally. That's what Latin was like.

Yeah. Latin's very, although the word order, it doesn't matter at all in Latin. And all the best Arabic singers are indeed Egyptian, um calphum being probably the greatest. Egyptian, traditional Egyptian singing is amazing.

And pop is great too. Yeah. Yeah. So I love Egypt. I really do. I love it. Never had a bad experience there. It's just an incredible place. It really is. Definitely need to go. Sorry, I took us so far off topic. What's the hardest language learn? I have no idea. I can't imagine learning Chinese. I can't even begin. Did you? Yeah, I took two years of it in college. Is it just a question of rote memorization?

Yes, basically, yeah. I mean, but it's rough. I mean, you know, it's, I think it's also decontextualized, like, you know, with, I had no one to speak. Right, right, right. And it's just sort of like I couldn't imagine needing it really. So it's like purely in theory. It's just like I gave up. It was like, I'm the kind of person like if I don't see, like, you know, I'm the kind of person like if I work for someone, I'll do anything they want if they explain why. But if I don't understand what it's for, then I'm just, I can't do it.

And even if it's something that I'm my own boss, if I don't see the point, I don't do it. I just like give up. I crap out. I'm discouraged. people are making so many intelligent comments here nadia margaret is exactly right the grammar in arabic is easy and the alphabet is hard that's why it took us all those months but if you can get the alphabet you're going to speak arabic um and uh where did i just see it marcel do a lot of cia officers have accents if they learn a language yes so how do you deal with it if you're trying to recruit

people that's that's a key that's something that i think most outsiders don't don't know is that you're not going to go into the terrorist group and pretend to be Lebanese or Egyptian. You're going to recruit a guy who's already in the terrorist group to report back to you. So your command of the language is just so you can deal with him. You're not going to be exposed because there's all those things you just don't know, right?

Like I remember being fascinated by during World War II, I read about an operation where basically, I think it was British and American operatives were dropped off on the Normandy coast to basically scope things out in 1942. And they, you know, they spoke French and they dressed right and everything was fine

and they went to cafes and you know what did them in? They were equipped with, no, they were equipped with pre-World War II French francs. Now, they were the same exact francs that were in circulation because they had no new, money had been printed during the war, but they were new. They were crisp. And nobody, and for three years, no one in France had seen a new, a new Frank.

And suddenly these are like brand new, and that's how they got busted. And they all got killed. Right. Reid, how did CIA officers come up with an authentic backstory about their covers? You go to the office of central cover, and they give you the backstory. and then it's up to you to memorize it now is it like so like with valerie playing she actually had a business right is that necessary do you actually she was a deep cover officer called a knock a non-official cover officer that's that's a whole different world a whole different life

that's why i never encountered Valerie um at headquarters because they they don't even come into the building they're so independent of everybody else but um the rest of us like i remember going a central cover and they gave me a membership card in the national trout fishermen's club and i had you know keys to an office in indianapolis that did you know i forget what import export something or other they give you a whole life backstory and it's up to you to know it and so when you get stopped and they say you know who do you represent you say i represent you know art vandalay import export they want to know the number and the number and the members got a ring somewhere and somebody asked to answer and say art vandalay import export may i help you

right that's of course on the on the sixth floor of the cia headquarters but then like so so the doesn't it so the cover can't really be like oh i work at jp morgan chase and of course they call and you don't work there no unless you're non-official cover like valry in which case not only yeah do you work there you actually physically work there and you show up you do you do you do your eight hours and then after your eight hours then you go out and do your CIA eight hours that's a friggin hard job i mentioned too a couple of weeks ago i think um about uh emeraldist fox kennedy bobby kennedy junior's uh daughter-in-law she was a deep cover officer but her cover was she was a um an uh an art consultant so she would recommend art purchases to very very wealthy people

Ah, Eric. Well, anyway, I'll come back to Eric in a sec. She would make recommendations to very wealthy people, and she would be the middle person in these art purchases. Eric asks, do you keep the double pay? No, you give the whole thing back. And there is a dedicated office at the Department of the Treasury that collects the money that you earned,

which in some cases is four or five, six times what you're actually earning. And then they do your taxes for you every year. Oh. Yeah. I had a boss. I had a boss whose cover. I had a boss whose cover was blown by Aldrich Ames. So they had to,

the phrase they used is they had to bring him in from the cold. And he, his cover job had been as the manager of a mutual fund. And I'm talking 27 years ago. He's making a million bucks a year 27 years ago. He didn't get to keep one cent of it, not one cent. Eric, said your question, great question. Are you fired from the CIA if you're fired from your cover job? No.

They'll transfer you into another division. They'll probably bring you inside and then put you in an embassy somewhere. That's very strange. Yeah, it's hard. Keep it all straight in your mind. I mean, is that the kind of thing that might inspire someone to or make them more vulnerable to being recruited by, a foreign agency without a doubt I get used to a certain I mean they think about all

I mean I worked in a bank and I couldn't help but think about the hundreds of millions of dollars I was dealing with every single day and think you know I just took a little something for me they wouldn't miss it you know

I mean I think it's just I mean I obviously here I am I didn't do it Oh yeah Ted we used to joke all the time every every I don't know six months or so you get a you get an email from the director of the CIA. It's to everybody in the CIA. And it says, we have just arrested one of our officers.

He's being prosecuted for misuse of his CIA credit card. And let this be a lesson to everybody that you do not try to steal money from the government. The people of the United States, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And we always used to say, why in the world would you steal $50 from the CIA? Right. Does that make any kind of sense? at all. I used to say, if I'm going to steal from the CIA, I'm going to steal like millions. Right.

So fast forward to March of 2002, a colleague and I are in a van. We've requisitioned from the motor pool. We have two duffel bags with a million dollars in cash in each one. And I said to him, you know that thing we always say? You can't help, but think about it. Yeah, no, I remember one time I had this loan. It was a revolving line of credit, which means that basically it only came up every 30 days. No one checked the balance for 30 days, $375 million. And the way the banking worked and still does, actually, is that New York is the correspondent city for the United States.

So if a bank is like headquartered in, let's say, St. Louis. okay so and you want to wire money out of the country it has to go through new york yes yes it has to but if it's in new york it doesn't have to go through anything it's already in new york so if you wanted to wire that money anywhere to the in the world to a country that doesn't have an extradition treaty with the united states let's say you could and so i remember just thinking of gaming it all out it was like me and an operations clerk and my boss i could get my boss to sign, my boss would sign anything that I gave him because he loved me. So just one operations clerk, you know, a $35,000 a year operations clerk. And me, $375 million and it would be gone for

29 days before they ever knew. And it haunted me. Every day I went to work, I thought about it. And I was like, I could have done it. I knew how to do it. And I was just like, but that's just no way to live. No. To live. I didn't want to be like that. Who was that guy who went to Robert Vesco? Oh, yeah.

He ran to the Caribbean. Yeah, he went to Cuba. That's right. He went to Cuba. I don't want to be. I mean, like, Cuba's great, but I don't want to live like that with a target on my back. Yeah. No, I couldn't do it either.

I couldn't do it. People have so many good questions. Paris. It's Robbie behind me, Jay. Paris is asking if they have if the CIA hires people with more unusual backgrounds absolutely yes

I've told this quick story before on my very first day they turned me down I was with there were people sitting on either side of me on my very first day and one was a

was a cartoonist and they trained him to be a master forger I could have done that. Yeah, I know, I'm sure that you could have. And the other was a woman. Oh, yeah, you can do well. For excuse notes.

And the woman on the other side of me, her only training was at the Falls Church, Virginia beauty school. And she became a master wig maker for, for, yeah, for operations. So, yeah, they'll take. Well, we had a whole cadre of in-house meteorologists, and, you know, there were a lot of art people and mutual fund managers and, I mean, you name it. Pilots are important. Yeah. Graphics are important. Yeah.

That is a great, great question. Yeah, that was a good one. All right. So let's talk a little bit about something a little lighter. J.D. Vance. What an idiot. So, J.D. Vance, for people who may not have followed this story, he's from my neck of the woods. We both grew up a few miles away from each other in southwestern Ohio. He claims to be from Kentucky, but that's a lie. And he was on vacation in my old stomping grounds. My mom and I used to go to Caesar Creek, which was a stone's throw from Kettering where I grew up. And J.D. and his wife and kids decided to go to Caesar Creek, which is basically an in-law. Lake. It's very flat.

It's kind of like got one of those like all over the country, you know, like the muddy, like beach. It's kind of gross. Yeah. Yeah. And we used to swim in our local river in the Shannock Creek. It was all

gross and full of mud puppies and yeah, yeah, it's gross. It's not as good as a, Caesar Creek's not as good as a lake, I mean, as a river because at least a river has moving water. Yeah. Creek's like skanky and just sits like a flat. Anyway, the point is he was not pleased with the water level because he was worried that it might bottom out because the water's been running low.

So he arranged with the local authorities to release water from a dam so that, you know, he basically could have his ideal vacation. Now, to me, this was shades of former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie during when all the beaches in the state of New Jersey were closed. and Chris Christie decided to take advantage of one of the closed beaches. He brought his family by him. It was just and they had the whole beach to themselves. Well, the whole state is sweltering. You know, he gets it to himself. Anyway, this enterprising reporter, who's a friend of a friend of mine,

heard about it, got a tip. And then with his editors of permission, got approval to rent, a helicopter to fly over the beach with the telephoto lens and got that famous photo of chubby chris Christy with his big flabby thighs hanging out on the beach with his wife and kids and the cooler full of food and looking like a big pig and so this now tady vance has better optics than that well there are no optics here but it really reminded me of that right like so if you live in southwestern Ohio and the water level's too low and Caesar Creek's gross and skanky sucks to be you. But if you're the vice president of the United States and the heir apparent to

Maga World, as Trump recently said, then no problem. We'll do that for you. Absolutely scandalous. Absolutely scandalous. I want to say real quickly, too, The couple of, Robbie just sent around an MSN report that a, that a U.S. soldier, Taylor Adam Lee, age 22, has been arrested and charged with espionage for offering the Russians plans for the Abrams M1A2 tank in exchange for Russian citizenship. The idiot did it over the internet, and so he was quickly caught and is now in custody. And apparently there's an active shooter doing his thing on the campus of Emory University in Atlanta. Yeah. Yeah.

Never a dull moment. No, never a dull moment is right. And it's a Friday even. It's usually quiet. No, not lately. No. So, well, you want to say anything about it, J.D. Or are we done with him?

Yeah, J.D., you know, see, this is the thing, this is the kind of stupid decision that dogs politicians right suck it up and maybe the bottom of your canoe is going to scrape on the rocks right tough luck that's life but now he's going to have to explain himself just like ted stevens had to explain the the bridge to nowhere or whatever it was or not ted stevens it was uh what's her face that wanted to be guys president uh sarah palin um you know you you do stupid things and they always come back uh to bite you. And I know this sounds silly and minor,

but the knives are going to come out as soon as the election nears. And everybody in the Republican Party is going to want to be the next Donald Trump. No question. D. D. dumb move. Yeah, I don't think J.D.

has it in the bag by any means. I don't either. And he's so young. He's so young. He could run for president, you know, 35 years from now. That's true. By the way, quick reminder for people,

who haven't done it yet. If you can follow us over on Rumble and watch us over on Rumble at just go to Rumble.com slash C slash D-Program show or just go to Rumble and then just search for D-Program with Ted Rol and John Kiroaku,

we would greatly appreciate it because we literally make much, much, much, much more money over there. It's pennies on YouTube, on Rumble, it's dollars. It's really the difference between poverty and not poverty. So anyway, just a quick reminder there.

We'll probably be adding some ads to the show fairly soon, in fact. All right, so, yeah, I think that I will haunt JD. It'll come out. It will be used against him, for sure. Yeah, I think so, too. Apple's about to update their iOS, not normally something that's terribly exciting. However, they're going to do some, this is in the law of unintended consequences. This is a classic example, right?

they want to make it so that you can. Uh-oh. Bad internet connection in northwestern Montana. Oh, well, then I'm going to take the, while Ted is frozen, I'm going to answer, I'm going to answer Forc and Sebastian's question about, hypothetically, if a person has information that the CIA would want, how do you recommend getting it to them?

The CIA has been very weird about stuff. like this so what they do is they only allow the public to deal with uh the office of public affairs so you can go online and there's contact information for the office of public affairs i would recommend if the if the information is legitimately sensitive i would recommend doing it as a letter an old school letter write it out better yet type it out put your name and contact information so they can follow up with you and then just put it in the mail and send it to them much easier that way i answer the question go right ahead text i don't really know what happened there uh but whatever okay so what were you talking about oh so trump so the uh the iOS so basically so it's kind of like

if you have google mail um they have a system that if you get like a spam email that goes into sort of a sub email inbox in your in your google mail so going forward you know how we all get those spam texts from sometimes from people we don't know or those spam risk phone calls on your iPhone from people that you don't know who are usually spammers and scammers you'll get like polling requests I get them all the time by text message so obviously people have been complaining about that in a response to attempt to respond to that apple says okay so we're going to make it so that all of the the only emails and texts that you actually see are the ones that are from people in your contacts.

Now, I can see that being very problematic. I mean, I do want to get emails from people like listeners of the D program show. I want editors to reach out and say, Ted, I'd like to hire you for a million dollars a year. I don't want to not get that email. That's right. So, but the point, I would like to just lose the spam people, but I don't think it's possible to do one or the other. Anyway, there's concern about among pollsters who are basically 99% reliant on cell phones for polling data about politics and everything else. And they say they're fucked if this happens. And they don't, you know, we will no longer have reliable polling information, which I know there are people, some people might not care. But I think obviously if you care about democracy and politics, you do have to care.

Polling does matter. Ted, are you reading Ridd's comments here, just in? Trump's going to meet with Putin next Friday in Alaska. Oh, it's Sarah Palin's house. Alaska. She can see Putin's backyard from her house. Yeah. Oh, the mosquitoes this time of the year.

Oh, my God, it's going to be bad. That's true. Well, that's interesting. That is very interesting. But didn't we say it was probably going to be in Asia? And I mean, that's about as close as you can get to Asia and still be in the United States. So, yeah, I mean, well, I guess this is kind of like, so this is the U.S. So this is kind of like, you know, it's all about like, well, Trump's going to be able to say,

I got Putin to come to me. Yeah. And Putin's going to be like, well, it is a former Russian colony. Yeah, that's right. That's true. That's true. I'm looking at the Associated Press now to see what they're saying. No, they haven't.

They haven't announced. Do we have a timeline on that? Friday. Oh, okay. Well, yeah, Trump says next Friday. Next Friday. Okay. So is Alaska nice this time of the year?

I mean, you know, it's summer. It's, you know, I haven't been to Alaska, really, except to change planes. I have been to sort of Alaska-like places at this time. Right. Like Labrador. Oh, man. And I was on the first day of summer, the longest day of the year, I was in Iceland. Oh, my God.

I mean, it was like noon, 24 hours. Oh, there's that. Yeah. It really disrupted my sleep. I can't, I can't handle that. Yeah, you have to have blackout curtains for sure. Like, everyone's like a vampire. So, all right, we'll follow that.

That's going to be super cool and interesting. And we'll see if that's Wall Street Journal report. it turns out to be accurate. So what do you think about this Apple iOS thing? You know, is this a bridge too far? I mean, I think so. I have my own, I have my own Apple phone set so that the phone doesn't ring if the number calling me is not in my context.

It just goes straight to voicemail. Yeah. Figuring if somebody really needs to get in touch with me and I don't know them, they can leave a voicemail. They can leave a voicemail and I'll call them right back. Yeah, fair. But like you. I don't answer any phone number that's unfamiliar anyway.

No, I don't either. I don't either. But like you, you know, for example, I'll get my blood work results from the lab. And the lab's not saved in my phone. And sometimes they'll just text you from a four-digit number. I don't know how they do that. But, you know, am I not going to have access to things like that anymore in this new iOS? I guess not.

I don't know. Maybe those are allowed. Yeah, I mean, yeah, all sorts of. of things, right? Like, back when you got a COVID test, it would be one of those four-digit codes. That's right. Or, like, FedEx, like your package is on its way or any number. Exactly. Exactly. Right. Yeah. Right. And I guess, unless there's five more breaking news stories, the last one I wanted to ask you about is Donald Trump is offering a $50 million bounty for the president of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro.

This to me is a bad look for the United States. I thought it was a pretty bad look that what we did to Manuel Noriega, dragging him up, dragging a head of state into a Georgia prison and treating him like a common criminal. That's right. And I think this is even, it's even skankier in a way. Yeah, I agree.

I agree. Very unseemly. No one's no one's going to, no one's going to collect the 50 million. Plus, also, who would trust the U.S. didn't the U.S. Welch on, like, someone who gave information about Osama bin Laden? I thought that they did. It was like, or it was someone like that. It might have been Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, but it was one of the big Al-Qaeda figures. KS.M. We paid. And that was a beta we paid. But you're right. There was a story about one of the big figures, and we didn't pay out a dime.

And it seemed like we should have paid. Yeah. I don't remember who that was. Yeah, I don't remember either. I'd have to look it up. But my point is, I'm not sure I would trust the U.S. to turn over the way. But anyway, who's going to, what can you? I don't understand for information leading to the arrest of Nicolas Maduro. He's the president. He lives in the presidential palace in Caracas.

You know where to find him. Go get him if you want. You don't need to spend 50 cents to find him, much less $50 million. I don't even understand what this is about. They're acting like he's on the lamb and living in Torabora. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Do you understand this? Like, wow, if we only knew where he was. I know, I should call and get the $50 million. I'll give you his address. Yeah, right. Yeah, Saddam Hussein, the informant for Saddam Hussein got nothing. I remember that.

But there was something more recent than that. Yeah. Where we stiffed him. Oh, yeah, Jolani had a bounty too. Yeah, until he didn't. yeah now he's our dear trusted friend for the time yeah yeah that's right that's right oh yeah this is this is that true the doctor i'll tell you what doesn't get true doesn't trust vaccinations because that's that's absolutely true and polio is surging in pakistan since then um john carrie and i were we're going to go to pakistan together in 2009 and i said if we go we've got to get the doctor out. The doctor was a paid CIA asset. The CIA walked away from him and

the guy got life in prison for helping us find us. Lucky not to have been killed. Yeah. And and Kerry didn't want any part of it. I wrote a long detailed classified memo about who this doctor was and exactly what he did and we had to get him out. Carrie's like, no, no, no, no, we're not doing any of that. Yeah, real shame. Well, real shame. Real shame. So was it the doctor with the $25 million? Seems to be like we should have. Yeah, we should have paid him at least, you know, part of it. And gotten him out, of course.

Yeah, that's right. Yeah, Jolani not only doesn't have a bounty anymore, just wait until the big White House dinner in his honor, because you know that's coming. That will happen. Oh, once you clean up and you wear a suit, You know, he looks like a hipster bar keep in Bushwick with that beard. Yeah, isn't that the truth?

So, all right, John, are we deprogrammed? Yeah, Ted, I hope you enjoy your weekend, and I hope you have great success at Barnes & Noble there. Thank you so much. For anybody who cares, I'm supposed to be at the, I don't know, I'm not sure I'm going to show up, but the Barnes & Noble in Calais, Spell, Montana, 1 p.m. tomorrow, Easter, Central, what is it? Mountain time. That's it. Mountain Oyster time. All right, guys. Thank you so much for joining us.

Please like, follow, and share the show. We'll be back next week, Monday. I'm not sure about Wednesday because I'll be traveling. I'll be, we might have to push that one back to Thursday. But we're normally here Monday, Wednesday, Friday, 5 p.m. Eastern time. Please tell all your friends. Also, the following week, right, we're going to go to Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday at 5 p.m. We're very excited about that. I hope you guys are too.

And really, have a great weekend and take care. Thank you, everybody.