DeProgram with John Kiriakou and Ted Rall - DeProgram with Ted Rall and John Kiriakou: “Israel’s Famine in Gaza”

Episode Date: July 28, 2025

Tune in to the “DeProgram” show with political cartoonist Ted Rall and CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou, delivering unfiltered analysis of the top global and domestic stories. We tackle critical topics with insider expertise and fearless commentary, exposing the raw truths behind the headlines. Join Ted and John as we talk about: • Gaza’s Starvation Crisis: The UN reports over 120 deaths, mostly children, from malnutrition in Gaza due to Israel’s aid blockade. Trump urged Israel to allow “every ounce of food” into Gaza today, acknowledging the “real starvation” crisis. Urgent action is needed to avert further famine. • Russia Sanctions Tighten: Trump shortened his 50-day deadline for Russia to end the Ukraine war, threatening severe sanctions after Russia’s latest drone attacks. The Kremlin remains defiant, escalating global tensions. Diplomacy hangs by a thread. • Trump’s Scotland Trip: Trump’s Scotland visit, hosted at his Turnberry resort, sparked protests over his Epstein ties. Demonstrators demand Epstein File transparency as Trump denies briefing on his involvement. The controversy deepens. • Maxwell Pardon Rumors: Ghislaine Maxwell’s DOJ interviews fuel speculation of a Trump pardon. Her attorney hints at clemency, while Trump claims he hasn’t considered it but notes his authority to do so. Critics fear a justice system betrayal. • ICE Raids in NYC: ICE’s intensified NYC operations, including deporting a former IRA member, have communities on edge. Mayor Adams faces lawsuits over sanctuary city policies. Fear grips immigrant neighborhoods as protesters mobilize. • Thailand-Cambodia Ceasefire: Trump demanded an immediate ceasefire as Thailand-Cambodia border clashes displace thousands. Malaysia reports both nations agreed to halt hostilities. Peace remains fragile.

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Okay, no, no, I'm not. Now it's okay. Anyway, I'm Ted Rall. That's John Kariaku over there. Thanks, as always, for joining us here on D-Program, where we try to deprogram you from all the corporate mainstream propaganda that's in the media and everywhere else. It's like the old Palm Olive commercial.

propaganda, you're soaking in it. Yeah, yeah. I'm old. I remember that stuff. All right, so today we're going to talk about the starvation crisis in Gaza. The prospect of even more sanctions against Russia, I guess they found some lying around between the sofa cushions that they hadn't used yet. Trump's visit to Scotland. There are rumors that Jislane Maxwell, whose name I still can't pronounce, could be pardoned by Donald Trump.

I still don't understand why she would be. Ice raids here in New York City, things are going to get spicy here. I have a feeling this week. And the ceasefire deal between Thailand and Cambodia seems to have been at least in part prompted by Trump's tariff threats, which is one of the strangest combinations of stories i've ever heard yeah john shall we just get into the situation in gaza yeah two israeli human rights organizations today uh issued a joint statement saying that the israeli government is committing genocide they used the word genocide for the very first time wow the new york times craps all

over this announcement by saying well these are liberal groups in israel and And they're frequently in opposition to the Israeli government. But listen, genocide is genocide. And they compare what the Israelis are doing in Gaza to what the Germans did to them in the Second World War. Minus the ovens, I think this is a very, very important development. In the meantime, the Israelis deny, deny, deny that there is any such thing called genocide. They say that they're fighting a war with Hamas. Well, if you're fighting a war with Hamas, why are so many children?

children starving to death. And if you're not committing genocide, then why would you make this grand announcement today that you're allowing, you're allowing shipments of food? If there wasn't a starvation policy, you wouldn't need to make an announcement that you're sending in plane loads of food being dropped on pallets and parachutes. Not to mention it's a starvation policy that was announced immediately after October 7th, 23, and by the very same people who are still in the government. That's right.

And who never retracted those statements or even apologized for them. So, John, one of my favorite comments that came out in the last day was from everyone's favorite prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. He said that in response to the pressure, Gaza would receive minimal humanitarian aid. that where where we're at is that's an up that's more than I mean minimal yes because there was no food none the policy is to starve civilians it is it's to kill people it is and so I mean aside from the question of you know how do you get up every morning and live with yourself um I mean there's the question of like the messaging right I mean it's kind of like that was

greeted totally without commentary by outfits like the New York Times. Like, it's blaze. Like, no big deal. I mean, as the occupying power, Israel has a responsibility to provide ample sustenance and food, water, power, and everything else for the people in the Gaza Strip. And they're like, well, we'll provide minimal. Like, that's okay. Even before hostilities, Ted, there were five hours a day of electricity and two hours a day of water. That's all the Israelis allowed. And now, even don't, so, you know, we, of course, France has already decided to acknowledge Palestine as a state. I think that's a big deal. That recognition is a huge deal. There's pressure now on Keir Starmer, even in the UK. Now, I think, I've always thought that the UK would be

the second to last to go. The U.S. would be last. So, I mean, the very fact that Starmer has, hasn't rejected this idea out of hand, I think is massive. You know, John, those two Israeli groups declaring that this is genocide, that is a big deal. Of course, and of course, they're liberal groups. It's going to start with obviously. What? You think Ben Gavir is going to call it genocide? Precisely.

Maybe eventually we'll get there. But right now, this is how it starts. I mean, it is a big deal. I mean, there's definitely, you know, you can sense the shift. in the, you can just feel it, right? I mean, the ground is falling out from under, you know, from support for the far right regime of Netanyahu specifically and Israel in general. You're absolutely right.

Kirstarmer already has a reputation for being weak and ineffective, not just as prime minister, but as a leader of his own labor party. So if we expected leadership from Kirstarmer, we're likely to be, disappointed. However, with that said, you make an important point and a correct point that I too would have believed that the Brits would be the next to the last country to turn away from the Israelis and in favor of the Palestinians. I'm going to change that now. And I'm going to say that the next to last country to turn away from Israel will be Germany. The Germans are irrational in their support of Israel, as irrational as American policy is. And they're going to be

with the Israelis until the bitter end. And that's because of their history. They feel like they're the ultimate guilty liberals. That's right. That's what it is. They're the guilty liberals. Like, oh, look what we did. We have to make right.

So we'll help the Israelis do it to the Palestinians. And that'll put us right with the Israelis. It's insane. Stupid policy. Yeah, no. I mean, of course, obviously, look, I could understand the discomfort. But, I mean, it's going to become, we can see already, like, Hakeem Jeffries and people like that, they're having to backpedal all these politicians.

They were in the safe place, right? And that was true in Germany, too. It was always safe to support Israel. You and I both know, John, 10 years ago, if you criticized Israel, you were in tremendous danger. You were jeopardizing your reputation, your job. You know, you'd be accused of being anti-Semitic. I know when I did anti-Israel cartoons, 30 years ago, I got accused of being anti-Semitic. So nothing's, you know, but now it's safer.

It's safe. Yeah, right. Thanks to those, thanks to those photos that are coming out. It's the photos that have done it. And you know, what's funny, too. No one cares about starving and dying adults, by the way. No, it's the children. It's the children.

And for the first day or two after those photos ran, there were a lot of complaints in the UK that the BBC had either doctored the photos or took the photos in other countries during famines and said they were Palestinians. Now, right, not true. These are legit photos taken by BBC photographers of Palestinian children. Yeah, they are. And there's tells, too. But, you know, look, in fairness, deep fakes are a real thing. We've seen tons of photos of like old disasters repurposed to present as something that's contemporary outside of the Middle East crisis. So it's not like impossible that such a thing would happen. But the Israeli government, they have some balls.

The official spokesperson today went on and said, this is fake news. These photos are faked. There is no famine in Gaza. This is the official policy, the official statement of the government. Scandalous. They're kidding, right? I mean, how much more full of shit could you be? And I mean, I think the denials only make their situation.

worse. I mean, the Israelis are rightfully in a no-win situation, but the only thing they could really say is, you know, this whole Gaza humanitarian foundation thing didn't work out. We're going to let the UN back in and, you know, let the chips fall where they may. And then there was that article over the weekend in the Saturday New York Times media dump where they revealed that actually everything that Israel said about Hamas stealing aid was not true. It's not true. So they were just making shit up. But it, you know, it just appeared, it appears like, so the Times dutifully released it on the Saturday.

But when nobody's can see it. Well, supposedly, right? But that's not really true anymore. I don't think the New York Times understands that. I think, like, they think nobody read it. Actually, Saturday is a major news day on the internet now. Good. You know, they're all old down there on 8th Avenue and 42nd.

street. They're very, very old. Not the people who work for them, but the editors who make the call, they don't get it. And it's kind of great. Donald Trump today said that there should be more aid going into Gaza. He was asked if the photos were faked. He said they looked real to him. Good. That's actually a major announcement from Donald Trump for him to say something like that. But then, you know, we look back to just, what was it, Ted, a week, maybe a week and a half ago when Benjamin Netanyahu was in Washington and half the Senate showed up to take a selfie with him with Cory Booker, who I briefly flirted with the idea of supporting in a presidential run. That's gone from my head. But him, like, lamely trying to hide his face, like he was having second thoughts. just as they were taking the picture,

it enrages me. I can't believe that this guy is not treated like a war criminal. Well, yes, I can't believe it. It's the United States. And then we impose sanctions on the UN special rapporteur for torture.

It's just, I just can't believe it. Well, I mean, if there's hope, if that really, I mean, things really are changing. I mean, fast by the day. I mean, if I'm the Israelis, I'm nervous as hell right now. Absolutely, because there's no endgame for them. They know what they want to do.

They want to kill every Palestinian and the ones they can't kill throw out. But that's not a viable policy. It's, you know, it's a crime against humanity. You can't feel it. There's a really great well-written piece in times of Israel, which is, of course, as you'd expect, a pro-government, pro-and-very Zionist publication. But basically it's saying that it's claiming that Israel has never had an articulated policy throughout the conflict in terms of war aims. And that's true. That's true. However, we know that there are war aims. Sure. I mean, and Israeli generals, they're not

bad generals or tacticians, right? No, sir. They, I mean, they know what they're doing. There was a, there's a minor Zionist party that is a part of the Netanyahu coalition and the head of this party, whom I had never heard of before said yesterday, look, the policy should be to either kill or expel every Palestinian and we shouldn't be afraid to say it. It's like, well, you're the only one who's not afraid to say it. It is a war crime and a crime against humanity and the legal definition of genocide, but don't let me stop you from saying it. I think it's also a violation of international law for an official of a government to even articulate such a statement. He could be prosecuted for that in the future. Yes, he could.

Of course, we would put sanctions on the court that prosecuted himself. Right, yeah, of course, because it's the judges you have to blame. Yeah, so how much, so I mean, okay, this is the tough question. I don't, it's probably unanswerable. Maybe we should both try to answer it or just punt. What happens next here? I mean, are we going to, how much longer is this going to go? I mean, my feeling is Israel's got literally the amount of time that they have before they

cave in and let the UN back in is measurable in days. seriously i have to agree with you um there's pretty much nothing left to destroy all there is left to do is kill as many people as you can kill as we said that's not a viable policy and the only way that the israelis can get out of this is to turn back to the united nations declare victory declare Hamas destroyed and turn it over to the u.n and then you can engage the Saudis and ask them to join the Abraham Accords, and you can negotiate some deal later. But if the Israelis knew what was good for them, they would declare victory and go home. They could offer Hamas's leadership exile, right?

That's a good idea. We will let you leave. Yes. And you can go to a third country, I don't know, to be determined. But, and we promise we will not send the Mossad after you to assassinate you later on. Right. Right. Nick Otto has a good question there, Ted. What about the American leaders of both parties who are complicit in this genocide? That's a, you know, seriously, that is a great question. It seems to me like if you are the country that is the number one supporter, I mean, look, I guess it's a question. What is the role of the United States in this World War II analogy, right? If Germany is Israel, then the United States is a close.

ally, like it's an access member, like fascist Italy or Imperial Japan or perhaps Hungary or Romania, any of those like fascist access or the Bolshe regime in France, they were all prosecutable. They were all, you know, they were all legally vulnerable. We focused on Germany at the end of the war for obvious reasons. But hey, you know, the leader of Vichy France was condemned to death. And then his sentence was then commuted to life in prison because he was five million years old. He was like 86. Yeah. So, you know, but I think, yeah, no, I think, honestly, the political leaders of the United States, certainly the president, certainly the leaders of Congress, they should be held to account legally for their role in this. I mean, they set the

They sent the weapons. They set the money. They provided logistical support. They provided intel. I mean, people keep, you know, like, John, one of the rules that, like, Zionists who try to equate criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism say is if it's anti-Semitism, if you hold Israel to a different standard, then you hold other countries. Okay, but the difference is, okay, when Myanmar commits atrocities against the

Rohingya people, we're not paying for them or sending weapons. It's horrible and it should be condemned and stopped. But it's not really our thing. It's not our responsibility. It's everybody's business, but it's not a special. But Israel is the number one recipient of foreign aid. We run interference for them in the UN Security Council. We, you know, we provide them with crazy amounts of intel and weapons. Four billion dollars a year ever since Camp David. And by the way, I mean, if Jimmy Carter were here, I think he would say, like, the reason that we're bribing the Israelis and the Egyptians with $4 billion a year is to say, cut the shit and live in peace. Well, the Israelis broke their part of the bargain. The Egyptians didn't.

That's right. The Jordanians didn't. No. Everyone's doing what they're supposed to do. But Israelis just do whatever the fuck they feel like. I mean, really, it's part of their, like, national personality, if you believe it's. thing. It is. It is. That's absolutely true. And you, you absorb that as you walk around Tel Aviv or Jerusalem or anywhere else in Israel. You just, you can feel the vibe that people

emit as you're over there walking around. Every Israeli that I ever knew, that's not true. Almost every Israelis, every Israeli that I ever knew wanted to utterly destroy the Palestinian Indians kill them all or exile them all and let the Israelis live happily ever after. Almost every Israeli I know. Even my American friends who are Jewish and who consider themselves to be Zionist, there's one guy who I've been close to for 20 years and I'm just about ready to unfriend him on Facebook because I just can't take his Zionist propaganda anymore. and then he starts off every post by saying

if there's any anti-Semitism, you are permanently blocked. Well, any criticism of Netanyahu to him is anti-Semitism. Ridiculous. I mean, I try not to do that because I like to keep lines of communication open, but sometimes there's really no choice because it makes you literally insane.

Yeah, so, I mean, we're, it's just, you know, look, I got to agree with you about the Israelis that I've met, too. I knew one or two who were very compassionate to the plight of the Palestinians, viewed them as human beings, believed that the Israelis needed to live side by side in peace and friendship and harmony with them. But very, that's really exceptional, right? Most of them really view them as rats and vermin to be exterminated, just like it is like, what the, you know, like that old joke, like, you know, what is there, rock doing on top of our oil it's like it's like what are these fucking

Palestinians doing you're like infesting our land like why are they here our holy land yeah yeah um you know honestly the only people who are really the only the only Jews who I know who are really great on this in the United States are people associated with Jewish Voices for Peace or Code Pink or any of the other myriad of uh and those are big groups and they're big groups and they're increasingly vocal and i think it's absolutely wonderful meiko pellet is doing yeoman's work as the head of palestine house here in washington dc um it just opened a couple of weeks ago and it's it's small but my goodness it's a start what is palestine house

it is a meeting space slash gallery for um pro-Palestinian human rights groups, Palestinian artists, Palestinian musicians. They have programming there several nights a week. It's up on Capitol Hill. And one of the city's big property developers, who happens to be Lebanese-American,

donated the building. And they have a small endowment, so they're able to make a go of it. And Yalo Banana, even Tucker Carlson, sounds sane to me now, oh my God, I can't tell you how many times I've had that conversation with friends just in the last two weeks.

Well, Tucker has changed, too. He's changed. He'll be the first to say so. Yes. Oh, thank you, Dana. Tucker, once he was free of the bonds of Fox News, was able to be himself, his libertarian self. And while he's still completely wrong, for example, on the issue of abortion, I love the guy. I consider him to be,

be a friend, a loyal friend, and he's 100% right on Palestine. And we should join forces. You know, I take a lot of heat about this too, and I know you do as well, Ted. But parties be damned in our country. We should join forces with everyone who agrees with us. We can get so much more done than if we impose these ideological purity tests that do nothing but divide us. I feel really strongly about that. No, I totally agree. You know, I think about, I know a lot about the French resistance. You know, when the Nazis invaded France, monarchists fought alongside communists and socialists. It was like the idea was like, we have an infestation here of Nazis. We can't like be worrying about each other. My favorite example of this was, what was his name,

the leader, Shamassoud, the leader of the United Alliance. Yeah, had Shamassud. Did you ever meet him, by the way? Once. Right before he was assassinated. Yeah, that was on 9-10 right when that happened. Sure was. So, so Akhmat Sharmatid was the legendary general from the Panjir Valley, Tajik, northern, from the Northern Alliance. And he unified the anti-Taliban, the anti-Soviet resistance, right? And he famously convened all these tribes and factions who all hated each other. And they all got together and he held up a cup of tea, toasted everyone and said, first we kill the Russians, then we kill each other. And remembering that order is very, very important. Right now, we have a, you know, we have a major problem. On a foreign policy front, we're knee-deep in

militarism, adventurism, and Zionism and complicity with genocide. We've got whoever, everyone is against that. Left, right, whatever. We've got to get together. Here in the United States, we have rampant billionaires and corporations underpaying everyone, screwing us all, taking away our health care, left, right, middle. Everybody's got to, like, fight for ordinary people. I mean, we've got to get together. I mean, there's a place to unify between the left and the populist left and the populist right, for sure. I mean, the populist right has been betrayed by Trump and they know it. Yeah, that's absolutely true. Reed makes a couple of good points here too. Tucker's not going to cross the rubicon

because this kid actually does work for things. That is true. And it's not just Palestine that he's right on. He's also talking about Zionist manipulation in the United States. He and I had a long conversation about that, actually, about Israeli intelligence operations in the United States and how the Israelis for decades now have been spread out all over the country trying to infiltrate our defense contractors and steal our defense secrets because we only give them 95% of what we have

they want the other 5% that That's the Israeli way Yeah, it's the Israeli way Yasutaki All right All right, are we deprogrammed on Gaza right now? Yeah, I'm all fired up about guys. There will be, oh, me too. And by the way, seriously, for people who are coming

to this point of view belatedly, welcome. Welcome. And thank you. And better late than never, and we're not going to give you shit. But seriously, welcome aboard. We have to put an end to this shit. And if it's, you know, look, we all have been propagandized. So it's not shocking that it takes some people longer to be depropagandized than others. All right. So, Russia, Russia. Donald Trump had set a 50-day deadline, which some people had interpreted as basically like a wink-wink, nudge-nudge to President Putin. Like, you guys can do some mopping up operations there in preparation for a ceasefire negotiation. But I'm really looking for you after 50 days to sit down with the Uki's and sit down and work out some... With the operative phrase being after 50 days.

After 50 days. Well, this is kind of like one of those things like... I had a credit card where they used to say you had 28 days to pay. And then, like, one day I got a late notice after I paid 10 days afterwards. And it was like, but I thought, oh, yeah, we changed that. You didn't read that, like, 5,000-word thing that we sent you. Yeah. So that's kind of like what happened to Russia.

I mean, Putin just got his notice like, oh, no, 50 days has been revoked. Now is now. Now is now. Yes, now. It might be 10 to 12 days, maybe. Maybe. So, okay, so then Trump's saying if the Russians don't hop hop to it and make peace with Ukraine, and the Ukrainians do appear more willing to talk and get serious than ever before, but who knows with them. Okay, so what exactly is the threat here to Russia? I don't really get it, because they've already slammed them with sanctions. They got you and me fired. I mean, it's like, what more do they, I mean, what more could Trump do?

I know we still buy shit, particularly energy from Russia. But, you know, the Russians can, they have other, they have other markets. It's oil. You know, it's like, I used to work in banking. And we used to say, you know, we have the one product everyone wants money. And it's like, well, when you sell oil, you have, you have another product everyone wants. I mean, if. If you're Putin, are you losing any sleep?

No, because the Indians and the Chinese have said, whatever oil you have, we'll buy it. And after that initial shock, you remember right after the Ukraine invasion, Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, said that the Russians were surprised at the quickness with which the U.S. was able to impose sanctions. And we kind of knocked them off kilter for three or four weeks. and then they realized they don't really need the United States, including the American banking system. When they can turn to the Indians and the Chinese and everybody else in the world that doesn't want to fall into line behind U.S. sanctions, they realized they're actually not having

too tough of a problem with it. Well, not to mention, it terrorized the rest of the world, right? You know President Xi and Prime Minister Modi of India, they looked at that move and they said, the fucking Americans are they're feckless and reckless right they will kick anyone out of the monetary system you know breton woods be damned they don't care they're gonna do they're gonna politicize the u.s dollar and the reserve currency we better get our own deal going that's right and just wait until the bricks countries make their own unified currency it's going to be it's going

to be a major change in global it's an atomic bomb that's right i mean it could really like tilt the U.S. into a depression within days. That's right. It really could. So the Ukrainians, you know, finally saw the writing on the wall with Donald Trump. And the Russians saw an opportunity that, you know, hadn't been there before.

And so they're not afraid of sanctions. We can sanction them from now until kingdom come. They don't care about the sanctions because they don't need us. Right. It's really as simple as that. So, I mean, obviously that's it. Yeah, in a way, in a little bit, Trump is pushing on an open door, right? I mean, Russia doesn't want this to go on forever.

They're not stupid. It costs money and time, and they're not really getting anywhere. I mean, the lines aren't moving very fast. I mean, pretty much, this is good, you know, it is what it is. You look at a map of where the front lines are, this is where it is. And you might have some land swaps to make things a little more even, so we don't end up with a Thai-Cambodian situation. But it is what it is. And I know Putin gets that.

I mean, so, like, so I guess the question is, is a ceasefire, is a deal possible this year? Yeah, sure, sure. But there has to be something really special in it for the Russians because they're just not feeling under any pressure. Yeah, they're just not. I mean, certainly an end to all the sanctions would be a start, right? But then I think reintegration, you know, honestly, Honestly, I bet G8 membership would be just the tasty treat that Putin would like. I would agree with that.

I would agree. Remember the G7. And Donald Trump has said it should be the G8. Oh, sure, sure. Do you remember the G7 plus one? That was offensive. That was offensive. And it was like Gilligan's Island and Russia and the rest.

Yeah, and all the rest here on Gilligan's Isle. Yeah, by the way, I don't know if you know that, right? The rest were the professor and Marianne. And then they changed it in season two. And they negotiated a deal. And Marianne's the only one who ever made any money from that show. Her agent negotiated like some insane deal for residuals and syndication. Back then they were like, syndication, what's that?

And she like lived in total luxury the rest of her life. Yeah, she just died. Yeah, she did. Russia, though. I mean, so do you think, So that might be enough, right, to get it done with Russia. But then are the, you know, can Trump lean on the Ukrainians and force them to sign a deal? I mean, he can, but he's getting pressure from the militarist forces and the supporters of Ukraine politically breathing.

You know, he's got Lindsey Graham and people like that breathing down his neck. So which way, how does Trump fall on this? He has to, do I want my Nobel Peace Prize? or do I want to suck up to Lindsay Graham? Like, what is it? I think he wants the Nobel Peace Prize, which is why he called the Cambodians and the ties over the weekend and told him to cut it out.

And now they announced a ceasefire. Yeah, let's just skip to that. Let's talk to that. Let's talk about that because I thought it was an interesting story, right? So back in 1907, the French, they were the colonial power. Thailand was independent, right? But Cambodia was a French colony. And they signed a border deal. They defined the border, mostly along a river, but with an exception. And the way that the treaty looked, the text of the treaty, basically put these temples inside of Thailand. And then, but the map that accompanied it put the temples inside Cambodia. So Cambodians, are like, we're going with the picture. And the ties are like, we're going with the words.

I love this whole thing. And so they've been like at it for years over this, although for the most of the time, no one cares. Basically, for five days, there's been fighting across the border with heavy artillery. So, and some F-16 action. The ties that we, as we talked about last week, obviously have the military advantage overwhelmingly. And basically over the weekend, Trump said,

We have an August 1st deadline for all of the tariffs with every country on earth. And if you two rascals don't cut the shit, you guys will get, like, hit by massive sanctions, I mean, by massive tariffs and bring it too now. So Thailand, I get, they have a lot of trade with the U.S. Cambodians don't have shit. No. They sell us a few tickets. Yeah.

So I think with the Cambodians, they just wanted to be over because they're getting their asses kicked, right? agreed okay that was my take so the ties are motivated but but whoever heard of ending a war with a threat of tariffs I mean it's kind of brilliant it is brilliant actually and it and it's worked I mean listen this whole tariff thing you and I both said was nuts when it was first announced he was going to crash the international economy and son of gun if it if it's not working out? It's true.

Yeah. Yeah. Sorry, Jay. We've been talking about other things. But anyway, time this. I'm not going to be in the past. I'm sure it'll come up again. Tying this back to Ukraine and Russia.

Somebody pointed out that, you know, the Pentagon has this plan going into 2026. Of course it does. That's what the Pentagon does. It does near medium and long-term planning. Oh, yeah. They have plans to invade Lichtenstein. Oh, yeah, yeah. They're called off-the-shelf plans. They come up with the plan to invade X, Y, Z country, and they just put it on the shelf. And someday, if you need to invade that

country, you pull it off the shelf and you do the invasion. Case of emergency, please break glass. Yeah, yeah, that's right. So I think that the Ukrainians are exhausted. I think that they don't fully trust Don Trump to keep funding them and sending weapons. And they also realize they're going to have to concede some territory, at least to the Russians. But the Russians, I don't understand what the motivation is to keep fighting unless the Russians are serious about overthrowing Zelensky taking Odessa someday. Who knows?

Otherwise, it's not acting rationally. Because I mean, Russia has been kind of fighting with one hand tied behind their back. I mean, they have not committed the full. full weight of the Russian military to this project. They've treated the Russia-Ukrainian war as kind of like an important project, but one of many, not like an existential, you know, fight for the Russian Federation. This is not total war for them. It's like something they're just doing on the side, kind of. And that's why they're not, I mean, if they threw everything they had at the

Ukrainians, they would overthrow Zelensky and overrun the entire. Absolutely. Absolutely. It was So what's going on? I don't know. I'm wondering if they're trying to put so much pressure on Zelensky that the Ukrainians rise up and push Zelensky out. Let Zelensky take his money and run to London. And then they might be willing to sit down and negotiate a settlement with whomever steps in and it fills the void. I don't know.

I don't know. Otherwise, the Russian position over the last several weeks does not make sense to me. Yeah, they're an old Cold War thing about a mystery wrapped in an enigma. That's right. A riddle wrapped in a mystery. That's right. Russians are hard to figure out sometimes. And yet they're also the most straightforward people in the world sometimes, too.

Yeah, sometimes they are. No, a yellow banana, that's one of the issues. The Ukrainian constitution says that in a time of war, elections can, be postponed indefinitely. If you said, yes, Zelensky declared martial law, and then he said, well, under martial law, you can't have an election. So I would love to have

an election, but because of the thing that I declared, we can't have one. Yeah, do it. And there's no and there's no, by the way, the U.S. had elections during the Civil War. Just saying. Yes. Yes, we did. Yeah. Yeah, I think, Pamela,

I think that's right. The Duran, you know, those guys in the Duran, they know more about Russia and more about the Russian-Ukraine war than I think anybody else in the planet practically. They are saying that the Russians want to demilitarize Ukraine. And they use that term to denotify the Ukrainian military. I think it's the same thing. And so removing like the far right components like the Azoffi type people. Correct. Yeah. I don't know. I mean, it just seems like, it's like, that's, does Russia really want to micromanage another country's military like that?

God forbid. I can't imagine. You have anything better to do? Unless they push the Costa Rican model where, you know, Costa Rica just doesn't have a military. It just doesn't exist. They have a national police force, but there is no military. There's no Navy. They have a little coast guard with, you know, one boat in the Atlantic and one boat in the Pacific.

But that's it. Well, but the West would never tolerate that because Ukraine's a major weapons purchaser. It is. And a major weapons manufacturer. What weapons do they make? Oh, they are prolific with the 9mm and the Kalashnikov. They have factories just pumping them out. Yeah.

So this is a Soviet legacy. Yes. Yes. Just like it is with the Romanians. Yeah. The Romanians make billions and billions of 9 millimeter ammunition every year. That is super interesting. So Cambodia and Thailand, I would say, like, okay, yes, it's fragile.

It just, the ceasefires just went into effect. Like all ceasefires, this is one of those. We'll stop fighting now. Details to be worked out later in terms of this, you know, 1907 border conflict. But my feeling is that this is over for now. What do you think? Yeah, I think so too. Yeah.

And there's no upside to it. Well, you can pick up some temples. I guess you get the temples. Yeah, you get the temples. Who doesn't want their own Buddhist temple? I take a Buddhist temple. They look cool. You know, speaking of Buddhist temples,

do you remember the giant Buddhas in central Afghanistan? Yeah, in Bamion. In Bamian, that the Taliban blew up, like 1,500-year-old Buddhists. The Greek government, in the depths of its economic depression, tried to buy those Buddhas just to save them. Oh, wow. And with the intention of then donating them back to a post-Taliban Afghan government. Yeah, and Mullah Omar was like, fuck you guys.

Well, I remember, like, yeah, at the time, I mean, I think it's important to remember that. Not to at all, you know, I can't sign off on what they did. But, you know, the rhetoric was really interesting because it was 2000. Mullah Omar, the one-eyed leader of the Taliban at the time, said, look, you guys don't care about our children who are starving to death due to sanctions. So why on earth should you care about this big sandstone thing? We're blowing it the fuck up. And I remember thinking, like, man, that's brutal.

ISIS had the same mentality in Syria and Palmyra and all that. But I could see it. You know, like you Westerners, you care about this. this 1,500 year old thing, but you don't care about people right here and now. Yeah, isn't that the truth? First, I want to thank USC and to answer his question. You know, my first couple trips with the CIA, I went to little teeny tiny piddling countries that nobody would even pay any attention to.

And we would have these massive, gigantic American embassies that would take up like an entire city block. And I remember asking, I forget what country I was in. It was like Ethiopia, maybe. And I was like, why do we have an embassy that's this gigantic in Ethiopia when we don't have any national interest here? And the station chief told me, because we have to make sure it's bigger than the Russian embassy. I mean, that's what it came down to. So it is a size of our national penis.

That's exactly what it is. You go to any African country and our embassies are absolutely. absolutely gigantic. And it's because the Soviets had big embassies. So ours had to be bigger. It's not the size of your consular representation. It's how you use it. That's great.

So Reed S points out that a lot of independent journalists and YouTubers are visiting Afghanistan lately. I've been watching them. I'm jealous. Yeah. I love Afghanistan. I think it's honestly, couldn't possibly, right now is the safest it's ever been in our lifetime.

I'm absolutely sure that's true. Yeah. I think you could even go. You could even travel on the Central Highway. The highway is a misnomer. But I bet you could do that and be okay. Oh, the U.S. Embassy in Cairo. Oh, my God.

There's a lot I probably shouldn't say about the U.S. embassy in Cairo. Other than, yes, it's an enormous facility. And the Russian embassy is equally enormous. It's ridiculous. Rita, is this question. Why is it forbidden to take a photo out? the embassy overseas.

Not everywhere. Well, I mean, they're not laws that you can't take photos. Their policy, the State Department's Office of Diplomatic Security doesn't allow photos because they can be used to case the embassy. So they have people on the roof and they have people looking at the closed circuit TVs and they'll run out and grab your camera. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yes, well, certainly I've been to, in a lot of former Soviet republics, you can't take any pictures or in any authoritarian state. You can't take any pictures of any public buildings at all. In Turkmenistan, I got into trouble taking picture of a post office. I got in Saudi Arabia one time taking a picture of a sunset that just happened to have the Ministry of Interior off in the distance to the left. Did they try to take your camera? They did. And I stood my ground and it was a standoff for a half an hour, but they finally backed down when I pulled out the black passport.

I bet they did. Yeah, I bet they did. I genuinely was not, I don't care what the interior ministry looks like. I was genuinely taking a picture of a desert sunset. Yeah, no, I believe you. All right, so let's talk, should we talk about Trump? He's in Scotland, his mom. Yeah.

He was born and raised in Scotland. Yeah, but how incredibly rude is it? And what a gigantic violation of protocol that he goes to Scotland and then summons Kier Starrmer to fly to Scotland to greet him. It's like, come here, dog. And Starmor did. He got on a plane and he went. It's crazy.

Yeah, well. I'm shocked by it. Yeah. So, yeah, it's interesting. Why do you think there's so many people in Scotland who are protesting him over Epstein? I mean, he's got all, people are lined up along the side of the road everywhere Trump goes, saying that, you know, calling him a pedophile and saying that he's, you know, need, why do they care about the Epstein files? I don't think they do. I think this is just an easy swipe that they can take at him.

They protest him every time he goes to his golf club in Scotland. And I think this is just, this Epstein thing has made it so easy to criticize him. I mean, here we are weeks into it. And there is still zero White House strategy over how to deal with this. And then today when he... Well, they played for time by shutting down Congress early. That's exactly what it was. They played for time by shutting down Congress until September.

Um, but also, it's not going to work. No, it's not going to work. And it's just like the countdown at the front, at the beginning of our show. We're just watching that countdown. They're just waiting. Yeah. It's like, and then this stupid statement that, you know, are you going to pardon Gislaine Maxwell?

And he says, well, I have the power to pardon Gleine Maxwell. It's like, oh, my God. Like, have you learned nothing over the last two weeks? That's exactly what you shouldn't say in response to a question. Why not? Because Galane Maxwell is a convicted pedophile serving 20 years in prison, his base is more anti-pedophile than any other presidency in American history. And what does he gain by pardoning a convicted pedophile? I think I know the answer to that question, which is that it'll look like he's being transparent.

I'm pardoning her. Well, one of two things, right? I think he's like trying to figure out what to do, right? But if he pardons her, maybe he pardons her in exchange for a gag order, like she agrees to shut the fuck up. Otherwise, she's going to have a drone up her ass one day. Or, and she, it also fits in with his narrative, right? There's nothing to see here.

There's nothing in the files. There was no, there was nothing in there. Therefore, she never should have, people have asked, she's never been should then she should she should never have been convicted right and it's like yes she never should have been convicted so it plays into that narrative right it's like it keeps your story straight as well i mean it's a crooked story but as straight as you can possibly keep it i think that's that's what he's thinking that could be it i would say his thinking is incorrect but uh but that could very well be it. Yeah.

Fathers me very much. Well, I mean, and then the other approach could be to say, hey, I'll let her go. And that's part of my transparency operation. Maybe she doesn't have much to say, at least not about me or anyone I care about much. And that will show that I didn't, that we didn't have, that we, the establishment, didn't have Jeffrey killed and Maxwell buried in prison. Yes. We're letting her run around.

She can go be on the view, whatever she wants to do. And I'm going to show, like, I didn't do anything wrong. I have nothing to fear. Yes. Perhaps he's toying with those two possibilities. That's good thought. And he likes to, and the other thing is, he likes to blab because I think it's part of his test marketing.

He likes to dip his toe in the water. he raises the flag to see if anyone salutes, right? This is like, let's see how people react. If people freak out and say, like, what the fuck are you talking about? You can't pardon her? Then say, oh, uh, uh, you know, I never said that. I would have never done that. Which is a very common thing that the White House does.

I mean, every, every president does this. You release this rumor just to see what the response is going to be to the rumor. So that could be it. That could be it. I want to answer, uh, go hard. That's a good question right now. If they release the only person charged, well, someone else was charged too, but he died, then where's the justice for the victims?

Well, that's the whole point is then there's no victims. There were no victims, really, and the only person who is responsible has died. And because there were no victims, then we release the only person charged. I mean, I don't believe in any of this, but And Trump mentioned Larry Summers today? I missed that. Larry Summers, former president of Harvard who thinks that women don't know math.

Yeah, and former Secretary of the Treasury and current douchebag on top of it. Everybody who's ever met Larry Summers says he's one of the most awful human beings they've ever encountered. Yeah, yeah, I have heard. similar things. I heard the other day that John Kerry was somehow involved as well, which doesn't surprise

me one iota. Really? No. No. Listen, I worked for Carrie for two and a half years, closely, closely with Carrie. Carrie's a scumbag. And he's a fake progressive. There's nothing, like literally nothing progressive about him at all.

And then he'll do just stupid shit after stupid shit. Like, for example, I've been working for him for a year. and he bought a yacht and it wasn't just a yacht it was like an ocean going ship right and the the sales tax on it or not the sales tax but the mooring tax on it was six million dollars in in massachusetts so he registered it in in rhode island um which doesn't have a mooring tax and what he did he has you know he has a big house on on beacon hill in boston he's got a giant ski lot in Idaho he's got 120 acres in western Pennsylvania he's got houses all over a house in Georgetown so he bought a wife well no he's got as much money as she does oh is that true oh yeah yeah he's from the hinds ketchup yeah john hines his wife he's lovely by the way yeah so so kerry bought this little tiny condo in rhode island so he could have a road island address and save $6 million by docking his ocean-going ship there. And then there was this uprising. And even

staff members, we went to the chief of staff, really good guy who's actually a member of the Kennedy family. And we said, David, this is, this is a really bad look. You know, we're supposed to represent him. And we're out there and people are bashing us over this, over this failure to pay the mooring tax. And eventually, Kerry moved the ship back to Massachusetts and paid the million. So disappointing. Do you want to answer Reed's question? I missed Reed's question.

You got it there? Oh, oh, oh, Mr. Kyriaki, why don't know? Thank you. Oh, that's actually cool. So Reed, a couple of nights a week, a week or so before I left for prison, I was at my wits end, trying to save myself. So I wrote him an email to his private personal email address.

And I said, well, by then he was Secretary of State. So I said, Mr. Secretary, I'm begging you to help me. Please ask the president if he'll commute my sentence. The conviction would still stand, but I could work and earn money for my family and keep my family together and put food on the table. And he waited two, three days. And then he wrote back. and all the email said was please do not ever attempt to contact me again and that was the last time I heard from him that is cold yeah I'm sorry John that's brutal it was awful it really was

and no no explanation no reason that was it please do not ever attempt to contact me again wow is Mike Baker a real ex-Ci agent you have a minute so I replaced Mike in Athens and Mike's a good guy. He was a legit, you know, counterterrorism case officer, operations officer. And he did something that was really, really, like really stupid. He and another colleague of ours were doing surveillance on a terrorism suspect. And, you know, the best security in the world is probably old Greek ladies peering through their drapes, you know, from their houses.

And this old Greek lady kept seeing these two men sitting in a van day after, day after day. So she calls the cops. And the cops come and surround the van, right? Mike and his pal can't get out. Oops. They finally opened the door. The cops pull Mike and the other guy out.

and inside the van they have like three different changes of disguise each they have like six different ID cards all from different countries and in different names and so they used their

get out of jail free card and said call my boss in this certain section of the embassy they were expelled from Greece and then Mike when Mike went back to headquarters he

was called into the director of Counterterrorism Center's office. And Mike was kind of bragging to people that he was going to get an operation for standing up to the Greeks like that. And instead, they told him, we want your resignation by the end of the day. And that was the end of Mike. Yeah. I ended up working with his wife for several years afterwards. But, yeah, Mike was the real deal.

He just made a really stupid mistake. and he paid for it with his career. The thing about Mike, too, you know, Mike was a good-looking guy. I guess he's still a good-looking guy. No, this is well before Kover. He was a good-looking guy, so he went into male modeling. And he made a couple of hundred, a couple thousand bucks, you know,

modeling, whatever. And then he tried to get his own show at Fox News, and it just didn't work. He ended up pairing up with a KGB officer and opening a security consulting firm in London. I remember they did security for Madonna's wedding to Guy Ritchie. But Mike never really made money like he thought he was going to, and he never went back to the agency. Got you. John, let's talk about ICE. It's in four minutes, it'll be six o'clock Eastern time

here in New York City. A major protest is scheduled at that time in City Hall Park in Lower Manhattan. Ice is bringing the big show from L.A. to New York. They're going to be flooding the zone, according to the Department of Homeland Security. They're bringing in their military hardware. They're going to be grabbing and snatching as many brown-skinned people as they possibly can. The Washington Post told people, stay out. Stay out of the area.

It's going to be hell. Yep. And I have several friends who are like, oh, should I tell my friends. to not go outside. I'm like, yeah, tell them to take the couple, take the week off from work, you know. So it's going to be ugly. You know most of this activity is going to be happening

out in the Outer Boroughs and Bronx, Queens, and Brooklyn where they have a high, much bigger minority population. You know, I'm reminded of that quote from Casablanca where Humphrey Bogart advises the Nazi major, you know, not that probably not, wouldn't be good to certain neighborhoods in New York. ICE is getting ready to invade certain neighborhoods in New York. I have a feeling they're going to find it about as spicy as they found it out in L.A.

The locals don't like it. We don't like it here. And I mean, I wouldn't be surprised if there were clashes this week. The New York Times said this afternoon, too, that the level of raids that are expected in New York will dwarf the raids that we saw in Los Angeles. This is big. It's going to be very big, and we should probably expect to see some violence. I would think so.

And, you know, I should remind people that here in New York City, you know, due to the Supreme Court ruling, this used to be a city where it was illegal to own a handgun unless you were a celebrity. That's not true anymore. No. You can legally go out to, you know, Tennessee, buy a gun, bring it back. Hell, go to Long Island. Yeah. Right.

A lot of people just crossed the border into Vermont and buy a gun. a gun. It's really easy. I'm not encouraging it, but I mean, I do think it's likely. Likelier than not. I mean, I should point out, it's also been a long hot summer. We're now in the fifth consecutive week of over 90 temperatures. It's been a nonstop heat wave with no end in sight. We have heat end indices of over 100 degrees every single day. I've got my AC going 24-7. Someone asked if I had A-Z going for my cat. Yeah, but mainly for me. Yeah.

But it's like, my cat's a Russian blue, so he doesn't really like the hot weather. But it's definitely, it's horrible. So, and I think there's also going to be a lot of resistance. There's organized resistance here, you know, advocates for, and I think a lot of non-immigrants, non-migrants will help their migrant fellow New Yorkers. I mean, I would. It's against the law, but I would. I would.

There's no choice. Morally, I feel like I have to. John, did you hear about the case about this 82-year-old IRA veteran? Yes. Oh, my God. So what the heck? Oh, my God. This dude is 82 years old.

He was convicted back in 1983 of trying to buy rockets in New York. to attack in New York because you know in New York in the 80s was a wild time you could hang out of Studio 54 and buy rockets to attack the Brits

I'm sure it was probably just a fucking the usual FBI entrapment sting operations but anyway the point is he was trying to buy it he was the leader of this thing and then the Good Friday

Accords came and as part of the Good Friday Accords all these charges were dropped he was released from prison And he was given a green card allowed to stay in the United States. Anyway, the Trump administration just sent him a deportation notice. They said, you got to get the fuck out. He's 82 years old, hasn't committed a crime at all since 1983.

And he's got all sorts of heart problems. And he's on Medicaid and everything else you can imagine. And he needs that. I mean, I guess Ireland has national health care. He'll be fine. But, I mean, they want to kick him back to Ireland. And he's like, fuck you. all right whatever um but i mean what's going on john is it's just like are these letters being

auto generated for everybody who's got a criminal record well they must be they must be because otherwise i don't understand the strategy here if you want to you know raid all of the restaurants in new york city and grab the the sous chefs and the dishwashers that's one thing but if you're if you're expelling you know a chilean torture victim, which was what they did last week, and all an Irish, you know, freedom fighter for all intents and purpose, then how who's making that decision? I can't imagine that they're sitting around a table, you know, some conference room table in Washington with a stack of files saying yes, no, yes, no about who they expel. This has to be computer generated. There has to be like

this giant computer generated list of everybody who's ever been accused of a crime and is here on a green card, and then they're being expelled. I just, otherwise, I don't understand it. Yeah, and Houdini makes a point there, too. This way they can say, oh, we're not just expelling brown people. There have been white guys, too. Yeah, right. But I mean, 82 years old.

Yeah, 82 years old. Like, he's a real threat to our society. Yeah. Well, maybe, you know, they say it's like when they turn 83 is when people get really crazy. Never know what they might do. Yeah, crazy. Well, so I don't know. All right, so I guess we'll watch that.

We'll know more about it later in the week when we have our, we're here Monday, Wednesday, Friday, 5 p.m. Eastern. And I'm trying to think, is there anything else that we missed here? Not really, right? I mean, I'm a little scared. Weekends are slow, but there was a lot to talk about today being a Monday. Yeah, for sure. There's a lot. It's going to be a busy and very hot summer.

Yeah, yeah, always. So, let's see. Let's put this up. This is kind of cool. Thank you for the $10 donation. Much appreciated. The German chancellor announced an air bridge to Gaza today. What's an air bridge?

But stressed the importance of Germany's friendship with Israel and the need to remember October. Who could fucking forget the October? seventh attacks. People just, they don't stop talking about it. I mean, an air bridge is a, it's a direct path into another country's airspace where you're guaranteed safety. Okay. Yeah. Like the Syprus to Gaza and the Israeli Air Force won't shoot you down. That's an air bridge. Right. What we need is a bridge bridge. What we need is an open border. That's right. I mean, that's right. That's right. All right. Well, I guess we are going to declare ourselves sufficiently deprogrammed for today. Thanks, everybody. Thanks always for

joining us. Much appreciated. Please like, follow, and share the show. Seriously, please do. If you're not already doing it, just takes a second of your time. And it really makes a huge difference. And we really are super moved by John and I talk about this, by the incredible participation in the chats and just the enthusiasm. You guys are amazing. Love it. Thank you for these smart, well-informed, relevant questions. It really keeps things going.

Thank you for that. Here, here. And so, please check us out here on our various websites and stuff, but we'll see you Wednesday, 5 p.m. Eastern Time. Same bad station, same bad time. Take care. And if you're undocumented, get documented. And if you can't get documented, hide.