DeProgram with John Kiriakou and Ted Rall - DeProgram with Ted Rall and John Kiriakou: “Mass Shooting Targets ICE”

Episode Date: September 24, 2025

Political cartoonist Ted Rall and CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou analyze the deadly sniper attack on a Dallas ICE facility, where two detainees lie dead and a third fights for life, YouTube's reinstatement pathway for creators banned under defunct COVID-19 and 2020 election misinformation policies, visa revocations for foreigners celebrating Charlie Kirk's assassination, Ben Carson spearheading the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) agenda, and Trump promises to Arab and Muslim leaders at the UN that he will block West Bank annexationDallas ICE Sniper Attack: A gunman unleashes chaos from a nearby rooftop, firing indiscriminately at the Dallas ICE field office and a van, leaving two detainees dead and another critically injured. FBI Director Kash Patel reveals unused ammunition etched with "ANTI-ICE," signaling ideological fury in an attack probed as targeted violence, the third against Texas ICE sites this year following an August bomb hoax and July's officer shooting. Texas Senator Ted Cruz condemns divisive rhetoric that paints opponents as Nazis, urging an end to demonization.YouTube Reinstatements: Alphabet submits a letter to the House Judiciary Committee, unveiling a pilot program allowing creators banned for COVID-19 and 2020 election misinformation to apply for reinstatement, prioritizing conservative voices. Channels linked to Dan Bongino, now deputy FBI director, Steve Bannon, and RFK Jr.'s group eye return, bolstering monetization for influencers.Visa Denials Over Charlie Kirk: State Department officials scour social media for foreigners praising or joking about Charlie Kirk's assassination, revoking visas and deporting visa holders, with dozens queued including a Brazilian congressman and Mexican commentator.Ben Carson Joins USDA for MAHA: Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson sworn in as USDA's national adviser on nutrition, rural healthcare, and housing, leading efforts to implement Trump's Make America Healthy Again initiative through state SNAP junk food prohibitions and overdue Dietary Guidelines revisions.West Bank Annexation: At a closed UN General Assembly huddle with eight Arab and Muslim nations, Trump vows firmly to prevent Israeli annexation of the West Bank. Turkish President Erdogan labels the talks "fruitful" on Fox News, setting up Thursday's White House follow-up, while echoing 2020 Abraham Accords' anti-annexation roots amid far-right Israeli pressures.

Good afternoon, and thanks for joining us on D-Program with Ted Rall and John Kiriaku. It's Wednesday, September 24th. Hi, John. Nice to see you again. Good to see you. And I just want to say, by the way, a little bit of housekeeping. I'm on the board today, so any mistakes are mine, not Robbies. Also, please like, follow, and share the show.

We appreciate your questions, and we will answer them in the chats. Please watch us on Rumble if you can. next week, we're switching to a morning schedule for three weeks, but not until Wednesday, but heads up. We're here at 5 p.m. Eastern Monday through Friday until then. Also, we're about to drop. We just recorded a couple of really cool things. We just interviewed Reality Winner this morning.

We will be playing that Tuesday night in lieu of the live show, but we'll run it as a live so people can have the chat, but John and I will not be in the chat, but we'll be airing that at 5 p.m. Eastern Time. Great interview, a very, very wide-ranging. Check out her book, I am not your enemy. Also, John did part three of his interview with Yours Truly. We're starting to get into the LA Times bullshit. So keep an eye out for that.

Robbie will announce when we're dropping all those interviews as Rumble Premium content. Okay, John, let's get to the day. news um Dallas uh in the Dallas ice office um some uh we have another rooftop shooter uh they shot at the indiscriminately at a van and at the field office uh presumably they were aiming at ice because uh cash Patel showed unused ammo that said anti ice on it subtle of course that could be misdirection um but it's two detainees who were killed no As far as we know, no one from ICE has been injured.

We'll get into that. YouTube has decided to roll back its bands of users who were deemed guilty of COVID and 2020 election denialism. We'll get into that. Visa's State Department is actually trolling social media to look at tourists and other visa holders in the U.S. to see if they said anything mean about Charlie Kirk. and they're being banned and thrown out of the country. Ben Carson, remember him? He's back in the Trump administration.

He's joining the USDA. He'll be RFK's sidekick for Maha. And this might be, in a way, the most formidable news of the day. Donald Trump promised Arab and Muslim countries that he will not allow Israel to annex the West Bank, something that Israel has been threatening to do in retaliation for all the acknowledgments of Palestine as a sovereign state at the UN General Assembly this week. And we were looking at maybe even at annexation announcement as soon as this Friday. So a lot to go over. John, what do you think?

What should we get into first? You know, as much as I would love to talk about John Bolton and disappearing statues on the National Mall and a couple of other things that really aren't that important but are kind of fun. I think we should probably start with Israel's threat to annex the West Bank. Okay. Israel has annexed the Golan Heights. That's an act of war. It's a violation of international law.

You're not allowed to annex land that is conquered during war, a time of war. The threat to annex the West Bank would be, from the Israeli perspective, the end of any Palestinian attempt at statehood. It would be over. Donald Trump says not going to happen. It shouldn't happen, but this is going to be that classic pissing match. And who blinks first, Donald Trump or Benjamin Netanyahu? We already see that Netanyahu is willing to bomb Iran and to bomb gutter and to do anything

he damn well pleases. What's to stop him from annexing the West Bank? And then saying to Donald Trump, what are you going to do about it? That really frightens me. Now, nobody in the world will recognize that annexation. But I'm not sure Donald Trump has the wherewithal to stand up to Netanyahu. What do you think? I'm not sure either. I mean, I want to point out that the facts on the ground are already pretty rough for the Palestinians and for the people of the West Bank. I mean, by some accounts, there are as many as 2,000 checkpoints inside the West Bank, all manned by the IDF. They allow their violent colonialist settlers to run wild and steal people's houses, destroy their houses, trash their cars, beat them up, set them on fire, and even murder

them with impunity and the idea of she stands by and laughs and doesn't give a shit. By some analysis, 60% of the West Bank has effectively already been annexed. And as much as I would like to say, well, in a perfect world, all those illegal settlers would be evicted and that would be turned over en masse, turned over to their rightful owners, the Palestinians. I don't think you and I both know that's not likely to happen, even if we do move in a better direction from the standpoint of a free and independent Palestine. So, you know, it is a pissing match, right? I mean, you sized it up exactly.

I mean, this is a game of chicken. The far right part of the Netanyahu War Cabinet Coalition wants annexation of both the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. And I don't know if Netanyahu can say no to them. them, right? So Trump is making this promise. He knows, though, I mean, obviously he must be worried sick about something. You know, like, I guess he'll just figure he'll lose the entire Middle East forever if it happens. I would say that's accurate. I can't imagine an Arab country continuing to maintain diplomatic relations with Israel if they annex the West Bank. And I'm including Jordan and Egypt in that as well.

I agree with that. Like the worst possible thing that Israel could do for Israel. Besides the fact that Houdini points out correctly, it would also increase Israel's Arab population by 45%. 45%. Well, then Israel would have to pretend to be a democracy. That would be a major problem. I mean, I don't think they would, right?

I think they would annex it and they would give them second class in a social. Yeah, sure. Exactly. Yeah. No voting. Yeah, which I mean, in a way, they kind of already have for the Arab, for the Arab Israelis. You know, they're not full-fledged Israeli citizens in the same. They don't have all the same privileges at all, no matter how much the Israelis like to claim that they do. Yeah, no, I mean, I think, I think it's a big deal, right? I mean, look, I'm glad that Trump made this promise. Obviously, it's way belaborated. and it's not nearly enough. And truly, you know, we should completely cut off Israel financially and militarily and in terms of intelligence and no more vetoes at the U.N., none of that, right? So this seems to me like, I guess this is Donald Trump's red line for Israel. This is the one thing he will not allow them to do. That's my read here.

I hope. I really, really want to believe Donald Trump on this. But who knows? I mean, he promised to be the anti-war president. He promised to end the war, for example, within 24 hours between Ukraine and Russia. That's a joke. Which brings up Matthew Blair Raines question. Have we heard about Trump and Ukraine?

Yeah, of course we have. Oh, yeah, yeah. And, you know, yeah, Trump has obviously been, he did a, it seems to be a total flip-flop. But, John, I don't read it. that way. I think, you know, with Donald Trump, who's not exactly the most coherent communicator, I think what this is, it's a cheap way of making good on his threat from a few months ago, where he said, if I can't make a quick deal, I'm walking away and just allowing the war to go on. I thought the key part of Trump's statement about Ukraine was he said,

Ukraine could take back all of its pre-war territory. He's not defining whether the war began in 2014, so whether that would consider include Crimea or not, or whether he starts it in 2022. I'm suspecting he's thinking of 2022, but I don't know. But the key phrase in there is, with the help of the European Union, he's not saying the United States. No. He's not even saying NATO.

He's saying the EU. I thought that was a very carefully chosen phrase. Most definitely. yeah very carefully chosen you know i think really the uh the uh how should i say this i think that donald trump really doesn't have a policy i think he pretended to and he thought that he could fake his way through it by beating up on zolensky and that's why we saw that very well-staged uh previously choreographed uh fist fight smack down in the Oval Office when Zelensky went and was told off by Trump in Vance.

But I think deep down, there really isn't a policy. I think that Trump believed that if he spoke loudly enough and belligerently enough that the Russians would declare victory and just stop. And that he, Trump, could bully Zelensky and the Ukrainians just to accept the status quo. And it's not Zelensky that's been the fly in the oitman. It's been Putin. And now where do we go? Well, that is the question, right?

And you're right. I think Donald Trump wings it. That's his personality. And as much as his people inside his administration might try to get him to form of coherent policy, it's just not, that's just not who he is. Scary girls asking, would Crimeans even want to be part of Ukraine again? Fuck no. No, they voted in a plebiscite that was considered free. and free and fair by the observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

Overwhelmingly, they wanted to be part of the Russian Federation. And that's the same is true, by the way, of the Eastern, certainly the people of the, I'm going to say the Donbos, but certainly the Eastern Donbos. There's no question. They do not want to be Ukrainian. They never did. That's right. They never did.

It was clear. I mean, so I don't even know, to this point, I don't even know. know why Ukraine even wants them back. But on the other hand, Abraham Lincoln wanted the Confederates back. You know, I would have let them go. Yeah, they would have failed by now. Yeah, I would like, my take has always been like, well, eventually the blacks would have risen up and killed all the slave owners.

And then we would have just had an alliance with them with their new republic. And that would have been it. Probably it. Yeah. So, you know, you didn't really have to go rushing in. I understand. It's 19th century thinking. in a big way.

I don't know. Yeah, I think that's late. Yeah, so, okay, well, I hope that, you know, I really do hope that Trump keeps this promise. I think he kind of has to, right? I mean. I think he has to, yeah. Because, you know, he's in danger of coming across

as Benjamin Netanyahu's bitch. And he knows that's just too far. I think you're right. I mean, look, it's like this. I already think that he's been BB's bitch. Yeah. But the whole world will think of him that way. And that'll be the end of him, you know.

I think so too. So I think so too. Yes. So he's got, I mean, he's not, it's too late to stand tall. You know, like the old movie walking tall. We're past that point. But, I mean, you know, maybe you don't have to be. come Peter Dinklage. Maybe you can still be normal-sized. That's right. That's right. So,

all right. So let's see. Will Crimea go to Russia or Ukraine? Dual purpose asks. I mean, they're already, they're in Crimea. They've been annexed formally. They are in Russia. They are not going back, right? John, there's no way. I don't think so. No, I don't think so. no they're not going back no you know I feel very pessimistic about the state of the world today whether it's Russia whether it's the continuing fallout from the Charlie Kirk murder or or or others responses to the fallout of the Charlie Kirk murder I'm just not optimistic.

Well, we should probably talk about the visas then in conjunction with that, right? And I know if we have a couple of minutes, I want to talk about Jimmy Kimmel and his return. Oh, yeah, let's talk about Jimmy Kimmel. I watched it. Did you watch it? Yeah, I watched it too. What do you think? In Los Angeles.

I thought it was masterful. Really? I do. I think that he perfectly positioned himself. he almost brought himself to tears twice. That's true. He still took a swipe at Trump, but he took a swipe at Disney,

took a swipe at ABC, took a swipe at Pete Hegseth. I thought it was terrific. You disagree with me, though. Yeah, but, you know, I couldn't help looking at it as a writer of comedy and of cartoons. And I just kept thinking,

Stephen Colbert would have handled this better. You know, I mean, what was missing, here was irony. You got it in the first section where it's like he's wearing the silly banana out, the monster outfit and the sidekick with the banana out. And he's like, it's like, oh, we should get to, we should, we should change. That's funny. But, okay, you start, everyone's tuning in, as he pointed out, millions of people that never watch are now watching. You've got that audience. They're tuning in right at 11.30 p.m. You don't start out with the, you know,

know, I'd like to thank Seth Myers and I'd like to thank, you know, Ted's Cat Clovis and I'd like to stop. Like the thank yous, we really kind of didn't have to do that. One sentence would have been enough. Thank you to everybody who supported me. Done. But it was like, you know, it was like he was accepting an Oscar. And it was boring. And it went on for painful minute after minute after minute and then it actually wasn't that long i'm sure that it felt like it it felt long and i feel like you you know in a way many people were watching the jimmy kimmel show who have never watched the jimmy kimmel show so you only get one time one chance to make a good first impression from a comedy point of view i thought it was a fail um you know basically he went on there like as a mr serious

cultural commentator about America, capital A, drop shadow, gothic lettering. And I was like, okay, like you can do that, but like you should really keep it light and make fun of the absurdity of the whole situation. Don't be so fucking serious. And I thought he could have made fun of the whole thing. The best moments were when he did joke, I understand that he was really moved. You could see when he first walked out that he was crying twice. When he first walked out, I could see his eyes were, you know, tearing up.

Yes. So that's, you know, I get it. I mean, and I could see why. I mean, it's really a meaningful moment. There aren't many times when someone in American politics or humor or culture gets censored and then gets us, is brought back. That almost never happens. And he, I think, understood the gravity of the situation.

I didn't disagree with anything he said about authoritarianism. The German line was funny. Yeah. But I did think, yeah, I'm sorry. I just thought, you know, I just thought it could have been funnier. But I don't think he's that funny. And I guess this just sort of reinforced it for me. The Washington Post today has a little review that is very, it should have been on the opinion page to tell you the truth.

they're saying that you know he's back and he was confident and he was funny but he knows his days are numbered it's like what what inside information do you have that his days are numbered you're going to just throw a grenade into the middle of the room and just you know watch to see what happens you don't know his days are numbered so i didn't like that but i thought he did well i thought he did well. And you're right about about him having far more viewers last night than he probably ever has, ever. I said to my brother,

we were watching it together, that it had to be the longest standing ovation in the history of late night. Right? It must have been. So people... Yeah, no, I mean, he normally has about 200,000, previously he had about 200,000

nightly viewers. And he had to be well in the millions yesterday. Yeah. And, yeah, US triple X. I hate the Oscars where they thank everyone. I would I'd abolish that. I'd be like we're going to revoke your Oscar if you thank one person. Don't thank anyone. Go up there and say something interesting. This is why nobody watches the Oscars anymore because it's boring. It's like I'd like to thank my literary agent who did the adaptation of my Serbo-Croatian edition of my book based on this film. Shut the fuck up. If you have nothing interesting to say, don't say it. Yeah, I agree. I agree. Sorry, I'm churlish.

No, that's okay. That's okay. Hey, I did want to say something, too, about John Bolton. Okay. So the FBI said today that they did indeed recover classified documents, classified at the confidential and the secret level from John Bolton's home when they raided it. Now, tell me if this is a coincidence or if this is a setup, but Donald Trump went on Truth Social just a couple of days ago and demanded that Attorney General Pam Bondi begin prosecuting his

enemies. He did not mention Bolton. He specifically mentioned Comey and Schiff and somebody else, I forget. He didn't mention Bolton. But I've said this a thousand times, I'm going to say it again. A precedent, a very ugly precedent, was set in my case when Judge Leonid Brinkima redefined espionage as very simply providing national defense information to any person not entitled to receive it. In the case of an espionage, charge the person not entitled to receive, it can very simply be the cleaning lady who cleans your house and may or may not have had access to

it that's an espionage charge there's also a subsection of the espionage act that makes it espionage to take classified documents out of a secure area and to and to house them in an unsecure area these documents were housed in an unsecure area so he can be charged with multiple counts of espionage here that are legit charges now besides the fact that don't trump wants to prosecute everybody and i acknowledge that that's the case well not the upstein people except for the epstein people right i'm telling you that if what we're seeing in the press is true and i don't know because or tom homan sorry got to mention him too and tom Holman yeah oh and the and the post did the post is like uh but Tom

Holman you can just put 50 grand in a bag and you're okay um but if what we're seeing is true uh Bolton if I went to prison Bolton should go to prison and he should go to prison for you know this is a five year each one's a five year charge mm so there it is I mean okay so I know I understand that sentiment Now, taking yourself out of it, do you think that, like, if you can, do you think that, like, objectively, this is the kind of charge that should face years in prison? No. If you look at the federal sentencing chart, he would be classified in the far left column, which means he has a criminal history of zero. He's never been convicted of a felony before, a federal felony.

espionage is row 27 so if he went to trial and was convicted the government would ask for seven realistically he would be looking at two to four years but again a precedent in my case thanks to the good old CIA was if you have been charged with a national security offense you may not serve your your sentence in a minimum security work camp and so he would have to go to honest to god prison now you know he may get a sweetheart deal who knows but uh the one thing i still don't understand i know i said this last week i'm going to say it again maybe he can get eric adams deal yeah exactly and end up ambassador to turkey or something um i don't understand why his grand jury was convened in Washington.

Unless his house is in Washington, but I thought he lived in Maryland. At the same time, if these documents originated at the CIA, and I'm confident that many of them did, he could very easily be charged in the Eastern District of Virginia, in which case he's guaranteed to be convicted and go to prison. So we'll see where it goes. My guess is he's still going to get some kind of a sweetheart deal.

And, but, I mean, but not from Trump, just because he's the establishment and the big fish go don't go down and he's a fairly decent sized fish. Yeah. Yes. That's a little bit depressing. It is. Talking of administration, I mean, we should take note. I don't think there's a lot to say about this, but Ben Carson, you know, he's joining the Maha gang, RFK Jr. He's going to join the U.S.

He's going to become the USDA's national advisor on nutrition, rural health care, and housing. This is very esoteric. And he's supposed to lead efforts to implement, make America healthy again through state snap junk food prohibitions and dietary guidelines. First of all, I just want to say that, like, you know, a good night's sleep is a very important part of our health. And no one makes me sleepier than Ben Carson. when he talks. I mean, I'm sure he's a lovely man, but he's... He should be on at around, when I'm trying to go to sleep, which is around 8.30,

he should play for about an hour, and I will probably sleep right through tomorrow into the next day. I'll be fully... I'll live to be like 110. You know, my father's 97 years old. He only told me they just renewed his driver's license. what till he's 101 yeah yeah that's how it is oh my god it's crazy great country man those are at least half my genes are good uh anyway so ben carson i mean i think it's i think maha is a true it's a case study in squandered opportunity i mean it is it depresses me

this really needed to be taken seriously and just like all of Trump's stuff, the good, the bad and the ugly. Nothing's ever taken seriously, except for the really bad shit, like expanding ice into the biggest armed force in the entire world. But, you know, I mean, I would have loved

him to, you know, be serious about this, and he just clearly wasn't. Do you remember the painting that he had commissioned of himself and Jesus is standing behind him with his hand on Carson's shoulder? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. there's so many of those like there's like all this all this like right wing kitch of like uh you know

jesus with his with his hand on trump's shoulder as trump's leaning down trump who's you know whenever he's leaned down it's usually doing something profane maybe to bbby netanyahu um not not it's certainly not like worshipping the lord um and uh it's like but i love the one with dead epstein put his hand on Trump's short. The corpse of Epstein. That's great. Oh, you shouldn't have an AI make those. You could sell them and get rich.

Oh, yeah. You could just keep doing this. You could have like the bodies of the dead Gazans. You know, it's just like, it just goes on and on and on. There's no end to it, you know. Oh, that's, I shouldn't have said that out loud. I should just kept it to myself and just do it. It's true. Now the idea is out there. Now that the show is becoming popular, we have to be careful.

It's not a secret thing among a few friends, right? I mean, people are getting out there. We're like on, you know, we're like on a splash page on Rumble every day. I mean, you know. Incredible. No, no, no, yeah, no telling. Oh, well, there goes, there goes a profit. I'm sure other people are doing it. They probably are. Right. Hey, speaking of which, and I'm sorry if I'm getting a little bit too off topic. Please. But my Facebook feed today was absolutely full of these medals, what do you call it, the national, whatever, Franklin Mint, Franklin Mint. They're these metals about the size of an Eisenhower silver dollar, but they're Charlie Kirk on them.

Oh, God. And they come in a framed shadow box with a picture of Charlie Kirk praying like this. Oh, brother. Yeah, he's on his knees and he's praying like this. And then it has like the Lord's Prayer next to it. Oh, my God. Not since the Trump Bible. Exactly.

I mean, it's so blasphemous, right? I mean. And it says a portion of all prophets go to the Turning Point Foundation. Yeah. Uh-huh. Yeah. Right. I mean, yeah, I mean, you know, someone's really, someone who's smarter than me

needs to do a book about like maga kitsch there was a there's a book i think it's called tourists of history and it's about like 9-11 kitsch in particular but it's really fascinating and basically it talks about how after big tragedies like like 9-11 Americans love to put like stuffed animals and stuff like that like now if you think about it like let's say there's a fire at Nellam. Let's say it's like New Town, Connecticut. I mean, that would seem appropriate because it was a bunch of the victims were children. But we in this country, like if you have like 9-11, almost none of the victims were children. Most of them were adults. They were office workers for the most part. And yet people, New Yorkers and tourists piled up these, you know, these dolls and these stuffed animals and stuff. And so anyway, this sociologist, anthropologist, who wrote this book, she kind of makes the case that it's kind of amazing that historically the countries that do this kind of like childish form of memorializing, they tend to be extremely violent, militaristic, and expansionist. And she traces it to Nazi Germany that the Nazis like would do like stuffed animals and stuff like when like a top ranking. SS guy would be assassinated or something like that.

And it's basically like her feeling psychologically, and I buy this, is that a society can't really live with itself being a bunch of aggressive sons of bitches the way that, say, Nazi Germany was, the way that the United States is, certainly in the post-war era, but even before you can't you can't live with yourself as if you view yourself as adults you have to view yourself as children because children aren't responsible for what they do oh that's deep right that's deep right what an interesting what an interesting idea for a study the book's great strongly recommend it wow yeah yeah that's something yeah so so this so this is i think this Charlie Kirk's shit is like that.

You know, it's like it's infantilized. It's kitschy. You know, it's also this whole like, we are victims, like, everyone just wants to be a victim. Like, why are you picking on us? We on the right have never said or been mean to anyone, 9-11. Why do they hate us so much? Oh, I don't know.

Can't imagine. You know, like, really? But we were asking that over it. Why do they hate us? But we weren't really interested in the answer. What we were really saying is no one should hate us because we're just little kids and we shouldn't be hated. Thank you to Pamela. Pamela Drew explains it.

Franklin Mint is Roll Resnick Empire Dirkbag with Aspen with Monopoly in California almonds and pistachios. Awful human. See, I did not know that. You know what? And I get a shout out to Pamela. Pamela always knows this kind of stuff. And it would never occur to me to even look. And then when she says it, everything suddenly makes sense to me.

So what is the Resnick Empire? I'm not getting that. Oh, it's multi, multi millionaires out west. They're in the inland empire or something in California. They have a monopoly on almonds. They're the ones that are taking all the water. Oh, right. Like it's a gallon of water per almond, supposedly.

Right. Something fucking insane. a couple of questions. I mean, you know, sorry, here we go. Muhammad Ali is asking, this is for you. If I'm not mistaken, you're an Orthodox Christian. I am. Is something Islam as a part,

is Islam part of studying the Arabic language and your CIA agent? Why did you not convert? Oh. Oh, since Islam is part of studying the Arabic language. Why did you not convert? Well, you know what? Islam was not a part of studying the Arabic language, which was a complaint that I had. It's funny, I just gave an interview about this a couple of days ago.

It was a complaint that I had to the dean of the School of International Affairs at George Washington University. How can you have a Middle Eastern studies degree with no component on Islam or on any other religion, for that matter? So I complained about it. And then my junior, they hired Sayyid Hussein Nasser, who had been very briefly the Shah of Iran's last chief of staff, but he was a, like, globally respected thinker on Islam. You're right. There are a lot of guys, not just in school, but at the CIA, who studied Islam, usually at the grad level, and then converted to Islam. Really? I wasn't interested in converting.

I have my own faith and my own ideas. I just wanted to know more about Islam. I even took a course in Judaism. I had a minor in religion because I decided to take as many Islamic studies classes as I could. So I ended up with a minor in religion. I took Christianity, I took Judaism,

and I took a whole bunch of Islam. And I don't know. I felt like I was able to keep. carry on then an intelligent conversation when I was in the Middle East, whether it was with a pious Muslim or a pious Jew or even a member of the, you know, the Orthodox Church in Jerusalem or in Syria or anywhere else. There was a guy, sorry, I'm going to get off on a little tangent here. There was a guy I worked with.

I'm going to tell you his name, too. It was Andrew Warren. You can Google him. Andrew was a superstar at the agency. We worked together three different times in the Middle East, in CIA headquarters, and at the United Nations. And Andrew was one of like eight children, the son of a Baptist minister. He decided to get a master's degree in Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Amman in Jordan. And while he was in graduate school, he converted to Islam.

His parents were absolutely livid, but he converted to Islam. And because he was one of those rare, you know, black case officers who was also a Muslim and also spoke fantastic Arabic, his career just took off like a rocket. After I left the agency, his next assignment was in Cairo, and then he became the station chief in Algiers. the problem was that he really really liked to rape women while they were unconscious and so he would have these dinner parties and he would slip roofies in women's drinks and he would rape them and he would videotape himself raping them and then when they would come to in the morning he'd say what are you going to do about it you're Muslim you're not going to tell anybody. Well, he raped a woman in Algiers. Now, 21 of the rapes were in Cairo. Two of the

rapes were in Algiers. And the last woman he raped had the wherewithal to go to the ambassador and say, your man raped me. So the ambassador, God bless him, sent a cable. There's a special channel that an American ambassador can send a cable directly to the CIA without the state department seeing it. And so he sent a cable in this special channel. And headquarters cabled Andrew and said, hey, we were just going through your file. And we realized that you forgot to sign up for the class on, you know, like cultural sensitivity or whatever. so fly home for a week take the class it's two days then you do some consultation headquarters then you fly back when he landed at dallas airport they arrested him

and they charged him with rape he got out on bond and while he was out on bond he was re-arrested in virginia beach virginia walking down the street naked carrying a gun high on meth. And when the cops tried to stop at me, put the gun to his head, and they were able to tase him. They'd knocked the gun out of his hand. He ended up serving six and a half years

at a prison in Kentucky. And then I lost touch with, you know, whatever happened to him. Sure enough, a couple of months ago, he's in the New York Post. He's now known as Reverend Drew. Reverend Drew is now a backer, Baptist minister at this evangelical black Baptist church in Harlem.

And why was he in the New York Post? Because he raped an 80-year-old woman. And now he's in trouble again. And I'll tell you what, the moral of the story is that there are a whole lot of people like this walking around the CIA today. Sorry. That's a crazy story. I'm, yeah, I can't even. I'm gobsmacked.

We had a question, let me, oh, yeah, thank you for the donation from Selamom, $20, very, very generous. Do we think that the negative press that Prince Harry receives is a deflection of Prince Andrew and his Epstein connection? Because the more I read about Prince Andrew, the more sick I get. What do you think? I do think that that's possible. You know, I mean, certainly, I mean, I'm not really sure. I guess Prince, I think Prince Harry, like, pissed off the, I think there's a lot of things at work here.

First of all, he pissed off the press by not playing nice with them. And I think that's a big part of it. You know, it's like the press and the royal press industrial complex on Fleet Street in the UK doesn't, you know, they expect a certain standard of behavior, certain, certain, you know, give and take that they didn't get from Harry. Yeah. I think they didn't like the Megan marriage at all. And, you know, and I kind of don't like the Megan marriage because she comes off as Harry seems like a loss of soul. and she comes off as very controlling and sort of like taking she literally kind of told him let's run away from the royal family and like let's leave all this and she did she talked him into it

right she talked him into it and so I mean I think that's sort of like well he's not playing the game anymore and so you know you're supposed to stay in play although I kind of understand like I like the title of his book spare because that's what he is I mean it's kind of like hey just in the extremely unlikely event that we need you, stick around and go to all these boring ceremonies and don't live a real life. So, you know, I got to say that's the case here. Yeah, I think that's right.

I think that distraction only helps them keep Prince Andrew out of the press. And, you know, I hate when I read in the British press that, oh, the king, he's so upset with his brother, Prince Andrew, he took this title away from him, and he's not allowed to go to this conference in France. It's like, what are you really going to do something? The guy's an admitted pedophile. When are you going to bring him to justice? Instead of just saying, well, he's being punished. He's not allowed to go to the conference in France. By the way, Stephen Victor Andrews is saying

He's mad because X banned him last night when he was drunk and saying that I was a communist, which he is, said, well, Jedd Raul agree with me that he's a communist. Yes, if you need me to call Elon and tell him, I will tell him that what you said was true and that I will not only not sue you, that I would thank you for your compliment. Well, but Stephen Victor Andrews is also saying that you're a DNC stooge. Well, you can't really be both. You can't be both, no. he's going to have to choose.

Also, don't, don't, don't, don't ex-drunk. This is what friends don't like friends to ex-drunk. Yeah, I don't know. I don't think he should be banned for stuff like that. Although, I don't see, I don't think calling someone a communist is, is libelous. I think it's, I mean, you know, it's at one point, you know, for a lot of people in the 50s and stuff. But it isn't now, as far as I'm concerned. You know, I remember when I was a little kid, we were visiting my grandmother's house, my mother's mother.

And my mom said something about wanting to watch Rowan and Martin's laugh in. And my grandmother's English wasn't terrific, but my grandmother said, oh, Stella, we can't watch them. They're communists. And my mom said, they're not communists, mom. They're comedian. That's awesome. Still remember it. I think I must have been six.

That's so great. That's great. Flowchard is saying that Harry's not a legitimate royal. I am not, I'm just reading this as he's not the son of Prince Charles, but the army officer, James Hewitt. Yes, Diana had an affair. Yes, I know she had an affair. I guess is. I have no idea what the truth is, but he looks exactly like James Hewitt. Just like Ronan Farrow looks exactly like Frank Sinatra. Those two statements are very true. Yes. I mean, yes. There's no question about that. Oh, boy. I guess we should see since we're talking about banning. So Alphabet, which is the very poorly named, but extremely wealthy parent company of Google, sent a letter to the House Judiciary Committee saying that if you were a creator banned for saying shit about COVID, vaccines or whatever, or COVID in general, or the 2020 election having been allegedly stolen by Biden at Trump's expense, that you can apply now for reinstatement, saying that in particular, if you were a conservative, they're really interested in reinstating you. In other words, there's lots of lefties who were banned for the same exact reasons, especially for COVID. I wrote a whole article for the Wall Street Journal.

It was a news piece, really, even though it appeared on the opinion page, talking about all the people who lost their jobs during COVID for just refusing to be vaccinated or being skeptical. Anyway, so Alphabet's rolling that back. So Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino, Steve Bannon, other people are all looking to go back to Google, going back to Alphabet. They would be back on YouTube.

They don't have to just live on Rumble exclusively. They'd be like us. They get to be both on YouTube. I guess I'm okay with this. I don't like the prioritizing of conservative voices over liberal voices any more than I would like the other way around. It shouldn't be that way. I mean, look, I don't, I'm very deeply uncomfortable with the idea that like there's,

you know, things that, like, I don't know, for example, anything about any links between VAC, autism and VATs. and vaccines. I've looked into it. I've read a lot about it. I don't understand it. Okay. So I don't have an opinion about it, really. But I mean, it bothers me that we can't talk about it. It bothers me, too. And so I guess anything that rolls back censorship is good. Jace says a coworker of mine got fired for talking about Charlie Cook on Facebook. Someone screenshot his argument and sent it to the company. There's a piece in the front page of the Washington Post today about that happening to an elementary school teacher in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

And it seems to be, and this is not exclusive to the Republicans or to conservative, certainly because the liberals do this all the time. But this is the trend. If you don't like someone exercising their constitutional right to freedom of speech, you get them fired from their job. And it's happening all the time now. Yeah. Well, that's for sure. I mean, that's routine. I hate that. And especially if it's, you know, look, I understand completely. Let's say you're public facing and let's say you're, you know, I mean,

let's say you have a swastika tattoo on your neck. Right. And, you know, I might be hesitant to hire you as a waiter at my restaurant. Right. Because for obvious reason, I don't have to explain why. Right. Right. But honestly, let's say you're back office.

If you're back office or something, I don't think that's my business. and I think as long and I think you should be able to have a job and I don't have a problem with you and you know you might obviously in my opinion should not have that swastika on your neck but that's your stupid choice

I mean Pete Hankseth has white nationalist tattoos all over his chest he's the secretary of war yeah yeah that's exactly right you know of the I have like the full 5,000 Facebook friends but I actually know let's say 250 or 3

of the 5,000. And I'd say a majority of them are probably conservatives. These are all friends from high school, friends from college, friends from my hometown, and relatives. Most of them are conservative. Not most of them. The majority of them are conservative. But I wouldn't dream of taking a screenshot of one of their opinions about something and sending it to an employer. like how how does their opinion on some issue affect me that then in order to feel better about myself i have to make sure they lose their livelihoods it's so ugly and mean-spirited i can't i can't believe if you don't like what somebody's saying on facebook unfriend them it's really as simple as that or if you don't even want to be be embarrassed by unfriending them just uh unfollow

them for heaven's sake. I mean, to put a fine point on it, I mean, honestly, like, let's say you take a screenshot of what someone says, you send it to their boss, just like you said, John. Well, you're literally trying to murder. That's attempted murder because what you're doing, because what could happen is that person could lose their job. And they may never work again because we live in a society that doesn't guarantee you work. Right.

So they may, and they may starve to death because we live in a society and there doesn't have a good social safety net, they can become homeless and die outside. You're literally threatening someone's life. Their livelihood, what's your livelihood? The way you maintain your life and pay for your life. I mean, you should be, people should be thinking long and hard before they do that. They shouldn't be running to the local commandant tour and reporting people to the Gestapo. Exactly. That's exactly right. I feel exactly the same way. There's a little troll who was in the chat, who I had to killify. So, you know how it is.

The demonizer says, I wouldn't want to be under the care of a medical professional who celebrated Charlie Kirk's assassination. I have to admit, who cares? I mean, you know, then don't be. Yeah, then don't be. But it's like, I think it's a really weird metric, though. I mean, you know, it's like Barry Goldwater famously said that he didn't care if gays were in the military. He said, I don't care if the guy in the boxhole next to me is straight. I care if he shoots straight.

And like that's, I mean, that's how I feel. I mean, I don't give a shit if the pilot of my plane is like an anti-communist, you know, fascist, you know, has Donald Trump's face tattooed all over his ass. I mean, who care? I don't care. It's like fly the plane. You know, I'll thank and I'll say thank you when I get off the plane for flying the plane safely. I don't understand this desire to police people through their work. Agreed. I agree. Yep. I feel the same way.

I honestly, I don't care what other people's opinions on these political issues are. I just don't, I don't know, maybe I'm unusual in that I respect people's rights to have differing opinions. Now, if you're advocating violence against somebody, that's different. Sure, I'm going to object to that or, you know, racism or something overtly horrible like that. But otherwise, I don't care what people's positions are on these issues. I mean, I know, I mean, I definitely know people who have say racist shit. And, you know, I argue with them. And I think that's also, part of it is to engage with, you know, these are, these are not just evil opinions. They're mistaken opinions. Yeah. And you can, you can, there's good, scientific, strong, logical reasoning

that should prevail if this person that you're talking to is reasonably coherent. I'm glad this comment came up. Darina Philippi, Phippini, sorry, said, these ice must be stopped. These are Nazis coming to the earth to do harm and break up families. I don't know. I'm assuming that's a straightforward non-sarcastic comment. And it serves as a good jumping off point to talk about this attack in Dallas. John, you and I have been talking about ISIS tactics driving around in unmarked cars, masking up, no ID, wearing cheesy, you know, outfits and gear that they bought online or whatever,

or, you know, at Dick's sporting goods. or at the police, you know, surplus store, and that this was going to inevitably lead to violence and the people were going to start, you know, lashing back. Look, I'm going to, I'll fess up. I generally have a dim view of ICE. I think they are bad people. I think what they're doing is bad. I think if you're an ICE employee, you have a moral obligation to resign under protest at this point, because, not because they're deporting people, but because of the way that they're doing it. If this is a free country,

a free country doesn't have people wandering around in vans, snatching people off the street. Yeah. And who, you know, who are not, who could be anyone, and there's already been major cases of impersonation. Women have been raped. Oh, yes. Like by people, I'm ICE.

Come with me. And then they take them somewhere and rape them. And how's the woman to know, right? So now we have the situation in Dallas where someone shot at the ice field office ridiculously and tragically, it wasn't the ice. I mean, it was two detainees who were killed and another critically injured so the death count may go up. And apparently this was an anti-ice attack. There's been three attacks against ice in Texas in a matter of months. There was an ambush outside the ice office in July.

and a bomb hoax in August. Ted Cruz says that we should avoid divisive rhetoric and that we can't paint opponents as Nazis, right? To which I say, well, if the jackboot fits, wear it. That's right. But, you know, I mean, I understand, I mean, come on, that has to go both ways. I will give Ted Cruz props for what he said about Jimmy Kimmel,

although it was still kind of partisan. And he's like, oh, if we do this to them, they could do this to us. That's not the right reason to be against this, the censoring of Kimmel. The reason to be against it is because it's wrong and it's anti-American. But whatever, you know, I'll take my grace where I can get it. But anyway, we're going to see more of this. ICE's behavior is so provocative, so violent, so cruel, and so fundamentally un-American that I can't really blame.

I'm not justifying this. It's not justifiable. But I'm not surprised at all that people are lashing out violently against them. Really, I'm not surprised at all. And part of me is sort of like, I can't say that I would be as upset about this if they had gotten the ice guys instead of the detainees. I really wish I didn't, I couldn't say that. I mean, I'm upset.

Like, you know, I remember reading about like the new left in the early 70s. There was some crazy left-wing group here in New York that was assassinating New York police officers while they were, like, sitting in their squad cars. And even though I was like, I don't know, six when that happened, I read this all these years later, and I found it really upsetting. And I should find that upsetting.

When Ronald Reagan was shot, who I hated and who got me, you know, I was for all my classmates lost their financial aid and I lost my financial aid. but when he was shot i was upset i should be upset as someone who didn't like ronald ragan about that if if i wouldn't be upset at an attack against an ice officer it could say something about me but it also says something about them yeah without a doubt and you know it begs the question too where what's the end game here how bad does this get before society turns around and and tries to make it make it right again

I really honestly fear for the country right now. We're so divided and there are apparently so many people willing to use violence against those with whom they disagree or those who represent organizations or ideas with which they disagree that, I don't know, I think we're all in danger. We are. No, we're in, we're in danger. We're in a hot mess, John. I got to say, I don't, I'm going to. put this up. Houdini says, I don't buy that the shooter hit three people and them all being detainees if his goal was to hit an agent. I have to agree. I agree too. I don't, I don't believe it.

Yeah, I don't either. I don't buy it at all. You know what I think? Okay, I'm just going to say it. And you know I'm not prone to conspiracies. I think the government wrote that shit on the bullets. It's absolutely possible. Sure. I mean, it's ridiculous, but I really think they did. I wouldn't put it past them yeah i think that's right hey we've got a well maximus o five thank you uh for the donation he says hey gentlemen what are your thoughts about the greek spyware scandal i read from the bbc that two greeks and interestingly two israelis have been accused with marketing the software greece has a long and very unfortunate history of allowing themselves to be bugged the greek leadership has been bugged

apparently by the CIA that was that was the early part of the last decade uh no the early part of two decades ago before and after the Olympics and and political parties have bugged the other side repeatedly now there's yet another bugging scandal at the highest levels of the Greek government I will tell you that I believe the CIA bugged the Greek leadership 20 years ago I believe the Israeli leadership bugged the Greeks now. Yeah, this is going to get ugly. And, you know, previously, this has been bad enough to bring down Greek governments. U.S. Triple X.

Arad says something, well, he's agreeing with me. So, of course, I agree with him. I agree with people who agree with me. But he says, no one says anti-ice. That's exactly right, right? You'd write fuck ice. is what you would write on those things. No one would ever write

anti-ice. It's a very good point. It's so dumb. Who said that? U.S. Triple X. That is a very good point. We've never seen or heard anybody say anti-ice. You're right. The chant is fuck ice.

Yeah. There's a song by the damned called Antipope. And it's like so funny because it's hilarious because it's so deliberately clumsy in the way it's like, that's the day I became anti-Pope. Who would do that? Who would say that? And that's

why it's droll. And like no one would ever say like, you know, anti-maga. You just wouldn't say that. No. You would not say that. No. No. I also don't buy for one split second as we talked about yesterday

that the bullet lodged in his neck and didn't break the skin. Uh-uh. Nope. Uh, in, oh, in terms of Charlie Kirk. Yeah. No. That is not true and could not be true. As my lawyer used to like to say.

Uh, yeah. So, well, I guess we, we, we ticked all the boxes here. We talked about everything we wanted to talk about. We answered a bunch of questions. Um, it's been a long day. How many podcasts? How many interviews did you do today? I think I did five.

This is my fourth, and I'm going on the Jimmy Doors show in an hour. Wow. Oh, that'll be good. Yeah. I've been on that show. We ran into each other in Chicago last Wednesday, and he's like, hey, you've got to come on the show. I said, actually, I'm going to be in L.A., so I'm going to drive over to his house. Oh, nice.

He does the show in his garage. Oh, really? It's going to be fun. Yeah. Old school. All right. Well, let's see if there's any more quick. Questions we have to hit before we take off?

Yeah, only, yeah, see, I like that. Flow charge, very says, those who would say Antifa would say it. Okay. All right. Let's see. Kellis is saying that he, Charlie, was wearing a vest. I heard a report that it deflected upwards. I mean, he was a beefy dude.

I don't know if he was definitely wearing a vest or not. He didn't look like he was wearing a vest to me. I didn't notice any best, but I wasn't looking for one either. Yeah, yeah, everybody's agreeing. No one said with us. Nobody says anti-ice. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Alexander Luchy says, like spraying the word anti-Semitic somewhere to insult you.

That's exactly right. ridiculous. Thank you, Mr. Athenian. I would absolutely jump at that job. I could be out there in 24 hours. Mr. Athenian 89 says I should be Ambassador to Greece. Well, yeah, that would be a sweet gig. Gets to live in that beautiful house and mountains.

Love it. All right, guys. All right, so we will be back tomorrow, 5 p.m. Eastern Time on Thursday at 5. please like follow and share the show thanks for all of your questions your donations your comments and so on to the guy i had to ban why do you do that will just ban you if you keep trolling trolls are not welcome in the rumble or you know they're not they're not funny or ironic they're just it's a waste of time stupid wasted this is this is a place for smart conversation whether we agree to disagree so uh anyway all right john always a pleasure we will

see each we'll see you guys tomorrow and uh thanks everyone bye