DeProgram with John Kiriakou and Ted Rall - DeProgram with Ted Rall and John Kiriakou: “Putin and Trump Finally Meet in Anchorage”

Episode Date: August 15, 2025

It’s a key moment on “DeProgram with Ted Rall and John Kiriakou” as the presidents of Russian and the U.S. meet in Alaska to try to normalize relations and end the Russo-Ukrainian War. Trump-Putin Summit: Now underway at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage, where Trump is pushing for a ceasefire as Zelenskyy’s exclusion echoes 20th century imperialism and warnings of possible failure. Land swaps are on the table. Is there hope for an end to the bloodshed? 59% of Americans don’t trust Trump on Russia—should the president care?Kristi Noem’s Rent Grift: Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem is living rent-free in Quarters 1, a spacious waterfront home at Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling typically reserved for the Coast Guard commandant, raising concerns within the agency and among Democrats as a waste of military resources. Noem’s tenancy, prompted by safety concerns after the Daily Mail published photos of her Navy Yard residence, is “temporary,” though no duration is specified, and contrasts with other Cabinet secretaries who pay for their housing. Noem’s spending as South Dakota governor—$68,000 on mansion upgrades and $150,000 on campaign travel—indicates she’s not new to the Kato Kaelin lifestyle.Democrats Move Against D.C. Police Takeover: House and Senate Democrats introduced resolutions to end Trump’s control of the D.C. police, targeting the state of emergency declared Monday federalizing the Metropolitan Police Department. Lawsuits argue it breaks the 1973 Home Rule Act. Representative Jamie Raskin and Senator Chris Van Hollen lead the effort, citing low violent crime rates and Trump’s absence during the January 6 Capitol riot, though Republican control impedes progress.ICE Running Wild: Monrovia CA’s city manager reports a man hit and killed on the 210 Freeway while fleeing an ICE raid at Home Depot, though DHS denies chasing him. And a Louisiana lawsuit, JLV v Acuna, says ICE illegally deported two moms, Rosario and Julia, and their four U.S. citizen children—including five-year-old Romeo with stage 4 kidney cancer—to Honduras in April, denying due process and medical care. ICE ignored the moms’ wishes to leave children in the U.S., with one forced to consent under threat of foster care.Israel Running Wild: The U.S. responds to Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich’s plan for 3,401 housing units in Ma’aleh Adumim,, which the UN and UK deem illegal, threatening a two-state solution by splitting the West Bank. The UN says Smotrich’s plan is a war crime.CIA ‘Kryptos’ Sculpture Solution for Sale: Sculptor Jim Sanborn will auction the solution to Kryptos’s unsolved K4 panel on November 20, estimated at $300,000-$500,000, including original text and a proof-of-concept copper plate, with the money going to support disability programs.Illegal Bitcoin Mining in Central Asia: Tajikistan reports $3.52 million in damages from illegal mining using stolen electricity in Q1 2025, with 190 cases involving 3,988 individuals, while Kazakhstan uncovers a $16.5 million scheme using 50 MWh, linked to Russian and Chinese miners exploiting weak oversight.Russia and Central Asia Embrace the Taliban: Russia became the first country to give diplomatic recognition to the Taliban in July, followed by Kazakhstan recognizing a Talib as Chargé of Affairs in August, while Tajikistan seeks improved ties. Russia maintained its embassy post-2021, signed an economic deal for wheat, oil, and gas, and delisted the Taliban from its terrorist list, while Kazakhstan wants to boost trade to $3 billion and also delisted them, driven by stability and drug trafficking concerns.

It's time for deprogram. It's Friday, August 15th, 2025. I'm political cartoonist Ted Raul, CIA whistleblower, John Kiriaku, is over there on the other side of the screen. And yeah, in response to the question, will I always be introducing John that way? Yes, until he tells me to stop. So thanks everyone for joining us. We are here. We will officially be here Monday through Friday every weeknight, five or week afternoon. I don't know. what you would call it, 5 p.m. Eastern time starting Monday. So thanks everyone for liking, following, supporting the show in every way possible. You guys have been awesome. We're here on Rumble as well as on X Live and we're also on YouTube. We're going to be on Pickax soon. So that'll be cool. That's a new, cool place to go check out as well. Just a reminder, if you're not already doing so. Please consider supporting us by going over to Rumble and watching us there just because financially it's been a bit of a strain for the better part of a year ever since Biden's sanctions closed down our last job and we're pretty broke and we make a lot more money if you

watch the same exact show with the same exact experience over on Rumble. I'm monitoring the Rumble feed today. Producer Robbie's out. So any deficiencies in answering the Rumble questions are totally my fault. I take full responsibility. John's here in New York. And John, tell us what you're up to before. Yeah, I am here at the Hackers on Planet Earth, or Hackers of Planet Earth conference.

It's at St. John's University, today, tomorrow, and Sunday in Queens. And I have to tell you, I'm impressed with the size and scope of this thing. First Hackers Conference I've ever been to. They have three different venues going, on constantly. And I mean from from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. And some of these some of these rooms hold you know 500 600 people. So there is a lot going on. I'm going to speak. Actually, you know what?

I didn't know what I was going to speak on until about two hours ago. And I read it in the program. It says, uh, my, my speech is called, talk about winging it. I know. Right. Both sides of the wire, surveillance, whistleblowing, and building a cyber peace movement. And, yeah, that's what they're calling in on the other thing, too. What I'm going to talk about a lot, though, is the Vault 7 revelations and how the CIA and NSA and DAR and the FBI and whoever else wants to, ATF, DEA, can spy on Americans in ways that we can't even fathom. and then what we can do to combat that so i'm here with um a company called ivy cyber and oh that's funny stevie got an ad about bras in the middle of me talking on rumble listen lunch today and neither of us has mobs no and we don't have moves thank god

lunch today was two bags of cheetos in the speaker's lounge so if that ad makes us five dollars i'm happy to use it for a mcdonald's fillet a fish sandwich you're probably being the cheetahs sound like the meals that are being served to the russian journalists who are attending uh the anchorage summit they're being put off but i mean apparently in very kind of squalid conditions not changed that oh did he apparently the russians made such a thing what ted's talking about is all the american um members the media got you know rooms at the hilton and uh all the russians Russians got caught in the Alaska Airlines hangar. And so.

That's wrong. With little, with sheets. Yeah, it looks like an early COVID ward in there. That's exactly, that's exactly what it looks like. And so they raised a stink, thank you, Marble, thank you. They raised a stink saying that this was an affront against them because they're Russians, that it was done on purpose. Trump found out about it as soon as he landed.

landed and ordered that they be put in, I don't know, some five-star hotel someplace. Does Anchorage have a five-star hotel? I don't even know. I'm only aware of the Hilton. I've been to Anchorage once. And that's not a five-star. It's not five-stars. No. Although, nothing wrong with staying at a Hilton at all. I've stayed in many. I hope to stay in the future. Although they're getting rid of room service, which I think is foul. Marble 455. Thank you so much for the 10 bucks. Regarding spying is the FSB spying in Alaska now, John. Yeah. In fact, just by sheer coincidence, that one time that I went to Alaska, I was there with Gary Johnson when he was running for president in 2016. I was able to watch from the balcony of my room at the Hilton, American fighter jets, I believe they were F-18s, escorting a Russian spy plane away from the city that had flown too close. Yeah. I agree with Jace. Anchorage is surprisingly lovely. It really is. And there's enough to do there for several days. I thought it was fun. I had a good time. And I went when the weather was terrible late October. But I'll tell you, everywhere you turn your head, all you see is dozens and dozens of bald eagles. They're everywhere. Oh, that's cool.

Everywhere you turn your head, it's just bald eagle. When I lived in the Hamptons, there were a lot of bald eagles. We have a lot of them in the D.C. area now. being harassed by crows. When you and I were kids, they were all dead because of DDT, right? Their eggs had all fallen apart. So thank God that's something the EPA did. Bald Eagles would be probably extinct now. All right, let's get into it.

Lots of questions in the feed. But we should just go right into the, obviously, into the big news of the day, which is Trump and Putin are meeting even as we speak right now in Alaska in Anchorage. And everyone's all eyes are there. There was the handshake immediately between the two men. It's destined to be an iconic photo already. John, right before we went on the air, you heard something. Yeah.

So I'm on this list serve that used to be of RT employees. And so they're constantly, constantly exchanging information. And a couple of them are there in Alaska with. with with Putin and what they're saying is that coming out of meeting Sergei Lavrov the Russian foreign minister said that at least some sanctions will be lifted at the end of the meetings not all sanctions he didn't say which ones he said some sanctions will be lifted and in the meantime Trump said he believes that there will be a ceasefire by the end of the meetings and the end of the meeting is it's

just a one day meeting, right? This is it. It's one day. Do you think everything's already been negotiated in advance and they're basically there to dot the eyes and cross the T's? I do. I do. And the reason I say yes is because this was supposed to be a Putin Trump summit. Putin announced, I don't know, 12 hours ago that he was coming, not just with Lavrov, but with a contingency of their most important diplomats. And at the last second, Whitkoff and Rubio joined Trump on Air Force One, and Hegseth flew up separately. So all of a sudden, this became a very big deal. Yeah, Rubio was sort of a last-minute edition, right?

Yes. And so, I mean, my impression was, I mean, look, obviously we can only read tea leaves, but that's what we're paid very poorly to do here. The idea is, you know, I mean, it looks like initially the details didn't really basically first there was the decision to make to have the summit details had not been worked out and basically the feeling was these two guys are just going to get together in a room feel that take each other's temperature and maybe they're going to get together a second time but between that decision and today obviously there's been furious communications between Washington and Moscow and now you know so things are accelerating obviously there's tremendous desire on the part of these two men to normalize relations at least that seemed i mean they say ukraine's the main point i kind of think it's not i think normalization is the main point i agree with you ted i i think at least in the mind of donald trump he sees ukraine as a minor irritant here that there is a bigger picture at least as far as

the united states is concerned and he wants there to be movement alba is pointing out that that cia director ratcliffe uh is also there that would make sense in this contemporary setting because just the last two CIA directors have been engaged in foreign policy. So that's an important point. Marble says if they make a deal, they get to eat at Lobert. That's a reference to the Dayton Peace Accord that we talked about, you know, that resolved the Kosovo conflict. Did you happen to see? It's closed. Loberge is gone. Oh, I didn't know that. Did you see the New York Post report that Hillary Clinton said she would nominate Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize if there's a ceasefire?

Yeah, but there was a big caveat, right? She said, as long as Ukraine doesn't have to give up any territory. Oh, okay, well, then. Thanks for that. Let's just say the ranks for the odds of that are about the odds of her becoming president. Yeah. So, yes. So look, so, okay, so there's C-3-1-1 says, I don't believe there.

will be a lasting ceasefire. A lot of people feel that way. I think I have to agree. So this is about normalization, first and foremost. And so then there's the question of what does happen. I mean, you know, obviously we want this war in Ukraine to come to an end as soon as possible. What happens there? I mean, does, you know, is there just, are the French and the Brits and the Germans just going to throw too many wrenches into the works on behalf of Zelensky to stop that from happening? Maybe. I would have to think that there's got to be something big in this for Zelensky. If he's going to be expected to give up territory in perpetuity, he's going to have to get something really great in return. Now, Putin made that kind of random comment last week that all he wanted

was the territory. He didn't say anything about Ukraine. and NATO membership. So maybe, maybe the conversation is about NATO membership. Lulu is asking, is it impossible to lift sanctions? Because I don't think so. The sanctions weren't imposed by Congress, were they? No, no, they were imposed by the Treasury Department. Right. So that's just an executive order. Yeah. That's a phone call. That's it. Make them go away. It could literally blink of an eye, like, just, like, and bewitched, just wiggle your nose a little bit and they're gone. Yeah, agreed.

So, well, this is just a theoretical question, obviously, but M.W. Knox says, do you think Putin would give up what he's taken in exchange for the U.S. leaving NATO? Maybe. You know, and you have to think about how many times, three different times, the Russians asked to join NATO in the 1990s, three times. And three times we said, we didn't think that was a very good idea. And, you know, in retrospect. But it's not an anti-Russian club.

It's just a club where all the weapons point at Russia and Russia's not invited to join. Exactly. But it's not an anti-Russian club. And Marble's got a good question here, Ted. What agency facilitates such a conference, normally an embassy, without a doubt? And let me tell you, there is so much work involved with a presidential visit. They don't care who you are or how important you are or think you are in an embassy. You drop everything you're doing and you work on the presidential visit.

something like this is being done at a military base right yeah this is like dayton it's exactly like dayton which was at right patterson air force base that's right all d o d and and they're not really used to putting on big events like this the saving graces that they can provide security yes that's the main point here right that um john i have a question for you it just occurred to me so technically speaking uh Putin is subject to an iCJ warrant the second that he steps off that plane in Anchorage, the United States is supposed to arrest him and turn him over. Not necessarily, because we are not signatories to the ICJ.

But we're sort of, if it was someone else, we probably would. We'd snatch him. Yeah. Yeah, without a doubt. So, you know, do we have to send a letter to the ICJ or do we just sort of go, la, la, la, la, we can't hear you? Oh, you know what? Maybe we misread Tom's a question. It's the Ukrainian aid programs.

Those are congressionally mandated, yes. Oh, okay. So that would take congressional action. And again, Congress is not in session. But for sanctions against Russia, that's, that's Treasury Department. Yeah. And I guess, you know, well, the sanctions that closed like Sputnik and RT, that's, was that Treasury also?

Yes. Okay. Yeah, it sure was. I can tell you with more specificity, too. It was all about the banks. So when Treasury first announced sanctions, they were very, very poorly written, full of loopholes. And so what RT did to pay us was instead of transferring money from a Russian bank

directly into our checking accounts, they opened a bank account in Istanbul. And they transferred the money to this Turkish bank. And then the Turkish bank gave us our paychecks. And that lasted from the invasion, which was, what, February of 22 to October of 24. And then they tightened them up and we all lost our jobs. By the way, over on Rumble, we want to thank the Grice Meister is now a monthly supporter. We really, really appreciate you. Thank you so much for doing that.

Question over from the Rumble feed. I'm putting it up there from him or her. I know John keeps up with multiple boomer news sources. I guess we know this person's age. Do you keep up with more modern news outlets like breaking points with Crystal Ball and Sager NJet? I do. I do. I like Crystal Ball.

I like the work that she was doing over at the Hill, too. And they forced her out over there. But I think she's quite good. Yeah, I do. And she has a very lucky name. She has the perfect media name. Yeah, no, it's true. I mean, I would love to talk to her parents like, hey, good thinking there.

You know, it's like I have several friends who I've met over the years. Their last name is Smith and their shitty parents, their rotten parents, named them John. You know, I mean, if you name is Smith, don't be named John. I went to school with a kid named Pete Moss. The poor kid. I went to school with a girl named Kathy G. Broad. And her, this was during. the 70s. She had one of those monograms sweaters that said KGB. You've heard the old story about

the spinster sisters in Texas. Their last name was Hogg, H-O-G-G, and their parents named them IMA and Yura. Were they, were they fudged? Well, they were apparently nice, you know, ladies, but they were saddled with these. Thank you, Sotom, 23, 24 for your very generous donation, asking both of us, should Iran receive a standing ovation at the General Assembly for their political leadership during the bombing campaign? And what do you think is their next move? You know, that's a great question. A lot of people, a lot of leaders around the world are very concerned that there will be yet another, another Israeli attack on Iran before the end of the month.

Yeah. And I think that Benjamin Netanyahu is afraid of being lost in the, in the shuffle. He wants all eyes to be on him and is willing to actually kill people. Thank you, ICC, not ICJ, is actually willing to kill people to remain in the global focus. So I'm actually, Jen, I actually worry about that. Michael, Michael's asking, world speaking to her happening, New Zealand, Canada? Well, to quote my, to quote the attorney of someone with whom I used to be very close, I am a litigious prick.

And so, and they said that actually in court. So I sold out nine consecutive events. I can imagine who that was. I sold out nine consecutive events in Northern Ireland, Ireland, Scotland, and Northern England. And then like magic overnight with 57,000 clicks on the Buy Tickets Now button, I sold seven tickets. seven tickets and so to make a long story short

we were able to learn that meta's algorithm just no longer likes John Kiriaku and so they screwed me so I hired an SOB of an attorney who right now represents

not just the governor and the attorney general of Texas but 20 of the P. Diddy accusers he took it on what's the what's the word contingency thank you he took it on contingency because he

believes that I got screwed and that we've got a it's going to be hard to prove you know they don't like to reveal their algorithms I mean and they're probably going to say it's just all politics which is why like when Ted Raul posts a barn burner of a political cartoon it gets

one like on Facebook and you know when Ted Raul posts his cat you know he gets a thousand likes yeah yeah I mean, granted, my cat is cuter than my cartoons, but still. I filed a lawsuit against META in the Northern District of Texas. And I was very, very lucky to find an investor who is putting up his own money out of his own pocket to get this speaking tour back on track. We're going to restart it in January in Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Las Vegas, and Salt Lake City.

and so we will get to Australia and New Zealand, I promise you, it's going to happen. That's very, very cool. This one's over from Rumble again. I look forward to that. Okay. All right. So we have a lot to talk about besides this. Is there anything, do we want to leave this and move on?

I mean, I have high hopes. I mean, I have high hopes. I mean, I'm a perennial optimist. I'm, and I'm always overly optimistic and I get slapped down. Oh, and Nick. unfortunately, I'm still banned from Canada as a dangerous national security criminal. So I apologize, but I'm not coming to Canada. That sucks.

But yeah, I'm hopeful, but I don't want to get my hopes up too high. We'll see. All right. Let's move on to something a little more grim than that. Ice is running wild. The Monrovia, California City Manager says there was an ice raid at Home Depot, where else? A guy ran away. He was chased by ICE agents.

He was running across the 210 freeway, got hit by a car, and killed on site. DHS said that they didn't chase him. I know who I believe. And then there's a New Louisiana lawsuit. You might remember this case where JLV versus Akuna, where ICE illegally. deported two mothers and their four children who were all U.S. citizens illegally, including a five-year-old kid with stage four kidney cancer to Honduras in April. Without any due process, no medical care whatsoever. The moms wanted the kids to stay in the U.S., but they threatened to

take the kids away under threat of foster care. So now there's a lawsuit. This, We're just collecting these stories right and left now. Oh, yeah. Yeah. There was a kid in Northern California yesterday who was walking his dog. He's just walking down the street with his dog on a leash. Oh, right. And a bunch of INS thugs junk out of a...

He was a 17-year-old kid. Yeah. And they snatched him. And now nobody knows where he is. And apparently here in New York City, I snatched a seven-year-old out of elementary school yesterday. It's the first known case of a child being plucked out of a New York City public school. Oh, my God. Probably not the last.

There are schools now, I saw in Chicago yesterday or the day before, schools that are creating safe areas inside the school where they're hidden and they're locked. And if there's an immigration rate on the school, kids can get to these safe areas and try to sit it out. that's i mean okay so if you get to the safe area and ice decides to come to the safe area is someone going to shoot ice nobody's got the balls to shoot ice no but we now have our we have our first well we now have i guess this is at least two victims right who've been killed there was the guy who at the plant in arkansas i think it was who fell off a fence or fell off a building while trying to escape from ice yeah so um yeah it's a lopsided death count so far

It's kind of like the, you know, those old charts of the Israel-Palestine conflict. Now you don't even need to have those charts because it's just, it's just granted. Okay, so Star-Lion saying, Hollywood's remaking the Running Man. One of my favorite stories, and I really didn't like the execution of the movie at all. But the book, the book was brilliant. The book is great. It's Stephen King writing as Richard Bachman. Yes.

It just dawned on me how this immigration policy is so similar. but not fictional. Yeah, it is. And yeah, yeah, it is. It's just horrible. So, yeah, ICE is dressing up in construction outfits now. I mean, I mean, they're worse than the Gestapo. At least the Gestapo, you know, they didn't, they didn't disguise themselves. They were exposed to the resistance. We knew who they were. Their faces were exposed. They didn't indulge in sleazy tactics like jumping out of a van, you know, you're renting a rider truck or a Penske truck or whatever and jumping out of the back at Home Depot. Of course, obviously, you should stay away from Home Depot if you're undocumented. Hell, if you're Latino, you should stay away

from Home Depot. Seriously. And I'll tell you what, I have gone to Home Depot to hire workers at least a half a dozen times. And many of them have business cards. Oh, sure. They, They've set up little LLCs. Well, these are hardworking people, right? Very hardworking people. That's my beef here, right? Like, I have no problem at all. Take the gangbangers, take the criminals, take the felons.

You know, hell, it saves us, it saves us the money to jail them. Take them away. Send them back to their home country. You guys, be you. But like, these are, you know, we were told we were getting rid of the worst of the worst. These are not them. These are people, these are law-abiding, hard-working people. I know people will say.

okay they're not law-abiding because they entered the country illegally actually a lot of them entered the country legally they followed all of the rules they did what they were told and then basically the rules like basically pulled out from under their feet hey real quickly i want to say in response to um to star lion uh tour is also probably unsafe because uh they say the u.s government runs 51% of exit nodes i'm trying very hard this weekend to learn a lot of these terms. And I'm listening very closely. And I think what you're saying here is...

Torrance, like BitTorrent, right? I mean... Yeah. What you're saying here, Star Lion, is absolutely true that it's all about the exit nodes. And the government does run a majority of the exit nodes. And a lot of this... That's like a...

It's a callback to, like, how the NSA started domestic... Stop spying. It was at the nodes at companies like AT&T. That's exactly right. That's exactly right. It's something. that i mean there are a lot of people here who you would expect to see it at an event like this like with really long beards and really long hair and really big bellies because they're just

on their computers 20 hours a day and they're all geniuses and this has been probably the the most driven topic so far today since 10 o'clock this morning Yeah. Well, that's, I mean, it's not surprising because of this, you know, especially because there's so much overt fear of the government. I mean, there's one thing about Trump that I really like. I like a bunch of things about him, actually, like the fact that he's talking to the Russians. But, you know, one of the things I really like is, you know, he makes you scared of the government and we should be scared of the government. One of the things I don't like about the back to brunch Democrats is that when Biden or let's say Kamala had won, you know, everyone would have been like, everything's fine. And everything was. decidedly unfined. Yeah, you can say that again. So didn't think again, another incredibly generous donation. Hey, we're in New York for the weekend. I mean, I'm in New York all the time. Here's my contribution for the congestion tax and all the other taxes and tolls. Yeah, thank you. The congestion tax is lower on the weekend, actually. Oh, good. But that's appreciated. John, I assume you took the train, yeah. I took the train. And to try to save money,

I am staying with a friend, but he didn't tell me until I was on the train that he's in New Jersey. Oh, oops. Yeah, and I'm in Queens. So maybe not the best friend. Oh, my God. You could have stayed here at Chateau Rawl. Oh, thank you, Ted. In Manhattan, next time.

Next time. It's comfortable. It's air conditioned. There's no catches. It's on the transit system. Well, since we're talking about unorthodox living arrangements, I think, we should switch over to America's favorite dog-killing secretary of cabinet secretary christie no i did i was shocked when you sent me this i was shocked really yeah listen

bowling air force base is in what donald trump would call a shithole area hmm thank you marble um yeah it's it's it's bad it's really bad it's it's deep in in southeast Washington it's along the Potomac River, but on the, you know, obviously the D.C. side of the Potomac River, there's literally nothing anywhere around it. And it's far from the Department of Homeland Security. So. Well, so they claim that basically the Daily News kind of sort of doxed her

and showed photos of her living in at her, of her house in Navy Yard district. And so anyway, because they were concerned that she might be attacked, they moved her over to quarters one, right, at J.B. Anacostia. So, and she's gross over there. That's, that's the Coast Guard's place. So you were shocked by how gross it was and that she's living there, not by the fact that she's living for free, which is. Oh, I would expect a grift. Oh, yeah, I would expect a grift from her.

Absolutely. Yeah. All right. Yeah, without a doubt. So, and, you know, when she. was apparently when she was governor of South Dakota, she also kind of was accused of grifting $68,000 on upgrading the mansion. I can't imagine the South Dakota governor's mansion. The one in Little Rock, Arkansas is basically like just a crappy house and $150,000

on campaign travel, although, you know, it's penny ante really, but whatever. But she's kind of penny ante. Oh, I like this. Alba, I totally agree. Has, as As someone who was married to someone with borderline personality disorder, I agree with you. Yeah, I think Christy Gnome has it. Yeah, I have to agree. Anybody that can shoot an innocent, happy little puppy in the head. Right, because it was troublesome. Yeah.

Like, that's your job. Train it. Yeah. Yeah, because it was hard to train. So, I mean, what do we have here? The results of, oh, yeah. We should talk about Gaza. We weren't going to, but we should.

May I interrupt for one second? I spoke to Miko Pellett about this yesterday. I asked him the same question. And he said that the Russians have made a strategic policy decision to just not get involved with Gaza. And it's because since the Soviet Union fell apart, almost two million Russian and Ukrainian Jews have emigrated to Israel. And it's just such a can of worms that the Russians aren't interested in getting into the middle of it. Hmm. Yeah. And I said, well, how does this impact Iran? It's too many moving parts. Yeah. For example. Russians have a lot to talk to Trump about without thinking about that.

Oh, my gosh, yes. I mean, I would be the first to say you guys shouldn't be talking about this. I would agree. I would agree. I mean, there is just anything from the Russians. And somebody, even before we started the show, Ted, somebody asked, I'll go back early on, asked about a story that I talked about where the Saudis had offered to pay for a port, an airport, an electrical grid, water desalination plants. When was that? That was in 1991, the summer of 1991. And the Israelis said, absolutely not. Well, they didn't, yeah, they don't. 36 years later. They don't want that at all. That's a good question.

The answer is probably no. Is there an A-PAC, in other words, Raipak in Russia? No, there isn't. Although Russia definitely had cordial relations with Israel for a long time. For many decades, yes. Which is surprising when you think about the fact that so many Israelis are former Soviet citizens who fled the former Soviet Union. That's right. In fact, there are neighborhoods in both Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, where you only hear.

Russian spoken. The signs are in Russian. The political ads are in Russian. Yeah. Yeah, it's it's heavily Russian. Yeah, for sure. So. And Marcel's got a question here. This is that's the the $64,000 question. What cards would Russia even have for Gaza negotiations? None that I can think of. No, not anymore. No, not at all. Well, you know, we probably should talk a little bit about Israel. There's this new plan. that the E1 settlement plan, for people who don't know what that is, the West Bank is divided into districts

that have these acronyms like E1 and so on. And so this one district called E1, this right-wing dude got a Smotrich, he introduced a settlement plan to introduce more settlements into, for 3,400 new housing units in a town called Ma'alai. a do meme.

Both the UN and the UK say these settlements are illegal. Well, they're all illegal. But he's brazenly saying that this is about destroying any possible two-state solution by splitting up the West Bank once and for all. The U.S., so the U.N. has issued its latest statement. They say it's a war crime if it goes forward. That couldn't be clearer. The U.S., however, is sort of saying, well, we're okay with it as long as a

it's not destabilizing but of course it's as destabilizing as destabilizing knows how to be yeah yeah i have to agree i have to agree um i think it it would be greatly destabilizing you know i wanted to say something too about um well less is mentioning it here and um somebody mentioned it a moment ago oh mw knox yes thank you uh about Tucker Carlson's interview with this Greek Orthodox nun in the West Bank. Have you followed this at all, Ted? No.

I wish I could think like Tucker Carlson thinks. I would make so much more money. Of course, he also inherited all his money. Yeah, he inherited the Swanson and Frozen Foods billions. Yeah. So Tucker interviewed this Greek Orthodox nun who's lived in the West Bank

for the last 29 years. Her name is Mother Agapia Stephanopoulos. No relationship to George? No, it's a very common name. It just means the daughter of Stephen from the Peloponnesian Peninsula. Okay. That's what Opolis means from the Pelican Peninsula.

Oh, cool. And Houdini's right. People are viciously attacking this poor nun, led by Ted Cruz, who is quickly becoming one of the most, anti-Christian elected officials in America. Bizarre. Because he's shilling for the Zionists.

That's what this is all about. So she gave this interview, and it was about what it's like to be a Christian and a Palestinian in the West Bank. And what the Israeli government does. Yesterday, yesterday, the Israeli government seized all real estate holdings of the Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem.

Now, mind you, the Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem was created in the year 465. Doesn't, I mean, didn't they own almost basically a quarter of Jerusalem? Yes. Wow. And they said, oh, well, they haven't paid their taxes. So we're seizing everything that you've held since the year 465. I mean, it's kind of like it would be an active war

if there was someone who would fight it, you know? Is she George Stephanopoulos' sister? Is that what you said? You know what? I'll look. Honestly, George Stephanopoulos' father baptized me when I was six weeks old. He was our parish priest. I went to college with George.

George's always been kind of an asshole to me. He was an asshole in college, too. Okay, I stand corrected. That's his sister. I didn't know he had a sister to tell you the truth. Anyway, she goes into detail in this thing about what it's like to live as a Palestinian Christian. And you know what it's like?

It's the same as living as a Palestinian Muslim because the Israelis don't give two shits if you're a Christian. I have seen the checkpoints in the old city. It's amazing. I mean, actually, you know, I've got to tell you, The way that the Israelis treat people, what's really surprising is how little violence and how little resistance there is on the part of their victims, really, truly. Most people put up with a lot more than you would think they would.

I'm answering Lulu here. She says it's because evangelicals don't believe Orthodoxy is Christian. And I'm writing, I always get a kick out of that because we don't believe evangelical Christians. Well, I mean, I mean, the Orthodox, the Orthodox dudes were there first, right? Oh, yeah. I mean, it's like, well, the evangelicals don't believe that Catholics are Christian. Correct. It's kind of like, well, Catholics are OG. Yeah. Catholics and the Orthodox. And the Coptics. And the Cops, yes, we're the originals. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's very, very strange. Everyone's always like, my thing's real, your thing's fake. So, all right, so this,

The settlement plan, I mean, you know, obviously the settlements are just never going to stop. I think, but in a way, so the West Bank has become, because, I mean, obviously, the West Bank is the sideshow in the Middle East conflict. It ought not to be. The settlers are running wild. They're burnings, they're killing and maiming and raping and burning and torching Palestinians and their settlements. I mean, not their settlements, they're towns. ancestral homes and destroying their crops, and it would be front and center, if not for the bloodshed in Gaza is so much more severe. The Israeli settlers are just taking advantage of the

fact that all eyes are on Gaza. Yeah. You know, I read something, too, just the other day. You know, remember, you and I were talking about, oh, doggone it. Now, I'll come back to it. Now I have a mental blank. I'll think of it. Okay, so this is interesting. We'll have to look into this. I'll ask producer Robbie about this when he gets back. So the ads on Rumble don't buffer the live content and resume later,

but essentially skip over it. After all, both YouTube and Rumble are still in sync while a couple seconds apart. That's weird. That is weird. All right. We'll look into that. But thanks for, you know, these are growing pains on this show. We'll figure it out.

yeah all right talking about sideshow bob i called i called him side show bob this morning in a conversation i was having well it's so it's so easy he's back and dissing joe ragan all right well you know there's that um yeah this is kind of true all eyes are on russia so gaza is in trouble until it's over at gaza's in trouble anyway um i still think this is going to play out in the end you know someone asked when will it end i mean obviously nobody knows but my guess is it's going to be an East Timor situation. The Palestinians will get their freedom, but there will be, half of them will be left. Yeah.

That's what will happen. I agree with you. I mean, that's the optimistic view as sick as it is to say that. Yes, indeed. John, let me skip to something fun before we go to something serious. In front of your old job, there Langley, there is a statue that's been up there for, I guess 35 years or so. It's called the cryptos sculpture.

I was there at the unveiling. Oh, really? In 1990. So Jim Sandborn is the sculptor. And basically there's four panels on it, as I understand it. And they are all code. And people have figured out, they have decrypted the first three. But the fourth one's never been solved.

It's like one of those classic math problems. and so finally Jim Sanborn was tired of being asked over and over and over about it and he's like okay I'm going to auction off not the statue I thought when I first read this that the sculpture itself was going to be auctioned but it's going to stay put but he's expecting between $300,000 and $500,000 at auction for the solution to the K4 panel did you ever try to work on it I would look at that doggone thing every single day for almost 15 years. So it's shaped in an S, like sitting on its side, and all through it, it's, there are letters

punched in the entire thing. And the letters, the word cryptos repeats itself like a hundred times, cryptos, cryptos, cryptos, it's everywhere. And then there are other letters interspersed in between the words cryptos. And then that's it. So there's some message embedded in there. And when I was there in the 90s, there was an attempt to to load the information into a create computer

and have the computer crack the code. And it just couldn't crack the code. How's that even possible? So for a while, for a long while, you know, these codebreakers from NSA and CIA have worked to try to decipher what it says. And the artist has never revealed. what the message is i mean you know the nsa right their headquarters in fort meet is known as the puzzle palace isn't code really i always assumed coding was more their purview it's all it's all their thing

yeah it's like if cia had a problem they could contact their their colleagues over to and say yeah yeah can you look at this and yeah um it is their thing but the cia the cia cracked uh the not the the o s cracked the nazi codes along with the the the the British MI6. Like the Enigma machine and all that. Yeah, the Enigma machine. That's a cool machine. They've got one on display in the CIA Museum on the first floor.

But you're right. Deciphering code is really 99% NSA's Baileywick. So what's the, so what was the, you were there for the unveiling. I mean, what was, how did they explain like why, you know, the, the artistic reason that they put that statute there? Just because it would be fun? Yeah. had just built the new headquarters building a year and a half earlier old headquarters wasn't

big enough and so they more than doubled the size of CIA headquarters and uh you know they planted some shrubs and they were looking for public art they thought it would be kind of you know tongue in cheek and so uh and so they they did it uh that's pretty uh i i agree with this this is my kind of thing what if it was all a prank right and that's and that's why the Craig computer couldn't break it. But I guess for $300,000 to $500,000, we're going to find out. Unless it's, you know, like that, like that, who's the, like that banksy thing that self-destructed at auction? Loved it.

Fantastic. Brilliant. And Starline points out correctly that Vault 7 revealed that the CIA in many of these areas is going it alone. Listen, when you've got a budget that is literally unlimited. and you are unaccountable to anybody vis-a-vis what you spend the money on. Sure, why not duplicate what everybody else is doing? You expand. How many intelligence agencies are there, 14 or 16?

No, it's 18 now. Okay. Yeah, and there's all these agencies that, like, most Americans never, ever hear about. Like, right, like the Maps agency and all these, a DIA, nobody ever talks about. out? Well, those poor guys, yeah, you don't want to join the DIA. Really? What's wrong with the DIA? That's where people went when they couldn't make it into CIA or NSA.

I mean, literally all they do at DIA is they have these big maps and they just move little models of soldiers from one area to the other. It's called the Order of Battle Briefing, which they're mind-numbingly boring. and that's all those guys do. Okay, got a couple of John questions here. Is the octopus thing real or is just a conspiracy thing? I watched it and it's, no, it's, it's bullshit. Yeah. Okay.

And then my, oh, this is, I know the answer to this one without asking. Did you travel first class since they have an unlimited budget? Business class, 72 countries. Yes. The deal is that you can travel business class if you report to the office within 24 hours of arrival. Okay. I mean, I would think that first class might attract the wrong kind of attention, too.

Business makes sense. It's right in between. I've said this many times. This is a cover problem because CIA people are the only government employees on diplomatic passports traveling business class. All the other people with diplomatic passports are in cattle class in the back. So you can immediately spot the CIA people. That's awesome.

Very bad cover. So there's some Central Asian stories. You know, you and I are old stomping grounds, unbeknownst to each other. We were there at the same time. I love this story about Bitcoin mining. So it turns out that, you know, Central Asia has always struck me as a place where, you know, you can pull some shit because nobody's paying attention. Yes.

And there's kind of almost no government, really. I mean, there's a government, but they're not really paying that much attention to you or to their citizens. Anyway, turns out that there's illegal. I don't even know you could do this. There's illegal Bitcoin mining in Central Asia. And basically what that means is the whole theory of Bitcoin, which I think is fucked up beyond belief, is that, you know, you can mine more bit, you can mine it and create it yourself with your own computers working at all the time. And basically the intrinsic limitation is the amount of power that it uses. So therefore, you have to make it use a lot of power.

So literally, it's kind of like a big fuck you to the environment. And like inherently, right, no matter, even if you think Bitcoin's a great idea, I'm not even going to get into whether I believe in it or not. That's subjective. And what I think about that doesn't matter. But the environmental thing is ridiculous. But anyway, in Tajikistan, people, The local rogues stole three and a half million dollars in stolen electricity in the first quarter of this year alone.

Tajikistan is a, well, it is less poorer than it used to be, but still the poorest country in the former Soviet Union. So that's a lot of, that's a lot. They've charged a hundred, there's 190 cases involving almost 4,000 people that the Tajik authorities have caught doing this. Meanwhile, the Kazakhs found a $16.5 million scheme involving 50 megawatts linked to Russian and Chinese miners exploiting weak oversight. So basically, you know, you look at the location, right? Tajikistan borders China. Kazakhstan also borders China and also Russia.

And so, you know, you can sort of see like this is kind of like Silk Road smuggling. like the old days, but it's Bitcoin. I was also surprised to see this. It seems to me like it would be hard to steal electricity and kind of dangerous. Yeah, for sure, especially at that level. I mean, you know, things can explode. You know, I mean, I think it's like when you see the homeless guy

opening up the bottom of the lamp post with a screwdriver and like, you know, trying to run a radio or charge their phone off of it. Exactly. It's one of the reasons that in New York, they introduced these, like, phone chargers, like kiosks on the street for homeless people so that they wouldn't do that. When I was living in New York in 2002, a whole bunch of dogs were getting electrocuted because they were peeing on lamppost, and the lampposts weren't properly grounded. They were killing the dogs. That makes it. Sorry to laugh.

That is funny, though. But can you imagine doing this, like, you know, this is like the way poor people in Nigeria, smash holes into the oil pipelines and try to steal oil and then sell it on the black market. And every couple of years, they explode and kill hundreds and hundreds of people, wipe out entire villages. It seems like it would be the same thing. When I was in Hong Kong last year to go to a Bitcoin conference, total complete waste of time.

One of the present, not presenters, one of the big kiosks was sponsors, by the government of Bolivia, right? So there are 200 little startups that nobody's ever heard of. And then this giant tent sponsored by the government of Bolivia because they wanted everybody to know what cheap electricity they have. They have solar, they have wind, they have hydro power. Come in mine your Bitcoin in Bolivia. And people were like mobbed into this place. like, oh, what a great idea. It just seems all kind of nuts to me. Yeah, I think it's, I think it is completely insane.

Why did the world need new more money or new money? I know it's kind of not money, but it kind of is money. I agree that, yeah, Bitcoin with Tom, Bitcoin's not a currency as a speculation. I agree. We're being asked, what are our favorite stans? In other words, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Tajikistan. I like them all, to be honest, but I really do. I would say Uzbekistan's the most, got the most to do.

And maybe the best food. That might be true. And it has the best cities. And it has real cities, including one with a metro, Tashkent. But I have to admit I'm really, really partial to Kyrgyzstan. Really? The people are great. They're, you know, they are.

whenever there's a border dispute in the Central Asian Republic, Kyrgyz negotiators are brought in to settle things because they're widely accepted as being, like, wise. You know, like, basically there's all these theories about the, you know, like, basically the Central Asians all have different reputations, right? Like, the Tajik's are reputed to be kind, but kind of dim. The Turkmen are kind of thought of as being kind of dumb. Lusbex are aggressive, like almost like America. like basically, you know, a little bit invading and hostile and bullying.

The Kazakhs are kind of like stick up the ass, like sticklers for the rules. Yeah. I remember they would, when you had to declare every penny that you entered Kazakhstan, they would make you count everything out, every bit of currency. If you were off by a penny, they'd take it all. If you weren't off at all, you could have a million dollars. They'd let you keep it. But you had to be exactly right.

And so it's, but, you know, I mean, I do. I like the Kyrgyz. I mean, Turkmenistan is cool and weird. I mean, it's got the best bizarre I've ever been to in my life. Really? Cholkutska, outside of Ashkabat. Yeah, I mean, best place to buy carpets in the world, without a doubt. And antiques and all sorts of other good stuff, old Soviet crap.

It's great. You and I should have a conversation later offline about that. Okay. Let's do that. Yeah. Okay. I have to say, I have not been to as many as you have. But I'm really, really partial to Pakistan.

Oh, yeah. Why, I really am. Man, the history and the food and the landscape. I like the north. Especially in the north. Yeah. Where you drive down the road, you see, you know, cows and horses and, you know, whatever. But then you see wild boars running down the side of the mountain.

And then there's a tree full of monkeys. Yeah. And they're like mean hostile monkeys. And the water buffaloes. Look out of buffaloes. It's crazy. Crazy. I mean, yeah, the myth of Shangri-La, right, is based in Pakistani Kashmir.

And then going over to the Afghan border up north at Peshawar, for example, ever pass? Oh, my God. I've never seen anything like it. Yeah, I got to do that. It was amazing. There's a train. Yeah, there's a train.

I want to do the train. A steam engine train. Yes. And the Khyber rifle. ride on top, like in the old days. And the thing is apparently full of dinged with bullet holes because they get ambushed all the time. I was so worried about getting sick when I was up there.

Well, that's a good concern. And I was really worried about it. So I found a, what's the British? It's like the British version of Subway Sandwiches. Oh, Wimps? Wimps. Wimps. Thank you.

So I went into Wimpeys and they had bologna. And I said, yeah, give me a bologian cheese on white bread. And he's like, okay, do you want tomato? Nope. Gross. Let us know. Gross. No.

None of that stuff. Just to throw it at a customs and border. Yeah. And I would just go back to the Wimpeys every day that I was in Peshire. You were just trying to. And I was the only one who didn't get sick in the end. Because you ate that. we went to the British officers club one night for beers and everybody got sick there oh no it's

I mean I have lost so much weight like I'm a little chubby right now I could really stand a trip to Central Asia the diarrhea diet plan will we'll definitely take care of it I had an old timer tell me when I first arrived I said you know I'm a little bit worried about getting sick he goes oh you're going to get sick oh yeah he said listen if you just accept the fact that you you're going to get sick, you're probably going to shit yourself at some point. But just don't tear yourself up about it. Then you're going to be okay. Yeah, it's just going to happen.

I never. I never shot myself, but I was sick for at least 50% of the time that I was stationed in Pakistan. Low grade fever, cramps, yeah. No, I mean, the cramps, the first time I went to Central Asia, I mean, it was just, it's like a knives turning in your, in your stomach over. and over and over. And then you get the chills in the middle of the night and, oh, my God, it's just terrible. But every time you go, it's less bad, although I've gotten Giardia a few times out there.

Oh, my God. I was hospitalized in Cairo with Giardia once. It's rough. For death to liberate me from this day. And what's really rough is it's in your system for the rest of your life. And whenever your immune system is weak, it can come back any time, even when you're eating right. Yes.

Yes. Hey, and, and what nonsense is reminding us very. appropriately that we need to remind people to please, please, like and subscribe. Please. Like, follow, and share the show. Please, please, please.

I'll put it up again. Right. Share, subscribe, follow. That's right. I felt so welcomed in Pakistan. I'll tell you what. I'll tell you two little things.

When I got home, I remember my wife was she wasn't my wife then she was my girlfriend but she woke me up in the middle of the night she said you're talking in your sleep and to tell you the truth that's that's a thing at the agency that if you're talking in your sleep and you realize it or someone tells you you have to report yourself to security right because you may be talking about classified programs so i said i said oh my god was i speaking gibberish or did you understand what i what i said and you said or she said said, you said you were in Lahore and you were going out to buy spices. There goes your clearance.

And he says, any issues with the mosquitoes and pies? Oh, yes, yes, yes. They gave us chloroquineine before we left to fight malaria. I was like one of the only people that didn't come back with malaria. And that's another thing that keeps coming back years after you get. get it but um yeah four quinine gives you such vicious ferocious nightmares that after yeah i three or four nights i was like i i'd rather just risk the malaria and so what i did is i kept for for the whole you know eight months that i was there i kept the ceiling fan on

full blast just to keep the mosquitoes off of me so it was Yeah, mosquitoes are a problem everywhere in the developing world. No question about it. Central Asia is not so bad. I mean, Pakistan's South Asia, not Central Asia. Yeah, South Asia, yeah. But, yeah, no, I mean, definitely, you know, I've got to say I had really mixed reviews for Pakistan. I had some of my best and some of my worst experiences there. I mean, you know, driving down the street in the Jeep and having little kids throw rocks at us because, you know, we're obviously Americans. And, you know, I think it's the most anti-American country I've ever been to, worse than Afghanistan. I'm going to say, yeah, that's probably true. Yemen's pretty bad.

Oh, yeah, I found, yeah. Yeah. I saw that in Yemen, but I didn't experience. You're right. Pakistan and Yemen, probably the two most anti-American companies. Never understood why the Pakistanis got a raise after 9-11 at all. While we're talking about Central Asia, though, also, this just slipped through the news, right? So I didn't know that any country had recognized the Taliban government that took over in the fall of 2021, but they did.

Russia has now given formal diplomatic relationships to Taliban. I mean, that's a huge thing, not just because Russia is a massive country, but also considering the history, right, of the Russian war, the Soviet war in Russia, where they got their asses kicked and handed to them. So the fact of them doing that is amazing. And then speaking of Central Asia, Kazakhstan has recognized a Telib as Charge of Affairs. And Tajikistan, which is a neighbor, I had a fun conversation with the Minister of Foreign Affairs in Dushanbe in Tajikistan. And we're talking about Afghanistan. And I said, oh, what do you think?

And he said, oh, you mean our rowdy neighbor to the south. And it's like, that's fair. You know, this was in, this was in 2001 when he told me that. It's like very rowdy. It's kind of like, these people keep you up all night long. It's like, yeah, I mean, you got to, I mean, it's got to be tough for the, to be, like, Tajikistan is really, like, sort of, they have a lot of people all around them who are kind of like are a pain in the ass, right? It's a rough neighborhood.

It is a rough neighborhood. Yeah. Yeah, but the Tajik's, their only natural resource was really rocks and ice until recently. And then they found oil, you know, about 10 years ago through deep, super deep drilling. There's a new technique where they can go up a mile and a half down and get the oil. And the Tajik's are like, hey, we have oil too. It's a game changer. Wow.

So, which, I mean, and that's a country also, God, that's civil war, right? I mean, the signs of it are everywhere. You still see the tanks all over the place. But like in the 90s, nobody gave any shits about Tajikistan while they were slaughtering each other. I mean, it was brutal there. And basically, they all sides just, I always say this is like the peace. This is like what peace looks like. All sides were armed by, they were all proxies, right?

There was a Taliban proxy, a U.S. proxy, a Chinese proxy. everybody all the foreign powers lost interest stopped funding they exhausted themselves and at a certain point they signed a power sharing agreement and they were just like yeah we're just going to have to live with each other and just rebuild they never had a revolution or anything they never overthrew president rock mon but uh you know they've they've gotten it together they've they've turned it around i mean it's a cool place to see i'd love to see it i'd love to and i'd love to and i'd love to go to Mongolia. Oh, that's my next plan.

I want to go horse trekking in Mongolia. Yeah. You know, but there's, you know, I've got an invitation. And there's also that Jewish autonomous Oblast in southeastern Russia by the Kazakh-Mongolian border. Dying to go see that. I got a call from Afia Siddiqui's attorney day before yesterday.

Afia Sadiqi is a Harvard medical school educated, physician who self-radicalized, joined Al-Qaeda and fired at several FBI agents while she was being interrogated. She's been sentenced to like life without parole, whatever. And she's been in prison since 2007 or eight. And, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and. And word has just gone out that when she was arrested, along with her three children, the CIA took the children and just placed them with strangers. Well, the two oldest children made their way back to Afia Siddiqui's sister, who's also a Harvard medical school trained urologist.

And these children are U.S. citizens, by the way. The youngest was six months old. nobody ever figured out where she was sent now here it is 20 years later well 18 years later nobody knows where this child is so he's suing the CIA on her behalf and he asked me if i would go to afghanistan with him to give a deposition to some united nations group that i don't i don't understand the whole thing i said you know i'm i'm very uncomfortable going to afghanistan because of what I used to do, but I would consider it. You know, I mean, my take on that would be it would work if you visited the Afghan consulate first,

you know, if you can find one. Maybe the one in Moscow. It just sort of explained the situation to them and just sort of say, like, well, you know, I mean, Afghans are very reasonable people, but things have to be explained. And, you know, as you know, a safe conduct piece of paper will get you out of every problem. Got that right. Hey, have we ever considered going to North Africa? I love North Africa.

I've been many times. I've only been to Morocco. I want to do more. Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, and I've been four or five times to Egypt. Really great. Yeah, North Africa. I'm dying to, especially because I speak friends. you know so Algeria and Tunisia would be super interesting for me but I mean it's it's North

Africa I'm pissed honestly at Hillary Clinton because I had already studied up about Libya and the Lonely Planet Guide I was dying to go again apparently it had like one of the best bazaars in the world also and you know they fucking Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama broke that country they did they broke it and it's more than what a decade and a half ago and it's still is a complete and total disaster. Because of those two assholes. Well, okay, one last official topic and whatever questions. So the Democrats, this won't take long, Democrats in, they are introducing resolutions

to end Trump's federalization of the D.C. police. They're going after the state of emergency that he declared. and calling out the National Guard. There's also some lawsuits that argue that he's violating Trump, that is, the 1973 Home Rule Act, which restores, just like it would sounds, you know, local rule to D.C. So Jamie Raskin and Chris Van Halen are doing this. Obviously, the Republicans are in charge of Congress,

so I'm going to assume, no, nothing at all, right? I mean, nothing's going to happen here. uh no nothing's going to happen and just as we predicted just as we predicted the federal law enforcement figures that the that the white house sent in have done nothing but write seatbelt tickets breaklight tickets and cleaned out the homeless encampments this has nothing to do with fighting crime so where did the homeless go and and why are they doing that is that like a way to sort of get contact and collect information from D.C. people. Like, you know, when you write a ticket to someone, you'd get their driver's license

information. I don't think so. I think you have their body camera. Oh, no, I think they just want to be dicks to tell you the truth. But in terms of clearing out the homeless encampments, they're just, there's a, there's a law in D.C. that you're supposed to give the homeless 14 days notice that you're going to push them out, unless the encampment is along a highway, and then they get 24. hours. And so the White House is giving them 24 hours no matter where they are. And they're just

pushing them deeper into the woods in Rock Creek Park. This is just so tourists won't be able to see homeless people. That's what it's all about. Ridiculous. Terrible. So, you know, the thing is that as my friend Scott Stantis likes to say, Trump has the, has the attention span of a a deranged flee. So probably he's going to, like, forget all about this in no time. But it is terrifying. It's just how everyone puts up with it. And really, you have to.

I mean, armed men pull you over and, you know, you're not wearing your seatbelt. Well, you know, I mean, what can you do? Yeah. Whatever you do, don't throw a sandwich at the guy. Yeah. Ten years in prison. Certainly not. You know, I mean, obviously those charges are going to be dropped.

right they'll be dropped oh yeah that's what always happens always you know it's like when when in new york they go after the mob right they they arrest 20 guys they make them do the perp walk they say they're going to charge them with rico predicates they're all going to get 50 to life and then six months later very quietly they all take a guilty plea to a gambling charge and get six months always and the protesters same thing right they cattle them they treat them like shit and then it's Like, you know, oh, you know, like the rowdy, the ones at Columbia University and during the RNC in 2004 and all that. It's always like that. Let's see, 31 Arab countries, I don't know what this means.

Tarik will have to tell us 31 countries issue a joint statement about greater Israel. All right, well, I don't know what that is. Probably warning us, which Americans need to be warned. Yeah, well, yeah. I mean, the Israelis have. I mean, one of the ways I can really tell that the Israelis are up against the ropes and their Hasbara approach is check this out, John. I mean, my syndicated column this week is called In Defense of October 7th.

And I've heard almost nothing from these assholes. So you can only imagine. I mean, I'm not saying they were right to kill civilians and stuff like that. But basically, you have to read the column. But that title, right, it's kind of clickbaity. Right. And, you know, it's like I got a few people who are like, well, That's a provocative column.

I mean, can you imagine writing something about a year ago? I mean, you'd be lucky to have your head still attached. You got that right. Yeah, so anyway. Busy week. A busy week. And, yeah, you and I are going to hang tomorrow. So we should go and you should get prepared for your speech.

Because obviously now that you know what you're going to talk about, it's good you can get ready. John always a pleasure. Everyone, thank you so much for joining us here. It's been a busy week. We will be back Monday, 5 o'clock Eastern time here with D-Program with me, Ted Rawl and John Kariaku. And you can find us online in the meantime. You can always write to both John and I through our respective websites. Just Google them, and they'll come right up. Please like, follow, and share the show, and see you all later. Five days next week. Five days.