DeProgram with John Kiriakou and Ted Rall - DeProgram with Ted Rall and John Kiriakou: “Why is Iran Burning?”

Episode Date: July 23, 2025

On the “DeProgram show” with political cartoonist Ted Rall and CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou, we’re dissecting urgent global crises with unflinching clarity. We confront the escalating starvation crisis in Gaza, where over 100 aid groups, including Save the Children, blame Israel’s blockade for mass hunger. Gaza’s health ministry reporting 43 deaths from malnutrition in just days. We probe the horrific state of Gaza’s doctors, who are too malnourished to remain standing, much less treat patients effectively. The Guardian reports medical staff fainting from hunger, with 21 children dying in three days due to starvation, as hospitals buckle under the crisis. In the U.S., we examine the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, where lawyers demand the Trump administration and Kristi Noem cease inflammatory rhetoric labeling him a “monster,” raising free speech concerns after a judge barred his ICE detention. In Ukraine, we analyze President Zelensky’s response to domestic protests over entrenched corruption, as public unrest grows amid wartime struggles, with Zelensky proposing renewed talks with Russia to end the conflict. We also tackle congressional calls for more Jeffrey Epstein files, amid Trump’s past ties to the financier, fueling debates over transparency and accountability as Congress goes home early to dodge the heat. Finally, Iran. Why are fires breaking out all over?

Thank you. Hey, everyone. Thanks for joining us. It's Wednesday, July 23rd, 2025. You're watching D-Program with me, Ted Rall, and John Kiriaku. Lots to talk about John and I are having quite a day, but hey, so is the country. That's right. John, you were just on the phone with a guy who's kind of been in the news lately. Yeah. Maybe you want to tell us about it. I was asked at the last minute to appear on a show called Redacted. on the Unified Television Network, not realizing that I was going to be asked to appear along with Congressman Thomas Massey. So I got on, and as soon as I got on,

Massey got on, and he was absolutely fascinating. The whole thing was about Jeffrey Epstein. And I've been trying to talk a lot about Jeffrey Epstein because these political developments surrounding the Epstein, it's not a case anymore, but the Epstein situation. are complicated. He made them more complicated with what he said. So here's what he said.

You know, he used to be on the Rules Committee. The Rules Committee is the single most important committee on Capitol Hill because the members of the Rules Committee decide what bills go to the floor for a vote and what bills are just killed. Because he's an independent thinker, he was removed from the Rules Committee and his own. no longer a member. But he says, I'm a smart guy. My time on the Rules Committee taught me how to

write a discharge petition. A discharge petition is a very rarely used parliamentary trick in the House of Representatives. I remember it being used once when I was in college in 1986. What a discharge petition is this let's say um there is a bill to make a ted roll day okay and most well that would be unopposed yeah well see you'd think so that's what i was going to say most people want a ted raw day of course but there's why not there but there's this one asshole on on the rules committee who says you know what, I don't like Ted Rawl. He made fun of me in a cartoon one time, and I'm not going to allow this thing to go to the floor for a vote. So Congressman Kiriaku then writes up what's called a discharge petition. A discharge petition, if it gets a majority, that's 218 votes,

forces the bill out of the Rules Committee, whether they like it or not, to the floor for a vote. okay so until 1933 you needed 25% of members of Congress to vote yes on a discharge they changed the rules in 33 so now you need 218 votes to force a bill to the floor Thomas Massey just now said that he has a bill to force the administration to release every scrap of paper that exists related to Jeffrey Epstein to the public, including videos and hard drives and black books and files and emails and everything they have. And Mike Johnson, the Speaker of the House, said, oh, no, no, no, we can't do that. We can't do that. That's going to embarrass the administration.

And the president has already said that there are no files. We can't contradict the president. So Massey went to Hakeem Jeffries. And Hakeem Jeffrey says, you know what? I can guarantee you every single Democrat in the House of Representatives. Meaning that Massey has to come up with five Republicans. He's one. That's four more.

Marjorie Taylor Green said yes. That makes three more. So he's in talks with the Freedom Caucus. That could be as many as six more, which would give him enough to discharge the bill from the Rules Committee. So what did Mike Johnson tell him today? Mike Johnson said, if you persist with this, I'm going to change the rules, which haven't changed since 1933. And I'm going to make it so that you need two-thirds. of the members of the House of Representatives,

not 50% plus one. Can he change the rules unilaterally or does he need... Like that with the stroke of a pen. He can do anything he wants because he's the Speaker of the House. Another thing, too, Massey said, and this was so interesting to me, he wants to subpoena people in the Jeffrey Epstein orbit. Well, when I was a senior staff member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, I had subpoena power. You know, it's not something you want to do every day.

It pisses people off to receive a subpoena. But if you have somebody that just refuses to testify, you have to issue the subpoena and then force them to come and testify before your committee. So Massey issued a whole bunch of subpoenas for all these different people to come before the House and testify. as to their role in facilitating Jeffrey Epstein's crimes or in not helping to end Jeffrey Epstein's crimes. So what happened? Mike Johnson changed the rules. And so now the only people who can issue subpoenas

in the House of Representatives are Mike Johnson's attorneys. No member of Congress can issue a subpoena. as of today only mike johnson's attorneys so the fix is in man you know we we were saying day before yesterday when when johnson announced that he didn't want any any votes on epstein so he's just going to shut down the house of representatives until september so that there won't be any votes now you can't even issue a subpoena let alone have a vote one other one other thing too that Massey said that was very interesting. He said, despite this announcement

that the House will shut down, it actually won't shut down because Johnson doesn't trust Trump to not make recess appointments. Now, they're all the same party. They're all Republicans. A bit of Vipers. Oh my God, it's shocking to me.

So Johnson came to an agreement this week, and folks, this is not reported in the media. This is breaking news from Thomas Massey's mouth. Johnson came to an agreement with John Thune, the majority leader in the Senate, that every eight days, they will gavel the House in the Senate into session. and then immediately gavel it out of session. Okay? The whole process takes five seconds. So this is like the guy in the bottom of the hatch on Lost who has to keep pushing the button to keep pushing the button. That's right.

That's exactly what it is. So that way they're in recess, but they're really not in recess. That way they can't vote on Epstein, but Trump can't make any federal appointments. shocking. Well, just in case you were bored, John, and I don't think you were. This just broke in the New York Times while you were talking to Thomas. A.G. Pam Bondi, this is the lead story in the Times right now, informed Trump in the spring that his name appeared in the Epstein files, according to three people with knowledge of the exchange. The disclosure came as part of a broader briefing on the case by the FBI and prosecutors. It was made by Bondi during a

meeting that also included the deputy AG Todd Blanche and covered a variety of topics. She meets regularly with Trump, officials said. They informed the president that his name as well as those of other high-profile figures came up during their re-examination of the Epstein files that had not previously been made public. Trump has already appeared in documents related to the investigation. Steve Chung wouldn't address, answer any questions about this briefing. and basically reminded everyone that this was fake news, supposedly. And this is all previously been reported by the Wall Street Journal.

But, you know, this is a bona fide scandal, Ted. It is. It is. Wow. I mean, it's like what we thought it was, right? I mean, we thought, you know, the only answers here were that it had to be either the president or himself, who was somehow implicated to some extent. You know, I have to admit that it doesn't really pass the smell test that the president is a pedophile.

No, no, no, I don't believe that. No, I don't believe it either. No. There's no evidence of that. I mean, of course, anything's possible, but I just don't think, yeah, there's, like you said, there's, most things are usually the way they seem. Although every now and then, you're like, what? So this could be one of those times. But it's got to be someone close to him.

It's got to be someone he cares about who he's running interference for. It has to be. And I'll tell you what, it has to be Dan Bongina that leaked this to the New York Times, right? Right. It has to be. There is no other possibility. Yeah. So Elon Musk told the truth.

Yeah, Elon Musk told the truth, which then makes me think, how in the world did Elon Musk know that Donald Trump was in the Epstein files when Musk should not have had access to law. enforcement information. That's a second. That's a second thing. Well, that's a good question. Although apparently Doge had its, and Musk had their noses all sorts of holes that they weren't supposed to be. Yes.

That's right. Yes. So, so, yeah. So, I mean, I thought we were going to be just talking about like, you know, sending Congress home early and what a bad look that was. I mean, Massey was quoted this into this morning's media, I guess probably from stuff he said yesterday to reporters saying that like, you know, Maga World isn't going to forget about this just because six weeks go by. And, you know, I really, this really does remind me of Watergate

summer when things dragged out, you know, and I think about like sort of, you know, it was, it was no air conditioning in that, in that Senate hearing. It's like everyone's hot and sweaty. It was boring. And this low-level functionary named Paul Butterfield comes in. And, and he's just like, And then the tape recorder and the Oval Office. And people are like, what? There's a tape recorder in the Oval Office? Reporters go scrambling out the door. I was a little kid and I remember that.

Me too. It was like, what? And I remember always thinking that if Nixon hadn't dragged his ass on this whole thing, we would have never gotten to that point. No. The more Trump does this, the more it's staying in the news. I know he's hoping there's going to be an asteroid. hit or you know Jesus is going to finally come back and say hi or something's going to happen

that's going to wipe this off the headlines but I don't see it no I don't either and I'll tell you what Massey said some other things that maybe what just wanted I wanted to yelp out loud he said that that this that this discharge petition he wrote it but it's co-sponsored by rocana and he said that he and rocana have a lot of respect for each other they work together and a lot of legislation and and they are of one mind on this issue and then i was all done talking frankly i was enjoying listening to him i've been to a couple of baseball games with with thomas massey he is a lovely man you don't have to agree with everything he says he's very constitutionalist but that's cool. But he is such a patriot. He said a couple things that were fascinating. And I'll tell you

the lesser, the one of lesser importance first. He said that there is a, there's a kind of a phony, what's the, what's the number? 4.01 C3, whatever that, whatever that number is. Yeah, yeah, yeah. 5.03. C1.501. Okay, that. Thank you. Nonprofit. Non-profit. And you don't pay taxes on it.

That's right. So it all of a sudden started broadcasting TV commercials against him in his district. 501c3. Thank you. So it's broadcasting hit pieces against him. And he said it took his staff all of 15 minutes to trace the registration of this 501c3 back to the white house just like that it's like no you can't do that you're not supposed to do that but this this organization has spent and it's called like the the make

america great again patriots some some stupid thing like that and he said they've already spent one point eight million dollars so he's in serious trouble he's being he says he's being primaried in kentucky i actually went back uh friday i guess it was and i looked at the point polls. There's not a whole lot of polling in these individual congressional races so far. But his constituents love him and they want him to stand up like this. Okay, that was the less interesting thing that he said. The more interesting thing that he said is the last question of the panel, the host said, so Congressman Massey, you find yourself at odds with the administration a lot, like all the time. And then he laughed and he said, yes. And

Remember, I was the only Republican who voted against Mike Johnson for a speaker. So everybody's mad at Massey. So she's, he's the Barbara Lee of the right. He's the Barbara Lee of the right. Exactly. And she said, I mean, you know, Rand's Paul's. But Rand Paul is kind of a phony, though. Massey's a true believer.

He's really doing it. So she says, is there any chance that you might consider running for president under Elon Musk's new America party, maybe you and Roe Kana could do something together. Unity ticket. He says, never say never. Well, that's always the right answer. And I was like, oh, my God.

I mean, what any other politician would say is, I'm a Republican, I'm a lifelong Republican, I stand with the Republican Party, I'm going to work to change the Republican Party from within. That's not what he said. He said, never say never. My mouth dropped open on the air. It's an honest answer.

It was an honest answer. I've had this question up for a little while here. Deanna Montoya is asking, so neither of us, we've said this already, think that it's likely that Trump could have sexually assaulted a young girl. Let me tell you why I don't think that's true. Yeah, and then I'll follow you. I've said thousands of pages of biographies of Donald Trump. I wrote a biography of Donald Trump.

I don't recommend that you buy it. It's really not one of my best books. I mean, you know, it's okay. I have better books if you want to buy one of my books. But I learned a lot about him. And, you know, he's led such a public life that it's really just hard to believe that if he had these predilections or if he was really particularly interested in unusual sex, we wouldn't have heard about it by now. It just doesn't seem likely. You know, it's not like, think about, like, Matt Gates was only a congressman and everything came out, right?

I mean, Larry Craig, Mr. Wyde stands at the St. Paul Airport. Again, you know, it's just a senator from Idaho. You know, we found out everything. So with Donald Trump, who's, you know, the most public person in the United States and has been for decades, I think we would just know, you know, I mean, we know he likes to fuck porn stars now and then and other random skanks besides his wife, or sometimes the random skank becomes his wife. But, like, you know, that's not really unusual for dudes in general

and for dudes, like, at that level. I mean, you know, they have their wives and they have their families and they love them and they also have sex on the side sometimes. But they do it with adults. I mean, that's my take. Again, I mean, I'm not, you know, I don't have a crystal ball here. If I did, I'd be, you know, I'd be buying more stock. Now, I agree with you.

I think if he had done something like that, it would have come out by now, even just as a rumor. We also have the statement from Stormy Daniels that he was 100% vanilla, that there was nothing, nothing special or out of the ordinary. True. Yeah, he was a missionary. He was the missionary man to quote. Totally. Yep. And, you know, he made that comment when he was still friendly with Epstein, he made that.

he made that comment about, you know, Jeff's a good guy, he's a fun guy, loves women, just like I do. He loves him young, but he loves women. Right, right. I think there was a lot behind that statement. For sure, yeah. I mean, here's the thing, too. I mean, we do live in a world where perhaps it would be nice if you knew about the sexual assault and pedophilia that you might step up and try to stop it or even reported to the authorities, but I suppose that's too much to hope for. in this case. Right. Right. So, but I mean, I think clearly, so now we, now, now we have the

speculation game. I mean, I'm not going to throw out names here, but we're all going to be wondering, who is Trump covering for? Is it one person? Are there multiple, is there a multiplicity? Who is it and why? There's someone. There's got to be. There has to be. Because otherwise, this doesn't make any sense. If he had nothing to hide, he would have ordered the release of the information. He campaigned on ordering the release of the information. He released most of the JFK documents. He released the MLK documents.

He's in the process of releasing the RFK documents. But then all of a sudden, like magic, there are no Epstein documents. Yep, no, there were no files until there were files, and then there's no files again. And I love Speaker Johnson's comment that only kind of the best files, the proper files, the reliable files should be released. And who's going to get to decide that? Is it going to be you, John, or is it going to be me, Ted? I don't think so.

No, I don't think so. It's going to be them. And, yeah, it's the truth will out. This is going to. Yeah. And that's always the case. I say that a lot. Sometimes it takes years, decades even.

But the truth always comes out, always, always. You know, I remember six weeks before my release from prison, I called my wife. And I said, I was allowed to call her every other day for 15 minutes. So I said, how was your day? She said, it was great. And I said, really? It was great? Why was it so great?

And she said, because the Senate torture report came out today and it proved that everything you said was true. so i had to wait from 2007 to 2000 december of 2015 it took eight years but my truth came out this epstein truth is going to come out especially when you have people on the inside of the system who hate that it's not come out yet bonjino's furious to the point where he's talking about quitting cash patel is in a real situation right now where his his reputations on the line. And Donald Trump's only going to be president for three and a half more years. And then what does Patel do? You've got to be on the side of righteousness here. Otherwise, you're going to ruin yourself. Yeah. Shall we, are we ready to switch over to Gaza? Yeah. Wow.

Things in Gaza, right? So it's hard to know where to start. I could start with Brett Stevens's rancid column in today's New York Times, where again, he's turning cartwheels to de-define what going on there as a non-genocide and you know in a way does it really matter what it's called but it is but it is words it is a genocide it has genocide it does mean it and you know what's so funny is he actually quotes the um un definition of genocide and you know he always he's he carefully analyzes it and he ignores the whole in whole or in part part of that phrase yes part you don't i mean one of the the big justifications for not calling this genocide is to say, look at the Nazis. They wanted to kill every Jew. And that's not true. No, really? No. I'm trying to get most of them to leave.

Yes, that's right. And then or also, the Nazis didn't give warning or heard them into ghettos. Oh, wait, they did. And it's so, it's like, but also, you know, the whole point is if you go after a significant part of the pop a population and your purpose is to kill them or or just get them to leave that's still that's still genocide right i mean even if you don't kill anyone you don't hurt a hair on anyone's head that you can still be committing cultural genocide by driving a population out of their homeland so um you know anyway but the what blew me away is the starvation reports are escalating now to the point where the doctors, this was in the New York Times today, the doctors who are exhausted beyond belief treating the endless flow of casualties into what's left of these

hospitals in Gaza are now themselves succumbing to starvation and are literally fainting and passing out while they're operating on people. That's because they don't have enough food or water. Ted, were you the one telling me yesterday or the day before yesterday about these games that the IDF play? Yeah. Absolutely sick. Sick. Where they literally say, the doctors report that the IDF literally, for fun, the snipers will be like, today is shoulder day. Let's shoot everyone in the shoulder. Today is knee day. Let's shoot everyone in the knee. And then everybody, this was on the BBC, right? Very sober. That's right. But they, they, they, they, they, they, it was also now reaffirmed in the New York

Times that they were, uh, that, that people will come in all with the same identical injury, abdominal wound, uh, buttock, whatever, head wound, um, all in the same day. Oh, it's Thursday. The Israelis are, I mean, they're taking the piss. They're having fun. Yeah, they are. They're having fun. And, and listen, you've read the, the genocide statutes. I've read the genocide statutes. I don't care what your political positions are, not you as Ted, but I don't care what people's political positions are. This meets all of the legal definitions of genocide.

It is. It's a genocide, period. Well, there's no question. And, you know, I mean, it's sort of like this whole, you know, it's sort of like how you can sort of, like with people who have borderline personality disorder, they'll basically justify anything they do because you triggered them. Well, if you hadn't said this or hadn't done that or if you had remembered to take out the trash or whatever,

then I wouldn't have burned the house down. Do you see what you made me do? Right. And the thing is, it's like, well, but you do control your reaction. And Israel is basically a borderline country. They're basically saying, well, you know, look at what happened October 7.

Therefore, everything that follows, by definition, is not our fault. And that's completely absurd and ridiculous. That's a mental illness. Yeah. It is. Yeah. And, you know, I mean, the only good news, I suppose, is that belatedly, not just two years late, but I would argue decades late, the world is starting to see it. And also, people aren't afraid of Israel anymore. People are willing to speak up. I don't know that APEC is going to keep its power, even with all the money they have. I really was disappointed in these recent votes in the House of Representatives over military aid to Israel. A friend of mine in Code Pink posted something on Facebook that I thought was very important. It was a tweet from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez explaining why she voted against this bill that would have, I forget what. it would have

the bill would have $500 million that's what it was in spending for Iron Dome right like it's okay to allocate money for guns to shoot the Palestinians but your objection is that the money was going to be spent for the Iron Dome

and that's so typical of the Democratic Party it's typical of both parties but but you know these these pro-Israel lefties the ideology just doesn't make any sense to me. Well, I mean, part of it, you know, John, I think it stems from this ridiculous idea that governments and companies have where they'll say like, oh, well, you know, the money is in a separate pot. So like all the iron dome defense money is in this pot and the genocide money is in another pot.

So if you contribute to the benevolent Iron Dome funding, then you're not, you know, you're not necessarily funding the genocide. Of course, that's just fiction because money is fungible by definition. And if you take the, you know, it's kind of like, John, if you pay my cable bill, it's easier for me to pay my phone bill, right? I mean, that's just how the world works. And, but it's also like, it's almost honestly like, you know, SS guards at a death camp are, you know, they're killing people in the camp.

And then we say, well, you know, we don't want to finance that because that's bad. The killing part's bad. But, you know, we don't want them to fall off the watchtower. So we'll pay for like a little bumper there to like shore things up. And we don't want them to get shot by like the resistance. So we'll pay that, you know, we'll buy them some body armor so that like, you know, the Polish resistance or whoever, the Russian partisans can't shoot them off the watchtower. I mean, if you provide defense for a belligerent, you are assisting that belligerent.

Legally, you become a belligerent. Bruce Fine explained this to me. For example, the government of Belarus, the government of Belarus allowed Russian troops to invade Ukraine through Belarus. That makes Belarus a belligerent. And so it would be subject to war crimes charges after the war. It won't be, but that's just as an example. With the doctors falling down dead, it's just going to get worse and worse. By the way, another thing that was funny about this stupid column in the Times today

was he said, well, you know, if they were really committing genocide, it would be hundreds of thousands, not tens of thousands. Well, first of all, it is hundreds of thousands. It is. Could we now dispense with that? I mean, they just haven't found the bodies, but it's arithmetic. There were 2.3 million gazons there before on October. 6th, 2023. We're down to about two now. 2.3 minus 2. I know they threw me out of Columbia Engineering School, beauty school that's non-accredited now. But nevertheless, it was the

better part of the beauty school. It was the engineering school. And I know how to subtract 2.3 from 2. That's 300,000. That's right. 300,000 people. And you're right about the bodies. Most of Gaza has been leveled. It's rubble. You can see it in the overhead photography. And nobody has any idea how many tens of thousands of bodies are underneath those buildings, hundreds of thousands of bodies. Yeah, the bodies aren't counted by the Gaza Health Ministry unless they're recovered and identified. So they have to know, like, even if they get a body, they have to be like, okay, that's John Smith. Their birth date is such and such.

Their occupation was whatever. So, and if they don't do that, then of course, obviously. John, you've been to wars. I've been to wars. It takes a long time to find out. I mean, when a body, like, I'm speaking to you and said right now at a nine-story building. If someone dropped a bomb on this building, you know, there's probably 50, 60 people here now. I think it would take weeks, even for the NYPD to find everyone. I believe that. They just found a body in Pacific Palisades yesterday. I saw in the L.A. Times. They're going through, you know,

know, these houses that turned to ash, they just got around to this one block. And sure enough, there was a, there was a burned body in the, in the ruins. Yesterday. You know, this was months ago. Oh, we can't hear you, Ted. That's because I muted myself because I was coughing. So I guess we'll just keep an eye on this story, obviously. It's an ongoing catastrophe. So let's talk about Kilmar-Albrago-Garcia. So I'm glad to see this. His lawyers are aggressive. And this is, of course, the guy who was mistakenly, by all accounts, he is a green card holder deported to El Salvador.

There was a specific court order preventing that from happening, which ICE and the Trump administration either willfully or accidentally ignored. deported him anyway, then they found out, and then they made all sorts of ridiculous maneuvers to try to prevent that. When they did bring him back, they came up with some charges that may or may not, of course, be good, valid charges to say that he'd been involved in basically smuggling illegal immigrants and possibly working for MS-13, which apparently the truth is that he left El Salvador originally because he was afraid of MS-13. The Salvadorian authorities even said he doesn't fit the profile, nothing that they believe.

They don't believe he's a member. He doesn't have the right tattoos. He just doesn't, nothing fits, right? He's kind of just a mild-mannered dude who may have not had been the best husband is basically my dick here. So anyway, Secretary of Homeland Security, Christy Knoam, went on Twitter to call him a mom-form. And so anyway, now his lawyers are in court and they're asking the judge to issue an order telling the Trump administration to stifle it so that they stop prejudicing Kilmar's ability to get a fair trial in an American court of law.

I mean, this is long overdue. In my opinion, I don't even understand like when, I don't think district attorneys should ever go on the air and give a press conference and say, we just indicted this really. son of a bitch for committing horrible crimes. At most, they should just say, we've arrested this person. These are the charges. You know, we'll keep you posted. And that's it. They editorialize. They queer the jury.

They queer the judges. And this is, you know, I'm sorry when it's the cabinet secretary using the power of the U.S. government to say that you're a monster. How the fuck are you supposed to get a fair trial? You know, even in the Bureau of Prisons, if you are a member of a gang, the last two digits of your prisoner ID number are going to be dash 4-7. And so you see these guys in the Crips and the Bloods and MIS 13, and they all have 4-7. And then there was a guy I was sitting with one day, and I noticed his badge said 4-7. and I said, how are you a 4-7?

He's just a typical white guy. I said, how are you a 4-7? He said, they accuse me of being in the mafia. I said, the mafia? You're not even from a town that has the mafia. And he's like, I know. And then when I complained, they just said, so sue me. But if you have a badge that ends in 4-7,

you can't go to a minimum security camp you're not allowed to have you know compassionate release you can't do anything you're stuck in prison um but they don't have to actually show anybody any proof that you're in a gang once they say you're in a gang that's it it's done you're in the gang whether you like it or not and that's what christianome is doing in this case you just keep repeating the lie over and over and over and over and now all of a sudden he's MS-13, whether it's true or not. I mean, it does seem like he's got great lawyers. Yeah, that's very good.

The tricky part here is that the Trump administration, as usual, is playing it cute, trying to have everything two or three or four ways at the same time. So they want to prosecute him, but they said, well, we won't prosecute it. We might not prosecute him, in which case we'll send them back to El Salvador or maybe South Sudan. And then they're like, well, but maybe we will prosecute him, but then as soon as we convict him, we'll send them to South Sudan or Libya or whatever, or El Salvador. Or maybe we won't prosecute him at all. You know, it's kind of like, it reminds me of the shell game guys in Times Square back in the 80s, like you watch the hand, watch the, watch the ball, watch the ball, and you can

ever watch the ball. It, I mean, it's, it's so insanely, you know of this better than any way. when the state the advantages that the state has when they declare you an enemy and the amount of chicanery bullshit that they will submit you to subject you to is just it's it's incomprehensible for someone who hasn't been you know who hasn't who doesn't know what it is i mean it's just it's not well reported you find all these things out when you show up and then there you are in the in the jaws of the of the state yeah that's it and there's no let up here these these people are relentless you know these the the christian gnomes of the world and and these these justice department prosecutors oh my god they're just

relentless there's yeah there's no getting away i mean i'm i'm very very curious as to uh you know how this is going to play out um you know it's a fucking embarrassment again it's one of those things like, I don't know if they think that their base likes this. I don't know. Do you think it, I don't know. Do you think their base does like it? You know, I think that, well, I think elements of the base probably do. But the thing is that they're going to vote for you anyway.

They're going to support you anyway. So why keep pandering to them like this? Either lead or allow them to tell you on what issues they want you to lead. And to me, that's not leadership. No, no, well, I mean, it's definitely leadership. It's just leadership down the shitter. Yeah. How about Ukraine?

Oh, America's a famous, favorite democratic leader who has, leads the most streamlined to democracy in the world. Yes. That doesn't have any opposition parties. And very not corrupt religions. And very not corrupt in any way. In no way, shape, or form. And, you know, and, you know, we don't have to have any elections because, you know, that just gets in the way of democracy.

Anyway, there's a scandal now in Ukraine, and the bloom is off the rose. I suppose it's taken a lot longer than I would have expected it to. Yeah. I mean, Zelensky was really wildly unpopular before the war, and that sort of was all suppressed, and maybe there was genuine rallying around the flag in Ukraine. you would expect that. But now the opposition is getting brave. It's not easy to oppose the state in Ukraine. You may end up under house arrest or worse.

So, you know, it's a time of war and they have martial law. So, you know, they can literally just shoot you at a demonstration if they don't like you. So there's been large mass demonstrations opposing the regime because Zelensky basically put the Kaibash, on an anti-corruption campaign that was wildly popular and the people were really hoping to see happen, it reminds me a little bit of the kind of stuff that we've been seeing with the Epstein files here. It's just sort of like, yeah, we're not going to do that.

Just like that. It doesn't really seem to have a good narrative here. No, no. I was asked by a reporter this morning if I thought that it was possible that we may be seeing the early stages of a coup, even maybe a CIA-backed coup. And I said, you know what, if this were a year ago, I would say no.

But today I would say, sure, this could be the start of a CIA coup. It's not that, it's not 1963 where, you know, the CIA puts a bullet into the back of the head of the South Vietnam's president. But it could be the kind of coup where the U.S. ambassador and the station chief go to C. Zelensky and say, all right, it's time for you to go. pack your shit get on the plane and go to london and then could it be a kidnapping thing like we did to um what's his name from haiti uh oh jean bertrand aristide to central african republic yeah sure you sure that you're going to go to the happiest Stalinist place in central africa

just like that just like that so something's something's a foot in uh in ukraine and it's not good if you are a supporter of the Ukrainian government or of U.S. policy. I don't know what that means. I don't know either. You're the one. Weren't you trained in code, John? Yeah, I never did well with code. I preferred the disappearing ink.

That was much easier for me. Seriously. Do they actually use that? No, not really? Yeah. Yeah, they do. What, really? Uh-huh.

But what you do is. elementary school you write a letter in regular ink and then in between the lines you write your secret letter in the disappearing ink and so I don't even know if I'm supposed to be saying this but then what you do is you send the letter they put it into the solution I forget what it was I think it was hydrogen peroxide maybe and then the ink disappears and the hidden ink comes up oh that's cool yeah it's kind of cool yeah and not really complicated No, no. Not at all. It's like stuff that you can see at the Spy Museum in D.C. A fun, totally a fun visit. Oh, yeah.

It's expensive, but it's fun. Yeah, because it's a private thing. It's not a real museum museum. Unfortunately, right? So, Houdini is asking, Zelensky, if there's a Russian, Russia, Ukraine ceasefire. Because now the pressure is on him.

He's agreed to get serious. And they're talking in the next couple of days. The U.S. isn't invited, but Ukraine and Russia are going to talk. Yeah, so Udini, it's my understanding that he actually owns real estate because he stole so much money as president of Ukraine. He actually owns real estate in London, and he would likely go to London. And J-Roc makes a good point here, too. I thought the CIA already did his coup. Yeah.

Yeah. So this is the like the double coup. They didn't like the first coup. It didn't work out the way they thought. So they didn't try a different coup. Well, it's not hardly the first time in CIA history that there were so buyers remorse on the part of the agency, right? The coup and the counter coup. It's like you don't have to think about it that hard. If it doesn't go well, you just do it again. No big deal. No problem. That is it. Yeah. It's it's really great. Yeah, it's true. For people who are wondering what we're talking about, of course, we're talking about the 2014 coup. Some people would say it's not, but it fits all the, it really does fit all of the requirements for a coup. So do you think that Russia and Ukraine are going to make, are able to make any progress? I mean, the fighting, it seems to be, there's really just not a lot of movement.

What movement has been taking place has been to the benefit of Russia, but basically the, the facts on the ground haven't really altered a hell of a lot. No. And this is the prime fighting season, right? The weather's good. The spring rains are over so your tanks don't get bogged down in mud. This is where the two sides are supposed to be fighting like the most so they can dig in in time for winter. And it's just not happening.

Both sides are tired. You know, both sides are running short on supplies, especially for. fuel. And I don't know. Who wants this more? The Ukrainians or the Russians? I don't know. Well, that's a good question, right? I mean, you know, I think you and I probably would have agreed that Russia didn't really want this war. I mean, I haven't seen many belligerents wait eight years to attack. Right. That shows a certain degree of patience. Unless we're just a big procrastinator. You know, I said, ah, I had other things to do. I finally got around to it. But now I mean, now, I feel like if I were Putin, I would feel like I was in a good place to negotiate.

Oh, definitely. And so why not say, okay, let's talk. Let's do this. I mean, Russia hasn't changed their demands at all. So, and I think they're all achievable, perhaps except for some random stuff like denatification, which is kind of, first of all, impossible for the Ukrainians to do. and also impossible to define and kind of impossible to that's got to be a throwaway right demilitarization also has to be a throwaway because that's ridiculous so but in terms of the territorial concessions should not be that hard for Ukraine I mean like I've always said to my

friends who are pro-Ukrainian like in a way this war fixed a problem that should never have existed in the first place. Yes. I mean, these borders were poorly drawn after 1991. Yes. And if you're Ukraine, do you want a hostile, restive population of ethnic Russians in Crimea that you basically have to suppress? Right.

Right. Exactly. People, these people in Crimea and in the Donbass are ethnic Russians. They speak Russian at home. Their faith is tied to the Russian Orthodox Church, not the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. They aren't Catholics in those areas. The Catholics are in the West.

So what would Ukraine really be losing? They wouldn't really be losing anything. And then if part of the deal is this fast track to membership in the European Union, what's the downside? I don't see the downside. You know, just sign the deal. Yeah, let it go. Yeah.

But somebody made a comment. Yeah, Houdini's right. Zelensky is an ethnic Russian. Somebody made a comment about the corruption. Oh, my gosh, there are so many ways to do it. You can have a foreign company serve as a cutout. You can have the money diverted directly into your Swiss bank account. When I served overseas, we saw it nine ways from Sunday.

It's not at all hard. The Switzerland's not as good. It used to be. No, no. The Swiss will rat you out now. Now it's more like the Isle of Man, Luxembourg, Liechtenstein, yeah, the Guernsey, the Cook Islands. Yeah. And I mean, and then old-fashioned cash, right?

I mean, we know that like skids of $100 bills left Afghanistan by plane. Yes. And if you just show up, you know, and let's not, you know, less people forget, if you try. travel on a diplomatic passport, they don't search you. Yep. So you can bring vast amounts of whatever, drugs, runs, money, anything you want in your diplomatic pouch. That's it.

That's it. It's strange. I got arrested once with the diplomatic pouch. I was like, man, this is supposed to be my get out of jail free card. Yeah. I was going to Yemen to see some friends of mine. This was in the spring of 91. I was kind of tired from the war, and I wanted to, you know, go to that vacation spot that is Yemen, just to try to decompress for a little while.

So friends of mine, friends of mine invited me to go down. Next time you go, I want one of those big, pointy hats that the women wear. Yeah, those are awesome. I collect weird hats. Those are awesome. I actually bought little ones for my boys. They were young at the time. So I was traveling from Riyadh through Jetta to Sana.

And one of the State Department communications officers asked me if I would take a diplomatic pouch with me. And it had some radios in it and some mail, just mail, right? So I said, sure, sure, I'll take the pouch. So I took the pouch. And when I arrived in Yemen, they insisted on x-raying it. And I said, no, no, this is a diplomatic pouch. I'm a diplomat. I had my diplomatic credentials.

I had the paperwork with the wax seal on it and all this stuff. And they were like, fuck that. One of them pulled out his jambia, that curved dagger that they carry. He hacked the lead seal off the pouch. And I kept saying, you know, I protest. You can't do this. I'm 26 years old. What am I going to say?

So I didn't speak Arabic yet. I had taken like six weeks of just Arabic familiarization. so they open up the pouch he reaches in he pulls out this radio and it was like an old-fashioned cb radio and he says jesus one of the few arabic words that i understood at the time it means spy oh wow man they were on me so they put me in this cell in the in the uh airport and i was with like a filipino nurse and a couple of indian guys that had hashish on them and um i was in there for about hours and finally the the American ambassador came and said wow you really threw a wrench into my day and I said I'm sorry they should have never opened that pouch he said now forget it let's just go

so we got in the car that was my first experience in a jail cell yeah it's always funny when people just don't follow the rules and that that that happens a lot um so what do you I actually don't know what this question is about um do you know what this is this question is did john did you see situation i don't know all right uh no i i read the greek papers this morning and they were talking a lot about this this new wave of uh of refugees is that what you're talking about nick uh i don't know right yeah let us know okay i just figured since you're greek you know all you know all things greek i try i try to keep up on things yeah yeah somebody asked me a question today about

why do greeks hate the royal family so much and i was like oh i'd love to answer that question i can't apparently nick is is israeli tourists blocked by locals oh wow okay i'm going to take a very oh from disembarking oh yeah sassy spicy i like it yeah i'm going to check that out right now that that would be kind of a nice nice move oh top story greece crowds champion of women's water polo after victory over Hungary. Okay, let's see what else. A grateful world. Oh.

I believe. Greek police have dismissed reports in the Israeli media alleging that a mob carried out a knife attack against a group of Israeli tourists on the island of Rhodes. That's my ancestral island. Yeah. Interesting. You know what? I'm going to text my cousin and I'm going to ask him what's going on there.

with Israelis. All right. Well, and then question from Adam Fighter, when are we going to cover China? Well, it's true we have to cover China. There's a really interesting piece I think I read in Washington Post today about deflation. Now China's been in a deflationary environment for eight consecutive quarters over two years because of excessive competition. So the authorities are stepping in and basically they're going to start to regulate this so

that there's fewer companies in the same sector. They're going to sort of, I guess the right-wingers would say, they're picking winners in the free markets. Yeah, right. It doesn't seem like a bad idea to me. I mean, if you have excessive competition and prices are getting so low that in the aggregate sectors are wildly profitable, but no individual company can stay afloat, you've got a problem.

Yes, you do. All right. Well, thanks for the suggestion. question out. We'll yeah, thank you for that soon. I can't promise it'll be Friday, but it might be Friday, but we'll do it soon. Pretty pretty crazy. Real quickly, I want to get to the bottom of some of these. Yes, Prince Philip was Greek. Prince Philip was the son of a very minor Greek princess. And the royal family in Greece, the Greek royal family, they're not ethnically Greek. They're half British and half Danish.

So we never, that's why we hated them so much. They were imposed on us by Queen Victoria. So Philip was born in the island of Corfu, Gertkira, in Greek. And his mother suffered from severe mental illness. She ended up resigning from her royal duties and she became a Greek Orthodox nun and moved to a convent where she spent the rest of her life. Prince Philip left Greece as a child and never returned to Greece ever

it was because he hated Greece and didn't like the Greeks and they hated him and so there was no love loss between them and he was an asshole now Charles is different Charles goes to Greece every year or two years and he always always goes to Mount Athos which is what's called the Holy Mountain

He's not Greek Orthodox, of course, being the head of the Church of England, but he's as close to Greek Orthodox as a British royal is going to be. So they like Charles, they hated their own royal family, and we threw them out on a rail in 1967, told him never come back. And so, wait, when did military rule? 67 to 74. You know, the first Greek king was King Otto the first. Otto, right?

He was Bavarian. is German. The guy was king for 32 years and never learned to speak Greek. Well, that's how those royals are, right? They were like, you know how like CEOs? There's a CEO. I wanted to write this book that would have been titled the CEO class. But I'm not a business writer and it really should. So I'll give this to someone who's watching who's a business writer. But basically there's a category of dudes who they're, and it's all dudes, whose job is they don't, you know, they drop, they parachute in to run a cereal company,

even if they don't even eat cereal. And then they're off to run like a software company. And then after that, maybe they're running, you know, they're managing a ball team. They're just like sort of all over the place. And these royals are the same way, right? That's like, you know, poor Marie Antoinette, she never could have said, let them eat cake,

nor would she have because she was actually a kind-hearted person. But also, she never could have said it in court and been quoted because she didn't speak French. I did not know that. No one would have understood her. She was Austrian. She only spoke German. I did not know that. So.

See, it was the same thing with the Greeks. You know, we had a king of Greece who he was taking a tour of some neighborhood in Thessaloniki. and he was bitten in the leg by a monkey. And he pretended that it didn't hurt and it was no big deal. It got infected. And sepsis set in and he died three weeks later. Yeah. So his brother became king and his brother didn't want to be king.

And his brother didn't know what the hell he was doing. And he's like, oh, you know what? We should invade turkey and overthrow at a turkey. and then he led this army into Turkey which it's now called the catastrophe of 1921 I don't seriously I don't remember this episode yeah

yeah and then he got thrown out dumb adventures around that time like when the Marines invaded post-revolutionary Russia yeah yeah yeah yeah right also also disastrous stupid forgotten not studied oh my God

I don't know what Houdini is talking about, what Pine Gap is. I have no idea. I'm sorry. Tell us what it is. We don't know what you're talking about. Sorry. I don't know what that is. That's pretty funny.

A van just pulled up Pine Gap. All right. Oh, it's the television series Pine Gap? Oh, Pine Gap is a highly secretive, jointly operated Australian U.S. intelligence facility located near Alice Springs. It's a ground control station for signals intelligence satellites and a key relay station for satellite communications. The base plays a crucial role in global surveillance, particularly for missile launches and battlefield intelligence. You know, it's funny, we never called it Pine Gap. We always called it out of the springs.

But that was from GROC, and that's even more than I knew about Pine Gap. Personal questions for you here. How do you rate the turk? intelligence? Good in some ways and not good in others. Good in that they are on the Kurds like white on rice. And I don't mean just their own Kurds. I mean, I mean Syria and Iran and Iraq and all the Kurds. They're not so good on Greece. Greek intelligence is better against the Turks than Turkish intelligence is against the Greeks. Greek intelligence officers are much more likely to speak Turkish and to pass for Turks than Turkish intelligence officers are speaking Greek.

Did I work with them? Yes, I worked with them. Yes, I worked with them years ago. You don't have to say anything. You don't have to say anything. No, not going back to prison. No, because then we'll need two pardons for you. Yeah, we're still working on the first one.

It's hard enough getting the one pardon. Yeah, totally, totally. Citos. I'm going to check that out. The cruise ship incident on Citos. I was in Citos last summer. It's an amazing place. Yeah. Yeah. There it is. Protest against Gaza War prevents Israeli visitors from touring Greek Island. And that's from the Associated Press from this morning. I missed that. Yeah. Greek island residents stop Israeli cruise ship from docking. travel advisory for Greece by Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs

as ship is blocked in Citos Okay If you're not as not as you have nothing to worry about Yeah, there you go Good So let's I think we should also We would be remiss

Since we're good about talking about Iran There's this really weird situation Going on in Iran now Where things keep There's arson fires all over over the place. Yeah. And, you know, obviously, you know, my first thought goes to a country that starts with I and ends with L and sounds like Israel. You took the words out of my mouth, Ted. But this is a problem in Greece every summer. The Turks come and light fires. And we have these

catastrophic forest fires, wildfires. Really? Oh, yeah, yeah. It's a problem. Like it's on purpose. Oh, yeah. They'll send operatives in to the islands. and just light the forest on fire in the middle of the night. And you know that the Israelis are watching the same media weather reports that everybody else is watching, that it's 120 degrees Fahrenheit in Iran, and it's a tinderbox because it's so hot and it's so dry. Of course the Israelis are out there setting wildfires.

Absolutely. So you think it, I mean, obviously there's no Israeli tourists, right? But in Iran, but they have lots of operatives. We've already established that. We know that the Iranians are infested with turncoats. Iranians who are obviously collecting, you know, money from the Israelis. That's right. And you're paid to do this.

And a lot of Afghan refugees, it turns out, that have taken Israeli money. Well, they're poor as shit. I'm very, very grateful for being taken in. Yes. I mean, Iran does deserve some gratitude. for the fact that they've taken in a lot of... More refugees than any other country on the planet. Yeah, they've always been very open that way.

You know, they kind of... It's cool. They allude to it in that movie, Three Kings, great movie. I remember that movie. That was a good movie. To Iran. And, you know, it's done without comments, but it's a very sly politically and accurate, you know, thing.

Yeah, for sure. I've crossed that border from Afghanistan to Iran. And you can tell the, it's, you know, You get a sense of what a border feels like. Afghans like Iran, like Iran. They're like, of course, obviously there's a huge cultural ties go back thousands of years. But so, yeah, so we have these arson fires. It's psychological warfare, right?

I mean, are the Iranians going to be able to get a, I mean, I don't understand why the, what is it, the Mukabarat? Why don't we get down to the bottom of it and find out what the fuck is going on? and stop all this shit. Yeah. Are they incompetent? Yeah. Yeah, they are. And they're underfunded and they're focused on domestic political rivals and they're

not focused on counterintelligence. How you can have thousands of people essentially acting as sleeper agents in your country in a time of war is a mystery to me. But you know, there was an Israeli announcement yesterday. Perhaps you saw it saying, that they were able to identify a thousand Israeli citizens passing information to Iran and that most of them were Israeli, I'm sorry, most of them were Iranian Jews living in Israel. Do you believe that?

Yeah, I do actually. In that case, it might be ideological and not about money. It's not, I, again, you took the words right out of my mouth. I think it is ideological in that. respect. I mean, they're so upset about what's going on in Gaza. Exactly. And of course, obviously, I bet they catch a, that that community catches a lot of discriminatory bullshit on a day-to-day basis from the security forces. So. Can say that again. Amazing. All right. So are we sufficiently deprogramed?

I think so. Hey, do you want to tell, tell our. friends here that we're very slightly changing our name very slightly yeah right now we yeah so we had we I don't know if you guys have noticed this imagine you have when you go to search for us on YouTube there's another thing called the D program that comes up and it's in the UK it's a different show entirely and sometimes it's hard to find us it's very frustrating so I did what we all do in this day and age when we're trying to solve impenetrable problems I I asked AI what to do, and AI said that we should do what we're doing, which is we have officially changed the name to deprogram with Ted Raul and John Kiriakou.

Now, I graciously suggested that John's name go first, also alphabetical order. But then John pointed out that because of the spelling issue with... Nobody can spell my name. So that's why my name is first. Thank you, Houdini. Yeah, I would have been happy to have you go. for us. My pleasure.

Yeah, I mean, I'm totally telling me. Yes, thank you, Houdini, indeed. $5. Much appreciated. Please, please, please, please, please, please, like, follow and share the show. It really makes a difference to us.

It does. We are trying to make some money here, and if we get the search terms, right, I think it's going to make a difference, but we count on you guys the most. We're here again, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, 5 p.m. We're going to probably, to step it up to five days very soon maybe in a week or two but right now it's monday wednesday

friday so we'll see you friday at five eastern in the afternoon and uh thank you so much for your support really appreciate you and take care bye bye