DeProgram with John Kiriakou and Ted Rall - DSA vs. DNC | DeProgram with Ted Rall and Jamarl Thomas

Episode Date: July 27, 2026

Conflict reporter/writer/cartoonist Ted Rall and political analyst Jamarl Thomas deprogram you from mainstream media every weekday at 9 AM ET. Today we discuss:• The Civil War inside the Democratic Party turns spectacularly ugly over the Michigan Primary next week. Desperate to defeat insurgent DSAer Abdul El-Sayed, AIPAC throws $30 million-plus at centrist Haley Stevens in a race that quickly turned to racist Islamophobic slurs, and the involvement of Bernie-shivving North Carolina party boss James Clyburn. Meanwhile, the Democratic Party are far behind Republicans when it comes to money. Trump controls a $400 million super PAC, and the RNC is sitting on nearly $130 million. The DNC is $2 million in debt.• So much for fleeing the U.S. to Europe. Firefighters in France and Spain are battling wildfires close to the cities of Bordeaux and Madrid. Spanish authorities said fires close to Madrid remain “active and uncontrolled.” The wildfires raging in southwestern France—where 250,000 people have been evacuated—are so intense they have created “fire clouds,” a phenomenon never previously seen in the country. Temperatures in hard-hit areas in both Spain and France are expected to rise in the coming days.• Ukraine attacked an Iranian commercial vessel in the Caspian Sea, killing a sailor and injuring others, as the war in the Middle East threatened to overlap with the Ukraine conflict. Ukraine implied that the ship carried Iranian-designed Shahed drones destined for Russia. Meanwhile, the US—low on munitions—unilaterally paused bombing Iran.LIVE ON RUMBLE: https://rumble.com/c/DeProgramShowhttps://x.com/tedrallhttps://x.com/JamarlThomas#tedrall #jamarlthomas #news #politics

Good morning you are watching or listening to Deep Program with Ted Rall and Jamaral Thomas. It is Monday, July 27th, 2026. Good morning, Jamarle. How are you doing? I am doing fine. What's going on, Ted? Doing okay? I'm doing okay. Yeah, long time, no C. We did a little recording yesterday. Star Trek conversation was really fun. Weirdly enough, yeah. We need to get a fights on Star Trek. It's like talking about specific individual episodes.

Yes. Let's go right in a pale moon, like. It's Janeway right to sab with the board. All sorts of random stuff. We got to do that. Totally. Okay. So, all right.

So let's see today. We're going to be, first of all, please like follow and share the show. Thanks for tuning in. Thanks for listening. Thanks for watching. Always appreciate your support, which is very necessary.

I think it's safe to say that like after hitting like rock bottom in the last month or two financially, we've started to turn the corner. So I don't want to sound like, Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard Nixon, you know, repeatedly saying we've turned the corner in Vietnam. But, you know, we are, I think we've turned the corner against the Vietnamese who are the poverty, the kings of poverty. So, all right, so today, lots of stuff to talk about. We could have had a two-hour show, no problem. But anyway, we've got to talk about the Democratic, over the weekend.

the Michigan primaries turned exceedingly ugly with basically reflecting the civil war within the Democratic Party. That has been raging, honestly, for decades, but sort of really peaked out with the Bernie runs in 2016 and 2020. That shit is crazy what's going on between Stevens and El Sayed. So we'll talk about that. There's the wildfires in Europe. So much for my Ted Rawls plan B was like, hey, I'll go to Europe if this whole America thing doesn't work. out like well now Bordeaux is burning up 250,000 people have been evacuated by fascism and all like that yeah and certainly last but not least you it looks like there's

now a Venn diagram between the war between Russia and Ukraine and the Middle East conflict between yes Iran the US and Israel and Ukraine has attacked an Iranian ship and killed at least one Iranian sailor they claimed that Iran was shipping Iranian-made drones to Russia, which is probably true, but at least maybe not that specific ship, but they do generally do that. So, you know, that is a worrisome kind of like mini World War World War III development. Anyway, where do you want to start, J.T.? Let's start with Michigan, weirdly enough. Usually I go to foreign policy, but I'm curious about the Michigan thing. I get the sense that that's going to be nasty. I get the sense it's going to

You're saying that if I had to guess, it was something about him being a Muslim and something about Gaza or something to that effect. They've had to guess where this is going to go. That is exactly what's happened, right? So this war, so basically for people who've been living under a very small rock, this race goes down a week from tomorrow. the election is on Tuesday, August 4th, and it's Michigan statewide. It's for a U.S. Senate seat, completely open seat running. So on one side, you have progressive DSA member Abdul L. Syed. He is the progressive in the race, DSA er. And he was until about two weeks ago ahead of Haley Stevens, Stevens with a V. She's current sitting congresswoman and she's a corporateist. She literally is now

in receipt of the highest amount of donations from APAC that have existed in any race in American history. Over $30 million just for her. More is coming in. And now, you know, the sort of like a bad penny, James Clyburn, who I thought was retiring, but a apparently never retires and will never die because he is the vampire of corporatism swept in. And basically, this is a replay of what we saw in 2020 with on Super Monday, the day before Super Tuesday, when the DNC coordinated mass endorsements on the same stage against Bernie Sanders of Joe Biden. Yeah, that worked out great for the party and for the country. And they had like Beto O'Rourke and Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar and James Clyburn orchestrated this

whole thing. James Clyburn is of course the party boss of North Carolina and very influential among Black Democratic voters of South Carolina among Black Democratic voters and so he's pushing that same button obviously Michigan has a lot of black voters a lot of and a lot of like great migration people and so anyway they a lot of those they listen to him right. He's an old-fashioned party boss. So between the APAC money, the ads, the electability stuff, Clyburn telling, you know, having black preachers tell their flocks to vote for Stevens, overall, the points are now moving.

I would say right now it's Stevens to lose. So the race has flipped, and they're trying to take it away from Syed. He would have won otherwise, probably. So the ugly part is over the weekend on social media, we've seen clips of sort of mid-ranking black Democratic officials in the state of Michigan posting stuff, insinuating, trying to otherize Syed as a foreigner. And basically the biggest clip was this lady who's like saying, don't be coming into our state speaking Arabic. We don't need foreigners here. He's a Michiganian, and there's lots of English-slash-Arabic-speaking Michiganians, right? Or Michiganders, I guess, is what they're really called, right?

So it's really, you know, so it's, they're using Islamophobia and race. Robbie's against, this is exactly where Robbie said to do. Yeah, yeah. Robbie was, Robbie gave wise counsel. I hope he's getting paid well by A-PAC. that's what I would do honest to God if you can't do it yourself

there's plenty of people who do it for you because you know the enemy my enemy is my friend and that's what this is I'm telling you I mean they were telegraping this if I've read that can see it in Montana there's smart lives there in

Michigan they can see it too by the way Robbie they did this to Obama if you remember it was Hillary Clayne who came out with Obama's a Muslim stuff we'll put the video out with Obama with the Muslim garb or whatever Iraq, Usain Obama. It just goes to show just how despised Hillary Clinton was.

The fact that he was able to overcome that just shows that people hated her more than they hated him, which is impressive. This is one of the ugliest races I've ever seen. I mean, you know, politics ain't being back. But this is nasty. And tried to do the same thing to Mom Dani, also, if you remember. Totally. stuff and everything basically using Islamophobia

as a... That shit's not going to fly in New York City, though. Like, you know, right-wingers are still like, I don't understand, like, after 9-11, why do you guys still allow mosques and how did you elect a Muslim mayor? It's like, well, after 9-11, we were in New York,

the least Islamophobic, you know, place in the country. And so it's kind of like, I feel like New York should get to decide since we were the attacked party, the agreed, the aggrieved party, how to respond to this. And we recognized this for what it was. It was blowback from the Middle East and U.S. foreign policy.

It wasn't like Muslims are evil. It was like we've been fucking around with the Islamic world for a long time. And it was only a matter of time before some shit came back to us. And this is what it was. And it really sucks for us. But we didn't personalize it in or racialize it in that way to credit of New Yorkers, I think. And with Mondani, it's like, come on. Like, you're in a city that's where 170 languages are commonly spoken.

Like, you're not going to otherize Muslims. It's like you're going to have to find people more exotic than that to otherwise. But this does seem to be working in Michigan. See, it's interesting. I got to be honest with you. This war, if we're going to call it that in the Democratic Party, should have been fought a long time ago. Sanders was just the,

the, I don't know, the firing of the shot, if that makes sense. Like, that was when it became clear. There's lots of prequels, right? I mean, we have to get, they did the same shit to Jesse Jackson. They did the same shit to John Edwards. They did the same shit to Howard Dean. I mean, Ted Kennedy in 1980. There's antecedents all throughout.

No, that's true. I guess I was thinking of modern terms in regards going for the presidency and where it was clear they had to cheat him. Like it's one thing if you make an argument where you say, well, we beat that guy. Well, it's another thing when you have to cheat that guy and everybody sees you doing it. Okay, well, that's different. You've alienated a large part of your base right off the bat. And now you're in this kind of weird space of, well, we're not trying to get your votes because you love us.

We're trying to get your votes because you hate us less than you hate the Republicans. I don't know how a party remains entirely valuable like that with the exception of the fact that the Republicans do the same thing. The Sayyah thing, he had to know that this was going to be a play against him. In the same way, as you pointed out, for the Mum Donnie thing, this was going to be the angle that they were going to hit him with. He's other. He's something else. He's et cetera.

That's very dicey, though, to play that in a state where you have such a large Muslim population, what you may end up with is just both losing, meaning you may alienate the Muslim, you know, diaspora in a way where they just, are like, we're out. If we're the other, then we're just going to be the other. Well, they were already, they were already furious about what happened, you know, a couple of years ago with the uncommitted movement, which was centered in Michigan, the uncommitted delegate movement.

And, you know, and they weren't even allowed to have a representative speak at the Democratic National Convention. Kamala Harris refused to criticize Israel or back away from Israel at all in the height of the of the genocide that was going to. going on at the time. So I mean, yeah, no, I mean, look, I think this has dramatically, obviously, you know, Metro Dearborn might be like bye-bye for the Democrats. It doesn't mean they'll vote Republican, but, you know, some of them might. But I think there's going to be a lot of sitting on the sitting on, sitting on their hands, right, come election day. And then this has, I think,

this is a really watched race, right? Like, this is one of the most watched, nationally watched races that we've seen in a long time. People are paying attention to this from all over the country. Outside money is coming in for both sides. And I think this is a test in a way for the corporate Democrats to see how they're going to react. They're rolling out the same exact tactic they used to smash Bernie six years ago.

And it's like they think we don't, like progressives inside the party, aren't going to care or remember what happens. I don't believe that. And I think they could end up, you know, elected, you know, elevating Haley Stevens to the, to the U.S. Senate with the help of Big Gretsch, right, Gretchen Whitmer, the governor, who's popular. But they could undermine Gretch as a possible national name. And they could undermine their own brand. And they could end up splitting the coalition because once again, I mean, this morning on NPR, I heard some corporate. Democrat, I wish I caught his name. He was ranting about how DSA members are not Democrats,

and therefore they are not welcome inside the Democratic Party. It's like, well, of course, they're Democrats. They're running inside the Democratic Party. That makes you a Democrat. Also, he said, oh, they have their own party. DSA isn't a party. They're not on the ballot, okay, like as a party. They're an organization. They're not a political party, as we understand it. But, you know, basically, no one at NPR corrected this, this, like, hack. I mean, people are going to, I don't know. I mean, I was boiling when I saw this, like, Islamophobic bullshit. And there's not one leading Democrat who's going to say shit about it, like on social media.

Like, you're not going to have a Pete Buttigieg and say, like, you know, that's not really cool. They're just like, from my point of view, this is good. I mean, it's not that I love it, and it's not that I want somebody to be other us, but I do want them, you know, if you're not welcome to a party, I want to know that I'm not welcome to the party. They also, you point something else up. This idea that being a Democrat is some kind of spiritual phenomena. It's not. You have a card that says Democrat.

You run in a race that says Democrat. You vote for Democrats. There's nothing spiritual about that. It is a purely tangible thing, right? But different thing in the soul of a man. It's just like, manila. Malella is like, oh, I'm not a Trumpie. I'm like, you voted for Trump.

Therefore, you're a Trumpie. Yeah. You are what you are. Like, it's not a, it's not, it's not spiritual. It's not like, you know, a God thing. It's a tangible process. It's not what's in your heart. What's in your heart, right?

Yeah, it's not that. This is like, I voted for Trump, but in my heart of something else. Dude, you voted for Trump. You voted for Trump. Right. Like, so I hate that nonsense. Look, political parties. They are under a misconception.

They are under misconception. Political parties can change. There were Dixie Krets at one point. The Dixie Krets went belly up. There aren't Dixie Krets anymore. I mean, maybe one or two, but not any that would announce that they were, meaning that so organized political force, yeah.

Yeah, they changed. It flipped. And the reality of it is any particular political party, if it's done right, has to change. meaning you have to be able to account for that change. It's not this idea that you're a fixed entity and you will be this fixed entity in perpetuity regardless of environmental circumstances.

If an asteroid hit the earth, the Democratic Party would need to change to be able to accommodate a political system that can deal with the consequences of an asteroid hitting the earth. If they still are like, we're going to be liberals and we're the Democrats and blah, blah, blah, and we're not going to change.

Okay, that's a political system not working. Not an example of it working. I'm trying to point out that as you're going, society changes and is accommodating various challenges, you need to have a political space that can change to accommodate the challenges also. If you can't do that, then you don't deserve to exist. So I hate it when these guys make this argument as if third way Democrats is what we're going to be in perpetuity forever. It's like, do you realize that something came before you and something will take place after you. This war is necessary. And don't forget to point out, Sayy was Bernie Sanders

campaign guy. Right. That's right. So, I mean, I guess this is completely speculative, but I suppose there's a chance that voters in Michigan will be turned off by the sight of so many establishment people, all rallying, obviously in close coordination behind the DNC and then turned against in the same way that New Yorkers, who were not really sure about Zoran Mamdani, you know, kind of like coalesced behind him when they saw that the corporate establishment, like the New York Times and Bloomberg and so on, were against him. That's what really brought him home for them. Yeah.

Yeah. It's wild. But politics is bloodsport. It is bloodsport. I mean, by the way, what do you make of the fact that nationally, the same DNC that's trying to tell, you know, progress. So this is so funny, right? Like the DSAers are surging.

All the enthusiasm inside the party, especially among young activists, is behind the DSA. There's just no question about that. And meanwhile, the DNC, who claims they have all the fucking answers are broke as shit. The national DNC is literally has their bank account, you and I are both worth more than the DNC. They have a net worth of minus $2 million right now. Really? My cat is worth more than the DNC. What happened? Yeah, they...

You know, this was the same thing with Clinton, right? Like, this was the thing that allowed Clinton to have control of space, matter, and time as it relates to the Democratic Party. When they were running, Obama was running Obama for America and both were pulling from the same funding source, which effectively left the DNC broke. Hillary Clinton comes in and effectively pays the bills of the DNC and takes control of it because she effectively was paying the bills for the DNC. That's one part. The other part was his brain trust. How are they continuously losing money like this? It's not like they're winning.

I mean, obviously that's part of the questioning that the current DNC chair is facing, and he's supposed to be in there until 2029, but I think it's like anybody's guess whether he'll make it. I mean, if I were him, I'd want to be fired because his paycheck will probably bounce soon. I mean, the, I mean, what the fuck? Meanwhile, Trump has a Super PAC that has $400 million in it, and the RNC has $130 million in cash. So they have half a billion dollars between them. I mean, that's some sad thing.

That's an insane lead in regards to the money. I mean, Trump is not even running again. No. Well, theoretically. Well, I was going to say, so yesterday, the official White House X account put out a picture of Trump wearing a Trump 2028 hat. Now, and what does it mean that that's not even a story? I didn't even think about putting it in as a story today.

I'm mentioning it obliquely here just because you brought it up, kind of. I'd be worried about the Civil War when the Civil War happens, because that's a Civil War. That's a Civil War. That's, that people think that countries are eternal. And Americans think that because we haven't necessarily had to deal with upheaval in our lifetime, countries can fall apart. And it's shit like that that will be the, you know, finish.

What does it mean, nobody, I mean, like, I think if George W. Bush had, you know, put out a picture of himself wearing a, you know, third term hat, right? Like, you know, George W. Bush 2008, people would have freaked out. And, you know, there would have been like, how dare you? We're just so completely blasé now. We're like, ah, that's just Trump being Trump. I mean, I swear to God, if he showed up in full Nazi uniform on national TV with, you know, doing a sea Kyle, we'd be like, ah, he's just funny. That's just Trump.

Yeah, he doesn't have any credibility, but that makes him dangerous. Yeah. I mean, truth of the matter is Donald Trump did try to take the presidency when he lost. the race. And, you know, there were some Republicans that were like, no, I mean, it's not that in serious. It's not important. You're out of your mind. And the fact that they took it that way. It's like the stuff that he was doing in Congress to try to create chaos, even the riot. I mean, I mean, the riot wasn't necessarily included in it. And an argument could be made that the riot is the thing that saved us from really hitting the worst edges of it. Because at that point,

a little focus turned to her. conference of the House of Representatives vote against certifying the election? Yep. That's my point. Like they were involved in it. Like they were, it wasn't like, okay, these were just outside forces. I mean, sure, you had, what is name, Troy, whatever his name is, that was like, we're going to bring on the revolution and have stashing guns in Virginia. But the issue was internally that you had buy-in for much of the Republican Party that, yeah, we're going to try to overthrow the government of the U.S. That's what we're going to try to do. They were on board.

It wasn't just a bunch of Hicks, you know, storming the gates on January 6th. It was the, it was the republicans in the corridors of power. Yeah. Yeah. People who make it an oath to uphold the Constitution. Yeah, but they weren't going to uphold the Constitution. They were willing to torture it in a heartbeat if they thought they can get political power from it. And people are being, as you point out, very blasé about that.

They should have hit the roof. We, and we give these guys a huge amount of power. with the idea that that power is going to be used judiciously and honestly. And whereas honesty is something that I don't even think they know how to spell, you would think that at the very least there would be enough of them to say, okay, we're at the very least going to keep the mechanism of government in place. They were going to torture in a heartbeat. So, I mean, before we move on and do some comments, you know,

I want to wrap up this Haley Stevens thing. So, I mean, I'll call it. I think she's probably going to win this prime. I mean, it looks like the fixes. And I hope not, too, but it looks like that. What's the polling so far between the two? I checked this yesterday, and she was definitely, hold on. I will look at this right now.

But the trend lines were definitely moving in her favor. Of course, the thing is that the polling is very local yokel, right? So it's like little polls like Tavern Research and the Detroit News poll and stuff like that. But anyway, we've got Stevens ahead on the real clear politics average of polling 45 to 41, so ahead by

four points. Great News has her ahead by seven. Syed hasn't been ahead since the last week of June. So that's not a good friendline. Because it puts me to mind of the Massey race again, like where

it's clear and obvious that if it was just a race, Okay, Sayy may win, but it's not just a race. It's about the money. In May. Yeah. I mean, I'm just saying that if money is the thing that's determining factor in the race, then we shouldn't call this a representative government.

It's representative for a certain group, a certain group of people with means. Like, it's outrageous that Thomas Massey would lose that race purely for a foreign government's interest. And make an argument. Same thing here. Oh, totally. I mean, it's totally. I mean, APAC will be laughing their ass off, although I guess you could argue that the good news, if there is good news, is A, APAC is finding, buying American elections to become, it's becoming more expensive. And so it might become less affordable. And then the other thing is, I think it is ripping the Democratic Party a coalition apart, right? And that would be great. If the big, if the left were expelled, and recognized that they had been expelled from the Democratic Party and they could try to organize and figure something out on their own, that would be a game changer and it needs to happen.

And, you know. Agree. And I don't know why the left doesn't quite get it. It's like, dude, they're not fed into you. Their abusive relationship. Yeah. They would love you to death when it's something that they can get out of you, but otherwise they revile you. And it's like that needs to be accepted flesh to bone. I mean, like accepted hardcore.

Even if the left doesn't have enough where they can win themselves, at the very least they will have a base for which to start to try to win themselves. And at the very least they know themselves is something different and distinct and independent. Like meaning even if you have to still call yourself a Democrat, but you full well understand that you are not. Even that will be an improvement. I think that this is one of the, one of the events. advantages really the people on the right like me have had.

Because for the last eight years, we've been told that we're a basket of deplorables. Biden calls us trash. You have the Republican establishment calling us Nazis, the woke rike and all this other stuff. So basically both political parties are telling people like me, we don't want you, you're not needed. Yep.

And now we're seeing this stuff happening to the Democrats. It's just like, welcome to the party. I told your time was coming. To be fair, it's been there for a long time, Robbie. They've been doing it for a long time, but they've been able to hide it better into Democrats. But not as vocal, I guess, to the point that as what I'm saying. Now I'm actually coming out into the open and saying it.

So now the question is, can the populist left and the populist right work together? That's the rub. And I don't know. The answer should be yes if it indeed, like meaning if the right is really against war, then on that issue, the answer should be yes. If it's, I don't know, the answer should be yes. There should be a political coalition that could be form. I mean, if you get 70% of the public saying we don't like both political parties,

okay, then that's a political coalition, even if they don't necessarily agree on everything, maybe there's enough of what they agree upon where they can focus on three items. I mean, what you're talking about, and I agree with you, feels a little bit more like parliamentary democracy, where you could have parties that fundamentally have differing ideologies, but come together for certain things. Yes. In the U.S., we don't currently have that.

that really. Currently, like if the Democratic, you know, if one party, if they were something, the other party will tend to reflexively oppose it no matter what it is, right? Yeah. I mean, the last time we saw any kind of real bipartisanship was the Infrastructure Act, which Republicans have signaled for many, many years they wanted to work with Democrats to do something about. But then there's other stuff that just nothing came together, right? Like, criminal justice reform. There's a lot of Republicans who are against the prison industrial complex think it's too expensive and ineffective and not reducing crime. And obviously a lot of Democrats agree with them, but they can't come together to do anything because they're afraid

that like Democrats are afraid Republicans will accuse, will get the Democrats to vote with them, that it's a trap and then like one adds calling them weak on crime. There's not an arrest there, right? Well, we need a political coalition that's different. than the political coalitions that are already affiliated. And I think there's enough Americans that would back that stuff. Like, meaning, if you could get some of these people to weed themselves away from the corruption and the bribery and the money and everything else that they're effectively getting and say, hey, I want to do something what's best for the public, I think you can get that group.

I mean, and I think you would get a coalition of people on the right and left that can agree on three things and just focus on the three things. These are the three things that we're going into office for. This is what we're going to get done. This is what you can believe us on. you don't have to believe us on anything else. We're going to get these three things done and create a political coalition

around the three things that you're going to get done. I mean, granted, that's maybe Pollyannish, but I do think it would work if somebody actually did it. Everything's Pollyannish until it happens. Okay, comments. All right. Sassan Hala, thanks very much for the $5 donation.

Stevens is a domestic terrorist being sponsored by foreign terrorists. Well, I don't know that she's a best terrorist, but she's definitely sponsored by foreign terrorists. Oh, I mean the candidate for Jim Michigan. I'm sorry. Yeah.

Well, I thought the person was already an incumbent. Stevens is a she's a sitting congressman, but she's running for a promotion to the Senate. Oh, she's running for Senate. Okay. I see what's going on. Okay. Yeah, the seat is open.

That's what it was. Exactly. F you so. Are you mad that we still didn't get to see any aliens? Did Trump deport them? Thanks for the dollar. Also, men in black ice edition. That's terrifying.

That's terrified. Men and black ice agents. Oh, that's terrifying. The ones we have are terrifying enough. Yeah, I'm mad. I didn't see any aliens. I wanted to see. I would love to.

But this is kind of like a, oh, Cthulhu. Who's the one that did Cthulhu? Oh, the day the Earth did still? No, no, no, no. It's an author. Oh, what is his name? Basically, he has a, he does horror films or movies or books. He does books where the person learns and discovers something, but it's so earth-shattering that it fractures the consciousness of the person. And there's a name for it of his type of books. Oh, yeah, it's Lovecraft. That's right. Lovecraft, yes. It may be a Lovecraftian bargain them. It's like, yeah, you could see it, but you're never be the same. If you don't know what that means, do you still want to see it? Meaning, do you still want to know

if it will fundamentally change you in some radical way? Well, that's like the... The horror movie, the Vanishing, have you ever seen either... There's two versions. There's the American version and there's the original French version.

But basically... Well, the French version's a lot better. I didn't see the American version, but I know the reviews were not as good. Anyway, a dude, like a dude's girlfriend disappears. He loses his mind wanting to know what happened to her. Finally, the guy who knows and is responsible for what happened to her says, I will let you experience everything she experienced.

Do you want to do that? And he agrees. And of course, he's definitely never the same. I won't give away more than that. If you were given that, would you have taken that? Because there's a question about truth. Does truth matter? I mean, he was so tormented and needed to know that I believed it in his character.

But I think I'm at peace not knowing things more than maybe a character like that would be. I don't think I'm unusual. I think a lot of people are okay like not knowing everything. And I'm one of them. See, if there was, you know, I've been in the UFO thing for a while. and I keep this short. And one of the things for me, it's always, it's not enough to believe, because belief doesn't get you anywhere. Knowing is different, even if it's experience direct, in which case you can kind of interpret the experience. It may be that the experience is not

you dealing with something external, but even the fact that the experience happened in the first place is something interesting, knowing is different. And I was confronted with this thing of, okay, well, you know, recently in new UFO stuff, they do contacts. I fact, Barbara amenities whistleblowers came out talking about psionics and all it. That's a lot. But the question that I was confronted with was, hey, if you're trying to understand this stuff and trying to make contact and all of that stuff, what if you can't close that door? And would you still do it? Like, how much, how valuable of it is it to know? And what if you are going to be irreparably change after the knowing? That was a rough thing to

reckon so. This is like, what if it's true? And what if you're stuck with that door open? It's like, oh, they keep putting stuff in my ass every other night. I can't get him to stop. That's rough. It's like Johnny Depp in the ninth gate, right? He needs to know. Yes. Yes.

Yeah. Yeah. It's like how bad do you want to know? I don't think I need to know anything that bad. But that's just... Yeah, the ninth gate is a bit rough. But the alien thing, I would want to know. It could be that bad. I would accept it.

All right. This is a good question. Thank you, Peruse for asking. Hello, Robbie. How are the watching hours on Rumble looking? And Robbie, if you could also just remind everyone what we're talking about here. Yeah, watch hours on Rumble are going really good this month. I won't be streaming today.

I've got to do some stuff for TMI to get it over the first. finish line for its requirements. Basically of what is going on is that I lost my biggest client and lost about half of my income. And so what people have been doing just really kind of just to help out is streaming my my gaming content on Rumble and over on YouTube. Just so that way I can just use my gaming content just to kind of just make up that lost revenue.

If people who have been doing that, I appreciate it. if you're not doing it already, please do. Just go to Putin Bot Gaming, just like the name of the illustrious Russian president who does not seem interested in winning this war against Ukraine. And just pull up a playlist and let that puppy run. And I think that we're going to be okay with people. But seriously, the support that yel may give in me is overwhelming. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Robbie. And we will be updating you guys about what goes on there. All right. Harry Balsack, I also don't want to vote for a Zio, but I also don't want to vote for a Russophobe, so I won't vote. Fuck, voting for the lesser of two evils hasn't worked yet. Yeah.

I'm on that. You're still voting. It's like if you were ploddy, that's up on a graph. You're still going in a direction against your own interest. It's like, okay, I'll vote for this person. They hate the Russians, but, you know, they're not Zionists. And then war keeps going. Yeah.

Yeah, being Russophobic is insane. Okay, anyway, dual purpose. Robbie, do you think Ted and JT are out of touch with rural America? Ooh. I like that question a lot, actually. I like that question, too. How about Robbie? I don't.

We get so with them in Montana. I don't think so, but I think that their political ideology is. And here's, and here's one going on with this. both J.T. and Ted live they live on the East Coast. They live in old states, a lot of old money,

and the further west that you go, and more to the point, the further way that you get to the cities, the more is that you see these small towns that are just withering up and dying. And that's the rage. And like I saw a comment in the chat earlier about the problem is that American state immigrants.

The problem is not that American state immigrants. The problem is that American state immigrants. The problem is that American, can't pay their bills there's no wages and that neither political party cares and if you point that out people on the right are going to call you a nazi people on the left are going to call you a nazi there's no one fighting for there's no one fighting for the little guy meanwhile if you're just some smuck who hangings drywall for a living what you're seeing is that if you look back it takes as a google search look back to the median price of a house in 1955 you could buy a brand new house for 16 000

have a house of 12 kids off of a $30,000 a year salary. That is unattainable now. It is physically impossible. If you're working class four or middle class, you cannot get a home. And meanwhile, our government is. And then meanwhile, we have mass immigration coming in, driving now wages. That's the issue. The Republicans want them for lower wages.

Democrats want them for a voting block. even though it's kind of backfiring now in Michigan, meanwhile, just normal people are just like, there is no one looking out for me. That is the issue. And so in that way, I think there's a lot of disconnect.

And I think that's be the biggest problem, but trying to get the populist right and populist left to join together is because until we realize, that there has to be some compromises. I will let you kill your babies, but you've got to do something about the immigration. problem. And a total level is willing to make that sacrifice.

It's never going to happen. Look, Robbie, I think we agree. Everything that you just said, I don't think Ted and I would disagree with. Like, I don't think there's a huge disconnect. No, I mean, I'm going to ask you, it's a, I feel like there's a, okay, so what we're really talking about here is an urban rural divide, right? But like, if you look at America, let's say in 1920, what America looks like were bus industrial cities where most people either worked in factories or worked in shops that basically

the money that people were using to buy things from were coming from factories, right? That's what was powering the cities. And then small town America was going strong. And there was the general store. And those towns were powered by small farms for the most part. and the people who lived in the small farms and came in and shopped in those small towns. That's what America looked like, right, like 100 plus years ago, before the Great Depression. And now, both of those, the big cities, particularly, I mean, I would say particularly sort of the

the smaller cities like Baltimore, you know, places like that. Not, you know, there's still big places, but, you know, they're not like New York City. San Francisco, those kind of place, or LA, although there's lots of poverty. But those places have been suffering and rotted out by de-industrialization. And then big factory farming and agribusiness have destroyed small farms and made it impossible. And there's been a lot of other root causes for the end. But basically, amalgamation of agriculture has killed small town America. I guess my point is that public policy has been killing both the big cities in the East Coast and small town America, we're all kind of suffering the same disease.

So can we get together and understand each other and help each other? Well, we should be able to. The question is will we and can we? And until, this is going to get us to come down to being a real honest to God conversation about what is it that you want the country to look like for the next 100 years. Are you willing to look in the mirror? And by you, I mean, the compassionate left and say that until we fix our own house, maybe we should stop looking at it, no, taking care of the neighbor's kids.

That's the issue. Oh, you're muted, J.T. Marl, you're muted. I think your mic is off. Oh, I'm sorry. I guess what I'm saying is emphatically, at least from my side, yes. There are things that I would give away in order to get other things. politically. I don't have an issue with that. To me, that's just politics. It depends on what those

things are. That's what's going to have to happen. I don't have an issue with shutting the border, right? I don't think Ted has an issue with shutting the board. Until the unemployment rate is a 0.0%. If there's one, like, slovenly, worthless, lazy piece of shit American who nevertheless says, yeah, I'd be willing to work until that guy gets a job, No importation. Now, just because there's going to be consequences for that. But I would accept those consequences, even though the consequences will be bad. Oh, it's going to hurt.

Because I can take a person. Well, I mean, look, if you would, if that's the argument that we're going to admit, then you also have to say, okay, well, we need to increase education for health care, for whatever particular sector, because they're going to be vacancies almost immediately, especially if the goal is to go through and deport also. that's what would have to happen. And listen, I agree with you. And one of the reasons why America's education system sucks.

And I think that for my right-wing friends out there, this is where you can call me a communist. The education system should be federalized. And these big companies, like a black rocket stuff, they need to have their property taken away from them. If you hire an illegal alien, you need to go to prison for an extremely long time. I mean, there has to be real consequences here because, no, what's going on here in middle America is like, no, I'm sorry. I can't get your house. I can't get your job. You can't get married.

You can't have kids. But have you considered taking meth. I mean, seriously, that's the message that we're getting from the ruling class. It doesn't matter if you're white or black or we're in class Asian. It doesn't matter. This is not a racial thing. It is a class thing. And until the American people figure this out, it's not going to, it's going to implode.

And the reason why the Mondani, the reason why you know, the Democrat ship, Mondani was able to run and take over. Well, look at the census in New York City of the last 50 years. More half the population is foreigners. That's not an American. Yeah, but that's not why you won. I don't think that's why he won. I mean, I don't think he won because.

Oh, it's definitely a factor. I don't even think it's a factor. I mean, New York, it's, I mean, you're tired, poor huddle masses. There's that, right? So there's a character associated with New York. But I think he won because he was the anti-democrat, not to mention the stuff that he was talking about was directly related to what was going on in an economic sense. I would have voted for him. I despised the man and I would have voted for him because in that

debate, what's silly for me? I said, well, what foreign country will you go to when he said, I'm not going to go anywhere. The mayor of New York going to fix my city. Yeah. Well, they asked if they were going to Israel and the other three idiots on stage was like, I'm going to Israel. I'm going to Israel. I'm going to Israel. I'm saying here. Yeah, right. For sure. And again, and people need to people need to, people need to, just need to, I'll go away after this, so we have a show to do. People need to take the racial component out of immigration. I know it sounds crazy, but either you're an illegal migrant or you're not.

It doesn't matter if you're white, doesn't matter if you're purple, doesn't matter if you're green. It is not a racial thing. Again, it comes down to fixing your house first. That's the issue. And that's what the, that's what the populace on the left have to look into the mirror for. answer and answer our question are our feelings about the other more important than increasing wages for the American worker? That's the question that people on your side of the political persuasion have got to answer. My answer is yes, get wages up. That means you got to make work scarce.

That's the only way. You mean workers? You got to make workers scarce. Yeah, you can make workers scarce. Yeah, yeah. That is how you get wages up. As long as you can keep importing every Tom, Dick, and Harry from the rest of the world, you don't need to fix education. You don't need drive wages up. Employers will pay for workers if they have to. Well, they have to. Otherwise, you don't have a company. Thank you very much to Dead Man's Meme Club for the $10.

Hope you all having a good morning. A little better because of you. Thank you very much. Thank you so much for the $50 donation from Crown Heights Brainiac. Here's a lovecraftian irony. Both E.T. and Iran have more technology than the U.S. but the taxpayers pay double what everyone else and the media spends it like losing is a good thing. Well, I mean, the state can't look, the U.S. with its hegemonic status, it's kind of like an emperor, right?

It is very difficult for the media to talk about this as a loss and it's very difficult for the president to talk about it as a loss. It's always going to, meaning the media may, that's not entirely true. The media has pointed out that Trump has lost the war. But they don't talk about it that way if you're listening to them. They talk about it in different ways. Yeah. But yeah, it's hard for the empire to acknowledge that it's not doing well, which I guess does lead in to the Iran.

Also, thank you, Sneaker Dad for the $50. It's great to see you all again. Thank you. It's great to be seen and to hear from you. Manchow, thanks for the dollar. America is responsible for all of its own issues. If the U.S. would have left well enough alone, in Central and South America, the Middle East and Asia, we would live in a vastly different world.

True. True. But chaos is the latter. Yeah. I mean, in the way that we use. Chaos. I do want to get into the Ukraine-Iran thing, but very quickly, we should touch, take note of the wildfires in France and Spain.

In surrounded, 250,000 people have been evacuated from inside. around the city of Bordeaux in southwestern France. Spain, the fires close to Madrid are considered active and uncontrolled. That's the official statement. In France and in Spain, they now have seen fire clouds, which are basically where the smoke created by the fires are so massive and thick that they create their own weather systems with their own thunder and lightning and are changing the temperature there.

Basically, ironically, this seems to have all started because it was an unusually wet winter, and therefore a lot of scrub grew, and then it all dried out. It stopped raining. All the stuff that grew, like immediately died and just basically became dry tender. You know, France and Spain, the people who live there,

they've always been blessed by extraordinary, you know, incredibly mild climate, rich soil, great geography with access to both the Mediterranean and the Atlantic oceans. They have it all, right? They're like Springfield in the Simpsons. There's everything. You know, there's mountains. There's beaches. There's ports.

There's, you know, there's grasslands. It's all there. And, you know, it really seems like, um, climate change is being merciless to Western Europe now. Do they associate this with climate change? Yeah, 100%. Yeah. Because of the wet.

There's not even any question. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's so big. It's hard to get your arms around that. And it takes world cooperation even to do anything about it. So it makes you, I don't know, it puts you in this position of, I don't know, I don't impotence yeah if that's the word for it yeah like it's so big it's like like if somebody said um

um um alien civilization is coming and it's going to eat earth like it's literally going to eat earth it's the size of the thing okay well what do you do about that nothing cry well right but i feel like climate change is very similar only because yeah you may be able to do something about it but it requires cooperation and the moment that you require cooperation it's almost impossible that's what it feels like i have a question for you j t i'm going to derail the show um if if we discovered an alien civilization if one discovered us would the default reaction be we don't know if this civilization is a threat or not, it needs to be deleted? He said delete it?

Yeah, like erased. Because you don't know if that other civilization is going to be. That's the three-body problem. That's an entire book series, chain of suspicion. I don't know what this other group is doing. And because I don't know what this other group is doing, I can't take a chance that this group may come after me. And even if I'm superior to this group now, we're dealing with galactic distances. And so I still can't take the chance of kind of.

That you're attacking them, and by attacking them, you're creating the danger that didn't exist before. Yeah, but see, that's the rub. From the dark forest theory, they don't even, the attacks aren't malicious. Like, they're bureaucratic. It would be like if you get up in the morning and there's a bureaucrat that says, oh, there's a place that needs to be destroyed. And they figure out how to destroy the country, usually blowing up the sun or destroying the dimensions. That was the entire thesis of the book, Dark Forest. I don't know what this other person is going to do.

And by definition, that creates a suspicion between groups. And by the way, it's like that were people too, right? I don't know what this person is actually thinking. I don't know what this person is actually going to do, which makes me suspicious. So it makes me worry. Oh, this is the thing of like, okay, if there's a 1% chance that all things can end, how do you deal with the fact that there's that 1% chance that all things can end? Oh, Robbie, don't ask me that.

I don't know. All right. I don't know. In the time we have left, we should talk about what is probably the biggest danger that we're talking about, at least in the short term today. Climate change is the more or a slightly longer turn. So Ukraine bombed an Iranian ship in the Caspian Sea. The Caspian Sea is an inland ocean, kind of like Lake Erie or, you know, something like that. And it separates, it's to the north of Iran.

Over to, on the eastern border, you have Turkmenistan. And northernmost, you have both Kazakhstan, you have, sorry, Uzbekistan and Russia. And then on the other side, you have Azerbaijan and Baku on the west part of the Caspian Sea. It's a big, big, it's like an inland ocean. It takes about 12 hours to take a ferry across it to put it into it. So anyway, the ship was traveling. Across it, the Ukrainians took it out. The Ukrainians implied but did not directly say in their statement issued under the name of President Zelensky

that Iran's Shahid drones were destined to for Russia. Meanwhile, at the same time, the United States has paused bombing Iran. And even though Trump denies it by all accounts, it's because we're running low on ammo. We've given so much shit to Ukraine and to Israel and used so much of it ourselves that we're running very low. And, you know, the Iranians apparently are in full-on Jamaral mode and have no interest in negotiations right now. They're like they're liking, they like what they see. They're letting it. They're staying their hand.

They're not asking for new guards. I guess what, you know, I mean, how dramatic is this Venn diagram between the Russo-Ukrainian conflict and the U.S. Israel war against Iran? I mean, it's just, I mean, if you start saying, oh, we're going to attack weapons suppliers like Iran to Russia, I mean, all bets are off at that point, right? I mean, then Russia has justified attacking the U.S. Yeah. Well, Russia was always justified. and attacked in the U.S. under this model. I mean, it's the amount of money and weapons that Europe is dumping into Ukraine in order to kill Russians. It was always cost to spelling. Russia just never took them up on it because they wanted to keep it isolated to Ukraine. No, this is a paper-thin difference between these wars. Like, if you remember in the very beginning, Russia, the warhead or the drone that Russia was using was a Iranian drone that Russia eventually souped up, modified, and

made it into its own thing. But there's a paper thin difference between these wars. The United States is behind both wars. The CIA is directly involved in the war in regards to Ukraine. And keep in mind, Ukraine wouldn't have attacked an Iranian ship if it wasn't for the U.S. giving it the heads up to attack an Iranian ship to try to get across. Hey, we could still reach you. But again, this is very dangerous in the sense that if this keeps happening, then Iran is going to have to respond to Ukraine in some particular form of fashion, which at that point just merges both wars. They must be using mid-ranged missiles, right? Because the closest distance between the border of Ukraine and the edge of the Caspian Sea is 450 miles.

This was probably more about 600 miles away, right, what they hit. Or came out of Azerbaijan who attacked Iran before or allowed the airspace to use the attack Iran before. that's more likely probably a drone attack launched from Issylvania. Yeah, if we just launched one of the other location. That could drag the Azeris in. I'm surprised they haven't been dragged in already. I mean, if you remember, there was a back and forth between Russia and Azerbaijan with the Russians locking up a bunch of gangsters in the Azerbaijan,

as a Azeri government freaking out. And it's like, hey, these guys are mobsters? Why are you guys freaking out? It makes your government look like you're infested by the mob. Right? And I'm saying this is somebody who loved Azerbaijan. I would have loved to stay there longer. But obviously, there's mopped up connections in the government.

Oh, yeah. No, this, something like this has happened before where the territory of Azerbaijan was used to hit Iran. That's probably. Yeah, I find it unlikely that the, that the Uki's used, you know, missiles for this. Yeah. Yeah, to launch that attack. But either way, it killed the captain. Iran said they, you know, vengeance is ours.

They bowed retaliation. Who knows if they are going to retaliate in some particular fashion? They may just let this one go, but we'll see. But the reality of it is, more likely than not, the U.S. put them up to do this in order to make the point of saying, hey, you're still not safe even in the sea, in the Caspian Sea, which they should be safe and considering how far away it is. We have a few comments. Filius Fav, the technocratic, thanks for the dollar. The technocratic PMC, quote unquote, left, scare quotes, extols, extols the noble plucky immigrant as a way of implying that local

poors are undeserving, unmotivated, et cetera. Another way of stripping class politics out of the left. Kind of, I think part of it has to do a lot with believe it or not, the Second World War. Like with the way the Jews were shuffled

to different locations, the way people like migrants, how it's considered racist as opposed to just nationalistic to not necessarily want to increase immigration. Like the way we talk about it is very meaning for somebody just say, hey, I think we should shut the border because I think we have too many people in already and it's cutting wages. And, of course, the left is going to say, well, that guy's racist, obviously.

And it's like, okay, but what if they're not? What if they're, like, reacting to real world phenomena? Like, if you're in Europe and you're seeing, like, rapes go up and you can attribute it directly, like, in a real sense to immigration that's coming into the country, okay, you're not racist for pointing that out. Right. But that's the lens that it's looked in. Well, the person is obviously very things if they bring that up. That's not always true. Yeah, I don't know where, I mean, I would say also that like somehow in like the 1960s and 70s,

when there was something that aspired to be an internationalist left and that, you know, the Soviet Union still had the common turn which purported to dictate or give orders or at least suggestions to communist and socialist movements around the world. where there was some sort of centralized authority, that internationalism was a thing, right? Like workers of the world, you have nothing to lose but your genes, and a lot of people thought, like, well, that will mean in the future, we'll have to have one world government,

we're going to get rid of borders. And I think that opened some elements of the liberal left who didn't really ever understand, or I should say the cultural liberal left, not the class left in like the 90s and oughts to become open to sort of Clintonian internationalism, where basically workers are allowed to more or less move freely across international borders as needed by capital in order to exploit and hire them,

whereas capital was fluid in an entirely different way, thus advantaging capital under, you know, things like GAT, World WTO, NAFTA, and so on. And I mean, it's kind of a, ideological pollutant and it's caused a lot of people on the American left not to think straight. Yes, agree. I agree with everything you just said. Okay, so that's always great. I like to end on and up. It's 10 o'clock, which means it's time for TMI. Guys, in two hours, 12 o'clock, 12 noon, we're going to be doing the Q&A show because it's Monday. We do the Q&A show here on the program Mondays and Wednesdays. Please join us between 12 noon and 1 p.m. live. We look forward to here.

hearing all of your questions and answering all of them at that time. Bye, JT, and we will see you in a couple of us. See you, too. Bye. Have it going, guys.