DeProgram with John Kiriakou and Ted Rall - Fly the Fiendish Skies | DeProgram with Ted Rall and John Kiriakou

Episode Date: December 16, 2025

Political cartoonist Ted Rall and CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou deprogram you from mainstream media every weekday at 9 AM EST. Today we discuss: • A JetBlue pilot accuses the US military of recklessly flying over Venezuelan airspace without active transponders, endangering thousands of civilian air passengers and causing a near miss. • Running against crime and illegal immigration, rightist José Antonio Kast defeats a communist candidate for the Chilean presidency. Argentina, Paraguay, Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador are all governed by right-wingers. • Trump designates street fentanyl as a WMD. Meanwhile, the US military blows up three alleged drug boats in the Pacific, killing eight unknown civilians.• Blaise Metreweli, first female head of MI6, emphasizes threat from Russia and the war in Ukraine alongside high-tech/AI intelligence.JOIN US LIVE ON RUMBLE!https://rumble.com/c/DeProgramShowFOLLOW TED:https://rall.com/https://x.com/tedrallFOLLOW JOHN:https://www.instagram.com/realjohnkiriakouhttps://x.com/JohnKiriakouLISTEN ON SPOTIFY:https://open.spotify.com/show/2kdFlw2w8sSPhKI8NRx8ZuLISTEN ON APPLE MUSIC:https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/deprogram-with-john-kiriakou-and-ted-rall

Good morning, John. Welcome to D-Program with Ted Roll and John Kiriaku. How's it going? Good to see, man. It's going well. It was in New York all day yesterday. And Ted, it was so cold when I left Washington that the train was delayed 40 minutes because two of the train doors were frozen in the open position.

and they had to get a crowbar to try them away from, you know, being frozen against the train itself. 40 minutes we were late, an hour and 15 minutes late coming back. I didn't get home to 1 o'clock in the morning. See, this is why we should have good relations with Russia, because the transit authority in New York could call their counterparts at the Trans-Siberia Railroad. And see how the heck to handle this. Yeah, exactly. Oh, my God.

It is Tuesday, December 16th, 2025. Please, like, follow, and share the show. We're here Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. Eastern time. Today. What happened? I bumped. Did we lose? Knocked myself out.

Oh, I was going to say. I just said, what happened? That swipe thing. You know what I mean? Oh, yes. Yes. He said, iOS, you know, Steve Jobs, if you weren't dead, I would kill you. Okay, so let's see.

Among other things, I mean, we've been asked, why are we not, why do we not have on the rundown Trump's remarks about Rob Reiner? We can talk about that. Yeah, yeah. So today, we have this near miss over the skies over Venezuela. Yeah. Apparently, U.S. planes are flying around without transponders over there, and a jet blue plane had a nether.

near miss with a U.S. military refueling plane. And the JetBlue pilot is furious and saying that basically the U.S. is being reckless and it's outrageous. Chile just became the latest country with a right wing in Latin America with a right wing president. Trump just designated fentanyl as a weapon of mass destruction. And there's a new lady head of MI6. Blaise Metrowelli, I think I'm pronouncing her name correctly.

Anyway, so she just gave an important policy speech, and her emphasis was unsurprisingly, but maybe I am surprised that it was unsurprising. It's just basically Russia, Russia, Russia. Yeah. So anyway, and we have some questions already in the chat. So I like this first. I would just go straight to this question, if you're okay with this, John. Lauren Featherston is asking, it says she loves the show, thank you.

Thank you. How would we rate and grade this administration's first year in office? You can see why I like this question. I'm going to let you answer it then because. Well, you also, you need to give it straight A's. Yeah, I have to, yeah. Yeah, go for it. Okay, so I think there's obviously, you know, it depends on what metric you're looking at.

Are you looking at it from a standpoint of American history? Are you looking at it from a standpoint of effectiveness? Are you looking at it from a standpoint of, you know, what do the American people want and need? Are you looking at it from the standpoint of what did the administration have in mind when they first came in and are they, have they accomplished it and are they close to accomplishing it? I'm going to start with the last one first. The administration had a very ambitious agenda.

and basically their primary strategy has been to do everything that they can with as quickly as possible without bothering to with Congress and basically let the chips fall where they may. It's an interesting, very untraditional approach to governance. And I would say right now the jury is still out, but I don't think, I think that they've made a lot of big sweeping changes that are going to in the long run, be easy to replace because they weren't enacted with, you know, with congressional approval and because they weren't enacted with the support of the public. There was no buy-in, really. And things that you do quickly without getting popular buy-in tend to be easy to get rid of. So we'll see, you know, I guess the point is it's like, you know, Joen-Lai. It's too early to tell.

But I'm pessimistic. I would say that the administration's probably, not likely to leave sweeping changes behind it. And then in terms of whether it's good for the American people, I think it's been, I would have to say, the letter grade there would have to be a D. And we'll talk about the new economic statistics just broke, just as we were going on, the air, we're up 41,000 or 46,000 jobs, something like that. You need 200, economists like to see 200 or 300,000 jobs added to the economy. every month. This is after some previously low months. Unemployment is now rising to 4.6%.

Pretty substantial. And that's not including all the people who've given up looking for work. I think this administration has taken its eye off the ball, which was the economy. And that's why they're here. That's why Biden lost. And I think also their execution on the immigration issue has been lacking because it's been basically like, let's go with the low-hanging fruit, the people dropping their kids off at school and the day laborers at Home Depot. And that's not what the American people wanted to start with.

They wanted to start with the scumbags, the rapists, the murderers, the gangbangers. And that's not what they're doing. So I would say, you know, incomplete on the first metric, you know, probably like a D on the second. It's not too late to turn it around, though. you know, by any means. I mean, it's, you know, they have pretty much the next six months, I'd say, to get their act together.

They could fix a lot if they, if they got serious on health care. They could, they could really staunch the bleeding. I'm going to add to that, too, and say that I think the reason why the administration hasn't done better in, in this first year of the second term, is the complete and total failure of the Republican leadership in Congress. There was a piece in the Washington Post this morning, Ted, saying that, and I'll preface it by saying, you remember Republicans used to jump up and down because Barack Obama was signing so many executive orders. Donald Trump set a new record in his first term, signing more than double the number of executive orders that Barack Obama ever signed. And he's doubled it again by signing more executive orders in his first year. of the second term than he signed in his entire presidency in the first term. So he's having to do that.

I'm not blaming Donald Trump. He's having to do that because Mike Johnson is the weakest and the worst speaker of the House in American history. That's true. And because there is no stomach on the Senate side to initiate legislation. So he's got to do it by executive order. But one other thing. Robbie said in our in our private chat that as a as a conservative he ranks the first year of the second term as a failure and I'd love to hear why. Okay, well, let's bring yeah. All right, Robbie. What's here? Hi. Well, I mean, first of all, what Trump did is that he ran as a populist and he's governing as a Republican. We didn't elect a Republican. That's a good point. We elected someone who went in with the promise of blowing the system up and starting over with the hard reset and the

promise that he had was that he was that he made is that he was going to listen to the voices of the normal everyday worker that was that was what he ran on that's why the man had had had the support of what he had uh right wingers like me uh no people are moderate even people on the left came out and they supported trump yeah that's true all three times that he ran that is true but he governs as if he's just a typical republican so at this point what's the point of having the man what has he changed fundamentally what has he done he's gave us more debt he's created more inflation he's strengthened the power of the executive if you want a small government like i do that's the last thing you should have well he's militarized the streets of american cities

that that's been the main uh the main thing that has affected i think you know from an ordinary American perspective. If you live in a city, you're now likely to see National Guardsmen or ICE guys on a raid. Yeah. And that's something else. Personally, I support what ICE is doing, I think needs to be done. But I'm 100% opposed to a militarized police force. I don't want to live in the Soviet Union. So let's not do that. You know, by the way, the Soviet Union didn't really have a militarized police force. Their cops were not on, didn't have guns for the most part. They just carried like Billy Club. They would just stand around.

Yeah. Yeah, with and maybe a flashlight. I'll take I'll take y'all's words for it. I was never there. All right. Even though they were called the Militia, it's just a misnomer. Okay. Let's do another question. This one, this, I refer to

this. Ryan Heyman says nothing in the rundown about Trump, basically tap dancing on Rob Reiner's still warm corpse? Yeah, that was not cool at all. Tasteless. Even by Trumpian standards. Yeah. It was low.

And people in the Trump orbit are speaking out against it. It was classless. I mean, the thing is, it's sort of like, okay, so Rob Reiner was a big Democrat, sure. But like, you know, I know basically Donald Trump likes to make everything about him. And this was that. That's what this was about. And, I mean, in that sense, it worked. But it's just like, you know, honestly, you know what it is.

It's the equivalent of liberals who made fun of Charlie Kirk's death. It's exactly the same thing. I think it's exactly the same. And it's just not cool. Yeah, I agree completely. Thanks for the buck from FUSO. How's the CIA involved in the Venezuela invasion? Oh, well.

What would they have you do? What would they have had you do if they had sent you? There are lots of moving parts when trying to overthrow. throw a government. First of all, the CIA is 100% yes, involved in whatever it is that our government is doing right now in Venezuela. So what you need to do is operationally put pressure on Maduro to just run away. You want Maduro to run away.

But we know that Trump's idea was to make him think that he could run away. Yes. And I say that because we now know that the CIA tried to recruit his private pilot so that were he to run off like to Havana, the guy would actually land the plane in Key West and we grab him and put him on trial for drug trafficking a la Manuel Norie. Which, by the way, would mean that no other target of American regime change would ever have caused to believe anything that we promised in the future. That's exactly right.

number two so you well so you have to secure the presidential palace whether maduro is in it or not number number two you have to um either co-opt the military or bombard the military if they can't be co-opted uh number three you have to take control of the television and radio stations at least the ones in caracas and these are CIA operations or would these be military operations or coordinated. They would be joint operations. Okay. Yeah. Since 9-11, most of these kinds of operations would be joint with special forces. And then third, you have to take over the main intersections of the capital. But like I've said in the past, like we talked about on Friday, overthrowing the government is the easy part. Yeah. Right. It's governing. It's governing. That's the hard part. What do you do the next day? Right. That's exactly the issue. Right. And I mean, I guess you would also need to, now there would be a, there would be cyber attacks against Venezuelan internet infrastructure, right? They'd probably want to tank the internet. Right. Right. Exactly. Shut down the wire system so that like regime officials can't send their money overseas. Exactly right. Okay. Hey, can I add one thing, one thing to about this near miss between the jet blue.

Yeah, let's talk about that because we should just go to it because it's, you know, it's related. This, this is bad policy. You can't just announce on truth social that you're shutting down airspace and then not really do it, right? You can't, you can't just tell the Pentagon, go ahead and just fly wherever you want to fly, you know, buzz the coast or violate Venezuelan airspace or whatever and not tell civilian aircraft to avoid the area. if you're serious about overthrowing this government you have to shut down the airspace which means there shouldn't be any jet blue flight in the area right and it's like nobody's taken this seriously you're either going to do it or you don't do it you can't talk about it and then just pretend that you know that that's the plan it doesn't work what the pilot said is is and i think

it's maybe not a main story which is why i'm glad we're talking about it ought to be a main story it's really chilling. The pilot said that this U.S. military plane without a transponder appeared two miles ahead of him. I assume that he only knew about it visually at the same altitude. Now, two miles is about three or four seconds. Yeah, two miles is a long way when you're driving at 40 miles an hour on the road. But these planes go at 600 miles per hour. Exactly.

So, yeah. So literally, you know, I'm sure he had to, you know, the passengers had a jolting experience as he veered the plane to avoid. And he was absolutely rip shit. And a lot of these international pilots are military, they're U.S. Air Force veterans. Yes. So they know very well that, you know, this is not how you, this is no way to run, you know, an air force. It's crazy.

Do you think, I mean, this is, and also. So I guess the thing is I have to bring up what happened in Washington, you know, which still hasn't really been addressed, you know, at Reagan National Airport, the American Airlines plane, the tragedy that claimed, what, Kansas City? Almost 100 lives. Yes. And then, you know, with the U.S., with the Air Force helicopter that hit it,

it was clear, it was the Air Force's fault. Yes. My understanding is that the administration is trying to blame the airline. And they are trying to blame the airline and on Thursday of this past week, they, well, in the immediate aftermath of the of the accident, they restricted military helicopter flights in the immediate area of national airport. National airport is literally next to the Pentagon, right? On Thursday, they went back to the old rules again. I live directly underneath the flight path for landing. The airport's three miles from my house.

As I'm looking out the window, I see a plane right now that's flying into land. Every few seconds, and that's not true, every few minutes, you'll see military helicopters, too. Ospreys, Hueys, they're all over the place. It's a miracle that they don't hit each other more frequently. They're all in the same airspace. Yeah, I think people don't really understand how intermingled all that stuff is. And also, if you haven't flown into Reagan National, it's really in town. Oh, yeah.

It's on the metro system. It is, it's on the metro system. Yeah. Which is, by the way, it makes it a great airport to fly into. I try to fly exclusively or almost exclusively in and out of Reagan. I mean, it's even more in town than LaGuardia. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, it's more like for old New Yorkers will remember the eastern air.

airlines terminal on the east side of Manhattan. It's like that. That's what Reagan National is more like. That's right. So yeah, no, it's it's it's really reckless. We're going to, you know, people have to die before we take things seriously, but now people have died and we're still not taking it seriously. A question for you, John, from Zakaria. I don't think it's Farid. Did you hear about Desiree Fixler, the whistleblower about the W-E-F, is it possible that justice won't serve these demons, hope you get pardoned? Oh, thank you. Thank you. Yeah, I've been kind of tangentially following her revelations and whistleblowing. She's a serious person. You can disagree with some of the positions that

she's taking, but she's a serious person coming right out of the W-E-F. We don't get very much news about her because she's based in Europe. But yeah, she's, she's legit. I have respect for her. Okay, cool. And Robbie, we'll take that ad whenever you're ready. Have we heard Nicholas Franco wants to know of this recent controversy between Dan Crenshaw and the podcast, John Ryan. Oh, yeah. Oh, I have. It's so much fun. Dan Crenshaw, first of all, as we've said multiple times, is a scumbag. And everybody says it. And, you know, he tricked so many people. He ran for Congress in 2018, and there were like eight people in that race in Texas.

He ended up winning with whatever, 20-something percent. But he was, I mean, the guy's a bona fide war hero. I'm sorry to do this. Please hold that thought. We have to do the ad because the clock starts ticking once the ad comes up. So this is a little awkward here. All right, still scrambling for a Christmas gift while many shipping deadlines have already passed. Here's your lifeline, Chicago State Company.

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Every time I hear that ad, I'm like, I haven't had any breakfast, you know, but I didn't have much to eat this morning. I'm like, it makes me hungry. All I had is my quadruple shot of espresso. So anyway, Sean Ryan and Crenshaw. So Crenshaw, he's got the patch over his eye, he just got back from Afghanistan, he's a war hero, seal team six. So he eke out a win in the Republican primary. It's a solidly Republican district.

He wins election easily, his one re-election ever since 2020, 2020, 2024, 24. Sean Ryan said on his podcast a couple of weeks ago, how is it that in 2018, Crenshaw's worth like a couple of bucks and now in 2024 with a salary of $174,000 a year, he's worth millions and millions of bucks. How's that possible unless he's corrupt? Well, Crenshaw's response to Sean Ryan, was to send him

not to send him but to post a response saying my buddy's at six meaning at seal team six say you're talking shit about me it was a threat and Sean Ryan's like bring it on phony boy and so Crenshaw has his attorneys send Sean Ryan

a cease and desist letter and Ryan's like not a afraid of your freaking hired guns, bring it on. And why aren't, why aren't you just answering the question? If you make $174,000 a year as a member of Congress, how are you all of a sudden worth millions and millions of dollars unless you're corrupt? I want to, I want in on that secret. Seriously. So the funny thing about Sean Ryan, I follow him on on Facebook. He's posting everything, like every scrap of paper he gets from the lawyers. from Crenshaw's lawyers, he posts it and mocks it.

Every text message he gets from Crenshaw threatening him, he posts it and mocks him. And it's like Crenshaw, you know my beef with Crenshaw. He's just a, he's a profligate cheater, womanizer, just a disgusting human being. I have zero respect for this guy. Tell us how you really feel, John. Yeah.

I'm very sensitive to the issue cheating finish like a quite frankly i don't think the this is a comment i don't think u.s political elites care about the economy it'll always be good enough for themselves either way that's true i agree whenever you read like uh you know accounts of the history of the great depression there's always these people who you know they lived in the during the depression not in the depression really rich people who i mean they were having a great time everything was cheap and their money went further than ever phil chats i don't understand why people often praise the failure of the other party. If a Trump or Democrat is successful, we as Americans are successful. As a rabbi ally,

we are frustrated because we're waiting. I'm with Phil on that. I would love to see, you know, President Trump or any Republican succeed. I mean, at this point, I almost have to include Democrats because I don't like them either. As like, you know, whatever. I mean, yeah, please succeed. Yeah, I want our leaders to succeed. I don't care what the party is. And I'll add another thing, too. Lately, the Democrats have taken to exclusively complaining about Donald Trump. No new ideas, no new programs, no new policies, no new legislation, nothing. Yeah, and their complaints about Trump tend to be very vaporous, right? Like about his style or he's rude.

He says mean things about Rob Reiner, or he threatens democracy in some kind of vague, undefined way you know it's not these we're not having that's what frustrates me we don't have policy debates in this country no no we don't and we don't really it's crazy and part of the reason is i think first of all let's look at the democratic leadership of the house of representatives hakeem jeffreys is already a failure yeah already there's literally nothing different about his leadership style ability to promote policy from what we saw with Nancy Pelosi on the worst days. But if Nancy Pelosi was better at keeping her caucus together. Yeah.

Yeah. That's the only difference. There was a piece in the Times, I think it was over the weekend, talking about the discharge petition, right? You and I had a conversation ages ago about discharge petitions. And I said that one of the most recent ones that was successful was in 1980. 86 and it was on it was on social security tax right there they were exceedingly rare there have been six successful discharge petitions in the last 12 months that's crazy and it's because there's

no leadership right and so independent not independent but individual members of congress are are sponsoring discharge petitions just to get stuff out of committee I mean John, if I could snap my fingers and be a member of Congress without having to run or anything, I still wouldn't want the job. I wouldn't want it. Yeah. No. It's like, it's pointless. It's a waste of your time.

There's like literally nothing. And a lot of people have quit recently and said exactly that. That's right. Moni of the cat's asking, if there's any chance we can get a perplexity sponsor for your and our shows? That would be very greatly welcome.

Yes, it would be welcome here too. Yeah, I love it. Wolf and Fighter wants to know, how is Greece's relationship with Albania? I know a little bit about the relationship with other neighbors, but I have no idea about Albania. It's correct, as they say, not in warm, but it's correct. That's a very European word. Yeah, things really went down the toilet in 1991 when Prime Minister Antoni Samaras, who's a member of the Conservative Party.

now he's the leader of his own little like very conservative party he opened the border uh enver hoja had died in 1986 uh the the communist government fell apart samaras opened the border and more than a million it was like 1.2 million albanians crossed the border and entered greece looking for work that was a trauma at the time because it put greeks out of work and because Albanians were for the most part undocumented, they drove wages down, sometimes they didn't get paid at all. It was a big mess. Well, here we are now almost two generations later, one and a half generations later. And they're integral part of Greek society. In fact, most of them that came were ethnic Greeks anyway. And the reason I'm bringing that up is that

that's what the problem is now in relations between Greece and Albania. southern third of Albania is not called Albania in Greece. It's called Northern Epidos province because it's traditionally claimed by Greece. It's ethnically Greek for the most part. The mayors of the towns have Greek names. The Greek orthodoxy is the religion while the rest of Albania is Muslim from Ottoman times. Are the signs in Greek? The signs are both in Greek and Albanian, yes. And so the Greeks are constantly putting pressure on the Albanians to lighten up on the ethnic Greek community. They're harassed, they're discriminated against, frequently ethnic Greek political leaders are jailed. A lot of those mayors are in jail now.

So it's difficult. But both sides realize they have to live with one another. And I mean, and obviously temperamentally and politically, those countries couldn't be more different, right? Seriously. Okay, so I want to, you know, pick your brain a little bit about the Chilean election results. Yeah. So Jose Antonio Cast basically has replicated a sort of Latin American Trump kind of anti-immigrant,

anti-crime kind of template. Obviously, you know, the politics are specific to Chile. But now it's Chile, Argentina, Paraguay, Peru, Bolivia, and Ecuador are all right-wing countries. Obviously, the biggest one of them all, Brazil, is left-wing. But, you know, so Latin America tends to go in waves politically, right? In the 70s, it was right-wing military dictatorships like Augusto Pinochet. And then in the, you know, the aughts, we saw, you know, the whole, you know, LULU. kind of left wing Hugo Chavez kind of thing and now we're pivoting back right what's

going on in Latin America Chile is unusual in this respect in that cast election is a result of of the Chilean people just being tired of corruption the left has been just notoriously corrupt and people are tired of it and so here's this would-be strong man saying give me this election and i'm going to clean the place up so i think that there's not necessarily any great love of the of the right or the far right in chile so much as it's this anger with the left for just being a bunch of crooks but you're right you're right about waves and there's something to be said about milay in Argentina. He's a right-wing

populist. He's made nice with Donald Trump. Trump sends $40 billion in bailout money. And the Chileans are like, hey, I'd like to have a piece of that. That pisses me off. It really does. I mean, we have people in this country. I mean, like, even as we

speak, John, you and I are both renewing our health insurance through the Affordable Care Act. And there's no subsidies for you and me, right? And it sucks. And we're going to be like three times more for the same shitty plan that sucked before at a third of the price. Anyway, Ray C. 2020, thanks for the five bucks. Can the president decertify federal labor unions if their workers are openly plotting on

Zoom calls to sabotage the administration? Federal unionists network has been infiltrated and streamed last night on tour. Interesting question. So a couple of weeks ago, Donald Trump, signed an executive order, which he does almost every day, banning the federal union AFSCME from the federal workspace. And interestingly enough, I just read the executive order yesterday because I wrote an op-ed that included it. He specifically said that he didn't want to allow prison guards to be unionized. that that's what started this whole thing.

It's all about the prison guards. So the question, the answer to the question is, it's unclear. It's unclear whether he can decertify the union. I think probably no. But he's certainly within his rights to say, I don't want any union involvement in federal contract negotiations. Who certifies unions? Is that the NLRB?

Say that again? Who certifies labor unions in the U.S.? I didn't realize they had to be. be, is that the Department of Labor? Is that the NLRB? What is it? Yeah, it's, it's the American Federation of, what's it called? What's asked me stand for? The American Federation of State. Well, that's the Union. That's the Union. Yeah, but you certify, I mean, like, I mean, I know that like in order to be recognized, you have to be as a union, you have to have a certain number of members who signed cards and are willing to pay dues and all that

stuff. But who does that? It seems a little silly to me. It's almost like, so in the same way that like if we have First Amendment rights, why do we have to get a parade permit to have a demonstration on the street from the police? I don't understand that. Either you have First Amendment rights or you don't. And if we have the right, if we have the right to organize and collectively bargain against our employers, why do we have to go to the government to get permission to be recognized as a real labor union? Why can't we just do it? It doesn't make sense. That's a good question. And, you know, federal workers, listen, you know how stridently pro-union I am. I'm very proud, proudly, again, a union member right now. I just paid my dues a couple of weeks ago.

Very proud to be a member of the union. I was a member. of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union. My mom was in the American Federation of Teachers, my dad, the National Education Association, and the American Brotherhood of musicians. My grandfather on my dad's side, the American Brotherhood of Meat Cutters and the Steelworkers Union,

and my grandfather on my mom's side, Steelworkers Union. So long union tradition in my house. Clearly. I never joined the federal union because federal workers are forbidden from striking. Mm-hmm. So there's no point. There's no point. And by the way, I don't think federal workers should be forbidden from striking.

No, I agree with you. I mean, it's like that's, then at that point, you've got slave labor. Exactly. You should always have the right to withhold your labor. Absolutely, yes. So, yeah, I just, I don't think there should be any exceptions to that. By the way, I'm a, I'm probably still a member of the, probably the most unsuccessful union in American history, the cartoonist's union.

And they had a national strike back during World War II in the 40s. And, you know, cartoonists were quite rich, and there were a lot more of us. There were thousands of thousands. Anyway, the thing is, as soon as they basically all turned into scabs. As soon as the jobs opened up, there's such a bunch of lone wolves. They just decided to just take whatever jobs they could get. So it sucks. No solidarity in the cartooning world.

yes yes um so all right um well so uh let's talk about this trump declaration um of street and fentanyl as a wmd um so yesterday also at the same time it's worth noting that the u.s military blew up three more alleged drug boats this time in the pacific ocean yeah according to the pentagon they killed uh at least eight unknown civilians unidentified people supposedly narco-traffickers. And they're not calling them narco-terrorists in this particular press release. So, I mean, John, the thing that I keep coming back to

is, and I don't understand unforced errors, right? So this president ran successfully in a Republican primary against the Iraq war after the fact. And he basically, and you know, we all know how the Iraq war started out, predicated the excuse that was that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. We know that wasn't true, and it was all a lie, and we now know the war was a huge mistake.

Well, here we are in Venezuela, and again, we're going to use weapons of mass destruction as an excuse, and again, we know it's not true, but we're going to define at least when Bush accused Saddam of still having weapons of mass destruction, at least we knew he was talking about either chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons, as defined under international laws, WMDs. Here, we're redefining a drug as a weapon of mass destruction, which by definition can't be, because a weapon of mass destruction is an individual weapon

that goes off and kills lots and lots of people all at once. Like, no drug can do that. So it's like, you know, you can give drugs to lots and lots of people. You could poison the water supply with drugs. That still wouldn't make it a weapon of mass destruction. So, but I guess he can do this. And I mean, why, I guess the whole thing is if you're trying to overthrow Venezuela, why go about it in the same way that your adversary failed to do the same thing? I don't understand it.

And not only do I not understand it, I disagree with it because declaring fentanyl. a weapon of mass destruction, so cheapens the process that it makes the whole process kind of laughable and ineffective. You know, like declaring Antifa a terrorist organization. Did you see this video? I posted it on Facebook yesterday. It's these two guys. They're both military veterans.

And they're filming themselves. they go up to FBI headquarters and they said, hi, we're both Antifa Field Commanders. We want to turn ourselves in. And the FBI agent's like, I'm not really sure what to do.

Hang here. And they won't take them. They're like, well, the president declared at a terrorist group and we're both anti-fascist. And so, you know, we're both from build commander.

Yeah. And the FBI is like, we, we don't know what to do. You should just leave. It's the same thing. Fentanyl, weapon and mass destruction. Come on. And it's like, and we're not in. And fentanyl, that, Venezuela doesn't make fentanyl.

No, it doesn't make fentanyl. And whatever they're sending, which is probably cocaine, is not going to the United States anyway. And now it's going to, to Western, Europe. Yeah. It's just weird. Thanks a lot for the 20 bucks soden over on YouTube. Oh, thank you. Good morning. You've been under the weather for the last few days. Yeah, there's been a flu going around. A lot of people have gotten it. A lot. John, before Putin blew his former friend out of the sky, do you think the Wagner commander was a CIA asset? He almost made it to Moscow in his march. I don't think he almost made it to Moscow.

But I take the point. I mean, actually, what do we think happened there? I mean, I think it's reasonable to assume that, you know, he had like a convenient Paul Wellstone like accident. But probably, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

I think Putin probably just shot him right out of this guy. It's like, you've got to go. I mean, he was, I mean, he was, the dude was a traitor. Yeah. Yeah. So, okay, but anyway, so do we think he was a CIA asset? No. CIA isn't that good to be able to recruit somebody like him. They're just not that good.

Is he kind of, was he, he was also so rich. I mean, he's kind of like doesn't have vulnerabilities, right? I mean, you can't really offer him money. That's the thing. It's not uncommon to just not be able to identify a vulnerability in a person. You know, there are a lot of people. that I would love to have recruited, but there was just no hook. Yeah, like if the person's like, they're not chasing pussy, they don't need money.

Exactly. Or, you know, there was one guy, his vulnerability was that he was deeply in love with his wife. And the reason that was a vulnerability was because she got breast cancer. And do you want her to be treated in this crappy country we're in? or do you want her to be treated at the Mayo Clinic? Because I can make that happen tomorrow. That's the hook. That's interesting.

Yeah, no, that makes sense. That's terrifying, though. It's awful. By the way, thanks to the person who, let's see, who is Elliot, confirms that it's the NLRB, the National Labor Relations Board, certifies your union after you hold a union election. You know what? Of course it is.

And we should have known that. I wasn't even thinking of the NLRB. So, yeah. So, yeah, and by the way, Robbie and you are kind of having it in the chat about unionization. Robbie says, didn't the unions fail when they allowed the industrialization of the country? Robbie. And you commented that it was capitalists who encouraged the industrialization that wrecked the unions. Yeah, that's what happened.

The unions didn't fight back, though. No, they didn't. They should have all gone on strike. and they should have had a nap. They should have all collaborated and worked together, and they didn't. Like in France, when there's a, like, if, like, the, if the postal union goes on strike, the teachers go on strike. The cops go on strike.

You know, yeah. Everything's on strike together. I'm commenting now to Robbie. He said, but the unions folded like little girls. And I just texted, that is true. Unfortunately, I've talked a couple of times, Ted, about my memory of the beginning of the end in Western Pennsylvania and Eastern Ohio was in in 1978, or 77, when the Youngstown Sheet and Tube closed. 77. And half of the kids in June high school. Yeah, Japanese dumping

is what did it. But half the kids in junior high, their dad's lost their jobs. Kids were crying in the halls. Next thing you know, they've all moved to Florida, North Carolina, and the dads all took non-union jobs. They had to. They had to. They had to feed your family. Yeah. Yeah. No question. Let's talk a bit about this MI6 lady, Blaze Metro Wellie. She's the first, the MI6 is old. I didn't realize it was 116 years old, according to the press. She's the first woman to run MI6, and she gave a big policy speech. And basically, she went on and on and on about how the biggest threat to, I guess, the UK and to Europe in general is Russia. And specifically, it all comes down to the Russo-Ukrainian war. I thought that was really kind of sad. She talked a little

bit about AI and how it can be used for, you know, how it's a threat, but also how it can be useful also. And, you know, so she seems like she comes from the tech side of things. But it didn't seem like very, did not seem, I guess what did you think of her analysis is my question. Not convincing. Not convincing. Yes, AI is a very big problem. But you can't say that Russia is the gravest threat to, you know, freedom and democracy on the face of the earth. Where do you come up with that? Misuse of technology could be. China could be Russia is practically bankrupt. It has a population that is shrinking to the point where at its current birth rate,

there will be no Russians in 100 years. Obviously, that won't happen, but that is a funny factoid. Well, and whoever's left will have a lot of room. A lot of space. Yeah, a lot of space. But no, I'm just not seeing Russia as this, you know, in your face global immediate threat it has to no i i i'm not i mean do you think any nation state is even china or is it is it i think that the real threats are going to be more amorphous like

climate change yes which may not be specific nation state versus nation state that's right that's right you know in at at the very very beginning of the clinton administration um al gore was the guy who he was the point man for intelligence in the clinton administration Bill Clinton wasn't even vaguely interested in intelligence. Interesting. So Gore came to the agency and he created, you know, we have the counterterrorism center, the counterintelligence center, counter-narcotic center. Now there are one or two others.

But at the time, he created the environmental center to plan for, you know, the effects of climate change on global stability. And the day that George W. Bush came into office, they zeroed it out. That's really, I mean, just yesterday we talked about this story about the lost nuclear generator in the Himalayas in northern India. That's a climate change story. It's a threat, right? I mean, because literally, if that glacier hadn't been melting, that thing could have stayed up there for another 10,000 years. It would have been no big deal. Yes, that's exactly right.

Another thing, too, I remember in the very, very early 90s. there was discussion about making AIDS a tier zero threat, right? So it would be terrorism, China, and AIDS as the three biggest threats. And the Bush people weren't interested in that either. I mean, HIV wasn't the problem in 2001 that it was in 1991 or 19. no or 1993 but um the bush people just weren't interested they're like yeah it's it's in africa i remember i won't say the country but i remember it's funny because bush himself did end up taking an interest in aids in the end in the end there was a i won't say the country

but it at the beginning of the clinton administration what spurred clinton to do this was a report that there was one african country where every member of the cabinet was HIV positive Jesus Christ. And they were like, how can Africa survive like this? No, it can't. Yeah. No, that's that's fucking insane. Yeah.

I mean, I also have to give Bush some credit for, you know, when the, apparently he had a pandemic paper, white paper that he put together that kind of anticipated a lot of the stuff. I guess nobody read it after it came out. It's too bad. We really weren't ready for COVID. No. We should have had warehouses for. full of masks that should have been, you know, seriously, we should have had boxes with the old civil defense logo full of masks landing on every doorstep in America like the day it started.

Indeed. Thanks for the five euros, Rod and Gu. We don't have Rumble here in France. We can make it hard to support the show when I can't catch up with you live on YouTube. Well, we do take PayPal. I'll put the paper. It's also our email address, so you can reach out. It's, you can PayPal us via Deprogram Podcast at Gmail.

I put it up on the screen. It's deprogrampodcast at gmail.com. And Nick, Nick Brockia, 76, thank you for the $5. And thank you for that question. John, have you considered developing a one-man show, something that could tour similar in form, not content to what Mike Taysa did? Starting in February, baby. Yes.

Stay tuned. We're starting in Santa Fe, then going to Branson, Missouri, Charleston, South Carolina, Dallas, Austin, San Antonio, and Houston. That's going to be the first set of events, and we're going to go all across the country. I did this in the UK in January and February, and it was very successful. I can't wait to get started again. Can't wait. Very, very cool. Five Hokies says Robbie would likely be a great union leader.

I think that's true. I think that's true. Yeah. I think that's true. Yeah. Rob, you want to, you want to run away in? If you go on strike against you, that will have you droned. Well, I mean, ultimately, the sole purpose of a government,

it doesn't matter what government it is, is to take care of its people. The welfare of the people who live in your borders is the most important thing. And no one can explain to me why. outsourcing all your jobs, your industrial capacity, while at the same time you're throwing your borders open. Depressing wages is a net benefit for your people. If you want to destroy your country, that's how you do it. Yeah, no, I mean, the only, I had to sort of guess this because it's never been explained to me either, Robbie. The only advantage of deindustrialization,

and it wasn't pitched this way, to me, would be less pollution. That's about it, maybe. I mean, No one ever claimed that. Well, I guess if you have record high suicide rates and you have 100,000 people dying every year from drug overdoses, I guess you can make that claim. Hey, that's where we're going to get our fertilizer. No, but also, though, is serious question. Y'all both older to me, y'all both been in New York. I've never been there.

Is New York cleaner now than it was 40 years ago? Well, I was here 40 years ago. 40 years ago, yeah. And so that's where we're talking about. about 1985? Yeah. I'm serious. There's Washington, D.C.

You don't think so? In the 80? It's Washington, D.C. Not the 80s. Things cleaned up in the 90s, for sure. The 80s were gross. Yeah, the 80s were pretty gross. I mean, because it was a hangover from the bankruptcy in the 70s and all that.

It's cleaner now. That's what he's saying, right? Or did I misunderstand? No, I think, go ahead, Robbie. No, what I'm asking is, is it clean? Is New York City or Washington, D.C., or any major city, is it cleaner now in terms of just trash, garbage, oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

Is it cleaner now? Absolutely, yes, in Washington. Well, you know what the big difference is, is there's no newspapers anymore. So newspapers used to be everywhere on the street. People would just throw them on the ground. And like they used to start track fires in the subway like all the time. And they're not here anymore.

So the way I've always talked about this and y'all could, and I could 100% be wrong on this. if people are so concerned about how am I going to pay my bills or take care of my family or even can I even have a family because I can't afford to get married, how then can you think about a bigger issue like foreign policy or the direction of the government? If you're so consumed about just surviving the day to day, how can you possibly ever think about anything bigger?

I don't see how you can. And I think this is all by design. Well, I don't know if it's all by design. I mean, certainly there's been hostility towards labor. That's always, let me just think about it. Like, you know, if roughly two-thirds of your cost as an employer is employment, obviously you're always going to be thinking about ways to get that down. You're always going to want to keep wages low.

They're just after that. And, you know, I mean, in fact, I'm starting to write a column about that for this week. That's why you have a union, right? I mean, basically, the Americans, we've been pitched now. Like, you know, we've been talked to as consumers, which we are. We're all consumers. We all buy things. And it's like, oh, we're going to get your prices lower.

But we're also workers and we need a higher income. No one, Democrat or Republican, is arguing that we need higher wages, right? There's just addressing us as consumers, not as workers. I think that's the problem. And we've put up with it. It's like, oh, yeah, well, you know, you get a T-shirt for made an individual. Indonesia for 18 bucks at the gap, that's really cheap. And yes, it is. But we might be better off if that same t-shirt were 60 bucks and it were made in Iowa instead. I just, I don't know. I don't

know how you get there. I don't know how you, how you keep the country from just being completely hollowed out more than it already is. I don't. It's capitalism. It's the nature of capitalism. Marx had said all this was coming, 175 years ago. But the problem is that Marx doesn't have a solution for any of it. I mean, yeah, you're sure. Yeah. Yeah. And what does that mean? So I mean, basically the workers have to, the workers have to control the production. Workers are their own bosses. But that's my point. I mean, that's what, that's why I have a union. And no, no, when the union, no, when all those jobs are hollowed out, honest to God,

seriously, serious question, where was, where was the automotive union? Where was the steel union? Where were all these different unions? They were getting corrupt. You know, you can't and bribed, then Marx is wrong. Because the unions are supposed to be owned by the workers. That's the whole point. That's why you pay dues. But you can't have like a little island of Marxism in a sea of capitalism and expected to live.

And that's what a union was, a little island of socialism surrounded by a vast ocean of shark-infested capitalists. You know what I mean? We should, honestly, this is as a Rumble Premium episode, one day. Just

yeah. Because I'm serious. I'm serious i want to learn about this because my biggest enemy it's not china it's not russia it's not north korea my enemy or john they're two miles away from your house yeah those are the people that i hate all right robbie we'll we'll we'll take this up later okay so thanks everyone for tuning in you've been watching deep program with ted ral and john kiriaku we're here monday through friday eastern time nine a m we'll be back tomorrow tomorrow is wednesday john always a pleasure. Good to see you, Ted. Please stay tuned to on Rumble and tune in on TMI on YouTube to the TMI show with me,

Ted Raul, and Vanilla Chan. And we'll have a lighter take on the news. See you later. Thank you.