DeProgram with John Kiriakou and Ted Rall - Hegseth Warned by US Experts to Stop Iran War | DeProgram with Ted Rall and Jamarl Thomas

Episode Date: August 31, 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:• “Too Much, Too Long”: Top generals warn in the the Aug. 14 edition of the Secretary of Defense Orders Book (SDOB) to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth that prolonged large-scale operations against Iran are unsustainable and risks weakening their ability to confront threats elsewhere, including the U.S. homeland.At the same time, the U.S. attacks Iranian rocket launchers on an island in the Strait of Hormuz as Iranian forces were allegedly preparing to disperse sea mines into the waterway. Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps warn that the U.S. strikes would “result in the punishment of the aggressor” and fired ballistic missiles at a Jordanian air base housing U.S. troops.• The U.S. government says it is entering into a joint venture with a private Venezuelan energy company to loot oil and gas. The Trump administration says the U.S. would get 55% of the oil from the joint venture. That's equivalent to about 65 billion barrels of oil that's under the ground. Trump called it the "biggest oil deal in the world." But energy experts say there are many reasons to be skeptical.LIVE ON YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/@DeProgramShowLIVE ON RUMBLE: https://rumble.com/c/DeProgramShowhttps://x.com/tedrallhttps://x.com/JamarlThomas#tedrall #jamarlthomas #news #politics

Good morning. It is Monday, August 31st, 2026, you are watching or listening to Deep Program with Ted Roll and Jamal Thomas. And it's the lead story today. It's Jamarles' birthday. Happy birthday, J.T. How are you? I'm doing fine. That's the lead story. It's your birthday. I appreciate that, too. Thank you. 49 years old. I'm nearly half a century. Wow. Happy birthday, brother.

Sure. Thank you, Robbie. 49. So, yeah, how does 49 feel? I mean, you know, it's like certain birthdays hit certain people hard. And, you know, so will 50 hit hard? I don't know. But 50 didn't really hit hard for me.

He said it did. Okay. I mean, I don't make assumptions on hitting 50, if I'm being honest with you. That's dark. That may be dark, but it's true. I mean, it's liberating, if in a word. I mean, granted, it takes a bit of acceptance, but I mean, look, to put it in this way Max and I used to get into arguments about, um, about life. Because from her point of view, she was very terrified of death. And she would take measures in order to cover herself, exercise. I'm going to eat as little as possibly can because I think that keeps me alive and all that stuff. And, you know, Even like with the relationship stuff, like I remember when I was traveling, one of the things that ended the relationship was because my thing was like, I want immediacy. Like I want you here now. I think I was in Albania and it came to a head because my thing was like, dude, you're like an hour away. Why can't you come to come to me? Which, and as I pointed out to her, I have no expectation of living forever. But my expectation is that you can pretty much die at any moment. Which is true. Which is true, right? You can plot, you can play and you can do all that stuff.

and drop dead tomorrow. I always think of like, do you ever hear what happened to, you know, John Edward's son? It freaks me out vis-a-vis what you're saying. So, I mean, John Edwards' son, I think was 16 years old driving. And he, and his car was found off the road. Later, it turned out, like, he wasn't driving crazy. He was literally a little micro-tornado picked up his car, picked it up in the air, and crushed it and killed him.

I mean, he was driving like, you know, under the, you know, at the, you know, at the, speed limit completely you know I mean it's just basically God just basically you know smushed him like a bug like that's it you're gone yeah I can happen any moment like that's my assumption though like that's my working assumption so anything that needs to be done needs to be done now if we're going to get together we need to get together now if we're going to go to this place we need to go now everything becomes immediate that's not the way she looked at life most people don't like very differently and I'm like dude, I could die tomorrow.

Like, do you know the life I've led, right? Like, I accept that any random thing can happen. You can fall in your bathroom. You could fall getting out of thing. No, I mean, it's true. I mean, I was, there was some ballplayer for the Cincinnati Reds. I want to say maybe Davey Concepcion, but it might have been someone else. But he was a false wrongly diagnosed with a terminal disease.

And so he was told he had six months to live. So he went crazy and blew all of his millions on wine, women, and song. God bless him. And then it turned out, well, like, oh, well, I guess I'm not going to die in six months. But he said he didn't regret it and he stopped living for like the future. He started just like, he changed his life. He's like, you know, it can't be like, oh, I'll do this later. I'll travel later.

I'll, you know, wine women and song later. I'm going to do it all now. I'm just going to live. Yeah. Yeah. because you never know. I mean, that's the rough. That's the way I view it.

I view it through acceptance. Well, it's smart because it's real. So, all right. So, all right, well, just a reminder to everybody. We are always open to your questions. So if you have those, put them in on the live chat, YouTube, or Rumble. We especially appreciate the Rumble rants and the super chats, but we love all of your feedback no matter what.

Just another reminder, we do a Q&A show Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. So the Monday show is today, of course, at 12 noon. So stay tuned for that. Okay, so what should we do first? I mean, you know, we basically, the main story that we have here is about Pete Hague, Seth, being warned that the war against Iran has been got is too much and too long. that warning coming from inside the call it's coming from inside the house namely the pentagon and there it's the top generals top military strategists who are they composed something called the secretary of defense orders book the sd ob that goes to the s ob and and they basically

tell them you know this is what's what this one's the august 14th edition the washington post got a hold of it and it basically said that prolonged operations against Iran are no bueno and that we're not going to be able to even defend the United States at this rate. And of course, at the same time, this story broke the U.S. and Iran exchanged fire. The U.S. attacked a couple of Iranian ships in the Strait of Hormuz that they claimed were preparing to drop mines into the Strait of Hormuz. The U.S. claims that they've cleared vines. The IRGC said that they're going to punish, they're going to hit back, and they already fired missiles at a U.S. airbase in Jordan. We can talk about that first.

We can talk about this Venezuela, this kind of outlandish Venezuela oil story. You know, there's other, whatever we want to talk about. What do you think? Let's do the Pentagon first, because I'm fascinated about a Pentagon thing. This is obviously the Pentagon. So they called it a non-concur. that basically you had the Navy, I think it was Pacific Air Command, and you had various heads of the military organizations effectively saying,

we disagree with your policy of continuing with Iran because we can't maintain this strategy. But the non-concour is fascinating because the non-concour is still, we will continue to follow orders, even though we disagree with these orders. Obviously, somebody leaked this to the press saying, whoa, we need to put pressure on a presidential space, because all of these military leaders are disagreeing with what the government is doing. That by itself is fascinating.

I mean, Trump is no military experience. Donald Trump was effectively, you know, Mr. Bonesaw, a Bonespur, avoided the military. Hex-F is a prima donna and has no experience leading large numbers of men. He's a TV personality, right? And most likely an alcoholic. And the military comes to them and says, we need to stop this. but of course the president's ego is on the line the fact that America would have

looks like it lost the war if the president pulls back the president is not changing course I'm fascinated by that dynamic at the same time as there's a there's an article in today's New York Times analyzing this and they're talking about like well why do these wars keep going on and they quote some general

who was in Afghanistan in 2011 and he said oh if we'd known back in 2011, what we learned later, we would never have continued. We just feel like, you know, the U.S. military doesn't lose. And I'm like, the U.S. military usually loses. But also, it's also funny. I'm like, what do you mean? You didn't know then what you knew in 2020.

I mean, sure you did. I mean, if you read the newspaper, if you read, you know, magazines, if you read original reporting by people who say, go to Afghanistan, you would know these things. And it's just, yeah, it's always weird that they say that. There's also this, at the same time, and it goes to your point about like ignoring your generals, the Biden administration under General Austin created a special office called the Civilian Protection Bureau.

And basically, it's about 150x. who had to be consulted before preemptive strikes to make sure to minimize, to lower the, you know, to minimize the civilian casualty rates when they, and to make sure that they're hitting military targets, right? Supposed, obviously, we know they weren't very, let's put it this way. They either weren't very good at their, at their job, or they were not numerous enough. Anyway, Hanks, but the Hanksstath overruled all the generals. Every last general, they did a survey, they were asked,

you know, do you want this to go on? And they all said, yes, we'd like it expanded. Hague Seth basically gutted it in response. And so, I mean, obviously when you're, it's a delicate balance of leadership, right? You allude to the fact that Hague Seth doesn't have leadership experience. And it's like, you know, yes, to be a leader means you can't, you're the boss and you can just order everyone around. But more often than not, you're supposed to read the room. And you're supposed to follow, you know, you're supposed to follow the direction that you're,

the main bosses in your organization want to go. And if you ignore them routinely, you know, you're going to have a mutiny at some point, or they're just going to undermine you, more likely. Just, you know, there's, it's kind of like, you know, anybody who's worked in an office and gotten a stupid memo saying, oh, from now on, we need to do you to fill out this new form. And just people just read it. And they don't even speak up and say, this is stupid. I'm not going to do it.

They just don't do it. I mean, that's what's going to happen here. Or you're going to get diminishing returns. I mean, I think people tweaking jumping off boats is one of those diminishing returns. Like, for example, let's give it another example, like the office thing. Okay, the balls comes in and says, hey, from here or not, I need you to put five things of sugar. And I need to stir it this particular way and put foam on top and put cream on top. And you said, dude, it's just me here.

at lunch hour, they're going to be full of people. I'm not going to have time to do all that. He says, well, look, this is what I need you to do? And the boss walks out. Okay, well, what's going to happen? You're going to have a line all the way out at the restaurant. You're going to have many people who just don't go in because they see the line, meaning you are getting diminishing returns because you want somebody to do something dumb

that everybody is telling you it's dumb and they don't have the power to do. The issue is do you had a power to do it. And the answer is no. And if you don't have the power to do it, and yet the president is telling you to do it, what's going to happen? people tweaking jumping off boats yeah testosterone is giving me all real held up

I mean we I mean we literally don't have the the weaponry or the personnel or the ability to achieve these objectives right I mean and so like it's I mean it's kind of a basic rule like okay so on the left

one of the things that comes up frequently is like an Occupy Wall Street and now I hear it from time to time always we should have a general strike fuck the capitalists general strike nobody goes to work nobody buys anything and i'm like okay so sure but historically a general strike is something that you do like almost pretty much at the same time as a revolution because you've already agitated the entire you don't do that from the beginning and what i would argue with my comrades is you can't do a general strike because you will lose

and so you should never fight any battle that you will lose for sure. You just end up looking stupid and demoralizing all of your supporters, right? I mean, don't ever fight a battle. You cannot win. And, you know, just good advice in life. Here we are, you know, fighting whole, you know, huge wars that we cannot win. And like, I mean, it must kind of make the, you know, Trump's brain explode because, like, well, this is the biggest military force at the, you know, that has ever existed in the history of mankind.

And that's true. But there are limits. And there's just certain things you can't do. Biggest or most expensive? I think it's most expensive. I don't know what biggest. Maybe not biggest. Yeah.

Most expensive. Definitely. Definitely. Definitely. Most expensive. Did you see Trump's newest truth? I love the way that the largest pathological liar in American history calls his social media posts truth.

Talk about gaslighting. Which truth are you talking about? about i'm talking i saw the ridiculous one about venezuel and the no this is a brand new one from 609 this morning local time here in montana iran is officially a failed nation it is dead they have no navy they have no air force they have no currency they are not paying their soldiers or public inflation is at 300 percent hey we're almost there and their leadership is in total disarray and incapable of properly representing the country the only thing they have is fake news from the a willingness to kill their protesters and over 100,000 dead people, that must be tired,

they must be tried for war crimes against humanity and a good line of bullshit. Thank you for your attention to this matter. That's rich. I mean, that has to be for public consumption because it's so dumb. Like meaning it's not even like it's dumb. I don't even, I'm pretty sure they could be some fancy words wrapped around it, but it's just dumb. I mean, their currency, they may have inflation. but it's not spiraling through the roof.

In fact, from their point of view, we can keep this going until Trump leaves office. If you're talking to the people who are in Iran, they would say, we can keep this going. We don't, this doesn't, you know, like basically, this idea of the population being against the government is nonsense. You've taken liberals who were protesting in the government earlier,

like months earlier, and having those women with their hair out screaming that Iran needs a bomb. Right? That's a whole different animal. Also, tomorrow, If there's no boats left, he specifically said that, then what the hell did we just bomb yesterday? Right. And if they don't have a military, who is bombing ships that are trying to go through the Strait of Ramoos?

And if they don't have a military, who's disseminating mines in the Strait of Ramuz, right? According to you, right? Like, I'm not even saying that Iran was doing that. Like, according to you yourself, Iran is just using military vessels to disseminate mines. By the way, I don't care if they were putting out lines. I don't care either. I mean, of course, there's an anti-mine convention. It's not like, you know.

I don't care about those conventions. They're not real. I mean, like, meaning if it doesn't apply to everybody, then it applies to nobody. Right. No, it's, I mean, yeah, obviously those things. Look, I mean, I heard a great line over the weekend. I think we should use it all the time. But someone was saying like, well, oh, it was Canada.

It was the prime minister of Canada. And he said, oh, the U.S., they signed their agreements in pencil. Yep. And I was like, that's good. That's great. Yeah. It's very, very, very. By and that was thinking he even mentioned Iran when he was talking about Trump.

That could be wrong, but I could have swore he said something like Trump, like Trump, like Trump screwed over Iran or something like that. Well, yeah, no, I mean. He's right. He is. He's totally right. So, you know, look, obviously the bill's coming due. You know, we need to have like Achilles if he's feeling up to it. come in and talk to us about this, or some oil expert come in and talk to us about,

oh, we get that guy we had on before. He was great to talk about the strategic reserve, right? I mean, so the strategic reserve is going to be tapped out by the end of the month of September. Trump issued a truth, saying like, oh, well, with this Venezuela oil deal, which we're going to talk about, It's like they're, you know, we're going to have, we're going to immediately replenish all the supplies. Okay, so the strategic oil reserve of the United States is light crude. It is, Venezuela produces heavy crude. It ain't the same. You can't, it's sort of like, if you're really low on water and, you know, someone's like, well, I got shit tons of oil or vinegar.

That's like, okay, that's interesting. and maybe you can create a barter arrangement at some point. But, and Venezuela doesn't have the ability to ramp up production quickly because of the state of their infrastructure, which has been decimated by years of U.S. sanctions. So, you know, we'll talk about this deal. But I just thought it was funny. Like we're in me, again, it's like the thing that Robbie just read.

Trump is like, it's all fixed. Do you ever see the taking of Pelham, 1, 2,3, the original version with Walter Mathau? No. So, you know, it's basically four hijackers. It's very influential. Like Tarantino kind of cites it, like with the whole Mr. Green, Mr. Blue kind of thing. But anyway, it's a cool movie.

And four hijackers take a New York City subway train hostage and threaten to kill a hostage every 15 minutes unless they get the ransom demand, which, to date the story is only a million. dollars like one billion so but it's 1973 right so anyway there's a there's a scene at which point the you know

the the negotiators are running late getting the money to the hostages to the hostage takers and they're like well we have the money but we can't get you know it's held up we can't get down there they're going to kill another hostage what are we going to do what are we going to do and Walter Mathel the police detective says

wait wait wait wait they're down in a subway They don't know. We can tell them. And he's like, the money has arrived. The money has arrived. And it's like, in other words, that's what Trump is doing. He thinks that if he tells enough of the American people, don't worry, you know, strategic oil reserve. It's Venezuela's got to take care of.

It's fixed. Done. Like, Iran, destroyed. If he just like disseminates this and, you know, you see all of, you know, whatever, all of his right wing, you know, know, cut and pastors, his cult, mega people, mega voice and people like that, you know, disseminating everything, you know, they just dutifully, you know, send it all out. I mean, I guess it's meant to assuage people. I don't know.

I guess it's like at this state, at this stage when Trump has been repeatedly exposed to have lied in these situations. I don't know. I mean, this is the boy who has cried, well, zillions of times. Why is anybody at this point still listening? I don't even know why anyone is listening. Yeah, it's very Hitlerian. It's like, you know, Stalingrad has fallen. All of the lies that Hitler has been saying about,

we're taking Stalin, we've taken it, have been found to be folly. And the Russian military is on its events to Berlin. And you're still putting out propaganda. And you wonder. Miracle weapon is on the way. New rockets will destroy England. The Reich is, will be victorious. There's like an, like the, in occupied France,

they wrapped a banner around the Eiffel Tower that says, Germany is victorious on all fronts. That's what I mean. Who still believes this? Like, it's that part, right? It's like when I make the argument, when I've made the argument that this government is very hilarious, I don't know if that argument has convinced people,

but it's stuff like this that I think it should convince people. A, you know, in the same way, fair enough, we're not rolling through Canada yet, but we already talked about taking Greenland. We've attacked Iran. We've attacked and taken Venezuela. Okay, so these are like two countries that the United States effectively have taken

with the world just kind of standing by doing nothing with their thumb in their ass. By the way, the Democrats, like, I mean, I love the fact that, like, they have nothing to say about this Venezuela oil deal. I mean, the very first statement that should have come out from a unified Democratic Party should have said we will, when we come to power,

we will restore Venezuelan national sovereignty, which we respect. We do not believe in looting the natural resources of foreign countries, no matter who they are. Why not? Why don't they? But we know. Iraqi oil. Well, right.

A wax oil money goes through the U.S. One of the, I think it was the prime minister himself, was complaining that the United States still controls, or that there was a political movement to wrestle back control of Iraqis revenue because the U.S. is effectively stealing part of it. The United States is now stealing Venezuela and oil in a very similar way that they were stealing Iraq's oil and they're occupying a country in a similar way that they were occupying Iraq. So I guess I'm saying, yes, we do.

Yes, we do. Knocking over Iran the first time around was, again, because of oil. We wanted, we and the Brits, wanted control of Iran's oil revenue. The Shaw was willing to give it to us. Mosadec wasn't. Mosadek was out. The Shaw wasn't it. I guess I'm saying we do steal.

We have no issue with stealing. It's by point of it. But we shouldn't. Agreed. We should. It's disgusting as a policy. But it's not like the Democrats disagree. That's what I'm trying to say.

I don't even think the Democrats really disagree with the Iran War. If I'm being honest. I don't think so either. No, because it's team Israel all the way. Well, I guess I'm trying to make the argument that all of these people are psychopaths. And just because you choose one red or one blue psychopath, it's not necessarily going to change the policy. Joe Biden had no issue with pursuing the war in Ukraine despite the fact that he killed millions, or at the very least a million Ukrainians, hundreds of thousands of Russians.

And when he dies, which will likely be soon, we will have to lionize him because he's not Donald Trump and we'll have to ignore his role in the genocide. I will not be doing that. I suspect. If I still have breath in his body, I don't care if I am. in a nursing home on the way out. The last breath that I have in his body would be to do a show, celebrate the death and demise of Joe Biden,

hoping that death was painful. And I look forward to co-hosting that show with you. I appreciate that. It's like the rolling me in. It was like the last act of Jamal Thomas. Will y'all let me produce it? Hell yeah. 100%.

And talk. Okay, let's do comments. Final watcher. Bring back Michelle. Michelle Whitty. Long time. Oh, Michelle Whitney. She used to be my producer. Yes.

Michelle quit the show back in the John days. She basically, we weren't making any money, and she needed money. So she went and took a straight job. So just for the record here, she was not, she was not exiled of her by any. She just, it was her own decision, right? What is she doing now? Do you know? I don't know what she's doing now.

I heard that she was working in the retail space is what I know. I'm not at liberty to. And also that my info is a little old too. So not only do I not want to violate her privacy. Her privacy that I would be violating would probably be out of date. Manchild, happy, happy birthday, Jamar. Where should I send the tasteful nudes? Thanks for the dollar, by the way.

My email is appropriate. Racy 2020, happy birthday, Jamarle. Thanks for the $5. Thanks, man. Melissa Petrovick, happy birthday tomorrow. Have fun today. You deserve it.

You share a birthday with my oldest son, Nicola. Much love for both. Very cool. For the $25. Okay. What time was born? Pardon? I was born at Sunrise, like literally at Sunrise, 6.05.

Oh, I was born at 9 in the morning. Yeah. My ex, you know, she was heavy into astrology. Like, well, beyond what I am. And she, Among the other things that she used to do that used to annoy the shit out of me. I love her to death, but she used to do shit that would annoy me. She was like, she went to an astrologer once.

And both of us went. It was in Germany. And the woman spoke all German. I don't know what that woman was saying, right? And the woman, when I walked in, she was like, he's a Virgo. And she starts talking to her in German. And she turns, she says, she thinks you're Leo, Sunday. And I was like, well, the doctor and my mom was there.

I'm going to go with them at 6.5 a.m. That's what I think it is. And for the rest of the relationship, she would not let the shit go. Oh, I think you're Leo. I think you're Leo. I mean, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, dude, I would go with what my doctor wrote down as opposed to what your rando astrologer is coming up with.

It's like, are you out your mind? Like, how are you doing that? And it was annoying to me because she would just not let the shit go. Have you ever like, it wasn't even like, it's not even that it's overly significant. It's just the fact that she wouldn't let it go. That's annoying That's annoying Bunk of a hell out of me

Maybe she Maybe she thought that You remember that story About how the earth wobble Was changing the Was changing the astrological signs And that if you thought And I remember for me

I would imagine It would be if it's same for you It said like oh actually You're a Leo Not a Virgo But now that's all been scrapped That's not true But not in 1977

That wasn't true in 1977 Right Well I think the Earth's wobble Things been going on for 2,000 years But it's the procession of the equinoids or what did you call it? It's the, what is it called? What is it called? Because the Earth doesn't go in a straight light and the earth wobbles in a certain thing and it makes a certain trip around the I think it's like 23,000 years or something like that. I can't think the name of it. I know what you're talking about. That doesn't affect us currently. No, no. We use the tropical zodiac, which by the way, you know, I heard something crazy today just esoterically. Did you know that quietly in 2020? I don't know what it is for Richmond or DC. see. But they re-the New York City

is now officially classified by the National Weather Service as a climate that is human sub-tropical. Really? Yeah, New York City. Human subtropical. Now, when I was a kid, that was you know, Miami.

You have to cold. Right. Like when I lived in New York from, let's say, October on it was snowing, consular. Yeah. Yeah, so yeah, it's super interesting, super weird. That's amazing. Okay, so FU-Sel.

Thanks for the dollar. Trans-working woman who serviced Lindsay Graham says she was a bottom. You said he, but I'm going to say she, was a bottom on soft white underbelly interview. Wait, well, Lindsay was the bottom or the trans one was a bottom? Oh, oh, says he was a bottom. Okay, yeah, that Lindsay was a bottom. Okay, so he is correct here. I mean, that's not shocking, if true.

I mean, I wouldn't put, Lindsay never came across as particularly butch. As a copper. Deep green, thanks for the fiber, 20,000 and 100,000 protesters. That's too wide a margin. Which one is it? Also, how do they do? It provides no proof. Talk about fake news.

Yeah, you know, I mean, certainly some Iranian protesters were shot. But it's like these numbers that have been coming out are completely unsourced and totally unreliable. And there's just been propaganda. I mean, who knows? In context, Israelis, if you remember, during the first 12-day war, they were all of these people who were like protesting and then there were people who were taking down drone systems. There were people who were releasing drones. Like, it was chaos. Well, the Israelis had planned that for a while.

And even if you remember when they were having those massive protests, the Israelis and the Americans pointed out that they had basically put those people in. they ceded those people into the country itself. Trump was complaining that the Kurds hadn't given over the weapons to the protesters because they wanted basically to have an eternal revolt that was full of guns and everything else. Okay, that didn't happen. So you can imagine when Iran is putting down what they consider to be an insurgency funded by Israel and the Americans, that they weren't going to be gentle in putting that down, considering these people were killing cops and all sorts of stuff, mayhem.

The number wasn't 100,000. That's nonsense. I don't know what that number was. it wasn't 100,000. It wasn't even 20,000. But yeah, there were people who were killed in pursuit of trying to take down the Iranian state. That is true. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, yeah. I mean, look, that is going to happen, you know, in any country. Okay. So, thanks for the $50 from Sneaker Dad. You rock. Happy birthday, Jamar.

Why haven't either of you been a guest on Judge Napolitano's show yet? They never offered. I would go in a heartbeat. I love Jeff. Same thing. I always liked him, and I would happily go on. Yeah, Judge Nath has really good interviews, his really good guests. He, after he left Fox, he was on it, yeah. I mean, look, we're like vampires.

We have to be invited. Yeah, we have to be invited. Ted just show up. I mean, it's kind of like, it's hilarious. I've had people say, Ted, why haven't you ever published your cartoons in the New Yorker? I'm like, I can't like rape my cartoons onto the page. I mean, you know, I can't, Epstein them in there. It's like editor, you know, the fucking editor has to approve it.

It's like, and I'd love to be in the New Yorker, you know, obviously. No, Judge Knapp is good, man. I mean, put a bug in his ear if you need to put a bug in his ear. Yeah, by the way, when those suggestions come from listeners, they're worth a lot more than when they come from their perspective guest. Like me saying, ooh, ooh, ooh, I'd like to be on your show is not going to go nearly as far as you're saying, hey, you know, hey, you should have JT on, you know. Yeah. Okay. So, okay. Zoldavar, thanks for the $2. Happy birthday tomorrow. You're definitely not tepid. And thanks for the 1990. Wait, wait, wait. You know what he's talking about, right? You don't know what he's talking about. That's a coded. That's a coded reference. No, tell me. When I first started the show, like years ago, there was a guy named Tim Black who used to do a show. Tim Black was supposed to be on the left, gets into, I used to, I used to, I used to, I, Tim Black, I came on a show, I think once or twice. Tim Black did an interview with Sam Cedar, where he called into Sam Cedar show to debate Sam Cedar.

I don't know if you know Sam Cedar. Sam Cedar is one of the best debaters that I've ever come across. I've been on his old show on Air America. Okay, so you know who Sam Cedar is. Sam Cedar is a hell of a debater, especially for libertarians and holding on to that liberal point of view. He ate Tim Black alive. He ate him alive. It was humiliating.

When I get one on my show, the strongest position I could take was Tim was a bit tepid. Oh, that's right. Tim flipped out. He went on his show as like, I'm not effing tepid. He's like losing his mind. He flips it out. It was the funniest thing in the world. That is really fucking funny.

Okay, all right. That should be a T-shirt. I'm not effing tepid. That's going to be, Trent, if you're listening, not fucking tepidpet. Tepid. Untepid, de-tepid, de-tepid on D-Program. I don't know. We'll figure it out.

T.Y. Thanks for the 1999. Happy and for the happy birthday, Jermal, birthday wishes. MTG is loose hole. It should probably come as no surprise that Mike Lindell is now asking people to send him money so he can challenge his election loss. Pillow ma. Well, yeah.

The grift never dies with these people. By the way, Gibral, have you heard this, did you take note of this story about the influencer, the political influencers who are, apparently it's a paid gig. I didn't know that apparently we could whore ourselves out to like the Democratic Party or A-PAC or whatever and that they would send us money to just say whatever bullshit they wanted and we could just suddenly be like, you know, after careful consideration, I think Israel does have a right to defend itself. Gaza and quietly the money comes in and we would not have to reveal that to the listeners. They have been doing that for years. I didn't know that. It's a big New York Times story. I guess it's

like New York Times is always on everything late. Yeah, they've been doing that for years. A lot of the people who you see doing this gig don't have to tell you if they're being paid by the Democratic Party to push Democratic talking points. Okay. So that's, look, I will just say I have to never done anything like that and I never would do anything like that and I think anyone who does anything like that should be banned from the airwaves I mean I think like fuck you you don't have first amendment rights as far as I'm concerned you're not you're not expressing free you're not expressing a political opinion you're a fucking ad you're a fucking advertisement and just like any political ad you should have to say like this message paid for by APEC or whatever it should be

down at the bottom of the screen I don't have any problem with that if you're just like or Or you have to wear a t-shirt that says like, you know, horror or whatever. Like, A-PAC horror. Whatever. Fine. Then you can, again, slut, you know, for the DNC. Great. No problem.

I took it up the ass for the Republican Party. Awesome. There's a bill that Thomas Massey has, excuse me, that he's trying to get what's called the, I forget exactly what the name of it is. basically what's supposed to do whenever meat is packaged. It has to have a sticker on the label about where that meat is coming from. Is it American beef? Is it from Argentina?

Trump's brand new. Argentina's a dine, you know. That's a good idea. So it gives people the option to buy the beef that they from a green where they want to get from. So to mention, there could be a health issue with beef that originates in a certain country, right? There could be an e-coli outbreak in Bolivia. And, you know, maybe people are, I don't want Bolivia. if that's a thing.

And people might just say, I would prefer to support American farmers. Well, that's what I would do that. I would pay if I can afford it, I'm going to pay more for the American people. Just like I would pay more for me. Not to mention it's safer. It hasn't, it hasn't traveled as far. But the thing is, it's never going to get out of the committee. It's never going to see the light of day.

But then here's a travesty because if we get up with beef, why could we do political ads? Think about that. If you're able to label where you get your food from, why can't you think it labels, From the tip to your point about who's paying for your ads. Well, yeah. No, I mean, for sure. Not being aired as an ad, but it's being aired as a political opinion by some rando that's effectively being paid. And by the way, the reason they do that is because they want the, I remember, I know somebody who was being paid by government or the government wanted to pay them.

And the rationale for it was, well, we would prefer this person to come across as independent, even if they're not really independent, because they have more power in what they're saying. if indeed they're considered to be independent. Same difference, right? Randall hosts one day comes out and says, you know, I don't typically cover politics, but I think Hakeem Jeffries is the right approach to the Democratic Party. It's like, okay, what the fuck is this?

What's going on? Like some Randall giving an ad. And by the way, people are going to say, well, you know, you dudes used to be on Sputnik, right? Well, okay, and that's labeled. It's labeled. It's like, it's like, it's a news outlet. It's like being on the BBC.

Okay, you're, you are paid by British. by the British government, right? I mean, that's the deal. You know, I mean, everyone should know that. I mean, look, I thought that was like, look, trust me. If the, you know, when the LA Times went after me, I kept thinking, I couldn't believe when I found out, you're owned by the LAPD, literally.

You're owned by the LAPD Defension Fund. That should be on your masthead. Like, you know, like, you know, the percentage of ownership and all that, right? It's like if people are like, oh, I want to. read the LAPD Times, that's great. Then that's no problem. They have a right to buy that, but they should know what they're getting. It's like, it's like, you know, books that are ghostwritten. Bullshit, that's horrible. It's like, you know, the book says it was written by Hillary Clinton, but it was written by someone else. I mean, when you buy peas and you open the can,

if it says peas on the outside, there should be peas inside the can. And if I buy a book that says, has Hillary Clinton on it, that what's inside should be by the Hillary Clinton, you know, obviously. Agreed. Yeah. It's outrageous. But that's the way they, you know, they're trying to influence public opinion without trying to give up the ghosts that they're paying to influence that public opinion. I mean, Hillary Clinton had a, what, $5 million Twitter farm or Twitter bot army that was going out saying bad things about Sanders and Sanders supporters. Yeah, by the way, there was a hilarious story that broke at that time.

about how one tweet had been carefully massaged by 32 consultants. That's amazing. I don't doubt that, by the way. That sounds about right. Oh, it was well sourced. As opposed to Trump, who's just like taking a big shit at three in the morning and just bangs them out, right? Thank you for your opinion.

Thank you for your attention. Thank you for you. Frazmataz. What happened to Mark Frost, my favorite economist professor, Marine drummer, formerly on Sputnik? My first is good. In fact, I used to bring my first. on the show. I don't know what happened with Mark. I think we just kind of lost contact.

We can, I mean, I know we, I still have, uh, Manila, and I both have her, have his numbers. I have this number. I can hit him up. Yeah, let's hit him up. Okay. I mean, you know, he's way to my right, but like whatever, who cares? Him and I used to fight like cats and dogs and somewhere along the way we had a meeting of the minds, weirdly enough. I mean, I like it. He hit it from different angles, but we come to the verse. I mean, because at one point, Mark came on the show and was like, they should be throwing money out of helicopters. And it's like, whoa, what happened to that libertarian economist? Right. I remember that. Yeah. He's like, they should be throwing money out of helicopters. We got to deal with this. There needs to be buying from the government. Because Mark's main argument, I think, boils down to

capitalism requires buy-in, meaning you need the public to buy-in to your capitalistic argument, otherwise you're going to get chaos. He's an economist. He's a capitalist to his bones, but he's a capitalist that believes that, you know, people shouldn't be hungry. Well, I mean, not in a country this rich. It's like inexcusable. Digital design and innovation says, is calling me out and says, Ted, you were super against Farah. I am.

I'm still super against Farah. I don't think that the, I mean, that is a, look, Farah was used to shut down Sputnik and RT, literally shut down an entire news network. Okay. I mean, and if you're going to say, well, they were owned by Russia. Okay, every, you know, every major news network in the country. country is owned by someone, whether it's a foreign government

or a U.S. corporation or a partnership of corporations. So it's like big fucking whoop. I mean, that's and being, and there's no inconsistency. Like, here's the thing. Like, you shouldn't have to register with the government, but like if you're a,

you know, if you're, like I said, if you're an influencer slut who's taking it, you know, from some company or from, for some political cause, I don't have any problem with that, you just have to reveal it. Just to be clear, Farah didn't shut down the Russian thing. They've had sanctions on the parent company.

I mean, we signed the Farah was. Yeah. For Sputnik. I mean, oh, man, I kind of disagree with you on the Farah thing. Right. You're, you're, like, take for, take, should countries control and have mixed feelings about it? So, let's take Georgia, for example.

Georgia had a Farah law. Georgia's fair law was very similar to the U.S. The reason Georgia had that fair law is because the United States and Europe was doing everything in their power to overthrow the Georgian government, and they were dumping a huge amounts of money into the political space and the media space, in which Georgia made their law saying, this stops now. Right. It was a color revolution thing.

It was a color revolution attempt, where you had the president, who was a French spy, doing everything in their power to basically overthrow the government. Okay, well, the fair law was necessary in Georgia because otherwise all of that money, all of that support, would have effectively been used against the government that they would have been completely unaware of and Russia has a fair law in order for the same purpose I think my issue is the Arab fair law is not used honestly it used for political enemies which changes kind of the context of the fair law which I agree with you I don't know I'm mixed on it all right well I mean that's the problem I feel like any laws that are sort of inherently right for abuse are probably not good laws

But we've got to talk about Venezuela. Yes. So over the weekend, interestingly, right, this was also a, this came out late Friday. So this is a news dump for something that you would think Trump would be bragging about. But it was a news dump. They could have waited until Monday to announce it. They didn't. They said that Trump is claiming that the U.S. will go into a joint venture with some unknown private Venezuelan

energy company in order to loot basically Venezuela's oil and gas. There's supposedly about 65 billion barrels of unproven reserves under the ground in Venezuela. Trump says the U.S. would get 55% of that at cost, right? So it's complicated. And Trump's basically saying oil price problem solved, Iran problem solved, biggest oil deal in the history of the world, all of our gas prices will be back to 25 cents a gallon, everything is going to be fine, right? I mean, I exaggerate on that last one. But that's not going to happen. And there's so many, I mean, obviously there's the ethical consideration, which is this is not our oil. Okay, this oil belongs to the people of Venezuela. And it should be used by them for them as they see

fit full stop, right? Now, that said, this oil is not transferable to the strategic reserve, which is almost tapped out and can no longer be tapped into once you're down to a certain level, which is going to happen in about three weeks. It's not going to come out of the ground for years to come. A lot of foreign oil companies say they don't want to do any business with Venezuela because the political situation and the security situation is so unsteady on the ground. So it's basically uninvestable. That's probably Chevron, right? When they say it's a Venezuelan energy company, Chevron has most of the concessions.

And when they say it's a Venezuelan oil company, that would mean it could be Chevron Venezuela. That's a Venezuela company, even though it's part of the Chevron family. And basically, this isn't, nothing of this is going to come online for years at all. And apparently the whole at-cost thing is like a poison pill that most foreign, most investors don't want to get involved in at-cost deals because they really make their money from oil price volatility and arbitraging those spikes in oil prices, which is all to say, it's more Trumpian bullshit. It's theft. We are raping Venezuela. That's what this is. And for Trump to come out with a tweet saying they gave us a gift is just rubbing it in. Disgusting. But I say these people are psychopaths. I really mean it. Like they don't the misery that they're causing other countries, they are stealing the soil for lack of a better term. They are forcing their will on these deals. And Delza Rodriguez, who effectively betrayed Venezuela. And there have been some choice comments about her and her role in all of this. I mean, for one, she's an interim president.

It's one thing if you have an election, which even then will be dodgy. But it's one thing if you have an election and then a decision is made on a deal in its relationship with the United States. That's not really what's happening, though. This is a mob boss effectively stealing and getting a bunch of companies to try to come into Venezuela and take over several of their oil fields. What's wild about this, too, is this comes out at the same time that pictures of Maduro come out in a jumpsuit with him sitting in some gulag somewhere, given that he's doing okay, he's doing fine, et cetera, et cetera. The other thing of this is the Pentagon's investment in this. As you pointed out, companies didn't necessarily want to get involved in this. The Pentagon

ends up using almost like a shell company or front in order to invest a huge amount of money into the oil fields itself. So. Yeah, because we have a state oil company like, like a lot of countries do like Pemex in Mexico or whatever. Yeah, but this is not an American company. Like meaning this is not an American issue. Like this is America effectively stealing oil and acting as if this is some kind of major oil deal. It's not a major oil deal. I think Venezuela is going to get crumbs in comparison to what the companies are going to make.

Oh, by all accounts, yeah, the concession fees are way below market. I mean, assuming this deal ever happens, right? I mean, look, come on. Venezuela is a socialist country. The people are socialist. They're going to overthrow this government. I mean, you know, she's cruising for a revolutionary bruising that lady. We'll see.

I mean, there's some people on the ground who goes with the assessment that, okay, maybe life will be better now that Maduro is gone. And I look at this and be like, I don't live there. So I can't necessarily make that assessment, right? Right. But my sense is, yeah, but it was the U.S. that did this to you. meaning if I am trying to rape, well, okay, random person Bob Cobb is trying to rape somebody.

And Bob Cobb decides, I'm going to threaten her with a knife. I may put a gun in her head. I may do all of this stuff in order to kind of get her to the conclusion of, okay, I will let this happen. Okay, but that's not really her letting anything happen. That's a rape that's taken place because you use overwhelming force in order to allow that rape to happen. And that force has taken place over the course of decades. I mean, they've been trying to overthrow everything.

going back to Chavez. At one point, they had him where he thought he was going to get killed and the people came on the streets from this kind of revolution, in which case he would let him go. I'm trying to point out that we've been after to Venezuela for a very long time.

Yeah, for 25 years or more. Yeah. It's outrageous, though. It's rape. Yeah, I mean, I think it's like one of the, to me, it's also like, this is kind of like where I look at, okay, I can disagree with my Republican friends.

But it's like, you guys are sick if you think that this, is okay to support and to brag about. I mean, it's sick. All of them do. And Democrats. That's why you haven't heard anything from Democrats. Yeah.

One thing that I'll say that's really refreshing is at least Trump is honest about one thing, his imperialism. And that's refreshing. Because now that that's out, people all across the political spectrum can look at our elected leaders and say, where do you stand on this? because if you support the Ukraine war because borders are immutable, they cannot be changed, and then you support the removal and effective annexation of a foreign nation, which is further than what Putin ever thought about doing with Ukraine,

but you support this with Venezuela. Please, pray tell, explain to me the difference because I do not see it. Yeah. Agreed. Yes. Our great respect for national sovereignty. It's so funny. Yeah.

Yeah. I love these terms, right? National sovereignty. We care about this. We care about that. Our values. The rules based international order. Yeah.

It's all nonsense. Yeah. It's just words. Yeah. It's just words. And at some point, you would think, okay, does the country see the country for what it is? And I'm always surprised that the answers usually, no.

People don't care. People don't care. It's pain that makes people care. otherwise they don't care. Right. Yeah. Well, I mean, and look, this is going to be, I guarantee you nothing will ever come of this. And this will be not one drop of oil will ever be looted successfully.

It doesn't mean they won't, don't want to or they won't try. What's going to really happen is that American taxpayers are going to end up footing the bill in some way for this for this fiasco. Because it's not economically viable. I mean, it reminds me of so many other projects like this. The Trans-Afghanistan Pipeline Project, which Al-Bras, came up with, they were, sorry, Unicall, not Al-Bras. Unickel was trying to run a pipeline from Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, across Afghanistan to, that's why it's called TAP, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan,

out to the port of Moulton on the Indian Ocean. And they came up with this scheme under the Clinton administration back in the 90s. And they were like, and certainly part of the reason that the United States went to war against the Taliban was they were interested in doing this pipeline deal. In fact, UNICAL officials even flew the Taliban to meet with Bush to Governor Bush in 2000 in Texas to try to talk about. I think Bush probably still has the carpet that they gave him as a gift. Not kidding. And then like, you know, if you go back to before 9-11, I think it was July or August of 2001, there was Wendy Chamberlain was the U.S. ambassador to Pakistan and she was negotiating oil fees with the Taliban for the pipeline project. And she said, you have a choice. You can either get a carpet of money or a carpet of bombs. And then, you know, two months later, or a month later, where it wore a month later, where it wore. with Afghanistan, but it was, of course, not the only cause, but it was a contributing factor. And, you know, in the long run, I went, so I went back in 2010 to see if they'd ever started

construction under the U.S. occupation. Long story short, I found about 12 feet of pipe at the Turban border. They never did anything. I mean, and like, God knows how much money they time they wasted and how many people they killed over this bullshit that's what this is going to be like it's a total fucking waste of time it's it's not it's bad business forget about the evil politics i mean if you're spending u.s money from the standpoint of the middle i mean they spent for fuck's like 10 trillion dollars for the afghanan af in our record 10 trillion dollars like that money is inconceivable it's like it's so much money and they may do something similar in Venezuela, where they dump a ton of money into it. It's going to be money

based on U.S., especially since it's our investment, and we will see if anything becomes of it. I mean, either way, it will take years to exploit the oil out of Venezuela. I mean, A, as you pointed, it has to be filtered, it has to be pulled from the ground. They have to do the oil pills, et cetera, et cetera. And I think they were looking at what, 17 oil fields or 17 locations that they wanted to try to exploit oil from. Either way you look at it, this is rape. And I'm very curious whether there's going to be a backlash for what they're trying to do to this country. I hope, God, I hope there is. Yeah.

No, I mean, they're definitely on to me. I can hear the train delivering your Venezuelan oil to you right now. You should go sign for it. Get your own shirt. Right. Thanks, Donald. I love you. You're the best.

Yeah, it's outrageous. It says after all, okay, so this is drop site. This is after U.S. oil majors resisted Trump's push to rapidly invest in Venezuela. His administration seeking another route to inspire investor confidence made the government itself an oil investor. This is according to the Wall Street Journal. Under the New Deal, the Pentagon will receive a 20, no, 35 percent stake in North American Blue Energy Partner run by, I like,

Handuro, I think this has been in court, a Venezuelan businessman close to Delse Roryges, who's faced money laundering. Was it called Blue Energy? What? It's called American Blue Energy Partners. I'm sorry, North American Blue Energy Partners. I mean, I got to find out who that really is. That's a 35% stake in this enterprise. Like, I want to know who owns it.

You mean who owns it all? Yeah, like who is this? who is North American Blue Energy Partners is obviously a George McHare. It's run back to Alejandro Benacourt, a Venezuelan businessman close to interim president, Delsey Rodriguez, who's faced money laundering investigations. It's a stake will come through penny warrants, whatever that means, allowing Washington to acquire shares for a token price with little upfront spending. The U.S. could also buy 20% of the company's future oil output at cost.

So a warrant is kind of like a, it's like a stock option. It gives you the right to purchase a stock at a particular price. Okay. Okay. So basically like cents on a dollar. Yeah. Well, the value of the warrant is always less than the value of the stock, right? So let's just say a stock is currently trading in $10 a share and a warrant would have value

if it would allow you to buy that stock at $8 a share. I see. I mean, actually, the value of the warrant would be $2. Yeah, it would be pretty much anything. But it would be, it's usually that difference or very close to it. So, this is pathetic. It's just pathetic. And look, there's some Venezuelans who are hoping that this is beneficial to Venezuela.

They're hoping that the sanctions are relieved. they're hoping, you know, they have all of these hopes about things being better under U.S. management now that the U.S. has effectively got what they wanted. This is a bad precedent, though. Yeah, yeah. So, oh, interesting. So in this Blue Energy Partners had an American investor named Harry Sergeant III. The Trump administration ordered him to sell off his position.

He sold his minority stake to $300 million to Betancourt. Alaharanro. Betancourt, yeah. Yeah, exactly. So. How do you want to order somebody to sell their stake in a stock? Well, I mean, it's kind of like, hey there, Harry. It's like, you know what I mean?

It's like, hey there, Harry. Well, you know. Nice company you got there. Be a shame if something weren't happen to it. Right. Well, it's the same of the government could compel you to purchase a product and find you with taxes if you don't. Like what? Well, like for Osama, no Obamacare had the insurance requirement.

If you don't have insurance, they have tax you on it. So that is the government compelling you to purchase something. They either, hey, you can't afford, be do not want. So. Oh, he's a Florida Republican kingmaker. Big butt buddy of former governor Charlie Christ, hangs with Giuliani, Romney, McCain. And now basically, oh, so he's from that part of the GOP.

And he was a big Iraq War profiteer. He got like over $2.5 billion in Iraq War contracts. Wow. So he's a lovely person. Yeah. He's a good man. This is also a way for Trump to sort of consolidate control over the GOP. right it's sort of like fucking over the corporatist wing of the GOP yeah god yeah it's some gangster shit

I mean it is I mean these are the real gangsters I mean the bananas they didn't do shit by comparison with these guys was like economic hit man yeah that's what it is like complete playbook totally totally totally totally well all right well gross shit but now that's That's the end for today's show. We will be back at 12 noon here for the Q&A. So do come back to YouTube or Rumble and check that out. In the meantime, stay tuned. And TMI is coming up right now.

See you a little bit. Happy birthday again tomorrow. Thanks, man. I see you at 12th. Okay, see you then. Bye.