DeProgram with John Kiriakou and Ted Rall - Iran War Is Go Again | DeProgram with Ted Rall and Jamarl Thomas

Episode Date: May 5, 2026

Conflict reporter/writer/cartoonist Ted Rall and political analyst Jamarl Thomas deprogram you from mainstream media every weekday at 9 AM EST. Today we discuss:• Iran issued warnings after two U.S. destroyers, closely followed by two merchant vessels, came under attack during successful transits of the Strait of Hormuz. The UAE reported an Iranian assault on an energy hub that caused a fire. Oman’s state media reported an attack in the country but did not identify a perpetrator. Iran fired cruise missiles and drones at the U.S. naval and commercial vessels. Iran also sent six fast boats after the commercial ships, but U.S. forces fired on and destroyed the vessels. This is not what a ceasefire looks like.• A federal magistrate judge, Judge Zia Faruqui, tore into officials from the DC jail for mistreatment of the man who allegedly attempted to assassinate Trump at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. Cole Allen’s placement in severe lockdown — including being fully restrained by a five-point shackling system and a temporary suicide watch that required 24-hour-a-day placement in a padded, lighted cell without access to phone calls, books, religious material or recreational time — appeared to be unfairly punitive and not based on any known medical assessment.• A car driven by Cornell’s President Michael Kotlikoff bumps into students after a confrontation over Gaza. After a debate over the war, students say the university president hit them with his vehicle. He says he was the victim.• Trump declares that the US will withdraw 5,000 – and probably many more – troops stationed in Germany, after German Chancellor Friedrich Merz criticized the US handling of the Iran conflict, saying Tehran had humiliated Washington.MERCH STORE: https://www.deprogram.livehttps://x.com/tedrallhttps://x.com/JamarlThomasLIVE ON RUMBLE: https://rumble.com/c/DeProgramShowSPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/show/2kdFlw2w8sSPhKI8NRx8ZuAPPLE MUSIC: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/deprogram-with-ted-rall-and-jamarl-thomas/id1825379504

Good morning. You're watching Deep Program with Ted Rall and Jamaral Thomas. Good morning, J.T. Nice to see you back. Well, thank you. Great to be back. How you doing, Ted? Doing okay this morning? I'm doing okay. So it looks like the Iran War is back in effect. Seesfire in name only. A judge is reaming D.C. jail officials for the way that they're mistreating the suspect in the White House correspondence dinner shooting. The president of Cornell hit and run at least one of his students and ran over their foot while trying to get away from talking about Gaza. And Trump says he's going to pull out at least 5,000 troops from Germany and maybe any other European country that he deems has not been helpful enough in his war against Iran. So lots to talk about. Please like, follow and share the show. If you have questions about these or any other topics, please go ahead and put them in the YouTube chat live or in the Rumble chat also live in the 9 a.m. Eastern hour. We're here Monday through Friday at 9 a.m. Eastern time. And so I think that's about all the housekeeping we have to do. J.T. Do you want to choose a topic to go first? Yes. Well, I guess there are a few things, right? Five thousand troops from Germany is interesting.

I know a lot of people are pointing to Donald Trump as being something unique. And I would agree that his manner is unique. But that's this manner. Is it, and I'll ask you this, the United States, and I guess there are two things that once that's taken place here, or three things. There are more, but I'm pointing to it. One, this idea of the U.S. effectively throwing his weight around and is effectively saying, hey, junior partners, we expected you to fall in line, period. Yes, Iran didn't attack us. We don't

care that Iran didn't attack us. We expected you to go to war with us. There's that. Two, this notion that a country that spends a trillion dollars on military goes into a conflict and then after the fact, turns around and says, hey, we can't do this on our own, even though we could, even though we could. But we still want your help with this. And we're very, angry at you. And so we're going to punish you by pulling 5,000 troops out of Germany. Okay, you have like 50,000 troops. Five thousand is not really going to make that big of a difference. It's symbolic at best. And third, this power projection device called NATO that I don't believe for a moment that the United States, in real terms, even from a congressional standpoint or

otherwise or presidential standpoint, we'll pull out of. It's all for show, even though Germany and Europe is somewhat freaking out about the fact that the U.S. is doing it. How do you view, give me your take on this? Well, everything you just said, and I would add a few things. First of all, you know, this is kind of like when in New York City during the peak of Black Lives Matter, and the cops said, oh, okay, if you don't like us, then we'll just stay home. And every New Yorker was, oh, no, not that. Don't stay home.

God, that would be terrible. And, you know, just nobody cared. And it's sort of like that, right? I mean, if I'm German, I view, I mean, let's face it, we know why those NATO troops got there in the first place. They're basically residual post-war occupation troops. Yes. And it's an occupation. I mean, the only benefit that these troops have in Germany is that I guess some of them go off base during R&R and they spend some money in the community.

That's probably it. It probably benefits the sex worker community a lot. I'm not really sure what it does, you know, for the people of Germany. Who are they being protected from the big, bad Russians? Get real. Be serious. Right. So, you know, if I'm Germany, I'm like, you can take those 5,000, you can take 10,000, you can take them all.

You can close Mannheim Air Force Base. I don't care. So I don't really see how this is a big threat. I agree with you that there's something really strange about a president who decides to go it alone, not consult with his allies, and then expect his allies to be on board for the ride. I mean, I can definitely see the case for saying, you know, because I want to act quickly against Iran and because out of an abundance of caution, I don't want to take any chances with leaks, and I know that Israel and I can get this done without the help of the Germans or anyone else,

then I'm just going to go solo. But you know when you go solo that you're, you know, alone. That's how it is. And to not, and that's the part that like, you know, I haven't seen this kind of behavior from the United States in the past, right? That part is unique because it's illogical. It's irrational. And everyone's going to be able to see right through it. And when you're whinging and complaining about like, well, where are the Germans there to help us?

It's like, why would they be? You didn't ask them to. I mean, you know, I love my analogies. This is like how the DNC kept telling progressives and leftists, don't vote for us. We don't need you in the general election. We have enough anti-Trump Republicans. They'll support us. And we're like, okay, we won't.

We'll sit at home or we'll vote for Jill Stein. And then it's like, how dare you? That's why we lost. It's like, no, we lost because you told us not to vote for you. And we just did what you asked. I mean, so, I mean, I think this is, it's very, strange and I don't know. I mean, it's certainly not playing with the American people. I mean, the American people, you were out yesterday, the polls that came out yesterday from the Washington

Post shows that American people radically disapprove of this war, and that includes a lot of Republicans. Yes. Yeah, it's wild when you think about it. I mean, yes, America treats everybody like masses. And true, America treats everybody like a junior partner, meaning whether you're talking about Europe or anybody else, we don't have equals in the way that we look at things. Honestly, that's part and parcel to the reason why the U.S. is deal adverse. We don't consider the rest of the world equals, meaning we don't have to deal with you as equals, period. That's just the way we look at the world. And I would argue countries are just an extension of people, meaning when people say for the moment that you had a country that did not have a police force, that didn't have a prison system.

And the expectation was, all right, we're not going to prosecute laws, but you just need to be nice to people. That's all we need. What kind of country do you think we would have? And I guess the point of trying to make here is if you have a country that's like the U.S. a superpower, that there is no penalties imparted upon it for bad behavior. So it can go to war. It can kill the many people in the Iraq war. It can, you know, knock over governments and everything else.

But there's no consequence. What is there to inhibit corral American action? And it answers nothing. I'm going to push back on that. So think about like the behavior. I mean, most of us live 23.9 hours a day without ever encountering any law enforcement officer, right? It's like you go to a bar, there's no cop, right? You go to a diner, there's no cop.

You ride the metro. There's usually no cop. And yet, people aren't eating each other, they aren't raping each other on the bar. It's like there's no, like, Jody Foster and the accused. There's nothing like that, right? It's sort of people behave normally. And what prevents people from, I mean, first of all, most people don't want to do anything wrong. Okay.

And then among the people who do, who are kind of on the edge who would like to, but, you know, are not sociopaths or psychopaths. They're restrained by the fear that if they did. is something untoward. Let's say, you know, some, you're at a bar, you, you, you know, you grab someone's ass, you know, you're probably going to get beaten up by the other patrons. So you, so you, so you, and even if you don't get beaten up, you're not going to be welcome there ever again. And, uh, and people will not talk to you. So I think social opprobium is a big thing. And, um, and so in the, I think in the, in the, in the, um, look at what's happening to Israel, they have become a pariah state. And it hasn't played out completely, but it will, and it is,

and we can all see which way it's going. I think the punishment, as it were, for the United States is to do basically what is to see. It's sort of like the Germany thing. You know, countries are going to start ignoring you. They're not going to want to have anything to do with you. They're going to work, they're going to do work around. You know, producer Robbie West sent me a link. You know, the other day to an old Joe Biden speech from when he was a senator. It was right shortly after the collapse or maybe during the collapse of the Soviet Union. And he said, oh, what are the Russians going to do? Make an alliance with China, Iran, and the whole room is laughing. And then it's like, come on, they have to deal with us. Well, they do until they don't have to. And now they will make

a deal with the Chinese and the Iranians. So I think that, you know, the punishment, it takes a while. But we are going to become ostracized. We are becoming isolated. Our allies know they can't count on us. We're not reliable. We're not nice. We're not dependable. And we're not respectful.

Maybe that's the biggest one that I left for last. And we're not treating them like their real countries, like you said. So, I mean, I take your point. I think that's the punishment, though. I don't think there's like there can't be like a, you know, a clathoo. you know, Deiasex Machina like comes from outer space and says like you, America,

bad, boom, sweat you across the head. Like, I wish, but it doesn't, yeah, but I think it's more the way I said. No, true. I agree. True. I accept that. I would make the point of saying laws are not for regular people, laws are for

sociopaths, if that makes sense. Meaning, I agree with you that most people don't want to dominate. Most people don't want to rape and murder and kill, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But laws aren't for them. Right?

Laws are people who don't care about those things, who want to exert control. Look, the truth of the matter is, people are different. You have some people who are more passive and you have some people who get their kicks off of domination. It's like, I appreciate this role of being able to dominate somebody else. Laws of those people, right?

Like, it's for the lunatics of the world. It's for psychopaths. It's for the psychopaths. And I agree with you that there's social pressure that gets applied to people, but that's assuming that people care about the social pressure. And if I'm in a position of, let's say, leverage, maybe I don't care about the social pressure. I don't care if you don't like me, if you have to deal with me either way.

And I'm saying the U.S. has been in that position for a very long time where it's been accustomed to it. And so when it's enacting with other countries and dealing with other countries, it's doing so from this position of we're the indispensable, nation. We are, you know, we're different. You know, we have the rules-based order with us setting the roof. Like that's a mindset that is to simplify A, through policy, and B, how people respond to us, what we get accustomed to. And I'm saying that is under pressure. And that is under pressure from, A, what is happening in real world physical matter reality against Iran. That is under pressure from

real world physical matter reality of us losing in Ukraine and to China in regards to what China just did and saying, hey, if you're here, you're not going to pay attention to American companies, period, meaning we don't care about your sanctions. This is pressure, but all of this pressure is being, is coming from U.S. behavior. And I'm pointing out that until that pressure is applied, nothing in U.S. policy changes. At least that's my take on it. Yeah, no, I mean, I think that, yeah, I agree with that. I think that's where we're at. We have a question that I think segues nicely into another topic of ours. Alex Bringlow, thanks so much for becoming a member for a month.

What the hell happened with the U.S. ship missile or no missile? So Trump announced something called Operation Freedom, which basically means that the U.S. Navy has offered to escort non-aligned neutral country, neutral flagged ships through the Strait of Ormuz. And the Iranians have been firing at these American vessels. Now, the thing is, the thing is, T.T., we've been told repeatedly that, like, Iran hasn't laid a hand on us throughout the war, right? Now, we learned that that, we know, like I had a lawyer who used to always like to say, not only is that not true, it could not be true.

And it's not true. And now we know it wasn't true. It was covered up. It's kind of remarkable. I don't think I've ever heard of the United States military ever refusing to acknowledge that one of its facilities or vessels had been struck. But that's what's happening in this conflict. You know, they're just trying to put a good face on everything. Hell, I'm not really sure we know the total member of American airmen and soldiers and sailors who've been killed.

We don't know. So certainly we don't know about the number of injuries. So I guess the question is we know that missiles, including cruise missiles, have been fired at American vessels. I wouldn't put it past the Trump administration or the Department of War or whatever fuck it's called now to just say, you know, to cover it up if they had. But clearly, I mean, the big point here is the ceasefire is no more, right? It's in name only.

I mean, the UAE says that one of their energy facilities was set on fire, probably by a drone, maybe by a missile. Oman is not specifying exactly what happened to it, but Oman got struck by the Iranians, apparently, or might have been by the Houthis. The Iranians sent six small patrol boats to go after the commercial ships, but the U.S. claims to have destroyed those. and two destroyers, but at least one tanker successfully traversed the trade Strait of Ramos. I guess someone was impatient.

But this is going to look. The Iranians are going to draw blood. There's no question about it. So there are a few things. One, the blockade is not a total blockade. So there's that, their holes in it is porous. There's that, meaning from the standpoint of the U.S., the U.S. trying to blockade Iran.

It hasn't blockade everything. It's only blockade some of the ships that have gone through, meaning it's not a total blockade for sale. Two, you're right. There's a discrepancy taking place where the U.S. is like, yeah, we murdered X number of Iranian boats. Iran is saying those weren't our GCC boats. Iran is saying those were just innocent people who were boating,

kind of like in Venezuela and the Caribbean. Which is true. Who knows? Iran has thousands of those boats. If they lose a few, that's not necessarily indicative of anything significant. You're right. It seems that Iran did fire on the tanker that tried to,

I don't know, pretend as if it was going through the strait of Ramos, or tried to go through the straighter for Moose, either way that tanker hauled ass and left after being fired upon. The U.S. came up with this freedom project. It's not escorting anything. It's saying, hey, guys, here's a, way that you can try to get out of the street and good luck in trying to get out of the street, meaning they're not escorting anything. It's not like the U.S. has taken ships in the street

and saying, okay, we're going to welcome you through. The U.S. ships aren't getting near the straight because the U.S. knows that Iran will blow that shit off the war. There's that. The hot war, yes, because I don't know how this, there is no ceasefire in real terms. No, there's no ceasefire. Yeah. Oh, and by the way, and they did fire on the U.A. The reason is because the U.A. has been assisting the United States. hand over fist. And the UAE has a pipeline, it starts with F, Fallujah, Fulisia, whatever the name of the pipeline, that pipeline gets around straighter Fremuz. And so I don't remember if you and I were talking about it or me and somebody else was talking about it. Our thing was, the UAE is crowing about this pipeline that is going to be the first thing that gets hit. Fast forward two days later, that is the pipeline that effectively gets hit. Yeah. So I don't know how this doesn't become high again. It's a standoff. I mean, what's interesting to me is that the Iranians know that like time is on their side, like the Rolling Stone, right?

But the, so this is frustrating Trump. And he, the only thing he can really do in his mind is try to provoke a game change, right? And so this is, but these are, but the key word here is provocation. That provocation is going to get him what he does not want, which is a hotter war. And he's, I mean, the only way out, Mr. President, right, is to arrive at a satisfactory negotiation with the Iranians. I mean, that's the only way this is going to be settled, and yet it seems to be like not something he's willing to do in a serious way. You know, I mean, when's he going to come to Jesus? Is it going to be when a sizable number of American sailors are killed by an Iranian missile? What's it going to take? Look, from my point of view, and I've had this point of view for a while, Iran always had to have this fight.

The reason why Iran always had to have this fight is because of the thing that I alluded to before. People and countries respond to leverage and force and the perception of what I think you can do. If I'm the US and I'm a superpower and that'll, like for example, let's let's take this out of the hands of war for example. Let's say it's chess. Let's say I'm rated 2100, which I was before blacks. If somebody who's 1800 is talking to me, I'm not going to accept them as an equal to me under no circumstances.

Now you can say this ego, you can say that's hubris. Fair enough. I bought my ads off at 2100 rating. If I see your ratings 1800, I'm going to respect you less and it is going to take you you fighting with me to get across me that you're an equal, meaning you need to beat me or at the very least you need to draw and fighting me. And I'm saying the same thing you should do for the US. They're looking at a regional power from the point of view of the US. We spent a trillion dollars on the military. We never respected the country in which we thought we could remember

our shot over. And Iran needs to be able to at veryly show that they can not be pushed over. And until that happens, the U.S. is going to take it. a predatory point of view, meaning we're not going to make a deal with you because we don't believe you're in equal to us. However, if Iran can hold them off, hold off the U.S., that's different. Like, meaning Trump is deal incapable. The U.S. is agreement incapable to somewhere like Russia. Hell, we're agreement incapable to even somewhere like China. The same thing is going to be true for a right. A war was always necessary for Iran at the very least Joe resilience. At least that was my point of view. And that's my point of you now.

The U.S. is going to go back into a half. Or if it's Donald Trump's deal in case. I could be wrong. We'll see. I have a little glitch. Do you, is everything still running? What we add, Robbie? Yeah, no, you are running.

You keep dropping off for some reason, but we can hear you. It's just, we just have the deep program logo instead of your hands on face. Right now? Let me see, right now. I've got your handsome face. Okay, how strange. All right. I might hit reload.

Anyway, I'm going to put you guys. So you guys are both on, right? I'm going to hit reload and see if I can, because it's frustrating. Okay. You guys keep going. Okay. Yeah. Look, the reality of it is, the foreign policy, it's not about who's nice, who's pleasant,

who's polite. It's not about any of that stuff. From the U.S. point of view, we're an imperial power. Donald Trump is doing any and everything in his power to maintain U.S. egemony. Hence, fighting all across the globe. Right. So you got the CIA and the U.S. working in the Ukraine. You got Trump snatching leaders from the Caribbean, from South America. And now you have a war in Iran that Trump can't extricate himself out of because how could he? Because the U.S. President doesn't want to lose. It looks bad when you lose to what you've considered to be a middling power and a country that you said that you can do whatever you want with, which is obviously not true. And as you guys pointed out,

the hill is coming out with an article saying that the majority of Americans think Donald Trump is mentally and physically unfit to serve. Well, I mean, I would at least temperamentally, right? I mean, is he crazy in the same way that, you know, Joe Biden was crazy, was seen out? No, it's a different thing entirely. You know, it's, uh, it was it, it's Tolstoy, right? Like, all families are, are dysfunctional and all in different. No, every man. marriage is unhappy in its different way, right? Sinility hits in different ways. But Donald Trump clearly is past his expiration date. I mean, he's not the sharp policy. I don't think Donald Trump of 2017 would be doing this. You don't think so?

I don't think he would have gone in. I mean, I think I think BB Netanyahu was whistling in his ear back then to do exactly this. And he refused. Only because I would point out two things. Not to push back on you. I agree. But one, Syria has fallen. So the door to Iran is open from the way they're looking at it. And two, Donald Trump was so wrapped up with the Russia gate stuff. I don't know if he could have did anything under these terms. I mean, give me your take on that. Because those are two big differences that are missing from this turn as opposed to last term. Russia gate has been demolished. I mean, you may have some Democrats that believe that nonsense. But for the most part, They do. Yeah, I do think I'm going to stick to what I said. I really think, you know, I think we have some strong evidence that Israel's been

Jonzing to attack Iran now with the U.S. at its side for a long time. And it's only now that, you know, and the most baffling thing to me is that apparently no one in the administration was on Trump's side here. Nobody. There was no Dick Cheney. There was no Richard Pearl. There was no Paul Wolfowitz. There was no Donald Rumsfeld. There were no neocons telling him to do this, which I guess is to their credit and to Trump's credit for appointing them. But so this is all, I mean, it really truly is Israel's war. And I mean, you know, it's not an exaggeration. We have an ad. So I'm going to go ahead and try to do that. Hopefully, it's not like, like a bad one. Here we go. This country wasn't handed to us. It was carved out one hard mile at a time.

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You know, I wanted to do, I mean, you know, I know Robbie loves a 1775 coffee, but we have to break out sometimes. Go ahead, though, you were saying. I was going to say, Israel's war isn't Israel's war. I mean, because the U.S. has been itching for this war for a very long time. And from my point of view, and look, we can talk about it. The U.S. uses Israel as a stalking horse. It's like it's our dog in the region.

Hey, you're going to do stuff that we don't want to get our hands on, but really we're getting our hands on by having you do it. And you can make an argument to me that there's a feedback mechanism taking place between the U.S. and Israel. Fair enough. And that Israel has been aching for this war for decades. Again, fair enough. But let's be clear, going into Iraq, Libya, Syria, etc.,

was all aimed ultimately at going after Iran. And it's been U.S. policy. for decades to go after Iran. Donald Trump is just a fulfillment and a culmination with that particular policy, even though most presidents, for the most part, had sense enough not to do it during their administration. Give me your thoughts on that.

No, look, it's true. Iran was always the big boy in the room, right? I mean, everybody, you know, after 9-11 is a great example. First Afghanistan, why? Not because Osama bin Laden was there. He wasn't. He was in Pakistan. They knew that at the time, as I reported at the time, because it was easy.

The Taliban didn't have an air force. They were a ragged, rag-tag militia. It didn't stop them from defeating us over time. But, you know, that's a political will issue. Then they're like, okay, we're geared up for Iraq. Iraq is like, why did they do Iraq? Well, they would have longed to have done Iran because, after all, Iran financed, you know, Shia's, Shiite militias in the Iraqi Civil War. But Iran was too.

big. The U.S. tried to take out Iran using Iraq as a proxy during the war in the 1980s. Didn't work. Iran is too big. It's too modern. It's too developed. It's too much civilization, right? It's just too much, even for an empire like the U.S. to bite off. It's parthia to ancient Rome. It's too big. But that doesn't mean they didn't want it. It's just that nobody thought it was possible. And I guess still nobody thinks it's possible. And clearly it's not possible. So that's, you know, Trump decided to do something that wasn't possible. And he just proved what we already knew.

We have some comments and questions here. Mantell, thanks for the $2. With Trump continuing to have explosive diarrhea on the world stage, can anyone find the pepto? Or is the administration just going to pull an Elvis and croak on the shitter? I vote for number two. I think this administration is this presidency is in deep shit. I'd be very surprised if the president isn't forced to resign before the end of his term at bare minimum.

What about you? I just don't see how you stumble. It's May 5th. I mean, it's Cinco de Mayo, right? I don't see how we get to January 20th, 20, 29. I mean, that is a long, long way, right? Two and a half fucking years of this. nonsense? I mean, it's not going to get better. The economy is going to get worse. People are

going to get restless. I mean, the president of Cornell ran over a student. You know, I mean, it's like things are crazy. And we need to talk about that. But yeah, I think, I don't see how, I just don't see how you get there. It's kind of like, this is a marathon runner who's faltering at mile three. How do you get to Mount 26? I mean, the catch become, I mean, in order for that to take place, you would need Republicans to effectively pull that chain and pull that court. I mean, it depends on, for one, I think in part depends on the midterms, right? If you get a Democratic House, Democratic Senate, they're going to impeach his ass. I think they're going to impeach his ass. Well, for sure. They can't convict in the Senate, though. That's the catch. They can't take

them out, but they're going to definitely give him hell going forward. And he's going to be subpoenaed, like all of his folks are going to have mad subpoena action coming out of the House of Representatives. Lawfare is on. Lawfare is go. Do Republicans, because from your point of view, it doesn't take Republicans to turn for Trump to be like, okay, I'm up. Because it's hard for me to see that changeover, even though that changeover is possible depending on how bad things get if Trump becomes a liability. Because let me ask you this. It seems that Trump's political strength is the population, meaning he has a population of people that are willing to crawl on glass to support Trump. Does that change? And if that changes, does the political

calculus from Republicans also change? You're a student of history better than I am on the politics of the U.S. So I think the answer is yes, but I'm usually pretty good at the how, right? Like when a prosecutor presents their narrative of a case to a jury, it's not enough to just say, like, oh, she killed her husband. I have to know, like, what knife she used, what time of the day she used it, why she did it. I have to have a theory of the case. I don't have a theory of the case here. I don't know exactly how it goes down, but I don't see, but one way or the other, whether it's failing health, failing mental acuity, J.D. Vance sees an opportunity or the necessity to invoke the 25th Amendment.

It's enough Republicans crap out and just say like, oh my God, I can't, we can't all go down with this guy. But something's going to happen. I don't know what, but like something. And I don't think that's a hope thing. It's because it's going to be ugly when it happens. But it's going to be, but I just don't see this person with this temperament, unable to listen to any of his own closest advisors, taking advice.

from a foreign leader from a country that means us ill. It does not care about us at all. You know, I mean, this is basically Trump's a foreign agent at this point. I mean, that's fucked up, and I just don't see how it's, how it sustains itself. Robbie, you have thoughts. Well, yeah, because I think that it's an undeniable fact that Israel controls our government, and they do it through a couple of different ways. And I'm going to bring some receipts here.

First note, Ted, when you and me were talking, before the show started, your alma mater is taking away diplomas of people who criticized Israel. So think about that. You go, you spend on this money, you buy a degree, you criticize a foreign country. And then the university revokes the diploma that you've earned. You can criticize China, Mexico, your own country. No problem at all. But if you criticize Israel, your friend.

pride. If you want to know who controls you, found who it is that you're not allowed to criticize. Rule number one. I think Bolterre said that if I remember right. Ted, is that correct? I think that's what I want to say that. That's his quote. Second, take this a step further. We have almost 40 states have anti-BDS laws. Texas famously says if you don't swear a pledge of economic loyalty to Israel, you cannot work as a contractor for the state of Texas. Well, that's a direct violation of the First Amendment. I get to choose who I spend money with and who I don't. It's a government.

It's a government restraint on speech for sure. 100%. You don't have that restraint on any other country except for Israel. Then let's take this a step forward. Well, I mean, of course there's Benin. You're not allowed to say anything bad about Benin or Vanuatu. Whatever. I don't know what those are.

But I mean, you pick up the point that I'm saying here. And then we'll take it a step further. If you push hard enough, you can get debanked. You can get completely frozen out of society. There is no other country on this planet that has that power. And then you have the talking heads like Mark Levin, who's advocating the nuclear attack on another country. And you get your Republicans clapping like a bunch of stone seals,

because they think this is a great idea. And they keep in mind these are the same Republicans. They'll say, oh, we care about the Constitution. I'm a constitutional conservative. No, the hell you're not. You're a war-sucking pig. Yeah, and they're all ignoring the War Powers Act. Well, the War Powers Act is unconstitutional.

It's Act two of the Constitution. The War Powers Act should be abolished. The War Powers Act was a stupid, like, workaround. Well, then I didn't follow me even with the stupidity of it. Well, J.T, I mean, it goes to, it goes why it's that you said, right? It fits a rules-based order, and you get to make the rules, the laws really matter. Yeah, they don't matter. I mean, like there are laws for other people.

There's constraints on other people and countries. Not us. I mean, because, and that gets to my point, right? Unless there are costs imparted, then it doesn't matter. If you can't do anything to me, your opinion in me, I don't care. If I have free operation and if you still have to deal with me, then I don't care. Like, there's a reason why the U.S. is deal adverse. because we feel like we don't have to accommodate the deal.

It's just that, right? Like, if I'm making a deal with you and you can't do anything to me in order to maintain the fact or keep me to that deal, but I can impart cost on you, then you're stuck dealing with me regardless of what I do. That is the issue, and that is the position that the U.S. has found itself in for decades. But let's talk about Trump. I mean, I do think we want to follow up on that, right?

I mean, I think people need to know that. I don't see how a president with a 33% approval rating survives. That hasn't happened before. Right. So, you know, there's that, right? The last time we saw a president with those kind of numbers, we're talking about George W. Bush at the end of his term, after the disaster in Iraq. Before that, we're talking about like Nixon, maybe six months before resignation.

You know, I mean, there's, it's just, I mean, yeah, he's a lame duck, but hitting this bottom before the first midterm election of its second term, that's early. And I just don't see the turnaround, right? I mean, this morning, I heard a, I heard Trump talking and at a speech where he said, well, everybody asks, six weeks, what's taking so long? Vietnam, we were there for 19 years. I'm like, the reason we're asking what's taking so long is because you said you'd be done by now. This isn't like us making shit up and becoming impatient.

Are we there yet? This is like you repeatedly said. You know, I mean, he violates the Jeff Bezos rule, you know, under promise over deliver. He does exactly the opposite. So of course everyone's pissed. Well, also Vietnam didn't hurt the American economy either. That's not true at all. That's not true.

No, the, Vietnam War absolutely decimated the American economy and led to the oil shocks of the mid-1970s. You know, it fucked us up. We left a lot of material and cash and investments. You know, what people don't know is like, why were we in Vietnam, right? Massive natural gas resources. That was the main thing. And it had a huge impact. and people started to feel it by 72, 73,

which is right around the time that the Nixon administration, the Nixon administration, got serious about withdrawal. I agree with you at Trump, by the way, right? Like, I don't know the mechanism by which this stuff takes place, but it is a hard pill to swallow. I mean, for all the tense purposes, I agree with you that Trump is like, hey, I'm going to win the war, I'm going to win the war, this is over with, we can do whatever we want.

Oh, it's pretty much over. with at this point, et cetera, et cetera. And yet, you still take a military action. You still don't have control of the legislature for moose. Iran is still firing on your ships, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah. By the way, Robbie, you are right that like certainly Vietnam didn't shit the economy in six weeks. That's for damn sure. Yeah, because that's what I was thinking of. Because if you're about no, you know, Vietnam wrecked the American economy, I'm just trying to think of how. I mean, unless we're importing a massive amount of rights. Oh, for sure. I mean, it was a cause an effect thing but i mean let's let's look at this a scale vietnam did not turn off the global

energy market no nowadays i mean you can make a case that nike would be in a full on panic if something happened to be bad for them but not necessarily bad for anybody else right what we're doing with the rann i mean we i mean uh our local newspaper saying we could actually start running out of gas here in western montana than six weeks oh i wouldn't be surprised and the ranchers are completely shit in the bed because. And diesel costs are stratospheric. Oh, yeah, for sure. And so now irony of ironies, a lot of the farmers are starting to try to go north to our Canadian friends and the Canadians are just laughing at us.

It's also the beginning of the summer travel season. Us Americans, and I'm one of them, we love our road trips. And it's a big country. Yeah, and flying, right? Yeah, I mean, it's a big deal. It's not insignificant. This is a new norm. I guess from my point of view, whether you're talking about China passing sanctions on America, in this case, kind of sanctions on America. Basically, don't acknowledge U.S. sanctions. Okay, that's new.

That's a whole different animal, right? This is the other, quote-unquote superpower exerted its economic influence in a way that has never been exerted before on the U.S. Or whether you get Iran. I mean, like, I think part of the issue, too, is the U.S. and America knows that the U.S. spends a trillion dollars on military, meaning every- 1.5 soon. 1.5 soon. Every American knows we spend like nine, we spend more than like nine times or the nine of the nations combined. Maybe that number is five of the nations combined.

No, it's like nine. And the thing is we're not talking about like little wimpy nations with like Luxembourg. We're talking about like Russia, one of the biggest army producers in the world. world. Russia. Yeah. And so America knows that. So when you're going into a war with, let's say Iran, the expectation is, why hasn't this

over with you? Yeah, we should be wiping the floor with them, right? I mean, except for the fact that we surrounded them with bases and we thought that we had them right where we wanted them. But actually, they had us right, where they wanted us because we became, we created targets. You know, our biggest protection in the, uh, in the, uh, in the, uh, we wanted them. early days of the Republic and now is those two big oceans and two friendly allied countries that keep, you know, long-distance things from hitting us. And but so going to put a base,

like right up on the border of our enemy seems like a mistake. Yeah. It became a, liability. Monta Italia, thanks for the five dollars. Hey, Robbie, what, what make is your home protection? Safety first. Oh, rather, that is a, uh, A SKS made in 1963 Chinese chrome line barrel, 7.62 by a 39 round, works very, very good as someone comes in uninvited. All right. Okay. So let's move on to this story out of Cornell University. So Michael Kotlikoff is the, so like all the Ivy League schools that have been, you know, racked by the Gaza protests.

Cornell has had a whole raft of presidents since this all started. The latest one who's been there for just about a year is this guy Michael Kotlakov. They had a confab on campus last night where the students got together to talk about the aftermath and what could have been done better and trying to like, let's have a civilized discussion about Gaza. And a bunch of students followed the president out to his car and they were basically saying like you're demanding that he talked to them and he's like well I'm leaving we're done here and he backed up his car by I'm just going to talk about the stuff that is no question about it

backed up his car and drove over one of the students feet and basically and then knocked another one down so at least two students were struck here and then he left the scene without waiting for the authorities he says that they were that he was scared that they were banging on his car that they were standing behind him refusing to let him leave. They deny all that and say that there's no truth to it at all. Look, I don't know what happened. All I could say is it's a bad look for an Ivy League school, right? I mean, it's like you guys can and should do better.

I tend to, you know, obviously I'm on the side of the students. I think that they have the, you know, first of all, they have the right cause on their side. But they also happen to have, you know, the right to speak to their, you know, the right to speak to their university president who they normally don't have a chance to get in touch with. You know, I can commiserate with his desire to get out of Dodge and leave, but you can't just run over people, you know, unless you're ice, that you're allowed to do it if you're ice. You know, what do you think?

I think that certain positions and certain labels have responsibilities that, you're to those labels. So if I'm a parent, then I have certain responsibilities to my kids. One of which I need to take care of my kids. I need to pay for rent. I need to pay for house. I need to have those kids taking care of it, et cetera, et cetera. And you can do that for pretty much anything. Employee, et cetera. If you are the president of the university and you have taken a certain political position, maybe you need to talk to the students. I mean, that's kind of part of the job. I mean, I get, right, as a human being, you don't necessarily want a large number of people yelling at you, especially for something that you feel that you can't necessarily do anything about or position that you've effectively taken. But nobody told you to take the job of a unity professor, I mean, a university president, especially when you're in the middle of a contentious issue like a genocide.

And if you believe that your position is sustainable and you have a lot of students who disagree with you at some point you got to talk to those students. I get right that you don't want students screaming at you when you're getting in your car. And I don't doubt that they probably was hanging around the car. Like meaning when you're looking at protests and protesters are like, well, they don't talk to us, but you're screaming at the person, well, the person, regardless of whether you're right, which the students are, that person is still a person, right? And that person may feel some kind of way about people screaming at them or that they're surrounding the car. I don't think that the guy backed up intentionally to try to hit a student. No. I think he was trying to get away.

Now, obviously he should stay there for the cops, but that's a little bit difficult when people are screaming at you and when you've just hit a student. Right. And he may have also, I'm projecting here, he may have also thought, listen, I voluntarily showed up to this forum to speak about this topic. I've said my piece. The forum's done. I get to go home. Right. But people want to have a conversation. But the rub is, it is very difficult to have a conversation about genocide.

That's very difficult, especially when you're on the side of defending that genocide in some way. Right. And especially because Cornell, like all the other, like Columbia and Harvard and all the other Ivy League schools, have sided with the genociders and have come and have not just sort of sided politically, but have cracked down mercilessing. on the students. They've expelled students, suspended students. They've gone after professors. They've fired professors. They threw professors under the bus at the, you know, at those capital, at least DeFonik, Capitol Hill Kangaroo hearings, right? I mean, they've revoked, as Robbie mentioned, they've revoked college degrees. They didn't let people graduate. They've expelled people from campus. They invited ICE to

come in and arrest their own students for writing op-eds. I mean, so these schools have been really, it hasn't even been a matter of like, they have their thumb on the scale and they even banned, I love the fact that they banned a group called, wait for it, Jewish

Voice for Peace. I mean, it's a Jewish group and you banned it. Columbia did. Antisemitic bastards. Antisemetic motherfucker. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I mean, no, I agree with you. Those students have every right to be animated, every right to be animated. Right. And I don't blame him. And he has to go home. Yeah, God, God, God, I mean, I would just say personally to my fellow lefties who are in favor, who are trying to support the people of Gaza, seriously, don't stand behind people's cars. Yeah, don't do that. It's not smart. You'll get hit. They're going to hit you. And they're going to claim I was scared. terrified.

I just don't stand in front of people. I don't mind. I don't believe for a moment that the man, like, did his car in a way where he was intentionally trying to hit a kid. Right. But just don't, I mean, as a matter of course, even in a, in the most apolitical of circumstances, like in a parking lot, don't walk right behind someone who's a car when someone's in the car and the engine's running.

Don't do it. Yeah. Not a good idea. You're going to get hit. It will happen. Let's see. Andrei 420 reform, thanks for the donation. Robbie is a CCP plant confirmed L.O.L.

Well, we'll let Robbie into. Are you a Chinese Communist Party begonia? I am a huge fan of Soviet-era firearms. Because if you live in a place like Montana, where it gets very, very cold, and if you like to hunt like I do, if you've got to take your gun apart out in the middle of the woods, you want large oversized pieces that you can use that you can that you can that you can work with

while wearing gloves you cannot do that with modern american firearms they suck and the and the 7.62 by 39 round is fantastic 300 range a 300 yards range it will put it'll put either a four-legged or a two-legged or a critter down no problem at all okay Robbie I'm gonna leave you go shoot him I enjoy shooting too I'll shoot a shoot you have you ever signed SKS JT I know not that specific gun I do I mean, when I was doing, I took, I went to Slovakia once with my, I took my ex-girlfriend to Slovakia. She was Austrian. And I was like, we're going to have the greatest date ever. You're never going to have a date this good. And she was like, really? I was like, yes, really. All right. First thing in the morning, I crashed the car in the parking garage. while trying to hit a protester. I had to drive the car back to the thing, so we're sitting in the dealership for gunned as well while the rental thing goes through.

We get to the shooting range. It's in Slovakia, and they have pretty much any gun you can think of. Sniper rifles, machine guns, the works. And so I'm like, this is going to be great. She has like a six-shooter, like just a small six-shooter. She shoots it once. and like drops the gun. It's like,

oh, it's so valent. And I'm like, dude, this is great. But I spend the next hour of shooting every gun that they got there. I love shooting. This is fun.

So if I come to Montana and Robbie, we got to go shoot. Listen, I'm going to bring you here because one of the best ways to cut down trees. I can't. I said that delivery, cut down trees.

I have a Mazen the Gap. The thing was made in 1938. It's got the Soviet steel It's authentic Soviet. And my dad, he actually brought, he actually got that in Korea. He was a Korean War veteran. He killed the Chinaman that had the rifle. He took it apart, melted home piece by piece.

And when he got home from Korea, put back together. And the bullets is 7.62 by 54R. It's about Jey Long. And if you shoot a Pine Street, you'll blow the back out. So they just fall over. It's a magnificent rifle. I'm still a fan of the flage. same thrower drone but what can I say that's a whole different topic that's so much fun but yeah people

asking how they how they can become paid subscribers and supporters of the channel so we're going to tell you how you can do that real quick if you're on rumble or on YouTube you have to be on the website you cannot be on the app and so with with rumble you just you click on the live stream tab wherever the chat is or you are you're going to see it option to subscribe it's five bucks a month, becoming channel subscriber. You get access to all of the content, premium and regular, with no ads. On YouTube, you click on where it says subscribe and you can join it anytime, but if Rumble, the limitation is that you can only become a channel member during a live stream. The reason that Rumble does that, with YouTube, YouTube takes a 40% cut of the channel

subscription donations that are, they're a ticket every month. Rumble, the creator gives the the crater gets 100%. Rumble does not take a cut, which is huge. The drawback is, though, is that you can only do it during a live stream. So if you want to support D-Program and J-T and Ted and little me with my gun fetish, that is one of the best ways that you can do it. And J-T is also, you're streaming now on Rumble now, correct? I am streaming on Rumble.

That is correct. I did a 7-hour live stream, chess laugh stream. You got to get you doing a Rumble Studio. That way you start getting your ads. Because you're still using the stream yard. Yeah, we got to have a show meeting like tomorrow or today or whatever. Just afterwards. Tomorrow works.

Okay, let's do tomorrow afternoon. All right. Guys, Frank Friel, thanks for the five bucks. Having a bloated military budget doesn't mean we have the best military. It means we're getting ripped off. You're here. Okay, so let's see. I'll put my visual back on there.

Guys, I'll keep you on this for this, Robbie, for this last segment. So federal magistrate judge Zia Faruque is pissed off at the D.C. jail that is holding Cole Allen. Cole Allen is, of course, the accused shooter at the White House Correspondence Dinner. He apparently was placed in severe lockdown. He was fully restrained by a five-point shackling system and placed on suicide watch that had him 24-7 in a padded lighted cell with no access to the phone. In other words, he can't talk to his lawyers, books, religious material or recreational time. And he is a religious man. And so anyway,

according to the judge, this is unfair and seems to be used to punish him before he's convicted of any crime. He pointed out that the J6 serves were not treated this badly. It seems to me, I mean, I'm just going to say, sounds to me like the Trump administration, let it be known that this guy is to be treated poorly. I have no evidence of that, but that's just my guess. Take a shot at the king and you miss, what do you expect? Yeah. I mean, seriously. I mean, it's like the oldest rule in the book.

Right-wingers are saying, like, well, you know, like it's ridiculous to care about the conditions that someone is held in. They don't think that when it's one of their own, right, when it's January 6th. I mean, look, this can be anybody. Like something like one out of 15 American men end up in jail or prison at one point in their lives. I've read one as many as one out of eight. I mean, I've spent, I don't know, probably a total of about a week in American jails. You know, it's not that unusual. It's, I think it's in everybody's interests that everybody be treated well.

And bear in mind the fact that you're talking about people. who haven't been convicted of any crime at all. But even if you have been, I mean, how a society treats as prisoners is a huge metric of what kind of society it is. We've just been in prison for over a year. It hasn't gone to trial. So, I mean, there is no justice. We have a legal system. We don't have a justice system.

Correct. What's not about justice? It's just not, it's about a country maintaining law and order in the way that it. Yes. He's going to be roughly treated, just like the J-6s were roughly treated. J-6s were roughly treated because from the standpoint of the government, you raided the capital. It is immensely humiliating, and you want to deter that particular behavior by treating people as poorly as possible. So people can see that these people are being treated as poorly as possible.

I suspect the same thing is true for the code. It's not about being right or wrong. It's about the way a government tries to instill a certain amount of authority. saying don't do this and this is what Trump is doing to him this is what Biden did to J-6ers totally totally um guys um I'm not I'm trying to hit the TMI stream on Rumble and I'm not having any luck so I'm going to um let me see if I can troubleshoot this at the end of the show probably do I don't know what's going to happen I let me just no no you're live you're like am I I'll have? Okay.

That's funny. Oh, that's so funny because it didn't show. All right. So now. I have no idea what the hell it's broadcasting. But. Yeah, I don't know what it's broadcasting either. Okay, now I'm going to hit the, there we go.

All right. So hitting the, yeah, just hitting the countdown. Okay, countdown is off and running. All right. So anyway, everyone, thanks so much for tuning in to the program with Ted Roll and Jamarle Thomas. Thank you, Robbie West for producing. for filling in yesterday. Robbie's going to be filling in for Manila Chan on TMI.

It's coming up in just a minute. So stay tuned. Go over to TMI with Ted Raul and Manila Chan. We will see you back here on D-Program 9 a.m. tomorrow morning, Eastern time. Thank you so much. Bye, Jamal. Have a good one, guys.

Be safe. Bye.