DeProgram with John Kiriakou and Ted Rall - Je Suis Charlie Kirk | DeProgram with Ted Rall and John Kiriakou

Episode Date: February 17, 2026

Political cartoonist Ted Rall and CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou deprogram you from mainstream media every weekday at 9 AM EST. Today we discuss: • France has its own Charlie Kirk. The centrist Macron administration blames the "ultra-left" LFI party and the Jeune Garde of Jean-Luc Melenchon for the fatal beating of 23-year-old Quentin Deranque, a right-wing extremist, in Lyon—a notorious hotbed of right-wing violence. Macron calls for patience and calm. Will France listen? • Local police, sometimes seen as a bulwark against ICE goon squads on city streets, are signing deals to cooperate with and deport immigrants for the aggressive agency. There were 135 such deals a year ago; now there are 1,168. • Persian Gulf Showdown: As US-Iran/Israel talks stall and another carrier heads to the Gulf, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards drill in Strait of Hormuz. • BlanketGate: Corey Lewandowski, an unpaid special government employee who acts as chief of staff for and lover to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, fired a Coast Guard pilot for leaving Noem’s blanket on a plane — but was forced to rehire them upon realizing there was nobody else to fly the party home. Lewandowski has overseen a reign of terror over DHS. • Civil rights leader Jesse Jackson, who made history as a third-party presidential candidate, dies at 84. Robert Duvall, the actor, passes at 95.MERCH STORE: https://www.deprogram.livehttps://x.com/tedrallhttps://x.com/JohnKiriakouLIVE ON RUMBLE: https://rumble.com/c/DeProgramShowSPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/show/2kdFlw2w8sSPhKI8NRx8ZuAPPLE MUSIC: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/deprogram-with-john-kiriakou-and-ted-rall/id1825379504

Good morning, and thanks for tuning in to D-Program with Ted Roll and John Kirooku. Over there, somewhere in place far, far away is John Kirooku to my... I'm going to turn my... Let's see, it's evening in Dubai on the 50th floor of the Jumera Emirates Towers Hotel. But it's been a good fun day and heading back home late tomorrow night. Excellent. I hope that there aren't any TSA-related problems at the airport because of the DHS shutdown. But I guess probably not too bad yet.

It'll probably get worse. Yeah, I'm hoping not. Although, you know, it's possible. You never know how these guys are going to react to not getting paid. Well, and we've got a crazy story about the Department of Homeland Security. Corey Lewandowski, who is basically Christy Noam's paid. boyfriend, basically fired a Coast Guard pilot

who was ferrying them around. The Coast Guard is part of DHS, which I think is something that most people don't know. And anyway, and for the grave offense of leaving her blanket, so that they could cozy under the blanket together on the plane, and then they realized they were, there was no one to get them back home, because, you know, he was

the pilot so they rehired him and apparently even the new york post which is you know a right wing paper is reporting that lewandowski and christie noem are basically what i have unleashed what they call a reign of terror uh over department of homeland security i could see that kind of thing also really pissing off the guys at tsa yeah without a doubt you know even guys even people inside the trump administration in senior positions in the in the in the in the Trump administration dislike and resent Corey Lewandowski. They hate that this that this dude just has, you know, authority for no reason other than he's sleeping with a cabinet secretary.

Yeah, no, I mean, here's the thing. I think, I think honestly, if I could crawl into Donald Trump's soul, what I would find is that he would love to fire her, but that he's worried about, he's worried about the appearance of weakness. You know, people always say, oh, you don't look weak. No, you look weak when you fire someone that you yourself hired. You do look weak. I mean, my advice would probably be don't fire her or figure out some other way to move her somewhere else or I don't know.

Anyway, lots to talk about today. We have two notable deaths, Robert Duval and Jesse Jackson. We can talk about that if we want. Obviously, you're there close to the center of the action with this showdown in the straight of or move. the Iranians, it definitely looks like we're, you know, sort of ambling toward war. I don't, there's been very little progress in the talks between the U.S. and Iran. And the Revolutionary Guards, who basically, that's their coast guard. They're drilling in the Strait of Hormuz.

And, you know, so the thought there is that their general mentality has been, if we're not allowed to export oil, you're not going to be allowed to export oil either. That's exactly what everybody's afraid of. That's exactly. This happened, as I'm sure you will remember, this happened in the 1980s. I do remember. And it was sort of escalated to the point where Ronald Reagan ordered the U.S. Navy to escort oil tankers through the Strait of Hormuz.

It became very expensive. This was a program that went on for years. I'm watching CNN International. I'm not watching it, but it's on next to me. And it's talking about what everybody here in Dubai was talking about today. And that is the fact that there is a second round of talks taking place right now as we speak in Geneva. Steve Whitkoff and Jared Kushner are representing the United States. And after the first round where both sides said that real progress was made,

everybody that you talk to is hopeful that they can come to some sort of an agreement. because war benefits literally nobody in this. Well, I mean, playing the role in the same way that, like, the role that France is playing in the talks between the U.S. and Russia and Ukraine, Israel is playing in the role in the talks between the U.S. and Iran. Without Israel, I think, you know, I would be more optimistic. But the Israelis really don't want there to be any deal. They want to continue this.

They want this to go on. They want to bomb Iran. That's right. Last time they bombed Iran and the U.S. bomb Iran. They didn't really go after energy infrastructure, but they would like to do it this time. The Israelis wouldn't really have much to lose in that situation since they're not an oil-producing state. But it's a scary thing. It's a scary thing. I mean, the second aircraft carrier is on its way, ever so, you know, that it's pouring on the pressure. But I don't really think the Iranians

need more pressure. They have plenty of pressure, as it is, economically and so on. They know it's coming. They're not stupid. And so I guess the question is, is the U.S. able to ignore some of these really extremist maximalist demands that Israel is making, you know, like, oh,

you're basically not allowed to have basic mid-range missiles to defend yourselves with, or you can use them to attack, too. But you know, that's a pretty basic thing. They want them to give up their stockpiles of already enriched uranium. Yes. And they, and

want them to get rid of their nuclear power program entirely, which is, by the way, if you're an environmentalist, you shouldn't want because that's the clean power now. It would be nice to see a major oil producing country like Iran, dedicate more of itself its power consumption to nuclear. I saw the most interesting thing today. If I can interrupt you for me. Just to share. Abu Dhabi has all the oil. Dubai has all the oil. Dubai has all. the banks and the business. There's no oil here. But one of the things that Dubai has done very successfully is they've transitioned away from their own use of oil. They're growing by leaps and bounds as they have been for decades. But they have built a nuclear power plant and they have enriched

their own uranium that they use in the nuclear power plant. So that provides a lot of the electricity. But today, I was out in the desert for a conference. Deep in the desert, near the Emirate of Alain. And there was this monolith, Ted, this monolith just sticking out of the ground in the desert. And it was hundreds of feet tall. And one of my host... Ventilation shaft?

Well, that was one of my thoughts. One of my hosts said, do you see that thing in the distance? I said, what is that? It looks like it's right out of 2001, a space odyssey. Or the cover of who's next. Or the cover of who's next. That's exactly right.

And he said, you know, the first time I saw it, that's exactly what I thought. I thought it was a monolith, like a work of art maybe, out of the coming out of the desert. And I said, what is it? And he said, it's a giant reflector. And I said, like for solar power? And he said, yeah, it turns as the sun moves across the sky so that it's reflecting at maximum strength, the sun's rays. on the solar panels that are at its base. Oh.

And he said, he said, our goal is to use no oil at all to rely just on solar and nuclear. Yeah, they, they don't have, there's no shade, right? So yeah, there's no shade.

It's hot. It was sunny in 86 today. Yeah, it's, it's hot all the time. That's cool. I love that kind of thing. That's so cool.

So, I mean, I guess we can like, let's, can we can linger on this. I mean, so is the feeling there, John, that war is imminent or possible or this we're looking at another series of, you know, exchanges of airstrikes between Israel and Iran? I haven't come across anybody that believes that war is imminent, but everybody is very concerned that it is likely. We had a long conversation today at a

government offsite about who, if anybody, benefits from a conflict. And we talked about, we talked about the Iran-Iraq war. Everybody flocked to Dubai because of its stability. We talked about the invasion, the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990 and the subsequent Gulf War. Then the Iraq War in 2003 and the Afghanistan War that went from 2001 to, you know, 20, 21, I guess it was. Yeah, that's exactly right. And the consensus was that at the end of the day, nobody wins in a war. Dubai might marginally benefit by a war.

But, you know, there are going to be deaths, probably lots of deaths. And so in the end, it's not something that anybody should be hoping for. Well, the Israelis want it. except the Israelis. They absolutely want it. And they want it like to the bloody, bitter end. They want it bad. Yeah. They shouldn't want it, but they do want it. I mean, for their own good, they shouldn't want it. Let's pivot a little bit. There's this story in France that I wanted to talk about. So this, there's this young, this is sort of setting the stage here. So the biggest party in France is actually, they call the ultra left. that's called La France Insoumism.

And basically, here there's probably no equivalent. Here it would be a radical communist party. In France, it's just sort of a liberal. It's a socialist party, basically. And it's led by this guy, Jean-Luc Melanchon. And there was an incident in Lyon where a 23-year-old guy, Quentin Derranc, who is a right-wing extremist, I sort of compared him to Charlie Kirk, but he wasn't like a, you know, he wasn't a person who spoke in public, but he was a right-wing extremist who was basically attending a protest, providing security for a right-wing protest against a left-wing event.

He was set upon by about half a dozen goons wearing masks who beat him to death. And now the thing is, there's been no suspects arrested or identified. We don't know who is responsible. The Justice Minister, who's kind of a conservative, jumped to the gun and immediately blamed La France Sinsoumese, the ultra-left, as he called it, and said words kill. President Macron is calling for calm and patience. But meanwhile, Melanchon was accused of not showing any regrets here.

That's factually untrue. he issued a very strong declamation of what happened, denied any that the left had anything to do with it. There's something called the Jeann Gaud, which is the Young Guard, which is basically kind of like harkens back to the 1920s and the kind of like the street fighting that happened between the far left and the far right in pre-Nazi Germany. And the Jean Gaud is sort of like part of La France and Summism's like sort of left-wing shock troops. They're being accused of this. But to be clear, we don't have suspects. France is spinning out, and the right looks like they're trying to Charlie Kirk, this guy, Quentin Deronk, and turn him into a martyr for the right and basically to try to poison the well.

It may well be true that the left was responsible. We just don't know. But it's very worrisome. The presidential election is coming up next year. It's not going to be Macron's term limited out. France, which is always a bulwark of democracy usually, is really spinning out. And I should point out one other thing. France just admitted, for the first time in my memory anyway, a U.S. political refugee.

Who is that? So he's a ethnic Russian who came to the United States illegally with his wife. was arrested by ICE, and he and his wife have spent the last year or so in ice facilities. They applied for diplomatic asylum to over 100 countries. They heard back nothing from anyone except the French. Oh, my gosh. And the French issued full diplomatic asylum to him. But the wife only got a laissez-passé, which is sort of like one step below, but basically.

Yeah, it's just travel documents. The Americans haven't honored that. He's been released and he's expressing his gratitude. But that's a big statement for a close to U.S. ally. Huge, huge. But you know what, though? I mean, don't you get the feeling that especially our European allies just have had enough of our bullshit? Yeah.

And they're willing to act independently now? 100%. Yeah. I mean, the Canadian Prime Minister kind of spoke for them all recently. And, you know, I mean, the thing is, look, it's, it's now that it's happening. But Trump is just basically the shit cherry on the pot. I mean, the U.S. has been annoying and brutish to them for a long time. And they've just viewed like, they've had it, just like you said, John.

They've had it with us. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Hey, I want to apologize for my camera. This is not my new camera. This is just my laptop because I happen to be at the hotel. And so it looks absolutely terrible.

But I did buy a new computer. It is so advanced. I had to have it custom made. I picked it up the day that I left. And as soon as I get home, I'm going to set it all up. And you'll be able to at least see me in a not- Johnny, you'll just send me the specs for that because I'm in the market for a new computer. You got it.

Okay. You got it. It took Apple three weeks to make it and finally send it. No way. That's cool. I had to go to the Apple store and pick it up. Wow. I like it.

Okay. Well, let's do some questions. And thanks, everyone. Please like, follow and share the show. Oh, before we do that, let's go ahead and bring in producer Robbie West. He has some things he needs to talk to us about. Robbie, thanks for keeping us informed. Yeah, no, this will be short, sweetened to the point.

I apologize for my voice. At least I can talk a little bit now. You don't have measles, do you? No. I haven't been tickling tons. Reasonable question. Anyway. Oh, yeah.

No, no for sure. No, just real quick. with John's account over on Rumble, we are going to be bringing over all of his podcast appearances, all of his shows. Unfortunately, this will be a Rumble exclusive. The reason is that YouTube will punish you if you,

they call it duplicate content. So even though he appears on a show, YouTube will hammer his YouTube channel, even though he's actually there. A Rumble does not have that constraint. So we are going to be building a library. So if you are a fan of John, Kariaku. Then it's after

to scour the hinterwebs, you will be able to start finding all of his appearances in one place on Rumble. And that's what just that's going to happen, just to search for John Kariaku, and he will pop up and yours truly will be building that starting today.

Thank you, Robbie. Thank you. I'll tell you what, just the last couple of weeks, I couldn't have gotten any of this stuff done without Robbie. Robbie's been sick. He's been distracted. you know, with life and still, he's gone out and done it. So thank you, thank you, Robbie.

Okay. Happy to do it. All right. Is that it, Robbie? Yep, that's it. Okay, let me know when we have an ad. We got an ad. Just popped up.

Okay, please put it up. Okay, and we'll start. We'll take a question in the meantime. Okay, so let's go, let's hit the, go and go. Do you have something, John? I just wanted to say, Jesse Jackson passed away a couple of hours ago. And, you know, whether you like Jesse Jackson or hate Jesse Jackson or disrespect Jesse Jackson for his actions on the Dave Martin Luther King's assassination and the next morning, the man was still a giant in Democratic Party politics of the, of the, you know, last quarter at least of the 20th century. And no doubt.

It's a big deal that he passed. It is a big deal. Yeah, it really is. certainly we could list some complaints about Jesse Jackson. But I think the Democratic Party is a better party, at least it was for a while, because he was in it and tried as hard as he could to push the party slightly to the left.

He may have succeeded for a little while. The party sort of left him. Oh, for sure. Well, he was a Bernie figure. like Howard Dean and, you know, John Edwards. Who did quite well in his runs for the presidency. Yeah, his 1988 campaign in particular was extremely successful. He didn't second in 88, did he not?

Yeah, I think that's right. It's amazing. To do caucus, yeah. Yeah, no, I mean, for sure. Let's hold that thought because I do want to talk a little bit about Jesse Jackson. We have that ad to read. Still haven't tried 1775 coffee. Now is your shot, the 1775 Starter Kid just

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in a morning routine that stands for something just like Rumble does. Okay. But go ahead, John. You were saying about Jesse. You know, Jesse Jackson was not the most popular figure within the black political community because he was with Martin Luther King when Martin Luther King was assassinated. He was standing about 10 feet away when the shot rang out. But what he did is he soaked his hands in Martin Luther King's blood and then wiped his hands on his shirt. And then the next morning he appeared, the next morning he appeared on ABC's Good Morning America, still wearing the shirt. Corretta Scott King was livid that he had done that because she believed, I think correctly, that he had done it to burnish his own civil rights credentials.

For sure. And so he had a lot of trouble with the old school MLK people, the people who were closest to Martin Luther King through the 60s. And he was considered a bit of a huckster. My DMZ co-hosts, Scott Stantis, who's sat in for you a couple of times. he's worked in Chicago for a long time and he said that there were so many foul stories that came out about Jackson, for example, you know, bullying companies to demand that a member of his family get a franchise that they didn't qualify for or having members of his family spot a cute young thing in the audience and he had his own kids procure a cute young thing from the audience and And, you know, hey, I'd like that bundled up and sent to my room. So, you know, I mean, definitely not like the, you know, not a perfect human being by any means.

But at the other, on the other hand, there was, though he was really kind of where progressivism lived inside the Democratic Party all throughout the 80s and I would say well into the 90s. And, you know, the Democratic Party has ruthlessly crushed it ever since the 70s. They crushed Ted Kennedy, then Jackson, then Dean, and so on, goes on and on. Yes, indeed. So, yeah, I mean, he's a really important figure. And, you know, obviously, it's just his third party runs are really where it's at. A Rainbow Push Coalition, I'm not sure how much good they ever did. Yeah, I agree.

I don't think that they ever really amounted to anything outside the city of Chicago. but he tried hard to remain relevant for a very long time. A very long time. Yeah. And then you want to talk about, should we mention Robert Duval? I mean, who is one of our... He's so bad about that. One of our great actors.

Yeah. I feel very bad about the death of Robert Duvall. I mean, the guy was 94 years old. But Ted, I did not have any idea that he lived in northern Virginia. Oh, I... 30 minutes from my house. I would not have known. Apparently he was a very cranky, easily angered fellow who basically did not suffer fools gladly or maybe even people who weren't fools. But who cares about that. I mean, the point is he was an incredibly versatile, very rye actor, right? Like, he always had this droll kind of vibe. And, you know, I mean, he was, he's kind of like the consummate perfect supporting actor. Like, you know, he's, he's kind of like the consummate perfect supporting actor. Like, you know, he's, you know, he's. I felt like his lead roles were never that great, like in The Apostle,

but even though he was nominated for an Oscar for that, but I felt like, I mean, God, the other stuff is unimpeachable. I couldn't agree more. You know, and I had forgotten until I read the obituary that he played Boo Radley in To Kill a Mockingbird. That's how he got his really first big break. And then Harper Lee, actually sent him a telegram that just said,

hello, boo, and it was the only contact that they ever had. That's really funny. God, I wonder if there's ever been any piece of American pop culture that's generated more spin-off references than to kill a mockingbird. The Boo Rowdies were a band. I mean, you know, like there's so much stuff like that. So, yeah. Well, rest in peace, Robert Duval.

He was actually 95. It was a long life and by all accounts a good one. So, okay, let's do some more. Let's do some questions. Okay, Sneaker Dad, I bought three leper colony coins last weekend. They're from Columbia. I was told the ones from China are more expensive. That's a callback to something that, who did we mention?

Oh, was that you? John, that you mentioned the leper colony coins? Oh, yes, we did talk about the leper coi. No, it was not me. It was one of our viewers who talked about them. And then while we were on the air, I looked on eBay. And sure enough, there they were. They're cool.

Yeah, that is cool. Colin Plake, good morning to both of us. John, can you give advice on how you approach learning a foreign language? I was informed Arabic is one of the most difficult languages to learn. Yeah, it is. It's one of the most difficult languages to learn. The CIA, knowing that it's one of the most difficult languages to learn, demanded immersion, total, complete immersion. And so we were in Arabic from 8 to 4.30 every day, Monday through Friday, with a one hour break for lunch.

But I went beyond that. I would get into the classroom at 5 a.m. and put on a pot of coffee. I would study until seven. I would have a private tutorial from seven to eight and then go from eight to four, 430. So I was 11 and a half hours of Arabic a day, nothing but Arabic. We were not permitted to speak at all in English after just the second week. And if that meant you had to use, you know, hand signals, you used hand signals.

We didn't even learn the whole alphabet until Christmas. We started the last week of August. And then we had to do, well, this is going to sound kind of funny, but we had to do, like, it is normally a foreign immersion. We would go to Cairo for six weeks and just, you know, be immersed in Cairo in the city speaking Arabic. But I took Arabic during the Clinton budget cuts. And so there was no money to send us to Cairo. So I had to go to Detroit for six weeks and just stay in, you know, the Arab. you know, Arab town or whatever they call it in Detroit for its weeks.

And it was cold. It was in the winter. It was in the winter. But it helped my Arabic. You know, and I was thinking about something else. Speaking of immersion. This was in 1993 as I was studying. And I had this awesome instructor.

I had three awesome instructors. They were all CIA employees, but they were all ethnic Arabs, born, two of them born in Egypt and one born in Lebanon. And they would take us to the Arab bookstore in Falls Church, Virginia. They'd take us to the Arab grocery store in Fairfax. They'd take us to, you know, this Arab group and that Arab group. And we had to speak Arabic. So anyway, directly across the street from a condo that I, that I lived in, was this new mosque. It's the biggest mosque in northern Virginia. So our instructor, Ibrahim, he said one day, we're going to go to the mosque.

Everything's going to be in Arabic, of course, and we're going to meet with the imam of the mosque, and we're going to talk about Islam in Arabic. And he knows that you're just learning. So we're going to talk, we're going to speak very slowly. So we go to the mosque. And who's the imam of the mosque, Ted? But a guy named Anwar Al-Aulaki, who later went on to be al-Qaeda's chief spokesman. and was murdered by a drone launched by Barack Obama.

So years later, I was the only person that was still in the CIA when we killed Al-Laki. So forgive me, that I was still in the area when we killed Al-Lakki. So when I was at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, I went to Yemen. That's when we killed him. This was two weeks before we killed him. And I was meeting with the FBI, the legal attache at the American Embassy in Sana. and he said, I went in and I said, hi, I'm John Kiriaku. And he said, right, you're John Kiriaku, born August 9th, 1964, Sharon, Pennsylvania.

You graduated from Newcastle High School, Newcastle, Pennsylvania, June of 1982. You joined the CIA, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. He had my whole life. And I was like, very funny. And he said, you're going to do me a favor. And I said, oh, yeah, what's that? he said, I'm going to give you a classified briefing, which I've been specifically instructed not to do. And in exchange, when you go back to Washington, you're going to get me two assistant slots here in the embassy.

I said, okay, that's a deal. I can find two assistant slots for you, the budget for it. So he gives me this classified briefing. It was about Alaki. And he said, you're the only person still in government who has ever met Alaki. So we want to debrief you. said, come on, man. I said, that was 20 years ago. I don't remember anything about Al-Laki. It was 18, 18 years ago. I don't remember anything about Al-Laki. And he said, we just want to get your recollections,

what kind of person he is to talk to? I said, what are you going to do? You're going to approach him. You can't find him. You don't even know what country is in. And he said to me, I'll never forget it. He said, we know his location within three feet. Oh, man. And I said, oh, shit. And then they droned him two weeks later. Why'd they care about his personality if they're just going to blow it, blow up his personality? I think the speculation in my mind was that there was an argument between the CIA, which wanted to drone him and the FBI, which wanted to try to recruit him.

And the CIA won and said, screw that. We're droning him. Gotcha. Wow. That's crazy. That's a crazy, crazy story. Wow. Okay, then.

Let's do some questions. Good morning from handsome libertarian. I was curious your guys' thoughts on AOC and Newsom's speeches in Munich. Also, John, did you know there's a conspiracy on Twitter that you still work for the agency made me laugh. Yeah, I left a comment that just said, fuck you. That seems like a succinct response. Yeah.

Yeah, well, we talked a little bit about this. I mean, Newsom's speech was, I think, unworthy of comment. AOC's speech was surprisingly babbly and incompetent. I mean, she's not a dumb person. But she obviously doesn't know what the fuck she's talking about. See, and that's the issue. Because that's how it sounded to me. Do you think she's an actual serious candidate for the Democratic nomination for president?

No. Because I'm not seeing it. No. No. I mean, if she thinks she is, if she thinks she is, she's not. No, she can't do it. I mean, honestly, I hate to say this. And I really was trying to check in with myself for my own inner misogynist, right?

But I'm like, she sounds like Kamala. She's like, she babbles. It's like she sounds like, a bird brain. You know, it was like, now, there are a lot, obviously, I mean, there's lots of brilliant women politicians, but those are two who are not.

And I don't know. I mean, I think she just doesn't know, you know, everyone says foreign policy is not her forte. I mean, she just confirmed that. I mean, she should not have given that speech. Yeah, without any question. It really, it really fucked her up. I think, I mean, it was probably, I mean, it's not a total fucking like she can't come back from this,

but it's a, you know, it's a setback for her. Yeah, it hurts. And the thing is, is when you're playing at that level, that high level of politics, the funniest things, the smallest things or the apparently smallest things will do the most damage. Do you remember, I remember in 1984, there was a, there was a commercial that Gary, Gary Hart was running against Walter Mondale when they were running against each other for the Democratic presidential nomination. And there was some sort of minor factual error in it. And Hart said, we're going to pull the ad.

And then they didn't pull it for two days. And I remember on the news, commentators saying, this is a grave error, a grave miscalculation on the part of the of the Gary Hart campaign. And I remember thinking, why? They just, they let this stupid ad go for two extra days. days, it turned out to do serious damage to the heart campaign. Yeah. He wasn't a man of his word. He didn't have control over his own people.

His people are morons because they knew that this was untrue and they ran it anyway. So you never know what little issue is going to take root and really cause people to second guess possible candidacies. I think this is one of those situations. Well, I think that what happened here to your point, John, is that nobody had, it had never crossed anyone's mind to ask, hey, how's AOC on foreign policy? Yes. It just never came up. And so she decided to basically answer a question that hadn't been asked yet, but then that prompted, like, well, this is a question we should be asking. And now you've answered it poorly. Yes, I think that's if you hit it on the head. And so, you know, it's kind of like, I mean, I would have assumed, I mean, seriously, if you had, John, if you had said, oh, AOC is giving a speech. Let's watch it tomorrow.

You know, let me know what you think. I would have not anticipated that she would fuck up. I would have, you know. Because she's smart. She's smart. She's smart. But when you're playing the game at those verified levels, yeah. She's not that well educated on this, on these points, obviously.

Yeah. It would be like me giving a speech about economics. What the heck do I know about economics? Yeah, everybody's got weaknesses. And I think it's important to know them. What I, what baffles me, John, is why, I mean, she's, reading a speech. Why didn't she have a staffer who was knowledgeable on this stuff? Seriously. A better speech. That's right. Exactly.

Question for you, John, from Kodarak. China has had spectacular public espionage successes against us. Are we giving as good as we get maybe privately? Yeah. Yeah. How should I say this without getting myself in trouble? We've had success against the Chinese. We have for many years. many years. So this is a this is a game that is played well on both sides. The Chinese, if you look at Americans arrested for passing information to the Chinese, the last like three or four people have been people without access to really the most sensitive information. They're, you know, think tank people or, you know, people married to people who might have access or it's it's not the aldrich ames you know or or or or harold nicholson's of the world on the other hand you don't hear about americans getting arrested by the chinese and i think it's because the tradecraft is better um thanks for the for the dollar from ray asking for my favorite song by the punk band the exploited uh fuck the system is mine uh for me i'd have to go uh troops of tomorrow probably or punk's not get can't can't go without punk's

not dead. Okay. Let's see. Okay, sorry. Another question for you, John, from Frasmataz. When and where do we look for the Oh, Jesus. The Brennan-Ebstein connection. Can you remind us on the show once something has been published? Yeah. If you want to look, I'm going to search for it right now. If you want to look at the at the emails themselves go to it's it's easy www. justice.gov slash Epstein and it's they've set it up as a search engine so you can just go right in and see the raw documents so you go in there what I did was I just went to that website and I typed in John Brennan and up popped the the emails between Epstein and

Catherine Remler, the former White House counsel, who lost her job a couple of days ago because of her ties to Epstein. So yeah, you can, you can, you can search them independently. I got a call from Tucker Carlson yesterday saying that he's preparing a deep dive into these Epstein files. And did I want to talk about them? And I said, I didn't feel like I was qualified, but I recommended a friend of mine who has been just living and breathing Epstein documents for the last two or three weeks. So there's going to be a lot of good analysis coming out in the next few weeks. Well, that's, by the way, demureing like that is the kind of thing AOC should have done on speaking of Christine. So 3.5 million documents out of a total of six million have been released.

There's no sign that the administration ever intends to release more. Many of the 3.5 million have been redacted, but I'm going to skip that topic. Why is there, this is a law, right? It's not a law. It's not a policy. It was passed 429 to 1 in the House and 99 to nothing in the Senate. And signed by the presidents of the United States. Where the fuck are the 2.5 million documents? And what is the redress to getting them? Well, the documents are, according to Pam Bonn, not to be forthcoming. She just decided. That's a violation of the law.

That is a violation of the law and she should be held in contempt of Congress. She likely will not be. But by all accounts, there are another three million or so documents that are still in the DOJ system, that she is compelled by law to release and she is not. Yes. There's no leeway in that law that says like, oh, all of the. ones except the ones I don't want to release. All is all. Philip Blair asking, is someone trying to incite a years of lead in France? The years of lead is Italy in the 60s and 70s when there

was a lot of political violence. I mean, I don't know if anyone's trying to incite it, but right now, I feel like the justice minister is behaving very rashly. You know, Macron's is acting like an adult and trying not to incite. But they're trying to turn this, this, uh, uh, de Ranc guy into a Charlie Kirk. They're trying to make hay out of it and say that like the left wing, the left is inherently murderous. And I mean, you know, in a, in France, as here, political violence is usually a right wing thing. Yeah. Yeah, right. Um, question for both of us, Desert Fox. What do you make of the connection with the Rothschilds in the Epstein files? As a follow up,

please address the satanic. ritual abuse of children. So that's not a comfortable set of questions, is it? Okay, well, Rothschilds, I mean, and the reason that's not comfortable is because the Rothschilds, you know, stuff about the Rothschilds always plays into traditional anti-Semitic tropes. The problem is stuff about the Rothschilds really are a real thing. Yeah.

And so- They're a real family. Ironically, most of them don't have any money. I learned that just recently on the BBC. Yeah, it's 140 years old, right? I mean, it's an old financial dynasty. As for the satanic ritual abuse of children, I'm not, okay, I need someone who lives and breathes the Epstein files.

What do you know about this, John? I don't know very much. A couple people have asked me about this over the last few weeks. And listen, I am not the definitive word on this, but I haven't seen anything indicating that there was satanic ritual. abuse of children. I know that it's been it's been alleged. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. They haven't seen anything. Yeah, I'm not, and by the way, this is not my weasel way of saying, you know, I'm denying it. I literally just don't know. Yeah. Oh, Robbie may know something.

Okay. Here, let's see. We'll put up Robbie. There we go. So what I've, I'm not an authority on Epstein, but I do know about the temple and stuff. Basically what it is is that he was, he built a temple to the, to the old pagan owl god called Molok. And so, and so to kind of give you as one does.

Yeah, no, for sure. Well, the thing is, like, for example, in the book of, in the book of Joshua, when the Israelites went and God told the Israelites to wipe everyone out, it was because they, the Canaanites at the time, they worship Molok.

and then the way they would set the way they worship to them is that they would cause your children that they called pastor the fire so basically they burn their children alive and so moloch worship all the old testament moloch ball bail satan those are all names basically for the same kind of being and so epstein he really did have a temple to moloch on his island and a lot of these emails are coming up we're just coming out really referencing all of that so that's where this is coming from. Oh, yeah, for sure. And so I mean, not. Well, I mean, it's just, I mean, it was just sick. The dude was, he was honest to God satanic. He was satanic.

And one of the biggest, one of the biggest things that, that, that's a tentative Christianity, for example, is that Jesus said, no, suffered little children come under me and be better for a millstone. So be tied around someone's neck. We thought it to the seed and a herd of a child. Moloch on the flip side is the totally inverse of that. You bring your children to them. You would sacrifice your child typically by burning them a lot, by roasting them,

by put them on superheated arms of this statue that has arms up like this. And so if you read, if you ever read through the Bible, just do a search for passing through the fire. That's what I was talking about. So about Moloch. Yeah, Ball's different, right? Ball's a fertility god. Yep. Yeah.

Okay. All right. So, I mean, God and Ball were not really good friends, but I mean, but came to, but never God commanded the Israelites to wipe out another group of people. Moses was pissed because the Israelites were worshipping Baal. Yeah. And the Monarch was just that much worse. May I answer a question from our friend, Sodan? And we want to say thanks to Sneaker Dad.

Thank you very, very much. The $100. The $100. $1. Well, Sneaker Dad asks about the coffee in Dubai. Don't judge me for drinking Starbucks. It just happens to be a Starbucks in the lobby of the hotel. But the coffee here is incredible. It's traditional Arabic coffee, of course, where they roast the beans, like, as you need them. And then they grind in some cardamom as well. I've always really loved it. I've been drinking a lot of it.

And then the Minister of Digital Security told me today that there's an amazing new Greek restaurant that serves the best Greek coffee he's ever had along something called Fashion Row. I'm going to go there tomorrow and check it out. And then Sodon asks, can we please give him an educated answer on why Rizapalabi was in Munich? Have we not learned from Iraq and Ahmad al-Machalibi? Oh my God. That was exactly what I thought when I saw the news that. Reza Pahlavi was in Munich. First of all, I'm surprised that he could find his way to Munich without assistance. Secondly, we should not judge his popularity based on what we saw in Munich. The crowds in Munich were huge by Iranian standards, maybe as many as 20,000 people. Reza Pahlavi is an idiot. I was speaking today with people here in Dubai who are... Yeah, he's the pretender to the throne of Iran.

He's the pretender, yeah. They're very well informed on these issues, and multiple people came up to me and said, the U.S. can't really be serious about Reza Palavi, right? And I said, no. And then I said what I always say. But they always do stupid shit like this. Yeah, we do. I said what I always say, that if he were to return to Iran, he would not survive the walk

from the airplane to the terminal. And then the person I was speaking with said, they'll blow up the plane before it lands in Taiwan. Probably. And I said, yeah, Reza Palavi's not going to, he's not going to go back to Iraq. And I'll tell you another thing. Most Iranians who even are supporters of the former royal family will say that Reza's younger brother was the brains of the family. and that he might have actually become a good leader. But he committed suicide in Boston.

Why? Because his older brother slept with his wife. Oh, man. So Raisa Pilevi is not the kind of guy you want to be the moral leader of your country. Lovely family. Okay, so, yeah, Dearborn is the Muslim, is the Arab neighborhood. Yeah, Dearborn, Michigan. And everybody's from Yemen.

and everybody works for General Motors. Ted, did you ever try learning a foreign language from yes. Well, I speak French fluently. But English is my second language. That might not come as a surprise to some people. I've also tried to, I picked up a little bit of Russian. Brittany Leach, since you both have spent time in southwest Ohio, what are your thoughts on Cincinnati, Chile?

I also took four years of Spanish and it didn't take. I don't care for Chile in general. general. But if I were going to get Chile in the United States, Southwestern Ohio is the place. Listen, Chile, as specifically Cincinnati, Chile was invented by a Greek. Oh, really? Oh, yeah. Well documented. He first moved to Brooklyn when he emigrated, and then from Brooklyn to Cincinnati. And he started experimenting with Chile in Brooklyn, took his experimental chili with him to Cincinnati, and it just experienced. exploded in popularity.

I like chili. All kinds of chili. Any kind of chili. Turkey, white bean makes no difference to me. I like all chili. I like Cincinnati chili very much. Although not Gold Star Chili. I don't like Gold Star.

It's not good. Not Skyline? Skyline's way, way better. Yes. I like it. One, Kyle. Thanks for the 10 bucks. How come when Russia bans telegram and WhatsApp

for breaking brush and data laws, the U.S. media considers a depression. But when the U.S. wants to ban TikTok for data, concerns, it's perfectly fine. I feel like that's a question that answers itself. There it is. We're such a prince. Yeah, yeah. That's pretty much it. Oh, dirty pest 44. Love your moniker. Morning guys, love all you do and John praying you get pardon until it happens. History question, do you two believe Hitler died in the bunker? Apparently we spent millions tracking him after the war. I 100% believe that he died in the bunker because

the Russians recovered bits and pieces of what was left and took them to Moscow, and they were eventually later tested, and that's all been verified. In fact, there are many stories about successive directors of the KGB who kept Hitler's skull on their desks as a souvenir, as recently as 1979. Yeah, I think it's well, I know there were all those stories in the 70s that, like, Hitler was driving a cab in Buenos Aires or whatever. But there was even the Simpsons episode about it where Bart was playing with the phone and he was calling just random numbers in the Southern Hemisphere to ask if the, when they flesh the toilet, if the water went the opposite direction.

And he just random dialed an elderly Adolf Hitler as he was trying to get to his car. And when Hitler finally answered the phone, Bart hung up. And he was, Hitler was frustrated that he had missed the call. And a guy riding by in a bicycle says, Buenos days, minefura. And Hitler says, yeah, yeah, Buenos Dias. Sky B, a little late today, but if you guys covered that Gallup is no longer tracking

presidential approval ratings. Yes, and it's probably because Trumps are low and that they were threatened by the Republican Party, that they would lose all of their gigs. doing polls for the Republican Party. Elliot, Ted, can you speak to the legacy of French colonialism in Algeria today? It's massive. How does it affect contemporary French politics?

I mean, it's still, for example, it's still front and center. I mean, France is lousy with, you know, very black faces from colonial French colonial Africa and it causes nativism and it informs right-wing politics and Le Pen stuff. basically the French, you know, that legacy is incredibly huge. And it's weird because so many normal French people who are not on the left don't think that they have any responsibility or an account. They don't owe anything to these former colonies or the people who live there, even though these places were raped economically and literally in some cases.

Yeah, no, it's a huge thing. Dem Will, thanks for the 20 euros. Yes, we've had enough of the U.S. bullshit. Yeah. John, from Maximum Effort, I've been looking for your previous appearance on the Sean Ryan show. It seems the episode has been pulled. Do you know if that's true or not?

Yeah, I've heard that a couple of times, which is funny because I'm still in touch with the producer, like on a regular basis. She just emailed me like yesterday or the day before yesterday. I'll ask because somebody else mentioned that they had looked for it and couldn't find it. Okay. Let's talk a little bit quickly about this. You know, the ice, obviously I'm not going to be tee up what ICE is up to.

But local police have kind of been seen as a bulwark in some cases against ICE, at least passive bulwark, like dragging their feet in terms of cooperating with them. But there's all sorts of deals now for local police departments to deport on behalf. half of ICE and coordinate with them for deportations. There were about 135 partnership agreements like that when Trump became president the second time. Now there are 1,168 and growing. John, do you view this as like sort of an attempt by the national government to effectively federalize not just immigration enforcement, but whatever clamped down ICE is planning in the future? I think it is. I think it is. you know on the one hand the government says that it wants to hire something like a hundred thousand new ice

enforcement agents it can't do that it needs congressional authority and approval to do that you need a congressional appropriation it ain't common and the democrats are going to win at least the house in november and so the next best thing is to succund local police department deputize the locals deputize the locals and today in the washington post there was a feature story on abby's Bannberger, Abigail Spanberger, the new Democratic centrist, Democratic governor of Virginia, literally the very first thing she did on the day that she took the oath of office was to sign an executive order forbidding any Virginia police departments from cooperating with ICE on enforcement issues.

God bless her for that. State by Grace. Let's get through our questions as quickly as we have with the minutes we have left. Do you believe the U.S. is about to be attacked by sleeper cells in over 30? cities, hospitals, hotels, etc. No. I've heard this a number of times. Not seeing it. Okay, let's go quickly here.

Duval played Robert E. Lee, another Virginian. Mike Mnoynegan. His mother was a descendant of Robert E. Lee. Oh, Mike and Monaghan, John's friend is asking, does the CIA have a union? The cops in the UK are forbidden to have one. And I was wondering for the same thing with the CIA. No.

The State Department Foreign Service has a union, interestingly enough. Not that it could do anything. You can't go on strike. You know, the diplomats are on strike. That should be it. By the way, you can't really call yourself a free country if you can't withhold your labor. That's right. And we've been keeping up with Cuba.

I called some of my company, a contestant of the Cuban military. And they said if the U.S. comes to Cuba, they're not fighting for Cuba. They would fight for the USA. I'm in pretty regular touch with a Cuban official in the Ministry of Culture. And I emailed them last week to ask him, what the heck is going on out there? And he said, well, we've been in these situations before. We just have to take it as it comes. That's pretty optimistic.

Pink Lady Apples, question for both of us. You know the government can spy on any of us, but do they actually watch boring everyday people like me, ha, ha, do they listen through my TV? No, they don't listen. They watch. Yeah, they listen. What they do, it's not necessarily a human being that is watching you. it's it's you know the giant create computers that NSA employs and so yeah they're and they're listening to our phones and they're reading our text messages and our emails and and they're just

saving all that data just and that was true in 2013 2011 the data that that you know that uh snowden released in 2013 so you know the technology is 15 years later now um let's see something for me here Ted you already answered that wasn't Jackson dealing drugs at one point? I haven't heard that. Sir Bikes a lot, thanks for the buck. Have we seen the Obama Library? It looks to me like a prison where hope and change in BLM got locked up.

I think this might be last, and we'll leave this with you, John, from Ray. Did you hear about the U.S. deal with the Armenians about leasing 40 miles of southern border for 99 years, cutting off the Silk Road? Also, U.S. building nuclear plants for AI centers there. Yeah. that's why the Armenians didn't object earlier this week when J.D. Vance went to Azerbaijan and it was to improve relations with Azerbaijan to use them against the Iranians. Okay, actually, time for one more, John, because I just want to hear the answer. 10 euros. Thanks from Demwell. John, during your time at the CIA, did you encounter instances where claims initially

dismisses conspiracies turned out to be true? Oh, sure. Always. I mean, it's more practical stuff than you might imagine. Like, will there be a coup in cutter, for example? It was no, no, no, no. Okay, yes. And then there was a coup. All right. That leaves it. We're going to leave that there. That does it for a deep program with Ted Rall and John Kiroak. Stay tuned for a TMI show with Ted Rolla Manila Chan coming up in just about a minute or two. Thanks for everyone who is supporting the show here. You can, we'll explain how you can end up on the closing credits. Tomorrow, I'll bring that up. John, have a happy travel. See you tomorrow morning. Thanks. See you tomorrow.