DeProgram with John Kiriakou and Ted Rall - Jesus Weeps | DeProgram with Ted Rall and Jamarl Thomas

Episode Date: May 18, 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: • A crowd of thousands transformed a block of the National Mall into an evangelical-style worship service Sunday at an event backed by Trump and funded with millions of taxpayer dollars. In an eight-hour lineup, speakers including top government officials framed America as a country founded to be explicitly Christian — and in danger if its population turns from their version of that religious faith. Sitting, standing, dancing and praising with hands raised toward a blazing sun, attendees appeared riveted as speakers took the stage during “Rededicate 250: A National Jubilee of Prayer, Praise & Thanksgiving.” Many said they were thrilled to see an event that tied the nation and its government so overtly to Christianity. • The Trump administration is considering the establishment of a $1.7 billion fund to compensate the president’s allies and others investigated by the Justice Department under Biden. The unusual plan, which Democrats and former government officials criticized as a vast political slush fund financed by taxpayers, is being fast-tracked. The fund would also address Trump’s separate pair of administrative claims against the Justice Department for its investigations into him. Trump has asked for $230 million for those claims. • Iran is threatening to impose fees on undersea Internet cables beneath the Strait of Hormuz, CNN reports, raising concerns that Iran could target a critical “digital corridor” for global finance, cloud services and communications as talks with Washington remain stalled. • The Long Island Railroad commuter rail system is on strike. The main sticking point is a pay raise. MERCH STORE: https://www.deprogram.live https://x.com/tedrall https://x.com/JamarlThomas LIVE ON RUMBLE: https://rumble.com/c/DeProgramShow SPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/show/2kdFlw2w8sSPhKI8NRx8Zu APPLE MUSIC: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/deprogram-with-ted-rall-and-jamarl-thomas/id1825379504

Good morning. You're watching the program with Ted Rall and Jamarle Thomas. It's Monday, May 18th, 2026. Thanks for joining us. And good morning, J.T. How are you? What's going on, man? You don't okay? I'm doing good. I had a relaxing weekend relatively, so that's good. How about you? Not a bad weekend. I mean, I work most of the weekend, but I can't say it was bad, per se. Because, you know, with Rumble, so when I do my show in the morning, 7 a.m. to 9, I do, I streamed to Rumble now. But that's just the live show. The individual shows of the individual segments don't necessarily go to Rumble. So over the weekend, I made an explicit effort to move that stuff over to Rumble. So the individual thing. Yeah, that took a while.

The migration is a lot of like, download, wait, upload, upload, wait, download, wait. upload. It's dead. Yeah. And it takes forever. It does take forever. Yeah. Yeah. But otherwise, it was good. No complaints. Okay, good. Well, I, uh, so even though you're in the Washington, D.C. Metro, well, you're not really in the D.C. Metro, I'm in Richmond. You're in Richmond, which is far enough away, like two hours. But there's, there was, so I don't assume you made it to Trump's, uh, evangelical tent worship service. I didn't go to that. No. Okay. I would have been deeply concerned, not for myself, but just, you know, that there might

have been an assassination attempt against the president by, you know, God. Right. And God wouldn't miss, unlike some people. So, yeah, I didn't want to be there for that. Not to mention I would have never have been. Yeah, so there's really crazy, we have to talk about that. Also, in the Friday, I've often thought it would be fun to have a, I think you and I talked about this, you know, months ago,

I thought it'd be fun to have a media dump podcast, just dedicated to the news that they dump on you on Friday afternoon and early Saturday morning because they don't want you to know what happened. You know, they want to be able to say, we dutifully released this, but thinking that nobody's really watching, there was a Friday afternoon media dump about Trump's plan to create a $1.7 billion taxpayer-funded slush fund in order to pay off J-Sixers and other Trump allies.

And last and certainly not least, President Trump himself would collect $230 million to compensate him. This would all be for Biden-era DOJ prosecutions. Also, Iran is threatening the fiber optic cables that go underneath the Strait of Ormuz. And the L-I-Double R, that's the Long Island Rays, railroad, which serves hundreds of thousands of New York commuters every day, is currently on strike. So that has some ramifications economically and otherwise that we can talk about in terms of labor and all that. Anything you want to talk about first? So one of my subscribers asked about this story coming out by Thomas Massey. Because Thomas

Massey, that race is fascinating. It is the most expensive race in congressional history. Israel, oh, let's say, again, I say Israel, because it's kind of like slavery during the Civil War where people are like, oh, it wasn't about slavery. It was about state's rights. It's like the state's rights to do what, right? To have slaves. I feel the same way about this, right? It's like, well, no, no, no, this is not Israel. These are Jewish donors. Jewish donors for who? For who? They're effectively trying to take out Thomas Massey. And they're putting like $20 million. into this race to get rid of Massey. And the way the race is breaking down, it is basically even. It's even split. If you're looking at the polling, the polling is going both ways. There's

something for Massey. There's some for the guy that Massey's running against. But the guy is basically just rarely firster, the entire existence, his political existence, except the hand of a foreign entity. But the point I'm making, one of my subs said that there was a scandal where Massey was buying, selling cows to pay hush money to women or something? It's an insane story. I hope that story is true. That's fascinating. You're selling a house.

A heifer for your heifer? Yeah. Right. That story is awesome. I mean, could he just cut the middleman? And like, if he has any ladies who are like more agrarian, like, listen, I give you this fine cow. This cow begin. giving lots of milk every morning.

Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Yeah, just give the cow. So, yeah, no, it is an interesting story. I mean, Thomas Massey is kind of a hero of the sort of maga purists who kind of feel like Trump lost his way. And he's a critic from the right, right, in the same way that you and I are like critics of the Democratic Party from the left. And he's a critic of Trump and the Republican Party for betraying their principal. I know here I should I should invite Robbie to talk about Thomas Massey.

You always spoken very kindly about Thomas Massey. Yeah. Thomas Massey is I mean, he's true blue. And there's a reason why they're going after him. He is, if you go through, if you look at APEC tracker, there is one member of Congress, one, who has never in his career taking one dime from APEC. And that's Thomas Massey. and in the world of Israel of Israel instead of America First politics,

that is a moral sin. And then you have the fact that Thomas Massey, he dares to criticize the God Emperor Trump. And actually stick to these things called principles. You can't have that in the Republican or the Democratic parties. Like, no, Roe Conner, he talks a big game, but what does he actually do? Nothing. I mean, he's not putting any skin in the game.

That's why they're not going after him the way that, that the establishment is with Thomas Massey. And that's one of the reasons why there's so much support grassroots of people just rallying behind them. Just, his average donor is, donates $90. That's his average. The average for this turkey that he's running against is Israel Firster, who doesn't even debate is like $150,000. That's not coming from a normal dude. Sorry.

No. So guys, APAC has not had a great run in sort of special elections recently. My running total on the back of the envelope is that they lost five, picked and won two out of the seven most recent races that they got behind. That's unusual. That's a really, that that's definitely not like what they're used to. If they lose this very high, profile race. At a certain point, their power is going to start to ebb, right? If this keeps happening, people are going to stop being afraid of them. The spell is going to break. You would think. I mean, I guess from my point of view, if you have to dump $20 million into a race, or if I think it was what a couple of terms ago where they spent like $100 million in races all throughout the United States for congressional seats, then there's a question about your popularity of why you need to spend that much money in order to get and corral people to your point of view. Right. So, no, I take your point being, if you're spending this much money,

first and foremost, it gets across a certain level of the popularity that you had to spend this much money in the first place. Correct. If you can't affect the win with that much money, especially when 90% of the seats are won by the side with the most cash, and you're dumping millions into races to get rid of people, what does it say about your reach and capability? and will people stop being scared of you because of that. At a certain point, right? I mean, if you just keep losing, at a certain point, you've been exposed as a paper tiger, and that's it.

We'll watch that. I don't know. I'm going to need to do a deeper dive into that. I don't know how popular he is within his district. You know, how there's these congressmen who are, there's congressmen who are kind of like, you know, big national figures like Dennis Kucinich, but he didn't really bring home

the bacon for Cleveland. Then there's those who are, like Senator Aldamato, formerly of Long Island, New York, who was famously like Senator Pothole and basically like was really good at taking care of his constituents. Then there's like the AOCs who managed to do enough of both. I wonder, you know, I don't know if Tom, I mean, I think the key is to be like AOC. That's what, if Massey is taking care of his district, he should be. relatively untouchable. I mean, he's been in there for over a decade. I mean, I would think he's

fairly safe. That race is close. Take a look at the polling on that race. That race is close. Yeah. I think he looked. I made the bet that he'd win. But it's going to be, but it's more closer than what it should be. Yeah. Yeah, that's my, that's my sense of it, too. Okay, let's talk about the slush fund. I'm kind of, this broke on Friday. So the Trump administration is echoing some tactics that were used by Obama in order to sort of extract taxpayer money. They're trying to basically, they're saying all the people who were Trump allies who were prosecuted during the Biden years, lawfare, if you will, if you're on the right, should be compensated, not least the president himself. and they want to create this taxpayer, you and I paying for it, $1.7 billion fund. And, you know, look, you and I have been sympathetic to the president and others on the right

who were targeted by the Biden administration. It was gratuitous. It was wrong. So, I mean, there is an argument to be made like these people should be made whole. Like, why should you, if you just happen to follow the crowd in to the Capitol on January 6th, and you walked around, and now you have hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees and your life is, you know, you're broke. Someone should make you whole. I kind of think that's about, there is an argument to be made there.

But the question is who should make you whole? And, I mean, maybe the DNC, maybe Joe Biden personally. but I don't think that as a taxpayer, I had anything to do with that. And I don't think I should have to pay for it. And I really resent the idea that a man who's worth billions of dollars, even though he was wronged and aggrieved in some of these cases, the president should be dipping his dick into the taxpayer trough. It just seems it's so unseemly.

But on the other hand, I don't know, I'm on the one hand, this, on the other hand, that. What do you think? Yeah, I'm not on the other hand of anything. From my point of view, this is outrageous. The president is monetizing the president's. And this is true, whether you're talking about crypto, this is true, whether you're talking about the deals that just came to light in the New York Times where Trump made like $700 million worth of deals or something like that or stock trades over the course of the last year. And let's put that in perspective for the moment. the president knows what he's going to do in a foreign policy sense and how that's going to affect the markets. And he's using that knowledge in order to get his maximumance his own profit.

Yeah, over and over and over, particularly with the Iran war. I mean, the guy is bouncing the energy markets like a super ball. I mean, it's over and over. And so then to turn around and say, by the way, I want the U.S. government to just give me money, I want to get rid of a pretense. Just give me cash. Just give me money. That's what I want the U.S. government to do.

That's outrageous. Like, I mean, like, I know we said outrageous a lot, but it's appropriate a lot. Yes. Now, if we wanted to make the case that Trump was treated unfairly about a U.S. government, yeah, fair enough. I'd make that case. The Democratic Party mistreated Trump in this case in a way that they were going after him because those people were Democrats. And whether they were used it or rush gate stuff, whether they were using the lawfare.

Because if you're going to do that, then you also need money from the state of New York for going after Trump for lawfare. Like, you know, going to hush money paid it to a porn star. That nonsense. What they tried to put him in a cage for was for Hillary Clinton, who, by the way, was the same thing. It might not have been hushed money to a porn star. But what they were getting Trump ultimately for was it the same thing for Hillary Clinton for. You didn't disclose where the money was coming from. you use this term, you know, whatever term you use, that's insufficient.

The Clinton slap on the wrist for Trump, we want to put you in a cage. I get it. I get the argument. I made the arguments against them going after Trump for this nonsense, meaning if you're going to go after for something, go after something real, like the impeachment thing. But no. Just no. Just flat out no.

Jamarrow, the right before, you were on the air this morning on your own show when the New York Times released its new Sienna poll, in Sienna College poll, it says, it basically finds, not surprising, that Trump is at a new low for his second term. He's down to 37 percent. Other polls have shown him at 33 percent. He is underwater in a huge way on the cost of living. That's literally his worst. It's the most important issue to voters, and it's his worst performance. Sixty-nine percent disapproved, 28% approved. He's underwater by 42 there. The war in Iran, which is closely tied to the cost of living, he's underwater by 34. The economy overall, he's underwater by 31. I mean, this is bad, right? So I guess the thing is, what about the optics of this? He's being perceived. He's already being

quoted over and over and over, like, about like, oh, I don't pay any attention. I don't care about the economic pain caused to Americans. He's on top of that grifting, you know, living this luxurious lifestyle and grifting now, grifting the taxpayers, even though everyone knows he's loaded. So it's like, isn't he basically, he's the orange pig, right? I mean, basically he's being perceived as like, like, he doesn't care about you. He's spending money like crazy. But your austerity, your austerity is good for you, but not for me. I mean, that's a classic, you know, that's a classic example of what you're not supposed to do in politics. And here we are, right?

So this, to me, the slush fund story plays into this narrative. It just makes him look even worse. It does make him look worse, but he doesn't care. No, he doesn't seem to care. Like, meaning, what's... Maybe he wants the money so bad. He really just doesn't care. I mean, it's like...

What skin is it off of Trump's back? He's not running again. He's 80-some years old, meaning he's probably going to die in a couple of years. True. What does it matter to him in this case? And you can say, well, it matters to Republicans. Does he care about Republicans? I mean, you're talking about a hubristic narcissist

that's a pathological liar that is a psychopath that doesn't seem to care about babies being murdered at his hand when he's blown up school. Or, for that matter, screwing over the American taxpayer, where he was straight up tell him, I don't care about what you're encountering. I don't care about your financial hardships. I don't care that I'm the cause of him. Right.

He doesn't seem to care. This doesn't seem to be strings on it in this way. You're right. Okay, so why doesn't he care? I mean, this is a man who you and I both know was obsessed with polling. So is it that he's an incumbent and he doesn't think he's going to run again

and therefore he's like whatever, I can do whatever the fuck I want. Is he's just old and senile and like basically badening out on us and like he's losing it? Is it something else? I think he's old. I think he's not running again.

He's probably going to be out of politics after this race, even if he lives. Like I don't think he cares. I don't think there's strings on him. He doesn't care about the Republican Party. He doesn't care about, you know, the possibility that his entire legacy might be largely erased by a democratic wave. True, but this sounds like a cash grab, wouldn't anything else.

Why does an 80-year-old man need a cash grab? Family was. Like, meaning Trump may not have any association with the Republican Party in any real sense, meaning he's not an institutionalist. Like, it's not like he's not Mitch McConnell, for example, who may actually they care about the state of the Republican Party when he leaves. Do you get the sense that Trump is that guy who cares? I don't.

I mean, give me your take on this. I mean, I don't get the sense that Trump cares about the Republican Party. I don't get to sense he's institutionalist. I get to sense he's transactional. What can I get out of you? But at the point where I'm leaving politics, I don't believe for a moment Trump Jr. is going to be a viable political figure.

then what strings are there? I know your point is legacy should matter. I mean, that's the thing. It's like, yeah, I mean, if you're, I mean, he sends a lot of messaging that, you know, like that seems to indicate that he cares about legacy, right? He puts his name on everything. He wants the big triumphal arch. He wants to, you know, go over the top on the 250th anniversary of the Republic.

Like, I mean, these are all indicators to me that he wants, that he cares about being remembered and being remembered fondly. But then in order to do, I don't, maybe he doesn't understand history, but in order to do, to do those things, you have to, to be remembered fondly, you have to have some crossover appeal, right? Like, like, you know, there were Republicans who voted against FDR who nevertheless remembered him fondly for, you know, not letting their families starve during the Depression. Or, you know, there were people who didn't, wouldn't have voted for JFK, but respected his charisma,

his youth and all that, his ambition. And on the right, you know, vice versa, there were a lot of liberals who respected Ronald Reagan and they'd be like, okay, give that guy his due. That's what allows, like, the Reagan, you know, the airport to be named after Reagan. It's what it lets, you know, the international trade building to be named after Reagan. That stuff sticks, right? Like, stickiness is important. He's not going to, I don't think the way things are going.

He's going to have any stickiness. He's going to have a legacy as the worst president in history of the union. And probably, if I would even go further, the president that where this kind of canary in the coal mine was seen in the most obvious and clear. sense of terms in regards to the decline of the U.S. Empire. He will be remembered. It's kind of like the guy saying, I want to be, I want to die famously. And so he sets up his house and everything else. And then at the last minute, he has used the toilet and he ends up dying on the toilet. And he becomes famous to die in the toilet. It's that. It's like, you know, the king died on the toilet. He will be remembered. Yeah, he'll be in a way that I think you want.

Not in a good way. John D. Cackelfeller says, I spent about $150 this last election, buying every single Trump campaign pin. John, you got to let me know why, because I collect campaign pins. And I got to know why. I mean, like, why would you? You know, I mean, why? I wanted Bernie pins.

Some of my more recent politicians. Williams Williams Brown. Oh, what is those dolls called? The little dogs that they have? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. What are those called? The pez dispensens? Not the pest dispensers.

The bobbleheads? The bobbleheads. Yeah, it's like a bobble. bobblehead, but they also have like these little, I used to have the Star Trek ones behind me. But I wanted a Sanders one, but there was no way to be found because they were so, they were sold out. Everybody had. Here's his answer. My hope was that he would basically do a Trump term one and end out with his base still adoring him.

And I could scam some mouth breather out of a bunch of money for the campaign. Huh. Well, it's funny because, you know, great minds, right? So Scott Stantis, my colleague and best friend and also over my co-host of DMZ America, he and I both collect pins a lot. And he was theorizing that Grover Cleveland's stock would go way up after Trump won this reelection because Grover Cleveland's the only other president who successfully was out and then returned after a term in the way that Trump did. and it's like, oh, people will take an interest in Grover, Cleveland.

And I was like, I don't think Americans are historical enough to do that. But I picked up some Grover Cleveland Ephemera, just in case. Didn't really do anything. Very skeptical that Americans are going to be like, hey, Trump did this. So let me go back and look in history and figure out what a president. I don't buy that. I don't buy it. Not Americans, no.

That's not how we are. Let's do some more comments here. Matthew, $20 billion for $174,000 congressional seat. It's a good point. Maybe Bluth Funk. I never understood Anglos who identify with Israel. It doesn't really make sense, nor to me. Wandi, Thomas Nassie voted against a bill that aimed to give data centers special exemptions

from environmental regulations. He believed that no industry should receive special treatment. under the law. But maybe blue funk. But guys, compared to the real richos, Trump is poor. His net worth is like $4 billion. And we're talking about people who are in the $30 billion, Elon with $400 billion.

Trump is a peon to them. True. Man, child, thanks for the donation. Why is anybody surprised at Trump's behavior? He has gifted everyone for decades. Everything he's put his name on has died. How can anybody be shocked? Jesus fucking Christ.

shot I guess because it's one thing to grift in real estate is another thing to grift on a federal stage in front of the entire country in the world

and to do it in this kind of shameless over-the-top way like meaning this is not even being hidden this is just over-the-top and you would think that there would be pushback that people would be like

hey it's kind of problematic that the president is maximized profit off the presidency. That looks weird. Well, it is, look, I've mentioned this to you before. Maybe you have an answer

for me, because I don't have it. Why the fuck did the Democratic Party impeached Donald Trump over what they impeached him over, but not emoluments, which is specifically stated in the Constitution as grounds for impeachment? Like, why on earth

in the first term did the Democrats not impugent? impeach him for emoluments. If I had to guess, and if I had to make an educated guess, I would say it's because whatever you hold your opponent to, you are stuck with for yourself going forward. If you do something like that with the president, you may very well create a situation where it's your guy for them to go after you.

That's what if I had to guess it. I mean, because if you look at your body, I was my best guess. I was like, I'm not quite sure I'm fully satisfied with it, but it's my best guess. That's the only guess I have. Otherwise, I don't quite get it. Because honestly, it's a shoe-in.

I mean, even Republicans would have trouble voting against it. I mean, they'd figure out a way, but, you know what I mean? Like, it would be right. It's dead on. I mean, like, meaning the American public can kind of see it for what it is and say, okay, fair game, whether they are okay with the president. Maybe it's like kings. It was like, well, kings are appointed by God,

and we don't necessarily want to do anything to the king because we don't want to necessarily create a precedent for later on for other kings and queens, because if you can go after a king, then are they really appointed by God if you get them? But I don't buy that particular argument. I buy the argument more so kind of like the impeachment thing for George Bush. Yeah, we don't really want to do this because, you know, when we get in power,

we want to also be able to go into countries and attack countries. It can be that. Jack Samuels, we missed this one on Friday. So, Jack, if you're listening, we're sorry about that, but we're making up for it now. Thanks for the two bucks. J.D. Vance, suspending 1.3 bill. million dollars of Medicaid to California. Why? Because they're sociopaths. And what are they just

there's obviously just because California is a blue state and that's it. Correct. That's it. That's political malice. Yeah. At this point, nobody should be shocked at this point. Well, I guess that's a thing, right? Like, so people keep saying like, well, why are you shocked? Look, it's a valid point. If someone acts like a cock over and over and over and over, the next time they act like a cock. You shouldn't be like, oh my God, he acted like a cock. Right, right. But, I mean, true. But, you know, I guess I'm a rude. Because there's still things where I'm like, you know, it's kind of like, you know, there's still, I'm still, I still have the ability to be shocked. It's like, okay, like you did this, but there's a certain line you wouldn't cross. Oh, wait, you just crossed it.

And I find that surprising. So obviously, I must be, you should have. You should have. Yeah. You should have that sense. I mean, you should be outraged. This stuff is, like, this stuff is cancerous from a standpoint of a society. Like, the last thing you want is because what it does is it creates a division in the society of people who are this way and people who are somewhere else in a society that those divisions don't suppose it exists. It's supposed to be America, right? Texas.

Like, I don't like Texas. But if Texas had an earthquake or hurricane, I would expect the U.S. government to do. everything in his power to save the people of Texas. And if they didn't, I'd be pissed. I'd be pissed. Yes. I don't care whether it's a red or blue. Yeah, Western North Carolina is red, and I think the way those people were neglected was horrible. That's my point, right? Like, you would expect within the context of a country that the political leadership of the country looks at the country as one cloth.

We're all together. We're all together, like Puerto Rico after the hurricanes. Yeah, but the fact that he's creating this division, by definition, creates divisions. It's creating a distinction between one versus the other that shouldn't exist in America. Yeah, e pluribus nada. Okay, so let's talk about, should we do the LIRR? We'll take long. Sure. So this is the kind of thing we would have talked about probably.

You would have invited me on when you had your show on Sputnik as the resident New Yorker. So look, this is an interesting story. The Long Island Railroad, so New York City, a lot of people rely on, and its surrounding suburbs, rely on mass transit to an extent that is not comprehensible outside of the New York metro area. And so the subway operates within the five boroughs of New York City, although technically really within four. And then there's commuter rail that comes in and out.

New Jersey Transit. there's Metro North, which serves the northern suburbs in Connecticut, and then there's Amtrak also, but there's also the Long Island Railroad, which serves the 120 miles that go all the way to the eastern tip of Orient Point from Manhattan. The L.I.R, motormen and other employees, are some of the best paid municipal workers in the area. A lot of not at all uncommon for these.

guys to make in there mostly guys make about 120,000 or more a year with overtime you can make two 300,000 dollars a year. So they're on strike now the thing is this is a it's in part a sympathy strike on the part of the guys who drive the trains and collect the tickets and then the maintenance workers are the ones who are actually on strike but but the point is trains are shut down and the union is saying look yeah you've been giving us four or five percent a year increases, but effectively, that's not an increase at all because of inflation. We want real wage increases that are in excess of the inflation rate. I think that part is super interesting because I'm wondering if it lays a benchmark for other

labor disputes in the near future. It's also super interesting that they chose a time right when gas, prices were really, really high to walk off the job, right? I filled my tank yesterday. I paid $5.15 a gallon. Before all this started, I paid $2.85 a gallon. So, and I'm in New York, right? So the question is, I mean, how are, I guess the question is, does this, does this, I could see as the economy continues to deteriorate, a lot more labor unrest. In the 1970s when I was a kid, the economy wasn't great, and there were a lot of strikes. Coal miners, of course, the air traffic controllers under Reagan in 81. Are we going to see people who've been passed up for raises for years use their leverage,

especially related in the transportation sector to demand higher wages? And by the way, I'm highly I have no problem paying a person who drives a train a good salary. I don't want idiots driving trains. Oh, man, that's a tough one. I mean, because that's almost like looking at geopolitical events and making a rational assessment that your leverage is increased or decreased dependent upon what's taking place in the context of those geopolitical events. In this case, specifically, oil and energy, just going through the roof. Do Americans do that? Oh, that's a tough one.

I mean, here's the, the reality of it is, is regardless of what they want to do, they may not be in a position to ultimately do it. Like, play it out for a bit. Say, for example, the war escalates, which it seems like it is, because there's no way for Trump to effectively back down. There's a way for him to back down,

which is to back down, which is what he should do. That is what he should do. I don't think that is what he is going to do. Agreed. Especially as we were talking about hubris and this particular president, narcissism and even just the office in and in itself. There's a difficulty in the U.S. president accepting that it's been vested by a regional power, especially when you have a trillion dollar military and you're asking for $500 billion more for that trillion dollar military.

Like, it's hard for president. do it, especially when they are the ones that initiated the war in the first place. I'm saying if we play this out and this gets bad where their reprisal strikes by Iran, those strikes hit the oil infrastructure and everything else, this idea of speculators not incorporating the full cost of the war into the money that we're spending for the fuel. It's over with. All pretense is gone. It's not you paying $5 in gas, is you paying $8 in gas, $9 in gas. It's the gas going to $250. a barrel. It's stuff like that happening. If that's the case, then companies are not going to be a bit of energy necessary to run those companies and the mechanism by which they make profit,

basically. I'm selling something for you at a particular price where I can get a profit off of. That profit mechanism breaks down. If you're paying a huge amount of money for toilet paper and just to make it and you're selling it for $10 or $15, how is that going to function in your pricing model? Okay, people may need toilet paper, but what about stuff they don't need. Those companies are going to go belly up. Those people are going to lose their jobs. There will be protests, but it's not protests in the context of people coming off their jobs to protest. It's because they don't have a job or what they're paying for at the pump or because they can't afford basic stuff because things have gone through the roof as a direct result of the war that

Trump initiated. I guess I'm trying to say it may it may be difficult to do that if things get monstrously worse. Yeah. But give me a big on it. Maybe I'm getting this wrong. No, I mean, I think, you know, it becomes like a doom loop, right? I mean, the thing is, a lot of, one thing that's very perverse about capitalism is that during periods of economic expansion, there tends, you know, that's often a time when employers leverage their power over, you know, over labor.

and don't give, you know, the raises that are commensurate with the improvements in productivity and increases in profitability that would seem to say, hey, we're all rising, you know, the tide is rising, all the boats are going to go up. Guys, it's, you know, we're doing great. The stock markets, our stock is doing great. Everybody gets a 25% increase this year. Like, that just doesn't happen. And then at the end of the boom, and as you head into a slowdown and possibly a, recession, the resentments have piled up. And then by this point, often, it's kind of like I call it the ice cave effect. So in an ice cave, it's, you'll go in in like June and it's cold and there's

still ice in there because it because of the delay effect from the winter. And then vice versa, it's warm in the summer because of that delay. It's, and so you'll get people on, you know, you'll get, you'll get, you'll get workers going on strike, doing slowdowns. avatage and at the very, and making demands at the very time when actually there's really not a lot of extra money to be given by the employers and the employers are feeling like, you know, they're not feeling flush at all. So that's when you get a big conflict. And I mean, it's very perverse, but we keep seeing that cycle over and over. I feel like that's one of these. I mean, LIRR workers probably should have shaken down the railroad, you know, five years ago.

for this money. They didn't do it, and now they're pissed off, and they want more money. And so it's always this kind of like, you know, two sides can't talk to each other. By the way, best friend of mine worked for the railroads.

And I remember he was part of the union associated with the railroads. And I remember having a conversation with one day about like the political orientation. And his thing was like, look, we don't trust Republicans because we have no expectation of getting anything out of them. We don't trust Democrats. About the same token, you don't, like, that's not something we want to push either because

we don't entirely trust them either. Like many, there is kind of weird political quagmire where ostensibly they back Democrats, but they back them only because they think Republicans will actively go after them. Well, we're right about that. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, labor is in a peculiar spot. And then, I mean, look, I'm always on team labor in all these disputes.

So they're not, these are not the most sympathetic people because there's been all these stories in the New York area over the years of LIRR guys, you know, claiming to be on disability and then photographed at the golf course while they're on disability. And it's like, oh, I thought you weren't allowed to you couldn't stand. But there you are on the 17th hole. So, you know, that happens a lot, but, you know, whatever. Let's see. We should do some more comments here.

Okay. Frazmataz. Hey, do you want to ask Jamarland Ted if they heard of Chud the Builder? The weirdest part is like other jerks. He has a checkered past. Ajean provocateur. I do not know Chud the Builder. I do know about Chud as an insult.

but yeah i don't know who shut the building don't know sorry i don't know anybody who knows and by the way please like follow and share and don't forget the superchats and the rubble rats we do they really seriously are the way the show is going to be economically viable for us um California is very corrupt says keep it real

the money doesn't go to infrastructure and the homeless issue drug issue is bad but not real solutions can't arrest the homeless for being homeless. They try. Yeah, they do try. They have tried. Okay, Mr. A. Lee, I'm glad that he put this in. Raising wages is not going to make things better.

What needs to be done is to open the market to competition and flood the market. Okay, I hate to say this, but you can't really have competing railroads. It would cost trillions of, I guess in the early days of the New York City. Subway, they did have private competing railroads. But like, you know, seriously, you're not going to have a competition to the Long Island Railroad. It is what it is and it's a monopoly and for what it is. So, I mean, I love that when it's like, well, you know, it's like a doom loop, right? Like inflation is eating away people's wages, so they want higher wages. Higher wages cost higher costs, higher costs, being more inflation. That's all true. But what do you, but like,

You know, why should workers who are the people who are the most squeezed? Why should they be the ones who say, okay, we're the ones who will make a sacrifice for the greater good of reducing inflation? I mean, it's like, well, why? It's worse than that. Why should they take a hit for something that the government did? Right. Like, you may, it's one thing. If it's just kind of environmental where maybe it's the season, maybe it's, I don't know, people using more oil for a particular thing.

this is a war that the government launched on its own volition of an aggression just for geopolitical interests, meaning this is us looking for foreign wars abroad that is having feedback consequences. I felt, by the way, this is the same argument I was making it with Joe Biden, when Joe Biden was making this idea of a prudent price hike. And Jitsaki was arguing, what did she say, values are not without costs, that the entire point of having values on some level is the cost that you're willing. the pay to defend those particular values. Okay, for one, it's not our values. It's yours. And it's the government itself that made the choice of going after the way. Like, this is kind of like the slavery argument of reparations where people would be like, well, I wasn't around during that time, so I shouldn't have to pay for it. It's like, dude, it's the government

that was around that instituted the policy. It's the government that is responsible for this. And whoever was leading the government at that time, it's the same thing. We are paying higher gas prices, higher food costs as a direct result of what the Trump administration decided to do. Why should me, meaning I or any other worker, have to eat that cost? Well, so Mr. A. Lee, to be clear, was referring actually to the auto industry. If the U.S. let Chinese EVs into the U.S. car companies would have to lower their prices. Apple lowers its price in China.

Yeah, but do we, I mean, I kind of want to protect our car insurance. is what they don't. Yeah, I mean, I think all people are not understanding here is that we don't have, obviously, we don't have a global, unified, economic labor and management system, right? So the best way to understand free trade and internationalization is that capital is highly fluid. So if you want to build a manufacturing plant for, say, EV batteries, you can do that anywhere in the world, that you can find cheap labor, but people who are smart enough and skilled enough to do what you want. But if you're a worker, you can't move to wherever happens to have the highest

wages in the world. I mean, I remember when I got out of college, I looked up at the time, Cutter had the highest wages in the world. But, you know, I couldn't move to Cutter. I'm not allowed to move to Cutter. So management is fluid. Labor is static. And labor is static even just by inertia, right? Like, you know, labor is stuck because of family ties, cultural ties, linguistic ties to their community. It's moving is hard. You know, it's expensive. And that's not even getting into the legal issues. So, you know, the problem with Mr. A. Lee's suggestion here is, okay, so Tesla making cars in the United States, they have to pay American wages and American, you know, benefits. But, you know, Chinese EVs, obviously those manufacturers don't have to pay those.

And so, like, what that would effectively be doing is it would put downward pressure on American wages to the point where theoretically, would everything evened itself out, you know, we would, American workers, I guess, would be making about as much as Chinese workers. But our costs are so much higher. It's a different economy. We operate a different scale. So it doesn't work. I mean, all your, all your, you know, unless you go to one global socialist or capitalist, but one unified global one nation, you know, economy, but that's not happening. There's 211 countries. I mean, it's just going to here. If you think about it. I mean, like when Jeff Bezos goes to New York, you remember this? And it's like, hey, what are you going to give you to put my

building here? Hey, if you don't give me all of this money, you don't give me all this money, you don't give me all the benefits. And if you don't give me the taxes from the public, I might go to Montana. Montana may do it. They do it too, right? It's nonsense. There's a reason, put it this way. There's a reason what Trump, when he was saying, we're going to bring the jobs back, was full of the issue. He was never going to bring it back in that case. No. I don't even know how you could. Because as you pointed out, Ted, the issue is, if I can go to China or India and I can have this exact same product made, but make it for 10 cents on the dollar, 20 cents on the dollar. Hell, I may pay them $2 and that might be a dollar more than they were getting before. And then I would say, hey, I help

this population in regards to the money that we were giving them. Yeah, but you gutted the American jobs in order for you to make that particular profit. And the wild part is for all of this talk that Trump does about China, many of those companies are American companies. Many of them are. And so Trump is making all of this noise about American companies and about China taking advantage of us as those billionaires with China to make God's amounts of profit and not invest in. No, you're right. It's that it's not. If there's a structural momentum to this stuff that makes it almost impossible for a president to do something about it that won't necessarily, let's say turn over that apple cart. And maybe he should, but he's not going to do that. I can answer your question, J.T, about how Trump could have brought jobs back. Go for it.

So what he should have done and what people like me were hoping that he would have done was after he got elected, because let's take China first and foremost, China is the economic superpower because we built it. We export our industrial base. We exported it to China with the assumption that if we made it a rich country, it would become a democratic, a democratic country, and then we'd be able to use it. Instead of being a potential rival,

it would be an ally. How welcome the Republic of China was supposed to have been. We don't have that last. We wanted a slag, devotion to America. Of course. Well, back in the 90s, maybe things under Clinton were a little bit different.

The point is that we outsourced our industrial base to China. That's a statement of fact. Now, if you want to reverse the damage that Clinton did, the way that he should have done it, And what I would have done was I would have went to Congress. I would have taken the case to the American people saying, we're going to pass a law saying if you are, if you're an American company,

if you're outsourcing these jobs, these industries to China, you are going to pay tariffs to the point where your wage, where your costs are going to be equal to what you, to what you be paying an American worker. And I make that case directly to the American people. And every congressman, every senator at that point,

have to cast a yes or a no vote. Is anti-capitalist? Yes. But by definition, capitalism in this case is the problem. It screwed the American worker. So if you want to bring those jobs back, you have to have some kind of the equalizer between someone to work for $2 a day versus someone who requires $20 an hour to make a living. Tariffs do that. Trump can wait that case.

What that means is that is what Trump ran into. is that prices across the board skyrocket. Yeah, of course. But that's what he would have needed to have done. And then the way they should offset this, because these jobs coming back would then increase the amount of tax dollars being generated into the treasury. Because these jobs are coming back. That would solve the problem.

If it's screw China, I don't care about China. I care about America. That's what you should have done. That are paying more. So what? I'm not disagreeing with you, right? I'm just pointing out the contradiction in it and why that doesn't happen. Well, doesn't happen as a lobbyist.

Well, it's not just lobbyists. I mean, even if you take lobbyists out of it, there's a momentum to it. Meaning, if I'm a capitalist and I can make a ton of money by moving and shipping a job to Thailand, that every incentive in the world is there for me to do that. Every incentive. And you could say, well, yeah, you're firing the American workers. My job as a capitalist is not to hire. people. In fact, if I could get away without hiring people, I would because I can make more profit

doing so, which is why Burger Robot is going to be in place that is going to be dropping franchise and doing hamburg and stuff like that. And by the way, even if you could come up with legislation to prevent that from happening, the AI stuff, the robotic stuff, is going to do something very similar, even if it's in turmoil to the country itself. Like if I need to build a t-shirt and China can spit out, I don't know, 100 t-shirts in a minute. Sure. Okay, well, I can't compete with that. Like, as a capitalist coming back to the States,

I don't want to pay $50 for a T-shirt if that makes sense. No, it does. Listen, me and you're on the same page here. The point that I'm trying to say is that the government causes this problem. The government had the ability to solve this problem by leveling the playing field. The reason why Nike's are made in Vietnam is because the cost of living there is so much cheaper. Well, then if you, if you're concerned, as an American politician, is the welfare of the American worker, you want those jobs to come back. Instead of that, that, that factory being in

in Saigon, I guess, Huchyman City now, you want to be in Jackson, Mississippi instead, you tell Nike, it's an American company. So everything you import will be, will be tariff to the point where there is no advantage to you, Mr. Capitalist, to do this. I will completely fuck you. And I'm all about I'm all about that life. I'm all about that too.

But also there's another additional component that's encouraging that outsourcing, right? Like the shipping should be very expensive to send sneakers from the other side of the planet to the United States, even with the disparity in salaries.

And the thing is, unfortunately for American workers, those shipping expenses are basically subsidized under extremely generous tax codes for companies like Nike so that they can pretty much write it off completely. It's like a direct subsidy to Mursk and all these other big shipping companies that you see their names on the side of shipping containers, on the highways, on the back of semi-drugs.

Those companies are basically getting your, if they were paying for shipping the way that like you and I would have to pay, you know, a lot of these, a lot of these foreign manufacturing things wouldn't work. Yeah, of course. I mean, the entire thing is stacked. It really, but this just goes to show is that the American government, our government,

hates the American worker. They hate us. It's not that they, I mean, they don't look at us as a nuisance or being a bunch of just ingrates. This is a case of a, of a system that actively hates the domestic population

that they're supposed to rule over. And that's why I have all these problems. You have devil of pressure scholars of outsourcing and jobs. Then you have open borders, just bringing in just millions of people, which JT, you just admit it with automation. We don't need unskilled workers. You've got plenty of our own.

Why are we still importing more? This is insane. It's self-destructive. I don't entirely disagree with you. Yes. With automation, the amount of labor and everything, everything else will decrease. And I also agree with you. They do hate the American worker.

But you must understand why, though, it's a capitalist country. Like I know they call it, it's the democracy. It's a representative government and everything else. But every ounce of that is infused with the idea that it's a capitalist country. We're not a corporation. Right. I guess my point is that's not insignificant. That's not an intangible thing. There's consequences for it. Sure. You maximize profit. Even in the political space, these guys are trying to get rich, even as they are doing, quote, unquote, politics. And so everything revolves around this notion of how do we make people rich? How do we get a huge amount of money?

Not necessarily for the American workers. If somebody happened to piss a nickel, okay, fair enough. But the reality of it is the people with capital, the people with means, are the ones who are effectively making decisions and make a determination to ensure that they keep their means and that they keep their capital and they increase their capital. And people of their class, they're very class conscious. We tend to be less so. We don't even like talking about money per se.

So I don't entirely disagree with you, Robbie. I get it. It's a U.S. problem. It's a government. We incentivize companies doing that. And then 50 years are a little destruction. Okay, so we've got a couple more comments that we got to get to. Frankl, free market is a, thanks for the $5.

The free market is a myth. Nancy Pelosi proves that with their insider trading and try to build a more efficient car engine, see what happens to you. Yes. And maybe Bluth Funk, the guys in this new economy, creating a competitive worker takes 20 years of investment in computer science. They're not going to bring back manufacturing jobs. They're not going to be any left.

Yeah. Yeah, personally, I think that ship is so assailed. Yeah, I think that's probably wrong. The time to take care of this was many years ago. Robbie, I'm going to keep you on here as the resident evangelical. Yesterday, there was this evangelical style of a tent service on the Washington Mall, subsidized by millions of taxpayer dollars. For eight hours, the argument was made that the United States is an explicitly Christian country

and always has been the President of the United States did something that must have really made him burn. He read from scripture. I don't know that he'd ever picked up a Bible before, except maybe to take the oath of office. He doesn't go to church. I mean, normally when he worships on Sunday, he worships at the 18th hole at his golf course. You know, I mean, what did you think of all this? I mean, it seems to me like, I know you don't believe in the separation of church and state the way I do, but it was really unhinged. I mean, as we head into the 250th anniversary of the country to basically tell everyone, not only is this a Christian country, but you're basically not a true American unless you're a specific type of Christian, and you certainly can't be a different religion or not religious at all.

Yeah. If being a Christian means being like Trump, it's a hard pass for me. because he's not a Christian. And the people he's surrounding himself with, those are not Christians. Those are rifters. Those are hirelings. Those are wolves and sheep clothing.

They're hypocrites. And they're going to split hell wide open when they get there. And to say that America has always been a Christian, it's not Christian country now. A Christian country doesn't murder its own born children. A Christian country has a wage, unrestricted, undeclared war around the world,

killing millions of people because our values. Christian values means that you're against collective punishment. That means that you protect the weak, that you take care of the widow. You don't make widows. I mean, what he is saying is blasphemous, it's disrespectful, and all he's doing is heaping upon himself in greater damnation. I mean, what about like, I mean, I feel like one aspect of separation of church and state that's underappreciated is how much it actually protects Christianity and other relations.

religions from being commingled with the state. And therefore, when there's a backlash against the state, for example, a revolution or some other uprising, that separation kind of ensures that when the shit hits the fan, religion isn't going to go with it. Well, I mean, I don't live in a theocracy. But, I mean, that being said, I'm just one second, we're applying to a comment. But you've got to have, if you're going to have self-governance, if you're going to have a self-governing society, then you've got to have a population that at least understands the basic concepts of morality. And what is that? I mean, if you boil all down, you love your neighbors yourself. We don't have that.

And so that's one of the reasons why the crime rate is so out of control. That's one of the reasons why our government is running Robshaw doing everything that it is. it's because we we live in a in a in my opinion we we don't live in an apostate nation we live in a reprobate nation that's told that that goes as far as that we have evangelical leaders joining up with rabbi's to bless a golden idol of president trump and then this buffoon goes to the white house and has this fake prayer meeting with a bunch of fake pastors who want to have a seat at the king's table when they should be rebuking him, calling him an antichrist, and tell him just how much he sucks. And what he's going to do is that he's going to go

straight to a devil's hill when he kicks this bucket if he doesn't shape up his ship out. We don't have that. I don't think you can't have a Christian nation in the capitalist country, if I'm being honest. You can. And what you mean by that is, for example, you brought up crime. I don't think crime is the issue of people losing faith or now have faith in God. I mean, some of those criminals will tell you that they're Christians, whether you believe them or not. Like, meaning they may believe in God, but crime is an environmental issue? Like, meaning, is it rational to commit crimes in the case of lack and depravity, especially when a country tells you that having things is the epitome of success? Yeah, crime becomes a rational act in the case where people are in, let's say, dire straits,

and they need to get items and things. It's hard. We are out of time. But if you can't get a deaf of us, we're back in two hours for the Q&A show because it's Monday. So do stay tuned. TMI show coming up with me and Robbie. Robbie's filling in for Manila, 12 noon, Q&A show with the three of us answering any and all of your questions. Please like, follow and share the show. We're here Monday through Friday. 9 a.m. Eastern Time.

Thanks, everyone. Appreciate you. And... Good one, guys. Shield at the top.