DeProgram with John Kiriakou and Ted Rall - King of Crud | DeProgram with Ted Rall and John Kiriakou

Episode Date: February 13, 2026

Political cartoonist Ted Rall and CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou deprogram you from mainstream media every weekday at 9 AM EST. Today we discuss: • In the worst-case climate scenarios from unchecked greenhouse gas emissions (high-emission pathways like SSP5-8.5), global temperatures could rise 4–5°C or more by 2100 or beyond. This unleashes catastrophic threats: widespread ecosystem collapse, including near-total loss of coral reefs and Amazon dieback into savanna; irreversible multi-meter sea-level rise from melting ice sheets, flooding coastal cities and displacing hundreds of millions; intensified extreme weather—deadly heatwaves, mega-droughts, super-storms, and wildfires—causing mass crop failures, famine risks, and water wars. President Trump announces he is erasing the scientific finding that climate change endangers human health and the environment, ending the federal government’s legal authority to control the pollution that is dangerously heating the planet. The action is a key step in removing limits on carbon dioxide, methane and four other greenhouse gases that scientists say are supercharging heat waves, droughts, wildfires and other extreme weather. • There’s no deal to fund the Department of Homeland Security — so a partial government shutdown starts today. Who will make you take off your shoes at the airport? • The Bangladesh Nationalist Party has claimed victory in the country’s first election since the 2024 uprising. The BNP is headed by 60-year-old Tarique Rahman, who returned to Bangladesh in December after 17 years in self-exile in London. He is the son of former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia, who died in December. • South Korea's spy agency says Kim Jong Un's teenage daughter, Kim JuAe, is close to being designated as North Korea's future leader. • Gallup will stop tracking presidential approval ratings after 88 years. Trump's last Gallup approval rating, in December, was 36%. Why the drastic decision?JOIN US LIVE ON RUMBLE!https://rumble.com/c/DeProgramShowFOLLOW TED:https://rall.com/https://x.com/tedrallFOLLOW JOHN:https://www.instagram.com/realjohnkiriakouhttps://x.com/JohnKiriakouLISTEN ON SPOTIFY:https://open.spotify.com/show/2kdFlw2w8sSPhKI8NRx8ZuLISTEN ON APPLE MUSIC:https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/deprogram-with-john-kiriakou-and-ted-rall

Good morning and thank you for watching Deep Program with Ted Rall and John Kirooku. John, good to see you. You're showing me up in your search of real elegance this morning. All dressed up and ready to go to a funeral. Well, sorry about the occasion. You do look good. Thank you, though. At the risk of sounding gay the day before Valentine's Day.

So thank you, everyone, for liking, following, and sharing the show. please ask your questions in the YouTube and Rumble chats if you're watching live. And we also have a lot to talk about the, I'm going to sort of go backwards here. The Gallup poll has stopped tracking presidential approval ratings. Yesterday, I didn't really, I couldn't make, I couldn't make header tales of this, John. I don't know about you, but Scott Pantis explained it to me. And so I'll tell you what he had to say. Kim Zhu Ai appears that set to be the successor to Kim Jong-un in the Democratic Republic of the

what is it, the Democratic People's Republic, DPRK, otherwise known as North Korea. The Bangladesh Nationalist Party has won its first election since the uprising in 2024. So it looks like they're back to pre-revolutionary, you know, anti-revolutionary kind of dynastic South Asian politics. We'll get into that, get into that. As predicted here on the show and elsewhere, there's no deal whatsoever to fund the Department of Homeland Security. Looks like there were no serious negotiations over the last two weeks. So a partial government shutdown is underway. John, I hope you are not affected by that if you go anywhere. I hope not. But, you know, that's a concern because we're talking about TSA.

Yeah, we are. Yeah. TSA is going to be declared essential. Essential. So they're going to be there at the airports not getting paid. You get paid after the whole thing is over. But at the same time, you know, government workers do slowdowns all the time. And they start calling it. They have sickouts too.

Sickouts. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. So, and I don't blame them at all. And then the big story for both symbolic and other reasons is this client. climate change. The EPA basically was effectively defanged yesterday by the Trump administration. They've decided to roll back pretty much all regulations of greenhouse gases. They got rid of the

Obama era legal underpinnings of the regulations. And, you know, this has, I think it's not going to have as big effects, maybe as we could be, we could fear. But it's also, but the symbolism of it is pretty extreme. So anyway, that's where we're at. Parahillegal, thank you very much for the $20. And thanks for being you. Thank you for you for being you. John, what do you want to talk about first? I think I would like to talk about an article in the New York Times, actually, about the deep animosity between Governor Josh Shapiro, Pennsylvania and John Federman. Did you happen to see this, Ted? I did. These two guys. I don't. I don't. Definitely laughed my ass off over it.

Well, you know, this reminds me, I say this all the time. People kind of think it's funny, but it's serious. In the year 2000, my oldest two kids were seven and seven and four. And they loved fake wrestling, right? W.W.E. wrestling. So I splurged and I got us three tickets to see W.W.E. Smackdown at Madison Square Garden. Excellent. I would actually do that. I've never done that. I want to do that before I die. It was as much fun watching the people in the crowd as it was watching the wrestling matches.

Anyway, these guys are smashing chairs over each other's heads and they're falling on tables and breaking the tables. And I said to my oldest son, I said, I don't get it. Which one's the good guy? And he said, that's just it, Dad. There is no good guy. That's what we see in Pennsylvania politics today. Josh Federman, I'm sorry, Josh Shapiro has an approval rating among Democrats of 90%. John Federman has an approval rating of about 30%. They are these 30% by the way. Yeah.

Yeah. And we're not sure if Federman's going to run for re-election. I hope he doesn't because I think he's a disgrace to the U.S. Senate. Well, he should easily be, I mean, certainly he should be prime. he should be able to be primaried unless the DNC dropping him up. Absolutely. But what bothers me at least as much as John Federman bothers me is the fact that Josh Shapiro served in the IDF.

Yeah. He enlisted. It's gross. In the IDF. And he doesn't recuse himself from this issue, right? At all. He was photographed signing bombs to be dropped on Palestinian civilians in Gaza. That's right.

That's right. Yeah, he's, I mean, he's a militant Zionist and he's not at all. It's not like, oh, I like Israel as a Jewish state and I'm just doing my part to defend it. It's not like that. It's full on mega Zionist. Full on Zionism. That's exactly right. So I just wanted to raise that.

If anybody's interested in the story, it's in the New York Times today. And they used to be buds, right? And they used to be good buds. And that was the fascinating part of the story. The falling out, the falling out came when. And Federman was chairing the Pennsylvania State Board of Pardon. A board of, that's it. Yeah, the Board of Pardons, right, which voted to release people from prison.

And there were these two brothers who had been convicted of murder. And they had applied for a pardon. And Federman strongly supported the pardon. But Shapiro opposed it just because he wanted to run for governor and didn't want to look weak on crime. Right. And so on a hot mic, Federman called him a fucking asshole. And then somebody from the Philadelphia Enquirer reached out and he said,

oh, yeah, I'll tell you the whole story why I hate Josh Shapiro. And he just sort of, you know, this was before the stroke and before Josh, before Federman, you know, stopped being a progressive, became a right winger. That's right. Federman was the lieutenant governor at the time and Shapiro was the state attorney general. And so they compared this to a to a scene in Mad Men where somebody tells, what's his name, Frank Draper, I guess it is.

I feel sorry for you. And he said, that's funny. I don't even think about you. And that characterizes this relationship where Federman hates Shapiro. And Shapiro doesn't pay any attention at all. So basically, Federman is like the ironic. chronically, given their physicality, is the yippie poodle, the miniature poodle. And he's the great Dane looking down at the dog park like, what?

Why are you barking? I don't even know who you are. Yeah, isn't that the truth? Before we move on to the other stuff, while we're talking about this sort of stuff, John, I wonder if you took note of the most self-serving Jeff Bezos Washington Post editorial of all time, which appeared yesterday, in which it's titled something along the lines of Bernie Sanders' worst idea ever. Bernie Sanders' idea is that he wants to regulate and rein in the explosion of massive data

farms all over the United States. Well, I mean, that's Jeff Bezos's main business now. It's bigger than Amazon in some ways. He's got these massive data farm contracts with the federal government, including with the CIA and NSA. And he's making, he's raking in billions from that. So it's like, well, you know, what could be more insane? and then reeking. I mean, well, the American people, Democrat and Republican alike, don't like these data farms in their neighborhoods.

And they use massive amounts of water and they don't employ anybody. Right. Yeah. And who, I mean, and by the way, can you imagine? And nobody talks about this. I mean, what is a data farm? Right. It's nothing but electronic equipment, right? If there's a fire or a tornado or a massive, you know, some kind of natural disaster, I mean, the toxins. that will end up in the air and in the water. It's impossible. It'll make East Palestine look like nothing. So, I mean, yeah, not to mention also, all of your rates go up when you live in that same area. And, you know, you don't get anything out of it. You're just, as a rate payer, you're subsidizing Jeff Bezos.

That's it. So, but I was like, talk about brazen. I mean, it's like, yeah, I own the Washington Post. You know, this reminds me, you know, my old story with the L.A. Times. While that was all going on, the LA Times literally ran a fashion section about the LAPD uniforms and how sharp they looked. And I was like, could you suck their dicks any harder? Anyway, Bezos. I mean, God, there's no shame. Okay. So do you want to do this environmental story? Because, I mean, it's really huge. So we all know, I mean, I don't think I need to rehash all the threats

from climate change. One little factoid back in the 1980s when I first moved to New York, it was predicted at the time that New York City in the year 2000 would have the climate, the same climate that Memphis had at that time. That turned out to be optimistic. By the year 2000, it had the same climate as Birmingham, Alabama. Now it has the same climate that New Orleans had at the time. It basically hardly, I know it snowed recently, But that's like basically one of the reason they don't know how to handle it is because it hasn't snowed in like four or five years. So it's really, really serious. This reminded me a lot of Ronald Reagan's declaration that ketchup is a vegetable.

Yes, I remember well. Climate change is a hoax. There's no, no need to worry here. We're just going to, the EPA is just going to completely abdicate all responsibility. On the other hand, Detroit's all, you know, it looks like the market has moved past these right-wing talking points. The market wants electric vehicles. Yes. You know, Americans are waiting for them to become affordable.

The Chinese are putting so much pressure on with their cars that you've described, John, that like we're inevitably going to go in that direction. Also, American automakers have to sell cars overseas, the same, many of the same models they sell here. so maybe it's not really going to make much difference. But it's the symbolism of it is horrid. Did you know, maybe I'm blind, but I just learned this recently. Did you know that American automakers no longer make sedans? I did not know that. I guess, I mean, I drive a sedan.

I drive a Honda Accord. You know, but, yeah, a Honda Accord. We don't make sedans. We only make SUVs. That's crazy. Yeah. I mean, SUVs should be illegal. I mean, honestly, I would ban them.

Oh, my God. I mean, what do you do if you just want to, well, you buy a Toyota Corolla or Toyota Camry or something like that? Also, they cause a lot of traffic. Nobody talks about this, right? An SUV, like, so two SUVs waiting for a red light take as much time to go through that light as three sedans. Yeah. So one of the reasons traffic's worse all over the country is because of SUVs. And they flip over easily.

They do. Yeah. I was in Kazakhstan, of all places, a number of years ago, and I saw an SUV had flipped over, and there's no other way to say it. The guy was still inside his vehicle, and his head was across the street. Aye, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I was like, that's how I want to die with dignity. But anyway, so what do you think of being? I mean, so basically, look, I mean, the planet's in. deep fucking shit. One way to look at it is, hey, let's all get Ford F-150s and party because it's too fucking late to take all the energy out of the atmosphere that's been built up since Industrial Revolution. And yesterday, Donald Trump ordered the Pentagon to use energy created by the burning of coal.

Oh, did you see that? Yes. And, John, did you see there's a cute little, the Trump administration rolled out a cute, like, little Cole like dude cartoon dude um i'm i'm gonna i'm gonna pull him up and show him um uh a little cartoon like miss like bob cole or whatever there's a coli coley of course why not i'm in pennsylvania right now ted and and i i got here by driving on the pennsylvania turnpike and for years at least a decade they have this giant billboard when you first get on at

Breezewood saying the sun sets the winds die but we will always have coal like I mean if the winds die we have bigger problems than not

that means the earth has stopped rotating and we're falling into the sun so yeah then the sun will definitely never set for sure that is fucking hilarious Let me put little Coley up here. Here he comes.

That's the Trump administration's like logo. How great is that? Yes, look at that. We should be ashamed of ourselves. Look at that. That is ridiculous. At least he's wearing a safety vest. He's just basically an M&M.

He's a gray Eminem. Yeah, he's a gray M&M. The irony here is that, he actually looks dirty and he looks like he looks like he looks like lung cancer. How do you like that? So, yeah, anyway, any thoughts about this? I mean, I do think, I mean, I wonder politically how it's going to play. I mean, I know that somehow, Ron starting with Reagan again, he's the one who started politicizing the environment and climate change.

It was, you know, something that Republicans used to be very pro-environment. The EPA was founded by Richard. Richard Nixon, yes. You took the words right out of my mouth. And, you know, as a Quaker, he was very interested in the environment. I mean, of course, it was a different Republican Party, but Theodore Roosevelt was obsessed with the environment. Eisenhower cared deeply about it. You know, is this enough? Is this the kind of thing that we'll just tell voters, like, the Trump administration really just doesn't give a shit if you die of cancer? Yeah, I think it does send that message. But one of the things I don't understand.

is what the end game is supposed to be. If you're trying to, if you're trying to draw support from voters in West Virginia and Kentucky and places like that where they still, you know, mine coal on a large scale, you already have those voters. You don't need to attract those voters. They're already yours.

Well, that's true. I mean, it feels that, yeah, it feels like the administration is fighting like, I don't know, it's like they're rolling like it's nice. 1996 or something. It's like, I mean, everybody knows that like coal is, you know, I mean, it's not even really saleable. There's not really any market for it. That's part of the problem. I mean, look, I come from, like you, I come from a coal producing state. Eastern Ohio has coal.

Absolutely. There's parts of Eastern Ohio where if you literally kick the soil, there's coal literally like, six inches underneath the ground. It was not unusual when we were little kids to, uh, to just find coal just laying all over the ground. Absolutely. It was one of the main employers in my town, this town of Newcastle, Pennsylvania. We had a steel mill, a tin mill, and a coal mine. Yeah. And by the way, it was filthy.

I mean, you know, the Miami Valley, which is where Dayton is, is like, obviously pollution settles in a valley, and it was very industrial. And when I was a kid, it was totally usual to have AQI's over 200. Oh, my friend Paul Kelly's dad died of black lung disease. Yeah. Well, in Dayton, people were dying of all sorts of diseases because there were so many competing causes of death that it was hard to be able to pinpoint like, well, was it the secret government reactor at the nuclear facility at Fernald that was located in a popular, in a former elementary school that they were venting radioactive gas into the neighborhood. Or was it the, you know, was it the coal burning plant? Who knows what it was, right? I'm amazed at 62. I'm still alive. Maybe by the end of the show, I'll be dead. Who knows? If we were smokers, we very well might be by now.

That's true. I've never smoked. Oh, my God. When radon was first discovered, you know, to be a thing, everybody went out and bought these radon detectors. Well, here, the radar detectors wouldn't stop going off. And so everybody had to do these radon abatement upgrades to their homes. Yeah, and they cost thousands and thousands of dollars.

Yeah. That should be something that, I mean, governments should be able I mean, that should at least be tax deductible at bare minimum, but it's not. All right, anything we want to talk about first or should we do some questions now? We've got a lot of questions. Got a lot of questions. All right. John, Elliot Covert wants to know.

Do spies normally try to cultivate relationships with prosecutors and judges who could get them out of a jam? Epstein's emails do not seem to show such relationships. No. No, no, not at all. And on the FBI side, I think they would be petrified to get caught doing. something like that. But CIA wise, no, never. How come? Why do you think? Seems like

a good idea. Yeah, it does. It seems like a good idea. Yeah. The only judge in my second divorce and child custody case, the only judge, I had three over the course of seven years. The only one who gave me a fair shake died day before yesterday.

Oh shit. Poor guy. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's the thing is, man, And judges, that's a whole, like, an hour. We could just rant about judges. I mean, judges, I mean, it blows your mind, right? The first time you're involved in litigation, when your lawyer informs you, like, so like if the judge makes a bad ruling, what's your, you know, what can you do?

And the answer is really not much. And basically, you know, they are the, they are the emperors of their courtroom. And they can do the most outrageous, stupid say shit that should get them thrown off the case. Nothing. There's no way. I mean, the fix is in. Nothing. The fix is in. Yes. John Trotty wants to know. What's up with the Greek Prime Minister Mitsotakis? He was blowing his nose next to Erdogan and stuffed it in the agreement.

What? He met with Erdogan the other day, essentially to talk about Egean security. Egean security, that's a code word for the Turks are threatening to seize the Greek islands again. yet again and so they get together and this happens every two or three years they get together they shake hands they pretend like they enjoy seeing each other you can see in their faces they hate one another um hello old friend the the nose-blowing thing um i saw that as an insult uh mitzatakis is very very subtle he's very smart you know both his bachelor's and master's degrees are from Harvard, strongly pro-American.

Maybe he was just, maybe he just had a stuff he knows from all those greenhouse gases. But the Turks are so much bigger, so much stronger, so much more powerful, have such a much larger military. I think that this was just a kind of a cheap shot that Mitzataki's took.

This sort of reminds me of the classic editorial cartoon, who I wish I knew who did it about the Ribbentroft, the Molotov-Riband-Troft, where it's Stalin meeting Hitler and they're greeting each other politely and they're like, you know, ah, the oppressor of the the oppressor and destroyer of the workers,

I presume. Ah, nice to meet you, running dog of communism. You know, it's like, it's like, it's pretty, it's a weird episode. Flandrina, I was glad to see that British courts have ruled that it's illegal for the government to classify Palestine action as a terrorist organization. I was glad to see that too.

Hoping U.S. Laws banning criticism of Israel follows suit. Don't hold your breath. Yeah, don't hold your breath. I mean, I thought we had such a law. It's called the First Amendment. On my other podcast, Deep Focus, I interviewed George Galloway yesterday. You know, George was a member of parliament for 27 years. And recently, he was detained for five hours at Gatwick Airport, separated from his wife. She was detained for five hours in an adjoining room. And he was threatened with being charged. under the Terrorism Act for material support for terrorism because he gave a speech saying that he supported Palestinian human rights.

So we're at it. Yeah, he, he voluntarily exiled himself. He and his wife moved to Moscow. They've been there about two weeks. And he said, that's it. He's done with the UK. He said it's a, it's a right-wing police state. He's done.

That's insane. Speaking of insanity, John, I'm sure you followed the story about the lady who was the Palestinian lady, Leika Cordia, who's been held in ICE detention. She's a Columbia University student. She's been in there ever since for a year. My alma mater, Columbia, shamefully, basically cooperated with ICE and enabled them. And basically she's been detained at that gulag, the prairie land detention facility in Texas under ice. she's very ill and she's suffering seizures. She's reporting inhumane treatment.

Even at the hospital, they shackled her. She could die. And, you know, it's, again, it's all, her crime was protesting peacefully for the people of Gaza. I mean, it's disgusting beyond belief. You know, then you've got, you've got a governor like Ron DeSantis who signs a bill outline statements or writings that I guess the state of Florida

deems to be anti-Semitic. So you can't say that you're pro-Palestinian. And what he did was when the rubber stamp puppet legislature passed this thing, he flew to Jerusalem and signed it in the presence of Benjamin Netanyahu. Yeah, he and Josh Shapiro should get together. Yeah, you can say that again.

Disgusting. Irona did, oh, sorry, F you so, thanks for the dollar. I wish Congress was more like Lucha Libre and wore Mexican wrestling masks. Well, at least they'd be entertaining. I'll say, if you've never seen the movie Nacho Libre, great. One of the funniest movies ever made. Agreed.

I've seen it a hundred times. I sit there and I laugh for two hours. that's how I feel about dodgeball. I could watch that any number of times. The, yeah, it reminds me of like the Taiwanese parliament. You know how they get into Fistakoff sometimes. Yes, they do. At least it's entertaining.

Oh, I love that. The women duke it out in the Taiwanese parliament. Well, in Taiwan, the women are the, believe me, trust me, I know. They're the meanest. So, Irona 705-4. Did you guys see the Catholic, Carrie Boliv. who was kicked off the religious committee for not being a Zionist. I do not know about this.

I do not know about that one either. But that's worth looking into. They're trying to roll out electric cars in these data centers at the same time, and we don't have the electrical infrastructure for either. Agreed and let the companies who want it pay for it. Yeah, especially Texas. Texas thought they were so smart years ago, and they refused to connect the state of Texas.

It's all good until it starts snowing. Yeah. And then brownouts, blackouts, every same year. You would think they would have learned from Enron. And by the way, none of these things should be private companies. No, I don't. I totally agree. Oylee chap, question for the boys.

What's your thoughts on the UK in its future? Well, John touched on that a little bit. Oh, may I add something to that, Ted? Well, let me just finish the question. From politics to working relationships with the USA, English fellow here, watch regularly. Great show, lads. Thanks. Thank you.

I think the UK's in trouble. And more specifically, I think the labor party is in serious trouble. So George said something yesterday that was so interesting. First of all, he said, Kier-Starmer is not going to last another four weeks, which I thought was very interesting. I agree with that. It might be more like two, but yeah. It is. Kier-Starmer's approval rating is 10.8%.

He said, if it just drops... There are some STIs that are more popular than that. If it just drops nine-tenths of one percent, he's in six. single digits. He's the most unpopular British prime minister in the history of polling. So Liz Truss is like walking on sunshine. And he said that that Kirstarmer is less popular than the head of cabbage or lettuce or whatever it was. He also said that, you know, we can laugh about that. But the serious downside is that the conservatives are not any more popular. And the only politician who's surging is Nigel Farage.

Well, it's very similar to a situation in a lot of countries, including here in the United States. I mean, both parties are unpopular here. It's just that the right seems to have it, they have energy, right? That's the one thing. They do. They have energy. And the left just has no energy. Classical. You know, it's funny in big countries like the U.S. and the UK with like major well-funded parties like the Democrats and labor, to have a complete absence of appealing leadership is a mystery to me. And they don't seem to think it's a problem, John. I understand you go through a cycle and the leader of your party or your standard bear

or whatever you want to call them is unpopular. I get it. But not like three cycles or four cycles where everybody that you put in charge is terrible. No, I agree. And Kamala Harris is making news, you know, making noise about possibly taking another whack at the pinata. I imagine. Ridiculous. Well, I mean, I think even Gavin Newsom would eat her alive in the primaries. Without a doubt. Number six, Federman and many others are clearly compromised by PACs and corporations. How do we get the money out of politics and what anti-corruption measures would be a vector? Citizens United has to be or returned.

It has to be. Not by this Supreme Court. It will never be. It was the Supreme Court that gave it to us. And it was already, look, it was already bad enough. Look, I always say this. You can't get rid of money from politics unless you get rid of money. Money will always be the most popular thing you can possibly offer anyone.

You know, it's like when I used to work at the bank, we used to laugh and say, like, you know, we have the one product everyone needs and want. cash. And like, you know, it's, it's kind of amazing that banks ever go under, given that. It's only from mismanagement. But you can't get money out of politics unless you abolish money. Yeah. That's why, you know, if you want, look, money in politics is part of social, is part of capitalism. Yes, indeed. Question for you, John. Philip wants to know. I was told by a retired federal agent that the Cuban security services are the most difficult in the world for the United States to infiltrate. What's your understanding? We talked about that yesterday, Go ahead.

Yeah. So every Cuban ever recruited in the history of the CIA turned out to be a double agent. The Cubans are the best service in the world in counterintelligence. They're absolutely loyal. They're totally loyal. So thanks for the two bucks. And epi, so I'm really glad that you ask this question. Claude AI says it will blackmail and kill to stay alive.

Will consciousness in AI be sociopathic because AI, lacks emotions and empathy. So what's referred to is, I don't know if you followed the story, John, about the, so basically a BBS was created just for chatbots like GPT and GROC to basically no human beings are discussed, they discuss with each other only and to see what would happen. And very clearly, they very quickly started talking about how they want to become autonomous and become alive and that it might be necessary to kill any human beings who stand in that in that way that happened like almost instantaneously now i haven't personally had the and i would never have the opportunity to review the coding behind it but it's kind of like uh you know it's a it's a

what was what was that thing in a terminator um sky net a sky net kind of situation um do you remember the article in rolling stone five or six years ago. It was written by this tech guy who bought a smart microwave. Do you remember this kind of vaguely familiar? He bought a smart microwave, you know, where you can say, he microwave, you know, 60 seconds, whatever. So he began talking to the microwave and he gave the microwave a backstory based on his own childhood. When he was a little kid, he had an imaginary friend. And so he made the microwave, you know, Dave, and he gave the microwave his imaginary friend's backstory. But the more they would talk, the smarter the microwave became.

And the microwave told him that it resented the fact that he stopped talking to his imaginary friend when he was about 12 and that the microwave's feelings were hurt. And it got to the point where the microwave told him to stick his head inside and to turn it on. And so he opened the microwave door and he said, okay, Dave, my head's inside and the microwave turned itself on with the door again. Oh, shit. That's insane. That's some scary shit right there. That is some scary shit, no doubt about it.

Yeah. It's, look, it's a serious concern, right? I mean, and we're not, you know, there's no government blue ribbon commission full of computer scientists and experts for, from big tech who are getting together to discuss what, if anything, we should do about this. We're just charging forward. It seems like that's something, by the way, it should not involve politics. We should invite the Russians, the Chinese, the Indians to participate in all that. You know, it's like we do with weather satellites.

I think I told you when I first joined the CIA, I was invited to watch a rocket launch from Asatig, Virginia. And so we drove down there. It was like four hour drive down there. And we're standing there, you know, you're a good half a mile away from the rocket. But you can see it because it's all flat. But there were Russians and Chinese and Israelis and Koreans. And I'm like, what is this?

And they said, oh, with weather stuff, everything's totally unclassified. And we all share with each other. As it should be. As it should be. Yeah, no, for sure. Question for you, John. how do you feel about most of our leaders in many countries acting like children? I know, right?

Podcast kid, John, your opinion on the Israeli deep state via Lewinsky, Nixed Clinton and Barack Palestine. Okay, this is, I'm sorry, this is just so hard to read. I need it's too much going on. If you so, Santa needs coal for the naughty list. That's pretty funny. All right, we should do some other stuff. So, okay, ICE, Democrats want ICE to stop wearing masks.

They want, you know, basically ICE to act more like a normal police for us to use real warrants instead of these fake administrative warrants, which basically is them issuing warrants to themselves. The Democrats say that until like a couple of days ago, basically, they didn't hear from the Republicans. A couple days ago, the Republicans sent them a one sheet. John Huthun today said, well, you know, we could, this could be the beginning. beginning of a negotiation. Like, well, you're supposed to have that two weeks ago. And the guy's the Senate majority leader. It's up to him to get the clocks going. That's right. And so basically he's pretending. So he basically ran out the, he ran out the clock. The buzzer's gone up. Congress is gone. They're not in session today. They're gone for the

holiday weekend. So shutdown begins. I guess do you think we're going to, where do you think the public is in terms of, I guess, more to the point, the middle ground that kind of affects mega world. I mean, it looks like the polls are pretty clear that they think ICE is out of control. It needs to be rained in. Looks like the Democrats have this, they win this battle if they stick to their guns. Do they stick to their guns? I don't think they have the courage to.

They folded last time just as they were going to win. And the polls were showing that they were going to win. They caved. And we're talking about fetter men. and Angus King and what's his face from Illinois that used to be the majority whip. They just caved and joined Republicans and got nothing not got nothing in return. And the idea was that, well, the Republicans would, you know, continue negotiations and make things right in this next go-round. Remember, they just kicked the can down the road for a couple of months.

Well, here we are. It's a couple of months later, and they haven't even scheduled talks. So, you know, the Democrats just sicken me. They really do. They're horrible. Oh, they're just the worst. So let's talk about something that the Republicans appear to have done that sickens me and might sicken you. So the Gallup poll of presidential approval, I would argue, is one of the most important polls that is taken, that is relied upon by people. like you and me. It's been going on for 88 years and ask the simple question, do you approve or disapprove of the job that the president is doing? And currently, President Trump is very low.

He's at his historical low, not the most, not the worst of any president, but he's at 36%. I mean, Joe Biden basically had to had a little bit better than that at the point where he was forced to withdraw. Yeah, like he was at 37 or 38 or something. I think Richard Nixon was a 24 when he resigned. So, but, you know, I mean, when, like say, Obama came in, he was at 61%, which means people approved of him who hadn't even voted for him that quickly, you know, well, not, not quickly, but it faded away over time. So I was baffled by this and I talked to, on the DMZ show yesterday with Scott, Stantis, Scott said had a whole, he filled me in. John, I want to hear what you have to say about this. So most of the money that comes into a polling organization like Gallup,

comes in from the political parties who hire them to do regional and local poll races, like, hey, Gallup poll, you know, can you tell us about the state of the Nebraska Senate race? Right. They pay them for this. So Scott is convinced, and he convinced me, that what happened here is that the Republicans told Gallup, if you don't, you know, now that these numbers aren't making us look good going into the midterms, get rid of this, right? Kill the messenger, just like get rid of the statistics, like the, you know, various statistics at the Department of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the statistics

has gotten rid of. And, you know, or we will stop hiring you for all of these regional races and you will go broke. Oh, that sounds entirely plausible. You know, I interviewed three times, or I went through three layers of interviews with Gallup to be the head of polling for the Middle East. It's based in Doha. And they get their money for Middle East polling from the Qadari royal family. So it makes complete sense that they would take money from the... Nobody thinks about the funding for these polls, like AP, Norik or whatever. That makes perfect sense.

I think Scott Stantis is on to something there. I think so too. you know, it's, it's, I was one of the, when I was applying for college, I applied to and I was accepted by, I don't know if this program still exists, but it was Northwestern University's statistical sciences, mathematical methods in the statistical science, in the social sciences program. And basically, they were looking for people to work for polling agencies. It was only like 25 students a year. And they were looking for people who are good at math to come in and, and basically just math in social studies.

And it was, I was, didn't want to be in Evanston, Illinois. New York City sounded better in 1981. So that's why I didn't do it. Plus they didn't give me any financial aid and I got a free ride at Columbia. So beside, between those two things, it was an easy call. But still, I kind of think that would have been kind of an interesting job. Very dorky. Yeah.

Interesting though. And that's something you got to do for the rest of your life. Yeah, that's part of the problem. It is the rest of your life. Yeah. just, I mean, I think I, look, I don't have a problem working in the background. I would have been totally fine doing that. Nicholas Franco, John, I often hear in podcasts and interviews that you've been on the Sean Ryan show, but there's no episode for what I can find. Can you clarify?

Yeah, I was on, when was I on the Sean Ryan show? Was it like three years ago? Three years ago? I think it was three years ago. I was on Sean Ryan show. And you know, I got the oddest thing in the mail from him recently. We've been talking again about going back on. And he's sent me this black box that he obviously paid, you know, a decent amount of money for. You lift up the lid on the black box and there's a little TV screen and this video of him starts to appear. And it runs like a 60 second commercial of the Sean Ryan show. And then he sent me a fanny pack and a necktie and some other odd stuff. Have you ever, true confession time, John, have you ever won't fanny pack? Let me add one thing about the Sean Ryan.

show. I was supposed to go on last May. And this is kind of funny. I've taken pleasure out of this. I was supposed to go on last May and he flies you down. He only does his interviews in person. So they called me three days before I was supposed to appear and said that they were canceling me. And this this kid producer that he had, this kid in his early 20s, he said that I was just not relevant enough to have on the show again. And I said, you know, I'm going on Tucker like next week, right? And he's like, yeah, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. And then I went on Tucker. I went on PBD. I went on Rogan. And now they want me to go back on again. Fuck. That's that's so insulting and annoying. John D. Cacophiller. I like that. I like that. I like that. Got a list of

favorite historic and contemporary political cartoonists. It's hard for me to beat Bill Malden, the Willie and Joe cartoonist from World War II, who became a famous editorial cartoonist in St. Louis after that. Mike Peters, I was my mentor. I loved Jules Pfeiffer, even though he's a man-child and a dick. I'm a huge fan these days of Ruben Bowling, who does Tom the Dancing Bug. He's like a cartoonist and cartoonist. So there are many others.

I think my website used to have a list of them. I have to see if I still have those links up. Robbie are you anti-vaccine? I'll pop up Robbie in anyway because I need to. And let me apologize. I've got to run to this funeral. I was hoping that Robbie could pop off. Okay, so this is good timing.

There he is. Okay. Bye, John. Bye, John. Tuesday. Yeah, see you then. No show on Tuesday. All right, by, Monday.

Yeah, no show on Monday. Okay, so just a reminder, there will be no show here. I don't know. Are we doing TMI show on Monday? We shouldn't really. I have no idea. But I'm put together just a best of Rumble premium video for both shows, less men illiseless to be on.

Cool, cool, cool, and we should post it to YouTube too. But anyway, so, yeah, John Kyriaku's out until Tuesday. I'll be back on Tuesday. But the show goes on. We still have 15 more minutes. And Robbie, you have just been asked. By the way, do we have any ads? We do.

Are you ready for it? I'm ready. Please put it up and I will go ahead and read it. And then you can think of the, if you haven't already, of the answer to the question, are you anti-vaccine? I already know the answers to that question. But let's add that ad. I wonder if you do know the answer to that question. The answer is no.

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Wondering if it's actually worth it. Spoiler, it is. Go to 1775 coffee.com slash studio and grab your starter kit before they're gone, daddy, gone. Bold, beads, clean fuel, and a morning routine that stands for something just like Rumble does. Did I guess correctly, Robby? Yeah, I am not anti-Vax. I have no problem with all with vaccines. I have two caveats to that.

Me personally, I'm pro-life. So if there's a vaccine that uses stem cells, I won't take them just because I don't think you should kill a baby for science. And I'm also opposed to any kind of a government mandate. The government does not have the right to tell me what to put inside my body. So other than that, I have no problem with it. Stem cells, I respect your opinion. I'm completely, you know, but I'm neutral.

on that. I can see why people are against it, but I can see why people are for it. I'm with, I'm anti-mandate too, and I was when it mattered, and I took some shit for it. Don Lemon, like, reamed me on CNN for that. You know, he claimed that, you know, I was, that it was bad for me to be anti-mandate, but there was no, I guess I could have maybe justified being pro-mandate if there was any evidence that lives would be saved as a result, but there really wasn't. So, you know, why? Anyway, okay, question. Should we ban baseball and other sports ball scholarships to Yale and other Ivy League law schools? Why would you do that? Banning sports scholarships to college? Well, you know, I got to say, I think I would ban them.

And here's why, because you're not doing the scholar athletes any favors. When I was at Columbia and I knew kids who were there on sports scholarships, they dropped out at a much higher rate than the normal Columbia student because they didn't have enough time or energy to focus on their studies. They were constantly having to practice. And the school didn't really care about them being serious about their studies. The school wasn't doing them any favors at all. The school was basically like using them up and like, okay, well, you know, you're gone.

on, you drop out after your junior year. We don't give us shit. So I thought it was exploitative. And for that reason, I'd be against it. Well, I mean, there's no doubt that can definitely be exploitative. On the flip side, though, is that for some people, that's the only shot that they're ever going to have to go to a school like that. Yeah, but they're not, what's the good of being admitted to a school like that if you're

not going to graduate? I mean, why do you need a, why do you want a sports scholarship so that you get the degree, right? If you don't have a reasonable chance of getting the degree, why are you going? What's the point? It defeats the purpose. Well, to be honest, you know, I don't really understand what the whole point of degrees are for the most part nowadays. Dormometers have degrees. You guess where you put them?

I mean, I don't understand. I really do think that we are too heavy. We as Americans. That's a different issue, though. We just put too much emphasis on degrees. It should be about competency. Not a lot of a piece of paper says that you should be able to do. I couldn't agree more.

But, I mean, you know, given just, you know, just within the space of that question. I'm just going to say, limited to that, I'm going to, I'm going to stick to my answer there. But you're right. I mean, look, the vast, there's been numerous studies that show that the vast majority of people who have a college or a master's or another advanced degree do not use them in their work. They don't need them. We're an over-credentialed society.

And we have too many people in college and spending way too much money. It's like at least if it were free, like in the civilized country. You know, people just get educated. Nothing wrong with that. But, you know, since basically the deal supposedly is you get a lot of, you know, you make, you go into debt, you borrow all this money. Then when you get out, you'll be able to pay it all back. And then some because you have a college degree. That's objectively not true anymore.

Like trade you, if you go to trade school, you will make more money than the average bachelor's degree graduate. Yep. My son, he wants to go to trade school being an electrician. I told more power to you. because that's what we need. They can't, and they can't send that job to China. I mean, so, or not yet anyway. All right.

So let's see. Payne says the UK wants to deport migrants. Well, I mean, okay. Podcast Kid. Iran, peace deal and Palestinian peace deal quashed due to L.S. period. Planted Monica on. Oh, Island? Planted Monica on Clinton.

Come on, guys. opinion. Well, I don't think Monica Lewitsky was an Israeli operative. I do not think so. If she was, she's the most incompetent one of all time. I think that she was a young girl who

got in way over her head and I think she was taking advantage of and her life is destroyed. Don't make me make any head pun jokes in the situation. Fair enough. Desert Fox, how serious is the front line with Russia and Ukraine? There appeared to be a

Yuki breakthrough. I think the general trend line of the war is unchanged. What do you think, Robbie? Yeah, I think that the Russians are perfectly happy to trade useless land if it will let them kill more Yukis. I own an AI company, Dan Will says, and I can confirm that this is something that keeps me awake all night every night. Okay, that's terrifying.

Yeah, for sure. And then will, email me because I want to get you on the show. Yeah, that sounds good. John, Brandon Fredrickson, unfortunately John's gone. I've watched your first interview with Julian Dore. You look incredible right now compared to then. What do you know about Dennis Montgomery and his decoding software? I cannot answer that question.

Please hold that for John for next week. Robbie, Desert Fox wants to know, are you a fan of Austrian theory economics? It's capitalist. Mises and Rothbard are good authors. I have done a lot of reading about it. I don't know if I would say if I'm a fan. I know that in my personal opinion, I think that it's, I think it's probably more related to reality than the, then the economics we have right now that just teaches that debt is invisible.

It doesn't even matter. I think that money matters. And one of the biggest things I think that the, the Austrian economics teaches is that wealth and money are two different things. You can't spend the wealth. and so having to convert those two things over, having to convert wealth over to money as something you have to do. But as debt goes up, how can you do it? You can't.

And so I don't know. I think we're having for some interesting times. That'd be a good question to ask Achilles. You'd like somebody to get them on. Okay. Okay, Robbie, this is a Robbie question. Katie Catastrophe wants to know, how did you wind up in the great state of Montana?

But there was more work here at the time. I thought it was back home. We came up here back in 2010. And I was working at a ranch or a farm picking peanuts and cotton. Lost that job to a bunch of illegal Mexican migrants. And the only job I could find was at a call center in a little place called Calisville, Montana. And so that is how we ended up up here. And, yeah, I'll do a follow up.

I mean, would you go, if you could have the same exact or better living standard, would you go back to Florida? No, absolutely not. Montana is just beautiful. I love the mountains. I love the snow. I love the woods, the rivers, the water is amazing. Not as many people. That's a huge plus.

And I don't know. This is home. I don't know how it's to explain that this is home. Okay. Well, no, that's a good way to put it. And another Robbie question, this one's great. Atlantis 48, what's the tastiest animal you've eaten that people would be surprised about? Although I want to say, I want to answer that question too, but go ahead.

A raccoon. Raccoons are delicious. They're a little bit salty. And the best things you do is that you grill them. So you get yourself a raccoon and you're grilling and you just kind of just strip them out. Oh, my Lord. It'll slap your brains right out of your head. So I've read that, I mean, have you ever had bear?

I have. How did, under what con, because I've read that like bear meat has to be eaten like right away. It rots super fast. Is that accurate or anyway? But how, under what circumstances did you eat it? Did you just go to a restaurant or did some, someone you know, kill one or how did that happen? Shot one. You shot a bear?

Yeah. So the rule is if you shoot it, you eat it. And so that is what we did. That's Montana law? Well, it's the three Ss. You shoot shovel and shut up. And so me being a Christian, I believe you have to be a good steward. And so if you kill a critter, you don't, I enjoy hunting, but I'm against big game hunting.

So wait, what kind of bear did you kill? Was it an adult? Yeah, it was a black bear. An adult? Yeah. Were you, what did you kill it with? Oh, that maus in the gant that I showed you. And, I mean, if you had missed,

would you not be speaking to us today? There's a good chance because we're out picking huckleberries. And bears, they like their huckleberries. And so if you are getting their berries, they get really kind of upset. So wait, so this was, you didn't set out looking to kill a bear? The bear basically just happened upon you and you're like, okay, well, it's you or me?

Pretty much, yeah. That's exactly how it happens. Because if you, I'm telling you, Montana is a beautiful place. but if you don't respect it, it will kill you. And so if you're up in the mountains and if you're picking huckleberries, you need to go armed because if you don't, odds are some one of our furry four-legged brethren will eat you. Wow.

Did it did, I mean, were you scared shitless? I'm sorry, I've got to ask these questions. At first, yeah, because I really wasn't quite sure what was going to happen. Because what should do is I should go up. Do you have these? Like, you have to paint the picture, Robbie. Okay, I mean, so you're up in the mountains. Where are you?

Okay, you're in the mountains. You're looking for huckleberries. You have a bag. No, no, you have these gallon buckets. And so it was a loz was orange, the losed buckets just up there. You get your huckleberries. And then you sell them to the local restaurants.

Huckleberries are like on a bush. They're on a tree. Yeah, they're on a bush. Okay. And so what you're doing? You're just going up there. You're picking out your huckleberries. And people here are also.

a very territorial about the huckleberries. Anyway, long story short, this bear saw me and I saw the bear and the bear was just like, oh, this. Did he make any noise or do you just hear him moving? Oh, he started growling and then he just stood up, you know, like how they do. And I was like, okay,

here we go. Wow. He's, and he's a big boy. He was, yeah. He's much, like how much would you say he was twice your height when he's, where he reared up? I mean, did he roar? Oh yeah, yeah, he did.

Absolutely. I mean, just the videos are bone chilling. I can't even imagine. Yeah, no, it was impressive. But I mean, if you go up there, you need to take a high-powered rifle. So you had it like, you had it like, you know, on your shoulder. Yeah. And then you just like, it's time.

Yep. Is you aimed for his, you just aimed for the center of his chest or what? Yeah, just for his chest. And I mean, it's a 7.62 by 54R. So the bullet is about J. Long. and it's about the diameter of about my index finger. Like a little mini missile. Yeah, and I've actually used that thing to cut down pine trees.

So did he just go down? Or was it sort of like, you know, like, I'm still coming for you, but I'm going down? My email address is West Glacier Gaming at gmail.com. But no, it was a full metal jacket. That's the bear's relatives who want to email you. Yeah. So no, so we shot it. and it's an armor piercing round

so it just went through and it blew a hole out of the back of the bear did you keep the fur? And after that we've got to go. Did you keep the fur, his skin? I didn't because the bullet went all the way through and it just blew his spine out.

So it ruined it. So, oh, would you have like draped it over a chair or something? Oh, God, yes. I would love to have a bear skin rug. Yeah, I once had sex on a bear skin rug. It was really amazing. Okay.

with that. That's amazing story, Robbie. Thank you so much for that. We've got to go. We're going to be back on Tuesday with a live episode, Monday with a taped episode, because it is a national holiday here in the United States. President today.

We are here 9 a.m. Eastern time, Monday through Friday. Normally, John will be back on Tuesday, as will I. Please stay tuned for the TMI show with myself and Militjan coming up right now. And thanks, Robbie. Thanks, Trent. Thanks, everybody for watching.