DeProgram with John Kiriakou and Ted Rall - Measles-26 | DeProgram with Ted Rall and John Kiriakou

Episode Date: February 10, 2026

Political cartoonist Ted Rall and CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou deprogram you from mainstream media every weekday at 9 AM EST. Today we discuss: • Will a raging measles outbreak in South Carolina, which has infected more than 900 people and become the largest U.S. outbreak in recent history, become another pandemic? • Tech is messing with the search for Nancy Guthrie: Before AI, proof of life could be established by having a hostage take a picture holding a newspaper or talking on the phone. Now you can mimic someone's voice or image in photos, videos and audio, known as “deepfakes.” You can also devise fake documents, like passports. • A U.S. immigration court terminated the Trump administration's attempt to deport Tufts University student and pro-Palestinian activist Rümeysa Öztürk, a Ph.D. student from Turkey, for her essay criticizing Israel. Meanwhile, ICE is arousing the ire of judges across the country for willfully defying their orders.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 tuning in to deprogram with Ted Roll and John Kariaku. It's Tuesday, February 10th. Good morning, John. Good morning, Ted. How are you doing? I'm all right. I don't have the measles yet, so I suppose that's a plus. At least there's that. I don't know if my old MMR childhood vaccine works for measles. I hope so. That's what I'm relying on. You and me both. So, yeah, we'll be talking about that, whether we're going to have to deal with another pandemic.

God forbid. And then technology is getting in the way of the search for Nancy Guthrie due to basically deep fakes and people who are claiming to have contact with her. That's making things harder for investigators. This is obviously the new today, right? It's not the future anymore. Last but not least, I'm totally going to butcher this Turkish name. But Ramesa Ozturk, who,

was, of course, she was the Tufts student who, everybody remembers, this was the beginning of the big Trump administration crackdown, or actually, this happened under Biden, right? This was a Biden thing. So she was arrested and detained. She was a green card holder, Tufts University student. And anyway, they attempted to deport her because she wrote an essay in the school paper or co-authored an essay, criticizing Israel's conduct of its military operations against the people of Gaza. And she, anyway, she's just been released not by a federal court, but notably by an immigration court. So that's worth talking about because, you know, that's a big symbolic thing. It really seems like the administration is starting to see the tide turn against its ICE policies.

So we'll talk a little bit about that. As always, we have some housekeeping to take care of. First of all, thanks everyone for continuing to sign up and subscribe to this very rapidly growing show. We are now at 16,700, nearly 17,000 subscribers on YouTube. So thank you very much for that. Thank you for your support and your generous donations. We appreciate you liking, following, and sharing the show. And thank you for your support for our producer, Robbie,

a lot means that you're supporting not only Robbie but also the show. We're almost there when it comes to Robbie Aide for the month of February. I'm going to go ahead. Please go to gofundme dot com and search for deprogram Robbie. Deprogram Robbie is one word. We're almost there. I'm kind of shocked that we haven't already gotten there. This is like one of those limit problems that keeps getting closer and closer. Yeah. Right there. We need a thousand bucks and we're almost there. It's the 10th of the month already. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is definitely the longest it's ever taken. Maybe everyone's just so cold. They can't move. But I can feel that. The heat was out at my house yesterday. And it was brisk. I think God I had the cat to keep me warm. Yeah, there you go. So, John, what should we do? We have some questions lined up. Do we want to talk about measles? We want to talk about Nancy. May I add a topic? Sure.

Any. Kim Iverson. I love Kim Iverson. She's an awesome human being. She has a great show. She's got like 300,000 subscribers. She's great. I worked with her when I had my show on RT.

She's great. But she did an episode of her show yesterday in which she showed these photographs that have been making their way around social media and video showing Jeffrey Epstein, just walking down the frigging street in Tel Aviv like he owns the place. Right. Folks, these are AI generated photographs and videos. They're fake. They're obviously clearly fake.

And people are running with them like, oh my God, how could we all have been duped? He's just walking around Tel Aviv. He's not walking around Tel Aviv. He's not walking around anywhere. His brother is the one who identified the body. His brother is the one. that escorted the body to the funeral home. Jeffrey Epstein is dead.

He hasn't escaped. It's not a gigantic conspiracy involving every retard in the Bureau of Prisons that helped him escape from the prison when there was a one tenth of one second glitch in the video. Which, by the way, because people don't think to ask the question, all the videos reset themselves at midnight. There's always a glitch. Always. it's not specific to Jeffrey Epstein that's, oh, they shut the cameras off. No, they didn't shut the cameras off. So anyway, my bottom line, Jeffrey Epstein's dead. Let's move on from there. Yeah, I'm not everything that happens a lot with these, you know, it's not even fake AI. There's,

where there's pictures, old pictures are presented with the, like a lot of right wingers criticizing the conduct of Mamdani with the snowstorm. Yes. And they dig up old pictures of piles of snow from New York, sometimes from 3, 20 years ago. So that's a big problem. I mean, you really don't know what you see. I mean, this seems like a good segue to talk about Nancy Guthrie, right? I mean... Yeah, let's do that.

Okay, so Nancy Guthrie, obviously, is Samantha Guthrie's mom. She's now been missing for 11 days. She's in her 80s. Nobody knows what's happened to her. She, you know, appears to have been abducted. And it's very, it's hard to tell, discern from the press coverage, whether they've really received credible, you know, demands or proof of life from any alleged hostage taker who certainly there have been opportunists who have approached and demanded first one and now $6 million. And one's already been arrested.

Wow. Yeah. A scammer. Yeah. So, I mean, it's disgusting. Oh, my God. I mean, you're already, you're missing your mother. and then like these scum come to the surface and you know try to like shake you down for money on

top of it all it's just it's and you know the family has said that she she can't walk 50 feet she physically she's very frail mentally she's all there but she hasn't had her medication in nine days and she it's a very important medication right yeah to like continue living yeah so she may so i mean there's that so there's that question of like whether she would even be like, you know, on at all. I mean, whether she even could still be alive is a, is it, I mean, you know, let's face it. We know, we all know the rules. The longer someone goes missing, the less likely they are to still be alive. I mean, she, I wonder if she just wandered off, too, right? I mean, you know, she's all there, but she couldn't walk 50 feet, they said. Yeah. Okay. So that's not it.

Yeah. I mean, I don't know. It's a mystery. But anyway, the thing is, I thought it was interesting that like now, you know, it gets into this issue of authentication. So the FBI, the FBI is actually, I learned a lot about authentication of video and audio in my LA Times case. And the FBI sets the gold standard about how to do that, like how to determine whether, you know, when you see a videotape or an audio tape, whether you can trust it or not, and whether you could, like, whether it could be entered as reliable evidence in a legal case. I mean, in this, in this, this case, the investigators really have their hands full because they're until the, until they catch someone, and then they're not going to really know what they have in terms of any videos or

audios that they've collected. One of the big things is, for example, for the Zabruder film, the way that it was authenticated is the FBI has the standards that you can find online. They have to have the original device with which it was recorded. If you don't have that, because they compare like the magnetic imprint of the audio tape or the or the or the or the videotape to the original machine. Without that, it's almost impossible really to say that something hasn't been spliced, altered, modified. Oh, interesting. Yeah. And that's so that's super interesting.

Like in my case, the key piece of information was an audio tape made with a micro-cassette recorder back from around in 2001. Juan, you remember those, the little ones. I sure do. I think I still have mine. LAPD claimed, you know, they had modified the audio, but they released a digital audio, not the original. They claimed that they still had the digital, but then when the court had demanded it, they didn't have it. And then when the court said, where's the original machine?

They didn't have that either. And then it was like their whole case started to fall apart. But like, you know, it's so authentication and enhancement are super interesting. Enhancement is totally different where you can like find stuff, bury. read, for example, under, let's say you get a recording of traffic noise, you can maybe hear a bullet under the traffic noise if you strip away the tracks. I've heard, tell me if this is not true or if it's no longer true now that technology has advanced. But I've heard that the only thing that they have trouble stripping away is the sound of water running. I had heard that too.

I don't know if that's still true or no. Yeah, it has something to do with the frequency. Yeah. So, like, yeah, you know, like a great, if you're not really, you don't really know what a track is, it's sort of like when you're listened to like, you know, like 1960s, like the Beatles or like, you know, or the Beach Boys, stuff that's really like where the tracks are separated really clearly. And you hear the music bounce back and forth between your left and your right speaker. So it's just, that's kind of like how it, you can sort of imagine how this is.

Anyway, I wish all the best to Nancy and Samantha Guthrie. This is just horrible, horrible. I can't even imagine it. I mean, I don't think there's any regulatory scheme that could like make this any, you know, that could like bring, that can rain in deep fakes. I mean, I think that's just, that's just the reality of new technology. There's nothing you can do. I watched a documentary last night about this woman. I think her name was Libi, Cybe, something B.

in the UK. She was convicted of murdering, she was a nurse in the neonatal care unit in a hospital in Cheshire, I think it was. And she was convicted of murdering six babies or seven babies and attempting to murder six others. The worst serial killer in British history convicted in 2024. And it turned out that she was completely innocent. But anyway, her best friend was interviewed repeatedly through this whole documentary. And I said to the person I was watching it with, that woman is AI. That's not a real person because the lips didn't quite match up with the words that we were hearing. And at the end of the documentary, it said that the witness was an AI depiction of what the

witness, you know, wanted to say in the interview that she didn't want her, her voice or her image to appear on the film. So they just created this AI-generated woman. Everything was AI-generated. She's like sitting in her kitchen and there's a bottle of dawn on the sink. They went to lengths to make this look like an actual human being. But this person doesn't exist. She was completely computer-generated. You know, I could live with that, John, if they said it in real time. underneath, right? It was like, you know, AI generated, this person's not here. Putting it at the end, though, that's really cheating.

Not cool, yeah. No, it's not cool at all. Wow, we're going to see so much more of that. I mean, even back in the day when like 60 minutes would do like the shadowed witness. Yes, yes, yes, yes. You know, like Jeffrey Wigand, right? Right. Like with a distorted voice like right.

And everyone sounds like Stephen Hawking. Yes. And, you know, but they told you, like, this person's voice has been modified. Duh. Exactly right. No one sounds like that. But, yeah. Anyway, all right.

Shall we do some questions? Yeah, let's do that. And by the way, thanks everyone for your questions. Please put them in. And we're going to immediately think. Our first thank you goes to Sneaker Dad. Thank you. For the $50.

We'll try again to do monthly donation to Robbie. Please let us know if you have any trouble doing that. Okay, so from Rumble, Frazmataz, for both of us, Nick Fuentes, recently compared Epstein to Muhammad. Is it possible for a non-Muslim to effectively, not officially, issue a fatwa on themselves? Seriously. By doing that. Like, what the fredger are you thinking? Why would he do that?

You know, you know what? He would do that because he's a stupid kid. That's why. Yeah. See, I'm in a bad mood today. I almost can't help myself. Well, that'll make for better radio. maybe. It's a talking

point though, right? I mean, it's sort of like it's a talking point on the right that Muhammad, you know, was a peto and all that. It definitely is a right-wing talking point. And let me just say that like, look, you know, when you start to get into, if you're trying to compare

21st century American law to seventh century, you know, medieval you know, tribal rules, I mean, I can talk about apples and oranges. Seriously.

Okay. Kat, thanks. Hi from San Diego. Can you talk about Savannah's mom's kidnapping from a CIA perspective? Is this a common occurrence? Does anything stand out to you about this case? No, this is a very, very uncommon occurrence. You know, kidnappings for ransom are exceedingly rare.

This almost never happens. And almost all kidnappings, the FBI will tell you, have been carried out by either family members or people familiar with the family. To have a stranger kidnap someone for ransom is highly unusual. And I think that's what kind of threw everybody in this case. Like, this can't really be a kidnapping, right?

It's such a throwback. I mean, the most recent case I can think of, I believe it was the 1990s when a New York City, businessman was kidnapped and held, I believe, for ransom by strangers, just for the money. And he was held under horrific conditions. They basically buried him on the side of the West Side Highway. Oh, my God. And he could hear the traffic going by.

And he could scream, but nobody could hear him. And there's no pedestrians anywhere in that area. It was in Upper Manhattan, which is kind of like a more, I wouldn't say rural, but it's definitely like undeveloped. It's like Rock Creek Park in D.C. Right. And, you know, there's just parks there. And he was buried alive, like, basically buried alive in this park for days.

And he's lucky. He survived. They, I don't remember how they found him. And of course, there was never, you know, I'm pretty sure the hostage takers got caught. But that was a long time ago. I can't think of anything more recent. Yeah, I agree with you. These things are very, very rare.

Yeah. This poor woman, though. I have a friend. I have a friend who's an accomplished private investigator. And I talk to him every few days, lives in, well, he lives outside Albany, New York. But anyway, he's been doing this for decades. And he said to me yesterday, very matter of factly, he said, she's dead. And she's probably been dead for days.

I would think that too. Yeah. I mean, I hope that. I hope he's wrong. Alex, John, did you vaccinate before going overseas deployments? From what I heard, the rules are very strict. Yeah, all of us. Oh, my God.

You know, when I first joined the CIA all the way up until like 2000. So for that whole decade, for yellow fever, you had to get a gamma globulent shot. And it was like injecting maple syrup in your butt. And it would make this not the size of a tennis ball. So they would give you dispensation to walk around the compound for an hour and stretch out your glutes. So you didn't get that giant ball. It was like an hour of administrative time to work out that ball of gamma globulin that's pooling in your butt. But yeah, we got.

And another thing, too, is you'd get all these shots the same day and the next day you're sick as a dog. and so we would get that day off without it counting against your sick leave but yeah and i only went to not only but i almost exclusively went to um the shithole countries as donald trump called them and so uh so i was getting shots right left and center every time i'd go god that sounds horrible let me add let me add one thing if i could i caught typhoid fever in bangkok in 2002 and it's the sickest I've ever been in my life. And when it was finally diagnosed as typhoid fever, I said, but I said it can't be typhoid fever because I got the shots.

I got the typhoid shots. Yeah. And the doctor said, the typhoid shots don't prevent you from getting typhoid fever. The typhoid shots make the typhoid fever slightly less virulent when you catch it. Gotcha. It was like the worst case of the flu I've ever had in my life. I had to go to the hospital twice. Wow.

It was bad. I have not. I only, I remember when you, I had a flashback to those big needles. I had the first time I went to Central Asia. I had to get hepatitis. Yeah, Central Asia. Hepatitis shot again in your ass, like sort of like, and it was, it felt like the needle was still in there, like a month afterwards. Yes.

And the needle's huge and it's thick. Yeah, it's bad. This is bad. Okay, I'm glad that this question came up. Dr. Douglas Hauser. John, can you help us understand what's going on with the Intel whistleblower cover-up and Ron Wyden's letter about the CIA maybe set up that story for people who aren't familiar? Yeah, I think this is about a whistleblower complaint that Tulsi Gabbard has squelched and is not allowing to see the light of day.

and the whistleblower decided to go around Tulsi to the oversight committees. And so Ron Wyden, the Democratic Senator from Oregon, who really is the only person on either the House or Senate Intelligence Committees that has a little bit of balls. They're kind of smaller than normal balls, but at least they're there. Nobody else, everybody else has been cast. They're measurable. They're measurable, yeah.

So Ron Wyden's asking for clarification, because if what the whistleblower is saying that, did is true. This is a violation of the Whistleblower Protection Act. And there's going to be some money in it for the whistleblower. Joel Regath, John, can you try to compare what we believed would have happened in Iraq if Saddam had lived versus reality? Yeah, I think so. With the benefit of 2020 hindsight, of course. Saddam was a monster, first of all, like a monster, gassed his own people. electrified the swamps in southern Iraq to electrocute both Shia Muslims and Iranian troops, surrounded himself with some of the most horrific butchers of the 20th century.

He was a very bad man, but he was the only bulwark, Sunni Muslim bulwark against Iran. And with the obvious exception of Kuwait, he was seen by most of the other peninsula countries as a protector against Iran. If Saddam were, he probably wouldn't be alive at this point. He's my dad's age, so he would be like 90, 91, almost 92. One of the sons like Uday or Use would have had been there. Yeah, I think Kusay probably would have taken over. Uday was too mentally unbalanced.

But Kusay probably would be the president of Iraq today. And it would be, you know, he would be, controlling things with an iron fist like his father did. But Iran would be significantly weaker because it wouldn't have a partner in Iraq like it does now. If you so, two bucks. Thank you very much. Are you watching the Winter Olympics? And any thoughts about the upcam coming L.A. Summer Olympics? I am not watching the Winter Olympics. You know, I set out to watch the Olympics and I just haven't gotten around to it yet. I've been following the news. I, I check the metal count every every morning.

We have two golds, two silvers and a bronze so far. So good for us. But in terms of the metal count, we're solidly in the center of the pack. I think the Italians are first and the Norwegians are second. I think that's what I saw this morning. But no, I don't think I have. I don't think my brain has the patience for traditional network Olympics coverage and anymore.

You know, that's with so much padding, like, oh, let's go back to this person's hometown and interview people who knew them. Yes, Ted. And then like, oh, and now we're going to see the preparation for the event. And then we're going to see the event. Then, like, okay, let's look at that event again. Oh, look at that event again, again, again, again. Yeah.

Oh, now let's have a bunch of commercials. I just don't have time for it. No. You know? No, I agree with you. It's just not for me. It's like watching American Idol where similarly they go back to the hometown and, oh, I've been singing since I was three. And it's like, nobody cares.

Did we see Pink Lady Apples wants to know? Did you see or did you enjoy Bad Bunny on Sunday? By the way, I'm seriously about my photo of you handsome gentlemen. Where do I send my address? Well, I don't know that we have such photos to send, but. I'll have to make a couple. Oh, you know. I'm flattered that you would care to have a photo of me. It's very flattering. Did it. You know, you can you can contract to text me through my website, rawl.com, and I'll pass, I'll put the, I'll give the address to Robbie and we'll try to figure out.

Or yeah. Yeah, same here. Bad Bunny. I watched it after the fact. Oh, I watched it. And, you know, John, we haven't had this. We haven't talked about this. I understand some of the right wing pushback. Not all of it. because, look, he is American. I mean, Puerto Rico is American. Yeah. But I will say my only, my critique really was there should have been subtitles. Absolutely true.

I don't speak a lick of Spanish. I will say, and don't mock me, but until two weeks ago, I never heard a bad bunny. Never heard of the man. Tell you the truth, when I first heard of him, I thought, I just assumed he was a black rapper. Yeah, me too. anything about it. So anyway, I watched it live because I thought, well, people are going to be talking about it because it's already controversial, so I should watch it just so I know what the heck I'm talking about. Didn't understand a single word. I did enjoy the creativity.

I did. And then the next day when the Washington Post, the New York Times, translated the lyrics, I was like, oh, I get it. Yeah. So now I can say, yes. I enjoyed it now that I understand it. And the thing is, I've had this argument with several people about the, you know, the subtitles. And I'm like, look, when you go to the opera, which is usually an Italian, they give you a translation. That's right. They do. And I mean, because you miss out a lot.

Yes. So, you know, I mean, to me, it's exactly the same thing. To me, Puerto Rico is as American as apple pie. That's not the issue. It's like, you know, like if there was a Zydeco, you know, performance, that doesn't exist in France, right? That's only American. That should have a translation. Yeah.

You know, just because it's, I mean, you know, we're in America. Exactly. Who would believe Epstein's brother, Cyber Engineer, asks? Say that again? You know, calling into question whether Jeffrey Epstein's brother can be trusted about his being dead. Oh, because he's, I see, so he's a part of the conspiracy. Oh, now it's getting complicated. Come on, people.

Do you have any idea how many freaking mental cases would have to be in on this conspiracy to make it work? Right. I mean, I was, somebody sent me Kim's video today. I got so angry seriously in the first 15 seconds. I said, I am not going to waste 15 more precious seconds of my life, even looking at this stupid nonsense. Katie Catastrophe is asking. Elon said he would pay the legal fees of any Epstein survivor

if they get sued for speaking out, although Elon's promises online prove not always to be, you know, bankable. I think he's just trying to get ahead of it, showing he's a changed man. I think it's just Elon trolling. Question from Jessica Davidson. Lately the media is starting to promote the idea that Epstein was working for Israel all along. Who was it?

Who suggested that several months back, John? Exactly right. True. Exactly right. I'm very proud to say. And Alan Dershowitz and I went to the mat over this on the Piers Morgan show. I'm proud to say I stood up to him. But, yeah, I maintained from the very beginning this had all the hallmarks of a,

of an Israeli access agent operation. I stand by that, and I believe I've been proven correct. It appears so. Let's see. As a true crime junkie, I can't wrap my head around this. 85-year-old woman, famous daughter, hoax, real ransom. It's just all so odd. Isn't it crazy?

Couldn't agree more. Yeah. I don't know what to make of it. I mean, I think the authorities don't either. Yeah, I think the authorities don't either. Nicholas Franco's, John and Ted, do you think the Europeans should create an alternative debit and credit cards payment system so their payments don't route through New York, which is the case with Visa and MasterCard? Yeah, that's that's, I forget what that's called. But yes, most banking in New York, in North America and Europe route through New York City.

New York City. That's why I remember I said the other day that they have that octopus card in China. And I asked one of the shopkeepers, what does this octopus card you guys keep using? Can't you just use, you know, Visa or MasterCard? And he said, no, those go through New York. These go through Shanghai. This way we're not liable for U.S. sanctions. Yeah. So, I mean, look, it's always, I'm always in favor of national sovereignty or in this case, regional independence. So yeah, I mean, they should, there's no reason the Europeans can't have everything go through Brussels or Paris or whatever. They could. Waterways, Ted, any thoughts about Austin Butener dropping out of the- I was going to ask you that, Ted?

So Austin Butner is the, was the publisher of the LA Times who basically was ordered by LA 4th. former disgraced, resigned, corrupt LAPD chief Charlie Beck to fire me and smear me in his own pages. Austin Butner is a disgusting pile of shit. And the people of California are going to be very happy that he's not going to be their governor to replace Gavin Newsom. Now, that said, so this was not the mayor's race. This was the governor's race. He was hoping to run in 2028. that said, this was the wrong, basically a bad thing happened to the wrong butner.

One of his four kids, 22-year-old daughter died. We're not really sure. It looks like a drug overdose, is my guess. And so he basically dropped out to take care of his, to deal with that. I have no idea. He doesn't seem like a warm and fuzzy person, but who knows what he is, what he's like as a father. But anyway, all I can say is the wrong butener died. Wow.

So handsome libertardian, John and Ted, what are our thoughts about the new trade deal between India, the U.S., possibly throwing a wrench into bricks? You know, forgive me if I sound cynical, but I think that's the whole idea. I think that, first of all, Trump likes India. Indians like Trump and both sides saw this as a positive development and at the same time the US gets the added benefit of throwing a wrench into bricks by pulling India closer to the United States

and away from China, Russia, Brazil at all. Yeah, I mean this is kind of interesting, right? Because India is playing a role that normally you would see this kind of thing happened with a smaller country that's trapped between more powerful states where they try to play them off against each other and like you can be

our suitor well I don't know I could go with these guys these he's so cute I might go with him and it's like but India's a big regional superpower so it's funny to see them do this I mean I guess compared to bricks

in the US obviously they are smaller so yeah John Harth, I don't understand who likes that kid. There's a difference between freedom of speech and then saying J.D. is a race trader because his wife is of color. I assume we're talking about Fuentes. Right? Right. I agree. Yeah. John, can you try to compare what we believed would have happened in Iraq?

Oh, we already got that. John, can you do a deep focus on South Africa and Israeli apartheid laws similarities? and thank you for defending Roshuala. No idea. Okay. Do you think the CIA had a hand in Gaddafi's son? Love the show. There's always a possibility, sure.

Sure. Although, well, you know, yes. The easy answer is yes. Sure, I believe it's possible. A year ago, I would have said, ah, nobody cares. This year, it's like, ah, you know, he actually actually,

has a following. He elected to stay in the town where he had been captured and was placed under a house arrest. He was developing a greater following. He was talking about going into politics. So who knows? Who knows? Stranger things have happened. Flandrina, I've been hearing a lot about the conspiracy that, quote-unquote, pizza was an Epstein code word for children. Is there merit to this discussion? A couple of Oh, my God. Names have brought it up on their podcasts. Big names.

And let me explain. So I work with Ben Swan, who is a lovely person. He really is. And Ben was actually fired years ago by Fox News because he latched on to this Pizza Gate story. And you remember, there's this pizza place in northwest Washington on Connecticut Avenue called, like, comet, not comet pizza pizza. It's called whatever it's called. It became famous because Podesta was always talking about it in the DNC emails. The truth is Podesta lives right there in the neighborhood on Nebraska Avenue.

So he's always going over there. So people said, oh, Podesta. Leave his phone on the counter. Seriously. So Podesta, they said he's going over there because in the basement there's this dungeon and that's where they're keeping children and they're torturing children down there and raping children.

And this guy drove up from North Carolina, you might remember, with an AK-47 and just started shooting the place up. Fortunately, nobody died. Fortunately, nobody died. Amazing. So he did it to liberate the children, shot up this door for this little side room.

Turns out there is no basement. let alone children. It's built on a slab. There's no basement. The little secret room he had, that was where they had the server and the computer to do payroll. The room was like four by six feet.

There was nothing in there but the computer and the server. The guy was quickly caught, sentenced to like seven years in prison. He's already out. He's made apologies. He was duped. QAnon said that this was happening.

Okay. Last week, the Epstein files are released. And there's an email from Epstein's urologist to Epstein. He's just prescribed some Viagra type drug. And he says, go ahead, take this pill. And then as soon as you take it, call me and we'll have some pizza and grape soda. And people are like, oh, my God, it's true. Children are in the pizza parlor.

It's a conspiracy. or they really like pizza. Yeah. I don't know. Yeah. I like pizza. I do too. And I probably have said that in multiple emails.

Most Americans do. Not grape juice, though. No, no, no. Grape juice is kind of gross. Okay. Dragons of Light, can you help explain a little bit what's happening now in the Middle East, all the alliances and defense alliances? Also, Turkey started to defend the whole region?

Thanks. Oh, the Turks man would love nothing. nothing more to neo-Ottomanize the entire, the entire region. And I never said that. We'll come back to that. He's trying to be what the Ottoman emperor was in the old days when the Ottomans were not the sick man of Europe. And the Israelis are having no part of it. The Cypriots and the Greeks are opposed to it.

the Turks don't, I mean, the Egyptians don't need the Turks for anything. The thing is, is Turkey is expansionist. It's occupying a third of Cyprus. It's occupying the border region with Syria. It's occupying the border region with Iraq. Nobody has any use for the Turks. John, let's talk about this measles situation. I mean, I'm a little bit ashamed.

The United States pretty much got rid of measles entirely by 20, there were no cases whatsoever. And there weren't for the next few years. And now, you know, we have over 900 people. It's raging. Dr. Oz is urging everybody. He's the head of the CDC. And he is strongly urging Americans who don't have one to get a measles vaccine.

Even RFK Jr. is saying it's your personal choice, but he's still not discouraging anyone from getting it. I mean, what's going on? I mean, how is it that we're dealing with measles in 2026? Because these idiots thought that they can make all these vaccinations optional. Because giving parents the right to make these decisions was really the right thing to do. Okay. So now your kid has measles and people are dying of measles.

Or your kid gets polio. or your kid gets, you know, lock jaw or whatever. You happy now? Boy, I guess you showed the government who's going to be in charge of your family. So if this is what you want for your kid, go for it. But I'll tell you what, as soon as another administration comes in, these rules are going to change back to what they were.

I would think. Yeah, it's really, it's bizarre. Folk style scrub. Maybe I'm unschooled, but it seemed to disrespectful. have a Puerto Rican independence flag at an American event. And for people who are unaware of what that references to, Bad Bunny was carrying a Puerto Rican flag around, if you look carefully, the blue field is lighter than the normal Puerto Rican flag that has a dark blue. And that's the independence. Now, I will say, I did feel like that that was a contradiction, right? It's an

internal conflict between the message that like, you know, Spanish and Puerto Rican and Latino culture are part of the United States, all to be celebrated. And at the same time, we want to be independent. Those two things politically don't go together, John. No, you're right. I think you and I've talked about this. The last time I went to Puerto Rico, I was talking with a with a guy, he's kind of mid-level Puerto Rican government official. And I asked him to explain to me what people's positions were on independence. And he said, oh, we are very evenly divided. He said, fully a third of Puerto Ricans want independence.

A third of Puerto Ricans want statehood to be a member of the United States as a state. and a third of Puerto Ricans want to just leave things exactly the way they are right now. And he said, and because of that, nothing's ever going to change. Yeah, that's my understanding as well when I went to Puerto Rico. I mean, yeah, personally, if I were Puerto Rican, I think I'd want independence. I would agree. I mean, I never understood why the Scots voted not to be independent from the Brits. I was shocked by that outcome.

I was stunned. I really believed that was going to be it. It was going to be... I thought it wasn't even going to be close. Agreed. Yes. And it's not like the Scots couldn't handle themselves economically. They have a viable economy.

They could... Yeah. I don't know. Yes. Neil Dalston, 7265. What's going on with the new Canadian bridge? This is the bridge between... Is it Hamilton, Ontario?

Yes, and Detroit. Did Trump just get bored of Greenland and went back to beating up Canada? I think so. It appeared that way, yes. I think that's exactly what happened. Yeah. Yeah. Brianna wants to know, John, whether you will do

another printing of the Reluctance by she would like to read a physical copy. Yeah, you know, I think we're moving in that direction. I sold out 50,000 hardbacks and 100,000 paperbacks. but I get more requests for a hard copy of that book than anything else.

I looked at my contract the other day and I don't own the rights to it yet. Random House still owns the rights, but I'm going to... Yeah, it would have to go out of print. Yeah, and it is. It's out of print. So maybe it's mine. You know what, I'm going to... Usually, once it's out of print for maybe not even a very long time, it becomes yours. You could maybe just do a limited run, like, of 100 or whatever.

Sure. Number copies. That'd be kind of cool. That's kind of cool. So, John, what are your thoughts about just Lane Maxwell, potentially getting a pardon from Trump based on her silence and testimony to try to absolve him? Well, she didn't testify. She took the fifth on everything.

Why do you think she, I mean, my take on that is I thought, I assume she didn't take the fifth because basically they didn't offer her anything. And therefore, why should she say anything? At the very least, they would normally have offered limited immunity. At the most, they would have let her just speak her peace and she couldn't be prosecuted for anything. That's how Oliver North ended up never going to prison because he was offered immunity. He testified.

The Justice Department then tried to charge him. And the Supreme Court said, you can't charge him because Congress gave him immunity. So nothing he said could be used against him. He ended up not seeing a day in jail. With Galane Maxwell, I think that. they just didn't offer her anything. They just subpoenaed her at the prison and said, come and testify,

and she said, not a chance. Right. I will say what they thought would happen. And the more, the more important point is this notion of a pardon or a commutation. Like deep down, I can't imagine any president commuting the sentence of or pardoning a convicted child

trafficker. Especially at that scale. But I'm genuinely worried. Huh. Um, F you so, thanks for the buck. And I do not, I do not know about this. Did you hear about that French hospital being evacuated because a guy came in with a live World War I rusty ordinance up his ass?

I, you know what? I have to, I have to Google that because that sounds awesome. Yeah, it does. You know, there was something else that one of our viewers told me about yesterday. And I was like, what are you talking about? And he said, you have to stop reading just the American media. there was an explosion at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. And then two hours later, there was a huge explosion at an Iranian Arms Depot.

Really? Yeah. So I looked it up. And sure enough, that's exactly what happened. And maybe the third prong of the attack is the French hospital ask grenade. Let's look at that, Ted. I mean, I had a friend who, well, she was a relative by my ex-wife's relative. She worked at the ER at George Washington University Medical Center there in D.C.

And she told me so many outrageous stories about people coming in with strange shit. And the grossest story she had was about a guy who came in wearing a trench coat. And when he removed it, he'd been fucking his cat. And the cat was clamped, you know, so they have like in their genitals, they have spines and they kind of like lock on each other. So that's kind of like why they yell when they fuck because it hurts. And anyway, but a cat, of course, a dude is like many times too big for the cat. Anyway, the point is the cat had locked on and wouldn't let go. And so I said, what did you do?

And she goes to me like, I'm retarded. Like, what do you think we did? I'm like, oh, if it were me, I'd take him to the back and shoot him. but I mean, because I'm not sure the world really needs cat fuckers. But she's, I'm sure you guys didn't do that. And she goes, no, we gave the cat a muscle relaxing. And I said, did you let him take the cat back home? And she said she didn't know that part.

Oh, this was not a grenade, Ted. Okay. Listen to this. Or does the F. You so said. A 24-year-old man reported to the emergency room complaining of severe rectal pain when, this is from El Paix. When questioned about the cause of his discomfort, he admitted to inserting an object

without specifying what it was, the pain was too intense to ignore, but he failed to provide some crucial details. The medical staff proceeded to operate as his standard procedure in similar cases where some kind of sexual activity leads to such an unpredictable situation. The problem, though, arose

when they began to remove the identified object, which turned out to be a relatively small World War I shell measuring 20, 20 inches long. What? And just over three centimeters in diameter. 20 inches.

Medical staff had to... 18 inches right here. Ridiculous. Medical staff had to halt the procedure fearing a possible explosion. The hospital, unfamiliar with such protocols, immediately alerted authorities. And at 140 a.m., police arrived and activated the bomb squad. The team established a security perimeter to neutralize the device so surgery could continue, although no one knew at that stage if the entire operation could blow up at any moment.

Initial checks, however, concluded that the shell dated from 1918 and posed no risk. It was no longer explosive. What us. People put a lot of weird shit in their ass. You know, my ex-father-in-law was an emergency room physician at St. Elizabeth's Hospital in Youngstown, Ohio. That's where he did his residency. And he told me, you know, back in the day, when I was a kid, Youngstown had a significant, mob presence.

And he said the worst case... Now there's not enough economy to be worth it. No. He said the worst case he ever had was a guy came in bleeding profusely from the rectum. And what the mob had done, the guy owed money and didn't pay it back. They shoved a pipe up his ass. Then they ran a line of barbed wire up the pipe and then pulled the pipe out. So his ass closed on the barbed wire. he said that guy was in surgery for 12 hours and it lacerated his liver, it lacerated his kidney.

He almost bled to death. That's fiendish. Yeah. Who would ever even think of something? I know. I know. I have a book on medieval torture. And I'm always like, who sat around thinking of this stuff?

Yeah. Isn't that the truth? It's sort of like there's a Tibetan torture where they have you, they put you on a block of ice. You stand on a block of ice. and you have like these hooks. Like basically your head is in a cage with hooks going up into your neck. And as the ice slowly melts, you know, you can't stay up as high. So they push more and more in.

I'm like, man, talk about, we're ingenious little monkeys. Yeah, I guess. Let's see. Look up a desert fox says, look up Podesta's personal art collection if you ever want trouble sleeping. I don't know anything about that. Zach Dicast, man's monsour, there are speculations that Trump is behind Nancy Gwetherie's kidnapping in some way. Yeah, he's also behind like when Clovis doesn't want to eat his food.

Do you give that theory any merit? Trump's not responsible for everything bad in the universe. Yeah. You know. Yeah. Yeah. Jackson McGrath is clarifying from his, earlier comment, I meant Roshuala on defending his marriage to mother Aisha.

Anyway. Sorry. All right. So let's talk about Ramesa Ozturk. She's the Tuft student who was famously on video initially dragged off the street over her. When did this happen? I'm trying to remember. Was this under?

No, it was under Trump. It was at the very beginning of the second Trump administration. So ICE, there's also a story in Politico today about how judges are really getting pissed off at ICE because of their legal tactics. First of all, whenever the judges issue any kind of habeas rulings, it's often the people are whisked out of state before they can, you know, whether they, before they can be liberated. the Department of Justice is constantly dragging their ass on replying to the court's demands. Even when the courts ruled that a detainee must be released, the ice just keeps them anyway for weeks, days, weeks at a time. The ice behaves in bad faith. They're often released.

For example, people are dragged off the street in Minnesota. and then dumped on and then just left outside without money or their possessions or their phone or any way to call anyone in El Paso. And it's like, well, we did release them. And if you've ever been to El Paso, it's not someplace you want to be just dumped out on the street. That's true. It's a little sketchy. And, you know, basically, oh, when judges say this person's free to go, I put monitoring bracelets

and ankles, ankle bracelets on them. You know, basically there's constantly, the judges keep saying, like, you guys are, you know, disrespectful, you're disobeying the courts. But basically, this is just sort of not going to change. But anyway, I guess my point is, we see the polls are very anti-ice these days. It's going to get worse and worse.

You know, I have good sourcing that says ICE is now headed towards Springfield, Ohio. to basically the people who were sent from Minnesota are now going to Ohio. It's just going to be ugly, more ugly scenes. I mean, does it, I mean, what do you make of the fact that like an immigration court, which are now called deportation courts? Right. These are pretty much, the fix is normally in against the immigrants, against the migrants,

but they decided to let Oztur go. I mean, what was it about her case? Do you think that, like, and this is decisive. That's it. She's down here. That's it. That's right. You know, I think that there is a lot of disagreement at the federal district court level. This decision negated that dispute at the district level. And I think that the appellate courts, even the appellate judges that were appointed by Donald Trump are now coming out in writing and saying,

this has gone too far and it needs to be dialed back you can't just pick somebody up and expel them because you don't like their political beliefs yeah yeah um well uh we'll see what happens to kaleel too that that's that's that's the big one that's the never in my mind yes me too um pete pete one i one ve thanks for the two for i like pizza too but i don't need ed drugs to enjoy it Seriously. I can't top that. Okay. Question for John from Desert Fox.

What's your opinion on recent settler agitation of Al-Axa in coordination with the looming Iran war? Many extremists see this as a biblical end-time battle of Gog and Magog. That is exactly right. I am actually frightened by all of this. You know, the religious Jews believe that that they need to reclaim the mount, right, and build the third temple. The first temple, of course, was BC. The second temple was destroyed, I don't know, 30 years or so after the crucifixion.

And this is where the third temple will come. As soon as the third temple is built, the Messiah is going to come down and take everybody to heaven. It's apocalyptic. It's exceedingly dangerous. And honest to God, if something happens to the Alaksan mosque, it's going to be the start of World War III. It is. It's going to be the start of World War III.

Nothing less. Ruby, God. I'm very worried about it. Ruby, Dog, thoughts on federal attempted takeover of state elections, impacts on coming midterms. Can't do it. We've talked about this in the past. The states get to run their own. elections. Well, what if, what if, I mean, but okay, but this has to, I mean, you're right. That's what the

Constitution says, but that has to be enforced in a court of law. What's to prevent more stuff like what we saw, the DOJ, the FBI seizing voter records in Fulton County, Georgia? What if the administration just says, fuck it, we're going to go ahead and just take over a bunch of state elections this fall? And then, like, you know, the election will be over. By the time the election's over, the courts will rule, but I mean, I don't know, there can be emergency injunctions. But, yeah. I mean, the court system doesn't seem to be very nimble and its ability to respond to the administrator, a very fast-moving administration.

Well, although one side or the other can appeal directly to the Supreme Court, you don't have to go to the district court, then the appellate court. You can go directly to the Supreme Court and ask for an injunction. And I suspect that's where we're headed. John, any CIA methods for rolling your R's as a white boy who barely speaks Spanish or Arabic? Yeah. In all seriousness, yes. Pronounce it like a D, like Teddy, like the name Teddy.

It will get you into the practice of... Yeah, but that's a French one back here. The Arabic one is... I am... royally annoyed that he didn't that question wasn't for the person who speaks French here. The Roy de la France. But, all right. And let's see.

I think this will probably be the last question here. Flandrina is asking, my sister is visiting our Palestinian hometown in the West Bank. She said they've had settlers walking through talking about how they're coming for our homes next. Oh, I believe it. I believe that. They're fucking thugs. Crazy, crazy people.

Yeah, they are. Horrible. And let's see. And I think, let's see. Oh, Susan Collins just announced that she is running for re-election in the state of Maine. No big surprise there. Also, the Trump administration is abolishing $600 million in funding from four Democratic-led states for public health spending. But hey, it's not like there's a measles outbreak or anything.

So it's not a problem. Public health, public schmelfth. We don't care. It doesn't matter at all. Yeah, that's nuts. Let's see what else. Yeah. Oh, John, before we go, I don't know if you saw this New York Times editorial

kind of calling for rolling back the legalization of cannabis in the United States. I didn't see that. Why? Basically, they think it's gone too far and that it's causing a lot of harm and that people are addicted to pot and that it's causing a lot of unanticipated problems. Oh, my God. Okay, well, then let's ban alcohol too. Oh, wait a minute. We tried that. It didn't work.

Never mind. Yeah. Unbelievable. And basically it's like they're basically, basically the idea, what they're calling for is not criminal. but, you know, making making it illegal again or just taxing the shit out of it so it becomes effectively illegal. Yeah. It's always about the taxes.

It's always about the taxes. That's right. Let's get the money. I've always said this. Like if the government was less interested, more interested in you driving safely, they wouldn't fine you for speeding or breaking the traffic laws. They would just, you just have points and eventually they would take away your license. That's all.

The fact that there's money involved is because they just want to make money. Yep. All right, John, thanks as always for joining me here for D-Program with Ted Roll and John Piriaku. We're back tomorrow, Wednesday, February 11th at 9 a.m. Eastern Time. We're here Monday through Friday at 9 o'clock Eastern Time. Tomorrow, John, you're going to be out. You're going to be traveling. Yeah, I'm going to do the James O'Keefe show down in Palm Beach.

All right. So go watch that. But also watch Scott Stantis. We'll be filling in for you, John. Scott Stantis is the editorial cartoonist for the Chicago Tribune. You guys remember him from filling in before. And stay tuned for the TMI show with Manila Chan and myself coming up right now. Thanks, John.

Happy travels and see you on Thursday. Bye, bye, Ted.