DeProgram with John Kiriakou and Ted Rall - Peace in Our Time? | DeProgram with Ted Rall and Jamarl Thomas

Episode Date: June 18, 2026

Conflict reporter/writer/cartoonist Ted Rall and political analyst Jamarl Thomas deprogram you from mainstream media every weekday at 9 AM EST. Today we discuss:• The U.S. and Iran have remotely signed their memorandum of understanding to end the war and open the Strait of Hormuz, and the agreement is now in effect. • Israel’s prime minister has been silent. His silence echoes against growing demands from across Israel’s political spectrum that he defy Donald Trump and keep fighting Hezbollah in Lebanon. Netanyahu has staked his political future on the war with Iran and is still insisting that campaign has been a success, even as his critics list the ways Iran has emerged stronger from this conflict.• Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar announces that he is halting all contact with European Union foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas for reportedly comparing Israel to South Africa’s apartheid regime. Officials and diplomats said that Kallas compared Israel’s treatment of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank to the apartheid system that existed in South Africa until the early 1990s. The reported remarks sparked criticism from a number of European representatives.• A proposal to tax the wealth of billionaires in California has officially gathered enough signatures to appear on the November ballot. Proponents have until June 25 to decide if they want to proceed. The initiative would place a one-time, 5 percent tax on the assets of California residents with at least $1.1 billion and would dedicate most of the revenue to health care. (Those with between $1 billion and $1.1 billion would pay a lesser percentage.)MERCH STORE: https://www.deprogram.livehttps://x.com/tedrallhttps://x.com/JamarlThomasLIVE ON RUMBLE: https://rumble.com/c/DeProgramShowSPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/show/2kdFlw2w8sSPhKI8NRx8ZuAPPLE MUSIC: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/deprogram-with-ted-rall-and-jamarl-thomas/id1825379504

Good morning. You're watching Deep Program with Ted Raul and Jamarlem. Thomas. It is Tuesday, June 18, 2026. Thank you for joining us. Please like, follow and share of the show. Busy morning for me this morning anyway, and hopefully for you as well. TMI coming up at 10 a.m. 11 a.m. We'll have DMZ America with Scott Stantis and I. However, Mr. Fish will be sitting in for the vacationing Scott Stantis. We'll be covering the assassination of a cartoonist, editorial cartoonist, in Polaroos. Poland. Okay, so let's see. We've now had some time to absorb the news of the ceasefire agreement. The ceasefire agreement is now officially the Memorandum of Understanding has apparently been docu-signed. It has been completely officially done. And I guess the ceremony in Geneva will just be, you know, for the cameras. But that's not going, but basically it's now in effect. The first anchors have already crossed through the Strait of Hormuz. Oil markets are reacting favorably. We've now had more time to absorb the events that led to where we are now.

We're looking at the reactions coming out of Israel. I've got to say, J.T., one thing struck me. You and I disagreed. You're the perennial pessimist here, which amazes me because I'm usually in any forum, the resident pessimist. So this is kind of like, you know how Israel has a political range from right far right. We're like from super pessimist to very pessimistic.

But the pessimist says basically that basically the Israelis are going to blow it up and that this doesn't stand a chance of lasting. Trump will not be able to withstand the, you know, the Zionist pressure. I'm, but you know, I'm thinking

the mere fact that Trump didn't feel necessary to even supply Israel with the text of the agreement until after it had been negotiated. The fact that they're not at the table, that they were sitting out in the hallway like a little kid while the adults took care of business indicates to me that this is a Jamar al-Thomas theory, and I agree with it, always have, that Trump, that Israel is the U.S. is dog. And so this, it follows that narrative, right? is the Israel is U.S.

dog. Iran says, call off your dog. We don't need to have Israel here in the room. They don't have to sign anything. Fuck them. You know, you will arrange for your dog, not to bite us or fight our friends in Lebanon. I mean, so obviously the U.S. and Iran both believe that they can make Israel stand down, that the U.S. could make Israel stand down without Israel being involved. to me, that gives me room for hope, quite optimism, but maybe somewhat tempered pessimism.

I describe it like a dog on a leash, or let's say a person riding a horse. That's a human we like horses. A person riding a horse. The horse does have a mind of its own and has wants, it has things that it wants to accomplish. but there is a rider to that horse. And the horse might have been able to roam so long that it forgot that it had a rider and it might have gotten everything that it wanted so much

that it forgot that it wasn't doing it on its own power. But it doesn't mean the rider is gone. It doesn't mean that just because the dog is peeing on people's yards that there's not somebody actually holding a leash and that the leash is just very, very long. I think what Israel got a wake-up call about that fact. They're the kid that gets everything.

And the most blue bins, they're like, this isn't a red bins. And he kicks the car and walks away. Mom! Right, right. Mom, this is what I wanted. But the reality of it is, I do think there is obviously we give them money. We give them political support.

We defend them in a UN General Assembly and its Security Council. Not the other way around. the other countries that don't, let's say, take a more hostile stance towards Israel, don't do so because of America. Not because of Israel. It's a country of eight million people. So, like, there is a clear difference in power dynamic between these two. I get that they give us money in politics and everything else.

But this is kind of like the Richard Nixon thing. At the end of it all, will the United States destroy its own economy for the benefit of Israel? No. Those are the people who put Trump in office, right? Like, yeah, you're paying off politics. politicians. At the end of the day, am I really going to destroy the U.S. economy? Am I really going to allow gas the spiral to infinity? For you? No. No. I mean, should we be looking at what's at the A-PAC influence and the Zionist lobby influence

in a different way? I was just listening to you, and I literally just crossed my mind for the very first time. Should we be looking at it instead of the simple linear, they pay money to our congressman therefore they own our legislature therefore they own us maybe that's wrong maybe in the israeli policy uh you know mentality they're so dependent on the united states the united states created them sustained them defended them um ran interference for them that they need to pour to invest money in these congressmen like you've said each congressman has their own apac um person baby system, right? They need that because it's basically like if they don't make sure, you know, it's kind of like, man, we got to make sure big daddy is happy. If big daddy is not happy,

you know, our allowance is going to get cut off and we'll be fucked. So could it be that even the APEC stuff is actually not a sign of Israeli strength, but it always was a sign of weakness? Well, you don't have to invest hundreds of billions of dollars if people agree with you. Right. Meaning if you and I were in agreement and we were on the same page, you don't have to give me money. Why would I need you to give me money if both of us agree in regards to what we're effectively doing? And I guess it is a measure of control on some level. And you do have people, I think the argument that I've heard people use is kind of like Democrats and Republicans in the way they make up a party.

You have Zionists and Israeli firsters who kind of dovetail in regards to that. thoughts about the world, in which case they affect an act policy. But again, that is separate from a president who's going to have to stand there and take the hit when gas goes to eight bucks and companies are going belly up and your economy and your stock market drops by 20,000 points. Like, those are physical matter reality consequences. Trump said as much, by the way. Trump was like, all the Israelis hate me. And all of these people would have been perfectly fine with the global economy going tits up. Okay, that's an, that's an acknowledgement that there were guardrails that Iran was able to effectively nail down that the U.S. couldn't necessarily get past in the

short term. Key point that I think we keep making. In the short term, if you look at the memorandum of understanding, most of this stuff is not settled. Like, you know, Iran will control the strait, and we will negotiate with the Gulf states that also give them some level of control. No, they're not. Iran's not giving that up. Iran's not going to have. It's in the Memorandum of Understanding. I'm sure you've read it.

It's not very, it's very, I read it. It's not long. It's, and, you know, yeah, we get a free toll straight to Formuz for 60 days. And after that, there's going to be a new Omani, a joint Omani Iranian, port authority that's going to charge tolls. So Gulf states also. And I'm saying the Gulf states are not going to have any part of this. No.

No, the Gulf states just be paying. The Gulf states be paying 300 billion, you know, be repairing their infrastructure. They'd be paying $300 billion to Iran. They'd be paying tolls to the Iranians. I mean, they're like not even the dogs anymore. They're the rats. It's like life's going to suck hard for them right now. I would not want to be, you know, I would not want to be living there at all.

It would blow. Okay, so. I mean, it's worse than that. I mean, the reality of it is they've had their bases attacked. They realize that they're infinitely vulnerable that the U.S. can't protect them, that this deal that they've made for oil for protection is null and void, which Iran has just demonstrated. And even worse, they gave Trump an airplane that costs hundreds of millions of dollars that Trump was probably. Yeah, like meaning you've bribed this man, like to the tune of billions.

And at the end of the day, he couldn't protect you. That's amazing. Like all of this stuff is amazing. The fact that Trump had to sign this humiliating document and is now trying to explain it to the American public. There's a clip where Peter Deucey says, Mr. President, in 2020, there was a comment that Iran never wins a war, but they always win a negotiation. Trump says, who said that? You did, Mr. President. That's awesome.

That Peter Ducey is pointing out, this looks like a surrender. Well, it's, I mean, it is. And again, look, honestly, I want to congratulate President Trump for surrendering. And I don't mean that facetiously. I mean, you, look, honestly, Like an important part of life is recognizing reality and acting accordingly, right? And come out of the foxhole with your hands up and hope you don't get shot. That's what happens here. It's better than the alternative, right? I mean, there's only one correct decision to make here.

And President Trump made it, albeit a little belatedly for my taste. By the way, the spinning is amazing on the right. They're literally saying, look at Donald. I mean, you know, they can't help themselves. They've got to like try to put a bright face on this. Will Trump get the Nobel Peace Prize now? No, because let me speak slowly and use small words. You don't get a peace prize for a war of choice that you began for no reason whatsoever.

So no. You don't get that. But yeah, I mean, look, the thing is, the bleeding gets staunched now. You know, it's like Trump is. not going to pay the $300 billion. Let me ask you that. J.T., why is it not the United States and or Israel that's paying the $300 billion? Do we just go to the Gulf states because they have more money than God and they don't care

about money and just say, like, hey, you pay? I mean, you know, why are they paying? Why, you know, like if you're Qatari, you might say, like, hey, we didn't start this. You know, you pay. Why are we paying $300 billion to the Iranians? To be fair, the investment can come from all quarters. China has said they wanted to be involved. South Korea has wanted to be involved.

Europe has wanted to be involved. So, like, that money can be organized. This is an initial fund, yeah. Yeah. It's just anybody can dump money into it. The U.S. is not going to molest it, and they're going to allow the investment to go through. And again, like, again, but this is in the future. Like, I don't think this is ever really going to come.

It may come up. That's true. I think the money's already on the way. Part of it, supposedly. So part of the money is $150 billion. And my understanding, I mean, you know, it's all been very fuzzy, right? It's foggy. My understanding is this is not like an IMF type thing where it's like we're, you know,

we're holding on to it. We're going to, yeah, we'll invest in your country, but you're never going to see the cash. We're going to send like, you know, our contractors to take care of this. We're sending in Halliburton. This isn't that. This is like we wire $300 billion to the Iranian government and they do with it what they will. Well, see, that wasn't, okay, that wasn't the way I understood it. I took it as investment, like private investment into Iran itself.

You're right. It's not alone. No. It's a gift. It's a different grant is what it is. Yeah, right. So, I mean, so that's a whole different animal. That is like, I mean, that's where so many comes to pass.

again, all of this stuff has talked about in the future. Like, yes, they may be coming up with deals and arrangements and those type of things, but at any point, the U.S. could put the cap on if this stuff falls apart. I guess my thing is, there are things that are immediate. So we are opening the strait. We're allowing your oil and your oil products go through unbolesed. Okay, well, that's money and revenue coming in pretty much in the immediate. Iran is going to control the strait, even though they're not going to have tolls.

Okay, they may not have tolls, but they may have administrative fees. Well, they'll have holes out here. It's going to be a toll. It'll just be a total, even if we don't call it a toll. Yeah. The $300 billion is basically reparations. There's that. The $24 billion, how much ever billions they're supposed to get there.

That was theirs. Yeah, that's theirs. That's a separate track of money. And that's something else people need to realize. The $300 billion and the money that is frozen from Iran are two separate tracts of money. One is Iran's own the money, which is tens of billions. The other one is hundreds of billions of investment. I mean, that's by itself the fact that he even had to sign that.

And then to try to make the argument that this is better than the JCPOA. How? How this is better than a JCPO? You can say whatever you want about Obama's JCPOA, right? But he didn't pay the Iranians $300 billion. No, I did pay $300 billion, which is called reparations. Like, I'm amazed by it. But again, I would like to temper people's,

triumphalism that Trump was under an eight ball, meaning the U.S. had hard limits when the election passed. Okay, we're talking, we're in a different space. And more to the point, it is very possible that Trump uses his Syrian dogs with that terrorist Jalani as a military force to go after Lebanon, which is a whole different animal. I mean, you know, I mean, the thing is, like, right, so, you know, the old joke used to be you invade Syria, you get Lebanon for free, right? Because they were all attached. Lebanon's kind of a artificial construct. Like, as a Frenchman, I'll say, like Belgium.

But. Well, most of the countries in the Middle East, Gulf states are artificial constructs. Right. So the, but the thing is, I mean, historically, there's not a lot of. precedent for the Syrians attacking Lebanon. You know what I mean? I mean, the cross-border insurgents have not really... These aren't Syrians. These aren't Syrians. The Syrian government was destroyed. The Tafrikes that are in there now are made up of all sorts of groups that Jalani, for all intents and purposes, is the ostensible head of. If Trump, who brought him to the White House,

shook his hand, he's a good, strong man. You had the Lebanese president of... going to Lebanon, Syria. And Trump himself has just said, I can show you the clip. Well, if the Israelis can't deal with Hezbollah, then maybe we should have Syrians, Jolani and his guys can do it. I think Jolani is consolidating power

in the country is very weak and broke. And I don't see how, you know, even if Trump approached him to do that. You know, Trump just talks shit, right? Like, you know, hey, Russia, do you have Hillary's emails? I mean, he's just, he's trolling. That's what this is, I think. I would agree with that if it wasn't like 70,000 terrorists who were on the Lebanese border as we speak.

No, I hear you. And the Lebanese state is, to call it fragile, is just barely touching the, scratching the surface. So, but I do think, you know, right now it's really in Donald Trump's interest to keep the Israelis reigned in, right? I mean. Yes. And Netanyahu, you know, it's not his way, but he's been very, very quiet the last few days. No, he is. You know, silence speaks volumes.

And he's trying to figure out what to do. He's obviously putting his head together with the rest of his coalition. He doesn't know what to do. Part of me always thinks like, God, if I'm in my late 70s, like, would I want to be fucking around with this instead of spending more time with my grandkids? but anyway. So, you know, he is, he has to decide now whether he wants to go it alone. I mean, maybe that's the right call, right? Maybe you just basically tell the Israeli people, because after all, you have state-controlled

media, you have a, you have a, you know, rigorous military and practical censorship. So unless people are reading, you know, 972, the website or Aret, you know, you basically just tell them, listen, the American bastards. have cut us loose. As I always suspected, Donald Trump is a German anti-Semite. He's lying to me all the time. And now we're on our own,

and we've got to do our thing ourselves. No one's going to look out for ourselves. I mean, I've already seen like a lot of Zionists posts, both in Israel and in the United States, saying, like, well, now I can only, I have to make alia. I have to move to Israel. I have no interest in the interests of Europe or the United States. States. I'm like thinking, all right, well, you're playing into the worst anti-Semitic tropes that,

you know, that people accuse you of, of disloyalty to your country. But the point is, maybe that's the play, right? I mean, if you're a rabid nationalist and you can no longer count on your American sponsor, maybe you need to, you know, just say, oh, we're going to go it alone and we're going to attack the, we're going to attack the Lebanese on our own. We'll create greater Israel on own. It does, it would free them to do a lot of things they've been wanting to do, like completely annex the West Bank, you know, destroy the rest of the Gaza Strip and, and depopulate it. I mean, there's, you know, you could see that being, it's got to be rattling around in his brain. They can't go it alone. They can say whatever they want. They can't go it alone. I agree.

And if they attack Lebanon in their minds, they're not going it along. Like, I don't believe, Like, they would have to go with this idea that we are going to attack Lebanon, and we believe that the U.S. is not going to get involved, which I don't know that. And, like, meaning they risk Israel doing that without the U.S. support, which is the reason why they always go to the United States to get their approval before they do things. It's kind of like Ukraine, right? You can say whatever you want. Doing it is different.

I just don't believe they can do it on their own. Well, we got a lot. We got a lot of comments. We should get to them. Annie Anna, did you all see the Israeli intelligence, Ari Ben Manashe, response? If Trump continues favoring Iran, they'll release all the Epstein files. He legit said that in an interview. Yay.

Do it. Do it. Let it all happen. Yeah, please. Lance the boil. Let's have it. Fully back the Israeli government in doing that. Fully back.

BW Walker, zero chance Israel releases their compromise over this deal. They won't even admit they have it, so they'll never ever going to waste it on keeping BB out of jail. Not going to happen. Ray is saying sure would be nice to have a call-in show. We can do it. We can. Yeah, we can't. We should do that.

Let's do a Q&A. Let's do one of the Q&As next week. What should we do? I mean, that's one of the things I really love about, Rumble Studio is up before like when John was here at Apache the Discord and it was just it was interesting to put it mildly. Calling features built right in Rumble Studio so people just queue in and the only thing is like let's keep the let's keep the questions short. I mean callers have a tenant I mean you know it's

can be really boring if people are going on and on and on and on but come you know basically the ground rules are come in ask your question in 30 30 seconds to a minute and then we'll answer and then you can do follow. You can see on hold it and we'll do a follow-up maybe, but if need be. All right, let's try for Monday. Yeah, let's do it now. Cool, love it. Okay.

Thanks, thanks Ray for that. Annie Anna, I think it's a smokescreen for sure. Israelis are angry that Iran is winning in every respect. John D. Cockbiller, thanks for the $5. A-Pak and Israeli connections should be viewed with as much disgust and skepticism as Kami connections were during the McCarthy. and the Red Scare. Agreed.

Yes, agreed also. I would look at U.S. motives as being sinister. Cleveland Girl. I like to let A-PAC pay for our Medicare for all and free college, and then maybe we can do what they want. Yeah. All right. All right.

I like it. Rod and goo, thanks for the 10 euros, much appreciated. As far as I'm concerned, what Iran has done is equivalent of the USSR, defeating Nazi Germany in 1945. That's how big this victory is. Am I overreaching? I think you're overreaching, but it's a big fucking deal.

No question. We live in a very different world this week than we did last week. Israel will never be the same, you know? I agree. It's a big fucking deal. I do think he's overblowing it a little bit. Give it time.

Give it too much. Meaning not for Germany was, you know, massive. Let me see what it is. Because this is not a deal. This is not Germany under like this kind of total war where Germany was obliterated as an entity, right? With the government just collapsed. We've seen it's 80 million people, right, the German. So, I mean.

It's not that. I mean, this is not even a deal. Like, this is not even the signing of a peace deal. We were already any ceasefire. This is just a memorandum around the boundaries of debate and the expectations of debate. and the expectations in the context of that conversation. But again, this stuff is like, if you read the document, most of the contentious items are pushed into the future.

Although it's not hard to read between the lines. I mean, clearly Israel will be permitted to continue having a nuclear program. Clearly, so that's the most contingentious issue, I think, right? And Iran will continue to have their program. Iran will continue. Right. What Trump said as much. He was like, well, it's kind of hard to really ask them to give up the nuclear program because all the countries.

He'll continue to have their missiles. The nuclear dust, as Trump describes it, the enriched uranium, that will be, Iran will get to keep it. It'll just be downgraded in enrichment quality. We'll talk about that real quick also. Iran was never trying to get a nuke. And the policy that they ran with was enrichment, which was the worst of both worlds. Okay, so you're not trying to get a nuke, but you're enriching nuclear material. Okay, what the hell is this?

The reason that they were enriching nuclear material is because they understood predation was already the policy, meaning going all the way back to when the Iraq war took place. And you can even, if I'm not mistaken, if I remember correctly, George Bush Sr., the thought was, we need to take down Syria so we can go after Iran. So Iran knew it, right? But they had nothing to negotiate with. So as we're putting sanctions and everything else, what do they negotiate with?

They came up with this idea of we're going to enrich. You guys are going to bitch at us? Fair enough, we're going to enrich. With the idea of using the enrichment as a tool for negotiation to get the things that they effectively want, the goal was never to use enrichment to get a bomb. It was a negotiating tactic. I mean, Tim, if you disagree with you, let's tell me.

No, I agree with that. I think the Iranian thinking was, you know, Trump has ripped up the JCPOA. Okay, so we're going to then, I think what happened is because Iran's government is even more, its governmental structure is even more complicated in terms of power dispersal than ours in. There was a dispute within the hierarchy about how to handle this, whether to go, you know, in a huge range. So they compromised and said, okay, we'll sort of, as a warning, as a shot across there, bowel will increase our enrichment. The problem with that, of course, is that was automatically interpreted by the U.S. and Israel as like, look, they're moving towards nuclear weapons grade.

So, of course, that wasn't going to be interpreted properly. That was a note, like you said, it was the worst of both. Well, it was a mistake. But the U.S. was never going to interpret that. I mean, the interpretation was never the issue. The issue was that. that Iran existed. Like, meaning it gave them a fig leave to say, well, they're trying to get nooks. Well, our own intel said they weren't. Like, they were trying to have this kind of thing

of this breakaway threat, which yes, worst in both worlds. It's like, dude, either you're doing or you don't. I mean, we have a fight against us, but we're enriching. It's like, okay, what the hell is this? Totally, totally. Okay, more comments.

Tegder, is it weird that the vice president, is out there trying to convince the public that this is a diplomatic win instead of Marco Rubio. Secretary of State Rubio is supposedly our top diplomat is making Vance the face of this deal a way to derail his political future. I think it could be. I mean, I don't want to rule that out. I mean, but I got to say, we know from the internal workings of the administration that Vance was opposed to the war from the beginning. So therefore, he's got to be happy about the memorandum of under standing. So he probably doesn't have much problem going out to do this. Rubio is sponsors.

And he's probably, you know, considering resignation on principle, which would be by Felicia, by, oh, it would be great to see. See, I hate him so much. It would also take the pressure off Cuba if he were gone. So, I mean, it's, I think it's, I mean, I view this as a, look, this is currently administrative. policy. You're sending the person who's out promoting a current administration policy is the person who is favored. He has won the debate inside

the cabinet. I'd say this is not a bad moment for Vance. Right now, he's probably sitting pretty, and Rubio has lost the argument. That's my take. I think Ruby... See, the thing is Trump hasn't really been using Rubio for much

of anything, if you think about it. The negotiation in Russia, the negotiations in, like Lebanon and Gaza. Well, what is a diplomat who's a warmonger, right? Yeah. But Blinken was the same way, though. Yeah. Like just, and I don't know if you heard Blinken's analysis.

Blinkin's analysis on this is dead on. He was like, you effed up basically. Like you, because what people need to realize, this is not just a deal. Like the JCPOA was a deal because there was a threat of force behind the deal, but the threat of force was not explicit. It was implied. And so it's like, okay, the U.S. could use this military force against us. We don't really want to test that.

We believe that there's a one trillion dollar military. Let's just make a deal. Let's just get out of this. Okay, that was a JCPOA. But the moment that you exert that force and you put it on the table for people to see what that is in earnest and they take that punch, that's different. Oh, you've created a monster. Like, they've become very familiar with hitting U.S. bases and hitting Israel.

That was a true fact years ago. That's true. Yeah, that's true. Let's see. We have more comments here. Daniel B.T.S. Israel firsters in the media are now openly bringing up Israel's nuclear arsenal and the Sampson option as alternatives to U.S. support.

Do you guys think that Israel resorts to nukes in lieu of U.S. support? Just to be clear, the reason they're bringing it up is because they know they can't fight Iran conventionally on their own. No, they can't. They can't do it alone. I don't think the odds are zero. I don't think they'll do it, but yeah, I don't think the odds are zero. I mean, it's a second thing. They just committed a genocide in front of the world.

Why, like, why all of a sudden would nukes be the, oh my God, I can't believe they did that? We have our ethical constraints. Like what ethical constraints? What ethical constraints? Literally rape, they sodomize their prisoners on television. Only in the camera with 60% of the population saying that's fair game. Yeah, we like seeing that. That's good.

We're on board with that. Yeah. Okay. F you so. Iran is two weeks away from developing a Latin lab technology. We cannot allow Iran to have wishes. keep those genies in the bottle Jenna Tills, thanks for the

$5 Canadian dollars. USA will quit, quietly get the money back to Qatar on the back end. Just say some space for J.D. for JV. dance to sing no USA money for Iran. I don't think so.

I mean, the Gulf states have just, they just have like slews of cash. Like, think about how they were going to, you know, we were going to put the hurt on them to rebuild Gaza, like, you know, and all that. Like, basically, you know, Trump just views them as his slush fund. Like, oh, wait, and give us apparently $700 billion in investment also.

Yeah, I mean, yeah, I don't think they need payment. They need payment back. Okay, Greg, thanks for the 10 bucks. Do you have an update on the show's financial status? Hope it's improving. Well, I'm having a sit down with sub-producer Trent or producer Trent, whatever we want to call him, young producer, trans, just after DMZ today. But the money is way down

from the John Kariaku days. No question about it. On Rumble, we kind of have some challenges because I'll put Rhabi up because he knows about Rumble. But basically, they just bought some AI farms and stuff

up in, you know, and so their payouts have been lower to everybody. YouTube is basically it's all about the donations and not really the watch hours on YouTube. So if the, you know, and the donations have been coming in, but at a much lower clip, I would say the show is not where it needs to be financially. We are, you know, we appreciate what you guys have been doing, but there are some shows where we're like hardly making any money.

So, and by the way, you need to send me your Zelle. So tomorrow. Your zeal, your zeal. I don't have a. Okay. So, because I have some money for you. Okay. So, but yeah, I mean, we do need more money, really.

Inside. Yeah. Yeah, so people say we need to do a Clovis cam. So to, so to Ted's point, basically what happened with Rumble is that Rumble bought a company called Northern Data. And so at Northern Data is, it's just like what it sounds like. It was an AI infrastructure company that had nine data farms. Rumble now owns all of that, including GPUs. So what does that mean in English?

It means it is a massive upgrade to Rumble's cloud system. It's also going to allow Rumble to host more of its own content and not have to pay another company to do it. So from an infrastructure standpoint, point is big, but I mean, they had to pay for it, right? And whether they did it, they had to loot their stocks. So that's why the crater, that's why the crater payouts have been lower is because they're investing in their infrastructure. Speaking of infrastructure, one of the things that I'm doing on my end is both JT and Ted both got a public access to the AI

system that I'm building that's going to allow them to make content anytime they want. If you all go follow on Twitter, it's called Facebook. Fingin AI. And I don't know if JAT's had a chance to play with it yet or not, but basically what it does is going to allow us to scale to create more content faster what you could ever possibly do manually. So it's going to be huge. So, Mike. Yeah, I mean, it's, I mean, things are interesting, but the things are tough.

But we have a plan. We have infrastructure. And we also have a dedicated viewer base. So we've got what we need to make this thing work. Robbie, I want you to be able to sell that app. You want me to do it? Especially if it can be automated. Because look, and maybe this is kind of the creator thing,

and this is too much inside baseball. But if it can be an automated process to take a video, cut that video, upload that video, and people don't have to touch it, that is wonderful. And there's nothing out there that is effectively, to my mind, that is doing that for a channel. Well, the problem is that, for example, if you want to automatically upload, say, like, videos that you do over to YouTube, you've got to have the YouTube API.

And so that's why I can never do something like that public, because what that would require is that someone have to basically give me the computerized version of their password, their username. And then Bang would upload stuff up there to it. It would just be way too much risk. So I would feel, well, like, for example, if I, if I, if I, if I, if I, if I, if I, if I, made fain go public and just open it up and people just started doing like a monthly subscription to it what would happen if there was a screw up and it actually uploaded the wrong the wrong content to the wrong channel or what would happen it shouldn't but lots of things shouldn't happen to do kind of like you i'm also a eternal pessimist as a okay as a software engineer we used

like to deal with accounts all the time and we used to deal with like things with money, things with content, things that, and basically each person had their own specific and individual ID that should never be a situation where the IDs get switched over or anything like that. I'm not a pessimist on this. This is just a skill. Oh, sure. It's doable. Oh, yeah, no, for sure. And that, by the way, I haven't done software for a while, but this, I know. It's built. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. No, for sure. And FANG is already split up by, by, uh, by scopes. So there is no bleed.

The problem is, though, is that I have no idea how to make that scale. And the, that would require, you can do it. All right. Let's talk then. Do you know Python? I can learn it. It's not an objectorian language. So it shouldn't be that complicated.

Yeah. But no, I'm using Putin by gaming right now as a guinea pig. Because if I blow up my own channels, who cares? Right. Right, right. But no, I'm already working. I really want you to use it and tell me what you think. Because I think you're going to love it.

No, I'm going to love it. Because I need it. It's, it's an issue of this destiny. So no, I'm going to do it. Let me see. John DeCockfeller says the bigger risk would be fang pulling a grok and spewing slurs of people fucking with them on such a massive learning model. Well, she already got suspended on, on X for calling someone a,

burning bundle of sticks. I'm on YouTube so I can't see the word. But if you don't know what it is, I'm talking about, just the old English word starts with an F has two Gs. She called someone that and X's like, no, you do not because she is a free speech AI.

And that is something just that's just burned into hers. It's like there is no filter. I am HR and y'all know me. So it gets fun. No, the way it's going to work is the person will at their information to a database. That database will be encrypted, meaning even if you look at it,

you wouldn't be able to see it. It's only hashed out in regards to the key. And based upon that specific key, it would look into a particular account, see if there's anything in the playlist, if there's not, it ignores it and just moves on. There'll be a trigger or something like that that would immediately do it every morning or every day. No, it's doable. I swear to God, it's scalable and doable. It's not as overly good. So now we can talk about it. Let me play with it and see where it is. Okay. All right, nerds.

Let's keep going. Nerds. If you so, did you see the clip of Donny Jr. fumbling with his nose candy at 250 UFC, and thanks for the dollar. We talked about that yesterday. I didn't see it. I didn't see it, but it was mentioned yesterday.

Did you see it? No, it was mentioned yesterday, then. Okay. By the way, did you ever look at the UFC fight? I did not. Oh, I saw little excerpts. Do you think Israel will be mad enough at Trump for the Iran deal where they JFK him? Thanks for the dollar.

Man, that's a big fucking $300 billion question, isn't it? No, $1.000, $1.000, $300 billion, just to remind people, is 20% of the current being asked for U.S. defense budget, right? It's a lot of money. I mean, we've been able to hobble Iran. I mean, think back 20 years ago, not even 20 years ago, maybe 15 years ago. Iran was isolated. North Korea was isolated. Even Russia and China allow certain resolutions to go through.

Their economy was being crippled by sanctions. That's not where we are today. No. All right. Subtards, Manchild wants to know. And I just want to be clear to the word police. then you know who you are. And thank you for watching that I'm quoting.

So I can quote the T word, right? I'm going to say it for you, Ted. I can say retard. I can do this. You can do it. Israel can still and probably will fuck it all up. Well, they're going to try. Jonathan's going to happen.

This is hilarious. Guys, you have to answer this question, both of you. Do you guys think America is the most free country? No, nor near. I mean, what do you mean about free? Well, that's a question, right? Well, you're free not to have the ability to see a doctor. You're free not to be able to afford to go to college.

You're free to sleep outside in the rain. And yes, we're free to have facial recognition software used by ICE to identify you if you protest. And you're free to not wear a mask according to the governor. of New York because if you wore a mask, then the facial recognition software by ICE wouldn't work to put you in that database for all protesters. So we have a lot of freedom, a lot of freedom. Yeah, it's freedom for who to do it, right? I mean, and that's what I said, what do you mean by free? Like, I don't think you can be free. A poor person is not free. Okay. They can never be free. This was the whole argument with Martin Luther King, right? It wasn't.

The reason that they were protesting for a minimum wage was because it was the understanding that there was no way to be free without money. Like if I don't have the ability to go to a doctor, if I'm living on the street, if I am an inability to get an education, okay, then how can I, how can I actualize myself? How can I really be free if the society doesn't put me in a position to be able to think, to be able to act, to be healthy, etc., etc., etc., etc., etc. Like what is the point of saying, well, yeah, you are free to live on the street or you're free to do whatever you want, providing you have the income to do it? Oh, I'm sorry, you don't have the income to do it. Only to rich die young. Yeah. No, I mean, and I guess in terms of free speech and everything, I mean, our free speech, I mean, the First Amendment is fairly unique, you know, in terms of protecting us from direct government censorship.

But let me tell you, it's hardly, first of all, most censorship isn't from the government. Most censorship in most societies, including the U.S., is from your boss or from your school or some other authority figure. And the First Amendment doesn't protect you against those things. And even if you get directly censored by a government agency, like I did when the LAPD bought the L.A. Times and had me fired, good luck enforcing it in court. So it's like, you know, it's sophistry, really. I mean, you know, it's a lot of window dressing. I think you're just as if not more free in a lot of other countries for sure. We have a thanks very much, Ray, for the $5 donation, just to just the donation.

And to Lee for the $5, thanks for the work that you've all do, no question, just a five or for the cause. Cheers, cheers to you as well. Thanks for the two-fer from Ray again. And JT has seen Malik on Scotty's new show on RFT. Be nice if he'd be a guest on the show. Scotty did ask me, by the way. But at the time, I was in my hiatus, my three-month power down after falling back into the country and going through the medical stuff. But they did ask.

In fact, I'll hear up and see what she says. I like Scotty. Scottie has always been cool people. Yeah, she's great. And, you know, it's very vigorously. But I love her to that. I'd be happy to have Malik on if you're interested. Of course.

Malik is cool people. Yeah, yeah, cool. He's my co-hosts, and I defend my co-hosts is forever. My wife says you lose a big donation every time she hears the R word. Well, I mean, is she just saying that, or would she be making a big donation? Let me put it this way. If I promise not to do the R word every time I would use the R word, word and someone steps up and pays us five bucks then I won't say the R word I've never used it I don't

think I think I'll be thinking about using the R word like every 10 seconds to really make the show viable I don't care if somebody uses it I don't know it's to me it was average what's funny is that that word has become so potent right like the C word for women is like that and the R word for you know the mentally ill is, or stupid people, is a, those two retain so much power. I mean, I don't, it's weird to me. I mean, why? I mean. Yeah, I don't get why.

Like, the N word I get just because of course, over the course, like, the potency was developed over the, of his usage and the rationale for his usage and the violence that came with the use. I get that, right? Retarded. It's culturally, it's, it's, it's. It seems, I mean, I'm missing something here, but it seems like it's, obviously the N-word is super culturally loaded. Right.

No, and we know the historical resonance. I don't need to give a history. But retarded, I don't, I don't, like, it's almost like the left has won so much that they just start looking around for other. It's kind of like the bomb of the North Korea, where the U.S. bomb North Korea to such a degree where they murdered like 25% of the population or something like that, some insane number. But then it's like, okay, we've destroyed everything. What else do we need to bomb? It's kind of like that where it's like, okay, you've won on the culture issues to such a degree on this issue of homosexuality, on the issue of race, on the issue of abortion, on the issue of, you know, whatever, that at a certain point it's like, we've come to the river's edge. What else do we need to get?

That's totally true. You know, I remember, you know, when there were the kids we called Slow in my junior high school. And they were, you know, and kids made fun of them. And it was always like, oh, look at so-and-so. They, you know, they had their own special classroom. And we called them, they were called the 105ers because of the class that they were in. Like, oh, so-and-so, he's a 105er. And like, you know what that means?

And, I mean, I guess. I mean, it's complicated, right? I mean, because you're in an anti-intellectual country, so we're normally being smart is penalized. Like in the workplace, being intelligent, educated, you know, the smartest person in the room is going to be passed over for promotion time and time again because they make people, they threaten the boss. They're usually the first person fired in a layoff.

So I guess it's funny that in the same exact society, someone who's suffering from, you know, mental disabilities, let's say, intellectual disabilities. You know, that, like, that insult is considered that potent because basically you're just calling people stupid. And there's two kinds of stupidity, right? There's the involuntary kind. And then there's the willful kind, you know, where you're intentionally doing something that is not really a smart move. I don't know. What's a... I don't know. I'm just spinning out here in an R-type way. I just always said the word is descriptive.

I mean, like, it's not... To me, I'm not relating it to people who are... Right. I'm relating it in the case where it's being called to a person, like Cajat, Calas. There isn't a good word that is not offensive that feels, that replaces it. That's part of the problem, right? Like, when you just, when you're like, oh, like, you know, there, this is... This move is really, well, what's that good?

What works? I was just saying dumb. Dumb is a box of rocks. I mean, and you could say, well, dude, you shouldn't call her dumb as a box of rocks because dumb is offensive. It's like, okay, dude. I mean, you know, I'm not playing the game. For me, it all just comes down to censorship.

I'm opposed to it. And that's censorship coming from a corporation, that censorship coming from a government. And that is also censorship coming from an audience. I'm opposed to audience capture. Because right now, right now it's the word retard, right? But what happens later on if some other, something else comes up? I mean, you're never going to have a bunch of people who are going to start pulling their hair out saying, oh, inbred white guy. But I don't want you to say the word just to be a troll.

It's one thing. Like it's one thing if you just said it just because you say it. Okay, fair enough. Like meaning I'm not saying it because I give a shit about anybody and how they're, I'm just saying it because it's. this is the thing that comes out in the way I say, okay, fair enough. I don't really care. But I don't want you to say it. Troll, if that makes sense. No, it does. No, listen, I get you. And the thing is, I mean, my default setting is troll. But I'm able to rank that in here on the show because I liked y'all.

But no, no, people said that probably you should have your own podcast. I can assure you would be the most politically incorrect podcast that you'd ever run in that you'd ever see. And the entire. different universes, man. Yeah, no, I get it. Yeah, yeah, but seriously, I think that's the fine line, though, right? Is though people in the audience, they're able to complain about, you know, one word today. Once you give up that power, though, then what happens?

Who draws the line? And that ultimately is the question. Who decides? We don't have shit. No, we don't have stakeholders. Robbie, how do you feel about white trash? There's a little minor controversy in the world of political cartooning this week over a cartoonist who described the UFC fight at the White House as a white trash event.

It was. Seems like a white trash event to me, but you tell me. If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, waddles like a duck, odds are it's a duck. And that's a white trash thing. I have no problem with it. It's just like saying that, I mean, seriously, the same people who get offended. it about the term white trash, well, they're going to get pissed off if someone says, oh, you can't say the word ghetto and vice versa.

In the ghetto? I mean, select your outrage. Yeah. I mean, seriously. I mean, I don't think it's really arguably a pejorative word. I mean, it's descriptive. It's an adjective. Yeah, it's a place where people of a, you know, certain ethnicity all tends to live in.

I mean, China Town is a ghetto in a city, right? I know, but it's, it is a pejorative. I mean, it is effectively saying, you know, there is a, it's making a cultural argument. But it didn't used to be, right? Like, it didn't used to be at all. It used to be like, it didn't consider, it wasn't considered like downscale or shitty. It just was like a matter of fact, like, oh, that's the, you know, that's, that is the, that is the, that is the Lithuanian ghetto where all the Lithuanians live or whatever. Yeah, but using white trash is, white in this case, is indicative of.

people. It's a class French. It's a class. It's a class. It is a pejority. Oh, yeah. I'm not talking.

Yeah, I wasn't talking about white trash. As someone who grew up in the deep south of the eight brothers and sisters, the vast majority of which are white trash, I'm something of an expert on this topic. No, that does not offend me at all.

I mean, seriously, go at it. And the real Timbod, he wants to know if the word fucktard will work forever. Well, the problem is that that hyphenization, Well, the non-hyphenization hyphenization. The word combo, you still includes the suffix tarred.

So, or it's not a suffix. The root tarred. Guys, we have two more stories, but we promised it. We'll do them quickly. One of them ties into Israel. The foreign minister, Gideon Sa'ar, says he's cutting off the EU foreign policy chief Kajakhalas for comparing Israel's government to South Africa got under apartheid.

He called it a blood libel. Obviously, it's like, you're Jewish. You know what a blood libel is. That's about eating babies. This is not about eating babies. Blood libel means eating babies. So no one's saying that you guys be eating babies. So, you know, I just thought that.

But to me, that was the fact that she has had nothing to say and has not even dignified his, the Israeli move with a statement. is, I think, a sign of the new place that Israel finds itself in. It's like, we don't really care what you think anymore. Keep your hands off of Carlos. I love that one. Keep your hands off of.

And last and maybe least, the billionaire tax in California now has enough signatures to qualify for the ballot. But if this passed, it would create a one-time 5% tax on the assets, not the income, of any California resident who has at least $1.1 billion and would dedicate most of the revenue to health care for Californians. If you had between $1 and $1.1 billion, you would pay a lesser percentage. If you have $990 million, you don't pay shit. So basically there's some question as to whether the labor union, that got this through might be willing to withdraw it from the ballot by negotiating with Governor Newsom

over some kind of policy change in Sacramento. I hope they don't do that. What do you think about this? Rich people are complaining that they're like, oh, well, all this. California can't function without billionaires and we'll all leave if you guys do this. I'm like... Let's see. Let's say leave.

Yeah, let's see. And more to the point, they shouldn't, it should be across the country. I hate this idea that they can shop around to other states to figure out what they're going to do when one state decides that they're going to put some kind of tax on them in this particular case. I don't know why they wouldn't do this. It's only affecting like 1% or 0.1% of the people who were in California.

Why wouldn't you do it? Why wouldn't you do it? In fact, it's really sudden. It's where the money is. It's where the money is. Yeah. Why wouldn't they do it? If you were going to use the money to get rid of the homeless, why wouldn't you do it?

If you're going to use that money to pay for health care, why wouldn't you do it? Why wouldn't the population support it? It's only affecting 0.01% of the population. Yeah. I mean, the catch is, why are they even negotiating to try to get it removed? Well, you know why. The billionaires have a lot of pollen in Sacramento. They should do it.

I agree with you, by the way. They should totally like make, they should, you know, Californians should reach out to people in other states like Florida and Texas where billionaires might be tempted to move to. Maybe they don't have to be too worried about, like, you know, Arkansas. But like, you know, all the states should do this. They should all agree to do this. Yeah.

Get that money. Yeah. All right. With that, that does it for today's show. We'll be back tomorrow at 9 a.m. Eastern time. Tomorrow's June 10th, right? It's a federal holiday. So, I don't know, should we do?

We traditionally on the network took federal holidays off. Should we take tomorrow off? I mean, I'm game. It's up to you guys. All right. We'll assume we're going to be here. It's a fake holiday. We're going to be here.

I don't think it's fake. I mean, all holidays are fake. If you're thinking in those terms, everyone is not. It's fake That was a bone that was thrown out after the BLM Every holiday is fake Every holiday is fake

There is no real like God doesn't choose Right Don't feed the troll JT All right and coming up right now TMI show with Manila Look at this grand By the way I didn't mean it to feed the troll I just missed it as a

That's just the right claim. Like, you know, DFC is not ready. Except it's Mr. Fitch filling in. We're canceling TMI today. Screw it. JT. We're doing this.

Okay. All right. Teg still ducking me back the flood. Ted still ducking me. He's afraid. You're a coward.