DeProgram with John Kiriakou and Ted Rall - San Diego Massacre | DeProgram with Ted Rall and Jamarl Thomas

Episode Date: May 19, 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: • Two teenage attackers fatally shot three men at a mosque in San Diego, California, in a suspected hate crime, before taking their own lives. Police were already on the hunt for the two when the attack at the Islamic Center of San Diego began, and they found three victims with gunshot wounds outside the front of the building. Officers found the suspects - aged 17 and 18 - dead of self-inflicted wounds in a vehicle blocks away from the mosque. • Iran has made a new proposal for a deal to end the war, with Donald Trump claiming he had postponed new military strikes so talks could continue. But there has been no sign of a breakthrough in the stalled negotiations. • Brian Morrissey, the top lawyer at the Treasury Department, quit in the wake of the creation of a $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization fund” that could soon make payments to Trump’s political allies. • Chinese leader Xi Jinping is set to host his “old friend” Vladimir Putin less than a week after Donald Trump's ​high-profile visit, as Beijing seeks to project itself as a stable and predictable power in a world shaken by trade tensions, wars and an energy crisis. MERCH STORE: https://www.deprogram.live https://x.com/tedrall https://x.com/JamarlThomas LIVE ON RUMBLE: https://rumble.com/c/DeProgramShow SPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/show/2kdFlw2w8sSPhKI8NRx8Zu APPLE MUSIC: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/deprogram-with-ted-rall-and-jamarl-thomas/id1825379504

And you're watching Deep Program with Ted Rall and Jamarlem Thomas. It is Tuesday, May 19th, 2026. Thank you so much for joining us. Lots to talk about, as always. Good morning, J.T. How was your last two hours on the air? It was good. I actually used Rumble Studio for today.

Oh, wow. How did it go? I actually used to the studio. So last night, I did two streams. I did the stream showing that Donald Trump chicked out of an attack. No, I didn't want him to attack. So, yes, I'm glad he chickened out. But that's be.

clear he chickened out and so when I did that video that video actually went relatively it took me a bit to figure it out like what was going on and I even put it on the wrong channel at one point like it wouldn't under my username as opposed to my regular name but it went okay it was close to stream yard their annoyances like it doesn't work in Indonesia there's that um what rumble Rumble Studio doesn't work in Indonesia? No, the link didn't work in Indonesia. My guess I'd use a VPN to get around whatever controls. Because, you know, Indonesia might have rules against it.

Yeah. It's funny because having been to Indonesia, I mean, it's definitely like authoritarian, but it doesn't feel brutal. It doesn't feel that way when you're there. No. I mean, but I guess you can see any country, right? Yeah, I mean, of course, I didn't do anything wrong, right? Right.

Right. You're not rubbing up against the law in Indonesia. Right. In no shape or form, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I enjoyed Indonesia. I was there last year back in September, I think, September, October. I stayed there for two months. Personally, I liked being able to get on a bike and drive from point A to point B and pay 25 cents for the transportation calls. Oh, yeah. Yeah. There's a lot to be said. I was a moped freak, loved driving, riding, around to my moped all over the place. Yep. Yeah.

But it was good. It didn't go bad. I prefer Streamyard because Streamyard is more simplistic. Rumble could be a little clunky. You'll get used to it, though. There's a lot of things. I mean, yeah, there's little things, like, for example, like putting up the banner that is just, that's at the bottom of the screen, right?

Like on Stream Yard, you can have it on a timer, which I really love. Then you don't have to babysit it. Here you have to take it out. But on the other. other hand, you can sort of get like, it's a little more elegant to have a smaller banner at the bottom than you do on Streamyard where it's really big of that. I can't use my layout. That's the issue.

Like, I have a layout for Streamyard. I don't have a layoff of this. Like, they have the different size in regards to their presentation screens. So you can definitely create, you know, in the design, we're doing the whole, we're geeking out here. But there's a way to do it here. I can show you how to do it. Yeah. I mean, because, well, I can add.

the background to it, but the sizes are different. Street yard is different. They allow... You have to? I would have to go to Photoshop. Listen, I have Photoshop. If you need me to do it for you, I'll do it for you. It'll take me like five minutes. No big deal. Okay. But so far, it's good. It was very close. And the resolution's a lot better. You can definitely tell.

All right. So, obviously, the main story today is this fatal attack involved leaving five people dead, including two attackers at this Islamic mosque in, well, there's no other kind of mosque, at the mosque in San Diego. We'll talk about that. The Iran and the U.S. continue to negotiate to no end. The Donald tacoed out, as you alluded to earlier. He claimed that he had a big, big attack, the biggest attack, nobody's seen such a big attack, the best attack that was going to happen. today, but then he said that at the request of various Arabist Gulf state allies, he decided

not to proceed. Who knows if there's any validity or truth to that whatsoever. It doesn't seem like the two sides are close at all. Another resignation based on principle from the Trump administration, those, we had not really seen any of those for decades. I'm glad to see that some government officials are growing us fine. The top lawyer at the Treasury Department, Brian Morris, quit in protest of the $1.8 billion taxpayer-funded slush fund that you and I have talked about here, J-T. Finally, I know you're going to want to talk about Putin's visit to China. He'll be hanging with Xi Jinping, who just got done hanging out with Trump. So Xi's been doing some major hosting duties lately.

And we'll talk about that. I think we should get San Diego out of the way, if that's okay. Yes. Okay, so these are, this is, as they say in the business, this is a developing story still. The motives, however, seem to be clear. The two alleged attackers here were found dead of self-inflicted gunshot wounds, 17 and 18 years old. They had gone missing and kind of like, you know, presumably in a sort of Columbine mode, at least one of them was wearing camos and fatigues.

and his mom reported him to the police because she was worried sick. They were looking for him at the time. They had issued some kind of declaration about white pride. So it seems that right-wing politics were somehow involved here. It seems pretty clear what happened, right? Like two right-wing teenagers worked themselves up into a fucking frenzy and decided to commit an Islamophobic hate crime and went to a mosque, killed three people.

Then we don't know if this part was pre-planned or not or whether they were overcome by fear or the horror of what they did. We probably never know that, but then they killed themselves. You know, I mean, there's going to be the usual blame game. Usually this goes the other way around. But I could definitely see people on our side

of the politics saying, well, this is because of the atmosphere. of hatred that's generically been, you know, ginned up against Muslims in this country, not just by this current president, but also by previous ones, you know, that may or may not be true. It may be a contributing factor anyway. That part, I will, I'll give you that part. But, you know, I mean, it's, it's, I don't know, what do you think the political ramifications of, if any of this will be? I mean, let's put in context where we've attacked a Muslim country. let's start there, right?

Donald Trump in a war of aggression, attacked a Muslim country. And I'm not going to make this one-to-one relation between hatred that might be stirred up in regards to attacking Iran or what it means to attack Iran. And then all of a sudden you have people who are under you attacking Muslims. But there is a culture. So I remember, do you remember when Obama was running?

And they kept using the term, He's a Kenyan Muslim. He's a Kenyan Muslim. And the wild part is, if you would look at the polling on it, Muslim of all the religions was the one that America's like the least, which is part of the reason why Republicans use that as a refrain to effectively hit him. You know, we can call them a Muslim, I suppose, and call them other things that are not necessarily palatable in American culture.

It's very otherizing in our culture. It is. And so by the same time. We haven't seen a huge number of these. Like meaning a group who ended up in a suicide path, whether they planned it or not, because ultimately

they end up, as you pointed out, working themselves into fervor and murdering other human beings. It is very hard for me to get in their headspace. I just, it is very wild to me that a, two people can do this, let alone one, because on some level,

they have to have some kind of agreement that they are going to go and do this? I don't know. I think it's actually more likely for me, at least the way I'm wired. You know, I would, I've always, I'm riddled with self-doubt. But if I have confirmation from someone who I like or respect or love that I'm on the right track, I'm much more confident about my course of action. And, you know, I mean, did you ever see the movie Heavenly Creatures? Yes.

So it's based on a true story, right? I think in New Zealand, where basically two friends decided to murder one of the two girls' sets of parents. And basically, there's like a homoerotic component to it. We don't really know if they were lovers or not. But basically, they kind of work themselves up. It's a lot of magical realism in the movie. But it's meant to get into their brains about, like, you know, they're living in a fantasy world, right? They're teenagers.

You know, your brain isn't really done until you're 25, right, ish. And so, like, your judgment isn't fully formed. You can't see the big picture. And, I mean, I could easily see being 17 or 18. And, I mean, I did a lot of stupid shit. I didn't kill anybody. But, I mean, the point is, you know, your judgment just isn't what it is going to be later on. So, you know, I think if you really decide.

like, oh, Muslims are the enemy or whatever. You choose a group. And you're like, these people are bad for the country. You know, we're doing what needs to be done. We're taking out the trash. I can see getting into that headspace. I'm not recommending it. But I mean, to me, it's not wild and foreign.

I get being angry that I get. I mean, like when I was younger, I was heavy into this black liberation stuff. Like when I was in high school. And it was like white people or evil. I can't believe this to place. And part of it was just because in reading history, like, it's like, oh, my God. There's a lot of supporting evidence. Yeah. Well, right, right. Like, but as I got older, it became this thing of like, okay,

well, dude, people are people. Like, it's not a group issue. Like, basically, you deal with people as individuals, not necessarily as this kind of mythical group. Past is not prologged. Like, meaning you grow, you evolve, you realize that your views of the world are not necessarily correct and you change those views. But murder seems different to me. Like this is kind of like, um, well, and not saying these are random people. I mean, who've done you no harm, who've meant you no harm. You don't even know them. You know, they're minding their business. You don't know, you don't know anything about them. Well, it's just based on the group, I didn't. Like, and because, you know, people would say, well, I have black friends.

And people are like, oh, that sounds so bad. But what they're effectively pointing out is, look, as an individual and dealing with people, I see Tyrone is somehow, somehow different than the larger group of blacks that I may not necessarily like. And I would wager that they would say something similar if they had a, quote, Muslim friend. And they would say, well, Mohammed is okay. But those other ones, those other ones got to go. Like they would say stuff like that, make a distinction between the individual that you get to know versus the group that you have these ideas about. And the body ideas are something enough.

In this case, we don't know if these kids had any positive views or had any Muslim friends at all. Sure. I'll just use that. But yeah, yeah. I mean, we just don't know. So obviously we'll continue to follow that. But, you know, we have a lot of other stuff. Anything we should probably do a few comments about.

Get just through some comments and then look going. Okay, Black Spock 135. Thanks very much for the $5. All my hopes from Lieutenant Uhura said to Admiral Kirk in the movie Search for Spock. That's what it was. Okay. I always forget about the movies. Yeah, the movies were, some of them were great.

Some of them, yeah. Yeah, some of them were great. I mean, don't get me wrong. Not going to the Whale one. Yeah, the Whale one was the dead. But spot dying is traumatic. It's so good. It's so good.

You will always. One thing I appreciate about the movies, look, I think that she, I much prefer the shows, but one thing I appreciate about the movies is the fact that they understood that movies are a different format. Like, you know, like there's the X-Files movies,

which are basically just long episodes. And you're like, and then, but like, you know, the Star Trek movies recognized from the very beginning, that cinema is a completely different format. So it's almost a different world, not just the uniforms are different, but like even the politics are a little different. It's sort of like how peanuts, the TV specials, are not peanuts the comic strip at all. They're different. It's the same universe, the same people. They act the same, but yes, the format is different. Like, it's slightly different in regards

to the way to the format. Yeah. Robbie, just filming, really. Robbie, hello, can you tell Jamarle? We love him, and this is his show as well. He keeps referring to it as Ted Rawls deprogrammed. I come here for both Jamarle and Ted, this is your show, too, now, Jamarle. That's true. I thought, I try, okay, fair enough, fair enough.

It just takes a while. When I took over Faultlands, for like a year, I felt like, this is gone on my show, I should be here. That's funny. The insecurity, I felt horrible for taking the job. Yeah, it took a while. It took a while. But I try to say I will be on with Ted, on the program or something like that.

I need to come up with a different list. Well, the name of the show has your name in it. Philip Blair, thank you so much. Three of you, yes, indeed. You three make a good deed, a good team. There aren't enough places where we get to hear friendly differences of perspective. Oh, that's sweet. No, that's really true.

Just filming really, yeah, this taco thing is crazy. Like, what do you want him to say? I always chicken out, so I'm going to do it this time. Kind of silly mocking him for backtracking. Fair. Oh, that's for me. Well, yes, I am mocking him backtracking. But I'm mocking him backtracking.

Not because I wanted him to have the strikes or attack a run. I'm mocking him because it's his own frame of reference. He shouldn't make the threat in the first place. He should make the threat. He's out there screaming that he's going to destroy Iran. He's going to literally kill everybody in one of those other tweets that he put out. Okay. And now you're saying, I was going to attack him.

I personally, I was going to do it. We had it all lined up. But I postponed it because people asked me not to do it. It's like, dude, you are in a position where there are no good options. Nobody told you to invade Iran. Nobody told you to attack Iran. Nobody told you to put yourself in this, in the country. and the globe in its particular position.

So yeah, I mock him because he shouldn't have made a threat in the first place. Like, these aren't negotiations. This is some kind of mob nonsense of, you know, hey, either you make a deal with me or am I going to murder you. Well, this is his schick. Obviously, look, you know, I don't know if I, if you and I have talked about this, but I met, I had very, very brief dealings with them in the late 80s as a banker. Trump.

With truck, yeah. Did you? I did. Yeah. So. Okay. Yeah. So basically, well, look, it's like if you were in New York in the 80s, you met Donald Trump probably.

So I worked at the Industrial Bank of Japan Trust Company in New York. And my boss came to me and said, oh, we have this Taj Mahal casino project in Atlantic City. Donald Trump is applying for a $25 million revolving line of credit. from us and from nine other banks for a total of $250 million. That's kind of a standard thing back then to do like, it still is, where you get, you pull money from different banks. So he's like my job was as a junior officer, crunch the numbers and see if it's viable. So the Trump organization sent over the documents.

By the way, I'm one of the few people who have gotten to see Donald Trump's personal tax returns. Did you? And I did. I remember I came home. and went out with my girlfriend that night, and I said, good news. We're richer than Donald Trump. Because, you know. Are you three? Because your assets minus your liabilities are your. And the thing is about rich people is

rich people are not usually rich. Rich people are people who have a lot of credit. So they can borrow a lot of money. Rich people don't usually have the money in their account. Donald Trump does now. But back then he didn't. People were just, he was a grifter. He was, and he's not really unusual in that respect. Anyway, so I crunched the numbers.

I came back to my boss and I said, oh, we did do due diligence. We drove down to Atlantic City, and it was a, you know, it's still very sketchy, but it was a war zone in the 80s. And the, I remember my Japanese boss, Shibuya and I sitting in the car, and we're looking at the blueprints. And we're like, okay, so it's going to be across the street. No parking deck? Like, no parking deck. And so my boss goes, do you think white people are going to drive here from the suburbs and park across the street where we are right now dodging bullets on their way to and from the hotel? I'm like, no, I don't think they will. And so anyway, we went back to, so we went

back to New York. I crunch the numbers more. And I was like, it's not even close. This is like ridiculous. Like, default is guaranteed. There's no way this project could make money. It can't. So, say no. So we called and said no. Someone from the Trump organization said, Donald would like to hear it from your lips directly.

Man to me. What? Donald needs to hear it from you. Now, bear in my face. He was very, say it to my face. The Trump Tower is on Fifth Avenue in the 50s. Our office was at Park in the 40s. It was a short wall.

So like half a mile maybe. So anyway, we're like, okay, we get to meet Donald Trump. We're not afraid of Donald Trump. I don't give two shits about Donald Trump. This is like 1988 of his show. And this is around the period when he's on the cover of People magazine as like world's most eligible bachelor and all that, like with the fluffy hair. And he has that like sort of boyish look.

Anyway, he walks in and I remember, my boss goes, look, it's like Mother Goose and his little ducklings, because like, he had his little lawyers like walking behind him, like one by one. And he walks in. And he's like, well, so why, you know, why are you returning us down? And my boss goes, well, Mr. Ted crunched the numbers. And he said they're bullshit. And then he, and then he, Trump goes, and who the fuck is? Mr. Ted.

And then my boss, without missing a beat, and I loved him for this. Mr. Ted is who the fuck says you don't get your fucking $25 million. Is that what he told Trump? Exactly what he said. And then he's like, fine. We got up. Wait, wait, wait. With all the little ducklings falling.

Godlings. Pardon? And he said that. Oh, yeah. Japanese, they tend to be a little bit more chill, like a little bit. self-effacing. Yeah, but my boss was from Hokkaido, which is a disadvantaged, you know, a traditionally disadvantaged ethnic group from northern Japan. So he looked different. He was, he acted different. He was brilliant, by the way. I mean, he was one of 20 officers. He brought in

24% of the revenue for the bank. He was like completely a genius. Like I remember he was the kind of guy like when the tax reform act came out, he came by my desk, drops this fucker on my desk and goes, read that. We're going to look for, we're going to look for loopholes and new financial instruments. I mean, that's the kind of guy he was. But yeah, I mean, the point is that getting back to Trump, you know, he likes, he's just like to threaten people. And like, but as you say, it's just, it's not, it's not a good, it doesn't really, it's stupid. I know he always does it, but it's not a smart way to negotiate. Well, not only is it not a smart way to negotiate. It's the fastest way to lose credibility.

And as I keep pointing out, just because Trump says that doesn't mean he doesn't attack. I'm of the mind that he will attack. I am of the mind that Iran is not going to get... They murdered Soleimani. They murdered the Ayatollah. They've attacked Iran in the middle of negotiations.

I don't get the sense that Iran is going to get a win. Yes. No, I mean, the Iranians are, they're not fucking stupid. I mean, like, exactly. They know what he's on about. I mean, R.J. Ramrod, shout out to Gimp, has the absolute best free open source Photoshop alternative on the Internet. Yes, it is.

It doesn't work for me. I don't know if they fixed this, but when I was looking to get rid of Photoshop, because it went from a one-time purchase to an annual subscription model, which I fucking hate, as a cartoonist, I have to have Photoshop. But cartoons have to for print have to be saved in TIF format. CMIK TIF, and GIMP didn't allow that. They only allowed you to save an RGP. This is very geeky.

But newspapers are printed in four-color process, and RGB is for the Internet. And so I kind of was hoping someone would do a plug-in or fix that in some way. Thanks so much for the $9 donation, a magical unicorn cat. As a high school teacher, I know with every fiber in my being, there were teachers who flagged these students as needing support and investigating. I can guarantee those teachers were ignored by the administration. Wow. Yeah. I mean, imagine that as a teacher, you're like, okay, something is wrong with Bob.

They don't. You know, is putting in artwork where he's murdering people. Hey, we need to see something about this. And then what happens? Although I got called out for that shit like in elementary school because I only use the black crayon. And it was like, oh, obviously, that's very dark. I'm like, I'm a future cartoonist.

All cartoons were white back then. I mean, do you think that they were flagged and that the teacher effectively, like the principal, just basically ignored? I think that's a hell of a thing to say, right? I think there's a strong chance. Yeah. I mean, obviously the parents were aware, right?

The parents were like, oh, they've got, they're gone. They called the cops. They were worried. I would say that doesn't seem like the, it doesn't seem like this would have come. out of nowhere, right? This is a kind of behavior. One day, your, you're awesome kid who spends all this time at the library studying ups and puts on camos and, like, grabs a bunch of guns and gets going. I don't think so. Yeah, agree.

Agreed. Let's see. Robbie, from Diane Thomas, I do enjoy when you give Jamarle Thomas, Jamar and Ted history lessons on the Bible. Thanks. And with that, and let's see, last one for now, GV man, I've never met an intelligent racist, and yes, they are weak. Usually they have grievances towards some race because they don't want to be responsible for their own failures. I would agree with that. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's, it's, these things are like, yeah, well, whenever you externalize your problems, even if you're, I mean, you, you.

can do it like I could do it with some validity like, well, you know, the billionaire class, the wealthy, they're fucking us. That's true. But, you know, buck up, buttercup, this is the society we live in and you have to do the best you can with the cards you've been dealt. I mean, I was, for me, a huge takeaway was, I visited San Quentin and the lifers. And I was talking to them about, like, sort of, well, how do you deal with it psychologically? knowing you're going to be here for the rest of your life. And they said like, oh, the first year, you basically are like banging your head against the side of your wall of your cell. You're crying every night. You're just miserable. But at a certain point, and there's several guys said this to

me, you realize this is where I live. This is my deal. This is my life now. And you try to make the best of it. And you, you know, you read, you study, you work out. You try to get straight with yourself and accept your reality and do the best you can, given your circumstances. And I think when you're externalizing your problems and complaining about the man, even though the man might be responsible, you know, it doesn't really help. Kind of, yes. I guess from my point of view, I look at it as there needs to be a realistic, legitimate appraisal of reality.

And if, in the context of that appraisal, assuming that you're correcting your that there is some environmental circumstance that is creating difficulties for you. I have zero issue with the idea of trying to change those environmental circumstances. Oh, yeah. The problem. Right. That's just life, right? I mean, like going into politics is acknowledging an issue and trying to change that issue.

Schoolboy philosophy of politics anyway. Holding, protesting. Right. Agitating. Murder. Murder is different, right? Like, meaning, if your appraisal of reality, you come back to Muslim are the problem. Your appraisal is wrong. Your appraisal is very wrong. Or the Chinese are a problem.

Or the Russians are the problem. Your appraisal in that context is wrong. Now, if you come back and say the billionaire class is screwing over the American public by buying politicians and effectively putting laws there, okay, that's correct. But it's the response to that, okay, now I need to murder billionaires. On the other hand, I mean, this just kind of, all right, we have to mention Luigi, right? I mean, He was just in court yesterday for a hearing. I mean, look, I'm so, I mean, I understand also the desperation of looking like, you know, what appears to have happened with Luigi is like we have this huge problem with health care in this country. Nobody seems able or willing to do anything to fix it.

Everything's corrupt. At some point, maybe an assassin's bullet is the solution. Right. I mean, it's not irapeutic. It's like all the people who tried to kill Adolf Hitler. Your point is political balance is sometimes necessary, despite what all of the media and everything. I mean, look, media and politicians have a bias towards not having political balance for obvious reasons that they're in politics and they don't want the public to rise up and get aggressive in regards to trying to change the political system that we have at our disposal. it is an irrational act to pretend that political balance is not a thing.

Right. They do it all the time. Now, the catch becomes, is that going to accomplish the objectives to which you are trying to set for yourself? If the objective is just to pop off on somebody, okay, fair enough. If your objective is a change to political system, that's going to be different. Yeah, yeah. And I think Luigi is a great example, right? Like, let's just say for the sake of argument, I mean, look,

This would be like it's a comic book. Like it's the watchman kind of solution, right? Where let's just say, you know, a healthcare CEO couldn't walk out the front door without getting popped. I don't know what that world looks like because that world doesn't exist. But let's just say that were true. Would it force them to shape up? I'm skeptical. I think they would probably just look for better security.

Yes. I think they would look for better security. They were paid more money to have a crackdown by the state. It was big stuff like that. I mean, look at the day how they reacted with Luigi. They flipped out. It's like, oh, my God, this is completely unacceptable. How dare you shoot a millionaire.

We're bitching about like, you know, Governor Newsom's tax on the billionaires. And now, you know, Mayor Mamdani in New York and his kid a tear attacks. They're acting like it's the fucking Holocaust. They're taxing billionaires. They're all going to leave the city. And I'm like, by the way, I've got to ask you this.

It occurred to me this morning. I was thinking about that because they were talking about it on local radio here about Mamdani and the whinging on the part of the billionaires about like, they're going to tax the billionaires. I'm like, first of all, I'm not really sure how it hurts an ordinary New Yorker to have someone who, you know, not be able to buy or want to buy a $200 million apartment. I'm not sure how that changes anything. All that's going to happen is maybe developers will,

instead of making one $200 million apartment, will make $20, $10 million apartments instead. But let's just say, but the conceit is that billionaires live where their businesses are. Lots of people, you know, have a business in Alaska and live in California, right? China. I mean, we're not all like, it's not like we live in 1860. Right. You know, every house has the, you know, on the second floor of the store is the apartment where the store is not the people in his wife's life. I mean, look, you know, sure, Elon Musk moved to Texas. Elon Musk has facilities all over the world, right? I mean, whatever. I don't know. It makes no sense at all.

So, like, if you can leave Cal, it's like as long as there's money to be made in New York or California or any other high tax plays, there will be business there. Yes, they will. Whether the billionaire who owns the business is there or is neither here nor there, who cares? And Bezos can get by with $50 billion as opposed to $100,000. Right? Like I'll kill him. Well, that's the thing too, right?

Like the effect of a billionaire in terms of gentrifying the economy and making housing unaffordable. I mean, it still blows me, this blows me away, right? So, Jamarle, in New York City, the median apartment is $5,000 a month. Get to lose my mind. To qualify more, actually, it's like $5,100. To qualify for that apartment, like if you get a realtor, you're like, show you your apartment, you're like, I like it, I'll take it.

You have to show proof that you make 40 times more in your annual income than the monthly rent. So if you make, if the rent is $5,000, you have to show that you make at least $200,000. $200,000 through your tax returns. You have to show that. So here's, so riddle me this. The median New Yorker makes nowhere close to $200,000 a year, right? The median New Yorker makes probably $80,000 a year. I mean, it seems to me like you're not going to, even under capitalist constructs,

you're not going to have a system that works unless the median rent, median rent is somewhere around the median income, you know, for qualifying. Ideally, yeah. I mean, like, I never understood how people could afford to live in D.C. To be frank. I mean, and the median rent was nowhere near $5,000. I think I was paying $1,900 a month. And I lived in a not necessarily the greatest of neighborhoods in D.C.

And that was actually making decent money at the radio station. I don't know how people afford it. Like people who work at coffee shops, so people who work at, let's say, fast food or convenience stores or whatever, I don't know how they afford to live in those areas. And Lord knows, I don't know how anybody affords to live for $5,000 short of somebody. I mean, some people have, have, like, weird things where it's like, oh, like, you know, I got a $1 million settlement because I was hit by a car when I was 16.

But, like, come on, that's like one person and a million. It's like people with rich parents. It's like people always, Americans love the exceptions, right? It's like, remember when Colin Powell, you know, rose to prominence? It's like, look, you know, it's like, it's easy to, you know, if you're black and you work hard, you can become a four-star general and become a future president maybe. It's like the reason he's in the news is because he's an exception, okay? That's why we're talking about it. I mean, it's like, no, I mean, it's like, oh, systemic racism isn't a thing.

It's stupid. Anyway, sorry. I'm going to run to news. It's all good. All right. So President Xi, he's often, he's hosting Putin. This is, he just saw Trump. Do you think there's going to be any messaging like where, you know, that basically

Xi tells Putin, hey, so Trump told me last week about, like, Ukraine. And do you think there's going to be any passing of messages there? So I assume there's strategic alignment among China and Russia. Oh, for sure. That's my assumption, just because of how close the two countries have effectively become over the course of the time that the United States has been putting pressure on both. Because you know this. In the old days, the thought was, okay, we're going to work with China against the Soviet Union.

I'm going to work with the Soviet Union against China. The idea of trying to deal with both simultaneously was just weird. And then to get to the point of saying, okay, after we've maligned you for all of these years and gone after you for all of these years, we're now going to work with, you know, Russia to go after China. It's like, dude, it's too late. You've literally overthrew a country to go after Russia directly and is demonized them for all of these years. And you did something similar to China, especially with Trump, or even going back to Obama with the whole transatlantic. specific partnership stuff, of trying to sow up world trade, in order to exclude China from the thing,

meaning we have gone after both. And we have, in doing so, push these countries together where they have singular, or let's say, common interests in this case. So, yeah, that's going to be a strategic, let's say conversation in regards to these two. Apparently, they're going to be signing multiple deals or multiple pieces of legislation together, getting across that much more,

how close they are together. And they're putting out a statement talking about a multipolar world, effectively saying this is now a multipolar world. Obviously, this is aimed at the U.S.'s negative aggression against Venezuela, Cuba, Iran, and whoever else gets them away at this point, but perhaps Colombia, perhaps another country. So the words are nice, I suppose. But, yeah, I suspect they are working in tandem. And let's be honest, from a cynical point of view, the U.S. attack and Iran benefits China and Russia in the way that this is damaging to the U.S., especially from the global economic standpoint.

Russia has all the gas in the world. China has all the gas reserves in the world. They will be okay for the time being. We are the ones that are being hurt by it. Hence, I would imagine that is also probably going to be part of the conversation. Ironically, July 4th, 2026th, our 250th anniversary is also looking a little bit like the beginning of the crunch, right, in terms of energy prices here in the United States. I mean, the stock market's going to be wide awake by then. And, you know, the energy market, the oil markets, the oil futures markets will be wide awake by that. And it's, I mean, it's going to be a very uncomfortable birthday party at the UFC. cage match on the White House lawn. You know, the wild part about it is, I think it's the two parts, the energy markets haven't really priced.

It's almost like they haven't fully accommodated what's happening right now. Almost like it's too big. It's almost like a human missile crisis in regards to something is taking place out there on the oceans, on the seas, that is somehow, in this case, for us, affecting us, In the case of the amount that you're paying for gas, the amount of grocery is the amount of inflation, et cetera, et cetera.

So it's very strange. It's this thing that's out there that's happening on the high seas, that it's very dramatic. These attacks are taking place, et cetera, et cetera. And we are feeling the negative consequences from it, which is necessary. Like, I don't mean to sound like an asshole for this. And this is not necessarily something I all that much enjoy. But the idea that we can go and attack other countries without a consequence seems outrageous to me. There should be a consequence.

There should be some feedback mechanism that tells you a leadership. Don't do that. It's like raising a child. And in raising a child, you let the child do whatever the child wanted to do. And then you're shocked when the child becomes a grownup and it's a maniac as a grownup. It's the same thing. We've been able to go into country after country after country without there being not significant consequence. in a way to hit the American public,

where the American public burned the White House to the ground as a result of their pain. This may be different. And as you point out, July is going to be the driving season. Assuming this was, that's why I believe there's going to be more strikes. Because I don't believe for a moment that Trump, A, can maintain a blockade for this long. That's, I mean, it's already porous. B, deal with an economic fallout of Iran's blockade,

and their blockade, especially if, there's this kind of continuous standoff and the oil supplies and everything else dwindle in the way they're dwindling i've listened to financial people um talk about this and you've as you point out had done financialization yourself they are somewhat perturbed or shocked that this hasn't been priced in yet that people still are listening to trump thinking to themselves yeah he chickens out and so he'll back away and the catch is it's a war it's not a tariff like this stuff is going to start getting pressed in in July, always, et cetera. It's going to be bad. I mean, you know, you brought up this point before, and I often think about it, like the lack of consequences

for the United States, right? Look, you can argue that, look, whatever, you know, if you disapprove of what Russia did in Ukraine, Russia faced consequences there than have been, you know, China probably feels that it would suffer consequences if it invaded Taiwan. But the Nazi Germany faced consequences. Imperial Japan faced consequences, ultimately. Not for a long time, but ultimately. And there's just no end in sight for U.S. military hegemony. And obviously there's no end in sight for now.

But I think even in 1933, if you were forward-looking, you can see that, you know, Nazi Germany could awaken the sleeping giant that was the United States and it could come down on them. In fact, that was anticipated by German, high-ranking German officials who had been to the U.S. and they told Hitler who had never been, he'd never, Hitler hadn't traveled much. And he, and they told him like, you don't understand. You can't fuck with the Americans. Like, right now they're busy with the Depression and all that. But if they get, if they see, set their minds to something, their industrial capacity is just unbelievable. You won't be able to defeat them.

And, you know, Hitler didn't really understand or take that seriously. But yeah, but for the U.S., there, I mean, I've always thought when the EU started, that the EU could be the only military and economic counterbalance to the United States. It was viewed as an economic counterbalance as a trade bloc that was meant to offset. That didn't really kind of work out, but certainly not as it was never viewed as a military counterbalance, which is really too bad. I mean, Europe has started two world wars. Yeah, true. I mean, counterbalance is not necessarily a bad thing.

I just don't trust. You heard in this case. Well, you can't. But that's the rub, though. Like, if there were consequences, let's say to, let's say, the Iraq war. Because we only lost, we lost less than 5,000 people, even though we killed, like a million, I got a million people killed in that conflict, meaning as a result of us going in. That doesn't even include the 500,000 that Bill Clinton apparently killed through sanctions

that Madeline Albright said was necessary, meaning killing kids. There was no pushback. Like, can you imagine if Putin was sitting there, or Lavrov was sitting there? And they said, hey, Lavrov, um, you know, we've noticed that you've killed 500,000 kids in this war. Can you imagine, like, the outrage that would be there? And instead, you get muted disagreement from the world community. But they don't say anything. Even Russia, Leveroff, when Leverov was like, yeah, Iran has a right to enrich uranium

under the non-proliferation treaty. Okay, I need you to be stronger. I need you to sit it with your chest. because all things being equal, you are under attack. Iran is under attack. We just avoided going after China because hashtag reasons. But I hope you get my point. None of these things had major consequences.

And you might have gotten this kind of strongly worded letter from somebody. But consequences, no. In which case, we didn't care because we don't care about your letters. Well, now it's different. Now it's different. We will see consequences. Yeah, that's true. Some more comments. Manchild says, I think Russia is running scared of Ukraine and Putin is looking for a handout.

I don't think that's the case at all. Running scared how? They're taking hundreds of kilometers of territory. And just because it may have slowed down because of issues like drones and weather and those type of things, Ukraine is a manpower shortage that is. It was astonishing. Russia has built up additional military capacity that they haven't even used. And a military that was 150,000 as well to 700,000, what, 50, 800,000? If Ukraine, who had a three to one advantage when this war started and Russia still was able to take 20% territory, how on earth does anybody expect them at this point to do anything? They are a drowning man. Yeah, I'm really tired of reading these stories about, like, yeah, Russia's about to crack.

Russia's about to crack. It's been four years. It's gone to five years. And the momentum is gone in one specific direction. Let's be very clear. Like, meaning, yes, drones have been a pain in the ass, just like they are for Israel and the Hezbole thing. But from the standpoint of drone technology, Russia dominates.

From the standpoint of the battlefield, Russia dominates. Yeah, I don't get the crack stuff. By the way, do you believe that, do you think that there's anything really worth, notable, worth talking about, about Taco Tuesday 17.0, uh, that just happened today. Um, you know, do you think? Yes, I do. What's notable? Because when Donald Trump, do you remember when this first happened, like when the war started? And within March, Trump was like, well, the Pakistanis came out and said, hey, let's have peace talks.

And then what we realized was it was Trump to push Pakistan for peace talks because Trump didn't want to look weak by acts of peace talks. And now you have a situation where Trump is like, yeah, I was going to attack them with this most powerful attack in the history of attacks. But because the Saudis and the Emirates and the et ceteras, I decided against it and the let negotiations. I'm so magnanimous. Yeah, nonsense. He understood as somebody in his orbit understands the negative consequences of that attack or, let's say, the response to that attack. or let's say the response to that attack, meaning if indeed you're talking about hitting infrastructure and water like desalination and everything else, then all bets are off.

And from the standpoint of the infrastructure of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, UAE, etc., it's toast. It's toast. So it's not an issue of, hey, we can't get oil through the straits. It's we can't produce it, which is a whole different order of magnitude of damage and chaos. my point of view is he or barely somebody has explained that to him so yes he may still attack for issues of humerus and ego and narcissism and everything else but i suspect that part of the thing that is creating this kind of contradiction in his policies is this is going to be dramatically bad and it's going to be in my lap when it happens yeah he's he's going through right

now the feelings that i did the first time i had to jump off the high dive at the municipal pool in Kettering, Ohio. It's like, I can't go back down because all the other kids will make fun of me. But I really don't want a belly flop from 12 feet up. It's going to re-insert. I don't know what to do. That's where you're saying in the chat that you've been wargaming this out. Well, I don't think it's about a rant at all.

So, for example, if you look at routers, I always have to look for concern indicators, whatever. They're what they are. what I like to do is I like to look at American media specifically and then just kind of war game out exactly in the opposite ways that they're saying so they have an exclusive saying the Russians are covertly being trained by China as return and fight in Ukraine first doesn't make any sense the Russians have the most battlefield experience than any other army on the planet if anything is the other way around here's what's going on I think China leads to the most battlefield experience the planet in manufacturing and drone and battery production.

So if Russia and China have a strategic alliance, and Russia is not a war with Ukraine, they're fighting Ukraine, but they're a war with NATO and the United States and their proxy war. So if you want to defeat Russia, you have to take China out of the equation. How do you do that? You do it by strangling their oil supply. How you do that? You do it by attacking Iran, which is the biggest oil partner. the biggest trading partner that China has in regards to oil.

Plus, the Japanese are starting to get kind of uppity. They're starting to get this idea that maybe they're a real country. Maybe they don't need to be occupied anymore. Maybe they can actually be independent after 1945. Well, Japan is the same problem that they had in 1935. They don't have any oil. They get all their oil from the Persian Gulf. This is all about controlling the entire Middle East,

controlling those oil fields, and strangling China and keeping Japan, in its box. That's what this is all about. This is nothing to do with the ramp. This is about trying to strangle China to make aware that the Chinese are not able to

support Russia with the drone technology that they have, especially the hardware, like the batteries and such, to try to inflict a defeat on Russia because even the Danish prime minister said Europe cannot allow Russia to win. You know, we don't even say that.

True. Yeah. I think what this is that this iran is a pawn it's not the game it's it's a little bit of both okay everybody that i've talked to um that has pointed out even labroth have made the point of saying the u.s is trying to control global energy markets it's this way of trying to maintain this kind of hedge money control of things the problem is that china has land routes and that if you've noticed the amount of traffic between iran and china especially has started to go over land land, meaning a lot of the stuff can be supplied over land.

And China has the largest energy reserves on the planet by fault. It's not even close, the amount that they've been using regards to oil and gas, an amount that they've saved up. The U.S. has been pumping out from our strategic reserve millions of barrels every day to try to effectively cut down on the cost that we're seeing at the pump, meaning the point that I'm making is that is... They're even trying to get rid of the federal gas tax. Yeah.

18 cents a gallon. I mean, gas has gone up two bucks a gallon. Exactly. So the point that I'm making is, if that's the plan, that plan is dumb. But from the standpoint of Iran,

keep in mind, they've had a hard on to take down Iran for decades, going all the way back to like the George Bush administration where the thought was, we need to give her to Syria in order to open the door for Iran.

Even George Bush Jr., right, when Dick, John makes this point of how we need talking about the Iraq war, Dick Cheney comes in and it's like, and we're going to be in Iran an X number of weeks. They've won at Iran for a very long time. So I agree. Yeah.

So agree, Robbie. This could be about going after China in some particular way. But let's be honest, there are also people in this administration that have a hard on for taking down Iran and this kind of Israeli first. I mean, oh, for sure. I don't want to, I mean, I want to sort of echo Robbie's point that just because someone has a stupid goal doesn't mean it's not their goal, right? True. True.

But that said, is, okay, China, I think we can all, all sane, rational people would say is ungetable. They're uncrushable. They're too big. They're too big to be failed. Okay. But at this point, is there anyone in administration who doesn't believe that? Is there anyone who thinks, oh, no, we can, we can corner China.

I mean, that's hard to believe. Well, just to be clear, Robbie, I'm not saying that the idea is dumb in the case of you mentioned. I'm saying it's just a dumb idea that the administration may have. I'm agreeing with you that there may be, meaning there are some people who are in, let's say, the strategy part of this. I don't believe Trump is a strategy part of this, if I'm making blunt. I think the U.S. policy is U.S. policy regardless of the president. They can be changing, but all intents' purposes, Trump is effectively gone with it. I do think that it would happen.

You know, I always wonder about that, right? Like, this is sort of the Hollywood president, right? Like, Bullworth. What happens if a president is elected, he's an outside, he or she is an outsider? They come in and they're like, all right, new sheriff in town. I've decided we're going to normalize relations with Iran. We're going to trade work and exchange ambassadors. We're going to get rid of sanctions.

we're going to be buds. What happens? I mean, obviously the phone calls start coming in and all the guys with the big stars on their lapels and all the lettuce on their chests come in and puff up and tell you that you don't want to be weak. But what happens really? I mean, can you hold your ground?

Is that policies, is that change in policy, even something that can happen under our ossified late capitalist system? I think so. I mean, and that's so cynical to believe that the president doesn't necessarily have power. I mean, even from the standpoint of a bully pulpit thing, he will be tested. Oh, he will be thoroughly tested, though. I mean, this is kind of like Kennedy, right, dealing with the Soviet Union, where it's like, hey, these guys lost X amount during the war. We need to understand our enemies and so forth, meaning you could make that argument to the American public. You would have a large segment of the American public that would back you on it.

and you would have to live on that public to do whatever you're going to do. I know a lot of the audience is going to disagree with me on this. It's impossible that a president can't do it. I don't buy it. I think you could. Give me a thing on this. Do you think I'm full of shit on this? Robbie, you too.

I'm curious. Yeah, I mean, I'm actually more interested in what Robbie has to say on this. Because, I mean, I don't know the answer to that question. It just seems like it's literally the biggest question of them all. Is it basically like the policy is the policy and you just have, you know, change in personnel and, you know, the lead actor is just changed every four years or so, but basically it's the same role all the time? Or is it possible to actually have a radical change in policy? I mean, there hasn't, there haven't been a lot of radical changes in foreign policy. No. The last one was what Kennedy getting shot, I suppose.

right I bring things home with the Soviet Union the presidency is a figurehead it doesn't matter I mean the United States by design the bottomizes itself every four to eight years with a no with the turnover of a new presidency but the bureaucracy never changes and then you have civil service laws that make aware even if you get a president who wants to be an actual reformer you can't fire the people who are there so if you can't fire someone does that person work for you. The answer is no, by definition. So the beat goes on. They do as they're told. And then at the end of the day, then you have all of the campaign finance. You have all the money that's coming in from all of the interests and all the lobbies. We don't have a country.

We have a board, we have a corporation that's ran by a board of directors. We have a, a CEO who goes and talks to the press, but he's actually do anything. I mean, I mean, we live in a fascist thing. The entire idea that we even have a representative system of government. Actually, a fascist state would be more flexible, right? Because a fascist state is a dictatorship, and the dictator can change the policy overnight, right? Look at Nazi Germany. Like, we hate the Bolsheviks.

Oh, look, we have a non-aggression pact with them over Poland. Oh, wait, we're at war with them. Xi Jinping doesn't wake up every morning looking at a map and he looks over at Taiwan and says, okay, how am I going to take this all island back? He wakes up every morning and his biggest concern is how do I feed over a billion people? So my head doesn't end up on a spike. That is his biggest problem. And I think that's why that's one of the reasons I came up to this conclusion about Iran.

It's to cause domestic economic problems to try to could change China because China's geography he really hymns it in more than anything else. If we control the sea routes, we could strangle them. That's what this is about. And the trucks, well, yes, there are a thing, don't carry anywhere near as much oil as a ship does. True.

Two comments before we go out, get out, because we're out of time. Not the Cat Williams. I thought the UFC cage match in the White House lawn was a joke. Alas, it is not. No, it is not. Frasmataz, Ted, check out Mark Felton, a Royal Society historian. He just did a video on the former SS Charlemagne French SS, who were tasked to redeem themselves by fighting in Vietnam. I will check that out.

The Charlemagne Division comes up in the sorrow and the pity, the legendary documentary about Vichy, France. Anyway, it's 10 o'clock. We are out of time. Peter gave us a $2 rant. He says, boys go to Baghdad, real men go to Tehran. Yeah, better not to be a real man, really. Anyway, thanks all for joining us. Appreciate you. Please stay tuned for TMI show with me and Manila Chan, except it'll be Robbie West again.

Stop filling in for vanilla. We'll have a lighter take on the news. You guys, see you later in the afternoon. We're talking about shit. And we'll see you at 9 o'clock tomorrow morning, where we are at 9 a.m. Eastern time, Monday through Friday. Bye. Ciao.

Have a good guy.