DeProgram with John Kiriakou and Ted Rall - Shutdown Scramble | DeProgram with Ted Rall and John Kiriakou

Episode Date: February 6, 2026

Political cartoonist Ted Rall and CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou deprogram you from mainstream media every weekday at 9 AM EST. Today we discuss: • ICE is fully funded but Democrats are holding up other Homeland Security funding over demands that paramilitary forces occupying Democratic cities be demised. A DHS shutdown looms, impacting air travel, but negotiations haven’t even begun. Meanwhile, Trump wants to rename Dulles Airport and Penn Station after himself in exchange for unfreezing $16 billion in funds for the Gateway Development Project. • Healthcare: TrumpRx website offers discounted meds for uninsured Americans. Texas surgeon Stevenson Bynon Jr., 66, is charged with manipulating his patients’ medical records to make them ineligible for organ donations between February 2023 and March 2024. Of five patients, three died. The other two received liver transplants at different hospitals. • NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani endorses center-right Democratic New York governor Kathy Hochul. Has the sellout begun?JOIN US LIVE ON RUMBLE!https://rumble.com/c/DeProgramShowFOLLOW TED:https://rall.com/https://x.com/tedrallFOLLOW JOHN:https://www.instagram.com/realjohnkiriakouhttps://x.com/JohnKiriakouLISTEN ON SPOTIFY:https://open.spotify.com/show/2kdFlw2w8sSPhKI8NRx8ZuLISTEN ON APPLE MUSIC:https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/deprogram-with-john-kiriakou-and-ted-rall

Happy Friday. Good morning, John. Good morning, everyone. You're watching DeProgram with Ted Raul and John Kyriaku, and I'm cracking up at the live feed on Rumble and YouTube, because people are saying that somehow I ended up in the Epstein files. If so, it wasn't the result of any fun, legal or illegal, I promise you, because I don't get invited to fancy things, you know, even the gross ones. Thank you so much for joining us. Please like and follow and share the show. Apologies in advance for any tech glitches that happened today or any slow list in getting to your questions, which John and I always try to get to. Yes. But, you know, it's hard to co-host the show

and read all the comments and filter them the way Robbie does. Robbie West, producer, is outtaking care of his wife, Kizzy, who's very sick. She's at the hospital right now. I know that he would greatly do. disapprove of what I'm about to do. But anyway, please contribute to go fund to Robby's GoFundMe, not just for the usual $1,000, which we're almost at, by the way.

Thanks, everyone. But go to gofundme.com slash D-F slash D-Program Robbie, or if you forget the slash F, just go to GoFundMe and then search for his name, which is one word, deep program, Robbie. Throw money at him, throw money at his wife. They need it. They have to come up. They're insured, both fully.

insured and they still have to come up with surgery money, good faith money. They call it, this country sucks, ass. And, you know, when you're desperately sick, the last thing you should be worried about is being able to pay for your medical treatment. You should be able to focus just on getting well. But that's just not how things work, as we all know. So let me see. A few things to get to. Oh, we do have an ad, John. So if you are amenable, I will just get this out of the way. Let's go for it. Move on. Okay.

All right, this will not come as a surprise to anyone. Still haven't tried 1775 coffee. Now is your shot. The 1775 starter kit just dropped. Only a thousand units. You're getting the bold, dark roast that hits hard. The smooth, medium roast, and the vitality mushroom coffee for clean energy and laser focus.

No crash. All single origin, small batch, toxin free and mold-free. Plus, you're also getting gold spoon clip because freedom isn't scooped with plastic. A frother strong enough to stir up your coffee and your mother-in-law's opinions. and a black 1775 Tumblr, $170 worth of coffee and gear. Yours for $99. This is for the ones who've been watching 1775 blow up on Rumble. Wondering if it's actually worth it.

Spoiler, it is. Go to 1775Coffey.com slash studio and grab your starter kit before they're gone. Bold beans, clean fuel, and a morning routine that stands for something just like Rumble does. One quick little ad for me, which is that yesterday we posted, we dropped the new DMZ America podcast with me and Scott Stammer. It was a really good conversation with cartoonist Mr. Fish. Very thoughtful. I highly recommend that if you have the time or the interest in, you know, left-wing media and cartooning and just the arts in general to check that out.

Anyway. I got to tell you, Mr. Fish, the first time I ever heard of Mr. Fish, I was at Bob Shear's house in Los Angeles. Or he has this wonderful, wonderful penthouse condo right in the middle of downtown L.A. and and he uh he had a he had a portrait of himself by mr fish that was literally one story tall and i'm so jealous i said bob what is this is this the altar to yourself we all have an inner donald trump right and he said he said no no mr fish did this and he's such a great artist and so important.

And he said, what else am I going to do with it? I had to put it up. That was the first time I had heard of Mr. Fish. That is absolutely hilarious. All right, Mani of the cat says, Ted actually appeared in the Epstein files. It's pretty funny. It would be, I mean, I don't know. Maybe it's true.

If that's true, please send me the screenshot. I'd love to see that. You know, a friend of mine, Elizabeth Lane, who's an independent journalist and quite a dogged one, called me yesterday afternoon to tell me that she found something in the Epstein files that was very, very intriguing. It is a one sentence single email. That's it. There's no follow-up or anything. And it's from the Deputy White House counsel under Obama emailing Jeffrey Epstein and saying, John Brennan gave me the CIA's highest award today. Pretty cool, huh? So first of all, would John Brennan be giving the Deputy White House counsel the CIA's highest award,

which is usually reserved for people who are killed in action, number one, other than the fact that she was probably on the Tuesday morning kill list meeting, helping to decide who was going to die week to week to week. I'm confident when I say that. But number two, why in God's name would she be telling Jeffrey Epstein? And now she's a big shot partner at some A-list firm in Washington. I think she has some questions to answer. Mania says that apparently I wrote an article that somehow ended up in there.

You know, people send articles to each other. Good to see I'm being read in low places. Yeah, that's a good question, John. I do not know. I mean, you know, there's so many, like, it's like all these little threads that you just want to pull and follow. Yeah, seriously. If only there was a profession whose job was dedicated to figuring these things out, We would call it investigative journalism.

But sadly, there is no such profession. You're exactly right. You're exactly right. Guys, here's what John and I have teed up to talk about, but we're never limited to these things. But these are like the things that like I pulled off the news. ICE is fully funded. That's something that people might not be aware of.

This is a confusing funding battle. Basically, we're half of the way through a two-week countdown towards a partial government shutdown. Oddly, ICE is not affected. ICE is fully funded. They can continue to do everything they want. Meanwhile, however, the rest of the Department of Homeland Security, the non-ice stuff is being held hostage by the Democrats.

So we're talking about stuff like TSA, which obviously could cause lines at the airport and delays for flights and so on. And so basically, it's very strange. The Democratic traders who joined the Republicans in voting for the last funding, they voted for ICE, but now the same guys say that they're not going to vote for the non-ice DHS stuff that's not controversial. Politics is very, very strange. And anyway, so basically they want, there's a list of 10 demands, including no masks anymore, visible IDs like a last name or a badge, etc. etc., etc. Republicans say those are non-starters. They're not going to do anything like that.

Got to ask you, Donald Trump, this could be just one of his many trolls, but he said that he would unfreeze the $16 billion in funds for this gateway development project between New York and New Jersey, which you and I can explain what that is. If the Democrats agree to rename Dulles Airport, not from former Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, but for Donald Trump, and Pennsylvania Station. I don't know if they would have to change the famous song, Pennsylvania 6,000, to Trump 6,000 or something. But anyway, he wants Trump, Penn Station, named after himself.

There's this new Trump RX website, this crazy case in Texas where this surgeon decided to turn eligible patients for organ transplant organ donations into ineligible for at least five people, three of whom died, two of whom got liver transplants at other hospitals. And, you know, and probably the thing that's got my blood boiling and probably those of most lefties like me, Mamdani has endorsed Hockel, the governor of New York. You know, that didn't take long. Basically five weeks for full spectrum sellout as far as I see it.

But anyway. I don't understand that at all, Ted. You know so much more about New York politics than I do. I think that I'm pretty good at politics pretty much everywhere. But this just defies all logic. Unless he's trying to, you know, reach out and repair the damage between the left and and the right of the Democratic Party in New York, I don't get this at all. And to best of my recollection, she didn't endorse him, did she?

She did not? Wait, wait, or did she even at the last minute, maybe like sort of like the day before the election or something like that. But, you know, not so that it mattered, certainly. Well, I mean, the governor of the state of New York holds all the purse strings for the city of New York. That doesn't have to be the case, but it is the case. And I could get into why that doesn't have to be the case later. The city can impose taxes. The city does impose taxes, income, sales and use, you know, securities, anything at once. And it could certainly hit the rich where it hurts, but they're not doing that.

So, Mamdani's got this big budget deficit. He knows he needs, he's screwed unless he gets cooperation from the governor. This is clearly a quid pro quo. The governor says, like, if you want me to not screw you financially and screw the city financially, you're going to have to endorse me. The thing that makes this, I wouldn't necessarily have a problem with this, except for the fact that she's being primaried by her progressive Mamdani, like Democratic Socialists like lieutenant governor.

So she and you know so much for solidarity, right? I mean, basically he got in and pulled the into the tree house and he's pulling the ladder up after him. But it's like it seems to me like, you know, democratic socialists should be sticking together. And that's not what's happening here. If she wasn't being primaried from the left, I would say there's not much, there's nothing wrong with what he's doing. but, you know, it's just being practical. Mbani's also catching a lot of shit from right-wingers, but also some honest broker New Yorkers

about the state of the city 12 days after this big snowstorm that we talked about here. There are giant, massive piles of snow all over the city. Cars still haven't been dug out because alternate side of the street parking has remained suspended. There's giant piles of traffic. New York City is strange because they have a separate, you know, most cities have snow plows and they have garbage trucks and they're not the same.

And but in New York, they are the same. So in New York, what they do is they put the plows in front of the snowplow in front of the garbage trucks. So when the snow comes, they plow the snow first, then when and then they suspend garbage pickup. When the snow's gone, then they come for the trash. well, it's, you know, I think it's a strange system. It might seem smart. It might be because it's hard for a city of this size to have, you know, the storage for, you know, two sets of vehicles.

Why not double up? But you can see the weakness here because, you know, with, you're trying to crack down on rats and you've got piles of garbage, you know, 10 feet tall. That's not great. At least it's winter. The rats aren't that bad. But, you know, it's, but it's scuzzy and the right is having a field day on social media. pointing it out. And, you know, between the deaths of the homeless people, the state of the city,

and, you know, America, I mean, New Yorkers punish their mayors for poor plowing. You know, the, the, the, de Blasio got a lot of shit for that. It's not, it's been, Mayor Lindsay got beaten up over, poor plowing during a storm, a snow storm. Koch. I mean, this is like New Yorkers want their snow plow. But let's, but let's point the finger where the finger needs to be pointed. and that is this disgraceful entity that calls itself the United States Postal Service. You know, through dark of night and hail and rain and snow, what a crock of shit that is. I didn't have mail for nine days. And the D.C. schools never closed, but the Postal Service did.

Yeah, well, the Postal Service should not close. I didn't get mail delivery either during a snowstorm. Nine days. Yeah, I mean, during, yeah, yeah, I mean, you know, everybody, if you ever go to New York, right, go to the beautiful main post office at 8th Avenue, between 32nd and 34th Street, that has that giant, like it's a beautiful McKean, McMede, Kim building that, you know, says, you know, the, the point, the, what does it say, neither sleep nor snow, nor hail, nor snow, nor dark of night. Exactly. He shall keep the postal carrier from his appointed rounds. Yeah. Beautiful statement.

And it used to be true. Yeah. When it was the Pony Express, and think of it, think of it that way, too. That's when it was really hard to make a delivery. Now it's just, you know, you have to put on a- Native American. You just have to put on a pair of boots and they stay home. Yeah.

No, it's true. And they don't, you know, they don't even have like, they're trucks. They have those silly little trucks where they drive on the wrong, on the wrong, the drivers, the driving size on the wrong side. You what? I bought one of those. You bought one? What do you? Yeah.

I'll tell you why. I'll tell you why. I had just started working for the CIA. And I used to drive past to go on my way home, I used to drive past this, you know, post office hub where everything gets sorted, right? Oh, okay. So they had these trucks and the jeeps parked out front. there were about 20 of them. And each one said,

had a for sale sign and had a price in the window. And there was one of those jeeps with the steering wheel on the wrong side, $500. Well, I was driving a 1988-Volkswagen Fox with 164,000 miles on it. And I thought, well, hell,

for $500, if I just get six months out of that thing, it's true. So I went in and I said, are these postal jeeps out here? here seriously they're $500 and they were like yeah I said yeah I'll take one and so I plunk down $500 in cash that I brought with me I had to put like the the tax on my credit card because I wasn't thinking about that and and I drove it home and I drove it for about I don't know 10 months

and then it fell apart and it drew and you have to drive on the and the driving on the right which actually benefited me because when I moved to Pakistan everything's on the other side and I was already used to it. But I'll tell you what, talk about no frills. Not only did it not have a radio, which was cool with me. You know, I didn't care. It didn't even have a heater or an air conditioner. All it did was it drove.

It was like. And they don't have snow tires. They slide all over the place as we know during these storms. It's terrible. But all it did was it drove from point A to point B. That was it. See, I feel like the Postal Service, if someone, if the president came on and said, you know, the Postal Service needs like amazing,

hardcore kick-ass like, you know, Toyota forerunners. I'd be like, yeah, that's true. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We're not spending our money in the right way. No, we're not.

And I will say, as much as I hate Barack Obama, one of the, the important things that he did to get us out of that pseudo-depression in 2009 was he spent billions of dollars to replenish the federal automobile fleet. He bought thousands and thousands of cars, which really injected some life into Detroit. And I remember Republicans saying, oh, he's throwing his money away, our tax money away. No, he saved Detroit. And he bought American. Yeah, and bought American at the same time. Yeah. That is smart.

Every now and then these guys, they use so many things that they're not all evil. So got to remember that. Hey, let me add one thing, Staffman. Staffman 3791, he says, USPS letter carrier here. The USPS is barely holding on. You'd be surprised how it's a functioning company when middle and upper management is so incompetent. My brother-in-law just retired from a 30-year career as a mail carrier. And he says exactly the same thing.

I've heard the same thing from other letter carriers as well. Yeah, it's a disaster. Yeah. I mean, we're in the nature of not. Go ahead. Those guys that are actually doing the work. are working hard. Oh, well, yeah, this is like,

it's like the sanitation workers in New York. They're kicking ass and taking names. It's not their fault that they don't have the resources they need to do the job. Now, that's always how it is. It's disgusting. Look, I mean, I can't believe the post office is in such trouble. I mean, they should be like a, you know, it should be an entity that wants for nothing,

considered it's key, it's crucial infrastructure. You know, I mean, Amazon wants to take away, you know, they want to do their own shipping. You know, it's like, okay, and then let's say Amazon goes away. That can happen. I mean, the Sears Robot catalog was everywhere, you know, and now where is it? You know, just to make my position clear, because I don't want anybody to misunderstand. firmware says, please don't crack on USPS.

The Republicans have been trying to kill it since idiot, George. I am 1,000 percent supportive of the U.S. Oh, no, me too. One thousand percent. I don't know if Congress is still sucking out like a leech $5 billion a year out of the postal service. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's not that it's not profitable.

It's a fine. It's that Congress won't let it be even quasi-independent. Yeah. Yeah. No, I mean, it's, it's, yeah, I'm definitely on team postal service. I think it's a fucking miracle that for, you know, half a buck, you can send a letter to the far, you know, to, you know, to, like a soldier stationed in, you know, on the far side of the planet. You know, that's amazing or that you can send for that matter.

Can you imagine if it's all privatized how much a letter it would cost to send a letter to like rural Montana? I mean, you couldn't do it. It would be like 50 bucks, you know, if you're lucky, if they'd even do it. All right. Anything you want to say about Zoran? You know, all I can say is I'm deeply disappointed but not surprised. I have one question for you about Zoron. So there was a piece in the New York Times today saying that landlords are saying with rental freezes, they're all out of business.

Everybody's going to be homeless. All the buildings are going to be empty. It's going to be Armageddon. What do you say to that? Well, okay. So, you know, I hate landlords. And I wish they were all dead. Okay, I'm with the dead Kennedys and their famous song.

Let's kill the, let's lynch the landlords. That said. I think they have, look, they're winching and they've always been whining, but here's the problem. A lot of landlords, a lot of buildings were purchased with the assumption of a rent roll that pre-existed 2019 rules that were changed under the former Mayor de Blasio, right? And so what happened there is that, okay, so the way the rules worked before was that when an outgoing tent, when a tenant left a rent-stabilized apartment built, apartment unit, the landlord was able to do renovations and if they did they could jack up the rent right yeah that rule

went away in 2019 um the the the the landlords have been bitching and moaning ever since because they're kind of like well we have no way of if you know we're we're being disincentivized from maintaining and upgrading our our housing stock and at the same time we can't raise the rent so what the fuck do we do? And so that's been the situation now. They were hoping that they would get a right-wing mayor who would support them. Obviously, that didn't happen. So this is less about the rental freeze than it is about that 2019 rule. I got it. And so because, you know, it's true that a lot of their expenses are going up, like a lot of rental apartment buildings in New York City. You know, the rent come, the heat comes from the building. It's not metered to the individual unit. So the landlord

has that cost as an operating cost. Well, you know, fuel costs have gone way up, right? So the truth is we may see a mini version of the 1970s, the Bronx is burning with landlords burning down their own buildings because they just can't make the rent, they can't make their mortgage payments anymore with the current rent rolls. It is actually a problem.

And, you know, the problem is that landlords have acted so greedily and fouly for so long. that even though they're like the boy who cried wolf, this time they're kind of right, but there's going to be no political sympathy whatsoever for them. And therefore, even if City Hall understands the problem, there's nothing they're going to be able to do for them. So this is a, because the New Yorkers would rise up as one against it. This is a big fucking problem. It's a ticking time bomb, John. Yeah, that sounds awful. awful. So, all right, so, all right. So, all right. So, We'll leave Zoran there, and shall we do some questions?

Yeah. All right. All right, Star Runner, John was rewatching Charlie Wilson's war, and after listening to you over the past year, Gustavrakotos's apology for the mispronunciation, mention of the junta's resonated with me. Can you tell me more about him, maybe on Dead Drop? Yeah. Yeah, you know what?

That's a great idea to do something on Deadrop. I hadn't thought of it. I spoke to his son, Greg, a couple of weeks ago. and I are friends. And, you know, Gus was a major figure in my career, major figure, a mentor, a friend, and a legendary figure at the CIA in its modern history. It was Gus's idea to, we could have a debate over whether it was a good would. It was Gus's idea to arm the Afghan Wajahideen and to give them Stinger missiles. He, he, he, He was, I mean, if anybody, if anybody can take credit for pushing the Soviets out of Afghanistan, it's Gus.

It was amazing. But the thing about Gus is that he was literally not afraid of anybody. There's a scene in Charlie Wilson's war where he punches another officer and sends him through a glass window. That actually happened. And that wasn't just some other officer. that was the deputy director of the CIA for operations and what happened to gust they promoted him and they knew it's because he was absolutely 100% fearless he said to me one time all he ever wanted to do was kill russians and boy really killed a lot a lot of russians oh my god yeah uh well so i was

just clicking on this link uh that came up from mania Looks like there's something promising there that might have some, might be some article that I wrote. That's pretty funny. Did we see, oh, Flanderina, question, did we see that the CIA shut down their world fact book page? Any insights into why? I got to say, I hate that.

The CIA fact book is awesome. And it's a huge resource for journalists and educators. And it has the most up-to-date maps for many parts of the world. that sucks. Oh, and it says, spotlighting the world factbooked as we bid it a fond farewell. What the heck?

Why in the world would they do that? I'll tell you, every one of us, we got the fact book the day it came out. The secretaries would go through the divisions and plop a giant copy on everybody's desk. And I referred to it constantly. By the end of the year, when it was time to get the new one,

it was dog-eared. Really? And they don't even say why, oh, because it went digital. Oh, so does it still exist? Well, I don't know. I'm not seeing it. It says it's, no, it went digital in 1997.

So in other words, it would just remain digital, but continue to be, I hope it would continue to be updated. No. It's gone. It's gone. Yeah, I mean, these are bad times. The farmer's almanac is gone. The world almanac, I think, is toast. I could be wrong about that. Anyway, all right. Wow. And all it says is one of the CIA's oldest and most recognizable intelligence publications.

The World Fact Book has sunset. The World Fact Book served the intelligence community and the general public as a longstanding, one-stop basic reference about countries. and communities around the globe. Let's take a look at the history of the world fact book. And then they just have one, two, three, four paragraphs about how great it was. And that's the end. That's it. Now, I used to come across it all the time, like doing research. And I can't even tell you how much I relied upon it.

Yeah, that's our tax money. And it's great that like the CIA, which is obviously as secret as it gets, still was doing this thing that was good for the public. There's a lot of this stuff that Americans might. not be aware of, like, for example, these amazing U.S. Army military histories that they publish and that you won't find at any bookstore. But if you go to a good library, they'll have, like, you know, crazy histories of, like, you know, the Southern Pacific War in World War II or whatever, you know, and they're immaculate, they rely on military archives. They're fantastic resources. They are fantastic resources.

Flandrina wants to know, why isn't the fact that Epstein owned the popular indoor amusement parks, Jeepers, bigger news, never heard of Jeepers. I was horrified to find that out and realized there's a location five minutes from where I grew up. Huh, I don't know. Have you ever heard of Jeepers? No. No. Yeah, exactly. Jeepers, creepers.

Someone else said it. Okay. Here in Wisconsin, Sky wants to know. Here, there are multiple data centers being proposed and actively being built that are completely opposed by the public. What can we even do to intervene at this point? You got to take it up with the zoning board in your area. You got to go to meetings and raise hell.

That's right. And your local elected officials, people are actually having success in some places like Arizona, for example, and in northern Virginia. In northern Virginia, if you go out just barely past Dulles Airport, you can, drive, you can drive for miles and see nothing but these data farms. They use massive amounts of water to keep the computers cool. And in a place like Arizona, it's like, what are you doing? You're wasting all that water just to keep computers cool. Put them in Michigan or Minnesota or something like that. I mean, if you want to, it's not like they employ anybody. So I don't know.

Right. Yes, you're right. We've got to stand up to this because it's a waste of resources, but you've got to do it at the local level. Yeah, yeah. And it may or may not work because I've got to tell you, every time I've ever gone into like a city council or zoning board meeting, you know, the fix was already in, you know, by the before they all walk in. So you've got to keep the heat on as a local, as a local person. You've got to like make their lives miserable, vote them out. And it may not work, to be honest. You know, they're not response. Obviously, they're often not responsive. I don't want to lie.

But what can you do? It definitely starts there. And then you can at least then if the problem is corrupt local officials, then, you know, you go after them. Man, citizenship is hard work. Can the average American even hope,

handsome libertarian wants to know, even hope to do anything to make any sort of change in this country, specifically talking about how we're now essentially the United States of Israel. This is related to the last question. I mean, there's definitely a sense of, a strong sense of helplessness.

Yeah. And I agree. I mean, look, is there anything? I mean, I don't think normal protesting works. It just doesn't. You know, it's like, we need new systems. Frankly, you know, I think the whole system needs to be, you know, gotten rid of and start and rebuild from scratch.

I would, I think the Constitution's out of date. I would completely, you know, restart from scratch. But that's me. But I think as a people, you know, we need to basically start thinking of politics as something we don't outsource when we vote. We have to be something we're doing every single day. We're agitating in our community. I mean, you can sort of see part, I mean, I'm not 100% approving of just following them around with whistles. But look at Minneapolis.

You know, these people, they managed to put Minneapolis and ICE on the map. They threw down and they paid the ultimate price into at least two cases. You know, I mean, that's a, it's a model to show what's possible when people come together as a community to resist. I think you're 100% right. And you're also right about the Constitution, Ted. It's outdated. but it's impossible to amend, right? In today's political environment, it's impossible to amend.

Well, that's part of, I think the fact that it's so difficult to amend, and I think it always was hard to amend, is part of the reason that it's obsolete, right? In France, they have an annual constitutional convention, and they amend it every single year. So, I mean, because they view the, they really do view it as, you know, a living document that has to be nipped and tucked all the time.

And I think that would be better. That's why we have to trash the Constitution, have a new constitutional convention, and start from scratch. Because then it's not about what the laws in the Constitution says. It's about the structure of how that Constitution allows new amendments and laws to be amended. I mean, you wanted to, there needs to be a barrier,

but it also needs to be, it has to be amendable. I mean, yes. the U.S. Constitution still doesn't officially say that women are equal to men. Okay? Yeah, that's true. That's extremely fucked up. Every other country in the world does that. Yes, that's absolutely true.

And the fact that we can't even get there, it just shows how fucked up the, you know, I mean, let's face it. If you put it up to a plebiscite, I'm pretty sure that would pass like by 90%, you know. Should be 100, but, you know. All right. John, big fan from Canada. Thank you. Giovanni, Gianni Chapput. Just wondering what your take is on the current political woke ideology that seems to be still one of the most prevalent ideologies in the G7 and not just the G7.

You know, I'm not really sure how to answer that. In Greece, as an example, and of course I follow Greece the most closely, they just don't have this wokeness. It just doesn't exist. I mean, there is kind of a live and let live national attitude. But the, but the, but the, the, the wokeness part of it doesn't extend into government. Steve, thanks for the two Canadian dollars. And he said he, we need some form of direct democracy. I agree with that.

I mean, I got to tell you, now, now that we have phones, you know, almost in, and you're expected to have one, right? I mean, even homeless people are expected to have a, a phone. Literally, they set up charging stations. outside in New York City so that homeless people can charge their phones. So most people have a phone, certainly most people who can vote. Honestly, I think you should come home almost every day and find some kind of national referendum waiting for you on your phone that used to be something Congress would have voted on and be like, and it asks you as a citizen, hey, what do you think about this?

And you should be like, yes or no? And then direct democracy. Yeah, I agree with that. I also don't think we should commit. That's how I would amend that I would also amend the Constitution so that the right to deploy troops is not reserved just to Congress or for that matter, de facto to the executive. And the American people should weigh in on whether we're going to waste or risk blood and treasure in a foreign war. If you don't have the support of the public, you shouldn't be able to do it. I agree.

And you know what? Let me add something. We need to revamp government, not just at the top, but at every level down, at every single level. Because for the most part, state legislatures are modeled on the federal system. I mean, with the exception of Nebraska, which has a unicameral legislature, nice idea. But otherwise, everything's broken, everything, at every level. broken. Yeah, yeah, it is. All right, let me pull up another question here. John, this is from, I can't pronounce this guys, I'll put it up there, maybe you can pronounce it.

Do you see it up on the screen? John, could Epstein still be alive? The photos look suspicious. I don't see it on the screen. It's on the, it's on the, it's in the Rumble studio. It's on the, If you looked at it on the live feed, you would see it. It doesn't matter. Anyway, could Epstein still be alive? No. The photos look suspicious. No.

You give government far too much credit. Most of them have their heads up their asses. And there are so many moving parts in a conspiracy that it's impossible to keep it all quiet. The boycott sense says, I knew Zohran was full of shit from the beginning. Why people couldn't see that earlier, never vote for any Democrat or Republican. You know, I've been thinking about this.

I'm genuinely worried about 2028 because I don't like any of the Democrats and I don't like most of the Republicans. So what the heck do I do? I mean, I'm very happy to go back to the Greens or to the libertarians, I voted libertarian a number of times. But I recognize that neither the Greens nor the Libertarians are actually going to win. So what do we do we do? Yeah. No, I mean, but I am coming around to, you know, his point of view. I mean, look,

there's nothing, you can only ever, John, as you know, obviously, you can only ever control yourself. You can't control anyone else, right? Yeah, that's right. And my take on this is maybe we just have to, you know, just be like, well, for yourself personally. I mean, I got to say, I got to vote for like Greens or Libertarians only or socialists if they ever exist again. Because they're never going to go anywhere unless you vote for them. And, you know, in this country, ballot X, votes be get ballot access. If you can get the Greens up to 5% in most states, for example,

they'll be guaranteed to be on the next ballot or the libertarians. I think it's like you're really throwing your votes away when you vote for a corporate party. And as far as I'm concerned, they can blow up Gaz and children as much as they want, but they're not going to, they shouldn't do it with my approval. Yeah, agreed.

Agreed. Question from John Hart. Hart got Reagan, his life and legend by Max Boot to read, and for someone who's Gen Z. I know, it's like hard to know where to start with that question. What should I be aware of about Reagan? I mean, bear in mind, right? I mean, Ronald Reagan was gone decades before this person was born. Pros and cons or controversies. John, you want to take a stab at pros and cons of Ronald Reagan? You know, it's funny. When I was in college, Reagan was president when I was in college.

And every time there was some event or scandal or whatever, we didn't like the invasion of Grenada, whatever, we would go to the White House and shout, fuck you, Reagan, right? It'd be hundreds of people. And now we're at the point where we're like, oh, do you remember when Reagan was president? Oh, it was just so, things were so good. And then you see these videos on YouTube of Reagan saying, we need more. immigrants. We need to legalize the immigrants who are here now without paperwork. Ronald Reagan would be a moderate Democrat in today's America.

That's true. I actually have much more of an appreciation for Ronald Reagan now than I did when he was actually alive and serving as our president. The warning I would give you is not about Reagan. It's about Max Boot. Yeah. My former editor, he edited my illustrations for the Wall Street Journal many, many years. He was a very nice man.

It always hurts me when rabid neocons are nice. Ravid crazed neocon. I will say my ex used to work with him at the Council on Foreign Relations, and he's a very nice man with very crazy ideas on international affairs. Like crazy, dangerous ideas that are going to result in a lot of people being killed. Yes. Yes. Yeah.

There's a whole set of the people like that. That's like, you know, Dick Cheney was easy to put into his box because he was an unpleasant person. So, and he looked like an unpleasant person in that Victorian idea that the person with an ugly soul has an ugly face. Yeah. But, yeah, no, Max Boot, you can't. put into that box. To me, Reagan's like, look, I think, like you, I've come to understand that Reagan was a lot more intelligent than we thought. We're certainly relevant compared to many of his

successors. That said, I think Reagan was really very damaging because he introduced the idea that, like, you know, the government's not the solution, the government's the problem, the idea that we're not all in it together, right? Like, he repeatedly argued successfully to the American people, that there should be no social compact. That we're all, it's all up to ourselves. Hey, if Robbie's wife, you know, gets a disease and she can't afford to get, you know, go to a doctor, sucks to be her, too bad. That's Reaganism, right?

Yeah, that's what Reaganism was. Yes. And in addition to allowing companies to rape the economy. I'm sorry, to rape the environment. Yes. And Democratic and Republican parties both bought that. And we've never gotten back that ever since Ronald Reagan, the Democratic, Party has never proposed, never mind past, proposed an anti-poverty program.

Anti-poverty programs were a standard thing all throughout the 20th century. And then they just went away. Reagan convinced us that we're a bunch of individuals, like basically like rats in a cage, as opposed to a community of neighbors who help each other out and care about each other. And we're not talking about just free money for people who don't want to work. We're talking about education and training programs to get people prepared. for the for the workforce. Reagan also, you know, perpetuated this, this lie about the so-called welfare queen.

Like he, he just kind of imagined this, you know, black woman in Detroit with 12 kids and collecting welfare for all the 12 kids and very specifically driving a Cadillac. Do you remember that, Ted? I do remember that. The welfare queen. Right. the welfare queen driving the Cadillac. No sense person existed.

He just made that up. And it just made people angry with poor people. So he was very divisive, very divisive. Very, very. And then all the money that could have been spent on training and education and infrastructure was instead spent on doubling the size of the Navy and building more and more nuclear weapons to crash the Soviet Union. Oh, and don't forget also he, you know, the AIDS crisis was full blown throughout his.

That was all his. And he did not want to finance AIDS research at all. He was like, fuck them. Let the queer people die. Fuck them. It's right. This was God's revenge. Remember that?

Yeah, that's right. Is there lifestyle, he said? Yeah. Lifestyle. Elliot Covert, without John, without getting into specifics, says the CIA collect embarrassing personal information, like what the Russians would call comprimat, on American elected officials. No.

But the FBI certainly does. You know who else does? The National Inquirer and other newspapers. I had a friend who was a top editor at the National Enquirer, and he said the reason that they didn't get sued more often was because they would always collect like twice as much dirt on a celebrity or a politician than they published. And then when there was a threat of a lawsuit,

their lawyer would say, okay, fine, we're going to have discovery. And then everything that our reporter found, it's all going to come out. You guys decide, let us know if you want to sue or not. And then, you know, rarely. Smart, man. I did that to Art Spiegelman when I wrote him up in the village voice. I collected twice as much shit and I knew he would threaten to sue.

And he did. And then it was like, he called the Voices Lawyers and the Voices Lawyers told him everything that I'd found that I didn't publish. He went away. Hi, Art. Fuck you. Wow. Wow. I learned that from the National Enquirer.

Wow, man. It's smart, though. Yeah, it is smart. Yes, it is. All right, here. Let me, oh, my God, like the comments go so fast. Here we go. Phrasmataz.

Ted, do you remember the punk show? Eat all the old people. I don't remember eat all the old people. I remember Kill the Poor, again, by the Dead Kennedys. I had an anarcho-socialist trust fund friend growing up who loved singing that kind of sociopath. he was to. Okay, well, you know, there was a certain sociopathic tendency to punk, which I do love. Anyway, oh yeah, the addicts is the band. That's it. Yeah, the oldest punk band. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Love that. Okay. So, um, still, still, I'm just trying to say, I'm so sorry, guys. I'm literally like a hundred messages

behind here. We really need Robbie. We need Robbie. Guys, yeah, Robbie, we miss you. Come, Fuck, we love you. We're sorry for everything we did wrong. Okay, Canada, Teflon Money Don, has been making some headlines like the Chinese EVs and the Hyundai Kia EVs deal. Oh yeah, that's a big deal. I read about that yesterday. Do you think that would have happened regardless of the U.S. tariffs?

I think it's fed things up. I agree. It sped things up. Yeah, I agree. You know, and it's going to move even more quickly now that the Canadians have told us to go fuck ourselves. They're tired of dealing with these threats. They're tired of dealing with unpredictability on the American side vis-a-vis tariffs.

And they are going to open Canada to Chinese EVs. And in exchange, the Chinese are going to start buying Canadian batteries. And we're going to be the ones that lose out on all this. I'm going to want to go to Canada and buy one of those Chinese cars after what you told me. Exactly right. Oh, my God. Jody 3339. ICE just purchased a huge warehouse for detentions here in Arizona.

I saw that they're doing this across the country. This sounds ominous to me. Are these going to be like Seacot here in the U.S.? Yeah, it sounds ominous to me too. Yeah, it's likely as bad as it sounds. Yes. Frasmataz, Ted, did you hear that Kier Starmor keeps having former rent boys from Eastern Europe committing arson against his properties?

Five now all incarcerated, all twinks. Never heard of that. What? I got to say, I was talking. to Mike. Keir Stamer is like is about he's about to go the way of Liz Truss, I think. But anyway, go ahead. Yeah.

Even the head of cabbage did better than Liz Truss. Um, I, you know what? No, let me comment on that. I think that Keir Starrmer is, is a dead man walking. Yeah. Yeah. First of all, he's a terrible politician. He's always been a terrible politician.

The only reason he got, he got elected was because Liz Truss at all in the, in the Tory party were even worse. But I'll tell you what the outcome. is going to be. Nigel Farage and the Reform Party, formerly UKIP, these guys are starting to appeal to labor voters. You know, this populism, it can be a very dangerous force. And it kind of looks like reform could actually displace the Tories. And Nigel Farage could be the next prime minister of the UK. Good point here from Elliot Covert. Funny John that you say that Reagan would be a Democrat because Max Boone is a neocon who became a Democrat after Trump was elected. That's true.

That's true. Yes. So literally. Yes. Yes. Which says a lot about the Democrats, doesn't it? Oh, yeah. That's the other thing. Brian Carroll. My dad was an air traffic controller. Patco, right? Patco. Fire them all. So fuck Reagan. I agree with that. I marched against that. He was arguably the most anti-organized labor president in American history. Yeah. Yeah, no, I mean, look, Reagan was a huge disruptive force. And he expanded the imperial presidency. Oh, my God, he, by the way, John, I got to ask, this is my question for you.

I mean, he gutted the results of the church hearings, right? I mean, the CIA went a completely different direction. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's absolutely true. In fact, that's kind of part of my standard speech that I give at universities. The church committee and the Pike Committee, you know, they instituted these huge reforms. And they became the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. Those reforms only lasted from 1976 to 1982.

And Reagan gutted them. And then we had Iran-Contra because of it. John T. Cackefeller, episode idea. Biggest mistakes of the 20th century in Ted and John's opinion. and we need like a 100-hour episode, but yeah. Yeah, I'm up for that. We could do that. Bill Chatt says, Ted, you pay me in free coffee and sign prints,

and I'll produce and screen comments and provide Roberto commentary. You know, no, Robbie's not replaceable. Greg Battis, I fucking love Canada so much. I like Canada, too. It's like, they're funny people. Yes. we shouldn't have made Robbie climate telephone pole and it killed. Robbie should be back on Monday.

I'm pretty convinced of that fact. Okay, so I'm not sure. Jackson McGrath, John, question for you. What's your experience with ASIO? I don't know what that is. Yeah, it was friendly and proper. I didn't do a lot with them just because the Australian Security and Intelligence Organization. just because it just wasn't my area of expertise.

They were China, China, China all the time, China. But I'd run into them every once in a while, like over an Iraq briefing, let's say. I did a lot of Iraq briefings with them over the years. Pink lady, I'm sorry, I missed your question. Put it back in and I'll try to catch it. I am so sorry about that. Just if you saw it. Well, you guys see how fast this goes by.

Twice as fast for me, though, because I have all the YouTube and the Rumble feeds together in one place. So it's like, ah! You know, it's like trying to drink from a fire hose. It's so great, though. I mean, it's so great. The alternative would be horrible. John, let's talk a little bit about the continuing situation with ICE, right? So, ICE is basically we have this, according to Democratic leadership, and I have no reason not.

to believe them this once. There's been no negotiations whatsoever about between the Democratic and Republican leadership. That was the whole purpose was to give them two weeks to talk. They haven't done shit like a bunch of college students late for a paper. They haven't even started to work on this thing and they're going to go out partying this weekend. They only have a matter of days to fix this. I got to say, I don't think they're going to. What do you think? I don't either. There's always the possibility that they'll kick the can down the road with another continuing resolution. But I'll tell you one of the things that's that's deeply disturbing to me is that they that the democrats seem to be so willing to concede on ice while threatening to hold the rest of the dhs budget hostage like okay

theoretically holding the dhs budget hostage is a good thing funding ice at this point with no concessions is not a good thing and if your if your strategy is to give ice whatever it wants and then not fund, you know, transportation safety administration. What the fuck are you thinking? Yeah. I don't understand this at all. It's totally ass backwards for sure. It really is.

There's no democratic leadership here at all. There's no intelligence whatsoever. Yeah. No, not at all. Should we rename Dulles and Penn after Trump? No. Gateway Development Project for people who don't know is basically, it's hilarious, $16 billion. It's a freak train tunnel.

between Long Island slash Brooklyn and New Jersey. That's what it is. Back in the old, and what's hilarious is there used to be a tunnel there. And it was allowed to fall into disuse as America's infrastructure rotted away in the 20th century. And basically the idea is just that the freight trains would be able to go from, for example, New England, through Long Island and then out to New Jersey, the way they used to be able to. And basically, that's what Trump is holding up, basically just because, because it's two Democratic states and he's vindictive. Hey, you, thanks for the Fiver.

Knowing what we know now, rags like the inquirist son and globe, we're probably telling the truth at least half the time, if not more. Stu of Matt Fyth, thanks for the Fiver. Does American hero John know if George Bush Sr. was in the CIA in the 60s? That has long been a rumor. I've never seen any evidence that he was ever in the CIA in the 60s. In fact, he was, he was, you know, busy running for, Congress in the 60s and making millions in oil. His father was one of the sort of quiet creators of

a proto-CIA along with the Rockefellers and, you know, all these these Wall Street bankers back in the 20s after the First World War. Both Scott Horton and Elizabeth Lane have done work. They've both written books about that. But I don't think he was in the CIA in the 60s. I think he wanted to be and life got in the way. And that's why he wanted so desperately to be CIA director under Ford and then asked Jimmy Carter to let him remain as CIA director. The answer was no. And Stanseville Turner became the director. But he loved the CIA, I think even more than he loved being president. Firmware. Thanks for the $20. Bush H.W. Bush called trickle-down economics voodoo in the 1980 primary. That's right.

Give more money to those who made it, who made it their life's work to aggregate wealth. Based an entire socioeconomic system on greed, what could possibly go wrong? Exactly. Then you have Elon Musk who probably says that he wants to be the world's first trillionaire. Steve says Max Boot's wife turned out to be a Korean spy. That's my recollection, too. Yeah, she did. In fact, I think she's being prosecuted right now. She is. Oh, my God. But, you know, hey, those Korean ladies can be hot, so, you know, things happen. Madara, thanks for the fiber. John, wish you the best with the pardon. We'd like to hear your opinion on Puerto Rico heavy mentioned in the Epstein files and heavy ties to the CIA. Yeah. Brown shirt, thanks for the fiber also. I just saw that yesterday. And to tell you the truth, I don't know what to make of it.

Yesterday, I heard, I took three different calls from journalists yesterday asking for my opinion on emails that, you know, were released in this tranche of three million that are just now seeing the light of day as people are going through the database. But there seems to be, there seems to be a lot of evidence that Epstein had something to do with the CIA. It may have been peripheral. But there's some kind of connection. there that that is new. And it's not just the CIA. It's the FBI. It's the KGB. It's MI5 and MI6. Yesterday, the Polish government accused him of being a KGB agent. And of course, the British just loved it. And it was on BBC last night. I think that's all a crock of

horseshit. He was obviously trying to get a private meeting with Putin. He was offered a meeting with Putin and several AIDS and he turned that down. So a meeting with Putin never took place. But you know, he may have been doing that as a free agent for the CIA. Well. There I know. It's getting far more complicated. 2010 Troy Boy. John, what's your favorite Windows OS?

Is it true that some U.S. government departments still use Windows 98? Yes. In fact, when I when I first went to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee staff, on my very first day, when I saw my computer, I laughed because I thought it was a joke. I thought somebody was just doing a first day joke on me by putting this 15-year-old computer on my desk. And then I looked around and all of them had those giant backs to hold all the gear and the tubes and whatever else. And I was like, holy shit, are you serious? because at the CIA, everything was state of the art.

Like the day something came out, we had it. That's how it should be, of course. And they were always sitting on pallets in the hall. And within a couple of days, they were being installed. Up on Capitol Hill, oh my God. I was embarrassed for what they had on Capitol Hill. That's so crazy. Guys, I want to apologize to some of our question asked,

askers, I was not able to get to, I lost track of some of your questions. Please, please, please, tune back in Monday or Tuesday next week. Let it remind us, I guarantee you, Robbie will be back and set things straight. It's just very hard to think, talk, and, you know, type and read all at the same time, you know, even though we do our best. But, you know, it's just not possible without Robbie, which is why we need help, Robbie's help. We need Robbie. We do. We need Robbie.

We need Robbie back. So all our love to Robbie and Kizzy this weekend. Get well soon. We love you and need you back. Guys, thank you so much. Have a great weekend, John. A pleasure, as always. To see you on Monday.

We're back Monday through Friday 9 a.m. Eastern time. And so see you then. Bye, everybody. Oh, stay tuned. TMI show with me and Milichan coming up right now. And if you're in the Rumble Room, I'm going to try to raid you guys and move you over. Thanks.

Bye.