DeProgram with John Kiriakou and Ted Rall - The Buck Stops Here | DeProgram with Ted Rall and Jamarl Thomas

Episode Date: May 29, 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:• Trump officials have pressed the office responsible for printing the nation’s money to design a $250 bill featuring Trump’s portrait, in what would be the first appearance of a living person on U.S. currency in more than 150 years.• A former senior CIA official is accused of stealing hundreds of gold bars worth more than $40 million and stashing them in his home. From November to March, David Rush requested and received a "significant quantity of foreign currency and tens of millions of dollars in gold bars for work-related expenses," according to the FBI.• A Kenyan court has suspended US plans to open an Ebola quarantine facility for American citizens. The 50-bed isolation centre is to be staffed by US medics and was due to begin operations today. In its court petition, rights group the Katiba Institute warned that the arrangement posed "grave and imminent risks" to public health. Now Trump wants to send Ebola patients to Europe.• Under the US-brokered ceasefire in October, the Israeli army withdrew to a demarcation line which gave Israel direct control of 53% of Gaza. Benjamin Netanyahu says he has given orders to the IDF to seize control of 70%, imperiling the deal.MERCH STORE: https://www.deprogram.livehttps://x.com/tedrallhttps://x.com/JamarlThomasLIVE ON RUMBLE: https://rumble.com/c/DeProgramShowSPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/show/2kdFlw2w8sSPhKI8NRx8ZuAPPLE MUSIC: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/deprogram-with-ted-rall-and-jamarl-thomas/id1825379504

Let's be honest, buying cannabis shouldn't be complicated, sketchy or low quality. That's why I want to tell you about mood.com. That's M-O-O-O-D.com. Mood ships federally legal cannabis straight to your door. No medical card, no hassle. And here's the kicker. The quality is better than anything you'll find at your local dispensary. Yeah, I said it.

Whether you're into edibles, concentrates, flour, or just looking to explore, you'll find it all at mood. And it's not just the variety that makes them stand out. Every product is sourced from small American-owned family farms that care deeply about what they grow. It's cannabis you can trust, delivered discreetly, and ready to elevate your mood. And because you're a listener, you get 20% off your first order. Just head to mood.com. That's M-O-O-O-D.com to get started. Good morning, or if you're in another part of the world, good afternoon or good evening or whatever.

Thanks for tuning in. You're watching Deep Program with Ted Rob. and Jamarlem Thomas. It is Friday, May 29th, 2026. Please like, follow and share the show. If you have questions or comments, please put them into the live chat. If you're watching in the 9 o'clock hour, East Coast time here in the United States. Good morning, J.T. How are you doing? I'm doing okay. What's going on, man? Doing okay this morning? I am doing okay. Glorious weather here. Just amazing, like stunning. So I, you know, I'm a collector. of money. I love to collect paper money. I collect all sorts of things. I'm quite the collector.

Propaganda posters, political buttons, coins, stamps. I'm a pack rat. So I took great interest in the new $250 bill that the United States Treasury is apparently planning. And that's a real thing. There's already been a few resignations from inside the Treasury Department and the mint from people who are angry about this plan. We can get into the details of that. And, you know, look, this would have been a classic John story, but he's not here, so we're going to do it anyway. The CIA, a former senior CIA official, apparently he was sitting in his house there near you in Virginia. Little did you know that if you broke into his house, he would have found over $40 million in hundreds of gold bars stolen from the CIA, $40 million in gold.

So, you know, you heard of the millionaire next door. He's under arrest, David Rush. We'll talk about that. What is this name? David Grush? David Rush. Yeah, so here's the-Rutch. Okay.

Let's just talk about it, right? So this dude, so basically what happened is the, he's a senior former CIA official. The FBI got wind of the fact that he had stolen this money from the CIA, or I should say the gold, and they went into his house. They notified the FBI. The FBI raided his house, and he's under arrest, right? So the logical question here is how did it that he came to steal? gold from the CIA. Well, it turns out that he checked it out. He told the CIA, I need this gold for an assignment. And that assignment, you know, we don't know what the nature of it is. But you and I both

know from like stories from the war on terror that the United States likes to throw around hundreds of millions, billions of dollars in cash. I didn't know that they used gold. But basically to bribe foreign warlords, dictators, and so on. Like, for example, and this happens all the time, when the Israelis raided the homes of the top officials of Hamas during their invasion of Gaza, they found, you know, hundreds of millions of euros that had been delivered by wait for it, the United States and Israel, to Hamas, when they were supporting Hamas in order to sort of, you know, divide and conquer the Palestinian Authority. Right. So, I mean, Hamas is a wholly owned, you know, subsidiary of Israel, but that's a different discussion.

So, and during the Iraq war, this was really a great story. I don't know if you remember it, J-T, but at one point... Let's be honest. Buying cannabis shouldn't be complicated, sketchy or low quality. That's why I want to tell you about mood.com. That's M-O-O-O-D.com. Mood ships federally legal cannabis straight to your door. No medical car, no hassle. And here's the kicker. The quality is better than anything you'll find at your local dispensary. Yeah, I said it. Whether you're into edibles, concentrates, flour, or just looking to explore, you'll find it all at mood. And it's not just the variety that makes them stand out. Every product is sourced from small American-owned family farms that care deeply about what they grow. It's cannabis you can trust, delivered discreetly, and ready to elevate your mood. And because you're a listener, you get 20% off your first order.

just head to mood.com. That's M-O-O-O-D.com to get started. Four C-1-30s containing over $25 billion in $100 bills were sent to Iraq to bribe local tribal officials, warlords, you know, various Iraqi people of influence by the CIA. At the end of all this, they couldn't account for a penny. they didn't have literally it was just all gone and it's like there's just the money it's just so this is just a reminder that like while you and I are worried about how we're going to keep the lights on every month and ordinary Americans don't know if they can send their you know their kid to the doctor that the government is a wash in money and they're using it for the stupidest things and I mean in a way

I don't even blame this dude. It's like, there he is. He's probably like, if he's a senior official, what did the guy make? Let's say he's a GS-15. What did he make? Like $150,000, $200,000 a year. He, you know, he sees all that money. He's like, I can give all this gold to, you know, who knows what evil reprobates that, like,

the right-wingers in Venezuela or whatever. or I can, you know, keep it for a person that I like better. Me. And so, I mean, it's kind of like I don't, I'm not surprised that, you know, cops steal money from drug dealers when they raid them. I'm surprised that they don't. So, like, you know, I mean, it's, it's just, you're just creating a system. But anyway, the scale of this is monumental.

Yeah. So he's like, hey, Delci Rodriguez. needs a new pair of shoes and a new Mustang. So I need to check out the gold bars to give to her. Look, you explained it beautifully. Like, we bribe people all the time, like, meaning it's by hook or by crook. The Spentley Butler was a racket. In that book, he points out that, you know, we were sitting in jackals.

And those were people who would be like, hey, you can get a new house. it's a new car. Your kids will be good for life. You can send your kids to the U.S. for education. Here are all the benefits. You want gold bars. Here are go bars. We just need you to do X, Y, and C. Basically, we need you to bend over. And we need you to kind of accept it. But we will pay you handsomely for it. It's that. Meaning, his job on some level was getting those gold bars to people for influence. And what's wild about it, as you also point out, it's like the money doesn't matter. like that's what I mean when I say under normal circumstances

when we're going after governments whether it's knocking them over militarily, bribing them or whatever else, the fallback consequences to the American public don't typically exist. They exist in the sense of, okay, you spent $10 trillion on

the Iraq and Afghanistan war. Okay, that's a number. Do we really feel that number? That really? With $39 trillion in debt. So obviously the number is a thing, but it's not something that really has legit consequences. Dictuity doesn't matter.

Yeah, it's like it doesn't matter, which is wild. Like that's a very weird phenomenon that seems to only exist in America where the money doesn't matter. And so, yeah, this guy's like, they're not going to miss it. It's Bretton Woods, right? Like when you're the world's reserve currency, you know, as the M.D. As the Dire Straits' song goes, you get your money for nothing and your chicks for free, right? I mean, you literally, there are no consequences.

And so, yeah, I mean, like, during the, to be specific, right, like during the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, and I was there, but I didn't obviously see this kind of money. But it was widely reported that about 800 CIA paratrooped into. northern Afghanistan, all carrying massive backpacks full of cash. And as I learned in a war zone like that, as I'm just going to quote Lois Romano of the Washington Post, who I was there with, she said, in a war zone, everything is paid in bundles of $100 bills, even for ordinary people. And that was true. And we're talking about a country where at the time, you know, $15 to $20 a month was considered an excellent salary. So, you know, suddenly, and that's part of what happened, you know,

with the Northern Alliance government set up under Hamid Karzai, is they were every month or so, every week or whatever, pallets of cash were flown in to Kabul and dropped off with, like, people like Karzai's family, not so much Karzai himself and all these top officials. And even now, something that many Americans are, unaware of, even now, the United States is continuing to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in cash to the Taliban government. It's like even before 9-11, the United States was sending hundreds of millions of dollars in cash to the Taliban government to pay their government

salaries. This was to compensate them for opium eradication. And it's just like that all over the world, right? And the thing is, cash has a toxic effect. I mean, it's completely liquid. That's why people want it. And it's, but therefore, it's also completely unaccountable. And it, you know, drives up massive inflation. I mean, when I was there in 2001, I got wind of an NGO in Kabul that had rented out a house in Kabul. It was paying $10,000 a month.

In Kabul, okay, a place where if you wake up in the morning alive, you're a lucky person at the time. you know, now it's much safer. And, you know, it's like 10,000, I mean, it wasn't worth $100 a month. And but, but with the inflation that was caused by, you know, the massive inflate, which caused utter misery and for, it put ordinary Afghans into a position where they had to be like either corrupt and work for the corrupt powers or they starve to death and die. And talk about resentment.

No wonder they wanted us out. Well, lessons learned. That was a document that the U.S. military commissioned to understand how they effed up so bad in both wars and how did they end up losing both of those wars ultimately when the Taliban effectively took power back. And what they pointed out was exactly what you're saying, that they were given, let's say, like a billion dollars to spend. And he pointed out like, how are we going to? to spend a billion dollars in a place that basically has mud huts. Like, meaning, where do you spend this money?

It's ridiculous, right? It's like Bruce-earth millions, right? Like, like spending, it's hard. Yeah, you have, it's like you have a place with mud huts, no infrastructure. And they're like, okay, here's a bunch of money. Now we need you to spend it to bribe people and everything else. And it's like, okay, what am I going to do with this money? And you're talking about like millions of dollars every week that they are supposed to spend. And obviously, it drives corruption, which as you point out, on steroids. Let's be honest. Buying cannabis shouldn't be complicated, sketchy or low quality. That's why I want to tell you about mood.com. That's M-O-O-O-D.com. Mood ships federally legal cannabis straight to your door.

No medical card, no hassle. And here's the kicker. The quality is better than anything you'll find at your local dispensary. Yeah, I said it. Whether you're into edibles, concentrates, flour, or just looking to explore, you'll find it all at Mood. And it's not just the variety that makes them stand out. Every product is sourced from small American-owned family farms that care deeply about what they grow. It's cannabis you can trust, delivered discreetly.

and ready to elevate your mood. And because you're a listener, you get 20% off your first order. Just head to mood.com. That's M-O-O-O-D.com to get started. Lessons Learn document where the public looks at the government is being so radically corrupt. And by the way, J-T, how much does it cost to bribe a congressman here in the United States?

You grand, right? Like, you can buy a congressman for five grand. No problem. It's hilarious. we're paying these people who don't who are living in places with a much lower cost of living a lot more than our own people i mean it's very very fucked up i mean look the mark what it what this is about is it's not about grease you know i don't know what the intent in but but the effect is uh when we pour billions of dollars into a war zone like this in some shithole country right

is like, is not like, you're not really renting people. Like, it's not a tip. It's not like a $5,000 bribe. It is like you're actually changing the economy of the place because the scale is so massive. When the U.S. troops went into the home of Taliban leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, the one-eyed cleric, right? They were shocked because they were looking,

we're like looking for the money. There was no money. Omar had a locker under his under his he lived very frugally he lived in a mud in a mud adobe house with no windows and no glass in the windows he was cold at night it was very primitive he liked that he was like you know i'm an ascetic i don't need a lot he had a locker with the entire national budget of afghanistan in there which at the time comprised about 150,000 u.s. dollars he you doled that out to people personally like in Amir.

And, you know, I mean, and they looked in vain for the bank account, the numbered accounts in Switzerland or, you know, in Luxembourg and so on. They did not, the Cayman Islands, didn't find anything. There was no corruption under Taliban 1.0, 1996 to 2001. It's why the Taliban were popular. You know, the corruption. And so we brought back, we bring in corruption. you don't, I don't know, if you need Delci Rodriguez on your side, you don't really need to give her, you know, $100 million. If you do, you're not really renting Delsi Rodriguez as the acting president of Venezuela.

What you're really doing is you're telling her your days are numbered and this is your retirement plan for you and all the people you care about. And that's a different mentality. Oh, that's interesting. I mean, because the reality of it is, even with Syria, the belief is that a lot of these people are effective. paid off. Meaning it is a better military strategy to just pay people as opposed to attacking a country, meaning if I can pay you off, I don't have to attack you. And in the case of Venezuela, it was, I guess, a little bit of both. I mean, because what they were using or what they were saying seemed ludicrous to me. It was a beam that made people get sick at the stomach and the military went in

as they were throwing up or as they were on the toilet. It was like, okay, too, are you serious right now? It sounds more to be like people were bribed, and you were able to get your hands on them because people were bribed, especially if there's a change in policy after the fact, which it seems to be. So, yeah, I mean, I'm not shocked that this guy had all these gold bars. Obviously, this is what the CIA does every day, like meaning even on a Tuesday. They would be given gold bars to somebody. It's just funny that it's gold bars and that cash. Oh, it's hilarious. Remember Gold Bar Menendez, the senator from New Jersey?

Yes. And he only had, what, a few? I mean, hundreds of gold bars. I mean, again, I'm not surprised. I mean, like, of course, you know, as the great philosopher said, you've got to know when to hold him and know when to fold him. You know, he obviously didn't know that, right? And basically, but at a certain point, you're like, you know, it's like frog and toes.

I'll just have one very last cookie. And it's like, you know, he took home a gold bar and it's like, oh, that was easy. They're so small. And it's like, here's another one. And he kept it in his house, right? In his house. Like, why don't go into a state park find an empty tree trunk, you know? Yeah.

I'm not going to have it caught him. I mean, like, if he signed them out. I bet I know how they caught him. He was supposed to give it to somebody and didn't give it to him. Yeah, someone complained. Where the fuck is my gold bar? Where's my money? I'm a gold bar short.

I'm too gold bar short. If you want to keep driving me, I need my gold bars. Where are my gold bars? Yeah, that's exactly what it is. One, one 800 CIA help. Right. Right. You're on the customer service line.

I'm missing my goal. bars. They can't find my go bars. Where is it? Oh my God. And you know they just have this like you know at the CIA they have this safe that's massive with

bundles. I mean like bear in mind right? 24 C130s. Those are the ones with the nose opens up in the front and they they can put a plane inside the plane right? Like the C130 is like I mean it requires a

landing a runway that's two miles long to get up and down. It's a fucking monster. Piled to the ceilings with palettes of shrink-wrapped hundreds, right? Like, $100, $100 bills is $10,000, like one little bundle, right? Those things are all wrapped together. I mean, I know I've personally had to, for a client, handle $1 million in cash once. And that's a lot of money. That's like heavy. It's like, you know, you wouldn't really want to carry that shit like to Europe in you know as as as check-it it's heavy it's like it's a billion of that is a thousand of those right and then 25,000 I mean it's like what it's just the scale is ridiculous well people stop hey robbie hey robie hey sorry just one second my wife is talking about I'll be back

All right. Well, that's what happens. Okay. I guess that's an opportunity to see. Speaking of money, we can get a few gold bars from Rumble Premium. It doesn't look like it, though, not right now. Anyway, I just love this story. I will make sure that we say that he is alleged to have done. I'm back. Yeah.

And so for those of you who have gold bars that you have acquired illicit, the uh now this but whatever that word is remember i'm retarded and i'm tired i'm going to do you a solid so what you do is that you get your gold bar and you don't do this all at once like you do once every couple of months you take your gold bar and know what you do is that you deposit it with moon pay that way your gold bar then links up to rumble wallet so that way you can use a debit card linked to your rumble wallet account and it's just like cash you don't have to keep your gold in your house anymore. So for those of you who have this, you can thank me later. You can send me a tip to RumbleWall. Well, just whoever. I mean, CIA agents, uh, A-PAC bundlers. It doesn't really matter.

I mean, Washington's full of whores. And if you need to move your money, moon pay plus rumble wallet equals your best friend. This is my. And that's CIA agent, Robbie. He should, if you would have own this in advance. He might, you know. You might be okay. Actually, you would have been screwed either way. Because the money gives you leverage. If you hide the money and you want it and they want it back, you can negotiate for a better deal, right?

Like, I'm not telling you where the gold is until you, unless you agree, like, I only go to jail for a year, right? Yeah. I don't have to go. I gave it to them. These people are lying about it. I shouldn't do that too. Yeah.

There's probably a good on it. Crime, right? Yeah, exile me to Kazakhstan. I will live in the Montana of Asia. Not that's not as a close U.S. ally would turn your house over. Yeah, you need to go somewhere that. It's not a U.S. L. Well, in all fairness, though, the U.S. did try to color revolution in them. And the Russians stepped in and said, not in our backyard. So they're not that close. That's not Kazakhstan. That's Tajikistan. No, they did the same thing in Kazakhstan. They tried to do it. They did the riots there.

They did do it to Kyrgyzstan. Yeah, they tried it in Kazakhstan, and the Kazakh president was just like, hey, Vlad, can you help me out here? And the Russians there are Likety Split. Akayev, the president of Kyrgyzstan, who was deposed by Bush in 2005, the only democratically elected leader of a former Soviet Republican Central Asia. When he fled because American trained radical Islamists from Osh, basically surrounded. founded the presidential palace. I love this story. His presidential guards were like, you know,

okay, we have machine guns on the roof. We're going to, we're going to mow them down. And he said, I forbid it. Like, no kirghis should die because of me. And he's like, I'm leaving. So he went to exile in Russia, where he is now. And when the mob burst into his office, there was a note on the desk that said, please take good care of my country. You love that story? I don't know if I I like that story because it's like sort of, I mean, his his attitude, which was, I mean, you can make the case that Richard Nixon, that the election in 1960 is stole for him by Kennedy because of voter fraud in Chicago. Although that's pretty debunked, though. Well, I mean, it's because of who you have. I don't know if that's true.

I mean, there's no doubt there was, like, here's the thing. Illinois absolutely had like lots of dead people voting, no question due to the Daily machine. But even if Illinois had gone for Nixon, he still would have lost. Well, maybe. But the point I'm trying to make, though, is that when his advisors recommended Nixon, he made a stink out of it. But he said, no, it's okay. Canadian loves this country.

It's in good hands. But that's in the old days. That's the way he's, like John Wayne, you know, I didn't vote for him, but he's my president. I hope he does well. That's not really the way they look at it today. Well, that's not how it is now. Now it's about who can know who can pick out the corpse the most. Yeah, but hook about crook.

The curious thing, the reason I don't like that is because I don't like, it sets a bad precedent that goes beyond just the individual circumstance. I mean, and that it's kind of like evil morale is stepping down when the fascist was taken over the country. And evils thing is, look, I don't want to have a war. And which is effectively what would take place. There will be some kind of civil war of sorts or some kind of. Or Al Gore, not fighting Bush v. Gore. Yeah, but see, I don't think these things are positive, especially from a larger context. get the immediate of it. But the entire point of people doing stuff like that is because they believe

that the other side won't fight for their country when it's really the responsibility of the president to defend the country. And so if the president is. And so am I usually. And so, I mean, I definitely see your point. Look, I think Evo Morales should have fought. I think, I mean, I think the Cuban government should not be negotiating with Trump. I think they should be like, You want it? Come and invade. Come and take it. Come and take it by force. Like, you know, like the Iranians. Like, finally, look at the Iranians.

They pushed up for a few times. And then finally, when they're like famously, like, we've closed the strain of our moose, let the orange pig try to open it. That obviously worked out better. Yeah. It's, look, it's not that I get it, right? But the reason that they put people in this position is because they're basically saying, We dare you to defend your country.

Yeah. Because of what it costs to do so. But there's a cost to us, too. And as Iran is inflicting, I mean, obviously, every situation is different in terms of the cost. J.T., you up for some comments? Yes. Okay. Maybe Bluth Funk, I was thinking about Jackson Pollock.

Did he pee on his painting? What? I don't know. I don't think so. Did he pay on his painting? He sprat. I've been to the Jackson to the Pollock-Krasner house

in East Hampton, New York, and that is where he lived with his wife, the fellow artist, Polly Krasner. And I've seen the studio where he worked. And it's kind of fascinating because you can see the outlines of where there was a square or a rectangular painting,

and then where the paint splattered off there. He used house paint, which is the crazy part, which means if you own a Pollock, it's probably going to start to fall apart, sooner rather than later, right? Because the paint sucks. It's not really, it's low quality paint. It's not proper paint for a, anyway.

Frank Field sounds like the CIA doesn't want dollars either. Let's see. Frasmatazas, the chat remembers spirit cooking in the WikiLeaks emails around Halloween 2016 that was verifiably black magic that Latino and black voters talked about on Facebook and in church. But then

Share Blues, CEOs, ex-husband's pizza shop, comet ping pong becomes the focus of PizzaGate, which, although compelling, only makes sense to white people who already likely voted for Trump. Okay. I didn't fully get into whatever the hell that.

I just thought it was weird. Rogue bot, I love this. I wonder how much money was buried in Afghanistan in Iraq, only to be retrieved later by some retired military personnel. It's like three kings, right? Yeah, I wouldn't be shocked. And in fact, that gets your point about

why did he keep it in his house? Like, if you're going to get that money, why don't you put that money somewhere and why don't you have to say, I don't know, maybe we think too much about the CIA. Maybe we think that's smarter than what they actually are. But I guess my first thought is, why would you have an exit plan?

If you're shuffling gold bars, I would think that you're shuffling with the idea of going somewhere else and disappearing with that money. I think it's, you know, I think it starts, I think it's an addiction, right? I think it starts out like your, like the first time, like he probably, here's, I'm willing to bet like, you know, my own gold bars that he will, that this, that the following is what happened. He at first was paying out the gold bars and cash and Rolexes. There were Rolexes too. Dutifully, as required.

And it's like dropping them off with, you know, Emirati sheiks or, or. whatever. And then after a while, he's like, what if I kept one? What would happen? And then, like, he keeps it and nothing happens. Then he's like, rinse, lather, repeat. And then so because of the way that he's thinking of that way, it's not like a master criminal who's like, man, I would like to like do like the Johnny Cash song one piece at a time. I would like. Let's be honest. Buying cannabis shouldn't be complicated, sketchy or low quality. That's why I want to tell you. I want to you about mood.com. That's M-O-O-O-D.com. Mood ships federally legal cannabis straight to your door. No medical card, no hassle. And here's the kicker. The quality is better than anything you'll find

at your local dispensary. Yeah, I said it. Whether you're into edibles, concentrates, flour, or just looking to explore, you'll find it all at mood. And it's not just the variety that makes them stand out. Every product is sourced from small American-owned family farms that care deeply about what they grow. It's cannabis you can trust, delivered discreetly, and ready to elevate your mood. And because you're a listener, you get 20% off your first order. Just head to mood.com. That's M-O-O-O-D.com to get started. To bring this bat, I would like to build up a little cute seven-figure nest egg. How am I going to do that? That mentality is entirely different. You would think, like, if you're thinking about it with your best friend, like you and I, over drinks,

we're like thinking about like how would we do this if we'd be like well you don't keep it at the house but he's not thinking that way it's his own little secret that he's maybe keeping from his family probably keeping from his family um he's just doing it himself and it's his own little it's his little thing it's like a little squirrel i think that's i think it's like it's so psychological it's not logical it's psychological yeah i mean by the way he could have been paying people in US, too. It's the CIA. I mean, they used up what is operation. Oh, what is the name of, what is name of what is the name? I forget the name of it. But they were paying people in the US also. I mean, I wouldn't put it past. No, no, for sure, although they're not supposed to do anything like

that. P.W. Walker, that money comes right back to the U.S., which is why they were so winning to throw it around in places like, willing to throw it around in places like Afghanistan, or those running the program were skimping off the top. Crown Heights Brainiac, thanks for the $9, or $10, I should say. If Putin and Xi decide to go after the petrol dollar, I won't be mad. The U.S. uses it for sanctions, conflict, and regime change. Agreed. Yeah, agreed.

But that seems to be happened naturally. I mean, like anything that you use is a weapon, and you use it. it as a weapon at one point that was, let's say, un- where there was, it was uncontested as a weapon. It would inevitably, your enemies are going to find ways to deal with it. Same thing with nuclear weapons, where the U.S. gets a nuke, starts threatening China and Russia or at the time, the Union with using a nuke in a very short period of time, the Soviet Union gets their own nuclear weapon. Soviet Union puts up satellite in a very short period of time.

United States goes to the moon, meaning it's never going to be a situation where a particular weapon is uncontested. The issue is that the U.S. decided to use their leverage in the economic system as a weapon, which is very dodgy because obviously the other countries are going to find ways to mitigate that weapon, which is the reason why the U.S. at one point, they had, what, 70, 75 percent in regards to countries using the dollars and the number dropped down to 50. percent currently like there's a reason for that it's not random yeah we yeah you can only do that if you are totally a neutral actor uh yes you and you never weaponize it and i mean that's it yeah okay so uh frank feel giving someone that kind of money in a poor country basically turns that

person into a mini oligarch true storm burn stormborn thanks for the five Good morning, gents. What are your thoughts on the Russian drone strike in Romania? Will they invoke Article 5 and bring NATO into this? Thank you for bringing that up. I thought it was an accident. I didn't take it as a drone strike. Calling a drone strike acts as if Russia intentionally hit Romania. Well, it is a drone strike. I mean, I agree with you. It has to be an accident. I mean, it's happened before. You know, Ukrainian drones have gone into Poland. Russia was, remember that time?

Russia was accused. I mean, drones go off target. You know, they get lost and they, you know, part of the danger of drones. So something that doesn't really happen in conventional warfare with normal ballistic missiles. They don't really go into other countries entirely. But there's probably someone will point out an exception to that, but I can't think of one. Yeah, but it's happened before. Or like the drones that were washing into the shores of Estonian states. I mean, the Latvian government literally collapsed from that mistake. From remembering this correct. That's correct. Yeah. The result of the drones that were flying into Labia, now it's very possible that Russian operators to control those drones

in order to fly them into some of the Baltic states, but they were still in Ukrainian drones. They didn't declare Article 5. I don't think NATO wants to have that fight with this Russian military. They do. They do. And I think it's like, It's just sort of like we, look, it's relatively minor. You know, it was clearly not, I mean, you know, Russia, we know didn't do this on purpose.

And it's for the people whose apartment got blown up. But, you know, it's not like, yeah, no, Article 5 is not going to be invoked here. Although when I heard about it, I'm scared. And the very fact that, by the way, this question comes up is why NATO is dangerous. Article 5 is dangerous. It is, you know, it's like this shouldn't be something. thing that anyone in Brussels has to discuss. It shouldn't be like, oh, so do we go to World War 3 over this? No, okay, all right, everybody go home. I mean, I'm glad that cool heads prevail,

but I mean, they shouldn't have to. The structure shouldn't exist in the first place. Yeah, agree. Govman, thanks for the $7. How could Gore have fought Bush v. Gore without a rebellion? It was Supreme Court. It was over. He could have complained more, I guess. Okay, so let me tell you. First of all, there are things that in Bush v. Gore Gord didn't do correctly, but that's a different question. Like, for example, he didn't ask for a statewide recount in Florida. He asked for a Democratic county's recount. That provided the opening for the Supreme Court to rule against him. It was also really boneheaded because the counties that are going to undercount your votes are going to be the counties that are controlled

by the opposite party, right? So better to ask for a Republican county's recount, right? So his party, his campaign was run by fools. But yes, he could have gone on TV every single day and done rallies and said, they stole it from me. We know you can do that. Donald Trump did it. You can, he could have said, you know, like, this is not acceptable. He could have created a constitutional crisis. He could have refused to concede. He could have tried to fight it again in the courts. I mean, the fact is that Al Gore won the 2000 election, and he won the state of Florida by tens of thousands of votes.

And it's, you know, that's kind of like beyond, I mean, I wouldn't say it's beyond dispute, but it's provable. And it's, he didn't do that. He chose to be a gentleman. What was her name, God? his campaign manager from New Orleans. He's always on, oh God, what is her name? It's going to come to me.

Anyway, I was talking to her about signing her for syndication when I used to be an editor at United Media, and we ran a syndication arm. And so she came in, she wanted to write a syndicated column. And she was Al Gore's campaign manager, and she told me one-on-one that on election night 2000 at about 9 o'clock at night Eastern time right after the last polls had closed she walked into the hotel suite and she saw Gore on the phone and she asked one of the other staffers who's who's he on the phone

with and she was told oh he's on the phone with Bush he's calling to concede and she was like what now bear in mind right So she walked over and hung up on Bush. She pushed the receiver down and just basically like, you're gone. You're not calling. And yelled at him, like, what the fuck is wrong with you? It's like she said he didn't have the hunger. He didn't have the fire in his belly.

He didn't want to be president. He didn't care enough. He didn't have any fight in him. He wasn't a fighter. He was soft. This is a Democrat thing. I mean, also, like, meaning this, like, for the longest time, people may forget this. Oh, Donna Brazil.

That's her. That was his campaign. Are you shitting me? That was Al Gore's campaign manager? Donna Brazil, yeah, she was his manager. I didn't know that. Yeah. So here's the thing about Democrats.

For the longest time, it was a third rail for Democrats. for Democrats to bring up any idea of the elections being stolen. In fact, it was a third rail in politics. And it was a third rail for a reason, because the integrity of the system depends upon elections and credible elections, meaning that it's not like there's a king, right? If you challenge the electoral system, you said the elections are fake, and people, let's say, a large percentage believe you,

then there is no way to govern. America. Because at that point, legitimacy comes into question and the entirety, integrity of the system depends upon legitimacy that the public believes that whoever won is legitimate. That's the only thing that gives you the lever of power. And so this was very dodgy for them to touch in the electoral space until Trump got into the electoral spaces are screaming that the elections are fake, it's all fake, etc, risking a civil war. He didn't seem to care. Gore agreed. Didn't have to hunger in him. It wasn't in him, not to mentioned the third rail. If you remember, Clinton was dodgy about the third rail also, where she ends up getting Jill Stein to challenge the election in order to get a recount,

because she doesn't necessarily want to touch the third rail of politics saying that it might have been rigged or faked. Gore allowed the disenfranchisement of millions in Florida. And I mean that seriously, because all those were black communities and most of those were black communities. If you remember Gore being Speaker of the House, gavled down one person after the next as they came up saying, we believe that the election were fake. We believe that needs to be a recount. All these people were disenfranchised. And Gore would gavel them down one after the next, after the next. You can look at the video on YouTube. He didn't have it in it. I remembered it just being astonished. Yeah. He didn't have it in him. And this is meaning,

Gore, who was just cheated out of the election, gavling down people telling him that he should fight for his own electoral. Remember the Brooks Brothers riot? Where, like, the Brooks Brothers riot, they called it. During the counting in Miami-Dade, which I'm pretty sure is the biggest county in Florida, basically these right-wing Republican capitalists, Capitol Hill goons, who were all staffers for Republicans. were all bundled up on a plane, sent down to Miami Dade, and they broke in on national television.

You can look this up and broke into and started beating up the people who were counting the ballots. And that caused the stopping of the count. They stopped counting the votes in Miami Dade because of that. A bunch of like little, you know, 25-year-old little shits, you know, from Capitol Hill went down there to do that. I mean, it's on television. It's on CNN. That's what I mean, health is not illegal. I mean, especially intervening and intellectual.

It was a coup. I mean, I remember Carl Rove going on PBS News Hour during the crisis, which lasted from November 7th to December 20th, 2000, and saying, well, they can recount, but if it doesn't come out our way, we're going to have to have the military step in. I mean, it's a coup. I mean, for sure, it was a coup.

We should, because we have other interesting things to talk about today, we should do that. We also have to talk about this, the $250 bill. So Trump apparently is pushing hard. The law says, ever since 1866, that a living person cannot appear on U.S. currency. Trump wants to create a new $250 bill, something that has never existed before. there used to be 500s and there used to be thousands. To celebrate the 250th anniversary of the United States, of course, it would have the design, the mock-up would have Trump's scowling,

glowering face on it. It's a very ugly design from a graphic design standpoint, not surprisingly, because that's where we are now. And anyway, a couple of people in Treasury at the Mint have stepped down. They were, because they were being bullied by the White House to do this. apparently it normally takes about six to eight years to approve from the beginning of a conception of a new bill design to roll it out because especially a high denomination note like that has to be super counterproofed you know counterproof protected right counterfeit protected um so the anyway the thing is they're like well we can't do it and also it's illegal and we don't want to and it's gross basically thoughts? Well, I mean, if it's illegal, then that should be the end of the discussion of the conversation short of Congress. Right. Exactly. Congress would have to pass it, and it will be

filibustered to death. Hopefully. You don't think so. I'm not sure. I mean, you know, you just mentioned what the, you know, how much spine the Democrats are composed of. There's not a lot of calcium in those in those bones um you know they they i mean are they really going to you know they won't filibuster to stop a genocide uh are they going to that's different yeah well that's something they agree with yeah they propose they're on team genocide okay but they won't they won't go to the mat for anything that they supposedly actually care about so you know are they going to see they There's no cost for them doing this. I guess that's what I'm saying.

Like, it's one thing for them to put themselves online when there's no costs. There's no costs. I don't think Chuck Schumer wants all of this money in its pockets, or Nancy Pelosi wants Trump glaring at her from her wallet. I don't think she wants that. She'll use Apple Pay. I don't know. I don't know. I get to feeling that Nancy Pelosi, if they checked her ice box, she'd have a lot of gold bars.

I hope you give up quick, though. Like, I get the sense. Does the Rush have something in common maybe? Yeah. I don't get the sense that Democrats are going to be okay with this because it's no cost in them fighting it. Meaning there's no financial interest saying we need Donald Trump's face on money. There's no Israeli interest putting hundreds of million dollars into Democrats

allowing Donald Trump's face on money. There's no cost for them to fight this, in which case, but their base hates it. So. Let's be honest. Buying cannabis shouldn't be complicated, sketchy or low quality. That's why I want to tell you about mood.com. That's M-O-O-O-D.com.

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It is. It's Banana Republic stuff. It's Saddam Hussein. It's Muammar Gaddafi. It's, you know. Yeah, that's exactly what it is. It's banana. Like a lot of this stuff is banana.

Republic stuff. We're just going to start wars. We don't need Congress. You don't need that stuff. The president, the strong man, in and of itself, it's enough to do it. We are going to strangle other countries. We are going to put my face on money. They're going to put my face on money.

My face on money. I mean, we shouldn't even be talking about the legalities or whether it's possible to pass it through Congress. An idea like that should a country that had proper unified values would literally just Democrat, Republican, you know, everyone else would just agree like, yeah, no, we don't do that. Like we don't rape children and we don't put the president's face on money. We just don't do that. Well, rape is considering Israel is a staunch ally of the United States and considered they just been put on the UN blacklist for being systematic rapists. Well, and they just reaped the Gaza flotilla people apparently.

Yeah, exactly. So the whole raping of people being off the table, well, that's not the case. and the president putting his face on money at the very least an attempt to do so. It's crazy. Comments, Manchild, thanks for the dollar. With Congress needing to approve a Trump coin and a $250 bill, there's no way this happens. He has way too little time left in office to pull off a process that takes seven plus years.

Hopefully. But I can't believe. But it shouldn't even be proposed. Phileas Fav. Pollack, CIA's favorite artist, at least, Two of his exhibits were funded by it. There's a field in academic history that deals with the so-called cultural Cold War. Yeah, you know that theory, right, about Jackson Pollack.

Yeah. The paintings and everything else gets across. Kind of like, oh, what is the other painter's name? It was an attack on socialist realism, right? Like the idea. Like those block pictures of the Soviets dealt with real life, real physical matter phenomena, and then these kind of... Totally abstract, meaningless.

Yeah, I don't want to call it esoteric. Decorative. Yeah, the abstractness of it all is the thing that negates this idea of the realism of the Soviet photos and states and culture. Yeah. Do you give it credence? I mean, like, there is something to be. It's documented. We know it happened, right?

We know it's true. Yeah, so I do, yeah. I mean, it absolutely occurred. I guess what I'm asking is, do you think it had to bang to the buck with it? trying to inflow. Oh, no. Although I think there's something to it. I mean, I think it's, I mean, you know, again, at the risk of sounding like Zizak and his Lacanian shit, the search for the real, but I'm obsessed with it. It is, you know, the, the, the last half of the 20th century, and certainly this century so far has been defined in the United States by,

living in by trying to promote the we were trying to get people to not understand their own material realities like for example you live in the best country in the world with the highest living standards in the world that everybody wants to leave their country to come to our country and that's why we're awesome except for the fact that when you actually drive through this country whether you're in rural or urban areas what you see is an ocean of people living in massive amounts of poverty that scores like number 38 on quality of life indices. You know, none of those things are true. Basically, Americans don't connect to what's true, and because of that, they can't possibly

think about forming an opposition to their reality because they don't know what their reality is, or at least they're confused about what their reality is. I mean, they're not confused when they're sitting down to pay their bills every month, but they're confused the rest of the time. Right. And they may think it's purely a factor of their own failings because the country is fantastic. Everybody else is living in wealth and et cetera, et cetera. I'm alone. I'm an individual. That type of stuff as opposed to kind of putting the blame on society that allows this reality to take place. No, I get it. No, you're right. I mean, even the money is not attached to real world phenomenon. Like other countries can't produce 10 trillion dollars to invade Iraq. Afghanistan and just put it on the credit card. Other countries need to actually have some kind of financial backing to

whatever the thing that they're dealing with. We don't. It's a super game. Like that man. Speaking of non-reality, so we talked yesterday about Trump's plans to send, and this makes me

angrier the more I think about it for multiple reasons, to send U.S. aid workers who travel to the Ebola zone in the Democratic Republic of Congo, to, he was trying to quarantine them at some new facility to be stood up in Kenya, supposed to open today. And, you know, as you pointed out, it's, you know, obviously he's racializing Ebola, right? Ebola, like, it's like in, in the public's imagination is an African disease. It's a disease, diseases just go wherever, right? But he, But also, so the racializing of it is infuriating.

And so is the, like, punishing people who are so noble that they're willing to go to a place to deal with this very, to treat people with this highly contagious, very fatal disease. And you're treating them like shit. And now the latest is that a Kenyan court. So, you know, I had brought up yesterday the question of like, what about the Kenyans? Why do they want Ebola patients? Well, they don't, apparently. So a Kenyan court has just said, like, no, you can't build this. So currently that's on hold.

So now Trump's like, well, I'd like to send them to Europe, but there's no idea of where in Europe they could, you know, who in Europe would want them or where that, how would that look or whatever. This is just, it's just Trump being a mega turd again. Is Trump being Trump? I mean, he's acted this way all the way through. I mean, and I remember people used to argue, even black. people would argue. Well, I don't know if he's racist. And it's like, okay, so when he's going after the

African American Museum, okay, why is he doing that? And it's not just racist, classes also. I mean, when Elon Musk comes in and is firing American workers who are working for the federal government and firing workers as Social Security and Medicare, okay, who is he affecting? And then they're still spending two trillion dollars a year. So it's like, okay, so obviously this did nothing. And you guys don't have an issue in, let's say, increasing the wealth or maximizing the wealth off of the U.S. government for the people who are effectively of means. I guess I'm saying this is Trump being Trump through and through. It's disgusting. It's like these people are putting their lives on the line for others. And when they're trying to come back for some

kind of treatment or so forth, whether we get the best treatment in the U.S., we're like, Yeah, send them to Africa. Oh, no, no, no, send them to Europe. They're abasals. They'll take them. Who's going to go in the future if they do this? There's that. But again, Trump doesn't care. I mean, from his point of view, we're okay with not having tourists coming into the country.

Not having people from, let's say, China or from other schools wants to get their technical degrees to come into the country. Mind you, that isn't our best interest. It is one of the things like us being a melting pot and bringing people and getting people and getting the best and brightest from around the world. Because in the way that you point out, we have projected to the world that we are the greatest, everybody wants to live here. That's not just being projected to the United States.

The American dream is something that is being pushed out in media and everything else all across the globe, whether you listen in American music or American movies. You may take that as true, even if you live in a different country. And I'm saying that many countries, China being one of them, many of their dreams, was succumbent to America and live in America. Many of those people work in technical fields that we can use and require.

And us telling those people around the world to eff off, it's not their best interest. This is just another one of those cases. Not good. We've got to talk about Israel and their latest outrage in Gaza. But let's get through the comments that we have hanging from the previous topic. Frank Field, thanks for the don't know. the writers of network could never imagine this shit.

You know, it's funny that you brought that up because I was literally just thinking about that while we were talking. Like, you know, I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore. No, we're not mad as hell and we're totally going to take it more. Phileas Fav, there are debates about

whether Pollock's work was intended to strip art of the ability to speak literally about politics interested in Ted's view. I mean we talked about that I do think that it's you know I mean as a political cartoonist obviously political art is what I do for a living and I got to say that is yeah I mean you see we have politics without politics in this country in terms of the electoral political system and now we have political art without politics in it you know you'll like you know

wokeism in some respects is kind of politics without politics. It can be, especially when class is completely eradicated. And when you go to, and you look at even political cartoons, the least hard-hitting political cartoons are the ones that get the most reprints, get run all over the place, win prizes and so on. So yeah, no, I think that was part of it. John D. Cackefeller, thanks for the $2. Can we make a Trump $1,000 note as a symbol of inflation under his governance?

It can be our version of that African $1 million note. And don't forget, he already got rid of the penny, which was also a sign of inflation. Penny was a sign of inflation. Getting rid of the penny is a sign of inflation. I mean, the United States has had the penny since it's a founding. And literally, he abolished the penny. And there are no new pennies being minted anymore. And a lot of people made the case that they're wasteful and that, you know, basically, you know, the prices have increased so much that the nickel needs.

So now when you have a, let's say something rounds to three cents or whatever, it rounds up to five or whatever. So that's just getting rid of the penny is definitely a symptom of inflation. That's interesting. I never thought it that way. I mean, because even if you have inflation, you can still end up with a penny amount. Well, think about it. I guess you're saying it's running up to five cents. If prices went up times more than they are now, you wouldn't need the nickel anymore.

You know what I mean? Yeah. Interesting. I guess from my thought, you always could end up with a number of something, something, 0.01. You could. It's less necessary because you have nothing that really is, nothing that's really worth one penny at a certain point. When I was a kid, there were five French francs to the dollar. and they still had a centime.

They had the French franc, and a centime is one hundredth of a franc. And so that that that centime was what, like one fifth of a penny. And, you know, and frankly, they were very, very small. And like, they were useless. And the French government eliminated them at a certain point. You know, it was like the smallest coin became the five centi. Which was effectively a U.S. penny. We've got to talk about, so under the, you know,

U.S. brokered ceasefire agreement signed it back in October. Israel agreed not to have any direct control over Gaza over more than 53% of the territory, which is, as far as I'm concerned, 53% too much. But they now, in contradiction, Bibi Netanyahu unilaterally has said, give the order, we're going to make it 70%. Does the ceasefire fall apart at this point? Well, wait, just to be clear, because they've been. already taken 60%, which is more than 50% that you just mentioned.

53, yeah. Yeah. Does the ceasefire pull apart? There was never a ceasefire. I'm sorry, there was never a ceasefire. Just because people are still shooting and killing each other? Yeah, pretty much. And Israel, look, if I enter into a peace agreement with you and I continue the war under the

gas of a peace agreement, that's me continuing the war. under the guise of a peace agreement. And I'm saying that's true in Gaza, that is true in Lebanon. It's true in both, which is the reason why Iran has extended its umbrella over Lebanon in any kind of negotiations, basically saying, get your dog in order. Your rabid dog needs to be put down, if indeed we're going to come to some kind of terms of an agreement. So that's why, I mean, Like the Lebanese government that is effectively a vassal state that wind fire shied in anger at an invading military decided to make an agreement that apparently didn't include southern Lebanon, despite the fact that that's still Lebanon. Israel has even been violating that and it's bombing of Beirut. So I hope you get my point, right?

I'm trying to make the point of saying these guys go into negotiations and ceasefires, quote unquote, as a way. way of continuing to pursue their war aim, knowing full well that the United States is not going to say anything about it or do anything about it. They're going to turn a blind eye. And so, yeah, of course Israel is doing this. I think what's interesting is are they doing this because they believe that negotiations with let Iran are proceeding, meaning are they doing this to play spoiler? Because it seems like they've increased the amount of murdering that they've done over the course of the last couple of days. As talked, some negotiations have started to call.

We'll have to leave that there. J.T. have an awesome weekend. We're going to record on Sunday. We'll talk about that later. Yes. See you guys, Monday, 9 a.m. We're here Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. And stay tuned for a.m.

Show with Manila Chan and myself, Robbie West, filling in. Appreciate you guys tuning in. See you later. Bye.