DeProgram with John Kiriakou and Ted Rall - The Fix Is In | DeProgram with Ted Rall and John Kiriakou

Episode Date: January 13, 2026

Political cartoonist Ted Rall and CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou deprogram you from mainstream media every weekday at 9 AM EST. Today we discuss: • The presumption that the FBI can be trusted to investigate the killing of activist Renee Good by ICE agent Jon Ross fairly has been all but destroyed by White House statements, freezing out local authorities, and the DOJ’s refusal to allow its civil rights experts to weigh in. Does it matter if the government abandons all pretense of objectivity? • As if life didn’t suck enough for Gazans who have survived the genocide, severe storms are ripping away the tents of hundreds of thousands of refugees. • Western analysts are eagerly hoping for revolution in Iran. • Malaysia and Indonesia block Grok over deep-fake porn. Even Renee Good has been virtually undressed.JOIN US LIVE ON RUMBLE!https://rumble.com/c/DeProgramShowFOLLOW TED:https://rall.com/https://x.com/tedrallFOLLOW JOHN:https://www.instagram.com/realjohnkiriakouhttps://x.com/JohnKiriakouLISTEN ON SPOTIFY:https://open.spotify.com/show/2kdFlw2w8sSPhKI8NRx8ZuLISTEN ON APPLE MUSIC:https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/deprogram-with-john-kiriakou-and-ted-rall

Good morning. This is D. Program with Ted Rawl and John Kiriaku. It is Tuesday, January 13. Thank you so much for joining us. Today we will be introducing some merch you can buy. We're also going to, happy to announce that Robbie Aide is fulfilled for the month of January. But if you are so moved and you would like to tip Robbie, because he can certainly use the cash. GoFundMe.com slash F slash D program, Robbie. We're going to be talking about the ongoing fallout from the killing of Renee Good. The situation in Gaza, which has been fallen off the headlines, but is still sucking hard for the people there who have survived. Certainly the crisis in Iran, and Malaysia and Indonesia have become the two first countries to block GROC, and I believe any AI platform,

over deep fake porn. And by the way, even poor Renee Good has been virtually undressed by Grock, it turns out. It's just nuts. People are nuts. You have nothing better to do with your time? No shit. You take a dead woman's picture and use AI to make her naked. Yeah.

What pleasure do people get out of something like that? It's just too weird for me. I know. Well, and also, as a former programmer, I know this is something that could easily be stopped. It's just a little bit of code. Not so hard. But anyway, good morning, John. Good morning, Ted.

Please like, follow and share the show, guys. Go ahead. And like I said, I'm going to put up that URL for people who want to throw Robbie a little extra scratch, which he needs. But we do really thank you for kicking in that $1,000 for the month of January. So we'll be back after this talking about this again at the beginning of February. the deal. We raise $1,000 a month from him. Before we get into it, our junior producer, he has, he's asking me to remind you that if you become a tier two YouTube member, by this coming Friday, you will be able to, you'll be able to get credits and you'll be able to,

you can also buy YouTube merchandise through YouTube for the show. And here is one of the first examples of it, the new D-programmed T-shirt, handsome black, simple punk rock, just like us. And so anyway, go to YouTube and do that. But we want you to watch us on Rumble. So we're making it as complicated as possible. You know, yeah. I like it.

I like the T-shirt. I'm going to get myself one of those myself. Okay, so, all right. So we should, of course, as always, please put your comments, questions, insults, everything into the YouTube or the Rumble feed, and we will get to them, ASAP. A little bit of breaking news. The former president of South Korea, Yun Suk Yol, is apparently facing the death penalty for his imbecilic attempt to impose.

martial law. I have a yun story. So I was a, I was a, I had a job at an office at Columbia University's admissions and financial aid office. My boss, the office manager, was a yun from this family that has really powerful Korean family in and out of politics for literally centuries. Oh, centuries. Centries. Okay. Anyway, one of, so he, he had a scroll that he showed me he laid. He laid. He laid a scroll that he showed me. Lates roll down on us four. It was the entire family tree going back a thousand years.

You know what? I worked with Yo-Yo Ma's son, Nick Ma. We were both on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee staff together. And we were talking about genealogy. And I was saying how proud I was that I was able to go back with documents to 1799. And then just kind of with stories to like 1645. And he said, oh, his father has these. ancient scrolls that go back 2,000 years with their family tree.

Two thousand years. He said they were found inside the wall of a mud house that had been in the family forever. That's cool. So this was only a mere millennium, not too. Crazy, though. Anyway, the point is, I remember looking at it. And at one point, I found, I think it was his grandfather or great-grandfather.

And I was like, wait, you're directly descended from the biggest asshole in Korean history. He goes, yeah. And it was a eun who basically had a plate of, and he's a big part of the reason that the partition happened. Wow. I mean, but anyway. So I'm like, again, these unions, they keep popping up like bad pennies. I like Koreans.

I like Koreans. They love Americans. They work hard. Their food is fantastic. Their food is great. Yeah. I learned how to use chopsticks from a Korean roommate in college. Paul. And the thing is, so they eat, you know, when they eat steak, right, they love steak,

they don't cut it up first, right? You literally pick up the whole piece and you bite it off like like a caveman. But the thing is, what I'm really appreciative of that because it gave me really strong, uh, chopstick chops. I worked to the guy at the CIA who was engaged to a Japanese girl and she broke up with him because she said that he ate like a Korean. The way he used chopsticks. And he said years later, he's like, I still don't know what in the world she met by that. Oh, no, that's just what I'm talking about. Like the other, so like the Japanese, which I also, I worked for a Japanese bank. The Japanese, the chopsticks are a more delicate, like a surgical implement. Whereas like, you know, you have to kind of like use some muscle mass to, to use it

Korean cell. Personally, if I, if I had to do it all over again, I'd still do Korean. Korean method is the best method, because you can do anything, you know, if you can pick up heavy piece of beef. You know, everything else comes easy. Yeah. That's true. All right. So let's see.

We've got some questions. Let's just do some questions before we talk about Renee Good. Or maybe, well, all right. McKenna, 308. We both speak about the importance of independent media. What are your favorite, who are your favorite independent media sources? Who should we avoid? There's fewer than there used to be.

Go ahead, John. Avoid the interstate. I don't trust a single one of them. And in all complete seriousness, I think that they work for or with the FBI. Well, we certainly know that they worked with the NSA. You can say that again. I'm very proud of consortium news.

I mean, Chris Hedges is there and Ray McGovern is there and so many people whose opinions I respect. I like consortium very much. For historical analysis, covert action magazine, Jeremy Kuzmorrow of is very good. Anti-war.com is good. I like Reason Magazine, although I don't agree with everything they say, but even the stuff I disagree with, they argue it well. How about you, Ted? I agree with all of those.

And also I agree with your take on the intercept, Jesus Christ. Very bad. Total wolf and sheep's clothing. I'm also at who what why. Oh, yeah. Who what Y is good. Yep. Yeah, so, and I do cartoons for them.

So, yeah, no, I agree that there's fewer than there used to be. And of course, there's podcasts like this. By the way, just some breaking news from the hill. It looks like there's that the fallout over Renee Good could actually increase the chances of a government shutdown. A lot of Democrats seem to be threatening. hold funding for the Department of Homeland Security in order to demand reforms. So that's interesting. That's huge. And like you said last week, we're three weeks away from another government shutdown and literally no one's talking about it. No, I know. And I was just thinking about that this morning. Like these Democrats, they can do something about a lot of the stuff that we're talking about here. And I guess, you know, this is what it is. They can shut down the guard. They don't have to pay. They do not have to.

keep going. Katie Catastrophe, you keep mentioning your time in the Middle East, were you a traditional journalist before you got into being a cartoonist? I have worn that hat, but no, I've been a cartoonist first. My first cartoons were published when I was 15 years old in the Kettering, Ohio, Oakwood Times. But definitely I've done straight journalism at various publications throughout over the years. But I kind of view it as two things. I have the journalist hat and I have the cartoonist hat. So, you know, they're not the same.

Also, although sometimes are the same. Philosite chief, question, another one for me. Would you consider making a cartoon where you and John are the characters? Sure. 100%. I mean, full disclosure. I mean, John and I are going to be working on a book together. Yes.

That's pros. But I could be doing a graphic novel. Hey, and I want to say something. on the record and in front of everybody because I know what you're like and I know what your response would be if we were talking about this privately. So I want to commission you to do a cartoon,

not a cartoon, but like a portrait of me that I want to use as my screen for deep focus. That's awesome. And the reason I say publicly is because I know you wouldn't charge me and I want to pay the normal rate that anybody would pay if they just stumble on your website. John, you don't have to do that. I know, but I want to.

All right, well, I appreciate that. We'll talk about it. Definitely, if I charge you anything, it'll be the friends rate. There's a friend's rate, and then there's the enemy's rate, and then there's the sort of corporatist rate, and those are all different numbers. Thank you. But anyway, I probably will.

I'll try to convince you not to take my money. I mean, not to send me your money. But yes, I would totally do that. John, we'll talk about, tell me the specs later. If you so, a dollar, thank you so much. L.A. punk versus NYC punk versus British punk. So I love them all. I love X.

I love the Ramones. I love the sex pistols. But I've, and I love the dictators, big New York punk band. But I got to probably go British punk, really. And I also really like San Francisco punk, like the Dead Kennedys. How about you, John? I got to ask you. I'm, listen, I'm stuck.

I'm stuck in the mid-1970s. Every single morning, seven days a week when I wake up, the first words out of my mouth are, and I have to spell it, A-L-E-X-A, because she'll turn herself on. Play 70s on 7. And she says, 70s on 7 by Sirius X-M. And I just lay there in bed for half an hour.

You would have liked the Ted Rall studio this morning. I was blasting Mott the Hoopel. I love Mott the Hoopold. I saw Mata Hoopal at George Washington University in 1982. But my point is, and I listen to Casey Kasem every single weekend. They do a different year, but on that day, on that date, every weekend. This past weekend was 1970. The weekend before was 1978.

The weekend before that was 73. But I just, I never graduated into punk because I was stuck in mid-70. these rock. That's interesting. You know, I was, because I'm a year older than you. Yeah. And maybe that made the difference. But like, for me, I was waiting, dying.

You know, I was dying in the, as a kid when I was 12, dying in the, in the ocean of Prague rock. And I hated that stuff. And then when I first heard like the New York Dolls, blondie, early talking heads, Devo, all that stuff. It was suddenly like my mind was, open like this is what I've been waiting for. And I, you know, for a while there in the late 70s, there was this kind of like, once you went punk, you didn't go back to like, you know,

classic rock. You're not going to listen to Zep anymore. But now I don't feel that way at all. I feel like it's all the same. It's all like Billy Joel would say, it's all rock and roll to me. Yeah. When I got to college, I started college a year later, a year after you did. So I was, I started in 82. And by then, you know, 70s rock was gone. 70s pop was pretty much gone or going. And I remember, it was all new wave. Freshman year, it was all new wave. A freshman year, there was like a mixer.

The drinking age in D.C. was 18 at the time. New York, too. So we were all 18. So I remember going to this mixer and somebody was blasting safety dance. Remember that awful, awful song? Men in hats. Men in hats. You can leave the past behind.

I remember thinking, I want to shoot myself. rather than listen to the rest of this song. And now it's a really fucking stupid song. And it's retro. It's back in style. I don't understand. Well, there were a lot of stupid one-hit wonders during that period.

But, you know, I have to admit, I might not change the channel if that came on now. I have to say, I like the instrumentals. But, you know,

but the music's so dumb. Oh, it's bad. The lyrics are so dumb, so dumb. You can dance if you want to. Oh, my God. Like, what a stupid. Anyway, that's just me. Yeah, no, no, no, it's not you.

You're right about that. That's objective truth. X. Ryan, John, does Trump want a civil war? Look, I'm getting into the Renee. I mean, John, I was just thinking about this this morning, right? I was looking at like the White House, the official White House, the official Homeland Security Twitter feeds. And it's like.

The thing is, I've never seen a government that tries to raise the temperature before. When the White House spokeswoman is asked a question and her response is, your mother, what do you think of that? You know you're in trouble. Yeah. That's seriously your official response from the White House, your mother. I mean, they're trying to raise the temperature. Yeah.

This is part of their, I mean, so, you know, what do you think, John? I mean, they don't want a civil war, obviously. Because they would be part of it, you know. Excuse me one second. Phil Chatt says, I picture John with flock of seagulls hair. Freshman year, spring fling, it was called, in the quad. Now, that is a good song. I ran so far away from you.

The band was flock of seagulls. And I remember calling my brother and saying, oh, my God, I'm in heaven. I just saw flock of seagulls and it was free. Okay, sorry. Yeah. I was so disappointed that the rest of the album wasn't as good as that single. Now, that's not true about certain one-hit wonders. Like the vapors, remember turning Japanese?

Oh, my God. But there are other shit's great, actually. But just nobody listens to it. No, that's true. Sorry, to get back to your civil war thing, And, you know, I think that if he does, he doesn't even realize that he does. And I keep coming back to this New York Times interview that they did with Trump Day before yesterday, in which three separate times they asked him, who was advising him?

And three times, he said, he doesn't take advice from anybody, which I don't fully believe. But he's, he said he doesn't take advice. Whatever his gut tells him, that's what he does. He's only constrained by his own morality. That's what he told in New York Times. Yeah, that's it. He's only constrained by his own morality. That's like, that's also not true. That's not true because it can't be true. Desert Fox question for both of us, where do we stand on the Iran war? The fleet movements don't lie, but I don't think that normal logic applies. Thanks for the amazing work and riveting yet sober. Oh, I'm glad you brought that up.

So go ahead and answer it. And while you're talking, I'm going to find this magnificent website that somebody sent me yesterday. Okay. All right. Well, so look, here's the thing. Like, if you missed the show yesterday, as John pointed out, you know, the fleet movements are constrained to the Southern Caribbean. We're still fucking around with the Venezuelans and we're busy over there. So if anyone's going to attack Iran right now, it's probably going to be our proxies, the Israelis,

or arguably our bosses, the Israelis, depending on how you look at it. And so in terms of, here's the thing, right, like we don't, there is no Iran war now. And I guess we should talk about what the situation is. I mean, we're hearing a lot of, you know, very overheated analysis about how we're at the brink of revolution. Now, the thing is, like Robert F. Kennedy, as Robert F. Kennedy famously, observed, you kind of don't know if a revolution is, a revolution that appears inevitable after it happened, impossible before it happens. I think that's very true. The thing is, also, I agree with your analysis yesterday, though, John, 100% I thought about it more and more

after we talked here on the air. I don't see Iran having another 1979 style, and I don't mean ideologically, but like a unified national revolution. I see disintegration. I see civil conflict more looking like Libya. Yeah. Well, you know, because there's no center. There is no center. These demonstrations started in Kurdistan because reportedly, that's where the most Israeli agents are located. So they've moved to some of the major cities. But But an Iranian in Iran said this morning to somebody that I'm close to, that they keep hearing reports of these thousands of people now dead. And he said, it's just not happening.

These demonstrations are isolated. They're a small scale. Yes, there are deaths. A lot of them are caused by the. police, a lot of them are caused by the demonstrators. And I mentioned yesterday, these demonstrators, and there's confirmation from the Israelis today that these are Mossad agitators. They're bragging about it in the Israeli papers. And Mike Pompeo posted on Twitter that it's the Israelis. But they're burning the fire trucks. They're going to fire stations and they're throwing Molotov cocktails at the

fire trucks so that when they light fires in buildings to burn the buildings down and get people agitated, they can't put the fire out. That's an Israeli tactic. It's a well-known Israeli tactic. I was going to say that's not the tactic of your standard uprising kind of person. No, it's not. And may I add one thing? So this fantastic site that gives you up to the minute locations of every aircraft carrier. Remember we said that if you really want to know if the United States is going to attack another country. Look at naval movements because we never, ever attack anybody if we don't have an aircraft carrier battle group or two or six nearby. So the USS Nimitz is in Washington State on its way to Norfolk, Virginia. The USS Dwight Eisenhower is in Norfolk.

The USS Carl Vinson is in San Diego. The USS Theodore Roosevelt is in San Diego. The USS A. Abraham Lincoln is in the South China Sea. The USS George Washington is off the coast of Japan. USS John Stennis is being repaired in Newport News, Virginia. The USS Harry S. Truman is off the east coast of the United States. The USS Ronald Reagan is being repaired in Puget Sound. USS George H.W. Bush is on its way to Norfolk from Jacksonville, Florida. Florida, the USS Gerald Ford is off the coast of Puerto Rico. We cannot attack Iran. There are no naval support vessels. Can't do it. And we don't have, and there isn't a base, an air base of any size that we have access to close enough to it, right? No, that's right. So yeah, that's interesting.

I mean, what do you make of those? I mean, most of it, a lot of vessels heading to or at Norfolk retooling? Yes. Yes. Several of them are being completely refurbished. Some are being sold for a penny. I read online. I can even tell you which ones.

They're being sold for a penny. That's the USS John F. Kennedy, USS Enterprise, USS Constellation, and the USS Kitty Hawk, all were sold for one cent to international shipbreaking limited. and they're going to be taken apart panel by panel and sold for scrap. Huh.

I was going to say, like, you know, Pete Davidson probably should have bought one of those instead of the Staten Island Ferry. Staten Island Ferry. For hundreds of thousands of dollars. Yeah, that he can't get out of. Yeah. Well, that was like how high. I know he said he was high. I actually believe him.

He probably was. How high were you, dude? We want that gunge. That's right. Because a transaction like that doesn't take. take an hour. I mean, if you're high for an hour, okay. Right, right. Good point. Good point. I guess you might just tell your assistant to do it, right? You know, like people say, oh, I got this tattoo because I was drunk. It's like, dude, that tattoo must have taken eight hours to get on you.

What do you mean you were drunk? How drunk could you possibly have been? Or maybe you're drunk when you start and then by the time you're just sober up, you're like, I can't have a half tattoo, you know? I mean, that would be the worst. Zach Dicast says that my take on Renee Good is so Lib-Tard, Normie, crap, crap, all-caps. I'd like some details. I mean, I'm not sure he or she knows what my take is on this. I mean, look, here's the thing. Even if we stipulate, that shooting is unjustified for the simple reason that, like,

there is no evidence whatsoever of, I mean, let's just say that she's guilty of everything they say. She's obstructing law enforcement. She's non-compliant. She drove toward the dude. The fact is he fired at her as she was going by. Okay. So like even if she hit him, okay, that threat is now a past threat because it's already happened.

And there's no evidence that happened anyway. So the point is he didn't have any right to shoot her. Now we could say that like, so I think a grand jury and a jury should adjudicate this. Could it be complicated? Sure. Could he possibly walk? Sure. But I think it deserves, you know, 12 men and women good and true to look at it. That's what I take. I was watching a legal analyst last night on Jake Tapper. And he said that this was obviously a homicide, not necessarily a murder. And to tell you, the honest to God's truth, I never thought about the difference between the two. A homicide is simply defined as, a person who is killed by another person. Yeah.

That's a homicide. A murder is when you intentionally kill the other person. But of course, if you shoot someone... And a manslaughter is by negligence usually. Yeah, that's right. But if you shoot somebody in the face, what do you think is going to happen? Right. It's a homicide.

It should be investigated. Yeah. And I guess let's talk about that. I mean, that was our main topic today. So, I mean, here's the thing. The government is, you know, abandoning all attempt to have us believe that they're engaged in a fair process, right? The president, the vice president, the secretary of Homeland Security, all within hours defended the ICE agent. The social media feeds for the administration have been going rolling night and day to defend him.

And they're smearing her. I love how they dehumanize her. They call her this individual. This individual, I noticed the same thing. Instead of, you know, you don't have to say this mother of three, but you could have just said this person, this woman, you know, anything like that. But they don't do that. This individual, domestic terrorists. Anyway, and now the latest, so the Minneapolis and the Minnesota authorities have both been frozen out of what has become inexplicably a federal investigation.

And now the DOJ normally incidents like this has civil rights experts, which I think is confusing to people because they think civil rights relates to racial issues. Correct. It doesn't. No. Your civil rights are like your First Amendment right to free speech is a civil right. And if you kill somebody and it's charged as a violation of their civil rights, you're still talking about life without parole. Right. It's a very serious charge.

I mean, your Second Amendment right to own a five. firearm is a civil right. That's right. People don't, you know. So the thing is that those civil rights people normally, their team participates in an investigation like this and they have been frozen out. That just doesn't happen. I mean, the administration does not seem to care about being perceived as fair or not having

their thumb on the scale. Yeah. Does that matter? I mean, I feel like it does matter. I think it matters. I think it matters. And, you know, I gave this a lot of thought last night. Donald Trump's not going to be president forever. Republicans aren't going to be president forever. There's no statute of limitation on murder. There's no statute of limitation on civil rights violations.

And so really, all we have to wait for is a Democrat to get into the White House and the Democrat to order that the Justice Department turn over priming. in the case to the state of Minnesota, and then this guy screwed. Assuming the Democrats have the balls to do that. Assuming, and we should say, that's a big assumption. I don't trust any of them. No, I mean, with good reason. Peruse, hey, John and Ted, thanks for the show.

Have you met Jeffrey Sachs? And could it be possible to get him as a guest on the show? We should try. I met him once on a podcast. We should try to get him. I think that would be a lot of fun. Robbie, let's try to Robbie, can you reach out to Jeffrey Sachs for us?

Okay, thank you, Robbie. Awesome. Okay, all right, so, okay, for John, from Frasmataz, regarding the intercept, but more broadly, what are your thoughts on Pierre Omidyar? Oh, don't I get to have thoughts about Pierre? Yeah, yeah, no, you have very well-considered thoughts on billionaires. You go first.

Well, so Pierrot Mediaar is, what's the phrase, a lying sack of shit. So if you go to YouTube and look, I recommend that anybody do this, look up the Intercept launch video for first look media. First Look, look media launch video. It'll make you laugh. So basically it's Pierrot, talking about how he's launching a new media company. This is about 10 years ago in which they're going to do everything. The media's in crisis.

That's true. And we need an independent voice with hard-hitting, ass-kicking journalists. So we're going to do everything new finance. We're going to have a whole team doing financial reporting. We're even going to do sports, culture, you know, weather, everything, right? Like a giant. We're reinventing the media. Because he's a billionaire and he can afford it.

Yeah, I have billions to spare. I love America. I love the world. I love press freedom. I want everybody to go wild and crazy, right? So my, so when that all happened, it turned out like, well, when we said there's going to be 15 different channels, what we really mean is one. And so anyway, then my buddy who worked over there calls me up and he goes, oh, would you like to come on as like a graphics journalist slash editorial cartoonist slash columnist? I'm like, I'm in.

So I don't hear back. And like basically he keeps, so he's getting more and more pissed. He's like, our budget went from 20 to 10 to $5 to $1 million. At a certain point, Pierre is weighing in on the office furniture, saying that the office furniture is too expensive. And basically the thing shriveled away to like a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of what he promised. And the thing is for no particular reason. just because he's a control freak.

And he wanted to make a big splash, but he didn't want to actually spend his money. And then that's not getting into the fact that he has like, you know, he wasn't going to do what you would need a billionaire to do. Throw money at it and then don't check in, right? Just make sure your money's being spent right, maybe. But like, you know, basically you shouldn't have your thumb on the scale,

like the way that, you know, Bezos is on the editorial page of the Washington Post. Oh, I can't. I would have canceled. I would have canceled my post subscription, except that we do this show. We have to have it. And we have to have it. Me too. Oh, I can't.

But, but so the thing is so that that's my. So I think Pierro BDR is completely full of shit, basically. I have to agree. I have to agree. You know, in the very beginning, when they were still at the $20 million phase, I was like, okay, this is, this is actually going to be cool. Even though he's a billionaire, I thought, If he gives them, you know, editorial freedom like he promised he would, I thought, okay, this is going to be, this is going to be all right. And then almost instantaneously, it just became a lie. But that's not my biggest beef with the Intercept.

I've said this a million times. I've written about it. The Intercept, the Intercept's reporters have been personally responsible. for sending five whistleblowers to prison. Five whistleblowers. Reality winner. Mm-hmm. Jeffrey Sterling, me, Daniel Hale, and who's the fifth?

I can't remember. Anyway, it's five. Take my word for it. I tweeted at them when they outed reality winner. And that was the most agreed. of all the cases. Ridiculous. Ridiculous.

Amateurish behavior by two self-professed professional national security journalists. What a crockish. Idiots. And let's name them. It's Matthew Cole and Rich Esposito. Shame, shame on that. By the way, I should never work in journalism again. Never ever.

Matthew Cole fancies some. himself and the author. Rich Esposito, when he left journalism to become the deputy police commissioner of New York. Appropriate. Isn't that appropriate? So, yeah, I tweeted at them and I said, I said, these are the kinds of people, by the way, that the Intercept hires. That's right. I said, hey, intercept, serious question.

You must be working for the FBI, right? Because nobody can be that stupid. And I got hundreds of responses. They were like the only ones who didn't respond. Of course. I mean, you know, it's, it's horrid. Okay, Cooper duper. Thanks for this question.

Although Renee Good's passing was tragic, do you think that the mainstream media and social media is hyping it up to distract from the fraud allegations? Okay, so people, you guys know I'm a lefty. In part, yes, I do think that. You know, this is a, this is, look, But if you're Governor Tim Walls, this is a, you're maybe not happy to see a Minnesota taxpayer get blown away on the streets of a suburb.

But I'm not going to go that far. I don't think he's that evil. But you're not unhappy to see the Somalia stuff, you know, washed off the headlines. I think it's part of it. I do think it's kind of like, we only have room, you know, the Americans only have room for one Minnesota story in their brain. And let's have this one be the story. I do think that's true.

Yeah, I think that's right. Frazmatast, John, how on earth do you have an Alexa? Like the privacy factor. You know what? It can be used as evidence in an event of an emergency. Yeah, in all seriousness, I just have one in the bedroom where nothing is going on. So I don't mind if she listens to me because, you know, it's just me snoring, I guess. I'm done there's too many places like with that comment john i'm not going to oh my god um USA

navy vet what are we talking about here gossip are we talking about world affairs i don't know maybe i got a tune out of this uh doesn't make any sense what's going on here it's important to choose can't eat fair okay yes true americans can't eat and we can and we can't and okay we that's true No, seriously, it is a major problem. But I mean, I'm sorry, I'm not going to apologize for breaking out. John and I are both usually very grim-like people. So here I'm not usually accused to being too joyful. I don't know about you, John.

Hey, our buddy, Mike from Nottingham, wrote in the chat that, oh, shoot, let me find it. I think I got it from, from Robbie. Help me out. It's about, it's a UK question. Here, I'm gonna, Robbie, do you know?

There is, I got it. I got it. Peter Mendelsohn on the BBC saying he was blind to Epstein's crimes because he himself, Mendelsohn is gay. It's his laughable as the interview. Oh my God. Mandelson, think about that. I mean, everybody knows Mandelson's gay. Nobody gives a shit.

So he's justifying having been to the island because, and it's okay because he's gay. And all the underage kids were girls. So it's cool. No worries. Yeah, because if you just know about it, that's, that's okay. Yeah, that's right. You don't have to tell anybody. Somebody else will tell.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. That's all. That's, I'm obsessed with that whole idea. that somebody else will. Like, you know, we're going to replace all our employees with, you know, people from overseas and AI. Yeah. But, like, someone else will hire real Americans for real jobs.

Someone else will do it. It's always someone else will take care of it. You know, as a journalist, I mean, it would be icky for me to take on this difficult story that would challenge the official narrative. But some other journalists will do it. Don't worry. Don't worry, John. some other lawyer will take you on.

Exactly. Not me. Exactly right. Aren't Americans too lazy and chill to fight a civil war, James Turner? Well, we did. So I don't know. I don't think, you know, look, I do think we are a lazy folk intellectually, but I don't think, that could be a civil war.

But I think you need different dynamic than we have. You know, we have to have like, you need organizations. I keep coming back to that. Nobody likes to hear it. Soden, thanks so much for the 49-99. Oh, my gosh. Thank you. Thank you.

Good morning, John and Ted. While I sip on this morning cocktail, I work nights, L-O-L. Can you please tell us? I actually, you know, I used to live right on the same street as the New York Times, the 43rd Street, which New York Times was between 7th and 8th. I was between 8th and 9th. And there was a bar that all the New York Times like press workers would kick off to. And I would see them, you know, drinking hard like at, you know, 7 in the morning.

when I was on my way to my office job. Anyway, kind of funny. Can you please tell us where the U.S. went wrong with the Shah back in the day? I would love to hear from you guys who were alive at that time and how everyone dropped the ball. Take it away, John. Wow, where do you even begin? The Shah was an absolute monarch, absolute dictator. He had a bloodthirsty intelligence service called Savak that spent way more time in

investigating and murdering Iranian citizens than it ever did doing anything, you know, in any other country. He had formal official diplomatic relations with Israel, which really pissed people off. He was perfectly happy to send Iran's oil to the United States and to the UK. And, you know, Iran very briefly had a democratic government, rather, rather. It was Prime Minister Muhammad Mossadek. And the U.S. and UK overthrew Mossadegh in 1953. The Shah had been, or his father had been in power. Then the Shah was briefly in power.

Then Mossadegh won an election. He was deposed and spent literally the rest of his life under house arrest. The Shah was forcibly reimposed on the Iranian people. and then by 1979, it all fell apart. He went on a ski vacation in February of 79 and never went back. Yeah, all that. And I think the one chapter that's kind of missing from this is because ultimately of the way that the revolution played out, we kind of forget the role of like socialists and other leftists and other.

the anti-Shah alliance was very was very broad and it included a lot of opposition figures and they organized you know thoroughly and consistently for you know at least at least five to 10 years against the Shah and you know the Shah was a U.S. you know UK puppet and and the Iranians are proud people and I mean and you know they wanted national sovereignty and you know the And the Shah was a despot. Yeah, he was. He was a despot. He really was.

Yeah. And Savak was brutal. One of my mom's classmates at Wright State University was an Iranian refugee. He was a political refugee. He was a political dissident against the Shah. He went home for vacation during one of the breaks. And the Savak guys kidnapped him, amputated both of his legs and dropped off his bleeding body in front of his parents' door in Tehran.

Oh, my God. That's what they were like. Let's see. Have we heard about this John and Marjorie? Have we heard about the theory that Trump has dementia, starting to show more and more symptoms? He's definitely not the same as he was. I've heard that.

No. And the White House has never explained these MRIs that he's getting up at, what's the Naval Hospital in, Bethesda. Bethesda Naval Medical Center. That one. Right, that one. Yeah, something's up.

Yeah, I mean, look, he's getting older. I mean, you know, he wasn't the same in the 90s as he was in the 80s or in the odds as he was in the 90s and so on. We are all getting older. But something is up. And I don't know what it is. It's not playing out the way Biden did. With Biden, it was like you just couldn't miss it. Because, you know, Trump's still energetic.

Yes, he is. Ray, thanks for the. John, what you take on Karg Island and its significance for Iran, heard that it would get hit, that it would destroy the world. If it got hit, it would destroy the world's oil economy and other repercussions. Yeah, Khark Island is where most of Iran's oil is refined. And it was bombed in the 1980s. It caused a global oil price shock. It's possible that the West, meaning the United States and or Israel, could bomb it again.

If that were to happen, I think the Iranians, having learned their lesson in earlier decades, would come out swinging. And it would just be a crisis for oil prices. Robbie, we got an ad? Okay. Whenever you're ready. Okay. So, let's see. Elliot Covert.

John, murder is actually defined by malice aforethought, which is a vague legal term. Sometimes you can commit murder by acts of indifference to human life, e.g. drunk driving. But murders also and all the different subsets of it are defined differently depending on the jurisdiction. That's right. That's a good point. So, you know, but I mean, by the way, I don't think drunk driving is technically considered murder. I don't think it is. I think it's considered a form of manslaughter. Yeah.

That's why they call it vehicular. a homicide rather than vehicular murder. I could look at, well, if anyone knows differently, let us know. Great Battis, what do you think about Federman supporting the Greenland takeover? Federman. You know, Federman supporting the Greenland takeover came two days after Federman announced that he was not going to support the Greenland takeover. Speaking of dementia.

I'm trying to be kind to the guy, but he's clearly brain damaged. And he should not be in the center. it. No. He's not in his right mind. And he's, and he's embarrassing himself and the state. Yep. Almost as much as his whole life has fallen apart. His staff is all left. His wife is broken up with him. I mean, you know, we don't even know if he still like talks to his children. He's a fucking mess. Yeah, he's a mess. And unfortunately, he's in because he's a mess. He's in no position to understand that he's a mess. Yeah, that's exactly right. Frasmatat's quick, tricky question for you, John. Would you support Dr. Oz as Senator, if we could go back to the election, I certainly would not as a doctor, just as a person.

The guy served in the Turkish special forces. This is not just that it's Turkey. It's not for me, but not just because it's Turkey. This is exactly why I would never vote for Josh, what's his name, the governor? Because he served in the IDF. So you don't serve your country, the United States, but you're going to run and serve Israel or serving the Turkish special forces after having gotten your American citizenship.

No, no to both of them. I would rather write in Ralph Nader or somebody. Yeah, that's the thing too, right? Like in a binary system, you don't really have to choose one or the other. John, why can't the U.S. attack Iran using only ground bases in the Middle East? Doesn't the U.S. have a lot of bases?

Are those not enough? Why not? Those are not enough because we don't have enough missiles and we don't have enough planes. You know, aircraft carrier battle groups or the carriers themselves carry so many planes. And then the support ships are full of literally everything you would need to fight a war.

Look at it this way. In 1990 and 91, we bombed Iraq mercilessly for over a month to use Colin Powell's, terminology, we bombed them back into the Stone Age, right? But it wasn't until we started using our naval assets that we really had them on the run. And then that's why the ground war only took, but what, 42 hours, I think it was. Yeah, yeah, super, super, and lightning. Talk about Blitzkrieg.

All right, let me read this ad. You've probably noticed Rumble is growing fast and it's not slowing down. They're building a real alternative to big tech that puts creators first and actually protects free speech. And now there's Rumble Premium. An easy way to upgrade your experience with premium. You get ad-free viewing across the platform. No pre-rolls, no interruptions, just the content you came for. Plus premium members unlock exclusive content like bonus videos behind the scenes, drops,

and more from your favorite creators right now. Rumble is offering $10 off an annual subscription. Just go to Rumble.com slash premium and use the promo code studio at checkout. That's Rumble.com slash premiums promo code studio. No ads, more freedom, and content you actually care about. that's the deal. So we should talk about GROC. We talked about a little bit. I use GROC, full disclosure. I'm a paid member of X. So, you know, it's not like I'm opposed to it. Malaysia and Indonesia became the first countries in the world. Malaysia is a Muslim, well, they're both Muslim countries.

Huge Muslim countries. Huge. And they're so they're very, so they're very, conservative. Malaysia is more conservative than Indonesia. Yeah. But, so they're blocking GROC over deep fake porn. What can or should big tech do about it? I mean, they could seriously program. There's already all sorts of blocks on what GROC or other, you know, image generate, text to image generators will make for you. Like, for example, if you ask it to create Nazi imagery, it won't do it for the most part. So you can do that. You can program it to just not create these deep fake nudes and stuff that have been making

like young girls' lives miserable in like public schools. Why don't they do that? I mean, this doesn't serve any purpose or is it just that they know that there's money to be made? That's got to be it, right? I mean, why would you do something like that for fun? I don't get it. It's got to be a moneymaker somehow.

But then at the same time, any moron would know that the government's going to come after you. You're going to have it shut down. Yeah, that's the thing, right? Like possession of, so I have a colleague who we will call Darren Bell, because his name is Darren Bell, who was arrested for possession of child pornography. He's a peeled surprise-winning editorial cartoonist. I'm ashamed to say. he got an award I can't get, apparently.

And he, you know, he was arrested for possession of both conventional child porn and AI generated child porn. And that was part of what made the case interesting from a legal point of view. He's one of the very first cases in the U.S. of someone to be arrested for, you know, child porn that's created by AI. It's, is it, I guess, the question. is here, I don't even know how to put this. It's sort of like, how does society meant to deal with this? I mean, it spreads a terror. No one, no specific person was harmed.

However, it's a harmful message to the normalization of this idea is clearly harmful. Is the legal system able to respond to a problem like that? Well, that's a good question. And, you know, honestly, I think that the legal system, whether it's in the United States or in Malaysia and Indonesia, wherever it is, is going to have to constantly play catch up on these issues because the technology is changing so quickly. I mean, even two years ago, just two years ago, nobody knew what AI was. Nobody knew what it could do or how it was going to change things. It's putting people out of work now. College professors are redundant. We don't need people to teach us how to write poetry because the machine does it. Now with porn, I mean, it's human nature, I think, to just any new invention to try to figure out how can use it to generate porn. But otherwise, I think it's just things are changing too quickly that these governments and corporations can't keep up. good question from vermicious canids is there no justification or desire for the u.s to have a stronger physical presence in greenland or is that just cold war era thinking let me say before

donald trump brought this up the amount of americans who gave this any thought on a day-to-day basis was 0.000000 0001 percent yeah i mean nobody nobody no Nobody thought of this or was like, yeah, you know what we really got to have. We really got to have Greenland to keep ourselves safe. You know, and it's like, is there a justification? Ted, this has to be about, this has to be about the rare earth metals, right? I remember yesterday we were talking about this. And drilling in the Arctic.

It has to be. We talked yesterday about this. The Northwest Passage is now open. Yeah. that's true it's now open but uh the the u.s has always had access to uh to Greenland the base was given to us in whatever it was 1940 or 41 to protect Greenland from the Nazis uh we've had the air base you know for for many decades we've had the right to create bases for many decades and we used to have more of a presence and we withdrew

under both Democratic and Republican administrations. Yes. But we can literally, we don't even really have to ask permission, right? We can just call the Danes and say, hey, we'd be sending some more guys. And they're like, okay, that's it under the terms of the agreement. So is there justification? Sure, the justification is that 1951 treaty. Yeah, it is.

Exactly. But that's the thing is that that treaty makes it impossible to understand the need or the desire on the part of Trump to own it. I think Trump wants to be able to say that he added to U.S. territory. I think that he's old enough to remember like, you know, Alaska and Hawaii as new states. And I think he wants those and he wants, he wants to be a president who added territory to the United States. Yes, I think that's right. And it's a lot of territory.

Yes. Although useless for the most part. But, you know, long time listener, it would be one thing of Shapiro. served in the IDF, but still protected Pennsylvania's civil liberties, but he threatened to send him the National Guard to pro-Palestine college encampments. Well, that's true.

And so, John, John, curious on where you stand in regard to the status of your pardon, and whether you're discouraged or encouraged as to who's received pardon thus far. Touchy subject, but rooting for you. Thank you. I will always remind you that if it's better

not to comment, it's better not to comment. Yeah, I will say that I feel like I'm very close. I'm talking to all the right people. I am mystified as to why it hasn't happened. You know, I see reality TV people and crooked politicians and actually crooked politicians who don't, not just don't like Donald Trump, but have complained in the media about Donald Trump, even after they received pardons from him. I'm just not, I'm mystified.

I don't know. Well, obviously, everyone's pulling for you. Thank you. So we should talk a little bit about these storms. This is kind of a weird climate change meets the Middle East story, right? So these big, I mean, you know, people don't really realize that like in Israel and Palestine, the weather can be pretty severe. And it can be they get storms, they get severe.

I've been there during like, you know, when it was in the 30s and the wet, you know, brutal, hard rains, big storms in the Mediterranean. So big storms swept through the hundreds of thousands of people who are living in tents in Gaza over the last few days. And it's made their lives even more miserable than they have been before. The international press is still not allowed in by the Israelis. And so, you know, what are the chances as the, is the ceasefire in danger of taking this human rights, this humanitarian story off the headlines? I mean, in a weird way, from a PR standpoint, when the Palestinians kind of almost be better off with the war still going on? They would certainly be getting more attention. Because if you're a Gaza-Palestinian, the war never ended.

The ceasefire is a joke. People are being killed every day still. And there's still no, I shouldn't say no food, there's still not enough food. There's still a terrible lack of clean water. There aren't enough medical supplies. People are unhoused. You know, there are still bodies under the rubble. It's a hellscape.

Yeah. And we're not talking about it anymore in the West. That's, yeah. Well, that's huge. All right. So just a reminder, everyone, if we go buy the Deep Program T-shirt over on, YouTube. I like it. Become a tier two member.

And there it is right there. Please like, follow, and share the show. If you're on YouTube, do consider after you buy the t-shirt heading over to Rumble because your support for the show goes a lot further for us over here on Rumble.

Please stay tuned for the TMI show with me and Manila Chan coming up right at 10 o'clock Eastern time in a matter of seconds. We will be back tomorrow here on D-Program with Ted Roll and John Kirooku at 9 a.m. Eastern time, so see you then.

Thanks so much. John, talk to you tomorrow. Take it easy. Bye.