DeProgram with John Kiriakou and Ted Rall - Venezuela Crackdown | DeProgram with Ted Rall and John Kiriakou

Episode Date: January 8, 2026

Political cartoonist Ted Rall and CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou deprogram you from mainstream media every weekday at 9 AM EST. Today we discuss: • Trump’s plan to run the Venezuelan government via coercion and threat of force is turning the acting post-coup government paranoid. Will this powder keg explode into civil war? Meanwhile, Bruce Fein joins Nicolás Maduro’s legal defense team. Will Trump’s continuing recognition of the Venezuelan government validate Maduro’s claim to be a POW? • Abruptly changing course, Trump invites Colombian President Gustavo Petro to the White House. Can Petro trust Trump not to arrest him too? • Trump pulls the US out of a key climate treaty and dozens of others. 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. Who knows? I blame the Israelis. You're watching. Why not? Everybody else does. You're watching D-Program with Ted Rollin-John Chariacu. That you are, it is Thursday, January 8th, 2026. Happy New Year.

Thank you so much for joining us. Please like, follow, and share the show. Some new things happening today. Robbie is going to come on and help explain that. I think, I'm not sure that's working. We're working on a way to contribute to the show using Bitcoin, if that's your preferred method. And, you know, I tried to activate that yesterday, but, you know, they threw me out of engineering school, as you know. So, you know, maybe that is true. Maybe that didn't work. We'll see. Robbie will check that. We are going to, as usual, answer your questions in the Rumble feed as well as the YouTube feed live.

Just a few, like, details, some housekeeping. TMI show at 10 o'clock after this. And in the 11 o'clock hour, it's the weekly DMZ America podcast with me and Scott Stantis. We have a guest who's very pertinent to today's news of the Pittsburgh Post Gazette closing. Rob Rogers, former editorial cartoonist for the Pittsburgh Post Gazette will be joining us in the 11 o'clock hour. He knows how the sausage was made. He was there for, I think, 26 years or so. Wow.

So we will hear all about that. Anyway, for Robbie Aid, we are still a little bit short of what we need to get that $1,000. You guys have almost done the job. So we're trying to get over the finish line. Hopefully we can do it today so we don't have to talk about this tomorrow. So please contribute to allowing us to keep Robbie on as our producer. The GoFundMe is D-Program Robbie. Just go to GoFundMe and search for deprogram Robbie,

or you can click the entire URL that I just put into the screen. GoFundMe.com slash F-D-D-program Robbie. Okay. John, obviously we're going to be talking about the developments in Venezuela, The government, as you mentioned, a couple days ago, government forces have set up checkpoints. They're taking people out of their cars, searching their phones to see if they were like, you know, yay, you know, yay, we're very happy about what happened to Maduro or not. So when you over, I want to talk about how governments that are subject to American intervention can become paranoid and turn on their own people, and that's a consequence that we may not fully appreciate. Nick Maduro's been claiming to be a P-O-W, and he might have, you know, inadvertently,

the White House may be helping him make that defense when he's in court in New York. We'll talk about that. May I interrupt you on that point? Please. So I've spoken a thousand times about my friend, Bruce Fine. Bruce Fine, the former deputy attorney, acting deputy attorney general in the United States under Reagan. great attorney, constitutional scholar. He called me last night, about 10 o'clock. And I said, oh, Bruce, I'm so glad you called. I was working on, we're talking about writing this book together.

I was working on the book and I had a thought. I wanted to pass by you. He says, wait a minute, wait a minute. You'll never guess who hired me to represent him. I said, who? He said, I spent the entire day with Nicholas Maduro. I said, you've got to be kidding me. So as he's telling me, Googling Bruce Fine Maduro. And sure enough, boom, there it is. Bloomberg, BBC, New York Times, CNN. I said, so you and Barry Pollock? He said, yes, Barry Pollock and I are going to be the trial attorneys. And he said that he thinks the case is strong. The CIA kidnapped Maduro. The charges are specious. It talks about organizations that he allegedly headed that don't exist which we've talked about here on the show and he said stay tuned

this is going to be a hell of a case please invite him onto the show absolutely will okay great absolutely will but may i add another thing ted i think that um even with all that's going on with um with maduro and venezuela and and now uh gustavo petro being invited to the united states we should also talk about what happened in minneapolis yes one hundred percent that's the news of the day. Yeah. It's, I was, I listened, uh, in real time to NPR this morning, uh, basically for an hour and a half. And they did something I have not heard them do for any story in my memory. Um, they were, they kept, first of all, they kept coming back to the same story every 15 minutes or so. I've just never heard them do that. Yeah. And in, uh, in the morning

news. And they were trying to cover it live. They were trying to reach out for comment to the Minneapolis Attorney General, sorry, the Minnesota Attorney General, and they had, they kept having technical problems getting them on the line. We know what that's like. But the point is they don't usually do that. Usually these shows are all pre-recorded. And, you know, they're not like eager to cover it. This, this just seems, this seems different, right? So we should talk about that first and foremost. And, you know, we'll talk also later about, I do want to talk about Columbia and Gustavo Petro and Trump's withdrawal from the climate change treaty, which I think is probably not that big a deal. But nevertheless, we should touch upon it. And all right, so let me ask you

real quickly, before we jump in, if you were Gustavo Petro, would you accept this invitation? I'd be scared. Because I'd think, like, what if this fucking maniac, like, what if he kidnaps me? What if I show up? And he's like, ha, ha. He's, you know. Donald Trump, he's the ultimate troll. I mean, this would be hilarious to him. Yeah, it would be. Like, just like I, you know, invite him. And it's like, slap the cuffs on him and haul him off and he can share a share

a cell with Maduro, right? And like we said day before yesterday, Colombia has major non-NATO ally status. Okay, this is a close friend of the United States and has been for a long time. So is Denmark. So, you know, I agree with you. Donald Trump is the ultimate troll. I think he enjoys it. I think it's fun for him.

Totally. He's laughing his ass off. I mean, he tries to be all stern in public, but you know, I mean, he's literally laughing his ass. And Robbie says, wouldn't he have diplomatic immunity? He has better than diplomatic immunity. He has head of state immunity. But so does Nicholas Maduro, presumably.

Right. And so did Michael. Manuel Noriega. And so did Manuel Noriega. And so did Saddam Hussein. That's right. And Warmaar Gaddafi. Yeah. Yeah. We had a question before we even started the show about whether or not there was a Hezbollah presence or an Iranian presence in Venezuela. I actually wrote about that for the Los Angeles Times.

You know what the, what the Iranian presence is in Venezuela? No. They own and operate a bicycle fact. factory. That's it? That is it. Well, you know, but the argument, the argument from the State Department is that, well, that bicycle factory can be converted into a widget factory for tanks. Oh, yeah. What is that called? It's not retooling, but basically, right? The repurposing. Yeah. That's like the aluminum. That's like the aluminum tubes controversy from the Iraq. Iraq. Exactly. I mean, at that point, anything can be weaponized, right? Literally anything.

which is one of the ways that we were able to squeeze apartheid South Africa. They're like, yeah, we need tubes for the sewers. The sewers are breaking down. The tubes can be used to launch missiles. No tubes for you. Ridiculous. It's like, yeah, totally insane. Yeah, no, no, I have to say, if I were Gustavo Petro,

I might need, like, written in blood assurance that I was not going to be arrested. Yes. But I'm not sure that would even be enough. I might be like, maybe we can do this by Zoom, Donald. Exactly. Or I might say, why don't we meet somewhere else? Why don't we meet in Mexico? And, you know, well, Claudia will host the festivities.

We'll have good margaritas. You won't have, you'll have virgin ones. It'll be great. Yeah, see. That would be my suggestion. Yeah, that was my first thought. I was like, are you going to fall for that? It's like, he seems, Petro seems like a naive fellow.

You know, I think he's one of these guys who was never really interested in politics. He ran for president just because he thought it was the right thing to do for his country. He won because he was the right candidate at the right time. He's not a professional politician. He probably would, would be perfectly happy just to go about his normal business. and not be not be bogged down with these issues and here he is wondering should i go to the white house is he going to kidnap me should i risk it i don't know i don't know i feel like vaugh hovel made the you know an easier pivot to uh the presidency of a country yes than petro did

well i agree uh plus i worry if i'm donald if i'm petro like maybe don't trump thinks that i'm an oil company. Look at my name. You might you might want to nationalize me. I do want to talk F you said, thanks for the two for Venet Trump says we control Venezuela oil. But do we control the coffee? Will you be hawking Trump coffee on Rumble now?

You know, I could maybe get behind cheaper coffee prices if the president can help us there because I'm an addict. Listen, I need my fix. And you know I drink. vast amounts of coffee all day. I'll tell you what, my

partner objects vociferously to Starbucks. I like Starbucks. I like the coffee. I like the different choices of the coffee. It's not as bad as it used to be. It's not as bad as it used to be. But she she believes that they are

supportive of Israel and she wants me to boycott Starbucks. So for a while I was like trying not to go to Starbucks, but sometimes I would go. And then she bought me this DeLongi coffee maker, espresso machine that makes the most wonderful coffee I have ever had in my life. And I only rarely go to a Starbucks now.

And even then, only at the airport when I have to take some 5 a.m. Godforsaken flight to Miami or whatever. We should have a coffee off. I'm personally partial to the Dutch maker, the Technoverm. It's a very expensive, beautiful machine. One of my fans bought it for me. Wow. It's also gorgeous, but also makes the best coffee I've ever had in my life.

Oh, that's fantastic. I don't know. Fantastic. I'm loving it. Yeah, no, it's like the machine is really underrated. People don't, you know, they think, I mean, the water is also a super important. you know component too yes oh my gosh yes um google google homini uh have a question for us are we sure that it's about the oil and not the u.s. dollar no i think it's about the dollar yeah more than the

oil well the oil will prop up the dollar yeah i think he's right i think it is about the dollar you know we said i years ago i don't remember if i was doing the show with michel or doing the show with Brian or whatever. But I think we were all pretty much in agreement that when Kuwait did that oil sale to China. And I'm going to say it was like 2019 or 20.