The following is a transcript of an episode of DeProgram with Ted Rall and John Kiriakou for Monday, July 21, 2025. Transcript was done via AI, so beware of possible errors.
Ted Rall: Hey there. Thanks for joining us here on DeProgram, where we deprogram you from corporate news propaganda. Coming to you on the left side of your screen, I’m an editorial cartoonist, Ted Rall. On the right side of the screen, but not politically, is John Kiriakou, CIA whistleblower. Thanks for joining us. We’re here now on our regular schedule, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, 5 PM Eastern Time, 2 PM on the West Coast, and we love you in all other 22 time zones as well. I guess there are more than that. There are those half-time zones. Those are very strange. I don’t even understand the reason. Well, we could do it. If only there was a device that could answer that question for us.
So, let’s get into it. Lots to talk about today, as always. John suggested, and we definitely have to talk about, the role of Donald Trump as bully-in-chief. I think that’s self-explanatory, but we’ll get into the details and exactly what that’s all about. Several of my cartoonist friends called me about a story out of The Intercept saying that ICE is now setting up domestic surveillance against critics like yours truly and John, who say anything bad about ICE on social media. So we’ll talk about that chilling effect here. As ICE is prepared to become the biggest police agency in the United States now with its massive expansion, we’ll talk about the human cost of the Trump deportations, including this terrible case of an 82-year-old Chilean torture victim under Pinochet who is at death’s door in Guatemala. Sorry, not Guantanamo. He was actually reported dead. ICE thought he was dead, but he’s hanging on, thank God. We’ll talk about that. Pat Tillman—some people who are familiar with my cartooning career will remember that I did a very controversial cartoon about him. His brother appears to be having some major problems, and he’s under arrest for apparently intentionally driving into the front of a post office in San Jose, California. And on the Israel-Gaza front, I guess you could call this good news: 23 countries just signed a joint statement, including Canada, urging an immediate cessation of hostilities and criticizing Israel for its behavior there. So, John, let’s get into it with Donald Trump. There’s the Gulf of America stuff, which I have to admit, let’s start with that. A lot of stuff that Trump does comes out of the fevered rants of right-wing media over the years, as you expected. I watch Fox every single day, and I have for years. I’ve never seen anyone talk about renaming the Gulf of Mexico before Donald Trump brought it up during his second term. He never brought it up during his first term. Never. Suddenly. So where is this coming from?
John Kiriakou: I think it came from his decision to rename Mount McKinley, Mount McKinley. I think he figured, “Hey, why should I stop here? I’m going to change the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America.” And, you know, the people on the MAGA right just love, love, loved it. It’s such a stupid thing, but it’s easily changed back. But then we saw the way he began bullying universities to the point where Harvard’s not allowed to accept international students. Columbia is losing its federal funding. Yale had to back down and get on its knees in front of him. That bothered me very much. But then today, he issued a new demand that the Washington Commanders, Washington’s football team, must change its name back to the Washington Redskins, or he will nix the deal that the team has negotiated with the city of Washington, D.C., for a new stadium. This is a big deal in Washington because both the Washington Redskins and the Washington Senators used to play at what became RFK Stadium. RFK Stadium is a terrible stadium. It’s been abandoned now for years. They’re in the process right now of knocking it down. The Redskins moved to Lanham, Maryland. They’ve been there for twenty-five years, whatever it is. They, under pressure, dropped the name Redskins several years ago and couldn’t pick a name. So they were known for two seasons as the Washington Football Team, which was also stupid. And then they decided to become the Washington Commanders several years ago. Well, they’re tired of playing in Lanham, Maryland. The stadium there now is old and in disrepair, and they decided that they wanted to go back to Washington because the new stadium that’s being built on the RFK Stadium site is right on the metro. It has its own metro station, so everybody can get there. It’s going to have tons of parking for thousands and thousands of cars, and Lanham’s not like that. You have to drive to Lanham, Maryland. It’s the only way to get there and the only way to get to a game. So he’s thrown this wrench into the deal now. RFK has been torn down. It can’t be renovated. They wouldn’t have renovated it anyway. But now unless they change their name back to Redskins, he’s going to kill that stadium deal, and the Commanders are stuck. Not just the Commanders are stuck. Residents of Washington, D.C., are stuck because they’re not going to see any of the revenue benefits that were expected to come from the team. So now, I mean, the only reason it seems to me that he’s doing this is just because of cruelty. He’s just mean. He’s trying to bully. And I think it just distracts from the important issues.
Ted Rall: I’m glad, John, that you reminded us of what happened with Mount McKinley, which had been renamed to Mount Denali. That’s the Native American preferred name. It’s also an SUV. So it went from McKinley to Denali. I guess, traditionally, it may have been called Denali before. It was named Mount McKinley, obviously. It’s been there a long time. And so, in the case of the Alaskan mountain, you know, let’s get rid of the Native American name because that will piss off the Native Americans. In the case of the Washington Commanders, let’s restore the Native American name because it’s a Native American name they don’t like. And I can’t help but think about that incident in the first term when he had Native American tribe representatives pose for a photo under the portrait of Andrew Jackson, a genocidal maniac who, aside from shooting the husbands of women he was having sex with, also liked to kill Native Americans.
John Kiriakou: Good point. He did.
Ted Rall: I mean, Columbia is also about to sign a $20 billion deal with the Trump administration to try to get some of their research funds back, which Trump has been wielding as well.
John Kiriakou: If they would just address the rampant antisemitism that’s taking place.
Ted Rall: I think it’ll be easier to find the Loch Ness Monster than the rampant antisemitism.
John Kiriakou: I think so too. I mean, he did. I don’t understand what he hopes to gain. He’s a lame duck. He can’t run for president again. I think this is just to be mean. And you know what? Speaking of lame ducks, I’m sorry I should have brought this up before the show, but we should probably talk about this new Trump-announced policy to convince the Texas state legislature to do an off-cycle congressional redistricting to squeeze three, four, or five more Democrats out of their congressional districts so that the Republicans can hang on to the House of Representatives in perpetuity.
Ted Rall: Is that allowed? I mean, because it normally happens after the census every ten years.
John Kiriakou: This has never been done before, Ted. It’s never been done before. And so Hakeem Jeffries then announced this morning that he is filing lawsuits to ask judicial permission to redraw the congressional districts in California, New York, New Jersey, and one other state—oh, Minnesota—to squeeze Republicans out of their districts to offset Texas if Trump wins. Incredible. They’re just like crime families, the two parties. That’s all.
Ted Rall: Well, I mean, in fairness to the Democrats—not something I do normally because I hate them—but, you know, it is true that in this particular respect, they’re between a rock and a hard place. Because if they go tit for tat, they’re playing Trump’s game, and they legitimize it. It’s kind of like having an abusive spouse. If they hit you all the time and you hit them back, well, then you’re just two people who hit each other. But on the other hand, if you don’t do anything, then you’re a wuss, and you’re getting rolled, and your partisans hate you. In this respect, I don’t know what Democrats should do.
John Kiriakou: I agree, man. I don’t know. The whole thing states. It really, this goes back to the 1990s. We can hate on James Carville all we want, and he’s deserving of our hate sometimes. But he can be charming as hell. He got into a knockdown, drag-out fight with Hillary Clinton in the mid-1990s because he wanted to pour millions of dollars into state legislative races to win seats in state houses and state senates because they’re the ones that redraw these maps every ten years. And she told him that was a waste of money, that the money the DNC had should go to U.S. House and U.S. Senate races, and anything left over should go to the presidential campaign. And the Clintons walked away from the state races. And look what happened. Republicans control, like, 70-something percent of them now. There’s no farm team. When was the last time that you ever heard of a state senator or state representative being spoken about on the national stage? It was Barack Obama in 2004, when state senator Barack Obama gave a speech at the Democratic National Convention.
Ted Rall: I was there. I remember it well. You’re right about that. And, yeah, I remember, of course, I’m so old. In the late ’80s, when I worked for a Japanese bank, I met Governor Bill Clinton, and my boss turns to me and says, “That guy’s going to be president.” And I was like, “Who? Him?” Shows my political instincts. Don’t have me pick candidates. Wow. So, I just wonder how this is going to play out legally. I mean, redistricting is kind of like, they do what they want much of the time? The states set their own rules. They change them all the time. They’re going to get away with this.
John Kiriakou: I think they’re going to get away with it. Trump has so stacked the courts.
Ted Rall: Well, let’s talk a little bit about the psychology of political bullying. There’s always been political bullying, and I could name example after example. But here, it’s really naked. It’s brazen, and it just seems to be the way Trump always worked as a developer. He just comes down like a ton of bricks: “Don’t mess with me. I do whatever I want. It’s not personal. I’ll just destroy your life to get what I want. You’re in my way. Don’t be in my way.” And nothing much really stands in his way. I mean, is it just as simple as, this works, so I do it?
John Kiriakou: I think it actually is. I think Donald Trump is like a lot of CIA officers that I’ve met over the years, senior ones, where they just push the envelope of legality as far as they can until they’re slapped down. There was a great piece in the Washington Post today saying that in 70% of the federal cases that Trump has lost so far, the administration has just ignored the judge’s decision. So they’re in contempt. But how do you hold a president in contempt? You can’t do it. What are you going to do? You’re going to lock up the White House lawyers until the president does what you tell him to do? That’s not going to happen ever.
Ted Rall: Because the guys who wrote the Constitution were a bunch of English upper-class gentlemen. The idea that someone would behave indecently, totally ignoring the rules, was just not something that would cross their minds. It never occurred to them.
John Kiriakou: I’m not optimistic. Michael Gardner says the judiciary is our best hope. I agree, but even that does not make me sleep better at night.
Ted Rall: No. I think this is a major crisis. And the part that I keep coming back to is, you know, this man was only elected six months ago. We’re one-eighth of the way out of the woods.
John Kiriakou: One thing that I find kind of fun too, and this is a minor point, but it bugs the hell out of me, is I hate having to defend Barack Obama. But when Obama named whatever it was—a drug czar, a border czar, some czar—I remember Fox News going to some Republican rally and asking people, “What do you think about this?” And they’re like, “We don’t have no czars in the U.S. That’s a communist idea, having czars.” And I was like, “Man, you morons.” Reagan is the one who started the czars with his drug czar. It was a Reagan administration policy, and the people are too stupid, shortsighted to remember that. Number one. Number two, Obama took an incredible amount of criticism for the number of executive orders that he signed. And I remember Republicans just screaming that he’s ruling by executive order. It’s just executive fiat. It’s illegal. It’s anti-democratic. Donald Trump has signed more executive orders at this point in his term than any president in American history, and the MAGA Republicans are loving it. The sum total. So now we’ve gotten ourselves into a political position where, when the Democrats win the presidency again, they’re going to have to sign hundreds of executive orders to undo the executive orders that were signed under Donald Trump. Just keep happening like this every time, cycle after cycle, and it’s going to be the Gulf of Mexico, and then it’s going to be the Gulf of America again, and then the Gulf of Mexico again. And we just make ourselves look like boobs.
Ted Rall: That’s right. And it’s a system that doesn’t work. And while we’re doing this, we’re not addressing our real problems. John, one of the things that’s really changed too is we’ve seen fairly unified government before. There have been other times when one party held the trifecta, all three branches. That’s the case now. But what I’ve never seen or read about, as far as I can tell, is where one branch of Congress, particularly the House of Representatives, completely becomes a rubber stamp, enabling party, gives up its prerogatives entirely, completely relinquishes oversight or wanting to be consulted. It used to be that in Washington, power was everything. Don’t step on my toes. Yes, we’re both from the same party. I like you, President Kiriakou. But as Speaker of the House, I’ve got to insist that you check in with me. And now it’s like, “Yes, sir, Mr. President. I’ll do, and I don’t even hear from you. You never call. You never write.” It’s really that part is truly frightening. For students of Nazism, the Enabling Act, when the Reichstag just passed one law that finally said anything that Adolf Hitler proposes is automatically passed. They still met and everything, but it was kind of like under the Roman Empire where the Senate still met, but the emperor had decided everything. It was a dictatorship. That’s where we’re at. Even Republican senators don’t seem to be pushing back real hard.
John Kiriakou: No. If you think they’re welcoming it, look at Lindsey Graham. Could Lindsey Graham be any more of a lap dog than he is? I’m not even sure it’s possible. And 2324 makes a good point. The Democrats are no better. The Democrats are in a state of utter chaos right now. They can’t even decide if they want to endorse Mamdani for mayor of New York. He’s their nominee. Well, they don’t want to. They don’t like the cut of his democratic socialist jib.
Ted Rall: That’s right. But they’re going to, and now the thing is, it’s a bad look. They will as they get closer, but by then, it’s too late. The time to show unity is in advance. Probably better not to do it at all. By the way, shout out to 2324. Thank you very much for the $9.99 donation. We really, really do appreciate it. Well, let’s answer his question. What does happen next with the Democrats? I would have expected by this point, we’d start to see some initial cohesion, but I don’t see it.
John Kiriakou: No. There’s no cohesion at all. I think what’s going to happen, though, they are such a corporatist party at their core that they’re going to go right back into that DLC, middle-of-the-road, tack to the left in the primaries, tack to the right in the general corporate party that they’ve been since Bill Clinton was nominated in 1992. When they went to, what was it? Annapolis or Y River, I think it was at Y. They went to their Democratic off-site in 1992, and they invited the Democratic Leadership Council to present on what became the centrist third way.
Ted Rall: That was the centrist third way that no longer exists. But, basically, it doesn’t need to because they run the whole DNC.
John Kiriakou: The whole party moved to the right. I don’t think it’s going to change. We’re not going to see a Bernie Sanders-like person ever again, particularly as a Democrat.
Ted Rall: No. Mamdani is the only game in town now. We’ll see what happens there. But, I mean, the mayor of New York doesn’t usually go on to anything national of any import. We’re not calling you President Giuliani. But, you know, he could have. I mean, just surprising, but for a variety of reasons, I think it just doesn’t carry over. You know, Carville has an op-ed in today’s New York Times where he talks a little about that. His prediction is that the day after the 2026 midterms, there will be a leader, a front-runner, apparent for the presidency who will effectively become the leader of the Democratic Party, and nothing will really coalesce until there’s that leader.
John Kiriakou: I think he’s living in a fantasy land.
Ted Rall: I think he may be right, but I just don’t know that there is such a leader who can do this. There are eight Democrats out of the desert.
John Kiriakou: There are eight Democrats that have already either set up exploratory committees or traveled to Iowa or New Hampshire for fundraisers.
Ted Rall: Yep. We know the list. I mean, it’s not too early to start shaking the trees for money. Gavin Newsom, Andy Beshear, governor of Kentucky, Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania. Josh Shapiro will not be the nominee. The progressives will just not allow it.
John Kiriakou: You know what, though? On principle, I could or would never vote for someone who has served in a foreign army. I honestly have no idea where his loyalties lie. And if it’s to the IDF, not a chance.
Ted Rall: Yeah. The IDF is a criminal organization. Totally agree.
John Kiriakou: Travis has a very down-in-the-weeds question for me about Phil Mudd. So I knew Phil Mudd very, very well at the CIA. Believe it or not, he used to be a nice guy, a decent guy. He’s a direct descendant of Dr. Mudd, who set John Wilkes Booth’s broken leg after he murdered Abraham Lincoln. And he’s a distant cousin of Roger Mudd, the famed journalist. But Phil, in order to promote his own career, went all in with the torture program. So Phil and I were pals until 2001. And then, without even having exchanged a word, we became enemies to the point where he testified against me in the grand jury. Not that he knew anything about my case. He just wanted to say on the record that I was an asshole. That was it. So I always enjoyed watching Phil fail. He was initially appointed deputy undersecretary of Homeland Security for intelligence under Obama. And I called a couple of friends of mine at the agency who were quiet supporters of mine, and one who was on the Obama transition team, and they yanked his nomination. And he’s not done anything of import since then, except he coauthored a book that was a defense of the torture program, which just made me so happy that his name now will be associated in perpetuity with the torture program. He so deserves it.
And, Reid, I’m sorry. I never had anything to do personally with Leon Panetta, but I published an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times from prison, handwritten on a legal pad, which they gladly ran, saying that Leon Panetta should be in the bunk next to me because he committed espionage. He gave classified briefings over a classified mock-up of the bin Laden compound to Kathryn Bigelow, a Hollywood director, and Mark Boal, a Hollywood writer, for Zero Dark Thirty. And then invited them to the attaboy speech after bin Laden was killed, forgot that they had been invited, and then outed the names of all the SEAL Team Six officers who were responsible for the bin Laden killing, and then said, “Oops. Sorry.” That’s all classified. And then they redacted not just the six names. They redacted 27 lines of his comments because they found out that a whole bunch of other stuff that he said was also classified. And remember, the judge in my case said that the definition of espionage is providing national defense information to any person not entitled to receive it. What he did was the definition of espionage. Insane. Jessica Chastain played—I don’t know. Should I say her name? She played the red-headed devil. I won’t say her name. I’ll probably get in trouble again. And Billy Waugh. Billy died a couple of years ago during COVID, not of COVID. He was well into his nineties, but I did not keep in touch with him after I left the agency. Every once in a while, I would run into a mutual friend. I’d say, “Tell Billy I said hi,” and then Billy would say, “Tell John I said hi.” But that was the end of it. I liked Billy a lot, but Billy kept some dangerous company.
Ted Rall: Shall we talk about ICE? And I also, before I should interject about this case of Luis Leon that, you know, you read a case and some cases make your blood boil. This guy, 82 years old, came to the United States in 1986 under Ronald Reagan. He’d been tortured by the Pinochet regime of Chile, notorious. He got political asylum under a right-wing Republican administration, rightly so. He’s lived here peaceably all these years. He loses his wallet. In his wallet was his green card. So he goes online: “What do I do?” You go to ICE, and you file a form, and we’ll give you a new one. He makes an appointment, shows up, is cuffed immediately, dragged off, and disappeared into the system, into the network of domestic immigration gulags.
John Kiriakou: His family called every morgue, every police station, every hospital.
Ted Rall: Yep. Can’t find him. He’s got a green card. He’s basically a U.S. citizen who can’t vote. That’s what a green card holder is. And the guy’s 82 years old and suffering from all sorts of medical conditions. Well, finally, weeks pass. The family is completely losing their mind. By the way, his wife doesn’t know where he is. And then ICE calls and says, “Yeah, by the way, he died. You can pick up his body in Guatemala.” And to add to the excitement, because never a dull moment, it turns out, “Oh, not dead yet, but he might.” He’s desperately ill in a hospital in Guatemala, and he may or may not make it back. This is ludicrous.
John Kiriakou: That’s kidnapping. It’s kidnapping and torture is what it is. The guy came in.
Ted Rall: It was, yeah. They just swept him up. They don’t even allege that he committed a crime. Like, you did something that justifies us yanking your green card, which, by the way, they don’t have that authority to do anyway. They’re not even making the case. They literally have no basis. Just whoosh. He just did it. This can happen to anybody. It happened to that U.S. army vet. The Intercept has this piece that basically says that ICE is making an enemies list. They’ve hired private contractors to monitor social media feeds to keep track of their critics. Their explanation for this is that ICE officers are supposedly in a lot of danger. They really hate it. And what if something were to happen to one? They’d want to be able to know that maybe it was someone who posted on X, something that was bad that would help them investigate this possible theoretical future threat to these dudes. Of course, obviously, they are hated and reviled, not because they’re enforcing the law, but because of the way they’re behaving, the kinds of things that they’re doing.
I had two cartoonists call me today and say that they’re concerned that they’ve said negative things about ICE in their cartoons and in their social media feeds, and their cartoons appear on social media. And they’re wondering if they need to start thinking about leaving the United States. This is the intention here, clearly, to establish a chilling effect on criticism, because if that were not the case, they wouldn’t announce it. If it was something they just wanted to do for their personal safety, they’d just do it. But why announce it? The announcement is to let you know, “We see you. We’re making a list, and we’re checking it twice, and you’re going to be on that list.” And when we’re done deporting all the foreigners, well, we’re not going to just close shop and say, “Wow, we deported all the illegals. Throw us a party. You’re welcome.” They’re going to expand, and they’re going to turn—they’ve already been expelling green card holders. Just last week, there was this raid on a California cannabis farm where they arrested and tried to deport a U.S. citizen born in the U.S. who is also a U.S. Army vet, 23 years old, who was working at this legal cannabis farm. The dude almost died in custody. He was so badly physically maltreated. And, of course, he’s suing. There are all sorts of allegations of medical abuse in ICE custody. And now there’s this surveillance project, which, you know, is terrifying. It feels a lot like fascism.
John Kiriakou: I think that is fascism. I happen to be in New York. Sorry, I didn’t tell you in advance, but I’ve been swamped. I’m in Queens to finish the photography for my next book, and I went to the grave today of Roy Cohn. And, you know, what a charmer. It’s not really a grave. He’s in a family mausoleum, the Marcus family. And all it says is “Roy Cohn, birth year and death year, lawyer and patriot.” Well, he’s not a lawyer. He is one of the darkest, most hated and hateful figures in modern American history. Jesus. And he would fit in so well in government today. He represented Donald Trump.
Ted Rall: I mean, early on. Roy Cohn and they were buddies. There’s that movie, which I haven’t seen, The Apprentice, about their early relationship and the things that Trump supposedly picked up from Roy Cohn. He was, of course, the scoundrel of the Army-McCarthy hearings.
John Kiriakou: Absolutely. Let me say real quickly, we have a whole bunch of questions. Thank you, Soudan. My book, Remains of the Day, the definitive guide to Washington, D.C.’s historic cemeteries, is supposed to be out next week. It won’t be, and I don’t know why, but it’s ready to come out. The book after that is called Whispers in the Dirt, the definitive guide to New York City’s mafia graves. That’s why I’m unshaven. I’ve been out since eight this morning. I went to five different cemeteries here.
Ted Rall: Oh my god. Forever.
John Kiriakou: Ted, I’m going from one grave to the other. I put it into Waze, and it’s like, “Continue straight for two miles.” In the same cemetery. There are 350,000 people buried in this cemetery.
Ted Rall: They’re a major feature on the map of New York City.
John Kiriakou: It’s crazy. So, anyway, Cohn was also an attorney for a lot of high-level organized crime figures, and I wanted to put him in there too. That’s why I was out. But Cohn made me think, frankly, of Stephen Miller. You guys are mentioning Stephen Miller here. Just between us, I heard last week that one reason I haven’t been pardoned is that I have a Stephen Miller problem. So I’m going to try to work that out so Stephen Miller doesn’t hate who he thinks is John Kiriakou.
Ted Rall: Maybe you shouldn’t say anything bad about him here.
John Kiriakou: Yeah. Right. You get a pass from me on this. Saint John’s Cemetery in Queens has Lucky Luciano, Vito Genovese who’s next to Tommy Lucchese, who’s a hundred feet from Lucky Luciano. And then in the mausoleum is John Gotti, and he’s next to Roy DeMeo, and he’s next to a guy that he shot six times in the head. It’s just nuts.
Ted Rall: I believe it. So do we want to talk any more about ICE, or what do you think?
John Kiriakou: Before you get into it, just as an aside about ICE, I get this hyperlocal newsletter every day at four. It’s called Arlington Now, and it’s for Arlington, Virginia. And they had an article today that there’s this serious feud between the Arlington County Sheriff’s Department and ICE. And my first thought was, “Good. Good for the sheriff’s department.” I voted for this man for sheriff. I don’t even remember his name. Not the woman. She retired. I voted for this Hispanic guy because he was just a low-level sheriff, and he was going to go in and bomb-throw and tear the whole place down. So I click on the article to see what the fight is about. And it says the sheriff’s department is refusing to cooperate with ICE. And so ICE said that they’re going to try to take over the sheriff’s department. I’m like, “Okay. That’s cool.” And then it said the reason why this fight is taking place is that ICE has twice put a hold on this convicted pedophile. And rather than hold him until an ICE officer can get there to deport him to wherever it is in Latin America he’s supposed to be deported to, they just keep letting him go, and he keeps molesting other children. It’s like, “No. That’s not cool.” Stand up to ICE, but not in support of a pedophile. What the heck are you thinking?
Ted Rall: Well, also, I’m not sure, like, I want foreign kids to be molested either. Prosecute him. Hold on to him. Nail him. I mean, nail him here. This is one of those cases where it’s like, yeah, we can keep him here. I don’t know that I necessarily trust returning him, unless it’s to a country that we can believe. So what do you think? I mean, is there going to be political pushback here either in the Democratic Party, in the media, or on the street?
John Kiriakou: There has to be. I’m still kind of chuckling about that woman who voted for Trump in Indiana. She and her husband had that successful steakhouse, apparently the most successful steakhouse in Indianapolis. He came here from Mexico thirty-five years ago, never got legalized, but got married, had kids, has a profitable, successful business, a pillar of the community, and they grabbed him and sent him back to Mexico. And she was crying on the news saying that she voted for Trump because he said he was only going to throw out the bad hombres. And then there was a woman last week. I laughed so hard. I don’t mean to laugh, but she said that she voted for Trump because she wanted to own the libs. But now with the big beautiful bill, she’s going to lose her Medicaid. And what’s she going to do? She can’t afford medical insurance. What, all I wanted to do was own the libs. Like, you moron. There are consequences to our votes.
Ted Rall: This is not really saying that this is a consequence thing, but I’ve always been obsessed with always having my paperwork, particularly both of my passports, up to date. Friends who have nebulous legal status here, because a lot of people have come in and overstayed visas or gotten green cards but never become citizens, I’ve always told them, “You never know in this country how the political winds will shift. You can just ask the Japanese Americans in 1941. It’s always good. If you’re not sure, get yourself regularized. Get as much legal documentation as you can.” Right now, obviously, it’s not going to happen. But when a Democrat comes back in, get that done if you want to stay because you just never know what’s going to happen.
John Kiriakou: You never know. That’s absolutely true. And the situation domestically has become so crazy, stuff that we’ve never seen before. You know, masked ICE kidnappers roaming the streets.
Ted Rall: I’m still waiting for the violence. This is a country full of weapons. It’s like 12 guns for every man, woman, and child. Someone’s going to shoot these ICE guys. And the ICE guys, honestly, it’s not really illegal to resist being kidnapped. If you don’t know who the people are, anybody could dress like that, cruise around in an unmarked car, all masked up, and try to grab with their little fake police outfits. No badge. No ID.
John Kiriakou: You go on YouTube and type in “fake cop,” and you’ll have video after video of people getting pulled over. And it turns out the person being pulled over is a real cop, being pulled over by a fake cop, and then clarity ensues. I love those.
Ted Rall: That’s awesome. I used to tell my ex-wife, we lived in a rural area, and I would tell her, “If you’re in the rural area and you see the red and blue lights behind you, just keep driving until you get to a gas station, someplace that’s well lit. Don’t just pull over on the side of some country road. And if they get mad, they get mad. Whatever. But, you know, anyone with $20 can buy those things and put them on the roof of their car.”
John Kiriakou: Galls.com.
Ted Rall: And I don’t think cops should be driving around in unmarked cars anyway. You don’t need them. Drive around in a police cruiser like a normal person. It’s going to happen. I’m really curious when it happens, how people will respond to that. I don’t know whether they’re going to laugh and be like, “ICE had it coming,” or they’ll be like, “That’s so terrible. They were just enforcing the law.” Or will it just be completely siloed, based on what party affiliation you have?
John Kiriakou: One fun thing I saw in the LA Times the other day is that tow truck drivers are now towing ICE’s cars. So these ICE guys just park anywhere they damn well please, and they get out to raid a restaurant or whatever, and tow trucks are towing their cars away.
Ted Rall: That’s awesome. Is it intentional?
John Kiriakou: Oh, yeah.
Ted Rall: Oh, that’s so great. Keep doing it, guys. Team tow truck all the way. Jay French is asking, “How did Obama manage to deport so many people without making much noise?” Good question. I don’t know the answer to that question. My understanding is that, first of all, he trolled prisons more. So you don’t see that. He was going for undocumented people at prisons, and nobody cares when they’re really bad hombres. And, also, he went to workplaces like Tyson Chicken in Arkansas. Those are in rural areas. So he got away with a lot, man. The violent coordinated Homeland Security raids of the encampments, all on the same morning.
John Kiriakou: Oh, yeah. The Tuesday morning kill list was an Obama invention.
Ted Rall: Yeah. And my personal favorite Obama quote is his term for watching drone killings when someone’s head explodes. He coined it. He called them “squirters.” No, ma’am, we love Barack Obama. He’s the best. He was great. We love him.
John Kiriakou: Wow.
Ted Rall: I think we can probably move on to this bizarre story out of San Jose, California, where, so, Pat Tillman—I have a personal connection here. So Pat Tillman was an Arizona Cardinals player. I thought he was a quarterback, but he was a big deal at the Arizona Cardinals. And in the days after 9/11, he volunteered to serve in Iraq. And then he was ultimately transferred to Afghanistan. He died in Afghanistan. Now, a lot of this, basically, the way this was originally presented in the media at his memorial service, which was led by Senator John McCain of Arizona, and it was nationally televised, it was a big thing. It was kind of like he was our noble patriot hero who gave up a million-dollar career to go and serve his country and fight the terrorists in Afghanistan. That’s how this whole thing was marketed. He was basically marketed like he was a right-wing conservative who saw 9/11 and got pissed and went to Afghanistan. Well, that’s not really what happened. What really happened was that he went to Iraq first. Why did he go to Iraq? Because his brother had previously enlisted, and he thought, “Oh my god, I’m so pissed about this.” He was opposed to the Iraq War. He said it was completely illegal, but he got the idea, maybe from a recruiter, that he could be assigned to the same unit as his brother, with whom he was very close, and could watch his back in combat, and they could be brothers side by side in the same unit. Army recruiters are basically the best part. They told him that. He believed them. He promised their mom, “I’ll take care of Kevin. I’ll go.” And then he went to Iraq, and then they were, of course, assigned to different units. And then he went to Afghanistan, where, ironically, they were in units that served in the same area, but they were never in the same unit. And then we were told that the horrible Al Qaeda terrorists shot Tillman. Actually, that turned out not to be true. That was friendly fire that killed him. So he was killed by his comrades accidentally.
And then when his body was brought back, there was this giant patriotism-off, presenting Pat Tillman as, you know, he gave up his football career to help serve God, country, and George W. Bush. So enter Ted Rall, political cartoonist. None of this information that he’d served in Iraq, that he was a left-winger, that he had gone and met with Noam Chomsky in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that he was violently opposed to the Bush administration, to interventionism, to militarism, and that he was just there to help his brother—none of that’s reported. Nobody knows any of that. I think he’s a right-wing idiot who basically fell for Bush’s lies and bullshit about Iraq and Afghanistan and went there and got used and died like a moron. So I did a cartoon about it. And, basically, it was one of my spate of really controversial cartoons during that time period, and that was one of them. And so the cartoon came out, and all hell broke loose. Anyway, that’s some background.
I got to know—I’m at a cartooning convention in Sacramento, and I get a call from Mary Tillman, the mom. And she’s really cool, and she’s just like, “You know, I was really mad at you and furious at you. But after I calmed down, I decided I wanted to hear from you what you were thinking and what your thoughts were.” And I just told her, “Look, I did a cartoon on the story as it was reported at the time, which turned out to be all lies. If I’d had that information, I wouldn’t have done that cartoon at all. He’s not an idiot. He was a wonderful, smart, compassionate, thoughtful, progressive young man who got killed in the stupidest way you can die in a war, killed by your own men and through no fault of his own. And it’s a fucking tragedy and a nightmare.” And we talked about it, and we got to know each other. I would say we’re friends, and we’ve talked since then. So in today’s news, one of the other brothers of this family, obviously deeply touched by tragedy, drove his car intentionally into the front of a post office in the San Francisco Bay Area. It caught fire, and he’s under arrest. Apparently, he’d been suffering from mental issues for quite some time, and the family is dealing with this. And, you know, it’s just like a reminder that this happened a long time ago. Even I still feel really bad. I don’t feel guilty because you have to have done something wrong to feel guilty, and I didn’t do anything wrong as a political cartoonist, but I feel bad. If I could go back in time, I wouldn’t draw that cartoon at all. I might have drawn a cartoon criticizing Bush and John McCain for being scurrilous dogs, but I didn’t. The whole thing now, this is happening too. What a shit show. And it just shows how long the aftermath of this kind of trauma lasts. Pat Tillman, oh yeah, I know who that is, but it’s been twenty-one years since his death. And it’s still kind of killing them.
John Kiriakou: He was a safety and defensive back. I will tell you something that I have never said publicly before. My grandmother on my mom’s side had four brothers, and all four of them served in the Second World War. And when I was a little kid, my grandmother was not close to her brothers. There was one in particular, Uncle Bill, who lived in the same town. We would see him at family events, the Greek festival, or a dance, or a baptism, or whatever. And my mom always told me not to ever ask Uncle Bill about the war. When I was a little kid, that didn’t really mean anything. But by the time I was 12 or 13, I was very interested in the war because a lot of my friends’ dads had served, or if your dad didn’t, then your grandfather did. So I never approached Uncle Bill. Well, when I finally became an adult, my mom told me a story. This was the reason why she told me I really should stay away from Uncle Bill. Uncle Bill was one of the American soldiers who liberated Dachau Concentration Camp outside of Munich in the closing days of the Second World War. And he never was able to get over what he saw there—piles and piles of bodies and half-burned bodies in the crematoria and people looking like skeletons. Now we call it PTSD. They didn’t have a name for it back then. He gets back from the war and sort of bounces around from job to job. Fast forward to 1953. The war’s been over for eight years. Uncle Bill has had no therapy or mental health care whatsoever. There was nothing like that back then. He somehow gets it into his head in 1953 that Richard Nixon, who had just been elected vice president, promised him a job at the post office in Steubenville, Ohio, where he lived. So Monday morning, Uncle Bill puts on his best suit. He goes down to the post office, and they said, “What are you here for?” He said, “I’m here to start work.” They said, “We don’t know anything about that. You’re not supposed to work here.” And Uncle Bill said, “That damn Nixon, I’m going to make him pay for humiliating me.” Six months later, who happens to come to the civic center to give a speech but Vice President Richard Nixon. And Uncle Bill tried to get into the venue with a .45. And he was arrested and charged with conspiracy to shoot Richard Nixon, and he served five years in prison. What my mom used to say, “There, but for the grace of God, our name could have been Oswald.” Even after all this, he never got any mental health care. And now here we are in 2025. I’ll tell you how Uncle Bill died. He got hit by a train. Like, how can you not see that the train is coming right at you? And my mom said, “Well, I think that was the whole point.” No Walkmans back then.
Ted Rall: I almost got hit by a train. I was listening to that.
John Kiriakou: Got killed by a train. My mom’s best friend’s son got killed by a train. Uncle Bill got killed by a train. Where you and I grew up, Ted, a lot of the crossings don’t have the bars that come down. It’s just, you stop and look both ways and hope there’s not a train coming. So here we are in 2025. Seventy-two years have passed since Uncle Bill was arrested, and we still don’t have adequate mental health care for people who come back from combat.
Ted Rall: I think of that famous incident with General Patton, who slapped a shell-shocked, traumatized soldier and got into a lot of trouble for it because it was reported. He didn’t recover. His command assignments, he never recovered after slapping that soldier. And rightly so, I think. But that was the point of view. And things haven’t really changed. In this case, this is like the brother of the victim, and it’s just horrible. He’s collateral damage. We should probably leave that and check in on Israel. So, basically, 23 countries signed a declaration, mostly European countries, but also Canada. Major countries are demanding an immediate end to hostilities. And, of course, every single day, a dozen or more Palestinians report to a food distribution site in Gaza and are massacred by IDF forces. Every single day. They’re so desperate that they figure, even though it’s incredibly dangerous, “Well, we’re going to die of starvation anyway.” At this point, there’s still all the semantic arguments: Is this genocide or not? If both it is, but people who say it isn’t, my favorite counterarguments are, “Well, they haven’t killed them all.” I’m like, “Well, Hitler didn’t kill them all either.” And also, they’ve issued warnings and tell them to evacuate to other places. Nazi Germany did that too. That’s not really a defense. How much longer is this going to go on before someone who matters makes it stop?
John Kiriakou: Nobody is saying anything. I was looking at the BBC today too, and the BBC was saying that, yes, the Israeli IDF killed another 61 people who were standing in line for food. But there are also children who were reported to have starved to death today, including a four-year-old girl who hadn’t eaten in weeks. She was lucky that she was at least able to get water for a couple of weeks. So, yeah, the only European country that’s really said anything so far is Ireland. Everybody else is just pretending that this isn’t happening.
Ted Rall: I’m hoping France acts quickly because that would be a game-changer. France has tremendous power from its legacy as the dominant diplomatic power. French prestige is massive. So I’m hoping Emmanuel Macron does something to validate his far-left administration, which is wildly unpopular in France. This morning on BBC Radio, I was pleasantly surprised that they interviewed a physician-slash-reporter who’d been on the ground there in a hospital in Gaza for months. And he said in very clear language, “There’s no question that this is an attempt to exterminate the entire population of Gaza and to do complete ethnic cleansing.” He said something, John, that was extremely disturbing. He said that, for the IDF lately, for months, they play games with the injuries. And the BBC asked, “So what do you mean by that?” And he said, “Well, in one day, everyone will come in with a head wound. The next day, everyone comes in with a left leg wound. The day after that, everyone comes in with an abdominal wound.” And she said, “That’s a very serious allegation.” And he’s like, “It’s a fact. It’s documented. I have photos.” And so it’s like, “You think it’s a coincidence?” No. The idea they’re doing this for fun. They’re shooting civilians for fun. And to send a message to troll in this incredibly sinister way. I’m almost 62 years old. I’ve never heard of such a thing. I’ve studied war. I’ve just never heard of such depravity.
John Kiriakou: I don’t even have words. I’m just speechless. These are crimes against humanity, war crimes. They need to be prosecuted just as we had prosecutions at Nuremberg.
Ted Rall: Let’s get real. If Israel was not a U.S. ally and this was going on and the president of the United States got word this horrible situation is happening over in this country, there would be tremendous pressure. We have to lead an international invasion force. We would either do it ourselves or we’d go to the UN and say, “We’re going in as an international community. This is a Rwandan-style genocide. We’re putting a stop to it right here and now.” Am I wrong?
John Kiriakou: No. It is a Rwandan-style genocide. I was outraged when I heard that Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons were not allowed to speak, but they were also not allowed to walk. They had to go from point A to point B on their hands and knees for months at a time, and they’re just destroying their legs, being forced to do so. It’s just sick the way the Israelis are treating people. Criminal.
Ted Rall: I went with an open mind the first time I went to Israel. And when I saw the checkpoints and the way that people are treated, you can’t possibly think it’s anything but apartheid.
John Kiriakou: It just is. I think I told you my mom, back in 2008, my dad had been dead a few years, and she was lonely and bored, and she wanted to take a trip. So she called me and said, “Hey, I think I’m going to take a trip to Ireland with NPR. They’ve been advertising this group.” And I was like, “Mom, it’s February. Why do you want to go to Ireland in February? It’s going to be freezing and just pouring down rain the whole time.” And I said, “My church is planning a trip to Israel. You should go to Israel. You know everybody.” So she and my sister went to Israel for the first time. My mom never paid attention to current events or the news or anything. She would always say, “Oh, I’ve been busy raising three kids. I didn’t have time for the news.” So she comes home and says to me, “Did you have any idea how they treat the Palestinians out there?” And I was like, “Of course, I did.” And she didn’t. And for months afterwards, she would talk about how their driver, who was a Palestinian Greek Orthodox guy, was humiliated at every checkpoint, not allowed in certain hotels, not allowed across certain dividing lines. They would have to get out of their little van and walk the rest of the way just because he was Palestinian. And I said, “Yeah. And multiply that times the millions of Palestinians who live in Israel. It’s criminal.”
Ted Rall: Question Everything just posted that. I guess this is probably a quote from a story. I hope. “Heads day, legs day, testicles day, heart day. The IDF sniper’s sport includes certain targets for certain days.”
John Kiriakou: I saw the spitting. They spit on a bunch of Greek Orthodox people going into a church.
Ted Rall: They just destroyed Pope Francis’s favorite church, a very historic one, hundreds of years old, bombed it. I mean, come on. They knew where it was.
John Kiriakou: But, Ted, they did say they would investigate. They would carry out an investigation.
Ted Rall: They’re so good at that. I’m still waiting to hear, you know, they have so many investigations that they owe. We’re probably going to see those Epstein files before we see the results of those Israeli investigations. Guaranteed. They’re sons of bitches. What can I say? Alright. So, let’s see. Should we put this up? Abby Martin mentioned on Rogan that most of the IDF is kids from Jersey and the Philly suburbs. Ironically, many of the kids from Philly and Jersey over there are also Palestinian. So it’s basically like Jersey-on-Jersey violence. Seriously.
John Kiriakou: Time was when they could just settle it on the football field.
Ted Rall: That would have been better.
John Kiriakou: Awful.
Ted Rall: Well, John, I think I ended up on a depressing note here, but we gotta do that. So thanks, everyone, for joining us. Please like, follow, and share the show. We really appreciate the tremendous support you guys are giving us. Just keep it coming. Love you guys. We are here Monday, Wednesday, Friday, which means we will be back Wednesday, 5 PM here on YouTube and Rumble live. Obviously, not everyone’s available then. So if you’re watching us in streaming, we appreciate you as well. We also have an audio version of this. So for you guys, we’ve seen the numbers tick up recently. For people who are just listening, thank you so much for doing that, and thanks for enjoying the show. Thank you, I’m Ted Rall,. That’s John Kiriakou. Have a great night, and see you Wednesday.
John Kiriakou: Bye-bye.
