Ex-CIA John Kiriakou The US Government is Destroying Itself (2026)

Any [music] chance we get to speak with John Kuryaku, we say yes. Uh we talked to him a little over a year ago and it was one of our best conversations we had. Um although we got many comments saying how we were interrupting him and when I saw it render we really were uh what was unbeknownst to most everybody was that we were having huge technical issues and so I was hearing him double in my ears. It was hard to understand when there was silence or when he was done talking. And so this time we went to him in person. We didn't want to have any of those issues and so we went to DC and we got to sit down with him in person and I think it was one of our best conversations we've ever had. Um in the last year he has just gone parabolic in his fame. Uh he was on Tucker Carlson, he was on Danny Jones, Sean Ryan, Joe Rogan, uh and now he's on the Austin Matt podcast. So I'm really grateful we get to talk to him. I appreciate his perspective as a DC insider ex CIA whistleblower. He kind of knows how the game is played. I appreciate his gut checks on sort of what's going on. So, we get into geopolitics and we really give him a lot of room to talk in this one. Um, and just uh I appreciate his perspective and I try and learn from him every time I'm with him. So, thank you so much for watching. Like and subscribe if you haven't. We're doing, you know, we're still growing and uh we want to keep doing this. So, all right. Hope you enjoy it. Welcome to the Austin and Matt podcast. John Kuryaku, welcome to the show. Thank you. Thanks for having me. It seems like the US government might be destroying itself. What do you What do you think about that? Is that true? I I think it's true. And it's not This is not a partisan issue. The Democrats, the Republicans, there's no no light between them. We have, Forgive me for repeating myself, but I say this all the time. Our defense budget is bigger than the next eight largest countries combined, right? That's not tenable over the long term. And so year after year, year after year after year, we're like eight to 10 times more than the other eight combined. Yeah, that's crazy. It's crazy. It's crazy. And then we wonder why we have bridges that are falling into the rivers below them. Why our airports are [ __ ] and embarrassing. Why our interstate highways are, you know, pocked with potholes and they're impassible. Why our our hospitals are all in need of of upgrades cuz we spend all the money on weapons and all these other countries have great hospitals, great roads, great bridges is because they don't spend as much on military. That's right. We're sitting here not too far from Foggy Bottom where a lot of the agency headquarters are. Do you think there is a lot of the money going into DC that doesn't need to be right now? Oh yeah. Oh, listen. Before 911, uh the the highest concentration of millionaires per capita in the United States was in Silicon Valley in Northern California. Post 911, it's right here in Washington. Yeah, that's not a good sign. A lot of people got very rich from 911. What What is China thinking about this right now? Oh, the Chinese know, the Chinese have a far longer term outlook on life than we do. Um, and it's because our presidents have four-year terms. That's right. And the Chinese are just there forever. And so, they know that they can outweigh us. They know that we're going to get to a tipping point one of these days where we just can't pay the interest on the national debt anymore. It's pretty currency related, right? I mean, a country is its currency. That's how I like to think about it. And if if you can't sustain the currency, the country falls. And that's why a unified bricks currency is such a threat to us. Totally. You know, it's just in the discussion stages right now and the US is going to do everything it can to make sure it never ever happens. But, you know, do we have that authority over the long term? Is it really up to us to tell the Chinese, the Russians, the Indians, the Brazilians, the South Africans, the South Koreans, the Iranians, no, you can't do that because it's not good for us. I think they're going to laugh at us. I think they're going to proceed. Anyways, India's been buying a lot of gold. I know Russia's been buying a lot of gold. It seems like they're going to be in a position to have a gold back currency. Yeah. I don't know if we have that much gold, to be honest. It's kind of hard to tell. They they just tell us to take their word for it. I mean, I never met anybody that's been inside Fort Knox and has seen the gold. And I've traveled in some, you know, rarified circles over the years. The government just says we have to just believe them. Well, they always say it's just it's a security risk because I remember Elon, he said he was going to go in and stream it on X and it never happened and because it's always a security risk. We don't want people seeing the doors and the locks and and it's it's it's just plausible enough to go Yeah. Okay. But like but if no one ever gets to see it ever, we've this has happened in history before and when I don't know, bring it out, show it, and then bring it back in. I mean, do something where we don't see all the security, but you can bring it in the yard. just turn it on the turn on the camera when you're there in front of the gold. You don't have to see the the doors and the spin locks and and the cameras and all that stuff. So So what does the US have going for it right now? Like like what are what are our because if we're if our back's up against a corner right now, like what do we have going for us? What's good? 12 aircraft carrier battle groups. I mean that's that's kind of the the display of our of our might is in our carrier battle groups. Um, we still do have the world's go-to reserve currency. Uh, just about every oil purchase is still made in dollars. No matter who's doing the buying and who's doing the selling, it's all Is that the case even for Russia? No, the Russians are bartering a lot of it. And then they're they're taking rubles at whatever the international rate happens to be. They've they've proven to be far more resilient than we gave them credit for being. Um the foreign minister Sergey Lavrov said uh right after the invasion of of Ukraine, he said that that the Russians were surprised at the quickness with which the United States imposed very serious sanctions. And then 6 months later he said the Russians were surprised at the quickness with which they were able to come out from under the sanctions. Is there something? Is there a deal going to be struck between Putin and Trump? Do you think? I I've heard about this peace board. You know, the Russians, there's no incentive for the Russians to make a deal cuz they're winning and they don't need us. They're pretty self-sufficient from a resource perspective. Yeah, very much so. At least don't need anything. They've got oil, they've got gas, they've got gold, they've got everything they need. Do you need us? Do you think UK Ukraine will become like Afghanistan where we've dumped a bunch of resources and weapons and eventually we're just going to abandon it and we're going to have billions of dollars of weapons sitting there? I think that it's not going to it's not going to become the no man's land that Afghanistan has become. But yeah, I think what's going to end up happening is it's going to be a rump state. It's not going to look like it looks on the maps right now. They've they've lost Donetsk and Luhansk. They've they're going to lose um Carke. Uh I I wouldn't bet money that, you know, Crimea changes hands again. And even Odessa, the Russians just said what, three weeks ago, four weeks ago that they want Odessa. That's a serious red line for the rest of the world. But who's going to stop them? We're not willing to commit troops. It would be an act of war and it would put Russia at war with NATO which is, you know, by definition it's World War II. Are we really willing to die for Ukraine? I don't think so. I heard from Tom Billu that uh any nation that's been over their GD their debt to GDP ratio has been over 130%. Has never not gone to war in 18 months after hitting that except for Japan who basically they were an exception and we're quickly approaching the 13%. We're in the 20s right now. I just looked at a couple of days ago. Yeah. Yeah. And they say it's in the next year or so we're going to hit it or so. Um does that it seems like war is a byproduct of Yeah. poor and poor currency because war supercharges an economy and you can inflate your way out of debt. You turn money into noise as they say. Yeah. That's right. I'll tell you what really worries me is um as a country and again this is not partisan either. We just seem to be willing to do Israel's bidding whenever they whenever they demand it. Why? I don't know. The only explanation I have, and it's a kooky one, is that they have alien technology. Like I like I don't I lit they they they have something that's like we have an ace. They have some card that they just can show and everyone's like, "Wow, we just But I you know what I think it is realistically though? We we said a moment ago that the Chinese have a long view. The Israelis have a long view, too. in in the 1950s, um, Apac was formed and it was nobody ever heard of Apac. It was this little teeny tiny, you know, lobbying group. It really didn't mean anything in Washington. And then they started raising money and more money and more money and more money. And then in 1969, um, Richard Nixon guaranteed Israeli security. No president before had done that. He guaranteed Israeli security. So all of a sudden, we're committed to making sure that Israel is as strong and secure as it can possibly be. Well, that's not the the Israeli definition of security and the American definition are two different things. And it's not always in American interests to align with the Israeli definition. What's the Israeli definition? That we have to create a sense of constant chaos in the Middle East. Because when countries are fighting themselves, that means they're not fighting Israel. That's their peace. Is everyone else battling? That's right. I'll give you a couple of examples. Is that true? If it goes all to peace, everybody will turn at Israel and look at them. No. Oh, it's it's a narrative. Yeah. Oh, it didn't seem true. No, it's absolutely not true. No. Where do we even start with this? So in 2003, we were getting ready to attack Iraq. And three or four days before the invasion, the Israelis discreetly came to us and they said, "We want in on this." And we said, "Absolutely not. Absolutely not. You can't have anything to do with it. If you do, every Arab country in the alliance is going to drop out. the next day. Well, I Iraq in its western desert has um uh big power pylons, right? Because nobody lives in the western desert. So, they were they were exporting some electricity to Jordan. They were exporting a little bit to Syria. So, these are three-legged pylons, which are cheaper to build than four-legged pylons. And then two days before the invasion, these pylons just started tipping over and then the next one would tip and then the next one would tip. And I remember the deputy director of the CIA saying, "Fucking Israelis just can't stay out of it cuz they they didn't think that we were going to create enough chaos in Iraq and they thought we might as well just take out the entire electrical grid, too. Why not?" You know, can you explain to me what happened in Iran when we bombed the nuclear facility? Did how were there first of all, how are there no casualties? I just can't imagine. I see. I have I have a theory. Did we? Yeah. I think we warned him in advance. Yeah, we must have, right? Yeah. Yeah. We're coming in. You got three days. Do that. Yeah. Going back a little bit, um, you know, the Israelis bombed, uh, Thrron, right? The Israelis have a very very sophisticated program to take out military leadership and nuclear scientists. They've killed everybody. They took out literally the entire military leadership. The 12 top generals, every one of them's dead. And they did that by targeting their cell phones. what they did. There are two million um Afghan refugees in in Iran, but because they're refugees and they're not documented, they can't get any benefits, including food, medical care, housing. So, they're literally just living in the streets. So the Israelis discreetly went in and said, "Listen, we'll give you $100 a month if you tell us what time the general leaves that apartment every morning and which way he's going." And so you just recruit all of these homeless, destitute refugees, give them $100 or $50, at least they'll be able to eat for the month. And then you're collecting volumes of intelligence. And so they took out the entire military leadership. The Iranians realized what was happening and so they forbade all general officers from carrying cell phones. Right? The Israelis went in with a second wave and killed the next wave of generals. How did they do that? It never occurred to the Iranians to tell the generals bodyguards that they can't carry cell phones. Of course. And so they just targeted the bodyguard cell phones. It was as easy as that. They kill nuclear scientists in Iran, either by having assassins on the ground, which they do, or with drones, which they also use, and then they kill them when they go around the world to attend seminars or university classes or whatever. You either recruit them or kill them if they refuse the recruitment. So they've they've beaten the Iranians that way. Then the Iranians, which was my original point, the Iranians, to save face, they just took it on the chin from the Israelis. They're going to have to retaliate, but they don't want the Israelis to use nukes against them. So, they tell us, "Listen, we're going to send like 700 drones. They're slow motion drones, and they don't have missiles on them. They're suicide drones. They just crash into the building. They have explosives and they blow up. So tell the Israelis, we're going to send these drones. So we tell the Israelis, the Iranians are going to attack you. They're going to send these drones. The Iranians launched their drones. They're subsonic. So it took them like six hours to cross Iraq and Jordan. The Israelis were ready for them. And then they shot all but I think it was like 11. 11 made it through or seven made it through. whatever it was, maybe it was seven, made it through. That's valuable intelligence. So, the Iron Dome isn't so airtight as everybody thinks it is. But anyway, one guy got killed in Tel Aviv, six people got injured. No big deal. But then the Israelis attacked again and the Iranians are like, "Okay, well, now we have to retaliate again because they've attacked us and they can't look weak to their own people." So, they start launching missiles. Now, the Iranians, like the Russians and the Chinese, have supersonic missiles. We don't. Ours are still in the testing phase. So, their missiles can break the sound barrier, and they're much much more difficult to handle. And several got through. So, then the Israelis bombed Gutter and killed the chief negotiator for Hamas. Now, Gutter is a major non-NATO ally, right? We are compelled by treaty to defend Gutter. So, what do we do? We're going to bomb Israel. Can't do that. So, we give the Israelis a stern talking to and we make them apologize and we look like fools for allowing it to happen. Um, and then the Iranians uh start worrying that we're going to bomb their nuclear facilities. Now, here's where things changed in terms of American policy. Literally, every Israeli prime minister, going back to, you know, Reagan, when he would come to the United States, he would say, "You got to bomb Iran. You got to bomb Iran. You got to bomb Iran." And every single president said, "No, we're not going to bomb Iran for you until this president." Now, the rumor is that the reason why President Trump decided to bomb Iran is because Netanyahu told him, "If you don't, we're going to bomb them, but we're going to use nukes." And so, we bombed the Iranians with a bunker buster, the a Moab, you know, mother of all bombs. Um, just so the Israelis wouldn't use nuclear weapons. Holy cow. But the Iranians survived. You know, Iran is a gigantic country. It has 92 million people. And public opinion is not as deeply divided as the Israelis want people to believe. You know, the Israelis, you guys have seen this this clown Raza Palavi uh on TV, right? The crown prince of Iran, right? Oh, yeah. whose wife is carrying on a very public affair with her personal trainer, which is an utter humiliation in Islamic culture. Sure. Totally unacceptable. He He's got a 14-year-old. They live here in PTOIC, Maryland. And um the guy hasn't been in Iran since he was like 16 or 17 years old. They stole everything they could steal and get it on these planes and he's just lived fat and happy in Maryland ever since. And what now? He's supposed to go back to Iran to crown himself king like his father did. Place the crown on his own head like Napoleon. So, um, if you are an Iranian millionaire in Beverly Hills, yeah, he's your guy. That's where his support comes from. That's where his support ends. Literally, nobody in Iran wants that family, the Palavi family, to uh to take over leadership. So, who takes over leadership in the event of a of a coup or a or a revolution or an uprising or whatever? Who knows? The Israeli plan is that the US would install him and then for our trouble and all the money that it cost us to, you know, bomb these guys and bring carrier battle groups, we would get 49% of Iran's oil. They would keep 51%. and presumably everybody would live happily ever after. That's a fantasy. That's never going to happen. We tried that in 1953. We're still paying the price. It's just not going to happen. First of all, he wouldn't survive the walk from the plane to the terminal if he were even to go back. Secondly, his own people would murder him because he's he's a cuck. I mean, let's be honest here. This is a humiliation, not just for him, but for all Iranian men, right? Um, Iranians I think want democracy. I'm I'm going to disagree with many of my friends and say that I I don't believe that the Ayatollas are popular. I think that if Iranians could truly have their choice, they'd throw these guys out. But it it is not up to us. It's not up to the Israelis, nor should it be, to decide who gets to be the president of Iran. you know, is Pierce Morgan, I was on the Pierce Morgan show recently, and he said, uh, uh, are the Iranians are a threat to the United States? I said, 'Of course not. He said, 'W wait a minute, what? You just said the Iranians are not a threat to the United States. I said, no, they're not a threat to the United States. They don't even have a missile capable of reaching the United States. But that's not the issue. The issue is, are they a threat to Israel? And everybody knows because Benjamin Netanyahu says it every 15 seconds that Iran is a an existential threat to Israel. But guess what? Israel is an existential threat to Iran. The Iranians aren't killing Israeli generals. The Iranians aren't killing Israeli scientists. The Israel The Iranians aren't wantingly bombing Israel whenever they feel like it. It's the Israelis that are the threat to the Iran. Sounds like Iran can't even compete with Israeli intelligence. And they know they can't. The the Iranian intelligence service is one of the worst, one of the most inept on the planet because of corruption or it's a in part it's corruption, in part it's sanctions, in part it's nobody wants to teach them. You [clears throat] got to learn from somebody. Yeah. Yeah. Right. So Russia's not heavily involved in Iran trying to The Russians have robust trade relations with Iran, but they like to keep it just there. They're not interested in making things friendlier. It feels like while Russia's distracted with Ukraine, Trump is trying to take advantage to sort of secure this hemisphere and taking out any Russian allies. Isn't that interesting? Doesn't it seem like Venezuela, you know, I'm of two minds? Yes. Yes, that's exactly what it seems like to me. But I'm I'm of two minds here. Um, you know, of course, we have the for better, for worse, we have the Monroe Doctrine. President James Monroe in his 1823 State of the Union address said that the United States would oppose any European involvement in the Western Hemisphere. That was a slap at the British, plain and simple. Nobody even realized he had said it until seven years later a member of the House of Representatives quoted it and called it the Monroe Doctrine. Even then, nobody paid attention to it until 1852 when the British said, "Hey, these islands down here, the Las Malvenas, we're going to call them the Faullands and we're going to just take them." And the Argentines were like, "Well, wait a minute. The Americans have this thing called the Monroe Doctrine, and they say you can't do that." And the British said, "What are you going to do about it?" And they took them anyway. And then in Washington again, 1852, people said, "Hm, maybe we should make good on this Monroe Doctrine thing because we're kind of looking stupid now." And so we decided then to take it seriously. In the 1850s and 1860s, we forged a very close and abiding relationship with the government of Venezuela. We didn't know what oil was yet. It hadn't been discovered anywhere. We wouldn't have known what to do with it anyhow. But they had lots of gold. And so the British said, "You know what? This country, Venezuela, it has a lot of gold, so we're going to take it." And the British just invaded Venezuela and took all their gold. So the Venezuelans came to us. This is like 1868 by by the time this happened. And they said, "Hey, you guys have this thing called the Monroe Doctrine and the British just invaded us and they're taking all of our gold. So, what are you going to do about it? It's time to either put up or shut up." And um and President Andrew Johnson said, "They've got a point, right? Well, we can't attack the British because we just came out of the Civil War and we were weak." So, we sued them. We sued the British on behalf of the Venezuelans. And we went to what then was the International Court in Geneva, Switzerland, and we said, "The British have no right to this gold. It's Venezuelan gold. It's our hemisphere because we said so. And we want the British out." And the court said, "All right, our decision is that the British can keep 90% of the gold and Venezuela can keep 10% of the gold." And we were high-fiving each other. It's like we won 10% of your gold back. That was a victory. Wow. Yeah. And then as we got a little bolder and stronger, Teddy Roosevelt became president. And in 1905, he told the Brits, "You out of Venezuela." And they finally bugged out. And the Venezuelans have mined their own gold ever since. But anyway, until until recently. Until recently. So it was only in 1905 that the Monroe Doctrine really became an actual thing. But it was because there was a multi-olar world, right? You had the Tsarist Empire, you had the British Empire, you had the French Empire. The US was feeling like maybe stretching our legs a little bit around the world. It was genuinely a multipolar world. So we decided it's easiest to protect the Western Hemisphere. So, we're just going to redeclare this Monroe Doctrine and the Western Hemisphere is ours. Well, we were the bad guys in most of those cases. We just forcibly took the Panama Canal or took Panama and then cut the canal. Um, we overthrew countless Latin American governments, multiple governments in the Dominican Republic in in uh Guatemala. You guys know the the Arben story? Why we why we overthrew Arbenz? Do you know that story? I was just reading about it from David Talbot. I was reading that book. Oh, David Talbot is absolutely brilliant. Um, do you know about the United Fruit Company? A little bit. I would love for you to explain it though. It's it's a crazy story. So, in the late 19th century, this rich industrialist from Boston decided that he's going to build a a train system from Guatemala City to the um coast. Right. So he he's going to have a monopoly on transport and anything that needs to be exported, it's going to have to go on his train. So he just buys this little narrow strip just wide enough for a train from Guatemala City to the coast and hires hundreds of workers to lay the track. Every day these workers who he's paying you know pennies an hour. Every day these workers take a lunch break and they just go to the edge of the jungle and they pull these fruits off the trees. And he says, "What are these fruits that that these workers are are eating every day." And he's told that they're called bananas. He had never heard of b of a banana before. He'd never seen a banana. They were unknown to Americans. So he tasted one and it was delicious. So he decided, I'm going to buy all the land on the two sides of the train tracks and I'm going to put the bananas on the train and ship the bananas to the United States. That was the start of what became known as the United Fruit Company, which today is called Chaita Banana. So it went through several different ownerships and in 1953 the government of general or government sorry of president uh uh Hakobo Arbenz said you know we've been exporting these bananas for half a century. We're not making anything on them. There are bananas. I'm going to nationalize the the banana crop and the national fruit company's going to have to lump it. Well, it turned out that three members of the board of directors of the United Fruit Company were John Foster Dulles, the secretary of state, Alan Dulles, the director of the CIA, and President Eisenhower's secretar's brother. And so they overthrew our Benbs. They installed a military dictatorship that brutalized the Guatemalan people for the next half a century and Chaita Banana still owns the bananas. Can we talk about the Dulles brothers for a moment? Yeah. Monsters, both of them. Were Were they still idolized when you entered the CIA? Like was John Foster Doulles and especially Allan Doulles? I heard that Allen had made a bust of his head that you'd see when you'd walk into the CIA headquarters. Yeah, that's true. Was he still spoke of just very highly? No, I actually asked that when I when I first started working at the CI. I asked about him and I asked about uh James Angleton. Like I was really curious what people thought about those guys. Dulles was just kind of forgotten. It was so long ago, right? He he ended his tenure 19 well January of 1961. Um everybody's dead and gone from those days. and Angleton. I did meet a couple of oldtimers who crossed paths with Angleton and they said that everybody feared Angleton. You know, they respected Dulles because, you know, we were kicking asses and taking names all around the world, which was a cool thing from 1952 to 1960 for a lot of people. um you know we were confronting the Soviets and and the the British Empire had been destroyed because World War II was so expensive and they couldn't maintain India and it broke into Pakistan and then later uh Bangladesh and all of a sudden we were the the big guys on the block. Um but Angleton people were genuinely afraid of. My first boss at the agency told me that he had actually started at the agency um in the what was called the graduate fellowship program. So they would take, you know, high-erforming grad students, give them a secret security clearance, not a top secret, and then they would, you know, make copies and get coffee and, you know, go to briefings and whatever. So he started, he ended up being a senior intelligence service level four assistant secretary of defense when he finally retired. But he said when he was, you know, 22, 23 years old, uh, he got his first grad fellowship and it was in Angleton's office. I said, "No way." He said, "Seriously, I worked for James Angleton." Dang. And he said on his first day, the secretary gave him a tour of the office. It was the counter intelligence center. And um he said, "When you first walked in, there was this wall of file folders. When when I first got started, we weren't computerized yet. I I still can't believe I'm that old already, but we had IBM Select Electric 3 typewriters on our desks and these giant boxes with green little green screens called Delta Datas." And we we were just entering the computer age. So it was all paper when he started. And um he said that the secretary told him um every once in a while you may find yourself alone in the office. Whatever you do, don't look in those files. And I laughed when he said it. He goes, I know, I know. So what's the first thing I do? He said, I ran to the files as soon as like everybody's out at some going away party or whatever. I ran to the files. He said, every single one of those files was on an American citizen. No way. Oh my gosh. Every one of them. And Angleton was supposed to be on the the European theater, wasn't it? I thought I forget where Angleton exactly was, but I thought he was the director of European affairs for the CIA. Almost his whole career was spent on counter intelligence. But just to make it worse, he was Kim Phily's best man. Yes. And Kim Philby was his best man. And you know, Angleton was obsessed with moles. He he thought everybody at the CIA was potentially a Soviet mole. And in fact, it was Philby that was the mole. His best friend. Yeah. Philby was a famous spy for the Soviets. Angleton never got over that. Philby was the number two or number three in MI6, the British Intelligence Service. He had been recruited by the KGB when he was in college and he was directed to join MI6. He didn't realize he's going to end up being the deputy director of MI6. So when word leaked out that he was one of the the three Meredith I forget I forget the other guy's name. There was a fourth who who came clean later like in the 80s. But anyway, when people started pointing the finger and saying the mole has to be Philby and then others were like it's not possible for the somebody that senior, you know, who meets with the queen for him to be the mole. But there was enough circumstantial evidence that they removed him from his position and they sent him to Beirut and then another mole tipped off the KGB that the Brits were going to arrest him. He went to the British ambassador's Christmas party in Beirut at the at the ambassador's residence. He got a message triggering a meeting with his handler. And the only reason to trigger an emergency meeting was, "You've been outed. you've got to run. He excused himself from dinner to go to the bathroom, climbed out the window of the bathroom, and escaped to the Soviet embassy. And then they smuggled him back to Moscow. Like six days later, he appeared at a press conference in Moscow and said, "Ha, I was the mole the whole time, suckers." Wow. He used to lecture at the KGB training center to all the the brand new KGB officers. Unlike really any other mole or defector, you know, one of the dirty little secrets of espionage is let's say I I recruit you as a penetration of a foreign intelligence service. you're you're a mole and I tell you you're so great and I'm giving you a million dollars and I tell you that the president himself sends his best regards which I'm making up, you know, or we've we've issued you a medal. I can't show it to you because it's classified and we have to keep it in a safe at headquarters, but you just got the highest medal that the CIA you know, you do that kind of thing all the time. Normal. But if you need to come back to the CIA because you've been outed and your country's going to kill you, you can't just walk the halls of the CIA like you own the place. Deep down, we consider you to be a traitor. We're glad that you were a traitor for us, but you're still a traitor. Well, Philby, you know, they gave they gave him a staff position, a teaching position. We consider the the moles that we have to be traders because they're tradering for against our enemies, but the fact that they're willing to be a traitor is less ideal. Yeah. Because 95% of them are doing it for the money, right? And if they'll if they'll But isn't everybody doing it for the money? I mean, [laughter] well, if they commit treason against their own country, why wouldn't they commit treason against us? Right. Sure. So, we just, you know, we thank mafia rules. We we set them up in a house and with a business and, you know, don't worry about anything. They they have enough money for the rest of their lives. But yeah, you're not just going to have a staff badge and just drive into the CIA compound and take your parking space. Got it. But in Russia, they did with Philby. He was the real deal from the beginning. Amazing. You know, people said that I I worked for a guy. I didn't work for him. He was the head of research for an office that I was working in. So, he was sort of like a a dotted line on the org chart. Um, and he was an old-timer. And he said that when he first got hired as a junior analyst and he would be walking down the halls and he would see uh uh Angleton, he would turn around and go the other way. He said Angleton kind of went kooky after a while. when when he first learned that it was Philby that was the mole the whole time, he kind of lost his mind and never got it back. It would really break your reality, I think, to have your best friend be the mole for that many years. And and not only is he your best friend, he's the godfather to your child. We have a word for it in Greek and the Italians do too. We we say kumbi and they say kari in Italian. There's no English word for it really, but it's like you're you're related. I mean, it's like a brother-in-law, you know, you're part of the family and that's the trader. You've been looking for traders all over the agency all these years, decades, and that's the trader. It's the guy that you've been sharing the information about your hunt for traders with. That's the trader. I think that would drive any man a little bit. Mhm. Uh it would dishevel you to a point where it'd be hard to ever get your feet underneath you. Yeah. And you know that people are saying behind your back, "What kind of judgment does this guy?" Totally. Everything calls into question. But he knew he had been doing some filthy stuff. Angleton didn't. I think on his deathbed, he said like, "I'll see the I'll see my boys back in hell." Yeah, he knew. He did. And he was a bad guy. Yeah. Angleton was a bad guy. Well, back if we if we roll back the clock a little bit more, it seems to me that the CIA was actually more on the side of sort of Nazi money. Oh yeah, FBI. It was the CIA. It was the predecessor of the CIA that brought all these Nazi scientists in with Operation Paperclip. And the FBI was really the ones that was like, "No, we don't want the Nazi money in." Yeah. But the CIA was already looking forward to when the Soviets were going to be in power, which is exactly why all those Nazis gave themselves up to the Americans. They didn't trust the British. They were petrified of the Russians, but they calculated correctly that the US would lay out the red carpet. Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. There was this whole process of denazification and a lot of the wealthy uh Germans. It was very you had to get a couple of letters from Jewish people that gave you, you know, that you're my friend. But it it was basically a formality essentially where you just paid enough money and you were denazified. And once you got that sort of letter, America was like, you're you're good. Come on in. Verer von Braun is buried right here in in Alexandria, Virginia. The guy was at NASA for all those years. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. and designing rockets to shoot against us just before that. Wildly Exactly. Yeah. Father of the V2. Well, the country makes mistakes and then it has to try to fix them. And speaking of that, I think Trump probably owes you a pardon. Is there any word on whether or not Trump's even considering giving you a pardon? I've applied formally. I have been very very fortunate to get a letter of support um signed by some of his closest friends Tucker Carlson, Dr. Phil, uh Judge Dalitano, a couple of um couple of leaders from the Make America Great Again Foundation, major campaign donors. Um, I know that the letter got to the US pardon attorney and the pardon attorney made a comment recently that not a day goes by that at least two people don't call him, write him or email him asking him to pardon me. So, I'm hoping for the best. I think we're all rooting for it at this point. Appreciate it. 100%. And did you get any what did you feel when I think Julian Assange reached a deal? Yeah. So, you know, God bless Donald Trump for doing that. At least he made some motion, right? No, it wasn't Trump, was it? No, that was uh that was Biden. That was Biden. Yeah, that was before Trump was going to do it. Trump said publicly that he would do it. He did pardon Ross Olrich though, which was an awesome thing to do. You know, just before that pardon came down or whatever it was, commutation or pardon, I can't recall. Either way, I met with Ross's mom and sister, they make they made such a compelling argument. I I asked them to be on my podcast and then boom, the pardon came through. Yeah. And I was like, "Wow, he deserved a pardon." Yeah. That poor guy was seriously wronged. Yeah. I mean, okay, even if he did even if what he did was illegal. So, what do other people who do the same thing get? 5 years and you're out in uh in four. Mhm. Come on. Yeah. He was still sitting there 10 years later. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's not cool. No, that's not cool. You know, I I say this all the time, and I'm at the risk of repeating myself, I'm going to say it again. The United States has 5% of the world's population, right? We have 25% of the world's prison population. Over the last 20 years, Congress has created 50 new crimes, not laws, 50 new crimes every single year. meaning something that you could do a year ago that nobody gave a [ __ ] about today is a felony. I I wrote I've written in the past about a couple of egregious cases. These these were during the Obama administration. There was a woman um who worked for uh Noah, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the weather people. Yep. So she worked in Noah's Honolulu office, which is kind of a big Noah site. and she was a GS12. Honolulu is an expensive place to live. You can't live on a GS12 salary. So, she and a partner uh bought a boat and they would take tourists out on the boat and go whale watching. So, they're out whale watching one day and they come across a pod of orcas feeding on a seal, right? They're just tearing at the seal carcass. Everybody goes to the side of the boat. They're taking pictures, taking video. Somebody goes at the whale. Okay. Like to make sure the whale stays. Look at me taking a photo. Yeah. I'm taking a picture. Couple of weeks later, FBI open the door. She opens the door. I said, "FBI, we're doing a uh an investigation. You have this uh boat. You take tourists out." She said, "Yeah." Did you take tourists out two weeks ago? Yes. Did you see a whale? Yeah, we saw whales eating a seal. Did you whistle at the whale? She said, "No." Somebody did, I think, but I didn't. She said, "But you know what? I videotape every trip and then I sell the DVDs to the to the tourists." They took that DVD. They came back with a search warrant, took all of her DVDs and her laptop and her cell phone, and they ended up charging her with a felony count of interfering with the feeding of a wild animal, which is a violation of the Endangered Species Act. She fought this thing for five years and just to make it go away, she took a a plea to a misdemeanor count of interfering with the feeding of a wild animal. Well, she lost her job at Noah. Her boat was repossessed. She lost her condo. She lost her pension. Her friend, her partner never spoke to her again. Fighting those battles is not cheap. No, I spent I spent $1.15 million. I'm still paying. And you're not getting your benefits. No, they took my pension off of it. So, this kind of thing happens all the time. There was a fisherman in Alabama. Not Yeah, in Alabama. And um he was out hunting. He was out fishing for halibet, right? Who doesn't love halibet? Not halibet. Forgive me. Hamore. What? What's hammud in English? It's um grouper. Grouper, right? Everybody loves grouper. It's like the state fish of Florida, right? It's everywhere. Well, there's a law that the grouper has to be 12 in. You have to throw it back in. So, these fish and wildlife guys come up to his boat. They've got the little red light spinning around. They want to come on the boat, which they are perfectly welcome to do. They get on the boat. They pull out the tape measure up. One of the fish is 11 in and it's still flopping around. He said, "No problem. I'll just throw it back in." No, no, no. You already caught it. You're under arrest. They charged him. This is a felony. They charged him with a felony because the grouper was 11 in instead of 12 in. He lost everything. He lost his boat. He lost his business. He lost his money. He lost everything. He lost his fishing license. Everything. Well, are you and I better off because they arrested this guy for having a fish that was one inch too small? Are we better off because the Noah woman uh was convicted of whistling at the whale? Is society better? Yeah. What's going on here? Why is this abuse of power happening? Is it lack of incentives? That's easy. No, I can tell you because this is how people get promoted. Oh, right. The FBI is not going to get promoted by not arresting you. like I went to the house, but uh he had a plausible excuse. I didn't arrest him. But are you gonna get promoted for getting a guy on 11 in fish over 12 in? It doesn't m It's not like you got to get the biggest bust. It's just getting the criminals. Your cases have resulted in 100% guilty verdicts. Oh my gosh. It's a percentbased because listen, I I can tell you from firsthand experience, every assistant US attorney sees himself or herself eventually running for Congress, running for governor, being the US attorney, being in some A-list law for law firm's corner office, making $6 million a year, climbing the ranks, and they're going to do it on your back through kingdom building. That's right. That's exactly what it is. It's kingdom building. Yes. It It's bloated. It feels like every organism needs to have a defense system. Like we have our we have our immune system, but once the immune system becomes too big, it's cancerous. It kills you. Very you're you're exactly right. I heard a statistic that the FBI has 250,000 paid civilian informants throughout the country. I I don't know if that's real, but that's a that's a report I saw that allegedly was from the FBI itself. You know, there are famous now declassified reports of um the FBI infiltrating uh antivietnam war protest groups to the point where, you know, six guys would show up for one of these meetings and all six of them were FBI agents, not knowing that the all the others were FBI agents and they're all ratting each other out in their reports. I mean, does every country have this problem? Does China have the same problem? China may. China might. It's possible. Who do you think I if anyone has moles in the US, which country would you guess is doing the best job right now? China, Israel, Russia are the three big ones. Yes. Okay. What are they here for? Secrets, education, almost entirely defense secrets. The Russians have that longer term view again. You know, they have this thing called the illegals program, also called the sleeper program, where they'll take you at the age of 12, and they'll send you to this camp and you're going to watch American TV shows and American movies and speak learn to speak American accented English so that nobody can tell that you're Russian. And what they do, it's harder today, but what they used to do is they'll find in the social security records, um, somebody born the same year as you, but who died as an infant, and then they'll apply for a social security card in that name, which is now your new name. And with a social security card, you get everything. You get a driver's license, you get a you get a passport, you get a, you know, utilities turned on, and you come here with your fake US P or now it's actually a real US passport because you've applied for it uh in that name and you get a job as you know well in in the Netflix show the Americans they were travel agents or in my neighborhood here in Arlington this woman was a freaking special ed teacher and here she's a KGB sleeper agent the whole time and you just lead this normal life until you're activated and And you know, you may go 20 years without being activated, but once you're activated, you do as you're told, and then you go back into your deep cover again. And the activation may be that they want you to shoot somebody in the head. Or they want you to put on these shoes that they brought you cuz they have this special adhesive on the on the soles and they want you to walk around outside a nuclear plant to see how much um radiation is leaking or walk around outside this factory because we think it's a nuclear missile factory and the Americans say it's a you know bicycle factory and then you just go back into your your cover life again. It's pretty sophisticated. Who's that? We don't do that. Do you think that there are moles in our graduate programs right now? Because absolutely. Yes. Okay. Mostly Chinese. Mostly Chinese. What What sorts of things will they be studying? The hard sciences. Oh, that kind of makes sense, you know. But that's a that's a two-edged sword because the Chinese send them here to get PhDs in, you know, astrophysics or whatever or organic chemistry. And then while they're here, we're like, they're probably Chinese moles. We should flip them, right? We sell them and then we try to flip them and send them back to China to then report to us. How do you flip a a mole? It's hard. You get them dating an American girl. Sure. That might scare him away. Actually, yeah. You know, I was just teaching a class a couple of days ago and I was using this wonderful, wonderful book called Fair Play that um a former CIA officer named Olsen wrote. He used to be the director of the counter intelligence center. This book is fantastic. And what he does is he he offers up like a hundred different scenarios that many of us in operations, you know, encountered on a day-to-day basis. And then he'll ask people's opinions, professors, lawyers, grad students, former CIA, former FBI, and there are disagreements across the board, like what do you do? So, one of the questions was there's a uh there's a Russian PhD candidate in the United States. The FBI believes that he's a sleeper agent. And so a CIA case officer is assigned to just accidentally bump into him at the tennis club where he goes. So she goes to the tennis club. She sees him practicing his serve. She says, "Wow, you know, you have a really great serve." He takes a liking to her. She invites him for a drink in the bar. They have a drink. They start dating. It's clear to her that his interest is romantic and she's holding him off. So, she assesses that he is weak personally. He's very lonely. Um, he may have a drinking problem, but he would be very valuable to us as as a double as a double agent to double him back against the Russians. and she tells her boss, "I'm willing to have sex with him. Do you allow her to?" And everybody was like, "Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes." And then Olsson writes the actual right answer, which is absolutely not. Right. You don't let her have sex with him. No. I mean, you got to draw the line somewhere, right? Right. Right. That's incredible. Do do you have to draw the line somewhere? I I think in a real fight rules kind of go out the window. Sometimes sometimes I worked with a woman who had been a case officer in Latin America and she recruited this guy and immediately started sleeping with him and then she came clean to her boss and he's like, "You're out. Out." So for a while they switched her from ops to analysis which is a real smack across the face. She married the guy and then after the investigation was done, they threw her out. You know, this is pretty common though. I mean, I know America did this to the British when we were breaking away from them. I mean, we needed the cotton gin and water mills and trains and I mean, we we had they had the British had technology that we wanted and we would also send moles over to England to try and steal the plants, work at the factory, work at whatever was going on to bring that industry back to America. So this is not something that's like specific to any nation. It's Sun Sue, art of war. I mean, it's if your opponent's more powerful, this is the way to go. Get stuff from them. Espionage is specifically mentioned in the Bible on multiple occasions, right? Yeah. It's been around a long time. Well, they say it's the second oldest profession. [laughter] They do. I mean, they've always said that [clears throat] it's a supererset of the oldest profession, basically. Yeah. Yeah. [laughter] Yeah. Last time we chatted with you, you said that there was actually a ground game going on in Africa. You said that there were US Do you have We're losing. What's going on? The Chinese are just throwing money at everybody. Against us or No, no, no, no, not against us. They don't even need to. Oh, like that Onion uh headline said, the Chinese are perfectly happy to sit back and watch us destroy ourselves and we're burning. Yeah. So a congalles diplomat said to me one time, you know, you promise us democracy, the Chinese promise us food. Which one are they going to take? So you know, the Chinese have this belt and road initiative. It's been going on for decades already. It was a big deal when I was in Pakistan 20 24 years ago. um they spend so little on defense relative to their population and compared to what we spend that they're just swimming in money. Their economy is robust. They've got some real estate problems now. But their economy is generally robust, especially manufacturing, swimming in money. And so they just go to every country in Africa and say, "What do you need? You need roads?" Done. You need a port. you need an airport, you need hospitals, you need schools, not a problem. Just sign this 99-year lease on your rare earth metals. And they say, "Fine." And then the Chinese build all this stuff. The Chinese are all over Africa and now making inroads into South America because they can provide whatever these countries want. And then we tell the same countries, "We've got some old F-16s that are sitting in mothballs over here. We're going to give you two of them." Wow. Yeah. What do you think of that? [laughter] And they're like, "Come on. The Chinese are already They beat you to it." Yeah. They're building libraries and beautiful things. Exactly. Do you have an opinion on I I saw this thing recently around how the population of China may not be as large as they say it is just by taking sheer statistics of birth rates that should have happened when we knew the population 50 years ago and even you can sometimes measure the population of a country by salt consumption. Oh, that's interesting. I heard that. It [clears throat] doesn't matter how rich or poor you are. Every human needs pretty much the same amount of electrolytes. And so you can actually track electrolyte traffic and proxy populations. Interesting. And basically it seems like China might only have it might be about the size of the US. Maybe 300 maybe 500 million people. What? Yeah. Not the one point whatever they say they have. I hadn't heard that. I I did hear that early last year India officially passed China. Um I hadn't heard that. They have a serious real estate problem with hundreds of thousands of units just sitting completely empty. Yeah. Those people have to be living somewhere if they exist and they don't appear to be living anywhere. So yeah, I think it was something like every woman needed to have five kids on average for the last 50 years for the growth rate to be it was some it was some ridiculous number and they've had the one one child policy that we all know about. And so they're just like statistically there cannot be over a billion people in China. It's not possible. You know the Russian um the Russian rate of population growth is so low. There was an editorial about this not too long ago. They said that um in I think it's a hundred years there won't be any Russians. They're just going to die out. Now, of course, that's not going to happen because they'll they'll institute incentives for people to have more children. Immigration will turn people into Russians. But, I mean, you have to think, right? I mean, Elon has been talking about this a lot. I mean I do it sort of seems like our global population might be on the decline uh just in terms of you know you need 2.1 ch babies per family to two to replace you and 0.1 for all the accidents and just things that happen and growth rates are now abysmally below too in many western nations and that only you know you do the math and go three generations out and the population is a quarter of what it was and I think it's you know it's hard to reverse demographics are one of those things where you kind of see a hundredyear train wreck and once that year is done and all the babies have been born in 2025. You can't make more babies out of 2025. And so it does seem like I think that's sort of lending sort of the whole macro visual of the whole world right now is everybody's regionalizing again. It's sort of like everyone's sort of going after their own resources because we're contracting. Yeah. And I've so bloiated I got off track. First of all, that is an outstanding op-ed right there. Oh, cool. I think a a lot of papers would run that. That's important. We were talking about spheres of influence. I I started talking about the Monroe Doctrine, but I think that snatching Maduro was kind of a signal to the Chinese and the Russians that Venezuela's ours. We'll concede that Taiwan is yours and Ukraine is yours. Absolutely. There it is. Absolutely a signal. Everyone's regionalizing. Everyone's spread to thin. That's what made me think of it. Yeah. Populations are declining and so the the wagons are circling now. It's a big circle because the world's huge from regional region to region, but it the incentives are there to contract and we're just watching. It's it's not usually peaceful when that happens. It's because economies go down things, you know, it's very problematic to shrink in size versus growth is always very helpful. It covers over a multitude of issues. And just last week there was a piece in the post that um population growth continues in the United States but at the lowest level in more than a decade because we've so clamped down on immigration. Yeah. And so you can influx artificially through immigration but you know that has its own that's not black and white. There's a lot of nuance there. Yeah. Yeah. What's up for grabs there in these fears? Because you're saying Russia, China, it's a tripolar world I guess. Yeah. Maybe China and Russia would have more connection to each other. Or is or will Russia just stay independent of China regardless? You know, I think that the Russians are weaker and weaker as time passes. Well, they're losing a lot of guys every week. A lot. Yeah. And I think that the that the real rivalry now is going to be simply us and the Chinese. I I really believe that. And where do the OPEC producers fall? You know, isn't that funny? OPEC used to be so important. They were a part of every conversation. And now it's like nobody really cares anymore. When I was a kid, I I teach this in my history of terrorism course. One of the most fascinating characters to me in in contemporary history is Carlos the Jackal. This guy was a terrorist Superman. You know, people are were so afraid of Osama bin Laden. You didn't know Carlos the Jackal. Where was he from? I don't know Carlos the Jackal. Oh, Ilitch Ramirez Sanchez. He was the most important terrorist in the world in the 1970s and 1980s. Okay. He was Venezuelan. Got it. But he was an international man of mystery. Right. The Venezuelans would have been perfectly happy to arrest him. The evil James Bond. Yeah. He he was he was James Bond's nemesis. In the 1970s, 1975 I guess it was, all the OPEC nations had an OPEC ministerial meeting. All the ministers of oil from every OPEC nation. They met in Vienna and Carlos and his and his crew kidnapped all of them at once. [laughter] All of them. And he said, "I want a billion dollars. I'm going to start shooting them every hour." Whoa. And they paid. Yeah, they paid. Incredible. That's incredible. Wow. Like, who has the guts? Who has the brain that can even conceive of an operation like we should kidnap the oil ministers? Every one of them. All of them. Yeah. And then he did it. That would be like getting all the tech CEOs right now all at once. All at once. You you go to Davos, you just grab everybody, right? And just hold them. Yeah. What did you think of uh Davos the WF meeting that they had? Do you have any any cliff notes? You know, somebody to whom I used to be very close uh goes to Davos and Shangrila and you know all of these things. She told me that all they ever talk about is arms deals. That's really all it comes down to. The heads of state make these semi-important speeches that the media carry, but all the actual private chatter, all the private conversations, they're all about arms deals. That's all that ever happens at those places. You know, it's not like the Jewish bankers from the city of London are secretly arriving to plot out the global economy. No. No. They're like, "Listen, these F-35s, we want these Yeah, that kind of thing. And I think that's really what happened at Davos. We got Carney speech and Trump made a speech and everybody makes a speech, but I don't think that's really what what was accomplished. What how did you feel after Venezuela when they captured Maduro and Trump was standing on the stage and then I I forget it was one of the generals that stepped up and he basically looked at the camera and said, "We've been practicing. We can do this anytime, anywhere." whenever we want. That's absolutely true. He We're sort of trying to resolidify ourselves as the bullies, aren't we? Because violence is our business, I guess. Yeah. You know, I'm I'm a little embarrassed to say it, but this is this is the country we've given ourselves. We We made a national conscious decision that this was who we were going to be. Yeah. I've heard it said that populist presidents are summoned. They're not the people summon the populist president. I think that's a great way to look at it. Yeah. That's it's not that he's doing anything that is he's the people want this. There's this reason Donald Trump didn't come down from the sky. No, we chose him. That's right. Mhm. And this is another thing. Oh man, we were just making friends of mine and I last night at dinner, we were making fun of this hless woman from Indianapolis. As a matter of fact, she and her husband had this successful steakhouse, right? and he came here 35 years ago without papers. He's illegal this whole time, but he married this woman, never filed his paperwork. They opened this restaurant. It's very successful. They have plenty of money. Trump is elected. They grab him, send him to an ice prison, send him back to Mexico. And she voted for Trump. And she's crying on the local news and she said he said he was only gonna take the bad ombres. Okay. The point I want to make is Donald Trump at every step of the way has told us exactly what he intended to do. And the Democrats always underestimate him. He's far brighter than the Democrats think he is. And he's not like pulling a fast one than anybody. He tells us exactly what he intends to do and then we're shocked when he does it. I think that's what the populace was so surprised about him in is just how honest he was. Yeah. Because I think that the narrative for 20 years has been that, you know, politicians smile at you and say things and then they do arms deals behind you. you know, they go to Davos and they talk about peace and then they go do arms deals and eventually if you just think that's going on and then you get a guy, you know, whether you like his message or not, but he says what he's going to do and he does that and he seems honest, it's hard to it's it's appealing in that way at least regardless of the message is this is a guy who's not lying at least and that some something about that feels like I have agency now because I can, you know, I'm not being fooled. I think you've hit it on the head. And you know, 2028 is right around the corner. And I don't think that the Democrats have been able to do anything to discredit populism, right? They just haven't. They seem more disorganized. Oh, I think they're in chaos. Does it seem It seems like Gavin is probably going to be their best bet upcoming election. Okay. But, you know, coming from a state like California, he's going to be very easy to attack. Totally. Yeah. I go to I go to California a lot and I never get over the shock of $55 a gallon gasoline. I won't do it. I can't imagine living there. And taxes are so insanely high. Yeah. I mean, it's, you know, you have all the tech guys moving from California to Texas. And Texas is a free state, so there's no state income tax. And California is what, 13%. So that's outrageous. You can move and you get a 13% raise just from moving. I mean some for some a lot of people that's free housing. Yeah, that's pretty appealing depending how much money you make. That's I mean you can make any amount of money and free 13% is pretty interesting. But he started texting in all caps and he uses hands a lot now when he talks. I don't know if you've seen Gavin in recent interview. Oh no. He just moves his hands. It's like he's trying to become a Trump. Listen, anybody I'll tell you the reason why I why why I hate Gavin Newsome and to the point where I would never vote for him. You know, he was this golden boy for a long time. He was a he was a member of the city council of San Francisco and then he became the chairman of city council. Then he was mayor of San Francisco and then he was lieutenant governor and then he was governor. Well, when he was running for governor, he's running for lieutenant governor. um [clears throat] he asked his best friend who was his campaign manager to stand in for him because there were so many campaign events. You know, it's a big state, a lot of people. You can't you can't go to every single campaign event. So, his best friend, who was his chief of staff and campaign manager, is going and representing him. All the while, Newsome's banging the guy's wife, right? And then they got caught and he's like, "Ah, sorry. I apologize to the people of California. People of California, apologize to your best friend. You've betrayed a friendship. You can't get past something like that. If he thinks that little of his best friend and is willing is willing to to betray that kind of a friendship, what's he going to do to you and me? What's he going to do to the country? Listen, if his own wife can't trust him, well, how's the country supposed to trust him? I don't trust him. That's a hard one to overcome when somebody says that on a stage about you over and over and over. Exactly. If you had to predict who will be the two candidates in the next presidential election, who who do you think they're aiming for? A lot of my friends disagree with me. I think Newsome for the Democrats. I think he's going to be just flush with money. And you know this Democratic policy of superdelegates, the fix is in from the beginning. Whoever the the cigar smoking backroom bosses at the DNC decide is going to be the nominee, that's going to be the nominee. The Republicans don't have superdelegates. Almost all of my friends think it's going to be JD Vance. And I don't. I think it's going to be Marco Rubio. Yeah, JD Vance is very young. It's deceiving actually. He's got the gray beard, but he's he's very young. He's got he's like 41. Yeah. Two. He's got 35 years that he could still be running for president. Rubio's already run. He's been a senator. He's been Secretary of State. Now he's the national security adviser. On top of that, he's got Florida. And after they took over Venezuela and he was standing up there with the generals and the president and they asked him about Cuba, he asked Marco to step up. Marco, why don't you talk about this? That's right. It looks like Trump is really favoring Marco right now as well. I think so, too. Yeah. I think Trump genuinely likes JD Vance for sure. And I think JD Vance genuinely wants to be schooled in Trump populism, but I think Rubio's a better politician. Remember JD Vance? He was a senator for two years. And didn't we [ __ ] about Obama? Because all he ever had was that he was a senator for four years or Yeah. four years or two years. 06 to08. Two years. We bitched about him because he was unqualified to be president. Well, JD Vance has been vice president now for four years, but or it'll be for four years, but he was just a senator for two years. I think he's just too young. Makes sense. Yeah. And you hold him back for later. He he can go for a different election. I think he has a very bright future. I really do. Tell you the truth, I think his wife is actually at least as qualified as he is. I don't I don't know much about his wife. Yeah. Usha, she's very very smart. Very smart. Top universities, made millions in investment banking. What do you think's happening with um what do you think Trump's going to do around Alex Prey and all the ICE things going on? Just this afternoon, um DOJ announced, um a special investigation special investigation into human I'm sorry, into civil rights violations. Oh, civil rights violation at the federal level is akin to a murder charge. Whoa. They just did that this afternoon. Yeah. 3 four hours ago. Oh, man. We were setting up. I didn't see that. Yeah. So, okay. So, that's a that's a positive response. Yeah. So many Republican, especially senators, pushed back saying, "Okay, we've crossed a line here. You got to do something." Um, the White House leaked yesterday that the two guys who fired the shots had been suspended on Saturday. They just never announced it. And then this afternoon, they said they've they've asked a prosecutor to look into it. Okay. Yeah. Good. That's great. That is good. Yeah. I think it's I think that it's hard to see what's going on internally and you know it just seems like a little bit of an abuse of power. Yeah. And how do you rein that in? And how do you if you don't does that mean you just you you're okay with it when it feels like the president's sending troops into your city. It feels like it's turned into a banana republic. And a lot of very smart people have begun making comparisons to the summer of 68. And that's not something you want to be compared to. No. No. No. Dang. Mhm. Well, John, what sort of advice do you have for Americans right now going forward? You know, I think all Americans should be involved in the political process. I really do. Do you still have hope in the political process? Yeah. Saying that, crazy as it sounds, you have optimism. I I [snorts] am I'm optimistic. I I make a joke frequently on my own podcast that I'm an equal opportunity hater. I hate everybody. Yeah. Right. Um, [laughter] that's great. Real libertarian. Real I really am a libertarian. I truly am. Um, but I see hope in individuals. I believe very strongly that we need viable third parties very strongly. In 2016, I was uh very fortunate to travel with Governor Gary Johnson to 12 states out west and I introduced him at all of his campaign stops. That's cool. Yeah, we got 2.8%. Which was a record. One of those was mine. Yeah. Yay. Awesome. I wasn't allowed to vote yet, but uh otherwise I would. I voted for him in 2012. All right. Yeah. I didn't vote for that criminal Obama. But um we need a viable Libertarian party and we need a viable Green Party. or even, you know, I keep getting these emails from something called the uh it's not the reform party, it's the uh I'm not sure. Um I don't I I just delete them. But it's supposed to be this this moderate Yeah. this middle of the road party. Oh, yeah. You know what I'm talking about? Yeah, I forget what they call themselves, but one of the lessons that I learned with the libertarians, I'll tell you a funny story first. I was invited to the Libertarian Christmas party, Christmas of 2016. So, being libertarians, it wasn't held until the end of January, of course, [laughter] because nobody can get their act together. And that's why we don't have a third party. This is like January 23rd. I'm going to the Christmas party. It was over here in Alexandria. and we all had hello, my name is name tags on. So this guy looks at my name tag and he goes, "John Keryaku, I've been looking all over for you and I look at his and and he's the head of the Virginia Libertarian Party." I said, "Oh yeah, I've heard of you. Nice to meet you." We were CCed on a couple of emails together. Nice to meet you. And he goes, "I want to ask you, would you run for governor of Virginia?" And I said, "Absolutely not." Wow. And he said, "Not why not." I said, "Listen, I like you guys a lot. I really do. And I believe in the Libertarian Party, but first of all, nobody has his act together. This party's a month overdue. This party is January 23rd." Yeah. [laughter] And I said, and I said, "I know that you guys mean well, but I know it's going to happen. I'll register to run as a Libertarian. You guys are going to all forget all about me. I'm going to be completely out of pocket. I'm gonna go broke and then I'm going to get 1% and I'm going to humiliate myself. I said, "No thanks." Well, he said, "Well, okay. I I get it. I get it." Because it was true. All of it was true. So, when we were we were traveling around the West, we went to like Alaska, Washington, Oregon, Utah. We went all over the place. It was so much fun. We bought this beaten up old Winnebago for like $36,000. Yeah. And um and except for we we flew to Alaska, but everywhere else we just drove all over the place. So, one of the things I learned was that the Libertarian Party doesn't have a major donor, right? There was this one guy that they only referred to as the canned tomato king of California. I don't know who that is. Um he's a libertarian and he gave them $40,000, which was a lot by libertarian standards. And they used it to buy the Winnebago. [laughter] The entire Libertarian Party is equal the value of one Winnebago United States. It was lovely. It was nice. Up, but the sides, [laughter] you know, popped out so you had extra room when you parked. It was okay. The slides. Yeah, the slides. Get all six voters in there. Yeah. [laughter] But, you know, you've got for both Democrats and Republicans, people giving millions and millions of dollars at a time. You know, the Adlesen's would just write checks for millions of dollars. And these Hollywood mucky mucks, they'll have a a a dinner at, you know, some producers's house and raise $50 million. And the libertarians can't compete with that. And then the Greens are just Yeah. You know, God bless them. They're most of them are lovely people. the ones that I have met, but they're just not no chance not serious people. Well, the math doesn't really sustain a third party in our country because we have first passed the post and a 50% plus one vote. If you do the math, it's just impossible. You can't win. You have to buddy up with some unless you win 8% of the vote and then you get 8% of the representation. Now, it's now that that is a way to climb into the ranks and get proper but but if you have to win 50% plus one, you have to make a deal with one of the two big parties. And I mean they've run this in game theory in scenarios in colleges everywhere where you have 10 parties and they just start going and after four elections it's two parties. It just it always consolidates right. In Greece I follow Greek politics very very closely. Parties are constantly coming and going. Right. But the winners are always one of two. And the one of them kind of changes its name every once in a while but it's just these two. Yeah. And it's it's in the design of the rules. You have to actually change the rules, I think, to to enable third parties to get into. 100 years ago, we had a whole bunch of parties. Yeah. Right. We had a a viable socialist party. We had [snorts] we had the Progressive Party. Yeah. A little farther back, the Wig Party. We had all kinds of different parties. And they were getting people elected to Congress. But one thing that the libertarians just get wrong and I said this too at the time as if it were my place to say it like let me tell you guys how you should run your party. [laughter] Just listen to this. I said I get these hair on fire emails from you guys and they're like oh my god we just elected a guy to the water board of Milwaukee. And people are like awesome. Okay. And then you don't run anybody else in any of those other races and then you run for president. What are you doing? Yeah. Something like 70% of all races at at every level are unopposed. So you can run for every waterboard position, every schoolboard position, half of the legis state legislative races. You can get a ton of people elected as libertarians if you wanted to. Wow. And I don't think they want to. That's amazing. It's a lot of work involved. It's a lot of work. Yeah. You got to wake up every day. I'll tell you one other story. We were in uh we flew from um Anchorage to Juno. Gary was going to do a uh a speech at the University of Alaska at Juno. and a guy who had been like the Libertarian nominee for vice president from 1992 or 96, I forget. I remember he was a State Farm agent. He was flying up from Texas. Um, and he was going to meet us at the airport. Like his flight from Seattle, he went from Dallas to Seattle, Seattle to Juno. It was going to arrive at the same time that ours did. So, we're supposed to pick him up and take him to the hotel and then from the hotel to the venue. So, we all fly in. It was like eight of us. We fly in from from Anchorage and we're waiting for him and waiting for him. And Juno airport, if you've ever been to Juno, it's like the size of this room. It's like gate one is there, gate two is there, there's three, there's four. That's the whole airport. It's right here. And there's a Starbucks. That's it. So, we're waiting for him. We're looking around like it's the eight of us and there's nobody else and we don't see him. So, we page him. I said to one of the interns, "Do you mind uh paging this guy? Here's his name." They page him. Please meet your party at uh you know, gate one. Nothing. So, we paged him a second time. Nothing. So, we go to the hotel and we said, "Did he did he get past us and he got to the hotel first?" And they said, "No, he hasn't checked in yet." So, it came time I said to Gary, "We really should go to the venue now. We're going to be late." So, we got in our vans and we drove to the venue. I introduced Gary. He starts speaking and then the guy shows up and I said, "Where have you been?" He said, "I was waiting for you guys." I said, "Where?" He said, "At the airport." I said, "Didn't you hear us page you?" He goes, "I heard somebody page me. I figured it's probably NSA tracking my movements. [laughter] And I said, "And that is why this party will never turn into anything." That's what I said to him. That's all I said to him. I was so angry. That is wild. Well, they're paranoid, but it's it's almost like if you were at the top, you have you have to be paranoid. These guys are getting sued over everything nowadays. You have to have deep pockets. Yeah, you do. Which kind of makes me wonder, do you think Trump could go for a third term just because he seems to be a guy that can fight off lawsuits constantly? I don't. I think he's just having a blast just overwhelming toying with the Democrats. And of course, they lose their minds every time he says something like this. No, I I don't think Yeah. You know, the guy's almost 80 years old now. I think I mean, what more could he possibly accomplish in life, right? So, no, I think he's just having fun. That's good news. Yeah. Yeah. We don't want to break precedent here. Yeah. Yeah. No. And the only way you could do it is probably to be in wartime, actually. Isn't I I don't think you could even do it then. Okay. I really don't. That's great. I think that's probably what a lot of people are nervous about in the back of their minds, but it seems I agree with you. I don't know why he would. He's getting older. I mean, even just as a human, what do you you know, you did a lot. And you know, if he wanted to leave a legacy, he's [snorts] succeeded. I don't think he had success. I don't think he successfully created a legacy after the first term, right? I think it was kind of chaotic, but after this one, Yeah. I mean, he's got genuine, what should we call them? Uh, he's a mentees. Yeah. The word is slipping my mind right now. It's uh when what did you say? Accolades. Kind of success. Successors. Yeah. Accolades. Oh, successors. Yeah. He's got people. He's got Dr. Oz up there. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I don't think that he has permanently changed the Republican party. I think that at its heart, the Republican party is a neoconservative party just like the Democrats are a neoliberal party. But otherwise, you know, he gave he gave populism a shot in the arm that we haven't seen since the 30s. Really? Do you think it was it was needed or it was it was overdone? He's a controversial figure. I don't want to criticize. Yeah, that's fair. Well, John, I think it's I think we're up. Our time is about up. It's been a real pleasure chatting with you, man. in person. Yeah. Good. Good to see you in person. Yeah. Great to meet you in person finally. Thank you. Yeah, this is great. Thanks for coming on the show. Thanks for the invitation. All right. Thanks everybody.