[00:00] I'll go on Fox just like I'll go on CNN or MSNBC if the message is right. And it always surprises me at um how many people will unfriend me on social media if I've gone on Fox. It's It's nuts. It's like why why why do you put yourself in a corner where you're only going to associate with the people who agree with you on all the issues? That doesn't make any sense to me. And you know
[00:32] what? Let me tell you, if I So, I am single and um and I'm I'm looking. So, I'm on these apps like so many other people are and I meet this woman and she is absolutely stunning. And not just stunning, smart. She has a master's degree in archaeology and she did a dig in Greece and a dig in in Israel and she's in a very senior position um in government at at at a deputy assistant
[01:11] secretary position. Right? So we start texting, we start calling and I said, "Listen, I I want to be transparent and upfront. um you should know a little bit about me. And she said, "Oh, I know who you are, Mr. Kiryaku." I had never used my last name, but she said, "I know who you are, Mr. Kuryaku." I said, "Okay, great. Well, if it's okay with you, then it's great with me. Can't wait to go out. We go out to dinner. Have a fantastic time." I ask her out a second time. We go out the second time. Fantastic time. And then I say to her, "Hey, there's this little
[01:45] town outside Washington called uh Shepherd's Town, West Virginia." I said, "It's a it's got like art galleries and boutiques and bars and restaurants. Let's go on Saturday and we'll walk around town. We'll have lunch and, you know, hang out." She said, "Great." I pick her up 10:00 on a Saturday morning. As soon as she gets in my car, my my car, I can tell something's wrong. So, I said, "Are you okay? What's wrong?" "Nothing. Nothing." She goes, "Nothing. Everything's fine." I said,
[02:17] "Well, clearly something's bothering you. what is it? And she says, "Well, I have doubts about your progressive credentials." And I said, "Excuse me?" I said, "I went to prison for my progressive credentials." And then she says, "I saw a YouTube video of you last night in which you quoted Ronald Reagan." And I said, "All right, I know what quote you're talking about." I said, "Ronald Reagan
[02:56] was right when he said that government is the problem. It's not the solution to the problem." But the rest of that quote was, I said, "Even a broken clock is right twice a day." And she says, "I just need to process this. I need to think about it." it. I'm like, "Okay, whatever." We go to Shepherd's Town, have a nice time, but she's kind of cool for the for the day. Finally,
[03:26] around 3:00, it starts to rain, and it's raining kind of heavily. So, I said, "Look, why don't we just get in the car? We'll go back to DC." So, we get in the car, and I don't like to sit on my phone when I'm in the car. So, I take my phone out of my back pocket. I put it in the cup holder and we're driving and I get a text message. It goes. So I I look and I thought, "Fuck." It was a text message from Tucker Carlson and it said, it said, "Hey buddy, haven't heard from you in a while.
[04:04] Let me know if you're free for a beer." So, I kind of I give her the side eye like this just to see, you know, has she noticed? And she's like, "Who is that, John?" Yeah. Looking at the text message. So, I pretend I didn't notice. And then she goes, "Do you know Tucker Carlson?" And I said, "Yes, and he's a lovely guy. You don't have to agree with him. I disagree with him on 95% of the issues, but he's a nice guy." and she says, "Take me home right now and don't ever call me again."
[04:41] So, I did. But that's Washington in 2024. That's Isn't that on par with your tagline from your show? The red team, blue team. Everybody needs to have this tribalistic. It's either red team, blue team. No in between, no nuance. That's it. Can you imagine just as recently as the 1990s, Republican and Democratic members of Congress used to live together in group houses on Capitol Hill, play poker together on Fridays, go to church together on Sundays. Now they would just assume kill each
[05:13] other. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's the level of the discourse. But the Democratic Party is is hor in horrible horrible shape. Terrible. The neoliberal, they have lost their minds. And it's all led by this old mummified uh guy walking around who's barely sentient. He doesn't know where he is half the time. Can't find a chair to sit down in wandering off the stage. Um and and then beyond that just um imperialist genocidal kind of foreign policy. Even Kissinger said, "I see no aim
[05:46] in the current United States foreign policy." Even Kissinger was like, "You guys are doing it wrong." You know, it's funny that you say that because just last night I had a similar conversation in which I told a friend of mine that as much of a genocidal maniac as Kissinger was, he at least had goals in foreign policy. You know, you can disagree about what he did in Chile and Cyprus and Vietnam and a dozen other places around the world, but you knew what his policy was. you knew what
[06:21] the goal was and Raal Polyik was real. It was only because of Kissinger that Nixon went to China. It was only because of Kissinger that that Nixon and Brev were able to negotiate dant. And you're right there there's no discernable policy from this administration or the last one for that matter and even the one before Barack Obama. I mean, it was it was just kind of a standard run-of-the-mill neoliberal warloving, you know, lead from behind and still pretend to be the leader kind of kind
[06:58] of traditional policy. Nothing bold, nothing special, certainly nothing advocating peace in any way. No. And I mean Kissinger didn't advocate for peace necessarily, but at the same time the the the end result was at least and not that I'm for imperialism at all, but at least the end goal was to strengthen the United States. But in in the case of everything since Bush, it's been actually to create more enemies abroad. That's right. It seems or maybe that's uh on
[07:32] accident or whatever, but yeah, it just seems like there's not anything clear now. You we're steeped in Ukraine and everything like this. Mhm. and and look at the drone program just as one example. Um, you know, so many of us thought this was a fluke of the George W. Bush administration and it wasn't. The drone program is probably the single biggest the single most important recruiting tool for terrorist groups that exists. I can't tell you how many al-Qaeda fighters I captured or helped to
[08:10] capture who told exactly the same thing that they had no beef with the American government until our drones killed their dads, their brothers, their uncles, their imam, blew up the village, blew up the school, blew up the hospital, and then they were compelled to take up arms against us. Well, you know, in George W. Bush's last month as president, he killed 24 people with drones. And in Barack Obama's last month as president, he killed more than 400 people with drones. So, you know,
[08:45] what kind of policy is that? It's a policy of failure. And what do we get out of it? I mean, what you can say that the war on terror was some vague idea about going and getting vengeance in all these people, but were we trying to get oil out of Iraq or what? Just stealing the resource. Was that that's really the goal, I guess. Um, so I did I did want to ask you about Go ahead. Yeah.
[09:16] Uh I w I did want to ask you because you know we got right now there's a conflict in Georgia uh that seems to be instigated without any credibility. We don't know for sure but it seems like the CIA is behind this color revolution that's going on in Georgia. Ukraine is obviously being backed by the United States pretty heavily. Uh, and Noni. Now, Noni was an interesting character and I wanted to get your take on it because he went to Yale and and you were you were actually the one who was recruited from a university. He went to Yale,
[09:47] which is like one of the places that they are known to have CIA recruitment programs. What's your take on Noni? What's your take on Georgia and these kind of things? Well, let's talk about Georgia first. I'm fascinated by what's happening in Georgia. Um, but I think that the bottom line there is actually quite clear. Um, the bottom line is that our policy, whether it's stated or not, is to create as many problems for the Russians, especially on their borders, as we possibly can.
[10:17] So, you know, we're we're pumping tens of billions of dollars into Ukraine. Uh, we're not going to stop. You know, that joke that we'll fight to the last Ukrainian, that's actually not a joke. It's the policy, right? We will fight to the last Ukrainian. Um, so we've got that. We've got the policy of of encirclement. You know, the the Baltic countries are all in NATO. Poland's in NATO. Ukraine is de facto NATO. And um and why not stir up trouble in Georgia, you know, whether it's
[10:56] over this stupid uh foreign agent registration copycat law or just stirring, you know, poking the hornets's nest to to draw the Russians in. I'm surprised we're only doing it in Georgia. I'm surprised we're not also doing it in Armenia. You know, the Russians have tried hard to to walk a tight rope between the Armenians and the and the Azeris. We don't give a [ __ ] about the Azeris. I'm surprised we haven't jumped in with both feet on the side of the Armenians. If only I mean, it's
[11:28] not cuz we even care about the Armenians. If only to upset the Russians. So, to me, that's that's sort of the the easy issue. Now, Nani, I don't have the foggiest idea if Noni was working for the CIA or the FBI or if they even ever approached him. I have no idea, but I can speculate.