[00:00] Hello everybody, and welcome to our first episode of John Kiriakou's briefing room. I'm John Kiriakou. Here in the briefing room, we aim to bring you news and commentary without political bias. It's all about the analysis. We give you the facts, and then we talk about what those facts mean. Even before we begin, I want to thank you for being here. It is literally only because of you that we can make a go of this. So, please do me the personal favor of liking, commenting, rating, reviewing, and
[00:31] sharing the podcast with your friends and family. It would really mean a lot. So, what's in the news today? Actually, there's a lot in the news today. Um Our first topic is and should be the Iran war. Fighting has resumed again. The US and Iran are trading strikes, serious strikes, strikes that are killing people. The United States is bombing military targets all around Iran. The Iranians are bombing US military targets, so far primarily in
[01:02] Qatar and Kuwait. They're also hitting Bahrain and Oman. They fired missiles at Jordan yesterday. Those missiles did not impact anything. But, this is a big deal. It's It's not It's not just a temporary conflagration. This This is a real war. Uh this all started because Well, it didn't start at all, reignited because the Iranians attacked a Cypriot-flagged uh ship in the Strait of Hormuz. They uh hit the engine room, apparently with a
[01:34] drone. One uh seaman went overboard and is still missing and now presumed dead. At the same time that this is all happening, Washington lost one of its most influential foreign policy players over the last three decades. That was Senator Lindsey Graham. I have been tough on Lindsey Graham over the years. I have always maintained that on Capitol Hill there are workhorses and there are showhorses. A workhorse is a member of the House or
[02:05] a member of the Senate who actually writes legislation and is a substantive expert on something. A showhorse is a member of Congress who just runs in front of the nearest camera and bloviates about whatever happens to be in the news. That was Lindsey Graham. I don't mean to speak ill of the dead, but Lindsey Graham has so much blood on his hands over the last 30 years that I don't think we should be celebrating him. Lindsey Graham died on Saturday night at his home on Capitol Hill
[02:37] just hours after returning from a trip to Kiev. He is one of the strongest supporters of the Ukrainian government on Capitol Hill. Medical examiners say that the cause was a perforated aorta. Uh he apparently had um arteriosclerosis that he didn't know about. His arteries were clogged. And the bottom line is that he had a massive heart attack. To understand how sudden this was, just hours before he died, Graham was speaking with President Trump and preparing to appear on NBC's Meet the
[03:08] Press the following morning, Sunday morning. He was booked and then suddenly he was dead. In the end Trump went on Meet the Press uh in his place. Graham was not just simply one of the Senate's loudest talks. He was one of the few lawmakers with direct personal access to President Trump and to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. That made him a player in foreign policy automatically. He often served as an unofficial backchannel between Washington and
[03:40] Jerusalem. But but Graham was so pro-Israel as to be irrational. Um his death now sort of changes things on Capitol Hill for a number of reasons. Number one, uh Israel has lost its most vocal supporter. He really was its most vocal supporter. Number two, Ukraine has lost its most vocal supporter. Number three, the Republican Party has lost really
[04:11] what amounted to a Trump whisperer, somebody who had Donald Trump's ear and who who could convince him to do things. But let's look for a minute at the history of Lindsey Graham. Lindsey Graham was in the House of Representatives for many years before being elected to the Senate three terms ago, 18 years ago. Uh he was one of the leaders of the House impeachment of President Bill Clinton. Made a name for himself there, ran for the Senate, got elected to the Senate, and has been easily reelected
[04:43] ever since. Now, he fended off a rather strong primary challenge a couple of months ago, but still with well over 50%. And he was a shoo-in for reelection in November. But Lindsey Graham was a chameleon. This is This is a word that I've used to describe him multiple times over the years. Whatever happened to be in vogue, whatever foreign policy goal happened to be popular, there was Lindsey Graham.
[05:14] If there was one thing that Lindsey Graham loved loved loved more than anything else, it was war. He was a lieutenant colonel in the Judge Advocate General's Office in the Army. Uh he served for decades, but he never saw a war that he didn't want to jump into with both feet. And I'm talking about Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Ukraine, Gaza. He loved them all. And he was one of the biggest proponents of a wildly inflated defense
[05:48] budget on Capitol Hill. The current defense budget is $1 trillion. That's That's more than the next nine largest countries combined. And he wanted to increase that by 50% next year. In 1 year. He didn't care if children were starving. He didn't care that his state was near the bottom of the entire collection of 50 states in public education. He didn't care. So long as we had state-of-the-art
[06:20] weapons and weapon systems, ships, F-35 fighter jets, whatever the Pentagon wanted, Lindsey Graham made sure the Pentagon had. Lindsey Graham was also the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee and the number two on both the Appropriations Committee and the um Judiciary Committee. And so he played a leading role in pushing Donald Trump's Supreme Court nominees through the process. Getting back to Israel here.
[06:52] For Israel, Lindsey Graham's death removes one of Benjamin Netanyahu's closest and most reliable allies in Congress. In in in both of these conflicts, whether it's Gaza or Iran that we're talking about, and going all the way back to the Iraq war, he was always more than happy for the conflict to escalate. And frequently, he was a proponent on Capitol Hill, sometimes the only proponent, for sending in ground troops. His death, though, is an enormous potential gift for the
[07:26] people of Gaza. This is someone who, in the Meet the Press green room, would be on the phone with Benjamin Netanyahu asking if there was any information that he could reveal on the air. Seriously. This is what he did. Here's an example of how he would talk on that show. >> So, when we were faced with destruction as a nation after Pearl Harbor fighting the Germans and the Japanese, we decided to end the war by the bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki with nuclear weapons. That was the right decision. Give Israel the
[07:56] bombs they need to end the war they can't afford to lose and work with them to minimize casualties. Can I say this? Why is it okay for America to not to to drop two nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to end their existential threat war? Why was it okay for us to do that? I thought it was okay. So, Israel, do whatever you have to do to survive as a Jewish state. >> Ay, yay, yay. Where do you even start with something like that? First of all, historians are unanimous now that it was not necessary for the United States to
[08:27] drop nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The war was essentially over. Yes, we would have had to have launched a ground war, but the Japanese were broken. Besides, the Soviets The Soviets were moving in from the north. The war was done. Dropping nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a political decision. And it was a terrible one. More than 100,000 people were vaporized by those bombs, not to even mention the
[09:00] the thousands and thousands, tens of thousands of people who developed cancers later from the nuclear fallout. But, Lindsey Graham is advocating allowing Israel to use nuclear bombs on its own people. On innocent civilians, women, children, the elderly, populated areas. I I don't know anybody in his right mind that would advocate for something like
[09:31] that. And and furthermore, let's take it the next step. If it's okay for the United States to use nuclear weapons and okay for Israel to use nuclear weapons, then why wouldn't it be okay for the Russians to use nuclear weapons? Or the Chinese, or the Indians and the Pakistanis. The French for that matter, the British. It would usher in an entire new world. It's insanity. This is an insane position perpetrated by Lindsey Graham. And here's how Benjamin Netanyahu reacted to news of Lindsey Graham's
[10:03] Lindsey Graham's death. Let's go to that video. >> And I think one or once or twice he got his way. But let me tell you, the last conversation I had with him, I said, "Lindsey, we've come of age. We have a a robust economy. We can we can take care of our own financing our own weapons for the defense of Israel and defense of our common interest with America. So, I'm going to phase out the support the military support for Israel the over a period of years and bring it down to
[10:34] zero. We can do it." And he went ballistic. He said, "No way, you can't do that." Because he was so concerned with our security, which he believed was your security, that he actually fought the Prime Minister of Israel on keeping America's aid or actually increasing it. And that tells you what kind of a person this this extraordinary extraordinary friend was. >> Yeah, that says a lot right there. Uh you know, there's there's kind of a side
[11:05] story to this, too. Uh to to Benjamin Netanyahu's comments just now. He took a political shot at uh at Democrats. It was very, very subtle, and I think most Americans probably missed it. But what he said was that he wants to phase out American aid, specifically military aid, to Israel over the coming years. And Lindsey Graham was against that and because our security is the same as
[11:37] their security, blah, blah, blah, blah. He did that on purpose though. He said that on purpose because he's trying to figure out a way to turn American public opinion back in support of Israel. He knows that that most Americans hate foreign aid. I actually happen to like foreign aid. I think that I think that it buys us soft power that, you know, is is well worth the cost. But the
[12:09] conventional wisdom in the United States today, and this has been true for for the last 20 or 25 years, Americans don't like foreign aid. Well, the number one recipient of American foreign aid is Israel. But the thing is is if you are going to be co-located uh with American uh military officials in the Pentagon or with intelligence officials in the CIA and you've got spies spread out all over the country stealing American secrets
[12:40] anyway and you're a first world country with a first world economy you don't need the aid. And so, I think that Benjamin Netanyahu's calculation here is let's spread the word among the American people that we don't want this foreign aid anymore. You guys keep it. You spend it on yourselves. We're going to be okay. We'll we'll tough it out. We'll be okay. Well, Israel is a is a socialist welfare state
[13:10] anyway. They've gone generations living on the the teat of the American taxpayer. So, don't don't think that Benjamin Netanyahu is doing us any favor here. He's not. Well, getting back to Lindsey Graham. Now that he's died, we are in this unique situation where his work portfolio has essentially been revealed. This is fascinating. A reporter for Axios by the name of Barak Ravid was very close to Lindsey Graham. And he just released essentially Lindsey Graham's
[13:41] dying wishes and also his proposed arrangement to end fighting between the US and Iran even as we're getting into a new period of fighting with Iran. His key to solve the region the problem across the region ran through highly unpopular Saudi leader, de facto leader, Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman. Let's check out this Axios piece. Here's what he reported from his conversations with Lindy Lindsey Graham.
[14:11] The White House is preparing for what could become a multi-day or even multi-week exchange of fire with Iran over the Strait of Hormuz. The length and severity of the new campaign hinges entirely on Tehran's next moves, US officials tell Axios. Why it matters. A war that began with the goal of degrading Iran's missile capabilities and destroying what remained of its nuclear program has evolved into an open-ended fight over the world's most important energy choke point.
[14:42] A US official said the current escalation could last a day or two, a week, or a month depending on whether Iran continues its attacks on commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz. "We're going to slap them a bit so they understand we're not around." the US official said. Okay, let's take a break right there. It's pretty clear Lindsey Graham is the source for Barak Ravid Barak what's his name Ravid. It's pretty clear. Um Lindsey Graham has said these things
[15:13] publicly using the same language, the same lingo, the same word structure. And the thing is is Lindsey Graham here's a guy with a lifetime of military uh experience, a a lifetime of political experience on Capitol Hill dealing with the military and with uh foreign policy. And he still thinks that a country of nearly 93 million people, Iran, the size of the whole of Western Europe,
[15:45] and with the support of Russia and China, can be brought to defeat in a day or two? A week? Or a month? That's how we got into 20-year-long wars in Afghanistan and and Iraq. Because we listened to idiots like Lindsey Graham. Moving on. Driving the news, diplomacy has stalled for now, and military pressure is back at the center of President Trump's strategy. Trump
[16:16] said Wednesday, the 60-day ceasefire outlined in the memorandum of understanding was over after an exchange of fire triggered by Iranian attacks on commercial ships. The US then launched a second round of strikes near the Strait of Hormuz including attacks on infrastructure targets inside Iran for the first time in months. Iran retaliated with attacks on US bases in Kuwait and Bahrain while insisting it would not back down from its claim to control the strait. The bottom line here, and this is a clear bottom line,
[16:48] we can't beat Iran. Nobody can beat Iran. First of all, the culture is the 7,000 years old. Secondly, they live in the area. Third, the nature of warfare has changed. Think of it this way. We sent two aircraft carrier strike forces, also called aircraft carrier battle groups. It's an aircraft carrier full of fighter jets, and they take with them between 11
[17:18] and 12 ships. Either either 11 or 12 ships. The Iranians are fighting with suicide drones. Suicide drones cost between 5 and 10,000 dollars to make. You just strap explosives onto them, and you fly them into a target. You can't defend yourself from something like that. If if you have something like the Israeli Iron Dome, let's say. That's That's fine. You can shoot things out of the air. You can shoot down
[17:49] incoming missiles or what have you. But you can't shoot down 5,000 incoming drones. You don't have 5,000 missiles. Similarly, how in the world are you going to protect an aircraft carrier against suicide drones that are just going to fly into its side? The Gulf Arab countries are beside themselves over this. I was in Kuwait a few months ago. I was in Abu Dhabi, and I was in Dubai a few months
[18:19] ago. I also have friends who are members of five of the six royal families. I don't have any Saudi royal family contacts, but I have close contacts in all the other royal families. And unanimously, they are asking themselves, "Why do we have these American bases here?" Right? There are army bases in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Oman. Bahrain is the headquarters of the Fifth Fleet of the US Navy.
[18:49] Uh Qatar has the largest US Air Force base in the world, anywhere in the world. And in the United Arab Emirates, we have ground troops, we have air troops, we have navies, uh sailors. And we can't stop Iran from attacking these these countries, these friends of ours. And so, they're beginning to think, maybe we should make our own peace with the Iranians cuz the Americans aren't able to protect us. If I were a leader of Saudi Arabia,
[19:22] Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, or the UAE, I would be seriously reassessing my country's relationship with the United States. Moving on. Shortly after Trump signaled the US was what it ready to de-escalate, telling reporters on Air Force One that Iranian officials had {quote} called a little while ago and want to make a deal. That's just simply not true. The Iranians do not just call and say they want to make a deal. The Iranians do not call and say, "Oh, woe are we we
[19:56] give up. We want peace." No, that's just made up. That's for domestic US political consumption. The Iranians are willing to fight to the very death to protect their country. Remember, and this is important. Don't don't forget this. In the very beginning, when the United States and Israel launched these decapitation attacks, they killed Ayatollah Khamenei, they killed almost every Iranian nuclear
[20:27] scientist, they killed multiple cabinet members, they killed just about every senior member of the Iranian military leadership. The war was supposed to last a day, a day, because once these people were dead, remember, the Iranian people were going to rise up and it was going to be the land of milk and honey and freedom would reign and everybody would be happy. And that just never happened. The thing is is anybody who watches Iran and Iranian politics could have predicted that that would never happen. But, our government decided to listen
[21:01] to the admonitions of Benjamin Netanyahu and now we're bogged down in a war that we can't win. The other side, Iran's top negotiator Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, accused the US of bullying and breaking promises and warned that the Strait of Hormuz would only reopen on Tehran's terms. Quote, "If you strike, you'll get hit." That's what Ghalibaf wrote on X, formerly Twitter. The Strait of Hormuz will only open with Iranian arrangements, not
[21:31] American threats. So, let's let's look at the Strait of Hormuz. If we can pull up a a map, JB. I'm asking my producer to pull up a map of the Strait of Hormuz. You see how ships have to go in that little over over what's called the Musandam Peninsula. Uh now, it's the United Arab Emirates on the very tip and the rest of it is Oman. So, so part of that peninsula is separated from the rest of Oman, but it's all desert. Almost nobody lives
[22:02] there. The UAE and Oman are very close, so it doesn't matter. But, here's the key. The Strait of Hormuz is very very shallow and it's very difficult for ships to maneuver through. Well, the deepest part of the Strait of Hormuz is on the Iranian side of the maritime border. And so, for the last century plus, if you wanted to go through the Strait of Hormuz, you went through Iranian waters. And then we started bombing Iran and the
[22:34] Iranians closed the strait. Well, then all of a sudden there's a toll and Donald Trump says, "We are going to collect the toll." It's not up to us to do to collect the toll for ships going through Iranian territorial waters. That didn't work. It lasted just a couple of days. And then some ships started to try to go through the the Emirati and Omani side, but it's very shallow there. And it's dangerous for ships to run
[23:04] aground. Um the Iranians also were angry because it upset the status quo and the Iranians then attacked one of those ships then resulting in renewed US bombing. The bottom line being we're all back to square one again. I want to add this, too. There was no problem for ships going through the Strait of Hormuz before the US attack, the US and Israeli attack. It was the US and Israeli attack that
[23:34] closed the Strait of Hormuz. And then we're demanding that the Strait of Hormuz be open. The Strait of Hormuz was open. We're the ones that forced the closure. So we're going to have to see where that goes. I'm hoping cooler heads prevail, but I'm not optimistic. The big picture, reopening the Strait of Hormuz and restoring freedom of navigation for commercial ships has become a central goal for the Trump administration mainly to stabilize global energy markets. Well, of course it has. Nobody wants to pay $4 or 4 and a quarter for a gallon of gas. For Iran,
[24:07] maintaining control over the Strait has become a key objective in any deal to end the war because it belongs to Iran. The issue was a central provision in the US-Iran memorandum of understanding and conflicting interpretations of the Strait clauses are now causing the deal to unravel. The MOU requires Iran to allow safe passage for ships through the Strait of Hormuz, but soon after it was signed, Iranian officials accused the US of violating the deal by routing ships through the southern lane near the Omani
[24:38] coast without Tehran's approval. So there it is. Lindsey Graham, who we've said died suddenly Saturday, spent his final weeks laying the groundwork for an ambitious new push to normalize relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel. This is something that he told the reporter Barack what's his name? Barack Ravid in multiple conversations. Now,
[25:09] this would be the crown jewel of the so-called Abraham Accords. You might recall in the 2016 presidential campaign, then candidate Donald Trump said that he would end the Arab-Israeli dispute in 24 hours. Okay, obviously, clearly, that was ridiculous and he didn't do that. But what he meant by that was he was going to just screw the Palestinians and try to get the Arabs to open diplomatic relations with the Israelis. He was largely successful in
[25:40] what was called the Abraham Accords. So now, Morocco has relations with Israel, uh Sudan has relations with Israel, uh the United Arab Emirates has relations with Israel, Bahrain has relations with Israel, in addition to Egypt and Jordan, which have long had relations with Israel. But the crown jewel would be Saudi Arabia. Not just because Saudi Arabia is the biggest and most populous country on the Arabian Peninsula, but because it is what's
[26:11] called the land of the two holy mosques. It's the very beating heart of Islam. Also, Lindsey Graham knew darn well that most Gulf Arabs hate the Palestinians. And I'll tell you why they hate the Palestinians. I was I had a front row seat to this whole thing playing out. In 1990, on August 2nd, 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait.
[26:42] The ruling family fled into exile in Saudi Arabia and Iraqi troops set out to rape Kuwaiti women, they destroyed the country, they set all of the oil wells on fire, took years to put them out. Um But the entire middle class, not just in Kuwait, was Palestinian. The Palestinians were the doctors, the lawyers, the professors, the bankers. They made the economies run.
[27:14] And the leader of the Palestinians at the time, or the Palestine Liberation Organization, was Yasser Arafat. The American Secretary of State, James Baker, went to Arafat and said, "You have to do the right thing. You have to come down on the side of the Kuwaitis and help us push the Iraqis out of Kuwait." And there was this very public self-flagellation on the part of Yasser Arafat, and in the end, he came down on
[27:45] the side of Saddam Hussein. The same thing was happening in the United Nations Security Council at the time. Yemen just happened to have a seat that year on the on the UN Security Council. And Secretary Baker went to the Yemenis and said, "If you have any idea what's good for you, you're going to vote yes on a use of force to push the Iraqis out of Kuwait." The Yemenis and the Cubans were the only ones to vote no. As a result, Saudi Arabia expelled
[28:17] literally every Yemeni. It was millions of them. Yemen has never recovered. Never. The economy collapsed, the country split, civil war after civil war, it's never recovered. But when I was living in the Gulf in the early and mid-1990s, the consensus among Gulf royal families was that they were going to expel every Palestinian. And for the most part, they did. They replaced them with Filipinos, Bangladeshis, Egyptians.
[28:50] Most recently, Syrians. You don't have to be Palestinian to be a lawyer or a professor or an engineer or a banker. Other countries produce those professions as well. And so the Palestinians never recovered. And that's why right now these countries are willing to open diplomatic relations with the Israel with the Israelis because they don't mind screwing the Palestinians. Lindsey Graham knew that. Benjamin Netanyahu certainly knows that.
[29:23] Donald Trump probably knows it, doesn't care one way or the other. And so uh the Palestinians are in a very bad situation right now. Now, we get to a point where we get to a point where the average American who watches the news every day wakes up one morning and says, "Wait a minute, this is a genocide. You can't just go there and just kill everybody. That can't be your policy to kill everybody, every civilian, every man, woman, child, elderly person. You you
[29:56] flatten the hospitals, literally all of them. You flatten the schools, you flatten all the homes and the apartment buildings, and then you restrict food shipments. And you cause starvation on a massive scale. So it's not our political leaders like Lindsey Graham who who have stood up. It's the average American who is standing up and saying enough. Well, Lindsey Graham saw Saudi-Israel normalization as the defining prize of a
[30:27] broader post-war settlement in the Middle East, one that could outlast the military campaign against Iran and then fundamentally reshape the region. He had worked on this issue for many years, including with the Biden administration. And he believed the opening created by Iran's weakening could give President Trump a rare chance to broker a historic agreement. I will tell you that I have been guilty over the past 6 or 8 months of saying that
[30:57] this may sound overly optimistic. But we used to say in the '70s, only Nixon could go to China. Richard Nixon was the most anti-communist, most anti-Chinese president in American history, but he went to China and made peace. Would it be possible that only Trump could go to Tehran? No. Lindsey Graham's plan was to begin an intensive diplomatic push after Israel's October elections and the US midterms
[31:28] with the goal of reaching a deal before the new Congress was sworn in in January. So time was tight and it was running out. But Graham believed the war with Iran first had to be brought under control, especially this ongoing crisis in the Strait of Hormuz. He had urged Donald Trump to authorize a short, overwhelming military operation to forcibly reopen the strait if diplomacy failed. That sounds like the old troop surge
[31:59] that we initiated in Iraq and which also failed. I'm going to leave you with this thought from Barak Ravid, the Axios reporter. He says that Graham told him that he intended to work with President Trump and his team to make clear to Netanyahu and to other Israeli leaders that Washington expected the next government, the next Israeli government, to move in the direction of normalization of relations with Saudi Arabia and that the US would press it hard to do so. In the final hours of his life, Graham
[32:30] spoke with President Trump by phone Saturday night. We believe that this was the final phone call that he had. And he briefed him on his trip to Ukraine and on the Russia sanctions bill that he wanted the Senate to vote on soon. Trump told Graham that he was preparing to launch fresh strikes against Iran after another attack on commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz. A person who spoke with Graham just after the call said that Graham complained that he was not feeling well. When the person urged him to seek medical attention immediately, Graham
[33:02] said that he would do so on Sunday morning after he finished his stint on Meet the Press. Graham then joked, "I can't die now. I still need to do the Russia sanctions, get Iran sorted out, and do Israel-Saudi normalization." And then he dropped dead 2 hours later. I don't believe that anything's going to change vis-à-vis the war in Iran now that Lindsey Graham is dead. Donald Trump has his policy. Donald Trump has made up his mind. Donald Trump certainly
[33:32] has the support of the rest of the Republicans in the House and the Senate to continue this this war on Iran. But but he did lose a serious cheerleader in Lindsey Graham. When I was a little kid at Christmas time, my mom and dad always used to put one little 1-oz silver bar in my stocking and the stockings of my brother and sister. And it was fun, and silver was something like $7 an ounce at the time, and I just accumulated them. I started doing the same thing with my
[34:03] own kids at Christmas time, putting a 1-oz silver bar. Well, then I discovered 10-oz silver bars. And then there are the big silver silver bars that are 100 oz. It's just my way of saying that um we did that just for fun. We did it at Christmas time just for fun. But it's very serious. What if the way money works is about to change? Not someday, not hypothetically, but right now. China and the United States are both making
[34:34] moves that suggest that we could be headed towards something the world hasn't seen in more than 50 years, a return to gold-backed money or something very close to it. China is shutting down paper gold trading at four of its biggest banks right now, all on the same day, and they're building a new system that settles in gold physically instead. On our side, the government is sitting on over 8,000 tons of gold still valued at just $42 an ounce on the books. Legislation to fix that is already in
[35:06] Congress. If both superpowers start anchoring their currencies to gold, what happens to the price? And more importantly, what happens to every dollar in your retirement that isn't backed by anything at all? That's the question. Our free report from American Alternative Assets answers. It's called The Day Money Changes Forever. And if you have an IRA or a 401k, you need to read it right now. Get your free copy at johnlovesgold.com. That's johnlovesgold.com
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[37:41] Your fan edits have blown me away. I really cannot walk 5 ft without getting recognized. All because someone on TikTok started adding laser beams to my eyes and uh and Alvin and the Chipmunks voice when I talk. I have a personal policy that I never ever ever say no to a selfie request or an autograph or whatever. Because when I say that that my success is only because of you and people like you, I mean it. But anyway, I wanted to show you a
[38:13] couple of the uh of the fan edits that are out there that we've had so much fun with. Can we cut to some of those? This is a tattoo. A tattoo that Chris Riley got on his leg. I I didn't even know what to say. I'm I'm humbled. I'm not sure that you're going to want a tattoo of my pouting face 20 years from now, but listen, I'm humbled and flattered. >> [laughter]
[38:54] >> You can't force hummus up someone's rectum, for example. Right? You can't >> You know, they learned I was afraid of an irrational fear of insects. And so, they put him in a coffin. >> And they dumped a box of cockroaches in there with him. And then closed the coffin. And they left him in there for 10 days just with a diaper. >> You can't do that. Nobody told you you had permission to do something like that. You know, and waterboarding was supposed
[39:25] to be the ultimate technique. But there were a couple that were that were clearly worse than waterboarding. >> Uh sleep deprivation. Right? >> So, this was the first one that I received. Uh I I didn't even receive it. I just randomly saw it on Instagram. And there are a lot of crazy talented people out there. So, I'm I'm very, very flattered, but it's just nuts to me that
[39:57] people are using their talents for silly things like this. Thank you for Oh my god. I have an assistant uh who goes through my emails uh just because I get hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of emails every day. I just can't get through them. And she told me the other day, "You know, you get You get nudes like every single day." She said, "I just delete, delete, delete." And I said, "Yeah, save for that way. I mean, I don't know if these people are 18 years old and even still, I I don't want their nudes."
[40:27] And she said, "Oh, they're between like 18 and 70." I was like, "Yeah, no. There's even a a petition that somebody started to put me on Dancing with the Stars." >> [laughter] >> It's just so ridiculous. I don't even know what to say. I am I am grateful though. I really am. It's fun. >> Of all these Cameos, what was the sweetest one?
[40:58] >> Uh I've gotten three. I've I've done about 1,950 Cameos so far. >> Okay. >> I do 20 or 30 a day. >> Okay. >> I've gotten three where Well, let me let me back up. About 50% of them are birthday wishes. You know, uh Jimbo's birthday is next Tuesday. I say, "Hey, happy birthday Jimbo. John Kiriakou here. Hope you had a great day, you know, etc." So, there's birthday, you know, Mother's Day, Father's Day, whatever.
[41:30] Advice, pep talk. About 10% are pep talks. So, of the 10% that have been pep talks, three have come back to say that I somehow talked them out of committing suicide. I'm not really sure how I did that. But, you know, there are a lot of really hurting people out there. We get so wrapped up in our own lives and our own existences, we don't realize how many other people are in pain.
[42:01] There's one girl, she's just one out of almost 2,000 Cameos that I've done. One who sounded like she was in such pain. I said, "Listen." In the Cameo, I said, 'We're not supposed to do this, but here's my phone number. >> Wow. >> Call me.' And she called me. Crying, she's 15. She's bulimic. Her parents don't understand her. She was going to commit suicide. And I talked her out of it. And um
[42:31] she's called me twice since then. Usually for less than a minute or two. >> Very respectful. >> Very, very respectful. And she said she just She's having a down day and she needs to hear a friendly voice. And that's it. Cameo has literally changed my life. Uh Cameo is an app where, you know, D-list celebrities, people most Americans have never heard of like me, um will give you birthday wishes, as I said, or or a pep talk or advice, or,
[43:04] you know, happy Father's Day or Merry Christmas or whatever. But every once in a while, you know, people who are really in crisis reach out because it's the only way they can figure out how to get to you, and then one thing leads to the other. I I will add that during COVID, I had a friend, a good friend, who took his own life. And I spoke to him the day before he did that. And he sounded great. And I said to him,
[43:35] "James, you sound great today." He was He was depressed a lot. And he said, "Yeah, I feel really good today." The next day his sister called me. And um and she said, "I wanted you to know that James killed himself last night." He um he went for a walk in the neighborhood. The neighbor had a big oak tree. He strung up a noose and he hung himself from the neighbor's oak tree. He left a note. He said he didn't want to get his mom's house dirty. But he said,
[44:06] "Please call John and tell him I said I was sorry." I will never forgive myself thinking that there was something I could have done, something I could have said to talk him out of it. Again, I had talked him out of it, I don't know how many times. But it made me realize how many people are out there who are genuinely hurting. And if they need a friendly voice, and I happen to be that friendly voice,
[44:38] I'm happy to do it. We've got to rely on each other. I think COVID really really showed that to all of us that we have to help each other and stick together to get through these tough times. We can't just be focused on our own lives and stuck on our own zone when there are other people out there who really need help. And so I I was glad that I could help somebody. I am addicted to Angry Birds. My ex-wife once told me that one of the reasons why
[45:08] she wanted divorce was because as soon as my alarm goes off in the morning, I roll over, put on my glasses, pick up my phone, and I start playing Angry Birds. And she would lose her mind on me. "What are you doing? Are you playing Angry Birds again? Is that all you do is play Angry Birds?" In my defense, I actually get up an hour early. Nobody's missing out on anything. I'd rather have Angry Birds than have you. I'm globally ranked on Angry Birds. I have played 2,887 consecutive days. A guy said to me the
[45:38] other day, "Hey, I made level 36 in Angry Birds. What level are you?" I said, "1,708." Angry Birds is very important to me. >> [laughter] >> The more podcasts I'm on, the more people ask me about my personal life. And one of the things that I love, love, love, it's really my only vice, besides buying art, um is playing Angry Birds. Angry Birds 2. I have not missed a single day in nine consecutive years. I love Angry Birds.
[46:09] It's the first thing I do when I wake up in the morning. I roll over, I put on my glasses, I get my phone, I go to Angry Birds, and I start killing those pigs that are eating my birds' eggs. And of course, I use the black pearls that I accumulate to buy hats for my birds, and I increase the number of feathers, so their flock strength is more, and you have to You have to know Angry Birds to really understand, but man, there is nothing that I love more than Angry Birds. You got to love Angry Birds. It's For For a while, it was like
[46:43] the only joy I had in life. And sure enough, the first thing I did this morning was play Angry Birds. I will add that my doctor, last time I went in for a physical, my doctor said, "You know, you're 61, you're almost 62, you need to start thinking about keeping your brain fresh." And I said, "Okay, what do you mean by that?" And he said, "I want you to do the New York Times crossword puzzle every day." I said, "Every day, including Saturday?" Cuz that's like an impossible puzzle. He said, "Yeah, do it every day." I've become obsessed with crossword
[47:13] puzzles. I do the Washington Post, which is really the LA Times. I do the New York Times, and I do the USA Today every single day, 7 days a week. So now I have to actually get up even earlier because I do the I do the crossword puzzles first, and then I do Angry Birds. Because Angry Birds, you know, I can take breaks and, you know, whatever. Check out Angry Birds. You can't go wrong. In the meantime, I I want to thank you again for joining us. This was our very first episode of uh of The Briefing
[47:45] Room, and as I said, I'm going to say it again, we're only able to do this because of you. So please like, comment, share, rate, review, and tell your friends and family. The plan is to release new videos every Tuesday and Thursday. But, one of the things that I absolutely love to do is to take questions from you. And so, please feel free to put questions in the chat, and then we will begin answering them in a
[48:15] third installment uh during the course of the week. I look forward to that very much. Just let the questions rip, and we'll handle them as they come. Thanks for joining us, and we'll see you next time.