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Larry Charles, who’s worked on some of comedy’s most influential and successful projects, from Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm to Borat and Bruno to The Arsenio Hall Show, tells everything about his forty years of blood, guts, and laughter in the new book Comedy Samurai.

Including the juicy stuff, which he shares with us on Useful Idiots: as an activist against genocide and for Palestinian rights, what is it like to work with notorious Zionists Jerry Seinfeld, Sacha Baron Cohen, and Bill Maher? And as a Jewish writer in Hollywood, how did he escape the Israel propaganda machine when his friends didn’t?

Useful Idiots: You're very political. Do you ever struggle with making sure your politics don't get in the way of comedy?

Larry Charles: Well, I think my bottom line is it needs to be funny. And I bet I've been exploring that relationship between things that aren't supposed to be funny that I would then rise to the challenge of trying to make funny. And of course, political issues are amongst them.

Working on Fridays as my first job plunged us into the political world. Some sketches were more successful than others in terms of funniness and/or in terms of insight, but we were not at all censored. And I never have felt since that time that I was censored in terms of exploring politics through comedy. I love the idea of trying to bring those two worlds together, even when they're not on the surface supposedly funny, because there's always an angle.

I was a big political cartoonist fan and I did political cartoons in high school. So I've always been looking for that juxtaposition, that interesting synthesis between politics and humor.

Useful Idiots: You have visited Palestine, and you've been very vocal on the issue, especially since Israel started attacking Gaza after October seventh. Now, you've worked with some people who have made some of the most influential comedies ever: on Seinfeld with Jerry Seinfeld, Borat and Bruno with Sacha Baron Cohen, and others too who have very different views than you when it comes to the issue of Palestine. I'm curious how you navigate that, how incredibly creative partnerships can not transcend to being in alignment on really fundamental political issues.

Larry Charles: The propaganda machine is able to seduce you, you get sucked in very easily. And you believe that Israel is your birthright. And those kinds of things were not questioned at all when I was a kid. And I'm sure for Bill Maher or for Jerry or for

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We have another Useful Idiots Double Header this week: former CIA officer and whistleblower of the CIA’s torture program John Kiriakou on the Jeffrey Epstein hoopla; and Visiting Assistant Professor at Clark University’s Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies Marta Havryshko, on why she believes that Ukraine is becoming a dictatorship.

First up is John Kiriakou, the only person to serve jail time for the CIA’s illegal torture program. He didn’t participate in the program, he only committed the crime of telling the public about it.

Now, John is focusing his sleuthing skills on the Jeffrey Epstein case. If anyone’s got the dirt, it’s John Kiriako.

Useful Idiots: You said that you feel material was probably destroyed. Can you elaborate on that?

John Kiriakou: At the CIA, even though there are laws like the Federal Records Act, which specifically says you cannot destroy documents, they destroy documents all the time.

After Congress specifically told the Director of Central Intelligence that he had to preserve the MKUltra documents, he went back to headquarters and they destroyed eighty percent of the tens of thousands of pages of documents that they had. So now we don't really know what is true about MKUltra.

Same thing at the CIA with the torture videos. As soon as word leaked that there were videos of Abu Zubaydah and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed being tortured, [CIA Director] Gina Haspel put them in an industrial grinder and destroyed them.

So why would we think that the FBI would be any different, especially when it comes to allegations that some of the most powerful and some of the wealthiest men in the world are implicated in the scandal? I could absolutely see the FBI destroying documents.

Useful Idiots: What is the relationship between Epstein and Israel? And what do we know about who was on the plane, and who engaged in sex crimes?

John Kiriakou: Alexander Auctions of Maryland got the Epstein Black Book. They didn't say who had it, but they put it up for auction. It has everybody in it. Why in the world would that be in private hands? Why is that not in the FBI, being investigated and poured over? Why are the the manifests for the Lolita Express not being poured over? Why are they not questioning every single person who flew to the island?

The real question in my mind is who was Epstein working for? And I've thought about this a lot. I can only conclude that

"He is, in Democratic terms, not much different,” says conservative commentator John Podhoretz, comparing Zohran Mamdani to former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke. And it’s a seamless argument, clearly, until Podhoretz admits one tiny flaw in his reasoning:

“David Duke's a Nazi. Of course no one should be a Nazi,” but then, turning his argument back to Mamdani: “Well no one should be a Stalinist either... and he is a supporter of Hamas."

We’re not really sure how to even argue such a nonsense argument, but it’s helpful that Podhoretz helped us out with undermining himself. Similarly to Trump’s “Communist” claims about Mamdani, it isn’t true that Zohran is a Stalinist or a Hamas supporter, which is an easily verifiable fact – just ask him. But when the elite get scared, they pull out their “1001 Insults” book and start throwing everything they’ve got at their boogeyman.

So far, nothing has stuck to Zohran Mamdani.

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Also in this week’s Thursday Throwdown: Hakeem Jeffries is in denial about the progressive plan to primary him, CNN’s Fareed Zakaria is doing his journalistic duty of bootlicking Benjamin Netanyahu, and NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte has a hilarious new joke about Russia.

It’s a week of madness – watch with Katie and Aaron so you can laugh instead of cry at it all. Thanks for supporting independent media, subscribe to watch the full episode here: