Straw Man Fallacy – FT#2

23 Jun Straw Man Fallacy – FT#2

Show Notes

When someone makes a strong argument that’s hard to refute, don’t despair. Simply pretend they made a different argument, that’s easier to knock down – you could massively oversimplify what they said, misrepresent the point of their argument, or just put words in their mouth. Congratulations! You’ve just constructed a Straw Man that’s easy to defeat.

Trump

We started out by discussing this clip of Trump on the Second Amendment:

Then we talked about this clip of Trump confusing abortion and birth:

Mark’s British Politics Corner

Mark talked about this clip of Boris Johnson lying about banana-based tyranny:

Fallacy in the Wild (Sting – kind of a weird David Attenborough impression)

In the Fallacy in the Wild we looked at this clip of Kirk Cameron:

Fake News

Here are the statements from this week’s Fake News game:

1. They said “Sir, what would you like to name it?” I said I’ll tell you and I’m being serious about it. I wanted it to be called the Tax Cut Cut Cut Cut plan. Four cuts. And we all agreed that was a little bit hokey so we decided not to do that.
2. Our country is respected again all over the world. We’re not making apologies, we’re not making excuses, we’re respected again as a country.
3. We’ve got jobs coming back. Big, beautiful jobs like you wouldn’t believe. And the fake news media say “Unemployment’s been going down for years”.  I’ll tell you what: Not like this.  Not like this.

Click below for the answer

Mark got it wrong this week, so he’s still on 0%

Lying is not a logical fallacy

We talked about the lies in a single White House press event

The stories we really didn’t have time to talk about

• The fact that Trump habitually rips up any piece of paper he’s finished with, and a team of records officials are paid over $60k a year each to tape them back together so that they can be sent to the National Archives.
• EPA chief Scott Pruitt illegally used government resources to try and get his wife a Chick-Fil-A franchise.  This revelation did NOT come out of one of the 15 current federal investigations into Pruitt’s corruption scandals.
• The Supreme Court kind of said it’s OK to discriminate against gay people if you believe in God hard enough.
• Paul Manafort got put in jail to stop him from doing any more witness tampering. Trump called it ‘a tough sentence’, proving once again he doesn’t know what a sentence is.
• Trump disinvited the Philadelphia Eagles for not being patriotic enough, then held a ‘Celebrate America’ event instead, but refused to learn all the words to God Bless America.
• Trump said Russia should be let back in the G7 summit, turned up to the summit late, clashed with all the other world leaders and left early.  Then he insulted Justin Trudeau and refused to sign the joint communique from the summit.
• Trump met with Kim Jong Un, agreed to stop joint military exercises with South Korea (without telling South Korea) and in return got a promise to talk more in the future.  Then he tweeted “There is no longer a Nuclear Threat from North Korea.
• And on Trump’s 72nd birthday, the New York State’s Attorney General sued the Trump Foundation, alleging that the charity engaged in “a pattern of persistent illegal conduct occurring over more than a decade.”  Happy Birthday Mr President!

If you wanted to buy a T-shirt featuring this fallacy, you could click here. No pressure

And if you have some money left over after that, Jim’s book, 2000 Mules and One Big Lie: A Stubborn Conspiracy Theory is available now.