17 Dec Argumentum Ad Nauseam – FT#15
Show Notes
The Ad Nauseam logical fallacy refers to a situation where someone asserts a claim repeatedly, often even after the claim has been debunked, in the hope that people will start to believe it through sheer repetition and that people will get sick of trying to refute it so they will simply give up.
To be honest, it’s hardly fair even calling this an argument; it’s really just ‘pretending nobody has noticed that you’re lying’.
The examples used in this episode will be coming soon.
Here are the links to the stories we talked about
Recruitment is not a logical fallacy: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2018/12/12/rick-santorum-turns-down-trumps-chief-staff-gig-answer-right-now-would-be-no/?utm_term=.2aa9ad8df0d6
And finally, some things we really don’t have time to talk about:
- A federal judge has sentenced Michael Cohen to 3 years in prison for financial crimes, lying to congress, and campaign finance violations which were at the direction of President Trump. Seems like if Trump really wanted Hillary to get locked up he should have given her a job on his campaign.
- AMI, the company behind The National Enquirer has apparently been working with prosecutors since September, and has admitted coordinating with Trump’s campaign to pay hush money to a playboy model in order to influence the election. Honestly, if you can’t trust the National Enquirer, who can you trust?
- The sentencing memos for Michael Cohen heavily implicated someone called ‘Individual 1’ in various felonies. Trump tweeted “Totally clears the President. Thank you!” because, hey, it’s worth a shot, right? The identity of Individual 1 remains a mystery, although the memo does mention that they began an ultimately successful run for President in 2016.
- On 10th Dec in a collusion-denying tirade Trump tweeted that the Democrats were unable to find a weapon that fired decorative embroidery made by gathering cloth in regularly spaced round tucks. Whilst hundred of thousands of people on twitter immediately thought he just couldn’t spell Smoking – Bill Mitchell, the host of a YouTube channel “dedicated to supporting the presidency of Donald J Trump” quickly retorted; five hours later, cramming Mocking and Smoking together to save Trump’s ass; that’s got to be worth a cup of covfefe next time he’s passing the White House surely!
- When told that federal prosecutors believe Trump has committed multiple crimes, Utah senator and spineless dinosaur Orrin Hatch said “OK, but I don’t care, all I can say is he’s doing a good job as president. I don’t think he was involved in crimes but even then, you know, you can make anything a crime under the current laws if you want to”. Fortunately, we don’t have to care about Orrin Hatch any more, as he’s retiring from the Senate, and gave his farewell speech this week. The internet’s response was not exactly mournful. Here’s a genuine, typical tweet:
“Sen. Orrin Hatch delivers his farewell address on the Senate floor” and I cackle and give zero fucks. I hope that ghoul dies of boredom as soon as retirement starts. fuck him.”
- Last week Dan McCready, the Democrat running for Congress in the disputed 9th District, renounced his concession that he’d made to Republican Mark Harris in the midterms despite being entitled to a recount. North Carolina Republicans originally threatened to sue the elections board if it refused to certify the Ninth results. But following ballot tampering evidence, they have weirdly since backed all the way down from that and their own State GOP executive director Dallas Woodhouse is this week effectively calling for a new election. Whilst it is rather gratifying seeing a right-wing party that isn’t British fighting amongst itself for once, our lot could learn a thing or two about admitting to tampering and re-running votes!
- Former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was interviewed at an event in Houston last week and said “the president would say, ‘Here’s what I want to do, and here’s how I want to do it,’ and I’d have to say to him, ‘Well, Mr. President, I understand what you want to do but you can’t do it that way. It violates the law”. Naturally, Trump accepted the criticism with good grace and.. No, seriously though, he tweeted: “Mike Pompeo is doing a great job, I am very proud of him. His predecessor, Rex Tillerson, didn’t have the mental capacity needed. He was dumb as a rock and I couldn’t get rid of him fast enough. He was lazy as hell.” The best people.
- Trump is of course concerned about managing the debt owed to America’s creditors by the most successful economy in history – currently about $21 trillion – and expressed his concern with a heartfelt; “Yeah, but I won’t be here,” So now we know why he doesn’t care about climate change – there is of course no correlation between Trump’s statement and the recent successful flight by Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic to the edge of space.
