I’m Entitled to my Opinion – FT#136

14 Nov I’m Entitled to my Opinion – FT#136

Show Notes

The I’m Entitled to my Opinion Fallacy occurs when someone invokes this supposed right in the face of opposing evidence which they can’t argue against.

Trump

We started out by discussing this clip of Mike Pence defending Trump’s opinion on voter fraud:

And then we looked at this clip of Joe Tacopina defending Trump’s opinion on the bias of a judge:

Then we talked about Roger Stone’s testimony to the House Intelligence Committee in 2017:

Finally, we talked about Kellyanne Conway’s invention of ‘alternative facts’:

Mark’s British Politics Corner

Mark talked about football pundit Gary Lineker’s opinion on Brexit.

And he followed that up by talking about this clip of GB News folk defending Suella Braverman’s opinions on pro-Palestinian protests:

Fallacy in the Wild

In the Fallacy in the Wild we looked at this clip from The Mentalist:

Then we discussed this clip from The Big Bang Theory:

And we finished by talking about this clip from 12 Angry Men:

 

Fake News

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

1. The Latino vote is so incredible because they’re unbelievable people. They have incredible skills, incredible energy, and they’re very entrepreneurial. All you have to do is look at the owners of Univision. They’re unbelievable entrepreneurial people. And they like me. You know, there’s never been anything like it in the Republican Party. I’ve been a Republican and am a Republican, and we have tremendous support from the, I call Hispanic, Latino, you have lots of different terms. But it all means the same thing as far as I’m concerned.
2. They’ve released the genie out of the box. They’ve done something that nobody thought would happen. They’ve taken a president who is very popular. I got 75 million votes, much more than that, I believe. No president’s ever gotten that many votes and they’ve taken that number of people. And I think you can double it or almost you can triple it in terms of the real – the feeling. You can’t do that. You can’t go after people. You know, when you’re president and you’ve done a good job and you’re popular, you don’t go after them so you can win an election.
3. What they’ve done is like a third world country. It’s like – I don’t want to give any names, but you know the names, that’s where this kind of thing happens. In places where – look, what they’ve really done is they’ve made this the thing you have to do. If I’m president, and I think I will be, I would be stupid not to do what they’re doing right now. If I see someone who is against me and doing well, as well as I’m currently doing – I’m ahead in all the polls – I would have to take them down by indicting them. I would have to.

Mark got it right AGAIN this week (that’s eight in a row!), and is on exactly 50%!

 

The Trumps under oath are not a logical fallacy

We talked about the Trump family’s testimony in the NY civil fraud trial.

 

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

• The beginning of November is the most important time of the year when it comes to American politics, because, as we all know, November 7th is Four Seasons Total Landscaping Day. The anniversary of Rudy Giuliani finding out the election was called for Biden while holding a press conference in a parking lot between a crematorium and a sex toy store because a comedy genius at Four Seasons Total Landscaping did not ask “Do you think this is the hotel” when they took a booking for an event. And yes, technically the first week in November is also when they do elections and shit, and they did some this year, so I guess I could talk about that. Democrats won pretty much everywhere. Andy Beshear was reelected as Governor in Kentucky, Virginia Democrats held on to the State Senate and took the House of Delegates, New Jersey Democrats expanded their majority in the State Senate, a Democrat was elected to the open seat on the Philadelphia Supreme Court, and school boards across the country rejected the vast majority of candidates endorsed by Moms for Liberty, choosing instead sane people who are in favor of kids learning stuff. Meanwhile, Ohio so convincingly voted to enshrine abortion access into the state’s constitution that Ohio Republicans are already workshopping ways to ignore the majority of the electorate, with State Representative Jennifer Gross claiming it only passed because of foreign election interference, and Representative Beth Lear saying “No amendment can overturn the God-given rights with which we were born”, by which she presumably means the God-given right to force other people to have babies? Not sure. In any case, these idiots seem to be having trouble understanding that taking away reproductive rights is unpopular, which they have in common with, well, all the other Republicans, like Marjorie Taylor Greene, who is convinced that Republicans lost because they’re not being extreme enough when they talk about abortion, or One America News host Jack Posobiec, who ranted in all-caps that “THE CHILDLESS, UNMARRIED ABORTION ARMY MOBILIZED BY BARBIE, TAYLOR SWIFT, AND TIKTOK ARE CRUSHING REPUBLICANS AT THE BALLOT BOX.” I mean, he’s not wrong, exactly.
• “If Brains from Thunderbirds were a real person” AI generative image result and new Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson and his somewhat puritanical faith-obsessed views have come under more scrutiny now he’s elected to the Speaker’s job. You know those pesky niggling and obviously vote-winning election-denying, far-right Christian nationalist views from his time with the anti-LBGTQ organization Alliance Defending Freedom through to his claim that school shootings could be blamed on abortion and teaching evolution. Also under scrutiny are his online activities which he talked about in a conversation on the “War on Technology” at Benton, Louisiana’s Cypress Baptist Church which turned up on X formerly known as Twitter (I just say that to annoy Elon!). Apparently he runs a piece of software called Covenant Eyes (and I can hear Mrs Potato Head saying “and your angry eyes” everytime I see that written down) which monitors what you watch and doesn’t like, prevent it or anything, no it collates a report and then sends that to your “accountability partner” which in Mike’s case is his 17-year old son for whom Mike is his accountability partner! Yeah way to go Mikey – not only is it a bit weird and big brotherish but eeeewww your kid is going to see if you’ve – let’s face it – watched porn – and you just know at 17 that’s all he’s gonna be doing!!  “If anything objectionable comes up, your accountability partner gets an immediate notice. I’m proud to tell ya, my son has got a clean slate” says Mike! ​​As the X user Receipt Maven pointed out “A US Congressman is allowing a 3rd Party tech company to scan ALL of his electronic devices daily and then uploading reports to his son about what he’s watching or not watching….who else is accessing that data?” Just say No Mike just say no!
• Five people got together in Miami on Wednesday to argue about which of them gets to lose to Biden if Trump chokes to death on his KFC by next November. Yes, it was the third Republican Primary debate last week and we’re down to five because Doug Burgum didn’t meet the minimum national polling requirement and Mike Pence pulled out of the race and immediately triggered multiple Mandela effects where half the people swear he pulled out months ago and the other half are shocked he’s still alive. The remaining candidates all behaved in their assigned roles, with DeSantis aiming to replicate normal human facial expressions and failing HARD, Tim Scott doing basically nothing (although his mythical Canadian girlfriend did make an appearance), Chris Christie attacking Trump,  Vivek Ramaswamy attacking everyone and everything, and Nikki Haley having no fucks left to give when Vivek started going after her daughter for having a TikTok account. Haley’s response of “You’re just scum” became both the biggest takeaway of the evening, and simultaneously the truest thing ever said on stage at a GOP debate. 
• “I’ve dealt with these politicians many times,” says Zephan Parker, the bespoke bootmaker behind Houston’s popular Parker Boot Company, which, he says, has made height-increasing cowboy boots for a number of Texan politicians. “I’ve helped them with their lifts. And [DeSantis] is wearing lifts; there’s no doubt.” There you have it folks Politico reports that Tiny D who stands at a miniscule 5’ 11” is worrying about his size and the size of Trump – who at 6’ 3” also wears lifts to give him that front half of a pantomime-centaur look. Apparently height is perceived to be an advantage over on the Right cos over the last century or so, taller candidates have tended to have an advantage in general elections — with the notable exceptions of former President Barack Obama, who is shorter than Mitt Romney, and President Joe Biden, who is shorter than Trump. Traditional Western boots are typically built with an elevated heel, ranging from 1 1/2” to 1 7/8”. DeSantis’ boots have a traditional Western silhouette, but, to Parker, the heels appear shorter. When you stick inserts into cowboy boots, the combination of the height-increasing lifts and the heels can “turn them into five-inch stilettos,” Parker says. “That’s too much for the common man. So on a ready-made boot, they’ll cut down the heel about half an inch to accommodate the lifts, which looks to be what happened here.” “He looks like he’s wearing trousers with an eight-inch opening,” the bootmaker estimates, “which is plenty of room for a Western boot on a man of his proportions.” The fact that the tops push against the trouser legs suggests to Parker “the boots are bigger than intended, probably to accommodate his lifts.” De Santis’ campaign deny it of course, “the governor doesn’t pad his boots, but if he ever needed anything to line a pet cage or fold up and wedge under a table leg, that would be the highest and best use for Politico Magazine.”  Yeah nice well-informed comeback guys apart from the fact that POLITICO Magazine does not appear in print!
• I wrote a whole intro here about the rise in hate crimes since 2016 and especially during the past month due to events in Israel but then I remembered this part’s supposed to be both informative and funny, and there’s nothing funny about hate crimes. Or so I thought – stay with me here – until I read about Ruba Almaghtheh, an Indiana woman who decided to crash her car into the Israelite School of Universal and Practical Knowledge in Indianapolis last week, because she’s an antisemitic asshole and she thought it was a Jewish school. Fortunately for everyone, Ruba is also an idiot and couldn’t be bothered to Google the school before smashing into it and causing $10,000 of damage, because if she had, she might have discovered that the Israelite School of Universal and Practical Knowledge is and SPLC designated hate group who are even more antisemitic than she is, as well as being anti-LGBTQ and anti-women. So fuck those guys. Now if we can just get all the hate criminals to only attack each other, I think we could solve the problem.
• Jacob Angeli-Chansley, better known as the QAnon Shaman (though he prefers to be called America’s Shaman, thank you very much), filed paperwork with the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office on Thursday announcing his intent to run as a Libertarian (natch) in Arizona’s 8th Congressional District. Chansley was released into a halfway house this past March after serving 27 months of his 41-month sentence for his part in the January 6 insurrection, and has since been very vocal about the fact that all of his contrition over his actions that day were total bullshit, especially the part where his lawyer made him blame Trump for what he did. He now claims that, actually, the January 6 insurrection he was literally filmed participating in, shirtless and wearing a large fur hat with horns, was a psyop by the FBI to make Trump and his supporters look bad. Errr!? None of this phases the world of the Q-Anonsensers which at one point was very certain that he was a CIA or FBI plant on a mission to make them all look bad, now the consensus seems to be that he is “part of the plan,” or at least on the side of the “white hats.” Okay I guess given that a Democrat is not going to win that seat let’s just go with choosing the most ridiculous ill-suited candidate and potential embarrassment for the GOP – mind you they don’t embarrass easily – and at the very least enjoy the merch possibilities, formal or casual available with matching furry tie no doubt. 
• James Comer, the idiot Chair of the House Oversight Committee, struck idiot gold in his search for evidence of corruption in the Biden family when he found a check to Joe from his brother Jim for $200,000 dollars. Clear evidence of shenanigans which will no doubt lead to a successful impeachment and bring down the Biden administration. All the anti-Biden folk on Twitter are convinced it’s the smoking gun and are happy to wave away technicalities like the fact it says on the check that it’s a loan repayment and that it was written in March of 2018 when Joe was a private citizen. In their determination to prove malfeasance they claim there’s no evidence that Joe ever loaned Jim that amount of money, conveniently ignoring that CNN found evidence of a bank transfer of $200,000 two months before into Jim’s account from a law firm connected to Joe. Still, say Comer and friends, Biden had shell companies, which is very suspicious, and there’s just no way that a payment of that amount between brothers is anything other than some as yet undetermined highly illegal and nefarious scheme. I mean, imagine if James Comer had a brother, with whom he repeatedly exchanged hundreds of thousands of dollars in deals which are unexplained – that would be crazy. What’s that, the Daily Beast? Oh, yes, those deals. Apparently James Comer’s family owns quite a lot of farmland. Back in 2019 his brother Chad bought James’ half of a property in Monroe county for $100,000, only for James to buy the whole property back from Chad five months later for $218,000, only this time, using a shell company. And in 2015 the brothers swapped properties worth around $175,000 and $203,000, with James gaining about 30k from the transaction but neglecting to disclose that in public records. What’s that quote about people in glass houses again?
• This last week or so in British Politics Suella Braverman, the Home Secretary says living on the streets when you’re homeless is a ‘lifestyle choice’ and she is trying to crack down on people living on the streets being able to have tents. Also in her op-ed piece for the Times she managed to offend pretty much everyone with her spiteful ignorance of the history of the troubles in Northern Ireland and describing pro-peace Palestinian marches as hate marches ignoring the facts that both Palestinian and Israel support groups attended the march on Saturday. Basically she was saying that  people should not march for an Armistice, cos it ruins the meaning of Armistice Day. Then 92 right wingers are arrested for acts of violence while defending the cenotaph from peaceful people who are nowhere near the cenotaph. We wait with bated breath for the cabinet reshuffle on Monday where we hope Suella will be considering a new lifestyle choice, yeah just not on my street alright Cruella! It won’t happen cos little Rishi doesn’t want to make a martyr of her so she becomes the de facto leader of the Tory Right for the inevitable decade in opposition. Oh and also check your data roaming settings if you’re going on holiday outside of your cell phone suppliers boundaries, since Brexit for instance, phone companies in the UK no longer have to provide free roaming in Europe and will charge you for it. Morocco is not in the EU so was always going to be chargeable if you start using your iPad’s data allowance say, like Scottish Health Secretary Michael Matheson who apparently was using his governmental iPad for work on holiday in Morocco and racked up £11,000 in data roaming charges! Sheesh I thought I’d overdone it a bit when I discovered that you get charged when sailing across the English channel cos it’s in international waters and not the UK or EU! Serves me right for listening to the latest episode of this podcast!!

That’s almost all for this week, but here’s our AI-aided and minimally hand-edited transcript which is at least quite accurate, but not totally:

I’m Entitled to my Opinion – FT#136 Transcript

Jim: Hello, and welcome to Fallacious Trump, the podcast where we use the insane ramblings of an ingordigious maw-worm, to explain logical fallacies.

Mark: I’m your host, Jim, and I’m your other host, Mark. A logical fallacy is an error in reasoning that results in bad or invalid arguments. And the logical fallacy we’re looking at this week is the I’m entitled to my opinion fallacy. Can I just congratulate you on the gorgeous phrase ingordigious maw-worm?

Jim: Yeah.

Mark: Wow. What is ingordigious?

Jim: it’s a combination of a couple of Susie Dent words, the brilliant linguist from Countdown, and online. Ingordigious means motivated primarily by greed.

Mark: Nice.

Jim: Yeah, it’s a 17th century English word. And a maw-worm, is someone who insists that they have done nothing wrong despite evidence to the contrary.

Mark: Wow.

Jim: There you go.

Mark: Perfect.

Jim: Works perfectly for Trump.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: So the I’m entitled to my opinion fallacy, I think, is unique, as far as we’ve seen so far, in that the thing people say when they’re committing the fallacy is the name of the fallacy.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: I don’t think any of them have been quotes before.

Mark: Yes.

Jim: But, yeah, essentially, this is when people invoke their right to an opinion in the place of evidence, usually in the face of opposing evidence. So when they’ve put forward their opinion and their supposed evidence for that being the truth, and then they’ve been shown it’s wrong, then rather than presenting more evidence or arguing against the evidence that they’ve been shown, they’ll just say, well, I’m entitled to my opinion. And it’s a kind of thought terminating cliche in as much as it’s designed to just shut down the discussion. But the thing is, they are technically right in that they’re entitled to their opinion in as much as no one can stop you thinking a thing.

Mark: Yes.

Jim: They can’t make you have a different opinion. But typically, when people use this, that’s not really what they’re saying.

Mark: No.

Jim: What they’re kind of saying is, I have the right for my opinion to be given as much respect and weight in an argument as your facts.

Mark: Yeah. I’m entitled for you to respect what it is that I’m saying despite. And give it equal weight. Yes, despite the facts being to the contrary, my opinion weighs as much as your facts. It’s, a Trojan horse phrase.

Jim: The idea that all opinions are equally valid is inherently flawed anyway. But the idea that an opinion is equal to facts on the other side is clearly not logical. Yeah. Interestingly, although I’ve got several examples from Trump World, and three of them are in defense of Trump, Trump himself doesn’t seem to really say this. I haven’t been able to find examples of him saying it, at least. And I think the reason is because he doesn’t express the things he says as an opinion.

Mark: No, he expresses them as facts.

Jim: He claims they’re facts. He pushes them as facts. And so if you say, well, that fact’s wrong, he doesn’t say, well, in my opinion, it’s different. He’s like, no, you’re wrong. My facts are true even when they’re absolutely not true. But some people who are often called upon to defend him are less willing to go that gung ho about it and will fall back on this fallacy. One of the first ones, I think, probably was when he was just President elect and he was talking about how he would have won the popular vote as well, if you count all the illegals that voted for Hillary, if you take them. So Mike Pence was on George Stephanopoulos’ show and was called to defend that.

George Stephanopoulos: I’m asking just about that tweet, which I’m going to say that he said, he would have won the popular vote if he deduct the millions of people who voted illegally. That statement is false. Why is it responsible to make it?

Mike Pence: Well, I think the president elect just wants to call to attention the fact that, there has been evidence over many years of that’s not what he said. and expressing that reality, Pew Research center found evidence of that four years ago, is certainly his right. But

George Stephanopoulos: it’s his right to make false statements?

Mike Pence: Well, it’s his right to express his opinion as a president elect of the United States. I think one of the things that’s refreshing about our president elect, and it’s one of the reasons why I think he made such an incredible connection with people all across this country, is because he tells you what’s on his mind.

Jim: That’s very refreshing.

Mark: He is very refreshing. And also in doing that, he gives permission for other conspiracy theorists as we know to say. Yeah, no, he’s right. All of this is true. All of these awful things that are proved disproved by facts. You can prove anything with facts. It’s a conspiracy. We are right. We are able to express this stuff because the president does it.

Jim: Yeah. So Pence tries to offer some evidence inasmuch as he brings up a Pew research study from a few years before that. He mentions it a few times during this interview. The first time he says, correctly, that it revealed voters who were, incorrectly on the rolls who had died or moved away or whatever. But each time he does it subsequently, he suggests that it is evidence of fraud, which it isn’t evidence of fraud at all. It’s not evidence that fraud took place. It’s evidence that the voter rolls need cleaning, that’s all. And so he tries to kind of bring in evidence, but when that fails, when George Stephanopoulos pushes back on it, he just goes back on. Well, it’s his opinion. He’s got a right to express his opinion.

Mark: yes. He’s got a right to spread falsehoods. Well, it’s a very refreshing. He’s chimed with all sorts of other people that pedal falsehood. Yeah. That’s why he got voted in, because they all believed his lies, because they all agree with them.

Jim: Yeah. And our second example is also a George Stephanopoulos interview. Every time I hear his name, because he was mentioned on friends in, like, season one, when they got his pizza. The girls got his pizza.

Mark: yes.

Jim: And Rachel didn’t know who he was and said, who’s George Snuffalupagos?

Mark: Yes.

Jim: It’s all I can think of when I hear his name. Anyway, he was interviewing Trump lawyer Joe Tacopina. This is one of the New York trials where Judge Marchan was – Trump was saying that he is biased against Trump. And so Stephanopoulos was asking Tacopina if he believes that too.

George Stephanopoulos: President Trump has attacked the judge. Is that your team’s official legal position? Do you believe the judge is biased?

Joe Tacopina: No, I don’t believe the judge is biased. I mean, the president’s entitled to his own opinion. Look, he’s been the victim of a political persecution.

Jim: So, yeah, Joe is saying, essentially as a lawyer in his courtroom, I’m not going to say he’s biased. Yeah, I haven’t got any evidence to say that. But the president can say it, that’s fine. He’s entitled to his opinion and he’s.

Mark: The subject of a political persecution. That’s surely an opinion too.

Jim: No, he says, that’s a fact. I don’t care whether you believe it or not. That’s a fact. He says later on in that interview.

Mark: right. Wow. Right. Okay. The Trumpness is bleeding across his legal team.

Jim: So our, third example is from Roger Stone’s testimony to the House Intelligence Committee in 2017. Now, this was the testimony that he later was prosecuted for lying to Congress about and eventually had to be pardoned by Trump because otherwise he was going to prison. And what he lied about was the extent of his connection to Russian sources prior to the 2016 election. So perhaps we could do a bit of a dramatic reading.

Mark: Oh, yeah. There you go, yeah.

Jim: Do you want to play Adam Schiff or Roger Stone?

Mark: I’ll be Schiff. Yeah.

Jim: Okay, go.

Adam Schiff: Mr. Stone, you’ve acknowledged that it’s the conclusion of the intelligence community that Gucci, for two, is a cutout of the Russian intelligence agencies.

Roger Stone: They have said that, yes, and you’ve disputed that.

Adam Schiff: But do you have any basis to dispute that, other than the fact that you wish it not to be true?

Roger Stone: I just see no proof of it other than the flat statement that it is the case. So I’ve given you my opinion. Yes.

Adam Schiff: And because the intelligence community hasn’t shown you the classified information that will be the basis of their conclusion, you’re rejecting it on the basis of the fact that they’ve gotten other things wrong in the past. Is that your…

Roger Stone: Many, many, many other things. And as I say in my statement, I believe they’ve been politicized.

Adam Schiff: Yes, but your testimony, Mr. Stone, that you were never in contact with Russians, let alone the Russian intelligence services, is only truthful if the intelligence community is wrong about its assessment, and you have no basis to conclude that they are wrong about their assessment.

Roger Stone: I’m entitled to my opinion. I do not believe that they are, that he is or that entity is a Russian cutout, and therefore, I would disagree with you.

Mark: Wow. Yeah. I see no other proof of it other than the flat statement. And I love that, that he says that. Schiff says, do you have any basis to dispute that other than the fact that you wish it not to be true?

Jim: Three times he comes back to him saying, you’ve got no reason to believe this. Have you? And all of the evidence is on the other side. And Stone is like, well, that’s my opinion. I, get to have an opinion.

Mark: Yeah. When the speaker says it, they think that’s it. And they almost kind of dust their hands together and go, right, that’s it.

Jim: Job done, I win.

Mark: Or it’s a stalemate. Or I’ve trumped. Ha. With a small T. I’ve trumped your card. Yeah. If that’s all you’ve got. I’ve got my opinion. Yeah, there it is right there.

Jim: Yeah.

Mark: Jeepers.

Jim: And so our, fourth example is from Kellyanne Conway.

Mark: Yay.

Jim: Following day, one of the press conferences that Sean Spicer held after Trump was inaugurated, in which Spicer lied about almost everything. And Chuck Todd weirdly took Kellyanne Conway to account and asked her probing questions about this stuff and wouldn’t let it go. So she responded like this.

Kellyanne Conway: Don’t be so overly dramatic about it, Chuck. You’re saying it’s a falsehood and they’re giving. Sean Spicer, our press secretary, gave alternative facts to that. But the point. Alternative facts.

Jim: Alternative facts.

Mark: Such a great.

Jim: Is really this fallacy, I think. Sure, you’ve got the truth on your side. We’ve got our version.

Mark: Which I am entitled to.

Jim: Sean Spicer has his own version, of facts, and he can say so.

Mark: Wow. Such a brilliant addition to the global lexicon, wasn’t it? I’d like to say that I miss both Sean Spicer and Kellyanne Conway, but I don’t at all.

Jim: I never give them a second thought.

Mark: No. And he was the most ill-suited for the role person ever.

Jim: Well, in press secretary, I mean, just in my head, only comparing him to Trump’s other press secretaries and still thinking, actually, no, he was great.

Boris Johnson: And now is the time, I think, for Mark’s British politics corner.

Mark: We’re going to start off with politic adjacent. And actually, he mentions that he’s not interested in politics, but he does seem to wade in on the issues of the day. And it’s Gary Lineker, ex England World cup star and TV football soccer pundit. And before he was commenting on Suella Braverman’s use of language from 1930s Germany and bringing sports coverage to a complete standstill. Back in October 2019, he was talking about Brexit. Under the banner headline, Gary Lineker stuns BBC viewers with patronizing, claim poor people were duped by Brexit. The right wing tabloid Daily Express, who also do both of those things, dupe poor people and are, patronising. They clipped an interview that he gave on the BBC, which begins with this.

Gary Lineker: Politics has always been an interest. I don’t want to get involved in politics in any way, but it’s nice to be able to voice for opinion. Obviously, I have a large platform, so I have to think about the degree of responsibility with what I do. So I try and do it in the right way. The Brexit issue has become something that, from the very start, I just couldn’t work out why it would be a good idea. Whether I’m right or wrong, time will tell, but, I’m entitled to my opinion, and I’m perfectly happy with people, that have a difference of opinion, but I still am waiting to hear from one of them something positive, genuinely positive.

Mark: So in there, there’s kind of an extension of the I’m entitled to my opinion. He talks about graciously allowing other people to have opinions, but there’s something in there that smacks a bit of I’m okay with other people’s opinions, but they’re wrong is kind of in there. And also he says, well, yeah, I was interested in politics, don’t want to get involved in politics, but I’d like to have my opinion. So he’s doing the I can be involved in politics through the fact that I’ve got an opinion. But he does wade in with lots of opinions, and the strength and rightness of his political position is based on the fact that he’s entitled to his opinion.

Jim: I think this fallacy becomes a lot messier when you’re talking about things that are either genuinely opinion based, like preference or kind of ideas of what might happen in the future or might happen given a certain set of circumstances. Like Brexit at the time. Well, no, not at the time, because this was 2019, wasn’t it? Yeah. I think his opinion that Brexit wasn’t a good thing by this point had been fairly well proven. So in a way, I think the most fallacious he’s being. Is engaging with other people’s opinions, that it is actually great, and saying, yeah, they are entitled to their opinions because who say, like, yeah, other people can have their opinions. I mean, they can, but look at the fact. So where this is strongest is where people are expressing opinions about things that can be proved, and they’re on the wrong side of that.

Mark: Yeah. So I think, by extension, the fact that he says he doesn’t want to get involved in politics.

Jim: Yeah, he does a very bad job of not getting involved.

Mark: Is disproven by the facts. But I like to express my opinion. The fact is he does get involved in politics. That’s a lot of what his online presence is about.

Jim: I mean, arguably, given his high profile status as a BBC presenter and football pundit and stuff, he’s more involved in politics than a large number of politicians who you never hear anything from ever. Like most of the Lib Dems, unfortunately, and a huge number of backbenchers, he’s way more politically active, you could argue.

Mark: Yeah, but he’s kind of denying it, in a way. Interestingly, the URL of the article at the end is Brexit News. Gary Lineker, Brexiteer Remainer, BBC latest. So you can kind of tell what the Daily Express thinks of his opinion, I. E. That he should keep it to himself. And speaking of Suella Braverman as, someone who should keep the stuff to themselves, as Home secretary, she’s been calmly acknowledging this week the part that Britain’s played in all the wars across the centuries, and accepting those same Britons can, of course, march for peace, whatever side of the issue they stand behind during the current conflicts. No, of course she hasn’t. She’s been rabidly stirring the culture wars pot in the run up to the armistice day parade in London. And she published an op ed in the Times which was unsanctioned by the prime Minister, accusing the police of biased policing against the right wing and not the peaceful pro Palestinian martyrs. Sorry, hate mobs. And thus, in a very Trump like way, actually incited some sort of violence on the streets. And the government is quite quiet about it, apart from I actually spotted Rishi Sunak’s tell when he said he still had full confidence in the home Secretary ahead of Monday’s cabinet reshuffle.

Jim: That offers some hope.

Mark: Yeah, he’s doing a cabinet reshuffle – for reshuffle, read rearranging titanic deck chairs. So whilst the government’s been quiet on it, right wing commentators have not been silent. And so here’s a clip from GB News, which is the broadcast arm, as we discovered, of the Tory party, where GB News were heavily represented at the last conference because most of the presenters are Tory party members, if not elected officials. So this is GB News, Michelle Dewberry’s show. And on the show, Alex Dean, who’s credited as a PR consultant, he employs the fallacy on Suella’s behalf. And, Peter Edwards, who’s credited as former editor of Labour List, counters the Fallacy.

Michelle Dewberry: The article she wrote in the Times where she basically accused the police of playing favourites, treating those on the left when you’re protesting very differently to perhaps those on the right.

Alex Dean: I think that whilst she may use some terms that people, might not use themselves, she’s perfectly within her right to express, her opinion. And I think, furthermore, given that the ability to designate something as a protest, so risky that it can’t take place, sits. Not with her, but with the police.

Michelle Dewberry: It wasn’t a speech, it wasn’t an interview. It was her opinion.

Peter Edwards: I mean, that’s a defence put out by her aides, sources telling newspapers it’s just her opinion. She holds one of the great offices of State Home Secretary. There’s an international crisis in the Middle east, which I think, left or right, we’re all very saddened and distressed by. But on such a sensitive issue, just to chuck out an article like this, ignore the comments. And it wasn’t that they didn’t see it. Downing Street saw the article, requested edits, and her, team or her, Suella, refused to make them. So it’s basically sticking two fingers up at her boss on such a sensitive issue. And my worry is finally that it makes it all about her.

Mark: That’s the other thing that I think this fallacy does, is when you say I’m entitled to my opinion, the entitle bit is there an opinion? Is there? But it’s also my opinion. And it does make the argument about the person saying I’m entitled to my opinion. As Peter Edwards points out, it is all about Suella. It’s become about her. Defenders are saying she’s got the right to express an opinion. Well, not when you’re determining government policy.

Jim: Yeah, that’s the thing. This becomes much more dangerous and problematic when the people who are expressing the opinion hold positions of power or have some kind of conflict of interest even on a topic. us expressing an opinion on anything isn’t going to make any difference to anyone. But when you’re the fucking Home Secretary or the president or someone like that, your opinion isn’t just your opinion. No, it becomes government policy. Even by proxy.

Mark: Exactly. Yes. And it’s absolutely disingenuous for anyone to say, oh yeah, another fallacy we ought to try and look at because there’s so many times it pops up. Grant Shapps the Defense secretary is now saying that the Labour Party are playing politics with the demands that Suella Bradman be held to account for publishing her opinion in the face of directives from number ten who said, no, you can’t publish that. You need to take these things out that she didn’t take out. And I think they said, you need to take this out because they’re factually incorrect. It’s just opinion. You can’t be saying that given that you’re in the office that you hold. And of course the fallback after she’s entitled to her opinion is you’re just playing politics. Yeah, we should look at that one. See what, That maybe when we swap roles, might do that one.

Jim: There might be a new one. I’m not sure that falls into any existing one So you might just come up with it.

Mark: Labour’s Darren Jones was commenting on the fallout of it, and he pointed out that Suella Braverman is entitled to her views, but she should make them privately within the cabinet meeting. And also, retired rugby referee Nigel Owens pointed out, you can’t have an opinion when it’s totally factually wrong. That then is just a feeble excuse to say something. What she’s doing is she’s inciting hatred and division and disenfranchising the police. She’s done all sorts of stuff. She’s trying to blame the judges for being too woke and for upholding the law about people being deported to Rwanda.

Jim: Bloody judges, upholding the law.

Mark: Coming round here, pointing out our legal problems. And she does all that stuff. And then to say, well, I’m entitled to my opinion allows you to say outrageous things, seeking to be granted permission to be able to say this shit with no comeback. That’s the thing, is, when people say that, you’re right, it is a thought terminating cliche, because that’s the end of it. And that’s it. I’ve entire opinion, and that’s the end of it. whilst it kind of leans into thought terminating cliche, I think it also contributes to invincible ignorance. There’s a brilliant Facebook page called. No, actually, that’s bollocks. Which, had this example where it spells out the blind faith of Boris supporters. And there was this little, video clip, and he kind of written some commentary and said, okay, so basically what’s going on is the viewer, Eileen says, I think Boris has done a marvellous job. Really? In the face of all the evidence presented to you at the select committee hearings. Yes, well, I’m entitled to my opinion. Well, naturally, you’re right, Eileen. You are. But I’d implore you not to ignore the truth when it’s laid out in front of you. Yeah, well, I still think Boris has done a marvellous. It’s that it’s a barrier to. Not to have to engage with the facts on the basis that the other person is arguing with.

Jim: Yeah.

Mark: And I’ve got to get the last word. Yeah.

Jim: It’s a refusal to accept any argument or facts or anything on the other side.

Mark: Just No.

Jim: Can’t change my mind.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: This is my opinion. That’s it.

Mark: Yeah. And I’m entitled to it.

MARK’S FALLACY IN THE WILD STING

Mark: The Beatles there, of course, with a new number one hit now and then.

Jim: So in the fallacy in the wild, we like to talk about the fallacy of the week from a non-political perspective. And our first example this week comes from the Mentalist. Another medium or a claimed medium, has come to them with information about a case, and there’s some dispute. Obviously, Patrick Jane is skeptical, and the others, not so much.

Grace: Christina told us she knew in advance that Rosemary was in danger. Why would she tell us that if she’s guilty?

Patrick: How diabolically clever of her. Make us dismiss her as a suspect. Because she made herself look like one.

Grace: Or maybe, just maybe, she has a rare and precious gift and is trying to help us.

Patrick: A rare and precious gift. Tell me, who gets these gifts anyhow? And how come no one ever has the gift for seeing horse race results? And how come dead people always talk such tedious dribble?

Lisbon: Play nice, Van Pelt’s entitled to her opinion.

Grace: Not if it’s wrong. This is like believing in the Easter Bunny.

Wayne: Who says there’s no Easter Bunny?

Mark: Nice. She’s entitled to her opinion. Yeah, that’s the other thing. Stop arguing with her.

Jim: Absolutely. That’s the thing. Lisbon is defending Grace in this instance, saying that she’s entitled to her opinion, and, yes, she is entitled to it, even though it’s wrong. But that doesn’t mean that you’re not open to challenge. If you express an opinion and someone can offer questions to challenge whether it’s right or not, that’s okay. Yeah. That’s not being mean to her.

Mark: No, it’s not like she’s saying no. I don’t particularly like David Bowie. You can go. Okay. Yeah, fine. Fair enough. That’s. You’re entitled to your opinion. Yeah. Rather than. Well, you’re wrong.

Jim: She’s expressing the opinion that it is possible that mediums really can talk to the dead, and Jane is prepared to push back and has evidence-based questions. But if you don’t know the backstory of the Mentalist. Patrick Jane used to scam people. He used to be a stage mentalist, a, TV mentalist who would kind of read people’s minds and talk to the dead and that kind of stuff. So he knows all of the tricks. That people do when they pretend to do that stuff. And that’s why he is convinced that that doesn’t exist in reality, because all of the people who he’s ever seen who do that, he knows what tricks they’re using. Yeah, that’s the evidence base that he’s coming from in his.

Mark: Yes, exactly. Yes. He’s coming from a vast body of evidence of, the facts of how you do this stuff. Didn’t we see one, at QED, when you just went, oh, yeah. Now I’ve worked out how he did it.

Jim: Well, we saw a magician who did some mind reading type things.

Mark: Yes, exactly. And what you’re trying to do is sway the crowd’s opinion that you are, in fact, reading minds.

Jim: But the way you do that, as a stage mentalist is to provide them with evidence that appears to show that that’s a power you have. Yeah, and it’s just that they are not critically thinking about that evidence in the right way. And possibly because it’s a trick they’re not aware of, it is still providing evidence rather than just saying, hey, I, can read minds, and that’s totally a thing, and if you don’t believe it, that’s my opinion and I’m entitled to it.

Mark: All you’ve got is the evidence, that I can’t.

Jim: That doesn’t exist. Yeah. So our, second example comes from the Big Bang Theory, an episode where the gang have done something wrong to Sheldon. They’ve messed with one of his experiments. He got very cross and moved. Resigned from his position at the university and moved back to Texas.

Sheldon: What are they doing here?

Leonard: We came to apologize

Howard: again

Leonard:and bring you home. So why don’t you pack up your stuff and we’ll head back?

Sheldon: No. This is my home now. Thanks to you, my career is over, and I will spend the rest of my life here in Texas trying to teach evolution to creationists.

Sheldon’s Mom: You watch your mouth, Shelly. Everyone’s entitled to their opinion.

Sheldon: Evolution isn’t an opinion, it’s fact.

Sheldon’s Mom: And that is your opinion.

Sheldon: I forgive you. Let’s go home.

Mark: Brilliant. Brilliant. Yeah, there is. That’s the double down.

Jim: Absolutely. Yeah. Explicitly saying that your facts are just an opinion as, equal to my opinion. Equal to my opinion that creationism is real. That’s essentially what people are doing with this fallacy is they are equating the fact with the opinion and saying they have equal weight. Sheldon’s, Mum just did it explicitly.

Mark: Yes. not only are they saying that my opinion is equal in weight to your fact, but that your fact is no less of an opinion than my opinion.

Jim: and should be treated the same, essentially.

Mark: Bringing facts down to the level of opinion. And proud of it.

Jim: So our final example comes from twelve Angry Men, which we have discussed a few times. I think, in fact, we’ve probably looked at this scene before. But this is the very, very end of the film. And this is where Lee J. Cobb is kind of coming to the end of his rope. And he’s dealt with all of the arguments. He’s the one holdout. He still thinks the kid’s guilty. And he’s trying to kind of deal with the fact that everyone’s presented facts to him that he can’t argue again.

Juror #3: You lousy bunch of bleeding hearts. You’re not going to intimidate me. I’m entitled to my opinion.

Jim: And this is almost the last thing he says before breaking down and admitting that he thinks actually the kid isn’t guilty. And the reason he’s holding out is because he sees in this kid his own son, who has walked away from him and abandoned him, presumably because he’s a violent asshole.

Mark: Could be.

Jim: And so he resents his kid and his relationship with his kid, and regrets not having a relationship. And so he sees this kid in the defendant, in his relationship, and he sees him as a kind of waste draw. He holds on to that, that emotional argument, his feeling that the kid is guilty, his opinion, despite all of the facts that are presented to him, and all of the questions that are raised that suggest that at least there’s doubt. And all he can do at the end is not argue against those facts. Just say, well, I’m entitled to my opinion, and that’s it.

Mark: That’s all that’s left. And also, there’s a stubbornness involved in his character, but in people that say, well, I’m entitled, like Eileen and her belief that Boris was doing a great job, you just dig your heels in and say, well, I’m going to stick with my opinion. In the face of all the contrary evidence, he does break down. In order to agree that the facts and the evidence presented to them mean that there is reasonable doubt, he has to break down. He has to emotionally go through trauma to get past why he’s holding on to his opinion.

Jim: And I think it’s very telling that this is the character who says this, and it’s right at the end. Because M any of the. It starts out eleven people saying the kid’s guilty. At any point in the film, any one of those other eleven could have said, well, I’m entitled to my opinion. And that’s why I’m sticking with what I think. But each of those other ten were prepared to be argued around by evidence. They had, at least partly an open mind, and they weren’t sticking with their idea because it was their opinion, and that outweighs facts. They listened to the facts.

Mark: Yes.

Jim: This is the one guy who wasn’t swayed by the facts until he had that breakthrough.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: So before we move on to fake news this week, just want to mention that Christmas is coming up. The goose is getting fat, and by Goose, I mean me. And if you are thinking about what presents you might want to give people for Christmas.

Mark: then think no further.

Jim: There’s a new range of T shirts on our merch store at Fallacioustrump.com/tee In fact, the specific new range is at Fallacioustrump.com/shirts. And if you don’t have Apple Podcasts, if you use a different podcast app, you might have noticed that since episode 130, I’ve been using episode specific thumbnails. Apple Podcast still shows the show artwork no matter what, but some apps use episode specific artwork, and it’s on our Facebook group with each episode and so on. That artwork is what I’m putting on to T shirts. So every episode since 130, there’s a T shirt with that fallacy, with a definition and a little image that represents that fallacy. And I’ve also done some of the kind of classics, straw man, poisoning the well. And there will be more going up weekly if you would like a fallacy. And there isn’t a T shirt of it yet. Let us know, and, I’ll make one for you, just specifically for you. There you go. There is a Black Friday Cyber Monday sale coming up at the end of November, so that’s why I wanted to tell you about it now, because you can get 40% off during that weekend, and they’re good things to get for Christmas or for yourself. Treat yourself.

Mark: Yeah, forget the horrible Christmas jumper. Buy one of these for Christmas, and it’s for life, not just for Christmas. Absolutely.

Jim: Yeah, I’m wearing one right now.

Mark: My favorite graphic so far is the worst case scenario, one with the crocodile, snake, and a bomb.

Jim: So FallaciousTrump.com/shirts for that range. And if there isn’t a fallacy that you like up there, let me know which one you’d want to see.

Donald Trump: So we’re going to play fake news, folks. I love the game. It’s a great game. I understand the game as well as anybody. As well as anybody.

Jim: Yes, it’s time for fake news. The game where I read out three Trump quotes, two of which are real and one I made up, and Mark has to figure out which one is fake news.

Mark: So I’m just going to state it for the record and say it out loud. And I’m sure I’m not the only one thinking this, that the whole game is rigged against me. Basically, I demand a recount as all the numbers to the right of the ratio rightfully are mine. And I’m just voicing my opinion, as is my right. But I think many people agree that this is correct.

Jim: Right. Well, Trump did an interview on a Spanish language channel called Univision recently. And a lot of the stuff he said was very, very rambly. It was a fawning interview. They weren’t probing questions that he was asked. Right. But he went on, his answers rambled significantly and repeated himself and went down rabbit holes and things. So here are just some things that he said during this interview. He was asked initially about why he thinks Hispanic people are intending to vote for him in such huge numbers. He said

the Latino vote is so incredible because they’re unbelievable people. They have incredible skills, incredible energy, and they’re very entrepreneurial. All you have to do is look at the owners of Univision. They’re unbelievable entrepreneurial people. And they like me. You know, there’s never been anything like it in the Republican Party. I’ve been a Republican and am a Republican. And we have tremendous support from the, I call Hispanic Latino. You have lots of different terms, but it all means the same thing as far as I’m concerned.

Mark: Okay,

Jim: so that’s why Hispanics are voting for Trump. Yeah.

Mark: They’re incredible, unbelievable, entrepreneurial people. And he’s a Republican. And he’s been a Republican. Right. Okay. Yeah.

Jim: And then he was asked about Biden going after him so much.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: He said, they’ve released the genie out of the box. They’ve done something that nobody thought would happen. They’ve taken a president who’s very popular. I got 75 million votes. Much more than that, I believe. No president’s ever gotten that many votes. And they’ve taken that number of people. And I think you can double it or almost, you can triple it in terms of the real, the feeling. You can’t do that. You can’t go after people. You know, when you’re president and you’ve done a good job and you’re popular, you don’t go after them so you can win an election.

Mark: Okay. He’s released the Pandora out of the bottle. Yeah. Genie out of the box, and he’s gone for the usual Trump bump. I’ve got 75 million, much more than that. I believe by the next sentence, he’s doubled it and tripled it. In terms of the real, then words fail him. Okay. Can’t do that. What is he doing? Yeah.

Jim: number three. He was asked about being indicted four times. He said What they’ve done is like a third world country. It’s like, I don’t want to give any names, but, you know, the names. That’s where this kind of thing happens. In places where, look, what they’ve really done is they’ve made this the thing you have to do. If I’m president, and I think I will be, I would be stupid not to do what they’re doing right now. If I see someone who’s against me and doing well, as well as I’m currently doing, I’m ahead in all the polls. I would have to take them down by indicting them. I would have to.

Mark: Right. He isn’t ahead in all the polls, is he? No. Okay. Wow. All right.

Jim: Now, before you make your decision.

Mark: Yeah?

Jim: I just want to say that this is a potential here to get to 50%. If you get this right, you’re on 63 out of 126, so no pressure.

Mark: Okay. This is it, in my opinion, if I don’t win, then it’s rigged. Okay. Well, I quite like the unbelievable, incredible, unbelievable entrepreneurial. And I’ve been a Republican and am a Republican. and also the double it triplet. In terms of the feeling on the basis that if I don’t win, it’s all rigged. I think that it’s a toss up between unbelievable entrepreneurials. Too many of those. But that could be, I don’t know. Okay. I would indict them. Don’t give me your names. No, they are. Okay. I think number three is the one that you made up, but I’m sure it’s number one.

Jim: Would it be fair to say that you’re more convinced by number two?

Mark: Yes.

Jim: The genie out of the box. Yes. And number two.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: Is real.

Donald Trump: They’ve released the genie out of the box. You understand that? They’ve done something that nobody thought would happen. They’ve taken a president who is very popular. I got 75 million votes. Much more than that. I believe no president has ever gotten that many votes. And they’ve taken that number of people, and I think you can double it, or almost. You can triple it in terms of the real – the feeling you can’t do that. You can’t go after people. When you’re president and you’ve done a good job and you’re popular, you don’t go after them so you can win an election.

Mark: basically, you got 75 million. More than any other president. Yeah.

Jim: But I think it’s like wind chill. It feels like 225,000,000, doesn’t it?

Mark: Right.

Jim: It’s only 75 million, but the feeling in the shade, his opinion, is 225,000,000.

Mark: Yeah. It’s just what the fact he put in. I believe I got more than that. I believe nobody’s got that many votes.

Jim: He didn’t get that many votes. He got 74 million. He didn’t get 75 million.

Mark: Yeah. You can’t go after people. Basically, it’s him. It’s him that, they’re going after him. You can’t do that when you’re that popular, when you’re as popular as he’s just made up, you can’t go after them because they’re only going after him because he’s so popular. What they’ve got to do is respect his popularity and don’t chase him for all the criming that he’s done. Yeah.

Jim: In his life because he’s so popular and he’s done a good job. Yeah.

Mark: In his opinion. Yeah. He believes he’s done a great job. Yeah. He’s done the best job ever. No other president has done a job as well as he’s done it. In terms of the feeling, as far as he’s concerned. Yeah.

Jim: If you just make up stuff, then you can say any numbers you like, aren’t you?

Mark: That’s fine. Exactly.

Jim: In terms of. Not technically in the real world, but the feeling of how well I’ve done, I’m going to start doing that at work. How many hours have you done today? Well, I woke up late and I left early, but the feeling felt like I felt like eight.

Mark: Felt like I felt like I did 45 hours today. Yeah. Sometimes it’s triple that. Yeah. Sometimes in my head, I’ve done 48 hours in a single afternoon. Yeah.

Jim: Wow. You also think that number one is real. Yeah, I have doubts, but, yeah. Last chance to change mind.

Mark: Oh, that’s very kind, but now I’m going to stick with the one I’ve said. We’ll have to take your first answer.

Jim: Number one.

Mark: Yeah

Jim: Is real.

Donald Trump: Well, the Latino vote is so incredible because they’re unbelievable people. They have, incredible skills, incredible energy, and they’re very entrepreneurial. All you have to do is look at the owners of Univision. they’re unbelievable entrepreneurial people and they like me. There’s never been anything like it in the Republican Party. I’ve been a Republican and am a Republican. And, we have tremendous support from the. I call Hispanic Latino. You have lots of different, terms, but, it all means the same thing as far as I’m concerned.

Jim: What the fuck is he talking about?

Mark: There’s never been anything like any Republican Party because I’ve been a Republican. I am a Republican and I should know what the hell. And we have tremendous support from the just random, slightly racist terms.

Jim: When he’s asked by a Spanish language American TV channel, why do you think Hispanic people are voting for you in such huge numbers or want to vote for you? He’s like, well, Hispanics, all Latinos, call them whatever you like. It’s basically the same. Yeah, they’re all a monoculture and they like me. Christ, look at the owners of Univision, such as very non Latino, non Hispanic. Wade Davis, the CEO, of Univision.

Mark: Yeah. What are you going to do? Employ a lot of Hispanic people? Very entrepreneurial. Yeah, he goes, incredible.

Jim: There’s three incredibles and two unbelievables.

Mark: And then an entrepreneurial. And then he gets stuck with that, so he has to mash them together. Yeah.

Jim: And then he says, there’s, never been anything like it in the Republican Party. I’ve been a Republican and am a Republican. What?

Mark: The Republican Party. He just.

Jim: Remembered.

Mark: I’ve been a Republican. Oh, hang on. I am Republican and we have tremendous support from the. I call them derogatory terms.

Jim: Well, not derogatory, just generic. Sadly, there is a history of them being interchangeable, including in the US Census in 2010. They just mixed Hispanics and Latinos. Hispanics generally is used to refer to Spanish speaking people from places where they speak Spanish, including Spain, whereas Latinos typically used to describe people from South America, Latin America, who don’t necessarily all speak Spanish. Like, for example, Brazilians who speak Portuguese. and that group of people generally doesn’t include people from Spain. So. Yeah, it’s just saying, well, they’re the same group.

Mark: They all love me. Yeah, even the Brazilians vote for me.

Jim: but that does mean that you’ve won. Number three was fake news. He has suggested that he is not that his hands are tied and he’s just got to indict people, but he suggested that now that all bets are off and given the way that he’s been treated, anyone who looks at, him wrong is getting indicted because he’s.

Mark: Convinced that it’s all, Well, either he’s convinced or he’s just using it As a smokescreen from all the actual criming, which has nothing to do with his presidential achievements. You can see why I’m hesitating to use the phrase, but it’s, like, nothing to do with the fact that he was president. It’s all to do with the fact that he’s a fraudulent businessman.

Jim: Well, and a criminal.

Mark: Oh, yeah.

Jim: Fraud, insurrection, election interference, retaining classified documents. I mean, I could go.

Mark: On. Yeah, no need, because it’ll all be in the headlines. What he’s going to do is get back at people by just doing the same to them.

Jim: Yeah. Revenge. The one thing that motivates him almost as much as greed. Yeah, because, he’s an ingordigious. maw-worm.

Mark: Exactly.

Jim: Yeah.

Mark: But yay.

Jim: We have got some social contestants on Facebook and Patreon, so if you’d like to join in next time, be on Facebook and Patreon when we recorded, even though we don’t tell you when we record. And it seems interestingly to be split by platform. So, on Patreon.

Mark: Right.

Jim: A lot of people have got it right. Oh, Stephen says, I’m going with number three. It seems the most coherent.

Mark: Ergo, not. Oh, I should use that.

Jim: Anders says, I agree with Stephen. And if I was wrong, we’d have to take you down by indicting you. We would have to. Renee says number three is fake news. I think I’m fairly certain I’ve heard one and two, which means I’m listening to Trump way too much. Number three is tricky. It sounds so much like Trump’s idiocy that it’s hard to resist. Well done, Jim. Invisible unicorn says, I’m going with three for the same reason. And Amber says, wait, is three coherent?

Mark: Nice

Jim: Nice. But on, Facebook, Mary says, I think this is the first week. I have literally no idea. Scott says, this is a tough one. They’re all equal parts gibberish. Pretty sure number three is real, because he certainly thinks he could, as president, indict people. Number one contains a big word that’s repeated. He likes to do that. Hence, I think number two is fake news. Andrew says number two sounds like a stroke victim, so it’s probably true. I’m m going with three. I think he said similar, but that’s how you’re tricking us. Andrew says, I’m going for number three, mostly because I want to hear him say, they let the genie out of the box. And Ben says, I’m going for number one as it’s too coherent. Difference of opinion on which is the coherent one.

Mark: Yes. And interesting that people have repeated the.

Jim: Word, they’re looking out. I think that’s the main thing that people are going by is does this sound completely unhinged or coherent? Yeah. And I must admit I am struggling, especially in recent weeks, and I think this may be part. I’m not trying to take away anything from your impressive run of victories in any way

Mark: Don’t patronize me

Jim: just to say I’m struggling to be as batshit as Trump.

Mark: Right.

Jim: He does seem to have got worse. It’s hard to come up with.

Mark: They are just completely non sequitur tangents. Yes, exactly. And it’s hard to think like that when you’re as logical a thinker as you are. But there must be a way of applying the logic to that. Yeah. You’ve almost got to write down words and into cutting them lines.

Jim: Yeah. Poetry magnet things for the fridge and rearrange.

Mark: Now there’s a merch opportunity. Flippin’ eck. Yeah. You call it the fake news game and you just put in all of the key Trump words and.

Jim: You could. Fridge magnet. Well, there is our first, like, 40 or so fake news games are on sporcle as a quiz, so you can kind of test yourself on that. Right? Yeah. because someone on Facebook, I think, suggested it was a good idea, and I used four and thought, yeah, okay, why not? But I haven’t updated it at all. Right, that’s it. You are on 50%.

Mark: Yay.

Jim: 63 out of 126. And, only taken five and a half years.

Mark: I know! Yeah. Wow. Yes, because. So you’ve been driving yourself mad for five and a half years.

Jim: and it’s time for the part of the show that this week at least is called the Trumps under oath are not a. Logical fallacy, because

Mark: is a legal precedent.

Jim: Well, they’ve all. No, not at all. They’ve all been under deposition oath. Many, many. The. And Even, Donald has been under oath in this case because he was called to the stand to talk about the statements he was making about, the judge’s Clark, that he claimed were about Michael Caine. But Dom Jr. Eric, Donald and Ivanka all gave testimony over the last week and a. Yeah, Donald Jr. Was first. This is the New York fraud trial. So they were being asked about, the financial statements that the Trump Organization prepared and gave to banks and stuff in an attempt to get bigger loans because they were overvaluing their stuff. So Don Junius said that he, relied on accountants, wasn’t involved in the preparations of financial statements.

Mark: Right.

Jim: Although. He did sign,

Mark: Well, we were just rubber stamping stuff at that. Yeah, but weren’t they in charge of the cup? Aren’t they in charge of the company? Well, weren’t they in charge of the company?

Jim: They were in charge of the company, supposedly because Trump wouldn’t want any kind of conflict, of interest when he was president, obviously. So he claimed that he was going to divest all his investments when he was campaigning in 2016. but what he actually did was put just Don and Eric in charge of the Trump Organization in a kind of trust. kept basically everything else, kept all of his other stuff, just didn’t do anything with it. Basically kind of threatening people to come and get me, do what are you going to do? So, yeah, Don and Eric supposedly ran the Trump Organization from the, point at which Trump was elected to, we initially suspected the point after he left office, but actually it turns out that he took over control again five days before he left office on the 15 January, I think. Not fully sure why or what impact that has, but it did seem a. Bit of a weird thing.

Mark: Does it coincide with another fraud case or something?

Jim: I don’t think so. but he did in July of that year, then step down again and make Don Jr. The trustee for the Trump Organization. And that, I think, was because that was when Alan Weisselberg had been indicted for tax fraud. So at that point, Trump was like, I think your kids did a great job. While I was should, you should look after that is mired in these tax fraud questions, I’ll just take a step back. Yeah. When Trump was asked on the stand, when he testified about why his kids were put in charge, essentially, obviously it’s because it’s his kids. But he said of, Donald Jr. He said, he’s a hardworking boy, young, man, and he’s done a very good job. And then, as an afterthought, said, as has Eric, Eric was very busy running the company. And I thought putting Don in would be good. He’s smart, he’s a very honorable guy. But they didn’t plead the fifth, at least not in large part. There was some suggestion early on, and I kind of suspected it, that they might all just answer all the questions with, on advice, of counsel, I refuse to answer. But no, they said stuff. Some of the stuff they. Said was lies.

Mark: Most of what they said seemed to be, I can’t remember.

Jim: I don’t recall.

Mark: Ah.

Jim: Most of what Ivanka said was, I don’t recall. Even when she was shown emails or documents proving that she was involved in specific transactions or meetings, or that she had kind of emailed to say, let’s do this, or let’s have a meeting about this, she was like, I don’t remember that.

Mark: That’s a bit like, I’m entitled to my opinion in that. If you say I don’t remember, well, it doesn’t matter if you remember it or not, you’re already guilty of what we’ve said. Here’s the evidence. You did it. Saying I don’t remember doesn’t get you off. It grants you immunity in your own eyes. That’s your opinion. Yeah. That you’ve got off because you just can’t remember. It doesn’t matter whether you can remember or, yeah, you did do it. And we’ve got, here are the receipts. We’re holding them up and showing it to you. It doesn’t matter whether you remember it or not. The fact that that’s why Facebook, that popular bit in Facebook, when it says, here’s a memory from 14 years ago, or seven years ago, or four years or three minutes, this is what you did. Ah. And you look at it and think, well, I don’t remember that at all, but that’s nice to be reminded, because do you have to be minded in order to be reminded? So if you can’t remember it, and here are the facts being presented to you, are they really going to go for false memory syndrome claims?

Jim: I don’t know that they’re smart enough for. She is she, she did say basically she didn’t remember stuff. She was asked about the Deutsche bank loans, where one of the agreements was that in order to kind of qualify for the loan, for the course of the loan, Trump would maintain a net worth above 3 billion. Bloody hell. And Ivanka, suggested that they lower that to 2 billion. in an email, she didn’t recall that she was that amount of involved in getting the loans from Deutsche bank, at least, in terms of. She was negotiating the terms, they ended up at 2.5 billion as the net worth. She was also asked about the valuation of her apartment that she leased from Donald in the Park Avenue building. that was valued at $12 million more than she paid for it. So she paid, wow, eight and a half million dollars for it. Or she had a purchase option, she was leasing it, she had an option to buy it for eight and a half million. but the value that was on the financial statement that Trump gave to banks to get loans was 20 million – 20.8 million, actually. Wow, that’s quite a difference. And she was asked about that and she said, I wasn’t involved in his statement of financial condition. I can’t say what it took into account or didn’t take into account. So she had no specific recollection that her father had personal statements of financial. She was. Her testimony was almost entirely. I don’t know or I don’t remember. Don Jr. And Eric both claimed not to have been involved in stuff, even though they just had been. They were running the. Eric, before testifying, said, I don’t get involved in the financial statements. I pour concrete, which is not. He doesn’t do that. Definitely doesn’t do that. Not apart from anything else Trump. The Trump Organization hasn’t built anything in like 15 years. They just invest in stuff,.

Mark: or perhaps They pour it around the feet of the people that detractors and chuck them in the river.

Jim: Yeah, but, yeah, he said during his testimony, he said, I focus on construction, I don’t focus on appraisals. He was shown plenty of emails that showed that that wasn’t true

Mark: that he was doing nothing but evaluations. Yeah.

Jim: Don Jr. As I said, basically said that he just threw his accountants under the bus. He relied on them. He didn’t get involved in the actual kind of financial side of it at all. Right. When Trump testified, it was a different tone.

Mark: to his, was just, I like the headline on, NBC that’s got angry outbursts in the thing. And there’s a collector of. Because that’s the name of the band, a collector of headlines that have the word outbursts in. That was nice. Angry outbursts. So that was kind of the description of Trump’s answering of questions. Yeah. I like the way when even his lawyers didn’t the judge kind of say, could you just rein him in a.

Jim: Bit and get him to answer questions multiple times? He repeatedly, unfortunately, this trial isn’t televised, but there were several people live tweeting it. So I was watching the testimony in text form as it was coming through. And so many times it was like the judge has asked his, Trump’s lawyers to get him to kind of have some control over him, to try and stop him from answering questions with speeches. He said, this isn’t a rally. He told him off, like answering yes no questions with a speech, with rhetoric about how this is all very unfair and he’s being railroaded and all of that kind of stuff. Trump shouted at the judge a few times and pointed at, Letitia James, the attorney general, and said, she’s a fraud. It’s just mad. It’s the kind of thing you would see, I think, if there was a film where someone was trying to get sent to jail, like they were kind of being hunted by the mob or something, and what they wanted to do was be safe in a jail cell, this is the kind of actions that they do in a court to guarantee they were definitely going away, preferably into maximum security solitary. But, yeah, he was completely unhinged, as you would expect. Although when we’ve seen him do depositions, and they often record those and sometimes they get released, he tends to be quite demure and respectful when he’s answering questions in a deposition. And whenever we’ve heard, people talking about when he appeared for his arraignments and had to speak and was saying kind of, yes, no, thank you, et cetera, he was appearing contrite. He was sitting there and not making a fuss. In this case, which is a bench trial, the judge gets to decide. There isn’t a jury that he’s playing to, right. He can’t be hoping that there’s a couple of MAGA people on the jury who will appreciate this kind of shenanigans. It’s, the judge who gets to decide what happens with him and what the result is. And he’s just doing everything he can to piss the judge off. To the extent that I’ve read some people suggesting he’s trying to make the judge lose it, he’s trying to make the judge so angry that he will say something or do something that will cause a mistrial or cause him, to be able to claim on appeal that the judge is clearly biased. Right. Because he’s acting so crazily that the judge might, if he isn’t very, very calm and restrained, which he has been, he’s been amazing up to now, he could say something, theoretically, that would make an appeals court think, well, that’s unprofessional, not the kind of behavior we expect.

Mark: From a judge, but that would mean that there was a plot afoot on the part of his legal. I don’t know. Because his lawyer, who is. It’s almost as a Shakespearean aside, when Trump is off in the background ranting about something or other, rather than just answering a yes, no question, he just kind of, close up to the. Camera, just says, it’s best to just let him run.

Jim: Yeah, but that’s Kise. Alina Habba, who is also on his legal team, has been going the other way and has also been engaging with the judge and kind of arguing back and to the point that she’s been told to sit down and shut up, essentially by the judge, because she continually made the same objections over and over again to stuff that was not objectionable and had already been ruled on right. Then took the opportunity to come out. In fact, the legal team have now been gagged as well because there was a gag order on Trump to stop him from saying negative things about the judge’s staff. And so what happened was the legal team just started saying them. And so the judge has extended the gag order to the legal team. And so now Alina Habba is going on Fox and when Judge Janine is saying, why are you going after the. Yeah, she’s saying, I can’t tell you, I’ve been gagged. As if there is something to say.

Mark: As if there’s something to.

Jim: But, but yeah, she’s coming out. And whereas Trump was talking immediately outside the courtroom, kind of inside the courtroom building, talking to reporters and saying how unfair it is and how it’s being railroaded, Alina Harbour is holding her little kind of press conferences things outside the courtroom building, because I think she’s slightly less likely to get sanctioned by doing that if she’s not directly outside the courtroom, claiming the judge is biased and against her.

Mark: Plus, because she’s got an actual job.

Jim: Of being a lawyer, I mean, she’s.

Mark: Trump’s lawyer, so not really. Well, yeah, Rudy, but could get professionally barred, whereas Trump just ended up in jail. It makes me think of what Bob Woodward reported in the book when we covered it, that his, Trump’s advisors would say to, no, no, you can’t appear live in court. You’re not going to do that. We’re not going to let you do that because you’ll just. And, they knew that like, four years ago. Just, no, can’t have you stand up there because you will just go off on one. Ah.

Jim: And make yourself look stupid.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: And I think the thing is, what I was saying about the judge being very restrained and not doing anything that might potentially be used against him in an appeal is also, I think, the reason why Trump hasn’t been held in contempt, because any other defendant would have been held in contempt way earlier. But obviously, this is very contentious and he’s the former president and it’s definitely going to be appealed. So he is giving him all the leeway. I don’t know if there’s a point that Trump can cross, a line he can cross, that would mean he would be held in contempt. But I think the reason he is not doing that is because there is absolutely no way you can look at this trial, at least as it’s been reported, as far as I’ve been, as I’ve seen, and say that the judge, has treated Trump harshly. He has given him a lot of room for maneuver. Yeah. And Trump has used it all and.

Mark: More and doesn’t know that he’s actually hanging himself.

Jim: You don’t behave this way in a court.

Mark: This is not.

Jim: No, this is behavior you expect to get away with.

Mark: If you want to present yourself as somebody that’s not guilty or worthy of, judicial consideration to your advantage. You don’t behave like this. Yeah, you’re going in and throwing your weight about and shouting and accusing the judge of being biased and shooting down the whole thing as a witch of. Well, Boris was straight out of Trump’s playbook. But it’s like Boris at the select committee calling into question the validity of the court, which is, the last bastion of scoundrels, is that when you’ve finally been caught, you just say, I don’t recognize the power of.

Jim: You over me. It’s an old legal tenet that, I think we’ve discussed before. When the law is on your side, argue the law. When the facts are on your side, argue the facts. When neither on your side, bang on the table. And that’s all Trump has, is the banging on the table and shouting and claiming he’s being hard done by. He doesn’t have any defense.

Mark: And finally, some things we really do. Not have time to talk about.

Jim: The beginning of November is the most important time of the year when it comes to American politics, because, as we all know, November 7th is Four Seasons Total Landscaping Day. The anniversary of Rudy Giuliani finding out the election was called for Biden while holding a press conference in a parking lot between a crematorium and a sex toy store because a comedy genius at Four Seasons Total Landscaping did not ask “Do you think this is the hotel” when they took a booking for an event. And yes, technically the first week in November is also when they do elections and shit, and they did some this year, so I guess I could talk about that. Democrats won pretty much everywhere. Andy Beshear was reelected as Governor in Kentucky, Virginia Democrats held on to the State Senate and took the House of Delegates, New Jersey Democrats expanded their majority in the State Senate, a Democrat was elected to the open seat on the Philadelphia Supreme Court, and school boards across the country rejected the vast majority of candidates endorsed by Moms for Liberty, choosing instead sane people who are in favor of kids learning stuff. Meanwhile, Ohio so convincingly voted to enshrine abortion access into the state’s constitution that Ohio Republicans are already workshopping ways to ignore the majority of the electorate, with State Representative Jennifer Gross claiming it only passed because of foreign election interference, and Representative Beth Lear saying “No amendment can overturn the God-given rights with which we were born”, by which she presumably means the God-given right to force other people to have babies? Not sure. In any case, these idiots seem to be having trouble understanding that taking away reproductive rights is unpopular, which they have in common with, well, all the other Republicans, like Marjorie Taylor Greene, who is convinced that Republicans lost because they’re not being extreme enough when they talk about abortion, or One America News host Jack Posobiec, who ranted in all-caps that “THE CHILDLESS, UNMARRIED ABORTION ARMY MOBILIZED BY BARBIE, TAYLOR SWIFT, AND TIKTOK ARE CRUSHING REPUBLICANS AT THE BALLOT BOX.” I mean, he’s not wrong, exactly.

Mark: Brilliant Barbie, Taylor Swift and TikTok. Fantastic. “If Brains from Thunderbirds were a real person” AI generative image result and new Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson and his somewhat puritanical faith-obsessed views have come under more scrutiny now he’s elected to the Speaker’s job. You know those pesky niggling and obviously vote-winning election-denying, far-right Christian nationalist views from his time with the anti-LBGTQ organization Alliance Defending Freedom through to his claim that school shootings could be blamed on abortion and teaching evolution. Also under scrutiny are his online activities which he talked about in a conversation on the “War on Technology” at Benton, Louisiana’s Cypress Baptist Church which turned up on X formerly known as Twitter (I just say that to annoy Elon!). Apparently he runs a piece of software called Covenant Eyes (and I can hear Mrs Potato Head saying “and your angry eyes” everytime I see that written down) which monitors what you watch and doesn’t like, prevent it or anything, no it collates a report and then sends that to your “accountability partner” which in Mike’s case is his 17-year old son for whom Mike is his accountability partner! Yeah way to go Mikey – not only is it a bit weird and big brotherish but eeeewww your kid is going to see if you’ve – let’s face it – watched porn – and you just know at 17 that’s all he’s gonna be doing!!  “If anything objectionable comes up, your accountability partner gets an immediate notice. I’m proud to tell ya, my son has got a clean slate” says Mike! ​​As the X user Receipt Maven pointed out “A US Congressman is allowing a 3rd Party tech company to scan ALL of his electronic devices daily and then uploading reports to his son about what he’s watching or not watching….who else is accessing that data?” Just say No Mike just say no!

Jim: Five people got together in Miami on Wednesday to argue about which of them gets to lose to Biden if Trump chokes to death on his KFC by next November. Yes, it was the third Republican Primary debate last week and we’re down to five because Doug Burgum didn’t meet the minimum national polling requirement and Mike Pence pulled out of the race and immediately triggered multiple Mandela effects where half the people swear he pulled out months ago and the other half are shocked he’s still alive. The remaining candidates all behaved in their assigned roles, with DeSantis aiming to replicate normal human facial expressions and failing HARD, Tim Scott doing basically nothing (although his mythical Canadian girlfriend did make an appearance), Chris Christie attacking Trump,  Vivek Ramaswamy attacking everyone and everything, and Nikki Haley having no fucks left to give when Vivek started going after her daughter for having a TikTok account. Haley’s response of “You’re just scum” became both the biggest takeaway of the evening, and simultaneously the truest thing ever said on stage at a GOP debate.

Mark: Excellent, excellent. You just give up, you go, oh God, you just. That’s so good. “I’ve dealt with these politicians many times,” says Zephan Parker, the bespoke bootmaker behind Houston’s popular Parker Boot Company, which, he says, has made height-increasing cowboy boots for a number of Texan politicians. “I’ve helped them with their lifts. And [DeSantis] is wearing lifts; there’s no doubt.” There you have it folks Politico reports that Tiny D who stands at a miniscule 5’ 11” is worrying about his size and the size of Trump – who at 6’ 3” also wears lifts to give him that front half of a pantomime-centaur look. Apparently height is perceived to be an advantage over on the Right cos over the last century or so, taller candidates have tended to have an advantage in general elections — with the notable exceptions of former President Barack Obama, who is shorter than Mitt Romney, and President Joe Biden, who is shorter than Trump. Traditional Western boots are typically built with an elevated heel, ranging from 1 1/2” to 1 7/8”. DeSantis’ boots have a traditional Western silhouette, but, to Parker, the heels appear shorter. When you stick inserts into cowboy boots, the combination of the height-increasing lifts and the heels can “turn them into five-inch stilettos,” Parker says. “That’s too much for the common man. So on a ready-made boot, they’ll cut down the heel about half an inch to accommodate the lifts, which looks to be what happened here.” “He looks like he’s wearing trousers with an eight-inch opening,” the bootmaker estimates, “which is plenty of room for a Western boot on a man of his proportions.” The fact that the tops push against the trouser legs suggests to Parker “the boots are bigger than intended, probably to accommodate his lifts.” De Santis’ campaign deny it of course, “the governor doesn’t pad his boots, but if he ever needed anything to line a pet cage or fold up and wedge under a table leg, that would be the highest and best use for Politico Magazine.”  Yeah nice well-informed comeback guys apart from the fact that POLITICO Magazine does not appear in print!

Jim: I wrote a whole intro here about the rise in hate crimes since 2016 and especially during the past month due to events in Israel but then I remembered this part’s supposed to be both informative and funny, and there’s nothing funny about hate crimes. Or so I thought – stay with me here – until I read about Ruba Almaghtheh, an Indiana woman who decided to crash her car into the Israelite School of Universal and Practical Knowledge in Indianapolis last week, because she’s an antisemitic asshole and she thought it was a Jewish school. Fortunately for everyone, Ruba is also an idiot and couldn’t be bothered to Google the school before smashing into it and causing $10,000 of damage, because if she had, she might have discovered that the Israelite School of Universal and Practical Knowledge is and SPLC designated hate group who are even more antisemitic than she is, as well as being anti-LGBTQ and anti-women. So fuck those guys. Now if we can just get all the hate criminals to only attack each other, I think we could solve the problem.

Mark: That’s excellent. Brilliant. Jacob Angeli-Chansley, better known as the QAnon Shaman (though he prefers to be called America’s Shaman, thank you very much), filed paperwork with the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office on Thursday announcing his intent to run as a Libertarian (natch) in Arizona’s 8th Congressional District. Chansley was released into a halfway house this past March after serving 27 months of his 41-month sentence for his part in the January 6 insurrection, and has since been very vocal about the fact that all of his contrition over his actions that day were total bullshit, especially the part where his lawyer made him blame Trump for what he did. He now claims that, actually, the January 6 insurrection he was literally filmed participating in, shirtless and wearing a large fur hat with horns, was a psyop by the FBI to make Trump and his supporters look bad. Errr!? None of this phases the world of the Q-Anonsensers which at one point was very certain that he was a CIA or FBI plant on a mission to make them all look bad, now the consensus seems to be that he is “part of the plan,” or at least on the side of the “white hats.” Okay I guess given that a Democrat is not going to win that seat let’s just go with choosing the most ridiculous ill-suited candidate and potential embarrassment for the GOP – mind you they don’t embarrass easily – and at the very least enjoy the merch possibilities, formal or casual available with matching furry tie no doubt.

Jim: James Comer, the idiot Chair of the House Oversight Committee, struck idiot gold in his search for evidence of corruption in the Biden family when he found a check to Joe from his brother Jim for $200,000 dollars. Clear evidence of shenanigans which will no doubt lead to a successful impeachment and bring down the Biden administration. All the anti-Biden folk on Twitter are convinced it’s the smoking gun and are happy to wave away technicalities like the fact it says on the check that it’s a loan repayment and that it was written in March of 2018 when Joe was a private citizen. In their determination to prove malfeasance they claim there’s no evidence that Joe ever loaned Jim that amount of money, conveniently ignoring that CNN found evidence of a bank transfer of $200,000 two months before into Jim’s account from a law firm connected to Joe. Still, say Comer and friends, Biden had shell companies, which is very suspicious, and there’s just no way that a payment of that amount between brothers is anything other than some as yet undetermined highly illegal and nefarious scheme. I mean, imagine if James Comer had a brother, with whom he repeatedly exchanged hundreds of thousands of dollars in deals which are unexplained – that would be crazy. What’s that, the Daily Beast? Oh, yes, those deals. Apparently James Comer’s family owns quite a lot of farmland. Back in 2019 his brother Chad bought James’ half of a property in Monroe county for $100,000, only for James to buy the whole property back from Chad five months later for $218,000, only this time, using a shell company. And in 2015 the brothers swapped properties worth around $175,000 and $203,000, with James gaining about 30k from the transaction but neglecting to disclose that in public records. What’s that quote about people in glass houses again?

Mark: yeah, never swap a glass house with your brother. This last week or so in British politics, Suella Braverman, the Home Secretary says living on the streets when you’re homeless is a ‘lifestyle choice’ and she is trying to crack down on people living on the streets being able to have tents. Also in her op-ed piece for the Times she managed to offend pretty much everyone with her spiteful ignorance of the history of the troubles in Northern Ireland and describing pro-peace Palestinian marches as hate marches ignoring the facts that both Palestinian and Israel support groups attended the march on Saturday. Basically she was saying that  people should not march for an Armistice, cos it ruins the meaning of Armistice Day. Then 92 right wingers are arrested for acts of violence while defending the cenotaph from peaceful people who are nowhere near the cenotaph. We wait with bated breath for the cabinet reshuffle on Monday where we hope Suella will be considering a new lifestyle choice, yeah just not on my street alright Cruella! It won’t happen cos little Rishi doesn’t want to make a martyr of her so she becomes the de facto leader of the Tory Right for the inevitable decade in opposition. Oh and also check your data roaming settings if you’re going on holiday outside of your cell phone suppliers boundaries, since Brexit for instance, phone companies in the UK no longer have to provide free roaming in Europe and will charge you for it. Morocco is not in the EU so was always going to be chargeable if you start using your iPad’s data allowance say, like Scottish Health Secretary Michael Matheson who apparently was using his governmental iPad for work on holiday in Morocco and racked up £11,000 in data roaming charges! Sheesh I thought I’d overdone it a bit when I discovered that you get charged when sailing across the English channel cos it’s in international waters and not the UK or EU! Serves me right for listening to the latest episode of this podcast!!

Jim: The thing is, arguably, if he was prepared to let the government look at his kind of browser history, he’d probably like. If that was legitimate stuff, he’d probably be able to claim it as an expense, right? Yeah, but he’s prepared to just pay the 11,000 pounds rather than let anyone see what he’s been doing online.

Mark: exactly. Yeah. It’s definitely work, but at least go in and put your data roaming cap on. Would you like us to warn you when you get above 35 pounds? Oh, yeah, that’s right. Yes. You got over 35 pounds a couple of thousand times. Yeah. Wow.

Jim: So that’s all the bad arguments from faulty reasoning we have time for this week. You’ll find the show notes at fallacioustrump.com and if you hear Trump say something stupid and want to ask if it’s a fallacy, our Contact details are on the contact page.

Mark: If you think we’ve used a fallacy ourselves, let us know. And if you had a good time, please give us a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Or simply tell one other person in person about how much they’d like our podcast, and you can support the show at, Patreon.com Slash F. Trump. Just like our straw man level Patrons, Laura Tomsick, Renee Z, Schmootz, Mark Reiche, Amber R. Buchanan, who told us where we met her at QED. We can just call her Amber, though another listener recognized her at QED this year because we keep using her full name all the time. And our true Scotsmen level patrons, Melissa Sytek, Stephen Bickle, Janet Yuetter, Kaz Toohey, Andrew Hauck, and our top patron, Loren, thank you so much for your continued support. It’s really very much appreciated.

Jim: Thank you. You can connect with those awesome people as well as us and other listeners in the Facebook group at, facebook.com/groups/fallacioustrump.

Mark: All music is by the outbursts and was used with permission. So until next time on Fallacious Trump, we’ll leave the last angry outburst to the Donald.

Donald Trump: That’s right. Go home to Mommy. Bye bye.