Playing Politics – FT#143

20 Feb Playing Politics – FT#143

Show Notes

The Playing Politics fallacy occurs when someone avoids engaging with an argument by claiming their opponent is merely ‘playing politics’ when in fact they are trying to effect change.

Trump

We started out by discussing this clip of Trump talking about border security:

And then we looked at this Trump tweet:

Democrats are blocking additional funding for the popular Paycheck Protection Program. They are killing American small businesses. Stop playing politics Dems! Support Refilling PPP NOW – it is out of funds!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 16, 2020

Finally, we talked about this clip of Ted Cruz following the Parkland shooting:

Mark’s British Politics Corner

Mark talked about Rishi Sunak accusing Keir Starmer multiple times, and this clip of Sunak doing it while refusing to apologise for using a transphobic dog whistle while the mother of murdered trans girl Brianna Ghey was in the chamber:

He followed that up by talking about Jacob Rees Mogg accusing UNICEF of playing politics by feeding British children:

Fallacy in the Wild

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

Then we discussed this clip from Don’t Look Up:

And we finished by talking about this clip from The West Wing:

 

Fake News

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

1. What’s happening with crime is it’s through the roof and it’s called migrant – I call it a new category. I just came up with that name, but I think it’s appropriate. It’s a new category of crime where they go and they beat up police officers – you’ve seen that. They go and they stab people, hurt people, shoot people. It’s a whole new form… and they have gangs now that are making our games look like small potatoes. Okay? Because Joe Biden allowed this to happen we will call it from now on Biden migrant crime. Okay? It’s Bigrant crime. This is… we’ll call it… I got it: Bigrant. Let’s call it Bigrant. Biden crime. Bi… oh that’s good. That’s smart.
2. Our Democrat run cities are really going to hell. They’re going to hell. When you look at stores being looted by hundreds of people that run into the stores and run out with television sets, and our great policemen aren’t allowed to do anything – they want to but they’re not allowed. They don’t want to lose their families, they don’t want to lose their sons and daughters, and their houses, and their pensions, and all of that. And they could stop it very quickly. And we just allow them to roam in and roam out. Everybody’s out there. You have cameras – these same cameras are out there shooting these people walking out with television sets.
3. They’re the party of crime. They let murderers and rapists go free, they let – the open borders mean people are coming from all over who have been let out of prison from South America, the Middle East, from Congo. “Oh, hello, what part of Congo are you from?” “Prison” “Oh, great”. So of course crime is like nobody’s ever seen. You can’t even believe the numbers. It’s like a rocket ship. And if the police even mention the words law enforcement they get told to just stand aside and let it happen while large packs of sadistic criminals and thieves systematically rob and steal and roam the streets.

Mark finally got it wrong this week, and is on 52%!

 

$355 million is not a logical fallacy

We talked about the huge verdict in Trump’s civil fraud trial in New York

 

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

• Special Counsel Robert Hur’s report on Biden’s handling of classified documents was released last week. The Executive Summary begins “We conclude that no criminal charges are warranted in this matter. We would reach the same conclusion even if Department of Justice policy did not foreclose criminal charges against a sitting president.” The report continues “Our investigation uncovered evidence that President Biden willfully retained and disclosed classified materials after his vice presidency when he was a private citizen” and then goes into detail about how there is insufficient evidence to prove he did it wilfully, citing multiple plausible innocent explanations they could not refute, and setting out the significant material differences between his actions and Trump’s, saying specifically “Unlike the evidence involving Mr. Biden, the allegations set forth in the indictment of Mr. Trump, if proven, would present serious aggravating facts”. Of course, that has not been the focus of reporting or of the GOPs reaction because Hur also decided to include his opinions on Biden’s mental faculties, calling him a “sympathetic, well meaning, elderly man with a poor memory” This is somewhat outside the scope of the Special Counsel’s job, which is why Robert Mueller’s report didn’t say “While this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate the weird, smelly, orange, narcissistic, pathological liar”. The media leapt on the shocking revelation that Biden sometimes forgets stuff with a renewed round of stories asking if Biden is too old to be President while conveniently ignoring the alternative is Trump, whose brain is like a steel trap which rusted shut twenty years ago and got repeatedly shat on by all the creatures of the forest. Republicans took an already partisan report, ignored its findings and mischaracterized it to claim it said Biden was either mentally unfit to stand trial or too stupid to commit a crime, ironically using the exact reason that Mueller declined to prosecute Don Jr. Fortunately, this doesn’t seem likely to make much of a difference with voters, because none of the 81 million people who voted for Biden in 2020 are shocked to discover that he’s old, and they’ve all heard of Trump. A Morning Consult poll taken after the report was released found 68% of voters think Biden is too old to be President. That’s the same number as previous polls.
• When you’re feeling a bit low cos you didn’t get a message of love on Valentine’s Day from, say, the candidate that wanted to replace expelled George Santos but failed to get elected – Democrat Tom Suozzi defeated Republican Mazi Pilip in a Tuesday special election to fill the vacancy left by Santos in New York’s 3rd congressional district – perhaps you should start Feb 14th like Trump did by bemoaning that if only Pilip had given him more love in the form of an endorsement of him. In true valentine spirit thus called her a foolish woman telling her she knew nothing about modern politics shouting on Trump Social “MAGA, WHICH IS MOST OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY, STAYED HOME – AND IT ALWAYS WILL, UNLESS IT IS TREATED WITH THE RESPECT THAT IT DESERVES. I STAYED OUT OF THE RACE, ‘I WANT TO BE LOVED!’ GIVE US A REAL CANDIDATE IN THE DISTRICT FOR NOVEMBER. “I want to be loved!”? Oooh what a giveaway. He didn’t forget about Melania of course, emailing a heartfelt intimate love note to her titled SEND YOUR LOVE and after a few endearments someone wrote for him, he signed it informally and coquettishly “Donald J. Trump” – in case she didn’t know it was from him? She shoulda known cos at the bottom a link says Please leave some kind words for the First Lady this Valentine’s Day – which takes you to a fundraising page where you can donate to Trump’s campaign. Well when the First Lady doesn’t even appear in the Christmas Trump Family photo I guess you can grift her for all you’re worth hey Donny? Which is actually not so much these days!
• One great example of actually playing politics is impeaching an official who hasn’t committed any high crimes or misdemeanors and who definitely won’t be convicted by the senate. Like, say, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, who House Republicans claim failed in his role of securing the Southern border. Their attempt to impeach him for this was pretty much simultaneous with their committed votes against funding border security measures in case it made Biden look good. They first tried to vote for impeachment on February 7th and thought that they were going to win by one vote until Democrat Congressman hero Al Green from Texas showed up in hospital scrubs in a wheelchair having just had abdominal surgery to cast the tying vote 215-215. A weird House rule means that any issues that result in a tie cannot then be brought up for another vote until the next session of Congress, which in this instance would be next January, so a Republican congressman changed their vote to no, because if they lose, they get another go. Which is fucked up. Anyway, they had another go last week and thanks to a Northeastern storm affecting some members’ travel, and the return of Steve Scalise from his cancer treatment, they won 214-213. A completely pointless victory, because they don’t have the votes in the Senate to convict and it’s not even clear that Senate Republicans are bothered enough to hold a hearing, so this may be dealt with by a simple vote to dismiss, which only needs a simple majority. I’m kind of hoping the hearing does go ahead, because House Speaker Mike Johnson named Marjorie Taylor Greene and Clay Higgins as Impeachment Managers, which means they would essentially be prosecuting the case against Mayorkas, and they’d be up against non-crazy people with law degrees so I’d be making popcorn.
• In a mad ignorance and spite-fueled pronouncement that will not have endeared him to anyone – except for perhaps the hoodlums in the Kremlin, who, prospect as much as you like DJT, are never gonna let you join the dictators club you’re so desperate to be part of – Trump invited Russia to ‘do whatever the hell they want’ to any NATO country that doesn’t pay enough. In a considered evaluation of the underlying tenet of the NATO agreement that each nation undertakes to protect every other member nation, he’s said yeah fuck it unless you pay your way we’re gonna fling you to the wolves, no better yet, bad guys just come get them, we ain’t gonna do nothin’ cos they’re cheapskates who’ve leeched off us all this time. Of course, as Biden and many other NATO allies pointed out, this just gives carte blanche to Putin-style psychos to carry on doing more Ukraine-style things across the globe with impunity. Trump of course has completely misunderstood a) how NATO is funded, NATO has a target that each member country spends a minimum of 2% of gross domestic product on defence, and most countries are not meeting that target. But the figure is a guideline and not a binding contract, nor does it create “bills”; member countries haven’t been failing to pay their share of NATO’s common budget to run the organisation. and b) that his words are very powerful. Despite him saying one endorsement from him could’ve won Mazi Pilip that election if only she’d been deferential enough, he doesn’t think his words have consequences beyond Putin now probably considering him best buds. There used to be a slogan during the 90s promoting information about HIV/AIDS “Don’t die of Ignorance” let’s hope we don’t at the hands of Trump’s, and let’s hope Trump does!!
• We’ve talked before about James Comer’s obsessive campaign against Joe and Hunter Biden, and his uncanny ability to step on rakes wherever he goes in the search for evidence of the Biden Crime Family. One of the keystones of their evidence that sleepy old cognitively impaired Joe is also a corrupt criminal mastermind raking in cash from all four corners of the globe in a web of villainy was the 2020 claim by an unnamed FBI source that Burisma executives told him they had paid Joe and Hunter Biden $5 million each for protection, and that they felt coerced into the payment. Typically, when a single individual makes a potentially libellous claim about someone else, rather than announce it publicly or launch an impeachment investigation, the pragmatic thing to do would be to seek some kind of corroboration, ideally from multiple sources. So of course what James Comer did was the exact opposite of that and immediately started telling everyone who would listen about the smoking gun he had uncovered and how it definitively proved Biden was the Godfather. That unnamed FBI source now has a name – Alexander Smirnov – which we know because he has just been indicted by a Los Angeles Grand Jury for lying to the FBI. The lie in question, according to the charging documents, occurred in 2020 and concerned “a prominent political figure and his son”. Despite this, Comer’s impeachment investigation will continue, because there are always more rakes to step on.
• On Feb. 6, a group of families met to lobby senators on issues affecting the local transgender community in Georgia. 65-year old Republican Sen. Carden Summers, the primary sponsor of the state’s bathroom ban bill walked by a mother and her children whilst they waited to meet with Democratic Sen. Kim Jackson a staunch supporter of LGBTQ+ rights. Carden spoke with Lena Kotler the mother and her 8-year old Aleix about that they were there to “talk to legislators about keeping her kids safe.” and Carden knelt down in front of Aleix and said, according to Kotler, “Well you know, we’re working on that and I’m going to protect kids like you.” Kotler then replied, “Yeah – Aleix is trans, and she wants to be safe at school, she wants to go to the bathroom and be safe.” That is when, according to multiple witnesses, Sen. Summers stood up and fumbled his words, repeating, “I mean, yeah, I’m going to make sure she’s safe by going to the right bathroom,” continuing to use the correct pronouns for Aleix. I mention Carden’s age cos like he’s a grown-up and every thing – well adult, cos when asked if he would make her go to a boy’s bathroom, he then allegedly backed away, saying, “You’re attacking me,” turned around, and walked off quickly. This exactly encapsulates the issue of why anti-trans bills that ban transgender people from public spaces that match their gender identity have proven ineffectual in the past. In numerous hearings over bathroom bans, transgender people often point out that cisgender individuals cannot always tell who is and is not trans. If the actual guy who wrote the actual bill can’t actually tell who’s supposed to use what bathroom then, how, why you know like just WTF! And speaking of WTF, WTF does it matter?! – I bet Carden uses the same bathroom his wife and daughter does inside his house – “ooohhh go away – my own family won’t stop attacking me!!”
• When Republicans claim that fetuses are children, it may seem like just an excuse to control women’s bodies, albeit one debunked by simply pointing out that eggs aren’t chickens, but they are determined to double down any chance they get. In Alabama, a patient in a Mobile fertility clinic somehow accessed the area where frozen embryos are stored and accidentally destroyed three specimens. The all Republican Alabama Supreme Court just ruled that the prospective parents can sue the clinic for wrongful death because frozen embryos are children. Weird methodology, but I can’t say I hate the fact that the couples might get some compensation for the clinic’s shoddy security. However, in Missouri, the Department of Transport is taking the argument even further in order to avoid a wrongful death suit of their own. In November of 2021, highway workers James Brooks and Kaitlyn Anderson were struck by a vehicle on Interstate 270 and killed. Kaitlyn was 6 months pregnant with a son, who she planned to call Jaxx. The Department of Transport were supposed to have a protective truck in place, but did not, so Kaitlyn’s family sued for wrongful death. However, as an employee of the state, Kaitlyn’s case would fall under Workers’ compensation laws rather than wrongful death. Worker’s comp wouldn’t pay because it doesn’t cover unmarried people without dependents. So the family tried to sue the DOT for wrongful death of her unborn baby Jaxx. Missouri’s state legislature being very red, the DOT didn’t make the argument that Jaxx wasn’t a person yet, they went another, very different way. They claimed he was also a state employee. A Missouri Supreme Court trial is set for March. 
• So Feb didn’t start so well for Keir Starmer and the Labour party – heading into 3 by-elections with the possibility of demolishing some more of the blue wall in the North of England in Rochdale, Kingswood and Wellingborough by overturning Tory majorities, then Labour’s Rochdale candidate Azhar Ali embraced conspiracy theories that Israel allowed the 7 October attacks to happen and made accusations about Jewish influence in the media – a problem for Starmer who’d so proudly expelled the likes of Corbyn over charges of anti-semitism and cos Starmer had accepted Ali’s apology rather than fling him out of the party and have to get another candidate. After several ructions from within the party he was expelled but too late for Labour to stand another candidate they now have the nightmare possibility of Ali winning as an independent! However Feb didn’t continue well for Sunak who lost both by-elections in Kingswood and Wellingborough – Wellingborough by a swing to Labour greater than any in any election since the 1940’s, trying to remain cheery and blaming it on “no incumbent government does well in midterm elections” even though it’s an election year and not the middle by at least 2 leaders, Sunak talked about having a plan – again! Though the plan doesn’t seem to include winning elections. Meanwhile in the House of Lords despite Rishi seemingly having no idea what the will of the people is he has warned the House of Lords not to defy that will and pass the Rwanda bill as they scrutinise/tear it to pieces. They are being asked to say that Rwanda is safe now but the govt representative Lord Stewart of Dirleton was asked “If the Rwandan Government are ‘working towards’ putting safeguards in place, that means they are not currently in place. Is that correct?” to which he replied, “It must do”. So… not safe now. When your own team kinda start admitting defeat it’s time to jack it in… hmmm are you beginning to get the message Rishi? Any message? Hello Rishi, can you hear us? Time to go son!

 

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:

 Playing Politics – FT#143 Transcript

Jim: Hello, and welcome to Fallacious Trump, the podcast where we use the insane ramblings of an elderly man with a poor memory to explain logical fallacies. I’m your host, Jim.

Mark: 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 playing politics because we’re at the self imposed every 11th. How, many. elevens is 143?

Jim: 13. 13? 13. 11s

Mark: Yeah, there we go. Yeah, this one, we were kind of talking about it for quite a long time.

Jim: Few episodes it’s been since we started talking about it, since you mentioned it.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: This is the first of our new ones that we’ve made up. Identified that you, Came up with. Identified.

Mark: Yeah. Well, insofar as I kind of said, yeah, there’s something there, surely, about playing politics, because it keeps coming up and it keeps irking me. And it sounds like it’s a fallacy, the way that it’s being used.

Jim: Yeah. And at first, I was like, nah, it doesn’t sound like a fallacy to me. And then gradually, you wore me down over a period of weeks.

Mark: It’s good to know. I’m encouraged in these explorations.

Jim: What we, I think, decided, what my understanding of it, at least, and by all means, tell me if you think you have a different understanding, is that this is a kind of a form of thought terminating cliche, a specific version of that where someone will shut down debate on an argument or avoid engaging with an argument from the other side. By accusing them of playing politics, when actually what they are doing in most cases is doing politics, which is doing an act of governance. And by accusing them of playing politics, what you’re saying is that they are doing something to make themselves look better or enrich themselves in some way.

Mark: Exactly.

Jim: Rather than actually doing their job of being a politician.

Mark: Yeah. And also, it’s got kind of overtones or undertones of machiavellian, intents, when if you’re playing at office politics, you’re doing stuff in a self aggrandizing way in order to move up the ladder so you can accuse other people of just doing stuff in order to get ahead.

Jim: There’s a focus on the personal benefit of it, or the benefit to your side compared to the benefit to the people you’re supposed to be working for, your constituents.

Mark: Yeah. Because at the height of, the level that we’re talking about, presidential and prime ministerial, you’ve reached the top of the ladder. So it’s used as a thought terminating cliche, as a way of diverting attention away from having to explain yourself, having to engage in the argument, having to counter any accusations by just saying, in making those accusations, you’re just playing politics, you’re not doing what you’re supposed to be doing.

Jim: Yeah. So examples of people actually playing politics, in my mind, and it happens on both sides, I’m sure. But, for example, Trump trying to extort Ukraine into opening an investigation into Biden that was using the machinations of politics to benefit himself. He wasn’t doing that to help the USA. He was doing it to get his political rival investigated. And the thing is, when people complain about that and say that this is not an okay thing to be doing, they then get accused of playing politics.

Mark: Yes. It’s difficult to pin down what the person means by play. Well, what do you mean by playing politics? Once you say that, that’s deemed by the sayer to be enough.

Jim: Yeah. I looked into the origin of politics, the word being used in a negative sense like that, to be saying that someone is doing something in a political way, meaning a negative. And it’s from the kind of mid 18 hundreds that it started. And the reason I looked into that is because one of the examples I was looking at for fallacy in the Wild was a 1971 Michael Caine film called the last Valley, which was set during the 30 years war, which, as everyone knows, was 1618 to 1648. And Michael Caine was doing, ah, an accent I don’t think exists in nature.

Mark: Right.

Jim: And he used the phrase playing politics. He accused the pope of playing politics.

Mark: Okay.

Jim: And I thought, well, this seems very early to be using a phrase like that. I don’t think this exists. And sure enough, it was like 200 years before people had started talking about politics as a negative kind of way of doing that kind of thing. and the other thing that we’ve noticed about this, it’s very context dependent. In order to figure out whether this is someone genuinely accusing someone of playing politics, because that’s what they’re doing or whether they’re using it fallaciously, you have to know the motivations of the person who is being accused. And so in that case, the Michael Caine accusing the pope of playing politics. I had to figure out what the pope at the time was doing and whether that was badly political. Turns out it was, I think it was Pope Urban, the last Pope Urban, who was very kind of nepotistic in terms of getting his friends and family, lots of money and powerful positions.

Mark: But kind of there.

Jim: So, yeah, that was a, ah, fair accusation, and therefore, it isn’t one of our examples because Michael Caine’s character was using it accurately, not as a way of deflecting or stopping debates.

Mark: And two centuries ahead of his time.

Jim: Yeah, but that means that you do have to understand the context behind the accusation of it, which made, it take quite a lot longer to find.

Mark: The example and also to be kind of short, because at the same time, the meaning that we understood it to contain was also at the same time kind of coalescing and becoming a bit more solid. So each example you find gets you somewhere towards a, stronger definition. And then you think, oh, actually what that does is reel a whole bunch more examples.

Jim: I hope that that’s the value of the examples that we give you in every episode, is that we can explain something pretty quickly. And this could be a five minute podcast where we just say, this is a logical fallacy and explain what the fallacy is. But the examples hopefully show you how it’s used in real life, in politics and in tv and stuff, and that gives you a clearer understanding of the range of ways that people use it.

Mark: Yeah. And actually, I wonder whether many of the fallacies that we’ve looked at all require a lot of context, and we just have got used to that.

Jim: That’s definitely true to some extent. it’s certainly more true of informal fallacies. we’ll be doing next week, next episode, we’ll be doing a formal fallacy, which we don’t do very many of. And formal fallacies are ones where the form itself, the form of the argument, means that it is Fallacious.

Mark: Yeah. So it’s using formal logic, I guess.

Jim: Yes, absolutely. Where it comes from about the form of the argument, whereas informal, it’s not about the form, it’s about how it’s used. And therefore, context is important. It’s almost always important to some extent, it seems in this case, I think, to be more than usual. Our first example this week, ironically, because one of the biggest bit of playing politics that’s happening at the moment is the Republicans messing around with border security and asking for stuff and then voting against it when they get it. Is Trump talking about border security?

Donald Trump: Congress must fully fund border security and the year ending funding Bill. We have to get this done. They’re playing games, they’re playing political games. I actually think the politics of what they’re doing is very bad for them. But we’re going to very soon find out. Maybe I’m, not right, but usually I’m right.

Jim: So this was the end of 2018 when they were trying to agree a funding package that would fund the government. This was what led to the 35 day government shutdown, the end of 2018. Beginning of 2019, because Trump was asking for $5.7 billion in federal funds for his wall. And Democrats, true to what they’d been saying his entire presidency, were saying, we’re not funding the wall. It’s a fucking stupid child’s idea of security. There are better ways to spend that money. We’re not doing it. So that wasn’t plain politics. Arguably, because they were sticking to what they genuinely believed was the right thing to do for security and for the use of that money. What the Senate did then was they unanimously passed an appropriations Bill for more funding for the government. Without that 5.7 billion for the wall, the House looked likely to also pass that, which would have then funded the government. And Trump said that he would sign it. But conservative media all said, basically, oh, ah, he’s totally kind of backing down. He’s not standing up to them about the wall. Yeah. Dan Bongino, who was standing in for, Tucker, I think, on Fox, said, this is not the way that he said he was going to do it. And Anne Coulter came out and said he called him gutless. She said that his administration will just have been a joke. Presidency. Who scammed the american people? Rush Limbaugh got in, in the action. He said, trump’s going to get less than nothing. The drudge report argued against it. And so because Trump was afraid of looking bad in front of all his right wing friends, he went back on what he’d said and decided he wouldn’t sign the Bill that the Senate had already passed and continued to demand the 5.7 billion. The House then created a new Bill, including the funding, passed it because the Republicans had control of the House. Basically, it was going to get blocked in the Senate because they didn’t have the votes. So it was never going to go anywhere. They knew that. And Trump then spent the next 20 days blaming the Democrats for him refusing to sign the thing that the government had already agreed on because the right wing media said he looked like a loser. So, that’s him accusing the Democrats of playing politics over funding the border, doing it himself. Yeah.

Mark: Yes. There’s a lot of that involved, I think, with this notion of playing politics, because part of the playing politics is playing to the gallery. It’s about looking good. Yeah.

Jim: So our second example is a tweet from Trump. April 16 of 2020. Democrats are, blocking additional funding for the popular Paycheck protection program. They are killing american small businesses. Stop playing politics. Dems support refilling PPP. Now it is out of funds. The Paycheck Protection program helped businesses to get loans so that they could continue to pay their workers during the pandemic.

Mark: Right. Yeah.

Jim: That ran out of money because there’s only so much money. And so they wanted to refill it. And the Democrats wanted to make sure that that money didn’t only go to big businesses that had relationships with banks that they might be able to get loans from anyway and things like that. They wanted to make sure that it got to smaller banks who would give it smaller businesses, community based lenders and credit unions. And also they wanted, in that funding Bill for dealing with COVID fallout, they wanted to, continue to fund hospitals. They wanted to give 100 billion to hospitals and increase coronavirus testing and things like that. So that’s what they were arguing for and why they voted against the republican Bill, which simply added another 250,000,000,000 to the PPP pot. So he’s right that they blocked additional funding for the PPP. And the reason they were doing that was because negotiations weren’t over. They were still trying to negotiate with the Republicans to get more stuff. And the Republicans went, here’s a Bill. Sign this one. And they went, no, we’re not signing that one. Keep talking to us about more stuff.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: Is that playing politics? No, I don’t feel like it is. Because the Republicans have blocked the border security thing, which contained all the things they asked for. Because, and we know this specifically because it’s been said by plenty of Republicans and by people who are aware of Donald Trump’s feelings about this, that they’ve blocked border security funding because Trump has asked them to, because it would make Biden look good. If they fund it, it would be a win for Biden. And he doesn’t want that. He wants them to still be able to campaign on the border being at a crisis. So that’s playing politics. That’s using politics to make yourself look better and your opponent look worse? Trying to negotiate for a better deal for your constituents.

Mark: Yeah. And holding up those fast tracking of by pointing out that there are bits missing and that having done it before, the, reported experience is that it’s going to people that can afford to do it anyway. They’re not in need of that. It’s actually the small businesses that are being killed by it.

Jim: Just going to the big banks, essentially. Yeah.

Mark: So it ought to be looked at more closely. And it’s the job of the opposition to employ checks and balances and hold any legislation to account and ask questions. Yeah.

Jim: If you sign the first thing that isn’t a negative, then you’re not necessarily getting the best thing. What you want is the best thing.

Mark: Yeah. And you want to keep talking about why this one isn’t the best thing, because it’s not suiting these employers.

Jim: And consequently, by not signing that 250,000,000,000 Bill.

Mark: Mhm.

Jim: Five days later, they did sign a $484,000,000,000 Bill.

Mark: Right.

Jim: Which fully funded the PPP program to the tune of 320,000,000,000, of which 60 billion was set aside specifically for community based lenders, smaller banks and credit unions. That would give smaller businesses who don’t have an established relationship with, big banks a better chance of accessing those loans. It also gave 75 billion to help overwhelmed hospitals and 25 billion to set up new coronavirus testing programs. So by delaying for less than a week, they got a, lot more of the stuff they wanted, which would help real Americans with the things that they needed.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: Our third example is Republicans, whenever there’s a mass shooting, because understandably, Democrats tend to use the fact that mass shootings are in the news to say, isn’t it time we did something about guns and increased gun control, increased background checks, did some kind of gun control legislation, because that’s when there is an appetite for it, when people are thinking, how can this keep happening? And of course, because Republicans want to shut down that conversation, they call that playing politics. They call asking for genuine life saving legislation that will address this issue playing politics. After the Las Vegas mass shooting, Jim Jordan said, the aftermath of a shocking and unimaginable tragedy like what just happened in Las Vegas is not the time to play politics. No, it’s the time to do politics.

Mark: Yes, exactly. Yes. It’s the time to bring in some sort of legislation, stop happening.

Jim: And this is Ted Cruz after the parkland shooting.

Ted Cruz: The reaction of Democrats to any tragedy is to try to politicize it. So they immediately start calling that we’ve. Got to take away the second amendment rights of law abiding citizens. That’s not the right answer.

Jim: It’s always time to talk about gun control in the US, it’s, the most effective time when that’s in the news. And to Republicans, that’s the time you can’t talk about it because talking about it is playing politics.

Mark: That’s playing politics. Yeah. Yes.

Jim: Just this week with the Kansas City shooting, Bill Eigle, state senator in Missouri, he tweeted to the liberal gun grabbers already trying to use this Casey tragedy to push your radical gun control agenda. Hear me now. Not in Missouri. One good guy with a gun could have stopped the evil criminals who opened fire on the crowd immediately. Guns don’t kill people. Thugs and criminals kill people. So that one good guy with a gun argument is slightly undercut by the fact that there were 800 armed police at the parade.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: And the guy that took down one of the shooters was just an unarmed parade guy. Just a guy is very much them doing the playing politics thing and accusing the other side of playing the politics.

Mark: So he’s tweeting, let’s not politicize tragedy to your own end. And in the process, politicizing the tragedy.

Jim: Absolutely. And just a few years ago, Obama said something, after, I can’t even remember which mass shooting it was, but he went on tv and know there’ll be calls. People will accuse me of politicizing this. Let’s politicize this.

Mark: Yes. Because who else is going to fix this other than politicians?

Jim: And incidentally, Bill Eigle, who sent that tweet, the Missouri state senator. That’s not even the stupidest thing he said this week, because they had a debate about, abortion in Missouri, in the state house. And his, argument to why there should be zero exceptions for rape or incest is that a one year old could get an abortion if you allow exceptions because he thinks babies can get pregnant. I’m not sure. I’m not sure which bit of anything he doesn’t understand. M most likely everything he doesn’t understand, but he was trying to take it to the absurd result and went a little too think, yeah, maybe.

Mark: Yeah. Or maybe we could be accused of playing politics if we point out that kind of stuff. Yeah.

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

Mark: So this is kind of where it all came from, because Sunak, has accused Starmer of playing politics at least seven times in the last year. So I’ve put a montage together of the four times he accused him of that in winter, 2022 23, and the three times in spring summer 2023, as.

Rishi Sunak: Ever, engaging in the petty personality politics. Last week, I offered him Labour votes to pass these housing targets because this is bigger than politics. In 12 hours time, there’s a nurses strike. All he needs to do is meet the nurses. His inaction speaks volumes, as ever with this prime minister, it’s Tory politics first, patients second. The health secretary and other ministers have engaged fully, not just with the unions, but with an independent pay setting process which takes the politics out of the process and ensures that we can meet those independent requirements with a fair pay deal. He’s not even promising an NHS that puts patients first like it did under Labour. No, he’s promising that one day, although we can’t say when, their record high waiting list will stop growing. That’s it. When it comes to the NHS, it’s crystal clear. The Conservatives on the side of patients, Labour on the side of their union paymasters. We’re protecting public services against undisrupted strike action, Mr. Speaker. And we have new laws to stop the boat. What has he done? He’s voted against every single one of those. And, that’s the difference between us. While he’s working on the politics, we’re working for the british people. And that’s the difference between him and me. He focused on petty politics. I’m delivering for Britain, but that is the difference between us, Mr. Speaker. While he is always focused on the politics, we are actually just getting on and doing the job.

Mark: So, as you can see, it kind of changed tone. It just became a whole thing of, That’s the difference between us. He’s on the politics. I’m doing the plan, which is a bit disingenuous because his pledges, his plan not going quite so well. So he’s kind of going for. Sam has got no plan. But it’s not primarily the opposition’s job to come up with a plan. That’s the government’s job. The opposition’s job is to hold the government and their plan to account and try to effect some change in those. Well, certainly in the UK, in the draconian strike laws and the inhumane immigration laws which led to the Rwanda Bill. What Sunak accuses Starmer of doing in playing politics, Starmer is. So when he says, and he voted against all of those things, well, he didn’t. It’s a bit more nuanced than that. What he did was to say that what you’re doing is taking away the right of employees to withdraw their Labour in order to petition for better working conditions. And that was about the nurses strike. But if you want to do that, then you’re playing politics because you’re not letting them get the bills through unopposed. And the weird thing is that, the first one, it starts with, he’s playing petty, politics as usual and opposing all of this stuff. And, Starmer’s, which was about imposing housing. No, not a cap. The opposite of that. It’s just saying here, you’ve got to produce this many affordable houses. Each and every developer that builds a, new development has to produce a certain percentage of affordable housing, which is euphemistically called affordable housing, because the implication is that every other house is unaffordable. But it’s social housing. It used to be that local, councils that were funded by central government and local government would build houses. They would become council houses. So that was social housing for people that didn’t want to buy. They would just rent, and they would rent from the council. That all got done away with by Margaret Thatcher, who said, you should just sell them off. So now developers build houses in return for the developers keeping a lot of the profit when they sell the houses, they’ve got to build a certain amount of houses for affordable housing. And Starmer and Sunac wanted to put in place a, quota say, right? You’ve got to have this many percentage. I think it was something like 40% or something. It nearly went through. And Starmer said, great, I will even whip the Labour party to vote for the government for this legislation. And then Sunak got his head turned around, not unlike Trump, by various lobbyists, building developers, and changed his mind and then accused Starmer, of playing politics by opposing this and characterizing it as something other than not putting quotas in. And Stalmer said, hang on a minute, I’m not playing politics. You forget that, last week I gave you the votes for this. You’ve changed your mind. Oh, man, whenever Sunak accuses him of playing politics, he’s the one playing politics, because I think he still needs to look good in the eyes of his backbenchers, in the eyes of his party. He needs to look like the strong man. So he accused. And every time he does, you get this baying, throng of his back benches that make this somewhere between a playground and a farmyard noise. And Sunak loves it. He absolutely loves that. And you can see that he’s worked out what will trigger that response. And actually, I watched one of these fallacies, a, playing politics valley being created in front of our eyes this week. In the first week in February, trans girl Brianna Jai murderers was sentenced to life in prison. And Brianna’s mother was in the House of Commons during prime minister’s questions. And Sunak was doing the whole thing about Starmer and his uturns. And he said this whilst Brianna’s mum is in the house.

Rishi Sunak: I think I counted almost 30 in the last year. Pensions, planning peerages, public sector pay, tuition fees, childcare, second referendums defining a woman. Although, although, in fairness, that was only 99% of a uturn. The list goes on. But the theme is the same, Mr. Speaker. It’s empty words, broken promises, and absolutely no plans.

Lindsay Hoyle: Keir Starmer

Keir Starmer: Of all the weeks to say that when Brianna’s mother is in this chamber, shame parading as a man of integrity when he’s got absolutely no responsibility. Absolute of all.

Rishi Sunak: Brianna’s mum, I thought was inspiring and it showed the very best of humanity. I have nothing but the most heartfelt sympathy for her entire family and friends. But to use that tragedy to detract from the very separate and clear point I was making about Keir Starmer’s proven track record of, multiple U turns on major policies because he doesn’t have a plan, I think is both sad and wrong. And it demonstrates the worst of politics.

Mark: Well, there’s Sunak himself demonstrating the worst of politics.

Jim: The fact that he pointed out that I, ah, used a transphobic dog whistle in front of a murdered trans girl’s parent is the worst of politics.

Mark: Yeah, no, the fact that he pointed that out.

Jim: Yeah, absolutely.

Mark: He pointed out. Not that I did it. That wasn’t the worst. no, the fact that starmer, he drew attention to it, score political points. Yeah, because he was doing the list and then he spent more time on that one. And Starmer is just a, loss for words.

Jim: He’s really angry. I’ve not seen him, especially in pmqs. He usually keeps his composure very well. He was really pissed up.

Mark: The fact that the baying school kids on the Tory back benches all just went teachers really angry. Okay, so here we go. So this is, another example is dealing with food poverty. In January 2020. Jacob, Reese Mogg accuses UNICEF the international children charity of, playing politics.

Jacob Rees Mogg: I think it’s a real scandal that UNICEF should be playing politics in this way when it is meant to be looking after, people in the poorest, the most deprived countries in the world where people are starving, where there are famines, and where there are civil wars, and they make cheap political points of this kind, giving, I think, 25,000 pounds to one council. It is a political stunt of the lowest order. But what has this government done about child poverty? We are committed to our manifesto pledge to reduce child poverty since 2010 to 2018 19. There are 100,000 fewer children in absolute poverty in this country. This is a record of successive conservatism. And UNICEF should be ashamed of itself.

Mark: UNICEF is a charity to look after the children in the poorest and most destitute countries. So rather than saying this is a bit of a wake up call, that UNICEF are having to do this in the UK, because what that does is make the UK puts the UK on the same footing as those countries outside of the UK that are underserving their children and families. So the grant. Yes, they did pledge 25,000 pounds for south London charity to help supply breakfast boxes over the Christmas holidays. So this is 2020, and it’s during COVID schools are closed down. Those eligible for free school meals aren’t, getting the free school meals because there’s no school. And so they said, well, we’ll do this. And they also said, it’s the first time in our 70 year history that we’ve had to make such an intervention in the UK. And they spent 700,000 in total in the UK. But note also the child poverty Action Group reports that 350,000 more children, over and above the 100,000 that he says have been lifted out of poverty. 350,000 were pulled into poverty in 20, 21, 22, largely because the government cut the 20 pound universal credit uplift halfway through that year.

Jim: Yeah, child poverty has gone way up worse over the last ten, year. Where is he getting his figures from?

Mark: But it’s true to say that it did go down over that bit, but it’s gone way up since then. Yeah.

Jim: So was he stopping. He was drawing a line over Covid. Was he, like, stopping it short of COVID Yes, stop before COVID We were doing really well. Completely ignore the fact that that happened and we fucked that. It’s much worse now than it was in 2010 2011.

Mark: 4.2 million children are fucking hell up. from 3.6 million in 2010 eleven.

Jim: I wondered if maybe he was just counting those specific children. And over the last ten years, a lot of them have aged out of being children, so aren’t counting.

Mark: 100,000 of them are now adults. They’re starving adults now. Yeah.

Jim: Fucking hell.

Mark: And then to say that, it’s a political act. There’s something in the use of the fallacy that reveals consciences being pricked and shortcomings being identified, of people doing things that fill the gaps left by government who should be doing it, or governments who create a society where it can happen. And they do this in order to distract from accusations of neglect. So those delivering to Anita is told to stop playing politics. He’s making it a political point. It isn’t a political point other than him playing politics to make it a political point in order to distract from the dearth of, provision coming from the government. And similarly, in July 2021, the England soccer team lost in the UA for euros final on penalties against Italy. And Natalie Elfic, Tory MP for Dover WhatsApp. This about Marcus Rashford, who played in the England team,

Guto Harri: a WhatsApp group between 275 mps which show one member’s view of Marcus Rashford. Natalie Elphicke the Conservative MP for Dover. WhatsApp, the group saying they lost. Would it be ungenerous to suggest Rashford should have spent more time perfecting his game and less time playing politics?

Mark: He wasn’t playing politics at all. He was campaigning for the government to continue to provide free school meals to vulnerable, eligible pupils throughout the school holidays, during the COVID pandemic. They’re in the vulnerable category. They’re getting free school meals because their parents don’t have access to funds, even less access to funds when Covid was hit, because nobody was going to work. And so he was saying that the provision should be made. Why don’t you just do that? And, the government kind of resisted it. And that sparked Rashford’s campaign. Eventually, Boris’s government u turned and did exactly what he’d asked for and then congratulated Rashford for his tenacity. And he was awarded for an MBE. He was awarded an MBE for the work he did in that regard, despite the fact that they were the ones that were blocking the thing. He advocated for and accused him of playing politics when he should have been playing football.

Jim: The thing is, I think this is one where. Because we talked about this being used outside of politics, which we’ll talk about, when we get fantasy in the wild. And I feel like this is people being accused of, people who aren’t in politics, getting a bit involved in politics, doing something slightly political. And so I think this is an accusation which is leveled at people who, they, you know, stay out of your. This isn’t your job. Essentially, stick to your lane. Which they didn’t throw at Donald Trump, the game show host. but they do throw. And they will repeatedly interview people like John Voight and Scott Bayou on Fox, but argue that Taylor Swift should stay out of politics. And, ah, I think this is a different thing. I don’t think this is people being accused of playing politics in the same way because their job isn’t to do politics. I think playing politics is like you are playing at it. You’re not really doing it properly.

Mark: Right.

Jim: And I think, in a way, these people are being accused of doing politics when it’s not their job, not actually of playing politics.

Mark: Interesting. Matt Monroe there with the music played.

Jim: So in the fallacy in the wild, we like to talk about the fallacy of the week from a non political perspective. And obviously that was pretty difficult this week. Yeah, because we’re talking about playing politics. So each of these have a political aspect to them. The first is from the shield, and this is, I think, season one of the shield. Acevedo, the captain, is considering running for city council. There’s been a double murder in an area which is underserved by the police. And a spokesperson or a kind of assistant to the current city council member is involving herself in the case and wants to hear, for example, why it took so long for emergency services to arrive after the 911 call. So she comes to the barn to find out more about it.

David Acevedo: Karen

Karen: I was hoping you had some new information by now.

David Acevedo: Unfortunately, no.

Karen: Well, what about the 911 tape?

David Acevedo: They’re on the way.

Det. Claudette Wyms: We’ve been trying to find Melissa Kramer before she gets her own tape.

Karen: Oh, well, I’d like to listen to them with you. Two women are dead, David. I hope we’re not playing politics. Here.

Jim: So she kind of implicitly accuses him of playing politics in hesitating when she says she wants to listen to the 911 tapes. And the thing is, I think he kind of is a bit because she is supposedly the current city council members handpicked, replacement for him, and therefore probably will be running against David in the, primary coming.

Jim: So Acevedo, as the current police captain, will look bad if his force did a bad job in this, and then the council member can possibly use it against him in the future. But his force probably did do a bad job, and what they really want to do is find the bad guys, but also on his side of it. I don’t know how common it is or how okay it is for the council member or a member of their staff to listen to 911 calls with the police. I think that seems to be playing politics. That’s why she wants to get involved in the case.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: Is so that she can look good to her constituents.

Mark: Exactly.

Jim: In him hesitating of like, should I let this politician involve herself in this, our, crime solving? I’m not sure to what extent he’s doing it because he wants to cover his own ass or whether he’s actually thinking, is this the right thing to do, to let her get involved or not.

Mark: Actually, that seems to, uphold my theory that when somebody says, accuses somebody of playing politics, it’s to cover up the fact that they’re not doing politics.

Jim: Kind of.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: I mean, she hasn’t really got any particular reason to be there listening to the stuff other than she can then go back to her constituents and say, oh, I’ve sorted this for you. I’m making sure that the police do what they’re supposed to be doing.

Mark: Yeah. If that was Suella Braverman, she’d be stirring the culture wars as a deliberate act to say it took me to intervene for them to do the investigation that they, doing.

Jim: Her taking part in this has no effect on the investigation at all.

Mark: Exactly. Ah. And makes her look better than those pesky bloody police who are trying to not keep a lid on it to protect themselves. They’re not playing politics in keeping the lid on it. They’re keeping the lid on it because they’re thinking, might this compromise, should this come to trial, would that compromise, the evidence base somehow?

Jim: Yeah. Although arguably because no one in the shield. Well, very few of the characters in the shield are like, great people. Right. is really probably also thinking about his own political career.

Mark: Yeah. Just call it playing politics. Yeah. That’s the shield they’re putting up, isn’t it? That defending themselves against accusations of playing politics.

Jim: So our second example is from don’t look up. and this is a kind of a side. It’s not the main story, but this is an interview that a journalist is doing with Chris Evans, who is playing an actor in a, kind of disaster movie that’s meteor based, being released at the same time. And he’s wearing a badge that is considered political within the movie.

Interviewer: I know a lot of Hollywood is supporting the just look up movement, but I haven’t seen a pin like this pin.

Devin Peters: This pin points both up and down because I think as a country, we need to stop arguing and virtue signaling. Just get along. That is so refreshing. I think we’re all tired of the politics. Yeah, well, I mean, that’s why we made total devastation. It’s for everyone. It’s a popcorn move.

Jim: So his argument is that wearing, ah, essentially both sides ism as a badge because everyone’s tired of the politics, and it’s just time we put aside and got along and stop virtue signaling. And I think virtue signaling is arguably the non political version of this in that people are accused of it. When, what you’re claiming. When you accuse someone of virtue signaling is, You don’t really believe what you’re saying. Yeah, you’re just doing it to make.

Mark: Yourself to look good.

Jim: You’re pretending to support LGBTQ or women or whatever. You don’t really think that. You just think that people will think that you’re a good person if you say these things. And that’s the kind of same thing as playing politics in that they’re accusing politicians of doing a thing that will make them look good rather than actually believing it or doing the real work.

Mark: Yeah. Around the time of, Marcus Rashford being accused of playing politics, there was a whole, exchange about kind of virtue. They said political gesturing was their version of virtue signaling visa vis taking the knee, or worst of all, Rishi Sunak wearing an England shirt at a match over his shirt. And.

Jim: Not. I’m not saying virtue signaling isn’t a real thing. Doesn’t exist. People don’t do it. But, assuming that someone doesn’t actually believe what they’re saying and is just saying a thing to look good, if they’re not doing that, I think it’s Fallacious and it’s doing this.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: Our third example is entirely political because it’s from the West wing. And this is. I think it might be the final series where Santos is up against Vinnick. Matt Santos versus Arnold Vinnick. And there has been a problem at a nuclear facility in California and people talking about how this should be talked about in the media by the politicians. Josh, by this point, is working on the Santos campaign and finds something out about Vinnick.

Josh Lyman: Vinnick lobbied for federal approval for San Andrea 25 years ago. He’s the reason the plant’s there.

Matt Santos: When is this going to break?

Josh Lyman: I don’t know. Press is kind of preoccupied.

Helen Santos: We don’t want to nudge them along?

Josh Lyman: We, could put it out. Yeah, but then he could hit us. Back for playing politics with a mushroom cloud. If the press finds it on its own, it’ll be 900 times bigger.

Josh Lyman: What if they don’t find it?

Jim: They will.

Helen Santos: This isn’t politics. This is policy. Those places are unsafe. It’s a legitimate point.

Jim: So Santos’s wife’s argument is that it’s actually okay to put this out to the press, that their opponent lobbied for this nuclear plant to be built, which is now having problems because it’s a legitimate point. We’re not playing politics. If we tell the press about this, obviously it’s his political opponent. So the fallout from it without, for want of a better word, is that it would benefit their campaign at the expense of Vinix. Josh says if we did that, we’d be accused of playing politics. And in fact, is a little bit playing politics in saying, let’s let the press find it on their own. That will be better for us. we will fit better by doing that. And he’s right, because a couple of scenes later, we cut to Vinnick’s campaign staff who are having this conversation.

Bob Mayer: They’re killing us out there and they. Still don’t know our guy helped get. That plant approved in the first place.

Bruno Gianelli: I know Josh Lyman. There is a reason he has camped out in Florida, the swingingest of swing states. Santos is going to whack us. Then we hit him back for politicizing a national disaster.

Bob Mayer: Big roll of The dice on one weak Pair of knees.

Bruno Gianelli: Trust me, Josh has the political equivalent of Tourette syndrome. He can’t help himself. We wait for his next spasm, then we strike back. Yeah, Bruno.

Jim: They are strategizing, accusing Josh of playing politics when he reveals to the press the thing that they don’t want to get out about their. And their plan is to, accuse him of politicizing a tragedy.

Mark: Yes, playing politics. So, they’re playing politics in order to show that they’re not doing. Because, yes, the politics that went on was Alan Alder approving the nuclear facility.

Jim: Yeah. And to show that the Democrats in the show are not actually playing politics. The phone call that he gets at the end there is to invite his candidate, Vinnick to travel to California with the president because he’s the current California senator. So they ask the senator from the state to accompany the president. And Santos will not get to go on that trip because he’s in Florida. Bartlett, the good Democrat president, is so focused on doing the right thing instead of making his side look good. He recognizes that that will benefit Vinnick’s campaign. To be there on the ground with the president and Santos won’t be there. But it’s the right thing to do. So that’s what he’s going to do.

Mark: Yeah. But also once the press get that story, they won’t be able to accuse Bartlett of playing politics.

Jim: Yeah.

Mark: So is that, a political move? Yeah.

Jim: Right. Before we move on to fake news this week, a couple of things. First thing is, our oscars pool is now open. If you go to slash oscars, you can sign up, you can choose which of the, films you think are going to win in each of the different categories. And we will all compete, as we have done for the last couple of years, to see who is the best at predicting.

Mark: Yeah. And also it’s a way to. Because we pride ourselves on our film nerdiness. But also, I don’t have a good track record with this. As per usual, I kind of take umbrage at, I tend to vote for who I think ought to win, should win, won’t bloody win, but they really should. And in the process accuse the entire Hollywood film industry of playing politics. It’s not stood me in good stead because I’m completely sold on one or two of the animations thinking that’s just brilliant, because I think it’s brilliant, therefore it’s going to win, whereas you’re a, More sort of, what are they going to think that is the right and then consequently come out top?

Jim: Well, I’m not the reigning champion. Paul C is currently the champion. He won last year. But I did come second and I came first in, 22. So, yeah, I hope to place high. But it is just bragging rights. There’s no prize for this. No, it’s just to have fun and compete and see who does best.

Mark: But also the prize actually is.

Jim: Yes, because what we will do is for every entry that we get, we will donate $5 to charity in general. We usually do this year because it’s an election year, we’re doing, when we all vote, they’re a get out the vote organization because turnout is important and ideally with a higher turnout, there’s a better chance of democrats winning. The other thing that we’re going to do is that we normally do a kind of giving patron money to charity in kind of September time, and we’re going to do that again, but we’re going to do it this year for our, March patron money. And the reason is because we’re also going to give that to when we all vote. And it’s going to make more of a difference if we do it now than just before the election. so if you’ve been thinking about maybe becoming a patron, if you’re already a patron but have been thinking about increasing your patron subscription, or if you just want to increase it for one month and then drop it again, all the money we take in through patreon for March, we will be donating to when we all vote, along with $5 for every person who joins in our Oscars pool@fallacioustrump.com. Oscars and yeah, amazing bonus because I will be donating that through my work. We have a system where they will match any donation. So essentially that is doubled. So it’ll be the equivalent of twice our, ah, monthly patron money, plus ten pounds per person who joins in the Oscars pool. So if you’d like to help with donating a reasonable amount of money, we’re not a huge podcast, but that’ll be a few hundred quid at least to the get out the vote process. Then you can join in by doing that, by either joining in with the Oscars pool or upping your patron.

Mark: Do think about just kind of upping it for one month even, and then you’re upping it, and then you will guarantee that it will be doubled, it will be well worth it. And thanks again to all our patrons for being patrons. If you’re not a patron, there’s a vast library of stuff that you could get access to. Plus you get extra, bonus bits on these episodes. And we do an episode every week as well. For patrons.

Jim: Absolutely. What you could do is join up just for a month and challenge yourself. There you go in that month to consume all of the bonus material that we’ve ever put out over the last 143 episodes. I’m not sure there’s physically enough time. You maybe could listen to it at one and a half speed or something.

Mark: Yeah, he’s BS. It’s bad enough trying to watch all the Oscar films in the intervening period without doing that. Yeah. Yes, I know. That would be a good challenge.

Jim: Let us know if you survive it.

Mark: Or whether it’s preferable to just chuck ice water over yourself.

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 instead of bringing about real, substantial differences in the world, this is purely designed to make fun of the democratic institutions, to game the system of government, if you like. We are literally playing politics right now. Well, you are. I’m not of.

Jim: Yeah, yeah. We could call this game playing politics, really, couldn’t.

Mark: We? Would just be virtue signaling.

Jim: So our theme this week is Trump’s views on crime and how bad it is in the US, given that he’s.

Mark: Contributed so much to it, ironically.

Jim: Yeah, he doesn’t talk about that part. well, I mean, he does. He fucking won’t stop talking about that part. But in these quotes, he focuses more on crime committed by other people. Okay, so statement number one. What’s happening with crime is it’s through the roof, and it’s called migrant. I call it a new category. I just came up with that name, but I think it’s appropriate. It’s a new category of crime where they go and they beat up police officers. You’ve seen that. They go and they stab people, hurt, people, shoot people. It’s a whole new form. And they have gangs now that are making our games look like small potatoes. Okay? Because Joe Biden allowed this to happen. We will call it from now on. Biden migrant crime. Okay, it’s migrant crime. This is. We’ll call it. I got it. Vigrant. Let’s call it vigrant. Biden crime by. Oh, that’s good. That’s smart.

Mark: Makes our games look, like small potatoes. He just loves coming. Migrant. I’ll call it his new car. I just came up with that name. But no. And then,

Jim: All right, statement number two. Our, ah, Democrat run cities are really going to hell. They’re going to hell. When you look at stores being looted by hundreds of people that run into the stores and run out with television sets. And our, great policemen aren’t allowed to do anything they want to, but they’re not allowed. They don’t want to lose their families, they don’t want to lose their sons and daughters and their houses and their pensions and all of that. And they could stop it very quickly. And we just allow them to roam in and roam out. Everybody’s out there. You have cameras. These same cameras are out there shooting these people, walking out with television sets.

Mark: And we allow them to roam in and roam out. Okay, so the policeman, because they don’t want to lose their families. All right.

Jim: And statement number three.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: They’re the party of crime. They let murderers and rapists go free. They let the open borders mean people are coming from all over who have been let out of prison. From South America, the Middle east, from Congo. Oh, hello. What part of Congo are you from? Prison. Oh, great. So, of course, crime is like nobody’s ever seen. You can’t even believe the numbers. It’s like a rocket ship. And if the police even mentioned the words law enforcement, they get told to just stand aside and let it happen. While large packs of sadistic criminals and thieves systematically rob and steal and roam the streets. Right?

Mark: Can’t believe the numbers. It’s like a rocket ship. Like numbers are. Yeah. You get arrested for just mentioning law enforcement these days. Yeah. Ah. Arrested and thrown in jail. What the fuck? That’s kind of both mad and a little bit racist all at once. What? Okay. The open borders, South America, Middle east and Congo. Okay. And the other one, they don’t want to lose their family. So, two there, I’m a bit suspicious of bigrant because I think that’s too clever by half for him. But that escalation, lose the family’s sons, daughters, houses, pensions, all of that, that seems like a fake escalation. Okay, so, I’m going to chance my arm and say that, by Grant, is too big of a joke for Trump to have thought up.

Jim: Okay, so the other two.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: Which you more convinced by?

Mark: More convinced, weirdly, by the Congo one.

Jim: Okay.

Mark: Because, it’s got lies about crime and racism in there. Yeah, I think that’s probably true.

Jim: Okay.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: And number three is fake news. I’ve done it.

Mark: I’ve broken my streak. Wow. Oh, that’s excellent. Because the other one. Jesus Christ.

Jim: Having real.

Mark: What the fuck? Okay.

Jim: it’s been seven months since I’ve won one.

Mark: Sounds like a wow. And that was the least or the most innocuous one? The least. Oculus one. Wow, look at that.

Jim: Yeah. The thing I took from reality. reality. Are we calling Trump speeches reality? Actual recorded stuff is he has recently claimed, I think it was just the other day, he claimed that lots of people from Congo were coming over the border and they’d all just been let off. Prison.

Mark: Okay, right. Well, weirdly, that was the most bizarre bit.

Jim: because I thought it was so weird. Random country to just pick out of the blue.

Mark: But, yeah, that escalation from. Can’t believe the numbers is like a rocket ship. That’s, I don’t know, very trump like.

Jim: That means that number one, seven months.

Mark: I can’t believe that.

Jim: That’s amazing. Very impressive run.

Mark: Well done.

Jim: So well done you for that length of time. So number one is what’s happening with.

Donald Trump: Crime is it’s through the roof and it’s called migrant. I call it a new category. I just came up with that name, but I think it’s appropriate. It’s a new category of crime where they go and they beat up police officers. You’ve seen that. They go and they stab people, hurt people, shoot people. It’s a whole new form. And they have gangs now that are making our games look like small potatoes.

Mark: Okay.

Donald Trump: Because Joe Biden allowed this to happen. We will call it from now on, Biden migrant crime.

Mark: Okay.

Donald Trump: It’s by Grant. I got a vigrant. Let’s call it Biden crime. Oh, that’s good. That’s smart.

Mark: Why did he go vigrant and then Biden crime? Why didn’t he go brime?

Jim: I think that his. When the first time he said vigrant was a mistake, he was trying to say Biden migrant, and then he thought, that’s even better than Biden m migrants trying.

Mark: So we’ll call it bigrint. And then failed to realize what the portmanteau word was. Yeah. the big pause. That’s smart. it’s just a whole new category of culture wars, isn’t it? Let’s just make up stuff. Yeah. It’s a new category of crime where they go and beat up police officers. That’s never happened before in the history of policing, where police, specifically migrants,

Jim: All over the place.

Mark: And then he says, you’ve seen that because that just plays into. Yeah. Your worst nightmares. Your prejudices are being played out. You’ve seen that. Yeah, of course you have.

Jim: Everyone knows. And of course, that means that number two is also real.

Donald Trump: No, our Democrat run cities are really going to hell. They’re going to hell. When you look at stores being looted by hundreds of people that run into the stores and run out with television sets, and our great policemen aren’t allowed to do anything they want to but they’re not allowed. They don’t want to lose their families. They don’t want to lose their sons and daughters in their houses and their pensions and all of that. And they could stop it very quickly. And, we just allow them to roam in and roam out. Everybody’s out there. You have cameras. These same cameras are out there shooting these people, walking out with television sets.

Mark: And they could stop it very quickly. They just allow them roam in and roam out. Everybody’s out there. You have cameras. These same cameras, the same ones that.

Jim: Are, filming him at, his rally.

Mark: not the same cameras that people are walking in and stealing. Okay.

Jim: Now he’s pointing at the press and suggesting they’re watching it happen. They don’t give a shit.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: So for about a year now, he’s been talking about these huge packs of criminals, right, running into department stores, killing people. Literally, he’s been saying since January of last year, large groups of criminals killing people, robbing everything, and then leaving. And the police can’t do anything about it. They’re not allowed to.

Mark: Right?

Jim: I haven’t got a m fucking clue where he’s getting that from. No, from context clues and other stuff he’s talked about, about wanting to indemnify the police. The stuff about them losing their families, their sons and daughters, their pensions, their houses and everything. He’s talking about people like Derek Chauvin who get prosecuted for killing, that. He wants to stop that happening. He’s fine with the killing. He doesn’t want them to be prosecuted and lose their stuff and their families and their freedom as a result of killing. So police should essentially be allowed to do whatever the fuck they want. They shouldn’t have ever any consequences for any of that. That’s his plan. And he’s characterizing that as if police try and arrest someone they’ve just seen kill someone and steal a television set, then they get arrested. They’ll get all their freedom taken away.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: It’s fucking insane.

Mark: Does anybody have a television set anymore? Because it conjures up big Baker light square things.

Jim: Well, one of our social contestants on Facebook, Richard Thunder Holkins, makes exactly that point. He says, I have to say, number, two is fake only because of the use of the words television set. It sounds stupid these days. It’s right out of bullseye in one. A lovely remote control color television set.

Mark: Yeah, well, it’s like politicians in the UK talking about widescreen television.

Jim: Yeah.

Mark: That’s a mark of how common people are, because they will buy a widescreen television rather than feed their children.

Jim: Yeah.

Mark: So we ought not to feed them in order to encourage them to not buy a widespread.

Jim: Yeah, they should be. They should be eating beans and watching a four x three cathode ray set.

Mark: Get those anymore. Widescreen tellies are all you can get. we all went over to widescreen. Oh, I don’t know, 2004, my first widescreen telly. But then it got to the point where you couldn’t have a bigger screen because the depth of the television cathode ray ended up being longer than the room.

Jim: Yeah, I almost killed myself trying to get a 42 inch cathode ray set home

Mark: Shelf. Exactly. Yeah. Had to live in the back of the box.

Jim: There was no other room. Also on Facebook, Molly Oliver.

Jim: correctly said three is fake because it’s too cogent.

Mark: yeah, see, I didn’t go along with that. I went with one is fake because it’s completely mad. Yeah.

Jim: Anders on, Patreon agrees. Three solely based on my disbelief that he would use Congo instead of been.

Mark: I don’t think he thinks Congo is in Africa. I think he thinks.

Jim: That’s a good point.

Mark: Congo is just east.

Jim: Could be, anyway, Mexico. Yeah. Scott agrees that number three is made up. says, I doubt he knows there’s a place called Congo.

Mark: Right.

Jim: number one sounds trumpish. Lots of mixed up words, jumbled syntax and utter absence of any semblance of a coherent thought process.

Mark: Like number three is.

Jim: Will says number one, it portrays him, ah, somewhat of a sense of self awareness. He doesn’t possess that particular human capability. And I don’t think that tiny handed Bulgarian is that witty.

Mark: Yes, well, that was my. And the fact that he’s listening to what he’s saying.

Jim: Yeah. Although we do hear that a lot, don’t we, when he says a thing, and then he’ll process the thing he just said and think, oh, yeah, no, that was a very smart thing I just heard myself say. Yeah, exactly.

Mark: But the fact that he pauses to.

Jim: Say, oh, that’s good.

Mark: But he’s taken time out to congratulate himself on stumbling into a portmanteau word.

Jim: So kaz tui on Patreon says, this is a new level of Trump. Hell, the fact he said two of these, and probably some of the third, is diabolical. have heard him say something about all three. So, number two, based on. I thought he had mentioned looters were stealing fridges, which again, he has, another point. He’s talked about people stealing fridges.

Mark: Widescreen fridges.

Jim: Yeah, Renee Z says, I will agree with Anders. Number three is fake. if Trump said Congo, he would have said the Congo, because that’s what we learned back when he was in. Although again, he’s been talking about Congo. invisible unicorn. I feel like I can hear his voice and cadence in my head when reading through one and two. So I’m going with number two. It’s fake, though. the Congo argument is apt. Criminal. Did I fall through a wormhole to another dimension? Millions of thinking people think this goon makes sense. How does any of this make sense? Let’s see. Where’s that blue pill?

Mark: You can hear the spiraling despair there, can’t you? Oh, no. Yeah. I’m so sorry. We unleash this on everybody.

Jim: And finally, one eyed Nick says, Trump can’t say systematically, don’t be daft. Three is fake.

Mark: you see, now you’ve all said it makes perfect sense. I fell for the. That one’s. Obviously, he’s not smart enough for that. Let’s go for that. Turns out he’s just in cognitive decline, which I’ve forgotten to factor in with vigrant.

Jim: That was quite recent. And I wonder if he’s going to start trotting that out now that he’s come up with it.

Mark: Now that he’s come up, I wonder.

Jim: If he’s going to start using vigrant crime. Yeah, obviously he’ll need to explain its origin every time.

Mark: Every time. Like all good Portman words. Damn it. So, yeah, that was very enjoyable, but damn. I could have got 70 then.

Jim: Yeah, sadly, still stuck on 69. Nice.

Mark: Goddamn.

Jim: So it’s time for the part of the show that this week, at least, is called $355,000,000 is not a logical fallacy, because this section seems to be becoming what has gone badly for Trump in court this week.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: Which I’m okay with. I am fine with that.

Mark: I’m quite liking it. It should sustain us for the next 91.

Jim: I think we’ll be good. Yeah. So the main thing we’re going to talk about is, the huge, although predicted by me and others, fine that he has been required to pay by judge Arthur Engron in the civil fraud case, where Donald Jr. And Eric and he and Alan Weisselberg have all been required to put up some money. his two sons have been fined around 4 million each. I think. Weisselberg has been fined a million and Trump has been fined 354.9 million.

Mark: Yeah, just to keep it under the.

Jim: 355, which is quite a lot of money.

Mark: Yes. Given that he says he’s worth a fortune, it’s actually quite a large chunk of that fortune.

Jim: It is.

Mark: That he’s going to have to find in order to pay it.

Jim: Yes.

Mark: How’s he going to do that?

Jim: I mean, that’s a great question. We questioned that with just the 83 million that he has to pay e, Jean Carroll.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: And the same things come into play, really, because in order to appeal this, he has quite a limited amount of time to pay either the full amount to the court or to pay a 10% bond to a bond company, which is prepared to put up $350,000,000.

Mark: But wouldn’t they take 10%?

Jim: Yeah, he’d pay 35 million to them and he wouldn’t get that back. And that’s their payment for kind of taking the risk on him, essentially.

Mark: Right. Yeah.

Jim: And again, I don’t think, a lot of bond companies, there’ll be a lot of takers. I don’t know how many have that kind of money. That’s a fuck ton of money.

Mark: Yeah. Because it was a question with the 83 that we were talking about.

Jim: So he’s already going to be limited to the ones that he can go to, and then those ones who presumably have done quite well for themselves by making good decisions, then would have to decide, yeah, he’s probably good for it when it’s Trump.

Mark: Exactly. And also that they would want to be the bond company that associates cells with Trump, and then people in the future would say, yeah. Did you think that you were going.

Jim: To get that back? He is going to appeal, but the question will be how he manages to swing that, because, he does.

Mark: He still has to pay, a, kind of good faith payment, even if he appeals.

Jim: Well, he has to pay that money, essentially. He has to either get the bond or pay the full amount for an appeal to go forward. So he can’t.

Mark: Okay. Yeah. Oh, wow. Yeah. So then he might get it all back. Yeah.

Jim: If he wins the appeal, then he would get it back. He won’t win the appeal, obviously.

Mark: No. So he can’t actually delay having to do the payment.

Jim: He has 30 days to do that. From the date of the ruling, does he have 354,000,000 cash, like liquid assets? Yeah, probably not.

Mark: See, if he’d left the EU, you could get that every week, give that to the NHS. That’s exactly the same thing, isn’t it? Yeah. Another bunch of liars talking about tons of money.

Jim: And the other aspect of this is that it’s not just the money. initially, the, ruling that the judge made before the case, even started, when he know he clearly committed crimes. We’re just figuring out how much he said he was going to take away their New York business certificate and they would have to dissolve the Trump organization. So he’s walked back, he said, we’re not going to do that, but he’s not allowed to do any business in New York for three years.

Mark: So why did he not go through with that?

Jim: Partly because that was the thing that was most likely to get overturned on appeal.

Mark: Okay.

Jim: That would be the kind of thing that an appeals court might say, well, taking away his, ability for life might be too much. So I think that by redressing that himself, rather than being overturned by a higher court, he’s showing that he has taken it into account and been more thoughtful about it. And therefore, that is likely to make the higher courts think this isn’t an unreasonable thing. the other thing is that with these kinds of fines, this is, ah, subject to interest as well. So unless he pays it immediately, interest accrues on a daily basis.

Mark: Oh my God.

Jim: So if he requires an appeal and loses the appeal, the amount of time that takes to play out is not something he probably wants to delay too much, because, there have been estimates interest that could add another 100 million to the amount of money he personally owes. But will he also, if he doesn’t have that kind of cash on hand, and he can’t get a bond company to take it up, will he be able to liquidate enough assets in time? Because, he also has restrictions on what he’s allowed to do through his businesses. He has an independent monitor, attached to the Trump organization, who is also, she’s allowed to hire someone to work for her. And the Trump organization has to pay them a salary. And they basically get to decide anything that comes in or goes out, any financial documents, any financial decisions, they say yes or no to.

Mark: He can’t just fold a thing and sell a building or close down a golf course, or they’ve got to open.

Jim: They have to say yes or no to it. So that’s going to make it harder for him to do anything that might be a little bit dodgy in order to get the money to appeal the dodgy stuff he’s done.

Mark: Yeah, because there are, ah, checks and balances in place to prevent him from doing that.

Jim: In monopoly, if you run out of money, you can just mortgage one of your properties, can’t you? Yeah. ah, and Mar a Lago is worth one and a half billion dollars, according to him. Yeah.

Mark: So surely just turn that over.

Jim: Surely he’d be able to get a $350,000,000 mortgage on Mar a Lago, but.

Mark: Then they want some sort of guarantee that he’d be able to pay it back.

Jim: Well, then, if you don’t pay your mortgage, they take your property, don’t they?

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: So that’s what the loan would be against. All he needs to do is convince all of those. Hang on a minute, isn’t that the thing he’s just been found civilly liable for? Yeah, he might have some. What do you need this money for? Well, yeah, I told banks my Mar a Lago was worth way more than it was, so that I could get.

Mark: A. So I’ve been found guilty of doing that. So I’ve got to pay off a fine as a result. So, given that this is worth $4 billion, could you just loan me 350? Yeah. Plus the added bonus of lots of classified.

Jim: Absolutely.

Mark: Documents in the bathrooms. They got to be worth.

Jim: They’ll be off on eBay by the end of the week. Yeah, exactly.

Mark: It’s cool, it’s secret. Yeah. It’s been in Mar a Lago’s bathroom. Yeah. But your own piece of Trump, of.

Jim: Course, that’s not the only thing that’s gone badly for Trump in court, these two weeks. We’ve also had, the DC appeals court ruling that he is not immune from all the stuff he claimed he was immune from, which is quite reasonable, because obviously he isn’t. And, they pointed out.

Mark: God.

Jim: They, pointed out that presidents do not have unbounded authorities commit crimes.

Mark: Love you. That’s excellent.

Jim: yeah, I feel like that shouldn’t need a court to say.

Mark: Or somebody’s just kind of pointing out this is kind of a conclusion. If things were to escalate, this would be where it would go. So if you think you’re. No, you can’t do that. Crying to get away with it. No, not having that.

Jim: They said it would be a striking paradox if the president, who alone is vested with the constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed with the sole officer capable of defying those laws with impunity.

Mark: Nice.

Jim: It was a really nice.

Mark: The Americans don’t do irony. That’s lovely. Yes.

Jim: And they also made it clear, this three judge panel on the DC appeals court, that if he were to appeal on bonk to the whole appeals court, they would also turn it down. He will not win an appeal. That doesn’t mean he can’t appeal. but he’s not. I may have overstated. What they specifically said is it won’t delay anything. Anything that would be continuing now in lieu of a supreme court appeal is still fully able to continue. And that’s been read to mean that won’t make it. You’re not going to win. You’re not going to win if you go on bonk. he is obviously going to appeal that to the supreme court. Yeah, I, think he already has, actually. And, so they haven’t yet said whether they will. it’s the. That requires four justices to agree to look at it. It would require five to rule that he is immune.

Mark: Immune from all of those things that prosecution pointed out. Yeah.

Jim: and it may be that there are enough judges to say, yeah, we’ll look at it, but not enough to rule in his favor. It may be that the ones who think they should look at it will see that they’re not going to win the immunity argument, because it’s fucking stupid argument. But arguably, it is a situation which hasn’t been established by the supreme Court in the past. Ah, I think they call it a matter of first impression, or at least it was when it was looked at by the appeals court.

Mark: And I wonder also whether they think they might think that it’s a time limited gamble because ultimately Trump will die. But if they put that in place, would that apply to all?

Jim: Would be. That would be a ruling that a president, is immune. If they decided, we’ll see what happens with that. They may decide that they’re going to grant Cert so that they can rubber stamp the lower court’s decision and it has more authority. and there’s no question about that. I don’t know what they’ll decide on that, but the DC appeals court decision goes to some length, to use the word officer a lot, when it talks about the president, which factors into the 14th amendment case, one of the questions under which is, is the president an officer of the United States? That’s something that Supreme Court heard oral arguments about a week and a half ago. That ruling probably won’t come down for a little while yet, but they do that live. You can hear the audio live.

Mark: Right.

Jim: And so people listened in and felt that they seemed to be leaning towards putting him back on the ballot in Colorado and Maine and arguing not necessarily that he didn’t commit, insurrection, but partly that maybe the president isn’t an officer of the court. Also maybe the 14th amendment, section three I think it is, isn’t self executing. So it only prevents someone from being on the ballot if Congress decides that.

Mark: Right.

Jim: I think when we originally talked about this, I said that might be the thing that they rely on, because it goes back to a very old case decided by Judge Salmon. The other aspect of it was what they seemed to be, ah, asking most about know, does it seem fair that one state can decide who gets to be president? And although that might not know in this case, Colorado or Maine, because Colorado was going to go for Biden anyway, this allows other states that might have an impact on the actual outcome of the election to prevent him from being on their ballots. So should that power be with the individual states, or should it be a federal decision to allow him on ballots or not? The other question that was being asked and talked about was, does the 14th amendment actually prevent him from being on the ballot, or does it just prevent him from taking office if he were to win?

Mark: Right.

Jim: There’s a theory that, if that’s the thing that they come down on, that he could be allowed to be on the ballot, he could win the election, and then the supreme court could go hobby. You can’t actually be president.

Mark: No.

Jim: I don’t think they’d step in.

Mark: At that point because that would be open to all sorts of appeals, wouldn’t.

Jim: It, on the part.

Mark: why did you let go of all of that stuff?

Jim: Because standing. You can stand like an under 13 five year old or a non citizen could stand for election. People probably wouldn’t vote for them because they would know that they wouldn’t be allowed to be president.

Mark: Like, Schwarzenegger could never be president. He’s right wing gun toting enough to.

Jim: Yeah, but he wasn’t born. He’s not a born citizen. Born in Austria. I think I could be wrong. yeah. also in this two week period since our last episode, there’s been shenanigans in the Fulton county case.

Mark: Oh, yeah.

Jim: With Fonny Willis and special prosecutor Nathan Wade having to answer questions about their personal relationship, which, according to them, started after he was hired to work on the case, according to one of Fonny Willis’s former co workers, who maybe has an axe to grind because she was arguably, fired from her office. It started before Wade, was fired. And so there’s question over whether that means that this is an inappropriate relationship or that there’s some kind of impropriety going on. Also, whether Fonny Willis has kind of financially benefited directly by hiring someone who might have been her boyfriend at the time, and then have been on trips with him and stuff like that. So obviously, they’re asking lots of personal questions about this couple’s relationship. They’re not actually a couple anymore. their relationship ended, according to them, kind of around June last year. I mean, it doesn’t go against all of the crimes that Trump committed.

Mark: No, it has nothing to do with any of that. No. And it doesn’t cast any doubt on their ability to try that.

Jim: Not really the law. No, it’s not great. It gives the other side something to argue about and something to claim is unfair or something like that. and I don’t know what’s going to happen with it. Judge McCaffey, who has been kind of presiding over the hearing about it, has said that there’s a potential argument that depending on the situation, she could be disqualified from prosecuting the case, like her office. That doesn’t mean the case wouldn’t be prosecuted, necessarily. It goes back to a, higher authority who then gets to assign a new prosecutor or prosecuting county, to prosecute. And obviously, they would have access to the work product that was done by Willis’s. So a lot of people have said this would mean that they’d be starting from scratch again. And it throws everything backwards. It doesn’t really. It means that it would take time for that other office to get up to speed on everything, but all of that material has been, developed, and there’s no, fruit of the poisonous tree arguments here that they’ve done anything that would take that evidence in any way.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: We’ve also just quickly got. March 25 will be now the date of his first criminal trial starting because Judge Marchen in New York has dismissed the kind of final attempts to either dismiss the case or delay it. And, originally, because the DC case was originally set for March 4, and people were saying, including Trump’s lawyers, that that doesn’t give them enough time to then be in the New York trial, which is the hush money case, the stormy Daniels hush money case for March 25.

Mark: Right.

Jim: Judge merchant, said, no, we’re sticking with 25th for now. Let’s see what happens. And during that period, Judge Chuckun in DC postponed her trial because of the unresolved immunity hearings that could affect her case. So because that’s been postponed, there’s now plenty of time for the new, York trial to happen.

Mark: Right.

Jim: that will happen now, March 25, and that will be his first criminal trial. And finally, in Florida, Judge Aileen Cannon, who has been quite pro Trump, in a lot of her rulings, has shot down his latest attempt at further delaying that and postponing pretrial deadlines, and kept those deadlines at, February 22. So all pretrial motions now have to be in by February 22, which was her original deadline. There was some, consideration that she would extend that she’d been asked to extend it by, Trump’s lawyers, but she said, no. What I’ll do is I’ll keep the deadline of the 22nd, but if there’s another 11th hour thing that happens after that, that you can prove it means it’s necessary to give me a new pretrial motion. After that, I’ll consider it.

Mark: Right.

Jim: But absent that, 22 February is your last day. So that suggests that she’s at least prepared to let the case move forward because she could have delayed it and, yeah, it would have been one of the less unreasonable things she’s done.

Mark: Right. So does that mean we can put out, the tour?

Jim: No, not yet, because now the, judge, Chuck, and trial in DC has been postponed and, hasn’t been given a new date, and we still don’t have a date for the Fulton county trial.

Mark: I think we should just fill in the blanks with question marks or TBA or something like that, because it’s a brilliant shirt.

Jim: It’s a great shirt.

Mark: Dan, being a completeist. And finally, some things we really don’t have time to talk about.

Jim: Special Counsel Robert Hur’s report on Biden’s handling of classified documents was released last week. The Executive Summary begins “We conclude that no criminal charges are warranted in this matter. We would reach the same conclusion even if Department of Justice policy did not foreclose criminal charges against a sitting president.” The report continues “Our investigation uncovered evidence that President Biden willfully retained and disclosed classified materials after his vice presidency when he was a private citizen” and then goes into detail about how there is insufficient evidence to prove he did it wilfully, citing multiple plausible innocent explanations they could not refute, and setting out the significant material differences between his actions and Trump’s, saying specifically “Unlike the evidence involving Mr. Biden, the allegations set forth in the indictment of Mr. Trump, if proven, would present serious aggravating facts”. Of course, that has not been the focus of reporting or of the GOPs reaction because Hur also decided to include his opinions on Biden’s mental faculties, calling him a “sympathetic, well meaning, elderly man with a poor memory” This is somewhat outside the scope of the Special Counsel’s job, which is why Robert Mueller’s report didn’t say “While this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate the weird, smelly, orange, narcissistic, pathological liar”. The media leapt on the shocking revelation that Biden sometimes forgets stuff with a renewed round of stories asking if Biden is too old to be President while conveniently ignoring the alternative is Trump, whose brain is like a steel trap which rusted shut twenty years ago and got repeatedly shat on by all the creatures of the forest. Republicans took an already partisan report, ignored its findings and mischaracterized it to claim it said Biden was either mentally unfit to stand trial or too stupid to commit a crime, ironically using the exact reason that Mueller declined to prosecute Don Jr. Fortunately, this doesn’t seem likely to make much of a difference with voters, because none of the 81 million people who voted for Biden in 2020 are shocked to discover that he’s old, and they’ve all heard of Trump. A Morning Consult poll taken after the report was released found 68% of voters think Biden is too old to be President. That’s the same number as previous polls.

Mark: When you’re feeling a bit low cos you didn’t get a message of love on Valentine’s Day from, say, the candidate that wanted to replace expelled George Santos but failed to get elected – Democrat Tom Suozzi defeated Republican Mazi Pilip in a Tuesday special election to fill the vacancy left by Santos in New York’s 3rd congressional district – perhaps you should start Feb 14th like Trump did by bemoaning that if only Pilip had given him more love in the form of an endorsement of him. In true valentine spirit thus called her a foolish woman telling her she knew nothing about modern politics shouting on Trump Social “MAGA, WHICH IS MOST OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY, STAYED HOME – AND IT ALWAYS WILL, UNLESS IT IS TREATED WITH THE RESPECT THAT IT DESERVES. I STAYED OUT OF THE RACE, ‘I WANT TO BE LOVED!’ GIVE US A REAL CANDIDATE IN THE DISTRICT FOR NOVEMBER. “I want to be loved!”? Oooh what a giveaway. He didn’t forget about Melania of course, emailing a heartfelt intimate love note to her titled SEND YOUR LOVE and after a few endearments someone wrote for him, he signed it informally and coquettishly “Donald J. Trump” – in case she didn’t know it was from him? She shoulda known cos at the bottom a link says Please leave some kind words for the First Lady this Valentine’s Day – which takes you to a fundraising page where you can donate to Trump’s campaign. Well when the First Lady doesn’t even appear in the Christmas Trump Family photo I guess you can grift her for all you’re worth hey Donny? Which is actually not so much these days!

Jim: One great example of actually playing politics is impeaching an official who hasn’t committed any high crimes or misdemeanors and who definitely won’t be convicted by the senate. Like, say, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, who House Republicans claim failed in his role of securing the Southern border. Their attempt to impeach him for this was pretty much simultaneous with their committed votes against funding border security measures in case it made Biden look good. They first tried to vote for impeachment on February 7th and thought that they were going to win by one vote until Democrat Congressman hero Al Green from Texas showed up in hospital scrubs in a wheelchair having just had abdominal surgery to cast the tying vote 215-215. A weird House rule means that any issues that result in a tie cannot then be brought up for another vote until the next session of Congress, which in this instance would be next January, so a Republican congressman changed their vote to no, because if they lose, they get another go. Which is fucked up. Anyway, they had another go last week and thanks to a Northeastern storm affecting some members’ travel, and the return of Steve Scalise from his cancer treatment, they won 214-213. A completely pointless victory, because they don’t have the votes in the Senate to convict and it’s not even clear that Senate Republicans are bothered enough to hold a hearing, so this may be dealt with by a simple vote to dismiss, which only needs a simple majority. I’m kind of hoping the hearing does go ahead, because House Speaker Mike Johnson named Marjorie Taylor Greene and Clay Higgins as Impeachment Managers, which means they would essentially be prosecuting the case against Mayorkas, and they’d be up against non-crazy people with law degrees so I’d be making popcorn. There was the thing about having a fool for a client. Someone who represents himself has a fool for a client. Well, I mean, it can’t be worse than being represented by Margie Taylor fucking Green.

Mark: In a mad ignorance and spite-fueled pronouncement that will not have endeared him to anyone – except for perhaps the hoodlums in the Kremlin, who, prospect as much as you like DJT, are never gonna let you join the dictators club you’re so desperate to be part of – Trump invited Russia to ‘do whatever the hell they want’ to any NATO country that doesn’t pay enough. In a considered evaluation of the underlying tenet of the NATO agreement that each nation undertakes to protect every other member nation, he’s said yeah fuck it unless you pay your way we’re gonna fling you to the wolves, no better yet, bad guys just come get them, we ain’t gonna do nothin’ cos they’re cheapskates who’ve leeched off us all this time. Of course, as Biden and many other NATO allies pointed out, this just gives carte blanche to Putin-style psychos to carry on doing more Ukraine-style things across the globe with impunity. Trump of course has completely misunderstood a) how NATO is funded, NATO has a target that each member country spends a minimum of 2% of gross domestic product on defence, and most countries are not meeting that target. But the figure is a guideline and not a binding contract, nor does it create “bills”; member countries haven’t been failing to pay their share of NATO’s common budget to run the organisation. and b) that his words are very powerful. Despite him saying one endorsement from him could’ve won Mazi Pilip that election if only she’d been deferential enough, he doesn’t think his words have consequences beyond Putin now probably considering him best buds. There used to be a slogan during the 90s promoting information about HIV/AIDS “Don’t die of Ignorance” let’s hope we don’t at the hands of Trump’s, and let’s hope Trump does!!

Jim: We’ve talked before about James Comer’s obsessive campaign against Joe and Hunter Biden, and his uncanny ability to step on rakes wherever he goes in the search for evidence of the Biden Crime Family. One of the keystones of their evidence that sleepy old cognitively impaired Joe is also a corrupt criminal mastermind raking in cash from all four corners of the globe in a web of villainy was the 2020 claim by an unnamed FBI source that Burisma executives told him they had paid Joe and Hunter Biden $5 million each for protection, and that they felt coerced into the payment. Typically, when a single individual makes a potentially libellous claim about someone else, rather than announce it publicly or launch an impeachment investigation, the pragmatic thing to do would be to seek some kind of corroboration, ideally from multiple sources. So of course what James Comer did was the exact opposite of that and immediately started telling everyone who would listen about the smoking gun he had uncovered and how it definitively proved Biden was the Godfather. That unnamed FBI source now has a name – Alexander Smirnov – which we know because he has just been indicted by a Los Angeles Grand Jury for lying to the FBI. The lie in question, according to the charging documents, occurred in 2020 and concerned “a prominent political figure and his son”. Despite this, Comer’s impeachment investigation will continue, because there are always more rakes to step on.

Mark: On Feb. 6, a group of families met to lobby senators on issues affecting the local transgender community in Georgia. 65-year old Republican Sen. Carden Summers, the primary sponsor of the state’s bathroom ban bill walked by a mother and her children whilst they waited to meet with Democratic Sen. Kim Jackson a staunch supporter of LGBTQ+ rights. Carden spoke with Lena Kotler the mother and her 8-year old Aleix about that they were there to “talk to legislators about keeping her kids safe.” and Carden knelt down in front of Aleix and said, according to Kotler, “Well you know, we’re working on that and I’m going to protect kids like you.” Kotler then replied, “Yeah – Aleix is trans, and she wants to be safe at school, she wants to go to the bathroom and be safe.” That is when, according to multiple witnesses, Sen. Summers stood up and fumbled his words, repeating, “I mean, yeah, I’m going to make sure she’s safe by going to the right bathroom,” continuing to use the correct pronouns for Aleix. I mention Carden’s age cos like he’s a grown-up and every thing – well adult, cos when asked if he would make her go to a boy’s bathroom, he then allegedly backed away, saying, “You’re attacking me,” turned around, and walked off quickly. This exactly encapsulates the issue of why anti-trans bills that ban transgender people from public spaces that match their gender identity have proven ineffectual in the past. In numerous hearings over bathroom bans, transgender people often point out that cisgender individuals cannot always tell who is and is not trans. If the actual guy who wrote the actual bill can’t actually tell who’s supposed to use what bathroom then, how, why you know like just WTF! And speaking of WTF, WTF does it matter?! – I bet Carden uses the same bathroom his wife and daughter does inside his house – “ooohhh go away – my own family won’t stop attacking me!!”

Jim: When Republicans claim that fetuses are children, it may seem like just an excuse to control women’s bodies, albeit one debunked by simply pointing out that eggs aren’t chickens, but they are determined to double down any chance they get. In Alabama, a patient in a Mobile fertility clinic somehow accessed the area where frozen embryos are stored and accidentally destroyed three specimens. The all Republican Alabama Supreme Court just ruled that the prospective parents can sue the clinic for wrongful death because frozen embryos are children. Weird methodology, but I can’t say I hate the fact that the couples might get some compensation for the clinic’s shoddy security. However, in Missouri, the Department of Transport is taking the argument even further in order to avoid a wrongful death suit of their own. In November of 2021, highway workers James Brooks and Kaitlyn Anderson were struck by a vehicle on Interstate 270 and killed. Kaitlyn was 6 months pregnant with a son, who she planned to call Jaxx. The Department of Transport were supposed to have a protective truck in place, but did not, so Kaitlyn’s family sued for wrongful death. However, as an employee of the state, Kaitlyn’s case would fall under Workers’ compensation laws rather than wrongful death. Worker’s comp wouldn’t pay because it doesn’t cover unmarried people without dependents. So the family tried to sue the DOT for wrongful death of her unborn baby Jaxx. Missouri’s state legislature being very red, the DOT didn’t make the argument that Jaxx wasn’t a person yet, they went another, very different way. They claimed he was also a state employee. A Missouri Supreme Court trial is set for March.

Mark: Okay, no one’s kind of questioning why are they employing somebody who is less than not even born?

Jim: Surely child Labour laws come into play.

Mark: Yeah, okay.

Jim: Yeah. One republican legislator in Missouri pointed out that if this is the case, then surely all pregnant state workers should apply for two salaries.

Mark:So Feb didn’t start so well for Keir Starmer and the Labour party – heading into 3 by-elections with the possibility of demolishing some more of the blue wall in the North of England in Rochdale, Kingswood and Wellingborough by overturning Tory majorities, then Labour’s Rochdale candidate Azhar Ali embraced conspiracy theories that Israel allowed the 7 October attacks to happen and made accusations about Jewish influence in the media – a problem for Starmer who’d so proudly expelled the likes of Corbyn over charges of anti-semitism and cos Starmer had accepted Ali’s apology rather than fling him out of the party and have to get another candidate. After several ructions from within the party he was expelled but too late for Labour to stand another candidate they now have the nightmare possibility of Ali winning as an independent! However Feb didn’t continue well for Sunak who lost both by-elections in Kingswood and Wellingborough – Wellingborough by a swing to Labour greater than any in any election since the 1940’s, trying to remain cheery and blaming it on “no incumbent government does well in midterm elections” even though it’s an election year and not the middle by at least 2 leaders, Sunak talked about having a plan – again! Though the plan doesn’t seem to include winning elections. Meanwhile in the House of Lords despite Rishi seemingly having no idea what the will of the people is he has warned the House of Lords not to defy that will and pass the Rwanda bill as they scrutinise/tear it to pieces. They are being asked to say that Rwanda is safe now but the govt representative Lord Stewart of Dirleton was asked “If the Rwandan Government are ‘working towards’ putting safeguards in place, that means they are not currently in place. Is that correct?” to which he replied, “It must do”. So… not safe now. When your own team kinda start admitting defeat it’s time to jack it in… hmmm are you beginning to get the message Rishi? Any message? Hello Rishi, can you hear us? Time to go son!

Jim: So, that’s all the bad arguments and faulty reasoning we have time for this week. You’ll find the show notes at https://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’ve 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/ftrump, just like our newest Patron, Stille Post, our Straw Man level Patrons, Will M, Scott, Aussie En Banc, Laura Tomsick, Renee Z, Schmootz, Mark Rikey and Amber R. Buchanan (who told us when we met her at QED we can just call her Amber, though another listener recognised her at QED this year cos we keep using her full name all the time!); and our True Scotsman level Patrons, Melissa Sytek, SteveN Bickel, Janet Yuetter, Andrew Hauck, and our top Patron… Kaz Toohey! It’s really very much appreciated. Thank you.

Jim: You can connect with those awesome people, as well as us and other listeners in the facebook group at http://facebook.com/groups/fallacioustrumpMark: All music is by The Outbursts and was used with permission. So until next time on Fallacious Trump we’ll leave the last word … to the Donald!

Donald Trump: That’s right. Go home to mommy. Goodbye. Bye.