Affirming the Consequent – FT#145

18 Mar Affirming the Consequent – FT#145

Show Notes

Affirming the Consequent is a formal logical fallacy taking the form:

If P then Q
Q
Therefore, P

eg: If I am a bird, I have two legs.
I have two legs.
Therefore I am a bird.

Trump

We started out by discussing this clip of Trump explaining why high COVID numbers are a good thing, actually:

And then we looked at this clip of Trump opining that fake news is perfect for CNN:

Finally, we talked about this clip answering whether being impeached casts a cloud over his presidency:

Mark’s British Politics Corner

Mark talked about Matt Hancock arguably scapegoating Public Health England:

and Munira Wilson MP arguing that he was indeed scapegoating them:

He followed that up by talking about Lord Marland’s defense of Tory Donor Frank Hester’s racist remarks:

Fallacy in the Wild

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

Then we discussed this clip from Cheers:

And we finished up with this clip from Monty Python and the Holy Grail:

 

Fake News

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

1. You know the polls are all rigged. Of course, lately they haven’t been rigged because I’m winning by so much I don’t want to say it. Disregard that statement. I love the polls very much. We’re beating him by so much but with the suburban – they always say suburban housewives, they want something that’s very important. Security. They don’t want illegal immigrants coming into our country. They don’t want illegal immigrants knocking on their front door and saying “I’m going to use your kitchen, and I’m going to use your bedroom, and there’s not a damn thing…” and that’s when – that’s the nice ones.
2. When I came in, as soon as I came in I did Alaska. Drill baby drill. The Republican party had been trying to make it happen since Ronald Reagan, but they couldn’t do it. And all of a sudden we had more oil than we knew what to do with. We went from nothing to the top-tippy-top oil producers in the world, and we would have been double, triple Saudi Arabia, believe me. But Joe Biden and the radical leftists stopped it all just when oil hit the highest price anyone’s ever seen. How stupid do you have to be? We have the stupidest leaders. Who are these people? Idiots.
3. They are weaponizing law enforcement for high level election interference against Joe Biden’s top and only political appointment – a guy named me. It’s a guy named me. Joe Biden and the fascists – they’re fascists, that control him are the real threat to democracy. Remember that. I’m not the threat to democracy, I’m stopping the threat to democracy. They’re the threat to democracy. As an example – you read about this. Can you believe this? Sometimes it’s not good to be rich. I just posted a $91 million Bond 91 million on a fake story – totally made up story. Think of it. 91 million.

 

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

 

The State of the Union is not a logical fallacy

We talked about Biden’s SOTU address, and Katie Britt’s unhinged response.

 

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

• By the time you hear this, Judge Scott McAfee will probably have ruled on whether DA Fani Willis is disqualified from Trump’s Georgia election interference case, but we’re recording on Thursday night and there’s no news yet. However, McAfee has made a pretty consequential ruling this week, dismissing six of the charges in the case. The dismissed charges relate to the pressure campaign on Georgia officials including Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to pretend Trump won in Georgia. Three of the charges are Trump’s, so he’s now only facing 88 felony charges, which is hardly any – barely an inconvenience. The others belong to Rudy Giuliani, Mark Meadows and three Trump lawyers. McAfee’s ruling says  “As written, these six counts contain all the essential elements of the crimes but fail to allege sufficient detail regarding the nature of their commission” and he’s specifically said he is not dismissing the possibility the underlying conduct was criminal, and instructed prosecutors that they are free to have another go at bringing the charges again and giving more detail this time. The RICO charges and the ones for filing false documents still stand, and while Trumpworld is no doubt seeing this as a win just short of total exoneration, I’m thinking it might be an indication that McAfee is not going to disqualify Fani Willis, because if he was, there’s really no need to rush this ruling out now, as the case would be on hold for some time and he could do shit like this at his leisure. Of course, because you live in the future, you already know whether I’m right or wrong.
• We always love a good reductio ad hitlerum at Fallacious Towers, but not as much it seems as die Fanta-Bedrohung Öberdundiejellherr Trump loves Hitler himself. Reporter Jim Sciutto’s new book The Return of Great Powers interviews several of Trump’s former advisers. All of them stressed that Trump regularly lavished praise on authoritarian leaders around the world, calling Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán “fantastic,” Chinese President Xi Jinping “brilliant,” and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un an “OK guy.” And according to former Trump White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, Trump said “Well but Hitler did some good things”. Up there with “ Nice smart uniforms” Trump’s “Well, [Hitler] rebuilt the economy.’ drove Kelly to remind him that “you can never say anything good about that guy, Nothing,” “He even makes Mussolini look great!” According to Kelly, Trump sees himself as a tough guy, thinking if he brought in old generals to his cabinet they would display unerring loyalty like he thought Hitlers generals did, til Kelly pointed out that they plotted against Hitler and attempted several assassinations; something Trump didn’t know cos I suspect it didn’t fit with his image of himself as infallible and undefeatable. On becoming president it appears Trump was a bit disappointed that he couldn’t just move money around where he liked and deploy troops at will. He’s planning not to be disappointed next time in office as The New Republic’s Matt Ford summarised, “Trumpworld is scheming to install ideological loyalists throughout the federal government, purge the civil service of any dissenters, centralise all power in the executive branch, and unleash the Justice Department on Trump’s perceived political enemies with sham prosecutions.” Still could be worse: he could be quoting Hitler on the campaign trail and inviting Orbán to Mar-a-Lago and saying “There’s nobody that’s better, smarter, or a better leader than Viktor Orbán,” “He’s the boss, and he’s a great leader, fantastic leader. In Europe and around the world, they respect him.” Ferchrissakes can we not just dress Trump up with a whole bunch of GI Joe dolls and tell little insecure Donnie that he’s a giant and these little fellas need his help to escape from the real world back to Barbieland for the next 4 years or something? 
• As if there were any doubt, Trump completed his takeover of the Republican Party by installing daughter-in-law Lara as co-chair of the RNC alongside Trump’s handpicked actual politician Michael Whatley. Lara has said she thinks Republican voters would be interested in seeing the RNC pay Trump’s ever expanding legal bills, and it wouldn’t be the first time she exploited her position to help Donald financially, given that the dog-rescue charity she chairs funnelled $2 million dollars to Trump properties over the course of seven years. The RNC raises funds to help Republican candidates but I’ve got a feeling most of that money is going to go to one specific candidate from now on, and those down-ballot Republicans are going to be shit out of luck going into November 2024. And when I say I’ve got a feeling, I mean Lara pledged on Newsmax to spend every single penny of the RNC’s funds on electing Donald Trump. The RNC has already started cost cutting to free up more money for Daddy’s lawyers, firing more than 60 staffers within the first three days and ending a minority outreach program. In other news, the RNC had a minority outreach program! But hey, what harm could that do? If there’s one group GOP candidates don’t need any help reaching out to, it’s minorities. But they’re not just getting rid of useless programs and everyone who knows what they’re doing, they’re also making some pretty strategic hiring decisions. First up is election denier, OAN reporter and former Trump attorney happy to perjure herself for money, Christina Bobb who, in a move seemingly calculated to break every irony meter in America, is the RNC’s new Senior Counsel for Election Integrity.
• Just when Trump perhaps thought he might be able to survive another week on say the $382,000 loose change down the back of a sofa, before he’d have to find yet more money to pay yet more legal costs, his attempt to sue Orbis the company was founded by Christopher Steele late of MI6 which put together the so-called Steele Dossier that notoriously listed scandalous claims that Trump had taken part in “sex parties” in St. Petersburg and consorted with sex workers in Moscow, was thrown back in his face – like a man pissing in the wind. British Judge Karen Steyn, sided with Orbis in her ruling throwing Trump’s case out saying it was “bound to fail.” Orbis had argued it should be thrown out because the report was never meant to be made public and was published by BuzzFeed without the permission of Steele or Orbis. It also said the claim was filed too late. Halving the legal bills Orbis said it incurred, she last week still ordered Trump to pay legal fees of £300,000 or $382,000! Being so poor that you’ve not got a pot to piss in, comes from the era when people would sell their urine to the leather trade as it was used in the tanning process. If you didn’t even have a pot to piss in you couldn’t even make money doing that. Showers of jokes about Trump and tanning, golden toilets, Russian sex workers and piss are just waiting to be lapped up there folks! 
• You hear a lot of shit about three being the magic number, but let’s face it, five is way better. All the best things come in fives – Jacksons, Nights at Freddy’s, Mambos, Famous child detectives and Spice Girls. And of course, unnamed Trump employees in the Mar-a-Lago documents case indictment. Some of those cryptically enumerated workers are still, much like Patrick McGoohan, known only by their number. But this week Trump Employee Number 5 sat down for an interview with CNN’s Kaitlin Collins  and we learned his true identity – Seasonal Valet in charge of the Mar-a-Lago car service, Brian Butler. Brian says he’s come forward now because it’s looking like Judge Cannon might reveal all the names of witnesses against Trump and he’d rather be in control of telling his story than be hounded by everyone when a federal judge doxxes him out of the blue. Butler worked for Trump for over 20 years, so it’s hard to feel too kindly towards him, but he’s been cooperating with prosecutors for the past year, and one of the things he’s told them, which we didn’t find out until now, was that while FBI agents met with Trump’s lawyer Evan Corcoran to receive what he thought were all the classified documents in Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s body man Walt Nauta was driving 10 to 15 boxes of documents away from Palm Beach to be loaded onto Trump’s plane, bound for his Bedminster golf course. Sure, we already knew that Trump hid 25 boxes from Corcoran and told Christina Bobb to sign a sworn statement that they’d handed everything over, but this seems even worse somehow. Once the shit hit the fan Trump offered repeatedly to pay for a lawyer for Butler, but he wisely decided to choose his own lawyer, which is why he’ll be testifying against Trump if the trial ever gets going rather than joining him as a co-defendant. 
• Congressional research shows that minority business owners face systemic barriers, including being denied loans at a rate three times higher than nonminority firms, often receiving smaller loans and being charged higher interest rates. The kind of situation explored in Oscar Nominated short The Barber of Little Rock. A good thing then that the Minority Business Development Agency was established in 1969, somewhat surprisingly perhaps during the Nixon administration, to address discrimination in the business world. The Biden administration widened its scope and reach through the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act in 2021, making it a permanent agency and increasing its funding to $550 million over five years. The agency, which helps minority-owned businesses obtain financing and government contracts, now operates in 33 states and Puerto Rico. According to its yearly reports, the agency helped businesses raise more than $1.2 billion in capital in fiscal year 2022, including more than $50 million for Black-owned enterprises, and more than $395 million for Hispanic-owned businesses. A good thing all round then you’d think, but hell what would attempts to level the playing field in say, Texas, be without privileged white folks claiming the program discriminated against them. Judge Mark T. Pittman of the U.S. District Court of the Northern District of Texas, who was appointed by Trump, ruled that the Minority Business Development Agency’s eligibility parameters violate the Fifth Amendment’s equal protection guarantees because they presume that racial minorities are inherently disadvantaged. Which sounds a bit like Trump railing against his fraud costs ruling on the basis that “they’d already decided it was fraud”. Some things are held to be self-evidently true! Pittman’s ruling said that while the agency’s work may be intended to “alleviate opportunity gaps” faced by minority-owned businesses, “two wrongs don’t make a right. And the MBDA’s racial presumption is a wrong.” With white-extinction conspiracists making such judgements you’d think it’s a slippery slope, but Alphonso David, president & CEO of The Global Black Economic Forum, who is helping to represent the Fearless Fund, an Atlanta-based organisation that provides early-stage funding to businesses owned by women of colour, currently being similarly targeted, said the Texas ruling is not necessarily predictive of how those other cases will play out. He pointed to another ruling on Wednesday in which a conservative group lost its attempt to reinstate a lawsuit against pharmaceutical giant Pfizer over a fellowship program for Black, Latino and Native American professionals, and other Diversity Equality and Inclusion advocates celebrated a separate win on Tuesday when a Florida law that limits discussions on race and diversity in the workplace was ruled to be unconstitutional by a federal appeals court. What with institutional racism still visibly rampant in Texas and the British Parliament, it’s good to see humans finally making some progress in the 21st Century! Oh wait, no, that should be it would be good to see humans actually making a lot more progress – it’s the 21st century FFS!  
• Colorado GOP Congressman Ken Buck has had enough of his Republican colleagues trying to impeach anything blue that moves, and has announced he’ll be leaving Congress before the end of the month rather than wait until his term is up in November.  This is fun for several reasons. First, Ken’s an anti-abortion, anti-gun-control, anti-lockdown, climate change denier, so fuck him. Even better, this reduces the GOP’s majority in the House from three to two. But best of all, there’s a chance it could spell the end of Lauren Boebert’s political career. Having won her election in 2022 by only 546 votes, Lauren announced she’d be switching districts to run for Ken Buck’s vacant seat in Colorado 4th when he retired in November, which is a much safer seat. However, his decision to leave this month will trigger a special election, and whoever wins that will probably be in a better position to stay in the seat in November to serve a full two year term. Bobo could run in the special election, but to do so she’d have to resign from her 3rd district seat with no guarantee she’d win the special election, and her resignation would trigger another special election for her vacated seat, which could well flip to the Democrats, reducing the Republican majority on a more permanent basis. Consequently, Lobobes announced on Wednesday that she will not be running in the special election but will focus on the November race she is now much less likely to win. Well, if she loses, she’ll have much more spare time on her hands to indulge in her love of the theatre. I hear Beetlejuice is good!
• This week in British politics – former deputy chair of the Tory party 30p Lee Anderson who once said a vote for the Reform party is a vote for Labour, joined George Galloway on the backbenches as he defected to the Reform party. Not so much looking like the threat that you’d rather not have outside the tent pissing in, but more like grumpy potatoes who’ve pissed themselves, he and George are the faces of the bright new dawn of a political revolution congealing in the deep fat fryer of a disused chip shop. Michael Gove introduced a new definition of extremists and used parliamentary privilege, (which is basically white upper-class privilege, insofar as you can say nasty things about non-white underprivileged people and get away with it), to list organisations that will no longer be able to receive government funding. Of course this includes many organisations that Suella Braverman called extremist i.e. peaceful protestors using language criticising right-wing government policy when it comes to not calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, and oddly does not include Tory party funders who employ extremely violent misogynist and racist language when criticising a left-wing policy-maker representing the views of her Hackney constituents. Hopefully the government itself will no longer be able to receive such funding, and will have a moral epiphany that will lead them to give it all back, distance themselves from racism and privilege and graciously step down and out of the way of a more equitable society. Yeah right – as Lee Anderson pointed out about 2 years ago, the only things the Tories have left in their non-governing ungovernable tank are the class, culture and immigration wars. Perhaps he’s joined Reform for a bit of a rest!

 

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:

Affirming the Consequent- FT#145 Transcript

Jim: Hello. And welcome to fallacious Trump, the podcast where we use the insane ramblings of the Fanta menace 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 affirming the consequent, also known as the converse fallacy. Fanta menace is excellent, isn’t it? There’s stuff that you’re bringing to it because you’ve got to know that phantom, is orange.

Jim: Uh-huh.

Mark: And the Fanta menace, that’s just excellent.

Jim: It is a good one.

Mark: Good. Yeah.

Jim: So, yeah. Affirming the consequence. This is related to the one we did last time, denying the antecedent. It’s another formal fallacy. And as you may remember, if you listen to the last episode, denying the antecedent is if p, then q, not p, therefore not q. This one is if p, simpler than Q. Q, therefore p. The example that I used last time was, if I’m a bird, I have two legs. I’m not a bird, therefore I don’t have two legs. So in the same vein, this one would be, if I’m a bird, I have two legs. I have two legs, therefore I’m a bird, which you can hopefully see is equally fallacious, because I am not, in fact, a bird.

Mark: Right. Yeah.

Jim: There are other options.

Mark: Yes. You are, in fact, a kangaroo.

Jim: Absolutely. Yeah. So we have some Trump examples, and the first one is from the coronavirus days when it was really bad and they were doing lots of testing and finding lots of cases.

Donald Trump: So when we have a lot of cases, I don’t look at that as a bad thing. I look at that as, in a certain respect, as being a good thing, because it means our testing is much better.

Jim: He’s saying that the fact that they’re finding a lot of cases means that their testing is good. Because if your testing is good, you will find a lot of cases.

Mark: You will find more cases. Yeah.

Jim: And they found a lot of cases in the cases.

Mark: So the testing is good.

Jim: That means their testing is good. Yeah.

Mark: I’ve got a feeling the british government made the same argument as well. Uh-huh. That it’s not that the other things that we’re doing are, ah, so crap. Like eat out to help out, for instance. So crap that it’s increasing the numbers of, cases. What it is, is the testing is improving, so therefore we’re able to catch more cases. So, actually, using this fallacy allows you to ignore all the other reasons and just say, oh, okay, so the reason we’ve got more cases of COVID is because our testing has improved, not because we’re shit at dealing with it.

Jim: Yeah, because, it depends how you frame it, really, isn’t it? It’s looking at it from one perspective and ignoring the perhaps less convenient options. So our second example is around the same time, and Kaitlan Collins asked Trump.

Kaitlan Collins: This yesterday at the republican lunch, that you were complaining about the CDC and the, delayed rollout of testing.

Mark: Do you think that I don’t know.

Donald Trump: Who gave you that? It’s fake news.

Kaitlan Collins: Do you think Robert Redfield is doing a good job leading the CDC?

Donald Trump: I do. it’s fake news, Kaitlan Fake news, therefore you can report you didn’t come perfect for CNN.

Jim: So CNN reports fake news. This is fake news, therefore it’s perfect for CNN.

Mark: Yeah. And also, it’s a circular proof of your own opinion. That’s it. You dust off your hands and say, well, that’s it. Job done. Yeah.

Jim: You’re reinforcing it by doing it in both directions.

Mark: Yes.

Jim: Saying, look at how strong this connection is between these two things.

Mark: Works both ways. Both ways. It’s so infallible. Yeah, it works both ways. And it also means you haven’t got to address the question at all, which he’s very good at. He spent four years not addressing any questions. God damn.

Jim: So our, final example in this section is when he was asked if being impeached cast a cloud over his attempts to deal with other countries and negotiate deals.

Donald Trump: I think it’s a very bad thing for our country. Does it cast a cloud? Well, if it does, then the Democrats have done a very great disservice to the country, which they have.

Jim: So, yeah, if it casts a cloud, Democrats have done a great disservice to America, and they have done that. They have done a great disservice to cloud. There’s a cloud over.

Mark: They’ve done a great service. They’ve done a great service. So they must have cast a cloud. And if they cast a cloud, then they’ve done a great disservice. Yeah, that’s the reason. Proof, if proof was needed. But it’s so obviously when he uses it, hopefully, in the ones that I’ve got to show you, I think it’s obvious as well. Whereas the other one was foxing us in our attempts to decipher, if not q, then not p. Yeah.

Jim: The other one’s trickier because it’s closer, I think, to, denying the consequent, which is valid logic.

Mark: Yes.

Jim: In the same kind of way, if you affirm the antecedent here, instead of affirming the consequent, then that’s valid logic as well. So if you said, if I’m a bird, I have two legs, I am a bird, therefore I have two legs, that’s valid logic.

Mark: It also contains an if and only if kind of things, isn’t it?

Jim: That one doesn’t. That one doesn’t need to, because it’s saying, if p is true.

Mark: Right.

Jim: Then we know something about Q, then we have information P is true. Therefore we can use that information we know.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: Whereas this version is going, if p is true, we know something about Q, q is true. And then you’re assuming that tells you something about P, but it doesn’t, because the relationship doesn’t work in that direction.

Mark: Yeah, I was trying to explain it. So what fallacy. Look at it this week. Well, it’s this one, which is like that idea of going on a cruise. You could say, okay, if it’s Tuesday, this must be Belgium. Absolutely.

Jim: yeah.

Mark: And then you’d say, well, we’re in Belgium, so it must be Tuesday. Ah. And that’s only true if you’re on a cruise.

Jim: Well, it’s also only true if you’re only spending one day there. If you’re spending all of Tuesday in Belgium, but also all of Wednesday.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: Then if it’s Tuesday, it must be Belgium. But if it’s Belgium, it doesn’t necessarily have to be Tuesday.

Mark: And the reaction I got was it. Well, that’s just said, yes. It’s also logically fallacious, because it doesn’t follow if P, then Q. Q, therefore P. No. You get thrown out of logic class.

Jim: Yeah. There’s an accusation by people who don’t really understand the scientific method that science relies on this fallacy, basically.

Mark: okay. Right.

Jim: They say a scientist testing gravity, for example, would say, if gravity is real, then every time I drop something, it will fall to the ground. Every time I let go of a thing, it will fall to the ground. And every time I let go of a thing, it does fall to the ground. Therefore, gravity is real. Right? That’s what they.

Mark: Okay. That’s this fallacy. Yeah.

Jim: But the scientific method is to try and disprove the thing you’re saying. So your hypothesis may be that gravity is real if everything always falls to the ground. But then you try and make stuff not fall to the ground. You don’t just do it and go, well, yeah, that proves it. You try and break the system to disprove the thing that you think is probably true. And when you’ve done everything you can to try and disprove it, and you haven’t been able to disprove it, that makes it more likely to be true.

Mark: Yeah. I can remember doing an experiment and being utterly astounded by it with gravity. Probably at school, I had two sort of rubber balls that were the same size and weight. And if you hold them up at, chest height, and you drop one, but fling the other one out to the side.

Jim: Right.

Mark: And they will both hit the ground at the same time.

Jim: Yeah.

Mark: Of course, it describes a parabolic arc. We were just astonished by it, not least because we realized that we must have held the thought that up until that moment that it might not be true. Flung it out to one side. Well, where would he go? What would he do? Could you throw it so hard you put it into orbit or what?

Jim: I mean, even if you did throw it so hard, you put it into orbit, it’s still the same thing happening. It’s still falling at the same rate.

Mark: Yeah. And then when they did it on the moon, I don’t know which Apollo mission that was.

Jim: But they took a hammer, hammer. And the feather.

Mark: And a feather. And because there’s no air on the moon, to all intents and purposes, there’s just gravity. They dropped the pair of them, and they both hit the ground at the same time. Or hit the moon, hit the lunar surface at the same time. And that we’re just watching that. So that theory was posited before it was possible to find a vacuum big enough to drop a feather and a hammer in it.

Jim: Yeah. It was Galileo, wasn’t it? Legend has it that he took two things of differing sizes and weights to the top of the lean Tara pizza.

Mark: And then dropped them out. Yeah.

Jim: So it wouldn’t necessarily have been about air resistance with the feather. But still, two things of radically different sizes and weights would still work. You don’t need a vacuum, to test that one.

Mark: Yeah. And now is the time, I think, for Mark’s british politics corner. So, whilst we’re talking about COVID back in August 2020. So this is only five months after, the government decided that COVID was a thing. The then health minister, Matt Hancock, abolished Public Health England, which was the, organization designed to look after the public health.

Jim: That sounds like a brilliant idea.

Mark: Yeah. And created the National Institute for Health Protection. And he said this,

Matt Hancock: we need to bring together the science and the scale into one coherent whole. So today I’m announcing that we’re forming a new organization, the National Institute for Health Protection. To my brilliant colleagues at PHE, I want to thank you, each and every one of you, for your service that you have provided and will continue to provide.

Mark: So, this was seen as scapegoating the, public health in England for the shortcomings of the government’s response to the pandemic, much of which has emerged in the recent COVID inquiry. Munira Wilson, the Liberal Democrat member of parliament for Twickenham, basically summed that up.

Munira Wilson: I think people at home who are struggling to deal with the impact of coronavirus on their day to day lives will be left wondering why on earth the government is seeking to make a bureaucratic reorganization, around the functions of government that are there to protect our public health and help us get through this cris, when we are still in the middle of a pandemic. ah, it’s quite clear to me that ministers are wishing to deflect responsibility from some of the terrible decisions that have been taken, whether that’s been around, provision of protective equipment, test and trace and the tracing app being botched, and a whole series of other, lumbers through this crisis and then trying to scapegoat phe as a result.

Mark: I think the fallacy is inherent in Munira’s statement. If there was scapegoating, Public Health England would have been abolished. Public Health England was abolished. So it must have been scapegoating. It serves their purpose, because basically the Lib Dems and everybody else other than the Tories were all having to go at the Tories for being shit at what they were doing. So it serves her, narrative to say this was just scapegoating, but it will only stand scrutiny if there’s no other plausible explanation. And as much as we hate Matt M. Hancock and the ignorant half passed story response to COVID, the actual obvious candidate for an alternative to that scapegoating explanation is the official one that once Public Health England had failed to produce an operational testing regime at the requisite scale, the Department of Health stepped in and created the test and trace system. Whatever one thinks of that dodgy money to make Sexl 95 debacle, that was the thing that then the merger of. So he’s talking about, we need to do the science, which is Public Health England, and the scale, which is the department of Health. The logic of the situation involved amalgamating the two organizations together. And the demise of the Public Health England as a separate organization was simply as a consequence of that chain of events. You don’t have to have untoward motives posited. You don’t have to say it can only be scapegoating. Plus, it was also unlikely that the inquiry into the government’s conduct of the COVID-19 policy would exonerate the members of the government purely on the basis of the failures of the PHE. So the Public Health England, if they were seen to fail, that would not let the government off the hook. And it didn’t exonerate many, if anyone. Anyway, it didn’t succeed in deflecting responsibility away from them, as Munira had suggested, apart from, the political problems that beset the replacement for Public Health England, because after COVID, the Test and trace department was no longer needed. So the funding for that was withdrawn. So, in a way, if it wasn’t scapegoating public Health England, what it was was a sleight of hand to be able to begin the increased privatization of the National Health Service because the money was suddenly cut. So the public Health England had a big budget. The Department of Health had a big budget. Then the two got amalgamated, and then the test and trace system, as we know, was complete failure. Consequently, when test and trace was dismantled, a, because it didn’t work, b, it wasn’t no longer needed the budget to what was Public Health England, which is now the only remaining half of, the Institute for Health Protection.

Jim: I feel like it was dismantled while it was still needed. We eventually reached a point where it wasn’t needed, but not the point where they abandoned it because the numbers fell off the end of the spreadsheet.

Mark: No, that wasn’t the reason why we got rid of it. No, it was just shit. Yeah, exactly. So what politically happened? So, actually, the accusation of scapegoating was wrongly leveled because the fallacy was, if they’re scapegoating, it would have been abolished. It was abolished. Therefore it’s scapegoating meant that there was a tunnel vision, that it couldn’t be anything else. So nobody’s kept an eye on what’s become of the Institute for Public Health, what’s become of Public Health England and the funding thereof afterwards? So that’s the thing that should have been leveled at it. If there was political shenanigans at foot to privatize the NHS, then Public Health England would have been abolished. Public Health England was abolished. Therefore, there must have been political shinganagings or the privatization of the NHS. So it didn’t distract away from blame for COVID, it distracted people away from slights of hands, vis a vis funding so that the government didn’t stand up. And no, no, it’s not scapegoating at all. Allowed the people who said, oh, it’s just scapegoating. Lots of people said that. The unite union who, are, the union of, health workers said it, Labour Party said it. the Liberal Democrats said it. Everybody said it was scapegoating, phe in order to move blame away from the government because, like us, they all hated Hancock, but the government kept quiet about that because that wasn’t what they were doing it for at all.

Jim: Oh, no, we’re being corrupt in totally different ways that you’re not looking at.

Mark: Ah, yeah, exactly. That’s right. So you keep looking there. So actually what they did was distract them by. Yeah, I doubt that they’re that clever, but I think Cummings was still working. Okay, so our second example this week, it was revealed that a major Tory party donor, Frank Hester, had targeted misogynist and racist abuse at Diane Abbott, former Labour Party MP, now an independent, having had the whip withdrawn for making deeply offensive and wrong comments suggesting that jewish, irish and traveler people had never been subject to racism. She had likened their experience to prejudice experienced by redheads, and she apologized, but the whip was not reinstated. And that’s an important thing to know about, because although Frank Hester is not an MP, he is a major donor, having given 10 million pounds to the Tory party. And since it was revealed that Hester had said in 2019 that Diane Abbott makes you want to hate all black women and that she should be shot, the Tory party have been at great pains to not describe this as racism. Here’s former Tory party treasurer, Lord Marland.

Lord Marland: He’s an international businessman. He travels widely overseas. He does a lot of business in Jamaica, he does business in Malaysia, Bangladesh and places like that. So he’s not a racist.

Mark: So what we’re hearing there is Lord Marland affirming the consequence, ah, from the argument that the antecedent, he’s not a racist because he’s an international businessman, the consequent. So he’s saying he is an international businessman.

Jim: So if he’s not a racist, then he would be perfectly happy doing business all around the world in the Caribbean, et. Yeah, he is happy doing business in those areas. Therefore, he’s not a racist.

Mark: So he’s not a, is. So this is the equivalent of the Tory party can’t be anti immigration in a racist way, because many of the cabinet are of immigrant families. Look, there’s Rishi Sunak, Suella Bravman and Priti Patel. So we can’t be awful and racist and anti immigration. Of course it is possible to be racist and do business overseas. We know that because he is a racist. And if that’s not confirming the antecedent in itself. Yeah, and we know that they can be anti immigration in a racist way, because they, are. The Beatles there, of course, with your blues from the white album.

Jim: And in fallacy in the wild, we like to talk about the fallacy of the week from a non political perspective. And our, first example this week comes from Alf.

Mark: Yay.

Jim: this is an episode where Alf has become convinced that the guy who’s just moved in two doors down is Elvis. He’s still alive. And, to be fair, there are hints along the way that he could be right.

Mark: Does he keep saying, thank you very much? He does.

Jim: A couple of days. He does it. And so Alf confronts him about it.

Elvis: Yeah. Wait a minute, I remember you. You’re that talking monkey I saw in Vegas.

ALF: Vegas? You’ve been to Vegas? That proves it.

Elvis: Proves what?

ALF: That you’re Elvis.

Jim: Yeah. If he’s Elvis, he’s definitely been to Vegas. This guy’s been to Vegas. Therefore, he’s Elvis.

Mark: Therefore, he’s Elvis. Yeah, exactly. Wow. I can remember the night that Elvis died.

Mark: You were probably not born three. Right. The night Elvis died. I, was hitchhiking home, I think, from the next town along. Thunderlift got in the car and the guy was in tears. He said, elvis has died, and it’s on the radio.

Jim: Wow.

Mark: There you go.

Jim: Yeah.

Mark: My parents letting me out hitchhiking when I was one. That’s really irresponsible, isn’t it?

Jim: So, our second example comes from cheers and this is an episode where Norm, who is, an accountant by trade, has been out of work for a while. And the gang at the bar feel like maybe he’s taken a job washing dishes at Melville’s, a seafood restaurant.

Cliff Clavin: Now, look, I’m not going to believe that my buddy, a professional man like myself, has been reduced to scrubbing pots and pans in a fish house. I mean, if he had, there’d be telltale signs, you know, he’d come in wreaking like a mackerel.

Sam Malone: Well, that proves it. He’s either washing dishes in Melville’s or he’s driving a herd of cats to Dodge City.

Jim: Yeah, so if he was washing dishes at Melville’s, then he would smell a fish. He does smell a fish. Therefore, he’s washing dishes at Melville sufficient.

Mark: For herds of cats following you through the, what more proof do you need?

Jim: And the thing is, because these are, ah, sitcoms, the thing that they are suggesting fallaciously turns out often in these cases to be, to be. They’re correct in this fallacious assumption.

Mark: Right, alf?

Jim: They suggested maybe he was correct in his assertion that the guy, was actually Alice who moved away quickly in the middle of the night.

Mark: No, he just went home. Yeah, I’ve got an alf teddy bear. Is that, a teddy bear? No, it’s a teddy mel Mackie. And, yeah, with the floppy hair and everything. I love that. And the warts on his nose. Alfred. Jess. Brilliant. Loved it.

Jim: So, our final example in this section is from Monty python and the holy grail. and the villagers have found a witch.

Sir Bedivere: There are ways of telling whether she is a witch. Tell me, what do you do with witches

Villagers: Burn em

Sir Bedivere: and what do you burn apart from witches?

Villagers: More witches wood.

Sir Bedivere: So why do witches burn?

Villager: Because they’re made of wood.

Sir Bedivere: Good. So how do we tell whether she is made of wood?

Villager: Build a bridge out of her.

Sir Bedivere: but can you not also make bridges out of stone?

Villager: Oh, yeah.

Sir Bedivere: Does a wood sink in water?

Villagers: No, it floats. It floats. Throw her into the pond

Sir Bedivere: What also floats in water?

Villagers: Bread. Apples. Very, small rocks. Cider. A, great gravy. Cherries. Mud. A church’s churches. Lead. Lead.

King Arthur: A duck.

Sir Bedivere: Exactly. So logically,

Villagers: if she weighs the same as a duck, she’s made of wood.

Sir Bedivere: And therefore.

Villagers: A witch.

Jim: Yeah, there we go. If she’s a witch, she’s made of wood. So if you can prove she’s made of wood, then she’s a witch. And the way to prove she’s made of wood is obviously, if she weighs the same as a duck.

Mark: I love that in that, that John Cleese just calls out things that, are made of massive amounts of stone churches. Eric idol is calling out other liquids. Gravy and cider lead.

Jim: So before we move on to fake news, we just have quickly to show our results for our Oscars pool.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: Because, it was the Oscars. It was a great show. Ryan Gosling did. I’m just Ken. It was brilliant.

Mark: Oh, yeah. That was amazing.

Jim: And it wasn’t super surprising. A lot of the favorites ended up winning, but we also ended up winning, Mark and I.

Mark: Hey.

Jim: So, yeah, each. We got 33 points.

Mark: Oh, my God. I didn’t fail miserably like last time.

Jim: No, last year you did. Okay. The first year you got 14 points. The second year, you got 26.

Mark: Right.

Jim: Which is what I got the first year.

Mark: All right.

Jim: And I got 30 last year. But this year, yeah, we both got 33 because, a little bit more predictable, maybe.

Mark: Either that or I reconciled myself to the fact that things were going to win that I think thought ought not to. So I chose the one that we knew would win. and then later on, it kind of drifted off.

Jim: There were some that. Yes, we both put the same for a lot of the categories. We differed on a few. We, ended up with the same points. So, in third place, with 27 points was Rene z. Yay.

Mark: Although nice.

Jim: She says that really, the legitimate third, place winner, is Richard’s never win at the Oscars, because rene, said that she doesn’t actually watch a lot of films. She didn’t know much about them. So what she did, Richard roper, the Chicago film critic, she put his choices down for what he was going to win as her choices. So, we beat Richard Roper as well.

Mark: Oh, my word.

Jim: Yeah.

Mark: Wow.

Jim: I think that’s a perfectly promulnt way of doing it. So, I think renee is third place, and richard’s never win at the Oscars came technically for.

Mark: Right.

Jim: So thank you very much to everyone who took part. I hope you enjoyed it. And we will obviously be making donations based on the number of people who took part and the amount of patronage we have had during March. And I want to thank the people who have increased their patronage so much for that, particularly. Yeah, that is rene, Richard, and amber, who have all increased their patronage for march.

Mark: For march.

Jim: So fantastic.

Mark: Thanks so much. It will all get doubled or matched because that’s what your organization, your company does. Brilliant. Oh, I’m really chuffed. Bloody one. Wow. I almost never win. And speaking of which.

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.

Mark: Yes.

Jim: It’s time for fake news. The game where I read out three Trump quotes, two of which are real, and one I met up and Mark M. Has to figure out which one is fake news.

Mark: You see, when I’ve won this game, there have been three quotes and, I see that there are three quotes. So I’ve won. This seems logically sound.

Jim: So these are from a recent Trump rally just in the last few days in Rome, Georgia. He was a bit rambly. He was quite prone to gaffes, which I’ll play one later because I just have to. But it wasn’t long enough or as part of another kind of group of interesting things that he said to include in these, but it’s worth playing.

Mark: I noticed you didn’t use the word cogent long enough nor made enough sense to include.

Jim: Okay, so statement number one. You know the polls all rigged. Of course, lately they haven’t been rigged because I’m winning by so much. I don’t want to say it. Disregard that statement. I love the polls very much. We’re beating him by so much. But with the suburban, they always say suburban housewives, they want something that’s very important. Security. They don’t want illegal immigrants coming into our country. They don’t want illegal immigrants knocking on their front door and saying, I’m going to use your kitchen and I’m going to use your bedroom. And there’s not a damn thing. And that’s when. That’s the nice ones.

Mark: Okay. He’s kind of revealed a secret there. I know they’re all rigged, except when I’m winning. I don’t want to say that.

Jim: Statement number two.

Mark: And suburban housewives. Yeah, okay. All right.

Jim: Statement number two. When I came in, as soon as I came in, I did Alaska. Drill, baby, drill. The republican party had been trying to make it happen since Ronald Reagan, but they couldn’t do it. And all of a sudden, we had more oil than we knew what to do with. We went from nothing to the top, tippy top oil producers in the world, and we would have been double, triple Saudi Arabia, believe me. But Joe Biden and the radical leftists stopped it all just when oil hit the highest price anyone’s ever seen. How stupid do you have to be? We have the stupidest leaders. Who are these people? Idiots.

Mark: Okay.

Jim: And state number three.

Jim: They are weaponizing law enforcement for high level election interference against Joe Biden’s top and only political appointment. A guy named me. It’s a guy named me. Joe Biden. And, the fascists, they’re fascists that control him are the real threat to democracy. Remember that. I’m not the threat to democracy. I’m stopping the threat to democracy. They’re the threat to democracy. As an example, you read about this. Can you believe this? Sometimes it’s not good to be rich. I just posted a $91 million bond. 91 million on a fake story? Totally made up story. Think of it. 91 million.

Mark: Did he really just say, weaponizing law enforcement for high level elected interference? Far too many syllables there. Are they? Wow. See? M that little repeated thing. Fascists that control you. The rip. I’m not the threat. I’m stopping the threat. They’re the threat. Can you blip. And then 91. 91. 91 m. Okay, and then I’m going to use your kitchen, I’m going to use your bedroom, and there’s not a damn thing. And that’s when. That’s the nice one. What? There’s not a damn. Did he forget the or as I always say, that well, no phrase, there’s not a damn thing. And that’s when. Okay, all right. As soon as I came out, I did Alaska. Drill, baby, drill top. Tippy top. See, that’s ringing a little bit of a Jim alarm bell there. Tippy top. But then he might m have said it. Every now and then, he’ll say, yeah, I like to say tippy top, I’m ready. That. Okay, despite that, and despite the weaponizing law enforcement for high level election interference, which is impossible for him to have said, I think I’m going to choose number two as the one that you made up. Okay, so the drill, baby, drill. Yeah.

Jim: So of the other two, which are you more convinced by?

Mark: Well, oddly, number three, weaponizing law enforcement, m for high level election interference.

Jim: Okay, and number three. Yeah, it’s real.

Donald Trump: They’re weaponizing law enforcement for high level election interference against Joe Biden’s top and only political appointment. A guy named me. The guy named.

Mark: Me.

Donald Trump: Joe Biden. And the fascists, the fascists that control him, are the real threat to democracy. Remember that. I’m not the threat to democracy. I’m stopping the threat to democracy. They’re the threat to democracy. As an example, you read about this? Can you believe this? Sometimes it’s not good to be rich. I just posted a $91 million bond. 91 million on a fake story? Totally made up story. Think of it. 91 million.

Mark: Yeah. That’s going to endear him to his blue collar followers, is it? Yeah, sometimes. He’s not going to be rich. I’ve just had to post the 91 million bond. 91. Can you believe that? Yeah. The fact that you’ve had to do that for lying about how much your stuff is and that, you could.

Jim: Afford to do it, this was not for lying about how much his stuff was worth.

Mark: Oh, right. Okay.

Jim: This was calling E Jean Carroll crazy and.

Mark: Crikey. Yeah.

Jim: Which he then immediately continued to do.

Mark: Yes. If only there was of kind. If I had a nickel for every time. Well, I called her a liar.

Jim: Yeah. and Eugene Carroll’s lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, put out a statement after this saying, we are keeping a close eye on what Trump is saying and will not hesitate to, take further action if he continues to say these things because. Yeah, she can absolutely sue him again because it didn’t work. He’s still fucking doing it.

Mark: why is that a threat to democracy? I’m not a threat to democracy. And his example of them being the threat to democracy is the fact that he was found guilty of libel, defamation. So not letting him get away with being a complete asshole is a threat to democracy.

Jim: But also within that is the news that he has, in fact, posted a bond.

Mark: Yes.

Jim: In that case, the people who have underwritten that bond are, the insurance company Chubb, who have said, we don’t make judgments on whether these people are good or bad. We just do bonds. That’s what we do. It’s fine.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: It might be a little bit disingenuous because the CEO of Chubb is a Trump donor. And also, Chubb was kind of involved in the case in New York where he lied about how much stuff was worth.

Mark: Okay.

Jim: They, valued his properties. I think it was his duplex or whatever it is, in Trump Tower. And they went in, and he only gave them 15 minutes to do it and told them they couldn’t go in the master bedroom and the other bit because Milani was sleeping or something, and then hurried them out.

Mark: Can’t go in the other six rooms.

Jim: And they didn’t go. Well, we haven’t had an opportunity. We can’t value this because we haven’t seen it. They just put, oh, yeah, fine. Whatever he said, we’ll go with that. Which they should have done, $4.50. So they were kind of part of that case, and now they are giving him a $91 million bond.

Mark: Wow.

Jim: For which he’s probably had to pay them somewhere between one and $2 million, and also put up some collateral, which presumably is worth a lot more than really, honestly worth.

Mark: Yeah. Not just in their valuation. Yeah.

Jim: But there isn’t any information on where that collateral has come from.

Mark: It’s coming from.

Jim: It isn’t necessarily a property owned by Trump. It could be. It could be that he’s put up property or properties that he owns for that. It could be that someone else has offered property or properties collateral. Yeah. Like, I don’t know, say, for example, Orban, who visited Margo just last week, or Musk, who visited, with Trump just like, a few days before this happened.

Mark: And 91 is rather more than he had to do. Is it because he didn’t do it.

Jim: You have to pay the interest that is likely to accrue. Basically, you have to do the judgment plus 10% so that some interest can accrue while you are doing the appeal. And there is enough to cover that as well. So it doesn’t mean that would necessarily be all he is ending up having to pay E. Jean Carroll when he loses his appeal, because if the appeal drags on, it could go higher than that. But that’s how much that Chubb.

Mark: And he is going to lose the appeal because he’s going to lose the appeal. He just goes on to defame and denigrate and libel and slander.

Jim: And of course, he’s only got, as of today, another ten days to come up with the 454 m million dollar bond for the New York attorney general civil case.

Mark: Let’s hope Musk isn’t using his latest rocket as collateral.

Jim: So you also thought that number one was real?

Mark: Yes. I’m beginning to doubt it, but yes.

Jim: And number one is real.

Donald Trump: The polls are all rigged. Of course, lately they have been rigged because I’m winning by so much. I would say disregard that segment. I love the polls very much. we’re beating him by so much. But with the suburban. They always say suburban housewives, they want something that’s very important. Security. They don’t want illegal immigrants coming into our country. They don’t want illegal immigrants knocking on their front door and saying, I’m going to use your kitchen and I’m going to use your bedroom. And there’s not a damn thing. And that’s the nice one.

Mark: What? It’s just a charade of fucking racism. That whole bit when he laughed because he realized what he’d said. Yeah, because, ah, I’m winning. Didn’t stop him suspecting mailing voter fraud when he won first time round.

Jim: Well, because he didn’t win the popular vote. So, yes, number two is fake news. You’re correct. So you’ve won. you ruined my streak of two.

Mark: Hey. Right, well, that was because I had to win, because there were.

Jim: No. He didn’t say that. He has talked about being energy dominant quite recently and how he took it from the. Being third in the world to the first. And he has suggested that Biden has fucked that up. But in fact, 2023 was, the most oil produced. The amount of oil produced by the US was higher than any nation has ever produced oil in a year. 13 million barrels of oil a day, on average, in 2023.

Mark: Wow.

Jim: So Biden has not turned off the spigot or whatever? No, he has no very much allowed oil drilling to continue, although, yes, he did stop the alaskan wildlife reserves from being drilled through.

Mark: But I guess they are now no longer dependent on imports from Saudi Arabia.

Jim: Well, of course they are still dependent on imports because of the infrastructure of the US, gasoline system. They are not set up for refining the kind of oil that comes out from the ground because they built their refineries to refine middle eastern oil, which is different. They are arguably energy dominant, or oil dominant, but not, and will not be energy independent. It’s just not a thing they can do. But, yeah, net export versus imports. Yes, they are exporting more than they. So we have got some social contestants.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: In fact, only on Patreon, for some reason. Okay, no one on Facebook’s interested. All right, king of a.

Mark: Has it not been taken down as possibly hate speech on Patreon?

Jim: We’ve got eight guesses. Okay, we’ve got Ozzy on banks says they all sound so trumpal. Stillskin, it’s really hard to pick. I can totally hear him saying, drill, baby, drill. And know he’s enjoyed the phrase tippy top in the past. So I think two is real.

Mark: Okay.

Jim: Orange man baby. Obsession with poles and immigrants is a well trod path. So I think one is real, leaving three with far too many syllables as fake news.

Mark: There you go.

Jim: That was definitely a thought.

Mark: Yes, exactly. But, ah, that’s interesting that he thinks that, tippy top was a giveaway fix. That was for me.

Jim: That was my. I felt it had been long enough since we delved into tippy top that I could bring it back, but that was my tell. Becca says I’m kind of the opposite of Ozzy. While I’m also sure two is real, I’m fairly certain I’ve heard three. So I think that one is fake. So both of them convinced.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: Scott, on the other hand, says, I think number two is fake news. Although it contains many trumpisms. I think it’s a mashup of some of his comments. Number one is confusing enough to fly out of Donald’s cat butt of a mouth. I think I heard number three because.

Mark: The other thing about number two is that bit was, who are these people? Idiots is too good a gag. Too good a gag he wouldn’t think to do. Yeah. Yeah.

Jim: One eyed Nick says, I think maybe I heard someone talking about three. Two sounds like the garbage that fall out of his flabby, Ron Seal coated face. So I’m saying one is fake.

Mark: Wow. Okay, there you go. Well, you were right. It is the kind of thing that will come out. It’s Ron Seal coated ass butt of a mouth. Yeah.

Jim: Stephen Beckhall says, had, a fun dinner conversation with my sweetie on this one. And we’re both leaning three as being fake as it’s real. Close to an admission of guilt, which the hemorrhoid wouldn’t do. Rene Z says, well, holy crap. I think number one is fake news, although I can hear him saying those horrible, threatening words to women. He’s such a pig. I’ll stick with number one as fake. And again, to quote Frank Barone. Holy crap.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: Anders says, I, just called number two is the fake. Think of it. Number two is fake. Tippy top fake. Who are these real ones anyway? Idiots.

Mark: Nice.

Jim: And will m. Says, going to go with number two as fake. I’m reasonably certain he said number three, because I’ve read him quoted at the tail end of number three. I don’t know, though. Man is truly fucking disgruntled. Disgruntled.

Mark: Nice. Yeah. Never has my gruntled been so dissed. There we go. Only a very more few saying two.

Jim: Is definitely real and picking from the others.

Mark: Yeah, see, that’s my thing. If it’s too real, I was thinking about it today, thinking, okay, so what am I going to go with? And I think it was, if there are too many things in there that are real, then that’s probably not real. But the idea nearly got thrown off.

Jim: By weaponizing.

Mark: Was just. It was slightly too over the tippy top. Yes, but drill, baby, drill. Nice. Disco inferno.

Jim: Yes. Very good callback to Sarah Palin. Yeah, he has said drill, baby, drill a few times.

Mark: They’re almost kind of little unconscious triggers, aren’t they?

Jim: It is pavlovian.

Mark: Yeah. Yes, exactly. And not in a meringue kind of way. Yes. In a dog dribble kind of way. And what was the faux par? The lapse.

Jim: So, yeah, the bit I wanted to play was just one of those. You know how when he messes up a word, he pretends he didn’t mess it up like the furniture of our children? Yeah, he did that here. But it’s because I think he didn’t understand how the word was being used on the teleprompter. And then when he tried to reinsert it into the sentence, he fucked it up all over again. So he’s talking about money that Iran was getting. Compliments of the Biden administration.

Mark: Right.

Donald Trump: And $10 billion for electricity to Iraq. All compliments of an incompetent Biden administration. They gave them so many compliments and they gave them so much money.

Jim: So it’s compliments because they gave them so many compliments, which is not what that means at all.

Mark: No. Wow. He kind of skipped, what that is. Wow.

Jim: But he couldn’t just let it go. He couldn’t. He had to try and fit it back in to show that he badly.

Mark: He tries to give off this Persona as a tough guy, but actually, he’s just a needy, tiny boy who’s never been loved. He can’t be seen to be doing wrong because that would be embarrassing and everybody would hate. Like when he did ko Fifi and everybody around, he went, yeah, no, of course he did something.

Jim: He did an interview just recently, probably with Newsmax. Might have been oan one of the stupid ones. Not a proper TV channel. They are such ridiculously softball questions. They were like, right. What’s it like being the best person ever? one of the questions was, the guy said, you’ve got a lot right, but nobody gets everything right. Is there, such a thing as being overconfident? And Trump’s response was, I got everything right. I was right about everything.

Mark: Yeah, of course. Wow. Oh, God. So that means I’m 70 for 134.

Jim: That’s right. Yeah. Which is around 52 ish percent.

Mark: Well, that’s enough to withdraw from the European Union.

Jim: Absolutely. More than enough. Yeah, more than enough.

Mark: It’s a, supermajority.

Jim: A landslide.

Mark: Oh, jolly good.

Jim: And it’s time for the part of the show that this week at least, is called the State of the union is not a logical fallacy because it was Biden’s, last state of the union before the election.

Mark: Right.

Jim: I mean, he kind of knocked it out of the park. Really?

Mark: Yeah. Came out fighting.

Jim: Absolutely.

Mark: Great. Yeah.

Jim: So Republicans couldn’t call him sleepy. So instead they called him aggressive and angry and mean and shouting. Yeah, they said he was shouting at America because he was energetic and he wasn’t taking any shit.

Mark: Exactly. And shutting down. and really actually being on the ball. It was stand up comic on the ball.

Jim: He was responding to hecklers. he was kind of making some of the Republicans laugh a bit. He did a bit with Lindsay Graham. He didn’t really stumble. He didn’t make mistakes. He was strong and talked about all of the stuff that he’s done. Kept referring to Trump as my m predecessor.

Mark: Yeah, dismissively.

Jim: He called out the supreme Court on the Dobbs decision and basically said, know, because some of the justices were there. He called out Republicans on the border bill and the fact that they weren’t supporting it and he was trying to get stuff done and stop bad things happening and stop the crisis and they weren’t playing ball, they weren’t letting him do it.

Mark: And they kind of went at that point and he said, yeah, no, it was like dealing with hecklers as a stand up. You don’t like that. And then turned it around and said, what is it you don’t like about blocking the very thing, blocking the bipartisan agreement that we had and you’re blocking it for your own things. We could have sorted out the problem that you had identified and agreed this was the solution and then you blocked it. No, it’s great, wasn’t it?

Jim: Yeah, I was surprised. I think a lot of people were surprised because the media’s been talking constantly about how old and feeble he is. And obviously the, her report didn’t help that, with Robert, Her saying he’s a kindly, elderly old man with a poor memory. And, yeah, he came across as, ah, fully in control. He spoke for over an hour and, yeah, he had control of the room. lots of applause lines, talked about making Roe v. Wade the law of the land again, if they can put Democrats in Congress who will actually sign the right laws and stuff like that, protecting Social Security and Medicaid. He talked about the bad things that Trump did and said, know, history is watching and we are going to do the right thing. We’re not going to be all about hate and retribution, we’re going to be about progress. In fact, he did a thing kind of age based about attacks on his age. He said, it’s not about how old we are, it’s about how old your ideas are.

Mark: Yeah, I really like that. That was very, yeah, yeah. It’s what you do as a stand up, isn’t it? You call attention to the thing that people have called attention to and then you turn it to your advantage. You flip it around and get good with that. Yeah. The whole applause thing, that was because Kamala Harris was up and down applauding every now and then.

Jim: And Mike Johnson, I’ve heard him described as looking like the prettiest elf in the treehouse. He was just sitting there kind of smirking and never, applauding or standing or anything, even at proper things where he’s basically just saying, america’s really good. And, Mike Johnson was sitting there.

Mark: He sort of shook his head at every time he said, my predecessor. He was going, yeah, he wasn’t kind of MTG. He didn’t kind of stand up and go, yeah, shut up. Or anything like that. He was just trying to, in a statesman like way, express some disagreement with and disdain for when actually all the stuff he was talking about. Pretty reasonable stuff. It was, yeah, we should do this for Gaza. we should do this for Ukraine. We’re not going to take it on the chin. We’re not going to let Putin do anything he likes, as his predecessor had said. We’re going to do something about it. We’re never going to let him walk all over.

Jim: Yep, it was all good. And arguably the attention went to the republican response to the state of the union, but not because it was great.

Mark: No.

Jim: So I think that one got talked about more and it got into the cold open on Saturday Night Live.

Mark: Oh, my God, that was so good, wasn’t it?

Jim: It was so weird. It was really. It was Katie Britt, who is junior senator from Alabama. she’s a freshman senator and she has been talked about as kind of the future of the party and a potential VP pick for Trump before. And, well, first of all, they put her in a kitchen to deliver her speech because she’s a woman and that’s where women are, in the kitchen. It would be weird if she was behind a podium or in the Senate chamber or any. You wouldn’t expect to see a woman there, but just sandwiches, just out of shot, that’s where you expect to see the woman.

Mark: Did she get described as the TikTok trad wife? Yes. Let’s do a serious rebuttal of the state of the union by somebody who’s serious member of the republican party. just to show how seriously we’re taking her, we’ll stick her in a kitchen rather than behind a lectern on.

Jim: A flag, dress her like one of the wives from the handmaid’s tale.

Mark: Yes, exactly.

Jim: And then for some reason, she did the delivery of a, community theater audition of a really serious part, like a really dramatic role that requires.

Mark: Well, it made me. With her accent and everything. It made me think of count hots in roof and the Saturday Night live thing with Scarlett Johansson, no less. Absolutely nailed it with the little kind of the vocal fry at the end of the sentences and everything. Absolutely brilliant. The one bit which said, and now I’m going to deliver a bit, which is kind of odly. Yeah, that’s what it is. Because it was all this kind of whispering.

Jim: Breathy, she was kind of doing, especially when it was supposed to be angry or screamy or something like that. It went down to whispering, which is something that Biden sometimes does when he wants to kind of emphasize something. He will be giving a speech, and he’ll get to kind of what might sometimes be a crescendo, and then he’ll just lean into the microphone and go, that’s not how we’re doing it. He’ll bring it down. And she did that kind of thing where it’s like, ah. Oh, I’m so passionate about this. I can’t even vocalize it. I just have to breathe it out. and, yeah, she was on the point of tears, or supposed, apparently on the point of tears a few times. But the thing is, normally, even a bad state of the union response will get praise from Republicans.

Mark: Yeah. Because it’s saying all the right things and they’re doing down the. Yeah.

Jim: And this wasn’t completely without any praise. Ted Cruz, I think, said it was good. He had Katie Britt on his podcast, the other day. And also, Trump said she was great, but a lot of other people, a lot of other Republicans thought it was really fucking weird and strange. Not what they’re looking for.

Mark: Yeah. And even I was surprised. And I was even surprised, like, Charlie Kirk even said, I’m sure she’s a sweet mom and a person, but this is not what we need. Joe Biden has just declared war on the american right, and she looks like she’s hosting a cooking show, whispering about how Democrats don’t get it. that’s from Charlie Kirk, who’s kind of. He’s a rabid, bloody Republican.

Jim: Yeah. I mean, there’s no reason for him ever to tell the truth. He’s out of practice, definitely. so I’m surprised he didn’t just ignore everything she did and say that was the best state response ever in.

Mark: The way that Ted Cruz kind of does because he’s looking after his own interests. Yes.

Jim: So one unnamed Trump advisor told Rolling Stone, what the hell am I watching? Another unnamed republican strategist told the Daily Beast, this is one of our biggest disasters ever, which is going a bit.

Mark: Given that they’ve had Trump.

Jim: Charlie Kirk asked the people who follow him on Twitter, what they thought about it. And even the people who follow Charlie Kirk didn’t like it. And they have no discernment taste at. Yes, exactly. They described it as very babysitter reading a bedtime story, like slightly scary baby, way too dramatic. The up and down emotion was bizarre. Wow. And it was bizarre. It was unsettling. It’s not especially long. It was like, what, 20 minutes I would recommend, if you haven’t seen it, check it out because, oh, yeah, it’s kind of amazing.

Mark: Watch Casey Britt and then go watch the Scarlett Johansson one bit m on the SNL one where she said, yeah, not only am I talking know on behalf of America, but I’m also selling these diamante crucifixes that, pop as a graphic from, like, QVC or something. So good. And they just nailed it perfectly. And that’s how you realize what it is you’ve been watching. Brilliantly, brilliantly acted. She should get an Emmy just for that. It’s just so good.

Jim: And some Republicans manage to be both dismissive of it and also horrendously misogynist. like the owner of Gab, Andrew Torber, who said Katie Britt should have been tucking her kids into bed, not giving a melodramatic political speech. The GOP is desperately trying to pander to women voters with other women. Anyone who understands women knows this will never work. Women hate other women. What women want, are attracted to is a strong, masculine, authoritative.

Mark: Wow. Right? There you go. Yeah.

Jim: Even Laura Luma said it was the worst GOP State of the union reply ever. Laura Luma.

Mark: Wow. So she knows thing about the worst Evers.

Jim: Yeah.

Mark: Wow. And finally, some things we really don’t have time to talk about.

Jim: By the time you hear this, Judge Scott McAfee will probably have ruled on whether DA Fonny Willis is disqualified from Trump’s Georgia election interference case. But we’re recording on Thursday night and there’s no news yet. However, McAfee has made a pretty consequential ruling this week, dismissing six of the charges in the case. The dismissed charges relate to the pressure campaign on Georgia officials, including Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger, to pretend Trump won in Georgia. Three of the charges, are Trump’s. So he’s now only facing 88 felony charges, which is hardly any, barely an inconvenience. The others belong to Rudy Giuliani, Mark Meadows, and three Trump lawyers. McAfee’s ruling says, as written, these six counts contain all the essential elements of the crimes, but fail to allege sufficient detail regarding the nature of their commission. And he specifically said he’s not dismissing the possibility the underlying conduct was criminal and instructed prosecutors that they are free to have another go at bringing the charges again and giving more detail this time. The RICO charges and the ones for filing false documents still stand. And while trump world is no doubt seeing this as a win just short of total exoneration, I’m thinking it might be an indication that McAfee is not going to disqualify funny Willis, because if he was, there’s really no need to rush this ruling out now, as the case would be on hold for some time. And he could do shit like this at his leisure. Of course, because you live in the future, you already know whether I’m right or wrong.

Mark: We always love a good reductio at Hitler room at fallacious Towers, but not as much, it seems, as deFanto. Bedrahung, Oberdun de Gelhair Trump loves Hitler himself reporter Jim Sciotto’s new book, the Return of Great Powers, introduced several of Trump’s former advisors, and all of them stressed that Trump regularly lavished praise on authoritarian leaders around the world, calling hungarian prime minister Viktor Alban fantastic, chinese President Xi Jinping brilliant, and north korean leader Kim Jong un an okay guy. And according to Trump, White House chief of staff John Kelly. Trump said, well, but Hitler did some good things up there with nice, smart uniforms. Trump’s well, Hitler rebuilt the economy, drove Kelly to remind him, you can never say anything good about that guy. Nothing. He even makes Mussolini look great. According to Kelly, Trump sees himself as a tough guy, thinking if he brought in old generals to his cabinet, they would display unearring loyalty like he thought Hitler’s generals did. Till Kelly pointed out that they plotted against Hitler and attempted several assassinations, something Trump didn’t know because I suspect it didn’t fit with his image of himself as infallible and undefeatable. On becoming president, it appears Trump was a bit disappointed that he couldn’t just move money around where he liked and deploy troops at will. He’s planning not to be disappointed next time in office. As the new Republic’s Matt Ford summarized Trump, world is scheming to install ideological loyalists throughout the federal government, purge the civil service of any dissenters, centralize all power in the executive branch, and unleash the Justice Department on Trump’s perceived political enemies with sham prosecutions. Still, could be worse. He could be quoting Hitler on the campaign trail and inviting Orban to Mar a Lago and saying there’s nobody that’s better, smarter or a better leader than Viktor Orban. He’s the boss and he’s a great leader, fantastic leader in Europe and around the world. They respect him, for Christ’s sake. Can we not just dress Trump up with a whole bunch of GI Joe dolls and tell little insecure Donnie, he’s a giant, and these little fellas need his help to escape from the real world back to Barbieland for the next four years or something.

Jim: As if there were any doubt, Trump completed his takeover of the Republican Party by installing daughter in law Lara as co chair of the RNC alongside Trump’s handpicked actual politician, Michael Watley. Lara has said she thinks republican voters would be interested in seeing the RNC pay Trump’s ever expanding legal bills, and it wouldn’t be the first time she’s exploited her position to help Donald financially, given that the dog rescue charity she chairs funneled $2 million to Trump properties over the course of seven years. The RNC raises funds to help republican candidates, but I’ve got a feeling most of that money is going to one specific candidate from now on, and those down ballot Republicans are going to be shit out of luck going into November 2024. And when I say I’ve got a feeling, I mean Lara pledged on Newsmax to spend every single penny of the RNC’s funds on electing Donald Trump. The RNC has already started cost cutting to free up more money for daddy’s lawyers, firing more than 60 staffers within the first three days, and ending a minority outreach program. In other news, the RNC had a minority outreach program. But hey, what harm could that do? If there’s one group GOP candidates don’t need any help reaching out to, it’s minorities. But they’re not just getting rid of useless programs and everyone who knows what they’re doing, they’re also making some pretty strategic hiring decisions. First up is election denier OAN reporter and former Trump attorney happy to perjure herself for money. Christina Bob, who, in a move seemingly calculated to break every irony meter in America, is the RNC’s new senior council for election integrity.

Mark: They don’t have irony meters in America. Well, not on the right, anyway. Just when Trump perhaps thought he might be able to survive another week on, say, the $382,000 loose change down the back of a sofa, before he’d have to find yet more money to pay yet more legal costs. His attempt to sue Orbis, the company that was founded by Christopher Steele, later mi Six, which put together the so called Steele dossier that notoriously listed scandalous claims that Trump had taken part in sex parties in St. Petersburg and consorted with sex workers in Moscow, was thrown back in his face like a man pissing in the wind. British judge Carroll Stein sided with Orbis in her ruling, throwing Trump’s case out, saying it was bound to fail. Orbis had argued it should be thrown out because the report was never meant to be made public and was published by BuzzFeed without the permission of Steele or Orbis. It also said that the claim was filed too late, halving the legal fees Orbis said it incurred. She’d last week still ordered Trump to pay legal fees of 300,000 pounds, or $382,000. Being so poor that you’ve not got a pot to piss in, comes from the era when people would sell their urine to the leather trade, as it was used in the tanning process. If you didn’t even have a pot to piss in, you couldn’t even make money doing that. Showers of jokes about Trump and tanning golden toilets. Russian sex workers and peers are just waiting to be lapped up there, folks.

Jim: You hear a lot of shit about three being the magic number. But let’s face it, five is way better. All the best things come in fives. Jackson’s nights at Freddy’s, Mambo’s, famous child detectives and Spice Girls, and, of course, unnamed Trump employees in the Mar a Lago documents case indictment. Some of those cryptically enumerated workers are still much like Patrick McGuan, known only by their number. But this week, Trump employee number five sat down for an interview with CNN’s Kaitlan Collins, and we learned his true identity. Seasonal valet in charge of the Mar a Lago car service, Brian Butler. Brian says he’s come forward now because it’s looking like Judge Cannon might reveal all the names of witnesses against Trump, and he’d rather be in control of telling his story than be hounded by everyone when a federal judge doxes him out of the blue. Butler worked for Trump for over 20 years, so it’s hard to feel too kindly towards him. But he’s been cooperating with prosecutors for the past year, and one of the things he’s told them, which we didn’t find out until now, was that while FBI agents met with Trump’s lawyer, Evan Corcoran, to receive what he thought were all the classified documents in Mar a Lago, Trump’s body man, Walt Nowter, was driving ten to 15 boxes of documents away from Palm beach to be loaded onto Trump’s plane, bound for his Bedminster golf course.

Mark: Wow.

Jim: Sure, we already knew that Trump hid 25 boxes from Corcoran and told Christina Bob to sign a sworn statement that they’d handed everything over. But this seems even worse somehow, once the shit hit the fan, Trump offered repeatedly to pay for a lawyer for Butler. But he wisely decided to choose his own lawyer, which is why he’ll be testifying against Trump if the trial ever gets going, rather than joining him as a co defendant.

Mark: Congressional research shows that minority business owners face systemic barriers, including being denied loans at a rate three times higher than non minority firms, often receiving smaller loans and being charged higher interest rates, the kind of situation explored in Oscar nominated short the barber of Little Rock. A good thing, then, that the minority business development agency was established in 1969, somewhat surprisingly, perhaps, during the Nixon administration, to address discrimination in the business world. And, the Biden administration widened its scope and reach through the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs act in 2021, making it a permanent agency and increasing its funding to $550,000,000 over five years. The agency, which helps minorityowned businesses obtaining finance and government contracts, now operates in 33 states and Puerto Rico. According to its yearly reports, the agency helped businesses raise more than $1.2 billion in capital in fiscal year 2022, including more than $50 million for black owned enterprises and more than 395,000,000 for hispanic owned businesses. A good thing all round, you’d think. But hell, what would attempts to level the playing field in, say, Texas be without privileged white folks claiming the program discriminated against them? Judge Mark T. Pittman of the US district court, the Northern District of Texas, who was appointed by Trump, ruled that the minority business Development agency’s eligibility parameters violate the Fifth Amendment’s equal protection guarantees because they presume that racial minorities are inherently disadvantaged. Which sounds a bit like Trump railing against his fraud costs, ruling on the basis that they’d already decided it was fraud. Some things are held to be self evidently true. Pittman’s ruling said that while the agency’s work may be intended to alleviate opportunity gaps faced by minority owned businesses, two wrongs don’t make a right, and the MBDA’s racial presumption is a wrong, with white extinction conspiracies making such judgments, you’d think it’s a slippery slope. But Alfonso David, president and CEO of the Global Black Economic Forum, who is helping to represent the Fearless Fund, an Atlanta based organization that provides early stage funding to businesses owned by women of color currently being similarly targeted, said that the Texas ruling is not necessarily predictive of how these other cases will play out. He pointed to another ruling on Wednesday in which a conservative group lost its attempt to reinstate a lawsuit against pharmaceutical giant Pfizer over a fellowship program for black, Latino and native american professionals and other diversity, equality and inclusion advocates celebrated a separate win on Tuesday when a Florida law that limits discussions on race and diversity in the workplace was ruled to be unconstitutional by a federal appeals court. What with institutional racism still visibly rampant in Texas and the british parliament, it’s good to see humans finally making some progress in the 21st century. Oh wait, no, that should be it would be good to see humans actually making a lot more progress. It’s the 21st century, for fuck’s sake.

Jim: Colorado GOP Congressman Ken Buck has had enough of his republican colleagues trying to impeach anything blue that moves, and has announced he’ll be leaving Congress before the end of the month rather than wait until his term is up in November. This is fun for several reasons. First, Ken’s an antiabortion, antigun control, antilockdown climate change denier, so fuck him. Even better, this reduces the GOP’s majority in the House from three to two. But best of all, there’s a chance it could spell the end of Lauren Boebert’s political career. Having won her election in 2022 by only 546 votes, Lauren announced she’d be switching districts to run for Ken Buck’s vacant seat in Colorado fourth when he retired in November, which is a much safer seat. However, his decision to leave this month will trigger a special election, and whoever wins that will probably be in a better position to stay in the seat in November to serve a full two year term. Bobo could run in the special election, but to do so, she’d have to resign from her third district seat with no guarantee she’d win the special election. And her resignation would trigger another special election for her vacated seat, which could well flip to the Democrats, reducing the republican majority on a more permanent basis. Consequently, Lobos announced on Wednesday that she will not be running in the special election, but will focus on the November race. She is now much less likely to win. Well, if she loses, she’ll have much more spare time on her hands to indulge in her love of theater. I hear Beetlejuice is good.

Mark: Yeah, if you say Bobert three times this week in british politics, former deputy chair of the Tory party, 30 p. Lee Anderson, who once said a vote for the Reform party as a vote for labor, joined George Galloway on the backbenches as he defected to the reform party. Not so much looking like the threat that you’d rather not have outside the tent pissing in, but more like grumpy potatoes who’ve pissed themselves. He and George are the faces of the bright new dawn of a political revolution congealing in the deep fat fryer of a disused chip shop. Michael Gove introduced the new definition of extremists and used parliamentary privilege, which is basically white upper class privilege insofar as you could say nasty things about non white, underprivileged people and get away with it, to list organizations that will no longer be able to receive government funding. Of course, these include many organizations that Suella Braverman called extremists, I. E. Peaceful protesters using language criticizing right wing government policy when it comes to not calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. And odly does not include Tory party funders who employ extremely violent, misogynist and racist language when criticizing a left wing policymaker representing the views of her, Hankley constituents. Hopefully, the government itself will no longer be able to receive such funding and will have a moral epiphany that would lead them to give it all back, distance themselves from racism and privilege, and graciously step down and out of the way of a more equitable society. Yeah, right. As Lee Anderson pointed out about two years ago, the only thing that the Tories have left in their non governing, ungovernable tank are the class culture and immigration wars. Perhaps he joined reform for a bit of arrest.

Jim: So that’s all about arguments and faulty reasoning. We have time for this week. You’ll find the show notes@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 the 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@patreon.com. Slash f Trump just like our straw man level patrons, Richard Thunder Hopkins will M. Scott, Ozzy on bank, Laura Tomcik Schmootz, Mark Reiche and Ambar Buchanan, who told us when we met her at QED, we could just call her Amber, though another listener recognised her at QED last year because we kept using her full name all the time. And our true Scotsman level patrons, Renee Zetz, Melissa Seitek, Stephen Bickle, Janet Yuetter, Andrew Hauck, and our top patron, Kaz Toohey. Thank you so much for your continued support. It really is very much appreciated. Thank you.

Jim: You can connect with those awesome people as well as us and other listeners in the Facebook group. Uh@facebook.com slash groups slash fallacious Trump.

Mark: All music is by the outbursts and was used with permission. So until next time, m on felacious Trump, we’ll leave the last word to Z. Donald. That’s right.

Donald Trump: Go home to mommy.

Mark: Bye.