Moral Equivalence (Redux) – FT#147

15 Apr Moral Equivalence (Redux) – FT#147

Posted at 00:15h in Fallacies by
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Show Notes

The fallacy of Moral Equivalence is committed when someone argues that because the actions of two people or groups are morally equivalent (whether they are or not), those people or groups are just as bad as each other.

Trump

We started out by discussing this clip of Trump comparing Jan 6 to the “BLM riots”:

And then we looked at this pretty blatant moral equivalence from Dinesh D’Souza:

We followed that with this now-deleted tweet from ABC News analyst Matthew Dowd:

Finally, we talked about this article by David Brooks about Brett Kavanaugh and Christine Blasey Ford.

Mark’s British Politics Corner

Mark talked about LBC’s Shelagh Fogarty drawing an unexpected equivalence between Rishi and Boris.

He followed that up by talking about Rishi’s comments on George Galloway:

An finishes with Sam Armstrong’s take on the whole thing:

Fallacy in the Wild

In the Fallacy in the Wild we looked at this clip from Halt and Catch Fire:

Then we discussed this clip from Criminal Minds:

And we finished with this clip from The IT Crowd:

 

Fake News

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

  1. Look at this crowd. Nobody’s ever seen a crowd like this. And they won’t show this – the fake news back there. They never show it. What they’ll do – and they’re really… I call them the enemy of the people and I really think it’s true. It is true. What they’ll do is take a photo of a single empty seat and they’ll say “Trump didn’t fill the arena.” And the reality is we’ve got people lined up outside begging to get in. Hundreds of people. Can you believe it? They lie like dogs.
  2. Every single President on Mt. Rushmore… now here’s what I’d do. I’d ask whether or not you think I will someday be on Mt. Rushmore, but, but here’s the problem. If I did it joking, totally joking, having fun, the fake news media will say, “He believes he should be on Mt. Rushmore.” So I won’t say it, OK? I won’t say it. But every President – they’ll say it anyway, you watch, tomorrow. “Trump thinks he should be on Mt. Rushmore. Isn’t that terrible?” What a group. What a dishonest group of people.
  3. I’ve got to interrupt. You know, the fake news will say, “Oh, he goes from subject to…” No, that’s -you have to be very smart to do that. You got to be very smart. It’s called… you know what it is? It’s called spot-checking. You’re thinking about something when you’re talking about something else, bop bop bop bop bop bop bop, and then you get back to the original. And they go, “Holy shit. Did you see what he did? That’s ama…” It’s called – it’s called intelligence.

Mark got it wrong again this week, and is on 51%!

 

The Presidential Records Act is not a logical fallacy

We talked about one of Trump’s favorite defenses against accusations he stole classified documents.

 

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

  • We’re just hours away from Trump’s first criminal trial in Manhattan and the former guy is eager to get going so that he can prove his innocence. Oh no, wait, he’s spent the past week in a panic doing everything he can to delay or dismiss because he knows he’s going to lose. Of the many motions Trump’s lawyers filed, a few were dealt with by Judge Merchan himself. He turned down a request to delay the trial because of negative pretrial publicity, arguing that the publicity isn’t going away, and that Trump himself was responsible for most of it. He dismissed Trump’s attempt to delay the trial until the Supreme Court rules on presidential immunity because they left it till the last minute and also several of the crimes in question happened before he was President. Merchan also refused a motion to recuse himself, just like he did when Trump’s lawyers filed the same motion back in August. The New York Appeals court has also been busy refusing Trump’s motions, starting with one on Monday asking them to delay the trial while they consider his request to have the trial moved out of Manhattan on the grounds that the jury pool has been polluted by news coverage of Trump’s other legal cases. Where could they move it to where nobody’s heard what’s going on with Trump you ask? He suggests Staten Island, where he won in both 2016 and 2020, not that nasty Democrat Manhattan area. On Tuesday, the appellate court turned down his request to delay the trial while he appeals the gag order that prevents him from going after court personnel and their families. Merchan expanded the gag order when Trump kept attacking his daughter. Incidentally, in our last episode, I incorrectly said she had posted anti-Trump memes on her social media, but it turned out that wasn’t her account. Sorry about that! And on Wednesday, another appellate judge refused his final request to delay the trial while he appeals Merchan’s rulings on immunity and recusal. So that’s it – he’s out of delays and it’s time for 12 New Yorkers to be chosen who will decide whether millions of people will be voting for a convicted felon in November.  
  • When you’ve gone into the religion bizness huckstering the word of Gaaad you get to make proclamations about the Lawd like you’re an insider – a member of the holy Quadrinity you know? So when last Friday, the White House issued a proclamation recognizing the Sunday of that weekend as Transgender Day of Visibility and called on Americans to “join us in lifting up the lives and voices of transgender people throughout our Nation and to work toward eliminating violence and discrimination based on gender identity.” You know like they do every March 31st since Biden came to office, apostles of God’s representative on earth – no not the hippy kid with the beard and the wet soles of his feet – his holiness the Dope Donald Trump took to the socials angry! House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) accused the White House of having “betrayed the central tenet of Easter — which is the resurrection of Jesus Christ.” “Banning sacred truth and tradition — while at the same time proclaiming Easter Sunday as ‘Transgender Day’ — is outrageous and abhorrent. The American people are taking note” Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt called on Biden “to issue an apology to the millions of Catholics and Christians across America who believe Sunday is for one celebration only — the resurrection of Jesus Christ.” Though why she distinguished catholics and christians is beyond me and probably her. The banning Mike Johnson referred to is probably to do with the long-running Easter tradition in which children of National Guard members submit decorated eggs to be displayed at the White House. Rules have been in place courtesy of the American Egg Board for 45 years and include that designs must not include any questionable content, religious symbols, overtly religious themes, or partisan political statements.” So those that do aren’t allowed in – yeah same rules under Trump of course. Meanwhile Senator Raphael Warnock (yes Democrat) reminded us that “Jesus centered the marginalized, he centered the poor. And in a moment like this, we need voices, particularly voices of faith who would use our faith not as a weapon to beat other people down, but as a bridge to bring all of us together.” Meanwhile Joe went to church on Easter Sunday – Trump didn’t – hates it when that collection plate comes round!
  • As Ebony and Ivory taught us, there is good and bad in everyone, and I think it’s important to remember that even someone like Donald Trump has value. For example, without Trump, Peter Navarro and Allen Weisselberg wouldn’t be in prison right now. On top of that, he’s making millions of assholes poorer, both gradually, by continually grifting them for donations, and incredibly quickly, by convincing them that Trump Media is a great investment. The company, which owns Truth Social, began trading on the Nasdaq on March 26th and the share price quickly spiked to $79.38. Since Trump owns nearly 80 million shares, this meant his stock was worth around $6 billion, and meant that for the first time he made it onto the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, a ranking of the world’s 500 richest people. Heavily invested followers cheered him on, mocked anyone who’s ever laughed at his business acumen and posted gloatingly on social media about being tired of winning. It didn’t last. The share price plummeted day after wondrous day, assisted by financial disclosures that revealed Truth Social made $4 million in revenue last year but lost $58 million. Last Tuesday, having lost more than $3 billion of his personal wealth in just over a week, Bloomberg kicked Trump off the Billionaires Index, and it just kept on going down. The price dipped below $31 a share on Friday before closing at $32.59 – another half a billion dollar loss for Trump. I’m really enjoying watching him lose vast amounts of money in real time, but the best thing is that no matter how bad it gets, thanks to a six month lock-up period he can’t sell any of his shares until late September so I get to keep hitting refresh and laughing all summer long.
  • Jim Jordan, who heads the House Judiciary Committee and its subcommittee on “the weaponization of the federal government,” continues to “weaponize the power of the federal government”. He’s getting a bit miffed that big companies are not advertising on his dear friend Donald Trump’s social media platform Truth Social. Of course according to Jordan it’s nothing to do with protecting the reputational harm and brand safety of long-established international hard-won-credibility-and-customer-loyalty on the part of the likes of Procter and Gamble when choosing not to advertise to conspiracy theorist nutjobs secure in the business knowledge that most people are actually turned off by conspiracy theory nutjobs and get a negative impression of advertisers who cater to them. Advertising companies speaking up and suggesting “hey, maybe we shouldn’t help fund websites pushing fascist ideology, or pushing the drinking of bleach as a healthcare solution” Jordan is pretending violates the law sending missives out saying “The World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) through its GARM initiative may be acting inconsistent with U.S. antitrust laws and congressional intent by coordinating GARM members’ efforts to demonetize and eliminate disfavored content online.” If nothing else it’s a way of spending citizens tax dollars that would otherwise go on soap and washing powder, and is sure to please cash-strapped Trump. So well done you Jim Jordan!
  • Since Easter, Trump has compared himself to Jesus, Nelson Mandela and his old favorite, Abraham Lincoln. I’m not sure the Mandela story is a close parallel to the possibility of being thrown in jail for continually attacking the family of a judge overseeing the case where he falsified business records to cover up the hush money payments he paid to a porn star so voters didn’t find out he slept with her while his wife was at home with their new baby, but the Lincoln comparison has never been as relevant as last week, when, thanks to Trump, the Arizona Supreme Court was able to take women’s reproductive healthcare all the way back to 1864. Following the Dobbs decision, the ruling allows Arizona to enforce a 160 year old ban on all abortions unless the pregnant person’s life is at risk. When the law was written, Arizona wasn’t a state yet, slavery was still legal, women couldn’t vote, the age of consent was ten years old, and doctors were undecided on the germ theory of disease, but many of them were still convinced their main job was balancing peoples fucking humors. The timing couldn’t have been much worse for Trump, coming just one day after he disappointed his more rabid anti-abortion followers by walking back his promise to sign a federal abortion ban given the chance, with a video on Truth Social saying it’s up to the states to decide. A state then decided and he didn’t miss a beat before saying they’d gone too far.
  • Okay so Democrats didn’t control where Easter fell – long established church deference to math charts and moon phases and weirdly non-christian planetary astronomical stuff involved, nor of course do Republicans control solar eclipses, howeeeevveeeerrr…. Julie Green a charismatic preacher and self-styled prophet who claims to channel God on the daily, bringing “divine” news to a devoted following from a home studio in Iowa had special guest on her show on April 4th – prophetic guest named Larry Ballard — who claims he “died in 1968,” returning to life after a serious accident with supposed heavenly insight — I checked but he doesn’t appear to be Paul McCartney’s stand-in – together they unpacked the spiritual symbolism of the coming eclipse. They were quite taken with the fact that the path of totality crossed Eagle Pass in Texas (and a great swathe of the planet over thataway – a lot of it water but I digress) “There’s no coincidence about Eagle Pass,” Green said. “God is saying they can’t pass through Me. Because He is our line of protection. God is our border. He’s our refuge. He is our fortress. And God is saying no one can get past Me.”  The higher power that Green and Ballard exalt is markedly aligned with the MAGA agenda — and less so the words of Exodus or Matthew that exhort the faithful to not oppress the foreigner and to welcome the stranger. Ballard indeed goes so far as to say “Donald Trump is God’s anointed,” adding that Trump is on a divine mission: “He’s going to close that border; he’s going to drill.” “God is saying this is a time of call of repentance, as a nation,” Green interpreted. “It is simply telling America: Hey, X marks the spot.” All dismissable crackpot stuff except Green has the ear of people Trump has promised to appoint to positions of power and prominence in a prospective second term in the White House. On April 5th Gen. Michael Flynn was on the show displaying a military-industrial sense of piety: “As I’ve always told you, Julie, prayer is still the most powerful weapon system known to man.” And I thought my idea that rhinos would stampede through Mar-a-Lago Jumanji-like cos of the eclipse was a bit tonto!! 
  • Scrabble has gone woke according to Fox News. Yes, it may be hard to work out exactly how a game that lets you make any word you like could be woke, but dammit Jeanine Pirro and Greg Gutfeld will find a way! The facts are that Mattel is releasing a new version in Europe which, as well as the original (and awesome) game, by flipping the board upside down you get an extra, new game which is more collaborative rather than competitive. There’s still a winner and a loser despite Greg’s claims to the contrary, but instead of getting scores for words, you win by completing challenges like ‘expand a word already on the board’ or ‘play a word with only one consonant’. Naturally, according to Fox this is not only a sign that young people are stupid and too soft, but, says Greg, “playing a game without scoring… is anti-human” – presumably Greg has never played hide and seek, Risk, chess, Jenga, tag… I’ll tell you one game he admits he’s never played – Scrabble. Jeanine goes on to complain that “They have removed certain words… but there are also new words that the woke generation would be very comfortable with.” Again, since it’s just a bag of letters, it’s pretty hard to remove words, but Jeanine clarifies that they banned racist and LGBTQ slurs from tournaments. This is true, but it happened back in 2020 and I don’t hear her complaining that you can’t play razzmatazz because there’s only one Z and two blanks, or gastrointestinal because the board’s only 15 tiles long. Maybe she just really wants to play slurs. Well don’t worry Jeanine, you can still play them all you like at home, and if you can convince Greg to play, he’ll probably teach you some new ones. But what about those new woke words that have been added? Well, that was back in 2022 when the Scrabble dictionary was last updated and some of the new words were things like bae, stan and zoomer. So not woke words as such, just words that young people understand, which is basically the same thing! Bloody woke young people and their toxic having fun playing collaborative games together!
  • You know when you get those messages from someone called oh I dunno Charlie or Abi on Whatsapp and it comes with the female equivalent of a dick pic and a lot of emoji’s and “hey sexy call me…” and you know how those of us who grew up with computers know how to deal with them cos we learned all about those Nigerian princes wanting to get our bank details so they can deposit 400 million pounds in it, and we’ve seen reruns of that Monty Python Blackmail game show sketch when they reveal compromising pictures of notable public officials until they call into the show and pledge money, well poor old William Wragg MP (no not old he’s 37 – so he’s as old as Microsoft Excel 2.0, GIF and VGA) got taken in by a Grindr scam sending dick pics to people who threatened to publish them unless he gave them other government staff’s numbers. So of course, mindful of the highest level of security surrounding government issued devices, he quote “gave them some numbers, not all of them.” So he’s resigned the whip and can no longer represent the Tory party – he didn’t get bunged out of the party nor got asked to resign as an MP, cos the official line, as ever, was ‘he’s apologised, and he’s going to step down at the next election and who wants yet another pesky by-election just before a general election’ – yeah tsk what were we thinking! In not being drawn on why he didn’t bung Wragg out for being a security-breaching idiot – you know the thing Suella Braverman resigned over in order to leave Liz Truss’ cabinet, Rishi minded everyone to be vigilant against cyber-attacks ‘that threaten our democracy’. Cos, you know, keeping apologetic security-breaching Wragg as vice-chair of the Tories’ backbench 1922 Committee and chairman of the Commons Public Administration Committee, and re-employing Suella Braverman in exactly the same Home Secretary role six days after she’d resigned under Truss is not threatening our democracy. As Jacob Grees-Blobb said in attempting to discredit the ECHR, “Courts don’t hold governments to account voters do” Yeah except governments aren’t above the law – and if you don’t give the voters a chance to show just how much they’re are sick to the back teeth of you cos you control the election date Rishi – then where’s the democracy and accountability? In the oft quoted (by Tories) words of Oliver Cromwell, “You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go.”

 

Create your podcast today! #madeonzencastr

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:

Moral Equivalence (Redux) – FT#147 Transcript

 

Jim: Hello, and welcome to fallacious Trump, the podcast where we use the insane ramblings of Mrs Goutfire 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 taking another look at this week is moral equivalence. Mrs Goutfire. It just conjures up overdressed, over made up, stumbling, circulation sorcerer. Perfect.

Jim: So, yeah, moral equivalence. This was the third episode we ever did, way back in 2018. So, yeah, we’re having another look at it with some more up to date examples and our new perspectives gained from years of doing this shit.

Mark: Now, I, know also, it’s. And I say every time we do these reduxes, you think, we’ve done that one. So we’ve cured the world of it.

Jim: Everyone will have stopped doing this by now, stopped using that, because we said, we mentioned it online.

Mark: Yeah. We’re preventing people one fallacy at a time.

Jim: Back in those days, we were getting maybe, like 50 or so listeners an episode. So, you know, wow, that’s gonna have a ripple effect that will stop people using these.

Mark: Yeah. So, hopefully our, we’re providing a service to be able to slowly chip away.

Jim: Definitely.

Mark: And eventually, everyone who makes these kind of mistakes will just die of old.

Jim: But no, these are just inherent to the human condition, and it’s worth learning about them so that you can try and be a bit less likely to do it, but we’ll never actually get.

Mark: Call them out. You can spot them happening.

Jim: Yeah.

Mark: And. And then. And nothing lay down and just let the outrageousness continue.

Jim: Yeah.

Mark: Yes.

Jim: So, yeah, moral equivalence fallacy is basically when people claim that two very different actions are just as bad as each other, often therefore providing some kind of COVID for their thing they did.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: Or someone that they like did by saying, it’s just, you know, it’s no different to what those. Those people did that you like.

Mark: Yeah, yeah. So there is a. There is a judgment going on. It’s nothing. Just what they’re doing is the same as what they’re accusing me of. There’s that moral aspect of, well, you say what I’m doing is bad. Look at, ah, them. You’re adding in a, moral bit, which might not necessarily be applicable.

Jim: Yeah. And often it’s kind of suggesting hypocrisy in some way. It’s suggesting that people are treating you or your allies differently to how they would treat people who they agree with.

Mark: Right.

Jim: So in our first example from Trump, he’s talking about the January 6 insurrectionists and how they’ve been treated by the Department of Justice.

Donald Trump: And those people are being treated, many of them are being treated unbelievably unfairly. Compare that to what happened in the riots where black lives matter and antifa killed people. They killed people.

Jim: So did they, though. Well, people, yes, there were a few deaths in the summer 2020 protests. Yeah. You know, there was also looting and property damage and stuff like that. It did happen. As we’ve discussed, the leftist framing that the protests were mostly peaceful, which is much derided by the right, is largely accurate in as much as there were around 2400 protest events tracked by acled, and around 200 of them, less than 10%, around 7% involved some violence or property damage. So mostly peaceful, meaning well over 90% didn’t involve any property damage even at all or any violence. And the protests that did turn violent in some cases were due to perhaps overzealous policing or counter protesters who were also violent.

Mark: Yep.

Jim: That’s not to say that none of the people who were protesting on the side of BLM got violent. That did happen.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: But, suggesting that protesting for the right for black people not to be killed by the police.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: And attacking the seat of government based on a lie about which guy what?

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: are not the same. Suggesting, though those things are the same, is not logical, doesn’t follow, isn’t proper cognitive reasoning, and suggesting that also the people who did the insurrection are being treated unfairly. And the BLM protesters, look at what they did. They did the same, basically the same stuff, just as bad stuff and got away with it. Like weren’t treated poorly. That’s just not true. Even they didn’t do the same stuff, the motivation for doing the stuff they did was dramatically different.

Mark: And the amount of stuff that was done that led to violence was 90% less.

Jim: Yeah. I mean, you could definitely say that it was a minority of the people involved in the January 6 insurrection who were violent. I think that’s probably fair that there was a much m higher percentage of those people who, you know, they trespassed, they went through Congress, they went through broken windows and doors and stole stuffs, in some cases, wiped feces on the walls, you know, did property damage and things like that, but some didn’t. And the people who actually were violent was probably a minority. So in that sense, it may not be a terrible comparison, but suggesting that the BLM protesters got away with it essentially got away with all the bad stuff that happened. Absolutely not true.

Mark: Guys didn’t. Yeah.

Jim: There were around 14,000 arrests just in the first month of the BLM protests, and a lot of those, not the majority, but there were well over 300 that went to trial and resulted in convictions. And the average length, of time that those people ended up spending in prison was 27 months over two years. By comparison, of the 749 federal defendants as of January this year who have had their cases adjudicated related to January 6, around 467 were sentenced to periods of incarceration, of which the average was 48 days.

Mark: Whoa. What?

Jim: So, quite a lot less m than two years plus.

Mark: Yeah. It arguably sustains the principles that the BLM protests were protesting.

Jim: Arguably. Yeah, yeah. That the largely white January 6 insurrectionists have been treated differently to the largely black BLM protesters, but not the way Donald Trump thinks.

Mark: Yes, yes.

Jim: So our second example is a pretty fucking blatant one, because it is from a reply to a tweet by Alexander Vindman, who tweeted after Putin murdered Alexey Navalny. He said, navalny was murdered by Putin. This needs to be called what it is. Condolences to Alexis family and Dinesh D’Souza, our, ah, good friend, replied to Vindman’s tweet saying, navalny equals Trump. The plan of the Biden regime and the Democrats is to ensure their leading political opponent dies in prison. There’s no real difference between the two cases.

Mark: Wow.

Jim: Yeah. Wow.

Mark: There’s no real difference.

Jim: There are some differences, if you really think about it.

Mark: Yeah. When you come to think of it. Yes.

Jim: For example, the fact that Navalny didn’t commit any crimes and was put in prison for being Putin’s political opponent.

Mark: Yes.

Jim: And then was killed in prison. By comparison, Trump committed lots of crimes, and the process of bringing him to justice has been incredibly carefully and time consumingly done. He hasn’t seen justice yet, and every indication is that they are taking their extreme care to make sure that it is done, in a way that is responsible and fits with the law.

Mark: Yes. And the accusation that they’re doing it from political motivations can’t be leveled.

Jim: I mean, it is being leveled, but it’s not. Is disingenuous at best.

Mark: Yes.

Jim: Yeah.

Mark: Yeah. Wow.

Jim: Speaking of disingenuous people on Twitter, ABC News analyst Matthew Dowd tweeted in November of 2016. This tweet was subsequently deleted because he was called out on it by basically everyone. He tweeted. Either you care both about Trump being a sexual predator and Clinton’s emails, or you care about neither, but don’t talk about one without the other, because those are the same.

Mark: Those are the same, basically, no real difference.

Jim: Openly boasting about grabbing women by the pussy. it’s the same as using a private email server.

Mark: It’s just as bad. It’s just. It’s just as morally wrong. Yeah, yeah.

Jim: So I personally, that it is reasonable to think both of those things are not great, but prefer someone who was a bit careless with her emails to someone who attacks women.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: I think of, the two. I know which one I would. I would be more willing to forgive in terms of if I had to vote between them.

Mark: Yes. I’d be less outraged by when it came to the polling booth. Yes, exactly.

Jim: And I don’t feel like you have to bring them both up.

Mark: Either that or you’ve got to care about neither of them.

Jim: Yeah, yeah.

Mark: You’re not allowed to care more about one than the other or less about one. You have to care about them equally or not at all.

Jim: Yeah. Because either your candidate is perfect or you can’t say anything negative about the other candidate. That’s essentially what this boils down to.

Mark: Yeah, yeah.

Jim: And now is the time, I think, for Marx.

Sheila Fogarty: British politics corner.

Mark: Well, I thought for once that we’d start out quite light. So here’s LBC’s Sheila Fogarty in June 2023, talking about Rishi Sunak’s silence on Boris’s fate at the hands of the select committee, looking into whether he had misled parliament, which he had.

Shelagh Fogarty : I just think it is unbelievable that one of the most serious sets of sets of findings against a british prime minister, Boris Johnson, how can the current prime minister not have anything to say about that, of any meaning about the committee’s findings? I just. I mean, it’s the moral equivalent of hiding in the fridge, isn’t it?

Mark: So this. So that’s. Which is referring to the day that Boris Johnson hid inside industrial refrigerator a m milk m bottling plant in Yorkshire to avoid being interviewed on good morning, Britain in 2019. In the lead up to the election in December that year, whether Boris actions were a moral standpoint, because at that time, we’d not even had Covid or wallpaper gate or party gate or misleading parliament. We had had illegally proroguing parliament and all the other immoral nonsense that Boris drags around with him like pig pen out of peanuts, cloud of dirt, whenever he moves. So, drawing a moral equivalence, one would have to have a, noticeably morally dubious position to compare things to.

Jim: I mean, cowardice. Is cowardice a moral issue? Arguably, that’s what Boris was displaying in avoiding being asked hard questions by not particularly tough journalists at, good morning Britain. They’re not exactly Pulitzer winners, are they? Morning television.

Mark: Well, it was Piers Morgan.

Jim: Yeah, exactly.

Mark: Debbie McGee. So, drawing a moral equivalence, you need a noticeably morally dubious position to compare things to. Otherwise it’s fantastic. Speaking of which, our second example, Rishi Sunak on the 1 march made a speech on the steps of number ten the day after George Galloway got elected in Rochdale for the Workers Party of Britain. George campaigned in opposition to the government and the opposition. So the Labour party stance on supporting Israel’s actions in Gaza, Sunak’s speech opens up with a trio of guilt by associations similar in unfoundedness to his recourse to using Corbyn to smears Starmer. And then he goes on to. To a multi layered, I am going to argue, set of moral equivalencies.

Rishi Sunak: Last night, the Rochdale bar election returned a candidate who dismisses the horror of what happened on October 7, who glorifies Hezbollah and is endorsed by Nick Griffin, the racist former leader of the BNP. I need to speak to you all this evening because this situation has gone on long enough and demands a response, not just from government, but from all of us. Since October 7, there have been those trying to take advantage of the very human angst that we all feel about the terrible suffering that war brings to the innocent, to women and children, to advance a divisive, hateful ideological agenda. Membership, ah, of our society is contingent on some simple things, that you abide by the rule of law and that change can only come through the peaceful democratic process. Nearly everyone in Britain supports these basic values, but there are small and vocal hostile groups who do not. Islamist extremists and the far right feed off and embolden each other. They are equally desperate to pretend that their violence is somehow justified when actually these groups are two sides of the same extremist coin.

Mark: So despite George and the Workers Party of Britain abiding by the peaceful democratic process to bring about change, that is through the ballot box, because he won. We have this weird equivalence because Galloway doesn’t support Israel’s actions in Gaza. Suddenly we have a nationwide problem with extremism.

Jim: Both sides extremism as well. Not just.

Mark: Oh, yeah, yeah.

Jim: Not just the extremism we actually have a problem with.

Mark: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes, exactly. We’ll come to that. What he’s doing is making the election of George Galloway something that does not abide by the simple, simple values of british society, that somehow it’s not right to enlighten mp on a one themed protest vote. When Galloway won, he stood up and said, this is for Gaza. So it’s like a one issue protest sing which ignores the vote Tory to get Brexit done. One issue election 2019, by the way, and consequently, this is not abiding by those simple values of democracy, democratic process in Britain. And thus this is a vocal and hostile group. Then layering the equivalence that pro palestinian protesters, including Galloway, are people trying to take advantage of the angst felt around Israel’s war in Gaza and are thus islamist extremists, and that they are as extreme as right wing extremists, aka nazis, possibly. So there’s these weird multi bits of equivalence going on in there. And of course, this also glosses over the rise of the hateful and divisive policies from the same prime minister who made sue Allah Bravaman his home secretary. Bravaman called the pro Palestine. Yes, he called the pro Palestine processors hate marchers and was sacked after she criticized the police for being too lenient towards those pro palestinian protesters. And as a result of what she said, right wingers defended the cenotaph on Armistice Day against the palestinian mobile. The pro palestinian marchers peacefully marched about a mile away. And Sunak also made Lee Anderson his party’s deputy chairman. Lee Anderson had the whip removed, in effect, sacked from the Tory party for saying that Sadiq Khan had sold out London to his islamist mates.

Jim: I think part of this is an Overton window issue.

Mark: Ah, yeah.

Jim: Because you could plausibly make an argument that there are equivalencies, not that they are necessarily equivalent, but that actually extremists on both sides could be seen as equivalent. Those. Those who think that killing other people for your cause is perfectly fine, for example. and there are those on both sides. However, what they’re doing is defending extremists on the right who are essentially committing genocide and calling people who are anti genocide extremists.

Mark: Yes, yes.

Jim: Which is very weird.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: If you call them extremists, you can say they’re as bad as the extremists on your side, who you, who you are currently defending.

Mark: Yeah. Because that’s the point of calling somebody an extremist, is to make them have. They’re having extreme views. And you might be, you could be right that the Overton windows moved so far over to be able to support genocide in committing.

Jim: Well, especially when the people who are controlling the conversation, the people in power, essentially, who are saying, this is how I define these people, essentially. That’s. I mean, it may be not the Overton window as a whole of society deeming what’s okay to say and not say, but it’s. It’s at least in that conversation that they are having at the time. Yeah, there’s a mini Overton window, I think, that is. Yeah, they’re redefining the sides of it. And what’s outside the window of acceptability.

Mark: And of course, anything that is outside of the window of acceptability. So anything that doesn’t contain Suella Bravman and Lee Anderson are extremists. And it was just the oddest thing. He came out apropos of nothing, apropos of George Galloway doing what he’d done twice before. He did it once under Blair and, said, this is for Iraq. To crystallise a protest vote in a democratic election process is now an extreme act. Of course, it wasn’t when the leave vote went through, when that, you know, it wasn’t there. No, because that’s Tory party policy. So, you know, it’s Tory party policy is to defend Israel’s right to defend itself. And anyone that disagrees with that is.

Jim: A hate marcher defending Israel’s right to defend itself. I keep feeling when that comes up, a great example of an iron man fallacy.

Mark: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jim: Because when they are literally defending their right to do it, however the fuck they do it, no matter what horrific means they use to defend themselves and then say, oh, I’m just defending their right to defend themselves. You know, you wouldn’t want them not to be able to defend themselves, would you?

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: You’re so iron man in your own argument and saying, look, this is a completely perfect and normal reasonable argument you couldn’t possibly disagree with, but they’re defending all kinds of horrific war crimes.

Mark: Yeah. So if you protest against that, then you’re labeled as extreme as the extremists that you’re accusing extremism of. So in commentary of this on Talk TV, which is another right wing talk channel with tiny audience, they missed the point altogether. They missed that point. That the equivalent is to, you know, to make these peaceful protesters the moral equivalent of war criminals. Yeah, they missed that point. And Sam Armstrong, who describes himself as a journalist and commentator, is just basically a right winger for money.

Jim: you don’t know, he might be a right winger in his spare time. Too.

Mark: Ageful in my spare time. Yeah.

Mark: Exactly. Yeah. He might do as a hobby. Yeah. A bit of a bus holiday. Yeah. Turning up and shouting, when you do.

Jim: What you love, you never work a day in your life.

Mark: Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, that’s right. So here he is on talk tv making a different weird equivalent.

Sam Armstrong: This country has an unofficial blasphemy code which says if you’re going to say something about Islam, you have to say something about the far right. Yes, there is a small, very small, comparatively pocket of far right extremists that are, that have grown in recent years. We have a terrorist problem in this country and overwhelmingly it is from the islamist community, Islamists, those that want to make Islam the political basis of our country. And it has got dramatically worse in recent months. And weekend after weekend, they are marching through London and cities across this country, making the jewish residents of those places feel terrified to walk out. And instead, what does the prime minister of this country do when he’s giving a speech faced with this enormous sudden, insurgency? He has to create a false moral equivalency. It’s disgusting. It’s an infection that runs through the metropolitan elite that I’m afraid are still governing the vast bulk of institutions in this country.

Mark: So he manages to throw in metropolitan hero course, which you kind of go, oh, he is a conspiracy theorist after all. Yeah, you got it. But he kind of. So I’m not sure what the false moral equivalency he accuses the prime minister of making. Is he making an equivalency? It’s a false moral equivalency to liken right wing thugs with islamist extremists. Is that the false moral equivalency though, these right wing thugs? Yeah, we’ve got a problem with it. It’s growing a little bit, but they’re not as bad as his massive m insurgents.

Jim: That is what he’s saying. Yeah, I feel like you’re saying that mockingly, but yes, that’s exactly what the right wing extremists that we have are not as big a problem as the Islamists.

Mark: Yeah. So what you’ve got to do is make the Islamists an enormous problem, you know, such that London is a no go area because he’s been sold out by Sadiq Khan to his islamist mates. And, so I was thinking, well, okay, who. Who are these islamist extremists that are descending on London weekend after weekend? Oh, it’s the same peaceful pro palestinian protesters making jewish citizens lives of misery, which is kind of, odd because Hackney MP Diane Abbott pointed out that groups of jewish people join regular London marches in solidarity with Palestinians. And she said, you know, it’s nonsense that pro palestinian marches make London a no go zone for Jews. Blocks of Jews. Every march is complainers that don’t like the cause. And Reuters have published many pictures of pro Palestine protesters being hugged by smiling orthodox hasidic Jews. It’s perfect photography because the hasidic Jews have got a particularly representation, very identifiable as a visual representation of the jewish community in north London.

Jim: Yes.

Mark: And the fact that they are present, standing next to somebody who looks very arabic and very palestinian, smiling, shaking, hands, hugging, gives the lie to the Tory party line that the peaceful anti war in Gaza protesters are, islamist extremists. And we know that’s the party line because Robin Simcox, the UK’s counter extremism tsar, who oddly looks like Martin Sheen playing an actual tsar, said recently, rather oddly, phrasingly, we will not have become an authoritarian state if London is no longer permitted to be turned into a no go zone for jews every weekend. It’s one. Yeah. So, so we will have become an authoritarian state if London.

Jim: We keep allowing. Yeah. To be a no go zone, which it isn’t.

Mark: No. Yeah, it isn’t. It’s not. Yeah. So that’s the party line. So what, Sam?

Jim: Well, hang on. how is that an authoritarian state?

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: If. If we allow. If we allow something authoritarian, m is mandating, something must or must not happen.

Mark: Yeah. Which is exactly what Suella Bravman wanted to do.

Jim: Yeah. Yeah. She wanted to mandate that they weren’t allowed to march.

Mark: Weren’t allowed to march.

Jim: Feels a little bit than allowing protest.

Mark: Yes, yes, yes. and that. And in doing so, Sadiq Khan has sold out to his islamist mates. You know, both Suella Bravman and Lee Anderson got fired from the Tory party for saying those things.

Jim: Yeah.

Mark: So how is Rishi able to stand outside and make this speech? He said, I’ve got, you know, George Galloway has wondez, this protest, and I’ve got to have this conversation with you because it’s all gone too far. The people that said that you fired them.

Jim: Yeah, but he didn’t. He didn’t say it in the same racist words. So, no, they’ve got a. They were fired for not hiding their racism better.

Mark: Yes. Yes. They were not allowed to. To retain their jobs because they didn’t.

Jim: Loud about it.

Mark: They would be. Yeah. Whereas he and you and you. Look at this thing, it is ten minutes long, this speech, and it’s just. It’s political word salad. Doesn’t say anything and it layers moral equivalency.

Jim: Ah.

Mark: One upon the other. I am going to cut it up and use it as an advert for the next outburst gig. See if I can get him to say outrageous things. More outrageous than he already has. Tom waits there with as bad as me. His famous moral equivalent track.

Jim: So in the fallacy in the world, we like to talk about the fantasy of the week from a non political perspective. And our first example this week comes from halt and catch fire, the period computer technology drama.

Mark: That’s weird. Hearing period and computer technology.

Jim: Yeah, well, it’s the start of the kind of development of home computer stuff that drives the narrative, really. So in this episode, Bosworth, who is, well, part owner, but also a classic salesman, heads to the home of one of their lapped subscribers to see if he can kind of turn them around and get their subscription back.

Bosworth: I’m head of customer satisfaction at a company called Mutiny. I just came by this morning to apologize to your son here about all our network hassles this week and see. What I can do to bring him. Back into the mutiny family.

Customer: Nothing. I’m the one that canceled the subscription, okay? He’s been racking up hundreds of dollars on my credit. Cardinal can’t remember the last time they. Had a friend home from school. I mean, you video game companies are no better than drug peddlers.

Mark: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jim: And Bosworth, being a, superb salesman, manages to talk this woman round by pointing out, or kind of letting her, figure out that actually her son doesn’t really have any friends at school, but he’s got loads of friends online thanks to their game, thanks to the community aspects of the service they provide. So. Yeah, but, you know, just as bad as drug peddlers because of the. Because of the transactions that they require and they just. Yeah, you get hooked and the addiction.

Mark: Yeah, yeah.

Jim: So our, second example comes from criminal minds, and this is quite a weird, because this is Agent Prentiss having a bit of a kind of existential crisis at the end of an episode. What’s up?

Emily Prentiss: Bobbie Baird asked me a question, sticking with me.

Derek Morgan: What was it?

Emily Prentiss: She asked me how they could do it, how those men could hunt, and kill people in the woods.

Derek Morgan: What’d you tell them?

Emily Prentiss: That they don’t think like we do. But the truth is that we do think like them.

Derek Morgan: Yeah, we do. Because it’s our job. We need to know how it feels.

Emily Prentiss: We hunt these people every day. The question is, how different are we.

Jim: Us and theme pretty fucking different. Because they are, hunting for fun and killing, whereas the FBI’s behavioral sciences unit are, hunting criminals to bring them to justice.

Mark: Yeah. To stop.

Jim: To stop them from killing people for fun. Yeah.

Mark: Kind of arbitrary murder. yeah. Do you think the script was written by a, serial killer? Yeah.

Jim: It’s really quite weird because, I mean, if you think about it for a second, it’s pretty fucking obvious that while, yes, part of the job they have to do to catch the bad guys is think like bad guys. That’s kind of the classic trope.

Mark: And then hunt them down and possibly engage in gun.

Jim: Yeah, and they. And yes, they hunt them all the time. And, I mean, this episode was about people who kidnapped people, released them into the woods, and then hunted them. So it’s like, that’s. It’s about the tracking people down and hunting them aspect of it.

Mark: Yeah. Yeah.

Jim: But still, the motivation is important also, what happens when you catch them. That’s quite important, too.

Mark: We’ll take them through the due process. They will point out that what they did, the bad guys, was bad.

Jim: you know, are we. Are we really any different to them?

Mark: Yeah, it’s that kind of the argument that brought about the end of the death penalty fundamentally, isn’t it? You know, we’ve got all these murderers, and then we are just organizationally, constitutionally murdering them.

Jim: And in fact, that’s a, that is such a trope that it has a page on tv tropes, which is don’t kill him. Then you’ll be just as bad as he is kind of thing. of people taking righteous revenge on murderous bastards who’ve done horrific things to them. So common in literature and in films and tv is some character saying, you know, you can’t, don’t do it. You’ll be, you’ll be just as bad as them. Which isn’t the same thing. It’s not the same to finally take revenge on your oppressor as it is to be the oppressor.

Mark: That’s the plot. Well, it’s basically the plot for death wish. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There it goes.

Jim: So, finally, in this section, we have a comic take on a very common advert that we used to get in the UK. An anti piracy ad that was on all vhs. Ah. And dvd’s that you would rent. And then, the it crowd did a jokey version of it.

Ad Voiceover: You wouldn’t steal a handbag, you wouldn’t steal a car, you wouldn’t steal a baby. You wouldn’t shoot a policeman and then steal his helmet. You wouldn’t go to the toilet in his helmet and then send it to the policeman’s grieving widow and, then steal it again. Downloading films is stealing. If you do it, you will face the consequences.

Roy Trenneman: Man, these anti piracy ads are getting really me.

Jim: So the first few lines of it were pretty much exactly the real ad. Ah, you wouldn’t steal a handbag, you wouldn’t steal a car. Downloading films is a crime.

Mark: It’s the moral equivalent of stealing a policeman’s helmet and defecating. Yeah, exactly the same.

Jim: Sending it to the policeman’s widow and then stealing it again.

Mark: Yeah, yeah. Ah. So, yeah, so if you face a consequence, you get. We’ll get shot by the, uh-huh. By the FBI. Yeah.

Donald Trump: So we’re gonna, we’re gonna 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: Because I’ve realized making me go through this time after time is as bad and as sadistic as making someone learn piano scales day after day for like, 10,000 hours just so that they can one day become a virtuoso at it and, like, really good. yeah, I see what’s happening now, and actually, I’m quite grateful.

Jim: This is training. That’s what this is.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: So our theme this week.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: Is fake news. And what fake news will say.

Mark: Oh, we’ve got a bit meta, huh?

Jim: Yeah.

Mark: Okay.

Jim: He likes to predict what the fake news will say about things that he has said or is doing right in the future, and then get very annoyed about the fake news in his imagination saying it.

Mark: Okay. Right, right. And even more annoyed when they don’t even bother reporting.

Jim: It doesn’t matter, because by then, he’s not at the rally anymore.

Mark: He’s done it.

Jim: So.

Mark: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jim: So, statement number one.

Mark: Uh-huh.

Jim: Look at this crowd. Nobody’s ever seen a crowd like this. And they won’t show this, the fake news back there. They never show it what they’ll do. And they’re really. I call them the enemy of the people, and I really think it’s true. It is true. What they’ll do is they’ll take a photo of a single empty seat and they’ll say, trump didn’t fill the arena. And the reality is, we’ve got people lined up outside begging to get in. Hundreds of people. Can you believe it? They lie like dogs.

Mark: I love that. When it goes, they call them the enemy of the people. And I really think it’s true. It’s true. It’s just gone from him making something up. I call on this, and to. It escalates by the end of two sentences. It’s a fact. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

Jim: Statement number two. Every single president on Mount Rushmore. Now, here’s what I’d do. I’d ask whether or not you think I’ll, someday be on M mount Rushmore. But. But here’s the problem. If I did it. Joking. Totally joking. Having fun, the fake news media will say he believes he should be on Mount Rushmore. So I won’t say it. Okay. I won’t say it. But every president, they’ll say it anyway. You watch tomorrow. Trump thinks he should be on Mount Rushmore. Isn’t that terrible? What a group. What a dishonest group of people.

Mark: Because the other thing he does is hides his absolute burning desire to be on Mount Rushmore by saying, so if I am joking, if I was totally joking, having fun, they would say he still believes he should be on Mount Rushmore, which he. Which he does. So he is that kind of, some sort of projection thing going there, and then he calls them for saying what he secretly desires. He calls them dishonest. Or they will say this about this.

Jim: Yeah, he calls them dishonest for, For saying it in his imagination, though.

Mark: Yes, exactly. Yeah.

Jim: He doesn’t wait for them to say it and then call them dishonest.

Mark: Yeah. He’s saying they are a dishonest, but it’s true. I think it’s true. It’s true. Yeah.

Jim: So statement number three.

Mark: Okay.

Jim: I’ve got to interrupt. You know, the fake news will say, oh, he goes from subject to. No, that’s. You have to be very smart to do that. You’ve got to be very smart. It’s called. You know what it is? It’s called spot checking. You’re thinking about something when you’re talking about something else. Bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop. And then you get back to the original and they go, Holy shit. Did you see what he did? That’s amazing. It’s called. It’s called intelligence.

Mark: They don’t, For one, they don’t say, that’s amazing. They go, That’s a sign of cognitive decline. Yeah. Holy shit. I don’t. Yeah. I can’t believe we’re buying this nonsense. Yeah. Okay, so now that, you see, I’m. To. My brain it is. It’s called intelligence. My brain is. Is running from. Okay, so is that now a very smartly written trump like thing, because it’s got the. He goes from subject to subject, which is the tell of a trump type thing, which indicates to me that that’s one that you’ve made up. But then that’s what I’m supposed to think, so I don’t know that it is. Oh, Mandy. Okay, so I think the number one, that’s just resoundingly true, but then that might be mean that it’s wrong as well. Okay. Okay. I’m gonna go with my gut, which is to say that number three is the one that you made up.

Jim: okay, so the other two, which are you more convinced by?

Mark: I think I’m more convinced by the look of this crowd, nobody’s number one.

Jim: Okay.

Mark: Any of the people really think it’s true is true.

Jim: And number one, the crowd think, yeah, it’s fake news.

Mark: Oh, fuck. Oh, man. How the mighty done. Yeah. What the fuck? Yeah.

Mark: Even convinced myself that that’s why that one should be served. Because it’s mild and. And solid and all that kind of realistic.

Jim: Ah.

Mark: that’s the equivalent of Boris’s non.

Jim: Shouting bad as Boris’s not shouting one. Yeah.

Mark: Yeah, man.

Jim: Yeah. yeah, that. That was, That was torture.

Mark: Oh, no, that does mean that the. No, that does mean that number three is real. No, that is awful.

Jim: That means number three is indeed real.

Donald Trump: I gotta interrupt. You know, the fake news will say, oh, he goes from subject to. No, that’s. You have to be very smart to do that. You gotta be very smart. It’s called. You know what it is called? Spot checking. You’re thinking about something when you’re talking about something else.

Mark: Up. Up.

Donald Trump: And then you get back to the original and they go, holy shit. Did you see what he did? That’s a. It’s called. It’s called intelligence.

Mark: Ah, I gotta interrupt. It comes in like, schnozzle. Gerante.

Jim: That’s him interrupting himself. Yeah, that’s. That’s who he has to interrupt. And that’s the point is he cannot make it through a thought. And, that’s called intelligence. That’s like a sign of how brilliant he is that he cannot finish a sentence without. Without getting distracted, like the dog from up and, saying something else.

Mark: Squirrel. Yeah. Wow. I got spat again. Yeah. Oh, man, it was. You see, it was so Trump.

Jim: Yeah.

Mark: That it was Trump.

Jim: Yeah.

Mark: Yeah, I.

Jim: And I. Thing is, I read that he’d said this, but they didn’t quote it exactly. And what they quoted, I thought, oh, this is brilliant. I have to use this. And then when I found the actual quote, it was way better than I even thought.

Mark: Yeah. Yeah. They hadn’t said that was.

Jim: Ah.

Mark: no, man, oh, man.

Jim: M. Yep, yep.

Mark: And that means. So, okay, then the thing about Mount Rushmore, that is also true.

Donald Trump: Every single president on Mount Rushmore. Now, here’s what I do. I’d ask whether or not you think I will someday be on Mount Rushmore. But no, but here’s the problem. If I did it. Joking. Totally joking. Having fun. The fake news media will say he believes he should be on Mount Rushmore.

Mark: So I won’t say it.

Donald Trump: Okay, I won’t say it. But every president, they’ll say it anyway. You watch tomorrow. Trump thinks he should be on Mount Rushmore. Isn’t that terrible? What a group. What a dishonest group of people.

Jim: What a dishonest group of people I just made up in my head. They’re really dishonest, the people I made.

Mark: Up, the fake news media, which doesn’t exist. It only exists in his head. If I did ask you that, people would say he thinks he should be on Batman. Well, why would you ask the question otherwise? It just tells lies. He just noticed lies. Yeah. And then blames other people who point out the fact that he’s telling lies. He will lie about the fact that they will point out that he’s telling lies and then decry them as dishonored people for pointing out, even though he’s just made up. Oh, my God. God. No wonder it’s hard to spot the one that you. Because they’re just. Ah. Fuck.

Jim: Well, yeah, it turns out number three is a popular choice among our social contestants.

Mark: It’s.

Jim: Yeah, so it’s.

Mark: Well, you knew it would be.

Jim: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, it’s a gift. Every now and again, you just come across one of those.

Mark: It’s gold every time. Yeah.

Jim: so Anders on Patreon says the, trip down. I’m sure I have this from memory Lane, where it’s all too easy to become the laughing stock. It’s only when you realize you’ve heard all three sometime long ago that the alarm burst off. Then it’s too late. What to do if found out? Delay, delay, delay. Therefore, I pick up. I pick number three to be fake. The only logical solution, because it puts off making a fool of myself. The longest.

Mark: One. Yeah, yeah. Feel your pain.

Jim: And Richard Thunder Hopkins says, tough one. I have to say, number three is fake news, but only because of the S bomb. I don’t think I’ve heard Trump swear at all. It offends the Bible bashing conservatives and also baby Jesus. Number three, you made up. To which Willem rightly points out, he curses like a sailor when not in front of the teleprompter. Yeah, he’s been doing more and more. There are findable clips of him at rallies and in front of crowds saying all kinds of swear words, so.

Mark: Yeah, wow. Yeah, wow.

Jim: Maybe I’ll do a compilation for 150. Yeah, but, yeah. And then will gave his own answer. He says, jesus Horatio Christ, the man’s a fucking buffoon. Number two is fake, is my guess. Sad.

Mark: Ah. Ah.

Jim: Renee Z says I’m going with three as fake news. He says, bing, bing, bing, bing. Not bop, bop, bop, bop, doesn’t he?

Mark: That’s true, yes.

Jim: My brain is scrambled. I’m finishing up my tax return, which is due on Monday.

Mark: Right. The thing which Trump hasn’t done for years.

Jim: Yeah. So, yeah, so on Facebook, Peter says, I so want three to be real. I mean, bop, bop, bop is priceless. Talk about insane ramblings of an orange pumpkin. Yeah. Andrew says, going with three because of how much coverage the bit bop boop garnered, and I’m pretty sure this isn’t where it came from. Maybe it was a different bitbop boop that you saw Andrew.

Mark: Oh, you won’t have said it just once. Yeah, yeah.

Jim: and Donna doesn’t technically make a guess, but just points out we need an exhausted emoji here in the US.

Mark: yeah, well, it’ll be a guy with a. With a really bad hair piece, wouldn’t it? Kind of orange. It being orange emoji.

Jim: That’s not an exhausted emoji. That’s something flesh would clive.

Mark: With the kind of air coming out.

Jim: So unfortunately, that means that you have nothing one time. Well, you’ve done. You won a couple of weeks ago, but, yeah, since your amazing run of like twelve in a row, you’ve picked the fake news twice as your most likely one, which I’m enjoying greatly.

Mark: Yeah, I know. Absolutely. Yeah. No, I know. Having, having had the. When we did the presto changeover swapped over version, it is, an addictive drug. It’s as bad as video games to write something that is so convincing, but also to find one that is so obviously fake looking that you can then sneak one in above it. man, I’m gonna have to listen to myself a bit more rather than go with my gut. My gut is useless. It’s stupid, it’s not smart at all.

Jim: Try your brain.

Mark: Yeah. Good intelligence. That’s called digestion, you fool.

Jim: Penfed free checking offers zero fees and zero balance requirements for zero hassle. Penfed access America checking lets you earn money on your balance for dreams big and small. Choose the best account for you and start making the most of your money. Learn more more@pennfed.org dot federally insured by NCUA. To receive any advertised product, you must become a member of Penn Fed credit Union. And it’s time for the part of the show that this week, at least, is called the Presidential Records act is not a logical fallacy. I was almost calling this, the presidential Records act is still not a logical fallacy because I’m sure we talked about it before, but I think it was in the context of the Clinton Sox case when.

Mark: Oh, yes, it was, because that was.

Jim: What led judicial watches. Tom Fitton to suggest to Trump that he could use the PRA as a defense in the Florida case where he’s accused of exactly what he did, which was taking lots of classified documents and presidential records to Mar a Lago.

Mark: Yeah, yeah. Which is nothing to do with presidential records.

Jim: Absolutely.

Mark: As a defense because he’s breaking the terms of the Espionage act?

Jim: Yes. Yeah. Because the thing that he’s been indicted on in Florida is largely on the Espionage act. That’s what 32 of the charges are, on individual documents that are classified. He’s still breaking the law on the non classified presidential documents that he took, but it’s the classified ones that they’ve kind of focused on, because that’s going to be easier. And it is based on the espionage act. And it’s the kind of willful retention and refusal to give them back when Nara asked for them over the course of a significant amount of time. And then I think there’s eight charges that are based, that are around obstruction on making false claims that he’d given all the classified documents back, hiding them from his lawyer and from Nara and the FBI and so on.

Mark: So his defense involves an interpretation of the presidential records, which in no way allows him to do what he wants.

Jim: Not in the slightest. The PRA, apart from anything else, is a civilization law and the espionage act as a criminal law. And it’s quite rare for a civil law to trump a criminal law.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: And also his interpretation of the PRA is exactly the opposite of what it actually, the PRA is like 180 degrees from what the entire law was created for, which was to, make it so that people like Nixon couldn’t just take stuff that was presidential.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: Say, this is mine, and then profit from it. And so Trump’s theory is that he totally gets to do that. He get, basically no one else other than the president can have any review ability of him saying, these things are not presidential records, they’re personal records. They’re mine, and I can do what I like with them. And that is true. That’s the exact reason the law exists in the first place. But crucially, it is nothing to do with this case. And none of the charges relate to or mention, none of the indictment mentions the presidential Records act, because that’s not what’s being raised. So this was a motion to dismiss that he or, his lawyers put into the Florida court in February, 22 February, and it was based on the fact that you should dismiss this case about all of these classified documents that I had, because actually, they’re my personal records. They’re not presidential records, they’re not classified documents. I declassified them with my mind, and they’re all personal.

Mark: Right.

Jim: And it’s fine.

Mark: He made some personal records because he, he had declassified them by acts of mind.

Jim: The argument was that he made them personal records. By dent, of just taking them to Mar a Lago. The act of doing that indicated that as far as he was concerned, they were personal records. And no one gets to say any different.

Mark: Yeah. The law about taking secret records away from the secret place, it’s an in breach of the espionage act when it only, when it applies to him as president.

Jim: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I, yeah.

Mark: Right. But only him. I don’t think that people, you know, if Biden gets reelected and they said, well, I can do that, then they’ll just go, no, you can’t do that. Well, only Trump can do that.

Jim: See, Trump’s idea, Trump’s theory is that Biden also did that. In fact, everyone does it.

Mark: Oh, yeah.

Jim: Because Obama did it even though he didn’t, and Biden did it even though he only did it a bit and then immediately gave them back as soon as they discovered that he had any.

Mark: Yeah. M, I didn’t try to.

Jim: It’s all the same.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: So Eileen Cannon, the judge in Florida, did not rule on that motion to dismiss.

Mark: Right.

Jim: This is leading up to this, this month. Now we’re in, we’re in April.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: And so still hadn’t ruled on his motion to dismiss based on the PRa, which is an obviously a nonsense request.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: And should have been ruled on pretty quickly. And she should have just said, no, this is nothing to do. That’s got nothing to do with this case. Absolutely. What she did instead was she asked the lawyers on both sides to give her proposed jury instructions in this case. There’s no, there’s not even a trial date for the case. Technically. It’s still scheduled for May. I think it’s May 25, I think. But, everyone knows it’s not going to happen then, because she’s been delaying, so there literally isn’t time to get all the stuff done. She’s got a backlog of rulings that she hasn’t made yet. So, it’s not going to happen in May. So we don’t know when the trial is going to happen. And jury instructions are a thing that in some jurisdictions, happens just before the trial starts. In a lot of places it happens during the trial because the jury instructions are given to the jury at the end of the trial before they go and deliberate. They’re the judge’s opportunity to explain some things to the jury that will help them to make their deliberations. So quite far out. At least two, months before the trial was due to take place, and it’s not going to happen then. She’s asked both sides to come up with jury instructions, but based on two very specific scenarios, not just general ones. She hasn’t said, kind of, you know, let me know what you think I should instruct the jury. She’s. She’s laid out two. Two scenarios, the first of which is the basis that the praenje gives the president the right to claim any documents he likes as personal at the end of his presidency, which is not what the PRA does. It’s the opposite of what the PRA does. The second scenario, you might think, would be the opposite of that. You know, write me a jury instruction based on the fact that that isn’t true. But no, the second one also misstates the law. The second one is she directed the parties to write instructions for a scenario in which the jury has to determine whether the documents Trump is accused of illegally retaining are presidential or personal. Each of the documents, each of the 32 counts. so that’s not what a jury does. A jury, specifically is a finder of fact. They do not rule on legal issues. They don’t decide legal things. The judge does that. That’s their job. The jury figures out what they reckon the facts were around the case. This, whether each of these records is a personal record or a presidential record is a legal issue. That is for the judge to decide, not the jury.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: So both of. Both of those scenarios are mad.

Mark: Yeah. So it’s only one pointed out the madness.

Jim: Oh, yeah.

Mark: What the fuck are you doing? Yeah.

Jim: Trump’s lawyers didn’t.

Mark: No, of course not. Know.

Jim: I mean, they kind of. Yeah, in a way, they kind of did. They wrote an instruction for the one that gets the jury to decide, but they. For the other one, they didn’t even bother writing an instruction. They basically said, well, if you were going to instruct them that the PRa lets the president claim documents are personal, you should just give us the case. You know, we win in that scenario.

Mark: Right.

Jim: So you should grant our motion to dismiss that we put in last, you know, in February.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: Whereas Jack Smith’s side, their response to it was a little bit more factual and yet legal, a little bit snarky, because they’re dealing with an incompetent judge and essentially Trump appointed. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So first of all, they said, okay, you have to rule on the motion to dismiss because we need to know if you believe that the PRA is a viable defense, because it shouldn’t even be brought up in this case. If you think it’s a viable defense, rule on that. And then if you rule against us, if you rule that it’s a viable defence, we can immediately go and appeal it to the 11th Circuit, which we will, because you’re wrong.

Mark: Yes.

Jim: And, they said it stems from a fundamentally flawed legal premise, so a bit more legally. But they said, yeah, you’re wrong if you think that. So tell us. Tell us that’s what you think and we’ll get it sorted out. We’ll go and tell.

Mark: Yeah, we’ll. Yes, or we’ll convince you that you’re wrong. No, we’ll show you that you’re wrong.

Jim: I mean, we already told you you’re wrong because we answered the motion to dismiss.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: So we’ve pointed out you’re wrong. You need to actually make a ruling. But then they suggested not two, but three different jury instructions. The first one was maybe tell the jury what the actual law is.

Mark: Oh, there you go.

Jim: You know, you could. You could correctly instruct them that the. This case has nothing to do with the Presidential Records act and he’s being indicted on the Espionage act, which is a criminal law, and the PRA has nothing to do with it. You could correctly do that. Or, since we’ve been instructed to give you instructions on these other two scenarios, you could lie to them and tell them that the PRA, gives Trump the right to decide to. You could do that. That would be wrong. You would be lying, but you could do that. Sure.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: You’re the judge. And for the other one, for the one where the jury gets to decide on each document, they basically said, here’s all of the laws that pertain to this and why this is wrong, and then you could say to them, despite all of that, I’m asking you to.

Mark: Decide, I should just say, yeah. Yeah.

Jim: So that.

Mark: It was quite kind of.

Jim: Yeah, it was quite snarky. So, following their submissions, Judge Cannon did rule on the motion to dismiss. She ruled in Jack Smith’s favor against Trump. She said, the presidential Records act does not provide a pre trial basis to.

Mark: Dismiss, but leaves that open to. You might be able to do it during a trial.

Jim: Absolutely. Which is way worse.

Mark: So it’s no ruling at all?

Jim: No, because if she had dismissed at this point, then Jack Smith could have gone to the 11th Circuit and said, this is clearly mad, and the 11th Circuit would have overturned it. But if she allows a jury to be seated once that happens, jeopardy attaches. So that means that whatever happens from that point on, if Trump is found innocent by the jury, you know, found not guilty by the jury. Orlando, if they reassert the motion to dismiss on the pra grounds. And at that point, she says, sure, why the fuck not? Case dismissed. Smith can’t do anything about it, can’t appeal. At that point, you can’t indict him again for the same crimes.

Mark: Yeah, yeah.

Jim: So it’s important that he gets an answer before the trial starts as to what is going to happen. So they, they said, basically, one of the parts of Jack Smith’s team’s response to the mad jury instructions question was to say, let us know what you think you’re going to say about this. You know, having given you our versions, tell us if you are going to say the jury can consider the PRA in their jury instructions, because we need to know that, and we need to be able to then appeal that. Obviously, they did it more legally than that. They said, you know, the government must have the opportunity to appeal pretrial. Her response to that was, she said, to the extent the special counsel demands an anticipatory finalization of jury instructions prior to trial, prior to a charge conference, prior to the presentation of trial defenses and evidence, the court declines that demand as unprecedented and unjust.

Mark: The fuck?

Jim: She brought it up.

Mark: She brought it up. Yeah.

Jim: She said, what should I say to the jury? Jack Smith said, well, here’s what you should say. Tell us what you’re going to say. And she was like, I’m not telling you what I’m going to say. That’s insane to ask me this.

Mark: So is there no way that we. That they can. We. They can get rid of her overseeing this thing?

Jim: Well, there’s a few options open to Jack Smith at this point, yeah. He could make a motion for her to recuse because she’s made of a few batshit rulings now. And George Conway, on his podcast said that according to discussions he’s had with people in that district, in that area, because 11th circuit covers, I think, Florida, Georgia, and Alabama, they kind of have an unwritten three strike rule where if you are, if you make a wacky decision, they’ll say, watch out. But if you make, three in the same direction that seem to benefit one side, they’ll have a conference and they’ll say, look, maybe we should give this to another judge. So that’s a possibility. She’s definitely done that by now, appointing the special master to look through the documents, and she’s done some wacky things that all seem to randomly favor Trump.

Mark: I don’t think it’s random. I think it’s.

Jim: So that’s a possibility, but it is hard to get a recusal based on bias. And so I think I probably Smith is gonna, is waiting for it to be just undeniably obvious that she is sticking her thumb on the scales.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: Which, you could argue we’re there, but probably he’s gonna give her a bit more rope. Some people have suggested that he could get a writ of mandamus, which basically it’s a court telling the judge, or I think, any federal employee to do their job to do. So maybe if she doesn’t rule on the jury instructions that she asked for, like, he’s not asking, he didn’t ask for final jury instructions. That would be mad at this point. He just asked if she’s going to include the pra in the jury instructions or, you know, if she thinks that it’s a viable thing. So if she doesn’t rule on that, theoretically, he could get the 11th Circuit to, to make her do that, to make her make that ruling. But I think, what is most likely, and I would say probably what he’ll do is a motion in limine about the pra. Specifically, a motion in limine is a pretrial motion to restrict a certain testimony. So, to keep something out of evidence being given in trial, and it is used by both sides. It might be used, for example, to remove some evidence which is prejudicial, wherever the usefulness of that evidence to prove something might not be as strong as its likelihood to prejudice the jury against someone. So that kind of thing might be excluded at trial. And there’s a danger if that’s brought up, even though the judge will then say, stop that, you’re not allowed. Strike that from the record. The jury still heard it. So there will often be a pre trial motion to say, no one’s allowed to talk about this stuff.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: So that would be the thing to make a motion to say, can’t even mention the Trump, can’t raise the pra as a, as a defense, and the judge can’t say, presidents are totally allowed to do this. Yeah, she would have to rule on that. if she didn’t rule on that and try to set a trial date and try to start jury selection or anything like that, he could then again get, a writ of mandamus to make her rule on that pre trial. So that, there is on the record something saying, yes, she thinks this is fine, or she won’t say anything about it. So it’s not the end of the world at this point, but what is being in some cases, reported as a win for the government in terms of. She’s ruled against the motion to dismiss and in favor of the government is not fully in his favour. It’s, leaving that option open for her to dismiss after jeopardy attaches at trial, which would be the end of the case.

Mark: End of the case, yeah. And it’s just so obviously and patently biased. Absolutely Trump, that, it’s. It’s appalling that you’ve got to find legal means to call that out rather than just to say, what the fuck are you doing?

Jim: It’s. It’s either obviously and blatantly in favor of Trump or she’s completely incompetent.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: And she’s a reasonably new judge. She’s only done like, five or six cases.

Mark: Right.

Jim: But prior to that, she was a lawyer.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: She must know the law to have.

Mark: Got that far, surely, to ev. Well, you know, we say that.

Jim: Yeah, yeah, yeah. One of the things that is most ridiculous, when Jack Smith gave this, this response to the request for jury instructions.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: It was seen by some, although it was quite respectful and well, very well legally written, it was understandably seen as a. As a smackdown on the judge.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: Basically telling her she didn’t know what she’s talking about. And Trump, who, as we know, is very respectful to judges as a whole.

Mark: Oh, yeah.

Jim: He said Jack Smith should be sanctioned or censured for the way he is attacking a highly respected judge, Eileen Cannon, who is presiding over his fake documents hoax case in Florida. He’s a lowlife who’s nasty, rude and condescending and obviously trying to play the.

Mark: Ref nice, which, weirdly, is exactly what Trump has done.

Jim: Absolutely.

Mark: On every other case that has been brought against him, because he thinks that everybody should bow down and allow him to do whatever he likes because he’s a baby.

Jim: Yeah.

Mark: Yeah. And he hasn’t quite made it through the terrible twos.

Jim: Also, we have the bond case, the one that he was originally to pay the $454 million bond and then it was reduced to 175 million. He posted that bond. But that actually, although it stopped Letitia James from being able to start proceedings to seize his properties, is not necessarily the end of the story.

Mark: Right.

Jim: Because Letitia James filed a notice of exception to the sufficiency of the surety.

Mark: So basically she’s saying this bond isn’t.

Jim: Worth the paper it’s written.

Mark: It’s. Yeah, it’s a worthless bond. Yeah.

Jim: And that’s partly because of the ambulance chaser equivalent bond guy that Trump went to, who is a guy called Mister Hankey, who I cannot think of without thinking. Mister Hanky the Christmas poo. Exactly.

Mark: Yes. Yeah. And he’s called Don Hanky. Don Hankeye. Yeah.

Jim: So mister Hanky the Christmas poo is, he’s a billionaire magadona for one thing.

Mark: Right.

Jim: He’s also a subprime auto loan provider. Right. So he will give money to people who can’t really afford to borrow money for a car. And then when they end up not being able to afford, the loan will come down on them hard and, and take their cars.

Mark: Basically. It’s a repo man.

Jim: Yeah.

Mark: Dangles it out, lures them in.

Jim: Yeah.

Mark: He’s a Venus flight of a loan.

Jim: Yeah.

Mark: So not somebody you would want to go to.

Jim: So his insurance company, who Trump supposedly got this bond from, first of all, when they put the paperwork in, they didn’t provide their financial statement initially. That was thought of as just an error. And it was sent back by the clerk of the court and said, you know, to be, to be correct.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: But it’s possible that they didn’t include it. Cause it shows that they don’t actually have the money to cover the bond.

Mark: right.

Jim: Or at least not according to New York laws. First of all, it’s not authorized in New York to issue surety bonds. So it can’t get a certificate from the New York Department of Financial Services, which is usually part of the package of the bond. So they didn’t provide a certificate saying that they’re able to do it. New York has laws about how much money state regulated surety companies can post on a single bond in terms of, percentage of their capital and surplus. So surplus, for an insurance company is all of their assets, minus all of their liabilities.

Mark: Yeah. Because you’ve got to be sure that if you’re posting a bond to provide the security that should they need to, they could come get the money. You’ve got to have the money available.

Jim: Yeah. So even if all of the people who you’ve insured suddenly need to claim on that insurance all at the same time.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: You need to be able to pay them all, which is the same reason that banks have to not be over leveraged. Because if there’s, if everyone decides to take their money out all at one go.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: Then you can’t say, well, I’m sorry, I don’t have it.

Mark: Your shoebox with your cash in it. We’re using it to build a hospital in Africa.

Jim: Yeah. And so that limit in New York is 10% of the firm’s capital and surplus.

Mark: Right.

Jim: And according to the financial documents that they did eventually put through, Knight specialty insurance have a $138 million surplus. The bond is $175 million.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: That’s more than 127% of their surplus.

Mark: Yes.

Jim: Which is a little bit more than ten.

Mark: Yeah. Yeah. By an order of magnitude.

Jim: Yeah.

Mark: Yes. Yeah. Okay.

Jim: Yeah. Mister Hankey, the Christmas pooh said that it’s, all right. Because I have this other company that has, like, a billion dollars.

Mark: Okay. Well, you know, and that’s a. I hope the people that heard that threw their hands in the air went, well. Yeah, you sound exactly like Trump. Yeah. I’ve got 500 million in cash. I just don’t want to. Yeah, I just can’t show you it. I’ve got a unicorn in my cupboard. You just can’t see it.

Jim: Yeah. So supposedly, Knight specialties parent company has a surplus of a billion, or a billionaire in equity, at least. But it’s not named on the bond paperwork. So that company wouldn’t be liable for the money.

Mark: Yes. Yeah.

Jim: So that it would only be night specialty insurance that would be liable for the bond.

Mark: And when they can’t come up with it. Well, yeah, it’s not going to go to the parent company.

Jim: Here’s the brilliant thing, though. It doesn’t really matter how much knight specialty insurance has. They could have nothing. And it wouldn’t actually matter, because the way the bond legal document is written.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: This is from a thing in the Daily Beast. They said, in reality, a strict reading of bond number 3500 588 shows that even the smaller company isn’t technically on the hook for paying the 175 million if higher courts ultimately cement his loss to the ag. Ah. Buried in the typical legalese of the contract is the phrase Knight specialty insurance company does hereby undertake that if the judgment is dismissed, Donald J. Trump shall pay the sum directed. So they’re not even promising to pay it? They’re promising Trump will pay it.

Mark: Wow.

Jim: Normally, a bond would be jointly inseverably liable. So. So if Trump, won’t pay, the bond company pays. That’s not in there.

Mark: What they’re saying is, if the bond company’s got to pay, Trump’s got to pay.

Jim: Trump’s going to pay. Yeah, they’re not saying they’ll pay anything.

Mark: So actually, him saying. But the parent company is got this massive amount of assets, but the bond paperwork said we’re not even liable.

Jim: Yeah.

Mark: So I’m, in no danger of losing any of this money because Trump’s gonna pay it. What kind of bond would you. What? Yeah.

Jim: It’s almost like he doesn’t know what he’s doing, or he knows what he’s doing more than Trump does and has kind of crafted it in such a way that it’s meaningless and just hoping that the government doesn’t notice.

Mark: Yeah. Like people who’ve been trained, it’s. Oh, my God, it’s Rudy Giuliani all over again, isn’t it? We’ll just do these things and say this stuff in the hope that long established, organizations that are government funded or that hold governments to account just won’t notice. They won’t have checks.

Jim: Not like they’ve done this before or anything.

Mark: No. They won’t have procedures in place to stop people doing this kind of thing. No. Turning up in a court of law with a drunk. They won’t have any of those systems in place to stop that happening. I can outsmart them. I was once the mayor of New York, you know. Jesus Christ.

Jim: I mean, there’s a couple of other small things, like the fact that normally a bond would cover interest and costs as well.

Mark: Yeah. Yeah.

Jim: This one specifically says, the liability of this bond shall not exceed the sum of $175 million, which is not how that usually works.

Mark: Yeah. Because the interest is going up.

Jim: Yeah.

Mark: Daily.

Jim: Anyway, there’s the fact that they don’t talk about where the money, where the collateral comes from, because, initially they said it was bonds, then they said it was cash. Then they said that he hadn’t actually given them the cash. He just pledged the cash, essentially, which is, again, not usually how that works. And after that, they said it was held at a brokerage firm, and night specialty insurance could access it if needed. But they don’t say that Trump can’t access it, so there’s nothing to stop him from taking it out. Also, if he has 175 million, I really. And m maybe this is my nothing. Understanding how bonds work. but I don’t understand why, if he has 175 million in cash, why he’s paying night specialty insurance to, over the bond, to under paying them a fee, although. Yeah, a low fee, according to Hanky the Christmas poo.

Mark: Right?

Jim: Yes. He says, actually, he’s regretting now that he didn’t charge Donald Trump more because of the scrutiny over the bond and that he’s getting a lot of emails, a lot of phone calls. Maybe it’s part of the reason why Trump had trouble with other insurance companies. But, yeah, weirdly.

Mark: What did he think he was going into?

Jim: I don’t think he knew because he said he charged him a low fee. Although originally he said he charged him just the same as he would everyone else. But being a subprime auto loan man, his traditional interest is 19%, which is, a fuck ton more than bonds would normally be. Somewhere between one and 10% usually. But he says it was a low fee that he charged him, and part of that was because he considered it a low risk, which is a bit weird, given that this is a man who is such a high risk that there literally wasn’t another bond company or bank in the world that was prepared to loan him the money.

Mark: Yeah, yeah. Where has this guy been? Has he been on a different planet? Has he paid no attention to? He’s been underwater or something for four years. What the fuck? He’s just, does he exist? Is he real? He’s a real guy.

Jim: He’s made a Christmas poo. He’s a real guy, and it’s just.

Mark: Been made up by Trump.

Jim: Yeah.

Mark: In order. And then, he’s written a bond in Sharpie.

Jim: The final dignity is that, according to Propublica, they have found that several days before, the bond was reduced from 454 to 175 million.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: Hankey had said to Trump that he would give him the full amount, the 454.

Mark: Oh, right, okay.

Jim: So when Trump’s lawyers went to the court and said, we’ve been everywhere, no one will give us 454. Yeah, we can’t do that. We have to be lower.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: They were lying.

Mark: Wasn’t true. Whoa.

Jim: Which is fraud, coincidentally, exactly what Trump is being tried for.

Mark: Yes. Yeah. Yes, yes, yes.

Donald Trump: I.

Mark: So no surprises there then. Yeah. And finally, some things we really don’t have time to talk about.

Jim: We’re just hours away from Trump’s first criminal trial in Manhattan, and the former guy is eager to get going so that he can prove his innocence. Oh, no, wait. He spent the past week in a panic, doing everything he can to delay or dismiss because he knows he’s gonna lose. Of the many motions Trump’s lawyers filed, a few were dealt with by Judge Merchand himself. He turned down a request to delay the trial because of negative pre trial publicity, arguing that the publicity isnt going away and that Trump himself was responsible for most of it. He dismissed Trumps attempt to delay the trial until the Supreme Court rules on presidential immunity because they left it till the last minute. And also, several of the crimes in question happened before he was president. Merchandise also refused a motion to recuse himself, just like he did when Trumps lawyers filed the same motion back in August. The New York appeals court has also been busy refusing Trumps motions, starting with one on Monday, asking them to delay the trial while they consider his request to have the trial moved out of Manhattan on the grounds that the jury pool has been polluted by news coverage of Trumps other legal cases. Where could they move it to where nobodys heard of whats going on with Trump, you ask? He suggests Staten island, where he won in both 2016 and 2020, not that nasty Democrat Manhattan area. On Tuesday, the appellate court turned down his request to delay the trial while he appeals to gag order that prevents him from going after court personnel and their families merchandise expanded the gag order when Trump kept attacking his daughter. Incidentally, in our last episode, I incorrectly said that she’d posted anti Trump memes on her social media, but it turned out that wasn’t her account. Sorry about that. And on Wednesday, another appellate judge refused his final request to delay the trial while he appeals merchandise rulings on immunity and recusal. So that’s it, he’s out of delays, and it’s time for twelve New Yorkers to be chosen who will decide whether millions of people will be voting for a convicted felon in November.

Mark: When you’ve gone into the religion business huckstering the word of God, you get to make proclamations about the Lord like you’re an insider, a member of the holy quadrinity, you know? So when last Friday, the White House issued a proclamation recognizing the Sunday of that weekend as transgender day of visibility and called on Americans to join us in lifting up the lives and voices of transgender people throughout our nation, and, to work towards eliminating violence and discrimination based on gender identity, you know, like they have done every 31st March since Biden came into office. Apostles, of God’s representative on earth. No, not the hippie kid with the beard and the wet soles of his feet. His Holiness, the dope Donald Trump took to the socials, angry House Speaker Mike Johnson, Republican, accused the White House of having betrayed the central tenet of Easter, which is the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Banning sacred truth and tradition, while at the same time proclaiming Easter Sunday as transgender day is outrageous and abhorrent. The american people are taking note. Trump campaign spokeswoman Caroline Leavitt called on Biden to issue an apology to the millions of Catholics and Christians across America who believe Sunday is for, one celebration only, the resurrection of Jesus Christ. So why she distinguished Catholics and Christians is beyond me. And probably her, the Banning Mike Johnson referred to is probably to do with the long running eastern tradition, in which children of National Guard members submit decorated eggs to be displayed at the White House. Rules have been in place because of the american egg board for 45 years and include that designs must not include any questionable content, religious symbols, overtly religious themes or partisan political statements. So those that do aren’t allowed in same rules under Trump, of course. Meanwhile, Senator Rafael WarnOck yes, Democrats reminded us that. But Jesus centered the marginalized, he centered the poor. And in a moment like this, we need voices, particularly voices of faith, who would use our faith not as a weapon to beat other people down, but as a bridge to bring all of us together. Meanwhile, Joe went to church on Easter Sunday. Trump didn’t because he hates it when that collection plate comes round.

Jim: As ebony and ivory taught us, there is good and bad in everyone. And I think it’s important to remember that even someone like Donald Trump has value. For example, without Trump, Peter Navarro and Alan Weisselberg wouldn’t be in prison right now. On top of that, he’s making millions of assholes poorer, both gradually by continually grifting them for donations, and incredibly quickly by convincing them that Trump media is a great investment. The company, which owns Truth Social, began trading on the Nasdaq on March 26, and the share price quickly spiked to $79.38. Since Trump owns nearly 80 million shares, this meant his stock was worth around $6 billion, and meant that for the first time, he made it onto the Bloomberg Billionaires index, a ranking of the world’s 500 richest people. Heavily invested. Followers cheered him on, mocked anyone who’s ever laughed at his business acumen, and posted gloatingly on social media about being tired of winning. It didn’t last. The share price plummeted day after wondrous day, assisted by financial disclosures that revealed truth Social made $4 million in revenue last year but lost $58 million last Tuesday, having lost more than $3 billion of his personal wealth in just over a week. Bloomberg kicked Trump off the billionaires index and it just kept on going down. The price dipped below dollar 31 a share on Friday before closing at, ah, $32.59, another half a billion dollar loss for Trump. I’m really enjoying watching him lose vast amounts of money in real time, but the best thing is that no matter how bad it gets, thanks to a six month lock up period, he can’t sell any of his shares until late September. So I get to keep hitting refresh and laughing all summer long.

Mark: Jim Jordan, who heads the House Judiciary Committee and its subcommittee on the weaponisation of the federal government continues to weaponize the power of the federal government. He’s getting a bit miffed that big companies are not advertising on his dear friend Donald Trump’s social media platform. Through social. Of course, according to Jordan, it’s nothing to do with protecting the reputational harm and brand safety of long established international hard won credibility and customer loyalty on the part of the likes of Procter and Gamble. When choosing not to advertise to conspiracy theorists, nut jobs secure in the business knowledge that, most people are actually turned off by conspiracy theory, nut jobs and, get a negative impression of advertisers who cater to them. Advertising companies speaking up and suggesting, hey, maybe we shouldn’t help fund websites pushing fascist ideology or pushing the drinking of bleach as a healthcare solution. Jordan is pretending violates the law, sending missives out, saying the World Federation of Advertisers, WFA, through its garm initiative, may be acting inconsistent with the us antitrust laws and congressional intent by coordinating gum members efforts to demonetise and eliminate disfavored content online, if nothing else, is a way of spending citizens tax dollars that would otherwise go on soap, and washing powder, and it’s sure to please cash strapped chump. So well done, you Jim Jordan.

Jim: Yeah, he claimed it was censoring conservative voices not to advertise on Trump social. Yeah, the party of small government.

Mark: That’s not how advertising works. Yeah, and, and he leads the subcommittee on the Weaponization of the federal government, investigating things to stop that happening. And then he goes off and. And does it because. Yeah, it’s censoring conservative voices. No, it’s people going, the people on here are mad. It will do our products reputational harm.

Jim: They’re private companies. They get to do whatever the fuck they want with their advertising budgets. That’s the invisible hand of the market. You’re supposed to like that shit.

Mark: Yeah. Yeah.

Jim: Since Easter, Trump has compared himself to Jesus, Nelson Mandela, and his old favorite, Abraham Lincoln. I’m not sure. The Mandela story is a close parallel to the possibility of being thrown in jail for continually attacking the family of a judge overseeing the case, where he falsified business records to cover up the hush money payments he paid to a porn star so voters didn’t find out he slept with her while his wife was at home with their new baby. But the Lincoln comparison has never been as relevant as last week, when, thanks to Trump, the Arizona Supreme Court was able to take women’s reproductive healthcare all the way back to 1864. Following the Dobbs decision. The ruling allows Arizona to enforce a one 60 year old ban on all abortions unless the pregnant person’s life is at risk. When the law was written, Arizona wasn’t a state, yet slavery was still legal, women couldn’t vote, the age of consent was ten years old, and doctors were undecided on the germ theory of disease. But many of them were still convinced their main job was balancing people’s fucking humours. The timing couldn’t have been much worse for Trump, coming just one day after he disappointed his more rabid anti abortion followers by walking back his promise to sign a federal abortion ban, given the chance, with a video on truth social saying it’s up to the states to decide. A state then decided, and he didn’t miss a beat before saying they’d gone too far.

Mark: Okay, so Democrats didn’t control where Easter fell. They’re a long established church, deference to mass charts and moon phases and weirdly non christian planetary astronomical stuff involved. Nor, of course, do republicans control solar eclipses. However, Julie Green, a, charismatic preacher and self styled prophet who claims to channel God on the daily, bringing divine news to a devoted following from a home studio in Iowa, had a special guest on her show on April 4, prophetic guest named Larry Ballard, who claims he died in 1968, returning to life after a serious accident with supposed heavenly insight. I checked, but he doesn’t appear to be Paul McCartney’s stand in from 1968. Together they unpacked the spiritual symbolism of the coming eclipse. They were quite taken with the fact that the path of totality crossed eagle Pass in Texas, as well as a great swathe of the planet over that away, a lot of it water. But I digress. There’s no coincidence about Eagle Pass, Greene said. God is saying they can’t pass through me because he is our line of protection. God is our border, he’s our refuge, he’s our fortress. And God is saying, no one, can get past me. Apparently the higher power that green and Ballard exhort is markedly aligned with the MAGA agenda, and less so with the words of, say, exodus or matthew, that exhort the faithful to not oppress the foreigner and to welcome the stranger. Ballard indeed goes so far as to say Donald Trump is God’s anointed, adding that Trump is on a divine mission. He’s going to close that border. He’s going to drill. God is saying that this is a time of call, of repentance as a nation, Green interpreted. It’s simply telling America, hey, x marks the spot. All dismissible crackpot stuff. Except Green has the ear of people Trump has promised to appoint to positions of power and prominence in a prospective second term in the White House. On April 5, General Michael Flynn was on the show displaying a military industrial sense of piety. As I’ve always told you, Julie, prayer is still the most powerful weapons system known to Mandev. And I thought that my idea that rhinos would stampede through Mar a Lago jumanji, like, because of the eclipse, was a bit tonto.

Jim: I feel like prayer is the most powerful weapon system known to man as a testable claim. And we should test it against Michael Flynn.

Mark: Yes.

Jim: I don’t, I don’t think that test would last very long.

Mark: No. No, not since, you know, the, the thing that would swept the board at, the Oscars was about a man who invented a fairly powerful weapon system.

Jim: I think there are some pretty, not very powerful weapons that would defeat Michael Flynn’s prayer, I reckon like a chair leg, hypothetically.

Mark: Well, even, you know, ironically, a Trump edition Bible to the back of the head.

Jim: I don’t think his prayer would do very much.

Mark: No.

Jim: In response to that, as we all.

Mark: Know, the power of prayer and thought being sent to victims of school mass shooting.

Jim: Yeah, it hasn’t done anything yet, but.

Mark: You know, any day now, another one occurring any day now.

Jim: Yeah.

Mark: Because, you know, now that the, literally, the stars have aligned and cast a massive shadow across Texas, that’s cos the anointed one is going to do something about it.

Jim: Scrabble has gone woke, according to Fox News. Yes, it may be hard to work out exactly how a game that lets you make any word you like could be woke, but damn it, Janine Pirro and Greg Gutfield will find a way. The facts are, that Mattel is releasing a new version in Europe, which, as well as the original and awesome game, by flipping the board upside down, you get an extra new game, which is more collaborative rather than competitive. They’re still a winner and a loser, despite Greg’s claims to the contrary. But instead of getting scores for words, you win by completing challenges like expand a word already on the board or play a word with only one consonant. Naturally, according to Fox, this is not only a sign that young people are stupid and too soft, but, says Greg, playing a game without scoring is anti human. Presumably, Greg has never played hide and seek, risk chess, jenga, tagore. I’ll tell you one game he admits he’s never played Scrabble. Janine goes on to complain that they’ve removed certain words, but there are also new words that the woke generation would be very comfortable with. Again, since it’s just a bag of letters, it’s pretty hard to remove words. But Janine clarifies that they banned racist and lgbtq slurs from tournaments. This is true, but it happened back in 2020. And I don’t hear her complaining that you can’t play razzmatazz because there’s only one Zen and two blanks. Or gastrointestinal because the board’s only 15 tiles long. Maybe she just really wants to play slurs. well, don’t worry, Janine. You can still play them all you like at home. And if you can convince Greg to play, he’ll probably teach you some new ones. But what about those new woke words that have been added? Well, that was back in 2022, when the Scrabble dictionary was last updated, and some of the new words were things like bay, Stan, and Zoomer. So not woke words as such, just words that young people understand, which is basically the same thing. Bloody woke young people and their toxic. Having fun playing collaborative games together.

Mark: You know when you get those messages from someone called, oh, I don’t know, Charlie or Abby on WhatsApp? And it comes with a female equivalent of Dick pic and a, lot of emojis and, hey, sexy, call me. And you know how those of us who grew up with computers know how to deal with them? Because we learned all about those nigerian princes wanted to get our bank details so they can deposit 400 million pounds in it. And we’ve seen reruns of that Monty Python blackmail game show sketch when they reveal compromising pictures of notable public officials until they can call into the show and pledge money. Well, poor old William rag MP. No, he’s not old. He’s only 37, so he’s as old as Microsoft Excel 2.0. The image format, Gif and VGA all got invented in 1987, got taken in by a grinder scam, sending dick pics to people who threatened to publish them unless he gave them other government staff’s numbers. So, of course, mindful of the highest level of security surrounding government issued devices, he, quote, gave them some numbers, not all of them. So he’s resigned the whip and can no longer represent the Tory party. He didn’t get bunged out of the party, nor got asked to resign as an MP because the official line, as ever, was he’s apologized and he’s going to step down to the next election. And who wants yet another pesky by election just before a general election? What were we thinking in not being drawn on why he didn’t bung rag out for being a security breaching idiot. You know, the things Suella Braverman resigned over in order to leave Liz Truss’s cabinethe Rishi minded everyone to be vigilant against cyber attacks that, threaten our democracy because, you know, keeping apologetic, security breaching rag as vice chair of the Tories backbench 1922 committee and chairman of the Commons public Administration committee and re employing Suella Braverman in exactly the same home secretary role six days after she resigned under trust is not threatening our democracy. As Jacob Griesblob said in attempting to discredit the European Court of Human Rights, courts don’t hold governments to account, voters do. Yeah, except governments aren’t above the law. And if you don’t give voters a chance to show just how much they’re sick to the back teeth of you because you control the election date, Rishi, then where’s the democracy and accountability? In the oft quoted by Tories words of Oliver Cromwell, you have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and, let us have done with you in the name of God. Go.

Jim: So that’s all the bad 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 content 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 podcast. Or simply tell one other person in person about how much they’d like our podcast and you can support the show@patreon.com. ftromp just like our strawman level patrons, Richard Thunder Hopkins, Will M. Scott Ozzy on bank, Laura Thompson Schmootz, Mark Reichi, and Abba Rpcanade, who told us when we met her at QED, we could just call her Amber. So another listener recognised her at QED last year because we keep using her full name all the time. And our true Scotsman level patrons, Renee Zed, Melissa Saitak, Stephen Bickle, Janet Louata, Andrew Halk, and our top patron, Kaz Tui. Thank you so much for your continued patronage. It’s really very much appreciated indeed.

Jim: You can connect with those awesome people as well as us and other listeners in the Facebook group@facebook.com. groups Fallacioustrump all music is by the.

Mark: Outbursts and was used with permission. So until next time on Felicia Trump, we’ll leave the last word to the Donald. That’s right.

Donald Trump: Go home to mommy. Bye bye.

Jim: 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, no. I was, what I was doing while I was reading that was also, kind of scanning down and thinking, did I take Brigham Bergilligators name out of the next section trying to read that while checking. It’s called intelligence.

Mark: Yeah, that’s smart.

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Jim Cliff
jim@fallacioustrump.com


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