Appeal to Coincidence – FT#151

11 Jun Appeal to Coincidence – FT#151

Posted at 00:21h in Fallacies by
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Show Notes

The Appeal to Coincidence occur when someone claims luck or coincidence is the reason something happened despite evidence of a more likely cause.

Trump

We started out by discussing this clip in which Trump denies trying to get a Florida casino:

And then we looked at Steven Cheung’s alleged reason that Trump chose to hold a rally in Waco Texas, and then looked at this clip of KellyAnne Conway:

Finally, we talked about this clip of Greg Kelly defending Trump’s use of Hitlerian rhetoric:

Mark’s British Politics Corner

Mark talked about Hannah Bardell’s question to Health Minister Edward Argar:

He followed that up by talking about Liz Truss not apologising for mortgage rates going up while she was PM:

Fallacy in the Wild

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

Then we discussed this clip from Wonder Woman:

And we finished with this clip from Taskmaster:

 

Fake News

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

  1. I got indicted more than Alphonse Capone, Al Capone, Scarface. You know how bad he was? You know, these are – I know some of the guys in the front row. They’re tough guys. If you ever looked at Alphonse Capone, you wouldn’t be tough at all. You’d be dead by the morning most likely. I got indicted more than Alphonse. Alphonse was a tough man. They did a movie called Scarface. Check it out. Even it was half true, you don’t want to deal with him.
  2. I’m the only person ever indicted where my numbers went up. It’s true. But the great Al Capone – did anybody ever hear of Alphonse Capone? He was so mean. If you looked at him in the wrong way, he’d blow you… away. He’d kill you. He’d kill people for fun. Scarface. He had a big scar on his face. I’m sure it happened very innocently. Big, horrible, grotesque scar. Scarface. Did you ever hear that, Scarface? He was only indicted once. I got indicted four times in a matter of seconds.
  3. I got indicted four times in a very short period. That’s more than the late great Al Capone. Alphonse Capone, Al Capone, did you ever hear of Al Capone? Scarface. Great head of the Mafia, right? Nice gentleman. He was a beauty. Had a big scar from here to here. It’s true. Scarface. He was a dangerous guy, and they only ever indicted him once. He killed a lot of people, and probably a lot more but they never found the bodies. I never killed anyone, but they indicted me four times.

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

 

A convicted felon is not a logical fallacy

We talked about Trump’s conviction.

 

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

  • Oh, it’s been such a great week for bad people facing consequences. Last month the DC Circuit court of appeals upheld Steve Bannon’s conviction which, you’ll remember, was not a well deserved jail sentence for crimes against fashion, but a contempt of congress charge. It turns out you can’t just ignore a subpoena because you think the January 6 Committee is bad, even if a Trump lawyer tells you to. Bannon’s sentence had been stayed during the appeal, but since he lost  because, like Trump, he’s a loser who committed crimes, he’s been ordered to report to prison by July 1st to begin serving his four month sentence.  I’m not sure if that’s the same prison where Trump trade advisor Peter Navarro is currently serving his four month sentence for contempt, but honestly it’s really hard to keep track of all Trump’s criminal friends. When asked by a reporter how he plans to continue with his daily right-wing invective spewing known as the War Room after he reports to prison, Bannon replied “Who says I’m reporting! WarRoom can not and will not be silenced.” And if he wants to be dragged to prison in cuffs, I’m here for it. Ginger, get the popcorn! After vowing to fight it all the way to the Supreme Court, Bannon claimed that this is evidence that the Justice Department is  “shutting down the MAGA movement, shutting down grassroots conservatives, shutting down President Trump,” which, if nothing else, shows he doesn’t know what grassroots means. 
  • Arizona’s MAGA licking Rep. Senator Paul Gosar’s new bill, dubbed the Treasury Reserve Unveiling Memorable Portrait (see what the clever acronymic crony’s done there’ T-R-U-M-P) Act, would require the United States Treasury to print $500 bills with convicted felon Trump’s face on them. There is a law – you know those things Donnie – the kind of thing that you broke 34 of recently – from 1866 that in order to avoid the appearance of a monarchy, it was long-standing tradition to only feature portraits of deceased individuals on currency and coin. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution explained the 1866 law this way: “Our Founding Fathers believed it was unpatriotic for living people’s likenesses to be placed on money in circulation.” Though it was slightly skirted when Calvin Coolidge appeared on a commemorative half dollar minted for the 150th anniversary of American independence. Gosar’s not talking commemorative suit with arrows on behind bars type portrait on a specially minted orange note however, oh no he’s gone full Mount Rushmore – nothing’s big enough for their God-King-Messiah, carving convicted felon Trump’s hair over the man in the moon wouldn’t be beyond their list of suitable acts of worship. Notwithstanding that the US Treasury stopped printing large denomination notes in 1945 a convicted felon Trump $500 bill would have some advantages apparently in this age of completely-made-up-by-Gosar “Bidenflation” “larger-value currency will empower Americans with the freedom of more tangible options to save and exchange goods and services” he doesn’t explain how “Additionally, the absence of large-denomination currency issued by the Treasury encourages Americans to rely on digital banking, which faces greater vulnerability to surveillance and censorship.” Particularly, I guess, if you are, say, a felon convicted of 34 counts of financial coverups? “Trump notes would likely be sought after by collectors” Gosar added which surely negates his first two points. The ultimate reason for doing this absurd and going-nowhere-fast act is to ingratiate himself with the convicted felon in the hope that he won’t be come after when convicted felon Trump’s thought-police start going through Gosar’s files just cos he’s way too arse-licky! 
  • I wasn’t kidding when I said it was a great week for bad people facing consequences. Human aneurysm Alex Jones agreed to a court supervised liquidation of his assets in order to pay the Sandy Hook families who won a $1.5 billion dollar lawsuit against him back in 2022, which means that claim he’s been making on a near daily basis that this episode of InfoWars might be the last one could actually come true some day. So long as Knowledge Fight keeps going, I don’t mind. Meanwhile, Salem Media, the Christian right media conglomerate who is at least partly responsible for the shows of people like Charlie Kirk, Dennis Prager and our good friend Dinesh D’Souza, has announced they will no longer be distributing the film or book versions of 2000 Mules on their platforms, after they learned that Mark Andrews, one of the people accused of being a mule in the film has been cleared of any illegal activity by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. To be fair, they probably learned that when he was cleared over 18 months ago, but you know, paperwork takes a while, and the bosses probably weren’t told so it’s probably a coincidence that this announcement and an official apology to Mr Andrews has come within a week of Salem Media being dismissed as a defendant in the defamation case Mr Andrews brought against Salem, Dinesh, True the Vote and others. It’s worth noting I think that while Salem won’t be distributing them any more, the film is still available elsewhere, like on Dinesh’s locals page because he’s apparently still convinced so the lawsuit continues. Mr Andrews, if you’re listening, and you need a witness to point out some of the other flaws in the film, I’m available.
  • Meanwhile in the Texas state of Gilead a finance and philosophy professor are fuming that their attempts to flunk or expel students who take time off to have, or even refuse to employ staff who’ve had, abortions is being somewhat thwarted by arch-Republican Richard Nixon’s administration’s signing in of the federal act called Title IX in 1972. Title IX currently bars publicly-funded schools from discriminating on the basis of sex or gender. This means that schools cannot penalise students for health care based on sex. As a male student would be granted leave if he had to travel for surgery, so must a female student, the federal statute requires. Austin Professors Daniel Bonevac and John Hatfield argue that granting students an excused absence in such cases violates their First Amendment rights. Which as far as I learned protects freedom of speech, the press, assembly, and the right to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. What really aggrieves Bonevac and Hatfield is that Title IX prevents them from controlling the private lives of students. Along with their anger about abortion, they grouse about not being allowed to punish students “for being homosexual or transgender.” They also argue they should be able to penalise teaching assistants for “cross-dressing,” by which they appear to mean allowing trans women to wear skirts. Sure you can protest that you are allowed to say such things but it doesn’t guarantee that a) you’re right and the law is wrong or b) that anyone is going to agree with you, unless of course you file not in Austin but 486 miles away in Amarillo, Texas where eyes-bugging-out screeching-at-top volume-about-the-evils-of “sexual revolutionaries” convicted felon Trump-appointed judge Matthew Kacsmaryk is very clear that sex is only for procreation within marriage, and anything outside of that should draw legal sanction. Unfortunately, the Dobbs decision, which ended abortion rights, didn’t just empower professors who are overly preoccupied with the sex lives of undergraduates. Texas has swiftly turned into a case study in how abortion bans aren’t really about “life” at all, but about giving abusive misogynists a whole new set of tools to use in controlling women. What’s really going on here is not that nosey right-wing professors are not, despite their feeble protestations to the contrary, just really into babies. For people who actually care about children, there are plenty of volunteer opportunities that aid real kids who need food to eat and opportunities to grow. Instead, the throughline is anger at women for living their lives outside of the control of the men who feel entitled to dominate them.
  • The jury is currently deliberating in Hunter Biden’s trial for owning a gun for eleven days while being a drug addict in 2018, and Republicans seem confused. Any of them who are capable of logical consistency… Yeah, OK, I heard it. Never mind. There might be a couple who are struggling with the fact that Joe Biden clearly isn’t intervening in any way in the process, and the old two-tiered justice system that protects Democrats and punishes Republicans appears to actually be not doing that. Don’t worry though, The Federalist’s Benjamin Weingarten is here to explain with an op-ed in the New York Post. You see, this is all actually a clever ploy executed by Joe to use the DOJ to target his only surviving son and publicize the lurid details of his struggles with alcohol and drugs, in order to distract from all the actual crime and corruption sleepy Joe is doing. Sure, it’s a jury trial and Hunter risks a prison sentence, but that’s apparently a price Joe is prepared to pay in order to guarantee reelection by having a close family member convicted of a felony. That’s how it works, right? Meanwhile, the fact that this is a trial at least partly about someone’s right to own a gun is causing genuine confusion for another Republican. Trey Gowdy, the man who spent two and a half years and $8 million investigating Hillary’s role in the 2012 Benghazi attack and found nothing, went on Fox News last week to, and this is weird, defend Hunter. He said “I did gun prosecutions for six years … I bet you there weren’t 10 cases prosecuted nationwide of addicts or unlawful drug users who possessed firearms or lied on applications … why are you pursuing this one?” Even Lindsay Graham told HuffPo last week “I don’t think the average American would have been charged with the gun thing… I don’t see any good coming from that.” Unlike those RINOs Gowdy and Graham, proper Republicans, see this as the Department of Justice just following the rules, calling balls and strikes, and doing their job without fear or favor. Five minutes later, of course, when Trump’s 34 convictions need defending, the DOJ are far-left Marxist Fascist Communists who have weaponized the rule of law and brought the entire concept of law and order to its knees with their rigged partisan show trials. 
  • NBA player turned Alex Jones protegée Royce White wants to be Minnesota’s next senator, and got a major boost this week when the state GOP endorsed him. But according to a new report from The Daily Beast, White’s FEC disclosures from a failed 2022 bid to unseat the Democrat Ilhan Omar are riddled with highly questionable campaign expenditures. On August 25, 2022, several days after his campaign loss, White and others racked up a tab over $1,200 at the Goldrush Cabaret, a strip club in Miami, Florida — almost 2,000 miles away from Minnesota. As well as strip clubs; limousines, nightclubs, hefty unexplained wire transfers, cash withdrawals, luxury hotels, expensive restaurants, clothing, sporting goods, and private car services are all listed as expenses after White had officially lost the 2022 Republican primary. The total amount surpasses $100,000. White claimed that the lavish spending at the Gold Rush strip club was campaign-related as he had recorded a podcast in Miami, and that he simply likes “the food there.” A bit like saying “yes I subscribe to Playboy – cos the journalism is top notch!” A quick calculation from Gold Rush’s menu suggests that those present would have had to order 48 of the establishment’s $25 appetizer platters in order to have spent $1,200. Other vital campaign expenses for the dedicated public servant determined to selflessly represent the interests of his constituents and forgo personal aggrandisement, White’s campaign also spent $3,200 and Guitar Center, $2,500 at Dick’s Sporting Goods, $700 at Sally’s Beauty Supply, and made purchases at a wide variety of clothing stores, including Lululemon, Cavender’s Western Wear, Crocs, Nike, and Nordstrom. The Daily Beast also found that many of the out-of-state purchases made by White’s campaign coincided with touring dates for Ice Cube’s “Big3” three-on-three basketball league, with major expenditures in Chicago, Dallas, Tampa, and Atlanta. Still he’s obviously the perfect GOP kinda guy – if your presidential candidate is a convicted felon guilty of 34 counts of falsifying financial records to cover up payments made to influence an election campaign, then, hey, who are they to chastise new recruits for just following in the great leader’s footsteps. 
  • Last year, the House of Representatives approved new rules for expenses associated with the fact that they work both in DC and in their home district, and sometimes need to maintain two residences. There are certain rules, like they can’t claim for mortgage payments, there’s a daily cap, and they can only claim on days they’re actually working in or flying to DC. The noble idea is that running for government shouldn’t be restricted to the independently wealthy, and especially young lawmakers might find it hard to make ends meet if their home district is anywhere near as expensive as DC. Generally a good thing, I would say, but the one change I would have made is to require receipts. As it stands, even keeping records of expenses is “strongly encouraged”, but not required. And these are politicians we’re talking about. And half of them are Republicans. Which is how we got the news that 319 House members shared over $5.8 million in taxpayer funded expenses in 2023 without having to account for any of it. Nancy Mace, who owns a $1.6 million townhouse on Capitol HIll still managed to claim almost $28,000 including $4000 for lodging expenses in October. According to two former members of her staff they told her the maximum plausible monthly expenses she could claim would be $1,800 but she told them to seek the maximum reimbursement regardless of her actual expenses. She’s not the worst offender, though. Matt Gaetz claimed over $30,000 in lodging and over $11,000 for food – more than double the average household grocery bill. The top spender, though, was Michigan Republican Jack Bergman, who topped $32k for lodging and almost $12k for meals. It’s almost like, when it comes to politicians, the honor system is one to be avoided.
  • So we’re in week two or thereabouts of the election campaign – feels like muuuuch longer – and what have we had? Ooh outright lies from the Tories again – Sunak lying in the first of the television debates with Starmer about the truth of the claim that Labour policies will put taxes up by £2,000 for each household, based on I don’t know what cos the Labour party haven’t published their election manifesto yet, and saying that it was independently verified – the independent verifiers themselves; the governments’ own Office for Statistics Regulation said yeah you’ve glossed over that the sum was over 4 years so 500 per year not 2,000 that you’re implying, oh and plus the figures were profoundly influenced by Tory party advisers and not independently produced by say the Office for Statistics Regulation. The same lie was perpetuated during the second TV debate featuring 7 leaders of parties along with the one Farage said about not wanting to stand as an MP this time when he became the leader of the Reform Party, having been invited to by the former leader Richard Tice. You know, like the way Afghanistan invited the Russians to come into their country in 1980. I also listened to a dramatisation of the fiction novel 1984 this week as part of the celebrations of the 75th anniversary of its publication and was struck by how Farage is like Goldstein in that “what was strange was that although [he] was hated and despised by everybody, although every day and a thousand times a day, on platforms, on the telescreen, in newspapers, in books, his theories were refuted, smashed, ridiculed, held up to the general gaze for the pitiful rubbish that they were—in spite of all this, his influence never seemed to grow less. Always there were fresh dupes waiting to be seduced by him.” Speaking of which – the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings was celebrated at the weekend and Little Rishi spreadsheet-for-a-heart and no-sense-of-optics Sunak thought it a smart thing to do to leave and get a helicopter back to the UK to fit in an extra half-day of campaigning whilst the rest of the heads of European states including Keir Starmer and David Cameron FFS paid their respects for the whole ceremony. Hee hee that’ll teach ‘em Little Rishi must’ve thought, forgetting that when it comes to the War and the Royals oooh you can’t muck about with that stuff in the eyes of the suddenly patriotic forelock-tugging cap-wringing serf-like multitudinous descendants of those sent to war by their elders and betters. Even really old-school – still hateful – Tories like Michael Heseltine – Thatcher’s militia-man – shook their shaggy heads and predicted the complete wipe-out of the Tory party as a result. Never mind running health, education, transport, water, energy, and post office money into the pockets of their mates and into the ground for the rest of us for the last 14 years, if you’re gonna snub war veterans then that’s really the thing that’ll kill off your party. So much so that Suella deVille Braverman is hailing Reform as the new Tories and probably getting Farage to become Sunak’s successor – and you wonder why old matey Nige has suddenly got interested in politics again – hmmm coincidence?

 

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:

Appeal to Coincidence – FT#151 Transcript

Jim: Hello, and welcome to Felonious Trump, the podcast where we use the insane ramblings of a convicted felon to explain logical fallacies. I’m your host, Jim.

Mark: And I’m your host, Mark. A logical fallacy is an error in reasoning that results in bad or invalid arguments. And the logical fallacy we’re looking at this week is the appeal to coincidence. So, yeah, felonious Trump, very nice. We ought to rename ourselves as that from now on.

Jim: Yeah, well, it was a suggestion from Melissa, which I thought, yeah, that is good. I don’t think. I think we’ll stick with fallacious Trump for now.

Mark: Yeah. Yeah. But it’s nice.

Jim: It’s a nice. It’s a nice one off.

Mark: Yeah. Makes me think of Thelonious monk as well. Yeah, that’s such a nice felonious. Well, nice to play on words.

Jim: Thelonious monk is kind of part of the inspiration for that, cadence of name when I was picking fallacious Trump. It’s kind of thelonious monk. Hieronymus Bosch. That kind of thing was what I was thinking. So. Yeah.

Mark: Wow, what a coincidence.

Jim: So, incidentally, I should say that technically, he isn’t yet a convicted felon yet.

Mark: Right.

Jim: Because although he has been found guilty of 34 different felonies, he’s only a convicted felon after he’s been sentenced.

Mark: Technically speaking, when you become a convict.

Jim: When you suit with arrows, I’m happy to let it go personally, even though I’m a bit of a pedant sometimes. You know, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but this, this episode is going to be out there for a long time, and. And he’ll be sentenced very soon, so it will be true. And it’ll be true for most of the time this episode exists.

Mark: Yeah. And if he ever gets to listen to it in jail.

Jim: Yeah.

Mark: Then,

Jim: And it’s a lot more fun to say as well.

Mark: Oh, yeah. And it’s, you know, and we’re just going along with what the Democrats are calling him at any conceivable opportunity. That’s his new epithet.

Jim: Absolutely.

Mark: Isn’t it? Yeah.

Jim: So appeal to coincidence. This is when someone ignores a likely cause of events and instead attributes it to luck or coincidence, whether it’s good luck or bad luck. And they might be doing that because they’re not very good at thinking. Or they might be doing it deliberately to avoid addressing the actual probable cause for things happening. Or that, yes. That they might, in fact, be the cause. So our first example is from Joe Scarborough on morning show, asking Trump about a thing that came up in one of the presidential primary debates in 2015, when Jeb Bush talked about casino gambling in Florida and saying that Trump wanted to get casino gambling and tried, essentially, he was suggesting that he tried to kind of bribe Jeb Bush, who was governor of Florida at the time, to allow it. And Trump denies it.

Joe Scarborough: Let me ask you about the Florida casino question. Did you ever ask Jeb, Bush personally, to bring casinos to. The state of Florida? There seems to be some debate between. You two about that.

Donald Trump: No, Joe, what happened is a group that I knew wanted him to do it. I wasn’t involved in it. They wanted him to do it. Ultimately, I think he did it. I didn’t even follow the whole process, but I think he did it in some form, but I wasn’t involved with it. And ultimately, the Indians got gaming approved, but I was not involved with that at all. And as I told them, if I wanted it, I would have gotten it. I was not into it at that time. It was a different time. In my life. but it was, it sort of coincided, but it was not for me. So it’s. I don’t know, I didn’t follow it. It happened. Yeah, I benefited as a result, and if I. And it wasn’t me, but if I did want it, I would have got it.

Jim: Yeah, if he did, if he did want it, he would have got it. But no, what jeb was saying, it’s complete coincidence there was just another group of people who were, who wanted casinos in Florida, didn’t have anything to do with me. Obviously, that’s not true.

Mark: no.

Jim: No.

Mark: But he’s not changed at all in nine years. You know, he can’t, he’s got to deny that it was anything to do with him. But he can’t give the impression that if he didn’t want something, he wouldn’t be able to get it, because that would reveal that he’s not the strong willed and successful businessman that he likes us to think that he is and he isn’t. So he can’t let that go, which almost scuppers him, because he’s saying, oh, yeah, no, nothing to do with me, I didn’t want it. No, that’s not to say that if I did want it, I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t be able to get it. Of course I would. but in this case, it wasn’t me. Never doing me. I didn’t benefit from it. I don’t even know what happened. I’ve not been following it. Nothing to do with me.

Jim: So the contemporary news reports from the nineties, even 1997, Trump held a fundraiser which raised money for Bush when he was running for governor. And the Trump hotels and casino resorts company donated $50,000 to the Republican Party of Florida. At that time, Trump was pushing Florida to allow him to open casinos on Seminole tribal land, and the, tribe was looking to open up Vega star slot machines and poker in casinos to be managed by Trump. In 1998, he backed a Seminole proposal to state officials to share gambling revenue with Florida all through to 2005, when Bloomberg Business wrote a story about out his failed attempt to bring casinos to Florida, and quoted Richard T. Fields, one of Trump’s former consultants, who said that he negotiated on Trump’s behalf with the Seminoles to build and manage casinos on tribal property. Fields, even in court documents, said that Trump was only interested in building specific class three casinos, offering pure games of chance. But Florida Governor Jeb Bush nixed the idea, and after that, Trump directed that the effort be terminated. So all of the things that Jeb Bush was talking about in 2015 are, backed up by previous reporting from the nineties and from 2005 saying that, yeah, he wanted casino gambling in Florida. He tried to get it. He was going to run them. He donated money to Jeb Bush. He donated money to the Republicans in Florida to get it to happen. It didn’t happen because Jeb was like, no, I don’t want casino gambling in Florida. Not a coincidence.

Mark: Not a coincidence.

Jim: In fact, exactly as Jeb Bush said.

Mark: Yes. Yeah. Oh, man. And despite the fact that he said on Hannity the other night, he’s a respected businessman that’s been doing legal things all his life.

Jim: Yeah.

Mark: Successful. I’ve been lying about the whole thing.

Jim: I mean, he’s moment.

Mark: He can speak. Yeah.

Jim: He’s consistent. So.

Mark: Yeah. If not consistently. Yeah. Inconsistent.

Jim: Yes, yes, yes. So our second example is from Trump’s planned rally. Well, not planned rally. He had a rally in Waco. it was pretty much where he kicked off his kind of reelection campaign.

Mark: Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Jim: And it was on the 30th anniversary or during the week of the 30th anniversary of the Waco siege.

Jim: And I. That is a bit of a bullhorn to, it’s not a dog whistle. It’s a, it’s a foghorn to two white supremacists and the kind of three percenters, oath keepers, all those kind of anti government people who are pro gun and preppers. That kind of people.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: They all think Waco is a big thing for them. And.

Mark: Ah.

Jim: So kicking it off there and at the time when he was there showing footage from January 6.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: Was probably intentional.

Mark: Yeah. Not an accident.

Jim: Yeah, yeah. You might think. But his spokesman, Stephen Chung, said that, it wasn’t an intentional nod to the most infamous episode in Waco’s history. It was, it was chosen because it was centrally located and close to all four of Texas’s biggest metropolitan areas while providing the necessary infrastructure to hold a rally of this magnitude. Yeah. Nothing to do with the fact that 30 years ago to the day, to the day, there was a big government overreach kind of siege thing happening.

Mark: Exactly. pure coincidence. The fact that. Also pure coincidence that they couldn’t hold it in any of those big metropolitan areas which would have had the necessary infrastructure to hold and been close to the other four metropolitan areas or the other three metropolitan areas. Oh, no. Pure coincidence.

Jim: Oh. Nothing to do with. No, no. We weren’t trying to send a message or anything. Not at all.

Mark: Of course not. No, no.

Jim: So our third example is from Kellyanne Conway, responding to questions about Trump’s donation to Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi’s campaign when he donated $25,000 to her campaign just before her office decided not to open an investigation into Trump University.

Reporter: Do you know the facts around his decision to make a contribution to Pam Bondi’s political organization? Do you know anything about that?

KellyAnne Conway: As I understand it is, as Mister. Trump and Attorney General Bondi never discussed the Trump University matter at all, it’s. Very customary for him to contribute to. Republican candidates across this country. He’s been very generous in his contributions, including to some of the candidates who. Don’T support him now in his presidency. And that’s what he said. He obviously is a, Floridian.

Reporter: So without seeing the documents involved with the Trump Organization in terms of their decision to do it, you’re just asking people to accept the timing as a coincidence, given that the contribution came right around the time her office was making a decision.

KellyAnne Conway: Yeah, they say that they’ve never discussed it. I think there’s absolutely no equivalence between. That and Hillary Clinton using the State. Department as a concierge for foreign donors. I understand,

Reporter: but again, people should just say the fact that the contribution was given around the time the office was making the decision, that’s just a coincidence. That’s what people should treat it as.

KellyAnne Conway: Pam Bondi and Donald Trump said they’ve never discussed that. So I would say yes,

Jim: very carefully. Not saying that until the very end.

Mark: Yeah, yeah, some sort of, Yeah, it’s not right to see that there’s an equivalency there.

Jim: You have to bring up Hillary for defending Trump, obviously, or Obama. Yeah, that was the butter emails point of the conversation. The thing is, coincidences happen because a coincidence is just two things happening. When those two things are probably linked, attributing it to coincidence is likely fallacious. That doesn’t mean it’s always necessarily untrue. It is possible that the fact that he happened to donate $25,000 to this woman’s reelection campaign the week that she declined to open an investigation into his subsequently found to be fraudulent university, it’s possible that that was just happenstance. but, yeah, I think it’s reasonable to think maybe it wasn’t, and it’s worth a look, given other factors.

Mark: Yeah. And not least of all Kellyanne Conway going to extraordinary lengths to not say it was a coincidence. Yeah, I was about to say that, I missed Kelly Hancock, but I.

Jim: Don’T know, you only have to listen to her for a few seconds, and.

Mark: Then you’re like, right, yeah, yeah.

Jim: So our final example is the whole thing of Trump quoting Hitler a lot.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: And, yeah, the defense often seems to be. No, it’s just, you know, that just happens to be a thing Hitler said, you know, when. When he retruthed on truth social, that video of what the next Trump term would be like, that included the unified right. And when he talks about poisoning the blood of our country and things like that, it’s all just. It just keeps stumbling arse backwards into things Hitler once said.

Mark: Because they’re out there and you would just come across those.

Jim: I mean. Yeah, if you say enough stuff, eventually you’re going to say stuff Hitler said, aren’t you?

Mark: Well, it’s. So it’s the monkey’s infinite. Absolutely, yeah.

Jim: And Greg Kelly on Newsmax made almost that point.

Donald Trump: We pledge to you that we will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs, that live like vermin within the confines of our country.

Greg Kelly: Now, they say that Donald Trump is like Hitler. He’s using the same words that Hitler used. Well, Hitler used the word chair. Okay, I sit in a chair. That doesn’t make me right, you see, but they don’t stop, do they?

Mark: Speaker one? But, yeah, but the fact that you’re excusing what Trump says, that does make you, you know, at, least.

Jim: Yeah, little bit.

Mark: Himmler or Goebbels. Yeah, yeah. Just what the hell. Yeah. So because he’s used the word, we’ll root out the vermin on house living, those vermin on our streets.

Jim: Yeah. Same chair, isn’t it?

Mark: You know, it’s exactly the same.

Jim: And the fact that he does it all the fucking time, it’s just a series of coincidences.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: Each more coincident than the last.

Mark: More coincidental than the last, yeah. Yes. Because there must be an accumulative effect. Yeah. Oh, is it by some sort of coincidence that you’re using the same hitlerian speeches that you’ve used before? Oh, yeah, yeah. It’s a pure, purely coincidence. I reached for one of my speeches and it just so happened to be wrinkled with things from the last. Right, yeah. And now is the time, I think.

Jim: For Marx british politics corner.

Mark: It was interesting. And, some might say it’s coincidental that I couldn’t find the audio for this. What I was looking for was the then secretary of state for health, Matt Hancock, who’s speaking on good Morning Scotland on February 23, 2021. So this is around the time that people were saying, hang on a minute, all of these contracts for PPE and respirators and particular bits of equipment were all going to people who weren’t qualified in any way to provide this equipment, but were m Tory donors who were fast tracked and given opportunities to bid for. And were many of them awarded, Baroness Mond, looking at you, the contracts to deliver these things, even though, as you know, the head of a lingerie firm, you, of course, exactly the right person positioned to provide, you know, medical protective.

Jim: Essentially the same thing, isn’t it?

Mark: It’s the same stuff.

Jim: Probably got sewing machines and stuff.

Mark: Yeah. And access to material or access to people in Bangladesh that might make the stuff for them for a pittance and then they could charge, you know, 9 million quid for it or something. Yeah. So anyway, he’s speaking on that on, February 23, 2021. And my question is also layered on top. Is it a coincidence that the Internet Archive has got the 21 February 2021 of that broadcast and the 24 February of that broadcast? It’s not broadcast on Saturday, but not the 23rd of Feb M. And so he’s talking about the awarding of these contracts and the apparent lack of scrutiny or due diligence regarding suitable of the suppliers. And he’s talking about his staff saying none of them took their jobs in anticipation of having to source PPE in the middle of a global pandemic. And he said his staff absolutely understood their legal obligations but that, he absolutely backs his officials in spending all of their time buying PPE to keep people safe. The presenter then said, 2 billion pounds of contracts have been linked to party members or donors to the conservative party and asked, is it just a coincidence that they’re Tory donors? And Matt Hancock, of course, said, yes, absolutely.

Jim: Just a coincidence.

Mark: What I cared about was getting PPE and getting it to the front line. And I’m sure you’ll agree with that, that the right thing to do was to buy PPE because demand had understandably gone up tenfold. We were all pushing as hard as we could to buy PPE and I’m sure that was the right thing to do. Well, yeah, surely it would have been the right place to look, would be people that supplied PPE, like various local hospital suppliers who did not get the.

Jim: Contract when you’re choosing between companies who already do that and, friends of yours who reckon they could have a go.

Mark: Yeah. And who have in the past donated lots of money, ah, to the party. And I potentially would promise to do the same in the future given how much you cocked up, the response to the COVID thing, you’re going to need all the support you get when it comes to the net collection.

Jim: It’s just coincidence if the ones you pick happen to be the ones who have never done it before. Yeah, because it’s certainly not based on kind of the best prices, is it? Because they didn’t, like, outbid the people who could actually do the job. So it can only be coincidence.

Mark: Yeah, exactly. Of course, bear in mind, this is the same Matt M. Hancock who, as health secretary, characterized the chinese response to the origins of COVID virus as an appeal to coincidence. In the first draft of his biography, he wrote, imagine there was an outbreak of a deadly new virus in Wiltshire. And we shrugged off the fact that the outbreak just so happened to be near a little place called Porton down. We’d be laughed out of town. So important down is the research, center for viruses famously looked into the Novichok poisoning that happened in Salisbury. It’s just. So he’s saying, oh, if that happened, people would have said, oh, yeah, coincidence. So. And consequently, the cabinet office did ask him to tone it down in the final biography. Just kind of. You can’t say shit like that. You can’t say, oh, you’re saying that’s a coincidence, are you?

Jim: The thing is, I don’t think that they put the lab important down because of all the local viruses they have there. No, which, which is part of the reason that the Wuhan virology lab is there studying bat viruses, because they have bat viruses there in that area.

Mark: Yeah. So, anyway, to give us a flavor of the opposition picking up on Hancock’s rhetoric, the then minister of health, who, answers to Hancock as the secretary of health, Edward Agar, who ought to be agar, surely, if he’s in health, was asked a question by the Scottish National Party’s Hannah Bardell on the 24 February 2021.

Edward Argar: All the contracts, have been found so far to be awarded entirely appropriately. There has been no adverse judgment in respect of any of that. And indeed, under regulation 32, which highlights that, in an emergency, contracts can be awarded without tender, I certainly would take the view that the situation we faced with this pandemic would certainly constitute a national emergency.

Hannah Bardell: Can the minister tell me if it’s coincidence, incompetence or just rank stupidity that his government and health secretary awarded a 30 million pound contract for testing vials to the health secretary’s former neighbour, who was a former pub landlord and had. No experience in this field and has. Now been investigated by the MHRA? And surely he agrees that these breaches mean the health secretary must resign.

Edward Argar: Thank you, Mister speaker. Well, the honourable lady, will not. Be surprised to know that I completely and utterly disagree with her. I, think my right honourable friend has done and continues to do an extraordinary job under extraordinary pressure over the past year to help this country through this pandemic. She raised a very specific, issue. And it has been made clear that the health secretary and no other minister had any involvement in the assessment, the due diligence, or any decisions in respect to that contract.

Mark: What she’s picking up on is Hancock saying, oh, yeah, it’s just a coincidence. And then she kind of alighted on this one of testing vials, which was Hancock’s, old neighbor who used to run a pub. They go, oh, yeah, you could have a guy that you know about washing up glasses. You could do that, surely? And then that caveat bit at the end when he said he had nothing to do with the appointment of the. Well, no, that’s right. But you had everything to do with fast tracking the sole applicant. There was no, they didn’t go out to tender.

Jim: If it wasn’t for the fact that we have Hancock’s WhatsApp messages, I would say maybe he has just a WhatsApp group with his rich friends and sent a message around going, does anyone want to do this one?

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: Who fancies having a go at, this thing? I’ll, pay you 9 million pounds.

Mark: Yeah, you could get in here. Do you know about gloves? Well, I’ve, got glovebox in my porsche. Well, that’ll do. So, finally, post Covid, we survived that post Hancock and even post Liz truss. Here is Liz Truss, who in not so many words, is dismissing the tanking of the economy and the impact on the lending rate and mortgage costs is just a coincidence? And it was happening everywhere. And anyway, it wasn’t me.

Ed Conway: Liz Truss do you have an apology for the people whose mortgages went up so. Much during your time in office?

Liz Truss: The fact is, mortgage rates have gone up across the world. The issues that I faced in office were issues of not being able to deliver the agenda I’d set out because of a deep resistance within the british economic establishment.

Ed Conway: You’d concede they went up very sharply. During a time in office.

Liz Truss: Well, they have gone up everywhere.

Ed Conway: Yeah, but they went,

Liz Truss: there was a global rise. There was a global rise in mortgage rates.

Ed Conway: Rates. While the bank of England was, you know, moving towards tightening interest rates, quantitative easing. They were kind of going up a. Bit and then suddenly they went through the roof directly after the mini budget

Liz Truss: that was when the government governor of the bank of England announced that he was selling 40 billion pounds of government gilts.

Ed Conway: Well, it’s not quite the same, it wasn’t quite the same time. That was one day. And then the next day came the mini budget. Exactly the same day. But these, these shots are day by day and day by day. You can see not much going on. And then the mini budget happens. This, for instance, the, the cost of ensuring the UK against default. And then suddenly up goes that, that cost. So the UK becomes a scarier place for investors straight after the mini budget. This is day by day.

Liz Truss: But you’re not talking about the actions. Of the governor of the bank of England. Well, what I’m saying is that the specific issues that cause I. The difficulties in the market were, largely as a result of decisions made by the governor of the bank of England.

Jim: Wow, she’s so bad, isn’t she?

Mark: Yeah, it’s a Boris Johnson size nuanced, argument. It’s saying, well, it wasn’t anything to do with me announcing the unfunded tax cuts, but it was to do with what the british financial establishment did as a result of the markets going, what the fuck? So then they had to prop up the market because, yes, the cost of insurance against things being really bad went way up because people just went, whoa, if you’re gonna do that kind of stuff, we’re not going to be able to fund you. So she’s saying it was the actions taken by the bank of England that caused the mortgage rates to go up. Nothing to do with me proposing completely unfunded. that was all that. Just sad. It’s happening at exactly the same time. Well, it wasn’t exactly that. Yes, it was. No, it wasn’t. Look at the graph. Man.

Jim: But the answer, But you’re not talking about the thing that isn’t the cause.

Mark: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jim: Is bold. Yeah, I guess.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: But then she didn’t have anywhere else to go with it.

Mark: No, because, yes. Saying actually nothing. What she’s fundamentally saying is, can you prove a causal connection? But she’s not got the wit or vocabulary to be able to do that, so she’s just dismissing it. Yeah.

Jim: I mean, how hard is it just to say the economy is a very complex mechanism. There’s no one thing that causes things to happen. There’s a cloud of different issues that all contribute to, things moving in particular directions, and then they have to be dealt with and mitigated.

Mark: If you use the Chicago model, model of economics, but she’s absolutely got no fucking clue about any of that. So what? She’s, Because she’s the puppet of the ERG. She’s just spouting those things and saying, oh, it’s nothing to do with me. You can hear Rhys Mogg because she was the puppet for his kind of government. You can almost hear him say it, you know? Oh, well, it’s nothing to do with what her actions were. It was all to do with the actions of the financial establishment immediately afterwards, leaving out the bit to correct the thing that she did. Absolute coincidence that I did what I did. Me and quasi did all this stuff. Nobody knew us. The bank of England were doing all these things, and mortgages were all going up all over the world. Yeah, but no, they weren’t. It’s the same argument that Sunak and Boris and truss. Maybe she wasn’t long enough to be able to talk about them, to say, oh, yeah, well, our achievements are the furlough scheme, and then we got scuppered by Covid. Ukraine, blah, blah, blah. All the things that have affected everybody else. So nothing do with Brexit? Oh, yeah, that was the one. Nothing to do with Brexit. That’s just coincidental with Ukraine. Covid.

Jim: Yeah.

Mark: The fact that.

Jim: The fact that all the stuff that happened after Brexit was predicted before Brexit, that Brexit would cause all this stuff to happen.

Mark: Yeah. It’s just.

Jim: Yeah, we just. It was bad luck that. Yeah, several other things happened around because normally in politics, nothing happens. Nothing. So when you make a change, when you do something, you can assume that you’ll know how that will play out.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: You can’t. You can’t predict things will change. So.

Mark: No. Who could take it was everybody. The rest of Europe got affected in much the same way by Covid and, you know, we. And the furlough scheme and the. The vaccine rollout and the war in Ukraine. Yeah, but all of those economies aren’t as shit as ours.

Jim: No, no. They recovered quickly.

Mark: Yes, but that’s because of the. The, reticence of the british financial establishment to put in place all of the mad schemes that I wanted to cover. Yeah.

Jim: It’s nothing to do with a rotating door of shitty Tory prime ministers.

Mark: Nothing to do with that. No, no. That’s just a coincidence. Reggae star Jimmy cliff there with sooner or later. Which I realize now should have been Sunak, not later.

Jim: So, in the fallacy in The Wild We like to talk about the Fallacy of the week. From a non political perspective. And our, first example this week comes from blue Bloods. And in this episode, Danny and his partner are interrogating a kind of local mobster. Who. Someone who was threatening his business. M got run over by someone who worked for him. And then the person who worked for him committed suicide, supposedly. And they find this a bit suspicious.

Mario Vangelis: Look, all I know, some mook we hired to park cars offed himself. The fact that I know the guy, he killed in a car accident. It’s a total coincidence. End of story. Yes.

Jim: Just. Just because you can connect these. Both of these people to my business. And I benefited from the one guy’s death. And then I benefited from the other guy’s death after he killed the first guy. Pure coincidence.

Mark: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It almost sounds like Doug and Dinsdale Piranha.

Jim: Yeah.

Mark: Oh, what a coincidence. these things m fallen off your shelves. Yeah.

Jim: Yeah, yeah. And in a kind of similar criminal kind of way. Our next example is from Wonder Woman. not the film.

Mark: No. Not the heretical.

Jim: Certainly not 1984. No. This is from the original. The brilliant Linda Carter series.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: And in this, she is investigating because a factory has been burned down.

Diana Prince: Mister Stryker, I’d like to talk to you.

Stryker: The lousy time. In case you’re having.

Diana Prince: This is the second major disaster to hit your company within a week. If you had cooperated with the IADC before. We might have prevented this one.

Stryker: I told you, golf Industries is a private corporation. Whatever happens to us is none of your business, Miss Prince

Diana Prince: Wrong. You’ve got dozens of government contracts. Including one for top secret missile guidance system. That’s being developed in this plant. That makes it my business, Mister Stryker.

Stryker: I have to think about my stuff now. Your involvement would only drive the value of their shares straight down.

Diana Prince: Sabotage will do the same thing. Maybe you don’t realize that after all, you are new to the job.

Stryker: You say sabotage, and I say we’re. Having a run of bad luck.

Diana Prince: What’s interesting, how your bad luck started. When Harlow Galp died. And you took over as chairman of. The board,

Jim: there’s clearly something going on his business which is related to the government, their kind of government contractor, has suffered two major disasters in a week. It would devalue their share price. He says, no, we’re not going to treat it as anything suspicious. It’s just bad luck. We’ve just been very unfortunate this week.

Mark: It’s just a terrible run of bad luck. And she goes, yeah, funny how the bad luck happened when you became chairman of the void.

Jim: Yeah, yeah, this incidentally is a batshit episode that involves a brain in a jar, essentially running.

Mark: Wow.

Jim: Running the conspiracy.

Mark: Excellent.

Jim: Fantastic. I loved wonder woman in the seventies.

Mark: Cool.

Jim: So our, third example is the first time that we’ve ever had a clip from Taskmaster, which is my favorite show.

Mark: Yeah, absolutely.

Jim: The task here was that the comedians had to move rice from one receptacle to another, without using their hands. They had certain things that they could use. And the comedian Sean Gibson tried to siphon rice with a straw the same way you might with water.

Mark: Yes.

Jim: And it didn’t go very well. And Greg Davies had this to say,

Greg Davies: we all know if you suck water through a, hose, I don’t know what the scientific reason for the water will keep flowing on its own.

Alex Horne: I think it’s just lucky. It’s just lucky.

Greg Davies: I mean, did you really think you could get the same effect with rice?

Jim: So, yeah, for pure comedic effect, Alex Horne, little Alex Horne suggests that siphons work, but just by luck.

Mark: Just luck.

Jim: Yeah, yeah, just, just, so that’s why it works sometimes.

Mark: No, it’s just lucky that, yeah, and I forgot to mention that the, I, had an example which I came across, well, I knew about a, ages and age ago because it just made me laugh. And, I, and the explanation turns out to be the, it’s purely coincidental. So there’s a guy that runs a grocery shop, you know, like a small, supermarket.

Jim: Convenience store.

Mark: Convenience store, thank you. In Wolverhampton. And he’s called Mandeep. Sing chatter and he’s called, it sings breeze local. And he’s used the typeface and color of Sainsbury’s local. So we have the supermarket chain, Sainsbury. They have various sized shops, large supermarkets, large out of town stores, and then they have small local, convenience stores. They call them Sainsbury’s local. And he says, ah, how did I come up with a name which is registered with companies? House, obviously. And he says, well, my name is Singh and it’s on Bushbury Road. So obviously it’s Singsberry’s local. That’s where the names come from. Yeah.

Jim: Just the coins that it looks exactly like Sainsbury’s.

Mark: And he’s being sued by Sainsbury.

Jim: Of course he is, because it’s passing on.

Mark: Yes. Yeah.

Jim: He’s definitely breaching their copyright. Yes.

Mark: So he’s going, no, just. Just a coincidence. The fact that is. I’ve done it in orange, and I’ve called that. No, no, sing. It’s a. It’s a portmanteau. Brilliant. Brilliantly funny, though. 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: You see, on the face of it, it may look like that I’m directly responsible for any failures to win in this game, but it’s actually a matter of the simultaneous occurrence of cleverly worded, thus disguised quotes with the moment of a particular choice. It’s. It’s pure happenstance. It’s. It’s a chance meeting of a sewing machine and umbrella on a dissecting table, if you will.

Jim: Right. Yeah. So our example this week comes from multiple times. Thought that the best way to detract from the fact that he’s a criminal was to compare himself to Al Capone.

Mark: Oh, okay. With a. With a known convicted criminal, mostly comparing.

Jim: Himself, when in fact, pretty much every time comparing the number of times he’s been indicted to the number of times Al Capone was indicted.

Mark: Okay, statement number one, because that’ll make you innocent. Yeah, yeah.

Jim: I I got indicted more than Alphonse Capone. Al Capone, Scarface. You know how bad he was. You know, these are, I know some of the guys in the front row. They’re tough guys. If you ever looked at Alphonse Capone, you wouldn’t be tough at all. You’d be dead by the morning, most likely. I got indicted more than Alphonse. Alphonse was a tough man. They did a movie called Scarface. Check it out. Even if it was half true, you don’t want to deal with him.

Mark: Okay? Look at the guys in the front row. They’re tough guys.

Jim: Yeah. Okay, statement number two.

Mark: Yeah. Mm Mm

Jim: I’m the only person ever indicted when my numbers went up. It’s true. But the great Al Capone did anybody ever hear of Alphonse Capone? He was so mean. If you looked at him in the wrong way, he’d blow you away. He’d kill you. He’d kill people for fun. Scarface. He had a big scar on his face. I’m sure it happened very innocently. Big, horrible, grotesque scar. Scarface. Did you ever hear that? Scarface. He was only indicted once. I got indicted four times in a matter of seconds.

Mark: He’s got a completely skewed view of what, of what makes somebody better than somebody else, obviously. He was only indicted once. I got indicted four times in a matter of seconds. Oh, yeah. Well, that’s. That’s much better. Yeah. You’re much more innocent. Okay. Uh-huh Yeah.

Jim: Statement number three. I got indicted four times in a very short period. That’s more than the late, great Al Capone. Alphonse Capone. Al Capone. Did you ever hear of Al Capone? Scarface, great head of the mafia, right? Nice gentleman. He was a beauty. Had a big scar from here to here. It’s true. Scarface, he was a dangerous guy. And they only ever indicted him once. He killed a lot of people and probably a lot more, but they never found the bodies. I never killed anyone, but they indicted me four times.

Mark: He was a dangerous guy, and I only ever count indicted him once. Think how dangerous I am. You wouldn’t want to mess with me. That’s. In a way, he’s kind of trying to use the thing to prove his innocence, but also signal that, don’t mess with me. You know. That’s, They would call me scar hair or hair face or orange face or something. Ass face. Yeah. Ah, don’t call me ass face. Okay. Well, I see. Yeah. Either he, he slash you. It’s using very similar sounding thing.

Jim: I mean, that is this game. That is how this game is played.

Mark: I know, but two of the speeches are very, very, very similar, which makes it even harder. so it’s whether he says Scarface a million times or Alphonse Capone a million times. Did he ever call himself Alphonse? Was he called Alphonse was like, Albert. I, don’t know. Don’t know. I quite like the tough guys. One, because I could see him kind of doing that pointy thing with his tiny hands. So that nobody knows which one he’s pointing at. okay. If you looked at him, you wouldn’t be tough. You’d be dead by the morning, most likely. okay. But I quite like, also he’d blow you dot, dot, dot away. As opposed to. Couldn’t think of the term. He’d kill people for fun. So did he have the scar on his face very instantly? Is that real or a big scar? Did he bang on about the scar? Alright, okay. On that basis, too much scar. I’m gonna go with number two. The one is. Number two is the one you made up.

Jim: Okay, so the other two. Which are you more convinced by?

Mark: More convinced by one with the tough guys. Yeah, some of the guys. The front row is tough guys.

Jim: Number one is.

Mark: Yeah, real. I got indicted more than Alphonse Capone. Al Capone, Scarface. You know how bad he was? You know, these are. I know some of the guys in the front row. They’re tough guys. If you ever looked at Alphonse Capone, you wouldn’t be tough at all. You’d be dead by the morning, most likely. I got indicted more than Alphonse. Alphonse was a tough man. They did a movie called Scarface. Check it out. Even was Heftru.

Jim: You don’t want to deal with it.

Mark: What the fuck is he, what? And they’re all going, whoo.

Jim: Yeah, of course you’re that bad.

Mark: You’re four times better than Al Capone. Al Capone was a bad guy. He wasn’t. He’s not really been held up ever as a hero ever, in popular culture.

Jim: No, I think what he’s saying is right. Even Al Capone, who was clearly a bad guy, only got indicted once. Therefore, the fact they’ve indicted me four times and I’m clearly not as bad as Al Capone, shows that it’s a political witch hunt. I think that’s the direction he’s coming from.

Mark: But taking completely out of context, it’s. I’m four times better than he is, so you don’t want to mess with me. Yeah, yeah. But then he kind of goes off on one and kind of tries to associate himself with another fictitious hoodlum.

Jim: Yeah.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: Well, yeah, I think I did wonder if you might think that when he says they did a movie called Scarface, you might think, well, Scarface wasn’t about Al Capone. It m was Tony Montana.

Mark: No, there is that.

Jim: Yeah. And therefore might m pick it. But you didn’t, so he didn’t fall for it.

Mark: Right.

Jim: but the reality is that Scarface, the Al Pacino movie, is a remake, technically, of the 1932 Paul Mooney Scarface.

Mark: Right.

Jim: Which also wasn’t technically about Al Capone, but only because if it was about Al Capone, the writer and director would have been killed. They made it very clear to Al Capone’s minions that this is definitely not about Al Capone. Yes, we’re calling it Scarface. Yes, he does get called Scarface. Yes, it is about a gangster in Chicago who has a scar on his face. Yes. Most of the names of the characters, we’ve barely changed at all. Yes, there is a St. Valentine’s massacre kind of scene in an underground garage. It was exactly alcohol. But they were like, oh, what are you talking about? This.

Mark: And they went, oh, okay. Yeah, yeah. Bit like William Randolph Hearst. And, he’s got. No, nothing. No, nothing to do with that at all. No.

Jim: So technically, the 32 film is about Al Capone, really kind of, although the.

Mark: Names are being changed to protect the makers.

Jim: And therefore the Al Pacino one is also. It’s just a remake of the same story.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: They just transposed it to Miami and the drug trade. And you also think that number three is real.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: And number three.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: It’s fake news.

Mark: Oh, really? Oh, bloody hell. He really did say Scarface a million times. Wow.

Jim: Yeah. I mean, either one, frankly, was going to be. There was going to be a lot of him repeating himself, but it feels.

Mark: That the one that you did was like, toned down. And the other one was just way, way too over the top.

Jim: Yeah, yeah. The one thing I added that he did actually say in another speech, because he said that, he. This is one of his things in his rallies, because he doesn’t have a lot of material. He just recycles the same stuff. So there’ll always be a bit about Al Capone when he’s complaining about how much he’s been indicted. So one time he did call him the head of the mafia, right? He wasn’t the head of the mafia. Not at all. He wasn’t even in the mafia. He wasn’t sicilian.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: So he didn’t say that. But he did say number two.

Mark: I’m the only person ever indicted where my numbers went up. But the great Al Capone. Did anybody ever hear of Alphonse Capone? He was so mean. If you looked at him in the wrong way, he’d blow you away. He’d kill you, kill people for fun. Scarface, he had a big scar on his face. I’m sure it happened very innocently. Big, horrible, grotesque scar. Scarface. Do you ever hear that? Scarface, he was only indicted once. I got indicted four times in the. A matter of seconds. Yeah. Yeah.

Jim: One thing he did say in another, another time was, if you had dinner with him, and he didn’t like the look of you.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: By the time you walked out of the restaurant, you’d be dead.

Mark: don’t come running to me if you break your legs. Yeah.

Jim: Which I did like, but it was not part of a coherent paragraph, because.

Mark: These are perfectly coherent.

Jim: Yeah.

Mark: Yes.

Jim: I could surprise what gets rejected from this game.

Mark: The utter in care is. It’s true. The great Al Capone. Yeah, well, he wasn’t. What the fuck? It’s, And that. Yeah. See up that he’d blow you dot, dot, dot away. Yeah. Should have gone with that as real. But it was just the too many scarfaces was just. It was. I just was rejecting it because it was just horrible oratory.

Jim: Fair enough.

Mark: Should have gone. Should have embraced it, because it’s exactly how he talks, it turns out. Yeah.

Jim: I don’t know if he called himself Alphonse, but Alphonse was his name.

Mark: Right?

Jim: So it wasn’t short for Albert, but. But everything else, I mean, does it need saying? He’s wrong. He’s wrong about this.

Mark: Oh, yeah.

Jim: Capone was indicted at least six times.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: So every single rally that he does where he talks about how Capone only got indicted once.

Mark: Well, he only got. Did he not only get. He only got successfully convicted once, he.

Jim: Ended up in prison for, tax evasion. Yes. But he was also convicted in 1929 for carrying concealed weapons in Philadelphia. I don’t know if he did jail time for that.

Mark: Yeah, maybe he did.

Jim: There were a few indictments that didn’t lead to convictions, but a couple that did. And certainly, obviously, the one that ended with him in jail was the tax evasion one, which is weirdly prescient for Trump’s criminal.

Mark: Exactly. Yes.

Jim: Where it may well be financial paperwork that, ends up with him.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: Going away, possibly.

Mark: Yeah, yeah. Because that’s. That’s the one where is we. That’s the one where the receipts are. Actual receipts. Yeah, yeah, and available. Yes, exactly. And. Yeah, quite.

Jim: so we have some social contestants on, Facebook. Gregory Ruderman, says, number one sounds like him being so impressed that he knows the name Alphonse, and we know he’s never more impressed than when he thinks he knows something. And number three sounds like him for the very short period. I don’t think he’d say that. This guy happened very innocently while he’s talking up how bad Al was. So I think number two is fake news.

Mark: Oh, there you go. Yeah. Well, yeah, I’m with you. With you there. Yes.

Jim: Mary says, these are so good, it’s scary. The two of them are real. It’s not a great reason, but I don’t like the in a matter of second split at the end of number two, so I’m going to pick that. And, Mike says one is fake news because it’s the only one he doesn’t call Al Capone. Great.

Mark: Oh. Oh, nice. Yes, yes, yes.

Jim: And on Patreon.

Jim: We have Scott saying, I’m going to say that number one is fake news. Number two might be real because Donald does love to brag about his numbers. And three is, well, great head of the Mafia. Who says that? Donald, of course.

Mark: Yes, exactly. Yeah, the late, great and great head. Yeah.

Jim: One eyed Nick says the gibbering shit given just can’t ever stay on point. Kenny, he’d blow you away. Feels like a gym joke, but I’m the only person ever indicted where my numbers went up. Feels trumpish. I think I’m going to go with number one being fake news. Trump doesn’t usually talk that much about movies, so I think that’s the fake one.

Mark: Oh, oh, yeah. Yeah, you’re right. Yeah, see, I’m there with you, Nick. That was the, it was the gym joke that warded me away from that. Yes.

Jim: M. Stephen Becker says, my gut says three is the most plausible. My gut is also a lying sack of innards. So I’m saying three is fake.

Mark: Ah. and you’re right. Yes, yes.

Jim: Invisible unicorn agrees. I think three because it’s too coherent. What a way to suss out the probable next leader of the free world. I’ll start drinking now.

Mark: You’ve only started now. Oh, my God. Yeah, yeah.

Jim: Renee Z says, these are all so similar. Mark will go crazy. That’ll be fun to hear. Sorry, Mark.

Mark: Yeah, yeah, thanks.

Jim: Yeah, I think three is fake news. They all have Trumpian elements. But I don’t recall him saying that Capone was the head of the mafia. It was called the outfit in Chicago, I think. See, he did say that, but just not in this exact.

Mark: Yeah, yeah.

Jim: Context. it was called the outfit. He wasn’t head of the mafia, but Trump did say it.

Mark: There you go. Well, nice work.

Jim: Fun fact, my husband’s godfather is buried a few graves down from Al Capone’s.

Mark: Wow. The use of the word godfather.

Jim: Yeah, renee has a lot of good Chicago facts.

Mark: Married to a man who has a godfather, who’s buried near Al Capone.

Jim: Godfather’s perfectly normal thing to have.

Mark: Well, I know, but if you’re married, Paul graves down from Al Capone. Yeah.

Jim: will m. Says, I don’t know which one is fake, but my lord, I do hope number one is real. That dopey orange dipshit thinking the movie Scarface was where Al Capone would be priceless. Never has more clueless and less self aware human being existed.

Mark: What I know. Possibly Prince Andrew.

Jim: Maybe, maybe. I mean, it’s close. Yeah. Anders says me 3 seconds in. This is easy. Must be number one. No way in hell. He refers to him as Alphonse me now. Guess I’ll stick to number one then.

Mark: Just. I can see his, like a little cartoon face again. Kind of like a peanuts crinkly mouth because it would look, we just go, what? Yes, no. Yeah, absolutely.

Jim: And, finally, kaz tui says, oh, man. Nice work, Jim. Mark, get out the dartboard. I think grotesque is quite the verbal challenge for the rotting jack O’lantern. So I think two is fake, but who knows? This week, three is a little too coherent for that drug riddled failed mind. But occasionally he does read the teleprinter.

Mark: Oh, hedge hedging a bets there with could be two, could be three. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, that was. Yes, they were, that was my flip flop for the, for the time. And it was the. Yeah, it was the blow. You dot the dot away. Didn’t know whether that was him.

Jim: Yeah.

Mark: I didn’t know whether it was the tell, but yes, I mean, I.

Jim: Did feel, to be fair, that that was one that you could conceivably think was a, gym joke. Yes.

Mark: Nice.

Jim: Yeah.

Mark: there you go. Yeah, chuck it in.

Jim: Yeah, it’s rare that he comes up with a joke that I might make.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: But when he does, I leap on.

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Mark: Yay. Why is that then?

Jim: Well, I don’t know if you’ve heard. I mean, this has not been in a lot of the news, really.

Mark: Right.

Jim: but, yeah, Trump was found guilty form President Trump. Yeah, yeah.

Mark: Trump in a criminal trial. Yeah, yeah.

Jim: And it happened. We were actually online when the news came out because I was waiting, it was when we were doing our last patron bonus, and I was waiting for Mark to come online and I, and I thought, I’ll just check what’s going on because the jury were out. This was confused night, our time. I just thought, I wonder what’s happening. I wonder if there’s any news. I wonder if there’s just any stuff about, like, questions the jury have asked the judge or anything like that. And it said the jury has a verdict and they need 30 minutes to do the paperwork.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: So I didn’t know what the verdict was yet. And then Mark came online and then within a few minutes it was. Yeah. Guilty.

Mark: Yeah. Which is. Take a minute. Amazing to sign, everything to write and cross out. Ha ha ha. This is not acceptable legal phrase, is it?

Jim: Yes, yes. Oh, no. So just quickly, to address the closing arguments, because we talked about the rest of the trial. The prosecution laid out the whole case. Actually, the prosecution went last, which is quite unusual, I think, in the federal system. The prosecution goes first in closing arguments and then the defense says their bit and then the prosecution gets a rebuttal at the end. But in New York, apparently, defence goes first and then the prosecution goes last. And that’s that. There are arguments both ways on whether that benefits the defendant or the prosecution.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: Cause there’s psychological elements of recency and primacy of the. If you remember the things you heard first versus you remember the things you heard most recently.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: And there are people who say, well, if the prosecution goes first, then the defense is basically required just to kind of address the things the prosecution said, and they don’t get to put their side forward as easily, whereas defense goes first, like they did in this case. They tell the story.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: And then the prosecution is there to say, well, none of that stuff was true. yeah.

Mark: And here’s why.

Jim: Yeah.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: So there’s, I don’t know, open question as to which is kind of better slash worse for different parties in the trial, but that’s the way they do it, apparently, in New York. So, yeah, the defense came first. And the thing is, they have been scuppered by the fact that their client is Trump, not only in the fact that he’s a criminal.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: But the fact that the arguments that they were allowed to make on his behalf.

Jim: Ended up being ones that tended either not to be relevant to the case at all. Like suggesting that he never had an affair with Stormy Daniels, which is immaterial to whether he falsified business records or things that make him sound not good so much as just, somehow powerful or impressive in some way. Like when his lawyer got stormy to say that he’d won a golf tournament at his own club and stuff like that. And the fact that he desperately needs them to elicit someone to say nice things about him.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: Even when they’re testifying against him, meant that they didn’t get to address some of the things that could have actually swayed this in some way, legally speaking.

Mark: Yes. They could have addressed some of the points that the prosecutors were making that were technical issues to do with the case. Yeah. And, and not to do with Trump himself, but all of the people around him and whether they were telling the truth about the transactions that were taking place, he didn’t, he didn’t care about that.

Jim: the message he wants to be out there is that he’s being railroaded. Yeah. This is a political most important thing. Yeah.

Mark: Yeah. He who wins tournaments that he, you know, posts, having, having, having experienced the. There was a Joe Queen and who ran his own film festival in order to make it the film that he had made win. You know, we kind of know about that stuff.

Jim: I mean, we did, we did run a film festival and include our film in it, but we didn’t give it an award.

Mark: No. No. Because we see the shortlist because we were aware that that’s narrowly, ah, missed m out on it. We made it look like we were legitimately good runner up. Yeah. And then the people that are one went, oh, no, you surely deserve that. Yeah, that’s. Yeah, that’s.

Jim: Yeah, they tried to give it to us and they.

Mark: But they refused in a very, very british way. Oh, no, no, no. We can’t possibly. Not possibly. Yes, he’s. He’s up for talk about me. Let’s not get bogged down in the legalities of these transactions done by other minions. Where’s. Where’s me in this? Talk about me some more. And, consequently, it queered their pitch, basically, in order to negate anything that the prosecutors had put up. And then they had a Trump stand in who just bad mouthed everybody and brought the thing to a standstill on his insistence. He’s going, yes, I need somebody to go in there and shout all my grievances and also allow me to say they prevented me from testifying. Well, yeah, of course they bloody prevented you from testifying, because they know that the case would have been completely lost on day one if you stood up and testified.

Jim: That was what he said on the way out of the courtroom, essentially after closing arguments, was that he couldn’t testify because the judge wanted to. You know, the judge said that it was perfectly fine for them to ask him stuff.

Mark: Yeah, exactly. And they’ll bring things up.

Jim: Yeah. You can’t be expected to. If you tell one lie, they’ll convict you of perjury.

Mark: What are things coming to you if they could just ask you stuff rather than allow you to rant?

Jim: But the only real big thing that came out of the closing arguments, really, was the fact that Todd Blanche, Trump’s lawyer, did kind of the best job he could do with what he had. But towards the end, he kind of warned the jury that they should kind of think carefully before sending Trump to prison.

Mark: Right.

Jim: And so there was an objection, which was sustained because the jury doesn’t get involved in the sentencing. The jury is about deciding the facts of the case.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: So they are specifically not allowed to consider what the possible sentence might be and what the consequences of that might be in whether the facts are real or nothing.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: On who to believe. So top Blanche was told off for that, and the jury was instructed not to take that into account. So the jury instructions came next. The, the jury charge, I mean, that was fairly standard stuff as well, although a big thing was made about it, on the right wing, suggesting that Judge Merchant had said that they don’t need to be unanimous in deciding to convict, which wasn’t the case.

Mark: Right.

Jim: We talked about this a little bit last time. What he did instruct was that if they found that Trump had committed the crime of falsifying business records.

Mark: Uh-huh.

Jim: In order to cover up another crime.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: Or in the advancement of another crime, they didn’t need to be unanimous about which crime that underlying crime was in.

Mark: Order to make this one a crime. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jim: But Trump obviously didn’t.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: Get that. He said, oh, the judges said they don’t even need to be unanimous. This is unheard of. It’s never happened before to any person. And because the right wing are, awful, they all just said exactly the same thing and none. It wasn’t ever true.

Mark: No.

Jim: Yeah.

Mark: And it’s not true that you haven’t got, you’ve got to be unanimous.

Jim: Well, you do have to be unanimous in the decision. They did all twelve of them to say he was guilty. it would have only needed one of them to hang the jury to yes on any of the counts. Any of the 44 34.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: Counts. There could have been a juror, that, said, no, I’m not sure about that. I’m not. Not voting guilty. Nothing you can do to change my mind. But that didn’t happen because all of the jury, including one of the members of the jury, even though they’ve said, oh, you know, this proves that you can’t get a fair trial in Manhattan if you’re republican.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: One of the jurors gets their news from truth social, Fox and Twitter. I think it was.

Mark: Right.

Jim: You don’t get your news from truth social if you’re not a Trump follower.

Mark: No, because there’s no news to be had there.

Jim: I have a truth social account.

Mark: Yeah, yeah.

Jim: And I don’t get my news from truth social.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: Almost all the people who have true social accounts are already in favor. They’re already mega people.

Mark: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jim: Or they’re just really into adverts for gold. There’s, there’s a fucking shit ton of put your money in gold. It’s the only safe thing the world is ending.

Mark: Is there Trump, Trump gold?

Jim: Inevitably. There must be. There’s bound to be bars of gold bullion with Trump’s face embossed on it. Yeah.

Mark: That’s his natural color, after all. Yeah, yeah.

Jim: So, yeah, those are the only people on truth social. So even with one definite MAGA person on the jury and others, I mean, that doesn’t mean all the others were Democrats.

Jim: There was a big mix of different kind of news sources and obviously both sides agreed on the jury. They both questioned every member of the jury and accepted those people.

Mark: Yep.

Jim: So it wasn’t a Democrat jury who convicted Trump. In fact, it was a jury that was tough to find because they were people who didn’t feel strongly one way or the other about.

Mark: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that, and it took a long, it was a long process. There was a few days defense. His defense was agreeable to those people who were in the, on the jury and they were going to try him without fear or favor.

Jim: Yeah.

Mark: Which is completely alien concept to Trump.

Jim: Yeah.

Mark: He’s all about fear and favor.

Jim: Yeah. As each count came in, because each count was reported individually when, when the jury was giving their, their verdict.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: The media outlets were saying, okay, well, so count one. Guilty. Count two’s coming in now. That’s guilty. And they just. It was guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty 34 times.

Mark: Fantastic. You kind of almost want to hold off. Like, you get to 33 and go, get to 34, and then you go, oh, I can’t quite read that. yeah.

Jim: Interestingly, 30, I’m not sure why, but 33 and 34 came in together. They were like, oh, they went up, they got it all the way up to 32 and then went. And 33 and 34 guilty, too.

Mark: I have heard the transcript of the reading of that set to music, which is great. And it’s like a minute and a half or something. It’s great. Yeah, yeah.

Jim: Then we come to the aftermath of the verdict.

Mark: Has it made any difference at all?

Jim: Well, actually, although I said before I didn’t think it would probably make any difference, I was being a little bit flippant. And what I said to some of my friends before it came through was that essentially elections, in many cases, I don’t know, it’ll be true of the UK election, but elections are, decided on the margins. Us elections, certainly for the last few decades, have been decided on by tens of thousands of votes rather than in certain areas, especially with the electoral college states where it is kind of 50 and a half to 49 and a half are the places that make the difference. So not a lot of people need to be convinced. And while I think there are a lot of Trump fans who won’t be moved at all by it.

Mark: Right.

Jim: And there are a lot of Democrats who obviously, doesn’t make any difference, I don’t think they’re more likely to vote against him or vote for Biden because of this. I don’t think so. There will be some. And I don’t understand these people. I don’t know who they are. I can’t fathom that they exist. But there are some people who are undecided. There are some people who care enough about politics to vote, but not enough to know anything about what is happening at all.

Mark: Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jim: And this is a thing that I think they’ll know, they’ll have heard.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: And some of them will think, maybe not the convicted felon.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: And that’s all it needs, is some.

Mark: You’re right, it is like in the UK, because there are undecided voters and you think, how could you possibly have lived for 14 years under this current government and been at the suffering at the hands of that and still be undecided? Undecided, it doesn’t mean anything. You’re a complete rabid right winger, who will vote for the right wing, whatever happens, because you’ve swallowed the lies being told to you, or you’re gonna vote not for the right wing because they’re not the person that you want the party. And so. But to be undecided, you’ve either. Yes, you’ve got, you’ve got, you’ve got.

Jim: To basically be someone who could get on the Trump jury.

Mark: Yes. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, I guess. Yes, I guess so. Yeah. Because you kind of. How would you not. Well, it’s. I mean, we’re bad. We’re bad.

Jim: If anything, too much attention.

Mark: Too much attention. Yeah. So maybe that’s, that’s it. So that’s where our, our, failure to understand undecideds comes from, is because we’ve really decided. We’ve so decided. You know, the british example is that woman, we went, oh, no, not again. When there was general elections in 2018 to 19 and she went, well, not again. What’s it, what’s it for this time? You know? And the various, nuances of paroking parliament just passed her by, because that’s. People are getting on with their lives and they don’t, despite the government, they are the people that, that go to the pub and don’t talk about, don’t break the rule and they don’t talk about religion or politics.

Jim: Yeah.

Mark: And occasionally when there’s a clash of cultures, when you come across someone and you say, oh, yeah, what do you think of Trump? And they, know what to think and you’ve. What.

Jim: Yeah, yeah, it’s weird.

Mark: And you’ve got to kind of say, oh, that’s interesting. How comes it you don’t know about Trump or how. How have you managed to exist and operate without thinking about this? Yeah.

Jim: When did you come out of the bunker.

Mark: Yeah, that’s, I think that’s probably a conversation terminating phrase, but, yeah. But I think a more magnanimous approach, the more documentary filmmaker approach might be. Oh, that’s interesting.

Jim: Oh, you’ve been in a coma then.

Mark: How have you remained unaffected by. Yeah. Which might be a, less confrontational.

Jim: Civilization since you were lost in the Congo?

Mark: I’m, beginning to doubt your, your abilities as an interviewer for. Remind me, just to get you to hold the camera. I’ll ask the questions. All right. Gotta be even. Feign interest, you know, you don’t have to be interested to say, oh, that’s interesting.

Jim: Uh-huh.

Mark: Tell me some more about that. Yeah, I mean, it is interesting. Where have you been? Have you been on another planet, you dolts? Yeah. Yeah.

Jim: So, the reality is that I think there will be some people who might be affected slightly by it, and hopefully that’s enough. The, you know, polls are, meaningless, largely. I think, as a society, it’s time to move past polls. But even the polls are, ah, showing a shift.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: And it’s small. It’s kind of, it’s like two percentage points or thereabouts. Shift away from Trump following your conviction. Newspapers are finding people who said, I voted for Trump twice, I wouldn’t do it again now that he’s convicted. So there are people out there, some of those people who, who are even going to the trouble of agreeing to be in newspapers saying, I won’t vote for him, will vote for him. I’ve absolutely no doubt that they will vote for him, ah, in November. but some, some won’t. So there is that. And the other thing, apart from it actually potentially affecting his chances in the election, is that he is going to get sentenced to something. There will be sentencing, which happens 11 July, which is a few days before the Republican National Convention, where they pick their nominee. Obviously, they’re still going to pick him no matter what. You know, if he were to get life, which he won’t, they would still say, he’s definitely our president. But in the meantime, well, today, in fact, Monday, he has a virtual probation meeting to, help to, he has to kind of essentially verbally fill in a questionnaire to help with the sentencing.

Mark: Right.

Jim: And, there’s a lot of things the judge can take into account when deciding on the sentence. Part will be his meeting with probation officers. Part is whether he’s been convicted of crimes before, which, amazingly, he hasn’t. But there’s also things like, does he show remorse?

Mark: Which, I mean, very difficult to detect.

Jim: I don’t know what the exact opposite of remorse is.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: Whatever it is, that’s what he shows.

Mark: That’s what he’s showing. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. God. Yeah.

Jim: And that is a factor. so, and the fact that he has continued to say it’s a witch hunt, say it’s a hoax, and say it’s, you know, it’s rigged and it’s the, you know, Biden weaponizing the justice department against me and all that kind of stuff in a press conference he gave, the day after, which he, I mean, he looked fucking rough. He’s not. Yeah, he doesn’t look great at the best of times, but even for Trump m, I saw, I think one journalist said he looked like he’s woken up in a motel room next to a dead hooker. He’s like, he looked, he looks really fucking rough at the first conference.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: that he was talking, he was saying, I, I’m, you know, I’m still under the gag order. And, then immediately violated the gag order.

Mark: Surely some of that, though, those ones that the prosecution didn’t press for where he had violated the gag order, they’ve got to come up in the probation, surely.

Jim: Yeah.

Mark: Indicator of his lack of the kind.

Jim: Of stuff that will factor in.

Mark: Yeah, yeah.

Jim: One of the things that might come up in probation is that he’ll be asked if he associates with criminals.

Mark: Right, right.

Jim: And he absolutely does because most of his campaign staff have been convicted of felonies.

Mark: Convicted criminals, yes.

Jim: Or are. At least some of them are under investigation. A lot of his lawyers are, either under investigation in various states or have already been convicted or pled guilty to stuff. I don’t know if Walt Nautor is still working for him. I think he probably is, but he’s, you know, obviously under indictment in, in Georgia, Florida. Rather hard to keep track. You’ve got Roger Stone, Michael Flynn, Steve ballroom. I don’t know if George Papadopoulos is still on the scene at all. I doubt he’ll be associating with Michael Cohen much, but essentially, most of the people who’ve worked for him for the last ten years are felons.

Mark: Giuliani.

Jim: So that’s a factor. I don’t know. I’ve heard people talk about whether there’s a drug test, and I don’t know if that’s part of the probationary thing. I hear Adderall stays in the system for about three months, but, yeah, Diet Pepsi. And, I mean, if he’s been anywhere near Don Junior, he’s going to have a contact high, at least. So that probationary interview is going to be interesting, and that will factor in to the sentencing. Merchant has various options. I mean, all the way from, you know, a small fine, essentially.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: Through house arrest. Potential prison time, theoretically, maximum is four years per count, although they’d almost certainly, if that were the case, it won’t be the case, but if that were what he chose, it would. They would run concurrently. I’m sure there’s community service is an option that would be entertaining to see Trump picking up litter in New York in a orange jumpsuit. Very entertaining. Yeah. There’s various options. And it’s true that jail time isn’t always the decision for this kind of crime, but it’s not never the decision for this kind of crime.

Jim: And Merchand was the one who sentenced Allen Weisselberg, who is also an elderly white rich man who never was convicted of any crimes before.

Mark: Anything before.

Jim: To jail time for Financial crimes.

Mark: Yep.

Jim: It’s not impossible, but I don’t think it’ll happen. I mean, I’ve. I’ve always said it will be house arrest, probably.

Mark: Right.

Jim: It could just be probation. It could be. It could be that he’ll be given probation and then if he does anything. So they’ll just have to wait a day or two.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: And then. Yeah. If he did get probation, then obviously he would have to regularly meet with a probation officer and check in and been monitored.

Mark: Yep. Yep.

Jim: So there are consequences. The very smallest possible consequence, I think, for him, at least, is a fine. I mean, house arrest is not much for him because he basically stay in Mar a Lago, and he could spend all his days in Mar a Lago, complaining about the fact he can’t be out on the campaign trail and then going golfing. Actually, he can’t, because Mar a Lago, contrary to popular belief, doesn’t have a golf course. It’s near Trump’s golf course in Florida, but it doesn’t have a golf course of its own. So if he were confined to the. The outer reaches of Mar a Lago, he couldn’t play golf.

Mark: Tag on his angle. Yeah.

Jim: Yeah.

Mark: But I guess also the. The fine thing, if he was fined, they’re going to want to. Yeah, we’re going to go through the whole. Where you’re going to get the, the bond guarantor and all that kind of stuff.

Jim: Yeah.

Mark: While he’s applying about whether he’s got any cash. Yeah.

Jim: While he’s, while he appeals this because he will. He’s already said he’s going to, I think he has 30 days from sentencing to file his appeal to, or to notify that he’s going to file his appeal. But he’s definitely going to do it already. He’s already talking about it. And I’d be absolutely shocked if he was just like, well, they got me.

Mark: yeah.

Jim: So, yeah, so he’s definitely going to appeal. And while that happens, even if he were convicted to prison time, it’s likely that the carrying out of the sentence would be stayed pending his appeal. So I don’t, he’s not, even if he were given prison time, I don’t think he’s going to prison before the election. Yeah, but that would be hanging over him.

Mark: It will come down to the marginal voters that you talked about before because, you know, the MAGA cult followers are just going to vote for him, whatever, doesn’t matter because he’s their, you know, God, king, Messiah now, and he can’t, can do no wrong. If he does wrong, then the system is at fault and he’s right and the system is wrong. and then there are people who are not going to vote for him under any circumstances. And actually, there are people in the m middle who, the so called undecideds who are actually going to sway it because they are going to get a bit more queasy about voting for a convicted felon.

Jim: Yeah.

Mark: You know, people who’ve got kids at school and are, struggling to afford to be able to send them to college and that kind of stuff. People who have got real jobs and are suffering as a real result of, republican policies vis a vis.

Mark: You know, sexual health or whatever, they’re going to be the ones that think, yeah, well, a convicted felon as a.

Jim: President, really, but the other guy is pretty old.

Mark: Yeah. But at least swings around. Yeah, yeah. But also, actually, the economy is been doing quietly quite well and, you know, if anything, they’ll complain that they haven’t been blowing the trumpet enough about it because.

Jim: Yeah, yeah. Another really good jobs report this month, even, even, Stuart Varney on, on Fox was saying how good the job report was, and it was surprisingly impressive.

Mark: So.

Jim: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I’m quietly pleased to that there do seem to be movements that it’s making a difference with some people, and I don’t think it needs a, lot of people to be swayed.

Mark: Yes, exactly. Yes. I think it is just down to that thin layer in the margin that it’s got to make a difference, too. So when it’s like 2%, there’s a two point change. That’s actually quite significant because that’s in the margin.

Jim: And of course, we are still five months out from the election. A lot can happen between now and then in either direction. So it’s not something that we can get too confident about just yet, but it’s a nice direction of movement. There’s, also other things that he loses by being a felon. he doesn’t. I thought, oh, he’s, he lives in Florida. Felons in Florida can’t vote. He can’t vote for himself in the election. Turns out that’s not the case because. Although if you, if you commit a felony in Florida, you can’t vote in Florida. But Florida law acquiesces to the locality where the felony was, committed. In New York, you can’t vote while incarcerated.

Jim: But after that, you get your voting rights back, and before you’re incarcerated, also, you can still vote. So he can still vote in Florida, sadly. But he does potentially lose, first of all, gun rights, felons, right. Can’t carry guns. He has three guns, which is upsetting and scary to me, but he has, yeah, he has three pistols, and a New York concealed carry license.

Mark: Right.

Jim: Because he secretly always thought that Fifth Avenue thing, he said, yeah, yeah, yeah. One day, one day, you know, gonna.

Mark: Have to enact that.

Jim: Yeah, he could have his guns taken away. New, York City Police Department apparently is preparing to revoke his license to carry a gun. He’s also potentially in danger of losing his liquor licence in Mar a Lago and, wow, I guess maybe other places. Bedminster, his other golf clubs would not be able to serve alcohol because felons can’t have a liquor license.

Mark: The other thing is, he can’t actually visit the United Kingdom. Yes.

Jim: International travel is going to be an issue if he were to become president, because there are quite a lot of countries that restrict felons from entry. The UK is one. So he can’t visit, currently his golf club in Scotland. Incidentally, if he did try to visit UK anyway, at the moment, he has a 380,000 pound financial settlement outstanding in.

Mark: The case against the HMRC.

Jim: No, against Christopher Steele.

Mark: yes, yes, yes. The Steele dossier, he hasn’t paid that.

Jim: But if he, if he ever sets foot in the UK again, if he’s ever allowed to, that can be enforced.

Mark: Yeah. Because at some point somebody’s going to say to him, yeah, you don’t actually have any money left.

Jim: Yeah.

Mark: You’re. You can’t keep doing these things. These. These fines you’ve got to pay. You can’t just keep saying, yeah, yeah, we’ll pay that. You. We haven’t got. There is no money. We’re gonna have to sell some stuff. And it’s not worth as much as you think it is, because that’s part of the problem. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jim: But the reality is, while there’s a lot of jobs that he wouldn’t be allowed to do as a felon and would never get, you know, if he put felon on his paperwork, in fact, there’s a, there’s a movement, at least the change, dotted petition, I think possibly a bill in progress to, on the basis of this, saying, if Trump, as a convicted felon, is allowed to be president, technically, as you know, is allowed to run for president.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: We should stop requiring that information on job forms, on job abortions. There should be a law that you can’t ask people if they have a, spent conviction.

Mark: Yeah. Because if the bloody president can.

Jim: Absolutely. Why are we stopping people from being nurses or working in McDonald’s or something? Because of a prior felony conviction.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: When.

Mark: When we’re gonna let the guy run either country.

Jim: Yeah.

Mark: Yeah. So I’m representing the country in the rest of the world, is a convicted felon.

Jim: Meanwhile, although he can’t, he can’t own a firearm. he can potentially have access to the nuclear football.

Mark: Yes. Yeah.

Jim: So that’s great.

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

Jim: Oh, It’s been such a great week for bad people facing consequences. Last month, the DC circuit court of Appeals upheld Steve Bannon’s conviction, which you’ll remember was not a well deserved jail sentence for crimes against fashion, but a contempt of congress charge. It turns out you can’t just ignore a subpoena because you think the January 6 committee is bad, even if a Trump lawyer tells you to. Bannon’s sentence had been stayed during the appeal, but since he lost, because, like Trump, he’s a loser who committed crimes, he’s been ordered to report to prison by July 1 to begin serving his four month sentence. I’m not sure if it’s the same prison where Trump trade advisor Peter Navarro is currently serving his four month sentence for contempt. But honestly, it’s really hard to keep track of all Trump’s criminal friends. When asked by a reporter how he plans to continue with his daily right wing invective spewing known as war room. After he reports to prison, Bannon said, who says I’m reporting? War room cannot and will not be silenced. And if he wants to be dragged to prison in cuffs, honestly, I’m here for it. Ginger, get the popcorn. After vowing to fight it all the way to the Supreme Court, Bannon claimed that this is evidence that the Justice Department is shutting down the MAGA movement, shutting down grassroots conservatives, shutting down President Trump, which, if nothing else, shows. He doesn’t know what grassroots means.

Mark: Arizona’s MAGA licking representative Senator Paul Gosar’s new bill, dubbed the Treasury Reserve, unveiling memorable portrait. See what the clever acronymic cronies done there. Trump Ah act would require the United States treasury to print $500 bills with convicted felon Trump’s face on them. There is a law. You know those things, Donny. The kind of thing you broke 34 of recently from 1866, that in order to avoid the appearance of a monarchy, it was a long standing tradition to only feature portraits of deceased individuals on currency and coin. The Atlanta Journal Constitution explained the 1866 law this way. Our founding fathers believed it was, unpatriotic for living people’s likenesses to be placed on money in circulation, though it was slightly skirted when Calvin Coolidge appeared on a commemorative half dollar minted for the 150th anniversary of american independence. Gosar’s not talking. Commemorative suit with arrows on behind bars. Type portrait on a specially minted orange note, however. Oh, no. He’s gone full Mount Rushmore. Nothing’s big enough for their God King Messiah carving convicted if felon Trump’s hair over the man in the moon wouldn’t be beyond their list of suitable acts of worship. Notwithstanding that the US treasury stopped printing large denomination notes in 1945, a convicted felon Trump $500 bill would have some advantage. Apparently, in this age of completely made up by Gosar bidenflation, larger value currency will empower Americans with the freedom of more tangible options to save and exchange goods and services. He doesn’t explain how. Additionally, the absence of large denomination currency issued by the treasury encourages Americans to rely on digital banking, which faces greater vulnerability to surveillance and censorship. Particularly, I guess, if you are, say, a, felon convicted of 34 counts of financial cover ups. Trump notes would likely be sought after, by collectors, Gosar added, which surely negates his first two points. The ultimate reason for doing this absurd and going nowhere fast act is, of course, to ingratiate himself with the convicted felon in the hope that he won’t be come after. When convicted felon Trump’s thought police start going through Gosar’s files just because he’s way too arsenic. Yeah.

Jim: The only reason I rely on digital currency is because it’s. I don’t have the convenience of a 400 pound note.

Mark: Exactly. Yeah.

Jim: That’s just why I pay for my petrol with. With my card.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: Yeah.

Mark: Even though it will empower you, surely a, 400 pound note will empower you with the freedom of more tangible options to save and exchange goods and services. Because you go, can you imagine going into sings bridge local with a $500 bill? And you go, yeah, can you change that?

Jim: No, of course.

Mark: You’re buying. I’m buying a bag of chips. Well, that’s 199. Yeah. If you got change over 500. Because it’s very convenient.

Jim: Yes, very tangible.

Mark: Carry this around. It’s a tangible option. I’m just going, fuck off.

Jim: Yeah, just fucking use apple pay.

Mark: Get out of my store. Yeah. Huh?

Jim: I haven’t carried notes for years.

Mark: You bought it? No, no, that’s. Yes.

Jim: anyway, I wasn’t kidding when I said it was a great week for bad people facing consequences. Human aneurysm. Alex Jones agreed to a court supervised liquidation of his assets in order to pay the Sandy Hook families who won a $1.5 billion lawsuit against him back in 2022. Which means that claim he’s been making on a near daily basis, that this episode of Infowars might be the last one, could actually come true someday.

Mark: He’s finally lost the shop.

Jim: So long as knowledge fight keeps going, I don’t mind. Meanwhile, Salem Media, the christian right media conglomerate who is at least partially responsible for shows of people like Charlie Kirk, Dennis Prager, and our good friend Dinesh D’Souza, has announced they will no longer be distributing the film or book versions of 2000 mules on their platforms after they learned that Mark Andrews, one of the people accused of being a mule in the film, has been cleared of any illegal activity by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. To be fair, they probably learned that when he was cleared over 18 months ago. But, you know, paperwork takes a while and the bosses probably weren’t told. So it’s probably a coincidence that this announcement and an official apology to Mister Andrews has come within a week of sailing media being dismissed as a defendant in the defamation case Mister Andrews brought against Salem. Dinesh, true the vote and others. It’s worth noting, I think, that while Salem won’t be distributing them anymore, the film is still available elsewhere, like on Dinesh’s locals page, because he’s apparently still convinced. So the lawsuit continues. Mister Andrews, if you’re listening and you need a witness to point out some of the other flaws in the film, I’m available.

Mark: Yeah, and a whole bunch of documentary evidence. Yes, soon to be published. Meanwhile, in the Texas state of Gilead, a finance and a philosophy professor are fuming that their attempts to flunk or expel students who take time off to have, or even refuse to employ staff who’ve had abortions is being somewhat thwarted by arch Republican Richard Nixon’s administration’s signing in of the federal act called title nine in 1972. Title ix currently bars publicly funded schools from discriminating on the basis of sex or gender. This means that schools cannot penalize students for health care based on sex. As a male student will be granted leave if he had to travel for surgery, so must the female student. The federal statute requires. Austin professors Daniel Bonovac and John Hatfield argue that granting students an, excused absence in such cases violates their First Amendment rights, which, as far as I learned, just protects freedom of speech, the press, assembly, and the right to petition the government for address of grievances. And what really aggrieves Bonnevac and Hatfield is that title IX prevents them from controlling the private lives of students. Along with their anger about abortion, they grouse about not being allowed to punish students for being homosexual or transgender. They also argue they should be allowed to penalize teaching assistants for cross dressing, by which they appear to mean allowing trans women to wear skirts. Surely you can protest that you are allowed to say such things, but it doesn’t guarantee that, a you’re right and the law is wrong, or b that anyone is going to agree with you. Unless, of course, you file not in Austin, but 486 miles away in Amarillo, Texas, where eyes bugging out, screeching at top of volume about the evils of sexual revolutionaries. Convicted felon Trump appointed Judge Matthew Kazmarick is very clear that sex is only for procreation within marriage, and anything outside of that should draw legal sanction. Unfortunately, the Dobbs decision, which ended abortion rights, didn’t just empower professors who are overly preoccupied with the sex lives of undergraduates. Texas has swiftly turned into a case study in how abortion bans aren’t really about life at all, but about giving abusive misogynists a whole new set of tools to use in controlling women. What’s really going on here is not that nosy right wing professors are not, despite their feeble protestation to the contrary, just really into babies. For people who actually care about children, there are plenty of volunteer opportunities that, age real kids who need food to eat and opportunities to grow. Instead, the through line is anger at women for living their lives outside the control of the men who feel entitled to dominate them.

Jim: The jury is currently deliberating in Hunter Biden’s trial for owning a gun for eleven days while being a drug addict in 2018, and republicans seem confused. Any of them who are capable of logical consistency? Yeah, okay, I heard it. Never mind. There might be a couple who are struggling with the fact that Joe Biden clearly isn’t intervening in any way in the process. And the old two tier justice system that protects Democrats and punishes Republicans appears to actually be not doing that. Don’t worry, though, the federalists. Benjamin Weingarten is here to explain with an op ed in the New York Post. You see, this is all actually a clever ploy executed by Joe to use the DOJ to target his only surviving son and publicize the lurid details of his struggles with alcohol drugs in order to distract from all the actual crime and corruption sleepy Joe is doing. sure, it’s a jury trial and Hunter risks a prison sentence, but that’s apparently a price Joe is prepared to pay in order to guarantee re election by having a close family member convicted of a felony. That’s how it works, right?

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: Meanwhile, the fact that this is a trial, at least partly about someone’s right to own a gun is causing genuine confusion for another Republican. Trey Gowdy, the man who spent two and a half years and $8 million investigating Hillary’s role in the 2012 Benghazi attack and found nothing, went on Fox News last week to and this is weird, defend Hunter. He I did gun prosecutions for six years. I bet you there weren’t ten cases prosecuted nationwide of addicts or unlawful drug users who possessed firearms or lied on applications. Why are you pursuing this one? Even Lindsey Graham told HuffPo last week, I don’t think the average American would have been charged with the gun thing. I don’t see any good coming from that. Unlike those rhinos, Gowdy and Graham, proper republicans see this as the Department of Justice just following the rules, calling bulls and strikes and doing their job without fear or favour. Five minutes later, of course, when Trump’s 34 convictions need defending, the DOJ are far left marxist fascist communists who have weaponised the rule of law and brought the entire concept of law and order to its knees with their rigged partisan show trials.

Mark: That’ll be the two tier process. Yeah. NBA player turned Alex Jones protege Royce White wants to be Minnesotas next senator and got a major boost this week when the state GOP endorsed him. But according to a new report from the Daily Beast, whites FEC disclosures from a failed 2022 bid to unseat the Democrat Ilan Omar are riddled with highly questionable campaign expenditures. On August 25, 2022, several days after his campaign loss, White and others racked up a tab of over $1,200 at the Gold Rush cabaret, a strip club in Miami, Florida, almost 2000 miles away from Minnesota. as well as strip clubs, limousines, nightclubs, hefty, unexplained wire transfers, cash withdrawals, luxury hotels, expensive restaurants, clothing, sporting goods, and private car services are all listed as expenses. After White had officially lost the 2022 republican primary, the total amount surpasses $100,000. White claimed that the lavish spending at the Gold Rush strip club was campaign related, as he had recorded a podcast in Miami, and he simply likes the food there. Yeah, it’s a bit like saying, yeah, I subscribe to Playboy because the journalism is top notch. Quick calculation from Goldrush’s menu suggests that those present would have to order 48 of the establishments $25 appetizer platters in order to have spent $1,200. Other vital campaign expenses for the dedicated public servant determined to selflessly represent the interests of his constituents and forgo personal aggrandizement. Wike’s campaign spent $3,200 in guitar center and $2,500 at Dick sporting goods, $700 at Sally’s beauty supply, and made purchases at a wide variety of clothing stores, including Lululemon, Cavendish, Wessonware, Crocs, Nike, and Nordstrom. The Daily Beast also found that many of the out of state purchases made by White’s campaign coincided with touring dates for ice cubes, Big three, three on three basketball league, with major expenditures in Chicago and Dallas and Tampa and Atlanta. Still, he’s obviously the perfect GOP kind of guy. If your presidential candidate is a convicted felon, guilty of 34 counts and falsifying financial records to cover up payments made to influence an election campaign, then, hey, who are they to chastise new recruits for just following in the great leaders footsteps?

Jim: It reminds me of that episode of Friends, as many things do remind me of an episode of Friends, where Joey, who was at the time a, newly crowned soap actor, was spending enormous amounts of money and then needed to kind of send everything back because he’d spent a lot, so much. I love Lucite. And yes.

Mark: And thankfully, yeah.

Jim: Including the, giant dog.

Mark: Giant.

Jim: Absolutely.

Mark: Yeah. Porcelain dog. Yeah.

Jim: In other expenses news. Last year, the House of Representatives approved new rules for expenses associated with the fact that they work in both DC and in their home district, and sometimes need to maintain two residences. there are certain rules, like, they can’t claim for mortgage payments, there’s a daily cap, and they can only claim on days they’re actually working in or flying to DC. The noble idea is that running for government shouldn’t be restricted to the independently wealthy and especially young. Lawmakers might find it hard to make ends meet if their home district is anywhere near as expensive as DC. Generally a good thing, I would say, but, the one change I would have made is to require receipts. As it stands, even keeping records of expenses is strongly encouraged, but not required. And these are politicians we’re talking about, and half of them are Republicans, which is how we got the news that 319 House members shared over $5.8 million in taxpayer funded expenses in 2023 without having to account for any of it. Nancy Mace, who owns a $1.6 million townhouse on Capitol Hill, still managed to claim almost $28,000, including $4,000 for lodging expenses in October, according to two former members of her staff. They told her the maximum plausible monthly expenses she could claim would be $1800, but she told them to seek the maximum reimbursement regardless of her actual expenses. She’s not the worst offender, though. Matt Gates claimed over $30,000 in lodging and over $11,000 for food, more than double the average household grocery bill. The top spender, though, was Michigan Republican Jack Bergdeh, who topped $32,000 for lodging and almost $12,000 for meals. It’s almost like, when it comes to politicians, the honour system is one to be avoided.

Mark: Well, it’s. It’s like the, UK expenses scandal some years ago where they were claiming for a moat and a. And, a dove cot in the grounds or something. Oh, yeah, well, we just let you have that, of course. And there’s.

Jim: But they had to actually, like, fill in a form.

Mark: Provide. Yes. Which is how we got to see the details. Yeah. My God. And they. And the, the whole second home thing is that you can. You can claim for that. Which makes me think of which I didn’t, come when I was about to write about to talk about the british politics bit. There was one bit. The Michael gove has, jumped ship and his replacement has been flown in because they just tow the party line and they’re young and impressionable and hungry. to be part of the gang that’s about to be sent into oblivion for two generations. and he has nothing to do with the constituency that he is representing. So he was photographed outside the house he’s moved into in the constituency, holding the keys, going, very glad to be, you know, living in and representing the constituency, my constituency, and hopefully taking you into the general election. Turns out he rented it off Airbnb for like a month.

Jim: Oh, amazing.

Mark: Because you think, well, yeah, why would you rent it for any longer? Because you’re going to get wiped out, in July 4. So, yeah, so good luck. And you put that out, you put a keys moment on the Internet and everyone on the Internet is going to go, well, let’s just find out where that house is and it’s available after July 5. Yeah. So here we are in week two, or thereabouts of the election campaign. It feels much longer. And what have we had? Part from the lie about the house, outright lies from the Tories. Again, Sunak lying in the first of the television debates with starmer about the truth of the claim that Labour policies will put taxes up by 2000 pounds for each household based on I don’t know what, because the Labour Party haven’t published their election manifesto yet and saying it was independently verified and the independent verifiers themselves, the government’s own office for Statistics Regulation said, yeah, you’ve glossed over the fact that that sum was over four years. So 500 a year, not 2000 that you’re implying. Oh, plus, the figures were profoundly influenced by Tory party advisers and not independently produced by, say, the Office for Statistics Regulation. The same lie was perpetuated during the second tv debate featuring seven leaders of parties, along with the lie that, Farage said about not wanting to stand as an MP. This time when he became the leader of the Reform party, having been invited by the former leader, Richard Tice. You know, like the way Afghanistan invited the Russians to come into their country in 1980. I also listened to a dramatization of the fiction novel 1984. This week, as part of the celebrations of the 75th anniversary of its publication, was struck by how Farage is like Goldstein in that what was strange was that although he was hated and despised by everybody, although every day and a thousand times a day, on platforms, on the tele screen, on, in newspapers, in books, his theories were refuted, smashed, ridiculed, held up to the general gaze for the pitiful rubbish that they were, in spite of all this, his influence never seemed to grow less. Always there were fresh dupes waiting to be seduced by him. Speaking of which, the 80th anniversary of the D day landings were celebrated at the weekend and little rishis spreadsheet for her heart and no sense of optics. Sunak thought it a smart thing to do to leave and get a helicopter back to the UK to fit in an extra half day of campaigning, whilst the rest of the heads of european states, including Kinsta and David Cameron, for fuck’s sake, paid their respects for the whole ceremony. He that’ll teach em. Little Rashi must have thought, forgetting, that when it comes to the war and the royals can’t muck about with that stuff in the eyes of the suddenly patriotic four locked, tugging, cap ringing, surf, like multitudinous descendants of those sent to war by their elders, abettors, even really old school, still, hateful Tories like Michael Hesseltine, who was Thatcher’s militia, Mandy shook their shaggy heads and predicted the complete wipeout of the Tory party as a result, never mind running health, education, transport, water, energy and post office money into the pockets of their mates and into the ground for the rest of us for the last 14 years. If you’re gonna snub war veterans, then that’s really the thing that will kill off your party. So much so that Sir Deville Bravaman is hailing reform as the new Tories and probably getting farage to become Sunak’s successor. And you wonder why old Matey Nige has suddenly got interested in politics again. coincidence?

Jim: At least Trump had a good reason not to go to the D day festivities this time, in that. Yeah, France wouldn’t let him in anyway.

Mark: Yeah. Rishi going. Yeah, I’ll get back. And campaign. Only thinking. Yeah, you’ve forgotten about this insane, irrational thing that we’ve got for the war, and, you know, the tourists just don’t mess with. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, sending. Yes. The memory of people that were sent to war by people like you, it’s.

Jim: Like calling the, 1966 english football team shit. Yeah, you’re definitely not getting elected.

Mark: And D day landings, you can’t go. Ah, yeah, we’re just lucky with the weather. No, you. That’s it. You’re going to be ostracized for about all the time. Yeah.

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

Mark: We use 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 could support the show@patreon.com. ftrump just like our newest patron, Eleanor Brown, our straw man level patrons, Colleen Laiela Ah, Richard Thunder Hopkins, Will M. Scott, Ozzy on bank, Laura Tomsick Schmootz, Mark Reiche, and Amber R. Buchanan, who told us when we met her at QED, we could just call her Amber, though another listener recognised her at QED last year because we keep using her full name all the time. And our, true Scotsman level patrons, Sharon Robinson, Renee Zed, Melissa Saitek, Stephen Bickle, Janet Loueta, Andrew HalC, and our, top patron. Thank you so much and welcome, Eleanor, and thank you for your continued and brand new support. It’s very much appreciated.

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

Mark: Groups FeliciasTrump all music is by the outburst and was used with permission. So until next time on Felicia Trump, we’ll leave the last word to the convicted felon, Donald. That’s right, go home to Mommy. Bye.

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Jim Cliff
jim@fallacioustrump.com


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