Notable Effort – FT#152

24 Jun Notable Effort – FT#152

Show Notes

The Notable Effort Fallacy occurs when someone relies on effort rather than evidence in evaluating a claim.

Trump

We started out by discussing this clip of Trump on his efforts for seniors:

And then we looked at this clip of Trump anticipating the Durham report being positive for him:

Finally, we talked about this clip of Trump on election integrity:

Mark’s British Politics Corner

Mark talked aboutRishi Sunak and the NHS waiting lists

He followed that up by talking about Rishi rating his campaign on effort:

And he finished by talking about Sir Simon Clarke talking about the Rwanda bill:

Fallacy in the Wild

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

Then we discussed this clip from The West Wing:

And we finished up with this clip from Taskmaster New Zealand:

 

Fake News

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

1. When I’m there I’m a good father, you know, I like my kids but I like working, too. Sometimes I like working a little more – depends if they behave. The people who work for me do what they’re told. But, you know, I’m there, I spend time with them but no, I don’t play with them. They get on pretty well by themselves.
2. I like kids. I mean, I won’t do anything to take care of them. I’ll supply the funds and she’ll take care of the kids, right? It’s not like I’m going to be walking the kids down Central Park. Marla used to say I can’t believe you’re not walking Tiffany down the street, you know, in the carriage, right? I’m gonna be walking down Fifth Avenue with the baby in a carriage. It just didn’t work.
3. (On changing diapers) No, I don’t do it. It’s not my thing. I… you know what, I’m a good father, but that’s not my thing. There are a lot of women out there that, you know, demand that the husband act like the wife, and you know, there are a lot of husbands that listen to that. So, you know, they go for it.

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

 

Project 2025 is not a logical fallacy

We talked about the terrifying plan for Trump’s second term.

 

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

• They say a criminal often returns to the scene of the crime, and so it was that Trump visited Capitol Hill last week for the first time since his conviction on 34 felony counts. In an event described by Adam Schiff as “bring your felon to work day”, Trump met with Senate and House Republicans who fawned over him like a bunch of Charles Boyles to Trump’s Jake Peralta. Speaking about the meeting afterwards, Mike Johnson could barely contain his excitement when recounting how Trump “said very complimentary things about all of us. We had sustained applause. He said I’m doing a very good job. We’re grateful for that”, and Marjorie Taylor Greene talked about how funny and sweet he was, and said he always recognises her which, at his stage of cognitive decline, is a big deal. Ralph Norman said “It was a great, uplifting thing. Everybody was excited,” and even Mitch McConnell said “He got a lot of standing ovations. It was an entirely positive meeting”. But of course, they have to say that, because despite everything, Trump is still inexplicably popular with people of the land. The common clay of the new West. You know… morons. When given the opportunity to talk anonymously, attendees said Trump did almost all the talking and had “lots of tangents”, adding “I lost interest after about 45 minutes”. Perhaps this was Chip Roy, of Texas, who another source in the room spotted watching golf on his iPad. Another attendee described the whole thing as “Like talking to your drunk uncle at the family reunion.” I know it’s going to be decades before the GOP manages to crawl out of the hole Trump has dug for them, but I feel like step one might be to have a whip round and see if they can buy just one spine to share between them.
• In a kind of an homage to The District, Craig T. Nelson wannabee Minnesota GOP-endorsed candidate and new friend-of-the-show Royce White, who has pled guilty to theft and disorderly conduct, endorsed conspiracy theories, denigrated women and LGBTQ people, described himself as an “antisemite,” fallen behind on child support, and played fast-and-loose with campaign finance laws as we reported last episode, has gone all The District and data-led on identifying crime hotspots in tweeting a map of Minneapolis with lots of dots all the way across it with the message “Crime in Minneapolis…Out of control. Come on now. Refund the police! #Godspeed”. Sheesh it’s powerful stuff, the map plays into the heart of the GOP’s law and order strength etc not like the soft Democrat senator Amy Klobuchar – oh no we’re grasping this thorn alright! Except it’s a map of the location of all 195 public drinking fountains in the city. Yeah flippin’ ‘eck that well ‘ard geezer Royce White’s not only got sharpie writing of Alex Jones was Right on his head during a Big 3 match but he’s the kind of guy who represents the image of a party that’s tough on water and tough on the sources of water! Maybe the message is something along the lines of “Hey crime.. you don’t wash with us!” Or perhaps it doesn’t matter that you can stand a bigoted convicted felon who has no grasp of basic facts in a state where no Republican has won statewide office in nearly 20 years cos it doesn’t matter when there’s another one exactly like him running for the White House!
• During his Capitol Hill meeting with Republicans, which was either the modern equivalent of the Sermon on the Mount or a discount Trump rally depending on who you ask, Trump opined on the location of the Republican National Convention, saying “Milwaukee, where we’re having our Convention, is a horrible city.” Perhaps not the smartest thing to say about the largest city in one of the battleground states you desperately need to win in 2024. Trump of course both denied saying it and clarified that when he said it, he was talking about the crime rate, which, incidentally, has dropped dramatically in 2023 and so far in 2024. As Democratic Congresswoman Gwen Moore pointed out, the city’s crime rate will go up when convicted felon Donald Trump arrives for the convention. But it turns out Trump wasn’t just randomly bitching about Milwaukee, according to sources who spoke to ABC, Trump has made plans to stay in Chicago during the convention, commuting 90 miles every day rather than stay in Milwaukee. Of course, this isn’t necessarily because of crime related fears. It’s more likely just that if he stays at his own hotel in Chicago he gets to charge his Secret Service protection detail for hotel rooms, but if he stayed near the venue he wouldn’t be making a profit on the deal. Since this was reported, Trump’s people say he does, in fact, plan to stay in Milwaukee during the convention, and I’m sure that will make Wisconsinites forget all about what he said and give him a ticker tape parade or something. Well, the Republican ones, anyway.
• Remember when Trump’s campaign posted German National Socialist-era rhetoric in one of his videos and they all blamed the intern and the freelance graphic artist, Michigan Republican primary congressional candidate Anthony Hudson offered his sincere apologies and promised to sack his staffer after a video message was posted on his X channel featuring the AI-generated voice of Martin Luther King saying “I have another dream,  I came back from the dead to say something I have another dream that Anthony Hudson will be Michigan 8th District’s next congressman. Yes, I have a dream again. OK, now I am going back to where I came from. Goodbye.” which is then followed by the Voice of Hudson saying he approves this message. Hudson claimed he was “extremely furious about this situation.” He warned that just as his voice had been AI-d as well, “This could happen to any of us so please be cautious and aware of who has your personal information.” Yeah could happen to anyone! Especially if you’re a desperate Republican running for office, so desperate that merely hours later he changed his mind about how angry he was and said he’d decided “not only to keep my campaign staffer, but also give him a raise as I believe MLK would be disgusted at the complete suffering of Flint Michigan residents under the current administration’s watch.” He added, “If MLK were alive today- I do believe he would endorse me and my vision for a better Michigan.” Really Anthony? Really? MLK? You? A Republican? Well yeah I guess you’re just what he would’ve wanted!

•  One of the other cities Trump needs to win in November, and that he claims won last time, is Detroit. Since the city’s population is almost 80% Black, it’s an important community to reach out to, so when Trump visited last weekend he held a roundtable event at a Black church which Kellyanne Conway described like this: “look at the contrast of just this weekend – you’ve got Donald Trump in Detroit talking to 8,000 people, at a Black church of course”.  This is one of those alternative facts you’ve heard so much about, because when Newsweek asked the church, they replied that their seating capacity “is a little under 700” although they did add that during Trump’s roundtable event, “We had standing room only and others who were unable to be admitted due to capacity issues.” However, even the church is lying, because there are photos and videos of the event and it’s at most three-quarters full. One other thing you notice when you look at the photos and videos is that way over half of the congregation of the Black church is… white. When asked by Washington Post reporters nobody in line to get in said they were members of this particular church. Meanwhile, the politicians of color who shared the stage with Trump did not include that District’s Congressperson, Democrat Rashida Tlaib, but did include John James, whose northern Michigan district is affluent and overwhelmingly white, Byron Donalds, whose Florida District is overwhelmingly white, and Ben Carson, who is presumably hoping for that coveted VP slot. Also alongside Trump while he talked about how crime is ravaging the city was former Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, who knows a thing or two about the local crime scene, since four years ago Trump commuted his 28 year sentence for a wide-ranging racketeering conspiracy that included fraud, extortion, bribery and tax crimes and involved stealing money from nonprofit organizations. 
• I’ve worked out that Royce White was actually talking sense with his fountain map and ‘it’s a crime’ schtick cos I’ve just watched the ad that ran during Turning Point’s People’s Convention over the weekend. Alex Clark, a MAGA-world talking head/”influencer?” is holding a bottle of, dare I say, ordinary looking water; clear, appears liquid, in a plastic bottle, probably swallowable?… But no, this is Freedom2O and she tells us, quite stridently that “It’s a reminder that even the most ordinary acts, like taking a sip of water, can be infused with meaning and purpose by choosing to drink Freedom2o. You’re not just choosing the brand, you’re choosing to stand up for what you believe in,” Clark pitches the product – where a 12-pack of 16.9oz bottles cost $21 – by insisting that every sip of the conservative water is “not just refreshing, it’s rebellious, and it’s unapologetic to drink this in public.”  So you’re not just chugging plain old tap water grifted out to gullible saps who sip – no no you’re encouraged to “speak your thirst” whatever the fuck that means and “protect the first”  and merely by the act of publicly sucking on a stupidly expensive bottle of water (which incidentally has a frequency of 432hz – however the fuck that’s measured) you can be anti-woke in front of whoever actually cares about the contents of what you’re tipping facewards and align your new age chakras with a sound bath at the same time. Other successful liquids from the anti-woke right include of course that reaction to the Bud-Lite inclusive pride edition – Ultra-Right beer and Guiliani’s own Rudy Coffee both of which allow you to “drink to the cause” – probably both their nearing-bankruptcy causes as the two businesses are struggling somewhat to remain liquid – ha ha see what I did there Alex Clark?!! Yeah!    
• Kari Lake lost the Arizona Gubernatorial election in 2022, accepted the result gracefully and moved on. No, hang on, that’s every Democrat politician who lost their elections. Kari challenged the result in court and this week was told that she doesn’t get to run the election again. I should clarify, because you might be experiencing an extreme form of deja vu right now, since Kari lost her case way back in December of 2022 when the judge dismissed her case after two days of trial saying “The Court cannot accept speculation or conjecture in place of clear and convincing evidence“.  She appealed, and lost again in February 2023, the Appeals Court saying “Lake’s only purported evidence” that long lines at voting centers “had any potential effect on election results was, quite simply, sheer speculation”. Then she appealed to the Arizona Supreme Court, who declined to hear her case and sanctioned her lawyers for lying to the court but still remanded one of her seven claims to the lower court to reconsideration, which resulted in another ruling against Kari in May. She tried to appeal that ruling straight to the Arizona Supreme Court who told her to go away and do it properly, so she went back to the Court of Appeals, who this week told her not only does she not get to do the election again because that’s not a thing, but she can’t have a new trial to present evidence she claims she didn’t have access to at the time of her first trial, because she actually did have access that evidence, it’s just that her expert witness hadn’t found the time to look at it, and that’s very much a her problem. 
• In another gruelling week of election campaigning Sunak and Starmer argued about who had it tougher Starmer had his phone cut off when he were a kid and Sunak had so many privations in his childhood that he had to go wi’out Sky TV! Ay butt you trying telling the young people of today that and they won’t believe you. Farage has single-handedly increased the sales of Mcdonald’s banana milkshake as people buy them just to throw them at him like they used to the last 7 times he failed to get elected. Labour launched their manifesto which excited all the people on the right of business, and Farage’s Reform launched their manifesto, well they called it a contract, which excited all those people that can’t add up, and who like reading illegible notes hastily scribbled on the back of fag packets in Wetherspoons – so yeah just about everyone who’s likely to vote for him in Clacton. The Tories meanwhile are concentrating on just getting Rishi out of the way – go feed some sheep somewhere and look like you might appeal to some safe Tory-voters – whilst they sidle up to the populace and say pssst look you don’t want Starmer to like get a super-majority and then increase accessibility to voting undoing all our carefully organised poll-restricting and be in power for 20 years do you where would be the accountability – not like when Boris had a huge majority oh no that was different he was a fine upstanding legally-minded genuine, honest, people-focussed, monogamous and magnanimous representative of the poor and underrepresented so didn’t need any accountability – er oh no um wait – okay okay just don’t vote for fucking Farage though hey cos he’ll end up leading the Tories in 2029!

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:

Notable Effort – FT#152 Transcript

Jim: Hello, and welcome to Fallacious Trump, the podcast where we use the insane ramblings of idiot Amin to explain logical fallacies. I’m your host, Jim, and I’m your other host, Mark.

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 notable effort fallacy idiot amins. Very good.

Jim: Thank you and I mean, it’s, the dictator angle is a bit of a throw forward to our, is not a logical fallacy section, but we’ll come back to that.

Mark: Radio.

Jim: Meanwhile, notable effort. This is where effort is used as the metric for whether you should give a claim, any credence or not, or kind of reward someone rather than the outcome or ideally, evidence. And so when someone, if someone was to claim that, you should believe them because they worked really hard on figuring out, their point of view and put a lot of effort into it. That isn’t really what that should be based on.

Mark: Yeah. Was it Jerry Kushner who said, yeah, it’s got many pages on a map.

Jim: Yeah. Yeah. His middle eastern peace plan. Far more pages than previous peace plans.

Mark: And pictures and everything.

Jim: Uh-huh. So our first example from Trump this week is when he was talking about how much his administration had done for seniors.

Donald Trump: So we’re taking care of our senior citizens. Ah, better than ever before. There’s never been this much effort. There’s never been this much money spent. we’re taking good care of them. And, thank you all very much. Thank you.

Jim: So the amount of effort you put in to looking after old people and the amount of money you spend isn’t necessarily the best way to evaluate whether you’re actually doing care. They’re getting good things for old people, especially when you’re lying about putting lots of effort and money into.

Mark: Oh, yeah, yeah. Especially that bit. Yes. You would do it. Something to do with excess deaths, as we all learned in Covid, that might be a good mechanism.

Jim: Well, we talked about how his rollback of regulations on nursing homes led to issues with COVID Yeah. And just generally more spreading of disease.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: Because they got rid of the need for nursing homes to track disease, essentially.

Mark: Right.

Jim: Among other things.

Mark: Yes.

Jim: Apart from that, his constant efforts to overturn Obamacare would have, had they been successful, led to probably tens of thousands of older americans losing their health insurance.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: He regularly, in his budgets that he put forward to Congress, proposed cutting Medicare and other welfare systems in order to basically give bigger tax breaks to rich people.

Mark: He probably put a lot of effort in opposing those each time. Yeah.

Jim: And when he was campaigning to be reelected in 2020, that was one of the things he was kind of campaigning on. He said at, the World Economic Forum that he was going to slash benefits for things like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. Because he doesn’t actually give a shit about old people.

Mark: No, he gives a shit about his friends liking him for the money he’s giving them and they will therefore heap preys upon him.

Jim: Yeah, but if he was telling the truth about putting a lot of effort in m, that isn’t necessarily how you should be judged. There is strong argument that when you are talking to kids about their achievements or their effort, it is very positive in general to praise their effort rather than praising their achievement, because that can lead to a situation where they feel like, oh, if I don’t achieve, if I can’t achieve somehow, then I’m not a good person, I’m turning, you know, I’m doing badly, I’m gonna disappoint everyone and stuff like that.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: And what they should be encouraged to do is their best effort equally.

Mark: It will discourage the likes of, oh, I say, Boris Johnson. People like not put any effort in in order to think that, well, I should just achieve because of who I am.

Jim: Yeah. But how you treat kids in terms of kind of teaching them what’s important and valuable is, I think, different to how you should treat politicians in evaluating whether they’ve done a good job or not.

Mark: Yeah, yeah. Bit like if Trump turned up on the generation game as hosted by Bruce Forsyth in the seventies, people would have to do, strange and silly things, basically for points. And he would award them, the host would award them. He would often award one just for effort, just for turning up.

Jim: Yeah.

Mark: It’s like when you participation trophy, isn’t it?

Jim: It’s a, Yes, one of those kinds of things.

Mark: Yeah, yeah, yes, quite so. It’s praising people’s effort because it bloody.

Jim: Woke Bruce Forsyth.

Mark: Coming on here in the seventies, playing games on our tv screens for no money and getting awarded something for just joining in.

Jim: So our, second example is when Trump was hoping that the Durham report would show bad things about Hillary and wanted, therefore, before it came out to say, basically, you really should listen to the Durham report and accept its findings by saying this.

Donald Trump: I do think the big report to wait for is going to be the Durham report. That’s the one that people are really waiting for. And he’s highly respected and, we’re, and he’s worked very hard and he’s worked, long hours, I can tell you had gone all over the world.

Jim: Oh, yeah, he’s tried so hard, bless him. John Turum, he’s done such a lot. He’s been every, he’s travelled a lot, he spent so many, talked to a lot of people. Trips.

Mark: Yeah. And written, things down. Yeah.

Jim: So when that comes out and shows that Hillary did bad things, I mean, it’s. It’s definitely must be true.

Mark: It must be true because he’s worked so hard.

Jim: He’s worked so hard on it. Yeah.

Mark: Yeah. Strangely, when Robert Mueller did exactly the same thing.

Jim: Yeah. That was a waste of time and money.

Mark: That was a waste of, time and effort. yeah, yeah. Complete waste of effort. Yeah.

Jim: And as it turned out, John Doris report was a waste of time and money and effort. At least if you speak to Trump, because he didn’t find anything, he didn’t.

Mark: Prove anything, you know, at the, end of his painstaking investigations, it just went, no, there’s no case to answer.

Jim: Yeah. So finally, when he was asked the question about the 2018 midterms of whether we could trust the results, this was before the midterms. He was being asked if, you know, given that there was some question in Trump’s mind, at least, over election integrity in 2016, despite the fact that he won, him losing the popular vote because of all of the illegals who voted. And so he was asked, you know, are you going to accept what happens in the midterms? Is this going to be a well run election?

Donald Trump: I just met with the FBI, with Chris and the Justice Department, and with, secretary Nielsen, and they’ve spent a lot of time and effort and some money on making sure that everything with respect to the election coming up in five days is going to be perfect and safe. there will be, hopefully, no meddling, no tampering, no nothing and some money.

Jim: Yeah, yeah. The fact that there is no evidence of any election interference or meddling or tampering. The reason you can be sure about that isn’t because of the amount of effort, because they put some beforehand to make sure that it would be okay. It’s because of the lack of any evidence of any problem.

Mark: Yes, exactly. So it isn’t just down to, you shouldn’t believe the outcome because of the amount of effort that was put in. No, no. It was because they didn’t find any evidence of wrongdoing or electoral fraud, because what he’s doing is setting it up so that he can then dismiss any future election results that he doesn’t like because they’ve not put enough effort in. But ironically, is probably, ironically, in a. In a, Alanis Morriset M kind of way, it’s probably ironic that part of the electoral fraud that was effected on the 2020 election, according to him, is because people went to extraordinary lengths to do that. There were huge efforts in place to deny him the victory.

Jim: Yeah. The schemes that they claim happened would have required, had they actually happened, an enormous amount of effort. Yeah, yeah. Far more effort, arguably, than you would really need, because they were insane schemes that. That went above and beyond what you would actually have to do.

Mark: Yeah. So surely by the same token that he’s saying, yeah, they put in a lot of effort and they proved the election to be fine based entirely on the amount of effort they put in. If the Democrats went to extraordinary lengths in these kind of strangely conspiratorial ways that he continues to rail about, the fact that they put lots of effort in must mean it was fine.

Jim: Yeah. Well. Or at least they should be rewarded in some way for that.

Mark: Yeah. That it was, It had as much electoral integrity as the 2018 ones did. But, perhaps he got to the point where like, a week later he’s going, yeah, actually, I’ve got to be careful what I say here, because I’ve not got any outlandish.

Jim: Yeah. I think that if they had done all of the things that true the vote, for example, claimed that they did and somehow managed to make that happen without anyone coming forward, out of the tens of thousands of people that must been involved in the scheme, made it happen without creating any weird statistical anomalies, that would have had to have been the case and.

Mark: Yeah. Oh, that would have taken a lot of effort to hide that as well. Yeah.

Jim: And actually then pulled it off with just enough of a vote margin in those key states to make it work. Frankly, I think they’ve shown the organization and intelligence it takes to run a country far better, than the Republicans ever have.

Mark: Yeah. Yes. So we should. We should applaud their alleged.

Jim: I think that kind of hard graft intelligence should be rewarded.

Mark: Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So in a way, we’re with him. That kind of. Yeah. If you’re going to, you know, equally, if you’re going to praise somebody’s efforts being put in, then you ought to praise them even if you lose.

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

Mark: Well, we’re in the election campaign, and actually, early on when we decided to do this one, I, that very day, listened to him doing a stump speech, the one where he planted three Tory councillors in a biscuit factory and made them look like members of the public, and then weirdly asked, oh, yeah. Yes, you, sir. right in the middle there that I recognize from Tory Central office. Yeah. What’s your question about? And his one was about. No, actually it wasn’t, because it got to the end. This one comes from GB News, of all people. Who asked about NHS waiting lists?

Rishi Sunak: I am in this to make sure all of you get the healthcare that you need. I love the NHS. I’m from an NHS family. My dad was a GP, my mum was a pharmacist, and I’ve worked incredibly hard to get the waiting list out. And you’re right, I wish we had made more progress.

Mark: Yeah, okay, yeah, I did. I admit I added the pause for comic effect because he did work. He did work incredibly hard to get the waiting list down. And if the Tory Council of Plants were worth their salt, they would have burst into spontaneous applause.

Jim: They really weren’t putting much effort in at all, were they?

Mark: No, no, I just standing there going, oh, I’m, quite confused, understandably, because the waiting lists in 2010, when the Tories came into power, were just over 2 million. So this is people who are waiting treatment for more than one thing, for.

Jim: Non emergency surgery and stuff.

Mark: Non emergency kind of stuff, yeah, yeah. Difference between cases of patients and all that stuff. But. But, fundamentally, when they inherited the NHS from the Labour party, the waiting list was running at somewhere just over 2 million. Now, in 2020, 414 years later, some might say it’s coincidental to the end of the Tories current rule. The waiting lists are falling. It’s true. In the recent debate, Sunak said numbers of people on the waiting list awaiting treatment on the National Health service are falling. And Starmer said, well, yeah, when you came into office, they were 2 million, they’re now 7.6 million, and you’re saying that they’re falling. And soon. I said, yeah, but they’re falling from what they were last week, 7.9 million. So they have been falling. Yes, but you’ve put them up. But what we should do is applaud his hard work. He’s worked incredibly hard to get the waiting list down. And he goes on to conveniently blame the striking junior doctors, rather than just confess that, simply working very hard on the problem doesn’t stack up as an alternative to actually finding a solution, which might include, you know, meeting with the doctors union and working out a pay deal so that the junior doctors don’t go on strike, actually putting some money into the system to try and get the waiting list down by paying the people who are treating the patients, who are queuing up for treatment some more money so that they feel valued and go to work, rather than experiencing a 15% pay cut in real terms since 2010. Yeah. So the examples number two, Rishi on the continuing campaign trail was asked by Nick Ferrari on LBC radio today, Wednesday the 19 June how he rates the election campaign so far.

Nick Ferrari: How many points out of ten would you give your campaign so far?

Rishi Sunak: Nick, I’m not interested in those types of things. The poll that matters is on July 4.

Nick Ferrari: Points out of ten of the campaign. Would you give it nine out of ten?

Rishi Sunak: That’s for the voters to judge on July 4. There’s no point.

Nick Ferrari: You’re not sitting with your colleagues saying this is fantastic or we need to improve here.

Rishi Sunak: No, I’m focused on doing the best job I can, working as hard as I can, talking to as many people as I can about the choice at this election. How significant? Rather than commenting on the campaign as it’s going, what I’m focused on doing is talking to people about the choice for the future. That’s what the poll on July 4 is about.

Nick Ferrari: How significant is that? Two of Britain’s richest men have announced they’re backing Sir Keir Starmer, one of whom, John Caldwell, has in the past given 500,000 pounds to the Tory party as recently as 2019.

Mark: So we shouldn’t be looking at. Okay, what about all those real terrible gaffes that you did and, Is it working? No, no. Ignore all that and the fact that two massive Tory donors have now defected to Labour, effectively their support. We should ignore that. But what we should do is look closely at the fact that he’s working very hard, talking to as many people as possible, as if that’s a thing you can even gloss over the fact that you’re. What you’re talking about. What he’s talking about to people isn’t shit in the rivers, potholes in the roads. There’s 8 million people waiting to get some treatment for the NHS, that schools are falling to pieces, the transport system is awful, people died in Covid. He’s not talking to people about that. He’s just talking to people about the fact that labor has no plan, which is odd because even though they had no plan, he managed to cost it and say this, no plan of theirs is going to cost you 2000 pounds more tax, which, which isn’t. He’s, expending a great deal of effort to go and talk to as many people as possible.

Jim: It is a weird response to. How do you think the campaign’s going?

Mark: Yeah. Yeah.

Jim: To say yes. I’m not focused on how the campaign’s going, I’m just focused on working on the pole. Working really hard.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: I thought he was a politician. If you’re going to avoid the question, you at, Then least say a thing that is positive to your side. Right. Isn’t that the point? If you’re not going to answer the question you’ve been asked, get your talking point across. His talking point can’t possibly have been. No, I’m working hard and talking to people.

Mark: Yes. Because it turns up a lot. Really? That’s one of his talking points. Is that Jesus? Yeah, that’s it. But, you know, he’s doing this enticing.

Jim: He’s no Ed Miliband, is he? He knew how to stick to a talking point.

Mark: yeah. Yes. Oh, you know, I miss that kind of stuff.

Jim: We’re gonna get around the table.

Mark: Yes. Yeah. And I’ll answer it. And I’m very aware how you’re going to edit this, so I’m just gonna answer it in case you use the clip for any of the questions. Yeah. It turns out they just use all of them in order to make him look stupid. Yeah. I think part of the, I’ve almost. I’m on the verge of saying, you’ve got to admire his efforts because he’s literally single handedly doing this campaign. He’s rarely seen with somebody else.

Jim: Stand with him.

Mark: Yeah. Nobody will stand with him. I think Cameron went with him to feed some sheep recently, or George Osborne or somebody, or, you know, theme the weird, weirdest people. But they send him off to places where they’re going to vote for him anyway because, you know, he’s in the heartland of the Tory land owning boroughs at the same time as two of the richest people who donated half a million to Boris’s campaign have defected to have said, yeah, looks like Labour’s going to get in. So I’m just going to hedge my bets and I go with them. And, you know, Rishi, being an ex banker, he ought to know about shorting the odds and going, yeah, well, you know, I want to invest in the long term development of Britain, so I’m actually going to bet that the Tories lose in the short term. It’s. Oh, it’s just ghastly. He just gets angry when people want to stop him talking about the effort. He’s gone to, talking to people. He was on the radio talking for an hour. So I guess you’ve got to admire that. You know, it’s not like Nick Ferrari wasn’t feeding him the softball things and saying, you know, would you give it nine out of ten? Would you actually. Do you actually say, been a bit, not successful? Let’s do this bit, which would then allow you to say, oh, I think this bit of the thing was very successful. Yes, thank you very much for that softball, Nick. So we can’t not talk about the Rwanda bill. That bill that keeps on giving. The final example is his hateful right wing Tory MP for Middlesbrough south and east Cleveland, Sir Simon Clarke, who’s denigrating the creative legal fraternity who are stepping in in the future to protect the human rights of people being deported to Rwanda, even after the british government have committed the ontological fallacy and made Rwanda safe merely by saying it is. I think it was a debate in January this year, the third reading of the Rwanda bill, and he’s talking about it.

Simon Clarke: We need to strengthen the provisions, in particular against individual claims, as opposed to the general principle, the safety of Rwanda. It’s welcome. We are asserting that, but that will be critically undermined unless we can stop the profusion of individual claims which will materialize, not least with the help, I’m afraid, of, a creative legal fraternity. If we do not close off this route, we will face pressing operational problems which will significantly impair and indeed, perhaps totally frustrate our ability to pursue what this side of, of the house wishes to deliver. We have tried on multiple occasions, and despite the valiant efforts of my right honorable friends for Witham, for Fareham, for Newark, for Torbay, Corby and others, we have not succeeded. And it comes really down to the fundamental question of in whose interest do we sit here and do we legislate today? It is clearly, of course, the public interest,

Mark: apart from the fact he is. Kind of saying that the whole of the legal system is just getting in the way from preventing us. This is bloody creative law. This is what we want to do.

Jim: Coming around here using the law to protect people’s human rights.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: In creative ways.

Mark: And he says, despite the efforts of the member from Witham Pritip, Suella Bravaman and other right wing bastards, you know, we should step aside because of the effort they have expelled on behalf of the party to railroad through this bill that would allow them to enact hateful, racist policies. We should just step aside and let that bill sail through. But no, people would rather hold legality and humanity to be more important and powerful than effort expended by a parade of identity racist, scaremongering foreign secretaries. And at the end, he bungs in the old argument ad populum by saying, we’re legislating on behalf of the british people, after all, and not any other race of people, because they’re worth much less, obviously

Mark: Chumbawumba there, of course, with top thumping. Get knocked down while I get back up again because you praise my effort at doing so.

Jim: In the Fallacy in the wild we like to talk about the Fallacy week from a non political perspective. And first example this week comes from raising hope. In this episode, Virginia want to adopt a dog, but they have been put. They find out they’ve been put on a no dog list from the local pound because of something that their kid did years ago that presumably endangered a dog. But they’re keen to get a dog still, so they go into some effort to do it.

Virginia Chance: We figured out why our house was on the no dog list. It’s our idiot’s son, but he doesn’t live with us anymore.

Burt Chance: And if you’re worried about the idiot part, don’t. We barely raised him.

Michael: The rules are rules.

Virginia Chance: Would a person who would harm an. Animal make you these? These cookies are shaped like things humans like.

Burt Chance: Boobs, cars, televisions.

Virginia Chance: And these are shaped like things dogs like.

Burt Chance: Bones, hydrants, mailman’s ass.

Virginia Chance: Realize they all kind of look like lumps. But we’re not cookie cutter rich.

Michael: Wow, that took a lot of effort. Maybe I misread you. Unlike dogs that can’t lick your hand. And know what’s in your heart.

Burt Chance: So you let us adopt a dog?

Michael: Not yet. In order to get you off the. No dog list, I have to put you through a three day trial period. But then you’ll be dog owners.

Jim: So the guy at the pound who previously was like, no, your house is on a no dog list. I cannot give. You can’t adopt a dog. There’s just no way around it. They bake him cookies, and he’s like, well, that took a lot of effort. So.

Mark: I’m, with him. Because there was, like, two categories of cookies. Yeah, they obviously had to point them out because they’re cookie cutter rich. So they just look like lumps. Yeah.

Jim: So I. I feel like if there’s a reason not to give someone a dog, the fact that they are prepared to bake cookies shouldn’t trump that reason.

Mark: Yes, I think that’s probably bribery and. And somewhat corrupt.

Jim: Arguably, yeah.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: So our, second example is from the west Wing, and this is an episode called Gaza, which necessarily hold up brilliantly. It’s kind of largely anti palestinian for the most part, although there are people who are pro Palestine in it as well. But essentially Donna and a, group are on a fact finding mission on the Gaza Strip and their vehicle gets attacked by a bomb. So they’re in the situation room discussing what the response should be and what the people on the ground, ah, locally, are doing.

President Bartlet: What’s the situation on the ground?

Miles Hutchinson: The chairman’s not letting the grass grow. Palestinian Authority police made a night raid into the Jabalia refugee camp. There was an exchange of gunfire and six suspects were taken into custody.

Leo McGarry: Any chance of the right people?

Miles Hutchinson: The Israelis say no.

President Bartlet: Did they want to think about it for a minute?

Miles Hutchinson: They say these guys are dissidents from Fatah. The chairman just, settling, old scores.

Kate Harper: He did take action.

Leo McGarry: Were you awarding a’s for effort now?

Jim: Yeah, they took an action and their action was to arrest people who probably had nothing to do with it.

Mark: Yeah. But we’ve got to applaud their effort.

Jim: And saying, well, you know, he did something.

Mark: Ah. that’s interesting because there’s probably a Venn diagram for the. For the politicians fallacy, which is.

Jim: Yeah, yeah.

Mark: Something must be done that we’ve done something. Yeah.

Jim: Yeah.

Mark: So therefore it’s the right thing to do.

Jim: Yeah.

Mark: Or it’s right to do something, so we will do something. Doesn’t actually matter what it is.

Jim: Yeah. Because that’s essentially her argument, is that he has previously been accused of not doing anything right in these kinds of situations and this time he did something, so we shouldn’t kind of dismiss it completely.

Mark: If some presidents didn’t write letters, then call. Yeah.

Jim: So, yeah. In the spirit of giving an a for effort, we have our second in a row example from Taskmaster. Although this is Taskmaster New Zealand.

Mark: Right.

Jim: And this is following the prize task in which all the comedians bring in a prize. In this case, the category of prize was the most New Zealand thing.

Mark: Right.

Jim: And this is how points were awarded.

Jeremy Wells: David gets one point. Ursula, you’re two points for your rugby ball.

Urzila Carlson: That’s harsh, mate.

Jeremy Wells: Guy is three points for your cushion. Matt, you’re four points. And I think, Laura, you went to so much effort, so I think you should get five points for that.

Jim: Laura did go to quite a lot of effort. She gathered some, typically new Zealand drink cans after a festival and took them to Weta, where they turned them into kind of sculptures of animals.

Mark: Wow.

Jim: Which was arguably a lot of effort. Whether they were then automatically the most New Zealand thing out of all of the prizes, perhaps should be the question.

Mark: Given that one of the sculptures of animals was a panda.

Jim: but, I mean, thing is, one of the things about Taskmaster is that the scoring is famously arbitrary. But, in this case, it was supposed to be the points. Five points for the most New Zealand.

Mark: Thing, not the most effort expended.

Jim: And she was given the five points because she put in a lot of effort. So.

Mark: Well, it makes me think of when various participants have, like, got a tattoo or got a star named after Greg Davis or got him, so he’s now a lord or something like that. So they go. They do go to extraordinary amount of efforts. And I think he quite likes those. But actually, he will not fall into the fallacy. He was going, yes, you’re. You think you’re going to woo me into giving you a lot of points because you’ve gone to a lot of effort, but the thing you’ve. You’ve achieved is still shit.

Jim: Yeah. And in some cases. In many cases, in fact, he realizes that it’s funnier if someone has gone to an enormous amount of effort, ended up with something that isn’t that good and they only get one point for it, and m someone who’s basically picked something up on their way out the door that. Yes, guess what points is that?

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

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

Mark: You see, I think what we’re doing is we’re focusing on the wrong thing. Looking at the score is actually not measuring the, amount of work that the toil that goes into. You know, forget about the work that you do, but making the things, the real work is done on the identifying me. And I’m speaking on behalf of our listeners as well. I’m sure they’ll agree with me that actually, the. The application of effort is the thing that should be rewarded. So it doesn’t matter even if we get it wrong. You know, sometimes. Sometimes happens that shouldn’t be the thing that affects the score. What we should be doing is being rewarded for the amount of application we’re sight, unseen. We’re looking at these things. Forget about the effort that you’re putting in.

Jim: It’s weird. It’s weird that you want to load, the one time we switched over and you had to do one.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: I pretty much remember you saying this was the hardest aspect of the entire thing, was the amount of effort you put in.

Mark: Absolutely. That’s why I needed to be rewarded a thousand fold for that. But you’ve been doing this for hundreds of times. 141 times you’ve done it. So, you know, comes easy. No, we should absolutely ignore the. Because. Excuse the score. Yeah.

Jim: So we have a theme this week. It was Father’s day. It’s just Father’s day at the weekend.

Mark: There you go.

Jim: And so I thought we’d get some quotes from Trump about being a father because, you know, he’s such a great and loving father.

Mark: He is. He doesn’t even know who his kids.

Jim: Are, but his kids are nice, well rounded, law abiding individuals who have no.

Mark: Problem trying to do things in order to seek the love.

Jim: And self assured fine within themselves.

Mark: Not the worst people. No, no. Not the worst people. And who needs it there? Every effort. Praise to the skies. Yeah. No.

Jim: Yeah. So statement number one.

Jim: When I’m there, I’m a good father. You know, I like my kids, but I like working too. Sometimes I like working a little more. Depends if they behave. The people who work for me do what they’re told, but, you know, I’m there, I spend time with them, but no, I don’t play with them. They get on pretty well by themselves.

Mark: It’s almost a bit of a joke there. Sometimes. I. Depends how they behave. Yeah.

Jim: Mm

Mark: Okay.

Jim: Statement number two.

Mark: Yep.

Jim: I like kids. I mean, I won’t do anything to take care of them. I’ll supply the funds and she’ll take care of the kids. Right. It’s not like I’m gonna be walking the kids down Central Park. Marley used to say, I can’t believe you’re not walking Tiffany down the street, you know, in the carriage. Right. I’m gonna be walking down Fifth Avenue with the baby in a carriage. It just didn’t work.

Mark: Mmm

Jim: Okay, statement number three. He’s asked about whether he changes diapers.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: He said, no, I don’t do it. It’s not my thing. I. You know what? I’m a good father, but that’s not my thing. There are a lot of women out there that, you know, demand that the husband act like the wife. And you know, there are a lot of husbands that listen to that. So you know, they go for it.

Mark: Yep. Well, there’s lots of you knows in there and he kind of, that the husband like the wife.

Jim: What?

Mark: That sounds like an early trump, so that sounds quite authentic, which makes me think that you made them up as well. Yeah, the kids down Central park. I’m beginning to think there’s too many names in there and he can’t remember what his previous wives and his kids called. Yeah, it’s just he’s concerned with the current one. I mean, we haven’t seen his current wife for months. I’m beginning to think she’s gone. She’s escaped. I suspect the first one he’s doing in front of a crowd. And they’ll love that because he just go, yeah, I like working. Yeah, but I like working. Sometimes I like working a little more. Depends if they behave, you know what I mean? And they all go, hahaha. eek. Having said that, I suspect that. Oh wait, no, I don’t know. Okay, I’m gonna go with because I think that sometimes, working depends if they behave. It’s a trump size joke. Is it a gym size joke? Okay, I’m gonna go with number one as the one you made up.

Jim: Okay. The other two, which you more convinced.

Mark: By, I think the diapers one, not my thing. The husband act like the wife. Now suddenly I’m, thinking, that’s right.

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

Mark: No, I don’t do it. It’s not my thing. I, you know what? I’m a good father, but that’s not my thing.

Donald Trump: There are a lot of women out.

Mark: There that, you know, demand that the.

Donald Trump: Husband act like the wife.

Mark: Yeah.

Donald Trump: And you know, there are a lot of husbands that listen to that. So you know, they go for it.

Mark: You don’t just say, yeah, what, that’s right. So what’s his definition of a good father? Okay, yeah, I’m a good father, but I’m not present and I don’t do any of the stuff.

Jim: Yeah, I don’t know. Anything that involves after them, the actual looking after of children. That’s women’s thing.

Mark: Yeah. They demand, whoever’s on the other end of the line just goes, yeah.

Jim: So this, this was an interview with the, the op and Anthony show, radio show. It was, yeah, not great. Not great. No, let’s be honest.

Mark: But that one was not great. Yeah. What the hell was it an early one or was it.

Jim: It was. I think this was around when Baron was born.

Mark: Oh.

Jim: I mean, so, yeah, we’re talking, like, what? Band’s 18, isn’t he? So.

Mark: Yeah, yeah, yeah. He’s just graduated. Yeah, I’m a great father, but I don’t want to go to his graduation with them. Oh, no, that’s fine. You can go to the graduation. Damn it. Yeah. Wow.

Jim: So you also think number two is real.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: And number two.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: Is.

Mark: Yeah.

Donald Trump: Real life kids. I mean, I won’t do anything to take care of them.

Jim: She’ll take.

Donald Trump: I’ll supply the funds, and she’ll take.

Mark: Care of the kids. Right.

Donald Trump: You know, it’s not like I’m gonna be walking the kids down Central Park. Marla used to say, I can’t believe you’re not walking Tiffany down the street, you know, in the carriage.

Mark: Right.

Donald Trump: I’m gonna be walking down Fifth Avenue with a baby in a carriage. And it just didn’t work.

Mark: They’re laughing.

Jim: Yeah. Ah, no, this is the Howard Stern show, so they loved it.

Mark: Okay.

Jim: Again, this was before Baron was born. Howard asked if they’re going to have any kids, him and Melania.

Mark: Right.

Jim: And he said, yeah, he would because he likes kids, but he’s not actually going to do anything.

Mark: Just to know I like kids from afar. Yeah. I think. What do they look like? Yeah. Like, small versions. You? Oh, yeah, yeah. Ah, I’ve never come.

Jim: Just further away.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: That’s what.

Mark: It never had anything to do with them. Yeah. So, you know, but, yeah, but, hey, I’m a good father.

Jim: My former wife couldn’t believe I didn’t do more with. With my last child, but, yeah, that’s not happening.

Mark: Yeah. It was before being a new man. You know, that thing where it became hip to do that the thing that people have been doing for ages suddenly was a hip thing to do. And there were, you know, that. That Athena poster of a. Probably, a fireman holding a baby. Yeah, no doubt that. That kind of thing that replaced the tennis player scratching her ass one. That’s how. That’s how you can tell that society’s moved on.

Jim: Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, m. Well, Athena doesn’t exist. Hasn’t existed for decades, but, yeah.

Mark: Yes.

Jim: Yeah. It makes me think of Piers Morgan when, Daniel Craig had his kid in a baby carrier strapped to him, and. And Piers Morgan, like, tweeted out a photo of that and. And was like, oh, my God, even James Bond is, like, now a total pussy or something. It’s like, what the fuck are you just.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: Oh, God. The idea of what a real man is. Is so fucking skewed, it’s insane.

Mark: Yeah, well, Piers Morgan is, Well, whatever makes me in the most money.

Jim: Yeah.

Mark: You know, he has controversial opinions.

Jim: Yeah.

Mark: On the dot to meet deadlines for money.

Jim: He’s the toxin in toxic masculinity.

Mark: Yes. He’s certainly not the masculine. No, because Trump, he thinks he’s a good father. Because the model that he’s got is his father. Yeah, it was.

Jim: It was a fucking awful father. Absolutely.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: So, yeah, he’s. He’s holding himself up against that and going, yeah, I do all the stuff. My dad ignore my children unless they do something really impressive, and then I kind of vaguely acknowledge them.

Mark: If they do stuff that I don’t like, then I will tell them that I don’t like it. And even though they’re desperate for my applause of their effort. Yeah. I will deign to sneer at them.

Jim: Yeah.

Mark: Because, you know, because I’m a good father, just like my dad and, his dad. Yeah.

Jim: If it doesn’t help my business, I’m not interested in anything they do.

Mark: Yeah. Yeah. Because it doesn’t work. So walking down Fifth Avenue with a carriage in the eighties. No, no. Can’t. Doesn’t work because that’s not the image that he was projecting on behalf of Fred and the Trump Organization.

Jim: Yeah. So that means that you have got a point this week.

Mark: Hey. Hey. Ah. All right. Well, there you go. Good, good effort on my part.

Jim: Yeah. So you’re still staying above that 50% mark.

Mark: Yay. Yeah. See, I think that the tell was that the little joke in there, which.

Jim: I can’t resist sometimes.

Mark: Trying to be a bit funny. Yeah. But there. But it worked. I mean, it’s a. It’s a very Trump shaped joke. I did. I, did go. Did think. Oh, that nearly had me. Yeah. Yeah.

Jim: So we do have some social contestants on Facebook. Christine says, number three. I can hear him saying number one, with his whining, fake, musing voice.

Mark: Yes.

Jim: And number two is so damning, it’s got to be true.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: Mike says two is fake. Even Trump can’t be that stupid to say, I won’t do anything to take care of them, can he? I really hope he did actually say that. And he did.

Mark: Yeah. Yeah.

Jim: And on, Patreon, one eyed Nick says, you know, he won dad of the year, ah. 18 years in a row at his golf course, and adds, jesus fucking Christ, that’s awful. I hate them all so much. I’m gonna say two because it sounds like him acknowledging he’s a bad dad, whereas the other two read like he’s unintentionally telling on himself. So two is fake.

Mark: Yeah. Okay, nice. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jim: Will says two is fake. I just don’t think he knows Tiffany’s name.

Mark: Yes. That was thing at the beginning. Yeah.

Jim: Renee Z said, what a pig. He probably said all of them. I guess the least piggish is number one, so I’m guessing that that’s fake news. Blech.

Mark: Oh, okay.

Jim: Yeah.

Mark: Okay. Well, I guess you’re right. Yeah.

Jim: Colleen Loyola said, I think number one, too. The other two are based on toxic faux masculinity and an aversion to human bodily functions, which are two things that pretty much define the buffoon. Yeah, very good.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: Anders says number two. You know, I go for it.

Mark: No messing about. You got to be praised for that at that small amount of effort. Anders. Nice. Good work. So I hadn’t gone for the pink quotient. That would have been the way to do it. Yes. Because, number one, I couldn’t quite bring.

Jim: Myself to be as misogynistic as Trump when I was making up a fake one.

Mark: Yeah. Yes. Yes.

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Mark: Yeah.

Jim: But we’ve been a bit busy with some trials.

Mark: Yeah, yeah.

Jim: And we’ve got a brief respite this week before the presidential debate. Debate comes up this week and then the sentencing for the next one.

Mark: He’s already begun setting the scene for not turning up to the debate.

Jim: Oh.

Mark: Not participating. He’s already, well, saying, you know, he’s.

Jim: For losing it faced.

Mark: Yeah, yeah.

Jim: He’s claimed Biden is going to be on drugs and that’s why he’ll do well. And also that maybe I’ll just lose it deliberately for some reason. Yeah, yeah, something like that. He said it. Yeah. I just. I might just lose on purpose.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: So when he does fucking awfully, we’ll never know if he intended to,

Mark: Well, never know whether he’s meant to do it. Yeah. You know, for all intents and purposes, he looks exactly the same as. Yeah. Being a complete arse. Ah. And not getting anything right.

Jim: Yeah.

Mark: But, yeah. He’s just pretending.

Jim: So, yeah. As I say, I wanted to talk about this for a while. And coincidentally, in our respite between the trial and the debate, it’s in the news because first of all, John Oliver talked about it on the most recent episode of last Week Tonight. And also.

Mark: Right.

Jim: The House Democrats have created a task force to counter projects.

Mark: Oh, thank God.

Jim: How useful that will be. It’s hard to say.

Mark: No. Well, it does have that horrible kind of feel of the remain project versus the Leave project.

Jim: Well, yes, but one thing that is important in their mission to stop it is firstly informing everyone what it is. Because I think that is part of the issue is that although it’s actually been openly talked about in republican circles is something that I think some people don’t even know exists. What it is, is a roadmap for Trump’s second term should he win in 2024. And the thing about Trump’s first term is that it was awful, but also completely chaotic and didn’t get stuff done that he would have liked to have got done, partly because he had people working for him who knew what they were doing and stopped him from doing stuff. And he also had in various organizations like the national, Oceanographic Institute and the FBI and the Department of Justice and the Department of Agriculture and the EPA and the FDA. In those places, there were experts working who knew what they were doing, who had got their jobs, because they knew what they were talking about. And they had not only worked in his presidency, they’d been working there for years, because that’s how a lot of the people in these agencies work. There are somewhere around 2 million people who work for the us government in agencies like those who work there, because that’s their area of expertise. They’re, you know, scientists or economists or whatever.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: And that job requires those skills.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: There’s a, ah, significantly smaller number of people, I think around 4000 that are political appointees, that are appointed to run different departments or things like that, that those people are controlled essentially by the executive branch. They are hired and fired at the whim of the president.

Mark: Yes. They’re the ministers, whereas the others are the civil servants. So, UK equivalent. Yeah, yeah.

Jim: So part of the fact that there are all those people who know what they’re doing in those agencies is part of why Trump was now actually able to achieve some of the things he wanted to do, because they were like, well, this is insane, it doesn’t make sense, it won’t work. And we’re the ones who would need to do it and we’re not doing it.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: And so part of Project 2025 is to fire enormous numbers of those people, replace the people who know what they’re doing with people whose only qualification is loyalty to Trump.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: And, yeah, it feels like, say, for example, people doing research into nuclear physics. Those ones feels like you want people who know what they’re talking about to be doing that, rather than just someone who has essentially filled in an online form saying, yes, okay, I did get arrested on January 6, but I really love Trump. And they’re like, right, you’re in.

Mark: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. You actually need rocket science.

Jim: Exactly.

Mark: I think people are fed up with experts. Yeah. Just writ large. The other thing about Trump’s first term is, I don’t know that he knew what he wanted to do. Well, he absolutely railing around in a kind of ignorant eighties business throwback to the fifties kind of guy who had no knowledge of economics or trade deficits or how any of that works.

Jim: Well, the thing is, a whole bunch of prejudice, much like the Brexit vote.

Jim: Nobody thought he was going to win. So just like when the Brexit vote went that way, everyone was like, well, fuck, what do we do now? We hadn’t planned for this. Trump didn’t have a transition team. He had no clue. He had no platform. his platform was not Obama. And overturning everything Obama had done. He didn’t have any platform or roadmap or sense of what the government does, let alone what he wanted to do if he was running the government. He, just had these mad slogans like build the wall and drain the swamp and lock her up. None of which he did.

Mark: Exactly. Yeah, like get Brexit done, get back out control of our borders and all that. None of which Johnson did.

Jim: And he still doesn’t have any idea of what the government does or what he would like to do if he became president again. But that’s where project 2025 comes in.

Mark: Because that’s a whole bunch of evil bastards in the background.

Jim: That is people like the Heritage foundation, the, Nradeh, turning point, conservative organizations who have got together and decided, okay, what do we want to happen?

Mark: Yes.

Jim: Trump gets in again because we can get him to do it. He will fucking do it. He’ll do anything. We are.

Mark: Oh, yeah, because, yeah, yeah.

Jim: Because we will tell him he’s great.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: We will fawn over him. So he will forward our agenda. And their agenda, because they’re conservative organizations is fucking horrific.

Mark: Yeah. Well, not least to create a rush that will last a thousand years.

Jim: Yeah. The purge of non loyalists being, not only a big part of it, but also a part of how they’re actually going to achieve their other goals. On last week, tonight, John Oliver talked about Johnny McEntee, who we have talked about before, who was at one point Trump’s body man and then was put in charge of the White House office of personnel and showed a clip of Johnny McEntee explaining how he got that job, which was that one day while he was just carrying Trump’s bags, like, outside the Oval Office.

Jim: Trump said, what we got on today? And he said, oh, you’re meeting with the officer personnel? And Trump was like, oh, they really annoy me. Do you reckon you could run that office? And he went, yeah, and that’s fucking it.

Mark: How could it be?

Jim: That’s it. He basically was like, you’re a human. I can see you. You can have the job. And that’s the level of expertise you need to get a job. An important job in the Trump administration is. You haven’t said anything negative about Trump and he can see you.

Mark: At the moment, the parallels are Truss’s prime minister ship for 40 days.

Jim: Prime Minister dinghy.

Mark: Yeah. I think more of a pedal, like a swan shaped pedal, maybe.

Jim: Maybe like a door, like in Titanic.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: Just a flotsam.

Mark: Yeah, flotsam. her, Prime Minister flotsam. Yeah. And, and she was the puppet of the IEA, the Institute of European, Affairs, which is no such thing. It’s nothing to do with Europe. Nothing’s not really institute. It’s like three.

Jim: But I bet they do have affairs.

Mark: Oh, absolutely, yeah. And, and also the ERG, the european research group who do no research. They’re not really a group and they hate Europe, but they’re basically. There’s a building in Tufton street in London where massively rich people who have donated huge amounts of money to the Tory party get to set policy and they are all right wing nut jobs and they alighted on truss. They are not the ones that are, that sunak is the puppet of, but trust was that. That’s why she wondez, because they got to run the project. You know, the Jacob Riesmog is, was, is one of that group. And it’s Jacob Reese. If you wanted a government run by Jacob Rees Mogg, it was Liz Truss’s government.

Jim: Yeah.

Mark: that’s where they just. And they flattered her to tell her she was great, she was intelligent, she’s brilliant, and, and now she’s doing the, the Trump like tour of saying, oh, yeah, well, it wasn’t me. M. It was all the deep state. Surely you are the deep state. And it’s all that. Well, it wasn’t what I did. It was what the people that did that in order to fix the broken things that I did that caused the problems. And that’s it. There is a shadow government. they’re talking about getting rid of the deep state. They are the fucking deep state. They’re the ones that will pop it, the likes of Trump and did it with trials.

Jim: Yeah. I mean, the deep state as a concept at the moment doesn’t really exist. the deep state, as argued by people like Trump and Dinesh D’Souza.

Mark: Yeah, yeah.

Jim: Is, is this cabal of government operatives, the people in those agencies who have the jobs and transition from one presidency to another.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: That they are all liberal and all working against Trump.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: And that’s, ah, not true in any way. Those people are working to support the agenda of the agencies that they work for. Yes.

Mark: Ah.

Jim: To benefit the things they’re experts in. So the people who are in the NOAA are, figuring out the weather systems, thinking climate change is bad and we should really do something about that because they know about that shit. Not because it. Not because that’s against what Trump wants.

Mark: Yeah. And they consequently advise the people who are politically at the front of stuff. It’s awful, isn’t it, that no knowledge narcissists, man babies, they’re the experts that advise those people. Why are those people in charge? That’s the whole plot. Yes, minister and. Yes, prime minister. And the thick of it. And Veephenhe, well, because the scientists, the.

Jim: People who are experts.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: They wouldn’t want to be in charge that, because that’s an awful thing to be. So.

Mark: Yes.

Jim: Yeah.

Mark: Actually, you’re decided to do that. Mmm. Don’t think you ought really to do that because that’s actually against the laws of physics. Let’s just not do that.

Jim: Yeah.

Mark: In fact, you’re not going to be able to do that. They’re not saying, I don’t want you to do it because I’m politically opposed to your.

Jim: No, no.

Mark: Your saying, this is philosophy, this is.

Jim: A bad idea, it wouldn’t work, it’s illegal. and it would cost way more than doing it the right way.

Mark: Yeah, yeah.

Jim: And the thing is, yeah. What Trump wants to do, having argued about this deep state and claimed this deep state is against him and it’s what stopped him from doing all the things he wants to do. And that, he’s a, but the same time, the only person who can bring it down and also was completely beaten by his entire first term.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: What he wants to do is install a republican deep state. That’s, that’s what he’s trying to do, is create that system he’s claiming exists.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: In his favor, by replacing all of those people with people who are.

Mark: Only loyal to him and also with the, with the naive ignorance that he possesses, naive, narcissistic ignorance that he doesn’t know that the deep state have their own agenda, you know, and he will gladly be the mouthpiece for it. You know, I’ve, I’ve spent the weekend in Berlin, so I’ve come up against the. And, Berlin was sat inside East Germany during a, post, war period. And then Berlin itself was divided west, east and west. And you just can see the political machinations are still writ large in the architecture and the street names and all that kind of stuff. This notion that they put, people up in a position, a puppet leader, in order to effectively an underlying awful regime. You know, I encountered the Berlin wall in, at first hand, and it wasn’t there to stop people getting in. It was there to stop people getting out because they were trying to tell the populace that actually the communist Democratic Republic of Germany was fine. It was absolutely fine. It was great. Don’t look over the wall where you’ve got freedom and food and nice clothes and good education and clean air. No, this is perfectly fine. Here we’re going to give you all that you require and prevent you from seeing something else. It’s like, it’s don’t look up in physical manifestation. But the odd thing was that at the very, there’s a great display of the last bit of the Berlin wall, which has got all the famous graffiti on it, which says, after the fall of the communist regime, the problem was that stuff that was provided by the government, energy, education, water, transport, then became private enterprises. So lots of people lost their jobs and it all got run for profit and the service plummeted. So you think, okay, so the two regimes are about saying, this is great, we’re doing it for the benefit of the people. But what happens is that the people at the top get the most benefit, and the system is entirely created for the benefit of the people at the top. So Trump will say, I’m doing away, I’m draining the swamp. I’m doing away with the deep state. And he’s encouraged in that by those people who want that to happen, because it will mean that they can then pursue the things that they want to do, which for centuries, the checks and balances in government have prevented them from doing, which include having dominion over your body, having the right to tell you where you, where you go and when and who you can see and why and where you can work and how much they’re going to pay you and what they’re going to provide you and how much you’re going to have to pay for that.

Jim: Yeah. And, the list that you just came up with, m some people might think, well, that’s just like a, you know, a general liberal scare story of what fascism will bring in when it happens. And you know that they’ll bring it in quietly and then enact those things. All of the things you said pretty much in, in the project 2025 manifesto thing. Yeah, you can, you can check it out. although it’s 920 pages on project two, zero, twenty, twenty five, dot org. It’s all out there. It’s there. They’re public about it. They don’t. They’re proud of it. They don’t give a shit. But, yeah, some of the things that they want to do that, well, not just want to do, are, planning to do and lay out how to do it and also how to put the judiciary and legislature in place in order to make sure that these things happen and stick, which is a thing that never happened in Trump’s first term, because no one was running anything. It was all just shit. But they have laid out the plans of, these are the things that we need to put in place first, and then you do this, and then you do this, and this is how we make it happen. Some of the things they want to do are, to rescind discrimination laws, on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, and trans status, so that it is completely free for organizations, for private companies to. To fire people for being gay or whatever, to say that abortion is not healthcare. So use the FDA, because the FDA will, at this point, be under Trump’s control. Use his loyalists, the FDA, to ban abortion medications, to say that mifepristone and misoprostol and other things are, And contraception are, unsafe and can’t be prescribed, can’t be allowed to remove abortion, contraception, abortion medications from healthcare plans, to deploy military, to force immigrants into holding camps, to start the massive deportation scheme that Trump is claiming he’s going to do and promising, really, he’s going to do, to kind of shift the DOJ and police forces to essentially answer to the executive branch. So that, I mean, they’re creating the kind of police state that they claim, that Souza claims already exists under the liberals. But, yeah, saying that they will prosecute das that they disagree with and that the Department of Justice, which will be under Trump’s control, can take over from local law enforcement if they’re not doing the things that they want them to do.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: To end overtime pay.

Mark: Just.

Jim: Just because. Fuck you. To outlaw pornography and imprison those who make or distribute pornography.

Mark: Wow.

Jim: And make educators or librarians who purvey.

Mark: Pornography in quotes, as defined by them.

Jim: Registered, as sex offenders on sex offender registry. And, of course, the way they define pornography is not pornography. M it’s anything that acknowledges the existence of LGBTQ people. So, like, books for teens that say it’s okay to be gay, in their mind, is pornography. And. And schools librarians, they say, should be imprisoned, or put on the sex offenders registry for making this content available to people. They want to get rid of the department of Education. They wanted to defund the FBI to stop them from combating right wing domestic terrorism and misinformation and disinformation. They want to dismantle the department of Homeland Security. What? They want to cut all diversity and inclusion programs in the government. In any government agency.

Mark: Oh, yeah, yeah, because you need. What you need. yeah. Because if you want this to perpetuate, you’re just gonna have right wing war people.

Jim: Absolutely.

Mark: Yeah. Fearful of extinction. Yes.

Jim: They want to downsize the Environmental Protection Agency so that they can more easily, roll back regulations that.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: You know.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: They want to remove climate change and renewable energy priorities from the department of Agriculture. All of these things that, I mean, this is just. It’s, again, it’s a 920 page book of how to bring in a theocracy.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: With full instructions. Like it’s a recipe book.

Mark: Yeah, yeah.

Jim: To serve man m up to the right wing.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: It is fucking insane. And so the fact that part of the House Democrats plan to combat this is just to let people know it exists is initially a good thing.

Mark: Frightening enough.

Jim: Yeah, but, yeah, frightening that that’s necessary, but, yeah, it is necessary to let people know it exists. And it is, again, thanks to John Oliver, it is a bit more out there this week than it was last week. But the other part, the other. The second kind of string of the Democrats attempt to stop this is to start putting in kind of the legislative mechanism that will stop some of these.

Mark: Things, prevent it being put in place. Yes, yes.

Jim: To whether that’s involving in getting states to pass state laws that will allow things in those states that would kind of supersede federal. Like, for example, if there’s no federal protection for things, then states can protect those things individually.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: So making sure that those things are put in place in blue states is one step towards helping these things become less dangerous. But there’s such a lot in there that the only real thing you can do about this is to make absolutely sure Trump doesn’t get elected.

Mark: Trump doesn’t get in. Yeah. And, finally, some things we really don’t have time to talk about.

Jim: They say a criminal often returns to the scene of the crime. And so it was that Trump visited Capitol Hill last week for the first time since his conviction on 34 felony counts. In an event described by Adam Schiff as bring your felon to work day, Trump met with Senate and House Republicans who fawned over him like a bunch of Charles Boyles to Trumps. Jake Peralta speaking about the meeting afterwards, Mike Johnson could barely contain his excitement when recounting how Trump said very complimentary things about all of us. We had sustained applause. He said, im doing a very good job. Were grateful for that. And Marjorie Taylor Greene talked about how funny and sweet he was and said he always recognises her, which at this stage of his cognitive decline is a big deal. Ralph Norman said, it was a great, uplifting thing. Everybody was excited. And even Mitch McConnell said he got a lot of standing ovations. It was an entirely positive meeting. But of course, they have to say that, because despite everything, Trump is still inexplicably popular with people of the land. The common clay of the new west, you know, morons. When given the opportunity to talk anonymously, attendees said Trump did almost all the talking and had lots of tangents, adding, I lost interest after about 45 minutes. Perhaps this was Chip Roy of Texas, who another source in the room spotted watching golf on his iPad. Another attendee described the whole thing as like talking to your drunk uncle at the family reunion. I know it’s going to be decades before the GOP manages to crawl out of the hole Trump has dug for them, but I feel like step one might be to have a whip round and see if they can buy just one spine to share between them.

Mark: In kind of an homage to the district, Craig T. Nelson, wannabe Minnesota GOP endorsed candidate and new friend of the show Royce White, who has pled guilty to theft and disorderly conduct, endorsed conspiracy theories, denigrated women and LGBTQ people, described himself as an anti semite, fallen behind on child support, and played fast and loose with campaign finance laws. As we reported last episode, has gone all the district and data led on, identifying crime hotspots in tweeting a map of Minneapolis with lots of dots all the way across it with the message, crime in Minneapolis out of control. Come on now, refund the police hash. Godspeed. Sheesh. Is powerful stuff. The map plays into the heart of the GOP’s law and all the strength, etcetera. Not like the soft Democrat senator Amy Klobuchar. Oh, no. So we’re grasping this, Thorn, all right. Except it’s a map of the location of all 195 public drinking fountains in the city. Yes, Fritmaneck. That wellard, geezer Royce White’s not only got sharpie writing of Alex Jones was right on his head during a big free match, but he’s the kind of guy who represents the image of a party that’s tough on water and tough on the sources of water. Well, maybe the message is something along the lines of, hey, crime, you don’t wash with us. Or perhaps it doesn’t matter. You can stand a bigoted convicted felon who has no grasp of basic facts in a state where no Republican has won statewide office in nearly 20 years, because it doesn’t matter when there’s another one exactly like him running for the.

Jim: White House during his Capitol Hill meeting with Republicans, which was either the modern equivalent of the sermon on the count or a discount Trump rally, depending on who you ask. Trump opined on the location of the Republican National Convention, saying, Milwaukee, where we’re having our convention, is a horrible city. Perhaps not the smartest thing to say about the largest city in one of the battleground states you desperately need to win in 2024. Trump, of course, both denied saying it and clarified that when he said it, he was talking about the crime rate, which incidentally, has dropped dramatically in 2023. And so far in 2024, as democratic congresswoman Gwen Moore pointed out, the city’s crime rate will go up when convicted felon Donald Trump arrives for the convention. But it turns out Trump wasn’t just randomly bitching about Milwaukee. According to sources who spoke to ABC, Trump has made plans to stay in Chicago during the convention, commuting 90 miles every day rather than stay in Milwaukee. Of course, this isn’t necessarily because of crime related fears. It’s more likely just that, if he stays at his own hotel in Chicago, he gets to charge his Secret Service protection detail for hotel rooms. But if he stayed near the venue, he wouldn’t be making a profit on the deal. Since this was reported, Trump’s people say he does in fact, plan to stay in Milwaukee during the convention. And I’m sure that will make Wisconsinites forget all about what he said and give him a ticket, ape parade or something. Well, the republican ones, anyway.

Mark: Remember when Trump’s campaign posted german national socialist era rhetoric in one of his videos, and they all blamed the intern and the freelance graphic artist? Well, Michigan Republican primary congressional candidate Anthony Hudson offered his sincere apologies and promised to sack his staffer after a video message was posted on his x channel featuring the AI generated voice of Martin Luther King saying, I have another dream. I came back from the dead to say something. I have another dream that Anthony Hudson will be Michigan 8th districts next. Congressman, I have a dream again. Okay, now I’m going back to where I came from. Goodbye. Which is then followed by the voice of Hudson saying he approves this message. Hudson claimed he was extremely furious about this situation. He warned that just as his voice had been AI’d as well, that this could happen to any of us. So please be cautious and aware of who has your personal information. Yeah, could happen to anyone, especially if you’re a desperate Republican running for office. So desperate that merely hours later, he changed his mind about how angry he was and said he decided not only to keep my campaign staffer, but also give him a raise, as I believe Martin Luther King will be disgusted at the complete suffering of Flint, Michigan residents under the current administration’s watch. He added, if Martin Luther King were alive today, I do believe he would endorse me and my vision for a better Michigan. Really, Anthony?

Jim: Really?

Mark: Martin Luther King? You a Republican? Well, yeah. I guess you’re just what he would have wanted.

Jim: One of the other cities Trump needs to win in November, and that he claims he won last time, is Detroit. Since the city’s population is almost 80% black, it’s an important community to reach out to. So when Trump visited last weekend, he held a roundtable event at a black church, which Kellyanne Conway described like this.

Donald Trump: Look at the contrast of just this weekend. You got, you got Donald Trump in Detroit talking to 8000 people, and then.

Mark: At a black church.

Jim: Of course, this is one of those alternative facts you’ve heard so much about, because when Newsweek asked the church, they replied that their seating capacity is a little under 700. Although they did add that during Trump’s roundtable event, we had standing Ramona family and others who were unable to be admitted due to capacity issues. However, even the church is lying because there are photos and videos of the event and it’s at most three quarters full. One other thing you notice when you look at the photos and videos is that way over half of the congregation of the black church is white. When asked by Washington Post reporters, nobody in line to get in said they were members of this particular church. Meanwhile, the politicians of colour who shared the stage with Trump did not include that district, Congressperson Democrat Rashida Tlaib, but did include John James, whose northern Michigan district is affluent and overwhelmingly white, Byron Donald, whose Florida district is overwhelmingly white, and Ben Carson, who is presumably hoping for that coveted VP slot. And alongside Trump, while he talked about how crime is ravaging the city, was former Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, who knows a thing or two about the local crime scene. Since four years ago ago, Trump commuted his 28 year sentence for a wide ranging racketeering conspiracy that included fraud, extortion, bribery and tax crimes, and involved stealing money from non profit organizations.

Mark: I’ve worked out that Royce White was actually talking sense with his fountain map. And it’s a crime shtick because I’ve watched the ad that ran during turning points people’s convention over the weekend. Alex Clark, a, mega world talking head, head influencer, is holding a bottle of, dare I say, ordinary looking water. Clear. Appears liquid in a plastic bottle. Probably swallowable, but no, this is freedom to owe. And she tells us, quite stridently, that it’s a reminder that even the most ordinary acts, like taking a sip of water, can be infused with meaning and purpose. By choosing to drink, drink, freedom to owe. you’re not just choosing the brand, you’re choosing to stand up for what you believe in. Clark pitches the product where a twelve pack of 16.9 ounce bottles costs $21 by insisting that every sip of the conservative water is not just refreshing, it’s rebellious and it’s unapologetic, to drink this in public. So you’re not just chugging plain old tap water grifted out the gullible saps who sip. No, no, you’re in courage to speak your thirst, whatever the fuck that means, and protect the first and merely by the act of publicly sucking on a stupidly expensive bottle of water, which incidentally has a frequency of 432 hz, however the fuck that’s measured. So you could be anti woke in front of whoever actually cares about the contents of what you’re tipping facewards and align your new age chakras with a sound bath at the same time. Other successful liquids from the anti woke right include, of course, that reaction to the bud light inclusive pride edition ultra right beer and Giuliani’s own Rudy coffee, both of which allow you to drink to the cause, probably both their nearing bankruptcy causes, as the two businesses are, struggling to remain liquid. See what I did there? Alex Clarke. Yeah.

Jim: Carrie Lake lost the Arizona gubernatorial election in 2022, accepted the result gracefully, and moved on. No, hang on. That’s every Democrat politician who lost their elections. Carrie challenged the resulting court, and this week was told that she doesn’t get to run the election again. I should clarify because you might be experiencing an extreme form of deja vu right now. Since Carrie lost her case way back in December of 2022, when the judge dismissed her case after two days of trial, saying the court cannot accept speculation or conjecture in place of clear and convincing evidence, she appealed and lost again in February 2023. The appeals court saying Lake’s only purported evidence that long lines at voting centers had any potential effect on election results was quite simply sheer speculation. Then she appealed to the Arizona Supreme Court, who declined to hear her case and sanctioned her lawyers for lying to the court court, but still remanded one of her seven claims to the lower court to reconsideration, which resulted in another ruling against Carrie. In May, she tried to appeal that ruling straight to the Arizona Supreme Court, who told her to go away and do it properly. So she went back to the Court of Appeals, who this week told her not only does she not get to do the election again, because thats not a thing, but she also cant have a new trial to present evidence she claims she didnt have access to at the time of her first trial trial, because she actually did have access to that evidence. It’s just that her expert witness hadn’t found the time to look at it and that’s very much a her problem.

Mark: In another gruelling week of election campaigning here in the UK, Sunak and Starmer argued about who had it tougher. Starmer had his phone cut off when he were a kid and Sunak had so many privations in his childhood, the year, to girly out Sky TV. but you try telling the young people of today that and they won’t believe you. Farage has single handedly increased the sales of McDonald’s banana milkshake as people buy them just to throw them m at him like they used to the last seven times he failed to get elected. Labour launched their manifesto, which excited all the people on the right of business. And Farage’s reform launched their manifesto. Well, they called it a contract, which excited all those people that can’t add up and who like reading illegible notes hastily scribbled on the back of fag packets in wetherspoons. So, yeah, just about everyone who’s likely to vote him in Clacton. The Tories, meanwhile, are concentrating on just getting Rishi out of the way. Yeah, go feed some sheep somewhere and look like you might appeal to some safe Tory voters whilst they sidle up to the populace, say, psst. Look, you don’t want Starmer to, like, get a, super majority and then increase accessibility to voting, undoing all our carefully organized, poll restricting and, like, be in power for 20 years, do you? Where would be the accountability? Not like when Boris had a huge majority. Oh, no, no, that was different. He was a fine, upstanding, legally minded, genuine, honest people focused, monogamous, and magnanimous as representative of the porn underrepresented. So didn’t need. No, wait. Okay, okay. Just don’t vote for fucking Faraj, because, hey, he’ll end up leading the Tories in 2029.

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

Mark: If you think we’ve used the fallacy ourselves, let us know. And if you’ve had a good time, please give us a review on, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Or simply tell one other person in person about how much they like our podcast and you can support the show@patreon.com. ftrump just like our newest patron, Sweeney Monstoy, our strawman level patrons, Colleen Lyella, Richard Thunder Hopkins, Will M. Scott, Ozzy on bank, Laura Thompson, Schmoot smockrack in RB Cannon, 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 Yueta, Andrew Halk, and our top patron, Kaz Tui. Thank you so much for your new and continued patronage. It’s very much appreciated. Thank you.

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’s Trump, we’ll leave the last word to the Donald.

Donald Trump: That’s right, go home to mommy.

Speaker A: Bye.