Magic Words Fallacy – FT#154

29 Jul Magic Words Fallacy – FT#154

Show Notes

The Magic Words Fallacy occurs when someone uses specific phrasing to avoid consequences for what they say.

Trump

We started out by discussing this clip of Trump from 1994:

And then we looked at this non-apology apology from Ted Yoho:

Finally, we talked about this example of a Sovereign Citizen:

Mark’s British Politics Corner

Mark talked about Nigel Farage simultaneously disavowing and defending the awful people in his party:

He followed that up by talking about Priti Patel’s non-apology apology:

And he finished with Robert Jenrick being very wrong about why the Conservatives lost the election:

Fallacy in the Wild

In the Fallacy in the Wild we looked at this clip from The Incredible Burt Wonderstone:

Then we discussed this clip from Cop Rock:

We followed that with this clip from American Dad:

And finally we looked at this clip from Bob’s Burgers:

 

Fake News

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

1. It was a warm, beautiful day in the early evening in Butler township in the great Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Music was loudly playing in the campaign was doing really well. I went to the stage and the crowd was cheering wildly. Everybody was happy. I began speaking very strongly, powerfully and happily, because I was discussing the great job my administration did on immigration at the southern border. We were very proud of it.
2. Behind me and to the right was a large screen that was displaying a chart of border crossings under my leadership. The numbers were absolutely amazing. In order to see the chart I started to like this turn to my right and was ready to begin a little bit further turn which I’m very lucky I didn’t do. When I heard a loud whizzing sound and felt something hit me really, really hard on my right ear. I said to myself wow, what was that? It can only be a bullet.
3. I immediately knew what was happening and as I swiftly and gracefully dropped to the ground I saw the assassin on the roof and I started to point him out to the brave secret service agents who rushed on to the stage and shielded me from harm. I wanted to stand up because I could hear the crowd behind me, really a massive crowd, were crying because they thought I was dead, but the agents wouldn’t let me up. It was only then that I realized I was drenched in blood.

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

 

A new candidate is not a logical fallacy

We talked about Biden dropping out and Kamala Harris stepping up.

 

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

• There’s a well known phrase variously attributed to Lincoln and Mark Twain. “Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.” Probably neither of them actually said it, but whoever did was almost certainly talking directly to Lauren Boebert. Following the Supreme Court’s decision overturning Chevron deference, Lauren squared off in a Congressional hearing against EPA Administrator Michael Regan. To be clear, the court’s ruling held that courts no longer need to defer to the expertise of government agencies in interpreting ambiguous laws. Boebert did NOT get that, and she asked if the EPA were going to continue to implement unconstitutional regulations or if they’re going to repeal them. To his credit, Regan didn’t directly call her an idiot, but it was very much implied in his tone when he said “Do you understand the ruling?” Beetlejuice Bobo cleverly replied “Do YOU understand the ruling”, but unluckily for her, he did actually understand it, and explained that they wouldn’t be repealing anything, because that’s not what the court said and then literally laughed in her face when she said they did do that, and added “this was a huge victory”. If you happen to be a voter in Colorado’s 4th Congressional District, Boebert’s Democrat opponent, Trisha Calvarese in NOT an idiot, and could really use your help. Only one Democrat has won in the district in the last 50 years, and that was in 2008, partly thanks to the wave of down ballot enthusiasm that followed Obama’s candidacy, so if there’s ever another chance it’s right now!
• Trump mini-me and actor-most-likely-to-play-Don-Jr-in-the-movie adaptation-of-the-life-of-Trump; JD Vance is the most popular vice president possible according to Trump – well course, cos he’ll suck up and do anything Trump says in order to curry favour in the hope he’ll be thrown the tiniest tasty morsel from the encrusted corners of the orange messiah’s burger slavering maw – you know a lot like Don Jr.  Oddly/though not oddly, according to poll numbers JD Vance is the first non-incumbent vice presidential nominee to have a net-negative favourable rating after a convention since 1980. His net rating is – 6, yes minus 6! An Economist/YouGov poll found that 22 percent of 1,582 U.S. adults viewed him favourably, while 31 percent viewed him unfavourably and 48 percent had no opinion about him at all. A Marist poll found that just 31 percent of registered voters had a favourable impression of Vance, while 33 percent said they saw him unfavourably and 36 percent said they were unsure or had never heard of him. It’s as though people know Vance is a fake and that Vance knows that Trump knows Vance is a fake. But of course none of it matters, Trump won’t let Vance drag him down “Look at those numbers” he’ll say “36 and 48 percent those are the biggliest numbers” And I guess though that’s what you want as your Veep – someone who a third to a half of Americans have never heard of so they don’t forget who you are eh Donnie – even better that he sounds exactly like you cos then they’ll start thinking he is you “and so youthful and smart – just like that Kamala woman – hey we got no problems..” Yeaaaahhh that’s how it works – right? 
• Say what you like about Republicans, nobody can deny that they respect law and order and always back the blue. Unless, of course, the blue is stopping them from doing something illegal, but I’m sure they have some excuse about that that helps them deal with the cognitive dissonance. But mostly, the authoritarians love a man in uniform. Take, for example, Michele Fiore, a Republican former City Council member in Las Vegas. When she was on the council she led the charge to erect a statue of a police officer who was killed in the line of duty. For six months she doggedly pursued donors to raise funds for the statue and almost single handedly secured $70,000 in donations, which I’m sure would have been appreciated by the fallen officer’s family and colleagues if she hadn’t then stolen the money and spent it all on her daughter’s wedding, rent, and other personal expenses. It’s totally out of character for Fiore who has hardly ever been involved in scandals unless you count the hundreds of thousands of dollars of taxes she neglected to pay in the home healthcare business that she dissolved after avoiding multiple attempts by health department inspectors to look at her business records, or whatever is was she said at the Clark County Republican Party convention in 2020. The Party won’t repeat what she said, instead choosing to describe her comments as “racially charged” and calling them “completely inappropriate,” “irresponsible, insensitive and inaccurate” in the statement they released disavowing her words. That’s the Republican Party calling her unacceptably racist. There would be more to say about Michele, but fortunately I don’t think we’ll be hearing from her again because she’s left politics, and now she’s been suspended from her job hearing court cases in rural Nevada. Oh yeah, did I forget to mention she was a judge?!
• “I have no idea who is behind it, “I know nothing about Project 2025. I disagree with some of the things they’re saying and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal.” Yep, that’s one Donald J Trump ex-president and convicted felon doing his usual thing of distancing himself from anything that might blow up in his face and reflect badly on him. Of course if Trump wasn’t unlike yer typical grandpa and could actually interact with the interwebs he could, like CNN did, review online biographies, LinkedIn profiles and news clippings for more than 1,000 people listed on published directories for the 110 organizations on Project 2025’s advisory board, as well as the 200-plus names credited with working on “Mandate for Leadership.” and then he might well also discover that overall nearly 240 people have ties to both Project 2025 and to Trump, covering nearly every aspect of his time in politics and the White House and last Tuesday, the (former) Biden campaign posted dozens of examples of connections between Trump and Project 2025. Whilst many of Project 2025’s priorities are aligned with the former president, especially on immigration and purging the federal bureaucracies, it has lately become a lightning rod for other ideas Trump hasn’t explicitly backed; plans to ban pornography, reverse federal approval of the abortion pill mifepristone, exclude the morning-after pill and men’s contraceptives from coverage mandated under the Affordable Care Act, make it harder for transgender adults to transition, and eliminate the federal agency that oversees the National Weather Service – and make the use of Sharpies mandatory?. Perhaps in the somewhat short-lived spirit of post-assassination-attempt ‘unity’ and the ‘dialling down of political violence’ – three days after Kevin Roberts, leader of the Heritage Foundation the organisation behind Project 2025, said in an interview that the country was “in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.” Trump posted “I know nothing about Project 2025”. Perhaps Trump’s narcissism will ultimately save us from Project 2025 insofar as he won’t be able to stand that people around him are vying for power and are smarter than him. It’s a fine balance that the architects of fascism must strike between maintaining the ego of the dumbass, unstable, strangely-haired leader whilst getting him to believe that their final solutions are his own ideas! In an attempt to distance themselves from Trump Project 2025 spokespeople say the document “does not speak for any candidate or campaign. It is ultimately up to that president, who we believe will be President Trump, to decide which recommendations to use” Yeah that president? Any president not Trump necessarily. You think Kamala will do any of that? They’re fascists people, it’s a power grab, read it, weep, gasp, be strong and vote blue whatever you do!
• While we’re basking in the honeymoon period of Kamala’s campaign, her opponent is also celebrating some good news. A rare win in court. Not one of his criminal cases since they’re all in various states of fuckery, but in his defamation lawsuit against ABC. The network had motioned for the case to be dismissed, but the Southern District of Florida’s Chief Judge, Cecilia Altonaga ruled that the case can proceed. The current Republican candidate for President is, you see, disgusted, appalled and personally harmed by the totally untrue and malicious statements of George Stephanopoulos who pointed out that a Judge affirmed that Trump had been found to have committed rape. That is, of course, what Judge Kaplan said, but the former President of the United States feels its very important that everyone understand the jury only found that he sexually assaulted a woman because technically in New York what he did isn’t called rape despite everyone knowing it’s rape. A crucial distinction that the guy who still has the support of tens of millions of voters feels needs to be litigated. The Judge in this case said “To be clear, the Court is not reaching the merits of Plaintiff’s claims. Defendants may very well convince a reasonable factfinder to follow Judge Kaplan’s reasoning or to adopt other reasoning leading to the conclusion that Stephanopoulos’s statements were not defamatory.” but she found that while Stephanopoulos did reference the fact this was Judge Kaplan’s interpretation, he only did so fleetingly.  I can’t help but feel we should have some kind of standard where someone who’s been found liable by a jury of any kind of sexual assault shouldn’t get to be President, and it shouldn’t matter whether New York law calls rape rape.
• Sometime back in March Republican National Committee spokesperson Danielle Alvarez said that “minority community outreach is more than brick[s] and mortar. We have seven community centers. They will remain open” One of them is in Milwaukee, about a mile north of where the RNConference was being held. Raw Story reports that three community members, in what according to a Brown University survey is one of the most segregated cities in the country, have never seen anyone go in or out of the building, and they laughed at the drawings of Lincoln, MLK, Ronald Reagan and Trump on the walls. Why is it there? No it’s not one of those anomalous abandoned fully-functioning buildings like in the capital of Cyprus stuck in the neutral zone since 1973 the Wisconsin Republican Party web page, apparently refers to it as the “Black Community Center.” although Khenzer Senat, who’s listed as the “office contact,” left the Wisconsin GOP more than a year ago to join the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce. It might be something to do with the fact that Milwaukee voted almost 79 percent for Joe Biden over Trump in 2020, although Wisconsin overall is one of the most purple states in the nation — and will likely be critical to the fortunes of the eventual winner of the 2024 presidential election. It might thus be they think they can make inroads in a community not typically supportive of Republicans. “Well,” said community member Vickie Hobbs,“they’re not doing a good job.” One door down, a sign informs passers-by that it is Black-owned building and asks people not to litter or tag it with graffiti. The sign had the hashtags  #JUSTICEFORGEORGE #BLACKLIVESMATTER #BLACKWOMENMATTER – you know, the kind of issues the GOP are soooooo good at engaging with.
• ABC isn’t the only media organisation currently fighting a defamation case or two. The right-wing website Gateway Pundit is also in hot water for things they said about election workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, and Dominion employee Eric Coomer. Unlike ABC, they’re not going with the “The thing we said was true” defense, largely because the things they said were obviously not true, so instead, they came up with a different brilliant strategy. Tell even more lies, but this time, to the court. The lie they told was that they’re bankrupt, but it wasn’t a very convincing lie, because they said they had $100,000 to $500,000 in liabilities and $500,000 to $1 million in assets, which is not what bankrupt means. What they seem to have done is confuse ‘bankrupt’ with ‘doing really well for themselves’. Bankruptcy Judge Mindy Mora noticed that they actually have lots of money, and when she looked at the real figures found that their assets were 22 times the size of their liabilities and questioned whether they’d filed for bankruptcy in good faith or to get out of paying people they defamed. Gateway Pundit cited the pending litigation rulings against them as a liability, but Judge Mora said “That’s not a basis for bankruptcy relief; it’s the justice system in operation” and dismissed their bankruptcy claim. As a fun extra, when looking at the website’s financials she also discovered that they may have been operating in Florida for three years without a proper business license and could owe back taxes to the state. It’s nice when the justice system works, isn’t it?
• In a relatively calm week in politics this side of the pond Keir Starmer removed the whip from 7 Labour party MP’s who voted with the SNP’s amendment to the King’s Speech which laid out Labour’s 49 Bills they’d be bringing in this parliament. The SNP proposed that the two-child cap on benefits given to families be abolished and regretted that it wasn’t in the King’s Speech. Labour had protested at its introduction way back in 2017 and part of their promise to reduce child poverty could, the SNP argued, be effective at a stroke if they abolished this cap and allowed child benefit to be claimed for third and subsequent children. Many Labour MPs have been very vocal about it, quoting 300,000 people could thus be lifted above the poverty line. Many vocal supporters abstained but many voted for the amendment i.e. against the Labour government. Keir in an effort to continue to be tough on dissent and tough on the causes of dissent effectively ousted the 7 MPs from the Labour party. A shame really, whilst I guess he needs to be seen to be in control, it does mean that those agitators are now outside the tent pissing in, rather than agitating from within. A show of strength or a dictatorial crushing of disagreement hmmmm? Meanwhile in the first PMQs with the roles reversed, it was pleasantly quiet from Rishi’s side of the dispatch box, I guess he’s got nothing to prove any longer. He even cracked a gag that whilst he wishes Team GB good luck in the Olympics they ought not to look for him for advice on how to win. With the leadership contest set to last longer than the actual election campaign, and that was loooong, and him sitting in merely as caretaker leader of the opposition, I guess he figures why bother, I’ll recast myself as an agreeable statesman, look good on the Goldman Sachs application, and let the mealy mouth performance posturing be done by those vying to be the next leader. Fortunately Suella Braverman’s only supporter in that race appears to be Suella Braverman, unfortunately Priti Patel, Kemi Badenoch, James Cleverly, Robert Jenrick and Tom Tugenhat all have more support than that – and not one of them thinks that the centre ground is where they lost out. And speaking of the far right, Farage fucked off as soon as he could after the King’s speech in order to be seen at the RNC with other, now unemployed, crazies Liz Truss and Boris Johnson all playing to empty rooms! Ha!

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:

Magic Words Fallacy – FT#154 Transcript

Jim: Hello, and welcome to Fallacious Trump, the politics podcast, where we use the insane ramblings of Michigan’s man of the year 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 magic words fallacy. Also known as caveating. Now, this is episode 154, which is divisible by eleven.

Jim: That’s right.

Mark: So this is one that. Well, I’ve, prevented you from saying one you’ve made up.

Jim: This is one you’ve identified. Identified, yeah. And given two names because it just. It felt right.

Mark: Yes, exactly. Because some of the other ones, they sound more real. Yes. Do you know what that in itself is a magic words thing, in a way.

Jim: yeah, yeah. Because. Yeah, yeah. Because this Fallacy is basically when people use a specific type of phrase or set of words that then somehow either lends more weight to what they’re saying or kind of gives them cover for saying something wrong or bad. Usually the latter.

Mark: Right.

Jim: It’s usually the fact that they’ve said something that is unacceptable. But because they’ve used a specific word or phrase, magic word, then, yeah. They reckon they can get away with it.

Mark: Kind of renders it in an inoffensive.

Jim: Exactly. So our first example.

Mark: Well, they think they can.

Jim: Our first example is from Trump. And this is an old interview from 1994.

Donald Trump: I don’t want to sound too much like a chauvinist, but when I come home and dinner’s not ready, I go through the roof.

Jim: Okay, so when you say that. But I’m not. Yeah, it’s a, it’s a bit. I’m not racist, but it’s. You’re, you’re saying, don’t pay attention to the meaning of these words because that’s not what I mean by them. That’s not my intent, is what I’m about to say, what it absolutely means and what you will, you would understand if I didn’t give you this caveat is totally not actually my intent, even though it very much is.

Mark: It kind of hinges. It hinges around that. That. But, I once edited a series of kind of late night serious political discussion programs about the libyan, the new libyan constitution in Arabic. And I learned the Arabic for but which is Lekhan. So you could, you could get. And a politician would start talking and then they get to Lehaan and then you kind of. Then they would say something else. So you think, well, I could leave all that first bit out because that’s the stuff that’s caveating what they’re about to say the other side of the butt of. So I would check with my, translator, and say, can I just leave that bit out? Because they’ve just said. But there, haven’t they? Yeah. So I could leave that bit out because that’s excusing.

Jim: That’s the politician bit. Yeah.

Mark: Yes. Now let’s get the bit when they’re actually saying what they’re saying. So that was a good rule of thumb. Yeah.

Jim: So our, second example is from Ted Yoho, who had a confrontation with AOC on the steps outside of the Capitol. He called her a fucking bitch. And that was reported on, as you do.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: And he wanted to address the reporting of what he had said.

Ted Yoho: The offensive name calling, words attributed to me by the press were never. Spoken to my colleagues, and if they. Were construed that way, I apologize for their misunderstanding.

Jim: So this is a non apology apology.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: I didn’t do it, but if I did do it, what I apologize for is not doing it, but for them misunderstanding the thing I did.

Mark: Yes. Yes.

Jim: So I’m apologizing for their error.

Mark: Yes. Yeah. Not saying I did do the thing that you said that I did. I’m apologizing for the fact if,

Jim: Yeah.

Mark: And, well, I’ve got similar examples of that non apology, which seems to be.

Jim: Very common among people.

Mark: I tested it a lot, but it’s a very politician non, apology. Yeah. Where they. So they look like they’ve apologized, they’ve made an apology shaped statement.

Jim: Yeah.

Mark: But they, but they’ve not apologized for it. and, they’re very rarely called out on that.

Jim: Yeah. Our final example in this section is an example of a wide group of people called sovereign citizens who seem to think that if you say the right words, you can get away with all kinds of crimes. And this is one who’s in front of a judge on Zoom. This is because it’s during the pandemic and, he, has a go.

Judge Crum: All right. At the Butler county jail. Are you Anthony Dubus?

Anthony Dubus: Sir, I would like to state for the record and correct that, I am not the all caps name on the paper. I am the proper case trade name, sole living heir, beneficiary and executor of that named trust. I am the living man. I am a foreign national and I. You’re a foreign national? I’m a foreign national. I’m an american national. I am here by special appearance only, held against my will, under duress, in false imprisonment, and under false arrest.

Judge Crum: Very good. This is state of Kansas versus Anthony Edward Dubus. Count three alleges you operated a motor vehicle on August 17, 2023 in Butler County, Kansas, without having, valid insurance. That’s no proof of insurance. A class b non person misdemeanor. Do you understand your charges, Mister Dubus?

Anthony Dubus: No, I do not stand under these charges. And I would like to make it clear that I was not operating a motor vehicle. I was operating my private conveyance. Not for hire, not for commercial use, not to transport passengers or products for hire.

Jim: This is really, really typical of sovereign citizens, especially the ones who you’ll probably most often see these if you watch any sovereign citizen videos on YouTube, which are all them failing to game the legal system. And most of them are, trying to get away with driving without a license or without insurance. And the reason that they are constantly in court for that is because they claim that traveling in your personal conveyance is not driving a car. Because if you use the right words, yeah. Then, then it’s not against the law.

Mark: So when something out of Terry Gilliams, Brazil.

Jim: So when the police pull them over and say, can I see your driving license? They say, I don’t have one. I’m not required to have one, because I’m not driving, I’m traveling, which is a fundamental right of all citizens.

Mark: So the thing is, it looks exactly the same as driving without a license.

Jim: Very much, yeah. Ah, it’s hard to tell the difference.

Mark: It’s hard given that the laws that are, applied to the road that you’re joining in the activities on what you’re doing looks exactly like what everybody else is doing. So forgive us, as the law enforcement officers, for applying that law to what you’re doing and trying you on that basis. But as a sovereign says, at any point, it just went, I’m, not the all caps person on the thing. I am the sole trader, the living.

Jim: Man, beneficiary of the proper case. Yeah. So, yeah, they think that your name that is assigned to you by the government or something, in all caps, when you’re indicted, whether is right, that’s. That’s not you. That’s a, fiction, a legal fiction. And that means. So that when the judge says, are you this person? Right, the answer is yes. But the answer that sovereign citizens give is extremely convoluted, and. And it never, ever works. There is not one instance on you, on YouTube, or anywhere of a sovereign citizen saying the right words, and a judge going, case dismissed. I guess nothing we can do about this. In fact, there’s one brilliant one where the guy says that he’s the attorney of note, which isn’t a thing for the name, that he’s the guy the judge is asking about. and he says, okay, in that case, this person, who is supposed to be up in front of the court hasn’t shown up today, so I’m issuing a warrant for his arrest. thanks very much. Yeah. Because there’s judges who see this time and time and time again, and they have had enough of it and they have no more fucks to give.

Mark: Yeah. I mean, is there. Has anybody ever successfully got good? Because you.

Jim: I mean, I’ve never seen one. I watched a few. Yeah.

Mark: If it had successfully worked, it would be all over YouTube, wouldn’t it?

Jim: Because it isn’t real. The ideas that they have about what the right words are to use don’t make any sense. There aren’t legal magic words. There is the right procedure that you have to follow if you represent yourself in court. And there are, you know, the things that you have to do, but there aren’t specific words you can use to get round a procedure that is required of you.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: And that’s what they reckon. They reckon that the USA, doesn’t really exist. You know, everything’s under the confederacy or something like that because it’s a corporation, the USA, and everything’s under maritime law. And there’s gold fringes on the flags. And if they say just the right thing, they can get away with not actually paying taxes or having driving licenses or doing all kinds of things. And a lot of these things are, trivial and inconsequential to them. They could easily do it, you know, having a driving license. Yeah. You have to pay to do it and you have to take your test and everything like this. But a lot of these people, they’ve passed their driving test. They’ve got. They’ve got a license and they’ve just let their license expire and not renewed it because they’re kind of waiting. They’re excited about when they’re going to get pulled over. So they can start, they can try this thing, and they’ll have sheaves of paper in their car with the right words to say to the cop who pulls them over, and they refuse to get out of their car. And there’s so many videos of people just of the police smashing the window and dragging the people out the car, and the sovereign citizen is going, I do not submit. Stand down. Stand down. And it’s obviously not working because that doesn’t stop a policeman from arresting you when you’ve committed a crime.

Mark: Exactly. The amount of energy they must put into researching all the magic words. They could have applied for their license five times and just gone down the, you know, the DMV and, pick one up.

Jim: But they think they’re winning.

Mark: Yeah. Yeah. Because the other end of the spectrum of the magic words application is Trump, who just says, well, it doesn’t apply to me. I don’t have to do that because, you know, I’ve got immunity. And what he’s doing is instead of ignoring the laws of the land, he’s changing the laws of the land by using the magic words.

Jim: It’s a different kind of magic he’s got there.

Mark: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

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

Mark: We’re going to look first at Nigel Farage’s Reform party, which pretty much like his Brexit party and UkIP before that, seems to attract members slash candidates that have, racist and homophobic views. Not to put too far a point on it this time round three reform candidates were ejected from the party, ultimately eventually, for racist and homophobic comments. The court on film during the campaign for the general election, that’s just gone. Andy Bell on Channel five News asked Farage about this on 2 July 2024. And in doing so, his, second question conjures up a very misses mertonesque turn of phrase, I, to which Farage applies several incantations of magic words in response.

Nigel Farage: There are some people there that ought. Not to be there that’s not reflective. Of me, the party or the vast majority of people.

Andy Bell: Well, it’s interesting you use the phrase vast majority. Georgie David, the candidate of yours in east London, who’s just withdrawn, says the vast majority of candidates for reform are racist, misogynistic and bigoted.

Nigel Farage: Well, she wouldn’t know, would she?

Andy Bell: She was one of your candidates.

Nigel Farage: Well, well, again, I just discovered earlier. On today she was what we call, she was what the party called a democracy candidate. That is. Would anyone please stand?

Andy Bell: Well, look, it’s not a great look, is it, that these candidates seem to keep coming along and you keep having to disown them. What is it about your party that is attracting these?

Nigel Farage: Don’t ask me. I wasn’t there. I wasn’t. I wasn’t part of it. Well, I am now. Yes, I am now.

Mark: So uses. There’s four, I think, four counts there. One of it. One is, well, she wouldn’t know. I don’t know why she wouldn’t know. But just saying, well, she wouldn’t know means they go, oh, yeah, no, you’re right. And you back off. She was a candidate. She knew that. She states that. Yeah, the vast majority were, racist homophobes and, misogynists and said, well, she wouldn’t know what. Yeah, but she’s one of your candidates. Oh, yeah, but she was just, she wasn’t a real candidate. She was a democracy. She was a paper candidates. It was a democracy. You would want somebody want to stand.

Jim: Yeah. That’s more of a no true candidate now.

Mark: Yes, exactly. Yeah. A never reformer and never faraja. Yeah. And then, Well, I wasn’t, I wasn’t, I wasn’t there then. I didn’t, knew nothing about it. I wasn’t there and I wasn’t the leader. So all of these are, get out clauses in answer to his mertonesque m. What is it about your party that seems to attract racists and homophobes? I was looking at somebody talking to him about the Brexit party, and there were three or four candidates then who were, accused of the same kind of views. And then he said, oh, well, we’re a startup, you can have teething problems, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So he, he is the master of the magic words.

Jim: Yeah.

Mark: And they’re just excuses to allow this kind of stuff. And when you, What did he say recently? He blamed the Russians invasion of Ukraine on Europe, and then he said that the time honoured magic words, my views, were taken out of context. What context would they have been in that would have excused that?

Jim: Uh-huh. Yeah. That’s a very common christian, apologist argument about people, ah. Who say how, you know, negative things about the Bible. Oh, he’s taking it out of context. Okay, well, what is it okay to beat your slave to death?

Mark: It’s like a review on a poster, isn’t it? The only context would be. It would be unacceptable for me to say and then say the thing, so I’m not going to say it. That’s the only context in which that would be an acceptable thing to say in that you’re caveating it. Here’s the version of the, politicians apology. I’ve got two examples. So there’s pretty Patel in, November 2020. So this was after a report had emerged that she’d bullied members m of her staff, kind of thing that seems to follow. Who was the other one? There was somebody else that was got rid of because of Kosov bullying where, where he complained that the, the bar was set too low for bullying. Yeah, it needs to be way high stuff I was doing.

Jim: You’re just gonna call everything when I was at school.

Mark: Yeah. Yeah. So a report emerged that she had been, she had bullied members of the staff, although she was consequently not sacked by Boris Johnson, because she’d apologized, obviously, and hears the apologise,

Reporter: your behaviour would be deemed as bullying to accept those findings.

Priti Patel: Well, first of all, I have given an unreserved apology about that and it’s important to recognise, in terms of the code, that the prime minister is the arbiter of that code and he makes. The judgment accordingly as well.

Reporter: I just wonder what your view is.

Priti Patel: My view is on the record. My view is absolutely on the record and I’ve given,

Reporter: which is,

Priti Patel: An unreserved apology to anybody that has. Been upset by anything that has taken.

Reporter: What are you apologising for? What behaviour of yours are you apologising for?

Priti Patel: If people felt upset.

Mark: So I’m accused of bullying. I’m apologizing if people were upset as a result of what I did. Nothing. I’m apologizing for bullying people.

Jim: Yeah.

Mark: And causing them upset. I’m Apollo. I’m sorry that they’re upset, which is what, Dominic Raab was the other guy.

Jim: The kind of implication is some people get very easily upset.

Mark: Yeah, yeah. All you’ve got to do is bully them a little bit and they get very upset. Yeah. Yeah. Dominic Ralph’s was the same. I think the bar has been set too low. But some people get, you know, you just. You whack them on the back of the head or you pull their chair out. Some people are very sensitive. They get very easily upset. So I’m a pull. I’ve made a full and unabashed apology on the fact that some people. I’m sorry that people are upset. I’m, sorry that you’ve got. That you’re crying.

Jim: You’re so easily upset after I punched.

Mark: You in the face. Yeah. I’m really sorry. I want you to say so. Yeah, I’m sorry that you’re crying. I’m sorry you’re such a worse. Yeah. That’s the kind of things that bullies say, isn’t it? And then Boris Johnson, who previously denied the existence of long Covid, said this at the COVID inquiry earlier this year.

Jim: The words that I scribbled in, the margins of submissions about long, Covid have, obviously been now publicised and I’m sure that they have caused a hurt and offence to a huge number of people who. Who do indeed suffer from that syndrome. And I regret very much using, that language and should have thought, about the possibility, of future publication.

Mark: So it seems to me he’s sorry for the fact that stuff that he, as prime minister, would have written in the margins of a report might get published. I, don’t know that he’s apologizing for the fact that people suffered this syndrome which he pooh poohed and are, ah, still and received no shrift, from him.

Jim: Yeah, yeah. Basically. I didn’t just see anyone was gonna.

Mark: Say, yeah, yeah, I’m sorry that it got published. So what are you exactly apologizing for? Well, I’m so good that it got published whilst we’re talking about the Tory party. Why not? So Robert Jemerich, was interviewed earlier, in July by Nick Robinson on BBC’s political thinking. And, they’re talking about what went wrong after the election. and this is what, Robert Jenrick said.

Robert Jenrick: If we fail to act now with seriousness and change the conservative party, then things undoubtedly could get worse. That’s why I think that we have to respond to this challenge by repenting for some of the mistakes we’ve made, such as on immigration, but not just on immigration.

Nick Robinson: You use the word repenting. It’s a fascinating word. It’s got religious overtones, the sense that. Your beliefs were wrong and that you need to say to the public, we sinned, we need to repent, we need to cleanse our soul. We have got. Do you see it in those sorts of terms?

Robert Jenrick: I do. I think if you speak to people on the doorstep, and I’ve certainly spent the last eight weeks doing that, day in, day out. People are angry and frustrated in this country, not just at the Conservative party, at the whole political establishment, for failure to tackle some of these issues, whether that’s accepting that we need to leave the European Convention on Human Rights, adopting a very clear position on illegal migration, saying that legal migration should be capped by parliament at the tens of thousands. And if we want to regain their trust, they have to see that we understand that. And that means being very clear about what we got wrong and beginning to put it right.

Mark: He’s saying we should repent. And the magic words he’s employing prevent him talking about anything other than more policy statements. He’s making a leadership bid.

Jim: Well, yeah.

Mark: And he’s using policy statements, rhetoric about not being right wing enough. Yeah, and use.

Jim: That’s what I thought when I was listening to it.

Mark: I was like, yeah.

Jim: Is he saying the problem was that we didn’t accept quickly enough that we have to leave the european court of human rights? Yeah, yeah.

Mark: We didn’t do enough.

Jim: That was one of the big things that everyone was like, I can’t believe they’re thinking of leaving the european court on you rights.

Mark: Yeah. You know, and that’s it. Yeah. Why are we getting rid of the, the Tories? Well, because they haven’t left the european.

Jim: Because they don’t agree with human rights. They are anti human rights.

Mark: Actually. What, what they should be repenting about were party gate eats out to help out, locking down too late and opening too early, not screening patients, being returned to care homes and consequently killing a lot of old people with COVID illegally proging parliament, the no deal Brexit, Dominic Cummings not being sacked over Barnard Castle, pretty patel not being sacked over bullying the two child benefit limit, increase in food bank shit in every waterway in the country, Liz truss, etc, etcetera. Those are the things that you should be repenting over and apologizing for, surely. But, what he’s doing, he’s apologizing to the completely made up electorate in his mind, that were disappointed that their extreme isolationist, nationalist, racist, populist stance didn’t cut through, not the actual real ones.

Jim: it was a journey. I went on listening to it.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: Because initially I thought, oh, I don’t mind. Repent. I don’t mind that when he’s talking about that. Yes, we fundamentally met. M had the wrong idea. We did the wrong things.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: And I was like, yeah, you fucking did. And then he was like, yeah, yeah, we weren’t nearly right wing enough.

Mark: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Not yet. So not the actual real ones. And I’m thinking, well, either. Is it. Is it, you know, is that that kind of the whole tin ear thing? He’s, you know, they were listening to what people were saying on the thing, but they weren’t.

Jim: They somehow heard that.

Mark: Yes. Yeah, yes. Yeah. Is it willful blindness? So he’s just ignoring all the other stuff because that’s really too awful to talk about. And if they did talk about that, they would never, ever get back in because of, just that image of the queen sitting entirely alone in Westminster Abbey at the funeral of the Duke of Edinburgh whilst the, caseload of.

Jim: Booze was a wheelie. Suitcase of booze.

Mark: Literal suitcase of booze. Washington being wheeled down Downing street. You know, that thing you can’t talk about. That’s if they actually said, we fucked up, and this is where we fucked up. It’s, you know, in the words of pretty Patel, appalling that they don’t do that. Rick rock and shaggy there for their 1999 magic words hit it wasn’t me excellent. All you need to say wasn’t me.

Jim: And 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 the incredible Bert, wonderstone Steve Carell film.

Jane: I have millions of ideas for tricks, Burt. I mean, did you really think I. Wanted to be a magician’s assistant?

Burt Wonderstone: Yes.

Jane: No, Burt. Make me your partner.

Burt Wonderstone: Poor, sweet Nicole. My name’s Jane. My act is incredibly intricate. It is the product of years of study and training and, no offense, but you are a girl.

Jane: You gotta be kidding me.

Burt Wonderstone: Not that girls can’t do magic. It’s just that men are better at it.

Jane: You know what? I don’t want you staying here and I don’t want to work with you.

Burt Wonderstone: What? Just because I said that men are better than women? I said, no offense. Therefore, you cannot be offended. Legally.

Jim: Yeah, there you go. Yeah, he said it.

Mark: He said the word no offense, spark.

Jim: So,

Mark: Yes.

Jim: Yeah.

Mark: Yes.

Jim: She has no recourse there. She has to not.

Mark: It’s like saying, I’m not being funny, but, yeah. And then they say. And my rejoinder to that. To that certain kind of person said, yeah, not being funny. But. And then they say something which isn’t.

Jim: It’s never funny.

Mark: Always. Completely. Always particularly racist. I get. No, you’re right. You weren’t being funny. That was. Yeah, I’m not being racist, but, I. Yeah, some of my best friends are.

Jim: Yeah.

Mark: You know, insert minority group here.

Jim: And speaking of I’m not being racist. But, yeah. Our next example comes from the brilliant cop rock, which we’ve talked about before. And this is a song about not being racist.

Detective Miller: Don’t get me wrong, I keep an open mind. I know what’s what When your butt’s on the line and. When you need a man to cover your back. Well blue is blue and black is black.

Jim: So he started out by saying, don’t get me wrong. Yeah, but you can’t trust black policemen. But, you know, don’t. Don’t take this the wrong way.

Mark: Don’t take it the wrong way. No.

Jim: To say the thing that is awful. Yeah, but I caveated it beforehand, so it’s fine.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: And don’t take this the wrong way is exactly our next example, which is from american dad.

Steve Smith: Why can’t I go to the good mall and get a summer job there?

Francine Smith: Because that’s our mall and we don’t want to risk running into you. Don’t take this the wrong way, but you’re kind of a nerd.

Steve Smith: What is the right way to take that?

Francine Smith: Not like that.

Jim: Yeah. When you say, don’t take this the wrong way, you’re gonna say something, that someone will take the way you intend it and that’s the wrong way.

Mark: Yes, yes. Yeah, but that. So. And what, it shifts the blame onto the listener. Yeah. It.

Jim: You’re being a bit releases.

Mark: You take the responsibility for being ours. Yeah, exactly.

Jim: So our final example from Bob’s Burgers is a, very common caveat, and arguably one that is used importantly in kind of legal contexts when you want to say stuff, but you’re not sure if you’re being accurate and, legally, you want to protect yourself. And this is an episode where a wolf has escaped from the Wonder Wharf

TV Reporter: It’s been called the beast of the. Bay, the monster of the marina and the Wonder Wolf. But whatever you call it, it’s allegedly extremely dangerous and allegedly out for blood. Wreaking, alleged havoc on our quiet little community. Allegedly.

Jim: Yeah. If you say allegedly enough. It doesn’t matter if you’re telling the truth or nothing. That’s, Yeah, as far as I’m concerned. That’s how it works, in my opinion.

Mark: As far as I. Ah, yeah, yeah. So we’re gonna.

Donald Trump: 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: Listen, the whole. The whole game is clearly rigged. It’s obviously got bugs and teething troubles that still need ironing out. Okay, so there have been wins, some wins against the odds, I might add. Clear victories, to be sure, but I’m not happy about it.

Jim: So our theme this week.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: Is Trump at the RNC.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: Decided that he would tell the story of the assassination attempt.

Mark: Oh, okay.

Jim: He said that, this would be a thing he would only ever do once because it’s too painful for him to recount this traumatizing story. he since told it several times, but, the way he told it was so fucking weird. It was. He, he didn’t write it himself, but he did add a few ad libs. And it is so.

Mark: Right.

Jim: Kind of Barbara Taylor Bradford, like William Faulkner, kind of descriptive. laying the scene of this. It’s not like if you were in a traumatic situation and you were telling someone about what happened to you. This is fucking not how you would tell a story.

Mark: No. If you’re writing.

Jim: Yeah. You wouldn’t lay down directions in these terms. while also.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: Managing to fit in ways to boast about yourself. So.

Mark: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jim: So these are all from that section of his unifying speech. Statement number one. It was a warm, beautiful day in the early evening in Butler Township in the great Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Music was loudly playing and the campaign was doing really well. I went to the stage and the crowd was cheering wildly. Everybody was happy. I began speaking very strongly, powerfully and happily, because I was discussing the great job my administration did on immigration at the southern border. We were very proud of it.

Mark: So many happies in there. Wow. Wow.

Jim: Birds were singing, bees were buzzing. exactly.

Mark: It’s gotta go into zip.

Jim: Okay.

Mark: Statement numbers on my shoulder. It’s a fact.

Jim: It’s actual statement number two. Behind me and to the right was a large screen that was displaying a chart of border crossings under my leadership. The numbers were absolutely amazing. In order to see the chart, I started to like this turn to my right and was ready to begin a little bit further turn, which I’m very lucky I didn’t do. When I heard a loud whizzing sound and felt something hit me really, really hard on my right ear, I said to myself, wow. What was that? It can only be a bullet.

Mark: Yeah. Not like a bee. Because it was a warm, beautiful day in the early evening in a township of the great commonwealth of Pennsylvania, where they’re bees. Yeah.

Jim: And statement number three.

Mark: Hm.

Jim: I. Immediately knew what was happening. And as I swiftly and gracefully dropped to the ground, I saw the assassin on the roof and I started to point him out to the brave secret service agents who rushed to the stage and shielded me from harm. I wanted to stand up because I could hear the crowd behind me. Really? A massive crowd were crying because they thought I was dead, but the agents wouldn’t let me up. It was only then that I realized I was drenched in blood.

Mark: It’s only then I realized I’d lost my shoes. And, like, like, you kind of focus when you’re completely drunk and you’re focused on one thing. this one stupid, banal thing, like where I’ve.

Jim: That was absolutely the most relatable thing he’s ever done.

Mark: Yeah, yeah. I’ve put it down somewhere. I’ve, dropped it. It’s in my turn ups. Yeah, yeah. Right, right. Drenched in blood. Wasn’t drenched. Okay. All right. Well, yeah, I quite like that you can hear the music actually under. It was a warm, beautiful day. It’s like the opening scene of the Waltons.

Jim: it’s a beautiful, warm day on Walton Mountain.

Mark: Yeah, on the great Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. It’s so good. It actually’s like the sylvanian family kind of stuff.

Jim: Yeah.

Mark: Okay. Quite like that one. Strongly, powerful and happily, that. I like that because it’s clunky, because everybody was happy. And then happily, he’s probably picked that up and said it again. Nobody would write happy twice in the two sentences. It’s just bizarre. And it can only be a bullet really hard on my right ear. Okay. Swiftly and gracefully alike. and the fact that the secret service agents only rushed after he had said them and had pointed out to this assador, of course, then that would add to his omniscience. He’s completely aware of everything that’s going on, even though the security services weren’t. Okay, all right. I think that even though the. Drenched in blood. So it. See, the things I’ve tussling with, it can only. Wow. It can only be a bulletin. Is he going to have thought of that? And I was drenched in blood. Okay, I’m going to go with number two is the one that you made up.

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

Mark: I think the warm, beautiful day in the early evening about the township of.

Jim: The great Commonwealth, Pennsylvania, the literary equivalent of it, was a dark and stormy night.

Mark: Yeah, yeah, I’ve changed your mind now, right? Yeah, go on.

Jim: And, ah, number one. Yeah, it’s real.

Donald Trump: It was a warm, beautiful day in the early evening in Butler Township in the great Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Music was loudly playing and the campaign was doing really well. I went to the stage and the crowd was cheering wildly. Everybody was happy. I began speaking very strongly, powerfully and happily, because I was discussing the great job my administration did on immigration at the southern border. We were very proud of it.

Jim: That’s the kind of paragraph that usually ends with. And then I did a backflip and everybody cheered. It’s like. Yeah, it’s just fucking.

Mark: It was all a dream. Oh, my God. It’s just.

Jim: Ah.

Mark: no, no, there’s a.

Jim: There’s a competition on Twitter. I forget the name of the account, but it’s things that never happened. And it’s a,

Mark: Right.

Jim: It’s a competent. Like, they collect things through. Through. Through the year of stuff that’s posted on social media. And it is all people writing like this about times that they confronted injustice in KFC or whatever.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: And everybody cheered for them and they. And the manager paid for their meal. And, Like, it’s just they’re the hero in their own little story.

Mark: And all the workers made an arch with. With a whole series of golden arches, and I walked out with it and everybody stood up and applauded. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, no, we’ve seen the video. Basically what you did was you punched a Karen in the face. That was it. And people just went, that was it.

Jim: Yeah, yeah. so, yeah, that was a thing he said.

Mark: Well, it’s. It’s just more of his kind of self eulogizing in the. In the. So either. Either he’s. He’s pretending to believe it or he absolutely believes it. I think he absolutely believes it. That he got to. That he would say to people, yeah, you need to write something. We’ve got to. We’ve got to freeze this moment in time. We’ve got to note down every single atom and make it sound like the.

Jim: Beginning of a Disney film.

Mark: Exactly. Yeah.

Jim: Yeah. I.

Mark: One of those ones where you embed somebody into an animated landscape. Yeah. That. That sort of thing. And, you know, none of that shrek nonsense when it’s all turned on its head and ruined.

Jim: Yeah.

Mark: No, it’s got to be the proper lush one that everybody falls in love with. The hero cries at the death of a reindeer. Yeah. Yeah.

Jim: So you also think that number three is real.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: And number three.

Mark: Yeah, yeah, it’s fake news. Oh, Nice one. Yeah, you see, it was that. It’s the same shape as the one above in that. It was, Yeah. Dumped it up, did you? Don’t you? Then I realized I drenched your blood. Dumped it up to dummy. Yeah.

Jim: Yeah. He did boast about the crowd size.

Mark: Nice.

Jim: That’s the one thing that I kept. But that was inevitable. Like, he. He m can’t talk about perfect a crowd without talking about how big the crowd is. But, yeah. he didn’t claim to point out the assassin to the secret service or, swiftly and gracefully dropped gracefully.

Mark: Oh, yeah. No, no, I regret that choice now because.

Jim: Yeah, no, I mean, none of them are more plausible. I don’t blame you.

Mark: No, it’s not. That’s absolutely not. I mean, it was so. Yeah, it was. Yes, it is just as implausible. I heard loud whizzing sound, felt something really hard. So it can only be a bullet hole drenching blood. Yeah.

Jim: You know, so, yeah. Number two really isn’t. It is indeed, real.

Donald Trump: Behind me and to the right was a large screen that was displaying a chart of border crossings under my leadership. The numbers were absolutely amazing. In order to see the chart, I started to like this, turned to my right and was ready to begin a little bit further turn, which I’m very lucky I didn’t do. When I heard a loud whizzing sound and felt something hit me really, really hard on my right ear, I said to myself, wow, what was that? It can only be a bulletin.

Jim: So one of the things about this, among all the other things I don’t believe, is.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: Who, who turns their head a bit and thinks of themselves. You know what? I’ll just turn in a minute. I’m about to continue turning my head. But fortunately, he didn’t even have a chance to do that. Had the opportunity to decide that that was the next movement my head was going to do, but hadn’t actually put it into action yet executed it.

Mark: Yeah, yeah. Because that’s what you do when you turn to look at a chart and you think, oh, I can’t quite see.

Jim: Yeah, I might just turn it further.

Mark: Then I might be able to see it.

Jim: Yeah. You have that internal narrative going on.

Mark: Yeah. And that’d be the kind of speed that, Yeah, yeah.

Jim: That’s his thinking speed. There’s a bit of a lag between the old brain and then the body doing it.

Mark: Because it’s like pre bluetooth, so it’s quite slow. Yeah. It’s like it’s not even as fast as a scuzzy connection.

Jim: Yeah.

Mark: And then he’ll think, oh, hang on a minute, I’ve got to breathe in first because I haven’t done that for a while. And then breathe out. It’s like, you know, forget Carter and his chewing and walking at the same time. No, this is Trump who’s going to. Can’t turn his head and then turn his head a bit more without stopping to think about it in between.

Jim: You have to do it in stages.

Mark: Whilst attempting to look at something. Yeah, yeah. I’m just going to look at that over there. Oh, I can’t quite see it. I must learn a bit more. Okay. What I’ll do to do next. Yeah, this is a little bit.

Jim: This is how I thought turning a car worked before I learned to drive. I thought, you know.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: You turn the amount you reckon you need to turn and you either get it right or wrong and then you adjust. Yeah, that’s what I thought. I didn’t realize. Yeah. Like, you’re getting feedback the entire time you’re turning and therefore you’re gonna join it.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: As you go. I just hadn’t occurred to me. But, yeah, that’s how Trump turns his head. He turns it a bit. He turns it the bit. The amount he reckons then.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: Evaluates whether that’s. And then goes, oh, no, I’m gonna need to turn a bit more.

Mark: I’m gonna have to do a bit more. How much more? I don’t know. Some less than that, but a bit more than I thought it was, but not as much. Perhaps he overshoots.

Jim: Perhaps he’s overshooting too fast sometimes and then has to turn back.

Mark: So he’s a bit wary of it. There’s that little bit of learning he’s done. Yeah. I’m a little bit wary of going too far. So I’ll just under undershoot rather than overshoot and have to correct it, because then I’ll just look a fool.

Jim: So it’s worth mentioning, I think.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: That the amazing chart was not true.

Mark: No.

Jim: The chart of immigration achievements. Yeah. The main thing that wasn’t true about it.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: Was that there was a big arrow pointing to when Trump left office, which matched up, coincidentally, with the lowest immigration in american history.

Mark: Oh, really?

Jim: The chart was actually of, apprehensions at the border.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: And so it went all the way down to pretty much zero. And then they did a big arrow saying, trump leaves office, and then it went all the way back up again and indicating that Biden was responsible for all those things. The only trouble is that they put the arrow, not January 20, 2021, but right in the middle of the pandemic, when all the borders of all the countries were closed everywhere.

Mark: Right. Nice.

Jim: So, yeah, there was very little illegal immigration going on during COVID because people, nobody could go anywhere in the air.

Mark: Yes. They, were out in the wild.

Jim: But actually, by the time he left office, it was going way back up again, but. Yeah. In the way of a good.

Mark: In the way of a chart.

Jim: Yeah.

Mark: Yes.

Jim: So, wow. We, we have some m. social contestants.

Mark: Oh, yeah.

Jim: On Patreon, Will, m. Says, number one is fake. In my opinion. I haven’t been following the news at all lately. Well done, Will. I don’t know how that’s possible, but. Yeah. Amazing.

Mark: M. Yeah. Oh, God. If only we could do that. Yeah. Oh. that must be bliss. It must be like a warm, beautiful day in the early evening. Yeah. All the time where Will is.

Jim: Maybe this is how Will learned that there was an assassination.

Mark: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sorry. In which case, sorry for pricking that bubble. Yeah.

Jim: Renee Z. Says all his fucking lies are said by him as the truth. Are you changing the rules and making all three real? I’m choosing number one as fake news. It sounds too much like it’s written by someone with skill at writing fiction. Two and three sound like his recreation of what happened.

Mark: Nice. Nice. Yeah, yeah.

Jim: Richard says, I think number two is fake. Has the Donald ever heard a bullet that wasn’t in a movie? He certainly didn’t hear any when he was in the army, the navy, the air force, and the marines all at once.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: Anders says, I’m gonna close my eyes and bite the bullet. Like sledgehammer. Number three is fake. Trust me, I know what I’m doing. Which is. Anders, a brilliant sledgehammer quote. it was. It’s a nice show. Sledgehammer with David Rash. Not many people will necessarily have got that reference, but I’m there with you, Anders. yeah, and it worked.

Mark: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jim: Scott says, I think I heard number two. Number three is just so bizarre, I want it to be true. So I choose number one as fake.

Mark: I know. That’s. Yes, that’s. That’s the thing I slip into.

Jim: Yeah.

Mark: Often. Yeah.

Jim: And yes. invisible unicorn said, holy steaming dog shit. He really said two of those. Number two seems like he’s rambling, so it’s too easy. The other two read like pulp Fallacy novels and the sentences are too complete. One is fake.

Mark: Wow. There you go. Yeah, yeah. Yes. I think. Yeah, I think you’re right that the Faulkner esqueness of the, that obviously. Yeah, because he never written them. Yeah, obviously. The other ones, it kind of added stuff too, but the openings.

Jim: It’s a warm, beautiful day, so unfortunately, that means that you did not get a. Oh, no. This time.

Mark: About that.

Jim: It’s.

Mark: It’s a. You know, whilst I’m quite happy to play along, but I’m just not happy about it. Yeah, damn fine. A, damn fine quote that time, swiftly and gracefully. Beautiful. Beautiful.

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Jim: And it’s time for the part of the show that this week, at least, is called a new candidate is not a logical fallacy. Because while we talked at, some length in our emergency bonus episode last week about the fact that Kamala was probably going to be taking over from Joe Biden after he dropped out, she’s now had her first, what are we, confused for her first four days, almost three and a half days as the presumptive candidate. Yeah, Sunday that he dropped out Sunday night.

Mark: Yeah, yeah.

Jim: And, yeah, it’s looking pretty much a foregone conclusion.

Mark: Yeah. Because didn’t she get to get like 1976?

Jim: Yeah. The delegates in the primaries had, voted for the Biden Harris ticket, but they didn’t automatically go to Harris.

Mark: Okay.

Jim: and there was kind of some question of how that would work. And obviously, the Republicans are saying that you can’t, you know, it’s totally subverting democracy, which is not something they would ever do to just install her, as the candidate because primary voters voted for Joe Biden. And also it must be against the law to change what candidate. And of course, they haven’t had the DNC yet. They haven’t had the convention. So he wasn’t the candidate yet. He was just the person that everyone reckoned was probably going to be the.

Mark: Candidate, going to be the one, bit like Trump was possibly the person that everyone reckoned would get until the RNC.

Jim: Yeah. And yeah, she needs to secure the party vote. She needed 1976 out of the 3900, nearly 4000 delegates that exist. And she passed the 1976 number pretty early on Wednesday. Now, we are at a point where 3284 delegates out of the 3900 have pledged to vote for her and six, hundred, 26 of the others. It’s just because the Washington Post hasn’t managed to get hold of them yet to find out who they’re voting for. So there’s 39 who said they’re undecided.

Mark: More of the undecideds that we talked about last time. Yeah.

Jim: No one said they’re voting for anyone else, but, yeah, almost 3300 as of now. this is confused night UK, time they’ve said that they are going to vote for Kamala Harris. So basically she’s got it locked up. They are actually not going to wait for the convention to solidify that because there was already a system in place where they could have a kind of virtual roll call, which I think is, I don’t know, it’s done over like Zoom or something, but where they essentially all say, yeah, we’re definitely voting for this person. There was. They were already getting ready to do that for Joe.

Mark: Right.

Jim: They decided to kind of ahead of the Congress. Yeah, yeah. it’s just so that they could kind of start getting some momentum, I think, before the convention came along and they, they didn’t do that, but now they’ve, they’ve reinstated that potential system. I think that is what they’re probably going to do. And they’re going to do it before August 7. Because while most states don’t have a thing about who has to be the candidate, because of the fact that Joe was never technically the candidate, Ohio is the kind of closest that there is a potential issue. And for them, it’s essentially whoever is the candidate as of August 7. So that’s what, nearly two weeks before the convention. The convention is, August 19 to 22nd. So to head off any potential challenges in Ohio, they’re going to get Kamala essentially signed off by all delegates in a virtual roll call before August 7. And that will mean that there isn’t really any plausible legal argument that anyone can make that she shouldn’t be the candidate. They’ll still make the arguments, but none of them will go anywhere. And they’re the kind of arguments that if they were to try and take them to, like, the Supreme Court, for example, where who knows what would happen? That whole process of going through the various steps to get there would take far longer than the election itself.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: So it won’t matter by that point. It’ll be moot.

Mark: They’re just trying to come up with all sorts of things saying, oh, you can’t do that, because we don’t like it. It’s not fair.

Jim: Oh, yeah, they’ll challenge. They’ll challenge her on everything. They can possibly challenge her.

Mark: Right, right. Yeah.

Jim: Which is really nothing. So they’ll challenge her on all the stuff they can’t possibly challenge her on, and the courts will go, fuck off, and it won’t make any difference. But by the time the convention comes around, there will be. She’ll be the nominee officially, and the convention is going to be lit, if I can use that phrase, as a 50 year old white mandev. Yeah.

Mark: Because she’s being brat.

Jim: It is going to be, somewhat more exciting in terms of the famous people than the republican convention was, which, which boasted what more exciting? Hulk Hogan and Dana White. No ice tea. Wouldn’t vote for Trump. No.

Mark: No.

Jim: apparently Hollywood has been kind of actively ringing the Harris campaign to say, what can we do? How can we help? Like, they have not. They have just constantly been on the phone. Every time they put their phone down, a different major Hollywood star calls them up and goes, how can we help to do this?

Mark: Wow.

Jim: Because enthusiasm for Kamala, has been just insane. It’s off the charts in, like, in a good way. I confess that, you probably heard our, ah, kind of our, ah, ah, immediate response, our emotional response, in our last emergency episode, I didn’t like the way it happened, and I was concerned about whether it was ultimately going to be the right thing. I was, as I said at the time, I was optimistic, and I. And I felt like there was definite advantages and there were disadvantages. I was wrong to be so cautious. I am absolutely delighted to see the huge level of enthusiasm.

Mark: The amount of money that got raised.

Jim: 80 million, $81 million, just in small dollar donations. That doesn’t count. The big donors that were donating to paCs, because the amount they wanted to donate was way higher than the amount you’re allowed to donate directly to the campaign. So in small dollar donations. $81 million in 24 hours, which is the most a presidential campaign has ever raised in history in a single day. And of that, a huge number. Like half a million people. At least. That was their first donation of the 2024 election.

Mark: Wow.

Jim: They hadn’t, like, previously been Democrat donors or donated to down ballot races or anything else. They were like, fuck me, Kamala’s in. We are donating. We need to get her.

Mark: Exactly. That’s the visible manifestation of the sort of national endorsement of the, of the idea.

Jim: It’s a ridiculous amount. And that was just in the first 24 hours where, as we said, more than three days in, it’s over $126 million. Now that, that’s more than doubled by the, the high figure donors who’ve donated to paCs. So the democratic party as a whole has taken in well over a quarter of a million, over the last three days.

Mark: Quarter billion.

Jim: Quarter of a billion, yes, quarter of a billion in the last few days. So which is.

Mark: That doesn’t even include whatever was raised for the Biden.

Jim: No, that’s. That’s not including the 96 million that they already had on hand that she. Yeah, that got transferred into her campaign account. So, yeah, that, is, that is enormous in terms of the value that they can get out of that with the, campaign staff that they have. Who are, who are. It turns out fucking awesome because, yeah, they have just turned on a dime from all the stuff they were doing to promote Biden into immediately promoting Kamala and doing it really effectively with memes and things like that. Charlie, XCX in the UK, she called Kamala brat, which is a song, apparently. And the camera hq turned their twitter header lime green to match with that. And they started putting out memes of that. And they, Trump said in a rally speech, oh, she’s got this line where she says, you know, she’s the prosecutor and I’m the felon. It’s prosecutor against felon. And they basically clipped that out and added Kamala saying, I approve this message after it and put that out as a thing. They put out a press release today that the title of it was something like 78 year old criminal, is confused or something like that, is having difficulty. They have been absolutely brilliant, starting essentially from scratch. They didn’t have a lot of notice that this was happening. Some people reasonably high up in Biden’s campaign didn’t, like, found out that he was stepping down on Sunday when it was announced. So it wasn’t like this was completely widespread and everyone in Kamala’s camp and everyone in Biden’s camp knew about it, but they’ve really fucking stepped up and they’re doing a great job. And the money that has been raised will enable them to do that at a much bigger level and nationally and in those targeted areas, which are going to mean exactly.

Mark: Which is able to get seven states, isn’t it? The actual ones that would kind of matter. This.

Jim: I mean, there are, yeah, there’s a lot that it’s important that they are there and campaigning and kind of show up at. But yeah, there’s, in terms of the ones that have a potential to flip and make a big difference, there’s not that many. There’s probably nine or ten that have some that could be considered purple that might be important not to lose. Yeah. She’s also been endorsed by almost everyone you can be endorsed by in terms of Democrats. So all 23 of the 23 democratic state governors, of Democrat senators, 46 out of 51 have already endorsed her. 199 out of 212 House Democrats have endorsed her. Nancy Pelosi, who hadn’t previously endorsed her. Today there’s a lot of stories saying that Obama is getting ready to endorse her. and we talked the other day about the fact that he didn’t immediately endorse her and whether that was a problem or whether he was going to. The more recent news is that they wanted his to be a kind of standalone special thing and not get lost in the mix.

Mark: Well, because my, my thought was that he was more concerned about the, process. Lack of opacity on the process. Yeah. And I think once the process has, well, it’s, it’s been gone through the process. Yeah. Then he’ll come out and now they can make it into something that looks, looks a bit special.

Jim: Yeah. there’s also, apparently when, when Nancy came out and endorsed her, the insiders and the people who talked to the insiders were saying that it has, it has been a bit of a plan for the more senior Democrats to stagger their endorsements of her to keep that in the news cycle.

Mark: Yep. Yep.

Jim: Because if everyone did it on day one, that’s huge. But then people stop talking about it every time. Now that they do it, they can say, you know, yet another one. There’s, there’s, look at the numbers. She’s got basically the entire party behind her talk, about unity, which is what, you know, the Republicans claimed their.

Mark: Conference was about, talked about for about five minutes.

Jim: Yeah.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: It is a historically unified democratic party right now. Also on top of the delegates endorsements and the massive fundraising, they have signed up 74,000 new volunteers to work on the Harris campaign. in just three days of just people showing up and saying, what can we do? How can we help? And vote.org announced that in the first 48 hours after Joe stepped down and Kamala stepped up, they had a 700% increase in new voter registrations, which means 38,500 new voters in the US registered in 48 hours. Wow. And of those new voters, 83% were people between, 18 and 34.

Mark: Oh, wow.

Jim: So it’s energizing young people, the younger demographic, in a way that they weren’t before, in a way that people were looking at Biden and Trump and going, yeah, this isn’t us. They don’t represent us. And, that’s more, incidentally, in two days than happened when Taylor Swift said people should register to vote back in. Wow. In September.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: So that’s huge. And that is the kind of thing, that’s the kind of thing with the new voters, new volunteers, money, big donors coming back as well to the party, celebrities endorsing at the DNC, all the delegates, all of the democratic politicians. You can’t get really more enthusiasm and more unity than this. And it is reminiscent of 2008 and Obama.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: Which, yeah, I couldn’t have hoped on Sunday, I was like, yeah. You know, I was thinking, trying to be hopeful about it, and hope is the thing now. I think that people are starting to feel, and I mean, because of the last eight years that we’ve had.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: It’s such an, unrecognizable feeling. It’s something we’re not used to. In fact, one of the, democratic strategists told CNN about, like, why there’s been such a change from people basically being resigned to, but behind Biden to this.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: They said, I don’t think people realized how worried they were until they had hope.

Mark: There you go.

Jim: and, yeah, I think that’s right. I think now.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: All of a sudden, people are like, oh, you mean it doesn’t have to be. Probably. Shit. We could actually maybe have something good.

Mark: Yeah, we haven’t got to. Yes, exactly.

Jim: This feels weird.

Mark: You haven’t got to vote with your, nose pinched.

Jim: Yes.

Mark: Smell. You know, you can actually vote for something positively rather than as a kind of, reaction against the negative. Something popped up in my feed of Gerald Ford answering a little girl’s question in 1989. Something like that. Little girl said, do you think there will ever be a female president? And he said, yeah, what will happen is there will be a female vice president and the president will die in office, and then the vice president will take over, and then after that, look out, because there will never be a male candidate after that. And he was, you know, it was quite a, it was a serious.

Jim: Weird answer to give a little girl.

Mark: Yeah. Yeah. But it was a seriously thought out thing. I think he was acknowledging the, you know, the misogynist aspects of american politics. But if you could break through that.

Jim: Barrier, I think that’s the thing is, is the concern I was expressing on Sunday was that there was that misogynist and racist side of, some people. And I. I had not been sufficiently optimistic. I think now, in where we are about the other people stepping up, about the people who don’t feel like that and don’t accept that, but people are fucking stepping up, and. And that’s great, and that’s what we need. And if there’s stuff you can do, now’s a great time to start doing that.

Mark: And it’s kind of the triumph of the progressive notion. There’s this kind of, well, I was talking about this on Sunday, that our feeds are somewhat skewed because we’re looking at Trump for the interests of the podcast. But it gets somewhat skewed as to Trump’s reading of Biden’s presidency, that he’s the worst president ever. And so, therefore, you don’t get to see, you know, the affordable healthcare act stuff. And, all of the progressive things gets suppressed in the. In our consciousness and in the national. I got this feel that, that progressiveness has been suppressed in the national consciousness. And Kamala Harris has enabled people to. To embrace what Biden has done and think, oh, for fuck’s sake. Yes, we did do all of this. It’s actually possible to do this in this increasingly right wing, suppressive, gilead esque political environment. We can be progressive and celebrate that progressiveness. And don’t forget that we. She was our, candidate of choice.

Jim: Absolutely.

Mark: I think my m mom was.

Jim: I don’t think it was yours.

Mark: Mine was AOC, probably.

Jim: She’s not even eligible.

Mark: Wasn’t that the time we did that test of how left wing are you? And I was like, 98% or something.

Jim: I think you were Bernie Sanders, probably. Oh, yeah, probably, yeah. no, you know, it was. I think it was the first democratic primary debate, in 2020 was. Was the one where I said, okay, Kamala’s gonna be the next president. And I was wrong about that, but I was just wrong temporarily. So.

Mark: Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Jim: Next but one.

Mark: And just stop the sentence.

Jim: And the attacks that have come at her from the right have been largely predictable of what we said of racism and misogyny and accusing her of sleeping our way to the top and that kind of stuff. in fact, to the extent that apparently even the republican leadership are going, look, guys, can we just chill it with the racism?

Mark: Wow.

Jim: It’s a bit, it’s a bit much. M. and like, let’s not call her dei hire and things like that because everyone knows what we mean.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: And Yeah, so. But there’s also been some more idiosyncratic attacks, of complaining about her laughs. One of the. There was a memo that was sent round by the national, the republican senatorial committee which said she’s weird, she likes Venn diagrams and she laughs inappropriate times. And I’m like, how fucked up do you have to be where you’re like, what? Why is she laughing? What’s that about? Why is she happy?

Mark: Well, yes, exactly. Well that’s the thing. Is it that the, the right don’t do funny as we know? It’s, it’s a fact. It’s also very funny, but it’s a fact. So they don’t know. I mean if you watch bloody JD vance, the other day talking about making a terrible joke about Mountain dew being racist and then leaving a gap in a very Liz truss kind of way. Leave gap for laughter. It says on the teleprompter, you know, leave gap for laughter and then say this when nobody fucking laughed because it was the worst joke ever. It’s like, you know, and we import 80% of our cheese and that is terrible big gap. Tumbleweed going through, cricket sound and she’s expect. She expected a laugh there. JB, exactly the same. They don’t know how to do funny. So the fact that people do know how to over on the left, quite happy to have a laugh at stuff and laugh happily and freely because they are quite joyous people. Pamela Harris. Quite joyous.

Jim: Yeah.

Mark: And wouldn’t you be if you raised 81 million pounds in a day just by being you? That would be something to, you know, have a bit of a chuckle about. A bit of a giggle.

Jim: Yeah. So. Ah.

Jim: I feel hope and it’s weird.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: Cuz yeah, I mean we’ve done 150. There’s 154 of these. Yeah.

Mark: Don’t all of them post.

Jim: I don’t remember if any of these sections of is not a logical fallacy have been positive, hopeful ones no. Full of us going, look at this. Isn’t it great?

Mark: Oh, my God. Isn’t it great?

Jim: Yeah, I mean, maybe when Trump lost, then, there probably was one we did. Yeah, but, yeah, yeah, but it’s a rare thing because m normally these about are about how shit it is and. And what awful thing Trump has done this week and all that kind of stuff. So I’m, very pleased to have one where it’s just, look at all the awesomeness.

Mark: Yeah, there you go. There’s a t shirt. Yeah. And finally, some things we really don’t have time to talk about.

Jim: There’s a well known phrase variously attributed to Lincoln and Mark Twain. Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt. Probably neither of them actually said it, but whoever did was almost certainly talking directly to Lauren Boebert. Following the Supreme Court’s decision overturning Chevron deference, Lauren squared off in a congressional hearing against EPA administrator Michael Regan. To be clear, the court’s ruling held that courts no longer need to defer to the expertise of government agencies in interpreting ambiguous laws. Boebert, did not get that, and she asked, if the EPA were going to continue to implement unconstitutional regulations or if they’re going to repeal them. To his credit, Regan didn’t directly call her an idiot, but it was very much implied in his tone when he said, do you understand the ruling? Beetlejuice? Bobo cleverly replied, do you understand the ruling? But unluckily for her, he actually did understand it and explained that they wouldn’t be repealing anything because that’s not what the court said, and then literally laughed in her face when she said they did and added, this was a huge victory if you happen to be a voter in Colorado’s fourth congressional district. Boebert’s Democrat opponent, Tricia Calvarees, is not an idiot and could really use your help. Only one Democrat has won in the district in the last 50 years, and that was in 2008, partly thanks to the wave of down ballot enthusiasm that followed Obama’s candidacy. So if there’s ever another chance, it’s right now.

Mark: There you go. Trump mini me and actor most likely to play Don Junior in the movie adaptation of the life of Trump, JD Vance is the most popular vice president possible, according to Trump. Well, of course, because he’ll suck up and do anything Trump says in order to curry favor in the hope he’ll be thrown the tiniest tasty morsel from the encrusted corners of the orange Messiah’s burger slaverings more. You know, a lot like Don Junior. Oddly, though. Not oddly. According to poll numbers, JD Vance is the first non incumbent vice presidential nominee to have a net negative favorable rating after a convention since 1980. His net rating is minus six. Yes, minus six. An economist slash YouGovpol found that 22% of 1580 m two us adults viewed him favourably, whilst 31% viewed him unfavorably and 48% had no opinion about him at all. A Marist poll found that, just 31% of registered voters had a favourable impression of Vance, whilst 33% said they saw him unfavourably and, 36% said they were unsure or had never heard of him. It’s as though people know Vance is a fake and that Vance knows that Trump knows Vance is a fake. But of course, none of it matters. Trump won’t let Vance drag him down. Look at those numbers. He’ll say 36 and 48%. Those are the bigliest numbers. And I guess, though, that’s what you want as your feet. Someone who a third to a half of Americans had never heard of. So they don’t forget who you are. Aye, Donny, even better than he sounds exactly like you. Because then they’ll start thinking he is you. And so youthful and smart, just like that Kamala woman. Hey, we got no problems. Yeah, because that’s how it works, right?

Jim: Say what you like about Republicans, nobody can deny that they respect law and order and always back the blue. Unless, of course, the blue is stopping them from doing something illegal. But I’m sure they have some excuse about that that helps them deal with the cognitive dissonance. But mostly the authoritarians love a man in uniform. Take, for example, Michelle Fiore, a, republican former city council member in Las Vegas. When she was on the council, she led the charge to erect a statue of a police officer who was killed in the line of duty. For six months, she doggedly pursued donors to raise funds for the statue and almost single handedly secured $70,000 in donations, which I’m sure would have been appreciated by the fallen officers family and colleagues if she hadn’t stolen the money and spent it all on her daughter’s wedding, rent and other personal expenses. It’s totally out of character for Fiori, who has hardly ever been involved in scandals, unless you count the hundreds of thousands of dollars of taxes she neglected to pay in the home healthcare business that she dissolved after avoiding multiple attempts by health department inspectors to look at her business records or whatever it was she said at the Clark county report Republican Party convention in 2020. The party won’t repeat what she said, instead choosing to describe her comments as racially charged and calling them completely inappropriate, irresponsible, insensitive and inaccurate. In the statement they released, disavowing her words, that’s the republican party calling her unacceptably racist. There would be more to say about Michelle, but fortunately I don’t think be hearing from her again because she left politics and now she’s been suspended from her job here in court cases in rural Nevada. Oh yeah, did I forget to mention she was a judge?

Mark: I have no idea who is behind it. I know nothing about Project 2025. I disagree with some of the things they’re saying, and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous, abysmal. Yep, that’s one Donald J. Trump, ex president and convicted felon, doing his usual thing of distancing himself from anything and it might blow up in his face and, reflect badly on him. Of course, if Trump wasn’t unlike your typical grandpa and could actually interact with the interwebs, he could, like CNN did, review online biographies, LinkedIn profiles, news clippings for more than a thousand people listed on published for the 110 organizations on Project 2025 advisory board, as well as the 200 plus names credited with working on mandate for leadership. And then he might well discover that overall, nearly 240 people have ties to both Project 2025 and to Trump, covering nearly every aspect of his time in politics and the White House. And last Tuesday, the former Biden campaign posted dozens of examples of connections between Trump and Project 2025. Whilst many of Project 2020 five’s priorities are aligned with the former president, especially on immigration and purging the federal bureaucracies, it has lately become a lightning rod for other ideas that Trump hasn’t explicitly backed plans to ban pornography, reverse federal approval of the abortion pill and mifepristone, exclude the morning after pill and men’s contraceptive from coverage mandated under the Affordable Care act, make it harder for transgender adults to transition and eliminate the federal agency that oversees the National Weather Service and probably make the use of sharpies mandatory, perhaps in the somewhat short lived spirit of post assassination attempt unity and the dialing down of political violence. Three days after Kevin Roberts, leader of the Heritage foundation, the organization behind behind 2025, said in an interview that the country was in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be. Trump posted. I know nothing about project 2025. Perhaps Trump’s narcissism will ultimately save us from Project 2025, insofar as he won’t be able to stand that people around him are vying for power are smarter than him. It’s a fine balance that the architects of fascism must strike between maintaining the ego of the dumbass, unstable, strangely haired leader whilst getting him to believe that their final solutions are his own ideas. In an attempt to distance themselves from Trump, Project 2025. Spokespeople say the document doesn’t speak for any candidate or campaign. Is ultimately up to that president, who we believe will be President Trump, to decide which recommendations to use. Yeah, that president. Any president. Not Trump, necessarily. You think Kamala will do any of that? They’re fascist people. It’s a power grab. Read it, weep, gasp. Be strong, and vote blue, whatever you do.

Jim: I think, unfortunately for him, his new vice president, JD Vance, wrote the forward for Kevin Roberts book that is coming out soon about project 2025.

Mark: There, you go.

Jim: While we’re basking in the honeymoon period of Kamina’s campaign, her opponent is also celebrating some good news. A rare win in court, not one of his criminal cases, since they’re all in various states of fuckery. But in his defamation lawsuit against ABC, the network had motioned for the case to be dismissed. But the Southern District of Florida’s chief judge, Cecilia Altonaga, ruled that the case can proceed. The current republican candidate for president is, you see, disgusted, appalled, and personally harmed by the totally untrue and malicious statements of George Stephanopoulos, who pointed out that a judge affirmed that Trump had been found to have committed rape. That is, of course, what Judge Kaplan said. But the former president of the United States feels it’s very important, important that everyone understand. The jury only found that he sexually assaulted a woman because technically, in New York, what he did isn’t called rape, despite everyone knowing it’s rape. A crucial distinction that the guy who still has the support of tens of millions of voters feels needs to be litigated. The judge in this case said, to be clear, the court is not reaching the merits of plaintiffs claims. Defendants may very well convince a reasonable fact for to follow Judge Kaplan’s reasoning or to adopt other reasoning leading to the conclusion that Stephanopoulos’s statements were not defamatory. But she found that while Stephanopoulos did reference the fact that this was Judge Kaplan’s interpretation, he only did so fleetingly. I can’t help but feel we should have some kind of standard where someone who’s been found liable by a jury of any kind of sexual assault shouldn’t get to be president. And it shouldn’t matter whether New York law calls rape rape.

Mark: Yep. The fact that he’s got to litigate that. What you’re saying there is devam. All she’s reporting is that in another state, somebody called it this.

Jim: Yeah, his defenses. I didn’t technically rape her. yeah. Judge Kaplan basically said that what he did would be considered by most people. Rape.

Mark: Yeah. sometime back in March, Republican National Committee spokesperson Daniel Alvarez said that minority community outreach is more than bricks and mortar. We have seven community centres. They will remain open. One of them is in Milwaukee, about a mile north of where the republican national conference was being held. Raw Story reports that three community members in what, according to a Brown University survey, is one of the most segregated cities in the country, have never seen anyone go in or out of the building. And they laughed at the drawings of Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Ronald Reagan and Trump on the walls. Why is it there? No, it’s not one of those anomalous, abandoned, fully functioning buildings like in the capital of Cyprus, stuck in the neutral zone since 1973. The Wisconsin Republican Party webpage apparently refers to it as the black community centre, although Kansas Senate, who’s listed as the office contact, left the Wisconsin GOP more than a year ago to join the Metropolitan Milwaukee association of Commerce. It might be something to do with the fact that Milwaukee voted almost 79% for Joe Biden over Trump in 2020. Although Wisconsin overall is one of the most purple states in the nation and would likely be critical to the fortunes of the eventual winner of the 2024 presidential election, it might thus be they think they can make inroads in a community not typically supportive of republicans. Well, said community member Vicky Hobbes, they’re not doing a good job. One door down, a sign informs passersby that is a black owned building and asks people not to litter or tag it with graffiti. And the sign has the hashtag JusticeforGeorge. Black lives matter. Black, women matter, you know, the kind of issues that GOP are so good at engaging with.

Jim: ABC isn’t the only media organization currently fighting a defamation case or two. The right wing website Gateway pundit is also in hot water for things they said about election workers Ruby Freeman and Sheamos and Dominion employee Eric Kuma. Unlike ABC, they’re not going with the the thing we said was true defence, largely because the things they said were obviously not true. So instead, they came up with a different brilliant strategy, tell even more lies. But this time to the court, the lie they told was that theyre bankrupt, but it wasnt a very convincing lie because they said they had $100,000 to $500,000 in liabilities and $500,000 to $1 million in assets, which is not what bankrupt means. What they seem to have done is confuse bankrupt with doing really well for themselves. Bankruptcy judge Mindy Moura noticed that they actually had lots of money and when she looked at the real figures, found that their assets were 22 times the size of their liabilities, and questioned whether they’d filed for bankruptcy in good faith or to get out of paying people they defamed. Gateway pundits cited the pending litigation rulings against them as a liability, but Judge Maurer said that’s not a basis for bankruptcy bankruptcy relief, it’s the justice system in operation and dismissed their bankruptcy claim as a fun extra when looking at the website’s financials. She also discovered that they may have been operating in Florida for three years without a proper business license and could owe, back taxes to the state. It’s nice when the justice system works, isn’t it?

Mark: Oh yeah. And it’s also the barber strives and effect. Doesn’t it, rank up and you look into it and go, oh fuck, all sorts of other things. In a relatively calm week in politics this side of the pond, Keir Starmer removed the whip from seven Labour Party MP’s who voted with the SNP’s amendment to the king’s speech, which laid out Labor’s 49 bills they’ll be bringing in this parliament. The SNP proposed that the two child cap on benefits given to families be abolished and regretted that it wasn’t in the king’s speech. Labor had protested at its introduction way back in 2017 and part of their promise to reduce child poverty could, the SNP argued, be effective at a stroke if they abolished this cap and allowed child benefit to be claimed for third and subsequent children? Many Labour MP’s have been very vocal about it, quoting 300,000 people could be thus lifted above the poverty line and many vocal supporters abstained, but many voted for the amendment, that is against the Labour government. Keir, in an effort to continue to be tough on dissent and tough on the causes of dissent, effectively ousted the seven MP’s from the Labour party. It’s a shame really. Whilst I guess he needs to be seen to be in control, it does mean that those agitators are now outside the tent pissing in rather than agitating from within a show of strength or a dictatorial crushing of disagreement. Meanwhile, M in the first pmqs with the roles reversed. It was pleasantly quiet from Rishis side of the dispatch box. I guess hes got nothing to prove any longer. He even cracked a gag that whilst he wishes Team GB good luck in the Olympics, they ought not to look for him for advice on how to win. With the leadership contest set to last longer than the actual election campaign. And that was long. And him sitting in merely as caretaker leader of the opposition, I guess he figures why bother? I’ll recast myself as an agreeable statesman, look good on the Goldman Sachs application, and let the meatly mouthed performance posturing be done by those vying to be the next leader. Fortunately, Suela Bravaman’s only supporter in that race appears to be Suella Bravamante. Unfortunately, pretty Patel, Kemmy Badenoch, James Cleverley, Robert Jenrick, and Tom Tuggenheart all have more support than that, and not one of them thinks that the centre ground is where they lost out. And speaking of the far right, Farage fucked off as soon as he could after the king’s speech in order to be seen at the RNC with other now unemployed crazies Liz Truss and Boris Johnson all playing to empty rooms. Ha.

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

Mark: If you think we’ve used a fallacy ourselves, let us know. If you had a good time, please give us a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Or simply tell one other person in person about how much they’d like our podcast and you can support the show@patreon.com. ftrump just like our newest patrons, the pizza dude chronicles on TikTok. Our, strawman level patrons Colleen Lyella, Richard Thunder Hopkins, Will M. Scott, Ozzy Ombank, Laura Tomsick Schmootz, Mark Reichie, and Amber R. Buchanan, who told us when we met her at QED, we could just call her Amber. They’re another listener, recognized her at QED last year because we keep you going 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, guys, and welcome to our new patrons. Your support is very, very much appreciated.

Jim: You can connect with those awesome people as well as us, and other listeners in the Facebook group at, facebook.com groups. Felacious Trump.

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

Donald Trump: Go home to mommy.

Speaker A: Bye.