False Dilemma (Redux) – FT#155

13 Aug False Dilemma (Redux) – FT#155

Show Notes

The False Dilemma Fallacy occurs when someone suggests or implies there are only two possible choices or outcomes, and if you don’t choose one then the other is inevitable

Trump

We started out by discussing this clip of Trump talking about Bill Barr

And then we looked at this clip of Trump on the stakes of the election:

Finally, we talked about this clip of Trump on closing the country due to COVID:

Mark’s British Politics Corner

Mark talked about the debate in the House of Lords between Baroness Altman and Viscount Younger of Leckie.

He followed that up by talking about this clip from GBNews:

Then he talked about Kemi Badenoch’s 2017 Tory Conference speech:

Fallacy in the Wild

In the Fallacy in the Wild we looked at this clip from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine:

Then we discussed this clip from Two and a Half Men:

And we finished with this clip from Parks & Recreation:

 

Fake News

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

1. Has anyone ever seen “The Silence of the Lambs?” He’s a dangerous guy, a scary guy. Hannibal Lecter. I think even Jim Jordan would be afraid of Hannibal Lecter. He’s not around any more, but that’s who they’re letting in through the borders every day. It’s not the ones who are just a little bit crazy, it’s the worst of the worst. That’s who we have now, it’s like an army of Hannibal Lecters.
2. Has anyone ever seen “The Silence of the Lambs?” The late great Hannibal Lecter. He’s a wonderful man. He oftentimes would have a friend for dinner. Remember the last scene? Excuse me. I’m about to have a friend for dinner and this poor doctor walked by. I’m about to have a friend for dinner, but Hannibal Lecter, congratulations, the late great Hannibal Lecter.
3. Has anyone ever seen “The Silence of the Lambs?” Hannibal Lecter, how great an actor was he? You know why I like him? Because he said on television on one of the — “I love Donald Trump.” So, I love him. I love him. I love him. He said that a long time ago. And once he said that, he was in my camp, I was in his camp. I don’t care if he was the worst actor, I’d say he was great to me. And no, he was great.

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

 

 Tim Walz is not a logical fallacy

We talked about the new Democrat VP candidate, Tim Walz.

 

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

• Political campaigns are all about messaging, and that’s one of the things Democrats tend to struggle with because a lot of their positions are pretty nuanced, but one very simple message has emerged in the past couple of months, partly thanks to Tim Walz, which has resonated on the left and infuriated on the right. Republicans are weird. Some of the more conspiracy minded Republicans… so… Republicans, have speculated that it’s some kind of top-down enforced, probably focus-grouped talking point that was sent out to all the Soros-funded shills in the media and on the socials, because why else would everyone be saying it all at the same time? Well, one reason is many of those people are responding to Republican denials by pointing out that, yeah, they are fucking weird. They want to track your periods, burn books, stop funding meals for kids and check people’s genitals before letting them do sport. They think that a convicted felon gameshow host should be President, and immune from crimes, that kids who think they’re cats are using litter boxes in school, and that 19 unsecured handguns hidden randomly around an old lady’s home is the embodiment of the American Spirit. They think Kevin Sorbo is cooler than George Clooney, write books about shooting dogs in the face, dress up like buffalo to attack the Capitol, and take horse dewormer to prevent Covid because a doctor, who believes endometriosis is caused by demons having sex with women while they sleep, told them to.They’re terrified of drag queens, Black history, strong women and the Olympics, and they’re against childless cat ladies! Childless cat ladies are awesome! While the left has been unusually united in agreeing Republicans are weird, the right has been less consistent in their response. Brian Kilmeade said being weird is cool, Vivek Ramaswamy called the attack dumb and juvenile, and Trump and others went with the time-honored “I know you are but what am I?” strategy to distance themselves from those dumb, juvenile Democrats.
• In a televisual display of more car-crashes than a demolition derby, Trump was a guest interviewee at the annual convention of the National Association of Black Journalists. After turning up on stage nearly an hour late and blaming the audio equipment in a variation of his teleprompter skit, and not the deadlock backstage following his team’s apparent flat-out refusal to allow Trump to be fact-checked live during the interview, he complained that the interviewer was rude cos she asked him sensible grownup truth- and past experience-based questions about why black voters should trust him after all his lies surrounding, and abuse of, voters of colour. He then wheeled out Birtherism 2.0 by complaining that Kamala Harris confused him cos before she was Indian and now she’s turned black. “I’ve known her a long time, indirectly,” Trump said. “And she was always of Indian heritage, and she was only promoting Indian heritage. I did not know she was Black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn Black, and now she wants to be known as Black.” To audible, gasps, laughter and jeers from the audience of *checks notes* black journalists he attempted to win round the panel of interviewees by protesting even more, cos that always seems to work with his usual crowd. “I respect either one,” he added, “but she obviously doesn’t, because she was Indian all the way, and then all of a sudden, she made a turn and … she became Black. … Somebody should look into that, too.” If ever there was a need to read the room this was it. Dropping in an anachronistic use of the word ‘respect’ like that and likening yourself to Abraham Lincoln was not going to smooth the hall to your way of thinking Donnie, no sir! And given that he’s been in the past of Swedish, German and American heritage he’d surely know about the fallacy of the false dilemma that you can’t be one and the other when it comes to say being the child of Indian and Black parents! Thankfully Trump didn’t last the whole of the allotted hour-long interview slot – I think the team ended up blaming the teleprompter – the fact there wasn’t one – so we just got raw curmudgeonly racist idiot Trump!

• A headline to an NBC article today read “Democrats continue to joke about false JD Vance rumor after years of criticizing Trump for spreading misinformation” and NBC can fuck right off. These are not the same thing. For the uninitiated, the rumor they’re referring to is that JD Vance fucked an inside out latex glove shoved between two couch cushions, and wrote about it in his autobiographical bestseller Hillbilly Elegy. The rumor, which was invented by a guy on Twitter called Rick, was quickly fact checked and debunked by the Associated Press in an article titled “No, JD Vance did not have sex with a couch” but, in a twist that is the best proof so far for a loving God, the article was then taken down and replaced with a message saying simply “This story did not go through our standard editing process and has been removed.” Presumably, because while they can verify that the story did not appear in Vance’s book, it would be irresponsible to claim it definitely didn’t happen. Because, you know, it’s JD Vance. Look at the guy. It’s not impossible. And here’s the difference between this and all those lies spread by Trump. It’ll surprise nobody to hear that we are pro information and anti misinformation on this show, but this is not misinformation. It’s a joke. Ever since it was debunked on day one, none of the Democrats who talk about it think it’s real or want other people to think it’s real. It’s funny partly because it annoys them, but mostly because it was brilliantly written – the inside outness of the latex glove is a touch of genius – and because Vance is so weird that it’s kind of just about plausible. Rick, the progenitor of the joke told The New Republic he was inspired by an anecdote about Lyndon Johnson suggesting they start a rumor that his opponent has sex with pigs. His campaign manager said nobody would actually believe that, and LBJ reportedly replied “I know, but let’s make the son of a bitch deny it.”
• Adam Schiff, Californian Democrat reminded us this week that in 2016 “The Trump campaign welcomed Russian interference, took advantage of it and then sought to deny it, much to the detriment of the country.” in response to reports that the Trump campaign had been hacked. The Trump campaign announced that its systems had been breached after news organisations asked questions about Vance when he was a candidate for vice-president that appeared to come from internal vetting documents. “They were only able to get publicly available information but, nevertheless, they shouldn’t be doing anything of this nature,” Trump posted on Saturday evening. “Iran and others will stop at nothing.” He added throwing Iran under the bus – while The Washington Post said it had received a 271-page document marked “privileged & confidential” from an anonymous AOL customer known as Robert. Politico later said it had been receiving documents from someone who called themselves Robert since 22 July – (AOL? And no one was suspicious?) Microsoft has not confirmed that the Trump campaign was the target, it has said that an Iranian group run by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards was behind a June attack on a presidential campaign. Trump campaign spokesman, Steven Cheung, said: “Any media or news outlet reprinting documents or internal communications are doing the bidding of America’s enemies and doing exactly what they want.” Well let’s face it he should know – didn’t Trump invite Russia to do the same with Hilary’s emails after all? Okay so whilst I am with the Biden administration in “strongly condemning any foreign government or entity who attempts to interfere in our electoral process or seeks to undermine confidence in our democratic institutions”. It’s kinda gratifying when the orange document-embezzler gets a taste of his own stashing-them-in-the-john-and-showing-them-to-all-and-sundry-in-audio-recordings medicine.
• Ever since Kamala stepped in for Joe Biden, the Trump campaign’s public events have been sparse, to the extent that less charitable observers might accuse him of being sleepy and hiding in his basement. It could be fear of another assassination attempt that means he doesn’t want to do outdoor rallies, coupled with the fact that many indoor venues won’t host him because he didn’t pay them last time, or more likely, it’s the fear that he doesn’t have a hope in hell of attracting crowds that rival his rival’s, and he’s far more afraid of looking like a loser than being shot. Either way, he sought to remedy his absence in the news cycle by inviting journalists to his house for what he called a “general news conference” last Thursday, and teased that it was about the debates. In fact, he spent about 20 minutes trashing Kamala, mentioned the debates briefly, and then said “any questions? In all, he talked for 64 minutes, during which, according to an NPR fact check, he told “162 misstatements, exaggerations, and outright lies.” I’d say they were being conservative with that count, but it was in the ballpark. Among the unhinged bullshit he spewed was the idea that America is currently very close to both another Great Depression and another World War, that he’s leading big in swing states, that electric vehicles are two and a half times heavier than gas vehicles, that nobody in history in any country has had crowds as big as his, especially Martin Luther King, that the MAGA base is actually bigger than the Republican Party and makes up 75% of the country, that abortion is a very small issue, and anyway, everybody wanted the Supreme Court to overturn Roe, and that he was in a helicopter that had to make an emergency landing with former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, who told him some terrible things about Kamala. Brown, who dated Kamala for a couple of years, three decades ago, denies ever having been in a helicopter with Trump. Journalists have tried to figure out what the fuck he was talking about, which I can tell you from experience, can be tricky. The New York Times speculated that the California politician he could be thinking of was former governor Jerry Brown, who Trump did share a helicopter ride with, but didn’t have any mechanical issues. In response, Trump called the New York Times to yell at them that he has the flight records of the helicopter and he’s “probably going to sue.” When asked to produce the records, the Times says he “responded mockingly, repeating the request in a sing-song voice”. Meanwhile, Politico reckons he meant former state senator Nate Holden, who was in an emergency helicopter landing with Trump back in the early 90s. Holden told Politico “Willie is the short Black guy living in San Francisco, I’m a tall Black guy living in Los Angeles. I guess we all look alike.” Both Holden and Jerry Brown confirm they never spoke to Trump about Kamala. 
• Okay it might not be Chappaquidick but in a weird Kennedy/Woody Allen ‘I shot a moose’ kind of crossover, RFK Jr posted a video interview of himself with Roseanne Barr – yeah right! But wait it gets even weirder/funnier – no not funnier really. A decade-old mystery of a dead bear cub found over a bicycle in Central Park got solved by the perpetrator actually ‘fessing up. Yep it was RFK Jr himself that put it there. He was not on his way to a party at the Rabinowitz’s but leading a falconry party in the Hudson Valley when the driver in front of him hit and killed a bear. Naturally being the good samaritan and ecologist and man who’s brain’s been eaten by a worm, he stashed the bear in his van thinking he’d skin it and put the meat in the freezer when he got home – all reasonable so far!! Well he got waylaid and ended up being late from a New York restaurant and then had to go to the airport and didn’t want to leave the bear in the van in the car park in the airport cos “that would have been bad” – yeah that woulda been bad. So instead he thought I know I’ll take it and the old bike from out the van and make it look like the bear was hit by a bike in Central Park – yeah of course!  Forensics later determined the bear had been hit by a car and RFK was anxious that his fingerprints were on the bike. And weirdly enough, one of the New York Times reporters who covered the mystery was Caroline Kennedy’s daughter Tatiana Schlossberg, RFK Jr.’s first cousin once removed. She told the paper this weekend that “like law enforcement, I had no idea who was responsible for this when I wrote the story.” But the mystery remained unsolved, and the story eventually faded away. Now, almost 10 years later, Kennedy said he was prompted to come clean ahead of an anticipated New Yorker exposé: “Looking forward to seeing how you spin this one,” he captioned the video. The New Yorker magazine ran an article about how this fits in with the Kennedy’s chequered history with vehicles and the landscape and includes a photo of Robert Kennedy Jr, who was 60 at the time, posing with his hands inside the bear’s bloody mouth and an exaggerated grimace on his face. “Maybe that’s where I got my brain worm,” he told the magazine. Still maybe this sojourn into stand-up comedy routines might reverse his dwindling fortunes in national polls – no, no, it won’t let’s face it. Did he call the bear Teddy I wonder? Oh do I hope so!
• With the election looming, and MAGA Republicans in positions of power within the electoral system in various states, it’s nice to remember that the efforts to hold people accountable for fucking around in 2020 are ongoing. Slow, but ongoing, and at some point some of them will find out. That day got a little closer for those involved in the fake electors scheme in Arizona this week, as two of the defendants agreed to plea deals. Lorraine Pellegrino, one of the fake electors, has pleaded guilty to one charge of filing a false instrument. More importantly, former Trump attorney Jenna Ellis has had her nine felony charges dropped in exchange for her full cooperation and providing prosecutors with evidence to implicate the other defendants. Those defendants include, among others, Mark Meadows, Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman and Christina Bobb. Trump is currently an unindicted co-conspirator in the case, but with a key cooperating witness now on board, all that could change. Ellis knows what she’s getting into, having already escaped felony charges in Georgia by cooperating there.
• After a couple of weeks where the Labour party enacted some progressive growth-based policies, the far right expressed their frustration at the ditching of the Rwanda policy by characterising a random knife-wielding murderer as a racially-motivated attack by the son of Rwandan parents despite the fact that the murderer was a Cardiff-born British citizen who attacked and killed three young girls similarly of immigrant parents. Not phased by the irony, nazi thugs were happy to be stirred up by lies about the origin of the murderer spread by Stephen Yaxley-Lennon ensconced in a holiday villa in Spain and elected MP Nigel Farage asking questions about whether the police were telling us everything on social media rather than raising such questions in the House of Commons as befits an elected MP. And in a twist of the two-tier policing claimed by the far right insofar as those who were burning citizens advice centres, hostels housing asylum seekers and libraries were being arrested for doing those things and the people that weren’t doing that weren’t being arrested, a report for the government identified that Islamist protests were being policed as terrorist uprisings whereas far-right protests were regularly dismissed as thuggery and angry protests by people expressing so-called ‘legitimate concerns’. A week later after 500 arrests and a half-dozen swift convictions and jail terms and massed crowds of thousands in Scotland Brighton and Walthamstow chanting ‘refugees welcome here’ the self-righteousness of the goaded-by-rich-absentee responsibility-deniers far-right racist thugs rapidly dissipated and they returned to the fringes of gammon-faced keyboard-warriorness silenced by the community-minded actual people of Britain. These inclusive citizens are my people, the others act not in my name. Please carry on Keir knocking on doors, locking those away and bringing cohesion and a sense of service to these sceptered isles. Meanwhile despite these horrendous displays of the logical conclusion of their beliefs all the Tory leadership candidates still say they weren’t right-wing enough and that’s why the Tories lost – yeah right!

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:

False Dilemma (Redux) – FT#155 Transcript

 

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

Mark: And I’m your other host, Mark. Logical fallacy is an error in reasoning that results in bad or invalid arguments. And the logical fallacy we’re taking another look at this week is the false dilemma fallacy, also known as the either or fallacy, and the black and white fallacy. And I’ve heard it called the false dichotomy fallacy in my research. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jim: False dichotomy is another one.

Mark: Yeah. So. So Blatteroon. Yeah, like a buffoon who blethers on.

Jim: Yeah, pretty much.

Mark: Okay.

Jim: It’s a, It’s a mid 17th century word. There’s only, like, a few noted uses of it in. During that period until it was then put into a dictionary, and then a few more people used it. right. That means a babbler or idle headed fellow.

Mark: Nice.

Jim: A babbler of nonsense.

Mark: That’s kind of like a babbler. Like a. Like a bobblehead. An idle headed fellow. Nice. Yeah, yeah. Good. Yeah. Yep.

Jim: So, yes, the false dilemma fallacy, or all those other ones, we have talked about it before. This is. This is another look at a kind of one of our classics from, I don’t know, this was like episode five or six. And.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: it is when someone suggests that there are two options and that you have to pick one of those options. Those are the only two options. And there isn’t anything else. No in betweens, just the extremes usually. Yeah. Suggesting that that’s just how it is is usually fallacious. So our first example comes from Trump, and when he’s talking about, Bill Barr and what he thinks he should have done regarding the origins of the, Russia investigation.

Donald Trump: Bill Barr is going to go down either as the greatest attorney general in the history of the country, or he’s going to go down as a very.

Mark: sad, sad situation.

Jim: Those are the only two things. If he. If he investigates the origins of the Russia investigation and basically jails Obama and Hillary, then he’ll be the greatest attorney general in the history of the country. If he doesn’t, he’ll just. He’ll be a very sad situation.

Mark: Yeah. Because that, obviously, that’s a, well known state of affairs for somebody to be. Absolutely sad situation. Yeah. Yeah, right. Yeah.

Jim: one of his rallies. Example number two is actually, this is kind of examples two, three, four, technically, because there’s. There’s three in one in one rant here. at Israeli.

Donald Trump: The stakes of this election could not be more clear. Either we surrender to the demonic forces, abolishing and demolishing and happily doing so, our country, or we defeat them, in a landslide on November 5, 2024. Either the deep state destroys America or we destroy the deep state. That’s the way it’s got to be. We’re at a very pivotal point in our country. Either we descend into a lawless abyss of open borders, rampant killings, super hyperinflation, which is what we have right now, and not coming down, and festering corruption, or we evict Joe Biden and the Democrats from the White House, and we make America great again.

Mark: So is it possible to have several either ors? If the. If the only choices are the first two, then how can you have any more choices of two at the same time?

Jim: Well, yeah, yeah. I mean, those ones, I think he would probably argue, if required to, that all of the first things were the same and all of the second things were the same.

Mark: Right.

Jim: So they’re all, either we win or lose.

Mark: Yeah. Yeah.

Jim: Which is not a false dilemma, because when it. When there is a binary choice.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: He either wins the election or he loses the election. Technically, you could draw, but I don’t think it’s ever happened.

Mark: Abstain. Or, you could.

Jim: Statistically, it’s unlikely.

Mark: Yeah. Or you could attempt to overthrow the, election ratification.

Jim: The other time, when it’s not a fallacy, is if someone who has the authority to present you with choices, offers you choices that they have come up with and is unwilling to allow you to make any other choices. Our, third Trump example comes from his first debate with Biden back in 2020.

Mark: Oh, right, yeah. Ah.

Jim: When he was talking about whether the right thing to do was open or close the country in response to coronavirus.

Kristen Welker: You’ve demanded schools open in person and insist they can do it safely. But just yesterday, Boston became the latest city to move its public school system entirely online after a coronavirus spike. What is your message to parents who worry that sending their children to school will endanger not only their kids, but also their teachers and families.

Donald Trump: I want to open the schools. The transmittal rate to the teachers is, very small, but I want to open the schools. We have to open our country. We’re not going to have a country. You can’t do this. We can’t keep this country closed. This is a massive country with a massive economy. People are losing their jobs. They’re committing suicide. There’s depression, alcohol, drugs at a level that nobody’s ever seen before. There’s abuse, tremendous abuse. We have to open our country. You know, I’ve said it often, the cure cannot be worse than the problem itself. And that’s what’s happening. And he wants to close down. He’ll close down the country if one person in our massive bureaucracy says we should close it down.

Kristen Welker: Vice President Biden,

Joe Biden: simply not true. We ought to be able to walk. And chew gum at the same time. We ought to be able to safely open. But when they need resources to open, you need to be able to, for example, if you’re going to open a business, have social distancing within the business. You need to have, if you have a restaurant, you need to have plexiglass. Dividers so people cannot infect one another. You need to be in a position where you can take testing rapidly and know whether a person is, in fact, infected. You need to be able to trace, you need to be able to provide, all the resources that are needed to do this. And that is not inconsistent with saying that. What we’re going to make sure that we open safely. And by the way, all you teachers out there, not that many of you are going to die. So don’t worry about it. Come on.

Jim: So, yeah, yeah.

Mark: So basically he’s saying, it’s a bit more nuanced than that. I, love his walk and chew gum reference. That’s really good.

Jim: Come on, man.

Mark: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jim: So what Joe did there brilliantly was pointing out how you actually deal with this when it is presented as an either or. Point out that actually the right answer isn’t either of the two things that you’ve suggested, and they aren’t the only two options. What we need to do is somewhere in between, which is open, but make sure we’re doing it in a safe way, not just ignore all of the stuff that’s going on and pretend it’s fine and just open everything. And now is the time, I think, for Marx, british politics corner.

Mark: So it’s similar to that in the arguments that were made against Johnson and Sunakhe vis a vis the late lockdowns, was that they were operating under a false dilemma that we need to maintain the economy of the country versus the health of the country. And what’s turned up in the COVID inquiry is that that kind of was the overriding thought, certainly behind the eat out to help out thing. Washington sod the healthy consequences. Let’s get people out there to feed the virus in restaurants and we’ll give them money to do that in order to. Because they were the toys of the party of the economy and economic growth. And shutting down the thing to protect people kind of flew in the face of lots of other critics of theirs that were saying, well, yeah, but what about businesses? And the thing is, if everybody goes to eat out to help out, then they end up getting sick, they can’t go to work anyway, so the economy goes to a halt. So. And you can’t have an economy if everyone’s dead. That’s, you know, that’s not a dilemma, that’s actually just true. So I looked at that and I thought it was too depressing. So I did find it on, in passing. The other thing that struck me was the profits versus poo that’s going on with the water companies in the UK at the moment that are, treating shareholders as a priority over treating sewage. So similar to that. Here is from March 2023 in, the House of Lords, the parliamentary undersecretary of state for the Department of Work conventions, who’s called viscount younger of lecky. Such baroque names. We love it. And he’s talking about the Department of Work and Pensions applying to the task force on climate related financial disclosures to pension funds worth more than the billion. Up till then, these disclosures, the requirement was, levied against companies that were worth 5 billion. And they, are to identify the ways to enhance investor understanding of climate related business risks and opportunities. So the Department of Work and Pensions thought, well, pension funds are on that threshold of billions, so they should be looking to tell their investors about climate risk. It’s supposed to encourage people to put in place climate amelioration efforts. How are they investing in things to tackle climate change fundamentally? It turns out that in a report, the pensions for purpose report, Baroness Altman noted that it highlighted a problem. There was a clash of long term climate concerns being in opposition to short term pension growth requirements. A bit like shareholders taking precedence over people wanting to drink clean water.

Viscount Younger of Leckie: My Lords, by October 2022, occupational pension schemes with assets above 1 billion pounds fell into scope of DWP’s requirements to report. In line with the Task Force on Climate related financial disclosures, the department published guidance alongside the requirements to help pension schemes improve the quality of governance and manage climate risk. DWP committed to review the requirements in late 2023 and will consider whether pension schemes require additional guidance in relation to their fiduciary duties.

Baroness Altman: My lords, I thank my noble friend. The pensions for purpose report highlighted a dilemma in which some say that considering real world impacts of pension fund investments, including green or net zero assets, infrastructure and housing, could be portrayed as trading off risk adjusted returns against doing good. But does my noble friend agree that this is a false dichotomy? A, failure to consider climate and nature impacts of investments is likely to increase long term risks and reduce returns, as opposed to pension funds, who typically look at short term performance measures. So I wonder if my noble friend might ask relevant ministers in the treasury whether they will consider accepting relevant amendments that have been laid to the Financial. Services Markets bill,

Mark: which was a bit of a cheeky nod to these amendments in there to actually stop people fundamentally shorting the markets, for greater profits, rather than using the profits of their companies to provide the service that the company was set up for. It’s a bit of a dig at financial backers, shareholders of water companies. So the report, which was written by finance people, the pensions for purpose report says, yeah, the problem with ameliorating climate risk is that it puts out, it’s in opposition to making any money. So she’s saying, yeah, well, that’s, So that’s. And it’s saying, this is the dilemma we’ve got. Either we put in place some of the things that the current, climate of climate change amelioration might affect investments in the short term. And she’s saying, well, hang on a minute, that isn’t a. It’s a false dilemma because it isn’t one or the other. You can invest in, say, wind power, solar power, all sorts of things that aren’t being curtailed under the net zero policies. You could invest in that. So pensions could do that rather than ignore all that stuff.

Jim: Arguably, that’s the entire point of the net zero policy.

Mark: Yes.

Jim: Is that you’re making the things that are going to be better for the climate more attractive than the other things.

Mark: Yeah. Yes. And she was pointing out that the fact that the report been written by financial institutions and some of the amendments that were being put in for the finance bill ought to be applied to that. And, he. I think his reply is. Oh, that’s beyond my purview to be able to affect that stuff. And, well, she knows it. Again. Yeah. Yeah. Bugger. No, isn’t. That’s. Well, I’ve got a dilemma there. I’d love to do that, but I can’t. It’s not my job. M. So this is a rather esoteric thing and very low key and, genteel like that, but, moving from that to the ridiculous. So, in May 2023, the Daily Mail published an article, if you hesitate to say, news report, saying that Starmer will today tell his top team that woke issues do not matter to the public as he tries to build on Labour’s success in last week’s local elections, which translates ads, let’s stoke the culture wars, whilst denying it in the wake of what certainly looks like a building of momentum towards an inevitable landslide victory at the end, at the next general election. And it’s filled with caveats, which we talked about before, like, apparent dismissal. And a Labour source says, and nowhere in the article does it actually quote Starmer actually saying what they say he will say, because he didn’t actually say what they say he will say. But it speculates on all of this building from their fury that Starmer would not be drawn on having to define a woman in the then latest culture war, which, of course, the Daily Mail says Labour started the next day. Predictably, GB News picks up the Daily Mail article and talks about it as if it were fact, saying.

Patrick Christys: So why should people arguably be more. Bothered about whether or not someone should. Have to take the knee or whether or not we should m, you know, not m mispronounce someone than they should. About 7 million people waiting for NHS treatment.

Emma Webb: I think it’s possible to be worried. About both of those things. so Starmer is setting up this strange false dichotomy to try and minimize the fact that the left and many people within his own party have been pushing, for these, where are you calling it? Woke issues.

Mark: So they’re setting up the fact that Starmo is setting up this false dilemma when it is perfectly possible, which is actually what the Labour Party’s position is, it’s perfectly possible to be concerned about both.

Jim: Of course it is. One of the things I like about this fallacy is that it does give that kind of veneer of making sense when someone says it, in the first place, when they say something like, you know, how can we pay nurses properly without putting up taxes for working people? Those are your options. You either pay nurses or everyone can buy food, because we’re not taxing you out of being able to do that. To the uninitiated, very non thinking ear at first, you’re like, well, yeah, those two things, they’re in complete opposition to each other, so you can’t have both. Until anyone says, you can totally have both. There’s just other things that we’d need to do about it. You know, it’s more.

Mark: Yes, exactly. Yeah.

Jim: And then immediately it becomes clear to everyone that that was nonsense.

Mark: Yes.

Jim: What was just said. And it’s.

Mark: Yeah, it’s.

Jim: So when she says, well, you can worry about both things.

Mark: You don’t.

Jim: You don’t have to pick one.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: Or of course you can.

Mark: Yes, yes, exactly. That’s the thing that the actual chancellor, now, she has said, I’m not going to put taxes up for the working man. And of course, all the rich, non dom, tax paying owners of newspapers are saying she’s going to put up taxes. He said, yeah, but it’s not about if you want to pay the property services. And they just put through a, 5% rise for teachers and they’re going to a 5.5 for other public sector workers, you know, something that they. That will then avert all the strikes of doctors and nurses and teachers and train drivers and basically get the infrastructure and then. Yes, and you don’t have to do that. Like people, like the toys have always been saying, by taxing, putting up taxes, all you need to do is just tax the rich, tax the people. Yeah. Earning more that, you know, tax them on their second billion.

Jim: The ones who live off the interest of their enormous amount of money.

Mark: Yes, yes, you could tax them a bit. So, similarly, Kemi Badenoch, who from now on, I’m going to call bad Enoch somebody. I spotted that as a bad enoch. who is now in the running for being further to the right than pretty Patel, Suellev Brabman, Enoch Powell and Attila the Hun. And he’s also in the running for the leader of the Tory party lines up Labour to be the creators of another false dilemma in her conference speech in 2017.

Kemi Badenoch: When I joined the conservative party, many labor activists couldn’t believe that a black woman could be conservative. They said it was a lapse of judgment, that I’d soon be running away screaming from all the white, middle aged conservative men and their prejudice,

Mark: apart from. The brilliant cutaway at that point. So she’s up with the lectern and they cut away to the audience while she’s saying all the white middle aged and there’s a pan across the serried ranks of the attendees of the conference, and they are all white, middle aged men. All of them. So the false dilemma she’s setting up is that labor. Say, you can’t be both black and a Tory. You’re either black or you’re a Tory.

Jim: You can either be black or a Tory. Yeah.

Mark: And she’s saying, don’t let them say otherwise. And it’s that kind of. They never. They’ve never said it at any point.

Jim: I mean, some people probably have said.

Mark: Why are you a Tory? How can you be a Tory?

Jim: Yeah. Yeah. I’m sure they’ve questioned, but I think they do that to white people, too.

Mark: Yeah. Yeah. That’s true.

Jim: I certainly do.

Mark: Yeah. Yes. And then they. After about five minutes of con, they go, oh, yeah, I get why you’re a Tory.

Jim: Yeah.

Mark: Because you’re an asshole. Yeah. Yeah.

Jim: It’s only usually.

Mark: Yeah, yeah.

Jim: A couple of minutes, we’re talking to someone. That’s enough.

Mark: That’s enough. That’s all you need. Yeah. the clash there, the great clash there and white riot.

Jim: So, in the fantasy in the wild, we like to talk about the fantasy of the week from a non political perspective. And our first example is kind of a variation on. On really the canonical example of this fallacy, which I would say maybe is George W. Bush saying, if you’re not with us, you’re against.

Mark: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Jim: So this is a deep space nine episode where Kira Neuryse is talking to some Cardassians and giving them combat advice.

Seskal: You expect us to attack our own people?

Kira: If necessary, yes.

Rusot: That’s out of the question.

Damar: I agree. We limit ourselves to targets defended by the Jem, Hadar and the Breen.

Kira: believe me, I understand how you feel. During the occupation, I didn’t want to attack any facility that had a Bajoran working in it but I did it because they were collaborators. They were working with the enemy.

Rusot: We’re not Bajorans. We don’t kill our own.

Kira: Well, then you might as well just give up right now because the minute that the Dominion realizes that you will. Not attack your own people they will station a Cardassian at every base they have.

Odo: She’s right. The founders won’t hesitate to play your own people against you.

Kira: Anyone who is not fighting with you is fighting against you.

Jim: Yeah. That’s not true.

Mark: No.

Jim: Some people are doing neither.

Mark: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Although I’d be cowering and running away. Yes. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Jim: There are definitely people who aren’t fighting with you who are fighting against you.

Mark: Oh, yeah.

Jim: The enemy. Usually. They’re sometimes collaborating like the enemy.

Mark: Yeah. Yes.

Jim: Yeah. But not necessarily everyone.

Mark: Also interesting that the, The Kardashians exist now as well as the Kardashians. I know the Kardashians exist. They are an alien.

Jim: Kardashians technically existed when the Kardashians.

Mark: There you go. They are an alien race. You know, if only we, had an opportunity. We will all be against.

Jim: So, our, second example comes from two and a half men and this is an example where Charlie meets the dad of the woman he’s been seeing. And the dad, who’s played by Stacey Keach, incidentally is a massive bigot.

Tom: When a man gets to be 40. And he isn’t married he’s either a. Rascal or a poof.

Charlie: Interesting.

Tom: So what. So which one are you?

Charlie: actually, there’s a third choice. What’s that? Well, sometimes it takes a while for a man to meet his soulmate. Like I finally met your daughter.

Mark: Yeah, nice save, Charlie Sheen being the.

Jim: Voice of reason there.

Mark: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jim: There’s more than just the two options. The. I mean, spoiler alert for that episode. You’ve had time to watch it now. Yeah, it’s. It’s been on. It’s been around a while. Two and a half. Mendez but the dad character turns out to be highly closeted.

Mark: yeah, there you go. That’s how he would know. There we go.

Jim: Our, final example is from parks and Recreation.

Leslie Knope: This is a little something I learned from Karl Rove. If you want to guarantee the results. Of a survey you design the question to give you the answer that you want.

Ann Perkins: Wouldn’t you rather have. Have a park than A storage facility for nuclear waste? That seems iffy.

Leslie Knope: Yeah, don’t worry about it. I made it all up.

Ann Perkins: Yeah, that’s. That’s what I mean.

Mark: Brilliant. That is, Yeah. Reference back to yes, minister, isn’t it? That whole thing? Yeah.

Jim: So, yeah. That’s how to get people to agree that there should be a park.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: Is by suggesting that if it’s either a park or a storage.

Mark: Wasn’t there a, real republican questionnaire that asked a terrifically leading question?

Jim: Like, there was a. There was one about Trump. It was something like, who’s better, Trump or. Or crooked Hillary who did all of this bad stuff.

Mark: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then. And how many people answering that went, well, I think you’ve just set us up with a full stop never there.

Jim: Yeah. Yeah. They call it a push pull when.

Mark: Right.

Jim: The, purpose of asking the question isn’t actually to see what people think, but to, put some information into your head about the options.

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

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

Mark: So I, just like to point out that in this game, it’s simply a matter of I win or it’s obviously rigged in the house’s favor. It’s not possible to both lose and the whole setup not to be guilty of malfeasance. And I realize in saying that, I sound exactly like Trump when it comes to anything involving fair competition. Soldier. I’ll stop.

Jim: That’s how this works.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: So this one’s been a long time coming, right? Because the theme this week is Hannibal Lecter.

Mark: Yay.

Jim: And, yeah, Trump has. Has talked about him a lot. He talked about him a while ago, and it got a bit of publicity. And I thought, well, I’ll kind of do a Hannibal Lecter fake news, but I won’t do it now. I’ll let it go. So that Mark’s forgotten the things that he probably said about it because he.

Mark: Won’T say it again. No, he’s never going to say it.

Jim: We’ll come back to it at a later date.

Mark: Yeah, he just.

Jim: He never fucking shuts up about Hannibal Lecter these days. He’s always on about him.

Mark: Has he? Just got found an old dvd or something or.

Jim: Well, the thing is where it comes up, I don’t think he’s now consistently doing this, but how it started was his weird, unsubstantiated claim. I’m going to go further. Untrue claim that countries are emptying their insane asylums into the US. Right.

Mark: Yes.

Jim: People have never been able to, offer any evidence for. Is just a thing he said. And he wanted to be clear that insane asylums, in his mind, are different to mental institutions in that.

Mark: Okay, yeah.

Jim: Mental institutions is, you know, people with difficulties or whatever, insane asylums are where the dangerous and scary people are.

Mark: Okay. Yeah.

Jim: Like Hannibal Lecter. And so that’s. That’s where. When he’s talking about the bullshit about people coming in from prisons and mental institutions and insane asylums, that’s what. That’s how he gets on to Hannibal Lecter. But he doesn’t do it the way. I mean, I can’t say the way a normal person would because nobody would talk about it, that transition. But he still has his own special way of doing it. And it usually starts with asking, have you. Has anyone ever seen silence of the lambs?

Mark: Right?

Jim: So these are, Sometimes he did that, right? Statement number one. Has anyone ever seen silence of the lambs? He’s a dangerous guy, a scary guy. Hannibal Lecter. I think even Jim Jordan would be afraid of Hannibal Lecter. He’s not around anymore. But that’s who they’re letting in through the borders every day. It’s not the ones who are just a little bit crazy. It’s the worst of the worst. That’s who we have now. It’s like an army of Hannibal lecters.

Mark: Okay? Hannibal’s army. Okay, yeah.

Jim: Statement number two.

Jim: Has anyone ever seen silence of the lambs? The late, great Hannibal Lecter. He’s a wonderful man. He oftentimes would have a friend for dinner. Remember the last scene? Excuse me, I’m about to have a friend for dinner, and this poor doctor walked by. I’m about to have a friend for dinner, but Hannibal Lecter. congratulations. The late, great Hannibal Lecter.

Mark: What the fuck? That’s oftentimes. And then where does that go? Even he introduces him and he kind of comes in and he goes, oh, yeah, I’ve just seen the film again. Remember that bit? Wasn’t it funny? What the.

Jim: Okay, statement number three.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: Has anyone ever seen silence of the Lambs? Hannibal Lecter. How great an actor was he? You know, I like him because he said on television, on one of the. I love Donald Trump, so. I love him. I love him. I love him. He said that a long time ago, and once he said that, he was in my camp, I was in his camp. I don’t care if he was the worst actor. I’d say he was great to me. And. No, he was great.

Mark: The voices. The voice is in his head. Okay. Except you said, I know. Yesterday. What were you doing? I don’t know. That’s. No. Well, so the. The thing is that Jim Jordan was. Was actually real. he’s not around anymore. Who he. Jim Jordan or Handel Lecter, but that’s who they’re letting in. He doesn’t exist at all. And that. Because he’s fictional, but that’s who they’re letting in. That an army of Hannibal lectors. Okay, well, that little bit, the friend for dinner one where it just doesn’t. It’s like he’s promising to go somewhere, and then he just. He forgets what, and he just ends the anecdote without even noticing that he hasn’t said it. God, and then the. So would him. Hannibal Lecter is a great actor. No, it was a. It was a fictional character being played by great actor. And yet. And really, that great actor gonna have ever said, I love Donald Trump? Well, no, he wouldn’t, but that doesn’t make it fake news. That might just be consistent with a Trump lie. But then that whole lovely thing. He was in my camp. I was in his camp. I don’t care if he was worse than I say. He’s great. You know, it was great. It wasn’t worse. Yeah, great actor. So Jim Jordan, I’m not sure about. And the. Okay, so. Okay. Army of Hannibal actors. Eek. Okay, I’m. I’m gonna go with number three as the one that you made up.

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

Mark: I’m more convinced by cassava. The friend, Virginia. That would amused him, because he would. I think he’s saying that because he understood the gagan. And then. Yeah, and then he overworks it, and he’s got it. Doesn’t explain why he finds it funny. He can’t. But he just finds it funny because he’s kind of got it. But he doesn’t know why he’s got it. So I think that’s the real one. Number two. I’m more confident about that.

Jim: And number two.

Mark: Yeah?

Jim: Is the one you made up is real.

Mark: oh.

Donald Trump: Has anyone ever seen a silence of the lil? The late, great Hannibal Lecter? He’s a wonderful man. He oftentimes would have a friend for dinner. Remember the last scene? Excuse me, I’m about to have a friend for dinner. As this poor doctor walked by. I’m about to have a friend for dinner. But Hannibal Lecter, congratulations. The late, great Hannibal Lecter.

Jim: Congratulations. Why is he congratulating him? M. And he’s not dead? late. Great.

Mark: No, it’s not. It doesn’t exist there. yeah, so he starts.

Jim: Not even dead in the films, though.

Mark: No. He starts it with. Anybody seen him? The Hannah elector. He’s a wonderful man, blah, blah, blah. And then he would go on to say, this is why I’m bringing him up as a subject.

Jim: You would think so.

Mark: But then he just amuses himself because he’s got the gag.

Jim: and maybe he just got that.

Mark: Yeah, good. Yeah, that’s a play on words. I’ve got all the best words. Yeah.

Jim: Wow.

Mark: Okay. Yeah.

Jim: So you also think the number one is real.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: And number one.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: He’s faking his.

Mark: Oh, good work. Oh, my God. No, that means the other one is. No.

Jim: Oh.

Mark: Ah, you see, it was the. Jim Jordan was the, a bit of a flashing blue light there, but I just couldn’t believe number three, so.

Jim: Well, believe it. Believe it and weep. Oh, no.

Donald Trump: Has anybody seen silence of the lamps? Hannibal Lecter? How great an actor was he? You know why I like him? Because he said on television, on one of the. I love Donald Trump. So I love him, I love him, I love him. He said that a long time ago. And once he said that, he was in my camp. I was in his camp.

Mark: Yeah.

Donald Trump: I don’t care if he was the worst actor. I’d say he was great to me. And, No, he was great.

Jim: So,

Mark: Really, really. Did he actually ever say that on Telegen?

Jim: I mean, thing. There are multiple actors who have played Hannibal actor, so there’s a few chances for it to affect.

Mark: Right.

Jim: But no, Anthony Hopkins is definitely largely apolitical. He doesn’t get involved in politics. But he’s never said he likes Donald Trump. Brian Cox, he called Trump such a fucking asshole and so full of shit. Didn’t like him at all. Mads Mikkelsen, who played him on tv in Hannibal, he came the closest, but definitely didn’t say he loved Trump. He said that he could definitely laugh at some of the stuff Trump says and could go, oh, my God, did he say that? Which isn’t loving him. No, but he said, I think he’s a fresh wind for some people.

Mark: Oh, there you go. Yeah.

Jim: That’s as effusive as he was prepared to be Trump.

Mark: And he’s kind of likened him to an attack of gas, really? Yes. Yeah.

Jim: He’s gone as far as to say. Some people think he’s refreshing in some way.

Mark: Yeah, yeah.

Jim: So.

Mark: And some of the things he said are hilarious, including. Yeah, yeah, the whole thing. He’s a great actor. I don’t care if he’s the worst actor. I say he was great. No, no, he was great.

Jim: I would lie purely because he once said he liked me.

Mark: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, man. I should have gone with the Jim Jordan thing for Sat.

Jim: Well, some of our, ah, social contests went, with number one. So we’ve got on Patreon Kaz two. He says, so here is the Hannibal test. Holy crap. He just says the same thing over and over like a wound up toy. I think number two is true. So I’m going for number one is Jim’s word salad. There you go.

Mark: Yeah. Damn. You can’t.

Jim: Renee Z says, I think number one is fake. So with my usual habit, number three will be fake. But I’m sticking with number one as fake news. He always seems to adore Hannibal Lecter. I think there was a brief interview with Anthony Hopkins about this. So Trump may have seen it and made up the craziness about Hopkins telling Trump he loved him.

Mark: Right.

Jim: Anders says it’s got to be number three. If not, Anthony Hopkins will turn around in his grave. I’m taking a risk now since there’s still a couple of days until the episode drops and suddenly it’s not a joke, but way too soon instead. and Schmutz says, I’m with Anders. I think three is fake. Unless Anthony Hopkins says he likes Trump for the second rate reality tv and batshit crazy entertainment kind of reason.

Mark: Yeah. He would be a great character to play, not unlike Hannibal Lecter. Yeah. Yes. Yeah.

Jim: Will M. Said I’m not sure this month because he’s slightly more unhinged than usual. Number three definitely has to be real.

Mark: Wow.

Jim: I love the idea that he thinks Hannibal was an actual person slash actor combo.

Mark: Yeah, yeah, exactly that. Yes.

Jim: That man is as much use as tits on a bull.

Mark: Nice.

Jim: Scott says, number two is Donaldy enough to be real, and I want three to be real. Hannibal Lecter loves Donald. How cute. Donald thinks Hannibal is really an actor. A bad one who loves him.

Mark: But no’s great.

Jim: I think one is fake. I’ve not. I’ve not heard Donald refer to Hannibal as the bad guy before. And I really doubt he would accurately remember Jim Jordan’s name.

Mark: Right. Yeah. Should have seen that flag. Yeah. Yeah.

Jim: And, Stephen Bickle says, good grief. I don’t know. And at least two of them. He seems to think Hannibal is a real person. I think I’m going to have to go with number one. While I remember him talking about lecters in immigration, I’m pretty sure Jim Jordan wasn’t involved in that statement. He’s talked about Hannibal Lecter a lot. So it may well have been at some point at the same time as he was talking about Jim Jordan. I couldn’t be sure of that.

Mark: But that’s the thing, cassette. That’s the one where he actually finishes through Thor. Yeah, that was my mistake, but obviously fooled me.

Jim: Now.

Mark: It was just. I couldn’t believe the whole Anthony Hopkins thing and that it was, Yeah. He thinks Hannibal Lecter was an actor. It’s a fictional character acts combo. Yeah.

Jim: Couple more on Facebook.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: Andrew John says, So wait, you’re saying he talked about Hannibal Lecter more than once? Yes, lots. Resigned sigh. I think I’ll pick three as fake just in the hopes that he didn’t actually say, I love trump.

Mark: Well, exactly.

Jim: You get your wish. He didn’t say, I love Trump, but three wasn’t fake.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: And finally, Nick says, every time I read one of these, I feel bits of my brain falling away like wet cake. I know he loves the have a friend for dinner line, which makes me think two is real. We all know how he loves anyone who says they’d love him. So that makes three strong to be real. I don’t think he’d ever talk about Hannibal Lecter being as bad as Mexicans. So I’m going with number one as fake.

Mark: Wow. Wow. That’s. If only. Yes. That was. It was a toss up. Definitely. The coin felt that fell the wrong side.

Jim: Yeah. I feel like our social contestants did far better. They were very strongly on number one.

Mark: Yeah, yeah. But even if they differed in the strange and convoluted ways they got there. But, yeah. Yeah. Oh, man. Let’s go back and play it again. Yeah. Because it’s obviously rigged. That’s the only reason I ever lose. Yeah.

Jim: Yeah.

Mark: Either that or something else. And those are the only two choices.

Jim: And it’s time for the part of the episode that this week, at least, is called Tim Walls is not a logical fallacy. Because I thought, after last times, quite kind of upbeat and happy is not a logical fallacy. Section we should do that again. That was fun. and so we’re talking about the new vice presidential candidate for the democratic party, Tim Walls.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: And as the, options were being winnowed down.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: He started kind of coming to the forefront, and there were lots of kind of social media videos of him going around and people talking about what great progressive things he’d done. And it seemed like, yeah, this is a pretty good guy. And Josh Sapiro was a. Was a kind of quite strong choice in Pennsylvania. But equally, he had some things that he’d said about kind of the student protests against Gaza and all that kind of stuff that would possibly mean that he was a bit risky with some of the younger demographic.

Mark: Right.

Jim: well, not just the younger demographic, but that. That, that group that was particularly protesting against the Biden administration’s stance on Israel and Palestine. And that wasn’t going to help getting Josh Shapiro involved, even though, unlike.

Mark: Pretty Patel, he didn’t call them hate marches.

Jim: No, absolutely no. Suelle Bravaman, pretty much all of the ones that were up for consideration were all really good. Mark Kelly. I thought he would be good.

Mark: It’s got everything. Wasn’t. He’s an astronaut forever. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jim: He was good. He’s. He was more moderate in terms of politics in general, more to the. Not to. Well, more to the right than Kamala.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: But not, you know, he’s still pretty progressive. But ultimately, she went with Tim Walsh, governor of Minnesota. And just like, when she stepped up and there was all that enthusiasm around her, it’s gone just as well. Again, basically, immediately he became the vice presidential nominee. Everyone that I saw, at least on the left, was like, great. You know, even if he wasn’t my first choice, great pick. He’s. He seems like a good guy. All of the things that you see when you kind of first start looking into him a bit are, generally really, really good and really, really progressive. He’s. He’s a. He definitely started out in his political career more moderate than Kamala, but I think he’s moved leftwards, to the point where he is one of the more progressive. Certainly in terms of the policies that he’s actually enacted in Minnesota, a lot of great success.

Mark: Has he moved leftwards or has he just done lots of locally petitioned for and required and popular things? Not. They didn’t because they were popular, but the things that he’s done are popular. He’s done those kind of things. And politics has moved to the right of him, I think.

Jim: Yeah. In some ways that that’s true. And he’s good at the messaging of pushing those more progressive ideas at times in ways that get other people on board. Like when he did a climate, change bill, he launched it, I think, at a kind of labor union or something like that, or a factory somewhere where it was about the workers and was talking about it all in terms of how good it was going to be for the economy and for the workers, even though what it was was a climate change bill, because it was going to get the people who weren’t necessarily in on it for that reason along for the ride. But also, there are things he’s definitely moved on. Like, for example, gun control. I mean, he’s a gun owner. He’s a hunter. he was in the national guard for 24 years. At one point, he had an a rating with the NRA, right. And they donated to him. But, seeing various school shootings and the fact that nothing was being done about it and all of this kind of stuff, he ultimately changed his stance on guns, decided that gun control is important and background checks are absolutely necessary. He donated the money that he’d been given by the NRA to charity, refused further donations, and now has an f rating with the NRA. So he’s. That, that’s a thing that he’s definitely moved, on, become more progressive. But other things that he’s done in terms of, like, helping Minnesota be. Be generally progressive. Things like just protecting the right to reproductive care, protecting gender affirming care for trans people, doing free school meals, lunches and breakfasts for kids, which is.

Mark: Yeah. Regardless of.

Jim: Yeah.

Mark: Their income. Yep, yep.

Jim: And basically, all of the people that I’ve seen talking about him on social media who are from Minnesota, the overwhelming message from them has been, sucks that he’s not going to be our governor anymore because we love.

Mark: Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jim: That’s like, they’re not saying, oh, you want to watch out, all this would be bad for the country. Anything like that. They’re saying, oh, does he have to not be our governor?

Mark: Does he have to go, yeah, yeah. Well, it’s kind of, in a way, he’s. It’s kind of, it’s a bit like the Bernie Sanders and, certainly the Jeremy Corbyn effect, that Corbyn is an excellent local mp. And his socialism, you know, I know Tim Waltz was saying that neighbourliness isn’t socialism. Yeah. So he. So, and, and Corbyn’s socialism comes from being neighbourly. And that’s, you know, he’s and he got elected despite being deselected from the Labour party and ostracized as being unelectable and all that kind of stuff. Got elected with a greater majority in his constituency than Keir Starmer got in his constituency. And even in Corbyn’s two elections that he contested, he got a greater, number, a greater percentage of the vote than Starmer did in his landslide victory recently. So that, that kind of local politician ness, which makes politicians very popular, you kind of think, oh, God, wouldn’t it have been great if starmer, had appointed Corbyn as his deputy, as his vice president, as his, you know, deputy prime minister? Because then he would have embraced that whole left wing. That’s the thing that camera Kamala’s doing is that she is, you know, she’s over there where Biden is slightly center of left with all that stuff, but she’s embraced somebody who is visibly a, progressive and, a neighbourly socialist. And somebody I’ve read somewhere, somebody described this, this election is all about the vibes and, and Tim Waltz has got them in, in spades. You know, he is the vibe king. And he’s just great. Just that footage there was, I think JD Vance said that, he’s going to unleash hell on earth. And somebody, as a kind of counter to that, put out the video of the kids around him when he saw. Explains the thing about fries Cornwallis. It’s just so lovely.

Jim: I’ve seen, I’ve watched it a number of times. I’d already seen it before I knew who he was. But yeah, I’ve seen it.

Mark: And the thing is that he is overwhelmed by it. He. It’s not like Trump doing that, you know, scribble some sharpie on the bottom of a piece of paper and hold it around. He’s done it and he shows it to the kids and the kids know exactly what it means and they’re applauding and they just hug him and yeah.

Jim: Yeah, he’s like fist bumps. And then one of them just puts her arms out. And that happened around the same time as Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed a thing like enacting child labor, in Arkansas or something. And there’s a picture of her signing it. And these kind of poe faced kids just like, yeah, we even doing here?

Mark: And they just, you know, they identify friendly people that do good things.

Jim: The thing is, he’s, he’s a high school teacher, of many years.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: And, yeah, but he’s one of those lovely high school teachers that everyone remembers fondly. He’s not a strict asshole. He’s one that jokes around with you. At least that’s. That’s what his former students have said. And that’s what. That’s very much the impression you get from what, everything you see of him, basically.

Mark: Yes, he is.

Jim: He’s very avuncular. He’s very kind of just. Just folksy and chummy and nice.

Mark: And he has their interests at heart, and he gets out of the way. He’s not part of the picture when it comes to, enacting legislation, either as a high school teacher or as an elected governor, in enacting things on behalf of people.

Jim: Yes.

Mark: He’s not part of the deal. You know, that’s not. It’s not about him. So when he stands up and talks, it’s. He’s talking about the things that neighbors need and the things that kids need and the things, the rights that people should be given. And it’s very simple stuff. That’s what I like about him. He’s using very simple language, like Trump does, but he’s saying things like, it’s not pie. It’s not. When it comes to rights, it isn’t pie. And people understand pie, you know? 3.1,415,926.

Jim: There’s enough to go around for everyone.

Mark: There’s enough to go. Yeah, it’s not if. It’s not like, if I have some, you can’t have any. We just make a bigger pie. Yeah, that’s. That’s it. And he’s talking that kind of simple language.

Jim: Yeah. And I think, a lot of people who have, teachers in their family or no teachers, probably know those teachers who will put so much of themselves into their job and helping the kids not just take, you know, getting a paycheck. It’s not a job for, like, for the most part, if you’re a good teacher, it is not a job where you kind of clock in and clock out, and that’s. That’s it. They’re doing it because they care so much about other people, and they care about kids. They want to do a great job for them, and they want them m to do well. And. And he is a guy who wasn’t just a high school teacher. He was the football coach, and he. He, chaired the. The gay lesbian alliance club at the school.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: He was the lunchroom supervisor for years. And, you know, he really properly got involved in the kids lives and in the life of the school because it, just seemed that’s the kind of person he is. He doesn’t half ass it.

Mark: Yeah, yeah.

Jim: And, yeah. And at the same time, somehow he was in the National Guard like on weekends.

Mark: Yeah, yeah.

Jim: And stuff.

Mark: Yeah. And it’s, but it’s all about that kind of service to your community thing and those roles and those positions and that thinking and philosophy is, is not about him. It’s about, I’m in a position to be able to provide this service, so I will, because that’s important and I will do it selflessly. In contrast with some, somebody that’s orange that we all know.

Jim: Yeah, yeah. The contrast between Harris and the Trump Vance ticket was already dramatic, but it’s, it’s got even more contrasty by adding Tim Wolves in there and. Yeah, yeah. Ah. The Republicans are having difficulty finding stuff to have a go at him about. They’re not doing it. They’re doing it. Yeah, yeah. But they’re, they’re struggling a little bit. Laura Ingraham started out by saying that how badly he’s done for Minnesota. She said, if you know Minnesota well, and I know it well, especially Milwaukee, it’s changed. She doesn’t know that well because she doesn’t know Milwaukee’s in Wisconsin, not Minnesota. But, it’s, it kind of shows that maybe she’s nothing. She’s just saying it because she wants to say bad things about him rather than from any place of knowledge or geography. But, the main two other things that they’ve done is they’ve attacked his military record in as much as Vance, particularly, and a few others have said that he pulled out of the National Guard. You know, he retired from the National Guard, when they were about to be deployed to Iraq in 2005.

Mark: Right. And so that’s making that the reason.

Jim: Avoiding, yes, avoiding combat. He’s, you know, he was in it while it was easy, and then when it looked like they might be in danger, he was in charge of the battalion. He was the command sergeant major at the time. And so he retired a few months before they got the kind of official call for Iraq.

Mark: Right.

Jim: to Iraq. So the dates are quite important because that kind of did happen. But not in any way the ways that they’re talking about it.

Mark: No, because they’re suggesting causal connections.

Jim: Like, right. Your battalion is going to Iraq. And he was like, I’m out of here.

Mark: Right. I’m going to retire. Yeah.

Jim: I’m off.

Mark: I’m not.

Jim: What actually happened was, was he put in his papers to run for Congress in February of 2005. The notification about the potential deployment of his battalion sometime over the next two years. Not definite and not a timeframe. Came in the following month, in March 2005.

Mark: Right.

Jim: He retired in May of 2005.

Mark: Okay.

Jim: But retirement isn’t something that happens immediately in the National Guard. You don’t just go, here’s my papers, I’m off.

Mark: Right.

Jim: And even Fox News says that the Minnesota National Guard told them that he put his retirement papers in five to seven months before he retired. Before, maybe seven months before is December or like October, November, the previous year. So months before his battalion was given notification that sometime over the next two years, maybe they would go to Iraq.

Mark: Right.

Jim: He’d already put in his papers to retiree.

Mark: Right.

Jim: And with the intention of running for Congress. Right. At that point, while he was still, you know, in the National Guard and also campaigning for Congress, his campaign put out a press release saying, I don’t know what’s going to happen if I go. If I end up going to Iraq. I’ll still be in the campaign, but I’ll be there. so it wasn’t like, I’m not doing that. I’ve retired. Fuck.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: but they didn’t.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: They didn’t get the deployment. And ultimately he retired. And then several months after he retired, then they got the official notice that they were being deployed. So that’s the time frame that it happened. First he said he was retiring. He put in his papers to run for Congress.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: Then they got the notification that maybe they were going. His retirement came through months later. Then they ended up going.

Mark: Then they.

Jim: Yeah. So, yeah, none of that is him trying to get out of being deployed to a war zone.

Mark: What that, is, is the, Republicans cherry picking to the nth degree.

Jim: That is the process of retiring from a job or from a position in that case. The other thing that they are latching onto a bit is that he’s described himself and has been described by the campaign as a retired command sergeant major. And he is retired. And he was at one point a command sergeant major, but he wasn’t a.

Mark: Command sergeant major when he retired.

Jim: Yeah. There is a process that you have to go through. So he rose to that rank and did that job. But one. But you, there’s like a three year training period or something like that. You have to complete various things and you have to do, be doing that job for a certain amount of time before you essentially are, given that rank in terms of benefits when you retire.

Mark: Right.

Jim: So for benefits purposes on retiring, having not completed that process and that period, and the training and all of that kind of stuff. Despite the fact that he’d been doing that job and being in that rank, he. He was demoted, essentially to a lower.

Mark: Rank because the army didn’t want to pay purposes. Yes. Yes, yes. Because they didn’t want to pay because.

Jim: That’S how that works. Yeah. Now, I’m not an expert on this by any means, but my understanding is that it is usually the case that veterans are referred to by the rank that they were when they retired. So their retirement rank, not necessarily the highest rank they achieved. So.

Mark: Right.

Jim: If someone or someone or the rank.

Mark: That the army decided they were going to pay him at because they were money grabbing.

Jim: Yeah. So it would be more accurate to refer to him as a retired whatever rank he is for benefits, like Gunnery sergeant or something like that.

Mark: Right.

Jim: So that’s arguably inaccurate, I don’t think. I would say it goes as far as to call it stolen valor because he’s saying he was that rank and he did do that rank. He did that job. But that’s the kind of strongest argument that they have against this.

Mark: Wow. These are their best arguments.

Jim: Yes. That’s as far as it goes.

Mark: Yeah. Wow.

Jim: And the other attack that they have on him is brilliant because they call him Tampon Tim.

Mark: Okay. Right.

Jim: And the reason for that is because he signed a bill.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: That in Minnesota, they put free sanitary, products in high school students bathrooms.

Mark: Okay. Yeah.

Jim: Now that is a great thing.

Mark: Yeah, it is. Yeah.

Jim: But Republicans being assholes.

Jim: When this bill was going through, they tried to add a. An extra addendum to it to specify that it was only female students, that these were for that and female students bathrooms.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: It. The bill specifically just said, let’s just put it in the bathroom to be included in bathrooms that are used by students between these grades. That’s all. Doesn’t. It doesn’t mention that all bathrooms. It doesn’t say they have to be in boys bathrooms. It doesn’t, It just says they need to be put in bathrooms. And it doesn’t unnecessarily exclude people. Republicans said, we want to unnecessarily exclude people.

Mark: Exclude people.

Jim: They lost that argument. So make it into the bill.

Mark: Yeah. Yeah.

Jim: And so, so the bill is that the schools have to have free sanitary products available for students in bathrooms that the students usually use.

Mark: Fair enough.

Jim: Simple as that.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: And if the Republicans hadn’t attacked him on that, a lot of people would never have heard that he did this brilliant, really good, useful thing that helps poor students have access to sanitary products that they wouldn’t necessarily be able to access, which is really good. And that he did it in a way that affirms their gender identity if necessary. Yeah.

Mark: If they. It’s the kind of thing that theme parks do for free.

Jim: Yeah.

Mark: You know, if, if you’re with your daughter at Disney World and you need to access sanitary products, you can get them for free. And no Republican on earth would accuse Disney of being.

Jim: They love Disney. Don’t.

Mark: Trans friendly. Yeah, yeah. Perfect American. Yeah.

Jim: What you’ll see Republicans doing is claiming that he made it law that there have to be tampons in boys bathrooms. In boys bathrooms, which is not the law. Also, they, they are so fucking stupid that they can’t bigot. Right. So of the ones that I’ve seen, talking about it, not like the politicians or people like Laura Ingraham who also fuck it up, but the, the general everyday mAGA people on social media, half of them say that, you don’t need sanitary products in boys bathrooms because, you know, you shouldn’t be allowing girls to go in boys bathrooms.

Mark: That had to happen. Right.

Jim: That shouldn’t be allowed. but the other half somehow think that it’s about people born as born males, in their vernacular, who think they’re girls, who therefore think they menstruate or think they need tampons somehow. And they’re like, if you’re born a boy, you don’t need a tampon. You’re, fucking doing being a bigot wrong. You’re not.

Mark: I can’t even.

Jim: You haven’t figured out how to be horrible. So. Yeah, they’re not sure what they’re angry about, but they’re definitely angry about it.

Mark: They’re definitely angry. Yeah.

Jim: And they’ve done it in a way that makes him seem all the more awesome to everyone else. And I did see one person put, tampon Tim is going to help hold back the red wave, which I think is absolutely brilliant, brilliant, brilliant.

Mark: And the other thing that I really, really like about him, in his, in his, it’s somewhat affected. That’s the thing about him is that he can use his down home, you know, accessible. I’m just him kind of stuff to his advantage, which means he can say things that look in all innocence to be innocently said and then come up with, well, yeah, yeah, those Republicans, they’re just weird.

Jim: Yeah.

Mark: And everybody just, you know what? Yeah. And it’s just great. And that whole thing about when they go low, we go high, actually, that they’ve managed to do that and said, you know, when they go miserable, we go joyful. And, and it’s about the, it ought to be possible to be joyous with this stuff, which is what we discovered with Starmer’s labour Party. And there was a moment in the election, I think we. Did we talk about last thing or we did we talk about off air when Carol, Vorderman, tv’s Carol Vorderman, who’s, kind of, basically, she’s Vanna White.

Jim: If Vanna White could do maths.

Mark: There you go. She’s the, she’s the, she’s the glamour stuff of, you know, tv show with a math number stuff, but with a maths degree. And she was on the late night coverage of the general election here in the UK in July. And the serious politicians and ex politicians and ex spin doctors were being very, they were pontificating about the ramifications of the percentage of the vote that the far right had picked up, blah, blah, blah. And she, and she kind of came in and just went, can I just stop you there? Can we just enjoy the fact that labor won, the socialists won, they’re in with a massive victory. Let’s have a little bit of joy. So there is room for joyfulness. And that, and the examples that Waltz has presented that it’s possible to do these progressive things in a low key way, elicit joy from your community and distill the joy that your community feels into policy and legislation and talk about it joyfully.

Jim: And the enthusiasm that they’re getting, both him and Kamala, at the rallies that they’re now doing, is fantastic. And just like people were complaining in the early days about Kamala laughing and being happy and how weird that was. Freak them out.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: I saw a thing on the Daily Mail about Tim waltz, like, acting bizarrely at, the rally. And all he was doing is. Was walking while everyone was still cheering. Like they hadn’t, ah, stopped cheering when they’d walked on. He was just kind of walking around smiling and clapping.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: Like they don’t understand what it, what being happy looks like.

Mark: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because Trump does that. But it’s a. It’s very.

Jim: Well, he does that weird, Ah, double wanking dance.

Mark: Yeah. Yes, exactly. But he does that. He wonders about. And that’s. And, and nobody’s not smiling.

Jim: He doesn’t laugh. That’s the thing.

Mark: No, he grimaces and it’s that. And, and, you know, the daily mails doesn’t say, oh, yeah, Trump’s kind of.

Jim: Milking because he’s very visibly thinking, I’m great. This is great. Everybody loves me.

Mark: Yeah, yeah. I’m only here. It needs to go on for longer. Why is it. Why is it. Why is it nearly ending?

Jim: Yeah.

Mark: Or even with JD Vance kind of cracking gags that aren’t gags and then filling in the space where he would be talking over people laughing and cheering in the knowledge that in the post production they will add that in afterwards. Yeah. And, nobody kind of says, that’s a little bit creepy, but somebody who’s joyfully doing it going, oh, yeah. What you got? Stop. What? You’re still cheering. All right. I’ll just enjoy it. Thanks. Yeah, I’m not. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Thank you. It’s, you know, it’s that kind of. It’s with Trump. It’s a, it’s a, ah, it’s a kind of Nuremberg thing with JD Vance’s kind of humble brand with, you know, with the, the absence of, you know, he kind of goes, oh, you guys, I love you. And they’re not doing anything. And he’s just behaving as if they are. And then. But with, with Tim Waltz, he’s just overwhelmed by it all and think, yeah, okay. Yeah. If you want to. If you want to do it, go right ahead. It’s fine. And, you know, there’s no point in speaking now because you’re not going to let me. So I just.

Jim: Absolutely.

Mark: Thank you.

Jim: Enjoy it. Yeah. So, yeah, I’m sure we’ll be back to horrific stuff next time. It’s nice to have a moment. Nice enthusiastic ones.

Mark: Exactly. Yeah. It’s just, a pleasant respite, isn’t it? We’re kind of in amongst all the. Or the. Or dieu, when you find a shining diamond, you know, in the, in the streaming river of shit, it’s. Yeah, we need. We need to pull them out when we can. Yeah. And, look at them and go, oh, look at that. Yeah. And finally, some things we really don’t have time to talk about.

Jim: Political campaigns are all about messaging, and that’s one of the things Democrats tend to struggle with, because a lot of their positions are pretty nuanced. But one very simple message has emerged in the past couple of months, partly thanks to Tim Walt, which has resonated on the left and infuriated on the right. Republicans are weird.

Mark: I. They’re weird.

Jim: Some of the more conspiracy minded Republicans. So Republicans have speculated that it’s some kind of top down enforced, probably focused, grouped talking point that was sent out to all the Soros funded shills in the media and on the socials. Because why else would everyone be saying it all at the same time? Well, one reason is many of those people are responding to republican denials by pointing out that, yeah, they are fucking weird. I they want to track your periods, burn books, stop funding meals for kids, and check people’s genitals before letting them do sport. They think a convicted felon game show host should be president and immune from crimes. That kids who think their cats are using litter boxes in school, and that 19 unsecured, handguns hidden randomly around an old lady’s home is the embodiment of the american spirit. They think Kevin Sorbo is cooler than George Clooney, write books about shooting dogs in the face, dress up like Buffalo to attack the capital, and take horse dewormer to prevent Covid because a doctor, who believes endometriosis is caused by demons having sex with women while they sleep, told them to. They’re terrified of drag queens, black history, strong women and the Olympics. And they’re against childless cat ladies. Childless cat ladies are awesome. While the left has been unusually united in agreeing republicans are weird, the right has been less consistent in their response. Brian Kilmeade said being weird is cool. Vivek Ramaswamy called the attack dumb and juvenile, and Trump and others went with the time honored I know you are, but what am I strategy to distance themselves from those dumb juvenile democrats?

Mark: Just weird. Just fucking weird. In a televisual display of more car crashes than a demolition derby, Trump was a guest interviewee at the annual convention of the National association of Black Journalists after turning up on stage nearly an hour late and blaming the audio equipment in a variation of his teleprompter skit and not the deadlock backstage following his team’s apparent flat out refusal to allow Trump to be fact checked live during the interview, he complained that the interviewer was rude because she asked him sensible, grown up truth and past experience based questions about why black voters should trust him after all his lies surrounding and abuse of voters of colour. He then wheeled out birtherism 2.0 by complaining that Kamala Harris confused him because before she was indian, and now she’s turned black. I’ve known her a long time indirectly, Trump said. And she was always of indian heritage, and she was only promoting indian heritage. I didn’t know she was black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn black, and now she wants to be known as black to audible gasps, laughter and and jeers from the audience of check’s notes, black journalists. He attempted to win round the panel of interviewees by protesting even more because that always seems to work with his usual crowd. I, respect either one, he added. But she obviously doesn’t, because she was indian all the way, and then all of a sudden she made a turn and she became black. Somebody should look into that, too. If ever there was a need to read the room, this was it. Dropping in an anachronistic use of the word respect like that, and likening yourself to Abraham Lincoln was not going to smooth the hole to your way of thinking, Donny. No sir. and given that he’s been in the past of swedish, german and american heritage, he’d surely know about the fallacy of the force dilemma, that you can’t be one and the other when it comes to, say, being the child of indian and black parents. Thankfully, Trump didn’t last the whole of the allotted hour long interview slot. I think the team ended up blaming the teleprompter, the fact that there was a one, so that we just got raw, curmudgeonly racist idiot Trump.

Jim: A headline to an NBC article Today readdez democrats continue to joke about false JD Vance rumor after years of criticizing Trump for spreading misinformation, and NBC can fuck right off. These are not the same thing. For the uninitiated, the rumour they’re referring to is that JD Vance fucked an inside out latex glove shoved between two couch cushions and wrote about it in his autobiographical bestseller Hillbilly Elegy. The rumour, which was invented by a guy on Twitter called Rick, was quickly fact checked and debunked by the Associated Press in an article titled no, JD farce did not have sex with a couch. But in a twist, that is the best proof so far for a loving God. The article was then taken down and replaced with a message saying simply, this story did not go through our standard editing process and has been removed, presumably because while they can verify that the story did not appear in Vances book, it would be irresponsible as journalists to claim it definitely didn’t happen. Because, you know, it’s JD Vance. Look at the guy. It’s not impossible. And here’s the difference between this and all of those lies spread by Trump. It’ll surprise nobody to hear that we are pro information and anti misinformation on this show. But this is not misinformation. It’s a joke. Ever since it was first debunked on day one, none of the Democrats who talk about it think it’s real or want other people to think it’s real. It’s funny, partly because it annoys them, but mostly because it was brilliantly written. The inside outness of the Lacex glove is a touch of genius, and because Vance is so weird that it’s kind of just about plausible. Rick, the progenitor of the joke, told the New Republic he was inspired by an anecdote about Lyndon Johnson suggesting they start a rumor that his opponent has sex with pigs. His campaign manager said nobody would actually believe that, and LBJ reportedly replied, I know, but let’s make the son of a bitch deny it.

Mark: Which makes m you think of David Cameron. Adam Schiff, California Democrat, reminded us this week that in 2016, the Trump campaign welcomed russian interference, took advantage of it, and then sought to deny it it, much to the detriment of the country. In response to reports that the Trump campaign had been hacked. The Trump campaign announced that its systems have been breached after news organizations asked questions about France when he was a candidate for vice president. That appeared to come from internal vetting documents. They were only able to get publicly available information, but nevertheless, they shouldn’t be doing any of this nature, Trump posted on Saturday evening. Iran and others will stop at nothing, he added, throwing Iran under the bus. While the Washington Post said it had received a 271 page document marked privileged and confidential from an anonymous AOL customer known as Robert, politico later said it would be receiving documents for someone who called themselves Robert since 22 July. AOL. and no one was suspicious. Yeah.

Jim: What’s wrong with CompuServe?

Mark: Exactly. Yeah. Been receiving them since 22 July 1994. Yeah. Whilst they have been receiving that, Microsoft has not confirmed that the Trump campaign was the target. It has said that an iranian group run by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards was behind a June attack on a presidential campaign. Trump campaign spokesman Stephen Chung said, any media or news outlet reprinting documents or internal communications are doing the bidding of America’s enemies and doing exactly what they want. Well, let’s face it, he should know. Didn’t Trump invite Russia to do exactly the same with Hillary’s emails after all? Okay, so whilst I’m with the Biden administration in strongly condemning any foreign government or entity who attempts to interfere in our electoral process or seeks to undermine confidence in our democratic institutions, it’s kind of gratifying when the orange document embezzler gets a taste of his own stashing of them in the john and showing them tall and sundry in audio recordings.

Jim: Medicine, ever since Kamala stepped in for Joe Biden, the Trump campaign’s public events have been sparse to the extent that less charitable observers might accuse him of being sleepy and hiding in his bakery basement. It could be fear of another assassination attempt. That means he doesn’t want to do outdoor rallies, coupled with the fact that many indoor venues won’t host him because he didn’t pay them last time. Or more likely, it’s the fear that he doesn’t have a hope in hell of attracting crowds that rival his rivals. And he’s far more afraid of looking like a loser than being shot. Either way, he sought to remedy his absence in the news cycle by inviting journalists to his house for what he called a general news conference last Thursday and teased that it was about the debates. In fact, he spent about 20 minutes trashing Kamala, mentioned the debates briefly, and then said any questions. In all, he talked for 64 minutes, during which, according to an NPR fact check, he told 162 misstatements, exaggerations and outright lies. I’d say they were being conservative with that count, but it was in the ballpark. Among the unhinged bullshit he spewed was the idea that America is currently very close to both another Great Depression and another world war, that he’s leading big in swing states, that electric vehicles are two and a half times heavier than gas vehicles, that nobody in history, in any country has had crowds as big as his, especially Martin Luther King, that the MAGA base is actually bigger than the Republican Party and makes up 75% of the country, that abortion is a very small issue and anyway, everybody wanted the Supreme Court to overturn row and that he was in a helicopter that had to make an emergency landing with former San Francisco mayor Willie Brown, who told him some terrible things about Kamala. Brown, who dated Kamala for a couple of years three decades ago, denies ever having been in a helicopter with Trump. Journalists have tried to figure out what the fuck he was talking about, which I can tell you from experience can be tricky. The New York Times speculated that the California politician he could be thinking of was former governor Jerry Brown, who Trump did share a helicopter ride with but didn’t have any mechanical issues. In response, Trump called the New York Times to yell at them that he has the flight records of the helicopter and he’s probably going to sue. When asked to produce the records, the Times says he responded mockingly, repeating the request in a sing song voice. Meanwhile, Politico reckons he meant former state senator Nate Holden, who was in an emergency helicopter landing with Trump back in the early nineties. Holden told Politico, Willie is the short black guy living in San Francisco. I’m a tall black guy living in Los Angeles. I guess we all look alike. Both Holden and Jerry Brown confirmed they never spoke to Trump about Kamala.

Mark: That’s a variation of I know I am. I know I am. Yeah.

Jim: the other thing is, actually, I didn’t even mention this in that bit, but this, the stuff he did talk about the debates, he got that wrong because first of all, he said that the debate on the 10 September, which he’s agreeing to is, was on NBC, which isn’t. It’s on ABC. but he said what we’re doing is three. We’ve agreed with the networks to three debates. Fox, on like the 4 September NBC, he said, but it’s actually ABC on the 10th and then another one later in September. And, you know, Kamala’s a coward if she doesn’t join in. But so obvious what he’s doing is that, she’s already agreed to the one on the 10th with ABC. That was the one that she was trying to get him to agree to do. Yeah, he only wanted to do one on Fox, so by, by scheduling one on Fox beforehand, what he wants to do is get her to do that one and then he’ll pull out of the rest. Done the Fox one. So obviously not going to agree to that because that’s, it’s like, it’s, an obvious trap, like a box with a stick under it and food. And then he’s going to pull the stick away.

Mark: It’s just spell f u d. Yeah, yeah, but yeah, yeah. Oh, it’s Charlie Brown. You hold the thing and I’ll run back and kick the ball and see, you’re going to pull it away. I won’t pull it away. You’re going to pull it away. Okay. It might not be chappaquiddick, but in a weird Kennedy slash Woody Allen, I shot a moose kind of crossover, RFK junior posted a video interview of himself with Roseanne Barr. Yeah, right. But wait, it gets even weirder. slash funnierez. no, not funnier, really. A decade old mystery of a dead bear cub found over a bicycle in Central park got solved by the perpetrator actually fessing up. Yep, it was RFK junior himself that put it there. He was not on his way to a party at the Rabinowitzes, but leading a fulkery party in the Hudson Valley when the driver in front of him hit and killed a bear. Naturally, being the good Samaritan, an ecologist and a man whose brain’s been eaten by a worm, he stashed the bear in his van, thinking he’d skin it and put the meat in the freezer when he got home. All reasonable so far? well, he got waylaid and ended up being late from a New York restaurant and then had to go to the airport and didn’t want to leave the bear in the van. In the car park in the airport. Because that would been bad. Yeah, that would have been bad. So instead he thought, I know, I’ll take it, and the old bike from out the van and make it look like the bear was hit by a bike in Central park. Yeah. Of course, forensic later determined the bear had been hit by a car and RFK junior was anxious that his fingerprints were on the bike. And, weirdly enough, one of the New York Times reporters who covered the mystery was Caroline Kennedy’s daughter, Tatiana Sloshberg, RFK junior. S first cousin once removed. She told the paper this weekend that, like law enforcement, I had no idea who was responsible, responsible for this when I wrote the story. But the mystery remained unsolved and the story eventually faded away. Now, almost ten years later, Kennedy said he was prompted to come clean ahead of an anticipated New Yorker expose. Looking forward to seeing how you spin this one, he captioned the video. New Yorker magazine ran an article about how this fits in with the, Kennedys check and history with vehicles and the landscape, and includes a photo of Robert Kennedy junior, who was 60 at the time, posing with his hands inside the bear’s bloody mouth and an exaggerated grimace on his face. You. Maybe that’s where I got my brain worm. he told the magazine, still, maybe this sojourn into stand up comedy routines might reverse his dwindling fortunes in national polls. No, no, let’s face it. Oh, did he call the bear Teddy, I wonder. I do hope so. That.

Jim: I mean, this was amazing because. Because the New Yorker essentially told him. Because they contacted him for a comment. they told him the story was coming out and he thought the. All right, I need to get in front of this, obviously, because this is gonna be bad. So roseanne fucking bar to come over and. And I will tell her the story in a way that doesn’t make me look good.

Mark: Yeah, yeah.

Jim: And do it, you know, that way. Yeah, I control the narrative. What the fuck?

Mark: And then. And then to say, let’s see how you spin this. You don’t need any spinning at all. The only spinning you need is the spinning of video spins. You just go, yeah, we just put that out as is. Yeah, yeah. It’s absolutely brilliant, isn’t it? Love it.

Jim: With the election looming and MAGA Republicans in positions of power within the electoral system in various states, it’s nice to remember that the efforts to hold people accountable for fucking around in 2020 are ongoing. Slow but, ongoing. And at some point some of them will find out. That day got a little closer for those involved in the fake elector scheme in Arizona this week, as two of the defendants agreed to take plea deals. Lorraine Pellegrino, one of the fake electors, has pleaded guilty to one charge of filing a false instrument. But more importantly, former Trump attorney Jenna Ellis has had her nine felony charges dropped in exchange for her full cooperation and providing prosecutors with evidence to implicate the other defendants. Those defendants include, among others, Mark Meadows, Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman and Christina Bob. Trump is currently an unindicted co conspirator in the case, but with a key cooperating witness now on board, all that could change. Ellis knows what she’s getting into, having already escaped felony charges in Georgia by cooperating there.

Mark: So she’d done it in a different state as well.

Jim: Yeah, yeah, she already cooperated in Georgia. That’s, that’s all happened. The Georgia thing, I mean, obviously the, the, you know, the Georgia case against Trump and the other co defendants is, is currently pending.

Mark: Wow.

Jim: Apparently she doesn’t want to do prison in any of the states she’s been indicted in.

Mark: Yes. Yeah.

Jim: Weird.

Mark: Yay. After a couple of weeks where the Labour party enacted some progressive, growth based policies, the far right expressed their frustration at the ditching of the Rwanda policy by characterizing a random knife wielding murderer as a racially motivated attack by the son of rwandan parents, despite the fact that the murderer was a Cardiff born british citizen who attacked and killed three young girls. Similarly, of immigrant parents, not fazed by the irony, nazi thugs were happy to be stirred up by lies about the origin of the murderer, spread by Stephen Yaxy Lennon, ensconced in of holiday villa in Spain, and elected MP Nigel Farage asking questions about whether the police were telling us everything on social media, rather than raising such questions in the House of Commons as befits an elected mp, and in a twist of the two tier policing claimed by the far right, insofar as those who were burning citizens of ice centres, hostels, housing asylum seekers and libraries were being arrested for doing those things and the people that weren’t doing that weren’t being arrested a report for the government identified that islamist protests were being policed as terrorist uprisings, whereas far right protests were regularly dismissed as thuggery and angry protests by people expressing so called legitimate concerns. A week later, after 500 arrests and half a dozen swift convictions and jail terms and mass crowds of thousands in Scotland, Brighton and Walthamstow chanting, refugees are welcome here. The self righteousness of the goaded by rich absentee responsibility deniers, far right racist thugs rapidly dissipated and they return to the fringes of gammon faced keyboard warriornists silenced by the community minded actual people of Britain. These inclusive citizens are my people. The others act not in my name. Please carry on, Keir. Knocking on doors, knocking those away, and bringing cohesion and a sense of service to these scepter dials. Meanwhile, despite these horrendous displays of the logical conclusion of their beliefs, all the Tory leadership candidates still say they weren’t right wing enough. And that’s why the Tories lost. Yeah, right.

Jim: It has been incredibly satisfying to see things like. Like Brighton, I think, is one of the best examples where there were, like, four racists and literally thousands of people protesting against the racist.

Mark: Yes, but. But not even protesting. Just stay.

Jim: Just being there.

Mark: Yeah, no, you’re, Actually, yeah, refuses. There was a brilliant bit in Southport where there was, an excellent bit where there’s the tobacconist who lives opposite the. Whose shop is opposite the community, center, where the murders took place. From Sri Lanka, his tobacconist was smashed to pieces and burned and looted by racist thugs. He’s been there 35 years, something like that. The following day, the entire community turned out, cleaned up the shop, an ice cream supplier restocked his fridge. People have raised 11,000 pounds to repair the shop in 24 hours and just went, yeah, yeah, it’s all right, mate. These people aren’t us. This course, you’ve been part of the community. He was thinking, that’s it, I’m gonna sit up and go. And even, some friends of mine who live in Walthamstow, they just. The entire street was full of people. He said, the barbers has never been busier. yeah. Fancy getting me haircut. Turkish barbers, you know, there’s a kebab shop. You’re all, it’s the Walthamstow is the melting pot of north London.

Jim: Yeah.

Mark: And it’s just 55 racist thugs turned up and they just, like, turned up, turned on the heel, went away again. They go, okay, are you just a fair weather racist? It continues to be frustrating that the parliamentary system and to a certain extent, the media system isn’t nimble enough to deal with the likes of Farage, with his plausible deniability, who just kind of latches onto fake news put about by. There was a disgruntled 55 year old woman who made up a name for the guy that committed the murders in Southport. And then that was promoted by Andrew Tate, and then I that was promoted by Farage because he knows where his money’s coming from. And Tommy Robinson, Stephen Yaxley, Lennon is on a bit. He’s evaded, arrest by going to Spain.

Jim: Yeah, he’s fled. He sought refuge in a foreign country because he feared for the safety of his children.

Mark: But yeah, yeah, it’s being paid for by people who contribute to his charities, so called charities. It’s thick. People are too stupid to know that they’re being racist.

Jim: I think some of them know.

Mark: Oh, they know, yeah. But they’re too thick to know that they’re being manipulated by rich racists who wouldn’t get near enough to throw a brick. Of course they wouldn’t, because, you know, where would their earnings be? They’d end up in jail.

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 use the fallacy ourselves, let us know. And if you’ve had a good time, please give us a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast. Or simply tell one other person in person about how much they like our podcast and you can support the show@patreon.com. ftrump just like our strawman level patrons, Colleen Lyella, Richard Thunder Hopkins, Will M. Scott Ozzy on bank, Laura Tomsick Schmootz, Mark Reiche and Amber R. Buchanan, who told us when we met her at QED, we could just call her Amber, though another listener recognised her QED last year because we keep using her full name all the time. And our true Scotsman level patrons, Sharon Robinson, Renee Zed, Melissa Saitek, Stephen Bickle, Janet Ueta, Andrew Halt, and our top agent patron, Kaz Tui. Thank you so much for your continued support and continuing to beat me at fake news. It’s very much appreciated.

Jim: You can connect with those awesome people as well as us and other listeners in the Facebook group@facebook.com. groups fallacioustrump and you can meet some of them. And possibly, well, definitely us. And possibly some of them. If you go to QED, there’s still some tickets available@qedcon.org.

Mark: That’D be great. All music is by the outbursts and was used with permissions. So until next time on Felicia’s trump, we’ll leave the last word to the Donald. That’s right.

Donald Trump: Go home to mommy. Bye bye.

Jim: Yes. It’s time for fake news. The game where I haven’t messed that up, for ages. I used to mess it up all the time, like, every episode, but after, I’ve been doing it flawlessly for, like, years. So there we go.

Mark: Yeah. Yeah.

Jim: Always room for more mistakes.