Two Wrongs Make a Right Fallacy – FT#156

27 Aug Two Wrongs Make a Right Fallacy – FT#156

Show Notes

The Two Wrongs Make a Right Fallacy occurs when someone tries to justify an action by pointing out that someone else did it too, or would if they had the chance.

Trump

We started out by discussing this clip of Trump talking about nominating Amy Coney Barrett:

And then we looked at this clip of him comparing Dinesh D’Souza to Rosie O’Donnell:

Finally, we talked about this tweet about Senator Roy Blunt:

Q: Did the videos change your mind at all about conviction?

Sen. @RoyBlunt: “I mean, you have a summer where people all over the country were doing similar kinds of things. I don’t know what the other side will show from Seattle and Portland and other places.”

— Ben Siegel (@bensiegel) February 10, 2021

Mark’s British Politics Corner

Mark talked about David Tennant calling out Kemi Badenoch and her overreaction to that:

He followed that up by talking about this clash between Alistair Campbell and Nigel Farage:

Fallacy in the Wild

In the Fallacy in the Wild we looked at this clip from House, MD:

Then we discussed this clip from Blue Bloods:

And we finished with this clip from The Amazing Spider-Man:

 

Fake News

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

1. Well, first of all, he has got tremendous support, and he really does among a certain group of people. People that like families. I mean, you know, he made a statement having to do with families. That doesn’t mean that people that aren’t a member of a big and beautiful family with 400 children around and everything else, it doesn’t mean that a person doesn’t have… He’s not against anything, but he loves family. It’s very important to him. He grew up in a very interesting family situation and he feels family is good, and I don’t think there’s anything wrong in saying that.
2. What a lot of people don’t realise, I think a thing that a lot of people don’t even think about, you know, it’s really incredible, and I think about it a lot. You get asked a lot of questions. People like you… not you, other people, ask questions that are not good questions, some are good questions, some are really bad questions, and then they complain “Oh, he didn’t answer the question.” Why would I want to talk about that? The things that these people ask about, when they just want to have something they can complain about. I’m not going to do that.
3. One of the things I do in a show like yours, you… your show… you know, you see it on Fox, but where you really see it is all over the place. They take clips of your show that you’re doing right now with me and if I do a good job they’re going to vote for me. They’re going to vote for me because it’s not just on Fox, it’s on… Fox is a smaller part of it. You’re on all over this… those little beautiful cell phones you’re on… you’re all over the place. You have a product. You have a great product. You have a great brand, so you have to get out. You have to get out. You have to do things like your show. And other shows.

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

 

The Democratic National Convention was not a logical fallacy

We talked about the excitement and hope shown at the DNC.

 

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

• Fox News personality Maria Bartiromo is well known for her insistence on due diligence and proper sourcing. As we’ve discussed before, when Kraken lawyer Sidney Powell claimed the 2020 election was riddled with massive fraud, Maria didn’t just give her a platform to spout nonsense, she asked for evidence, so Powell forwarded an email from her source, who claimed the wind told her about the fraud in a dream, and also mentioned that the wind tells her she’s a ghost, but she doesn’t believe it. That was good enough for Maria, who interviewed Powell the next day and kicked off a series of claims which ended with Fox paying $787.5 million to Dominion. Anyway, fast forward almost two years and Maria has learned her lesson. The source for her latest claim on Twitter was the wife of a friend of a friend, who apparently claimed she took her son to get a new driver’s license at the DMV office in Weatherford, Texas and they “Had a massive line of immigrants getting licenses and had a tent and table outside the front door of the DMV registering them to vote!” Maria’s friend’s friend’s wife then said they went to two more DMVs in Fort Worth and saw the same thing. While the post didn’t specify they were illegal immigrants, that’s the conclusion her followers came to, and they were curious why the DMV was registering illegal immigrants to vote. The non-Fox-media were curious too, but rather than accepting a racist third hand story at face value and adding a bit more racism in for good measure, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram actually looked into it. The fact that there isn’t a DMV office in Weatherford was the first clue it might not be 100% accurate, but there is a Department of Public Safety Driver License office there, but they didn’t have a tent or a registration drive when this supposedly happened. DPS spokesperson Sgt William Lockridge told the Star-Telegram “None of it is true” and added that assuming non-white Texans lining up to get licenses are immigrants, illegal or otherwise, is “kind of racist.” 
• In another manifestation of fascist-curious megalomaniac nerd’s simultaneously cosying up to and electronically repelling right-wing political megalomaniacs, Musk repeated his shit-Twitter X live campaign launch disaster with Ron de Santis that Trump ripped the piss out of at the time, with a shit-twitter/X interview with Trump. It took more than 40 minutes before anything could be viewed or heard and what could be seen and heard was Trump hemming, hawwing slurring and growling his weird, unhinged way through crowd sizes and the usual Rally greatest hits like a disoriented, racist Daffy Duck; as USA Today beautifully put it. Musk, meanwhile, has the interviewing skills of a stoned introvert. He did little but cheerlead Trump and agree with every bizarro thing that fell out of his mouth, while occasionally going on the kind of odd right-wing tangents you’d expect from a man too rich to ever be told to pipe down. Perhaps Trump and Musk share that in common along with social-media ineptness and unmerited sense of self-importance – and Musk at least bestowed the same gift equally on deSantis and Trump – online viewing disaster – that mastery of slick punchy media platform provision will get the first-time voting kids on board fo sho! Bwahahahaha!
• While Kamala jets around the country whipping Democrats into a hope-fuelled frenzy, Trump has mostly been playing golf and sulking, but occasionally his aides can get him to leave the confines of his golf clubs and talk to people. For example, last Thursday he took a trip to Montezuma Pass, Arizona to stand by the border wall he’s so proud of and talk to journalists. He called his wall “The Rolls-Royce of walls”, and lamented the pile of unused sections stacked nearby, which he claimed were evidence of Democrats desire for an open border. Unfortunately, like a lawyer in a landscape gardening parking lot, he had chosen the wrong place for his press conference, and the wall he was standing next to and praising was in fact built by the Obama administration. Trump could rightfully lay claim to the rusting discarded segments, which were part of an abandoned Trump administration attempt to extend the wall up a steep hill in Montezuma Canyon. The Trump wall made it halfway up the hill at a cost of $35 million a mile, and presumably stopped all the human traffickers, gang leaders, drug smugglers, and insane asylum patients who had made it all the way from South America but didn’t fancy walking halfway up a hill. That’s assuming, of course, that they couldn’t cross the border through one of the sections of Trump’s wall that literally fell over in a strong wind, or in one of the thousands of places where people cut through the wall with cheap power tools or climbed over it with $5 ladders.
• “In an honest system, I believe I would have won the election. In my heart, I no longer believe that I have a realistic path for electoral victory in the face of this relentless, systematic censorship and media control.” No, not Trump finally relenting in the face of a younger, more intelligent and popular candidate, but ol’ Worm-Brain Bear-Cycle himself; RFK Jr. He’s decided, through no fault of his own of course, that he needs to withdraw from the race in the face of dwindling support and plummeting polls. He’s not going to take his name off the ballots of course, noooo that’d be stupid, he’s just not going to do the stupid and stupidly expensive thing of bothering to campaign sufficiently to warrant being on the ballots. ​​He said he would stop campaigning and withdraw his name from ballots in battleground states to ensure he doesn’t swing the election to Harris. But he said he would keep his name on ballots in states that are not expected to be hotly contested. That way I guess he can still walk around with some votes and possibly even some dignity intact? Yeah right! He said he expected his name to be on the ballot in “most” states, but added polling “showed that by standing on the ballot in the battleground states, I would likely hand the election over to the Democrats with whom I disagree on the most existential issues — censorship, war and chronic disease.” Trouble is Robert I think many people disagree with you on those too, and those that do agree with you tend to have first discovered that they agree with Trump disagreeing with the Dems on those issues. As a kind of weird (ha!) tribute act to Trump’s MAGA Republicans I don’t see how RF thought he’d attract any votes – is he the more moderate end of rabid racist ring-wing-ism? The UK equivalent of the Liberal Democrats relationship with the Tories? Or is he the Reform vote – the refuge where people who think Trump isn’t weird enough go to? That might explain some of RFK Jr’s whole-hearted embracing of Q Anon type things. Of course aged 70 Bobby Jr is no longer the youngest candidate to Trump’s 78 and Biden’s absent 81, so maybe that had something to do with it – the kids aren’t going to turn up for you now boy. Natch RFK has thrown his weird behind Trump who, not unlike Nikki Haley and JD Vance, were once the visible alternative to the orange 78-year old 6-year old. Ah the power of the tantrum!
• January 6 insurrectionists have been caught in a wide variety of ways, from posing for press photographers while in the Capitol and volunteering their full name and hometown, to yelling Trump 2020 repeatedly on a plane heading out of DC until the flight crew turns the plane around and goes back to the terminal. The FBI received hundreds of thousands of tips from rioters’ ex-wives, neighbors, and, given the kind of people involved, probably a bunch of sworn enemies. Amateur internet detectives figured out the identities of some, while others shouted their name while livestreaming the assault on their own social media pages.14,000 hours of Capitol security footage, 2,000 hours of police bodycam footage and countless livestreams and news reports were run through facial recognition software to match with police mugshots and DMV photos of suspects. I bet at least one guy walked into a police station wearing an “I assaulted the Capitol on January 6 and all I got was this lousy t-shirt” t-shirt. But one of the most recent of all 1,400 or so charged with january 6 related offenses also put in the most work at help with his incrimination. Nathan Thornsberry, a 42-year old former Marine from Michigan, wrote a self published book called January 6: A Patriot’s Story, and published it on Amazon. Described as “an eyewitness account of the events of January 6th”, it places Thornsberry front and center during a series of violent incidents. But Thornsberry’s not an idiot. He used a nom-de-plume, Nathaniel Matthews, to avoid detection by authorities, then published it using his own Amazon account, which is linked to his real name and a phone number which also led authorities to his Facebook account. Oh, and the About the Author section includes multiple real biographical details including the town he was born in, his military service record, his degree and his alma mater. Having now linked Thornsberry to video footage of the insurrection, Prosecutors argue that his book details his direct involvement, and have entered several excerpts into evidence.
• Big-Mouth Billy Bass was a thing, a last century thing, millennials were born after it was a thing. What looked almost but not quite like one of those fishing trophies of a stuffed fish mounted on a shaped wooden plaque with a gold engraved plate below, almost except it was all made of plastic, would suddenly jump into life at the press of a button and the front end of the fish would turn towards the button-presser and start singing Bobby McFerrin’s “Don’t worry be Happy” or Al Green’s “Take me to the River” – So popular were these that Al Green reportedly said he earned more royalties from the sale of the animatronic fish than through ordinary record sales. So of course how do we Make America Great Again well we shill a shit plastic trout on a plastic wooden presidential seal with a jacket shirt and tie and fins and stupid hair as Trumpy Trout – but we’re not going to risk having to pay royalties to Trump – and you’d be certain he’d claim them – by using his voice to say actual things, we’ll get the cheapest and worst impressionist – hey that kid in IT can do a fair impression let’s get him to do it – to say really poor fish-themed versions of Trump’s ‘popular’ statements “Some Bass are bad fish, crazy fish, druggy fish, but some Bass are good fish and i only love some of them” really badly synched to the ‘movement’ of his trouty pout and flapping fins in ‘High Fidelity sound’. The term High-Fidelity has not been used in advertising since Al Jolson was miraculously synched to actual recordings of him singing in the first ever talkie – was that when America was Great? At the height of cultural appropriation of suppressed people? If this was the UK the website would have been made by Led by Donkeys as an elaborate spoof set up to dupe the stupid and the self-obsessed – which of course it does – you can own your own piece of shilled fish-based shit plastic for $69.99 – this deal is not available in stores – yeah no kidding! And thus costs 10 dollars to ship oh and you’ll have to buy batteries too and from what I recall they take 4 D-sized batteries and last no time at all! Possibly significantly the second tab on the website after Home is Arbitration Agreement – even before you get to Customer Service and Shipping. Yeah you know some things are best left in the past – rubber animated fish and Trump’s presidency!
• Trump’s campaign might have resembled a badly wounded, morbidly obese warthog lately, but fear not, they’ve rehired Corey Lewandowski! If you don’t remember Corey, allow me to provide a quick precis of his career since joining now convicted felon Trump’s campaign in January 2015, alongside now convicted felon Michael Cohen, Sam Nunberg, and now convicted felon Roger Stone, soon to be joined by now convicted felon Paul Manafort, now convicted felon Steve Bannon, and now convicted felon Peter Navarro. He assaulted both a reporter and a protester within a little over a week in March 2016, but wasn’t fired until the following month when he clashed with Manafort, after which he tried his hand at TV punditry, was fired from One America News for also occasionally appearing on Fox, and then Fox cut ties with him after he appeared drunk on air. Lewandowski, you may be surpised to learn, is not a convicted felon, having only been accused of misdemeanor battery when he sexually harassed the wife of a Trump donor at an event in Las Vegas. In 2022, that led to a plea agreement involving community service and impulse control counselling, as well as a final rebuke from a Trump spokesperson who said Lewandowski would no longer be associated with Trump World, but perhaps they were talking about an as yet unrealised theme park, because as I mentioned, he’s back. Within an hour, he had already fucked up with a Tweet announcing his return, ending with a call to action to “get off the couch and join us”. Seriously? Has he not been watching… anything for the past month? Speaking of JD Vance, he had a go at shaking off the ‘weird’ mantle by doing a normal thing – going into a donut shop in Valdosta, Georgia and just buying some donuts. Reporters from C-SPAN and a couple of other places were there, and his team was filming for social media, so all he had to do was not be weird. And oh Jesus did he fail hard. His team had forgotten to give him actual things to say, presumably under the impression that he might be capable of a human interaction with a shop worker, but instead he locked eyes with each of the three staff members behind the counter and asked each in turn how long they had worked there, and no matter what they said, he follow up was “Okay, good”. Which is one more word that the poor girl whose job it was to serve him donuts was able to muster when, after she made it very clear she did not want to be filmed interacting with him, he said “I’m JD Vance, I’m running for Vice President”. She said “Okay” and managed not to add “just tell me what fucking donuts you want, man, so we can be done here.” When that part of the transaction did come round, the bearded charisma vacuum mentioned a couple of donut types and then just asked for “whatever makes sense”, because he didn’t actually want donuts, he wanted some footage that proved he was likeable and hopefully didn’t include any mentions of upholstery. Well, one out of two’s not bad.
• Comparatively quiet week this week in British Politics insofar as there’s been no riots, and only one donor cronyism accusation – a Labour donor who gave £200,000 to the party was offered a role as a civil servant working in the exchequer with Rachel Reeves but has stepped down since – just like the Tory donor Mohammed Mansour who after having donated over 5 million to the Tories last year has returned the Knighthood that was rushed through before Easter by Sunak to avoid the traditional new year’s honours list and the king’s birthday honour’s list – no, no of course he hasn’t and neither have Simon Blagden nor Oluwole Kolade who donated over a million pounds to the Tory party two years ago stepped down from their senior appointments subsequently landed at NHS England and UKHSA – and surprisingly no-one in the Tory party has yet come forward to employ the Two Wrongs fallacy to justify it. The two parties are however blaming each other for the upcoming rise in home energy costs that are about to hit us in the autumn – is it me or does it seem to have gone up more frequently since the governing body in charge of not letting the price go up too much were empowered to prevent the prices going up too much? In a bit of a downer from the optimism of Blair’s 1997 election “Things can only get better” theme – Starmer announced today that “Things are going to get worse before they get better” the b-side of the not so popular 12” remix of the D-Ream hit featuring Prof Brian Cox on keyboards. In Tory leadership news Tom Tugenhat announced two more supporters had put their signatures to his throwing his Tugenhat in the ring – except one of them, Alexander Brown MSP, didn’t exist – still when your chances are non-existent Tom why go to the bother of ensuring your office uses the names of actually existing MSP’s like say Alexander Stewart for instance? And in another disappointment the Met Police ended its investigation into the insider dealing that led to members of Sunak’s inner circle placing bets on when the election would be called days before Sunak called the election. The offences being investigated apparently did not meet the “high bar” to prove misconduct in public office, the force said on Friday. I bet either the new police commissioner will be included in Sunak’s resignation honours list or the bar might need to be lowered a bit then!! Bet that won’t happen either!

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:

Two Wrongs Make a Right Fallacy – FT#156 Transcript

Jim: Hello, and welcome to Fallacious Trump, the podcast where we use the insane ramblings of grown up Eric Cartman to explain logical fallacies. I’m your host, Jim.

Mark: The host, Mark. A logical fallacy is an error in reasoning that results in bad or invalid arguments. And the logical fallacy we’re looking at this week is the two wrongs make a right fallacy, vis a vis Eric. Carmen. I don’t think he’s that grown up. He’s bigger. Not really.

Jim: He’s taller.

Mark: Yeah, taller. Everyone’s taller than Carmen.

Jim: He hasn’t changed. You respect my authority.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: So, yeah, the two wrongs make a right fantasy. This is kind of similar to the two court way, which is, you did it, too.

Mark: Yeah, I know I am. Ah, but what are you?

Jim: Yeah, two court quay. In my opinion. I think it is basically about calling out hypocrisy. So when someone accuses you of doing something or says that you’ve done it, you’re bad because you did something.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: If you say, well, you did it or you did something just as bad, what you’re saying is that they’re being hypocritical for calling you out on it. This one.

Mark: Right. Yeah.

Jim: Is essentially justifying your behaviour by saying that someone else did a similar thing or something as bad or would do it given the chance.

Mark: Okay. So you can add insult to insult.

Jim: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Mark: By saying, yeah, this. The reason I’m doing this is because they did that.

Jim: Yeah. You’re not attacking.

Mark: They would have done that.

Jim: Who is accusing you?

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: You’re saying, well, it’s okay, you know, I’m m completely justified in doing this because someone else did it first. So, you know.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: So, you know, I can have a problem with me having done this because.

Mark: It’S fine, they’ve done it.

Jim: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Mark: Yeah, yeah. So you’ve. You’re keeping the bad out of the equation.

Jim: If you’re not going to condemn them, which you didn’t, obviously, presumably, then you can’t condemn them, then you can’t possibly. Yeah, yeah. That’s how it goes.

Mark: Everything’s fine.

Jim: Yeah.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: So our first Trump example comes from the dying days of his first term. let’s hope only term.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: When he was nominating Amy Coney Barrett to the supreme Court and to defend.

Donald Trump: Our God given freedoms. I nominated Amy Coney Barrett. She’s gonna be great. She’s gonna be great. She’s gonna be there for a long time. Gonna be there for a long time. And they vote on her today. You know, tonight. Today, the Democrats are saying that’s a terrible thing. They do the same. First of all, it’s not terrible. Justice Ginsburg said, no, he’s the president for four years. If somebody comes up in the fourth year, what’s the difference? She said, of course, she was referring to Clinton or Obama, I guess.

Jim: Right.

Donald Trump: She perhaps wouldn’t have said it if it was me, but she did say it, and that’s the way it is. And they would do the same. Can you imagine Schumer crying, Chuck, saying, you know, well, we think it’s highly unethical to appoint a Supreme Court justice, radical left Supreme Court justice, because it’s the fourth year, and we think, therefore we won’t do it. Can you imagine that? They would do it? The only difference is they’d do it faster than we did it.

Jim: So he’s saying that because given the chance, Democrats would nominate a Supreme Court justice in the fourth year of their presidency, therefore, it’s fine that he’s doing.

Mark: It, despite the fact that they complained like crazy when.

Jim: Well, not only did they complain, but they blocked Obama’s nomination.

Mark: Yeah. On the basis that, well, it was.

Jim: In last year that in 2016, Scalia died 269 days before the election. And so Obama, nominated Merrick Garland, and they blocked that nomination, citing that it was too close to the election and that they should, give the american people the chance to make the choice of who gets to pick the next Supreme Court justice. So the problem wasn’t that Democrats were saying it was terrible and it shouldn’t be done. Democrats were saying, you didn’t let us do it for these reasons, and therefore you should play by the same rules. But they obviously didn’t, because it was only 46 days prior to the election that Ginsburg died. And they were like, they would do it. And, in fact, Lindsey Graham, who had said at the time, in 2016, hold my feet to the fire, you know, keep me honest about this. If it was a Republican, it wouldn’t be okay to do it, and it’s not okay to do it when it’s a Democrat. And then four years later, he was like, of course it’s fine for us to do it now. And, you know, the Democrats would, if they do, it, given the chance, if they had the control of the Senate, then, yeah, they’d have done it.

Mark: And how dare you hold my m feet.

Jim: Absolutely. Yes.

Mark: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jim: But according to, according to Trump, because Democrats would do it if they had the opportunity, then it’s absolutely fine for him to do it and find things. Why is anyone getting upset about it? It’s crazy.

Mark: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jim: And he had a similar response to what he saw as disparate treatment of Dinesh D’Souza and Rosie O’Donnell.

Donald Trump: Rosie O’Donnell, who violated the campaign finance laws as badly as anybody I’ve ever seen. And nothing happens to her. Right. And yet Enesh violated that. He made a little mistake and they wanted to destroy him. So we pardoned him. We pardon, by the way, he made a mistake. Rosie O’DonNell that was a massive violation of the campaign finance laws. But Dinesh, Dinesh D’Souza, they wanted to put him in jail. I don’t know. I think he might have even gone to jail for a period of time for doing something that was really very understandable. Rosie O’Donnell five times. What she did is incredible. Nothing happens. And then she gets on and says what a bad guy I am. I’m not a bad guy.

Jim: Yeah.

Mark: Not the way he stops himself saying, dinesh, violator. No, he made a mistake. Yeah.

Jim: So, yeah, according to Trump, Rosie O’Donnell violated campaign finance laws like no one’s ever seen. Like the absolutely worst, most egregious violations. Dinesh D’Souza made a little mistake. Little mistake, you know, and it could happen to anybody. It’s completely understandable. And they, and they came down on.

Mark: Him like a tonne of bricks.

Jim: Yeah. Wanted to, put him in prison. So we pardoned him because that’s the right thing to do. And, you know, she’d done this thing and it was much worse. Five times. So here’s what actually happened in those two cases. They were quite different. And that, may be part of the reason they were treated differently.

Mark: Could be, do you think?

Jim: Because what Dinesh Dsouza did was he donated $10,000 to an old friend of his campaign, to Wendy Long’s campaign. The limit is $5,000. So he said that it was from him and his wife. And then he convinced his lover at the time to donate another 5000 in her name and her spouse’s name and his assistant to donate another 5000 in his and his spouse’s name. And then he said he would reimburse those people the $5,000 each.

Mark: Right.

Jim: So he. He basically gave well over, the amount you’re legally allowed to give by getting other people to put their name to it and then reimbursing. So he fraudulently used straw donors to donate far more money than you’re allowed to, to an individual, and then covered.

Mark: It up by paying them, and calling something else.

Jim: He paid them, he reimbursed them the money, and he used. He had them use their own names to pretend that it wasn’t him doing it.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: What Rosie O’Donnell did was contribute to five different politicians in her own name above the amount that you were allowed to. And she said she thought that if it was above a limit that you’re allowed to, they would just return whatever was above the limit.

Mark: Right.

Jim: That’s not how that works. Yeah, but when authorities looked into it, they were like, well, she clearly thought that’s how it worked. It was a mistake. She wasn’t trying to cover anything up. She used her own name. She didn’t kind of do it in multiple transactions to try and make it look legit or anything like that. She just. She just donated this amount of money, expected a return of anything that was not okay and. And didn’t, you know, that’s not how that worked. But they didn’t prosecute her for it, because actually, part of that law is you have to willfully know that you’re breaking the law. Dinesh willfully knew he was breaking the law, admitted that he knew he was.

Mark: Breaking the law by using other people’s names.

Jim: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Mark: Giving them money.

Jim: He was deliberately trying to cover it up. And he admitted that he knew what he was doing was wrong.

Mark: Yes, that’s right. Yes, he did. And then kind of backtracked on that. Once he got the pardon, he then changes his story. Yeah.

Jim: So the two cases were a little bit different, but as Trump tells it, Dinesh made a little mistake, whereas Rosie O’Donnell deliberately, repeatedly committed horrible campaign finance.

Mark: Fraud greater than even Dinesh D’Souza.

Jim: Yeah. On a scale no one’s seen.

Mark: Yes.

Jim: So, finally, in this section, we have a, tweet about Senator Roy Blunt. This was, during the January 6 hearings. Democrats showed lots of footage of January 6 and all the bad stuff that happened and violence, etcetera. And a reporter, Ben Siegel, asked Roy Blunt if the videos changed his mind at all about the conviction or the lack of conviction of Trump in the impeachment. And Roy Blunt said, I mean, you have a Starmer where people all over the country were doing similar kinds of things. I don’t know what the other side will show from Seattle and Portland and other places. He’s suggesting that they should.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: During the January 6 hearings, show footage from protests that were in response to police violence against black people. Because there was also violence.

Mark: There was all kinds of stuff going on. Yeah, yeah. It’s another version of that argument, isn’t it?

Jim: Absolutely.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: Yeah. It’s a repeated thing that is saying, you know, January 6 wasn’t that bad. Look at all the BLM stuff. This is the same thing they are. They are using that and saying, look, nothing happened to those people. Lots happened to those people. Lots of them got arrested. So therefore, January 6 was fine. And you can’t have a problem with.

Mark: It because two wrongs make a right. Yeah, there you go. Exactly.

Jim: And now is the time, I think, for Mark’s. British politics corner.

Mark: Well, only. Only two examples this week because I just got too depressed looking at stuff. So, but I did. The flavour of the month. Kemi Badenoch, who’s the front runner for the leadership of the Tory party, and prior to that was someone who, until the general election on the 4 July, seemed to use the COVID of being the minister for women and equalities, for the equality hub to stoke the culture wars in order to frighten wavering Tory voters to vote Tory and bring in all sorts of various inequalities. In June this year, David Tennant, yes, him, was given an award as LGBTQ ally of the year, and at the ceremony made allusions to how disappointing it was that such a thing needed to be celebrated and how it would be great if Kemi Badenoch simply kept quiet and stopped sticking her, ah, nose into stuff, particularly as equalities. Minister, with the express purpose of actually promoting inequality. Kemi responded on GB News when asked why she actually seemed to be playing the racism card. So here’s David Tennant, and then we go into Kemi.

David Tennant: I suppose, if I’m honest, I’m a little depressed by the fact that acknowledging. That everyone has the right to be. Who they want to be and live. Their life, how they want to live it, as long as they’re not hurting. Anyone else, should merit any kind of special award or m special mention, because it’s common sense, isn’t it? It is human decency. We shouldn’t live in a world where. That is worth remarking on. However, until we wake up and Kemi. Badenoch doesn’t exist anymore, I don’t wish ill of her. I just wish her to shut up.

Camilla Tominey: Obviously, when he stood up on stage. He didn’t mention your colour. You then condemned him as a straight white man. Was it about race or is that just the context of these kind of comments for you personally,

Kemi Badenoch: it’s not about race at all. It’s about showing that they are hypocrites. And it wasn’t about him being white or, you know, I said he was rich, a rich, lefty, white, male. It’s that they play identity politics and they have a ladder of who’s up and who, you know, who’s a protected group and by their own rules. In the same way, as we’ve seen them in other circumstances, they criticise other people for going after, black people, black women in particular. But when it’s them, the rules suddenly change. And that’s what I was highlighting. It doesn’t have anything to do with his skin colour. I don’t judge skin colour, but they do, except when they don’t want it to matter. Like in that instance,

Mark: somewhere. Somewhere in there, she’s trying to worm out of playing the racist card they play identity politics. So she’s just got in with everything. Cis white, rich, lefty, metropolitan, liberal elite, tofu eating wokerati white male. Fair play to the tv news presenter to say he didn’t actually call you that. He just said, you know, one day we’ll wake up and Cami Bradnot will be dead. And until that day, we’ve just got to hope she is quiet. It’s not, you know, of course, she took offence at that. And in taking offence at that, justifies her offensiveness by calling him a rich white elite, you know, who ought to keep his nose out of politics. Says they have this rubric where at some point they will place play the racist card when it suits them. And, They didn’t, but they will. But they didn’t. But they will.

Jim: Yeah, yeah. In response to what he said, which was the. The fact that we’re identifying this, the fact that this award has anything to do with acknowledging LGBTQ people is a bad thing. It shouldn’t. We shouldn’t need that to exist. Then said nothing about anyone’s identity. And she’s like, straight, white, male talking about identity politics. How dare he?

Mark: Exactly. Particularly, you know, particularly because I’m m a black woman and it happens all the time.

Jim: To me, I think she’s missed the point that it’s her own awful personality and views that are, causing people to call her out by name and wish she didn’t exist.

Mark: Yes, exactly, exactly. Nothing to do with your identity as you, nothing to do with your identity with a particular group, you know, either. Bye. Gender, race, creed, belief, sexual orientation or other. It’s just you that. Yes, it’s identity politics. Yes.

Jim: Uh-huh.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: Okay.

Mark: meanwhile, yes, I did spend some time listening to Nigel Farage, who seems to be. He steers just close enough to say, well, I can do this because they do it. But he sort of veers off at becomes a question, becomes one of those kind of. I think we should. I’m just asking. I think these questions should be asked. He does a lot of that latterly, but way back in 2016, I think I’ve identified where he’s done it. So he’s on good morning, Britain. So the breakfast news thing with Alistair Campbell as the former communications chief for Tony Blair’s Labour government. And here’s Nigel Farage, privately run, self aggrandizing elected racism denier. And I’m m just asking questions. Conspiracy theorists. And they were talking about Brexit in 2016. And Farage claims to invented the whole thing, apparently. And as Campbell asks when these liars will be taken to task, and I think Farraj counters with the fallacy,

Alistair Campbell: when are you people. When are you going to be held to account for the pack of lies you told? Are we going to stay in the customs union or not?

Nigel Farage: No.

Alistair Campbell: Right. And, did Boris Johnson say we would have?

Nigel Farage: No.

Alistair Campbell: Yes, he did. 350 million pounds. Are we going to get it or not? Are we going to get it or not?

Nigel Farage: Should I tell you what the biggest lie is?

Alistair Campbell: 350 million pounds are we going to get?

Nigel Farage: You told us it was a common market, it was about trade. And not to worry our little head, 50 years of lies. And we’ve now redressed the balance

Mark: So his justification for the lies on the side of the bus and Boris saying we won’t come out of the customs union, is that he thinks that in 1974, when the common market was about trade, which it was in 1974, he thinks that, because that was a lie and there’s been 50 years of lies, or 50 years has passed since, he thinks that’s a lie. They are justified in telling these lies.

Jim: Yeah.

Mark: So this one is definitely. Well, we are telling lies because you told lies.

Jim: Yeah. That makes it okay.

Mark: It’s not. Yeah. And that makes it okay. Absolutely does, yeah. Sum 41 there with their I death metal classic we’re all to blame.

Jim: And in the fallacy in the wild, we like to talk about the fantasy of the week from a non political perspective. And our first example this week comes from House, Md.

Mark: Yay.

Jim: House has a lot of things that he feels the need to justify. In this instance, he is given a patient drugs to deal with steroid abuse when they claim not to have been abusing steroids.

House: I had three reasons.

Lisa Cuddy: Good ones?

House: Well, we’ll see in a minute. I’m just making them up now. He lied to me first.

Lisa Cuddy: Your mother did teach you two wrongs. Don’t make a right.

House: If he lies to me about not taking steroids and I lied to him about not treating steroids, he’s cured.

Jim: So, I mean, there is. You can see the logic there from a distance. Yeah, it kind of m makes sense.

Mark: Yeah. It’s one of those. It’s a 50 yard logic test. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jim: And the problem obviously, is if the guy isn’t lying, because House is only assuming that this guy is lying based on a few things that he’s picked up. And if the guy isn’t lying, then it’s actually quite dangerous to give him the drugs that are for steroid abuse.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: And obviously, because this is quite early in the episode, turns out he wasn’t abusing steroids. And more stuff happens that leads to their differential diagnosis. So. Yeah, yeah.

Mark: It’s fantastic.

Jim: The fact that he thought that the guy was lying meant that it was fine for him to give that he then lied about what they did.

Mark: What the. Yeah, yeah.

Jim: It’s perfectly justified. Yeah.

Mark: There, there are lots. There’s lots of. Basically, that’s the plot to every episode. Yeah. So he kind of gets away with lying about something or other.

Jim: Yeah. The unofficial slogan of House was everybody lies, basically. That’s kind of. It’s. It’s that and it’s never lupus were the two things that they said over and over again.

Mark: Yeah, yeah.

Jim: So our, second example is from blue Bloods.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: And this, in this episode, Jamie, the youngest member of the Reagan family, who is usually pretty much a goody two shoes, has had a case kind of ripped out from under him by a former colleague, and he’s looking for some, some help from his sister.

Erin Reagan: So I’ve done business with Hoffman. He’s a good detective. Why did he steal your collar?

Jamie Reagan: We graduated from academy together. He was second in the class.

Erin Reagan: So he just has it out for number one.

Jamie Reagan: I don’t know what his problem is.

Erin Reagan: But he made detective and you haven’t yet. So maybe you have the same kind of problem.

Jamie Reagan: Maybe I do, but I play by the rules.

Erin Reagan: Until now.

Jamie Reagan: Fire with fire.

Jim: So.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: Fight fire with fire. Jamie has. Has decided that he is going to get this guy back. He’s going to steal a case from him.

Mark: Right.

Jim: And justifying it. A thing that he would never normally do because it’s not the kind of thing you’re supposed to do as a New York beat copy of. But he’s justifying because it happened to him. You know, the other guy did it to him first. So you’ve got to fight fire with fire perfectly.

Mark: That’s the american way.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: Yeah.

Mark: Which leads neatly into.

Jim: Yeah. Similar kind of getting even scenario. We have a clip from the amazing Spider man. The Andrew Garfield Spider man with the brilliant Martin Sheen as Uncle Ben.

Mark: Yep.

Jim: This follows a scene where Peter has just humiliated a bully on the basketball court.

Uncle Ben: Was that true?

Peter Parker: What?

Uncle Ben: What I heard in there just now. Did you humiliate that boy?

Peter Parker: Yeah, I did. But this guy. This guy deserved it.

Uncle Ben: Did he?

Peter Parker: Yeah.

Uncle Ben: Was he the kid that hit you? was he?

Peter Parker: Yeah. Yeah, but.

Uncle Ben: So all this is about getting even. If so, I guess you must feel pretty good about yourself now, right? Am I right or wrong?

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: Oh, Uncle Ben, you always know the right thing to say.

Mark: Yeah, uncle. Uncle Ben. Just call me Jeb Bartley. It’s the perfect breakdown of the justification for the, uh-huh. Two wrongs fallacy is. So you must feel pretty good now.

Jim: Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely.

Mark: Not only have you managed to beat the guy senseless and or stuck into the ceiling, and you’ve justified feeling good about it in a kind of righteous way.

Jim: He used his great power without great responsibility. he used it to simply get even and make the guy feel bad because he was a bad guy and it was vengeance rather than helping people.

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: Okay, so last time we played a new one, it was clearly because you cheated. Insofar as you knew the answer even before we began. Therefore, it is only fair and right that I’m not prevented from using similarly underhand means and can progress even as far as blackmail, kidnapped, extortion with impunity. Yeah, fair enough.

Jim: Yeah.

Mark: I feel pretty good about myself right now.

Jim: Completely.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: Makes a lot of sense. Yeah.

Mark: Yeah. Yeah.

Jim: So, these statements are, answers that he’s given recently in one on one interviews. Because he kind of. He’s been shying away from the big campaign stops. He hasn’t been going out meeting the people, going to diners and you know, offering them to buy everyone a burger and then running away before the Bill comes, or any of his usual stuff. But he has been sitting down with friendly journalists and saying incoherent things into a microphone. So these are things that might have been in response to questions, but might as well not have been. It didn’t really matter what he was asked. He would just. Yeah, he would just say stuff. So the first one is in response to a question about JD Vance and whether he was actually the right pick as vice president, specifically in response to the childless cat ladies thing. So he said, well, first of all, he has got tremendous support and he really does among a certain group of people, people that like families. I mean, you know, he made a statement having to do with families. That doesn’t mean that people that aren’t a member of a big and beautiful family with 400 children around and everything else. It doesn’t mean that a person doesn’t have. He’s not against anything, but he loves family. It’s very important to him. He grew up in a very interesting family situation and he feels family is good. And I don’t think there’s anything wrong in saying that.

Mark: Right. 400 children and everything else. Yeah.

Jim: Uh-huh.

Mark: 400 children and everything else. Yeah. Yeah.

Jim: Statement number two. What a lot of people don’t realise, I think a thing that a lot of people don’t even think about. You know, it’s really incredible. And I think about it a lot. You get asked a lot of questions. People like you, not you. Other people ask questions that are not good questions. Some are good questions, some are really bad questions. And then they complain. Oh, he didn’t answer the question. Why would I want to talk about that? The things that these people ask about when they just want to have something that they can complain about. I’m not going to do that.

Mark: Right. Okay. Yeah. People like you. Not you. Yeah. Yeah. Other people. Yeah.

Jim: Statement number three. He said, right. One of the things I do in a show like yours, you, your show, you know, you see it on fox, but where you really see it is all over the place. They take clips of your show that you’re doing right now with me, and if I do a good job, they’re gonna vote for me. M they’re gonna vote for me because it’s not just on fox. It’s on fox is a smaller part of it. You’re on all over this. Those little beautiful cell phones you’re on. You’re all over the place. You have a product. You have a great product. You have a great brand. So you have to get out. You have to get out. You have to do things like your show and other shows. Right.

Mark: Did he get to the end of his point then? No. right. So basically saying, I’m coming on your show because I’m, guaranteed it’s not just on the wireless. Yes. It’s going to be on those beautiful cell phones. Okay. right. God. Okay. So big, big, beautiful family with 400 children around. that sounds like he’s gonna say that because it’s just a bit of hyperbole. is he going to talk about fox in those, those terms? Tell Fox that. that’s why he’s on fox. okay. Okay. So I’m gonna try and channel some of our, our social, media participants techniques and just go with the opposite of the one that my gut thinks is. I thought I did that every week. yeah. Okay. So I. Oh, no.

Mark: The good, I just, I desperately want to hear him say the good questions, good questions, bad questions. Then they complain. I’m not going to complain, but that does, sound like it’s a gym sized joke. Three and two have got the same you. Your show, you, not you. Okay. Right. Okay. I’m so up. So consequent to that. I’m going to say the number two is the one you made up.

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

Mark: I think by the big, beautiful family before?

Jim: Okay, yeah. Number one.

Mark: Yeah. Yeah.

Jim: Is.

Mark: Yeah.

Donald Trump: Real well, first of all, he’s got tremendous support, and he really does among a certain group of people, people that like families. I mean, you know, he made a statement having to do with families. That doesn’t mean that people that aren’t a member of a big and beautiful family with 400 children around and everything else. It doesn’t mean that a person doesn’t have, he’s not against anything, but he loves family. It’s very important to him. He grew up in a very interesting family situation and he feels family is good. And I don’t think there’s anything wrong in saying that.

Mark: It’s just, it’s so that. So he’s saying he likes people that like families. He’s really does. Amongst a certain group of people. People that like families.

Jim: people that don’t like families don’t like him.

Mark: Exactly. That’s not to say doesn’t appeal. They’re not important. So people who don’t like families, we also. What news? But he comes from a very interesting family and he feels families good. And there’s. Everyone was saying that. Yeah, it’s just. What the hell? You just think. Has he been seen in the same room as JD Vance yet? You know? not for a while now, but.

Jim: I mean, yeah, the thing is, Vance didn’t say I like families or families are good. He said childless people shouldn’t have the same rights as people with children.

Mark: So it’s a little bit different. Tremendous efforts of will to turn it into. Yeah. I’m guessing that part of his interesting family situation is that when they realised what he’d grown up into, they just disowned him and said, no, we’ve never had any children. And that’s why he wants to take away their rights. Yeah.

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

Mark: Yeah. Though I’m less convinced as we go on.

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

Donald Trump: One of the things like doing a show like yours, your show, you know, you see it on Fox, but where you really see it is all over the place. They take clips of your show that you’re doing right now with me and if I do a good job, they’re going to vote for me. They’re going to vote for me because it’s not just on Fox, it’s on Fox is a smaller part of it. You’re on all over this. Those little beautiful cell phones you’re on. You’re all over the place. You have a product. You have a great product. You have a great brand. So you have to get out. You have to get out. You have to do things like your.

Mark: Show and other shows in an attempt to not offend everybody and include everyone. He’s kind of just has to go, oh, yeah, you have to do like your show. Oh, and there are other shows. And it’s not just. You’re not just on fox foxes small either. He’s struggling to say something. Oh, he’s got no idea what he’s talking about.

Jim: No he’s got both of those. Both are true. There’s number of words to say, nothing at all in the end.

Mark: Yeah, yeah.

Jim: All he’s basically said are, sometimes you see clips of shows on social media.

Mark: Yes.

Jim: That’s all it is. Like, yeah, part of the reason I go on tv is because sometimes they’ll put clips of me on tv. Not on tv.

Mark: Yes. Yeah.

Jim: On other media, see them on the Internet.

Mark: If I only speak on wax cylinders, then I’m not going to get out there.

Jim: The context for this, such as it is, was.

Mark: Right.

Jim: He had. Just. He was on Fox, he’d been asked a question about Internet censorship, that kind of thing. You know, the thing that people on the right say about being silenced and stuff.

Mark: Yeah, yeah.

Jim: And he claimed that, that Google had not contacted him about suppressing a story about him to apologise yet, but they, they probably would.

Mark: Right.

Jim: And then this was like the next thing he said. There wasn’t another question.

Mark: All right. I was gonna say, that’s context. Yeah, yeah, yeah, context.

Jim: This was not in response to her asking anything. This was following on from something completely separate and I don’t know why led him there at all. It’s.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: Just something going on inside his head. So you did get that, right. Number two was something I made up. Yeah, completely. It was just a stream of consciousness nonsense.

Mark: It’s perfect. It was, it was a toss up between, you know, it’s you, you, not you that. Yours, your show.

Jim: When I started writing that paragraph, I did not know where, where it was going or.

Mark: With Trump. M very good. And, I guess that’s actually, you’ve got in, you’ve got under his skin and into that, you know, hollow cavity that’s within. Between his ears when he’s just hearing the words echoed and then it triggers the next thing. So that. Yeah. What a lot of people don’t realise, I think a lot of people don’t even think about, you know, it’s really incredible. I think about it. You don’t think about it, but I do. You get asked a lot of questions. Well, not you. And the questions they ask are not good questions, but some are good, some are really bad. And then they complain. You didn’t answer the question and then you’re getting on to complain. It is the perfect thing. And, ah, somebody’s got to pick that as real.

Jim: It’s kind of like one of those, you know, the things you do on a, on a phone where you type a word and then it suggests the next word. And you just keep hitting. Okay on the next word. Yeah, kind of.

Mark: It’s that. Oh, it’s that one word at a time storytelling thing where you’ve got.

Jim: You fold over the page and give it to someone else and they have to.

Mark: Yeah. Yeah.

Jim: So, yeah, I think I managed to fool a reasonable number of people on the socials with that.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: By just kind of randomly writing it out off top med.

Mark: Are they looking at it on their beautiful cell phones?

Jim: I think they are, yeah. On.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: On Facebook, we have Fennec, who says, I think one is fake news, because while rambling and nonsensical, it seems to stay on the same topic from start to finish. I’m not at all sure that the orange clown is capable of maintaining that kind of continuity. Andrew says, I’m going with number one since it’s the only one with a number reference in it, 400. And since they all seem to be word vomit, that’s the only way I can differentiate them. And Ben said, I vaguely remember him saying bits of all three, but think three sounds like the most likely to be compiled by Jim. That being said, I would love to hear him be such a sycophant. Yeah.

Mark: Get your wish. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jim: And on Patreon, Anders says, I have a great. A great answer on my beautiful little phone. It’s number three that you made up, but foxen is not a part of it. And all the others are real. One and two are real. Vote for me.

Mark: Nice.

Jim: Renee Z says, this is tremendous. Poor mark. His brain will explode like mine just did. I’ll be back with an answer shortly. Okay, I’m back. After processing this nonsense, I’m choosing three as fake news. Although I can hear him talk, talking about little beautiful cell phones.

Mark: Yeah, yeah. Wow.

Jim: Says, what the hell, Jim? There’s nothing there. No subject, no information, and not one, sir. Holy crap. So that rotting orange brain could have said all three, but I think number two is the one you crafted out of a scrabble bag.

Mark: Ah, well done.

Jim: There you go.

Mark: Yeah, yeah. It’s nice because that number two is hidden behind number three. That. Yeah, yeah. Nice because it makes number three look more ridiculous than camouflaged in there. Yes, exactly. Makes it slightly suspect. Very good.

Jim: Stephen Bickle says, I’m going with number three.

Mark: Ah.

Jim: Number two digs on the media. A trump fave. And number one has an exaggeration of the level of that. He also loves number three. I can’t even tell what he’s talking about, which means it’s likely true. But I feel he would have name dropped at least once. Somewhere in there. Yeah.

Mark: No, yeah, yeah. And he’s talking about Fox, so, yeah.

Jim: True Ozzy on banks that I’m going with number one as fake news because it sounds like Trump is talking about JD Vance having tremendous support, and that’s clearly fake news.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: Scott says, oh, my. For number two, Donald sure hates being asked actual questions, so that’s probably real. Number three goes so far off the rails so quickly, it also must be true. That leaves number one. Although rambling, disjointed is probably fake. Is it? Is it?

Mark: Yeah, it’s lovely, isn’t it? You think? Oh, yeah, that’s. That. No, wait a minute. Oh, I’ve got to go back and start again now. Yeah.

Jim: One eyed Nick says, what? There are two of those. That dementia Don burbled into his diet Coke. Did you just lose it and make up all three? This week, I’m going with number one being fake because it sounds like he’s talking about JD Vance. And that’s sufficient reason to believe that worst orangutan never said it.

Mark: Nice. Yeah, yeah.

Jim: And finally, Willem says, assuming number one is fake, it’s hard to tell. He used to sound incredibly dumb in his rants, like an ignorant person. Now the rants are legit ravings of a mental patient having a psychotic break.

Mark: Or suddenly got an image of one through of the cuckoo snaps.

Jim: So, So, yeah, I think I beat everyone except one person on that one, so, yeah.

Mark: Ah, wow.

Jim: I’m feeling pretty good about myself.

Mark: M. Yeah. Yeah, pretty good.

Jim: But I didn’t beat you, which is really the only one that matters, so I shall have to work harder.

Mark: Very kind of. Yeah, that’s right. I can hear you saying, hissing it between clenched teeth. Yeah. Yeah. All right, well, so maybe I won’t have to resort to, blackmail, kidnapping, extortion this. This time.

Jim: And it’s time for the part of the show that this week, at least, is called the Democratic National Convention. Was not a logical fallacy because I thought, what the hell? Let’s have three in a row that are about good things.

Mark: Yeah. Some happy, happy, happy, joy, joy. Yeah. Yeah.

Jim: It was full of quite joyful, happy people.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: Having fun, saying nice things and just everyone clapping and being nice to each other.

Mark: Yeah. So much. So much. So that didn’t trump complain that, people said, thank you too much?

Jim: Yeah, yeah. And he definitely didn’t watch. Didn’t he? Said he wouldn’t watch it. He didn’t watch. He wasn’t interested in it. And he did kind of live, live tweet on truth social.

Mark: Yeah, yeah.

Jim: Camilla’s speech and kind of respond to her in real time on truth social. But he wasn’t watching.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: It’s not the kind. He’s no interested.

Mark: No.

Jim: So.

Mark: No, no. At all. No. Yeah, no. And he was so called fact checking.

Jim: Yeah, yeah. He wouldn’t want to. He wouldn’t want to contribute to their ratings, far from anything else. But their ratings were much to his chagrin, I’m sure, significantly higher than Republican. They hit, I think, 20 million each night. Certainly the first couple of nights, Republicans hit, I think it was 18 point something million on the first night. Then it went down to 14 million on the second because everyone was like, this is a pile of shit. And. Yeah, but, yeah, the Democrats held it up there and I kind of going in, I was like, yeah, I mean, it’s going to be, it’s going to be good. But these things are, you know, who really cares about them other than people who are super into politics, like people who are really. Or either the delegates themselves or like, they’re really, really into it. But 20 million’s pretty good ratings, I think.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: That’s surprisingly high, I think.

Mark: Yeah. Cause you kind of think actually, you know, they’re going to. They’re preaching to the converted.

Jim: Definitely.

Mark: Well, unless all the weird, like us watch both of them.

Jim: I think we’re both. How dare you? We’re weird and converted.

Mark: And they’re converted. Yeah, yeah. We’re progressively weird. But, So actually, to have a large converted base.

Jim: Yeah.

Mark: You know, if that itself converts into votes. I mean, the sense I get, of watching these things is that you’re not going to be watching unless you’re a staunch follower.

Jim: I think that’s true. Yeah.

Mark: Political journalist.

Jim: Yes. I think that’s. That’s largely true. It is. Preaching to the, to the choir. There’s still a bump, even with that in the, usually in the polls after following each, I mean, the Republicans didn’t get theirs, partly because Biden brilliantly picked that moment to drop out of the race. And so all of the attention following the RNC went to. To that.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: But there is usually a polling bump after, and it’s sometimes only temporary. but there’s also an increase in, donations. The donations for the commoners campaign went up again hugely. they’ve now raised over $540 million since they launched her campaign just over a month ago.

Mark: And about.

Jim: It was something like 80 million or something on the final day of the convention.

Mark: Wow.

Jim: Or possibly over the four days of the convention, but most, the bulk of that was on the final day following her speech. Partly. But it’s definitely an opportunity for them to get all of the people behind their messaging, get a bit of enthusiasm and kind of get everyone, lots of people who are going to go back to their constituencies and prepare for victory to kind of be all in the same room and excited together. But it also is an opportunity for them to get more volunteers and potentially voters, but also money. So, ah, for all that, it did very well. Yeah, it went really smoothly. I mean, for a huge event like this. I mean we’ve both been involved in big events and filming them and stuff like that and, and there’s a lot that goes wrong just pretty much every time because there’s just so many moving parts.

Mark: Yeah, yeah.

Jim: And sometimes that doesn’t show on to the screen, you know, sometimes you can, you can paper over the cracks while stuff’s going on and get away with things sometimes. Yeah, there’s, there’s stuff that goes wrong and this you know, technical difficulties and things. But pretty much I think there was one moment m where they were talking to ah, an AV technician in like Michigan or something, and his AV didn’t work right. I think he was muted or something, or they couldn’t quite get the microphone to work. But you know, that’s when it’s going to happen, is when you’re talking to the expert in that the very person.

Mark: Is in charge of it. Yeah, yeah, of course.

Jim: But pretty much it went really, really well. Like the more independent journalists who went there that I’ve read have said it was really professional, went really well. Everyone seemed really happy. It was like, there’s obviously a lot of kind of left leaning journalists who were super enthusiastic about it, and a lot of content creators and kind of smaller, independent journalists, they kind of favoured those, or it seemed like, at least from some reports, that they favoured the smaller content creators and the youtubers and people like that. They had like special areas for them and like a blue carpet and stuff for them to do interviews.

Mark: Nice.

Jim: So they credentialed a lot of smaller creators who are going to be the people, the kind of people who are going to want to go to it, who are content creators are going to be the ones who are very enthusiastic about Harrison waltz and want to say nice things about them. whereas the mainstream media, who might be a bit more critical in some cases, had possibly a bit less access.

Mark: It’s a kind of an update of what Obama did in his first, election campaign, which was to mobilise that nascent, Internet would then become called influencers. He was about mobilising that youth vote through the medium that they talked to each other on. I think there was. I’ve got a feeling they even had somebody that was in charge of putting stuff out on blackberries, those. That kind of stuff on MySpace or whatever, you know, on friends reunited. So is that. That kind of stuff? So there’s an acknowledgment of that. Whereas the, the Trump campaign is. If it’s. Unless it’s on true social, it’s not worth a light and nobody’s on truth social. Yeah. There’s nothing on tick tock. There’s no trump tick tock stuff per se. But that’s so that. So to embrace content creators on all the platforms and get them to be enthralled by the spectacle and do stuff means you haven’t got to do it yourself. It’s it’s brilliant.

Jim: It’s a absolutely grassroots kind of from the top down in a way.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: Yeah. It’s. Well, if not organised by the top, but kind of at least facilitated or you know, they’re allowing them access so that they can get the word out in their own way. So. Yeah.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: I think it’s probably very effective, I imagine. But they also added just kind of injected fun into the procedure, like with the roll call, which is usually pretty boring to watch for a couple of hours for as they go to each state. And each state goes, yeah, we’re nominating this person as well. They did. They had a DJ, DJ Cassidy, who had state specific music for each state that he kind of played to introduce each state. And then they would do their little bit and kind of cheer and sometimes there were kind of celebrities from those states like Spike Lee was there for the New York one, Sean Astin, I think. Indiana maybe. I don’t know if that was because he’s. I don’t know if he’s from Indiana or. That was a nod to stranger things. Yeah. Some of the music was like from bands that were from that state. Some of it was. Was like. That state was mentioned in the lyrics of the song.

Mark: Right?

Jim: Yeah. And, and some were just completely random, just like dance bangers that they thought were good.

Mark: Yeah. Yeah. We love that. That’ll be exciting.

Jim: Yeah.

Mark: Yeah, yeah.

Jim: I think the favourite was, Georgia, where Lil Jon, who is from Atlanta, did kind of short version of turn down for what? When he announced, that they were nominating Kamala. Yeah. It was just really kind of very high energy and everyone having fun.

Mark: Nice.

Jim: And. No, it’s easy to stray into an area where it’s like what a few suited executives think is going to be fun and then everyone’s like, yeah, what the fuck? Why, why are we doing this? What’s the point of this? Yeah, but it didn’t feel like that at all. At no point. Willie. Oh, Christ, another song. They was just, everyone was just like really excited about everything that was happening. So it came across really well.

Mark: Bit like the, the opening ceremony in the Olympics where you have to have all the countries.

Jim: Yeah.

Mark: You know, turn up and wave and stuff like that. And they, whilst it was shit in Paris, they changed it.

Jim: There were some fun bits. Quite enjoyed the Maria Antonio section.

Mark: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, that’s quite. But the bit where they had the teams on the boats all waving and it was chucking in our rain and it’s like, oh, yeah, yeah. That worst outside cost ever. You know, didn’t even wipe the lenses. So you think, why haven’t they got. When they got hoods over the cameras?

Jim: Yeah.

Mark: And it was just, it was awful. And that’s the, that is the word. They did a, quite a good job of, you know, styling it up. That, that boring bit where the teams all wander through.

Jim: Yeah.

Mark: Normally the stadium waving a flag and you just go, look how few there are. No wonder. And then no wonder the US wins so many medals. There’s 17 millions of them. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, yes. So good on them for, for, you know, zazzing up the, the roll call thing. Yeah, yeah, no, that’s excellent. Plus, AOC got to open proceedings.

Jim: Yeah, yeah, they had some.

Mark: So cool.

Jim: They had a lot of good speeches from, from kind of up and comers in the party from, you know, from people like AOC, from just governors and, and I mean, a couple of governors that maybe shouldn’t have given, been given a slot like Kathy Hochul from New York who just wasn’t very good, but pretty much everyone was good. and Joe Biden did a bit on Monday, which was kind of a, like, thanks for everything, thanks for all the fish kind of goodbye. Yeah, that was great. And very emotional. Everyone was like taking the opportunity to. Well, like it felt like in the crowd taking the opportunity to say thanks and bye for.

Mark: Yeah, yeah, well done. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jim: and they had speeches from people, like the Obamas Michelle and Barack. Michelle’s speech was brilliant. It was absolutely fantastic. It was better as the best of all the speeches, including Barack’s and Camilla’s. and just really a great mix of, kind of getting people ready for the job that we’ve got to do. Taking the piss out of Trump a bit, setting, up where the Democrat party is and why it’s important to have Kamala in the position she is now. A lot of it was also focused on who Kamala and Tim Waltz are as people.

Jim: And it kind of not identity politics in the sense of this is a black woman who’s also half indian. It is about, this is her background, this is who, you know, the kind of things that her mother told her are important about being a good person. That kind of identity politics of like, who are they as people? Which is a great contrast to the fucking weird assholes on the other side.

Mark: Yeah, exactly.

Jim: These are just good people who want to do good things and care about people in the country and society.

Mark: And they come out of the community and they serve the community and they’re not, you know, billionaire unself, made, you know, branding opportunities for the trans organisation. They’re out for themselves. Yeah.

Jim: And to that end, there were two quite extended kind of biography videos of Kamala. One on the first night that was voiced by Geoffrey Wright, the, Oscar nominated actor. and on the final night, there was a ten minute video, about Camilla’s life, narrated by Morgan Freeman, who is just like, if you’re gonna get someone to narrate a video.

Mark: Yeah. Wow. So I can hear, I can hear his voice now.

Jim: Absolutely.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: yeah, there was it, it felt like, there were, there were bits of policy here and there scattered around. But a lot of it was about, these are, ah, people that we want to be the ones making the decisions, the ones, you know, negotiating with other countries, the ones who have our interests at heart. and that’s what they focused on, which I thought was good. It came across well and it seemed.

Mark: Like a good choice and I think it was a good, it was a good thing to do insofar as it allayed the doubts that, you know, Trump’s talking about it as a coup. But it kind of, if there were any doubts in the minds of Democrats who only, wanted Biden to be the representative, they were saying, look, these are your kind of people. They’ve come up through the Democrat, tradition. They’re through the ranks of the party. They are your kind of people. They represent your kind of constituents, just as Biden did. They are continuing that tradition. And to have that story told by people who revitalise the Democrats, you know, in a, Kennedy kind of way. You know, the Obamas.

Jim: The good Kennedy. Not the good Kennedy.

Mark: No. Not the weird, weird third party nominees. No, no, not that long. Yeah. Not the chap and critic ones. Yeah, the good Kennedys.

Jim: Or even just notion that with the early, funny Kennedys.

Mark: Yeah, yeah, those, those ones. Yeah. The previous lot who injected a lot of, the class into the. And energy into the political system, whether they were completely corrupt, self made billionaires funded by dodgy, you know, wheelchairs, glossary.

Jim: There’s an argument for that. Sure.

Mark: Yeah, yeah, yeah. But they come with the last lot to inject that stuff in.

Jim: Yeah.

Mark: and the Obamas have done that thing. And I really like, I mean, the best gag of the night was Barack’s.

Jim: crowd size gag.

Mark: Well, no, the one. Yeah, that one. But also the, I’m the only one stupid enough. Michelle Obama.

Jim: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, Michelle had a good. Her one. One of her best lines was, Who’s gonna tell Donald that maybe the job he’s seeking is actually one of those black jobs.

Mark: Yeah, yeah. Yes. Yeah.

Jim: And then,

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: And Barack, mocked Donald’s obsession with crowd sizes and then did.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: A hand gesture so good that suggested he might be obsessed with the size of other things, which was just perfect, wasn’t it?

Mark: And he did a kind of replay.

Jim: Good.

Mark: Of Trump’s hands.

Jim: Yeah, the accordion hands.

Mark: Kind of imbued it with meaning by. By looking down at the.

Jim: It’s amazing.

Mark: Absolute perfect comic timing.

Jim: According to his speech writers, that was improvised. That, like, the illusion to sighs was just something he did off the cuff. I, can’t believe it. It was so good.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: But.

Mark: Oh, yeah. Well. Well, you know, that’s because. Yeah, he is a great speaker. Obama’s just a great speaker.

Jim: it was at the, the 2004 democratic convention that Obama made his speech that essentially propelled him into the front running for the. For the job.

Mark: For the.

Jim: In 2008.

Mark: Yes. Yes. Yeah.

Jim: So, yeah, so these conventions can make a difference.

Mark: Yeah. well, that’s. Yes. So it was interesting that AOC got. Got quite a lot of air time. so, you know, maybe there’s this notion that. Oh, actually, you know, young women of colour.

Jim: Yeah, yeah. Absolutely.

Mark: We need to be grooming them to want to stay in the party and we need to, show them that we value their contribution.

Jim: Yeah.

Mark: You know, despite the fact they’re way too progressive for m mainstream democratic politics. But, yeah. Yeah.

Jim: So, yeah, no, I think, yeah. You know, it all went very well. There was. There were kind of a few moments that went viral, mainly from the Obama speeches, but also, when Tim waltz spoke.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: he talked about his kids and his, his. And his wife struggles with conceiving and therefore using IVF. And then the cameras cut to, his kids, hope and Gus. And, that was a lovely moment, both in just. Just so how clearly they were proud of him. Like, the connection between them was very immediately clear. How. How proud he was of them and how proud they were to hit for him to be in this moment on this stage making this speech. Gus stood up and. And was very emotional, and was, like, pointing and yelling, that’s my dad. And was taken the piss out of by a few people on the right, but, yeah. but immediately defended by everyone else, including some people on the right.

Mark: Wow. Wow.

Jim: Partly because he has a, learning disorder and is neurodivergent. And they were, understanding that it’s not a good look to attack neurodivergent people for expressing emotion. But I think some of them understood.

Mark: Given the trollers in.

Jim: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely.

Mark: You know, impressions of that community. Wow.

Jim: I think some of them even understood that just people loving members of their family and being proud of them and in showing emotion over that isn’t necessarily an awful thing that should be mocked.

Mark: Yeah. Because didn’t they. Didn’t. Wasn’t the, the kind of response to Gus was, baron who. And didn’t they say, this is how you should?

Jim: Yeah, there was one person and he’s.

Mark: Like, standing there like, you know, the crowd, like the crown prince from.

Jim: Yeah.

Mark: lion king. So waving, waving at them. He’s just waving, waving them. Yes, exactly. Yeah, yeah.

Jim: Which is a fucking psychopathic, song is basically saying, I’m really looking forward to my dad dying, so I get to take over.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: But, yeah, well, yeah, it’s basically.

Mark: It’s a rerun of King John from Robin Hood, isn’t it?

Jim: Yeah, yeah.

Mark: If only he’d done his Disney homework. Yeah, yeah.

Jim: So it was. It was a lovely moment. And they just came across as a really great family who get on well and love each other, and that’s all good.

Mark: Yeah. And even Oprah turned up and, told us we should all choose Cameron Harris, which handy Oprah. Yeah.

Jim: As a contrast to Hulk Hogan and kid rock, I did say that the celebrities at the DNC would be on another level. And although there was rumours right up until the end of the fourth night that Beyonce would show up and do a performance, she didn’t, she didn’t show up, sadly. Although I reckon, like, if, if we all just claimed she did, like, no, if we all agreed on it.

Mark: Yeah, that’s, fine.

Jim: You know what they’re gonna do? They’ve done it. They did it first. They make up stuff all the time. It’s fine. Yeah, that justifies it.

Mark: Yeah, but we have a fellow.

Jim: But among the celebrities that were at the DNC, in contrast to Kid Rock, Hulk Hogan and who was it? Who else was it? The RNC?

Mark: Ice t?

Jim: No, he wasn’t there. I see. it was, surely he was, he wasn’t, he’s not that awful a person. he would not be seen dead anywhere near Trump. no, I think, you know, those are the, those are the people. Like That’s Sorbo might probably was there and like, Scott Bay, those kind of people. So in contrast to that, we had Oprah, Patti LaBelle, Spike Lee, Stevie Wonder, John Legend, Eva, Longoria, James Taylor, Tony Goldwyn and Kerry Washington from scandal common. Sean Astin, Stephen Colbert was there, the chicks formerly known as the Dixie Chicks, they did the national anthem. Pink was there. it was just, wow, like an Oprah. Fucking Oprah. I mean, I know she lives in Chicago, so it was just down the road for her. It wasn’t. Yeah, it wasn’t far for her to go, but still, that’s quite a difference. Yeah, there were no washed up eighties wrestlers there who can no longer even get parodic film.

Mark: Yeah. Or get all the way through their t shirt that they’re tearing off themselves.

Jim: Yes, there were a few right wingers there in disguise. Matt Walsh went in disguise and, Mike Lindell shaved off his moustache and, and yelled at a twelve year old content creator who, who completely fucking owned him because this kid called Noah, he was, he’s from Georgia. And Lindell was, was yelling at him about missing ballots in Georgia, which isn’t a thing. And, yeah, and, and so this kid was going, so, you know, all right, tell me, tell me some details. Tell me the source.

Mark: What?

Jim: Tell me, you know, who, the surname of this person you’re talking about. And he’s like, well, no, no. And, and so, this kid was like, so your, your source is basically, trust me, bro, and nice. And Michael kind of went away with his tail between his legs and this kid was like, yeah, I don’t know what he’s yelling about? So.

Mark: Wow. Yeah, that’s excellent. Yeah, yeah. Does he look like an even bigger idiot, without his moustache?

Jim: Well, it was hard to say because he was also wearing dark glass and a big hat.

Mark: but it could have been anyone.

Jim: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, if it wasn’t for his distinctive bellow, then I think maybe people wouldn’t have recognised him.

Mark: His distinctive pillow, right? Yeah.

Jim: He wasn’t carrying a distinctive pillow at the time. And it all ended with. With Camilla doing her speech, accepting the nomination. I mean it was, it was generally a good speech. Sadly, it. She followed Michelle Obama a couple of days earlier. So it wasn’t a great speech compared to her, but it was a good speech. And they kind of are trying as well, as well as pointing out that they’re actually humans, who care about people. They’re also kind of trying to claw back some ownership of patriotism and freedom and saying like, this is not a republican idea, this is, we believe in freedom. Freedom is a good thing. And it’s okay for Democrats to say that too. And so, yeah, they did talk about freedom quite a lot in, in her speech and also in Tim Waltz’s. I mean, the whole thing went very well. Remains to be seen what happens next in terms of the upcoming stuff of the debates Trump’s currently trying to put out of the ABC debate.

Mark: Yeah, yeah.

Jim: But that might happen. I think Walt and Vance have agreed. A vice presidential debate on the 1 October.

Mark: That’d be so good, wouldn’t it? Yeah, yeah.

Jim: But in the meantime, they’ll all be going out campaigning everywhere and meeting people and talking and stuff and we’ll be following it all.

Mark: And I think There were parallels with the You know, it doesn’t quite have the same pzazz as. Because we’re about to go into conference season with the parties over here. But the, that whole bit about owning freedom and also security and defence of the realm and all that kind of stuff was a And financial acuity was one of the things that the Labour party set out to talk about this time round ahead of the election. And I suspect there will be some really tight policy lines that are ah. That are quoted each and every time by waltz and Paris whenever they speak, which will be to allay those fears.

Jim: Yeah.

Mark: Of. Well, because we’re still only talking about seven states, seven kind of key states. I mean, that there are wavering there.

Jim: Now where it matters. They’re now kind of tying, or at least within the margin of error in all the battleground states and even North Carolina, which was considered m kind of lean republican, although actually 2020, it was pretty close. It was closer than some of the other battleground states in terms of pure vote. numbers is looking like it is a toss up now. And North Carolina, 16 electoral votes. So if they. If Cameron could get North Carolina, she wouldn’t even necessarily need all of the other company. yeah, so, yeah, ah, there’s movement in the right direction. There’s still, you know, we’re two months out. A lot can happen. a week is a young time in american politics. And, yeah, yeah, they’re going to be trying to draw a, distinction between them and the Republicans. They’re going to be raising Robbie Wade. they might point out the fact that Trump continually keeps claiming that everybody wanted Roe v. Wade overturned and all the presidents before him tried to get it done, and he was the only one who managed it, which is insane.

Mark: including the ones. Including the presidents that brought in, they were trying to get rid of it. Yeah.

Jim: So, yeah, there’s going to be a lot to pay attention to. A lot can happen, good and bad, hopefully most of it good.

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

Jim: Fox News personality Maria Bartiromo is well known for her insistence on due diligence and proper sourcing. As we’ve discussed before, when Kraken lawyer Sidney Powell claimed the 2020 election was riddled with massive fraud, Maria didn’t just give her a platform to spout nonsense, she asked for evidence. So Powell forwarded an email from her source who claimed that the wind told her about the fraud in a dream and also mentioned that the wind tells her she’s a ghost, but she doesn’t believe it. That was good enough for Maria, who interviewed pal the next day and kicked off a series of claims which ended with Fox paying $787.5 million to Dominion. Anyway, fast forward almost two years, and Maria has learned her lesson. The source for her latest claim on Twitter, was the wife of a friend of a friend who apparently claimed she took her son to get a new driver’s licence at the DMV office in Weatherford, Texas, and they quote, had a massive line of immigrants getting licences and had a tent and table outside the front door of the DMV registering them to vote. Maria’s friends wife then said that they went to two more dmvs in Fort Worth and saw the same thing. While the post didn’t specify they were illegal, immigrants. That’s the conclusion her, followers came to, and they were curious why the DMV was registering illegal immigrants to vote. The non Fox media were curious, too. But rather than accepting a racist third hand story at face value and adding a bit more racism in for good measure, the Fort Worth Star Telegram actually looked into it. The fact that there isn’t a DMV office in Weatherford was the first clue. It might not be 100% accurate, but there is a department of public safety driver licence office there. But they didn’t have a tent or a registration drive when this supposedly happened, DP’s spokesperson, Sergeant William Lockridge told the Star Telegram none of it is true, and added that assuming non white Texans lining up to get licences or immigrants, illegal or otherwise, is kind of racist.

Mark: Yeah, it’s not difficult, is it? As a journalist, just look into stuff. Yeah, yeah. In another manifestation of fascist, curious megalomaniac nerds, simultaneously cozying up to and electronically repelling right wing political megalomaniacs, Musk repeated his shit Twitter x live campaign launch disaster with Ron DeSantis that Trump ripped the piss out of at the time with a shit Twitter x interview with Trump. It took more than 40 minutes before anything could be viewed or heard, and what could be seen and heard was Trump hemming and hawing and slurring and growling his weird, unhinged way through crowd sizes and their usual rally crazed hits like a disoriented, racist Daffy Duck, as USA Today beautifully put it. Musk, meanwhile, has the interviewing skills of a stoned introvert, and he did little but cheerlead Trump and agree with every bizarro thing that fell out of his mouth while occasionally going in on the kind of odd right wing tangents that you’d expect from a man too rich to be ever told to pipe down. Perhaps Trump and Musk share that in common, along with social media ineptness and unmerited sense of self importance. And Musk at least bestowed the same gift equally on DeSantis and Trump online viewing disaster. That mastery of slick, punchy media platform provision will get the first time voting kids on board, for sure. Ah.

Jim: While Kamala jets around the country whipping Democrats into a hope fuelled frenzy, Trump has mostly been playing golf and sulking. But occasionally his aides can get him to leave the confines of his golf clubs and talk to people. For example, last Thursday he took a trip to Montezuma Pass, Arizona, to stand by the border wall he’s so proud of and talked to journalists. He called the wall the Rolls Royce of worlds, and lamented the pile of unused sections stacked nearby, which he claimed were evidence of democrats desire for an open border. Unfortunately, like a lawyer in a landscape gardening parking lot, he had chosen the wrong place for his press conference. And the wall he was standing next to and praising was in fact built by the Obama administration. Trump could rightfully lay claim to the rusting, discarded segments, which were part of an abandoned Trump administration attempt to extend the wall up a steep hill in Montezuma canyon. The Trump wall made it halfway up the hill at a cost of $35 million a mile, and presumably stopped all the human traffickers, gang leaders, drug smugglers and insane asylum patients who had made it all the way from South America but didn’t fancy walking halfway up a hill. That’s assuming, of course, that they couldn’t cross the border through one of the sections of Trump’s wall that literally fell over in a strong wind. Or one of the thousands of places where people cut through the wall with cheap power tools or climbed over it with five dollar ladders.

Mark: Nice. In an honest system, I believe I would have won the election. In my heart, I no longer believe that I have the realistic path for electoral victory in the face of this relentless, systemic censorship and media control. No, it’s not Trump finally relenting in the face of a younger, more intelligent and popular candidate. But I’ll worm brain bear cycle himself. RFK Junior. He’s decided, through no fault of his own, of course, that he needs to withdraw from the race in the face of dwindling support and plummeting polls. He’s not going to take his name off the ballots, of course. No, that’d be stupid. He’s just not going to do the stupid and stupidly expensive thing of, bothering to campaign sufficiently to warrant being on the ballots. He said he would stop campaigning and withdraw his name from ballots in battleground state to ensure he doesn’t swing the election to Harris. But he said he would keep his name on ballots in states that are not expected to be hotly contested. That way, I guess he can still walk around with some votes and possibly even some dignity and tax. Yeah, right. He said he expected his name to be on the ballot in most states, but added polling showed that by standing on the ballot in battleground states, I would likely hand over the election to the Democrats with whom I disagree on the most existential issues, censorship, war and chronic disease. Trouble is, Robert, I think many people disagree with you on those two, and those that do agree with you tend to have first discovered that they agree with Trump. Trump disagreeing with the Dems on those issues as a kind of weird tribute act to Trump’s mega Republicans. I don’t see how RF thought he’d attract any votes. Is he the more moderate end of rabid, racist right wingism, the UK equivalent of the liberal Democrats relationship with the Tories? Or is he the reform vote, the refuge where people who think Trump is weird enough go to? That might explain some of our RFK junior s wholehearted embracing of QAnon type things. Of course, aged 70, Bobby Junior is no longer the youngest candidate to Trump, 78, and Biden’s absent, 81. So maybe that had something to do with it. The kids aren’t going to turn up for you now, boy. Natch. RFK has thrown his weird behind Trump, who, not unlike Nikki Haley and JD Vance, were once the visible alternative to the orange 78 year old six year old. Ah. The power of the tantrum.

Jim: He’s already talking about possibly having a cabinet position in Trump’s administration. He is.

Mark: Trump isn’t.

Jim: well, no, they both are. He’s been, it’s been mentioned. and supposedly RFK Junior reached out to the Harris campaign to talk about, you know, a potential cabinet in her administration. They did not return his calls. Yeah, which is absolutely. Which is the right way to do that.

Mark: Yes. It’s like he kind of said. Yeah, Cameron. Like he’s important. Yeah, yeah, kind of, you know, it’s the Nick Clegg thing, isn’t it? Yeah. Well, if I can actually swing the vote.

Jim: Uh-huh.

Mark: He’s, he’s kind of. He’s Ross Perot, isn’t he? He’s the third way.

Jim: Too much gravitas.

Mark: Yeah, I know. He says the kind of. He’s not. He’s not sufficiently. The other point in the triangle. No, it’s just. It’s just Trump light, you know, he’s not even that. He’s. Well, it’s just confused.

Jim: I give it Democrat, I give it a month and a half before Trump replaces JD Vance with RFK Junior.

Mark: Nice. Yes, that would be good.

Jim: January 6. Insurrectionists have been caught in a wide variety of ways, from posing for press photographers while in the capital and volunteering their full name and hometown to yelling Trump 2020 repeatedly on a plane heading out of DC until the flight crew turns the plane around and goes back to the terminal. The FBI received hundreds of thousands of tips from writers, ex wives, neighbours, and given the kind of people involved, probably a bunch of sworn enemies, amateur Internet detectives, figured out the identities of some, while others shouted their names while live streaming the assault on their own social media pages, 14,000 hours of capital security footage, 2000 hours of police body cam footage, and countless live streams and news reports were run through facial recognition software to match with police mugshots and dmv photos of suspects. I bet at least one guy walked into a police station wearing an I assaulted the Capitol on January 6 and all I got was this lousy t shirt. T shirt. But one of the most recent of all 1400 or so charged with January 6 related offences also put in the most work to help with his incrimination. Nathan Thornsbury, a 42 year old former marine from Michigan, wrote a self published book called January 6 A Patriot’s Story and published it on Amazon. Described as an eyewitness account of the events of January 6, it places Thornsbury front and centre during a series of violent incidents. But Thornsbury is not an idiot. He used the nom Descartes plume Nathaniel Matthews to avoid detection by authorities, then published it using his own Amazon account, which was linked to his real name, and a phone number, which also led authorities to his Facebook account. Oh, and the about the author section includes multiple real biographical details, including the town he was born in, his military service record, his degree, and his alma mater. Having now linked Thornsbury to video footage of the insurrection, prosecutors argue, that his book details his direct involvement and have entered several excerpts into evidence.

Mark: That’s excellent. Wow. Wow. I love the poorly educated. I think Trump once said, yes, big mouth Billy Bass was a thing, a last century thing millennials were born after. It was a thing what looked almost, but not quite like one of those fishing trophies of a stuffed fish mounted on a shaped wooden plaque with a gold engraved plate below. Almost, except it was all made of plastic, would suddenly jump into life at the press of a button, and the front end of the fish would turn towards the button presser and start singing Bobby McFerrin’s m, don’t worry, be happy or Al Greens take me to the river. So popular were these that Al Green reportedly said he owned more royalties from the sale of the animatronic fish than through ordinary record sales. So, of course, how do we make America great again? Well, we shill a shit plastic trout on a plastic wooden presidential seal with a jacket, shirt and tie and fins and stupid hair as trumpy trout. But we’re not going to risk having to pay royalties to Trump, and you’d be certainly claimed them by using his voice to say actual things. We’ll get the cheapest and worst impressionist. Yeah, that kid in it, he can do a fair impression. Let’s get him to do it. It to say really poor fish themed versions of Trump’s popular statements. Some bass are bad fish, crazy fish, druggie fish, but some bass are good fish and I only love some of them really badly. Synced to the movement of his trouty pal and flapping fins in high fidelity sound. The term high fidelity has not been used in advertising since Al Jolson was miraculously syncede to actual recordings of him m singing in the first ever talkie. Was that when America was great at the height of cultural appropriation of suppressed people? If this was the UK, the website would have been made by led by donkeys as an elaborate spoof set up to dupe the stupid and the self obsessed, which of course it does. You can own your own piece of shilled fish based ship plastic for 69.99. This deal is not available in stores. Yeah, no kidding. And thus costs $10 to ship. Oh, and you have to buy batteries too. And, from what I recall, they take 4d sized batteries and last no time at all. Possibly significantly, the second tab on the website after home is arbitration agreement, even before you get the customer service and shipping. Yeah, you know, some things are best left in the past. Rubber, animated fish and Trump’s presidency.

Jim: Trump’s campaign might have resembled a badly wounded, morbidly obese warthog lately, but fear not, they’ve rehired Corey Lewandowski. If you don’t remember Corey, allow me to provide a quick precy of his career. Since joining now convicted felon Trump’s campaign in January 2015 alongside now convicted felon Michael Cohen, Sam Nunberg and now convicted felon Roger Stone, soon to be joined by now convicted felon Paul Manafort, now convicted felon Steve Bannon, and now convicted felon Pete Navarro. He assaulted both a reporter and a protester within a little over a week in March 2016, but wasn’t fired until the following month when he clashed with Manafort, after which he tried his hand at tv punditry, was fired from one America news for also occasionally appearing on Fox and then Fox cut ties with him after he appeared drunk on air. Lewandowski, you may be surprised to learn, is not a convicted felon, having only been accused of misdemeanour battery when he sexually harassed the wife of a Trump donor at an event in Las Vegas in 2022, which led to a plea agreement involving community service and impulse control counselling, as well as a final rebuke from a Trump spokesperson who said Lewandowski would no longer be associated with Trump world. But perhaps they were talking about an as yet unrealised theme park, because, as I mentioned, he’s back. Within an hour, he’d already fucked up with a tweet announcing his return, ending with a call to action to get off the couch and join us. Seriously, has he not been watching anything for the past month? Speaking of JD Vance, he had a go at shaking off the weird mantle by doing a normal thing, going into a donut shop in Valdosta, Georgia, and just buying some donuts. Reporters from C SPAN and a couple of other places were there and his team was filming for social media, so all he had to do was not be weird. And oh, Jesus, did he fail hard. His team had forgotten to give him actual things to say, presumably under the impression that he might be capable of a human interaction with a shop worker. But instead, he locked eyes with each of the three staff members behind the counter and asked each in turn how long they’d worked there. And no matter what they said, his follow up was okay. Good. Which is one more word, than the poor girl whose job it was to serve him donuts was able to muster. When, after she made it very clear she did not want to be filmed interacting with him, he said, I’m JD Vance, I’m running for vice president, she said, okay, and managed not to add, just tell me what fucking donuts you want, man, so we can be done here. When that part of the transaction did come round, the bearded charisma vacuum mentioned a couple of donut types and then just asked for whatever makes sense. Because he didn’t actually want donuts. He wanted some footage that proved he was likeable and hopefully didn’t include any mentions of upholstery. Well, one out of two’s not bad.

Mark: And meanwhile, Tim Waltz and his team went into a, another shop, a bakery, and just like, was perfectly normal.

Jim: They had a great time. All the staff were joking with them. They were? Yeah.

Mark: And they were going, yeah, so what makes this stuff so good? And he was saying, oh, yeah, you gotta go. If you do, if you go to another recognisable social event that other people would have gone, other humans go to, you can’t go there without getting something from this storm. Yeah. Plus, even though Tim Waltz has got no hair, he’s got a better haircut than JD Vance. Oh, dear. It’s a comparatively quiet week this week in british politics, insofar as there’s not been a riot and only one donor cronyism accusation. A Labour donor who gave 200,000 pounds to the party was offered the role as a civil servant working in the Exchequer with Rachel Reeves, but has stepped down since. Just like the Tory donor, Mohammed Mansour, who, after having donated over 5 million pounds to the Tories last year, has returned the knighthood that was rushed through before Easter by Sunak to avoid the traditional new Years honours list and the King’s birthday honours list. No, no, of course he hasn’t. And, neither have Simon Blagdon nor Ollwulay Kolode, who donated over a million pounds to the Tory party two years ago. Neither of them stepped down from there. Senior appointments subsequently landed at NHS England and UK Health Services association and surprisingly, no one in the Tory party has yet come forward to employ the two wrongs fallacy to justify it. The two parties are, however, blaming each other for the upcoming rise in home energy costs are about to hit us in the autumn. Is it me or does it seem to have gone up more frequently since the governing body in charge of not letting the price go up too much were empowered to prevent the prices going up too much? In a bit of a downer from the optimism of Blair’s 1997 election, things can only get better theme starmer announced today that things are going to get worse before they get better, which was the b side of the not so popular twelve inch remix of the dream hit featuring Professor Brian Cox on keyboards. In Tory leadership news, Tom Tucan Hat announced two more supporters had put their signatures to his throwing his tuganhat into the ring. Except one of them, Alexander Brown, member of scottish parliament, didn’t exist. Still, when your chances are non existent, Tom, why go to the bother of ensuring your office uses the name of actually existing members of the scottish parliament, like, say, Alexander Stewart, for instance? And in, another disappointment, the Met police ended its investigation into the insider dealing that led to members of Sunak’s inner circle placing bets on, when the election would be called. Days before Sunak called the election, the offences being investigated apparently did not meet the high bar to prove misconduct in public office, the force said on Friday. I bet either the new police commissioner will be included in Sunak’s resignation honours list or the bar might need to be lowered a little bit, then bet that won’t happen either.

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

Mark: If you think we’ve used the fallacy ourselves, let us know. And if you’ve had a good time, please give us a review on Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Or simply tell one other person in person about how much they like our podcast and you can support the show up agent. Just like our strawman level patrons, Colleen Lyella, Richard Thunder Hopkins, Will M. Scott, Ozzy on bank, Laura Tomsick, Schmoot Smart Reiche, and Amber R. Buchanan, who told us when we met her at QED. We can 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 Saitik, Stephen Pickle, Janet USA, Andrew Hauck, and our top patron, Kaz Toohey. Thank you so much for your continued patronage. It’s very, very much appreciated. Thank you.

Jim: And you can connect with those awesome people as well as us and other listeners in the Facebook group at ah, facebook.com groups. Fellasustrump.

Mark: All music is by the outbursts and was used with permission. So until the next time on Felicia Trump, we’ll leave the last word to the Donald. You will spend time. That’s right.

Donald Trump: Go home to mommy.

Mark: Bye.