Glittering Generalities – FT#160

29 Oct Glittering Generalities – FT#160

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Show Notes

The Glittering Generalities Fallacy occurs when someone uses vague, emotionally appealing phrases in place of reason.

Trump

We started out by discussing Trump’s favorite slogan:

And then we looked at this clip of Trump kind of talking about winning

Finally, we talked about this clip of Trump complaining about bad people doing things:

Mark’s British Politics Corner

Mark talked about the inaugural speeches of every British PM for the past 50 years, including clips like these:

Fallacy in the Wild

In the Fallacy in the Wild we looked at this clip from Eddie Abbew on TikTok:

Then we discussed this clip from Lord of War:

And we finished up with this clip from Last Week Tonight:

 

Fake News

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

1. “Do it as a form of a loan.” I do that with athletes. They can’t quite – you know, like a professional golfer who I think is very good, they don’t have any money, but they have a lot of talent. I’ll say, “Here’s the deal.” I did it with a number of people. Here’s the deal. What I want to do. Professional golfer. I play golf, I play very nice. Did you see the picture of me, the horrible picture with the stomach out to here? That was – so, what I do is I’m putting up today a picture of me, actually, what I actually look like hitting a ball, smashing the fricking ball. And you’ll see, quite – I wouldn’t say slim. I wouldn’t say slim but not bad. But the ball does go far. I would say it goes about nine times further than Biden can hit it, nine times.
2. When you look at Iran, they had no money. They were a poor, poor, like a really poor country, and they would go begging to the other countries – “Please do business with us,” but I told the other countries if you do business with Iran then you can’t – we won’t do business with you. But Biden gave them $16 billion in cash, and now they maybe have nuclear. I think they probably do have it, and that’s a much bigger problem for the environment than global warming. I’m really an environmentalist. I have so many golf courses, I’ve built amazing golf courses all around the world so I understand about the environment. I have a new one in Scotland and it’s the best, most sustainable – we always do it environmentally.
3. I’ve been here before, and I told the story before, not in this kind of detail, because, you know, you have these teleprompters. If I would read it off a teleprompter, it wouldn’t be so good, and it would be a lot shorter. It wouldn’t be as good. And I didn’t want to do that. I said, “When I come here, I’m going to tell them the real story of Arnold.” But Arnold Palmer was all man. And I say that in all due respect to women, and I love women, but this guy, this guy. This is a guy that was all man. This man was strong and tough. And I refuse to say it, but when he took showers with the other pros, they came out there, they said, “Oh my God, that’s unbelievable.” I had to say it. I had to say it.

 

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

 

The election is not a logical fallacy

We talked about the upcoming election, where the polls are, and if we have any reason to be optimistic.

 

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

• With just over a week to go before the election, it’s time to really take a look at the character of the candidates. Sure, it’s fun to make fun of Trump and his weird make-up, his inability to articulate a single thought, and his pathological need for approval that stems from his emotionally distant father scarring him for life with a crippling sense of inadequacy, but what kind of a man is he? We got a little closer to truly knowing Trump thanks to an article in the Atlantic last week about Vanessa Guillen – a 20-year old army private who was murdered by a fellow soldier at Fort Hood in 2020. When Trump heard about the incident he invited Vanessa’s family to the White House, and sat with them for 25 minutes expressing his sympathy. At one point he told them “If I can help you out with the funeral, I’ll help—I’ll help you with that… Financially, I’ll help you,” which must have been a weight off their minds. So there we are. A small window into the genuine empathy and respect Trump feels for his fellow man, and I’m sure that’s where the story ends. Let me just check that Atlantic article… oh, hang on, there is a bit more. Ah yes, it seems Trump didn’t forget that family, he actually followed up several months later, asking his people if they ever got the bill for the funeral, and if so, how much it cost. Yes, he was told – it was $60,000. This, according to the article, made Trump angry, saying. “It doesn’t cost 60,000 bucks to bury a fucking Mexican!” He turned to his chief of staff, Mark Meadows, and said “Don’t pay it!” Later that day, according to a witness, he just couldn’t let it go, saying. “Can you believe it? Fucking people, trying to rip me off.” The Guillen’s family attorney confirmed that they never received any money from Trump.
• The chair of the conservative House Freedom Caucus Andy Harris is very concerned at helping out voters in North Carolina given the devastation wrought by Hurricane Helene in the western part of the state. So concerned that he’s all for adopting ideas from Trump activist Ivan Raiklin who gave a keynote speech at a dinner Harris attended. Harris seems to agree with Raiklin that they should save everyone the bother of having to go through the storm-torn landscapes of the state in search of a ballot box, so they’ll help out by simply stating that potential difficulties with voting in the hurricane-damaged area would be a basis for the state Legislature to declare in advance that Trump should win the state’s 16 electoral votes. ‘Look, you got disenfranchised in 25 counties. You know what that vote probably would have been.’ Harris is recorded as having said to Raiklin in a video Raiklin upped to X! Apparently in the keynote speech Raiklin argued that in addition to North Carolina, Republican-controlled legislatures in New Hampshire, Arizona, Nebraska, Georgia and Wisconsin could take similar steps by meeting on Election Day and awarding their electors to Trump. Andy Harris baulked a little at going that far “It looks like just a power play,” he said. “In North Carolina, it’s legitimate. There are a lot of people that aren’t going to get to vote and it may make the difference in that state.” Whiiiiich still looks just like a power play to me. And also to Patrick McHenry, retiring Republican congressman for North Carolina, who said, “It makes no sense whatsoever to prejudge the election outcome. And that is a misinformed view of what is happening on the ground in North Carolina, bless his heart.”  Asked to elaborate on his remarks, Harris issued a statement through his campaign: “As I’ve repeatedly said, every legal vote should be counted. I would hope everyone could agree that legal American voters whose lives were devastated by the recent storms should not be disenfranchised in the upcoming voting process.” Unless of course it means that it’s looking dodgy for Dim Trump Un in which case ‘hey let’s just swing that thing into practice where no-one will have to bother to vote for the lifelong presidential dynasty ever again – we’ll save you having to come out folks!’ – Stop the Steal anyone?!
• Everyone surely understands that political campaigning can just be a series of photo ops designed to make the candidates appeal to various demographics, hopefully interspersed with some opportunities to actually get out there and talk to the people, kissing hands and shaking babies, so that people can relate to the candidates. Or, if you’re Trump, it can be about avoiding interviews with actual journalists, talking to Joe Rogan for so long that you’re more than two hours late to your own rally, and staging photo ops entirely to troll your opponent. The right has somehow become obsessed with the fact that Kamala doesn’t have any paperwork to prove that she worked in a McDonalds more than 40 years ago. Her fast food paystubs are very much the long form birth certificate of 2024. And so it was that Trump’s people  decided to have him work the fry station at a Pennsylvania McDonalds. There are those who might say that the footage of him handing bags of food to drive-thru customers, who expressed surprise and delight to see the former President at the restaurant, was a genuine attempt to connect with working class voters. JD Vance, for example, went on Fox to praise Trump’s “genuine interest in the employees and their lives and where they came from. That’s something you can’t stage and you can’t fake,” and he said it’s why “working people … have this emotional connection to Donald Trump.” I get why Vance is impressed. After all, Trump didn’t spend the whole time asking staff members how long they’ve worked there, then saying “OK, good” and ordering  “whatever makes sense”, but yes, you can stage and fake all that. And one of the ways we know that is that this was all as fake as you can fake it without building your own McDonalds out of cardboard. The branch was closed to the public during the photo op, and all the ‘customers’ were screened, vetted and positioned in the drive-thru line before Trump even got there. None of them ordered any food, they just got whatever makes sense in a bag while Trump smiled for the cameras. When a reporter asked him if he supported raising the minimum wage, a pretty fucking pertinent question while he’s cosplaying as someone earning less than a quarter of the national average salary, he said “Well, I think this. These people work hard, they’re great. And I just saw something — a process that’s beautiful.” He then belittled how actually fucking hard they work by claiming “I could do this all day” during the five literal minutes he scooped fries. The irony, of course, is that Trump couldn’t actually get a job at McDonalds because they don’t hire convicted felons.
• What do you do when your legally-defined-as-not-factual pseudonews show is canned by Fox News – that well known news-shaped channel – for being party to the bringing-on of a $1.6bn defamation lawsuit by Dominion Voting Systems? If you recall, whilst being the idiot at the centre of that; Tucker Carlson’s texts got shared to let us know what he really thought about Trump “We are very, very close to being able to ignore Trump most nights,” Carlson texted an undisclosed recipient on 4 January 2021. “I truly can’t wait.” He added: “I hate him passionately.” Well not unlike JD Vance, Carlson knows a bandwagon/gravy train when he sees one and was a warm-up act for the Tangerine Nightmare in Duluth, Georgia last Wednesday. Seemingly high on the testosterone so absent from the USA as reported in Carlson’s own “The End of Men” stupidmentary programme, he likened the US under Trump as a naughty girl being disciplined by her father. “If you allow your hormone-addled 15-year-old daughter to slam the door and give you the finger, you’re going to get more of it. There has to be a point at which Dad comes home.” At which point the crowd erupted into raucous cheers. Okay hang on – so Trump is the angry father coming to discipline the US – for what? For not voting for him, for not wanting to behave meekly as a prisoner in an overbearing male-centric demagogue-worshipping throwback unequal-rights 1950’s society? Carlson continued “Dad comes home and he’s pissed,” “He’s not vengeful, he loves his children. Disobedient as they may be, he loves them … And when Dad gets home, you know what he says? You’ve been a bad girl. You’ve been a bad little girl and you’re getting a vigorous spanking right now. And no, it’s not going to hurt me more than it hurts you. No, it’s not. I’m not going to lie. It’s going to hurt you a lot more than it hurts me. And you earned this. You’re getting a vigorous spanking because you’ve been a bad girl, and it has to be this way.” Clearly this struck a chord with the stupid-ass misogynist, toxic masculinity, lust for violence and thirst for revenge crowd cos when Trump came on stage, they screamed “Daddy’s home” and “Daddy Don”. Sigmund Freud is spinning in his grave! In their blinkered woman-hating spittle-flecked, red-mist-descended fantasies Trump supporters are of course blind to the fact that Trump cares nothing about any of them or about causing them pain anymore than he is to be believed when he says he is the saviour of women – their shield and defender, as he told women attending a rally in Pennsylvania “You will be protected, and I will be your protector.” The same protector who has stated he is proud to have rolled back 50 years of rights over your own decisions vis-a-vis your bodies – With shields like that who needs swords?
• OK, what the fuck’s going on? We’ve been watching Trump’s slow descent into madness, admittedly from a starting point of near total insanity, for more than six years now, and I feel like I should no longer find anything he does surprising. But then he did a town hall in Oaks Pennsylvania, and I had to accept that there are layers of whatthefuckery I didn’t even know existed. If you haven’t already seen reports of this, you probably won’t believe me when I tell you what happened and I wouldn’t blame you for a second. I’ve watched the video, and I’m only about 80% sure it’s not a prank that the rest of the internet is specifically playing on me. The whole thing started out perfectly normal – the convicted felon and adjudicated rapist who is a coin flip away from running the free world was being interviewed by puppy-murdering South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, when a couple of audience members fainted from heat exhaustion. He’s not a monster, so rather than just ploughing on while his unconscious fans were tended to, he suggested playing some music. But then he decided that listening to music was more fun than answering questions, so he got his people to play the rest of his playlist while he danced on stage. For almost 40 fucking minutes. And you’ve seen Trump dance. He’s no John Travolta. Hell, he’s no Joey Tribbiani. He just swayed back and forth, occasionally flapping his elbows in slow motion like a manatee caught in treacle, and just stared at the crowd, who I can only assume were trying to figure out which is the best facial expression to ask “er… what the fuck is happening?” I’ve mentioned before that I’m a fan of musical episodes of TV shows – The Buffy one was amazing. I even enjoyed the Star Trek: Strange New Worlds one, but now they’ve gone too far. This one was worse than the Grey’s Anatomy musical episode. I’ve got a theory, though – one that doesn’t involve bunnies or dancing demons. Trump is so convinced he’ll never see any consequences for his many crimes that he doesn’t really need to be President again, and he definitely doesn’t want to be President again. Complaining about how the Democrats stole the election again will be so much more lucrative and fun, so I think he’s pulling shit like this and talking about Arnold Palmer’s massive dick because he’s desperately trying to find anything that will make people stop voting for him. Joke’s on him – the rubes that have followed him for years don’t have an off switch.
• In 2008 Ben and Jerry’s got admonished by the Justice Department for offering a free ice cream to anyone wearing an ‘I Voted’ sticker for violating the federal law barring compensation for voting. Fast forward to 2024 and Batman-but-with-parents Elon Musk has been offering $1million each day until Nov 5th to a random person who has signed a petition being circulated by Musk’s America PAC. They must however be a registered voter. The program works like this: Registered voters in Arizona, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, or Wisconsin — all swing states that could go for either Vice President Kamala Harris or Trump come Election Day — could sign the petition, which claims to be a “Petition in Favour of Free Speech and the Right to Bear Arms” until Monday, October 21, which happened to be the voter registration deadline in Pennsylvania. Whilst not openly stating that you can only be eligible to win if you vote for Trump – after all Musk is not stupid, well not as stupid as he looks – and boy does he ….. – the petition is kinda in the Republican ballpark of their beliefs n’est-ce pas?! Is what he’s doing illegal? ‘One issue Musk faces’, said David Becker, executive director of the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation & Research, ‘is that what constitutes payment for voting-related activity has been broadly interpreted in the past’. Hence the Ben and Jerry’s ruling. But even if the DOJ decides to go after Musk for this — and there is no guarantee that it will — the issue likely won’t be resolved before November 5, in part ironically to avoid any perception on the part of the federal government that the DOJ is meddling in the election! What is it with stupidly rich people wanting to influence communications to guarantee that the incoming regime is friendly to the idea of not taxing the fuck out of them to redistribute the wealth of the country a little more fairly. A bit like Jeff Bezos, owner of the Washington Post bringing pressure to bear on the editorial team to not back either candidate this year – for the first time since before Jimmy Carter!  Hmmm – just pay yer taxes ya bastards – you can’t take it with you!! Though I ‘spect some techbro is working on that too!
• One of the problems Republicans had with the 2020 election was supposedly that various rules were changed at the last minute to accommodate the fact that people were voting during a pandemic. Well, last minute changes to the rules might only be a problem when Democrats do it, it turns out. A panel of Trump appointed judges on the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals just granted a request from the RNC to invalidate a Mississippi law that allows ballots to be counted up to five business days after election day provided they were posted and postmarked by November 5th. Despite this rule being in place for four years in Mississippi and mirroring the rules in around 20 other states, Republican lawyers only decided to challenge the rule this year, claiming that it disproportionately harms Republican voters, who are less likely to vote by mail. What impact this will have on next week’s election remains to be seen, as the 5th Circuit did not rule that late-arriving ballots could not be counted, but sent it back down to the federal district court to decide how the rule should be implemented. So basically, if you’re in Mississippi, maybe send off that postal vote now, or if you can, go vote in person. And in 2028 that will probably apply to a hell of a lot more of you when this makes its way to the Supreme Court and those assholes do whatever they can to suppress mail in voting until someone has the balls to stack the court.
• Everybody is getting a bit jumpy at this time of year- no not cos of the impending Halloween celebrations with people frightened into desperately drawing the curtains and hiding behind the sofa so kids don’t come knocking demanding sweets in exchange for having drawn webs on their faces, it’s cos of the Rachel Reeves’s first Labour party budget where people are being frightened into desperately withdrawing their pension funds and hiding their offshore accounts so Keir don’t come knocking demanding taxes on unworked-for interest payments after their first 10 million having drawn up webs of shell companies! Many right-wing media owners, who are themselves mostly multi-millionaire domiciled-elsewhere kinds of people – who else can afford to buy a fricking newspaper let’s face it – are telling the government that lots of wealthy people will leave the country if the budget taxes employers and the rich rather than ‘working people’ as Labour have termed it. Okay then go – it’s not like you’re contributing to the bleedin’ economy anyway! Meanwhile no-one is quaking behind their doors at the prospect of one of the boogie-candidates in the boogie-leadership election for the boogie-Tory party. Kemi BoogieBadEnoch is bad-mouthing Robert Jenrick and vice versa in order to appear as malevolent as they need to be, to be elected. Kemi’s mantra is now that she is a woman, Thatcher was a woman, and she led the party from opposition to government, and therefore she can, oh and she’s got more integrity than anyone else in the Tory Party cos she’s not been sacked yet. A shame Labour is thinking of introducing a smacking ban, cos I suspect there are as many queuing up to do that to Kemi as there are to vote for her. Oh and the ban seems to have been enacted already for Labour MP Mike Amesbury after CCTV appears to show him punching a man – and it wasn’t even James Cleverly for not still being in the running for Tory Leader!

 

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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:

Glittering Generalities Fallacy- FT#160 Transcript

Jim: Vote. Go and vote. Vote now if you haven’t voted yet, go and vote. Stop listening to this immediately and go out and vote.

Mark: Go and vote.

Jim: I know that’s not how we normally start the show, but we have to now. Yeah, yes.

Mark: Every conversation should start with that.

Jim: Oh, yeah, yeah, yes. Every news report, every conversation that you have, every phone call. Who does phone calls anymore? Every zoom call, every everything. Every interaction you have with another WhatsApp should still telegram just at the moment with checking whether they voted and if they have voted, telling them to go and vote, then you can get on with the stuff that you were going to talk about.

Mark: Yeah. Even if the stuff you’re going to talk about was voting.

Jim: Yeah, especially.

Mark: Yeah, yeah. So before you even start about voting, talk, talk about voting.

Jim: Absolutely, yeah.

Mark: Yes.

Jim: So, hello and welcome to Fallacious Trump, the podcast where we use the insane ramblings of an erratically bronzed demagogue to explain logical fallacies. I’m your host, Jim.

Mark: And I’m your other host, Mark. A logical fallacy is an error in reasoning that results in bad or invalid arguments. And the logical fallacy looking at this week is glittering generalities.

Jim: This is from the mid 19th century, the phrase glittering generalities. And it, it was, if not originated, then probably popularized by a, a Whig senator from Massachusetts called Rufus Choate, right, who wrote a letter, a public letter to the main Whig Committee. And he was saying that the anti slavery Whigs were so caught up in the Declaration of Independence’s glittering and sound generalities, right, that they would destroy the Union by being their anti slavery selves who thought that, you know, men being created equal was a thing and all that nonsense. Right?

Mark: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jim: So, so that was kind of the main, the oldest big use of the term glittering generalities and slightly more recent, not very Much more recent, 1859, Abraham Lincoln used the term defending Thomas Jefferson being accused of using glittering generalities in kind of his, his abstract ideals of how America should be. And, and Lincoln was defending him in a letter saying that basically he’s not. These aren’t glittering generalities, these are not mere rhetoric. But Definitions and axioms of free society.

Mark: Nice. There you go. Yeah.

Jim: So glittering generalities are, when people use vague, positive sounding phrases or buzzwords without detail of how those things are actually going to go about or what they even mean in the place of kind of reason or actual policy. Yeah, actual policies.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: And I think that that fits with a thing you’ve probably heard Trump, say more than anything else. Not fake news.

Mark: Right.

Jim: But this.

Donald Trump: We want to make America great again. It’s very simple. We want to make America great again and that’s what we’re going to do.

Mark: It is very simple to say, but it’s not very simple. It’s, it’s. Yeah. If you, if you sat in town and went m. Right. How are you going to do that and when was it great and why isn’t it great now?

Jim: Not just how are you going to do it, but what does it mean? What does great.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: Great for who? Yeah, people like him, really is the answer, sadly.

Mark: Yeah. Yes.

Jim: Yeah. And absolutely. When was it great? And again, to answer that question like who are you talking about? Who was it great for? Is really important.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: When you’re asking that question. Because it has not been great for everyone in the past. There have been times when it has been less than great for quite a large proportion of society people.

Mark: Yeah. Because of their race, creed, things. Yeah, various things. The fact that they weren’t white land owning men.

Jim: Yeah. And it’s that group of people for whom nostalgia gives them the opportunity to claim it was great.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: And we should get back to that because now that everyone gets to, own land and vote and shit like that, it’s not as great because it’s not. Because they’re not privileged anymore. That privilege has been taken away by giving it to everyone.

Mark: Yeah. So it is a generality in its glittering. Because they’re going for great.

Jim: Yeah.

Mark: And the, the general bit, we go, yes, we are going to make that happen. We’re going to make it. Yes. It’s like the one. I could talk about it because I’m not going to talk about it. When the, when the whole Brexit thing was take back control.

00:05:00

Jim: Yeah.

Mark: You go, okay, yeah, we’re going to get something back. That’s the idea is, and it’s kind of underlies make America great again as well, is the implication that somebody has taken something away from you. The greatness of America has been removed from your grasp and control has been taken away from you by the eu. in this case, which was what the underlying, the Brexit thing, and they’re positioning themselves to be the people who are going to deliver it back. But the same thing applies when you say, okay, who’s the people taking back the control and what are they taking back control of?

Jim: Yeah.

Mark: and again, it’s the, you know, white male, privileged, public school educated rich men who are interested in taking back control. And if the control is taken back, then they can guard that privilege and make it great again.

Jim: Yeah.

Mark: They can make it how it was before. They can be in control where other people were taking control of ways. So they put the. Generalize it to. It’s affecting all of you.

Jim: Yeah. But you don’t need to argue any of that nuance. Any of that. That,

Mark: No.

Jim: Pesky, complicated nuance that gets you into when you can just.

Mark: Stop. Damn. Pesky.

Jim: Yes.

Mark: When you can just bring up really.

Jim: Vague words with positive connotations. Because everyone loves control. Everyone loves having control. You know, they don’t love being controlled, but they love having that, having control over their own stuff, don’t they? And they love things being great.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: Who could argue with things being great? No one’s going to argue against that, are they? You’d be crazy to.

Mark: No.

Jim: So if you just boil it down to something that sounds good generally without any detail at all, and put yourself.

Mark: Up as the person that’s going to bring that about.

Jim: Yeah.

Mark: Simple as that.

Jim: And sometimes the good positive connotations can be in response to negative connotations on the other side that you can argue about that are equally vague and unresolved and undefined. in a case like this, we.

Donald Trump: Are a nation in serious decline. Decline. We are a failing nation. We are a nation that has lost its confidence, lost its willpower, and lost its strength. We are a nation that has lost, quite simply, its way. But we are not going to allow this horror to continue. Less than four years ago, we were a great nation, and we will soon be a great nation again. Soon be. With our leadership. Every disaster Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have created can be fixed and be quick. Very quickly. We’re going to do it so quickly. Remember I used to tell the story, we’re going to win, win, win. Right. We’re going to win so much. You’re going to get tired of winning. We’re going to win. We’re going to start winning. Please, please, Mr. President, we’re winning too much. We can’t take it anymore. We’re going to win, win, win.

Jim: Yeah. This is one of the first things that he argued was that America doesn’t win anymore. M. And we’re going to win. Win so much you’ll be tired of winning. And at no point did he, make any attempt to define what that means.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: Like, what does it mean that America doesn’t win? And what will winning mean? It just, it’s just a generally positive thing. Everyone thinks winning is better than losing. So say we’re going to win.

Mark: Yeah. Particularly if you preface the whole thing with failing. Yeah, we’re failing. We’re not winning. We’re losing.

Jim: Yeah.

Mark: Everybody’s losing their confidence and losing this.

Jim: So, yeah, all of the negative things are, similarly vague because. Yeah. What does it mean? That the country has lost its confidence.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: The USA’s confidence. What?

Mark: Yeah, yeah.

Jim: And its strength and its willpower.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: It’s meaningless. But losing those things is bad. They’re obviously bad. Because strength is a good thing. Willpower is a good thing. Confidence is a good thing. So if you’ve, if we’ve lost them. Oh, bad things. And yes, similarly, all of Biden’s disasters. M. Again, completely undefined.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: But disaster, ah, what a bad thing. So, yeah, we’re gonna fix them. Because fixing is good.

Mark: Yeah, we’re gonna fix all these broken things. Yeah, all of the. Yes, exactly. We’re gonna fix them all. Even though some of them, ah, like they were going to fix Obamacare.

Jim: Yeah.

Mark: Because that was. That was a bad thing because Obama came up with it.

Jim: We’ve got a T shirt in our merch store, Felicia. Trump.com merch. I think it is. Yeah. Which is relevant to this episode, I realize now, but I hadn’t thought about this and it’s been in there for years. That is pro good things, anti bad things. That’s what the T shirt says. And that’s basically this. This Fallacy.

Mark: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes. We’re all pro good things and we’re all anti bad things.

Jim: Hard to argue with, isn’t it, really?

Mark: But. Yeah, but it’s a bit more nuanced than that. Okay. What do you call good things and what do you call bad things? Yeah. Ah, you know, destruction of people’s rights.

Jim: Yeah.

Mark: Might be a good thing for some people. For the people who want those people not to

00:10:00

Mark: have any rights so that I get more rights then they think that’s a good thing, but it’s not a good thing.

Jim: Bad thing. Well, here’s some of the things that Trump thinks about things.

Donald Trump: There are powerful forces in Washington trying to sabotage our movement. These are bad people. These are very, very bad. And Evil people. They know who they are. These are the people who made their money, their names, their careers, their power off the corrupt and broken system, and they liked it the other way. So they will do anything at any time, and they’ll never stop. But you know what? We’re stopping them. you’re seeing that right now. You’re seeing that right now. We’re stopping them.

Jim: Could he be any more vague? They’re a bad.

Mark: Almost went into a martini effort there, didn’t it? Any place, anytime, anywhere, there are bad people. Bad people.

Jim: They know who they are. They’ll do anything.

Mark: I haven’t got to point them out. Yeah, they’ll do anything.

Jim: But we’re stopping them doing the anything that they will do. No detail of who they are or what they’re doing or why it’s bad or how they’re stopping them. But you’re seeing it. You’re seeing it being stopped right in.

Mark: Front of your eyes right now. He didn’t say. He didn’t say this. When the Black Lives Matter, people were being violently suppressed whilst he crossed the road to hold a Bible upside down. It wasn’t contemporary.

Jim: It wasn’t.

Mark: Because.

Jim: It wasn’t while he stood outside the church. No.

Mark: Right. Because that. Because. Yeah, because he defines a lot of things as bad.

Jim: Yeah.

Mark: And. And clearly they’re not like peaceful protests. Not bad. If you disagree with it, you just disagree with it. It doesn’t make it bad.

Jim: No. it’s evil.

Mark: And it doesn’t make your disagreement with it good.

Jim: It’s evil. And evil is bad. So therefore, evil is. You should disagree with them.

Mark: Yeah. Yeah. By definition, evil is bad. Fair enough. Yeah. Yeah. Well, what am, I thinking?

Jim: I don’t know what you’re thinking. And now is the time, I think, for Mark’s British politics corner.

Mark: well, I was thinking, where better to look for glistering than the sunlit uplands of our Prime Minister’s first speeches as Prime Minister over the last nearly 50 years? So it’s just one example. There are many PMs and many years. So we’re doing three chunks because it’s too depressing otherwise. What was very interesting doing this exercise was to listen out for the common themes and metaphors, but also to revel in the warm, smug glory that is hindsight, because it somehow makes it possible to get over the trauma of the fact that we lived through all of these clowns. We’re going to do it in reverse order. So the first chunk of our three chunks is Keir Starmer in 2024, Rishi Sunak in 2022, and Liz Truss in 2022, who all kind of attribute the resilience and determination of the nation to the people of the nation themselves. Which makes you also realize that we’ve managed to do all that we’ve managed to do in spite of their actions as leader rather than as a result of them. And they’re also quite fond of nautical references as well.

Keir Starmer: Yet if I’m honest, service is merely a precondition of hope. And it is surely clear to everyone that our country needs a bigger, reset, a, rediscovery of who we are. Because no matter how fierce the storms. Of history, one of the great strengths. Of this nation has always been our ability to navigate away to calmer waters. That we will rebuild Britain with wealth. Created in every community, our NHS back on its feet, facing the future, secure borders, safer streets, everyone treated with dignity and respect at work.

Rishi Sunak: I will deliver a stronger nhs, better schools, safer streets, control of our borders, protecting our environment, supporting our armed forces, leveling up, and building an economy that embraces the opportunities of Brexit, where businesses invest, innovate and create jobs.

Liz Truss: By delivering on the economy, on energy and on the nhs, we will put our nation on the path to long term success. We shouldn’t be daunted by the challenges we face. As strong as the storm may be, I know that the British people are stronger. Our country was built by people who get things done. We have huge reserves of talent, of energy and determination. I am confident that together we can ride out the

00:15:00

Liz Truss: storm, we can rebuild our economy and we can become the modern, brilliant Britain that I know we can be.

Mark: Bit of a tautology there at the end. We can become the thing I know that we can be.

Jim: Absolutely.

Mark: But it’s all about rebuilding and with promises of growth, of economy where money will be coming out of our ears.

Jim: Ah, weathering storms. Lots of storms.

Mark: Storms, yeah. Oh God, it was. And realizing the potential of Brexit and leveling up, you know, and up is good, up is a good word. Heading for calmer waters. We’re going to, going to weather the storm because we’ve got resilience and all that kind of stuff. So it’s all good stuff.

Jim: Yeah. Also, the country was built by people who got things done. It’s literally not possible for a country to be built by, by anyone other than people who got things done.

Mark: yeah. Sat about waiting for Godot. Yeah. So, so, okay, so we’re moving back in time. Here’s chunk two, this is Boris Johnson in December 2019 and July 2019. Yes, there were two elections that year. Theresa May in 2016 and David Cameron in 2015 and 2010, when he was joint head of the coalition government with Nick Clegg.

Boris Johnson: And in the next few weeks and months, we will be bringing forward proposals to trial. Transform this country with better infrastructure, better education, better technology. And if you ask yourselves, what is this new government going to do, what is he going to do with his extraordinary majority? I will tell you, that is what we are going to do. We are going to unite and level up, unleashing the potential of the whole country. And we will do a new deal, a better deal that will maximize the opportunities of Brexit while allowing us to develop a new and exciting partnership with the rest of Europe based on free trade and mutual support. I have every confidence that in 99 days time we will have cracked it.

Theresa May: As we leave the European Union, we will forge a bold new positive role for ourselves in the world. And we will make Britain a country that works not for a privileged few, but for every one of us. That will be the mission of the government that is lead. And together we will build a better Britain.

David Cameron: This is a country with unrivaled skills and creativeness. A country with such good humor and such great compassion. And I’m convinced that if we draw. On all of this, then we can. Take these islands with our proud history. And build an even prouder future. Together, we can make Great Britain greater still. And I want to help try and build a more responsible society here in Britain. One where we don’t just ask what. Are my entitlements but what are my responsibilities. One, we don’t ask where, what am I just owed, but more, what can I give? And a guide for that society that those who can should and those who. Can’T, we will always help.

Mark: So there we have building a better Britain and unleashing the potential of the nation. Yeah, yeah. Why wouldn’t you do that? Build a better Britain? Yes.

Jim: They never say we’re going to make everything worse. They.

Mark: No, no. That’s quite interesting, isn’t it? Yeah, because they all did. Yeah. Not at least because there was an election in seven, 2019 and two in 2022. Two in 2019. So it is quite good going backwards. And notice also the Boris’s speech is a lot about himself, as you’d expect, because of his extraordinary majority. It was only 80 seats. Starmer got 157. Also Cameron, the word is creativity, not creativeness. Eaten in Cambridge education. But, you got to admire his creativeness when he channels JFK’s Ask not what America could do for you, but what can you do for America?

Jim: And a plagiarism than creative.

Mark: Yeah, that whole thing of getting out of the way, getting out of the way, not being big government, actually, it’s all about you, the people, you know, let’s work together in service for this thing. Because, well, no, we’ve elected you to do that. You, you’re gonna do that. and you haven’t done that. But yeah. So they’re unleashing the potential, they’re leveling up, making a better Britain and making Great Britain great again. And so the third chunk before Cameron was Gordon Brown and then Tony Blair. So, ah, Gordon Brown 2007, Tony Blair in 97 and then Margaret Thatcher in 19.

Gordon Brown: And I want the best of chances for everyone. That is my mission. That if we can fulfill the potential and realize the talents of all our. People, then I am absolutely sure that. Britain can be the great global success story of this century.

Tony Blair: It will be a Britain renewed where. Through education and technology and enterprise, we equip our country for the future in a different and new economic world. And where we build a nation united. With common purpose, shared

00:20:00

Tony Blair: values, with no one shut out, no one excluded, no one told that they did not matter.

Margaret Thatcher: And I would just like to remember some words of St Francis of Assisi. Which I think are really just particularly. Apt at the moment. Where there is discord, may we bring harmony. Where there is error, may we bring truth. Where there is doubt, may we bring faith. And where there is despair, may. We bring hope,

Mark: which is God. So, there’s Gordon Brown talking about that will be the best country in this century, and Blair saying all sorts of stuff. What’s interesting is when the labor leaders do their first speeches, there isn’t a background of booing going on. You know, just saying, just an observation. And Thatcher, Thatcher doesn’t even bother to make it about the people of Britain, but compares herself to some Francis of Assisi. You know, how much more glitteringly general can you get than a biblical illusion of splendid things to come? And elsewhere in all of their speeches, they all talk about, oddly, they all talk about restoring trust in politics and politicians and the economy, as each of them has been ruined by the previous government. But listening to it in reverse, you get, oh yeah. And each of them also went on to perform reputation tarnishing actions and had to contend with economic disasters, some of which they actually caused. Cameron May and Boris’s Brexit. If you thought that was bad, Liz Truss did exactly the same thing. So they went in with all of this general, it’s all going to be great. And they came out of it with small human bad things that went on. You know, partying when the Queen is sitting, husband’s funeral, that kind of stuff. Trashing the economy when the Queen is dying, just all of that. Blair fucking going to war with Iraq. and Thatcher just got to being. Going to war in the vulgar to say to get a third term. appalling, awful stuff. We’re going to unleash the potential. If somebody says unleash the potential, there’s Gordon Brown doing it in 2007, Johnson doing it 15 years later. Has it happened? Yeah, well, yes, if you got out.

Jim: Of the bloody way and stop, stop leashing the potential.

Mark: Potential. Stop leashing it. Yeah, we wouldn’t complain so much.

Jim: Yeah.

Mark: D-Ream there. Of course, with their glittering generality, Things can only get better from 1994 with featuring Professor Brian Cox playing on the live version. Yeah, he played keyboards on there with their live touring. Different guy on the studio, he did the live stuff.

Jim: So in the fallacy in the wild, we like to talk about the Fallacy of the week from a non political perspective. And our first example is directly coming to you from qed.

Mark: Yay.

Jim: Because we went to qed, Mark and I. Yeah, it’s good. And the very first talk on the main stage was a guy called Dr. Idz who was talking about medical misinformation on social media, particularly on TikTok. And this is one of the videos that he showed. And this is a guy called Eddie Abbew who basically is anti processed foods, which, you know, fair enough. Yeah, some of them aren’t great, but he is very kind of like almost

00:25:00

Jim: abusive about them and like really belligerent. Yeah, very, very anti them. and so he starts off in a supermarket around fresh produce and then it cuts to him with some more sugary type foods.

Eddie Abbew: When you eat natural foods like this, you Become free. You become who you are meant to be. But you see, when you eat ultra processed shit like this, it numbs, your brain. But you don’t realize because it happens. From childhood, the sugar inflammation also affects your brain cells. Guys, free your mind. Stop eating this kind of stuff. Eat real food.

Jim: So Dr. Idz was using this as an example of the appeal to nature fallacy. We were pleasantly surprised to see several mentions of various logical fallacies during the talks.

Mark: We nearly stood up and went, yay, that’s us. Yeah.

Jim: So, yeah, he was saying essentially that a lot of what this guy does is natural food is good. Processed food is unnatural, therefore bad. And yeah, that’s way too simplistic. There are instances where fresh natural food is good and there are processed foods which are, bad for you. But it’s not as simple a line as that. And in the same way, what he was talking about as the kind of consequences of eating each of the foods, he said, if you eat fresh food, if you eat all this good food, you will be free.

Mark: Be free.

Jim: What the is that? What does that mean?

Mark: You’ll be your best.

Jim: You’ll be your best self. Yeah. But if you eat the sugared stuff, it numbs your brain again. What does that mean?

Mark: And you don’t know. You dumped your brain because he’s numbed your brain. Yeah.

Jim: What does a numb brain mean? You don’t. You don’t have any nerve endings in your brain, so your brain is numb no matter what you eat. Your brain is numb.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: Also, your brain really needs sugar. Its fuel is glucose.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: Yeah. You shouldn’t eat too much sugary stuff.

Mark: At the expense of other things.

Jim: Yes. Your brain needs. First of all, your brain needs like a quarter to a half of all of the glucose in your body is used by your brain.

Mark: Wow.

Jim: Also fruits and vegetables and the other stuff that he was showing and saying this is good stuff. Contain sugar.

Mark: Are, providers of that.

Jim: They’re naturally occurring sugars, but they’re metabolized in the body essentially fundamentally the same way as glucose is. Having an apple means that you get other good stuff alongside the sugar. You get fiber and you get certain kind of vitamins and minerals and that kind of stuff that you don’t necessarily get with ultra processed foods, which you should eat in moderation. But trying to say that if you eat sugary stuff, your brain will go numb. But if you eat fresh, good produce, you will be free.

Mark: Then you’ll be free.

Jim: It’s meaningless. It’s a glittery generality. It’s just.

Mark: It’s quite good, isn’t it? Because, you know, being free is a good thing.

Jim: Numb is bad. Apparently numbrains. People don’t like numbrains. M so even though everyone has one.

Mark: Brains all the time. Yeah. What would be the opposite of a numbrain? A free brain or a, painful brain? Probably prickly brain. Yeah.

Jim: An itchy brain. Yeah. I’d rather have a numb brain, thank you very much. I enjoy not feeling my brain the whole time. That’s right.

Mark: Yeah. It would. I think it would upset me somewhat if I could. Yeah. Feeling it thudding around in there if we were a little bit disconcerting. Yeah.

Jim: So, yeah.

Mark: Itchy Brain is a great single from that third album by I’ve Got A Number. Yeah.

Jim: So our, second example comes from the Nic Cage film Lord of War in which he plays an arms dealer. And in this scene he is being transported to a place where he is going to deal arms with a group of freedom fighters, as they call themselves, somewhere in Africa.

Yuri Orlov: So where are we going?

Andre Baptiste Jr: RFS the freedom fighters.

Yuri Orlov: Every faction in Africa calls themselves by these noble names. Liberation this, Patriotic that. Democratic Republic of something or other. I guess they can’t own up to what they usually are. Federation of Worst Oppressors and the Last Bunch of Oppressors.

Jim: Yeah. So there is a tendency among certain groups to give themselves positive sounding names. like Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, for example.

Mark: Yeah. Or Democratic Republic of Congo.

Jim: Yeah, yeah, Things like that. Because it’s just the name. It doesn’t represent their actual politics. It is, it is a meaningless word with positive connotations. It is as glittering in general as it gets.

Mark: A bit like the House Freedom Caucus. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jim: And in fact, a lot of groups will do that who aren’t freedom fighters or terrorists, depending on which side you’re on. Like, I can’t remember what RFK’s group is called, but it’s something like the foundation for Children’s Health or whatever, which is an anti vax group.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: Actively kill children in

00:30:00

Jim: advocating against vaccines. Who name themselves a thing. That sounds like it’s pro good stuff, anti bad stuff.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: But what they’re doing is actually bad stuff. And so our, final example comes from last week. Tonight.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: This was an episode where John Oliver was talking about medical devices particularly and what FDA cleared means. He prefaced this with a clip from Shark Tank where a person who was promoting something to the sharks was saying that their device was FDA cleared. And Mark Cuban and one of the others said, well, that doesn’t mean anything. That doesn’t mean it’s safe, which is accurate, because approval, if it’s FDA approved, that means that the FDA has decided the benefits that you get from using this medical device are, better than the side effects that you might get from using it. So it’s overall a good thing.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: FDA cleared means that it is substantially similar to another device that has been approved.

Mark: Oh, okay. Yeah.

Jim: So it doesn’t mean they’ve tested it, doesn’t mean they’ve looked at it. Basically, they’ve looked at plans for it and details about it, and they’ve gone, yeah, that looks a bit like the things that we’ve already said are, okay, so you can then claim it’s FDA cleared, but that doesn’t mean it’s safe and it doesn’t mean it’s effective.

Mark: Right.

Jim: So that was the preamble to John Oliver saying this.

John Oliver: Saying something is FDA cleared is in no way proof that a device actually works. It’s a phrase that can promise way more than it delivers. Like when a cereal describes itself as part of a complete breakfast, that doesn’t really mean anything. Anything can technically be part of a complete break if you ingest it alongside oatmeal, yogurt, granola, fruit salad, and a glass of orange juice. Heroin is part of a complete breakfast.

Jim: This is a thing that was used repeatedly in ads in. Especially throughout the 80s. Pretty much every kind of sugary cereal would say that it was part of a balanced breakfast or part of a nutritionally complete breakfast. They would show it a bowl of the sugary stuff alongside a couple of slices of toast and a bowl of oatmeal and a yogurt and a wheat sheaf. Yeah. And a bag of grapes and a glass of orange juice and stuff. And. Yeah, it’s part of it. Sure. It doesn’t make it good. And advertising does this all the time. It will use this kind of stuff, and sometimes advertisers get in trouble for doing it when it turns out actually the thing you’re pushing isn’t very good. But, sometimes it’s really vague stuff like Frosty’s used to be with Frosted Flakes in the US Frosties in the uk. Frosties bring out the tiger in you. That was their thing.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: What does that mean and meaning?

Mark: And they were great.

Jim: They’re great. Yeah.

Mark: And they’re great. Yeah.

Jim: Listen, for example, would help fight bad breath.

Mark: Right.

Jim: Which doesn’t mean it stops you having bad breath.

Mark: Yeah. It would just help. Help fight.

Jim: It doesn’t even necessarily fight it. It just helps fight it. Like if you do lots of other stuff, like not eating food that would give you bad breath and cleaning your teeth regularly and using your teeth, and using Listerine all together, all of the stuff you might do, which is separate from necessarily just using their product. It helps products that claim to boost your immune system or help boost your immune system, which is more common, again, kind of meaningless and ultimately not desirable because a too strong immune system is how you get lupus and stuff like that. So it’s like you don’t want your immune system to be the kind of immune system that. What it does that attacks bad things and lets in good things. Good thing, anti bad thing. Immune system is what you need.

Mark: We came up, with, or we were talking about that at qed. Clinically tested.

Jim: Yeah, clinically tested.

Mark: Something says it’s clinically tested. It’s, you know, stamped all over it. Clinically tested. It may have failed.

Jim: Absolutely. It doesn’t say. But they’ve tested it.

Mark: Take it to the clinic and they test it. Clinically tested, like everything should be. Yeah, yeah, that’s. Yeah. But he failed miserably. But you leave that be out. It’s like the theater posters when you. You always put the reviews on. You only put the good bit on. Then you put, you know, dot, dot, dot, good bit, dot, dot, dot.

Jim: Amazing.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: And they’ve left out the. That this got on stage.

Mark: That’s why it’s amazing that anyone greenlit this. Yeah, it’s amazing that this person got any work after the previous terrible thing that they did. Y.

Jim: So, yeah. When you see a vague advertising slogan with just positive buzzwords that doesn’t give any detail or explanation, be skeptical.

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 what I made up, and Mark has to figure out which one is fake news.

Mark: So this game, you see, this game is going to be so great. I’m going to bring so much fairness and rule abidance to this game that you’re all going to want to play it forever. And when you do, I’ll ensure that we’ll all win, all of us together

00:35:00

Mark: and share in the glory to come. That’s my mission. We’re going to make this game great again.

Jim: Well, that sounds like a worthy and positive mission to be on.

Mark: Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, give it two years till the next election, and then we’ll realize where it all went wrong. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jim: So there is a theme this week, okay. And the theme is golf, mostly when Trump was really supposed to be talking about something else, but ended up talking about golf because he’s easily distracted by golf. And. Yeah, and the reason that the theme is golf is by one of the statements which our, listeners may have already heard, because it’s been out there a bit, but it’s one of those times when I had to do it anyway because it’s. It’s one of those.

Mark: Right.

Jim: So you may have already heard one of these, you may not. And they’re all golf related. So statement number one. He was talking about NATO and suggesting that instead of funding people’s defense, like through NATO, like giving countries money, what they should do is loan them money to defend themselves and then expect them to come back after he said, right, do it as a form of a loan. I do that with athletes. They can’t quite, you know, like a professional golfer, who I think is very good. They don’t have any money, but they have a lot of talent. I’ll say, here’s the deal. I did it with a number of people. Here’s the deal. What I want to do. Professional golfer. I play golf. I play very nice. Did you see the picture of me? The horrible picture with the stomach out to here? That was. So what I do is, I’m putting up today a picture of me actually, what I actually looked like hitting a ball, smashing the fricking ball. And you’ll see quite. I wouldn’t say slim. I wouldn’t say slim, but not bad. But the ball does go far. I would say it goes about nine times further than Biden can hit it. Nine times.

Mark: Oh, my God. That’s a. One of those, infinitely bouncing, golf balls. So he started off with. He’s talking about NATO and he’s ended up m saying, I’m, not fat and I can hit it further than him Anyway. No, no, no. Whoa.

Jim: So statement number two.

Mark: Yeah, yeah.

Jim: He was talking about foreign policy, right? And he said, when you look at Iran, they had no money. They were a poor poor, like a really poor country. And they would go begging to the other countries, please do business with us. But I told the other countries, if you do business with Iran, then you can’t, we won’t do business with you. But Biden gave them $16 billion in cash, and now they Maybe have nuclear. I think they probably do have. And that’s a much bigger problem for the environment than global warming. I’m really an environmentalist. I have so many golf courses. I’ve built amazing golf courses all around the world. So I understand about the environment. I have a new one in Scotland and it’s the best, most sustainable. We always do it environmentally.

Mark: That’s the problem with nuclear. It’s worse for the environment than global warming. Okay. of course he’s an environmentalist. He’s got a golf course. Yeah. All that green space. Yeah. Think about it. Yes. All those green deserts where nothing can live other than fat golfers. Not fat, I wouldn’t say slim, but not bad. Yeah.

Jim: And okay.

Jim: Statement number three. He visited Latrobe, Pennsylvania, where Arnold Palmer is from. And so he spent the first 15 minutes or so of his rally talking about Arnold Palmer. That and doing like anecdotes. Right. So he said, I’ve been here before and I told the story before, not in this kind of detail because, you know, you have these teleprompters. If I would read it off a teleprompter, it wouldn’t be so good and it would be a lot shorter. It wouldn’t be as good. And I didn’t want to do that. I said, when I come here, I’m going to tell them the real story of Arnold. But Arnold Palmer was all man. And I say that in all due respect to women, and I love women, but this guy, this guy, this is a guy that was all man. This man was strong and tough. And I refuse to say it, but when he took showers with the other pros, they came out of there, they said, oh my God, that’s unbelievable. I had to say it. I had to say it.

Mark: Yeah. The man is stronger, tough, and only the best is good enough. Yeah. yeah, okay. Okay. Has it gone from yes, if I read off the teleprompter, it wouldn’t be so good and it’ll be a lot shorter. No, no, it would. By virtue of the fact that it is a lot shorter. Yeah. If I really have a teleprompter, it’ll be a minor miracle. M. Okay, so he’s gone. Started off with a loan through athletes, through professional golfers, to Stomach to Biden and then Iran to nuclear Donald. Okay, well, see, I think that kind of running out, it’s the opposite of a slippery slope. Brilliant. It’s like the running down, it’s just sort of petering out to. Yeah, right. Okay. All right, well I think given

00:40:00

Mark: the great gag route, global warming and environmental, nuclear and the fact he understands about the environment because he’s got golf courses. I think number two is the one that you made up.

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

Mark: Think the Arnold Palmer one. I think number three.

Jim: And number three.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: In which he talked about Arnold Palmer’s massive dick.

Mark: Yeah, yeah.

Jim: Is.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: Real.

Mark: No, I’ve been here before and I’ve.

Donald Trump: Told the story before. Not in this kind of detail because, you know, you have these teleprompters. If I would read it off a teleprompter, it wouldn’t be so good. Right. And it would be a lot shorter. It wouldn’t be as good. And I didn’t want to do that. I said, when I come here, I’m going to tell him the real story of Arnold. But Arnold Palmer was all man. And I say that in all due respect to women and I love women. But this guy, this guy, this is a guy that was all man. This man was strong and tough. And I refused to say it, but when he took showers with the other pros, they came out of there, they said, oh my God, that’s unbelievable. I had to say it, I had to say it.

Jim: He did not, in fact have to say.

Mark: I’m not gonna say it, I’m not gonna say it, but I just say it, man.

Jim: Yeah. so that was a thing.

Mark: Yeah. To be. And yeah, yeah.

Jim: You also think that number one was real. Where he. Yeah, he went from NATO all the.

Mark: Way down to stomach to golf, to Biden.

Jim: Yeah, number one is real.

Donald Trump: Do it as a form of alone. I do that with athletes. They can’t quite, you know, like a professional golfer who I think is very good. They don’t have any money, but they have a lot of talent. I’ll say, here’s the deal. I did it with a number of people. Here’s the deal. What I want to do.

Mark: Professional golfer.

Donald Trump: I play golf. I play very nice. Did you see the picture of me? The horrible picture with the stomach out to here? That was. So what I do is I’m putting up today a picture of me actually, what I actually look like hitting a ball, smashing the frickin ball. And you’ll see quite. I wouldn’t say slim. I wouldn’t say slim, but not bad. But the ball does go far. I would say it goes about nine times further than Biden can hit it.

Mark: Nine times, because that’s important when you’re comparing presidents, is how far you can Hit the, hit the ball. You just smash the freaking ball. So he’s comfortable. So wait a minute. Let’s do it as a form of. Oh yeah, no, that’s a good idea. Let’s talk about that. Yeah, I’ve did that with a number of people say here’s the deal. Okay. Oh, okay, what is the deal?

Jim: Yeah.

Mark: And then he’s just gone off to think, oh yeah, that horrible picture.

Jim: This is, just shows that this is.

Mark: It’S, it’s the way it’s also, it’s also out and out narcissism.

Jim: Oh yeah.

Mark: If you, if you hit him where it hurts, like you put ugly up and you say that he cheats at golf, then he’ll just do all that he can to do that. Some I read a description of him as a, somewhat mid grade businessman that would do anything for applause.

Jim: Yeah.

Mark: And it’s all about the, the weave is about trying to work out where the next laugh is and where the next weave back. No, he only weaves away.

Jim: That’s the thing. If you’re gonna do it, it’s not a weave.

Mark: It’s more of a petering out if.

Jim: You’Re going off on tangents and then bringing those tangents back and kind of doing it as a nice segment like an episode of Seinfeld or something like that where all of the, all of the plot points ultimately coalesce into a single thing.

Mark: Yes.

Jim: No, it’s not. He just, he just gets easily distracted.

Mark: Yes. That’s what it is. It’s not a wave. It’s just narcissistic distraction. Yeah. Oh, there’s a shiny thing. Oh, there’s a reflection of me. I’m going to look at that. Yeah.

Jim: Oh God.

Mark: Oh man.

Jim: Which means that you’re correct that number two.

Mark: All righty.

Jim: Was indeed fake news. Although.

Jim: It is inspired by a story about his new golf course in Scotland.

Mark: Right.

Jim: Which Trump International billed as one of the most environmentally friendly and sustainable courses ever built in the history of time. The Trumpet organization is saying we’ve really taken this seriously. They’ve talked about getting geomorphologists and ecologists and environmental scientists to ensure the courses work seamlessly within the landscape and that kind of stuff.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: I don’t know who they got to do it. But other experts in the environment and golf courses have been less enthusiastic

00:45:00

Jim: about it. Nature agency Nature Scott denotified the site that the course was built on, as a site of special scientific interest, following, the work that was done to create this golf course which is kind of an extension of a, previous course. And they did that because it was just devastating to the local landscape. The Scottish Wildlife Trust chief executive said building Trump International Golf Links on a unique dune system has destroyed the dynamic nature that made it special.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: Bob Ward, policy director of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at London School of Economics, said the idea that building another 18 hole golf course next to the existing one could be environmentally friendly was laughable and complete nonsense. He said the damage is severe and irreparable. There’s no way they can credibly make that claim.

Mark: Whoa.

Jim: Professor Jim Hansen, a geomorphologist at University of Glasgow, said that biblical quantities of sand have been moved to build the first course which had destroyed the underlying structure of the soil. Wow. That’s the extent to which they care about the environment when building these courses. And yet, and, even then still claim that this is one of the most environmentally friendly and sustainable golf courses ever.

Mark: Wow. Of course, if you ask people who aren’t anything to do with environmental sustainability, if you just ask people that agree with you, then they’ll go, yeah, yeah, of course it is. Yeah. When you say it’s the most environment. Of course, of course it is. Of course it is.

Jim: When you don’t define environmentally friendly or sustainable.

Mark: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jim: So, we do have a few social contestants.

Mark: Oh, lovely.

Jim: Andrew on Facebook.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: Says number one seems the oddest in that he never really says anything less than usual. Anyway, so I’m going with that as the fake.

Mark: Yeah, no, good reasoning. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jim: On Patron Kaz too, he says, holy crap, Jim, this is having an effect on my cognitive. And I have cognitive. This wrinkled orange nappy stain muttered something like one and I’ve heard bits of three dribble out of his Mac face hole. So. So I’m going with two as Jim’s fine, concerningly on point wordcraft.

Mark: There you go. Nice, nice.

Jim: One eyed Nick says. See, I would have gone for number three being fake if I hadn’t heard it from his own puckered little face anus. Number one is him talking about himself, so that’s bound to be real. Which means I’m going with number two being fake.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: Can’t see him ever calling himself an environmentalist. Anders says, might that be Jim trying to seal the deal with repeating? Here’s the deal a number of times to lull Mark into picking number one as real? I sure hope so, for I claim it as fake news. Though he probably has said the latest part about how close to slimmy is and how far he can hit a ball.

Mark: Yeah, yeah, because that’s the most important rubric for your presidential chops.

Jim: Becca says, okay, I’ve heard recordings of three. There was a kerfuffle over it, and I think I’ve heard two. So I’m going with one being fake. This is backed up by a coin flip over whether I should go for one or two.

Mark: That’s all the objective evidence you need.

Jim: Renee Z Says, I think two is fake news. It has bits of things, things he said, but overall, I don’t think it’s a stream of diarrhea from his mouth at the moment. I’m so disgusted with this Nazi and all other Nazi fascists that are going to vote for him, some of whom I know I can’t even reason through my choice for fake news.

Mark: Fair enough. Yeah. The red mist descends and you just have to poke at the screen. Yeah, no, I’m with you.

Jim: And finally, Stephen Bickle says, Jim is getting too good at this. I’m actually going to go with number three. It feels similar to what I remember him saying, but I think it’s been scrambled up a bit it. From what he actually said.

Mark: Ah, nice. You see?

Jim: Yeah.

Mark: yes, you see, you’re doing it by proxy. You’re not that people aren’t going for the one that you did, but they are applying your techniques to, other ones. And then being hoodwinked by that. That way you’re spreading yourself out like some kind of sci fi octopus.

Jim: That’s why I constantly change which technique I’m using, whether I’m going to completely make it up out of whole cloth or do a kind of stream of consciousness thing at the last minute or. Or make a joke in it, or use things that he’s actually said, but make them crazier or. I wear many hats from my.

Mark: So many m. Many hats of many techniques. From my brief experience with trying to come up with Fallacious Boris for this bit, for the fake news. It is, it’s a hard. This is probably the hardest bit in the whole. The whole thing. But you’ve got to apply that. Okay, what have I done, before? Is that gonna work? Is that too convincing? Is it not?

Jim: Yeah.

Mark: Yeah. But hey, it’s all through it.

Jim: You did so. Yeah. And so did Renee. Again, I’m. I’m gonna have to go back through the archives, all the ones she’s spotted. I think she’s got a ridiculously good record at this.

Mark: We might have to Re what we should do is have a shout out to somebody to compile all of that stuff.

Jim: Yeah.

Mark: And if anyone feels like going scoreboard.

Jim: Back through the patron.

Mark: Yeah. Comments and checking what the scoreboard is to see if Rene is know.

Jim: I think. Yeah. If you, if you get just follow her some kind of back door communication thing to Renee then

00:50:00

Jim: I reckon she could help you out with this.

Mark: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Could keep the score up a bit. Yes.

Jim: So it’s time for the part of the show that this week at least is called the Election is not Logical Fallacy because I don’t know if you know, there’s a, there’s a thing coming up next week. yeah, a little, little small election. It’s not very important really. Right. I mean it could, it could change the course of some sort of chairman. Right.

Mark: Okay.

Jim: So we did kind of talk about our predictions for the election back in January when we did predicted the British and US Election details. And the British one we had to kind of go from a point at which it hadn’t been called yet.

Mark: So we didn’t.

Jim: We had very little to go on. But obviously with the US One we were going on it almost certainly being Biden versus Trump.

Mark: It’s all changed vastly.

Jim: Yeah, yeah, it has changed. And I think that basically I said I thought that kind of it would be a lower turnout than 2020. I thought enthusiasm had probably waned for both of them generally. And I obviously, I predicted that Biden would win because that are just out of desperate hope. So yeah, obviously things have changed though. We’re in a different situation. And what is endlessly shocking is that this is m. Probably going to be even closer than 2020. Yeah, it’s looking incredibly tight to the extent that we can put any faith in polls at all. The polls are extremely close. Camel is going to win the popular, vote. I think that’s. Yeah, true. And also what the polls predict.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: But in terms of all of the individual states, especially the battleground states, they’re all pretty much within or close to the margin of error for all the polls. So which makes it very difficult to predict anything.

Mark: And it’s kind of, it’s, it’s part of, part of it is that you just think why are the people that are voting for Trump. Trump continue to vote for Trump? Oh yeah, you know, they’ve not got a complete industry. To me, they’ve not even got Q. They haven’t got the Q, you know, role playing game to go along with this. There’s no external thing telling them that Trump is the God King Messiah, other than their own belief now. And so part of the.

Jim: And Trump.

Mark: Yeah, well, yeah, I’ll get a grudging, acceptance of the. The Trump PR machine is continued to pedal the idea that actually he is the God King Messiah and he is an ordinary man of the people. And by dint of just appealing to absolutely every populist thing, so, whether it’s freedom of speech, taking away your arms, you know, keep those pesky women quiet that go. Keep those pesky m. People who aren’t the same color as us quiet. Just appealing to people’s misogyny and racism and biases and you have class war and culture war, all of that. So all of that’s really easy to do when you’re like Farage or you’re like Boris or you’re like Trump, because it means you haven’t got to do any actual politics. All you’ve got to do is spot where the. Where the bad things are going and, And then just appeal to them and just say, oh, yeah, I’m as racist and misogynist and awful as you are. And. And I’m a member of the same class as you are.

Jim: Yeah.

Mark: Farage manages to pull it off constantly. Even though he dresses like a landowner when he’s in a pub drinking with his. With his erstwhile mates and being all mighty, he dresses like a rich landowner. He’s got the kind of the mustard waistcoat and the plus fours and the stripy jacket. He just. And a hat. He just. He looks like a toff.

Jim: Yeah, yeah. He looks like he’s on his way to the hunt.

Mark: Yes, exactly. Yeah, yeah. And taking part in the privilege of others. A bit like Trump. He’s very good at identifying somebody further down the food chain that the people who are, ah, down the food chain from him can be down on.

Jim: Yeah, yeah.

Mark: which distracts them from identifying that he is completely out of touch and has no interest in their welfare at all, and thereby hoodwinks them into voting for him and not seeing through the fact that what he’s doing is just militarizing, monetizing and energizing their prejudices for his own end. Yeah. I mean, Trump’s just, like, grifted

00:55:00

Mark: four dozen pieces of shit merchandise, all made in China, whilst at the same time being racist against China, blaming China for everything. But he’s grifting all this shit to people that would just lap it up, up, and they don’t think that they are actually just giving Lots of money to a rich man who’s for his entire career been given money.

Jim: Yeah. I think to the extent that I can understand it at all or kind of.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: Figure out any motivations for it. I think this, as with most things, a combination of factors and I’ve got no real concept of how much these are in different proportions, but I think, yeah, there’s absolutely some of his base who are just the worst awful people. They are, they are horrific misogynist racists. And, and that’s what they get out of it. There are people who are in an echo chamber and they are, they’re being. Their life is a bit. And they are buying what’s being constantly fed to them by Fox and others or Breitbart or, you know, whoever, whichever they listen to or watch that, that it’s other people’s. It mostly immigrants fault that their life is a. And only someone like Trump can help. So there’s. Yeah, there’s that group who aren’t necessarily explicitly racist, wouldn’t proudly accept that they’re racists, but, inclined to accept that when it’s told to them that it’s the, it’s the others, it’s the minorities that are causing them all the problems.

Mark: Yeah. Yeah.

Jim: And then I think there’s a large group that are probably just experiencing the sunk cost fallacy that they’ve spent so long so invested in Trump. They believed in him, they thought that he could do great things. They voted for him twice. And so despite all of the. That has happened, the convictions, the obvious cognitive decline, all of the stuff that he’s been openly going through for the last year or two, they’re too invested in it. They can’t now go, oh, yeah, actually I, I’ve been an idiot for.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: For years now. I was so wrong. He’s a dick.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: They can’t. It’s like their brain won’t let them do that. I think.

Mark: And I guess the same is, you know, our cognitive bias will kick in, but the same is. Is on the Democrat side. There are people who are lifelong Democrats that will not consider not voting for the Democrat candidate, even if it is a black woman. And, you know, not saying that there are, no misogynist, races in the Democrats, but there’s been a succession of white men, you know, one black man but. And one white woman. That they didn’t vote for it sufficiently. But it’s the weird bit is the people in the m. Middle who are still undecided.

Jim: Yeah. Like, how can you be they still don’t know who they’re going to vote for. Yeah, what the fuck is that?

Mark: How much more research do you need to do?

Jim: I don’t think it’s about the research for these people. Right. I’m going to go out on a limb and say I don’t m. Think those people, those undecideds are going to spend the next week kind of on the Internet checking out their research.

Mark: Yeah, yeah.

Jim: I don’t, I honestly don’t know what it is, but I don’t think it’s research. Yeah, it’s their issue.

Mark: It’s just, it’s, there’s the kind of people that say, oh it doesn’t make any difference when you. I’m not going to vote for anybody because it never makes a difference. Well yeah, sure it doesn’t. You’re right. If you don’t vote it won’t make a difference.

Jim: Yeah, I mean to be fair the polls usually do focus on likely voters. So yeah. Of those still it’s like 11. Between 8 and 11 of people just haven’t decided yet. Which is insane.

Mark: I mean it must be also been to do with well, whatever happens it won’t affect me. Yeah, that, that kind of a thing. And well that’s not true because your rights will be impinged upon if you don’t vote. You get to go along with the, the majority vote and if the majority vote is for the Nazi party that are going to ship out people they don’t like, then you will, you may well get caught up in that.

Jim: Yeah.

Mark: So it’s, it’s just, you know, a conspiracy of silence. But what is it? All it takes is for good men to do nothing.

Jim: Yeah.

Mark: Oh, I mean there are several people locally where I am who don’t vote. They just say, oh I’m not gonna vote. You know some of them are on the ignorant end when they just say m costs they will prioritize the immigrants over me. Well you know that’s not true. Or it doesn’t make, oh yeah, if I vote them in they will just be all woke and do this kind of stuff. He said, well that’s not true either.

01:00:00

Mark: Just. Or if I, it doesn’t make any difference who I vote for. All over. It doesn’t make any difference who you vote for or vote for the socialists, you know and then at least we keep the self interest capitalists out of power for a bit.

Jim: I have a little bit of sympathy for people who are in a very one sided district which is never ever going to go the other way. And so I can understand why those people feel that it’s not worth it, there’s no point. Yeah, I don’t agree. And to the extent I’ve ever done that myself, of just not bothering because it’s, because it would definitely wouldn’t make a difference. I don’t do that now. I vote, anyway, because actually, first of all I think that the size of that minority, even when it’s a first pass supposed system, is important. Not just for.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: To, to the extent that you can possibly send a message to politicians of whether they’re doing a good job or not, but also.

Mark: Yeah, yeah.

Jim: To the supporters of that party, the minority party, thinking, oh well, maybe it’s got a bit bigger since last time. Maybe there’s a chance if we keep doing it in a few years even, maybe there’s a chance it will, we’ll have an MP or a local councillor, whatever.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: And I think that’s important. And also the popular vote thing in the US even non existent, God forbid, even if Trump, wins the size of that popular vote going to the Democrats is an important thing. Oh yeah. To nudge people into being more vociferous about getting rid of the electoral College, for example.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: To just let people know that actually it’s less than half the country that are complete cunts.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: That is important. Even if it’s not going to make a difference in your specific district if you’re in a red.

Mark: And also though it will, it will still important. Endlessly irk.

Jim: Oh, that Trump. That’s a bonus as well. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s gravy.

Mark: Yeah. So, yeah, but that’s, but I guess that’s the thing, isn’t it, that you’ve. That if everybody actually votes not for Trump.

Jim: Yeah.

Mark: More people vote not Trump than for Trump. And yet Trump gets in, then there’s something fundamentally wrong with the electricity.

Jim: I mean it’s happened several times, like three times in the last 20 years it’s happened. The loser, has won the popular vote.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: And it’s always been Democrats, obviously. I think that the polling in 2020 and to a lesser extent in 2022 was way off. They have focused a bit, the polling organizations on getting better representation for the, for some of the groups that were underrepresented. And it is probably closer to reality than it, than it has been in the past.

Mark: Right.

Jim: Again, for certain groups for like over 65s and people like that, probably it’s reasonable. It’s kind of it’s going to be less so for like 18-25s. The other bit of information. Well, I don’t, I mean it’s information. I don’t think it’s evidence in any particular direction is the, the fact that early voting has been underway in most states.

Mark: Right.

Jim: For a while now. And a lot of, early votes have been passed, be they mail in ballots or impersonally voting. And we do have in a lot of states, data on whether those, early votes have been received from people who are registered Republicans or registered Democrats.

Mark: Right. Yeah.

Jim: And for the most part, like overall, it is currently 42% of those mail, in and early in person votes that have been cast up to today, I think it is 42 of those are registered Democrats, 40 of them are registered Republicans, and 18 are either independents or not registered as with a party.

Mark: Was either.

Jim: Yeah, that’s pretty close. It’s, it’s.

Mark: And also quite surprising given the given the negative publicity that Trump’s been putting around.

Jim: Yeah.

Mark: About mail in votes.

Jim: Well, one thing that has shifted over the last four years is the proportion of the early votes that are Republican. And I think part of that is that, Trump hasn’t been as vocal this time about saying that you shouldn’t vote by mail. He was, he was doing that actively in 2020 and. Yeah. And this time he, he’s, he’s very much not doing that. And, and at times he has said, oh, you know, mail in ballots, really bad and open to abuse, but you should definitely do it. You should, you should vote by mail or you should, you know, vote however you can go early do.

Mark: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jim: Often kind of thing. Him and other Republicans, other prominent Republicans are telling people to vote however is convenient for them and not doing nearly as much on mail in ballots as a whole and as a way of doing it. So

01:05:00

Jim: there’s definitely been an increase and that doesn’t indicate a shift towards Republicans overall. It could absolutely be in both cases because there is. While, Georgia, for example, absolutely smashed the 2020 record for the first day of early in person voting. Yeah, it was already a record in Georgia and they kind of tripled it or something this year. Year.

Mark: Wow.

Jim: Overall, I think in most states, if not all, they’re at this stage, which is unsurprising because it’s not, we’re not in the middle of a pandemic. In the ravages of a pandemic, mail in received votes and early in person voting is down on 2020 right across the country. And again, it’s difficult to say whether that is a reduction in enthusiasm or whether that is just people are, are going to vote in person on election day or going or leaving it a bit later to vote in person. There’s not that many mail in ballots that were sent out that haven’t been given back yet. Essentially, around 60 million mail in, and early in person ballots were requested and already over 43 and a half, nearly 43 and a half million have been returned. So that’s almost 75. We still got a week to go.

Mark: Yeah. And, how do the figures compare with 2016 when there wasn’t a pandemic to those.

Jim: Oh, yeah, there was not nearly as much. It was, it’s way higher than 2016. But because a lot of states in 2020 increased accessibility, some states previously had rules that you had to have an excuse for mail in voting. For example, you had to have a disability or some other reason that you couldn’t specifically get to the polls. And most states removed those kinds of restrictions.

Mark: And also those states have got increased restrictions for voting day.

Jim: Like, yeah, a lot of them have.

Mark: You’ve got to stand there, the opening hours are restricted, you can’t be given water, all that.

Jim: And some states have got restrictions on this kind of mail in an absentee voting. So, like Georgia has dramatically reduced the number of mail in dropboxes available in a lot of areas. There’s way fewer than there were in 2020. So that’s going to have an impact because, they’re just not as accessible. Whether that will mean that people choose to do it in person, go on election day, or whether that will just suppress the vote is hard to say. Again, basically what I would say is, to the extent that we can kind of predict anything at this stage, I, prior to 2016, was absolutely 100% positive Hillary would win. So, yes. Who the knows what’s happening?

Mark: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jim: yeah, yeah. All we know is that at the moment, the battleground states, for example, if you look at the party registration of the ballots that have been received, and this doesn’t mean this is who they voted for, because there are going to be some Republicans who aren’t voting.

Mark: Do you know what? I’m not gonna vote for Trump. Yeah, yeah.

Jim: It’s possible there are going to be some Democrats who are, who are. Would think Trump is great. I don’t understand that, but it might happen. Who knows? And obviously we don’t know what the independents and other people are thinking. And they’re a big chunk so in Nevada, at the moment of returned ballots, it’s 40% Republicans, 35% Democrats and 25% other. So that’s one of the battleground states. Similar numbers in Arizona. Georgia, it’s a bit closer. 49% Republicans, 45% Democrats, others only 6. North Carolina it’s 35 to 33 percent and 32% independent to others. So that’s a huge wow section. In Pennsylvania it’s the other way. Democrats 60%, Republicans 30%. And similarly in Michigan it’s Democrats 52%, Republicans 38%. Pennsylvania’s 20 electoral college votes. So that’s huge. If, if colonel wins Pennsylvania.

Mark: Yeah, yeah.

Jim: Then she’s got multiple different routes of the other battleground states that she could pick up to, to take her to 270. So, and, but again, we don’t know if these are indications of how the vote is going to go or if it’s just that these are the people who’ve decided to do it early already and others are waiting till election day. It’s, it’s up in the air.

Mark: I wonder whether part of Trump’s silence about not to postal vote is because he saw and tried to dismiss those massive landslides of postal votes that were for Biden. So perhaps in his dim witted, simplistic view, he’s thinking, well, if I keep quiet about votes, I might get a landslide of postal votes.

Jim: I think he’s been advised that telling people not to vote by mail probably suppressed his base voting to some extent because not all of them will have wanted to go to the polls and some of them would have voted by mail. So I think

01:10:00

Jim: he’s probably been given advice on that.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: And yeah, I think inevitably not doing that will increase the number who are prepared to vote by mail and that might increase the turnout a bit. In Wisconsin, incidentally, the majority is independents and others, 42%.

Mark: Wow.

Jim: Are non registered to a party register people.

Mark: Yeah, yeah.

Jim: Democrats 35% Republicans 23. Wisconsin’s a very important swing state as well. So there’s a few that at the moment are kind of leaning Republican. There’s a few that are leaning pretty strongly Democrat. There’s a couple that are, split pretty much down the middle. So that doesn’t really tell us anything.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: And a lot of the other states, the non battleground states are kind of going the way you would expect them to go in terms of the proportions if of those that even collect that data. And there are states, a lot of states, where the mail in ballots can’t begin to be processed until election day. I think one of the things that makes it hard to understand why it’s so close. I mean of the many things, one of the things that makes me feel kind of optimistic about it.

Mark: Right.

Jim: Is I don’t think that the early enthusiasm for Kamala has waned much.

Jim: When I see footage of, of camera’s events, Tim Wolf’s events, people still seem super into it.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: And I’m seeing a lot stranded in.

Mark: The desert waiting to be.

Jim: I’m bust back. I’m seeing a lot of half empty stadia for Trump and people like, the other night he talked to Joe Rogan last night I think it was, and talked for ages and didn’t leave to go to the rally that he was supposed to go to until it was like two hours into the rally. And yeah, they put up a video of him saying like, I’m sorry, I’m on my way. And people just left. Basically a lot of the people left. Tonight as we record this, he is doing a rally in Madison Square Gardens. That is a big venue and looked pretty busy and right full. And incidentally, from the bits that I saw of it before we started recording, it looked like a racist show because they, they had, they had awful people doing warm up stuff, including a horrifically racist comedian. That racist comedian in himself prompted people like Bad Bunny and Ricky Martin to endorse Kamala Harris, based on his racist jokes. So you know, and also Beyonce came out and endorsed Harris in Texas.

Mark: Wow.

Jim: The other day. So what I’m saying is I think it feels like. And it, yes, my media consumption is biased, but I do also pay attention to a lot of what’s going on on Fox and on the other channels.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: It really feels like there’s, there’s a lot more enthusiasm for Harris and that Trump’s enthusiasm is waning.

Mark: It’s a bit like any, you know, any New Kid on the block. There’s a lot of media coverage, you know, mainstream media coverage. And then it goes through the usual, cycle of. Yeah, we’re all, we all really love it. It’s great. You know, it’s like Beetle Mania and then they’ll find something that’s wrong with it and shoot them down. So you build up the here and then claim, oh, well, we, we built them up and shot them down. So. Or is it just that the news cycles moved on? So I think the news.

Jim: Yeah, absolutely. I think that’s it. I think it’s not that the media enthusiasm For Harris has, has definitely shifted. Like it’s not that they, they were all about it when it was exciting.

Mark: And Biden’s out, she’s in. Yeah.

Jim: And yeah, they, they aren’t covering her in the same way as they were a month ago or two months ago. But if you look at her rallies and the public appearances she does and all of that kind of stuff, it still seems to be getting really good responses from the people who are there and watching. So. Yeah, I don’t know. The other thing is when will we know who has won?

Mark: Yes.

Jim: And initially we were thinking. Or I, I did and I’m not sure I mentioned it to you. I was thinking what if we did a live stream of election night. And then I realized that.

Mark: Right.

Jim: 48 to 72 hour live stream is not reasonable.

Mark: And also we wouldn’t know anything by the time it’s over. Yeah, yeah.

Jim: The polls don’t close until it would be like midnight Tuesday night PM and yeah, it’s gonna, it’s, we won’t know anything for a while.

Mark: Plus all the postal ballots, some of the states, they can’t be counted until election day.

Jim: Absolutely.

Mark: And then they have to be counted by hand.

Jim: Well, there was a ruling in Georgia that said that they were going to have to do all of the election day ballots in each individual voting district. They were going to have to count them twice by hand before they were out to certify their numbers and give them to the central counting station. That ruling was overturned by a high court. So that’s now not the case. So that, that was going to completely Georgia for like a week. There was no way we were going to know what, what the results were out of Georgia

01:15:00

Jim: for ages. But now that’s been overturned and, and so they’re saying Brad Raffensperger and people like that are saying that it, that we might know Georgia within like a day of the election. Probably not election night, but possibly the next day. So we’ll see. There’ll be states that, that will take a few days. And the thing is because it’s going to be so tight, probably they’re going to be really, really careful. No one is going to want to make any mistakes at all. Especially when those mistakes can then be pointed to as evidence of fraud.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: So everyone’s going to be really careful. They’re going to be double and triple checking stuff. It’s going to be no one jumping the gun at things. Even people like Fox News aren’t going to want to say, yeah, Arizona is looking like, like it’s going for Harris or whatever. Like they did. Yeah, in 2020. And so they’re not going to rush it. Some of the states, yeah, they can’t start processing the mail in ballots. There aren’t going to be as many mail in ballots as there were in 2020. So it’s going to be quicker. But there are other processes that will cause problems. There are a good 30 at least, election deniers who are in positions of power in various places who will probably try and make things harder, take longer, so that they can point to difficulties, and issues and anomalies. So I, I think we probably won’t know for sure for probably three days after the election, at least. Yeah, you know, obviously we’ll know a lot of the states and a lot of them will be like, California will be called for Harris before the polls have closed or like the second the polls close because there’s absolutely no way it could possibly not be. But yeah, yeah, we won’t have the numbers for probably a few days.

Mark: How long was it last time the.

Jim: Election was November 3rd and the final result was called while Giuliani was giving his press conference at, ah, Four Seasons Total Landscaping on November.

Mark: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jim: So it was four days.

Mark: Wow. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it’s likely to be. Yeah, around that because, yeah, I think.

Jim: It might be a little bit. But, but they’re going to be really cautious. so we are recording our next episode on the 7th, two days after the election. We probably won’t know the result then, but who knows?

Mark: Yeah, we’ll see who knows might do.

Jim: So we’ll give you a bit of an update on how things have gone.

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

Jim: With just over a week to go before the election, it’s time to really take a look at the character of the candidates. Sure, it’s fun to make fun of Trump and his weird makeup, his inability to articulate a single thought, and his pathological need for approval that stems from his emotionally distant father scarring him for life with a crippling sense of inadequacy. But what kind of a man is he? We got a little closer to truly knowing Trump thanks to an article in the Atlantic last week about vanessa Guillen, a 20 year old army private who was murdered by a fellow soldier at Fort Hood in 2020. When Trump heard about the incident, he invited Vanessa’s family to the White House and sat with them for 25 minutes, expressing his sympathy. At one point, he told them, if I can help you out with the funeral, I’ll help. I’ll help you with that. Financially, I’ll help you. Which must have been a weight off their minds. So there we are, a small window into the genuine empathy and respect Trump feels for his fellow man. And I’m sure that’s where the story ends. Let me just check that Atlantic article. Oh, hang on, there is a bit more. Yeah, it seems Trump m didn’t forget that family. He actually followed up several months later asking his people if they ever got the bill for the funeral and if so, how much it costs. Yes, he was told it cost $60,000. This, according to the article, made Trump angry, saying, it doesn’t cost 60,000 bucks to bury a fucking Mexican. He turned to his chief of staff, Mark Meadows, and said, don’t pay it. And later that day, according to a witness, he just couldn’t let it go, saying, can you believe it? Fucking people trying to rip me off. The Guillens family attorney confirmed that they never received any money from training Trump.

Mark: Nobody ever has. That’s the thing. And yet he managed to piss every red cent that his father ever gave him up the wall. But. But nobody’s ever said, oh yeah, I got paid. The chair of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, Andy Harris, is very concerned at helping out voters in North Carolina, given the devastation wrought by Hurricane Helena in the western part of the state. So concerned that it is all for adopting ideas from Trump activist Ivan Reichling, who gave a keynote speech at a dinner Harris attended. Harris seems to agree with Reichling that they should save everyone the bother of having to go through the storm torn landscapes of the state in search of a ballot box. So they’ll help out by simply stating that the potential difficulties with voting in the hurricane damaged area will be a basis for the state legislature to declare in advance that Trump should win the state’s 16

01:20:00

Mark: electoral votes. Look, you’ve got disenfranchised in 25 counties. You know what that vote probably would have been? Harris is recorded as having said to Reichling in a video, Reichling up to X. Apparently in the keynote space, Reichling argued that in addition to North Carolina Republican controlled legislatures in New Hampshire, Arizona, Nebraska, Georgia and Wisconsin could take similar steps by meeting on election day and awarding their electors to drive Trump. Andy Harris balked a little at going that far. It looks just like a power play, he said. In North Carolina, it’s legitimate. There are a lot of people which aren’t going to get to vote and it may make the difference in that state, which still looks like a power play to me. And also to Patrick Mahenry, retiring Republican congressman for North Carolina, who said it makes no sense whatever to prejudge the election outcome. And that is a misinformed view of what is happening on the ground in North Carolina. Bless his heart. Asked to elaborate on his remarks, Harris issued a statement through his campaign. As I’ve repeatedly said, every legal vote should be counted. I would hope everyone could agree that legal American voters whose lives were devastated by the recent storms should not be disenfranchised in the upcoming voting process. Unless, of course, it means that he’s looking dodgy for dim Trump, in which case, hey, let’s just swing that thing into practice where no one will have to bother to vote for the lifelong presidential dynasty ever again. We’ll save you having to come out, folks. Yeah, stop the steal, anyone?

Jim: Everyone surely understands that political campaigning can just be a series of photo ops designed to make the candidates appeal to various demographics, hopefully interspersed with some opportunities to actually get out there and talk to the people, kissing hands and shaking babies so that people can relate to the candidate candidates. Or if you’re Trump, it can be about avoiding interviews with actual journalists, talking to Joe Rogan for so long that you’re more than two hours late to your own rally, and staging photo ops entirely to troll your opponent. The right has somehow become obsessed with the fact that Kamala doesn’t have any paperwork to prove that she worked in a McDonald’s more than 40 years ago. Her fast food pay stubs are very much the long form birth certificate of 2024. And so it was that Trump’s people decided to have him work the fry station at a Pennsylvania McDonald’s. There are those who might say that the footage of him handing bags of food to drive through customers who expressed surprise and delight to see the former president at the restaurant was a genuine attempt to connect with working class voters. J.D. vance, for example, went on Fox to praise Trump’s genuine interest in the employees and their lives and where they came from. That’s something you can’t stage and you can’t fake. And he said it’s why working people have this emotional connection to Donald Trump. I get why Vance is impressed. After all, Trump didn’t spend the whole time asking staff members how long they’ve worked for, then saying, okay, good and ordering whatever makes sense. But yes, you can stage and fake all that. And one of the ways we know that is that this was all as fake as you can fake it without building your own McDonald’s. M out of cardboard. The branch was closed to the public during the photo op and all the customers were screened, vetted and positioned in the drive through line before Trump even got there. None of them ordered any food. They just got whatever makes sense in a bag. While Trump smiled for the cameras when a reporter asked him if he supported raising the minimum wage, a pretty fucking pertinent question while he’s cosplaying as someone earning less than a quarter of the national average salary, he said, well, I think this, these people work hard, they’re great. And I just saw something, a process that’s beautiful. He then belittled how actually fucking hard they work by claiming, I could do this all day. During the five literal minutes he scooped fries. The irony of course is that Trump couldn’t actually get a job at McDonald’s because they don’t hire convicted felons.

Mark: What do you do when you’re legally defined as not factual? Pseudo news show is canned by Fox News, that well known news shaped channel for being party to the bringing on of a 1.6 billion defamation lawsuit by Dominion Voting Systems. If you recall, whilst being the idiot at the center of that, Tucker Carlson’s texts got shared to let us know what he really thought about Trump. Trump, we are very, very close to being able to ignore Trump most nights. Carlson text to an undisclosed recipient on 4th of January 2021. I truly can’t wait, he added. I hate him passionately. Well, not unlike Jaylee Vance, Carlson knows a bandwagon slash gravy train when he sees one. That was a warm up act for the Tangerine Nightmare in Duluth, Georgia last Wednesday. Seemingly high on the testosterone so absent from the usa as reported in Carlson’s own the End of Men Stupid mentoring program, he likened the US under Trump as a naughty girl being disciplined by a father. If you allow your hormone addled 15 year old daughter to slam the door and give you the finger, you’re gonna get more

01:25:00

Mark: of it. There has to be a point at which dad comes home. At which point the crowd erupted into raucous cheers. Okay, hang on. So Trump is the angry father coming to discipline the US for what? For not voting for him? For not wanting to behave meekly as a prisoner in an overbearing male centric, demagogue worshiping, throwback, unequal rights, 1950s society? Carlson’s continued dad comes home and he’s pissed. He’s not vengeful. He loves his children, disobedient as they may be. He loves them. And when dad gets home, you know what he says? You’ve been a bad girl. You’ve been a bad little girl. You’re going to get a vigorous spanking right now. And, no, it’s not going to hurt me more than it hurts you. I’m not gonna lie. It’s gonna hurt you a lot more than it hurts me. And you earned this. You’re getting a vigorous spanking because you’ve been a bad girl. And it has to be this way. Clearly this struck a chord with the stupid ass misogynist, toxic masculinity, lust for violence, the thirst for revenge crowd. Because when Trump came on stage, they screamed, daddy’s home and Daddy Don Sigmund Freud is spinning in his grave in their blinkered, woman hating spittle flecked red mis descended fantasies. Trump supporters are of course blind to the fact that Trump cares nothing about any of them or about causing them pain any more than he is to be believed when he says he’s the savior of women, their shield and defender. As he told women attending a rally in Pennsylvania, you will be protected and I will be your protector. the same protector who has stated he is proud to have rolled back 50 years of rights over your own decisions vis a vis your bodies. With shields like this, who needs swords?

Jim: One of the things I hate most about Tucker Carlson is the frequent windows we get into his sexual fantasies. I don’t want to know. I don’t, you know, I’m not kink shaming. I just don’t want to know that you no longer want to fuck the green Eminem because they’re not wearing as sexy shoes as they used to, or that you would, that you would like Trump to spank you and call you a bad little girl.

Mark: Yes.

Jim: I just don’t, I don’t, I don’t want to know.

Mark: Just don’t know.

Jim: No, no, no, I can do that.

Mark: All I want to know about that, is fantasies for tanning your balls. Yeah, just enough of it.

Jim: Keep it to yourself.

Mark: keep yourself, yeah, keep quiet about it. Tell your therapist it’s because he hasn’t got any money. He’s not earning any money. well, he’s not going to be earning money as Trump’s warm up man, because he’s never going to pay you, Tucker. Not going to happen.

Jim: Okay, what the fuck’s going on? We’ve been watching Trump’s slow descent into madness, admittedly from a starting point of near total insanity, for more than six years now, and I feel I should no longer find anything. He does, surprisingly. But then he did a town hall in Oaks, Pennsylvania, and I had to accept that there are layers of what the fuckery. I didn’t even know existed. If you haven’t already seen reports of this, you probably won’t believe me when I tell you what happened. And I wouldn’t blame you for a second. I’ve watched the video, and I’m only about 80% sure it’s not a prank that the rest of the Internet is specifically playing on me. The whole thing started out perfectly normal. The convicted felon and adjudicated rapist, who, a coin flip away from running the free world, was being interviewed by puppy murdering South Dakota Governor Christy Noem when a couple of audience members fainted from heat exhaustion. He’s not a monster. So rather than just ploughing on, while his unconscious fans were tended to, he suggested playing some music. But then he decided that listening to music was more fun than answering questions. So he got his people to play the rest of his playlist while he danced on stage for almost 40 fucking minutes. And you’ve seen Trump dance. He’s no John Travolta. Hell, he’s no Joey Tribbiani. He just swayed back and forth, occasionally flapping his elbows in slow motion like a manatee caught in treacle, and just stared at the crowd, who I can only assume were trying to figure out which is the best facial expression to ask, what the fuck is happening? I’ve mentioned before that I’m a fan of musical episodes of TV shows. The Buffy one was amazing. I even enjoyed the Star Tre Star Trek, Strange New Worlds one. But now they’ve gone too far. This one was worse than the Grey’s Anatomy musical episode. I’ve got a theory, though, one that doesn’t involve bunnies or dancing demons. Trump is so convinced that he’ll never see any consequences for his many crimes that he doesn’t really need to be president again. And he definitely doesn’t want to be president again. Complaining about how the Democrats stole the election again will be so much more lucrative and fun. So I think he’s pulling like this and talking about Arnold Palmer’s massive dick because he’s desperately trying to find anything that will make people stop voting for him. Jokes on him. The rubes that have followed him for years don’t have an off switch.

Mark: In 2008, Ben and Jerry’s got admonished by the Justice Department for offering a free ice cream to anyone wearing an I voted sticker

01:30:00

Mark: for violating the federal law barring compensation for voting. Fast forward to 2024 and, Batman. But with parents, Elon Musk has been offering $1 million each day until November 5th to a random person who has signed a petition being circulated by Musk’s America pac. They must, however, be a registered voter. The program works like this. Registered voters in Arizona, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada or Wisconsin. Yep, all swing states that could go either for Vice President Kamala Harris or for Trump come Election Day could sign the petition, which claims to be a petition in favor of free speech and the right to bear arms until Monday, October 21, which happened to be the voter registration deadline in Pennsylvania, whilst not openly stating that you can only be eligible to win if you vote for Trump. After all, Musk is not stupid. Well, not as stupid as he looks. And boy does he look. The petition is kinda in the Republican ballpark of their beliefs. Nest Bar Is what he’s doing illegal? One issue Musk faces, said David Becker, executive director of the nonpartisan center for Election Innovation and Research, is that what constitutes payment for voting related activity has been broadly interpreted in the past, hence the Ben and Jerry’s ruling. But even if the DOJ decides to go after Muslim ask for this and there’s no guarantee that it will, the issue likely won’t be resolved before November 5th. In part, ironically, to avoid any perception on the part of the federal government that the DOJ is meddling in the election. What is it with stupidly rich people wanting to influence communications to guarantee that the incoming regime is friendly to the idea of not taxing the out of them to redistribute the wealth of the country a little more fairly. A bit like Jeff Bezos, owner of the Washington Post, bringing pressure to bear on the editorial team to not back either candidate this year for the first time since before Jimmy Carter. Just m pay your taxes you bastards. You can’t take it with you, though I suspect some tech bro is working on that too.

Jim: One of the problems Republicans had with the 2020 election was supposedly that various rules were changed at the last minute to accommodate the fact that people were voting during a pandemic. Well, last minute changes to the rules might only be a problem when Democrats do it Turns out a panel of Trump appointed judges on the fifth Circuit Court of Appeals just granted a request from the RNC to invalidate a Mississippi law that allows ballots to be counted up to five business days after election Day, provided they were posted and postmarked by November 5th. Despite this rule being in place for four years in Mississippi and mirroring the rules in about 20 other states. Republican lawyers only decided to challenge the rule this year, claiming that it disproportionately harms Republican voters who are less likely to vote by mail. What impact this will have on next week’s election remains to be seen, as the Fifth Circuit did not rule that late arriving ballots could not be counted, but sent it back down to the Federal District court to decide how the rule should be implemented. So basically, if you’re in Mississippi, maybe send off that postal vote now, or if you can go vote in person and in 2028 that will probably apply to a hell of a lot more of you when this makes its way to the Supreme Court and those assholes do whatever they can to suppress mail in voting until someone has the balls.

Mark: To stack the court Meanwhile, in British politics, everyone is getting a bit jumpy at this time of year. No, not because of the impending Halloween celebrations with people frightened into desperately drawing the curtains and hiding behind the sofa so kids don’t come knocking demanding sweets in exchange for having drawn webs on their faces is because of the Rachel Reeves first Labour Party budget where people are being frightened into desperately withdrawing their pension funds and hiding their offshore accounts. So Kia don’t come knocking demanding taxes on unworked for interest payments after their first 10 million having drawn up webs of shell companies, many right wing media owners who are themselves mostly multimillionaire domiciled elsewhere kinds of people. Well, who else can afford to buy a freaking newspaper, let’s face it, are telling the government that lots of wealthy people will leave the country if the budget taxes employers and the rich rather than working people as Labour has termed it. Okay then go. It’s not like you’re contributing to the bleeding economy anyway. Meanwhile, no one is quaking behind their doors at the prospect of one of the Boogie candidates in the Buki leadership election for the Boogie Tory party. Kemi Boogie Bajanok is badmouthing Robert Jenrick and vice versa in order to appear as malevolent as they need to be to be elected. Chemist mantra is now that she’s a woman. Sasha was a woman and she led the party from opposition to government and therefore she can oh, and she’s got more integrity than anyone else in the Tory party because she’s not been sacked yet. It’s a shame that Labour is thinking of introducing a smacking ban because I suspect there are as many

01:35:00

Mark: queuing up to do that to Kemi as there are to vote for her. Oh, and the ban seems to have been enacted already for Labour MP Mike Amesbury after CCTV appears to show him punching a man. And it wasn’t even James Cleverley for not still being in the running for Tory leader.

Jim: So that’s all the bad arguments for 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, ask if it’s a fallacy. Our contact details are on the contact page.

Mark: If you think we’ve used 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 podcasts and you can support the show@patreon.com f TRUMP Just like our newest patron, Mike Smith, our straw man level patrons LT Colleen Liela, Richard Thunder Hopkins, Will M. Scott, Ozzie On Bank, Laura Thompson, Mark Reiki and Ambarg Buchanan, who told us when we met her at QED we’d just call her Amber. And this year at QED I met the listener who recognized her at QED last year because we keep using her full name all the time. And our two Scotsman level patrons Schmutz, Sharon Robinson, Renee Z, Melissa Saitek, Stephen Biggle, Janet Loetta, Andrew Hauck, and our top patron Kaz Tui. Thank you for joining our patrons, Mike, and thank you so much for your continued patronage. Everybody else, it’s really very much appreciated.

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

Mark: Fallacious trump all music is by the outbursts and was used with permission. So until next time on, Fallacious Trump, we’ll leave the last word to the Donald.

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

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