Euphemism – FT#168

18 Feb Euphemism – FT#168

Show Notes

The Euphemism Fallacy occurs when someone uses a misleadingly positive word or phrase in order to avoid a negative reality.

Trump

We started out by discussing one of Trump’s euphemistically transphobic Executive Orders

Then we looked at Trump lying about crimes (but not his ones this time):

And finally we talked about Trump reframing his bragging about sexual assault:

Mark’s British Politics Corner

Mark talked about the leaked mock press conference about Partygate:

He followed that up by talking about Boris Johnsons’s excuse/apology for partying:

Then he talked about David Linden’s list of other reason’s Boris should have resigned

And he finished with Nigel Farage’s overly gentle description of bigotry:

Fallacy in the Wild

In the Fallacy in the Wild we looked at this clip from The West Wing

Then we discussed this clip from Bob’s Burgers

And we finished up with this clip from Blackadder

 

Fake News

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

1. I’d put him in the cabinet, absolutely, but I don’t know how he could do that with all the things he’s got going. But he can sort of, as the expression goes, consult with the country and give you some very good ideas. Like on AI, nobody knows more about it than Elon. It’s a big, you know, big thing. And he said it’s very important. I mean, it’s very important for the country. If we don’t do it, China is going to do it, or somebody else but most likely China. And China is working right now to develop massive electricity, a flood of electricity, a massive flood of electricity.
2. The judge they’ve got me up against, she’s a real piece of work, but I’m not even allowed to talk about it. And believe me, if I was allowed to talk you’d, as the expression goes, you’d hear a lot that you wouldn’t even believe. One day I’ll tell you. One day I’ll tell you. But she gagged me. Can you believe that? Nobody in history has been not allowed to say they’re innocent, but I’m not allowed to say it. It’s incredible. Meanwhile, the other side, Joe’s hired thugs that made up all these lies about me, they get to hold press conferences about it and the judge doesn’t say a thing.
3. If you don’t want to have illegal alien criminals crawling through your windows and going through your drawers as the expression goes, then vote against Crooked Joe Biden, throw him the hell out of office before I even arrive. You got to. Look, if we have this regime, it’s like a regime. And believe me, they are bad for democracy. What they’re doing with elections, what they’re doing in Washington DC, with people putting them in jail for years and years and years, and they let Antifa get away with murder. It’s just a horrible thing. It’s a very bad thing, and it’s a very dangerous thing.

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

 

Ethnic cleansing is not a logical fallacy

We talked about Trump’s plans to take over the Gaza Strip and relocate the people who live there.

 

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

• Wow, 2025 felt like a really long year, but thank god it’s finally… What? What the fuck do you mean it’s only February? Oh, god! Yeah, it’s another week with too much news even for the bit we humorously decided to call things we really don’t have time to talk about. Not looking so fucking funny now, is it? Anyway, new Attorney General Pam Bondi was in the job exactly 5 days before doing something that would get a normal AG impeached. She ordered the corruption charges against New York Mayor Eric Adams dismissed on the grounds that they were filed by the Biden administration, and they’re preventing him from doing the important work of rounding up illegal immigrants in New York. Importantly, they’re to be dismissed without prejudice, so that any time Adams steps out of line they can just refile the charges and beat him back into obedience. She hit a brief roadblock in the person of Danielle Sassoon, the Acting US Attorney for the Southern District of New York. Sassoon refused to carry out the order on the grounds that she not only believed Adams committed the crimes he is charged with, she planned to bring a superseding indictment with more charges. Rather than carry out the order, she resigned, and wrote Pam Bondi a scathing letter accusing her of setting up a quid pro quo with Adams. Guys! We found one! A republican with integrity! In fact, Danielle Sassoon is not only a Republican, she was just appointed by Trump to the role, she’s a member of the Federalist Society, and she clerked for Antonin Scalia! And she still did the honorable thing! Maybe there is some hope after all. Sassoons second and third in command also resigned rather than dismiss the charges, one of them writing “ I expect you will eventually find someone who is enough of a fool, or enough of a coward, to file your motion. But it was never going to be me.” and Bondi’s Acting Deputy AG (and former Trump criminal lawyer) Emil Bove set out to find one of those fools or cowards. He went to the Office of Public Integrity, presumably under the assumption the name was sarcastic. He essentially locked the department in a room for an hour with instructions to decide amongst themselves who would file for the dismissal, or all of them would be fired. After four more resignations, Bove finally found his foolish cowards, Edward Sullivan and Antoinette Bacon. It’s not quite done yet, as District Court Judge Dale Ho has to sign off on the dismissal. His ability to refuse it outright is limited, but he can, and very much should, order an evidentiary hearing into why the department was seeking to dismiss the charges. Fortunately, Dale is a Biden appointee, and a former civil rights lawyer, and I think there are about seven attorneys who suddenly have a lot of time on their hands who might agree to be witnesses at the hearing.
• Sure, if you were to, say, talk to someone signing up to join a political party as a supportive member or to work in a campaign office it’d be perfectly reasonable to say to that prospective candidate, ‘hmm, you see this role is for this party that has these values and belief systems and perhaps you’d be more comfortable actually seeking work at the party that is most aligned to your outlook, like say the guys at the other end of the political spectrum’. Like if you were Kemi Badenoch trying to convince Nigel Farage that he ought not join the Tory party after all for instance. And then McCarthy came along and Hoover kinda took issue with employees and prospective employees thought-crimes, as they saw them, for being slightly more lefty than they’d’ve liked when promoting the idea that the ideology that wasn’t straight-down-the-line free-market capitalism, he questioned their loyalty to the country if you will. We know how that all turned out – that’s right Arthur Miller wrote The Crucible! Wee-elll predictably Trump’s administration seems to be taking that loyalty one step further as befits a mediaeval monarchy, and intelligence agencies are asking candidates for top national security positions in the Trump administration to provide straightforward yes or no answers –  to the questions ‘was Jan. 6 “an inside job?” And was the 2020 presidential election “stolen?”’ Of course who did not give the desired straight “yes” answers, were not selected. Separately, at least two individuals in FBI field offices outside Washington, who were being interviewed for senior positions, were asked similar questions. The questions included: Who were the “real patriots” on Jan. 6? Who won the 2020 election? Who is your “real boss?” This in the already tense atmosphere at the FBI where interim Justice Department leaders appointed by Trump ordered the FBI to hand over a list of the thousands of personnel across the country who worked on Jan. 6. cases, forced out senior FBI leaders and transferred several senior Justice Department officials, and fired prosecutors involved in a special counsel investigation of Trump. At the CIA however we appear to be fine – “As the president’s principal intelligence adviser, I will begin with leading by example, checking my own views at the door, and committing to delivering intelligence that is collected, analyzed, and reported without bias, prejudice or political influence,” biased, prejudiced and political-influenced Trump-apologist and director of national intelligence nominee Tulsi Gabbard told the Senate Intelligence Committee. I’ve been watching the second series of Wolf Hall about Thomas Cromwell negotiating the court of unhinged, dangerous, bloated, gouty, orange-haired, scabrous Henry VIII whose blind loyalty fails to save Cromwell from the executioner’s block. Yeah Make America Tudor Again!
• This week Trump announced he was nominating Amazon Executive David Keeling to head OSHA, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Unusually for a Trump appointee, Keeling actually has some experience in the field. Before he worked at Amazon he was in charge of workplace safety at UPS, during which time they were sanctioned multiple times by OSHA for needlessly exposing their drivers to extreme heat and repeatedly refusing to install air-conditioning in their delivery trucks. In 2021, the year he moved to a similar role at Amazon, the company accounted for roughly half of all workplace injuries in US warehouses. Sure, you might think, Amazon has more warehouses than anyone else, so that’s bound to happen, but the following year injuries in Amazon warehouses were found to be 70% higher than in similar, non-Amazon facilities. So this guy seems like a great choice for the department whose only role is to value employee safety over profits, but I wouldn’t worry too much about it, because Republican Arizona Congressman Andy Biggs has already introduced a bill to abolish OSHA and repeal the Occupational Safety and Health Act, which was signed into law in 1970 by that woke leftie Richard Nixon. Multi-millionaire Biggs said “It’s time that we fight back against the bloated federal government and eliminate agencies that never should have been established in the first place. I will not let OSHA push Arizona around with their bureaucratic regulations.” Since OSHA was put in place, worker deaths in the US are down by 60%, and injuries are down by almost 80%, but Biggs doesn’t care about that because valuing human life eats into profits.
• The great thing about being new in the job, or in the job again with people that are new in the job, is you get to be all new and vibrant and smash stuff up and be a disrupter and shiz like that! All start-uppy and Zucky and Musky! Yeah let’s us here in the all-new staffed Department of Energy get all energetic and downsizey and efficient and fuck it, just fire everyone! They’ve been here for years whadda they know they’re just clogging up desk space waiting to retire – can ‘em – can the lot of ‘em! An Energy Department spokesperson disputed the number of personnel affected, telling CNN that it wasn’t actually 300 staffers that got fired Thursday night at the National Nuclear Security Administration “less than 50 people” were “dismissed” from NNSA, and that the dismissed staffers “held primarily administrative and clerical roles.” Yeah you say that now cos what the DOE seemed not to know is that the NNSA looks after the US’s Nuclear missiles. Some of the fired employees included NNSA staff who are on the ground at facilities where nuclear weapons are built. These staff oversee the contractors who build nuclear weapons, and they inspect these weapons. It also included employees at NNSA headquarters who write requirements and guidelines for contractors who build nuclear weapons. A source told CNN they believe these individuals were fired because “no one has taken any time to understand what we do and the importance of our work to the nation’s national security.” “Congress is freaking out because it appears DOE didn’t really realize NNSA oversees the nuclear stockpile,” one source said. “The nuclear deterrent is the backbone of American security and stability – period. For there to be any even very small holes poked even in the maintenance of that deterrent should be extremely frightening to people.” Not as frightening admittedly as knowing that Trump holds the codes to the nuclear football – but it’s still up there! Needless to say the agency began rescinding the terminations Friday morning! Dumbasses!
• Somehow all of Trump’s batshit cabinet nominees who have reached the voting stage so far have been confirmed. I say somehow, but we all know how – people didn’t vote for enough Democrats in high enough numbers, and now the majority in both houses of Congress is made up of spineless yes men who are afraid if they step out of line the richest man in the word will fund a primary challenge against them. Sorry, that’s very unfair. Spineless yes men and women who are afraid if they step out of line the richest man in the word will fund a primary challenge against them. Anyway, as of this writing, insane conspiracy theorist Kash Patel has not yet been confirmed as FBI Director, but in the meantime, the agency seems to be in good hands, albeit accidentally. Following interviews with Trump’s team during the transition period, FBI Special Agent Robert Kissane was told he would be the Acting Director, with Special Agent Brian Driscoll backing him up as Acting Deputy Director. On Inauguration Day, however, due to Trump’s policy of only hiring idiots, his team listed Driscoll as the FBI’s Acting Director on the White House website and, rather than admit they fucked up and correct it, they just decided to let it stand, since Kash will be in the job soon enough. But it turns out that Driscoll is one of those guys who has already had enough of Trump’s shit, so when he was ordered to hand over a list of all the FBI Agents who had investigated the January 6 insurrection so that they could be purged, he refused, noting that thousands of FBI personnel were involved, including himself. In a message to FBI agents, he wrote “we are going to follow the law, follow FBI policy, and do what’s in the best interest of the workforce and the American people — always” He hasn’t been fired yet, but it’ll probably only be a week or so until Kash is in the job, and all hell breaks loose. Still, I think it’s worth celebrating these little moments of resistance wherever they happen. 
• Elon Musk’s team at the so-called Department of Government Efficiency launched its website on Wednesday night with a feature allowing users to “trace your tax dollars through the bureaucracy.” People can navigate through all federal agencies and offices for details about their head counts, budgets and average ages of employees. The website states in tiny print at the bottom that its database excludes information from U.S. intelligence agencies. But an easy search shows that DOGE’s database provides details on the National Reconnaissance Office, the federal agency that designs, builds and maintains U.S. intelligence satellites. Not only are NRO’s budgets and head counts classified, but the prospect of Musk’s tech team meddling in sensitive personnel information is setting off alarms for some in the intelligence community. “DOGE just posted secret NOFORN info on their website about [intelligence community] headcount, so currently people are scrambling to check if their info has been accessed,” said one Defense Intelligence Agency employee. NOFORN stands for “Not Releasable to Foreign Nationals,” meaning information in this category can’t be shared with any foreign governments, international organizations or foreign nationals without specific authorization. And of course being ‘Tech Support’, barely-stable genius Elon Musk’s team will surely know that the internet used to be called the world-wide web and unlike the World Series Baseball some of the internet takes place outside US borders! Also Musk can’t claim he wasn’t aware that the National Reconnaissance Office is one of the nation’s intelligence agencies. His company, SpaceX, has a $1.8 billion contract with NRO to build hundreds of spy satellites. Hours after this story was published on Huffpost A White House spokesperson said “DOGE did not share classified information, any assertion to the contrary is a lie,” “Yesterday the accusation was DOGE was not transparent and today the accusation is DOGE is too transparent. Stop the fear mongering, DOGE’s mission remains to cut waste, fraud, and abuse and are doing so with the proper security clearances and following the law.”  – even as NRO’s classified information was still accessible on DOGE’s website. See, that 1984 fiction-novel did prove to be useful in honing the ol’ doublespeak!
• A lot of people wonder why the Democrats aren’t doing more to stop Trump, and there’s two main reasons. One is that they don’t get warned in advance about the random shit Trump comes up with, so when you hear it on the news and wonder why Democrats aren’t rebutting it immediately, it’s likely that they only just heard about it on the news too. Second, and more important, is THEY ARE NOT IN POWER. They have no ability to outvote things in the House or in the Senate, so all we can expect is people like Hakeem Jeffries, Pete Buttigieg, and AOC making their usual excellent points on social media and on occasional TV interviews, and somehow not yelling at almost exactly half of the American electorate for being Nazi collaborators. One thing we do have, for now, at least, is the courts. So far, the administration’s playbook has been to do blatantly illegal and unconstitutional things, and then stop doing them when a judge tells them off, while getting ready to ask their pet Supreme Court Justices to let them do the illegal things. And LOTS of cases are being brought against the illegal shit, so for now, there are blocks from federal judges on the Birthright Citizenship ban, the freeze on federal grants, the dismantling of USAID, and the ban on gender affirming care for minors among others. Trump and co do reserve the right to be whiny babies about following the law, though. Having been ordered to restore references to trans people on some federal websites, they complied but added a note at the top to say “Any information on this page promoting gender ideology is extremely inaccurate and disconnected from the immutable biological reality that there are two sexes, male and female. The Trump Administration rejects gender ideology and condemns the harms it causes to children, by promoting their chemical and surgical mutilation, and to women, by depriving them of their dignity, safety, well-being, and opportunities. This page does not reflect biological reality and therefore the Administration and this Department reject it.” Sorry, I should have said whiny, scientifically illiterate babies.  Meanwhile, 14 states filed a lawsuit challenging the authority of the clearly unconstitutional Department of Government Efficiency, and we just heard that the lawsuit has been assigned to Judge Tanya Chutkan – hero of the erstwhile January 6th case against Trump, who is already very much out of fucks to give when it comes to holding Trump and his idiot cronies to account.
• Okay you’re in the playground at kindergarten, some kids found a green marble in the corner of the playground like centuries ago and despite the finders keepers rule you think you should have it. The kid tells you politely no it’s mine and I don’t want to give it to you, anyway you just got here what gives you the right? I got money? I don’t need money, I like the thing, I own the thing, it’s mine, it’s not yours. Teachers and playground monitors – you know grownups – get involved, they confirm the thing’s not yours, never has been, you can’t just have it and sending a baby related to you to go and stand by the thing and pretend other people don’t like the thing being owned by the other person and that they’d totally be happy if the thing was yours isn’t going to work. Eventually you go to congress and a creepy suckup Georgia Republican Representative Buddy Carter says he’ll unveil the Red, White, and Blueland Act of 2025 to apparently help you, who he’s calling America’s “negotiator-in-chief” – told you; suck-up! To acquire the thing that isn’t yours. Now to be clear, again!, even if all of your friends – well the ones who call themselves your friends cos you’ve told them they can have some candy or you promise you won’t pull their hair or something, even if all of them agree and write in chalk on the playground floor that ‘we the people of the United Playground say you can have the thing and not the other kid and what’s more you can it a different colour – for real!’ it STILL doesn’t mean you can have it. Meanwhile Denmark have launched their plan to buy California or “New Denmark,” as the crowd-funding campaign website said the Golden State would be called, and would see its world-famous theme park Disneyland rebranded as “Hans Christian Andersenland”. The thing is the Danes know they are being funny, Trump, the weird fuckin’ kid with no friends in the playground except maybe Boris Johnson who also thinks he should be just given everything just cos, Trump thinks saying his equally funny things backed up by GOP idiot suckups actually constitutes a) the art of the deal and b) foreign policy! 
• One of the executive orders signed by Trump on day one was called “Restoring Freedom of Speech and Ending Government Censorship” and the second thing it promised to do was “ensure that no Federal Government officer, employee, or agent engages in or facilitates any conduct that would unconstitutionally abridge the free speech of any American citizen”. In unrelated news, The Associated Press was barred from attending a press conference in the Oval Office last week as a direct consequence of the news outlet continuing to call the Gulf of Mexico by its real name instead of the one Trump made up. White House Minister of Propaganda – sorry, Press Secretary, Karoline Leavitt said “I was very upfront in my briefing on Day One, that if we feel that there are lies being pushed by outlets in this room, we are going to hold those lies accountable, and it is a fact that the body of water off the coast of Louisiana is called the Gulf of America, and I’m not sure why news outlets don’t want to call it that, but that is what it is.” not adding “We have always been at war with EastAsia.” Meanwhile, at the Pentagon, there is a new policy to rotate press outlets out of permanent office space in the building to give other press outlets the chance to enjoy the benefits of greater access. Outlets being rotated out this year include the Washington Post, The Hill, CNN, the New York Times, NPR and Politico, but don’t worry, I’m sure they’ll be replaced with equally respectable organizations. I’ve got the official list of who will be replacing them right here. Oh fuck. Yes, it’s Newsmax, Brietbart, the New York Post, One America News, and the Daily Caller. Weirdly, Fox News got to keep their existing spot. I’m sure the fact that new Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had a weekend job there didn’t factor in at all.
• This week we learned that Chancellor Rachel Reeves spent fewer months at the Bank of England than she said she had on LinkedIn and had changed the entry there to reflect that after a BBC ‘investigation’, the BBC’s political correspondent Chris Mason also spent a lot of time on the News telling us we should also get excited about the fact that there was no issue at all with her expenses claims made when she worked at HBOS and that she left there on excellent terms and there was no suggestion of wrongdoing at all, which was frankly difficult to get excited about given the relative inconsequence of her actions compared with say Boris Johnson’s £840 a roll Downing Street wallpaper or Liz Truss’s £22bn hole blown in the budget or Boris Johnson lying to the Queen and everyone about Brexit and proroguing and parties and his suitability to run the country. But hey ho journalists are nothing if not balanced. Except it seems when it came to allowing Tory ministers to get all flustered about a Labour councillor’s somewhat insensitive ageist sexist messages in a whatsapp group which came to light recently too. Whilst not condoning such activity, and Labour’s probably right to suspend the perpetrators pending investigation, no Tory conversation about it wanted to point out when the messaging happened – it was of course as we suspected – cos the messaging was directly contemporary with the Tories’ Covid Era “let the bodies pile up” whatsapp messaging. Which of course only last year Boris had a great deal of trouble remembering why he couldn’t access the vast stock of Whatsapp messages cos he’d changed phones or trousers or addresses or worried about how it would tarnish his reputation as a humanitarian or something. I’m not excusing the actions of the Labour members but in the interests of balance it  would seem to me to be that‘s the kind of thing journalists ought to be putting into any interviews with delightfully outraged right-wingers!

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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:

Euphemism Fallacy – FT#168 Transcript

Jim: Hello and welcome to Fe Fallacious Trump, the podcast where we use the insane ramblings of Elon Musk’s vice president 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 we’re looking at this week is euphemism.

Jim: Yeah, we did dysphemism.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: Which was all about making things sound worse than they really are. Cause this is negative. And feism is about speech in Greek. And you, as in utopia is good.

Mark: They go, yeah, dystopia, utopia.

Jim: So it’s the opposite. So this is when you replace a word or phrase with something that sounds better in order to.

Mark: Right.

Jim: Make your point sound more appealing or less awful, depending m on where you’re starting from’just.

Mark: Less awful. Yeah.

Jim: Yeah.

Mark: Ah, okay. Yeah.

Jim: So our first example from Trump is one of his many executive orders that he’s signed since, going into office. And they have, they’re all given titles. They typically don’t put, you know, awful thing to do because we hate people.

Mark: Or because we inherited something we hate.

Jim: Yeah, they give them nice titles.

Jim: One of them was called Prioritizing Military Excellence and Readiness.

Mark: Right. Well, that sounds pretty good.

Jim: Sounds like a lovely thing.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: Sounds like a good thing that you should definitely want. And there’s a certain amount, however, of this, which is kind of, Iron Manning. We talked about Iron Manning a while ago, which is ye pretending that your stance is something that no one could possibly argue with. Like y. Another one of Trump’s executive orders claims to be about protecting women.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: From radical gender ideology and stuff like that. Whereas really as just being anti trans and. Yeah. Protecting women. Who could argue with that? And in the same way, who could argue with.

Mark: Right.

Jim: Prioritizising military excellence and readiness.

Mark: Yeah. Because why would you wish for not.

Jim: Eclud military shitness and laziness?

Mark: Unreadiness.

Jim: Un.

Mark: That’s just y. Un. Preparedness. Yeah. Don’t want that.

Jim: But the thing is, this executive order actually has absolutely nothing to do with military excellent. And readiness. It is about, getting rid of trans stuff from the military.

Mark: Okay.

Jim: It led a newly announced ban on trans service members.

Mark: Right.

Jim: A reoun ban. Because Trump did it in his first term as well. Yough. He did that one by tweet. So this one, the policy of this executive orders are split up into sections where the first section is purpose and then the second section is policy. And that’s the bit that kind of tells you what they want to do. And the policy section for this one says it is the policy of the United States government to establish high standards for troop readiness, lethality, cohesion, honesty, humility. That’s a weird one. Uniformity and integrity. And this policy is inconsistent with the medical, surgical and mental health constraints on individuals with gender dysphoria.

Mark: Whoa.

Jim: This policy is also inconsistent with shifting pronoun usage or use of pronouns that inaccurately reflect an individual’s sex.

Mark: How do they. They go into. Right. Okay. They just say that. They just state it. They’ve don’t explain why. They just, state that.

Jim: Yeah. Somehow the need to call people by their preferred pronouns.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: Makes America less safe, less ready and less.

Mark: Less. It degrades the lethality of the armed forces. Okay.

Jim: Yeah. So it, it’s just transphobic hatred.

Mark: Right.

Jim: With a much nicer name.

Mark: Yeah, yeah. Jesus Christ. Yeah.

Jim: Ah, yeah. So one of the other things Trump has done since taking office is pardon ye various right wing extremists. Well, lots of right wing extremists, some of whom were involved in the interaction on January 6, but others who have been involved in attacks on Planned Parenthood and places like that.

Mark: Right.

Jim: so this is how he characterized one of those groups.

Donald Trump: Most of us would not have believed it possible that a grandmother with a severe medical condition, quite elderly woman, would be put in jail for praying here in America. She was put in jail because she was praying. But we’re joined today by a woman who was 75 years old. Paulette Harlow was sentenced to two years in prison for peacefully praying outside of a clinic, charged under an obscure law that hadn’t been used in years.

00:05:00

Donald Trump: Paul is one of many peaceful pro lifers who Joe Biden is rounded up, sometimes with SWAT teams and thrown them in jail. Many people are in jail over this. This is just crazy. We’re going to get that taken care of immediately. First day, immediate. But let’s call these brave Americans what they really are. It’s persecuted Christians. That’s what they are. They’re persecuted.

Jim: Those are two clips, incidentally, that I added Together because he mentioned her a couple of times in different speeches. He called these people peaceful pro lifers, persecuted Christians, brave Americans who have been targeted peacefully praying. Yeah, those are euphemisms. Pro life is a euphemism for forced birth. Yeah, it’s not pro life. Cause they don’t care about life. They don’t care about the life of the mother, they don’t care about life of the child after it’s been born. They want to force the mother to give birth and that’s all.

Mark: That’s it. They don’t. Yeah, they’re not pro life of this will support them as a result of that. Make sure the people that are having to bear this child and look after it and that are supported throughout the child’s education all the way out to adulthood.

Jim: Protect it from you know, guns and shit.

Mark: Yeah, yeah.

Jim: So yeah, are. They’re not pro life. But that is a much nicer way of saying pro forced birth. And calling this woman a peaceful pro lifer, a brave American and a persecuted Christian is kind of euphemistic and kind of just lying because.

Mark: Right.

Jim: She was absolutely not sentenced to two years in prison for peacefully praying outside a health class. What she was sentenced for and incidentally she never ended up going to prison because as a 75 year old with various health conditions she was given house arrest until they were able to find a facility that was able to give her medical care as well as incarcerate her which they never did because it was. She was only sentenced in June of 2024. and then Trump pardoned her when he got into office. So she didn’t spend any time in prison at all. But the thing that she did was she took part in a forceful blockade of a reproductive health clinic in D.C. in October 2020 where they shoved their way in, she and nine other people shoved their way in, chained themselves together and stopped people from being able to access care. Which is not an obscure law that there is against that faces act which is used all the fucking time against exactly this thing. It’s the freedom of access to clinic entrances.

Mark: Ye.

Jim: So this person along with her nine co conspirators was sentenced. They were sentenced to various amounts of time but there were people injured in this attack on this, this clinic. This 75 year old grandmother purposefully fell on the clinic manager forcefully shoving him into a waiting room chair. Another co conspirator shoved a nurse, severely injuring the nurs’s ankle. A melee ensued. Says the Americans United report on this. Yeah, it was A, non peaceful, forceful blockade of care in a place which has a law specifically requiring people not to do exactly that. That law, incidentally, the FACE act specifically does allow peaceful praying outside.

Mark: Right.

Jim: That’s a thing you’re entirely allowed to do.

Mark: The bit that will arrest you for is everything else. Well, it’s this from the guy that has pardoned all those people that he described as patriots who were peacefully protesting, the stealing of the election, you know, by smashing their way into a government building and threatening to hang various people and shitting on the desks.

Jim: Absolutely peacefully, though.

Mark: Yeah, peaceifly. Oh, yeah, yeah. You know, they’re keeping within the red velvet ropes.

Jim: Y.

Mark: Of course they were.

Jim: Yes. And our final example from Trump comes in his debate with Hillary where he was asked about the Access Hollywood tape.

Anderson Cooper: You describe kissing women without consent, grabbing their genitals. That is sexual assault. You brag that you have sexually assaulted women. Do you understand that?

Donald Trump: No, I didn’t say that at all. I don’t think you understood what was said. This was locker room talk.

Jim: No, it wasn’t. But that’s a nice way to say. A lessful way actually to describe what he said.

Mark: Yeah, yeah.

Jim: Whereas Anderson Cooper there describes what he said.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: You bragged about sexually assaulting women. That’s not euphemism and it’s not dysphemism. That’s an accurate description.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: Whereas locker room talk is a way to dismiss it.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: By making it sound not as bad.

Mark: But actually’it’s such a well used euphemism that everyone knows exactly what it means, so it doesn’t actually take any sting out of it because

00:10:00

Mark: you know that locker room talk is going to include racism, misogyny, you know, ageism, just anything. Classism.

Jim: I mean, it’s the equivalent of boys will be boys kind of thing, isn’t it? You know, it’s excusing that as just the way that men are.

Mark: Yeah. It’s just how they are. You. Different times. It was different times and yeah, that’s. Yes. There’s another one, isn’t there? Yes, Those things that, we’in the UK, you know, there are no 1970s television personalities left either alive or out of jail. And people just like, kind of, it was different times. It was different times. And he think, yeah. So these days when you hear something that was broadcast, then there’s a warning that says it reflects the mores of the time and you’re watching it withhast, with your chin on the floor thinking, oh, my God. It’s a sort of pseudo euphemistic way of talking about this stuff. You know, it reflects the values of times. Yes. Why are you. Why are you broadcasting? Just doesn’t get you off the hook. You shouldn’t be broadcasting it. Some things. Fair.

Jim: Fair enough. I don’t know. I mean, I think things like the Muppets, on Disney, for example.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: Many episodes have those kinds of warnings on them.

Mark: Oh, really?

Jim: Yeah, because there were sketches about, like, travelers who they call gypsies at the time. M and we don’t do that anymore. And. Yeah, I think it’s dangerous to just not show any stuff from the past that doesn’t align with how things are now.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: Because it has a danger of making people not realize what things were like back then, how much things were accepted by society.

Mark: Actually. Yes. One of those little caveats is a bit like keeping the statues of slave owners in a museum and putting a plaque to explain who they were and why a statue was erected to them.

Jim: I think a lot of people would be fine with that. Would be having them in a place where the context is given of who they are and what they did and why those statues have been moved from public places. Y that is teaching the history, which is the argument that is made by the people who want to keep the statues there with no context, is that, you know, you’re a rasising history. I think there is a danger if you don’t allow that kind of caveat and that kind of context to be added to things, then you are pretending that. And also there would be a dearth of any content from, prior to, like, 19. 1971, even then.

Mark: Yeah, yeah. Y yeah. Because it was learning to. Yes. I mean, the whole rise of alternative comedy.

Jim: There’s aspects of Friends that these days do not hold up under scrutiny. Y But I think seeing that as a. Not just of its time, in as much as. Oh, we can excuse it then, but, as an example of what was acceptable in society at that time, or acceptable to the people with power to talk about it at that time. Because there were always people who didn’t find it acceptable. They just didn’t have any voice.

Mark: Yeah, yeah.

Jim: And so they were dismissed. And that’s true of, like, the fact that we had the Black and White Minstrel show on Saturday night primeime TV in the late 70s, which is ins. Fucking insane now.

Mark: Oh, my God. Yeah.

Boris Johnson: And now is the time, I think, for Mark’s British Politics Corner.

Mark: When you think about the last, 14 years, but certainly the last five years of British politics. Most of it is euphemistic phrases to describe how marvelous things will be. Even talking about Brexit. It was all done with euphemism. We will take back control. Control of our money, our, borders, our fishing or whatever. None of which is true. And it all hid below its cheery surface, things that you didn’t necessarily want to engage with or would have to. But I think at the very heart of the kind of use of euphemism was what came out during the COVID crisis, which ended up being party gate, which was even the word party gate is a euphemism for the appalling bloody behavurs. And it began with this. In 7th of December 2021, it was ITV News. They released a video of a mock press conference from 22 December 2020. That was our first lockdown Christmas in which former Press secretary Allegra Stratton and other Downing street staff for practing in the number 10 briefing room. And she mock questions from colleagues, including this one from Ed Oldfield, who was the Prime Minister’s special advisor.

Ed Oldfield: I’just seen reports from Twitter, but there was a down street Christmas party on Friday night. Do you recognise those reports?

Allegra Stratton: I went home. Hold on. Oan u u,

Ed Oldfield: Would the Prime Minister Condone having a Christmas party?

00:15:00

Allegra Stratton: What’s the answer?

Ed Oldfield: I don’t know.

Unidentified Downing Street Employee: O the party was cheese and wine. Clear.

Allegra Stratton: Is cheese and wine. All right? It was a business meeting.

Unidentified Downing Street Employee: I’m joking.

Allegra Stratton: It is recorded. His fictional party was a business meeting and it was not social. Distanced.

Mark: What’s astonishing is how unprepared she is to be able to talk about this stuff. She just doesn’t know’t workshopping how to answer this.

Jim: This is her preparation that we’re seeing. Yeah, but. Yeah, the fact that she didn’t have a ready answer for that. That obvious question.

Mark: Yeah. How was this not a party?

Jim: Yeah.

Mark: Yes. How is it not a party? The thing, the very thing that we are not allowed, we’re not allowing anybody to do over Christmas. We have done it. We’re about to have done it. I suspect that the fact that he asked that question was that they had done it.

Jim: Of course they. Yeah.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: That’s. Then if you haven’t done it, why.

Mark: Else would you have that questionursw ask.

Jim: That question in a mock press conference.

Mark: Yeah. Or they’about they’re preparing BO to have one.

Jim: Otherwiseise the answer would be, oh, don’t be silly, Ed, we’re not going to do that.

Mark: We’re not going to do that because, everybody’s socially distance. We’re all going to hope, of course that’s not going to come up because we’re not doing that. So they come up with a euphemism for it was a business meetingah when we know it was a, you know, booze fueled Christmas bash. As soon as that came to like, see resigned. And in January of 2022. So following that revelation, December, further evidence about a gathering in the garden of number 10 that had taking place in May came to light. And Boris Johnson apologized to the House of commons. Number 10 is a big department

Boris Johnson: with the gardener as an extension of the. Office, which has been in constant use because of the role of fresh air. In stopping the virus. And when I went into that garden just after 6 on the 20th of May, 2020 to thank groups of. Staff before going back into my office. 25 minutes later to continue working, I. Believed implicitly that this was a work event.

Mark: It’s a work event. If nothing else, the legacy of Boris Johnson is that he’s added to the lexicon of euphemism, callol parties. You can. Yeah, so it’s now a work event. And he was convinced that it was a work event. And later on he said, nobody told me that it wasn’t a work event. And even after that they said, even if they did tell me, I, was sure that the rules were obeyed at all time. And yeah, and for the vacillation and the explanation arous this and other gathering slash work events which led to the Sug Gray Inquiry. He was ultimately censured for misleading Parliament, which is itself a, euphemism for lying. Lying in the workplace as part of your job, you’re not allowed to l. You’re not allowed to stand up and lie to everybody else’s face on the public purse.

Jim: I mean, yeah, technically, but name a day ever yeaheah in UK Parliament when they haven’t done that.

Mark: Quite. Yeah, well. And what’s interesting is that. So that’s 12th of January. On the 24th of January, the Scottish National Party’s Minister David Lindon points out the disconnect between censuring Boris for that for the misleading Parliament rather than his various acts of moral turpitude.

David Linden: Revelations about Downing street being turned into a frat house during a deadly pandemic are just the latest and a very long lity of bad decisions from a Prime minister who Scotland didn’t vote for. So I’m askingess, I find myself somewhat baffled and wondering why being economical with the truth in this chamber is the tipping point for Tori MPs with the Prime Minister. Why didn’t the Tory MPs see him for what he really is when he compared Muslim women wearing the hijab to looking like ater box when talking of the war torn Libyan city of Sut, he said that it could be the new Dubai and all they had to do was clear the dead bodies away. When he unlawfully shut down Parliament, misled the Queen and tried to run the country like a tin pot dictator. The fact is this Prime Minister should resign because he is morally bankrupt and he always has been. I see that theable gentleman member for Shrewsby who’s managed to come to the chamber rather than touting for a second job, wants to intervene. So if he wants to stand up and intervene in his speech, he’s very welcome to do so. Otherwise he’s going to chenper from the.

Mark: Position could have ended it after he said economical with the truth. That in the Houses of Parliament is the accepted euphemism, for lying. So you could say I he has been economical with the truth. He also uses another euphemism at the end, chuntering from a sedentary position which because the rule is in the Houses of Parliament if you’re going to talk you have to stand up and you know, everybody else goes quiet and you talk rather

00:20:00

Mark: than just chunering away. So obviously this guy wanted to intervene and say, you know, how outrageous, blah. And the guy that stood up was the member of for Shrewsbury was David Korzynki. So he’s saying oh I see you’re in the chamber rather than touting for a second job because he was being paid 6,000 pounds a month by a New York City based investment firm and he had described his association with the firm as a job he would do in his spare time. And also he’d go on to fairly soon after this, to share a platform with right wing populist politicians, including Victor Orban and the Deputy Prime Minister of Italy, Mateo Salvini, at a conference organized by the Edmund Burke foundation, which is very coincidentally delicious. Korzyinssky responded in an article published in the Spectator stating that his reason for attending the conference was to make the case for nation states against European federalism, which sounds like a euphemism as well. And the pleasing coincidence is that economical with the truth was first used by Edmund Burke in a paper published in 1796 called Letters on a Regicide Peace, which included falsehood and delusion are allowed in no case whatever. But as in the exercise of all the virtues, there is an economy of truth. It is a sort of temperance by which a man speaks truth with measure that he may speak it the longer. And it entered modern lexicon when Robert Armstrong used the phrase in 1986 by Catch A trial when Margaret Thatcher’s Tory government tried to prevent the publication of a spy’s memoirs. And he was asked to define the difference between a misleading impression and a lie. And he replied, as one person said, it is perhaps being economical with the truth. And oddly now it is the accepted way of saying that someone is lying. If you say they are lying, you get censured and thrown out of the Houses of Parliament for using unparliamentary language.

Jim: Yeah, it’s an accepted euphemism to get away with calling someone a liar, basically. Yeah, yeah.

Mark: But, in 1906, Churchill came up with a much better one, which is terminological inexactitude, which I absolutely love. So our final example here is unembarrassed racist and director of the Reform UK Party Limited Nigel Farage.

Nigel Farage: Responding to the riots last summer, serious career criminals were released and this to make way for, yes, rioters, but equally those who’ve said unpleasant things on Facebook and elsewhere on social media.

Mark: Those that have said unpleasant things on Facebook and elsewhere, unpleasant, things being a euphemism for the likes of urging people to target a hotel housing asylum seekers of refugees. In the case of Jordan Paloo was sentenced to 20 months and calling for hotels housing asylum seekers to be set alight. As posted by Tyler Kay, who was also jailed and during the sentencences of Daniel Kingsley. Another judge, Reese Rowlands, said that Kingsley is, ah, a bigot who holds deeply offensive and racist views and that Kingsley appeared to be unhappy. There hadn’t been any significant Rio in Wales and he wanted some nearer to home. Adding, you only post something on social media if you want it to be seen. They’re being arrested for posting things on social media. No, they’re being arrested for what they posted on social media, which is inciting people to violence.

Jim: It’it’s an extremely common use of. This is people who’ve committed crimes who you happen to politically agree with. Yes, it happens a lot when people get fired for being horrendous bigots and they say, oh, they got fired just for standing up for free speech or, you know, things like that. And it’s actually. There was the teacher who got fired for. Well, they said he got fired for refusing to use Aent’s pronouns.

Mark: But yeah.

Jim: What he actually got fired was for outing a trans student on national tv.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: we had it with the latest Dinesh D. Souza police state film did as well. People supposedly being jailed for merely attending school meetings.

Mark: Yes, yes. Going to school board meetings. Yeah, well, yeah, that’s. Yeah.

Jim: And all of the stuff you said and did when you were.

Mark: Yes. It’s a bit like trust saying, I didn’t crash the economy. It was the things that people did after my budget that crash the economy.

Jim: Continuing to want to eat.

Mark: Yeah. Just pesky stuff like that. Yeah. Retract, don’t do it when your life is so try

00:25:00

Mark: don’t draw conclusions that just don’t follow on Retract, don’t do it Try your loc it just screw it Retract, don’t do it Just to follow on Just to follow on Retract, don’t do it when you launch yourself Screwy don’t draw conclusions that just don’t follow on Retract, don’t do it Try your locker Just screw it Retract, don’t do just don’t follow Just take theractioniip. Frankie gohost Hollywood there with the not really very euphemistic.

Jim: Relax’s a little bit euphemistic.

Mark: A little bit y.

Jim: Not quite enough to get it unbanned from the BBC radio.

Mark: No, that’s right. No. Because nobody noticed until Mike breed infamously said, oh, I know what this is about. They kind of went, don’t know what you’re talking about. Yeah, yeah. Until we watched the video and then we went, oh.

Jim: So in the fallacy in the worldild, we like to talk about the fallacy of the week from a non political perspective. And our first example this week comes from the west wing.

Mark: Hey.

Jim: This is an episode where they are sending in an extraction team into Ghana to rescue some hostages.

Admiral Percy Fitzwallace: They fly in on two Comanches in a black hawk. 20 men forcibly secure the perimeter of the barracks. A snatch force of six men penetrate and take the captives.

Leo McGarry: What about resistance?

Admiral Percy Fitzwallace: Well, they’re gonna subdue sentriesies and visible guards. They’ve got heavy sniper rifles and the CIA wet team.

Leo McGarry: What’s the timetable?

Admiral Percy Fitzwallace: 47 minutes to get there from the president’s go order. That’s radio silence. Two hours to get it done.

President Bartlet: Why a wet team?

Admiral Percy Fitzwallace: Excuse me, sir?

President Bartlet: Why the CIA wet team? We’re not near water.

Admiral Percy Fitzwallace: No, sir. It’s called. They call it a wet team because it’s bloody.

President Bartlet: I had to ask

Jim: So rather than calling them the Assassin Squad or something like that. The heavily armed murder group.

Mark: Murder M Group. or the Sweeney Todd Sons. Yeaheah.

Jim: They call them the Wet Team. Wet team because they are going to be drenched in blood by the time they. Which is bit of euphemism, makes some sound not as bad. Which is why the president didn’t though, until he was informed.

Mark: Made him sound like the Wet Bandits from.

Jim: Yeah, Yeaheah.

Mark: From Home Alone, didn’t it? Yeah. As a sidebar, when his daughter, who went on to be the handmaid in the Handmad sale, y got kidnapped, what was the. What was the follow up for that? She’just like, disappeared. Next season reappeared. That was it. They just went, oh, yeah, we found her.

Jim: that was the year that Aaron Sorkin stopped running the show. M. So he set up the cliffhanger, the end of one season and then John Wells took over the the next season and was like, I don’t really know how to finish this storyline inore so they kind of glossed over it a bit. But it did. Yeah, there was a resolution to it. They didn’t just like, oh, hi, Zoe. right.

Mark: I thought that was it, the resolution.

Jim: A dream.

Mark: Yeah, there was.

Jim: There was, a resolution to it. It was just not like a major storyline for the. What. Probably if Sorkin had continued, it would have been a thing.

Mark: Yeah, it would have worked.

Jim: Ye. It would have been a story arc. Yeah, they were just like, o let’s. Let’s get that one over with so we can get on with some politics.

Mark: Yeah. Yeah. Right. Yeah.

Jim: Our, second example comes from Bob’s Burgers.

Mark: O. Right. Y.

Jim: And, this is an episode where Gene has a girlfriend, but doesn’t really like her, but does like the fact that her dad is a kind of composer of jingles. Right. So he has a lot of music stuff and Gene is really into music. So, like, he gets to play while he’s her boyfriend. He gets to play with all of the music equipment.

Mark: Right.

Jim: And that means he hasn’t got around to getting rid of her.

Courtney Wheeler: Did you really mean those things that you said?

Gene Belcher: No. Well, a little bit. I’m sorry,

Courtney Wheeler: so you don’t like, like me?

Gene Belcher: No, but

00:30:00

Gene Belcher: I like things about you. Like your dad and his stuff.

Courtney Wheeler: You were using me.

Gene Belcher: I prefer the term networking.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: Gene likes a positive spin on the fact that he was a with, her so that he could go around her house and play with her dad’s music equipment.

Mark: She’s not working. Yeah. O. Yeah. O. There’s A duo, an Australian duo called, their show is called Wananomics. It’s basically kind of LinkedIn euphemistic stuff. So like in office euphemistic speech, we’ve renamed some movies. So when Harry reached out to Sally and Mission Impossible was renamed just Mission Statement. So and it’s just this entire staff about all these euphemistic terms interfacing with the commensible industry on a, self motivating, freewheeling basis throughout the city. Basically they’re a delivery person for McDonald’s. And all of that stuff is kind of a euphemistic rewriting of all the things you’ve done in order to. And it’s not like nobody could see through that, but you just join in and play the game.

Jim: And sometimes when that is done, I mean there’s an argument that politically correct terms are euphemisms. Ye, but they’re being done because a euphemism is a more pleasant way of saying something. And so if the way that people used to say it was offensive, but you still want to be able to refer to that group of people. Yes, but you use a less offensive term to do so. Arguably you’re using euphemism and there’s nothing fallacious about that. You’re just replacing an unpleasant term with a more pleasant term. Yes, that is socially acceptable.

Mark: Yes. You’re disarming the power imbalance.

Jim: Yeah.

Mark: because, you know, when one group refers to another group in a derogatory fashion, if you take that, the derogation away, then it restores the, the power balance. So you can, yes, you can refer to that group of people positively. And it’s only the, the people that. Well, it’s now woke, isn’t it? PC Gone Mad is now called woke. The people who say, yes, it’s all gone bloody woke, are the people that want to retain the power balance.

Jim: They want to use the hurtful terms instead of the more friendly.

Mark: They go, what was wrong with that? Well, the fact that you can’t see what was wrong with that. Just go back to the 70s and watch the television series that you took. You’re back to your black and white minstrel show and don’t bother us.

Jim: So our, final example in this section is from Blackadder and in this one, which is Blackadder 2. So it’s set during the Elizabethan era and Blackadder is selling his house and the woman he is showing round asks about the toilet situation.

Mrs. Pants: What about the privies?

Edmund Blackadder: Well, what we’re talking about in u. privy terms is the very latest. In front wall fresh air orifices combined with a wide capacity gutter installation below.

Mrs. Pants: You mean you crap out of the window?

Edmund Blackadder: Yes.

Mrs. Pants: Well, in that case, we’ll definitely take it. I can’t stand those dirty indoor things.

Jim: Yeah. So he’s trying to make an unpleasant sounding thing sound more pleasant.

Mark: Sound quite push. Yeah. Yeah.

Jim: She’s fine either way.

Mark: Yeah. Yes. It does make you realize that real estate descriptions are all kind of euphemisms. Yeah. That’s. I once was looking in east London and the area I was looking at was described by real estate agents as East Islington. When was just hack. It was Hackney.

Jim: Yeah.

Mark: And East Islington, because of all the cachet of Islington sounded a lot more pleasant than Hackney.

Jim: Yeah. I mean it’s a very common thing in real estate where they describe an area as popular and affordable, meaning cheap and overcrowded.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: And you know, there’s all kinds of things like that.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: It’it’s aeah. You got to frame it in a more positive way. So before we move on to fake news this week.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: It’s time to officially open our Oscars pool. It is now available for you to go and take part in@fallacioustru.com Oscars Excellent. Where you can predict who you think will take home all of the prizes. Part of the reason we’re doing it is because for our patrons in the week before the Oscars, we will be releasing an episode where we talk about every single ye film, every one of the 50 films that has been nominated for an award in each of the different categories

00:35:00

Jim: and what we thought of them and whether they should win and what should win and what didn’t even get nominated that should have been nominated and that kind of thing. And we’ve been watching all of the films over the last few weeks since the nominations came out that have been nominated for Oscars. So we are, starting for an informed perspective. And then we’ll be giving, our uninformed views on. On what we read about it.

Mark: Well, they’re informed by our own. Yeah. Our own cognitive biases.

Jim: Y and so we will be taking part in trying to predict what we think will win. And we would like you to join in@feaciousstrump.com Oscarseah and in a way of encouraging you to do so. And also just an excuse to give some money to charity for every person that takes part in that. Y we will be donating $5 to a charity called Elevated Access Y. They’re a reasonably small organization, although they’re growing, but they provide an important service. They started out by providing a service to people who needed reproductive healthcare. And that, has now expanded to a gender affirming care. And it is an organation that arranges volunteer pilots who have their own planes to provide free flights around America for people who are in areas where they are not able to access reproductive or gender affirming care in their area to fly them to a place where they can get that care. Because in a lot of cases the travel and time spent doing that and the expense spent doing that is a thing that stops people from being able to do it. And so it restricts the ability to access that care to people who are in a higher income bracket because they have the ability to take time off work or take several days to travel somewhere, stay somewhere, et cetera. And it means that poorer people are not able to access that care. And through elevated access, those people are given the ability to fly somewhere and be flown back. And that means they can access care they wouldn’t otherwise be able to.

Mark: Because astonishingly that. Well, on their site it says most people in the U.S. are within 30 miles of an airstrip there at least one small airport with a single Runway. And that’s all it takes. The aviation community has been volunteering, providing flights for cancer patients, victims of natural disasters, domestic violence survivors. And so they now unfortunately, they’re saying we’ve got to do this with the current administration for people who seeking reproductive help or gender affirming help. So they’re providing that service to do it.

Jim: Yeah. In 2022 they did 39 flights. In 2023 they did 584. So they are a growing organization. They work across the US and they help people who need that kind of help. And at the moment a lot more people need that kind of help thanks to the kinds of restrictions that Trump is trying to put in. So we thought it was a worthy organization, that we could actually make a bit of a bigger difference, even though it will be a relatively small amount of money. But there are quite small organization and so we can actually have, and it.

Mark: Feels like it’s kind of real, proper direct access.

Jim: They are also eligible for a matching donation from my employer, which is great. So that means that when we donate $5, in fact for every person there will be $10 going to elevated Access to excellent. Help them provide those services to people who desperately need them. So if you want to help, do that by all Means you can donate directly to Elevated Access, @eleatedcess.org we’ll put a link in the show notes. But if you want to do it by joining our Oscars pool, that will also.

Mark: So it’s completely free to join and we will donate. So if just. Just join up and you get bragging rights for beating us with them. We’ve not yet won.

Jim: Well, I have. Yetah.

Mark: You know, there are. O. Yeah. You see, just when you thought it was a collective. No, it’s. It’s not. I was using a euphemistic we there, which is in order to encourage people to. To come. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right. Say this is what I’m up against, listeners. This is what we need to battle Jim against. Because he. Yeah, yes. He does all the thinking and all the talking, and then he just goes with what. What everybody else is going to vote for rather than the things. Ye. I made the mistake of a prot. Protest mil. Win’of protest votes. Yeah. But, yeah, so join in. You can go head to head with us and, quizz yourselves on who ought to win, who will win, and see if you can outsmart Jim. I got a feeling I beat you last year.

Jim: Last year we were equal, but we. We were both beaten by le.

Mark: Now there you go. Yeah, yeah. So it could happen again.

Jim: Absolutely.

Mark: No, I’m gonna try and win this time. Right. Yeah.

Jim: So that’s fallacioustrump.com Oscars, son.

Donald Trump: We’re gonna play Fake News. Folks. I love the game. It’s a great game.

00:40:00

Donald Trump: 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 m and one I made up, and Mark has to figure out which one is fake news.

Mark: This is a very nice game. It’s a very delicate game. It would be a shame if someone were to pay you a visit and evaluate the game and deem it necessary to take it away from you and show it the sights by the coast, by the cliff edge, if you understand my meaning. Not that, I’m threatening anything. Course. No, no, absolutely not. But it would be a shame if something were to happen to the game.

Jim: Yeah, it would be a shame. So this week, I can’t remember. It was the last one we did or the previous one. but we. We had one of Trump’s, as the expression goes.

Mark: Yes, yes, yes.

Jim: In a real. It is made up, which he does.

Mark: Bloody.

Jim: He does love to say it. Followed by things that, aren’t expressionsions. So this is another. We’ve done this before, but this is another series of those experiences with Trump not knowing what an expression is.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: And these are all from before the election.

Mark: Statement.

Jim: number one, I’d put him in the cabinet. Absolutely. But I don’t know how he could do that with all the things he’s got going. But he can sort of, as the expression goes, consult with the country and give you some very good ideas. Like on AI, nobody knows more about it than Elon. It’s a big, you know, big thing. And he said it’s very important. I mean, it’s very important for the country. If we don’t do it, China is going to do it or somebody else, but most likely China. And China is working right now to develop massive electricity. A flood of electricity. A massive flood of electricity.

Mark: As the expression goes. Top with the country and a massive. A flood of massive electricity and a massive flood of electity. Okay, all right.

Jim: M. Statement number two. The judge they’ve got me up against, she’s a real piece of work. But I’m not even allowed to talk about it. And believe me, if I was allowed to talk about it, you’d. As the expression goes, you’d hear a lot that you wouldn’t even believe. One day I’ll tell you. One day I’ll tell you. But she gagged me. Can you believe that? Nobody in history has been not allowed to say they’re innocent, but I’m not allowed to say it. It’s incredible. Meanwhile, the other side, Joe’s hired thugs, that made up all these lies about me. They get to hold press conferences about it, and the judge doesn’t say a thing.

Mark: So there he is, not being able to say he’s innocent. Or whilst he’s saying he’s innocent. Yeah. As the expression goes, you’ll hear a lot that you wouldn’t even believe. Isn’t an expression. he just thinks that everything. He thinks he’s basically that moment when your toddler goes through the terrible twos where they realize that actually what they’re feeling, not everybody else is feeling. So when they’re hungry, not everybody else is hungry. Prior to that, the world revolves around them. And then when you reach 2, you realize, oh, oh, actually, the world carries on without me.

Jim: Yeah. Trump’s never reached he.

Mark: He’s never got to that point. Yeah.

Jim: He’s still struggling with object.

Mark: Permanent. Yeah, exactly. Things disappear at he going, well, yeah. Wanders off. Yeah.

Jim: So statement number three. If you don’t want to have illegal alien criminals crawling through your windows and going through your drawers, as the expression goes. Then vote against crooked Joe Biden. Throw him the hell out of office before I even arrive. You got to look, if we have this regime, it’s like a regime, and believe me, they are bad for democracy. What they’re doing with elections, what they’re doing in Washington D.C. with people putting them in jail for years and years and years. And they let antifa get away with murder. It’s just a horrible thing. It’s a very bad thing and it’s a very dangerous thing.

Mark: Going crawling through your windows and going through your draws, as the expression goes. Nope. I mean, it’s quite a good lyric. Okay, well, they’re. They’re all completely believable. see the. The last one, elections. seems. That seems a bit ordinary, which might be to just parking that for the moment. So the, the gagged one that sounds all sort of feasible during that trial. M M And massive electricity flood. A flood of. Massive flood of electricity. That sounds like a rule of three building joke type thing written by somebody who knows what he’s doing rather than Trump call. Okay, so I’m going toa go for number one as the one you made up.

Jim: Okay. So have the other two. You more convinced by number two.

Mark: I think the judge and the expression

00:45:00

Mark: goes you’ll hear a lot they wouldn’t even believe because it’s just like a nonsensical. It doesn’t make any sense at all. Okay. Yeah, yeah.

Jim: Number two. Yeah, it’s fake news.

Mark: Oh, nice work. Bloody hell. Oh, that’s really good. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Cause it’s like, it’s. It’s a. Yeah. There’s the gag believe. If I was allowed to talk the suppression go do, you’d hear a lot. You wouldn’t even believe. Ah. man. That’s basically a palindromic sentence. Ah, wow.

Jim: Yeah, yeah, that’s one of those ones. It’s just kind of stream of consciousness. I just kind of thought all right, about the judge and then just wrote it all in oneow.

Mark: Oh, no. Oh, no. I think. Yeah, I think there’s. There’s some therapy required now. Then an intervention is needed if you’re able to just do that in one go. Oh, no.

Jim: Yeah. so.

Mark: Oh, very good.

Jim: That’s u. not a real one.

Mark: Oh no. Horrifyingly, that means the other ones are. Oh no. Whichish you thought can’t possibly be is utterly made up because it’s just A joke.

Jim: Yeah. That’s real.

Mark: It’s real.

Donald Trump: I put him in the cabinet. Absolutely. But I don’t know how he could do that with all the things he’s got going. But he can sort of, ah, as the expression goes, consult with the country and give you some very good ideas. Like on AI, there’s nobody knows more about it than Elon. It’s a big, you know, big thing. And he said it’s very important. I mean, it’s very important for the country. If we don’t do it, China’s going to do it or somebody else, but most likely China. And China is working right now to develop massive electricity. A flood of electricity. A massive flood of electricity.

Mark: What’s, what’s, what’s that goingn do it?

Jim: I mean, in a way, ye. I’m surprised he didn’t say a flood of electricity, as the expression goes, because, yeah, famously.

Mark: Ye.

Jim: Electricity and water together.

Mark: Well, well, yes, he’s told us many, time, you know, if you’ve got battery operated boats, or even a Tesla that goes into the water.

Jim: Absolly yeahks immediately electric shars.

Mark: Yeah. And like. And nobody knows more about AI than Elon. Well, I think they probably do. Yeah. Yeah.

Jim: So number three is also real.

Mark: Oh, God, yeah.

Donald Trump: If you don’t want to have illegal alien criminals crawling through your windows and going through your drawers, as the expression goes, then vote against Crooket Joe Biden. Throw him the hell out of office before I even arrived. You got to look, look, if we have this regime, its like a regime and believe me, they are bad for democracy. What theyre doing with elections, what theyre doing with. What theyre doing in Washington D.C. with people putting them in jail for years and years and years and they let antifa get away with murder. It’s just a horrible thing. It’s a very bad thing and it’s a very dangerous thing.

Mark: Just what on earth is he talking about?

Jim: Great question. Yeah.

Mark: O maneah. Yeah, I’m a bit disappointed you that you didn’t say a flood of massive electricity as well as a massive flood of electricity.

Jim: Yeah, massive electricity.

Mark: They’re massive electricity. Really big electricge.

Jim: Barely fit down the wires.

Mark: Exactly. And the pylons, you think they’re big things, those metal pylons hold the wires up. They’re going to be twice that size. Yeah.

Jim: So we do have some social contestants.

Mark: Oh, yep, yep.

Jim: On Patron, we have the Pizza Dude Chronicles on Tik Took, who says number three is definitely Jim because as the expression goes, it just is nice.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: Richard Thunder Hopkins on Facebook said, I think Jim made up number one. I’ve heard ramblings along the lines of number two and number three just seems to have some trump about it. Can I choose number one please, Jim? Thanks.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: Ah, got suckered in on Discord Rondo. Who said you’ve properly used a metaphor at the end of number one there, Jim? Dead giveaway. I’m not sure it’s a proper metaphor. A massive flood of electricityity.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: Rene Z says, I think number one is fake news. No particular reason other than I have some broccoli steaming on the stove and I don’t want to overcook it because.

Mark: Yeah, look out. You’ve got to look out for the massive flood of electricity. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jim: Steve Pickle says, I’m also going with number one. The others feel pretty familiar.

Mark: Al Right.

Jim: Andrew says I’m guessing number one since I think I’ve heard both of the others. So number one, very popular.

Mark: Oh, how about that?

Jim: And in a, I think, unprecedented attempt to mess with this game. Right. Richard Thunder Hopkins,

00:50:00

Jim: who already, yeah. Gave an answer on, Facebook, gives a different answer on Discord in an attempt to double his chances.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: He says, I think Jim made up number two. I’ve heard ramblings along the lines of number three and number one just seems to have some Trump about it. N Please.

Mark: J so there’s going to be a third platform where. Where he’s going to do the third version.

Jim: Yeah, I think if I had. I posted the patren one a bit late. If I think I’posted that on time. There may have been a. A third one on Patron. Similarly worded.

Mark: Very good.

Jim: Maximize his ch of winning.

Mark: We see you, Richard.

Jim: It’s not something we can endorse.

Mark: That’s the saying goes. Oh, well, well done. Right, well, I expect to visit. I will take the game away and, as the saying goes, show it some nice sights from a veryied talll building.

Jim: And it’s time for the part of the show that this week at least is called Ethnic Cleansing is not a logical fallacy.

Mark: yeah, yeah.

Jim: I mean, I think obviously we all knew it was gonna be a terrible shit show.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: But I didn’t have Trump vowing to take over the Gaza Strip and develop it as real estate on my 2025 bingo card.

Mark: No, well, it’s kind of is. It’s interesting because in my, British, politics corner, David Lindon, the SMP mp, referred to Johnson saying, oh, yeah, well, there’s this. Where was that? Libya or somewhere where they. So it could be the new. The new Dubai. All we’ve got to do is get rid of the dead people, get rid of the bodies and it’s basically the same notion.

Jim: Yeah.

Mark: What? You know, with a lot of Trump mixing. Yeah.

Jim: Well, Jared Kushner did call Gara a valuable waterfront property.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: A couple of years ago. But yeah. Trump reckons that the best thing for Gaza, and obviously for him.

Mark: Ye.

Jim: Is that the US takes over, develops it into the Riviera of the Middle East.

Mark: Not for the Palestinians.

Jim: No, no, absolutely not for the Palestinians. They can all fuck off.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: That’s where the ethnic cleansing comes in.

Mark: Yes.

Jim: Yeah. He wants to get rid of the Palestinianse he doesn’t see any issue with various other Middle Eastern countries. Them as refugees. Yeah. They’accept.

Mark: Just give them some brand new, nice, shiny, clean land to.

Jim: Why wouldn’t they? everyone in the Middle east famously gets on. Brilliant.

Mark: Yeah. They’ll just go, yeah, we’ll have em. M. Yeah, come, come this way. Yeah. Yes, yes.

Jim: But not only that, not only does he.

Mark: Right.

Jim: Underestimate the desire of places like Egypt to just take in lots of Palestinians.

Mark: Ye.

Jim: Or anyone to have any issue with him deciding to remove this group from this place.

Mark: Yah.

Jim: He thinks that the Palestinians should think it’s a great thing and not want to go back to Gaza. He said, I don’t think people should be going back to Gaza. He’s like, short term, at least until it’s all developed. And, even then, not the Palestinians, ideally. He says, I heard that Gaza has been very unlucky for them. He’s really been doing his research. He said, they live like they’re living in hell. Gaza is not a place for people to be living and the only reason they want to go back, and I believe this strongly, is because they have no alternative, apart from the fact that.

Mark: They’Ve lived there for thousands of years and, only got displaced by the European forces deciding that that’s where Israel should be.

Jim: Yes. The fact that it’s their home and has been the home of their families for generations, doesn’t factor in. He believes it very strongly, though. You can do that when you know nothing about a subject.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: You can believe whatever the fuck you like. Very strongly.

Mark: Why would you have a belief if he wasn’t a strongly held belief? He just got. Yeah, I saw. I kind of casually believe it, you know, but he. But he can’t be seen to be ignorant. So he just said, yeah, I heard it’s hell for Them. Yeah, basically because the place has been bombed to shit.

Jim: I heard it’s been unlucky. He said I.

Mark: It’s been veryuck.

Jim: That’s the fucking understatement of the century.

Mark: Yeah. Well, there you go. There’s a euphemism right there.

Jim: They haven’t had much luck.

Mark: They. No Pa. Palestinians, you know. You think, yeah, we should up the luck a bit and just go and redevelop the place and so make it as nice as the Israelis have made Israel. And then we’ll take away all of the fact that Israel controls the water, the electricity, the gas supply, access into and out of. Oh, no, they can’t go out of Gaza. They can only say Israel can go in and out. Israelis can go in and out of Gaza, no problem at

00:55:00

Mark: all. And, the Garans can’t leave. They can barely go back. Go from one side to the other. But that is just down to some bad luck on the part of the Garans.

Jim: Ye. Yeah. He says that he was asked, ah. In an interview with Fox’s Brett Bayer if Palestinians would have the right to return.

Mark: Hm.

Jim: And, he said, no, they wouldn’t because they’re gonna have much better housing. That’s not how rights work. That’s the reason.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: Theoretically, at least. Why someone might not want to return.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: But it’s not why they don’t have the right to go back to their homeland.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: Because they’ll have better housing. So. Yeah, because he’s gonna somehow arrange with m. Countries that don’t agree with him doing this. Because a significant part of the Middle east is Muslim and Arabs who, tend to have some sympathy for the Palestinians in their plight against the Israelis.

Mark: Their long run of bad luck.

Jim: Yeah.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: If anything, it weaponizes parts of the Middle east against Israel again and against America and against any kind of intervention, and desperately damages the shaky piece that was part of the Abraham Accords that Jared was involved in brokering with his 80 pages and a map.

Mark: Yeah. Yeah. So many pages. Yeah.

Jim: It really seemed, given the look on his Chief of staff, Suzy Wile’s face when he announced it when he was doing a press conference with Netanyahu, it really looked like he just came up with, it on the spot.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: Because she was. I mean, shocked isn’t the right word. She was, like, staring daggers into his back.

Mark: What, the actual farts like? Yeah, yeah.

Jim: What the fuck are you talking about? You mad man child?

Mark: Yeah. Yeah.

Jim: Ah. But it’s all he knows. he’s a real Estate guy.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: So he’s like oh this place, this is run down. We can probably get it cheap basically is what he’s thinking.

Mark: Yeah, we’ll just have to get. We can do the tenants out, can.

Jim: Sell it off, put a casino in.

Mark: It’ll be fine. And make a lot of money.

Jim: The fact that there’s 2 million Palestinians there that need to be reomed against their will.

Mark: Yes.

Jim: Doesn’t fucking enter into his calculations.

Mark: Ah if only you watched two of the Oscar nominated films this year, he might have some insight into the ongoing plight of the Palinilians and their constant uphe. Upheaval at the hands of their neighbors to disenfranchise them of the lands of their ancestors.

Jim: Yeah.

Mark: Oh God.

Jim: And of course Republican politicians because they are spineless weasels.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: are barely saying anything about it. Like some of them have said. Oh that’s I think Was it Tom Tillis? One of them said I think there might be a kink in that slinky or something. Which presumably as a southern metaphor.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: I don’t know. Yaheah.

Mark: Yeah, yeah. Some sort of Lindsey Graham. Yeah.

Jim: Lindsey Graham said because Trump said that he wouldn’t rule out sending troops to Gaza. US troops to clear it secure to. Yeah, to secure it, to secure the area. like and level it so they can put some hotels up. Yeah. So Lindsey Graham said we’ll see what our Arab friends say about that. Yeah, I think we will.

Mark: Yeahaheah.

Jim: I think most South Carolinians would probably not be excited about sending Americans to take over guard. I think that might be problematic but I’ll keep an open mind. No, don’t fucking keep an open mind. Speak out against.

Mark: Yes.

Jim: And say this is the most insane plan I’ve ever heard.

Mark: Heinus he grab on on not being involved in any wars and.

Jim: He now wants to go violently into the Middle east in order to places.

Mark: Grab while he’s on a roll with Canada and Greenland and he’s kind of gone. Oh well yeah, I might as well have Gaza. I could solve Gaza. I solve. And Ukraine. He’s gonna have a go to Ukraine as well. I’ll just sold the war by just buying the place. Where’s the moneynna come from?

Jim: I mean I don’t think that he’s suggested buying it.

Mark: Right. He’s justnna over invade it. Oh right. He’s just gonna have it.

Jim: He wants to take over it and own it. He says we’ll own it and we’ll be responsible for dismantling all of the dangerous unexploded bombs and other weapons. Level the site and get rid of the destroyed buildings.

Mark: He said level the site as a.

Jim: Proper real estate therefore, because they’ll be doing. Yeah, they’ll be doing the whole. All of the work essentially that means that they get the rights to it essentially. Someone will probably plant a flag at some point and that bee. Yeah, because. Because Empire Building is now a thing again.

Mark: Yeah, why not?

01:00:00

Mark: Jesus Christ, Netanyahu is over the moon. Because that means he can oh he’s totally go from Seea to Shining Sea. He, he go oh yeah, brilliant. If I can get the Americans backing to, to finish off what I can no longer politically continued to do, that would be great. I can stay in power. I haven’t got to kill any more people because that is kind of going out of favor now. I’ve got to think of something else otherwise I’ll be out on my ear and end up in the Hague. So if a real estate idiot comes along and says ye we’ll clear the site. It’s got brilliant haven’tn toa do anything.

Jim: I mean the other thing is the likelihood of increased activity from people like ISIS who are already labeling this as an example of how the US is anti Muslim because yeah, yeah, it’s a recruiting tool now.

Mark: Ye.

Jim: Especially it and for Hamms as well for within Palestine saying, you know, join us and fight because otherwise you’re not.

Mark: Going to have a home.

Jim: Yeah, that’s not propaganda now.

Mark: Yes, yes, absolutely.

Jim: Gift yeah. The President of the US is saying we are going to move you out y if throw out of your land your homeland. Ye we need to fight back. Yeah, it’s fucking insane.

Mark: There’s something more malevolent about his ignorance this time round. Last time he just wanted to join in and all the other despots were going yeah, you can prospect all you like mate, you’re not going to join our chapterah. But this yah time roundy, I think.

Jim: It’S a combination of well as I said last time, not knowing and not caring. He’s ignorant of international law and how the world works.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: And he doesn’t give a shit. He doesn’t give a shit if his plans hurt millions of people or even end up in them dying doesn’t matter.

Mark: No people, you know, the likes of the news agents. So John Soal and can’t remember the other two.

Jim: Emily Mateless.

Mark: Emily Mateless. They are representative of the Western media who say oh perhaps he just he’s pushing the boundaries. He’s trying the edges of the. A bit like a 2 year old does. He’s testing the boundaries. I don’t know that he is. He’s just doing what he thinks he ought to be able to do because to him it seems like a good idea.

Jim: I think there’s. I don’t think it’s his plan. I think it’s Project 2025’s plan. But I think that there is a certain element of pushing the boundaries in order to get away with. To find out what you can get away with and, get away with as much as you can with all of the executive orders that are blatantly unconstitutional and illegal.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: Is, Yes. Some of them. He won’t be able to do some of them. The Supreme Court might go. Yeah, suppose so.

Mark: Yeah.

Jim: And. And he’s getting no pushback from Republicans who are in the majority. So. Yeah, yeah. I think, I think part of that is he knew that he wouldn’t. Or the people who were in charge, knew that they wouldn’t be able to get away with everything that they tried to do. But the more stuff you try, the more you’ll get away with them. Yeah.

Mark: Well, it’s literally. Yeah. You just throw as much shit as you can at the wall and see what sticks. Yeah. And then, then you have a wall covered in shit. Exactly. And. Which is the Trump administrationsoutely. Yeah. And finally some things we really don’t have time to talk about.

Jim: Wow. 2025 felt like a really long year, but thank God it’s finally. What? What the fuck do you mean it’s only February. Oh, God. Yeah. It’s another week with too much news, even for the bit we humorously decided to call things we really don’t have time to talk about. Not looking so fucking funny now, is it? Anyway, new Attorney General Pam Bondi was in the job exactly five days before doing something that would get a normal age impeached. She ordered the corruption charges against New York Mayor Eric Adams dismissed on the grounds that they were filed by the Biden administration and that they’re preventing him from doing the important work of rounding up illegal immigrants in New York. Importantly, they’re to be dismissed without prejudice so that at any time Adams steps out of line, they can just refile the charges and beat him back into obedience. She hit a brief roadblock in the person of Danielle Sassoon, the acting U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York. Sassoon refused to carry out the order on the grounds that she not only believed Adams committed the crimes he’charged with, she planned to bring, a superseding indictment with more charges. Rather than carry out the order, she resigned and wrote Pam Bondi a scathing letter accusing her of setting up a quid pro quo with Adams. Guys, we found one. A Republican with integrity. In fact, Danielle Sassoo is not only a Republican, she was just appointed by Trump to the role. She’s a member of the Federalist Society and she clerked for Antonin Scalia. And she still did the honourable thing. Maybe there is some hope after all. Sassoon’s second and third in command also resigned rather than dismiss the charges. One of them writing, I expect you will eventually find someone who is enough of a fool or enough of a coward to file your motion, but it was never going to be me.

Mark: Wow. Nice.

Jim: And

01:05:00

Jim: Bondi’s acting deputy AG and former Trump criminal lawyer Emile Bovai set out to find one of those fools or cowards. He went to the Office of Public Integrity, presumably under the assumption the name was sarcastic. He essentially locked the department in a room for an hour with instructions to decide amongst themselves who would file for the dismissal or all of them would be fired. After four more resignations, Bovai finally found his foolish cowards, Edward Sullivan and Antoinette Bacon. It’s not quite done yet. As District Court Judge Dale Hoe has to sign off on the dismissal, his ability to refuse it outright is limited. But he can and very much should, order an evidentiary hearing into why the department was seek to dismiss the charges. Fortunately, Dale is a Biden appointee and a former civil rights lawyer. And I think there are about seven attorneys who suddenly have a lot of time on their hands who m might agree to be witnesses at the hearing.

Mark: Wow. Sure. If you were to, say, talk to someone signing up to join a political party as a supportive member or to work in a campaign office, it would be perfectly reasonable to say to that prospective candidate, h m, you see, this role is for this party that has these values and belief system, and perhaps you’d be more comfortable actually seeking work at the party that’s most aligned to your outlook, like, say, the guys at the other end of the political spectrum. Like if you were Kemib Badenock trying to convince Nigel Farage that he ought not join the Tory Party after all, for instance. And then McCarthy came along and Hoover kind of took issue with employees and prospective employees thought crimes as he saw them for being slightly more lefty than theyd d have liked when promoting the ideology that wasnt t straight down the line. Free market capitalism. He questioned their loyalty to the country, if you will. And we all know how that turned out. Yeah, that’s right. Arthur Miller wrote the Crucible. Well, predictably, Trump’s administration seems to be taking that loyalty one step further, as befits a medieval monarchy and intelligent agencies that asking candidates for top national security positions in the Trump administration to provide straightforward yes or no answers to the questions. Was January 6th an inside job? And was the 2020 presidential election stolen? Of course, those who didn’t give the desired straight yes answers were not selected separately. At least two individuals in FBI field offices outside Washington who were being interviewed for senior positions or ask similar questions, the question included who were the Real Patriots on January 6th? Who won, the 2020 election? Who is your real boss? This in the already tense atmosphere at the FBI, where interim Justice Department leaders appointed by Trump ordered the FBI to hand over a list of the thousands of personnel across the country who worked on January six cases, four stout senior FBI leaders and transferred several senior Justice Department officials and fired prosecutors involved in a special counsel investigation of Trump at the CIA, however. So we appear to be fine. As the President’s principal intelligence advisor, I will begin with leading by example, checking my own views at the door, and committing to delivering intelligence that is collected, analyzed and reported without bias, prejudice or political influence. Biased, prejudice and political influence, trump apologist and director of National Intelligence nominee Tulsi Gabard told the Senate Intelligence Committee. I’ve been watching the second series of Wharf hall about Thomas Cromwell negotiating the court of unhinged, dangerous, bloated, goututy, orange haired, scabrough Henry viii, whose blind loyalty fails to save Cromwell from the executioner’s block. Yeah, Make America Tudor again.

Jim: This week, Trump announced he was nominating Amazon executive David Keeling to head osha, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Unusually for a Trump appointee, Keeling actually has some experience in the field. Before he worked at Amazon, he was in charge of workplace safety at ups, during which time they were sanctioned multiple times by OSHA for needlessly exposing their drivers to extreme heat and repeatedly refusing to install air conditioning in their delivery trucks. In 2021, the year he moved to a similar role at Amazon, the company accounted for roughly half of all workplace, injuries in U.S. warehouses. Sure, you might think Amazon has more warehouses than anyone else, so that’s bound to. But the following year, injuries in Amazon warehouses were found to be 70% higher than in similar non Amazon facilities. So this guy seems like a great choice for the department, whose only role is to value employee safety over profits. But I wouldn’t worry too much about it because Republican Arizona Congressman Andy Bakes has already introduced a bill to abolish OSHA and repeal the Occupational Safety and Health act, which was signed into law in 1970 by that woke lefty Richard Nixon. Multi millionaire Biggs said it’s time that we fight back against the bloated federal government and eliminate agencies that should never have been established in the first place. I will not let OSHA push Arizona around with their bureaucratic regulations.

01:10:00

Jim: Since OSHA was put in place, worker debtss in the US are down by 60% and injuries are down by almost 80%. But Biggs doesn’t care about that because valuing human life eats into profits.

Mark: Y Yep, the great thing about being new in the job, or in the job again with people that are new in the job is you get to be all new and vibrant and smash stuff up and be a disruptor. Sh’like that, all startupy and zucky and musky. Yeah, let’s us here in the all new staff Department of Energy get all energetic and downsizy and efficient and fuck it. Yeah, just fire everyone. They’ve been here for years. What do they know? They’re just clogging up their space waiting to retire. Can em. Can the lot of em. An Energy Department? S spokesperson disputed the number of personnel affected, telling CNN that It wasn’t actually 300 staffers that got fired. On Thursday night at the National Nuclear Security administration, less than 50 people were dismissed from NNSA and that the dismissed staff office are held primarily administrative and clerical roles. Yeah, you say that now because what the DOE seems not to know is that the NNSA looks after the US’s nuclear missiles. Some of the fired employees included NSSA staff are on the ground of facilities where nuclear weapons are built. These staff oversee the contractors who build nuclear weapons and they inspect these weapons. It also included employees at NSSA headquarters who write requirements and guidelines for contractors who build nuclear weapons. A source told CNN they believe these individuals were fired because no one has taken any time to understand what we do and the importance of our work to the nation’s national security. Congress is freaking out because it appears the DOE didn’t really realize NSSA oversees the nuclear dockpile. One source said the nuclear deterrent is the backbone of American security and stability, period. For there to be any even small holes poke even in the maintenance of that deterrent should be extremely frightening to people. Not as frightening admittedly as knowing that Trump holds the coast to the nuclear football, but he’s still up there. Needless to say, the agency began rescinding the terminations Friday morning.

Jim: Dumbouses Somehow, all of Trump’s batshit cabinet nominees who have reached the voting stage so far have been confirmed. I say somehow, but we all know how people didn’t vote for enough Democrats in high enough numbers, and now the majority in both houses of Congress is made up of spineless yes men who are afraid if they step out of line, the richest man in the world will fund a primary challenge against them. Sorry, that’s very unfair. Spineless yes men and women who are afraid if they step out of lineying, the richest man in the world will fund a primary challenge against them. Anyway, as of this writing, insane conspiracy theorist Cash Patel has not yet been confirmed as FBI director, but in the meantime, the agency seems to be in good hands, albeit, accidentally. Following interviews with Trump’s team during the transition period, FBI Special Agent Robert Kssain was told he would be the Acting Director, with Special Agent Brian Driscoll backing him up as Acting Deputy Director on Inauguration Day. However, due to Trump’s policy of only hiring idiots, his team listed Driscoll as the FBI’s acting director on the White House website. And rather than admit they fucked up and correct it, they just decided to let it stand since Cash will be in the job soon enough. But it turns out that Driscoll is one of those guys who’s already had enough of Trump shit. So when he was ordered to hand over a list of all the FBI agents who had investigated the January 6th insurrection so they could be purged, he refused, noting that thousands of FBI personnel were involved, including himself. In a message to FBI agents, he wrote, we’re going to follow the law, follow FBI policy and do what’s in the best interest of the workforce and the American people. Always. He hasn’t been fired yet, but it’ll probably only be a week or so till Cash is in the job and all hell breaks loose. Still, I think it’s worth celebrating these little moments of resistance wherever they happen.

Mark: Yeahep Elon Musk’s team at the so called Department of Government Efficiency launched its website on Wednesday night with a feature allowing you users to trace your tax dollars through the bureaucracy. People can navigate through all federal agencies and offices for details about the headcounts, budgets and average age employees, the website states in tiny print at the bottom. That is database excludes information from US intelligence agencies, but an easy search shows that Doge’s database provides details on the National Reconnaissance Office, the federal agency that designs, builds and maintains US intelligence satellites. Not only are NROs budgets and headcounts classified, but the prospect of Musk’s tech team meddling in a sensitive personal information is setting off alarms for someone in the intelligence community. Doge just posted secret no fore and info on their website about intelligence community headcount, so currently people are scrambling to check if their info has been accessed, said one Defense Intelligence Agency employee. No form stands for not releasable to foreign nationals, meaning information in this case category can’t be shared

01:15:00

Mark: with any foreign governments, international organizations, or foreign nationals without specific authorization. And of course, being tech support, barely stable genius Elon Musk’s team will surely know that the Internet used to be called the World Wide Web, and, unlike the World Series baseball, some of the Internet takes place outside US Borders. Also, Musk can’t claim he wasn’t aware that the National Consance office is one of the nation’s intelligence agencies. His company, SpaceX, as a $1.8 billion contract with NRO to build hundreds of spy satellites. Hours after this story was published on HuffPost, a White House spokesman said Doge did not share classified information. Any assertion to the contrary is a lie. Yesterday the accusation was Doge was not transparent, and today the accusation is Doges too transparent. Stop the fearong. Doge’s mission remains to cut waste, fraud and abuse and are doing so with the proper security clearances and following the law, even as NRO’s classified information was still accessible on Doji’s website. See, that 1984 fiction novel did prove to be useful in honing the old double speak.

Jim: A lot of people wonder why the Democrats aren’t doing more to stop Trump, and there’s two main reasons. One is that they don’t get warned in advance about the random shit Trump comes up with. So when you hear it on the news and wonder why Democrats aren’t rebutting it immediately, it’s likely they only just heard about it on the news, too. Second, and more importantly, they’re not in power. They have no ability to outvote things in the House or the Senate, So all we can expect is people like Hakim Jeffre’Pete, Buttigieg and AOC making their usual excellent points on social media and on occasional TV interviews, and somehow not yelling at almost exactly half of the American electorate for being Nazi collaborators. One thing we do have, for now at least, is the courts. So far, the administration’s playbook has been to do blatantly illegal and unconstitutional things and then stop doing them when a judge tells them off while getting ready to ask their pet Supreme Court justices to let them do the illegal things. And lots of cases are being brought against the illegal shit. So for now, there are blocks from federal judges on the birthright citizenship ban, the freeze on federal grants, the dismantling of USAID, and the ban on gender affirming care for minors, among others. Trump and co do reserve the right to be whiny babies about following the law, though, having been ordered to restore references to trans people on some federal website, they complied, but added a note at the top to say any information on this page promoting gender ideology is extremely inaccurate and disconnected from the immutable biological reality that there are two sexes, male and female. The Trump administration rejects gender ideology and condemns the harm it causes the children by promoting their chemical and surgical mutilation, and to women by depriving them of their dignity, safety, well being and opportunities. This page does not reflect biological reality and therefore the administration and this department reject it. Sorry, I should have said whiny, scientifically illiterate babies. Meanwhile, 14 states filed a lawsuit challenging the authority of the clearly unconstitutional Department of Government Efficiency. And we just heard that that lawsuit has been assigned to Judge Tanya Chukun, hero of the erstwhile January 6 case against Trump, who is already very much out of fucks to give when it comes to holding Trump and his idiot cronies to account.

Mark: Ooh, excellent. Ah, these moments. Yes, little moments of glimmers of hope. Yeah. Okay, you’re in the playground. At kindergarten, some kids found a green marble in the corner of the playground, like centuries ago. And despite the finest keepers’s rule, you think you should have it. The kid tells you politely, no, it’s mine and I don’t want to give it to you. Anyway, you just got here. What gives you the right? I’ve got money. I don’t need money. I like the thing. I own the thing. It’s mine. It’s not yours. Teachers and playground monitors, you know, grown ups get involved, they confirm that things’s not yours, never has been. You just can’t have it. And sending a baby related to you to go and stand by the thing and pretend other people don’t like the thing being owned by the other person and that they’totally be happy if the thing was yours isn’t going to work. Eventually you go to Congress and a creepy suck up Georgia Republican Representative Buddy Carter says he’ll unveil the Red White and Blueland act of 2025 to apparently help you who he’s calling America’s Negotiator in Chief told you suck up to acquire the thing that isn’t yours. Now to be clear again, even if all your friends were the ones who call themselves your friends because you’ve told them they can have some candy or you promise you won’t pull their hair or something, even if all of them agree and writing chalk on the playground floor that we the people of the United Playground say you can have the thing and not the other kid and what’s more, you can call it a different colour for real. It still doesn’t mean you can have it. Meanwhile, Denmark have launched their plan to buy California or New

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Mark: Denmark as the crowdfunding campaign website said the Golden State would be called and would see its world famous theme park Disneyland rebranded as Hans Christian Anderson Land. The thing is, the Danes know they are being funny. Trump, the weird fucking kid with no friends in the playground, except maybe Boris Johnson, also thinks he should just be g everything just co Trump thinks saying his equally funny things backed up by GOP idiot suck ups actually constitutes a the art of the deal and b foreign policy.

Jim: One of the executive orders signed by Trump on day one was called Restoring Freedom of Speech and Ending Government Censorship, and the second thing it promised to do was ensure that no federal government officer, employee or agent engages in or facilitates any conduct that would unconstitutionally abridge the free speech of any American. C In unrelated news, the Associated Press was barred from attending a press conference in the Oval Office last week as a direct consequence of the news outlet continuing to call the Gulf of Mexico by its real name instead of the one Trump made up. White House Minister of Propaganda Sorry, Press Secretary Carolyn Levitt said, I was very upfront in m my briefing on day one, that if we feel that there are lies being pushed by outlets in this room, we are going to hold those lies accountable. And it is a fact that the body of water off the coast of Louisiana is called the Gulf of America. And I’m not sure why news outlets don’t want to call it that, but that is what it is not adding. We have always been at war with East Asia. Meanwhile, at, the Pentagon, there is a new policy to rotate press outlets out of permanent office space in the building to give other press outlets the chance to enjoy the benefits of greater access. Outlets being rotated out this year include the Washington Post, the Hill, cnn, the New York Times, NPR and Politico. But don’t worry. I’m sure they’ll be replaced with equally respectable organizations. I’ve got the official list of who will be replacing them right here. Oh fuck. Yes, it’s Newsmax, Breitbart, the New York Post, one American News, and the Daily Caller. Weirdly, Fox News got to keep their existing spot. I’m sure the fact that new Defense Secretary Pete Heigseeth had a weekend job there didn’t factor in at all.

Mark: Yah. In the UK this week we learned that Chancellor Rachel Reeves spent fewer months at the bank of England than she said she had on LinkedIn and had changed the entry there to reflect that after a BBC investigation. The BBC’s political correspondent Chris Mason also spent a lot of time on the news telling us we should also get excited about the fact that there was no issue at all with her expenseensive claims when she worked at HBO and that she left there, on excellent terms and there was no suggestion of wrongdoing at all, which was frankly difficult to get excited about given the relative inconsequence of her actions compared with say, Boris Johnson’s £840 of roll down on in his street wallpaper, or Liz Truss’s 22 billion pound hole blown in the budget, or Boris Johnson line to the Queen and everyone about Brexit and Parroingan parties and his suitability around the country. But hey ho, journalists are nothing if not balanced. Except, it seems, when it came to allowing Tory ministers to get all flustered about a Labor Council’s somewhat insensitive ageist sexist messages in a WhatsApp group, which came to light recently too, whilst not condoning such activity and Labor’s probably right to suspend the perpetrators pending investigation. No Tory conversation about it wanted to point out when the messaging happened. It was of course as we suspected, because the messaging was directly contemporary with the Tories Covid era. let the bodies pile up. WhatsApp messaging. Which of course only last year, Boris had a great deal of trouble remembering why he couldn’t access the vast stock of WhatsApp messages because he’d changed phones or trousers or addressesses or worried about how it would tarnish his reputation of the humanitarian or something. I’m, not excusing the actions of the Labour members, but in the interest of balance, it would seem to me to be that’s the kind of thing journalists ought to be putting into any interviews with delightfully outraged right wingers.

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

Mark: If you think we’ve used the fallacy ourselves, let us know. And if you’ve had a good time, please give us a review on Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcast. So simply tell one other person in person about how much they like ah our podcasts and you can support the show@ah patreon.com ftrump just like our newest patrons, Kristin Gullingmith, Alistair Blacklaws and Chuck Greay. Our ah strawman level patrons Mike Smith, LT Colen Lyela, Richard Thunder Hopkins, Will M. Scott Ousszy on Bank, Mark Reiky and Amber R. Buchanan who told us when we met her at qed we can just call her Amber. And last year at QED I met the listener recognizer at QED the year before because we kept using a full name all the time. And our true Scotsman level patron, Schmootz Sharmoise

01:25:00

Mark: and Renez, Melissa Sctech, Stehen Pickel, Janet Uetta, Andrew Hak and our top patron Kazui. Thank you so much and welcome and thank you for your continued and new support.

Jim: You can connect with those awesome people as well as us and other listeners in the Facebook group, uh@facebook.com group feacious trump or in the discord uh@fallaciousrump.com discord and you can take part in the Oscars pool@ah fallaciousrump.com Oscars all music is.

Mark: 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.

Mark: Bye.

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