29 Apr Hypophora – FT#173
Show Notes
Hypophora occurs when someone answers their own question without giving anyone else a chance to answer. It can be fallacious if the answer given serves them better than other plausible answers.
Trump
We started out by discussing this clip of Trump lying about Joe Biden:
Then we looked at this clip of Trump disrespecting historians:
And finally we talked about this clip of Don Jr talking about COVID:
Mark’s British Politics Corner
Mark talked about this clip of Kier Starmer on government corruption:
Then he talked about this clip of Ed Miliband:
And he finished with this clip of Boris Johnson defending partygate:
Fallacy in the Wild
In the Fallacy in the Wild we looked at this clip from Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Then we discussed this clip from Mean Girls:
And we finished up with this clip from It’s a Wonderful Life:
Fake News
Here are the statements from this week’s Fake News game:
Mark got it wrong this week, and is on 51%!
Courts are not a logical fallacy
We talked about Trump’s many recent losses in court.
The stories we really didn’t have time to talk about
- I’ve got to admit, I was expecting the Trump Musk double-act to end in a jealousy-fueled Truth Social meltdown about how Musk is a moron who doesn’t understand business and only really ever brought Trump his Diet Coke, never had any real power, Elon who? I don’t think I ever met him – but instead it seems he’s just quietly backing out of the White House through a hedge, like Homer Simpson or, for those of you who enjoy really deep cuts from Trump’s first administration, Sean Spicer. Musk’s explanation for stepping back and spending less time on taking desperately needed funds from federal programs is that he needs to focus on Tesla, which last week reported a 71% drop in profits compared with the first quarter of 2024. The real reason is likely a combination of the fact that he annoyed so many members of the administration that nobody would sit with him at lunch, the courts keep telling him he can’t fire people who study ebola, and Trump won’t let him use the cottage at Mar a Lago any more because he refuses to say that tariffs are the best idea ever. On the plus side, for Elon at least, his quarter million dollar investment in the Presidency will still pay dividends in various ways, the most recent being SpaceX’s position as frontrunner in the bids to build Trump’s impractical, unnecessary and hugely wasteful proposed missile defense shield which he predictably calls the Golden Dome.
- In a move that would not have been out of place in 17th Century Salem, the home of witches, superstition and a month-long celebration of Halloween Joseph Sansone, a Florida hypnotist and conspiracy theorist who believes that mRNA treatments are “nanoparticle injections” that amount to “biological and technological weapons of mass destruction” has drafted a bill in the Minnesota House introducing legislation (HF3219) that would make possessing or administering certain vaccines a crime punishable by up to 20 years in prison. Of course mRNA technology holds tremendous promise for treating cancer and other ailments in addition to vaccines for infectious diseases. Thousands of cancer patients are currently participating in trials of personalized mRNA vaccines targeting various types of tumors. The language in the bill further bans “nanotechnology or nanoparticles that alter genes and create a biosynthetic cell replication,” which could impact other cutting-edge medical technologies like CRISPR which looks at DNA sequences found in the genomes of bacteria and archaea. It also bans “any human gene therapy product for any infectious disease indication.” The bill compels state and local authorities to “use all lawful means necessary” to enforce its provisions, and would subject authorities to prosecution under existing weapons of mass destruction statutes if they refused to investigate alleged violations of the law. Never mind that the RNA-based Covid-19 vaccines have saved millions of lives and are considered one of the most important medical and public health achievements of the 21st century so far, as long as one fob-watch swinging non-medical practitioner’s fears about ghoulies and ghosties and long-leggedy beasties are assuaged that’s all that counts right! And in a true ‘edit out the hairy-arm’ tactic several Minnesota Republicans have also sponsored a marginally less extreme bill (HF 3152) that would make administering mRNA vaccines merely a misdemeanor subject to a $500 penalty in case Sansone’s ridiculous bill doesn’t make it through!
- Our favorite mustachioed foghorn, Mike Lindell, is back in the news this week, thanks to the ongoing defamation lawsuit brought against him by former Dominion Voting Systems employee Eric Coomer. Since MyPillow is doing so badly, and Mike spent nearly all his money trying to prove things that aren’t true, buying fake packet data and losing $5 million bets, he can’t afford good lawyers. In fact, he doesn’t even have his pick of bad lawyers, because some of them won’t work for an election denying asshole who can’t pay them and doesn’t have a case, so he has to choose REALLY bad lawyers. His latest attorney is Christopher Kachouroff, who previously defended Trump co-defendant Harrison Floyd in an election interference case in Georgia, and made headlines when he forgot to wear pants during the Zoom court hearing. He’s been caught with his pants down again, but thankfully only metaphorically this time, because a filing he made in Lindell’s case has been questioned by the judge because it contained nearly thirty defective citations including “misquotes of cited cases; misrepresentations of principles of law associated with cited cases, including discussions of legal principles that simply do not appear within such decisions; misstatements regarding whether case law originated from a binding authority such as the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit; misattributions of case law to this District; and most egregiously, citation of cases that do not exist,” The judge asked multiple times how this happened and Kachouroff had no explanation until finally the judge asked outright if he had used generative AI to produce the filing and he admitted that he had. He claimed he wrote a draft himself and then used AI to improve it, but the judge said “Given the pervasiveness of the errors in the legal authority provided to it, this Court treats this representation with skepticism” which I think is a pretty healthy way to approach anything said by Mike Lindell or anyone associated with him.
- Remember ol’ cuddly loveable creator of wholly fictitious biography and callous thief of money from elderly and impaired donors and embezzler of campaign funds for rent, luxury designer goods, personal trips to Las Vegas and the Hamptons, cosmetic treatments and a subscription to the adult content site OnlyFans – George Santos? And that he had pleaded guilty in August last year to charges of committing wire fraud and aggravated identity theft, as part of a yearslong scheme that preyed upon his own political party, and family members in order to line his own pockets? And there’s him thinking he’d therefore be a shoe-in for the VP role at least. Well good news – U.S. District Judge Joanna Seybert sentenced him to 87 months behind bars and ordered him to pay almost $374,000 in restitution and over $200,000 in forfeiture. The judge was unmoved by George’s little quivering bottom lip when he made a crocodile-tearful plea for mercy and acknowledged he’d “betrayed the confidence” of his constituents. She said she doesn’t like sending people to jail, but Santos was “fully deserving” of the lengthy sentence. Obviously Santos took to the social media cesspool X to alert King Troll himself saying “I believe that 7 years is an over-the-top politically-influenced sentence and I implore that President Trump gives me a chance to prove I’m more than the mistakes I’ve made.” Yeah the thing is Trump is only interested in people who can make that magnitude of ‘mistakes’ and get away with it – that’s the Art of the Deal surely? People who get caught are losers? And only if you wriggle out of it by running for president can you be the winner. Santos’ attorneys had urged Judge Seybert to sentence him to the minimum of two years saying “His conduct, though involving dishonesty and abuse of trust, stemmed largely from a misguided desperation related to his political campaign, rather than inherent malice” though with Santos being a Republican how do you tell the difference? Possibly in an attempt to stamp out the rise of a future baby Trump prosecutors had added “It is abundantly clear that, without a substantial deterrent, Santos will continue to deceive and defraud for years to come. That is especially true given Santos’s craven efforts to leverage his lawbreaking as a springboard to celebrity and riches” It is rather refreshing when the criminal shysters are shown to be what they truly are once outside of the protection of Trumpworld, and punished soundly for it. Jack Smith please stand by for 2028!
- At TV quack Dr. Oz’s swearing in ceremony as head of Medicare and Medicaid, Trump made a few remarks and went off on a lie-filled tangent about how prices are actually coming down if you just ignore what the lying grocery store checkouts say. He claimed egg prices were down 87% and said “You can have all the eggs you want. We have too many eggs. In fact, if anything, the prices are getting too low.” Based on figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, that would mean a dozen large Grade A eggs is now around 64 cents, down from $4.95 in January. Weirdly, that same Bureau of Labor Statistics pegged the price in March at $6.23, which is a 26% increase. But hey, maybe Trump said eggs, but meant something else, like the value of his eponymous Crypto meme coin, which was worth about $74 on inauguration day, and is now about $12. It did get a bump recently, though, when Trump’s team announced a special private dinner with Trump for the top 25 coin holders and a gala for the top 220. That raised around $100 million which, to be very clear, is not for a PAC, a campaign, or a charity, it directly enriches Donald J Trump himself, and allows the super rich to pay for direct access to the President of the US. Legal? No, but who gives a crap about any of that any more?
- Think of the weirdest thing that a person could possibly do at an official White House event with the Easter Bunny, and Trump will either already have done it or be doing it at that very moment. At this year’s Easter Egg Roll at the White House, brought to you courtesy of dodgy corrupt sponsors as we reported in a previous episode, Trump was hawking his shitty exploitative, and of course very expensive, merch. What do kids go for these days? He must have said to his equally out-of-touch marketing yes-men, and then answered it hypophoracly; trading cards – ‘Remember those? we had them, I had all of them, Attila the Hun, Pol Pot, Jack the Ripper, all my faves as a boy, let’s do those’. And thus why he was pictured surrounded by guileless first-graders keen to find easter eggs, disappointing them by showing them the star card in a collectible set featuring 15 Trump cards (ha ha!) with pictures of the Prez doing trumpy things; shouting at oppressed peoples, finishing colouring in a new EO, failing to be kissed by Melania, you know, the usual. The star card being gazed upon by children with bemused grins was of course the shot of him dodging the bullet that killed Corey Comperatore and raising that tiny defiant fist with ketchup on his ear. The cards come pre-slabbed in plastic, each one bearing a grade of “10 – Gem Mint” from World Class Grading as if they’re immediately rare and valuable, they’re not; the $197 set is already tanking on eBay for $99. Trump’s cards are entering a surprisingly large existing playing field of Trump trading cards – who knew!? There is a large assortment of assassination collectible cards on eBay – most of them shipping from China – so sheesh they’re gonna be expensive and absolutely chuffing worthless all at the same time! I’ve just realised we had in the UK a collectibles card game called Top Trumps – that’s all I’ve got to say about that for fear of ruining my entire childhood!
- Society’s hatred of lawyers goes back to at least Henry the VI Part 2, but probably way further, and is often well justified, but maybe this story about some law students offers some hope for the future. Three Georgetown Law students are fighting back against Trump’s fascist attacks on the legal system with a simple tool – a spreadsheet. When Trump started targeting law firms who represented his enemies, some took him to court, and others folded like cheap suits. We talked previously about Paul, Weiss, but other firms also capitulated, like Skadden Arps, who represented the Georgia man who sued Dinesh D’Souza for calling him a criminal in 2000 Mules. To get Trump to back off, they agreed to provide the administration with $100 million of pro bono legal work. Other law firms that hadn’t even been contacted by Trump panicked and took down pages on their website about diversity, or changed their hiring practices. Meanwhile, law students at various law schools started turning down placements, interviews, and even jobs, at firms who caved to Trump and his cronies, and the three Georgetown students I mentioned earlier decided to make it easier by compiling a spreadsheet of all the law firms and splitting them up into categories like “Caved to Administration”, “Complying in Advance”, “Stood Up Against Administration’s Attacks” and “No Response”. As well as helping students choose the kind of firm they want to work for, it’s apparently having an impact on the firms themselves, with some already contacting the organizers to tell them how they’re fighting back in an attempt to move from “No Response” to the coveted “Stood Up” status.
- Pointless, unnecessary, and vindictive, and viewed with a definite eye on the next general election – no not Nigel Farage this time, but the ruling made by the UK Supreme Court. Yes it seems that, keen to maintain the ‘special relationship’ with the US they’ve been aping the US Supreme Court’s playbook and trashing hard won LGBTQ+ rights by making a ruling on a case brought by JK Rowling-supported gender-critical group For Women Scotland. The Supreme Court’s justices decided the definition of ‘sex’ in the 2010 Equality Act excludes trans women and solely refers to biological women. Of course the Labour government ought to be strenuously upholding its long tradition of supporting the rights of all cis, het and LGBTQ+ people and fighting for equality and emphasising that rights aren’t a zero sum thing, there are equal rights to be recognised for all groups and no other group is denied any rights as a result. The Labour government ought to be very voluble about restricting the effects of the unforeseen and unintended consequences of this ruling steamrollered and bankrollered through by a tiny-minded billionaire’s pressure group, but they’re not. Just when you thought the left meant being progressive and humane, they’re worried about losing voters to parties even further to the right of the overton window they are currently squatting in, and are instructing the NHS to be far more discriminatory when providing hitherto completely apolitical medical and health care to trans people, and empowering the British Transport Policemen to stripsearch trans women. Labour’s own cis lesbian MP Kate Osborne told fellow politicians that she is frequently misgendered in the House of Commons already and believes this will happen more often following the ruling. In the same way that Boris’ islamophobic comment about burka-wearers looking like letterboxes brought about a rise in hate crimes against muslim women, by not preventing the legitimization of discriminatory hate-crimes against the trans community and inevitably by extension the whole of the LGBQ and + communities, Labour is guilty of a woeful dereliction of duty. Despite this awful week for humanity, there is good news that the Conservatives are expected to lose hundreds of seats in the local elections next week. Tory peer Lord Hayward, a leading pollster, has estimated they could lose up to 525 of the 954 seats they are defending. I suspect that Labour won’t do too well either and ol’ frogface Farage will stand to benefit and usher in even more Racist Reform Party anti-everyone hate-criming! Unintended consequences indeed! Nice one JK you fucking terf!
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