06 Apr Spin Doctoring – FT#190
Show Notes
Spin Doctoring occurs when people manipulate or frame information to control public perception.
Trump
This episode was a body-swap, Face/Off, Vice Versa, upside-down, topsy-turvy episode in which Mark and Jim switched places, so on this occasion Mark started out by discussing these clips of Trump and his acolytes lying about the murders of Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti, mixed in with Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and Jon Stewart telling the truth:
Jim’s British Politics Corner
Jim talked about this clip of Keir Starmer avoiding a question:
And he followed that up by talking about Transport Department Special Advisor Jo Moore picking a good day to bury bad news.
Fallacy in the Wild (Sting: Tribute – Tenacious D)
In the Fallacy in the Wild we looked at this clip from Men in Black:
We followed that with this clip from Family Guy:
And finally, we talked about this clip from Yes, Minister:
Fake News
Here are the statements from this week’s Fake News game in which Jim had to figure out which of these Kemi Badenoch quotes Mark had made up:
Jim got it right this week and is currently on 50%
The End of The Iran War is in sight is not a logical fallacy
We talked about Trump’s shifting timelines and objectives for the war.
The stories we really didn’t have time to talk about
- Musician Jack White, he of White Stripes Seven Nation Army fame, and who recently put out an album for Record Day that plays from the inside outwards on side 2 appropriately needled Trump on Instagram after it was announced that the president would be slapping his signature on U.S. banknotes. “Oh how humble!” White wrote. “But why stop there donnie? Why don’t you use your small hands to sign into law that your oh so stern orange face appears on the front of the hundred dollar bill as well?” Trump’s signature will appear alongside that of Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. The name of the U.S. treasurer will be removed. Disappearing Treasurer Brandon Beach doesn’t seem disappointed; “The President’s mark on history as the architect of America’s Golden Age economic revival is undeniable. Printing his signature on the American currency is not only appropriate, but also well deserved.” White called out these enablers of the emperor’s new clothes “You might as well, since Congress and the American people (and to an extent, the rest of the world) are all just letting you do whatever you want to anyways, so go ahead! Invade Cuba next? Sure! Go ahead, nobody’s stopping you.” Ever mindful of Trump’s narcissistic desire to leave a lasting legacy White added “Gas prices are surging as a world wide crisis that HE caused rages in the Middle East; it’s the perfect time to joke on fox “news”, visit Graceland, and sign into law to have your bloated, cocky signature on all U.S. currency! Congrats donnie! You deserve it!” In the punk spirit of a rock ‘n roller White advocates “Wouldn’t it be funny if someone started a campaign to black magic marker line out his name every time you receive a new banknote? I think that’s against the law to deface U.S. currency, so I would never suggest that becoming a nationwide campaign,” he wrote, “but is everyone allowed to break the law when they feel like it or just donnie?” Yeah its just Donnie!
- Long-time listeners will remember that during Trump’s first term we ran a competition which we called the Fire Swamp where listeners tried to guess which members of Trump’s administration would get the boot. It worked because the turnover was insane, but this time he surrounded himself with Olympic-level sycophants, so most of them have kept their jobs. However, as we all know, loyalty is very much a one way street with Trump, so mere weeks after puppy-murderer Kristi Noem was fired, Attorney General Pam Bondi is now also out of a job, apparently moving on to what Trump calls “a much needed and important new job in the private sector” which definitely really exists. I like to imagine that when Pam heard the news, her immediate reaction was to yell “BUT THE DOW IS OVER 46,000!” It’s hard to imagine what more Pam could have done to keep her job. She oversaw a DOJ that unfurled a massive banner of Trump’s face outside headquarters, which I’m sure provided a cosy, North Korean-style ambiance for the career prosecutors she was busy firing, she overlooked all kinds of real crimes, ignored the constitution, and abandoned civil rights enforcement in favor of targeting Trump’s enemies, and she did her best to delay, redact, and cover up the Epstein files. Admittedly, her best was shit, and she didn’t actually manage to indict any of Trump’s enemies, but that was largely because they hadn’t done any crimes, so that’s not really her fault. Ultimately, it’s entirely possible that the reason she’s being fired now is that she’s due to testify to the House Oversight Committee about the Epstein files on April 14th and Trump thinks this will get her out of it. He’s wrong, of course, but then that’s kind of his thing. Meanwhile, her Acting replacement as Attorney General will be Trump’s former personal attorney and current Deputy AG, Todd Blanche, so I’m sure he’ll bring a real sense of professionalism and non-partisan stability to the role.
- The US under Trump is opposing calling Russia the aggressor in a G7 statement on the third anniversary of Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, threatening to derail a traditional show of unity. US envoys have objected to the phrase “Russian aggression” and similar descriptions that have been used by G7 leaders since 2022 to describe the conflict, Russia’s aggression was mentioned five times in the G7 leaders’ statement last year. “We call on Russia to immediately cease its war of aggression and completely and unconditionally withdraw its military forces from the internationally recognised territory of Ukraine.” Desperate to be the Prince of Peace and cosy up with Dracula’s ugly stunted cousin Vladimir Putin, Trump has departed from the language used by the Biden administration in referring to the largest land war in Europe since the second world war, The world’s leading economies traditionally issue the statement ahead of the G7 with a spokesman saying “We are adamant that there must be a distinction made between Russia and Ukraine. They are not the same.” Even after Trump blamed Ukraine for the war, described Mr Zelenskyy as a “dictator without elections”, falsely claimed that Zelenskyy had an approval rating in Ukraine of just four per cent when he enjoys 57%, and suggested Russia should be invited back into the G7, the spokesman continued “The Americans are blocking that language, but we are still working on it and hopeful of an agreement”, I think they should do a Donnie and just say they’ve got agreement and put out the statement anyway! Meanwhile Donnie will be pleased cos Putin’s reportedly reacted warmly to his fawning lapdog Donnie’s efforts on his behalf saying “they were open to a negotiating process without any biases or judgments about what was done in the past”. Trump really is the worst undercover agent ever!
- On Wednesday morning Trump became the first sitting President to attend oral arguments in the Supreme Court while his pet Solicitor General John Sauer tried to convince the Justices that the 14th Amendment is more of a suggestion really. To be clear, Trump didn’t visit in person so he could glower at the Justices in a “nice court you have here, be a shame if something happened to it” kind of way, that would be wrong. He was there for a totally different and cool reason that he’s just not telling anyone. I mean it’s not like he had anything else to do, everything’s going so great right now that the country basically runs itself..Anyway, the case at hand is his attempt to end birthright citizenship by Executive Order, and John Sauer’s argument is that when the 14th Amendment refers to “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof,” it doesn’t mean the children of immigrants, because reasons. Chief Justice Roberts described his argument as “very quirky”, which is SCOTUS for “What the fuck are you talking about”, and the other Justices were even clearer in their skepticism – even those appointed by Trump. Amy Coney-Barrett pointed out that Sauer’s version isn’t what’s written in the Constitution, Kavanaugh pointed out they’d also be overruling Congress and decades of precedent, and Gorsuch basically advised Sauer to stop relying on US vs Wong Kim Ark for his arguments, since that case contradicts his claims. You can tell how badly it went because Trump went straight home afterwards to ragetweet on his stupid Twitter clone that The US is the only country stupid enough to allow birthright citizenship, which is true if you ignore the 34 other countries with unconditional birthright citizenship and the 39 that have it with some restrictions.
- Remember that thing when California Governor Gavin Newsom called Trump’s Texan gerrymandering bluff and announced Proposition 50 to redraw the voting maps in the state so they favour the Democrats – like the Republicans did in Texas to increase Republican seats? Well Newsom did the right thing (or should that be the left thing) and put it to the ballot and Californian voters last year decisively passed the redistricting ballot initiative, and whilst the Republicans opposed it – ‘natch – the supreme court denied an emergency petition to keep the new maps from moving forward. Not satisfied with that, gubernatorial candidate Chad Bianco, Riverside county’s sheriff, has seized 650,000 ballots saying he is carrying out an investigation into allegations that ballots were unlawfully cast in that election. This follows allegations made by a group called the Riverside Election Integrity Team which contended that a discrepancy of 45,896 votes exists between the final vote count and handwritten records that tallied hand-counted ballots. Election officials and the California attorney general, Rob Bonta, have both dismissed those allegations. The discrepancy between the machine count and the final count submitted to the state is only 103 votes. Bonta has repeatedly sent letters to Bianco’s office over the last two months saying his staff is not qualified to conduct a recount stating “We are especially concerned with legal deficiencies in the affidavits underlying the warrants, including the omission of material facts.” In one of the letters, Bonta wrote that the ballot seizure was “unacceptable” and “sets a dangerous precedent and will only sow distrust in our elections”. There Rob you have hit upon the crux of the nub, if you lose or don’t like the result call everyone cheaters and grab the ball and run off the field, Farage did exactly the same after the Gorton and Denton by election here in the UK when Reform came second to the Greens. Of course the second-level of what-are-the-consequences thinking seems to elude all Republicans, if Bianco is successful in sowing distrust in elections how’s he going to get elected on the trust-worthy ticket? I suppose he’s thinking no further than I’m the Sheriff in this here town and what my six-shooter says is the law! Polling in the gubernatorial race has got to close at high noon surely!
- Back when we both worked at Channel 5 in the 90s, I recall one member of the legal department advising the producers that it’s better to ask for forgiveness than permission. Such was the startup culture of a plucky challenger brand like 5, where we had to overturn the norms to get some viewers away from the bigger channels. Trump works on a similar premise, although he’s changed it up a bit, and doesn’t ask for permission or forgiveness. Instead, he just knocks down part of the White House and decides to build a ballroom without checking with anyone first. The National Trust for Historic Preservation felt so strongly that he should have at least followed one of the laws that governs such things, that they took him to court and this week their request for a preliminary injunction was granted by a federal judge, effectively meaning the construction project will have to stop. Trump is naturally pissed off, because he really wants a massive gold-leafed party barn that holds 999 people. Why 999? Who knows. Maybe four digits would require a level of mathematical complexity that the current administration finds “woke.” Meanwhile, the judge ruled that any construction work that’s necessary to ensure the safety and security of the White House is exempt from the scope of the injunction, so of course Trump started claiming that his 90,000 square foot narcissism warehouse is actually all about the security if you think about it, saying “The roof is droneproof. We have secure air-handling systems. You know, bad things happen in the air if you have bad people. We have bio-defense all over. We have secure telecommunications and communications all over. We have bomb shelters that we’re building. We have a hospital and very major medical facilities that we’re building. Think of that for the safety of the president.” As far as he’s concerned, that means the ruling says they can keep going.
- In order to demonstrate that the ballroom would be a ballroom for the People you’d think that Trump would employ designy people who know how to design for people. Ahead of the, let’s face it, forgone approval vote for the ballroom by The National Capital Planning Committee stacked almost entirely with drooling Trump licky-lackeys, the New York Times published a piece on Sunday by a trained architect, fine arts expert, and urban planning writer who warned about serious flaws in the ballroom mockups. It appears that contrary to the requirements of actual people, all the windows on the eastern wall are fake, painted on and not actual holes in the wall that let in light and stuff, the overblown elevated portico of a double row of big fat columns – and you thought Ramses III had a small penis complex! – blocks the light and views from the actual windows on the south wall, and the staircases to the elevated portico, whilst granting access to be able to squeeze through the colonnade of ersatz Trump-dicks don’t actually lead to any entrances, so you can’t even get into the IKEA retail unit of a gaudy bling-fest. Kate Schwennsen, former national president of the American Institute of Architects, said, “If any of my previous students had submitted the proposed Ballroom addition to the White House as currently designed, I would have given them a failing grade.” Of course real-life Chucky doll with extra angry eyes; Karoline Leavitt – provided the traditional well-thought through measured reasonable adult spiteful knee-jerk reaction posting “The New York Times had three random people who have ‘studied fine arts,’ ‘long written about urban planning,’ and never built anything to write an article criticizing the new White House ballroom,” glossing over trained architect Junho Lee’s credentials and ignoring that Trump hasn’t built anything either; other people have in the vain hope that one day he’ll pay them. Leavitt concluded that Trump is “ensuring the People’s House finally has a beautiful ballroom that’s been needed for decades — at no expense to the taxpayer” as if turning up to the Palace of Westminster, demolishing it and submitting plans for a replacement establishment could be justified by saying ‘its alright I’m paying for it’. a) too bloody right you are! and b) come to think of it perhaps that’s where Guy Fawkes went wrong – oh if only gofundme was around in 1605!
- Keir Starmer has spent his week playing a high-stakes game of Geopolitical Zoom-Call, trying to convince 35 other countries to help him reopen the Strait of Hormuz while Donald Trump treats the global energy crisis like one of his kids – completely ignoring it. Trump wasn’t invited on the Zoom call, and I think the reason is because at least one of the countries was bound to bring up the fact that there’s only one specific guy you need to take out if you want the Strait to open up. I mean, you don’t invite that guy to join the chat. Meanwhile, last month Nigel Farage promised to professionalize Reform UK by bringing in “experts” to replace the usual stable of candidates who spend their evenings tweeting 1930s German philosophy. One of those experts was Simon Dudley, the former head of Homes England, who apparently decided the best way to handle his debut interview as housing spokesperson was to adopt the bedside manner of a Babadook. While discussing the Grenfell Tower tragedy – a preventable disaster that killed 72 people due to a catastrophic chain of corporate and regulatory failure – Dudley described the post-fire safety rules as “regulation which is not working,” before pivoting to the remarkably zen-meets-sociopath observation that “everyone dies in the end.” It’s a bold new direction for housing policy: why bother with fire-resistant cladding when we’re all just stardust waiting to return to the void? Initially Reform put out a statement defending Dudley, and then when literally everyone pointed out how fucking awful it is to say stuff like that, they fired him, with Farage throwing Deputy party leader Richard Tice under the bus for hiring him in the first place.
If you wanted to buy a T-shirt featuring this fallacy, you could click here. No pressure
And if you have some money left over after that, the audiobook version of Jim’s book, 2000 Mules and One Big Lie: A Stubborn Conspiracy Theory is coming out this month. Or you can get a free copy by becoming a Patron by the end of May.
