Conspiracy Theory Thinking (Redux) – FT#196

06 Jul Conspiracy Theory Thinking (Redux) – FT#196

Show Notes

Conspiracy theorists often create unfalsifiable arguments, using a combination of goalpost moving, arguments from ignorance and circular logic.

Trump

We started out by discussing these clips of Trump and Mike Johnson claiming the California primaries are rigged:

Then we talked about this clip of a Flat Earther remaining unconvinced by the Artemis II mission:

Mark’s British Politics Corner

Mark talked about Nigel Farage conspiratorially theorising about two-tier justice systems:

And topped it all off with this clip of Liz Truss coming up with unfalsifiable theories for why the Tories lost the election so badly:

Fallacy in the Wild (Sting: Tom Waits – What’s He Building In There?)

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

Then we discussed this clip from Avatar:

Then we discussed this clip from Superstore:

And finally, we talked about this clip from Conspiracy Theory:

Fake News

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

Mark got it right this week and is still on 48%!

The Great American State Fair is not a logical fallacy

We talked about America’s 250th birthday, which was comprehensively stolen by Trump.

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

• The Supreme Court finished their term last week with a bunch of very shitty rulings including allowing Trump to end temporary protected status for Haitian and Syrian nationals, expanding his ability to fire the heads of various supposedly independent agencies, and upholding State bans on trans athletes playing on girls sports teams. On the plus side, they were able to read and understand the plain text of the Fourteenth Amendment. Well, some of them were, anyway. If we had a functional Supreme Court, John Roberts would have looked at the Trump administration’s emergency request to rewrite 150 years of settled constitutional law and overturn birthright citizenship and told him to fuck off. Instead, the Court dragged it out for eighteen months giving right-wing, morally pliable law professors plenty of time to flood the discourse with bad-faith, pseudo-scientific “information” to manufacture a debate out of thin air. And it almost worked. On the question of whether the constitution says what it says, the ruling was a razor-thin 5-4. Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, and Clarence Thomas were all perfectly happy to gut the concept of American citizenship because Trump wanted them to. Brett Kavanaugh joined the majority to strike down the order, but only on a technicality. He was with the other three assholes in claiming that Trump’s EO didn’t violate the Fourteenth Amendment, but in his opinion it did violate 8 USC 1401 (a), which says “The following shall be nationals and citizens of the United States at birth: (a) a person born in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof.” Which is of course completely different to the 14th, which says “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” No, you’re not having a stroke, those are functionally identical, but the benefit of claiming Trump is only violating the law, not the Constitution, is that Congress can change the law. The right-wing-o-sphere reacted to the ruling with their usual combination of pant-wetting, head-exploding, and misunderstanding basic reality, claiming that with this new ruling, hordes of pregnant women will be waiting just over the border until they’re 10cm dilated and then they’ll sprint across and squeeze the baby out.
• You know when your kids all start at a new school and everyone gets a cold as they get exposed to a new petri dish of germs in the close knit environment well it happened to Air Force’s basic training hub in San Antonio where an outbreak of flu is worsening. As of Wednesday, the number of cumulative cases linked to a flu outbreak at Lackland Air Force Base, part of Joint Base San Antonio, had reached 275. That’s up from 222 cases reported on Tuesday. As of Tuesday, four people had been hospitalized. This follows a departure from the usual practice of requiring all new recruits to have the flu vaccine. In a nod no doubt to RFK Jr’s scepticism about the efficacy of vaccination despite 150 years of evidence to the contrary, the outbreak is unfolding just two months after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth made the annual flu shot optional for troops, scrapping the military’s requirement for it, which dates to 1945, a move breaking with longstanding public health directives. “Our new policy is simple: If you, an American warrior entrusted to defend this nation, believe that the flu vaccine is in your best interest, then you are free to take it; you should. But we will not force you,” Hegseth said in April. Services have already been given exceptions to Hegseth’s policy according to Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell in a statement provided to ABC News. As part of those exceptions to the policy, the Army, Navy and Air Force are once again requiring flu shots for basic trainees, according to officials. In the Air Force, only about 40% of its new trainees at Joint Base San Antonio had a flu vaccination when the outbreak started in early June.  In response to the outbreak, some U.S. officials including Rep. Joaquin Castro — whose district covers about half of San Antonio, including Lackland Air Force Base — criticized Hegseth’s policy ending mandatory vaccination. “After Secretary Hegseth scrapped the military’s flu vaccine mandate, it was only a matter of time before an outbreak occurred,” he wrote in a post on X last week. “It was a reckless decision that put troops in harm’s way and undermined our military readiness.” The Air Force now has the goal of vaccinating all of the recruits in this recruit class and will vaccinate all new recruits arriving at the base. Moreover, the Army is preparing in the coming weeks to broaden that requirement to troops deploying overseas, first responders, child care workers, health care personnel, prison staff and soldiers taking part in certain large-scale training exercises. Sometimes I do rather get the sense that no-one in the Trump administration has a clue about what they’re doing, but I’m sure the vaccination against Trump Derangement Syndrome will soon become compulsory so I’ll be fine!
• Back in May, the DOJ indicted a former prosecutor for emailing herself two copies of Volume II of Jack Smith’s investigative report on Donald Trump. The report was, and still is, under seal, and the prosecutor, Carmen Lineberger, changed the document name to Bundt_Cake_Recipe.pdf to avoid detection. This is what we experts call “illegal as shit”, and led to her being charged with felony obstruction of justice and concealing government records, and misdemeanor theft of government property. We don’t yet know what Ms Lineberger was planning on doing with the two emailed copies, but we do know that Trump’s Justice Department is filled with all the worst, stupidest and most inefficient lawyers known to man, so it came as no surprise last week to hear that the DOJ filed notice to Judge Aileen Cannon that they had accidentally emailed three copies of the exact same, still sealed and fully secret document to Ms Lineberger’s attorneys during the discovery phase. The next step is presumably to charge themselves with all the same crimes. Fucking idiots 
• Days before granting him a pardon in March 2025, President Donald Trump phoned Trevor Milton, an electric-vehicle entrepreneur convicted of defrauding investors of more than $660 million, according to Reuters. Trump told Milton that high-profile advisors, including Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., had convinced him that Milton was unfairly prosecuted. “You had a lot of support,” Trump said. “Bobby Kennedy. You have to call Bobby and thank him.” Under Trump’s second term, winning a pardon no longer follows the Justice Department’s traditional guidelines. Success now depends on access to an informal network of influencers who appeal directly to Trump. A Reuters analysis of pardon, lobbying and electoral records, along with interviews with over 80 people, found that personal relationships, political donations and narratives of victimisation have replaced formal process as the primary route to clemency. Reuters identified 290 advocates who helped secure clemency for 197 recipients, representing 624 separate acts of influence. Among them, 73 helped secure more than one pardon or commutation. Brett Tolman, a former US attorney now in private practice in Utah, was involved in at least 12 pardons or commutations. Roger Stone, a longtime Trump confidant, had a hand in at least five. Among the most active advocates are Trump allies who themselves received clemency. Alice Marie Johnson, pardoned during Trump’s first term after more than two decades in prison, was appointed by Trump as his “pardon czar.” Stone, pardoned in 2021 after a conviction for obstructing a Congressional investigation, uses his conservative radio show to champion recipients’ causes and has acknowledged advocating for several. Angela Stanton King, a conservative author and former campaign advisor to Kennedy, received a Trump pardon in 2020 and has since become a repeat advocate. “I have access, I have relationships,” she told Reuters. “Because of that, I’m in the perfect position to be able to advocate and make sure that someone’s name or application isn’t just sitting over somewhere in a pile getting dusty.”Reuters found that 10 recipients, influencers and the companies they ran, including Milton, donated a combined total of more than $10 million to Trump-related political committees before and after their clemency decisions. Milton alone contributed at least $1.84 million to campaigns supporting both Trump and Kennedy ahead of the 2024 presidential election. Naturally the White House said in a statement that “anyone spending money to lobby for pardons is foolishly wasting their money,” and described the pardon review process as rigorous, involving the White House counsel and the DOJ. The DOJ said it continues to make “consistent, unbiased” recommendations to the president. Ty Cobb, who served as White House counsel during Trump’s first term, told Reuters: “There’s nothing other than money, praise, partisanship and relationships that dictates who gets pardons.” Like any of this is news to us! 

• Our favorite Australian Trump-botherer, Jonathan Swan, has a new book out with long-time White House correspondent Maggie Haberman. The book, Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump, pulls back the gold lamé curtain on the opening act of Donald Trump’s second term, presenting a fever dream where the leader of the free world spends his mornings supergluing gold appliques onto the marble fireplace mantel, surrounded by miniature Mar-a-Lago cherubs he had shipped in specially, to fix the vibe. Meanwhile, the residence staff was forced to carefully audit the executive garbage because Trump kept accidentally throwing out priceless White House sterling silverware alongside his midnight crisp packets and empty Starbucks cups. When he wasn’t accidentally binning the historical spoons, Trump was busy waving a two-page letter in front of reporters to prove his global reach out-classed Attila the Hun, Genghis Khan, and Adolf Hitler. He proudly claimed it was from a “presidential historian,” who turned out to be Gary Player’s longtime golf caddy jotting down geopolitical theories between holes. According to the book, Trump’s day-to-day management style is exactly as well-informed and well thought out as you would expect. He casually ordered an investigation into “this lawyer who was in the administration who said the election was fair and there’s no fraud,” leaving Stephen Miller and Boris Epshteyn to Google Chris Krebs’ name before drafting the paperwork to unleash the Justice Department. Meanwhile, he affectionately calls Communications Director Steven Cheung, “Luca Brasi” and praises him as a slightly more violent version of Kim Jong Un. Among the slapstick, however, are more chilling examples of their cruelty. The book exposes a frantic internal White House memo detailing Stephen Miller’s active plot to suspend habeas corpus to supercharge mass deportations under the guise of halting a foreign “invasion.” Miller obviously doesn’t give a shit about the humans, and it’s possible he understands that habeas corpus gives detained people the legal right to challenge their imprisonment, unlike puppy-killing former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who confidently and wrongly defined habeas corpus in a congressional hearing as the president’s constitutional right to kick people out of the country.
• Let’s face it, Trump’s administration stinks! But it might not just be cos of their singular unsuitedness to hold any position of responsibility beyond holding the door open for the grown ups – even then they’d need constant supervision – it’s pull you idiot not push! Turns out several big names in the White House Pete Hogsbreath, Rustychains Kennedy Junior, Howard Lutnick, Sean ‘Road Trip’ Duffy and The Eyeliner Kid Vance all swear by Dr. Sean O’Mara’s sauerkraut fermented vegetable diet. Jesus if the Odorous Orange isn’t bad enough all these heads of departments are chugging pickled cabbage and extolling the virtues of weight loss and glowing skin – I suspect they don’t choose to attribute either of those to the constant fecal-flavoured expulsion of air and the consequent stripping of the top epidermal layer brought about by the contact of acidic gas with their sweaty faces. I guess they need to find some way of justifying the $8,000 dollar ‘optimization plans’’ or $18,000 direct consultation that O’Mara charges. For the fee it seems he’ll also accompany clients to the grocery store to teach them about picking out fermented foods in the back of the refrigerator section, where there is less light that could degrade the nutrients and the living microbes. In printing that the Wall Street Journal just saved us all 18 grand there. In an emotional interview with the WSJ O’Mara said it’s his life calling, noting that people say feeling healthy helps them communicate better and have more energy for a stressful job, saying “Nothing will improve somebody’s appearance more and their performance.” But I think he might just be taking the piss a little when he recommends “old-world cheese for snacking” That includes blue cheese, gorgonzola or parmesan on a wheel, which apparently Lutnick eats plain, without a cracker. Those fake windows in the ballroom better just be placeholders for the real thing if senators’ wives are to be invited to anything in there judging by Kennedy’s wife Cheryl Hines’ report on 20-pounds-in-30-days-lighter husband Bobby Jr. “We’ll be in the car, dressed up. I’ll have my little clutch, right? One of my good bags that I only take out every once in a while, because I want to keep them nice, and he’ll hand me a bag of sauerkraut and say, ‘Can you put this in your bag?’ And I’ll say, ‘I actually cannot.” The Katie Miller podcast fails to disclose further whether she added “Fuck off you croaky stinking fartbag of a useless fake-tanned conspiracy theory-peddling ignorant bastard.” Nor whether the slamming of the car door on his throat actually improved the way he speaks to her.         
• In a typical display of great judgment, FBI Director Kash Patel managed to simultaneously compromise a sealed federal investigation and deeply alienate his colleagues in the Secret Service. Early on June 16th, possibly while hungover – I’m just guessing, Kash took to Twitter to aggressively brag about how the bureau had “stopped cold” a terrifying mass-casualty plot targeting the Idiocracy-style UFC cage match held on the White House lawn. Unfortunately for the justice system, his social media victory lap occurred before agents could round up roughly ten to twenty remaining suspects who were still active participants in the group chat where they made their plans. Matt Quinn, the Secret Service’s deputy director, might as well have been talking directly to Kash at his press conference later that day when he said “I’ll tell you a phrase I learned early in my career in the New York field office and that’s ‘Don’t choke on your own smoke.’ “I’ll tell you the Secret Service led that investigation from the beginning. I’ll tell you that case is ongoing. In order to maintain the integrity of the investigation and the security plan, we chose not to leak it.” While the FBI and the Secret Service later issued a sanitized joint statement praising their “strong working relationship,” the damage to the ongoing operation was already done. Disgruntled administration officials leaking to the press made it clear that the FBI Director had essentially tipped off a web of suspects for the sake of an early morning digital high-five. The irony is that the grand “terror plot” itself was unlikely to be a big deal. The group, calling themselves “The Vanguard of the Old Republic,” allegedly envisioned a chaotic multi-wave assault involving explosive-laden drones to trigger a stampede, followed by snipers picking off the evacuating crowd. In reality, the entire scheme was a half-baked fantasy born from a TikTok conversation gone wrong. The plotters possessed exactly zero drones, no explosives, and absolutely no tactical means to outsmart the actual security perimeter of the White House. The entire operation unraveled when one of the suspects’ Mums looked at her son’s bizarre digital behavior and sensibly decided to call the police. Still, this should fuel more discourse about the violent left who want to assassinate Trump, except for the fact that the Vanguard identify as militant accelerationists—a fringe, far-right philosophy dedicated to the belief that modern American society is in terminal decline and requires a violent push to trigger total societal collapse. They talked about targeting the White House event out of fury toward Trump, whom they viewed as an amoral elite too cozy with the establishment and tainted by the Epstein scandal. They rationalized that a stadium filled with government officials and wealthy donors contained no innocent bystanders, only the complicit. We at Fallacious Trump are unable to offer any opinion on this matter.
• A week is a long time in politics – three weeks is a colossal epoch. Here in Blighty we are speaking to you from the sunlit uplands of no real leader of the Labour Party. Following the Makerfield by-election triggered by the sitting Labour MP standing down to allow former Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham to stand, who then trounced Reform into second place and won the seat. Starmer hemmed and hawwed in a Sunday reminiscent of Boris refusing to go even though pretty much all of his cabinet handed in their notice and wrote letters demanding his resignation in 2022. Starmer eventually conceded that he was no longer in touch with the voting public and did the walk of shame to the lectern in Downing Street. In his speech he told us that his legacy was to turn around a Labour Party that was politically, morally and economically bankrupt. This naturally upset Corbyn a little who, when he stepped down as leader, had left a Labour Party buoyant with 600,000 members (twice that under Starmer), funds and popular policies. And yet who’s Your Party seems unfortunately as irrelevant now as Starmer’s Labour Party. The missing Tracy brother from Thunderbird 6; Andy Burnham, who Kemi Badenoch described as a black t-shirt and a pair of eyelashes – eyelashes? a pair of eyelashes? no-one says that you idiot – eyebrows you meant eyebrows! (Burnham posted a video of him simply saying – dark blue actually) though yet to be handed the reins, has been rather shafted by Keir Starmer who, whilst making much of Truss leaving a 22bn pound black hole in the finances, has left Burnham his economically bankrupt legacy; a 5bn pound stable door closed for promised defence spending after the defence minister and secretary horses had bolted over lack of funding of defence. Farage complained that there should be a general election cos otherwise we’re just going to have another professional politician slotted into place, this coming from a man who’s owned several political parties, which have received over 22million pounds in donations from crypto-billionaire Christopher Harborne, and had spent 20 years blagging a salary from the European Parliament. Farage needs a general election now cos the man-of-the-people shine is coming off him rather since the £5 million bung, the Makerfield defeat and more revelations that he’s earned £270,000 being an ambassador / salesman for Direct Bullion – a gold merchant, for 12 hours work – that’s £22,500 an hour! 1,700 times that of the national living wage of £12.71 an hour. But as he and his latest turncoat lick-spittle Robert Jenrick keep bleating ‘It’s none of your business, it’s a conspiracy on the part of the media to prevent Farage from becoming PM’. I think you’re doing a fairly good job of that Nige already, stand by to see him decide to quit politics again, I’ll bet my Burnham Bitcoin on it.

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