11 Jan Promised Proof – FT#66
Show Notes
The Promised Proof Fallacy is committed when someone can’t back up their claims with anything other than some currently non-existent proof that they claim will appear later.
Trump
We started out by talking about Trump claiming the reason he didn’t visit the military cemetery in France was the weather (which he totally has proof of that you’ll probably see eventually) and not the fact he thinks troops are losers and suckers:
The we talked about Trump being unable to offer proof (yet) of Mexico sending criminals to the US:
And finally in this section, we heard a caller on C-SPAN claim the Capitol was attacked by Antifa, based on proof that doesn’t yet exist:
Mark’s British Politics Corner
Mark is having to take a few weeks off from the podcast due to work, so Jim talked about this clip of Boris Johnson claiming he has seen Dominic Cummings’ evidence, but has no plans to show it to anyone else:
Fallacy in the Wild
We talked about this clip from Murder, She Wrote:
We followed that up with this clip of Pastor Jack Hibbs:
The Future of Fallacious Trump
Trump will no longer be in the White House by our next episode, but we’re not going anywhere! He’ll still be in the public eye, his kids will still be awful, his supporters will still be a blight on the USA, and hopefully there’ll be some trials to cover at some point. We’re sticking around as long as you want us, and Mark will even be back soon!
Fake News
Here are the statements from this week’s Fake News game:
- I’m not here to talk about me, I’m here to talk about your two great Senate candidates. And frankly, I shouldn’t have to do — or to even tell you this, but I won Georgia very strongly. I won Georgia by thousands of votes, and it wasn’t even close. There’s all kinds of proof, a lot that you haven’t even seen, and it’s not just Georgia either. And if your Governor wasn’t one of the dumbest Governors in the country he wouldn’t have let it happen.
- We have all seen what our opponents are capable of doing. I ran two elections. I won both of them. Second one; much more successful than the first. But we can’t let this happen any longer. On election night, we were leading by so much, we’re not gonna have that tomorrow. We’re not gonna have that tomorrow night, where you’re leading and then all of the sudden, boom, it’s gone like magic.
- Gallup, Gallup, you know the Gallup poll, they did a — I don’t say this braggingly, the most admired man in the world, or the country — I don’t say it. I say it for a different reason. So I came in first — Obama came in second, and Biden came in way low. Then I say, and they say, and people have said, “How is it possible that a guy who got 80 million votes can’t get any votes for the most admired man?” You know why? Because he didn’t come in first, that’s why.
Click below for the answer
Our guest host Frank got it wrong again this week, and is currently on 0%
Sedition not a logical fallacy
We talked about the armed insurrectionist attack on the Capitol, incited and urged on by the President and his acolytes.
The stories we really didn’t have time to talk about
- Sadly eclipsed by the shitty news this week was the best news we’ve had for a long time. Democrats won both Georgia Senate runoff elections, handing control of the Senate to the Democrats and allowing the Biden administration to actually get shit done. Apart from the excellent work by Stacey Abrams and others to get out the vote and the excellent campaigning from Ossoff and Warnock, we have to thank the Republicans for this, because without Trump continuing to cast doubt on the integrity of the democratic process and focussing almost entirely on whining about the election results instead of campaigning for Perdue and Loeffler, without McConnell spending the last few weeks depriving people of desperately needed money, without Lin Wood telling Republicans not to vote, and without Loeffler and Perdue being hateful, soulless, bigoted literal crooks, it might not have happened.
- I don’t know about you but I like to see the New Year in with a big celebration, this year having been somewhat different, the prospect of spending that evening with say an unsuccessful Presidential candidate might well have been the cherry on the Xmas pie! Certainly those who stumped up hundreds dollars for the New Year’s bash at Mar-a-Lago were expecting, if not promised, that Trump and his Mrs would be there with them putting on a super spread. Inexplicably however those two bailed to Washington on the Wednesday and left them with the greasy B-Team of Don Jr, other miscellaneous Trump offspring, and the dripping superspreader himself; Rudy Giuliani. Never fear, to help try and prevent buyer’s remorse from kicking in too soon they were also serenaded by one-hit wonders Vanilla Ice and Berlin. Perhaps they were persuading them to party like it was 1987 and that they were actually all still in Back to the Future 2, when Biff won all the money, got the girl and was still the king, and they weren’t in a sad fake-tanned white pensioner’s retirement home abandoned by the proprietor who cares more about their cash than their adulation. No, he cares about their adulation, just not about being close to their maskless pox-filled breath as they exhale it all over him. Actually $900 a pop represents pretty good value – who now wouldn’t want to pay that amount not to be in the same room as him!
- Over sixty court losses is nothing if you’re a master dealmaker really determined to subvert the will of the American people, so Trump called Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger last week and spent an hour trying to get him to break the law to help Trump out. Fortunately for us, a member of Raffensperger’s team recorded the call, and, when Trump lied one more time on Twitter about the integrity of the state’s election process, they sent the recording to the Washington Post. Anyone looking for a masterclass in negotiation from one of the most successful businessmen on the planet, might have chosen in the past to attend Trump University but since that’s sadly been forced to close because of all the fraud, this phone call will have to suffice. Not to worry though, you can still learn key skills like lying – “If we could just go over some of the numbers I think it’s pretty clear that we won, we won very substantially in Georgia”; suggesting what to say when you break the law – “There’s nothing wrong with saying you recalculated”; awkwardly flattering the lawyer “I’m sure you’re a good lawyer. You have a nice last name”; threatening your opponent with prosecution – “You know what they did and you’re not reporting it, That’s a criminal offense. And you can’t let that happen. That’s a big risk to you and to Ryan, your lawyer”; and desperately begging for help when you have nothing left to offer – “so what are we going to do here folks? I only need 11 000 votes, fellas. I need 11 000 votes, give me a break”.
- When you are a white-privileged newly-elected Republican senator is it possible for anyone to take your words about Hitler out of context? Especially when the context is about not losing future elections by winning the hearts and minds of the young in the ways of republicanism, and the words are “Hitler was right on one thing. He said, whoever has the youth has the future.” After her office tried to twist the words to make it into a “denunciation of evil dictators’ efforts to re-educate young people and similar efforts by left-wing radicals” Downstate Illinois Representative Mary Miller went on to say people were twisting her words to mean “something antithetical to my beliefs”. Then why not use a reference to those left-wing radicals, the Russian Communist Party and their Young Pioneers who were schooled along party lines since childhood? Is it even more antithetical to be seen to be knowledgeable about what socialism really is? Which might turn off her fellow Electoral College vote objectors or her husband who attended the rally at which the insurgent-in-chief incited people who definitely don’t have the hammer and sickle tattooed on their chests to stop the Electoral vote counting. Apparently we need to ensure that young republicans are brought up to realise that there IS something worse than mentioning Hitler.
- As well as Trump’s lifetime ban from Twitter, a number of other right wing voices have also been banned, such as attorney and crazy person Sidney Powell, and attorney and crazy person L.Lin Wood. Wood has gone from spouting the usual Trump supporting, Q Anon believing bullshit to some conspiracy theories that are causing us some genuine concern here at Fallacious Trump, because there’s a point where it’s OK to laugh at people, and then there’s a point where you wonder whether anyone around him can get him the help he so obviously needs. And Mr Wood is fucking right there on the border of those two points. So I’ll leave it up to your conscience whether you find it funny that Wood claimed last week that Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts is a pedophile who was involved in the death of Antonin Scalia and that Jeffrey Epstein is still alive. It’s good to know Trump’s lawsuits are in such good hands.
- Okay I’m casting Men in Black 5 – there’s a pharmacist in this one, you know, Agents K and J meet with an innocent-looking person who has the inside track on interstellar skullduggery, what’s his back story? You’d want to start with the words ‘self-declared conspiracy theorist’ right? Cos they’re the really weird ones – not enough to have someone else declare that to them – they say it about themselves – doubly weird cos they have the knowledge that what they believe are those off-the-beam, out-there explanations for things most people have a rational explanation for. Let’s face it, the plot of every MIB film really. And it works cos we all go “hahaha they’re pretending this weird shit is real and we know it isn’t etc etc”. Except okay this pharmacist is real, a self-declared conspiracy theorist who destroyed 500 doses of the Covid vaccine on Christmas Day at his hospital pharmacy in Grafton Missouri because they would have mutated the DNA of the patients. Well quite right too, thank the Lawd for people like Steve Brandenburg, cos blimey 500 mutants with zero chance of being mutants, and now zero chance of being immunised, would have really impacted the lives of those around them much much more than the 21 million US citizens infected with, and the 350,000 who’ve been killed by, COVID-19 – yeah good work Steve – here’s the part where Agent K blows your head off – again!!!
- Aforementioned crazy person Sidney Powell is one of the crazy people that voting machine company Dominion is getting ready to sue for defamation and while I love to see it, I can’t help thinking she’s going to get off on the Tucker Carlson defence that no right minded person would take anything she says seriously. Meanwhile, Dominion have been sending out litigation hold letters to make sure that evidence is saved, including one to Rudy’s star witness and comedy drunk person Melissa Carone which said “you have positioned yourself as a prominent leader of the ongoing misinformation campaign by pretending to have some sort of “insider’s knowledge” regarding Dominion’s business activities when in reality you were hired through a staffing agency for one day to clean glass on machines and complete other menial tasks” which is kind of amazing.
- Here in the UK we have adopted a new three-part slogan – well I say that, we’ve actually returned to the simple rigour of “Stay at Home, Protect the NHS, Save Lives” cos the virus still exists and so does the government and the former has more control of the latter than vice versa. After reflecting on the success *cough cough* of Boris’ inept cabal of shitmunchers, the new three-part phrase, in reality, is Starmer Suggests, Boris Rejects as unpatriotic, Sturgeon Implements, Boris U-Turns, Atishoo Atishoo We All Get Blamed. Sorry is that 5 parts or Tier 2? Lockdown 3 or the 12th of Never? Whatever, it’s been and will continue to be a long, long time. Having heard that today’s death toll alone exceeds Australia’s entire tally for the whole pandemic so far, I’m off to trace my eligibility for an antipodean passport. Till next time then – She’ll be right, No Worries, G’Day!
That’s all for this week, thanks for listening!
