Show Notes The Appeal to Fiction Fallacy is committed when someone tries to use something that happened in a work of fiction to back up their claim about the real world. Trump We started out with this clip of Trump making various claims about the border, many of which were in fact things...
Show Notes The Broken Window Fallacy is committed when someone tries to claim when a bad thing happens, that good things will result from it, which makes it OK. Trump We started out with this clip of Trump claiming tariffs, which raise prices for US consumers, will make the US a richer nation: We...
Show Notes The Sunk Cost Fallacy is committed when someone justifies maintaining or extending a course of action based on the cost already incurred (whether in terms of money, time, effort or intellectual capital). Trump We started out with this clip of Trump justifying sending 4000 more troops into Afghanistan in August of...
Show Notes The Double Standard Fallacy is committed when someone treats two very similar situations differently (usually to their advantage) with no explanation why. Trump We started out with this clip and tweet combo from Trump being happy to accept the media 'calling' the election in 2016 and not so cool about it...
Show Notes The McNamara Fallacy is committed when someone treats something as important because it is easy to measure, or dismisses something as unimportant because it is hard to measure. Trump We started out by talking about Robert McNamara's use of Vietnamese death toll as a measure of US success during the Vietnam...
Show Notes The Fallacy of Worse Evil is committed when someone acts like something is not a problem because worse problems exist or can be imagined. Trump We started out by talking about this clip of Trump on Coronavirus: We followed that with this clip of Trump defending Russia: And then we looked at Louie...
Show Notes The Appeal to Anonymous Authority is committed when someone cites an authority to back up a claim, but the authority is unnamed, vague or similarly uncheckable. Trump We started out by talking about this clip of Trump claiming the best analysts predicted a stock market crash if Biden was elected Then we...
Show Notes The Accelerating Truth Fallacy is committed when someone uses their own previous assertions as evidence or proof that those assertions are true. Trump We started out with these clips of Trump claiming with more and more certainty that Robert Mueller wanted to be his FBI Director: Mark's British Politics Corner Mark talked about...
Show Notes This is a special episode inspired by a Twitter conversation. It's only 20 minutes and has none of the usual sections, so the notes below are simply links to things I talked about in the episode. The twitter conversation that inspire this bonus episode. Trump's tweet about executing babies: Senate Democrats just...