Golf, Gaza and skinny men on drugs

The Bugle audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello Buglers and welcome to issue 4350 of the Bugle audio newspaper for a visual world. This is the 30th of July 2025.

I am Andy's Oltzman and I'm currently 24 days of cricket into a potential 29 days of test cricket out of 55 days of actual time marathon that's only just over half of the last 55 days which to me is not quite enough i am part of a scientific research project to find out if you can have too much of a good thing and i'm delighted to answer no you can't um but anyway um in amongst uh the cricket we uh

we have time for this the final full bugle before our august hiatus um

We will have a couple of sub-episodes for you to tie you over until September Hove's interview.

But before that, joining me for respectively, the first and not the first time, it's Sarah Barron and Nato Green. I'll leave a gap for you to applaud at home or wherever you're listening to this.

Hello, Tom.

Sarah, welcome to the bugle. Oh my god, what an honor to be here.
Thank you.

I feel like we're taking you away from the cricket in a way that I worry is almost physically painful for you.

Is that how it feels?

Well, we're currently in a gap between matches. So once we've finished recording here, I only have, I think, another 17 hours of cricketlessness before it restarts.
So I think I'll be able to cope.

You know,

I've got some old cricket videos and recordings to tide me over.

But thanks for your concern. I thoroughly appreciate it.
Andy, am I correct that you are...

when you're watching the cricket test matches, you are fully erect.

And that you need some breaks

so that your body can recover. I mean, there's so many words that require definition and explanation there.
I mean, you know,

erect in terms of

at the ready for whenever a statistic emerges that needs to be shared with the listening, of course.

But, you know,

it's not a kinky thing, NATO. It's too pure for that.

How dare you sully it like that?

So, Sarah,

you are originally from Chicago. You're now living in London via New York City.
So you're basically here to provide the kind of mid-Atlantic neutrality that neither I nor NATO can offer.

Oh, yes, of course. I've got a, I speak two languages.
I've got a foot in both

oases, neither an oases on either side of the gaping pond.

So

I'm here to sort of smooth over any miscommunications that may occur between the two the two old friends. Are you guys old friends? Have you guys met in life before?

We have met a few times. Most of our relationship has been conducted through

recordings, but no, we have met.

We have met a few times.

I've slept in Andy's house, in fact. Yeah.

So, do you know what?

I wasn't aware of that. When did you do that, Nathan?

Your wife was the big spoon. Didn't she tell you?

One of the stories will lead me on to this idea, but a thing that I was thinking about this week was like when someone, and we're moving at the moment, so we're sort of like as a family of three, we're couch surfing between now and the first of September.

And it's made me think like when someone offers you their home or a version of like, you should come stay with us. My follow-up question is always, but are you going to be there?

Like, don't you need to know? Like, Andy, I like you so much. I would love for us to become better in life friends.
But if you offered me your home, I'd need to be like, Are you going to be there?

Because that's such a high level of friendship. You have to be very intimate, I think, to share a home for even a night.
So, NATO, when you were Andy's, he wasn't there, but his wife was.

Do you know of?

I think I will say it's all coming back to me now. I've tried to

block it out, obviously. Having someone who's so cricket skeptic skeptic under my roof didn't feel right.

NATO, now you are

currently not in your habitual California, but you are in the California of the bit of the American East Coast between Connecticut and New Hampshire, Massachusetts. That's right, Andy.

I'm in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, visiting my parents.

I don't know if you're familiar with Cape Cod.

Different towns on the Cape have different sort of histories and culture, and there's like a lot of oldie-timey oldie-timey stuff.

You can take a stroll through history, like there's a town with historic 18th-century whaling ships, or you can visit Plymouth Plantation where actors will stage reenactments of the arrival of the pilgrims from England in the year 16.

Funny.

The town my parents live in is focused on preserving ancient traditions that have all been lost,

been all but lost in our time as America's move beyond them. And I think I'm saying this word right.
I think it's pronounced science.

They have a place here called the Marine Biological Laboratory. And get this, it's a scientific research lab where people look at evidence and then formulate ideas based on that evidence.
Oh my God.

What a world.

Well, I'm sure next time when you're on the show, you can report on the ceremonial burning down of said scientific research center as America progresses into its glorious future.

We are recording on the 30th of July, 2025. On this day in 1956, the U.S.
Congress passed a joint resolution signed by President Eisenhower, establishing as the U.S.

national motto the words, In God we trust. It's turned out this was a big f ⁇ ing mistake.

One of the least trustworthy deities that America

could have chucked its lot in with.

I mean, if the evidence was not already painfully apparent, by 1956 that God was at best out of form, more likely off-work, ill for approaching 2,000 years, or functionally non-existent, or retired to the celestial golf course soon after completing his Make a Planet in a Week holiday course.

Well, it certainly should be evident now.

Trusting in God, when God is such a hands-off deity these days, has allowed all manner of ne'er-do-wells and power shysters to essentially steal America and shove it into their back pocket.

Maybe a better option with both hindsight and its distant estranged cousin foresight would have been, rather than in God we trust, the motto, in a constant striving for the most just and equal society, and actually giving at least least half a shit about all that stuff in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution we trust.

But that wouldn't have fitted quite so neatly on

El Merch.

As always, a section of this

newscast is going straight in the bin. This week we review all the big summer art shows,

some of the big art shows in the world's leading galleries. Heron Audsley clattering

with his show, What Eats Will Be Eaten at the Weirdless Gallery Gallery in New York City. Haunting montages of giant sausages sitting around tables about to tuck into plates full of humans,

of vengeful apples plucking grannies from trees and six-foot ice cream cones licking a melting sunbather on the beach. It's both graphic and terrifying.

We review from Germany Ebon Fluttermich with her new show Frenetica at the Krappenberg Kunsthaus, the incomplete superstar Fluttermuch with her least finished collection ever.

She's reduced the process of creating art to under three seconds per piece.

The review from the Krappenberg

Arts

magazine.

Sorry, I realize I hadn't finished writing that. Let me do that again.
One of the early reviews of the show said, it is not for the artist to instruct their audience what to see.

By leaving all her works not only incomplete but basically not even started, Flottomoch displaces the creative spark into the art viewer themselves, meaning that each blank canvas, uncarved slab of marble, partially opened box of pencils and untouched shark corpse become not one work of art, but a theoretically infinite exhibition of human creation.

This sounds absolutely sensational. And also we review

Gimlet Hurtwag, the Brito-German installationist.

All roads lead to Rome. That's at the Illuminati Gallery, which is a covertly managed art gallery run by Cabal of the Rich and Powerful.

And Hertwag's latest show, he's of course a roadkill art specialist, and he's got all the latest scrapings off Britain's motorways.

This time, the remnants of non-traffic-aware fauna are positioned in Roman history-inspired tableaus.

See a badger in a toga stabbed to death by conspirators, several deer publicly crucified along the side of a road, and an Emperor penguin slain in the Colosseum by a giant mouse or a Maximus.

A controversy over whether the penguin was a genuine roadkill after Hertwag was seemingly caught on CCTV driving a golf buggy into the penguin enclosure at Snutterbridge Zoo.

But don't let that distract you from the quality of the art. We review all those shows and many more in our section in the bin.

you you wouldn't know you've been cricketing andy

i've just been trawling the gap the art galleries of the world have you guys heard of an artist named um ed pashke

oh i haven't actually but i when i was um have you heard of him nato

can't say i have i when i was um like 11 years old and my brother was seven my parents dragged us to the art institute of chicago and we walked into this big,

there was this big painting on the wall by this guy named Ed Pashke.

And it was a lot, you know, it was floor to ceiling in the gallery. And it was this big brown thing with like fluorescent, like kid in play, fluorescent pink hair.
And the title was Turds in Hell.

And my brother and I became so hysterical that guards had to ask us to leave the museum.

And just ever since then, like no, no arch related thing will ever be as dramatic to me as the birds from hell being thrown out of the art institute of chicago because i'm laughing too hard at 11.

hilarious you're 11 years old and there's a floor to ceiling painting of a piece of shit called birds in hell

what will ever top that's uh i i it's so interesting you say that because i also have an early trauma at the art institute of chicago

uh which was being taken by my parents as a child and seeing, there was an exhibit of the American painter Ivan Albright,

whose paintings were famous for being basically

these grotesque portraits. And they're so gross, the way that he, like, it's like every portrait looks like the end of Dorian Gray.

Yeah. And it's like, it was just like, like, whenever I think of an upsetting image, my whole life, I still think of that, that, those paintings.

Like,

if you were to see one now, would it still creep you out, or would it just remind you of the feeling of being creeped out? Oh, it's still creepy.

It's, I mean, literally, as I was thinking about it, I was like, do I have the name right? Is it I've been all right?

And I googled it quickly, and the picture came up, and I felt creeped out right now.

Never goes away.

Top story this week: Donald Trump has been in in Europe.

This is not a drill. America has deployed its greatest weapon of mass destruction to Europe, the continent with which it was once formerly in a vague ally relationship.

He's been specifically in Scotland, largely promoting his golf course, but also hacking out a trade deal that seems to have been greeted with a mixture of apprehension and horror, as generally everything that Trump has done is greeted in the world.

Look, I'll be honest, I've taken a philosophical decision over the past couple of months, as I've probably explained before, to ignore the American president and what he says, and what he does, and what he says he's done, what he says he's doing, or will do.

Not forever, but certainly for a few months until after what he's said, done, stroke, said, and not done, or done, but not said, or objectively implied, has or hasn't

proved to be meaningful, true, or anything, frankly. But this trip

raised a few questions, I think, NATO and Sarah.

In particular, the main question that struck me was, what the f is the British Prime Minister doing meeting an American president at a golf course in Scotland?

Particularly, what the f is the British Prime Minister doing meeting an American president at a golf course in Scotland owned by that American president?

And also, why did he meet him at that golf course in Scotland without presenting him with the traditional Scottish greeting, as so welcomingly done by the late Janie Godley when Trump visited before,

which was a four-letter description of Donald Trump. I mean, this is a hard-won national tradition to hold up a banner saying Trump is a when he goes to his golf course in Scotland.
And amidst all the

traditions that we are losing in this country, this to me is the most

painful one.

NATO, what

obviously, I mean, I think you've probably made it fairly clear on the bugle that you're not

a committed Trump fan, I think,

thus far. What have you made of

his golfing expedition? Well, first of all, Andy, I've been warning you motherfers about golf.

Buglers, you let me down. Back on Bugle episode 4000,

I alerted the Buglers to the Trump golf course in Scotland, and I told you to go shit on it. And did you do that? No, you did not.

Golf is a bullshit sport for wannabe aristocrats to conspicuously dance. Democracy dies in darkness? No, it doesn't.
It dies in the light of day on the ninth pole.

Do you know how you know that golf is a bullshit sport? Because Donald Trump does it.

Not only does he do it, but apparently he spent about 23% of his presidency golfing.

The thought of Donald Trump golfing should dry out everyone's enthusiasm for that colonizer activity, like genitals of all genders the world over desiccate instantly at the thought of Donald Trump having sex with anyone.

Look, I love a chicken tika, but if I found out it was the favorite food of cannibal serial killers, I would re-evaluate my Uber Eats. Golf is not a sport.

Call me back when Trump does the haka with the all blacks.

So,

according, so

Sarah, you are,

if I've just been appointed of the Bugles golf correspondent,

um,

yeah,

what an honor. I feel like so holistically spoken to by what NATO just said.
I despise golf, I think it's so stupid. I think if you like it, you're stupid.

I would have said this, I would also say this about boxing, but I realize the news isn't taking us into boxing. But I have zero respect for boxing and zero respect for golf.

And one of the things I don't understand is when people talk about a good golf course,

what the

are they talking about? Have they never tried crazy golf or as we call it in America, mini golf? I don't, here's, let me tell you something.

I have a nine-year-old son, I take him crazy golfing all the time.

And there is a place where you can go where you bounce a ball down a deconstructed drum kit and get bonus points for hitting a symbol. How can Trump's golf course compete with anything like that?

I, I, and why is Scotland thought of as a good place to golf if it just rains all the time? This is not a rhetorical question.

Like, why is there a golf course anywhere other than like New Mexico and you go in the winter?

Why? Well, I think, I think the, the answer to that is that, that, that, that sport in general is supposed to be a metaphor for life.

And clearly, golf in Scotland evolved under the pretext that life is unremittingly miserable and fundamentally pointless. And

that's probably the explanation you're looking for, though. Likes sport the most.

Do you watch golf?

Yes.

I occasionally watch golf, maybe three or four evenings a year on the telly. But that's, yeah.

What is bringing you in?

What are you getting from those evenings?

Well, I guess now what I'm getting is that it's a golf course that doesn't have donald trump on it um which which makes it you know but so just nice to see that that is still a possibility um

the last day of a big golf tournament it it strips bare the human soul you see players just falling apart under pressure which is what you as a sports fan what you want to see is elite performers crumbling before your very eyes and that's that's what keeps us coming back you seem like a nice person but it's all you've let you all down.

Yeah.

Well, listen, you can tell how much respect Trump has for Scotland by the fact that he matches his skin tone to iron brew. Yes.
Well, that is,

you know, it's his Scottish roots coming out, essentially.

In terms of

the politics of it, it was a bit weird that

the president of America invited

the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom to a venue in the United Kingdom. But I mean, this is essentially how

international politics works.

It's a kind of cocktail of stomach churning, official groveldom, strategic embafflement, and attempts to interpret and or misinterpret the meaning of whatever Trump happens to say in the five seconds that he opens, each five seconds he opens his mouth.

So it's kind of, like I said, it's hard to work out the full meaning in terms of the future relationship between,

well, between Britain and America, between America and the concepts of truth and hope.

But

yeah,

it's puzzled me this whole trip.

I liked watching Keir and Victoria's facial expressions. That's where I put my energy because I feel that Starmer, the whole time he looked to me, And I think there's some argument to be made.

And I'm not saying it's a winning argument, but I think there's some argument to be made that he's not a terrible Trump Wrangler in a few different ways.

And it's not, um, it's not a pleasing process to watch, but he's not a total piece of shit at it. But watching his face was like watching a groom

sort of questioning. his choice of best man is his best man gives like a horrible rambling speech.

And what I kept thinking while I was watching Victoria was like, you know, if you're ever with someone who's really, really drunk and you know that you have to walk a balance between like making sure they feel listening to while not over engaging them.

That's, that was, I thought, her energy. Keir's was, I'm at a wedding and I can't believe this is my best man.
And Victoria's was, this guy seems drunk. I have to figure out how to handle him.

Look, Andy, say what you will about Kiera Starmer, and I will.

But

so they did some joint press conferences, and the joint press conferences looked like a pen and teller show.

I don't know if you are familiar, but one talked constantly, spouting incoherent libertarian nonsense in a Vegas casino, and the other one didn't talk and did all the work.

Trump and Starmer negotiating is like a dry biscuit negotiating with a rabid weasel. Neither of them can build a hospital, but there's a clear predator-prey relationship.

I am reminded, watching Kirstarmer, I am reminded of the Yiddish word nebish.

In the Yiddish dictionary, the definition of a nebish is the quality of a person who, when they enter a room, you feel like someone just left.

Does that not sum up Kirstarmer?

Oh my God, I've heard my mother say nebeshi my entire life. I didn't know that's what it was.

An energy beach there. That's fantastic.

I mean, there are times with Trump's presidency that it seems that it's really just a means of him getting free publicity for his brand and free travel for his business trips to hawk his dodgy wares.

And those times are usually between one second past midnight and a bit after 11.59 p.m.

I mean, for the weird thing, Stalma found himself having to defend the British government's investment in wind turbines after

Trump claimed that this was the quotes most expensive form of energy, which,

if facts are your hobby, it's not, either financially or in terms of the ecological cost of the planet and its current interim species in charge.

Also, I mean, winds are really getting their bluster on these days.

So, if Trump really wants wind turbines to be less effective, he should be advocating the use of wind turbines to decelerate the climate befucketification process so that winds then then are less less potent and people have to resort to fossil fuels again and the macabre dance of planetary death begins once more.

But I think that's maybe a little beyond his political attention span process that would maybe take, I'm guessing, I'm going to say 2,000 years.

The trade deal

with Europe, described as a dark day for Europe by the French Prime Minister, which is not, I guess, a ringing endorsement for a trade deal, although it does maybe suggest that it's achieving what Trump

was seeking to achieve, which was to make Europe upset as an entire continent.

I mean, attempting to make a trade deal with the current American junta is a hazardous business. It's like trying to negotiate...

on where to go for next year's family holiday with a screaming toddler who's just been stung by a wasp but also is for reasons that apply only in this simile the only person in the family legally allowed to book the flights and hotel um and also isn't a toddler, but is a screeching undead Banshee, vampire, zombie, hyena.

So it's, you know, it's, it's difficult. Clearly.

NATO, are there people dancing in the streets in America

at the signing of this deal? No.

I mean, look, so here's the, so as I understand the EU trade deal, currently there are tariffs

of European products entering the United States of a little bit under 5%.

Trump wanted to increase them to 30%,

and the deal settled on 15% for most things. That's the headline.

So the agreement only triples the current tariffs on European imports to the United States. Good news, bad news.
The good news is that the uncertainty and volatility of a trade war may be over.

The bad news is that tripling tariffs still means that shit will only be somewhat more expensive in the U.S. and not prohibitively more expensive.

Trump created chaos and then delivered for the United States by getting a result that is only slightly worse than if he had done nothing. And this is his definition of a success.

So, as

and the deal is, then you read deeper into the deal, and it's more complicated because there's still bigger tariffs on steel and no tariffs on other products like semiconductors.

And the U.S. is supposed to invest in the

EU is supposed to invest in the U.S. by buying American oil and weapons, and Trump may still change tariffs later

for wine and spirits. So, to recap, they want to have a process to negotiate later for tariffs on wine, but there will probably definitely not be a tariffs on cork for wine bottles.

So, taxing wine but not cork is like taxing diapers but not babies, where you get more babies but still end up covered in shit.

And as a regular bugles know,

as regular buglers know, I am an expert on deals.

And maybe this is in the press coverage, but this deal, in my professional assessment, seems like what I would call not a deal.

Which is, Trump says it's a deal, which is what he cares about. I would say that it partakes of the Platonic ideal of dealness without actually being a deal.

Imagine you were in a cave and you saw a reflection of a deal on the wall of the cave, and you thought that was a deal, but on closer examination, it turned out it was just a game of hangman that a hobo had left on the wall of the cave.

Then you turn from the wall of the cave, expecting to finally observe the truest form of a deal, and that is also not a deal, but just a stack of copies of Trump's 1987 book, The Art of the Deal, scratch and sniff edition.

Now, as Andy mentioned, a lot of European officials are not happy because Trump only likes a deal if he wins and the other side loses. So

the French European Affairs Minister Benjamin Haddad said this state of affairs is not satisfactory and cannot be sustained and urged the EU to activate its anti-coercion instrument.

Anti-coercion instrument. Is that like a safe word?

And

which would the anti-coercion instrument would allow for, quote, non-terror retaliation. And I wonder what non-terror retaliation could consist of, maybe

slapping Trump with a glove or mocking him in an Italian opera or just French people going, haha, you know, in a disapproving manner.

Oh, my God. I, you know, when I was reading through this story, I was just thinking it had a very sort of Goldilocks

vibe to me, inasmuch as I was, I really liked the French negativity of like, this is horrible. Are we still, are we allowed to do a French accent now? Is that still acceptable?

Well, I think as long as it's, as long as it's good, and I think that was, that was definitely above the threshold, Sarah. I think that's

like,

like, no, this is terrible.

And then the Italians and the Germans are like, it's not that these ones i'm not gonna do the friends and the the other ones are like

it's okay but then the spanish prime minister went i agree in effect he said wait no i'm gonna try the spanish accent here and you'll let me know how it is uh the uh hola quitala nope i can't do it the spanish guy went you know what this is bad but i agree and what i loved about this story was like the honest negativity negativity of it.

I hate when people act like terrible things are good.

I spoke to a woman recently who just had a baby, and I thought she was going to talk to me about how miserable her life was now that she was a mother. And she just went, I've never been happier.

And I was like, you can go for yourself.

Like,

that's what I felt the Germans and the Italians were doing. They were going, hey, it's great.
And I was like, you can go fuck yourself.

It's okay that it's bad, but can we just admit that it's bad? Like the French and the Spanish, please?

In especially,

but

we'll do it in this moment.

Pardones,

Sate is very cool, dude.

Ham on, have on.

In other Kirstamen news, he has announced that the UK will recognize the state of Palestine in September, unless Israel, and I'm not sure the exact diplomatic terminology used here,

something along the lines of gets its shit together and stops starving people to death.

That might be reading between the lines.

Maybe this move has come a few decades late.

British Foreign Secretary David Lamy said it was, quote, with the hand of history on our shoulders that Britain planned to recognise a Palestinian statehood.

The problem with this is that generally when the hand of history taps you on the shoulder, it's playing a prank.

It taps you on one shoulder, activates on the other side of you, or it taps you on the shoulder, then flicks a V-sign at you whilst muttering, loser, or it squirts you in the face with a novelty flower pinned to its lapel, or it whacks you in the face with a frying pan, or knees you in the groin, or smears you in honey and releases a swarm of wasps.

The point is, don't trust history and keep your eye on its hands.

The question is. History is famously handsy.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I watched a really, um, a really interesting tactic.

It's like, do you think it would have been more effective if in the 80s they just said, hey, if you don't stop beating your wife, we'll give her some rights. That's what it sounded like to me.

And also, Starmer's new tactic is to copy France. Is it just a matter of time before we get mandatory tight speedos in public swimming pools?

Nato, do you know about this? I didn't know. British people know this, but I didn't know this.

Do you know that when you go on vacation in France, in most of the pools, you as a man have to wear a speedo? Did you know that?

Oh, maybe that's why I got in so much trouble in French swimming pools for just going fully dick out. Oh my god.

I respect the power of your choices.

My body, my choice. My body, your choice.
Our eyes are burned.

So Starmer said that

if Israel doesn't get its shit together, the UK will recognize Palestine as a state in September. Now look, Andy, the woke want you to think that the way to stop a genocide is decisive action.

But real leaders know that the way to stop a genocide that has been underway for 663 days is to wait two more months before doing anything.

Starmer says he'll recognize Israel unless Israel agrees to a ceasefire and a peace process, in which case he won't recognize Palestine as a state, which would be the basis of the peace process.

It also makes me wonder what it means to Starmer to recognize Palestine as a state. Does he think it'd just be like, oh, Palestine, is that you? I thought I recognized you.

I haven't seen you since 1948. Wow, girl, you look different.
You've lost some weight. What's your secret? Girl, are you in Ozempic now?

This recognition

take place unless, quote, substantive steps are taken by Israel. These substantive steps include agreeing to a ceasefire.
Thus far, Israel has only

really been interested

in a partial ceasefire

under which everyone ceases firing apart from the Israeli military, which I guess is a stepping stone to a full ceasefire in some ways.

It must commit to a long-term peace process that, quote, delivers a two-state solution.

And some news just breaking, reaching us that apparently Benjamin Netanyahu is now seeking a compromise under which Israel does recognize Palestine as a state, but only if there are no people left in it.

So again, that might be something that

Israel must guarantee that the occupied West Bank will not be annexed in the future. That's a tricky one because the future is so long.

I mean, how are we to judge what's going to be going on in like a thousand, a million, or a billion years' time? I can't see that one sticking.

And also, it has to allow the UN to restart the supply of aid. But that, I mean, that's a slippery slope, isn't it?

It starts with what seems like a harmless supply of basic life-saving subsistence-level sustenance.

And before you know it, the UN are ferrying in shiploads of Michelin-style meal kits, fine wines, elite military hardware, top-grade cheeses, and a luxury dessert trolley, wooden horse construction kits, trampolines, nuclear weapons, chocolate fondants, and jacuzzis.

And Israel simply cannot take that risk. So there's still quite a lot to be

to be hammered out.

Netanyahu, long-term future conflict seed surround of the year from Eternal Despair Monthly magazine, has said that the UK plans to recognise a Palestinian state, quotes, reward Hamas,

which I guess is true to the extent that it's not true at all.

Actually, on reflection, that might make it false. But anyway, it's not so much rewarding Hamas as recognizing the fundamental right to self-determination, which I'm pretty sure is different.

And also, it's being a bit of a slap on the wrist for Israel for failing its remember your own origin story challenge and failing it repeatedly and failing it hard.

I think, I mean, the

Starmer is just unprepared. Like, you know, as a Jew, I recognize the Israeli government's approach to negotiation as being steeped in a thousand years of like Talmudic legal reasoning,

where, you know, like Donald Trump in the joint press conference with Starmer said that he wanted to get, make sure that the children of Gaza got every ounce of food.

And then Netanyahu hears that and says, okay, they can have an ounce of food.

Actually, I think one of the direct Trump quotes was, I want them.

to make sure they get the food because that food isn't being delivered or at least all of it, which sounds like he's making a complaint call to the Liberu.

Yes. I mean, that's, it does seem to be the way that he interprets the world, essentially.

He also said he thought that the children were hungry, quote, based on television. My God.

Which, like, you know, for

the person who we used to call the leader of the free world to be formulating policy positions based on television and not the advice and analysis of experts who've devoted their careers to studying the field.

You know,

this is so much winning.

Hamas continued to refuse my constructive suggestion that they should resign and relaunch elsewhere, maybe as a garden equipment franchise or a softball team or an online yoga collective, anything really that isn't their current line of work.

So it seems that the AMPAS

is going to last a little while longer.

I'm ready for the all-female reboot of Hamas. Oh, my God.

To be honest,

I think that would be a universally good move. I think the all-female reboot of basically everything in the political world is

what is the...

We may look back on the Ghostbusters movie as a turning point in human history whereby the patriarchs finally, finally came to the conclusion that maybe it is time to take a couple of years off and come back refresh for another 10,000 years of control of the world.

Okay, I'll be president.

The Democratic Party dissolving into nothingness news now.

And, well, NATO, the Democrats have rebounded from last year's electoral catastrophe, like a frozen turkey rebounding from the bottom of a well, down to a 33%

approval rating.

Why is this? And what can they do to rectify this apart from buying us control more of the media, which is what modern democracy is all about, of course. But what else could they do to turn it around?

Now, Andy, you might think from your comfortable perch in London that

Donald Trump, as a president, who is clearly in the Epstein files, involved in pedophilia and sex trafficking, enacting horribly unpopular policies to deport people's beloved

cooks and gardeners and housekeepers while kicking millions of people off of health care, that that would be a political windfall for an opposition party. But

you might think that,

but you would be wrong.

Voters hate Trump, but they hate the Democrats more.

And the Democrats are the least popular that they've been, according to this poll, in 30 years. So let's take a beat and think about when that was.
So let's do a little subtraction, carry the two.

That would have been 30 years ago, it would have been 1995 when Bill Clinton was president. And these Clinton people have an undefeated 30-year record at winning personally while losing politically.

Whenever Democrats start doing something popular, the Clinton people show up and go, this is actually bad. And then voters go back to hating Democrats and everybody wonder what happened.

Let me remind you that in the election last year, the Democrats sent Bill Clinton, that old fucking lecherous fitted sheep, to campaign for Kamala Harris in Michigan in a master stroke of political strategy by having him yell at Arab voters that I got news for Hamas.

Israelis were there first before their faith existed. And

if we're being biblical about it, people were there before their faith existed too.

What about the Canaanites, Bill?

And yet we have to act like the Clintons were successful. The Clintons are the M.
M-night shamelon of politics.

They made one movie in the 90s that seemed good at the time, but didn't age well, and then got paid to make another 20 shitty movies.

And we all go, this is kind of interesting and maybe a little racist, I guess.

But there's a math reason why the polls say voters don't like Dems, which is that both sides hate the other side, but Republicans love the Republicans. And Democratic voters hate their own party.

I get polled all the time. They call me, NATO, do you approve of Republicans? No.
Then they say, do you approve of Democrats? No. And then they don't ask me why.

So the Democrats think that I said no because I thought the party was too nice to immigrants or trans people.

When in fact, the reason I hate the Democrats is that I would like it very much if they believed anything. Anything.

Anything at all. Start small.
Genocide is bad. Ice cream is good.
Build from there. What if the Democrats tried to solve a problem?

That would be exciting for me.

So, and then the article on the poll said that despite widespread irritation with Democrats, voters said that if an election were held today, they would back a Democrat for Congress over a Republican by three points.

Now, voters,

to remind you, hate the Democrats more than the Republicans, but they will vote for the party they hate more because voters are subs.

that is the clearest explanation of american politics i have heard in my life nato

i'm so curious on who the like who are the 30 percent who think they're doing well

like i want to take a look at those 30 and i get that we all have to be off like licking our wounds but if i kept licking myself this long i'd be sectioned

and we where where is where is our star nato what do you when is our star coming? Was Bernie Sanders our only shot? Like, can the Democrats,

is it in the DNA of the Democrats now that we could get our fearless star who doesn't give a shit? Or is it just never going to happen?

I mean, Sarah, the sad thing, and I think, I mean, I think there was a recent episode of Bugle that talked about this.

I was just in New York where Democrats elected Zohran Mamdani as their candidate for mayor. He has to go on to the general.

And

people are so into it. People are like, man, this guy is exciting.

He's attractive. He's smart.
He's articulate. He seems to have principles.
He's talking about the problems that people have. He went to a Wu-Tang clan concert.

He raps about salt.

I don't know if you know that. No.
Zoran Mamdani has a, like, there are these rap videos on YouTube of his prior rap career under the name Mr. Cardamom.
Right.

Is this where he rapped about having a cool grandma and how much he likes salt?

Listen, I hate my grandma, but I do love salt.

UK news now, pharmacists have warned that the demand for weight loss drugs has become completely unsustainable with now an estimated, I'm going to make up a figure here, 150 million out of the 68 odd million people in the country using weight loss drugs.

Sarah, as our medical correspondent,

just

explain what's going on here. Here's what's going on, okay?

Everyone is on it, including my husband, who told me not to tell people, but I do not respect his wishes.

I,

all, all the dads in my neighborhood, you're just seeing these guys. These guys, they've been big boys, husky boys forever.
And then they walk down the street and you're like, whoa.

And I said in my, my husband heard me telling a friend that he was on Ozempic. He's on Manjaro, whatever.
And he was like,

can my private life not be like just fodder for you? And I was like, dude.

Do you think it's pride? You've lost a huge amount of weight immediately. And these guys are so private about it.
And I ran into this other mom and she was with her husband.

And we were talking like mom stuff, mom stuff. And then he looked visibly bored and said, I'm going to excuse myself.
And I made a joke and he walked away. And I said to her, I went,

Hey, um,

has he

lost a lot of weight recently? And she went, Uh-huh.

And I went, Are you allowed to talk about why?

And she went, Uh-uh. It's like what these guys who clearly don't exercise, who clearly

well,

we're all sat there going, oh,

there's no increased muscle mask. They just look like someone stuck a pin in them and they've just weighted.

What's going on?

So I am, I'm fascinated by the whole thing. I'm fascinated about the fact that people are private about it.
I'm fascinated that these guys think everyone doesn't know already. And I had really

feelings about it becoming inaccessible because on the one hand, like

i i like to not have to listen to my husband complain about his weight but on the other if he put it all back on because he stopped getting access to manjaro then i could keep berating him about his health whilst also knowing he has a very good life insurance policy

It's the kind of private medical decision that is only visible in public from across the street.

It's

crazy, NATO. It's like, it's just the strangest thing.
But I mean, I'm here for it as a story. And it's

huh. And here it is.
I was feeling like an asshole because I have trouble losing the last 10 pounds because of my persistent refusal to

stop eating a super burrito plus a scone and three cocktails every day. Really hard.

Well, that brings us to the end of this week's Bugle. As I said, we are having a few weeks off.
We'll be back in early September.

In the meantime, you can see Bugle co-hosts in action at the Edinburgh Festival. Alice Fraser is doing a show called A Passion for Passion.

That's at the Soho Theatre in London from the 6th to the 9th, and at the

Underbelly Bristow Square in Edinburgh, 6:50 p.m. from the 11th to the 25th of August.
She's She's also doing two morning writing classes, one on each of the two Sundays. She's in Edinburgh.

Details on Alice's various websites and social media outlets. Rhea Lena is doing Rhea Bellium.

Always good to see a pun in her title. 2.25pm at the Monkey Barrel at Cabaret Voltaire.
Tiff Stevenson, also at the Monkey Barrel, Post-Coitel at 2.50pm. That's the title of the show.
2.50pm.

Josie Long, 7pm in Pleasant's Queen Dome. Now is the time of monsters is her show.
And Ian Smith is doing Footsbar Half Empty at 12.30 also at the Monkey Barrel. A few non-Edinburgh things to plug.

Neil Delamere, he is on tour in the UK from September to November. Achilles Neil,

another name-based pun.

Details on his website. Felicity Ward is doing the last two shows of her I'm exhausting tour in Manchester and Bristol in September.

Hari Kondabolu is at in Philadelphia on August the 24th, Portland, not sure which one, which Portland, on September the the 4th, 5th to the 7th in Seattle, and the 18th to the 20th of September in Burlington, Vermont.

Josh Gondelman's positive reinforcement special is available on YouTube now. His weekly Pep Talk newsletter can be found at thatsmarvelousnewsletter.com.

And Helen Zaltzmann has a wonderful show called Souvenirs, available on BBC Sounds. The Illusionist has a four-letter word season on that I'm sure would appeal to all buglers.

And Answer Me This, a show that goes back even further than the bugle, is currently back from the dead. Um, Sarah, what have you got to plug?

I would love to plug my podcast called They Like to Watch, which is about trying to find TV that isn't a total piece of shit. That's sort of the Trojan horse of it all.

And what's inside it is my marital dynamic to my husband, who's on Manjaro.

Andy, I have a question.

I was just thinking about Tiff's Edinburgh show post-Coidal. Has anyone done an Edinburgh show where they have a bunch of sex and then do a show immediately afterwards?

Like, so that they're immediately like Walk of Shame, post-orgasm. Oh, my God.
That is so filthy and interesting.

I'm not sure. I've definitely never done that show.

Okay.

I don't know if anyone else does.

Typical comic question: who books that?

So, Buglers, I am on tour. In the darkest hour is the name.

This Sunday, August 3rd, I'm in Philadelphia at the Philadelphia Punchline. Philly Punchline, Philly Buglers, come through.

August 24th, Sacramento Punchline. August 28th, Fort Collins, Colorado at the Comedy Fort.
August 30th, Denver with the Grawlicks. September 13th, Portland, Oregon.

I'm specifying my Portland, Portland, Oregon, Siren Theater. And October 2nd, Mike Drop Comedy in San Diego.
Buglers, come see me.

Also, Buglers, an event to alert you to the Bugle live stream live 18th birthday show. 18 years.

This show will have been going in mid-October, and we are celebrating this on the 26th of October with a show that is being live-streamed to all known corners of the universe.

It's taking place at Leicester Square Theatre. Tickets are available as a pre-show for Bugle subscribers.

uh from the 31st of that's tomorrow well today probably as you listen to this thursday 10 a.m and uh on general sale from the 1st of August and we will put links on the Bugle website and I might even reactivate my extremely dormant social media feeds to give you a link to that as well.

And I will also be on tour with more Zoltgeist shows early in 2026 details forthcoming. So we will be back.

In September, there will be some sub-episodes through August to support all our wonderful Bugle co-hosts in their various endeavors.

In the meantime, and we will be back in September when hopefully the world will all be fine and we will have absolutely nothing to talk about.

Sarah, great to have you on the show. Thank you and

NATO, as always. Lovely to have you too.
Until September, viewers, goodbye.