Trade Tantrums, Brexit Birthday and Superbowl!

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello Buglers, and welcome to issue 4330 of The Bugle, the audio newspaper for a visual world that simply won't go away, or won't stay away.

That's the audio newspaper rather than the world, which also won't go away.

I mean, we go away for about a week at a time.

I guess.

Well, generally, we come crawling back, begging for forgiveness after one or sometimes tour in the summer.

I'm telling you, I've started this show very positively.

Welcome to issue 4330 Take Two of the Bugle, the world's coolest guide to fashion and romance.

No, no.

This is the bugle.

I'm Andy Zoltzman, and joining me to smear the still warm entrails of another week's news into our own faces.

And guess what the future holds based on the noises we then make?

It's a man who yet again has turned down the offer of millions of dirty dollars per settler to join the Saudi-backed LIV golf tour just to talk to you buglers.

It's Nish Kumar.

Nish, thanks so much for making that call.

Everyone thinks it's out of principle Andy.

In reality, it's a negotiation tactic.

I'm holding out for an even more lucrative offer.

Right.

Is it right to say you also turned down $10 million a season to play for the Moscow Milliners in the Russian Hat Design League as well?

Yeah, that's true, Andy.

That's actually true.

But that was over some unsubstantiated allegations that I was hat doping.

And I cannot stress this enough.

I will fight to clear my name in court.

I made those berets of my own accord.

There was absolutely no performance-enhancing hat-making drugs involved in that.

I am simply a skilled milliner.

It's an interesting couple of weekends for me, Andrew.

Two weekends ago,

I did a TED talk.

I didn't do a TED talk.

I cannot stress this enough.

When I was offered the chance of doing a TED talk, my instinctive thought was, I can't think of anything worse than me strapping on a Madonna mic and dispensing wisdom to an audience of, I imagine, what would have been quite angry people.

Instead, I interviewed my friend Alice Shahada, who runs the Palestine Comedy Club.

It's a wonderful conversation.

It'll be available soon.

I was very happy to do it.

But then two days ago, the following weekend, not seven days later, I was working this time in my capacity as hike man for James James A.

Castor doing a DJ set.

And really, those two things really sum up my ambitions in life, Andrew.

I've wanted to be an interviewer who takes on the hardest-hitting conversations, and I've also wanted to be a hype man jumping around in a band.

I have always seen myself as somewhere between Walter Cronkite and Flavor Flav.

And I think the last two weekends have really proved my diversity as an entertainer.

Right.

I've always thought of you very much as Flavor Cronkite.

Well, Andy, sometimes on this show, I get a, you say something and I get a sinking feeling in my stomach.

And I'm getting that sinking feeling right now.

And that sinking feeling is a blizzard of photoshops I'm going to be receiving across various mediums of social media from the

frankly radicalized lunatics that listen to this podcast.

I imagine there's going to be some...

Some Photoshops done that somehow managed to be insensitive towards me, Walter Cronkite and Flavor Flave.

The big three.

The big final three in many people's eyes.

If you deface enough copies of the Bible, it all makes sense.

I guess Cronkite's the father, I'm the son, and Flavor Flav's the Holy Ghost.

I guess.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, you've just basically called yourself Jesus there, Nish.

Not for the first time.

Listen, we're both bearded brown men that were misunderstood in our eras.

We had some ideas that proved to be controversial in our lifetime, but history will judge us favourably.

Jesus, as we all know, was a 45-year-old white, curly-headed businessman, basically the baby.

I don't know what he became after that.

I lost interest.

Look at the paintings.

Look at the paintings, Nish.

So, is that you saying you're Jesus?

Look, I mean, you know, we're from the same team.

That's all I can say.

That's all I can say.

Yeah, both of you are a a huge letdown to the Jewish community.

Yeah, I mean, I think he costs, he costs, he costs us more market share than I have, to be fair.

Yeah, but I should, for the benefit of listeners, just to give you an insight into how seriously Andrew takes the tenets of his faith, he just held up his mug, which had a picture of a dead pig on it.

A dead pig that he ate with his wife to celebrate their engagement and commemorated in a photo that he then turned into a mug that he's now drinking his tea out of even andy's tea is not kosher

yeah but that pig it was in a restaurant in spain and it was so tender they cut it with a plate um

you know

i think that pig was so damn good it it just becomes kosher

I don't know if the, I mean, obviously, you can interpret the scriptures in many different ways, as humanity has proved over and over again.

It's time to move on Nish.

We are recording on the 3rd of February 2025.

On this day in 1690

Massachusetts issued the first paper money in the Americas.

Huge moment in the history of American bribery and corruption.

Just so much less clanking.

It made the whole process.

So much easier to do without people noticing.

It's an elegant art form.

It's an elegant art form with paper money how how how on earth are people bribing each other now yeah what we're just sort of brown envelopes filled with bitcoin you can't do it it's a lost art uh the 3rd of february as we record is national sickie day um

so i mean

it's a day for everything and what a great day this is i mean what better excuse i mean that obviously you know the sicky is you know

some people in favor of it others are against it but there are we give you now on national sickie Sicky Day, some even better excuses for taking the day off, including, excuse one, I'm on the verge of discovering a new form of coffee that sits somewhere in the quantum caffeiniverse between a latte, a cappuccino, and a flat white.

If I nail it, boss, I'll give you a 2.5% share in the IP, which could be worth up to $70 trillion a week.

Excuse B, I can't come into work today because I'm stuck three feet off the ground.

I taught myself to levitate last night, but only read the instruction manual up to the levitation bit

without also learning how to get back down.

Should be fine to be in tomorrow, possibly not until p.m.

Excuse 3.

I was diagnosed when I was young as being too cool for school, and I now need a second opinion on whether that also means I'm too cool for work.

Excuse D, my great-grandfather worked as arse off in the days before statutory holidays and shit like that, so I reckon my family is owed one.

That admittedly is a risky door to open.

Excuse E, I'm actually too well to come to work today.

My excess of health could destroy office morale.

When all my colleagues are consumed by jealousy at my frankly ethereal aura of fairness and glimmeringly perfect skin and excuse f i had a dream last night that aliens will visit me today the 3rd of february with a new chemical element that cures all known diseases i know it's probably nothing but just in case i have to stay home i mean if i came to work and we all missed out on it you would feel bad boss wouldn't you so there you go those are your alternatives uh alternative excuses for uh for national sickie day i mean it's a bit different when you're self-employed in this isn't it the uh the sicky is um a slightly different art form.

Harder to pull off, Andrew.

Harder to trick yourself when you employ yourself.

But I did

have a job.

Well, I had several jobs for a long period of time.

I was an office temp.

And when I was an office temp, let me tell you, I was the Michelangelo of pulling a sicky.

And by that, I mean I was the teenage mutant ninja turtle of pulling a sicky in that I did it often whilst eating pizza and wearing a lot of orange.

But I really was like unbelievable at it.

The key thing is an annual bout of diarrhea because

it burns clean, man, as an excuse.

It doesn't show up in your voice.

You don't have to put on a pretend voice.

You just have to sound slightly frantic, like

you're making the call in between emergency battle movements.

I thought when you were the Michelangelo of Pulling a Sickie, that what you did was you painted some willies and balls on the ceiling until you were asked to leave the the office.

As always, a section of the bugle is going straight in the bin.

This week, we have a special moment of calm in this troubled world.

We need a moment of calm.

So here from the bugle is your moment of calm.

There it was.

I hope you enjoyed it.

Oh, go on, then we'll give you another one.

There, there, two moments of calm.

I hope you didn't waste them.

The sad thing is that in that second moment of calm, somewhere in the world, a fox was slaughtering a chicken whilst an angry man paddling back across a river was shouting, I told you guys, just simmer down and learn to get along while I took my grain to the other side.

You idiots.

Addy, there's no time for a moment of calm in this world.

I haven't checked because I don't actively have the news open while we're recording this, but I assume in one of those moments of calm, Donald Trump ordered a full-scale military invasion of Disneyland to remove what he called a communist rodent.

Yes, well,

I mean,

has he learnt nothing from history?

Obviously, the answer to that is yes, he's learned nothing from history.

But I mean, that comes just after he announced the war on Narnia because of the lefty lion.

So don't never fought wars, never fight wars on two fronts.

Never.

Also, that Narnia winter, it's felled many a general.

Top Top story this week.

Well, we're starting in America again, Buglers.

I'm sorry about this, but we are sadly trapped in the stupidest of all the parallel universes that we sincerely do hope exist.

Because if there are no parallel universes, Nish, and this is the only one there is, we're fed it up big time.

I mean, that's the one little glimmer of hope I have that we are just in the stupidest parallel universe.

You've got to hope that this isn't the only universe and you've certainly got to hope that we're not like hitting a six out of ten ten on the stupidness scale

anyway you've got you've got to hope we're not like a mid-ranking stupid parallel universe

uh our top story in this parallel universe giant orange shithead puts the ffs into tariffs news

um

delusion monger of the year and gold standard divisionist donald trump has declared war on the world Trade.

Sorry, I forgot the word trade before the world

war.

The toadying Tech Bro, coronated king of the USA, announced 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico and a one-time special offer of just 10%

for China.

He's also waggling his trade wangle in the general direction of the EU and everywhere else in the world.

As well, the Wall Street Journal in an editorial called Trump's tariffs the dumbest trade war in history.

And that is a hotly contested title.

That is a title as old as trade.

Often, when we say something is the greatest of all time, or in this case, the dumbest of all time, all time isn't that long.

But trade wars, they go back to when people would fight over who promised how many bison in exchange for how many other bison to each other.

You painted it on the wall of your cave, you dick, and it's all there in ochre and rock.

Read the wall, anyway.

Nish, um, I know you're a uh, you're a longtime student of uh of trade wars and what they've done for uh done for the planet.

Um, what are you enjoying this one so far?

Yes, that's right, Andy.

Several papers have described uh this week as a Trump tariff tantrum, uh, showing that he is at least consistent in all of his behaviors, being able to be summarized in the same continent, repeated three times.

So, the current plan is that Mexico and Canada will be hit with a 25% border tax.

There's some exemptions on Canadian energy, which will be hit with a 10% tax, which is also what is going to be levied on everything coming in from China.

The Wall Street Journal, as you say, called it the dumbest trade war in history.

My first thought is, don't say that, because that man will immediately take that as a compliment.

The two things he enjoys most are stupidity and being described as the most anything in history.

So, that is, first of all, that's a bad, so it's a red rag to a bull.

And secondly, it appears, Andy, I'm a keen Star Wars fan, and we are very much at the episode one, the Phantom Menace phase of things.

A load of trade tariffs are being argued over, and whilst everything seems dull, it could be about to get violent very, very quickly.

And just like the start of the Phantom Menace, there seems to be a lot of unnecessary and inexplicable racism aimed at the Chinese.

It's been a, I don't know if if you've seen that movie recently, but let me tell you, the Trade Federation Aliens,

it has not aged well.

It has not aged well.

Yeah, it seems to have been, it seems to have been heavily influenced by Benny Hill.

That's all I'm saying.

Okay.

That's all I'm saying.

It's not aged well.

I've not seen it recently.

I saw it when it first came out into the cinemas, which would have been over 25 years ago now.

1999.

1999.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's, it's, it's not a good film.

Yeah, to be honest, I thought it was, um, yeah, amongst the shitti two hours of my life, actually.

Particularly

the Jar Jar Binks character, which I assume was a model on the former Yorkshire wicketkeeper, Jimmy Binks.

And I just thought it was just

didn't really express anything about him at all.

That's the longest we've ever gone recording one of these before you've brought up an obscure cricketer.

You're a model of restraint, Andy.

Yeah, thank you.

Thank you.

You're a changed man.

Either that or you're trying to pretend that cricket doesn't exist, given that England lost by 150 runs in the most recent T20 game.

What are you talking about?

So look,

if it's not scheduled to take an entire working week, I don't recognise it as sport.

So look,

the big headlights here are this is rough news for Canada and for Mexico in particular.

It's been a rough couple It's been a rough year and a bit for Canada.

First, Kendrick Lamar destroys Drake's career and now this.

Theo Argetis, who's the managing director of the Ottawa-based public affairs firm Compass Rose, said that the unknowns had

left Canada with no choice but to hit Trump back hard.

And he also said, at the end of the day, we don't even really know why he's doing this.

And that phrase may well be written on Trump's gravestone, or at least it would be, if Trump wasn't going to have to be immediately buried in an unmarked grave because if there is a Trump grave, that thing is going to be desecrated beyond belief.

That thing is essentially going to be used as a mass dog toilet.

Like, they are going to have to either go with an unmarked grave or they're going to have to do him like they did Osama and dump him overboard of a ship.

Like, there is no way that that man is having a marked grave.

Well, also, I'm not sure he's ever going to die, to be honest, because, well, certainly heaven's not going to take him, and I don't think hell wants him either, to be honest.

So, I think he's going to be stuck here in between forever.

He's yeah, he's he's blaming the fentanyl crisis on Canada.

So that fentanyl, the synthetic opioid that's

the center of a real addiction crisis in America.

However, less than 1% of fentanyl actually comes over into the US from the Canadian border.

So it's absolutely irrelevant.

The problem is

the result of a complete systemic failure by the American healthcare system.

And instead of choosing to remedy that, he's blaming Canada faster than the rest of us can shout, Free Luigi, he did nothing wrong.

Okay.

The former Deputy Prime Minister of Canada, Christia Freeland, said on CNN, this action is utter madness.

It is a betrayal of America's closest friend, of your ally, your neighbor, your best partner

in the whole world.

And people have warned Nish that not only is is it bad for the world, but it's also bad for America.

So is this an example of Trump achieving his primary strategy goal, which is

off the entire planet?

And if there's collateral damage for the USA, he doesn't give even a fraction of half a shit.

No,

I think a fraction of half a shit is generous, Andy.

He doesn't even give a shot.

He doesn't even give a mild skid mark on a pair of boxers about the future of the American people.

He's already warned them that this might cause them pain.

I mean,

it's an astonishing thing.

Justin Trudeau tried to make a sort of emotional appeal to America and he said, we fought and we died with you.

But that's absolutely useless because obviously Trump didn't fight alongside anybody because he got out of the Vietnam War by using a spurious bone spurs excuse.

And there's no point in invoking the Second World War with Donald Trump.

That's like invoking, that's like trying to bond with me over the result between Manchester United and Crystal Palace.

Our team's lost.

Trump is still smarting about the result of the Second World War.

There's literally no point in bringing that up as a way of bonding with him.

In terms of

the effect of tariffs, I found this article.

Are tariffs bad for growth?

Yes, save five decades of data from 150 countries.

And I found this, well, it's not so much an article, it's a piece of academic research on a website that was pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.

Here it comes.gov.

This is an official website of the United States government.

I mean, admittedly, I don't think Trump's read all the pages of the US government's various websites.

But even so, five decades of data from 150 countries.

I mean, I guess you could say, yeah, but what about the

hundreds, thousands of decades before that from all the countries that no longer exist because they traded themselves out of existence?

I guess

you could look at that as well.

And he's barely made it past the Second Amendment on the US Constitution.

Like,

why you would expect him to have done any reading is sort of beyond me.

In a post on his Truth Social site, two words, at least two lies in that title.

Yeah.

He basically said, without this massive subsidy, Canada ceases to exist as a viable country.

Harsh but true.

Therefore, Canada should become our cherished capital letter 51st state.

Now, I mean, I've tried to look, yeah, because obviously instinctively,

you know, if you're on the non-Trumpian end of the political seesaw, you instinctively tend to think that everything he says is poisonous nonsense.

But

we at the Bugle, we have to be objective.

So I've tried to look for the plus points about Canada becoming the 51st state.

of the USA.

So for our Canadian listeners, let's look for the positives.

Canadian golfers golfers could play in the Ryder Cup, which they currently can't, Nish.

They currently can't play for the USA.

But once Canada becomes part of that, I don't know how many Canadian golfers there are professionally.

Some, I imagine, not that many.

Well, let me first of all say, Andy, I'm absolutely blown away.

Your first positive somehow involved sport.

Positive two, way more Canadians would become above average in way more metrics.

That is

That's worth bearing in mind.

Canada would be the biggest state in the USA and therefore, in Trumpian logic, the best.

And it would be a huge boost for the flagging Canadian flag-making industry, which had been stuck with the same old hack-made

maple leaf nonsense for far too long now.

What, since the 60s, I think.

So, you know, America would have to remake all its flags as well.

They'd have to add another

star on.

Maybe they'd add a maple leaf instead of the 51st star.

I don't know.

There are more details just emerging of Trump's 51st state plan,

and quite a generous offer this because in terms of population, I think America's population is almost 10 times Canada.

But Trump has suggested that the name of the new country would take the first five letters of America and the first two of Canada and wash them together to make the name of

a new country.

So that's very generous of him.

You know, five from America, just the two from Canada.

I mean, that's

the humanity of the man.

Mexico's President Claudia Scheinbaum

has promised retaliatory tariffs.

It's also always worth noting that Mexico's President Claudia Scheinbaum is a Jewish-Mexican woman, and as such, three-fifths of the way to being Donald Trump's worst nightmare brought to life.

The only two she's missing are being black and gay.

Every morning, Trump wakes up in a cold sweat shouting, the black Jewish Mexican lesbians are after me.

Whilst in a room down the corridor, Melania continues to pray to the gods of heart failure to make her a widow.

Trump's portrayal of Mexico as a kind of lawless gangland is actually weirdly only marginally less realistic than the portrayal of Mexico in the film Emilia Perez.

I saw the film Emilia Perez and I'm genuinely concerned that the script is adapted directly from the ramblings of Donald Trump.

It really feels like someone involved in that movie just heard Trump say something like, Mexico is full of transgender drug dealers, and thought, you know what, let's just whack some songs on that.

And bish-bash-bosh, Oscar nomination's ahoy.

The Canadians have not reacted overwhelmingly positively to the

USA.

Hockey fans in Ottawa booed the playing of the Star-Spangled Banner before the match between the Ottawa Senators and the Minnesota Wild in the

NHL.

And I mean, I've never fully understood why it is that you have to play national anthems before sporting events, even international sporting events,

but particularly non-international sporting events.

It's always struck me as a bit odd.

But they booed the Star-Spangled banner.

Presumably, I don't know if it's just like a justifiable, if pedantic, gripe with the term the land of the three, of the free and the home of the brave, still not having sarcastic air quotes around the words free and the brave.

But obviously it works because the senators beat the wild 6-0, or if you read the result on Trump's Truth Social feed, 4.5-nil.

Tariffs are already biting.

Pure Zaltzmann.

Pure uncut Zaltzmann.

Absolutely uncut Zaltzman.

It's a joke about sports and sports statistics and tariffs.

We could have whacked a classics reference in there.

Yeah.

Thank you.

We're getting it in its purest form.

Yeah, getting Canadians to boo your national anthem is unbelievable.

This is a nation of congenitally polite people.

It really is quite astonishing.

The other thing to point out is, obviously, it's clearly insane that at sports games, they have to play the national anthem.

The only thing more insane than that, and we should come clean on this as European football fans, Andy, is the fact that when the European club football competition, the Champions League, which is played by the winners and the sort of top three or four teams in every European league is played.

The players stand not for a national anthem, but for the anthem of the Champions League.

There's a song that they've written for the Champions League, which is basically this: These are the champions.

And

all 22 of the starting players have to stand and solemnly respect that anthem.

Well,

I'm just saying,

as a European football fan, I might be in a glass house vis-a-vis stupid anthems at sporting events.

I think really

they should just sing the current leading gambling jingle from before every sporting event.

All the players, all the fans to sing it.

That's basically all sport is now.

Hey, hey, it's not all gambling, Andy.

Some of it is sports washing for brutally repressive regimes.

Sorry, sorry, my mistake.

Okay, hey,

I will not have you wash sports washing out of sport.

That's a huge facet of it.

It's 50-50.

It's 50-50 making money for the gambling industry and the other 50 trying to get people to forget chopped-up journalists in bids.

That is 50-50.

Sorry for my sports washing.

Of course, I mean, a week is a long time, as we've mentioned on the bugle recently, a week is a long time in politics.

And

what are we down now to 204 weeks?

No, 206 weeks to go until, hopefully, there's at least a different Trump as president.

But, I mean, let's set achievable goals at this point.

As I said, he will be immortal.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I have real issue with people saying that there's X number of weeks or days until the end of the Trump administration.

What are you, you?

What the are you talking about?

What on earth gives you the right to he lost the last election and he tried to steal it?

And now you're just going to assume that he's in office.

He's never going to let

it's an infinite number of weeks before America has an election again.

That's that's what that's the best way of framing it.

Anyway, in the course of this week, not only has he declared trade war on America's two neighbors

and various other parts of the world, but he's

also politicised a huge tragedy,

the plane crash in Washington, D.C.

He managed to maintain, I was listening to the press conference, I was driving to my show the other day, Nish, and he managed to maintain a vague, if completely implausible veneer of humanity and at least pretend dignity for I think it was about 38 seconds before he then politicized the raw and infinite grief of the bereaved with his trademark poison bomb of wild, groundless speculation, fevered blame-flinging, his spoilt child giga ego, and of course, an almost spiritual commitment to misanthropy and prejudice.

And clearly, he's built his political career and success on proud, unashamed, and carefully nurtured putrescence of the soul.

And any suffering and tragedy is a political opportunity.

And he wasn't going to turn that down.

He blamed, amongst other things, Biden, Obama,

diversity, equity, and inclusion in general, people who are not intellectual geniuses like him, clearly, people with mental health issues, the disabled, people who are not white men.

It was one of the most extraordinary and if you're a fan of one or both of dignity and democracy harrowing press conferences I've ever listened to.

It's history's greatest example of a diversity hire has continued to wage what I can only describe as an astonishingly self-defeating war against diversity initiatives.

Trump may as well wage war on spray tan and outright corruption.

There's never been a clearer example of somebody essentially rising to the top of several different industries off pure, unfettered diversity quota initiatives.

Like he,

it's, yeah, it's quite astonishing.

He said that the

terrible crash was the result of Obama pushing mediocre standards for air traffic controllers and saying that we have to have the smartest people.

It doesn't matter what they look like, how they speak, who they are.

It matters.

Intellect, talent, the word talent.

You have to be talented, naturally talented genius.

You can't have regular people doing that job.

How he didn't spontaneously combust in a cloud of pure hypocrisy is beyond anyone's powers of comprehension.

Trump pushing meritocracy whilst being the president is incredible nonsense.

Also, the other people that he's appointed, that he's been appointing this week or attempting to appoint this week are not themselves adverts for his idea that he wants the most intelligent people to be put into positions of power.

The recently confirmed Defense Secretary, Pete Hegseth, was confirmed despite allegations of excessive drinking.

and abuse of his second wife.

And Hegset about the era of DEI is gone at the Defense Department and we need the best and the brightest.

What are you going to do?

Fire yourself?

It's unbelievable to me.

JD Vance thanked Trump for his leadership and bringing a higher the best people approach.

JD Vance looks like an eight-year-old boy that's drawn a beard on so he can see a nudie flick at the cinema.

And

he brings absolutely zero expertise or political acumen to his position as the person who will be president if nature actually takes its course on the current incumbent in that job.

Trump is talking about getting the best of the brightest.

In the week, he is trying to appoint Robert Kennedy Jr.

to be in charge of the Department for Health in America is unbelievable.

Robert Kennedy, who himself is not an advert for health, given that he looks like overcooked steak and also has a hostility to vaccines that is only matched with his enthusiasm for witch burning.

Well, look, Lish,

as I may have said on the Beagle before,

him being health secretary, to me, I know he's got no medical background, but medical science is not the kind of thing you can just go out and learn, is it?

You kind of just go and study medical science.

It's a natural, innate quality.

It spread also into the media, understandably.

Fox News's Jesse Waters, the Chris, I didn't even say anything there.

You were just guessing what I was going to call him.

We don't actually know any of these questions.

Anyway, it spread into Jesse Waters blaming transgender people, short people, not in those words.

I mean, it's,

I know it's, it's a, you know, it is foolish to expect any

sense of dignity or fact to intrude on the

on American politics now.

Disabilities rights groups issued a joint statement calling Trump's comments irresponsible, disparaging and wrong, which is obviously true and valid, but also accusing Trump of being of saying irresponsible, disparaging and wrong things is about as meaningful as criticising a whale for chowing down on some nice juicy plankton or criticising an overfed puppy for crapping on the carpet and not writing a letter of apology.

In mitigation, I do think we need to say this, Nish.

Trump is the democratically elected leader of the USA and he is simply giving America what they voted for.

We often criticise politicians for not doing that.

So it's only fair that we give Trump credit for not changing tack in office.

America actively voted.

for someone whose immediate instinct in the aftermath of a tragedy would be to be irresponsible, disparaging, and wrong.

They voted for an inhumane, sarcotic narcissist.

He has a sacred moral duty to continue to be one.

And to be fair to the lad, he is an absolute natural.

That is definitely something you can, I mean, you can practice it, but I don't think you can learn it to the level.

I mean, when something looks so easy and unforced, we also forget the thousands of hours of hard work and practice that have gone into it alongside the innate natural aptitude.

I mean, to me, Trump is the Roger Federer of inhumane psychotic narcissism.

So let's give him credit for that.

But, you know, he's giving America.

what they democratically chose.

In regards to his just outright war on the transgender community, I would like to, as I always try to do, take this opportunity to thank and congratulate so many members of our profession, Andy, that have done so much fantastic work using their enormous platforms to normalize hatred against a vulnerable minority group.

I hope you all burn in hell.

So as part of the sort of continued culture war, the White House has reinstated an order from Trump's first term establishing the 1776 Commission to promote patriotic education.

So that's one of the key elements of that is playing down America's role in slavery and arguing that the civil rights movement infringed the lofty ideals espoused by the nation's founders.

And it did, in some ways, contradict the values of the nation's founders in that their values included being pro-slavery.

And that is such an important factor to remember in all of this.

All of these stupid things, like the 1776 Commission, are specifically named to take America back to a time before the abolition of slavery.

It is such an important thing to continue.

Some of the other things that they're suggesting are to the 1776 Commission is arguing that January the 6th should be made a national holiday in which people are encouraged to defecate on national monuments and government buildings.

Martin Luther King Day is to be renamed Kid Rock Day to celebrate an actual American patriot for once.

And Hamilton is to be replaced with an all-white cast so we can get some actual decent rappers.

And the final project is a mass funding of a program to replace the Lincoln Memorial with a statue of John Wilkes Booth to celebrate a man who really knew, and this is a direct quote from the Commission, how to own the Libs.

Well, yes, it is, I mean, the latest in a barrage of horrendous malevolence-laced prejudice to be chundered from the presidential esophagus.

I think the theory, Nish, that Trumpian America is pursuing is that if you make enough trans people and immigrants feel uncomfortable enough then inevitably at some point a magic giant misanthropic rhinoceros will spontaneously appear in the heavens and start shitting gold bars directly through people's car windows so i think that's the economic theory behind this to boost the well-being of ordinary hard-working americans i'm not an economist so i don't know if it's going to work But like I said, that's what America's voted for.

We need to give it time.

All in all, I mean, it was so, there was a really weird obsession with the coldness of the water of the Potomac River as well.

I mean, it was so strange and unsettling in so many levels.

But all in all, it was another impressive performance in Trump's efforts to colonize the top 1,000 least dignified public performances by an American president list.

I think he's now knocked out of the top 500 that time that Franklin Pierce in 1854, I think it was, stripped down to some very threadbare fluorescent purple speedos and twerked a disarmingly erotic sculpture of the late Martha Washington that he'd made himself out of his own earwax.

But that's not even top 500 anymore.

Yeah, yeah.

He's replaced a couple of those speeches Reagan made when he was severely addled with dementia

and threatened to nuke Duran Duran.

Let's move back across the Atlantic now, Nish.

And birthday news.

Happy fifth birthday to Brexit.

It officially, obviously the vote was in 2016, but Brexit officially came into force five years ago,

just a couple of days ago now.

Look,

it's too early to judge if Brexit is going to be the glorious success that we all hope it will be.

As I said a couple of months ago, we need to give it time, like we did with being

members of the EU.

We need to see how it pans out over the first four decades.

Then, if things are broadly going well, and Brexit has objectively, essentially been beneficial for the nation economically and socially, we can throw our toys out of the pram in the traditional manner and rejoin the EU.

So, I think that's how it works.

And you've got to wait to see it's working and then get out of whatever's happening at the time.

Yeah,

this might seem confusing for non-British buglers, and I will suggest it's probably quite confusing for a lot of British buglers as well, because the vote was in 2016.

But obviously, it was only in 2020 that the official birthday of Brexit began, because that was the moment when we negotiated our exit and we officially left the European Union.

It's not really an anniversary that gets a lot of traction

because I don't think I need to remind people listening to this podcast what immediately followed the 31st of January 2020.

But it's a little bit like, it's a little bit like, and I imagine there's quite a few of these children across the world, a kid who was born on the 10th of September 2001.

It's a birthday that people remember.

But it's somewhat of an afterthought given what immediately followed it.

It's, yeah,

so happy fifth birthday to Brexit.

And like me, on my third birthday, when I threw a tantrum and hacked my cake to pieces in protest at not being allowed to attend the event fully dressed as Spider-Man, it's made the lives of everyone involved slightly worse.

So youGov polling on Wednesday that's a dark incident.

My mum's still not happy about that.

YouGov polling showed on Wednesday showed that the number of Britons who think that leaving the EU was a good idea is at its lowest since the referendum, with just three in ten saying it was the right decision.

Most voters support returning Britain into the European Union, with even one in six who backed the UK's departure now experiencing regret.

So the signs are not looking good, Andy.

I was digging into this YouGov poll.

And just as a side note, the people I respect most are the people who participate in these polls and then, when asked the question, say, I don't know.

And I don't mean that facetiously.

I think we need to celebrate the don't know community much more than we do.

Just the people who have the honest candor to just turn around and say, I don't know enough to make a comment on this issue, because unfortunately we live in an era where the biggest problems in our society are caused by people who know absolutely f all declaring themselves.

I believe the phrase was natural geniuses.

Well, look, I've long argued that the great problem with the Brexit referendum was that it was this binary choice, that there needed to be a third option, like you say, of how the f should I know that is way beyond the scope of human knowledge to factor in all the different calculations.

And if there'd been a I don't know option, I think that would have got a solid, I'm going to say 98%

of the vote, um, or it certainly should have done.

Um, but as it is, I mean, part of the reason is that now, what, eight, eight and a half years since the vote, anyone under the age of 26 and a half didn't have a say in it for them.

Brexit, it's just that kind of weird thing that happened in their childhood that made

daddy start weeping and put on some pull on some union jack wire fronts over his head and said at last after 40 years i'm allowed to do this again um

so um

uh there was wait wait a quote wait a quote from your own children andrew

not cool man that's intellectual property theft it still uh defines and divides the country and its media as illustrated by the reporting of any stories to do with anything to do with europe uh so there was a headline on the uh the the sun website and uh the Sun has had a bit of a tricky time of late

as a newspaper and as a star, I guess.

This was the story.

Plans for Britain to sign up to a free movement scheme for young people in Europe were seen as the start of a Brexit betrayal last night.

And this is the betrayal.

This is the next sentence.

Whitehall officials were said to be working on allowing university students.

and those on technical courses to take part.

Now, basically, the betrayal is allowing young people to expand their horizons and be educated.

That's the betrayal.

That's what we voted to stop.

Let's never forget that.

Let's not give in to the Wokerati and allow young people to have the kind of opportunities that our generation had and basically failed to take advantage of, Nish.

Those have to learn or not learn.

Andy, you are speaking my language.

At last, after however many years of this goddamn cuckfest, at last, we're getting some reasonable sense.

This is a betrayal, Andy.

Brexit was specifically voted for to make the lives of our children and grandchildren slightly worse.

You're missing a huge motivational factor behind a lot of it, and that is deep resentment by old people at the youth of their children and grandchildren.

A dance as old as politics itself.

If I may quote from my own grandmother, the whites don't give a f about their kids.

Now, that's a translation from the Mully Island, but the spirit of it is very much correct.

Yeah, the independent newspaper actually undertook the task of trying to

see how promises made around Brexit stacked up.

And as a review of Brexit, it reads a little bit like the one and a half star review I received for my 2014 show at the Melbourne Comedy Festival.

There was a promise that there would be £350 million a week for the NHS.

That's obviously not materialised, but Brexit has led to a slowdown of nurses arriving in Europe from the EU states.

There was this vote leave promise that the UK would prosper as an independent nation, but government figures show that Brexit is expected to knock 4% from the size of Britain's economy in the long run.

We were promised lower taxes and a better cost of living.

Neither of those has materialised.

There was a big promise that by the lead backers that there would be a trade deal with the United States of America, despite Barack Obama, the then president, warning that leaving the EU would put Britain at the back of the queue.

And

that's obviously not happened.

And now we're dealing with America, which at this point is the roguest of rogue states.

There's essentially almost nothing that Brexit promised that has actually been delivered.

But again, that's only if you think what Brexit was promising was what they said.

Whereas

what they implied was a gradual making of this country into something slightly worse and that has absolutely been delivered on

that is absolutely that it's like make america great again people keep saying well that's not he that's he's not delivered on that he's not making anything great these political movements are are not about improving things they're about dragging us back to the pre-industrialized era like they're about making our countries

they're about making our countries substantially worse the whole point of britain was to take back control and to put us back into our Victorian heyday.

And so

all we really were ever being promised with Brexit was increased racism and a worse sewage system.

And we have both of those, Andy.

Okay.

We have both of those.

We had race riots last summer and our rivers are filled with human shit.

Virgo, Brexit is a success.

All we need now is to get all the school kids back up the chimneys and

everything will have been achieved.

We'll be truly independent from all those

health and safety gone mad that was forced on us

by Brussels.

The EU has been clamping down on our British right to die of tuberculosis.

The government is, well, I mean, it's only been in power, what, seven months now?

And I think it's fair to say it has struggled to re-inflate the balloon of economic confidence, which partly because the balloon has had a prolonged tussle with the porcupines of Brexit and COVID.

But balloons can always be patched up, can't they?

They can always be patched up, often.

The government's latest plans included a new train line from Oxford to Cambridge.

And,

you know,

if HS2

does not unlock the Northern Powerhouse by making it slightly quicker to get from London to Birmingham, then surely an Oxbridge train line will, Mish.

And we can also add a university train race to the sporting calendar as well.

I know you'd enjoy that.

I know you're loving train races.

Listen, Andy, the Labour government is all about delivering for working people.

And what could deliver more for working people than getting a train line from Oxford to Cambridge?

What could be of a higher priority to, because we're constantly told by the Labour government that they can't do things like, you know, come down harder on racist rhetoric or, you know, support immigration because of its huge benefits economically and socially to Britain over the last half century.

We can't do any of that because we might alienate

a sort of abstract voter that doesn't really exist in the north.

But seemingly, the government's recourse to appealing to that abstract, non-existent northern English voter is to build a trade line between the two most elite and exclusive universities of this country.

It's an interesting political ploy.

Sports section now, and well, we're recording on the 3rd of February this coming Sunday.

It's the Super Bowl, one of the biggest sporting events of the year, the Philadelphia Eagles against the Kansas City Cai Fs.

Sorry, Chiefs.

I thought it was some kind of slightly more up-to-date frat house.

And I mean, it's set to be a thrilling match, Kansas going for their third consecutive victory.

Nish, are you an American football fan at all?

Andy, I'm a huge fan of the Super Bowl halftime show.

I could not be more excited for this.

I'm putting it out there.

I'm putting it out there.

If anybody has a way of reaching Kedrick Lamar, I am willing to stand near him on the stage at the Super Bowl, jumping up and down.

Right.

I'm putting it out there.

Well, we will have full exclusive reports on Nish's halftime

jumping next week.

But what about the game itself, Nish?

I mean, what are going to be the decisive factors between these two two outstanding teams that have both managed to convert their excellent regular season form into a successful postseason?

Well, let's look at the decisive factors.

I think it could come down, Nish, to which team can put the troubles of the world furthest to the back of their mind.

So much big, heavy stuff going on around the world right now.

Wars, political division, environmental disaster grams and the like.

So it could come down to which team can shuttle that out and focus on the game.

This has always been a factor in Super Bowls, Nish, of course, pretty much ever since Super Bowl

in January 1980 when LA Rams coach Ray Malavasi blamed his team's 31-19 defeat to the Pittsburgh Steelers on inexperienced quarterback Vince Ferragamo being quotes clearly distracted by the global oil price crisis and the recent outbreak of war between the Soviet Union and Afghanistan.

Going further back, pre-Super Bowl, the 1947 NFL Championship game on the 28th of December saw the Eagles

sink to an early 14-0 deficit against the Chicago Cardinals, as they were then, consumed by worry over the growing abdication crisis in Romania that eventually saw King Michael I relinquish the throne just two days later.

They could never come back from that and lost the game.

Another factor, Nish,

is going to be which team plays better in the dark?

Because the Super Bowl is taking place in the New Orleans Superdam.

The last time it was there

in 2013, it featured a 34-minute delay due to a power outage, which got such media traction and Colin Minch is in the press that the scheme is set to be repeated, and each team will be able to call a three-minute period of complete and utter darkness at some point in the game, obviously, excluding the final two minutes of each half.

Another key factor could be which team has the most misogynistic kicker.

I mean, sport statisticians are still looking for definitive proof of a link, but the Chiefs, Harrison Butker, or Harrison, get back in the kitchen girls, Butka, as he's also known.

He scooped up three Super Bowl rings, and some people are starting to join those statistical dots, Nish.

So, yeah, I guess we will have more evidence one way or the other after this weekend.

But, of course, the key factor in this Super Bowl could come down once again to celebrity romances, with senior player in a relationship with Taylor Swift having proved the decisive factor in every Super Bowl since the start of 2024.

via her romantic couplage with the Chiefs tight end Travis Kelsey.

Rumours are reaching the Bugles NFL news reporting team that the Eagles have forced their star tight end Dallas Goddard to dump his current girlfriend and go on a date with Swift rivaling pop legend Barbara Streisand.

The Goddard-Streisan date could be set to involve a meal at a sushi restaurant followed by a film and then maybe 10 pin bowling or bingo.

A competitive karaoke was ruled out by both the Eagles and Streisand's management team, both concerned by what impact a defeat would have on the psyche and confidence of their clients.

So, I mean, there's just so much.

So much to consider in a game like this, Nish.

All those key 0.001 percenters, they all add up.

You've got to question some of the decision-making to breeze past attempting to set up a romance with Sabrina Carpenter or Charlie XEX and going straight to Streisand.

You have to question the wisdom behind that decision-making.

I do hope Charlie XEX does perform at

Super Bowl.

What would it be?

Come on, Andy.

Use that education.

Use that education.

Is it 9010 or 1010?

I don't know why the f ⁇ you're asking me, man.

I literally have no clue.

Anyway, so much to consider with the Super Bowl, but at the end of the day, it might all come down to who at the end of the day has put more points on the scoreboard.

Such a sport.

Thank you for listening, Buglers.

That brings us to the end of this week's podcast.

There are a few tickets left to some of my remaining tour shows.

Go to andyzultsman.co.uk.

Go to thebuglepodcast.com for details of Alice Fraser's extremely imminent book.

Nish, anything to plug?

Big plugs coming up.

For North American buglers,

there are still

tickets left for my US and Canadian shows, but I will say, as I said last time I was on here, those things are selling in a, I would describe suspiciously well.

Like, I

do think I might be the victim of some sort of elaborate prank by the people of Canada and America, because a lot of those shows are selling incredibly well.

We've added an extra show in a late show in Brooklyn on the 28th of February.

There are still tickets in Philadelphia.

We've added shows in Berkeley, Seattle, and Portland.

We've added a big show in Vancouver, so please do come down to that.

And then for Australian and New Zealander buglers, massive news.

I'll be returning to the southern hemisphere.

On the 8th of April, I start a two-week run at the Melbourne Comedy Festival.

And then after that, I go on to do shows in Sydney, Perth, Brisbane, Wellington, and Auckland.

And if you live in england there are still uh tour uh tickets available for my tour dates uh in may including some tickets uh on the 24th of may in hackney in london for a show that i'm filming please for the love of god come to that because otherwise it's going to be very embarrassing and captured on camera for the love of god um unfortunately that special is also being directed by christopher nolan so the end product is going to be punchlines first it's going to be very very confusing

uh thank you for listening uh buglers we will be back in two weeks time we have a week off next week in which we will have a sub episode for you containing some things but until then goodbye

Hi buglers, it's producer Chris here.

I just wanted to very quickly tell you about my new podcast, Mildly Informed, which is in podcast feeds and YouTube right now.

Quite simply, it's a show where me and my friend Richie review literally anything.

So please come join us wherever you get your podcasts right now.