Ross and Rachel – Bugle 4099

Hello, buglers, and welcome to issue 4099 of the Bugle.

I am Andy Zaltzman, and what you're about to hear are highlights of the first few shows of the Bugle America tour.

We began in Brooklyn, then on to Washington DC, and then Boston.

Since then, we've already been to Providence, Rhode Island, which was an absolutely delightful show.

Tonight, as I'll record, I'm in Northampton, Massachusetts, which you mightn't get to if you listen to this very quickly and/or have a time machine.

Then on the 3rd of March, it's Philadelphia, the 4th of March, Chicago, the 5th, Minneapolis, the 6th, Denver, the 7th, Portland, the 11th, San Francisco, and the 12th, Los Angeles.

See you all at all of those shows.

There are also Bugle Live shows coming up soon in Scotland, Glasgow and Edinburgh on the 19th and 20th of March.

Also, I'm doing a special three-night run of Sacharis for Hire at the Soho Theatre the 26th to the 28th of March.

These are Brexit special shows.

I will be answering any questions on Brexit, valid or otherwise, to the best of my ability or to the worst of my ability.

I'll decide closer to the time.

So, here are some of the choicest bits from those three venues.

Oh, I hadn't finished writing this joke, just remembered.

There we go.

That does sometimes happen.

Those are the bits that Chris will be editing out.

So.

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello, buglers.

please welcome to the stage Andy Zaltzman.

Thanks.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thanks.

Right, I'm British.

It's starting to sound sarcastic now.

So,

hello, buglers.

hello Los Angeles sorry Brooklyn sorry sorry I'm always getting those mixed up

that's right I've gone straight in with a 1950s baseball joke

give the crowds what they want so

if you are allergic to sporting references I suggest you take a powerful antihistamine now

This is the first live bugle ever to take place A on the east coast of the USA and yeah,

what a coast that is.

A lot of East Coast fans in there.

Easily one of the top coasts of the USA for me.

It's the first ever bugle to take place on the 26th of February 2019.

If you discount the live bugle that goes on whenever I wake up and start talking.

24-7, 365, always on call.

And it's also the first ever live bugle to take place with a full operational, well-regulated militia backstage

when in Rome.

So

this is the bugle, live from the Bell House in Brooklyn,

doubling up as at least part of issue 4099

of the world's leading only and possibly best audio newspaper

for a visual world.

The visual version of a show that is by definition not dependent on anything visual.

What the f are you people doing here?

By which I mean thanks for coming.

I'm always getting those two mixed up as well.

So another quick straw poll.

Who listens to the bugle regularly?

Mikim, thank you very much.

Thank you for your support.

Who has never listened to the bugle?

You are possibly in for a confusing night.

I should now introduce someone without whom the show couldn't take place.

Well, well, well, it could, but it would be even more chaotic than it already is, and that is producer Chris.

So.

Let's get on to.

Here we are.

Have we got producer Chris?

Here we are.

Let's

see if we can get him on there.

Happy Bugle.

Sorry I can't be there.

He can't be here.

He cannot be here.

He cannot be here.

And therefore.

Therefore.

He's been sacked.

Sacked for not being here.

But instead, we have an adequate replacement

because everything is being automated.

And for the first time, we have a robot producer.

There we go.

That is the.

That is.

By the way, the reason he's not here, a number of reasons.

You might have heard some of them.

He's...

Restraining order.

Partly.

He is actually still wanted in connection with the Salem witchcraft trials in 1692 after he tried to dunk Mary Walcott in a pond.

Claimed he's just trying to train train her up for the first phase of the impending Massachusetts triathlon championships, but they were having none of it.

Also, we have to keep one component of the bugle in Britain in case Brexit is brought forward unexpectedly.

Also, Chris has just had a hip replacement,

which is true.

It's the best kind.

You don't want a square replacement.

Is this on?

So instead, we have the producer tech

AutoChris 3000X, the fully automated robot podcast producer.

Let's see if it works.

Hello, buglers.

There we go.

Hello, Andy.

Hello, RoboChris.

So have you got anything else to say?

There we go.

So nothing changes.

So we are recording and performing this on the 26th of February, 2019.

Well, you have just cheered the anniversary of the Christiansborg Palace in Copenhagen burning down in 1794.

What is your problem with Danish architecture?

You've just cheered the anniversary of Adolf Hitler, one of the naughtiest men of the 20th century, if I may quote the International Society for Massive Understatements,

ordering the Luftwaffe to be reformed, violating the Treaty of Versailles, and you've cheered that.

What kind of f ⁇ ing monsters are you?

As always, some sections of the bugle are going...

We have Future food.

What foods are we going to be eating in the future?

We've all heard about how catastrophic climate change is going to be for food.

So what are we going to be eating in the future?

So, here we have the future food.

Well, for a start, how is food going to be different?

No cutlery.

We'll be too busy for cutlery, competitive global economy.

We will just be troughing down face first on a plate.

And what are we eating?

A giant bees,

why not?

B, worms, obviously.

It's the spaghetti of the future.

Random bugs, we'll also be eating odd cubes of strangely coloured mush.

That's really the future of food.

And old iPads.

iPods.

Got to make some use of them.

Random stuff we find around the house.

And plastic bags.

And of course, plastic bags are already very popular amongst

a number of sea creatures.

They've developed a real taste for them.

I mean, they really,

I mean, they found a whale that had eaten 84 plastic bags.

I mean, that is more than a habit, isn't it?

It must be tastier than people make out.

and I've got people complaining about plastic in the sea and uh you know those little kind of plastic things off the tops of beer cans I just see those as SM kit for sexual adventurous derapins

it's time to meet our first co-host for today

We are going to try something absolutely incredible now using the wonders of technology.

See if you can guess the Bugle co-host based on the following lies.

She is acting Secretary General of the United Nations.

She owns a bobsled.

Not only that, she thinks that the bobsled will be the most efficient form of transport after the apocalypse.

And we'll all be riding bobsleds and is terrified of toast.

Any guesses?

Well, would you believe it?

Yes, it is.

It is Alice Fraser.

There we go.

Let's

see.

This is.

There she is.

There she is.

Live

from London.

Hello, Andy.

Hello, buglers.

Hello, Alice.

Do you want to see the crowd?

Say hello to Alice.

There we go.

Hello.

So, um, there it is.

There is.

There is Geraldine.

So, uh, how's uh how's how's London?

Uh well, I'm I'm well.

Well, I'm sick and it's one o'clock in the morning here, but uh I had a good day Today Facebook showed me an ad for spam and I had to report it as spam

That is the logical end point of modern civilization, isn't it?

Right, and it's time now to meet our second Bugle co-host for the day

Sorry, I forget it's an international show.

You've got to play people in with a national anthem.

Right, so guest the bugle co-host.

This is based on facts, three facts about our bugle co-host force today

firstly first appearance on the bugle a bugle debut fact number two he abandoned his 2020 presidential run to appear on this show tonight that is the kind of dedication you are getting from the man you're about to meet and fact three he used to work on a show called last week

tonight last week tonight with this man

there he is that's uh

that is john oliver as he looked before before he came to america smarmed

uh please it is please welcome a huge bugle welcome to

josh gondelman

hey josh

how you doing

i feel tremendous thank you for having me that's um it would have been amazing if anybody had guessed me

truly incredible

One person in the back like, gondolman!

Oh, sorry, sorry, we've got to play you in with your anthem as well.

Oh, thank you.

Did anyone take the knee?

Did anyone take the knee?

We're just trying to weed out the riffraff.

So, John, welcome to the bugle.

It's a delight to have you on for the first time.

How's America?

I mean, you've seen it from afar.

And much like a firework, that's best how it's observed lately.

It's intense.

It's every day.

Right.

America's not taking planes off.

Because it's what?

It's two and a bit years into the era

of Trump.

We've got any Trump fans in?

Really?

How?

Oh, mate, you were in the wrong place.

And I mean, who would have thought it?

Here at a live podcast show

in a trendy club in Brooklyn.

Trump is more of a terrestrial radio fan guy.

If this were on AM radio, people would be going wild for him right now.

I voted for Trump.

Three million times.

Rampant voter fraud.

If you have democracy, you vote as many times as you can.

Exactly.

Yeah.

I love girl scout cookies.

You eat the whole sleeve.

Justify.

And also, I voted for Trump because I'd reached the conclusion by the time you had your election back in late 2016 that it was far, far safer if you elected Trump into the White House than released him back into the wild.

He got real comfortable, real quick though.

He's really made it his own.

Alice, I think your laugh sounds even more evil at a range of 5,000 miles.

Does Alice?

Flip the double horizontal burr.

That's a high tariff maneuver for this early in the game.

And this late at night in London.

Oh, Mr.

Smith.

Oh, wow.

Wow.

Does she see us or do we just see her like a clinical trial?

If anyone else wants to flip a bird to Alice Frays, we'll leave the webcam on at the end of the show.

Right, it's time for our top story this week.

Top story this week, no sleep till breakstime.

Better one for the beastie boy's friends.

I spent a lot of time doing that this afternoon.

So we do have to talk about Brexit.

How many British people are here?

Welcome.

Excellent.

And

you'll fit right in, Josh.

You will fit.

That is the depth of my political insights.

Oh, yeah, you can just add BR to shit.

I'm in.

Let's do this.

It's all happening back home in Brexit land, by which I mean absolutely fall is happening.

The Prime Minister is hiding in a cupboard.

The Leader of the Opposition is pointing at a bench, saying, look, it's a bench.

And David Cameron, you see up there, the former Prime Minister, who uncaked this Jerobham of inaction, incompetence, and incomprehensibility.

He is basically just...

I don't know quite what he is doing.

This is the only satisfactory way out of Brexit for me now.

Because if we have a second referendum, there's going to be huge social dues.

If we go through with Brexit it's going to be huge social and the only possible compromise is to get David Cameron and chain him to Big Ben

like a modern day Prometheus

for for as punishment for stealing xenophobia from UKIP and giving it to the Tories

and just have a crowd of British people just line up every not to rip his liver out we've moved on we're not that just to tut at him in a British way I think that'll get us

get it out of our uh out of our uh out of our system um it's uh 31 31 days now uh till uh brex time so uh are you excited

as um

as uh i mean who uh so who voted in the in the brexit referendum

um and uh so did any americans vote

no

we needed you more than ever then

does our shit special relationship mean nothing to you this is Britain.

Go ahead, sorry.

I interrupted a woman across the world.

The fing dude moved.

Yeah.

No, I was just gonna say I am so sick of Brexit just coming round and round and round like a recycled Christmas pudding, which is the worst cake.

It's just a sandwich of apricots that wanted to live, just this terrible bland sultana cushion.

You know they invented refined sugar so you don't just have to squash things that taste better on their own.

Let's cover it in alcohol and set it on fire.

Yes, please.

Oh, now you want me to eat it as well.

F off, let it burn.

As I believe the British said on Joan of Ox, last time it was

very exciting.

So amongst the Brits, who thinks there should be a second referendum?

So you want to undermine British democracy?

and who thinks there shouldn't be a second referendum?

Yeah, so that is also undermining democracy.

There is no way not to undermine democracy.

Democracy has taken a fearful whooping

in Britain.

We're still kind of and we haven't decided yet.

We're in this kind of bizarre game at the moment.

There's no satisfactory way out of this.

We're in a kind of game of pin the least shit available tail as unincompetently as possible into the less damaged eyeball

of the donkey that appears least likely to shit on our shoes while we're doing it.

It's rough.

It's also a little, they're like holding a second, possibly holding a second referendum.

It's so late.

It's like asking, should we really break up like just after you moved all your shit out of your ex's apartment?

Are we doing this?

It's like, well, the bed's on the curb, dude.

Yeah, we're doing this.

But bear in mind, we decided to split up on one day almost three years ago, and we weren't really sure about it then either.

I thought Ross and Rachel were annoying.

Will they or will they?

So the thing is, we don't need, we don't, the problem is we don't really need a second referendum.

We just need to do the first referendum again.

But have the

proper question.

Because they gave us the wrong referendum paper.

Yeah, they gave us, they missed off the third option that we really needed.

Here's

what they should have given us.

Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the EU or leave the EU?

Option one, remain.

Option two, leave.

Option three.

I have absolutely no f ⁇ ing idea.

That is way, way, way beyond my sphere of political and economic expertise, obviously.

I mean, come the f ⁇ on.

How the f ⁇ am I supposed to make a decision on an issue of such unknowable and indeed unmeasurable magnitude, especially when my inevitably incomplete information about the subject has been further undermined by a campaign of political dissembling, fact-skewing and outright bullshit from all sides, driven by shady, unaccountable vested interests, haunted by the willy-waggling spectre of political opportunism, caked in the fresh vomit of a bile-spewing media.

Honestly, is this what we fought those world wars for?

Three of them, two hot, one cold.

In summary,

Brexit is not something that can be objectively judged without allowing both scenarios to play out for a minimum of 50 to 70 years in otherwise equal parallel universes, and even then, we might be being a bit hasty.

Justify!

In America, that option is called Gary Johnson.

Gary Johnson also is the composite name for everyone who voted for Brexit.

Kind of a Western Boris Johnson.

Boris, so I love a cricket stat, as many of you all know.

And

this is tangentially relevant.

One of England's finest modern cricketers, Alistair Cook, retired last year, and I worked out that he had spent time batting for England in test-match cricket, the highest form of the game that lasts five days and often ends in a draw.

It's the best thing ever invented.

It's way better than all forms of reality.

I mean, you compare it with the news.

I mean,

all baseball.

I mean, just have you not watched the news.

Cricket's way better than

reality.

Look at the news, it's full of bastards and arseholes and suffering and tragedy and failure.

Would you not rather watch a human being throw a small ball at another human being approximately once a minute?

Is that not more soothing for our human souls?

So

Alistair Cook batted I worked out for 27 hours, 27 days, 23 hours and 57 minutes in his international career.

And to put that in context, that is the amount of time that Boris Johnson spends thinking about himself in the average fortnight.

It's amazing he spends so much time thinking about himself and so little time grooming his own hair.

I am not in a position to

judge him for that.

What is going to happen next, according to the Prime Minister, is leave.

We are going to leave.

And as you keep saying, leave means leave.

This is one of the things we've heard most often in the aftermath of Brexit: leave means leave.

Now, I took the liberty of looking up exactly what leave means in the shorter Oxford dictionary.

Here we go.

Leave verb.

And leave means,

it gives 15 separate definitions of leave, including to allow to remain in its current state,

which

is,

if nothing else, charmingly ironic.

Leave also means

to bequeath for use after death, which, given the demographic of the Brexit vote, seems entirely appropriate.

Here you go, grandchildren, if you need me, I'll be in my grave laughing my tits off.

They were leave, but soon they'll be remains.

Boom, there we go again!

You know what this crowd wants, Josh.

They want 30 of them in a row at some point, but anyway.

It also means to give up completely, which is what the government has done.

It also means to ignore like unwanted cabbage on a chilled child's plate.

It means to depart from sense and reason.

I might have made some of these up.

And it means to f ⁇ things up completely.

Now, I have made up some of those, but I'm a product of my times, and I didn't start it.

I mean, what's the American view of Brexit, Josh?

I mean, how how do you see the chaos unfolding?

So, the American view of Brexit is what?

But

personally, it's just nice to not be the only nation making colossal mistakes.

It's like when you spend five minutes pushing a door and then you see it's a pull door, and then someone else comes by and pushes it, and you go, no, idiot, that's a pole door.

And you feel so good, and you pat yourself on the back so hard.

It is truly, it is wild to me that it's still, they're still like, should we do it?

Like if they were talking about pulling out during intercourse for this long, the nation would be full-on pregnant.

I mean three puns already.

I'm feeling redundant here.

I'm feeling.

Alice, can you, anything else on Brexit since I've left the country the other day?

Well, I think that basically the idea of Brexit is that Britain pre-EU is the hot girl you had a crush on in high school and you can't go back to her because time doesn't work like that.

Now she's grown up and gotten complicated and you don't really have a crush on her now.

If you could travel back in time you'd realize she wasn't even that great when you were 12.

Your memories are a bit blurry.

She just had nice hair and seemed mysterious because she didn't talk much.

Also, you're a grown-up now and it's kind of creepy that you still have a crush on the idea of someone who's never grown up.

in your head you're a grown man who still has a crush on a 12 year old and in the Britain you're thinking about she still thought boy bans and domestic abuse were still totally awesome

nicely explained very nicely explained

let's move on to American news now

Josh, your your president, your spiritual leader, your guru and your personal inspiration,

Donald Trump, is, well, he's making a peaceful world right now.

He's meeting Kim in a new summit.

You excited about that?

I think the fewer people he's talking to at one time, the better.

So like, as long as he's talking to Kim one-on-one, he's not tweeting, he's not watching Fox News.

There's only so many bad ideas that he could be both thrusting into the world and being pummeled with himself.

So I guess I'm for it.

I think anytime he can be in, the fewer people in a room with him, the better.

That's an interesting way of looking at it.

Yeah.

Alice, how's the,

is there much excitement about the summit back in London?

I mean, people are pretty thrilled.

Trump's gone out to meet Kim Jong-un to swap hair tits and bitch about why no one really gets them.

He tweeted about his relationship with Kim Jong-un and he spoke about it saying, it's a very interesting thing to say, but I've developed a very, very good relationship.

We'll see what that means, but he's never had a relationship with anyone from this country and hasn't had lots of relationships anywhere.

He reiterated that he was in no rush to press for North Korea's denuclearization.

He said, I don't want to rush anyone.

I just don't want testing.

As long as there's no testing, we're happy.

And he said, carrying on, that Kim Jong-un said, if we trust him, we definitely don't need to use protection.

Family show, family show on us, family show.

I feel like Trump has never had an STD test.

I do.

I feel like he's just like, that's the lady's responsibility for sure.

That's his stance.

He's just had any test.

No.

Not in school, not at the doctor.

Not of his own physical strength.

Just his dicky little ankle that got him out of Vietnam.

Perhaps the most exciting element of this summit is that Vietnam has deported a Kim Jong-un impersonator.

Or if you will, a Kim personator.

I will.

Who had staged.

A chap called Howard X from Hong Kong had staged a fake summit with Russell White, who is a professional Trump pressionist from America.

Do you not think this is the way forward for all global politics?

Because, you know, people vote for these sort of figureheads, but they're generally massive.

And

if you replace them with someone who looks like them, so we think like that's what they might actually get something.

I think this is the future of the future of democracy, to be honest.

Is deporting impressionists?

Well,

I say we give it a shot with Alex Baldwin, see what sticks.

The wall, Josh.

Yeah.

I mean, I was here back in 2016.

There was a lot of talk about

Mexico building a wall and paying every penny of it.

I mean, I think it's fair to say it hasn't entirely panned out that way.

I don't think so.

I will say

Mexico has paid for all of the wall that's been built.

That's one way to look at it, right?

No wall, no payment.

I feel like he's kept his promise.

He's winning politics by dividing by zero.

Any thoughts on the election next year, Josh?

Oh, the 2020 election?

I'm honestly kind of looking forward to no...

People make a big deal out of how many candidates are now in the Democratic primary, but I'm really looking forward to no Republican primary.

That's the upside, right?

It's like it's just going to be Trump.

Like if Ben Sasse tries to run run against him, he'll just be like, no.

And then all the other Republicans will be like, he said no, it's got to be no.

So there's not going to be a Republican primary.

So at least the spectrum is going to be like, hey, maybe we help some people get health care.

To like, let's help everybody get health care.

Whereas when there's a Republican primary, it's like, how many people can I inject with the syringe I found on the street?

I'm rich.

Legally, I should be allowed to stab.

That's what I call my syringe.

There's some very exciting New York news.

As you may have heard,

New York has been forced to return $5.3 million to the government after admitting to fraudulently billing damage charges after Hurricane Sandy, the 2012 celebrity storm that clocked up a $71 billion tab after getting wind crazy all over the East Coast, including a whopping $32 billion after a crazy night out in New York.

So, what?

Apparently, the city falsely claimed that 132 Department of Transportation vehicles were damaged, when in fact they weren't.

Many of them had already been taken out of service.

But, I mean,

this is just how economics works, isn't it?

This is just getting creative, Josh.

Yeah.

Just moving numbers.

It's also an incredibly like New Yorkers love to brag about how much they suffer on a daily basis.

So this is the most New York thing imaginable.

Just like Hurricane Sandy, oh yeah, it ruined every car.

FEMA came, they said it made Katrina look like a chihuahua pissing in a ficus.

Greatest city in the world.

Yeah, New York is the city that never sleeps because it stole a bunch of money and has an uneasy conscience.

Also, it stole its roommates Adderall.

The US attorney Jeffrey Berman said when people lie to FEMA about the cause of property damage in order to reap a windfall, it compromises our ability to provide financial assistance.

And then he followed up with, I probably shouldn't have said windfall.

What a disaster.

I mean, sorry.

I am devastated by a tornado of regret.

I mean, blow me down, let's wash that from the record.

Oh boy, wasn't that just the biggest Freudian property damage and loss of lives?

Alice Fraser.

Alice, you are

the Bugles, Donald Trump's

sexual harassment history correspondent.

Exciting new breaking news.

Yes, a staffer on Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign says he kissed her without her consent.

At a gathering of supporters before a Florida rally, Albert Johnson said he grabbed her hand and leaned in to kiss her on the lips as he came out out of a car, but she turned her head and he kissed her on the side of the mouth.

The creepy uncle kiss.

In a statement, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders dismissed Johnson's allegation as absurd on its face and pointed to a radio interview in May 2017 in which Johnson said positive things about Trump.

She said to this Alabama-based radio show,

quote, he's just the nicest guy.

He treats everyone as if they're part of his family.

No, no, no, no.

You're better than that, Joe.

No, we're not.

Right, let's move on now to

tech news.

In horrifying technology dystopia news now, a small up-and-coming technology company has been criticized for failing to tell users about a hidden microphone in one of its home security systems.

The company, it's called Google, you might have heard of it.

They announced a software update that would allow their home security system to respond to voice activation cues and questions by an artificial intelligence system that is neither Siri nor SkyletNet, but sounds a lot like both.

The problem was saying there'd be a software update to the system that would turn the microphone on to listening mode meant people suddenly realized the hardware already had a microphone in it, which Google had somehow forgotten to mention.

I mean, you have to forgive them, they're a small company.

How could they have possibly anticipated the security concerns that would be raised by secretly hiding listening microphones in people's houses during a period of massive uncertainty about privacy regulation and the overreach of unelected yet massively powerful corporate interests who technically make their profits by offering free services in exchange for all your secrets?

The poor little tech giant deployed a human spokesman to protest that the failure to mention they'd included a spicerphone was, quote, an error on our part and that was never intended to be a secret, which I for one choose to believe because they can tell if I don't.

And what possible motive could they have for lying to their customers when their main source of revenue is literally monetizing your private information?

It's not really surprising, is it?

I I mean,

you'd be more surprised if Google hadn't put a microphone.

It's like the old parable of the dolphin and the man in the herring outfit.

It's just inevitable, isn't it?

When has secret microphones ever gone bad, right?

When has it ever brought down Richard Nixon's presidency or gotten everyone killed by the mob?

It's just...

There's like no happy end to a secret microphone story.

Also, I think that every device is spying on me.

Like, I think this microphone has a secret microphone inside it.

I don't want, there's this old trend of smart appliances.

I don't like that at all.

I want my appliances dumb as hell.

I just want, yeah, I want to open my refrigerator.

I don't want it being like we've cooled everything to the perfect temperature, sir.

I just want to be like, there's leftover pizza.

Let's party, big dog.

There's one beer in the back you forgot about

Just like this this fridge is an idiot, but he's my best friend

It's not just Google that's been getting him.

Oh, yes.

Oh, I have two titles for this one that you can tell me which one is okay.

Okay.

It's either in leaking ooze news now

or in leaking, leaky f ⁇ s news now.

I mean 601 half dozen of another as far as I'm concerned.

Facebook is suffering some abdominal pains after claims it's been receiving highly personal data from third-party apps, including the flow period and ovulation tracker.

It apparently shared with Facebook when users were having their periods or when they were trying to become pregnant.

And a Wall Street Journal investigation found that Facebook can receive information from numerous apps even if in some cases the user does not have a Facebook account.

Which, yeah, let me tell you left me feeling bloated and grumpy, classic PMS symptoms.

That's short for post-massive sensitive data theft stress, Andy.

I'm not talking about my period.

That was last week, which you'd know if you asked Facebook.

So who has enjoyed, did you enjoy the Cohen

testimony today?

I mean, it doesn't completely show your country

in its best light.

I think Donald Trump's former lawyer, is that

any of the rest of you use him as a lawyer?

Get around a bit.

Currently not riding that high, has to be said in trustworthiness monthly magazines, world rankings.

But still the choice between him and Donald Trump.

Well, what I'll say about Donald Trump, there's an old saying, isn't there, never trust a man whose eyebrows meet in the middle.

Now, that doesn't apply to Trump, but there is also another saying, which is, never trust a man who obviously f ⁇ ing lies all the time.

Yes, indeed.

Mr.

Cohen made a statement about Trump to a crowded hearing of the House Oversight and Reform Committee.

And boy, are my arms tired.

I feel like the risks of being a soft-hearted, weak-minded artist on a lovely lefty podcast talking to a thoughtful, compassionate crowd is that you end up going for cheap Trump bashing.

And the last thing I want to do is preach to the converted or pander to the prejudices of the audience by calling Trump a con man, a cheat, and a bad father.

So it's always nice when his own right-hand man does it for me.

Yeah, I mean, that was incident.

Racist con man cheat.

He's basically a one-man Hollywood pilot plot.

And

it's not new,

to be fair, that phrase, because that's also what Donald Trump has in his online dating profile.

Cohen said, began with a statement.

including these words really jumped out at me and when i not just jumped out they uh they jumped out while ripping open their dressing gown and waggling their jumble chunks at me

he said I have asked this committee to ensure that my family be protected from presidential threats this is what you've become America

the idea that the president is quite likely to leave a horse's head in someone's bed

So yeah, he included copies of letters that he wrote at Trump's direction that threatened his old high school colleges and colleges not to release his grades

or sat scores and I mean I think this is fine does not does this not show that Trump is in many ways too modest for his own good

doesn't want to flaunt his absolute power deluge of A grades distinctions summars cum laudes

special prizes for being straight-up genius.

He humbly knows that many of his supporters are not, shall we say, academic high achievers like himself.

And there's nothing wrong with that.

In his book, his well-studied, well-thumbed book, and he'd just rather not waggle it in people's faces.

He says, are you f ⁇ ing cynics?

You thought he was, can you not take the man at face value?

No, well, not if his face is an obvious lie.

An obvious orange lie.

Yeah, Cohen's statement reads like the heartbreaking confession of a man who has strayed from an essentially ethical core, admitting that he behaved incredibly badly and saying that working for Mr.

Trump was intoxicating, which checks out because he does look a bit fermented.

Cohen said, when you were in his presence, you felt that you were somehow changing the world, which is true.

He has changed the world, but you know,

not in a good way.

So, this is one of the details I most enjoyed from Cohen today: that Trump, the charity auction for the portrait of himself.

So,

he basically paid someone to put in a bid on his behalf for his own portrait to make sure it was the most expensive thing at the I think he might have self-image issues

given that this was an image of himself

He paid $60,000 for this portrait using money from his own stuff basically stolen from his own charitable foundation

Great guy great guy

And I mean who would have thought a guy like that could win an election?

I mean, he didn't really win it, but I mean, he got he got in.

Cohen also said, I have lied, but I'm not a liar.

Words with which I can sympathise.

Also, I have delivered a baby, but I'm not a midwife.

The difference with me and Cohen is that I only delivered my own baby once.

I did not deliver other people's babies over and over again using threats.

Squeeze!

Anything else on Cohen, Alice, before we move on?

Oh, my favourite bit was when he said that Trump had said of his own son that Don Jr.

had the worst judgment in the world.

Which is a mean thing to say about your own kid, but seems to have been backed up when Don Jr.

retweeted a thing from Garrett M.

Graff saying, Ob Cohen, this is a man with nothing left, with no reason to lie or obfuscate at all.

So, you know, that's a reassuring signal that the President really does tell it like it is.

Right.

I think it is time to end this game.

I do have some puns, but

I just don't I don't think that's enough of a democratic mandate.

Alright, okay.

That's

that's not that is how easily things can change.

That is democracy uh real so um

uh who went to uh who went to university?

So um uh I'm quite fascinated by the American uh university system and um so I'd I'd written this this big uh big thing about uh the American uh college system, uh but I wasn't sure how well it would go down.

I thought it might spit the crowd and that Harvard like it and the other Harvard hate it.

No matter how hard I tried, even if I put in MIT efforts.

Oh, come on, I'm busting my balls up here, trying to get laughs.

But

some people just won't have their leave now.

They won't stand for this.

They'll get really browned off, might end up having a fight outside.

We'll duke it out.

And I don't want that.

I wanted to create harmony, not division.

Ivanta-built bridges.

um some people drown their sorrows in uh drink have a glum beer clumbia glum beer

um at the bar some will be drinking in a in a dark corner all beasting well no that was really shit i wrote these

it was very late uh some might have been warned by their friends who've seen me before they'll have said this guy's a burke leave before he gets to the puns

Do you know that my old podcast partner you see on the screen there, his extended uh family works in beer making.

They grow the crops that give it its distinctive flavour.

Johns Hopkins.

Still do that.

I had one relative in the landed gentry back home, very aristocratic.

She married a knight of the realm, but was terrified of tall plants and any form of wood.

So she banned them from her garden.

She became known as the notary dame.

Notre Dame.

So I've got that complete.

It's f ⁇ ing late.

Right.

It's very tough to write these.

No, Andy, it's early.

It's very tough to write these, Buns.

I write them all longhand on paper rather than type them.

But I like to be able to make changes so I don't use ink and I have to carry my writing implements around in a special vehicle.

It's parked outside, in fact.

I've got my pencil van here.

Pencil.

Right.

You asked for it.

I mean, this is.

You asked for it.

You asked for it.

And now.

you regret it.

You missed a great opportunity not to have this happen.

So I've got a bit of a rice smile on my face.

Maybe this is more

for the guys.

It's not very girly humour.

It's more boysy.

Right, we're done.

That's it.

Thanks for coming tonight.

Thanks for standing up for so long, as you've been saying.

Thanks for supporting the show over the years.

We've gone independent again, so we've relaunched our voluntary subscription scheme.

And well, hopefully, I'll be back with more bugle shows here next year.

But please show your appreciation on a fantastic bugle debut.

Josh, go away.

Thank you.

You guys, thank you so much.

All the way from London, Australia, and Flamingoland, Alice Fraser.

I've been Andy Zolson.

Thank you very much for coming.

I'll see you all again.

Thank you.

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.