Bonus Bugle – Putin, Trump and The Queen’s Brooch

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello Buglers and welcome to the Bugle Summer Break 2018.

I'm off on holiday for a few weeks before returning triumphantly to perform at the Edinburgh Festival where no doubt you will all be coming with bated breath to see my show Right Questions, Wrong Answers at the Stand Comedy Club from the 15th to the 26th of August.

There are two live bugle shows: one on the 15th of August with me, Alice Fraser, and Alex Edelman, and on the 22nd, it'll be me and Nish and TBA.

Terrific act, TBA.

Can't wait to see what he or she brings to the table.

This week, as our 4076 sub-episode A, there's some classic off-cuts from recent bugles.

Do enjoy them.

There was also, he had some rather interesting meetings with Her Majesty the Queen, the British Donald Trump,

purely in terms of being head of state.

They seem quite different people, to be fair.

Very different vibes.

And someone,

a brooch expert,

managed to pick up on some

rather tactical brooch work by Her Majesty, who wore three different brooches in her meetings with Trump, in which at various points he didn't so much break protocol as sledgehammer protocol into unrecognisable jelly.

One brooch was a gift from the Obamas, one was a gift from Canada, and one was a diamond teardrop, which is not as many think worn by monarchs who've personally killed someone.

I absolutely love that that is within your frame of cultural understanding.

You're a much more.

Oh yeah, but you're missing.

I mean, you've probably never seen John Oliver without his makeup.

Oh my god.

But this brooch, this diamond shovel-like brooch, was worn famously by the Queen at her own father's funeral.

Read into that what you will, or indeed what other people will, which is that the Queen was basically making a comment on the entire death of a merit as a nation

yeah she had to be talked out apparently talked out of wearing a do not grab me by the pussy brooch uh pickle disappointingly did not wear the commemorative brooch given to the young princess charlotte augusta of wales in 1814 to mark the british burning down the white house we should credit at samurai knitter uh who is the person on twitter who has done some absolutely sterling brooch-based decoding and it is like i mean in many ways you know sometimes people say so what's the monarchy for You know, how does it represent modern Britain?

I mean, that represents modern Britain absolutely perfectly.

Being passive-aggressive through the medium of brooch is really

Britishness distilled.

If the Queen was also hammered on 16 pints of WKD, she would have truly embodied everything that is great about this nation.

I loved that she did it, but there's also a part of me that was like, Do you really think that Donald Trump,

who is not known to pick up on what women really think of him, Is going to respect

a 90-year-old woman insinuating that she has mild distaste via the medium of jewelry selection.

But it's also such british, it's so, like Nish said, it's so British, but it's also so upper class to be like, Yes, I'll

hint that I don't like him by wearing the same jewelry I have worn in times of sadness.

That'll show him.

And Trump had some kind words about the queen.

He said, That is a beautiful woman.

Twice.

Twice.

He's such a fing creep.

To be fair to the queen, she did.

By protesting against him via broach, she did.

It does suggest she knew where his eyes would head on a woman's body.

I don't think either of us is going to be doing the role of a wrong.

I think this isn't the first time I've said this on this podcast but there goes the knighthead

oh my god Piers Morgan gives him the out too and he says he says she's beautiful and then Piers Morgan says yes she's brilliant and Trump goes yes but also so beautiful like that's the highest compliment Donald Trump can pay anyone a porn star his daughter the queen of england she is beautiful.

It doesn't matter.

Nothing else matters.

She's beautiful.

Not for 90.

She's beautiful.

So what's, I guess, like, we're on summer break now.

So what, I mean, what do you think is going to happen to Trump between now and when we're next bugling in a while?

I'm slightly more worried about what's happened to Trump since we started recording the show.

I mean, he might have invaded Bolivia or something.

I don't know.

I think, Alex, what's the American view?

What's your reckon?

What's going to happen?

Well, I think Putin is going to be head of the Environmental Protection Agency.

Not his worst appointment.

No, I think from Pruitt, it's an upgrade, if we're being honest.

I feel like the reality is nothing's going to happen because at this point, the Republican Party is now supported by racists, people who don't want to pay tax, and racists who don't want to pay tax.

And at this point, Trump could take a shit on the Lincoln Memorial, wipe his ass on the Constitution, and then dry up the Statue of Liberty to completion.

And his base's only comments would be, What was the Statue of Liberty wearing?

Maybe she was asking for it.

Oh, and Lincoln can suck it.

The Confederacy losing the Civil War was the worst thing to ever happen to this country.

And also, does this mean the tax cut is still on?

In which case, shit on, Mr.

President.

And when asked to walk back his comments, he would just go, Oh, I meant to say not at the end of that sentence.

It's World Cup time now.

Let's turn to happier happier things.

So

who here is an England fan?

It's coming home.

Yeah, I mean, it might come home, but if it comes home, will it be, again, will it be just to ask us to do its washing and give it dinner before it f ⁇ s off to the pub with its mates and then goes off on another 52 consecutive gap years like last time

I thought that, because I saw the hashtag, and I thought it was a kind of Brexit thing, IT's coming home, about how we're going to claw back call centre jobs that were stolen from us by Indian graduates because of Brussels putting quotas on our cod stocks and all the Bulgarians and the refugees flooding over primarily to other countries.

So it's...

It's coming home.

Is it written in the stars?

That's what people said.

It's written in the stars for England to win.

I think it is.

It is written in the stars, but there's a f ⁇ of a lot of stars.

And if you are fluent in braille

and read the stars by some kind of like braille interpretation, you can pretty much see anything written in the stars, including the words, we're going to tank the semi-final against Croatia.

The media will then start banging on about how lucky we've been all the way through and return to the grand English tradition of personalized recrimination and infantile scapegoating.

That is also written in the stars.

So we'll see which one shines brighter.

I don't know how people can be pro-World Cup and

pro-Brexit at the same time because a lot of the World Cup fervor seems to involve going over to other people's countries and vomiting on their stuff.

Yes.

Like no matter how good this mobility framework is going to be, it's one thing to have to organise your cheap

Bucks night in Croatia.

And it's another one when you have to organise a visa for violent Dave and his police record from that night when he head-butted a teenage girl who refused to back down from her insistence that Raheem Sterling is a fumble-footed butterbungler and a waste of a forward and she wouldn't bang manager Gareth Southgate despite having with her own eyes witnessed his vest wearing compassionate yet manly post-match hugs.

This is the level of punditry we're not getting from the BBC.

Well, you know, they say

Tilsley's awful, isn't he?

I'd be a great football commentator, man.

Oh, of course you'd be.

They say women wouldn't be good at it.

The underlying premise is that, you know, women don't like balls, even if they say they do, they don't.

I guess they're not.

They're trying, but they don't love them.

But who loves balls?

Absolutely deplorable.

Aren't they?

I mean, even when you're born with them and, you know, oh, God.

You just want to kiss them.

They swim away in the bath.

Like, this is like, ooh, ooh.

Yuck.

I'm against them.

But I think, honestly, Clive Tilsley's awful, isn't he?

Surely, can we p you know what I mean?

Can we retire Clive Tilsley?

Maybe that could be like a strand in some kind of Brexit negotiation that we

like to sell Clive Tilsley to Bulgaria.

I was listening to Dion Dublin wax lyrical about how Russia's the best place he's ever been this morning on Five Live.

He's genuinely going, it's never been in Russia.

It's an amazing country.

What a brilliant place.

And I recommend that everybody comes to Russia.

It's really amazing.

It's the best place.

And I just thought somewhere out there, there's people in Salisbury going,

it's not super awesome here.

In this two-week heat wave, we've sat inside our houses terrified.

So we're not, we're kind of on the fence, whether we love Russia.

My twin brother went to Russia after he finished school on his gap year, and he went with his friend who's also got the Jewish heritage.

They went to a circus and they had two monkeys dressed as Jews having a wedding.

Great country.

Great country.

Sorry, as the only Gentile on the stage, I was supposed to go terrible.

Did they have a little monkey hooper?

Did they?

Did one of the little monkeys smash the glass next year in Monkey Jerusalem?

How far did they go?

Well, they probably went further than I did at my wedding, when.

But then

I am a tremendously bad Jew.

Was your wedding cake made out of ham?

My wedding cake was not made out of ham.

My wedding cake was a leg of ham.

It's not great.

So, really, two monkeys.

Interesting.

Well, not interesting.

Shameful and terrible.

Well, they can't reproduce, can they?

That is one of the problems.

Who monks are Scandinavians?

They have an appalling birth rate in Scandinavia.

Is that what you're talking about?

Yeah, it's because their women are happy.

It could be that.

Or the men are firing blanks and they need some Irishmen to reverse invade the situation.

There were not much to look at us Irishmen, but we're absolutely swimming with jiz.

We are some jiz heavy men.

That's science.

That's Samuel Beckett.

That's Samuel Beckett.

Is that what your bulls are doing in the bath, just thinking?

They're just...

They've got their own little longboat and they're trying to get back.

Trying to get back over there.

Really ride up a fjord.

I find you can make something dirty by just adding a

really forcing it dirty.

There was nothing dirty about that.

Fjords are very navigable.

Or were you talking about the monks?

Because although they were could not, they were see, that's the thing that a lot of people don't understand.

Is monks were

they were celibate.

It was celibacy, not chastity.

Celibacy is you can't get married.

Chastity is you can't have sex.

So, a lot of the monks were, in fact, very lusty individuals.

How dare you bring facts here?

Yeah, this is not true.

Don't you worry, none of that was true.

Absolutely none of that.

I don't think I've ever said a true thing in my life.

Well, you are fitting in very well on this show, Andrew.

So

it's had a huge impact on the country.

The extent of the impact of of the World Cup run on this country is that a number of British supermarkets have said they will close early on Sunday if England reaches the final.

And that puts everything in perspective because we do not stop shopping for finging anything

these days.

I mean our supermarkets would not shop for the fing apocalypse frankly.

They would be tenaciously hanging on after the rest of the planet had ended whilst the four horsemen tapped their watches ostentatiously through the window and the store manager tried to put them off by saying we've got a two-for-one deal on bags of carrots and sugar lumps maybe your horsies would like that judas here is an important announcement it seems that none of us know how to brush our teeth properly but don't panic quip is here to save your teeth quip is an electric toothbrush that's a fraction of the cost of bulkier brushes it's essentially like having your teeth gently licked by a benevolent angel it has an inbuilt timer no cutting corners my toothy friends and they send new brush heads every three months so your brush keeps your teeth looking absolutely sensational Quip was called the best electric toothbrush by GQ and the Tesla of toothbrushes by Bloomberg.

Let's assume those were meant as compliments.

Quip starts at just $25, and if you go to getquip.com/slash bugle right now, you'll get your first refill pack free with a quip electric toothbrush.

That's your first refill pack free at getquip.com/slash bugle.

Spelled G-E-T-Q-U-I-P.com slash bugle.

I mean, there was uh

suggestions that you know, various people did suggest that he'd been he had been

treasonous when it comes to Putin

I mean I've never met Vladimir Putin

and people are often very different in person aren't they?

I found that actually from my cricket commentary work for the BBC where I've worked with various current and former players and you see someone on the cricket field and they're mostly playing cricket but then when I've met them in the commentary box they don't hit things with bats and they don't throw small hard balls at other people nearly as much which I have to say is nice.

So Putin maybe is very different in a

private meeting.

I mean I do find him about as trustworthy as a suntanned polar bear.

But I try to take him at face value.

And I mean his face says I can and will do absolutely whatever the f I want.

It was slightly odd to hear Trump say President Putin says it's not Russia that did the meddling in his election.

I don't see any reason why it would be.

I mean, that's, I mean, how, in terms of the most worrying things an American president has ever said, Alex, in the history of your great nation, I mean,

how far up the top, top two or one is that?

Well, I think it's number two.

After that time, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt said, I mean, Japan says it wasn't us who attacked Pearl Harbor, and I can't see any reason why it would be.

He had to walk it back almost immediately.

But people forget about it all the time.

But, you know, he was a liar.

He wasn't even really in a wheelchair.

That was all the ruse for sympathy.

That was the second most worrying thing that he said all day.

Seriously, my least favorite thing that Trump said that day was something that he tweeted and then repeated several times, which is, our relationship with Russia has never been worse.

Never been worse?

There was a point where we were pointing missiles at each other from Cuba.

There was a point.

Donald Trump had to hide under his desks during nuclear drills as a child and he was like, it has never been worse than it is now.

Where I have a two-hour solo session with the Russian president where he almost definitely took his shirt off in front of me to demonstrate dominance.

And there's a,

it's never been worse.

But yeah, it's very, it's very concerning.

But I also feel like what was interesting to see is there are a few people who really who voted for Trump, but they're say chair of the Institute for U.S.-Russia conflict or something like that.

So it's very much, there's a line where we're seeing now that Trump is crossing where a few people are like, uh, I can't do this anymore.

I can't keep lying to myself.

Like the chairman of the charity to keep children out of cages is like, I think it's time to to draw a line in the sand right here.

And Russia, it seems like, is a real line for a lot of people.

So Joe Walsh, who's been a Trump defender since day one, and Newt Gingrich, who's been Trump's number one legitimizer since day one, they were like,

they've couched it in Trump-friendly language, but they're like, oh, the president should probably walk back his comments

on Russia being America's closest ally, because that is not happening.

I mean, yeah, Gingrich called it an aberration, which suggests Newt Gingrich has not been paying attention for the last year and a half.

But

one of the kind of key flashpoint was Trump's comments when he was asked directly about Russian interference and

whether Putin was involved.

And Trump said, I have President Putin.

He said, it's not Russia.

I don't see any reason why it would be.

Then just over 24 hours later, he claimed that he meant the exact opposite.

The sentence should have been, I don't see any reason why it wouldn't be Russia, Mr Trump said, sort of a double negative.

Aping that famous American rhetorical flourish that all presidents have had.

Who can forget Kennedy's infamous don't ask your country what it can't do for you speech.

Yeah, it's I mean it's at best linguistically unorthodox and at worst your president Alex is a fing treasonous moron.

I mean it's not so much that he knows he rowed back on his statements as tried to row back to the surface after singing his rowing boat by shooting several holes in the bottom of it because Vladimir told him to.

I guess the question that everybody's asking is, does it matter?

And the answer everybody was receiving is, no, it fing doesn't.

Because an opinion poll found that 79% of Republicans approved of his handling of the Russian president, and 85% think the Justice Department investigation is a distraction.

And Anthony Scaramucci, the ex-communications director and pound shop dog shit good fella,

said, I was happy to see him walk it back.

True friends tell you when you have food in your teeth and when there's a stain on your shirt.

That is not the same thing, unless the stain on your shirt is an etching of the current president urinating on some prostitutes.

And it was also interesting that some of the things that Trump did not mention

after the meetings, for example, Russian military involvement in Ukraine, the annexation of Crimea, poisoning people to death on British soil.

meddling in the U.S.

election, firing dogs into space.

It's been a while.

Or the famous Russian magician, The Incredible Vladimir, and his sensational disappearing journalistry.

Oh,

when you list them like that, it sounds bad, actually.

Also, he didn't mention exactly what went on during that VAR replay in the Russia-Spain game of the World Cup second round match towards the end of the time.

Or either of Putin's recent best-selling books, How to Buy Friends and Subjugate People, and The Joy of Assassinating Political Opponents.

What about just all Q?

All Q, okay, all Q and no I.

Surely that's half the time.

You ask all your questions and then we'll leave.

Okay.

Right, we'll just get three questions and then.

No answers.

No.

Hands high.

Hi, Charlie's one up there.

Look at that.

Look at that athleticism up the stairs.

Move!

Wow.

Do you like this shirt?

Do I like this shirt?

I feel, yeah, we're going to be seeing quite a lot of that shirt.

There's an India cricket shirt for those

watching with their ears on the audio verse.

It's coming home.

To India, where they really are into cricket.

Instead of the seven weird old bastards who like it here.

Look!

That is insulting to me and the other six weird old bastards.

So Andy, I hear something about puns.

You like puns, right?

I've been clean for a couple of weeks.

Okay, okay.

I want to try this one on you.

So cricket stats and puns.

Right, okay.

Is that possible for a pun run?

Cricket stats.

Cricket stats and puns.

Not off the top of my head.

From your good old confectionery stall days.

Well, I'd just be worried that it wouldn't be quite good enough.

It would end up being very average.

Boo!

Right, okay, next.

We have

one more question.

Yes.

Oh, that's it.

Has anyone checked at the Home Office if football has the right documentation to enter the country?

There we go.

Yay!

No other questions.

I resent that the audience is funnier than me tonight.

That's right.

Don't laugh at that.

You're just saying it's true.

Are you South African?

Yes, my father's

from South Africa, moved here in the 60s.

And

so my father's an immigrant, but he did take the very sensible precaution of being white, got away with it.

Genius tactics, genius tactics, and that was all the documentation he needed, I think, back in those days.

Well, I hope you enjoyed this week's bonus sub-bugle.

There will be more from the archives next week.

And don't forget to buy all tickets to my Edinburgh show and the Edinburgh shows off all Bugle co-hosts.

Details on the internet.

See you in August.

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.