Bugle 4013 – American Carnage

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

2017 will be remembered as the day the factories closed.

Rusted out factories and the drugs and the gangs.

These are just, righteous people.

This is your celebration.

Your voice, your hopes and your dreams stops right here and stops right now.

At the center of this movement, trillions and trillions of dollars,

we will get our people radical Islamic terrorism for everyone to follow.

We will rediscover there is no room for God.

We've enriched foreign industry.

It's going to be only America first.

America first.

Ladies and gentlemen, please remain standing while the president and official party depart the platform.

You will be released by sections shortly.

Hello, buglers, and welcome to the first bugle of the rest of your lives.

Which of course is true of all bugles, but particularly this one.

Because this is Bugle 4000 Unlucky 13 for the week ending the 20th of January 2017.

We are recording just an hour or so after Donald Trump declined the chance to complete the biggest prank in human history by saying, of course I didn't mean it.

I'm obviously not a presidential candidate.

You should see the looks on your faces.

Here's Mikey Peter do the chit-chat.

He declined that that chance and therefore we have President Trump.

And yes, all the doommongers and all the doommonger mongers were wrong.

It's fine.

He's been president now for, well, I'm looking at my watch now.

It's basically two hours.

And no nuclear war, no divine strike from the heavens, no mass global recession and no species ending conflict.

It's fine.

All those concerns were unjustified.

I'm Andy Zoltzmann.

And I've fled to record this bugle to New Zealand, just to be safe.

New Zealand, of course, scientifically the nation least likely to end up in a nuclear standoff or fully fedged ground war with Trump's America.

I'm recording this special, immediately post-inauguration special show from the Bugle secret Trump-proof bunker, 8,000 miles beneath the Earth's Crust, which proved to be something of a logistical error.

Turns out 8,000 miles beneath the Earth's crust in New Zealand is just above ground level in London.

Went just a tiny bit off straight during the really hot bit in the middle.

So here I am.

Hello, Chris.

Nice to see you.

Hi.

It is T plus two hours, as I said.

We're recording in the immediate afterglow of the vigorously carnal consummation of the arranged marriage of the United States of America and President Priapas himself.

And joining me from Seattle, it is a man who is firmly in the 70% minority of Americans who would probably rather have had a fossilized mammoth shit as Commander-in-Chief than tycoon tear away.

It is Hari Kondabolu.

Hello.

Hello, Andy.

Hello.

Hari, I always seem to get you on the show at a moment where you are

so upset with what is happening in the world

that even the act of speech seems kind of heroic.

Well,

because you keep asking me about the American election.

And so as a result, I am always going to be glum and depressed and

questioning a lot of things about this country.

It's never happy.

Oh, by the way, just a quick side thing, which I realize is ridiculous because we just started.

But I had a few people who are fans of the bugle message me saying that they're sick of me talking about American politics, that they want me to talk about a broader range of things, which frustrates me because this is the Trump election.

We're talking about the potential nuclear annihilation of the world.

We're talking about

global chaos and war.

Like, why would I talk about anything else?

Like, that's like watching Independence Day, and then all of a sudden someone in the film is like, I'm sick sick of all this alien stuff.

When are we going to talk about the football season?

And to be honest, I think it's

your

third show, and I got you on just before the election, just after the election, and on the day of the inauguration.

Correct.

So I've slightly limited your rate.

I've tell you next time, I'll get you on and get you to talk only about European tour golf.

There we go.

Bernard Langer, is that a person?

Very good, very good.

Okay, I got him.

So you're in Seattle currently, which is basically physically as far away from Trump as you can get in the United States

without going either to Hawaii, which, as we learned from Trump himself during the whole Bertha controversy about Barack Obama actually being an Imam from somewhere in outer Muslimistan, that's actually not in America at all.

That's what the Bertha has told us.

Or to Alaska, which, as I speak, in fact, just hearing confirmation on the news wires, Trump has just given Alaska back to Russia as a gesture of goodwill.

So, Das Vidanias who are Alaskan buglers.

Well, you've basically got as far away from physical contact with Donald Trump as you can possibly manage without leaving America.

I'm in a liberal bunker.

I feel fairly safe.

This is a place where I'm sure Mumia Abu Jamal, the Black Panther who has been in prison for decades, probably got the third most votes for president during this last last election.

Anyway, I'm hugely grateful for you for joining us on what I know must be a very difficult day for you and taking some time out from what I know is a very, very busy schedule of slamming your head in your own hands, weeping and screaming, why, why, why?

This is Bugle 4013 for the week beginning the 23rd of January 2017, key anniversary, this one, exactly zero years since the 23rd of January 2017, when President Donald Trump for the first time used the words, what do you mean you won't tell me the f ⁇ ing codes?

It's my f ⁇ ing football.

I'll f ⁇ ing play with it.

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

This week, all other news in the world is going in the bin, including Theresa May, the leader of the Conservative junta, currently occupying the Palace of Westminster and 10 Downing Street and refusing to leave, laid out her vision for Brexit, which was great or rubbish.

Delete according to whether you already agreed or disagreed with her.

Here's another story.

In the bin, half of the world's primate species face extinction.

According to scientists, could humans be one of those species we reveal all in our exclusive are we on the brink of extinction analysis and let me just open the envelope no we're fine uh also in the bin a free personalized oath for you to to sway yourself into whatever you want to sway yourself into uh so you can just uh tailor this according to your own uh own lifestyle choices i fill in your name and any titles or honorifics here do solemnly stroke threateningly stroke spookily, stroke tearfully, stroke chillingly, swear that I will faithfully execute the office of

King of Meeland, stroke empress of all I survey, stroke new lead singer of Hermann's Hermits, stroke chief dude, stroke dudette of the cool brigade, stroke president of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, stroke as much as I can be asked, stroke if absolutely necessary, stroke, unless anyone else wants to do it instead of me, preserve, protect, and defend my lovely dog.

Stroke the institution of the after-lunch snooze.

Stroke that nice china plate my grand gave me for Christmas when I was small.

There you are, there's your own oath.

You can feel like Trump for a day.

That section in the bin.

Top story.

It isn't pretend it's real.

Reality star Donald Trump President of the United States.

For a while there, I thought perhaps the Mayans were right, and we all died in 2012, as predicted, and that this was just hell.

And I actually would prefer this being hell than real life, because at least if we're in hell, it makes some kind of sense.

It's

absurd.

Also, I'm starting to think that all those celebrities that died in 2016 knew what was going to happen, and they got out of here just in time.

I feel like they were clued in somehow.

It was awful watching the inauguration.

He looked scared to death.

He looked frightened the whole way.

I felt like Barack was holding his hand through the beginning until he got there.

It was weird looking into the crowd.

Lots of red hats.

Lots of red hats in the crowd that said make America great again.

Trump making a killing on the inauguration.

Never thought that being president would be a financial boon during the inauguration.

So that happened.

Basically, I was seeing a crowd with a bunch of people who think this man can turn back time and stop the flood of progress.

But on a positive note, Andy, I might start my business of selling magic beans again.

Oh, that's good, because that's been out of...

out of out of business for a while, hasn't it?

Oh, yeah.

I mean, I haven't done that since they started selling the Iraq War to Americans.

i'm like ah this is the time for the beans

they're up for it

um i was intrigued by the fact that when he swore the oath he was using uh i already was using president lincoln's inauguration bible and yet miraculously his hand did not dissolve on contact with abraham lincoln's bibles isn't that that could have been a prosthetic hand made of some special

special, I don't know, Lincoln-proof substance.

I mean, if it had been his own flesh, surely the spirit of Lincoln would have absolutely annihilated it.

It wasn't Lincoln's Bible, Andy.

No way.

They probably hid that

to make sure he wouldn't destroy it.

And also, based on the Golden Showers rumors, I don't think that would be the right thing.

That is an American artifact.

We can't have strangers' urine, foreign urine at that,

all over the Lincoln Bible.

Right.

Oh, it'll be American urine from now on for Trump.

He's going to keep those activities at home, surely.

There was a copy of Playboy tucked into the Bible, to be fair.

Here's a quick tip for buglers.

Do not, I repeat, do not read out the transcripts of Trump's inauguration speech in a German accent.

Absolutely,

absolutely do not do that.

Not even for fun.

Just don't.

Just especially not this bit.

We assembled here today and are issuing a new decree to be heard in every city, in every foreign capital, and in every hall of power.

From this day forward, a new vision will govern our land.

From this day forward, it's going to be America first.

America first.

Don't do that.

Do not do it.

I fell for the temptation.

I feel dead inside.

Oh, wait, did you do the German impression already?

Because that's how I heard it.

I thought that was...

Oh, that's not.

Okay.

He kept saying America first,

which is, when have we not been like thought about our interests first?

But he kept, so that was like the key phrase, America first,

which for me was weird because it was like strange to hear a preview of the words that will be said to me during a hate crime.

Like, oh, that's going to be the, okay.

It's not just going to be USA, USA.

It's America first.

It was, as a non-American, obviously, I have no right to hold an opinion on your democracy.

Or I didn't until Trump said, we will determine the course of America and the world for many, many years to come.

To me, Harry, he seems to be basically expressing the worldview of an unusually incubated four-year-old.

And the essential message of Trump's speech seemed to be, there's no I in isolationism.

Well also he said

when Americans are united, we are unstoppable, which

that's some super villain nonsense.

I mean that's

like that's not even trying to pretend that he's a good guy.

That's like straight up like who wants to be unstoppable?

Just, you know, and he was talking about we're only going to think of America.

We're not going to worry about other people, like other people's issues.

We're going to keep the wealth here.

It's basically he's trying to starve out the developing world and we're not allowed to get foreign things anymore is the idea.

His wife is not from here.

But okay.

Are we looking at, you know, is there going to be like a ceremonial slaying of Mrs.

Trump as a kind of gesture of

American isolationism?

You know what?

Maybe he will.

I can see this happening because we had,

I know America has not had what you might call a second civil civil war over this yet.

But when

we had a big civil war in the 15th century, at the end of which, as a gesture of conciliation,

Henry Tudor married

the former queen of Edward IV, I think I'm right in saying.

So he's basically bringing together the Lancastrian and Yorkist sides of the civil war to create a new unified nation.

Now,

if Trump is going to slay his wife, as the subtext of his speech, quite clearly suggested he will, will in a in a in a gesture of American independence surely he will have to marry Hillary Clinton as to bring he talks about bringing the nation together that is the only way he can do it I think Bill will happily step aside does she does she have a choice in the matter or is it kind of is that not how Trump's America works with women

well clearly that it doesn't I mean Trump's America does not work with women

judging by his cabinet I think I know she said she wants the best for America I'm sure she'll she'll step up to the plate

and also also, given that he has absolutely no experience of politics

of any kind, really, you know, it would probably do him good to have a first lady who's done the job before.

I mean, he does have his daughter

in whatever situation that is.

Yeah, I mean, I think that that might even be a step beyond the pale for Donald.

There's an awful lot in the speech, Harry, about

attacking the Washington establishment.

He said, we are transferring power from Washington, D.C.

and giving it back to you, the people.

I mean, I guess the question is, how?

And the answer would be, shut up.

But as a person of America, are you excited about getting all this power back?

And what are you going to do with it?

Oh, my God.

I barely get my rent paid on time.

I'm the last person who should have, well, I'm the second to last person

who should have control of America.

When did people people ever have power?

That's not true.

There was always somebody, like, in charge, telling everyone else what to do.

And if there was dissent, bad things would happen.

I mean, that's fairly universal.

I mean,

he talked about jobs being sent overseas and about changing the status quo.

Like, as if everyone was ignoring that he was up there.

As if he has struggled.

It's like he had complete.

And somehow it worked.

People seem to be down with the idea that,

you know, everything's coming to an end.

Well, I mean, that might make financial sense, isn't it?

Cheeky little Armageddon.

Settle things up.

One thing that was calming about the speech is that he did have the okay hand gesture up most of that speech, which was which was comforting, because it seemed to indicate everything would be okay.

Well, that's just that's the way that he works people.

He's a master manipulator.

Well, you talked about this sort of international attitude.

He said the wealth of our middle class has been ripped from their homes and then redistributed all across the world.

All across the world, Donald.

Yep, I'm sure those Rwandans and Bangladeshis are getting absolutely hammered on middle-class American champagne as we speak.

Maybe not all, all across the world.

There's been some interesting global reaction.

Chris picked this up.

that North Korea state news have not reported on the inauguration at all.

Not a B, not important enough.

Right.

And that's currently

in some possibly related news and the latest world happiness rankings, North Korea, currently the happiest nation in the world, jumped up from last place to first just by not reporting on the Trump inauguration.

There was some seriously outlandish stuff.

Nothing more outlandish than this.

We will build new roads and highways and bridges and airports and tunnels and railways.

all across our wonderful railways america you have always ignored the railway why now why why the railway?

Now, that is one of the defining features of America.

A country that clearly would have benefited from a functioning railway network.

And all of a sudden, he's throwing away that key plank of national identity.

The man is a hypocrite.

That was one of those moments where I realized that he might have written the speech himself.

It felt like that should have been checked.

And also, like, Obama was the one that was talking about high-speed railway when he was elected, and everyone thought he was a maniac.

And for some reason, that just kind of slipped right through.

I was really hoping that Chuck Schumer, the Democratic minority leader who spoke before

the swearing in and whatnot, I was hoping he would filibuster.

There was that small feeling because he was talking for a while.

Then I'm like, oh, I see where this is going.

He was talking about the Civil War.

Then I'm like, if I was him, I'd be like, well, let's start with the first day of the Washington administration.

And then the second day.

And if you just kept it up for about like, I don't know, three, three and a half years till the next election cycle, you know,

I think I mean, we I don't know.

There has to be a way out.

There might be aliens.

There might be a way out of this.

Yeah.

Well, um, I can suggest uh one good way out, and that is uh you need to watch more cricket, Hurry.

Because cricket's on, you know, pretty much all the time.

Uh, you know, the long games last five days.

That is an awful lot of time you can distract yourself from.

I mean, I reckon if you if you if you can get it you could probably spend almost the entirety of the next four years watching cricket

if I mean I think that might be the way for Americans to uh to survive that's generally how I deal with breakups except with baseball

baseball does a pretty sound job.

Well yeah, you know there's a Ken Burns documentary uh called Baseball about uh the history of um baseball.

And

it's like 20.

It's basically real time, isn't it, from the start?

Yeah, it's about 4,000 hours.

Well, basically, it feels like 4,000 hours, but it fills up a lot of time.

And after a breakup, I like to watch that over and over again to feel a sense of comfort and that I belong to something.

And usually I

am pantsless

eating a mango.

So that's the next four years,

what I'm saying.

That could be one of the positive sides of Trump rule.

It might have been kind of bizarrely, almost a kind of aggressively

pessimistic, divisive speech for an incoming president.

But it could be a huge boon for the American hobby industry.

There's going to be a lot of people, like you're watching in baseball videos, people taking up all manner of stuff to distract them from.

I mean, this could be an absolute, maybe this is how he's intending to rebuild the American economy by just getting everybody to lock themselves in a shed and build model ships for four years or something.

He used the phrase American Carnage, which was very unsettling.

Didn't expect to hear like what essentially is the name of a video game

in his inaugural address.

This American Carnage sounds a good title for a podcast.

I mean about the next four years, yeah.

He created, like, he had that American Carnage, he had that phrase, he had America first.

But I expected to hear more of the hits, which was kind of disappointing.

I didn't hear you're fired.

I was hoping for that.

I was hoping he'd go on and say, America, I'm hired.

I mean, that would have won a few points for me.

He didn't pull out the grab them by the pussy.

I was really hoping he'd try.

I know that's

a couple of months ago, but I felt like maybe he'd bring that back.

There were no impressions either of disabled people or any new impressions.

I thought he'd whip a couple of new things out just to give us a preview of the next four years.

But he just, you know, he closed on the biggest hit.

He closed on Make America Great again.

He had a nice long build-up.

It was like Make America Safe Again, Make America Rich again.

He did that.

You all knew where it was going.

We all knew.

It's going to end on the big one, building anticipation.

And then he nailed it.

He nailed it.

And about the 48 people who showed up for his inauguration,

they were thrilled.

I was slightly disappointed that he didn't, you know, Lock Her Up Up didn't feature as well.

That would have been a dramatic.

If he just had Hillary Clinton sitting a couple of rows behind, just like, just at one point, some military figures started sort of filing into the background while he was speaking.

I wondered if they were just going to arrest, try and convict Hillary Clinton on the spot.

Well, you know,

if that did happen, as terrible as that is, there's something kind of impressive about it.

Because like when Obama promised to close down Guantanamo Bay, which he didn't after eight years, that seemed like a really difficult, outlandish thing to do, right?

Considering where we were as a country during the Bush administration.

And this man made the claim that he would jail his opponent.

And imagine if he actually did it on the first day.

Like, that is impressive.

I mean, we'd be fing as a country, and the peaceful transfer of power would very quickly end.

But man, that's a person who keeps their promises.

You got to admire that.

So you're saying

you would have respected Trump more had he

been arrested and jailed.

I mean, he'd be despicable.

I would hate him.

But there's like, you know what?

You said all this shit during the campaign.

You actually followed through.

At least he's not a phony.

I thought he's a con artist the whole time.

And now I'm like, no, you are just a fing maniac.

But

you're a genuine maniac.

An honest, law-abiding maniac.

Right, right.

Reverend Wayne T.

Jackson, who gave the third of the prayers, he said he prayed that Trump would be given the wisdom of Solomon, the vision of Joseph, and the meekness of Christ.

I mean, that's

meekness and Donald Trump do not seem to go.

I mean, for a start, meekness is not necessarily a quality you want

as a president.

I mean, maybe Trump swung slightly too far the other way.

The wisdom of Solomon, clearly that's not going to happen.

But Jackson previously has said about Trump, Donald Trump is an example of someone who has been blessed by God.

Look at his homes, businesses, his wife, and his jet.

You don't get those things unless you have the favor of God.

Now, that is a radical interpretation of the doctrine of Christianity.

But even as a Jew, I think, oh, hang on.

Oh, hang.

Someone has defaced your Bible, my friend.

A jet?

Did God

promise them the jets?

I thought what was one of the most impressive things was Barack Obama, whose face looked to me throughout like the absolute definition of heartbreak, managing to go a full half hour plus from the start of Trump's speech to him getting in the helicopter and fleeing without shouting at any one point the words,

alert!

Extraordinary restraint from Obama.

You have to admire that.

It didn't last long, though.

We have the transcripts, Hari, from the conversation the Obamas had in the helicopter as they flew away from Washington.

Shit.

Fing hell, Michelle.

Did that actually happen?

Kabaza, I think it did.

Shit.

He's even more of a yes.

Yep.

He is.

Can I play golf tomorrow?

Yes, you can play golf every day now.

Yeah, thanks for rubbing that in.

So, uh, tough times for the Obamas.

That That was, I mean, there were some, there were some awkward faces in the background during that speech.

Some very,

very awkward faces.

Oh, yeah.

And I would have loved to have seen the face on the Abraham Lincoln statue at the other end of the mall.

Whether it was started mouthing

the first F, for sake, again.

Or stop touching my Bible.

Now, I asked for some questions for an inauguration Q ⁇ A and various of you got in touch via Twitter and

Facebook.

This came from at Schraup, who asked us, Harry, how much cheese did I eat to dream this?

I mean,

to me, that's an industrial quantity of some deeply, deeply unpasteurized, probably cave-matured Spanish blue stuff.

I mean, really, combat cheese has gone into this level of

American nightmare, I think, if you're on the non-Trump side of the political seesaw.

Or it could have been American cheese with the plastic still on it.

Well, that's all you'll

be allowed to eat, of course.

Won't have any of this foreign cheese muck.

Be all American cheese for American mouths.

This came in from Daffrankland.

Sorry, at Dafrankland.

I've got to use the at.

It says, a question for Hari Kondabolu.

How should England remedy their lack of wicket-taking bowlers in subcontinental conditions?

Oh.

Well, I would go old school and try to recolonize India.

I feel like that kind of suppression will allow you to control the conditions which you will play.

Perhaps you will only play in England.

Perhaps

you will change some of the rules, which you could do again as a colonial power.

So

at

Lofwirian asks, is the inauguration proof that time travel does not work?

Huh.

I don't know.

Maybe it's proof that it does work and that the future has come back to play a prank on us.

It's just pissed off with us for leaving it in such a mess.

And that, you know, Trump is, it wouldn't, it would explain it, actually.

Well, especially if you had a bunch of voters who were

from the future who don't like the future of the country, Trump gets a time machine, brings them to America to vote for him, and that would explain the margins of some of those key states.

Or the other way it could have worked was the suppression of minority voters.

But also it could have been the time travel thing.

Maybe Trump's the better option and in this in the original reality Rick Santorum has just been made president.

Do come and see my tour shows that begin on the 2nd of February.

Details at andysawsome.co.uk and I'll start shamelessly tweeting the gigs.

Hari, any shows to plug?

Yes, there are shows to plug.

I'll be in Atlanta, Georgia, February 17th, Asheville, North Carolina, February 18th, Madison, Wisconsin at the end of April, and

New York at Caroline's in

early May.

So I'm around.

There are tickets to buy.

It's all on my website, google.com.

Search Hari Kundabolu or Harry or Harry Comedian.

There's a whole bunch of words that will somehow get you to me.

I promise, next time I get you on the show, there will not have been something involving Donald Trump being elected as American president.

You know, it'll be distant history by then.

Wait, so are we going back into the past?

Is that how we're going to avoid talking about it?

We're going to do the show from news from a year ago or two or three years ago.

I actually would do that.

Just pretend that none of this happened.

And we are just starting to hear about the Trump candidacy.

And we can mock it.

We can pretend that it will never happen.

I mean, why don't we do that?

Let's live in the past, Andy.

Well, if that does seem to be the way that politics is going, so maybe we should just surf along with that.

Before we go, I have a special inauguration commemorative two-clue presidential cryptic crossword for you.

Two simple clues, one across and one down.

They interlock around the sixth letter of one across, and the sixth letter of one down, in fact.

And one across is this.

It's two words of six and five letters in length.

I don't know if you can guess it is.

And the clue is, obviously perverted new White House resident goes for some sodomy, switches O for A, gets between two large breasts.

That's the start, then more R's.

Six.

Six letters and five letters.

And one down,

nine letters long.

American leader confused after getting the fourth and fifth prostitutes to get mixed up with endless dirty peas.

So there you go, there's your two clue cryptic crosswords

to commemorate this historic moment in the advance of civilization, dignity, and human discourse.

I'll be back next week with Nish Kumar.

In the country, briefly, in between bits of globetrotting.

Do keep sending your emails in to hellobuglers at thebuglepodcast.com we've got a new website as well haven't we yes yes uh

it's all happening um yeah i'm gonna do you know what it is

what's it called what the url is the thebuglepodcast.com there we go so that's the key part of uh vlogging something isn't it um do keep listening to the bugle and all other podcasts on the wonderful radiotopia network of which we're now a part enjoy the next four stroke eight years buglers

it won't last i mean that's less than eight years, Harry, now, until Trump is definitely not president.

Less than eight years.

Oh, that's great.

I would suggest stocking up on water, canned goods, batteries, flashlights, anything you can get over the next couple of weeks, just in case.

Happy times.

Thank you for listening, buglers.

Goodbye.

Hi, Buglers.

It's producer Chris here.

I 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.