Bugle 4004 – ZERO DT

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello, buglers!

It will all be fine.

It'll all be fine.

Just have a nice, relaxing cup of tea.

Look at a pretty flower.

Think about a nice relaxing game of tennis.

Eat a sweet, soothing banana.

Stroke a bench.

Smell a clean puddle.

Huddle a bus stop or a lamppost.

There, there.

It's all fine.

The world is fine.

The headlines today.

World shits itself.

International Opportunist Lunatic Tycoon Association, Hale's greatest ever victory.

Thing thought to have had a 15-20% chance of happening happens.

Experts say no one could have envisaged this.

Clinton lawyer buys massive yacht.

Republican Party attempts CPR on Lincoln Corpse.

Federation for the Rights of White Men, Hale's biggest historical breakthrough in white male political power since about five minutes ago.

Trump eats live squirrel, belches, then says he's looking forward to taking care of the squirrel and that he's always wanted wanted a squirrel for a pet, whilst flossing his teeth with squirrel's tail.

All four jaws fall off Mount Rushmore.

England score 500 in a cricket match in India.

Media and political elite told it is out of touch by other bits of media and political elite.

Gary Johnson says, yay, I got bronze.

World shits itself again.

Here's Ian with the weather.

Yes, hello buglers and welcome to issue 4004 of the Bugle audio newspaper for a visual world.

If you are listening to this, then clearly things have not yet gone as badly as some people predicted they would.

See, I told you it's all fine.

I'm Andy Zaltzman live in London, the future capital of California, and joining me from the

United States of America in New York City, this city that never sleeps, certainly not at the moment, it's too busy having a fist fight with itself.

It's a man who I imagine is not in the top 50 million Trump fans in the USA.

It's Hari Kondabolu.

Hello, Andy.

Hello.

I believe our nation is now referred to as States of America.

Even that is pushing it a bit, isn't it?

What happened?

You know what it feels like, Andy?

It feels like my nation broke up with me.

Right.

And

you could see that the relationship was rocky the whole time, but you didn't think it was going to end.

Not like this.

Not for him.

The whole thing is, oh.

I walked outside.

I walked outside my apartment in Brooklyn the day after it happened, and it's usually very bustling and kids, and nothing.

It was the eeriest thing.

It was nothing.

I mean, I didn't see tumbleweed because that'd be a bit much, but like it was, it was, it was nothing.

It was just eerie silence.

Right.

How are you doing?

Well, I mean, I'm very pleased pleased that The Atlantic exists.

That's for sure.

I mean, your tone of voice says more than a thousand op-ed pieces ever could, frankly.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Who elects Lex Luther as president?

Who thought that was a good idea?

Who was watching Superman and thought Superman was the villain?

Yeah, that's

a very strong way of putting it.

Anyway,

we'll get on to more on this,

what does look like probably being being our top story this week.

Bugle 4004, this is for the week beginning Monday, the 5th of Trumpuary in the year 0 DT, or in the old dating system, Monday, the 14th of November, 2016.

Amazing to think.

It is exactly 20,000 years to the day since a bird in what is now France ate a worm causing the death of that worm.

It's 225 years since Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart wrote his little-known blues classic, I feel shit.

I reckon I've only got about three weeks to live.

Rather prophetic number.

And 80 years since the launch in 1936 of the first ever John Lewis department store Christmas TV advertisement.

It is Christmas soon, so why not buy something for someone?

That is all.

Has the world moved on or gone backwards?

As always, a section of The Bugle is going straight in the bin this week, a clickbait section to mark the UN International Intrusive Marketing and Online Exploitation Day, including including a lecture from Professor Graffin Dredge from the Massachusetts Institutes of Pointless Curiosity entitled, You Won't Believe What I'm Going to Tell You About Why Clickbait Works.

We also have bits of clickbait conversation, phrases for you to say aloud in public spaces to get people to talk to and or look at you, including, hey, here are 15 reasons why people are using their tables this year.

B, want to know something really weird?

Well, I'm going to tell you something mildly interesting.

And C, my penis is bigger than it used to be, and all I used was a pencil sharpener and a liter of kerosene.

So, throw those into conversation and see what happens.

And we have our own audio clickbait, including 46 descriptions of pretty women who don't realize they're being described.

Ever wondered why everybody from the 1840s is dead?

Celebrities who sound so different now to how they sounded as children, and 25 things professional golfers have in common with Hitler.

That section in the bin.

Top story this week, and well, as we have touched on already, it is the 2016 US presidential election, or to give it its now official title, What the Unholy f just happened?

I don't know quite how you are processing this

motherload of electoralism, Hari.

I mean, personally, I was trying to watch England play a test match in India whilst this was unfolding.

And for the first time in my life, I found it really quite hard to concentrate on the cricket.

I mean,

that puts it in context.

It was four in the morning, and, you know,

I could barely even concentrate on Alastair Cook batting as if he was a hardcore Hillary Clinton fan.

It was not an easy morning for Cook.

So what, I mean, you mentioned the icy coldness of the streets of Brooklyn.

Had you, I mean, had you considered this was

even

a vague possibility?

Because every time I thought of it, I thought, no, I know we had Brexit,

but

this is, as Trump himself said, this is Brexit plus, plus, plus.

Surely, surely America can't do the same.

But

I mean, what went wrong?

It's been basically an 18-month viral mutation of democracy that appears to have infected the

entire voting system of America.

I mean, first of all,

maybe I vaguely imagine this.

And what would happen when I went down that path and I imagined the possibility of a President Trump, I thought to myself, Hurry, you just have so much imagination for the day.

Why waste it on something that will definitely not happen?

So many people in this country drank the Trump Kool-Aid that I'm wondering if that Trump Kool-Aid was mixed into the water supply.

Because there's no other logical way that they could vote for this human being.

Right.

Oh, wait.

Racism.

Racism.

Oh, right.

That's...

I forgot about the racism.

The election results also give us statistical proof of how racist our country is.

We now have the numbers.

Right.

So

it's 47% racist.

Is that essentially what you're saying?

Wasn't it?

It's more like 49%, wasn't it?

I don't know.

It depends

how Gary Johnson's fans are fitting into that

into that spectrum.

Great.

I mean, the extraordinary thing is that,

and we haven't really fully told our listeners the story.

So, for anyone who's missed the news, the winner

on Tuesday and new president-elect of the States of America is, spoiler alert, the undisputed Beethoven of bigotry, the Michelangelo of misogyny, the Pablo Picasso of parochial prejudice, the Homer of hate-mongering, the Vincent van Gogh of the vindictive, the Daniel Defoe of divisive demagoguery, the Shakespeare of shit stirring.

I think I've made the point.

Oh, there's another one coming.

The Carly Ray Jepson of Crackpot Reactionary Jive.

Jepson belongs in that list.

I stand by that.

And the amazing thing is, he did everything within his power to make himself as unelectable as possible.

He gave a performance of Nadia Comanek style perfection in his How to Do Everything to Lose an Election routine, but

it wasn't enough.

How much of this do you think came down to the fact that the one thing he was unable to do anything about in his admirable quest to do everything not to become president and make himself unelectable was the fact that he was up against Hillary Clinton.

That that seemed to be

the one obstacle Trump could never fully overcome.

Yeah, I mean, I think

it was hard for him to lose when Hillary Clinton

is seen as so unlikable.

A lot of that has to do with sexism.

Much of that has to do with sexism and also racism of hating Barack Obama for eight years.

And part of me wonders if there's a percentage of people that don't understand how to vote.

Like, do they think they punch out all the holes except

the one they want elected?

Is there maybe,

I've been trying to figure out other explanations for this, or did people just show up and urinate on the ballot and hand it in and people knew that was a Trump vote?

Like, how,

I don't know how else this could have happened other than

that.

I mean, it just, you you know look certainly hillary clinton's um

you know her her record is a bit spotty and the reason for that is that she's been in politics for for several decades so that's what happens when you're in politics for several decades

so bad things happen during that time and i think trump was able to exploit that as well as a

as well as a very fascinating uh method of uh of explaining things to people which is saying nothing, but repeating it over and over and over again until it sticks.

Right.

And

this does seem to be the future.

This is my deep concern with this, is this appears to be the future of democracy.

And we've seen Trump bragging about sexual assault, but maybe that's not going to be enough in future elections.

People are going to have to take it further.

They're going to be candidates in 2024 or 2028 deliberately leaking footage of themselves saying, yeah, ice picked to the back of the head.

You should have seen his face.

Oh, my God.

It's a tough time for me to do that.

I'm trying to come up with words, Andy.

I mean,

I'm seeing how this could potentially, I mean, I know you dealt with Brexit, but it almost feels like I would want

a Al Murray-type figure.

I would want somebody who everybody voted for

because they thought he was the pub landlord and then gets elected.

And it's like, no,

it's Oxford-educated Al Murray.

So you're saying you hope Trump is just a character act.

Yes, yeah.

I mean,

that would be ideal.

I would like him to rip off his face on the opening

of the inauguration.

I want him to go his face during the inauguration, and I want Andy Kaufman to appear.

I think, I mean, that would be great for TV ratings.

Just the ripping off the face alone, I think.

It's still, I still don't fully understand from Hillary Clinton's point of view.

And clearly,

there were some off-puttingly tumescent question marks, not just hovering over her head, but fully roosting in her hair.

But it still does not completely explain why, too, it seems millions and millions and millions of Americans Hillary Clinton was not so much a viable potential president as the spawn of BLZ,

the source of all evil, the de facto Mrs.

O.

Bin Laden, a card-carrying Campbell who wants to eat your children like a hot dog and charge you for the ketchup, the self-styled woman responsible for the eruption of Mount St.

Helens in 1918 and the Wall Street crash of 1929, Lenin's new girlfriend.

I mean, it's hard, it's hard to that, and I guess that explains why, you know, as they keep saying with democracy, the people have spoken.

This is the will of the people.

But the thing is, in democracy, when the the people speak, it is largely incomprehensible.

And looking at the results, what the people of America have essentially said is, we very, very, very marginally prefer Hillary, but without any real conviction and in a geographically unhelpful way.

So that's...

These are strange times.

And it is hard to escape the sensation that America, what America's essentially done, Hari, is vote for a Halloween pumpkin.

Orange, scary, hollow on the inside.

Actually, that's a bit unfair on the pumpkin.

Halloween pumpkins do often have at least a flicker of light.

Andy, I'll say that your analysis is very astute, but it is not making me feel better.

Oh, sorry.

I didn't realise that wasn't come to see me as some kind of doctor or shrink.

There are protests now.

The anti-Trump protests in New York and many other...

many other cities.

Have you joined in with Lady Gaga and

the rest?

Well, yesterday I was on Madison Avenue around 36, 35th Street, and I saw an incredible

rally of young people marching in the street, stopping traffic.

I didn't see an end in sight to these young people walking towards the Trump Tower, demanding justice.

And it was a beautiful sight.

And I saw it and

walked in the opposite direction because I had to get to a podcast.

but I spiritually never left them.

My soul was there.

Right.

And was carried.

There is a certain irony in these protests in this democracy-loving country, people refusing to accept the results of the election.

The results of an election whose results were threatened not to be accepted by the man whose acceptance of those results is now being protested by people not accepting the results.

This is democracy really disappearing extremely fast up its own arse.

Harry, are there any positives that you can take from this as an American of a non-Trumpian persuasion?

Yes, before I just want to tell you the most devastating quote that I...

Is that okay if I just the most devastating quote that I this show is all about devastating quotes.

The quote that hurt me the most was maybe America is not ready for democracy.

Do you know who said that, Andy?

Do you know who said

Oh, dunno.

The nation of Iraq.

The nation of Iraq said that.

That was one of the things about his acceptance speech.

He has that maneuver with his hand when he's speaking, as if he has spent his entire life from the age of four pulling the legs off spiders.

Oh, man.

Any other positives to

straws to clutch at?

I mean, statistically,

let's try and be objective about this.

Sure.

Statistically, 83% of worst-case scenarios never actually happen.

I mean, that does leave ample space for very bad case scenarios that could only be slightly worse than the worst case scenarios.

But still, that's, you know, that's eight.

I mean, I've made up that statistic, but it can't be that far off.

Yeah, but it wasn't very comforting either, considering the worst case scenario was Donald Trump being elected, and that happened.

So at this point, the idea of another worst case scenario happening repeatedly

seems very possible at this point.

Well, so you're saying that the worst is over, so it's all uphill from here.

That is a very optimistic thing.

And no, I was not saying that.

Not at all.

All right, okay.

Other positives.

Alec Baldwin will be on Saturday Night Live more doing depression of Donald Trump.

People like Alec Baldwin.

That's good.

End of the world.

End of the world.

You know,

maybe it's not the ideal solution, but it's a positive.

It ends all of human suffering by ending all of humans.

And that's a positive.

Oh, t-shirt sales.

I'm sure t-shirt sales, anti-Trump t-shirt sales will go up.

That will only be good if they are manufactured in Michigan, as Trump promised.

Oh,

yeah, good point.

Yep.

I mean, you might get a nice, a really nice mural

on the big wall with Mexico.

I mean, that's...

That's something to look forward to.

A bit of wall art.

Also, I mean, I might be looking at this from a slightly selfish point of view, but

it has, it's not since 1980 has a Republican president won an election and the England cricket team then gone on to lose its winter test match series.

You know, in

84, Reagan was re-elected.

England beat India.

1988, George W.

Bush, sorry, George Bush Sr.,

he was elected.

England then withdrew from tour to India.

1920, George W.

bush's uh win and i i use that word in the you know loosest sense england went and beat pakistan and sri lanka and 2004 when bush uh bush won uh again

england beat south africa so we're just touring india at the moment so i mean this is absolutely fantastic news for english cricket which surely has to take take priority over

you funny none of the uh the papers here had that uh on the front covers that's strange.

It's almost, well,

that's the liberal media, isn't it?

Not telling the true story again, isn't it?

Spin it their own way.

They can't handle the truth.

I'm sorry.

Periodically, I just might make that sound.

It's not you, it's just, you know, everything.

Right.

If the U.S.

was another country

and

they elected a man like Donald Trump, people would be calling for foreign military intervention.

Like they would be discussing what is the best way to invade America.

Right.

And it's the northern border.

It's definitely the northern border, I would say.

Who do you blame?

I mean, one of

the best things to do after a vote like this, and you said earlier on that, you know, I've dealt with Brexit, or we as a nation have dealt with Brexit.

Let me just confirm that neither I personally nor Britain as a nation has even come close to dealing with Brexit.

That is,

we've experienced the initial thrashings of Brexit.

Dealing with it is something that is going to take many decades.

But you've got to find someone to blame, Harry.

That is a way to psychologically deal with these things.

I mean, who are you pinning the finger of blame onto, the severed finger of blame?

Whose eye are you nailing that into?

Well, first of all, there's a lot of people who have been blamed, right?

Certainly,

the cable news has blamed the Green Party partially,

Libertarian Party and the Green Party.

Their 1%

apparently

led to Donald Trump's victory.

I'll tell you who I blame.

I blame Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Really?

For his

famous quote, we have nothing to fear but fear itself, as quoted by Hillary Clinton in

her convention speech earlier in the year.

We have nothing to fear but fear itself.

And that was Roosevelt laying down quite how effective fear itself could potentially be as a campaign tool.

And he really laid the ground for the amazing fear-mongering industry that has grown up around electoral politics in America ever since.

So

I blame FDR.

It's his fault.

I didn't know that Donald Trump was the fear itself.

I knew what he was talking about.

I mean, he's the embodiment of fear, isn't he?

A number of things were said in Mr.

Trump's acceptance speech.

And he did give, I mean, some crazy things have been said since.

I mean, people have compared it with Brexit and said the world did not fall off its axis when Brexit happened.

And

that's true.

But then again, all the dinosaurs didn't drop instantaneously dead when the asteroid hit either.

So let's not jump to conclusions.

And Trump did give a relatively gracious acceptance speech.

albeit one in which he did that weird pulling the legs off spiders thing with his hands.

And maybe this is a sign that, as many people have said, he will be a different person in office.

Well, my response to that is A, he probably won't be.

B, well, he might be.

But C, that does not make everything okay.

If anything, it makes it worse.

It is ladling another splodge of dishonest custard onto the 18-month crumble of power lies.

This is like praising a serial killer for making a nice cup of tea for the police when they finally catch him and keeping them well fed with a surprisingly serviceable homemade strawberry cake whilst they dig up his patio.

He has said to me, he He said some extraordinary things.

He began by saying, Hillary has worked long, very long and very hard over a long period of time.

We owe her a major debt of gratitude for her service to our country.

Now, wasn't a long period of time what Trump was recently saying she should be serving in jail?

And he continued by saying, I mean that very sincerely.

Hang on, Donald.

It is a well-known rule of language that anyone saying, I mean that, probably doesn't mean that.

Anyone saying, I mean that sincerely almost certainly doesn't mean it.

And someone saying I mean that very sincerely is congenitally incapable of sincerity.

He also said, now it is time for America to bind the wounds of division, which is, I mean, that was, that was truly spectacular.

That was like Brutus going up to Julius Caesar and saying, oh, Julius, you want to have that looked at?

Who would do so?

Look, I would.

I would bandage you myself with my tunic if it wasn't so covered in blood splatters.

Honestly.

Honestly.

And it doesn't sound like him at all.

All that victory speech says to us is that Donald Trump can read.

It's definitive now.

We've seen it.

He said, we will seek common ground, not hostility, partnership, not conflict.

I say it is time for us to come together as one united people.

Now, this can only be seen as a withering assault on everything Donald Trump has stood for, an evisceration of the politics that got him elected.

And what this has led to, I believe, is surely that now everyone in America is pissed off because, you know, he acted like a ct in the campaign.

People voted for a c.

He can't backtrack on it now.

He should have some respect for his electorate and continue being a c.

That is the only way he can justify this result.

And also, what it made me think that, you know, it was, you know, objectively, if you read it, you think, oh, that's a nice that is a nice conciliatory speech.

That is trying to build bridges over the lakes of division that he has personally dug and flooded himself.

But it also made you think: if he had made that speech before the election, or at the convention, or when he launched his campaign a year ago, or at any point since, he would have lost that election.

That is not what people wanted from Trump.

He would have lost very badly indeed.

I've got some positive news for you, Hari.

Yes.

So you mentioned this like Brexit,

but

if America has in the next couple of months what we've had over here for Brexit,

what you're going to get is Trump's going to stand down,

everyone around Trump is going to stand down,

and inexplicably, Tim Kaine is going to have to lead a Republican agenda for the next four years.

Oh my god.

How is that good news?

Well, it's not Trump.

When

I'd like to know, from

your perspective over there,

is this something that is just a source of mockery for the US?

Or do you, do you are you all also legitimately scared?

Well,

both.

Those two are not mutually exclusive.

I mean, if this planet is going to go down, it's going to go down laughing.

And well, it's interesting you should ask, actually, because we do have some exclusive footage of the global media coverage of the Trump victory.

This, firstly, from the Russian TV station Depravda.

This from the American financial radio station, Perspondulz FM.

Mike, what does this Trump victory mean economically?

Well, Bob, what this means is a return to everyone having everything they want and doing exactly the jobs they want for whatever wage they so choose to be paid for doing it.

Is that so, Mike?

It is, Bob, and if you disagree, you're gonna have to f off and get over it.

What does that mean?

I don't know, Bob, but America's great again, so it doesn't matter.

Details, schme tails.

And this from Canadian National Radio.

There is a duck loose on the road north out of Winnipeg this morning.

So do drive carefully if you are driving north out of Winnipeg.

Now, here's Celine Deion

again.

Andy, I find your access to such a broad range of media really incredible.

What do you mean, my accents?

Your access.

Oh, access.

All right, okay, good.

I'm glad you said that.

I find your accent when reading a

broad range of media very exciting.

No, no, I mean,

every time we've done this, which is one other time,

I've just been blown away by what you're able to find.

Yep.

Thank you.

I'll take that as a compliment.

It was clearly not intended for us.

But I think there are some legitimate questions to be asked.

I mean, how did this happen?

I guess it all started with the Big Bang, then the first fish climbing out of the sea, an unelected fish, I should point out, an elite, unelected fish.

Then the asteroid knocking out the dinosaurs.

Athenian democracy rising and then failing before it could sort itself out.

Columbus getting a bit inquisitive.

The War of Independence, John Logibed invented television.

And of course, the gradual marginalization of the working class as the forces of globalization and technology forced a more rapid change on humanity than we are evolutionarily able to cope with.

And

it's, I guess, Trump's

calls to arms did seem to resonate.

His slogans like, make America great again,

or so, if I haven't thought this through, then you don't have to either.

I'm not hurt.

That was particularly effective for him.

Hate, the fun, free, and fast-acting alternative to thoughts.

That really hit home.

Slogan he unveiled last week, all other humans are shit.

That really seemed to get the voters out.

And of course, pussy grabbers of America unite.

That was a very potent.

potent sloganeering from the uh Trump campaign.

But it does seem that he connected more effectively than

the other candidates.

He also disconnected more effectively, but

that's beside the point.

Bernie Sanders said this after the election.

He said, people are tired of working longer hours for lower wages, of seeing decent paying jobs go to China and other low-wage countries, of billionaires not paying any federal income taxes and of not being able to afford a college education for their kids, all while the rich become very much richer.

And I guess...

Oh, this is a fair point.

America's working class, beaten down by the rapacious practicalities of global capitalism and its penchants for money-saving immigrant labor, damaged by the trickle-down injustices of high-level tax evasion, have finally found a man to represent them against these immovable forces of the modern economic world.

And that man is a rapacious capitalist and proud tax avoider with an impressively shameless track record of employing cheap foreign labor of questionable legality.

As the old saying goes, keep your friends close and elect your enemies to the highest possible office.

If this is the problem, then Trump is a f ⁇ ing weird solution.

It's basically voting for the very embodiment of the thing people are protesting about.

I mean, to be honest, I'm not sure there is any problem to which making Donald Trump president is the solution, unless the problem is how do you stop Donald Trump complaining about the election process being rigged.

It's like trying to eradicate bubonic plague by hiring a battalion of unusually flea-ridden rats.

Or if you're a chamber music fan, trying to cope with a new neighbor who's moved in who loves jazz, who started playing their Dave Brubeck records a bit too loudly, by hiring the band Megadeth to play live in your living room for four years.

Yet, Donald Trump chose a very interesting way to win this election.

He apparently chose the George Costanza approach, which is to do everything in your power to lose, and somehow you win.

So, Seinfeld, still relevant all these years.

It does seem, though, Hari, that

the key demographic in this election was white males.

And I do think, speaking as a white male it was about time our voice was heard in mainstream politics.

I think we should probably wrap up our election coverage there and

a lot of people have actually sent in requests of try and deal with it through the medium of puns and

well I'm not sure whether you know whether that's that's that's feasible some people ask for puns about the some of the candidates, some about Trump himself and his his own personal character trait.

Well I'm not gonna either of it.

I mean,

I'm going to just do a heartfelt look back on the campaign because, and I'm going to be pillaried for this.

But at one point,

I really thought,

quite early on, I thought Trump was going to cruise to victory.

And people are getting very angry.

A friend of mine is protesting.

He's protesting by setting fire to his shoes.

He burnt his sandals.

But that didn't work.

And, you know, all the sexual revelations, nothing could damage him.

He'd have have sex with anything, Trump.

Women, animals, furniture, insects.

I think he'd even pull his pants down and for hack a bee.

Oh, God.

But he wouldn't be ginger with it.

That is appalling.

He did apologise to one of the women involved.

He admitted he acted like a prick santur massive bunch of flowers.

But I think it's time to accept it.

Wake up, America.

Rube your eyes and look to the future.

And at least...

you know, the tide has turned.

2020 will be different.

Might be hostility at Trump's rallies in 2020.

He could be in a little stadium with his son, Eric.

Suddenly the crowd's going to turn against him.

He's going to have to flee.

Get in the car, son, I'll say.

Get in the Carli Arena.

Carl at Carleaf Arena.

Get in the Carlevi Arena.

I mean, I think that was technically quite good.

Anyway, but everyone needs to relax.

I need a decent brew, a hot cup of English breakfast with its clean, clean flavour, a crisp, crisp tea.

But it got me thinking about what kind of man Trump is, Hari, what his character is, his deep-seated personality traits.

I was concentrating so hard I'd lost my way on

the way to the recording.

I had to get walking directions on Google Maps.

It's amazing.

You can set it to give you directions as a pedestrian.

It shows your path.

Shows your path.

Shows your path.

So

to the spot you want to get to.

But I reckon Trump was probably obsessive as a kid.

Probably must have played board games.

I found myself thinking, I wonder what board games he played.

I reckon he came down to a choice of five.

Was he A, Scrabble fan, B, risk enthusiast, C, chess addict, D, Cluedo devotee, or E, go maniac?

And more importantly,

it made me think,

you know, what drugs are all these Republican voters taking to make them support Trump?

The works, I reckon.

Crack, pot.

But not all the Trump family is that bad.

I mean, his female sibling is lovely.

She's narcissist.

Narcissist.

No?

Can we create?

You just look at me confused now.

This is quite a high tariff pun run.

It's still happening.

Nearly.

Okay, well, we'll finish it now.

Because Trump, you know, he's got issues with anger, clearly.

Sometimes he's so busy that he gets an itchy rash between the digits of his feet, which he finds can be cleared up with a powder, the kind of thing parents use on babies.

He has a special formulation made to treat his foot problem, but he often loses it, and then he suddenly has to look for it and go on a totalc hunt.

Total cunt.

I mean, that was worth the effort, wasn't it?

Was that not worth the effort?

Did it go on too long?

It's not getting bleeped.

I think I stopped breathing in the middle of it.

Okay.

You'll learn, Harry.

You will learn.

Other Other news now, and well America has not just been ruffling its own feathers, it's been ruffling Italian culinary feathers as well.

McDonald's, the celebrity fast food chain, is suing the city of Florence in Italy for $18 million

after it was prevented from opening a

quotes restaurant in one of the famous

squares in Florence, the Piazza del Duomo, an architectural marvel.

And

this is a truly extraordinary,

extraordinary.

For a start, I mean, have some fing self-awareness, Ronald.

I mean, have you been to Florence?

It would take a hard-hearted, brick-headed clown not to think, you know what?

I'm not needed here.

They have food.

They have better food than I can give them.

The Piazza del Duomo needs no architectural adornment from the golden arches.

I'm going to move on.

Maybe they'll build a 600-meter-high McDonald's in Dubai or something.

There was no need for this.

No need, Hari.

I mean, it was very much a Trump move.

Like, they said no,

so

Florence said no, so McDonald's said they will sue.

That is a Trump move.

That's what you do when you don't get what you want.

If McDonald's could, they would put ads in the Bible.

If McDonald's had the choice, there would be McDonald's at cemeteries, in the cardiology departments of hospitals, in confession booths.

They would open a McDonald's in a Burger King.

There is no shame here.

I mean, this is...

There will be one in the White House come January the 21st, surely.

Yes, and slot machines.

McDonald's claim they were discriminated against.

And I guess when you think of it in those terms, the courts must stand up for the victims of any form of discrimination.

And multi-billion dollar global fast food mega-brands operating on the very edge of edibility are the last persecuted minority.

They need legal systems, Italian or otherwise, to look after them.

And frankly, also, if the Italian legal system is preventing you doing something, then frankly, well, you need to have a word with your accountants or you are doing something very,

very wrong indeed.

Do you know the recent killer clown craze started from

Ronald MacDonald?

Is there in the first, well, the first 25 years of MacDonald's existence, he personally slaughtered every single animal himself?

Your questions now.

And well, I haven't quite got around to setting up the email.

I promise I would set it up by

this week.

I will try and set it up by next week.

I promise I will try to set it up.

I'm not saying I will set it up, but I promise I'll try and maybe will.

Michael Boyd asks, hey, Andy, I'd love you to do the whole bugle without once mentioning the U.S.

presidential election.

The bugle is my escape.

Can you please do that?

Sorry, I got to that slightly too late in this show.

Just very slightly too late.

Thanks, those of you who did send in queries.

The email address will be functioning within

a couple of years?

Sooner, hopefully.

Hopefully within a week or so.

Anyway, time to move on from that.

Well, if you're looking for something to buy for people for Christmas, can I recommend tickets to Andy Zaltzmann 2016 The Certifiable History?

That is my world exclusive look back at the year at the Soho Theater from the 20th to the 23rd and 28th to 30th of December and the 3rd to 7th of January of 2017.

That's 2016, the certifiable history, when I will attempt to bag and label everything that has happened in the world this year.

Harry, have you got any gigs to plug?

I do have gigs to plug.

I'll be doing my first post-election gig in Boston at the Wilbur Theater on November 12th.

So, you know, we'll hug it up, we'll cry together, and

maybe jokes.

Bloomington, Indiana, November 17th to 19th, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, November 20th.

And at the end of the month, going into December, we'll do a West Coast run from Portland, Oregon, on November 30th, Seattle, Washington, December 5 through 7, Vancouver, December 3rd.

And again, and we'll head to the south if I'm still alive by the end of the month.

So go to hurrykundabolu.com or Google to find out

where I will be and how to buy tickets.

It's got the Lewis Clark expedition all over again, isn't isn't it?

It's time to

put democracy back in its box for at least 24 hours until the 2020 campaign begins.

Are you going to run, Hurry?

I mean, we've seen that basically anyone can become president.

You're in showbiz like Mr.

Trump.

I don't even run in real life.

I can't even imagine wanting to do that for office.

Run, because there's two meanings of run in that.

Yeah, no, I saw what you did there.

So I enjoyed the linguistic gymnastics that went into that.

Much appreciated at this late stage of the show.

Just one piece of advice for any listeners who are coming to the US in the next couple of months or perhaps

are deciding to stick around the U.S.

and are planning to maybe make a trip to New York, I would suggest going to see the Statue of Liberty, if you can, because within, I'm assuming by the time Trump takes office, she will be deported back to France.

Minus underwear, I would assume.

And man, does she have some fine underwear.

So that's it.

Bugle 4004, the first bugle of the post.

Donald Trump has never yet been elected world's most powerful person era of humanity, which has just supplanted the Anthropocene era, I believe.

And remember, buglers.

It will all be fine.

Don't worry.

It will all be fine, possibly, depending on who and where you are and what your definition of fine is and whether by all you mean not all.

It's just been a storm in a teacup, admittedly a storm that has seen the democratic process and the concept of human dignity capsized and buffeted to within an inch of their lives and in a teacup that is the world's most powerful nation.

That is a big teacup.

A big, big teacup and we're all now going to be forced to drink that bitter, bitter tea for four years, that potentially poisonous tea, but still just a storm.

in a teacup.

And look, the markets, the economic markets have been quite stable for the last few hours.

That proves that everything is going to be okay economically and socially on a national and global level for the next four, sorry, eight years.

And yes, that shattering sound you can hear, that's not the sound of the glass ceiling being smashed to pieces.

It was the sound of Vladimir Putin high-fiving himself in his own mirror.

But there's no point crying over spilt milk.

Even if that milk is spiked with arsenic and it's been spilt directly into your mouth before someone forcibly holds your lips together and shouts, It's democracy in action.

If you don't like it, why don't you f off to North Korea?

It will all be fine.

From me, Andy's ultimate in London.

Goodbye.

And from Hari Kondomolu in New York.

It's so bad.

It's all just so bad.

Goodbye.

Bye.

The Bugle is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, made possible with great support from our founding sponsors, the Knight Foundation and MailChimp, celebrating creativity, chaos, and teamwork.

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.