It's 7 o'clock. Do you know where your freedom is?
Welcome to another episode of the Psycho-Semanticast. This is what I guess I would call the preamble to the Dead Zone episode. I got Duncan McLeish and Bo Ransdell on board for this one, and, uh...
At the beginning, there was about an hour, hour and a half of political talk where we slightly referenced the movie. But much like the Starship Troopers episode, it sort of felt like its own sort of episode.
And that way we can split it up. And if you don't feel like just listening to political debate and you need to have the movie as part of it, then I hate saying this, but you...
You would want to skip this one and wait for the next one, which will be coming out in the next couple days or next week. They're both over an hour long, and they were both good fun. This one is this first half.
preamble is largely uh Duncan and Bo going back and forth uh I sort of kicked back and enjoyed myself listening to them sort of have some political tennis it was a good time and I didn't
need to cut much out and it yeah it just felt like like the starship troopers time that just just put it out so yeah we'll have a quick break with a promo or two and a song maybe and then we'll get into the preamble to the dead zone
Looking for something different in your podcast library? Then why not check out the podcast Under the Stairs? I'm the host Duncan McLeish and joining me each week will be a special guest as we examine some classic old school horror favourites.
as well as some modern classics.
That's not to say that we don't tackle some of the, let's say, more questionable entries into the horror genre. And if all that wasn't enough, we have a subset of shows called Baz V Horror, where our horror novice, the Baz, tackles horror in all shapes and forms.
to see who will come out victorious. So what are you waiting for? The show can be found at podcastunderthestairs.wordpress.com and on Stitcher and iTunes.
The podcast Under the Stairs is a proud member of Legion Podcasts Network. This is Duncan McLeish from Under the Stairs, signing off.
I've reached the top and had to stop and that's what's bothering me. I wanna be a man, man come, scroll right into town. Be just like the other men, I'm tired of monkeying around.
Oh, booby doo, I'm gonna be like you.
Like you. Now don't try to kid me, man cup. I'll make a deal with you. What I desire is man's red fire to make my dream come true. Now give me the secret, man cup. Come on!
Screw me what to do. Give me the power of that red flower so I can be like you. Oh, booby doo. I want to be like you. I want to walk like you. Talk like you.
Someone like me can learn to be like someone like you.
ridiculous that me, a gigantopithecus, would ever dream I'd like to team or the likes of few men come. But together we'd have powers or the jungle's treasure's ours.
But the dream my dream takes too So, ooo, ooo, ooo I wanna be like you, ooo, ooo I wanna use that flame just the same Like me.
sexy can you hear me oh yo we clive and nubby uh don't get me started on the fucking yanks i've had a drink
How's it going? I'm doing pretty well. Clinky clinky. How are you guys doing? I'm fantastic. I'll not be good tomorrow morning. I am so excited for this now.
yeah this is a bad idea i should have i should have committed one way or the other that's the plan but i didn't do it i thought i could have the best of both worlds yeah you wanna
Wanted to have your bell end and eat it too. By the way, that episode is fucking gold.
Someone needs to take that right now and put it in a museum and fucking preserve it because that shit is fucking gold. Oh, hey, while I've got you both here.
This is what he does, Darren. Oh! As if I hadn't planned this. Oh, it's just off the cuff. It's all planned. It's usually to extort my... Do not go into a pyramid scheme with Bo. The timeshare.
He's going to say, I've got this amazing opportunity for you both. Watch this. What's it, Bo? Have you heard the good news, Darren? No. The bombs are flying. Hallelujah. Hallelujah.
are we there we are ah the day the 30th the day of the state of the union um that's probably okay the union is the best it's the greatest state of the union ever
We have the biggest union. If you look around, you can't believe how big the union is. My union is bigger than any other union, but not like a workers' union because I'm against workers' union because I'm a capitalist.
It's a classy union. Not like the fake news would have you believe. Fake news, fake news. No collusion for the record. Collusion, China.
oh dude he here's the good news he might be about to go down he's not gonna go down you keep saying this he's not gonna go down this man is fucking he's a weeble wobble
Donald Trump has successfully exposed that your country has no teeth in taking down a president. Yeah, you're right. You're right. With ease. Whenever anyone says anything, it's like, I didn't say that. And they're like, well, maybe you didn't.
The problem is that everyone knows he did. Everyone knows it's a lie. And a lot of people...
Like, you know, a fair amount of the media, as well as most people you run into, are like, oh yeah, he's full of shit. And then the difference is, do you think he's full of shit, but okay? Or do you think he's full of shit and a nightmare?
and i come down on the nightmare side but there are a lot of people who are like oh he's a dirt bag but he's also cutting taxes and deregulating you know the like all the uh uh regulations levied on corporations to protect the environment are getting shit on and all that stuff you know
The new EPA deregulation happened today. Yeah. Yeah, I was reading about that earlier, yeah. Let me paint the picture for you. There's this very famous fairy tale about the emperor who has no clothes on.
In Donald Trump's world, Donald Trump walks out that building along the main street and everyone realizes that he isn't wearing any clothes and then they tell him that he's not wearing any clothes and he tells him that he is wearing clothes and no one says anything. Yeah, well, all he does is watch Fox News.
And have his, you know, Hope Hicks read him the good stories about him that day. So, yeah, I mean, he is in a self-imposed.
you know, isolation booth where it's nothing but a positive story. Yeah, but it's not self-employed. If you wanted to, if you, as a race, as a country, wanted to get rid of him... As a race.
as a race as a country if you guys wanted to get rid of him there are more than enough mechanisms and gears in place through what you've set up as your democracy to remove him
No one's prepared to pull a trigger. Yeah, well, the Democrats are too pussy to push the issue too much because they don't have any power and are afraid they won't get it if they push the issue. There's that one guy that votes for impeachment like every other week.
Right. Yeah. I mean, it's like repealing Obamacare where somebody comes out every couple of weeks. It's like impeach. And it's like, there are 12 of you in the house and there's like 4,000 Republicans. You can't do shit.
Bo might be exaggerating, but I like it, I like it, because that's what it feels like.
It's hyperbole to make a point, Duncan. For as little as they've gotten done, you kind of forget that they have the majority in the House, Senate, and the White House. That's your saving grace. Your saving grace is that guy's been in office for a year and has passed.
tax reform yeah a lot of executive orders have been damaging though yeah but a lot of these executive orders have been blocked and well
Yeah, but also him appointing a bunch of federal judges is bad news, too, because he appoints a bunch of fucking hee-haw outcasts. Yeah, but what have they done, actually? What have they done? Well, nothing yet, and you hope that, like, you know...
The problem is their lifetime appointments. Let me put it this way. In a different situation, if George W. Bush had been president with both the House and the Senate...
He got a whole war passed. What are you talking about? Yeah, but he got a whole war off the back of the worst fucking terrorism attack in your country's history. So you can kind of cut him a bit of slack, you know what I mean? In that...
The worst thing that could have possibly happened ever since the election of Donald Trump happened in your country and he's like that. These guys did it and everyone was like, yeah, let's bomb them. I kind of see that. I don't agree with it, but I kind of see it. What I'm saying to you is...
and that was the all that fucking intelligent stuff came from people that should be
for the most part trustworthy. What I'm saying to you is this dude has been in office for an entire year with both the House and the Senate and the best he's been able to pass.
through legislation he couldn't pass his health care shit which you would have thought everyone would have agreed with who were a public and it didn't oh yeah no mike pence could have gotten obamacare repealed
if he wanted to and the reason he didn't is because it was a shitty plan they replaced it with well but trump is just tripping over his own dick every time somebody asks him about health care doesn't know what he's doing right he this week
said he will literally sign like when the house and the senate agree on what your immigration your policy or whatever that is trump has basically said he will sign whatever's putting down in front of him right he will say that
Right. But the problem with that is that's what he says on, you know, Monday. Yeah. And then and then he says that and he goes back to the Oval Office and.
like Gollum Stephen Miller gets in his fucking head. We call him alt-right Gargamel over here.
he totally is where he like whispers in trump's ear and he's like no they're talking about brown people man you can't do that shit and then he'll be like you're right no more
Right, right, but what I'm going to say is, does that make Trump a fucking genius then? No, he's a moron. If he's a moron, you have nothing to fear about a moron.
Right. He can't pass whatever Stephen Miller tells him to do, he will not get through the House and Senate. Right, but he's a moron. Whatever the House and Senate want to do, it won't get past Stephen Miller. So ultimately what will happen is...
nothing really will change and to be honest with you if you can coast the status quo for the next three years there's worse positions to be in well let me just say
We're not Scotland, Duncan. Just because he's fucking up domestic policy, that ain't the big concern. The problem is...
That he's the guy who's the figurehead of the nation and has to meet with foreign leaders and has access to the button. There's a lot of talk about maybe we should change the rules so the president just can't do that.
yeah but that being said that's not a bad thing one man should not have the power of nuclear well of course not
But the point is that, yeah, he's been kind of shit at fucking up the country internally. Yeah, but we're literally going to talk about a movie. Externally has much more. We're literally going to talk about a movie where we're basically saying that the one...
one man should not have that power yeah well no i mean discussion that's not a bad thing that's why i've watched i've watched this movie so much recently
Because it is the story of Donald Trump, only there's a hero psychic to save the day. I'll put it this way. See, this is a weird journey I've been on.
i feel like i have taken this journey through the psycho semantic cast in the last year and then we'll tell you my first appearance on the show i was an ardent socialist and i still consider myself i come from a socialist country I...
Basically, I would say easily over 60% of Scotland believe in socialist values, universal healthcare. You don't pay for tuition in Scotland. You go to university at the cost of the state. These things are just...
values that we hold as being innate to all people that live within our country that's just taken for granted and as such i look at like when someone says oh yeah health insurance i'm like that sounds silly
But what is your tax rate? My tax rate is less in America. We discussed this with smoke. We worked this out.
I pay about comparable to what an American pays for tax. Well, but give me a percentage somewhere in the ballpark. You don't have to give me the exact numbers. I'm not trying to pry. I think I pay less than 20% of my salary goes to taxes. No shit.
Yeah, and see if I'm ill. Not that I want to depress you or anything like that, but I get... No, I'm always depressed. That's my secret. I'm always depressed. I get 36 days.
Leave in my country, if I'm ill at any time, the healthcare system...
in Scotland will take care of me at no cost at all. I don't pay for prescriptions so if I go to the hospital and they're like that, right you need to take this cancer medication for example, that's paid for. I don't ever have to front the cost of that at all.
If I wanted to go to university, that's paid for me. Yeah, I can't begin to describe the amount of benefits I have.
living in the country that i have yeah i i would have assumed the tax rate was closer to 30 than 20. no no no that's crazy
yeah so that's that's what i do i mean now now i am depressed if i earn more money i would pay obviously a higher rate of tax and there is a threshold is there a difference like here we call it
1099 but like if you do freelance work is that a different tax rate most likely if you're if you're earning above the
the rate so if i had like if i had two part-time jobs for example as long as it doesn't tip over what would be classed as the hours of a full-time job i would pay additional i would imagine but i have one full-time job but my wife earns considerably
a lot more than i am because she's better than me for sure i mean i mean swing a cat but that's a given that's a given um as she pees
a higher rate of tax but her higher rate of tax which is comparable to 40 doesn't kick in until she hits the threshold of what my rate of taxes so there's a there's i think it's 35 000.
pounds in the uk is the threshold before you jump up to 40 tax so up until 35 000 she pays the normal rate of tax and the eighth and above 35 000 she pays the additional rate so it is about i'm just thinking like
yeah okay all right so that would be substantially higher but but but it's not really though it's everything above 35 000 so if she earned 36 000 for example only 1 000 pound would be comparable for the 40 oh no shit like it's graduated that way exactly so it's locked up to that point smart
that's the way that's the way the uk works so and i'm not saying that we've got the greatest system at all fucking no but it may it makes logical sense that you're saying like hey here's kind of the median income so we're gonna keep the taxes reasonable now if you're making over that we're gonna
just take the overage and tax that a little bit more that makes perfect sense to me yeah you're gonna take what's above so that's oh so fucking smart why why don't we do that
That would solve so many problems. That's what we do over here. But what I'm seeing to you as an outsider who has went on a journey over the last year, essentially through Darren's show, of seeing this fucking monster be elected to your country.
And literally, you will not know, like, I went through the same journey as you guys. Like, when I woke up in the morning and my friends were sending me Facebook messages saying, Donald Trump is ahead.
In the States and everything like that, no. I went through exactly the same rollercoaster of what felt like despondence and depression that I imagine a lot of Americans did as well, in that it's the slow realisation that you don't have much in common with your fellow...
man like you know you think as a person who has friends and relatives and people you meet and all the rest that generally everyone has the same innate
responses to things the same fundamental decent values yes you you realize that people are willing to shell that out very very quickly for other things which
from your perspective as someone who doesn't believe in those things you just assume everyone else has and i went through it in my country through brexit when i was like that why would anyone in the uk not want to consider himself european and be at you know you have like
borders and all this and apparently in Scotland we all well the majority of us about two-thirds of us believe that but in the rest of the United Kingdom
no one fucking believed that and then waking up in the morning and realizing that that's the way we're going was fucking wholly depressed and i was like that well at least donald trump won't get in and then i woke up and donald trump got it and i was like that the world is
well that's literally the world is i do not belong in this world yeah i mean thank god le pen did not get elected in france that really would have felt like a kick in the balls just globally like fuck you progressives yeah as as bad as france says and
France is bad, by the way. Regardless what it's... France is not a country where everyone is... France has some serious race issues. Yeah, they've had... Battle of Algiers is...
it's my touchstone for that yeah yeah it's still fresh but as it stands just now when you look at that um you know that as bad as the french will ever get the french and germans
even though the Germans had like a surge in right wings they will never go down that road because second world war and that will always trump regardless what you put on the table oh well there's too many foreign people coming to our country second world war and that trumps anything
And as much as this will build at any point, it will never build too far. What I look at as being, like I say, my journey of doing podcasts on the Darren show. And I am still very much...
an ardent left-wing socialist with what I would now say is libertarian leanings and I will say that the greatest thing that's come out of Donald Trump's presidency in its first year is that people pay
much more attention than they were doing for the previous fucking 30 40 years on what exactly your president's doing how much power they actually have
and what it is they're doing and people are far more politically active politically motivated and vocal about stopping certain things i think if and this is that this is a testament to how your country works
Under any other system where people weren't pushing things and weren't being as politically motivated as they are, Donald Trump's first year would have been a fucking landslide for fucking horrible things to happen to your country. And that being said...
very little that is hugely damaging well it actually happened there has actually been a weird net positive
In that there are demonstrations like there haven't been in this country since the 60s. Yep. There are women and... black people and muslims and trans people like running for office now as a pushback against that idea and uh you know it's the obama misquote uh
the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice and i i i do believe that i think i think you have to as as someone that's sitting speaking to someone who recently
described himself on a morbid Monday as someone that grew up listening to in the 90s slightly more angsty sort of music and a guy who played in a fucking punk band I don't need to tell you that the times that these things are more important are at times of turmoil.
That's when your voice comes out, whether it's in cinema or in music. When you are in a time of comfort and complacency, these things don't mean fuck all. People sitting there railing against the system means nothing when everyone's happy.
it's when things go bad that the the spotlight is shown on what is wrong what doesn't work and what should be fixed and that's how things go and donald trump is yeah he's probably the worst president you
ever had and he probably will be the worst president that you will ever have for a long, long time.
Is he the most dangerous person that you've ever had elected to office? I don't see it. And the reason I don't see it is because he's proved in his first year he is totally inept. Actually, see if that guy was actually clever and motivated.
You'd be fucked. But he's not.
There are enough stories coming out of the White House because that is a leaky fucking shit. Very leaky. Which is great because it keeps us all in the know. But it's horrible because it keeps us all in the know.
If it was a soup, it'd be called cock-a-week-y. See what I did there. Kind of. Boo, bo, boo. But...
I do think that if he stood up and said, like, you know, we're going to have the biggest, the classiest nuclear war anyone ever saw on the Korean Peninsula, let's launch them, boys. You know, like the...
you know greg stilson hallelujah i think i think there are people around him that would be like we cannot do that you're a doddering old man yeah sit down
will give me that you know that despite the power of his position i think someone would say no let me put it this way i think if he did that he'd be driving past some book depository somewhere and he would take a shot to the head Your country is exquisitely awesome at removing people.
that they have in power that they don't agree with in terms of, you know, oh, what's that? You think that blacks should be treated equal and you think that we should pull it to Vietnam and you also think that the Cuban Missile Crisis is nothing?
bang you know i mean like your country's not shy of taking a shot at a president are you talking about the deep state look this is the funny thing that this is the thing that makes me chuckle quite a bit is this idea that
that there is this thing called the deep state. I hope Smoke's listening to this because this is Smoke's...
like bread and butter he loves fucking perpetuating we had a conversation this week we was talking about the fbi as a whole and how fucking corrupt they are and all the rest i was like well you can't say that everyone in the fbi is corrupt he's like well look at this article and i'm like yeah
I don't dispute for one second that there are individuals within the FBI that are corrupt. I totally understand that. But it's an organisation that employs thousands and it's branched over the entirety of your country and there are many different departments.
to sit there and blanket say that everyone in the FBI is part of the deep state or everyone in the FBI is working against the president is tantamount to saying that every Muslim is a terrorist. It's fucking ridiculous.
The worst thing you can do is blank and statement anything because it doesn't make any sense. Unless you're saying that all Scots are angry, dismissive bastards. That is accurate. I will side with that.
but what i'm saying is that you can't you can't do these things and that's the deep state is this great thing that people seem to latch on to
when things are not working their way oh yeah well there's government forces working against me or really because five weeks ago you were all for it when it was working with you so how does that work and it doesn't work and
I find it bizarre that these conversations... Your country is slowly... It's on a precipice just now. It's on a precipice between people that have... too much of a moral high ground and that they feel that within their beliefs they have a self-righteousness which
which almost overpowers any rational argument, and those that believe that, you know, the Illumina is a real thing, aliens are going to take over your planet, and chemtrails will kill you all, and all these things, the government controls the weather, and the...
The problem is there's no voice from the middle. So all you ever hear reported is one extreme on the other. And that is dangerous.
like those both polar extremes will be louder than the middle because the middle by definition is something that demands can order centralization bring in
points of view from different sides and try and centralize it when you're at either side and you're just like blah blah what old fucking frogs gay you know all this shit on either side
You get the greatest sound bites on the media that you're aiming for, but you don't actually win or construct an argument or a conversation at all. All you're doing is making arbitrary statements, which, to be honest with you, can't actually be defined.
described or even to some extent argument argued out in a way which feels rational.
And that's not to say that my country's a great story. This is how the fake news thing is playing in the UK. You'll love this. Right, so this is the effect that your president has had on my country. The Westminster government has done this decree in the last week.
to root out fake news this is the uk we're talking about here is that is it the same fake news that we're talking about here which is the the actual news so so here's the thing though see
In fairness to Donald Trump, you bite your tongue. Honestly, I almost choked on the worst when I said it. What Donald Trump says is fake news. He's not 100% wrong when he says that.
If he then says that Fox is 100% real news, then yes, yes, he's wrong, 100%. But when he says that, you know, there is news which is fake...
in the u.s or anywhere he's not necessarily wrong news by his very definition when removed from the center is a spin well sure but but he's not just talking about
He is in part talking about, you know, MSNBC and the, you know, the kind of left of center reporting. But he's saying that, like, you know, NPR.
Which, in my experience at least, like, they do completely hippy-dippy human interest stories. But the news itself is pretty legit. You know, it's fairly straight ahead and down the middle.
And but he's talking about them, too. Like when he's not saying you're fake news because you're reporting my the Russia investigation.
and emphasizing my belligerent or stupid reactions to it.
But he's also saying, well, the news itself is fake, that I'm being investigated. He's saying that negative press against him is fake. Yeah, all negative press is fake. But he genuinely believes that what he's saying is right.
Yeah, yeah, because he's, you know, an old, stupid racist. And yeah, old, stupid racists are real sure of what they believe.
yeah but if i see you i believe this you're like that well that's not right duncan and i still believe that i can say that you're wrong
well of course like you can have well you know there was we can disagree on the facts as uh kenyanne conway once said yeah that's right it was you can have your own you can have your own opinion sir but you can't have your own fat And that's the problem.
I want to stress, I have to do this disclaimer every time I'm on the show. I am not siding with Donald Trump. I hate the man. I think he's an affront to everything that's decent in this world.
But, that being said, I think that it's important to... I think him saying, well, this is fake news, has forced your journalists and your country to...
be a bit more stringent and do a bit more due diligence before they report something. I don't think that's a bad thing.
Yeah, I mean, no one's going to argue that veracity in the press is important. And if a news story is incorrect, it needs to be corrected immediately and not buried in the back of the paper and all that shit.
time I just think once again it's like this bipod byproduct of having someone evil in a position which forces everyone to
sort their cards and get their house in order yeah i think that the after effect of having someone as awful as him in office is just people are doing things a bit better yeah you're organizing better had you had hillary
clinton in that office things where they just kind of carried over and i don't necessarily think that's the best thing for your country at all i think the best thing for your country is the
the active community the active awareness of uh political ramifications that you have right now is a better position to be in albeit under the tyranny of someone who is horrible
I think sometimes you need to see what your vote is worth in order to make the decision whether or not you'll vote. And it kind of had to wake some of the far-left Democrats up.
The ones who were like, if it ain't Bernie, I'm not voting for Hillary or voting for Jill Stein and that bullshit. Where you're like, you fucked up. You fucked us.
And here's, I'll tell you, I'm no political strategist, Duncan.
Though, I am available. You told me you were getting a political strategist on the show. I'm a Republican strategist. We're getting the Southern strategy right here.
uh yeah i'm a i'm a you know yellow dog democrat is what they were called uh that's no bullshit that's what uh southern democrats were called yellow dogs um i
Yeah, the Dixiecrats was also a term for him back in the 60s during the Civil Rights Movement. Was that like the tribute band to the Dixie Chicks? No, the Dixiecrats were the ones who...
If memory serves, I may fuck up my history here, but I think the Dixiecrettes were the ones who were against the passage of the Civil Rights Act. And that's why the country... like the south has been red ever since but at any rate
Political strategist Bo says if the Democrats wanted to shove that dildo nice and deep into Republican ass in 2020, you run a moderate Democrat.
You don't, you don't play to the base cause you got them and, and, and politics is base plus, right? Like your base and who else? So you run somebody like.
I don't know if Booker is good. I haven't dug deep enough into how far left he might go in a primary. Yeah.
He seems real, so I like Cory Booker a lot. He's pretty central. I like his story. His biggest criticism from the left, as far as I know, is he's taken a lot of donations from the pharmaceutical industry. Yeah. He's pretty soft on them.
but your left is not left though this is i love this like america's left of center is what would be the equivalent of center right in the uk shut up for a second let us sort this out your socialism is not actually socialism right at all but it's like let's do let's do like
Let's do healthcare, where everyone plays premiums, et cetera, et cetera, which is not really universal healthcare. It's a weird, weird thing where your country is more...
centre of right. Your Democrats are more centre of right than they are centre of left or left-wing. And even Bernie Sanders was not, like, everyone's like, oh, he's a socialist. He's almost a communist.
no he's not but but calling someone european in this country is not flattering duncan to a certain demographic and to a large demographic right and the uk right now the uk government is right wing
In France, it's right-wing. In Germany, it's right-wing. So it's right of center. So the three major powerhouses in Europe... are all right of center governments but those right of center governments are still what you would consider
Oh, fucking crazy people. Like, if you put Angela Merkel's platform...
put that mantle on Cory Booker, he'd get run out of town on a rail. They'd be like, what the fuck are you talking about? She oversees one of the strongest economies in the world.
post fucking depression. Duncan, we do not care about facts in this country. We don't care about data. We're good people.
We're like, have you listened to Germans talk? It's not.
It's not sexy, Duncan. Oh, it is. This is the scheisse. This is the scheisse. Yeah, the scheisse is good. Everyone knows what that means. You do, though, to an extent, because when a statement is said...
that the market is doing really well and the stock market in particular is doing well under Trump.
People understand what that is and they get behind it, whether or not it actually benefits them or not. So they do actually follow statements like that. That is the true religion of the United States. Yeah.
is capitalism and it just depends on how how how deeply you practice as to how much of an asshole you are i think like it's like it's like a like once again stressing
to dern's listeners here even though duncan has had a few beverages tonight has been out dancing the wild tango with a couple of men in glasgow which sounds a lot seedier than it actually was i am
I'm actively politically minded. I always have been that way since I was like 14.
and I took a real interest in politics. I am an ardent nationalist in my country. I think that Scotland should be its own independent nation. It's not a popular theory because we had a vote on it.
Turns out 55% of my country disagreed with me. And that's fine because that's democracy and that's how democracy works. You put things to the vote of the people. If it goes your way, fantastic. If it doesn't, then you lick your wounds.
calibrate and then you work at how best to achieve your goal within the means that you have I don't believe that as being like left-leaning
my political bent. I don't think that the current Westminster government in the UK, which is a right-wing Tory government, is indicative of what my country believes in. It doesn't at all. There are very few Tory MPs in Scotland. The majority are actually...
SMP, Scottish Nationalist Party, which is left. It's a socialist party. What's her name again? I'm going to forget it. Theresa May? No, no, no. Nicholas Sturgeon? Yeah. She's fucking awesome. Love her.
I've watched a number of her speeches, some that you've sent me in and some in my own time. And yeah, like I said, I want to take her like Brendan Gleeson.
she belongs to us now scottish scottish politicians regardless which side they lie on are are weirdly weirdly
poetic in the way that they deliver speeches they're all very eloquent they're all very well structured and it's been that way for as long as i know scottish politicians have a passion about them regardless which side you lie or where you hear them talk and you if you
agree with it you feel enthralled to the point that you're like yes let's march on the south and kill them all or yes let's maintain the union and god bless the queen that's just the way it is and that's the environment I've grown up in Politics, I would love to say politics are...
Just general things like voting and that means more in my country. I don't necessarily think it does. When you look at how general elections in my country are held, the polling rate is not that much higher.
than what you had at your last election. People just are not interested until they have to be interested. And I think the backlash against Trump that has happened with all the subsequent...
elections that you've had, whether they're at just Senate level, etc. I think you've found there is a move to the Democratic side of things. That could be Doug Jones.
I don't want to misinterpret that, though. It's not...
It's not a bunch of people deciding to jump ship and become a Democrat. It's a bunch of people coming out to vote that didn't. Well, it's a bunch of people saying, oh, not this.
Like, we kind of left it up to the people who weren't voting for the most part, or the people who were voting. Like, the new voters you're getting are the ones who are like, oh.
uh if if i leave it up to you guys this is the best you got well shit i gotta take tuesday off now and saying that roy moore lost by two percent in the vote yeah yeah yeah pretty much uh like once again we'll use the alleged tag but yeah
But that's what you're up against. But at least he ain't a Democrat. But this is what they were saying. I saw...
umpteen videos of people being interviewed panels of people being interviewed with the world on that you know well you know i you know i think he probably did do it but he's not a democrat and i'm like in this particular scenario what is worse
being a democrat or being a child molester you seem to think it's being a democrat that is wrong right well but that that's the other big problem that you know we're kind of
combating in this country is this idea that if you disagree with me politically you are my mortal fucking enemy you know and that's why you need a moderate
democrat to really you know put the nail in the coffin of all this super nationalist bullshit is somebody to be like hey you know what we're all a reasonable people
You know, we can all disagree. We can argue and still be friends. In fact.
I think the best of friends do argue time to time. You should. You should not agree with everyone around you. You're only enriched as a person if your friends have different beliefs, whether that's political, theological, or...
just moral, those things benefit you. I do a podcast where... my main co-host is someone who is right of center leaning who was very much for the for scotland remaining within the united kingdom like everything politically that i am like
vehemently opposed to he believes in it does not reflect our you know our relationship we get on really well i was out drinking with him earlier on having a laugh and all the rest they just don't he is entitled to his beliefs i'm entitled to my beliefs Where we get the opportunity to vote, we vote.
the way it goes if we have to have a conversation i don't belittle what he says he doesn't know what i say doesn't necessarily mean i have to agree what he says right or he has to agree with me but we act like adults
And that's how you do things. You addle with them. And when he makes a good point, I will actively say, actually, I never thought it that way. That's great. I would love to say it's vice versa. It's not. Because soon as the word national...
nationalism comes at my mouth on snp he instantly goes into you know diehard genius which means anything i see after that point is not right right that that's the line in the sand Yeah, but he has actively said on more than one occasion that he genuinely thinks regardless...
whether he agrees with the politicians or not that if the smp as a party were a party who were left-leaning who were not for the breakup of the united kingdom we would vote for them
He believes with everything politically out with that one thing and that one thing is the sticking point which will make him the remote film.
So he will vote, and it's weird, it's like these people that were going to vote for Bernie Sanders but instead voted for Donald Trump, which seems insane, but there's a lot of common ground to believe so.
between those two it's just that there's some things that were a bit more insane one guy was a politician and the other was a television host yeah but there was a lot of that that like bernie sanders does not believe in
at all he hated it and he hated this idea jobs going out with america and all the rest which is not dissimilar to what donald trump said just bernie sanders could articulate it better And also the rest of his ideology was a little more like his isolationist tendencies.
i don't i don't know how crazy people were about that but it was all the like hey we're gonna pay for college and you're gonna get you hey we're gonna be kind of european that was sort of his shtick and and that's why i still say he can't win
the hell thing was not donald trump up until very very close to being elected was very much for better health care for americans you know more universal platform which was a lot of what bernie sanders was saying
I think your policy was a bit more mental. But then Bernie wasn't all that fucking great on immigration either. I think you're making a huge leap.
to say that Donald Trump had a particular notion about what he thought about health care.
I think Donald Trump did have an idea of what he thought was... But it wasn't a firm, like, I believe this. But Donald Trump had an idea of what he wanted to do.
I imagine that he did have an idea of what he should do healthcare wise and what he should do immigration wise and what he should do economically speaking, how he should handle other countries etc. I imagine that he probably did have those things.
and then he brought people in who told him that that was not a good thing and sided with them. I don't necessarily think that's...
once again not to throw people under Obama got elected under a series of promises which he did not keep specifically to do with how he was going to clean up Wall Street which he didn't do he employed people on his finance committee I mean
The drone shit is real heinous. Nobody's saying Obama walks on water here. No, no, no. But a lot of people do, though. A lot of people like that wish Obama could have had the third term.
Right, I'm not saying that the guy wasn't eloquent and was a gifted politician, but you are overlooking a lot of things. Donald Trump lied about this particular thing he was going to do.
oh really is donald trump the first politician to actually lie about what he's going to do that tracks back far and there's a lot of them that do that and a lot of them have these things that's that's equivocating like yes obama was not entirely honest on the campaign trail
Donald Trump lies with a frequency and rapidity.
You just can't compare the two. It's like Little League versus the World Series. It was major policy statements that Obama said he was going to do that. He did not fucking do it anyway. He went back on them.
He didn't clearly contradict himself. Generally speaking, I'm sure you could find a clip, but...
Generally speaking, if he said something on Monday, it was the same thing on Wednesday. And if someone said, hey, it was different back then, he wouldn't be like, no, it wasn't. That's true, but no one asked him.
No one asked him. No one questioned him on these things. Right, because he was a grown-up. Because he was a grown man, Duncan, that you assumed was going to tell the truth until you found out he wasn't.
Yeah, but people knew that he wasn't telling the truth and no one questioned him. That's my point. He coasted by on a lot of shit.
which he did which was not right and no one questioned him and i'm not saying that he's not as bad as donald trump and i don't i genuinely don't think he is however he did some pretty horrible reprehensible things yeah quite easily in hindsight as well even worse got the nobel priest prize
as well which for kind of nothing yeah i mean yeah except bombs on innocent people but i mean like which has has tripled by the way under trump the number of civilian casualties and i'm not saying
I don't think that's Trump. I think that's just Trump's not interested, so people are taking liberties. Right! That's my pulling token. Yeah, you could argue that's his job to do that, but what I'm saying to you is that...
when when it comes to like i think about the big pledges of you know of obama when he went in and what he was going to do
In his first term, not his second term, but in his first term, and a lot of those things about gutting out Wall Street, making things better, reinventing how the banking system works in your country and all that, he did fucking none of that.
that and no one at any point sat there and said that was your main platform policies which you did not do in fact if anything you reversed on that and solidified the party line of what had happened before no one questioned him on that so why is why is donald trump
the worst villain in the world where he's like that. We're going to build a wall. No wall has happened. We're going to repeal Obamacare. That didn't happen. You know what I mean? Because the promises he's making are fundamentally horrible. The fact that he's not good at...
It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if you start from I'm taking a shit on you. Whether that's runny or not is not in play.
Yeah, what's worse? Me making a promise I'm going to do the worst thing possible and not delivering that or me telling you that I'm going to do the best thing and doing the opposite.
I'm going to go with me saying I could do a horrible thing but not being able to do it. Look, I'm saying after living under both presidents...
I would take Obama six days of the week and twice on Sunday over Donald Trump, even if Obama came to my front door every morning and spit in my face, because at least the guy was...
trying to bring like healthcare to a more modern level a more reasonable level like it wasn't perfect by any stretch um but like there were
All the things you've talked about are true and it was bad shit, but there was a lot of good shit he did too. Way more.
More guns sold under Obama than any other president. More drone strikes at that time than any other ones. More people deported under Obama than any other president before. So why are those things whitewashed over?
Because he was a better speaker in healthcare. Who is whitewashing? I am saying you are right. All that is true.
he's not a perfect president he's he was a dude who had a job he was probably in a little bit over his head i think he had genuinely good intentions but you know i disagree with a lot of stuff too I just think that people are shooting over.
to the worst possible extreme with the moron that you have in office just now when you actually look on paper he has been ineffective in delivering a lot of what he says he wants to do yeah but it's just humiliating duncan
It's like every time you see him on television, it makes me feel bad that I'm an American. And I don't like feeling like that. No one likes a guy. And to be honest with you, your country is probably in a lesser standard than it was before.
them. We see him, I think there was a recent article on BBC which says that general opinion on the US has dropped since he went in. I'm going to be honest with you.
That's not a bad thing. The USA has... far too much power as a nation over the rest of the nations in the world that's what this is all about this is me speaking as a scottish man you fucking revolutionary motherfucker i think i think your country has far too much
right and wrong and you you have had successive governments that have dictated and used force on other countries to dictate how they should do their democracy when
let's be honest your democracy is flawed itself i.e someone gets elected without the popular vote i.e less people voted for that person they still become president that's a flawed system um so yeah for for for
to be traveling all over the world telling other countries how to handle their democracy seems pretty rich because you had a democracy you someone got elected that apparently the media and
other people didn't like and there is now like massive campaign to like if this guy like stares at the sun without wearing glasses it's frontline page for the next He tried to fire the dude who was investigating his connection to Russia after firing...
The guy who was investigating him for his investigation with Russia. He did. He fired Comey. That was the whole deal. He said, Comey's investigating me. I got to fire him. And then.
way... way back in june before the indictment shit came out he was already talking about firing muller because muller was getting close to his because somebody was like if they do that they're going to impeach you right away you can't keep doing that if someone cuts
me off in traffic i could be like fuck this guy i want to kill him i didn't kill him though it's not a crime and he fired he fired comey it's not a crime but it's just very suspicious yeah it's very suspect but it's not a crime so i don't know what you
What I come back to these things is he plays your system very, like, even if it's...
accidentally, he plays your system very well. Your system has no teeth to hold him accountable. Because if your system did have teeth, he would be held accountable. So you can't blame the man for playing the system. Yes, you absolutely can, because it makes him a...
Don't hate the player, hate the game.
I hate the player. This is a bad person. Most systems, the whole reason communism doesn't work is because communism totally ignores the fact that people are selfish.
And at least capitalism goes the other direction where it's like, oh, people are totally selfish, so let's use this as a base of finance. But at the end of the day...
there is the assumption that you are pulling the levers of power for the right reasons. And everyone knows.
at the very least everyone has come to accept that when a politician tells you something uh there's a 50 50 chance that you're getting the real story
But that existed before Trump. Yeah, 100%. I'm saying that's our basis.
But we still believed in the fundamental goodness of the person. Like, even as much as I think George W. Bush is an awful, awful president, I can't bring it...
I can't bring myself to believe that he's a bad man. I think you should be like, I understand that. And I think that makes him a, a God awful president, but I don't think he set out.
on that path thinking i'm going to myrus in a war for decades i don't think that was his intention and if you know the decision was a terrible one
And you can even argue the criminality of it. But I don't know that it makes him, at his essence, or at least in the way he views himself, as a bad person.
Donald Trump didn't expect, according to that book that came out, Donald Trump didn't expect to be president. Right. I mean, that was, I'm not all the way through it. I'm about two thirds of the way through that now. And yeah.
I think it's suspect, that book. I think it's accurate. I think it's totally accurate. About wanting to set up a media station, et cetera, and all the rest, and not want to be president, but use it as a platform.
what my my my thing i'm saying to you is that you've had some and don't even like we can i can keep i literally have an inexhaustible list of things that i could throw against previous presidents i've been in your country like horrible shit that they've done but but but again i think you're not
allowing for the fact that this one is particularly bad yeah but what like i could have the best of intentions but
do horrible things Bo that doesn't forgive the horrible things I do rather than being a horrible person but being ineffective to do those horrible things I would much rather be in a position that I knew that someone was horrible but was ineffective
of doing horrible things than thinking someone was nice and seeing the horrible things they could do. All right, how deep into Kantian philosophy do you want to go? You can swing it. You can... But at heart, to me, this is a...
moral issue like my biggest problem with this president is that I don't think he has morality I think he is amoral I think he is
born of business you know that it's just hey i think fundamentally he wants to be liked i think he's narcissistic in that way that's all he wants i think tomorrow if he i think tomorrow if he got told that he could get
5% of Americans to like him to drop the idea for a wall and to drop the the idea of the immigration policy has and to you know 100% support Obamacare he would do it in a second.
Well, let me put it to you this way. I don't think any of his policies that he has in his head are rigid, because if they were rigid, he would be consistent with them across the board, which he's not.
Usually it's the last person that he spoke with controls his brain. That's the rumor. The rumor going around is that when he comes to make a decision, the last person to speak to him is...
generally the words that comes out his mouth, whether it's on TV or it's a person that speaks to him. I'm saying to you that...
of the the massive platform of things that he ran on which were absolutely reprehensible and horrible things that were mentioned how much of them has he actually done in his first year when he controls both the house and the senate
Well, there's all the deregulation of the EPA. Right, he's deporting 800,000 Dreamers.
He'll trade them for $25 billion for the wall. Yeah, but I don't think he's even said himself it's not a wall anymore. Well, recently he's been back to the wall.
But there are large areas where you don't need a wall because you have a mountain and you have a river. You have a violent river and you don't need it. Okay?
yeah but it's not a wall see if you actually read into what he's suggesting it's like some sort of modified version but but that's the thing is that deal was already on the table like when schumer and pelosi sat down with him
and uh ryan was ryan and mcconnell uh as well as you know ancillaries when they were like hey we've got a deal it was the graham lindsey graham was in on it uh
What was it? Was it Grant Schumer? Yeah. And Schumer, yeah. The Schumer shut down.
Well, but the whole idea of the bill that they presented him was, hey, we're going to give you some money for this stupid-ass wall.
you're going to extend ship and then you're also going to allow the dreamer program to continue. Like you're not going to enforce a shutdown that was arbitrary based on his win.
Let's not forget that he created that crisis. And so.
the bills on the table, everyone agrees. And then Miller gets to him and then he refuses it after agreeing to it. And.
then nobody knows what the fuck to do because how do you negotiate with someone whose mind changes literally day to day let me counter by saying any democrat that thought it was right to even remotely fund
a part of that wall should be fucking ashamed of themselves. But man, what are you going to do? It's 800,000 people who have been here for decades. You've got to protect those people. I don't like, this is the moral argument, right? It's like, man, they're.
they're basically ransoming that stupid wall for this, but maybe you've got to pay that ransom because you're tearing apart families. Either that you dig your heels in and highlight the fact that you refuse to do...
something which is morally fucking wrong and yet at the cost of something else that's morally wrong but you highlight that well but that was the shutdown and they pussied out on it well that's the plan now that's what donald trump that's what donald trump thrives on donald trump thrives on
As a businessman, putting you in a position where you have to choose one or the other. And what I'm saying is you don't have to have either. Just a few days ago, they took the funding, the offer.
Whoever's doing the negotiations for the Democratic side, they just took the offer to fund the wall off. And a lot of people and.
there's been a lot of squabbling of, well, there's never been a stop to the squabbling, but now it's being seen as a move that that way. Now it'll be.
The Republicans fault for shutting down the government again because they only extended funding until February 8th, I think. And this way it'll be the Republicans are shutting down the government over a wall instead of them foreign kids.
They beat us all the time. This is bullcrap! I ain't standing for this! When do we beat Mexico at the border? They're laughing at us, at our stupidity. They took our year!
That's right a lot of people up there can't get jobs They can't get jobs because there are no jobs because China has our jobs and Mexico has our jobs. They all have a job When Mexico sends its people
they're not sending their best they're not sending you they're not sending you the american dream is dead yeah i mean it's so fucking stupid and as soon as McConnell said hey we're gonna make a promise that by this date we'll get legislation on the floor I promise wink wink
And that Democrats were like, okay. I mean, you fucking pussies. Yeah, but once again, that's a Democrat vote. So what I'm saying is...
like well to put things into context here i don't think either one of your parties in your country are particularly great i think both of them are both of them are pretty horrible and i'm not speaking
in a way where i'm like i'm so much better than you i don't necessarily think they're much better in my country either i think a lot of things are said to get votes and then a lot of people get into office and then like i can't do that or we won't do that or we'll just change back in this
I'll give you a version of that. I will give you, like, a lighter version of that. Like, these things, if you are against a fucking wall, you don't even capitulate.
regardless what the consequences are you don't capitulate part fund a fucking wall you don't do it because you're caving but that's why you do the shutdown and you say no no no no because originally they said hey can we do
the dreamers on a clean bill and he was like okay until someone explained to him like no no no you can't do that because then we don't get anything yeah but trump was 100 pro dreamers before yeah but
again he's the sofa president whatever asshole was on him last is the shape he has obama obama had eight years to sort this out and didn't do it
well but though you're right right yeah right he did and it but the problem with it was the whole way to get it funded in the first place was that it had to come up for renewal and that was the whole drama was that
you know trump just decided like hey we're not going to renew it so but how did like once again so obama basically set something up which would defer to the next person
Well, yeah, because that's how you get it done in the first place. So these people aren't getting deported because you're right. He had a very aggressive deportation policy.
But at the same time, and that's why presidents are complicated, was also very much trying to keep people who had been in the country.
for years and years had come here as children, like basically had been born or had come here as a very young child to America, like didn't know the country they were from, probably didn't speak the language.
if they did not well. And... you know like how do you protect those people how do you like and and also to some degree their parents and the whole deal was hey you you come out of the shadows like you're here illegally technically but you get on our book
you're paying taxes you're paying taxes you have no criminal record right and and we're going to give you this path towards citizenship and it was you know imperfect but again you can't let
you know uh the perfect be the enemy of the good it was better than the alternative um which was throwing these people out and and so yeah to get the to to get
that past you have to make a deal with the republicans and they've controlled congress since what 2010 or 2012 uh 12 was the republican wave right i think yeah
Whenever the midterms were. Yeah, that sounds right to me, but somewhere in there. But yeah, it was, well, because it was after Obamacare was the Republican wave, right? Do I have that wrong?
No, I believe so. But Obamacare was the Republican plan. It became Obamacare because Obama was president when it was signed. But I don't know if it was part of the compromise because we think the Democrats are pussies right now.
Back then, they were just like, well, if we just sit here, maybe everybody's going to get along. And that's why I haven't identified as a Democrat shit since I started voting.
I respect that. I do. I'm not saying I haven't voted for Democrats, but I've never been a member of the Democratic Party. Duncan, I have talked about this before about you don't really identify with a party.
that sort of thing you should never identify with the party you should event you should identify with the person that's representing your interests at your constituency level whether that's at the state level or at the local level that's who you should identify because that is what politics is
about one giant arbitrary party which is apparently going to represent all the interests of however many states you have with completely different needs and completely different identities and different issues and different problems
That's not how it should work. You should identify with the person, regardless what part they are, the person that stands up for the interests you believe in at the state level or at the city level or whatever it is.
That is how it's supposed to work. He's going to stand up for the company that I work for, where my job is based. I will vote for him. He's going to stand up for the fact they're closing the hospital in my city.
right, I'm going to stand up for him because I don't want that hospital. If he's a Republican, and I don't agree with the majority of what he says, but that's the platform on which he's running on, which I believe in, I should vote on those issues. It shouldn't be...
It shouldn't be Republican, it shouldn't be Democrat, it should work down to specific issues that affect you as an individual. That's how you're supposed to vote.
you're not supposed to vote on one thing that solves because even fucking republicans or democrats are not republicans or democrats because you've got fucking tea party republicans you've got conservative republicans you've got freedom caucus
you've got the democrats now you've got the bernie sanders fucking day you don't have these things are what happens when you pigeonhole your country into two parties which are too big to encompass all the issues right like like the way that that you know that legislation and debate
works you know parliament works in in the uk and scotland um just i mean it's incredibly foreign because we don't we don't have there are two voices there aren't
there aren't seven you know it's there are two parties and those parties vote in blocks like you get some bleeding at the edges but as a rule it comes down on party lines like the number of times you hear a news report that says voting along party lines this was passed or this failed
And that's just how it happens. So we don't, there's no legitimate debate. It's just, there are two positions. There's no debate. And it's unfortunate.
I voted for many different people from many different parties, but I have never voted for a Republican. I've always found somebody that I've identified with what I wanted a lot more. Like, I genuinely, like, when I hear about Republican values and all the rest, I...
for the majority of it I don't agree with any of it and
But Trump didn't run on what you would class as being generic, stereotypical Republican values. He ran counter to a lot of that. And for the most part...
And I know we're talking about the Bernie Sanders thing, and Bo, you specifically pointed out that one is a politician and one is not a politician. I don't necessarily think that makes anyone... better like you know like because you're more eloquent and because you understand how
politics works and because you may have a certain degree of morality against you i don't think that necessarily excuse a pointed point of view i think but the trump administration is the perfect example of how
terrible it looks when you elect someone who doesn't know how government works. Yep.
And, and he's just going to hire a bunch of other people who don't know how government works. He's fired a lot of them. Right. And you can't get shit done. So yeah, you've got to hire people who know how government works and it's way better. But I mean, so yeah.
able to pass a lot of this well of course not but no but I mean those are two different arguments it's not like would you rather have a president you know who's mentally ill or one who's a racist it's like we got both
It's two great tastes that taste great together. Yeah, but I think... Let me put it this way. What I keep coming back to is there was a high probability that someone like a Ted Cruz...
could have made his way in there yeah that would have been rough yeah that has horrible he could have got elected would you be sitting here saying well you know at least he's an eloquent politician who well he was never that duncan
I mean, he would have had to have become eloquent in office. He did read Green Eggs and Ham to filibuster a vote once. Yeah, but the guy speaks better than Donald Trump. He does, but that's...
That's a low bar. I've got a just now year old nephew that's kind of at the same reading level. Michael Rubio then.
Yeah, Marco Rubio, would he be a better president than Donald Trump? It's not even a case of being a better president. I think he's still a fucking fairly reprehensible person. Sure, of course he is. Because he has better morals and because he's a better politician.
does that and he would be more effective I imagine at getting things through that would have been worse than you know like being able to push through things that Donald Trump could never push through
do you forgive that because he's got a better moral compass yes what i'm saying is yeah i don't think you do that at all i think what you do is you look on the look at look on the acts of the man look at what they are able to do and judge them on their own individual
Regardless what Donald Trump says, a lot of people say a lot of crazy things. Regardless...
What side of the world should you look at? We have a Prime Minister in the UK who kept banging on before the last election she had last year that she was the person that was going to bring strong and stable leadership.
to the uk she then ran an election which she should have won comfortably she lost more seats and then flumbered and floundered around for the best part of
three four months after that and not being able to do it and then she still takes a kick in every single week at the prime minister's questions and all the rest and
She's not a great politician at all. In fact, a lot of what she believes in when people cast her memory back is when she was Home Secretary looking after things at home. She was pretty bad and she wanted surveillance on people's emails. People...
like suddenly forget that when you start seeing other things when you start
like rebranding yourself in a different way people have short-term memories nowadays where they don't think about these things they don't carry them through and i have no doubt in my mind that she had have achieved the power that she wanted with more people she'd be pushing through a lot of things
that I don't fucking agree with at the moment she's unable to do that because she didn't get what she wanted what I'm saying to you is someone like a Donald Trump regardless how fucking shit he is and he is shit
Let's be honest, the guy's a fucking moron. He's not got any real credibility, although he holds an office. It's an office that no one's really taking seriously. Within your own country, our...
around the rest of the world, which is demeaning and is humiliating. Let me put it to you like this. The new Prime Minister of Scotland is Nigel Farage. Yep.
That's your new prime minister. Yep. And I start telling you, you know what? He's about as good as other Scottish prime ministers.
I feel that Donald Trump is our Nigel Farage made good, only not as smart.
Yeah, but if Nigel Farage was elected to my country on the policies that Donald Trump was elected to your country and Nigel Farage couldn't pass any of them, I can live with that.
I can live with that. I'm not happy about it, but I can live with that. I can comfortably live with that because there's a lot of reprehensible shit that's not fucking happened in my country because there's a buffoon in office that can't get it done.
Rather than let's elect a guy that probably could get things done and get things which are maybe not as bad, but close to that mark. But every time he came on television talking about how he, as a representative...
of the scottish people that wouldn't you be like oh you i mean it's a slight difference
One, he's not Scottish. Two, he doesn't like Scotland. He thinks that Scotland is... I don't think Trump likes America, quite frankly.
Trump loves America. He loves the idea of what America is. He loves 1950s America and 30% of the people in it. Yeah.
It doesn't have to. I keep coming back to this. As bad as things are for you right now, my thought process leans back on this idea.
Would I rather have an ineffectual fucking ridiculous politician who spouts off nonsense that he tries to backtrack on or deny all the time or someone from the same political leaning?
is being very effective and being able to galvanize what he wants to push things through going donald trump every single step when when he is sitting in the seat of the the president of the united states of america
that ought to mean something. Yep. And even if you're effective at doing bad shit, I'll almost take that over I should never.
have touched this desk, have slept in this bed, have walked over this doorway. I don't belong here. That's how I feel about this president.
the world have ordered executions on civilians, on politicians.
all over the world and i've done it rather effectively under the guise of being the president i don't think that that bed and that table is so morally clean
Right, but you're not American, Duncan. It's an idea, man. Like the whole idea of America, much like every country, is an agreed upon set of bullshit.
And the American bullshit means the president is a good guy. He's, you know, Michael Douglas. He's the guy that's, you know, behind the scenes. And like Saturday Night Live used to make fun of this where.
uh ronald reagan always looked kind of dopey because it turns out he was kind of going through some things hell yeah yeah horrible things but yeah you know snl would do those sketches where as soon as he was done shaking hands with the girl scout he was like all right come on
right right like the the map would flip over it would be a situation room and he would be on his shit and it was funny but it was also what we expect the president to be right like he ought to be um like
kind of like reagan he was a movie star but he was also kind of a hero and all that shit like all that stuff is kind of tied up in the idea of the presidency and it's part of the national identity and and when you have someone like
Donald Trump as that figurehead. It, you know, it does something to the national psyche and it's, it's cancerous.
in a way that someone like Marco Rubio, who you're right, would probably be more effective and would be more damaging in some ways. But...
You know, also, there would be a sort of thread of consistency, a sense that there was normalcy in place. And this administration has been anything but that. Like, even if you're a supporter of Trump in this country.
you can't deny that he's not a volatile figure.
And, and that is not what we want out of a president. We don't want a guy who's like, you know, Yosemite, Sam shooting his revolvers, like, you know, we want a guy that's like, well, I'll tell you how this is going to go.
We're going to sit down. We're going to talk about it. We're going to have a committee. That's kind of what I want out of a president is a boring administrator who's kind of thoughtful. Boring administrators drop bombs on people.
well i mean but i'm even going back to you know like even nixon who did a lot of shitty things of course if you put nixon in office just now nixon would never have been impeached
You're probably right. Yeah, you're probably right about that.
yeah because by today's standards what he did was not but that's but that's kind of the cancer of trump is that he has diminished the conversation and even the level of thought in this country in some ways to the point where
you know president what was it like taco taco bell pepsi or whatever idiocracy yeah ladies and gentlemen
I'm sure! Shut up! Shut up!
IQ of your country being lowered under successive governments. Well, he lost the popular vote. Like the minority of people elected a guy who, yes, I think has... made our country dumber you know it is that billy madison thing yeah but didn't george w bush get in
Right, but this guy's dumber than that. Every time it happens, it gets worse. It's the multiplicity effect. Your country's already lived through a scenario where someone got elected who didn't win on the popular vote, was won by the election.
he did nothing to fix it. Uh-huh. Well, of course, it helped him win. Why would you fix that? If I touch, if I touch, if I put my hand in a fire and I burn my hand, right,
i should have known better if i do it again i'm a fucking idiot so i once again i don't think that's true i don't think trump has lowered the iq of your country i think that people
have been successively doing that over generations in certain parts of your culture. Yeah, and he's just highlighted it. You're probably right. I think what he's done is he's been able to speak to these people because they're eloquent. So you can't blame the man for...
speaking at a level which unarticulate or less educated people understand. If anything, I would flip that and say that your other politicians didn't go out their way to speak to those people.
didn't try to go to their level, only worked on a certain level that they thought would get elected by. Well, if that level is being, you know, like... pro-life and racist so they should be in the country I'm not saying they shouldn't be in the country but I'm saying you don't give them a megaphone
You don't give them the megaphone. Is their megaphone that loud? Yeah.
are you crazy less less i'm not crazy because trump's running on an approval rating of what less than 35 percent i know it hovers around 39.
yeah see if he went for election just now i don't think he'd get elected of course not of course not because too many people are motivated yeah but if the megaphone was that loud and it really did like change things i think
well that's what woke everyone up it did they it gave them that megaphone like when you elect someone who's he was talking about uh you know uh how um judge who is hispanic is probably gonna rule against them because they're hispanic like when that guy gets elected president people are like
fuck that shit and so but you know it has it has shown a light on a part of the country that is okay with that at the very least if not if not
You know, if not necessarily in cahoots with the idea, at least complicit with it. Yeah, but 55% of my country... thought that the UK, the UK as an organisation, was better with Scotland being part of it than Scotland.
Being an independent nation and then overall I think about was it 52% of the whole United Kingdom thought that we were better being separate from Europe because all these europeans were coming over here and stealing our jobs
duncan i believe we were talking about the united states yeah but what i'm saying is it's the same idea it's the same argument it's the same uh you sure got elected because like all these foreign people are coming across and stealing your job it's the same argument it's an argument that
really be proved and that's what makes it affect you sorry not an ineffectual argument it makes it very efficient is that it can't be proved because what you can see is the reason you don't have a job is because of this person here this demographic here very very easy to do
worked over here and it worked in your country as well and what i'm saying to you is that it doesn't like 52 percent of the united kingdom voting one way on you i don't agree with it i don't necessarily think
that you know well these people are all fucking idiots and as a result it's highlighted the fact that they're all fucking idiots and that they have the same right to vote that i have and just because the vote doesn't go my way is
you know that's part and parcel and that's what democracy is if you always got your way then i mean if you always got your way you get complacent you get flabby about well which is what you had and
all this stuff that you're talking about is being like socially active you can almost argue to a certain extent as well like the stuff that's
kind of trundled out of the kind of Weinstein things sexual harassment all the rest all these things are becoming more prominent because you have someone in office who is alleged to be
you know this uh woman abuser you know oh sure the me too stuff was like like trump is rocket fuel for that yeah right where it's like hey the president has been accused all this shit of being
can't get this guy however by the way all these fucking people have done it as well let's shine the spotlight there yeah i'm saying is yes whilst once again i think if clinton was in none of this would happen and
I'm thinking that as... You don't think the first woman president would have been enough? I mean, maybe that's my own ideology. Yeah, I don't think so. I don't think so. We had a woman prime minister over here, and she had one of the longest... terms and systematically destroyed a lot.
The UK was built on in terms of industry, trade unions and all this. She fucking systematically destroyed all that. And Hillary Clinton wasn't a great person. And I know a lot of people would have voted for her out there. She cheated a lot. That Syria stuff was pretty horrible.
look at her vote record and transcend that back she wasn't the best on race relations there was a lot of stuff she did in the past that wasn't fucking great i mean let's not talk about race relations compared to trump she she
checks that box at least uh compared to the alternative what has yeah but what is dot right
When she was in office, she voted for a lot of things which held back certain districts to do with blacks and to do with the police. What has Donald Trump actually passed?
It doesn't matter what he passed. He was taken to court for rejecting black candidates in his properties when he was a slumlord.
He like he has a history of being.
not racially insensitive it's not that delicate of being out and out racist he wanted to build a goddamn wall and might still try to build a goddamn wall separating us from our
our nearest neighbor to the south, like it's fucking Hadrian in the 800 BC. Are we even doing a show? I don't even know anymore. I don't even know. All I'm knowing is that I'm starting to find it somewhere.
valid points here and the medicans will go to the toilet oh it has been for a year sir uh all right i'll be right back we'll take a break here right now and play some promos for some rad ass shows and
Maybe some songs. I have no idea. But yeah, we will be right back. Sorry, man. I didn't know how to take us out.
never really officially started and then no records everything from the moment you come on okay good um yeah so don't worry this i i made a totally separate episode from the time
Me, Duncan, and Smoke did Starship Troopers, but I'll fill up my drink. You get me on talking politics, I'll talk for fucking ever. Yeah. So yeah, don't worry. And we will all resume in a few seconds.
All right. Thanks for listening to that. The other half, the more movie centric part of this recording will be out shortly. Thanks for listening. Don't forget to duck and cover.
Because...