The Bugle - New Year, Same Ol' USA

Episode Date: January 14, 2026

This week’s Bugle is a US Special, hard not to be at the moment. Kick starting 2026, Andy Zaltzman joined by Nish Kumar, and Nato Green try to navigate their way through what might be the worst start to a year since, well since 2025.🇺🇸 USA's Capture of Maduro: Andy, Nish and Nato, get their teeth into the breaking news of the US's capture of the Venezuelan president. 🇺🇸 Even More Trump News: Meanwhile, Donald Trump continues to do… even more of whatever it is he’s doing now. As we delve into his plans and reasons for taking Greenland. 🇺🇸 The Tragedy in Minnesota: Finally, we touch upon the tragic events that unravelled in Minnesota, and try to, like the rest of the world, make sense of it all. 🎧 Support The Bugle! Become a Team Bugle subscriber for bonus episodes, exclusive video editions, and the righteous satisfaction of funding satire:http://thebuglepodcast.com📺 Watch Realms Unknown on YouTubeProduced by Chris Skinner, Laura Turner and Harry Gordon. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Audio newspaper for a visual world. Hello, buglers. Happy New Year, and welcome to 2026. I'm Andy Zaltzman back in the Northern Hemisphere, and this is issue 4,364 of the bugle, the world's premier sort of verifiably unverifiable, truth and lies. It is the 12th of January, and joined me today to discuss what has frankly been a disgrace of a year so far.

It's, I mean, it really should be a shame. of itself. It's not even a fortnight inn. From London, Nish Kumar, and from San Francisco, NATO Green. Hello, both. Can I still say Happy New Year, given that the year's not that new anymore, and it's certainly not fucking happy.

Listen, I'm under normal circumstances. I'm very happy for people to say, Happy New Year throughout January. You know, I sort of increasingly have no time for people who build their personality out, saying things like, oh, you can't keep saying happy New Year, and things like, Die Hard actually is a Christmas film.

No, I don't care about you. You're ultimately in irrelevance. But yeah, happy new year. Given the start to this year, it feels pretty fantastic. I think, like, what I've been thinking about this week is that our, the human nervous system is not evolved to endure the amount of stimulation we're taking in at this point. like the number of like the human nervous system did not evolve to have access to real-time information about what every single head of state in the world was doing to make everything worse at the same time like you get 35 notifications on a device all like our nervous system was evolved to live in a village with 14 people and take a day and a half to weave a basket out of league. use with no air pods even no headphones just weaving a basket out of leaves humans are evolved to have the patience and the calm and the focus that it takes to discover that artichokes can be food

you know what I'm saying like like like 20 the human of 2026 does not have the patience to encounter like a hard, prickly plant in the wild in ancient Rome and think maybe if I steam this and dip it in an aoli and scrape just a bit of it off with my teeth, it'll be the, like that person isn't being interrupted by BBC news alerts that another country has been invaded. Can I just say, I got a real insight into the mindset of people. This morning I actually went to the American Embassy to get my American work visa renewed.

And just to give NATO you an insight into how people are feeling about that process, the man in front of me, who was an English man, because it's also quite cold. And you have to stand outside in quite a long queue before you could get into the embassy. So everyone sort of dressed for winter was wearing the American flag as a scarf. That is the mindset that people are in when it comes to visa applications. And I worry that if he does get turned down, he will return with the flag and to prove his loyalty to America will commit the ultimate act of tribute by Frikes and Stripes. I hope that man got his visa renewed because otherwise I do worry that he's going to jizz all over it. And if he does jizz all over it, is that.

desecration or is that the ultimate tribute that you can pay to the flag of the United States of America? We enter a very interesting philosophical gray area with that. I think that it's a whole wing of the Smithsonian now is it's done flags.

The only way to pay tribute is to masturbate onto an American flag whilst you have a statue of George Washington up your ass as a d'I. That's the only true way. has already started badly and Spanish I don't know

we are recording on the 12th January tomorrow the 13th of January more optimistically is apparently make your dream come true day I don't know what dreams you've been having I had this weird

weird daydream the other day about democracy still vaguely functioning in some way, shape or form but then I woke up but if there If I make the dream I had last night come true, then look out, buglers.

Look out for a giant talking crocodile playing snooker with blood dripping out of its eyeball whilst I try to order a new pair of trousers on a touch screen 20 times before giving up and just covering my legs with sheets of lasagna. Andy, just on the dreams, I've had, like, a lot of Americans, to give you a sense of the mental state of Americans right now, a lot of Americans, you know,

that there are signs that Donald Trump has some serious medical problem, and so people are like, will the Grim Reaper claim him at some point? And so that, but then the dream is really, if Donald Trump were to die in office, is there a way that he could die that his supporters would not immediately turn into some sort of weird Antifa Jew conspiracy theory? So that's what we're trying to feel. It's a fantastic band name. I don't know if you're looking to, if we're looking to form a band out of the bugle co-hosts, but. And T for Jew conspiracy theory, I'm putting that forward.

And if I know anything about the listenership of this podcast, there will be an album cover being made right now. One of you, no offense, lunatics. Beautiful lunatics. That's the album title. As always, the section of this audio newspaper is going straight in the bin. This week, we look at the Consumer Electronic Show of 2026, all the new electronic gadget tartar that are set to revolutionize our lives, including, this is very exciting, AI eyebrows,

which are AI-powered eyebrows that replace your regular eyebrows and automatically protest all the news from all the news websites around the world and configure themselves into the appropriate expression on your face, so you don't actually have to keep up with events yourself, but your face can still look like you're bang up to date just by looking concerned, surprised, hopefully doubtful, ragingly pessimistic or quirkily amused. Also, the self-repairing TV

that you can throw a brick through during every single news bulletin and it completely bloops back into usable form within seconds. The sideless waterless bathtub, which could be very useful. The wireless e-goat, the time-traveling smart sock that keeps your feet feeling fresh and comfy in the past, present and future, and releases a distress signal that only bats can hear if your foot is about to accidentally kick or kick or step on a bat. The reversible chainsaw do wear good quality gloves while you use that. And the personal perma cloud, protect yourself from sunburn with your own cloud that follows and shades you 24-7-365,

even at night. Warning, permacloud may rain. Do not use if prone to osmosis or made of salt. And also in the bin, we look back at the... CS show from the year 2026 BC when some of the technology on show included the stick, the

crudely hued bit of flint, splat of mud, the human finger and the hole in the ground. That section is in the bin. Top story this week. Everything is it's the first bugle of a new year and

well it's already shaping up to be one of the shittest years of the decade so far. And that is a ferociously contested title. As decades go, the 2020s is like Federer Nadal and Jockovich all pushing each other to never dreamt off heights, or in the case of the 2020s never dreamt of shites. I've been

in the comforting bubble of cricket for the last two months, broken only by our Australian live bugles. So I've been willfully ignoring everything in order, you know, from a professional point of view, to avoid breaking

up the soothing rhythms of the BBC's radio cricket commentary by shouting, What the fuck? The matter of England, a crap at cricket. The world is rampantly insane, and humanity is a failed species. It's 127 for three. So, I'll admit, I've been trying to catch up on

some of the news that has been happening over the last few weeks, while I have been snout down in cricket stats. And NATO, look, it's early days yet, but it does look like your president may struggle to pick up his coveted Nobel Peace Trinket again, this year. he's not overloaded on the peace the peace buffet so far this year.

I think it's fair to say. Well, you say that, Andy, but he disagrees. So, you know, as you know, one of Trump's talking points is that he stopped eight wars, which is true except for the fact that there weren't eight of them, they weren't all wars, they didn't stop and he wasn't involved. And except for that, he did stop AWORS. So it's been

it's been such a bonkers time. You know, I, while you've been off doing the cricket, I did have a moment where I was jealous that I had to miss the week of the bugle whenever it was that you covered the few days, the blissful few days that we had to one. whether the Epstein files confirmed that Donald Trump blew Bill Clinton. There was a few days of that question being a live concern in America.

And honestly, if they did blow each other consensually, it's the only thing I don't like about them. Sorry, I said that wrong. If they did blow each other consensually, it's the only thing that I've ever liked about either of them. that they've given each other pleasure. Anyway, so where to begin? So first, just as a simple place to start, Trump signed an executive order withdrawing the United States from 66 global organizations,

agencies, and commissions because they were too woke. However, of the 66 organizations of the U.S. is withdrawing from, 31 of them are UN-affiliated. It's hard to overstate. how much Trump hates the United Nations, presumably because he feels it hasn't been itself since it was led by Butros, Butchos, Boutros, Boutros Gali, didn't get the gig.

He resigned the UN 31 times in a row. 31 times in a row. It raises the question, what did the UN ever do to him? He's resigning the UN like he's a jilted lover of the U.N. and just found out she's going to prompt with her new man Burkina Faso. And Trump is outside the UN's bedroom with a boombox like John Q's that can say anything, yelling Burkina Faso will never make you come like I did. The list is sort of all over the place of the things that they withdrew from.

They don't believe in climate change. So it sort of makes sense that they withdrew from the International Solar Alliance, the International Renewable Energy Agency. But then they withdrew from the International Cotton Advisory Committee. I thought that the Trump administration would like the committee that recommends separating whites from colored. Some of them, I also understand, they withdrew from the regional cooperation agreement on combating piracy and armed robbery against ships in Asia, consistent for Trump to take a pro-piracy stance. Although it's pretty specific. I was like, okay, cooperation, good, agreement, good, combating piracy, okay, sure.

And then ships specifically in Asia like, fuck, people suffering piracy in the Atlantic. You're on your own. Then there's a statement from Secretary St. Marker Rubio, and it gets pretty weird. It says, from DEI mandates to gender equity campaigns to climate orthodoxy, many international organizations now serve a globalist project, in the discredited fantasy of the end of history, these organizations actively seek to constrain American sovereignty. Now, that is literally the entire point of the U.M. A plus on comprehension, the purpose of multilateral diplomatic bodies is to constrain

the sovereignty of those participating bodies. That's the point. They are founded on the premise the world is more effective at solving its problems and avoiding conflict. When everyone agrees to stay in a room and keep talking to each other, even when they disagree instead of narrowly pursuing their own interests, the value to the world is worth the sacrifice individual nations make up

and giving, not pursuing their own narrowly construed interests. It's like saying that I stopped going to the gym because they insisted that I use the exercise equipment for exercise while I just wanted to masturbate on the treadmill and they constrain my sovereignty in that way. I'm looking at the list of organizations. You mentioned 66 global organizations, 31 from the UN, 35 other organisations.

Marco Rubio put out a tweet saying, today President Trump announced the US is leaving 66 anti-American, useless or wasteful organisations, which does raise the possibility that if it's leaving anti-American, useless and wasteful organisations, America could be leaving the United States of America. I mean, it could be pulling the Republican Party out of the Republican Party and Trump may even be departing his own body.

So time will tell on that, along with the UN framework. Sorry, Andy, we're just actually getting some breaking news that it's now 67. And the latest organisation they've left is the United States of America has formally withdrawn from Earth. And a spokesperson of the Trump administration has said 71% of the Earth is covered in water. water is blue. That is a clear bias towards the Democrat Party and we will no longer involve ourselves in this leftist planet.

Well, fair enough. You can't argue with that, really. He's, yeah, as you mentioned, leaving... I don't know where he's going to go, because space is black, and we know how they feel about that. It's only black if you look at it at nightnish, otherwise it's blue.

Maybe sunset is the time for them to go. The UN framework convention on climate change. They're ditching that, as you said, pretty skeptical of climate change. The UN Alliance of Civilizations. A skeptical of the concept of civilization as they are of climate change. That also makes sense. The UN entity for gender equality and the empowerment of women, ditto. The UN permanent forum on people of African descent, it's all, it's all stacking up. It is all stacking up. The Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary General for children in armed conflict, America's pulling out. It's about time these youngsters in

war zone learn to stand on their own. feet. And if they're not happy about it, then they are perfectly at liberty to pretend to have bonespurs and get out of having to be a child in the war zone. Within their own. Also, pulling out the WPBSA, I'm just hearing the governing body of world billions and snooker. There was this, I mean, in terms of, you know, the limits on his global powers, he gave an interview with the New York Times in which he was asked if there were any limits. And he said, yes, there was one thing, my own morality. my own mind. It's the only thing that can stop me.

I mean, is that two things or zero things? I'm not sure. Maybe that averages out at one thing. But I mean, expecting Trump's morality to stop Trump's behavior. But that is akin to trying to stop a runaway train plummeting down a mountain rail line by hitting it with a cucumber as it goes past you. It's not going to work. Nish, what I mean, what else you expect to? Anything else you're expecting America to quit? Well, I mean, I guess

I think beyond the planet that we live on, I'd say America is planning on quitting most things at the moment. I mean, look, the big issue here is that Trump being turned down for the Nobel Peace Prize has clearly backfired on all of us because somebody has clearly told him of the spurious existence of a Nobel War Prize, and he has now decided to go all guns blazing

for that particular prize. the US appears to have withdrawn from the basic tenets of international law. Obviously, on the 3rd of January, when the year was three days old, the United States launched a military strike on Venezuela and captured President Nicholas Maduro and his wife, Celia Flores. They are now being held in custody in America on charges of narco-terrorism. And currently, Trump has said that, the United States is going to run Venezuela for an undetermined period of time.

He's also said to reporters that he contacted oil companies about Venezuela's oil reserves before and after the strike that took out Maduro. Guys, this is fundamentally un-American. This is not how the American government behaves. You are not supposed to execute regime change in Central and South America by invading. You were supposed to do it by calmly and covertly having the CIA direct funds to help for Menta Koo that overthrows democratically elected leaders and replaces them with fascist U.S. government stooges. And you don't say you've consulted oil companies before and after. You dress the whole thing up in some bullshit about democracy.

You say that they've got WMDs that could explode the anus of every American in 15 minutes. What happened to the sext up dossier that took us to war in Iraq? The problem I think with that phrase is sexed up implies that the dossier has itself given consent. And as such, it's not really the Don's Jam. He's more in favor of unwanted groped dossiers. It's a real disgrace to see the United States turn its back on its own history. That's not how you do regime changes. You lie to people.

You pretend it's not to do with oil. I swear to God, Dick Cheney has only been dead for a couple of months. and that is already turning in his grave. Don't make Cheney come back to Earth from hell where he definitely is. Just to be clear, Dick Cheney is definitely in hell. If they can harness the rotation of all the people who are turning in their graves now,

I mean, that could save the world. Be the most enduring source of renewable energy yet discovered. Nathan, in terms of, was the Venezuela jaunt gone down in America? Well, you know, so Trump took the Maduro's from

Venezuela, but he can't use them until he also captures the crema and black bean puree to dip them in. If you don't speak Spanish, Maduros means fried sweet plantains. So they've been building this up for some time. They've spent

two years whipping a full-blown hysteria about Venezuelan drug gangs. It's Venezuelan narco. The trend de Aragua is under your bed. And then literally the minute they captured Maduro, it turned out they were after a different drug, which was oil. They had been attacking these Venezuelan boats for weeks in the Caribbean. They couldn't tell the different. They didn't know. They couldn't confirm that the boats were drug trafficking boats or just fishermen.

and what does it tell you about the Trump regime that they don't know the difference between drug traffickers and fishermen, which is to say they don't know the difference between cocaine and a tuna. And because I'm rigorous about the bugle, I did Google to confirm that the tuna is a fish that is in the Caribbean, and in the course of that research, I discovered that there's another fish in the Caribbean that's called the Atlantic porkfish sweetlips.

and A, that is my favorite piece of new information and B, now the Atlantic porkfish sweet lips has all my cocaine. So, porkfish sweet lips was your drag name, wasn't it, Zaltzman? Only for that one show. So now the US has access to Venezuelan oil.

So the US has, soon we've kidnapped Maduro and are then taking their oil tankers so that now we have access to Venezuelan oil and that we can, and the reason that we didn't have access to Venezuelan oil before we kidnapped Maduro was because we were promoting democracy in Venezuela by imposing sanctions on Venezuelan oil. So we're not violating the sanctions that we created if we steal the oil. Pretty clever. There was an easier way to get the oil, which would have been through an obscure financial instrument called asking.

But where's the fun in that? So Trump said Venezuela is going to be handing over 50 million barrels of oil a day to America and that the money will be controlled by Trump himself. He said it will be controlled by me. So, I mean, what could possibly go wrong with that? I mean, as if Venezuela did not have enough economic difficulties as it is, it now has a serial career bankrupt looking after its oil. wealth. It's just

it's not it's not working out well for the people of Venezuela. Well the US steals the Venezuelan oil and liberate, I mean it's being to say liberates the oil and then sells it at market price and then just to be sure it's used only for benevolent purpose. Donald Trump hides all of it

in his own personal offshore bank account so that it can't be corrupted, which is far more ethical than Nicholas Maduro selling the oil at market prices and hiding only some of the money in his mustache. Nish, I mean, it's a bit of a change over the years for a minute. As you hinted, America's interfered with other countries over the years.

There was the Theodore Roosevelt Doctrine, Speak Softly and Carry a Big Stick, which is now metastasized into the Trumpic scream your f*** off and hurl flaming chainsaws all over the place. I mean, where is next for it? Well, I guess from a European perspective, the concern is that what's next is Greenland. So there's been a lot of saber rattling by the US at various points over the last couple of years about a possible incursion into Greenland. And obviously that has escalated wildly since the Venezuelan, I think, what did you call it, jaunt, Andy? Trump said that the US will acquire green.

And this is a direct quote, whether they like it or not. Now, Greenland is currently, I mean, that's basically, when he eventually has a presidential library, that may as well be across the front of the whole building, whether you like it or not. Although given Trump's presidential library, I imagine it will be just one computer with dial-up internet logged into a pornography site from 1997. Greenland is currently controlled by Denmark. and Trump has been sort of making noises about America taking it over various points. When he was asked about the fact that, you know, Greenland is not on sale.

It's not just on the market. He said, I'm a fan of Denmark too. They've been very nice to me. But the fact that they had a boat land there 500 years ago doesn't mean they own the land. Now, I will say at the point that he said this, you have to assume that every indigenous Americans head exploded in pure rage. Because I'm pretty sure having a boat land

in a place 400 years ago is the entire basis for the country of America. I hope I've not got my history from the now destroyed woke bit of the Smithsonian, but I'm fairly confident that indigenous

Americans ought to give them their real name Americans were told pretty clearly that a boat landing is the reason that somebody owns a country. Well, okay, so I'm glad you mentioned Theodore Roosevelt because critically, Trump didn't.

As a justification for the kidnapping of Maduro, they cited the Monroe Doctrine of 1823. And the Monroe Doctrine said, by President James Oro said, said, Europe, you don't get to have colonies

any more colonies in Latin America. And Trump cited that and said that this is now the Donro Doctrine. And what's interesting about that is that he got the wrong doctrine. And that what he meant to cite was the Roosevelt corollary to the Monroe Doctrine from 1904, which was specifically about Venezuela that is the source of the speak softly and carry a big stick that said, where Free Theater Roosevelt famously said to the rest of the world, basically in so many words, if anyone's going to plunder Latin America, it's going to be us. And so, and the reason the, that the Venezuelan oil is the hardest oil.

I don't know if you caught this detail, but it's like, it's the most, it's heavy crude. And so it takes, it not only does the oil create greenhouse gases, but it requires greenhouse gases extra, even to just refine it, to create more greenhouse gases. Heavy crude and oil, according to AP, is dense, sloppy and thick, which is also my Pornhub search term. And so Maduro, according to the American media, was a dictator running in a third-term regime that undermined internal democracy and the media. But he was a threat to the United States because he noticed that Trump is a sundowning gangster. And the people of South America know a thing or two about Crail-Vane dictators using the entire country as a personal treasure chest. And Donald Trump is too much for them. And so noticing that Trump is a joke is grounds for some light regime change.

and so they had to take out Maduro and they replaced the Maduro government with the Maduro government so it was like how Sun Ra died and his band The Arcusa Stil Tours with playing his music in his costumes but without him it's like it was like the toothpick game like what is the least amount of regime change

you can do and have it still be a regime change he did say that the United States is going to do something there, as in Greenland, whether they like it or not, but that something is a vague term. I mean, something could be anything from put on an open mic country music night

or drop all of America's nukes on Greenland simultaneously in a bid to break the world record for the biggest ever slushy. I mean, it's quite a vague sort of catch-all term. He also said that America taking ownership of Greenland is psychologically important for me, which is

I mean, I'm not sure this is the mental makeup you want in the leader of the free world. That's a sort of psychology you expect from like a low-ranked tennis player trying to get through qualifying to a tournament. This is psychologically important to make it into the first round proper, rather than destabilising the entirety of NATO and the fragile geopolitical framework of the world. But there you go. We live in different times, I guess.

People in Europe keep saying things like, well, if he does do this, then that's the end of NATO. And you're like, that's the least of our problems at this exact moment. It's the end of everything. He invades Europe. The end of NATO is like one of about 75 problems. we're all going to be facing. He said maybe another president would feel differently,

but so far, I've been right about everything. Can I just also say, from a UK perspective, Peter Mandelson has given an interview over the weekend to the BBC, assuring people that Trump won't take Greenland by force. Now, international buglers might not be familiar with Peter Mandelson, but he is and always has been the living incarnation, of BEL's above himself. He was very involved in the Labour Party for a long time.

He's been sacked repeatedly over various scandals, and he was actually appointed by Kirstama as the ambassador to the US. He then had to step down from that job after it was some emails showed that he'd been in contact with the billionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein after, after his conviction for being a big old pedo.

And he had offered him his support. Peter Mandelson said, that because he was gay, he didn't see any of the paedophile crimes. So what I'm saying is when it comes to Peter Mandelson saying that Trump is not going to take Greenland by force, that is a guarantee that he's going to take Greenland by force, because I would say that Lord Mandelson's judgment is severely impaired. So what is it about, and we talked about the 50 million barrels of oil a day from Venezuela, but what is it about Greenland with its plentiful supplies of wear?

earth minerals and potentially huge gold and oil reserves that is attracting the attention of as well as lots and lots of ice, which is possibly needed for Trump to cryogenically freeze his remaining organ so he can live forever and serve a record million consecutive terms as president. There's some suggestion that he might just basically try to bribe Greenland's residents of which there are only 56,000. And again, this sort of tapped into American history. they bought shitloads of land off France and the Louisiana purchase in 1803 for 15 million dollars.

I'm not sure who got the better end of the deal there. It's still a bit early to make that call. Russia flogged Alaska to America in 1867 for 7.2 million. Perhaps having calculated that one day Sarah Palin would be governor of Alaska and Russia would have enough of its own shit to do with at that point. It's called depreciation, Andy. Only 7% of Americans back military. action in Greenland, which doesn't sound like a resound.

I guess America has not got a good record at away wins in recent decades. Let's see why people are a little skeptical. As you know, I am a union negotiator and so I pay a lot of attention to

the negotiation lessons. Yeah. And so under the There's an existing treaty between the part of the rationale for the U.S. one in Greenland is for strategic military defense purposes in terms of monitoring the Arctic. The U.S. already has a military base on Greenland and has access to Greenland under an existing treaty for military purposes. But that's not good enough for Trump. What Trump said is, quote, ownership gives you things and elements that you can't get from just signing a document.

Now, first of all, things and elements. One of the things that is incredibly striking to me about Trump as a negotiator, is his lack of interest in the details of the deal. Like in my experience in negotiations, the negotiation is all about the details. And he's like, there are things and elements. You don't worry about it. And then he said, secondly, he said,

that you can't get just from signing a document. Signing a document is the marker of ownership. You buy a car, you sign it. You sign stuff. You buy a house. You sign stuff. The only way that you get to own things without signing a document is if you're just tapping your phone at the Apple pay.

And I imagining Trump wants to have Greenland by like tapping his phone on it and just gets a gift return receipt like he bought a toaster at Macy's, you know? I guess, you know, long term, the question does America need Greenland? You ally it to Trump's environmental policies. Greenland is 80% covered in ice caps now, but it could provide, you know, 700,000 plus square miles of prime agricultural land within just two or three decades.

So you can see kind of long term, there's an element that makes strategic sense. He also said Greenland is covered with Russian and Chinese ships all over the place, which would be a real concern for America if it was actually true. So again, these are all factors in it. In terms of the negotiations, though,

I mean, this, you know, this sort of threatening to do whatever it takes with Greenland. It's a classic step one in a Trump. It's sort of like haggling with a wolf who's threatening to eat all of your grandparents. So when the wolf eats only one of your grannies, it feels like you've got a pretty sweet deal. So it's pretty remarkable. Yeah. I mean, there's, you know, condemnation from around the world of America's actions. Hezbollah condemned the kidnapping of Maduro and Mrs. Maduro,

saying that America's actions threatened the, fundamental rights upon which international order is based. And look, Hezbollah don't always come across as incorrigible fans of international order. So, yeah, this is, these are strong words from the big age. And they also said it could lead to a return to the dark ages of human history, which does seem, I mean, arguably America was in a much better state in the dark ages than it is now.

But also, to be honest, I think I might take that. I might take a return to the dark ages and just another swing at modern civilization. I think clearly we've fucked it up now. We need to just go back to pre-renasance times and just have another fucking thing. Paint even more willies on ceilings to get things going. And then, you know, just try not to f*** up this badly again.

I think you just pitched the reboot of Battlestar Galactica. Andy's just pitched the reboot. of civilization. Let's go gritty this time. We let civilization... Civilization is in its Batman and Robin face, and we need a Christopher Nolan type figure to take it back to its gritty roots.

The most amazing thing about this is because of the complexity of extracting the oil and also because of the instability in Venezuela, which has not been improved by Trump's actions, some of the oil companies are now reluctant to get involved in actual investments in Venezuela.

So Trump is actually in a bad mood with Exxon at the moment because he says that they've been too cute, which I don't think anyone has ever accused Exxon of being too cute. A lovable, cute little cuddly oil. Yeah, as far as I know, Exxon is not the Laboo Boo Boo doll of oil companies. But yeah, he said that they're, he said that he doesn't like Exxon's response. they're playing too cute. Exxon has basically said that it's not going to get involved because it's worried about further regime change. And also, a private equity investor who specialises in energy investments told the financial times here that there are serious concerns about

investments in Venezuela because, and this is a direct quote, no one wants to go in there when a random f*** can change the entire foreign policy of the country. That is, So we can now add to the list of things that are too woke for the Trump administration, ExxonMobil and private equity investors. There's not much left. I don't know what else is left. The Daily Telegraph might be the only thing left. In terms of the future of Venezuela, I guess on the positive side,

there's only around 900 years worth of oil in reserve in Venezuela so the ordinary citizens of Venezuela only need to wait for about a millennium or so before they can settle down to a quiet life undisturbed by the acquisitive talents of domestic and international petrohawks which is not that long in the grand scheme of things

but let's clean for that well we will of course have full weekly updates on America's military interventions around the world Iran could be next. Much talk from Trump about a possible intervention in Iran. There are huge protests across Iran

in more than 500 locations sparked us before New Year by an ongoing financial crisis. Hundreds reported killed by security forces, thousands, arrested and Ayatollah Hamanae facing the biggest threat to his leadership since he became supreme leader in 1989. His reign coincided, perhaps coincidentally, with a major downturn in England's performances in Ashes Crows. These are the

I've never been a fan to be honest For that and other reasons Don't blame the Ayatollah, Andy You could blame him for a lot of stuff It's not like We're short of things to blame the Ayatollah for That we cannot blame the Ayatollah For England's pathological

Inability to read Shane Warren's leg spin He calls himself the supreme leader The Supreme Leader, obviously he's taking responsibility. He's very much the Diana Ross of Iran. And listen, at various points, Ayatollah Hamadhi, we have found ourselves asking how many wickets have we lost before the lunch break?

In a televised address, Kamene called on Trump to, quote, focus on the problems of his own country. I don't know if there's a pot calling a kettle black or a vampire calling a cannibal, a bad vegan or just a prick calling a dick a cock. I don't know. It's definitely one of those things. Trump wore, he posed with a make Iran great again hat,

which led to Greece getting pretty fucking worried, to be honest, maybe working out how it might try to hold a mountain pass with only 300 soldiers again. It's a bit trickier at these days than it used to be. So, I mean, could America really achieve simultaneous wars in Iran, Greenland, South America, Africa, space and Minneapolis? I mean, that is taking a lot on. And, Nat, it's amongst the many depressing stories that have afflicted America domestically recently. The events in Minneapolis recently are right up or down there with some of the bleakest. Well, so, I mean, it's been a weird week to have the stuff with Iran and Minneapolis at the same time, because as the Iranian regime is, what I say the regime's violent crackdown, I realize I need to specify which is.

So that's the world we're in. But as the Iranian regime is preparing for a violent crackdown against protesters, Trump said, quote, we will start shooting if Iran starts shooting the same week that the U.S. regime started. shooting. Now, generally speaking, my least favorite genre of political comedy is pointing out hypocrisy. But I think in this case, we need to take a step back and take in awe with the breath and the scope of the hypocrisy of the Trump regime. It's almost like we need new words for the levels of hypocrisy. Like hyper hypocrisy.

The 1992 song by Noddy by Nature. So, this This week, so ICE has been doing a massive deployment in Minneapolis based on false claims about child care fraud by Somali immigrants. And there was an ICE agent who murdered a mom named Renee Good in her car while she was trying to drive away. That was a horrible tragedy. and it is easy to feel despair in this moment. And what gives me some amount of hope is that all over the country, as we speak, regular Americans are running towards armed federal agents to protect their neighbors. That's happening everywhere all the time.

It's incredible. And the purpose of escalating state violence is to intimidate the public, and it's not working. They're within two days, indivisible swap track, a thousand protests against ice around the country. And the best thing to come out of Minneapolis is that because it's January of Minnesota and it's bloody cold, there are a ton of videos coming out of people as legal observers of ice operations, filming ice agents, slipping and falling on icy Minneapolis site. Proving once again that across time and space and culture, the funniest thing is a fat man falling. So I attended the protest in San Francisco.

It was good, but like we've been protesting so much and for so long that the chants are getting weird. As people get tired, they need to tap out and new people to take the bullhorn and the chance change. And so they're evolving from like your classic, like, what do we want, justice, when do we want it now, to what do we want? A Truth of Reconciliation Commission to hold people accountable both in the federal government as well as other elite institutions that were completely. in the consolidation of autocratic rule in the U.S. to have to face the harm they've caused before we turn the page so we don't repeat the mistakes of both the Iraq war, the 2008 financial crisis and January 6th by letting our urgency to turn the page and move on where we allow people to avoid consequences for their actions, thus incentivizing further such actions. When do we want it? Ideally on January 7, 2021, but second choice now, third choice, as soon as Trump predictably dies in office because of whatever his weird hand thing is. And fourth choice, probably the most realistic option maybe in history books in 20 years. Meanwhile,

our regime is getting more like overtly Nazi. Like the official social media feeds of federal agencies are quoting Nazi slogans. There are so many of them that like I'll see something

they'll post something that has some weird phrasing and then I'll see commentary that it's a famous old Nazi slogan. And I didn't realize that there were so many Nazi slogans. Like, they're really getting the deep cuts of the Nazi slogan. Nazis are like Tupac. Like, we thought we were dead and they keep dropping news. You know what?

What gives me comfort is that Christy Knoem, Pete Hegseth, and Stephen Miller are so desperately trying to show what good Nazis they are. And on some level, I think, all know that Hitler would have found them disappointing and pathetic. Like, if they actually got to meet Hitler, it would have been like a Friars Club roast. Like Stephen Miller, you're definitely not the master race. At best, you're addressing mannequin at the master race as haberdashery. Listen, NATO, you say it's hypocrisy.

I don't see it as hypocrisy because Donald Trump has repeatedly said that he's going to intervene if Iranian authorities kill protesters. It's not clear what side he's planning to intervene in favour of. It's not entirely clear if he's going to say to them, listen, that's not how you kill protesters. I'll show you how you kill protesters. And the Iranian filmmaker Jaffa Panahi, who is one of the great luminaries of Iranian cinema,

and who is actually in America because his film, it was just an accident is actually... I saw it last night. It's incredible. It's an incredible film. It's doing the award rounds at the moment and it's an extraordinary film

and Panahi himself has been repeatedly imprisoned by the running regime and the end of the movie has this like incredible conclusion that is like brilliantly sort of ambiguous. I wouldn't, I genuinely wouldn't give it away because it's really, really such a brilliant ending. And there's, you know, there's a lot of debate about how you feel the ending is going to be perceived, what he thinks is going to happen.

I'll tell you where there's no room for ambiguity in the remarks that Juffa Bernari made when he was asked about a potential American intervention. Because he was asked about the protests and he's given a huge amount of support to the protesters. He said that when regimes such as Iran get to this point, no one, how no one can really predict how long it will take. It could be a year, a week, a month. But eventually they will fall.

But when asked about his reaction to Trump saying make Iran great again, he has said the regime has already fallen. And as I've said before, the people who are carrying out the protest industry, they want to make that happen. He was pressed again by the interviewer from Variety. So you do not feel the need for US intervention in Iran, correct? And he said, you do not seem to understand. Let me say it again until people have the will to change something from within.

Nothing will be able to make that change. Emmanuel has presented us with one of the great ambiguous ending. in cinema this year was so close to telling this person to go for themselves and calling them a kind of like it is really extraordinary. I mean, what has happened with Renee Good and Minneapolis this week is it really is the latest in a string of disgraces. And what's made it even worse has been the reaction of Trump and the people closest to him. Trump falsely said in an interview with the New York Times that Good ran over

the ICE agent that shot her, in spite of the fact that we can all see the video, and crucially, we know the difference between forward and backward. And the Homeland Security Secretary Christy Noem accused good of domestic terrorism, suggesting that the industrial quantity of Botox she's had injected into her face

has now drifted into her brain. And J.D. Vance wrote on X that the agent in question was defending his life against the deranged leftists who tried to run him over. J.D. Vance is a phenomenal, phenomenal individual because he is both an icon to white supremacist and a one man repost to the concept of white supremacy.

No one has done more to dismantle the philosophy of white supremacy than that beach ball with a beard drawn on, that Christmas adventurer club, motherf-fri- also. The other thing is they keep talking about ice agents being a threat. And of course they're a threat because they are not sufficiently trained. My evidence for this is someone who has been confirmed as an ice agent is Dean Kane. The actor who in the 90s played Superman. Now, I'm not saying that ice agents are underprepared,

but I'm saying if Dean Kane is in ice, that is a sign that they are not trading them formally. Also, we are in an extraordinary position where an actor is now in an anti-immigration paramilitary organization, and he is most famous for playing America's most famous illegal immigrant. Did you catch the detail that the training that they're offering for ICE agents is 47 days because Trump is president, he's the 47th president? That is the... That's not enough time.

That's not enough time. I spent three years to get a degree in English literature and history. And I didn't... And I didn't... And I'm not allowed to have a gun. well thank you for listening buglers we will be back next week

tickets for my tour extension of the Zaltgeist are available by my website Andyzaltzman.com.uk Starting on the 31st of January and shows through to April-ish I'm going to say NATO anything to plug

yep I have the last bit of the tour shows coming up before I record. February 1st, Santa Rosa at Barrelproof. February, Saturday, February 21st at the Punchline, Sacramento. Sunday, February 22nd, Los Angeles. By the first time I've done it in L.A., the Lyric Hyperion, I'd love to see some buglers there.

And then I am recording Saturday, February 28, in San Francisco, but those shows are sold out already, pretty much. Nish. I am starting a new run of tour dates and the new show. The first outing of it will be on Saturday, April 18th at the Moon Tower Comedy Festival in Austin, Texas. Do buy your tickets from the Moon Towers website. Austin Theatre.org forward slash Moontower Comedy, forward slash performers, forward slash Nish Kumar. There's some hyphins in there.

I sort of broadly back you guys to get it. And I imagine I'll be hopping straight over from there to do a late set of the mothership. On those hollow words, that's the end of this week's show. Goodbye.