The Bugle - The Pollsters Have Given Up - Bugle 4319

Episode Date: November 4, 2024

Andy Zaltzman, Nish Kumar and Alice Fraser look at the final moments of the US election. Is Donald Trump still functioning? Is this the end of polls? Can we all vote?Also, the British Royal Family: Rich.Why not check out 15 years of top stories: https://www.thebuglepodcast.com/topstories.Featuring:Andy ZaltzmanNish KumarAlice FraserProduced by Chris Skinner and Laura Turner. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world. Hello Buglers, I am Andy Zaltzman and welcome to this special Bugle, issue 4319 of the world's most reliably unreliable news source, recorded just one day, that's 24 hours in human time before America rams its national fingers into the electrical socket of democracy once more. A tremulous world awaits to see what the world's most powerful, citation needed, defined powerful nation will inflict on itself. We, the 8 billion non-Americans who have cruelly denied the votes in this decision that will affect our lives, mood, and planets, arguably even more than Americans can only sit and wait.

Denied the rights and the opportunity to have our say by the cruel happenstance of geography and by the insularitas tradition that only people who are citizens of a country can vote in its elections, even though often, and in America's case arguably always, they are the ones who are least objective about it. And as America stares at itself in its shattered political mirror, the mirror it has been remorselessly headbutting for decades now whilst whimpering, Am I beautiful? Am I? and its multiple reflections, we can only once again write letters of apology to generations past and future, a parody of itself to which we have allowed our democracy to sink. Now that was a bit of a bleak start to the show, so let's try again.

Welcome to the bugle, it'll all be fine! Disclaimer, it may not all be fine. All may not turn out to be fine at all, even slightly. The bugle accepts no responsibility for the act of political self-immolation that the USA may or may not be about to inflict on itself. All bets are off. Please vote responsibly. Now joining me to discuss the last twitchings of this acrid corpse of an election campaign, two people who, like me me have really had to work to get our votes in, being as we are not allowed

to vote in America, but we have to find a way. Firstly, a man who, if all the votes I've tried to cast are counted as they should be, will this time next week be an electoral college member for the Republican Stronghold of West Virginia. It's Nish Kumar! Hello Andy. Hello Buglers. I will say yes, we are as foreign agents not supposed to intervene in an election. But as anyone who knows anything about American history knows, intervening in foreign elections is the most inherently American thing possible. I don't know if anybody has studied too much of the history of Central America in the 1970s and 80s. Uh, but they, it could not be more American.

It could not be more of a tribute to one of America's worst actors and presidents, Ronald Reagan, than to directly intervene in a foreign election. America is currently in the process of paying a constant rolling tribute to Reagan by consistently trying to get people addled with dementia elected as president. So I just feel like it's an equivalent tribute for us to directly intervene in the American election, Eddrey. Also joining us, providing perspective and quite literally distance from the other side of the world, it's coming to us from Brisbane, Australia, pretty much as far

from the USA as you can get without leaving the surface of the planet. It's Alice Fraser. Hello, Eddie. Hello, Nish. It is delightful to be here. Yes, being a foreign agent is such a difficult thing. I appointed myself a foreign agent, but the moment I added it to my website, I was immediately swamped by comedians desperate to get an agent.

I couldn't explain to them that that isn't exactly what the kind of agent that I just shrugged at them and told them to get a TikTok and took 30% of their income. So it's going well. 30%, Alice, if that joke has any basis in fact, you have got to have a word with your agent right now. As always, a section of The Bugle is going straight in the bin. Well, in fact, we are delaying our section in the bin this week to see if the section in the bin this week is the entire concept of hope and democracy functioning for the good of humanity. We'll

see if that does or doesn't go in the bin over the next 36, 48 hours or so. Instead, we're going to have a special anniversary section in the bin looking back exactly 100 years to the 4th of november 1924 100 years ago today 100 years on from the 1924 presidential election in which the republicans won the popular vote now, I know for our younger listeners Anyone whose political consciousness began at any time from 1990 that seems almost inconceivable, but it did used to happen. In fact, they won it quite convincingly. And in our special anniversary section of the bin, we catch up with the superstars of that campaign to see how things are going. We sit back and chill with the winner, Calvin, the Iceman Coolidge. We catch up with runner-up John W. Davis, the Democratic candidate, and get his reflections on his landslide defeat.

And we asked progressive party candidate fighting Bob LaFollette, whom he would most like to get into the metaphorical or indeed literal ring with today. Sorry. Who's candle all three of the f**kers since 1933. Oh, wow. Right. What? When exactly in 1933, fifth of january so he didn't even live to see out of body line series ended poor old kelvin no uh no i don't suppose he can reschedule what about davo no i guess he was never very good at the media shit and fighting bob so he definitely can't do it but look if he turns up on the rest of the on the rest is politics i'll be pissed off anyway

pissed off anyway and that section I love I did taking shots at rival rival political podcasts absolutely love it for international listeners the uh the rest is politics is a political podcast and these are not my words these are just the words of some randall disgruntled guy that is hosted by a haunted victorian puppet and a war criminal. But I cannot express this enough, those are not my words. Those are the words of one Kish Numer. Top story this week, America vomits its own soul out into a bottomless chasm of despair. Sorry, America goes to the polls to vote in its presidential election. Now I've actually enjoyed this election campaign a lot more than I thought I was going to.

And by enjoy, I mean ignore, because I've spent the last month in Pakistan in the the loving embrace of cricket also I've just started my my stand-up tours I've been concentrating on that and I had lots of cricket in the weeks before that in the English cricket season and to be honest it has made this election campaign far more bearable. How have you both dealt with it? This, I mean, I guess 2016 there was a certain, I don't know, I mean, novelty to it. And I mean, I guess, you know, I don't know, there's almost like a dull fad of reality about Trump still being even a candidate.

How have you managed to cope with it? The dull fad of reality was Trump still being even a candidate? How have you managed to cope with it? The dull thud of reality was your special move when you were a wrestler, wasn't it, Zoltan? It was. Just got to get it just high enough above the... Anyway. Sorry, Alice. The nature of this election is so urgent and upsetting.

You know, it's a battle for the soul and identity of America. Sorry, Alice. The nature of this election is so urgent and upsetting. It's a battle for the soul and identity of America. If one party wins, it will be straight up repressive, patriarchal, Christo, fascism, four square families with 15 children apiece, populating rural compounds in the f***ing end of nowhere. If the other party wins, it'll be the absolute disintegration of social traditions, miserable, over-employed barren women, gay minorities transitioning, miners, bleeding hearted leftists demanding your hard earned

tax dollars be poured into wasteful half-baked programs to teach refugees knitting or critical race theory while your grandma can't get a job. It's so incredibly important and vital and I feel like my care-ometer got tapped out about three and a half years ago maybe. Like everything is so f***ing urgent and in your face and depressing all the time. I think I'm done.

I think. It's just you resigning as a, as you know, from the human race, essentially, just maybe I'm moving on to a happier species. Well, the only way that I'm coping is by looking on the funny side, Andy, on the bright side of things. It is very funny to me that the Republicans whole pitch is basically Well, the only way that I'm coping is by looking on the funny side, Andy, on the bright side of things. It is very funny to me that the Republicans' whole pitch is basically constantly asserting that the Democrats have the power to rig elections, that there's a deep state that's

in control of everything, that the Hollywood elite are drinking children. They have the power to control your life and prevent the Republicans from winning, and that's why it's important to get out and vote. And also if the Republicans win, ignore all that stuff we spent months or years saying about the validity of the election. It's amazing. And Nish, how's your election campaign gone? My election campaign has gone fantastically, Andrew. And I'm basically at this point, all of our objective is to not pull

a Tony Hinchcliffe. Every comedian now, we've all had bad gigs. Some of us have had gigs so bad, they've ended up in the news. But none of us have had a gig so bad, we might potentially alter the trajectory of a presidential race. And the only objective here is to not do what Tony Hitchcliffe, aka Kill Tony, did when he opened for Donald Trump at what appears to be an Adolf Hitler tribute concert that he staged at Madison Square Garden. It was very strange. It was like watching the bootleg Beatles or something. It was a very strange event.

Tony Hitchcliffe told a joke that is so racist about Puerto Ricans that it may well have a direct impact on the presidential race. I mean, elsewhere, I will say that, aside from all the other very, very sort of important conversations and issues that we've had here, it is really important to stress that Donald Trump at the most recent bout of rallies has looked fully dead. He has looked simply dead as f***. Like, I don't know. He's putting the Brezhnev card. It genuinely looks like Lenin is running for Russian president now. And again, we shouldn't, we should separate all of these out. There were very serious issues at play.

But at several of Trump's rallies that I've seen video footage of in the last couple of days, he has looked like me when I did what I would describe as ill-advised stand up comedy gig 25 minutes after getting out of the airport when I landed in New Zealand. I was so jet lagged that my brain could not make memories. I was forgetting the words I was saying as I was saying them. I sort of jet lagged myself into having the memento man's disease. It was incredible. I was barely capable of understanding what I was saying as it was coming out of my mouth. Now, I will say did the gigs go fine? Of course they did. I'm an incredibly competent stand up comedian. And I will say competent is about tickets available

at lishkermar.co.uk for my talk. But what I will say is what I wouldn't have done in that position is give me the codes to the most powerful nuclear arsenal assembled in the history of mankind. He looks deeply and profoundly unwell. At one point last week, he just started week he just started riffing on Hannibal Lecter. He's consistently just talked about Hannibal Lecter repeatedly to the extent that it's starting to be concerning that he thinks Hannibal Lecter is a real guy. He's done this quite often now hasn't he? Lecter seems to be some sort of spiritual touchstone. I don't know if he's like a, like a hero, a role model. I don't know. Well, they didn't do anyone any favors by casting Mads

Mikkelsen in the, in the reboot, did they? Cause now everyone has weird sexual feelings about Hannibal Lector. To be fair, I think Trump probably had weird sexual feelings about the original Hannibal Lector. But again, handsome actors can turn anyone's head. Regarding Tony Hinchcliffe, I was so glad that I'm not doing the last post anymore, because if you recall correctly, there were occasional moments where it felt like the made-up universe that I had created was piercing through to the boundaries of reality. And when he started saying there was a floating trash island in the

ocean, I was like, is it Bob the sentient trash island who's running for president in the last post-universe? I think we'd all take that now, Alice, to be honest. We would all happily welcome Bob the sentient trash island back from the fictitious past into the real present. I mean, all the rabbits Trump has pulled out of the campaigning hat, the rotten festering corpses of rabbits out of his putrid hat. I mean, racism, sexism, big time bullshit. He described Puerto Rico, this floating island of garbage. He said Liz Cheney should have guns pointing at her face.

He joked joking, of course, about journalists being shot. I mean, personally, I know humor is innately subjective, but I didn't find it laugh out loud funny. But then comedy of awkwardness is not really my thing. He talked about the enemy within and whether or not you think he was attempting to directly quote Adolf Hitler. It was certainly the kind of language that you might use if, for example, you were scripting a TV drama about Hitler and you wanted Hitler to sound just like Adolf Hitler.

He claimed God was on his side. This is a weird thing, claiming God was on his side. I know we all tend to drift a bit right as we get older and God has had some pretty wonky political and social views over the years but even so that seems like a bit of a leap for God to support a man who quite literally shits on all ten of his commandments on a daily basis. I just think the only acceptable time to call someone the enemy within is when you're pregnant and they're kicking your bladder. I will say that at certain times of my life where I've experienced, shall we call it, colonic discomfort, I have repeatedly referred to the enemy within

and have screamed, the power of Christ compels you at my own stomach. Get thee behind me, Satan. He also used this phrase, hydrogen is the new car. That will take so much explanation on so many levels. That was the working title of Orange is the New Black. He also pretended to give a blowjob to a microphone. Is that really appealing to the undecided voters? the just maybe there are key voters in key swing stuff. You just wait for one or other candidate to give a pretend blowjob to a pretend microphone and that could be what swings it for Trump. By contrast, Carmen Harris is pitching for unity, hope and progress. I mean, I don't know who the

hell she's trying to convince with that shit. Those are things that traditionally vast swathes the American electorate are at best skeptical about. They're a bit woke maybe even a bit French. I'm not sure she's going down the right road with that. There was an article on Vox with a headline, is America collapsing like ancient Rome? Someone who studied ancient Rome to a degree, I mean literally a university degree above, but I mean to a pretty small degree of that degree. Let's give ancient Rome some credit. It took them hundreds of years to collapse like America is doing in the space of about a decade and a half. So, if America is collapsing like ancient Rome, I'll tell you who we all owe an apology

to Francis Ford Coppola, because his movie Megalopolis, which I have seen, and I think is the closest experience to, I guess, taking psychedelic drugs I will ever get to. He had a lot of things to say about America as a comparison with the decline of the Roman Empire. Did I understand a lot of them? Absolutely not. Were quite a lot of people laughing at various points in the film that I don't think was supposed to be funny? Absolutely they were. Just to circle back onto those, like the journalist remarks. So Trump has basically said, this is the quote that he said about journalists. He was talking on stage at one of his rallies, presumably in between stuff about Hannibal Lecter being elected as the new Secretary of State for Cannibalism.

He said, I have this piece of glass here, but all we really have over here is the fake news. And to get me, someone would have to shoot through the fake news. And I don't mind that so much. So that's what he said. And you have to give his spin doctors credit, huge amounts of credit, because one of his campaign spokespeople, Stephen Chung,

said that Trump had said nothing to do with the media being harmed, and then said this, there could be no other interpretation of what was said. He was actually looking out for their welfare far more than his own. Stephen Chung has the worst job in the Western world, apart from the person who has to clean out Trump's toilet at the end of the day. Those are the two people with simply the worst jobs in the West.

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, are you suggesting he does poo in a party? I mean, if the shoe fits. I would say given the coherence he's been exhibiting in some of his rallies, if he's making the party, it's a big day for Don Don. I will say most of his rallies at this point look like adverts for adult nappies. Like it is unhinged. It looks like in the teleprompter it says in and out. Like he is losing coherence by the second.

If he is elected, that inauguration speech in January is going to be an impromptu tribute to Weekend at Bernie's. Well, he's always been particularly good at sort of jazz speech where he sort of doesn't manage quite to say anything and thereby allows anybody who's watching him to impose that, you know, sort of abstract art. You get to impose your own meaning on the shape of the words. It's very vibe-spaced. But it does seem to have gotten more policky.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Despite all this, the polling is apparently so close that polling companies are wary of predicting the result because they're afraid of getting it wrong, which slightly defeats the object of being a polling company. But there was a BV headliner of the BBC website today, an article, 10 reasons why either Harris or Trump might win. Now, I mean, that is hedging so much, that's hedging bets, that is entirely foresting your bets in a kind of Amazonian rainforest of obscurity.

It is, well, I mean, we talk often on The Bugle about how difficult it is to understand America. And it must be, I do feel sorry for traditional, long-standing Republicans who have seen this sort of aggressive form of political necrosis grasp their party and for all its flaws. I mean, it used to be known by its acronym, obviously the GO for grand old party that acronym has now been updated to mad bad and dangerous to know As Lord Byron was described by his one of his squeezes Caroline lamb It's a bit of an unwieldy acronym Sounds from maniacally advocated disharmony bitterly antagonistic delusion deranged apoplectic nurturing grudges eternally ranker

Subsessively unremittingly splenetic totally offensive knowing nothing of world. GOP was snappier, but I think this is more appropriate for the model of the president. Alice, I know you've been keeping track of the, well, the key aspect of Kamala Harris's campaign, which is that she doesn't have a penis and testicles, which makes her quite unusual as a presidential candidate in America. And many people have said that this testicles, which makes her quite unusual as a presidential candidate in America. And many people have said that this could be, you know, an absolutely key factor

in the election campaign. Yes, yeah. People are saying that women will vote for Kamala. She leads among women from 18 to 29, 18 to 29 year old women by 30 points, apparently, according to a recent poll by the Harvard Institute of Politics or HIP, which apparently more and more women are coming out to vote and most of them are voting for Kamala Harris unless they're older women who are white who are voting for Trump, which is not ideal necessarily, but I sort of don't know what they mean by these polls anyway. Just the idea that more women is a good thing for Kamala. There's an ad that's doing quite well at the moment that suggests that your vote is going to be private and so you're going to secretly be voting for Kamala in order to protect yourself and your female friends and your female children

and your female parents. Look, I don't know. You don't even need to believe that abortion is a good thing to be against the idea that deeply private health decisions ought to be the business of the people making them, maybe in consultation with their doctors. You don't need to believe in trans rights to say that someone else's relationship with their own body is none of your business. Like I think lip filler looks weird, like, and like you've got a squid

butt trying to escape from your face, but I'm not going to vote for someone to outlaw it because I don't care enough about somebody else's body. I just, I feel like we really need to re-institute not caring about what other people do. How about if that would destroy all of politics around the world? Not necessarily politics. That's the joy of politics is to impose your crackpot views on people that you have never and will never meet.

Who's going to want to go into it? Where's the incentive for kids to go into politics if they're not going to be able to impose their worldview on innocent third parties? Podcasting! third parties podcasting. Can't all these people just get a podcast and leave us alone? That's what we've done. It's a leaf out of our book, Republican Party. We try to impose our views, but we're only doing it on people who've clicked download. download. What about the lapsed Jewish sport obsessed vote, which way is that? Another key aspect in the election campaign and another thing that could swing in these

delicate final hours is the death of a squirrel in New York, which has come to symbolise everything that's wrong with modern America. New York wildlife officials euthanised a pet squirrel. JD Vance has jumped on this. It's become a kind of course, a lever for the Republicans. So the government basically where, I mean, as the old saying goes, where you kill squirrels, there you kill some squirrels.

I think that's how it goes. But Vance has interpreted this as saying the government wants you to stop owning any pets. And this is proof that the government wants to impose itself under the Democrats on every aspect, want us to stop you keeping an anaconda in your bathtub, stop you releasing your pet tiger into kindergarten's full of children in zebra outfits. The tigers eat zebras, I assume so.

I mean, they probably don't meet very often. That's how they accumulate stripes. But again, as the old saying goes, one squirrel death is a tragedy. 50,000 gun deaths is a happy statistic that proves that the Second Amendment is working just as the founding fathers intended. So this is it's a strange thing that's come into this campaign. This this this squirrel martyr. Yeah, it's become it's become a real focus of J.D. Vance, who's Trump's running mate and also the man who

most looks like a child who's drawn on a beard to his face, just so he can get into see an 18 movie. Particularly as this is a group of people who would fight to the death for your right to shoot and eat a squirrel in the wild. Yeah. And also, particularly because this is a group with this very interesting that they've managed to muster the interest on the death of a squirrel

when they have not been able to muster the same level of excitement or interest in the deaths of many black people in America. This is a group of people who have finally found a rallying call and that rallying call is squirrel lives matter. And we expect to be seeing SLM hashtags all over all of JD Vance's tweets between now and the end of time.

Yeah, I was hoping it was disinformation when I saw this story come up. I was like, oh, maybe this is more f**king nonsense in a political campaign that has just been knee deep in f**king nonsense. Well, in the words of every Republican spokesperson since 2016, you can't spell disinformation without information. Well, that is information. And in the words of Donald Trump, I can see a light should I walk towards it, please let me go.

Well, in news that won't be news to anyone who reads the news, this is one of the most misinformation-y election cycles ever. I think it is unprecedented in the amount of absolute f***ing nonsense that's out there. Rumors, misleading allegations. How do we know that's true, Alice? How do we know that's true? Because we have a combination of AI and bot farms. So now you can do it at scale. Do they really exist, Alice? Does AI and bot farm, do they really exist? We live in the future, Andy. It's never been this easy to lie in bulk at scale in industrial quantities. Just think about it. In the olden days, to spread misinformation, you'd need to hire a

single deformed jester or minstrel troop to roam the countryside suggesting your political opponent was filleting the devil for extra servings of pudding. Now, you can have a glorious oar. Well, I was going to say oar. You hire four people to write a so-called gospel and you absolutely ruin the health of a perfectly functioning religion. Andy is never more committed to the tenets of the Jewish faith when it comes to slamming the Christians. For a Jew so lapsed, he's basically a Muslim. Zoltzman gets very defensive when it comes to the followers of Jesus Christ.

I'm just nostalgic for a time when if you wanted to kind of affect people's opinions, you had to like put one shoulder up and hunt around behind their throne whispering in their ear. Now, you know, artisanal misinformation. Now you can have an orchestra of AI bots and content farms in third world countries turning this shit out in vast exponential curving sprays of fucking nonsense up the world in everyone's pocket 24-7 in every time zone on earth simultaneously. It's very, it's disheartening for the old trad misinformation.

Yes, disheartening, it's sort of disheartening in the way, in the film Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, that kind of disheartening where you're having your heart kind of gouged out from your chest cavity. Kind of aggressively disheartening. Springbank visitors is what I say. And someone who stands to benefit quite significantly from a potential Trump win is Elon Musk, the cartoon parody, fictitious gazillionaire, disruptorist and freelance evil genius impersonator, a man who is so rich he eats Fabergé omelets for breakfast and who seems to be goading himself to become the worst possible version of himself. There's a kind of relationship of strangely mutual fluffery with Donald Trump. They are very much two javelins skewering democracy in the same eye sockets from slightly

different angles. And it's kind of, well, he almost seems to be, I don't know, kind of purchasing the soul of American democracy. I'm not entirely comfortable with that, Alice, are you? Well, in a direct outcome of the decision in Citizens United that money equals a voice, essentially, this is the most billionaire election I think we've seen yet. Musk, specifically, has donated more than $75 million to Trump's campaign and he's offering cash prizes of like a million dollars to registered voters who sign a petition. He's jumping around making the letter X with his hands. He's showing up at rallies.

He's putting a shoulder behind this thing and behaving in this completely deranged way. But I don't think he's gone mad with power. A lot of people are suggesting that he's gone mad with power. He's enacting the loosely midlife crisis of a divorced dad in a pathetic need for the adulation of toxic nerds online. And I can see why some people would think that. But I just, I think he's genuinely and honestly and sincerely inside himself decided that his vision for a futurist future full of humans living in domes among the stars is an achievable goal and that the futurey future is being held back by the inefficient mechanisms of bad government and the inherent

clunkiness of democracy and the innovation shackling drag of worker safety regulations. So I think he's just gone all in and he's being silly in order to get attention, in order to get the world that he wants, where he's allowed to, I don't know, fire puppies at children in order to see how they'll survive on Mars. Like, I don't know. Yeah, he's sort of averse to regulation and taxation in the same way that he's sort of averse to wearing clothing that fits his body. What he stands to gain is potentially enormous. He already has a huge amount of contracts with the US government. Trump has repeatedly suggested that he will be given some sort of position within the Trump administration to improve the efficiency of the US government, doing to the US government, presumably what he is, as long as he is not regulated

or taxed in any way, he will support absolutely the most repressive governments in the world. He's demanded, he's complied with demands by Erdogan in Turkey to censor his opponents and he complied with Narendra Modi's Indian government when it asked him to remove a hostile BBC documentary. So Elon Musk claims to be a free speech absolutist, but he is evidence for free speech absolutism in no way, shape or form. Just as his constant retweeting of white supremacist propaganda is completely at odds with his own appearance, which is a visual rebuke to the concept of the genetic superiority of white people. I cannot believe a man is promoting white supremacy whilst walking around looking

like someone has managed to stretch skin over a shipping container. Oh, it's a fact we all want a safe space these days. And Elon Musk has made Twitter a safe space and what you made it a safe space for some of the world's most dangerous and horrific people. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He's had a celebrity spat this week with Cardi B, the prominent rapper. Yes, short for Cardigan Boobs. Well, Cardigan Bay actually in Wales. He elongated sandy beaches and has always been inspired by Elon Musk, of course, is the modern wireless electronic smart version of the old Elon Musk. But

they've had a argument this week which Musk accused Cardi B of being a puppet. Cardi B has been a prominent supporter of Harris, whereas by contrast, Elon Musk hates all humanity. So those are, I guess, the two different standpoints they're coming from. And I mean, it's a strange celebrity beef and Cardi B hit back pretty strongly explaining a bit about her background. She put a social media message up saying, I'm a daughter of two immigrant parents

who had to work their ass off to provide for me a product of welfare, a product of Section 8, I'm a product of poverty, and I'm a product of what happens when the system is set up against you. Quite strong words. I think with Cardi B, it is important to remember this is not she has spoken out on a number of occasions in different election campaigns, she's spoken in support of Bernie Sanders, and she's spoken out in support of AOC. And she was also a sort of prominent supporter of the Biden campaign in 2020. She is sort of consistently underestimated by people that go up against her. And as much as she is a product of social programs that she very, very well understands, and has spoken repeatedly about her

fondness for FDR and the start of what constitutes the social security support system in America. Elon Musk is also a product of what happens if you give your children too much money as a child. Like this is a real lesson. And I say this to two parents on the podcast in sometimes not giving your children money. And instead, just giving them a book to read about the history of the human race. Well finally one question that's often asked is why do the two parties in America, the Republicans and the Democrats, have the logos that they have? Well I've looked into it and

the Republicans, their logo famously is an elephant. Why do they have an elephant? Well that's because the elephant is the animal that can most easily stick at least a bit of its head up its own ass. Obviously the current Republican party has gone a bit further than that even and can pretty much play its own duodenum like a clarinet, but still it's a poignant image, a poignant image, and that's why they chose the elephant. Also because elephants are very good at trampling over everything in their path and also despite all the evidence suggesting they should be completely opposed them elephants have never publicly stated

They're opposed to guns Also, elephants have excellent long-term memory spanning up to 70 years and Republicans like to remember only how things were at least 70 years ago So that's why they've chosen the elephant. Whereas the Democrats have gone for the donkey Why have the Democrats gone for the donkey because they like to go not very far not very very fast. And they also seem inextricably drawn in to get mixed up in arguments in the Middle East. And also, like so many donkeys, donkey riders in the past, their leaders often turn out to be not quite the saviors they were promoted as. So two very appropriate, two very, very appropriate symbols. Two very appropriate symbols.

Once again, the specter of Christianity turns this man into a student of the faith. Well, that concludes our US election preview. We will have world exclusive news on the results later in the week. We'll record on Thursday with Nato Green to get his completely objective view on American politics after the election results come out. That podcast, like, I'm going to listen to that podcast like the scene in Oppenheimer with the bomb. Just fall, just fall, Put your glasses on. As NATO absolutely erupts. Buglers, wherever you are in the world, vote as hard as often and as often as you can. Because from a purely, I'm going to just make this personal appeal to you, Buglers, and I'm sure I speak for

both Nish and Alice when I say this. As a comedian, I can't face another fucking four years of Trump gags. I can't, I just can't. I don't think I've, I've got, even last time I had to make a cauliflower on a stick with Donald Trump's voice talk about cricket. That was how desperate I got to try and avoid looking into the heart of darkness that is Donald Trump.

So please, whatever you can do, even just set up a news channel for me and announce that Harris has won, even if it's not. Other news now and well some exciting news here in the United Kingdom. It turns out the royal family are even f***ing richer than anyone thought. And we already thought they were f***ing rich in monetary terms if not spiritual ones. And it's turned out that they've been receiving millions of pounds of income in rent for the use of their land and properties from the amongst others NHS, from schools, from the armed forces and from various charities according to new Documentary now a lot of people have said this is appalling that the royal family really shouldn't be essentially taking advantage of the the rest of the country they should be

Contributing rather than taking away but I see this as just a patriotic extension of the fawning obsequiousness to historic, genetically inherited privilege that is what this country is built on. And if anything, we should be giving them more. In fact, everyone should give all their money to the royal family, just like when Britain was great. Nish, do you disagree? Well, to offer an alternate perspective, Andy, I'm sorry if I look slightly distracted whilst

you were telling that joke, but I was busy sharpening my fucking guillotine. Yeah, the summary of the story is that the, so channel four, which is the channel, television channel of the United Kingdom and the Sunday Times are one of our newspapers, one of our newspapers has reported that the private estates of King Charles and Prince William have contracts with public bodies and charities. And over the past year, deals made on behalf of these contracts have raised around 50 million pounds. Now, I guess my first question here is why the f**k do these f**ks need more money? What are they trying to finance? Even more sister f**king than they've already been doing? Like, it is astonishing to know that these people have side hustles has CEO culture got so far that it's even infecting the British Royal

family who receive money from the British state every year as codified into the law of this country. And as if that wasn't bad enough. The Daily Mirror today is reporting that Prince William has rental properties that he owns. So Prince William is also a landlord. Just when you thought you couldn't hate the royal family even more, it turns out that they're also landlords, aka on the morality scale, one notch above paedophiles. No offense to any landlords listening. Actually, let me rephrase that a lot of offense to any landlords listening.

It's surprising to be the lord of all the land and also a landlord renting properties to the NHS for millions of dollars a year. I mean, it is sort of, but then on the other hand, like you have to be fair to them, diamond encrusted unicorns won't hunt themselves. True. That's never true, well, that's spoken. Also, not only are they renting out properties to the NHS, they're also renting out properties to people, like ordinary people are living in some of these houses, and some of the tenants are at risk. I want to... Yeah, you want your landlord to be... Listen, We've all had dealings with our landlord.

I want to text Prince William and tell him my tap's leaking. Would it be one of those landlords that comes around to try and fix it himself to save a better life? Well, unfortunately, he's an even worse landlord than that. He's not even coming around himself. He's not sending anyone around. Some of the tenants in properties he's owns are at risk of fuel poverty. Some of them are living in homes that are hard to heat that are riddled with damp and black mold.

So like he's not only a landlord, he's basically a rogue landlord that would be the subject of a kind of, you know, Michael Moore style hit piece. He's also probably described as basically Buckingham Palace. So it's not really been updated for 150 years. He's, he's also launching a campaign against homelessness and is part of the premise of the campaign is it's for a right to everyone to have a safe and stable home Now Prince William, I say this to you with all the love in the world. The call is coming from inside the house my brother My brother in Christ if you want to sort out the problems of people living in homes that they shouldn't really be living in You need to look at your own portfolio

properties, my friend. Also I mean Buckingham Palace could pretty much solve London's street homeless problem just by opening the front door. I was driving past it the other day and I was like this is massive that's exactly what I said. It's so huge anyone who's been to London will know space is not exactly at a premium in our city. And then we've got these, let's not put a beat around the bush, squatters living in this huge property right in the middle of it. Oh God, it boils your blood. And that's even before you remember they're harboring his f***ing pedo uncle. Allegedly.

Chris, you could just sprinkle an allegedly across this section. Allegedly. I'll give you a plea. I actually I don't even think we need a legend. Do we not know for sure. I saw that I saw that TV documentary. I mean, drama. I mean, but I mean, I think the point is that people are angry saying that the royals should be setting an example to the country and that, you know, by these financial arrangements and let's put it in context, the Duchy of Lancaster and the Duchy of Cornwall were established respects between 1399 and 1337.

So in kind of British terms, they're still relative newcomers on the scene in terms of established power. But the royals do need and some roles have said good example the late queen for example. Set a tremendous example for the public by showing the future generations by showing them that they will have to work until the age of ninety six and never retire without that is a great example to set the people but sad in all roles of public support. to set the people but sadly not all roles are quite so public-sponsored. Well part of the criticism that they're facing is that they're not paying tax, they're not paying tax as a corporation and nor are they paying capital gains tax which they would be doing if they were renting it out as individuals. But I don't think that's very fair criticism because who are they paying taxes to? Themselves? Yeah. There's a huge element of robbing Peter to pay Peter about the entire enterprise. Well that brings us to the end of this American election preview, Bugle.

As I said, we will be back later in the week with reactions to the results and to find out whatever America has done to itself and the rest of the world. Thank you for listening. Bugler's my tour. The Zolt guys has started for tickets and information on the remainder of the dates which stretch through to quite far into next year go to andyzoltzman.co.uk and thanks to everyone who has already bought tickets. It's selling better than traditional Saltzman shows if you're a long term fan. I do apologize if you expect to be able to stretch out on your own road like normal.

But Nish, you're also on the road. Yeah, I'm on the road. Tickets available at nishkama.co.uk. There will be some announcements about Australia, America, Canada and New Zealand imminently, as long as I remember to make them. Otherwise, if you're desperate to see me, why would you be? But if you are, you can buy my last stand up show at my website nishkemore.co.uk. Alice? Yes, I am going to be doing a little book tour in February in the UK. So stay tuned.

I would say stay tuned to my social media for details, but actually social media is not reliable anymore in terms of getting the information. So you can sign up for free at patreon.com slash Alice Fraser. That's a one-stop shop for all of my stand-up specials, podcasts, and blogs, as well as my twice weekly writers meetings. We are also going to be doing a few exciting things, including a midnight writers meeting where people share all of the stuff that's too naughty for the normal writers meetings. And then I've got a book.

It is called A Passion for Passion, and it's on unbound.com. You can buy that. It's coming out on the 6th of February. And also I've got a podcast. It's called The Gargle. It is the sister podcast to this podcast. It's the glossy magazine to the Bugles audio newspaper for Visual World.

It comes out every week. If you just wanna go there and not hear any jokes about politics, that's the place to do it. There you go Bugles. We'll be back later in the week. Until then, goodbye and may democracy be with you.