The Chaser Report - Do Albo & Dutton Trust Trump? + ANNOUNCEMENT

Episode Date: April 16, 2025

Dom and Lachlan debrief after the ABC leaders' debate, where the national broadcaster had the audacity to expect answers. Plus Dom makes an announcement about the Chaser Report's imminent future. Just like Christ, we're gonna disappear over Easter and be back a few days later. Watch OPTICS on ABC iview here:https://iview.abc.net.au/show/opticsCheck out more Chaser headlines here:https://www.instagram.com/chaserwar/?hl=enGive us money:https://chaser.com.au/support/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Chaser Report is recorded on Gatigal Land. Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Hello and welcome to The Chaser Report with Dom and producer Lachlan today. Hello, Lachlan. Hi, Dom, how are you doing? Hello, dear listener. How are you? I'm ever so well, but how are you?

You've finally gotten out of the PEP content minds, you poor thing. Oh, actually, yeah, sorry, I should be, forgive me if I'm a bit quiet at the moment. I'm actually, Chaz is just recording in another room at the moment. I think you can hear him. What's happened since the last time I spoke to you about tariffs. Our 16 of Chaz droiding on.

He's still going. The poor, poor man. Pity the guy who works for him. Well, exactly. Now, the first leaders debate not to be on Sky News, let's call it that, has just taken place.

And I have to confess, I haven't watched it as yet. I was out doing family stuff. You've listened to it, though, I understand. I have indeed. I was on the edge of my seat. Oh, my, David Spears, hats off. What a performance.

He had both candidates on the ropes for a thrilling 59 minutes. Fantastic work. Okay, yeah, I did see some clips where he was going, Mr. Albanesey, Mr. Albanese, and suggesting quite controversially that answering the question posed might actually be the format of the debate, desirably. This is the first A.B. B.C. debate for 20-something years, I believe. Since 1993 or something.

Yeah, okay. So first in my lifetime and other people older than me's lifetime. So it was amazing to see, I didn't know that leaders' debates could actually have someone asking questions and then being as audacious to expect an answer. It was once in a lifetime experience for me. I mean, we should be clear that the answers weren't necessarily given. it was just But they were expected Yeah there was the sort of vibe

In the clips I saw of Look just so you know I'm going to be disappointed I know you're a former school teacher That was your vibe I'm sure Mr Hodson Was um look I just want you to know

I'm not mad I'm just disappointed boys And what you're doing If they were in my class We'd be having a stern talking to after That Albanesee he kept speaking Even after David reminded him that his minute was up And that it wasn't

His counterpart's policy He was supposed to be talking about talking about, but indeed, here's own. Let's take a quick break, a thing that you wouldn't have seen during the debate, and more's the pity, really. Add breaks are often the highlight of a sporting contest. Look at the Super Bowl, and then maybe one or two more reflections on the debate, but look, frankly, I'm not really in a position to so much sensible about it.

We have got an announcement to make about the podcast, very major announcement. So, yeah, wait during this. Would you call it a very major announcement that we're going to take a break for Easter? Hey man, it seems I can't avoid a podcast without a very major announcement happening. Is this finally the time we're just ditching Charles and we're admitting that we've been using an AI version of him for the last six months? I mean, it would be an upgrade. Hang on, what's the, what's the, what's the, what's the, what's the big announcement?

Did they have some news, did they? What's the big, I don't even know what you're referring to. Oh, we're going ABC, hopefully, for PEP, fingers crossed. the ABC is going to be bringing PEP on board officially so that the podcast will no longer need to have a five-minute terms and conditions read out at the start of every episode. Yeah, does this then, I mean, should you be announcing this on this podcast? Or is it something that's gone public in the PEPA sphere?

Oh, it went public in the PEPA sphere, and we've assumed the ABC aren't listening to it there either. Okay, all right, noted. Okay, so, well, that's exciting, a bit of legitimacy. And this will mean fewer appearances on Media Watch, which I think, promotionally speaking, is a bad strategy. I've already been on Media Watch three times in my lifetime. Have you?

I have, yeah. Not great. What were the other ones? Well, so there was the Fairy Bread thing back in 2021. Oh, yes, the stunt. And then last year, I, through an outlet I used to write for Pedestrian TV, I wrote some rather scathing comments about Kyle Sandalans that, Paul Barry thought were worth addressing.

Really? Yeah, whoops. Anyway. That's absolutely, that is a Sanderland's level of media watch frequency. That's an annual appearance, Lockland. Yeah, I know. I had no idea. I assume that's why Linton thought it was necessary to bring me up.

I'm sorry, a listener, if you didn't know, PEP got the Media Watch treatment. I had no idea that I was dealing with someone who's such a serial trouble maker. I think that's more Media Watchers than the Chaser has had. I thought that I'd be carrying the rascal torch, but if it's more. No, I think you're out on your own. Yep. Well, well, good.

Okay, so the big announcement, look, it's not that big announcement. It's not nearly as big as you switching to the ABC. It's for PEP, what it is is we're taking a break, a little break. It's not clear how long it will be for, but my money would be on kind of mid next week because there is an election campaign on. But, look, Charles and I are just super busy. And Charles in particular, for some reason, no one understands why, Loughlin, but his career is going absolutely gangbusters.

He had optics, of course, did really well if you haven't seen that. That's on ABC. Ivy, which we've mentioned, I think, in every single show notes since he's done it. So, yeah, great. And, you know, acclaimed satire. And then this Wankanomics thing is doing the corporate parody, as we were saying on the show yesterday. And apologies for the audio, by the way. That just seems an absolute blockbuster.

So he's just exhausted doing that, busy doing that. Have you ever seen its Instagram page? I have. It's got 169,000 followers, which one, nice, but two, 169,000 followers, Charles. Why is he still doing this podcast? That absolutely baffles me. Look, and there's no... For some reason, he still wants to do the podcast, I gather, but no, the simple

announcing is we're going to take a break. It might be a week, I'm not sure, but it's school holidays. We're busy, we're exhausted. exhausted and as much as the podcast is our top priority ahead of even our families, I think it's time for just a little brief break. We don't want to go for too long because the campaign is on. But yes, point being, don't expect us in your feeds every day. What? We decide to do this thing daily. Anyway, it might be easier. I like how we're announcing we're going for a break over what is already a public holiday.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's true. We shouldn't have done it over Easter anyway. It's also the fact that Charles and I are religious, Loughlin. You know this. We will be going to Anglican and Catholic and Orthodox Mac, I spent it's time for Orthodox Easter, which might have happened already, I should actually know that. We're just going to go to church several times a day for the next couple of weeks

just to make sure we've cover all the options. Well, we've got to, I mean, with conservatism on the rise around the world, it's more of a safety investment. It's a career investment for the future at this point. I was reading that young people in England, in the UK, have been embracing Christianity. Apparently, I think the number was 16.

percent of 18 to 24 year olds go regularly whereas it was I think five years ago it was four percent I'm just thinking this the cost of living crisis is really starting to bite if you can't afford to go to raves and the best communal event you can go to where they play live music is church then the economy's really really sucking hey man you've totally forgotten a bigger factor for for drawing young people which is free wine oh my goodness me and the me and the boys turn up every Sunday to do shots of Jesus blood. It's fantastic. A thimble full, but it's still better than nothing.

As the chaser, it's great. Wash it down with a little wafer. Yeah, so that's what's going on? It's not really a massive announcement. So what have we done, Lachlan? We've given a fairly lackluster review of the debate. I haven't watched it and you've watched a bit of it, but the thing is, look,

I did glance over the transcript looking for bombshells and saying if anyone had massively stuffed up to the point where their campaign was in jeopardy. that doesn't seem to have been the case the main attempt didn't spears he do a bit of an attempted gotcha with whether people trusted trump whether dutton and albany trusted trump or indeed she jing pink that was my main takeaway was so so spears asked both candidates dutton first do you trust donald trump and i mean the obvious answer is to avoid the question because it's the only correct answer you don't want to piss off the the marga types who might vote you also don't want to set yourself up for criticism from the opponent who says, oh, you're damaging Australia's relationship with the US. Also, old mate from the far right is going to come and visit your hotel again if you go

Donald Trump. That's true. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But crucially, you don't say yes either because the rest of the population wouldn't want you to say yes. So Dutton gets asked this question and he valiantly responds with a non-eastern. answer oh well i've never met trump so so how could i judge him i've got to look him in the eye it's it's incredibly hard to come to any judgment on donald trump given how little exposure the

rest of the world gets to him he's not talked about enough yeah i feel i feel we don't have enough information about trump yet the jury's still out i actually found out uh in another podcast pep uh today that in 2020 Australians searched well sorry in 2016 Australians searched more for results on the U.S. election than they did on the Australian federal election. I mean, that's not shocking at all, though, is it? When you think about it, I mean, when I said the jury's still out on Trump, I wasn't making a pun about his actual legal woes. It's kind funny if that's not actually a metaphorical jury in the case of Donald Trump. Yeah, but I mean, this is the thing, Lachlan, is that basically the main aim of both campaigns at this point is to not

stuff up, to not do anything shocking and outrageous. And when the coalition, you know, previously got stuck into public servants and was talking about making them work in the office suggesting that they needed to pull up their socks that was very soon afterwards as we discussed in a recent episode that was reversed by peter dutton so you don't want to really you don't want to frighten the horses you don't frighten the Aussies but you also don't want to seem too close to Trump do David Spears say do you trust Donald Trump to do something like do we know what it was to do was it to was it to every single morning do some bizarre shit you're on it there yeah do you do you do you do you

You trust him to be the bane of your existence every single day while you're in office, forced to have a fake relationship with the leader of the most powerful country in the world? Maybe that's what the trust was based on. Do you trust him to allegedly manipulate the markets using his own social network? That's one allegation that's gone on. I mean, it's just a question. I think... Do you trust him to give good financial advice to people close to him?

Yes, that's a good point. And I think Anthony Albignis said, I have no reason not to, not to trust Donald Trump. And I mean, that after the last couple of weeks of what's happened with the markets, he's a trusting guy, Anthony Albany. They both are. If there was a gotcha or a gaffe in this, the ABC's leaders debate, it was definitely the moment when I heard Anthony Albanesey, without hesitation, say that he trusts Donald Trump.

That was a genuine spit take from me. I had a little lemon lime bitters in my mouth at the moment and when I heard Albanesey say he trusted Trump I did not have that lemon line bitters in my mouth anymore. Well, I'm sorry to hear that in this time of cost of living that's money out of your pocket, Lachlan. But let's bear in mind, though, that's spinnable. You're going to be thinking the 4D chess way.

You've got to be thinking, what do I say? And this is, I mean, Albanese is such an experienced politician. You've got to be thinking to yourself, okay, what's the paper tomorrow? trust Donald Trump. Oh, trust Donald Trump to do whatever he's just done. You can spin it any way you want. What does trust even mean in this difficult world of ours local? You can't even trust the Chaser Report to put out episodes anymore.

I think the point here is that you've got to be thinking about what you can spin the words to mean on the third or fourth iteration. And optics has taught us this, I think. It's not what the words mean now. It's what you can say they meant the following day when you change your position, but say that it was your position all along and you haven't changed. position. That seems to be the game in modern politics. But I mean, Lock on, if

no matter who wins this election, it seems as though we're unlikely to have a Trump-style government. I don't want to rule out Clive Palmer's trumpet of patriots yet, because we know the only poll that counts is the poll on election day. Oh, I have an update on my grand money-losing theory that

Tucker Carlson, sorry, that Elon Musk would turn up at a Clive Farmer event. Listeners might remember that I was willing to bet that Elon Musk would support Clive Palmer at a Tucker, Clive, Elon trio panel. Yeah, all of those events nationally got cancelled because Tucker Carlson, not even Tucker Carlson

wanted to give his time to Clive Palmer. So I owe Charles money now, which is the only benefit there is it's evened out by the amount of money he owed me. I think this is a problem, Lachlan. I think you're doing what one of the betting companies did. I think it was the 2019 election. They paid out too early on Bill Shorten.

Do you remember that? One of them paid out early because I thought it was all in the bag for Labor. Yeah. If you're betting against Elon Musk doing something ridiculous, there's nothing to do with running Tesla at the last minute. You still got two and a half weeks. Oh my good.

You're still getting involved. Oh my, okay. What am I talking about? In fact, in fact, what I should be waiting for is when we have an election on a judge in a relatively small state of Australia, that's when I should expect Elon Musk to turn up. I think I've got it, Lockland.

What you need to do is say that Albanese and Dutton want to ban Tesla because sales are down here, as per everywhere else. But that if elected Prime Minister, Clive Palmer, will buy every Australian a Tesla. I think Elon will be so desperate to sell 25 million Teslers that he won't even fact-checked that he'll be jump on the Zoom. That is the election called. You've heard it here first.

So I post that one on social media and see if you get any traction. All right, well, let's have the break. We did go and talk for too long. This is our holiday time we're going to. When I say our, I mean, Charles and me, in your case, you will never stop editing, Pep. Yeah, man. I don't know.

It was up to 4 a.m. yesterday just for the recording. Just one thing, though. If the whole thing is going into the ABC, does that mean you actually will be subject to OHNS, rules because this could be the thing that saves your life lockland uh i i have on good authority nah it won't all right well we'll um we'll play this podcast one day at your funeral some point in the next year or two thinking of how lockland hodson gave his all for for for pep in other words gave his all for nearly nothing as good as good as podcast as it is yeah yeah yeah yeah this is

this is my life now all right well we'll catch you at at an unspecified time on the feed but probably next week or so. Enjoy not hearing from us, frankly. Don't call us. We'll call you. We're part of the iconic class network. We'll see you soon. Gotcha.

Thanks, Dom.