Trump's Fake Energy Ceasefire + Shane Gillis Gym Wh*res Joke Sparks Outrage - Off the Fence

Hello everybody and welcome to this week's of the fans with me Constance and Kiss and my trigonometry co-host Frances Foster, Winston Marshall of the Winston Marshall show and of course Tom Slater from Spike, gentlemen, welcome back. This week's four stories for us are Trump's so-called energy ceasefire, we'll discuss and debate that, Shane Gillis has caused outrage by suggesting that women who dress provocatively at the gym look like haurs in an SNL monologue. Trans people now have to use the rooms according to their biological sex in the NHS and Sally Rooney has pulled her books from the UK over her support for Palestine action. Those are the four stories. Winston, you have got our story about Trump's energy ceasefire with Russia and Ukraine. Take it away. Yes, it has been an eventful week to say the least in the Russia Ukraine war. This latest episode I think we can say started last Friday on the 9th when Trump did a deal to buy 4.8 million tons of diesel from Putin. The next day on Saturday, Trump then lashed out at Zelensky. Trump said that the US has told Zelensky repeatedly that he could do whatever he wanted in Russia but do not hit the refineries because, quote, that's a world problem and a better damn well stop hitting those refineries. It escalated on Sunday, Trump announced the energy ceasefire that Constantin pointed out which Putin ignores Zelensky abides for three days, days before resuming attacks on the 15th. Meanwhile, Zelensky says he will in fact do elections if Putin agrees to a two-month ceasefire. But the story deepens still on Tuesday and Wednesday. Starlink and Starsheel, which is used by Ukraine, see big disruptions, although they have resumed functioning since then. And all the while, Ukraine make great grounds with Operation Vivaldi. I say great grounds. I think it's considerable given the state of the war over the last couple years, the latest phase reportedly recaptured 101 square kilometers. Now, before we go into the details of what's happening in each of these different parts of the story. And before we look at the meta stories at play, I think it's worth analyzing each of the different sections here. Of course, if this was the rest is politics, this is not even a conversation. This is all because Trump is, of course, a stooge of Putin, Russia, of course, in control of everything conversation over. But I think things are a little bit more complicated. And I suspect my co-panelist will agree. Let's just start talking about diesel. Because I think this is probably fundamental. Diesel prices are up 115% on the year. And that is impacting inflation. PPI is at 6.3% and futures of diesel are at record highs. So that is a problem. Constantin. I have no reason to suspect you have any link to Ukraine or Russia, because you're British, of course. But perhaps you can get it right. You're English. You're English. We're all English now. What about. Yeah. So look at diesel. Yeah. So we've got a, first of all, just get the facts correct. And I spent last night looking all of this up with Venice. I get my stats correct, checking everything. And I wrote an article last night, which I released, which says Trump's Russia, Ukraine, energy, cease fires, fake news, which is what it is. It's got nothing to do with Ukraine. It's got nothing to do with President Zelensky. This is about deflecting the blame for their run war away from the Trump administration and onto anyone else so that they can at least try to redirect the rage of American voters away from the fact that the gas prices and everything else, therefore, is going up. Why do I say this? So this month, Russia has promised to deliver 300,000 metric tons of diesel. Next month, that's due to go up to 500,000 up to potentially a million tons in December. Now a million tons of diesel sounds like a hell of a lot of diesel until you recognize and realize that global diesel consumption is 115 million tons a month. So we are talking in this month less than 0.3% of the diesel that is consumed globally that Russia has promised to ship, not has shipped, but has promised to ship. And as you talked about in your introduction, Vladimir Putin is not somebody who can be trusted. This energy ceasefire was violated by him attacking Ukrainian power stations in direct contravention of whatever ceasefire Donald Trump thinks he's managed to sign. Now, where is you mentioned diesel prices being up 115 percent this year? There are 115 percent this year because of the war in the run. The District of Hermos, which has been so badly affected by that war, has the problems there have taken about 5.4 million tons per month out of the global economy. That is the reason that diesel prices are going up. And the reason the futures are going up of course is there's clearly no enter because Donald Trump has not found a way to end this war that he started. And the end of my article, I quote our conversation with Ted Cruz, which I'm sure Francis will remember well, when he was pressuring him on this very fact in March, we were having this conversation, that come November, if gas prices are up, if the war is still ongoing, you're going to be in trouble electorally. And the country is going to be in trouble. And Ted Cruz says, well, look, I don't think it's I don't believe that's going to happen. I believe this is going to be a matter of weeks, not months. But if it does happen, we have done something very seriously wrong. And this is what this is about. This is about American electoral politics. It's got nothing to do with energy. And it certainly has nothing to do with Russia and Ukraine. Now, you mentioned operation of a value. And I think it's worth saying that this comes at the very moment that Ukraine is actually starting potentially to turn the tide in this conflict. Ukraine has been under the cost for, for the last three years, I would argue, they had some initial successes pushing Russia away from Harkiv and the North, liberating Herzogn, pushing the Russians out of other parts where they've been able to recapture territory. And since that time, they've been fighting a defensive war, which is in which they are by the virtue of the numbers involved guaranteed to lose. But what they saw, operation of values, not some massive strategic success, but what it was about was preventing Russia from encircling a very significant area of Ukrainian defenses. And what they did is they cut off one of the pincers with very well planned and well orchestrated counter-attacks, using primarily drones and other ways of remotely attacking them for which they do use Starlink and the other systems that provide them that functionality. So this comes at the very time that Ukraine is actually doing well to say nothing of the fact, of course, that yes, it's true that Ukraine has destroyed this significant portion of Russia's refining capacity somewhere between 20, you know, I think the more accurate estimates are 20% the Ukrainian say up to 50%. I don't, I'm not convinced of that. But let's say it's 20 to 30%. It's significant, it's not significant in terms of global diesel prices. But what it is significant is in terms of Russia's war machine. And Russia is now in a very, very dead deleterious position when it comes to its own energy and when it comes to the entire war economy, which is being very systematically destroyed by Ukraine, which is the only way actually that Ukraine can make progress because killing Russian soldiers in the field is not really achieving anything because Putin doesn't care. And he has plenty of more men to throw into the meek grinder. There's not going to be any internal rebellion against him. He can have World War II almost human waves, which they've had at certain points and certain points at the front, continue to attack without any problems at home with his popularity. In fact, if you remember, the attempted coup by Evgeny Pregozion, whenever that was, which ended in Pregozion miraculously, his plane accidentally being shot down by Russian anti-aircraft missiles. That was a coup from the right, if you like. That was a coup from the hard liners who were saying, you are not going hard enough. And so the longer the war goes on, actually, Putin is under pressure to ramp up the effort not to not to play it down. So killing Russian soldiers in the field is not going to win Ukraine the war, destroying Russia's war economy is. And so you're left with this situation where I think you have to recognize what's happening here is President Trump is using President Zelensky as a scapegoat to deflect attention away from the consequences of his war in Iran which he started at the very time that Ukraine is actually doing well and so you're pulling the rug out from under Ukraine and President Zelensky and banging on about these elections which have really this is complete it's a complete irrelevance for a start it's perfectly normal for countries that want to suspend elections this country did it in World War 2. Secondly, Zelensky remains very popular with the Ukrainians and by the way the more he is attacked by President Trump the more popular like he naturally becomes. So this is a complete red herring and all of this is simply a way to distract from the reality which is that the Republicans are on course to get absolutely crushed in the midterms and Trump is trying to find anybody other than himself that he can blame for it. And he's worth saying that I suppose the perfority of the Americans in the course of the past week extends of course beyond the diesel deal and this phony energy cease-fire which seems to come as a complete surprise both to President Zelensky and Vladimir Putin didn't even certainly didn't seem to get the memo because he continued to hit Ukrainian energy infrastructure as Consum was saying there were also these reports that US intelligence sharing was dialed down that the starlink and star shield systems which sort of respectively deal with offensive operations in Ukraine and potentially offensive operations as well does guiding the drones giving them that kind of support that that game was dialed down it seems recovered to a certain extent but nevertheless that's a kind of putting of a thumb on the scale there which is really really significant. I don't also if you look at the arguments that Trump is making for that diesel deal not only does it not stack up in terms of the amounts if he wanted to free up this amount of diesel or own Matthews and the spectator made this point he could have just kind of deal with the Canadians if he was talking about that kind of negligible amounts. So I think the fact that this is primarily for domestic political consumption is pretty clear. In terms of what it tells us about the US President and he starts on the wall I think it is inescapable at this point that what he might not be in Putin's pocket that he's not this sort of stewge in the way that Rory Stewart-Allister Stewart would make out. He has- -Allister Campbell. -Allister Campbell and Rory Stewart would make out. It has come to the you know we can't help but conclude that he's nevertheless come to the conclusion that Ukraine is kind of the villain of the peace that the main obstacle to there being any kind of peace deal here is not the invaders ceasing to invade it's the nation being invaded just putting up with a pretty iniquitous ceasefire a pretty iniquitous messy peace as it might be and I don't think we can really get away from that now I think there has been this sort of anti-Ukrain tendency which is it would be one thing if you had an American president going around saying that this is none of our business as some of the isolationists on the American right might say people can agree or disagree with that particular position it's another thing to say Ukraine are the problem here and that is where we've ended up I think it's fair to say and this could extend beyond even America's support for Ukraine there was also threats that the procurement system which Europe uses to give military aid to Ukraine this is the prioritized Ukraine requirements bliss pearl as it's called could also be shut down because when Europeans say that they're supporting Ukraine military armaments what they usually mean is that they're paying the American military industrial complex buying those weapons and then donating them to Ukraine so this could this could hobble even what existing support there is for the Ukrainians across the across the continent as well so it's a this is a the one can have arguments about the support the Americans are given to Ukraine so far to remove it at this particular point is a moral choice and one that will come at the cost of the Ukrainians at a time when the Russians seem to be continuing to pursuing this policy of just grinding as many Ukrainian cities as it can into the ground knowing that really there's not going to be much pushback from it from the supposed allies in the West and guys I know for a long time can I just add one thing for us it's not analysis but just factual things that I think worth saying before we move on the I your point Tom is very interesting about Ukraine being the villain I don't think that's the case with Trump and all of this stuff about him being a Russian stew just frankly silly and people who bang on about this just do my head and because it's not analysis it's just wishful thinking and yeah it's a it's a way of condensing all your lack of understanding into one it's like it's like a debt restructuring for retardation you sort of package up and run one big massive retarded thing that you say and then it sort of explains everything right the reality is is Donald Trump doesn't care about Ukraine because the American global posture is they're like Russia is not a problem for us the problem for us is China which you might argue about right or wrongly it is what it is and I should say just a little bit about what it is that Trump is trying to get Zelensky to do and Zelensky is refusing to do so Vladimir Putin has no intention of signing a ceasefire because from his perspective the longer the war goes on the better place he is to get what he actually wants what does he actually want well what he wants is fundamentally to permanently undermine Ukraine's defense and also to have something that he can sell to the Russian people as a victory what is that well the big fight and the reason that the war has become a sort of world war one almost trench warfare with drums situation is they're fighting over what's called the fortress bell in the Donbass which is this heavily fortified naturally very suited to defense all area of Ukraine where the Ukrainians have rightly made an almost final stand if that portion of Ukraine is overrun or if as part of a ceasefire it is handed to Russia then Ukraine effectively loses its ability to deter or defend itself against any further aggression and so what Putin is trying to do is to get Ukraine as part of the negotiations to give up as much land as possible including that area so that Ukraine is permanently left vulnerable to further invasion and therefore we'll have to concede lots and lots of things in the future whether that's having a Russian imposed puppet regime a Russian stewed in place Russian you know secret services being involved in Ukrainian the running of Ukraine etc so and when when when Donald Trump says Zelensky is harder to deal with than Putin the reason is that Putin is promising things to Trump and sounding like he's prepared to do a deal which he then renegs on time and time again as we've seen over and over or you're dealing with Zelensky who's saying look you you you don't care about us but we are obviously have to care about our country and what you are asking us to do is to surrender the only bit of the country that we can actually credibly defend now or in the future so that you can win the midterms and I as the president of Ukraine I'm not prepared to sell out my country so you can pretend that the diesel prices are high because of us that's the only other bit I think worth adding go ahead Francis. So Andrew Neal made this point in our wonderful interview him a couple of weeks back when we he was saying what's the one thing we're not talking about that we really should be and he mentioned this very fact and which has come to the forefront of global discussion and he made the point which is very interesting which the rise in diesel prices disproportionately affects Trump voters because diesel is used in haulage equipment it's used in farming equipment it's used in generators particularly backup generators and so these rises in prices are affecting Trump's base disproportionately it affects everyone of course but it affects his base so if he doesn't want to see a catastrophic veering off towards the dams during these midterms he really needs to do something about the diesel prices and do them sharpest which is why he a couple of weeks ago we talked on the show about him pressurizing Europe into releasing their their their their previous their stock which they have been kept which they have kept back into the market and therefore lowering diesel prices so what you're seeing right now is the republican scrabbling because they're deeply worried that their base is going to start hemorrhaging votes if I can just add to the argument about put Trump being a Putin's stooge the EU import in the range of two to 2.3 billion euros worth of imports from Russia each month 30 to 50% of that is hungry in Slovakia but even if you removed hungry in Slovakia in comparison the US import 160 to 410 it's very volatile but it's and it's rarely as high as 410 but even if you remove hungry in Slovakia the EU are funding the war, you know, if you're going to follow the same argument as these people who say that sort of put Trump's supporting Putin, the EU is funding war to much as in orders of magnitude higher and we and they don't argue that the EU are Putin's duty. So that's just one sort of absurdity in that line of argument that I keep hearing. I do want to push on this diesel thing that doesn't quite make sense to me from Trump's point of view and maybe you guys have insight here. So while France is absolutely right, we discussed it in an earlier episode, Trump wanting the EU to release its diesel reserves. It's also that he's removed excise tax on diesel in the states and he has he he's going to focus on diesel. But as Constantine points out, this is a very very small amount of diesel for which the Russians are standard to get about 4.8 billion dollars worth in payment. I don't quite understand why Trump thinks that that's a good idea because it doesn't it doesn't. It's about two days worth of fuel. What this isn't about diesel. It's not about diesel. It's about being able to say that the Ukraine war is what's causing the diesel price to go up and the diesel shortages to be happening. That's what it's about. Yeah. The only thing this is about. It's about deflecting the anger of the American particularly Republican voter which France has made a very good point is disproportionately affecting Trump voters. It's about being able to say this is the Lensky's fault. This is Ukraine's fault. If I had been in charge, this war would never have started. By the way, I have to I have to say this. President Trump said he would end the war when he was elected. And it just I've got to the point where the things that he says, I'm just like, you know what, I actually, I don't really listen to President Trump statements anymore because I'm like, there is no point believing anything that you're saying. You, you know, people so he floods the zone and it's 4D chairs and maybe it is, but taking any of it seriously is completely pointless because none of it ever stacks up to reality. And so what this is about is not about getting a few million metric tons of diesel out of Russia over the course of many months. This is about deflecting from the blame so that he can try and lose the midterm slightly less badly than the other way as well. No, I think that's right. I think that's right. But before we move on, I want to turn to Winston's point about the EU because I think that is really crucial. It's been the EU's dirty secret throughout all of this conflict that not only does it continue to purchase oil and gas from Russia, it has been spending more on that than it has been donating to Ukraine in terms of the war effort. This is a phenomenon you can read about in mainstream newspapers. There was a report last year by something called The Sensor for Research and Energy and Cleaner. It was in the Guardian made this point that, again, the amount it was giving effectively to the Russian war machine outstrip the amount that it was giving to the Ukrainian defence. This is risen again recently because the Russians have been pointing this out. Trump has been pointing this out. There's some disparity and disagreement over just the amount that they have been spending. And they have been trying to dial it down. They're overreliance on Russian hydrocarbons. But France continues to buy Russian LNG. All kinds of countries have been making use of these opt-outs that exist within the EU sanctions framework in order to continue to fund that. So it is a reminder that there was a lot of two facedness on all of this. We had Andy Burnham welcoming Vladimir Zelensky to Britain with the King's Guard there, ended up looking a bit more trumped and than militaristic as it turned out. But that's the thing about the Europeans is that they are really good at having a conference, putting out a communique, putting out tweets that say we stand with Ukraine on that level wonderful. But when it comes to actually properly supporting Ukraine, it has always been pretty meek. It's always been overshadowed by the amount that many of those countries are continuing to pass on to Russia. And it's also underwritten by the Americans because of the amount that they've essentially purchasing from the US in order to then give to Ukraine. I mean of course this has always been one of those kind of inescapable paradoxes about the Ukraine conflict. It is in a fight for its own survival, but it is of course reliant on some very unreliable allies in order to do that. But whereas with America, that's pretty clear. Cut we've got Trump and his own particular political preoccupations. The fact that he has soured on Zelensky certainly and the fact that there are a fair amount of people around him, let's just say, who do have this view of Ukraine which is this kind of corrupt anti-democratic authoritarian state who is essentially on the leadership, is essentially on the take as much as anything else. All of that, of course, informs the picture a little bit. But when it comes to the European powers, but I didn't have how weak they are and I didn't have how too face they are, they hardly have a leg to stand on when it comes to moments like this and they're supposed to support Ukraine because that's been their dirty secret all along. With one tweet saying we stand with Ukraine to the end whilst quietly continuing to purchase all that Russian LNG and it's amazing that more people don't recognise that's what's been going on. There's one little correction there is that I don't think Russian oil is getting to Europe, certainly not directly, but it is a gas and LNG where we're bringing a lot of it in. And I just add to add to that, even though under Trump too, there is less aid going to Ukraine than under Biden. It is still the case that through various mechanisms, hundreds of millions of US taxpayer money is going to support Ukraine and whether it's Patrick Interceptors and other systems and other military assets that there is still defense and help going from the Americans to Ukraine. And I make this point to say that if you want to understand Trump by their fruits, you will know him. It might be that he's complimenting Putin, but if you actually look at his actions, it doesn't suggest that, which comes to my big question, which maybe you guys have insight into, is what leverage does Trump actually have over Putin? So in the conversation about the Ukraine more, if we can just ignore the midterms in Iran, I'd like to come back to that, but I see part of me, I'm very happy to be told I'm wrong on this, but when I see Trump making these kind of compliments or gestures to verbal gestures towards Putin, and very harsh on Zelensky, his actual ally in contrast, the way I see it is that I don't think Trump has any leverage over Putin, so has to do that. Am I wrong? Does he have any leverage over Russia? He has only one bit of leverage, well, one, it's not a bit, he has only one lever that he could have pulled. And I said this, people who have been watching us show for years, will remember me saying this before he was even re-elected in 2024. He had a lever that he took away from himself with his rhetoric. Now, President Trump is very good at, you know, getting his base to change their minds overnight and turn around and go in a completely opposite direction because now it's the new truth. But the reality is there was only one way that he could have ended this war, and I was very hopeful that he would have ended this war. And that way was to say to Vladimir Putin, look, either we do a ceasefire now that I've been elected, and in that ceasefire, you're not going to get what you want, and neither is Ukraine. But what you're both going to get is enough that you can safe face and we can stop the killing, and you can be secure that you are not going to get NATO troops and missile bases on your border, which is what you claim this was about. Zelensky will promise to have elections, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. We'll maybe have some kind of European peacekeeping force. On the border, you get the safe face, Zelensky gets the safe face and then be voted out, and they'll probably elect someone, someone else, blah, blah, blah. That's one, but that's not leverage. That's just an offer of an acceptable deal. Or Vladimir, if you don't do this, I will give the Ukrainians literally everything. I will give them so much weaponry. I will give them so much intelligence. We'll open, we'll lift all the restrictions on arms exports. We'll lift all the restrictions on the types of weapons we give them. We will let them off the chain and they will be terrorizing inside your country. They will destroy your war economy. They're going to destroy your economy. You are going to be absolutely screwed. And we will ramp up the weapons that we give them. Those, that's the typical negotiating position. Either you take this or things will be really bad. And President Trump had the ability to do that, except he mostly took it away from himself by banging on about how much money Ukraine's already got. And what you've ended up in now is actually the worst of both worlds. As you say, the United States is continuing to provide aid and support to Ukraine. While at the same time pulling support away with critical points so that the money they're giving to Ukrainians is not actually allowing Ukraine to have the success that it wants to on the battlefield. field. So you're not ending the war. The war is dragging on. People are still dying. You are still spending money, except you are making sure that that money is not effective in the things that it's supposed to achieve. The problem with option 2 there is that this is the classic rejoinder that would have led to nuclear war because if the Americans had escalated on that scale, everyone would have fear that the Russian retaliation and escalation would be to nuclear. Am I wrong to think that? Well, so if the Ukrainians get more defensive missiles to shoot down Russian ballistic missiles, Putin is going to launch a new. No, as you framed it, you framed it. Trump had the second option of being just going max, max in on Ukraine. But if he did that, would there not have been a fear for you? Well, that's what I'm saying. I'm reacting to the very point that you made. So the number of Patriot missiles, batteries that Ukraine has got and other anti-missile systems is minuscule. They're not able to defend that country against Russian ballistic missile attacks effectively. He could have given them more of that. He could have given them way more defensive capability. He could have given them way more intelligence. And by the way, at the time, Trump came into power in the second term, Ukraine was not destroying Russia's war economy like it is today. And yet, if Trump had threatened that at the time, he would have got leverage over Russia by saying, we will let Ukraine destroy your refineries and whatever. And we see today that when Ukraine destroys Russian refineries, Vladimir Putin is not launching nuclear weapons. So, of course, the threat of escalation and actual escalation creates a higher risk of runaway escalation, which is why I'm not actually saying Trump should have done the escalation. I am saying he should have come in and made it unequivocally clear that he is prepared to escalate if Putin is not going to take the deal, right? And then he would have had the opportunity to see whether that would work or not. But right now, you're correct. He has no leverage. And so the reason he's sucking up to Putin and beating up on Zelensky is that he has massive leverage of Zelensky and no leverage of a Putin. If it was the other way around, he'd be sucking up to Zelensky and having a go of Putin. But my broader point is very simple. As long as the United States simultaneously continues to provide support to Ukraine while pulling it away, you're getting the worst of both worlds. I don't even, I actually would understand more if they, if Trump just went all in and said, you know what? I so don't care about Ukraine. We're going to pull all support. We're not going to sell the Europeans' weapons to give to the Ukrainians. We want the war to end by any means necessary. If that means Putin takes chunks of Ukraine, then that's absolutely fine. That would make more logical sense. But of course, Trump can't do that because both within the Republican Party and globally, that would be seen as caving to Putin. And so he's not actually in a position to do that, which I believe is what he would do if he could. Yeah. I think just on the terms of the midterms, what's implicit in what you're saying, just to say out loud is that if Trump loses the House of Representatives, that means the second half of his presidential term is going to be completely a stalemate that there's just nothing's going to happen. So I probably, definitely, with you Constantine, in your emphasis is on the fact that he's screwed up over Iran. And I know you guys, a trigonometry, are big via tolerance fans. I don't need to re-hash that argument with you. But my emphasis is I would say it's on the midterms. And I think you are right, Constantine. He is trying to make noise about Zelensky, push the blame, make it about Zelensky so that it's not his fault that the diesel prices that inflation is up. So I see that, but it was slightly different emphasis there, but it is his fault, though, because diesel prices are up and you can look at the graphs, you can look at a graph of diesel prices and point to where the war in Iran starts and then where they are now. And it's not complicated. It is his fault because he chose to invade Iran and shut down the global fuel artery, which is why we've lost over 5.4 million tonnes a month through the Australia farmers in diesel, which is now pretending to try and compensate for by getting minuscule demand out of Russia. So this, so this, yeah, I just agree because I say it's the I atollars fault. And it's through there, not just their nuclear enrichment program, but specifically the Iran missile shield, but they had, and if they finished building that, then that we would never be able to do anything about the nuclear enrichment. So I would say that it's the fault of Iran's escalation over years, whereas you say it's the fault of Trump. And perhaps maybe it's, it was bad timing, but I think, I mean, I think timing might, might, might be the argument. You could say, you know, we definitely needed to do something about Iran, but maybe you should have waited until the midterms and then done it. If you were, if that was your plan, but it seems to me that this was not thought through. And I say this, I come back to I interview with Ted Cruz. Ted Cruz told us that he sat in the beast, the limo, the presidential limo with President Trump and told him, Mr. President, go ahead. This will be a quick get in and out. This is how these wars always start with somebody going, we're going to get in and out. We're going to sort it all out. It's going to take a couple of months, which by the way, is how Vladimir Putin's ended up in a four and a half year war in Ukraine, because he was told, you're going to go in with parent troopers, you're going to seize Gostomal, you're going to land tanks and infantry, you're going to take key of your Chechen death squads, you're going to take ads of Lensky in a couple of days. Jobs, jobs are good on two weeks later. The people of Ukraine will rejoice at the return of the Russian brothers. This is how this stuff always goes down. And so whatever your concerns about the Ayatollah, et cetera, you can't deny that it was President Trump's decision to go in and attack Iran. And you also, in my opinion, can't deny that the reason we are in the energy crisis we're in is because of the war in Iran. And that is what this is all about. And Winston, when you say Ayatollah, please say afterwards, peace be upon him. Thank you. On that delightful note, let's move on to something slightly less geopolitical. And this is, of course, the fact that Shane Gillis did a monologue on SNL, which has sent some women absolutely mental. Francis, take it away. Well, thankfully, we've now moved on to the biggest and there I say the most important story of the week, which is obviously Shane Gillis on SNL. So if you don't know anything about SNL, it's essentially the biggest and most famous satirical sketch show in America. It's an American cultural institution, which has but launched careers of the likes of Mike Myers, Eddie Murphy, Chris Rock, Norman McDonald, and so on and so forth. Now, in 2019, Shane was picked to be a cast member on SNL, which even in 2019 was still a huge honor and assigned that you are ascending into the comedic stratosphere. However, a couple of days later, an unnamed comedian, released a clip from Shane's podcast showing Shane making a joke about a Chinese people, which used a racial slur. Shane was subsequently cancelled in a matter of days from SNL. But because Shane is a singular comedic talent, he've doubled down and focused on producing comedy. And he has now come to the point through his comedy, through his stand-up, through his podcasting, through his Netflix series Tires. He is now one of the biggest, not the biggest comedian in America at the moment. He is a world record holder for selling out the largest number of tickets to a comedy show, sort of a 76,000 in the arena at Philadelphia. So he has been invited back on SNL. Not the first time he's been invited back a few times, but still as you can appreciate there is an edge to Shane coming back to us now and doing the opening monologue. The opening monologue, by the way, is the most prestigious part of the show. So he comes out and he does the monologue. And we are now going to see a clip from his monologue here. Dino, over to you, please. I try to go to a public gym. Going to the public gym is a fact, I especially in New York as a nightmare, dude. It's just the hottest gay guys you've ever seen. They're jacked and they look at me. Yeah, right. I know. Also, I've been to the gym in so long. I didn't know women just dress like whores now. Look, there's no other way to describe. Have you seen it? I've seen the shorts. Have you seen the shorts? There's neon, they're like artificial bait colors. The wrinkles go around the cheeks and all combine at the butthole. And don't look. You're not allowed to look. Peru don't look because they are filming. I'm in the background like 10 TikToks right now. Okay. So that is a clip that has basically generated an internet storm, and the reason comes down to the line about women dressing like wars in the gym. And that has prompted- Thanks for explaining that mate, I never would have guessed that cause the controversy. Well, you know, they got very upset about it anyway. So this is prompted a huge backlash with former SNL members coming out, saying that it's misogynist as well as various other actors, et cetera, et cetera. Women have now started posting pictures of themselves in revealing gym gear online in this kind of social justice movement again, Shane. So, I mean, that's one thing to thank Shane for, but anyway. And what has actually been really, really interesting is also, they've tried to start the struggle session with certain members of the SNL, of the current SNL cast, the most famous of whom is Michael Shay, and we're going to see a clip of Michael on a TV show at the moment. He's making a reference to a certain someone's opening model. Oh, no. You said, thanks a lot, Shane, referencing, of course, Shane goes- You even had to bleep that out. Well, there was the eye roll emoji, but in all seriousness, how are you thinking about what happened this week with Shane's opening model? You've seen the pushback. No, again, that's comedy. It's like, you think it's funny, and then some people don't. Did you laugh at what he said? I was at cue cards, actually, thinking about what I was going to say, that I was going to make people upset. So, I wasn't really- I didn't even see it till, like, the next day. And you thought? I didn't think about it, honestly. I think it just didn't- it just was like, you know, if you had seen it ahead of time, because the writers get to see the opening model log, right, ahead of time, they get to see the draft side too. If you're not working, there's so much going on, it's really hard to- really hard to see what everyone's doing, you know, especially, like for me, I'm not what they call good at my job, so I don't pay attention to it. So, let's never get that guy off the fence, he managed to send the fence from the entire end of it. It's kind of sad, yeah, the final point I should make is that this monologue was vetted and approved by SNL producers, and Shane did this in a rehearsal many times on the set of SNL. So it was widely known to everybody involved in the production, the content of the monologue. So I guess it's over to the panel, what do you think, and how should he be executed for this horrendous crime? Well, I actually- first of all, one thing's probably worth adding is this whole gym where discourse has been going on for many, many, many years. So Jeff Dye, who's a comedian, we've had on trigonometry, he posted a clip of himself doing bits about this like 15 years ago, and when it all blew up, I quoted and said a tweet that I also talked with Chris Willemson about in which I said three years ago, because there was this whole discussion about creepy men at the gym, staring at women, and I said, these creepy men have got to stop staring at hot women at the gym, otherwise they're going to stop wearing lingerie to work out, and then everybody loses. So, like, we've been making these jokes for many years, it's nothing new. The only thing I would say is, Shane Gillis is clearly one of the great comedians alive today, one of the most popular comedians alive today. I thought his monologue was pretty weak by his own standards, and that bit was also quite crudely done. There's a more sophisticated and funnier way to do that instead of just calling the women whores, but it's got nothing to do with that. It's just people who like to get outraged and try and cancel people for making what is an entirely valid observation. If you go to the gym and look at what women are wearing now, I actually, I've never been to a whore house, but I imagine if you go to a whore house, they have a bit more decency in there. What do you reckon with? And I was, it's funny how you see people being invited, as Michael Shoe was there, to take outsized offence to something that really everyone knew was a joke. Like, for a moment there, he almost had enough hurry to say, "Well, the thing is people say things that they think are funny." And some people like them and some people over the news, they have to sort of backtrack. It's a, to his credit, I suppose, that he didn't, you know, do the full throwing Gillis under the bus. But the fact that we're invited to do this dance all the time is absurd, particularly because American comedians, even in the midst of the great awoking, have a certain roughness, shall we say, that would make a lot of people in the British comedy stand up circuit blush, you know. This, this, this sort of material that Shoe and Gillis was doing there is something you could easily see in a Bill Burr show again, incredibly popular and beloved comedian in America. There's just this dance that everyone feels like they have to engage in, whenever a moment like this takes place. It did feel like being in a time warp and being back in not just like 2020, but like the kind of height of the sort of new feminism early 2010s, Jessica Valente, formerly the Guardian, popped up to say that Shane Gillis' routine, "This is why men become rapists." You just say, "Are we not over this hell fucking thing?" We're not over this absurd, someone makes an off-color comment and a joke, let's not forget. And then therefore, that's a really horrific moment for the culture that we all need to reflect upon. I mean, it's good to say, it's worth saying, of course, that he's not really facing any sort of serious consequences from this. And the whole Shane Gillis arc is a heartening story of a triumph over cancel culture, for the reasons that you sketched out there, Francis, being kicked off of the cast in 2019, returning to host it in 2024 for the first time. And in between that time, him becoming this enormous arena act, kind of rebuilding his reputation and standing, via kind of being part of the sort of Rogan world. I mean, I think I'm right in saying, but by the time Shane Gillis returns to SNL in 2024 to do the opening monologue, your average episode of SNL was watched by half as many people as your average episode, of the Joe Rogan, it's his whole structure that used to exist. These gatekeepers that used to wield so much power are just so much more diminished now. And with that again, too, kind of high fluting about it. The success of Shane Gillis is also quite heartening because it's I've been being a great comic and it would have been such a terrible tragedy if he had just been pushed into obscurity because he used a few healthy words at one point in a podcast, it was also a kind of welcome push back from sort of like Meet Head America, culturally speaking, who like even before the Trump years were kind of considered old hat. He's very much the product and talks about it a lot in his comedy of sort of Fox News, watching Lowem Middle Class suburban America, the sort of people who are the butt of jokes for many years and continue to be on shows like SNL. The fact that he's managed to sort of come back and sort of represent, in a sense, if we're going to use that clawing identity area in terms, that section of America, who yet might use the word retard from time to time, but their heart's basically in the right place. It's been a useful sort of cultural reset in so many ways. And the fact that yes, this has caused a lot of people to lose their shit on social media, but no one's really seriously saying that he's going to lose any arena shows or any serious consequences from that. It's a good indication that we're certainly not in the depths of performative pearl clutching and cancel culture that we were when he first got canned from SNL back in the day. I'd add, I mean, I think you're right, your description is sort of representing meathead America, but Gillis is extremely bright lad, extremely intelligent bloke and knows his stuff. I've been following him for a while. I actually think the story isn't really about him. It is about progressive women here. And it is objectively true that women dress like hauls at the gym. That's why I go to the gym every day. It is ridiculous to say they don't. And more absurd is this reaction that Frankie rightly points out that they're all posting on Instagram, photographs of themselves dressed like hauls exactly as Gillis explained in the sketch. And you know, I guess I'm a whore now, just sort of proving his point and I sort of step back. And I look at it like we're off the back of the Cornell 7 case we talked about it last week and Lindsay Clancy the week before just just leaving aside what's. It's specifically happened in those cases. If you look at the reaction to them, it's bananas. And if you remember back to me too, which was sort of made first Trump 1.0, I sort of see this as that sort of a movement, a sort of progressive female or just progressive left general feeling that they don't like the strong men in the world. And this is a way to vent their sort of anger. And I see that as it's almost like a valve for them, like they don't actually care about this shameless monologue. They just need to lash out a little bit. And I think that that's why you see them like it's insane the way they defended Lindsay Clancy who murdered her own children. I mean, it is absolutely, it's nuts. And again, it's this, it speaks more for the period we're going through, I think, than anything to do with Shane. I will find at this final point. So I agree that women are now dressing in a very provocative manner at the gym. And initially, I did welcome- No, I gently put that. That was the- Yeah. But I did well. this and I thought this is a positive until I started noticing them filming themselves and then the paranoia entered my head of like Trima Trigonometry guy staring at women at Jim and I like there was one time where like I was at the gym and this woman was doing squats and then I noticed the camera and basically long story short now every time I go to the gym I don't wear my glasses that's here I can't see anything I just go in there I do my do what I need to do and I get out and I'm gonna be uncanceled if something's gonna get me it's not gonna get me like a 25-year-old dress provocatively was 44-year-old man in the corner of Jim gently sweats whilst staring yeah take the glasses off maybe a patriotic platform balaclava there's all these cups of hair that you might have to employ there was one thought theory doing the rounds I don't think as much to it but it is funny that this particular bit of Gilles' resembles a scene in the new series of tires his Netflix show where he's in the gym and he gets caught out in precisely this fashion so it's actually come up quite a good time because those two videos are kind of going viral off the back of one another but yeah so you know it just shows the parallels all these all these you know influencers and people saying that you know men need to get back in the gym it's fraught with peril unfortunately and it took someone like Shane Gilles' to point out all right well we've spent an hour on Ukraine and for us let's move on to our third story to our third story which is that the NHS National Health Service in this country has issued new guidance which is the trans people and in fact all people should be placed in wards and bays according to their biological sex now I don't think we need to have a long back and forth on this other than to say I think it's worth pointing out that the you know Britain has been called Turf Island by both people who are pro-turf if you like an anti-turf and the reason this new guidance has been issued is you'll remember about a year ago in 2025 a Maya 4 starter and others brought a case which eventually ended up in the Supreme Court which effectively said that sex is a biological thing we had to go to the Supreme Court to confirm GCSE biology as a result of that previous NHS guidance which was very different of this has been withdrawn and has now been replaced with this and I guess what I'm trying to highlight here is ultimately we often talk on the show about big and sometimes intractable problems or what feels like intractable problems and this is a very good example where campaigners mostly women and mostly gender critical feminists fought for a number of years and look media commentators like us gave them platforms and helped them on that journey too but they were the ones leading leading the charge went through the legal system eventually achieved a legal outcome which is now very reluctantly I suspect nonetheless is being implemented across the public sector in this country and it shows you the power of campaigners and activists who actually stand on truth and continue to pursue Maya 4 starter and others of course with themselves cancelled from jobs and made it effectively their new career to pursue issues of this kind and they've been very successful so it's a testament to them that you are now actually seeing real change in real places and a return to sanity I would argue now it's been long in the coming I don't know about you when you see stories like this you kind of want to give the NHS a very slow clap because it's taken this long to be real it was really true it used to be like a complete matter of shame that you would have a health secretary who would be presented with the fact that we've continued to have mixed sex wards because that was usually because there just wasn't enough wards to go around and ended up with wind out in the chair space with some old codger of his bits hanging out at two o'clock in the morning screaming for more cigarettes or whatever it might have happened like that was a real problem that the NHS would be shame faced about and yet then it was suddenly sort of rebadged is wonderfully progressive to spot all the sort of horror stories it produced you're absolutely right constant this is like long 44 there's obviously the Supreme Court ruling and everything that went into that the four women Scotland campaign of the efforts of my four stature and sex matters and all of those different groups that have cropped up to just bring us back to sanity and it's the fact that it's taken this long is unfortunate but it's because of them that it's slowly getting there and of course those series of employment tribunal cases the Darlington nurses the sandy Peggy case up in Scotland which kind of really pushed this issue in terms of the staff as well having to share changing rooms which is also part of this new guidance with men who've decided they were women last Thursday and just why did it take this long and also it's one of those unfortunate things where the Supreme Court ruling was only really the beginning there was a lot of people who understandably were elated by that but the idea that that was just instantly going to cascade throughout all the institutions that all of them were suddenly going to say all right fair enough that was mad we're going to stop doing it now it's it's going to take a much more kind of concerted effort to properly push all of this out so this is a yeah one very long in the coming and welcome victory but there's plenty more of those to come because it hasn't gone away it's like any of these kind of work topics you think that there has been this sort of whether it's an election goes the right way or Supreme Court ruling goes the right way you think brilliant done but it's a kind of established feature of our institutions now which might have been pushed into a corner a little bit and told to behave itself but it's still there and it's going to take a little bit more to properly dislodge it lads I'm going to be annoying mm-hmm I am actually on the fence on this issue on the one hand we now have our female hospital wards NHS wards free of biological men which means that our job to protect our female family members is made easier on the other hand we now have to share our hospital wards with some of these transbloaks you're going to buy on this deck what's specifically you worried about you're going to be overpowered by one of the people you know mate you've all been there you wrote it down you thought this is gonna bang this is your shameless moment so you've got visions of being in the hospital ward there's no way to let in this trans woman dress very provocatively doing squat so something is all of these nightmare visions smash into one I will confess I did for me the reason the joke doesn't work is I don't I am not fearful of a trans whatever in my hospital ward it doesn't bother me yeah yeah I guess the joke didn't land no I think it's great news I'm going to backtrack I'm off the fence I think it's great news and it's just a shame that we even have to have these conversations in the first place it's absolutely absurd that this was this was even an argument and it's great that finally we're moving in a sensible direction I find it very interesting that we you know nobody really talks about this issue anymore I think partly it's because it's been resolved quite unquote and I think it's because everybody's just moved on to Palestine you know what I mean it's like if you remember in the 90s where everybody where all the girls had their favorite boy band and then they felt from favor and then they all moved on to the next one whatever the next one was and I just kind of think that's how we treat the social justice movements you know trans it's all right it's a bit boring now and you know and it gets a bit messy why don't we all just move on to Palestine and just scream genocide and that's what everyone's doing now all right well that is the I think the end of that story and Tom finally the Sally Rooney story and Palestine speaking of Palestine of course yeah this is something to do with Palestine action tell us yeah so this is the news this week which Sally Rooney the very celebrated Irish novelist has pulled her books from sale in the UK in agreement with her publisher Faber following her very vocal support for Palestine action there's a lot of kind of moving parts of this so if you forgive me I'll just walk us through this Sally Rooney expresses full some support for Palestine action in a piece for the Irish Times and she says that she will also donate her royalties from her books and from the various adaptations as a very popular hugely popular BBC adaptation one of her novels back in 2020 to this campaign group Palestine action gets prescribed as a terrorist organization in July of last year so under British terror law to fund this organization is a extremely serious offense to even express support for this organization is an extremely serious offense and even to walk around for sign implying support for this organization is something that could land you prison for six months so this has created a huge row over freedom of speech and whether or not in this case the crackdown on Palestine action has led to this kind of wave of censorship it's worth pointing out that this book has not been banned the her books rather have not been banned in the UK this is not the home secretary saying these things can't be published because of Sally Rooney's views on Palestine action it very much comes down to that commitment of hers to fund the organization which keys into that however it is worth saying that if Sally Rooney were to simply come to the United Kingdom and repeat what she has already written in the Irish Times and can say freely in the Republic of Ireland that she supports Palestine Action. That she herself could be criminalized for that. And also, and this is a story which also cropped up over recent weeks, the number of arrests which have taken place in the UK purely for people indicating support for Palestine Action has been entirely off the scale. So this is a story in the Guardian here. Half of all of the terrorism arrests in Great Britain since 9/11 have been in the past year. The reason for that is it coincides with the prescription of Palestine Action as a terror group and you have seen thousands upon thousands of people often sort of pensioners. There was one former aide of King Charles who was caught up in this just sitting outside of a court holding signs saying, I oppose genocide, I support Palestine Action. Fast majority have been for essentially holding signs and indicating support which only comes with a potential prison sentence of about six months. Expressing false from support for inviting support for funding, that's something the Kalandrian prison for potentially 14 years. So essentially what we've got here is a couple of things that we've got to disaggregate. Should Palestine Action have been prescribed as a terror group? In my mind, no. For the simple reason that they're not on a par with Hamas, they're not on a par with Al Qaeda, they're not on a par with ISIS. And also because of our existing terror legislation which I think there are problems with it anyway, that would mean that even someone, some idiot saying that they broadly speak and support the organization can be criminalized. I think that's a big problem for freedom of speech. It's also a big problem for feeding the martyr and victim complex of these pro-Palestine activists who at the very least don't deserve it. All that being said, should the question of funding is the tricky bit? And this is something that I think has got a little bit lost in the debate, even in my more immediate responses to this story earlier this week, I sort of missed and people rightly pointed it out to me. Is that I think it's fair to say that if the British state wanted to say that palestine action, and we can go into some of the things that is done, which goes beyond protest, we're talking about destruction of property, we're talking about attacks on British military assets, even though you could legitimately say, we don't think anyone should be funding what is essentially criminal activity. I think that's a perfectly more reasonable area to have an argument about, should someone be criminalized for doing something like that. But the sheer matter of expressing support for, I think, is the key issue because it's not really about Sally Rooney, she's done this quite purposely to put palestine action back on the agenda, the subject of its prescription is back, is in the Supreme Court next month, may well be overturned, we'll see what happens there. But it has pointed to this glaring issue in our sort of free speech debate, which is that we've had these swathes of arrests, purely for people expressing support for this organization. And the reasons I say that's a problem for free speech and that's a problem for feeding the victim complex of the pro-Palestine lot. So yeah, her book hasn't been banned, but there is a big discussion here about free speech, what its limits are, and whether or not P.A. you should be considered a terrorist organization, in that sense. - Yeah, well, at the risk of having myself jailed here, I will say I didn't agree with them being prescribed as a terrorist organization either. Imagine, in fact, if, imagine I went to prison for supporting palestine action, that would be quite comical. But anyway, I totally didn't support it. And I think the fact, like, as you say, tension is being arrested for basically expressing support for this group, it just shows that once you start policing people's speech in this way, you inevitably end up having to do something like this. And at this point, it's a left wing cause, at some point it'll be a right wing cause. And we've just got to get to a sensible definition of what terrorism is. And in fact, we just got to get to a sensible definition of words in the first place. This is what happens when everything's racist, everything's fascist, everything is, et cetera, et cetera. So yeah, don't agree with them being prescribed at all. I think what's different to you. Oh, sorry. Go, well, you go for it. You go for it. Go for it, for it, for it, for it, for it, for it, for it. No, no, no. Well, my point was something else entirely. My point is this is what actually happens when you don't tackle what was rampant support for genuine terrorist organizations in these marches. And people actually chanting insane things that could in be interpreted as genocidal. And once you've let that get out of hand, then you've got to take this draconian approach where you prescribe even organizations like Palestine Action, where there is a genuine debate around them as a terrorist organization. And I think what it speaks to is the weakness and the indecision. And the fact that the government would take completely unawares by the pro-Palestine marches post-October 7th. OK, so I'll tell you why I disagree with your general collective view on this. I do think Palestine Action should be a prescribed terrorist organization. The reason being is because not only have they carried out various attacks on sites in Britain, in the United Kingdom from as far back, including 2020, two raid on the Thales factory in Glasgow. And there's 2024 is the famous case in Filton because not only did they do criminal damage to assets, but they also attacked someone that's serious spinal injury to someone there. And they are openly a direct action group operating. So I do think that they are a terrorist group. The reason why, I think for me, the fault line is that in British Terrorism Act, so the law is, if you are a prescribed terrorist act, you cannot be supported either materially or vocally. You can't have support from there, which is actually different from how the Americans do it. So the Americans is you can't materially support them, but you can vocally support. So there you can't, I'm not sure exactly someone will treat me like this, but something like Hamas, you can't materially support Hamas, but you can say you support Hamas. Here, I think the problem is in that law. And I probably would be inclined to say that it would be suitable for us the law that you can't materially support these groups like Palestine Action. But if you vocally support them, it's useful for us to know what people think. That's one of the arguments for free speeches that I want to know what my neighbors think. And so I want to know, am I in a safe or a dangerous situation? So I think the problem is in with the Terrorism Act law. And so perhaps you can tell me, if you think it's good, that the Terrorism Act means that vocal support, not just material support of terrorist organizations, is a suitable law. I just one last note is that Starmer and this current Labour government have outlawed Palestine Action as a terrorist organization. They have not outlawed the IRGC. They have not outlawed Muslim Brotherhood. Those are still not prescribed terrorist organizations in Britain. They have, so the prescribed Palestine Action, which, of course, seemed very ridiculous when you have grandmas and Parli Square being ratted up by the police. Nevertheless, I still think that they have been doing terrorist activity. Well, that's exactly my issue. Well, my issue with what you're saying is you talked about crimes they've committed and you establish criminality. But none of those things meet my definition of terrorism. Breaking into a factory and destroying stuff is not terrorism, in my opinion. Injuring a police officer is bad and wrong and should be criminalized. And those people should have been punished. Didn't they get off? In fact, on that one, Tom, you remember the details of this. Oh, no, in terms of that, no, no, no, they didn't get off. But it was as far as I can remember. Maybe someone can double check that. But the last thing I remember-- I think it got about that case. That was pretty-- Oh, Dean, could we please use Venice AI to check those facts, please? Yeah, so the police woman who had her spine injured, Dean, police woman had her spine injured. Samuel, what was-- Samuel corner was the-- Samuel corner, what was the sentence that they got for doing that? In any case, to me-- My memory is it's seven years, yeah, but-- OK, well, I guess that's-- I mean, if it was my spine or someone I knew, I'd probably wanted to be 50 years. But within the confines of a fair and partial justice system, you probably think that's somewhere within the reasonable mark. My point is, those things do not meet my definition of terrorism. And the direct action part of it-- well, we spent several weeks discussing direct action on the South Coast of which people were ambivalent about whether they support it or not. To me, terrorism is when you're engaged in acts of terror. What is terror? Well, it's massacring, violence, killing people, blowing things up in order to terrify the civilian population of the societies. It's the targeting of civilians to create a political outcome. As I understand it, that's one of the workable definitions of terrorism. I think breaking into a factory and even attacking a police officer in the process, that's criminal and should be treated as a crime. But I don't see how that's terrorism. I suppose there's a couple of things I'd say out here. The first thing is that I think your distinction Winston between Wings and Winston. words and action between vocal support and material support, that is should be the fundamental line in any of these conversations. It's the one that we don't have in this country much to our detriment. So I think that's something that we can sort of build any of these arguments on top of. The point about terrorism, I do agree with Constantine, whatever this is and it is despicable what they've been getting up to, not just because of the violence, also some of the targets that they have taken. There's obviously a lot of focus on what they did at the Elbit systems, the Israeli defence companies, placed us outside of Bristol and Filten, and also R.F. Bryce Norton, which they attacked last summer and that was basically the prompt for them to be prescribed as an organisation. But there were also attacks on a Jewish land or business in Stamford Hill, which they claimed was linked to Elbit systems, even though the business itself claims there are no such links. And what you effectively end up with is a bunch of these pro-Palestine activists throwing red pain at a Jewish business, even kind of staining the massacres on the door outside and smashing glass in a very Jewish area of North London. I mean, this is something which is pretty scummy behaviour by anyone's reasonable definition. Surely that might be a problem. That goes over the line into Constantine's terrorism, right? No, that's where we cross the line over into potentially a race-based tale or whatever bullshit. Yeah, racially aggravated crime, not bullshit, racially aggravated crimes or real thing. That's what that is. But, but it's definitional because it's politically motivated. It's a lot of space-based. It's politically motivated. But I wonder though, I wonder if there's, I mean, there could potentially be a sort of third-way through this because for instance, if there was someone say Elon Musk was giving money to right-wing groups who were going around, not merely protesting and showing up outside of the silent hotel, but breaking and smashing them up, and that was their modus operandi. I think you can easily see an argument that if you've got someone, not even just a broad, but in this country who's funding criminal activity, a group who has an organisation, a range, an organised in-secret to go and destroy property, whatever, that there should be some sort of offense. It's just not clear to me that terrorism covers that, not least because obviously under existing British law it also comes with all of these other measures involving cracking down on speech when people even just support them in any way, shape or form. So that might be the way for, I think Lord Walnie has made this suggestion that he should have almost like another category of prescription, which involves these kind of criminal direct actions, syndicates which move beyond the realm of protest, even move beyond the realm of reasonable civil disobedience into something that does need to be cracked down upon. But this is just not it. And maybe this is just a tactical point, therefore maybe it's not the most principal thing in the world, but I think the pro-parasite law, they really get, they like to enjoy this sort of frisson of radicalism and this idea that they, despite having the most high status opinion of our time, are actually the dangerous dissidents who are under the thumb of the state. Aside from anything else, I think granting them that status is a mistake, particularly when there are other means to deal with this criminal behaviour, even if it isn't an organised fashion. And that's how I see this Sally Rooney thing, I think she's sort of quite purposefully, sort of propagandistically, put this glaring problem of just locking up people left, right and centre, just for holding up placards onto the agenda. It hides most of what that scummy group does of course, but it just feels like we're going to end up handing them a propaganda win and corroding free speech at the same time. So that's roughly where I land on it. There's a lot of kind of more fine tune arguments about what legally should constitute terrorism and what shouldn't, but I think that's where we've ended up, that's the kind of net effect of all of this that's gone on. I mean, there is the argument that essentially if you don't crack down on this group as hard as they have done, then what essentially you're doing is you're allowing them to escalate until something really serious happens. And look, the serious things have already happened, people have got injured. Businesses have been targeted, let's be honest, purely for the fact that they're Jewish. So if you don't get this under control, you don't get it under control sharpish in one, two, three, four years, as more and more people become radicalised, something really serious will happen. And that is exactly the argument that the entire left will use to prescribe and ban organisations that protest against illegal immigration. That's exactly what they will do. And they're already doing it. It's worth saying they're already doing that. So Shami Shakrabati, who used to be the head of liberty, no less, gave a speech recently in which she said, within a breath of each other, I, of course, as we've liberty, have opposed the prescription of Palestine, actually, isn't that terrible, we should prescribe patriotic platform, which is, shows you where this is going, but it's also mind-bending, because if patriotic platform had done even a percentage, like a 1% of what Palestine action have done, then all of their members would have been locked up within about 24 hours. And so the prescription support scene you call the right, that's the kind of road that we're setting down. Exactly. So if a right-wing direct action organisation had attacked Muslim businesses and had, in the process of breaking into a factory that was currently used to drop bombs on Afghanistan, let's say, had attacked a police officer with a sledgehammer and broken their spine, fractured their spine, they would be all locked up, they'd be prescribed instantly, it'd be front-page news in all the newspapers. And we wouldn't be sitting here talking about, did they get five years, did they get seven years, etc. But that is a conversation about two-tier policing, two-tier criminal justice, which we all know is going on, objectively speaking. The point I'm trying to make is, I think the idea that if you don't nip it in the bud now, it's going to escalate, is a Pandora's Box that we don't want to be opening, if we believe in the society in which you have free speech. And which people are allowed to vent their views and sail fairly close to the line, which is, of course, what will always happen in a free society. We could make society a little less free to avoid it, but I would be against that. I would only say that I think I understand the point you're making, comparing it, how the left would view the group like Patrick platform, but Patrick platform, apart from the leader who's been arrested and kept in remand on charges of criminal damage to a boat belonging to a illegal migrant gang leader, whoever it is that was trying to pilot these people across the channel. They've not actually committed, they've not committed crimes. The people who are being arrested are people throwing bottles who are adjacent to Patrick platform, whereas what Palestine action we're doing, and I think Constitence made a perfectly good argument that he doesn't think that they should be considered terrorism. But I think within the current terms of the terrorism act, it does fall, I think it does fall quite comfortably within that terrorism act because of their planned attacks, but you're saying you're trying to sort of delineate between what civilians and what's not. But I would say that they have been civilians and you would say it hasn't crossed that line. That's kind of how I see our difference in opinion here. All right, I think that's absolutely fair. I think we've done as much as we can on that this week. Gentlemen, thanks for being here. One thing I will say, by the way, last week's Off the Fence was the first one to reach half a million views on YouTube, which I think for a new show, absolutely fantastic. Second one. Second one. Or was it the first one over half a mill as well? Yeah. Fantastic. Well, broad point is we're absolutely smashing it. And it is because of you watching and listening at home. What about you, mate? We're going to get the credit. Frankie needs words of affirmation. Very needy, yeah. Very needy, co-panelist. Francis, you're the best co-host anyone could ever hope for. Thank you. And your apartment's beautiful Francis. I love I love to stand on this very info. You've got to be careful what you wish for me. You might get genuine expressions of love and support in your British. You can't handle it. Anyway, gentlemen, thank you for being here. Ladies and gentlemen, watching a home. Thanks for watching. Leave us a comment. Tell us what you think about the show. Share this with friends that you don't want to be friends with anymore. It always works very well. And by the way, final thing I'll say, if you haven't worked this out already, trigonometry now has its own coffees called trigofuil. You can get it using link in the description. Francis and I drink it ourselves. We pick that out. We tested a whole bunch of flavors. That is what we're after. And Tom and Winnie, we need to get your couple of banks of this stuff because once you've had it, once you've, I haven't thought of a slogan, but once you've had it trigofuil, once you've, once you've gone trigofuil, you'll never, I don't know. Anyway, we'll work on it. Don't try and grind. Thank you, Trigger. We'll get in all kinds. Yeah, yeah. Oh, no. Happy note. Thank you very much. And we'll see you next week. Thank you.