It might be banning news agencies from press conferences, the reasons for which I saw something as well that they haven't started referring to the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America yet. And that was potentially another reason why they've been uninvited. They've placed gag orders on federal employees so they can't speak publicly about the sort of the doge activity that's going on.
And then you're standing on this stage talking about how you want to be a champion for free speech and all these like egregious breaches of it that are happening in Europe. So same way you look at Kemi Badenock, who's trying to insert herself into this conversation over the weekend with that piece she wrote in The Telegraph lamenting her concerns about lack of free speech. It's just it's hypocrisy of the highest order. Right. Because she voted for the Police Crime Sentencing in Courts Act.
Right. That introduced draconian prison sentences for. political protests that were too loud.
Her government that banned the introduction of quote-unquote anti-capitalist materials in schools. Like, these people don't care about free speech. They use it as a Trojan horse for the issues they care about. So with J.D. Vance, for example, it's like these freaks who are turning up and praying outside abortion clinics.
It's like, you have impinged on that man's free speech. He doesn't care about the protesters that are getting these... like insane prison sentences for walking down roads. He doesn't care about any of the actual sort of material attacks that have happened on free speech.
It's entirely a political vehicle. Can I just correct you? Please. I don't think it's fair that these people who have been silently praying outside abortion clinics are arrested because what, you know, they just happened to be outside an abortion clinic while simultaneously having a background in anti-abortion campaigning.
We've all... bumped into a friend before. Yes, of course.
Had a catch up. This was a new development in prayer for me because I didn't realise it worked like an induction hob and it had to be in contact with the thing that you were praying about. That's really funny. I thought the whole point of prayer was you could do it anywhere.
No, no. It was convenient. Like at home, at church. We've all seen, you know, like evangelical pastors like praying with their hands on someone.
Oh God, yeah. I forgot about that. That's a lot more effective.
So what? What they should ideally be doing is be facing against the glass of the abortion clinic. That's why they had to introduce the buffer zones, because there were like millions of evangelicals pressing their faces up against the abortion clinic.
And speaking to them. That's the big thing. There was like one of these people.
I don't want to name them because I can't be bothered. But there's one of them. One of them goes to these abortion clinics and they will convince the partner. to go back inside and say tell tell her not to get it they'll do this and then when they're arrested for it they're like but i was just praying i was only praying yeah and this is it first of all who are these people that are doing the silent praying and quite often if you ask them or you ask for example students they're out flyering about abortion and on university campuses nine times out of ten they're quite often americans who are being paid for by american you to come here and campaign around this issue because broadly speaking like abortion is a settled issue in Britain despite the best efforts of the organizations like this and that is because I our civil society broadly is is secular right like we're very happy we don't we don't want or need some religious freak deciding that they're going to pray for your unborn baby right and in the same way on a personal level i don't know how you guys feel about this but obviously there's that video this weekend of that guy who burnt the Quran, like getting attacked by a bloke with a knife and like getting kicked in the street in the same way.
Like I'm okay with you being religious privately. The second you introduce it into the public sphere, I, you're trying to pray outside abortion. clinics or you're attacking people in the street with a knife because they burn a quran which is don't get me wrong like i would say distasteful i don't think you deserve to be stabbed for doing it and i certainly don't think it's a criminal offense to do it either oh you don't think it's a criminal offense to burn the quran outside the turkish embassy no i think if it was outside a mosque I probably, I think you're getting towards like public order offence at that point.
Incitement to violence. But why do you think he was doing it? You think he was doing it just for the fun of it?
Just for the hell of it? I think he was doing it to be like incredibly provocative, yeah. Yeah, which I would suggest is incitement. Well, I think because it was outside the embassy.
And it was sort of a political protest in that way. The thing we're talking about here, and with all of this, with about free speech, with about incitements of violence, with about hate speech, I appreciate, like, it's a grey area. There aren't, like, clear lines, and we'll probably sit on these things differently.
But for me... I think the bar for like a public order offense for doing something like that has to be quite high. I think broadly speaking doing outside an embassy not quite the same.
I think doing it outside a mosque where you're like okay you're literally going to like the site of where the people of this faith are and you're deliberately doing something incredibly provocative at that point I think there's a there's a pretty strong case for incitement I think there's a pretty strong case for for a public order offense but if you're just in like a random street outside an embassy doing as as a protest, I'm not sure it's quite there for me in the same way. I'm not confident on that line of thinking, but perhaps we can return to it. I did thought it was quite funny that the delivery driver turned up, just gave him a kick and then cycled back off.
I thought that was just quite funny. Did he offer that now? Random acts of violence. You know that premium subscriber thing? If you do that, they'll dish one out for you.
What I thought was interesting about Vance's speech was he was almost providing a template to movements in Europe where or people in Europe as to do these things, stand for these principles, and you will get the endorsement of the Trump White House. You've seen the governments that kind of embody those values already, like Maloney in Italy was invited to the inauguration, Millet. So, and you're tarring quite different figures politically with the same brush, but you are tarring like Schultz, Macron, Starmer, Tusk, like all these people as just like broadly leftist liberals who are, the enemy within for protecting liberal democracy i guess so there's a carrot for or encouragement for all these alternative political movements like schultz made the point that there is a firewall against the afd in germany because it has its roots in nazism and every german should have a obligation to stand against Nazism.
But for the AFD and organisations like it, hearing the encouragement of the Vice President on a stage like that, it just provides fuel to the fire almost. I also, to your point, right, about the diversity, of political positions and opinions in Europe, clearly. I had a similar read on it, which was it felt like Vance was like the emissary to like a colonial outpost of the American empire, which they view.
you as a monolith and is basically like i will now go and speak to europe and and tell them about the problem with their politics because i guess you know talking comparat size whether it's economies land mass for america to sort of talk about i don't know the politics of spain or poland or germany in isolation it kind of feels like almost too small time for him to be dealing with whereas if he goes and engages with the european union as a whole which obviously is you know how it's done on on trade terms and often on political terms that kind of makes more sense because at that point you're sort of getting towards powers of comparable scale and size and my understanding and i guess we'll talk about this in the context of the ukraine stuff as well is that it's part of that reset towards like the return of great power politics where it's you know the us and russia having a bilat to decide the future of ukraine not involving for example, in the European nations, or Starmer trying to do this sort of like bridging exercise between Europe and America. It does have that kind of, well, dare I say it, Cold War-ish feel.