An Alleged Crank & Antisemitism

Summary

Armstrong & Getty On Demand

Episode: An Alleged Crank & Antisemitism
Date: October 13, 2025

Episode Overview

In this episode, Armstrong & Getty delve into the phenomenon of viral internet rumors, their often-absurd origins, and the deeper psychological mechanisms and social costs behind public accusations—especially those designed to humiliate or harass. Using recent, oddball examples—such as the claim that Patrick Mahomes will play trumpet at Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift’s wedding and the conspiracy theory swirling around the First Lady of France—they explore how such stories take hold, why they’re effective, and how they can be weaponized, including against marginalized groups through mechanisms like antisemitism. The conversation includes references to a piece by Kat Rosenfield in The Free Press, highlighting the dynamics of rumor, accusation, and the toll of disproving falsehoods.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Absurd Online Rumors and Their Spread

• Patrick Mahomes & the Trumpet Wedding Prank:

  • The hosts discover and dissect an online "headline" claiming that NFL star Patrick Mahomes will play trumpet at Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift’s wedding.
  • They quickly realize the image is AI-generated and the claim is a social media prank, noting how easy hoaxes are to create and spread.
  • Quote:
    • Joe: “If that's fake, I love it because it's so stupid... the utter lack of any motivation anybody could possibly have to make that claim. That's what makes it funny.” (03:34)

• The Mechanics & Fun of Online Hoaxes:

  • Michael and Joe muse about starting their own viral rumors, wondering how easily such fake stories catch on and why people create and spread them.
  • Michael: “I gotta start thinking up just random things like that and see if I can get them going.” (05:09)
  • Joe adds that with “faked-up graphics,” anyone can make misinformation go viral now. (05:14)

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2. From Trolling to Malice: How False Accusations Become Harmful

• Introduction to the Macron Conspiracy & Kat Rosenfield:

  • The conversation shifts to the persistent online conspiracy about the First Lady of France, Brigitte Macron, with rumors alleging she is transgender—spurred by figures like Candace Owens.
  • Joe introduces Kat Rosenfield’s article, which discusses how “trolls” and “outrage junkies” manufacture and amplify unfounded, humiliating claims.

• The Real Harm of "Humorous Outrage":

  • Quoting Rosenfield, Joe explores the emotional burden placed on those falsely accused, tying it to a famous saying attributed to Jean Paul Sartre:
    • Quote:
      • Joe: “The anti Semite does not accuse the Jew of stealing because he thinks he stole something. He does it because he enjoys watching the Jew turn out his pockets to prove his innocence... The point is not the lie themselves. The point is the burden it places...to perform the exhausting, undignified, humiliating exercise of refuting the allegations.” (07:10-08:45)

• The Undignified Dance of Refuting Lies:

  • Michael underscores the lose-lose situation victims face: "It does put you in the undignified position of proving she's wrong or even responding to it right, which would be unpleasant." (08:54)
  • Joe: “It's about stealing their time and energy, about the power trip of setting little fires in someone else's house and sitting back laughing while they run around trying to extinguish [them].” (09:11)

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3. The Repetitive Power of Rumor: Perception Becomes Reality

• Why Repetitive Lies Work:

  • The discussion expands on how repeated allegations—no matter how unfounded—eventually create suspicion, often referenced as the “Streisand effect.”
  • Joe reads from Rosenfield, illustrating how eventually, “repeated allegations of wrongdoing start getting treated like proof in and of themselves.” (09:23)
  • Michael personally connects this to the persistent Michelle Obama “conspiracy jokes,” noting how constant repetition can even make the skeptical pause:
    • “Greg Gutfeld has made that joke so many times that I start thinking... is there something I'm missing?” (09:52)

• Public Denials Fueling the Fire:

  • They discuss the Armie Hammer allegations as an example of how public denial (e.g., "Armie Hammer Denies Cannibalism Claims") paradoxically cements the rumor in the public mind.
  • Michael: “Because of the denial... everybody found out Barbra Streisand’s address because she was arguing so much about... not telling people her address. You end up with that situation.” (11:23)

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4. When to Respond and When to Ignore Falsehoods

• “Let it Lie” or Fight Back?

  • The hosts reflect on the dilemma for public figures: whether to ignore slander (risking it festers) or confront it (amplifying it further).
  • Joe: “The question of when to turn out your pockets to fight back and when to just turn away has no easy answer. Refuting a falsehood means dignifying it...” (10:11)

• Their Own Policy on Addressing Rumors:

  • Both hosts prefer to “publicize our sins,” addressing embarrassing stories themselves before they become rumors.
  • Joe: “It’d be hard to imagine coming up with a headline that would be more embarrassing to me than things I’ve admitted I’ve done. So that helps.” (12:36)

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5. Humor as Defense

• The conversation ends on a lighter note, with Joe making a playful (if dark) joke referencing cannibalism rumors and the First Lady of France.
  • Joe: “Me and Mrs. McCrone nibbling on a nice calf together. And I don't mean the... I mean the kind that says moo.” (12:52)

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the absurdity of fake news:
  Joe: “If that's fake, I love it because it's so stupid. ...The utter lack of any motivation anybody could possibly have to make that particular claim.” (03:34)
• On why trolls target people:
  Joe (quoting/ paraphrasing Sartre via Rosenfield): “The point is not the lie themselves. The point is the burden it places on the person being lied about...” (08:45)
• On the futility of denying rumors:
  Michael: “Because of the denial... You end up with that situation.” (11:23)
• On repeated innuendo and rumor:
  Michael: “Greg Gutfeld has made that joke so many times that I start thinking... is there something I'm missing?” (09:52)
• On their approach to personal rumors:
  Joe: “We publicize our sins.” (12:16)

---

Important Segment Timestamps

• 03:02 – Discovery & dissection of the Patrick Mahomes-wedding trumpet hoax
• 05:35 – Transition to Macron/First Lady rumors
• 06:07 – The Kat Rosenfield article and its take on trolling and humiliation
• 07:54 – Sartre's quote on antisemitism, illustrated
• 09:23 – Why repeated rumors start to feel “real”
• 10:11 – The conundrum: refute the falsehood, or ignore it?
• 11:18 – Armie Hammer, the “cannibalism denial” and the Streisand effect
• 12:16 – Armstrong & Getty’s “publicize our own sins” policy
• 12:52 – Humorous sign-off referencing cannibalism rumors

---

Tone & Style

The conversation moves quickly between satire, social observation, and serious cultural commentary. There is frequent self-deprecating humor and irreverence, even as the hosts tackle the darker implications of rumor-mongering and organized online harassment. They cite credible sources, use memorable analogies, and keep the discussion accessible with pop culture references.

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Summary prepared for listeners seeking a comprehensive understanding of this episode’s core discussions and takeaways.

Transcript

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[Joe]

What the first lady of France's alleged crank has to do with anti Semitism. That's right, you heard me. It's one more thing.

[Michael]

Armstrong and Getty.

[Joe]

One more thing.

[Michael]

So before we get to that, I got a question. I don't know, maybe you guys know the answer to this. I forgot to research it. I came across this headline. Well, it was online as a headline in something I've never heard of, right? There's like 9 million different outlets that I've never heard of. And I don't know which ones are real and which ones are folk fake or whatever. This one is something called the perennial Mahomes to play trumpet at Travis and Taylor's wedding. And the quote is, I've been training for this my whole life. Does Patrick Mahomes play the trumpet? And is he gonna play the trumpet at their wedding? And has he been training for this his whole life?

[Joe]

If that's fake, I love it because it's so stupid. Well, it's got a picture. I know what I'm going to do. I'm going to post that Patrick Mahomes is going to play the trumpet at Kelsey's wedding with Taylor Swift and claim.

[Michael]

This is his dream come true. There's a picture that is clearly AI of Patrick Mahomes in a tuxedo with a flower on it. Like he's a groomsman with a trumpet in his mouth.

[Ryan Reynolds / Mint Mobile Advertiser]

Yes.

[Michael]

So I don't think that's a real Internet AI Overview says no, there is.

[Joe]

No indication that Patrick Mahomes plays the trumpet. Then I'm.

[Michael]

I agree with Joe. That is one of the. Where did that come from? Strangest. You know, would it be a funny prank to play on people?

[Joe]

How do you explain why that's so funny? It's the. Utter stupidity is the wrong word. It's the.

[Ryan Reynolds / Mint Mobile Advertiser]

I don't.

[Joe]

I don't know what was the source? The utter lack of any motivation anybody could possibly have to make that particular claim. That that's what makes it funny.

[Michael]

It's something called the perennial.

[Joe]

It's like saying he adopted three cats. I mean, who cares, right?

[Michael]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I see what you mean. It's subtle. Enough. It's like, okay, because it's not like, you know, has decided to ride a donkey into the wedding chapel or something. That would be. No, he's been practicing his whole life and he's really looking forward to the opportunity to play the trumpet. His best friend's wedding.

[Joe]

Maybe they're just seeing how far they can get it to spread. You know, just as in a social.

[Michael]

Experiment, I gotta start thinking up just random things like that and see if I can get them going.

[Joe]

Yeah, I've thought of that many, many times. I would like to do that. I mean, and it's so easy these days with. You can fake up the graphics and whatever and see if you can get this stuff to go viral. But there are plenty of people already.

[Michael]

Doing that in the headline Mahomes to play Trumpet at Travis and Taylor's Wedding. Quote, I've been training for this my whole life. How great would that be?

[Joe]

The trumpet. Speaking of Internet trollery, what does the alleged pennis of the first lady of France have to do with antisemitism?

[Michael]

So back to that story. Is Macron's briefly wife a dude which would include such broad shoulders. A penis which. There are pictures and videos out there that claim. See, you can see it right there. I mean, you can see she's got swinging junk right there. You can see it.

[Joe]

Yeah. Well, I came across a great piece by Kat Rosenfield in the Free Press, who talks about how she does a lot of fairly edgy stuff on the Internet and journalism wise and stuff. And so she's getting. She gets trolled and what she calls humorous outrage and cancellation from outrage junkies left and right. And. And one. Before we get into the meat of it, I really like this story. No, dear an idiot, she says, I won't trouble you with further details because they're both ridiculous and unimportant. And for the most part, these pylons always play out the same way. The outrage lasts a day or two while it does, it's rarely worth engaging in. But in the midst of this latest one, something unusual.

[Michael]

Get to the real sausage of the story for us.

[Joe]

A prolific journal. Cut that part out, Michael. Yeah. A prolific journalist named Hamilton Kane, who I have never met nor interacted with, publicly announced that he was privy to some salacious information about my alleged racist proclivities, courtesy of my most trusted colleagues and family friends. So this guy is online and this guy's got a lot of followers and all claiming that she's really a serious racist. And he's been talking to close family and friends about it of hers. I'm friends with her editor and one of her, one of my former publishing colleagues is best friends with her mother. Dang, the stories I've heard he wrote on X Blair Racist AF so the interesting part of this Cat Rosenfeld piece about making like wildly unfounded claims about people and she, she talks about the first lady and that whole thing and what's her name, Candace Owens, who keeps going back to it and she said originally she just thought it's about childish idiots. That's why control troll people online. She says worst of all, a world where the only recourse against these lying liars, even if you're the first lady of freaking France, is to debase yourself by responding in such a way that even when you win, you still kind of lose. And there's a famous saying, and this is where it turns serious. There's a famous saying often attributed to Jean Paul Sartre, although it's a paraphrase and it doesn't matter quote, the anti Semite does not accuse the Jew of stealing because he thinks he stole something. He does it because he enjoys watching the Jew turn out his pockets to prove his innocence. In other words, people who traffic in destructive rumor mongering are often telling stories they even they don't believe. The point is not the lie themselves. The point is the burden it places on the person being lied about to perform the exhausting, undignified, humiliating exercise of refuting the allegations.

[Michael]

That's interesting. So like getting back to McCrone's wife. So Candace Owens makes those kind of comments or whatever. It does put you in the undignified position of proving she's wrong or even responding to it right, which would be unpleasant.

[Joe]

And Cat writes it's about stealing their time and energy, about the power trip of setting little fires in someone else's house and sitting back laughing while they run around trying to extinguish that sounds.

[Michael]

About exactly like exactly what is happening.

[Joe]

And then does any she skips ahead, talked more about the Macron says does anyone believe this? Probably not, or at least not at first. But after a while, repeated allegations of wrongdoing eventually start getting treated like proof in and of themselves. The first time you walk past the Jew turning out his pockets to prove he isn't a thief, you sympathize. The 17th time you start to wonder what's this guy doing so that people are accusing him of stealing all the time. There's got to be something to it.

[Michael]

Well I got to admit, I've gone that's where I've ended up. Not like, not for real, but a little bit like on the Michelle Obama being a man. Greg Gutfeld has made that joke so many times that I start thinking, why are so many people making that joke? Is there something I'm missing?

[Joe]

Yeah, yeah. Let's see. And sometimes. Oh, she goes into the. Because of the repeated accusations. Starts to give people the idea that maybe I should be. Maybe there's something to this. Right. She says for this reason, the question of when to turn out your pockets to fight back and when to just turn away has no easy answer. Refuting a falsehood means dignifying it in some sense to the liar's level.

[Michael]

Absolutely.

[Joe]

Well, staying silent, on the other hand, can look like a tacit confirmation that the falsehood is true.

[Michael]

I think that's exactly what Trump did to Obama with the birth certificate. Put him in the awkward position of having to, you know, dignify it and refute it.

[Joe]

Yeah. And then she goes in the example of Armie Hammer, who found himself at the center of one of the weirder Me Too maelstroms after a former partner accused him of rape and physical abuse along with other sensational offenses. Though Hammer was never charged, his public denial of the allegations paradoxically made people wonder if there might be something to them, especially when accompanied by memorable headlines such as Armie Hammer Denies Cannibalism claims.

[Michael]

Oh, wow. And I remember that story. Yeah, yeah.

[Joe]

Right.

[Michael]

Because of the denial. So you, you get into that whole Streisand effect thing where everybody found out Barbra Streisand address because she was arguing so much about how you don't tell people my address. Yeah. You end up with that situation.

[Joe]

Yeah. So, but the one part that I will, you know, take away and really keep is that people don't accuse the Jew of stealing because they think they're stealing. They just want to humiliate them by making them turn their pockets out over and over again.

[Michael]

The when to fight it and when to just let it lie is a heck of a. That's a heck of a thing.

[Joe]

Right.

[Michael]

I think everybody starts with I'll let it lie, but then it starts to grow a little and you think, well, I need to respond to this. But then it's off to the races now you got another day of the news story, more headlines. Just like Katie said here. You've heard the story of the cannibalism because of the denial.

[Joe]

Right, Right. Exactly. We've always, both of us on the show, gone with the policy that we publicize our sins. So, you know, if somebody says, you know, somebody writes the headline, Joe Getty drinks himself insensible watching playoff baseball. Somebody will see that and say, oh yeah, they talked about that for like half an hour Thursday.

[Michael]

It'd be hard to imagine coming up with a headline that would be more embarrassing to me than things I've admitted I've done. So that helps.

[Joe]

I got a couple. You know why I'm always bringing up cannibalism, Michael?

[Michael]

Why?

[Joe]

Well, do the math. It's all I'm saying. Me and Mrs. McCrone nibbling on a nice calf together. And I don't mind the. I mean the kind that says moo.

[Michael]

Well, I guess that's it.

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