19/03/26 United State Of News

 This week's satirical bite out of the far right 

 The Fake News War, 

 The Rich Don't Like You, 

 The Iran War, again (again)

Transcript

Good evening. It’s the 19th March 2026 and this is the United State of News, a spoof news show that takes a satirical bite out of the far right. I am Johnson Hood and these are the headlines.

·       Trump demands Oscar for his role as Putin’s doormat.

·       Martinis for breakfast, because if not now, when?

·       Trump has a world leader to help with the strait of Hormuz, but you don’t know her because she goes to another school.

But first

Not content with a war in Iran, President Trump has declared a second war on the media, because like a heroin hit - one is never enough. His complaints about fake news are as commonplace as his name in the Epstein files, but amid mounting criticism of the Iran conflict, Trump has stepped up a gear and gone to war on the truth.

Returning to Washington after a gruelling golf trip, Trump criticised the Wall Street Journal of ‘false reporting’ and said ABC News was ‘one of the worst, most fake, most corrupt news organisations on the planet.’ To which Fox News said, hold my pint. 

Trump then went on to say, ‘Iran has been working in close co-ordination with the Fake News Media,” which is in itself fake news. 

Secretary of War Mongering, Pete Hegseth, has a similar complaint to make. He recently harangued journalists for not being positive enough about him setting fire to the world. Pete doesn’t like criticism and is famously so thin skinned, we can see through to where his backbone used to be. He even went on to suggest the type of headline he expects in the future. Using the example of ‘Mideastern War Intensifies,’ Pete suggested it should have been replaced with ‘Iran Increasingly Desperate.’ Or instead of the headline, ‘Pete So Stupid, He Thought Marines Could Only Fight in the Sea,’ it should have been “Pete Handsome and Sober.’

The whining from the Whitehouse led Brendan Carr, head of both the FCC and a monkey’s penis, to get involved. The Federal Communications Commission is supposed to be an independent agency, but Carr is unable to stand up to the President, having come down with a terrible case of the Trump Knees, which forces him and the Republican Congress to drop into an immediate grovelling position. Carr threatened to revoke the licences of local broadcasters who didn’t paint the Iranian war in a more favourable light. 

All three men – a term I apply loosely here – believe the media shouldn’t report the truth and focus on patriotic lies instead. But when Trump speaks of patriotism, he means to him, not the country that has afforded him multiple opportunities to fail upwards. Trump avoids scrutiny like he avoids revealing how much tax he pays, but now journalists have him on the ropes, they’ll investigate everything and go through his garbage like a racoon with a Substack account.

And now a quick word from me

As part of United State of News, we are about to launch Spotlight On, a limited series profiling 4 right wingers benefiting from the rise of fascism. Some you’ll know, some you’ll have heard of, but all of them are worth your attention. Tune in to find out who wanted to start their business on a Native American reservation to avoid paying tax, who said accommodating schoolchildren with learning difficulties was insane, and who refused to send condolences to the parents of a dead student because they were black.

Follow now to receive your new extra podcast episodes.

And now, we go live to our roving reporter Billy Beans, who says the best bit of any pork chop is the gristle. What have you got for us, Billy?

Deputy leader of the UK’s far right party Reform – Richard Tice – has been caught with his hand in the cookie jar and that jar is filled with tax avoidance schemes. It was revealed this week, Richard had successfully avoided paying £600,000 in corporation tax in a complicated scam – I mean, scheme – called the Real Estate Investment Trust.

It is important to note, Richard has not broken any laws, but he’s bent them to such a degree that if they were a balloon at a kid’s birthday party, he’d have twisted them into the shape of a dog - robbing a cat.

You might have expected a man hoping to govern a country he has just conned out of 600 grand to be full of apologies, but he wasn’t. He was full of hot piss instead, stating “All Britons should do their best to pay the minimum tax possible,” suggesting he doesn’t know where the government gets its money from.

But he’s not talking about ordinary people. They will still have to pay up, because of the 41.7 million UK residents of working age, 30.3 million of them have their taxes automatically deducted from their wages through the PAYE system. They don’t have the option to ‘pay the minimum tax possible.’

Richard, or Dick for short, is talking about the elites. Those people with a back-up private jet. People who shoot peasants – I mean, pheasants – on the grounds of their ancestral homes. People who twang elastic bands off their butler’s foreheads because they can.

Chillingly, Richard went on to say, we have ‘entered a new world’ with ‘a new moral code,’ a supposed dystopian realm where the rich can behave with impunity, where screwing over your country is something to be celebrated. But that place doesn’t exist and come the general election, we’ll show Richard just how much of a dick he really is. 

Good reporting. And Richard Tice is one of the famous faces to feature in our Spotlight on series, so please give it a listen. Now we join Virginia Cluck-Bucket for an instalment of her series called ‘MAGA Mayhem.’ 

World leaders have refused to help Trump clean up his mess in the strait of Hormuz, but rejecting the President is like a pensioner with a sex life. It’s a good thing - in a way - but you don’t want to witness it first hand.

Trump unravelled quickly, embarrassing himself with a series of contradictory statements. I don’t want help, it was a test, can I have some help please, I’m bombing Cuba next. He shifts positions so fast, it’s like he’s speed reading the Karma Sutra.

It is clear Trump skipped the class War-mongering 101. Everyone else predicted that a conflict with Iran would lead to an oil blockade, but it came as a surprise to him, just like when he learned something called the strait of Hormuz had a curve in it.

Later on, it may be that the world gets dragged into the flushing water of Trump’s toilet-mind, but as it stands now, no world leader will partner in an illegal war with someone whose military strategy rests on blaming everyone else.

And helping Trump is no guarantee of reward. After watching your ships sink, he’s just as likely to raise a tariff on your country because you didn’t compliment his new rash.

No one knows how this will end because Trump doesn’t know. He claimed he’d end the war when he ‘felt it in his bones,’ suggesting the war isn’t being directed by him, but by his pelvis. However, it is heartening to see democracies around the world sticking together, and if they put enough pressure on him, he’ll pop, like the zit he is.

Thank you, Virginia.

And that has been the United State of News. I’ve been Johnson Hood. Good luck.