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Speaker 1

00:00

-♪ ♪ -♪ ♪ Hi there. Welcome to the show. Still taking place in this blank void, which fun fact, is actually just a zoomed in picture of this I Voted sticker, which is great. Unfortunately, that sticker is attached to James Woods, which is very much not.

Speaker 1

00:19

And obviously, we're gonna start with our main story tonight, which is the 2020 election, or as it's known for horses, just another week. Look at them. They've got no clue. Hot idiots.

Speaker 1

00:31

This was clearly a very long, very tense week. Although, thankfully, it all felt worth it due to how it ended. ♪♪

Speaker 2

00:39

CNN projects Joseph R. Biden Jr. Is elected the 46th president of the United States, winning the White House, and denying President Trump a second term.

Speaker 1

00:51

Yeah. That definitely happened. Trump isn't going to be president anymore. Something I personally learned from no less than 20 text messages from my friends and family all saying, it's over, which in this situation was welcome, but on any regular day, would terrify the living shit out of me.

Speaker 1

01:08

As we are taping this on Saturday, people across America are still taking to the streets to celebrate. Not just that Biden and Harris were elected, but you sensed mainly that a certain someone was about to get evicted from the White House. -♪ ♪ -♪ CHILDREN CHEERING

Speaker 3

01:24

AND APPLAUDING

Speaker 1

01:25

♪ ♪

Speaker 3

01:28

Have a great good time... ♪ -♪ Come on! -♪ -♪ Yeah!

Speaker 1

01:32

-♪ -♪

Speaker 3

01:34

Hey, hey, hey, goodbye! -♪ -♪ Hey!

Speaker 1

01:38

-♪ -♪

Speaker 3

01:40

Bumbalo Joe! -♪ -♪ Bee-bee-bee-bee-bee-bee-bee-bee-bee-bee-bee-bee-bee-bee-bee-bee-bee-bee-bee-bee-bee-bee-bee-bee-bee-bee-bee-bee-bee-bee-bee-bee-bee-bee-bee-bee-bee-bee-bee-bee-bee-bee-bee-bee-bee-bee-bee Let's go, Donald Trump! Come on!

Speaker 3

01:42

Yeah! Hey, hey, hey! Goodbye! Yay!

Speaker 3

01:42

Fuck Donald Trump! Fuck Donald Trump!

Speaker 1

01:44

You know what? That person screaming, fuck Donald Trump from the back of a moving scooter, actually sums up pretty nicely how a lot of people feel right now. And I've got to tell you, it was like that all day here in New York.

Speaker 1

01:55

There was a mood here that can only be described as a reverse 9-11. Why? Because it combined complete euphoria and abiding disgust for Rudy Giuliani. And this time, people were actually dancing on the rooftops in New Jersey.

Speaker 1

02:08

It was a really good day. Never forget. It is genuinely hard to overstate the level of relief that has been flying around parts of this country, especially at the end of a truly draining week. And tonight, we thought it might be worth mapping out exactly how we got to this point over the last 7 days.

Speaker 1

02:27

Because at the start of this week, we all knew that due to the pandemic, this election was going to be different. Crucially, that it was gonna require more patience than usual. Yet, for some reason, as soon as Tuesday came around, everyone seemed to immediately forget that. Because starting that evening, almost every news channel was overtaken by some version of a guy playing with a big screen while someone comes in to interrupt and pester them with questions.

Speaker 1

02:50

It was basically the equivalent of watching the security footage at a Best Buy for 4 straight days. And while news outlets tried their best to be patient, As things dragged on, it was clear they just couldn't do it. Something perhaps best summed up by this exchange between Don Lemon and a Philadelphia City Commissioner.

Speaker 4

03:09

So how long do you think it's gonna take to count all the votes, Commissioner? You know, it's interesting hearing reporters talk about, listen, everybody, this is gonna take some time, and then the polls close, and then it's, why don't you have the results yet? So, everyone needs to recalibrate their expectations.

Speaker 4

03:27

I resemble

Speaker 3

03:27

that remark.

Speaker 4

03:28

There's a difference between... It's nothing personal. So, let me ask you this then, Speaking of, that was a good answer, but are you talking hours, are you talking days?

Speaker 1

03:41

He doesn't fucking know, Lemon. Leave the man alone. At that point, it would have been just as productive to ask him, when will penguins learn how to fly?

Speaker 1

03:50

Or, when is Michael Keaton gonna win an Oscar? Or, what does the rest of the Pringle guy's body look like? Is he tall or short? Does he have a lot of body hair?

Speaker 1

03:57

Or is he completely smooth? When will he be able to tell me what his nipples look like? Are you talking hours? Or are you talking days?

Speaker 1

04:04

What was also entirely predictable was how Trump was going to react as the count slowly unfolded, because long before the results were in, he took advantage of the fact that he was ahead in some states to declare a premature and completely unfounded victory. At 2.30 a.m. On Wednesday, he delivered this nightmarish speech from the White House.

Speaker 5

04:24

This is a fraud on the American public. This is an embarrassment to our country. We were getting ready to win this election.

Speaker 5

04:35

Frankly, we did win this election. We did win this election. So we'll be going to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Speaker 5

04:44

We want all voting to stop. We don't want them to find any ballots at 04:00 in the morning and add them to the list. Okay?

Speaker 1

04:55

No. It's not okay. It's not okay at all. For a start, you can't just threaten to go to the Supreme Court when things aren't going your way.

Speaker 1

05:02

It's the highest court in the land, not the middle school principal's office. And second, they weren't finding ballots, they were counting them. And counting and finding are just not the same thing. That's why the movie Finding Nemo wasn't called Counting Nemo.

Speaker 1

05:17

Because that would have been a very different and much shorter movie. 1 Nemo, the end. Unfortunately, that press conference set the tone for the rest of the week with the soon-to-be former president and his camp doing absolutely everything they could think of to subvert this election. On Wednesday, after the count in Michigan began to favor Biden, Trump tweeted out, we hereby claim the state of Michigan, which is clearly not how it works.

Speaker 1

05:43

Calling dibs on states is not how we elect presidents. We use the electoral college, which is at least 3 percent less stupid than that. The very same day, the president's personal lawyer and recent star of the Borat movie, Rudy Giuliani, arrived in Pennsylvania to try and stop them from counting the votes that were still remaining, which stood at nearly a million that morning, most from heavily Democratic areas. And he did so with this impassioned speech.

Speaker 6

06:10

How many votes do we have to be ahead? 400,000 is not enough? With 80-plus percent counted, I think there's only 14 percent of the vote to go.

Speaker 6

06:22

Do you think we're stupid? You think we're fools?

Speaker 1

06:25

Yeah. Yeah, we do, yeah. And, actually, this is a bit awkward now because we had space for a joke here, but that took no time at all. So, tell you what, instead, let's look at this raccoon-shaped cookie jar with a raccoon in it.

Speaker 1

06:37

Did you eat all the cookies? I bet you did. Those cookies have gone from being inside 1 raccoon to being inside another. What an absolute delight.

Speaker 1

06:45

Anyway, Giuliani's press conference was truly unhinged, with him throwing around wild accusations with absolutely no evidence. And perhaps the best response to it came from John Fetterman, Pennsylvania's lieutenant governor.

Speaker 7

06:57

To come in and stand on a street corner in Philadelphia and say, we won Pennsylvania, It's like, you know, like, like, LOL. I mean, like, you know, like, it's just bizarre. I mean, it's like a bad House of Cards episode.

Speaker 1

07:13

Yeah, he's right. Lieutenant Governor Stonecold is absolutely right, because this is like House of Cards in that it's full of political intrigue, there's a sexual predator pretending to be president at the very heart of it, and it's gone on for at least 4 seasons too long. And for what it's worth, the Trump camp's protests were consistently inconsistent in their messaging, primarily because early on, in some states, Trump looked like he was ahead, while in others, he looked like he was behind, which meant that in Michigan, where he led early on, his supporters showed up at a Detroit ballot counting site to chant this.

Speaker 3

07:47

Stop the count! Stop the count! Stop the count!

Speaker 1

07:52

Stop the count. Okay, right. But in Arizona, where Trump seemed to be behind, his supporters chanted this.

Speaker 3

08:00

Count the votes! Count the votes! Count the votes!

Speaker 3

08:02

Count the votes!

Speaker 1

08:04

Now, setting aside the absurdity of 2 groups on the same side shouting completely opposite instructions, it is worth taking a minute on just how weird it is that 1 of those instructions is, count the votes. Because they were. That's exactly what the ballot counters were doing.

Speaker 1

08:22

It'd be like a dad chanting at his teenage son's bedroom door, beat that meat, beat that meat. He is. He's doing it. You really don't need to cheer him on.

Speaker 1

08:32

In fact, all you're doing is making it way harder for him to finish. And unfortunately, the information vacuum that formed in those 3 days provided ample space for Trump and his supporters to just throw complete bullshit around. At 1 point, Trump's Twitter timeline looked like this, with a whole run of tweets flagged as disputed or misleading. Meanwhile, Giuliani was tweeting out this article and implying 21,000 dead people had voted in Pennsylvania, which they hadn't.

Speaker 1

09:00

Also, rumors were flying around that Trump ballots were being disqualified in Arizona because Sharpies had been used to fill them out, which was false. And Eric Trump tweeted out a fake video of ballots in Virginia Beach being burned, a video that the city itself had debunked a day before he tweeted it. And that is really a shame, because normally, the Trump sons are so good at getting to the truth. You know, like the time that they solved the mystery of, can a beard actually make someone look more like a child?

Speaker 1

09:28

The answer turned out to be a resounding yes. Good work, gumshoes. But conspiracy theorizing ran so rampant this week that during a press briefing from a Nevada voting registrar, this happened.

Speaker 8

09:42

The Biden crime family's stealing the election! The media's covering up! The Biden crime family's stealing this election!

Speaker 8

09:47

The media's covering up! The Biden crime family's stealing this election! The media's covering up! The Biden crime family's stealing this election!

Speaker 8

09:53

The media's covering up! We want our freedom for the world! Give us our freedom, Joe Biden! Joe Biden's covering up this election!

Speaker 8

09:59

He's stealing it!

Speaker 9

10:05

Where were we? What was the last question?

Speaker 1

10:07

Okay, there is so much to deal with there. There is the Arctic cool displayed by that registrar while he was being interrupted by a walking internet comment. Then there was that man's shirt, featuring what I assume were his 3 favorite things, which I'm legitimately jealous of, because now I want a tank top with my 3 favorite things on it, specifically, oversight, FOIA requests, and hamsters in Speedos.

Speaker 1

10:29

Now that is a shirt. But I think my favorite thing is just how painfully clear it is there that that guy was expecting to get dragged away and was then completely stuck when it didn't happen. The Biden crime family is stealing our freedom! The Biden crime family is stealing...

Speaker 1

10:45

Really, guys? Nothing? No one's gonna escort me out of here? Because honestly, I was really counting on someone tossing me in a car and taking me away.

Speaker 1

10:52

I don't actually have a ride home otherwise. All right. You know what? I guess I'll walk.

Speaker 1

10:58

Have a good day, everyone. Pizzagate was a 9-11 or whatever. And in the midst of all of this, the Trump campaign was loudly announcing that it was filing multiple lawsuits in multiple states, trying to cast a cloud over the whole process. But it is important to know just how ridiculous those lawsuits were and still are.

Speaker 1

11:17

1 case in Georgia centered on a poll watcher who left the room and thought that a stack of 53 ballots that may or may not have arrived late might or might not have been counted while they're away. Although the poll watcher could not say for sure, because again, he had left the room. That particular case was dismissed by a judge because, and I quote, the court finds that there is no evidence. Meanwhile, in Michigan, the Trump campaign requested that absentee ballots stop being counted after, and this is key, the counting had essentially been finished in the state, that suit relied on 1 poll watcher having heard a rumor from someone else that some late ballots were being counted.

Speaker 1

11:53

And when the judge pointed out that that was total hearsay, the Trump campaign's lawyer tried to wriggle out of it before being slapped down hard.

Speaker 10

12:01

This is a firsthand factual statement made by, Ms. Coneron, and she has made that statement based on her own firsthand physical evidence and knowledge

Speaker 11

12:16

that she... I heard somebody else say something. Tell me why that's not hearsay.

Speaker 11

12:19

Come on now.

Speaker 1

12:19

Yeah. Come on now. And look, I'm no legal expert, but I am pretty sure it's not a great sign for your case when a judge gives you the judicial equivalent of, fuck out of here. Now, 1 big Trump complaint that he's making a lot right now, so you will probably be hearing it for the rest of your life, is that the election is illegitimate because Republican poll watchers weren't given access to the ballot counting in Pennsylvania.

Speaker 1

12:43

He actually tweeted on Saturday, "...bad things happened which our observers were not allowed to see. Which is a tough charge to make stick because by the nature of the accusation, you didn't see them. But the claim was actually even more meritless than it appears, which of all networks, Fox News pointed out.

Speaker 11

13:02

The Trump campaign has said that they wanted to have their, their poll watchers there, and that, I guess they're being asked to provide evidence for something that they say they weren't able to even participate in or to be able to see. And so, that's, I think, where they would say that needs to be rectified, if it could be.

Speaker 12

13:23

That's not true. It's not true. It's just not true.

Speaker 12

13:27

The claim from the Trump campaign and the president about that is not true. It is false. In fact, the lawyers for the Trump campaign last night in federal court admitted that.

Speaker 1

13:37

He's right. They admitted it. Specifically, the judge asked, are people representing Donald J.

Speaker 1

13:43

Trump in that room? To which the campaign lawyer said, yes, and the judge replied, I'm sorry, then what's your problem? Making this officially the single sassiest week in the history of the judiciary. They must have traded in their gavels for umbrellas because these jurists are throwing some shade.

Speaker 1

14:01

And the embarrassing flimsiness of these fraud claims starts to make sense when you see just how desperately the Trump camp was trying to drum them up. Take Arizona. They announced at a press conference on Thursday that they had gathered concerns by thousands of people about voting irregularities, which on its face, sounds dramatic. But, it's also a little at odds with this moment captured just minutes earlier.

Speaker 13

14:24

Hi, everyone. If anyone has any personal example of where they've witnessed election fraud here in Arizona, please come see me. I need a concrete example, I need someone to talk to right over there in the corner.

Speaker 13

14:39

Thank you.

Speaker 1

14:40

Okay, that is just pathetic. Although, I do like the idea that someone who actually witnessed election fraud and had proof was waiting until that glorified block party to tell anyone about it. Yeah, I saw a guy in a ski mask pulling fake ballots out of his Kiev festival, but it honestly didn't occur to me to tell anyone about it until a representative from the law firm Hangover Hangover Divorce and Meat Sweats told me to meet him over there in the corner.

Speaker 1

15:06

I'm so glad I was wandering by. But wait, that's not all. The Trump campaign also set up this website and phone number where they invited people to submit evidence of voter fraud. Meaning if you, say, wanted to supply them with an incident that you found suspicious, you could do that.

Speaker 1

15:23

You still can, actually. You can simply go to this address and send them whatever evidence you want. There's even an option to add photographic proof. And quick fun fact here, don't know why I'm even mentioning this, a political term of art for election shenanigans is rat-fucking.

Speaker 1

15:38

So, if you, say, happen to have any access to images of Pennsylvania-based rat-fucking, it's frankly your patriotic duty to send them to the Trump campaign straight away. And all these pointless lawsuits are clearly gonna cost a lot of money, which is probably why the campaigners spent the last few days frantically trying to fundraise for them. E-mailing supporters in an increasingly aggressive manner with 1 message reading, this is your final notice. So far, you've ignored all our e-mails asking you to join us in defending the election.

Speaker 1

16:12

You've ignored Team Trump, Eric, Lara, Don, the vice president, and you've even ignored the president of the United States. And final notice, for what exactly? To not give them money? Maybe it's the last chance to go to the official Donald J.

Speaker 1

16:28

Trump site and buy this dog leash, featuring a dog who I can only assume was lobotomized and given rabies immediately before having this picture taken. Also, quick side note about those solicitations. In the fine print, it mentions that rather than funding lawsuits, half of any contribution will be used to retire debt from Trump's re-election campaign. Which is both completely unsurprising and also not even the worst thing he's ever asked his supporters to do, because that would obviously be when he made them watch him do this dance, which looks like he's milking 2 cows at once and enjoying it sexually very much indeed.

Speaker 1

17:06

But perhaps the single most pathetic part of this entire week was that in the moments before this race was called on Saturday morning, Trump tweeted out, "'I won this election by a lot!' All caps, exclamation mark." And if that wasn't a bad enough case of denial, this is how some of his supporters responded to news of his defeat.

Speaker 3

17:26

We are the champions! We are the champions! No time for losers!

Speaker 3

17:36

Cause we are the champions... Of the world!

Speaker 1

17:44

Look, I would love to make fun of that, but unfortunately, I have no time for losers. But here is the really important thing. After this absolute year of a week, the days of counting, the misinformation, the desperate, pathetic attempts to paint this process as fraudulent, the fact is Trump lost this election.

Speaker 1

18:05

He lost. All that bullshit, which we've grown accustomed to seeing work, did not work this time. And it's not like Trump and his family are gonna stop. They're gonna carry on grifting and lying like they've always done.

Speaker 1

18:16

But once he's out of the White House, it's just not gonna have the same effect anymore. It's not gonna directly impact every American's life. And that alone is fucking fantastic. And look, by temperament, I'm inclined to overanalyze everything.

Speaker 1

18:31

And I can already feel myself starting to do it. I'm starting to focus on the negatives here and be cynical about what a Biden presidency could or is even going to try to achieve. But before we get into anything negative at all, let me just give us all a quick moment with no caveats of celebration. In fact, let's put 30 seconds on the clock right now, during which time everyone could just experience joy in whatever form you want.

Speaker 1

18:55

Dancing, screaming, banging a frying pan, it is really up to you. Personally, I'm gonna do 1 of my favorite activities, which is dispensing excellent facts about octopuses over footage of people celebrating this election. Ready? Go.

Speaker 1

19:09

Octopuses are great. They have 3 hearts, blue blood, they can taste with their arms, their brains are spread throughout their body, they can change shape and color, They have beaks. They can open bottles. They remember faces and they hold grudges.

Speaker 1

19:21

1 time, an octopus escaped a New Zealand aquarium by crawling down a drain pipe into the ocean. Also, there was an experiment a few years back where scientists gave octopuses ecstasy. And they learned that if octopuses take ecstasy, they'll hang out and party with other octopuses. But if you don't do that, they prefer to keep themselves to themselves.

Speaker 1

19:38

That's from a real study. Isn't it great? I'm not saying I want to fuck an octopus, but you know what? I kind of want to...

Speaker 1

19:43

Oh, that's it. That's it. That's it. That was time.

Speaker 1

19:46

That was uncomplicated fun. So, given we just did that, if you don't mind, I am gonna overanalyze this election just a little bit. Not much though, mainly because it is still too early to draw any big conclusions. There are 2 key things that we know though.

Speaker 1

20:02

The great news is that this election had record-breaking turnout, and over 74 million people chose to kick Donald Trump out of office. The less good news is that more than 70 million people voted for him and everything he said and stands for. And that is something that we are going to have to reckon with for the foreseeable future. And I know that Biden has repeatedly said on the campaign trail that the ugliness Trump represents is simply not who we are.

Speaker 1

20:30

He did it constantly in moments like this.

Speaker 9

20:33

The only thing that can tear America apart is America itself. And that's exactly what Trump's been trying to do from the very beginning. Dividing America based on race, religion, gender, national origin.

Speaker 9

20:48

It's wrong. It's not who we are. This is not who we are. Everybody knows who Donald Trump is.

Speaker 9

20:56

Let's keep showing them who we are.

Speaker 1

20:59

Look, That is a really nice sentiment. But, dividing America based on race, religion, gender, and national origin has frequently been very much who we are. In fact, you could well argue that in the history of America, the 1 sentence version of Trump's presidency is, he kept showing them who we are.

Speaker 1

21:17

So we cannot and should not ignore that millions voted for Trump. Meaning, they either actively supported his bigotry or at the very least, were comfortable enough with it to vote for him anyway, which isn't great. It's like if your grandma was dating 2 old guys, both of whom had fought in World War II, and in the end, she picks Pete, who seems decent and works at the library, and you're really happy for her. But at the same time, you are wondering how the fuck she got so far with Klaus.

Speaker 1

21:44

Because that doesn't really reflect that well on her. And even in the joy and relief at the end of this week, it does feel worth remembering just how scary it felt as it was unfolding, with Trump supporters swarming and following a Biden-Harris bus in Texas, and that moment in Detroit that we saw earlier where a largely white crowd showed up in a city that is 80 percent black to shout that they should stop counting their votes. And if you don't understand how those images rhyme with history, it might be because you're just not used to seeing them in color. Because the last 4 years were not about just 1 man, and this isn't just about the last 4 years.

Speaker 1

22:21

And even that 1 man is by no means going away.

Speaker 11

22:25

Whatever happens, Donald Trump is the current and future leader of the Republican Party. Certainly, at least until someone else comes along with his stamina, charisma, and drive.

Speaker 1

22:38

Putting aside the wildly divergent definitions we have of stamina, charisma, and drive, that get-out garden party guest is right when she said that Donald Trump is here to stay, although not in office, however hard he resists going. As a Biden campaign spokesperson told the press this week, the United States government is perfectly capable of escorting trespassers out of the White House. Which is just a nice sentence to hear.

Speaker 1

23:03

And there is going to be time to talk about what Trumpism is going to mean going forward, just as there's going to be time to talk about what this week means for the Democratic Party, which didn't get everything they hoped for. They lost seats in the House, and the question of whether or not they'll have a Senate majority is down to 2 runoff elections in Georgia in January. But the real takeaway of this election might be that there is no easy answer to the question of who we are. A perfect example is this.

Speaker 1

23:32

Kamala Harris is now gonna be vice president. The first woman vice president, the first South Asian-American vice president, the first black vice president, and the second black person we've sent to the White House in the last 12 years. That's incredible. Unfortunately, we did elect a white supremacist in between them, and the fact is that all of that together is kind of who we are.

Speaker 1

23:56

We're the country that did all those things, and it's important not to deny that reality. And just a final quick point here, defeating Trump took a lot of work. Much of it by activist groups led by those with the most to lose from a second Trump term. A big factor in the vote in Arizona was indigenous and Latino people coming out for Biden.

Speaker 1

24:17

And in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Georgia, Black voters were absolutely key, with the groups organizing that vote, particularly Black women, working relentlessly for years. And in the days and the weeks ahead, there's likely to be a lot of talk from white people about how black and brown voters saved us. Which does kind of miss the point a little bit, because they weren't so much voting as a favor for white people, so much as voting to protect themselves and their communities from someone trying to do them active harm. Although there are some lessons in some of that organizing.

Speaker 1

24:50

In Georgia, Stacey Abrams, along with many others, helped to register hundreds of thousands of new voters over the past 2 years, half of them people of color, and turn them out to the polls. In fact, just before the presidential race was called, she was already tweeting out details about the January 5th runoff for Senate and making sure that people request their ballots. Why? Because she knows what she's fucking doing.

Speaker 1

25:15

And if the Democrats are smart, which they are not always, they should listen to her and activists like her going forward. Look, it is gonna be a long road to dig us out of the place that the last 4 years have put us in. But that is why it might be so important to remember the moments of triumph that this week has managed to provide. Richie Torres and Mondaire Jones became the first gay black men elected to Congress.

Speaker 1

25:42

Cori Bush, a Black Lives Matter activist, is Missouri's first black congresswoman. In Delaware, Sarah McBride became the country's first openly transgender state senator. Multiple counties elected reform-minded prosecutors and sheriffs. Florida voted to increase the minimum wage, and every state that had a marijuana initiative on the ballot approved it.

Speaker 1

26:02

And most importantly, despite his lies, his obstructions, and his depressingly popular racism, this guy fucking lost. Do you realize what that means? 1, he's sad right now, which is great, But also, no more Stephen Miller at the White House. No more Steve Mnuchin.

Speaker 1

26:20

Hate to see him go. Love to watch him walk away. No more helicopter shouting time. I'm not gonna miss that.

Speaker 1

26:27

No more Mike Pence or Betsy DeVos or Jared. No more fucking Jared. And there'll be big, systemic, institutional problems we need to talk about in the months and the years to come. And we will, because for some reason, this is the life I've chosen.

Speaker 1

26:43

But for now, after what's just happened, I frankly think that we have all earned the right to put on our masks, go outside, and party like octopuses on fucking ecstasy.

Speaker 3

27:00

You