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[00:15.420 --> 00:18.960]  And this is Radio Station WBAI New York.
[00:19.160 --> 00:23.940]  It's 7 o'clock on the day after.
[00:25.240 --> 00:29.160]  Time for a very special edition of Off the Hook.
[00:34.370 --> 00:38.870]  The telephone keeps ringing, so I ripped it off the wall.
[00:39.810 --> 00:44.330]  I cut myself while shaving, now I can't make a call.
[00:45.430 --> 00:49.710]  Couldn't get much worse, but if they could, they would.
[00:49.970 --> 00:52.610]  But maybe they bombed for the best, it's paid for worse.
[00:53.310 --> 00:55.090]  I hope that's understood.
[00:55.370 --> 00:56.270]  But maybe they bombed!
[02:14.600 --> 02:16.860]  And a very good evening to everybody.
[02:17.460 --> 02:19.120]  The program is Off the Hook.
[02:19.120 --> 02:19.120]  Welcome back.
[02:20.000 --> 02:25.140]  Emmanuel Goldstein here with you, catching my breath and trying to breathe deeply.
[02:25.800 --> 02:28.080]  Joined tonight by Kyle.
[02:29.220 --> 02:29.660]  Hello.
[02:29.960 --> 02:30.400]  Hello.
[02:30.680 --> 02:30.920]  Hello.
[02:31.080 --> 02:31.960]  How are you doing there?
[02:32.640 --> 02:33.860]  How am I doing?
[02:34.120 --> 02:36.340]  I'm doing all right.
[02:36.520 --> 02:37.280]  I only have an hour.
[02:38.340 --> 02:39.600]  Yeah, okay, that's it then.
[02:39.620 --> 02:40.200]  That's it then, okay.
[02:40.380 --> 02:40.660]  All right.
[02:40.660 --> 02:44.740]  And joining us on Skype land, Rob T.
[02:44.900 --> 02:45.340]  Firefly.
[02:47.220 --> 02:47.960]  Oh, wait a minute.
[02:48.040 --> 02:48.340]  Hold on.
[02:48.580 --> 02:49.340]  This button was pressed.
[02:49.580 --> 02:50.360]  Let's try that again.
[02:50.560 --> 02:52.020]  Joining us, Rob T.
[02:52.100 --> 02:52.460]  Firefly.
[02:53.240 --> 02:54.000]  Good evening.
[02:55.040 --> 02:55.680]  How are you?
[02:57.640 --> 02:58.520]  I'm fine.
[02:58.760 --> 03:01.660]  I haven't really been paying attention to TV or the news or anything.
[03:01.760 --> 03:02.540]  Is stuff going on today?
[03:03.680 --> 03:04.700]  Yeah, a little bit.
[03:04.820 --> 03:06.500]  A little bit of stuff going on.
[03:08.300 --> 03:14.820]  Yeah, I'm actually leaving my phone on so that I can see what gets tweeted and spread around.
[03:15.220 --> 03:16.840]  Gila, you're here as well, or there?
[03:17.040 --> 03:18.380]  I am here as well, yes.
[03:18.400 --> 03:19.400]  How are you faring?
[03:20.260 --> 03:23.160]  Oh, you know, I'm hanging in.
[03:23.260 --> 03:28.680]  I had a call with a colleague this morning who said this is going to have to be quick.
[03:28.680 --> 03:29.940]  I haven't gone to bed yet.
[03:29.940 --> 03:31.460]  This was 11 o'clock a.m.
[03:31.900 --> 03:33.340]  Yeah, I'm not that far off.
[03:33.540 --> 03:34.420]  That's about right.
[03:34.620 --> 03:36.260]  You know, doing a little better than that.
[03:36.340 --> 03:36.640]  Uh-huh.
[03:37.100 --> 03:41.400]  But long, long day.
[03:42.080 --> 03:42.740]  Long day.
[03:42.880 --> 03:43.320]  And Alex.
[03:44.100 --> 03:45.460]  Alex, how are you?
[03:45.980 --> 03:47.000]  I am very well.
[03:47.100 --> 03:47.920]  Greetings from Manhattan.
[03:49.220 --> 03:50.100]  Yeah, Manhattan.
[03:50.240 --> 03:50.840]  In the thick of it.
[03:51.460 --> 03:52.300]  I am indeed.
[03:52.300 --> 03:52.940]  That's right.
[03:53.080 --> 04:00.260]  Yeah, I just got a notification, by the way, on my phone that there were large groups, I think, heading towards Washington Square.
[04:01.000 --> 04:02.720]  I can't imagine what for.
[04:03.540 --> 04:05.000]  A rumble in the park, maybe?
[04:05.660 --> 04:06.160]  Yeah, maybe.
[04:06.320 --> 04:06.940]  Something like that.
[04:07.100 --> 04:09.480]  I mean, yeah, look, it's all very exciting.
[04:09.820 --> 04:13.500]  I'm in my office right on 28th and Broadway looking out the window.
[04:13.680 --> 04:15.720]  Don't give your address out on the radio.
[04:15.720 --> 04:17.360]  Now everybody's going to be coming to you.
[04:17.680 --> 04:18.800]  Well, that would be fine.
[04:19.620 --> 04:21.740]  As long as they're wearing masks, I don't really care.
[04:22.880 --> 04:44.220]  Okay, well, for those listening in the future that don't know why we seem like we've just been through some of the scariest moments of our lives, it's the day after Election Day 2020, four years after our infamous 9-11 show, 9-11 being November the 9th,
[04:44.860 --> 04:53.200]  2016, when the entire nation, in fact, the entire world was shocked by Donald Trump's victory in that election.
[04:54.140 --> 04:56.220]  And last night was different.
[04:57.800 --> 05:00.380]  Wasn't what most of us were expecting.
[05:01.740 --> 05:04.040]  But in some ways it was.
[05:04.200 --> 05:20.020]  Some ways it was almost exactly what we were told was going to happen, where due to walk-in votes being counted first, it would appear that Donald Trump was ahead and maybe even on the verge of victory.
[05:20.500 --> 05:27.780]  And then the mail-in votes and the absentee votes would be counted afterwards, and those numbers would start to change.
[05:27.840 --> 05:29.720]  That is actually exactly what happened.
[05:31.160 --> 05:39.100]  There were so many people, so many people that were bemoaning our fate or their fates.
[05:39.420 --> 05:40.440]  We're good at that.
[05:40.520 --> 05:41.260]  We're good at bemoaning.
[05:41.260 --> 05:59.920]  I noticed this yesterday, just watching various message boards and Twitter, and I was on TV, that no matter what, the people in the Republican camp were defiant and insisting that everything was going good for them.
[06:00.020 --> 06:05.240]  Whereas in the Democratic base, it was all, what's gone wrong?
[06:05.340 --> 06:05.980]  What did we do wrong?
[06:06.060 --> 06:06.900]  Whose fault is this?
[06:07.180 --> 06:08.880]  I think that's part of the problem.
[06:08.880 --> 06:26.620]  I think this finger-pointing and second-guessing, it's become the norm for the Democrats, and they aren't as sure of themselves and sure that no matter what happens, they've come out victorious.
[06:27.820 --> 06:34.300]  In actuality, I believe we are on the verge of Joe Biden winning.
[06:34.300 --> 06:40.540]  I would not have said that last night, it sure looked like Donald Trump was about to win.
[06:40.880 --> 06:44.960]  I fell for the same thing that I told myself I wasn't going to fall for.
[06:45.020 --> 06:47.740]  I looked at the numbers, and the numbers didn't appear good.
[06:47.740 --> 07:00.500]  But when you put everything into perspective and realize the facts and the science behind it, it made sense that, yeah, once Michigan, once Wisconsin, once they started counting the actual votes, those numbers would change.
[07:00.660 --> 07:01.900]  That is exactly what happened.
[07:02.020 --> 07:08.200]  But, you know, when I went to sleep at about, what, seven in the morning, I wasn't really feeling good.
[07:08.200 --> 07:23.340]  It took, when I woke up at about nine in the morning, I didn't sleep well at all, it took a long time for me to actually check in, because I was afraid of what might have happened in that period of time.
[07:23.960 --> 07:28.040]  And when I did, hey, it's hopeful.
[07:28.360 --> 07:29.040]  It is hopeful.
[07:29.280 --> 07:48.600]  There's a lot that didn't go the way that I wanted it to go, certainly, and I know a lot of people probably share in that, but again, you know, taking, taking a lesson from the way Republicans deal with things, what we got, I think, is something that we can work with.
[07:48.780 --> 07:59.280]  I think it's something that we can consider to be a victory and something that, that we just need to figure out how to make work to our advantage.
[07:59.740 --> 08:00.860]  That's, that's my perspective.
[08:01.400 --> 08:02.380]  How about you guys?
[08:03.440 --> 08:09.280]  Um, I work on what I like to call the lower west, upper east side.
[08:09.280 --> 08:13.780]  It's about as far south and west as you can get, and still on B on the upper east side of Manhattan.
[08:14.200 --> 08:16.940]  And yesterday was actually terrifying.
[08:18.680 --> 08:23.340]  Um, every storefront on my walk to work was boarded up.
[08:23.540 --> 08:26.380]  They sent us home from work early.
[08:26.680 --> 08:32.120]  They said, we want to close the building early to make sure everyone's able to get home safely before it gets dark.
[08:33.040 --> 08:42.860]  The idea that no one knew what was going to happen and what the outcome was going to, uh, instigate, I guess.
[08:43.080 --> 08:48.020]  Like, the, the mood around election day was very scary.
[08:49.000 --> 08:55.820]  And there have been, you know, years where we felt hope and years where we felt defeat and years where we felt excitement.
[08:56.060 --> 09:01.200]  And this was the first year that I felt fear going into an election.
[09:01.200 --> 09:03.460]  And I, I did not enjoy that feeling.
[09:04.080 --> 09:06.440]  You haven't felt that feeling in the last four years?
[09:06.960 --> 09:07.800]  No, no, no, no.
[09:07.800 --> 09:08.980]  I certainly have.
[09:09.260 --> 09:21.040]  But that the overarching emotion of election day was fear, not, not optimism, not excitement, not potential fear.
[09:22.000 --> 09:22.120]  Right.
[09:22.340 --> 09:28.380]  I think it called, it's the culmination of a lot of, uh, some of the anxiety and uncertainty of the past four years.
[09:28.380 --> 09:43.500]  And then to, to have sort of a deep dread fear because of the rudderless interim, uh, whether it's the short term in the next couple of days or a hundred days or, or however things play out, there's such tension.
[09:43.860 --> 09:49.300]  Uh, it's, it's, um, hard to ignore that the stakes seem super high.
[09:49.500 --> 09:55.420]  Like, um, especially when there's such passion and anger, uh, being thrown around.
[09:55.420 --> 09:56.160]  Yeah.
[09:56.280 --> 10:03.540]  And, and, and we are moving into, um, a scene in this play where it's going to really get animated.
[10:04.100 --> 10:18.480]  Um, if Trump does lose, which it increasingly looks like he will, um, the next 100 days could be the scariest days in the history of this country because we will basically have a maniac at the, at the controls, uh, that has nothing to lose.
[10:18.900 --> 10:21.860]  And that, and what happens on January 20th?
[10:22.280 --> 10:24.220]  And anybody, anybody can guess.
[10:24.360 --> 10:25.960]  So it'll be fascinating, but but scary.
[10:26.180 --> 10:27.420]  And what happens after that?
[10:27.580 --> 10:28.900]  Look, we, we always knew this.
[10:29.060 --> 10:34.880]  We knew that the people that supported this weren't going anywhere.
[10:35.040 --> 10:39.360]  They were still going to be around, uh, whether Trump won or whether Trump lost.
[10:39.920 --> 10:45.200]  So that shouldn't be a surprise that there is this animosity out there.
[10:45.740 --> 10:48.980]  Um, so, you know, we should be prepared for that.
[10:49.400 --> 10:54.900]  The question is, um, will we be in a position where our guy won or our guy lost?
[10:55.420 --> 10:59.480]  And how is this going to play out over the next four years?
[10:59.680 --> 11:00.160]  Alex?
[11:01.260 --> 11:12.500]  Yeah, I think, you know, building on, on both what you just mentioned, Emmanuel, as well as Gila's point about being afraid of the selection, you know, one of the things that I noticed was, was quite interesting this weekend when I was in Pennsylvania,
[11:12.660 --> 11:13.320]  not Manhattan.
[11:13.620 --> 11:19.080]  Uh, we went to a little town, you know, known for artist shops and galleries and things called Milford.
[11:19.460 --> 11:25.880]  And in Milford, there was a, it was sort of a huge sort of encampment of Biden supporters.
[11:26.420 --> 11:30.220]  And you would go on almost every corner in the main square of the town.
[11:30.380 --> 11:32.640]  And on one side of the street were Biden supporters.
[11:32.760 --> 11:34.500]  And on the other side of the street were Trump supporters.
[11:34.960 --> 11:38.060]  And like clockwork, the Biden people were wearing masks.
[11:38.400 --> 11:40.040]  The Trump people were not wearing masks.
[11:40.280 --> 11:42.460]  I mean, it was, it was sort of predictable in In that sense.
[11:42.640 --> 11:42.760]  Right.
[11:43.240 --> 11:47.100]  But it was civil in this small little Pennsylvania town.
[11:47.820 --> 11:52.380]  The two sides could peacefully coexist on one side of the street as opposed to the other.
[11:52.580 --> 11:56.420]  Well, one side of the street is busy getting the other side infected, though.
[11:56.520 --> 11:57.660]  That's an issue.
[11:58.200 --> 11:59.980]  Yeah, there's that issue.
[12:00.120 --> 12:06.540]  I mean, thankfully, the street was wider than six feet, you know, according to WHO regulations and whatnot.
[12:06.540 --> 12:10.300]  But the, you know, the point being is that it was civil.
[12:10.520 --> 12:17.740]  There were some people driving past and pick up trucks yelling, you know, epithets over at the Biden supporters every once in a while.
[12:17.980 --> 12:19.960]  You'd get somebody who was really angry about it.
[12:20.120 --> 12:23.400]  But it gave me some some great measure of hope.
[12:23.480 --> 12:25.400]  It gave me some heart that there could be a peaceful.
[12:26.240 --> 12:27.220]  Oh, my goodness.
[12:27.400 --> 12:27.720]  Excuse me.
[12:27.720 --> 12:27.940]  All right.
[12:28.000 --> 12:28.740]  Who's the wise guy?
[12:28.980 --> 12:30.040]  That is so...
[12:30.040 --> 12:30.560]  I apologize.
[12:30.980 --> 12:30.980]  Yeah.
[12:31.400 --> 12:32.240]  Somebody's calling me.
[12:32.360 --> 12:33.020]  I don't know how that was.
[12:33.240 --> 12:39.900]  There could be a peaceful transition of power, even if, you know, Trump loses, you know, perhaps even on narrow margins here.
[12:40.020 --> 12:49.180]  But, you know, what we're seeing tonight is, like I said earlier, we just got a notification that there's about 500 peaceful protesters gathering in Washington Square Park.
[12:49.180 --> 12:52.340]  And what they're protesting for is for counting every vote.
[12:52.600 --> 13:03.840]  And what we saw consistently with the president, starting last night, when he declared at 2.30 in the morning, and by the way, you know, I sent you a note last night saying, I'm sick of this.
[13:03.880 --> 13:04.440]  I'm going to bed.
[13:04.560 --> 13:10.580]  I woke up at 2.30 in the morning to see Donald Trump giving a speech to the world that he had just won.
[13:11.500 --> 13:12.800]  Yeah, from the White House.
[13:12.800 --> 13:12.800]  Right.
[13:13.280 --> 13:13.520]  Yeah.
[13:13.620 --> 13:13.860]  Yeah.
[13:14.220 --> 13:16.200]  It was, you know, from the White House, of course, Kyle.
[13:16.440 --> 13:17.220]  Which was 2 what?
[13:17.320 --> 13:17.760]  What did you say?
[13:18.460 --> 13:20.020]  It was around 2.30 in the morning.
[13:20.280 --> 13:22.120]  It was totally, it was just totally nuts.
[13:22.460 --> 13:28.820]  And at that point, you know, we started to see that there was going to be an issue with the counting of the votes.
[13:28.900 --> 13:29.880]  And that's what we're seeing today.
[13:30.060 --> 13:34.640]  And we have seen them consistently throughout the day trying to prevent votes being counted.
[13:35.400 --> 13:40.600]  Anybody who is in a position of power who believes in democracy should want every single vote to be counted.
[13:40.660 --> 13:41.440]  Oh, wait a minute, Alice.
[13:41.460 --> 13:42.220]  I got to take exception.
[13:42.220 --> 13:44.220]  They're not trying to stop votes from being...
[13:44.220 --> 13:45.700]  They want the votes to be counted in Arizona.
[13:45.960 --> 13:47.640]  They want the votes to be counted in Nevada.
[13:47.880 --> 13:51.040]  They just don't want the votes to be counted in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.
[13:51.340 --> 13:53.060]  I don't know why that's so hard to understand.
[13:53.840 --> 13:55.800]  They're a West Coast voting bloc.
[13:55.880 --> 13:56.620]  That's what they want.
[13:57.500 --> 13:57.860]  Yeah.
[13:58.080 --> 14:02.240]  You know, count the votes that are in favor of us and don't count the votes that are in favor of Biden.
[14:02.240 --> 14:03.200]  Yes, you get it.
[14:12.240 --> 14:17.920]  Trump had also threatened to go to the courts and seek some kind of legal remedy there.
[14:18.080 --> 14:35.380]  And we're already seeing, I think, this evening, from this afternoon into this evening, these cockamamie schemes that they're trying to concoct to bring into court that would ostensibly show that Republicans have been discriminated against or targeted in some fashion to disenfranchise them from this election.
[14:36.040 --> 14:40.360]  And I don't know if you guys have heard the Sharpie theories by any chance?
[14:40.360 --> 14:48.100]  Well, I heard something like that, that Republicans were given Sharpies and that meant their vote wouldn't count.
[14:48.880 --> 14:50.620]  I can't even get my head around it.
[14:50.980 --> 14:51.460]  Right.
[14:51.560 --> 15:07.860]  So if you fill in something with a very thick permanent black magic marker, like a Sharpie as opposed to a pencil or a pen, the theory is that the scanners, the optical ballot scanners aren't going to register that as a vote and that Republicans were given Sharpies while Democrats were not given Sharpies.
[15:07.860 --> 15:16.540]  This was roundly rejected by, I think it was the Michigan Secretary of State or it might have been the Nevada Secretary of State, one of these states.
[15:16.700 --> 15:18.080]  But they're communists, you know?
[15:18.280 --> 15:20.760]  They're communists and they're working for China.
[15:21.620 --> 15:23.560]  It just writes itself.
[15:23.660 --> 15:37.900]  The real danger, though, is that they're using the victim, you know, being a victim of some sort of discrimination to get access so that they can run and dump other ballots or just be there to contest as many as they can and slow the process down.
[15:38.680 --> 15:39.720]  Yeah, that's right.
[15:39.720 --> 15:47.620]  And they will find people to make declarations, under oath, affidavits, that say that they were given a Sharpie, that they're a Republican, etc., etc.
[15:47.740 --> 15:52.580]  And that's how they're going to try to throw sand into the gears of this process of counting every vote.
[15:53.500 --> 15:57.680]  But Alex, I used... I don't know if it was a Sharpie, it was like a magic marker.
[15:57.900 --> 16:01.720]  I voted yesterday in person and it was like a felt-tip pen.
[16:01.840 --> 16:02.620]  Okay, that's what it was.
[16:02.740 --> 16:08.480]  And I went to the fax machine or whatever that thing is called, you insert your ballot and it sucks it in.
[16:08.940 --> 16:11.000]  It said my vote was counted.
[16:11.240 --> 16:11.960]  It works.
[16:12.140 --> 16:16.500]  So I don't know if a Sharpie is any different than that or if it even was a Sharpie.
[16:16.600 --> 16:24.000]  But one thing I do know is when they sent me to my little area where I was going to vote, they didn't ask me if I was Democrat or Republican or anything.
[16:24.360 --> 16:27.480]  The pen was just there for whoever happened to be at that station.
[16:28.080 --> 16:40.260]  Well, you know, playing Temple's advocate here, as we noted last week, the voter registration information is going to have a one-character letter determining whether or not you are a Republican, Democrat, or Independent, right?
[16:40.340 --> 16:49.640]  So when they look you up in the voter rolls, conceivably they can see that you were a Democrat, you were registered as a Democrat, so maybe they gave you a pen.
[16:49.640 --> 16:53.200]  Yeah, but they don't give you, well, at least where I went, they don't give you a pen.
[16:53.320 --> 16:54.960]  The pen is just there at the station.
[16:55.320 --> 16:58.020]  And also, when they look you up, that information is not right.
[16:58.180 --> 17:02.140]  All the information is in there in front of them, just your name, address, that kind of thing, and signature.
[17:02.760 --> 17:18.380]  Regardless of the merit of this argument and whether or not it would actually affect the optical ballot scanner, which I don't believe it would, the point that I'm making here, though, is this is how they're going to try to throw sand into the gears of counting every vote.
[17:18.500 --> 17:26.540]  Because you're going to see them rushing into court with people who are making declarations that they have been discriminated against in this kind of crazy fashion.
[17:26.540 --> 17:32.300]  That does not necessarily make any technological sense to us, and hopefully not to a judge.
[17:32.300 --> 17:46.960]  Because without any evidence of fraud or disenfranchisement, intentional disenfranchisement of Republicans specifically, all of their applications to courts are going to be roundly rejected.
[17:47.180 --> 17:51.640]  Because courts are not going to want to interfere with this process of counting votes.
[17:51.800 --> 17:53.800]  Counting votes is what we do as a democracy.
[17:54.060 --> 17:58.480]  I mean, the fact that we have an electoral college where votes are nullified is a completely separate issue.
[17:58.600 --> 18:00.020]  We went into that last week.
[18:00.020 --> 18:09.380]  But this time, you know, we are just counting the votes so that we can even get to the process of submitting electoral college votes.
[18:09.580 --> 18:12.000]  The courts are not going to want to have anything to do with this.
[18:12.160 --> 18:15.540]  We saw this four years ago when Jill Stein tried to go into Pennsylvania.
[18:16.420 --> 18:23.660]  And she had the chicken and the egg problem, which was she wanted to request a recount because she thought that there was potentially voter fraud.
[18:23.660 --> 18:25.600]  And she raised this really interesting argument.
[18:25.720 --> 18:26.860]  Her lawyers, I thought, were great.
[18:27.000 --> 18:37.960]  And that they made it into an equal protection issue because some precincts and counties in Pennsylvania did not have a voter-verified paper ballot, a paper ballot associated with it.
[18:38.080 --> 18:40.500]  It was direct recording electronic votes, right?
[18:40.720 --> 18:54.380]  So those, because they could be tampered with and not have some kind of voter-verified ballot associated with it, those votes were not protected as equally as votes where there was a voter-verified paper ballot.
[18:54.380 --> 19:03.020]  But the court said to her, look, if you don't have evidence of tampering here, we're not going to order a recount and we're not going to do anything about the electoral process.
[19:03.020 --> 19:04.260]  We're going to let it stand.
[19:04.600 --> 19:11.200]  So without, you know, ordering some kind of recount or ordering a forensic examination, how are you going to have this evidence of tampering?
[19:11.420 --> 19:16.060]  And without evidence of tampering, you can't have a forensic re-examination or a recount of the votes.
[19:16.760 --> 19:28.320]  Well, now, regarding evidence of tampering, and just the suspicion that there was tampering, that is the job of the Republicans right now, is to get that out there, to get the suspicion.
[19:28.480 --> 19:34.380]  It started last night, there was a tweet by Trump, I don't know if he caught this, all caps, what is this all about?
[19:35.140 --> 19:44.980]  He shared an image of an electoral map of Michigan that purported to show an unexplained jump overnight in the number of return ballots in the state.
[19:46.280 --> 19:53.580]  According to the data in the map, 138,000 ballots had come in out of nowhere, and all of them were for Biden.
[19:53.780 --> 19:57.960]  The claim had been going viral in parts of the right wing all morning.
[19:58.560 --> 20:06.660]  Headline on one right wing website read, voter fraud in Michigan, massive dump of over 200,000 ballots for Biden, all of a sudden appear overnight.
[20:06.960 --> 20:09.540]  At least 14,000 tweets had included the image.
[20:09.700 --> 20:10.640]  The image was real.
[20:10.640 --> 20:15.060]  But the idea that it indicated fraud was absolutely false.
[20:15.300 --> 20:20.800]  Though the people sharing it likely initially did not know that the data in the map was wrong.
[20:21.420 --> 20:32.700]  Now, the image was a screenshot of a map on the website Decision Desk HQ, which tracks election results and has powered results data for media outlets like BuzzFeed News.
[20:32.700 --> 20:39.320]  After Trump's tweet on Wednesday, today, Decision Desk HQ said there had been an error in the data.
[20:39.560 --> 20:42.660]  It had been sent from Michigan's Shiawassee County.
[20:42.660 --> 20:52.840]  Once we identified the error, we cleared the erroneous data and updated it with the correct data as provided by officials, Decision Desk HQ said in a statement to CNN.
[20:53.480 --> 21:03.940]  A clerk with the Shiawassee County clerk's office confirmed to CNN that a typing error had been made when votes were being entered for Biden and that the error was corrected within 30 minutes.
[21:04.600 --> 21:10.520]  Decision Desk HQ is known as a reliable source of information, but it did not explain why it took hours to make a statement about the error.
[21:10.520 --> 21:25.260]  But the story of how a screenshot of an error on an electoral map on a niche website made its way to the President of the United States is one emblematic of the online misinformation ecosystem and Trump's central role within it.
[21:26.220 --> 21:38.660]  Working with the Aletheia Group, a disinformation research company, CNN found evidence that the screenshot may have made its first appearance online when it circulated early Wednesday morning on a QAnon forum.
[21:39.140 --> 21:47.240]  On the hate-filled platform 8Con, a successor to 8chan, CNN has reached out to 8Con for...
[21:47.240 --> 21:48.020]  Oh, don't reach out.
[21:48.140 --> 21:49.220]  Don't reach out to them, CNN.
[21:49.340 --> 21:50.080]  You're going to regret that.
[21:50.980 --> 21:57.640]  The screenshot then made its way to anonymous accounts on Twitter, some posting in Spanish, and one with the hashtag Latinos4Trump in its username.
[21:58.240 --> 22:05.900]  Those tweets were then picked up by some conservative influencers and right-wing websites, forums, telegram channels that are known peddlers of misinformation.
[22:06.520 --> 22:15.820]  And the President is determined to paint a picture of a rigged election, and this is unlikely to be the last time he promotes an unsubstantiated claim that's circulated in the dark underbelly of the Internet.
[22:16.880 --> 22:19.120]  So this is what we're up against, folks.
[22:19.280 --> 22:25.060]  This kind of thing is every little mistake, everything that couldn't possibly be distorted to make it seem like something it's not.
[22:25.680 --> 22:27.800]  That is what we'll be dealing with for the next few weeks.
[22:28.120 --> 22:28.500]  Go ahead, Rob.
[22:29.860 --> 22:34.420]  Yeah, and this really drives home the major point for me, which is that we can talk about Trump.
[22:34.580 --> 22:39.780]  We can talk about the man himself, the one person who is at the center of all this, the guy in the chair in the White House.
[22:40.100 --> 22:44.220]  But he is not the source of what's going on right now.
[22:44.280 --> 22:47.820]  He is a symptom of what's going on and what's been going on for the longest time.
[22:47.820 --> 23:08.760]  And that's the media environment we're in, the fact that mainstream news has focused on basically punching up engagement by riling people up, dividing people, posting whatever wacky theories get them eyeballs and get them those precious clicks online,
[23:08.760 --> 23:25.920]  and creating this environment in which we're divided, everything is like us or them, and nobody is taking their own time to form their own qualified opinions on things or read the link that they're retweeting or any of this.
[23:25.980 --> 23:29.280]  And so this is an environment that's very, very easy to manipulate.
[23:29.360 --> 23:33.300]  This is very easy to manipulate if you're the Republican Party.
[23:33.300 --> 23:37.460]  It's very easy to manipulate if you're a state actor somewhere.
[23:37.920 --> 23:41.540]  And we're all victims of that right now, and this is the fallout.
[23:42.140 --> 23:48.740]  And I would also say that there is no logical limit to where things are going.
[23:48.820 --> 23:50.960]  We were talking about the pens, right?
[23:51.140 --> 23:54.800]  And I was just thinking about, I used to do event planning and logistics.
[23:55.060 --> 23:56.600]  Like, that was what I did for a long time.
[23:56.600 --> 24:04.120]  So my thought immediately was, you can buy a gross of ballpoint pens for, like, I don't know, $10?
[24:04.940 --> 24:07.180]  States are strapped for cash right now.
[24:07.180 --> 24:12.460]  Are you telling me that someone ordered multiple grosses of Sharpies?
[24:13.220 --> 24:16.140]  Like, does a state have that kind of money right now?
[24:16.560 --> 24:17.040]  No.
[24:17.240 --> 24:21.240]  If you take 30 seconds and think about it logically, that doesn't make any sense.
[24:21.280 --> 24:22.080]  Yeah, but Gila...
[24:22.080 --> 24:23.700]  But people are aimed to hear that now.
[24:23.860 --> 24:28.120]  Yeah, but what you're forgetting is that Biden is in Sharpie's pocket.
[24:28.760 --> 24:28.880]  Okay?
[24:29.040 --> 24:29.300]  Right.
[24:29.320 --> 24:32.040]  Sharpie has been controlling things for years.
[24:32.040 --> 24:34.380]  And they're a tool of the Democratic Party.
[24:34.520 --> 24:34.920]  Yes, Alex.
[24:36.620 --> 24:37.140]  Alex.
[24:37.460 --> 24:38.360]  I know.
[24:38.520 --> 24:40.220]  I had to unmute myself there.
[24:40.340 --> 24:41.580]  Give me a second, gentlemen.
[24:42.640 --> 24:50.060]  You know, this whole idea that things went off yesterday without an incident, I think is really not clear just yet.
[24:50.060 --> 24:57.420]  Just because the election infrastructure seemed to actually work in a very reasonable fashion, we didn't have a lot of technological hiccups.
[24:57.560 --> 25:05.800]  That doesn't mean that, well, the absence of apparent interference does not mean that there was no actual interference.
[25:05.800 --> 25:16.440]  I mean, think about where we were a week ago, right, when we're talking about the Hunter Biden laptop, you know, and other influence operations that we know have been prevalent on social media.
[25:16.660 --> 25:18.140]  We just mentioned QAnon.
[25:18.380 --> 25:28.300]  You know, they were known to have been amplified by Russians, you know, touting these very divisive conspiracy theories that they know would divide Americans.
[25:28.720 --> 25:31.700]  We talked last week as well about voter intimidation.
[25:31.700 --> 25:41.560]  What I've seen, and that hasn't actually, we haven't talked about this with, on the record with the media, but we've seen a lot of financial fraud in the DNS targeting voters.
[25:41.980 --> 25:46.960]  And that's where election interference and financial fraud really tend to overlap.
[25:47.900 --> 26:08.340]  And where we are now, to go back to Gila's point, where we're now with this continued process of counting, of certifying, contesting votes, and even litigating voting results, all of these activities are creating a very fertile attack surface for additional disinformation campaigns.
[26:08.460 --> 26:11.540]  So we are very far from being out of the woods.
[26:11.540 --> 26:15.720]  We're not out of the woods until there is a new president in place.
[26:15.840 --> 26:22.020]  Assuming that Biden reaches 270 and Trump leaves on January 20th, then I think we're going to be out of the woods.
[26:22.020 --> 26:44.500]  But maybe even not entirely then, because we are still going to be dealing with the vestiges of a country, almost 50% of which voted for Donald Trump, despite his abysmal record, despite his autocratic tendencies, despite the fact that there were nearly five times as many deaths in eight months than there were during the entire Vietnam War on account of the mismanagement of the coronavirus.
[26:44.960 --> 26:45.740]  I'll stop there.
[26:45.740 --> 26:48.700]  Well, that was going to be the case either way.
[26:48.800 --> 26:52.960]  If Trump had won, it's going to be the same number of people that supported Trump.
[26:52.960 --> 26:55.180]  If Trump loses, same number of people.
[26:55.420 --> 27:02.240]  So that was always going to be a challenge, trying to figure out, okay, what do we do now with all this divisiveness?
[27:03.000 --> 27:08.260]  You know, I think what people also need to do after a traumatic event like last night, and it was traumatic.
[27:08.420 --> 27:12.380]  I could feel the stress levels of the entire nation just in the air.
[27:12.380 --> 27:15.380]  The important thing is to look to yourself.
[27:15.380 --> 27:16.400]  Are you okay?
[27:17.020 --> 27:19.780]  How is your life being affected right now?
[27:19.900 --> 27:22.780]  Are you going to be able to do the things that matter to you?
[27:23.140 --> 27:25.700]  Odds are that's going to be the case.
[27:25.840 --> 27:28.380]  Odds are you're going to be able to live the same life.
[27:28.840 --> 27:36.220]  But many of us are not happy with the way things went in local races or Senate races or various other things.
[27:36.960 --> 27:42.040]  But, you know, whenever something challenging happens, you make do.
[27:42.340 --> 27:46.900]  And that's something that I think Democrats really need to learn how to do.
[27:47.100 --> 28:01.160]  And that means coming together, getting over disagreements, not taking pot shots at each other constantly, and working with what they have, you know, and building something based on that.
[28:01.160 --> 28:12.520]  And adverse situations bring out the best of us, you know, it's in a blizzard, you lose power, you somehow get through, and you make every moment count, and you take care of each other.
[28:12.840 --> 28:16.580]  Well, you know, things aren't exactly perfect right now.
[28:16.860 --> 28:19.580]  There's a lot of challenges, a lot of bad things that are happening.
[28:19.580 --> 28:36.820]  But if we come together, and basically take stock of what we have, support each other, I think we build from that, you know, rather than expending energy on disagreements on certain issues with people that we normally agree with in the first place.
[28:37.900 --> 28:56.320]  We unite, and I think we did this to a great extent for this campaign, because instead of having people that were talking about third-party candidates, which, you know, I support third-party candidates, but in this particular case, I think we all realize it would not serve us to have something like that in play.
[28:56.740 --> 29:01.800]  We need to be able to come together more to achieve certain goals.
[29:01.800 --> 29:05.560]  And that is something the Democrats have not been doing recently.
[29:05.560 --> 29:14.900]  You know, when, assuming Biden takes charge, one of the first things he needs to do is fix this Supreme Court situation.
[29:14.900 --> 29:17.440]  And part of that is changing the narrative.
[29:17.680 --> 29:31.140]  You see, Republicans are very good at changing the narrative and referring to evening out the court or basically fixing what the Republicans have been doing, referring to that as stacking the court.
[29:31.400 --> 29:40.140]  No, stacking the court is what they have been doing over the past few years, basically three seats that they put in, two of which are invalid.
[29:41.040 --> 29:47.980]  And to refer to Democratic efforts as stacking the court, that's changing the language.
[29:48.120 --> 29:48.880]  It's very Orwellian.
[29:49.340 --> 29:50.980]  You can't let them get away with that.
[29:51.080 --> 29:52.360]  Don't use the same phrase.
[29:52.520 --> 29:53.660]  Call it something else.
[29:54.620 --> 29:55.540]  It's court...
[29:55.540 --> 29:56.380]  I don't know.
[29:56.440 --> 29:57.680]  There's a better phrase for it.
[29:57.720 --> 30:00.000]  I heard one before, but it's basically...
[30:00.000 --> 30:00.720]  You're a lawyer.
[30:00.820 --> 30:02.220]  I'm rebalancing the court, I think.
[30:02.220 --> 30:03.040]  Rebalancing the court.
[30:03.040 --> 30:04.120]  There you go.
[30:04.300 --> 30:05.900]  I was about to see the exact thing.
[30:06.180 --> 30:06.680]  That's right.
[30:07.200 --> 30:07.740]  Rebalancing.
[30:08.180 --> 30:08.720]  Restoring.
[30:08.880 --> 30:10.840]  Restoring the court to what it was.
[30:11.160 --> 30:11.600]  That's right.
[30:11.920 --> 30:15.940]  Expanding the justices to expand justice.
[30:16.160 --> 30:18.220]  You look in the past, you see the votes.
[30:18.540 --> 30:20.860]  For Ruth Bader Ginsburg, I think it was almost unanimous.
[30:22.000 --> 30:32.360]  Senators voted across the aisle because a position on the Supreme Court was not seen as necessarily a political appointment, whereas now it's nothing but a political appointment.
[30:33.160 --> 30:40.060]  So, you know, Joe Biden cannot just say, okay, we're going to play fair now, and I'm going to reach across the aisle constantly.
[30:40.060 --> 30:49.420]  No, that's the worst thing he can possibly do, because right now things have been abused for so many years that we're in a broken state right now.
[30:49.420 --> 30:56.100]  Now, we need to even things out, then we play fair and keep this from happening again.
[30:57.960 --> 30:58.440]  Yeah.
[30:59.520 --> 31:00.160]  Yes, go ahead.
[31:01.260 --> 31:10.720]  The thing you were saying earlier about we need to be there to take care of each other, we also, and I don't think enough is being said about this today, we need to take care of ourselves.
[31:11.420 --> 31:12.780]  Self-care is very important.
[31:13.080 --> 31:15.780]  There was a point yesterday, I mean, we know what's going on.
[31:15.880 --> 31:19.460]  We know it will not be solved one way or another for a long time.
[31:19.780 --> 31:29.120]  It's very tempting to just watch the doom scroll by, but there was a certain point yesterday where Gila and I, you know, we had to shut off the social media.
[31:29.380 --> 31:31.880]  You know, we sat down, we watched a movie, we worked on something unrelated.
[31:32.540 --> 31:41.300]  You know, today, there was a certain point where I had to close my social media tabs, because it was just for my own mental health, and I needed to recognize that and take care of myself.
[31:41.620 --> 31:43.540]  And, you know, I played a video game for a while.
[31:44.520 --> 31:52.740]  Do not underestimate the importance of backing off when you need to, you know, listen to yourself and take care of yourself, every one of you out there listening.
[31:52.820 --> 31:53.060]  Exactly.
[31:53.200 --> 31:56.080]  That should always be something that is foremost.
[31:56.080 --> 32:04.820]  But at the same time, keep a positive outlook, because guaranteed people on other sides are defiant.
[32:05.040 --> 32:08.960]  And that's something that this side needs to do more, is be defiant.
[32:08.980 --> 32:12.660]  Even if it looks like you're losing, well, you're not completely losing.
[32:12.880 --> 32:14.960]  You might lose something, but you're going to win something else.
[32:15.040 --> 32:18.040]  Hey, they just legalized pot in New Jersey.
[32:18.260 --> 32:19.380]  That's something, right?
[32:19.560 --> 32:20.800]  That's a good thing.
[32:21.000 --> 32:22.660]  There is good out of this.
[32:23.420 --> 32:23.900]  Yes.
[32:24.480 --> 32:25.260]  That's something.
[32:25.440 --> 32:25.960]  It is something.
[32:26.080 --> 32:40.760]  I would also just add that I think that it's important to realize, in the abstract, this is the weird in-between transition period of the process.
[32:40.760 --> 32:43.320]  It's supposed to be kind of strange.
[32:43.320 --> 32:52.720]  And I was kind of relishing, as Gia said, it was uncomfortable, but letting it kind of wash over me, this feeling of like, yeah, the country doesn't really know.
[32:52.720 --> 32:56.000]  So, like, it is sort of rudderless in this moment.
[32:56.280 --> 32:58.220]  There's a fork in the road.
[32:58.380 --> 33:02.220]  You can think of all kinds of metaphor to go with it.
[33:02.360 --> 33:03.520]  Hey, find some joy in that.
[33:03.800 --> 33:06.060]  Find some joy in the uniqueness of this moment.
[33:06.060 --> 33:09.040]  Because we're all going through it together, you know?
[33:09.220 --> 33:10.580]  And that's something unique.
[33:10.700 --> 33:12.600]  Something you can tell future generations.
[33:12.720 --> 33:12.920]  Gila.
[33:13.700 --> 33:14.100]  Right.
[33:14.260 --> 33:19.980]  Like, on the old Mickey Mouse Club in the 50s, there was, you know, they had a theme for every day of the week.
[33:20.080 --> 33:21.980]  And one day of the week was, anything can happen day.
[33:22.500 --> 33:23.880]  And I like that idea.
[33:24.060 --> 33:27.660]  We're living in sort of a permanent, anything can happen day right now.
[33:27.840 --> 33:30.880]  And, you know, it's up to us to make the best of anything can happen day.
[33:30.960 --> 33:38.380]  But I think also there is this concept that election day is the one day that everything is going to happen.
[33:38.380 --> 33:44.360]  And I think part of the question for me is how can we reframe that?
[33:45.180 --> 33:50.300]  We're not ever going to be in a position again where we're going to know every single thing on the one day.
[33:50.840 --> 33:59.440]  And I think we need to, as a country, look at the discussion a little bit differently and stop expecting to hear everything on one day.
[33:59.540 --> 33:59.820]  Right.
[33:59.960 --> 34:05.500]  I think because we set ourselves up for that, and that causes a huge host of issues in a lot of ways.
[34:05.600 --> 34:06.820]  We learn from that one day.
[34:06.960 --> 34:09.980]  We learn from that one day, and we keep moving forward.
[34:10.120 --> 34:12.700]  Regardless of the outcome, it doesn't change our resolve.
[34:12.860 --> 34:15.140]  It doesn't change what we believe in, what we will fight for.
[34:15.760 --> 34:18.400]  Here's something out of California, which I found to be interesting.
[34:18.400 --> 34:29.660]  California voters have passed Proposition 24, a ballot measure that expands the state's existing privacy laws, scales back the amount of data that big tech companies are allowed to collect on people.
[34:30.280 --> 34:39.180]  It'll make it harder for Facebook and Google to track people's activity through third parties, which could make much of the tech giant's advertising business models obsolete.
[34:39.900 --> 34:41.940]  Yeah, that's according to Business Insider.
[34:42.060 --> 34:47.000]  While Prop 24 is active only in California, it will effectively apply to all of the U.S.
[34:47.000 --> 34:49.680]  because of the state's huge influence on the tech industry.
[34:49.880 --> 34:51.400]  So this is good, right?
[34:53.680 --> 34:54.560]  Well, yeah.
[34:54.880 --> 34:58.320]  I mean, I think that the principle is laudable, right?
[34:58.880 --> 35:02.580]  You're placing privacy over profit, in theory.
[35:03.020 --> 35:19.280]  I mean, this law will probably be similar to the California Consumer Privacy Act that came into effect fairly recently, and which threw the entire nation into disarray in terms of trying to comply with that very hastily drawn law.
[35:19.720 --> 35:30.080]  This law, however, won't be the same in terms of haste, because this particular law is actually not going to go into effect, or it's not set to go into effect until 2023.
[35:30.520 --> 35:34.100]  So we've got three years to figure out how it's going to work.
[35:34.100 --> 35:36.920]  And in all likelihood, that may be further delayed.
[35:37.040 --> 35:47.980]  They may kick the can down the road, because there's probably going to be a substantial period for the advertising industry and the ad tech industry to comment on how this is going to work.
[35:47.980 --> 36:10.480]  And I think we can expect massive pushback from the advertising lobbies and the ad tech companies themselves, and especially the Googles and the Facebooks of the world, which would be primarily impacted by this, because this particular proposal would affect their ability to take data from their platform and combine it with third-party data that they get from others,
[36:10.820 --> 36:14.500]  repackage it, and then sell that to other third parties, right?
[36:14.940 --> 36:26.800]  So the point of the CCPA was for consumers to have the California Consumer Privacy Act that previously passed was to allow consumers to take back control over their data.
[36:26.800 --> 36:35.880]  But it didn't really have that particular effect, primarily because consumers don't actually know where their data is going.
[36:36.100 --> 36:39.700]  So this is another way to try to put a stop to this.
[36:39.860 --> 36:48.260]  But I think that, you know, on the other hand, the advertising industry and the Googles and the Facebooks, look, maybe they do have something legitimate to gripe about with laws like this.
[36:48.780 --> 37:00.500]  Because the fact that you have the most privacy-forward-looking legislation continually coming from the states, and California in particular, indicates, I think, that there's a problem.
[37:00.820 --> 37:04.300]  Why don't we have federal standards for data governance?
[37:04.660 --> 37:25.720]  I mean, national standards here would be helpful not only to consumers and would enhance the privacy of consumers and would enhance the privacy of persons around the world, but it would also be extraordinarily helpful to companies who have to pay expensive lawyers to help them comply with the current patchwork of requirements that we have on the books across the nation.
[37:26.240 --> 37:48.020]  Do you think there's some of the, like, influence from government contracting as well as some of these corporations, that there is less pressure put upon them on the federal level because, well, states' rights and all of that, of course, and having the states delegate and have their sovereignty and independence in setting rules.
[37:48.260 --> 38:15.700]  So, okay, yes, then California is a responsible party for entities headquartered or a part of the industry there, then sets the standard or the tone for the industry without the government because perhaps there's other contractual and interests that are perhaps slowing down the efforts of regulatory bodies while,
[38:15.720 --> 38:22.060]  you know, D of D or somebody else is happy with their, their Google search or whatever other services.
[38:22.860 --> 38:26.180]  Do we have an idea of the margin that this passed by?
[38:28.820 --> 38:29.300]  No?
[38:29.300 --> 38:30.360]  Okay, I guess not.
[38:30.380 --> 38:30.840]  Not to hand.
[38:31.080 --> 38:31.200]  No.
[38:31.480 --> 38:41.200]  All right, well, I, you know, I, I sense that it was, it was a good margin because it sounds like something that a lot of people feel passionately about and, and the tech companies will see the writing on the wall.
[38:42.320 --> 38:51.460]  According to the news story I've got, uh, it was on track to pass, uh, as of this morning with 50, 56% of voters supporting the measure and over three quarters of ballots counted.
[38:51.700 --> 38:52.000]  Okay.
[38:52.200 --> 38:54.480]  So that's, that's a pretty good, uh, not nothing.
[38:54.720 --> 38:55.280]  Yeah, definitely.
[38:55.580 --> 39:00.100]  So there are all kinds of things like that, positive things that have come out of, of the election.
[39:00.460 --> 39:18.240]  Uh, again, you know, there's a lot of things that we would have preferred, but, um, either way we fight, either way, you know, the battle for justice continues with, um, you know, if it was a choice, if it was a choice between, um, um, Democrats getting the Senate and the house,
[39:18.500 --> 39:23.840]  but losing the presidency, I don't know if that would be a good thing.
[39:23.960 --> 39:25.600]  And in fact, I know it wouldn't be a good thing right now.
[39:26.140 --> 39:29.800]  Getting Trump out of the equation, that means returning to Paris.
[39:30.280 --> 39:32.420]  It means rejoining the world health organization.
[39:32.420 --> 39:38.000]  It means getting kids out of cages and stopping these horrible, inhumane policies.
[39:38.460 --> 39:43.700]  It means maybe not a quarter of a million more people dying from COVID.
[39:44.140 --> 39:50.620]  So there's all kinds of positive things that will come out of this, assuming that the prevailing trend right now continues.
[39:51.580 --> 39:52.560]  So feel good.
[39:52.640 --> 39:53.380]  People feel good.
[39:53.480 --> 39:56.000]  This, this was a good day overall.
[39:57.380 --> 40:00.600]  I mean, I, I, I tend to agree with you there.
[40:00.860 --> 40:15.900]  I mean, having gone to bed last night and been, you know, really despondent, dejected, however you want to phrase it, waking up at two 30 o'clock in the morning, two 30 in the morning and seeing Trump announcing that he won and then waking up later on in the morning and seeing,
[40:16.380 --> 40:23.340]  wow, this is far from a done deal going into this evening, seeing that Biden seems to have a viable pathway to victory.
[40:23.720 --> 40:33.400]  But, you know, we, I don't think that we should rest on our laurels or count our chickens before they hatch, whatever your metaphor of choice is here.
[40:33.600 --> 40:50.060]  But because I do think that there is still a lot of sand that can be thrown on these gears and there's still a lot of surprises that the Republicans could have up their sleeves, especially when it comes to states like Pennsylvania and perhaps combining results in Pennsylvania together with another state,
[40:50.620 --> 40:52.280]  you know, some kind of active measures campaign.
[40:52.460 --> 40:58.500]  I mean, there's really a great incentive for this president to want to stay in power.
[40:58.780 --> 41:07.060]  I mean, he could be very, he could very well be prosecuted on January 21st or January 20th whenever he steps down from power.
[41:07.360 --> 41:10.100]  Robert Mueller testified exactly to that.
[41:10.280 --> 41:15.920]  If he was not a sitting president of the United States, he would be subject to prosecution for obstruction of justice.
[41:16.120 --> 41:16.960]  You guys hear that?
[41:18.980 --> 41:19.840]  What is that?
[41:20.620 --> 41:21.180]  That's...
[41:21.180 --> 41:21.880]  That...
[41:21.880 --> 41:25.280]  That is the 2600 siren.
[41:26.660 --> 41:29.000]  And that means we are calling the race.
[41:29.560 --> 41:31.360]  We are calling the race...
[41:31.360 --> 41:35.760]  We're calling the race ahead of everybody else because we're just impatient.
[41:36.460 --> 41:38.140]  We just want to get it over with.
[41:38.860 --> 41:43.380]  Okay, we're calling the race for Joe Biden over Donald Trump in the election.
[41:43.540 --> 41:45.980]  And here's the logic behind this.
[41:46.840 --> 41:48.700]  That siren is going to stop, isn't it?
[41:49.260 --> 41:50.800]  Do you want me to go throw something in?
[41:51.060 --> 41:53.340]  No, I think it goes three times.
[41:53.480 --> 41:54.260]  And then from...
[41:54.260 --> 41:55.380]  If I remember the last election.
[41:55.860 --> 41:57.060]  No, it's continuing.
[41:57.340 --> 41:57.700]  Well, whatever.
[41:58.360 --> 41:59.240]  Here's the math.
[41:59.360 --> 42:00.380]  Okay, I'm going to show my work.
[42:01.200 --> 42:04.880]  Right now, Joe Biden has 253 electoral votes.
[42:05.180 --> 42:06.580]  Donald Trump has 213.
[42:07.500 --> 42:09.980]  The number, the magic number is 200.
[42:10.220 --> 42:11.000]  You should get the champagne.
[42:11.660 --> 42:11.920]  Right?
[42:11.920 --> 42:12.980]  We have...
[42:12.980 --> 42:13.120]  Okay.
[42:13.260 --> 42:19.340]  Yeah, we have a very expensive champagne that we invested in thinking that this might happen.
[42:21.820 --> 42:24.020]  So, 253 electoral votes.
[42:24.160 --> 42:25.480]  270 is what he needs.
[42:25.660 --> 42:26.880]  So, who can do the math?
[42:27.020 --> 42:27.920]  That's 17.
[42:28.520 --> 42:28.960]  Right?
[42:28.960 --> 42:29.920]  All right.
[42:30.060 --> 42:32.520]  So, right now, we're looking at Pennsylvania.
[42:32.540 --> 42:34.220]  We're looking at Georgia.
[42:34.980 --> 42:36.940]  I believe we're still looking at North Carolina.
[42:36.940 --> 42:38.140]  We're looking at Arizona.
[42:38.140 --> 42:39.300]  And we're looking at Nevada.
[42:40.440 --> 42:48.600]  Nevada, the two brightest states in that list are Arizona and Nevada, where Biden is ahead.
[42:49.060 --> 42:52.360]  And the votes that they have to count are...
[42:52.360 --> 42:53.720]  Oh, those are the good glasses.
[42:53.960 --> 42:55.440]  Those are the ones we got from the Quaker Roads Company.
[42:56.160 --> 42:56.520]  Nice.
[42:58.260 --> 42:59.020]  What do you got there?
[42:59.080 --> 43:01.800]  You got a really classy bottle of champagne?
[43:02.160 --> 43:03.100]  Yes, it's French.
[43:03.400 --> 43:03.680]  French.
[43:03.840 --> 43:04.160]  Okay, good.
[43:04.260 --> 43:04.360]  Good.
[43:04.380 --> 43:04.940]  They know what they're doing.
[43:04.940 --> 43:18.220]  Um, so, those two states, Arizona and Nevada, um, are basically, uh, the votes that are still to be counted are mail-in votes, which predominantly favor Joe Biden.
[43:18.460 --> 43:22.580]  And I believe they're also from districts that favor Joe Biden.
[43:23.020 --> 43:27.800]  If he gets, um, Nevada, that's six electoral votes.
[43:28.320 --> 43:33.420]  If he gets Arizona, that's 11 electoral votes.
[43:33.420 --> 43:36.100]  11 plus six, Rob, is?
[43:37.440 --> 43:37.980]  17.
[43:38.280 --> 43:38.620]  17.
[43:39.100 --> 43:41.560]  17 plus 253 is?
[43:42.640 --> 43:43.180]  270.
[43:44.200 --> 43:45.880]  Okay, I didn't call upon you, but yes, you were right.
[43:46.180 --> 43:46.720]  270.
[43:46.980 --> 43:49.760]  270 gets Joe Biden over.
[43:50.280 --> 43:52.180]  And that's the race, folks.
[43:52.260 --> 43:52.820]  That's it.
[43:52.960 --> 43:57.340]  I don't see how Trump can catch him in Nevada and Arizona.
[43:58.040 --> 44:02.720]  If I'm wrong, if I'm wrong, I'll, I'll apologize.
[44:03.220 --> 44:04.580]  I'll put the champagne back.
[44:05.300 --> 44:06.360]  But I don't think I am.
[44:06.480 --> 44:07.740]  I don't think I am.
[44:09.160 --> 44:10.940]  All right, so, uh, Kyle, are you going to open this?
[44:11.040 --> 44:12.220]  Is this going to be a big dramatic thing?
[44:12.380 --> 44:12.820]  Okay, hold on.
[44:14.260 --> 44:14.960]  Don't hurt anybody.
[44:15.760 --> 44:16.160]  Oh!
[44:17.240 --> 44:17.640]  Wow.
[44:18.920 --> 44:20.020]  That was something.
[44:22.300 --> 44:28.320]  I think the last time we opened champagne on the air, we were overseas, and it wasn't nearly as, as dramatic as this.
[44:28.600 --> 44:28.920]  Thank you.
[44:29.020 --> 44:29.540]  Thank you very much.
[44:29.640 --> 44:32.160]  The good thing about doing shows remotely, you can drink on the air.
[44:32.760 --> 44:35.080]  Um, folks, be happy.
[44:35.340 --> 44:36.080]  Please be happy.
[44:36.340 --> 44:39.600]  Uh, too many sad faces, and we have so much to be happy about.
[44:39.780 --> 44:43.080]  There's so much ahead of us, so much good news, good people.
[44:43.740 --> 44:48.580]  Um, and I really think, I really think in another year, we're going to see the benefits.
[44:48.680 --> 44:50.980]  We're going to see that, uh, things are normalizing.
[44:51.580 --> 44:57.020]  And, uh, next time we do this, I think we'll actually be moving in a much better direction.
[44:57.360 --> 44:58.160]  That's, that's my hope.
[44:59.820 --> 45:00.260]  Cheers.
[45:01.080 --> 45:11.100]  I hope that you're right, Emmanuel, because those two states, you know, there was, it was just breaking news that I had seen that indicated that the Trump campaign had filed lawsuits.
[45:11.380 --> 45:11.900]  There you go.
[45:12.140 --> 45:12.760]  There you go.
[45:13.080 --> 45:15.400]  Okay, that means Biden has won.
[45:15.660 --> 45:17.880]  I'm sorry, those are not ballots.
[45:18.120 --> 45:19.500]  How many lawsuits has Biden filed?
[45:20.000 --> 45:21.480]  Yeah, I don't think he's filed any.
[45:21.480 --> 45:22.660]  I don't think he's filed anything just yet.
[45:22.860 --> 45:36.860]  But the, but the lawsuits that Trump, the Trump campaign had filed were in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Georgia, which are states that are outside of that 17 vote calculus that you had just, uh, iterated.
[45:36.860 --> 45:41.080]  Well, the thing is, Alex, he doesn't need Pennsylvania if he gets Nevada and Arizona.
[45:41.140 --> 45:42.500]  And he already has Michigan.
[45:42.500 --> 45:44.080]  He already has, has won Michigan.
[45:44.080 --> 45:45.880]  So I don't know what they're thinking as far as that goes.
[45:45.940 --> 45:46.780]  What was the third state?
[45:47.400 --> 45:49.380]  Uh, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Georgia.
[45:49.640 --> 45:50.000]  Georgia.
[45:50.180 --> 45:51.220]  And Georgia's still in play.
[45:51.220 --> 45:52.560]  They could go either way.
[45:52.720 --> 45:56.120]  But again, he doesn't need Georgia if he gets Nevada and Arizona.
[45:56.260 --> 45:58.220]  And I don't see a way he doesn't get those states.
[45:59.320 --> 46:00.120]  I agree.
[46:00.360 --> 46:10.540]  And look, you know, this whole thing, it, it seems, I think, you know, reasonable to all of us and to all of the Americans listening to us right now that we're talking about getting those states.
[46:10.980 --> 46:19.180]  But I think this, you know, real, really brings back the same issue that we had addressed last week, which is the fact that we have this electoral college is totally crazy.
[46:19.180 --> 46:27.860]  It's, it's such an anachronism, something that was developed at, I think at the outset of the 19th century, it wasn't, it's not even found within the constitution.
[46:28.640 --> 46:33.960]  I think that Joe Biden here is, is well in the lead when it comes to the majority vote.
[46:34.120 --> 46:35.680]  I believe it's 3 million.
[46:35.860 --> 46:44.240]  It's about 3 million, which was the total that Hillary Clinton was ahead of Donald Trump last time took, took several weeks to get there, but right away he's 3 million ahead.
[46:44.360 --> 46:47.260]  So yeah, again, so many more people voted for him.
[46:47.260 --> 47:02.120]  Well, here's the danger though, with that, that the danger, and, and it's the very reason why the electoral college has persisted for so long, we can, and we can't lose sight of the problem that it is very undemocratic, because if Joe Biden wins this,
[47:02.320 --> 47:08.480]  this will be another instance of the electoral college matching the popular vote, right?
[47:08.620 --> 47:21.820]  So, you know, like most elections in the history of this country, the electoral college and the popular vote have gone in the same way, but when they don't go in the same way, it creates major problems for mature democracies like our own.
[47:22.460 --> 47:24.240]  And I think that's a very big problem.
[47:24.280 --> 47:32.860]  And it's not just a problem for Democrats, it's a problem for Republicans as well, because a Republicans vote in New York should count just as much as the Democrats vote in Pennsylvania.
[47:33.220 --> 47:44.220]  Right, but as far as influencing the entire election, I don't see it ever going against Republicans, because they have such undue power in those middle states.
[47:44.740 --> 47:48.680]  You know, it just seems like it's designed to benefit them.
[47:49.840 --> 47:58.680]  I mean, I think it's designed to give these swing states, these battleground states, as we like to call them, an inordinate amount of power relative to the other states.
[47:58.780 --> 48:00.480]  And they sway conservative for the most part.
[48:01.340 --> 48:03.500]  Yeah, well, they're a bit of a mix, right?
[48:03.600 --> 48:06.880]  Because, and they wouldn't be battleground states if they weren't a bit of a mix, right?
[48:06.880 --> 48:08.040]  Then they wouldn't be battles.
[48:08.220 --> 48:10.580]  Then they would be, you know, Missouris.
[48:10.740 --> 48:12.780]  It would just be a whole bunch of Missouris or Alabamas.
[48:12.900 --> 48:16.960]  There's got to be a bit of purple to that state in order for it to be a battleground state.
[48:17.060 --> 48:21.940]  But I think that we cannot lose sight of the fact that the Electoral College is undemocratic.
[48:22.240 --> 48:26.480]  It nullifies votes on the right and the left and the middle all around.
[48:27.200 --> 48:28.520]  And that is undemocratic.
[48:28.580 --> 48:34.800]  In the 21st century, we need to reform that, regardless of who wins this election.
[48:35.200 --> 48:37.700]  I think and I hope and I pray that it's going to be Biden.
[48:39.140 --> 48:43.100]  But if it's Trump, I think we have no chance of reforming the Electoral College.
[48:43.260 --> 48:45.980]  I think if it is Biden, then I think we have a great chance.
[48:46.080 --> 48:51.200]  And we can't lose sight of the fact that we almost lost this election because of the Electoral College as well.
[48:51.780 --> 48:52.140]  Rob?
[48:52.140 --> 48:52.740]  Yeah.
[48:53.060 --> 49:00.760]  The other thing I'm taking comfort in, I mean, talking about the popular vote versus Electoral, earlier today, as of 2.30 p.m.
[49:01.100 --> 49:12.180]  today, Eastern Time, Biden had 69,949,918 votes, which beat the previous record, which was set by Barack Obama in 2008.
[49:12.500 --> 49:18.400]  So Biden officially has the most popular votes for a presidential candidate in American history.
[49:18.520 --> 49:19.040]  There you go.
[49:19.200 --> 49:20.880]  See, that's a positive thing to say.
[49:20.880 --> 49:22.460]  That's a positive thing.
[49:22.640 --> 49:25.160]  Also, you know, we're counting absentee ballots.
[49:25.360 --> 49:26.300]  We're counting mail-in ballots.
[49:26.500 --> 49:30.240]  Those are the ballots that Trump told his followers not to use.
[49:30.560 --> 49:37.480]  He was spreading his FUD, his fear, uncertainty, disinformation about the mail-in voting.
[49:37.700 --> 49:43.360]  And so he's now confused that most of the mail-in ballots seem to be for his opponent.
[49:44.940 --> 49:48.040]  Yeah, there are definitely things to take comfort in right now.
[49:48.200 --> 49:52.780]  And the best we can do now is just keep hoping for the best.
[49:54.460 --> 50:04.420]  Yeah, we really don't have any other choice and keep paying attention, but basically resolving to take the next step, figure out where we're going to go from here.
[50:06.640 --> 50:08.660]  Yeah, I mean, look, this is about systems.
[50:08.660 --> 50:10.560]  This is about policies, about practices.
[50:10.560 --> 50:16.000]  I think this is something, you know, that the hacker community can relate to and get behind.
[50:16.000 --> 50:30.640]  And whether or not this goes our way or it goes the way of Trump eventually, you know, if he can throw enough sand in these gears, you know, we are talking about something that is absolutely extraordinary, as Rob had mentioned here.
[50:30.640 --> 50:38.760]  This is unprecedented to have an election of this magnitude in the middle of a global health crisis, where we have all these different avenues of votes coming into play.
[50:38.760 --> 50:46.640]  We have different technology, disparate technology across the country, run by county officials for the most part.
[50:47.060 --> 50:59.240]  We have seen an entire new generation of poll workers stepping up to the plate and taking over from the old guard, the old guard that was susceptible to the coronavirus and COVID-19.
[50:59.240 --> 51:03.340]  And young people who were less susceptible said, you don't have to man that post anymore.
[51:03.740 --> 51:05.100]  I will do it for you.
[51:05.400 --> 51:06.300]  That's extraordinary.
[51:06.540 --> 51:12.400]  That's something I think that, you know, a bit of enthusiasm that we should carry with us for the next four, eight, 12 years.
[51:12.600 --> 51:16.660]  Yeah, it's going to be so much to look back and learn from.
[51:16.880 --> 51:23.980]  Yeah, I don't want people to feel discouraged because this wasn't a bigger victory, because every single vote counted and will count.
[51:24.620 --> 51:26.220]  And you got us here.
[51:26.380 --> 51:28.640]  You got us to a very positive place.
[51:28.640 --> 51:31.900]  He said, well, it just got us away from a very potentially negative place.
[51:32.120 --> 51:32.880]  Let me be clear.
[51:33.060 --> 51:37.540]  If Trump had won this election, I don't think this country would have survived.
[51:37.540 --> 51:38.560]  I really don't.
[51:38.640 --> 51:43.280]  I don't think we would have been able to get it back after another four years.
[51:43.580 --> 51:46.000]  Think of the damage that has been done in just these first four.
[51:46.120 --> 51:53.080]  But with a mandate from the people and basically nothing to lose, I'm still worried about the next hundred days.
[51:53.300 --> 51:54.900]  I'm still very worried about that.
[51:55.080 --> 51:56.000]  It's a different bridge.
[51:56.000 --> 51:57.280]  Yeah, yeah, it is.
[51:57.380 --> 52:00.100]  Actually, it's less than a hundred days, but still, it's going to be scary.
[52:00.880 --> 52:04.640]  That's going to do it for us here tonight because we are pretty much out of time.
[52:04.780 --> 52:06.080]  Any last words, folks?
[52:08.100 --> 52:09.500]  Just get some damn rest.
[52:09.760 --> 52:09.940]  Yeah.
[52:11.480 --> 52:15.240]  I think, you know, be careful, be vigilant, keep wearing that mask.
[52:16.500 --> 52:17.440]  Yeah, we're going to get through this.
[52:17.760 --> 52:18.300]  Hydrate, hydrate.
[52:18.520 --> 52:18.960]  Absolutely.
[52:19.280 --> 52:19.940]  Absolutely hydrate.
[52:20.660 --> 52:21.240]  All right.
[52:21.340 --> 52:26.840]  We will be back next week on the 11th, 1111, Remembrance Day.
[52:28.220 --> 52:30.200]  We will see you next week.
[52:30.580 --> 52:35.840]  And write to us, O-T-H at 2600 dot com.
[52:36.100 --> 52:37.460]  Tell us about something you hacked.
[52:38.160 --> 52:38.680]  Yes.
[52:38.880 --> 52:39.980]  We'd like to hear that.
[52:40.840 --> 52:41.240]  Good night.
[53:00.100 --> 53:07.120]  We'll see you next week.
[53:21.580 --> 53:23.920]  We'll see you next week.
[54:30.900 --> 54:33.620]  We'll see you next week.
[54:54.840 --> 54:59.660]  We'll see you next week.
[55:31.580 --> 55:33.540]  We'll see you next week.
[55:59.330 --> 56:05.630]  We'll see you next week.
[56:14.590 --> 56:19.120]  Brothers, sisters, we don't need a lot to screw it, baby.
[56:27.410 --> 56:31.450]  Brothers, sisters, we don't need a magic rule.
[56:34.360 --> 56:37.720]  Sisters, we don't need a magic rule.