AS292: President Trump, with Eli Bosnick and Andrew Torrez

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:30 Thomas: Welcome, to Atheistically Speaking. This is episode 292 and it is called President Trump.

0:00:40 Thomas: Okay, I've got an interesting show for you. So, what I did was, the night of the election, I decided to turn on the mic for a little bit and just react.

0:00:54 Thomas: I wasn't sure what I was going to do with it, but I think, I think I'm going to keep it, but I just want to let you guys know that it was, you know, it was pretty raw and emotional and it might not be for everybody. So if you want to skip the first 12 minutes of this episode and go straight to when I talked to Eli Bosnick and Andrew Torrez, which was much more upbeat, much more fun, still, you know dismayed of course, but but not quite the same level, not quite as raw. If you want to skip to that, that is a-okay with me. The next 12 minutes are not required listening for the show.

0:01:34 Thomas: It's just something I decided to keep because it's how I reacted. It's how I really feel. It's what I still feel. It's I felt and if anyone listens and takes comfort in someone maybe feeling the same as they do, or, you know, someone wants to laugh at someone feeling differently than they do. Whatever you want to do with it, it's out in the atmosphere now, and I can't do anything about it. So here is that, and then after is, frankly, an amazing recording with Eli and Andrew. Going to be a two-parter because it went really long, but it was totally worth it. So here you go. Here is Election Night Thomas.

0:02:16 Thomas: I don't know, guys, I don't know. I don't know what to tell you. I'm sitting here on Tuesday night, I'm pushing off my Michael Wood Jr. interview that I had already done, Thursday's episode. I, uh, it's not officially over, but it's officially over. I'm recording this, I don't, I don't know, I don't know, I first off apologies, maybe I don't know, that this may be more cursing than is normal, this is not going to be a typical episode, here's what I'm going to do, I'm gonna record a little bit of just what's happening in my mind right now, reacting to this news, this is NOT gonna be the full episode, though, this won't go on forever, I'm hoping to get either Eli or Andrew or both on and record with them. But for now, you're just going to give you my reaction.

0:03:13 Thomas: What do we do? This election of Trump is a rejection of everything good. It really is. It's a rejection of the idea that you need to be factual, it's a rejection of the idea that you need to be respectful, that you need to have some experience, that you know what the fuck you're doing, it's rejection of anything that I would say would be a good quality in a president, this is a rejection, this is anti-intellectualism in its extreme, it is, this is anti-intellectual people getting their revenge. What I'm going to do is, and maybe you'll hear a more informed me, me later on.

I'm going to research the hell out of this and do my best, as I'm sure we all are, to figure out what happened. I don't know. I would say my hunch will be a low turnout issue. That will be my hunch. I've seen some weird demographics already, but I don't know how much those demographics are because liberals didn't go to the polls and therefore that just skews it, and it just makes it look like Trump got more of a percentage of Latinos because Latino voters, voters didn't vote, or something, or if there really was a difference between what polls were showing and the reality in terms of demographics. But

0:04:39 Thomas: My hunch is it's just hard to win three elections in a row. It just doesn't happen very often, almost never. And people were not excited about Hillary. I don't know why fear of Trump didn't motivate people. That was why I thought we were going to be fine. I thought fear of a truly awful candidate would motivate everybody. I'm sitting here, I mean, I'm stuck in a loop right now. My loop is this, I think this is the worst thing I could imagine. This has got, this is horrifying. This is, and then, then what I think is it can't really be as bad as I'm making it out to be, right?

It can't, really, be all that bad. I keep thinking, that's what I try to do, because I try try to make things normal. My brain tries to make things into normal. And I've been fighting this with Trump and I keep pulling out of it though. But I try. I think you know what? He's just, it's just a Republican. He'll just be the Republican president. And then I think No, it's really that bad. It's really bad. I think, you know who I'm hurting most for right now, and this doesn't mean anything, this doesn't mean objectively, this is the worst outcome or anything, or

0:05:59 Thomas: This is who has it worse, not saying that at all, but I'm hurting worse now for women. That's what, that's, that's who's on my mind right now. Because, there are a lot, Trump has a lot of, of course, a ton of just disgusting policies and quotes and everything. The wall, the, all that, I get it, but, I think where we truly saw, just how deplorable he is, is with women, is the misogyny, and, and it, that was where it was, there was the most evidence, you could write some other stuff off, you can say, well, the wall, he wants a, he, wants a country, do we have a country or do we not have a country.

We need borders. It doesn't mean he hates Mexicans necessarily. This is me rationalizing. And you could do that. Sure, he's got some sketchy past dealings with African-Americans and his real estate things. He was shutting people out of housing. He's got some sketchies. But I don't know. Maybe he's over that. Maybe it's whatever. There's a lot of excuses you could make. But with women, there's no excuse. How he treated Hillary, he, we just elected a fucking person president who said, in a debate, just said, you're a nasty woman.

0:07:15 Thomas: Can you, how? I don't, this is who, and I get, I just saw a text from my wife. She's crying that this could happen. Are we, is she being dramatic? Am I being dramatic when I saw that? I started crying because of what, what it must mean to be a woman in this country and to feel like somebody can say this shit and win the election. I can't believe it. I really can't. I don't know. I'll just keep fucking recording this. I keep trying to pull myself out of it. This is like when Glenn Beck was crying over some bullshit. I guess. I don't know. I've tried. I can't imagine. I can't Imagine being, being a woman and seeing the things he said about women and seeing how he's treated a more qualified woman.

0:08:19 Thomas: The idea that he could even be close. I, I don't know guys. I don't know whether to laugh or cry. I'm doing both right now. Just don't know. I, I hope, I hope one day I can laugh at myself I hope this is funny to me one day. I hope it's funny to you one day maybe it's to you now.

0:08:41 Thomas: Okay, I've collected myself a little bit, I don't, I apologize if that made anyone uncomfortable, I'm sorry, but that's reality, that's what I'm doing, and this won't be the whole episode, don't worry, I'll just record for a little longer here. Really, though, can you imagine? Can you imagine what it must feel like? And I don't need, many of you don't to imagine. I need to imagine, because you know why? I'm the guy that's gonna be okay. I am the guy who's gonna fucking fine, because I'm white, I'm 30, I am well off, I will be fucking fine.

Health issue I don't have to worry about, having access to to proper health care as a woman, I don't have to worry about, I don't know. The atmosphere of just bigotry that is growing, that's one thing I didn't even, even I didn't fear that was happening. I thought Trump was just pulling people out of the woodwork a little bit and making people more comfortable expressing their racism. I actually think, based on what I've read, I actually think he's increasing it. I really do. And I know that this might sound crazy that some of you, you know, maybe you already knew this, maybe of you already suspected this. I didn't think that.

I didn't just having a leader like that, somebody who's now a fucking leader. I can't believe it. Having someone who's a leader, like that would actually increase it. I think it does. I think it does. There's more groups are popping up with chapters of the KKK, just all this shit. It's all popping up, but I don't have to worry about that because I'm white. I'll be fine. All right, you know what?, I, I think I'll just call a stop to this first portion of the show, that is my immediate reaction, I'll, just, say this, I, uh, uh, Andrew Torrez, openingarguments, friend, et cetera, you know, he will

0:10:42 Thomas: Attest to this, I was panicking early, now, I, first, let me say, I as wrong as wrong can be, my pinned tweet was wrong, my predictions were wrong, My gloating last week was wrong. I was as wrong, as it gets, proudly wrong. I still don't believe I'm wrong. I don't get it. It's impossible. Anyway, I'm as wrong as wrong can get. But immediately when results started coming in, I was panicking because in my mind, it's an all or nothing thing. That's why. That'S why I was panic so early. I expected a blowout.

0:11:23 Thomas: I expected the polls to be wrong the other way because I just did not believe. I'm not a positive person. I don't think of myself as optimistic. Quite the opposite. I think of my life as optimistic, but it's just one of those things where it's like the emperor has no clothes and I expect the entire election to turn up. Yes, we all vote the emperor's naked. It's ridiculous. The emperor is not wearing any clothes. And so that was my thought.

Like, that's what's going to happen. Happened and then some little results started coming in. Oh, they say he has clothes on. Oh they say the emperor has clothes. Oh they're great clothes. This state says it. And it's like sure she still could have eked it out. She still can by the way. As of recording this she has a tiny tiny chance on 538 it says if she, let's see, she has to win Michigan which she was behind in, Pennsylvania which was really close 50-50, and then also win either Alaska and New Hampshire or win Arizona. So that's her path. Maybe you're hearing this and you're laughing. Maybe you are in hysterics at how much I was panicking, but, and maybe that happened. I don't think it did. The point is it, it doesn't matter. It doesn't, it shouldn't have been this close. It shouldn't've been anywhere near this close, it just should not have been. And people, okay, I'll record more thoughtful stuff later.

0:12:43 Thomas: You know what? Yes, I'll save it. I'm sorry. I, you know, I'll collect my thoughts. I'm too emotional right now. I'll put something together. I'm going to record maybe with Andrew, maybe with Eli. We'll see how it goes. Anyway, let me just say that to close this section, I apologize on behalf of all white men who made this possible, and we'll see. It's looking like that might not have even been the bulk of it. I think that other demographics didn't vote as much in favor of Hillary as we all thought they would, but to women, to people of color, to Muslims, to Mexicans, to just anybody, everybody that he is against, I am sorry that the country has endorsed that. That. I'm sorry that today, even though she's probably going to win the popular vote, so I mean there's that, but that still means 49 point whatever percent of people support those things and don't find it beyond the pale to vote for those things, which I would, I would find that just undoable, but no, I'm sorry. I apologize. I don't know.

[0:14:18] Hello, I'll, oh, joining me right, how do I start? I don't know how to start this. I was gonna try to be really fake about it. I Was gonna try, to be like, really fake, like, like just a total departure from the first 12 minutes I recorded, where I'm like, just dying, and just, you have no idea, But anyway, no, I'm not gonna do that, I will say, uh joining, me for this, uh you know, this wake for fucking America, is, uh

[0:14:43] Is Andrew Torrez. How you doing, Andrew? I, I can't even say. I'm doing great. No, I'm I'm here I wasn't expecting you to. I was actually expecting like a lot. This was was going to be the first 10 minutes was just how

[0:14:56] Are you doing? So this is your, this is your show? Yeah, okay, so you're, so you're forwarding your time over to you relinquish your time over to one Eli Bosnick. How are you doing Eli? Oh

[0:15:08] I'm doing great. Oh man, yeah man, I've, this, I haven't been mad for a day in years. I have not had, first of all, if you have not checked in on Thomas's seven Twitters, they are nuts right now. It's very rare that you get to see Thomas not be like calm and collected and thoughtful, and all day on Twitter he's just been telling people to fuck themselves. He just hits where the F key is ish and then sends the tweet. We've gotten 24 hours of the deep deep insides

[0:15:49] of Thomas Smith. You soak it up while you, I don't think I've been, that I Don't know. Have I been that personal? I just tweeted a million things that are fucking true about the state

[0:15:59] Of our fucking country. God, I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna take a casual glance. I meant to, while you're doing That, I meant to announce, this will not be edited, sorry, we've already, you know, I, this will be a not for children show, and I'm not editing because I'm trying to turn it around, I thought, hmm, I can either, uh, you know, record our reactions and then edit and release it Monday, long after the country's exploded, Trump already

[0:16:23] Pushed the nuclear button somehow, like, they're like, how did he get access to it? I don't know, he just found a way, uh, or I could just do It and release it and turn around right away. So there's, I'm not editing anything. So you're gonna hear all of Eli.

[0:16:35] He, he, he starts getting a national security briefing starting, uh, today, just, just, you know, well, he already got some form of them, right, as a candidate, he gets, yeah, you get, you get like the, the b -level the Mickey Mouse, like, but, but no, I mean, he's going to, and like, you know, sitting next to Obama now, oh, like, they actually have to be together, I would not do that, no, I don't, I don't know, sorry, I, I mean, it's, it's the same level, I don't know, okay, I thought they would have to be some actual requirement where they had to sit together to get them, like, it's, a it's a good for a sitcom, it'd be perfect, perfect, right, so keep an eye on his Twitter, if he comes out with anything about China at like

[0:17:15] 3:43 a.m, it's probably because there's a nuke headed our way that he knows about but we don't. Oh, so are you gonna, you're gonna talk some shit on my Twitter? Okay, I've got a fantastic one. Okay, this is my favorite one of the day, so Stephen Knight, who, who, just to remind everybody, is a coward who won't have a conversation with me, wrote, "I suppose I have the meltdown of the regressive left to look forward to, small victories," and then Dave Rubin, who's also a coward, and is just gay enough and white enough to be past the line of privilege, and that's why he's evil. He wrote, "Blame is squarely on them. They drove decent liberals to the right, and they energized people who were tired

[0:17:55] Of being mocked and belittled." And Thomas, our thoughtful full host of Atheistically Speaking, wrote, "Fuck this bullshit hack narrative and the assholes peddling it, liberals weren't driven to vote for Trump," and that's really the crux of Thomas's day, some of them are thoughtful, but most of it is just a drunken angry phone call, my twin, I just got another, "My pin tweet is officially wrong, fuck you voters, fuck you, fuck you, and fuck you, please, somehow Hillary pull this out." All right,

[0:18:35] Look, I wasn't having, maybe things were said, I stand by everything I said Though, that's the thing about me is, I don't, I don't, there's nothing you didn't gain access to, anything that I regret, that's all, perfect

[0:18:47] That's oh, I agree, it's just it's rare when it comes. Everyone who's followed me on Twitter for the last six years is like, "Yeah, no, that's an Eli tweet." But it's nice to see it from you. Heath got back on on Twitter, that's how upsetting this election was. He fucking downloaded the Twitter app and remembered his password, which is, you know, you know you had to fucking reset that thing like four times, send it to an email he doesn't use. Exactly, he has to ask somebody what his email is and like his mom helps him log into it. Exactly, he's calling Verizon. Yeah, you know all the security questions on his email are like facts about him from the 80s, like that's when he said it, what

[0:19:27] was your first middle school crush, what was it, ah, it's a president's name. So he got on Twitter, it's all, we're all showing our truest selves. And Andrew put a very thoughtful thing in, very thoughtful thing, why don't you talk about what Andrew put in, I guess, since we've called out my shit we can contrast it. Andrew did, well, Andrew's, here's the thing, Thomas is a grown-up most of the of time, but deep down Thomas is me, like, I, the reason why I'm here so often is because Thomas is just, he's like, "Look at, that's my id." "That's my, that's what it is. If my brain doesn't stop the words from running around." But Thomas, but Andrew, you wrote

[0:20:08] a really wonderful post that I actually thought was was pretty fantastic about Trump supporters celebrating. Yeah, I, so two things, first, like, I take that all back, that was in the moment. Yeah, no, I, it, I've done the exact opposite of Thomas, which is, uh, I have been Twitter silent since, uh, the election, um, since since returns started coming in, uh, and that was, you know, as things, as it was kind of a a slow moving moving train wreck, and it was starting to become obvious that that things were going poorly starting at about nine o'clock, uh, yesterday, uh, I realized I

[0:20:48] did not have thoughts that I could share in like two sentences, right? So I've just, I've been completely Twitter silent, um, and then, uh, and then this morning I woke up and I had two different, um, like Trump gloating, you know, trump Trump supporters sort of gloating, and comments to me, and like my very first reaction was, uh, I'm going to punch this wall. Um, and, and I was, I was really pissed off. And then I was like, well, I don't know, like, like I like I was really like, I really felt like

[0:21:28] this is somebody who has just targeted me personally, and you know, now I, I want to just punch things until, um, everybody hurts. And and then I thought, like, I don't know, like if Hillary had won, right, I would be celebrating, you know, so I don't know. No, and and I agree with that. And I think you'll notice if you look at my Twitter feed, Eli, since you're in charge of looking at everybody's Twitter feed. I never once did anything like that. I didn't tell everything. I... All my anger is at two things. And, I have a couple questions for you guys and we can start talking about it a little bit, but my anger is directed first and foremost at liberals who didn't fucking vote. That is number one, because they should know better. And secondly, at people who are peddling, as I said, they're fucking bullshit narratives supported by nothing but their own biases as to what went wrong

[0:22:22] before there was even data about it. Go ahead. Yeah, no, that that's that, and we could name individual people, but like, yeah, you can take any catastrophic event and if you've been selling a book that says, you know, the decline of America is due to the regressive left not calling out PC culture, like. Like, yeah, you can just complete the set. Let's just fill in the blanks, right? That it PC culture has caused trial. I cut. No, like it's so frustrating. So let me, let's ask, you know, the only professional person among us, Eli, which would be Andrew, the Only Person who's with it, who could should really

[0:22:59] should command any respect of the three. Like I thought, let's ask who's going to end with my opinion. Opinion, let's let's hear someone who's eating three Subway sandwiches in a row, that's what we need to hear from, someone who has gone back and complained about not getting extra meatballs even though they ordered and paid for extra meatballs. Eli, your thoughts on the electoral college? Okay, there's a good topic, there's a good topic uh I don't give a shit about the electoral college. People are playing. I want to know what Andrew thinks. I want to know what eli thinks. Ranks. That's something I've seen a few people blame, because Hillary won the popular vote. I just, there's not an ounce of me that gives a shit about that because we didn't fucking vote. People, the people, the liberals in the swing States, I posted a graph that I saw. I don't know if Matt Dillahunty made it, but he's where I first saw it of the turnout.

[0:23:50] You can look at the fucking turnout, it was terrible, no one voted. I don't, what do you, but, but there's my thoughts. What do you guys, Andrew, what do you think about the Electoral College in this case. Like, is it, do you have a problem with it?

[0:24:04] So let me answer that in a second, I would first say that, um, people who are saying we need to abolish the electoral college because, you know, Hillary won the popular vote and Al Gore won the popular vote in 2000, like that that's not a good argument, right? Like Hillary won the popular vote in an election in which her opponent was not trying to win the popular. Yeah, right. So I, like, if if you had abolished the electoral college, which requires a constitutional amendment and isn't going to happen, that then, you know, Trump would have campaigned differently. I, like, I I'm still, I'm at a loss for describing. Well, that assumes that Trump's campaigning habits had any relation

[0:24:45] to facts or strategy, what he did. Sure, but like, you know, it, it's still like you cannot just take as given, right, we've had Democrats win the popular vote but lose the electoral college, therefore abolish the electoral college, and, you know, all of a sudden we have an uninterrupted line of Democratic presidents, like that, that's just not, yeah, that's a result-based argument, that's not based on actual principles. So, you know, look, we know what the downside of the electoral college is, it means that when people live in the states the three of us live in, right, New York, Maryland, and California, like our votes

[0:25:25] don't matter, um, because, you know, the only people that matter are people in swing states. But like, as you and I said in your other show, Thomas, like, you never really know what states are gonna matter. Like, I don't think too many people yesterday in Minnesota were like, "Oh, well, our state's gonna go completely down to the wire because there are millions of hidden racists." Um, so you know, so whatever, that that's the argument against the electoral college, it excludes some states and only people in swing states matter. But if you went with popular vote, it would literally take, in my view, maybe I'm wrong on this, but it would take the polarization that we have

[0:26:05] and turn it up to, I mean, like 11 is the wrong metaphor, like 17, 35, whatever. Because if the only thing that matters is getting out another person, right, is driving up the popular vote, I don't see why candidates would ever do do anything other than rally their base, right? Like, it's 15 times harder to persuade somebody who's kind of neutral than it is to just take somebody who likes you but is sort of apathetic. So, you know, Democrats would only ever visit cities and Republicans would only ever go, like, I don't know, to rural Idaho or whatever. Farms. Yeah, exactly. And like,

[0:26:46] the people who are like, "No, well, if you just counted all the a popular vote then like candidates would stop in all 50 states," like no they wouldn't, right? Like they would, yeah, they would stop in a few states, place the easiest place to turn out their votes. And like right now the electoral college forces you to try and figure out where, you know, those swing voters are. And like that sucks if you're super partisan, like it's gonna, it's you're gonna have the same kind of problem if you go to a straight popular vote. All right, Eli, what, are well, it turns the country into New Yorkvania, which is something that like is great for me because I want the liberals to have all

[0:27:26] the power, but we just, that's an admission you need to make. You can't be like, "Oh my goodness, like the popular vote is truly the will of the people." No, the there's lots and lots and lots and lots of stupid or evil people. There's two options, stupid or evil. There's lots of stupid or evil people who really wanted Trump to win, right? And they're out on farms.

And there's less of them than there are, especially if it was a popular vote, because then everyone in New York, like the New York percentages tend to be way depressed because everyone's like, New York's gonna go blue. I mean, I live in New York. You guys live in super blue states. So we have friends who were just like, oh, I mean, I'm gonna vote, but like New York goes

[0:28:06] super blue, so, like, why. And that, that's a valid thing and that represses some people. For me, it's actually not the 46.6% that didn't vote because I don't know why they didn't vote. Here's the thing, I don't know that they're not a single mom who had to pick up a kid and then he got shot by a bear and the octopus came up and dragged him down into the, I know they're not that. Yeah, okay, right. What I, what I, what I do have is the information of people who sat in a voting booth in Pennsylvania and hovered their little pen over the, the thing that said Hillary Clinton, and instead

[0:28:46] they filled in Gary Johnson. That is who I hold responsible. Not just numerically, because the numbers do back me up on that, not just numerically, but because they, they knew better. And I hold them more than Trump voters, because again, a lot of Trump voters are just uneducated. They do deserve that level of empathy. But Gary Johnson voters, I believe, for the most part, knew better. And their message was more important than the safety of people who don't have their privilege. And that's who I hold responsible. That's who this needs to be visited on.

0:29:21 Thomas: Interesting. So do the numbers bear that out, Andrew? Have you looked at that? That, because I, my impression, my first impression was, I actually didn't find third party voters as blameworthy as I thought I was going to. I thought the third party was going to get, the third parties were going to get more than they did. And I think that people do a trick where they see, oh, Gary Johnson got, you know, X number of votes, Hillary lost by X number of votes. Well, if every single Gary Johnson voter went over to Hillary, I don't think that's going to, I don't think that's realistic. I think that there's, you'd have to have information on how, how many of them would have voted for Trump in a two-person election. And I reject the idea

[0:29:58] that they're necessarily much smarter than Trump voters. I don't know, there may be a little bit, Eli. I don't know. But what's your interpretation, Andrew? So I think I'm closer to you, Thomas, than I am to Eli. And sort of for this reason, okay, if you look at the polls, and by the way, I have, have to give credit to this, uh, to my son Alex, who, uh, his homeschooling assignment for, um, for humanities, where, you know, we've been doing election related stuff, uh, for, for the year, uh, was, uh, I, I just wrote him a, a little three-word thing that said, "What went wrong?" And, uh, and then when we went, when

[0:30:38] we went to, uh, to baseball practice tonight, uh, he was talking to me about everything he looked up. And he said, you know, the polls, um, got Hillary Clinton's share of the vote correct. Yeah, I was gonna talk about that. It, it was exactly, though, the polls exactly nailed that. It's just, they were way low on Trump. And, um, so because I have a 14-year-old doing my research, I was gonna say, well, I I don't know. Because the voter, because really? Because okay. The The interpretation I had or that I saw was that

[0:31:13] they got her within 2% for national. Yeah, you know, look, I mean, I think that I interpreted that statement as, you know, right, within 2%. And I mean, he went and he looked at, like, the swing state polls, and, you know, sort of dug into the numbers beyond kind of the top line on the national. Well, let's get him on the show. Let's hang up. Yeah, yeah, it's 12, he's been in bed for hours, um, and, and, and the only, right, so we started talking about, like, what, you know, what are the hypotheses that would, uh, explain that, and the only thing that, uh, that

[0:31:54] we could come up with is the fucking regressive left. I want to hear Alex talk about the regressive left. Oh yeah, that'd be great. Like, I don't, I, I, yeah, anyway, sorry. The only thing, way too much, literate, there's way too much literature to which I would have to expose him, like, um, no. Right, this was something, you know, that, that all of the polling aggregator sites, you know, that 538's and Princeton Election, and the like, we're saying, like, "Okay, we'll explain how the polls could be off by, you know, three to four percent in order to give, you know, Trump

[0:32:34] a chance of winning," and, like, the only theory they put forward was the, like, shy Trump or embarrassed Trump voters. And I remember, like, making fun of this three days ago, right, and the way to make fun of it was really easy, like, uh, have you ever talked to anybody who's a Trump voter? Like, those people are not fucking shy. Those people are screaming in your face, like, you know, "Make America great again," and wearing their stupid hats and everything else.

And like, um, but, but it seems like that, I, I don't know, I mean, I, I'm doing that, you know, logical fallacy where, uh, I can't think of anything else and I've eliminated the other possibilities, so I'm going with that one. Okay, I want to say a few things about this, because I

[0:33:14] read a really good 538 article just now that I'm sure, I, I'm sure you guys have read, a lot of people have read, but I think, oh no, I'm gonna kill Nate Silver and burn, burn that site to the ground. So, no, I haven't read it. Okay. This could be, admittedly, this is going to be them explaining, you know, what happened because they were wrong. But they pointed out in this article, I recommend it, and it's pretty logical, they only missed by 2% % on the popular vote, which is very reasonable and closer than they were in 12. But here's what is so interesting and what sucks so much about the situation situation, is if one out of 100 voters, if 1% % of voters had gone the other way, it was a blowout for Hillary.

It's just that 1%. What they didn't realize, I think what people missed was, yes, she had a strong national lead, but her electoral college lead wasn't that strong. It was like she was just above him in all the swing states, so it looked like she had this huge electoral college lead, when in reality, since she was off, since turnout, in my opinion, turnout was way fucking low. So she, and I think that hurt her more than it hurt Trump. And therefore she dipped down a little bit and that just put her over, the, that put Trump over the top in a bunch of, like, five or six or whatever really close state calls. And that made the difference. And they weren't off by that much. It was just the map was, the map

[0:34:38] looks so different for being off by a small amount. Yeah, that's totally incompatible with everything 538 has been saying for 10 years though, right? Like, really?

Because, yeah, well, because, like, look at the 2012 map, right, like you could say the exact same thing, you know, Obama got 332 electoral votes or whatever, like, and but you could do the same thing, right, like you could go down and be like, okay, well, he only won Florida by one and a half points, and he only, want you know, like, you can always play this game, game, uh, when it's, you know, well, you can't play it in 2008 where Obama won by seven and a half points, but like, it, a, a three -point lead, I mean, one of the things that they've

[0:35:18] said, you can find, you do a search for it on the site, is a three -point lead in a state right before, uh, two days before the election is a big lead, right? Yeah, I know it doesn't seem like a lot. Badly, badly missed. That's, that's true. I think that does simplify it a little too much. There were a few states where they just completely missed. Yeah, and this is, – like, what I don't understand is, – certainly, I'd love to get your thoughts on this, when I saw the, the, the Trump campaign

[0:35:59] And the Trump spokespeople and everybody associated with him yesterday, like even as the night was wearing on, like this did not look like a group of people that expected to win. Even Republicans didn't expect it. That's the thing. That's why I'm not that mad at the pollsters. Like, nobody. And so when you look at like the sort of crazy strategy where Trump went to, you know, Michigan and Wisconsin and Minnesota, and like, I, I do not believe, like, I think that was just a sort of, you know, like bizarre drunken gamble.

0:36:32 Thomas: Okay, that's exactly a question that I was gonna. Something that is totally bugging me is people are, after

[0:36:38] the fact, saying Trump knew exactly what he was doing. I don't believe that. I just, I don't believe that. I don't, you know.

0:36:45 Thomas: I, it's, it's probably motivated reasoning. I just, I don't want to live in a world where Trump hasn't, knows anything about what

[0:36:51] he's doing. But also the evidence shows, yet he didn't know what he was, no, and look, like his

[0:36:57] right, his campaign manager and CEO are Kellyanne Conway, who is a 12th rate pollster who has never, never run a campaign above the, like, high school, you know, yearbook committee level. And Steve Bannon, who runs an online newspaper, right? Like, you cannot tell me that those people are secretly, like, the smartest political geniuses in the world. Like, no. There's no possible way, right? Like, if they had had the Bush '04 team in there, right? Right. Like if they had had, you know, longstanding, you know, Republican, if they'd gotten, oh, gosh, Ed

[0:37:38] Rollins. Right. Like if they'd gotten somebody like that, that's a, that's a longstanding Republican operative who has helped, like, not just mainstream Republican candidates, but like he was briefly signed on to the Perot campaign in '92 before he quit and was like, I was seriously concerned, concerned I was going to elect this guy president and he's mentally unstable, um, you know, right? Like, if they had had hardcore Republican operatives running the campaign, then I would give that theory some credence. But like, you cannot tell me, like, yeah, you know, the three of us, if the three of us were running a campaign and all of a sudden we beat, like, you know, a 99 to 1

[0:38:18] odds, like, you know, the first, the first five options you'd go with would be dumb luck, right? Like, yeah, you would not say, well, obviously, you know, Eli, Thomas, and Andrew are the smartest campaign operatives in the world having never done it before. It just sucks. That's such a small difference in the vote. It really is a tiny thing. Just one percent of voters going the other way. And I know you're making the argument that's always that way in certain states. And yeah, I, I see that, but I think that it, it was really, really close in all these states and she just lost them all by a tiny margin, or at least enough of them.

If it had gone slightly different, the shitty thing about our, you know, our system, and I don't know that there's a better way, there might be, but is that it changes everything everybody's saying. You know, it goes 1% the other way. We're all talking about how stupid Trump was and how he didn't know how to run a campaign. He totally ruined everything and all that. And, but just because of the 1%, you know, it's just like, it goes completely the other way. Well,

[0:39:17] You made the predicate to the point that I wanted to make tonight, which is I really, really hope that we can at least – if there's one positive thing that we can go back and get from this election for future elections, it is the end of the, like, well, I use my vote to send a message that X. So, people, a vote is not a message. A vote is a way of achieving an outcome, right? And when you say, well, I'm casting my vote for a third party or staying home or voting for this other person, so

[0:39:58] I can send a message to X that Y, like, well, then you're an idiot, okay? Because nobody interprets messages. The only thing that counts at the, the end of the day is who won. And like, why we have to keep telling people this when you have 2000, 2004, and now 2016, like, I don't know. But like, George Bush didn't win, uh, by any objective measure in 2000 and yet was somehow made the president. And the fact that he lost the popular vote, uh, and by any reasonable measure lost the Electoral College, uh, and won, you know, Scalia and and four other conservative

[0:40:38] justices on the Supreme Court, like the fact that that happened did not hamper him in any way from being president, right? And then the fact that he just narrowly squeaked out a win over Kerry, I mean, I don't know if you remember, but George Bush's first inaugural address of his second term was, well, now that you've elected me to this, you know, sweeping landslide, what I'm going to do is privatize Social Security. And like that didn't work because that's massively unpopular. But right. But there was never any talk of, like, well, you know, like you just

[0:41:18] barely squeaked by on the fact that like your campaign ginned up all these, you know, marriage amendments in swing states or whatever. And, you know, you just you just barely managed to beat one of the worst Democratic candidates in history. Like there was none of that. It was just he won. So he gets to do that. And so, you know, if Clinton had won 270 to 268, like she would have just as much quote political capital as if she'd won 538 to zero.

And like the same is true for Trump. I don't have no idea what Trump is going to do. But any idea that like, you know, margins and third party votes and staying home and this and that sends messages is just stupid. Like a vote is

[0:41:58] not a message. A vote is a way to achieve an outcome. And if you're voting, not caring about the outcome, then you're doing voting wrong. Wrong. Well, I've never heard Eli be this quiet for this long, so I'm now worried. Does anybody, I've never, I'm never more interested than I am in Andrew. Yeah, that's good. Point, let me throw this at you. I love, I love you too, Eli. Can, can I get you to consider, uh, being more mad at the, the mother, the single mother who got shot by a bear, or whatever you're saying. Um, so here's the only reason, oh let me, let me just give you a little bit of caveat

[0:42:28] What did you say? You said, you gave, gave a great caveat. You said the liberal voter who just didn't show up, and that person can fuck themselves a million times over, because the person who can't vote and that person exists, and we're not talking, pretending that we're talking about that person isn't useful, is much different than the person who doesn't vote. Very likely there are people marching in the streets of my city right right now, right, to protest Donald Trump's election who did not vote. And those people should get eaten by bears. They should get eaten by bears in front of us on TV, and it should be free for everyone who voted. Like, they check

[0:43:08] and say, oh, you voted and you get the, chain get to watch them, like, oh, it's the lesser of two evils, oh god, it's behind me, and we all get to watch, me, yeah, get him, get him, oh, it's a polar bear. This week it sounds like a great way for us all to unify. So I do want to caveat with that, is that for the people who couldn't vote are very different than the people who chose not to. Well, when you look at the comparison of 2008, I want to know what, are there just more bear octopus related incidents now? Because in 2008, somehow everyone can vote. I get it. It's Obama. He's the best. He's such a great candidate. I get it. He's magical. And I agree. He's an engaging candidate. Hillary, I don't know, for some reason people didn't find that to be true. I get it. But still, like that many more people voting in 08 just what How many more? People Like 40

[0:43:56] million, it's a lot, it might even be more than that, it's huge, it's, and and and look, like the solution to the bear octopus thing is what people like us are fighting for. And what I hope we will continue to fight for is expanding early voting, getting rid of the restrictions. The more you have that, the more you get around the I can't vote problem, which obviously we're all in agreement, you can't blame the single mother working two shifts for not getting out to vote. Vote, I exaggerated, it was 10 million more. Sorry. It was 10 million more uh turnout for for obama as as of right now. I don't know my change.

[0:44:33] But there were, but there were 20 million. All I saw was the total early vote numbers were 43, they were high. Yeah, right. And of that, that split disproportionately Democratic, right? Yeah, so, you know, when you, when you see 10 million less on, that's, that's, uh, that's with an additional, you know, 25 million early votes for Obama, so the turnout was, is sort of even more, uh, disparate and even more bad than that. So, I, like, I agree, number one, the, the, the problem is, you know, people who don't vote. Well, here's the point I want to make that I forget if I've heard someone make this.

Sorry if I'm ripping it off, but I just thought of it today. Why do we have to be so fucking inspired? That's what I want to know. Is it not enough to just look at Trump and just say, okay, this is a disaster. How about I go do the thing that I can do about it, which is vote. We have to be, oh, well, you know, Hillary says why the turnout was low. See, she's not as inspiring as Obama. Fuck that. You just be a grownup and go do the thing you have to do, which is fucking vote. I don't get it. We have president

[0:45:41] Trump, guys. President president Trump because can I can I stop though and say like because I said number one I want to blame people who didn't vote and like that's true and we all agree on that and I don't know structurally how to fix that and I agree all of the um you know I'm only voting for a candidate if you know they're my dream candidate people like I'm sure we'll rail against those people too but I like there's plenty of blame to go around to the Hillary campaign too right like I I mean I feel like uh you and I uh made the only or literally like the only place on earth that had a clear answer

[0:46:21] on her emails right like she's supposed to be the policy wonk I get that like it's you can't you know your answer every time in a press conference can't be like go listen to Opening Arguments right why not which would that would have been that's literally literally my answer that's been my answer from Joe genuinely like I love to Facebook fight and my answer for months has just been here you go a Harvard lawyer went through he read all the things and didn't see his family and he was like okay this guy left a bomb inside a basket somewhere and was like I'll get it later but I gotta take a do so uh Taco Bell's got two for one tacos gotta go he read all the cases he has

[0:47:02] the answers he went to Harvard and all the Green Party wiki league's assholes on my Facebook feed were like oh my god I don't listen to podcasts yeah do you have it in meme form like something with Jill on the corner that says revolution about a pipeline and I killed myself you're talking to my fucking ghost but like I mean look so the Hillary Clinton campaign never said there has not been as far as I can tell like they they didn't send out one of of their surrogates on MSNBC to say, okay, look, I realize this is going to be hard to say in 30 seconds, but here's what's going on with the emails, okay? And just walk

[0:47:42] everyone through it and say, look, the original decision was made. So number one, you never heard anybody from the Hillary Clinton campaign ever say, by the way, the one thing no one's ever talked about is every every single document that conforms to the norms of a document that has any level of classification on it was never migrated off of the Department of State server. Never. That's hundreds of thousands of documents. Everything that clearly said this is confidential or this is for your eyes only or this is, you know, any of those higher level of scrutiny never moved. Not once.

[0:48:22] Always treated with the ultimate respect. Everybody who's ever looked at us, including, you know, Jason Chaffetz, who, you know, literally calls up Hillary Clinton's house in the middle of the night. And like all of these people have looked at this and agree, everything we were supposed to handle properly, we handled properly. Then of that, there's a teeny tiny little segment. It's like nine email chains. It's a hundred total emails. That's it. That were goofed up in some way. And those are what you're talking about. And everybody who's looked at that has said, well, you know what? Maybe you should have taken a better look at these nine email chains. Domains uh but we didn't and if you want to say like my

[0:49:03] 68 year old candidate sucks at email my 68 year old candidate sucks at eval can we move on past that now but there's literally nothing there so you don't you think they have a lot of blame to for not responding I can't tell you I was in Florida when everything went from like Hillary's gonna win by 12 to uh you know Hillary's up by one right like I mean literally like that was the Comey letter then I went to Florida I I sort of disconnected from the news, and I looked and pulled at the polls, and I was like, well, that seems to have sucked for this week.

And I think that it was because – I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but everything I saw was the Comey letter comes out and

[0:49:43] says, okay, we have Anthony Weiner's laptop, and there are all these emails now, and it looks bad, and Trump is running around yelling, lock her up again. And every time I saw a Hillary Clinton spokesperson, their response was, well, we think people have made up their minds on emails already, right? Like, I didn't hear one of them look in the camera and go, do you not understand that Hillary Clinton now is calling for the FBI to release every single one of these emails to the public, right? That's how confident she is that this is nothing, okay? We've been through this. There's nothing you make a good point there's nothing there and nobody said that they all felt like they all said oh we think this is priced into

[0:50:23] the poll like what the fuck kind of answer is that right like so you know what I was gonna I was about to throw a bunch of exit poll stuff at you and then I realized it's the people that that would matter for your claim which I think is a good argument and compelling we would need the people who never exited their house we would need this the state at home uh numbers uh because I was going to say that the the exit polls show that 94% of Hillary voters thought she was honest and trustworthy as opposed to, you know, and then only, let's

[0:50:56] see, only 70. Yeah, because she only turned out us, right? Yeah, yeah. I saw this happen. I don't think I've ever seen this happen at the presidential level like this. And I suppose you could start making arguments about Al Gore and, you know, I don't know that we need to go there. Okay, but hold on. Let me counter something. Donald Trump is so much more demonstrably worse. He's so much worse. I don't know. I get that she wasn't perfect. I get it. She might not have had a good response on this email nothing thing. But like, I still blame the people who were swept up in that too much to realize. Look, okay, if we were talking about President Jeb Bush or President whoever you want to say, Marco Rubio right now, I think I would agree 100 if let's just change out the candidate and pretend all the numbers, all the results, everything is identical. I'd say, yeah, you know what? She, kind of messed that up.

[0:51:57] That's her fault. But when the opposite, when the person she's going against is the worst person to ever be up for election demonstrably lies at all times, that's where I think that goes out the window. They still had a responsibility to get out there and fucking stop a completely unqualified imbecile who, has no substance. It's not like he's, oh, he's a liar and he's full of all these, lies and scandals and stuff, but at least he's got the good policies and stuff. He has no substance. There's nothing there. And the idea that that couldn't motivate people is killing me. Well so

[0:52:33] So two things, first I I was I was saying this earlier today, as far as I can tell, I'm correct me if I'm if I'm wrong, Donald Trump has campaigned on one specific policy proposal and that was building the wall and no one thinks he's going to do it, not even his support, and he stopped talking about it, right? So I totally agree with you right there's zero he just he just campaigned on her and – yeah, anyway, go ahead. But where I was going to go, two years ago in Maryland, right, we had a gubernatorial election and the Democratic candidate was named I think Anthony Brown. He was the former lieutenant governor for Martin O'Malley

[0:53:13] and he was a terrible candidate and everybody knew he was a terrible candidate and nobody liked him.

[0:53:20] and it's Maryland. So you looked at, he was running against this guy named Larry Hogan and all of the polls were like, okay, well, Brown's going to win by 20. And then like right before the, I was like, oh, Brown's going to win by 15. And like the day before the election, there was a Baltimore Sun poll that was like, hey, Brown's going to win by 12 and Hogan won, right? And the reason that Hogan won is the exact same reason. This is what I was about to say that like I've never seen at the presidential level. The reason the polls were wrong was because everybody who was a Hogan supporter was like really, really, really, really, really, really mad and voted and went out and was mobilized.

[0:54:00] And everybody who was a Brown supporter was like, well, you know, like I always vote for the Democrats and like, this guy's pretty terrible, but you know, I'm not voting Republican. And so you had one of the bluest states in the nation elect a kind of doctrinaire – like not a Bill Weld-style Republican, right? Like not a moderate 1970s throwback Rockefeller kind of guy, but a like doctrinaire conservative Republican because those were the only people that can answer the question, I'm voting for my candidate because X, right? And it was, I'm voting for Hogan because I'm mad about

[0:54:41] O'Malley raising taxes. Well, and another part of this and totally I get it. And another part of it is, I didn't even know this, the number I heard was only two times has the same party been able to win three in a row.

[0:54:54] I didn't even know it was that rare. So we already were fighting against it. We really were. Yeah, but I don't know that I buy that, right? Right, like you look at the underlying because uh because Barack Obama's approval rating is like 55% percent because when you look at the policies that Hillary Clinton campaigned on uh all of them are sort of broadly popular so it's you know it's not like uh there's some sort of you know massive well I would say I think but I think it is the malaise I think it is no no I I think it's the the, it's, it's being complacent. I don't think it's a, oh, we've had too much Democrat. I think it's, you get complacent on the third one. I don't know. I think that makes sense. They were, people were complacent for Obama's second election. The turnout was way lower on his on his re-election.

[0:56:03] all right, that's it for part one in my reaction to President Trump. President Trump, guys, get used to it. If you didn't vote, fuck you. President Trump—that's what you get. That's what we all get. I don't want to hear this shit about not my president. He is our president. Face up to it! Face the fucking music. He's our fucking president because people didn't vote. Because people—oh, anyway. Alright, I'll leave the rest for part two. Part 2 is available immediately on patreon.com/atheist to my patrons is the least I can do in times like these. And it's okay if you're someone who's not able to contribute. No big deal. Part 2 will be available on Monday.

0:56:48 Thomas: Thank you so much for listening and be safe out there in these times.