Speaker 1: You're listening to Comedy Central. Lying it's as American as
Speaker 1: apple pie or getting in a fist fight over a
Speaker 1: chicken sandwich. And it's especially American now that the President's
Speaker 1: is a ninja level liah. Donald Trump lies so often
Speaker 1: that even his biggest lies can get lost in the
Speaker 1: free This is these American lies. Have you ever told
Speaker 1: a lie? Let's admit it. We all have. Just this morning,
Speaker 1: I was talking to the doorman and my co op
Speaker 1: and he said, Michael, do you know my name? And
Speaker 1: I said, of course, I know your name. Don't be silly.
Speaker 1: In reality, I have no idea what my doorman's name is.
Speaker 1: I think it's something Italian like Credenza or Gabba gool.
Speaker 1: So I lied to him. Today's show is about lies.
Speaker 1: People lie about all sorts of things. They lie about
Speaker 1: their age, they lie about their way, they lie about
Speaker 1: their whereabouts the night their neighbor's charcoal grill went missing.
Speaker 1: But some people lie more often than others. One of
Speaker 1: those people is the President, and we're gonna look at
Speaker 1: one of his biggest whoppers. The three to five million
Speaker 1: people voted illegally in the two thousand sixteen election. From
Speaker 1: w TDS in New York. I'm Michael Costa and Credenza.
Speaker 1: If you're listening, I apologize for not knowing your name, buddy.
Speaker 1: You're listening to The Daily Show presents These American Lies.
Speaker 1: Part one? What's three to five million illegal voters? Among friends?
Speaker 1: I'm here with producer Desi Lyric Desi. It's been a while.
Speaker 1: I saw you on Saturday. You crashed your car into
Speaker 1: my mailbox. So you're here to talk about the voter
Speaker 1: fraud lie? Right? The lie this week is that three
Speaker 1: to five million people voted illegally in the election. Wait,
Speaker 1: what do people know about at this No, it's a lie.
Speaker 1: Cost overrun these American lies. Yeah yeah, sure, Okay, so
Speaker 1: the voter fraud lie is still important today. Republicans use
Speaker 1: fears of voter fraud to restrict voting. We've seen it
Speaker 1: in swing states like Georgia, Virginia, and Wisconsin, where two
Speaker 1: hundred thousand people were recently purged from the voter rolls
Speaker 1: by a circuit judge. And to understand this lie, you
Speaker 1: really have to know about this guy, Donald Trump. Donald
Speaker 1: Trump has lived a pretty incredible life. He's been a
Speaker 1: real estate developer, a mail order stake salesman, a two
Speaker 1: time Emmy loser, and in twos sixteen he became the
Speaker 1: president of the United States. It is now official Donald
Speaker 1: Trump has won the electoral College. Now, most people would
Speaker 1: be happy to win the presidency, but for Trump, winning
Speaker 1: wasn't enough. Donald Trump won with three hundred and six
Speaker 1: electoral votes, even though Hillary Clinton got nearly two and
Speaker 1: a half million more popular votes. See. Trump won the
Speaker 1: electoral college, but he lost the popular vote. So it's
Speaker 1: like he won the lottery, but only because he stole
Speaker 1: the winning ticket from a seven eleven cashier. No, not
Speaker 1: at all. Tell me more about that. Trump won the
Speaker 1: election even though he got almost three million fewer votes
Speaker 1: than Hillary Clinton. And you gotta understand Donald Trump has
Speaker 1: a fragile ego. At his Comedy Central roast in two
Speaker 1: thousand eleven, he told the comedians who were roasting him,
Speaker 1: there was one thing they couldn't make fun of. Do
Speaker 1: you know what? That was his enormous ass, his wealth.
Speaker 1: He's got thin skin, especially when it comes to having
Speaker 1: less than others. So rather than admit he won fewer
Speaker 1: votes than Hillary Clinton, Trump did what came natural to him.
Speaker 1: He told members of Congress that maybe three to five
Speaker 1: million people voted illegally in the most recent presidential election.
Speaker 1: It's a claim the president repeated during his first official
Speaker 1: White House meeting with congressional leaders, telling them he lost
Speaker 1: the popular vote to Hillary Clinton only because millions of
Speaker 1: illegal aulets were cast, the same claim he made on
Speaker 1: Twitter after his win, saying I won the popular vote
Speaker 1: if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally.
Speaker 1: I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions
Speaker 1: of people who voted illegally. It's a stunning claim, right.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like saying I wanted scrabble, but only
Speaker 1: because I kicked my opponent in the crotch. And I
Speaker 1: can do the rest of the story myself. If you
Speaker 1: just want to take off, great, I'm gonna go. Mike
Speaker 1: wave a taco. Every lie starts somewhere, and this American
Speaker 1: lie was born in one of the birthplaces of American democracy, Massachusetts. Well,
Speaker 1: I got a number I don't like. The state flower
Speaker 1: is a Duncan Donuts coffee bean, and the state song
Speaker 1: is an Irish guy puking outside of baseball stadium. And
Speaker 1: now this state has another claim to fame. A professor
Speaker 1: whose work inadvertently ignited the voter fraud controversy. Brian shafter
Speaker 1: when the academics behind the study told CNN Trump is
Speaker 1: misinterpreting the study, calling Trump's claims absurd and not even plausible.
Speaker 1: I'm Brian Schaffner. This is Brian Schaffner. I'm a professor
Speaker 1: of political science at Toughs University. He's a professor of
Speaker 1: political science at Toughs University. Why are you repeating everything
Speaker 1: I say? Schaffner is a smart guy, even if he
Speaker 1: doesn't know how podcasts work. I'm a principal investigator for
Speaker 1: the Cooperative Congressional Election Study, which is a data set
Speaker 1: that has caused all these problems. Every election year, Schaffner's
Speaker 1: group surveys Internet users about their political views. The survey
Speaker 1: doesn't specifically ask about voter fraud, and yet there's a
Speaker 1: question included in the survey that's not really meant to
Speaker 1: look for noncitizens, but there's response Opts in the response
Speaker 1: can select that would identify them as non citizens, and
Speaker 1: that essentially led to this big controversy. There were over
Speaker 1: thirty responds to the survey in two thousand eight, and
Speaker 1: among that group, they're a little over three hundred who
Speaker 1: identified themselves as non citizens when they responded to this
Speaker 1: those supposed non citizens claimed avoted. So we've got this
Speaker 1: Internet survey taken in two thousand eight. Now flash forward
Speaker 1: from two thousand eights that Senator Barack Obama of Illinois
Speaker 1: will be the next president of the United States. He
Speaker 1: defeat to two thousand fourteen year old Jeremy Meechs, also
Speaker 1: known as the hot felon, because that's when this data
Speaker 1: set evolves from a curiosity to a flaming political hot potato.
Speaker 1: This episode of These American Lies is brought to you
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Speaker 1: We've got the perfect rejoinder with warby Snarker. We guarantee
Speaker 1: your friends will say, damn, now that guy has finished
Speaker 1: infinite jest, worry snarker, don't leave your brown stone without it. Hi, everyone,
Speaker 1: we're back with part two. A rough lie, and I
Speaker 1: just wanted to say for anyone listening at home, the
Speaker 1: next part of our podcast contains severe profanity and extreme
Speaker 1: graphic descriptions of sex X what. No, it doesn't. If
Speaker 1: you're listening with your children, you better turn it off
Speaker 1: unless you want those kids to grow up fast. Okay,
Speaker 1: just ignore him. Okay. So it's two thousand fourteen. Jesse Richmond,
Speaker 1: a researcher at Old Dominion University or o d U,
Speaker 1: comes across the survey. Richmond takes the responses to that
Speaker 1: final question about being a citizen and extrapolates that anywhere
Speaker 1: between thirty eight thousand and two point eight million non
Speaker 1: citizens voted in two thousand eight. There's only one problem
Speaker 1: with Jesse Richmond's conclusion. Jesse rich and has been dead
Speaker 1: for fifty years. Uh No. Here's Brian Shaffner revisiting his
Speaker 1: two thousand eight survey that became the basis for Richmond's work.
Speaker 1: We did a study where we actually recontacted the people
Speaker 1: who had claimed to be non citizens, and a lot
Speaker 1: of them when we asked the same question again, changed
Speaker 1: their answer, and among the people who actually claimed to
Speaker 1: be non citizens both times we asked, none of them
Speaker 1: were voters. None of them. Brian Shaffner had renounced his
Speaker 1: own findings, but by this time it's too late. Right
Speaker 1: wing media members are using the O d U survey
Speaker 1: to claim that voter fraud is an enormous problem, even
Speaker 1: though it's based on one studies interpretation of a flawed
Speaker 1: data set. So I guess des just one question remains right,
Speaker 1: How did this lie get to Trump? Oh? I was
Speaker 1: going to ask, is fifteen minutes in the microwave too
Speaker 1: long for a single taco? But that's good to your
Speaker 1: Your questions, good one. So it turns out Trump may
Speaker 1: have been turned onto voter fraud in his natural Habitat
Speaker 1: a golf course. Five days after Trump's inauguration, he hosted
Speaker 1: dinner for Republicans and Democrats. He tells his guests that
Speaker 1: he would have won the popular vote if it hadn't
Speaker 1: been for the three to five million illegal votes. So,
Speaker 1: according to The New York Times, a Democrat at the
Speaker 1: dinner asked Trump, where are you getting this information? And
Speaker 1: Trump cites a guy named Bernard Longer. Oh I loved
Speaker 1: him and dos boot. Bernard Longer as a German professional golfer.
Speaker 1: He won the Masters twice. You smile after a miss,
Speaker 1: but you can if you're Bernard Longer and my Master's
Speaker 1: champion of nineteen. He's now sixty years old. So apparently
Speaker 1: Trump went golfing with Longer sometime between Election Day sixteen
Speaker 1: and this dinner on January seventeen, and on the golf course,
Speaker 1: Longer told Trump about his experience. On election Day in Florida,
Speaker 1: Longer went to vote and he was told that he
Speaker 1: wasn't eligible too, because he's been dead for fifty years,
Speaker 1: because he's German and not a US citizen. But Longer
Speaker 1: looked at other voters in line, who he said, looked
Speaker 1: as if they should not be allowed to vote because
Speaker 1: they've been dead for fifty No one's been dead for
Speaker 1: fifty years. No one. Boris Karloff has been dead for
Speaker 1: fifty years. He died February second, nineteen complications from pneumonia.
Speaker 1: Boris Karloff has been dead for so Trump's got this
Speaker 1: idea in his head from Longer. People are illegally voting
Speaker 1: because this German golfer told him so, and he's upset
Speaker 1: that he didn't win more votes than Hillary. So instead
Speaker 1: of investigating this claim, instead of checking with any election officials,
Speaker 1: he just starts saying in public millions of illegal votes.
Speaker 1: That is something that is extremely fundamental to our functioning democracy,
Speaker 1: affair and free election. You say you're going to launch
Speaker 1: an investigation. What you have presented so far has been debunked.
Speaker 1: It's been called false. Look at the report. I called
Speaker 1: the author of the Pew report last night and he
Speaker 1: told me that they found no evidence. He said, no,
Speaker 1: then why did he write the report? That Pew report
Speaker 1: He was mentioning, he was probably confusing it with the
Speaker 1: study from Old Dominion, which leap frogged off the survey
Speaker 1: from Brian Shaffner, which remember, has been debunked, which remember
Speaker 1: doesn't really matter because now this lie has been supercharged.
Speaker 1: He continues to make this assertion that there were somewhere
Speaker 1: between three and five million voters that voted illegally in
Speaker 1: the last election. If he's got his spokespeople lying citing
Speaker 1: the survey. As I said, I think the president has
Speaker 1: believed that for a while, based on studies, information he
Speaker 1: has about voters about wire tapping, his repeated lies about
Speaker 1: those issues. He doesn't, he doesn't think he's lying about
Speaker 1: those issues, and you know it, and of course his
Speaker 1: friends at Fox News repeat the life back to him.
Speaker 1: President Trump continues to claim that anywhere from three to
Speaker 1: i'd really and undocumented immigrants across the country voted, costing
Speaker 1: him the popular vote. A lot of people think and
Speaker 1: remember about the President's comment about three to five million
Speaker 1: votes he illegal in this country. All this because of
Speaker 1: something that happened on the internet in two thousand eight.
Speaker 1: That's like a scandal breaking today because the President thought
Speaker 1: a Chuck Norris fact was real. Deesse, I just want
Speaker 1: to break in here and warn our listeners. The next
Speaker 1: section of the podcast contains several slurs about the Irish
Speaker 1: and audio taken from a hardcore pornographic film from Japan.
Speaker 1: What script are you reading from? Anyway? Donald Trump doesn't
Speaker 1: just let this lie go. Oh No. In May two
Speaker 1: thousand seventeen, he does this. Donald Trump just signed an
Speaker 1: executive order creating a Commission on Election Integrity to investigate
Speaker 1: alleged voter fraud. Vice President Mike Pennce and Kansas Secretary
Speaker 1: of State Chris Kobak will chair it. That's right. This
Speaker 1: lie created jobs. Real people kissed their kids goodbye in
Speaker 1: the morning and went to work in service of this line.
Speaker 1: That's crazy, though, people were kissing their kids. But it
Speaker 1: turns out this commission was a mistake because after a
Speaker 1: year of work, the commission disbands. They couldn't find any
Speaker 1: evidence of widespread voter fraud. He formed a commission to
Speaker 1: investigate his lie. That's like lying to your friend about
Speaker 1: how much you weigh and then insisting on stepping onto
Speaker 1: a scale. Actually that, oh yeah, no, that is a
Speaker 1: good metaphor, and then you step off the scale, kick
Speaker 1: the guy in the crotch, steals wall. Nope, you lost
Speaker 1: it again. Trump's Department of Justice was also investigating and
Speaker 1: was able to find just nineteen illegal voters in North Carolina,
Speaker 1: so three to five million illegal votes in the election.
Speaker 1: That's just a lie, A lie with humble beginnings that
Speaker 1: worked its way from an Internet survey to a Virginia university,
Speaker 1: to a right wing website, to a German golfer to
Speaker 1: the President of the United States. Dasylidic as a producer
Speaker 1: at these American lies. She recently unfriended me on Facebook.
Speaker 1: No hard feelings dazy. I'm Michael Costa. We'll be back
Speaker 1: next week with more FIBs, falsehoods, and fabrications on the
Speaker 1: Daily Show Presents These American Lies. This has been a
Speaker 1: Comedy Central podcast